A Time of Omens Read online

  Although the gnome nodded, she doubted if he understood. In a moment he jumped off her lap, found a copper coin wedged into a crack in the floor, and became engrossed with pulling it out. Jill wondered if she would ever meet Nevyn again in the long cycles of death and rebirth. Only if she needed to, she supposed, and she knew that it would be years and years before he would be reborn again, long after her own death, no doubt, though well before her next birth. Although all souls rest in the Inner Lands between lives, Nevyn’s life had been so unnaturally prolonged by dweomer—he’d lived well over four hundred years, all told—that his corresponding interval of rest would doubtless be unusually long as well, or so she could speculate. It was for the Lords of Wyrd to decide, not her. She told herself that often, even as her heart ached to see him again.

  Finally, in a fit of annoyance over her mood, she got up and went to the lectern to read, but the chronicle only made her melancholy worse. She’d been trying to recall an event that had happened in one of her own previous lives, but she could remember it only dimly, because even a great dweomermaster like her could call to mind only the most general outlines and the occasional tiny memory picture of former lives. She was sure, though, from that dim memory, that she—or rather her previous incarnation, because she’d been born into a male body in that cycle—had been present at the forging of the rose ring. During that life, as the warrior known as Branoic, she’d ridden with a very important band of soldiers, the true king’s personal guard in the civil wars—that much, she could remember.

  What she’d forgotten was that Nevyn had been not only present but very much an important actor in those events, perhaps the most important figure of all. There was his name, written on practically every page. As she read the composed speeches the chronicler had put into his mouth, she found herself shaking her head in irritation: he never would have sounded so stiff, so formal! All at once, she realized that she was crying. The flood of long-buried grief, not only for Nevyn but for other friends her soul had forgotten this two hundred years and more, seemed to work a dweomer of its own. Rather than merely reading the chronicler’s dry account, she found herself remembering the isolated lake fort of Dun Drwloc, where Nevyn had tutored the young prince who was destined to become king, and the long ride that the silver daggers had taken to bring the prince to Cerrmor and his destiny. All night she stood there, reading some parts of the tale, remembering others, until the sheer fascination of the puzzle buried her grief again.

  past

  Pyrdon and Deverry

  843

  Nothing is ever lost.

  The Pseudo-Iamblicbus Scroll

  1.

  The year 843. In Cerrmor that winter, near the shortest day, there were double rings round the moon for two nights running. On the third night King Glyn died in agony after drinking a goblet of mead….

  The Holy Chronicled of Lughcarn

  The morning dawned clear if cold, with a snap of winter left in the wind, but toward noon the wind died and the day turned warm. As he led his horse and the prince’s out of the stables, Branoic was whistling at the prospect of getting free of the fortress for a few hours. After a long winter shut up in Dun Drwloc, he felt as if the high stone walls had marched in and made everything smaller.

  “Going out for a ride, lad?”

  Branoic swirled round to see the prince’s councillor, Nevyn, standing in the cobbled ward next to a broken wagon. Although the silver dagger couldn’t say why, Nevyn always startled him. For one thing, for all that he had a shock of snow-white hair and a face as wrinkled as burlap, the old man strode around as vigorously as a young warrior. For another, his ice-blue eyes seemed to bore into a man’s soul.

  “We are, sir,” Branoic said, with a bob of his head that would just pass for a humble gesture. “I’m just bringing out the prince’s horse, too, you see. We’ve all been stable-bound too long this winter.”

  “True enough. But ride carefully, will you? Guard the prince well.”

  “Of course, sir. We always do.”

  “Do it doubly, this morning. I’ve received an omen.”

  Branoic turned even colder than the brisk morning wind would explain. As he led the horses away, he was glad that he was going to be riding out with the prince rather than stuck home with his tame sorcerer.

