The Dragon Revenant (24 page)

As regent of Aberwyn, as well as ruler of her own large demesne, Tieryn Lovyan had more to worry about than just her missing son. It seemed to Tevylla, whenever she saw her lady for a few minutes here and there, that the streaks of gray in the tieryn’s hair were getting larger and the wrinkles round her eyes deepening. Yet, harried as she was, Lovyan always had a pleasant word for the nursemaid when she saw her, and she always managed to look in on her granddaughter for some minutes every day. In fact, her brief times with Rhodda seemed to refresh the tieryn, who was not above hiking her skirts, sitting down right on the floor, and playing blocks or dolls with the child until a frantic servitor or page came rushing in with some new crisis.

Since back home in Dun Gwerbyn Rhodda had spent several hours a day with her beloved Granna, the child naturally resented the new order of things. After Lovyan had been dragged away from one of their times together, Rhodda would howl and rage for nearly an hour no matter what Tevylla did to calm her. She was beginning to wonder if something were wrong with the child—not that she was simple or half-witted, far from it. Even though she was only three, she spoke beautifully and knew as many words as an ordinary child of six or seven; in fact, she seemed to have a greedy appetite for words and was always badgering the bards and the scribes by asking what such and such a term meant and how she should use it. But along with all this precocious intellect came odd rages, and odder melancholy sulks, and times when she would tear off all her clothes, sob piteously, and say that she wanted to go live in the woods with the Wildfolk.

Tempers like that drove Tevylla to distraction, but she found that she had an unexpected ally in Nevyn. Not only did he give her good advice about handling the moods, he began taking the child for a walk at least once a day—just to talk about things, he said. Since Rhodda loved to go with him, Tevylla could hand over her difficult charge and get an hour or so alone with a clear conscience.

“I must admit I’m surprised, my lord,” Tevylla said to him one morning. “I thought a learned councillor like you would be above such things.”

“Oh the child has a fine mind. Her company’s very pleasant after hours spent with noble-born lords.”

He looked so sly at his joke that Tevylla had to giggle.

“We’re going to see the gnomes today,” Rhodda announced.

“Are you, dear? How lovely.” Tevylla assumed that the child and the old man had some elaborate game going. “Well, while you’re doing that, I’m going to go see Cook, and we’ll have a gossip.”

To get to the kitchen hut, Tevylla cut through the great hall, and as she happened to be passing the captain’s table, a young lad, slouching at the end of the bench, caught her arm with an ale-damp hand.

“You’re a good-looking woman, aren’t you? How come you keep hiding away in the women’s hall?”

Before Tevylla could reply or pull away, Cullyn was on his feet and moving, hitting the rider so hard across the face that tears sprang to his eyes.

“Hold your tongue, Lwc.” The captain’s voice was low and perfectly steady. “You’re speaking to a widow and the mother of a son.”

Lwc flinched back, one hand pressed over his swelling cheek, his eyes fixed in doglike apology on Tevylla’s face. Cullyn made her a bow.

“My apologies. None of my cubs will dare say one wrong word to you again.”

“No doubt.” Tevylla dropped him a curtsey. “My thanks, captain.”

As she hurried to the door, she saw two of the serving lasses watching Cullyn with undisguised longing from among the ale barrels. Since both pretty blonde Nonna and pinched-face Degwa were young enough to be his daughters, she stopped for a word with them.

“I wouldn’t be staring at the warband if I were you. I’d be going about my work before someone told Cook that you were hunting dangerous game.”

“Oh please, Mistress Tewa, don’t tell her.” Nonna put on her best winsome expression. “You’ve got to admit that the captain’s just absolutely splendid. Look at how he defended you.”

“Frankly, he rather frightens me, and he’s far too old for you. Now get back to the cookhouse and leave the warband alone.”

When she reached the kitchen, she told the cook straightaway about the lasses. Baena too had noticed their infatuation with the captain.

“I’ve spoken to the little sluts about it. I suppose it’s better him than one of his young louts. Cullyn’s a decent man around women, and if it was one of the warband they were after, they’d have big bellies already.”

