Bristling Wood (4 page)

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 eminded 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 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 rokes 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.”

“Oh, I heard me of Brynoic’s exile, sure enough, but the pronouncements of tieryns and suchlike mean little to me. Cursed if I’ll let a man die when I can save him just because his lord overstepped himself at court.”

With a sigh, Maddyn turned his head away. Nearby was his shield, leaning against the wall, and a tidy stack of his other gear, including his small ballad harp, wrapped safe in its leather sack. The sight of the fox device stamped on everything he owned made tears burn in Maddyn’s eyes. His whole warband, all his friends, men he’d ridden with for eight years now—all dead, because Lord Brynoic had coveted another man’s land and failed in his gamble to get it.

“Did the tieryn bury our dead?” he whispered.

“He did. I found the battlefield some days after I brought you home. From the sight of the slaughter, I’m surprised that even one man escaped.”

“I ran like a coward. I made the charge and got my wound. I knew I was dying, then, and I just wanted to die alone, somewhere quiet, like. Ah ye gods, I never dreamt that anyone would save me!”

“No doubt it was your Wyrd to live.”

“It was a harsh Wyrd, then. I’m still an outlawed man. I threw away the last bit of honor I had when I didn’t die with my lord and my band.”

Nevyn made a soothing remark, but Maddyn barely heard him. For all that his shame bit at him, deep in his heart he knew he was glad to be alive, and that very gladness was another shame.

It was two days before Maddyn could sit up, and then only by propping himself against the wall and fighting with his swimming head. As soon as he was a bit stronger, he began wondering about the strange room he was in. From the smell of damp in the air and the lack of windows, he seemed to be underground, but the fire in the enormous hearth drew cleanly. The room was the right size for that massive hearth too, a full fifty feet across, and the ceiling was lost above him in shadows. All along the wall by his bed was a carved bas-relief, about ten feet above the floor, that must have at one time run around the entire room. Now the severely geometric pattern of triangles and circles broke off abruptly, as if it had been defaced. Finally, on the day when he was strong enough to feed himself for the first time, it occurred to him to ask Nevyn where they were.

“Inside Brin Toraedic. The entire hill is riddled with chambers and tunnels.”

Maddyn almost dropped his spoon into his lap. Since Lord Brynoic’s dun was only about five miles away, he’d seen the hill many a time and heard all the tales about it too, how it was haunted, plagued by demons and spirits, who sent blue lights dancing through the night and strange howls whistling through the day. It certainly looked peculiar enough to be haunted, rising straight out of an otherwise flat meadow, like some old giant long ago turned to stone and overgrown with grass.

“Now, now.” Nevyn gave him a grin. “I’m real flesh and blood, not a prince of demons or suchlike.”

Maddyn tried to return the smile and failed.

“I like to be left alone, lad,” Nevyn went on. “So what better place could I find to live than a place where everyone else is afraid to go?”

“Well, true enough, I suppose. But, then, there aren’t any spirits here after all?”

“Oh, there’s lots, but they go their way and I go mine. Plenty of room for us all.”

When Maddyn realized that the old man was serious, his hands shook so hard that he had to lay down his bowl and spoon.

“I couldn’t lie to you,” Nevyn said in a perfectly mild tone of voice. “You’ll have to shelter with us this winter, because you won’t be fit to ride before the snows come, but these spirits are a harmless sort. All that talk about demons is simple exaggeration. The folk around here are starved for a bit of color in their lives.”