A Time of Exile (30 page)

“What made her do that?”

“I don’t know for certain, but I’d guess that Maddyn’s dead.”

The sprite threw back her head, opened her mouth in a soundless howl, and disappeared.

“He seems to be, yes,” Dallandra went on. “And she’s mourning him.”

Elessario cocked her head to one side and considered the words for some time. They walked across the glowy emerald grass in a pinkish twilight, where blue-green trees on the horizon shifted like smoke. With a howl that they
could actually hear, the sprite reappeared, much larger, about the size of a three-year-old child.

“She mourns because he’s gone to the place called death,” Elessario said, “and she can’t follow him there.”

“That’s right, yes.”

They were sitting on the billowing grass with the sprite between them, leaning her head into Elessario’s silken lap.

“Every now and then I wonder what it would be like to die,” Elessario said. “Tell me.”

“I don’t know. I can only make guesses. I suppose it’s a lot like falling asleep—but you’ve never been asleep—sorry.”

“I’m growing very tired of finding out that there are all these things I’ve never done.” But she sounded sad rather than cross. By then, the sprite was sitting on her lap and was larger again, like a child of nine or ten, cradled in her arms and silent. “If I go to Uve among the People, if I go to be born and someday die, what then, Dallandra?”

“I don’t know. None of us can know what would happen then.”

“I’m growing very tired of you telling me that there are all these things you don’t know.”

“But I don’t know them. The only one who can find those answers is you.”

They were walking among roses, with the sprite, tiny again, skipping ahead. All at once the little creature threw back her head and sniffed the air like a hunting dog. For the briefest of moments she froze, then darted into the air, swooped round them in joy, and disappeared.

“Something’s made her happy,” Dallandra remarked.

“Maybe her bard’s been reborn.”

“Oh no, it’s much too soon! Although, I don’t know about the Round-ears. It might be different for them.”

The lands of the court shifted and gleamed around them in a burst of moonlight, and now and again music drifted in warm air.

“Oh, lovely—the moon’s rising,” Dallandra said. “It’s so hard to believe that I’ve been here seven whole days.”

All at once, just from saying the words aloud, their import pierced her mind. How could it have been seven days, only seven short days, when enough time had passed for Nevyn to travel to the elven lands and leave them again, for
Maddyn the bard to appear, then die, and now, maybe—no, it was quite likely, really—be reborn again. Dallandra shrieked aloud and felt the cry tear out of her as if by its own will.

“Elessario! You’ve lied to me! You’ve tricked me!”

“What?” She spun around to stare, then suddenly burst into tears. “Never! Dalla, what do you mean?”

“How long have I been here?”

Elessario could only stare while tears ran down her cheeks. Dallandra realized that she would have no way of understanding such things as the passing of time.

“Take me to your father. Where’s your father?”

“Here.” In full court garb, draped in a cloak of silvery blue and wearing a golden fillet round his yellow hair, he came strolling up to them. “I’m the trickster, Dalla, not my poor little daughter. Time runs different here in our country.”

“You never told me.”

“You never would have come.”

“If you had gods, I’d curse you by them.”

“No doubt. You know, I’m rather sorry I lied. What an odd sensation.”

“Let me go home.”

“Of course. That was our bargain, wasn’t it? Home you shall go, and right now.”

“No!” Elessario howled. “Please don’t go, Dalla.”

“I’m sorry, child, but I have to. You can come visit me in my own country, like you used to do before.”

“I want to go with you now. Please, let me come with you and live with you.”

Suddenly the air grew cold, and the moon slipped behind dark clouds. In the murky light torches gleamed on armor and sword; shields clashed, men swore, banners snapped and fluttered as an army rushed toward them, Alshandra riding hard at their head. With a frown of mild disgust, Evandar threw up one hand and snapped his fingers. All the charging soldiers turned into mist and blew away. Stamping one foot, Alshandra stood before them.

“Dallandra will never leave. She’s turned my daughter against me, and I shall have her in return. It’s the law and it’s fair and she’s my prize.”

“I made her man a promise,” Evandar said. “And I shall keep it.”

“You made the promise, Evandar Yellow-hair, not me. She shan’t leave. If our daughter is going away because of her, she’s staying to be my prize in return.”

