Gwenhwyfar

Table of Contents

 

 

 

 

 

THE HERALDS OF VALDEMAR
ARROWS OF THE QUEEN
ARROW’S FLIGHT
ARROW’S FALL

 

THE LAST HERALD-MAGE
MAGIC’S PAWN
MAGIC’S PROMISE
MAGIC’S PRICE

 

THE MAGE WINDS
WINDS OF FATE
WINDS OF CHANGE
WINDS OF FURY

 

THE MAGE STORMS
STORM WARNING
STORM RISING
STORM BREAKING

 

VOWS AND HONOR
THE OATHBOUND
OATHBREAKERS
OATHBLOOD

 

THE COLLEGIUM CHRONICLES
FOUNDATION

 

BY THE SWORD
BRIGHTLY BURNING
TAKE A THIEF
EXILE’S HONOR
EXILE’S VALOR

VALDEMAR ANTHOLOGIES
:
SWORD OF ICE
SUN IN GLORY
CROSSROADS
MOVING TARGETS
CHANGING THE WORLD
¹

 

Written with
LARRY DIXON:

 

THE MAGE WARS
THE BLACK GRYPHON
THE WHITE GRYPHON
THE SILVER GRYPHON

 

DARIAN’S TALE
OWLFLIGHT
OWLSIGHT
OWLKNIGHT

 

 

GWENHWYFAR

 

THE BLACK SWAN

 

THE DRAGON JOUSTERS
JOUST
ALTA
SANCTUARY
AERIE

 

THE ELEMENTAL MASTERS
THE SERPENT’S SHADOW
THE GATES OF SLEEP
PHOENIX AND ASHES
THE WIZARD OF LONDON
RESERVED FOR THE CAT

 

And don’t miss:
THE VALDEMAR COMPANION
Edited by John Helfers and Denise Little

Copyright © 2009 by Mercedes R. Lackey.

All rights reserved.

 

Leatherbound book: Getty (RM) Dorling Kindersley.

Gold background: Gerrit Greve/Corbis.

 

 

DAW Books Collector’s No. 1489.

 

DAW Books Inc. is distributed by Penguin Group (USA).

 

All characters in the book are fictitious.

Any resemblance to persons living or dead is strictly coincidental.

eISBN : 978-1-101-14933-1

 

The scanning, uploading and distribution of this book via the Internet or any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal, and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage the electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

First Printing, October 2009

Dedicated to Russell Galen, without whom none of this would be possible.

The talk at
the hearth of the high hall of her father’s castle was all of magic that wild evening. Harvest-time had come and gone, and Samhain not far off; the old men and women were muttering about a hard winter ahead. Truly, it had turned bitter very quickly, and the harvest, while not scant, was also not bountiful. All that little Gwen knew, though, was that tonight it sounded as if everything cold and evil in the world was trying to get in. She was glad that Castell y Cnwclas was all of stone. Nothing mortal could get past those thick walls and nothing uncanny past the women gathered at the hearth, especially tonight.

Outside, the wind whined around the stone walls, and made the seats farthest from the hearth almost as cold as if the poor fellows relegated to them were sitting out on the walls. They were making up for the cold by drinking plenty of ale and mead. Inside, the drafts made flames of the torches on the walls flatten and dance, and even the huge open fire on the hearth in the center of the hall flickered this way and that, sending streamers of smoke into peoples’ faces unpredictably. Gwen was glad she was sitting on the stone floor, a bit of old sheepskin between her and the flags, where she was below the smoke. She hugged her knees to her chest and listened to the women of her mother’s circle with the wide eyes of a young owl. Firelight illuminated familiar faces and made them strange with shifting shadows and hectic light.

The Hall was the biggest room in the castle, and served many purposes. By day it was in turn her father’s audience chamber, the place where meals were served, and the scene of most domestic work that wasn’t done in the kitchen. By night, her father’s men and servants slept there. The walls were as thick as Gwen’s arm was long, broken only by narrow windows too small for anyone but a child to climb through. Right now, heavy wooden shutters closed off the worst of the winds. The hearth-fire in the center gave most of the heat and light, supplemented by the torches on the walls. The stone floor was covered with rushes—newly changed just two days ago, so the herbs strewn among them were still sweet and the floor beneath still clean. The ceiling was lost in darkness and further obscured by the smoke rising to the louvered hole above the hearth.

