Katharine Kerr - Daggerspell

“Ysolla had a hand in the tragedy,” Nevyn remarked to the fireplace. “It’s just possible that the Lords of Wyrd would bring them together again.”

The fireplace stared back in silence, which Nevyn took as doubt. It would still be worth taking a look around while he worked on banishing the drought. He could simply announce his presence as an herbman and get himself invited to visit Lord Maroic’s dun.

Oddly enough, it was the bard’s son who provided Nevyn with an even easier entry to the dun. The very next day, Aderyn came down to see him. Nevyn was honestly surprised, because he’d assumed that the lad’s interest was only a childish curiosity.

“Do you mind if I see the herbs and things?” Aderyn said. “Am I in the way? Da says I’m always in the way.”

“Not in the way at all. Maybe you can help me, in fact. Are there any ruined or abandoned farms around here? Certain kinds of herbs grow in land that’s been allowed to go fallow, you see, and those are the kind of herbs I need to pick.”

“There’s one, truly. There was this farm, and Lord Cenydd of the Boar said it was his, but our lord said it was his, and so they fought over it. So the farmer got scared and just left, and now there isn’t anyone there to fight over.”

“Oh, ye gods! Well, that’s a pack of noble-born warriors for you.”

“Don’t you like riders and battles and stuff?”

“Not truly, but I suppose you do. Lads usually do.”

“I don’t.” Aderyn wrinkled up his nose. “I’ll never be a rider when I grow up. It’s just being cattle thieves. I don’t care what anyone says.”

In surprise Nevyn considered the lad. Aderyn twisted one foot behind the other, balanced precariously, and looked wide-eyed around the hut.

“Well, here,” Nevyn said. “Would you like to show me where this farm is and help pick herbs? We’ll have to go tell your mother where we’re going first.”

“Oh, I would. There’s never anything to do up in the fort. Let’s go ask Mam.”

Nevyn got a cloth sack, some clean rags to wrap herbs in, and his small silver sickle. With Aderyn chattering all the way, they went up to the dun. As soon as they came through the gates, Cadda ran over and grabbed Aderyn’s arm.

“Where have you been?” Cadda said. “I’ve been worried sick.”

“I just went down to see the herbman. Where’s Mam? I’ve got to ask her if I can go for a walk.”

“She’s waiting upon Lady Cabrylla, but your Da’s in the great hall.” Cadda glanced at Nevyn. “Shall I tell our lord’s lady that you’re in the village, sir? I’ll wager she’d like a look at your herbs.”

“I’d be most grateful if you would.” Nevyn made her a bow. “Tell her I have perfumes and hair rinses and suchlike as well as medicine.”

Although Cadda’s eyes lit up at the thought, Aderyn grabbed Nevyn’s shirt and dragged him firmly off to the great hall, where Gweran the bard was drinking at Lord Maroic’s table. A solid-looking man in his thirties, with blond hair and a long blond mustache, Gweran rose to greet his son and this stranger. Nevyn got his second shock in as many days—Blaen! All at once Nevyn wondered about Aderyn’s mother. Oh, ye gods! he thought. Brangwen can’t be married to another man! But even as he thought it, he had the uneasy feeling that the Lords of Wyrd were laughing at him.

While Aderyn chattered out his request, Gweran listened with a pleasant smile.

“Very well,” he said. “If it’s truly all right with you, good sir.”

“It is. Your son’s remarkably bright, good bard. I always enjoy teaching someone a bit about herbs.”

After an afternoon gathering yellow dock, feverfew, and mallow in the abandoned fields, Nevyn took Aderyn back to the dun, then returned to his hut. He trimmed up the plants, cut off the useless parts, and laid the leaves and stalks out carefully on clean cloth to begin drying. As he worked, his mind ran restlessly of its own accord: Blaen and Ysolla here together. He had never expected to see the other actors in his and Brangwen’s tragedy again. It was ominous, troubling, making him wonder if his burden of Wyrd was heavier than he’d ever dreamt. So many lives were ruined along with hers, he thought, and all because of me and Gerraent. He decided that tomorrow he’d take his wares up to the dun and get a look at this bard’s woman. Until then, he put the matter firmly out of his mind. He had other work to do.

Just at sunset, Nevyn left the farm and went down to the riverbank, where he found an ash tree and sat down under its spreading branches to watch the river. A sluggish, sullen flow, bloody tinged in the last of the sunset, the river was weak even on the inner planes. Using the second sight, Nevyn could see how its raw elemental force ran tangled. Permeating, interpenetrating, and surrounding the world men call real are other worlds, or states of being, or even forces, if you would call them that. The dweomer calls them planes, knows their dwellers, studies their forces, and has ways to see them and to know that they’re as real as the only world most people can see. That the human mind is the gate between the planes is a safe secret to tell, because it takes years of study and work before the gate will open, years that impatient fools won’t spend to learn secrets they shouldn’t have.

One of these planes, the etheric, is the root of the elementals (what men call the Wildfolk), the source of natural forces and the web that holds every living creature’s soul. Within or beyond that plane is a locus of force that the dweomer terms the Wildlands, and more of the human mind is rooted there than people would like to admit. To see what was troubling the river, Nevyn built himself a gate to the Wildlands. He let his breathing slow until he felt rooted to the earth. The air flowed in and out of his lungs; before him was the water, with the last fire of the sun glinting upon it. His mind was the fifth element, reconciling the four. Slowly, carefully, he built up in his mind an image, a pale blue glowing five-pointed star, its single point upright as is holy. After all his long years of work, it took little effort to make the star flame and live apart from his will. He moved the image out of his mind until it seemed to stand flaming on the riverbank.

Inside this traced sigil, he could see the Wildlands opening out blue and misty under a cool sun. He was about to project himself through when the Wildfolk came to him, rushing through the gate in a swirl of half-seen forms. Nevyn felt the rushy tingle of power down his spine as they swept round him and projected raw emotions, trouble, hatred, and pleading with him to help them. The Wildfolk of Air cursed those of Fire and Water alike, while those of Earth were in despair.

“Here, here,” Nevyn said. “I’ll have to speak to your Kings. There’s nothing I can do alone.”

They were gone, racing back to their lands. Although Nevyn considered following, he decided that it would be best to let them bring the message to the Kings first. Slowly he erased the pentacle, drawing the blue light back into himself, then slapped his hand thrice on the earth to end the operation. In the cool night air he felt strong and at peace.

I’ll try again tomorrow night, Nevyn thought. If things are this bad, sooner or later the Kings will accept my aid. Although man is meant to rule the Wildfolk, not worship or placate them, they deserve respect and due courtesy, which Nevyn could offer them as one prince true-born to another. But it would have to be soon if he was going to spare the people of Blaeddbyr a famine. If this drought continued much longer, the crops would be past saving.

Early on the morrow, when the day was still cool, Nevyn returned to the lord’s dun to lay his wares before Lady Cabrylla. She received him in the women’s hall, where her serving women and the maidservants were gathered to see what this traveling peddler had to offer. As he laid out packets of herbs, pomanders, and cosmetic preparations on a table, Nevyn surreptitiously studied each woman in turn. He was just giving up hope when a young matron, her raven-dark hair caught up in an embroidered headscarf, came slipping in a side door and stood on the edge of the crowd. For all her different features and coloring, Nevyn could think of her as no one but his Brangwen.