The Bristling Wood Read online

  “Just that. I was always fond of her. If only some other beastly man had cast her off.”

  Nevyn gave her a thin smile and had a well-deserved swallow of ale.

  “I’ll be leaving tomorrow,” he said. “Going to Dun Deverry. Now that I have a nephew at court, I can hear some of the gossip from the king’s councils.”

  “Nephew, indeed! But I’m glad he’s there, all the same. I’m beginning to think that our only hope is to get our liege to override Rhys’s sentence of exile. It’s happened before.”

  “Gwerbrets have also risen in rebellion against such meddling. Do you think Rhys will?”

  “I don’t know. Ah, by the Goddess herself, it aches my heart to think of war coming to Eldidd, and all over my two squabbling sons!”

  “The war hasn’t started yet, and I’m going to do my cursed best to make sure it doesn’t.”

  Yet he looked so weary that she was suddenly frightened. Even though he was the most powerful dweomerman in the kingdom, he was still only one man. He was also caught up in political intrigue that—or so it seemed to her—his magical calling would ill equip him to handle.

  “Ah well,” she said at last. “At least the child himself was born with good omens. They always say it’s a lucky lad who’s born the first day of spring.”

  “So they do, and let’s hope this spring is as well omened for us all.”

  The absent way he spoke made her realize that he very much doubted it would be. She was hesitating, half wanting to ask more, half afraid to hear the truth if he should tell her, when a page came over to her. The young lad looked utterly confused.

  “Your Grace? There’s a noble lord at the gates. Should I ask you what to do, or go find Lord Garedd?”

  “You may ask me, because I’m of higher rank. If I were of the same rank as Garedd, you’d have to go find him. Now. Which noble lord is it?”

  “Talidd of Belglaedd, Your Grace. He said the strangest thing. He asked if he was welcome in the dun that should have been his.”

  Beside her Nevyn swore under his breath.

  “Oh ye gods,” Lovyan said feebly. “He would turn up right now! Well, lad, run and tell him that indeed he’s welcome in the dun called Bruddlyn. Tell him that exactly and not a word more.”

  As soon as the page was on his way, Nevyn turned to her with the lift of a quizzical eyebrow.

  “It all goes back to Loddlaen’s war,” she said, her voice heavy with weariness. “Talidd’s sister was Corbyn’s wife. She went back to her brother before the war even started, because having Loddlaen in the dun was driving her daft, and I can’t say I blame her for that, frankly. But then, after Corbyn was killed, I attainted this demesne because she’d left her husband. All my loyal men would have grumbled if I hadn’t. I offered her a settlement of coin and horses, but Talidd refused to let her take a copper or a filly of it.”

  She broke off because the subject of this explanation was striding into the great hall, stripping off his cloak and riding gloves as he did so. Talidd of Belglaedd was a heavyset man of forty, with gray hair still streaked with blond, and shrewd green eyes. Tossing his cloak to the page, he came over and made the tieryn a deep bow. His bland smile revealed nothing at all.

  “I’m surprised to see you here, my lord,” Lovyan said.

  “I came to congratulate Garedd on the birth of a child. The page tells me it’s a lad.”

  “It is, and a healthy one.”

  “Then Dun Bruddlyn has yet another heir, does it?” Talidd paused to take a tankard of ale from a serving lass. “Well, the gods may witness the justice of that.”

  Lovyan debated challenging him then and there. If she’d been a man, and thus able to fight her own duels, she might well have done it, but as it was, she would have to call for a champion. Answering that call would be the captain of her warband, Cullyn of Cerrmor, who was without doubt the best swordsman in all Deverry. It seemed rather unfair to sentence Talidd to certain death for a few nasty remarks.

  “I choose to ignore that, my lord,” Lovyan said, and she put ice in her voice. “If you feel injured, you may put your case before the gwerbret, and I shall come to court at his order.”

  “The gwerbret. Your Grace, happens to be your son.”

  “So he is, and I scrupulously raised him to be a fair-minded man.”

  At that Talidd looked down abruptly at the table, and he had the decency to blush. In the duel of words, Lovyan had scored the first touch.

  “I’m surprised you’d come here just to pour vinegar in an old wound,” she said.

