The Dragon Revenant - Katharine Kerr [81]
“I’m so sorry.”
“So was I.”
Just then, predictably enough for him, the equerry’s boy fell flat on his face and began to howl. By the time she had him settled down, it was cold enough to drive them all indoors. Although it never did snow, the rainstorm dragged on and on, and they had no more walks with the captain for some days.
Out of custom more than necessity, Dun Aberwyn set a watch every night, four rotations of two men each at the locked gates and four of a dozen up on the ramparts. It would have surprised these loyal men, however, to know that another watch, and a strange one, went on at the same time up in the tower suite that Nevyn shared with Elaeno. Every sunset, when the tide of the element of Water began to flow on the astral, and at midnight, when that gave way to Earth, and again at dawn, when the Aethyr burgeoned, the two dweomermen made a magical sphere of blue light all round the dun and set it with seals in the shape of flaming pentagrams. During the day they could rest, because the tides of Fire and Air are so inimical to the dark dweomer that even its greatest masters rarely buck them. All that autumn their watch had held, but even now that winter had arrived in earnest, Nevyn saw no reason to relax it.
“I can’t believe our enemies have simply fled the field after one miserable battle,” he remarked one night.
“No more can I,” Elaeno said. “They’re trying to lull us to sleep, more like. Someone ensorceled that stable lad and set him on Rhodry’s daughter, and it wasn’t any flyaway spirit, either.”
“Just so. But I’ve searched all over the blasted astral, and I know you have, too, and neither of us have found a trace of dweomer-work.”
“They’re lying low, that’s all. When they think we’ve given up looking, they’ll pounce.”
“In the meantime they’ve got to be living somewhere, curse them! I’ve had the regent send messages to her loyal men, asking them to keep an eye out for any suspicious strangers, but our enemies aren’t going to just ride into town and announce they’re setting up a dark dweomer shop.”
Elaeno managed a laugh at that.
“Curses for sale!” he intoned like a street vendor. “Come buy our nice hot love potions! Curses for sale! But truly, the local lords don’t have the necessary eyes to ferret out our nasty little friends. We make better arrangements for this sort of thing back home, I must say. Oh, that reminds me. I think I’ll pay a visit to the shipmasters’ guild tomorrow. They may know if any of my countrymen have taken up residence in Aberwyn lately.”
“There’s no reason that our enemies have to be Bardek men.”
“I know, but we’ve got to start somewhere, don’t we?”
There was no arguing with that. In the middle of the morrow morning, once the tide of Fire was running clean and strong enough to baffle any dark dweomermen, Elaeno left the dun on his errand. While he waited for him to return, Nevyn went to see his patient-cum-prisoner up in the tower.
By then Perryn was much recovered, though far from well. In those days, treating a consumption of the lungs was a tricky business. Nevyn was having him spend all day in bed and most of the night lying wrapped in fur rugs on the roof, where he could breathe the icy air in an attempt to strengthen his lungs. Although the cure was working splendidly, thanks in part to Perryn’s unnaturally high vitality, still Nevyn was keeping a close watch on him. He was also too afraid of setbacks to risk any more magical attempts to discover the man’s true nature. That particular afternoon, when Nevyn entered his chamber, the first thing Perryn did was complain about being restless.
“I just can’t sleep any more, my lord. It’s being inside all the time like this. I’m going to go daft in here, truly I am.”
“Better daft than dead, lad. I’ve seen cases of consumption that seemed cured for weeks, only to flare up again as soon as the patient overdid it.”
Perryn sighed and flopped back against his pile of pillows to stare miserably at the ceiling.
“Er, ah, well, there