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Part Three

Eldidd
918

AFTER SIXTY-ODD years in Bardek, Nevyn returned to Eldidd late in the summer of 918, landing in Aberwyn with some unusual cargo tucked inside his shirt for safety’s sake. While he’d been abroad, studying the scholarly dweomer lore of the Bardekian priests, he’d gotten the idea of making a talisman for the High King, a magically charged jewel that would radiate the noble virtues endlessly to its owner’s mind. To that end, he’d bought an extremely unusual stone and studied the various writings about such creations in the libraries of various temples, but to make the talisman, he brought the stone home. As big as a walnut, but perfectly round and smoothly polished, a tribute to the art of Bardek jewelers, the opal was shot through with pale gold veins and bluish-pink shadows, as mottled as the coat of some exotic animal. At the moment, for all it beauty, it was an ordinary jewel, a dull thing in its way, though worth a fortune. By the time Nevyn got done with it, it would be supremely interesting, and worth a man’s life.
Down in the center of Aberwyn stood the hall of the merchant guild, an imposing fat tower with glass in the downstairs windows and a stout slate roof. Their official money changer held court in a bare stone room with a hearth, two chairs, and a long table, where Nevyn found a stout and gray-haired man sitting behind a litter of Bardek-style scrolls. Behind him, at the entrance to another room, an armed guard slouched against the wall.
“I’m just back from Bardek,” Nevyn said to the money changer.
“You’ve hit the rate of exchange at a good time, good sir. Sit down, sit down.”
As Nevyn pulled up the rickety three-legged chair, he noticed the guard watching him with the interest of the longtime bored, a young man of about twenty, tall and well muscled, with blond hair, blue eyes, and the beginnings of a mustache blotching his upper lip. Nevyn wouldn’t have given him a second thought if it weren’t for the silver dagger at his belt. As it was, he took a good look at the lad’s face and then nearly swore aloud, because the soul behind his eyes struck him as familiar and friendly both. Before he could observe more, the money changer’s voice claimed his attention.
“We’ve been giving thirty Deverry silvers for each Bardek zotar of full weight.”
“Indeed? That certainly is generous! Are things troubled in Eldidd?”
“Have you been away for some time?”
“Years, actually.”
“Hum.” The money changer reflected upon something before he spoke again. “I hope to every god in the Otherlands that these rumors are only rumors, but they say the gwerbrets are still pining for the days when they were princes. The High King’s a long way away, my friend.”
“Just so. Rebellion?”
“Let us merely say that Bardek merchants have never gotten rich by allowing themselves to be caught in the middle of trouble. They’re not bringing us as much sound coinage as they once did.”
The money changer counted out Nevyn’s zotars, marked the tally on a bit of parchment, which Nevyn signed, then went back through the doorway to his vault to change the coins. Nevyn turned to the young guard and gave him a pleasant smile.
“What’s your name, lad? It looks like this duty wears on you.”
“Maer, my lord. But I won’t be guarding this fellow’s stores much longer. He just hired me to fill in, like. His regular man broke his wrist in a fall, you see, but thanks be to the gods, the splints are off now.”
When Nevyn risked opening up a quick bit of the dweomer sight with the sigils that controlled memory, the silver dagger’s face blurred and changed. For a moment Nevyn seemed to look into the weary eyes of Maddyn the bard. Nevyn was so glad to see him that he wanted to jump up and embrace him, but of course, since Maer would have no conscious memory of his last life, he did nothing of the sort.
“And what will you do next?” Nevyn said. “If these rumors of trouble are true, there’ll be plenty of work for silver daggers in Eldidd.”
“Oh, it’s all a lot of horseshit if you ask me, my lord. The gwerbrets can mutter over their ale easy enough, but getting the coin to outfit an army’s a bit harder. I’ll go west, I suppose. I’ve never ridden that way before.”
It was perhaps an omen of sorts. Nevyn had no real idea of where to settle down while he performed the dweomer work on the opal, but on the western coast lay a quiet little village that held pleasant memories for him.
“I’m heading west myself,” Nevyn said. “How would your captain feel if I rode with your troop a ways?”
“Captain? Troop?” Mael paused for a laugh. “The silver daggers haven’t ridden as a troop in fifty years, good sir. It was that royal decree, you know. We can only ride together one or two at a time, no more.”
“Indeed?” Nevyn was honestly shocked. I’ve stayed away too long, he told himself. “Why?”
“I don’t know. It’s the king’s law, and so it’s good enough for me. But I’m for hire, sure enough, if you need a guard.”
“Feel like riding to Cannobaen?”
“Gladly. A couple of silver pieces?”
“Done. We’ll leave at dawn, then, the day after tomorrow.”
When the time came to leave, Maer turned up promptly. Nevyn was loading up his newly purchased riding horse and pack mule in the little innyard just at dawn when the silver dagger appeared, leading a splendid black warhorse, laden with a pair of saddlebags, a bedroll, a plain white shield, and a pot helm, all tied in a messy sort of way to his saddle. He looked over the mule packs with some interest.
“So you’re a herbman, are you?”
“I am. Don’t worry about falling sick on our journey.”
Maer grinned and finished loading the mule without being asked. They led their horses through the busy morning streets, then mounted outside the west gate just as the last of the sea fog was burning off into a late-summer morning. To their left, the turquoise sea sparkled and churned at the foot of pale cliffs, and to their right, the winter wheat stood ripe and golden in the fields. As they rode, Maer burst into good cheer, whistling and singing in a fine clear tenor that with training would have made him a bard. Nevyn was so genuinely glad to hear the man he would always think of as Maddyn sing again that he had to give himself a stern warning. This was Maer now, not Maddyn, and it was against the laws of dweomer as well as common sense to treat the one as the other.
When he turned in the saddle to pay Maer a compliment on his voice, he was in for a surprise. Riding behind the silver dagger’s saddle and clinging to him like a child was a good-sized blue sprite. Just as he was telling himself that of course it couldn’t be the same creature, not Maddyn’s favorite still loyal after all these years, the sprite grinned at him in such smug contentment that he was forced to recognize her. Over the next few days, as they made their slow way to Cannobaen, Nevyn saw the sprite often, hovering around Maer during the day, cuddling up to him like a dog while he slept at night. It became obvious, though, that Maer never saw her, because often he would have stepped on her if she hadn’t jumped aside. Once, when Maer was off at a farmhouse buying food, Nevyn got a chance alone with her. Talking about death to one of the Wildfolk was, of course, a complete waste of time.
“He doesn’t see you anymore, you know. He’s changed since the last time you saw him.”
She snarled, exposing long and pointed teeth.
“It’s not good for you to follow him this way. You should be off with your own kind.”
At that she threw back her head and howled, a thin wisp of sound. Since normally the Wildfolk were incapable of making noise, Nevyn became even more troubled.
“I’ll talk with one of your kings,” he began, “and we’ll see what . . . ”
In a screech of fury she seemed to swell, sucking up substance from the material plane and turning for one brief moment quite solid and as large as a growing child. Then she was gone in a gust of cold air.
Beside seeing the Wildfolk, Maer had been a silver dagger in his last life, too, of course, but Nevyn tended to consider that a simple coincidence. Although he would never have pried into the reason for his dishonor, Maer himself volunteered the story as they sat round the campfire on their second night out.
“You’re not an Eldidd man, are you?” Nevyn had asked him.
“I’m not. I was born in Blaeddbyr, over in Deverry, and that’s where I got this blasted dagger, too. I was riding for the Wolf clan, you see, and one night, well, me and the lads got a bit drunk. So one of my friends got this daft idea. There was this lass he fancied—oh, bad it was, good sir—he was like a boar in rut over the tailor’s daughter, but her da, he kept an eye as sharp as one of his needles on the lass. So my friend puts us up to helping him. We went round to the tailor’s shop and Nyn calls the lass out of her bedroom window, while me and the other lad went round the front. We pretend to get into a brawl, you see, and old Da comes running out. So we led him a merry dance, insulting him and having a fine old time, and truly we got a bit carried away.” With a sigh, Maer rubbed his chin with a rueful hand. “We ducked him in the village horse trough, just for the fun of the thing, and all the time Nyn’s tumbling the daughter out under a hedgerow. So Da goes complaining to the lord, and cursed if Avoic doesn’t side with the old tailor and kick us out of the warband! Cursed unjust, I say. He let Nyn come back, though, because the stupid lass had to go and get a child, and so Nyn had to marry her.”
Maer sounded so indignant that Nevyn laughed aloud. Maer drew himself up square-shouldered and glared at him.
“Don’t you think it was unjust?”
“Umph, well. But you’re the first lad I’ve ever met who got that dagger because of a prank.”
“That’s been the tale of my days, good sir. I only want a bit of fun, and ye gods, everyone goes and takes it wrong.”
Late on a summer afternoon, Nevyn and his guard rode to the top of a rise and saw Cannobaen spread out along the little stream called Y Brog. At the sight of the round, thatched houses, Maer broke into a wide grin.
“Ale tonight with supper, my lord. Or do they even have a tavern in this hole?”
“They did the last time I was here. But that was a long time ago.”
At a hundred families, mostly of farmers or fishermen, Cannobaen was about twice as big as Nevyn had been remembering it. There was a good-sized proper inn on the old site o fthe small tavern. After he rented a chamber, Nevyn ordered ale and a meal for himself and stood the silver dagger to one last dinner, too. The innkeep, a stout fellow named Ewsn, hovered nearby.
“Do you get much trade through here?” Nevyn said, mostly to be polite.
“We’ve got a merchant in our town who buys and sells off in the west—with those tribes with the strange-sounding names. Men from Aberwyn come through every now and then to buy the horses he brings back.” He hesitated, sucking stumps of teeth. “Be you a herbman, sir? My wife has this pain in her joints, you see, and so I was wondering.”
“I am at that. In the morning I’ll be glad to have a talk with her if she’d like.”
The morning, however, apparently wasn’t good enough for the innkeep’s wife, Samwna. While she served Nevyn and Maer their dinner, Samwna also treated them to a long recital of symptoms as well rehearsed as a bard’s performance. While they ate roast beef and turnips, they heard all about the mysterious pain in her joints, strange aches in the small of her back, and night sweats, sometimes hot, sometimes cold. With the apple tart, they heard about headaches and odd moments when she felt quite dizzy.
“It’s all related to your woman’s change of life,” Nevyn said. “I’ve got soothing herbs that should help a good deal.”
Maer went scarlet and almost choked.
“My most humble thanks.” Samwna made him a little curtsy. “I’ve been wondering and wondering, I have. Here, you’re not thinking of settling in our town, are you, good sir? It’s been years and years since there’s been a herbman in our neighborhood.”
“As a matter of fact, I am. I’m getting too old to wander the roads, and I want a nice quiet place to settle down.”
“Oh, towns don’t come much quieter than Cannobaen!” Samwna paused to laugh. “Why, the big excitement lately was when one of Lord Pertyc’s boarhounds killed two chickens over at Myna’s farm.”
Nevyn smiled, well pleased. Idly he rubbed the front of his shirt and touched the opal hidden inside. If there’s trouble, he thought, it can cursed well stay in Aberwyn! No doubt remote Cannobaen would be undisturbed by these rumors of rebellion.

“By every hell, how can you be so stubborn?”
“It comes with my family title.” Pertyc Maelwaedd touched the device on his shirt. “We’re Badgers, my friend. We hold on.”
“By that line of thinking, we Bears should have to stay in holes.” Danry, Tieryn Cernmeton and Pertyc’s closest friend, perched on the edge of a carved table and considered him. “But cursed if I will.”
“Why do you think I nicknamed you the Falcon, back when we were lads? But this time you’re flying too high.”
They were sequestered in Pertyc’s small study behind a barred door, and a good thing, too, because Danry was talking treason. Since Pertyc had a taste for clutter, the room was crowded: a large writing table, a shelf with twenty leather-bound codices, two chairs, a scatter of small Bardek carpets, and on the wall, a pair of moth-eaten stag’s heads, trophies of some long-forgotten hunt of a remote ancestor. Pertyc’s helm perched jauntily on the antlers of the largest stag, and his shield was propped up against a book-laden lectern carved with intertwined dogs and badgers.
“I’ve always liked my demesne,” Pertyc remarked absently. “So remote here on the border. Nice and quiet. Easy to stay out of trouble in a place like Cannobaen.”
“You can’t stay out of this. That’s what you don’t understand.”
“Indeed? Just watch.”
Danry sighed again. He was a tall man, with a florid face that usually simmered on the edge of rage, and thick blond mustaches that were usually damp with mead. Lately, however, Danry had been withdrawn, and the mustaches had a ratty look, as if he’d been chewing on them in hard thought. Pertyc had been wondering what was on his friend’s mind. Now he was finally hearing. Ever since the forced joining of the two kingdoms some sixty years before, there’d been plenty of grumbling in Eldidd, a longing for independence and past glory simmering like porridge over a slow fire. Now the fire had flared up; the porridge was beginning to boil over.
“I’d hoped to come around to this slowly,” Danry said at last. “But it’s hard to believe you’d be too blind to see the ale in your own tankard.”
“I’ve never much liked sour ale. What does it matter to me if I pledge to a new king or an old one?”
“Perro! It’s the honor of the thing.”
“How are you going to have a rebellion without a king to rally round? Or have you ferretted out some obscure heir?”
“That’s a rotten way to speak about him, but we have.” Danry picked up a leather dog collar from the cluttered writing desk and began fiddling with the brass buckles. “The lad is related to the old blood royal twice over on the female line, and there’s a lass who’s related on the male line. If we marry them, well, it’s claim enough. They’re both good Eldidd blood, and that’s the true thing.” He ran the end of the collar through the buckle and pulled it tight. “You know, my friend, your claim to the throne is as good as his.”
“It’s not! I don’t have a claim at all. None, do you hear me? My most honorable ancestor abdicated; I’m descended from his common-born wife, and that’s that! No priest in the kingdom would back a claim on my part, and you know it.”
“There are ways of handling priests.” Danry tossed the collar aside. “But you’re right, no doubt. I was just thinking of a thing or two.”
“Listen, even jackals pull down the kill before they start squabbling over the meat.”
Danry winced.
“When I came to my manhood,” Pertyc went on, “I swore an oath to King Aeryc to serve him well, serve him faithfully, and put his life above my own. Seems to me I heard you and the rest of our friends swear one like it, too.”
“Ah, by the hells! No oath is binding when it’s sworn under coercion.”
“No one held a sword to my throat. I didn’t see one at yours, either.”
With a curse, Danry heaved himself up from the table and began trying to pace round the cluttered chamber.
“The coercion lies in the past. They stripped Eldidd of its rights and its independence under threat of open slaughter. It’s the honor of the thing, Perro.”
“If I break an oath, I don’t have any honor left worth fighting over.” Idly Pertyc touched the device on his shirt.
“Ah, curse your horseshit Badgers! If you don’t come in with us, what then? Are you going to run to this false king with the tale?”
“Never, and all for your sake. Do you think I’d put my sworn friend’s neck in a noose? I’d die first.”
Danry sighed, looking away.
“I wish you’d stay out, too.” Pertyc said.
“And I’d die before I’d do that. You can trumpet your neutrality to the four corners of the world, but you’re still going to be in the middle of it. What do you think we’re going to do, muster our warbands right down in Aberwyn? When the spring comes, we’re meeting in the forest, here in the west.”
“You scummy bastards!”
Danry laughed, tossing his head back and giving him a friendly slap on the shoulder.
“We’ll do our best not to disturb his lordship or trample his kitchen garden. Now here, spring’s a long way away. I have faith you’ll be mustering with us when the time comes. It might be dangerous if you didn’t. You know I’d never lift my hand against your dun and kin, but, well, as for the others . . . ” He let the words trail significantly away.
“Neutrals have found themselves stripped and sieged before, huh? You’re right enough. You tell our friends that I’ll protect my lands to my last breath, whether they claim to have a king on their side or not.”
“They wouldn’t expect any less from you. I warn you, though, when we win this fight, you can’t expect much honor or standing in the new kingdom.”
“I’ll take my chances on that. I’d rather die a beggar than break my sworn oath.” Pertyc smiled faintly. “And the word, my friend, isn’t ‘when’ you win. It’s ‘if.’”
Danry turned red, a hectic flush of rage across his cheeks. Pertyc held his gaze until Danry forced out a smile.
“Let us give the gods their due,” Danry said. “Who knows where a man’s Wyrd will lead him? Very well. ‘If’ it is.”
Pertyc walked outside with Danry to the ward, where his horse was standing saddled and ready at the gates. Danry mounted, said a pleasant and normal farewell, then trotted down the road to the north. As Pertyc watched the dun disappearing, he felt danger like a cold ache in his stomach. The dolts, he thought, and maybe I’m the biggest dolt of all! He turned and looked over his dun, a small, squat broch standing inside a timber-laced wall without ramparts or barbicans. Although his demesne was continually short on coin, he decided it would be wise to spend what he had on fortifications, even if he could only afford to build some earthworks and ditches. Whatever else it may have lacked, his dun had the best watchtower in the kingdom for the Cannobaen light, where every night a beacon burned to warn passing ships of where submerged rocks just off the coast. If the rebellion swept a siege his way, it occurred to Pertyc, he could perhaps parlay keeping the light into a reason for keeping his neutrality. Perhaps. The dread in his stomach turned to burning ice.
Later that same day, he was drinking in his great hall when a page came with the news that there was a silver dagger at the gates. Since he had only ten men in his warband, he had Maer shown in straightaway.
“I’ll take you on, silver dagger. I don’t know when we’ll see action, but another man might come in handy. Your keep, and if there’s fighting, a silver piece a week.”
“My thanks, my lord. Winter’s coming on, and the roof over my head’s going to be welcome.”
“Good. Uh, Maer? If you shave that mustache off, it’ll grow in thicker next time, you know.”
Maer drew himself up to his full height.
“Is his lordship suggesting or ordering?”
“Merely suggesting. No offense intended.”
Pertyc turned him over to his captain, then went up to the women’s hall, a comfortable sunny room that covered half the second story of the tower. It was the domain of his lordship’s old nurse, Maudda, all stooped back and long white hair these days, but still doing her best to serve the clan by tending Pertyc’s four-year-old daughter, Becyla. Pertyc felt very bad about keeping the old woman working, but there was, quite simply, no one else who could handle the lass. As headstrong as her mother, he thought, then winced at the very mental mention of his absent wife. He found them sitting in a patch of sun by the window, Becyla in a chair, Maudda standing behind, keeping up a running flow of chatter as she combed the lass’s hair, but as soon as Pertyc stepped in, Becyla twisted free and rushed to her father.
“Da, Da, I want to go riding. Please, Da, please?”
“In a bit, my sweet.”
“Now!” She tossed back her head and howled in rage.
“Stop that! You’re upsetting poor Maudda.”
With a visible wrench of will she fell silent, turning to look at her beloved nurse. She was a beautiful child, Becyla, with her moonbeam-pale hair and enormous gray eyes, tall and slender for her age and as graceful as a fawn when she moved.
“Now, lambkin,” Maudda said. “You’ll go riding soon enough. Your da’s the lord, you see, and we all must do what he says. The gods made him a lord, and we—”
“Horseshit!” She stamped her foot. “But I’ll be good if you say so.”
With a sigh and a watery smile, Maudda held out her arms, and Becyla ran to her. I’ve got to get the poor old dear some help, Pertyc told himself. He had this thought with the same tedious regularity with which he first enlisted young nursemaids, then watched them retreat.
“Maudda, I wanted your advice on somewhat,” he said aloud. “I’ve been thinking about my son. Do you think my cousin would take it amiss if I rode to his dun and fetched Adraegyn home for the winter?”
“Ah. You’ve been hearing them rumors of trouble, then.”
“Ye gods, do you know everything?”
“Everything that matters, my lord.”
“Please, Da, go get him,” Becyla put in. “I miss Draego.”
“No doubt you do,” Pertyc said. “I think it might be best all round if he came home. I can train him myself, if it comes to that.”
“Da?” Becyla broke in. “I want to go with you.”
“You can’t, my sweet. Young ladies don’t go riding round the countryside like silver daggers.”
“I want to go!”
“I said you can’t.”
“I don’t care what you say. I don’t care what your dumb gods say, either. I don’t want to be a lady. I want to go riding. I want to go with you when you get Draego.” With a shriek she threw herself down on the floor and began to kick.
“If I may be so bold, my lord?” Maudda pitched her voice loud over the general noise. “Do get out and leave her to me.”
Pertyc fled the field. He was beginning to wish he’d done what his wife wanted and let her take his daughter away with her. He’d refused only out of a stubborn honor. He could only thank the gods for making Adraegyn a reasonable and fairly human being.

“Now, you know who does have a little cottage,” Samwna said thoughtfully. “Wersyn the merchant. He had it built for his mother, you see, when she was widowed, but the poor lady passed to the Otherlands just this spring. No surprise, truly, because she was seventy winters if she was a day old. She always said sixty-four, but hah! you can tell those things, good sir. But anyway, it’s a nice stout little place with a big hearth.”
“Does it have a bit of land around it?”
“Oh, it does, because she liked her flowers and suchlike. Besides, it had to be a good stone’s throw away from Wergyn’s house. Moligga—that’s his wife—put her foot down about that, and I can’t say I blame her, because old Bwdda was the nosy type, always lifting the lids of her daughter-in-law’s pots, if you take my meaning, good sir.”
Nevyn began to remember why he normally avoided small towns.
On the other hand, the cottage turned out to be both suitable and cheap, and he rented it immediately, then spent the rest of the day unpacking and settling in. On the morrow, he decided that while he’d keep his riding horse, the mule would only be a nuisance. Samwna, that font of all local information, told him to try selling it to a farmer named Nalyn.
“He lives out near Lord Pertyc’s dun. He married the farm, you see, or I should say, it still belongs to poor dear Myna—she was widowed so young, poor thing, and her with two daughters to raise on her own—but now one of the daughters is married. Lidyan, that is, and it’s good for them to have a man to work the fields again, I must say, so it’s Nalyn’s farm in a way, like.”
Nevyn made his escape at last and rode out, with the mule on a tether rope, and found the farm. When Nevyn dismounted near the shabby thatched roundhouse, he could hear someone yelling inside. A man’s voice, thick with rage, drifted out, followed by the sound of a woman weeping and pleading. Ye gods, he thought, does this Nalyn beat his poor wife? A second woman’s voice yelled back, cracking in a string of curses. A young heavyset man came stalking out of the house. Just as he took a step out of the doorway, an egg came sailing after him, caught him on the back of the head, and shattered. With an oath, the man started to turn back in, then saw Nevyn.
“My apologies,” Nevyn said. “I just heard in the village you might want to buy a mule. I can come back later.”
“No need.” The young farmer was busily trying to get the egg off the back of his head with both hands. “I do indeed need a mule, though my sister’s stubborn enough for a whole rotten herd of them. Let me just wash this off at the well.”
Laughter rang in the doorway, and a young woman, about Maer’s age, came strolling out. She was pretty, raven-haired and blue-eyed, but not truly beautiful, with her hair cropped off short in the way many farm women wore their hair, out of the way of hard work. Her dress was dirty, much mended, and hitched up around her waist at the kirtle to leave her ankles and feet bare.
“And who’s this, Nalyn? Another of your candidates for my betrothal?”
“Hold your cursed tongue, Glae!” Nalyn snapped.
“He’s better-looking than Doclyn, aged or not. No offense, good sir, but my beloved brother-in-law is bound and determined to marry me off to get rid of me, you see. Are you in the market for a young wife, by any chance?”
“Glae!” Nalyn howled. “I said hold your tongue!”
“Don’t give me orders, you afterbirth of a miscarried wormy sow.”
With an anguished glance in Nevyn’s direction Nalyn walked off to the well to wash away the egg. The lass leaned comfortably against the doorjamb and gave Nevyn a brilliant smile that transformed her face for one brief moment. Then she was merely wary, and plain, her eyes too suspicious and cold for beauty.
“Here, good sir, I haven’t even asked your name. Mine’s Glaenara. You must’ve been talking with the village women if you knew we were in the market for a mule.”
“Well, I did happen to speak with Samwna. My name is Nevyn, and that’s a name, not a jest.”
“Indeed? Well, then, Lord Nobody, welcome to our humble farm. Samwna’s a good woman, isn’t she? And her daughter Braedda’s my best friend. As meek as a suckling lamb, but I do like her.”
Glaenara ran her hands down the mule’s legs, thumped it on the chest, then grabbed its head and pried its mouth open to look at its teeth before the startled mule could even object. His wet shirt in his hand, Nalyn came back and watched sourly.
“Now, I’m the one who’s saying if we buy that mule or not.”
“Then take a look at its mouth yourself.”
When Nalyn went to do so, the by now wary mule promptly bit him on the arm. Howling with laughter, Glaenara cuffed the mule so hard that it let go. Nevyn grabbed Nalyn’s arm and looked at it: mule bites could turn nasty, but fortunately, this one hadn’t broken the skin. Nalyn was cursing a steady stream under his breath.
“Just bruised, I’d say,” Nevyn said soothingly. “My apologies.”
“Wasn’t you,” Nalyn growled. “Glae, I’m going to beat you so hard one of these days.”
“Just try.” Glaenara set her hands on her hips and smiled at him.
At that, the other two women came running out of the house. Glaenara’s mother was gray and thin, her face drawn and etched deep with exhausted lines. Her sister was pretty, with less strength but more harmony in her wide-eyed face. Sniveling, the sister caught her husband’s arm and looked up, pleading with him silently. The mother turned to Glaenara.
“Glae, please? Not in front of a stranger.”
With a sigh, Glaenara turned tame, coming over to slip her arm around her mother’s frail waist and give her a kiss on the cheek. Nalyn patted his wife’s arm, looked Nevyn’s way, and blushed again. For a moment they all stood there in a miserable tableau; then Glaenara led her mother back to the house. With one backward glance at Nevyn, the sister hurried after.
“My apologies for my little sister,” Nalyn said.
“My good sir, no man in his right mind would hold you responsible for anything that lass does.”
As he was riding back to the village, Nevyn met Lord Pertyc’s warband, coming two abreast in a cloud of dust. At the head rode the lord himself, a tall but slender man who reminded him strikingly of Prince Mael, his distant ancestor, with his raven-haired Eldidd good looks and heavy-lidded dark blue eyes. Beside him on a gray pony was a young lad of about eight, so much like the lord that Nevyn assumed it was his son. As they passed, Pertyc gave Nevyn a wave and a nod; Nevyn bowed gravely. Behind came ten men with badgers painted on their shields. At the very rear, riding alone in the dust but grinning as cheerfully as ever, was Maer. When he saw Nevyn, he waved.
“I’ve got myself a nice warm spot in a badger’s hole. You brought me good luck, Nevyn.”
“Good, good! I’ve settled into the village. No doubt we’ll see each other from time to time.”

