The Bristling Wood - Katharine Kerr [83]
When the song was done—and it was a good twenty minutes long—most of the Wildfolk slipped away, but a few lingered, his blue sprite among them, sitting close beside him as he watched the ripples in the lake, the harp silent in his hands. He remembered that other lake up in Cantrae, ten years or so ago now, that had tormented his thirst as he rode dying. It had been about the same time of day, he decided, because the sun had rippled it with gold flecks just as it was doing to Drwloc in front of him. He could see in his mind the dark reeds and the white heron, and he could feel, too, the burning thirst and the pain, the sickening buzz of the flies and his dark despair.
“It was worth it,” he remarked to the sprite. “It brought me to Nevyn, after all.”
She nodded and patted him gently on the knee. Maddyn smiled, thinking of what lay ahead. There was not the least doubt in his mind that Nevyn had found the man born to be king of all Deverry. He believed with his heart and soul that the young prince had been handpicked by the gods to reunite the kingdom. Soon he and the other silver daggers would ride behind Maryn when he set out to claim his birthright The only thing Maddyn wondered about was when the time would come. As the sunlight faded from the lake, and the night wind began to pick up, it seemed to him that his entire life had led to this point, when he, Caradoc, Owaen, and all the rest of the men in his troop were poised and ready, like arrows nocked in the bows of a line of archers. Soon would come the order to draw and loose. Soon, he told himself, truly, soon enough.
He jumped to his feet and called out, a peal of his berserk laughter ringing across the lake toward the sunset. The strings of his harp sounded softly in answer, trembling in the wind. Grinning to himself, he slung the harp over his shoulder and started back to the dun, glowing with warm firelight and torchlight in the gathering night.
Part Two
Summer, 1064
The Lords of Wyrd do not make a man’s life as neatly as a master potter turns out bowls, each perfectly shaped and suitable to its purpose. In the ebb and flow of birth and death arc strange currents, eddies, and vortices, most of which are beyond the power of the Great Ones to control.
—The Secret Book of
Cadwallon the Druid
ONE
The sound of rain drumming on the ward outside echoed pleasantly in the great hall. In her chair by the fire, Aunt Gwerna was drowsing over her needlework. Occasionally she would look up and answer a dutiful “true-spoken” to one of her husband’s rhetorical questions. Perryn’s uncle, Benoic, Tieryn Pren Cludan, was in one of his expostulatory moods. He sat straight in his chair, one heavy hand gripping a tankard, the other emphasizing his points by slamming the chair arm. Benoic was going quite heavily gray, but he was still as strong-muscled as many a younger man, and as strong in the lungs, too.
“It’s these worm-riddled pikemen,” he bellowed. “Battle’s not the same with common-born men fighting in it. They should be guarding the carts and naught else. Cursed near blasphemous, if you ask me.”
“True-spoken,” Perryn said dutifully.
“Hah! More of this wretched courtly mincing around, that’s all it is. Trust the blasted southerners to come up with somewhat like this. It’s no wonder the kingdom’s not what it was.”
While Benoic soothed his feelings with a long swallow of ale, Perryn tried to unravel the connection between spearing a man off his horse and the fine manners of the king’s court.
“You young lads nowadays!” his uncle went on. “Now, if you’d only ridden in some of the battles I did at your age, then you’d understand what life here in Cerrgonney means. Look at you, lad, riding around without a copper to your name. Ye gods! You