If only he were here, she would think, he’d unravel this wretched puzzle fast enough! A grey gnome, a creature she’d known for years, materialized next to her and climbed into her lap. All spindly arms and legs and long warty nose, he looked up at her with his pinched little face twisted into a creditable imitation of human sadness.
‘You miss Nevyn too, don’t you?’ Jill said. ‘Well, he’s gone on now like he had to. All of us do in our time.’
Although the gnome nodded, she doubted if he understood. In a moment he jumped Off her lap, found a copper coin wedged into a crack in the floor and became engrossed with pulling it out. Jill wondered if she would ever meet Nevyn again in the long cycles of death and rebirth. Only if she needed to, she supposed, and she knew that it would be years and years before he would be reborn again, long after her own death, no doubt, though well before her next birth. Although all souls rest in the Inner Lands between lives, Nevyn’s life had been so unnaturally prolonged by dweomer – he’d lived well over four hundred years, all told – that his corresponding interval of rest would doubtless be unusually long as well, or so she could speculate. It was for the Lords of Wyrd to decide, not her. She told herself that often, even as her heart ached to see him again.
Finally, in a fit of annoyance over her mood, she got up and went to the lectern to read, but the chronicle only made her melancholy worse. She’d been trying to recall an event that had happened in one of her own previous lives, but she could remember it only dimly, because even a great dweomer-master like her could call to mind only the most general outlines and the occasional tiny memory-picture of former lives. She was sure, though, from that dim memory, that she – or rather her previous incarnation, because she’d been born into a male body in that cycle – had been present at the forging of the rose ring. During that life, as the warrior known as Branoic, she’d ridden with a very important band of soldiers, the True King’s personal guard in the civil wars – that much, she could remember.
What she’d forgotten was that Nevyn had been not only present but very much an important actor in those events, perhaps the most important figure of all. There was his name, written on practically every page. As she read the composed speeches the chronicler had put into his mouth, she found herself shaking her head in irritation: he never would have sounded so stiff, so formal! All at once, she realized that she was crying. The flood of long-buried grief, not only for Nevyn but for other friends her soul had forgotten this two hundred years and more, seemed to work a dweomer of its own. Rather than merely reading the chronicler’s dry account, she found herself remembering the isolated lake fort, of Dun Drwloc, where Nevyn had tutored the young prince who was destined to become king, and the long ride that the Silver Daggers had taken to bring the prince to Cerrmor and his destiny. All night she stood there, reading some parts of the tale, remembering others, until the sheer fascination of the puzzle buried her grief again.
Nothing is ever lost.
The Pseudo-Iamblichus Scroll
The year 843. In Cerrmor that winter, near the shortest day, there were double rings round the moon for two nights running. On the third night King Glyn died in agony after drinking a goblet of mead …
The Holy Chronicles of Lughcarn
The morning dawned clear if cold, with a snap of winter left in the wind, but toward noon the wind died and the day turned warm. As he led his horse and the prince’s out of the stables, Branoic was whistling at the prospect of getting free of the fortress for a few hours. After a long winter shut up in Dun Drwloc, he felt as if the high stone walls had marched in and made everything smaller.
‘Going out for a ride, lad?’
Branoic swirled round to see the prince’s councillor, Nevyn, standing in the cobbled ward next to a broken wagon. Although the silver dagger couldn’t say why, Nevyn always startled him. For one thing, for all that he had a shock of snow-white hair and a face as wrinkled as burlap, the old man strode around as vigorously as a young warrior. For another, his ice-blue eyes seemed to bore into a man’s soul.
‘We are, sir,’ Branoic said, with a bob of his head that would pass for a humble gesture. ‘I’m just bringing out the prince’s horse, too, you see. We’ve all been stable-bound too long this winter.’
‘True enough. But ride carefully, will you? Guard the prince well.’
‘Of course, sir. We always do.’
‘Do it doubly, this morning. I’ve received an omen.’
Branoic turned even colder than the brisk morning wind would explain. As he led the horses away, he was glad that he was going to be riding out with the prince rather than stuck home with his tame sorcerer.
All winter Nevyn had been wondering when the king in Cerrmor would die, but he didn’t get the news until that very day, just before the spring equinox. The night before, it had rained over Dun Drwloc, dissolving the last pockets of snow in the shade of the walls and leaving pools of brown mud in their stead. About two hours before noon, when the sky started clearing in earnest, the old man climbed to the ramparts and looked out over the slate-grey lake, choppy in the chill wind. He was troubled, wondering why he’d received no news from Cerrmor in five months. With those who followed the dark dweomer keeping a watch on the dun, he’d been afraid to contact other dweomer-masters through the fire in case they were overheard, but now he was considering taking the risk. All the omens indicated that the time was ripe for King Glyn’s Wyrd to come upon him.
Yet, as he stood there debating, he got his news in a way that he had never expected. Down below in the ward there was a whooping and a clatter that broke his concentration. In extreme annoyance he turned on the rampart and looked down to see Maryn galloping in the gates at the head of his squad of ten men. The prince was holding something shiny in his right hand and waving it about as he pulled his horse to a halt.
‘Page! Go find Nevyn right now!’
‘I’m up here, lad!’ Nevyn called back. ‘I’ll come down.’
‘Don’t! I’ll come up. It’ll be private that way.’
Maryn dismounted, tossed his reins to a page, and raced for the ladder. Over the winter he had grown another two inches, and his voice had deepened, as well, so that more and more he looked the perfect figure of the king to be, blond and handsome with a far-seeing look in his grey eyes. Yet he was still lad enough to shove whatever it was he was holding into his shirt and scramble up the ladder to the ramparts. Nevyn could tell from the haunted look in his eyes that something had disturbed him.
‘What’s all this, my liege?’
‘We found somewhat, Nevyn, the silver daggers and me, I mean. After you saw us leave we went down the east-running road. It was about three miles from here that we found them.’
‘Found who?’
‘The
