The Black Raven

by Katharine Kerr

  Everyone laughed, including Lilli. As they talked about Branoic, and the sort of demesne that Maryn would settle upon him, Lilli began to feel that her affair with the prince had perhaps never happened. Most certainly it had lasted only a brief time, and perhaps it had ended already. If so, she decided, she could not only live without him—she was also in some deep way relieved.

  And yet, about the middle of the afternoon, Maryn opened the door to the women’s hall and started to walk in. For a moment he froze, his face utterly expressionless as he considered the group at the embroidery frame. When the women began to rise, he waved at them to sit, turned on his heel, and left, slamming the door behind him.

  “How very odd,” Elyssa remarked. “Well, our prince is much distracted these days, what with the electors to worry about.”

  “How kind you are,” Bellyra said, grinning. “He looked terrified to me.”

  Lilli bent her head and paid strict attention to her stitches. She could feel her heart pounding like a traitor, crying out that she loved him still.

  After the dinner hour Lilli was sitting with Nevyn in her chamber when Maryn appeared. He walked in without knocking, then stood hesitating at the sight of his councillor.

  “I assume, my liege,” Nevyn said, “that you’d like me to leave.”

  “I would, truly.”

  Nevyn smiled, gathered up the book he’d been showing her, and with a bow to the prince, left. Lilli felt as if she were crouching in her chair, half-afraid Maryn would leave quickly, half-afraid he’d stay for a long while. He sat himself down in the chair Nevyn had just vacated and stretched his long legs out toward the fire.

  “I take it the princess asked you to attend upon her today,” Maryn said.

  “She did, Your Highness.”

  “Don’t call me that!”

  “My apologies.”

  For a long while Maryn scowled into the fire that leapt over big logs in the stone hearth. The salamanders lurking in the caves of glowing coals glowered right back, but fortunately of course he couldn’t see them. Lilli folded her hands in her lap and tried to think of something to say.

  “Forgive me, my lady,” Maryn said at last. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me these days.”

  “It’s all the waiting, isn’t it? Sitting around and talking and waiting for summer. It must be dreadful for a man like you.”

  “I suppose it is. But what is this creature, a man like me?”

  Lilli was too surprised to answer. Maryn looked up with a peculiar lopsided smile.

  “Don’t let me spoil this little span of time we have, my lady.” He stood up, glancing around. “Come lie down with me instead.”

  Yet after his lovemaking, when he’d dressed and gone, Lilli lay awake for a long while, wondering what his question meant, and what could have driven him to ask it. Finally, she fell asleep without an answer.

  Gwerbret Ammerwdd of Yvrodur stood nearly as tall as Branoic, and he was as broad in the shoulders. Grey streaked his dark hair and stained his moustache. As he talked, he reached up to stroke the moustache repeatedly with one wide hand, as if he feared he’d lost it. Since the prince had given him leave to stand, he leaned against the wall next to the hearth in the prince’s reception room and considered his sworn liege lord with cold dark eyes. Maryn, lounging in a chair, looked steadily back.

  “I understand your reasoning,” Ammerwdd said at last. “But there’s going to be a cursed lot of grumbling about your handing Cerrmor over to a lad.”

  “He’ll be a man before long,” Maryn said, “and is that truly what the grumbling will be about?”

  Ammerwdd smiled, glancing at Nevyn and Oggyn, who sat at a table off to one side, then back to the prince. When Oggyn looked as if he might speak, Nevyn raised a hand and silenced him.

  “Cerrmor’s a rich prize,” the gwerbret said. “I’d never deny that.”

  Maryn got up, beckoned to Ammerwdd to follow him, and joined his two councillors at the table, where a map of Deverry lay spread out. Maryn pointed to the northeast corner and laid a fingertip on one town.

  “This is Cantrae,” Maryn said. “It belongs to the Boars. Follow the river down, Your Grace, and we have Glasloc, also in the Boar’s hands. Then there’s the old Wolf lands. They have a claim on Lughcarn as well, and the gwerbret there is trying to see which way the wind blows before he pledges to me. He doesn’t know it, but he’s waited too long. If the summer’s fighting goes well, all these will be mine by attainder. I intend to be generous to my Cerrmor vassals.”

