In the narrow chamber Glyn was alone, sitting casually on the edge of the table and staring at the parchment map, struck with sunlight through the window. Cut from an entire calfskin, the map was worn, the writing faded in places. Here and there lines had been drawn in red ink, then scraped away again, the old frontiers and battle lines showing through, a bleeding palimpsest. At the sight Nevyn couldn’t help thinking that it was his kingdom that other men were fighting for. Of anyone in Deverry, he had the best claim to the Wyvern throne, if, of course, he’d been able to convince anyone that Prince Galrion was still alive after all these years—not a very likely task, no.
“I called you here to ask you somewhat,” Glyn said abruptly. “You’re the only man I can trust to hold your tongue about it. Even priests talk among themselves like old women.”
“Old women hold their tongues better, my liege.”
“Yet this question of mine takes a priest’s kind of knowledge to answer.” And here Glyn paused. “I was hoping the dweomer might be able to advise me.”
“And does my liege think I have such knowledge?”
“He does. Is your liege wrong?”
“He’s not.”
Glyn smiled in triumph, very briefly.
“Then answer me this,” he went on. “If a man or a woman has sworn a vow in a temple, is there any way that the oath can be forsworn without offending the gods?”
“Well, only in rare circumstances. Suppose someone swore a wrong thing with the connivance of a corrupt priest, then that priest’s superior could pronounce the vow invalid. It might also be possible for the person who swore the vow to renounce it by devoting the rest of their life to the god’s service, but that would be a tricky matter indeed.”
“That’s hardly the case here.”
“Oho! I take it my liege has noticed his brother pining after a forbidden thing.”
“He has, at that. It doesn’t take dweomer to see a horse in a chamber, good sorcerer.”
“True enough. I only hope that no one besides us has seen it, my liege. There are plenty of men who envy Dannyn.”
With a sigh Glyn nodded his agreement.
“If an old man may offer his liege advice,” Nevyn went on, “the king had best speak to his brother about this. It would be a terrible and impious thing for Dannyn to seduce Gweniver into breaking that vow.”
Glyn sighed and looked at the map.
“I should arrange for Dannyn to marry again,” he said. “I had thoughts of settling Lady Macla and the Wolf lands upon him, but I didn’t want him so far from my court all winter. Perhaps my selfishness was all for the best. No doubt Gweniver will visit her sister often.”
“No doubt, my liege. May I be so presumptuous as to ask you why you favor Lord Dannyn so highly? I find him worthy of your favor, mind, but most men don’t see their father’s bastards so clearly. Most prefer not to see them at all.”
“True enough. Well, you see, since my father claimed the throne for me when I was just a babe in arms, I was raised to be king. It sounded splendid to a lad: I’d claim the Holy City after glorious battles, I’d be the ruler of all I could survey, I’d save the kingdom from this war, and everyone would praise my name. But one day I was out in the ward, and I saw the stable hands tormenting this little lad. He was just about six, then, and I was eight. They were mocking him for a bastard, and when he tried to hit one of them, they mobbed him and started beating him. So I ran over and ordered them to stop. I felt most generous, kingly indeed, defending this poor little creature.” He smiled in overscrupulous self-mockery. “So I picked the lad up and wiped his bloody nose for him, and by every god in the sky, I might as well have been looking into a mirror. I suppose it goes without saying that no one had ever told the young king that his father took fancies to kitchen maids. Well, I found out that morning. So I went storming into Father’s chamber like the king I felt myself to be and demanded to know what he thought he was doing. It’s a pity you couldn’t have seen the look on his face.”
Nevyn allowed himself a laugh.
“But at any rate,” Glyn went on, “I insisted on having Dannyn come live with me in the broch, because he was my brother, no matter what our father thought about it. And a bit at a time, he told me what he’d gone through, living mocked and scorned as a scullery lad, made to feel grateful for having scraps to eat. And so I began to think about what rulership means, good sorcerer, in my childish way. I made a solemn vow to Great Bel that never would I put my will above all else and worship it the way my father did. For that alone I’d honor Dannyn. He gave me a gift worth more than a hundred horses. But beyond that he’s the only man in this court who loves me for what I am, not for the influence and land he can get out of me. Do I sound a fool for caring about such things? I must, I suppose.”
“My liege is not a fool. My liege is one of the sanest men I’ve ever met, and lest you think that idle flattery, let me add that sanity is a curse in mad times like these.”
“Is it, now?” The king looked away, slack-mouthed for a moment. “True enough, I suppose. Well, my thanks, good sir, for your counsel. If things allow, I’ll come down to the garden one of these days and see how it’s getting on.”
Rather than returning to his weeding, Nevyn went back to his chamber after he left the king. His heart was troubled, wondering if Glyn was meant to rule as the only king in Deverry, hoping that such was his Wyrd, yet knowing that the future was closed to him. After he barred the door to ensure that he wouldn’t be disturbed, he stood in the center of his small chamber and imagined that his right hand held a sword of blue fire. Slowly he built up the image until it lived apart from his will, no matter where he turned his attention. Only then did he use it to trace a circle of blue fire around him, imaging the flames until they, too, lived of their own will.
Laying aside the sword, he sat down in the center of the leaping, glowing circle and built up before him the mental image of a six-pointed star, glowing also with gold fire, a symbol of the center and balance of all things, and the source of the true kingship. Invoking the Kings of the Element of Aethyr, he stared into the hexagon formed in the center of the interlaced triangles and used it to scry, the way clumsier dweomerfolk use a stone or a mirror.
The visions came cloudy, barely forming before they dissolved, thrown together and torn apart like clouds in a high wind, and he saw naught there of Glyn’s Wyrd. Even in the Inner Lands (that is, the astral plane), the currents were troubled, the forces out of balance, the light shadowed. For every kingdom or people, there’s a corresponding part of the upper astral—some magicians call it a place, which will do—that’s the true source of the events that come to the kingdom on the Outer Lands, that is, the physical world, just as every person has a secret and undying soul, which determines what that person calls his will or his luck. The Deverry folk saw wars raging between ambitious men; those men saw themselves as the authors of their actions; Nevyn saw the truth. The petty squabbles of would-be kings were only symptoms of the crisis, like the fever is only the symptom of the disease, a painful thing in itself, but not the true killer. Deep in the Inner Lands, the dark forces of Unbalanced Death were out of control, sweeping all into chaos, with only a handful of warriors who served the Light to pit themselves against them. Although Nevyn was only the humble servant of those Great Ones, he had his own part of the war to fight in the kingdom. After all, a fever may kill a patient if it’s allowed to burn unchecked.
Now, mind that you never think of these forces of Unbalanced Death as persons, some sort of evil army led by beings with a recognizable soul. On the contrary, they are forces as natural in their own way as falling rain, but they were, in this case, out of control like a river in flood tide, swelling over its banks and sweeping farms and towns before it. Every people or kingdom has a streak of chaos in its soul, weakness, greed, small prides, and arrogance, which can be either denied or given in to. When indulged, this convocation of chaos releases energy—to use a metaphor—which flows to