The Black Raven

‘The daughters have got sons, right? What about them?’

‘Cadmar can designate a grandson as heir, yes,’ Rhodry said. ‘But the High King will have to approve it.’

‘Huh.’ Mel paused, thinking. ‘It’s a strange place, Deverry. I don’t like it. I feel like riding out right now, snow or no snow.’

‘We’ll all be leaving in the spring,’ Rhodry said. ‘What’s so wrong?’

Melimaladar exchanged a look with Vantalaber. All the archers at the table had fallen silent, Rhodry realized, to listen.

‘Well, look,’ Van said. ‘Here’s our Prince Dar, and he is a prince; none of us would deny it. But he’s a prince of the People, not one of your lords, and before this he’s always known what that means and how he should take it. Now look at him! He’s learning to give himself airs, isn’t he? With all the Round-ears bowing and scraping every time he walks into a room!’

Rhodry slewed round on the bench to look across the great hall. Near the honour hearth Cadmar was sitting in his carved chair with Prince Dar at his right hand and his favourite hounds lying at his feet. Once Cadmar had been a powerful man, but now his hair was white and his face somehow shrunken. Every now and then he would rub his twisted leg and its old injury, as if it pained him despite the warmth of the nearby fire.

By contrast Daralanteriel seemed all youth and strength, even though he sat still, contemplating the enormous sculpture of a dragon that curled around the hearth with its stone back for a mantel. He was an exceptionally handsome man even for one of the Westfolk, and Rhodry could see how a young girl like Carra would have followed him anywhere once he’d been kind to her. Over the winter his pale skin had turned even whiter, setting off his dark hair and violet eyes.

As they watched, Cadmar leaned forward to bark an order at the boys playing by the hearth. Two of them jumped up and ran off to do their lord’s bidding, but not before they’d bowed to both prince and gwerbret.

‘That kind of grovelling around,’ Vantalaber said. ‘I don’t like it. None of us do.’

‘Notice how the boys made their bow to Dar first?’ Melimaladar put in. ‘And how he smiled?’

‘And look at what he’s wearing,’ Vantalaber went on. ‘All the time now.’

Rhodry obligingly looked, though it took him a moment to see what Van meant. Around his neck on a golden chain the prince wore a gold pendant. In the firelight a jewel winked and gleamed.

‘By the Dark Sun herself!’ Rhodry whispered. ‘It’s Ranadar’s Eye.’

‘We all know he’s royal,’ Vantalaber said. ‘He doesn’t need to flaunt it.’

‘Just so,’ Rhodry said. ‘Huh. I’ll try to have a word with him. You’re right. The People will never stand for this, not out on the grass.’

* * *

Despite the cold in the tower room, Dallandra often stayed up late, reading one or another of Jill’s books by the silver light of the Wildfolk of Aethyr. Usually her studies led straight to her sleep work, when she went to the Gatelands to renew the magical wards that kept Rhodry’s dreams safe from Raena. That particular evening she had just finished restoring the flaming stars when Niffa joined her there. For some while they merely considered each other in the red and gold glow from the wards. She was a little thing, to Dalla’s elven way of thinking, not much more than five feet tall and slender with long dark hair that she wore loose over her shoulders.

‘There be a need on me to thank you,’ Niffa said finally. ‘Your news about our Jahdo did do my mam’s heart much good.’

‘I’m glad to hear it,’ Dallandra said. ‘He worries about her and the rest of you as well.’

‘Well, if you’d be so good, do tell him that Mam fares well, though in truth, she be sick again. There be naught he can do, so far away, and I’d not have him fret.’

‘I’ll do that, then. Is there a good herbwoman in your town?’

‘One of the best, or else I’d be sore troubled about my mam. Otherwise, there be much trouble upon us and our town. Tell me if you would – Raena, is it that she does cause grief to you and yours?’

‘She has in the past, truly. What’s she done to you?’

‘Naught that I can prove.’

‘Indeed? What do you think she’s done?’

‘Murdered my man, that’s what. I did see her in vision, like, laughing and laughing when he lay dead, but the councilman, and he be her man and not likely to bring her to trial, is he now? But the councilman, he did say it was evil spirits, and now the whole town does believe him.’

‘I have no idea of what you’re talking about.’ Dallandra paused for a smile. ‘Slowly now, lass. I don’t know the councilman nor much about your town. I didn’t even know you’d been married.’

Niffa’s dream image blushed.

‘My apologies,’ the lass said. ‘I do forget that you be your own self, somehow, and not just some woman in my dreams.’

‘And how do you know that?’

Niffa stared at her for a long moment. All at once her image wavered, turned pale, and faded away. No doubt Dallandra’s call for rational thought had woken her, because it takes long years of practice for dweomerworkers to stay lucid and rational in their dreams. Dallandra could safely assume that Niffa held no real control over her magical gifts. Someone should be teaching the lass, she thought. When she looked at the ward-stars that heralded her skill, she laughed at herself. Most likely that ‘someone’ was her. Paths such as hers and Niffa’s never crossed by pure accident.

With the morning the clouds broke up under a cold north wind and let sunlight flood the dun. In her tower room Dallandra took the oxhides down from the windows to let in light for a task she’d been dreading. Jill’s wooden chest held those few things that could be said to be personally hers, as opposed to things, such as her medicinals and dweomer books, which she had collected only to help others. Among the Westfolk, Jill’s bloodkin would have taken or given away her belongings to those who should have them, but Jill had no bloodkin left. The job had fallen to Dallandra, thanks mostly to their common devotion to the dweomer, which made them clanswomen of a sort.

