A Time of Exile

by Katharine Kerr

  “I see, but, Wise One, I’m so sorry!”

  “For me? Don’t be. I’ve accepted it.”

  But from that day on, Aderyn could deny Loddlaen nothing, not even when he grew old enough to beg for things that he should never have had.

  PART THREE

  ELDIDD

  918

  AFTER SIXTY-ODD years in Bardek, Nevyn returned to Eldidd late in the summer of 918, landing in Aberwyn with some unusual cargo tucked inside his shirt for safety’s sake. While he’d been abroad, studying the scholarly dweomer lore of the Bardekian priests, he’d gotten the idea of making a talisman for the High King, a magically charged jewel that would radiate the noble virtues endlessly to its owner’s mind. To that end, he’d bought an extremely unusual stone and studied the various writings about such creations in the libraries of various temples, but to make the talisman, he brought the stone home. As big as a walnut, but perfectly round and smoothly polished, a tribute to the art of Bardek jewelers, the opal was shot through with pale gold veins and bluish-pink shadows, as mottled as the coat of some exotic animal. At the moment, for all its beauty, it was an ordinary jewel, a dull thing in its way, though worth a fortune. By the time Nevyn got done with it, it would be supremely interesting, and worth a man’s life.

  Down in the center of Aberwyn stood the hall of the merchant guild, an imposing fat tower with glass in the downstairs windows and a stout slate roof. Their official money changer held court in a bare stone room with a hearth, two chairs, and a long table, where Nevyn found a stout and gray-haired man sitting behind a litter of Bardek-style scrolls. Behind him, at the entrance to another room, an armed guard slouched against the wall.

  “I’m just back from Bardek,” Nevyn said to the money changer.

  “You’ve hit the rate of exchange at a good time, good sir. Sit down, sit down.”

  As Nevyn pulled up the rickety three-legged chair, he noticed the guard watching with the interest of the longtime bored, a young man of about twenty, tall and well muscled, with blond hair, blue eyes, and the beginnings of a mustache blotching his upper lip. Nevyn wouldn’t have given him a second thought if it weren’t for the silver dagger at his belt. As it was, he took a good look at the lad’s face and then nearly swore aloud, because the soul behind his eyes struck him as familiar and friendly both. Before he could observe more, the money changer’s voice claimed his attention.

  “We’ve been giving thirty Deverry silvers for each Bardek zotar of full weight.”

  “Indeed? That certainly is generous! Are things troubled in Eldidd?”

  “Have you been away for some time?”

  “Years, actually.”

  “Hum.” The money changer reflected upon something before he spoke again. “I hope to every god in the Other-lands that these rumors are only rumors, but they say the gwerbrets are still pining for the days when they were princes. The High King’s a long way away, my friend.”

  “Just so. Rebellion?”

  “Let us merely say that Bardek merchants have never gotten rich by allowing themselves to be caught in the middle of trouble. They’re not bringing as much sound coinage in as they once did.”

  The money changer counted out Nevyn’s zotars, marked the tally on a bit of parchment, which Nevyn signed, then went back through the doorway to his vault to change the coins. Nevyn turned to the young guard and gave him a pleasant smile.

  “What’s your name, lad? It looks like this duty wearies you.”

  “Maer, my lord. But I won’t be guarding this fellow’s stores much longer. He just hired me to fill in, like. His regular man broke his wrist in a fall, you see, but thanks be to the gods, the splints are off now.”

  When Nevyn risked opening up a quick bit of the dweomer sight with the sigils that controlled memory, the silver dagger’s face blurred and changed. For a moment Nevyn seemed to look into the weary eyes of Maddyn the bard. Nevyn was so glad to see him that he wanted to jump up and embrace him, but of course, since Maer would have no conscious memory left of his last life, he did nothing of the sort.

  “And what will you do next?” Nevyn said. “If these rumors of trouble are true, there’ll be plenty of work for silver daggers in Eldidd.”

  “Oh, it’s all a lot of horseshit if you ask me, my lord. The gwerbrets can mutter over their ale easy enough, but getting the coin to outfit an army’s a bit harder. I’ll go west, I suppose. I’ve never ridden that way before.”

