Wizard's Heir (A Bard Without a Star, Book 1)

by Michael A. Hooten

  When he walked in the door, she looked up from the scroll she was reading and looked him over. “You must be the heir apparent,” she said in a voice that crackled like dry parchment.

  “And you must be the librarian,” he replied shortly.

  She grinned. “Chafing under your tutelage already? We haven’t even begun.”

  Gwydion said nothing, but met her gaze evenly.

  Bethyl nodded approvingly. “Don’t need to talk just to hear yourself. I like that.” She put the scroll down and stood up, cracking her back. He was surprised to see that she towered over him by a good six inches, and walked with a cane. “Now,” she said, “There are not many rules, but the ones that exist are important. First of all, the books and scrolls in here are to be treated like they’re made of butterfly wings. Understood?”

  “Yes, Bethyl.”

  “Good. Next, this is a quiet place. If you feel the need to talk to yourself while reading, then read somewhere else. Third, you are to use your time in here to study. If I find you sleeping, I will rap you across the back of the head with my walking stick. And finally, if you have a question about anything that you read, ask me. I may not have the answer, but I will probably know where to look for it. Any questions?”

  Gwydion looked around at the shelves, which seemed to go on forever. “What are we going to study first?”

  “Not we,” Bethyl cackled. “You. And you may start with whatever you like. All I require is that you study for four solid hours. What and how are up to you.” Her gaze turned inward. “Spend the first week learning the layout of the library. There are surprises everywhere.” She focused on him again. “But don’t forget that I’ll be watching. Now go.”

  Gwydion wandered down the first row of shelves that caught his eye. He ran his fingers lightly over the spines, breathing in the fragrance of parchment, leather, and mildew. Selecting one at random, he pulled it out and read the title: Diverse Observations of Creatures Marvelous. He opened it to an illustration showing a shining red dragon that seemed to leap off the page. A few pages further, a golden griffin crouched. The accompanying text had been written in small, tight lettering, and he read a few paragraphs before putting the book back carefully. He was intrigued, but he had plenty of time.

  At the end of the row, a ladder led to a small loft filled with nautical charts. He went back down to the main level, but soon came across a door that led into a small study with two comfortable chairs in front of a fireplace, and more books. Another door led to stairs that went down to a gloomy chamber where silver and gold scroll cases caught the light from a single lamp. He found a room full of stone tablets, and another of painted animal skins.

  In a nondescript room he found a book about Taliesin, the first Bard and the founder of the Bardic Academy. He settled down at a small table and started reading.

  A touch on his shoulder made him jump. “Relax,” Bethyl said, sitting beside him. “It’s only me.”

  “Sorry. I was a little preoccupied.”

  “A little? It’s obvious you’re not a warrior, boy, because I’ve been standing behind you for ten minutes. What are you reading?”

  He showed her the title and she grunted. “Do you have a problem with bards?” he asked.

  “Not really, no,” she said. “It’s just that reading about music is not nearly as interesting as hearing it. Where did you find this?”

  “The book? It was on the shelf right there.” He pointed behind them.

  She clucked her tongue. “I wondered. It belongs in the music room, you know.”

  “Do you have instruments, too?”

  “No, just books and copies of the music, written down. If we had instruments, some people might want to play them, and that would very quickly drive me insane.”

  Gwydion ignored the hard look she gave him. “Where are the books?”

  “I’ll show you tomorrow,” she said, standing up. “But for now, I think it’s time to call it a day. It’s almost time for dinner, so go.”

  He stood up, and looked her in the eye. “Thank you, Bethyl. I didn’t mean to appear surly before.”

  She let out a crackled laugh. “You are the charmer. Get out of here before I swoon at your feet.”

  “As you command, my lady,” he replied with a bow.

  “Just don’t forget that I expect you tomorrow at the same time.”

  Gwydion found Gil waiting for him in the courtyard outside. “It’s about time,” the tall boy said, jumping up.

  “How long have you been waiting?”

