A Time of Exile (10 page)

“I had a dream while I was napping, and I need to see a bit more. Hum, the amethyst will do.”

Carefully Nananna wrapped the other jewels up in bits of fine silk cloth, then laid the amethyst disk in the palm of her right hand. Dallandra knelt beside her and looked into the stone, where a small beam of light gleamed in the dead center, then swelled to a smoky void—or so it seemed to Dallandra. Nananna, however, watched intently, nodding her head every now and then at some detail. Finally she spoke the ritual word that cleared the stone of vision.

“Now that’s interesting,” Nananna said. “What do you think of it?”

“Nothing. I couldn’t see.”

“A man of magic is coming to us from the east. His destiny lies here, and I’m to take him in.”

“Not one of those smelly Round-ears?”

“Any man who serves the Light is welcome in my tent.”

“Of course, Wise One, but I didn’t think a Round-ear would have the wits for magic.”

“Now, now! Harsh words and prejudice don’t suit a student of the Light.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I don’t like the Round-ears much either, mind. But I’m trying. Do your best to try, too.”

In the middle of the next afternoon, they rode into the alardan, the great camp where the People meet at the end of the summer after a long season’s wandering with their flocks and herds. That year the banadars of the scattered tribes had chosen the Lake of the Leaping Trout, the most southerly of a chain of lakes along a wide river which the Eldidd men, with a characteristic lack of imagination, called simply Aver Peddroloc, the four-lake river. To the south stood a vast oak forest, tangled and primeval, that was a burying ground held sacred by the People for a thousand years. From the north shore spread an open meadow, where now hundreds of brightly painted tents rose like flowers in the grass. Out beyond were flocks of sheep and herds of horses, watched over by a ring of horsemen.

As their little group rode up, Talbrennon peeled off to drive their stock into the communal herds. Dallandra led the others down to the lakeshore and found an open spot to set up camp. As they dismounted, ten men came running to
do the heavy work for the Wise One and her apprentice. Dallandra led Nananna away from the bustle and helped her sit down in the grass, where Enabrilia and the baby joined them. Farendar was awake, looking up at his mother with a wide toothless grin.

“Look, sweetie, look at the camp. Isn’t it nice? There’ll be music tonight, and you can listen.”

Farendar gurgled, a pretty baby, with big violet eyes, a soft crown of blond hair, and delicate ears, long and tightly furled, as all babies’ ears were. They would begin to loosen when he was three or so.

“Give your aunt Dalla a kiss.” Enabrilia held him up. “Malamala’s sweetest love.”

Obligingly Dallandra kissed a soft pink cheek. There was a definite odor about the child.

“He’s dirty again.”

“Oh, naughty one!”

Enabrilia knelt down in the grass and pulled up his little tunic to unlace the leather diaper and pull it off. The diaper was stuffed with long grass, definitely well used; Enabrilia shook it out and began to pull clean. All the while she kept up a running stream of sweet chatter that vaguely turned Dallandra’s stomach. Her friend gushed over the baby no matter what he did, whether soiling his diapers or blowing his snotty little nose. At times it was hard for Dallandra to believe that this was the same girl who used to train for an archer and race her horse ahead of the alar across the grasslands, who used to camp alone in the forest with Dallandra, just the two of them. Every child, of course, was more precious than gold and twice as rare among the People; every elf knew that, and Dallandra reminded herself of it often. When Enabrilia started to put the grass-filled diaper back on, Farendar proceeded to urinate all over himself and her hand, but his mother just laughed as if he’d done something clever.

“I think I’ll walk back to the camp,” Dallandra said. “See if the tent is ready.”

The tents were indeed standing, and Halaberiel the banadar was waiting in front of Nananna’s with four members of his warband. Louts, Dallandra considered the young men, with their long Eldidd swords at their sides and their swaggering walk. Halaberiel himself, however, was a different
matter, a farseeing man and a skilled judge for the alarli under his jurisdiction. When Dallandra held up her hands palm outward, he acknowledged the gesture of respect with a small firm nod.

“I’m glad to see you, Wise One. I trust Nananna is well.”

“A bit tired. She’s down by the lakeshore.”

“I’ll go speak with her.” Halaberiel glanced at his escort. “You all stay here.”

