The Spirit Stone Read online

  Nevyn dropped down through the blue light and hovered a few inches above the ground. This close he could see that the red glow emanated from a lawn, enclosed in the dead black of a stone wall. Off to one side a cluster of pulsing orange resolved itself into rose bushes, swelling with the astral tides of spring. Nevyn could see Gerraent—or whatever he was called in this life—in the midst of his aura, a typical young warrior, his sword at his side even in the midst of the king’s gardens, blond, tall, heavily muscled and every bit as arrogant as always. His aura was shot through with blind rage, a blood-coloured crackle of raw energy that Nevyn found sickening.

  Nevyn’s sudden disgust seemed to touch Gerraent’s mind. He stopped his pacing and whirled around, his hand on his sword-hilt as he peered through the night. In puzzlement his aura shrank, then swirled around him. Nevyn marked him well so that he could recognize him again, then let his body of light drift upward. He was high above the ground when he saw another gold aura entering the garden, this one glowing softly around a female body. When Gerraent hurried forward to greet her, Nevyn lingered just long enough to confirm that she was no one bound to him by wyrd, then glided away.

  Not far from the garden stood the heart of the king’s dun, four towers joined to a central fifth like the petals on a wild rose. In the bottom floor of the tallest tower, open windows glowed with torch light. Nevyn swung himself through one of them and found himself inside the great hall. The last time he’d seen this room it had been filled with shabby furniture, its walls hung with faded, torn tapestries, its huge hearths filthy with ash and refuse. Now the walls had been plastered and decorated with bright banners, one for each of the great clans, hanging between each pair of windows. The tables and chairs at the honour hearth shone with polish, and light winked on silver goblets. Over on the servants’ and riders’ side of the hall, the furniture was stained and old, but serviceable. Neatly braided rushes covered the entire huge floor.

  Nevyn took himself over to the honour hearth, where noble lords sat drinking and a bard sang, his voice sounding oddly hollow and distorted to Nevyn’s etheric ears. Although no one sat at the king’s table, that is, the one closest to the fire, Nevyn saw a page leaving the hall with a flagon of mead on a silver tray. He followed the lad up the spiralling stone staircase, then along a familiar corridor to the king’s apartments.

  Fine Bardek carpets covered the floor; elaborately carved furniture sat upon them. On a long, narrow table, candles flamed in banked silver candelabra, but they sent out as much etheric force as light, making it hard for Nevyn to see in the chamber. Looming out of the golden mist, a man with dark hair but green eyes stood by the empty hearth. His linen shirt, stiff with embroidery, displayed the red wyvern of the royal clan, and he wore brigga in the red, white, and gold royal plaid of Dun Deverry. The page set the flagon down on a little table, then bowed and walked backwards to the door. With one last bow he let himself out.

  Nevyn remained, floating near the candles, and considered Casyl the Second, King of all Deverry and Eldidd. Casyl poured himself mead into a golden goblet, then sat down in a cushioned chair and stretched his long legs out in front of him. Finding the king alone was such a rare bit of luck that Nevyn decided to take it as a good omen. He moved closer still to the candles and began gathering both their etheric effluent and their smoke, winding it round his hands with a motion like that of a woman turning loose yarn into a proper skein. Although he couldn’t speak from the etheric, he could send thoughts to the king’s mind that to him would seem to be speech.

  ‘My liege,’ Nevyn thought to him. ‘A faithful servant stands ready to aid you.’

  Casyl leapt to his feet so fast that he nearly spilled his mead. He set the goblet down on the tablet and began looking around him. With a wrench of will, Nevyn tossed his skein of smoke and effluent around the head of his body of light. Casyl yelped and stepped back. At that Nevyn knew he’d been successful—a ghost-like shape had come through to visible appearance.

  ‘Sometimes great gifts come from no one at all,’ Nevyn went on. ‘Remember this jest well in days to come.’

  Casyl’s aura shrank so tight against him that it was barely more than a skin of light hanging around his body.

  ‘Your most honoured grandsire knew who no one was,’ Nevyn said. ‘The blood royal has its friends.’

  With that Nevyn broke the vision. He allowed the candle smoke to disperse, scattered the effluent, and let his body of light drift towards the open window. The working had tired him badly. Casyl never moved, merely stared openmouthed at the spot where Nevyn’s image had appeared.