“So you think the captain’s a decent man?”

“I do. Don’t you?”

“I’m not sure. Here I’ve been spending time with him almost every day for months, and I feel I hardly know him. On sunny days when Rhodda and I go out, he comes along with us, but you know, he rarely says two words together, unless he’s got news of my son to give me. Or sometimes when we’ve left the women’s quarters he’ll just pop up, like, to make sure we’re all right. He moves so quietly for a big man that he can truly scare you when you’re not expecting him.”

“I can believe that well enough. What does the child think of him?”

“Now that’s one good thing. She doesn’t throw her tempers when the captain’s around, I tell you. She’ll start to fuss, but he’ll give her one of his dark looks, and she’s as quiet as quiet again. And yet she never minds him coming along with us.”

“Well, he raised a daughter on his own, you know. His wife died very young, or so I heard the tale.”

“Truly? Now that’s a surprise! I wouldn’t have thought he was that kind of a man at all. Is his lass married now?”

“It’s Cullyn’s daughter that’s off with young Rhodry.”

“Oh! I hadn’t realized that.”

“It’s true, and I don’t know how the poor little lass manages, riding all over the kingdom like that.”

“It would be awful, sure enough. I do hope the King finds the lad soon, though. Our poor Lady Lovyan is eating herself away with worry.”

“Well, so she is. Rhodry’s always been a spoiled little beast, if you ask me. Look at him, seducing Rhodda’s mother first and then poor Jill! But truly, I’d rather have him in the gwerbret’s chair than some interloper who isn’t even a Maelwaedd. My mother was head cook here in Aberwyn before me, and her mother before her, and we’ve always served the Maelwaedds. I wouldn’t like to see some other clan come in here. What if they were mingy, like, or nasty tempered? You just never know with the noble-born.”

About an hour later, Nevyn turned up at the door of the kitchen hut with Rhodda and the captain both trailing after.

“I’ve got to go attend upon the tieryn, Tewa,” the old man said. “But Rhodda’s nowhere near ready for her nap yet.”

“We’ll have a bit of a walk, then. I see our bodyguard’s with you.”

Cullyn shot her a wry smile. She was surprised at herself, realizing just how much difference the cook’s news had made. Somehow knowing that the captain had a daughter made him seem like a human being. And what did I think he was before? she asked herself in some annoyance. A fiend from Hell?

As they made their way to the garden, they collected the equerry’s four-year-old son, a leather ball, and a pair of curved sticks that would do for a pretend hurley game. As the children ran around and swatted at the ball, Tevylla and Cullyn perched on the low brick wall and watched. Although the lawn was still green that time of year, it had a sad, thin look, and the western breeze made Tevylla shiver inside her wool cloak. When she looked off to the south, she could see dark clouds massing on the horizon for an assault on the dun.

“The kitchen gardener was telling me that he thinks we’re going to get a bad frost tonight,” Tevylla said. “Or maybe even a bit of snow. He says the omens are right for it.”

“Are they now? That’ll be a cursed nuisance.” All at once he laughed. “Listen to me. I’ve gotten soft and spoiled, living on the coast again. The few dribbles of snow we have down here are naught in a place like Cerrgonney.”

“So I’ve heard. You truly did travel all over before you took the tieryn’s service, didn’t you?”

“Oh, a fair bit.”

Suddenly he was silent again, staring absently across the lawn with eyes that seemed to see another view entirely.

“Did I offend you? My apologies.”

“What?” He turned, his lips twitching in the gesture that did him for a smile. “You didn’t, at that. I was just remembering the long road, and being cursed glad I was off it.”

“I see. You must be worried about Jill now.”

“I was worried from the wretched day she rode off with our young lord, but what could I do? She was always too headstrong for me to handle.” This time he gave her a proper grin. “Know what my woman used to say? Jill was as stubborn as I was and twice as nasty when she wanted to be.”