She pulled over the chair, sat down, and lifted the lid of the chest. One piece at a time, she took out Jill’s spare clothing – two shirts, a pair of brigga, all much washed and patched, and a newish grey cloak – and laid them on the table. The cloak would do for Jahdo, who grew taller daily, or so it seemed. The others? Dallandra supposed that the gwerbret’s women would cut them into useful rags. At the bottom of the chest, however, she found things of more interest: two bundles of brown cloth and a brown cloth sack.

The oblong bundle proved to be another book, a huge volume as long as her arm from fingertips to elbow. It smelled of mildew, and the leather cover was crumbling at the edges. When Dallandra opened it, she found tidy scribal writing, faded to brown, announcing that this book belonged to Nevyn, councillor to Maryn, Gwerbret Cerrmor. No wonder, then, that Jill had kept it apart from the other books on her small shelf. Carefully Dallandra turned a few of the parchment leaves, the writing faded, the sheets all ragged and splitting at the edges, and came to a diagram of concentric circles, each labelled to represent the nested spheres of the universe. The mildew made her sneeze, and she shut the book with some care.

Dallandra had met Nevyn once, towards the beginning of his unnaturally prolonged life. Thanks to her long dwelling in Evandar’s Lands, to her the meeting seemed to have happened no more than a few years past, even though it had been close to four hundred years as men and elves reckon Time. He had brought the Westfolk books of dweomer lore, and she remembered sitting in the warm summer sun and turning each page, staring at the diagrams and at the words she couldn’t read. Later, of course, Aderyn had taught her the Deverry alphabet. Aderyn, her husband, back then so long ago – she could still remember how it had felt to love him, though the feeling was only a memory.

‘Four hundred years ago.’ She said the words aloud, but they carried little meaning, just as her own age meant nothing to her. She’d been born more than four hundred years ago, but of that what had she lived, truly lived in the awareness of time passing? Thirty years perhaps, if that, because she had gone to Evandar’s country so young and stayed there so long. Did she regret it? Since nothing could call the years back, regret would only be a waste of time. She returned to her inventory.

The long narrow bundle turned out to be a sword in a sheath of stained, cracking leather, an odd thing for a dweomermaster to carry with her, as it was no ritual weapon but solid Deverry steel. Dallandra drew the blade and saw marks carved near the hilt: a stylized striking falcon, and just below, a lion device that at one time had sported a touch of red pigment. Out of curiosity she held the blade up to sight along it, looking for other marks. When in the cold room her warm breath touched the steel, a little snake made of moisture squirmed and ran down the blade. Startled, she nearly dropped it. She sheathed it and laid it on the table by the book, then opened the sack.

Inside she found a silver dagger in a much newer leather sheath, and a small something wrapped in silk. She put the dagger on the table and unwrapped the silk to find a squarish bone plaque, a few inches to a side, engraved with a portrait of a Horsekin: a warrior, judging from his huge mane of hair and his facial tattoos. The delicacy and realism of the engraving marked it as elven work, and of great age.

‘Meradan,’ Dallandra said softly. ‘Someone recorded what the invaders looked like. I wonder how long the limner lived afterwards.’

For a moment she held the plaque in both hands, as if it were a talisman that could give her knowledge of those ancient days. She felt nothing. She wrapped it up again in its silk and laid it by the other objects that Jill had treasured enough to carry with her through her wandering life. What to do with them? Dallandra had no idea.

Dallandra had known Jill only a brief time, and Jill had not been an easy person to understand. Her workings were so far beyond mine, Dallandra thought. Her knowledge of dweomer lore, too – gods, a thousand times beyond mine! On the wall hung the small shelf of books that Dallandra had begun to study under Jill’s tutelage. Those, she knew, Jill would have wanted her to keep until the time came to pass them on to another student of the lore. But what she would never learn from books was the way Jill lived her dweomer, in complete surrender and service to the Light that shines beyond all the gods. Although her compassion had at times been a cold and abstract thing, it had never wavered, not even when that service had demanded her life.

And what have I been doing? Dallandra thought. Chasing after glamours, living far from the physical world, turning my back on those I was born to serve! She had come to despise the physical world, in fact, with all its stinks and pain and filth. In Evandar’s fair country life flowed like mead, smooth and intoxicating. Yet like the mead its illusions of pleasure wore off soon enough, leaving the drinker muddled and more than a little sick.

Out in the corridor footsteps were coming toward the door. Dallandra stood just as Rhodry opened it and walked in, glancing at the table.

‘Jill’s things?’ he said in Elvish.

‘Just that. Here, take a look at that sword, will you? I’m curious about those marks on the blade.’

Rhodry obligingly picked the sword up, drew it full out of the sheath, and studied the devices. When he looked up, his eyes glistened with tears.

‘This belonged to Jill’s father, Cullyn of Cerrmor,’ he said. ‘She must have carried it with her for his memory’s sake.’

The tears spilled and ran. For a moment he stood sobbing like a child, yet still he held the sword in a practised grasp. If someone had threatened them, Dallandra felt, Rhodry would have killed him instinctively through his tears. With one last sob he laid the sword down on the table and wiped his eyes on his sleeve.

‘My apologies,’ he said. ‘It’s still hard, thinking that she’s gone.’