“You know what?” Adraegyn said.
“I don’t,” Maer said. “What?”
“Da says he wants to hire more silver daggers if he can find them.”
“Does he now? Do you know why?”
“I’ll wager there’s going to be a war. Why else would he come fetch me back from Cousin Macco’s?”
“No doubt you’re right, truly.”
Adraegyn considered him for a moment. He was perched on the edge of the watering trough and watching while Maer cleaned his tack. Maer enjoyed the young lordling’s company; as the eldest of a family of seven, he was used to having children tagging after him.
“Do you have to polish that dagger a lot? Silver plates and stuff get dirty truly fast.”
“So they do. But the dagger’s different. It’s not entirely made of silver, you see.”
“Can I look at it? Or is that rude to ask?”
“You can look at mine, but never ask another silver dagger, all right? Most of us are a bit touchy about it. Now be careful. It’s as sharp as the Lord of Hell’s front tooth.”
Grinning, Adraegyn took the dagger and hefted it, then risked a gingerly touch on the blade with the ball of his thumb.
“Have you ever slain a man with this dagger?”
“I haven’t, but then, I haven’t had it very long. Maybe I’ll get my chance if your father rides to war.”
“I wish I could go, but I’m still learning stuff.” Adraegyn sighed dramatically. “And I’ve got to waste all this time learning to read.”
“Truly? Now that’s a strange thing. Why?”
“Da says I have to. All the men in our clan learn to read. It’s one of the things that makes us Maelwaedds.”
In a few minutes the Maelwaedd himself came strolling over to lean on the watering trough beside his son.
“It’s always pleasant to see another man work,” Pertyc said. “Odd, but there you have it.”
“So it is, my lord. Sometimes I’d be traveling and stop to watch some poor bastard of a farmer slaving out in the fields, just to be watching him.”
“Just so. Here, Draego, what are you doing with Maer’s silver dagger?”
“He let me look at it, Da. That’s all.”
“Careful—those things are blasted sharp.”
“I know, Da!” Somewhat reluctantly, Adraegyn handed the dagger back to Maer. “Da, I want to go riding. Can I take my pony down to the village?”
“By all means. Or here.” Pertyc hesistated for a moment. “Maer, go with him, will you? You can use some of the spare tack while yours is drying.”
“Done, my lord.” Maer looked up sharply. “Do you think there might be trouble?”
“The world’s as full of trouble as the sea is full of fish. I don’t think anything just yet, but listen, Draego, from now on, when you want to leave the dun, you tell me first and take one of the men with you.”
“Why? I never used to have to.”
“Do as I say and hold your tongue about it. I’ll tell you more when there’s more to tell.”
There was a fair amount of activity down in Cannobaen that afternoon, because it was market day. Most of the farmers and craftsmen had their goods spread out on blankets on the ground, though the weaver and local blacksmith did have little stalls. As Maer and Adraegyn strolled around, the lad would stop every now and then and ask a villager how his wife was doing or if his children were well, and he managed to remember everyone’s name in a most impressive manner. At the edge of the market, a young woman was sitting behind baskets of eggs. Maer was immediately struck by her. Although she wasn’t beautiful, she was handsome, with a slightly malicious touch to her grin and life sparkling in her blue eyes.
“Who’s that, my lord?” Maer pointed her out.
“Oh, that’s Glae. She and her kin have the farm next to our demesne.”
Maer guided the lad over to Glae and her baskets. Tied up behind her was a mule.
“Good morrow, Glae,” Adraegyn said to her.
“Good morrow, my lord. Come down for a look at your market?”
“I have.” Adraegyn waved at Maer. “This is Maer. He’s my bodyguard now.”
“Oh, is he?” Glae gave Maer a cool appraisal. “And a silver dagger at that.”
“I am.” Maer made her a half bow. “But I beg and pray that you won’t think the less of me for it.”
“Since I think naught of you one way or the other, I can hardly think less of you, can I now?”
Maer opened his mouth and shut it again, suddenly at a loss for words.
“You’ve got a new mule, I see,” Adraegyn said.
“We do, my lord. We bought it from the new herbman in town.”
“There’s someone new in town?” Adraegyn was openly delighted. “Where does he live?”
“In the cottage by Wersyn’s house. And he seems a wise old man indeed, from what Braedda tells me.”
“Come on, Maer. Let’s go meet him. Maybe he’s a dweomerman or suchlike.”
“Oh, now here,” Maer said, grinning. “You do have a taste for the bard’s fancies, don’t you?”
“Well, you never know. Good morrow, Glae. I hope you sell a lot of eggs. Come on now, Maer. Let’s go.”
Maer made Glae one last bow, which she acknowledged with a flick of her eyes, then hurried after his half-sized commander.
They found Nevyn out in the garden in front of his cottage, digging up a flower bed as vigorously as a man a third of his age. Adraegyn hailed him, leaned on the fence, then gasped in sudden delight.
“Oh, your garden’s full of Wildfolk! They’re all dancing round and round.”
Nevyn grunted in sharp surprise. Maer started to laugh, then choked it back for fear of hurting the lad’s feelings—he was already blushing scarlet at his lapse.
“I mean, uh, I’m sorry, I mean, I know there aren’t really Wildfolk . . . ”
“What?” Nevyn’s voice was perfectly mild. “Of course there are Wildfolk. And you were quite right the first time. My garden’s full of them.”
It was nice of the old man, Maer thought, to help the lad over his awkward moment with a little lie. Adraegyn was beaming up at Nevyn.
“You see them, too? Truly?”
“I do.”
Adraegyn spun around to consider Maer.
“And you must, too. You can tell us, Maer. We all do.”
“What, my lord?”
“Well, come on. That big blue sprite follows you all over, you know. She must like you. Don’t you see her?”
For the second time that afternoon, Maer found himself speechless. He stared openmouthed while an awkward silence grew painful.
“My lord,” Nevyn said gently. “Sometimes the Wildfolk take a liking to someone for reasons of their own. I don’t think Maer does see her, or any of them, for that matter. Do you, Maer?”
“I don’t, truly.”
“Now tell me, Maer. Can you see the wind?”
“What? Of course not! No one can see the wind.”
“Just so. But it’s real enough.”
For the briefest of moments Maer found himself wavering. Did Adraegyn and old Nevyn really see Wildfolk? Did those fabled little creatures actually exist? Oh, don’t be a stupid dolt! he told himself. Of course they don’t!
Later, when they rode back to the dun, Lord Pertyc happened to be walking across the ward just as they trotted in the gates. A servant came running to take Adraegyn’s horse. As soon as he was down, the lad ran, dodging away from his father’s affectionate hand and racing for the shelter of the broch.
“Somewhat wrong?” Pertyc said to Maer.
“Uh, well, my lord, your lad wanted to go meet the new herbman in town, so I took him, but truly, I wonder if the old man’s daft.”
“Daft? Did he scare the lad or suchlike?”
“Not at all, but he scared me. Here, my lord, I don’t mean to open old wounds or suchlike, but does young Adraegyn talk about the Wildfolk a lot?”
“Oh, that!” Pertyc smiled in open relief. “That’s all, was it? Did the herbman tease him about it? Well, no doubt the fellow was startled to hear a lad his age still babbling about Wildfolk.”
“Er, not exactly, my lord. The old man says he can see them too.”

Late on the morrow morn, Nevyn was working out in back, planting a few quick-growing herbs and hoping that they would reach a decent size before the days turned short, when he heard a horseman riding up to the cottage. Trowel in hand, he hurried round and saw Lord Pertyc dismounting at the front gate.
“Good morrow, my lord. To what do I owe this honor of a visit? I hope no one’s ill at your dun.”
“Oh, thanks be to holy Sebanna, we’re all healthy enough. Just thought I’d have a chat, since you’re new here and all.”
Nevyn stuck the trowel in his belt and swung open the gate. Pertyc followed him in, looking wide-eyed round the garden as if he expected to see spirits leering out from under every bush. The place was full of spirits, of course, little gray gnomes sucking their fingers, blue sprites, ratty-haired and long-nosed, grinning to show pointed teeth, sylphs like airy crystals, darting this way and that. Inside, near the hearthstone, Wildfolk sat on the table and the bench and climbed on the shelves full of herbs. On the table a leather-bound book lay open.
“Ye gods!” Pertyc said. “That’s my most illustrious ancestor’s book!”
“One of them, at least. Being here made me think of it. Have you ever read it?”
“I take it on, every now and then. When every Maelwaedd man comes of age, his father tells him to read the Ethics. So you plow through a bit, and then your father admits that he could never finish the wretched thing, either, and you know you’re truly a man among men.”
“I see. Won’t you honor me by sitting down, my lord? I can fetch you some ale.”
“Oh, no need.” Pertyc had an anxious eye for the shelves of strange herbs and drugs. “Can’t stay more than a minute, truly. Er, well, you see, there was somewhat I wanted to ask you about.”
“The Wildfolk? I figured that Maer would tell you about what happened.”
“He did indeed. Um, you were just humoring my lad, weren’t you?”
A yellow gnome reached over and closed the book with a little puff of dust. Pertyc yelped.
“I wasn’t, actually.” Nevyn said. “Does his lordship truly doubt that young Adraegyn can see the Wildfolk?”
“Well I can’t say that I do, but I like to keep it in the family, you know.”
“Ah. I take it that his lordship’s wife is a woman of the Westfolk.”
“Well, she was.”
“My apologies, my lord. I didn’t realize that she’d ridding through the gates of the Otherlands.”
“Naught of the sort, if you mean did she die.” A tone of injured pride crept into Pertyc’s voice. “As far as I know, anyway, she’s alive and well and no doubt as nasty and wrong-minded as she ever was. I suppose I’m being unfair. I don’t know how I ever thought she could live in a dun and be the proper wife of a noble lord, but by all the ice in all the hells, she might have tried!”
“I see.” Nevyn suppressed a grin. “I take it that you didn’t stand in her way when she decided to leave.”
“It wouldn’t have mattered one jot if I’d gone down on my knees and begged her to stay.” All at once he turned faintly pink. “But why I’m burdening your ears with all of this, I don’t know. You seem to be an easy man to talk to, Nevyn.”
“My thanks, my lord. It’s a valuable thing in a herbman, being easy to talk to.”
“No doubt. Herbman, huh? Is that all you are?”
“And what else would my lordship think I am?”
“Now, I know that most men would mock the dweomer, good sir, but we Maelwaedd’s don’t. There’s bits and pieces about it in Prince Mael’s books, for one thing, and well, we pass the lore along. We’re like badgers, truly. We hold on.”
“Even to your oath to a foreign king?”
Lord Pertyc’s face went dead white. Nevyn smiled, thinking that this exercise in logic must seem an act of magic.
“We do,” Pertyc said at last. “Aeryc’s the king I swore to serve, and serve him I will.”
“With only ten men, it’s going to be hard to stand against the king’s enemies.”
“I know. A badger can tear one boarhound to pieces, but the pack will get him in the end. But a vow’s a vow, and that’s that. They just might honor my neutrality, or so I can hope, anyway.” All at once his lordship grinned. “Besides, I’ve already hired one silver dagger, so I’ve actually got eleven men now. Maybe more will ride my way.”
“That reminds, my lord. Do you know why the silver daggers never ride together as a troop, the way they did in the old days?”
“Well, one of the kings forbade them to. I suppose they were too dangerous. The kingmakers—that’s what they were called, you know. A warband that’s made a king can unmake one just as easily.” Pertyc frowned, remembering something. “Let’s see, in this book I have at home it says that after the civil wars all the free troops were banned. That’s right, I remember now. It was Maryn’s son. His councillors wanted him to ban the silver daggers, too, but he refused, because of the service they’d paid his father. But he didn’t want an independent army riding round causing trouble, either, so he ruled that they could only hire out as one man or two together.”
“Ah, I see. Well, too bad in a way. You could hire them if only they still existed, eh? But then, maybe this rebellion will stay in Aberwyn.”
Pertyc looked away so fast that Nevyn knew that he had information to the contrary.
“There are times when trouble spreads like fire in dry grass,” Nevyn said. “No one knows which way the wind will blow.”
“Just so. Well, no doubt I’m keeping you from your work. Good day.”

All summer, Glaenara had been curing cheeses in round wooden molds. When the four biggest wheels were ready, she loaded them onto the mule and took them to Lord Pertyc’s dun as part of their taxes. Since it was drowsy-hot, she went barefoot, saving the leather of her one pair of shoes for the winter. Although Nalyn kept urging her to get some boots made down in the village, she preferred to scant herself rather than take what she thought of as his charity. Until Nalyn appeared, Glaenara had been the strong one in the family, keeping up her mother and sister’s spirits after her father died, working harder than most lads to scrape a subsistence living out of their farm. Just when I’m old enough to plow like a man, he comes strolling in, she thought bitterly. But there was no doubt that Mam and Lida were happier now. Perhaps that was the worst blow of all.
The gates to Dun Cannobaen stood open, and the ward was its usual slow confusion—servants strolling about their tasks, the riders sitting out in the sun dicing for coppers, Lord Pertyc himself lounging on the steps with a tankard of ale. Glaenara dropped him a curtsy, which he acknowledged by getting up. Although she considered herself a world below him, Glaenara was fond of her local lord because he was a kind man, and his unfortunate marriage had given everyone something exciting to talk about for years now. Rulers have been loved, after all, for a good deal less.
“Looks like cheese,” Pertyc said. “What kind, yellow or white?”
“Yellow, my lord. It’s awfully good.”
Pertyc set his tankard down and drew his dagger to cut himself off a slice. When he took a bite, he nodded in satisfaction.
“So it is. Goes well with ale, an important thing round here, truly.”
Pertyc cut himself another, thicker slice, retrieved is ale, and returned to his steps. Glaenara led the mule round back to the kitchen door and began unloading the cheese. She’d just swung two wheels out when Maer the silver dagger came running up and made her a low bow.
“Now here, fair maid, those look heavy. Let me carry them for you.”
“Not heavy at all. Only twenty pound each.”
Maer, however, insisted on hefting three and leaving her only one to carry into the kitchen. As he laid his wheels down on the long wooden table, it occurred to Glaenara that he was trying to be polite to her. The idea came as a surprise.
“Well, my thanks,” she said.
“Oh, I’d pay you any service gladly.”
Another surprise: he was flirting with her. Caught off guard, Glaenara turned away and began talking with the cook, an old friend of her mother’s, leaving Maer to hover helplessly in the doorway. She was hoping that he would just go away, but he waited until she and the cook were done with their chat. As she was leaving, Maer grabbed the mule’s lead rope and led him to the gates for her.
“Truly, it was good to see you,” Maer said.
“Was it? Why?”
“Well, uh.” Maer began fiddling with the end of the lead rope. “Well, it’s always good to see a pretty lass, truly. Especially one with spirit.”
Glaenara snorted and grabbed the rope back from him.
“My thanks for helping me haul the cheese. I’ve got to get back to my work.”
“Can I walk with you a ways?”
“You can’t. Or . . . wait a minute. You said you’d pay me a service?”
“I will. Just name it.”
“Then shave that beastly mustache off. It makes your face look dirty and naught more.”
Maer howled, clapping a hand over his upper lip in self-defense. Glae marched away, sure that she’d seen the last of him. Yet that very afternoon, she was taking a couple of buckets of vegetable scraps out to the hogs when she saw him leading his horse in through the gates. She stopped and stared; the mustache was gone, sure enough. Nalyn came strolling over with a hoe in his hands and gave Maer a cold looking-over.
“Good morrow, sir,” Maer said. “I was wanting to speak to Glaenara, you see.”
“Oh, were you now? And just what do you want with my sister?”
“And what’s it to you who I talk with?” Glaenara snapped.
“Now hold your tongue. I just want to get a look at a man who comes courting you with a silver dagger in his belt.”
“Now here!” Maer put it, but feebly. “I’ve got honorable intentions, I assure you.”
Nalyn and Glaenara both ignored him and turned to glare at each other.
“You’re too young to judge a man,” Nalyn snarled. “I’ve had the experience to know a rotten apple from a sound one.”
“Who are you calling rotten?”
“No one—yet. Maybe I’m only married kin, but I’m the only brother you’ve got, and cursed if I’ll let you hang about talking with silver daggers and other scum of the road.”
“Don’t you call Maer scum! I won’t stand for it.”
“Oh, won’t you now?” Nalyn said with a smug little grin. “And how do you know his name, and how come you’re so quick to defend him?”
Glaenara grabbed one of her buckets of pig slops, swung, and emptied it over Nalyn’s head.
“I’ll talk to who I want to!”
Predictably, the noise brough Lidyan running—and shrieking at the sight of her husband covered with carrot peels and radish leaves. Maer doubled over laughing.
“Flowers to the fair,” Maer choked out. “And slops to the hogs. Ye gods, you’ve got a good hand with the bucket. He should be glad you weren’t sweeping out the cow barn!”
A piece of carrot peel had flown his way and stuck to his shirt. He plucked it off and handed it to Glaenara with a courtly bow.
“A small token of my esteem. Now I’d best get out of here before your brother takes a hoe to me.”
“Brother-in-law, that’s all. And don’t you forget it.”
The next time Glaenara went to market, she sold all her cheese and eggs early in the day, then went over to the inn. As she was tying up the mule out back, Braedda, Samwna’s pretty blond daughter, came running out to catch Glaenara’s arm and lean close like a conspirator. They were exactly the same age, although Braedda looked younger, just because her hands were soft and her face had been spare the rough winds of the fields.
“Ganedd and his father got home last night,” Braedda said, giggling.
“Oh, wonderful! Is your father going to ask about the betrothal?”
“He’s going over this evening, right after dinner. Oh, Glae, I can hardly wait! I want to marry Ganno so bad.”
Out in the back of the stables was a shed, filled with sacks of milled oats and tied shocks of hay. Glaenara and Braedda went there, as they usually did, to talk out of the hearing of her parents. They’d barely started their gossip, though, when Ganedd himself appeared, opening the door without knocking. He was a tall lad, filling out to a man built more like a warrior than a merchant, with pale blue eyes and golden hair, a sign that somewhere in his clan’s history was some Deverry blood.
“I’d best go,” Glaenara said. “I’ll be in for the market next week, Brae.”
Ganedd smiled briefly, then gallantly opened the door for her. As she led the mule out of the village, Glaenara was wishing she felt less jealous of her friend’s good fortune. Although she rather disliked Ganedd, he was a far better catch than any man that was likely to come courting her. Just as she was turning into the road, she happened across Nevyn, riding in. He made her a bow from the saddle, surprisingly limber for one who looked so old.
“In for the market, were you?”
“I was, sir. And a good day to you.”
He smiled, then suddenly leaned forward, staring into her eyes. For a moment she felt as if she’d been turned to stone and his cold gaze was a chisel, slicing into her soul; then he released her with a small nod.
“And a good day to you, lass. Oh, wait, I just thought of somewhat. Would you like to earn four coppers a week, doing my laundry and sweeping out my cottage and suchlike?”
“I would indeed.”
“Splendid! Then come in tomorrow, because I’m afraid I’ve let things pile up a bit. After this, two mornings a week should do it.”
“Well and good, then. I’ll be in before noon.”

As he rode his way, Nevyn was thinking of the strange vagaries of Wyrd. The last time he’d known this woman, she’d been queen of all Deverry and the virtual regent of Cerrmor while her royal husband was on campaign. The oddest thing of all, though, wasn’t the obvious change in her fortunes; it was that he’d pitied her even more when she’d been queen.

Out in the paddock behind the merchant’s big wooden house, twelve Western Hunter colts nibbled at the grass or stood drowsing head down in the warm sun, blood bays and chestnuts, mostly, but off to one side was a perfect strawberry roan, Ganedd’s favorite. When he leaned on the fence, the roan came over to have his ears scratched.
“I’m thinking of giving that colt to the gwerbret in Aberwyn,” Wersyn said. “It’s been a while since I’ve given his grace a token of our esteem.”
“This lad will make a good warhorse, truly.”
“Just so. You know, I think I’ll let you be the one to deliver him to his grace. It’s time he knew your name as my heir.”
“Uh, well, Da, I’ve been thinking, and . . . ”
“You’re not going to sea! I’m sick to death of having this discussion. You’re my son, and we deal in horses, and that’s that.”
“You’ve got Avyl! He’s your son, too, isn’t he? He’ll make a fine horse trader! You say so yourself.”
“You’re the eldest son, and that’s that.”
Wersyn had his arms crossed over his chest, a sure sign that arguing was futile. Ganedd turned on his heel and stalked off in the direction of town. At times he wished that he had the guts to just run away. If he could only find a merchant captain who wouldn’t mind offending his father . . . but that was worse than unlikely down in Aberwyn, where Wersyn was an important man in the guild. His aimless walk brought him to his grandmother’s cottage and the new herbman in town, who was grubbing away in the garden. When Ganedd leaned on the fence to watch, the old man straightened up, wiped his hands on a bit of rag, then strolled over to say good morrow.
“And does the cottage suit you, sir?” Ganedd said. “If it needs repair, I can try to set things right.”
“Good of you, lad, but so far, everything’s just fine. I hear you and your father are going to Aberwyn soon.”
“Tomorrow morning, actually, with the dawn. We’ve got some tribute to pay to Gwerbret Aberwyn, and then there’s going to be a big meeting of the merchant guild.”
“Interesting. What about?”
“I’m not allowed to discuss it, sir, with someone who isn’t in the guild.”
“All right, then. I’ll wager you enjoy going to Aberwyn, though.”
“Oh, I certainly do! Ye gods, life is so beastly boring here in Cannobaen.”
“No doubt, but don’t you go with your father when he trades with the Westfolk?”
“Of course, but so what? They’re just the Westfolk.”
“Ah. I see.”
And Ganedd was left with the infuriating feeling that the old man was doing his best not to laugh at him.

That very evening their two fathers arranged the wedding pact, but the formalities of life demanded that Braedda’s father come ask Lord Pertyc’s permission to formalize the betrothal of his daughter to Ganedd the merchant’s son. Technically, Wersyn should have come with him, but he was already on his way to Aberwyn with his son and the loan of his lordship’s silver dagger as well, for a guard. Pertyc approved the betrothal, stood the man a goblet of mead in celebration, then sent him on his way with his best wishes. The innkeep was only a few hours gone when Tieryn Danry turned up at Pertyc’s gates with an escort of ten men.
All that afternoon, while they drank together in the great hall and talked idly about everything but the rebellion, Pertyc was aware of Danry studying him like a tactical problem. Over breakfast the next day, when Danry suggested that they go hunting alone rather than organizing a full-scale stag hunt, Pertyc felt a confrontation coming, but he agreed simply to have it over with. When they rode out, they took only a lad with a pack mule and some dogs with them. Danry carried the usual short hunting bow; Pertyc had a yew longbow, mounted with silver, that had been a wedding gift from his wife’s brother.
At the edge of the forest, they left the lad with the horses and went alone on foot to see if they could flush a deer. The dogs, a pair of the sleek gray breed called gwertrae, were eager, whining as they sniffed round for tracks and nosed their way through the bracken and fern. Above them rose the ancient oaks, casting a shade cold with a hint of winter coming. Pertyc and Danry had hunted together this way a hundred times, picking their way down narrow trails as silently as the wild animals they sought. Pertyc found himself wishing they were both lads again, too young to be troubled by obligations and vows and the need to ride to war. When at length they came to a clearing where the sun came down in a long golden shaft onto the leaf-littered ground, Danry whistled sharply to the dogs and brought them back to heel.
“They haven’t even found us a trail yet,” Pertyc said.
Danry turned to him with a faint smile.
“My answer’s still the same,” Pertyc went on. “I won’t ride with you in the spring.”
“As stubborn as a badger, truly. But I came to tell you somewhat, and if you love me, then never say where you heard it.”
“You know I’ll keep silent.”
“Well and good. Then listen, Perro, things are growing nasty. You were wise to bring your lad home. I’m not the only man who had thoughts about your claim to the throne. There are some who’d be glad to put little Draego in your place.”
“They’ll have to kill me to get at the lad.”
“That’s just what they might do.”
Pertyc went cold, standing in the warm shaft of autumn sun.
“He wouldn’t be the first child to have a throne won for him by grown men,” Danry said. “Now listen, I don’t know any more than rumors. No one’s going to speak honestly of such things in front of me, because they know you’re my oath-sworn friend. It would be a long sight easier to stop the talk if you were one of us.”
Pertyc looked away.
“If they come for the lad, how are you going to stop them?” Danry said. “You can’t afford an army. Ah, ye gods, I feel torn apart, Perro.”
“Then maybe you should join me and the king.”
Danry winced, shaking his head in honest pain.
“I can’t. My honor would never let me rest.”
“No more would mine if I joined the rebels. I’ll warn you somewhat. If your allies decide to try for my lad, then get ready to watch me die.”
Danry came close to weeping. At his feet, the gwertroedd whined, dancing a step away, then coming reluctantly back to heel. Far off in the forests, a bird sang, a flood of defiant melody in the shadows.
“And if I die, and you live,” Pertyc said slowly, “I’ll beg you to watch over Adraegyn for me. He’ll need a faithful dog if he’s surrounded by wolves.”
Danry nodded his agreement. Pertyc hesitated, considering saying more, but there was nothing to say. He wanted to have one last day with his friend when they could pretend that things were as they’d always been.
“Let’s get on with the hunt, shall we?”
Danry threw up his hand and sent the eager hounds forward. They coursed slowly through the woods for another hour, neither of them speaking, the dogs growing sullen and frustrated, until at last the lead gwertrae stiffened, tossing up its head. An arrow nocked ready in his bow, Pertyc jogged after until, all at once, they heard a crash and rustle as a deer broke cover, and the hounds shot forward as fast as arrows, yapping after a young doe. An arrow whistled: Danry’s first shot, bouncing off a tree, way too short. Pertyc fell into his stance, raised his bow, and loosed all in one smooth motion. The doe reared up and fell, stumbled a few steps, then fell again as the dogs threw themselves upon her. Drawing his dagger, Pertyc ran for them, but she was already dead, skewered neatly through the heart. Shouting, Pertyc kicked the gwertroedd away. Danry came running, tossing his bow down, and grabbed the whining hounds by the collars.
“Ye gods, man!” Danry said, grinning. “You’ve got the best hand with a bow in all of Eldidd!”
Pertyc merely smiled, thinking that his wife could best him without half trying. While Dantry was forcing the dogs to lie down away from the kill, he set his foot against the doe’s neck and pulled the arrow out with both hands. Unbroken, it was worth straightening. As he examined the fletching for splits, he was thinking of his wife, remembering the stories she’d told him of wars long fought and over. His heart began to pound in a sudden gruesome hope. When he looked up to find Danry watching him, he felt as guilty as a caught burglar.
“Perro? I’ll beg you. Please join us.”
“I can’t. I’m too much of a badger, my friend.”
“Ah, by the hells! Well, so be it.”
Their afternoon was over, the last time they could love each other without the love turning to nightmare. Pertyc turned away before he wept.
Late that night, when the rest of the clan was asleep, Pertyc went up to his study and lit a pair of candles in a silver sconce. As a draft caught the flames, shadows flew back and forth across walls and filled his mind with thoughts of winter, his last winter alive, or so he was counting it. He was determined, though, that his death would cost his enemies a price as high as he could set it.
“And would it be true dishonor,” he said to one of the stag’s heads on the wall, “to bring longbows back into Eldidd? I’ve always been told so. The question is, do I give the fart of a two-copper pig about the dishonor? Our rebels, my cervine friend, are being a good bit more dishonorable with their wretched plots.”
In the blown shadows the stag’s eyes seemed to move, pondering his logic; but he never did answer. Pertyc found his ancestor’s books, actually a collection of treatises, bound up for the clan in two volumes, stamped with the clan device on the pale leather covers, and massive things, weighing a good fifteen pounds each. He propped the second one up on the lectern, lit more candles, and stood to turn the pages. Touching the book was a comfort all its own, because it gave him palpable contact with his history, all those other Maelwaedd lords, going back a hundred years to the disclaimed prince himself. He doubted, though, that his clan would live after his own coming death. Once a rebel faction proclaimed Adraegyn royal, the High King would have to choice but to kill the boy.
“Ah, stuff the dishonor, then!” he said to the stag’s head. “They’re murdering my lad, just by trying to put him on a throne that isn’t his. I’ve got every right to skewer as many of the miserable bastards as I can before the end. We’ll see if I can get those merchants to ride west for me—well, once they get themselves back home, anyway.”
Then he returned to his reading, which gave him a surprise of quite another sort.
In the morning, Danry took his leave, riding out at the head of his escort with a cheery wave of his hand and a jest for his last farewell. Pertyc had the groom saddle him up a horse, then rode straight to Nevyn’s cottage. As he walked through the garden, hot and hushed in the sunlight, Pertyc had the uneasy feeling that eyes were watching him, but although he peered into every shadow, he saw nothing but turned earth and growing things. When he knocked, Nevyn opened the door and ushered him in with a bow.
“Good morrow, my lord. To what do I owe this honor?”
“Oh, I just wanted a word with you.”
Nevyn smiled, waiting pleasantly. Pertyc glanced around the room, filled with the rich mingled smell of a hundred herbs and roots and barks, bitter and sweet, dry and sharp all diffusing together in the sunlit air.
“I was reading my ancestor’s book last night, you see, and I came across a most curious passage about the dweomer. It was in the book of Qualities. Have you read that, by any chance?”
“I have, but it was a very long time ago.”
“No doubt. Let me refresh your memory about this one bit, then. The most noble prince was discussing whether dweomer exists, you see, and he remarks that he once knew a dweomerman.”
“Oh, did he now? I think I begin to recall the passage.”
“No doubt. It would be a great honor to have one’s name recorded in a book for me to remember down the long years.”
Nevyn considered him with a small frown, then suddenly laughed.
“His lordship has quick wits. He’s most worthy of his noble ancestor’s name.”
“By the hells! You mean I’ve guessed right?”
“About what? You don’t really think that I’m the self-same man that knew Prince Mael, do you?”
“Er, well, it did seem to fantastical to be true . . . ”
“Indeed.” The old man considered for a moment, as if he were debating something in his mind. “Here, if you promise to keep this to yourself, I’ll tell you the truth. The name of Nevyn is a kind of honorary title, passed down from master to apprentice just like a lord passes his title to a son. When one Nevyn grows old and dies, then a new one appears.”
Pertyc felt embarassed as a page caught in some lapse of etiquette. Nevyn grinned at him in an oddly sly way, as if the old man had just done something that pleased him mightily.
“And did you come to ask me that, my lord, and naught more? His lordship seems troubled. Is it all because of the dweomer?”
“You’ll have to forgive me, good sir. I have so much on my mind these days.”
“No doubt. So must every lord in Eldidd.”

If it weren’t for Danry, Pertyc would have told the entire tale to the dweomerman there and then, but his oath-sworn friend was up to his neck in treason.
“Eldidd is always full of troubles.” Pertyc chose his words carefully. “Few of them come to much.”
“Those few that do can be deadly.”
“True-spoken. That’s why our Mael listed prudence among his noble qualities. It pays to be ready for trouble, even if none comes.”
Nevyn’s eyes seemed to cut through to his soul, as sharp as a sword thrust.
“I’m well aware that you and your son have a tenuous claim to the Eldidd throne.”
“I have no claim at all in any true or holy sense of that word.”
“Qualities such as the true and the holy are held in general disrespect in most parts of the kingdowm. That’s a quote from your ancestor’s book. It seems he was farsighted enough to deserve the name of Seer.”
Pertyc rose, pacing restlessly over to the hearth.
“Let me guess what you’re too honorable to tell me,” Nevyn went on. “Every friend you have is in this rebellious muck too deep to get out again, and so you’re being torn to pieces between your loyalty to them and your loyalty to the king.”
“How—ah, ye gods, dweomer indeed!”
“Naught of the sort. Mere logic. Let me ask only one thing: are you going to fight for the king or try and stay neutral?”
“Neutral, if only the gods will allow. And let me ask you the same. Are you a king’s man or neutral in this scrap?”
“I belong to the people of this kingdom, lad, not king nor lord nor usurper. And that’s all the answer you’re going to get from me.”

