Kingmaker's Sword (Rune Blades of Celi) by Ann Marston Page B

nephew. It was comfortable for both of us.
    ***
    Nennia came unexpectedly and startlingly into my life not long after I turned twenty by Cullin’s reckoning. Cullin and I had come home to the Clanhold when snow and storms closed the passes through the Laringorn Alps. We arrived just in time for the Winter Solstice Festival and the Clanhold was full to overflowing with celebrants not only from our own glen, but from all the neighbouring glens. Cullin and I were no sooner welcomed properly than Medroch drew me aside and informed me gravely that it was high time I was married, then announced that he had arranged for me to wed Nennia dan Caennedd, daughter of the laird of Glen Afton. Before I had time to do more than sputter my confusion, he had us handfasted and the deed was done.
    Nennia was a shy little girl, about my own age, mayhap a bit younger, slender and graceful as a young fawn with a glimmer of humour lurking always at the corners of her mouth. To my surprise, and to hers, too, I think, she delighted me, and I apparently pleased her. But we had so little time together. Cullin and I left shortly after Imbolc when the passes began to open again. As we were leaving, she informed me, a dimple forming at the corner of her mouth, that she believed she was with child. Before we could return to the Clanhold, a messenger from Medroch reached us. My delicate little wife was dead in early childbed, and I had a son.
    “And the boy?” Cullin asked, for I could not speak.
    “Healthy and strong,” the messenger replied. “Your lady wife has taken charge of him. They named him Keylan.”
    Medroch’s grandfather had been called Keylan. I nodded. “A fitting name, I said hoarsely. “Aye, fitting.”
    Nennia’s death saddened me greatly, but I could not grieve as deeply as I thought I should. We had scarcely begun getting to know each other before I left. Poor, shy little fawn of a girl. I would never forget her, and I greatly regretted my lack of overwhelming grief. But soon, life eased back into the now familiar pattern of ranging back and forth through the mountain passes between Laringras and Isgard. I was content in the rhythm of my life.
VII
    The road, little more than a narrow track, wound through the towering cedars and firs at the base of the cliffs. It followed the course of the river through the spur of mountains thrusting north from Laringras to curve around the east border of Falinor and Isgard. Overhead, thick grey cloud obscured the tops of the peaks in every direction, and filled the chilly air with a fine, wet mist that was trying to make up its mind to become drizzle.
    Southern mountains in early spring, I thought in disgust as I rode nearly a furlong ahead of the straggling merchant-train. I hate southern mountains in early spring. I hate drizzle and mist. I hate rain forests. And I especially hate mountains in early spring when they stood shoulder deep in drizzly mist and choked by rain forest. Too cursed many places for bandits to lie in ambush, waiting for an unwary merchant-train. Too much chance we might have to earn every silver the merchants paid us for the whole trip in the half-season it took just to get through these passes.
    It was less than a sevenday to Vernal Equinox, the beginning of early spring. We had spent the season between Midwinter and Imbolc traversing the Ghadi Desert. The Ghadi is tricky, but it’s mostly dry and hot at this time of year, and the air doesn’t threaten to choke a man with fog and drizzle, or trickle cold into him to turn blood and bone to ice. A fortnight past Imbolc had seen us into the dry eastern slopes of the mountains. Now, we were over the Divide and into the wet rain forest of the western slopes, and coming to the last stage of the journey. With any luck, we would be in Honandun a few days after Equinox.
    If we don’t drown first, I thought morosely. Hellas. I had forgotten how wet spring could be here.
    It was my turn to ride front guard and I was feeling