The Bristling Wood - Katharine Kerr [66]
“I have them on my pack mule, Your Highness. In case you shouldn’t require my services, I’ll leave them behind for the next candidate.”
“Oh, you can take it for granted that you’re staying. It’s all been passing strange. When I first sent to the temples for a tutor, I was expecting to get a priest. That’s who they usually send to a king’s dun. But they told me that they just didn’t have the right man available. It didn’t matter where I sent, and I asked at more than one holy place.”
“Indeed? How very peculiar, Your Highness.”
“So I was cursed glad when Pedraddyn wrote to say that you’d turned up. No doubt it’s Wyrd, and who can question that?”
Nevyn smiled politely and said not a word in answer. Yet for all his talk of Wyrd, Casyl spent the good part of an hour asking shrewd questions about the education he had in mind for the prince. Like most illiterate men, the king had a prodigious memory, and he dredged up references to every book or author he’d heard mentioned over the years just to see if Nevyn knew them, too. They were just beginning to discuss Nevyn’s maintenance and recompense when there was a bustle and confusion at the door: maidservants shrieked, guards swore and shouted. An enormous gray-and-black boarhound raced into the great hall with a very dead chicken in its mouth. Right behind ran a young boy, as blond and pale as Casyl. Yelling at the top of his lungs, he chased the panicked hound right under the royal chair, so suddenly that the dog nearly dumped the king on the floor. Swearing, Casyl jumped clear as the lad flung himself down and grabbed the hound’s collar.
“Give it back, Spider! Bad dog!”
“Maryn, by the fat rump of Epona’s steed! Can’t you see I’m talking with an important guest?”
“My apologies, Father.” The prince went on hauling the hound out from the chair. “But he stole it, and I told Cook I’d get it back, because he’s my dog.”
With a dramatic sigh the king stood back out of the way and let the prince pry the by now much ill-used and doubtless inedible chicken out of the boarhound’s jaws. Nevyn watched in bemused fascination: so this was the future king of all Deverry and Eldidd. As was necessary for the plan, he was a handsome child, with large, solemn gray eyes in a rosy-cheeked oval face and neatly cropped golden hair.
“Get that bleeding fowl out of the great hall, will you?” Casyl snarled. “Here, I’ll call a page.”
“Please, Father, I’d best take it back myself, because I promised Cook I would.”
“Well and good, then. Come back when you’re done.” The king aimed a vague kick at the dog. “Begone, hound!”
Boarhound and marked prince alike scurried out of the royal presence. With a sigh, Casyl sat back down and took his tankard from the table.
“He’s a wild lad, good scholar, and this is a rough sort of court, as you’ve doubtless noticed.”
“Well, Your Highness, there is much virtue in a simple life under less than easy conditions.”
“Nicely put. I can see that you’ll be able to teach the prince tact, if naught else. I see no reason to pretend to pomp that I can’t afford. The glory of my kingdom has always lain in her soldiers, not her fine manners.”
“And young Maryn had best learn that, my liege, if he wants to have a kingdom to govern when his turn comes.”
It took Nevyn some time to fit into the life of the palace. In the mornings he gave Maryn his lessons, but in the afternoon the prince went to the captain of the warband for training in riding and swordcraft. Nevyn spent much time alone at first, in his large, wedge-shaped chamber at the very top of the broch. It was nicely furnished with a bed, a writing desk, and a heavily carved chest for his clothing, but its best feature was the view, a vast sweep of the lake below and the rolling farmland beyond. At meals, he ate with the other high-ranked servitors and their families: the bard, the chamberlain, the equerry, and the king’s chirurgeon. At first they regarded him warily with an eye to keeping the king’s special favor for themselves, but since he cared naught