Dallandra found herself clutching the amethyst figurine at her throat, as if to keep it safe. Alshandra howled with laughter.

“You don’t know the way home, do you, girl? You don’t know which road leads home.”

They stood on the misty green plain, looking into the setting sun. On their right hand rose the dark hills, twisted and low; on their left towered the high mountains, their white peaks shining in the last of the light. Before them stretched not one road but a tangle, all leading off into mist as dark as night.

“You could wander a long time here,” Alshandra said. “Maybe luck would take you home straightaway. I doubt it.”

Evandar grabbed her elbow. When she swung round to face him he grinned in smug triumph.

“You say it’s fair that you have a prize, and so our laws run. But would it be fair, my sweet, my darling, to trap and keep a soul that never took a thing from you, that never saw Elessario before, that never, indeed, saw you or me before?”

“What? Of course it wouldn’t be fair, and never would I do such a thing. What does that have to do with anything?”

“Everything, my sweet, my darling. Dallandra carries a child under her heart, an innocent child that never took a thing from us, that’s yet to see any of us.”

With a shriek, a scream, a howl of sheer agony Alshandra swelled up huge, towering over them like storm clouds. When she cried out again her voice was a wail of mourning.

“Unfair!”

“No.” Evandar’s voice was cool and calm. “Very fair.”

She stretched out, as thin as clouds dissolving under a hot sun, then all at once snapped back, standing before them as an old, withered woman, dressed all in black, with tears running down her wrinkled cheeks.

“Clever,” Evandar remarked. “But somehow my heart doesn’t ache for you the way it should.”

With a snarl she stood before them, herself again, in her hunting tunic and boots, her bow slack in one hand.

“Oh, very well, show her the road home, but you’re a stupid wretched beast and I hate you.”

She was gone. Dallandra caught her breath in a convulsive sob.

“And what do you want from me, Evandar, in return for all of this?”

“Only one thing. After your babe is born, and if you’re not happy anymore, come back.” He caught her by the shoulders, but gently. “But only if you’re not happy. Do you understand? Come back only if your heart aches to come back.”

“I do understand, but I fear me you’ll never see me again.”

“No doubt. Well, I can hope—no, I’m fairly sure—that Elessario will find her way to you and to your world, sooner or later. As for the rest of us, our fate is no concern of yours. I’ll take it up in my hands, the fate of us all, and see what I can do about it. Farewell.” He bent his head and kissed her, a soft, brotherly brush of his mouth on hers.

The kiss seemed to wipe away the landscape around her. She blinked, staggered, then found herself standing on the edge of a shallow cliff. When she automatically clutched at her throat, she found the amethyst figurine gone. Down below in a brushy canyon stood the painted tents of her people. Off to one side she could see the big tent, painted with looping vines of roses, that belonged to her and Aderyn, but all the designs were oddly faded and weathered. Hasn’t he kept it up? she thought. Well, that hardly matters now—I’m home. Half laughing, half weeping, she ran along the clifftop until she found the path, then scrambled down, sliding a ways in her eagerness. As she got to her feet on the level ground, she heard shouts, and some of the People began running toward her, Enabrilia in the lead.

“Dalla, Dalla!” As Enabrilia threw her arms around her, she was weeping hysterically. “Oh, thank every god, thank every god! Farendar, don’t stand there gaping! Go get Aderyn!”

A tall young man, fully grown and a strong-muscled warrior, ran off at her bidding. Dallandra grabbed her friend by the shoulders while the other elves stood around
in dead silence and merely stared. Half of them she didn’t even recognize.

“That can’t be Faro!” But even as she spoke, she felt unwelcome knowledge creeping into her mind like dread. “What’s wrong with you?”

“You’ve been gone so long.” Enabrilia began repeating the same thing over and over. “You’ve been gone so long.”

Dallandra hugged her, shook her, yelled at her, until at last she fell quiet. When the other elves moved back to let someone through, Dallandra looked up to see Aderyn. For a moment she felt as if she would faint. He was so old, so thin, his hair dead white, his hands thin, too, like sticks or claws, and his face was so wrinkled, like ancient leather left out too long in the sun, that she sobbed aloud on a note that was close to a keen.

