The Black Raven. Katharine Kerr
With the morning the clouds broke up under a cold north wind and let sunlight flood the dun. In her tower room Dallandra took the oxhides down from the windows to let in light for a task she’d been dreading. Jill’s wooden chest held those few things that could be said to be personally hers, as opposed to things, such as her medicinals and dweomer books, which she had collected only to help others. Among the Westfolk, Jill’s bloodkin would have taken or given away her belongings to those who should have them, but Jill had no bloodkin left. The job had fallen to Dallandra, thanks mostly to their common devotion to the dweomer, which made them clanswomen of a sort.
She pulled over the chair, sat down, and lifted the lid of the chest. One piece at a time, she took out Jill’s spare clothing – two shirts, a pair of brigga, all much washed and patched, and a newish grey cloak – and laid them on the table. The cloak would do for Jahdo, who grew taller daily, or so it seemed. The others? Dallandra supposed that the gwerbret’s women would cut them into useful rags. At the bottom of the chest, however, she found things of more interest: two bundles of brown cloth and a brown cloth sack.
The oblong bundle proved to be another book, a huge volume as long as her arm from fingertips to elbow. It smelled of mildew, and the leather cover was crumbling at the edges. When Dallandra opened it, she found tidy scribal writing, faded to brown, announcing that this book belonged to Nevyn, councillor to Maryn, Gwerbret Cerrmor. No wonder, then, that Jill had kept it apart from the other books on her small shelf. Carefully Dallandra turned a few of the parchment leaves, the writing faded, the sheets all ragged and splitting at the edges, and came to a diagram of concentric circles, each labelled to represent the nested spheres of the universe. The mildew made her sneeze, and she shut the book with some care.
Dallandra had met Nevyn once, towards the beginning of his unnaturally prolonged life. Thanks to her long dwelling in Evandar’s Lands, to her the meeting seemed to have happened no more than a few years past, even though it had been close to four hundred years as men and elves reckon Time. He had brought the Westfolk books of dweomer lore, and she remembered sitting in the warm summer sun and turning each page, staring at the diagrams and at the words she couldn’t read. Later, of course, Aderyn had taught her the Deverry alphabet. Aderyn, her husband, back then so long ago – she could still remember how it had felt to love him, though the feeling was only a memory.
‘Four hundred years ago.’ She said the words aloud, but they carried little meaning, just as her own age meant nothing to her. She’d been born more than four hundred years ago, but of that what had she lived, truly lived in the awareness of time passing? Thirty years perhaps, if that, because she had gone to Evandar’s country so young and stayed there so long. Did she regret it? Since nothing could call the years back, regret would only be a waste of time. She returned to her inventory.
The long narrow bundle turned out to be a sword in a sheath of stained, cracking leather, an odd thing for a dweomermaster to carry with her, as it was no ritual weapon but solid Deverry steel. Dallandra drew the blade and saw marks carved near the hilt: a stylized striking falcon, and just below, a lion device that at one time had sported a touch of red pigment. Out of curiosity she held the blade up to sight along it, looking for other marks. When in the cold room her warm breath touched the steel, a little snake made of moisture squirmed and ran down the blade. Startled, she nearly dropped it. She sheathed it and laid it on the table by the book, then opened the sack.
Inside she found a silver dagger in a much newer leather sheath, and a small something wrapped in silk. She put the dagger on the table and unwrapped the silk to find a squarish bone plaque, a few inches to a side, engraved with a portrait of a Horsekin: a warrior, judging from his huge mane of hair and his facial tattoos. The delicacy and realism of the engraving marked it as elven work, and of great age.
‘Meradan,’ Dallandra said softly. ‘Someone recorded what the invaders looked like. I wonder how long the limner lived afterwards.’
For a moment she held the plaque in both hands, as if it were a talisman that could give her knowledge of those ancient days. She felt nothing. She wrapped it up again in its silk and laid it by the other objects that Jill had treasured enough to carry with her through her wandering life. What to do with them? Dallandra had no idea.
Dallandra had known Jill only a brief time, and Jill had not been an easy person to understand. Her workings were so far beyond mine, Dallandra thought. Her knowledge of dweomer lore, too – gods, a thousand times beyond mine! On the wall hung the small shelf of books that Dallandra had begun to study under Jill’s tutelage. Those, she knew, Jill would have wanted her to keep until the time came to pass them on to another student of the lore. But what she would never learn from books was the way Jill lived her dweomer, in complete surrender and service to the Light that shines beyond all the gods. Although her compassion had at times been a cold and abstract thing, it had never wavered, not even when that service had demanded her life.
And what have I been doing? Dallandra thought. Chasing after glamours, living far from the physical world, turning my back on those I was born to serve! She had come to despise the physical world, in fact, with all its stinks and pain and filth. In Evandar’s fair country life flowed like mead, smooth and intoxicating. Yet like the mead its illusions of pleasure wore off soon enough, leaving the drinker muddled and more than a little sick.
Out in the corridor footsteps were coming toward the door. Dallandra stood just as Rhodry opened it and walked in, glancing at the table.
‘Jill’s things?’ he said in Elvish.
‘Just that. Here, take a look at that sword, will you? I’m curious about those marks on the blade.’
Rhodry obligingly picked the sword up, drew it full out of the sheath, and studied the devices. When he looked up, his eyes glistened with tears.
‘This belonged to Jill’s father, Cullyn of Cerrmor,’ he said. ‘She must have carried it with her for his memory’s sake.’
The tears spilled and ran. For a moment he stood sobbing like a child, yet still he held the sword in a practised grasp. If someone had threatened them, Dallandra felt, Rhodry would have killed him instinctively through his tears. With one last sob he laid the sword down on the table and wiped his eyes on his sleeve.
‘My apologies,’ he said. ‘It’s still hard, thinking that she’s gone.’
‘So it is,’ Dallandra said. ‘Would you like that sword? I’m sure she’d rather you had it than anyone else.’
‘Most like she would.’ He picked up the blade again and sheathed it before he went on. ‘But I own too many things already for a silver dagger. Here, I know. I’ll give it to Dar for a wedding gift – a bit late, but then, he’s cursed lucky he’s getting anything from me at all.’
Dallandra laughed.
‘So he is,’ she said, ‘and what about the silver dagger?’
Rhodry laid down the sword and picked up the dagger. When he slid it free of its sheath, the silver blade flared with a strange bluish light. Rhodry laughed and held it up while the dagger seemed to burn like an etheric torch.
‘What in the name of the gods?’ Dallandra took a quick step back.
‘It’s a dwarven dweomer working.’ Rhodry sheathed the blade again and put it down on the table. ‘It gives warning when anyone with elven blood touches it. It would do the same for you. The Mountain Folk consider us all thieves, you see.’
‘It would scare a thief away, all right, seeing the blade burn like that! Huh, it’s odd. I’ve always heard that the dwarven race shuns dweomer.’
‘That’s true. Ah, who knows?’ Rhodry shrugged and considered the dagger for a long moment. ‘That should have been buried with Jill.’
‘I’m sorry. I didn’t realize.’
‘Not that it matters to her any more, I’d wager.’ He looked up, his eyes bleak. ‘I could take it, or wait! Jahdo shall have it, because when we captured him and Meer, he lost a knife that his grandfather had given him, and it’s irked him ever since.’