A Time of Exile Read online

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 st
udy 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.

  “I’ve 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 l
ed 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 king 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 Deverry 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.