The Spirit Stone (17 page)

‘And what will you do,’ Nevyn said, ‘once Evan’s gone with his father?’

‘I don’t know.’ Morwen’s face turned slack with grief. ‘My brother can’t turn me out, but I’m half-minded to go to the Temple of the Moon. The holy ladies told me I’d be welcome should I wish to join them. It’s not a bad life.’

‘Well, it’s not, truly, but—’

‘I’ve been studying the lore,’ Morwen went on as if she hadn’t heard him. ‘It’s an odd thing, but it seems to come to me naturally, like.’

‘Well, don’t be too hasty,’ Nevyn said. ‘Let me think about this. There might be somewhat I can do to make things a bit better for you.’

‘Huh! Unless your herbs can grow me a new face, good sir, I don’t know what that could be.’

‘I’ll think on it.’ Nevyn smiled at her, then glanced at Gwairyc. ‘Well, we might as well wait back in town and spare our proud Varynna the sight of us.’

As they were walking along the dirt road back to town, Gwairyc seemed preoccupied. Finally he gave one of his dismissive shrugs and came out with it. ‘A question for you, my lord,’ Gwairyc said. ‘The land out here’s not as rich as that around Dun Deverry, is it?’

‘The soil’s rocky in places, truly. I’m surprised you’d notice that.’

‘And isn’t half the fighting in the kingdom to see who’ll have the best land? Between the great clans, I mean.’

‘True spoken.’

‘But anyway, I was just remembering that pissing brat with the rotten tooth and his stinking family. Why is Morwen’s farm so wealthy-looking and theirs so poor?’

‘Myrn and Ligga, you mean? It’s not the farm that’s poor. It’s them. The reason? The closer you get to Dun Deverry, the more the noble-born take in taxes. Myrn and Ligga have the misfortune to live close to court.’

Gwairyc turned to look at him in open-mouthed amazement. ‘Misfortune?’ he said at last. ‘It’s an honour to be close to the king’s own city.’

Nevyn felt like grabbing him by the shoulders and shaking him. Instead, he said, ‘Not for them. Their local lord takes most of their crop, and they rarely have enough left to sell for things like cloth and furniture. If they can’t make it themselves, they don’t have it.’

‘Well, but don’t Morwen’s kin pay their lord taxes?’

‘Of course, but here in Pyrdon we’re close to the border. The lords know they need the loyalty of their folk. And beside, the lords here only go to court once a year, and not even that for some of them. They don’t need to cut a fine figure there, so they’re not as greedy as the courtiers.’

‘Greedy?’ Gwairyc blinked several times, as if he were trying to see something that lay beyond his vision. ‘If you’re going to stay at court you have to dress well, and entertain, and the like. The noble-born don’t have any choice about that.’

‘Um, well, no doubt they think they have no choice,’ Nevyn said. ‘Ah, here we are, back in town! Let’s go to the tavern room. I need a tankard of our innkeep’s darkest ale.’

With the market fair over, Nevyn had no customers that afternoon. He sat with Wffyn in the tavern, deserted except for them, their two apprentices, and the innkeep’s wife. Some flies circling round and round in the middle of the room provided the only distraction.

‘Uh, Gwairyc?’ Tirro said. ‘I was wondering if, well, if you’d like to dice for straws. It would be somewhat to do.’

Gwairyc considered for a long moment, while Tirro waited, his shoulders so tense he was nearly crouching on the bench.

‘Oh, why not?’ Gwairyc said at last. ‘Here, let’s move to one of those empty tables.’

Tirro smiled so broadly that he might have been given some expensive gift. ‘Splendid idea! Here, let me stand you a tankard. Please? I got my wages yesterday.’

‘Very well. My thanks.’

Nevyn watched while they set up their game and took their tankards, then leaned forward to speak softly to Wffyn. ‘He’s a sad creature, your apprentice. Desperate for a little friendly conversation.’

‘He is that,’ Wffyn murmured, ‘but I still wouldn’t trust him with anything I valued.’ He raised his voice to a normal level. ‘I wonder what he’ll think of the Westfolk? We’ll be there a fair bit of time, a good fortnight I was thinking.’

‘That long?’

‘That long. You see, I’ve got a grand scheme in mind.’ Wffyn smiled, and his eyes sparkled. ‘The Westfolk never sell us anything but geldings. That way we can’t breed their golden horses for ourselves. But I’ve brought some very special goods along. I’m hoping to find an opening, like, to persuade someone to part with a mare or two. If I can, then maybe next trip I can go to a different part of the trading zone and get a golden stud. No more of these long tedious trips, then!’