  “About an hour. I was beginning to think you were lost in there somewhere.”

  “Almost.” Gwydion began strolling towards the great hall. “Are your sisters going to join us again for supper?”

  “I don’t think so,” Gil answered. “They’ve had many dinner invitations since they arrived, and I think they might be trying to fill them all in the first few nights.”

  “It figures,” Gwydion said. “Bring two beautiful, and eligible, young girls into a place, and people will fall all over themselves to get to know them.” He glanced at his cousin sideways. “They are eligible, aren’t they?”

  “Well, they haven’t been betrothed yet,” Gil said. “Our mother has plans though.”

  “She would. She’s of the old school.”

  “Well, she better not start scheming with my life. I’m happy making my own choices.”

  “Like coming to Caer Dathyl?”

  Gil scowled. “Okay, so she gets things right every now and then.”

  Gwydion laughed and changed the subject.

  The next morning, Math’s image appeared over his sleeping nephew again. “Gwydion, wake up!”

  The boy startled out of a dream, then groaned as the previous day’s activities caught up with him. “I can’t move,” he complained.

  “Of course you can. Now get up and get dressed.”

  Slowly, feeling his muscles protest every motion, Gwydion sat up. “I’m not going to be very fast,” he said.

  “You weren’t that fast yesterday,” Math said gently. He watched the boy struggle to get his clothes on. “Speed is not the reason that you run, just as knowledge is not the reason you study.”

  “Then why do I do these things?” Gwydion asked irritably.

  “You do them to expand your world, and to give you flexibility.”

  Stifling a groan, Gwydion slipped on a shoe. “I don’t feel very flexible right now.”

  “You will.” Math smiled. “What would you do if an assassin came at you with a knife?”

  Gwydion looked up. “An assassin?”

  “It’s not impossible. Are you ready to go?”

  “I suppose.”

  Math said nothing else until Gwydion was out of the Caer, jogging slowly while his muscles screamed at him. “You didn’t answer my question, nephew.”

  “About being attacked with a knife? I don’t know what I would do.”

  “Think about it.”

  Gwydion tried to think, but he shook his head. “I suppose I would shout for help.”

  “That’s one possible solution. But what about fighting him?”

  “I’m not a warrior,” Gwydion said. “Everyone keeps pointing that out.”

  “You will be. And a sorcerer, too. And everything you learn will give you more ways of dealing with every situation that arises.”

  Watching his feet to make sure they kept moving, Gwydion pondered his uncle’s words. “Couldn’t you get to the point where you had so many options that it would be hard to choose? Couldn’t you become paralyzed with indecision?”

  “Very good,” Math said, his voice warm with pride. “But that is where wisdom and experience come in, and that is why we train. So that if you are ever attacked, you not only know how to fight back, but also which weapons to choose. And a shout is one of those weapons, by the way.”

  “It all seems so complicated,” Gwydion said, “And yet... Sometimes I feel like I’m about to make sense of it all, but I’m miss
ing the right word. Like a song I can almost remember, but keeps slipping away.”

  Math was silent for a while. “You love the harp, don’t you?”

  “Yes,” Gwydion answered, surprised by the question. His breathing was becoming more labored, so he did not elaborate.

  “Bethyl told me what you were studying yesterday, and I am not sure that I am happy with your choice.”

  “Why?” Gwydion gasped, feeling the stitch forming in his side.

  “You are of the blood and magic of the Cymry. Bards are something else entirely. I do not want you to become confused by the two.”

  Gwydion stopped. “Can’t go on,” he panted. He bent over, his arms on his knees, feeling worse than he had the time he drank too much mead.

  “Of course you can,” Math said. “Just keep putting one foot in front of the other.”

  “It’ll take me all day.”

  “We have the time. Now come on. Just keep moving. That’s it.”

  Gwydion shambled forward, going no faster than a walking pace. “Does it…ever get…easier?”

  “With time, yes. Your body will become used to both the running and the weapons training, and you will be able to go farther, faster, with each passing day.”

