A Time of Exile

by Katharine Kerr

  “Rhodry? Don’t you have one word to say to me?”

  He looked up, his mouth slack, his eyes narrow, as if he were trying to puzzle out who she was.

  “My apologies,” he said at last. “I thought you’d prefer it if I just held my tongue.”

  “Why would I do that?”

  “I must disgust you.”

  She considered the matter with the care it deserved.

  “You don’t, truly. But I’m afraid for your life.”

  “Does it matter if I live or die?”

  “Of course it does. Your Wyrd—”

  “Ah, curse my wretched Wyrd! I mean, does it matter to you?”

  Another question that deserved a careful answer, not some unthinking reply.

  “It does matter. I may not be in love with you anymore, but I like you. I always have, really. Liked you as a friend and admired you, too, and over the long years that’s more important than love.”

  “Is it? I—” He froze in mid-sentence.

  Jill felt at the edge of her mind the touch of crackling energy that means the Wildlands are lying close by. Her gray gnome popped into manifestation and pointed, all big eyes and gaping mouth, at something behind her. Opening up the second sight, she slewed around and looked. The first thing she saw was the smooth curving wall of the golden sphere of force that Aderyn and Gavantar had set over the tent and marked with flaming pentagrams. Just beyond, though, she could dimly make out a female shape, all wavery like a woman seen through bottle glass. When she rose to her knees, the shape vanished.

  “She knows I’m here.”

  “Actually, she told me you were coming. I mean, she didn’t know who you were, but she told me that the old man was bringing another dweomermaster. I figured it was you.”

  “You knew she knew, and you never told Aderyn?”

  When Rhodry blushed with shame she realized for the first time just how divided his loyalties were.

  Over the next few days Jill and Aderyn worked out a strange sort of watch. While Rhodry was awake and thus fairly safe, they both rested, too, but the minute he fell asleep, one of them would watch his body while the other stood watch out on the etheric plane. The White Lady was forced to stay far out of reach of his dreams, although Jill did catch a glimpse of her one morning. Normally, on the etheric plane an elemental spirit appears as a nexus of lines of force or as a crystalline brilliance, much more a bit of geometry than a person, but the creature that Jill saw hovering on a billow of blue light seemed caught in between. She’d put on a half-human face, but it kept forming out of and dissolving into a burst of green light and line. At the sight, Jill’s abstract compassion solidified into real sympathy; the poor spirit was being dragged from her own line of evolution and trapped where she didn’t belong. If things went much farther, she wouldn’t long survive her displacement, either, especially without Rhodry to feed upon. Jill sketched the sigil of the Kings of Aethyr into the blue light, then started forward—but the spirit fled from her with an exhalation of rage like a physical howl surging round the etheric.

  Jill returned to her body and sat up, stretching and yawning a little, to find Rhodry wide awake and staring at her.

  “What did you do to her?” he snapped.

  “I was trying to help her, you dolt.”

  He did have the grace to look shamed.

  All that day Rhodry was painfully restless. He paced back and forth across the tent, then started round and round, until Jill felt half dizzy from trying to watch him. When she suggested that they fetch Calonderiel and go riding, he didn’t even answer.

  “Are you going to start chewing your manger next?” Jill snarled.

  “What?”

  “You’re acting just like a stud being kept from a mare in heat. It’s not very pretty to watch you rut.”

  He stopped pacing and swirled around to face her.

  “Aderyn’s kinder than I am,” she went on. “He sees you as the poor innocent victim. I know you better than that. I’ll wager this phantom lover of yours didn’t have to drag you into her bed. I’ll wager she didn’t even have to ask twice.”

  Blushing scarlet, Rhodry took a furious step toward her.

  “Just try,” Jill said, grinning. “I haven’t forgotten how to fight, and I’ll wager I can throw you all over this tent.”

  He spun around, hesitated, then flung himself face down onto his blankets. She watched his shoulders shaking for a couple of minutes before she realized that he was weeping. She knelt down and began rubbing the back of his neck, letting a little of her own magnetism flow out to soothe him. In a few moments he stopped crying and rolled over.

