Bristling Wood (41 page)

To jostle the injured man as little as possible, they rode slowly back to Aberwyn. Over and over, Lovyan saw the accident in her mind. Why did the horse panic? There wasn’t so much as a mouse running across the road. It had happened like dweomer. Suddenly she went cold all over and called out to Nevyn, who was riding a little behind. He urged his horse up to ride beside the cart.

“Nevyn, this accident was a most peculiar one.”

“The man you sent to fetch me said as much, my lady. May I suggest that we discuss it privately?”

“Of course.” She felt her fear like a hand at her throat. The old man apparently agreed with her sudden insight.

Rhys’s wife, Madronna, met them at the gates. A willowy blond woman, she was pretty in a vacuous sort of way, but now her childlike face was composed by an iron will. Lovyan had to admire her daughter-in-law, who was sincerely fond of her husband.

“His chamber’s prepared,” Madronna said. “How bad is—”

“Bad, truly, but not the end. We’ll nurse him through this between us.”

While the men carried Rhys to the chamber, Lovyan went to her suite, took off her blood-soaked dress, and washed thoroughly. She put on a clean dress, a somber one of gray linen, then looked at herself in a mirror. The face that looked back seemed to have aged years since the morning. She was painfully aware of the deep wrinkles slashed across her cheeks and the numb, half-dead look of her eyes.

“Ah, Goddess, am I to bury another son?’

She laid the mirror down and turned away, knowing that she would do just that, for all Nevyn’s skill with his herbs. Yet she could not cry. She found herself remembering the day her second son was brought home to her, her gentle Aedry, just sixteen that summer, brought home wrapped in a blanket and tied over his horse, killed riding with his father in a war. She stood in the ward and watched while they cut the ropes and brought him down, and she never allowed herself one tear, because she knew the warband was watching, and if she cried at all, she would start screaming like a madwoman. She felt the same now. No matter how furious Rhys made her, he was still her firstborn son.

With a toss of her head, she left the chamber and went down to the great hall. Over on the riders’ side, the men were drinking steadily and saying little, even the ten men of her own that she’d brought as escort. As she walked past, she motioned to her captain, Cullyn of Cerrmor. He hurried over to the honor table and knelt at her side.

“Will he live, my lady?”

“I can only hope so, Captain. I need to send a speeded courier to Dun Deverry. The king has to be informed of this. Pick the man you think best and get him ready to go.”

“Done, my lady, but it had best be one of Rhys’s men.”

“For the formality, I suppose you’re right, but I can’t command them.”

“But, my lady, you’re the regent here now.”

“Oh by the gods, so I am! It’s all happened so fast that I can barely think.”

“It would take anyone that way, my lady.” He hesitated, honestly sympathetic, but bound by considerations of rank. Finally he spoke again. “Your Grace, you know that I’ve had my differences with the gwerbret in the past, but it aches my heart to see your grief.”

“My thanks.”

When he looked up, she suddenly remembered Rhodry, and what Rhys’s death might mean. The battle-grim warrior kneeling beside her loved Rhodry like a son, and she knew that Cullyn was as torn as she was. If Rhys died—even if he merely lay ill for months—the king would have the perfect reason to recall his brother, and Rhys would be unable to say a word in protest. She wanted Rhodry home with all her heart, but to have it take this?

“Ah gods.” Her voice sounded like a moan, even to her, and she forced herself to stay in control of her rising tears. “Captain, fetch me a scribe and the captain of Rhys’s warband. We’ve got to get that message to Dun Deverry as soon as ever we can.”

For hours Nevyn worked on the injured gwerbret, but even as he set the broken leg and stitched the bad cut over the eye, he felt his hope receding. Sooner rather than later, Rhys would die. The fall had damaged one of his lungs—Nevyn could hear that by putting his ear to the gwerbret’s chest—but how badly he couldn’t know. The one good sign was that Rhys was not spitting up blood, which would mean that the lung had been punctured by a splinter from one of his many broken ribs. In time, it might heal, though he doubted it. What was worse was the damage to his kidneys. By opening up his second sight Nevyn could see the gwerbret’s aura, and in it the centers of the various vortices of etheric force that correspond to the major organs of the body. Although such a diagnosis was rough, he could tell that something was severely wrong internally, centered on the kidneys. Just how severe, again, he couldn’t say. He knew that time would make it all horribly clear.

