A Time of Exile

by Kerr, Katharine

  “Can I come out now? This isn’t fair, Da, shutting me up like one of the women!”

  “Tell me somewhat, Draego. Do you want to be king of Eldidd?”

  “I don’t. I’d only be a usurper, not a king. Isn’t that what you said, Da? You’re always right, you know. Oh, this is splendid. Glae said you killed them all. Did you truly?”

  “Most. Come along. There’s a lesson my da taught me that it’s time to teach you.”

  Pertyc led him to the area just beyond the gates where the warband was piling up the bodies of the dead. Pertyc held Adraegyn’s hand tight and dragged him over to the heaped and contorted corpses. When Adraegyn tried to twist free and run, Pertyc grabbed him by the shoulders and forced him round to face the sight. The lad burst out weeping.

  “This is what glory means, Draego,” Pertyc said. “You’ve got to see it. Look at them.”

  Adraegyn was sobbing so hard that he could barely stand. Pertyc picked him up in his arms, carried him over to Leomyr, then set the weeping lad down.

  “Do you remember Tieryn Dun Gwerbyn, Draego?” Pertyc said.

  His face streaming with tears, Adraegyn nodded.

  “I killed him,” Pertyc went on. “I stood on our wall and hit him twice and knocked him off his horse. You know why? Because he killed Danry. That’s what having a blood-sworn friend means, lad. Look at him. Someday you’ll be Lord Cannobaen, and you’ll have a friend you love the way I loved Danry.”

  Slowly, a sniffle at a time, Adraegyn stopped crying.

  “What happened to his face?” the boy whispered.

  “The horses kicked his body a lot.”

  Adraegyn turned away, pulled free of Pertyc’s hand, and began to vomit. When he was finished, Pertyc knelt down beside him, pulled a handful of grass, and wiped the lad’s mouth.

  “Do you still think it’s splendid?”

  Adraegyn shook his head in a mute no.

  “Well and good, then. Once, when I was your age, your gran did to me what I just did to you. It’s part of what makes us Maelwaedds.”

  Carrying shovels, servants trotted past. Adraegyn turned his face away from the sight.

  “You can sleep in my bed with me tonight,” Pertyc said. “Doubtless you’ll have bad dreams. I did.”

  That evening, Pertyc shut his gates again, posted guards, and called the rest of his men into the great hall. He ordered mead poured all round, then had the servants ceremoniously chop up the captured ram and feed it into the fire. The men cheered, calling out to him and laughing, pledging him with their goblets as the best captain they’d ever seen. Pertyc merely smiled and called back that they deserved all the glory. On the morrow he would make a grim speech, but for now he wanted them to taste their victory. The elves were another matter. Pertyc called them together out of the hearing of the rest of the men.

  “You can leave tomorrow at dawn if you’d like, with as much booty as your horses can carry. There’s no need for you to see the defeat. The rest of the rebels are on their way here as fast as they can ride, or so Nevyn tells me, and they’ve picked up some reinforcements.”

  “Well, Perro,” Halaberiel said. “That’s honorable of you and all, but we don’t ride into a race only to ride out again at the first taste of dust.”

  “Are you certain? Look, you know enough about bowcraft to know that sixteen archers can’t repel an army of three hundred.”

  “Not forever. But there’ll only be a hundred and fifty left by the time we’re done with them, if we have the least bit of luck.”

  “Bound to have luck,” Calonderiel broke in. “The Wise One of the West is here, and so’s the Wise One of the East. Ye gods, if we’ve got so much evil luck coming our way that those two can’t turn it aside, then we’ll only fall off our horses on the journey home and break our necks.”

  Late that night, once the wounded men were tended and asleep, Nevyn climbed up to the top of the tower. Since the beacon keeper was used to his eccentric ways by then, he merely said a pleasant “Good evening” and returned to chopping some of the continual firewood for the light. Nevyn sat down comfortably with his back to the guard wall and studied the fire, a splendid, large luxury for scrying. In a few minutes, a portion of the Cannobaen blaze turned into a tiny campfire, and round it paced Gatryc and Ladoic, talking in hushed voices. Nevyn focused his will and brought himself closer to the vision, until he could see Gatryc’s grayish face. Every time the gwerbret moved his arm, he winced and bit his lower lip. The wounds were infected, most like, Nevyn thought with a professional detachment. Nearby two of the men who’d ridden with Leomyr sat on the ground, slumped and exhausted. So the lords knew that Leomyr was dead and that if they wanted Adraegyn they’d have to come get him themselves.

