‘My apologies, my apologies. What’s the real trouble, then?’
‘Oh, well, mostly, my grand scheme’s not going as well as it should.’
For a moment Nevyn quite simply couldn’t remember what Aderyn’s grand scheme was. Aderyn felt the lapse and smiled.
‘My compilation of dweomerlore,’ Aderyn said, ‘trying to piece together the ancient elven dweomer by filling the gaps with our own lore.’
Nevyn’s memory creaked into life at last. ‘Of course, the dweomer system the Westfolk lost when the cities were destroyed. We’ve talked about it many a time. Ye gods! I cannot tell you how aggravating it is, not being able to remember things the way I used to. Next I’ll be forgetting my own name.’
‘Well, you have a great deal more to remember than most men. Three hundred years’ worth, isn’t it now?’
‘Somewhat like that. Your own memories stretch a fair way back.’
‘Ah, but life out here is simple. You’ve always managed to complicate matters for yourself.’
‘That’s one way of putting it, I suppose. But about that problem –’
‘I’ve gathered together every shred I can, but there are large stretches of territory still missing from my mental map, as it were.’
‘I like that figure of speech.’
‘My thanks.’
‘Do you have any idea of what was in that missing province?’
‘Some important thing at the very centre.’ Aderyn’s mind radiated frustration. ‘I do know that the masters of the seven cities studied dweomer for very different reasons from ours. Their ultimate goal wasn’t to help their folk, though they did that, too, but to – well, to do somewhat that I can’t fathom, some grand result.’
‘No clues at all?’
‘Only an unusually elaborate schema of Names and Calls. When I first came to the Westlands, there were still a few dweomerworkers alive who had studied with a teacher who’d been taught in the lost cities. Unfortunately, that teacher was young by elven standards, and only a journeyman. The masters among the dweomerfolk stayed to fight till the end.’
‘And so the lore was lost with them?’
‘Just that. But one thing that did survive was a list of names of certain areas of the Inner Lands. These names, or so I was told, were all that survived of a twice-secret lore. Apparently you had to prove yourself worthy before you were allowed to study it.’
‘Secrecy has a bitter price in evil times.’
‘Just so. But I’m looking forward to telling you what little I’ve gathered, once we can talk face to face.’
‘I’m looking forward to it, too. We’ll be there as soon as we can.’
‘We?’
‘I’ve acquired a rather odd apprentice. I’ll tell you more once you’ve met him.’
The Westfolk lands lay a good month’s journey away, out beyond the western border of the kingdom. Wffyn the merchant’s ultimate goal was to trade iron goods for Westfolk horses, but rather than pack the heavy metalwork all the way from Cerrmor, he’d brought Bardek spices and fine silks to trade for it in Eldidd. As they made their slow way north from market square to market square, Nevyn had ample time to sell his herbs and other medicinals as well as collect more in the meadows and along the roads.
Nevyn also made a point of treating Gwairyc as the apprentice he supposedly was. He taught him herblore, trained him in the drying of herbs, and used him as an assistant when he performed the few simple chirurgeries he knew how to do. When it came to procedures, Nevyn found that having a large, strong assistant was very useful indeed, since the various anodynes available in those days lacked the power to render the sufferer unconscious. Over the years Nevyn had learned how to dodge the sudden fists or teeth of a patient driven mad enough by pain to attack the man trying to help him. Gwairyc, however, could hold them down and occasionally administer an anaesthetic of desperation by clipping the patient hard on the jaw. That part of the work he seemed to enjoy.
When they worked together in less trying situations, Nevyn studied the apprentice as much as the patient. Once, over three hundred years before, Nevyn had been a prince of the royal house, as arrogant as Gwairyc – if not more so, he reminded himself. Yet studying herbcraft with his teacher in the dweomer had opened his eyes and his heart. Once he’d seen how the ordinary people of the kingdom lived, and in particular the bondfolk who were at that time little better than slaves, he’d wanted nothing more than to end every moment of suffering that he could. He’d been hoping that this similar exposure to the ills and suffering of the common folk would open Gwairyc’s heart as well, but he saw on his apprentice’s face only the flickers of disgust and annoyance that would, occasionally, break through a mask of utter indifference. You weren’t a warrior, he told himself. You never had to temper your soul like iron.
Only once did Gwairyc take any interest in a patient. In a village called Bruddlyn, they met the local lord, a certain Corbyn, who brought them to his dun to treat his small son, also named Corbyn, for spotted fever. Fortunately, the boy’s mother had kept him in a dimly lit room, away from the sunlight that might have blinded him. Nevyn brewed one type of herbwater to lower the fever and a second as a soak for compresses to ease his itching skin.
‘Our lordship didn’t have much coin,’ Nevyn told Gwairyc afterwards, ‘but he did give us a silver cup that belonged to his own father. It has the name ‘corbyn’ inscribed on the bottom, but still, we should be able to sell it somewhere, for the silver if naught else.’
‘I take it the lad’s going to recover,’ Gwairyc said.
‘He is.’
‘Good.’ Gwairyc smiled in sincere pleasure at the news. ‘He’s the only son of that clan, the only one yet, anyway, and I’m glad they won’t lose their heir. But here, do these lords always name their first-born Corbyn?’
‘So it seems. Why?’
‘There’s somewhat odd about Eldidd, foreign-like.’ Gwairyc frowned at nothing in particular. ‘And that’s another thing that I just can’t …’ He let his voice trail away.
Nevyn waited for him to go on, but in a moment Gwairyc merely said that he’d saddle the horses and walked away.
Eldidd may be strange, Nevyn thought, but I begin to think Gwarro matches it! And what am I going to do with the lad, then? His first course of treatment for the illness in Gwairyc’s soul was failing, and badly. With a sinking feeling around his heart, he realized that he didn’t have a second.
It wasn’t until they’d almost reached their destination that Nevyn saw Gwairyc respond to the sufferings of a common-born soul, and even then, the circumstances were decidedly unusual. He received his first omen of that future event, and a hint of just how complex the days ahead might be, when he contacted Aderyn again.
‘Here’s a question for you,’ Nevyn said. ‘How will I be able to find you once we get to the grasslands? The trading grounds are quite large, as I remember them anyway.’
‘They stretch a good hundred miles, yes, north to south.’ Floating over the campfire, Aderyn’s image smiled at him. ‘I’ve arranged an escort for you and your merchant.’
‘Splendid! Where do I find this escort?’
‘In Drwloc. The fellow’s a bard, Devaberiel by name, and he’s going there to fetch a little son of his.’
‘What’s an elven woman doing living in Pyrdon?’
‘She’s not elven, though I suspect there’s elven blood in her clan – somewhere. She looks human, and her kin certainly act that