A Time of Exile

by Katharine Kerr

  “Then there’s naught I can say about it, is there? But I warn you, don’t let yourself fall in love with her again.”

  Rhodry merely shrugged, wondering if the warning were coming too late.

  On the morrow morn they splashed across Y Brog and left the settled lands behind. All that day they rode through fallow grasslands, dotted here and there with copses or crossed with tiny streamlets; that night they camped in green emptiness. Yet early on the next day Rhodry saw rising on the horizon a broken tower, as lonely in the endless grass as a cairn marking a warrior’s grave—which, he supposed, it might well have been.

  “Did this dun fall to the sword?”

  “I haven’t the slightest idea,” Jill said. “Calonderiel might know.”

  The elf in question, an old friend and a warleader among his people, was waiting for them near the empty gap in the outer walls that once had held wooden gates. They saw his horse first, a splendid golden gelding with a silvery mane and tail, tethered at his leisure out in the grass. Calonderiel himself was pacing idly back and forth in the ward, where grass grew round the last few cobbles and a profusion of ivy was sieging the broch itself. A tall man but slender, as most of his people were, the warleader had dark purple eyes, slit vertically like a cat’s, moonbeam-pale hair, and, of course, ears as long and delicately pointed as a seashell.

  “So there you are!” he sang out in Deverrian. “I thought Salamander had gone and gotten you all lost.”

  “Spare me the implied insults, if you please.” Salamander made him a sketch of a bow. “You must have been talking with my father, if you’d think so ill of me. Which reminds me. Where is the esteemed parent? I thought he’d be eager for a first look at this other son of his.”

  “No doubt he will, when he finds out you’ve ridden west.” Calonderiel turned to Rhodry. “My apologies, but Devaberiel’s gone off north somewhere with one of the alarli. I’ve got my men out riding, passing the word along and looking for him. He’ll turn up.”

  “Blast and curse it all!” Jill got in before Rhodry could say a word. “I wanted to speak with him before I rode on, and now I’ll have to sit around here and wait.”

  “Impatient, isn’t she?” Calonderiel was grinning. “You should be used to elven ways by now, Jill. Things happen when they happen, and not a moment before.”

  “Well,” Rhodry said. “I’ll admit to being a bit disappointed myself.”

  “And you must admit, Cal,” Salamander broke in, “that my father can take his sweet time about things. He calls his progresses stately or measured; I call them dilatory, tardy, lackadaisical, or just plain slow.”

  “Well, you’ve got a point.” The warleader glanced Jill’s way. “Aderyn’s at the encampment.”

  “That’ll make the waiting easier, truly. How far away is everybody?”

  Not very far at all, as it turned out. A couple of miles to the west the camp sprawled along a stream: some twenty brightly colored round tents, a vast herd of horses, a small flock of sheep, a neat stack of travois poles, all scattered through the tall grass in a tidy sort of confusion. As they rode up, a rush of children and dogs came yelling and yapping to meet them; about thirty adults strolled more slowly after.

  Over the years Rhodry had picked up a fair amount of Elvish, more than enough to greet everyone and to understand the various speeches of welcome that came his way. He smiled and bowed and repeated names that he forgot a moment later. When Calonderiel insisted that the two brothers share his tent, there were plenty of willing hands to carry their gear and to take their horses. Skins of mead and bowls of food appeared as the camp settled in around the main fire for a celebration. Everyone wanted to meet Devaberiel’s son and tell him about the major feast planned for the evening, too. In all the confusion it was some hours before Rhodry realized that he’d tost track of Jill.

  About half a mile away from the main camp, Aderyn’s weathered tent stood alone near a stand of willows at the stream edge. It was mercifully quiet there, except for the trill of birds in the willows. Jill tethered her horse out with Aderyn’s small herd, then carried her gear round to the tent flap. Just as she was wondering whether to call out a greeting, the flap rustled open, and Aderyn’s new apprentice, a pale-eyed young elf named Gavantar, crawled out. He was even more slender than most of his people, and pale-haired, too, so that Jill found herself thinking of him as more a spirit than a man. But his hands were strong enough as he snatched her burdens from her.

