The Dragon Revenant (60 page)

“We’ll have to walk the horses up,” he remarked. “It’s too steep a ride.”

“Oh here! Is this where you live?”

“I did until about fifteen years ago. I’ll admit to being pleased to see it again.”

The cleft was about six feet wide, and one side was just a natural cliff of packed dirt and weeds. The other, however, was a proper stone wall, made of massive true-cut blocks, and sporting a wooden door with a big iron ring in the middle. The Wildfolk came to meet them, sylphs like a thickening in the air, gnomes with scrawny faces and long arms, dancing and clustering round Nevyn like children welcoming their father home. A blue sprite with a mouthful of pointed teeth materialized on Jill’s shoulder, then pulled her hair so hard that it stung. With a yelp, Jill swatted her away.

“Stop that,” Nevyn said to the sprite. “Jill’s going to live here, too.”

The sprite glowered, then vanished with a puff of air.

“I put this door in myself,” Nevyn said. “A carpenter would laugh at the job I did, but it opens and shuts well enough.”

As if in demonstration he swung the door wide and walked in, the horse and mule following him gingerly. When Jill led her horse after, she found a stable, a big stone room with four mangers along one wall and fresh hay piled up by the other. Somewhere nearby, she heard the sound of running water. On the wall was an iron sconce with a half-burned wooden torch. Although it took Nevyn two snaps of his fingers to light the old, damp wood, finally the smoke rose straight up and disappeared through a hidden vent. The air was remarkably clean and fresh for a cave.

“The Wildfolk have done a good job,” Nevyn said. “But I fear me they stole this hay from some farmer. I’ll have to find out who and make amends.”

They unsaddled the stock and set them at their hay, then carried their gear down a short tunnel into what seemed to be an enormous room, stretching away and echoing in the darkness. Jill heard the dweomerman moving in the dark; then a fire blazed up in a huge hearth of square-cut blocks. Even though it was breathlessly hot outside, the caves were downright cold. The room was about a hundred feet on a side, with walls of smooth stone and a flat ceiling a good twenty feet above them. Huddled near the hearth were a wooden table with a pair of benches, a narrow cot, a large freestanding cupboard and a wooden barrel.

“Stolen ale, as well,” the old man remarked with a sigh. “We’ll have to get you a cot of your own. There’s a carpenter in the village.”

“I can sleep on a pile of straw for now. Did you build this place?”

“I didn’t indeed.” He paused to give her a mysterious grin. “But I did dig it out with a gnome or two to help me. Let’s have a bit of this purloined ale, and I’ll tell you the story.”

Nevyn rummaged through the cupboard, which was crammed full of books, cooking tools, packets of now-stale herbs, bits of cloth, and a few dusty trinkets. Finally he brought out two pewter tankards, dusted them out, and filled them at the barrel. The two of them settled themselves by the fire away from the chill of the vast room. For some minutes the old man gazed around him fondly like a merchant who, after a long year on the road trading, is finally home and at his own hearth.

“Well,” he said at last. “This tor isn’t a natural hill. As far as I can tell from poking around in here, it was a village long ago—very long ago, before the Dawntime. The folk threw their garbage out onto the street and built new houses on the ruins of old ones, until the village grew higher and higher above the meadow. Then they left for some reason, still long before the people of Bel rode to Deverry. So the wind blew dirt over it, and the grass grew up. Then, around the Dawntime, someone built a dun on the hill to guard themselves from our bloodthirsty ancestors. Didn’t do them one bit of good. I found a room with headless skeletons in it round the other side of the hill. I always thought those skeletons were human, but after meeting Perryn, I’m not so sure. Most of the dun was razed, but this corner of it was untouched when I found it. So, then, the people of Bel rode on down to the coast, and the wind and the grass came back, and with time, it all got covered up with dirt again and the hill was higher than ever. All I’ve done, you see, is to clear myself a space to live in.”

“And what about the ravine?”

