The Dragon Revenant - Katharine Kerr [8]
“I did, and it seems a good bit stronger. I can’t get over that peculiar color, a mucky sort of green it is, with those odd purplish stripes and specks.”
“I’ve never seen one like it before, truly. Well, let’s go down and have a look at him. If he’s well enough, we’ll try a working. Let me just put together the herbs and things I need.”
The prisoner in question was housed in a small chamber in one of the half-towers that clustered round the main broch. Outside his door stood an armed guard, because Lord Perryn of Alobry had been until his recent capture one of the worst horse thieves in the kingdom, an offense punishable by a public hanging after a public flogging. He had committed another, more serious crime as well, but Nevyn was keeping that a secret for several good reasons. The summer before Perryn had abducted and raped Cullyn of Cerrmor’s only daughter, Jill, but he’d done it by a muddled dweomer in circumstances so unusual that Nevyn had no idea of whether or not he were a criminal or a victim of some peculiar spell. Although the matter would require more study before he reached his conclusions, if Cullyn found out, Perryn wouldn’t live long enough to be studied. As it was, he’d nearly died already from a consumption of the lungs brought on by his misuse of his instinctive magical powers.
That evening, though, he did seem much recovered, a peculiarity in itself. As Elaeno had said, that consumption was severe enough to have killed an ordinary human being. Nevyn was beginning to suspect that Perryn was far from ordinary, and, in fact, perhaps not truly human at all. On the tall side, Perryn was a skinny, nondescript sort of young man, with dull red hair and blue eyes, a flattish nose, and an overly generous mouth. At the moment he was also deathly pale, his eyes still rheumy as he sat up in bed and coughed into an old rag. When the two dweomermen came in, he looked up, whimpered under his breath, and shrank back against the heap of pillows behind him.
“Still coughing up blood?” Nevyn said.
“None, my lord. Er, ah, well, is that all right?”
“It’s a very good sign, actually. Will you stop cowering and sniveling like a wretched field mouse? I’m not going to hurt you.”
“But when are they going to come to … er, you know … hang me?”
“Not until I tell them to, and if you do exactly as I say, they may not hang you at all.”
Perryn arranged a totally unconvinced smile.
“I see you ate a good dinner. Do you feel like getting up and getting dressed?”
“Whatever you say, my lord.”
“I want to know how you feel.”
“Well enough, then.” Perryn threw back the covers and swung himself up to sit on the edge of the bed. In his long white nightshirt he looked like some impossibly awkward stork. “Er, ah, I’m a bit light-headed.”
“That’s to be expected. Elaeno, hand him his clothes, will you?”
Once Perryn was dressed Nevyn sat him down in a chair right by the charcoal brazier, which was heaped with glowing coals. He’d brought with him a small cloth sack filled with chips of cedar, juniper, and a strange Bardek wood with a sweet but clean scent called sandalwood. Casually he strewed the chips over the coals, where they began to smoke in a concatenation of scent.
“Just somewhat to cleanse the stale humors from the air,” Nevyn said, lying cheerfully. “Ah, we’ve got some good coals. I always like to look into a fire. It always seems that you can see pictures in the coals, doesn’t it?”
“So it does.” Automatically Perryn looked at the lambent flames and the gold-and-ruby palaces among the heaped-up sticks and knobs. “When I was a lad I used to see dragons crawling in the fire. My Mam had lots of tales about dragons and elves and suchlike. I used to wish they were real.”
“It would be pretty, truly.”
Nodding a little, Perryn stared into the brazier while the sweet smoke drifted lazily into the room. When Nevyn opened up the second sight, he noted with a certain professional pleasure that the lad’s aura had expanded to normal from the shrunken size it had been during his illness. The Seven Stars were glowing