A Time of Exile

by Katharine Kerr

  It was on a warm morning in late summer, just about the time of the last apple harvest, that Nevyn saw from his tower room a horseman riding toward Cannobaen. Thinking that it was the usual messenger from Pertyc, and that the servants would see to it that the man had a meal and a place to sleep, he went on studying some diagrams of sigils that he’d brought from Bardek. In a while, though, there was a cautious tap at the door. Swearing under his breath, he opened it to find Maer. His eyes were so weary, and his face so thin and pinched, that he seemed to have aged ten years. Nevyn was shocked to see the silver dagger back in his belt.

  “If I’m disturbing you, my lord, I’ll just ride on.”

  “What? Of course not! I take it you’re not here as Pertyc’s man.”

  “I’m not.” He looked down at the floor and bit his lower lip as if he were fighting back tears.

  “Well, let’s go down to the great hall and have some ale, and you can tell me what’s gone wrong.”

  “It’s simple enough, my lord. Glae’s dead.”

  Nevyn stared, gape-mouthed.

  “Childbirth?” he said at last.

  “Just that, and our son dead with her. The baby was just too big, the midwife said, and it was like the birthing beat them both to death.” His face went dead white, and he trembled, remembering. “Ye gods, I had to get out of Aberwyn. His grace asked me to stay, but I just couldn’t bear it. So I thought I’d come tell you the news and say farewell, and then it’s back on the long road for me.”

  “My heart aches for you, and more for Glae.” Nevyn felt a stab of guilt, a wondering if he could have saved her if only he’d been in Aberwyn, but at that time, he had none of the knowledge nor the surgical tools of a Bardek physician to cut open a womb and try, at least, to save the babe if not the mother. “But don’t make some hasty move, lad.”

  “That’s what Lord Pertyc said, too, but I know my own mind, my lord.” He looked up with the faintest ghost of a smile. “But I’ll take that ale, sure enough, if you wouldn’t mind.”

  Over the ale Maer told Nevyn more details about Glae’s death, but as he rehearsed what had been for everyone concerned a time of horror, his voice stayed cold and flat, his eyes fixed and distant. Only his bloodless face betrayed the effort it was costing him to stay calm. During the story the blue sprite appeared to sit beside him on the bench. She was frankly gleeful, clapping soundless hands and showing her mouthful of pointed teeth in a wild grin. Yet when at the end Maer glanced her way, she stopped grinning abruptly and arranged her face into a decent imitation of sadness.

  “Does she understand what’s happened, Nevyn?” Maer said.

  “She doesn’t, lad. She doesn’t have a real mind, you know. So don’t be harsh with her if she’s glad her rival’s gone.”

  “I was furious at first. But then I started thinking about some of the things you’d told me, and I figured well, she’s like a clever dog, no doubt, and naught more.”

  “Brighter than that, because she can understand speech even if she can’t use it. Have you ever seen a monkey or an ape?”

  “A what, my lord?”

  “Animals they have in Bardek. But if you haven’t seen them, my comparison won’t do you any good. Think of her as a little child, then.”

  By being persuasive enough for a Bardek politician Nevyn managed to get Maer to stay for three more days, but nothing he said would change the silver dagger’s mind about leaving Pertyc’s service. The gwerbret, it seemed, had told him that he could come back anytime; the most Maer would allow was that someday, if the long road got too cold and hungry, he might think about returning.

  “If you live that long, I suppose,” Nevyn remarked one night at dinner. “What are you planning on doing? Getting yourself killed in some battle straightaway?”

  “I’m not, my lord. If it was suicide on my mind, I’d have drowned myself in Aberwyn Harbor, but I’m not the sort of man for that. It’s just that, well, what else can I do to earn my dinner but fight?”

  “Have you thought of riding west and finding the Westfolk? Calonderiel gave you an invitation, you know, when they were leaving.”

  “So he did. Do you think he meant it, my lord?”

  “The Westfolk never say anything unless they mean it.”

  A flicker of life woke in Maer’s eyes.

