Katharine Kerr - Daggerspell

When she entered the gray misty land, she wept, longing for the light. There, all was shifting fog, a thousand spirits and visions, and the speakers were like winds, tossing her with words. They wept with her at the fall that she must make into darkness. These spirits of wind had faces, and she realized that she, too, now had a face, because they were all human and far from the light. When they spoke to her of fleshly things, she remembered lust, the ecstasy of flesh pressed against flesh.

“But remember the light,” they whispered to her. “Cling to the light and follow the dweomer.”

The wind blew her down through the gray mist. All round her she felt lust, snapping like lightning in a summer storm. All at once, she remembered summer storms, rain on a fleshly face, cool dampness in the air, warm fires, and the taste of food in her mouth. The memories netted her like a little bird and pulled her down and down. She felt him, then, and his lust, a maleness that once she had loved, felt him close to her, very close, like a fire. His lust swept her down and down, round and round, like a dead leaf caught in a tiny whirlpool at a river’s edge. Then she remembered rivers, water sparkling under the sun. The light, she told herself, remember the light you swore to serve. Suddenly she was terrified: the task was very grave, she was very weak and human. She wanted to break free and return to the Light, but it was too late. The eddy of lust swept her round and round till she felt herself grow heavy, thick, and palpable.

There was darkness, warm and gentle, a dreaming water-darkness: the soft, safe prison of the womb.

In those days, down on the Eldidd coast stretched wild meadows, crisscrossed by tiny streams, where what farmers there were pastured their cattle without bothering to lay claim to the land. Since the meadows were a good place for an herbman to find new stock, old Nevyn went there regularly. He was a shabby man, with a shock of white hair that always needed combing, and dirty brown clothes that always needed mending, but there was something about the look in his ice-blue eyes that commanded respect, even from the noble-born lords. Everyone who met him remarked on his vigor, too, that even though his face was as wrinkled as old leather and his hands dark with frog spots, he strode around like a young prince. He never seemed to tire, either, as he traveled long miles on horseback with a mule behind him to tend the ills of the various poor folk in Eldidd province. A marvel he is, the farmers all said, a marvel and a half considering he must be near eighty. None knew the true marvel, that he was well over four hundred years old, and the greatest master of the dweomer that the kingdom had ever known.

That particular summer morning, Nevyn was out in the meadows to gather comfrey root, and the glove-finger white flowers danced on the skinny stems as he dug up the plants with a silver spade. The sun was so hot that he sat back on his heels and wiped his face on the old rag that passed for a handkerchief. It was then that he saw the omen. Out in the meadow, two larks broke cover with a heartbreaking beauty of song that was a battle cry. Two males swept up, circling and chasing each other. Yet even as they fought, the female who was their prize rose from the grass and flew indifferently away. With a cold clutch of dweomer knowledge, Nevyn knew that soon he would be watching two men fight over a woman that neither could rightfully have.

She had been reborn.

Somewhere in the kingdom, she was a new babe, lying in her exhausted mother’s arms. On a mirror made of sky he saw it with his dweomer sight.

In a sunny room a midwife stood washing her hands in a basin. On a bed of straw and rags lay a pretty young lass, the mother, her face bathed in sweat from the birth but smiling at a child at her breast. As Nevyn’s sight showed him the baby, the tiny creature, all damp and red, opened cloudy blue eyes and seemed to stare right at him.

Nevyn jumped to his feet in sheer excitement. The Lords of Wyrd had been kind. This time they were sending him a warning that somewhere she was waiting for him to bring her to the dweomer, somewhere in the vast expanse of the kingdom of Deverry. He could search and find her while she was still a child, before harsh circumstances made it impossible for him to untangle the snarl of their intertwined destinies. This time, perhaps, she would remember and listen to him. Perhaps. If he found her.

CERRGONNEY, 1052

The young fool tells his master that he will suffer to gain the dweomer. Why is he a fool? Because the dweomer has already made him pay and pay and pay again before he even stood on its doorstep. …

— The Secret Book of

Cadwallon the Druid

A cold drizzle of rain fell. The last of the twilight was closing in like gray steel. Looking at the sky made Jill frightened to be outside. She hurried to the woodpile and began to grab firewood. A gray gnome, all spindly legs and long nose, perched on a big log and picked at its teeth while it watched her. When she dropped a stick, it snatched it and refused to give it back.

“Beast!” Jill snapped. “Then keep it!”

At her anger, the gnome vanished with a puff of cold air. Half in tears, Jill hurried across the muddy yard to the circular stone building, a tavern, where cracks of light gleamed around wooden shutters. Clutching her firewood, she ran down the corridor to the chamber and slipped in, hesitating a moment at the door. The priestess in her long black robe was kneeling by Mama’s bed. When she looked up, Jill saw the blue tattoo of the crescent moon that covered half her face.

“Put some wood on the fire now, child. I need more light.”

Jill picked out the thinnest, pitchiest sticks and fed them into the fire burning in the hearth. The flames sprang up, sending flares and shadows dancing round the room. Jill sat down on the straw-covered floor in a corner to watch the priestess. On her pallet Mama lay very still, her face deadly pale, oozing drops of sweat from the fever. The priestess picked up a silver jar and helped Mama drink the herb water in it. Mama was coughing so hard that she couldn’t keep the water down.

Jill grabbed her rag doll and held her tight. She wished that Heledd was real, and that she’d cry so Jill could be very brave and comfort her. The priestess set the silver jar down, wiped Mama’s face, then began to pray, whispering the words in the ancient holy tongue that only priests and priestesses knew. Jill prayed, too, in her mind, begging the Holy Goddess of the Moon to let her mama live.

Macyn came to the doorway and stood watching, his thick pudding face set in concern, his blunt hands twisting the hem of his heavy linen overshirt. Macyn owned this tavern, where Mama worked as a serving lass, and let her and Jill live in this chamber out of simple kindness to a woman with a bastard child to support. He reached up and rubbed the bald spot in the middle of his gray hair while he waited for the priestess to finish praying.

“How is she?” Macyn said.

The priestess looked at him, then pointedly at Jill.

“You can say it,” Jill burst out. “I know she’s going to die.”

“Do you, lass?” The priestess turned to Macyn. “Here, does she have a father?”

“Of a sort. He’s a silver dagger, you see, and he rides this way every now and then to give them what coin he can. It’s been a good long while since the last time.”

The priestess sighed in a hiss of irritation.

“I’ll keep feeding the lass,” Macyn went on. “Jill’s always done a bit of work around the place, and ye gods, I wouldn’t throw her out into the street to starve, anyway.”