Dark Magicks Read online

  DARK MAGICKS: TWO STORIES

  Katharine Kerr

  Book View Cafe

  Dark Magicks: Two Stories

  Copyright ©2013 by Katharine Kerr

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce these stories, or portions thereof, in any form.

  These are works of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in these stories are either fictitious or are used fictitiously.

  Ebook formatting by Karen Lofstrom

  Cover design by Leah Cutter from a photograph by Michael Ellis

  ELECTRONIC EDITION ISBN

  978-1-61138-256-3

  Wellspring originally published in Return to Avalon, DAW Books, 1996

  The Fourth Concealment of Britain originally published in Out of Avalon, Roc Books, 2001

  Book View Café edition, April 2013

  Book View Cafe

  Contents

  Author's Note

  Wellspring

  The Fourth Concealment of the Island of Britain

  About Book View Cafe

  Author’s Note

  These two stories take place in the British Dark Ages, or at least, in a version of that time and place colored by the King Arthur legends.

  “The Wellspring” owes something to Marion Zimmer Bradley’s alternate history version of those legends. It was originally published in Return to Avalon, an anthology put out by DAW Books in 1996.

  “The Fourth Concealment of the Island of Britain” takes its title from a text contained in the Trioedd Ynns Prydain, a collection of bardic lore assembled from several medieval manuscripts. The Triads of the Island of Britain, to translate its title, describes three famous concealments; I’ve added a fourth. The story was originally published in Out of Avalon, Roc Books, 2001.

  Wellspring

  Down in the thicket the shade fell dappled, cool in the windless summer day. Among aspens the spring welled up clear, a noiseless bubble of water through white sand. When Gwanwyn knelt, she felt the Presence. The priests said an evil spirit lived in the spring, but she was convinced that the spirit was holy. Either way, at times the Presence did deign to show her visions. Gwanwyn opened the leather pouch hanging from her kirtle and took out a piece of honeycomb, wrapped in green leaves. When she laid it down upon the grass, the Presence grew stronger.

  Gwanwyn stared into the still waters and the rippling image of her own face, roundish and pale under blonde hair, pretty without being beautiful. Owain, O Holy Virgin, please, show me Owain!

  As she chanted his name, the dappled shadows blended to a darkness, then welled until the dark at the heart of the spring filled her mind. In the midst of the darkness, bright-lit in a ray of sun, Owain stood with his sword in his hand, his helm tucked under one arm. Gwanwyn saw her father standing nearby and laughing, his head thrown back. So. They were both safe, and the battle over. Gwanwyn smiled as if they could see her in return. Then the ray of light turned bloody, picked Owain out, and washed him in gore.

  With a scream Gwanwyn leaped to her feet. The spring was only a spring again, but the thicket seemed to shiver with the memory of her scream. She clasped her hands over her mouth and stood shaking, deathly cold in the summer air.

  “What’s so wrong?” The voice came from behind her. “Did you see somewhat in the water?”

  Gwanwyn spun around. Standing among the trees was a stranger, an old woman. Tall and spare, she wore shabby traveling clothes, a blue cloak thrown over a much-mended dress that once had been green, but her lined face was so strong that her white braids, wrapped round her head, seemed a queen’s crown. Just beyond stood a gray palfrey and a large gray dog lying patiently beside it.

  “Who are you? I thought I was alone.”

  “My horse smelled the water, and he’s thirsty. May a traveler drink at this spring?”

  “If the Holy Virgin allows it, you may.” The old woman nodded, as if tucking this bit of lore away, then went to fetch her horse. When the dog sprang up and followed, Gwanwyn leaped back. It was, in truth, a great gray wolf from the far highlands, with a black roach down his back and narrow yellow eyes.

  “He won’t hurt you, lass. I’ve had him since he was a cub, and I raised his mother, too.” The old woman busied herself with slacking her horse’s bit. “My name is Rosmarta, and I’m on my way to the village. Who are you?”

  “Gwanwyn of Dun Pennog. My apologies! I’ve quite forgotten my courtesies, haven’t I? How does your journey fare? Will you seek shelter in my father’s dun?”

  “My thanks, but I won’t. I have a cousin in your village, old Mab the herbwoman.” She hesitated, looking Gwanwyn over with calm, gray eyes. “You know, lass, sometimes roads cross for a reason.”