  “Ganedd’s going to be making one last trading trip west soon,” Nevyn went on. “Why don’t you go with him?”

  “He’s got his father’s business now? I thought Ganno would go to sea for sure once he had the chance.”

  “Well, his father’s a broken man, you see. He sits and stares all day at the ocean and naught more. So Moligga and the younger lad need Ganedd, and then there’s Braedda.” Abruptly Nevyn caught himself and shied away from the subject of happy marriages. “But you could stay in the Westlands for the rest of the summer, say. Then see how you feel in the autumn. My heart aches for you, but you know, Glae wouldn’t have wanted you to throw your life away.”

  Maer started to speak, then wept like a child. Nevyn flung an arm around his shoulders and let him sob, so long and so hard that Nevyn realized he’d kept himself from weeping during all the long weeks since Glae’s death.

  In the normal course of things Nevyn’s cure would have worked. Maer would have visited the elven lands, a world different enough to completely distract him, then most likely returned to Aberwyn with his mourning behind him. But Nevyn hadn’t reckoned with the blue sprite, or, rather, with Elessario.

  In the endlessly shifting land of the Guardians, the seeming of only a few hours had passed since Dallandra left them to return to Aderyn. When she saw her friend walk down the road toward home, Elessario rushed blindly away. Her feeling of pain was too ill defined to be called grief, but it was bitter enough to make her throw herself down in the grass and weep. At about the time Dallandra was giving birth to Loddlaen, she stopped weeping, the pain forgotten as fast as it had come, and went in search of company. When Dallandra was returning, Elessario was far away, sitting by the soul of a river and watching her friends dance. It was there that the blue sprite found her, at roughly the same time as Maer and Ganedd were joining the fall alardan out in the Westlands.

  Although Elessario had forgotten her grief already, she did remember Dallandra and all the things they’d discussed. One of those discussions involved compassion and the helping of others for no reason beyond their hurting. Somewhere in her growing core of mind, Elessario wanted to please Dallandra so badly that she was willing to follow her teachings, even though, unfortunately, she remembered them by rote rather than understanding their basic principles. When she saw the sprite’s honest pain, and once she understood what caused it, she decided to help the poor little thing to the best of her abilities in the hopes that Dallandra would be proud of her. Child though she was, Elessario’s abilities were considerable.

  When the fall alardan was preparing to disperse, and Ganedd was talking of riding back home with his newly acquired horses, Maer was faced with the choice of going with him or of riding with Aderyn and his alar down to the winter camps. He was still so grief-struck and lonely that the choice was a hard one simply because making any decision was hard. Every day he woke to the irony, still fresh and ghastly after all this time, that he’d never realized how much he loved Glae until he lost her. If you could go back, he would think, just for one day, just one rotten day, and live it over, knowing what you know now … ! Then he would shake his head hard, as if he could physically throw off his Wyrd, and get up to face another morning. A further irony vexed him, too. Now, when he would have been grateful for a little company, the blue sprite seemed to have deserted him. In all his long weeks in the elven lands, he never saw her once.

  Finally, though, the morning came when the Westfolk were striking their tents, and Ganedd’s men were linking the horses on lead ropes. Maer walked through the falling camp with Calonderiel and tried to make up his mind. South with the Westfolk or east with Ganedd?

  “Tell me,” Calo
nderiel remarked. “If you do go back with Ganno, what’ll you do then?”

  After six weeks among friends, the idea of riding the long road again looked less appealing than it had in the heart of his mourning.

  “Ah well, go back to Aberwyn and tell Gwerbret Pertyc he was right after all.”

  “And then sit around in his stone tent ail winter long?”

  “I catch your drift, all right. Well and good, then. I’ll stay with you, if you’ll have me.”

  “Naught I’d like more.”