  It was perhaps an omen of sorts. Nevyn had no real idea of where to settle down while he performed the dweomer work on the opal, but on the western coast lay a quiet little village that held pleasant memories for him.

  “I’m heading west myself,” Nevyn said. “How would your captain feel if I rode with your troop a ways?”

  “Captain? Troop?” Maer paused for a laugh. “The silver daggers haven’t ridden together as a troop in fifty years, good sir. It was that royal decree, you know. We can only ride together one or two at time, no more.”

  “Indeed?” Nevyn was honestly shocked. I’ve stayed away far too long, he told himself. “Why?”

  “I don’t know. It’s the king’s law and so it’s good enough for me. But I’m for hire, sure enough, if you need a guard.”

  “Feel like riding to Cannobaen?”

  “Gladly. A couple of silver pieces?”

  “Done. We’ll leave at dawn, then, the day after tomorrow.”

  When the time came to leave, Maer turned up promptly. Nevyn was loading up his newly purchased riding horse and pack mule in the little innyard just at dawn when the silver dagger appeared, leading a splendid black warhorse, laden with a pair of saddlebags, a bedroll, a plain white shield, and a pot helm, all tied in a messy sort of way to his saddle. He looked over the mule packs with some interest.

  “So you’re a herbman, are you?”

  “I am. Don’t worry about falling sick on our journey.”

  Maer grinned and finished loading the mule without being asked. They led their horses through the busy morning streets, then mounted outside the west gate just as the last of the sea fog was burning off into a late-summer morning. To their left, the turquoise sea sparkled and churned at the foot of pale cliffs, and to their right, the winter wheat stood ripe and golden in the fields. As they rode, Maer burst into good cheer, whistling and singing in a fine clear tenor that with training could have made him a bard. Nevyn was so genuinely glad to hear the man he would always think of as Maddyn sing again that he had to give himself a stern warning. This was Maer now, not Maddyn, and it was against all the laws of dweomer as well as common sense to treat the one as the other.

  When he turned in the saddle to pay Maer a compliment on his voice, he was in for a surprise. Riding behind the silver dagger’s saddle and clinging to him like a child was a good-sized blue sprite. Just as he was telling himself that of course it couldn’t be the same creature, not Maddyn’s favorite still loyal after all these years, the sprite grinned at him in such smug contentment that he was forced to recognize her. Over the next few days, as they made their slow way to Cannobaen, Nevyn saw the sprite often, hovering around Maer during the day, cuddling up to him like a dog while he slept at night. It became obvious, though, that Maer never saw her, because often he would have stepped on her if she hadn’t jumped aside. Once, when Maer was off at a farmhouse buying food, Nevyn got a chance alone with her. Talking about death to one of the Wildfolk was, of course, a complete waste of breath.

  “He doesn’t see you anymore, you know. He’s changed since the last time you found him.”

  She snarled, exposing long and pointed teeth.

  “It’s not good for you to follow him this way. You should be off with your own kind.”

  At that she threw back her head and howled, a thin wisp of sound. Since normally the Wildfolk were incapable of making noise, Nevyn became even more troubled.

  “I’ll talk with one of your kings,” he began, “and we’ll see what …”

  In a screech of fury she seemed
to swell, sucking up substance from the material plane and turning for one brief moment quite solid and as large as a growing child. Then she was gone in a gust of cold air.

  Besides seeing the Wildfolk, Maer had been a silver dagger in his last life, too, of course, but Nevyn tended to consider that a simple coincidence. Although he would never had pried into the reason for this dishonor, Maer himself volunteered the story as they sat round the campfire on their second night out.

  “You’re not an Eldidd man, are you?” Nevyn had asked him.

