The Red Wyvern - Katharine Kerr [133]
“She’ll be as good as imprisoned.” Nevyn walked round the table and came to stand beside the king. “I doubt me if such will please the lady.”
Maddyn shook his head like a wet dog trying to get dry. Out in the great hall, servants and riders alike had gathered in a circular press to watch.
“He’s thinking of Aethan, my lord,” Branoic said to Nevyn. “You’ll remember how he died.”
At the name Merodda’s expression changed—pain like a bird fluttered across her face, then was gone.
“I remember Aethan myself,” Prince Maryn said. “Is this the woman who—”
“It is, my liege,” Maddyn burst out. “I swore a vow of vengeance then, and I’ve kept it locked in my heart ever since.”
“Well, truly it was a grievous harm she worked him.” The prince hesitated, thinking. “But here, good bard, what do you want me to do? She’s a woman, an old woman at that, and she’s never lifted a sword against me. By the gods, if I’d spare Nantyn’s life, how could I not do the same for her?”
“But my liege! Everyone knows how she poisoned people and worked witchcraft.”
“Indeed? Lady Merodda, you must have some answer to these charges.”
Merodda lifted her head and looked first at the bard, then at the prince.
“And it will be worth the breath to make an answer?” Her voice held steady, but it sounded curiously flat. “Everything I ever honored and held dear is dead and gone, Prince Maryn. Kill me if it pleases you.”
“No one’s death pleases me, my lady.”
She sat back on her heels and considered him with a flicker of life in her eyes.
“I’d say that was true,” she said at last. “And a wondrous thing in a noble-born man.”
Again Maddyn shook himself. When Nevyn reached out a hand to steady him, Maddyn knocked it away. All the color had drained from his face, and he trembled as he stared at the woman he had hated for twenty years.
“The charges against me,” Merodda went on, “are true enough, though I only ever poisoned one woman, and I regretted it bitterly when I saw how hard it was for her to die. How many men have you slain, Prince Maryn? How many deaths lie at the feet of each and every man in this hall? Is the one death I made such a grievous thing, compared to all those slain men I saw lying in the ward and below the walls?”
Prince Maryn went tense.
“And as for the witchcraft, my prince, do you know what it means to be a woman born into a clan such as the Boar? Do you know what it feels like to be passed from one husband to the next at your brother’s decree with never a thought for what you might wish? Do you know what it means to wait and wait while the man you live for rides to war, and you never knowing if he lives or dies? Do you know what it means to grovel to get a few scraps for yourself while your brothers have the feast? Do you, my prince? I think not. And so I think I could talk all day and you still would never understand why I’d turn to spells and scrying, just to have a little something of my own.”
The great hall had fallen silent to listen. Nevyn felt torn. Better than any man there he knew just how corrupt she was and how cruel, but then, indeed, were any of them better enough than she to judge her? Hadn’t he used his own dweomer to put a king on his throne and to meddle in the lives of thousands of people thereby? Hadn’t his omens and his spells of glamor caused the deaths of thousands in the king’s cause? When Maryn looked his way for guidance, Nevyn mouthed a single word, “mercy.”
“Your words have truth in them, my lady,” Maryn said. “You would have made a king a splendid councillor if only you’d been born a man. You’ve pled your own case well enough, certainly, woman or no.”
“My liege!” Maddyn howled, the ringing pain of a well-trained voice.
“You!” Merodda leapt up and spun to face him. “You were Aethan’s friend, you say? Well, by the gods, I loved him. I would have run away with him, but my brother found out. Ah ye gods, I was sure he’d kill us both! I was a little stone in his