‘Indeed. Do you think you have a chance?’

‘I do. It’s all a question of finding the right goods to trade, the right temptation, if you will. The Westfolk are an odd-looking lot, but they’re human enough. Greed, my dear herbman—it’s a merchant’s true friend. Find the right bait, and the fish will swarm to the hook. I could be properly rich, I could.’

‘True spoken.’ Nevyn bit back his own temptation to point out that greed seemed to have become Wffyn’s mistress rather than a mere friend.

‘Now,’ Wffyn continued, ‘when shall we leave? I was thinking on the morrow, assuming that Devaberiel’s got himself here by then.’

‘You never know with the Westfolk, truly,’ Nevyn said with a sigh. ‘They come and go as they please and when they please and not a moment before.’

Wffyn nodded sadly. At their table Tirro and Gwairyc were still gaming, throwing the dice as grimly as if the fate of kingdoms depended upon their luck. Across the broad round room, the innkeep’s wife was swabbing out tankards with an old rag and rinsing them in a wooden bucket of well water. A few of the more industrious flies circled around her. Nevyn got up and strolled over to hand her his empty tankard.

‘I happened to speak with Morwen,’ he remarked, ‘when we went out to warn Varynna that her child’s father was on his way.’

‘I’ll bet you got a scant welcome from both of them.’ The innkeep’s wife tossed her grey and fraying rag into the bucket.

‘From Varynna, certainly, but I had a bit of a chat with Morwen. She mentioned a friend of hers, Lanmara. That’s an unusual sort of name.’

‘She wasn’t your usual sort of lass.’ The woman frowned in thought. ‘Now, don’t take me wrong, good sirs. Lanni was a decent lass, the blacksmith’s youngest, and very well brought up. The whole village was shocked that she’d befriend a witchmarked lass. Some people even said truly nasty things, that mayhap the two lasses were entirely too close and familiar with each other, if you take my meaning like, but I never believed that.’

‘Oh? Why not?’

‘Because Lanmara was too well brought up, that’s why, to even think of such! Though she did say some truly odd things, now and again, and I swear she had the second Sight.’

‘Truly? Why?’

‘She and Morri had a game they played when they were little lasses, all about the Wildfolk. They were pretending, like, saying they’d seen this one or that one, or pretending they were talking to some of them.’

‘Well, here,’ Nevyn said. ‘Most children do like a good tale about the Wildfolk.’

‘True spoken, good sir, but these two, well, they never grew out of it. Or at least, Lanmara never did. She was old enough to marry and still babbling about them.’ The innwife glanced around her, then dropped her voice to a conspiratorial murmur. ‘And I swear, she saw somewhat, sure enough. You’d see her eyes moving, like, but there’d be naught there. A bit touched, she was.’ She tapped her forehead with one finger and winked. ‘But then she foresaw her own death. It gave us all a fair turn, that.’

‘No doubt! What happened?’

‘She caught a fever a few winters back, and it was a nasty thing that settled in her chest. Coughing up blood she was, poor lass! With the spring it went away, but she told her mam plain as plain that it would return with the winter, and that she’d die. Her mam told her she was just ill and imagining things, but by the Goddess herself, come the first snow, the fever comes with it, and Lanmara was dead in four nights.’

‘The poor lass!’

‘Truly. It’s a pity you weren’t here with your herbs.’

A pity in more ways than one,
Nevyn thought.
Lilli, mayhap?
She’d died of a consumption of the lungs, after all. Since that particular trouble had an etheric component, it might well have followed her from life to life. He had no way of knowing for certain, but the omen he’d felt earlier returned with a touch of ice along his spine. He went back to Wffyn, who was half-asleep at the table.

‘I’m just going to take my mule to the blacksmith,’ Nevyn said. ‘His shoes aren’t as new as they might be, and I don’t want to take any chances.’

The blacksmith, a short but heavily muscled fellow, had no other customers that afternoon. After he trimmed up the mule’s hooves and fitted him with new shoes, Nevyn bartered him various preparations of herbs in lard to treat skin burns and paid the rest in coin. For a few moments they stood chatting while Nevyn considered an opening for the questions he wanted to ask. Fortunately, the blacksmith’s young son came out to the forge to see what his father was doing.

‘You’ve got a healthy-looking lad there,’ Nevyn said.

‘I do, and I thank the gods for it,’ the smith said. ‘We’ve got an older daughter, too, and she seems to be a strong lass, so again, may the gods be praised.’

