A Time of Exile (51 page)

“Dying, aren’t I?” Meddry whispered.

“Not just yet, and maybe not at all.” Aderyn came as close to an outright lie as he could get. “We’ll see what we can do for you, lad.”

“I can spot false cheer by now, herbman.” With a sigh he flopped back down into the warm straw.

Mostly to check how much vitality his newfound patient had left, Aderyn stared into his eyes, then nearly swore aloud as he recognized the soul who in his last life had carried the name of Maer. At that point he remembered the strange womanlike sprite he’d seen hanging round Lord Gorddyn’s gates, and his blood ran as cold as the sick boy’s.

“You’ve got a strange sort of lover, don’t you, Meddry?”

His face turned first so white, then so fiery with shame that Aderyn knew that his loose arrow had hit the mark.

“You’ve got to leave her alone. She’s what’s killing you. Hush! Don’t try to argue with me. Just listen. She’s so desperate to please you that she wants to look like a real
woman. She’s doing it by feeding off your life. I can’t explain any better than that, but it’s making you ill.”

In a stubborn burst of energy he shook his head no.

“We’ll talk more later. You rest here for now, and I’ll send one of your friends to you.”

Aderyn hurried into the great hall, where Calonderiel and the other elves were just finishing up their mead and preparing to leave. He took Lord Gorddyn to one side for a hurried talk.

“My lord, your rider’s close to death.”

Gorddyn swore and stared down at the floor.

“I might—just barely might, mind—be able to help him. Tell me, how long has he been ill?”

“Well, he didn’t come down with the actual fever until the spring, and he’s only been spitting up the blood for the last few weeks, but truly, he started acting strange months ago. Last winter, it was, just after Samaen.”

“Acting strange? How?”

“Oh, keeping to himself a fair bit, when he was always the soul of good company before. He used to go for long rides out in the snow, and I think me that’s when his humors started to wither, out in the cold and wind and all. That’s what the herbwoman in town calls it, withering humors. And every now and then one of the other lads would find him talking to himself. Just talking to the empty air as if there was someone there.”

Aderyn felt the savage sort of annoyance that comes from seeing your worst fear confirmed.

“Well, my lord, I ride with the Westfolk these days, but our camp is only a couple of days from here. I need to ride back and fetch my medicinals and suchlike, but I’ll be back as soon as ever I can. Now, listen carefully. I know what I’m going to say will sound strange, but please, my lord, if you value your man’s life, do as I say. While I’m gone, set a guard over Meddry. Never let him be alone for a minute. He’s more than ill; he’s being troubled by an evil spirit, but one of the lesser sorts that walk abroad on Samaen. She must have fastened herself onto him then. It’s the spirit that’s drying up his humors. If there’s people around him—or so I hope, anyway—the spirit will be puzzled at first and leave him alone for a few days.”

Lord Gorddyn’s eyes went as a wide as a child’s, but he
nodded a stunned agreement. Out in these isolated settlements, people took talk of spirits seriously.

When they left, they rode out fast, and Aderyn pushed everyone along as they traveled back to the camp. There he loaded up his medicinals, took a couple of fresh riding horses, and rushed back again. Although Aderyn wanted Loddlaen to come with him to study this interesting medical case, the boy—well, a young man by then, really—insisted on staying home, and as usual, Aderyn refused to cross his will. Aderyn was, of course, as worried about the spirit as he was about Meddry, no matter what he’d said to Lord Gorddyn. As he rode, he was planning how to approach her, and how he’d invoke the Lords of the Wildlands to help him catch her, but in the end, and for all his speed, he was too late. He rode up to Lord Gorddyn’s gates just in time for Meddry’s burying, out in the sacred grove of oaks behind the dun.

“Ah, ye gods, what happened?” Aderyn burst out. “I truly thought he had a couple of weeks left, my lord.”

“Good herbman, I’ve failed him badly, I’m afraid. Here, after this sad thing, we’ll talk. Go on into the dun and have the stable lads take your horses and suchlike.”

Later that afternoon, over mead Lord Gorddyn told Aderyn the tale. After the dweomermaster left them, they’d followed his orders exactly. The men in the warband took turns sitting with the lad and making sure that he was never alone for a minute during the day. At night they carried him to his bed in the barracks, where he slept surrounded by other men. Since he was so deathly ill no one even considered the possibility that he might get up and slip out on his own.

“But that’s just what he did, good sir.” Lord Gorddyn looked sick to his stomach. “Two nights ago, it was. All that day he’d been begging the men to go away, and he was raving, too, saying ‘I’ve got to see her’ over and over. They thought maybe he meant his mother, but she’s been dead these two years.” Suddenly he shuddered. “Maybe he did mean his mam, because truly, he’s seeing her in the Other-lands tonight, isn’t he? But anyway, they wouldn’t leave him. So when night came, they put him to bed in his bunk and brought him some broth and suchlike, but still they didn’t leave him alone. They took turns, like, eating dinner
in the great hall so he always had company. Sometime in the dead of night, when everyone was sound out, he must have escaped. It’s cold these fall nights, Aderyn. Winter’s coming early this year, I swear it, to judge from the frosts we’ve been having. But be that as it may, Meddry got the strength from some god or other to get out of the barracks and walk all the way out of the dun. He didn’t get much farther, though. We found him not more than a quarter mile from here, up in the birch groves.”