The four of them obligingly sat down in front of the tent. The worst four, Dallandra thought. Calonderiel, Jezryaladar, Elbannodanter, and Albaral—they were all staring, hungry-eyed and smiling. She felt like kicking dirt in their faces. As she followed the banadar, Calonderiel got up and ran after, catching her arm and bobbing his head to her.

“Please, Dalla, won’t you take a little stroll with me? Oh, by the gods who live in the moon, I’ve dreamt about you every night for weeks.”

“Have you?” Dallandra shook her arm free. “Then maybe you’ve been drinking too much Eldidd mead before you go to bed. Try taking a herbal purgative.”

“How can one so lovely be so cruel? I’d die for you. I’ll do anything you say, fight a thousand Round-ears or ride alone to hunt down the fiercest boar! Please, won’t you give me some quest? Something dangerous, and I’ll do it or die all for your sake.”

“What a lardhead you can be!”

“If I talk like a madman, it’s because I’m mad all for the love of you. Haven’t I loved you for years? Have I ever looked at another woman in all that time? Haven’t I brought you gifts from down in Eldidd? Please, won’t you walk with me a little ways? If I die for lack of your kisses, my blood will be on your head.”

“And if I get a headache from listening to you babble, then the pain will be in my head, too. Cal, the alardan’s full of prettier women than me. Go find one and seduce her, will you?”

“Oh, by the gods!” Calonderiel tossed his head, his violet eyes flashing with something like rage. “Doesn’t love mean anything to you?”

“About as much as meat means to a deer, but I don’t
like to see you unhappy. We’ve been friends for ever so long, since we were children, truly.”

Just seventy that year, Calonderiel was a handsome man, tall even for one of the People, towering a full head above her, his hair so pale it seemed white in the summer sun and his eyes as deep-set as a dark pool among shade trees. Yet Dallandra found the thought of him kissing her—or worse yet, caressing her—as repellent as the thought of biting into meat and finding a maggot.

“Besides,” she went on, “how would your pack of friends take it if I chose you?”

“They’d have to take it. We threw knucklebones to see who’d get the first chance to court you, and I won.”

“You what?” Dallandra slapped him so hard across the face that he reeled back. “You beast! You gut-sucking sheep worm! Am I supposed to be flattered by that?”

“Of course you are. I mean, aren’t you glad to have four men all ready to die for you?”

“Not if they dice over me first like a piece of Eldidd ironware.”

“I didn’t mean it like that!”

“Horse turds.”

When Dallandra started to walk away, he grabbed her arm again, bobbing his head and ducking before her like a bird drinking from a stream.

“Please, wait! At least tell me this: is there someone you love more than me? If there is, then I’ll ride off with a broken heart, but I’ll ride.”

“Since I don’t love you at all, it wouldn’t be hard to find someone I loved more, but actually, I haven’t even looked. Why don’t you believe me, you cloudbrain? I don’t love you. I don’t love anyone. I don’t want to get myself a man. Plain truth. No more to say. There you are.”

Rage flared in his eyes.

“I
don’t
believe it. Come on, tell me: what can I do to make you love me?”

She was about to swear at him, then had a better idea.

“I’ll never love any man who isn’t my match in magic.”

“What a rotten thing to say! What man’s ever going to match you? That’s a woman’s art.”

“It doesn’t have to be.” Dallandra gave him a small
smile. “A man could learn it, too—if he had the guts, and most of you don’t.”

This time, when Dallandra shook free and walked on, Cal stayed behind, savagely kicking at a tuft of grass with the toe of his boot. She hurried on to the lakeshore, where Nananna and Halaberiel were sitting in the long grass in the shade of a willow tree, their heads together and talking urgently.

“I’ve asked the banadar to do us a small favor,” Nananna said. “Concerning yesterday’s vision.”

“Of course I’ll go look for this man, Wise One. I’ll take my escort with me, too.” He thought for a moment. “Let’s see—the last of the Round-ear merchants is still here. I could ask him if he’s seen anything of a stranger.”

“No,” Nananna said. “I know this is only making your task harder, Banadar, but I’d prefer that you speak to the Round-ears as little as possible.”

Halaberiel shot her a troubled glance, then nodded his agreement.

“Take Cal with you, will you?” Dallandra broke in. “I want him out of my sight.”

“Oh, now now.” Halaberiel gave her an infuriatingly paternal smile. “He’s a decent boy, really, if you’d only give him a chance.”