  Ammerwdd nodded, stroking his moustache.

  “These lands are all a cursed long ride from the Belaver,” the gwerbret said at last. “Men who have land there aren’t going to want to give it up and move north.”

  “Who says they have to give up their old holdings? Well, whoever the Electors appoint as Gwerbret Cantrae will, and then Lughcarn as well. But the lesser lords won’t be under that sort of obligation.”

  Ammerwdd started to speak, then laughed, a short bark that sounded as angry as it did merry.

  “I like that,” the gwerbret said. “Divide their holdings; let them spend half the year riding back and forth; keep them out of trouble.”

  “So I thought.” Maryn turned to Nevyn. “Tell me, Councillor. If Glasloc returns to Gwerbret Daeryc, will he give up Mabyndyr?”

  “He will, Your Highness,” Nevyn said. “And Mabyndyr’s worth more than Glasloc.”

  “And then, my liege, there are the northern demesnes,” Oggyn put in.

  “True spoken.” Ammerwdd swept his hand across northern Gwaentaer. “How many of these lords will hold loyal to you in the spring?”

  “I don’t know,” Maryn said. “Probably none of them.”

  Both men laughed, a hard grim chuckle. Their cynicism was justified, Nevyn assumed, but not long after something happened that proved him wrong.

  On a day when the chill wind hinted of winter coming, one of Maryn’s new vassals rode in with his honor guard of fifteen men, and it was the last one that any of them would have expected: Lord Nantyn. As soon as he saw his horses well stabled and his men housed, Nantyn stomped into the great hall and yelled for the prince. He was a burly man still, Nantyn, even though his white hair lay thin on his skull; he had watery blue eyes and a face pocked with old scars. Nevyn, who happened to be in the hall, came hurrying to greet him with a bow.

  “Well, good morrow, my lord,” Nevyn said. “I’ve sent a page off to fetch Prince Maryn.”

  “Good.” Nantyn peered at him for a moment. “Ah, that’s right. You’re that cursed sorcerer. Well, I’ve come on an important matter.”

  Nevyn seated the lord at the honor table and sent a servant for mead. Since Nevyn had heard the gossip about Nantyn, that he’d beaten at least one wife to death for no particular reason, he was predisposed to detest him, and small talk was difficult. Fortunately Maryn came trotting down the stairs soon after. Nantyn rose, made a sort of bend at the knees coupled with a bob of his head that would have to do for a kneel, and got right to the point.

  “Braemys is scouring the countryside for bandits,” Nantyn said. “Enlisting them, I mean, not hanging them like he should be doing. There’s a cursed lot of desperate men out there, my liege, and he’s offered them all a place in his warband.”

  “Ah horseshit!” Maryn matched his way of speaking to his hearer. “There’s more than one way to raise an army, eh?”

  “Just so.” Nantyn sat back down without being asked and picked up his goblet again. “I figured you’d better know it now.”

  “You have my sincere thanks.” Maryn sat and motioned to the servant. “Mead for me and the councillor, lad. I’m surprised you’d ride all this way to tell me.”

  “So am I, Your Highness.” Nantyn laughed, a sound more like another man’s death rattle. “But winter gives a man time to think. I’m sick as I can be of the cursed pissproud Boars. Suppose they win. Once they take all the good land south of them, they’ll be coming after my land and anyone
else’s they can get their trotters on. I want my grandson to inherit, not some stinking Boarling.”

  Nevyn opened his dweomer sight and studied the lord. Nantyn’s aura was a ghastly sort of blood-red, not surprising, considering the sort of life he’d led. Nevyn could tell, though, that he was undeniably sincere in his loyalty to the new king. He was also telling the absolute truth as he saw it about Braemys’s recruiting tactics. The last lord I ever would have expected to hold loyal! Nevyn thought to himself.

  It was the best omen he’d had in a long time. If men like Nantyn were sick of fighting, then the astral tides had turned for certain, washing the kingdom toward peace. If only the wretched priests would see it, too! Yet as the conversation went on, Nantyn solved that ongoing problem for him as well.

  “I was hoping to send for all my vassals soon,” Maryn said at one point, “to celebrate my assuming the kingship.”

