A Time of Exile

by Katharine Kerr

  “Just so.” He looked away, staring out the window to a long view of grass and flowers. “And your people never went back, they never even went back to mourn them. That was a hard thing to forgive, that and of course the wretched iron.”

  “Evandar, I am so sick of hearing you people whine about iron. Do you think we could have built those beastly cities without it? Do you think we’d live long out on the grasslands without knives and arrow points and axes?”

  “I hadn’t thought about it at all. Forgive me.”

  “If they used iron in the cities, Father,” Elessario broke in, “how did you spend time there?”

  “With great difficulty. It was worth it to me, the pain.”

  “Well, then.” Dallandra pounced like a striking hawk. “If that pain was worth the beauty, then …”

  His laugh cut her off, but it was a pleasant one.

  “You’re as sly as I am, sorceress.” He rose, motioning to his daughter. “Come along, let our guest rest.”

  “Well, I am tired, truly.” Dallandra suddenly yawned. “I left home—well, it must have been a full day ago now.”

  For the first twenty years that Dallandra was gone, Aderyn kept hoping that soon, any day, any moment, she would return. The People marveled at him, in fact, that he would be so strong, so faithful to her memory, when all those old tales said that no one ever returned from the lands of the Guardians. During that twenty years, he spent some time talking to the Forest Folk, who worshipped the Guardians as gods, and learned what little they knew about these strange beings. When their shamans—priests is a bit too dignified a word—insisted that he should be happy that his wife had been honored and taken as a concubine for these gods, Aderyn managed to be polite, barely, but he never went back to talk with them again. It was his work that saved him. At first he supervised the copying of the books Nevyn had brought and taught his new lore to those elves who were already masters of the old; then he took young apprentices and trained them from the beginning in his craft. As Deverry men reckon time, it was in the year 752 that he sent his first three pupils out to teach others, and that year, as well, when he was still looking around for his next apprentice, Nevyn rode out to the Eldidd border to visit him.

  They met about thirty miles north of Cannobaen, at the place where the Aver Gavan, as men call it, joins up with the Delonderiel. That spring the elves were holding a horse fair, because the Eldidd merchants were willing to pay higher than ever for good stock, in the wide meadows along the riverbanks. What Nevyn brought with him, however, wasn’t iron goods, but news. The Eldidd king wanted those horses because he’d just declared war on Deverry.

  “Again?” Aderyn said peevishly. “Ye gods, I’m glad I don’t live in the kingdoms anymore, with all their stupid bickering and squabbling.”

  “I’m afraid it’s a good bit more this time than just petty quarrels.” Nevyn looked and sounded exhausted. “The High King died without an heir, and there’s three claimants, Eldidd among them.”

  “Oh. Well, my apologies. Truly, that’s a serious matter.”

  “It is.” Nevyn paused, considering him. “You know, I’m beginning to feel hideously old these days. Ye gods, there’s all that gray in your hair, and here I still remember the little lad I took as an apprentice.”

  “I feel even older than I am, frankly.”

  “Ah.” Nevyn was silent for a long, tactful moment. “Um, well, how are you faring these days? Without her, I mean.”

  “Well enough. I have my work.”

  “And your hope?”

  “Is feeble but alive. I suppose it’s alive. Maybe it’s just one of those embalmed corpses you read about, like the Bardekians make of their great men.”

  “I can’t blame you for your bitterness.”

  “Do I still sound bitter? Then I guess my hope truly is still alive as well.” For the first time in about six years, he nearly wept, but he caught himself with a long sigh. “Well, what about this civil war, then? How long do you think it will last?”

  Nevyn considered him for a long, sour moment, as if he were wondering whether or not he should let his old pupil get away with such an obvious change of the subject.

  “Too long, I’m afraid,” Nevyn said at last. “All three claimants are weak, which means no one’s going to win straightaway. I’ve gotten the most ghastly set of warnings and omens about it, too. Somewhat’s gravely out of balance on the Inner Planes—I’m not sure what yet. But I intend to do what I can to put an end to this nonsense. I’d wager that the war will burn itself out in about ten years.”

