“AS THRIFTY AS a dwarf” is a common catchphrase,
and one that the Mountain People take for a compliment.
Although they see no reason to waste anything, whether it’s a
scrap of cloth or the heel of a loaf, they keep a particularly good
watch over their gemstones and metals, though they never tell
anyone outside their kin and clan just how they do it. Otho, the
silver daggers’ smith down in Dun Mannannan, was no different
than any other dwarven craftsman, unless he was perhaps more
cautious than most. His usual customer was some hotheaded young lad
who’d dishonored himself badly enough to be forced to join
the silver daggers, and you have to admit that a wandering
swordsman who fights only for coin, not honor, isn’t the sort
you can truly trust with either dwarven silver or magical
secrets.
During his long years among humans in the kingdom of Deverry,
Otho taught a few other smiths how to smelt the rare alloy for the
daggers, an extremely complicated process with a number of peculiar
steps, such as words to be chanted and hand gestures to be made
just so. Otho would always refuse to answer questions, saying only
that if his students wanted the formula to come out right, they
could follow his orders, and if they didn’t, they could get
out of his forge right then and spare everyone trouble. All the
apprentices shut their mouths and stayed; they were bright enough
to realize that they were being taught magic of some sort, even if
they weren’t being told what the spells accomplished. Once
they opened shops of their own, they went on repeating Otho’s
procedures in the exact way they’d been taught, so that every
dagger made of dwarven silver in Deverry carried two kinds of
dweomer.
One spell Otho would acknowledge, especially to someone that he
liked and trusted; the other he would have hidden from his own
brother. The first produced in the metal itself an antipathy to the
auric vibrations of the elven race, so that the dagger glowed
brightly the moment an elf came within a few feet of it. The other,
the secret spell, was its necessary opposite, producing an
affinity, in this case to the dagger’s true owner, so that if
lost or stolen, sooner or later the magical currents of the
universe would float that dagger home. The thing was, by
“true owner” Otho meant himself, which meant that any
lost dagger would eventually come home to him, no matter who had
actually made it or how much its interim owner had paid for it.
Otho justified all of this by thinking of the purchase price as
mere rent, a trifling detail that he never mentioned to his
customers.
Once and only once had Otho produced an exception, and that was
by accident. Round about 1044, he made a dagger for Cullyn of
Cerrmor, one of the few human beings he truly admired. In the
course of things, that blade passed to Rhodry Maelwaedd, a young
lord who was forced by political exile to join the silver daggers.
As soon as Rhodry laid his hand on the dagger, it was obvious that
his blood was a little rarer than merely noble—the blade
blazed up and accused him of being half an elf at least.
Grudgingly, and only as a favor for Cullyn of Cerrmor’s
daughter, Otho took off the denouncing spell. What Otho
didn’t realize, since his dweomer was a thing of rote memory
rather than real understanding, was that he’d weakened the
complementary magic as well. The dagger now saw Rhodry, not the
dwarf, as its one true owner.
A silver dagger’s life is never easy, and Rhodry’s
time on the long road was worse than most, and by one thing and
another he managed to lose the blade good and proper, far away in
the Bardekian archipelago across the Southern Sea, round about the
year 1064. At the same time as Rhodry was killing the man
who’d stolen it, the dagger itself fetched up in the
marketplace of a little mountain town called Ganjalo, where it
stayed for several years, stubbornly unsold. The merchant
couldn’t understand—here was this beautiful and exotic
item, reasonably priced, that no one ever seemed to want to buy.
Finally it did catch the eye of an itinerant tinker, who knew of a
rich man who collected unusual knives of all sorts. Since this rich
man lived in a seaport, the dagger allowed itself to be installed
in the collection. Again, some years passed, until the collector
died and his sons divided up the various blades. The youngest, who
happened to be a ship’s captain, felt drawn to the dagger for
some irrational reason and traded another brother an entire set of
pearl-handled fish knives for it. The next time this captain went
to sea, the dagger went with him.
But not to Deverry. The captain sailed back and forth from
Bardek proper to the off-lying islands of Orystinna, a lucrative
run, and he saw no reason to consider making the dangerous crossing
to the distant barbarian kingdoms. After some years of this futile
east-west travel, the dagger changed owners. While gambling, the
captain had an inexplicable run of bad luck and ended up handing
the dagger over to a friend to pay off his debt. The friend took it
to a northern seaport and on a sudden whim sold it to another
marketplace jeweler, who bought it on the same kind of impulse.
There it lay again, until a young merchant passed by and happened
to linger for a moment to look over the jeweler’s stock.
Since this Londalo traded with Deverry on a regular basis, he was
always in need of little gifts to smooth his way with customs
officials and minor lords. The dagger had a barbarian look, and he
bought it to take along on his next trading run.
Of course, poor Londalo didn’t realize that in Deverry
offering a silver dagger as a gift was a horrible insult. He found
out quick enough in the Eldidd town of Abernaudd, where his
ill-considered gesture cost him a trading pact. As he bemoaned his
bad luck in a tavern, a kindly stranger explained the problem,
and Londalo nearly threw the dagger onto the nearest dungheap then
and there, which was more or less what the dagger had in mind. Yet,
because he also knew a lesson when he saw one, he ended up keeping
it as a reminder to never take other people’s customs for
granted again. If silver could have feelings, the dagger would have
been livid with rage. Back and forth it went between Bardek and the
Deverry coast for some years more, while a richer, older Londalo
became a respected and important member of his merchant guild,
until finally, in the spring of the year 1096, he and the dagger
turned up in Aberwyn, where Rhodry Maelwaedd now ruled as gwerbret.
The magical currents around the dagger thickened, swirled, and grew
so strong that Londalo actually felt them, as a prick of something
much like anxiety.
On the morning that he was due to visit the gwerbret, Londalo
stood in his chamber in the best inn Aberwyn had to offer and
irritably applied his clan markings. Normally a trained slave would
have painted on the pale blue stripes and red diamonds that marked
him as a member of House Ondono, but it was very unwise for a
thrifty man to bring his slaves when he visited the kingdom of
Deverry. Surrounded by barbarians with a peculiar idea of property
rights, slaves were known to take their chance at freedom and
disappear. When they did, the barbarian authorities became
uncooperative at best and hostile at worst. Londalo held his hand
mirror at various angles to examine the paint on his pale brown
skin and finally decided that his amateur job would have to do.
After all, the barbarians, even an important one like the lord he
was about to visit, knew nothing of the niceties of the art. Yet
the anxiety remained. Something was wrong; he could just plain feel
it.
There was a knock at the door, and Harmon, his young assistant,
entered with a respectful bob of his head.
“Are you ready to leave, sir?”
“Yes. I see you have the proposed trade agreements with
you. Good, good.”
With a brief smile Harmon patted the heavy leather roll of a
document case that he carried tucked under one arm.
As they walked through the streets of Aberwyn, Londalo noticed
his young partner looking this way and that in distaste;
occasionally he lifted a perfumed handkerchief to his nose as they
passed a particularly ripe dungheap. There was no doubt that
visiting Deverry was hard on a civilized man, Londalo reflected.
The city seemed to have been thrown down around the harbor rather
than built according to a plan. All the buildings were round and
shaggy with thatch, instead of square and nicely shingled; the
streets meandered randomly through and around them like the
patterns of spirals and interlace the barbarians favored as a
decorative style. Everywhere was confusion: barking dogs, running
children, men on horseback trotting through dangerously fast,
rumbling wagons, and even the occasional staggering drunk.
“Sir,” Harmon said at last “Is this really the
most important city in Eldidd?”
“I’m afraid so. Now remember, my young friend, this
man we’re going to visit will look like a crude barbarian to
you, but he has the power to put us both to death if we insult him.
The laws are very different here. Every ruler is judge and advocate
both as long as he’s in his own lands, and a gwerbret, like
our lord here in Aberwyn, is a ruler far more powerful than one of
our archons.”
In approximately the center of town lay the palace complex, or
dun as the barbarians called it, of the gwerbret. The barbarians
all talked about how splendid it was, with its many-towered
fortress inside the high stone walls, but the Bardekians found the
stonework crude and the effect completely spoiled by the clutter of
huts and sheds and pigsties and stables all around it. As they made
their way through the bustle of servants, Londalo suddenly realized
that he was wearing the silver dagger on his tunic’s leather
belt
“By the Star Goddesses! I must be growing old! I
don’t even remember picking this thing up from the
table.”
“I don’t suppose it’ll matter, sir. All the
men around here are absolutely bristling with knives.”
Although Londalo had never met this particular ruler before,
he’d heard that Rhodry Maelwaedd, Gwerbret Aberwyn, was an
honest, fair-minded man, somewhat more civilized than most of his
kind. Londalo was pleased to notice that the courtyards were
reasonably clean, the servants wore decent clothing, and the
corpses of hanged criminals were nowhere in sight. At the door of
the tallest tower, the broch proper, the aged chamberlain was
waiting to greet them. In a hurried whisper Londalo reminded Harmon
that a gwerbret’s servitors were all noble-born.
“So mind your manners. No giving orders, and always say
thank you when they do something for you.”
The chamberlain ushered them into a vast round room, carpeted
with braided rushes and set about with long wooden tables, where at
least a hundred men, all of them armed with knife and sword both,
were drinking ale and nibbling on chunks of bread, while servant
girls wandered around, gossiping or trading smart remarks with the
men more than working. Near a carved sandstone hearth to one side,
one finer table, made of ebony and polished to a shine, stood
alone, the gwerbret’s place of honor. Londalo was well
pleased when the chamberlain seated them there and had a boy bring
their ale in actual glass stoups. Londalo was also pleased to see
that the tapestry he’d sent ahead as a gift was hanging on
the wall near the enormous fireplace. As he absently fingered the
hilt of the silver dagger, he realized that his strange anxiety had
left him. Harmon, however, was nervous, glancing continually at the
mob of armed men across the hall.
“Now, now,” Londalo whispered. “The rulers
here do keep their men in hand, and besides, everyone honors a
guest. No one’s going to kill you on the spot.”
Harmon forced out a smile, had a sip of ale, and nearly choked
on the bitter, stinking stuff. Like the true merchant he was,
however, he covered over his distaste with a cough and forced
himself to try again. In a few minutes, two young men strode into
the hall. Since their baggy trousers were woven from one of the
garish plaids that marked a Deverry noble, and since the entire
warband rose to bow to them, Londalo assumed that they were a pair
of the gwerbret’s sons. They looked much alike, with wavy
raven-dark hair and cornflower-blue eyes. By barbarian standards
they were both handsome men, Londalo supposed, but he was worried
about more than their appearance.
“By the Great Wave-father himself! I was told that there
was only one son visiting here! We’ll have to do something
about getting a gift for the other, no matter what the
cost.”
The chamberlain bustled over, motioning for them to rise, so
they’d be ready to kneel at the proper moment. Having to
kneel to the so-called noble-born vexed Londalo, who was used to
voting his rulers into office and voting them out again, too, if
they didn’t measure up to his standards. As one of the young
men strolled over, the chamberlain cleared his throat.
“Rhodry, Gwerbret Aberwyn, the Maelwaedd, and his
son.”
In his confusion, Londalo almost forgot to kneel. Why, this lord
could be no more than twenty-five at most! Mentally he cursed the
merchant guild for giving him such faulty information for this
important mission.
“We are honored to be in your presence, great lord, but
you must forgive our intrusion in what must be a time of
mourning.”
“Mourning?” The gwerbret frowned, puzzled.
“Well, when we set sail for your most esteemed country,
Your Grace, your father was still alive, or so I was told, the
elder Rhodry of Aberwyn.”
The gwerbret burst out laughing, waving for them to rise and
take their seats again.
“I take it you’ve never seen me before, good
merchant. I’ve ruled here for thirty years, and I’m
four and fifty years old. I’m not having a jest on you,
either.” Absently he looked away, and suddenly his eyes
turned dark with a peculiar sadness. “Oh, no jest at
all.”
Londalo forgot his protocol enough to stare. Not a trace of gray
in the gwerbret’s hair, not one true line in his
face—how could he be a man of fifty-four, old back home,
ancient indeed for a barbarian warrior? Then the gwerbret turned
back to him with a sunny smile.
“But that’s of no consequence. What brings you to
me, good sir?”
Londalo cleared his throat to prepare for the important matter
of trading Eldidd grain for Bardekian luxuries. Just as he was
about to speak, Rhodry leaned forward to stare.
“By the gods, is that a silver dagger you’re
carrying? It looks like the usual knobbed pommel.”
“Well, it is, Your Grace.” Mentally Londalo cursed
himself all over again for bringing the wretched thing along.
“I bought it in the islands many years ago, you see, and I
keep it with me because . . . well, it’s
rather a long story . . . ”
“In the islands? May I see it, good merchant, if
it’s not too much trouble?”
“Why, no trouble at all, Your Grace.”
Rhodry took it, stared for a long moment at the falcon device
engraved on the blade, and burst out laughing.
“Do you realize that this used to be mine? Years and years
ago? It was stolen from me when I was in the islands.”
“What? Really? Why, then, Your Grace absolutely must have
it back! I insist, truly I do.”
Later that afternoon, once the treaty was signed and merchant on
his way, the great hall of Aberwyn fell quiet as the warband went
off to exercise their horses. Although normally Rhodry would have
gone with them, he lingered at the table of honor and considered
the odd twist of luck, the strange coincidence, as he thought of
it, that had brought his silver dagger home to him. A few serving
lasses wandered around, wiping down tables with rags; a few stable
hands sat near the open door and diced for coppers; a few dogs lay
in the straw on the floor and snored. In a bit, his eldest son came
down to join him. It was hard to believe that the lad was fully
grown, with two sons of his own now and the Dun Gwerbyn demesne in
his hands. Rhodry could remember how happy he’d been when his
first heir was born, how much he’d loved the little lad, and
how much Cullyn had loved him. It hurt, now, thinking that his
firstborn was beginning to hate him, and all because his father
refused to age and die. Not that Cullyn ever said a word, mind; it
was just that a coolness was growing between them, and every now
and then Rhodry would catch him staring at the various symbols of
the gwerbretal rank, the dragon banner, the ceremonial sword of
justice, with a wondering sort of greed. Finally Rhodry could stand
the silence no longer.
“Things are quiet in the tierynrhyn, then?”
