The Black Raven - Katharine Kerr [141]
“Look how it leans,” she said. “I was wondering why.”
Nevyn looked and saw the alarming angle the tower made to the ward below.
“It’s badly built, that’s why,” Otho snapped. “They just stuck it on top, like, instead of starting at the ground and digging a proper foundation.”
“It does look dangerous,” Nevyn said. “One of these days it could come down of its own weight. Well, or so I think. Otho?”
“I agree, my lord. A bad job all round.”
“I’ve looked through some old accounts Oggyn found,” Bellyra said. “The tower was built about fifty years back. The accounts even tell where the stone came from, up in Gwaentaer. They barged it down. Fascinating, I thought.”
Otho nodded his agreement.
“Well, Your Highness,” Maddyn put in. “In the last day’s fighting, when we finally broke through and took this area, some of the Boar’s men were up there dropping stones from the roof. Thanks to the lean the stones fell straight down without bouncing off the walls. So I thought they’d built it that way on purpose, like.”
“Now that I hadn’t thought of.” Otho looked profoundly sour. “You may be right, bard. But it’s not stable anyway.”
“Eventually I’m sure our prince will have it down,” Bellyra said. “But this is all very interesting indeed. I’ll have to write about this tower.”
“There’s another one round back,” Otho said. “And just as rickety as this.”
“Oh good! Let’s go see!”
The princess and her retinue trooped off, heading around the central broch complex. Nevyn, however, went back to his chamber where it was warm. There were times when the magical forces that prolonged his life ignored his aching joints.
It was Bellyra’s habit to compose in her head, then commit her words to the expensive parchment only once she had them right. Normally she would write in the morning, when the sun came strongly through the windows, but at times she would find herself adding a line or two in the evenings by candlelight. Often forming letters absorbed her until her eyes ached when, as on that evening, she’d found some particularly interesting lore to record.
“Nevyn’s told me lots about this broch,” she remarked to Maryn. “The one we’re in. Did you know it was the oldest?”
“I didn’t,” Maryn said, yawning.
She turned in her chair to look at him, lounging half-dressed and half-asleep on their bed.
“You find this tedious,” she said.
“I don’t. Go on.”
“Well, there was somewhat so odd about the way Nevyn told me about the broch. He was so caught up in it, like, and he made it seem so real. It made me feel that he’d been there and seen it with his own eyes.”
“Oh come now! He’s old, truly, but not that old.”
“I do rather know that. It was just his way of telling.” She glanced at the piece of parchment. “I’ve got it all down now. But anyway, the king who built it believed in keeping the old ways, and in his time the old ways included sacrificing horses and putting their corpses under the foundations of a new broch, so that’s what he did.”
“They must have rotted away by now,” Maryn said. “Bones and all.”
“Just so. Perhaps that’s why your army could take the dun. The old king thought it would never be captured as long as the spirit horses guarded it. Nevyn told me that he’d read in a book that in the Dawntime, the kings would have sacrificed children and buried them instead of horses.”
“Ye gods! Truly?”
“Truly. Oh, and count yourself lucky, my lord and husband, that they don’t consecrate kings now the way they did in the Dawntime. You wouldn’t have just ridden that white mare in the procession. You would have had to mount her and ride her like a wife, and right in front of everybody, too, so they could be sure you’d really done it and didn’t just say you had.”
Maryn blushed scarlet to the tips of his ears, and she laughed at him.
“You’re inventing that,” he snarled.
“I’m not. Ask Nevyn if you don’t believe me.”
“I’ll do naught of the sort!”
“Well, it’s true. Nevyn found