  At that time Aderyn’s alar consisted of himself and his son, the banadar, his warband of twenty and their families and tents, and a dozen other families as well, all of them, of course, owning flocks and herds. With so large a group they needed a winter campground to themselves and finally found one in a deep canyon about two miles from the sea. As usual, they set up the tents along the riverbank, but the herds would graze at the canyon’s rim. Since Calonderiel’s current woman friend rode off in a huff soon after they arrived (his women tended to come and go as frequently and as fast as the Wildfolk), Maer moved into his tent with him. Maer insisted on taking his turn at riding herd; he may have been a guest, but he disliked eating someone’s food and doing nothing in return. When he wasn’t on watch, and on the increasingly infrequent sunny days, he would often go riding, climbing out of the canyon, then letting his horse amble across the grasslands for aimless hours.

  It was on one of these solitary rides that he saw the sprite again, not that he recognized her at first. On a sunny morning he came to clump of hazels standing where three streams joined to make a proper river. Since his horse was thirsty, he dismounted, slacked its bit, and let it drink while he looked idly around. Sitting among the trees was an elven woman, dressed in a long tunic, or so he thought at first.

  “Greetings.” He trotted out one of his few Elvish words, then switched to Deverrian. “Am I disturbing you?”

  With a shake of her head and a toss of waist-length blue hair, she stood up and took a few steps toward him. Her skin was a deadly sort of pale, but otherwise she was very beautiful, with enormous blue eyes and a full, soft mouth. When she smiled, her teeth seemed on the sharp side, but they were white and no longer pointed. He was intrigued enough to drop the horse’s reins and go to meet her. Close up, she smelled of roses.

  “Maer?” she said.

  “How do you know my name?”

  “I’ve known you for ever so long. She said you wouldn’t recognize me, though. I guess you don’t.”

  “I don’t, truly. She? Who’s she?”

  “Just she. A goddess.” She paused for a slow seductive smile. “I can say words now. I love you, Maer.”

  It was her remark about the words that made him recognize his blue sprite, somehow transformed. With a little yelp he stepped back.

  “What’s wrong? I’m a real woman now.”

  “Not by half you are!”

  Her eyes flooded tears. Maer turned and ran for his horse, but as he was mounting, he could hear her sobbing. He was just frightened enough to keep riding, but her tears echoed in his memory and hurt. He knew what it was like to lose a beloved, didn’t he? The poor little thing, he would think. Trying to turn herself into a woman to please me! It was grotesque, really, and embarrassing as well as frightening—or so he saw it. As he did some hard thinking on the ride home, he decided that this mysterious “she” couldn’t possibly be a real goddess. Most likely she was just another member of the Wildfolk, unless she was something far worse. Like everyone else he knew, Maer believed in all kinds of spirits and ghosts, off in the Otherlands somewhere, who could at certain ill-omened times come through to his world. Meeting one was geis, and bad luck, and so many other awful things that he refused to tell anyone about his experience out of the real and honest fear that everyone would shun him from then on.

  That night he fell into an uneasy sleep and immediately dreamt of her. In the dream, it seemed that he was lying, wide awake but unable to move, in his usual blankets in Calonderiel’s tent. She materialized through its side, scorning the tent flap, and sat down to stare at him, merely stare in a teary-eyed reproach until he could no longer stand the silence.

  “I’m sorry I made you cry.”

  “Please come talk to me, Maer. That’s all. Please come back and talk to me.”

  “Do you live in those hazels?”

  “I live in her country. I visit the hazels. And I can visit the camp, but not when the mean old man’s around.”

  “Who?”

  “The owl.”

  Maer supposed that Aderyn did rather look like an owl, now that he thought of it. Automatically he went to sit up, only to find himself awake in a dark tent with Calonderiel snoring over on the other side. A dream, was it? But a cursed real one! When he fell asleep again, he had only his usual dreams of Glae.

  What with the continual wash of quick autumn storms and his herding duties, it was some weeks before Maer saw Little Blue-hair again. She’d been on his mind, though, out of simple guilt. He felt like a man who’s come home late at night without bothering to light a lantern and in his blind progress through the house manages to trip over and injure his faithful dog. Finally, on a sunny morning between two storms he rode out looking for her. When he found no trace of her in the hazel thickets, he rode upstream a ways through grass so tall and wet that it clung to his horse’s legs as they rode through. Still no sign of her. With an anxious eye for the dark clouds building and piling to the south, Maer considered turning back, but up ahead was another thicket. Sure enough, when he rode up, he saw her, standing between two trees and smiling, so brilliantly happy to see him that it ached his heart.