  “Huh!” Nantyn snorted. “That won’t happen, my liege, till you’ve defeated Braemys.”

  “Truly? Why?”

  “I forget you don’t know the priests here in Dun Deverry. They’ve made themselves rich out of these wars. They’re not going to declare for one candidate till they know beyond doubting he’s won.” Nantyn paused for a swallow of mead. “Greedy bastards, but they’re not stupid. Bring them Braemys’s head on a pike, and they’ll seat you as high king quick enough.”

  “I should have seen that long ago,” Nevyn muttered.

  Nantyn shrugged, reached across the table for the flagon, and poured himself more mead.

  “Well and good, then,” Maryn said. “Come the summer, and we’ll do just that.”

  Nantyn laughed and saluted him with his goblet. With muttered excuses Nevyn left Nantyn to the prince and fled the great hall.

  Long shadows lay across the ward. When Nevyn glanced up at the sky he saw a streak of mackerel clouds coming in from the north, signalling a rainstorm, he supposed, since it was far too early for snow. As he was walking over to the side broch that held his chamber, he saw Princess Bellyra and something of a retinue—Maddyn, two pages, and Otho—all standing with their heads tipped back. They appeared to be looking at a narrow tower that graced one of the newer buildings. When Nevyn joined them, Bellyra explained their odd posture.

  “Look how it leans,” she said. “I was wondering why.”

  Nevyn looked and saw the alarming angle the tower made to the ward below.

  “It’s badly built, that’s why,” Otho snapped. “They just stuck it on top, like, instead of starting at the ground and digging a proper foundation.”

  “It does look dangerous,” Nevyn said. “One of these days it could come down of its own weight. Well, or so I think. Otho?”

  “I agree, my lord. A bad job all round.”

  “I’ve looked through some old accounts Oggyn found,” Bellyra said. “The tower was built about fifty years back. The accounts even tell where the stone came from, up in Gwaentaer. They barged it down. Fascinating, I thought.”

  Otho nodded his agreement.

  “Well, Your Highness,” Maddyn put in. “In the last day’s fighting, when we finally broke through and took this area, some of the Boar’s men were up there dropping stones from the roof. Thanks to the lean the stones fell straight down without bouncing off the walls. So I thought they’d built it that way on purpose, like.”

  “Now that I hadn’t thought of.” Otho looked profoundly sour. “You may be right, bard. But it’s not stable anyway.”

  “Eventually I’m sure our prince will have it down,” Bellyra said. “But this is all very interesting indeed. I’ll have to write about this tower.”

  “There’s another one round back,” Otho said. “And just as rickety as this.”

  “Oh good! Let’s go see!”

  The princess and her retinue trooped off, heading around the central broch complex. Nevyn, however, went back to his chamber where it was warm. There were times when the magical forces that prolonged his life ignored his aching joints.

  It was Bellyra’s habit to compose in her head, then commit her words to the expensive parchment only once she had them right. Normally she would write in the morning, when the sun came strongly through the windows, but at times she would find herself adding a line or two in the evenings by candlelight. Often forming letters absorbed her until her eyes ached when, as on that evening, she’d found some particularly interesting lore to record.

  “Nevyn’s told me lots about this broch,” she remarked to Maryn. “The one we’re in. Did you know it was the oldest?”

  “I didn’t,” Maryn said, yawning.

  She turned in her chair to look at him, lounging half-dressed and half-asleep on their bed.

  “You find this tedious,” she said.

  “I don’t. Go on.”

  “Well, there was somewhat so odd about the way Nevyn told me about the broch. He was so caught up in it, like, and he made it seem so real. It made me feel that he’d been there and seen it with his own eyes.”

  “Oh come now! He’s old, truly, but not that old.”

  “I do rather know that. It was just his way of telling.” She glanced at the piece of parchment. “I’ve got it all down now. But anyway, the king who built it believed in keeping the old ways, and in his time the old ways included sacrificing horses and putting their corpses under the foundations of a new broch, so that’s what he did.”

  “They must have rotted away by now,” Maryn said. “Bones and all.”

