The Red Wyvern: Book One of the Dragon Mage (8 page)

From behind her Bevyan heard a door opening and a soft voice.

“My lady?” Sarra, one of her serving women, stepped in the door. “Are you unwell?”

“I’m not, dear.” Bevyan turned from the window. “Just taking a moment’s solitude. I’m trying to make up my mind about going to court. Tell me, do you want to go to Dun Deverry?”

Sarra hesitated, thinking. She’d come to Bevyan as an orphaned girlchild, long enough ago now that grey streaked her dark hair at the temples.

“Well,” Sarra said at last. “Our place is at Queen Abrwnna’s side, but oh, my lady, I shouldn’t admit such a shameful thing, but I’m ever so frightened of being caught in a siege.”

“So am I. The Cerrmor men are nearly to our lands, aren’t they? Sometimes I wonder what the summer will bring.”

Sarra laid a hand over her throat.

“But we mustn’t give up hope yet.” Bevyan made her voice brisk. “The gods will give us the Wyrd they choose, and there’s not a thing we can do about it.”

“True spoken.”

“As for things we can do something about,” Bevyan paused for a sigh, “I’m worried about little Lillorigga. She’s the only reason I’ll be going, frankly, if I do go. I keep asking for news of her, but no one ever sends me any.”

“Well, certainly her mother wouldn’t bother.” Steel crept into Sarra’s voice. “Do you think we could persuade the Lady Merodda to let us bring her daughter back here? For the cleaner air and all. When you had the fostering of her, she thrived, poor child.”

“Merodda might well be glad to be rid of her. It’s worth a try. I’ll tell you what. Let’s ride with my lord on the morrow, but there’s no reason that we need to spend all summer in Dun Deverry. If things do look grim, the lords will be sending their womenfolk away, anyway.”

“That’s true. Shall I tell the pages, then?”

“You should, indeed. We’ll need them to get our palfreys ready, and we need to fill a chest to go into one of the carts. There. I feel better already, with the decision made.”

But Bevyan paused to glance out the window. The sun was setting in a haze that sent long banners of gold across the sky, as if they were the pinions of some approaching army. The traitorous thought returned full force. What if Maryn’s army ended the war this summer? He’d promised amnesty if he should conquer, promised full pardons even to the lords who’d fought most bitterly against him. What if next summer there would be no march to war?

“My lady?” Sarra said. “You look so distant.”

“Do I, dear? Well, perhaps I’ve got a bit of the headache. Let’s go down to the great hall and get somewhat to eat.”

In the great hall lords and riders gathered, standing more than sitting, drinking ale, talking in urgent voices, but they stood out of nerves, not for want of benches, and their voices seemed oddly quiet in the half-empty hall. Bevva ran a quick count of lords: a mere four of them, and each obliged to bring no more than forty men apiece to augment her husband’s eighty and the gwerbret’s one hundred sixty. At the head of the table of honor sat her husband’s overlord, Daeryc, Gwerbret Belgwergyr, while Tieryn Peddyc sat on his right and their last living son, Anasyn, stood behind his grace to wait upon him like a page. No one who saw them together would ever have doubted that Anasyn was Peddyc’s son. They shared a long face, long thin nose, and a pair of deep-set brown eyes, though Peddyc’s hair had turned solidly grey and Anasyn’s was still chestnut. When he saw his wife enter, Peddyc rose, swinging himself clear of the bench and smiling as he strode over to meet her.

“There you are,” he said. “I’d wondered if you were ill.”

“Not ill, my love, merely thinking. I’ve decided I’d best ride with you when you go to Dun Deverry.”

“Good.” He let his smile disappear. “You’ll be safer there. I’m stripping the fort guard.”

Bevyan laid a hand on her throat. She wondered if she’d gone pale—her face felt so suddenly cold.

“Well, we’ve not lost yet.” Peddyc pitched his voice low. “If the time comes for you and your women to leave Dun Deverry, I’ll send you back with a full escort of men. Don’t worry about that. You’ll need to hold the gates long enough to negotiate a settlement with the Pretender.”

“I see.” Bevyan swallowed heavily and freed her voice. “As my lord thinks best, of course.”

He smiled and touched her face with the side of his hand.

“Let’s pray I don’t need to do that kind of thinking, Bevva. Come entertain our gwerbret. You and I will ride to court together, at least, and after that, only the gods know.”

