Katharine Kerr - Darkspell

The realization snapped the despair, sending it breaking the way a rope stretched too tight snaps. She spun round, her eyes searching the chamber. In the smoky light from the candles she saw a human form, a pale and flickering blue thing, almost a glowing shadow, certainly not a solid body. The hair prickled on her arms and neck when she recognized the slender shape of the man who’d poisoned himself.

“By the Goddess Herself,” Jill snarled, “the Light wins in the end!”

He flickered like a candle flame in a draft, then disappeared, but for all she knew, he’d return to torment her, perhaps in her dreams, where she would be helpless against him. In a little flurry of tears, she sat down on the edge of the bed and pressed her shaking hands between her knees. None of her much-praised sword craft would help in this battle. Only dweomer could fight dweomer. She saw then that denying her dweomer-power had left her helpless, that continuing to deny it meant that she would constantly be drawn into contact with strange things beyond her power to influence or control, simply because she had no knowledge or training, just as anybody can pick up a sword, but only a trained fighter can strike down an opponent. It was then that she remembered Nevyn, and that he was on his way.

Many a time she had seen the old man contact other dweomer-masters through a scrying fire. For all she knew, only a master could do such a thing, not some ignorant like her, but she rose and walked slowly over to the candles, massed in their sconce. At this, her first conscious attempt to use dweomer, she felt foolish, then embarrassed, and finally frightened, but she forced herself to stare into the flames and think of Nevyn. For a moment she was aware only of a blankness in her mind, then an odd sort of pressure, building against some unexplained thing, just as when a person temporarily forgets a name that he knows well and searches his mind in utter frustration at the lapse.

Her fear built, fear of using dweomer, fear of whoever was stalking her, built and built until all at once she remembered what she had somehow always known, that the fear was her key, that some strong feeling will break down the walls in the mind.

“Nevyn!” she cried out. “Help me!”

And there, dancing over the candle flames, she saw his face, a clear image, his bushy eyebrows raised in surprise, his eyes troubled.

“ Thank every god you called to me, ” his voice sounded in her mind. “ I’ve been trying to reach you for days. ”

He sounded so matter-of-fact that she giggled in near hysteria.

“ Try to be calm or you’ll lose the vision, ” he thought to her, and sharply. “ Think of it like a sword fight, child. You know how to concentrate your will. ”

She realized that she did, now that he’d pointed it out. It was much the same as the cold, deadly concentration she summoned when she watched an opponent move.

“ I was scrying you earlier and saw that fellow poison himself, ” Nevyn went on. “ No wonder you’re so troubled. Now, listen, we seem to have more than one kind of enemy, but oddly enough, we can turn that to our advantage. Do you realize what they want? ”

“ The opal I’m carrying, or at least, I think I have the opal. The arrogant little bastard keeps changing shape on me. ”

He chuckled with such humor that she felt her fear vanish.

“ It’s the opal, sure enough, and I’ll admit the spirits who tend it can be irritating at times. The thing is a talisman of the noble virtues, you see, and they take the virtue of pride a bit too seriously. But, here, has the shade of the dead man been troubling you? ”

“ I don’t know. Someone was. I called to you because thoughts kept appearing in my mind, and I felt someone stalking me. ”

“ Then it’s not him. Don’t worry. I’ll set a seal over you. Go to sleep and rest, child. I’m almost to Dun Hiraedd. ”

His image vanished. Although Jill did indeed lie down, she kept the candles burning and her silver dagger beside her on the pillow. She was sure that she would never sleep, but suddenly she woke to a room full of sunlight. Outside in the corridor she heard a page whistling, and that simple human sound seemed the most beautiful music she’d ever heard. She got up and went to look out the window. Sunlight poured down on the men who strolled about, laughing and talking. It seemed impossible to believe in dweomer-battles now, impossible that she would have summoned her will and spoken to Nevyn through the fire. With a shudder she left the window and hurried to get dressed. She wanted other people around her.

Once she was down in the great hall, the memory of her fear slunk to the edge of her mind. At their tables the warband were eating breakfast and joking with one another, while servants hurried back and forth. Blaen himself was in a sunny mood, chatting with Jill as if he’d quite forgotten about poisoned strangers in his city. The high officials of his court, the chamberlain, the bard, the councillors, and the scribes, came and went, stopping to bid their lord a good morning and bowing gravely to Jill. Blaen broke up a load of sweet nut bread and handed Jill a chunk with a courtly gesture. She was pleased to see that his grace was drinking ale, not mead, with his breakfast.

“Ah, it’s going to be good to see my cousin again,” the gwerbret said. “We had a lot of good times when we were lads. We were pages together in Dun Cantrae, you see, and the old gwerbret there was rather a stiff-necked sort, so we were always pulling one prank or another.” He paused, looking up as a page hurried over. “What is it, lad?”

“There’s the strangest old man outside, Your Grace. He says he’s got to see you straightaway on a matter of the greatest urgency, but he looks like a beggar and he says his name is nobody.”

“Nevyn, thanks be to every god!” Jill burst out.

“You know this fellow?” Blaen said with some surprise.

“I do, Your Grace, and for Rhodry’s sake as well as mine, I’ll beg you to speak to him.”

“Done, then. Bring him in, lad, and remember to always be courteous to someone old, shabby or not.”

As the page hurried away, Jill shuddered, feeling that the sunny, bustling hall had suddenly turned unreal. As if he’d picked up her mood, Blaen rose, watching the doorway with a small frown as Nevyn strode in, his tattered brown cloak thrown back from his shoulders and swirling behind him. He knelt to the gwerbret with an ease that many a young courtier would have envied.

“Forgive me for demanding your attention, Your Grace,” Nevyn said. “But the matter’s very urgent indeed.”

“Any man’s welcome to my justice upon demand. What troubles your heart, good sir?”

“That fellow who poisoned himself last night.”

“Ye gods!” Blaen said, amazed. “Has the tale spread as fast as all that?”

“It has to those with the ears to hear it. Your Grace, I’ve come to spare you the expense of burying that fool. Does his lordship know where the corpse lies?”

“Here, is he kin to you?”

“Well, since every clan has its black sheep, you might say that he is.”

Puzzled, the gwerbret glanced at Jill.

“Please, Your Grace?” she said. “Please do what he asks.”

“Well and good, then. Can’t be any harm in it.”

Doubtless consumed by curiosity, Blaen personally escorted Nevyn and Jill out to the ward and hunted up a warden. It turned out that the corpse had been wrapped in a blanket and laid in a small shed usually used for storing firewood. Between them Nevyn and Jill dragged it outside onto the cobbles. Nevyn knelt down beside it and pulled the blanket back to study the corpse’s face.