– now the hunting preserve of the Southern Boar clan. In the midst of a stand of old oaks was an ancient, mossy cairn that marked the grave of Brangwen of the Falcon, the woman he had loved, wronged, and lost so many years ago. He always felt somewhat of a fool for making this pilgrimage – her body was long decayed, and her soul had been reborn several times since that miserable day when he’d dug this grave and helped pile up these rocks. Yet the site meant something to him still, if for no other reason than because it was the place where he’d sworn the rash vow that was the cause of his unnaturally long life.
Out of respect for a grave, even though they could have no idea of whose it was, the Boar’s gamekeepers had left the cairn undisturbed. Nevyn was pleased to see that someone had even tended it by replacing a few fallen stones and pulling the weeds away from its base. It was a small act of decency in a world where decency was in danger of vanishing. For some time he sat on the ground and watched the dappled forest light playing on the cairn while he wondered when he would find Brangwen’s soul again. His meditation brought him a small insight: she was reborn, but still a child. Eventually, he was sure, in some way Maddyn would lead him to her. In life after life, his Wyrd had been linked to hers, and, indeed, in his last life, he had followed her to the death, binding a chain of Wyrd tight around them both.
After he left Muir, Nevyn rode west to Dun Deverry for a first-hand look at the man who claimed to be King in the Holy City. On a hot spring day, when the sun lay as thick as the dust in the road, he came to the shores of the Gwerconydd, the vast lake formed by the confluence of three rivers, and let his horse and mule rest for a moment by the reedy shore. He was joined by a pair of young priests of Bel, shaven-headed and dressed in linen tunics, who were also travelling to the Holy City. After a pleasant chat, they all decided to ride in together.
‘And who’s the high priest these days?’ Nevyn asked. ‘I’ve been living up in Cantrae, so I’m badly out of touch.’
‘His Holiness, Gwergovyn,’ said the elder of the pair.
‘I see.’ Nevyn’s heart sank. He remembered Gwergovyn all too well as a spiritual ferret of a man. ‘And tell me somewhat else. I’ve heard that the Boars of Cantrae are the men to watch in court circles.’
Even though they were all alone on the open road, the young priest lowered his voice when he answered.
‘They are, truly, and there are plenty who grumble about it, too. I know His Holiness thinks rather sourly of the men of the Boar.’
At length they came to the city, which rose high on its four hills behind massive double rings of stone walls, ramparted and towered. The wooden gates, carved with a wyvern rampant, were bound with iron, and guards in thickly embroidered shirts stood to either side. Yet as soon as Nevyn went inside, the impression of splendour vanished. Once a prosperous city had filled these walls; now house after house stood abandoned, with weed-choked yards and empty windows, the thatch blowing rotten in dirty streets. Much of the city lay in outright ruin, heaps of stone among rotting, charred timbers. It had been taken by siege so many times in the last hundred years, then taken back by the sword, that apparently no one had the strength, the coin, or the hope to rebuild. In the centre of the city, around and between two main hills, lived what was left of the population, scarcely more than in King Bran’s time. Warriors walked the streets and shoved the townsfolk aside whenever they met. It seemed to Nevyn that every man he saw was a rider for one lord or another, and every woman either lived in fear of them or had surrendered to the inevitable and turned whore to please them.
The first inn he found was tiny, dirty, and ramshackle, little more than a big house divided into a tavernroom and a few chambers, but he lodged there because he liked the innkeep, Draudd, a slender old man with hair as white as Nevyn’s and a smile that showed an almost superhuman ability to keep a sense of humour in the midst of ruin. When he found out that Nevyn was an herbman, Draudd insisted on taking payment for his lodging in trade.
‘Well, after all, I’m as old as you are, so I’ll easily equal the cost in your herbs. Why give me coins only to have me give them right back?’
‘True spoken. Ah, old age! Here I’ve studied the human body all my life, but I swear old age has put pains in joints I never knew existed.’
Nevyn spent that first afternoon in the tavern, dispensing herbs for Draudd’s collection of ailments and hearing in return all the local gossip, which meant royal gossip. In Dun Deverry even the poorest person knew what there was to know about the goings-on at court. Gossip was their bard, and the royalty their only source of pride. Draudd was a particularly rich source, because his youngest daughter, now a woman in her forties, worked in the palace kitchens, where she had plenty of opportunities to overhear the noble-born servitors like the chamberlain and steward at their gossip. From what Draudd repeated that day, the Boars were so firmly in control of the King that it was something of a scandal. Everyone said that Tibryn, the Boar of Cantrae, was close to being the real king himself.
‘And now with the King so ill, our poor liege, and his wife so young, and Tibryn a widower and all …’ Draudd paused for dramatic effect. ‘Well! Can’t you imagine what we folk are wondering?’
‘Indeed I can. But would the priests allow the King’s widow to marry?’
Draudd rubbed his thumb and forefinger together like a merchant gloating over a coin.
‘Ah, by the hells!’ Nevyn snarled. ‘Has it got as bad as all that?’
‘There’s naught left but coin to bribe the priests with. They’ve already got every land grant and legal concession they want.’
At that point Nevyn decided that meeting with Gwergovyn – if indeed he could even get in to see him – was a waste of time.
‘But what ails the King? He’s still a young man.’
‘He took a bad wound in the fighting last summer. I happened to be out on the royal road when they brought him home. I’d been buying eggs at the market when I heard the bustle and the horns coming. And I saw the King, lying in a litter, and he was as pale as snow, he was. But he lived, when here we all thought they’d be putting his little lad on the throne come winter. But he never did heal up right. My daughter tells me that he has to have special food, like. All soft things, and none of them Bardek spices, neither. So they boil the meat soft, and pulp apples and suchlike.’
Nevyn was completely puzzled: the special diet made no sense at all for a man who by all accounts had been wounded in the chest. He began to wonder if someone were deliberately keeping the King weak, perhaps to gain the good favour of Tibryn of the Boar.
The best way to find out, of course, was to talk to the King’s physicians. On the morrow he took his laden mule up to the palace, which lay on the northern hill. Ring after ring of defensive walls, some stone, some earthworks, marched up the slope and cut the hill into defensible slices. At every gate, in every wall, guards stopped Nevyn and asked him his business, but they always let a man with healing herbs to sell pass on through. Finally, at the top, behind one last ring, stood the palace and all its outbuildings and servant quarters. Like a stork among chickens, a six-storey broch, ringed by four lower half-brochs, rose in the centre. If the outer defences fell, the attackers would have to fight their way through a warren of corridors and rooms to get at the King himself. In all the years of war, the palace had never fallen to force, only to starvation.
The last guard called a servant lad, who ran off to the royal infirmary with the news that a herbman waited outside. After a wait of some five minutes, he ran back and led Nevyn to a big round stone building behind the broch complex. There they were met by a burly man with dark eyes that glared under bushy brows as if their owner were in a state of constant fury, but when he introduced himself as
