A Time of Exile (56 page)

“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.

“If I’m not meant to know, keep your secrets. It’d be a fine way to repay you, anyway, prying into things you shouldn’t tell me.”

Aderyn sighed in honest relief and looked his normal self again. It occurred to Rhodry, much later, that the old man had been as frightened as he.

That day marked a turning point, as if fear were the only medicinal strong enough to drive out his shame. That very evening Rhodry left Aderyn’s tent and wandered over to Calonderiel’s, where Jill was staying. As usual, the banadar had a crowd around him, young men, mostly, passing a skin of mead back and forth. While Jill watched, a little nervously, everyone greeted Rhodry without comment. He found a place to sit off to one side, took his turn at the skin when the mead came his way, and merely listened to the talk of hunting and the summer’s grass. When he left, everyone said goodbye in a casual sort of way, and that night he only walked for a couple of hours under the waning moon. On the morrow he took his place guarding the horse herd, and again, no one said a wrong word to him or asked him one single thing.

That night he joined Calonderiel’s men for the evening meal. They accepted him so easily that he realized he’d already been marked as a member of the banadar’s warband, another swordsman attached to the only kind of magistrate the People knew. The place suited him, and he took it gratefully, doubly grateful that he never had to say a formal word in acknowledgment. Swearing fealty to a man other than the High King, even to his oldest friend left in the world, would have come hard. After the meal they sat outside around a fire, passing the mead skin around, until Melandonatar brought out a harp and struck up a song. When the others joined in, Rhodry at first only listened. The music swept around him, long lines of sprung rhythm in some minor key, then tangled upon itself in intricate harmonies as the men sang of an ancient battle, a desperate last stand at the gates of Rinbaladelan during the Great Burning long ago. The ending left everyone so sad that the harper struck up a happier tune straightaway, a simple song about hunting. This one Rhodry knew, because it had been
a favorite at the Aberwyn court on those occasions when the People came to visit, and without even thinking he joined in, adding his cracked tenor to the melodic line and leaving the difficult harmony to the others. Since the song had its bawdy side, they were laughing as much as singing, making so much noise that Rhodry never heard someone walking up to kneel behind him.

All at once a new voice joined in, a trained and beautiful tenor that rang like a bell on every lighthearted syllable. When Rhodry felt a friendly hand on his shoulder, he turned and looked into a face that was more than half his. Devaberiel’s hair was as pale as moonlight, but his elven-slit eyes were the same cornflower blue as Rhodry’s, and the shape of his jaw and his forehead, and the quick sunny way he smiled, were as familiar as a mirror image as well. Rhodry stopped singing, feeling tears rise in his throat beyond his power to call them back. Devaberiel threw one arm around his shoulders and pulled him close. Slowly the music died away as every man in the circle turned to watch.

“Banadar?” Devaberiel called out. “Is there any man here who is so blind as to deny that this is my son?”

“I doubt it very much,” Calonderiel said, grinning. “He certainly looks yours to me.”

“Then here in the required assembly I claim him and present him to you.”

Rhodry wept in earnest, wondering why even as the tears came. The men rose to their feet and cheered; women hurried over with skins of mead; sleepy children crawled out of tents to join the celebration. In the midst of the uproar it was impossible to hear a word anyone said. Rhodry saw Salamander standing in the shadows with Jill, and his brother was practically jigging with excitement, with Wildfolk swarming around him like bees round a hive. When Rhodry went to join them, however, Jill turned on her heel and walked away. Even though he’d expected no less, still her coldness stabbed him to the heart, and he knew better than to tiy to follow her.

“Well, I finally caught up with the esteemed parent,” Salamander burst out. “And dragged him back just as I promised.”

“I happened to be on my way here already,” Devaberiel said with a certain amount of frost in his voice. “But no
matter. I see you’re wearing that wretched ring, younger son of mine. Has anyone figured out what it means yet?”

“Jill wants to talk with you about that, Father,” Salamander put in. “The morrow will do, however. Tonight let us celebrate, and lo, the moon already rises to join us at our drinking!”

It was two days before Rhodry had a chance to speak with Jill. He was nursing a hangover in Aderyn’s quiet tent when she came in, carrying a pair of saddlebags. He slipped into Deverrian when he spoke, simply because she was so much a part of his youth and his past.

