Katharine Kerr - Daggerspell

“Ye gods!” Nevyn snapped. “Isn’t there a chamber with a proper hearth?”

“There is, but his lordship won’t let us move him.”

“Indeed? Then I’ll deal with his lordship.”

When Nevyn pulled back the bed curtains, Rhodry looked up at him with gummy eyes. At sixteen, he’d grown into a lanky lad, getting close to six feet tall, and still as handsome as ever—or he would have been handsome if his hair weren’t plastered to his forehead with sweat, his lips not so badly cracked that they were bleeding, and his cheeks not flushed with a hectic glow.

“Who are you?” Rhodry mumbled.

“A herbman. Your men fetched me.”

“Ah, curse them! I don’t need—” He began to cough so violently that his body went rigid. He propped himself up on one elbow and spasmed, choking until Nevyn grabbed him and hauled him upright. Finally he spat out green rheum.

“You don’t need me?” Nevyn said drily. “I may only be a commoner, your lordship, but you’re following my orders.”

Rhodry’s lips twitched in a faint smile as he trembled with fever. Nevyn laid him down again and turned to the frightened manservant.

“Get that chamber with the hearth warm. Then pile extra pillows on the bed, and start heating me a big kettle of water. When you’ve done all that, send a man back to Aberwyn with a message. Gwerbret Tingyr needs to know that his son is ill.”

All that afternoon, Nevyn worked over his patient. He fed Rhodry infusions of coltsfoot and elecampe to bring up the phlegm, hyssop and pennyroyal to make him sweat, and quaking aspen as a general febrifuge. As the medicines cleansed his humors, Rhodry coughed until it made Nevyn’s own sides ache to hear him, but at last he began to breathe freely instead of gasping for every breath. Nevyn let him lie down then, propped up on the mound of pillows. The fever still played on his face like firelight.

“My thanks,” Rhodry whispered. “Owaen? Does he still live?”

For a moment Nevyn was too puzzled to answer him; then the memory came back, of another life when he’d tended battle wounds on the body this soul wore then, and a friend lay dying nearby.

“He does, lad. Just rest.”

Rhodry smiled and fell straight asleep. So, Nevyn thought, he’s reacting to my presence, is he? In his feverish state, Rhodry had somehow come across that long-buried memory.

All the next day, Nevyn brooded over his patient, forcing him to drink bitter infusions of herbs even though Rhodry swore at him and complained that he couldn’t get another loathsome mouthful down. Finally, that evening, the fever broke. Rhodry was well enough to eat a little thin soup, which Nevyn fed to him a mouthful at a time.

“My thanks,” Rhodry said when he was finished. “It’s a marvel, you turning up like this. Do you remember meeting me on the Cantrae road all those years ago?”

“I do, truly.”

“Its eerie. I was just trying to be courteous. I never dreamt you’d save my life someday. I must have cursed good luck.”

“So you must. So you must.”

When Rhodry fell asleep, Nevyn went down to the great hall for his dinner. The men in the young lord’s warband insisted on treating Nevyn like a hero. They brought him his food like pages and crowded round to thank him while he ate. One of them, a beefy lad named Praedd, even insisted on bringing Nevyn a goblet of mead.

“Here, good sir. If you ever need our aid for anything, me and the lads will ride out of our way to give it.”

“My thanks. I take it you men honor Lord Rhodry highly.”

“We do. He’s young yet, but he’s got more honor than any lord in Eldidd.”

“Well and good, then. And what of Lord Rhys, the heir?”

Praedd hesitated, glancing this way and that, and he dropped his voice when he answered.

“Don’t spread this around, like, but there’s plenty of men in Aberwyn who wish Lord Rhodry had been born first, not second.”

Praedd bowed and hurried away before he could say anything else indiscreet. As Nevyn thought over what he’d said, he felt a cold dweomer-warning ripple down his back. There was trouble coming in Aberwyn. Suddenly he had a brief flash of vision, saw swords flashing in the summer sun as Rhodry led a wedge of men into a hard-fought battle. When the vision faded, Nevyn felt sick at heart. Was there going to be a rebellion to put Rhodry in the gwerbretal chair when Tingyr died? Perhaps. Dweomer-warnings were always vague, leaving the recipient to puzzle out their meaning. Yet he could guess that, once again, he would have important work to do in Aberwyn when the time came.

The guess turned to a certainty late on the next afternoon. Nevyn was up in Rhodry’s chamber when a manservant rushed in with the news that Rhodry’s mother, Lady Lovyan of Aberwyn, had arrived with a small retinue. In a few minutes, the wife of the most powerful man in Eldidd swept into the room. She threw her travel-stained plaid cloak to the waiting servant and ran to Rhodry’s bedside. A solid woman in her early forties, Lovyan had an imposing beauty, her raven-dark hair just streaked with gray, her cornflower blue eyes as large and perfect as her son’s.

“My poor little lad,” she said, laying a hand on his forehead. “Thanks be to the Goddess, you’re not fevered anymore.”

“The Goddess sent a good herbman. Mother, you didn’t need to ride all this way just for me.”

“Don’t babble nonsense.” Lovyan turned to Nevyn. “My thanks, good sir. I’ll see you’re well paid for all of this.”

“It was my honor, my lady. I’m just thankful that I was close at hand.”

Nevyn left them alone, but later he returned to find Rhodry asleep and Lovyan sitting by his bedside. When Nevyn bowed to her, she came over to talk where they wouldn’t waken him.

“I’ve spoken to the servants, good Nevyn. They told me that they feared for his life until you came.”

“I won’t lie to you, my lady. He was very ill indeed. That’s why I thought you should be notified.”

Lovyan nodded, her mouth slack with worry. In the fading light, she looked intensely familiar. Nevyn allowed himself to slip into the dweomer sight and saw her clearly—Rodda, bound to Blaen again as mother to son. At that moment, she recognized him as well, and her eyes grew puzzled even as she smiled.

“Now, here, do you ever ride to Aberwyn? I must have seen you before, but surely I’d remember a man with such an unusual name.”

“Oh, my lady, you may have seen me when you rode by in the street or suchlike. I’d never be presented to a woman of your rank.”

Nevyn felt like laughing in triumph. Here they were, three of them come together at the same time as he’d had news of the lass who might be Brangwen. Surely the time was ripening, surely his Wyrd was leading him to one of those crisis points when he would have the chance to untangle it. In his excitement, he forgot himself badly. The fire was growing low; he tossed on a couple of big logs, then waved his hand over them. When the flames leapt up, he heard Lovyan gasp. He spun round to face her.

“My apologies, my lady, for startling you.”

“No apology needed, my lord.” Lovyan pronounced the honorific slowly and deliberately. “I’m most honored that a man like you would stoop to treating my son for a fever.”

“I see that my lady doesn’t dismiss tales of dweomer as nonsense fit only to amuse children.”

“Her ladyship has seen too many odd things in her life to do anything of the sort.”

For a moment they studied each other like a pair of fencers. Then Nevyn felt the dweomer prod him, force him to speak, as if his mouth would burn if he didn’t speak out the truth.

“It is very important for Rhodry to live to his manhood. I cannot tell you why, but his Wyrd is Eldidd’s Wyrd. I would like to be able to keep an eye on the lad from now on.”