  “Rhodry, please, I don’t want to see you die. Do what Aderyn and I say. Please?”

  He sat up, wiping his eyes on his shirt sleeve.

  “My thanks,” he whispered. “I just feel torn in pieces, and I don’t know how to—”

  The shriek sounded like a panther’s howl, blind-wild and feline, filling the tent and sweeping round. The slap came out of the shriek, a vicious blow across Jill’s face with the stinging rake of claws. All of Jill’s long years of dweomer training seemed to vanish. Without thinking she was on her feet and hitting back, automatically grabbing for an arm that wasn’t truly there, reaching for an enemy she couldn’t see. Her fingers closed on something more solid than air but not quite real; another slap caught her across the mouth; then she heard Aderyn yelling. Her enemy vanished.

  “And don’t I feel like a fool!” Jill burst out. “Here I had my chance to put the sign of the kings upon her, and I lost my head completely.”

  “I can’t say I blame you,” Aderyn said. “Instinct and all that. Gavantar felt her presence and woke me, but by the time I got here it was too late.”

  “Doesn’t matter.” Jill glanced around to see Gavantar standing just inside the tent flap. “Gav, stay here. Aderyn, let’s go talk where we can’t be overheard. I’m sorry, Rhoddo, but I can’t really trust you.”

  Since they could count on the spirit being too frightened to come back immediately, they walked a little way from the camp. Even though the grasslands were silent and sweaty in the heat of a windless summer day, being out of the tent and away from Rhodry’s obsession felt as good as a plunge into a cool river.

  “She’s as desperate as a wolf in winter if she’d risk breaching the seals,” Aderyn remarked. “It must have taken every bit of courage and power she has. I can’t believe she misses him as badly as all that.”

  “It’s somewhat else entirely. She’s jealous of me, and I think me we can use that to our advantage. Look, the Lords of the Wildlands should be willing to help in this.”

  “I’ve already made contact with them. It’s just that she keeps leading them a merry little dance, dashing away every time they get near her.”

  “What we need is somewhat to occupy what little mind she has, and I think we’ve found the perfect bait for our snare. Watching us catch her is going to be hard on Rhodry, but he’s brought it on himself, after all.”

  “Forgiving sort, aren’t you?”

  “And there you’ve put a finger on my weakness. Compassion doesn’t come easy to me, Aderyn. I’m not like Nevyn that way, or like you, either. Maybe it’s because I’ve survived my own hard times, but I don’t have much patience for someone else’s.”

  “Just so long as you know.”

  Two days later a summer storm whistled in like a curtain of rain moving across the grasslands. Aderyn announced that he was going to talk with Calonderiel and left the tent, ostentatiously taking Gavantar with him. Jill made a ball of dweomer light, hung it near the smoke hole in the ceiling, then brought out a pouch of elven “dice,” tiny wooden pyramids, painted a different color on each side. To play you shook ten pieces in your cupped hands, then strewed them out in a line; how many sides of each color came up, and the pattern they made, determined the winner, with the top score being a highly improbable straight of ten reds. Since the pyramids never fell plumb on tent cloth and grass, usual
ly the players ended up arguing—not that Rhodry seemed to care one way or the other, though. Half the time he barely watched her pieces fall, and she had to remind him when it was his turn.

  “We can stop if you want,” she said at last.

  “My apologies, but my heart’s not in it.”

  “Is she calling you?”

  “She’s always calling me these days.”

  “Ah, Rhoddo, my heart aches for you.”

  At the sound of his nickname he looked up and smiled with such a profound melancholy that for a moment she truly did feel sorry for him. She reached out and ran her hand through his hair and caressed the side of his face, and at her touch he turned his head and kissed her fingers, an old gesture, a habit from their time together long before.

  The blow from behind slammed into her so hard that Jill nearly fell right into his arms. She heard Rhodry yell; then a slap hit her hard across the face. With a wrench of will she kept herself from using magic and fought back with both hands, blindly grabbing and slapping this way and that like a cat batting at a mouse. At last one hand landed on something fairly substantial with a squishy thwack.