“They are, Father. That’s why I thought I’d
ride your way for a visit.”
Rhodry smiled and wondered if he’d come in hopes of
finding him ill. He was an ambitious man, Cullyn was, because
Rhodry had raised him to be so, had trained him from the time he
could talk to rule the vast gwerbretrhyn of Aberwyn and to use well
the riches that the growing trade with Bardek brought it. He
himself had inherited the rhan half by accident, and he could
remember all too well his panicked feeling of drowning in details
during the first year of his rule to allow his son to go
uneducated.
“That’s an odd thing, Da, that dagger coming
home.”
“It was, truly.” Rhodry picked it up off the table
and handed it to him. “See the falcon on the blade?
That’s the device of the man you were named for.”
“That’s right—he told me the story. Of how he
was a silver dagger once, I mean. Ye gods, I still miss Cullyn of
Cerrmor, and here he’s been dead many a long year
now.”
“I miss him too, truly. You know, I think I’ll carry
this dagger again, in his memory, like.”
“Oh here, Da, you can’t do that! It’s a
shameful thing!”
“Indeed? And who’s going to dare mock me for
it?”
Cullyn looked away in an unpleasant silence, as if any possible
mention of social position or standing could spoil the most
innocent pleasure. With a sigh he handed the dagger back and picked
up his tankard again.
“We could have a game of Carnoic?” Rhodry said.
“We could, at that.” When Cullyn smiled at him, all
his old affection shone in his dark blue eyes. “It’s
too muggy to go out hunting this afternoon.”
They were well into their third game when Rhodry’s wife,
the Lady Aedda, came down to join them at the honor table. She sat
down quietly, even timidly, with a slight smile for her son. At
forty-seven she had grown quite stout, and there were streaks of
gray in her chestnut hair and deep lines round her mouth. Although
theirs was a politically arranged marriage, and in its first years
a miserable one, over time she and Rhodry had worked out a certain
accommodation to each other. He felt a certain fondness for her, a
gratitude that she had given him four strong heirs for Aberwyn.
“If my lady wishes,” Rhodry said, “we can end
this game.”
“No need, my lord. I can watch.”
And yet, by a common, unspoken consent they brought the game to
a close and put the pieces away. Aedda had asked for so little from
both of them over the years that they were inclined to give her
what small concessions they could. As the afternoon wore on in
small talk about the doings of the various vassals in the demesne,
Rhodry drank more and more and said less and less. The heat, the
long silences, the predictability of his wife’s little
remarks all weighed him down until at last he got up and strode out
of the hall. No one dared question him or follow.
His private chamber was on the third floor of a half-broch, a
richly furnished room with Bardek carpets on the floor and glass in
the windows, cushioned chairs at the hearth and a display of five
beautifully worked swords on one wall. Rhodry threw open a window
and leaned on the sill to look down on the ward and the garden,
where the dragon of Aberwyn sported in a marble fountain far below.
One old manservant ambled across the lawn on some slow errand;
nothing else moved. For a moment Rhodry felt as if he
couldn’t breathe. He tossed his head with an oath that was
half a keening and turned away.
For over thirty years he had held power, and for most of them he
had loved it all: the symbols and pageantry of his rank, the
tangible power that he wielded in his court of justice and on the
battlefield, the subtle but even greater power he exercised in the
intrigues of the High King’s court. As he looked back, he
could remember exactly when that love turned sour. He had been
at the royal palace in Dun Deverry, and as he entered the great
hall, the chamberlain of course announced him. At the words
“Rhodry, Gwerbret Aberwyn,” every other noble-born man
there turned to look at him, some in envy of one of the
king’s favorites, some in subtle calculation of what his
presence would mean to their own schemes, others with simple
interest in the sight of so powerful a man. All he felt in return
was irritation, that they should gawk at him as at a two-headed
calf in the market fair. And from that day, some two years earlier,
Rhodry had slowly come to wonder when he would die and be rid of
everything he once had loved, free and shut of it at last.
He left the window and sat down in a half-round rosewood chair,
intricately carved with interlace wound about the dragons of
Aberwyn, to draw his newly returned silver dagger and study it.
Although the blade looked like silver, it was harder than the best
steel, and it gleamed without a trace of tarnish. When he flicked
it with a thumbnail it rang.
“Dwarven silver,” he muttered to himself. “Ah,
by the lord of hell, I must be going daft, to wish I was out on the
long road again!”
He owned another piece of dwarven silver, too, a ring he always
wore on the third finger of his right hand, a simple band of elven
workmanship, engraved with roses on the outside and a line of elven
writing on the in. Just as he held up his hand to look at the ring,
a page opened the door.
“Your Grace? Am I disturbing Your Lordship?”
“Not truly.”
“Well, Your Grace, there’s this shabby old herbwoman
at the door, and she’s insisting on speaking to you. One of
the guards was going to turn her away, but she gave us this look,
Your Grace, and I . . . well, I was frightened of her, so
I thought I’d best tell you.”
Rhodry’s heart pounded once.
“Did she give you her name?”
“She did, Your Grace. It’s Jill.”
“I’ll receive her up here.”
The lad frankly stared, then bowed and trotted away.
While he waited for the woman he once had loved more than life
itself, Rhodry paced back and forth from window to door. He
hadn’t seen Jill in thirty years, not since the night when
she left him, simply rode out of his life without a backward
glance—or so he assumed—to follow a Wyrd even stranger
than his own. At first, he thought of her constantly, wondered if
she missed him, wondered if her studies in the strange craft of the
dweomer were bringing her the happiness she sought. Yet as the
years passed and his wound healed, he let her memory rest except
for an idle wondering every now and then if she were well. Although
she did come to Aberwyn to tend her dying father, Rhodry was at
court in Dun Deverry at the time. Every now and then, some news of
her doings came his way, but never in any detail. Now she was here.
He was dreading seeing her, because she was only a few years
younger than himself, and he hated the thought of seeing her beauty
ravaged by age. When he heard her crisp voice thanking the page,
his heart pounded once again. The door opened.
“The herbwoman, Your Grace.”
In strode a woman dressed in men’s clothing, a pair of
dirty brown brigga and a much-mended linen shirt, stained green in
places from medicinal leaves and stems. Her hair, cropped like a
lad’s, shone a silvery gray, and crow’s-feet round her
blue eyes ran deep, but she seemed neither young nor old, so full
of life and vigor that it was impossible to think of her as
anything other than handsome. Beautiful she wasn’t, not any
longer, but as he stared at the face which coincided with the one
belonging to his lovely young lass of past years, he found that it
fit her better than the beauty he was remembering. Her sudden smile
could move him still.
“Aren’t you going to say one word to me?” she
said with a laugh.
“My apologies. It’s just a bit of a shock, having
you turn up like this.”
“No doubt. You’re in for a worse shock than that,
I’m afraid.”
Without waiting to be asked she sat down in one of the chairs by
the hearth. He took the other facing, and for a few moments the
silence deepened around them. Then he remembered that his silver
dagger must have been coming home at the same time as she was
riding into Aberwyn, and he shuddered, feeling a cold touch of Wyrd
that made the hairs on the nape of his neck bristle.
“And what is this shock?”
“Well, for starters, Nevyn’s dead.”
Rhodry grunted as if at a blow. He’d known Nevyn, her
teacher and master in the craft of magic, very well indeed—in
fact, Rhodry owed him his life and his rhan both.
“May the gods give him rest in the Otherlands, then.
Somehow I thought the dweomer would keep the old man alive
forever.”
“He was beginning to wonder himself.” She grinned so
broadly that it seemed inappropriate. “He was glad to go,
when the time came.”
“How did it happen? Was he ill, or was there an
accident?”
“What? Oh, naught of that sort. It was time, and he went.
He made his goodbyes to all of us and lay down on his bed and died.
That’s all.” Her smile faded. “I’ll miss him,
though. Every hour of every day.”
“My heart aches for you, truly.”
As if to share his sympathy Wildfolk came, sprite and sylph and
gnome, materializing like the fall of silent drops of rain to float
down and stand around them. When a skinny gray fellow climbed into
Jill’s lap and reached up to pat her cheek, she smiled again,
shoving the mourning away. The sight of the Wildfolk reminded
Rhodry of his own problems. Whatever else Jill might have been to
him, she was a dweomermaster now, the possessor of strange powers
and even stranger lore.
“IVe got a question for you,” he said. “How
long does an elven half-breed like me live, anyway?”
“A good long while, though not so long as a true elf.
I’d say you’ve got a hundred years ahead, easily, my
friend. When I’m buried and gone, you’ll still look like a lad
of twenty.”
“By all the ice in all the hells! That can’t happen!
How long will it be before all of Aberwyn figures out that
I’m no true Maelwaedd, then?”
“Not very, truly. The common folk are already whispering
about you, wondering about dweomer and suchlike. Soon enough the
noble-born will, too, and they’ll come to you with a few hard
questions about exactly how much elven blood there is in the
Maelwaedd clan, and whether or no those old rumors about elves
living forever are true. If someone found out who your true father
was, it would be a nasty blow to your clan’s
honor.”
“There’s a cursed sight more at stake than the honor
of the Maelwaedds. Can’t you see, Jill? My sons disinherited,
and civil war in the rhan, and—”
“Of course I see!” She held her hand up flat for
silence. “That’s the other reason I’ve
come.”
He felt the cold again, rippling down his back. Thirty years
since he’d seen her, and yet they still at times shared
thoughts.
“I had an omen,” she went on. “It was right
after we buried Nevyn—me and the folk in the village where we
lived, that is—and I went walking out to a little lake near
our home, where there’s a stand of rushes out in the water.
It was just at sunset, and there were some clouds in the sky. You
know how easy it is to see pictures in sunset clouds. So I saw a
cloud shape that looked just like a falcon catching a little dragon
in her claws. Oho, think I, that’s me and Rhodry! And the
minute I thought it, I felt the dweomer cold, and I knew that it
was true. And here I am.”
“That simple, is it? You think of me, and here you
are?”
“Well, I had to ride to Aberwyn like anyone
else.”
“Not what I meant. Why did the omen in the clouds make you
come here?”
“Oh, that! None of your affair.”
He started to probe, but her expression stopped him: unsmiling,
a little cool, like the cover of a book abruptly slammed shut.
He could remember Nevyn turning that same blank stare on
questioners who pried into things they weren’t meant to know.
Gwerbret or not, he would only be wasting his time if he
should ask more.
“I don’t suppose you could cast some dweomer on me
to make me age.”
“You’re still a ready man with a jest, aren’t
you? I can’t, and I wouldn’t if I could. The way
out’s obvious, anyway. You’ll have to turn the rhan
over to your eldest lad and leave Eldidd.”
“What? That’s a hard thing for a man of my rank to
do.”
“If you give up the rhan, your son will keep it. If you
try to keep it, your son will lose it.”
“It’s not just the blasted rhan! You’re asking
me to leave blood kin behind. Jill, by the gods, I’ve got
grandsons.”
“Do you want to see them murdered to wipe out the last
traces of a bastard line?”
With a groan he buried his face in his hands. Her voice went on
remorselessly.
“Once the first whispers go round that you might not be a
trueborn Maelwaedd, you’ll have to settle them by the sword,
and honor duels have led to wars before, especially with a rich
prize like Aberwyn at stake. If you lose the civil war, your
enemies will hunt down every child who could even remotely be
considered your heir, even Rhodda’s lad.”
“Oh, hold your tongue! I know that as well as you
do.”
“Well, then?”
He looked up to find her watching him with a calm sort of
wondering. For a moment he hated her.
“It’s all well and good to talk of me leaving
Eldidd, but I’m not an exile or a shiftless younger son
anymore. If I present a petition to the king to allow me to
abdicate, the rumors will pile up like horse dung in a winter
stable. Besides, what if our liege asks me my reasons outright? I
could try to lie, but I doubt me that I’d be convincing. The
long knows me cursed well.”
She frowned at the hearth while she considered.
“You’re right, aren’t you? I’ll have to
think about that.” Abruptly she rose. “If anyone asks
you why I came here, tell them I wanted to tell you about Nevyn,
because that’s true enough in its own way. I’ll see you again,
and soon.”
Then she was gone, out and shutting the door before Rhodry could
rise from his chair. For a while he tried to convince himself that
he’d been having a strange, drunken dream, but the elven ring
gleamed on his finger to remind him of the truth, that he would
have to leave his clan behind for the sake of his love for it
Besides, the dweomer had saved his life several times over in the
past, and he knew, with a sudden cold certainty, that the time had
come to repay his debt.
Bred and born to rule, carefully trained to impose his will on
others while following every nicety of courtesy, Cullyn Maelwaedd
was unused to feeling guilt, and he hated this constant nag of
conscience. Every time he looked at his father, it bit deep and
gnawed him that at times he wished that Rhodry
were . . . not dead, no, never that, but
perhaps showing some signs that he might indeed die at some point.
In a way, his dilemma was unique. Because Rhodry had refused to
send Cullyn into fosterage as custom demanded and had taken the
unheard-of step of raising his son himself, Cullyn was one of the
few noble lords in Devenry who honestly loved his father. Every
time he caught himself wondering if he’d ever actually
inherit Aberwyn and felt the accompanying bite of guilt, he saw the
wisdom of fosterage in a world where a son’s power depends on
his father’s death.
Cullyn also was fairly certain that his father suspected him of
wishing him gone. After the first few days of his visit, Rhodry
became more and more withdrawn, spending long hours alone either
riding through the demesne or shut up brooding in his private
chamber. Cullyn considered simply going home, but since he’d
said that he’d stay for ten days, he was afraid that leaving
ahead of schedule would seem suspicious. On the fifth morning he
came down for breakfast only to find that Rhodry had already left
the dun. He went out to the stable to question the groom, but the
gwerbret hadn’t said a word about where he was going. As he
made his way through the clutter of sheds behind the broch, he
noticed two serving lasses gossiping furiously about something, an
activity that would have meant nothing if they hadn’t
suddenly fallen silent at the very sight of him. He walked on past,
tormenting himself by wondering if even the wretched common-born
servants knew his secret.
Later, as he was going up to his chamber in the broch, a similar
thing happened, two pages, this time, who stopped talking the
moment they saw him. Cullyn grabbed one of them by the shirt
collar.
“And just what are you saying that’s unfit for my
ears?”