The great guildhall of Aberwyn was hot. Every one of the long rank of windows help diamond-paned glass—an enormous luxury but a stifling one as the sun poured through onto the packed crowd. A hundred men sat solemnly on long benches down on the blue and gray slate floor, while up on the dais stood a row of carved chairs filled with the guild officers, all in their ceremonial cloaks of bright-colored checked wool. At one end of this impressive line, the guild’s chief scribe snored shamelessly. In his seat down on the floor, Ganedd wished that he could do the same, but every time he nodded off, his father elbowed him in the ribs. All afternoon, the debate raged over the matter of loaning two thousand silver pieces to the gwerbret of Aberwyn. Although no one ever mentioned why the gwerbret wanted the coin, the knowledge was as cloying as the heat, making it hard to think clearly. A successful rebellion meant freedom from Deverry taxes, freedom from the Deverry guilds, and a certain heady rush of pride in independence. Failure, of course, meant losing the money down to the last copper. After the formal meeting droned to a halt, close to sunset, the debate continued in private inn chambers or over dinner tables in wealthy merchant houses. There in whispers among a few men at a time, rose the simple question: could the gwerbrets win or not?
“And even if they do win, what’s next?” Wersyn said. “There’s two great gwerbrets in Eldidd and only one throne. Ye gods, it gives me a headache, thinking about them turning on each other once the first war is over.”
“Well, we’ve got to start thinking about this kind of thing, Da,” Ganedd said. “We’re going to vote on the loan tomorrow.”
“True enough, but you’d better vote the way I tell you when the time comes.”
They were in their luxurious inn chamber, waiting for two of Wersyn’s old friends to join him for another private discussion. Among flagons of Bardek wine a small cold supper was laid out on a linen-covered table.
“If I’m voting the way you say, can I go down to the tavern room tonight? No need for me to listen, is there, if you’re going to make my mind up for me.”
“You nasty little cub.” Wersyn said it without real rancor. “Just don’t come in staggering drunk until my guests have gone. Ye gods! Sometimes I wonder where I got a son like you. Wanting to go to sea! Drinking! Humph!”
Since they were staying in an expensive inn, the tavern room was big and clean, with glass lanterns hanging every few feet along the whitewashed walls, but all the serving girls were respectable and watched over by a paternal tavernman who seemed determined to keep them that way. Down in one corner, out of the way by the kitchen door, Ganedd found Maer, drinking ale alone and doing his best to behave himself.
“Aren’t you going to discuss grave affairs of state with your da and his friends?”
“I’m not. They won’t listen to me, and it drives me half mad. This scheme is daft, Maer. They keep talking about how many riders the rebels can raise when what they need to be talking about is ships.”
“Huh? What have ships got to do with it?”
“Not you, too! Look, as the king marches south from Dun Deverry to Cerrmor, what does he find along the way? Loyal vassals, that’s what, with nice fat demesnes that support big warbands. Then when he gets to Cerrmor, what does he find?”
“Ships.” Maer sat up straight and began thinking. “Ships to deliver all those men to Abernaudd and Aberwyn in about half the time they could ride.”
“Right. And the rebels don’t have a third of the galleys they need to stop him.”
“Hum.” Maer thoughtfully chewed on his lower lip. “Too bad you can’t go for a marine officer, Ganno, on one of his grace’s galleys. You’ve got the mind for it.”
“That’s a splendid idea, you know, and one I never thought of. I wonder . . . but we won’t be in Aberwyn much longer this trip, so I can’t go ask his grace. What do you say we go see what kind of lasses work in the taverns closer to the docks? I nipped some of Da’s coin from his pouch when he wasn’t looking.”
“Did you now? Well, if you don’t mind me helping you spend it, I’m on.”
It was well into the third watch when Ganedd came stumbling up the stairs of the inn. As he let himself into their chambers, he tripped, falling onto his hands and knees with a curse and a clatter. Just as he was picking himself up, Wersyn came out of the bedchamber with a candle lantern in his hand. Ganedd grabbed the edge of the table to steady himself and forced out a weak smile.
“I can smell the mead from way over here,” Wersyn announced. “And a good bit more than mead, I must say. Cheap perfume, is it?”
“Well, I waited until your guests left, didn’t I?”
“I suppose I should be thanking the gods for giving you one little crumb of good sense. Look at you—like a prize bull, properly bred and twice as sweaty! And you’re drunk, and you stole from me, and—” He sputtered briefly, then took a deep breath. “Ye gods, Ganno! Do you know how late it is? You’ve been out carousing most of the night. And now you’re going to go staggering into the guildhall, I suppose, with your eyes as red as a weasel’s, and everyone will know what you were up to. By the Lord of Hell’s black ass, what will people think of me for having a son like you?”
Wersyn strode back into his bedchamber. When he slammed the door behind him and his candle, the reception chamber went dark. Stumbling over furniture, Ganedd found his way to his own bedchamber, fell down on the bed fully dressed, and passed out.
But he woke in the morning in a sullen temper. During breakfast, which he could barely eat, he had difficulty looking at his father, who prattled on about lower taxes as if the rebellion were already won.
“Now remember what I said about the vote this morning,” Wersyn announced finally.
Ganedd tried to swallow a spoonful of barley porridge, then shoved the bowl away as a bad job.
“The loan’s going through no matter what we think about it,” Wersyn continued. “So when it comes to the vote, we’re giving our approval too.”
Ganedd started to argue, then got up and rushed out of the room. He never made it to the privy, but no one cared when he heaved the contents of his stomach onto the dungheap out back of the inn.
The vote on the loan was the last item on the guild’s agenda, rather as though the master were putting it off as long as possible in the vain hope that some omen might make the decision easier. Ganedd sat sullenly on his bench—way at the back since he’d come in late—and nursed the mead-sick throb in his temples and the queasiness in his stomach. All at once, a bustle on the dais caught his attention. The guildmaster rose, tossed his cloak back from one shoulder, and blew on his silver horn to bring the meeting to order, the long sweet note echoing through the abruptly silent hall. Sunlight hung heavy on the sea of color that was the finery of the guild: gold-shot banners, checks and stripes of all colors on cloak and brigga, rainbow-hued tapestries on the painted walls.
“We come now to the matter of the loan of two thousand silver pieces to his grace, Gwerbret Aberwyn,” the guildmaster called out. “Is there any more debate to be laid before the convocation?”
Silence, stillness—no one spoke or moved. The guildmaster raised his horn to his lips and blew again.
“Very well. Those in favor, to the right. Those against, to the left. Scribe, stand ready to count and record the numbers.”
Slowly, a few at a time, the men rose, starting in the front of the hall, and walked to the right, so unanimously that the motion was as smooth as uncoiling a rope. Ganedd watched as first his father took a place at the right, then his father’s close friends trotted meekly after. His row, the last, began to get up. Ganedd followed them free of the benches, then abruptly turned and marched to the left side of the hall. He’d be cursed and frozen in the third hell before he’d back a doomed scheme like this one. It was also the sweetest pleasure he’d ever tasted to see his father’s face literally turn purple with rage. Ganedd crossed his arms over his chest and grinned as the entire guild gasped and stared; whiskered faces, lean faces, shrewd eyes, watery eyes, but all of them outraged.
“Done, then,” the guildmaster called. “Scribe, what is your count?”
“Ninety and seven in favor, two members missing from the count, and one against.”
“There’s one man in Eldidd who’ll hold for the true king,” Ganedd yelled. “You stinking cowards!”
At the shriek that rose he felt as if he’d heaved a rock into the middle of a flock of geese. The men swirled around, nudging each other, whispering and cursing, then shouting and cursing, louder and louder as they milled through the hall. Ganedd had said it out, the one unsayable truth: they were voting treason. Ganedd started laughing as the guild broke, hurrying away, muttering among themselves as they all tried to pretend they’d never heard a thing. Wersyn came running and slapped him so hard across the face that Ganedd staggered back against the wall.
“You foul little cub!” Wersyn howled. “How could you? Ye gods, I’ll kill you for this!”
“Go ahead. I won’t be the last man to die in the war.”
Cursing a steady stream, Wersyn grabbed his arm and dragged him across the hall. Ganedd followed meekly, laughing under his breath. He’d never had such a splendid time in his life. But his pleasure ended once they were back in their inn chambers. Shaking in fury, Wersyn shoved Ganedd into a chair and began pacing around, his hands clenched, his eyes snapping.
“You rotten little bastard! This tears it once and for all! I’m sending you straight back home. I can’t hold my head up if I’ve got a son like this at my side. How could you? Why? Ganno, for the love of every god—why?”
“Just to see what would happen, mostly. You all looked so wretchedly pleased with yourselves.”
Wersyn strode over and slapped him again.
“You’re taking Maer and getting out of here today. Get your things and go! I want you out of my sight.”
All the time Ganedd packed, all the time he was saddling his horse, Wersyn went on yelling at him, calling him a fool and a demon-spawned ungrateful whelp, a worthless dolt and a turd dropped by a spavined mare. The entire innyard and Maer as well listened to this lecture with visible curiosity. Once Wersyn had stormed inside, and they were leading their horses out into the town, the silver dagger could stand it no more.
“Ye gods, is he that blasted furious over one whore?”
“Last night’s got naught to do with it. Remember the gwerbret’s loan? It came to a vote today, and I was the only man who voted against it.”
Maer stared at him with a sudden flattering respect.
“Here, that took guts.”
“Did it? Maybe so.”
At the west-running road the city gates were standing open. Just outside they found another merchant, an old family friend named Gurcyn, standing by his horse and yelling orders as his muleteers organized his caravan. Ganedd threw his reins to Maer and strode over to speak with him, just as a last defiance.
“Good morrow,” Ganedd said. “Leaving so soon?”
Gurcyn looked him over, not anywhere near as coldly as Ganedd was expecting, but he said nothing.
“Go on,” Ganedd went on. “Tell me what you think of me. I’m giving you the chance, rebel.”
“All I think is that you’re a bit lacking in wits, though long on nerve. This thing’s going to be remembered. Here, did your father send you home in disgrace?”
“Just that. And what about you? I’m surprised you’re not staying to celebrate your treason with the rest of them.”
“Oh, hold your tongue! Roosters who strut too much end up in the soup kettle. As for me, my wife’s been ill, and I’ve got to get home straightaway. Good morrow, lad, and by the gods of our people, watch what you say, will you?”
As Gurcyn walked away, shouting to his men, Maer led their horses over.
“Who was that? One of the guild?”
“Just so. Why?”
“I’ve seen him before.” Maer’s eyes narrowed in hard thought. “Probably in some tavern, but you know, I think it was up in Dun Deverry, right after my lord kicked me out of Blaeddbyr, like, and I was riding west.”
“Maybe it was. A good guildsman rides wherever the coin calls, and Dun Deverry calls in a lot of coin. Come on, let’s get on the cursed road.”

Although Ganedd was usually good company, on the ride back home he fell into long cold silences and refused to be drawn out, not even by jests, thus leaving Maer with a lot of time to think—an unfamiliar activity and one that he preferred to avoid whenever possible. Now, however, he had a number of strange things to think about, starting with old Nevyn the herbman. When they’d first met back in Aberwyn, Maer had barely noticed him, but as they’d ridden west together, Maer had found himself oppressed by the growing feeling that he’d known the old man before, an acquaintance that was logically impossible because Nevyn insisted that he’d never been anywhere near Blaeddbyr in all the years since Maer was born, and while Maer was travelling as a silver dagger, the old man was over in Bardek.
Added to that, of course, Lord Pertyc thought that Nevyn was a sorcerer, which meant that Lord Pertyc believed that the dweomer craft was a real thing. Every now and then Maer would bring this idea to mind, like taking a strange coin out of a pouch, and turn it over and over between mental fingers, wondering at it. Since Maer had been raised to follow the noble-born without doubt or question, he supposed that if Pertyc said the old man was a sorcerer, then sorcerer he was. He supposed. He held the thought up to the mental light one more time, shook his head, and put it away again. Maybe sometime soon it would make sense. Maybe.
Finally there was the matter of the Wildfolk. Ever since young Adraegyn and the old man had discussed them that one afternoon, Maer had, again quite against his will, found himself thinking that perhaps they did indeed exist and that just maybe one of them was following him around, just as the lad said. His evidence for this was thin, and he did his best to ignore it. It was just that every now and then he felt something touch his arm or his hair; even more rarely, when he was riding, he felt tiny arms clasp his waist as if someone sat behind him on the saddle. Occassionally he saw a bush or branch move as if something stood within or upon it, or one of Lord Pertyc’s dogs would suddenly leap up and bark for no reason, or one of the horses would suddenly stamp and swing its head around to look at something that Maer couldn’t see. Once, when he was drinking a foaming tankard of ale and all alone at table, a tiny breath had blown the foam right into his face as he went for a sip. It was beginning to make his flesh creep, all of it. He would have wished that they’d stop and leave him alone, except wishing meant admitting that someone existed to do the stopping. He wasn’t ready to admit that, not in the least.
Yet he kept gathering new evidence in spite of his attempts to ignore it. As their horses ambled the last few miles to Cannobaen, Ganedd’s silence grew as black and cold as a winter storm. Maer amused himself by looking at the now familiar scenery: off to his left the clifftop meadows and the sparkling sea, the rich fields to his right, striped here and there with stands of trees, all second growth planted for firewood. Scarlet and gold, the leaves already hung thin and bare along the branches, especially on the trees planted next to the road that received the full force of the sea winds. It was in one of these that Maer saw, clear as clear, a little face peering at him. It was a pretty face, obviously female, with long dark blue hair and big blue eyes, staring at him wistfully. When Maer stared back, she suddenly smiled, revealing a mouthful of long pointed teeth. Maer yelped aloud.
“What?” Ganedd roused himself. “What’s so wrong?”
“Don’t you see it? Look! Right there, on that low branch.”
“See what? Maer, are you going daft? There’s naught there.”
“It’s a windless day and the leaves are shaking.”
“Then some bird flew away or somewhat. What are you doing? Falling asleep in the saddle and dreaming?”
“Well, I guess so. Sorry.”
With a melancholy sigh Ganedd went back to his brooding. Maer cursed himself for a fool and took up the job of convincing himself that he’d seen nothing. He’d just about succeeded when he noticed Nevyn, some hundred yards away, digging a few roots out on the clifftops. As they passed, the herbman straightened up and waved, just pleasantly, but his simple presence suddenly struck Maer like an omen. It was all he could do to wave back.

It was the next market day that Glaenara sold the last of the cheeses. She was just packing up to go home when she saw a rider leading his horse through the crowded square: Maer, his silver dagger bright at his belt. She wasn’t sure if she hoped he’d stop or not, but he took the matter out of her hands by doing just that.
“And is your bilge-mouthed brother in town today?”
“He’s not. What’s it to you?”
“Well, I brought you somewhat of a present from Aberwyn, and I didn’t want him to see me give it to you.” Maer took a packet wrapped in a bit of white linen out of his shirt and handed it over.
“My thanks, Maer. Truly.”
He merely smiled, watching as she unwrapped the cloth and found a small bronze mirror, a circle that fit neatly into the palm of her hand. On one side was a bit of silvered glass, held in place by a band of knotwork wires; on the other was a fancy design of laced spirals.
“I wanted to get the silver one,” Maer said, sighing, “but coins flow from silver daggers like chickens run from foxes.”
“It doesn’t matter. This is lovely. Ye gods, I’ve never had a mirror before. My thanks. Truly, my thanks.”
Glaenara held the mirror up. By angling her head, she could see her reflection a bit at a time, and a lot more clearly than in the reflection from a bucket of water. Much to her horror, there was a bit of dirt stuck on her cheek. Hastily she wiped it off.
“A pretty lass like you should have a mirror of her own.”
“Do you truly think I’m pretty? I don’t.”
He looked so shocked that she was embarassed.
“Well,” Maer said thoughtfully. “Truly, pretty isn’t the right word, is it? As handsome as a wild horse or a trout leaping from a stream, not pretty like a rose in some lord’s garden.”
“Then my thanks.” Glaenara busied herself with wrapping the mirror up in the cloth again, but she felt herself blush with pleasure. “And what errand are you running?”
“Well, our Badger wanted a word with Ganedd the merchant’s son. Cursed if I know why, but I’m taking the lad a letter. I can’t read, or I would have sneaked a look. It’s not sealed.”
“It would have been dishonorable.”
“Of course, but ye gods, I’ve always been a curious sort of man. Ah, well, it’s beyond me anyway, all this wretched writing. Will you come into town next week?”
“I might, I might not. It depends on the chickens.”
“Then I’ll pray to the Goddess to let them lay more eggs than your family can possibly eat and that my lord will let me come down to town.”
After Maer left, Glaenara counted up her coin. She had just enough to buy a length of cloth to make herself that new dress that Nalyn had been nagging her about. If she worked hard, sitting outside every evening to get the last of the sunlight, she could have the dress finished by next market day.

Ganedd sat uneasily on the edge of his chair and held his goblet of mead in nervous fingers. The lad was wearing a pair of blue-and-gray-checked brigga and a shirt heavily worked in flowers—his best clothes, Pertyc assumed, for his visit to the noble-born.
“No doubt you’re wondering why I asked you up here. I’ll come straight to the point. My silver dagger told me that you voted against the rebellion in Aberwyn. I’m holding for the king myself. It gladdens my heart that you do the same.”
“My thanks, my lord, but I don’t know what the two of us can do about it.”
“Naught more than what we can, truly, but we’ve got to try. I want to ask you to take my service. There’s going to be a war in the spring, lad, and I’ve no doubt that our rebels will want me dead before they march against the king.”
“I’m no warrior, my lord, but if you want me to join your men, I’ll do my best to fight.”
Pertyc was both surprised and ashamed of himself. He’d been dismissing this young man as nothing but a merchant, little more than a farmer and most likely a coward to boot.
“Well, actually,” Pertyc said, “I was hoping you’d run an errand for me. You deal with the Westfolk all the time, don’t you? You must know where to find them and all that.”
“I do, my lord.” Ganedd looked puzzled; then he grinned. “Longbows.”
“Just that. If I load you up with every bit of iron goods and fancy cloth and jewelry and so on that I can scrape together, do you think you could get me enough bows for the warband? I wouldn’t take a few extra archers amiss, either, if you can recruit some.”
“Well, I’ll try my lord, but I don’t think the Westfolk are interested in hiring out as mercenaries. The bows I can likely get, though.”
“Well, that’ll be somewhat to the good.” Pertyc hesitated, struck by a sudden thought and then surprise, that he’d never had the thought until this moment. “You know, I wonder just how proud a man I am.”
“My lord?”
It took Pertyc a long time to answer, and in the end, the only thing that brought him round was his love for his children. While no rebel lord would ever have knowingly killed his daughter, terrible things happened in sieges, especially if they ended in fire. If Pertyc lost the battle but the rebels lost the war, Adraegyn was quite simply doomed. The king’s men would smother the boy, most like.
“Tell me somewhat, Ganno. Do you think you could find my wife?”
Ganedd stared openmouthed.
“Well, she won’t lift a finger for my sake,” Pertyc said, “but for Becyla and Adraegyn she just might raise a small army.”
“I’ll do my best, my lord, but the elven gods only know where she might be, and the Westlands are an awfully big place. The sooner I leave, the better. Can you give me a guard and some packhorses? The less of Da’s stock that I use, the fewer questions Mam will ask.”
All that afternoon, while Ganedd gathered supplies, Pertyc agonized over the letter to his wife. Finally, when he was running out of time, he decided to make it as simple and as short as he could:
“Our children are in mortal danger from a war. My messenger will explain. For their sakes I’m begging your aid. I’ll humble myself in any way you want if you’ll just come and take them to safety.”
He rolled it up, sealed it into a silver message tube, then without thinking kissed the seal, as if the wax could pass the message along.
Just at sunset, Ganedd and his impromptu caravan assembled out in the ward, a straggling line of packhorses and mules along with two of Pertyc’s most reliable riders for guards and the undergroom for a servant. Pertyc handed Ganedd what coin he could spare and the message tube, then walked to the gates to wave his only true hope on its way until the caravan disappeared into a welter of dust and sea haze. As he turned to go inside, the ward flared with yellow light. Up on the tower the lightkeeper had fired the beacon.

In every warband, Maer reflected sadly, there was always an utterly humorless man like Crindd. If you said it looked like fair weather, Crindd saw rain coming; if you said a meal looked good, Crindd remarked that the cook had filth under her fingernails; if you liked the look of a horse, Crindd insisted that he had the legs to come up lame. On a bad day, Crindd’s little black shadow of gloom could make even Garoic the captain groan under his breath.
“Ye gods,” Maer said to Cadmyn one morning, “I’d drown the man except it would give him too much pleasure to have something go wrong.”
Cadmyn, an easygoing blond who was Maer’s only real friend in the warband, nodded with a faint look of disgust.
“True-spoken. We all used to mock him, but it wasn’t truly satisfying. He never seemed to notice, you see.”
“Really? Well, you just leave this to me.”
That afternoon Maer asked for and received Lord Pertyc’s permission to leave the dun, then rode over to Glaenara’s farm. Much to his annoyance, she was gone, and her brother-in-law refused to tell him where.
“Just what do you want anyway, silver dagger?” Nalyn snarled.
“To buy a pint of dried beans or peas from you and naught more. I’ll give you a copper.”
Nalyn considered, greed fighting with dislike.
“Oh, I’ll sell you a handful of pulse gladly enough,” he said at last. “But I don’t want you hanging around Glae.”
After dinner that night, two of the other lads kept Crindd busy in the great hall while Maer and Cadmyn sneaked out to the barracks. They stripped Crindd’s bunk of blanket and sheet, and while Cadmyn kept watch at the door, Maer sprinkled the dried peas over the mattress before he made the bed up again. When the time came, everyone in the warband went to bed full of anticipation. In the dark they could hear Crindd squirming this way and that. At last he got up, and they heard the sound of him trying to brush the sheet clean with his hands. When he got back into bed, the squirming picked up again. Finally one of the men broke and sniggered; the entire warband joined in. Crindd sat up with a howl of rage.
“And just why are you bastards all laughing?”
Silence fell, except for the sound of Crindd getting up and messing with something at the hearth. At great length, he struck a spark into tinder and lit a candle. Everyone else sat up and arranged innocent smiles while he stalked over to examine his bunk.
“There’s something in my bed!”
“Fleas?” Maer said. “Lice? Bedbugs?”
“Oh, hold your pus-boil tongue, you whoreson bastard!”
“Nasty, isn’t he?” Cadmyn remarked.
Crindd shoved the candle into a wax-crusted holder and began hauling the sheet off.
“Dried peas!”
“And how did they get in there?” Cadmyn said.
“Must be the Wildfolk,” Maer answered.
The moment Maer said the name he regretted it, because they came at the sound, or so he assumed, not knowing that the Wildfolk love a good prank, the meaner the better. Although it was hard to be certain in the flickering candlelight, Maer thought he saw them as little shapes of shadow, thicker than smoke but just as unstable. When Crindd began gathering the pulse and throwing it impartially at every man within range, the Wildfolk helped the warband catch what they could and throw it back. Maer, however, sat stone-still on his bunk and merely stared, wondering if Nevyn could make a potion that would bring him back to normal. At last Garoic rushed in, wearing a night-shirt over his brigga and swearing at the lot of them to restore order.
The prank brought Maer so much glory that of course he wasn’t going to stop there, Wildfolk or no Wildfolk. On the morrow he filled a bucket with water, threw in a handful of mucky straw from the stable, and balanced it on top of the half-open door of the tack room. When young Wertyc maneuvered Crindd into going to fetch something from this room, Crindd flung the door open and dumped the foul and by then chilly water all over himself. For the rest of the day, he strode around in a humor as foul as his bath, and his mood wasn’t sweetened any when Maer barred the privy door from the outside and trapped him in it. He must have banged and yelled for a good hour before Adraegyn heard him and let him out. Crindd grabbed a rake from the nearby dungheap and came charging for the barracks; he might well have killed someone if Garoic hadn’t calmed him down.
Although Crindd had no idea who was persecuting him, Garoic wasn’t so dense. That very evening, he caught Maer as he was leaving the great hall and hauled him off for a private word.
“Listen, silver dagger, a jest’s a jest, and I have to admit that I’ve had some good laughs out of all this, but enough’s enough.”
“But, Captain, sir, what makes you think I’ve got anything to do with it?”
“My eyes and ears. A warning, silver dagger: the long road might be calling you soon.”
Since being kicked out of the warband would mean disaster, what with winter coming on, Maer swore that the pranks would end. Unfortunately, Cadmyn came up with an idea that was too good to resist, and he also offered to take the blame for it if worse came to worst. Crindd had a pair of new riding boots, worked in two colors of leather, which had cost him all his winnings from a particularly lucky dice game. Maer and Cadmyn went down to a pond not far from the dun and found the two last frogs who hadn’t dug themselves under the mud for the winter. One fit neatly into each boot. Although Maer and Cadmyn were outside when Crindd went to put on his new boots, they could hear his shriek quite clearly. They were laughing themselves sick when Crindd found them.
“You foul bastards! I can see the mud on your brigga.”
From inside his shirt the frogs croaked.
“You’ve got a pair of pets, have you?” Maer said. “Well, flowers to the fair, and frogs to the warty.”
Crindd hauled back and hit him in the face. With a yell, Maer swung back, but he was so dizzy that he missed. He could hear Cadmyn shouting, and men running; just as Crindd hit him again, hands grabbed them both and hauled them apart. Although Maer’s right eye was already swelling and dripping, he could see Lord Pertyc and Garoic strolling over, both of them scowling.
“It was all my fault!” Cadmyn squeaked. “Crindd hit the wrong man!”
“He would,” Garoic said.
“What is all this?” Pertyc snapped.
“Frogs, my lord! They put frogs in my boots. This very morning.” Crindd reached inside his shirt and hauled out the terrified creatures. “Here’s the evidence. And they put dried peas under my sheet and doused me with rotten water and . . . ”
“Enough!” Pertyc took the frogs, contemplated them briefly, then handed them to a grinning Adraegyn. “Go put these back in the pond, will you? Right now, please. Now, Maer, Cadmyn. Why did you two commit this list of heinous crimes?”
Cadmyn groped for words and gave it up as a bad job.
“Well, my lord,” Maer said. “Just for the jest of the thing. You see, Crindd makes a splendid victim.”
Crindd squealed in outrage, but his lordship laughed.
“I do see, indeed. Crindd, it looks to me like you’ve already gotten your revenge on Maer’s right eye. Let this be a lesson to you: never be a splendid victim again. It gives people ideas.”
“But, my lord—”
“Just think about it, will you?” Pertyc turned to the two malefactors. “Maer, you’d better go down to the village and have the herbman look at that eye. I don’t like the way it’s swelling.”
When Maer rode up to the herbman’s cottage, he received a surprise bigger than the one the frogs had given Crindd. Out in the front garden Glaenara was spreading laundry to dry. Pretty in a new dress of woad-blue wool, she was singing to herself, her raven-dark hair gleaming in the sunlight. The sight of her made him feel warm all over.
“And what are you doing here?” he called out as he dismounted.
“Keeping up Nevyn’s house for him.” She strolled over to open the gate. “Oh, Maer! Your eye!”
“I just got into a little scrap with one of the lads.”
He found Nevyn sitting at a table inside and sorting out various herbs and dried barks. The old man got up and caught Maer by the chin, tipping his head back for a look as if the silver dagger were a child, and his fingers were surprisingly strong.
“Well, that’s a nasty mess, isn’t it? I’ll make you up a poultice. Sit down, Maer.”
When Maer sat, a pair of big-bellied gnomes appeared on the table and considered him. He scowled right back. Nevyn went to the hearth, where an iron pot hung from a tripod over a small arrangement of logs. When the old man waved his hand at the wood, it burst into flame. Maer felt so sick that he slumped against the table behind him like a lady feeling a faint coming on. Nevyn picked up a handful of herbs from the table and stirred them into the water shimmering in the pot.
“I’m assuming someone’s fist gave you that black eye.”
“It was, sir. Not long ago.”
“Ah.” Nevyn turned from his stirring and fixed Maer with one of his needle-sharp stares. “Glaenara’s a nice, decent lass, Maer. I would absolutely hate to see her dishonored and deserted.”
“Would you, sir?” Maer paused to lick dry lips with a nervous tongue. “Er, ah, well, I imagine you’re not a pleasant man to face when you’re angry about somewhat.”
“Not in the least, Maer lad, not in the least.”
When he waved his hand again the fire went out cold. So Lord Pertyc was right about the old man, Maer thought. I wonder if sorcerers can really turn men into frogs? I’ve no desire to find out the hard way, that’s certain.
Yet, as he was leaving, so was Glae, and he decided that it would be dishonorable to let her walk when he was riding her way. He lifted her to his saddle, then mounted behind, slipping his arms around her waist and taking the reins.
“What were you fighting over?” Glaenara said. “Some lass, I’ll bet.”
“Naught of the sort! It’s a long story.”
During the ride home, he told her about his persecution of Crindd, and she laughed as much as one of the lads in the warband. He decided that one of the things he liked best about her was the way she enjoyed a good laugh; so few lasses seemed to appreciate his sense of humor. When they got about half a mile from the farm, she insisted that he let her walk the rest of the way to keep her brother-in-law from seeing them together. As he was lifting her down, he tried kissing her. Although she laughed and shoved him away, she let him steal a second kiss. Just as his lips touched hers, he felt a sharp pain, like the pinch of bony fingers, in the back of his left thigh. He yelped and jumped.
“What?” Glae snapped. “What happened to you?”
“Er, a muscle cramp, I guess.” He rubbed the spot gingerly—it still hurt, all right. “I’m sorry.”
“Humph, well, if that’s the way you’re going to be!”
But she was smiling as she turned away and ran off, heading for the farm. Although Maer waved goodbye, he was completely distracted. For a few moments he could see in a tangle of bushes nearby a small blue creature, as solid and distinct as she could be, with long blue hair and a face like a beautiful child, scowling at him in jealous rage. Suddenly she disappeared, leaving him wondering if he were going mad.
Yet he saw her again, the very next time he rode down into town in hopes of meeting Glaenara. Sure enough, he found Glae selling eggs and turnips in the market, but just as he was striking up a conversation, the blue-haired creature appeared, standing directly behind Glae and snarling like a jealous lover. Maer completely forgot himself.
“Now don’t you hurt her!”
“What?” Glae said. “Hurt who? The chicken?”
“My apologies. I wasn’t talking to you—I mean—oh, by the hells!”
Glae swiveled around to look behind her. Although Little Blue-hair, as he started calling her, stamped a foot and shook a small fist in Glae’s direction, it was obvious that the human lass saw nothing.
“Maer, you are daft! That’s the oldest prank in the world, making someone look and find naught there. And I must be a lackwit to fall for it.”
“Ah, er, sorry. Truly, I shouldn’t have . . . uh, well. Here, I’ve got to go, uh, er, run an errand, but I’ll be right back. Don’t leave without me.”
Leading his horse, Maer hurried off through the sparse crowd in the direction of the blacksmith’s shop, but he turned off before he got there and found a private spot behind the inn. Little Blue-hair appeared, sitting on his saddle and smirking at him. Although he felt more daft than ever, he waggled a finger at her.
“Now listen, you, you can’t go around pinching people and suchlike.”
She held up one hand and made a pinching motion with her thumb and forefinger.
“Like that, truly. Don’t do it again, especially not to other people.”
She stuck her tongue out at him.
“If you don’t behave, I’ll . . . I’ll . . . I’ll tell Nevyn the dweomerman on you.”
He made the threat only because he could think of none better—after all, Nevyn terrified him, didn’t he?—but it had all the force he could possibly have wanted. She leapt to her feet, opened her mouth in a soundless shriek, flung both hands in the air, and disappeared. For a moment Maer felt almost guilty; then he decided that she’d brought it on herself and hurried back to take up his courting in peace. For some weeks afterward, all the Wildfolk stayed far away from him, and he was glad of it.

