A Time of Exile

by Katharine Kerr

  When she lowered it, at first it seemed that nothing had happened, and she laughed at herself for being taken in by some prank of Elessario’s, but when she put the nut in her pocket, she was suddenly aware of a subtle change in the landscape. The colors were brighter, for one thing, the grass so intense a green that it seemed to be shards of emerald, the sky as deep and glowy as a sunlit sea. When she took a few steps, she saw, ahead of her to the north across the emerald billows of grass, a mist hanging in the air, seemingly at the horizon, but as she walked on, it grew closer, swelled up, turned opalescent in a delicate flood of grays and lavenders shot through with the palest pinks and blues like the mother-of-pearl on Evandar’s harp. Thinking of the harp, she suddenly heard it, a soft run of arpeggios in some far distance.

  The mist wrapped around her in a delightful coolness like the touch of silk. Ahead she saw three roads, stretching out pale across the grasslands. One road led to the left and a stand of dark hills, so grim and glowering that she knew they had no part in Evandar’s country. One road led to the right and a sudden rise of mountains, pale and gleaming in pure air beyond the mist, their tops shrouded in snow so bright that it seemed as if they were lighted from within. Straight ahead on the misty flat stretched the third. As Dallandra stood there hesitating, Elessario came racing down the misty road.

  “Dalla, Dalla, oh, it’s so wonderful you’ve come! We’ll have such a splendid time.”

  “Now, now, I can’t stay very long, just a few days.”

  “Father told me, yes. You have to get back to your man, whom you love. Here. Father said to give this to you.”

  She handed over an amethyst hanging from a golden chain. When Dallandra took the jewel, she cried out, because it was carved into a full-length statue of her, no more than two inches long, but a perfect likeness, down to the shape of her hands. She slipped it over her head and settled it round her neck.

  “If you ever see me drop or lose this, Elessario, tell me at once.”

  “Father said that, too. I will. I promise. Now let’s go. There’ll be a feast tonight because you’ve come.”

  When Elessario took her hand, as trusting as a child, Dallandra realized that this spirit, at least, was still young enough to learn how to love. Hand in hand they walked on down the misty road, and when Dallandra looked back, mist was all that she saw behind her.

  Three hours before sunset, Dallandra’s mare came ambling into the herd. When Calonderiel, who happened to be on herd guard, saw her come home, he sent a young boy racing to camp to fetch Aderyn. In his tent, Aderyn heard the lad yelling all the way in and came running out to meet him.

  “Wise One, Wise One,” he gasped between breaths. “The Wise One’s horse has come home without her.”

  Aderyn broke into a run and headed for the herd. His mind kept flashing horrible images: Dalla thrown, her neck broken; Dalla dragged by a stirrup and bruised to death; Dalla falling down a ravine and hitting the bottom dead and broken. Leading the unperturbed mare, Calonderiel came to meet him.

  “She just wandered in like this, without saddle or bridle.”

  “Ye gods! Maybe Dalla was just doing a working, then, and the mare slipped her tether and wandered off.”

  Yet even as he spoke he felt a cold clammy dread, like an evil hand grabbing his heart. He was so perturbed, in fact, that when he tried to scry her out, all his skill and power deserted him. No matter what focus he used, he saw nothing, not her, not her trail, not even her saddle and bridle, which must have been lying abandoned somewhere. Finally Calonderiel saddled up three geldings and put the mare on a lead rope, then comandeered Albaral, the best tracker in the warband, to help them. On the way out, Albaral trotted ahead of them like a hunting dog, his eyes fixed on the ground as he circled round and round, looking for tracks. Fortunately, no one from the alar had ridden out that day but Dallandra, and soon enough he picked up the trail of crushed grass and the occasional clear hoofprint that led, straight as an arrow, across the grasslands.

  The sun was dancing on the cloud-touched horizon when they found her saddle and bridle. When Albaral yelled at Cal to stop and keep the horses from trampling the area, Aderyn dismounted and ran to the other elf, crouching in the tall grass.

