Katharine Kerr - Darkspell

“Is your business urgent, my lord?” Cobryn said. “I can retire from our liege’s presence.”

“Urgent it is, but it concerns you, too.” Nevyn bowed to Glyn, who was standing at the hearth. “Eldidd is taking out an enormous loan from the guildmasters of Abernaudd. I can think of only one place he’d want to spend so much coin: our borders.”

“So! I was wondering how long we could milk tears for one prince out of three. Well, Cobryn, that means we’ll have to change our plans for the summer’s fighting. Huh. I’ll wager Eldidd was going to have his warband over our border before we received the formal message of disclamation. And I don’t need dweomer to tell me that.”

“Just so.” Cobryn laughed, a cold wolf’s mutter under his breath. “But we’re going to have a surprise waiting for the bastards.”

“My liege,” Nevyn broke in, “are you going to make good your threat and hang Prince Mael?”

Glyn rubbed his chin with the back of his hand while he thought the matter over. Always heavy, his face had turned square and stout with age, and a florid color lay across his cheeks.

“It would ache my heart to hang a helpless man, but Eldidd may leave me no choice. I’ll do naught till I have the formal renouncement in my hand. Eldidd might change his mind, but there’s no bringing the prince back from the dead once he’s hanged.”

That very week Prince Cobryn led five hundred men along the coast road to the Eldidd border, and they were supported by grain ships and war galleys. After an anxious three weeks, messengers returned; they’d fought a major victory over a very surprised Eldidd army. Two days later a herald arrived from the king of Eldidd with a letter formally renouncing Mael and putting his son, Ogretoryc, in his place. Nevyn went up straightaway to inform Mael.

He found the no-longer prince sitting at his writing desk, stacked with the prisoner’s beloved books and scattered with pieces of parchment, the beginnings of Mael’s commentary on the Ethics of the Greggyn sage, Ristolyn. Nevyn was sure that the commentary would be excellent, if only Mael lived to finish it. When Mael rose to greet him, the sun caught the thick streaks of gray in his raven-dark hair.

“I’ve got some cursed bad news for you,” Nevyn said.

“I’ve been renounced?” He spoke flatly, even dryly. “I thought that was in the wind when I heard the guards talking about war on the border.”

“I’m afraid it’s true.”

“Well, Ristolyn’s ideas about virtue are going to stand me in good stead. It seems that the entire goal or end of my life has been to make a good death down in the market square. I’d say that fortitude would be the most appropriate virtue to that end, wouldn’t you?”

“Listen. You’re not going to hang if I have one cursed word to say about it.”

“Then that gives me hope. I suppose it’s hope. Maybe it would be better to hang and ride free in the Otherlands than sit here and molder. You know, I’ve been here longer than I was a prince in Eldidd. Fancy that. Over half my life as Glyn’s guest.”

“I’ll wager the freedom of the Otherlands won’t look so attractive when the executioner’s putting a noose around your neck. I’ll return as soon as I’ve spoken to the king.”

It was late in the afternoon before court affairs would allow Nevyn to have a private word with his liege. They walked out to the walled garden behind the broch. By the ornamental stream a willow tree trailed long branches in the water; the roses were thick with blood-red blooms, the only touch of color in the tiny park land, carefully tended to look untended.

“I’ve come to intercede for Mael’s life, my liege,” Nevyn said.

“I thought you might. I’m half minded to release him and let him go home, but I see no way that I can, none. He’d be a bitter enemy there, and worst of all, how would Eldidd interpret my mercy? As a weakness, no doubt, and I can’t afford that. It’s the honor of the thing.”

“My liege is right about not being able to release him, but he might be useful again in the future.”

“He might, but again, will Eldidd take it as weakness?”

“The gods will count it as strength. Whose good opinion does my liege value more?”

Glyn plucked a rose, cupped it in his callused, broad palm, and considered it with a slight frown.

“My liege?” Nevyn said. “I’ll outright beg you for his life.”

With a sigh Glyn handed him the rose.

“Done, then. I can’t deny you that after all you’ve done for me. Eldidd has a clutch of heirs like a sly old hen, but who knows? The day may come when he’ll regret disclaiming Mael.”

Since she enjoyed the favor and patronage of the king’s most important councillor, Gavra’s herb business had prospered down in the city. She now owned her own house and shop in the merchant’s quarter and made plenty of coin to support herself and her two children, Ebrua and Dumoryc, the prince’s bastards. For years Gavra had endured gossip branding her as a slut who had children by any number of men she fancied. She preferred it to having her children slain as heirs to an enemy line. Now that Mael was formally disclaimed, she considered telling the children the truth, but it was pointless. Even though he lived not two miles away, they had never even seen their father.

She supposed that the men who guarded Mael knew perfectly well that she was his mistress, but they held their tongues, partly out of masculine sympathy for Mael’s dull life, but mostly because they were terrified of what Nevyn would do to them if they spilled the secret. When she went up to the tower room that particular day, they even congratulated her about Mael’s reprieve from the hangman.

As soon as she was inside, she flung herself into Mael’s arms. For a moment they merely held each other tightly, and she could feel him shaking.

“Thank every god you’re going to live,” she said at last.

“I’ve been doing a good bit of thanking, truly.” He paused to kiss her. “Ah, my poor love, you deserve a proper husband and a happy life, not a man like me.”

“My life’s been happy enough, just knowing that you love me.”

When he kissed her again, she clung to him, feeling that they were two frightened children, clinging together in a dark full of nightmares. Nevyn will never let him hang, she thought, but oh, dear Goddess, how long can our dear old man live?

After three years of hard fighting, the Eldidd border war came to a stalemate when, in the middle of that summer, something happened for which none of the three sides was prepared: the province of Pyrdon rebelled against the Eldidd throne. Glyn’s spies, at a gallop, brought the news back that not only was it rebellion, but it looked to be a successful one. In Cwnol, formerly gwerbret of Dun Trebyc, the only large city in Pyrdon, the rebel forces had a leader so brilliant that his men whispered he was dweomer.

“Half of Pyrdon is still forest, too,” Glyn remarked. “He can have his men fade into the trees if they’re hardpressed, then fade right out again to attack in ambuscade. He seems to have a large force. Huh. I wonder if he’s getting coin from Cantrae.”

“I wouldn’t be in the least surprised, my liege,” Nevyn said. “And it would behoove us to send some, too.”

For the rest of that summer the Eldidd border stayed quiet, and by autumn it appeared that while Cwnol would be fighting for a long time, he had great chance of success. When Glyn sent the rebel messages, they went addressed to Cwnol, king of Pyrdon. As a final gesture Glyn betrothed Prince Cobryn’s six-year-old daughter to Cwnol’s seven-year-old son, a mark of royal honor that Cwnol repaid by increasing his raids into Eldidd. Yet even though the matter ended so well for the Cerrmor side, Nevyn was heartsick. As the endless war dragged on, the kingdom was torn into pieces.