“It looks like you’re leaving us. When?”

“Tomorrow at dawn.”

“Jill, I only wish you’d stay with me a while.”

“I can’t. I’ve told you that before often enough. We don’t belong together.”

“I just don’t understand.”

“That’s true. You don’t.” She got up and paced to the opening of the tent, stood there listening to the sounds of the camp. “And you can’t understand, truly, so for the love of every god, let it drop!”

For a brief moment Rhodry wanted to strangle her; then he wanted to weep; then he sighed and knelt down to feed a twig or two into the tiny fire.

“And where will you go, then?” he said.

“Bardek.”

“Bardek?”

“Just that.” She came back and knelt by the fire. “I’ve just time to get back to Aberwyn and find a ship, I think, before the sailing season’s over.”

“And why do you want to go to Bardek, or is that beyond my poor and pitiful understanding, too?”

“You’re still a sulky bastard when you want to be, aren’t you? Listen, you’ve already nearly drowned in trouble for wanting one woman you couldn’t have. Why do you—”

“Oh, hold your tongue! That’s a nasty weapon to use!”

“But a true-speaking, isn’t it? Anyway, I’m going to find out about the rose ring. Or try to, anyway.”

Automatically he glanced down at the silver stripe on the third finger of his right hand.

“Well, to be more accurate, about those letters inside it.” Jill went on. “Give it over for a minute, will you?”

“I don’t know what makes you think it’s an island word when it’s written in Elvish. Here.”

“I never said I thought it was Bardekian.” She held it up, angling the band a little to catch the light from the fire. “Do you remember when you were a captive in the islands? At that rich woman’s house—I don’t remember her name, but I do remember what you told me about her litter boys. Remember them, with the odd yellow eyes, and you were sure they saw the Wildfolk?”

“By all the gods, so I was! I wondered if they had elven blood in their veins.”

“I still do. Look, I’ve been talking with your father about the old days. After the Burning the People fled every which way. We know they had boats. Rinbaladelan—and it was a seaport, mind—held out for a year, time enough to pack up treasures for an exile. Your ancestors—the folk who fled east—were country people; they didn’t have the time or the inclination to rescue books and scrolls as they ran. But Rinbaladelan was an ancient city of learning and every grace, or so the story runs, and you can carry books a cursed sight easier in a boat than in a saddlebag.”

“And after all this time, do you think any of those books still exist?”

“Not unless someone copied them a couple of times over twixt now and then, no—not in the jungles of the southern islands with all the damp and mildews. But if—what if, just what if some of the People reached a haven there, and survived to build a city, and what if they’ve kept the old lore alive?”

Rhodry sat back on his heels and considered the flames. It seemed that he saw towers of gold rise among them, and the glitter of mighty palaces.

“Jill, let me go with you.”

“Ye gods, you’re as stubborn as a terrier with a dead rat in its mouth! I won’t, and that’s that. Your place is here. I don’t even know why, but it is.”

“Oh, is it now? And I suppose I’m just supposed to sit here and wait for you to come back! Cursed if I will!”

“You might be cursed if you don’t.” Oddly enough, she grinned at him. “If you’re going to keep company with sorcerers, you’d better watch what you say. But truly, I doubt if
it matters. Run where you will, Rhodry ap Devaberiel, but the dweomer will catch you when it wants you.”

He tried to think of some clever retort. There was none. She held the ring up to the fire again, and the silver sent a long wink of light into the shadows.

“It’s got to be a name,” she said at last.

“What?”

“The lettering, you dolt! If it was an ordinary word, someone would be able to translate it. Between them your father and brother took it to every sage in two kingdoms. Someone would have recognized it. But a name—well, anyone can call themselves what they like, particularly if they’re neither elf nor human, can’t they now?” She frowned at the writing, then sounded it out. “Arr-soss-ah soth-ee lorr-ess-oh-ahz.” She paused, then spoke it again in a strange tight voice, almost a growl, that seemed to vibrate through the tent and spread out to the ends of the earth. “Arzosah Sothy Lorezohaz!”

And far away to the north, on a rocky ledge high up a mountain that no human eyes had ever seen, a sleeping dragon stirred and whimpered in a sudden nightmare.

(Each column is one soul; each line, one story.)