They shared a quiet laugh, but Tevylla felt suddenly sad, thinking of her husband, dead these long years now. At moments like these it seemed more odd than painful that at thirty, when most women were thinking of making a match for their eldest daughter, she had nothing left but one son, and him gone from her into the male world of a warband. Back when she’d been the miller’s pretty daughter, life had seemed to offer so much more than the scraps it had finally thrown her way.

“Somewhat wrong?” Cullyn said abruptly.

“Oh, just thinking of my man.”

“What did he die of, anyway? If you don’t mind me asking.”

“A fever in the blood. He stepped on a nail out in the stables, and not even Nevyn could save him.”

“My wife died of a fever, too. I was riding a war, miles away, and I couldn’t even be there with her.”

The old pain in his voice was like the scar on his face, healed, maybe, but the blatant memento of a wound. Impulsively she laid her hand over his.

“I’m so sorry.”

“So was I.”

Just then, predictably enough for him, the equerry’s boy fell flat on his face and began to howl. By the time she had him settled down, it was cold enough to drive them all indoors. Although it never did snow, the rainstorm dragged on and on, and they had no more walks with the captain for some days.

Out of custom more than necessity, Dun Aberwyn set a watch every night, four rotations of two men each at the locked gates and four of a dozen up on the ramparts. It would have surprised these loyal men, however, to know that another watch, and a strange one, went on at the same time up in the tower suite that Nevyn shared with Elaeno. Every sunset, when the tide of the element of Water began to flow on the astral, and at midnight, when that gave way to Earth, and again at dawn, when the Aethyr burgeoned, the two dweomermen made a magical sphere of blue light all round the dun and set it with seals in the shape of flaming pentagrams. During the day they could rest, because the tides of Fire and Air are so inimical to the dark dweomer that even its greatest masters rarely buck them. All that autumn their watch had held, but even now that winter had arrived in earnest, Nevyn saw no reason to relax it.

“I can’t believe our enemies have simply fled the field after one miserable battle,” he remarked one night.

“No more can I,” Elaeno said. “They’re trying to lull us to sleep, more like. Someone ensorceled that stable lad and set him on Rhodry’s daughter, and it wasn’t any flyaway spirit, either.”

“Just so. But I’ve searched all over the blasted astral, and I know you have, too, and neither of us have found a trace of dweomer-work.”

“They’re lying low, that’s all. When they think we’ve given up looking, they’ll pounce.”

“In the meantime they’ve got to be living somewhere, curse them! I’ve had the regent send messages to her loyal men, asking them to keep an eye out for any suspicious strangers, but our enemies aren’t going to just ride into town and announce they’re setting up a dark dweomer shop.”

Elaeno managed a laugh at that.

“Curses for sale!” he intoned like a street vendor. “Come buy our nice hot love potions! Curses for sale! But truly, the local lords don’t have the necessary eyes to ferret out our nasty little friends. We make better arrangements for this sort of thing back home, I must say. Oh, that reminds me. I think I’ll pay a visit to the shipmasters’ guild tomorrow. They may know if any of my countrymen have taken up residence in Aberwyn lately.”

“There’s no reason that our enemies have to be Bardek men.”

“I know, but we’ve got to start somewhere, don’t we?”

There was no arguing with that. In the middle of the morrow morning, once the tide of Fire was running clean and strong enough to baffle any dark dweomermen, Elaeno left the dun on his errand. While he waited for him to return, Nevyn went to see his patient-cum-prisoner up in the tower.

By then Perryn was much recovered, though far from well. In those days, treating a consumption of the lungs was a tricky business. Nevyn was having him spend all day in bed and most of the night lying wrapped in fur rugs on the roof, where he could breathe the icy air in an attempt to strengthen his lungs. Although the cure was working splendidly, thanks in part to Perryn’s unnaturally high vitality, still Nevyn was keeping a close watch on him. He was also too afraid of setbacks to risk any more magical attempts to discover the man’s true nature. That particular afternoon, when Nevyn entered his chamber, the first thing Perryn did was complain about being restless.