The two boys went dead white and looked as if they
wanted to run, but whether or not he would ever be gwerbret, Cullyn
was a powerful lord and no man to argue with.
“Begging your pardon, my lord, please, it was
naught.”
“Indeed? Then why have you gone as white as
milk?”
The second page was older and obviously a bit wiser.
He stepped forward with a passable bow.
“My lord, we mean no offense. We were talking over this
strange rumor. Maybe you should know about it, my lord. Then you
can stop people from repeating it.”
“Indeed? And just what have the townsfolk been
saying?”
“Well, you know, my lord, how the gwerbret
looks so young? We heard an old woman in the marketplace saying it
was all because of dweomer. She said some old wizard cast this
spell on him years and years ago, that he’d never get old,
but then he’d have to die all of a sudden, like, to pay back
the spell. The old woman said there’s a gerthddyn in town
spreading the tale. He heard it up north or somewhere.” He
paused, sincerely troubled. “My lord, that’s not true,
is it? His grace is splendid, and I don’t want to see him
die.”
“Here, that can’t be true, indeed. Don’t you
bother your heart with it.”
Yet he hesitated, troubled himself,
remembering all the tales whispered among his clan that
Rhodry’s life had been touched more than once by dweomer. And
what if this strange story were true? Although by that time roost
people in Deverry knew that magic existed, few knew much about its
true powers and capabilities, so Cullyn was ready enough to
believe that it could keep his father unnaturally young. He
summoned four men from his war-band as an escort, then went into
the town. By asking round in the market square he found out that
the gerthddyn had been staying at the Green Goose, the best inn in
Aberwyn, but when he went there, the tavernman told him that the
gerthddyn had ridden out that very morning.
“I’ll wager, my lord, that he knew he couldn’t
stay here long, what with him spreading them nasty tales about your
father. There’s not a vain bone in the gwerbret’s body,
my lord. Why would he be making pacts with sorcerers just to keep
his looks?”
“Well spoken, truly. What was this fellow
like?”
“His name was Salamander, my lord, and he was a
skinny sort of fellow with yellow hair. Oh, he was a splendid
talker, my lord, when he was telling his tales, so it’s no
wonder this wretched rumor’s spreading itself around. Now,
wait, my lord.” He paused to suck his brown stumps of teeth
in thought. “Salamander didn’t rightly say the rumor
was true, like. He said he heard it up in Belglaedd and asked if we
thought there was any truth in it.”
“I see. Well,
he’s gone and no more trouble to us, then.”
When Cullyn
returned to the great hall, Rhodry was sitting at the head of the
table of honor and drinking alone. He waved his son over with a
smile that made him look more his normal self than he had in
days.
“There you are, lad. I’ve been thinking. Shall we go
hunting on the morrow? I rode out to the forest preserve today, and
the gamekeeper tells me we’ve got a pair of young stags. We
could cull one easily and help the old stag keep his dominion for
another spring.”
“Gladly, Father.”
Cullyn motioned a page over to pour him ale. As they talked
about the hunt to come, he forgot all about strange rumors in the
normality of the moment.
Just at dawn on the morrow, Cullyn joined his father and the
kennelmaster in the courtyard, where the well-trained dogs lay
still but excited, ears pricked, tails thumping the cobbles. When
the men mounted for the ride to the forest, the dogs leapt up and
swarmed round the kennelmaster, who trotted along with them on foot
as the party set out. In the brightening day the hunt left Aberwyn
behind and went north along the bank of the river Gwyn, which
churned white and swollen with the spring runoff. About eight miles
on they reached the preserve, a smallish stand of timber compared
with the vast gwerbretal hunting park at Belglaedd farther north.
While they ate a cold breakfast and let the dogs rest, Alban the
gamekeeper appeared out of the forest and sat down with them, a
gnarled and wind-chapped man as tough as an oak root. Since he was
nearly as shy as the deer themselves, it took him a long time to
bring out the various scraps of news he had for the gwerbret; he
would say one thing, then withdraw into himself before he brought
out the next. Rhodry listened with an amazing patience.
Since Cullyn loved the hunt, he was almost as excited as the
dogs by the time they finally got underway. So early in the year
the trees were only just leafing out, and the bracken and ferns
still low. Ducking and dodging the occasional branch, they rode
through the widely spaced oaks behind the kennelmaster and his
pack. The deerhounds coursed this way and that, sniffed the wind
more than the ground, then suddenly broke, baying off to the left.
With a laugh Rhodry spurred his horse after them, and Cullyn
followed, catching up with the hounds, who turned abruptly and
headed off in the general direction of the river.
All at once, Cullyn’s horse stumbled slightly, forcing him
to let it slow to regain its balance and calm down. When he headed
after the hunt, it was a good ways ahead of him. He could just see
them through the trees. Then he heard the barks turn to yelps of
terror, and the kennelmaster scream. Spear at the ready, he kicked
his horse hard, dodged through at a dangerous gallop, and burst
into a clearing to see a wild boar, flushed by accident but furious
nonetheless, making a straight charge at the pack. Dogs scattered
and the kennelmaster yanked himself into a tree barely in time.
Cullyn round himself swearing with every foul oath he knew.
They had no boarhounds—worse yet, no boar spears with the
essential guards on the haft. Already his horse was tossing its
head in fear as the massive, reeking boar charged one of the
hounds. As Cullyn kicked his horse forward, Rhodry appeared, raced
between the boar and the dog, and stabbed down at it as he passed.
Enraged, the boar swung after him and let the dogs be. With a
battle cry Cullyn charged after as Rhodry led the boar along. He
could see what his father had in mind—keep sticking the
slower-moving boar, keep it running and bleeding until they wore
the thing out and could make a safe kill. Since by its snarls he
could tell that the boar was deep in rut, he knew they had a long,
hard fight ahead. But they had forgotten about the river. Just as
Cullyn caught up, their strange hunt burst out of the forest to the
cleared roadway along the riverbank. Yelling for Cullyn to stay
back, Rhodry tried to turn his horse, but the mount got a good look
at the boar following and reared—then slipped and went
down. Rhodry rolled clear easily, unhurt, but the boar was turning
and charging.
“Da!” Cullyn’s voice was the shriek
of a child. “Da!”
Half to his feet, Rhodry threw
himself to one side and rolled straight into the river. Blind with
fury, the boar hurled itself in after him. Cullyn could never
remember dismounting, nor could he remember stripping off his
hunting leathers; all he knew was that suddenly he was in the river
and swimming, desperately coursing from bank to bank, letting the
current carry him downstream until at last, utterly exhausted, he
heard Alban screaming at him from the bank.
“To shore, my lord! I beg you, come ashore!”
With
the last of his strength Culyn fought the current to the bank and
grabbed the butt of the spear that Alban was holding out. It took
both their strengths to haul him up onto land.
“I never saw
them,” Cullyn gasped.
“No more did I, Your
Grace.”
The sound of that honorific knocked the last bit of breath out
of him. When he looked up, he saw the gamekeeper’s face
streaming tears, and the sight made him burst out sobbing, half
keening, half choking as he gasped for breath. All his suspicions,
all his envy and his fears were at last at an end, but he would
have spent a year in the hells just to have his father back again.
“By every god and his wife,” Salamander whispered;
and his face was white with fear. “I never dreamt your lad
would try to fetch you out again like that.”
“No more did I, or I’d never have agreed to this
daft scheme!” Rhodry felt like hitting him. “Aberwyn
could have lost two gwerbrets in one misbegotten day! Ye gods, did
you have to make that cursed boar so terrifying? I never knew you
could make an illusion smell like that.”
“You don’t understand, O brother of mine.”
Salamander passed the back of his hand over his sweaty forehead.
“That boar was none of my work. It was real, a solid,
corporeal, existent, and utterly unplanned accident.”
Rhodry felt the color drain from his own face. He was about to
say something particularly foul when Jill came crawling back into
their hiding place, a bracken-filled ditch on the other side of the
river.
“He’s safe,” she whispered. “The
gamekeeper and the kennelmaster are with him, and all the dogs,
too. They’ve gotten the horses under control, and no doubt
they’ll be riding home soon. We’d best get out of here
before every man in your warband comes out to search for your
corpse.”
“They’re not my men anymore.”
“Well, true enough, and we’ve got only the grace of
the gods to thank that they ride for your eldest son and not the
second.” She turned on Salamander. “You and your
wretched, blasted, rotten, and foul elaborate schemes!”
“You were the one who insisted there be witnesses, and you
agreed to this scheme at the time. Berate me not, O princess of
powers perilous, for I put not that stinking boar in their
path.”
Although Jill growled under her breath, she let the matter drop.
For some minutes they lay there, waiting until the remnant of
the hunting party should leave. While Salamander’s dweomer
could turn one man invisible as he crawled out of a river, he
couldn’t hide a party of three horsemen, a mule, and two
packhorses. Now that he knew Cullyn was safely on land, Rhodry felt
heart-wrung and numb, hating the irony of it, that he would find
out how much his son loved him when he’d never see the lad
again.
Eventually the hunting party gave up their last futile search
and rode back to Aberwyn, leaving them in sole possession of the
woods. Rhodry was more than glad to change out of his damp clothes
into the things he’d smuggled out in readiness: a pair of
plain gray brigga, an old linen shirt with no blazons, a cheap belt
with his silver dagger on it.
“So here I am, a silver dagger again, am I?”
“Not for long,” Salamander said. “We’ll
be in the elven lands soon enough.”
“Provided no one catches us.”
“Don’t fret about that,” Jill broke in.
“Salamander can make sure no one recognizes you, even if
they’re staring right at you.”
“Well and good, then. We’d best be off.”
“Just that. Our father should be waiting near the
border.”
“And that’s going to be a strange thing, meeting my
true father after all these years, and him a bard at
that.”
“Mam, I tried to save him, truly I did.” Cullyn
sounded like a little boy again.
Aedda caught his hands in hers and squeezed them gently.
“Of course you did. I know you did.”
For his sake, out of pain for his pain, she managed to do the
proper thing and weep, but there was no mourning in it. For years
she had tried very hard not to blame Rhodry; after all, she
wasn’t the first lass in Deverry who’d been given away
to cement a treaty, and she wouldn’t be the last. Yet still,
he had taken her maidenhead, her youth, her life, truly, while
keeping her always to one side of his affairs, and then, the final
bitter thing, he had taken her sons from her, too. They
always loved you more than they loved me, she thought. By every
fiend in hell, I’m glad you’re dead.
Although they never found the gwerbret’s body, they did
put up a stone to mark his passing, out in the sacred grove
where his ancestors lay. On it they carved this englyn:
This grave marks Aberwyn’s grief.
A wild wolf in the
battle-strife, Rhodry laughed when he took your life.
And that was the first death of Rhodry Maelwaedd and the
vindication of the old hermit who, years and years before, had told
him he would die twice over.
Keeping to country lanes and open lands, buying food from
farmers and shunning the duns of the noble-born, Rhodry,
Salamander, and Jill traveled west and south for ten days until
they reached the large stream or small river known as Y Brog,
marking what most human beings considered the Eldidd border, since
only elves lived beyond it. During Rhodry’s rule, the
Westfolk, as Eldidd people called the elves, had started becoming a
little friendlier than they’d been in times past. Every now
and then a trading party would show up in the border towns of
Cannobaen or Cernmeton to offer their beautiful horses in return
for ironwork and glasswares; even more rarely, an embassy would
appear in Aberwyn itself with tokens of friendship and alliance for
the gwerbret. Yet they were still strange and alien, still
frightening to most people. It was one of Rhodry’s regrets
that he’d never been able to make his subjects welcome the
Westfolk in the rhan. Since he’d always raised his sons to
like and admire them, he could at least hope that they would
continue to be welcome in the dun.
“I suppose I’ll get word now and then of how things fare
in Aberwyn,” he remarked one evening. “Especially if
Calonderiel goes to pay his respects to the new
gwerbret.”
“Of course he’s going.” Salamander was
kneeling by their campfire and feeding in sticks. “That was
part of the scheme. He’ll be waiting to have a chat with us, and
then he’ll head east. What’s wrong? Worried about your
holdings? Well, your former or late lamented holdings, I should
say.”
“It’s strange, truly. I can’t stop thinking
about Aberwyn. I keep drafting mental orders, you see, about the
way things should be run, and every now and then I actually find
myself turning round to call a page or suchlike to carry a command
for me.”
“You’ll get over it in time. Think of rulership as a
fever. It’ll pass off as your health returns.”
“Well and good, then. Maybe I need some strengthening herb
water or suchlike.”
They shared a grin. Although they were only half brothers, they
looked a good bit alike in everything but coloring.
Salamander’s hair was as ash-blond pale as Rhodry’s was
dark, but they had the strong jut of their jaw and the deep set of
their eyes in common, as well as a certain sharpness about the ears
that marked them as half-breeds.
“Where’s Jill, anyway?” Salamander stopped
fussing with the fire and came to sit down beside him.
“I don’t know. Off meditating or whatever it is you
sorcerers do, I suppose.”
“Do I hear a sour note marring your dulcet tones? A touch
of pique, a nettlement, if indeed such a word exists, a certain
jealousy or resentment of our demanding craft, or mayhap
a . . . ”
“Will you hold your tongue, you chattering
bastard?”
“Ah, I was right. I did.”
At that moment Jill appeared on the other side of the fire. They
were camped near a little copse, and in the uncertain light it
seemed she materialized right out of the trees like one of the
Wildfolk.
“You two look as startled as a pair of caught burglars.
Talking about me?”
“Your ears were burning, were they?” Salamander said
with a grin. “Actually, we were just wondering where you
were, and lo, our question is answered, our difficulty solved. Come
sit down.”
Smiling, but only a little, Jill did so.
“We should be at the ruined dun on the morrow,” she
remarked. “That’s where the others are meeting us. Do
you remember it, Rhodry? The place where Lord Corbyn’s men
tried to trap you during that rebellion.”
“Ye gods, that was years and years ago, but remember it I
do, and that dun will always be dear to my heart, because it was
there that I first saw you.”
“You chatter like your wretched brother, don’t
you?” She got up and walked away, disappearing noiselessly
back into the copse and gone.
Rhodry winced and stared into the fire.
“I think, O brother of mine, that there’s somewhat
you don’t quite understand.” Salamander paused for
dramatic effect. “Jill’s beyond you now. Beyond us
both, truly, for I’ll admit that there was a time or brief
season in my life when I was madly in love with her
myself—without the slightest result, let me hasten to add,
but a cold and most cruel rejection, a sundering of my heart and
the smashing to little bits of my hopes.”