  “Let me carry that gear for you, O Wise One of the East. You might have let me tend your horse.”

  “I’m not some withered old woman, lad, not yet, anyway. Is your master here?”

  “Of course, and waiting for you.”

  Although the day was warm, the tent was dim and cool, the air sparkling from the rush and bustle of elemental spirits that always surrounded Aderyn. Wildfolk crouched or lounged all over the tent, sprawling on the floor, clinging to the walls, perching on the many-colored tent bags hanging from the poles. A small fire smoldered under the smoke hole in the center, and the dweomerman himself was sitting cross-legged nearby on a pile of leather cushions. He was a small man, fully human, with enormous dark eyes in his slender, wrinkled face, and dead-white hair, which swept up from his forehead in two peaks like the horns of an owl. When he saw Jill, he grinned in honest delight and rose to catch her hands in his.

  “Ah, it’s good to see you in the actual flesh! Come sit down. Can I offer you some mead?”

  “None for me, thanks. I don’t have your head for the stuff. I wouldn’t mind a cup of that spiced honey water the Westfolk make, though.”

  The apprentice put the saddlebags down and hurried out again, heading for the main camp to fetch a skin of the drink in question. Aderyn and Jill sat down facing each other, and she began pulling some cloth-wrapped bundles out of her gear. A gaggle of gnomes clustered round to watch, including the small gray fellow that followed Jill everywhere.

  “Nevyn wanted you to have these books.” She handed Aderyn a pair of ancient folios with crumbling leather bindings. “Though what you’re going to do with a matched set of Prince Mael’s writings, I don’t know.”

  “Lug them around with all due honor and respect, I suppose. Actually, these particular volumes mean somewhat to me. The man who gave them to Nevyn was someone I much admired.” He ran slender fingers over the stamped decorations, flecked here and there with the remains of gold leaf, a roundel enclosing a pair of grappling badgers, and under it a motto: “We hold on.” “But fancy him remembering that, after all these years! I’m quite surprised that I do, actually.”

  “And here’s a trinket from Brin Toraedic. He said to tell you that since it was older than both of you put together, it was a marvel indeed.”

  Aderyn laughed and held up the golden cup, made of beaten metal and decorated with a ridged pattern utterly unlike any made by human or elf. Jill found herself studying the old man; he seemed no older, no weaker than he ever had, but still she worried. He picked up her thought.

  “My time won’t be for a little while yet. I have Gavantar to train, and he’s just begun his studies.”

  “Ah. I just … well, wondered.”

  “Things have been hard for you with Nevyn gone.” It was not a question.

  “They have. It’s not just the missing of him, though that’s bad enough. I feel so wretchedly inadequate, little-more than an apprentice myself, truly, and not fit to be the Master of the Aethyr.”

  “Oh, here, we all go through that! You’ll grow into the job. It’s like becoming captain of a warband, I suppose. All that responsibility at first—why, it must overwhelm a man, thinking of all those lives that depend on his decisions.”

  “True-spoken. But I’ve got Nevyn’s work to finish. I keep feeling that I’ve absolutely got to do it right for his sake.”

  “Wait a moment now! It’s not his work, any more than it’s your work. Don’t let that kind of vanity enter in or you’ll find yourself worrying indeed. It’s all o
ur work, and the work and will of the Great Ones. Think of it as an enormous tapestry. We each weave a little piece, what small amount we’re capable of, then hand the grand design on to the next worker. No one soul could possibly finish the entire thing by himself.”

  “You’re right enough, aren’t you?” Jill smiled, feeling her dark mood lift. “I’ll drink to that! Here comes your Gavantar now.”

  Carrying a leather bottle that was dripping wet and smelling of Bardek cinnamon and cloves, Gavantar ducked through the flap and joined them. Once the drink was poured round, he sat down by the door on guard, and with a shy duck of his head refused to move closer even when Aderyn invited him. He was new to the dweomer, Jill supposed, and still in awe of what he considered strange and mighty powers. Soon enough, when he came to see how natural in their way Aderyn’s magicks were, he would begin to feel at ease.

  “Is Rhodry still with Calonderiel?” she asked.