“Now listen, Glae,” Nalyn snapped. “You know as well as I do that Doclyn’s a decent young man and a good hard worker. His father’s asking me for the smallest possible dowry that can stand up in a lord’s court. We won’t do better than that. Why won’t you marry him?”
Glaenara looked up from the bowl of dried beans she was sorting and simpered at him.
“He doesn’t please me.”
“Oh, my humble, humble apologies, my fine lady! It’s not looks that matter in a man.”
“Obviously, or Lida never would have married you.”
“Glae!” Myna spoke sharply from her chair by the fire. “Please don’t start things up again.”
Glae banged the bowl onto the table and stalked outside, sweeping her skirts around her as she hurried across the muddy farmyard. The bitter truth, she supposed, was that unless she married someone, she’d go on living here, under her brother-in-law’s thumb, working hard all her life, never having anything resembling her own house—not that she’d ever have the lovely things and leisure that Braedda would. When she reached the cow barn, she paused, looking up at the sky, where the moon sailed free of a wisp of icy cloud. She shivered, wishing she’d brought her shawl. Over by the chicken coop something moved: a man shape, detaching itself from a shadow: Maer. She hurried over to him and whispered when she spoke.
“What are you doing here?”
“Trying to figure out how to get a word with you. Are you cold? You can have my cloak. Here.”
Bundled in the heavy wool, she walked with him a little ways back into the woods, where he’d left his horse. The moon streamed through the bare-branched trees and made little patterns on the ground.
“Suppose I come out here tomorrow night,” Maer said. “Would you meet me?”
“It’s going to rain tomorrow night. Samwna’s joints ached all day today, and that’s always a sure sign of rain coming.”
“Well, then, I’ll come out here anyway and keep a hopeless vigil in the pouring rain and get a horrible fever and maybe die, and it’ll all be for love of you.”
“Oh, don’t talk daft.”
“I mean it, Glae, truly. I’m half out of my mind for love of you.”
“Oh, don’t lie to me!”
In the moonlight she could just make out the shock on his face. Half afraid she’d cry, she sat down on the ground under a tree. In a moment he joined her.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “You’re right. But I’ll say this, and it’s not fancy words but the truth. I don’t think there’s another lass like you in all Deverry and Eldidd.”
“Is that good or bad?”
“A little of both. How’s this? I’m not mad for love of you, but I blasted well like you a whole lot, and every now and then, I think maybe I do love you.”
“That I can believe, and my thanks. I like you too.”
Somewhat hesitantly, Maer slipped one arm around her shoulders and kissed her. She let him steal another, found herself thinking of the future, and kissed Maer instead to drive the thought away. When he started caressing her, she wrapped her arms tight around him in the spirit of someone gulping a particularly bitter healing decoction and let him lie her down in the soft leaves.
The medicine worked. Having a man of her own made the rest of her life easier to take, as did the coppers Nevyn gave her for tending his cottage. Once she set her mind to ignoring Nalyn’s insults and keeping peace between them, they got through whole days without squabbling, and Mam and Lidyan began to relax into a pleased relief. When the explosion came, then, it was twice as bad as it might have been. One evening, just at sunset, Glaenara was chasing the chickens back into the coop for the night when Nalyn came walking out of the house. She could tell something was wrong just from the look in his eyes.
“And what’s eating you?”
“I was down in town, today, that’s what, and everyone was telling me I should be keeping an eye on my little sister. That silver dagger’s been riding into town to fetch you, hasn’t he?”
“And what if he has?” Glaenara set her hands on her hips. “It’s decent of him to give me a ride when I’m tired.”
“Ride—hah! Who’s riding what, Glae?”
“You little pus boil! Don’t you talk to me that way!”
Nalyn grabbed her by the shoulders and shook her.
“You tell me the truth.”
Glaenara twisted free and kicking him across the shins. When he grabbed her again and held tight this time, she was shocked at how strong he was—towering over her, causing her pain with an easy masculine strength.
“You’ve been rolling around with that lad, haven’t you? He wouldn’t want naught else out of the likes of you.”
This very real possibility made Glaenara burst into tears.
“Oh, ye gods!” Nalyn snapped. “It’s true, isn’t it?”
“So what if it is? Can’t I have one thing in my rotten life that I want just because I want it?”
With an oath, Nalyn let go of her, then slapped her hard across the face. Glaenara slapped back without thinking, and at that, the long bad feeling between them erupted. He grabbed her by the shoulder, twisted her around, and slapped her hard across the behind. As hard as she fought and kicked—and she landed some bruises on him—she couldn’t get free. The pain of his slaps was nothing compared with her terror at feeling so helpless. She was sobbing so hard that she could barely see. Dimly she heard her mother screaming and Lidyan’s voice calling out. All at once, Nalyn let her go. Glaenara staggered and almost fell into her sister’s arms.
“Nal, Nal,” Myna whined. “What are you doing?”
“Beating a little slut,” Nalyn sputtered out. “Lida, let go of her! I won’t have my wife feeling sorry for a slut like this. Her and her cursed silver dagger! Ye gods, I’m never going to be able to make her a decent match now.”
Lidyan started to cry, her hands slack on Glaenara’s arm. Still terrified, Glaenara turned to her mother, to find Myna staring in paralyzed disbelief, her thin lips trembling, her patient eyes full of tears. Glaenara tried to speak, but she choked on pure shame.
“Glae,” Myna whispered, “tell me it’s not true.”
Glaenara wanted to lie, but she was shaking too badly to speak. Myna reached out her hand, then drew it back, staring at her all the while with aching eyes.
“Glae,” Lidyan wailed, “how could you?”
But Lidyan was watching her husband; Myna turned toward him, too, a final slap sharper than any hand. They were both going to let him pass judgement on her.
“It’s true enough,” Glaenara spat out. “Go on! Call me what you want. I won’t be here to listen!”
Glaenara barreled through the gate, raced as fast as she could down the road, kept running even when she heard them call her back. She hardly knew what she was doing; she only wanted to run and run and never see any of them again. Her mother was siding with Nalyn. At the thought tears came to choke her and leave her gasping, forcing her to fling herself down into the tall grass to weep. By the time she’d wept herself dry, the sun was setting. She got up, expecting to see Nalyn coming after her to beat her some more, but the twilight road was empty, the house far behind. She wiped her dirty face on her sleeve and began running again, heading for town and Braedda, who would maybe forgive her—perhaps, she thought, the only person in the world who would.
At last, just as the stars were pricking the velvet sky, Glaenara reached the village. As she stood behind the inn and wondered if Samwna would even let her inside, once she knew the truth, the tears rose up again, hot and choking. She had no place in life anymore, nowhere to go, nothing to call her own; she was a shamed woman and a slut and naught more. She was still weeping when Braedda’s enormous cousin, Cenedd the blacksmith’s son, came strolling through the innyard.
“Glae, by the gods!” Cenedd said. “And what’s all this?”
“Nalyn turned me out, and I deserved it. All because of Maer.”
When Cenedd caught her by the shoulders, Glaenara flinched back, expecting that he would beat her, too.
“Bastards, both of them,” Cenedd said matter-of-factly. “Now don’t cry like that.” He turned his head and yelled. “Braedda, get out here!”
When Braedda and Samwna hurried out, Glaenara blurted the truth between sobs, simply because there was no use in lying. Braedda began to cry, too, but Samwna took charge—again, as matter-of-factly as Cenedd.
“Now, now, it’s not the end of the world. Oh, Glae, you’ve been such a dolt, but truly, I was afraid this was going to happen. Here, you’re not with child, are you?”
“I don’t know. It’s not been long enough to tell.”
“Well, then, we’ll know when we know and not a minute later. You come inside where it’s warm, and we’ll all have some nice hot ale.”
As the two women led her into the kitchen, Glae looked back to see Cenedd standing and talking urgently with Ewsn and Selyn, the weaver’s son. She and Braedda sat huddled together on a bench in the corner of the kitchen while Samwna bustled around, pouring ale into a tall metal flagon and setting it into the coals on the hearth.
“Mam?” Braedda said. “Can Glae sleep here tonight?”
“Of course. There’s no use in trying to talk sense to Nalyn until he’s had a chance to cool off a bit.”
“My thanks,” Glae stammered. “Why would you even help me? You should just let me sleep in the road.”
“Hush, hush! You’re not the first lass in the world to make a fool out of herself over a good-looking rider, and doubtless you won’t be the last.”
Ewsn stuck his gray head into the kitchen and caught Samwna’s attention.
“Be back in a bit. Just going for a ride with some of the lads. We’ve been thinking about poor Myna, you see.”
“So have I,” Samwna said. “It aches my heart.”
“You’re not going out to the farm, are you?” Glaenara blurted out.
“Not just yet, lass,” Ewsn said. “We’ll let your brother think things over before we do that.”

After dinner, Pertyc’s riders were welcome to sit in the great hall and drink while they gossiped or watched the little there was to see. Maer and Cadmyn were playing dice when Ewsn the inkeep, Cenedd the blacksmith’s son, and Selyn the weaver’s son came into the great hall, stood looking around them for a hesitant moment, then went over to whisper urgently to Pertyc.
“Wonder what they’re doing here,” Cadmyn remarked.
“Who knows? Seems a strange time of day to pay your taxes.”
In a few minutes a smirking Adraegyn came skipping over to the riders’ table.
“Maer, Da wants to see you. You’re in real trouble, Maer.”
“Am I now? Then why are you grinning like a fiend?”
“You’ll see. Come on, Maer. Da wants you right now.”
Up by Lord Pertyc’s carved chair stood Ewsn, Cenedd, and Selyn, all of them with their arms crossed over their chests and their mouths set in tight lines. Pertyc himself seemed to be smothering laughter. Maer shoved a couple of dogs out of the way and knelt at the lord’s feet.
“I wanted to tender you my congratulations, Maer,” Pertyc said.
“Congratulations, my lord?”
“On your coming marriage.”
Utterly puzzled, sure that this was a prank, Maer glanced this way and that. Cenedd stepped forward, looking somehow even more enormous than usual.
“Marriage,” Cenedd said. “You’ve been trifling with Glae, you little bastard, and now her brother’s kicked her out.”
“Marriage isn’t as bad as all that, Maer.” Pertyc leaned forward with a look of bland sincerity on his face. “Why, I did it myself once, and it didn’t kill me—though in all honesty it came blasted near.”
Maer tried to speak and failed while the warband snickered among themselves.
“I guess I’d best give you a permanent place in my warband,” Pertyc went on. “Can’t have poor Glae riding behind a silver dagger.”
“Now, here,” Maer squeaked. “I haven’t even said I would yet.”
Cenedd flexed his massive muscles.
“Now look, I’ll make a cursed rotten husband. Glae deserves better than me.”
“So she does,” Ewsn put in. “But it’s a bit late for that now, lad. You’re the one who’s been lifting her skirts, and you’re the one who’s marrying her.”
Ewsn and Selyn stooped like striking hawks, grabbed Maer one at each arm, and hauled him to his feet.
“Now listen,” Cenedd said. “You lost Glae her home. Either you give her another one, or I’ll pound you into slime.”
Maer had the sincere feeling he was going to faint.
“If she comes to live with you here in the dun,” Pertyc said, “I’ve got just the place for her. I’ve never known as strong-minded a lass as our Glae, so she can be my daughter’s nursemaid. Here, you’ve gone all white, lad! You’ll like being married. It just takes a bit of getting used to. We’ll see what we can do about getting you a chamber to yourselves here in the broch.” He glanced at a smirking servant. “Go saddle Maer’s horse for him. He’s riding down to the village to see his betrothed.”
Catcalls, cheers, and jeers—the warband exploded into laughter.
“Hey, Maer!” Crindd called. “Now this is truly funny!”
With a deep involuntary groan, Maer shut his eyes and let Cenedd drag him out into the ward. Adraegyn came running after and gave Maer’s sleeve a tug.
“But, Maer, what did you do to Glae?”
“Go ask your father, lad. It’s too complicated to explain right now.”
A grim procession of three villagers and one newly betrothed silver dagger rode round to the back of the inn to dismount. When Maer hesistated, Cenedd pulled him bodily from his horse, shook him hard, and set him on his feet again. When Maer groaned at the injustice of it all, Cenedd gave him a shove and sent him staggering inside, where Ewsn, Selyn, Samwna, and Braedda were all waiting and, just behind them, Nevyn stood and glared. Maer went cold all over in terror, remembering two very salient facts: Nevyn had taken Glae under his wing, and he was a sorcerer, capable—Maer was suddenly positive on this point—of turning men into frogs. No hope now, Maer thought: it’s marriage or the marsh. Glae herself was huddled on a bench in a corner. He’d never seen anyone look so miserable as she did then, her eyes swollen from weeping, her pretty dress torn and dirty, and on her cheek a flat red welt. All at once, Maer realized that her brother must have beaten her, and he felt himself to be the most dishonorable wretch in the entire kingdom. Glae raised her head and looked at him, her mouth trembling with tears.
“You don’t have to marry me if you don’t want to.” Her voice was dry and cold. “I’d rather starve than take that kind of charity.”
“Oh, hold your tongue! Of course I want to marry you!” He hurried over and threw himself down to kneel beside her. “Here, my sweet, forgive me. I’ve been cursed rotten to you.”
Glaenara stared as if she couldn’t believe her ears. When he held out his hand, she let hers lie limply in his, as if she hardly cared what he did to her.
“Glae, I truly want to marry you. Now come on, give your man a smile, won’t you?”
At last Glaenara did smile, shyly at first, then blossoming into the brilliant grin that made her look beautiful. Nevyn pushed his way through the gathering crowd and fixed Maer with an ice-blue glare.
“You’d best be a good husband.”
“The best you’ve ever seen. I swear it.”
“Good.” Nevyn started to say more, then glanced to one side, frowning.
When Maer followed his gaze, he saw Little Blue-hair sitting cross-legged on the floor like a child. That night she seemed about three feet tall, and more solid than he’d ever seen her before. She pointed to Glae, wrinkled up her nose in scorn, then began to weep. As Maer watched horrified, she slowly vanished, fading away, turning transparent, then gone, tears and all. Yet somehow, he knew she’d be back. When he glanced back Nevyn’s way, he found the old man troubled, and that was the most frightening thing of all.

That year, which was 918 as Deverry men reckon time, Loddlaen turned three, a slender, solemn child with pale hair and enormous purple eyes. Although the other children treated him as one of their own, he always seemed set apart from the games and the general shouting, preferring to cling to his father’s trouser leg and merely watch the goings-on or to play quietly with his foster brother, Javanateriel, in the safety of a tent. In his better moments, Aderyn wondered if the time he’d spent trapped in his mother’s womb off in the Guardians’ strange country had affected him in some way, but usually he refused to believe that anything could be wrong with his beautiful son. Even when Loddlaen woke in the night screaming from horrible dreams, Aderyn told himself that all children dreamt of monsters and suchlike at his age.
The autumn alardan that year was one of the largest Aderyn had ever seen. Since all summer the weather had been exceptionally fine, the grass was exceptionally lush, meaning that there was enough fodder near the campground to feed the herds for a few days longer than usual, and the elves took advantage of it for a long week of feasting and good company. Although Aderyn didn’t bother to count, it seemed to him that at least five hundred tents sprang up along the stream chosen for the great meeting. At night the tiny cooking fires looked like a field of stars. There were so many horses and sheep that the mounted herders had to take them out a long way around the camp, half a day’s ride in some cases.
It was no wonder, then, that Ganedd and his small caravan stumbled across the alardan, especially since the young merchant had enough sense to realize that the elves would be travelling south by then instead of camping near the usual trading sites. Aderyn had met Ganedd several times before; he rather liked the lad, and he could sympathize with his desire to break free of his family’s constricted life and see something of the world. It was Aderyn that Ganedd sought out, in fact, once he and his men had been fed and given a place to set up their own tent, because Ganedd knew elven ways well enough to come to the Wise One first. As soon as Aderyn heard his story, though, he sent for Halaberiel. The banadar was beginning to show his age; there were deep crow’s-feet at the corner of his eyes, and in certain lights you would have sworn that you could see streaks of gray in his pale hair.
“Hal, you’d best listen to this,” Aderyn said. “There’s trouble in Cannobaen, and two half-elven children are involved.”
“Pertyc Maelwaedd’s offspring?” Halaberiel glanced at Ganedd.
“Yes, Banadar.” The boy’s Elvish was not good, but adequate. “He sent me here with a letter for his wife. He needs help badly. His enemies are threatening to burn his stone tent and kill him and his children. He has eleven men and no archers. They have hundreds and hundreds of men.”
“Well, how like the cursed Round-ears, to count on unfair odds like that.” Halaberiel changed to Deverrian for the sake of their guest. “I doubt me if you can find his wife, lad. The last I saw of her, she was heading west with her alar to the far camps. I’ll send out messengers, but we don’t have a blasted lot of hope of catching up with her in time.”
“Well, I was afraid of that, sir,” Ganedd said. “But what we really need are bows, and extra arrows, and maybe an archer or two to show us how to use them, though truly they’d best be gone again before the siege starts. It would ache my heart to have your people slain in what’s most likely a hopeless cause.”
“I remember Pertyc from his wedding.” Halaberiel glanced at Aderyn. “As I remember, you missed that particular celebration, Wise One. He’s a good man, the only Round-ear I eve really liked—well, besides you, but then, you’re not really a Round-ear. Never were, as far as I can tell. I don’t see why Annaleria ever married him, but cursed if I’ll sit here while a man I like gets himself murdered in his tent.”
“You’ll help us, sir?” Ganedd broke into a grin.
“I will. Bows you shall have, and arrows, and me and some of my men, too. Calonderiel’s always spoiling for a good scrap, and I think Farendar and Albaral will ride with us for the excitement of the thing, and then there’s young Jennantar, who needs to learn Eldidd speech. I’ll pass the word around and see if anyone else’s heart burns to come with us, but truly, Ganedd, I don’t want to risk many more men than that.”
“Banadar, you’re worth a hundred Round-ear men by yourself alone.”
Halaberiel laughed.
“Put me up high on a stone wall with a good bow and someone to keep filling my quiver, and you might just be right, lad. We’ll find out soon enough.”
Although Aderyn’s first reaction was a sick feeling at this elven interference in human politics, in the end he decided that there was nothing he could do to prevent it. As the Wise One, Aderyn could have overruled the banadar, but only at a great social cost; there would have been arguments for days, and the entire alardan would have lined up on one side or the other, leading to further trouble for years to come. Besides, he considered that indeed Pertyc Maelwaedd had every justice on his side and deserved defending, as he remarked to Nevyn when they talked later that evening through the fire.
“I agree, actually,” Nevyn thought back to him. “But do you think archers are going to make that much of a difference?”
“I do. I mean, Hal tells me that in an open field the rebel army could easily wipe out a small squad of archers, but this isn’t an open field, is it? The banadar’s bringing two fletchers with us, and I gather he’s going to have them spend all winter making arrows while he trains Pertyc’s men.”
“I see. Wait—did you say with us?”
“I thought I’d best come along. I’d like to bring Loddlaen, so you could see him, but it’s just too dangerous.”
“On that, at least, I couldn’t agree more. You know, there’s a thing going on here that I’d like you to take a look at, too. Do you remember Maddyn?”
Aderyn thought for a long moment.
“Oh, the bard! The one who had the silver ring with the roses on it.”
“Exactly. Well, he’s been reborn, and he’s here, and that wretched little blue sprite is still hanging around him. You know, I think she honestly loves him. I didn’t think the Wildfolk were capable of that.”
“No more did I.”
“And now Maer’s starting seeing her and all of her kin, for that matter. He came to me about it the other day, poor lad, quite troubled about it. I made a little speech, all pompous and vague, about the magical nature of borderlands in general and this one in particular, and I dropped a few harmless hints about the Westfolk. Blather, it was, but he was impressed and felt much better. I could hardly tell him that being around me was awakening his deepest memories of his last life.”
“If that’s all it is. The sprite may have something to do with this, too. I’m on my way, then. We leave at dawn tomorrow, and since we have a pack train to contend with, it’ll probably take us a fortnight at the very least to reach Cannobaen.”
“Well and good. I’m looking forward to seeing you again.”
“And I, you. It’s been too long.”

On the day that the caravan arrived in Cannobaen, it poured rain, one of those quiet storms that without any pompous show of thunder and lightning settle in to soak everything. Since Maer had drawn stable duty that morning, he was out in the ward, wrapped in a greased cloak with the hood up, sweeping the stable leavings into a mound for the gardener. The rain had just finally found its way through the heavy wool to run down his back when he heard a clatter of hooves and a shout at the gates. Delighted with the distraction, he dropped his rake and trotted over just as Ganedd led his men and laden mules inside. Maer whooped in delight and yelled at the gardener to run and fetch his lordship.
“Maer!” Ganedd sang out. “Gladdens my heart and all that! We’ve done it, Maer! We’ve got bows and the men to teach us how to use them.”
Maer whooped again; he’d been rather looking forward to living longer than one winter more. All at once he realized that Wildfolk were swarming around the tiny caravan, and that he could see them all more clearly than ever before. Sylphs hung in the air, delighting in the rain; undines rose up out of puddles and grinned at him; sprites and gnomes thronged around the animals and sat on the saddles and mule packs; some of the bolder creatures were even perched on the shoulders of the men or rushed to greet them as they dismounted. Nevyn’s impressive remarks about the Westfolk and their affinities began to take on actual meaning.
“Come on!” Ganedd called. “Take our guests inside to meet Lord Pertyc. Here come the servants to tend the stock.”
With Ganedd in the lead they all dashed into the great hall, which was hot and smoky from the fires roaring in both hearths. Immediately everyone threw off their cloaks and dropped them into a wet and smelly heap for a serving lass to deal with later. Maer received his second shock of the day, because he’d never seen an elf before, never even knew that they existed, in fact. Cat-slit and enormous eyes of green and purple and indigo blue, hair as pale as moonlight, and the ears—try as he might he couldn’t look away. Finally a tall fellow with violet eyes took offense.
“And just what are you staring at, you Round-ear dog?”
“Cal, hold your tongue!” As fast as any lord to break up a brawl, the eldest of the lot stepped in between them. “You can’t blame the lad for being surprised. He can’t be such a bad fellow, anyway, since he’s friends with the Wildfolk.”
Maer glanced down to see Little Blue-hair. She’d come up beside him and taken his hand in one of hers; now she leaned against his trouser leg and stared at the visitors like a shy child.
“You see them, too?” Maer whispered.
“Of course.” The man called Cal smiled and held out his hand. “Friends?”
“Done.”
They shook hands solemnly; then Cal hurried after the others to be presented to the lord.

“Ganedd, my friend, if it were in my power to ennoble you, I would,” Pertyc said. “Since it’s not, and since I don’t have more than a handful of coin to my name, I don’t really know how I’ll ever be able to repay you.”
“Well, my lord, if we all get ourselves killed in the spring, repayment’s a moot point, anyway.”
Pertyc laughed and gave him a friendly slap on the shoulder.
“I like you merchants. So hardheaded, so practical. Well, if I can figure out a way to do it, I’ll repay you anyway, especially if by some miracle we do live through the spring.”
“Then I’ll take it gladly, my lord. Here, the servants should have brought those bows up by now. If his lordship will excuse me, I’ll just go hurry them along.”
“Please do. I don’t think I’ve ever waited more eagerly for anything than I’ve been waiting for those bows. And I need to have a word with my old friend Halaberiel anyway.”
As Ganedd was leaving the great hall, he came face to face with a young woman. With Glaenara—Ganedd stared openmouthed. All bathed and civilized as she was, he hadn’t recognized her for a moment. Even her hair was glossy-clean and growing longer, curling softly around her face. Her hands were clean, too, and her nails nicely manicured.
“What’s wrong, Ganno? Fall off your horse and hit your head?”
“Oh, my apologies, Glae! I, uh, well, just didn’t recognize you. I mean: I wasn’t expecting to see you here.”
“I’m married to Maer now.”
“The silver dagger?”
“Well, he isn’t that anymore.” She hesitated, suddenly distressed. “Ganno, do you still want to marry Braedda?”
“What? Of course.”
“Then you’d best get down to the village today. When your da got back from Aberwyn, you know? He went straight to Braedda’s father and tried to break off the betrothal, but Ewsn, bless him, said he’d wait to speak with you about it.”
Ganedd took her advice and rode down as soon as Pertyc gave him leave, much later that day. The rain had rolled on its way by then, leaving the sunset clean and bright, with a snap of the sea wind and the tang of salt in the air. Round back of his parents’ house he tethered his horse, then climbed over the garden wall and let himself in the back door. Twelve-year-old Avyl was in the kitchen, badgering the cook for a piece of bread and honey. When he saw Ganedd, he smirked. The cook threw her apron over her face and began to weep.
“Oho, so you came home, huh?” Avyl said. “Wait’ll you see Da.”
When Ganedd stalked by, Avyl followed, snickering. The noise brought Moligga out into the corridor. She took one look at Ganedd and began to tremble. Avyl abruptly held his tongue.
“I’m sorry, Mam,” Ganedd said. “But I had to do what I think is right.”
She started to speak, then merely shook her head in a scatter of tears. When Ganedd went to lay his hand on her arm, she drew back.
“Ganno, get out,” Moligga said, almost whispering. “I don’t want your father even seeing you.”
“Indeed? Well, I want to say a thing or two to him. Tell me one thing: how do you feel about this rebellion?”
“Do you think I care one way or another? Oh, ye gods, that ever it would come to this: my lad and my man, at each other’s throats, and all over a kind I’ve never even seen!” Slowly the tears welled, running down her cheeks. “Ganno, he made a declaration before the whole guild and cut you off.”
“I knew he would. Where is he?”
“Don’t.” Moligga caught his arm. “Just leave.”
As gently as he could, Ganedd pushed past her and walked on down the corridor. He flung open the door to his father’s study and marched in without knocking. Wersyn rose from his writing desk, his fingers clasping a leather-bound ledger, and gave him a sour little smile.
“Who are you? Strange—you remind me of my dead son.”
For a moment, Ganedd couldn’t breathe. Wersyn went on smiling. The silence hung as thick as sea fog in the tiny chamber.
“Then count me his spirit come back from the Otherlands for a little while. And I’ll give you a warning, like spirits do. If I live through this winter, then I’m going to see to it that you never trade in the Westlands again. They’re my friends, Da, not yours, and you cursed well know it.”
With a gasp, Wersyn hurled the ledger straight at his head. Ganedd dodged, laughing.
“But it’s for the king’s sake, Da. Not mine.”
His face scarlet with rage, Wersyn rushed him, his hand raised for a slap. Ganedd heard Moligga scream. He dodged, caught his father’s wrists, and grimly held on. No matter how much Wersyn struggled, he couldn’t break free. He was panting for breath and weeping in frustration at the inescapable truth: his little son was the stronger man now. When Moligga started to sob, Ganedd let him go.
“You can’t hit a dead man. Farewell.”
Ganedd turned on his heel and walked slowly out, strode down the corridor, and opened the front door. His brother’s skinny little face stared at him wide-eyed.
“I’m the heir now, Ganno. What do you think of that?”
“They should have drowned you young. Like the rat-faced weasel you are.”

Earlier that day Aderyn had ridden down to see Nevyn in his cottage, where they could talk privately of things that would only unsettle ordinary men. Nevyn was surprised by just how glad he was to see his old pupil in the flesh rather than through a scrying focus, enough so to make him wonder if he were growing old and sentimental or suchlike. For hours they talked of everything and nothing, sharing news of the craft and the various apprentices they’d taken in the past or, in Aderyn’s case, that they had now.
“The Westfolk are really amazing when it comes to magic,” Aderyn said at last. “They have more of an affinity for it than we do.”
“No doubt. Look at how vital they are, living so long while keeping so young-seeming and all. It seems to me that they must be far more open to the flow of the life-power than humans are.”
“They’re far more in harmony with life itself, actually. Well”—Aderyn’s expression suddenly turned blank and closed—“most of them.”
Nevyn could figure out that somehow the conversation had brought Dallandra to his mind.
“Ah, well,” Nevyn said, and a bit hurriedly. “I take it that your larger work is going well, too. Restoring the full dweomer to the Westfolk, I mean.”
They talked for a good long while more and parted with arrangements made to meet on the morrow as well. After Aderyn went on his way, Nevyn went into his bedchamber and sat down on the wooden floor to lift up the loose board and take out the small wooden casket where the opal was hidden. It was wrapped in five pieces of Bardek silk: the palest purple-gray, a flaming red, a deep sea blue, a sunny yellow, and then a mottled bit, russet, citrine, olive, and black. He laid it in the palm of his hand and considered the stone as it gleamed softly in the candlelight.
Since any good stone will pick up bits of emotion, dream-thought, and life-force from its owners and the events around it, Nevyn had postponed starting his work upon it. His own will and feelings were troubled and clouded by what he referred to as “this stupid rebellion,” and if his mind wasn’t utterly clear, he would inevitably charge the opal with the wrong thoughts. The last thing he wanted his talisman to radiate to the High Kings of All Deverry was a self-righteous irritation. They doubtless could summon enough of that on their own. One way or another, he’d have to settle things here in Cannobaen before he could get down to work. Ah well, he told himself, if you’d wanted an easy life, you could have been a wretched priest and been done with it!