  “These are hers, all right,” Aderyn said.

  Albaral nodded, then got up to start circling again to see if he could pick up any footprints or other traces of her leaving the spot. Aderyn knelt down, and when he laid a shaking hand on her saddle, he knew with the dark stab of dweomer-touched certainty that she was gone, not dead, but gone so far away that he would never find her. Involuntarily he cried out, a long wailing note of keening that made Albaral spin around to face him.

  “Wise One! An omen?”

  Aderyn nodded, unable to speak. Calonderiel left the horses and came running over, started to say something, then thought better of it, his cat eyes as wide as a tiny elven child’s. With a convulsive shudder Albaral turned away.

  “Found a few tracks. Wise One, do you want to wait here?”

  “No. I’ll come with you. Lead on.”

  But the tracks only led them a few yards, to a place where the grass was flattened down in a pattern that suggested, to Albaral’s trained eyes at least, that she’d first fallen to her knees, then lain down all in a heap. Beyond that there was nothing, no sign to show she’d risen again, no footprints, nothing, as if she’d turned into a bird and flown away.

  “But she didn’t leave her clothes behind her,” Aderyn said. “She couldn’t fly with those.”

  “Grass is kind of damp here,” Albaral said, kneeling. “Like there was fog, maybe. Or something.”

  “Some kind of dweomer mist?” Unconsciously Calonderiel crossed his fingers in the sign of warding against witchcraft.

  Aderyn’s fear clutched his throat and turned him mute. Had some great bird swooped down out of that mist and carried her away?

  “We could see how far the damp grass stretches,” Albaral said. “Seems to go on a ways.”

  Aderyn was about to answer when he heard—when they all heard—the sound of a silver horn, echoing from some long distance away, and looked up to see at the far horizon a line of riders silhouetted against the setting sun, the horses picked out in black against the blood-red clouds for the briefest of moments, then gone.

  “The Guardians,” Cal whispered. “Have they taken her?”

  Aderyn dropped to his knees and grabbed handfuls of the crumpled grass, the last thing on earth her body had touched. It took the others a long time to make him come away.

  All that night, once they were back in camp, Aderyn stayed in their tent and paced endlessly back and forth. At one moment he knew with a heartsick certainty that he’d never see her again; at the next, his hope would well up in a flood of denial to tell him that she’d come back, of course she’d come back, maybe in the morning, maybe in only an hour, that maybe she was walking toward camp this very moment. Then tears would burn in his throat as he told himself that she was as good as dead, gone forever. At dawn he stumbled out and actually walked off in the direction that she’d gone, but of course, he didn’t find her. When he came back to camp, everyone else treated him like an invalid, speaking softly around him, offering him food, telling him to lie down, staring at him so sadly that he nearly screamed aloud and cursed the lot of them.

  Aderyn slept all that day, vigiled all that night, and the next, and on and on, until seven days had passed with no sign of Dallandra. Only then, toward the dawn of the eighth night, did he finally think of the obvious and call to Nevyn through the fire. The old man responded so quickly that he must have been already awake and up. When Aderyn told him what had happened, his image above the fire seemed to grow even older with grief.

  “She promised me once that she’d never leave me,” Aderyn said at last. “And like a dolt, I believed her. Not for more than a few days, she said, and I believed her.”

  “Now here, I can’t imagine Dallandra breaking a solemn promise, no matter how much glamour t
hese Guardians have.”

  “Well, maybe she wouldn’t. Nevyn, I just don’t know what to think! If I only knew what’s happened to her, really knew, I mean. I’m only guessing that the rotten Guardians even took her.”

  “Why don’t you ask them?”

  “Ask them? I can’t even find them!”

  “Have you truly tried?”

