The Red Wyvern - Katharine Kerr [77]
By working until their fingertips were sore from the needles, and by recruiting every lass of every rank in the dun to help, Bellyra and her women managed to finish four big banners and six pennants in three days. Since the red cloth had come all the way from Bardek and cost as much as two war-horses, they used every scrap of it. Some of the piecework red wyverns were lumpy about the edges, and others had been shamelessly tacked down across their middles to keep them from bulging away from the backing, but as the princess herself remarked, they’d be filthy soon enough anyway, and no one would notice the stitching.
“We’ll have all summer to do a proper set,” Bellyra said. “But I’m not going to start them right away. We’ve all done enough sewing for now.”
The women cheered her.
During this nonstop needlework, Lilli had been able to talk with Nevyn mostly in the evenings, when the light turned bad. They would stroll in the garden among the roses until the night chill drove them inside, where of course they could say nothing openly about dweomer. Even so, she’d learned enough about the meaning of her gift for seeing omens to understand his concern at the way that gift had been used.
“I won’t say it would have killed you, though it might have,” Nevyn remarked during that last evening’s talk. “But you would have found it more and more difficult to clear your mind after each working and return to ordinary consciousness. Tell me, have you ever had a dream so vivid that when you woke, you weren’t sure if you were still dreaming or not?”
“I have, truly,” Lilli said, “though not very often.”
“Can you imagine what it would be like to live that way? You’d never be sure if you woke or were entranced, or even if you were asleep and dreaming. Your mind would drift from omens to dream to ordinary life and back again without any barriers between them.”
“That’s terrifying.” Lilli laid a cold hand on her throat.
“Good. I meant it as a warning.”
“Well, it worked. My lord Nevyn, I never wanted dweomer gifts, and now you’re telling me they’re dangerous! Isn’t there some way you can just make them go away? I never want to use them again, I truly don’t. I wish these wretched omens would just leave me alone!”
“It aches my heart, but I’m afraid there’s naught I can do. A lot of people are born with odd talents, but they never use them, and eventually the gifts shrivel up and fall away, like an apple left on the tree too long. But you’ve already started using your gift, and studying dweomer, too. You’ve set forces in motion, and there’s no turning back now.”
“But it wasn’t me! It was Brour and my mother.”
“So it was, and I’ll tell you, I’m furious about it. The dweomer must be chosen freely, just because there’s no turning back, and here they dragged you along the road without even telling you where you were going. That was a grave and ugly wrong they did you.”
Lilli risked a glance into the fountain. The water seemed ordinary water, but she looked away before a vision could trap her again. Around them the trees suddenly rustled; she started, then calmed herself. It was only a breeze, tinged with the sea, picking up as the evening turned cool.
“In a way I did choose,” Lilli said. “I asked Brour to show me things. I wanted to know what the omens I was seeing meant, and how it all worked.”
“Ah, but Brour caught your interest with his hints and suchlike, and your mother of course had been exploiting your gifts for some while.”
“Perhaps so. It just makes me feel so helpless.”
“No doubt. I’m sorry, child, but at least you’re free of them now. While I’m gone, please busy yourself with the daily life of the dun. I’ll wager you find yourself tempted, when days pass without news, to try to scry us out. Don’t! You need to let yourself build up strength.”
“Very well, my lord. I can’t really scry anyway.”
“Ah. Well, this winter I’ll teach you.” Nevyn hesitated, then suddenly frowned down at the ground beside her feet. “Tell me somewhat, Lilli. When you were a child, did your foster-mother ever tell you stories about the Wildfolk?”
“Oh,