  “The matter’s of great moment for the gwerbretrhyn, isn’t it? You forget, Your Grace, that I hold a seat on the Council of Electors.”

  Lovyan had forgotten, and she cursed herself mentally for the lapse. Talidd had a sip of ale and smiled his bland, secretive smile at her and Nevyn impartially.

  “I was hoping I’d be in time to witness the birth,” he said at last. “I take it there were witnesses not of this household.”

  “Myself and the herbman here.”

  “And none, my lady, would dare dispute your word, not in open court or in private meeting.” The smile grew less bland. “We may take it as a given that, indeed, the Lady Donilla’s not barren, no matter what seemed to be the case before.”

  Lovyan gave him a brilliant smile and hated his very heart.

  “Just so, my lord. I take it as another given that you’ll be summoning the council with this news as soon as ever you can.”

  Talidd left well before the evening meal with the remark that he had a better welcome nearby. He sounded so martyred, so genuinely injured, that Nevyn felt like kicking him all the way out of the great hall. For Lovyan’s sake, he refrained. Instead he went up to look in on Donilla, who was by then resting in her own bed with the swaddled babe beside her. In some minutes Lovyan joined him there, her expression as placid as if she’d never heard Talidd’s name, and made a few pleasantries to the younger woman. Nevyn left when she did, following her to the chamber in the suite that had been allotted to her on this visit. Although plain, it was obviously furnished with Dun Bruddlyn’s best; her cousin and his lady both had reason to be grateful for her gift of this demesne, as she remarked.

  “Although it’s turning out to be a troubled gift, sure enough,” Nevyn said. “I didn’t realize Talidd felt so strongly.”

  “Him and half the lords in the tierynrhyn. I knew there’d be trouble when I gave it to Garedd, but there’d have been trouble no matter what I did. Well, I suppose if I’d apportioned it to you, no one would have grumbled, but you didn’t want it, and so here we are.”

  “Come now, Lovva! You almost make me feel guilty.”

  “I like that ‘almost.’ But truly, whenever an overlord has land to give, there’s bound to be injured feelings. I only wish that Talidd didn’t have a seat on the council. Ah ye gods, what a nasty thing this is becoming! Even if Rhys’s wife did have a babe now, no one would believe it was his.”

  “Just so. I—”

  With the bang of a door and a gleeful howl of laughter, a child of about two came charging into the chamber with a nursemaid in pursuit. She was slender for her age, with a mop of curly, raven-dark hair and violet eyes, almost as dark a purple as an elf’s—all in all, a breathtakingly beautiful child. With a gurgle, she threw herself into Lovyan’s exalted lap.

  “Granna, Granna, love you, Granna.”

  “And I love you, too, Rhodd-let, but you’re being naughty and interrupting.”

  Rhodda twisted in her lap and looked solemnly at Nevyn. The family resemblance was profound.

  “I’d almost forgotten about Rhodry’s daughter. She certainly hasn’t inherited her looks from her mother’s side, has she?”

  “None, but Maelwaedd blood tends to be strong, and Olwen, poor lass, was one of those blond and bland sorts. Rhodry’s bastard might have a very important role to play in what lies ahead, so I keep her with me at all times—to supervise her upbringing, of course.” For all her talk of
political purposes, she kissed the top of the child’s head with a genuine fondness, then motioned to the nursemaid. “Now let Mistress Tevylla take you away and give you some bread and milk. It’s almost time for bed.”

  Although Rhodda whined, begged, and finally howled, Lovyan held firm and scooped her up bodily to give her to her nurse, who was hovering by the chamber door. Nevyn hadn’t truly noticed her before, but he saw now that she was a striking woman of about thirty, with dark hair, dark eyes, and almost severely regular features. Once she and her small charge were gone, Nevyn asked about her.

  “Tevva?” Lovyan said. “A charming woman, and with a will of steel, which she needs around Rhodda, I assure you. She’s a widow, actually, with a son of her own, who’s—oh ye gods, I don’t remember his age, but old enough for Cullyn to be training him for the warband. Her man was a blacksmith down in my town, but he died suddenly of a fever two winters ago. Since she had no kin, the priests recommended her to my charity, and I needed a woman for Rhodda. That child is a worse handful than even her father was.” She sighed, and since they were alone, she could be honest. “I suppose it’s the Elven blood in their veins.”