“Oh. Who is he, then?”
“Not who, O jealousy personified. What. The dweomer. It
takes some people that way. Why, by every god in the sky, do you
think she left you in the first place? Because a love of dweomer is
a burning twice stronger than lust or even sentiment, which it
oft-times overpowers.”
Rhodry and Jill had parted so long ago that Rhodry quite simply
couldn’t remember its details, but he could remember all too
well his bitterness.
“I didn’t understand then and I don’t
understand now, and cursed if I even want to.”
“Then there’s naught I can say about it, is there? But I
warn you, don’t let yourself fall in love with her
again.”
Rhodry merely shrugged, wondering if the warning coming too
late.
On the morrow morn they splashed across Y Brog and left the
settled lands behind. All that day they rode through fallow
grasslands, dotted here and there with copses or crossed with tiny
streamlets; that night they camped in green emptiness. Yet early on
the next day Rhodry saw rising on the horizon a broken tower, as
lonely in the endless grass as a cairn marking a warrior’s
grave—which, he supposed, it might well have been.
“Did this dun fall to the sword?”
“I haven’t the slightest idea,” Jill said.
“Calonderiel might know.”
The elf in question, an old friend and a warleader among his
people, was waiting for them near the empty gap in the outer walls
that once had held wooden gates. They saw his horse first, a
splendid golden gelding with a silvery mane and tail, tethered at
his leisure out in the grass. Calonderiel himself was pacing idly
back and forth in the ward, where grass grew round the last few
cobbles and a profusion of ivy was sieging the broch itself. A tall
man but slender, as most of his people were, the warleader had dark
purple eyes, slit vertically like a cat’s, moonbeam-pale
hair, and, of course, ears as long and delicately pointed as a
seashell.
“So there you are!” he sang out in Deverrian.
“I thought Salamander had gone and gotten you all
lost.”
“Spare me the implied insults, if you please.”
Salamander made him a sketch of a bow. “You must have been
talking with my father, if you’d think so ill of me. Which
reminds me. Where is the esteemed parent? I thought he’d be
eager for a first look at this other son of his.”
“No doubt he will, when he finds out you’ve ridden
west.” Calonderiel turned to Rhodry. “My apologies, but
Devaberiel’s gone off north somewhere with one of the alarli.
I’ve got my men out riding, passing the word along and
looking for him. He’ll turn up.”
“Blast and curse it all!” Jill got in before Rhodry
could say a word. “I wanted to speak with him before I rode
on, and now I’ll have to sit around here and wait.”
“Impatient, isn’t she?” Calonderiel was
grinning. “You should be used to elven ways by now, Jill.
Things happen when they happen, and not a moment before.”
“Well,” Rhodry said. “I’ll admit to
being a bit disappointed myself.”
“And you must admit, Cal,” Salamander broke in,
“that my father can take his sweet time about things. He
calls his progresses stately or measured; I call them dilatory,
tardy, lackadaisical, or just plain slow.”
“Well, you’ve got a point.” The warleader
glanced Jill’s way. “Aderyn’s at the
encampment.”
“That’ll make the waiting easier, truly. How far
away is everybody?”
Not very far at all, as it turned out. A couple of miles to the
west the camp sprawled along a stream: some twenty brightly colored
round tents, a vast herd of horses, a small flock of sheep, a neat
stack of travois poles, all scattered through the tall grass in a
tidy sort of confusion. As they rode up, a rush of children and
dogs came yelling and yapping to meet them; about thirty adults
strolled more slowly after.
Over the years Rhodry had picked up a fair amount of Elvish,
more than enough to greet everyone and to understand the various
speeches of welcome that came his way. He smiled and bowed and
repeated names that he forgot a moment later. When Calonderiel
insisted that the two brothers share his tent, there were plenty of
willing hands to carry their gear and to take their horses. Skins of
mead and bowls of food appeared as the camp settled in around the
main fire for a celebration. Everyone wanted to meet
Devaberiel’s son and tell him about the major feast planned
for the evening, too. In all the confusion it was some hours before
Rhodry realized that he’d lost track of Jill.
About half a mile away from the main camp, Aderyn’s
weathered tent stood alone near a stand of willows at the stream
edge. It was mercifully quiet there, except for the trill of birds
in the willows. Jill tethered her horse out with Aderyn’s
small herd, then carried her gear round to the tent flap. Just as
she was wondering whether to call out a greeting, the flap rustled
open, and Aderyn’s new apprentice, a pale-eyed young elf
named Gavantar, crawled out. He was even more slender than most of
his people, and pale-haired, too, so that Jill found herself
thinking of him as more a spirit than a man. But his hands were
strong enough as he snatched her burdens from her.
“Let me carry that gear for you, O Wise One of the East.
You might have let me tend your horse.”
“I’m not some withered old woman, lad, not yet,
anyway. Is your master here?”
“Of course, and waiting for you.”
Although the day was warm, the tent was dim and cool, the air
sparkling from the rush and bustle of elemental spirits that always
surrounded Aderyn. Wildfolk crouched or lounged all over the tent,
sprawling on the floor, clinging to the walls, perching on the
many-colored tent bags hanging from the poles. A small fire
smoldered under the smoke hole in the center, and the dweomerman
himself was sitting cross-legged nearby on a pile of leather
cushions. He was a small man, fully human, with enormous dark eyes
in his slender, wrinkled face, and dead-white hair, which swept up
from his forehead in two peaks like the horns of an owl. When he
saw Jill, he grinned in honest delight and rose to catch her hands
in his.
“Ah, it’s good to see you in the actual flesh! Come
sit down. Can I offer you some mead?”
“None for me, thanks. I don’t have your head for the
stuff. I wouldn’t mind a cup of that spiced honey water the
Westfolk make, though.”
The apprentice put the saddlebags down and hurried out again,
heading for the main camp to fetch a skin of the drink in question.
Aderyn and Jill sat down facing each other, and she began pulling
some cloth-wrapped bundles out of her gear. A gaggle of gnomes
clustered round to watch, including the small gray fellow that
followed Jill everywhere.
“Nevyn wanted you to have these books.” She handed
Aderyn a pair of ancient folios with crumbling leather bindings.
“Though what you’re going to do with a matched set of
Prince Mael’s writings, I don’t know.”
“Lug them around with all due honor and respect, I
suppose. Actually, these particular volumes mean somewhat to me.
The man who gave them to Nevyn was someone I much admired.”
He ran slender fingers over the stamped decorations, flecked here
and there with the remains of gold leaf, a roundel enclosing a pair
of grappling badgers, and under it a motto: “We hold
on.”
“But fancy him remembering that, after all these
years! I’m quite surprised that I do, actually.”
“And here’s a trinket from Brin Toraedic. He said to
tell you that since it was older than both of you put together, it
was a marvel indeed.”
Aderyn laughed and held up the golden cup, made of beaten metal
and decorated with a ridged pattern utterly unlike any made by
human or elf. Jill found herself studying the old man; he seemed no
older, no weaker than he ever had, but still she worried. He picked
up her thought.
“My time won’t be for a little while yet. I have
Gavantar to train, and he’s just begun his
studies.”
“Ah. I just . . . well,
wondered.”
“Things have been hard for you with Nevyn gone.” It
was not a question.
“They have. It’s not just the missing of him, though
that’s bad enough. I feel so wretchedly inadequate, little
more than an apprentice myself, truly, and not fit to be the Master
of the Aethyr.”
“Oh here, we all go through that! You’ll grow
into the job. It’s like becoming captain of a warband, I suppose.
All that responsibility at first—why, it must overwhelm a
man, thinking of all those lives that depend on his
decisions.”
“True-spoken. But I’ve got Nevyn’s work to
finish. I keep feeling that I’ve absolutely got to do it
right for his sake.”
“Wait a moment now! It’s not his work, any more than
it’s your work. Don’t let that kind of vanity enter in
or you’ll find yourself worrying indeed. It’s all our
work, and the work and will of the Great Ones. Think of it as an
enormous tapestry. We each weave a little piece, what small amount
we’re capable of, then hand the grand design on to the next
worker. No one soul could possibly finish the entire thing by
himself.”
“You’re right enough, aren’t you?” Jill
smiled, feeling her dark mood lift. “I’ll drink to
that! Here comes your Gavantar now.”
Carrying a leather bottle that was dripping wet and smelling of
Bardek cinnamon and cloves, Gavantar ducked through the flap and
joined them. Once the drink was poured round, he sat down by the
door on guard, and with a shy duck of his head refused to move
closer even when Aderyn invited him. He was new to the dweomer,
Jill supposed, and still in awe of what he considered strange and
mighty powers. Soon enough, when he came to see how natural in
their way Aderyn’s magicks were, he would begin to feel at
ease.
“Is Rhodry still with Calonderiel?” she asked.
“He is, O Wise One. The whole camp wants to meet
him.”
“Good. Then he’ll stay out of trouble for a few
hours, anyway.” She turned back to Aderyn. “Rhodry is
one of the things that are vexing me.”
“Ah. He’s still in love with you?”
“That, too, I suppose, but that’s not the important
thing. I wonder what’s going to happen to him now, mostly.
No, I worry about him, worry badly. We’ve snatched him away
from everything he knows and loves, which is harsh enough, and then
beyond that, there’s his Wyrd. For so long his whole life was
ruled by that prophecy, and now he’s fulfilled it, and well,
what’s going to become of him?”
“Prophecy?”
“The one Nevyn received all those years ago. Don’t
you remember it? Rhodry’s Wyrd is Eldidd’s Wyrd, it
ran.”
“Oh, that! Of course—he became gwerbret in the nick
of time, didn’t he?”
“You seem to take it all blasted lightly, but so he did.
Look, there would have been a long and ghastly war in Eldidd if
Rhodry hadn’t been there to inherit the rhan.”
Aderyn merely nodded. Jill supposed that he was so old, and had
seen so many wars, that one more conflict would have meant nothing
to him.
“And then there’s the rose ring, too,” she
went on. “I’ve been vexing myself about that bit of
jewelry for months now. That’s why I want to talk to
Devaberiel, you see, to ask him about it and that rather odd being
who gave it to him. I’ll wager he wasn’t an ordinary
elf.”
“You’re right about that.” Aderyn’s
voice had gone tense and strange. “I’ve got my own
ideas about who that mysterious benefactor was.”
“I want to hear them. And what about that wretched
inscription? If we knew what it meant, we might be able to
unravel the entire mystery.”
Although she was expecting him to tell her his ideas or at least
acknowledge that she’d spoken, Aderyn sat for a long
time merely staring out into space. At last, though, he spoke in a
voice that was half a whisper, half a sigh.
“The ring—that cursed ring! Dwarven work, and it had
a life of its own, just like their trinkets always do. Stranger
than most, this one, and I’ll wager its work isn’t over
yet.” He shook his head, then went on in a normal voice.
“But, oh yes, the prophecy . . . so a man
of elven blood finally ruled in Eldidd! Fancy that!”
“Well, you know, his son has a good dollop of elven blood
in his veins, too. Young Cullyn.” Jill had to smile at his
expression. “Here, Aderyn, you look shocked to the very
heart!”
The old man shrugged and looked away, and at that moment the
weight and sadness of all his long years seemed to press him down.
Wildfolk clustered round, patting his hands, climbing into
his lap, glaring at Jill as if accusing her of causing
their friend pain. In spite of his shyness Gavantar inched himself
closer, looking back and forth between the two masters of his craft
with a worried little frown.
“Well, the land did belong to the People once,” Jill
went on. “I’d like to see them welcome there again. Or
is it a wrong thing for men and elves to mix their blood like
this?”
“Not in the least.” Aderyn threw off the mood and
half the Wildfolk with a shrug and a wave of one hand. “And
it would be splendid, in my opinion, anyway, for the People to have
some say in ruling Eldidd, too. It’s just hard for me to
believe when I remember some of the things that have happened over
the years. There’s been a lot of bad feeling, Jill, just a
terrible lot of bad feeling between my two tribes. That’s how
I always think of elves and men, you see, as both mine now, though
once, truly, I hated thinking that I might still be a human being.
Of course, Rhodry’s the one who’s really caught between the
two worlds, isn’t he? It’s not going to be easy for
him, either. I can testify to that, from my own experience.”
He paused for a long moment. “Well, it’s going to be
much worse for him, truly. There are things that have happened to
him in other lives that are bound to come to a head now.
That’s one reason I made sure to be here on the border when
he came.”
“Indeed? What sort of things?”
“Well, it’s a long and winding tale, truly, and one
that runs hundreds of years, all told, though I think me that
we’re about to get to the end of it at last. You do remember,
don’t you, that his soul in another body was my
father?” The old man grinned. “If anyone can remember
that far, way back in the mists of time when I was born.”
Jill smiled with him, but she felt a touch of dweomer eerie run
down her back. She had, after all, in another body been his mother.
Aderyn was too courteous to mention the point.
“But Gweran—my father, that is, and Rhodry in
another flesh—was the most human man I’ve ever
seen.”
“But he was a bard. You’re forgetting that.
There’s a touch of . . . well, what? madness? the
Wildlands? . . . somewhat strange and magical
and crazed and inspired, all at once, in the soul of every
bard.”
“Well, so there is. I hadn’t truly thought of it
that way before. Wyrd and the tangles of Wyrd! They always say that
no man can know the truth of it.”
“Or woman either, but we’ve all got to try to
untangle our own.”
“Just so, and we were speaking of other people’s work
earlier, weren’t we? But Rhodry might well be my work
now—no need for you to bother and all—though I might
end up needing your help one fine day. After Gweran died, I doubt
me if you were involved in much of this.” He thought hard,
chin in hand. “You’ve always belonged to the human
race, Jill, not to the Elcyion Lacar like I do—not that
Rhodry’s soul was ever supposed to be so mixed up with the
elves, either, truly, bard or not. It’s an odd thing, how
tangled a man’s Wyrd can become, and all through muddles and
blunders. But you don’t need to trouble your heart over it.
Truly, I don’t think you were involved, except in the most
casual way.”
And in spite of herself Jill was vexed that there was some deep
part of Rhodry’s soul and Rhodry’s Wyrd that had
nothing to do with her.