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Part Three

Eldidd
918

AFTER SIXTY-ODD years in Bardek, Nevyn returned to Eldidd late in the summer of 918, landing in Aberwyn with some unusual cargo tucked inside his shirt for safety’s sake. While he’d been abroad, studying the scholarly dweomer lore of the Bardekian priests, he’d gotten the idea of making a talisman for the High King, a magically charged jewel that would radiate the noble virtues endlessly to its owner’s mind. To that end, he’d bought an extremely unusual stone and studied the various writings about such creations in the libraries of various temples, but to make the talisman, he brought the stone home. As big as a walnut, but perfectly round and smoothly polished, a tribute to the art of Bardek jewelers, the opal was shot through with pale gold veins and bluish-pink shadows, as mottled as the coat of some exotic animal. At the moment, for all it beauty, it was an ordinary jewel, a dull thing in its way, though worth a fortune. By the time Nevyn got done with it, it would be supremely interesting, and worth a man’s life.
Down in the center of Aberwyn stood the hall of the merchant guild, an imposing fat tower with glass in the downstairs windows and a stout slate roof. Their official money changer held court in a bare stone room with a hearth, two chairs, and a long table, where Nevyn found a stout and gray-haired man sitting behind a litter of Bardek-style scrolls. Behind him, at the entrance to another room, an armed guard slouched against the wall.
“I’m just back from Bardek,” Nevyn said to the money changer.
“You’ve hit the rate of exchange at a good time, good sir. Sit down, sit down.”
As Nevyn pulled up the rickety three-legged chair, he noticed the guard watching him with the interest of the longtime bored, a young man of about twenty, tall and well muscled, with blond hair, blue eyes, and the beginnings of a mustache blotching his upper lip. Nevyn wouldn’t have given him a second thought if it weren’t for the silver dagger at his belt. As it was, he took a good look at the lad’s face and then nearly swore aloud, because the soul behind his eyes struck him as familiar and friendly both. Before he could observe more, the money changer’s voice claimed his attention.
“We’ve been giving thirty Deverry silvers for each Bardek zotar of full weight.”
“Indeed? That certainly is generous! Are things troubled in Eldidd?”
“Have you been away for some time?”
“Years, actually.”
“Hum.” The money changer reflected upon something before he spoke again. “I hope to every god in the Otherlands that these rumors are only rumors, but they say the gwerbrets are still pining for the days when they were princes. The High King’s a long way away, my friend.”
“Just so. Rebellion?”
“Let us merely say that Bardek merchants have never gotten rich by allowing themselves to be caught in the middle of trouble. They’re not bringing us as much sound coinage as they once did.”
The money changer counted out Nevyn’s zotars, marked the tally on a bit of parchment, which Nevyn signed, then went back through the doorway to his vault to change the coins. Nevyn turned to the young guard and gave him a pleasant smile.
“What’s your name, lad? It looks like this duty wears on you.”
“Maer, my lord. But I won’t be guarding this fellow’s stores much longer. He just hired me to fill in, like. His regular man broke his wrist in a fall, you see, but thanks be to the gods, the splints are off now.”
When Nevyn risked opening up a quick bit of the dweomer sight with the sigils that controlled memory, the silver dagger’s face blurred and changed. For a moment Nevyn seemed to look into the weary eyes of Maddyn the bard. Nevyn was so glad to see him that he wanted to jump up and embrace him, but of course, since Maer would have no conscious memory of his last life, he did nothing of the sort.
“And what will you do next?” Nevyn said. “If these rumors of trouble are true, there’ll be plenty of work for silver daggers in Eldidd.”
“Oh, it’s all a lot of horseshit if you ask me, my lord. The gwerbrets can mutter over their ale easy enough, but getting the coin to outfit an army’s a bit harder. I’ll go west, I suppose. I’ve never ridden that way before.”
It was perhaps an omen of sorts. Nevyn had no real idea of where to settle down while he performed the dweomer work on the opal, but on the western coast lay a quiet little village that held pleasant memories for him.
“I’m heading west myself,” Nevyn said. “How would your captain feel if I rode with your troop a ways?”
“Captain? Troop?” Mael paused for a laugh. “The silver daggers haven’t ridden as a troop in fifty years, good sir. It was that royal decree, you know. We can only ride together one or two at a time, no more.”
“Indeed?” Nevyn was honestly shocked. I’ve stayed away too long, he told himself. “Why?”
“I don’t know. It’s the king’s law, and so it’s good enough for me. But I’m for hire, sure enough, if you need a guard.”
“Feel like riding to Cannobaen?”
“Gladly. A couple of silver pieces?”
“Done. We’ll leave at dawn, then, the day after tomorrow.”
When the time came to leave, Maer turned up promptly. Nevyn was loading up his newly purchased riding horse and pack mule in the little innyard just at dawn when the silver dagger appeared, leading a splendid black warhorse, laden with a pair of saddlebags, a bedroll, a plain white shield, and a pot helm, all tied in a messy sort of way to his saddle. He looked over the mule packs with some interest.
“So you’re a herbman, are you?”
“I am. Don’t worry about falling sick on our journey.”
Maer grinned and finished loading the mule without being asked. They led their horses through the busy morning streets, then mounted outside the west gate just as the last of the sea fog was burning off into a late-summer morning. To their left, the turquoise sea sparkled and churned at the foot of pale cliffs, and to their right, the winter wheat stood ripe and golden in the fields. As they rode, Maer burst into good cheer, whistling and singing in a fine clear tenor that with training would have made him a bard. Nevyn was so genuinely glad to hear the man he would always think of as Maddyn sing again that he had to give himself a stern warning. This was Maer now, not Maddyn, and it was against the laws of dweomer as well as common sense to treat the one as the other.
When he turned in the saddle to pay Maer a compliment on his voice, he was in for a surprise. Riding behind the silver dagger’s saddle and clinging to him like a child was a good-sized blue sprite. Just as he was telling himself that of course it couldn’t be the same creature, not Maddyn’s favorite still loyal after all these years, the sprite grinned at him in such smug contentment that he was forced to recognize her. Over the next few days, as they made their slow way to Cannobaen, Nevyn saw the sprite often, hovering around Maer during the day, cuddling up to him like a dog while he slept at night. It became obvious, though, that Maer never saw her, because often he would have stepped on her if she hadn’t jumped aside. Once, when Maer was off at a farmhouse buying food, Nevyn got a chance alone with her. Talking about death to one of the Wildfolk was, of course, a complete waste of time.
“He doesn’t see you anymore, you know. He’s changed since the last time you saw him.”
She snarled, exposing long and pointed teeth.
“It’s not good for you to follow him this way. You should be off with your own kind.”
At that she threw back her head and howled, a thin wisp of sound. Since normally the Wildfolk were incapable of making noise, Nevyn became even more troubled.
“I’ll talk with one of your kings,” he began, “and we’ll see what . . . ”
In a screech of fury she seemed to swell, sucking up substance from the material plane and turning for one brief moment quite solid and as large as a growing child. Then she was gone in a gust of cold air.
Beside seeing the Wildfolk, Maer had been a silver dagger in his last life, too, of course, but Nevyn tended to consider that a simple coincidence. Although he would never have pried into the reason for his dishonor, Maer himself volunteered the story as they sat round the campfire on their second night out.
“You’re not an Eldidd man, are you?” Nevyn had asked him.
“I’m not. I was born in Blaeddbyr, over in Deverry, and that’s where I got this blasted dagger, too. I was riding for the Wolf clan, you see, and one night, well, me and the lads got a bit drunk. So one of my friends got this daft idea. There was this lass he fancied—oh, bad it was, good sir—he was like a boar in rut over the tailor’s daughter, but her da, he kept an eye as sharp as one of his needles on the lass. So my friend puts us up to helping him. We went round to the tailor’s shop and Nyn calls the lass out of her bedroom window, while me and the other lad went round the front. We pretend to get into a brawl, you see, and old Da comes running out. So we led him a merry dance, insulting him and having a fine old time, and truly we got a bit carried away.” With a sigh, Maer rubbed his chin with a rueful hand. “We ducked him in the village horse trough, just for the fun of the thing, and all the time Nyn’s tumbling the daughter out under a hedgerow. So Da goes complaining to the lord, and cursed if Avoic doesn’t side with the old tailor and kick us out of the warband! Cursed unjust, I say. He let Nyn come back, though, because the stupid lass had to go and get a child, and so Nyn had to marry her.”
Maer sounded so indignant that Nevyn laughed aloud. Maer drew himself up square-shouldered and glared at him.
“Don’t you think it was unjust?”
“Umph, well. But you’re the first lad I’ve ever met who got that dagger because of a prank.”
“That’s been the tale of my days, good sir. I only want a bit of fun, and ye gods, everyone goes and takes it wrong.”
Late on a summer afternoon, Nevyn and his guard rode to the top of a rise and saw Cannobaen spread out along the little stream called Y Brog. At the sight of the round, thatched houses, Maer broke into a wide grin.
“Ale tonight with supper, my lord. Or do they even have a tavern in this hole?”
“They did the last time I was here. But that was a long time ago.”
At a hundred families, mostly of farmers or fishermen, Cannobaen was about twice as big as Nevyn had been remembering it. There was a good-sized proper inn on the old site o fthe small tavern. After he rented a chamber, Nevyn ordered ale and a meal for himself and stood the silver dagger to one last dinner, too. The innkeep, a stout fellow named Ewsn, hovered nearby.
“Do you get much trade through here?” Nevyn said, mostly to be polite.
“We’ve got a merchant in our town who buys and sells off in the west—with those tribes with the strange-sounding names. Men from Aberwyn come through every now and then to buy the horses he brings back.” He hesitated, sucking stumps of teeth. “Be you a herbman, sir? My wife has this pain in her joints, you see, and so I was wondering.”
“I am at that. In the morning I’ll be glad to have a talk with her if she’d like.”
The morning, however, apparently wasn’t good enough for the innkeep’s wife, Samwna. While she served Nevyn and Maer their dinner, Samwna also treated them to a long recital of symptoms as well rehearsed as a bard’s performance. While they ate roast beef and turnips, they heard all about the mysterious pain in her joints, strange aches in the small of her back, and night sweats, sometimes hot, sometimes cold. With the apple tart, they heard about headaches and odd moments when she felt quite dizzy.
“It’s all related to your woman’s change of life,” Nevyn said. “I’ve got soothing herbs that should help a good deal.”
Maer went scarlet and almost choked.
“My most humble thanks.” Samwna made him a little curtsy. “I’ve been wondering and wondering, I have. Here, you’re not thinking of settling in our town, are you, good sir? It’s been years and years since there’s been a herbman in our neighborhood.”
“As a matter of fact, I am. I’m getting too old to wander the roads, and I want a nice quiet place to settle down.”
“Oh, towns don’t come much quieter than Cannobaen!” Samwna paused to laugh. “Why, the big excitement lately was when one of Lord Pertyc’s boarhounds killed two chickens over at Myna’s farm.”
Nevyn smiled, well pleased. Idly he rubbed the front of his shirt and touched the opal hidden inside. If there’s trouble, he thought, it can cursed well stay in Aberwyn! No doubt remote Cannobaen would be undisturbed by these rumors of rebellion.

“By every hell, how can you be so stubborn?”
“It comes with my family title.” Pertyc Maelwaedd touched the device on his shirt. “We’re Badgers, my friend. We hold on.”
“By that line of thinking, we Bears should have to stay in holes.” Danry, Tieryn Cernmeton and Pertyc’s closest friend, perched on the edge of a carved table and considered him. “But cursed if I will.”
“Why do you think I nicknamed you the Falcon, back when we were lads? But this time you’re flying too high.”
They were sequestered in Pertyc’s small study behind a barred door, and a good thing, too, because Danry was talking treason. Since Pertyc had a taste for clutter, the room was crowded: a large writing table, a shelf with twenty leather-bound codices, two chairs, a scatter of small Bardek carpets, and on the wall, a pair of moth-eaten stag’s heads, trophies of some long-forgotten hunt of a remote ancestor. Pertyc’s helm perched jauntily on the antlers of the largest stag, and his shield was propped up against a book-laden lectern carved with intertwined dogs and badgers.
“I’ve always liked my demesne,” Pertyc remarked absently. “So remote here on the border. Nice and quiet. Easy to stay out of trouble in a place like Cannobaen.”
“You can’t stay out of this. That’s what you don’t understand.”
“Indeed? Just watch.”
Danry sighed again. He was a tall man, with a florid face that usually simmered on the edge of rage, and thick blond mustaches that were usually damp with mead. Lately, however, Danry had been withdrawn, and the mustaches had a ratty look, as if he’d been chewing on them in hard thought. Pertyc had been wondering what was on his friend’s mind. Now he was finally hearing. Ever since the forced joining of the two kingdoms some sixty years before, there’d been plenty of grumbling in Eldidd, a longing for independence and past glory simmering like porridge over a slow fire. Now the fire had flared up; the porridge was beginning to boil over.
“I’d hoped to come around to this slowly,” Danry said at last. “But it’s hard to believe you’d be too blind to see the ale in your own tankard.”
“I’ve never much liked sour ale. What does it matter to me if I pledge to a new king or an old one?”
“Perro! It’s the honor of the thing.”
“How are you going to have a rebellion without a king to rally round? Or have you ferretted out some obscure heir?”
“That’s a rotten way to speak about him, but we have.” Danry picked up a leather dog collar from the cluttered writing desk and began fiddling with the brass buckles. “The lad is related to the old blood royal twice over on the female line, and there’s a lass who’s related on the male line. If we marry them, well, it’s claim enough. They’re both good Eldidd blood, and that’s the true thing.” He ran the end of the collar through the buckle and pulled it tight. “You know, my friend, your claim to the throne is as good as his.”
“It’s not! I don’t have a claim at all. None, do you hear me? My most honorable ancestor abdicated; I’m descended from his common-born wife, and that’s that! No priest in the kingdom would back a claim on my part, and you know it.”
“There are ways of handling priests.” Danry tossed the collar aside. “But you’re right, no doubt. I was just thinking of a thing or two.”
“Listen, even jackals pull down the kill before they start squabbling over the meat.”
Danry winced.
“When I came to my manhood,” Pertyc went on, “I swore an oath to King Aeryc to serve him well, serve him faithfully, and put his life above my own. Seems to me I heard you and the rest of our friends swear one like it, too.”
“Ah, by the hells! No oath is binding when it’s sworn under coercion.”
“No one held a sword to my throat. I didn’t see one at yours, either.”
With a curse, Danry heaved himself up from the table and began trying to pace round the cluttered chamber.
“The coercion lies in the past. They stripped Eldidd of its rights and its independence under threat of open slaughter. It’s the honor of the thing, Perro.”
“If I break an oath, I don’t have any honor left worth fighting over.” Idly Pertyc touched the device on his shirt.
“Ah, curse your horseshit Badgers! If you don’t come in with us, what then? Are you going to run to this false king with the tale?”
“Never, and all for your sake. Do you think I’d put my sworn friend’s neck in a noose? I’d die first.”
Danry sighed, looking away.
“I wish you’d stay out, too.” Pertyc said.
“And I’d die before I’d do that. You can trumpet your neutrality to the four corners of the world, but you’re still going to be in the middle of it. What do you think we’re going to do, muster our warbands right down in Aberwyn? When the spring comes, we’re meeting in the forest, here in the west.”
“You scummy bastards!”
Danry laughed, tossing his head back and giving him a friendly slap on the shoulder.
“We’ll do our best not to disturb his lordship or trample his kitchen garden. Now here, spring’s a long way away. I have faith you’ll be mustering with us when the time comes. It might be dangerous if you didn’t. You know I’d never lift my hand against your dun and kin, but, well, as for the others . . . ” He let the words trail significantly away.
“Neutrals have found themselves stripped and sieged before, huh? You’re right enough. You tell our friends that I’ll protect my lands to my last breath, whether they claim to have a king on their side or not.”
“They wouldn’t expect any less from you. I warn you, though, when we win this fight, you can’t expect much honor or standing in the new kingdom.”
“I’ll take my chances on that. I’d rather die a beggar than break my sworn oath.” Pertyc smiled faintly. “And the word, my friend, isn’t ‘when’ you win. It’s ‘if.’”
Danry turned red, a hectic flush of rage across his cheeks. Pertyc held his gaze until Danry forced out a smile.
“Let us give the gods their due,” Danry said. “Who knows where a man’s Wyrd will lead him? Very well. ‘If’ it is.”
Pertyc walked outside with Danry to the ward, where his horse was standing saddled and ready at the gates. Danry mounted, said a pleasant and normal farewell, then trotted down the road to the north. As Pertyc watched the dun disappearing, he felt danger like a cold ache in his stomach. The dolts, he thought, and maybe I’m the biggest dolt of all! He turned and looked over his dun, a small, squat broch standing inside a timber-laced wall without ramparts or barbicans. Although his demesne was continually short on coin, he decided it would be wise to spend what he had on fortifications, even if he could only afford to build some earthworks and ditches. Whatever else it may have lacked, his dun had the best watchtower in the kingdom for the Cannobaen light, where every night a beacon burned to warn passing ships of where submerged rocks just off the coast. If the rebellion swept a siege his way, it occurred to Pertyc, he could perhaps parlay keeping the light into a reason for keeping his neutrality. Perhaps. The dread in his stomach turned to burning ice.
Later that same day, he was drinking in his great hall when a page came with the news that there was a silver dagger at the gates. Since he had only ten men in his warband, he had Maer shown in straightaway.
“I’ll take you on, silver dagger. I don’t know when we’ll see action, but another man might come in handy. Your keep, and if there’s fighting, a silver piece a week.”
“My thanks, my lord. Winter’s coming on, and the roof over my head’s going to be welcome.”
“Good. Uh, Maer? If you shave that mustache off, it’ll grow in thicker next time, you know.”
Maer drew himself up to his full height.
“Is his lordship suggesting or ordering?”
“Merely suggesting. No offense intended.”
Pertyc turned him over to his captain, then went up to the women’s hall, a comfortable sunny room that covered half the second story of the tower. It was the domain of his lordship’s old nurse, Maudda, all stooped back and long white hair these days, but still doing her best to serve the clan by tending Pertyc’s four-year-old daughter, Becyla. Pertyc felt very bad about keeping the old woman working, but there was, quite simply, no one else who could handle the lass. As headstrong as her mother, he thought, then winced at the very mental mention of his absent wife. He found them sitting in a patch of sun by the window, Becyla in a chair, Maudda standing behind, keeping up a running flow of chatter as she combed the lass’s hair, but as soon as Pertyc stepped in, Becyla twisted free and rushed to her father.
“Da, Da, I want to go riding. Please, Da, please?”
“In a bit, my sweet.”
“Now!” She tossed back her head and howled in rage.
“Stop that! You’re upsetting poor Maudda.”
With a visible wrench of will she fell silent, turning to look at her beloved nurse. She was a beautiful child, Becyla, with her moonbeam-pale hair and enormous gray eyes, tall and slender for her age and as graceful as a fawn when she moved.
“Now, lambkin,” Maudda said. “You’ll go riding soon enough. Your da’s the lord, you see, and we all must do what he says. The gods made him a lord, and we—”
“Horseshit!” She stamped her foot. “But I’ll be good if you say so.”
With a sigh and a watery smile, Maudda held out her arms, and Becyla ran to her. I’ve got to get the poor old dear some help, Pertyc told himself. He had this thought with the same tedious regularity with which he first enlisted young nursemaids, then watched them retreat.
“Maudda, I wanted your advice on somewhat,” he said aloud. “I’ve been thinking about my son. Do you think my cousin would take it amiss if I rode to his dun and fetched Adraegyn home for the winter?”
“Ah. You’ve been hearing them rumors of trouble, then.”
“Ye gods, do you know everything?”
“Everything that matters, my lord.”
“Please, Da, go get him,” Becyla put in. “I miss Draego.”
“No doubt you do,” Pertyc said. “I think it might be best all round if he came home. I can train him myself, if it comes to that.”
“Da?” Becyla broke in. “I want to go with you.”
“You can’t, my sweet. Young ladies don’t go riding round the countryside like silver daggers.”
“I want to go!”
“I said you can’t.”
“I don’t care what you say. I don’t care what your dumb gods say, either. I don’t want to be a lady. I want to go riding. I want to go with you when you get Draego.” With a shriek she threw herself down on the floor and began to kick.
“If I may be so bold, my lord?” Maudda pitched her voice loud over the general noise. “Do get out and leave her to me.”
Pertyc fled the field. He was beginning to wish he’d done what his wife wanted and let her take his daughter away with her. He’d refused only out of a stubborn honor. He could only thank the gods for making Adraegyn a reasonable and fairly human being.

“Now, you know who does have a little cottage,” Samwna said thoughtfully. “Wersyn the merchant. He had it built for his mother, you see, when she was widowed, but the poor lady passed to the Otherlands just this spring. No surprise, truly, because she was seventy winters if she was a day old. She always said sixty-four, but hah! you can tell those things, good sir. But anyway, it’s a nice stout little place with a big hearth.”
“Does it have a bit of land around it?”
“Oh, it does, because she liked her flowers and suchlike. Besides, it had to be a good stone’s throw away from Wergyn’s house. Moligga—that’s his wife—put her foot down about that, and I can’t say I blame her, because old Bwdda was the nosy type, always lifting the lids of her daughter-in-law’s pots, if you take my meaning, good sir.”
Nevyn began to remember why he normally avoided small towns.
On the other hand, the cottage turned out to be both suitable and cheap, and he rented it immediately, then spent the rest of the day unpacking and settling in. On the morrow, he decided that while he’d keep his riding horse, the mule would only be a nuisance. Samwna, that font of all local information, told him to try selling it to a farmer named Nalyn.
“He lives out near Lord Pertyc’s dun. He married the farm, you see, or I should say, it still belongs to poor dear Myna—she was widowed so young, poor thing, and her with two daughters to raise on her own—but now one of the daughters is married. Lidyan, that is, and it’s good for them to have a man to work the fields again, I must say, so it’s Nalyn’s farm in a way, like.”
Nevyn made his escape at last and rode out, with the mule on a tether rope, and found the farm. When Nevyn dismounted near the shabby thatched roundhouse, he could hear someone yelling inside. A man’s voice, thick with rage, drifted out, followed by the sound of a woman weeping and pleading. Ye gods, he thought, does this Nalyn beat his poor wife? A second woman’s voice yelled back, cracking in a string of curses. A young heavyset man came stalking out of the house. Just as he took a step out of the doorway, an egg came sailing after him, caught him on the back of the head, and shattered. With an oath, the man started to turn back in, then saw Nevyn.
“My apologies,” Nevyn said. “I just heard in the village you might want to buy a mule. I can come back later.”
“No need.” The young farmer was busily trying to get the egg off the back of his head with both hands. “I do indeed need a mule, though my sister’s stubborn enough for a whole rotten herd of them. Let me just wash this off at the well.”
Laughter rang in the doorway, and a young woman, about Maer’s age, came strolling out. She was pretty, raven-haired and blue-eyed, but not truly beautiful, with her hair cropped off short in the way many farm women wore their hair, out of the way of hard work. Her dress was dirty, much mended, and hitched up around her waist at the kirtle to leave her ankles and feet bare.
“And who’s this, Nalyn? Another of your candidates for my betrothal?”
“Hold your cursed tongue, Glae!” Nalyn snapped.
“He’s better-looking than Doclyn, aged or not. No offense, good sir, but my beloved brother-in-law is bound and determined to marry me off to get rid of me, you see. Are you in the market for a young wife, by any chance?”
“Glae!” Nalyn howled. “I said hold your tongue!”
“Don’t give me orders, you afterbirth of a miscarried wormy sow.”
With an anguished glance in Nevyn’s direction Nalyn walked off to the well to wash away the egg. The lass leaned comfortably against the doorjamb and gave Nevyn a brilliant smile that transformed her face for one brief moment. Then she was merely wary, and plain, her eyes too suspicious and cold for beauty.
“Here, good sir, I haven’t even asked your name. Mine’s Glaenara. You must’ve been talking with the village women if you knew we were in the market for a mule.”
“Well, I did happen to speak with Samwna. My name is Nevyn, and that’s a name, not a jest.”
“Indeed? Well, then, Lord Nobody, welcome to our humble farm. Samwna’s a good woman, isn’t she? And her daughter Braedda’s my best friend. As meek as a suckling lamb, but I do like her.”
Glaenara ran her hands down the mule’s legs, thumped it on the chest, then grabbed its head and pried its mouth open to look at its teeth before the startled mule could even object. His wet shirt in his hand, Nalyn came back and watched sourly.
“Now, I’m the one who’s saying if we buy that mule or not.”
“Then take a look at its mouth yourself.”
When Nalyn went to do so, the by now wary mule promptly bit him on the arm. Howling with laughter, Glaenara cuffed the mule so hard that it let go. Nevyn grabbed Nalyn’s arm and looked at it: mule bites could turn nasty, but fortunately, this one hadn’t broken the skin. Nalyn was cursing a steady stream under his breath.
“Just bruised, I’d say,” Nevyn said soothingly. “My apologies.”
“Wasn’t you,” Nalyn growled. “Glae, I’m going to beat you so hard one of these days.”
“Just try.” Glaenara set her hands on her hips and smiled at him.
At that, the other two women came running out of the house. Glaenara’s mother was gray and thin, her face drawn and etched deep with exhausted lines. Her sister was pretty, with less strength but more harmony in her wide-eyed face. Sniveling, the sister caught her husband’s arm and looked up, pleading with him silently. The mother turned to Glaenara.
“Glae, please? Not in front of a stranger.”
With a sigh, Glaenara turned tame, coming over to slip her arm around her mother’s frail waist and give her a kiss on the cheek. Nalyn patted his wife’s arm, looked Nevyn’s way, and blushed again. For a moment they all stood there in a miserable tableau; then Glaenara led her mother back to the house. With one backward glance at Nevyn, the sister hurried after.
“My apologies for my little sister,” Nalyn said.
“My good sir, no man in his right mind would hold you responsible for anything that lass does.”
As he was riding back to the village, Nevyn met Lord Pertyc’s warband, coming two abreast in a cloud of dust. At the head rode the lord himself, a tall but slender man who reminded him strikingly of Prince Mael, his distant ancestor, with his raven-haired Eldidd good looks and heavy-lidded dark blue eyes. Beside him on a gray pony was a young lad of about eight, so much like the lord that Nevyn assumed it was his son. As they passed, Pertyc gave Nevyn a wave and a nod; Nevyn bowed gravely. Behind came ten men with badgers painted on their shields. At the very rear, riding alone in the dust but grinning as cheerfully as ever, was Maer. When he saw Nevyn, he waved.
“I’ve got myself a nice warm spot in a badger’s hole. You brought me good luck, Nevyn.”
“Good, good! I’ve settled into the village. No doubt we’ll see each other from time to time.”