  “Not faster…today,” Gwydion complained.

  The weeks progressed quickly, with summer deepening into long days of sunshine and heat. The physical training still drained Gwydion, but he realized that it was due as much to the weather and the increased demands of Math and the kerns as to his own limitations. And he did notice some positive changes: by the end of the first fortnight, he was able to run without getting a stitch in his side, and he was at least able to hold his own with a short sword.

  His studies in the library also expanded. Knowing his uncle’s disapproval of his interest in bards, he began studying philosophy and history. That allowed him to find out more about the bards and what they believed without appearing obvious about it. Although Bethyl rarely appeared to notice him, he knew that she sent reports to his uncle every day.

  And he spent long hours with his uncle in the tower, learning the names and feel of each of the winds. Goewin was always there, watching him with a slightly disapproving look in her eyes. Of all the pretty girls in the Caer, she did not interest him in the least, so he ignored her and whatever she may have felt about him.

  Arianrhod was another matter entirely. He spent the summer on a subtle campaign to win her heart, but the little tricks that worked so well on the other girls had only made her smile faintly. And yet she looked at him with a combination of desire and aloofness that made him keep trying.

  One afternoon, Gwydion stumbled into the library feeling like a mass of welts and bruises. “You look terrible,” Bethyl said. “Who’s been beating on you?”

  “The kerns are training me,” Gwydion said.

  “And your cousin?”

  “You know about Gil?”

  “Everyone knows about him, and you, and the way he drubs you every chance he gets.”

  “Aye, he does seem to enjoy it.”

  Bethyl shook her head. “I don’t know why you’re having such a hard time with this.”

  “I’m not a warrior,” Gwydion complained.

  “And you’re going to use that as an excuse when you’re Lord Gwynedd?” Bethyl asked. “Your troops are going to be ready to go to war, and you’ll send someone else to lead them, saying, ‘Sorry, but I’m just not the warrior type’?”

  Gwydion shrugged. “It’s not like I’m not trying.”

  “Well, you could have fooled me.”

  “What do you know? You’re just a librarian.”

  Bethyl drew herself up to her full height and looked down at him. “You stupid boy.”

  Gwydion stepped back from the anger in her face.

  “You think I was always a librarian? Do you think that I know nothing of life?”

  He held up his hands. “Bethyl, I—”

  “You what? You think I am lame from falling off a ladder? Or from dropping a heavy book on my toe?”

  “I never thought about it.”

  “That’s your problem. You don’t think!” She pivoted around on her cane and started down a row of shelves. “Come with me!”

  He followed her, but at a safe distance, afraid that she might turn on him suddenly and knock him out with her cane. She led him back into a far corner, where a spiral staircase wound up out of sight. She climbed the stone steps quickly, despite her cane, not stopping until she came to a landing at the top. Gwydion caught up with her just as she went through the door.

  The circular chamber at the top of the tower was lit by four tall windows, one facing in each direction. The rest of the wall space was taken up by shelves filled with rows of books lined up in neat order. Two small tables, each with two chairs and a chess board inlaid on the top, were the only furniture.

  “What is this place?” he asked.

  “It doesn’t surprise me that you haven’t found it before now,” she said. “Look at the titles.”

  He moved to the nearest wall, and looked at a few spines: Famous Charioteers, Tactics for the Chariot, and A Man and his Driver: The Story of CuChulainn and Lobd Derg.

  Gwydion frowned and moved on, finding books on archery, training, and the lives of obscure heroes. A large book proved to be beautifully illustrated pictures of swords. He saw treatises on cavalry and camp layout, volumes on daggers and defensive ditches, and collected essays on the Battle of Glen Rhosyn. “It’s all about war,” he said.

  “Very good,” she replied. “Now sit, and read this.”

  She handed him a volume covered in rich blue leather with gold stamped lettering. “Techniques of the Claymore, by Bethyl na Fergus,” he read. “Is that you?”

  “It is indeed.” She sat across from him and folded her arms in front of her. “As I said, I wasn’t always a librarian. In fact, at one time I was a member of the Fianna, and part of the High King’s personal guard.”