Peddyc looked up, and when Bevyan followed his glance she realized that he was looking at the row of cloth banners in gold and green, faded and stained with age, that hung above the main hearth—the blazons of the Ram from time beyond remembering. She could only wonder if someday soon an enemy hand would rip them down.

•   •   •

“The omens?” Merodda said. “The omens are hideous.”

“You sound frightened,” Burcan said.

“Of course I’m frightened. I suppose that makes me a poor weak woman and beneath contempt.”

“I wouldn’t say that.” Burcan, second son of the Boar clan and regent to the king, allowed himself a wry twist of a smile. “I’d say it makes you sensible.”

Merodda sighed once and sharply.

Close to the mid-watch of the night they were sitting in her private chamber, she in a carved chair by the fire, he in another near the table. The candles burning there were freshly lit, and Brour and his bowl of black ink both had long since been tidied away.

“I wish I had better news to tell you,” she went on. “But we have an enemy here at court.”

“I don’t need omens to tell me that. Everyone envies our clan.”

“This is different. In the omen a red wyvern dropped out of the sky and slew a boar.”

“What? I wish you wouldn’t speak in riddles.”

“I thought it was clear enough. The king’s blazon is a green wyvern, and so someone close to but not of the royal family must be plotting to drop down upon us and supplant us.”

Burcan started to speak, then merely stroked his thick grey moustaches while he considered.

“You’re right,” he said at last. “It’s perfectly clear, now that you’ve explained it. I don’t know why, but I just can’t seem to grasp things like omens.”

“You don’t need to. You have me.”

They shared a smile. In the hearth the fire showered sparks as a log burned through and fell. Burcan rose, then strode over to take wood from the basket and lay it upon the flames. For a moment he stood watching it burn.

“Any idea of who this enemy might be?” he said.

“Not yet. You’re right about the envy. There are a lot of clans with reason to hate us. I just hadn’t realized how deep the hatred must run.”

“I’ll think about it. A wyvern, was it? Someone with a touch of royal blood themselves, maybe.”

“There! You’re beginning to puzzle this out.”

“Am I? Maybe so. Don’t know if I like it, though. That so-called scribe of yours—are you sure we can trust him?”

“I don’t know. He came to me for the coin, and if someone offered him more, I can’t swear he wouldn’t change his loyalties.”

“Thought so. I don’t like the man.”

“Why?”

“He comes from the south coast, doesn’t he?”

“Not truly. He’s from the northern lands, though he did live for some years in Cerrmor.”

“Still! How do you know he isn’t a Cerrmor spy?”

“I have ways to tell when someone’s lying, as you know perfectly well. There’s somewhat else, isn’t there?”

Burcan scowled at the floor.

“I don’t like the way he treats you,” he said at last.

“What? He’s always courteous.”

Burcan raised his head and looked at her. His eyes searched her face, probing for some secret. Merodda stood with a little laugh.

“Don’t tell me you’re jealous of poor Brour.”

“I don’t like the way he’s always in your company.”

When Burcan rose to join her, she laid one hand flat on his chest and looked up, smiling at him. In a moment he laid his hand over hers.

“My dear brother,” she said. “He’s little and ugly. You’ve got no reason to vex yourself on his account.”

“Good. And the moment you think he might turn disloyal, tell me. I’ll have the matter taken care of.”

Travelling with Gwerbret Daeryc’s entourage, his attendant lords and their joined warbands, plus their servants and retainers, was no speedy thing, especially with carts along and a herd of extra horses. Rather than jounce around in a cart with the maidservants, Bevyan wore a pair of her son’s old brigga under her dresses and rode her palfrey, as did Sarra. In the long line of march they travelled just behind the noble lords, although at times Peddyc would drop back and ride beside Bevyan for a few miles. It was pleasant, riding in the spring weather through the ripening winter wheat and the apple trees, heavy with blossoms, so pleasant that Bevyan found herself remembering the first days of her marriage, when she and Peddyc would ride together around his lands, alone except for a page trailing at a discreet distance. They had brought such a shock, those days, when she realized that she’d been married to a man that she would learn to love.

Now of course her lord, his hair streaked with grey, rode grim and silent, and behind them came what of an army he and his overlord could muster.

Along the way the entourage planned to shelter at the duns of various lords who owed men to either the tieryn or the gwerbret, but they found their plans changed for them. Their first night, when they came to the dun of a certain lord Daryl, they found it empty. Not a chicken pecked out in the ward, not a servant stood in the broch. While Daeryc and the men waited out in the ward, Bevyan followed Peddyc through rooms stripped bare.