“AS THRIFTY AS a dwarf” is a common catchphrase,
and one that the Mountain People take for a compliment.
Although they see no reason to waste anything, whether it’s a
scrap of cloth or the heel of a loaf, they keep a particularly good
watch over their gemstones and metals, though they never tell
anyone outside their kin and clan just how they do it. Otho, the
silver daggers’ smith down in Dun Mannannan, was no different
than any other dwarven craftsman, unless he was perhaps more
cautious than most. His usual customer was some hotheaded young lad
who’d dishonored himself badly enough to be forced to join
the silver daggers, and you have to admit that a wandering
swordsman who fights only for coin, not honor, isn’t the sort
you can truly trust with either dwarven silver or magical
secrets.
During his long years among humans in the kingdom of Deverry,
Otho taught a few other smiths how to smelt the rare alloy for the
daggers, an extremely complicated process with a number of peculiar
steps, such as words to be chanted and hand gestures to be made
just so. Otho would always refuse to answer questions, saying only
that if his students wanted the formula to come out right, they
could follow his orders, and if they didn’t, they could get
out of his forge right then and spare everyone trouble. All the
apprentices shut their mouths and stayed; they were bright enough
to realize that they were being taught magic of some sort, even if
they weren’t being told what the spells accomplished. Once
they opened shops of their own, they went on repeating Otho’s
procedures in the exact way they’d been taught, so that every
dagger made of dwarven silver in Deverry carried two kinds of
dweomer.
One spell Otho would acknowledge, especially to someone that he
liked and trusted; the other he would have hidden from his own
brother. The first produced in the metal itself an antipathy to the
auric vibrations of the elven race, so that the dagger glowed
brightly the moment an elf came within a few feet of it. The other,
the secret spell, was its necessary opposite, producing an
affinity, in this case to the dagger’s true owner, so that if
lost or stolen, sooner or later the magical currents of the
universe would float that dagger home. The thing was, by
“true owner” Otho meant himself, which meant that any
lost dagger would eventually come home to him, no matter who had
actually made it or how much its interim owner had paid for it.
Otho justified all of this by thinking of the purchase price as
mere rent, a trifling detail that he never mentioned to his
customers.
Once and only once had Otho produced an exception, and that was
by accident. Round about 1044, he made a dagger for Cullyn of
Cerrmor, one of the few human beings he truly admired. In the
course of things, that blade passed to Rhodry Maelwaedd, a young
lord who was forced by political exile to join the silver daggers.
As soon as Rhodry laid his hand on the dagger, it was obvious that
his blood was a little rarer than merely noble—the blade
blazed up and accused him of being half an elf at least.
Grudgingly, and only as a favor for Cullyn of Cerrmor’s
daughter, Otho took off the denouncing spell. What Otho
didn’t realize, since his dweomer was a thing of rote memory
rather than real understanding, was that he’d weakened the
complementary magic as well. The dagger now saw Rhodry, not the
dwarf, as its one true owner.
A silver dagger’s life is never easy, and Rhodry’s
time on the long road was worse than most, and by one thing and
another he managed to lose the blade good and proper, far away in
the Bardekian archipelago across the Southern Sea, round about the
year 1064. At the same time as Rhodry was killing the man
who’d stolen it, the dagger itself fetched up in the
marketplace of a little mountain town called Ganjalo, where it
stayed for several years, stubbornly unsold. The merchant
couldn’t understand—here was this beautiful and exotic
item, reasonably priced, that no one ever seemed to want to buy.
Finally it did catch the eye of an itinerant tinker, who knew of a
rich man who collected unusual knives of all sorts. Since this rich
man lived in a seaport, the dagger allowed itself to be installed
in the collection. Again, some years passed, until the collector
died and his sons divided up the various blades. The youngest, who
happened to be a ship’s captain, felt drawn to the dagger for
some irrational reason and traded another brother an entire set of
pearl-handled fish knives for it. The next time this captain went
to sea, the dagger went with him.
But not to Deverry. The captain sailed back and forth from
Bardek proper to the off-lying islands of Orystinna, a lucrative
run, and he saw no reason to consider making the dangerous crossing
to the distant barbarian kingdoms. After some years of this futile
east-west travel, the dagger changed owners. While gambling, the
captain had an inexplicable run of bad luck and ended up handing
the dagger over to a friend to pay off his debt. The friend took it
to a northern seaport and on a sudden whim sold it to another
marketplace jeweler, who bought it on the same kind of impulse.
There it lay again, until a young merchant passed by and happened
to linger for a moment to look over the jeweler’s stock.
Since this Londalo traded with Deverry on a regular basis, he was
always in need of little gifts to smooth his way with customs
officials and minor lords. The dagger had a barbarian look, and he
bought it to take along on his next trading run.
Of course, poor Londalo didn’t realize that in Deverry
offering a silver dagger as a gift was a horrible insult. He found
out quick enough in the Eldidd town of Abernaudd, where his
ill-considered gesture cost him a trading pact. As he bemoaned his
bad luck in a tavern, a kindly stranger explained the problem,
and Londalo nearly threw the dagger onto the nearest dungheap then
and there, which was more or less what the dagger had in mind. Yet,
because he also knew a lesson when he saw one, he ended up keeping
it as a reminder to never take other people’s customs for
granted again. If silver could have feelings, the dagger would have
been livid with rage. Back and forth it went between Bardek and the
Deverry coast for some years more, while a richer, older Londalo
became a respected and important member of his merchant guild,
until finally, in the spring of the year 1096, he and the dagger
turned up in Aberwyn, where Rhodry Maelwaedd now ruled as gwerbret.
The magical currents around the dagger thickened, swirled, and grew
so strong that Londalo actually felt them, as a prick of something
much like anxiety.
On the morning that he was due to visit the gwerbret, Londalo
stood in his chamber in the best inn Aberwyn had to offer and
irritably applied his clan markings. Normally a trained slave would
have painted on the pale blue stripes and red diamonds that marked
him as a member of House Ondono, but it was very unwise for a
thrifty man to bring his slaves when he visited the kingdom of
Deverry. Surrounded by barbarians with a peculiar idea of property
rights, slaves were known to take their chance at freedom and
disappear. When they did, the barbarian authorities became
uncooperative at best and hostile at worst. Londalo held his hand
mirror at various angles to examine the paint on his pale brown
skin and finally decided that his amateur job would have to do.
After all, the barbarians, even an important one like the lord he
was about to visit, knew nothing of the niceties of the art. Yet
the anxiety remained. Something was wrong; he could just plain feel
it.
There was a knock at the door, and Harmon, his young assistant,
entered with a respectful bob of his head.
“Are you ready to leave, sir?”
“Yes. I see you have the proposed trade agreements with
you. Good, good.”
With a brief smile Harmon patted the heavy leather roll of a
document case that he carried tucked under one arm.
As they walked through the streets of Aberwyn, Londalo noticed
his young partner looking this way and that in distaste;
occasionally he lifted a perfumed handkerchief to his nose as they
passed a particularly ripe dungheap. There was no doubt that
visiting Deverry was hard on a civilized man, Londalo reflected.
The city seemed to have been thrown down around the harbor rather
than built according to a plan. All the buildings were round and
shaggy with thatch, instead of square and nicely shingled; the
streets meandered randomly through and around them like the
patterns of spirals and interlace the barbarians favored as a
decorative style. Everywhere was confusion: barking dogs, running
children, men on horseback trotting through dangerously fast,
rumbling wagons, and even the occasional staggering drunk.
“Sir,” Harmon said at last “Is this really the
most important city in Eldidd?”
“I’m afraid so. Now remember, my young friend, this
man we’re going to visit will look like a crude barbarian to
you, but he has the power to put us both to death if we insult him.
The laws are very different here. Every ruler is judge and advocate
both as long as he’s in his own lands, and a gwerbret, like
our lord here in Aberwyn, is a ruler far more powerful than one of
our archons.”
In approximately the center of town lay the palace complex, or
dun as the barbarians called it, of the gwerbret. The barbarians
all talked about how splendid it was, with its many-towered
fortress inside the high stone walls, but the Bardekians found the
stonework crude and the effect completely spoiled by the clutter of
huts and sheds and pigsties and stables all around it. As they made
their way through the bustle of servants, Londalo suddenly realized
that he was wearing the silver dagger on his tunic’s leather
belt
“By the Star Goddesses! I must be growing old! I
don’t even remember picking this thing up from the
table.”
“I don’t suppose it’ll matter, sir. All the
men around here are absolutely bristling with knives.”
Although Londalo had never met this particular ruler before,
he’d heard that Rhodry Maelwaedd, Gwerbret Aberwyn, was an
honest, fair-minded man, somewhat more civilized than most of his
kind. Londalo was pleased to notice that the courtyards were
reasonably clean, the servants wore decent clothing, and the
corpses of hanged criminals were nowhere in sight. At the door of
the tallest tower, the broch proper, the aged chamberlain was
waiting to greet them. In a hurried whisper Londalo reminded Harmon
that a gwerbret’s servitors were all noble-born.
“So mind your manners. No giving orders, and always say
thank you when they do something for you.”
The chamberlain ushered them into a vast round room, carpeted
with braided rushes and set about with long wooden tables, where at
least a hundred men, all of them armed with knife and sword both,
were drinking ale and nibbling on chunks of bread, while servant
girls wandered around, gossiping or trading smart remarks with the
men more than working. Near a carved sandstone hearth to one side,
one finer table, made of ebony and polished to a shine, stood
alone, the gwerbret’s place of honor. Londalo was well
pleased when the chamberlain seated them there and had a boy bring
their ale in actual glass stoups. Londalo was also pleased to see
that the tapestry he’d sent ahead as a gift was hanging on
the wall near the enormous fireplace. As he absently fingered the
hilt of the silver dagger, he realized that his strange anxiety had
left him. Harmon, however, was nervous, glancing continually at the
mob of armed men across the hall.
“Now, now,” Londalo whispered. “The rulers
here do keep their men in hand, and besides, everyone honors a
guest. No one’s going to kill you on the spot.”
Harmon forced out a smile, had a sip of ale, and nearly choked
on the bitter, stinking stuff. Like the true merchant he was,
however, he covered over his distaste with a cough and forced
himself to try again. In a few minutes, two young men strode into
the hall. Since their baggy trousers were woven from one of the
garish plaids that marked a Deverry noble, and since the entire
warband rose to bow to them, Londalo assumed that they were a pair
of the gwerbret’s sons. They looked much alike, with wavy
raven-dark hair and cornflower-blue eyes. By barbarian standards
they were both handsome men, Londalo supposed, but he was worried
about more than their appearance.
“By the Great Wave-father himself! I was told that there
was only one son visiting here! We’ll have to do something
about getting a gift for the other, no matter what the
cost.”
The chamberlain bustled over, motioning for them to rise, so
they’d be ready to kneel at the proper moment. Having to
kneel to the so-called noble-born vexed Londalo, who was used to
voting his rulers into office and voting them out again, too, if
they didn’t measure up to his standards. As one of the young
men strolled over, the chamberlain cleared his throat.
“Rhodry, Gwerbret Aberwyn, the Maelwaedd, and his
son.”
In his confusion, Londalo almost forgot to kneel. Why, this lord
could be no more than twenty-five at most! Mentally he cursed the
merchant guild for giving him such faulty information for this
important mission.
“We are honored to be in your presence, great lord, but
you must forgive our intrusion in what must be a time of
mourning.”
“Mourning?” The gwerbret frowned, puzzled.
“Well, when we set sail for your most esteemed country,
Your Grace, your father was still alive, or so I was told, the
elder Rhodry of Aberwyn.”
The gwerbret burst out laughing, waving for them to rise and
take their seats again.
“I take it you’ve never seen me before, good
merchant. I’ve ruled here for thirty years, and I’m
four and fifty years old. I’m not having a jest on you,
either.” Absently he looked away, and suddenly his eyes
turned dark with a peculiar sadness. “Oh, no jest at
all.”
Londalo forgot his protocol enough to stare. Not a trace of gray
in the gwerbret’s hair, not one true line in his
face—how could he be a man of fifty-four, old back home,
ancient indeed for a barbarian warrior? Then the gwerbret turned
back to him with a sunny smile.
“But that’s of no consequence. What brings you to
me, good sir?”
Londalo cleared his throat to prepare for the important matter
of trading Eldidd grain for Bardekian luxuries. Just as he was
about to speak, Rhodry leaned forward to stare.
“By the gods, is that a silver dagger you’re
carrying? It looks like the usual knobbed pommel.”
“Well, it is, Your Grace.” Mentally Londalo cursed
himself all over again for bringing the wretched thing along.
“I bought it in the islands many years ago, you see, and I
keep it with me because . . . well, it’s
rather a long story . . . ”
“In the islands? May I see it, good merchant, if
it’s not too much trouble?”
“Why, no trouble at all, Your Grace.”
Rhodry took it, stared for a long moment at the falcon device
engraved on the blade, and burst out laughing.
“Do you realize that this used to be mine? Years and years
ago? It was stolen from me when I was in the islands.”
“What? Really? Why, then, Your Grace absolutely must have
it back! I insist, truly I do.”
Later that afternoon, once the treaty was signed and merchant on
his way, the great hall of Aberwyn fell quiet as the warband went
off to exercise their horses. Although normally Rhodry would have
gone with them, he lingered at the table of honor and considered
the odd twist of luck, the strange coincidence, as he thought of
it, that had brought his silver dagger home to him. A few serving
lasses wandered around, wiping down tables with rags; a few stable
hands sat near the open door and diced for coppers; a few dogs lay
in the straw on the floor and snored. In a bit, his eldest son came
down to join him. It was hard to believe that the lad was fully
grown, with two sons of his own now and the Dun Gwerbyn demesne in
his hands. Rhodry could remember how happy he’d been when his
first heir was born, how much he’d loved the little lad, and
how much Cullyn had loved him. It hurt, now, thinking that his
firstborn was beginning to hate him, and all because his father
refused to age and die. Not that Cullyn ever said a word, mind; it
was just that a coolness was growing between them, and every now
and then Rhodry would catch him staring at the various symbols of
the gwerbretal rank, the dragon banner, the ceremonial sword of
justice, with a wondering sort of greed. Finally Rhodry could stand
the silence no longer.
“Things are quiet in the tierynrhyn, then?”