“Oh, that runs along the old outside wall. Maybe there was a moat once, but whatever the reason, the ground settled away from the stonework. I happened to see it one day, when I was passing by, and climbed up to investigate. That’s how I stumbled onto the tor’s little secret.” He smiled briefly. “I’ve been digging like a mole, truly. It amuses me in the long winters. I put a tunnel down here and there, and sometimes I find a bit of pottery or jewelry. They’re all in that cupboard.” He sighed heavily. “One of these days, I have to clean the cursed thing out.”

“I’ll do it. I’m your apprentice now.”

“So you are.” Nevyn’s voice dropped to a whisper. “Ah, by the gods, so you are.”

The gratitude in his voice stirred the constant strange feeling in Jill, that she had known him before, long long ago in some other country. With it came another, that her whole life had led her to this room, half under the earth, half above it. Hastily she got up and fetched food from their saddlebags, to lay out the meal for the master like the apprentice she was. In the hearth, the Wildfolk of Fire cavorted, rubbing their backs on the logs like a cat will do on a doorjamb. Nevyn stared into the fire while Jill cut bread and cheese and laid the slices on a plate.

“Trying to teach you should be interesting,” Nevyn said. “First, I suppose, we’ll have to unscramble what that chattering elf taught you. I find it hard to believe there was much order or logic in his lessons.”

“There wasn’t, truly, but it didn’t seem to matter. It’s odd, but I almost feel as if I’d studied dweomer before.”

“Oh, do you now?” He smiled briefly. “Well, well, do you now!”

During their meal, Nevyn said nothing more, merely ate absentmindedly and stared into the fire. Against her will, against all her efforts to stop herself, Jill started thinking about Rhodry. Ever since their tormented farewell, she had been trying to put him behind her, as if his memory were a place she could ride away from forever. During the day, she could distract herself, but at this time of night the memories came, when they would have been sharing a meal and talking over the day behind them, whether at a table in some lord’s hall or by a campfire on the road. She was surprised, because she’d been expecting that she would miss having him in her bed most of all, but it was his company that meant the most to her. I truly did love him, she thought, but I always knew the dweomer demanded its price. She could see him so clearly in her mind that she almost wept, see him standing by a hearth, turning toward her with his beautiful sunny smile, his cornflower-blue eyes snapping with a jest and yet he was miserable—she could see that, too—the merriment and the jesting were a feverish attempt to hide how unhappy he was. He was wearing a fine linen shirt, embroidered with the dragons of Aberwyn in silver thread that caught firelight. When a page brought him a silver goblet of mead, Rhodry gulped it down much too fast. Suddenly the vision widened. Jill saw that the luxurious chamber was filled with people in the plaids of the noble-born. Sitting in a chair near Rhodry was a young woman, as slender as a reed and just as fragile-looking, but pretty with her long dark hair and wide dark eyes. Her slender hands were tightly clasped as they lay on her dark-blue dress. With a shock, Jill realized that she was wearing the plaid of Aberwyn for her kirtle. Oh by the hells, Jill thought, is that what they found for him to marry? Yet, when the lass turned her head to look at her half-drunk new husband with a very real terror of this man that the gods and her brother had dumped into her bed, Jill found it in her heart to pity the child. All at once, the side of Jill’s face stung like fire. She tried to rub the pain away, found that she was utterly paralyzed as the pain came again and Nevyn was leaning over her, his hand raised for another slap. Drunkenly Jill looked round and saw the walls of the buried chamber.

“My apologies for hitting you,” Nevyn said. “It was the fastest way to bring you back. What were you scrying? Rhodry?”

“Just that. He must be in Dun Deverry. I saw wyvern blazons all over the furniture and suchlike.”

“Doubtless the King wants to look over this new vassal of his.”

“Oh, no doubt. I saw his wife. She’s naught but a little mouse sent to amuse the cats.”

“Here, listen to you.”

Jill shrugged and looked away. She could feel tears rising in her throat. With a sigh, Nevyn sat down next to her on the bench.

“Child, you have my sympathy.” His voice was oddly gentle. “I know you love your Rhodry.”

Jill nodded miserably in agreement.