  All winter Nevyn had been wondering when the king in Cerrmor would die, but he didn’t get the news until that very day, just before the spring equinox. The night before, it had rained over Dun Drwloc, dissolving the last pockets of snow in the shade of the walls and leaving pools of brown, mud in their stead. About two hours before noon, when the sky started clearing in earnest, the old man climbed to the ramparts and looked out over the slate-gray lake, choppy in the chill wind. He was troubled, wondering why he’d received no news from Cerrmor in five months. With those who followed the dark dweomer keeping a watch on the dun, he’d been afraid to contact other dweomermasters through the fire in case they were overheard, but now he was considering taking the risk. All the omens indicated that the time was ripe for King Glyn’s Wyrd to come upon him.

  Yet, as he stood there debating, he got his news in a way that he had never expected. Down below in the ward there was a whooping and a clatter that broke his concentration. In extreme annoyance he turned on the rampart and looked down to see Maryn galloping through the gates at the head of his squad of ten men. The prince was holding something shiny in his right hand and waving it about as he pulled his horse to a halt.

  “Page! Go find Nevyn right now!”

  “I’m up here, lad!” Nevyn called back. “I’ll come down.”

  “Don’t! I’ll come up. It’ll be private that way.”

  Maryn dismounted, tossed his reins to a page, and raced for the ladder. Over the winter he had grown another two inches, and his voice had deepened as well, so that more and more he looked the perfect figure of the king to be, blond and handsome with a far-seeing look in his gray eyes. Yet he was still lad enough to shove whatever it was he was holding into his shirt and scramble up the ladder to the ramparts. Nevyn could tell from the haunted look in his eyes that something had disturbed him.

  “What’s all this, my liege?”

  “We found somewhat, Nevyn, the silver daggers and me, I mean. After you saw us leave, we went down the east-running road. It was about three miles from here that we found them.”

  “Found who?”

  “The corpses. They’d all been slain by the sword. There were three dead horses but only two men in the road, but we found the third man out in a field, like he’d tried to run away before they killed him.”

  With a grunt of near-physical pain, Nevyn leaned back against the cold stone wall.

  “How long ago were they killed?”

  “Oh, a ghastly long time.” Maryn looked half-sick at the memory. “Maddyn says it was probably a couple of months. They froze first, he said, and then thawed probably just last week. The ravens have been working on them. It was truly grim. And all their gear was pulled apart and strewn around, like someone had been searching through it.”

  “Oh, no doubt they were. Could you tell anything about these poor wretches?”

  “They were Cerrmor men. Here.” Maryn reached into his shirt and pulled out a much-tarnished message tube. “This was empty when we found it, but look at the device. I rubbed part of it clean on the ride home.”

  Nevyn turned the tube and found the polished strip, graved with three tiny ships.

  “You could still see the paint on one shield, too,” Maryn went on. “It was the ship blazon. I wish we had the messages that were in that tube.”

  “So do I, Your Highness, but I think me I know what they said. We’d best go down and collect the entire troop. No doubt we’re months too late, but I won’t rest easy until we have a look round for the murderers.”

  As they hurried back to the broch, it occurred to Nevyn that he no longer had to worry about communicating with his allies by dweomer. It was obvious that their enemies already kn
ew everything they needed to know.

  Even though Maddyn considered hunting the murderers a waste of time, and he knew that every other man in the troop was dreading camping out in the chilly damp, no one so much as suggested arguing with Nevyn’s scheme. If anyone had, Maddyn himself would have been the one to do it, because he was a bard of sorts, with a bard’s freedom to speak on any matter at all, as well as being second in command of this troop of mercenaries newly become the prince’s guard. The true commander, Caradoc, was too afraid of Nevyn to say one wrong word to the old man, while Maddyn was, in some ways, the only real friend Nevyn had. Carrying what provisions the dun could spare them at the end of winter’s lean times, the silver daggers, with the prince and old Nevyn riding at the head of the line, clattered out the gates just at noon. With them was a wagon and a couple of servants with shovels to give the bodies a decent burial.

  “At least the blasted clouds have all blown away,” Caradoc said with a sigh. “I had a chance for a word with the king’s chief huntsman, by the by. He says that there’s an old hunting lodge about ten, twelve miles to the northeast, right on the river. If we can find it, it might still have a roof of sorts.”