“They are, Father. That’s why I thought I’d
ride your way for a visit.”
Rhodry smiled and wondered if he’d come in hopes of
finding him ill. He was an ambitious man, Cullyn was, because
Rhodry had raised him to be so, had trained him from the time he
could talk to rule the vast gwerbretrhyn of Aberwyn and to use well
the riches that the growing trade with Bardek brought it. He
himself had inherited the rhan half by accident, and he could
remember all too well his panicked feeling of drowning in details
during the first year of his rule to allow his son to go
uneducated.
“That’s an odd thing, Da, that dagger coming
home.”
“It was, truly.” Rhodry picked it up off the table
and handed it to him. “See the falcon on the blade?
That’s the device of the man you were named for.”
“That’s right—he told me the story. Of how he
was a silver dagger once, I mean. Ye gods, I still miss Cullyn of
Cerrmor, and here he’s been dead many a long year
now.”
“I miss him too, truly. You know, I think I’ll carry
this dagger again, in his memory, like.”
“Oh here, Da, you can’t do that! It’s a
shameful thing!”
“Indeed? And who’s going to dare mock me for
it?”
Cullyn looked away in an unpleasant silence, as if any possible
mention of social position or standing could spoil the most
innocent pleasure. With a sigh he handed the dagger back and picked
up his tankard again.
“We could have a game of Carnoic?” Rhodry said.
“We could, at that.” When Cullyn smiled at him, all
his old affection shone in his dark blue eyes. “It’s
too muggy to go out hunting this afternoon.”
They were well into their third game when Rhodry’s wife,
the Lady Aedda, came down to join them at the honor table. She sat
down quietly, even timidly, with a slight smile for her son. At
forty-seven she had grown quite stout, and there were streaks of
gray in her chestnut hair and deep lines round her mouth. Although
theirs was a politically arranged marriage, and in its first years
a miserable one, over time she and Rhodry had worked out a certain
accommodation to each other. He felt a certain fondness for her, a
gratitude that she had given him four strong heirs for Aberwyn.
“If my lady wishes,” Rhodry said, “we can end
this game.”
“No need, my lord. I can watch.”
And yet, by a common, unspoken consent they brought the game to
a close and put the pieces away. Aedda had asked for so little from
both of them over the years that they were inclined to give her
what small concessions they could. As the afternoon wore on in
small talk about the doings of the various vassals in the demesne,
Rhodry drank more and more and said less and less. The heat, the
long silences, the predictability of his wife’s little
remarks all weighed him down until at last he got up and strode out
of the hall. No one dared question him or follow.
His private chamber was on the third floor of a half-broch, a
richly furnished room with Bardek carpets on the floor and glass in
the windows, cushioned chairs at the hearth and a display of five
beautifully worked swords on one wall. Rhodry threw open a window
and leaned on the sill to look down on the ward and the garden,
where the dragon of Aberwyn sported in a marble fountain far below.
One old manservant ambled across the lawn on some slow errand;
nothing else moved. For a moment Rhodry felt as if he
couldn’t breathe. He tossed his head with an oath that was
half a keening and turned away.
For over thirty years he had held power, and for most of them he
had loved it all: the symbols and pageantry of his rank, the
tangible power that he wielded in his court of justice and on the
battlefield, the subtle but even greater power he exercised in the
intrigues of the High King’s court. As he looked back, he
could remember exactly when that love turned sour. He had been
at the royal palace in Dun Deverry, and as he entered the great
hall, the chamberlain of course announced him. At the words
“Rhodry, Gwerbret Aberwyn,” every other noble-born man
there turned to look at him, some in envy of one of the
king’s favorites, some in subtle calculation of what his
presence would mean to their own schemes, others with simple
interest in the sight of so powerful a man. All he felt in return
was irritation, that they should gawk at him as at a two-headed
calf in the market fair. And from that day, some two years earlier,
Rhodry had slowly come to wonder when he would die and be rid of
everything he once had loved, free and shut of it at last.
He left the window and sat down in a half-round rosewood chair,
intricately carved with interlace wound about the dragons of
Aberwyn, to draw his newly returned silver dagger and study it.
Although the blade looked like silver, it was harder than the best
steel, and it gleamed without a trace of tarnish. When he flicked
it with a thumbnail it rang.
“Dwarven silver,” he muttered to himself. “Ah,
by the lord of hell, I must be going daft, to wish I was out on the
long road again!”
He owned another piece of dwarven silver, too, a ring he always
wore on the third finger of his right hand, a simple band of elven
workmanship, engraved with roses on the outside and a line of elven
writing on the in. Just as he held up his hand to look at the ring,
a page opened the door.
“Your Grace? Am I disturbing Your Lordship?”
“Not truly.”
“Well, Your Grace, there’s this shabby old herbwoman
at the door, and she’s insisting on speaking to you. One of
the guards was going to turn her away, but she gave us this look,
Your Grace, and I . . . well, I was frightened of her, so
I thought I’d best tell you.”
Rhodry’s heart pounded once.
“Did she give you her name?”
“She did, Your Grace. It’s Jill.”
“I’ll receive her up here.”
The lad frankly stared, then bowed and trotted away.
While he waited for the woman he once had loved more than life
itself, Rhodry paced back and forth from window to door. He
hadn’t seen Jill in thirty years, not since the night when
she left him, simply rode out of his life without a backward
glance—or so he assumed—to follow a Wyrd even stranger
than his own. At first, he thought of her constantly, wondered if
she missed him, wondered if her studies in the strange craft of the
dweomer were bringing her the happiness she sought. Yet as the
years passed and his wound healed, he let her memory rest except
for an idle wondering every now and then if she were well. Although
she did come to Aberwyn to tend her dying father, Rhodry was at
court in Dun Deverry at the time. Every now and then, some news of
her doings came his way, but never in any detail. Now she was here.
He was dreading seeing her, because she was only a few years
younger than himself, and he hated the thought of seeing her beauty
ravaged by age. When he heard her crisp voice thanking the page,
his heart pounded once again. The door opened.
“The herbwoman, Your Grace.”
In strode a woman dressed in men’s clothing, a pair of
dirty brown brigga and a much-mended linen shirt, stained green in
places from medicinal leaves and stems. Her hair, cropped like a
lad’s, shone a silvery gray, and crow’s-feet round her
blue eyes ran deep, but she seemed neither young nor old, so full
of life and vigor that it was impossible to think of her as
anything other than handsome. Beautiful she wasn’t, not any
longer, but as he stared at the face which coincided with the one
belonging to his lovely young lass of past years, he found that it
fit her better than the beauty he was remembering. Her sudden smile
could move him still.
“Aren’t you going to say one word to me?” she
said with a laugh.
“My apologies. It’s just a bit of a shock, having
you turn up like this.”
“No doubt. You’re in for a worse shock than that,
I’m afraid.”
Without waiting to be asked she sat down in one of the chairs by
the hearth. He took the other facing, and for a few moments the
silence deepened around them. Then he remembered that his silver
dagger must have been coming home at the same time as she was
riding into Aberwyn, and he shuddered, feeling a cold touch of Wyrd
that made the hairs on the nape of his neck bristle.
“And what is this shock?”
“Well, for starters, Nevyn’s dead.”
Rhodry grunted as if at a blow. He’d known Nevyn, her
teacher and master in the craft of magic, very well indeed—in
fact, Rhodry owed him his life and his rhan both.
“May the gods give him rest in the Otherlands, then.
Somehow I thought the dweomer would keep the old man alive
forever.”
“He was beginning to wonder himself.” She grinned so
broadly that it seemed inappropriate. “He was glad to go,
when the time came.”
“How did it happen? Was he ill, or was there an
accident?”
“What? Oh, naught of that sort. It was time, and he went.
He made his goodbyes to all of us and lay down on his bed and died.
That’s all.” Her smile faded. “I’ll miss him,
though. Every hour of every day.”
“My heart aches for you, truly.”
As if to share his sympathy Wildfolk came, sprite and sylph and
gnome, materializing like the fall of silent drops of rain to float
down and stand around them. When a skinny gray fellow climbed into
Jill’s lap and reached up to pat her cheek, she smiled again,
shoving the mourning away. The sight of the Wildfolk reminded
Rhodry of his own problems. Whatever else Jill might have been to
him, she was a dweomermaster now, the possessor of strange powers
and even stranger lore.
“IVe got a question for you,” he said. “How
long does an elven half-breed like me live, anyway?”
“A good long while, though not so long as a true elf.
I’d say you’ve got a hundred years ahead, easily, my
friend. When I’m buried and gone, you’ll still look like a lad
of twenty.”
“By all the ice in all the hells! That can’t happen!
How long will it be before all of Aberwyn figures out that
I’m no true Maelwaedd, then?”
“Not very, truly. The common folk are already whispering
about you, wondering about dweomer and suchlike. Soon enough the
noble-born will, too, and they’ll come to you with a few hard
questions about exactly how much elven blood there is in the
Maelwaedd clan, and whether or no those old rumors about elves
living forever are true. If someone found out who your true father
was, it would be a nasty blow to your clan’s
honor.”
“There’s a cursed sight more at stake than the honor
of the Maelwaedds. Can’t you see, Jill? My sons disinherited,
and civil war in the rhan, and—”
“Of course I see!” She held her hand up flat for
silence. “That’s the other reason I’ve
come.”
He felt the cold again, rippling down his back. Thirty years
since he’d seen her, and yet they still at times shared
thoughts.
“I had an omen,” she went on. “It was right
after we buried Nevyn—me and the folk in the village where we
lived, that is—and I went walking out to a little lake near
our home, where there’s a stand of rushes out in the water.
It was just at sunset, and there were some clouds in the sky. You
know how easy it is to see pictures in sunset clouds. So I saw a
cloud shape that looked just like a falcon catching a little dragon
in her claws. Oho, think I, that’s me and Rhodry! And the
minute I thought it, I felt the dweomer cold, and I knew that it
was true. And here I am.”
“That simple, is it? You think of me, and here you
are?”
“Well, I had to ride to Aberwyn like anyone
else.”
“Not what I meant. Why did the omen in the clouds make you
come here?”
“Oh, that! None of your affair.”
He started to probe, but her expression stopped him: unsmiling,
a little cool, like the cover of a book abruptly slammed shut.
He could remember Nevyn turning that same blank stare on
questioners who pried into things they weren’t meant to know.
Gwerbret or not, he would only be wasting his time if he
should ask more.
“I don’t suppose you could cast some dweomer on me
to make me age.”
“You’re still a ready man with a jest, aren’t
you? I can’t, and I wouldn’t if I could. The way
out’s obvious, anyway. You’ll have to turn the rhan
over to your eldest lad and leave Eldidd.”
“What? That’s a hard thing for a man of my rank to
do.”
“If you give up the rhan, your son will keep it. If you
try to keep it, your son will lose it.”
“It’s not just the blasted rhan! You’re asking
me to leave blood kin behind. Jill, by the gods, I’ve got
grandsons.”
“Do you want to see them murdered to wipe out the last
traces of a bastard line?”
With a groan he buried his face in his hands. Her voice went on
remorselessly.
“Once the first whispers go round that you might not be a
trueborn Maelwaedd, you’ll have to settle them by the sword,
and honor duels have led to wars before, especially with a rich
prize like Aberwyn at stake. If you lose the civil war, your
enemies will hunt down every child who could even remotely be
considered your heir, even Rhodda’s lad.”
“Oh, hold your tongue! I know that as well as you
do.”
“Well, then?”
He looked up to find her watching him with a calm sort of
wondering. For a moment he hated her.
“It’s all well and good to talk of me leaving
Eldidd, but I’m not an exile or a shiftless younger son
anymore. If I present a petition to the king to allow me to
abdicate, the rumors will pile up like horse dung in a winter
stable. Besides, what if our liege asks me my reasons outright? I
could try to lie, but I doubt me that I’d be convincing. The
long knows me cursed well.”
She frowned at the hearth while she considered.
“You’re right, aren’t you? I’ll have to
think about that.” Abruptly she rose. “If anyone asks
you why I came here, tell them I wanted to tell you about Nevyn,
because that’s true enough in its own way. I’ll see you again,
and soon.”
Then she was gone, out and shutting the door before Rhodry could
rise from his chair. For a while he tried to convince himself that
he’d been having a strange, drunken dream, but the elven ring
gleamed on his finger to remind him of the truth, that he would
have to leave his clan behind for the sake of his love for it
Besides, the dweomer had saved his life several times over in the
past, and he knew, with a sudden cold certainty, that the time had
come to repay his debt.
Bred and born to rule, carefully trained to impose his will on
others while following every nicety of courtesy, Cullyn Maelwaedd
was unused to feeling guilt, and he hated this constant nag of
conscience. Every time he looked at his father, it bit deep and
gnawed him that at times he wished that Rhodry
were . . . not dead, no, never that, but
perhaps showing some signs that he might indeed die at some point.
In a way, his dilemma was unique. Because Rhodry had refused to
send Cullyn into fosterage as custom demanded and had taken the
unheard-of step of raising his son himself, Cullyn was one of the
few noble lords in Devenry who honestly loved his father. Every
time he caught himself wondering if he’d ever actually
inherit Aberwyn and felt the accompanying bite of guilt, he saw the
wisdom of fosterage in a world where a son’s power depends on
his father’s death.
Cullyn also was fairly certain that his father suspected him of
wishing him gone. After the first few days of his visit, Rhodry
became more and more withdrawn, spending long hours alone either
riding through the demesne or shut up brooding in his private
chamber. Cullyn considered simply going home, but since he’d
said that he’d stay for ten days, he was afraid that leaving
ahead of schedule would seem suspicious. On the fifth morning he
came down for breakfast only to find that Rhodry had already left
the dun. He went out to the stable to question the groom, but the
gwerbret hadn’t said a word about where he was going. As he
made his way through the clutter of sheds behind the broch, he
noticed two serving lasses gossiping furiously about something, an
activity that would have meant nothing if they hadn’t
suddenly fallen silent at the very sight of him. He walked on past,
tormenting himself by wondering if even the wretched common-born
servants knew his secret.
Later, as he was going up to his chamber in the broch, a similar
thing happened, two pages, this time, who stopped talking the
moment they saw him. Cullyn grabbed one of them by the shirt
collar.
“And just what are you saying that’s unfit for my
ears?”