  Time to get back, Nevyn thought, and with that thought he felt something nearly as tangible as a pair of hands tugging at the silver cord. In a dizzying swirl of motion he swept back to Olnadd’s house, where his physical body lay, calling him back with a force his exhaustion couldn’t resist.

  Yet, tired though he was, Nevyn lay awake for a while that night, thinking about Gerraent. If his old enemy were here, perhaps he would also find the woman who had shared their original tragedy, Brangwen of the Falcon, Gerraent’s sister and Nevyn’s betrothed, back in that far-distant time when he’d been a prince of the blood royal himself. He hoped and prayed to the Lords of Light that he would find her. If only he could make restitution to her for his fault, he would at last be allowed to die. If it’s meant to be, he told himself, I’ll see Gerraent again, and no doubt he’ll lead me to Brangwen—if she’s here.

  Whether by chance or wyrd, Nevyn saw the reborn Gerraent early the next morning, when Nevyn and Olnadd went together to the dealer in books to buy Petyc’s bribe. As they were walking back to the priest’s house, they heard the clatter of hooves and the chime of silver bridle rings. Horsemen were trotting straight for them. All the nearby townsfolk ran for safety, darting into doorways or down alleys, plastering themselves against the walls of the houses. Silver horns blew; men shouted, ‘Make way in the king’s name! Make way!’ Nevyn and Olnadd found a safe spot in the mouth of an alley just as twenty-five riders on matched grey horses trotted past. At their head, unmistakably arrogant, rode Gerraent, his blond head tossed back, his blue eyes narrow and cold. Nevyn pointed him out to Olnadd.

  ‘Do you know who that captain is, by any chance?’

  ‘Only by name,’ Olnadd said. ‘He’s something of a hero, you see, but I truly don’t remember his tale. His name’s Lord Gwairyc, and he did somewhat or other in the war a few years ago that won him King Casyl’s favour. You’ll have to ask Petyc about it. I don’t keep up on the court gossip. I’ll send him a note asking him to join us tonight.’

  Directly that evening, after dinner, Petyc arrived at Olnadd’s house. He may have been the head of the royal scriptorium, but his god held higher rank than his king, and as he remarked to Olnadd, he couldn’t refuse the summons.

  ‘Not that I mind answering it,’ Petyc said with a smile.

  The scribe was a lean man, hollow-cheeked and balding, with deep-sunken dark eyes that flicked this way and that around the room, as if he were looking for hidden enemies. After they seated themselves at Olnadd’s table, the priest introduced Nevyn simply as a friend and scholar of strange lore. Petyc looked him over with a half-smile.

  ‘Nevyn?’ Petyc said. ‘It’s an odd name, Nevyn. You seem too corporeal to be no one at all, though that’s what the name might mean.’

  ‘It does mean no one, and it was a nasty jest of my father’s,’ Nevyn said. ‘No doubt you’ve never heard it before.’

  ‘Oddly enough, our liege the king was consulting with me about it this very morning.’

  Nevyn smiled and waited.

  ‘Petyc keeps the royal archives, you see,’ Olnadd put in. ‘So many a strange question comes his way.’

  ‘No doubt,’ Nevyn said. ‘And did our liege find the answer to his question?’

  ‘He found an answer of sorts.’ Petyc paused, quirking an eyebrow, then continued. ‘But whether the answer applies to you, good sir, I couldn’t say. It seems that in the
reign of our liege’s grandsire, King Aeryc, there was talk of a mysterious secret order of priests—or somewhat of that sort—who all bore the name Nevyn. A certain Nevyn paid King Aeryc a great service in the matter of the Eldidd rebellion.’

  ‘Ah,’ Nevyn said. ‘An interesting tale.’

  Olnadd suppressed a smile and studied the ceiling. Petyc considered them both, as nervous but as eager as a stray cat who approaches a bowl of scraps laid out by a farmer’s wife.

  ‘May I ask you somewhat?’ Petyc had gathered his courage. ‘If I pry, then tell me, but do those old tales of other men named Nevyn have somewhat to do with you?’

  ‘They do. What made you guess, besides the name, of course?’