  “If we’re riding that way to begin with.”

  They found the murdered men and their horses where they’d left them, and it ached Maddyn’s heart to think how close they’d been to safety when their Wyrd fell upon them. While the servants looked for a place where the thawing ground was good and soft, Nevyn coursed back and forth like a hunting dog and examined everything—the dead men, the horses, the soggy ground around them.

  “You and the men certainly trampled all over everything, Maddo,” he grumbled.

  “Well, we looked for footprints and tracks and suchlike. If they’d left a trail we would have found it, but you’ve got to remember that the ground was frozen hard when this happened.”

  “True enough. Where’s the third lad, the one who almost got away?”

  Maddyn took him across the field to the sprawled and puffing corpse. In the warming day the smell was loathsome enough to make the bard keep his distance, but Nevyn knelt right down next to the thing and began to examine the ground as carefully as if he were looking for a precious jewel. Finally he stood up and walked away with one last disgusted shake of his head.

  “Find anything?”

  “Naught. I’m not even sure what I was hoping to get, to tell you the truth. It just seems that…” Nevyn let his words trail away and stood there slack-mouthed for a moment. “I want to wash my hands off, and I see a stream over there.”

  Maddyn went with him while he knelt down and, swearing at the coldness of the water, scrubbed his hands in the rivulet. All at once the old man went tense, his eyes unfocused, his mouth slack again, his head tilted a little as if he listened to a distant voice. Only then did Maddyn notice that the streamlet brimmed with glassy-blue undines, rising up in crests and wavelets. In their midst, and yet somehow beyond them, like a man coming through a doorway from some other place, was a presence. Maddyn could barely see it, a vast silvery shimmer that seemed to partake of both water and air like some preternatural fog, forming itself into a shape that might not even have existed beyond his desire to see it as a shape. Then it was gone, and Maddyn shuddered once with a toss of his head.

  “Geese walking on your grave?” Nevyn said mildly.

  When Maddyn looked around he saw Owaen and the prince walking over to them and well within earshot.

  “Must be, truly. Here, Owaen, did you and the lads find anything new?”

  “Doubt me if there’s aught to find. Young Branoic did come up with this, though. Insisted it might be important, but he couldn’t say why.” Owaen looked positively sour as he handed Nevyn a thin sliver of bone, about six inches long, barely a half inch wide, but pointed on both ends. “Sometimes I think that lad is daft, I truly do.”

  “Not at all.” Nevyn was turning the sliver round and round in his thin, gnarled fingers. “It’s human bone, to begin with. And look how someone’s worked it—smoothed it, shaped it, and then polished it.”

  “What?” Owaen’s sourness deepened to disgust. “What is it, some kind of knife handle?”

  “It’s not, but a stylus to rule lines on parchment.”

  “A stylus?” Maddyn broke in. “Who would make a thing like that out of human bone?”

  “Who indeed, Maddo lad? That’s the answer I’d very much like to have: who indeed?”

  In his role as a learned man Nevyn recited a few suitable lines of Dawntime poetry over the corpses; then the silver daggers mounted up and left the servants to get on with the burying. When they rode out they headed for the river. Maddyn spurred his horse up next to the old man’s and mentioned the decrepit hunting lodge.

  “It’ll be better shelter than none, truly,” Nevyn said.

  “You don’t suppose our enemies camped there, do you?”

  “They might have once, but they’re long gone by now.” He gave Maddyn a wink. “I have some rather reliable information to that effect. Tell the men we won’t be out hunting wild geese long, Maddo. I just want one last look around, that’s all.”

  Only then was Maddyn sure that he had indeed seen some exalted personage in the stream.

  Just at sunset they reached the lodge, a wooden roundhouse, its thatch half-gone, standing along with a stables behind a palisade that was missing as many logs as a peasant his teeth. As soon as they rode within five hundred yards of the place the horses turned nervous, tossing their heads and blowing, dancing a little in the muddy road. Maddyn had the feeling that they would have bolted if they hadn’t been tired from their long day’s ride.

