The Black Raven - Katharine Kerr [121]
“Your father was always a farseeing man, my liege,” Nevyn said.
Maryn nodded. He was holding the rolled letter in one hand, slapping it rhythmically on the other palm.
“Father wants to send him here straightaway, before the snows,” Maryn said. “I’d best send an escort to meet him halfway.”
“That would be wise. Now that Hendyr’s lord is your vassal, Riddmar will be in no danger, but the honor of the thing matters.”
“I’m sending men from the Cerrmor warband. After all, they’ll be Riddmar’s men once I’ve won the kingship. And then as a gesture Oggyn thought some of the silver daggers should accompany them as my personal envoys.”
“That sounds good.”
“I thought of putting Branoic in command of the whole lot.” Defiance edged into Maryn’s voice. “It would be a considerable honor for him.”
“My liege, that’s unworthy of you.”
Maryn tossed the rolled letter on the table. Nevyn folded his hands in his lap and waited. At last Maryn looked at him.
“True spoken,” the prince said. “I’ll send Owaen.”
“My thanks.”
Maryn smiled, but ruefully.
“It will be good to get Cerrmor settled,” Nevyn said.
“It will. I wonder if the Council of Electors will see fit to support my candidate.”
“So do I. We’ll have to put some thought into that.”
Maryn got up and started pacing. He went from window to wall and back again, over and over, until Nevyn felt like screaming at him to sit down.
“What’s troubling you so badly, my liege?” Nevyn said instead.
“All this talk and politicking and weaselling around! Ye gods, I used to think that once the wars were over, once I held Dun Deverry, then I’d be king, and everything would fall into place. Apparently I was a fool for thinking that.”
“Not a fool, Your Highness. Merely uninformed.”
Maryn stopped pacing and smiled.
“My thanks,” Maryn said, grinning. “I much prefer your way of putting it.”
“I thought you might, my liege. But truly, the talk’s every bit as dangerous as the fighting. You won Dun Deverry by the sword, but keeping it—that you’ll do with words. A wrong decision now could lose you everything.”
After he left the prince, Nevyn returned to his own chamber, where the problem of the curse tablet lay waiting for him inside a little wood box of the sort that holds tools for scribes. He’d marked the wood all over with wards and sigils, then built astral seals over it as well, renewing them five times a day at the changing of the astral tides. Once the seals were freshly set, he would perform a banishing to dispel any accidental evil that might have accrued upon it. After all these precautions he would take the tablet out and handle it, hoping to gain some fragmentary visions or hear a voice, deep in his mind, that might tell him how to unwrap the dweomer twined around it. Nothing ever came to him.
He hated to exploit Lilli’s affinity for the tablet. She was young, just beginning her training, and always on the edge of illness. Yet he had no other weapons at his command.
“I begin to think that you must be right,” Nevyn said to her. “The baby must have been your brother. We’ll never have proof, but nothing else will explain the way the tablet affects you.”
“I was afraid of that,” Lilli said. “It’s so odd. My mother’s been dead for months now, but it’s as if she’s still here, working her horrible magic.”
They were sitting in his chamber, late of an evening, with the tablet lying between them in a pool of candlelight. It was such an ugly thing, with its sullen curse scratched in crude letters, to hold such power.
“You slept much of the day, you told me?” Nevyn said.
“I did,” Lilli said. “Which is why I can’t sleep now.”
Nevyn opened the second sight and studied her aura: stronger, brighter than it had been in all the time he’d known her. He closed down his vision and considered her physical body, less gaunt than ever before. His herbs and Maryn’s attentions had apparently both been good for her.
“I’m thinking of asking you to try a dangerous trick,” Nevyn said. “Are you game?”
“I am, my lord. Do you want me to touch it again?”
“Just that,