Darkspell - Katharine Kerr [70]
“Oh, how could he not know? My poor captive love.”
When he returned to the dun, Nevyn made a point of going up to the tower to see the prince. Although his pleasant chamber had changed not at all, Mael was a man now. Tall, filled out, he paced gravely round the room instead of throwing himself about in an agony of impatience. He was also dead pale, his alabaster skin making his raven hair look even darker. With a start Nevyn realized that it had been seven years since the prince had been out in the sun.
“You can’t know how much it gladdens my heart to see you,” Mael said. “I missed my tutor badly when he left.”
“My apologies, but the dweomer calls a man down many a strange road. I seem to have left you some comfort, though. I’ve spoken to Gavra.”
The prince turned scarlet and looked away.
“Ah, well,” he said after a moment. “It’s strange, truly. There was a time when I would have thought that a common-born woman was beneath my notice. Now I wonder what Gavra could possibly want with a wretch like me.”
“Your Highness has had a harsh Wyrd, truly.”
“Oh, not as harsh as many. I’ve grown tired of pitying myself, you see. Some men are like hawks, dying young in battle. I’m a little finch, kept in a royal cage and dreaming of trees. But it’s a nice cage, and there’s plenty of seed in my bowl.”
“True enough.”
“The books you left me have become more and more of a comfort, too. And Gavra found me an interesting thing down at the bookseller’s in the temple of Wmm. It’s a compendium of works by a philosopher named Ristolyn, who wrote in the Dawntime. Was he a Rhwman?”
“He wasn’t, but one of a tribe called the Greggycion, a wise folk judging from what little we have of their books. I believe that the beastly Rhwmanes conquered their kingdom, much as they did the one belonging to our ancestors back in the Homeland. Ristolyn always struck me as a writer worthy of much thought. I’ve read part of his Ethics of Nichomachea.”
They passed a pleasant hour discussing things that Nevyn hadn’t heard so much as mentioned in years. Although the prince talked with the eagerness of a born scholar, when it was time for Nevyn to leave, melancholy settled over Mael like a sea fog. He wasn’t a scholar, after all, but a desperate man clinging to whatever would keep him sane.
Leaving Mael’s silent room and going into the great hall was like walking into another world. Since the army was mustering, the hall was filled with lords and warbands: men shouting, men laughing, yelling for ale, and throwing jests like daggers at one another. Nevyn sat at Orivaen’s table with the king’s councillors just below the dais. As the meal was being served, Glyn came through his private door with Gweniver. When he went to the honor table, however, she left the dais and went to eat with the king’s guards and her Ricyn.
“Lady Gweniver seems to hold her nobility in contempt,” Nevyn remarked to Orivaen.
“She does. I’ve spoken to her about it ever so often, but one simply can’t argue with the god-touched.”
During the meal Nevyn watched Glyn, who seemed to have changed not at all, still as straight and gracious as ever as he smiled at a jest or listened to the conversation of his honored lords. Yet the change came clear later, when a page took Nevyn to the king’s private apartments.
Glyn was standing by the hearth. Candlelight shone and sparked on silver, gleamed on the rich colors of the hangings and carpets, and picked out the hollow shadows under his eyes. Although he insisted that Nevyn take a chair, he himself paced restlessly by the hearth as they talked. At first they exchanged little more than news and pleasantries, until slowly, a bit at a time, the regal presence wore away, and Glyn leaned wearily against the mantel, a heartsick man.
“My liege seems to honor Lady Gweniver highly,” Nevyn remarked.
“She’s worthy of honor. I’ve given her the place at the head of my guards, you see. No one will dare envy a god-touched warrior.”
There it was, the memory they would have to face.
“Does my liege still miss his brother?”
“I doubtless will