‘I don’t mean to pry, but it sounds like you’ve had illness in your family before.’

‘Terrible illness, good sir. My poor Lanni!’ He shook his head with a sigh. ‘Our first-born, but she died of a consumption of the lungs, and her just old enough to marry.’

‘Truly, that saddens my heart!’

‘Her mother’s not got over it yet. It was just two winters ago, you see.’

‘Recently, then. Was there a fair bit of fever in the town?’

‘There wasn’t. It came on her sudden-like.’ He paused to frown, and his voice tightened with old anger. ‘I’ll wager that wretched witch lass had somewhat to do with it, too. A friend of my daughter’s, good sir, if you can call a deformed get like her a friend. I told our Lanni to stop seeing her a hundred times if I told her once, but here she was sneaking round to see her on the sly!’

‘Did this lass have the consumption, too?’

‘She didn’t. She’s healthy to this day, which is why I’m sure as sure she cursed Lanni somehow. I wanted to go to our local lord and have the ugly little creature dealt with, but my wife, she talked me out of it. She was afraid the witch would curse us, too.’ He spat onto the ground. ‘Women!’

Naught more to learn here,
Nevyn decided. He bade the smith farewell and led his mule away.

The Westfolk arrived just as the innkeep was serving yet another meal of boiled meat and stale bread. Nevyn, Wffyn, and their two apprentices were eating at a table near the hearth when three men strode into the tavern room. Gwairyc looked up from his plate, glanced at the men, and stared, his table dagger forgotten in his hand. They were tall and slender, as most of the Westfolk men seemed to be, all blond as well, and they moved with an easy grace even though they carried bedrolls and travellers’ bundles. One of them had a longbow slung across his back and a quiver of arrows at one hip; another carried an elaborate leather case that could only contain a small harp.

‘That must be our bard,’ Nevyn said.

The putative bard was looking around the crowded tavern room. Finally he spoke to the innkeep, who pointed at Nevyn. The bard smiled and led his two companions over to their table. As they came close, Nevyn heard Gwairyc swear under his breath, and Tirro gasp in surprise. The Westfolk looked much like ordinary men, except for their ears, as long and delicately curled as a flower petal emerging from a bud, and their deep-set eyes, marked by vertical pupils like a cat’s. A gaggle of gnomes materialized to dance around them, but those, of course, no one at the table but Nevyn saw.

‘Good morrow,’ Nevyn said. ‘Are you Devaberiel?’

‘I am.’ The bard smiled pleasantly. ‘And this is Jennantar and Yannadariel. Here, let us pile these things up somewhere, and then we’ll join you at table.’ He glanced at Wffyn. ‘And a good eve to you, too, good merchant. There’ll be an eager crowd waiting for you at the trading ground.’

‘I’m glad to hear it,’ Wffyn said. ‘I’ve got many a fine thing to show you all.’

With a bard in the tavern room, the evening went by fast and pleasantly. He may have been tired from his long ride, but Devaberiel, like any true bard, couldn’t pass up a willing audience. He knew songs in Deverrian as well as in the Westfolk’s own language, and he’d barely finished the first one before the tavern room began to fill up. The news and the music had spread through the village. When the room could hold no more, townsfolk stood outside the windows and at the doors, so quietly that it seemed they barely breathed. No one moved until at last Devaberiel begged fatigue and began to loosen his harp strings.

In a swirl of talk and laughter, the crowd began to clear out. As Devaberiel made his way back to Nevyn’s table, the villagers pressed coins into his hands, which he took with murmurs of thanks and good-natured smiles. The innkeep brought a tankard of dark ale to the table and waved aside a proffered coin.

‘Not needed,’ the innkeep said. ‘Ah, it’s been a long time since we’ve heard you sing!’

Devaberiel smiled pleasantly but said nothing. This was the last time he’d sing here, Nevyn supposed, without his son to draw him. Some of the villagers began calling for ale, and the innkeep bustled away. Devaberiel took a good long swallow from his tankard, then wiped his mouth on the back of his hand.

‘So, good Nevyn,’ Devaberiel said. ‘Our wise one is looking forward to seeing you again.’

‘And I feel the same about him,’ Nevyn said. ‘It’s a bit of good luck that we could travel together.’

‘It is at that. You know, Aderyn told me that he travelled all over with you when he was but a little lad. Would it be an imposition to ask your help after I’ve claimed my son?’ Dev’s smile faded. ‘The poor lad! I don’t have the slightest notion of how to care for him, either on this journey or at all.’

Nevyn suddenly saw the obvious.