  “I’d say so, for all that Rhodda doesn’t have much of it.”

  “A full quarter, let us not forget. Don’t fall for your own lies about a trace of Elven blood in the Maelwaedds.”

  “Well, it’s not a lie, because there is one, but of course it doesn’t apply here. I take it you plan to make the child a good marriage someday?”

  “An influential marriage, certainly, and I plan to teach her how to make any marriage suit her own purposes. If she can learn to channel all that willfulness, she’ll be a woman to reckon with in Eldidd, illegitimate or not.”

  Although Nevyn agreed with vague words rather than burden her further, he privately wondered if the child could ever be tamed and forced into the narrow mold of a noble-born woman. Sooner or later, her wild blood was going to show.

  Before he left Dun Bruddlyn, Nevyn made a point of scrying out Rhodry and, when he found him well, telling Lovyan so. As he rode out, leading his pack mule behind him, he felt a dread that was as much logic as it was dweomer warning. The summer before, he and those others who studied the dweomer of light had won a series of victories over those who followed the dweomer of darkness. They had not only disrupted an elaborate plot of the dark masters but had also ruined one of their main sources of income, the importing of opium and various poisons into the kingdom. The dark ones would want revenge; they always did, and he reminded himself to stay on guard in his travels. Of course, it was likely that they’d scheme for years, trying to lay a plan so clever and convoluted that it would be undetectable. It was likely, but at the same time, the dweomer warnings came to him in a coldness down his back. Since the dark masters were so threatened, they would doubtless strike back as soon as they could. The only question was how.

  And yet, other, more mundane matters demanded his attention as well. The gwerbretrhyn was too rich, too desirable, to stay peaceful if the line of succession should be broken. As much as he hated involving himself in the schemings and feudings of noble clans, Nevyn knew that his duty to Rhodry’s dweomer-touched Wyrd also imposed on him a duty to Rhodry’s rhan and to his innocent subjects, who preferred peace to war, unlike noble-born men like Talidd. He would fight with every weapon he had to keep Aberwyn safe. For all that Lovyan was skeptical about his political skills (and he knew full well that she was), he was better armed for this fight than any man in the kingdom, right down to the wisest of the high king’s councillors. Oh, I learned a trick or two that time, he thought to himself, and our Rhodry was right in the middle of that little mess, for all that he was a humble rider then, and an outlawed man! Although it had been well over a hundred years ago now, he knew what it was to battle for the throne of not merely a gwerbret, but a king.

  Part One

  Deverry and Pyrdon,

  833–845

  When Dilly Blind went to the river,

  To see what he could see,

  He found the King of Cerrmor

  A-washing his own laundry …

  —Old Eldidd folk song

  ONE

  The Year 833. Slwmar II, king in Dun Deverry, received a bad wound in battle. The second son of Glyn II, king in Cerrmor, died stillborn. We took these as bad omens. Only later would we realize that Bel in His wisdom was preparing peace for his people …

  The Holy Chronicles of Lughcarn

  The flies were the worst thing. It was bad enough to be dying, but to have the flies so thick was an unjust indignity. They clustered buzzing round the wound and tried to drink the blood. It hurt too much to try to brush them away. The wound was on his right side, just below the armpit, and deep. If someone could have stitched it for him, Maddyn supposed, he might have lived, but since he was all alone in the wild hills, he was going to die. He saw no reason to lie to himself about it: he was bleeding to death. He clutched the saddle-peak with his left hand and kept his right arm raised, because the wound blazed like fire if he let his arm touch it. The blood kept oozing through his shattered mail, and the big shiny blue-black flies kept coming. Every now and then, a fly bit his horse, which was too exhausted to do more than stamp in protest.

