The Gold Falcon - Katharine Kerr [1]
As for Brangwen, left heartsick and shamed, she fell into her brother’s arms and bed. Soon enough, she was with child. Only then did Nevyn realize how greatly he loved her and how badly he’d failed her. Although he tried to get her away from her brother, he failed to stop the inevitable tragedy. When she drowned herself in shame, at her grave he swore a rash vow. Once she was reborn again on the wheel of life and death, he “would never rest” until he put right the evil he’d done by bringing her to the dweomer power which should have been hers. Little did he realize that fulfilling this vow would take him four hundred years of a single dweomer-touched lifetime, while the other actors in their tragedy were reborn and died again and again.
During his long life other souls would find themselves tangled in the chains of his and Brangwen’s wyrd (fate or karma). Some were people he helped; others became his enemies. Nevyn took apprentices, such as Aderyn and Lilli, and made contact with other masters of the dweomer, such as Dallandra, one of the Westfolk, elven nomads who wander the plains to the west of Deverry proper.
Eventually Brangwen was reborn as Jill, the daughter of a mercenary soldier named Cullyn of Cerrmor and Seryan, a tavern lass. After more than a few adventures she finally saw her true destiny and went with Nevyn to study the dweomer as she should have done all those years before. Only then could Nevyn die.
Jill outlived him by many years. With the help of the elven dweomermaster, Dallandra, and her bizarre lover, Evandar, a powerful soul who had never been incarnated at all, Jill captained the first war against the savage Horsekin and their so-called goddess, Alshandra. In truth, Alshandra was a mortal spirit, though one of immense magical power, and in the end Jill managed to kill her, though she went to her death as well. One of those Jill left behind was the man she’d loved in her youth, the half-mad berserker Rhodry Maelwaedd, whose wyrd turned out to be something stranger than even a great master of the dweomer could have imagined.
For over fifty years, Dallandra and the Westfolk have stayed on guard against the Horsekin and the cult of their false goddess. Although Alshandra is dead, the religion she left behind lives on. Dallandra has also been doing her best to shepherd the other souls bound by wyrd to her and ultimately to Jill and Nevyn while she continues her own dweomerwork of serving her own people. But now, on the border between Deverry and the Westfolk lands, the winds of change are blowing, and they are ill winds indeed. . . .
ARCODD PROVINCE SUMMER, 1159
The ancient Greggyn sage Heraclidd tells us that no man steps in the same river twice. Time itself is a river. When a man dies, he leaves the river behind, only to cross it again at the moment of birth. But betwixt times, the river has flowed on.
—The Secret Book of Cadwallon the Druid
NEB STRODE ACROSS the kitchen and stood next to the window, no more than a hole cut in the wall, open to the smell of mud and cows. Still, he found the air cleaner than that inside. Smoke rose from damp wood at the hearth in the middle of the floor and swirled through the half-round of a room before it oozed out of the chinks and cracks in the walls. Aunt Mauva knelt at the hearth and slapped flat rounds of dough onto the griddle stone. The oatcakes puffed and steamed. Neb heard his stomach rumble, and Clae, his young brother, took a step toward their aunt-by-marriage.
“Wait your turn!” she snapped. Her blue eyes narrowed in her bony face, and strands of dirty red hair stuck to her cheeks with sweat. “Your uncle and me eats first.”
“Give that batch to the lads.” Uncle Brwn was sitting at the plank table, a tankard of ale in his hand. “They’ve been pulling stones out of the west field all day, and that watery porridge you dished out this morning was scant.”
“Scant? Scant, was it?” Mauva turned and rose in one smooth motion. “You’ve got your bloody gall! Dumping more mouths to feed