A Time of Omens Read Free Page A

snow-white hair and a face as wrinkled as burlap, the old man strode around as vigorously as ayoung 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 just 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-gray 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 dweomermasters 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 through 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 gray 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, like 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, like 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