  “Oho!” Nevyn said. “My liege, you wait here with Cara-doc and most of the men. Maddyn, you, Owaen, and Branoic come with me.”

  “You’d better take more men than that, Councillor,” Maryn said.

  “I won’t need a small army, my liege. Most like there’s naught left here but bad memories, anyway.”

  “But the horses—”

  “See things men don’t see, but men know things that horses don’t know. And with that riddle, you’ll have to rest content.”

  Nevyn was right enough, in the event, although the ‘bad memory’ turned out to be bad indeed. The men dismounted and walked the last of the way to the lodge, and as soon as they stepped through the gap they saw and smelled what had been spooking the animals. Nailed to the inside of the palisade, like a shrike nailed to a farmer’s barn, was the corpse of a man, half-eaten by ravens and well ripened by the spring weather. Yet the worst thing wasn’t the stench. The corpse was hung upside down and mutilated—the head cut off and nailed between its legs with what seemed to be—from the fragment left—its private parts stuffed into its mouth. Branoic stared for a long moment, then turned and ran to the shelter of the palisade to vomit, heavily and noisily.

  “Uh gods!” Owaen whispered. “What?!”

  For all his aplomb earlier, Nevyn looked half sick now, his face dead white and looking with all its wrinkles more like old parchment than ever. He ran his tongue over dry lips and spoke at last.

  “A would-be deserter, most like, or a traitor of some sort. They left him that way so he’d roam as a haunt forever. All right, lads, get back to the troop. I think they’ll all agree that we don’t truly want to camp here tonight, shelter or not.”

  “I should think not, by the asses of the gods!” Owaen turned to Maddyn. “I know the horses are tired, but we’d best put a couple of miles between ourselves and this place if there’s a haunt about.”

  “You’re going to, certainly,” Nevyn broke in. “I’m going to stay here.”

  “Not alone you aren’t,” Maddyn snapped.

  “I don’t need guards with swords, lad. I’m not in danger. If I can’t handle one haunt, what kind of sorcerer am I?”

  “What about this poor bastard?” Owaen jerked his thumb at the corpse. “We should give him some kind of burial.”

  “Oh, I’ll tend to that, too.”
Nevyn started walking for the gate. “I’ll just get my horse, and then you all go on your way. Come fetch me first thing in the morning.”

  Somewhat later, when they were all making camp—in a meadow about a mile and a half downriver—it occurred to Maddyn that Nevyn seemed to know an awful lot about these mysterious people who had left that ugly bit of sacrilege on the palisade. Although he was normally a curious man, he decided that he could live without asking him to explain.

  With the last of the sunset, Nevyn brought his horse inside the tumble-down lodge, tied him on a loose rope to the wall and tended him, then dumped his bedroll and saddlebags near the hearth, where there lay a sizable if dusty pile of firewood already cut, left by the hirelings of the dark dweomermaster behind this plot—or so he assumed anyway. As assumptions went, it was a solid one. After he confirmed that the chimney was clear by sticking his head up it for a look, he piled up some logs and lit them with a wave of his hand. Once the fire had blazed up enough to illumine the room, he searched it thoroughly, even poking at the rotting walls with the point of his table dagger. His patience paid off when under a pile of leaves that had drifted in through a window he found a pewter disk about the size of a thumbnail, of the kind sewn onto saddlebags and other horse gear as decorations. Stamped into it was the head of a boar.

  “I wonder,” he said aloud. “The Boar clan’s territory lies a long way from here, but still, if they thought the journey worth it for some purpose… are they in league with the dark dweomer then?”

  The idea made him shudder. He slipped the disk into his brigga pocket, then paced back and forth before the fire as he considered what he was going to do about the possible haunt. First, of course, he had to discover if indeed that poor soul whose body rotted outside was still hanging about the site of his death. He laid more wood on the fire, poked it around with a green stick until it burned nice and evenly, then gathered up a mucky little pile of the damp and mildewed thatch that had slid from the roof over the years. If he needed it, the stuff would produce dense smoke. Then he sat down in front of the hearth, let himself relax, and waited.