It smelled of dampness, of spilled ale, of herbs and cooked meat, of sweaty bodies and wet wool. Faintly, because it had only been two days since it had been swept clean, there was a taint of urine from the dogs and cats that ran free in here. But above all it smelled of smoke.

The women had claimed the hearth itself, sitting about the fire on benches and stools or, like Gwen and her sisters, on the floor, and the men did not challenge them. No sane man challenged a Wise Woman, much less a gaggle of them. Behind them, on the mead-benches, were the men of her father’s following. He was Lleudd Ogrfan Gawr, called “The Giant,” and unchallenged king of these parts. There were no more Romans to contest his rule. The Romans had come and now gone from here; they mined their tin, lead, and gold no more, and the amphitheater they had built for their so-called games now echoed only to the wail of wild cats at night. And good riddance, said her mother. Her father’s words were more pithy and profane.

The good-natured growling and grumbling of the men sounded like a muttering chorus of sleepy bears on the edge of hibernation, fat with autumn berries and nuts, and thinking mostly about sleep. Partly, that was the mead and ale of her mother Eleri’s brewing. She put herbs in it—she said to flavor it, but the women all knew it was to make the men calm and sleepy, and that was a secret that would never be breathed to the men, not even to the king her husband. There was little argument on Ogrfan Gawr’s mead benches, and no hot-tempered quarrels that could break into blood feud. Eleri the Queen was a Wise Woman in the sense of knowing the ways of herbs as well as of magic, and she reckoned it worth the effort to keep the men from making more grief than there already was in the world. Bronywn, who served as her right hand and the children’s nurse, was the keeper of her secrets.

Hunting and fighting and tall tales were the order of business on the mead-benches tonight. With the harvest over, it was hunting that would help keep the men busy until spring, and hunting would be needed to keep the hall fed if the winter was a harsh one. Magic was the subject on the hearthstone; it was the provenance of women—and a very few, very select group of men. The Druids. The bards. The occasional hermit-healer. Eleri had told Gwen that this was because men spent too much time around Cold Iron; wearing it in the form of weapons, crafting it, cherishing it. “Magic shuns Cold Iron,” she had said, with a decided nod. “Men might have the Gift, but while they cling to Cold Iron, they’ll never have the Power.”

Gwen most especially watched her mother, listened to her words, for the Queen was also the chief sorceress here and high in the Councils of the Wise. Eleri had the Power and had it in abundance. Gwen had watched her, by full moon and waning, by Midsummer sun and Midwinter dark, weaving her Power into the spells that were the weapons
she
wielded to defend, protect, and nurture their people. There were two thrones in Lleudd Ogrfan Gawr’s High Hall: the one at the mead benches and the one at the hearth. And both were equal. The king guarded the people with his sword. The queen did so with Power.

There were those that said the queen was Fae-touched. Certainly, despite having given birth to Gwen and all her sisters, she often seemed as young as any of the maids at her hearth. There were those that said the two youngest of the brood, Gwen and her younger sister, took after her. But those that said it did so with a touch of pride, not fear; if they were Fae-touched, then, that would be a good thing.

Gwen’s sisters sat beside her, watching and listening just as raptly. Gynath who was almost twelve summers, Cataruna who was fourteen, and Gwenhwyfach a mere eight, the sister enough like her to have been Gwen’s twin, all listened and remained very, very quiet, lest they be remembered and sent off to bed. All the sisters had much the same look about them; they got their looks from their mother, who was slim and very fair—a rarity among dark people—and not the king, who was burly and, even rarer, had a head of hair like copper wire. They had a visitor this night, who would stay through Samhain to give their rites especial power. Eleri was concerned that the old men and women were right, that this would be a hard winter, and she would do whatever it took to keep her people safe through it.