  Gwanwyn smiled politely, tried to think of an answer, then decided that Rosmarta didn’t truly expect one. When the horse and wolf had drunk their fill, Gwanwyn showed her the way to the village by her usual shortcut, a narrow track that wound across the meadows. Mile after mile, the rolling hills of southern Rheged stretched round, them, a long green view crested with trees. Here and there in meadows grazed white cattle, switching flies.

  “You’ll pardon my asking,” Rosmarta said. “But what’s a high-born lass like you doing out without an escort?”

  “I like to be alone, and besides, all the men are off with Father. The Irish have been raiding again, you see.”

  “Well, that’s ill news!”

  “It is, truly. They burned a church, you see, and a monastery, too. They killed the monks; all of them.”

  “How dreadful.” Yet her voice had no mourning in it.

  “A terrible thing.”

  “Well, the monks were all good Christian men.”

  “No doubt.”

  Gwanwyn hesitated, waiting. Rosmarta never crossed herself.

  “And what about you, my lady?” Gwanwyn took refuge in courtesy. “Have you traveled far alone?”

  “I have, but who’s going to bother one poor old woman? Besides, there’d be pity in my heart for the man who dared attack me in front of Giff here.”

  The wolf stretched black lips over strong white fangs and waved his tail.

  About two miles from the spring, an untidy clutter of round thatched huts spread out around the crossroads. At the common well in the center of the village, a gaggle of old women in black and gray dresses were sitting and gossiping. A couple of small boys kicked a leather ball back and forth and raised little puffs of dust in the road. As Gwanwyn and Rosmarta walked by, everyone curtsied, but in a rather absentminded way. Old Mab’s house was scented with the bitter and the sweet of fifty different herbs. When they opened the gate to the jingle of tiny brass bells, Mab came waddling out, her smile vast among her many chins.

  “And there you are, my sweet cousin! And the Lady Gwanwyn, too, by the Holy Mother herself!” Mab made a surprisingly graceful curtsy. “How fares your father, my lady? Any news?”

  “I saw—I mean, none yet, good dame. But I pray every night he’ll come home safe.”

  “As well you might.” Mab glanced at Rosmarta. “It’s the Irish again, you see, coming up the creeks and stealing everything they lay their foul paws on and burning what they leave behind.”

  “So our young lady told me. I heard about the monastery.”

  Mab and Rosmarta exchanged the barest trace of a smile.

  “But now, we’re all in danger, like,” Mab went on, and her voice trembled. “They kill anyone who won’t make fit slaves. A terrible thing it is.”

  “It is, it is at that,” Gwanwyn said. “And we’ve lost ever so many good men, fighting them. I only pray I won’t lose my betrothed, too. I worry so about him.”

  “As well you might.” Mab gave a firm nod. “And will you take my hospitality, my lady?”

  “All my tha
nks, but your cousin must be tired, and I’d best get back to my duties.”

  Lord Cadvaennan’s dun lay half a mile from the village, close enough for his folk to run for shelter when raiding parties came marauding, on the top of an artificial mound surrounded by a double ring of earthworks. At the crest of the mound stood a wooden, palisade, enclosing a stretch of bare dirt, a row of stables, a scatter of sheds, and the wooden longhouse of Dun Pennog, where Gwanwyn had presided, mistress of the house, ever since her mother’s death three years before. Over the brassbound doors hung a row of severed heads, roughly dried in sun and sand, then nailed up for all to mock, the black-haired and bearded heads of Irish raiders. Alone among all the lords who swore allegiance to Urien, the king of Rheged, Gwanwyn’s father had won the name of Scotbane.

  Everyone swore that Lord Jesu himself must be helping Cadvaennan find the murdering scum, and great honors had come his way for it, too. But Gwanwyn knew that the luck came from a man named Vortin who had joined her father’s warband the summer before. He tracked the marauders down as easily as if he could see them from far away.

  All that afternoon, while Gwanwyn and her women sat spinning wool and singing to one another, she found her mind drifting from the songs to Rosmarta. Visitors of any sort were rare, up here in the hills, but for one of the commonfolk to have a visitor was unheard of. Toward evening, when the poor light forced the women to tidy the spinning away, Gwanwyn asked the eldest of her women, Anghariad, if she knew of Mab’s cousin.

