Darkspell - Katharine Kerr [179]
“Of course, child!” Nevyn felt like jigging in sheer glee. “There’s no reason that you and I and the babe couldn’t settle down somewhere where the folk need an herbman and his apprentice.”
She smiled in such sunny relief that she looked more a child than a woman.
“If it weren’t for Rhodry’s stubborn honor,” he went on, “we could do it straightaway, but I can’t see him being willing to grub among the herbs like a farmer.”
“He might—on the night when the moon turns purple and falls from the sky.”
“Just so. But well and good, then. We’ll keep it in mind. Up in the northern provinces there are a number of towns that need an herbman enough to ignore the fact that a silver dagger is wintering with him.”
After Jill left, Nevyn stood by the window for a long time and smiled to himself. At last! he thought. Soon his Wyrd would begin to unknot; soon he could begin to lead her to the dweomer. Soon. Yet even in his joy he felt a cold warning, that nothing in his dweomer-wound life would ever be simple again.
EPILOGUE 1063
The wild wind of a man’s Wyrd twists his life.
Untamed it is, unknown its turning.
Dread the dolt who declares he sees his, sun
sparkling. In mirror-murk, Wyrd watches him.
—Gnomic Stanzas of Gweran, Bardd Blaedd
“Why didn’t you have Valandario order Ebañy home?” Calonderiel said. “It’s been months since the Master of the Aethyr had any need of him.”
“Because in my heart I was hoping that he’d do something just because I asked him,” Devaberiel said. “Just once.”
Calonderiel considered this gravely. They were sitting in Devaberiel’s tent, and a fire burned under the smoke hole in the center of the roof. Every now and then a drop of rain slipped past the baffles and hissed in the flames.
“You know,” the warleader said at last, “you rant and rave at the lad too much. I swear it, bard, when you’re in full voice and yelling at a man, it makes his head ache.”
“And did I ask your advice?”
“No, but you’ve got it anyway.”
“Coming from you, of all men—”
“Ah, I know us both very well. Isn’t that why you’re angry at me now?”
Devaberiel stifled a furious retort.
“Well, yes,” the bard said at last. “I suppose it is.”
Calonderiel smiled and passed the mead skin.
By then autumn was drawing to a close. The weary sun hauled itself up late and stayed for only a scant six hours before setting among the rain clouds. Although most of the People had ridden south to the winter camps, Devaberiel and a few friends waited on the Eldidd border, driving their horses from meadow to meadow in search of fresh grass, hunting the gray deer and the feral cattle left from the days when Eldidd men had tried to claim the borderlands. For all his bluster, Devaberiel was worried about his son. What if Ebañy had been taken ill in the filthy cities of men or been killed by thugs or bandits?
Finally, just two days before the darkest day, when rain poured down and wind howled round the tents, Ebañy rode in, dripping wet and shivering with cold, so miserable that Devaberiel didn’t have the heart to berate him straightaway. He helped his son tether his horses with the others, then brought him into the warm tent and had him change clothes. Ebañy huddled by the fire and took a skin of mead gratefully.
“And have you run enough errands for one summer?” the bard said.
“Oh, yes, and a strange business it was.” Ebañy wiped his mouth on the back of his hand and passed the skin to his father. “There. I am braced, O esteemed parent. You may lecture, scold, berate, and excoriate me to your heart’s content. I realize that I’ve arrived in the autumn only in the most limited, restricted, and weaseling sense of that word.”
“I was just worried about you, that’s all.”
Ebañy looked up in surprise and reached for the skin with a flourish.
“Well,” Devaberiel went on, as mildly as he could, “Deverry’s a dangerous place.”
“That’s true. I’m sorry. I found this lass up in Pyrdon, you see, on my way home, who found my humble self very amusing indeed.”
“Oh. Well, that’s a reasonable excuse.”
Again Ebañy stared at him in wide-eyed