The Black Raven - Katharine Kerr [73]
“Well, after a manner of speaking,” Nevyn said at last, “you have been ensorcelled, you and half the kingdom with you. Some years ago, when I was desperately hoping for peace and doubting that I’d ever see it again, Maddyn the bard gave me an idea. If a prince came along who seemed to be dweomer, everyone would flock to his banners. And so I found Maryn and made him look as magical as a king out of the Dawntime. Wildfolk follow him everywhere, Lilli. They cast glamours over him like cloaks.”
Caught without words, Lilli sat down on the edge of the bed.
“You no doubt respond more than most people,” Nevyn went on. “You have the dweomer gifts, even if you can’t see the elemental spirits yet for yourself. In time you will, and then you’ll understand what I mean about the glamour.”
“Oh ye gods! I feel like such a dolt.”
“Why? I happen to cast a rather good spell. It’s fooled thousands of other people, after all.”
At that Lilli could look up and find him smiling at her. She started to laugh, but in the damp air of her chamber her lungs ached. The laugh turned into a racking cough.
“Huh, that sounds worse and worse,” Nevyn said. “I’ve brought some medicinals for it. Let me brew you up some, and then I need to ask Oggyn about getting you a chamber with a proper hearth. I’d forgotten about this dun, how cold it always seems to be.”
“Did you live here once?”
“Once. Before you were born. A very very long time ago.”
Although Lilli wanted to ask more, he turned away and began to rummage through his sack of medicinals so resolutely that she knew the subject had been closed.
That evening the prince summoned Nevyn to his private quarters in the heart of the royal broch. A page led him up a winding stone stair to a heavy oak door, worn smooth and grimy with age and smoke. It opened into a dim suite of rooms hung with threadbare tapestries and stuffed with decrepit furniture. Fat candles burned in smoke-stained sconces on the stone walls. Nevyn picked his way around three carved chests to sit in one of the many chairs the prince offered him. It creaked alarmingly under him. The prince himself perched on the edge of a wobbly table.
“The splendor of the royal palace!” Maryn said, grinning.
“Indeed, my liege. These people certainly never rid themselves of anything, did they?”
“Not their chairs nor their kingdom, not willingly. Though if the siege had gone on all winter, most of this would have ended up as firewood.”
“Most likely, truly.”
The prince paused, as if thinking something through. Nevyn folded his hands in his lap and waited. The guttering light from the candles threw shadows across the beamed ceiling and made him remember a time when torches had lit this room, two hundred years ago. He’d been young and a prince himself, then, and this broch new-built. More than two hundred years now, he thought. Gods! No wonder I grow weary!
“There’s a matter I need attended to,” Maryn said abruptly. “It concerns the lady Lillorigga.”
“How so, Your Highness?”
“No matter how much we consider Lilli a daughter of the Rams of Hendyr, and certainly Tieryn Anasyn calls her naught but sister, by birthright she’s still a Boar. When I proscribe the Boar clan and attaint their lands, it will go ill with her if she falls under the dominion of the proclamation.”
“I’m very glad you remembered that. I’m afraid I’d quite forgotten.” Nevyn was more than a little annoyed with himself for it. “I’ll speak to the priests of Bel tomorrow and take Anasyn with me. Before the god they can proclaim her kinship.”
“Splendid! Do that, please.”
“I take it that you don’t hold out much hope for Braemys’s swearing fealty.”
“Do you?” Maryn smiled with a twist of his mouth.
“None, my liege.” Nevyn got up. “When do we ride out?”
“Soon. We’ll give the herald a decent head start for the honor of the thing, but we can’t wait long. My vassals are growing restless. They need to return to their lands to receive the autumn taxes and suchlike. I’m hoping that Braemys’s loyal lords are just as eager to quit the field.”
“No doubt. They can’t have much stomach for more