Finally he’d done what he could do. Propped up on pillows, Rhys lay gasping for every breath he drew on the enormous bed, with its blue-and-silver hangings, worked all over with the dragon symbol of the rhan. His raven-dark hair was plastered to his forehead with sweat, and when he opened his eyes, they were cloudy.

“Will I live?”

“That depends on you to a large degree, Your Grace. Are you going to fight to live?”

Rhys smiled, as if saying that the question was superfluous, then fainted. With a sigh, Nevyn went to the chamber door to let in his wife, who had patiently waited all the long hours. She gave him a tremulous smile, then ran to her husband’s side.

“If he looks the least bit worse, send a page for me immediately, my lady. I’m going down to the great hall to eat.”

“I will, good herbman. My thanks.”

Nevyn came into a somber hall. The warbands ate silently; the servants moved among them without saying a word. Alone at the head of the honor table, Lovyan was picking at a bit of roast fowl, eating a bite, then laying her table dagger down and staring into space. He sat down at her right hand.

“You should try to eat, Your Grace.”

“Of course, but everything tastes like dirt from the stable yard. I’ve sent a messenger off to Dun Gwerbyn to fetch my serving women. I rather feel the need of them.”

“Just so. As regent you’ll have much serious business to attend to.”

A servant came with a trencher of fowl and cabbage, as well as a tankard of ale. Hoping he wouldn’t offend Lovyan, Nevyn set to. He was hungry after his hard afternoon’s work. She choked down a bit of bread like a dutiful child.

“I also sent a speeded courier to Dun Deverry,” she remarked. “He’ll go by ship to Cerrmor, then ride from there.”

“Good, but truly, I think I’ll send a message of my own. The king needs to know of this before . . . as soon as possible, and my messages travel faster than horses.”

“No doubt.” She shuddered like a wet dog. “Tell me the truth, my friend. When you slipped and said “before,” you meant before Rhys dies, didn’t you?”

“I’m afraid I did. My apologies. It may take weeks, but . . . ”

She nodded, staring at her trencher, then suddenly pushed it away. Although she seemed on the verge of tears, she tossed her head and sat up straight looking at him steadily.

“Let’s lie to his poor little wife,” she said. “Let her have a bit of hope. It’s hard to be widowed, when you’ve only been a wife for a year.”

“So it is, and I agree. Besides, the gods may intervene and let him live. I’ve seen one or two cases where I’d given up hope, only to have the patient recover.”

“Well and good then.” Yet her weary voice implied that such a hope was one that she would deny herself. “And what of that accident? There wasn’t even a fly buzzing round his horse.”

“So I thought, from what your messenger told me.” He hesitated, wondering how much to say. “I’m not truly sure what happened, but I’ve made a few guesses. I suppose that poor beast was put out of its misery?”

“It was. The riders told me that it would have been in agony the whole way back to the dun, so they slit its throat and gave the meat to a nearby farmer.”’

“Well, I doubt if it could have told me much, anyway.”

“Here, can you speak with animals?”

“Not in the least, my lady, I assure you. But I might have done a thing or two and judged its reactions. Well, as I say, doubtless naught would have come of it, anyway. Here’s what I’ve been thinking. Most animals have what men call the second sight—that is, they can see the Wildfolk and a few kinds of apparitions. It’s possible that the horse was frightened by malicious Wildfolk or by some sort of vision.”

“A vision? A ghost or suchlike?”

“Or suchlike. There’s never been a report of a ghost or banshee along the river road before, and they’re generally tied to one place.”

“I’ve never heard reports of any other sort of vision along that road either.”

“Just so. I think we can conclude that the vision or the Wildfolk or whatever it was was deliberately sent there.”

“Sent?” Her face went very pale.

“Just that, my lady. I’ll wager that someone used dweomer to try and murder your son. When I find out who he is, then I swear to you, he’ll rue the day he was born.”

“My thanks.” Although she spoke in a whisper, she was calm, the cold, bitter calm of a warrior surveying the field. “You told me that there was evil dweomer working behind Lord Corbyn when he rebelled. I never thought to see a blood feud worked by dweomer, but that’s what this must be, isn’t it? First they try to kill Rhodry, and now they’ve succeeded with Rhys. For some reason they hate the Maelwaedd clan.”