  “I’m not. I was born in Blaeddbyr, over in Deverry, and that’s where I got this blasted dagger, too. I was riding for the Wolf clan, you see, and one night, well, me and the lads got a bit drunk. So one of my friends got this daft idea. There was this lass he fancied—oh, bad it was, good sir—he was like a boar in rut over the tailor’s daughter, but her da, he kept an eye as sharp as one of his needles on the lass. So my friend puts us up to helping him. We went round to the tailor’s shop and Nyn calls the lass out of her bedroom window, while me and the other lad went round the front. We pretend to get into a brawl, you see, and old Da comes running out. So we led him a merry dance, insulting him and having a fine old time, and truly, we got a bit carried away.” With a sigh, Maer rubbed his chin with a rueful hand. “We ducked him in the village horse trough, just for the fun of the thing, and all the time Nyn’s tumbling the daughter out under a hedgerow. So Da goes complaining to our lord, and cursed if Avoic doesn’t side with the old tailor and kick us out of the warband! Cursed unjust, I say. He let Nyn come back, though, because the stupid lass had to go and get a child, and so Nyn had to marry her.”

  Maer sounded so indignant that Nevyn laughed aloud. Maer drew himself up square-shouldered and glared at him.

  “Don’t you think it was unjust?”

  “Umph, well. But you’re the first lad I’ve ever met who got that dagger because of a prank.”

  “That’s been the tale of my days, good sir. I only want a bit of fun, and ye gods, everyone goes and takes it wrong.”

  Late on a summer afternoon, Nevyn and his guard rode to the top of a rise and saw Cannobaen spread out along the little stream called Y Brog. At the sight of the round, thatched houses, Maer broke into a wide grin.

  “Ale tonight with supper, my lord. Or do they even have a tavern in this hole?”

  “They did the last time I was here. But that was a long time ago.”

  At a hundred families, mostly of farmers or fishermen, Cannobaen was about twice as big as Nevyn had been remembering it. There was a good-sized proper inn on the old site of the small tavern. After he rented a chamber, Nevyn ordered ale and a meal for himself and stood his silver dagger to one last dinner, too. The innkeep, a stout fellow named Ewsn, hovered nearby.

  “Do you get much trade through here?” Nevyn said, mostly to be polite.

  “We’ve got a merchant in our town who buys and sells off in the west—with those tribes with the strange-sounding names. Men from Aberwyn come through every now and then to buy the horses he brings back.” He hesitated, sucking stumps of teeth. “Be you a herbman, sir? My wife has this pain in her joints, you see, and so I was wondering.”

  “I am at that. In the morning, I’ll be glad to have a talk with her if she’d like.”

  The morning, however, apparently wasn’t good enough for the innkeep’s wife, Samwna. While she served Nevyn and Maer their dinner, Samwna also treated them to a long recital of symptoms as well rehearsed as a bard’s performance. While they ate roast beef and turnips, they heard all about the mysterious pain in her joints, strange aches in the small of her back, and night sweats, sometimes hot, sometimes cold. With the apple tart, they heard about headaches and odd moments when she felt quite dizzy.

  “It’s all related to your woman’s change of life,” Nevyn said. “I’ve got soothing herbs that should help a good deal.”

  Maer went scarlet and almost choked.

  “My most humble thanks.” Samwna made him a little curtsy. “I’ve been wondering and wondering, I have. Here, you’re not thinking of settling in our town, are you, good sir? It’s been years and years since there’s been a herbman in our neighborhood.”

  “As a matter of fact, I am. I’m getting too old to wander the roads, and I want a nice quiet place to settle down.”

  “Oh, towns don’t come much quieter than Cannobaen!” Samwna paused to laugh. “Why, the big excitement lately was when one of Lord Pertyc’s boarhounds killed two chickens over at Myna’s farm.”

  Nevyn smiled, well pleased. Idly he rubbed the front of his shirt and touched the opal hidden inside. If there’s trouble in Aberwyn, he thought, it can cursed well stay in Aberwyn! No doubt remote Cannobaen would be undisturbed by these rumors of rebellion.

  “By every hell, how can you be so stubborn?”

  “It comes with my family title.” Pertyc Maelwaedd touched the device worked on his shirt. “We’re Badgers, my friend. We hold on.”

  “By that line of thinking, we Bears would have to stay in our holes.” Danry, Tieryn Cernmeton and Pertyc’s closest friend, perched on the edge of a carved table and considered him. “But cursed if I will.”

  “Why do you think I nicknamed you the Falcon, back when we were lads? But this time you’re flying too high.”

