The Bristling Wood - Katharine Kerr [11]
“I’d say so, for all that Rhodda doesn’t have much of it.”
“A full quarter, let us not forget. Don’t fall for your own lies about a trace of Elven blood in the Maelwaedds.”
“Well, it’s not a lie, because there is one, but of course it doesn’t apply here. I take it you plan to make the child a good marriage someday?”
“An influential marriage, certainly, and I plan to teach her how to make any marriage suit her own purposes. If she can learn to channel all that willfulness, she’ll be a woman to reckon with in Eldidd, illegitimate or not.”
Although Nevyn agreed with vague words rather than burden her further, he privately wondered if the child could ever be tamed and forced into the narrow mold of a noble-born woman. Sooner or later, her wild blood was going to show.
Before he left Dun Bruddlyn, Nevyn made a point of scrying out Rhodry and, when he found him well, telling Lovyan so. As he rode out, leading his pack mule behind him, he felt a dread that was as much logic as it was dweomer warning. The summer before, he and those others who studied the dweomer of light had won a series of victories over those who followed the dweomer of darkness. They had not only disrupted an elaborate plot of the dark masters but had also ruined one of their main sources of income, the importing of opium and various poisons into the kingdom. The dark ones would want revenge; they always did, and he reminded himself to stay on guard in his travels. Of course, it was likely that they’d scheme for years, trying to lay a plan so clever and convoluted that it would be undetectable. It was likely, but at the same time, the dweomer warnings came to him in a coldness down his back. Since the dark masters were so threatened, they would doubtless strike back as soon as they could. The only question was how.
And yet, other, more mundane matters demanded his attention as well. The gwerbretrhyn was too rich, too desirable, to stay peaceful if the line of succession should be broken. As much as he hated involving himself in the schemings and feudings of noble clans, Nevyn knew that his duty to Rhodry’s dweomer-touched Wyrd also imposed on him a duty to Rhodry’s rhan and to his innocent subjects, who preferred peace to war, unlike noble-born men like Talidd. He would fight with every weapon he had to keep Aberwyn safe. For all that Lovyan was skeptical about his political skills (and he knew full well that she was), he was better armed for this fight than any man in the kingdom, right down to the wisest of the high king’s councillors. Oh, I learned a trick or two that time, he thought to himself, and our Rhodry was right in the middle of that little mess, for all that he was a humble rider then, and an outlawed man! Although it had been well over a hundred years ago now, he knew what it was to battle for the throne of not merely a gwerbret, but a king.
Part One
Deverry and Pyrdon,
833–845
When Dilly Blind went to the river,
To see what he could see,
He found the King of Cerrmor
A-washing his own laundry …
—Old Eldidd folk song
ONE
The Year 833. Slwmar II, king in Dun Deverry, received a bad wound in battle. The second son of Glyn II, king in Cerrmor, died stillborn. We took these as bad omens. Only later would we realize that Bel in His wisdom was preparing peace for his people …
The Holy Chronicles of Lughcarn
The flies were the worst thing. It was bad enough to be dying, but to have the flies so thick was an unjust indignity. They clustered buzzing round the wound and tried to drink the blood. It hurt too much to try to brush them away. The wound was on his right side, just below the armpit, and deep. If someone could have stitched it for him, Maddyn supposed, he might have lived, but since he was all alone in the wild hills, he was going to die. He saw no reason to lie to himself about it: he was bleeding to