When Dallandra crossed her arms over her chest and glared at him, Halaberiel hastily looked away and made the sign against the evil eye with his fingers. Although the evil eye was only a myth, most dweomerfolk found it a useful one.

“Very well, Cal will ride with me,” Halaberiel said. “Now, about this Round-ear we’re fetching, can you give me a sign to look for, O Wise One?”

“Come to my tent after dark. I’ll give you a riddle to ask him, too, just to make sure you’ve cut the horse out of the herd of cows.”

“Good.” Halaberiel rose, bobbing his head at her. “Shall I escort you to your tent?”

“No, but thank you. I think I’ll take a bit of sun.”

Nananna waited until the banadar was out of earshot before she spoke.

“And why are you breaking poor Cal’s heart?”

“I don’t love him.”

“Very well, then, but there’s nothing wrong with your finding a nice young man to keep you warm in the winter.”

Dallandra wrinkled her nose and shuddered. Nananna laughed, patting Dallandra gently on the arm with one frail hand.

“Whatever you want, child. But a cold heart may find it hard to work magic as it grows older and more chill.”

“Oh, maybe so, but I hate it when they hang around me, yapping like dogs around a bitch in heat! Sometimes I wish I’d been born ugly.”

“It might have been easier, but the Goddess of the Clouds gave you beauty, and doubtless for some reason of her own. I wouldn’t argue with her now that you have it.”

That night was the first in what promised to be a long series of feasts. Each alar made up a huge quantity of a single dish and set it out in front of their tents—Dallandra stewed up a vast pot of dried vegetables heavily spiced with Bardek curries—and the People drifted from one alar to another, sampling each dish, stopping to talk with old friends, then moving on to the next. Dallandra took a wooden bowl and trotted back and forth from alar to alar to fetch a selection of favorite treats for Nananna, who sat regally on a pile of cushions by a campfire and received visitors while she ate. By the end of the alardan she would have seen everyone at the meeting and dispensed wise advice, too, for most of their problems. Someday this role of wise woman would be Dallandra’s, but she was filled with the dread that she was too young, not ready, nowhere near Nananna’s equal. Her worst fear was that she would somehow betray her people’s trust in her.

Slowly the night darkened; a full moon rose bloated on the far empty horizon. Here and there, music broke out in the camp, as harpers and flute players took out their instruments and started the traditional songs. Singing, or at least humming along under their breath, the People drifted back and forth through the light from a hundred campfires. Just as the moon was rising high in the sky, the Round-ear merchant came to pay his respects to Nananna. Since she was supposed to be polishing her knowledge of the Eldidd tongue, Dallandra moved close to listen as Namydd of Aberwyn and his son, Daen, made Nananna low bows in the Round-ear fashion and sat down at her feet. The merchant
was a portly sort, graying and paunchy, and his thin wisps of hair made his round ears painfully obvious. Daen, however, was nice-looking for one of his kind, with a thick shock of blond hair to cover what Dallandra thought of as his deformity.

“I’m most grateful you’d speak with me, O Wise One,” Namydd said in his barbarous-sounding speech. “I’ve brought you a little gift, just as a token of my respect.”

Daen promptly handed over a cloth-wrapped parcel, which his father presented to Nananna with as much of a bow as he could manage sitting down. With a small regal smile, Nananna unwrapped it, then held up two beautiful steel skinning knives with carved bone handles.

“How lovely! My thanks, good merchants. Here, Dallandra, you may choose which one you want.”

Eagerly Dallandra took the knives and studied them in the firelight. One knife was decorated purely with interlacements and spirals; the other had a picture of a running horse in the clumsy Eldidd style. She chose the abstract one and handed the other back to Nananna.

“My thanks, good merchants,” Dallandra said. “This is a truly fine thing.”

“Not half as fine as you deserve,” Daen broke in.

Dallandra realized that he was staring at her with a besotted smile. Oh no, not him, too! she thought. She rose, made a polite bob, then hurried to the tent on the excuse of putting the new knives away.

By the time the moon was at her zenith, Nananna was tired. Dallandra shooed the last visitors away, then escorted Nananna to their tent and helped her to settle into bed. In the soft glow of the magical light, Nananna seemed as frail as a tiny child as she lay wrapped in her dark blue blanket, but her violet eyes were still full of life, sparkling like a lass’s.