  Aderyn left the tent and walked outside into the rising dawn. He hadn’t really tried, he supposed. In his heart he never wanted to see them again, wanted only to curse them or rage at them or in some way cause them the same heartsick pain that he was feeling. If he did, though, they would most likely never give her back. He left the waking camp and walked out into the grasslands, stumbled along blindly at first, wandering with no purpose, until he felt calm enough to think. From studying the lore, he knew something about the sort of places where the Guardians might appear: boundary places, the crossing of paths, the joining of streams, anywhere that seemed to be a gate or a ford or a marker between two different things. Following a dim memory, he came at last to a place where three rivulets became a proper stream.

  “Evandar!” he called out blindly in grief and rage. “Evandar! Give me back my wife!”

  His only answer was the grass sighing as it bent in the wind and the stream gurgling over its rough bed. This time his voice screamed in a berserker’s howl.

  “Evandar! At least give me the chance to fight for her. Evandar!”

  “She’s not mine to keep or give back.”

  The voice came from directly behind him. With a yelp he leapt straight up and turned as he came down, panting for breath, close to tears, and faced the seeming-elf. His yellow hair was bright as daffodils in the morning sun, and he was wearing a green tunic over leather trousers, a bow slung over his back and a quiver of arrows at his hip.

  “She came to us of her own free will, you see,” Evandar went on. “Truly she did. I asked for her help, but never would I have stolen her away.”

  “And I suppose you won’t be able to tell me if she’ll ever come back.”

  “Of course she will, when she wants to. We won’t keep her against her will.”

  “But what if she doesn’t want to? That’s no concern of yours, I suppose.”

  Evandar frowned, studying the grass, and spoke without looking up.

  “I have the strangest feeling round my heart, and all for your sake. I’ve never felt such a thing before, but you know, I do think I pity you, Aderyn of the Silver Wings. My heart is so heavy and sore that I don’t know what else to call it.” He looked up at that point and indeed, his luridly blue eyes glistened with tears. “I’ll make you a promise. You’ll see her again. I swear it, no matter how long she stays.”

  “Well, I believe you’re sincere, but your promise may not do me one jot of good. I’m not elven, you know. My race only lives a little while, a very little while compared with them and even less compared with the likes of you. If she doesn’t come home soon, I won’t be here. Do you understand?”

  “I do.” He thought hard, chewing on his lower lip in a completely human gesture. “Very well. I can do somewhat about that. Here, let me give you a pledge … oh, what … ah, I know. A long time ago my woman gave yours an arrow. Here, take another to go with it. You have my word and my pledge now, Aderyn of the Silver Wings, that she’ll come back and that you’ll live to have her back.”

  Aderyn took the arrow and ran his fingers down the smooth, hard wood, cool and solid and as real as the grasslands under him.

  “Then you have my thanks in return, Evandar, because I don’t have another thing to give you.”

  “Your thanks will do. Oddly enough.”

  When Aderyn looked up he was gone, but the arrow stayed, a tangible thing in his hands. He took it back to the camp and his tent, searched through Dallandra’s possessions, and found the other arrow, wrapped in an embroidered cloth in one of her saddlebags. He wrapped its fellow up with it, put the bag back, then sat down on the floor and stared at the wall, merely stared, barely thinking, for hours and hours.

  To Dallandra, much less than an hour passed on the misty road. Just at sunset Elessario brought her to a vast meadow, a long spill of green flecked with tiny white flowers. Scattered all across it were tables made of gilded wood set with jewels, so that they sparkled in the light of the thousands of candles that stood in golden candelabra. It was night, suddenly, and in candlelight the host was feasting. They were dressed in green and gold, and gold and jewels flashed at throat or wrist or sparkled in their hair; all of them looked like elves but more beautiful than elves to the same degree that elves are more beautiful than human beings. Dallandra was never sure just how many people there were, a thousand maybe, but when she tried to count them, they wouldn’t hold still—or so it seemed. Out of the corner of her eye she would see a table with, say, ten individuals; when she turned her head for a better look, the table might be gone, or it would seem that only two or three sat there, or perhaps twenty instead of ten. When she looked at a group from a distance, they seemed to blend together while still remaining distinct, as if they were forms seen in clouds, or flames leaping from a fire. Over the laughter rang music, harp and flute and drum, of such beauty that she felt on the edge of tears for the entire time the music played.