  ‘The name, mostly. Some of the records discuss a clan—I suppose you’d call it a clan—of sorcerers, always headed by a man called no one. I take it you’re sworn to aid the king?’

  ‘Him, too, but we do our best to offer our aid to anyone who needs it, whether prince or bondman.’

  Petyc considered this in some surprise.

  ‘Matters of history have always interested me.’ Nevyn decided to change the subject. ‘It’s a great honour to meet the keeper of the King’s archives. Olnadd tells me you understand their importance, unlike so many scribes.’

  With this sort of opening, the conversation could turn to the safe and pleasant matters of scholarship. As Petyc talked about his chronicles, his intelligence became obvious. He carefully selected what to record with a clear view of what granted an event importance.

  ‘Some of the ancient annals we have would no doubt amuse you,’ Petyc said. ‘They record with great solemnity every two-headed calf and dragon-shaped cloud seen in the kingdom, but omit to tell us anything about the king’s councils.’

  ‘You seem quite interested in ancient times.’

  ‘I am, truly.’ Petyc nodded in Olnadd’s direction. ‘His holiness here was the first to show me how fascinating the past can be. I was just a lad, then, sent to him once I’d been taken on by the dun. He taught me that there was more to books than the shaping of their letters.’

  ‘You were a quick pupil, one of the best I ever had.’ Olnadd glanced at Nevyn. ‘Petyc has an interesting library, some twenty volumes in his own personal collection.’

  ‘That’s an amazing number, truly.’ Nevyn took the hint and the opening. ‘I have a volume with me, actually, that might interest you, Petyc.’

  Nevyn brought out the bribe, a copy, some eighty years old, of the anonymous saga of Rwsyn of Eldidd, a king who’d ruled in the fifth century. When Petyc exclaimed over it, Nevyn could easily press it upon him as a gift without the word ‘bribe’ ever coming near the surface of conversation. With the saga duly accepted, Nevyn mentioned that he’d always wanted to see King Casyl from some better vantage than as a bystander to a formal procession.

  ‘That could be arranged,’ Petyc said. ‘I’d be most honoured, anyway, if you’d visit my humble quarters and look over some of the other books we’ve been discussing.’

  ‘And I should be most honoured to see them. May I visit you sometime soon?’

  ‘Come tomorrow afternoon, by all means. I’ll speak to the chamberlain about your audience with our king, but I fear that the chamberlain will tell you that he’s much too distracted these days. The Cerrgonney war, you know. I mean, rebellion.’

  ‘Oh no doubt. But perhaps I can impress the chamberlain with my sincerity.’

  On the morrow, wearing a clean shirt for the occasion, Nevyn presented himself at the massive iron-bound gates of the dun. When he announced his business, the guards looked him over suspiciously, but they allowed him into the ward while they sent a servant off to fetch the scribe. Petyc appeared promptly, then escorted him inside the rearmost tower of the conjoined brochs. As they were walking down a corridor, a pair of the king’s riders came swaggering along, shoving them out of the way and walking on fast. Petyc made a sour face at their broad backs.

  ‘That reminds me,’ Nevyn said. ‘Do you know anything about one of the King’s captains, a man named Gwairyc?’

  ‘I do. Now, I’ve only met him most briefly and formally, but his liege requested I enter a tale about Gwairyc into the annals for 980. It marked an event important in itself, but as well our liege meant it as a mark of honour to the captain. To give the man his due, it was splendidly brave. I suppose.’

  ‘An event of warfare, then?’

  ‘Just that.’ Petyc paused by a big wooden door. ‘Come in, and I’ll show you the very annal itself.’

  Petyc led Nevyn into a long low-ceilinged room, well-lit by a rank of windows. Four long wooden writing tables stood by the windows, and at the nearest, a pair of young scribes were making copies of a royal decree. Petyc spoke to each of them, checked their work, then led Nevyn into a smaller chamber, lined with wooden shelves, where leather-bound codices exhaled a faint smell of dust and old parchment. Most of the volumes seemed to be household accounts and bound correspondence, but Nevyn was gratified to see a fairly new copy of Queen Bellyra’s history of Dun Cerrmor.

  ‘A most interesting compendium, isn’t it?’ Petyc nodded in its direction. ‘She also left part of a manuscript about Dun Deverry itself.’