“He was dead, I take it.”

“Just that. He had one of his coughing fits and bled to death.” Lord Gorddyn’s pudgy face turned a sudden pale. “But here’s the cursed strange thing. He was lying on his back with his hands crossed over his chest. Someone had laid him out, like, for burying. And me and my men asked around in town and in all the farms, and we never found anyone who’d even seen him that night, much less anyone who’d admit to doing such a thing, and frankly, I know my folk, and none of them would have done it without fetching me first.”

Although Lord Gorddyn wanted Aderyn to take his hospitality for the night, he made a raft of polite excuses and left well before the dinner hour. A farmer he met on the road told him exactly where young Meddry’s body had been found. On the far side of a meadow from the dun stood a copse of pale birches, standing silently now in the chill of an autumn afternoon as if they mourned the boy who’d died there. Since there was a nearby stream to water his horses, Aderyn made camp in the copse. He had a light meal, then drew a magic circle round the camp, sealed it with the pentagrams, and waited.

She came with the moonrise, an hour or so after sunset that night, came walking up to the trees just like a human woman, but her long blue hair waved and drifted around her face as if it blew in some private wind, and she was barefoot, too, in the rimy frost. Unlike a human woman, she could see the magic sphere glowing golden over the camp. She greeted it with a howl of rage that sounded more like a wolf than a human. Slowly and carefully, so as not to frighten her, Aderyn walked to the edge of the circle and erased a portion to welcome her in. She refused to come
any closer, merely balled her fists and made a show of threatening him.

“Where is he?” she snarled.

“The boy you love? He’s dead, child.”

She stared with mindless blue eyes.

“You killed him, child. I know you didn’t mean to hurt him, and indeed, you need my help, too. Come now, let’s talk.”

Again she stared, her mouth slack.

“He’s gone away.” Aderyn tried to make her see. “Gone far, far away under the ground. He did that once before, remember? When you tried to take him to see Elessario.”

Her howl took him by surprise, because it was such a human sound, that time, as if all the grief and pain and mourning of the world were tearing her heart.

“I’m sorry. Please, child, come in and sit by my fire. Let me help you.”

She howled again, then vanished, leaving him to curse himself for a clumsy fool that he should let her escape so easily. Never had he expected her to love her victim so deeply and so well that she would react with true grief. He camped there in the copse for a fortnight, and every night he went searching the etheric plane for her, and during the day he meditated upon the matter and discussed it with the Lords of the Wildlands, but never did he or they find her again. (He did find out, though, that it was the lords who’d laid the poor lad out properly, as a small token of their desire to make amends.) Finally he was forced to admit defeat and leave to rejoin the People out in the grasslands, because winter was coming on, driving them down to the south coast. He reproached himself with his failure for years.

And for years the folk around Drwloc heard a banshee, or so they called it, wailing in the lonely places whenever the moon was at her full. At length she came less often, and finally, after a long, long time, she vanished, never to be heard again.

F
or six nights the alar camped near the ruined dun and waited for news of Rhodry’s father. Because of the stock, they did have to move on the seventh day, heading north a day’s ride to fresh pasture. After two days there, though, the alar split up for Rhodry’s sake. Calonderiel and his warband, with their women and children, along with Aderyn’s magical company and of course Rhodry himself, drove off a herd of extra horses to leave the best grazing for the sheep. They made camp back on the Eldidd border and set a guard every night to keep watch for any hated Round-ears. Every day the dweomermasters would scry for Devaberiel; they always found him easily enough, but he always seemed to be traveling idly north, unaware that his long-lost son was waiting for him on the border.

During all this time Rhodry found himself drawn to Jill in spite of all his best efforts to leave her alone. He had never wanted to lose her, had always planned, from the moment he first met her, to spend his entire life in her company, and now that he’d found her again—or so he
thought of it—all that old devotion came back in the same way as a fire, banked with sod for the night, flares up when a servant knocks the lumps of earth aside and lets the fresh air in. He found himself courting her as if she were a young lass, turning up at her side whenever she went walking, bringing her flowers, angling to sit next to her at every communal meal. Although she was mostly cold to him, every now and then she warmed, when they were talking about something they’d done or someone they’d known, all those years ago in his other life on a silver dagger’s long road.

One morning, when Rhodry went looking for Jill in his usual way, he found her sitting on the streambank near Aderyn’s tent. Apparently she’d just bathed, because she was combing her wet hair while Salamander sat with her and talked. When Rhodry joined them, his brother turned to him.

“I’m going to leave today and go look for our father. Obviously Cal’s messengers haven’t caught up with him yet, and I can just see us all wandering back and forth across the grasslands for years and years, passing close by but never meeting, endlessly wondering where the other one is—that sort of thing.”

“I was beginning to worry myself, and you have my thanks, but maybe I should just go with you. I’m the one who wants to see him, after all.”

“Aderyn says your place is here,” Jill broke in. “He doesn’t want you wandering all over the grasslands just yet.”

“Very well, but why not?”

“He didn’t tell me that.”

“Well, I’d like to know—”

“Hold up, brother of mine.” Salamander intervened. “Among the People we have a custom. What a Wise One—a dweomermaster, that is—says, we do. That’s one reason why I’ve never aspired to that exalted title myself. Some small dweomer I have, but the wisdom to lead my people—well, I’d just as soon not put myself to the test.”