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‘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 colour 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 got 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 any more.’
‘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 grey 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 travelled 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 glassware; 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 herbwater or suchlike.’
They shared a grin. Although they were only halfbrothers, they looked a good bit alike in everything but colouring. 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 nettle-ment, 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 was 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 were 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 war-leader had dark purple eyes, slit vertically like a cat’s, moonbeam pale hair, and, of course, ears as long and delicately pointed as a sea-shell.
‘So there you are!’ he sang out in Deverrian. ‘I thought Salamander had gone and got 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 coloured 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-coloured tentbags hanging from the poles. A small fire smouldered under the smoke-hole in the centre, 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 saddle-bags 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 grey 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 honour 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, 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’s 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 jewellery for months now. That’s why I want to talk to Devaberiel, you see, to ask him about it and the strange 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.’