  In truth, of course, Nevyn’s hope was ill founded in the extreme: the Time of Troubles was to last five and a hundred years, although of course Nevyn was indeed the one to finally and at great cost put an end to it. If either of them had known how long the wars would rage, they might well have lost heart and done nothing at all, but fortunately, dweomer or no, they were forced to live through them one year at a time like other men. Although Nevyn immediately involved himself in the politics of the thing, a story that has been recorded elsewhere, Aderyn and the People were little affected for some thirty years. Only then, after the demands of the various armies started ruining the delicate network of trade that held Deverry and Eldidd together, did the merchants stop riding west as often as they had. Iron goods were becoming too rare in Eldidd itself for the merchants to take them freely out of the country. The People grumbled, but the Forest Folk gloated, saying that the Guardians had somehow arranged to stop the trade in demon metal. Aderyn had a brief moment of wondering if they were right.

  Nevyn, of course, kept him informed of the various events of the wars, but only one meant much to Aderyn personally. Indeed, he felt himself so emotionally distant from the slaughter and the intrigues that he realized that he’d become more than a friend of the People—he was thinking like a man of the People. The Round-ears seemed far away and unimportant; their lives flashed past too quickly for their doings to endure or to take on much significance unless one of them somehow touched his heart or his own life. But in 774 Nevyn mentioned, in one of their infrequent talks through the fire, that two friends of his had died. Nevyn’s grief was palpable, even through their magical communications.

  “It aches my heart to see you so sad,” Aderyn thought to him.

  “My thanks. You know, this concerns you, too, I suppose. Ye gods, forgive me! I might have told you when they were still alive. I’m speaking of the souls that were once your parents, you see—Gweran and Lyssa, reborn and then killed again so soon by these wretched demon-spawn wars. Do you still remember them?”

  “What? Of course I do! Well, that aches my heart indeed. I suppose. I mean, it’s not as if they were my kin anymore. Huh. I wonder if I’ll ever see them again.”

  “Who knows? No one can read another’s Wyrd. But I must say that it seems unlikely. Their Wyrd seems bound to the kingdoms, and yours to another folk entirely.”

  But as it turned out, Aderyn did indeed have a small role to play in ending the wars when, in about 834, he left the elven lands for a few weeks and traveled to Pyrdon, a former province that had taken its chance to rebel and turn itself into an independent kingdom. By then, or so Nevyn told him, with so many claimants to the throne in both Deverry and Eldidd, it seemed that the wars would rage forever. Nevyn and the other dweomermasters had decided to choose one heir and put their weight and their magicks behind him in a desperate attempt to bring the kingdoms to peace. Simply because he was the closest dweomermaster to Loc Drw, where this claimant lived, Aderyn went to take a look at a young boy, Prince Maryn, son of Casyl of Pyrdon, whom the omens marked as a possible future ruler of Deverry. Traveling as a simple herbman, he arrived late on a blazing summer’s day at Casyl’s dun, which stood on a fortified island out in the middle of a lake.

  At the entrance to the causeway leading out to the dun stood armed guards. As Aderyn walked up, he wondered if he’d be allowed to pass by.

  “Good morrow, good sir,” said the elder of the pai
r. “Looks like you’re a peddler or suchlike.”

  “Not truly, but a herbman.”

  “Splendid! No doubt the ladies of the dun will want a look at your goods.”

  “Now here!” The younger guard stepped forward. “What if he’s a spy?”

  “Oh, come now! No one’s going to send an elderly soul like this to spy, lad. Pass on by, good sir.”

  The words hit Aderyn like a slap across the face. Elderly? Was he really elderly now? Since the ladies of the dun, including the queen herself, did receive him hospitably, during his stay in the dun he had many a chance to study himself in one mirror or another. Yes, the guards were right: his hair was snow white, his face all lined and sagging, his eyes droop-lidded and weary, impossibly weary from his long grief over his stolen woman. He saw then that Dallandra’s loss had burned his youth away like grass thrown into a fire. During those days in Casyl’s dun the last of his hope died, too, that ever he would see her again. He realized it when Nevyn asked him to stay an extra day and he agreed without a thought; he simply no longer felt the need to rush back to the alar on the off chance that she’d returned in his absence.