  “You bitch! You leave Rhodry alone!”

  Her only answer was another slap. Jill made a two-handed grab and caught something slick and cool but shaped much like an arm. There was a shriek, a slap, and suddenly Jill saw her, writhing in her hands: pale, lovely, but furious, her mouth twisted, her teeth pointed and sharp, her long blue hair waving in a private breeze of its own. She flung herself on Jill and tried to bite her, then disappeared, slipping through her hands as easily as water. Jill turned and made a blind grab, catching what felt like a handful of long hair. With a yelp the sprite reappeared, screaming and clawing at Jill’s face.

  “Enough!” Aderyn called. “We’ve got the circle drawn.”

  The sprite froze in Jill’s hands, then moaned, such a pathetic little sound that Jill let her go. She was trapped beyond her power to disappear, anyway, because not only had Aderyn and Gavantar slipped in when she was distracted by the fight, but a Lord of the Wildlands had come through to the physical plane. He seemed to be a thickening of the light, a silver shaft that barely hinted of a man shape caught within it. Her eyes springing illusionary tears, the sprite fell to her knees at his feet and buried her face in her hands.

  “It’s all over now.” The presence had a voice as soft as water slipping over rock. “You’re coming home with me, child.”

  The sprite moaned and raised her head to look desperately at Rhodry. When she held her arms out to him, he took one step forward, but Jill grabbed him and shoved him back.

  “I hate you!” the sprite hissed at Jill.

  “I don’t hate you, little one.”

  Just beyond the lord another presence appeared like a beam of light thrown from a slit in a lantern, enclosing a female form this time. Although Jill heard Aderyn gasp aloud, she kept her attention on the tormented being kneeling in front of her.

  “Go with your lord. He’ll make you well again.”

  The silver shaft glowed with warm light, then glided forward to envelop the sprite. The vague man shape within stretched out one hand to stroke her hair; then they both vanished. Rhodry fell forward, fainting, into Jill’s ready arms. Swearing a little at his weight, she laid him down on the floor, then grabbed a blanket and covered him, because he was dead pale and icy cold, shivering at the loss of the magnetic link he’d made with his White Lady. When she looked up to say something to Aderyn, she realized that the female presence was still there, in fact more substantial than before. As she stepped free of the pillar of light, her flesh seemed almost solid, though translucent. She herself seemed elven and very beautiful, with hair so pale that it was almost silver and eyes of a cold storm gray. As still as stone, Aderyn watched her, his expression forced into such a hard-set indifference that Jill suddenly realized who she must be.

  “Dallandra?” she whispered.

  The presence turned her head and considered her un-speaking for a long moment.

  “Do you follow the paths of the light?” Her voice was more a thought touching the mind, but Aderyn heard her, too, judging from the flicker of pain that crossed his face.

  “I do.” Jill spoke aloud.

  “Good.” She turned to Aderyn. “Elessario’s sorry now. She didn’t realize what she was doing. She was trying to help the poor thing when it loved the man called Maer.”

  “I assumed your friend was guiltless.”

  Aderyn’s voice was so cold that Jill was honestly shocked, but Dallandra ignored him.

  “There is a child that will be born,” she said to Jill. “Soon. Or soon as we judge time. It might be a long time in your world.”

  “Does this child concern me?”

  “I’d hope so. I see danger all round her.”

  “I’ll help if I can.”

  She nodded in a sort of wordless thanks, but her attention was drifting already to some other world. She was growing thinner, like a smoke curl in the wind.

  “What of the ring?” Jill put all the urgency she could into her voice to try to pull her back. “Do you know the meaning of the rose ring?”

  For the briefest of moments she smiled, and for that instant she seemed mortal again and solid.

  “I don’t. They never did tell me. They’re like that, you know.”

  Her chuckle seemed to hang in the air. She was gone. Aderyn let out his breath in one sharp sigh, tossed his head, and knelt down beside Rhodry as if nothing had happened at all.

  “Jill, you’ll stay here for a few days, won’t you? I could use your help.”

