Chapter 80: Words with Olyrrwd

The curtains to the sleeping chamber rustled so softly that the sound seemed a part of Herrwn’s dream that he was sitting up in bed and Olyrrwd was sitting next to him. They each had a cup of mulled wine, and they were talking about whether to allow Caelym to take Arianna, Cyri, and the twins to the meadow above the shrine to go dancing with the wolves from his pack. Herrwn had just said he thought it was too dangerous because the wolves might fight over who they got to dance with, but Olyrrwd crossed his arms and said, “I told you it’s not wolves you have to watch out for! I told—”

“I told the laundress you would need your best robes washed and ready this morning!” Benyon’s voice broke in. “I told her that over and over, Masters, but she didn’t get them washed and hung out until the late afternoon, and I had to go over and get them this morning so you would not have to come back to change after the sunrise ritual but can go directly to the High Council after you have had your breakfast.”

Caelym’s sleepy voice mumbled, “Thank you,” his blanket rustled, and his bare feet plopped onto the floor and padded off to the latrine, but Herrwn kept his eyes closed long enough to see Olyrrwd scowl and hear him grumble, “Well, that’s Benyon for you, never around when you need him and underfoot when you don’t!”

Olyrrwd had always lacked patience with Benyon. He’d mutter, “Why can’t he just hand you a dish without telling you how glad he was to wash and polish it for you?” when their chief servant spoke during the performance of his duties, but complained, “You never know when he’s lurking around,” if he came and went quietly. The closest thing to a compliment Herrwn recalled his cousin paying the servant was, “It only took two men to hold him down, and he hardly screamed at all while I cleaned out what was left of his eyeball,” when Benyon suffered an accidental—and quite awful—injury, and even then Olyrrwd had added, “Of course, looking over the cook’s shoulder just when she’s yanking the skewer from a roast goat was a stupid thing to do!”

Now Herrwn sat up, took the robes Benyon held out to him, and thanked him with more warmth than necessary to cover the resentment he felt at being woken up before he could talk with Olyrrwd about what had gone on since the last time his cousin had appeared in his dreams.

In the first months after Olyrrwd departed for the next world (which is how Herrwn preferred to phrase it, even knowing Olyrrwd himself would have just grunted and said, “You mean died!”), Herrwn had often dreamed that his cousin had come back to talk to him, but over time those visitations had grown less and less frequent.

Why this dream, and why now?

While having visions and interpreting them was more an oracle’s province than a bard’s, all priests of Herrwn’s rank were expected to ask—and answer—those two essential questions about their own dreams.

On the surface of it, the idea that there was a pack of wolves in the meadow above the shrine or that Caelym would take the four girls to dance with them was absurd. There were no wolves in the valley, and while Caelym might be impetuous in some ways, he was as protective of the young priestesses as of his own children. Still, it seemed to Herrwn that Olyrrwd was worried about something.

“If only we’d had more time,” he thought as he was putting on the clammy robes, “I could have reassured him that things are, for the most part, going quite well here.”

Which they were.

Caelym and Feywn’s second son was safely delivered after nine nerve-racking months, during which it took Herrwn’s stern and repeated admonitions to “be strong and remain calm for Arddwn’s sake” to keep Caelym’s agitation—elation alternating with panic—to a manageable level.

Recalling that Olyrrwd had been troubled by the warlike name Feywn had given her firstborn son, Herrwn would have liked to tell him how, when Rhonnon came out of the birthing chamber, she’d announced, as smoothly and authoritatively as if this were a part of the expected norm, “She and her chosen consort will be consulting with our chief priest on the matter of the infant’s name.”

Stunned and honored, Herrwn had crossed the threshold into the softly lighted chamber, where he found Feywn resting back against her pillows and taking sips of some reviving potion that Aolfe was spooning to her from a silver bowl. Caelym was kneeling at the edge of the bed, gazing down in radiant joy at the bundle he held cradled in his arms.

Rhonnon cleared her throat a few times, made increasingly louder “ahems,” and finally said, “Our chief priest is here, as you requested!”

Pulled out of his reverie, Caelym shifted his position so Herrwn could see the baby, whose hair was damp but unmistakably red. It had not seemed possible for Caelym’s face to beam any brighter, but it did when he looked up at Herrwn and whispered, “Feywn has said that I may choose his name, and I would like to give him the name Lliem, if you think it a good choice.”

Herrwn’s own cheeks must have glowed just as brightly as he replied, “It is the name of one destined to be a great bard, and I think it a very good choice.”

Lliem’s birth came at the start of a bountiful spring in which the crops came up early and frolicking lambs dotted the hillsides. Three months later, Gwenydd went into a long but, by Rhonnon’s report, not exceptionally difficult labor and delivered a vigorous baby girl, who was given the name “Gwylen” in what Herrwn guessed was a blending of “Gwenydd” and “Darbin,” as the infant herself was a blend of her two parents—blond and fair-skinned like her father but with her mother’s exquisitely refined features.

“Arddwn is five and will be coming to the classroom in the fall,” Herrwn would like to tell Olyrrwd now, “and Lliem and Gwylen have turned two, both of them walking and talking early, and they have been moved from their crib into a bed to make room for the baby Gwenydd is due to deliver at the turn of the next moon. None of the other young priestesses have chosen consorts or taken part in the Summer Solstice Ceremony. The twins are still a handful, but Lunedd has them in training as her apprentice keepers of the sacred calendar and seems to be keeping them more or less under control, and Cyri is doing quite well in all her studies. You would be pleased with her progress in the healing chamber, just as Rhonnon is with her natural skills at midwifery and I am with how far she has come in her memorization of the nine great sagas—especially considering she started her lessons at fourteen rather than at six.”

“And Arianna?”

Olyrrwd would not have overlooked Herrwn’s omission, and Herrwn would have had to answer honestly, suppressing a sigh to say, “And Arianna … well … Arianna has yet to find her calling … even at seventeen and three years past her first trip to the Sacred Pools. She flits from one field of study to another like a butterfly, some days tending the herb garden with Gwenydd, other days off with Cyri tending to pregnancies in the village and then sleeping through important rites because of being up all night tracking the movement of the stars with the twins.”

Since this was just between him and his cousin’s memory, Herrwn allowed himself to reflect, “I don’t think even Rhonnon knows where Arianna is half the time,” before continuing, “I spoke with her—Rhonnon, that is—about it the other day, urging her to advise Feywn to begin her daughter’s formal training as her chosen successor and give her the guidance she must have to be ready when the time comes for her to receive the spirit of the Goddess.”

“And what did Rhonnon say to that?” Herrwn could almost hear Olyrrwd’s chortle and had to smile ruefully as he recalled Rhonnon’s snappish retort that she had other things to do at the moment but that he was welcome to go to Feywn to discuss her getting old and dying if he wished.