The Bristling Wood - Katharine Kerr [82]
He turned and frankly ran from the man who’d discovered his secret. Young dolt! Nevyn thought, but with some affection. He would have to talk some more with Branoic, no matter who he … and then he saw it, what had been right under his nose but so unwelcome that he’d kept it at bay for days.
“It can’t be! The Lords of Wyrd wouldn’t do this to me! Would they?”
And yet he was remembering his Brangwen’s last incarnation, when as Gweniver she’d dreamt of becoming the best warrior in all Deverry. In this life, the Lords of Wyrd had given her a body fit to fulfill that dream and then, or so he hoped, finally put it to rest. While every soul is at root of one polarity, which translates into the sex of the physical body, each spends part of its lifetimes in bodies of the opposite sex in order to have a full experience of the worlds of form. Nevyn had simply been refusing to see that such a time had come for Brangwen, his lovely, delicate, little Gwennie as he still thought of her. For all he knew, she was working out part of her Wyrd that had nothing to do with him personally. Whatever the reason, she’d returned to him just as he’d known she would, but as Branoic of Belglaedd.
As he paced back and forth in the dark, silent ward, Nevyn was sick with weariness. He could see a dark message for himself in her soul’s choice of a body. Deep in his heart he’d been hoping that she would love him again, that they would have a warm, human relationship, not merely the cold discipline of apprentice and master. Apparently such a love was forbidden; he saw Branoic as a warning, that he was to teach the dweomer to the inner soul and forget about the outer form and its emotions. As much as it ached his heart, he would accept the will of the Great Ones, just as he had accepted so much else in the long years since he’d sworn his rash vow.
And after all, he had work on hand so important that his own feelings, even his own Wyrd, seemed utterly insignificant. Thinking about the battle ahead he could lay aside his personal griefs and feel hope kindling in his heart. Danger lay ahead, and great griefs, but afterward the Light would prevail again in the shattered kingdom.
On the morrow, a cool but sunny day, Maddyn went for a stroll round the edge of the lake. He found a warm spot in the shelter of a leafless willow tree and sat down to tune his harp. It had never been an expensive instrument, and now it was battered and nicked from its long years of riding behind his saddle, yet it had the sweetest tone of any harp in the kingdom. Although many a bard in many a great lord’s hall had offered him gold for it, he would rather have parted with a leg, and although those same bards had begged him to tell them his secret, he never had. After all, would they have believed him if he’d told the truth, that the Wildfolk had enchanted it for him? He often saw them touching it, stroking it all over like a beloved cat, and every time they did, it sang with a renewed, heart-aching sweetness.
As he tuned the strings that day by the lake, the Wildfolk came to listen, appearing out of the air, rising out of the water, sylph and sprite and gnome, clustering round the man that they considered their own personal bard.
“I think it’s time I made up a song about Prince Maryn. I take it you think he’s the true king, too. I’ve seen you riding on his saddle and clustering round him in the hall.”
They all nodded, turning as solemn as he’d ever seen them until an undine could stand the quiet no longer. Dripping with illusionary water, she reached over and pinched a green gnome as hard as she could. He slapped her, and they tussled, kicking and biting, until Maddyn yelled at them to stop. All sulks, they sat down again as far apart from each other as they could.
“That’s better. Maybe I’ll sing about Dilly Blind first. Shall I?”
With little nods and grins, they crowded close. Over the years Maddyn had elaborated the simple folk songs about Dilly Blind and the Wildfolk into something of an epic, adding verse after verse and clarifying the various