A Time of Exile (29 page)

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 surrendered 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.

Until, that is, she came closer and he saw the little amethyst figurine at her throat, such a discordant detail that it made him wonder if this dream were different. He realized then that rather than appearing as a dream-image of himself, he’d somehow assumed his body of light, the pale bluish form, a stylized man shape, in which he traveled on the etheric.

“Ado, it’s good to see you, even in this form,” Dallandra said. “But I don’t have much time. It’s hard for us to come to the Gatelands like this, you see.”

“No, I don’t see. For the love of every god, Dalla, when are you coming home?”

“Soon, soon. Oh, don’t sulk—it’s only been a few days, after all. Listen carefully. You know that guest of yours, Nevyn’s friend, the one the sprite loves?”

“His name’s Maddyn. But it hasn’t been a few days.”

“Well, five days then, but do please listen! I can feel them drawing me back already. Maddyn’s got a piece of jewelry made of dwarven silver. The Guardians need it. Ado, I’ve got so much to tell you. Sometimes the Guardians can see the future. Only in bits and flashes, but they do see it, in little tiny true dreams, like. And one of them saw that this Maddyn fellow’s going to be important. So they need the rose ring.” Even as she went on speaking, her form seemed to be growing thinner, paler, harder to see. “In my saddlebags are all sorts of things that you can trade him for
it—take as much as you need, heap him up with it, I don’t care. Just get the rose ring. Leave it in a tree near camp.”

“Do what? Why should I help these rotten creatures at all?”

“Oh, please, Ado, do be reasonable! Do for my sake if you won’t do it for theirs.” She was a mere shadow, a colored stain on the view behind her. “The biggest oak tree near camp.”

She was gone, and her companion with her. Aderyn looked down and saw the silver cord connecting his body of light with his physical body, lying in his blankets in his tent just below him. So—he hadn’t been dreaming after all! The meeting was in its way true enough. He slipped down the cord, returned to his body, and sat up, slapping the ground to earth himself out in the physical. The blue sprite was crouching at the foot of his bedroll and watching him.

“Well, little sister, you were a messenger, were you?”

She nodded yes and disappeared. For a long time that night Aderyn debated whether or not he’d do what Dallandra wanted, but in the end, for her sake, he decided that he would. He found her saddlebag—he’d been carrying it around for over a hundred and twenty years by then—and the jewelry she’d spoken of. Although it was all tarnished and dusty, she had some beautiful brooches and bracelets in the elven style, and they’d polish up nicely enough.

Early that morning, he went looking for Maddyn and found him sitting in the grass and tuning a small wooden harp in the middle of a cloud of Wildfolk. Although it was all nicked and battered, Aderyn had never heard a sweeter-sounding instrument. For a few moments they talked idly while the Wildfolk settled round them in the hope of music.

“I’ve got somewhat to ask you,” Aderyn said at last. “It’s probably going to sound cursed strange.”

“Ye gods, after knowing Nevyn for all these years I’m used to strange things. Ask away.”

“Someone told me that you’ve got a silver ring with roses on it or suchlike.”

“I do.” Maddyn looked startled that he would know. “It was given to me by a woman that I … well, if I say I loved her, don’t misunderstand me. She was someone else’s wife, you see, and while I loved her, there was never one wrong thing between us.”

He spoke so defiantly that Aderyn wondered if he were lying, not that it was any business of his. Mentally he cursed Dalla for asking for something that probably carried enormous sentiment for Maddyn.

“Um, well.” Aderyn decided that the plain truth was the best, as usual. “You see, in the dream I was told by a dweomerwoman of great power that this ring is marked by dweomer for a Wyrd of its own. She needs it very badly for a working she has underway. She’s offered to trade high.”

“Well, then, she shall have it. I’ve lived around the dweomer for years, you know. I’ve got some idea of the importance of dreams and what comes to you in them. I won’t trade, but I’ll give it to you outright.”

“Oh, here, I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to wheedle like a child. It must mean a lot to you.”

“It did once, but the woman who gave it to me is beyond caring about it or me.” The bard’s eyes brimmed tears. “If you want it, you shall have it.”

With the curious Wildfolk trailing after, they went to the tent that Maddyn was sharing with Nevyn. The bard rummaged through his saddlebags and took out something hard wrapped in a bit of embroidered linen. He opened the cloth to reveal the ring, a simple silver band about a third of an inch wide, graved with roses, and a pin shaped like a single rose, so cunningly worked that it seemed its petals should be soft to touch. He gave Aderyn the ring, but he wrapped the pin back up and returned it to his saddlebags. Idly Aderyn glanced inside the ring, half expecting to see the lady in question’s name, but it was smooth and featureless.

“The smith who made it, and that pin, too, is a brilliant craftsman,” Maddyn remarked. “Otho, his name is.”

When, out of idle curiosity, Aderyn slipped the ring on his own finger, his hand shook in a dweomer-induced cold.

“Somewhat wrong?” Maddyn said.

“There’s not. It’s just the knowing, coming upon me. You shall have this back, Maddo, one fine day. You’ll have it back in a way you never expected, and long after you’ve forgotten it.”

Maddyn stared in frank puzzlement. There was nothing Aderyn could tell him, because he didn’t know what he meant himself. His heart was bitter, too, remembering the similar promise that Evandar had made him. Apparently
the Guardian had meant that he would see Dallandra again, all right, but only in that agonizingly brief glimpse on the etheric plane.

On the morrow morning, Aderyn did what she’d asked and placed the ring high up in the crotch of the oak tree while the alar was breaking camp. Although he never knew who had taken it, the next time the alar rode that way, it was gone. In its place was a small smooth bit of wood scratched with a couple of Elvish words, a simple “thank you,” but in her handwriting. He borrowed an awl and bored a hole in the scrap, so he could wear it on a bit of thong round his neck, just because her hands had touched it. Seeing her again had brought his grief alive even as it had killed the last of his hope.

Early the next year, from an Eldidd port Maddyn sailed off with Nevyn to Bardek, and Aderyn never saw or heard of him again, not even to hear how he died, far off in the islands after the rose-shaped pin had been stolen from him. But oddly enough, Dallandra did hear of the bard’s death, or, to be more precise, she realized what had happened when his blue sprite turned up at the court of the Guardians on what seemed to her to be the day after she’d gotten the silver ring. It was the jewelry that drew the little creature, in fact, because they found her clasping it between her tiny hands. Her face was screwed up in an agony of despair, and when Elessario tried to stroke her, the sprite whipped her head around and sank her pointed teeth deep into the Guardian’s hand. Illusory blood welled, then vanished. Elessario stared for some moments at the closing wound.