A Time of Omens. Katharine Kerr

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.

PAST

       Pyrdon and Deverry

       843

      Nothing is ever lost.

       The Pseudo-Iamblichus Scroll

ONE

      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 corpses. They’d all been slain by the sword. There were three dead horses but only two men in the road, but we found the third man out in a field, as if he’d tried to run away before they killed him.’

      With a grunt of near-physical pain Nevyn leaned back against the cold stone wall.

      ‘How long ago were they killed?’

      ‘Oh, a ghastly long time.’ Maryn looked half-sick at the memory. ‘Maddyn says it was probably a couple of months. They froze first, he said, and then thawed probably just last week. The ravens have been working on them. It was truly grim. And all their gear was pulled apart and strewn around, as if someone had been searching through it.’

      ‘Oh, no doubt they were. Could you tell anything about these poor wretches?’

      ‘They were Cerrmor men. Here.’ Maryn reached into his shirt and pulled out a much-tarnished message tube. ‘This was empty when we found it, but look at the device. I rubbed part of it clean on the ride home.’

      Nevyn turned the tube and found the polished strip, graven with three tiny ships.

      ‘You could still see the paint on one shield, too,’ Maryn went on. ‘It was the ship blazon. I wish we had the messages that were in that tube.’

      ‘So do I, your highness, but I think me I know what they said. We’d best go down and collect the entire troop. No doubt we’re months too late, but I won’t rest easy until we have a look round for the murderers.’

      As they hurried back to the broch, it occurred to Nevyn that he no longer had to worry about communicating with his allies by dweomer. It was obvious that their enemies already knew everything they needed to know.

      Even though Maddyn considered hunting the murderers a waste of time, and he knew that every other man in the troop was dreading camping out in the chilly damp, no one so much as suggested arguing with Nevyn’s scheme. If anyone had, Maddyn himself would have been the one to do it, because he was a bard of sorts, with a bard’s freedom to speak on any matter at all, as well as being second in command of this troop of mercenaries newly become the prince’s guard. The true commander, Caradoc, was too afraid of Nevyn to say one wrong word to the old man, while Maddyn was, in some ways, the only real friend Nevyn had. Carrying what provisions the dun could spare them at the end of winter’s lean times, the silver daggers, with the prince and old Nevyn riding at the head of the line, clattered out of the gates just at noon. With them was a wagon and a couple of servants with shovels to give the bodies a decent burial.

      ‘At least the blasted clouds have all blown away,’ Caradoc said with a sigh. ‘I had a chance of a word with the king’s chief huntsman, by the by. He says that there’s an old hunting lodge about ten, twelve