Darkspell - Katharine Kerr [95]
“I can understand my lady’s fears.”
Primilla understood something else, too; although Ogretoryc had never met his father, he saw his wife every night. She decided that she had best contact Nevyn straightway through the fire and tell him what poisoned grain she’d gleaned.
As King Glyn’s most trusted councillor, Nevyn had rights far beyond those of the usual courtier. As soon as he finished talking with Primilla, he went to the royal apartments without so much as sending a page ahead of him. In the past he’d often wondered if it were a right thing to tell the king military information gleaned by dweomer. Now that he had some to offer, he decided that it was, simply because Eldidd’s claim to the throne was so weak that he was clearly a usurper. He found a visitor there ahead of him, Prince Cobryn, now the leader of the King’s Guard. At twenty-one Cobryn was tall, slender, and handsome, looking so much like Dannyn that at times Nevyn and the king found it painful to look at him.
“Is your business urgent, my lord?” Cobryn said. “I can retire from our liege’s presence.”
“Urgent it is, but it concerns you, too.” Nevyn bowed to Glyn, who was standing at the hearth. “Eldidd is taking out an enormous loan from the guildmasters of Abernaudd. I can think of only one place he’d want to spend so much coin: our borders.”
“So! I was wondering how long we could milk tears for one prince out of three. Well, Cobryn, that means we’ll have to change our plans for the summer’s fighting. Huh. I’ll wager Eldidd was going to have his warband over our border before we received the formal message of disclamation. And I don’t need dweomer to tell me that.”
“Just so.” Cobryn laughed, a cold wolf’s mutter under his breath. “But we’re going to have a surprise waiting for the bastards.”
“My liege,” Nevyn broke in, “are you going to make good your threat and hang Prince Mael?”
Glyn rubbed his chin with the back of his hand while he thought the matter over. Always heavy, his face had turned square and stout with age, and a florid color lay across his cheeks.
“It would ache my heart to hang a helpless man, but Eldidd may leave me no choice. I’ll do naught till I have the formal renouncement in my hand. Eldidd might change his mind, but there’s no bringing the prince back from the dead once he’s hanged.”
That very week Prince Cobryn led five hundred men along the coast road to the Eldidd border, and they were supported by grain ships and war galleys. After an anxious three weeks, messengers returned; they’d fought a major victory over a very surprised Eldidd army. Two days later a herald arrived from the king of Eldidd with a letter formally renouncing Mael and putting his son, Ogretoryc, in his place. Nevyn went up straightaway to inform Mael.
He found the no-longer prince sitting at his writing desk, stacked with the prisoner’s beloved books and scattered with pieces of parchment, the beginnings of Mael’s commentary on the Ethics of the Greggyn sage, Ristolyn. Nevyn was sure that the commentary would be excellent, if only Mael lived to finish it. When Mael rose to greet him, the sun caught the thick streaks of gray in his raven-dark hair.
“I’ve got some cursed bad news for you,” Nevyn said.
“I’ve been renounced?” He spoke flatly, even dryly. “I thought that was in the wind when I heard the guards talking about war on the border.”
“I’m afraid it’s true.”
“Well, Ristolyn’s ideas about virtue are going to stand me in good stead. It seems that the entire goal or end of my life has been to make a good death down in the market square. I’d say that fortitude would be the most appropriate virtue to that end, wouldn’t you?”
“Listen. You’re not going to hang if I have one cursed word to say about it.”
“Then that gives me hope. I suppose it’s hope. Maybe it would be better to hang and ride free in the Otherlands than sit here and molder. You know, I’ve been here longer than I was a prince in Eldidd. Fancy that. Over half my life as Glyn’s guest.”
“I’ll wager the freedom