  “Of course. I’m always glad to pay you a service, and I’d like to see him well again, too. I loved him so much, once.”

  “Once and not now?”

  “Once and not now.” Jill got up with a sigh. “And I regret it, in a way, losing a love like that, but it never should have been, and now it’s gone, and that’s that.”

  Aderyn was silent for a long moment. When he spoke his voice cracked with unnatural calm.

  “Too bad you never knew Dalla. I think you two would have gotten along quite well.”

  When Rhodry woke from that faint, some twenty minutes later, it seemed to him that he’d slept for days. He was muddled, too, wondering what he was doing, lying in Aderyn’s tent with Jill and Gavantar standing round, as solemn as priests.

  “What’s wrong?” he mumbled. “Have I been sick?”

  “You might say that.” Aderyn handed him a cup of hot liquid. “Drink this, will you?”

  The water tasted faintly of herbs, and drinking it made his head clear enough for him to remember the White Lady. All at once he couldn’t bear to look at any of them, and especially not Jill; he felt his cheeks burning with shame.

  “Ah, the blood’s returning to your face, I see.” Aderyn sounded amused. “Come on, lad, it’s all ended well enough. I can’t blame you for losing a fight when you didn’t have a weapon to your name and she had a whole armory.”

  For days Rhodry refused to leave Aderyn’s tent except in the dead of night, when everyone else was asleep. Under the waxing moon he would pick his way through the grasslands or stride back and forth along the streambank, always hurrying as if he could leave his shame and dishonor far behind or perhaps as if he could meet himself coming in the other direction and at last know who he was. Never once in that long madness did he think of himself as Rhodry Maelwaedd. The best swordsman in the kingdom, the lord whose honor was admired by the High King himself, the best gwerbret Aberwyn had ever known—those men were all dead. Every now and then he did become the old Rhodry who was a father and a grandfather and wonder if his blood kin fared well, but only briefly. Even his beloved grandson seemed to be drifting farther and farther away from him with every minute that passed, as if the child rode a little boat sailing endlessly away down some vast river. Just at dawn he would come stumbling back exhausted from these walks to slip into Aderyn’s tent and sleep the day away in a welter of dreams.
Often he dreamt of old battles, particularly the destruction of a town called Slaith; that dream was so vivid that he could practically smell the smoke as the pirate haven burned to the ground. Once, just when the moon was at her full, he dreamt of the White Lady, but it was only a distant thing, a memory dream and perfectly normal. The marvels were gone, utterly gone. When he woke, he was in tears.

  Aderyn and Gavantar were sitting in the center of the tent by the dead fire and studying a book together, talking in low voices about sigils and signs. From the light glowing through the walls of the tent, Rhodry could tell that it was near sunset. When he sat up, Aderyn looked over.

  “Hungry? There’s smoked fish.”

  “I’m not, but my thanks.”

  Aderyn closed the book and studied him for a moment, or, rather, he seemed to be studying the air all around Rhodry.

  “You know, you need to get out in the sunlight more. You’re pale as milk.”

  Rhodry looked away.

  “Oh, come now,” Aderyn said sharply. “No one outside of Jill and me and Gavantar even knows the truth.”

  “Everyone else just thinks I went mad, right? That’s dishonor enough.”

  Aderyn sighed. Rhodry forced himself to look at him.

  “Somewhat I wanted to ask you,” Rhodry said. “When this, well, this trouble started, you said some strange things that I’ve only just remembered. She found me again, you said. What do you mean, again? I never saw her before in my life.”

  “Um, well, I was wondering if you’d remember that. I made a terrible mistake, saying such a thing.” The old man got up and walked over, and at that moment he seemed taller, towering, threatening, his dark eyes cold. “Do you truly want to know? I’m bound to tell you if you ask, but that asking is a grim thing in itself, and the beginning of a long, long road.”

  All at once Rhodry was frightened. He knew obscurely that he was about to let some terrible secret out of its cage like a wild beast, knowledge that would rend and rip the few shreds he had left of his old life, his old self. He had seen too many secret places of the world, crossed too many forbidden borders already, to risk more.