  “Just so. Perhaps that’s why your army could take the dun. The old king thought it would never be captured as long as the spirit horses guarded it. Nevyn told me that he’d read in a book that in the Dawntime, the kings would have sacrificed children and buried them instead of horses.”

  “Ye gods! Truly?”

  “Truly. Oh, and count yourself lucky, my lord and husband, that they don’t consecrate kings now the way they did in the Dawntime. You wouldn’t have just ridden that white mare in the procession. You would have had to mount her and ride her like a wife, and right in front of everybody, too, so they could be sure you’d really done it and didn’t just say you had.”

  Maryn blushed scarlet to the tips of his ears, and she laughed at him.

  “You’re inventing that,” he snarled.

  “I’m not. Ask Nevyn if you don’t believe me.”

  “I’ll do naught of the sort!”

  “Well, it’s true. Nevyn found it in a book that was ever so old.”

  “Then you’re right: I do count myself lucky. Ye gods!” All at once he smiled at her. “You’ve got ink on your nose.”

  She also had ink on her fingers, she realized, and her reed pen had gone all mashed at the tip. It’s a good thing I seasoned more of them, she thought. She tossed it into the fire, where it burned with a hiss. She wiped her hands on a rag, then blew out the candles. By the light of the fire she walked over to the bed.

  “Do you think you could have?” she said to Maryn. “Taken the mare, I mean, if you had to in order to be king.”

  “I have no idea, and I don’t care to dwell upon it.”

  “Well, I’m just curious. I’m not a man, so how would I know? You couldn’t even get drunk first, not too drunk anyway, or you wouldn’t be able to do anything at all.”

  Maryn rolled his eyes heavenward. She picked up a bone comb from the wood chest under the window and began to comb her hair.

  “You’re thinking about it,” she said. “Aren’t you?”

  “I’m not!”

  “I’ll wager you are. I hope they washed the mare off first.”

  “Just hold your tongue about it!”

  “Have I made you angry?”

  “What? You haven’t. To tell you the truth, I like seeing you like this, so joyous about your lore. It’s like you’ve come alive again.”

  “Well, so it is.” She stopped combing and considered for a moment. “I’d not realized it, but that’s true.”

  He sat up, smiling at her.

&nbs
p; “Come here,” he said. “There’s no use in your combing that out if I’m only going to tousle it for you.”

  “And are you, then?”

  “You can pretend you’re the mare.”

  “You beast!” She threw the comb at him.

  He ducked, laughing. When she sat down next to him, he took her by the shoulders and kissed her. Wrapped in his arms she could forget everything, good and bad alike.

  But later, when he’d fallen asleep, she lay awake, thinking. In a way she was the white mare, she realized. By marrying her, Maryn had married the Cerrmor rhan and the claim on the high kingship with it, just as in the old days the sexual intercourse between king and mare had served as his marriage—but not to the kingdom itself, exactly. To the sovereignty of the kingdom, she thought. That’s what they married, and then the ruling is a separate thing from the land itself! The idea was so interesting that she got up, lit a candle from the glowing embers in the hearth, grabbed a fresh pen, and wrote it down.

  Over the next few weeks, as the last of the summer vanished into a chill autumn, Maryn stayed in her bed every night. In the mornings he would linger in their chamber. They would sit in the sun if there was any or near the fire if there wasn’t, and she would tell him what she’d discovered about the dun’s history. Her serving women began to remark upon how happy she looked, and she had to admit that they were right. Others noticed the change in her as well.

  “Well, Your Highness,” Nevyn remarked one afternoon, “you seem a good bit more cheerful these days.”

  “I am, truly,” Bellyra said. “And I owe you my thanks for the idea of writing in a book again.”

  “You’re most welcome.”

  They were sitting by a window in the women’s hall on a day warm enough to leave the opening uncovered for the light. It was a pleasant enough view, Bellyra thought, when the sun gilded the dark towers. Down below in the ward servants were trotting to and fro on various errands, and as she watched, part of the Cerrmor warband returned from exercising their horses. From this height the clatter of hooves on cobbles and the jingle of tack sounded like a cacophony of bells.

  “It’s not just the book,” Bellyra said. “Maryn’s been much—well, warmer toward me in the past few weeks. He finds me interesting again, I suppose.”