  “I don’t, at that, but Mab herself’s a strange one.” Anghariad raised a significant eyebrow. “She wasn’t born round here, you know. I remember when her husband brought her home, a long long time it was. All the way from Ty Gwin, it was.”

  “As far as that? Why, that’s two days’ ride!”

  Anghariad nodded and laid her finger up along her nose, as if in warning of strangers.

  All the warning did, though, was prod Gwanwyn’s curiosity. In the morning she set some of her women to spinning and others to baking bread out in the kitchen hut, and on the excuse of moving from one group to the other she could slip away and go down to the village. She found Mab and Rosmarta working out in Mab’s kitchen garden, plucking snails and green worms from Mab’s cabbages and drowning them in a leather bucket of salted water. At the sight of her they wiped their hands on their dresses and curtsied.

  “And what may I do for you, my lady?” Mab said. All at once Gwanwyn realized that she’d never thought of excuse or reason. Both women laughed, but in a kindly way.

  “Drawn by your curiosity, I’d wager,” Rosmarta said. “Well, come sit down while we work.”

  Stammering apologies, blushing, Gwanwyn sat down on an old stump for want of a stool.

  ’“Tell me somewhat lass,” Rosmarta said. “Has the Holy Virgin ever appeared to you at that spring?”

  “How did you know?” Gwanwyn blurted, then blushed scarlet. “I mean, oh, please, don’t tell the priests. I don’t want to be shut up in a nunnery all my life.”

  “No doubt,” Mab put in. “Though you’d have a quieter life there than you will as Lord Owain’s wife.”

  “I don’t care. I don’t want a quiet life.”

  “No doubt on that, either,” Rosmarta said, smiling. “But I knew because you said I could water my horse if the Blessed Virgin let me.”

  “Oh! Of course! Well, I’ve never had a true vision of her. I mean, she’s appeared to me, but she doesn’t look like the priests say she should. She comes in a green dress with flowers in her hair, but I know she’s not an evil spirit, I just know it, and so she must be the Virgin. Who else is there?”

  “Who, indeed?” Rosmarta sounded suddenly weary. “Who else is left to give women their visions?”

  Both Mab and her cousin were looking at her, watching in friendly concern like a pair of nursemaids watching their charge toddle to its feet and take a first step or two.

  “Well, no one,” Gwanwyn said, puzzled. “What do you mean, left? You don’t mean the horrid old demons, do you? The ones people used to think were like God?”

  “You’re the one who said your lady couldn’t be evil, not me” Rosmarta said. “And you’re the one who’s seen her, not the wretched priests.”

  Gwanwyn got to her feet. She shouldn’t be sitting here, listening to heretical things!

  “If she’s not the Holy Virgin, who is she?”

  The sinful question seemed to have asked itself. Gwanwyn clapped a hand over her mouth in horror, but the two women merely smiled. “A holy virgin,” Rosmarta said. “That bit’s right enough.”

  Gwanwyn hesitated, on the edge of asking more. “I’ve got to get back,” she said instead. “The spinning’s near done, and I’ve got to parcel out the threads.”

  “Come again if you’d like,” Mab said, “you’re always welcome here, my lady.”

  And on the morrow Gwanwyn did come again. This time she found Mab spinning up the clumps of gleaned wool, her widow’s right to gather. The old woman sat on a high stool and let the spindle drop, over and over, while she fed the carded fibers into the growing thread.

  “My cousin’s gone a-gathering herbs, my lady,” Mab said.

  “No doubt. She’s a wisewoman, isn’t she, Mab?’

  “There’s wise and wise, my lady.”

  “Well, so there is. But does she know grammarie?”

  “What?” Mab laughed, as merry as a lass. “How could a woman possibly know such things, and them as dark as dark?”

  “She knew I’d seen the Lady of the spring.”

  “Well, you as good as told her yourself. She’s a good woman, my cousin,” Mab went on. “As nice as you please.”

  Yet Gwanwyn was remembering the way that Rosmarta said, “sometimes, roads cross for a reason.” There’d been naught of the goodwife in her voice then. She walked back to the dun, wondering—in spite of her fears—hoping that Rosmarta knew forbidden lore.