  “He is, O Wise One. The whole camp wants to meet him.”

  “Good. Then he’ll stay out of trouble for a few hours, anyway.” She turned back to Aderyn. “Rhodry is one of the things that are vexing me.”

  “Ah. He’s still in love with you?”

  “That, too, I suppose, but that’s not the important thing. I wonder what’s going to happen to him now, mostly. No, I worry about him, worry badly. We’ve snatched him away from everything he knows and loves, which is harsh enough, and then beyond that, there’s his Wyrd. For so long his whole life was ruled by that prophecy, and now he’s fulfilled it, and well, what’s going to become of him?”

  “Prophecy?”

  “The one Nevyn received all those years ago. Don’t you remember it? Rhodry’s Wyrd is Eldidd’s Wyrd, it ran.”

  “Oh, that! Of course—he became gwerbret in the nick of time, didn’t he?”

  “You seem to take it all blasted lightly, but so he did. Look, there would have been a long and ghastly war in Eldidd if Rhodry hadn’t been there to inherit the rhan.”

  Aderyn merely nodded. Jill supposed that he was so old, and had seen so many wars, that one more conflict would have meant nothing to him.

  “And then there’s the rose ring, too,” she went on. “I’ve been vexing myself about that bit of jewelry for months now. That’s why I want to talk to Devaberiel, you see, to ask him about it and that rather odd being who gave it to him. I’ll wager he wasn’t an ordinary elf.”

  “You’re right about that.” Aderyn’s voice had gone tense and strange. “I’ve got my own ideas about who that mysterious benefactor was.”

  “I want to hear them. And what about that wretched inscription? If we knew what it meant, we might be able to unravel the entire mystery.”

  Although she was expecting him to tell her his ideas or at least acknowledge that she’d spoken, Aderyn sat for a long time merely staring out into space. At last, though, he spoke in a voice that was half a whisper, half a sigh.

  “The ring—that cursed ring! Dwarven work, and it had a life of its own, just like their trinkets always do. Stranger than most, this one, and I’ll wager its work isn’t over yet.” He shook his head, then went on in a normal voice. “But, oh yes, the prophecy … so a man of elven blood finally ruled in Eldidd! Fancy that!”

  “Well, you know, his son has a good dollop of elven blood in his veins, too. Young Cullyn.” Jill had to smile at his expression. “Here, Aderyn, you look shocked to the very heart!”

  The old man shrugged and looked away, and at that moment the weight and sadness of all his long years seemed to press him down. Wildfolk clustered round, patting his hands, climbing into his lap, glaring at Jill as if accusing her of causing their friend pain. In spite of his shyness Gavantar inched himself closer, looking back and forth between the two masters of his craft with a worried little frown.

  “Well, the land did belong to the People once,” Jill went on. “I’d like to see them welcome there again. Or is it a wrong thing for men and elves to mix their blood like this?”

  “Not in the least.” Aderyn threw off the mood and half the Wildfolk with a shrug and a wave of one hand. “And it would be splendid, in my opinion, anyway, for the People to have some say in ruling Eldidd, too. It’s just hard for me to believe when I remember some of the things that have happened over the years. There’s been a lot of bad feeling, Jill, just a terrible lot of bad feeling between my two tribes. That’s how I always think of elves and men, you see, as both mine now, though once, truly, I hated thinking that I might still be a human being. Of course, Rhodry’s the one who’s really caught between the two worlds, isn’t he? It’s not going to be easy for him, either. I can testify to that, from my own experience.” He paused for a long moment. “Well, it’s going to be much worse for him, truly. There are things that have happened to him in other lives that are bound to come to a head now. That’s one reason I made sure to be here on the border when he came.”

  “Indeed? What sort of things?”

  “Well, it’s a long and winding tale, truly, and one that runs hundreds of years, all told, though I think me that we’re about to get to the end of it at last. You do remember, don’t you, that his soul in another body was my father?” The old man grinned. “If anyone can remember that far, way back in the mists of time when I was born.”

  Jill smiled with him, but she felt a touch of dweomer eerie run down her back. She had, after all, in another body been his mother. Aderyn was too courteous to mention the point.