  They were sequestered in Pertyc’s small study behind a barred door, and a good thing, too, because Danry was talking treason. Since Pertyc had a taste for clutter, the room was crowded: a large writing table, a shelf with twenty leather-bound codices, two chairs, a scatter of small Bardek carpets, and on the wall, a pair of moth-eaten stag’s heads, trophies of some long-forgotten hunt of a remote ancestor. Pertyc’s helm perched jauntily on the antlers of the largest stag, and his shield was propped up against a book-laden lectern carved with intertwined dogs and badgers.

  “I’ve always liked my demesne,” Pertyc remarked absently. “So remote here on the border. Nice and quiet. Easy to stay out of trouble in a place like Cannobaen.”

  “You can’t stay out of this. That’s what you don’t understand.”

  “Indeed? Just watch.”

  Danry sighed again. He was a tall man, with a florid face that usually simmered on the edge of rage, and thick blond mustaches that were usually damp with mead. Lately, however, Danry had been withdrawn, and the mustaches had a ratty look, as if he’d been chewing on them in hard thought. Perfyc had been wondering what was on his friend’s mind. Now he was finally hearing. Ever since the forced joining of the two kingdoms some sixty years before, there’d been plenty of grumbling in Eldidd, a longing for independence and past glory simmering like porridge over a slow fire. Now the fire had flared up; the porridge was beginning to boil over.

  “I’d hoped to come around to this slowly,” Danry said at last. “But it’s hard to believe you’d be too blind to see the ale in your own tankard.”

  “I’ve never much liked sour ale. What does it matter to me if I pledge to a new king or an old one?”

  “Perro! It’s the honor of the thing.”

  “How are you going to have a rebellion without a king to rally round? Or have you ferreted out some obscure heir?”

  “That’s a rotten way to speak about him, but we have.” Danry picked up a leather dog collar from the cluttered writing desk and began fiddling with the brass buckles. “The lad is related to the old blood royal twice over on the female line, and there’s a lass who’s related on the male line. If we marry them, well, it’s claim enough. They’re both good Eldidd blood, and that’s the true thing.” He ran the end of the collar through the buckle and pulled it tight. “You know, my friend, your claim to the throne is as good as his.”

  “It’s not! I don’t have a claim at all. None, do you hear me? My most honorable ancestor abdicated; I’m descended from his common-born wife, and that’s that! No priest in the kingdom would back a claim on my part, and you know it.”

  “There are ways of handling priests.” Danry tossed the collar aside. “But you�
��re right, no doubt I was just thinking of a thing or two.”

  “Listen, even jackals pull down the kill before they start squabbling over the meat.”

  Danry winced.

  “When I came to my manhood,” Pertyc went on, “I swore an oath to King Aeryc to serve him well, serve him faithfully, and to put his life above my own. Seems to me I heard you and the rest of our friends swear one like it, too.”

  “Ah, by the hells! No oath is binding when it’s sworn under coercion.”

  “No one held a sword to my throat. I didn’t see one at yours, either.”

  With a curse, Danry heaved himself up from the table and began trying to pace round the cluttered chamber.

  “The coercion lies in the past. They stripped Eldidd of its rights and its independence under threat of open slaughter. It’s the honor of the thing, Perro.”

  “If I break an oath, I don’t have any honor left worth fighting over.” Idly Pertyc touched the device on his shirt.

  “Ah, curse your horseshit Badgers! If you don’t come in with us, what then? Are you going to run to this false king with the tale?”

  “Never, and all for your sake. Do you think I’d put my sworn friend’s neck in a noose? I’d die first.”

  Danry sighed, looking away.

  “I wish you’d stay out, too,” Pertyc said.

  “And I’d die before I’d do that. You can trumpet your neutrality to the four corners of the world, but you’re still going to be in the middle of it. What do you think we’re going to do, muster our warbands right down in Aberwyn? When the spring comes, we’re meeting in the forest, here in the west.”

  “You scummy bastards!”

  Danry laughed, tossing his head back and giving him a friendly slap on the shoulder.

  “We’ll do our best not to disturb his lordship or trample his kitchen garden. Now here, spring’s a long way away. I have faith you’ll be mustering with us when the time comes. It might be dangerous if you didn’t. You know I’d never lift my hand against you or your dun and kin, but well, as for the others …” He let the words trail significantly away.