  Close to sunset, Gwanwyn knew with a sharp urgency that her father was riding home. She climbed the catwalk on top of the palisade and stood looking down at the road. After some minutes she saw a cloud of dust coming fast. The warband swept through the village at a trot. Her father and Owain both were safe and riding at the head. Whooping with joy, she turned and yelled orders at the servants. One ran to open the gates, another to warn the cook.

  Just as Gwanwyn was about to climb down, she noticed Rosmarta, standing at the bottom of the hill with her wolf beside her, watching as the warband hurried by. It was a reasonable curiosity, no doubt, on the part of a stranger, but the old woman stood so straight and still that Gwanwyn wondered just what she was doing there.

  With shouts and the thudding of hooves on hard ground, the warband swept in through the gates, twenty men home safe, five men wrapped in blankets and slung over saddles. As the servant came running to take the horses away, Gwanwyn climbed down and shoved her way through the mob to her father’s side.

  Cadvaennan was lifting a leather sack down from his saddle-peak. “Boy!” he yelled at the nearest servant. “Run and get me a pike.” As Gwanwyn curtsied, she saw blood seeping through the seam. “Father, thanks be to the Holy Virgin for bringing you home safe.”

  “Safe?” Cadvaennan grinned through his filthy beard. “Thank her for the victory, lass.”

  Gwanwyn turned to find Owain right behind her. She threw herself into his arms and clung to him while he laughed and stroked her hair and told her she’d been silly to worry over him. He reeked of sweat, his horse’s and his own, but over it all hung the smell of other men’s blood. Gently he pushed her free and gave her an affectionate slap on the behind.

  “Run and set the servants working, will you? I could drink enough ale to drown a horse.”

  “You shall have it, my love. Father, shall I have them lay out a meal, too?”

  Cadvaennan was paying her no attention, A page was kneeling before him and bracing a long spear against the dirt while his lord took a man’s head out of the sack, its dark beard sti
ff with blood. He flipped it neatly round and ran the severed stump of the neck onto the spear with a sucking, squelching sound. The warband broke out cheering.

  “Another Irish captain sails to hell tonight!” Cadvaennan called out. “Set it by the fire to dry, lad. I’ll be making a drinking cup of his skull soon enough.”

  When the men burst out laughing, Gwanwyn turned and ran for the longhouse. At the door she collided with someone coming out.

  “Oh, my pardons!”

  “No matter,” Vortin said. When he laid a hand on her shoulder to steady her, Gwanwyn shrank back. Tall, stoop-shouldered, Vortin smiled down at her, a thin smile tight on a thin, scarred face. For all that he rode with the warband, Gwanwyn had never heard the bard give him credit for a single kill, but her father swore that a scout like him could earn his mead without swinging a sword. The warband whispered about it, just as the servants did: grammarie, they muttered, he has dark magic and strange grammarie in his soul.

  “I’ll come inside with you,” Vortin went on. “I’ve a question to ask you.”

  Since she couldn’t be rude to a man her father favored, Gwanwyn forced herself to walk beside him into the great hall, an enormous room set with wooden tables on the straw-strewn floor and two stone hearths at either end. While she gave the servants their orders, he watched her with his ice-blue eyes, all narrowed and calculating, then caught her elbow and steered her into a corner.

  “When we were riding up the hill, I saw an old woman, a stranger, with white braids round her head. Do you know who she is?” Gwanwyn hesitated, utterly unwilling to tell him, but she couldn’t give a reason why.

  “You answer me, lass. I know cursed well you know!”

  “Her name’s Rosmarta. She’s a cousin of Old Mab’s.”

  “Oh, is she now? Oh. Is she now!” He turned and walked away.

  Gwanwyn shuddered and plucked at her sleeve where he’d touched it. If there’d been time, she would have changed her dress.

  That night saw a victory feast in the great hall, lit by ’both torch and firelight for the celebration. The warband crowded round the tables and chivvied the servant girls as they hurried from man to man with pitchers of ale and plates of meat. At the table of honor up by the hearth, Cadvaennan put Owain and Vortin beside him, one at either hand, and Gwanwyn, of course, sat next to her betrothed. While they ate, Cadvaennan and Owain took turns telling her about the raid, boasting of heir kills and praising those of their men. Vortin picked at his food and said little, but every now and then he would look Gwanwyn’s way and give her smile like the grasp of a sweaty hand.