  Maddyn was the last rider in his warband left alive. Since when he died, the enemy victory would be complete, it seemed honorable to try to postpone their victory for a while; it seemed important then, as he rode slowly through the golden autumn haze, to cheat them of their victory for twenty minutes more. Ahead, about a mile away, was a lake, the surface rippled gold and shining in the sunset. Along the edge stood white birches, rippling in the rising wind. He wanted water. Next to the flies, being thirsty was the worst thing, his mouth so dry that he could barely breathe. His horse ambled steadily for the lake. It wouldn’t matter, his dying, if only he could drink first.

  The lake was coming closer. He could see the rushes, dark strokes against bright water, and a white heron, standing one-legged at the edge. Then something went wrong with the sun. It wasn’t setting straight down, but swinging from side to side, like a lantern held in someone’s hand as they walked. The sky was dark as night, but the sun kept swinging back and forth, a lantern in the night, back and forth, wider swings now, up up high up all the way to noon about him all the way above him and blazing. Then there was darkness, the smell of crushed grass, the flies buzzing and the thirst. Then only darkness.

  A lantern was burning in the darkness. At first, Maddyn thought it was the sun, but this light was too small, too steady. An old man’s face leaned over him. He had a thick mane of white hair and cold blue eyes.

  “Ricyn.” His voice was low but urgent. “Ricco, look at me.”

  Although Maddyn had never heard that particular name before, he knew somehow that it was his, and he tried to answer to it. His lips were too dry to move. The old man held a golden cup of water to his lips and helped him drink. The water was sweet and cold. I won’t die thirsty after all, Maddyn thought. Then the darkness came again.

  The next time that he woke, he realized that he wasn’t going to die. For a long time, he lay perfectly still and wondered at it: he wasn’t going to die. Slowly he looked around him, for the first time wondering where he was, and realized that he was lying naked between soft wool blankets on a pile of straw. Firelight danced over the walls of an enormous stone room. Although his wound still hurt, it was nicely bound with linen bandages. When he turned his head, he saw the old man sitting at a rough wooden table by the stone hearth and reading in a leather-bound book. The old man glanced up and smiled at him.

  “Thirsty, lad?”

  “I am, good sir.”

  The old man dipped water from a wooden barrel into the golden cup, then knelt down and helped him drink.

  “My horse?” Maddyn said.

  “He’s safe and at his hay.” The old man laid a hand on Maddyn’s forehead. “Fever’s broken. Good.”

  Maddyn just managed to smile before he fell asleep.
This time, he dreamt of his last battle so vividly that it seemed he could smell the dust and the horse sweat. His warband drew up on the crest of the hill, and there were Tieryn Devyr and his men waiting across the road—over a hundred to their thirty-seven, but they were going to make the hopeless downhill charge anyway. Maddyn knew it by the way Lord Brynoic laughed like a madman, lounging back in his saddle. There was naught they could do but die; they were trapped, and they had naught left to live for. Even though he felt like a fool for doing it, Maddyn started thinking about his mother. In his mind, he could see her clearly, standing in the doorway of their house and holding out her arms to him. Then the horn blew for the charge, and he could only think of riding. Down the hill, on and on, with Devyr’s men wheeling to face them—the clash came with a shriek from both sides. In his dream Maddyn relived every parry and cut, choked again on the rising dust, and woke with a cry when the sword bit deep into his side.

  “Here, lad.” The old man was right beside him. “All’s well now.”

  “Can I have some water?”

  “All you want.”

  After Maddyn gulped down six cupfuls, the old man brought him bread and milk in a wooden bowl. Since his hands were shaking too badly to hold a spoon, the old man fed him too, a spoonful at a time. The best feast in the gwerbret of Cantrae’s hall had never tasted as good as that meal did.

  “My thanks,” Maddyn said. “Truly, I owe you the humblest thanks I can give for saving my life.”

  “Saving lives is somewhat of a habit of mine. I’m an herbman.”

  “And wasn’t that the luck of my life, then!”

  “Luck?” The old fellow smiled in a sly sort of way. “Well, truly, it may have been, at that. My name is Nevyn, by the by, and that’s not a jest; it truly is my name. I’m somewhat of a hermit, and this is my home.”

  “My name is Maddyn, and I rode for Lord Brynoic. Here, do you realize that I’m an outlawed man? By every black-hearted demon in the hells, you should have let me bleed to death where I fell.”