The two boys went dead white and looked as if they
wanted to run, but whether or not he would ever be gwerbret, Cullyn
was a powerful lord and no man to argue with.
“Begging your pardon, my lord, please, it was
naught.”
“Indeed? Then why have you gone as white as
milk?”
The second page was older and obviously a bit wiser.
He stepped forward with a passable bow.
“My lord, we mean no offense. We were talking over this
strange rumor. Maybe you should know about it, my lord. Then you
can stop people from repeating it.”
“Indeed? And just what have the townsfolk been
saying?”
“Well, you know, my lord, how the gwerbret
looks so young? We heard an old woman in the marketplace saying it
was all because of dweomer. She said some old wizard cast this
spell on him years and years ago, that he’d never get old,
but then he’d have to die all of a sudden, like, to pay back
the spell. The old woman said there’s a gerthddyn in town
spreading the tale. He heard it up north or somewhere.” He
paused, sincerely troubled. “My lord, that’s not true,
is it? His grace is splendid, and I don’t want to see him
die.”
“Here, that can’t be true, indeed. Don’t you
bother your heart with it.”
Yet he hesitated, troubled himself,
remembering all the tales whispered among his clan that
Rhodry’s life had been touched more than once by dweomer. And
what if this strange story were true? Although by that time roost
people in Deverry knew that magic existed, few knew much about its
true powers and capabilities, so Cullyn was ready enough to
believe that it could keep his father unnaturally young. He
summoned four men from his war-band as an escort, then went into
the town. By asking round in the market square he found out that
the gerthddyn had been staying at the Green Goose, the best inn in
Aberwyn, but when he went there, the tavernman told him that the
gerthddyn had ridden out that very morning.
“I’ll wager, my lord, that he knew he couldn’t
stay here long, what with him spreading them nasty tales about your
father. There’s not a vain bone in the gwerbret’s body,
my lord. Why would he be making pacts with sorcerers just to keep
his looks?”
“Well spoken, truly. What was this fellow
like?”
“His name was Salamander, my lord, and he was a
skinny sort of fellow with yellow hair. Oh, he was a splendid
talker, my lord, when he was telling his tales, so it’s no
wonder this wretched rumor’s spreading itself around. Now,
wait, my lord.” He paused to suck his brown stumps of teeth
in thought. “Salamander didn’t rightly say the rumor
was true, like. He said he heard it up in Belglaedd and asked if we
thought there was any truth in it.”
“I see. Well,
he’s gone and no more trouble to us, then.”
When Cullyn
returned to the great hall, Rhodry was sitting at the head of the
table of honor and drinking alone. He waved his son over with a
smile that made him look more his normal self than he had in
days.
“There you are, lad. I’ve been thinking. Shall we go
hunting on the morrow? I rode out to the forest preserve today, and
the gamekeeper tells me we’ve got a pair of young stags. We
could cull one easily and help the old stag keep his dominion for
another spring.”
“Gladly, Father.”
Cullyn motioned a page over to pour him ale. As they talked
about the hunt to come, he forgot all about strange rumors in the
normality of the moment.
Just at dawn on the morrow, Cullyn joined his father and the
kennelmaster in the courtyard, where the well-trained dogs lay
still but excited, ears pricked, tails thumping the cobbles. When
the men mounted for the ride to the forest, the dogs leapt up and
swarmed round the kennelmaster, who trotted along with them on foot
as the party set out. In the brightening day the hunt left Aberwyn
behind and went north along the bank of the river Gwyn, which
churned white and swollen with the spring runoff. About eight miles
on they reached the preserve, a smallish stand of timber compared
with the vast gwerbretal hunting park at Belglaedd farther north.
While they ate a cold breakfast and let the dogs rest, Alban the
gamekeeper appeared out of the forest and sat down with them, a
gnarled and wind-chapped man as tough as an oak root. Since he was
nearly as shy as the deer themselves, it took him a long time to
bring out the various scraps of news he had for the gwerbret; he
would say one thing, then withdraw into himself before he brought
out the next. Rhodry listened with an amazing patience.
Since Cullyn loved the hunt, he was almost as excited as the
dogs by the time they finally got underway. So early in the year
the trees were only just leafing out, and the bracken and ferns
still low. Ducking and dodging the occasional branch, they rode
through the widely spaced oaks behind the kennelmaster and his
pack. The deerhounds coursed this way and that, sniffed the wind
more than the ground, then suddenly broke, baying off to the left.
With a laugh Rhodry spurred his horse after them, and Cullyn
followed, catching up with the hounds, who turned abruptly and
headed off in the general direction of the river.
All at once, Cullyn’s horse stumbled slightly, forcing him
to let it slow to regain its balance and calm down. When he headed
after the hunt, it was a good ways ahead of him. He could just see
them through the trees. Then he heard the barks turn to yelps of
terror, and the kennelmaster scream. Spear at the ready, he kicked
his horse hard, dodged through at a dangerous gallop, and burst
into a clearing to see a wild boar, flushed by accident but furious
nonetheless, making a straight charge at the pack. Dogs scattered
and the kennelmaster yanked himself into a tree barely in time.
Cullyn round himself swearing with every foul oath he knew.
They had no boarhounds—worse yet, no boar spears with the
essential guards on the haft. Already his horse was tossing its
head in fear as the massive, reeking boar charged one of the
hounds. As Cullyn kicked his horse forward, Rhodry appeared, raced
between the boar and the dog, and stabbed down at it as he passed.
Enraged, the boar swung after him and let the dogs be. With a
battle cry Cullyn charged after as Rhodry led the boar along. He
could see what his father had in mind—keep sticking the
slower-moving boar, keep it running and bleeding until they wore
the thing out and could make a safe kill. Since by its snarls he
could tell that the boar was deep in rut, he knew they had a long,
hard fight ahead. But they had forgotten about the river. Just as
Cullyn caught up, their strange hunt burst out of the forest to the
cleared roadway along the riverbank. Yelling for Cullyn to stay
back, Rhodry tried to turn his horse, but the mount got a good look
at the boar following and reared—then slipped and went
down. Rhodry rolled clear easily, unhurt, but the boar was turning
and charging.
“Da!” Cullyn’s voice was the shriek
of a child. “Da!”
Half to his feet, Rhodry threw
himself to one side and rolled straight into the river. Blind with
fury, the boar hurled itself in after him. Cullyn could never
remember dismounting, nor could he remember stripping off his
hunting leathers; all he knew was that suddenly he was in the river
and swimming, desperately coursing from bank to bank, letting the
current carry him downstream until at last, utterly exhausted, he
heard Alban screaming at him from the bank.
“To shore, my lord! I beg you, come ashore!”
With
the last of his strength Culyn fought the current to the bank and
grabbed the butt of the spear that Alban was holding out. It took
both their strengths to haul him up onto land.
“I never saw
them,” Cullyn gasped.
“No more did I, Your
Grace.”
The sound of that honorific knocked the last bit of breath out
of him. When he looked up, he saw the gamekeeper’s face
streaming tears, and the sight made him burst out sobbing, half
keening, half choking as he gasped for breath. All his suspicions,
all his envy and his fears were at last at an end, but he would
have spent a year in the hells just to have his father back again.
“By every god and his wife,” Salamander whispered;
and his face was white with fear. “I never dreamt your lad
would try to fetch you out again like that.”
“No more did I, or I’d never have agreed to this
daft scheme!” Rhodry felt like hitting him. “Aberwyn
could have lost two gwerbrets in one misbegotten day! Ye gods, did
you have to make that cursed boar so terrifying? I never knew you
could make an illusion smell like that.”
“You don’t understand, O brother of mine.”
Salamander passed the back of his hand over his sweaty forehead.
“That boar was none of my work. It was real, a solid,
corporeal, existent, and utterly unplanned accident.”
Rhodry felt the color drain from his own face. He was about to
say something particularly foul when Jill came crawling back into
their hiding place, a bracken-filled ditch on the other side of the
river.
“He’s safe,” she whispered. “The
gamekeeper and the kennelmaster are with him, and all the dogs,
too. They’ve gotten the horses under control, and no doubt
they’ll be riding home soon. We’d best get out of here
before every man in your warband comes out to search for your
corpse.”
“They’re not my men anymore.”
“Well, true enough, and we’ve got only the grace of
the gods to thank that they ride for your eldest son and not the
second.” She turned on Salamander. “You and your
wretched, blasted, rotten, and foul elaborate schemes!”
“You were the one who insisted there be witnesses, and you
agreed to this scheme at the time. Berate me not, O princess of
powers perilous, for I put not that stinking boar in their
path.”
Although Jill growled under her breath, she let the matter drop.
For some minutes they lay there, waiting until the remnant of
the hunting party should leave. While Salamander’s dweomer
could turn one man invisible as he crawled out of a river, he
couldn’t hide a party of three horsemen, a mule, and two
packhorses. Now that he knew Cullyn was safely on land, Rhodry felt
heart-wrung and numb, hating the irony of it, that he would find
out how much his son loved him when he’d never see the lad
again.
Eventually the hunting party gave up their last futile search
and rode back to Aberwyn, leaving them in sole possession of the
woods. Rhodry was more than glad to change out of his damp clothes
into the things he’d smuggled out in readiness: a pair of
plain gray brigga, an old linen shirt with no blazons, a cheap belt
with his silver dagger on it.
“So here I am, a silver dagger again, am I?”
“Not for long,” Salamander said. “We’ll
be in the elven lands soon enough.”
“Provided no one catches us.”
“Don’t fret about that,” Jill broke in.
“Salamander can make sure no one recognizes you, even if
they’re staring right at you.”
“Well and good, then. We’d best be off.”
“Just that. Our father should be waiting near the
border.”
“And that’s going to be a strange thing, meeting my
true father after all these years, and him a bard at
that.”
“Mam, I tried to save him, truly I did.” Cullyn
sounded like a little boy again.
Aedda caught his hands in hers and squeezed them gently.
“Of course you did. I know you did.”
For his sake, out of pain for his pain, she managed to do the
proper thing and weep, but there was no mourning in it. For years
she had tried very hard not to blame Rhodry; after all, she
wasn’t the first lass in Deverry who’d been given away
to cement a treaty, and she wouldn’t be the last. Yet still,
he had taken her maidenhead, her youth, her life, truly, while
keeping her always to one side of his affairs, and then, the final
bitter thing, he had taken her sons from her, too. They
always loved you more than they loved me, she thought. By every
fiend in hell, I’m glad you’re dead.
Although they never found the gwerbret’s body, they did
put up a stone to mark his passing, out in the sacred grove
where his ancestors lay. On it they carved this englyn:
This grave marks Aberwyn’s grief.
A wild wolf in the
battle-strife, Rhodry laughed when he took your life.
And that was the first death of Rhodry Maelwaedd and the
vindication of the old hermit who, years and years before, had told
him he would die twice over.
Keeping to country lanes and open lands, buying food from
farmers and shunning the duns of the noble-born, Rhodry,
Salamander, and Jill traveled west and south for ten days until
they reached the large stream or small river known as Y Brog,
marking what most human beings considered the Eldidd border, since
only elves lived beyond it. During Rhodry’s rule, the
Westfolk, as Eldidd people called the elves, had started becoming a
little friendlier than they’d been in times past. Every now
and then a trading party would show up in the border towns of
Cannobaen or Cernmeton to offer their beautiful horses in return
for ironwork and glasswares; even more rarely, an embassy would
appear in Aberwyn itself with tokens of friendship and alliance for
the gwerbret. Yet they were still strange and alien, still
frightening to most people. It was one of Rhodry’s regrets
that he’d never been able to make his subjects welcome the
Westfolk in the rhan. Since he’d always raised his sons to
like and admire them, he could at least hope that they would
continue to be welcome in the dun.
“I suppose I’ll get word now and then of how things fare
in Aberwyn,” he remarked one evening. “Especially if
Calonderiel goes to pay his respects to the new
gwerbret.”
“Of course he’s going.” Salamander was
kneeling by their campfire and feeding in sticks. “That was
part of the scheme. He’ll be waiting to have a chat with us, and
then he’ll head east. What’s wrong? Worried about your
holdings? Well, your former or late lamented holdings, I should
say.”
“It’s strange, truly. I can’t stop thinking
about Aberwyn. I keep drafting mental orders, you see, about the
way things should be run, and every now and then I actually find
myself turning round to call a page or suchlike to carry a command
for me.”
“You’ll get over it in time. Think of rulership as a
fever. It’ll pass off as your health returns.”
“Well and good, then. Maybe I need some strengthening herb
water or suchlike.”
They shared a grin. Although they were only half brothers, they
looked a good bit alike in everything but coloring.
Salamander’s hair was as ash-blond pale as Rhodry’s was
dark, but they had the strong jut of their jaw and the deep set of
their eyes in common, as well as a certain sharpness about the ears
that marked them as half-breeds.
“Where’s Jill, anyway?” Salamander stopped
fussing with the fire and came to sit down beside him.
“I don’t know. Off meditating or whatever it is you
sorcerers do, I suppose.”
“Do I hear a sour note marring your dulcet tones? A touch
of pique, a nettlement, if indeed such a word exists, a certain
jealousy or resentment of our demanding craft, or mayhap
a . . . ”
“Will you hold your tongue, you chattering
bastard?”
“Ah, I was right. I did.”
At that moment Jill appeared on the other side of the fire. They
were camped near a little copse, and in the uncertain light it
seemed she materialized right out of the trees like one of the
Wildfolk.
“You two look as startled as a pair of caught burglars.
Talking about me?”
“Your ears were burning, were they?” Salamander said
with a grin. “Actually, we were just wondering where you
were, and lo, our question is answered, our difficulty solved. Come
sit down.”
Smiling, but only a little, Jill did so.
“We should be at the ruined dun on the morrow,” she
remarked. “That’s where the others are meeting us. Do
you remember it, Rhodry? The place where Lord Corbyn’s men
tried to trap you during that rebellion.”
“Ye gods, that was years and years ago, but remember it I
do, and that dun will always be dear to my heart, because it was
there that I first saw you.”
“You chatter like your wretched brother, don’t
you?” She got up and walked away, disappearing noiselessly
back into the copse and gone.
Rhodry winced and stared into the fire.
“I think, O brother of mine, that there’s somewhat
you don’t quite understand.” Salamander paused for
dramatic effect. “Jill’s beyond you now. Beyond us
both, truly, for I’ll admit that there was a time or brief
season in my life when I was madly in love with her
myself—without the slightest result, let me hasten to add,
but a cold and most cruel rejection, a sundering of my heart and
the smashing to little bits of my hopes.”
