The Bristling Wood - Katharine Kerr [142]
“Of course.” She felt her fear like a hand at her throat. The old man apparently agreed with her sudden insight.
Rhys’s wife, Madronna, met them at the gates. A willowy blond woman, she was pretty in a vacuous sort of way, but now her childlike face was composed by an iron will. Lovyan had to admire her daughter-in-law, who was sincerely fond of her husband.
“His chamber’s prepared,” Madronna said. “How bad is—”
“Bad, truly, but not the end. We’ll nurse him through this between us.”
While the men carried Rhys to the chamber, Lovyan went to her suite, took off her blood-soaked dress, and washed thoroughly. She put on a clean dress, a somber one of gray linen, then looked at herself in a mirror. The face that looked back seemed to have aged years since the morning. She was painfully aware of the deep wrinkles slashed across her cheeks and the numb, half-dead look of her eyes.
“Ah, Goddess, am I to bury another son?”
She laid the mirror down and turned away, knowing that she would do just that, for all Nevyn’s skill with his herbs. Yet she could not cry. She found herself remembering the day her second son was brought home to her, her gentle Aedry, just sixteen that summer, brought home wrapped in a blanket and tied over his horse, killed riding with his father in a war. She stood in the ward and watched while they cut the ropes and brought him down, and she never allowed herself one tear, because she knew the warband was watching, and if she cried at all, she would start screaming like a madwoman. She felt the same now. No matter how furious Rhys made her, he was still her firstborn son.
With a toss of her head, she left the chamber and went down to the great hall. Over on the riders’ side, the men were drinking steadily and saying little, even the ten men of her own that she’d brought as escort. As she walked past, she motioned to her captain, Cullyn of Cerrmor. He hurried over to the honor table and knelt at her side.
“Will he live, my lady?”
“I can only hope so, Captain. I need to send a speeded courier to Dun Deverry. The king has to be informed of this. Pick the man you think best and get him ready to go.”
“Done, my lady, but it had best be one of Rhys’s men.”
“For the formality, I suppose you’re right, but I can’t command them.”
“But, my lady, you’re the regent here now.”
“Oh by the gods, so I am! It’s all happened so fast that I can barely think.”
“It would take anyone that way, my lady.” He hesitated, honestly sympathetic, but bound by considerations of rank. Finally he spoke again. “Your Grace, you know that I’ve had my differences with the gwerbret in the past, but it aches my heart to see your grief.”
“My thanks.”
When he looked up, she suddenly remembered Rhodry, and what Rhys’s death might mean. The battle-grim warrior kneeling beside her loved Rhodry like a son, and she knew that Cullyn was as torn as she was. If Rhys died—even if he merely lay ill for months—the king would have the perfect reason to recall his brother, and Rhys would be unable to say a word in protest. She wanted Rhodry home with all her heart, but to have it take this?
“Ah gods.” Her voice sounded like a moan, even to her, and she forced herself to stay in control of her rising tears. “Captain, fetch me a scribe and the captain of Rhys’s warband. We’ve got to get that message to Dun Deverry as soon as ever we can.”
For hours Nevyn worked on the injured gwerbret, but even as he set the broken leg and stitched the bad cut over the eye, he felt his hope receding. Sooner rather than later, Rhys would die. The fall had damaged one of his lungs—Nevyn could hear that by putting his ear to the gwerbret’s chest—but how badly he couldn’t know. The one good sign was that Rhys was not spitting up blood, which would mean that the lung had been punctured by a splinter from one of his many broken ribs. In time, it might heal, though he doubted it. What was worse was the damage to his kidneys. By opening up his second sight Nevyn could see the gwerbret’s aura, and in it the centers of the various vortices of etheric force that correspond