The Red Wyvern: Book One of the Dragon Mage. Katharine Kerr

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      ‘Now, omens of the future exist in the upper astral,’ Brour pointed at a circle. ‘That’s where your mother sends you.’

      ‘My mother sends me there? I thought you were the one who did that.’

      ‘Not I, child. Your mother knows as much about these things as I do.’ Abruptly he looked away.

      In the hall, a noise – someone walking, several people, all talking at once. Lilli leapt to her feet. Brour shut the book. The sounds grew louder – and went on past. Lilli let out her breath in a long sigh and realized that Brour had lost the colour in his face.

      ‘You’re scared of her, too, aren’t you?’ she said.

      ‘I can’t deny it.’

      Lilli stared. She’d never thought to see a man frightened of a woman, not anywhere in her world.

      ‘I’d best go.’ She got up. ‘I don’t dare have her find me here.’

      ‘Just so. But come back when you can, and I’ll tell you more.’

      Lilli ran out of the chamber, slammed the door, and raced down the hall. At the staircase she paused to smooth her hair and catch her breath, then decorously descended to the great hall below. I’ll never go back, she told herself. I’ll never look at that book again.

      At dinner that evening she sat next to Bevyan, whose warmth drove all thoughts of dangerous magic from her mind. They discussed Lilli’s dower chest, which she’d started filling while she was still at Hendyr, although, as she admitted, she’d been lax of late.

      ‘Well, dear, Sarra and I are here to help,’ Bevyan said. ‘The first thing we’ll want to do is the wedding shirt for Braemys, and then the coverlet for your new bed.’

      ‘We should have all summer,’ Sarra put in. ‘They won’t be holding the wedding till the campaigning’s over.’

      ‘That’s true.’ Lilli felt oddly cold, and she rubbed her hands together. ‘I hope naught ill happens to Braemys.’

      ‘Ai!’ Bevyan shook her head. ‘You’re a woman now truly, aren’t you, dear? You’ve joined the rest of us in worrying about one man or another.’

      That night, as she lay in bed and tried to sleep, Lilli was thinking about Braemys. She’d always liked her cousin, who had also been fostered out to Peddyc and Bevyan. Whether or not they married, she certainly didn’t want him to die in the summer’s fighting. And now, if he did die, whom would she be forced to marry in the autumn? Nantyn or some other old and drink-besotted northern lord like him. Uncle Tibryn would never allow his mind to be changed a second time; the miracle was that he’d allowed it once.

      Her mind like a traitor turned up Brour’s image, saying: you could use your gifts for yourself. What if she could read omens about Braemys’s wyrd? What if she could know what was going to happen to her, instead of feeling like a twig floating on a river, twisting this way and that with the current beyond her power to break free? She sat up in bed and wrapped her arms around her knees. Through the window she could see a slender moon, rising between two towers, enjoying all the freedom of the sky.

      In the morning, when Lady Merodda announced a hawking party, Lilli feigned a headache and stayed behind, moaning against her pillows like an invalid. As soon as she could be sure that they were well and truly gone, she got up, dressed, and hurried to Lady Bevyan’s suite. She needed advice, even though she could never mention dweomer to Bevyan. Merely being around her foster-mother would help her think, Lilli decided. Bevyan would give her a kind of touchstone to judge the worth of these strange things. But Sarra met her at the door.

      ‘Oh, Bevva’s not here.’ Sarra paused for a triumphant smile ‘She was invited to go hawking with the Queen.’

      ‘She was?’

      ‘She truly was, and I’m ever so pleased. It’s such an honour!’

      Of course, but Lilli was wishing that Bevyan had been honoured on some other day. She went downstairs, hung around the great hall for a miserable while, then found herself thinking again and again of Brour’s book and the secrets it held. At last, with a feeling of surrender, she returned to her mother’s chambers.

      Brour was sitting at the table by the window, but instead of his book, parchment and ink lay in front of him.

      ‘Ah,’ he said, grinning. ‘You came back.’

      ‘I did. Did you really mean what you said, about I could use my gifts for myself?’

      ‘I did. I’ll swear that by any god you like. Now, I’m just writing a message for your uncle, telling his son that you and he will marry. When I’m done, I’ll take it back to Lord Burcan, and then we can look at my book again.’

      Lilli sat down, elbows on the table, and watched him write, forming each black letter carefully on a parchment used so many times that it had been scraped as thin and flabby as cloth. The scribe who lived in Burcan’s dun would be able to look at those marks and turn them into speech again – Lilli shuddered, but pleasurably. It seemed a dweomer of its own.

      ‘My congratulations, by the by.’ Brour paused to pick up a little pen knife. ‘Or is the betrothal a bad one?’

      ‘It’s not, but one I’m well-pleased with.’

      ‘Good.’ He smiled, and it seemed to her that he was sincere. ‘I’m glad of that. Some day you’ll be able to use your gifts to help your husband, then, as well.’

      ‘I’d like that. I just hope my mother doesn’t find us out. She can always tell when I’m lying, you know. Is that dweomer?’

      ‘It is, most certainly.’

      Lilli caught her breath.

      ‘Ah,’ Brour went on, ‘but what you don’t understand is that dweomer can be countered with dweomer. I’ll teach you how to defend yourself against your mother’s prying.’

      ‘Really?’

      ‘Really. It’s a beginner’s sort of trick but a useful thing to know.’

      Lilli smiled.

      ‘I’m beginning to think I’ll like these studies.’

      ‘Oh,’ Brour said, solemn-faced, ‘I’m sure you will. I truly am.’

      After a morning’s desultory hunt, the Queen’s party rode down to the grassy shore of Lake Gwerconydd for a meal. While the pages bustled around, spreading out a cloth and opening baskets of food, the women turned their horses over to the men of the Queen’s guard and their hawks to the falconers. With Merodda and Bevyan in tow, the Queen ran down to the water’s edge, where small waves lapped on clean sand. She threw herself down on her back in the thick grass and laughed up at the sky while Bevyan and Merodda sat more decorously beside her.

      ‘It feels so good to be out of the dun,’ the Queen said. ‘Don’t you think so, Lady Bevyan?’

      ‘I do, Your Highness.’ Bevyan paused for a hurried glance back – the men were all staring at the Queen. ‘It’s a lovely sunny day.’

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