“Oh. Who is he, then?”
“Not who, O jealousy personified. What. The dweomer. It
takes some people that way. Why, by every god in the sky, do you
think she left you in the first place? Because a love of dweomer is
a burning twice stronger than lust or even sentiment, which it
oft-times overpowers.”
Rhodry and Jill had parted so long ago that Rhodry quite simply
couldn’t remember its details, but he could remember all too
well his bitterness.
“I didn’t understand then and I don’t
understand now, and cursed if I even want to.”
“Then there’s naught I can say about it, is there? But I
warn you, don’t let yourself fall in love with her
again.”
Rhodry merely shrugged, wondering if the warning coming too
late.
On the morrow morn they splashed across Y Brog and left the
settled lands behind. All that day they rode through fallow
grasslands, dotted here and there with copses or crossed with tiny
streamlets; that night they camped in green emptiness. Yet early on
the next day Rhodry saw rising on the horizon a broken tower, as
lonely in the endless grass as a cairn marking a warrior’s
grave—which, he supposed, it might well have been.
“Did this dun fall to the sword?”
“I haven’t the slightest idea,” Jill said.
“Calonderiel might know.”
The elf in question, an old friend and a warleader among his
people, was waiting for them near the empty gap in the outer walls
that once had held wooden gates. They saw his horse first, a
splendid golden gelding with a silvery mane and tail, tethered at
his leisure out in the grass. Calonderiel himself was pacing idly
back and forth in the ward, where grass grew round the last few
cobbles and a profusion of ivy was sieging the broch itself. A tall
man but slender, as most of his people were, the warleader had dark
purple eyes, slit vertically like a cat’s, moonbeam-pale
hair, and, of course, ears as long and delicately pointed as a
seashell.
“So there you are!” he sang out in Deverrian.
“I thought Salamander had gone and gotten you all
lost.”
“Spare me the implied insults, if you please.”
Salamander made him a sketch of a bow. “You must have been
talking with my father, if you’d think so ill of me. Which
reminds me. Where is the esteemed parent? I thought he’d be
eager for a first look at this other son of his.”
“No doubt he will, when he finds out you’ve ridden
west.” Calonderiel turned to Rhodry. “My apologies, but
Devaberiel’s gone off north somewhere with one of the alarli.
I’ve got my men out riding, passing the word along and
looking for him. He’ll turn up.”
“Blast and curse it all!” Jill got in before Rhodry
could say a word. “I wanted to speak with him before I rode
on, and now I’ll have to sit around here and wait.”
“Impatient, isn’t she?” Calonderiel was
grinning. “You should be used to elven ways by now, Jill.
Things happen when they happen, and not a moment before.”
“Well,” Rhodry said. “I’ll admit to
being a bit disappointed myself.”
“And you must admit, Cal,” Salamander broke in,
“that my father can take his sweet time about things. He
calls his progresses stately or measured; I call them dilatory,
tardy, lackadaisical, or just plain slow.”
“Well, you’ve got a point.” The warleader
glanced Jill’s way. “Aderyn’s at the
encampment.”
“That’ll make the waiting easier, truly. How far
away is everybody?”
Not very far at all, as it turned out. A couple of miles to the
west the camp sprawled along a stream: some twenty brightly colored
round tents, a vast herd of horses, a small flock of sheep, a neat
stack of travois poles, all scattered through the tall grass in a
tidy sort of confusion. As they rode up, a rush of children and
dogs came yelling and yapping to meet them; about thirty adults
strolled more slowly after.
Over the years Rhodry had picked up a fair amount of Elvish,
more than enough to greet everyone and to understand the various
speeches of welcome that came his way. He smiled and bowed and
repeated names that he forgot a moment later. When Calonderiel
insisted that the two brothers share his tent, there were plenty of
willing hands to carry their gear and to take their horses. Skins of
mead and bowls of food appeared as the camp settled in around the
main fire for a celebration. Everyone wanted to meet
Devaberiel’s son and tell him about the major feast planned
for the evening, too. In all the confusion it was some hours before
Rhodry realized that he’d lost track of Jill.
About half a mile away from the main camp, Aderyn’s
weathered tent stood alone near a stand of willows at the stream
edge. It was mercifully quiet there, except for the trill of birds
in the willows. Jill tethered her horse out with Aderyn’s
small herd, then carried her gear round to the tent flap. Just as
she was wondering whether to call out a greeting, the flap rustled
open, and Aderyn’s new apprentice, a pale-eyed young elf
named Gavantar, crawled out. He was even more slender than most of
his people, and pale-haired, too, so that Jill found herself
thinking of him as more a spirit than a man. But his hands were
strong enough as he snatched her burdens from her.
“Let me carry that gear for you, O Wise One of the East.
You might have let me tend your horse.”
“I’m not some withered old woman, lad, not yet,
anyway. Is your master here?”
“Of course, and waiting for you.”
Although the day was warm, the tent was dim and cool, the air
sparkling from the rush and bustle of elemental spirits that always
surrounded Aderyn. Wildfolk crouched or lounged all over the tent,
sprawling on the floor, clinging to the walls, perching on the
many-colored tent bags hanging from the poles. A small fire
smoldered under the smoke hole in the center, and the dweomerman
himself was sitting cross-legged nearby on a pile of leather
cushions. He was a small man, fully human, with enormous dark eyes
in his slender, wrinkled face, and dead-white hair, which swept up
from his forehead in two peaks like the horns of an owl. When he
saw Jill, he grinned in honest delight and rose to catch her hands
in his.
“Ah, it’s good to see you in the actual flesh! Come
sit down. Can I offer you some mead?”
“None for me, thanks. I don’t have your head for the
stuff. I wouldn’t mind a cup of that spiced honey water the
Westfolk make, though.”
The apprentice put the saddlebags down and hurried out again,
heading for the main camp to fetch a skin of the drink in question.
Aderyn and Jill sat down facing each other, and she began pulling
some cloth-wrapped bundles out of her gear. A gaggle of gnomes
clustered round to watch, including the small gray fellow that
followed Jill everywhere.
“Nevyn wanted you to have these books.” She handed
Aderyn a pair of ancient folios with crumbling leather bindings.
“Though what you’re going to do with a matched set of
Prince Mael’s writings, I don’t know.”
“Lug them around with all due honor and respect, I
suppose. Actually, these particular volumes mean somewhat to me.
The man who gave them to Nevyn was someone I much admired.”
He ran slender fingers over the stamped decorations, flecked here
and there with the remains of gold leaf, a roundel enclosing a pair
of grappling badgers, and under it a motto: “We hold
on.”
“But fancy him remembering that, after all these
years! I’m quite surprised that I do, actually.”
“And here’s a trinket from Brin Toraedic. He said to
tell you that since it was older than both of you put together, it
was a marvel indeed.”
Aderyn laughed and held up the golden cup, made of beaten metal
and decorated with a ridged pattern utterly unlike any made by
human or elf. Jill found herself studying the old man; he seemed no
older, no weaker than he ever had, but still she worried. He picked
up her thought.
“My time won’t be for a little while yet. I have
Gavantar to train, and he’s just begun his
studies.”
“Ah. I just . . . well,
wondered.”
“Things have been hard for you with Nevyn gone.” It
was not a question.
“They have. It’s not just the missing of him, though
that’s bad enough. I feel so wretchedly inadequate, little
more than an apprentice myself, truly, and not fit to be the Master
of the Aethyr.”
“Oh here, we all go through that! You’ll grow
into the job. It’s like becoming captain of a warband, I suppose.
All that responsibility at first—why, it must overwhelm a
man, thinking of all those lives that depend on his
decisions.”
“True-spoken. But I’ve got Nevyn’s work to
finish. I keep feeling that I’ve absolutely got to do it
right for his sake.”
“Wait a moment now! It’s not his work, any more than
it’s your work. Don’t let that kind of vanity enter in
or you’ll find yourself worrying indeed. It’s all our
work, and the work and will of the Great Ones. Think of it as an
enormous tapestry. We each weave a little piece, what small amount
we’re capable of, then hand the grand design on to the next
worker. No one soul could possibly finish the entire thing by
himself.”
“You’re right enough, aren’t you?” Jill
smiled, feeling her dark mood lift. “I’ll drink to
that! Here comes your Gavantar now.”
Carrying a leather bottle that was dripping wet and smelling of
Bardek cinnamon and cloves, Gavantar ducked through the flap and
joined them. Once the drink was poured round, he sat down by the
door on guard, and with a shy duck of his head refused to move
closer even when Aderyn invited him. He was new to the dweomer,
Jill supposed, and still in awe of what he considered strange and
mighty powers. Soon enough, when he came to see how natural in
their way Aderyn’s magicks were, he would begin to feel at
ease.
“Is Rhodry still with Calonderiel?” she asked.
“He is, O Wise One. The whole camp wants to meet
him.”
“Good. Then he’ll stay out of trouble for a few
hours, anyway.” She turned back to Aderyn. “Rhodry is
one of the things that are vexing me.”
“Ah. He’s still in love with you?”
“That, too, I suppose, but that’s not the important
thing. I wonder what’s going to happen to him now, mostly.
No, I worry about him, worry badly. We’ve snatched him away
from everything he knows and loves, which is harsh enough, and then
beyond that, there’s his Wyrd. For so long his whole life was
ruled by that prophecy, and now he’s fulfilled it, and well,
what’s going to become of him?”
“Prophecy?”
“The one Nevyn received all those years ago. Don’t
you remember it? Rhodry’s Wyrd is Eldidd’s Wyrd, it
ran.”
“Oh, that! Of course—he became gwerbret in the nick
of time, didn’t he?”
“You seem to take it all blasted lightly, but so he did.
Look, there would have been a long and ghastly war in Eldidd if
Rhodry hadn’t been there to inherit the rhan.”
Aderyn merely nodded. Jill supposed that he was so old, and had
seen so many wars, that one more conflict would have meant nothing
to him.
“And then there’s the rose ring, too,” she
went on. “I’ve been vexing myself about that bit of
jewelry for months now. That’s why I want to talk to
Devaberiel, you see, to ask him about it and that rather odd being
who gave it to him. I’ll wager he wasn’t an ordinary
elf.”
“You’re right about that.” Aderyn’s
voice had gone tense and strange. “I’ve got my own
ideas about who that mysterious benefactor was.”
“I want to hear them. And what about that wretched
inscription? If we knew what it meant, we might be able to
unravel the entire mystery.”
Although she was expecting him to tell her his ideas or at least
acknowledge that she’d spoken, Aderyn sat for a long
time merely staring out into space. At last, though, he spoke in a
voice that was half a whisper, half a sigh.
“The ring—that cursed ring! Dwarven work, and it had
a life of its own, just like their trinkets always do. Stranger
than most, this one, and I’ll wager its work isn’t over
yet.” He shook his head, then went on in a normal voice.
“But, oh yes, the prophecy . . . so a man
of elven blood finally ruled in Eldidd! Fancy that!”
“Well, you know, his son has a good dollop of elven blood
in his veins, too. Young Cullyn.” Jill had to smile at his
expression. “Here, Aderyn, you look shocked to the very
heart!”
The old man shrugged and looked away, and at that moment the
weight and sadness of all his long years seemed to press him down.
Wildfolk clustered round, patting his hands, climbing into
his lap, glaring at Jill as if accusing her of causing
their friend pain. In spite of his shyness Gavantar inched himself
closer, looking back and forth between the two masters of his craft
with a worried little frown.
“Well, the land did belong to the People once,” Jill
went on. “I’d like to see them welcome there again. Or
is it a wrong thing for men and elves to mix their blood like
this?”
“Not in the least.” Aderyn threw off the mood and
half the Wildfolk with a shrug and a wave of one hand. “And
it would be splendid, in my opinion, anyway, for the People to have
some say in ruling Eldidd, too. It’s just hard for me to
believe when I remember some of the things that have happened over
the years. There’s been a lot of bad feeling, Jill, just a
terrible lot of bad feeling between my two tribes. That’s how
I always think of elves and men, you see, as both mine now, though
once, truly, I hated thinking that I might still be a human being.
Of course, Rhodry’s the one who’s really caught between the
two worlds, isn’t he? It’s not going to be easy for
him, either. I can testify to that, from my own experience.”
He paused for a long moment. “Well, it’s going to be
much worse for him, truly. There are things that have happened to
him in other lives that are bound to come to a head now.
That’s one reason I made sure to be here on the border when
he came.”
“Indeed? What sort of things?”
“Well, it’s a long and winding tale, truly, and one
that runs hundreds of years, all told, though I think me that
we’re about to get to the end of it at last. You do remember,
don’t you, that his soul in another body was my
father?” The old man grinned. “If anyone can remember
that far, way back in the mists of time when I was born.”
Jill smiled with him, but she felt a touch of dweomer eerie run
down her back. She had, after all, in another body been his mother.
Aderyn was too courteous to mention the point.
“But Gweran—my father, that is, and Rhodry in
another flesh—was the most human man I’ve ever
seen.”
“But he was a bard. You’re forgetting that.
There’s a touch of . . . well, what? madness? the
Wildlands? . . . somewhat strange and magical
and crazed and inspired, all at once, in the soul of every
bard.”
“Well, so there is. I hadn’t truly thought of it
that way before. Wyrd and the tangles of Wyrd! They always say that
no man can know the truth of it.”
“Or woman either, but we’ve all got to try to
untangle our own.”
“Just so, and we were speaking of other people’s work
earlier, weren’t we? But Rhodry might well be my work
now—no need for you to bother and all—though I might
end up needing your help one fine day. After Gweran died, I doubt
me if you were involved in much of this.” He thought hard,
chin in hand. “You’ve always belonged to the human
race, Jill, not to the Elcyion Lacar like I do—not that
Rhodry’s soul was ever supposed to be so mixed up with the
elves, either, truly, bard or not. It’s an odd thing, how
tangled a man’s Wyrd can become, and all through muddles and
blunders. But you don’t need to trouble your heart over it.
Truly, I don’t think you were involved, except in the most
casual way.”
And in spite of herself Jill was vexed that there was some deep
part of Rhodry’s soul and Rhodry’s Wyrd that had
nothing to do with her.