  “But Gweran—my father, that is, and Rhodry in another flesh—was the most human man I’ve ever seen.”

  “But he was a bard. You’re forgetting that. There’s a touch of … well, what? madness? the Wildlands? … somewhat strange and magical and crazed and inspired, all at once, in the soul of every bard.”

  “Well, so there is. I hadn’t truly thought of it that way before. Wyrd and the tangles of Wyrd! They always say that no man can know the truth of it.”

  “Or woman either, but we’ve all got to try to untangle our own.”

  “Just so, and we were speaking of other people’s work earlier, weren’t we? But Rhodry might well be my work now—no need for you to bother and all—though I might end up needing your help one fine day. After Gweran died, I doubt me if you were involved in much of this.” He thought hard, chin in hand. “You’ve always belonged to the human race, Jill, not to the Elcyion Lacar like I do—not that Rhodry’s soul was ever supposed to be so mixed up with the elves, either, truly, bard or not. It’s an odd thing, how tangled a man’s Wyrd can become, and all through muddles and blunders. But you don’t need to trouble your heart over it. Truly, I don’t think you were involved, except in the most casual way.”

  And in spite of herself Jill was vexed that there was some deep part of Rhodry’s soul and Rhodry’s Wyrd that had nothing to do with her.

  PART ONE

  DEVERRY AND ELDIDD

  718

  In the cold gray morning, when the mists rose from the surface of Loc Tamig, one could understand why the local farmers thought it haunted. All Aderyn could see of the lake surface was a few patches of rippled water, broken by a drowned tree and four steel-gray rocks, while on the far shore the pine-black mountains rose up in peaks and shadows. The sound of a hundred waterfalls chattered and murmured through the mists like spirit voices. At the moment, though, Aderyn was more worried about the coming rain than possible ghosts. He was, of course, still a young man then, with his hair a nondescript brown and always hanging in an untidy lock over his forehead rather than swept up in the owl shape it would later assume, and he was even skinnier, too, because half the time he forgot to eat when he was deep in his dweomer studies. That particular morning he was down on his knees in the tall spring grass, digging up valerian roots with a small silver spade.

  Wildfolk clustered round to watch him work—two small gray gnomes, skinny and long-nosed, three blue-green sprites with pointed teeth and pretty faces. Just like children, they crowded close, pointed mute questions, and generally got in th
e way. Aderyn named everything they pointed at and worked fast with one eye on the lowering clouds. Just as he was finishing, a gnome picked up a clod and threw it at his fellow. Snarling and baring their teeth, the sprites joined in a full-scale dirt fight.

  “Stop it! Your great lords would find this most discourteous!”

  One sprite pinched him on the arm. All the Wildfolk vanished with little puffs of air and dust and a gust of smell like clean leaf mold. Aderyn gathered up his things and ran for shelter in the spattering rain. Down among a stand of trees was the round stone hut he shared with his master in the dweomercraft. Two years before, he and Nevyn had built the hut with their own hands and made a small stable for their horses and mules. Out in back was their garden, where practical beans and cabbages grew as well as exotic cultivated herbs, and a flock of chickens had their own little house. Most of their food, though, came from the farming villages at the north end of the lake, where the local people were glad to trade supplies for medicine.

  When Aderyn dashed into the single round room, he found Nevyn sitting by the fire circle in the center and watching the play of flame. A tall man, with a thick thatch of white hair and deep-set blue eyes, Nevyn was close to a hundred years old, but he had more vigor than most men of twenty, a striding walk and the erect carriage of the great prince of the realm that once he had been.

  “Back just in time, you are. Here comes the storm.”

  A gust of wind eddied smoke through the drafty hut as the drops began pattering on the roof. Nevyn got up and helped Aderyn lay the valerian to dry on clean cloths. The roots had to be sliced thin with a small silver knife, a nose-wrinkling smell, and they had to wear fine leather gloves, too, lest the strong juices poison them.

  “Nevyn? Will we be leaving Loc Tamig soon?”

  “You will.”

  Aderyn sat back on his heels and stared at him.

  “It’s time for you to go off on your own. I’ve taught you all I know, and your Wyrd runs different than mine.”