  Elessario and Dallandra sat, one to his right, one to his left, at the table Evandar headed. He caught Dallandra’s hand and kissed it.

  “Welcome. And was your journey an easy one?”

  “Oh yes, thank you.”

  “Good, but still, you must be tired. Here, have some mead.”

  He handed her a tall, slender goblet of pure silver wrapped with a garland of tiny roses made of reddish gold. Although she admired the workmanship, mindful of the old tales Dallandra set it down untouched.

  “I’m not thirsty, thank you.”

  His handsome face turned sharp with rage.

  “Why do you turn down my drink?”

  “I have no desire to be trapped here, and I won’t eat your food, either.”

  “I’ve already given you my pledge: you leave when you want to leave and not a moment later. You can drink with us in safety.”

  “Oh, please, Dalla?” Elessario broke in. “You can’t just go hungry the whole time you’re here.”

  She hesitated, then smiled and raised the goblet in his direction. If she kept distrusting them, they would never trust her.

  “To your health, Evandar, and to your continuance.” She drank off the toast. “Oh, by the gods, this mead is wonderful!”

  “It tastes like the mead they made in Bravelmelim.”

  All at once something came clear in her mind as she studied the feast and the feasters, the fine clothes, the jewelry, the gilded tableware and the intricately embroidered linens.

  “All of this is modeled on the lost cities, isn’t it?” Dallandra waved her hand randomly round. “Your clothes and everything else.”

  “Exactly that.” He grinned in pleasure at her recognition. “And later we’ll have jugglers and acrobats, just like the ones your kings used to watch.”

  The feasting and the entertainments went on till dawn, a glamour more ensnaring than any ordinary ensorcelment could have been. After all, Dallandra’s own magicks would have been more than a match for any clumsy manipulation of her mind or her aura, but for that little space of time she was watching—no, she was living in—her people’s lost past, religiously remembered, scrupulously re-created by beings to whom these forms meant life itself, or at the least, the only life they knew. A sheer intellectual lust to see more, to understand that missing history caught her deep and held her tight. When the feast broke up and the folk began to slip away in the pale light of a strangely twilit dawn, Evandar took her for a long walk down to a riverbank bordered with formal gardens exactly like the ones that used to grow in Tanbalapalim. They crossed a bridge carved with looping vines, roses, and the little faces of the Wildfolk to enter a palace, or perhaps it was only part of a palace, floating in mis
t. Some of the rooms seemed to open onto empty air; some of the halls seemed to dead-end themselves in living trees; some of the floors seemed almost transparent, with shadows moving back and forth underneath.

  The chamber that they all settled into for a talk seemed solid enough, though. It had a high ceiling, painted white and crossed with polished oak beams, and a floor of pale gray slate, scattered with red-and-gold carpets. The two walls that held no doors or windows were painted just like the outside of a tent, but far more delicately; on one was a vast landscape, a river estuary opening to the sea at either dawn or sunset; on the other, a view of the harbor at Rinbaladelan. The polished ebony furniture was all padded with silk cushions of many colors.

  “Did this room once belong to a queen of the lost cities?” Dallandra asked.

  “No, not at all.” Evandar gave her a sly grin. “To a merchant’s wife, that’s all.”

  Dallandra gasped, properly impressed.

  “You have no idea how beautiful the cities were, Dalla,” he went on, and his voice cracked in honest sadness. “Your people were rich, and they lived even longer than they do now, with time to learn every craft to perfection, and they were generous, too, pooling their wealth to build places so fine and wonderful that they took the breath out of everyone that saw them, even a strange soul like me. I loved those cities. Truly, I think they were the things that taught me how to love. If they still stood, I might go to your world and live there the way you want me to do. But they’re gone, and my heart half died with them.”

  “Well, true enough,” Dallandra said. “Broken stone doesn’t heal itself, and fallen walls won’t rise.”