Katharine Kerr - Daggerspell

At noon, Tanyc made a point of watching Lyssa as she ate with her husband. The bard and his family, the chamberlain and his, had a privileged table next to Lord Maroic’s by the hearth of honor. Tanyc took a place at one of the rider’s tables where he could see her easily. While she ate, Lyssa seemed far more concerned with her children than her husband, who seemed lost in one of his usual fogs somewhere, idly nibbling bread and looking across the room. It was such a good sign that Tanyc began considering ways to get a word alone with Lyssa. One of the other riders elbowed him in the ribs.

“What’s all this?” Gennyn said. “Looks to me like you’re watching a doe in someone else’s woods, my friend.”

“What’s the danger in hunting a doe when the stag doesn’t have horns?”

“The stag doesn’t need horns when there’s a keeper to watch out for poachers. Lord Maroic would turn you out if you stuck your thumb in the bard’s ale.”

“Indeed?” Tanyc turned to give him a slow stare. “Are you going to run to the captain with the tale?”

Gennyn cringed in a satisfying way and shook his head no, but Tanyc paid strict attention to his food. There was no use in giving the game away. If he wanted Lyssa, he was going to have to fight to get her, but then, he was used to fighting for everything he wanted. Nothing in my whole cursed life ever came easy, he thought, no reason for it to start now.

Late on a drowsy-hot day, Nevyn rode into Lord Maroic’s village of Blaeddbyr. It wasn’t much of a place—a handful of houses, a blacksmith’s forge, not even a proper tavern—a problem, since he was going to have to find somewhere to stay. He’d come to banish the unnatural drought, but such major dweomer-workings took time. Camping out in the forest, though possible, would be wearisome. After fifty years of traveling the roads as an herbman, he was old, stiff, easily tired, and at heart, sick of his constant solitude. Round the village well stood three women, holding their water buckets while they gossiped. When Nevyn led his pack mule and horse over, they smiled and greeted him with the aching curiosity of the perennially bored. At the news that he was an herbman, the smiles grew even broader.

“Now, that’s a welcome thing,” one woman said. “Will you be staying long, good sir?”

“I was thinking of it. I need to search the woods and fields for more herbs, you see. Do you know of anyone who’d take in a lodger? I can pay, of course.”

The three women thought hard, running over their own domestic arrangements aloud and finally reaching the reluctant conclusion that they had no room.

“Now, there’s Banna,” one of them remarked. “She’s got that little hut in back of her house.”

“She’ll talk the poor man’s ear off,” said another.

“But who else has a hut?” said the first.

When the conclusion was reached that no one else did, Nevyn got directions to the farm where Banna, a widow, lived with her only son. Nevyn found the farmstead about a mile down the road, a big enclosure behind a low, packed-earth wall. Since the gate was open, he led his horse and mule inside and looked round. In the muddy yard stood a big stone round house, a cow barn, various sheds for chickens and suchlike, and off to one side, a shabby wooden hut in the shade of a poplar tree. When Nevyn called out a halloo, a young, sandy-haired man hurried out of the cow barn with a rake in his hands.

“Good morrow, are you Covyl?” Nevyn said. “The villagers told me you and your mother might take in a paying lodger. I’m a traveling herbman, you see.”

“Ah.” Covyl leaned on the rake, looked Nevyn over, turned his attention to the horse and mule, considered Nevyn a bit more, then nodded. “Might. Depends on what Mam says.”

“I see. Can I speak to your mother?”

Covyl considered for a long slow moment.

“In a bit. She’s out picking berries.”

Covyl turned and walked back to the barn. Nevyn sat down on the ground by the wall and waited, watching flies drift in air scented with cow. He was just making up his mind that he’d be better off in the forest when a stout woman, with wisps of gray hair peeking under her widow’s black headscarf, came hurrying in. Behind her a beautiful blond lass, too nicely dressed to be living on the farm, led a small skinny lad with the biggest eyes Nevyn had ever seen. All of them carried wooden buckets, and the lads mouth was a predictable purple stain. Nevyn bowed to the widow and ran through his tale once again.

“An herbman, good sir?” Banna said. “Well, the gall of my son for making you wait out here! He should have had the decency of offering you a bit of ale. Come in, come in.”

Inside the house, it was cooler, but the flies still drifted and the scent was just as strong. The big half-round of the main room was scattered with straw, a few pieces of much-repaired furniture, sacks of oats, and farm tools. The forest began to look better and better. Banna, the lass, and the child put their buckets onto a wobbly table. When the lad reached for more berries, the lass caught his hand.

“That’s enough, Aderyn,” she said. “You’ll get a stomachache, and we’ve got to go back soon.”

“I want to stay and talk to the herbman.”

“Maybe another day.”

“But he’ll be gone another day.”

Nevyn started to make some trivial remark, but the words froze in his mouth as he glanced at the lass and recognized the soul looking out from her eyes. Ysolla, by the gods!

“Well, good, sir,” Aderyn said. “Won’t you be gone?”

“Oh, I doubt it.” Nevyn hurriedly collected his wits. “I’m just here to ask good Banna if she’ll let me stay in her hut.”

“Oh, I’m sure we can work something out,” Banna said.

“A bit of coin will be welcome. So, here, Addo, the next time Cadda brings you to visit, you can talk to the herbman.”

While Banna was showing him the hut, she was more than glad to tell Nevyn about Cadda, her youngest daughter, who had gotten herself a good place up in Lord Maroic’s dun as the servant for the bard’s woman. Banna also made it quite clear that Aderyn was the son of the bard and his wife. She repeated it several times lest Nevyn think her daughter had a bastard.

The hut itself was small, with a packed-earth floor, a tiny hearth, and one narrow window with a cowhide drape for want of proper shutters. Nevyn decided it would have to do. While he unpacked his goods from his horse and mule, Banna swept the dust out of the hut and covered the floor with fresh straw. After he shooed Banna out, he spread his bedroll in the curve of the wall, arranged his canvas packs of herbs opposite, and dumped his saddlebags and cooking pots by the hearth. He sat down in the middle of the floor and looked over his new home, such as it was.

So, Ysolla’s here, Nevyn thought, or rather, Cadda—I mustn’t make that mistake! She was the first sign he’d had in fifty years that he might be drawing close to the soul who’d once been Brangwen of the Falcon. Since his youth, he’d looked constantly for her to be reborn as he wandered the kingdom, with only the chance that is more than chance to guide him. Although he’d been expecting her to come back immediately, so that when she, in her new body, was about fifteen, he’d be only thirty-six, young enough to marry her, the Lords of Wyrd had chosen otherwise with their usual contempt for a man’s vanity. He had never found her. Though he was growing weary with age, he felt no signs of sickness, no omens of approaching death. At his level of the dweomer, he should have been able to foretell his death by now, in order to make the proper plans for leaving life, but he saw nothing. The Lords of Wyrd had accepted his rash vow literally: he would never rest until he found her and set things right.