  When he did return to the elven lands, he told the bards to add a new bit of lore to the tales about the Guardians: not always did they keep their promises.

  • • •

  To Dallandra, that same hundred years passed as four days, bright glorious days of feasting and music, laughter and old tales. At odd moments, she remembered Aderyn and even stored up things to tell him when she returned, because she knew that the information Evandar possessed about the lost cities would fascinate him as much as it fascinated her. Just as she never tired of hearing about the cities, Evandar never tired of talking about them, and with such affection that she began to see a possible strategy. Late on the fourth night, they sat together on a hillside overlooking a grassy meadow, where among glittering torches harpers played and the young folk danced in solemn lines, all bowing and slow steps.

  “It’s so different from the dances my people do,” Dallandra remarked. “We like to leap and yell and dance fast as the wind.”

  “Oh, I remember your dances, too—country dances, they called them then.”

  “I see. You know, I’ve been thinking. I wonder if the cities could be rebuilt. It’s too bad the Round-ears are such a treacherous folk; otherwise we could make some kind of alliance with them, or at least learn how to work iron again. I know, I know—you hate iron—but we really would have to have it to cut stone and suchlike, and we’d need to know how to work mortar and weave cloth and build bridges that wouldn’t fall down and streets that wouldn’t buckle. It might only be one city at first, but still, it seems such a pity to think of them lying there, all broken, with only the owls nesting and the wolves prowling through to keep them company.”

  “You’re saying that to tempt me.”

  “Does it?”

  “Well, yes, more perhaps than you can know, because I know better than you how it might be done. If we had a place to go to, a fine, fitting place, we’d be more likely to choose your kind of life over death. Well, some of us would. The young people. It’s their fate that worries me, the young people. There are fewer and fewer born, you know, as time passes by.”

  “I still don’t understand how they’re born.”

  “No more do I.” He laughed under his breath. “No more do I, but they become, and they delight us. I hate to think of them vanishing away.”

  Out in the meadow the music sang in harmony with the sound of laughter. Dallandra glanced up and saw a huge silver moon, just wisped with cloud, at zenith. Black specks, birds, she supposed, moved across its face, then circled round, plunging down, growing bigger and faster with the rush of wings. Howling in rage, Evandar leapt to his feet.

  “Run!” he screamed. “Dalla, to the trees!”

  Suddenly she saw trees, some yards away at the hillcrest. As she ran she heard shrieks and squawks, the rush of wings and the cawing of angry ravens. Just as she darted under cover she realized that one of the enormous birds was a nighthawk, stooping straight for her. In the nick of time she rolled into the shelter of woody shrubs and low-hanging branches. Screaming its disappointment, the hawk veered off and flew toward the meadow, where the dancers were scattering among the torches with little cries of fear. When Dallandra risked standing up, the hawk circled back, but this time it landed to turn with a shimmer of wings and magic into Alshandra.

  “I thought it would be you,” Dallandra said calmly. “You should come with your daughter when she goes, and then you won’t lose her.”

  “Fetid bitch! I’ll kill you.”

  “You can’t, not here, not in this country.” She laid her hand on the amethyst figure. “What are you going to do? Tear at me with your claws?”

  A shriek hung in the morning air. Alshandra was gone, and the sun was rising through a lavender mist.

  As Dallandra walked downhill in that pale dawn to join Evandar, the year 854 was ending in Deverry and Eldidd. As the slashing rains of autumn drove down, it threatened to become a black new year for Eldidd at least, because Maryn, a man now, not a lad, and the High King of a newly unified Deverry, was camped in her northern fields and sieging her northern towns with the biggest army Eldidd had ever seen. Aderyn was traveling with his alar to the winter camps when he heard the news from Nevyn, who contacted him through the fire. By then, Nevyn had become the High King’s chief councillor, but rather than sit and worry in the drafty ruins of the palace in war-battered Dun Deverry, he was traveling with his king on campaign.

  “Not that there’s a cursed lot for me to do,” he said that night and with evident relief. “We’re holed up in Cernmeton, and it’s nice and snug, because the town surrendered without a siege as promptly as you please.”

  “I’m glad to hear it. Do you think the war will last long?”