  Nevyn widened the vision until it seemed that he swooped over the countryside from a great height and found that the rebels were less than a day’s ride, perhaps twelve miles, away. What counted more was the king’s location. That search took a little longer, but eventually Nevyn spotted the royal army some fifty miles away, camped on the road just outside the western gate of Aberwyn. A flash of gloom cost him the vision. From what he understood of Halaberiel’s talk, their small squad of archers would be unable to turn back the newly augmented rebel army before they managed to ram open the gates. The rebels were warned, now, that archers with elven longbows held the walls, and they wouldn’t be stupid enough to come charging right in as Leomyr had. Well, if the king won’t arrive in time, Nevyn told himself, we’ll just have to slow the rebels up, then. The question is, how? He leaned back against the wall and considered the play of flames while he weighed possibilities.

  All at once the wind gusted, and the lightkeeper swore and coughed, rubbing his eyes with the back of his hand.

  “Cursed smoke!” he muttered.

  Just in time Nevyn kept himself from laughing, because, of course, it wasn’t the poor man’s stinging eyes that were amusing him. He got up and bade the lightkeeper good night, wondering what the man would think if he knew his small misfortune might have just saved the entire dun. For this work, though, he would need privacy. He hunted up Aderyn, who took him to his chamber at the top of the broch.

  “I’m not sure I can really pull this off,” Nevyn said after he’d explained his plan. “According to the Bardek scrolls that I’ve been studying, it’s theoretically possible, but theory’s one thing and practice another.”

  “Well, if you can’t, we’ll try to think of somewhat else. Are you ready to go into trance? I’ve got the door barred.”

  “I am, at that. If I start flopping around, hold me down, will you? I do that sometimes in deep trance.”

  As soon as Nevyn assumed the body of light, he left the dun, hovered high above it for a moment to gather strength, then flew off to the rebel camp. By the time he reached it, most of the men were already asleep, but Gwerbret Gatryc was awake and sitting by his council fire with a handful of the noble-born and what few captains remained. What infuriated Nevyn was that they knew their cause was already lost. They were planning on making Aeryc pay high for his peace and naught more, just so they could die with what they called honor, no matter what the cost to the farmers and villagers of Eldidd.

  After a few moments of rest, Nevyn floated close to the fire, which welled and purled with golden currents of pure etheric energy and thick blackish smoke, because the lords were burning damp and moldy wood culled from the forest floor. Nevyn prepared his mind in the way his theoretical scrolls recommended, called on the god-names they suggested for good measure, then slowly sucked up the energy, drew the fine particles of smoke to himself, and bound them round him by force of will. With one sharp thrust, he called on the Lords of Fire for aid. The smoke particles rushed and clung, caught in the stresses of his body of light the way iron filings arrange themselves around a lodestone. Gatryc yelped in terror and scrambled to his feet, his rotting arm dangling useless at his side. When the other lords all leapt up, too, cursing and staring, Nevyn could assume that yes, he w
as quite visible as a ghost-creature of smoke. Since he had no throat to speak with, he sent thoughts to their minds.

  “Beware,” Nevyn intoned. “Beware! Beware, O impious men! The gods have lost patience with your cause. Beware, lest you feast with me tomorrow in the Otherlands.”

  Nevyn could see their auras draw in sharply, a panic reaction as the fine forces rushed back to the body. In one convulsive step the pack of men fell back. Nevyn noticed that behind them, a couple of the riders had woken and sat up to stare.

  “Who are you?” Gatryc stammered.

  “I am the spirit of Aenycyr, last king of Eldidd. Be you mindful of my tragic tale?”

  “We are.”

  “For this little while, the Lord of Hell has allowed me to walk upon the earth, that I may warn you men who love Eldidd so greatly.” He hesitated, trying to remember more of the old saga that he was quoting. “Though your cause is just, your Wyrd is harsh. Not even the dead know when the time will come for Eldidd to rise again. Beware!”