“You know what?” Adraegyn said.
“I don’t,” Maer said. “What?”
“Da says he wants to hire more silver daggers if he can find them.”
“Does he now? Do you know why?”
“I’ll wager there’s going to be a war. Why else would he come fetch me back from Cousin Macco’s?”
“No doubt you’re right, truly.”
Adraegyn considered him for a moment. He was perched on the edge of the watering trough and watching while Maer cleaned his tack. Maer enjoyed the young lordling’s company; as the eldest of a family of seven, he was used to having children tagging after him.
“Do you have to polish that dagger a lot? Silver plates and stuff get dirty truly fast.”
“So they do. But the dagger’s different. It’s not entirely made of silver, you see.”
“Can I look at it? Or is that rude to ask?”
“You can look at mine, but never ask another silver dagger, all right? Most of us are a bit touchy about it. Now be careful. It’s as sharp as the Lord of Hell’s front tooth.”
Grinning, Adraegyn took the dagger and hefted it, then risked a gingerly touch on the blade with the ball of his thumb.
“Have you ever slain a man with this dagger?”
“I haven’t, but then, I haven’t had it very long. Maybe I’ll get my chance if your father rides to war.”
“I wish I could go, but I’m still learning stuff.” Adraegyn sighed dramatically. “And I’ve got to waste all this time learning to read.”
“Truly? Now that’s a strange thing. Why?”
“Da says I have to. All the men in our clan learn to read. It’s one of the things that makes us Maelwaedds.”
In a few minutes the Maelwaedd himself came strolling over to lean on the watering trough beside his son.
“It’s always pleasant to see another man work,” Pertyc said. “Odd, but there you have it.”
“So it is, my lord. Sometimes I’d be traveling and stop to watch some poor bastard of a farmer slaving out in the fields, just to be watching him.”
“Just so. Here, Draego, what are you doing with Maer’s silver dagger?”
“He let me look at it, Da. That’s all.”
“Careful—those things are blasted sharp.”
“I know, Da!” Somewhat reluctantly, Adraegyn handed the dagger back to Maer. “Da, I want to go riding. Can I take my pony down to the village?”
“By all means. Or here.” Pertyc hesistated for a moment. “Maer, go with him, will you? You can use some of the spare tack while yours is drying.”
“Done, my lord.” Maer looked up sharply. “Do you think there might be trouble?”
“The world’s as full of trouble as the sea is full of fish. I don’t think anything just yet, but listen, Draego, from now on, when you want to leave the dun, you tell me first and take one of the men with you.”
“Why? I never used to have to.”
“Do as I say and hold your tongue about it. I’ll tell you more when there’s more to tell.”
There was a fair amount of activity down in Cannobaen that afternoon, because it was market day. Most of the farmers and craftsmen had their goods spread out on blankets on the ground, though the weaver and local blacksmith did have little stalls. As Maer and Adraegyn strolled around, the lad would stop every now and then and ask a villager how his wife was doing or if his children were well, and he managed to remember everyone’s name in a most impressive manner. At the edge of the market, a young woman was sitting behind baskets of eggs. Maer was immediately struck by her. Although she wasn’t beautiful, she was handsome, with a slightly malicious touch to her grin and life sparkling in her blue eyes.
“Who’s that, my lord?” Maer pointed her out.
“Oh, that’s Glae. She and her kin have the farm next to our demesne.”
Maer guided the lad over to Glae and her baskets. Tied up behind her was a mule.
“Good morrow, Glae,” Adraegyn said to her.
“Good morrow, my lord. Come down for a look at your market?”
“I have.” Adraegyn waved at Maer. “This is Maer. He’s my bodyguard now.”
“Oh, is he?” Glae gave Maer a cool appraisal. “And a silver dagger at that.”
“I am.” Maer made her a half bow. “But I beg and pray that you won’t think the less of me for it.”
“Since I think naught of you one way or the other, I can hardly think less of you, can I now?”
Maer opened his mouth and shut it again, suddenly at a loss for words.
“You’ve got a new mule, I see,” Adraegyn said.
“We do, my lord. We bought it from the new herbman in town.”
“There’s someone new in town?” Adraegyn was openly delighted. “Where does he live?”
“In the cottage by Wersyn’s house. And he seems a wise old man indeed, from what Braedda tells me.”
“Come on, Maer. Let’s go meet him. Maybe he’s a dweomerman or suchlike.”
“Oh, now here,” Maer said, grinning. “You do have a taste for the bard’s fancies, don’t you?”
“Well, you never know. Good morrow, Glae. I hope you sell a lot of eggs. Come on now, Maer. Let’s go.”
Maer made Glae one last bow, which she acknowledged with a flick of her eyes, then hurried after his half-sized commander.
They found Nevyn out in the garden in front of his cottage, digging up a flower bed as vigorously as a man a third of his age. Adraegyn hailed him, leaned on the fence, then gasped in sudden delight.
“Oh, your garden’s full of Wildfolk! They’re all dancing round and round.”
Nevyn grunted in sharp surprise. Maer started to laugh, then choked it back for fear of hurting the lad’s feelings—he was already blushing scarlet at his lapse.
“I mean, uh, I’m sorry, I mean, I know there aren’t really Wildfolk . . . ”
“What?” Nevyn’s voice was perfectly mild. “Of course there are Wildfolk. And you were quite right the first time. My garden’s full of them.”
It was nice of the old man, Maer thought, to help the lad over his awkward moment with a little lie. Adraegyn was beaming up at Nevyn.
“You see them, too? Truly?”
“I do.”
Adraegyn spun around to consider Maer.
“And you must, too. You can tell us, Maer. We all do.”
“What, my lord?”
“Well, come on. That big blue sprite follows you all over, you know. She must like you. Don’t you see her?”
For the second time that afternoon, Maer found himself speechless. He stared openmouthed while an awkward silence grew painful.
“My lord,” Nevyn said gently. “Sometimes the Wildfolk take a liking to someone for reasons of their own. I don’t think Maer does see her, or any of them, for that matter. Do you, Maer?”
“I don’t, truly.”
“Now tell me, Maer. Can you see the wind?”
“What? Of course not! No one can see the wind.”
“Just so. But it’s real enough.”
For the briefest of moments Maer found himself wavering. Did Adraegyn and old Nevyn really see Wildfolk? Did those fabled little creatures actually exist? Oh, don’t be a stupid dolt! he told himself. Of course they don’t!
Later, when they rode back to the dun, Lord Pertyc happened to be walking across the ward just as they trotted in the gates. A servant came running to take Adraegyn’s horse. As soon as he was down, the lad ran, dodging away from his father’s affectionate hand and racing for the shelter of the broch.
“Somewhat wrong?” Pertyc said to Maer.
“Uh, well, my lord, your lad wanted to go meet the new herbman in town, so I took him, but truly, I wonder if the old man’s daft.”
“Daft? Did he scare the lad or suchlike?”
“Not at all, but he scared me. Here, my lord, I don’t mean to open old wounds or suchlike, but does young Adraegyn talk about the Wildfolk a lot?”
“Oh, that!” Pertyc smiled in open relief. “That’s all, was it? Did the herbman tease him about it? Well, no doubt the fellow was startled to hear a lad his age still babbling about Wildfolk.”
“Er, not exactly, my lord. The old man says he can see them too.”

Late on the morrow morn, Nevyn was working out in back, planting a few quick-growing herbs and hoping that they would reach a decent size before the days turned short, when he heard a horseman riding up to the cottage. Trowel in hand, he hurried round and saw Lord Pertyc dismounting at the front gate.
“Good morrow, my lord. To what do I owe this honor of a visit? I hope no one’s ill at your dun.”
“Oh, thanks be to holy Sebanna, we’re all healthy enough. Just thought I’d have a chat, since you’re new here and all.”
Nevyn stuck the trowel in his belt and swung open the gate. Pertyc followed him in, looking wide-eyed round the garden as if he expected to see spirits leering out from under every bush. The place was full of spirits, of course, little gray gnomes sucking their fingers, blue sprites, ratty-haired and long-nosed, grinning to show pointed teeth, sylphs like airy crystals, darting this way and that. Inside, near the hearthstone, Wildfolk sat on the table and the bench and climbed on the shelves full of herbs. On the table a leather-bound book lay open.
“Ye gods!” Pertyc said. “That’s my most illustrious ancestor’s book!”
“One of them, at least. Being here made me think of it. Have you ever read it?”
“I take it on, every now and then. When every Maelwaedd man comes of age, his father tells him to read the Ethics. So you plow through a bit, and then your father admits that he could never finish the wretched thing, either, and you know you’re truly a man among men.”
“I see. Won’t you honor me by sitting down, my lord? I can fetch you some ale.”
“Oh, no need.” Pertyc had an anxious eye for the shelves of strange herbs and drugs. “Can’t stay more than a minute, truly. Er, well, you see, there was somewhat I wanted to ask you about.”
“The Wildfolk? I figured that Maer would tell you about what happened.”
“He did indeed. Um, you were just humoring my lad, weren’t you?”
A yellow gnome reached over and closed the book with a little puff of dust. Pertyc yelped.
“I wasn’t, actually.” Nevyn said. “Does his lordship truly doubt that young Adraegyn can see the Wildfolk?”
“Well I can’t say that I do, but I like to keep it in the family, you know.”
“Ah. I take it that his lordship’s wife is a woman of the Westfolk.”
“Well, she was.”
“My apologies, my lord. I didn’t realize that she’d ridding through the gates of the Otherlands.”
“Naught of the sort, if you mean did she die.” A tone of injured pride crept into Pertyc’s voice. “As far as I know, anyway, she’s alive and well and no doubt as nasty and wrong-minded as she ever was. I suppose I’m being unfair. I don’t know how I ever thought she could live in a dun and be the proper wife of a noble lord, but by all the ice in all the hells, she might have tried!”
“I see.” Nevyn suppressed a grin. “I take it that you didn’t stand in her way when she decided to leave.”
“It wouldn’t have mattered one jot if I’d gone down on my knees and begged her to stay.” All at once he turned faintly pink. “But why I’m burdening your ears with all of this, I don’t know. You seem to be an easy man to talk to, Nevyn.”
“My thanks, my lord. It’s a valuable thing in a herbman, being easy to talk to.”
“No doubt. Herbman, huh? Is that all you are?”
“And what else would my lordship think I am?”
“Now, I know that most men would mock the dweomer, good sir, but we Maelwaedd’s don’t. There’s bits and pieces about it in Prince Mael’s books, for one thing, and well, we pass the lore along. We’re like badgers, truly. We hold on.”
“Even to your oath to a foreign king?”
Lord Pertyc’s face went dead white. Nevyn smiled, thinking that this exercise in logic must seem an act of magic.
“We do,” Pertyc said at last. “Aeryc’s the king I swore to serve, and serve him I will.”
“With only ten men, it’s going to be hard to stand against the king’s enemies.”
“I know. A badger can tear one boarhound to pieces, but the pack will get him in the end. But a vow’s a vow, and that’s that. They just might honor my neutrality, or so I can hope, anyway.” All at once his lordship grinned. “Besides, I’ve already hired one silver dagger, so I’ve actually got eleven men now. Maybe more will ride my way.”
“That reminds, my lord. Do you know why the silver daggers never ride together as a troop, the way they did in the old days?”
“Well, one of the kings forbade them to. I suppose they were too dangerous. The kingmakers—that’s what they were called, you know. A warband that’s made a king can unmake one just as easily.” Pertyc frowned, remembering something. “Let’s see, in this book I have at home it says that after the civil wars all the free troops were banned. That’s right, I remember now. It was Maryn’s son. His councillors wanted him to ban the silver daggers, too, but he refused, because of the service they’d paid his father. But he didn’t want an independent army riding round causing trouble, either, so he ruled that they could only hire out as one man or two together.”
“Ah, I see. Well, too bad in a way. You could hire them if only they still existed, eh? But then, maybe this rebellion will stay in Aberwyn.”
Pertyc looked away so fast that Nevyn knew that he had information to the contrary.
“There are times when trouble spreads like fire in dry grass,” Nevyn said. “No one knows which way the wind will blow.”
“Just so. Well, no doubt I’m keeping you from your work. Good day.”

All summer, Glaenara had been curing cheeses in round wooden molds. When the four biggest wheels were ready, she loaded them onto the mule and took them to Lord Pertyc’s dun as part of their taxes. Since it was drowsy-hot, she went barefoot, saving the leather of her one pair of shoes for the winter. Although Nalyn kept urging her to get some boots made down in the village, she preferred to scant herself rather than take what she thought of as his charity. Until Nalyn appeared, Glaenara had been the strong one in the family, keeping up her mother and sister’s spirits after her father died, working harder than most lads to scrape a subsistence living out of their farm. Just when I’m old enough to plow like a man, he comes strolling in, she thought bitterly. But there was no doubt that Mam and Lida were happier now. Perhaps that was the worst blow of all.
The gates to Dun Cannobaen stood open, and the ward was its usual slow confusion—servants strolling about their tasks, the riders sitting out in the sun dicing for coppers, Lord Pertyc himself lounging on the steps with a tankard of ale. Glaenara dropped him a curtsy, which he acknowledged by getting up. Although she considered herself a world below him, Glaenara was fond of her local lord because he was a kind man, and his unfortunate marriage had given everyone something exciting to talk about for years now. Rulers have been loved, after all, for a good deal less.
“Looks like cheese,” Pertyc said. “What kind, yellow or white?”
“Yellow, my lord. It’s awfully good.”
Pertyc set his tankard down and drew his dagger to cut himself off a slice. When he took a bite, he nodded in satisfaction.
“So it is. Goes well with ale, an important thing round here, truly.”
Pertyc cut himself another, thicker slice, retrieved is ale, and returned to his steps. Glaenara led the mule round back to the kitchen door and began unloading the cheese. She’d just swung two wheels out when Maer the silver dagger came running up and made her a low bow.
“Now here, fair maid, those look heavy. Let me carry them for you.”
“Not heavy at all. Only twenty pound each.”
Maer, however, insisted on hefting three and leaving her only one to carry into the kitchen. As he laid his wheels down on the long wooden table, it occurred to Glaenara that he was trying to be polite to her. The idea came as a surprise.
“Well, my thanks,” she said.
“Oh, I’d pay you any service gladly.”
Another surprise: he was flirting with her. Caught off guard, Glaenara turned away and began talking with the cook, an old friend of her mother’s, leaving Maer to hover helplessly in the doorway. She was hoping that he would just go away, but he waited until she and the cook were done with their chat. As she was leaving, Maer grabbed the mule’s lead rope and led him to the gates for her.
“Truly, it was good to see you,” Maer said.
“Was it? Why?”
“Well, uh.” Maer began fiddling with the end of the lead rope. “Well, it’s always good to see a pretty lass, truly. Especially one with spirit.”
Glaenara snorted and grabbed the rope back from him.
“My thanks for helping me haul the cheese. I’ve got to get back to my work.”
“Can I walk with you a ways?”
“You can’t. Or . . . wait a minute. You said you’d pay me a service?”
“I will. Just name it.”
“Then shave that beastly mustache off. It makes your face look dirty and naught more.”
Maer howled, clapping a hand over his upper lip in self-defense. Glae marched away, sure that she’d seen the last of him. Yet that very afternoon, she was taking a couple of buckets of vegetable scraps out to the hogs when she saw him leading his horse in through the gates. She stopped and stared; the mustache was gone, sure enough. Nalyn came strolling over with a hoe in his hands and gave Maer a cold looking-over.
“Good morrow, sir,” Maer said. “I was wanting to speak to Glaenara, you see.”
“Oh, were you now? And just what do you want with my sister?”
“And what’s it to you who I talk with?” Glaenara snapped.
“Now hold your tongue. I just want to get a look at a man who comes courting you with a silver dagger in his belt.”
“Now here!” Maer put it, but feebly. “I’ve got honorable intentions, I assure you.”
Nalyn and Glaenara both ignored him and turned to glare at each other.
“You’re too young to judge a man,” Nalyn snarled. “I’ve had the experience to know a rotten apple from a sound one.”
“Who are you calling rotten?”
“No one—yet. Maybe I’m only married kin, but I’m the only brother you’ve got, and cursed if I’ll let you hang about talking with silver daggers and other scum of the road.”
“Don’t you call Maer scum! I won’t stand for it.”
“Oh, won’t you now?” Nalyn said with a smug little grin. “And how do you know his name, and how come you’re so quick to defend him?”
Glaenara grabbed one of her buckets of pig slops, swung, and emptied it over Nalyn’s head.
“I’ll talk to who I want to!”
Predictably, the noise brough Lidyan running—and shrieking at the sight of her husband covered with carrot peels and radish leaves. Maer doubled over laughing.
“Flowers to the fair,” Maer choked out. “And slops to the hogs. Ye gods, you’ve got a good hand with the bucket. He should be glad you weren’t sweeping out the cow barn!”
A piece of carrot peel had flown his way and stuck to his shirt. He plucked it off and handed it to Glaenara with a courtly bow.
“A small token of my esteem. Now I’d best get out of here before your brother takes a hoe to me.”
“Brother-in-law, that’s all. And don’t you forget it.”
The next time Glaenara went to market, she sold all her cheese and eggs early in the day, then went over to the inn. As she was tying up the mule out back, Braedda, Samwna’s pretty blond daughter, came running out to catch Glaenara’s arm and lean close like a conspirator. They were exactly the same age, although Braedda looked younger, just because her hands were soft and her face had been spare the rough winds of the fields.
“Ganedd and his father got home last night,” Braedda said, giggling.
“Oh, wonderful! Is your father going to ask about the betrothal?”
“He’s going over this evening, right after dinner. Oh, Glae, I can hardly wait! I want to marry Ganno so bad.”
Out in the back of the stables was a shed, filled with sacks of milled oats and tied shocks of hay. Glaenara and Braedda went there, as they usually did, to talk out of the hearing of her parents. They’d barely started their gossip, though, when Ganedd himself appeared, opening the door without knocking. He was a tall lad, filling out to a man built more like a warrior than a merchant, with pale blue eyes and golden hair, a sign that somewhere in his clan’s history was some Deverry blood.
“I’d best go,” Glaenara said. “I’ll be in for the market next week, Brae.”
Ganedd smiled briefly, then gallantly opened the door for her. As she led the mule out of the village, Glaenara was wishing she felt less jealous of her friend’s good fortune. Although she rather disliked Ganedd, he was a far better catch than any man that was likely to come courting her. Just as she was turning into the road, she happened across Nevyn, riding in. He made her a bow from the saddle, surprisingly limber for one who looked so old.
“In for the market, were you?”
“I was, sir. And a good day to you.”
He smiled, then suddenly leaned forward, staring into her eyes. For a moment she felt as if she’d been turned to stone and his cold gaze was a chisel, slicing into her soul; then he released her with a small nod.
“And a good day to you, lass. Oh, wait, I just thought of somewhat. Would you like to earn four coppers a week, doing my laundry and sweeping out my cottage and suchlike?”
“I would indeed.”
“Splendid! Then come in tomorrow, because I’m afraid I’ve let things pile up a bit. After this, two mornings a week should do it.”
“Well and good, then. I’ll be in before noon.”

As he rode his way, Nevyn was thinking of the strange vagaries of Wyrd. The last time he’d known this woman, she’d been queen of all Deverry and the virtual regent of Cerrmor while her royal husband was on campaign. The oddest thing of all, though, wasn’t the obvious change in her fortunes; it was that he’d pitied her even more when she’d been queen.

Out in the paddock behind the merchant’s big wooden house, twelve Western Hunter colts nibbled at the grass or stood drowsing head down in the warm sun, blood bays and chestnuts, mostly, but off to one side was a perfect strawberry roan, Ganedd’s favorite. When he leaned on the fence, the roan came over to have his ears scratched.
“I’m thinking of giving that colt to the gwerbret in Aberwyn,” Wersyn said. “It’s been a while since I’ve given his grace a token of our esteem.”
“This lad will make a good warhorse, truly.”
“Just so. You know, I think I’ll let you be the one to deliver him to his grace. It’s time he knew your name as my heir.”
“Uh, well, Da, I’ve been thinking, and . . . ”
“You’re not going to sea! I’m sick to death of having this discussion. You’re my son, and we deal in horses, and that’s that.”
“You’ve got Avyl! He’s your son, too, isn’t he? He’ll make a fine horse trader! You say so yourself.”
“You’re the eldest son, and that’s that.”
Wersyn had his arms crossed over his chest, a sure sign that arguing was futile. Ganedd turned on his heel and stalked off in the direction of town. At times he wished that he had the guts to just run away. If he could only find a merchant captain who wouldn’t mind offending his father . . . but that was worse than unlikely down in Aberwyn, where Wersyn was an important man in the guild. His aimless walk brought him to his grandmother’s cottage and the new herbman in town, who was grubbing away in the garden. When Ganedd leaned on the fence to watch, the old man straightened up, wiped his hands on a bit of rag, then strolled over to say good morrow.
“And does the cottage suit you, sir?” Ganedd said. “If it needs repair, I can try to set things right.”
“Good of you, lad, but so far, everything’s just fine. I hear you and your father are going to Aberwyn soon.”
“Tomorrow morning, actually, with the dawn. We’ve got some tribute to pay to Gwerbret Aberwyn, and then there’s going to be a big meeting of the merchant guild.”
“Interesting. What about?”
“I’m not allowed to discuss it, sir, with someone who isn’t in the guild.”
“All right, then. I’ll wager you enjoy going to Aberwyn, though.”
“Oh, I certainly do! Ye gods, life is so beastly boring here in Cannobaen.”
“No doubt, but don’t you go with your father when he trades with the Westfolk?”
“Of course, but so what? They’re just the Westfolk.”
“Ah. I see.”
And Ganedd was left with the infuriating feeling that the old man was doing his best not to laugh at him.

That very evening their two fathers arranged the wedding pact, but the formalities of life demanded that Braedda’s father come ask Lord Pertyc’s permission to formalize the betrothal of his daughter to Ganedd the merchant’s son. Technically, Wersyn should have come with him, but he was already on his way to Aberwyn with his son and the loan of his lordship’s silver dagger as well, for a guard. Pertyc approved the betrothal, stood the man a goblet of mead in celebration, then sent him on his way with his best wishes. The innkeep was only a few hours gone when Tieryn Danry turned up at Pertyc’s gates with an escort of ten men.
All that afternoon, while they drank together in the great hall and talked idly about everything but the rebellion, Pertyc was aware of Danry studying him like a tactical problem. Over breakfast the next day, when Danry suggested that they go hunting alone rather than organizing a full-scale stag hunt, Pertyc felt a confrontation coming, but he agreed simply to have it over with. When they rode out, they took only a lad with a pack mule and some dogs with them. Danry carried the usual short hunting bow; Pertyc had a yew longbow, mounted with silver, that had been a wedding gift from his wife’s brother.
At the edge of the forest, they left the lad with the horses and went alone on foot to see if they could flush a deer. The dogs, a pair of the sleek gray breed called gwertrae, were eager, whining as they sniffed round for tracks and nosed their way through the bracken and fern. Above them rose the ancient oaks, casting a shade cold with a hint of winter coming. Pertyc and Danry had hunted together this way a hundred times, picking their way down narrow trails as silently as the wild animals they sought. Pertyc found himself wishing they were both lads again, too young to be troubled by obligations and vows and the need to ride to war. When at length they came to a clearing where the sun came down in a long golden shaft onto the leaf-littered ground, Danry whistled sharply to the dogs and brought them back to heel.
“They haven’t even found us a trail yet,” Pertyc said.
Danry turned to him with a faint smile.
“My answer’s still the same,” Pertyc went on. “I won’t ride with you in the spring.”
“As stubborn as a badger, truly. But I came to tell you somewhat, and if you love me, then never say where you heard it.”
“You know I’ll keep silent.”
“Well and good. Then listen, Perro, things are growing nasty. You were wise to bring your lad home. I’m not the only man who had thoughts about your claim to the throne. There are some who’d be glad to put little Draego in your place.”
“They’ll have to kill me to get at the lad.”
“That’s just what they might do.”
Pertyc went cold, standing in the warm shaft of autumn sun.
“He wouldn’t be the first child to have a throne won for him by grown men,” Danry said. “Now listen, I don’t know any more than rumors. No one’s going to speak honestly of such things in front of me, because they know you’re my oath-sworn friend. It would be a long sight easier to stop the talk if you were one of us.”
Pertyc looked away.
“If they come for the lad, how are you going to stop them?” Danry said. “You can’t afford an army. Ah, ye gods, I feel torn apart, Perro.”
“Then maybe you should join me and the king.”
Danry winced, shaking his head in honest pain.
“I can’t. My honor would never let me rest.”
“No more would mine if I joined the rebels. I’ll warn you somewhat. If your allies decide to try for my lad, then get ready to watch me die.”
Danry came close to weeping. At his feet, the gwertroedd whined, dancing a step away, then coming reluctantly back to heel. Far off in the forests, a bird sang, a flood of defiant melody in the shadows.
“And if I die, and you live,” Pertyc said slowly, “I’ll beg you to watch over Adraegyn for me. He’ll need a faithful dog if he’s surrounded by wolves.”
Danry nodded his agreement. Pertyc hesitated, considering saying more, but there was nothing to say. He wanted to have one last day with his friend when they could pretend that things were as they’d always been.
“Let’s get on with the hunt, shall we?”
Danry threw up his hand and sent the eager hounds forward. They coursed slowly through the woods for another hour, neither of them speaking, the dogs growing sullen and frustrated, until at last the lead gwertrae stiffened, tossing up its head. An arrow nocked ready in his bow, Pertyc jogged after until, all at once, they heard a crash and rustle as a deer broke cover, and the hounds shot forward as fast as arrows, yapping after a young doe. An arrow whistled: Danry’s first shot, bouncing off a tree, way too short. Pertyc fell into his stance, raised his bow, and loosed all in one smooth motion. The doe reared up and fell, stumbled a few steps, then fell again as the dogs threw themselves upon her. Drawing his dagger, Pertyc ran for them, but she was already dead, skewered neatly through the heart. Shouting, Pertyc kicked the gwertroedd away. Danry came running, tossing his bow down, and grabbed the whining hounds by the collars.
“Ye gods, man!” Danry said, grinning. “You’ve got the best hand with a bow in all of Eldidd!”
Pertyc merely smiled, thinking that his wife could best him without half trying. While Dantry was forcing the dogs to lie down away from the kill, he set his foot against the doe’s neck and pulled the arrow out with both hands. Unbroken, it was worth straightening. As he examined the fletching for splits, he was thinking of his wife, remembering the stories she’d told him of wars long fought and over. His heart began to pound in a sudden gruesome hope. When he looked up to find Danry watching him, he felt as guilty as a caught burglar.
“Perro? I’ll beg you. Please join us.”
“I can’t. I’m too much of a badger, my friend.”
“Ah, by the hells! Well, so be it.”
Their afternoon was over, the last time they could love each other without the love turning to nightmare. Pertyc turned away before he wept.
Late that night, when the rest of the clan was asleep, Pertyc went up to his study and lit a pair of candles in a silver sconce. As a draft caught the flames, shadows flew back and forth across walls and filled his mind with thoughts of winter, his last winter alive, or so he was counting it. He was determined, though, that his death would cost his enemies a price as high as he could set it.
“And would it be true dishonor,” he said to one of the stag’s heads on the wall, “to bring longbows back into Eldidd? I’ve always been told so. The question is, do I give the fart of a two-copper pig about the dishonor? Our rebels, my cervine friend, are being a good bit more dishonorable with their wretched plots.”
In the blown shadows the stag’s eyes seemed to move, pondering his logic; but he never did answer. Pertyc found his ancestor’s books, actually a collection of treatises, bound up for the clan in two volumes, stamped with the clan device on the pale leather covers, and massive things, weighing a good fifteen pounds each. He propped the second one up on the lectern, lit more candles, and stood to turn the pages. Touching the book was a comfort all its own, because it gave him palpable contact with his history, all those other Maelwaedd lords, going back a hundred years to the disclaimed prince himself. He doubted, though, that his clan would live after his own coming death. Once a rebel faction proclaimed Adraegyn royal, the High King would have to choice but to kill the boy.
“Ah, stuff the dishonor, then!” he said to the stag’s head. “They’re murdering my lad, just by trying to put him on a throne that isn’t his. I’ve got every right to skewer as many of the miserable bastards as I can before the end. We’ll see if I can get those merchants to ride west for me—well, once they get themselves back home, anyway.”
Then he returned to his reading, which gave him a surprise of quite another sort.
In the morning, Danry took his leave, riding out at the head of his escort with a cheery wave of his hand and a jest for his last farewell. Pertyc had the groom saddle him up a horse, then rode straight to Nevyn’s cottage. As he walked through the garden, hot and hushed in the sunlight, Pertyc had the uneasy feeling that eyes were watching him, but although he peered into every shadow, he saw nothing but turned earth and growing things. When he knocked, Nevyn opened the door and ushered him in with a bow.
“Good morrow, my lord. To what do I owe this honor?”
“Oh, I just wanted a word with you.”
Nevyn smiled, waiting pleasantly. Pertyc glanced around the room, filled with the rich mingled smell of a hundred herbs and roots and barks, bitter and sweet, dry and sharp all diffusing together in the sunlit air.
“I was reading my ancestor’s book last night, you see, and I came across a most curious passage about the dweomer. It was in the book of Qualities. Have you read that, by any chance?”
“I have, but it was a very long time ago.”
“No doubt. Let me refresh your memory about this one bit, then. The most noble prince was discussing whether dweomer exists, you see, and he remarks that he once knew a dweomerman.”
“Oh, did he now? I think I begin to recall the passage.”
“No doubt. It would be a great honor to have one’s name recorded in a book for me to remember down the long years.”
Nevyn considered him with a small frown, then suddenly laughed.
“His lordship has quick wits. He’s most worthy of his noble ancestor’s name.”
“By the hells! You mean I’ve guessed right?”
“About what? You don’t really think that I’m the self-same man that knew Prince Mael, do you?”
“Er, well, it did seem to fantastical to be true . . . ”
“Indeed.” The old man considered for a moment, as if he were debating something in his mind. “Here, if you promise to keep this to yourself, I’ll tell you the truth. The name of Nevyn is a kind of honorary title, passed down from master to apprentice just like a lord passes his title to a son. When one Nevyn grows old and dies, then a new one appears.”
Pertyc felt embarassed as a page caught in some lapse of etiquette. Nevyn grinned at him in an oddly sly way, as if the old man had just done something that pleased him mightily.
“And did you come to ask me that, my lord, and naught more? His lordship seems troubled. Is it all because of the dweomer?”
“You’ll have to forgive me, good sir. I have so much on my mind these days.”
“No doubt. So must every lord in Eldidd.”
If it weren’t for Danry, Pertyc would have told the entire tale to the dweomerman there and then, but his oath-sworn friend was up to his neck in treason.
“Eldidd is always full of troubles.” Pertyc chose his words carefully. “Few of them come to much.”
“Those few that do can be deadly.”
“True-spoken. That’s why our Mael listed prudence among his noble qualities. It pays to be ready for trouble, even if none comes.”
Nevyn’s eyes seemed to cut through to his soul, as sharp as a sword thrust.
“I’m well aware that you and your son have a tenuous claim to the Eldidd throne.”
“I have no claim at all in any true or holy sense of that word.”
“Qualities such as the true and the holy are held in general disrespect in most parts of the kingdowm. That’s a quote from your ancestor’s book. It seems he was farsighted enough to deserve the name of Seer.”
Pertyc rose, pacing restlessly over to the hearth.
“Let me guess what you’re too honorable to tell me,” Nevyn went on. “Every friend you have is in this rebellious muck too deep to get out again, and so you’re being torn to pieces between your loyalty to them and your loyalty to the king.”
“How—ah, ye gods, dweomer indeed!”
“Naught of the sort. Mere logic. Let me ask only one thing: are you going to fight for the king or try and stay neutral?”
“Neutral, if only the gods will allow. And let me ask you the same. Are you a king’s man or neutral in this scrap?”
“I belong to the people of this kingdom, lad, not king nor lord nor usurper. And that’s all the answer you’re going to get from me.”