  “I don’t. Everywhere the king rides, the opposition crumbles away. In the spring, when the towns are all running low on provisions and can’t possibly stand a siege, the army will move south and take Aberwyn and Abernaudd, and that’ll be an end to it. Deverry and Eldidd will be one kingdom from now on. What’s wrong? Your image looks frightened.”

  “I am. If the wars are over, are the Eldidd men going to start moving west again and stealing my people’s land?”

  “I’ve worked so hard to end the civil wars that I forget how things must look to you. But don’t let it trouble your heart.” Even the purely mental touch of Nevyn’s mind on his resonated with grief. “You don’t understand just how horrible things have been, just how many men have died. I think me that there’ll be plenty of land in the new kingdom to satisfy everyone for years to come.”

  Just in time Aderyn stopped himself from gloating.

  “Well, let me think,” he said instead. “My alar isn’t very far from Cernmeton, and we’ll be riding past on our way to the winter camps. Do you think we could meet?”

  “That would be splendid, but I don’t think you’d best ride into town. In fact, the king’s quartermasters are so busy drafting every man who looks like he could fight that I think me the People should stay far away from us at the moment. In the summer, though, when the war is over—it’ll be better then.” Nevyn’s image suddenly smiled. “And there’s someone with me that you should meet, indeed there is. The soul who once was your father. He’s a bard again, of a sort, but he was a mercenary soldier, too, for years and years, and a friend of mine as well. Maddyn, his name is.”

  By then the thought of his father was so distant that Aderyn felt neither more nor less pleased than he would at the thought of meeting any friend of Nevyn’s, but once he got to know Maddyn he did indeed find him congenial. Nevyn’s predictions about the course of the war proved absolutely true. When in the spring Maryn and his army moved south, the people of Eldidd scrambled to surrender and end the endless horrors of the war. Abernaudd opened its gates the moment it saw him coming; Aberwyn made a great show of holding out for an afternoon, then surrend
ered at sunset. While Maryn and his men hunted down the last Eldidd king, Aenycyr (who was, for those of you who care about such historical things, the great-grandson of Prince Mael of Aberwyn, later known as Mael the Seer, through the legitimate line of his first marriage), Nevyn took a leave of absence from his king’s side and traveled west with only Maddyn for company to visit with Aderyn.

  They met just northwest of Cannobaen on the banks of a little stream that ran into Y Brog, where the alar had set up camp to rest their horses on their way to the first alardan of summer. By then Maddyn was forty-five, an ancient age for a fighting man; his hair was thoroughly gray and his blue eyes were weary with the deep hiraedd of someone who’s seen far too many friends die in far too short a time. Yet he was still an easy man to talk with, and ready with a jest, and the People all liked him immediately because among his other talents he could see the Wildfolk as clearly as they did. There was one small creature, a sprite with long blue hair and needle-sharp pointed teeth, that was as devoted to him as a favorite dog, following him around during the day and sleeping near him at night.

  “I’m afraid it’s my fault,” Nevyn said ruefully when Aderyn asked about the sprite. “Many years ago Maddyn spent a winter with me, you see, when he’d been badly wounded. He began seeing the Wildfolk then—just because they were all around him, I suppose. His music had somewhat to do with it, too, because he’s a truly fine harper.”

  “The Wildfolk do love a good tune. Well, there’s no harm in it, I suppose, except I feel sorry for the poor little thing. When Maddyn dies, she’s not going to be able to understand it at all.”

  “Oh, she’ll probably forget him quick enough. He wasn’t meant to see the Wildfolk, much less have one of them fall in love with him.”

  Although Aderyn normally only slept a few scant hours a night, that evening he felt so tired that he went to his tent early and fell asleep straightaway. In his dreams the little blue sprite came to him and led him out across the grasslands—that is, he thought at first that he was in the grasslands, until he noticed the vast purple moon hanging swollen at the horizon. In his dream-mind a voice sounded, saying cryptically, “The Gatelands.” When he looked around he saw two young women running toward him, hand in hand and smiling. One of them was Dallandra. He’d dreamt about her so much in the last hundred years that he felt neither pleasure nor grief at first, merely noted somewhat wryly in his dream that yes, he still cared enough about her to summon her image at times.