Katharine Kerr - The Red Wyvern

Rhodry perched on the wide windowsill and let her have the only chair. Before she sat down she heaped chunks and sticks of charcoal into a brass brazier, then snapped her fingers to summon the Wildfolk of Fire. When the charcoal glowed, she held her hands over the warmth.

‘Aren’t you cold there in the draughts?’ Dallandra said.

‘Not so I notice.’

She was always amazed at how little cold and other discomforts, even pain itself, bothered him; his dangerous life had turned his entire body into a weapon, hard as forged steel. Matters of magic, however, lay beyond his strength.

‘These cursed dreams!’ he snapped. ‘I don’t mind admitting that I’m half-afraid to sleep at night. You wouldn’t have a talisman, would you, to drive them away?’

‘Nothing so simple. Tell me about them.’

‘I’ve been thinking a good bit about them. They have a sameness to them. I’ll be walking somewhere I know well, this dun, say, or the town, or even Aberwyn. And all of a sudden, the air around me will turn thick, like, and a bluish colour, like looking into deep water, and there the bitch will be, stark naked and taunting me. She keeps saying she’ll have my head on a pike one fine day and other little pleasantries.’

Dallandra swore at hearing her worst fear confirmed.

‘You think it’s dweomer, don’t you?’ He was grinning his twisted smile.

‘I do. Whatever you do, don’t go chasing after her. She’s trying to draw your soul out of your body, you see.’

‘And what then?’

‘I don’t know. If she were a master of the dark dweomer, she’d be able to kill you, but she’s nothing of the sort. A poor little beginner, more like, who knows a few tricks and naught more.’

‘A few tricks? Ye gods! She can turn herself into a blasted bird and fly, she can visit men in their dreams, and you call that tricks?’

‘I do, because I’ve seen just enough of her to know that she doesn’t understand how she does it. Her power is all Alshandra’s doing, or it was. Now it’s Evandar’s wretched brother who’s causing all the trouble.’

Rhodry laughed, a high-pitched chortle that made her wince.

‘Tricks,’ he said again. ‘Well, if that’s all they are, you wouldn’t happen to have a few you could teach me, would you?’

‘I don’t, but I’ve got a few of my own. I’ll scribe wards around you every night before you go to sleep.’

‘Not so easy with me sleeping out in the barracks.’

‘What? Is that where the chamberlain’s put you? After all you did this summer in the gwerbret’s service?’

‘A silver dagger’s welcome is a short one and his honour shorter still.’

‘That’s ridiculous! I’ll speak with the chamberlain for you.’ Dallandra hesitated, glancing around. ‘Here, if you don’t mind a bit of gossip, there’s room enough in this chamber for both of us.’

‘And why would a silver dagger mind gossip?’ His smile had changed to something open and soft. ‘It’s your woman’s honour that’s at stake. But if there’s no one up here to know –’

‘No one wants to live next to a sorcerer. Which has its uses. No one’s going to argue with me either, come to think of it. Why don’t you just fetch your gear and suchlike?’

‘I’ll find young Jahdo and have him do it. He’s been earning his keep as my page.’

‘It’s good of you to take the lad on like that.’

‘Someone had to.’ Rhodry stood up with a shrug. ‘He’s no trouble. I’m teaching him to read.’

‘I keep forgetting you know how.’

‘It comes as a surprise to most people, truly. But Jill made him a promise before she was killed, that she’d teach him, and so, well, I’ve taken on that promise with her other one, that she’d get him home again in the spring.’

Later that afternoon, with the chamberlain spoken to and Jahdo found, Rhodry’s gear got moved into a chamber next to Dallandra’s own. With the job done, Jahdo himself, a skinny dark-haired lad, brought Dallandra a message.

‘My lady, the Princess Carra did ask me to come fetch you, if it be that you can come.’

‘Is somewhat wrong?’

‘It be the child, my lady, little Elessi.’

‘Oh ye gods! Is she ill?’

‘I know not. The princess, though, she be sore troubled.’

Dallandra found Carra – Princess Carramaena of the Westlands, to give her proper title – in the women’s hall, where she was sitting close to the hearth with her baby in her arms. Out in the centre of the half-round room, Lady Ocradda, the gwerbret’s wife and the mistress of Dun Cengarn, sat with her serving women around a wooden frame and stitched on a vast embroidery in the elven style, all looping vines and flowers. The women glanced at Dallandra, then devoted themselves to their work as assiduously as if they feared the evil eye. Carra, however, greeted her with a smile. She was a pretty lass, with blonde hair and big blue eyes that dominated her heart-shaped face, and young; seventeen winters as close as she could remember.

‘Dalla, I’m so glad you’ve come, but truly, the trouble seems to be past, now.’

‘Indeed?’ Dallandra found a small stool and sat upon it near the fire. ‘Suppose you tell me about it anyway.’

‘Well, it’s the wraps. She hates to be wrapped, and it’s so draughty and chill now, but she screams and fights and flings her hands around when I try to wrap her in a blanket. She won’t have the swaddling bands at all, of course.’

At the mention of swaddling, Lady Ocradda looked up and shot a sour glance at the princess’s back. The women of the dun had lost that battle early in the baby’s life. At the moment Elessario was lying cradled in a blanket in Carra’s arms and sound asleep, wearing naught but her nappies and a little shirt made of old linen, soft and frayed.

‘Most babies like to be warm,’ Dallandra said.

‘By the fire like this she’s fine. But when I put her down in my bed, it’s so cold without the wraps, but she screams if I put them round her.’

‘It’s odd of her, truly, but no doubt she’ll get used to them in time.’

‘I hope so.’ Carra looked at her daughter with some doubt. ‘She’s awfully strong-willed, and here she was born just a month ago. You know, it seems so odd, remembering when she was born. It seems like she’s been here forever.’

‘You seem much happier for it.’

Carra laughed and looked up, grinning.

‘I am, truly. You know, it was the strangest thing, and I feel like such an utter dolt now, but all the time I was carrying her, I was sure I was going to die in childbed. When I look back, ye gods, I was such a simpering dolt, always weeping, always sick, always carrying on over this and that.’

‘Well, my dear child,’ Ocradda joined in. ‘Being heavy with child takes some women that way. No need to berate yourself.’

‘But it was all because I was so afraid,’ Carra said with a shake of her head. ‘That’s what I realized, just the other day. I was just as sure as sure that I was going to die, and it coloured everything. I’d wake up in the morning and look at the sunlight, and I’d wonder how many more days I’d live to see.’

‘No doubt you were frightened as a child,’ Ocradda said. ‘Too many old women and midwives tell horrible tales about childbirth where young girls can hear them. I’ve known many a lass to be scared out of her wits.’

‘I suppose so.’ Carra considered for a moment. ‘But it was absolutely awful, feeling that way.’

‘No doubt,’ Dallandra said. ‘And I’m glad it’s past.’

Carra shuddered, then began to tell her, in great detail, how much Elessi was nursing. Although she listened, Dallandra was thinking more about Carra’s fear. Had she died in childbed to end her last life, perhaps? Such a thing might well carry over as an irrational fear – not, of course, that Carra’s fear lacked basis. Human women did die in childbirth often enough. A reincarnating soul carried very little from life to life, but terror, like obsessive love, had a way of being remembered. As, of course, did a talent for the dweomer – she found herself wondering about the Raven Woman. It was possible that this mysterious shapechanger was remembering, dimly and imperfectly, magical training from her last life.