The great guildhall of Aberwyn was hot. Every one of the long rank of windows help diamond-paned glass—an enormous luxury but a stifling one as the sun poured through onto the packed crowd. A hundred men sat solemnly on long benches down on the blue and gray slate floor, while up on the dais stood a row of carved chairs filled with the guild officers, all in their ceremonial cloaks of bright-colored checked wool. At one end of this impressive line, the guild’s chief scribe snored shamelessly. In his seat down on the floor, Ganedd wished that he could do the same, but every time he nodded off, his father elbowed him in the ribs. All afternoon, the debate raged over the matter of loaning two thousand silver pieces to the gwerbret of Aberwyn. Although no one ever mentioned why the gwerbret wanted the coin, the knowledge was as cloying as the heat, making it hard to think clearly. A successful rebellion meant freedom from Deverry taxes, freedom from the Deverry guilds, and a certain heady rush of pride in independence. Failure, of course, meant losing the money down to the last copper. After the formal meeting droned to a halt, close to sunset, the debate continued in private inn chambers or over dinner tables in wealthy merchant houses. There in whispers among a few men at a time, rose the simple question: could the gwerbrets win or not?
“And even if they do win, what’s next?” Wersyn said. “There’s two great gwerbrets in Eldidd and only one throne. Ye gods, it gives me a headache, thinking about them turning on each other once the first war is over.”
“Well, we’ve got to start thinking about this kind of thing, Da,” Ganedd said. “We’re going to vote on the loan tomorrow.”
“True enough, but you’d better vote the way I tell you when the time comes.”
They were in their luxurious inn chamber, waiting for two of Wersyn’s old friends to join him for another private discussion. Among flagons of Bardek wine a small cold supper was laid out on a linen-covered table.
“If I’m voting the way you say, can I go down to the tavern room tonight? No need for me to listen, is there, if you’re going to make my mind up for me.”
“You nasty little cub.” Wersyn said it without real rancor. “Just don’t come in staggering drunk until my guests have gone. Ye gods! Sometimes I wonder where I got a son like you. Wanting to go to sea! Drinking! Humph!”
Since they were staying in an expensive inn, the tavern room was big and clean, with glass lanterns hanging every few feet along the whitewashed walls, but all the serving girls were respectable and watched over by a paternal tavernman who seemed determined to keep them that way. Down in one corner, out of the way by the kitchen door, Ganedd found Maer, drinking ale alone and doing his best to behave himself.
“Aren’t you going to discuss grave affairs of state with your da and his friends?”
“I’m not. They won’t listen to me, and it drives me half mad. This scheme is daft, Maer. They keep talking about how many riders the rebels can raise when what they need to be talking about is ships.”
“Huh? What have ships got to do with it?”
“Not you, too! Look, as the king marches south from Dun Deverry to Cerrmor, what does he find along the way? Loyal vassals, that’s what, with nice fat demesnes that support big warbands. Then when he gets to Cerrmor, what does he find?”
“Ships.” Maer sat up straight and began thinking. “Ships to deliver all those men to Abernaudd and Aberwyn in about half the time they could ride.”
“Right. And the rebels don’t have a third of the galleys they need to stop him.”
“Hum.” Maer thoughtfully chewed on his lower lip. “Too bad you can’t go for a marine officer, Ganno, on one of his grace’s galleys. You’ve got the mind for it.”
“That’s a splendid idea, you know, and one I never thought of. I wonder . . . but we won’t be in Aberwyn much longer this trip, so I can’t go ask his grace. What do you say we go see what kind of lasses work in the taverns closer to the docks? I nipped some of Da’s coin from his pouch when he wasn’t looking.”
“Did you now? Well, if you don’t mind me helping you spend it, I’m on.”
It was well into the third watch when Ganedd came stumbling up the stairs of the inn. As he let himself into their chambers, he tripped, falling onto his hands and knees with a curse and a clatter. Just as he was picking himself up, Wersyn came out of the bedchamber with a candle lantern in his hand. Ganedd grabbed the edge of the table to steady himself and forced out a weak smile.
“I can smell the mead from way over here,” Wersyn announced. “And a good bit more than mead, I must say. Cheap perfume, is it?”
“Well, I waited until your guests left, didn’t I?”
“I suppose I should be thanking the gods for giving you one little crumb of good sense. Look at you—like a prize bull, properly bred and twice as sweaty! And you’re drunk, and you stole from me, and—” He sputtered briefly, then took a deep breath. “Ye gods, Ganno! Do you know how late it is? You’ve been out carousing most of the night. And now you’re going to go staggering into the guildhall, I suppose, with your eyes as red as a weasel’s, and everyone will know what you were up to. By the Lord of Hell’s black ass, what will people think of me for having a son like you?”
Wersyn strode back into his bedchamber. When he slammed the door behind him and his candle, the reception chamber went dark. Stumbling over furniture, Ganedd found his way to his own bedchamber, fell down on the bed fully dressed, and passed out.
But he woke in the morning in a sullen temper. During breakfast, which he could barely eat, he had difficulty looking at his father, who prattled on about lower taxes as if the rebellion were already won.
“Now remember what I said about the vote this morning,” Wersyn announced finally.
Ganedd tried to swallow a spoonful of barley porridge, then shoved the bowl away as a bad job.
“The loan’s going through no matter what we think about it,” Wersyn continued. “So when it comes to the vote, we’re giving our approval too.”
Ganedd started to argue, then got up and rushed out of the room. He never made it to the privy, but no one cared when he heaved the contents of his stomach onto the dungheap out back of the inn.
The vote on the loan was the last item on the guild’s agenda, rather as though the master were putting it off as long as possible in the vain hope that some omen might make the decision easier. Ganedd sat sullenly on his bench—way at the back since he’d come in late—and nursed the mead-sick throb in his temples and the queasiness in his stomach. All at once, a bustle on the dais caught his attention. The guildmaster rose, tossed his cloak back from one shoulder, and blew on his silver horn to bring the meeting to order, the long sweet note echoing through the abruptly silent hall. Sunlight hung heavy on the sea of color that was the finery of the guild: gold-shot banners, checks and stripes of all colors on cloak and brigga, rainbow-hued tapestries on the painted walls.
“We come now to the matter of the loan of two thousand silver pieces to his grace, Gwerbret Aberwyn,” the guildmaster called out. “Is there any more debate to be laid before the convocation?”
Silence, stillness—no one spoke or moved. The guildmaster raised his horn to his lips and blew again.
“Very well. Those in favor, to the right. Those against, to the left. Scribe, stand ready to count and record the numbers.”
Slowly, a few at a time, the men rose, starting in the front of the hall, and walked to the right, so unanimously that the motion was as smooth as uncoiling a rope. Ganedd watched as first his father took a place at the right, then his father’s close friends trotted meekly after. His row, the last, began to get up. Ganedd followed them free of the benches, then abruptly turned and marched to the left side of the hall. He’d be cursed and frozen in the third hell before he’d back a doomed scheme like this one. It was also the sweetest pleasure he’d ever tasted to see his father’s face literally turn purple with rage. Ganedd crossed his arms over his chest and grinned as the entire guild gasped and stared; whiskered faces, lean faces, shrewd eyes, watery eyes, but all of them outraged.
“Done, then,” the guildmaster called. “Scribe, what is your count?”
“Ninety and seven in favor, two members missing from the count, and one against.”
“There’s one man in Eldidd who’ll hold for the true king,” Ganedd yelled. “You stinking cowards!”
At the shriek that rose he felt as if he’d heaved a rock into the middle of a flock of geese. The men swirled around, nudging each other, whispering and cursing, then shouting and cursing, louder and louder as they milled through the hall. Ganedd had said it out, the one unsayable truth: they were voting treason. Ganedd started laughing as the guild broke, hurrying away, muttering among themselves as they all tried to pretend they’d never heard a thing. Wersyn came running and slapped him so hard across the face that Ganedd staggered back against the wall.
“You foul little cub!” Wersyn howled. “How could you? Ye gods, I’ll kill you for this!”
“Go ahead. I won’t be the last man to die in the war.”
Cursing a steady stream, Wersyn grabbed his arm and dragged him across the hall. Ganedd followed meekly, laughing under his breath. He’d never had such a splendid time in his life. But his pleasure ended once they were back in their inn chambers. Shaking in fury, Wersyn shoved Ganedd into a chair and began pacing around, his hands clenched, his eyes snapping.
“You rotten little bastard! This tears it once and for all! I’m sending you straight back home. I can’t hold my head up if I’ve got a son like this at my side. How could you? Why? Ganno, for the love of every god—why?”
“Just to see what would happen, mostly. You all looked so wretchedly pleased with yourselves.”
Wersyn strode over and slapped him again.
“You’re taking Maer and getting out of here today. Get your things and go! I want you out of my sight.”
All the time Ganedd packed, all the time he was saddling his horse, Wersyn went on yelling at him, calling him a fool and a demon-spawned ungrateful whelp, a worthless dolt and a turd dropped by a spavined mare. The entire innyard and Maer as well listened to this lecture with visible curiosity. Once Wersyn had stormed inside, and they were leading their horses out into the town, the silver dagger could stand it no more.
“Ye gods, is he that blasted furious over one whore?”
“Last night’s got naught to do with it. Remember the gwerbret’s loan? It came to a vote today, and I was the only man who voted against it.”
Maer stared at him with a sudden flattering respect.
“Here, that took guts.”
“Did it? Maybe so.”
At the west-running road the city gates were standing open. Just outside they found another merchant, an old family friend named Gurcyn, standing by his horse and yelling orders as his muleteers organized his caravan. Ganedd threw his reins to Maer and strode over to speak with him, just as a last defiance.
“Good morrow,” Ganedd said. “Leaving so soon?”
Gurcyn looked him over, not anywhere near as coldly as Ganedd was expecting, but he said nothing.
“Go on,” Ganedd went on. “Tell me what you think of me. I’m giving you the chance, rebel.”
“All I think is that you’re a bit lacking in wits, though long on nerve. This thing’s going to be remembered. Here, did your father send you home in disgrace?”
“Just that. And what about you? I’m surprised you’re not staying to celebrate your treason with the rest of them.”
“Oh, hold your tongue! Roosters who strut too much end up in the soup kettle. As for me, my wife’s been ill, and I’ve got to get home straightaway. Good morrow, lad, and by the gods of our people, watch what you say, will you?”
As Gurcyn walked away, shouting to his men, Maer led their horses over.
“Who was that? One of the guild?”
“Just so. Why?”
“I’ve seen him before.” Maer’s eyes narrowed in hard thought. “Probably in some tavern, but you know, I think it was up in Dun Deverry, right after my lord kicked me out of Blaeddbyr, like, and I was riding west.”
“Maybe it was. A good guildsman rides wherever the coin calls, and Dun Deverry calls in a lot of coin. Come on, let’s get on the cursed road.”

Although Ganedd was usually good company, on the ride back home he fell into long cold silences and refused to be drawn out, not even by jests, thus leaving Maer with a lot of time to think—an unfamiliar activity and one that he preferred to avoid whenever possible. Now, however, he had a number of strange things to think about, starting with old Nevyn the herbman. When they’d first met back in Aberwyn, Maer had barely noticed him, but as they’d ridden west together, Maer had found himself oppressed by the growing feeling that he’d known the old man before, an acquaintance that was logically impossible because Nevyn insisted that he’d never been anywhere near Blaeddbyr in all the years since Maer was born, and while Maer was travelling as a silver dagger, the old man was over in Bardek.
Added to that, of course, Lord Pertyc thought that Nevyn was a sorcerer, which meant that Lord Pertyc believed that the dweomer craft was a real thing. Every now and then Maer would bring this idea to mind, like taking a strange coin out of a pouch, and turn it over and over between mental fingers, wondering at it. Since Maer had been raised to follow the noble-born without doubt or question, he supposed that if Pertyc said the old man was a sorcerer, then sorcerer he was. He supposed. He held the thought up to the mental light one more time, shook his head, and put it away again. Maybe sometime soon it would make sense. Maybe.
Finally there was the matter of the Wildfolk. Ever since young Adraegyn and the old man had discussed them that one afternoon, Maer had, again quite against his will, found himself thinking that perhaps they did indeed exist and that just maybe one of them was following him around, just as the lad said. His evidence for this was thin, and he did his best to ignore it. It was just that every now and then he felt something touch his arm or his hair; even more rarely, when he was riding, he felt tiny arms clasp his waist as if someone sat behind him on the saddle. Occassionally he saw a bush or branch move as if something stood within or upon it, or one of Lord Pertyc’s dogs would suddenly leap up and bark for no reason, or one of the horses would suddenly stamp and swing its head around to look at something that Maer couldn’t see. Once, when he was drinking a foaming tankard of ale and all alone at table, a tiny breath had blown the foam right into his face as he went for a sip. It was beginning to make his flesh creep, all of it. He would have wished that they’d stop and leave him alone, except wishing meant admitting that someone existed to do the stopping. He wasn’t ready to admit that, not in the least.
Yet he kept gathering new evidence in spite of his attempts to ignore it. As their horses ambled the last few miles to Cannobaen, Ganedd’s silence grew as black and cold as a winter storm. Maer amused himself by looking at the now familiar scenery: off to his left the clifftop meadows and the sparkling sea, the rich fields to his right, striped here and there with stands of trees, all second growth planted for firewood. Scarlet and gold, the leaves already hung thin and bare along the branches, especially on the trees planted next to the road that received the full force of the sea winds. It was in one of these that Maer saw, clear as clear, a little face peering at him. It was a pretty face, obviously female, with long dark blue hair and big blue eyes, staring at him wistfully. When Maer stared back, she suddenly smiled, revealing a mouthful of long pointed teeth. Maer yelped aloud.
“What?” Ganedd roused himself. “What’s so wrong?”
“Don’t you see it? Look! Right there, on that low branch.”
“See what? Maer, are you going daft? There’s naught there.”
“It’s a windless day and the leaves are shaking.”
“Then some bird flew away or somewhat. What are you doing? Falling asleep in the saddle and dreaming?”
“Well, I guess so. Sorry.”
With a melancholy sigh Ganedd went back to his brooding. Maer cursed himself for a fool and took up the job of convincing himself that he’d seen nothing. He’d just about succeeded when he noticed Nevyn, some hundred yards away, digging a few roots out on the clifftops. As they passed, the herbman straightened up and waved, just pleasantly, but his simple presence suddenly struck Maer like an omen. It was all he could do to wave back.

It was the next market day that Glaenara sold the last of the cheeses. She was just packing up to go home when she saw a rider leading his horse through the crowded square: Maer, his silver dagger bright at his belt. She wasn’t sure if she hoped he’d stop or not, but he took the matter out of her hands by doing just that.
“And is your bilge-mouthed brother in town today?”
“He’s not. What’s it to you?”
“Well, I brought you somewhat of a present from Aberwyn, and I didn’t want him to see me give it to you.” Maer took a packet wrapped in a bit of white linen out of his shirt and handed it over.
“My thanks, Maer. Truly.”
He merely smiled, watching as she unwrapped the cloth and found a small bronze mirror, a circle that fit neatly into the palm of her hand. On one side was a bit of silvered glass, held in place by a band of knotwork wires; on the other was a fancy design of laced spirals.
“I wanted to get the silver one,” Maer said, sighing, “but coins flow from silver daggers like chickens run from foxes.”
“It doesn’t matter. This is lovely. Ye gods, I’ve never had a mirror before. My thanks. Truly, my thanks.”
Glaenara held the mirror up. By angling her head, she could see her reflection a bit at a time, and a lot more clearly than in the reflection from a bucket of water. Much to her horror, there was a bit of dirt stuck on her cheek. Hastily she wiped it off.
“A pretty lass like you should have a mirror of her own.”
“Do you truly think I’m pretty? I don’t.”
He looked so shocked that she was embarassed.
“Well,” Maer said thoughtfully. “Truly, pretty isn’t the right word, is it? As handsome as a wild horse or a trout leaping from a stream, not pretty like a rose in some lord’s garden.”
“Then my thanks.” Glaenara busied herself with wrapping the mirror up in the cloth again, but she felt herself blush with pleasure. “And what errand are you running?”
“Well, our Badger wanted a word with Ganedd the merchant’s son. Cursed if I know why, but I’m taking the lad a letter. I can’t read, or I would have sneaked a look. It’s not sealed.”
“It would have been dishonorable.”
“Of course, but ye gods, I’ve always been a curious sort of man. Ah, well, it’s beyond me anyway, all this wretched writing. Will you come into town next week?”
“I might, I might not. It depends on the chickens.”
“Then I’ll pray to the Goddess to let them lay more eggs than your family can possibly eat and that my lord will let me come down to town.”
After Maer left, Glaenara counted up her coin. She had just enough to buy a length of cloth to make herself that new dress that Nalyn had been nagging her about. If she worked hard, sitting outside every evening to get the last of the sunlight, she could have the dress finished by next market day.

Ganedd sat uneasily on the edge of his chair and held his goblet of mead in nervous fingers. The lad was wearing a pair of blue-and-gray-checked brigga and a shirt heavily worked in flowers—his best clothes, Pertyc assumed, for his visit to the noble-born.
“No doubt you’re wondering why I asked you up here. I’ll come straight to the point. My silver dagger told me that you voted against the rebellion in Aberwyn. I’m holding for the king myself. It gladdens my heart that you do the same.”
“My thanks, my lord, but I don’t know what the two of us can do about it.”
“Naught more than what we can, truly, but we’ve got to try. I want to ask you to take my service. There’s going to be a war in the spring, lad, and I’ve no doubt that our rebels will want me dead before they march against the king.”
“I’m no warrior, my lord, but if you want me to join your men, I’ll do my best to fight.”
Pertyc was both surprised and ashamed of himself. He’d been dismissing this young man as nothing but a merchant, little more than a farmer and most likely a coward to boot.
“Well, actually,” Pertyc said, “I was hoping you’d run an errand for me. You deal with the Westfolk all the time, don’t you? You must know where to find them and all that.”
“I do, my lord.” Ganedd looked puzzled; then he grinned. “Longbows.”
“Just that. If I load you up with every bit of iron goods and fancy cloth and jewelry and so on that I can scrape together, do you think you could get me enough bows for the warband? I wouldn’t take a few extra archers amiss, either, if you can recruit some.”
“Well, I’ll try my lord, but I don’t think the Westfolk are interested in hiring out as mercenaries. The bows I can likely get, though.”
“Well, that’ll be somewhat to the good.” Pertyc hesitated, struck by a sudden thought and then surprise, that he’d never had the thought until this moment. “You know, I wonder just how proud a man I am.”
“My lord?”
It took Pertyc a long time to answer, and in the end, the only thing that brought him round was his love for his children. While no rebel lord would ever have knowingly killed his daughter, terrible things happened in sieges, especially if they ended in fire. If Pertyc lost the battle but the rebels lost the war, Adraegyn was quite simply doomed. The king’s men would smother the boy, most like.
“Tell me somewhat, Ganno. Do you think you could find my wife?”
Ganedd stared openmouthed.
“Well, she won’t lift a finger for my sake,” Pertyc said, “but for Becyla and Adraegyn she just might raise a small army.”
“I’ll do my best, my lord, but the elven gods only know where she might be, and the Westlands are an awfully big place. The sooner I leave, the better. Can you give me a guard and some packhorses? The less of Da’s stock that I use, the fewer questions Mam will ask.”
All that afternoon, while Ganedd gathered supplies, Pertyc agonized over the letter to his wife. Finally, when he was running out of time, he decided to make it as simple and as short as he could:
“Our children are in mortal danger from a war. My messenger will explain. For their sakes I’m begging your aid. I’ll humble myself in any way you want if you’ll just come and take them to safety.”
He rolled it up, sealed it into a silver message tube, then without thinking kissed the seal, as if the wax could pass the message along.
Just at sunset, Ganedd and his impromptu caravan assembled out in the ward, a straggling line of packhorses and mules along with two of Pertyc’s most reliable riders for guards and the undergroom for a servant. Pertyc handed Ganedd what coin he could spare and the message tube, then walked to the gates to wave his only true hope on its way until the caravan disappeared into a welter of dust and sea haze. As he turned to go inside, the ward flared with yellow light. Up on the tower the lightkeeper had fired the beacon.

In every warband, Maer reflected sadly, there was always an utterly humorless man like Crindd. If you said it looked like fair weather, Crindd saw rain coming; if you said a meal looked good, Crindd remarked that the cook had filth under her fingernails; if you liked the look of a horse, Crindd insisted that he had the legs to come up lame. On a bad day, Crindd’s little black shadow of gloom could make even Garoic the captain groan under his breath.
“Ye gods,” Maer said to Cadmyn one morning, “I’d drown the man except it would give him too much pleasure to have something go wrong.”
Cadmyn, an easygoing blond who was Maer’s only real friend in the warband, nodded with a faint look of disgust.
“True-spoken. We all used to mock him, but it wasn’t truly satisfying. He never seemed to notice, you see.”
“Really? Well, you just leave this to me.”
That afternoon Maer asked for and received Lord Pertyc’s permission to leave the dun, then rode over to Glaenara’s farm. Much to his annoyance, she was gone, and her brother-in-law refused to tell him where.
“Just what do you want anyway, silver dagger?” Nalyn snarled.
“To buy a pint of dried beans or peas from you and naught more. I’ll give you a copper.”
Nalyn considered, greed fighting with dislike.
“Oh, I’ll sell you a handful of pulse gladly enough,” he said at last. “But I don’t want you hanging around Glae.”
After dinner that night, two of the other lads kept Crindd busy in the great hall while Maer and Cadmyn sneaked out to the barracks. They stripped Crindd’s bunk of blanket and sheet, and while Cadmyn kept watch at the door, Maer sprinkled the dried peas over the mattress before he made the bed up again. When the time came, everyone in the warband went to bed full of anticipation. In the dark they could hear Crindd squirming this way and that. At last he got up, and they heard the sound of him trying to brush the sheet clean with his hands. When he got back into bed, the squirming picked up again. Finally one of the men broke and sniggered; the entire warband joined in. Crindd sat up with a howl of rage.
“And just why are you bastards all laughing?”
Silence fell, except for the sound of Crindd getting up and messing with something at the hearth. At great length, he struck a spark into tinder and lit a candle. Everyone else sat up and arranged innocent smiles while he stalked over to examine his bunk.
“There’s something in my bed!”
“Fleas?” Maer said. “Lice? Bedbugs?”
“Oh, hold your pus-boil tongue, you whoreson bastard!”
“Nasty, isn’t he?” Cadmyn remarked.
Crindd shoved the candle into a wax-crusted holder and began hauling the sheet off.
“Dried peas!”
“And how did they get in there?” Cadmyn said.
“Must be the Wildfolk,” Maer answered.
The moment Maer said the name he regretted it, because they came at the sound, or so he assumed, not knowing that the Wildfolk love a good prank, the meaner the better. Although it was hard to be certain in the flickering candlelight, Maer thought he saw them as little shapes of shadow, thicker than smoke but just as unstable. When Crindd began gathering the pulse and throwing it impartially at every man within range, the Wildfolk helped the warband catch what they could and throw it back. Maer, however, sat stone-still on his bunk and merely stared, wondering if Nevyn could make a potion that would bring him back to normal. At last Garoic rushed in, wearing a night-shirt over his brigga and swearing at the lot of them to restore order.
The prank brought Maer so much glory that of course he wasn’t going to stop there, Wildfolk or no Wildfolk. On the morrow he filled a bucket with water, threw in a handful of mucky straw from the stable, and balanced it on top of the half-open door of the tack room. When young Wertyc maneuvered Crindd into going to fetch something from this room, Crindd flung the door open and dumped the foul and by then chilly water all over himself. For the rest of the day, he strode around in a humor as foul as his bath, and his mood wasn’t sweetened any when Maer barred the privy door from the outside and trapped him in it. He must have banged and yelled for a good hour before Adraegyn heard him and let him out. Crindd grabbed a rake from the nearby dungheap and came charging for the barracks; he might well have killed someone if Garoic hadn’t calmed him down.
Although Crindd had no idea who was persecuting him, Garoic wasn’t so dense. That very evening, he caught Maer as he was leaving the great hall and hauled him off for a private word.
“Listen, silver dagger, a jest’s a jest, and I have to admit that I’ve had some good laughs out of all this, but enough’s enough.”
“But, Captain, sir, what makes you think I’ve got anything to do with it?”
“My eyes and ears. A warning, silver dagger: the long road might be calling you soon.”
Since being kicked out of the warband would mean disaster, what with winter coming on, Maer swore that the pranks would end. Unfortunately, Cadmyn came up with an idea that was too good to resist, and he also offered to take the blame for it if worse came to worst. Crindd had a pair of new riding boots, worked in two colors of leather, which had cost him all his winnings from a particularly lucky dice game. Maer and Cadmyn went down to a pond not far from the dun and found the two last frogs who hadn’t dug themselves under the mud for the winter. One fit neatly into each boot. Although Maer and Cadmyn were outside when Crindd went to put on his new boots, they could hear his shriek quite clearly. They were laughing themselves sick when Crindd found them.
“You foul bastards! I can see the mud on your brigga.”
From inside his shirt the frogs croaked.
“You’ve got a pair of pets, have you?” Maer said. “Well, flowers to the fair, and frogs to the warty.”
Crindd hauled back and hit him in the face. With a yell, Maer swung back, but he was so dizzy that he missed. He could hear Cadmyn shouting, and men running; just as Crindd hit him again, hands grabbed them both and hauled them apart. Although Maer’s right eye was already swelling and dripping, he could see Lord Pertyc and Garoic strolling over, both of them scowling.
“It was all my fault!” Cadmyn squeaked. “Crindd hit the wrong man!”
“He would,” Garoic said.
“What is all this?” Pertyc snapped.
“Frogs, my lord! They put frogs in my boots. This very morning.” Crindd reached inside his shirt and hauled out the terrified creatures. “Here’s the evidence. And they put dried peas under my sheet and doused me with rotten water and . . . ”
“Enough!” Pertyc took the frogs, contemplated them briefly, then handed them to a grinning Adraegyn. “Go put these back in the pond, will you? Right now, please. Now, Maer, Cadmyn. Why did you two commit this list of heinous crimes?”
Cadmyn groped for words and gave it up as a bad job.
“Well, my lord,” Maer said. “Just for the jest of the thing. You see, Crindd makes a splendid victim.”
Crindd squealed in outrage, but his lordship laughed.
“I do see, indeed. Crindd, it looks to me like you’ve already gotten your revenge on Maer’s right eye. Let this be a lesson to you: never be a splendid victim again. It gives people ideas.”
“But, my lord—”
“Just think about it, will you?” Pertyc turned to the two malefactors. “Maer, you’d better go down to the village and have the herbman look at that eye. I don’t like the way it’s swelling.”
When Maer rode up to the herbman’s cottage, he received a surprise bigger than the one the frogs had given Crindd. Out in the front garden Glaenara was spreading laundry to dry. Pretty in a new dress of woad-blue wool, she was singing to herself, her raven-dark hair gleaming in the sunlight. The sight of her made him feel warm all over.
“And what are you doing here?” he called out as he dismounted.
“Keeping up Nevyn’s house for him.” She strolled over to open the gate. “Oh, Maer! Your eye!”
“I just got into a little scrap with one of the lads.”
He found Nevyn sitting at a table inside and sorting out various herbs and dried barks. The old man got up and caught Maer by the chin, tipping his head back for a look as if the silver dagger were a child, and his fingers were surprisingly strong.
“Well, that’s a nasty mess, isn’t it? I’ll make you up a poultice. Sit down, Maer.”
When Maer sat, a pair of big-bellied gnomes appeared on the table and considered him. He scowled right back. Nevyn went to the hearth, where an iron pot hung from a tripod over a small arrangement of logs. When the old man waved his hand at the wood, it burst into flame. Maer felt so sick that he slumped against the table behind him like a lady feeling a faint coming on. Nevyn picked up a handful of herbs from the table and stirred them into the water shimmering in the pot.
“I’m assuming someone’s fist gave you that black eye.”
“It was, sir. Not long ago.”
“Ah.” Nevyn turned from his stirring and fixed Maer with one of his needle-sharp stares. “Glaenara’s a nice, decent lass, Maer. I would absolutely hate to see her dishonored and deserted.”
“Would you, sir?” Maer paused to lick dry lips with a nervous tongue. “Er, ah, well, I imagine you’re not a pleasant man to face when you’re angry about somewhat.”
“Not in the least, Maer lad, not in the least.”
When he waved his hand again the fire went out cold. So Lord Pertyc was right about the old man, Maer thought. I wonder if sorcerers can really turn men into frogs? I’ve no desire to find out the hard way, that’s certain.
Yet, as he was leaving, so was Glae, and he decided that it would be dishonorable to let her walk when he was riding her way. He lifted her to his saddle, then mounted behind, slipping his arms around her waist and taking the reins.
“What were you fighting over?” Glaenara said. “Some lass, I’ll bet.”
“Naught of the sort! It’s a long story.”
During the ride home, he told her about his persecution of Crindd, and she laughed as much as one of the lads in the warband. He decided that one of the things he liked best about her was the way she enjoyed a good laugh; so few lasses seemed to appreciate his sense of humor. When they got about half a mile from the farm, she insisted that he let her walk the rest of the way to keep her brother-in-law from seeing them together. As he was lifting her down, he tried kissing her. Although she laughed and shoved him away, she let him steal a second kiss. Just as his lips touched hers, he felt a sharp pain, like the pinch of bony fingers, in the back of his left thigh. He yelped and jumped.
“What?” Glae snapped. “What happened to you?”
“Er, a muscle cramp, I guess.” He rubbed the spot gingerly—it still hurt, all right. “I’m sorry.”
“Humph, well, if that’s the way you’re going to be!”
But she was smiling as she turned away and ran off, heading for the farm. Although Maer waved goodbye, he was completely distracted. For a few moments he could see in a tangle of bushes nearby a small blue creature, as solid and distinct as she could be, with long blue hair and a face like a beautiful child, scowling at him in jealous rage. Suddenly she disappeared, leaving him wondering if he were going mad.
Yet he saw her again, the very next time he rode down into town in hopes of meeting Glaenara. Sure enough, he found Glae selling eggs and turnips in the market, but just as he was striking up a conversation, the blue-haired creature appeared, standing directly behind Glae and snarling like a jealous lover. Maer completely forgot himself.
“Now don’t you hurt her!”
“What?” Glae said. “Hurt who? The chicken?”
“My apologies. I wasn’t talking to you—I mean—oh, by the hells!”
Glae swiveled around to look behind her. Although Little Blue-hair, as he started calling her, stamped a foot and shook a small fist in Glae’s direction, it was obvious that the human lass saw nothing.
“Maer, you are daft! That’s the oldest prank in the world, making someone look and find naught there. And I must be a lackwit to fall for it.”
“Ah, er, sorry. Truly, I shouldn’t have . . . uh, well. Here, I’ve got to go, uh, er, run an errand, but I’ll be right back. Don’t leave without me.”
Leading his horse, Maer hurried off through the sparse crowd in the direction of the blacksmith’s shop, but he turned off before he got there and found a private spot behind the inn. Little Blue-hair appeared, sitting on his saddle and smirking at him. Although he felt more daft than ever, he waggled a finger at her.
“Now listen, you, you can’t go around pinching people and suchlike.”
She held up one hand and made a pinching motion with her thumb and forefinger.
“Like that, truly. Don’t do it again, especially not to other people.”
She stuck her tongue out at him.
“If you don’t behave, I’ll . . . I’ll . . . I’ll tell Nevyn the dweomerman on you.”
He made the threat only because he could think of none better—after all, Nevyn terrified him, didn’t he?—but it had all the force he could possibly have wanted. She leapt to her feet, opened her mouth in a soundless shriek, flung both hands in the air, and disappeared. For a moment Maer felt almost guilty; then he decided that she’d brought it on herself and hurried back to take up his courting in peace. For some weeks afterward, all the Wildfolk stayed far away from him, and he was glad of it.