  “What happened?”

  “I’m getting to that,” she said irritably.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Humph.” She gazed out the window, her eyes focused on nothing, but she didn’t have a dreamy gaze; instead, it was slightly bitter. “Because of my height and strength, I was the only woman ever to carry a claymore as her first weapon. And I was young and full of myself, full of the importance of my position. Like young Gil, I always thought that battle was the highest entertainment, and dying there the greatest honor. But by my thirtieth year, I had seen blood and death aplenty, and I was tired of it all. So I decided to retire.

  “Two days before I did, though, a young man challenged me to a duel. He was even more cocky than you, if can imagine that, and I thought that I would be able to teach him a lesson easily.”

  She said nothing for several minutes. Finally Gwydion said, “What happened?”

  “I defeated him quickly, just as I thought,” she said. “But he was too stupid to accept defeat. He ripped the wicker off his blade and attacked me in earnest, seeking my life’s blood. I defended myself, of course. There is plenty that can be done, even with a wicker wrapped claymore, that can hurt a man. But he wouldn’t fall, and he was younger than I. He hadn’t blooded me, but he was tiring me quicker than I was him. So I used a little known, and not very honorable, maneuver: I stepped inside his swing, and used my belt dagger to stab him in the heart. Even then, he managed to bring his blade down on my foot, taking half of it off. I was exonerated of any wrong, of course, but it’s still not a good thing to kill the king’s son.”

  “That was you?” Gwydion said. “You killed Prince Eamonn?”

  “It was myself. Surprised?”

  “Well obviously. The stories talk about how he attacked dishonorably, but I always thought—”

  “You thought that a man defeated him.” Bethyl looked at him closely. “You aren’t the first to make that mistake about me. But that’s a part of what I’m trying to tell you.”

  Gwydi
on held up his hands. “I’m sorry, Bethyl, I’m still not getting it.”

  She shook her head. “I’ll spell it out for you, but only this once. You have a brain, a much finer one than most of the people you train with. You need to use it.”

  Gwydion snorted. “It’s well known that a book won’t make a warrior.”

  “But it’s a start, you idiot!” Bethyl got control of herself. “I didn’t want to do this, but you’ve given me no choice. From now until I say otherwise, you will study only the books in this room. No others, until you realize that your cleverness is useful for more than getting your way with the pretty girls.”

  “You can’t do that.”

  “I can, and I have. Don’t try getting your uncle to help you out of it, either.” Bethyl smiled grimly. “It was his idea.”

  Chapter 4: Enigma

  For three days, Gwydion tried to get out of his new curriculum. And for three days he felt Math’s stinging words in his ears and Bethyl’s cane across his knees. It didn’t help that word had gotten out to the kerns, and that he had had to contend with fresh teasing about using a scroll for a sword and a book for a shield. Each day he went up the stairs to the tower, and each day Bethyl locked him in like a prisoner. In a fit of boredom, he began to read.

  He started with the most interesting thing he could find, a thick book about the second and third Bardic Wars. It started with Cathbar becoming the Pen Bardd, some three hundred years after Taliesin founded the bardic order, describing him as a man of great charisma and influence. The picture on the facing page was gilded all about, except for the black of Cathbar’s eyes. Gwydion stared at them for a long time, wondering if they were a part of the truth or not. He felt like he should know, that the answer was somewhere within hearing...

  He shook himself and turned the page, concentrating on the words. It took him the next three days to get through the first half of the volume, reading about how Cathbar had seized the throne and almost destroyed the bards that opposed him in the second Bardic war. Then there was a hundred years of peace, during which time it seemed that Cathbar never grew any older. The bards, reduced to a few men who passed along the laws and teachings with great fear, did not dare to oppose him until Amergin came of age, the most powerful bard ever to have lived. That began the Third Bardic war, and Gwydion spent another week learning how Amergin and the other bards defeated Cathbar and restored a king to the throne.