A Time of Exile. Katharine Kerr

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 those years he 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 was 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 favourites, 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 like 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 shot 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 inside. 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, he was at court in Dun Deverry at the time. Once in a while, 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 grey, and crows’ feet round her blue eyes ran deep, but she seemed neither young nor old, so full of life and vigour 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 fitted 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 for ever.’

      ‘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 grey 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 rumours 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 honour.’

      ‘There’s a cursed sight more at stake than the honour 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.