“Now listen, Glae,” Nalyn snapped. “You know as well as I do that Doclyn’s a decent young man and a good hard worker. His father’s asking me for the smallest possible dowry that can stand up in a lord’s court. We won’t do better than that. Why won’t you marry him?”
Glaenara looked up from the bowl of dried beans she was sorting and simpered at him.
“He doesn’t please me.”
“Oh, my humble, humble apologies, my fine lady! It’s not looks that matter in a man.”
“Obviously, or Lida never would have married you.”
“Glae!” Myna spoke sharply from her chair by the fire. “Please don’t start things up again.”
Glae banged the bowl onto the table and stalked outside, sweeping her skirts around her as she hurried across the muddy farmyard. The bitter truth, she supposed, was that unless she married someone, she’d go on living here, under her brother-in-law’s thumb, working hard all her life, never having anything resembling her own house—not that she’d ever have the lovely things and leisure that Braedda would. When she reached the cow barn, she paused, looking up at the sky, where the moon sailed free of a wisp of icy cloud. She shivered, wishing she’d brought her shawl. Over by the chicken coop something moved: a man shape, detaching itself from a shadow: Maer. She hurried over to him and whispered when she spoke.
“What are you doing here?”
“Trying to figure out how to get a word with you. Are you cold? You can have my cloak. Here.”
Bundled in the heavy wool, she walked with him a little ways back into the woods, where he’d left his horse. The moon streamed through the bare-branched trees and made little patterns on the ground.
“Suppose I come out here tomorrow night,” Maer said. “Would you meet me?”
“It’s going to rain tomorrow night. Samwna’s joints ached all day today, and that’s always a sure sign of rain coming.”
“Well, then, I’ll come out here anyway and keep a hopeless vigil in the pouring rain and get a horrible fever and maybe die, and it’ll all be for love of you.”
“Oh, don’t talk daft.”
“I mean it, Glae, truly. I’m half out of my mind for love of you.”
“Oh, don’t lie to me!”
In the moonlight she could just make out the shock on his face. Half afraid she’d cry, she sat down on the ground under a tree. In a moment he joined her.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “You’re right. But I’ll say this, and it’s not fancy words but the truth. I don’t think there’s another lass like you in all Deverry and Eldidd.”
“Is that good or bad?”
“A little of both. How’s this? I’m not mad for love of you, but I blasted well like you a whole lot, and every now and then, I think maybe I do love you.”
“That I can believe, and my thanks. I like you too.”
Somewhat hesitantly, Maer slipped one arm around her shoulders and kissed her. She let him steal another, found herself thinking of the future, and kissed Maer instead to drive the thought away. When he started caressing her, she wrapped her arms tight around him in the spirit of someone gulping a particularly bitter healing decoction and let him lie her down in the soft leaves.
The medicine worked. Having a man of her own made the rest of her life easier to take, as did the coppers Nevyn gave her for tending his cottage. Once she set her mind to ignoring Nalyn’s insults and keeping peace between them, they got through whole days without squabbling, and Mam and Lidyan began to relax into a pleased relief. When the explosion came, then, it was twice as bad as it might have been. One evening, just at sunset, Glaenara was chasing the chickens back into the coop for the night when Nalyn came walking out of the house. She could tell something was wrong just from the look in his eyes.
“And what’s eating you?”
“I was down in town, today, that’s what, and everyone was telling me I should be keeping an eye on my little sister. That silver dagger’s been riding into town to fetch you, hasn’t he?”
“And what if he has?” Glaenara set her hands on her hips. “It’s decent of him to give me a ride when I’m tired.”
“Ride—hah! Who’s riding what, Glae?”
“You little pus boil! Don’t you talk to me that way!”
Nalyn grabbed her by the shoulders and shook her.
“You tell me the truth.”
Glaenara twisted free and kicking him across the shins. When he grabbed her again and held tight this time, she was shocked at how strong he was—towering over her, causing her pain with an easy masculine strength.
“You’ve been rolling around with that lad, haven’t you? He wouldn’t want naught else out of the likes of you.”
This very real possibility made Glaenara burst into tears.
“Oh, ye gods!” Nalyn snapped. “It’s true, isn’t it?”
“So what if it is? Can’t I have one thing in my rotten life that I want just because I want it?”
With an oath, Nalyn let go of her, then slapped her hard across the face. Glaenara slapped back without thinking, and at that, the long bad feeling between them erupted. He grabbed her by the shoulder, twisted her around, and slapped her hard across the behind. As hard as she fought and kicked—and she landed some bruises on him—she couldn’t get free. The pain of his slaps was nothing compared with her terror at feeling so helpless. She was sobbing so hard that she could barely see. Dimly she heard her mother screaming and Lidyan’s voice calling out. All at once, Nalyn let her go. Glaenara staggered and almost fell into her sister’s arms.
“Nal, Nal,” Myna whined. “What are you doing?”
“Beating a little slut,” Nalyn sputtered out. “Lida, let go of her! I won’t have my wife feeling sorry for a slut like this. Her and her cursed silver dagger! Ye gods, I’m never going to be able to make her a decent match now.”
Lidyan started to cry, her hands slack on Glaenara’s arm. Still terrified, Glaenara turned to her mother, to find Myna staring in paralyzed disbelief, her thin lips trembling, her patient eyes full of tears. Glaenara tried to speak, but she choked on pure shame.
“Glae,” Myna whispered, “tell me it’s not true.”
Glaenara wanted to lie, but she was shaking too badly to speak. Myna reached out her hand, then drew it back, staring at her all the while with aching eyes.
“Glae,” Lidyan wailed, “how could you?”
But Lidyan was watching her husband; Myna turned toward him, too, a final slap sharper than any hand. They were both going to let him pass judgement on her.
“It’s true enough,” Glaenara spat out. “Go on! Call me what you want. I won’t be here to listen!”
Glaenara barreled through the gate, raced as fast as she could down the road, kept running even when she heard them call her back. She hardly knew what she was doing; she only wanted to run and run and never see any of them again. Her mother was siding with Nalyn. At the thought tears came to choke her and leave her gasping, forcing her to fling herself down into the tall grass to weep. By the time she’d wept herself dry, the sun was setting. She got up, expecting to see Nalyn coming after her to beat her some more, but the twilight road was empty, the house far behind. She wiped her dirty face on her sleeve and began running again, heading for town and Braedda, who would maybe forgive her—perhaps, she thought, the only person in the world who would.
At last, just as the stars were pricking the velvet sky, Glaenara reached the village. As she stood behind the inn and wondered if Samwna would even let her inside, once she knew the truth, the tears rose up again, hot and choking. She had no place in life anymore, nowhere to go, nothing to call her own; she was a shamed woman and a slut and naught more. She was still weeping when Braedda’s enormous cousin, Cenedd the blacksmith’s son, came strolling through the innyard.
“Glae, by the gods!” Cenedd said. “And what’s all this?”
“Nalyn turned me out, and I deserved it. All because of Maer.”
When Cenedd caught her by the shoulders, Glaenara flinched back, expecting that he would beat her, too.
“Bastards, both of them,” Cenedd said matter-of-factly. “Now don’t cry like that.” He turned his head and yelled. “Braedda, get out here!”
When Braedda and Samwna hurried out, Glaenara blurted the truth between sobs, simply because there was no use in lying. Braedda began to cry, too, but Samwna took charge—again, as matter-of-factly as Cenedd.
“Now, now, it’s not the end of the world. Oh, Glae, you’ve been such a dolt, but truly, I was afraid this was going to happen. Here, you’re not with child, are you?”
“I don’t know. It’s not been long enough to tell.”
“Well, then, we’ll know when we know and not a minute later. You come inside where it’s warm, and we’ll all have some nice hot ale.”
As the two women led her into the kitchen, Glae looked back to see Cenedd standing and talking urgently with Ewsn and Selyn, the weaver’s son. She and Braedda sat huddled together on a bench in the corner of the kitchen while Samwna bustled around, pouring ale into a tall metal flagon and setting it into the coals on the hearth.
“Mam?” Braedda said. “Can Glae sleep here tonight?”
“Of course. There’s no use in trying to talk sense to Nalyn until he’s had a chance to cool off a bit.”
“My thanks,” Glae stammered. “Why would you even help me? You should just let me sleep in the road.”
“Hush, hush! You’re not the first lass in the world to make a fool out of herself over a good-looking rider, and doubtless you won’t be the last.”
Ewsn stuck his gray head into the kitchen and caught Samwna’s attention.
“Be back in a bit. Just going for a ride with some of the lads. We’ve been thinking about poor Myna, you see.”
“So have I,” Samwna said. “It aches my heart.”
“You’re not going out to the farm, are you?” Glaenara blurted out.
“Not just yet, lass,” Ewsn said. “We’ll let your brother think things over before we do that.”

After dinner, Pertyc’s riders were welcome to sit in the great hall and drink while they gossiped or watched the little there was to see. Maer and Cadmyn were playing dice when Ewsn the inkeep, Cenedd the blacksmith’s son, and Selyn the weaver’s son came into the great hall, stood looking around them for a hesitant moment, then went over to whisper urgently to Pertyc.
“Wonder what they’re doing here,” Cadmyn remarked.
“Who knows? Seems a strange time of day to pay your taxes.”
In a few minutes a smirking Adraegyn came skipping over to the riders’ table.
“Maer, Da wants to see you. You’re in real trouble, Maer.”
“Am I now? Then why are you grinning like a fiend?”
“You’ll see. Come on, Maer. Da wants you right now.”
Up by Lord Pertyc’s carved chair stood Ewsn, Cenedd, and Selyn, all of them with their arms crossed over their chests and their mouths set in tight lines. Pertyc himself seemed to be smothering laughter. Maer shoved a couple of dogs out of the way and knelt at the lord’s feet.
“I wanted to tender you my congratulations, Maer,” Pertyc said.
“Congratulations, my lord?”
“On your coming marriage.”
Utterly puzzled, sure that this was a prank, Maer glanced this way and that. Cenedd stepped forward, looking somehow even more enormous than usual.
“Marriage,” Cenedd said. “You’ve been trifling with Glae, you little bastard, and now her brother’s kicked her out.”
“Marriage isn’t as bad as all that, Maer.” Pertyc leaned forward with a look of bland sincerity on his face. “Why, I did it myself once, and it didn’t kill me—though in all honesty it came blasted near.”
Maer tried to speak and failed while the warband snickered among themselves.
“I guess I’d best give you a permanent place in my warband,” Pertyc went on. “Can’t have poor Glae riding behind a silver dagger.”
“Now, here,” Maer squeaked. “I haven’t even said I would yet.”
Cenedd flexed his massive muscles.
“Now look, I’ll make a cursed rotten husband. Glae deserves better than me.”
“So she does,” Ewsn put in. “But it’s a bit late for that now, lad. You’re the one who’s been lifting her skirts, and you’re the one who’s marrying her.”
Ewsn and Selyn stooped like striking hawks, grabbed Maer one at each arm, and hauled him to his feet.
“Now listen,” Cenedd said. “You lost Glae her home. Either you give her another one, or I’ll pound you into slime.”
Maer had the sincere feeling he was going to faint.
“If she comes to live with you here in the dun,” Pertyc said, “I’ve got just the place for her. I’ve never known as strong-minded a lass as our Glae, so she can be my daughter’s nursemaid. Here, you’ve gone all white, lad! You’ll like being married. It just takes a bit of getting used to. We’ll see what we can do about getting you a chamber to yourselves here in the broch.” He glanced at a smirking servant. “Go saddle Maer’s horse for him. He’s riding down to the village to see his betrothed.”
Catcalls, cheers, and jeers—the warband exploded into laughter.
“Hey, Maer!” Crindd called. “Now this is truly funny!”
With a deep involuntary groan, Maer shut his eyes and let Cenedd drag him out into the ward. Adraegyn came running after and gave Maer’s sleeve a tug.
“But, Maer, what did you do to Glae?”
“Go ask your father, lad. It’s too complicated to explain right now.”
A grim procession of three villagers and one newly betrothed silver dagger rode round to the back of the inn to dismount. When Maer hesistated, Cenedd pulled him bodily from his horse, shook him hard, and set him on his feet again. When Maer groaned at the injustice of it all, Cenedd gave him a shove and sent him staggering inside, where Ewsn, Selyn, Samwna, and Braedda were all waiting and, just behind them, Nevyn stood and glared. Maer went cold all over in terror, remembering two very salient facts: Nevyn had taken Glae under his wing, and he was a sorcerer, capable—Maer was suddenly positive on this point—of turning men into frogs. No hope now, Maer thought: it’s marriage or the marsh. Glae herself was huddled on a bench in a corner. He’d never seen anyone look so miserable as she did then, her eyes swollen from weeping, her pretty dress torn and dirty, and on her cheek a flat red welt. All at once, Maer realized that her brother must have beaten her, and he felt himself to be the most dishonorable wretch in the entire kingdom. Glae raised her head and looked at him, her mouth trembling with tears.
“You don’t have to marry me if you don’t want to.” Her voice was dry and cold. “I’d rather starve than take that kind of charity.”
“Oh, hold your tongue! Of course I want to marry you!” He hurried over and threw himself down to kneel beside her. “Here, my sweet, forgive me. I’ve been cursed rotten to you.”
Glaenara stared as if she couldn’t believe her ears. When he held out his hand, she let hers lie limply in his, as if she hardly cared what he did to her.
“Glae, I truly want to marry you. Now come on, give your man a smile, won’t you?”
At last Glaenara did smile, shyly at first, then blossoming into the brilliant grin that made her look beautiful. Nevyn pushed his way through the gathering crowd and fixed Maer with an ice-blue glare.
“You’d best be a good husband.”
“The best you’ve ever seen. I swear it.”
“Good.” Nevyn started to say more, then glanced to one side, frowning.
When Maer followed his gaze, he saw Little Blue-hair sitting cross-legged on the floor like a child. That night she seemed about three feet tall, and more solid than he’d ever seen her before. She pointed to Glae, wrinkled up her nose in scorn, then began to weep. As Maer watched horrified, she slowly vanished, fading away, turning transparent, then gone, tears and all. Yet somehow, he knew she’d be back. When he glanced back Nevyn’s way, he found the old man troubled, and that was the most frightening thing of all.

That year, which was 918 as Deverry men reckon time, Loddlaen turned three, a slender, solemn child with pale hair and enormous purple eyes. Although the other children treated him as one of their own, he always seemed set apart from the games and the general shouting, preferring to cling to his father’s trouser leg and merely watch the goings-on or to play quietly with his foster brother, Javanateriel, in the safety of a tent. In his better moments, Aderyn wondered if the time he’d spent trapped in his mother’s womb off in the Guardians’ strange country had affected him in some way, but usually he refused to believe that anything could be wrong with his beautiful son. Even when Loddlaen woke in the night screaming from horrible dreams, Aderyn told himself that all children dreamt of monsters and suchlike at his age.
The autumn alardan that year was one of the largest Aderyn had ever seen. Since all summer the weather had been exceptionally fine, the grass was exceptionally lush, meaning that there was enough fodder near the campground to feed the herds for a few days longer than usual, and the elves took advantage of it for a long week of feasting and good company. Although Aderyn didn’t bother to count, it seemed to him that at least five hundred tents sprang up along the stream chosen for the great meeting. At night the tiny cooking fires looked like a field of stars. There were so many horses and sheep that the mounted herders had to take them out a long way around the camp, half a day’s ride in some cases.
It was no wonder, then, that Ganedd and his small caravan stumbled across the alardan, especially since the young merchant had enough sense to realize that the elves would be travelling south by then instead of camping near the usual trading sites. Aderyn had met Ganedd several times before; he rather liked the lad, and he could sympathize with his desire to break free of his family’s constricted life and see something of the world. It was Aderyn that Ganedd sought out, in fact, once he and his men had been fed and given a place to set up their own tent, because Ganedd knew elven ways well enough to come to the Wise One first. As soon as Aderyn heard his story, though, he sent for Halaberiel. The banadar was beginning to show his age; there were deep crow’s-feet at the corner of his eyes, and in certain lights you would have sworn that you could see streaks of gray in his pale hair.
“Hal, you’d best listen to this,” Aderyn said. “There’s trouble in Cannobaen, and two half-elven children are involved.”
“Pertyc Maelwaedd’s offspring?” Halaberiel glanced at Ganedd.
“Yes, Banadar.” The boy’s Elvish was not good, but adequate. “He sent me here with a letter for his wife. He needs help badly. His enemies are threatening to burn his stone tent and kill him and his children. He has eleven men and no archers. They have hundreds and hundreds of men.”
“Well, how like the cursed Round-ears, to count on unfair odds like that.” Halaberiel changed to Deverrian for the sake of their guest. “I doubt me if you can find his wife, lad. The last I saw of her, she was heading west with her alar to the far camps. I’ll send out messengers, but we don’t have a blasted lot of hope of catching up with her in time.”
“Well, I was afraid of that, sir,” Ganedd said. “But what we really need are bows, and extra arrows, and maybe an archer or two to show us how to use them, though truly they’d best be gone again before the siege starts. It would ache my heart to have your people slain in what’s most likely a hopeless cause.”
“I remember Pertyc from his wedding.” Halaberiel glanced at Aderyn. “As I remember, you missed that particular celebration, Wise One. He’s a good man, the only Round-ear I eve really liked—well, besides you, but then, you’re not really a Round-ear. Never were, as far as I can tell. I don’t see why Annaleria ever married him, but cursed if I’ll sit here while a man I like gets himself murdered in his tent.”
“You’ll help us, sir?” Ganedd broke into a grin.
“I will. Bows you shall have, and arrows, and me and some of my men, too. Calonderiel’s always spoiling for a good scrap, and I think Farendar and Albaral will ride with us for the excitement of the thing, and then there’s young Jennantar, who needs to learn Eldidd speech. I’ll pass the word around and see if anyone else’s heart burns to come with us, but truly, Ganedd, I don’t want to risk many more men than that.”
“Banadar, you’re worth a hundred Round-ear men by yourself alone.”
Halaberiel laughed.
“Put me up high on a stone wall with a good bow and someone to keep filling my quiver, and you might just be right, lad. We’ll find out soon enough.”
Although Aderyn’s first reaction was a sick feeling at this elven interference in human politics, in the end he decided that there was nothing he could do to prevent it. As the Wise One, Aderyn could have overruled the banadar, but only at a great social cost; there would have been arguments for days, and the entire alardan would have lined up on one side or the other, leading to further trouble for years to come. Besides, he considered that indeed Pertyc Maelwaedd had every justice on his side and deserved defending, as he remarked to Nevyn when they talked later that evening through the fire.
“I agree, actually,” Nevyn thought back to him. “But do you think archers are going to make that much of a difference?”
“I do. I mean, Hal tells me that in an open field the rebel army could easily wipe out a small squad of archers, but this isn’t an open field, is it? The banadar’s bringing two fletchers with us, and I gather he’s going to have them spend all winter making arrows while he trains Pertyc’s men.”
“I see. Wait—did you say with us?”
“I thought I’d best come along. I’d like to bring Loddlaen, so you could see him, but it’s just too dangerous.”
“On that, at least, I couldn’t agree more. You know, there’s a thing going on here that I’d like you to take a look at, too. Do you remember Maddyn?”
Aderyn thought for a long moment.
“Oh, the bard! The one who had the silver ring with the roses on it.”
“Exactly. Well, he’s been reborn, and he’s here, and that wretched little blue sprite is still hanging around him. You know, I think she honestly loves him. I didn’t think the Wildfolk were capable of that.”
“No more did I.”
“And now Maer’s starting seeing her and all of her kin, for that matter. He came to me about it the other day, poor lad, quite troubled about it. I made a little speech, all pompous and vague, about the magical nature of borderlands in general and this one in particular, and I dropped a few harmless hints about the Westfolk. Blather, it was, but he was impressed and felt much better. I could hardly tell him that being around me was awakening his deepest memories of his last life.”
“If that’s all it is. The sprite may have something to do with this, too. I’m on my way, then. We leave at dawn tomorrow, and since we have a pack train to contend with, it’ll probably take us a fortnight at the very least to reach Cannobaen.”
“Well and good. I’m looking forward to seeing you again.”
“And I, you. It’s been too long.”

On the day that the caravan arrived in Cannobaen, it poured rain, one of those quiet storms that without any pompous show of thunder and lightning settle in to soak everything. Since Maer had drawn stable duty that morning, he was out in the ward, wrapped in a greased cloak with the hood up, sweeping the stable leavings into a mound for the gardener. The rain had just finally found its way through the heavy wool to run down his back when he heard a clatter of hooves and a shout at the gates. Delighted with the distraction, he dropped his rake and trotted over just as Ganedd led his men and laden mules inside. Maer whooped in delight and yelled at the gardener to run and fetch his lordship.
“Maer!” Ganedd sang out. “Gladdens my heart and all that! We’ve done it, Maer! We’ve got bows and the men to teach us how to use them.”
Maer whooped again; he’d been rather looking forward to living longer than one winter more. All at once he realized that Wildfolk were swarming around the tiny caravan, and that he could see them all more clearly than ever before. Sylphs hung in the air, delighting in the rain; undines rose up out of puddles and grinned at him; sprites and gnomes thronged around the animals and sat on the saddles and mule packs; some of the bolder creatures were even perched on the shoulders of the men or rushed to greet them as they dismounted. Nevyn’s impressive remarks about the Westfolk and their affinities began to take on actual meaning.
“Come on!” Ganedd called. “Take our guests inside to meet Lord Pertyc. Here come the servants to tend the stock.”
With Ganedd in the lead they all dashed into the great hall, which was hot and smoky from the fires roaring in both hearths. Immediately everyone threw off their cloaks and dropped them into a wet and smelly heap for a serving lass to deal with later. Maer received his second shock of the day, because he’d never seen an elf before, never even knew that they existed, in fact. Cat-slit and enormous eyes of green and purple and indigo blue, hair as pale as moonlight, and the ears—try as he might he couldn’t look away. Finally a tall fellow with violet eyes took offense.
“And just what are you staring at, you Round-ear dog?”
“Cal, hold your tongue!” As fast as any lord to break up a brawl, the eldest of the lot stepped in between them. “You can’t blame the lad for being surprised. He can’t be such a bad fellow, anyway, since he’s friends with the Wildfolk.”
Maer glanced down to see Little Blue-hair. She’d come up beside him and taken his hand in one of hers; now she leaned against his trouser leg and stared at the visitors like a shy child.
“You see them, too?” Maer whispered.
“Of course.” The man called Cal smiled and held out his hand. “Friends?”
“Done.”
They shook hands solemnly; then Cal hurried after the others to be presented to the lord.

“Ganedd, my friend, if it were in my power to ennoble you, I would,” Pertyc said. “Since it’s not, and since I don’t have more than a handful of coin to my name, I don’t really know how I’ll ever be able to repay you.”
“Well, my lord, if we all get ourselves killed in the spring, repayment’s a moot point, anyway.”
Pertyc laughed and gave him a friendly slap on the shoulder.
“I like you merchants. So hardheaded, so practical. Well, if I can figure out a way to do it, I’ll repay you anyway, especially if by some miracle we do live through the spring.”
“Then I’ll take it gladly, my lord. Here, the servants should have brought those bows up by now. If his lordship will excuse me, I’ll just go hurry them along.”
“Please do. I don’t think I’ve ever waited more eagerly for anything than I’ve been waiting for those bows. And I need to have a word with my old friend Halaberiel anyway.”
As Ganedd was leaving the great hall, he came face to face with a young woman. With Glaenara—Ganedd stared openmouthed. All bathed and civilized as she was, he hadn’t recognized her for a moment. Even her hair was glossy-clean and growing longer, curling softly around her face. Her hands were clean, too, and her nails nicely manicured.
“What’s wrong, Ganno? Fall off your horse and hit your head?”
“Oh, my apologies, Glae! I, uh, well, just didn’t recognize you. I mean: I wasn’t expecting to see you here.”
“I’m married to Maer now.”
“The silver dagger?”
“Well, he isn’t that anymore.” She hesitated, suddenly distressed. “Ganno, do you still want to marry Braedda?”
“What? Of course.”
“Then you’d best get down to the village today. When your da got back from Aberwyn, you know? He went straight to Braedda’s father and tried to break off the betrothal, but Ewsn, bless him, said he’d wait to speak with you about it.”
Ganedd took her advice and rode down as soon as Pertyc gave him leave, much later that day. The rain had rolled on its way by then, leaving the sunset clean and bright, with a snap of the sea wind and the tang of salt in the air. Round back of his parents’ house he tethered his horse, then climbed over the garden wall and let himself in the back door. Twelve-year-old Avyl was in the kitchen, badgering the cook for a piece of bread and honey. When he saw Ganedd, he smirked. The cook threw her apron over her face and began to weep.
“Oho, so you came home, huh?” Avyl said. “Wait’ll you see Da.”
When Ganedd stalked by, Avyl followed, snickering. The noise brought Moligga out into the corridor. She took one look at Ganedd and began to tremble. Avyl abruptly held his tongue.
“I’m sorry, Mam,” Ganedd said. “But I had to do what I think is right.”
She started to speak, then merely shook her head in a scatter of tears. When Ganedd went to lay his hand on her arm, she drew back.
“Ganno, get out,” Moligga said, almost whispering. “I don’t want your father even seeing you.”
“Indeed? Well, I want to say a thing or two to him. Tell me one thing: how do you feel about this rebellion?”
“Do you think I care one way or another? Oh, ye gods, that ever it would come to this: my lad and my man, at each other’s throats, and all over a kind I’ve never even seen!” Slowly the tears welled, running down her cheeks. “Ganno, he made a declaration before the whole guild and cut you off.”
“I knew he would. Where is he?”
“Don’t.” Moligga caught his arm. “Just leave.”
As gently as he could, Ganedd pushed past her and walked on down the corridor. He flung open the door to his father’s study and marched in without knocking. Wersyn rose from his writing desk, his fingers clasping a leather-bound ledger, and gave him a sour little smile.
“Who are you? Strange—you remind me of my dead son.”
For a moment, Ganedd couldn’t breathe. Wersyn went on smiling. The silence hung as thick as sea fog in the tiny chamber.
“Then count me his spirit come back from the Otherlands for a little while. And I’ll give you a warning, like spirits do. If I live through this winter, then I’m going to see to it that you never trade in the Westlands again. They’re my friends, Da, not yours, and you cursed well know it.”
With a gasp, Wersyn hurled the ledger straight at his head. Ganedd dodged, laughing.
“But it’s for the king’s sake, Da. Not mine.”
His face scarlet with rage, Wersyn rushed him, his hand raised for a slap. Ganedd heard Moligga scream. He dodged, caught his father’s wrists, and grimly held on. No matter how much Wersyn struggled, he couldn’t break free. He was panting for breath and weeping in frustration at the inescapable truth: his little son was the stronger man now. When Moligga started to sob, Ganedd let him go.
“You can’t hit a dead man. Farewell.”
Ganedd turned on his heel and walked slowly out, strode down the corridor, and opened the front door. His brother’s skinny little face stared at him wide-eyed.
“I’m the heir now, Ganno. What do you think of that?”
“They should have drowned you young. Like the rat-faced weasel you are.”

Earlier that day Aderyn had ridden down to see Nevyn in his cottage, where they could talk privately of things that would only unsettle ordinary men. Nevyn was surprised by just how glad he was to see his old pupil in the flesh rather than through a scrying focus, enough so to make him wonder if he were growing old and sentimental or suchlike. For hours they talked of everything and nothing, sharing news of the craft and the various apprentices they’d taken in the past or, in Aderyn’s case, that they had now.
“The Westfolk are really amazing when it comes to magic,” Aderyn said at last. “They have more of an affinity for it than we do.”
“No doubt. Look at how vital they are, living so long while keeping so young-seeming and all. It seems to me that they must be far more open to the flow of the life-power than humans are.”
“They’re far more in harmony with life itself, actually. Well”—Aderyn’s expression suddenly turned blank and closed—“most of them.”
Nevyn could figure out that somehow the conversation had brought Dallandra to his mind.
“Ah, well,” Nevyn said, and a bit hurriedly. “I take it that your larger work is going well, too. Restoring the full dweomer to the Westfolk, I mean.”
They talked for a good long while more and parted with arrangements made to meet on the morrow as well. After Aderyn went on his way, Nevyn went into his bedchamber and sat down on the wooden floor to lift up the loose board and take out the small wooden casket where the opal was hidden. It was wrapped in five pieces of Bardek silk: the palest purple-gray, a flaming red, a deep sea blue, a sunny yellow, and then a mottled bit, russet, citrine, olive, and black. He laid it in the palm of his hand and considered the stone as it gleamed softly in the candlelight.
Since any good stone will pick up bits of emotion, dream-thought, and life-force from its owners and the events around it, Nevyn had postponed starting his work upon it. His own will and feelings were troubled and clouded by what he referred to as “this stupid rebellion,” and if his mind wasn’t utterly clear, he would inevitably charge the opal with the wrong thoughts. The last thing he wanted his talisman to radiate to the High Kings of All Deverry was a self-righteous irritation. They doubtless could summon enough of that on their own. One way or another, he’d have to settle things here in Cannobaen before he could get down to work. Ah well, he told himself, if you’d wanted an easy life, you could have been a wretched priest and been done with it!

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