Daggerspell. Katharine Kerr

stays under your roof all her life?”

      “Just that.”

      Blaen hesitated, his eyes darkening.

      “Well, my lady,” he said to Brangwen. “You’re lucky in your brother, aren’t you?”

      “I think so. I honor him.”

      Blaen smiled, but all at once, Brangwen was frightened. The glow from the smoky fire danced, but it seemed to her that the fire came from Gerraent, as if long tendrils of flame were reaching out for Blaen against all their wills.

      With summer at its height, the sun lay hot along the dusty road, its light as gold as the grain ripening in the fields. Nevyn, who had once been Prince Galrion, led a pack mule laden with baled herbs across the border of the Falcon lands. As he walked, he kept a constant lookout for Gerraent, who might well be riding his roads. Nevyn doubted if anyone else would recognize the prince in this dusty peddler with his shabby clothes, shaggy hair, and old mule. He was learning that a man could be invisible without mighty dweomer-workings merely by acting in unexpected ways in unexpected places. No one would expect the prince to dare come near the Falcon again.

      When he came to the village, Nevyn even risked buying a tankard of ale from the tavernman, who barely glanced his way after he’d taken his copper. Nevyn sat in the corner near an old woman and asked her foolish questions about the countryside, as if he’d traveled from far away. When he left, no one even noticed him go.

      It was toward evening when he reached his destination, a wooden hut on the edge of the wild forest. Out in front, two goats were grazing on the stubby grass, while Ynna sat on her stoop and watched them, an old woman, thin as a stick, with long twiglike fingers, gnarled from her long years of hard work. Her white hair was carelessly caught up in a dirty scarf. An herbwoman and midwife, she was thought by some folk to be a witch, but in truth, she merely loved her solitude.

      “Good morrow, lad,” Ynna said. “Looks like old Rhegor’s sent me a pretty thing or two.”

      “He has. This supply should last you through the winter.”

      Nevyn unloaded the mule and carried the herbs inside, then watered the animal and sent it out to graze with the goats. He came back to the hut to find Ynna laying bread and cheese on her small unsteady table. When she handed him a wooden cup of water and told him to set to, Nevyn dug in, spreading the soft pungent goat’s cheese on the dark bread. Ynna nibbled a bit of bread and studied him so curiously that Nevyn wondered if she knew he’d once been the prince.

      “It’s wearisome, having old Rhegor gone from this part of the forest,” Ynna said. “And so sudden it was, him coming by one day to tell me he was going. Has he ever told you why?”

      “Well, good dame, I do what my master says and hold my tongue.”

      “Always best with a strange one like our Rhegor. Well, if he sends you to me with herbs every now and then, I’ll manage.”

      Ynna cut a few more slices from the loaf and laid them on Nevyn’s plate.

      “I miss Rhegor, though. I could always count on his counsel, like, when there was some troubling thing.”

      Nevyn felt the dweomer-warning down his back.

      “And how fares Lord Gerraent these days?”

      “You’re almost as sharp as your master, aren’t you, lad? Well, here, tell Rhegor this tale for me. He always kept an eye, like, on poor little Brangwen.”

      “Did he, now? I never knew that.”

      “Oh, truly, he did, just from a fatherly distance, like. So tell him about this. About a month ago, it was, the page up at the dun got a bit of fever, and a stubborn thing it was. I must have been back there five times before the lad was right again. And Lord Gerraent gives me a joint of venison for it. He says, do you have an herb to take madness away, Ynna? He was jesting, I suppose, but he smiled so coldlike it troubled my heart. And then the last time I went up the hill, I see Gerraent sobbing on his father’s grave.”

      “You can rest assured I’ll tell Rhegor about it. How does Brangwen fare, shut up with a man like that?”

      “Now, there’s the strangest thing of all. You think she’d be heartsick, but she goes around like a woman in a dream. I’ve never seen the lass look so broody like. I’d say she was with child, but whose would it be? She’s just as broody as if her belly was swelling, but that betrothed of hers has been gone too long now. Well, tell Rhegor for me.”

      On the ride home, Nevyn pushed the balky mule as fast as it would go, but it still took him over two days to reach his new home. Up in the wild forest north of the Boar’s demesne, Nevyn and Rhegor had cleared a good space of land near a creek. They’d used the logs to build a round house and the land to plant beans, turnips, and suchlike. Because Rhegor’s reputation as a healer moved north with him, they had plenty of food and even a few coins, since farmers and bondsmen alike were willing to pay with chickens and cheese for Rhegor’s herbs. Now, when it was too late, Nevyn clearly saw that he and Brangwen would have had a comfortable if spare life in the forest. If only you hadn’t been such a dolt, Nevyn cursed himself, such a stupid fool!

      Rhegor was out in front of the house, treating the running eye of a little boy while the mother squatted nearby. From her ragged brown tunic, Nevyn saw that she was a bondwoman, her thin face utterly blank, as if she hardly cared whether the lad was cured or not, even though she’d brought him all this way. On her face was her brand, the old scar pale on dirty skin. Although he was barely three, the lad was already branded, too, marked out as Lord Blaen’s property for the rest of his life. Rhegor stood the lad on a tree stump and wiped the infected eye with a bit of rag dipped in herbal salve.

      Nevyn went to stable the mule alongside the bay gelding. When he came back, the bondwoman looked at him with feigned disinterest. Even from ten feet away he could smell her unwashed flesh and rags. Rhegor called her over, gave her a pot of salve, and told her how to apply it. She listened, her face showing a brief flicker of hope.

      “I can’t pay you much, my lord,” she said. “I brought some of the first apples.”

      “You and the lad eat those on your way home.”

      “My thanks.” She stared at the ground. “I heard you tended poor folk, but I didn’t believe it at first.”

      “It’s true. Spread the tale around.”

      “I was so frightened.” She went on staring at the ground. “If the lad went blind, they’d kill him because he couldn’t work.”

      “What?” Nevyn broke in. “Lord Blaen would never do such a thing.”