The Red Wyvern - Katharine Kerr [15]
“Well, a good day to you, Niffa!”
Verrarc strode in through the side door. He was tall, the councilman, blond and good-looking by most people’s standards, but his blue eyes peered with a winter’s cold, and to Niffa his smiles looked as painted as a wooden doll’s.
“I trust your mam be well?” he went on.
“She does have a rheum, Councillor, though she fares better today than last. I did come in her place to thank you for that splendid gift.”
Briefly his smile turned warm.
“Most welcome you are to it, and your kin as well. Now, if your mother should need of somewhat, whether medicaments or food, please do ask me for it. I mean that from the bottom of my heart.”
He did, too—Niffa could tell even as she wondered why his very generosity irked her so. She managed a few more polite exchanges, then curtsied and made her glad escape.
As she picked her way down the icy steps that led to the granary and home, she was wondering why she hated Raena so much, and on sight, too. She’d never actually met the woman before that day. Unless she was very badly wrong, Raena hated her as well.
But little could either of them know that their hatred went back hundreds of years to another life, when both of their souls had been closely linked indeed, as mother and daughter in a life so far removed from what they shared at the moment that it would seem to lie in another world—could they ever know of it. And less could they know that the man Raena hated as Rhodry Maelwaedd had been bound up with them in a knot of Wyrd, though he, too, had lived in another body and another life, back in those distant years.
PART TWO
Deverry
849
The year 849. The spring brought terrible omens in the sky above the Holy City. A cloud shaped like a dragon flew overhead, and there was lightning. The sky turned the color of copper, and a huge cloud like a spindle of black wool drew water from Lake Gwerconydd only to spit it out upon the land. So many refugees fled to Lughcarn that the city could not take them all in. High Priest Retyc gave them what food he could gather and sent them farther east, where the farmlands had need of them.
—The Holy Chronicles of Lughcarn
CHAPTER ONE
In the midst of a clamor, Lillorigga, daughter of the Boar clan, sat on a bench in the curve of the wall and wished that she were invisible. The king’s great hall roiled with armed men, standing, talking, sitting, eating, calling out to one another and calling for ale. Spring had come and brought with it the annual muster of the king’s loyal lords and their warbands, but in the two enormous hearths at either side of the hall, fires blazed and sent wafts of smoke into the hazy room. The stone walls of the enormous round hall oozed cold, for the attacking sun never made more than a brief sally into the tangled complex of brochs and outbuildings that made up the royal palace of Dun Deverry.
Not that the hall looked particularly royal these days—a hundred long years of civil war had left the king poor in everything but men. Tapestries sagged threadbare and faded on the rough stone walls; straw and torn Bardek carpets lay together on the floor; the tables and benches listed and leaned, all cracked and pitted. The lords and the servants alike ate from wooden trenchers and drank from pottery stoups. Only the king’s own table retained some semblance of royal splendor. From where she sat Lillorigga could just see a page spreading a much-mended and somewhat stained linen cloth over it while others stood by with silver dishes and pewter mugs. Behind the boys came the royal nursemaid with cushions to raise the seat of the royal chair; King Olaen had been born just five summers ago.
Lilli was the king’s cousin—they shared a great-grandmother through the maternal line—and her uncle, Burcan of the Boar, stood as regent to his young highness. Her rank brought her bows and curtsies every time someone passed her bench or looked her way. She answered each one with a nod or a smile, but she hated the way the various