  The strain of keeping the smoke-built body was growing too great. Nevyn could feel his improvised form swirling and wavering over the fire. He decided that specifically warning them off Pertyc might be too blatant for an omen and allowed most of the form to drift back into smoke, but he did keep the face intact for a few moments longer.

  “Even as I speak the Lord of Hell recalls me. Throw this folly aside, men of Eldidd, or on the morrow night you’ll dine with me in the Otherlands.”

  As the last bit of smoke swirled away, Nevyn sent out an exhalation of pure panic. Just as the scrolls predicted, the men thought they heard an actual shriek, a grating, blood-freezing howl like a banshee’s, as he raced through the camp in his body of light, thrusting that thought into the minds of the sleeping riders as well as those of the lords. The men threw off their blankets, stumbled to their feet, cursing, swearing, asking each other what that ungodly wail might have been.

  The Wildfolk heard it, too. Radiating distress, which the more sensitive of the men dimly felt as their own, they materialized into physical form but clustered round Nevyn’s body of light, which they of course could see, in an enormous pack. All at once, he got another inspired idea.

  “See those men?” Nevyn thought to them. “They’re very bad men. They want to kill Aderyn and Halaberiel.”

  If they could have screamed in rage, they would have as they swept off through the camp. They pinched and kicked and bit, hammering the men, grabbing the horses. In a yelling, neighing, swatting, kicking chaos, the camp erupted. At this point, Nevyn realized that he was dangerously exhausted. He rushed back along the silver cord to the dun and slipped into his body. As he woke to normal consciousness, he found that he was lying all in a heap in the curve of the wall. Panting for breath, Aderyn had his arms around him.

  “By the gods!” Aderyn snarled. “If I’d known how strong you are in trance, I’d’ve got Maer up here to help hold you down.”

  “You have my sincerely humble apologies. Are you all right?”

  “You gave me a clip on the jaw, but otherwise I am. How did it go?”

  “Taking the smoke into the etheric mold worked splendidly. Humph, I certainly wish I’d known this trick during the civil wars! As for the results, well, let’s take a look in the fire and see, shall we?”

  But when they scried out the camp, they saw only trampled blankets, scattered gear, broken tether ropes, and Gwerbret Gatryc, sitting alone at the fire and cradling his inflamed arm while he stared into the face of despair. If it weren’t for the death he would have brought to the people of Eldidd, Nevyn might have found it in his heart to pity him.

  In effect, the rebellion ended that night. Most of the common-born riders disappeared into the countryside, slinking back to their families and taking their old places on their father’s farm or in his shop to wait and see just how lenient Aeryc was going to be. To protect their families, the remaining rebel lords and their last few loyal men surrendered to Aeryc, who pardoned the riders and hanged the lords. Gatryc committed suicide, but his infected wounds would have killed him in a few days anyway. While Aeryc rode at a leisurely pace to Cannobaen, all Eldidd waited and trembled. With their fathers slain, boys were the only lords the province had, but everyone knew that Aeryc would attaint the rebel duns and redistribute them to loyal men from Pyrdon and Deverry itself.

  Pertyc wasn’t in the least surprised when Halaberiel announced that he and his men would be leaving before the king arrived. There was no need, as the banadar remarked, to turn his highness’s whole view of the world upside down over a petty little rebellion like this.

  “But I thank you from the bottom of my heart for coming, my friend,” Pertyc said. “And it gladdens my heart that none of your men were killed over this.”

  “Mine, too.” But Halaberiel spoke absently. “And I’ll be seeing the rivers of home soon enough.”

  “You must be glad of it.”

  “I suppose.”

  Pertyc hesitated on the edge of comment.

  “I’m growing old.” Halaberiel said it for him. “I think that somewhere deep in my heart I was hoping for a glorious death in battle, clean and sudden. And now it doesn’t seem likely, does it? I see naught but peace ahead for my last few years. Ah well, what the gods pour, men must swallow, eh?”

  “Just so. I understand.”

  “I thought you might. Well, if I see your wife, shall I give her any message from you?”

  “That the children are well. That I wish she still loved me.”

  “She never stopped loving you, Perro. She just couldn’t bear to live with you. It was the Round-ear ways, not you.”

  “Oh.” Pertyc considered this revelation for a long moment. “Well, then, tell her that if she wants, she can come and take Beclya away with her. And as for me, say that I never stopped loving her, either.”