“Oh, ye gods! I’ve come back just in time to help you die.”

“I doubt that.” His voice was soft, but strong, younger somehow than his face. “My kind ages a long, long time before they die, Dalla.”

All at once her knees would no longer hold her weight, and she staggered forward, caught herself before she fell, then staggered again, letting him grab her arms and steady her.

“How long?” she whispered. “How long have I been gone?”

“Close to two hundred years.”

She threw back her head and keened, howling and raging all at once, just as Alshandra had done. The other elves closed in and caught her, supported her, led or shoved her along back to the camp and her tent. Only Enabrilia came inside with her and Aderyn.

“Sit down, Dalla,” Enabrilia said. “Sit down and rest. Things will be better when you’ve had a moment to think. At least you’re free and back with us.”

“Things will never be better again, never!”

Between them Enabrilia and Aderyn got her to sit on a pile of blankets. When, blind with tears, she held out her hands, he took them and squeezed them, his fingers stiff and dry and thin on hers. She realized that she would never again feel the touch of the hands she’d been remembering and burst out weeping afresh. Dimly she was aware of
Enabrilia leaving and had the hysterical thought that at least Bril had learned tact in the last two hundred years. She nearly laughed, then choked, then wept again, until at last, spent and exhausted, she fell quiet and slumped down against the blankets in a sprawl. She heard him get up; then he laid a leather cushion down in front of her. She took it, sat up enough to shove it under her head, then lay on her back and watched him numbly. His face showed no feeling but a deep confusion, like a man who’s coming round from a hard blow to the head.

“Ado, I’m sorry.”

“It’s not your fault.” He sat down next to her. “I’m surprised they let you go at all.”

“I’m going to have a child, and they let me go for its sake. It’s your child, Ado. We made it before I left. All those years were like seven days to me, no more.”

It was his turn to weep, but his tears were the rusty creak of a man who thought he would never care enough about anything in life again to weep for it. The sound made her want to scream for the injustice of it all, but there was no good in howling “It isn’t fair!” like one of the Guardians. Slowly she sat up and put her hands on his shoulders.

“Don’t cry, Ado, please. At least I’m back. At least we’re together. I’ve missed you so much.”

“Missed me or the young man you left behind?” The tears gone, he turned to face her, this old man who reminded her so much of her lover. “I wouldn’t even be alive, you know, if it weren’t for Evandar. He worked some kind of dweomer on me, to give me an elven life span, but he forgot about elven youth.”

He was furious, and she knew that no matter how much he might protest, it was her that he was angry with, not the Guardians. She wanted to weep again, but she was too exhausted.

“What about our baby?” she whispered. “Are you going to hate it?”

“Hate it? What? As if I ever could! Ah, Dalla, forgive me. At first I dreamt every night about seeing you again, and I had things all planned to say to you, wonderful loving things. And then the years dragged on, and I forgot them because I lost all hope of ever seeing you again. And now, I
don’t have any words left that make sense.” He got up, stood hesitating at the tent flap. “Forgive me.”

When he left, she was relieved. Within minutes, she was asleep.

As the days passed, Aderyn came to believe that he was more furious with himself than with either Dallandra or Evandar. He began to see himself as a warrior who spends all winter drinking, feasting, and lying around in his lord’s hall until, when spring comes, his mail no longer fits over his swollen belly and hefting a weapon makes him pant for breath just when the war is about to start and he’s needed the most. In all the long years that she’d been gone, it had never even occurred to him to look at another woman, never crossed his mind to grow fond of someone else.

No one could ever have taken Dallandra’s place in his heart, of course; never would he have thought of remarrying, even though elven law would have allowed him to do so as soon as she’d been gone for twenty years and a day. But he might have found friendship and affection, if not love, might have kept his heart alive instead of suffocating it in his work as he had in fact done. All the energy of his heart, all his capacity to love that he might have given to another woman—he’d transmuted them into something sterile and poured them into his pupils and his studies. He marveled at himself, that he had Dallandra back yet couldn’t really love her again, even though she treated him with all her old affection. She would have shared his bed if he’d wanted, but he used her pregnancy as an excuse and slept away from her.