“You had to continue your training,” Nevyn went on. “Don’t you see what’s happened? You’ve been using your dweomer, but all in bits and pieces, so you’ve got no control, no true understanding of what you’re doing. You sit here longing for Rhodry, you picture him in your mind, and all at once, you slip into a trance.”

“And truly, I didn’t even know it.” Jill was frightened as she thought things over. “What would have happened to me if I hadn’t come with you?”

“I don’t truly know, but there’s a good chance you’d have gone mad.”

“But you would have let me stay with Rhodry if I wanted.”

“I’d have been there to keep an eye on you, but no matter what the cost, you had to choose freely.”

The fire was burning low. Jill got up and laid on a couple of logs, watched them catch as the Wildfolk fell upon them in a shower of flame. The ghost of a memory haunted her mind, an abstract thing without image or word, of a time when she had not been allowed to choose, when she had been marked for the dweomer but some other thing had gotten in her way. She couldn’t remember what it was, another man, perhaps, that she’d loved as much as she loved Rhodry. All at once she knew that she had to remember, had to see her Wyrd clearly. She sat down in silence while the memory faded, then rose again, a restless spirit from the Otherlands of the soul.

The time when she should have chosen, the time when her Wyrd had been snatched from her. The time when the man sitting beside her should have brought her to her Wyrd.

“Galrion,” Jill said. “That was your name then.”

“It was.” Nevyn spoke very quietly.

Speaking the name brought a memory image with it, of Nevyn as a very young man.

“You’ve never died,” Jill said. “You’ve never died from that day to this.”

“And how could I have died and be here? When a man dies, isn’t that an end to him?”

His voice was humorous. When she realized that she understood the jest, she turned so cold that she got up to warm her hands at the fire.

“It was all a very long time ago,” Jill said.

“It was.”

“And how many lives have I lived since then?”

“So—you know the truth, do you?”

“I do.” Jill turned from the fire to face him. “How many lives has it been?”

“In time you’ll remember them all. Let’s just say that it was too many, and too many years all told.”

Nevyn stared into the fire, and she somehow knew that he, too, was remembering that other life. Jill felt as if she were standing on a mountain top after living in a deep valley. At last she could see the world spread out around her and know that it was vaster than she had ever dreamt. The memories crowded into her mind, ghosts pressing around her to tell her their tales. Finally Nevyn looked up.

“Brangwen?” he said at last. “Do you forgive me?”

“I never held one single thing against you.”

“Then you loved me too much. It was all false pride and carelessness, but I betrayed you as surely as if I’d drowned you myself.”

Jill remembered the night-dark river, the coldness of the water covering her, choking her. With a shudder she moved closer to the fire.

“Well, perhaps you did,” she said. “And truly, I did love you too much.” She hesitated, groping for words, wondering if she had the wisdom to say such things but knowing somehow that she remembered their truth. “And that’s why I had to lose you. That blind, dog’s love had no room in it for the dweomer. Ah ye gods, I wanted to bury myself in you, to
drown
myself in you! It was my doing as much as yours.”

“True spoken. But if I’d told you honestly what I was up to instead of sneaking around like a bondsman, if I’d only let you know that you were running toward freedom and not a life of exile and naught more, wouldn’t you have found some way to escape from your brother’s dun?”

“Well, truly I would have. I would have seen the choice as between life or death, not just as Gerraent or you.”

“You would have. You were never a dolt, Gwennic—just so young, so very young.” Nevyn was silent a long moment. “But do you forgive me?”

“I do. Easily.”

“Then my thanks.” His voice almost broke on the words.

Jill sat down next to him again. For a long time they sat in silence, watching the Wildfolk sport in the fire and the light dance over the walls, light and shadow, endlessly moving, endlessly changing, one into the other and back again.

G
LOSSARY

Aber
(Deverrian) A river mouth, an estuary.

Alar
(Elvish, plural
alarli
) A group of elves, who may or may not be bloodkin, who choose to travel together for some indefinite period of time.

Alardan
(Elv.) The meeting of several alarli, usually the occasion for a drunken party.

Angwidd
(Dev.) Unexplored, unknown.

Archon
(translation of the Bardekian
atzenarlen
) The elected head of a city-state (Bardekian
at)
.