Read Online Daggerspell by Katharine Kerr - Free Book Online Page B

of danger. Never had that warning failed to be true, not since he’d felt it first as a little lad, climbing a tree and knowing without knowing how he knew that the branch was about to break under him.
    The dun of the Boar clan lay a full day’s ride to the north. A stone broch rose three floors above a cobbled ward and proper wooden round houses for the important servants. Off to one side were the stables that also doubledas a barracks for the warband of twelve men. Lord Blaen’s great hall was fully forty feet across with a dressed stone floor. Two tapestries hung on either side of the honor hearth, and fine furniture stood round in profusion. As he walked in, Galrion had the thought that Brangwen would be far happier in that dun than she would be in a wilderness.
    Blaen himself greeted them and took them to the table of honor. He was a slender man, sandy haired, good-looking in a rather bland way with blue eyes that always seemed to be smiling at a jest.
    “Good morrow, my prince,” Blaen said. “What brings me the honor of having you in my hall?”
    “My brother and I have come to beg an enormous favor. My brother has decided that it’s time for him to marry.”
    “Oh, have you, now?” Blaen shot Gerraent a smile. “A wise decision, with no heirs for your clan.”
    “If it’s so wise,” Gerraent snapped, “why haven’t you made one like it?”
    Blaen went as stiff as a stag who sees the hunting pack.
    “I have two brothers.”
    The moment hung there. Gerraent stared into the hearth; Blaen stared at the prince; Galrion hardly knew where to look.
    “Ah, curse it!”’ Blaen snapped. “Can’t we dispense with all this mincing around? Gerro, do you want my sister or not?”
    “I do. And my apologies.”
    When Galrion let his eyes meet Blaen’s he saw only a man who wanted to be his friend—against great odds, perhaps, but he did. Yet the dweomer-warning slid down his back like snow.
    In his role as a courting man’s second, Galrion went to the woman’s hall, a half-round of a room above the great hall. On the floor lay Bardek carpets in the clan colors of blue, green, and gold; silver candlesticks stood on an elaborately carved table. In a cushioned chair, Rodda, dowager of the clan, sat by the windows while Ysolla perched on a footstool at her mother’s side. All around them lay wispsof wool from the spinning that must have been tidied away at the prince’s approach. Rodda was a stout woman with deep-set gray eyes and a firm but pleasant little smile; Galrion had always liked her when they’d met at court. Ysolla was a pretty lass of sixteen, all slender and golden with large eager eyes.
    “I come as a supplicant, my lady,” Galrion knelt before the two women. “Lord Gerraent of the Falcon would have the Lady Ysolla marry him.”
    When Ysolla caught her breath with a gasp, Rodda shot her a sharp look.
    “This is a grave matter,” Rodda pronounced. “My daughter and I must consider this carefully.”
    “But, Mother!”
    “My lady?” Galrion said to Rodda. “Do you have any objections to Lord Gerraent?”
    “None, but I have my objections to my daughter acting like a starving puppy grabbing a bone. You may tell Gerraent that we are considering the matter, but my son may start discussing the dowry if he wants—just in case Ysolla agrees.”
    Blaen was expansive about the dowry. Ysolla, of course, had been filling her dower chest for years with embroidered coverlets, sets of dresses, and the embroidered shirt her husband would wear at his wedding. To go with it, Blaen offered ten geldings, five white cows, and a palfrey for Ysolla.
    “Gerro?” Galrion said. “That’s splendidly generous.”
    “What?” Gerraent looked up with a start. “Oh, whatever you think best.”
    Yet that evening Gerraent acted the perfect suitor, happy to have his lady within his reach at last. At table, he and Ysolla shared a trencher, and Gerraent cut her tidbits of meat and fed her with his fingers as if