“Ye gods, you’re right enough! And Rhodry is . . . ” He caught himself barely in time. There was no need to burden her with the truth at this particular moment. “Out somewhere on the roads. Well, doubtless the king’s men will find him soon. The gods all know that they have more reason than ever to look for him.”

Lovyan nodded, staring blindly down at her plate. Nevyn got up and went to the fire. He had to tell Salamander immediately that he could no longer come to Cerrmor. He would have to do his best to keep Rhys alive until the king made up his mind to recall Rhodry and instate him as Aberwyn’s heir. He had another piece of information to pass along, too, the grim truth that Lovyan had seen, that the matter had gone far beyond the politicking of Eldidd lords. The dark dweomer was waging war on the Maelwaedd clan.

The king was having his hair bleached. In the midst of his private chamber, Lallyn the Second, high king of all Deverry and Eldidd, sat on a low bench carved with grappling wyverns while the royal barber draped towels around his liege’s shoulders. As an honor to his high rank, Blaen was allowed to kneel at the king’s side and hold the silver tray of implements. Ever since Madoc had come to him with the news, he’d been trying to have a private work with Lallyn, but in all the pomp that surrounded the king, private words were difficult to get. Even though the king sincerely wanted to hear what he had to say, this was the first chance they’d found all evening.

Carefully the barber began packing the king’s wet hair with lime from a wooden bowl. Soon Lallyn would look like one of the great heroes of the Dawntime, with a lion’s mane of stiff, swept-back hair to add further to his six feet of height, Such a hairstyle was a royal prerogative, and, as the king remarked, a royal nuisance, too.

“Blasted lucky, aren’t you, Blaen? Look on our sufferings and be glad you were born a gwerbret’s son.”

“Glad I am, my liege.”

The barber wrapped two steaming-wet towels around the king’s head and fastened them with a circlet of fine gold.

“My liege, it will be some few minutes.”

“It’s always more than just a few. You may leave us.”

Bowing, walking backward, the barber retreated to the corridor. Blaen sincerely hoped that the king was going to believe his strange tale.

“Now, Blaen, what’s this urgent news?”

“Well, my liege, do you remember Lord Madoc?”

“The sorcerer’s nephew? Of course.”

“Here! You know that Nevyn’s a sorcerer, my liege?”

Lallyn grinned at him while he adjusted a slipping towel.

“I do, at that. There’s quite a tradition, passed down from king to marked prince, about sorcerers named Nevyn. The name’s something of an honorific, or so my father told me, handed on like the kingship. In times of great need, one Nevyn or another will come to aid the king. I always thought it a peculiar tale and wondered why my father would tell me such a lie—until those gems were stolen, and lo and behold, a Nevyn appeared to return them to me. I prayed to my father in the Otherlands and made my apologies quite promptly, I tell you.”

“I see. Well, then, I trust my liege will believe me when I tell him that Madoc has dweomer, too.”

“Ah, I thought so, but I wasn’t sure. I’m glad enough to know, but is this what you had to tell me?”

“Not at all, my liege. I’ve learned that dweomermen have ways of sending messages with their thoughts. Madoc came to me earlier with urgent news from Nevyn. He begged me to tell you, because he knew it would be difficult for a man of his rank to gain a private audience with the king, and this has to be kept private for as long as possible. Soon the whole court will know, because a speeded courier’s on the way from Aberwyn, but Nevyn wanted Your Highness to get the news first.”

“I see. And what is this grave matter?”

“Rhys of Aberwyn had a bad fall in a hunting accident today, my liege. They doubt if he’ll live long—an eightnight, perhaps; at the most, a month.”

The king stared at him for a moment, then swore in a way more fitting for a common-born rider than royalty.

“I agree, my liege. You can see why I thought it best that my liege heard this news straightaway.”

“Just so.” The king gingerly settled a slipping towel while he thought things over. “And I’m most grateful to you for it. Eldidd politics are always dangerous.”

“So they are. No doubt my liege needs no reminding that the line of succession in Aberwyn will break as soon as Rhys dies.”

“No doubt. I’m also quite aware how much your exiled cousin means to you, Your Grace. Rest assured that the matter is under my consideration.”

Blaen felt the formal tone of voice like a slap across the face. He was being reminded that no matter how often they hunted or drank together, no matter how easily Lallyn would jest with him when the mood took him, the king was as far above him as he was above the common folk.