  Surrounded by an honor guard of a mere four hundred men, King Aeryc arrived at Cannobaen on a day that threatened rain but never actually delivered it. Although Pertyc suspected that Nevyn had something to do with the accommodating weather, he never had the nerve to ask the old man. Even though the king had left most of the army back in Aberwyn, there still, of course, was no room inside Dun Cannobaen’s walls for those that he had brought; they made a camp in the meadow where the villagers grazed cattle in the summer while Aeryc, Gwenyn, and an escort of fifty rode on to meet Lord Pertyc at his gates. For the occasion Pertyc insisted that every member of his warband, all eleven of them, take a bath and put on clean clothes; he followed his own order, too, and went over protocol with Nevyn, who seemed to know an amazing amount about dealing with kings.

  When Aeryc arrived, dismounting some feet away and striding up to the gates, Pertyc was ready. He and Adraegyn both bowed as low as they could manage; then they knelt, Pertyc on one knee, the boy on both.

  “My liege, I’m honored beyond dreaming to welcome you to my humble dun.”

  “It is small, isn’t it?” Aeryc looked around with a suppressed smile. “It won’t do, Lord Pertyc.”

  “My apologies, then, from the bottom of my heart.”

  “No apologies needed. But I suggest that we repair as soon as possible to your other dun.”

  “My liege? I have no other dun.”

  “Indeed you do, Gwerbret Aberwyn.”

  Pertyc looked up speechless to find the king grinning.

  “Pertyc, my friend, thanks to this rebellion there are exactly two men left on the Council of Electors for southern Eldidd: you and me. If I nominate you to head the gwerbretrhyn, and you second the motion, well, then, who’s to say us nay?”

  “My liege, my thanks, but I’m not worthy.”

  “Horseshit. Rise, Aberwyn, and stand me to some of your mead. His highness is as thirsty as a salt herring.”

  When, much later that day, Pertyc consulted with Nevyn, the old man told him that the king was invoking an ancient law. Any member of the Council of Electors who backed a rebellion against a lawful king did by holy charter forf
eit his seat upon the council. Although Pertyc was frankly terrified by his sudden elevation, he knew in his heart that he’d regret it the rest of his Ufe if he turned it down. Besides, he realized soon enough that as gwerbret he had considerable say in the disposition of the rebellion’s aftermath. Since the king was minded to mercy—he was farsighted enough to be more interested in preventing future rebellions than in punishing the current one—he granted many of the petitions to mercy Pertyc was minded to make. Not all, of course—the families of the rebel gwerbrets would be stripped of lands and title both, as would Yvmur’s clan and Cawaryn’s clans, by birth and marriage both. His young widow, barely a wife, was allowed to live, but only as a priestess, a virtual prisoner in her temple.

  But Danry’s widow and his younger son stayed in possession of Cernmeton, as did Ladoic’s of Siddclog, and so on among almost all the minor lords. Pertyc was finally able to repay Ganedd, too, when the young merchant came to him to beg mercy for his father. Dun Gwerbyn, however, was a different matter. When Aeryc wished to dispose it upon a loyal though land-poor clan of western Deverry, the Red Lion, Pertyc had not the slightest objection to make.

  And such are the twists of the human mind that from then on, the Red Lion clan felt nothing but friendship toward the Maelwaedds, while the Bears of Cernmeton, worn down by gratitude, came to hate them.

  When Pertyc, Gwerbret Aberwyn, and his family and retinue were ready to take up residence in their new city, the gwerbret insisted that Nevyn stay in Cannobaen as its virtual lord for as long as he liked. When the spring came, the place settled down rapidly into the drowsy routine of keeping the light burning and the lightkeeper’s family fed. Nevyn poked around the broch and finally decided to use a chamber up on the top floor for his work. After he got it swept and cleaned, it was pleasantly sunny—when Cannobaen had sun, a rare thing in the summer—and its three windows gave him a dramatic view of the sea and the countryside. Once it was furnished with a long table, a set of bookshelves, a charcoal brazier, and a comfortable chair, he could pick up his interrupted work on the talisman again, though he did set mornings aside to tend the ills of the local folk. Every now and then a letter came from Aberwyn, either telling him what news there was or asking his advice on some small matter. Nevyn would answer promptly, then return to reveling in his solitude.