“They even took the furniture,” Bevyan said. “Even the bedsteads. It’ll be a long hard haul of it they’ll have, getting those all the way to Cerrmor.”

Peddyc nodded, glancing around what had once been the lord and lady’s bedchamber. All at once he smiled, stooped, and pulled something out of a crack between two planks.

“A silver piece,” he said, grinning. “Well, I’ll take that as tribute. Here’s one bit of coin that won’t buy a horse for the Usurper’s army.”

Their second night on the road brought an even nastier surprise. Lord Ganedd’s dun was shut against them, the gates barred from inside. Daeryc and Peddyc sat on their horses and yelled out Ganedd’s name, but no voice ever answered. No one appeared on the walls, not even to insult the two lords. Yet the place felt alive and inhabited. In the long silences Bevyan heard the occasional dog bark or horse whinny. Once she thought she saw a face at a window, high up in the broch. When Peddyc and Daeryc rode back to their waiting entourage, they were red-faced and swearing.

“Are they neutral, then?” Anasyn asked. “Or gone over to the Usurper?”

“How would I know, you young dolt?” Peddyc snarled. “Oh, here, forgive me, Sanno. No use in taking this out on you.”

When the entourage camped, out in a grassy field stripped of its cows, Bevyan had the servants build a separate fire for the womenfolk. All evening, as they sat whispering gossip and fears, they would keep looking to the men’s fire, some twenty feet away, where Peddyc and Daeryc paced back and forth, talking together with their heads bent.

The third evening, then, they rode up to Lord Camlyn’s dun with dread as a member of their entourage, but the gates stood open, and Camlyn himself, a tall young man with a shock of red hair, came running out to the ward to greet them with four grey boarhounds barking after him. He yelled the dogs into silence, then grabbed the gwerbret’s stirrup in a show of fealty and blurted:

“Your Grace, what greeting did you get at Ganedd’s door?”

“A cursed poor one,” Daeryc said. “I’m glad to see you held loyal to the true king. This autumn, when we ride against Ganedd, his lands are yours.”

At dinner that night the talk centered itself upon broken fealties—who had gone over to the Usurper, who was threatening neutrality, who was weaselling any way he could to get out of his obligations for fighting men and the provisions to feed them. Since only one honor table stood in the poverty of Camlyn’s hall, Bevyan heard it all. She shared a trencher with Camlyn’s wife, Varylla, at the foot of the table. In unspoken agreement the two women spoke little, merely listened. By the time the page poured the men mead, Gwerbret Daeryc had forgotten tact.

“It’s the cursed Boar clan that’s the trouble,” he snarled. “Men would rally to the king, but why should they rally to the Boar?”

“Just so,” Camlyn said. “The wars have made them rich while the rest of us—huh, we’ll be out on the roads like beggars one fine day.”

The two men were looking at Peddyc and waiting.

“I’ve no love for Burcan or Tibryn,” he said. “But if the king had chosen them, I’d serve in their cause.”

“I like that if.” Daeryc paused for a careful bite of food; he could chew only on one side of his mouth, since most of his teeth were gone. “I’d do the same. If.”

Peddyc glanced down the table and caught Bevyan’s glance. She answered the unspoken question with a small shrug. It seemed safe enough to voice their long doubts here.

“Well,” Peddyc went on. “They say that King Daen made Burcan regent when he was dying. I wasn’t there to hear him.”

“No more was I,” Camlyn snapped.

“Nor I either. And with Daen’s widow such close kin to the Boar …” Daeryc let his words trail off into a swallow of mead.

“Hogs root,” Camlyn said, seemingly absently. “If you let hogs into a field, they’ll tear it up with tusk and trotter till the grass all dies.”

“There’s only one thing to do in that case,” Peddyc said. “And that’s turn them out of it.”

“Only the one, truly.” Daeryc hesitated for a long time. “But you’d best have a swineherd with well-trained dogs.”

The three men looked back and forth at one another while Bevyan felt herself turn, very slowly, as cold as if a winter wind had blown into the hall. She glanced at Varylla.

“I should so like to see the embroideries you’ve been making,” Bevyan said. “You do such lovely work.”

“My thanks, my lady.” Varylla allowed herself a shy smile. “If you’ll come with me to my chambers?”