  “You did come. Finally.”

  “Well, the weather’s not been the best, you know.”

  Maer slacked his horse’s bit and as an afterthought unsaddled him to let him roll and rest. Leaving the animal peacefully grazing, he walked into the thicket. She sat down on the ground, gracefully spreading what seemed to be a long blue skirt out around her like a gracious lady. Automatically Maer sat, too, facing her.

  “Now, I can’t stay long.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because it’s growing late, and there’s a storm coming. I don’t want to get soaked, and I don’t want to stay out in the cold all night, either.”

  “Oh.” She tilted her head to one side and considered. “I can understand that.”

  “Good. Now look, little one. We’ve got to talk about somewhat that you’re not going to like. You’ve got to find yourself a man from your own people and leave me alone.”

  “Won’t!” Her eyes flashed in rage. “They’re all ugly and warty.”

  Maer had to admit that the gnomes he’d seen—and they were the only ones who seemed to be male—weren’t the handsomest lot around.

  “That’s too bad, truly, but it’s the way these things go. You know, I don’t think you should be listening to this ‘she’ you keep talking about. I think me she’s leading you down the wrong paths.”

  “Not!”

  “Oh, indeed? Then why is she messing about with the way you look? I’ll wager Nevyn and Aderyn wouldn’t be very pleased to hear about this.”

  “Don’t tell them, Maer! Oh, please, don’t!”

  She threw herself forward, so that she was crouching in front of him like a suppliant, and looked up teary-eyed. When she clasped his hand in both of hers, her flesh felt as cool and soft as silk from Bardek. Since he couldn’t manage to think of her as truly real, it was impossible for him to realize that she was dangerous. He smiled and patted her on the cheek.

  “I won’t, then. But I still don’t like this so-called friend of yours. I doubt me if she’s a goddess. I’ll wager she’s some spirit or ghost, and she shouldn’t be leaving the Otherlands to mess about here.”

  “Not a ghost. Not the Otherlands.” Her hands tightened on his as she stared up into his eyes so sadly, so wistfully, that his heart went out to her. “Would you kiss me, Maer? Just one little
kiss?”

  With a smile he bent his head and gave her a brotherly brush of the mouth across her lips. When he raised his head again, the hazels were gone. All around them in a glowy purple twilight stretched a meadow filled with summer roses, blooming in a drunken exhalation of scent. Maer shoved her away and lurched to his feet with a yelp. She laughed, rising, dancing around him in a swirl of skirt.

  “You’re mine now, and we’ll be ever so happy.”

  “Here, now! You take me back!”

  “In a little while.” She stopped, smiling at him so winsomely that he would have been suspicious if only he hadn’t been frightened out of his wits. “Of course we’ll go back. In just a little tiny while.”

  Since Maer doubted that she was capable of an outright He, he was reassured enough to look round him. Some quarter of a mile away stood what seemed to be a dun far more elaborate than the palace of Aberwyn, maybe twenty fine towers, all joined together in a pattern that he couldn’t decipher and rising out of mist.

  “Let’s go see her, and then you can go home,” the sprite said. “Please? Just for a little while?”

  Maer let her take his hand and lead him toward the many-towered dun as the twilight turned all blue and silver. As they walked on, he could see it ever more clearly; a square sort of building, unlike any he’d ever seen, supported the towers, and a square wall, turreted at the corners, surrounded it, made of many kinds of stone, pink sandstone, gray limestone, the occasional decorative touch of green marble. He could see the windows turning golden with candlelight and hear music playing of such a sweetness that he felt he could weep. But at the same time, the castle seemed to stop drawing nearer. Each step he took was like raising a foot made of lead; his legs turned numb, too, and he felt that he could barely breathe. The light began to fade in the windows ahead, although he was suddenly aware of another light, all golden and blinding, opening like a tunnel before him.