personal guard to add to your war-bands.”
“By the gods! Our liege is most generous.”
“So he is. Lord Dannyn will accompany you at their head.”
Saddar paused, as if expecting some momentous reaction. Gweniver cocked her head to one side and considered him.
“Ah, well,” the councillor said at last. “And what does her holiness think of Lord Dannyn, if I may ask?”
“My men tell me that he’s splendid in battle, and truly, good sir, that’s all that matters to me.”
“Indeed?”
Something about the old man’s smile made her remember the odd warning she’d received from the Goddess, but still she said nothing.
“Well,” Saddar said, “it’s not my place to question those who have sworn holy vows, my lady, but let me give you a word of advice from one whose long years at times make him frank. Lord Dannyn is a very impetuous man. I would keep my eye on him, if I were you.” He paused to finish the mead in his goblet. “Ah, it gladdens my heart to see you here, Your Holiness. No doubt your Goddess has sent you as a mark of Her favor to our king.”
“Let’s hope not. Her favor is as dark and harsh as a blooded blade.”
Saddar’s smile froze on his lips. He rose, made her a polite bow, and hurriedly took his leave.
For some time Gweniver thought over the councillor’s troubling remark about Dannyn. She wanted to turn to the Goddess and ask Her advice, but in truth, she was unsure of how to go about it. Only a few fragments of the rites of the Darkened Moon had been preserved. The temple priestesses knew some chants and rituals to be worked at the waning of the moon; odd scraps of lore about certain battlefield prayers bad survived from the Dawntime; nothing more. Without a temple with mirror and altar, Gweniver simply didn’t know how to approach her Goddess. In her saddlebags she had a letter of introduction from Ardda to the high priestess of the Cerrmor temple, but she was afraid to go to that city-wise and court-bound lady with her odd talk of the Moon in Her Dark.
She realized, though, that she needed the mirror-working above all. On the morrow Gweniver did go walking in the city, but instead of the temple, she went to the market square and bought herself a bronze mirror with a silvered face, small enough to fit into a saddlebag. After dinner that night, she shut herself up in her chamber with only a candle lantern for light and propped the mirror up against a chest while she knelt in front of it. Silvery and distorted, her face looked back at her.
“My lady,” she whispered. “My lady of the Darkness.”
In her mind she pictured her vision in the temple, a mere memory image only, and dead. Over the past weeks she’d brooded so much over this memory that the image held still and firm in her mind, a clear picture that she could examine from many different angles, as she looked first at her sword on the altar, then at the mirror or at Ardda, standing nearby. If only there was a way I could see it in this mirror, she told herself, then maybe it would move. As she tried to build the image on the silver surface, it stayed stubbornly blank. All at once she felt foolish. Doubtless what she wanted was impossible, but some stubborn instinct drove her to try to force the image of the Goddess out through her eyes and onto the gleaming silver.
It was also very late, and she was yawning, finding it hard to focus her eyes as she worked. All at once she stumbled onto the trick in her mind, just as when a child struggles to learn how to roll a hoop with a stick, and it seems that no matter how hard she tries, the hoop will always fall—then suddenly, without conscious effort, the hoop rolls, and never again will she fail in the attempt. First she saw a flickering trace of a picture on the mirror; then all at once the image of the Goddess appeared, lasting only a moment, but there.
“Praise be to my lady’s name!”
Gweniver was no longer tired. For half the night she stayed before the mirror, with her knees and back cramped and aching, until she could see the Goddess as clearly as if the image were painted on the silver. At last the vision moved, and the dark eyes of night looked her way yet once again. The Goddess smiled, blessing her only worshiper in the entire kingdom of Deverry. Gweniver wept, but in pure, holy joy.
Since the plan was a simple one, Dannyn figured it would work. While he escorted Gweniver and her men to the Temple of the Moon, the two brothers of Lord Maer of the Stag would lead a punitive raid deep into Cantrae-held territory, striking at the Boar’s own holdings.
“Lord Maer’s brothers are foaming like mad dogs over the insult to their clan,” Glyn remarked. “I owe them a chance at vengeance.”
“It’s the best kind of feint we could have, my liege. We’ll get the Lady Macla back here safe and sound.”
“Good.” Glyn considered for a moment. “The real fighting over the Wolf demesne won’t come till autumn, when the Boar has the leisure to take up his blood feud.”
“Just so. Well, by then we’ll have the leisure to fight back.”
After the king dismissed him, Dannyn went to the women’s quarters to look in on his son. Some years before, Glyn had found him a wife from a noble clan that was willing to ignore his bastardy in return for royal favor. Although Garaena had died of childbed fever, the baby had been born healthy. Although custom demanded that the boy be put out into fosterage, Glyn had overruled custom—even a semiroyal child could be turned into a hostage far too easily to allow the lad out of the dun. At four years old, Cobryn was already chattering of weapons and warfare.
That afternoon Dannyn took him out of the royal nursery and into the ward. Since the warbands were returning after a day’s exercises on the roads, and the ward was full of men and horses, trotting by dangerously fast, Dannyn picked up his lad and settled him against his shoulder like a sack of grain. He was a pretty child, his hair as fair as flax, his eyes dark blue like his father’s. Cobryn threw his arms around his father’s neck and hugged him.
“I love you, Da.”
For a moment Dannyn was too surprised to answer, because he’d grown up hating his own father.
“Do you, now?” he said at last. “Well, my thanks.”
As they strolled through the ward, Cobryn chattering about every horse he saw, Dannyn saw Gweniver talking to a group of lords by the main gate. Carrying the lad still, he strolled over to join them. Cobryn twisted in his arms and pointed her out.
“Da, that’s a lady!”
When everyone laughed, the lad turned shy and buried his face in Dannyn’s shoulder. Gweniver walked over to get a better look at him.
“What a beautiful child!” she said. “He’s not yours, is he?”
“He is. I was married once.”
“Now, that’s a surprise. I thought you were the kind of man who never marries.”
“You misjudge me badly, my lady.”
Gweniver went as wary as a startled doe. As he watched her, as the moment dragged on, Dannyn was cursing himself—why did everything he say come out so awkwardly? At last Cobryn piped up and rescued him.
“You know what? The king’s my uncle.”
“So he