  ‘Ah, it’s survived, then.’

  ‘It has. The original’s down in Wmmglaedd, but we have copies here. Let me get you the annals we were speaking of.’

  Petyc squatted down in order to ferret about on a low shelf. Eventually he brought out a splendidly bound book, its wooden cover engraved with interlace and painted in red and gold. He thumbed through it and found the passage at the end.

  ‘You will forgive my humble style, of course.’

  ‘Oh, but the lettering’s splendid. The proportions are most just and fluid.’

  Petyc allowed himself a small smile. Nevyn read over the passage while Petyc watched amazed, simply because Nevyn was one of the few men in the kingdom who could read silently rather than aloud.

  ‘The most sorrowful death of Prince Cwnol was nearly deflected,’ the passage ran. ‘But his wyrd came upon him, and no man could turn it aside, not even Gwairyc, son of Glaswyn. When the foul traitors closed around the prince on the field, Gwairyc thrust himself forward and fought like a god, not a man, attempting to save his prince. He slew four men and carried the prince alive back inhis arms, but alas, the wounds were too deep to bind. In honour of his bravery, Prince Casyl counted him as a friend from that day on and commends his memory to all who might read this book.’

  ‘Nicely phrased.’ Nevyn closed the book and handed it back. ‘Did he truly slay four men by himself?’

  ‘So Casyl told me at the time—Prince Casyl, as he was. His father was still alive then, of course. I’ve never seen a battle, myself.’

  ‘You may count yourself quite lucky. Is Gwairyc still in Casyl’s favour now that Casyl’s king?’

  ‘He is.’ Petyc looked briefly sour. ‘He’s one of the many younger sons of the Rams of Hendyr—do you know them? A fine old clan, truly, but perhaps a bit too prolific for their own good. Gwairyc got himself into the king’s warband because of his skill with a sword, and now that he has his chance at royal favour, he sticks closer to the king than wet linen.’

  Nevyn was about to ask more when the chamberlain came bustling in. A stout man with flabby hands and neatly trimmed grey hair and beard, Gathry made Petyc’s earlier prediction come true.

  ‘Alas, good Nevyn,’ he said, ‘the king is much distracted these days. The Cerrgonney wars and all.’

  Petyc thoughtfully turned his back so that Nevyn could slip Gathry a velvet pouch of coins. The councillor patted his shirt briefly, and the pouch disappeared.

  ‘But you know,’ Gathry continued, ‘I do believe that our liege might have a few free moments this very afternoon. Allow me to go inquire.’

  The chamberlain bustled out again, only to return remarkably fast with the news that indeed, the king had a few moments to give one of his subjects. Nevyn followed Gathry up a long staircase and thr
ough a door into the central tower, where they went down a half-flight of steps to a pair of carved double doors. Gathry threw them open with a flourish and bowed his way inside. Nevyn recognized the half-round chamber; it had been the women’s hall when Maryn was king.

  All of Bellyra’s cushioned chairs and silver oddments had long since been replaced. On the stone walls hung tapestries of hunting scenes and hunting weapons—boar spears, bows and quivers of arrows, a maul for cracking the skulls of wounded game—displayed on iron hooks. The furnishings consisted of one long rectangular table and a scatter of benches. A pair of much-faded banners appliqued with red wyverns hung on the flat wooden wall, and in front of them in a half-round carved chair sat the king.

  Thanks to the royal line’s dubious inbreeding, Casyl looked much like Aeryc: the same squarish face, the same wide green eyes and tight-lipped smile, but his shock of hair was a dark brown, not blond like his grandfather’s. His long, nervous fingers played with a jewelled dagger. When Gathry started to kneel, the king pointed the dagger at him.

  ‘Leave us. Come in, my lord Nevyn.’

  Bowing, Gathry hurried out backwards and carefully shut the doors behind him. When the king nodded at a nearby bench, Nevyn sat.

  ‘Very well,’ Casyl said. ‘This is one of the few places in the dun where we won’t be overheard. I trust you’ll forgive the lack of ceremony.’

  ‘Ceremony means little to a man like me, your highness.’

  ‘So I thought.’ Casyl ran his thumb along the dagger’s hilt. ‘My scribes tell me many an interesting thing about men named Nevyn. Are they true?’