A Time of Exile

‘I’ll die soon,’ Nananna went on. ‘It is time, and Dallandra will have my tent, my horses, and my place among our folk.’ She laid a bony pale hand on the lass’s shoulder. ‘But I leave her a bitter legacy along with the sweet. I am old, Aderyn, and I speak bluntly. I do not like your people. I fear their greed and what it will do to us.’

‘I fear it too. Please believe me – I’d stop them if I could.’

Nananna’s eyes bored deep into his. Aderyn looked back unflinchingly and let her read the truth of what he said.

‘I have heard of the dweomer of the east,’ she said after a moment. ‘It seems to serve the Light I serve, only after its own manner.’

‘There is only one Light, but a rainbow of a thousand colours.’

Pleased by the answer, Nananna smiled, a thin twitch of bluish lips.

‘But one of those colours is the red of blood,’ she said. ‘Tell me somewhat: will your people kill mine for their land?’

‘That’s what I’m afraid of. They’ve killed others for theirs – or enslaved them.’

‘No one will ever enslave an elf,’ Dallandra broke in. ‘We’d die first, every last one of us.’

‘Hush, child!’ Nananna paused, thinking. ‘Tell me, Aderyn. What sent you to us?’

‘Just this spring I left my master and received my vision. In it I saw a river, far to the west. When Halaberiel brought me to you, I crossed that river.’

‘And do you want to go back across it to your own kind? I can have the banadar escort you.’

‘Wise One, there are some rivers that can never be recrossed.’

The old woman smiled, nodding her agreement. Aderyn felt cold with excitement, a sweet troublement. He could hear the distant singing, drifting in from the night with the wailing of flutes.

‘If you asked for me, and if I’ve been sent to you,’ Aderyn said, ‘what work do you want me to do?’

‘I’m not truly sure yet, but I do want Dallandra to have a man of your people at her side, who understands your ways as she understands ours. I see blood on the grasslands, and I hear swords and shouting. It would be a shameful thing if I didn’t even try to stop it. Will you ride with us for a while?’

‘Gladly. How can I stand by and let my folk do a murdering thing to haunt their Wyrd forever?’

‘Nicely spoken. Tell me, Dalla – can you work with this man?’

Dallandra turned her storm-cloud gaze Aderyn’s way and considered him for so long that his heart began pounding.

‘Well,’ she said at last, ‘I’d work with the Dark Fiends themselves if it would help my people. He’ll do.’

‘Well and good, then, as your folk would say.’ Nananna raised a frail hand in blessing. ‘Ride south with us, young Aderyn, and we’ll see what all our gods have in store.’

TWO (#ulink_a3aa6c67-9457-5ead-a0aa-22a4994b3b3d)

The cold autumn rains slashed down over the town of Cernmeton and sent water sheeting across the cobbles and pooling in the gutters. Wrapped in his heavy winter cloak of dark blue wool, Cinvan rode fast through the twisting streets and left it up to the few townsfolk abroad to get out of his horse’s way. He clattered through the gates of the tieryn’s dun, a walled compound centred round a stone broch, rode round to the back stables, and yelled for a groom. A stableboy came running.

‘So you’re back, are you? How was your visit home?’

‘As good as it needed to be. Did I miss any excitement?’

‘You didn’t, unless you count getting drunk in our lord’s hall as excitement.’ He sighed in a melancholy way. ‘We’ve got a Carnoic tournament going on. So far Edyl’s ahead by six games.’

‘I’ll see if I can give him a run for his coin, then.’

In the great hall smoke from the two huge hearths drifted in blue wisps across the round room. On one side the warband of thirty-five men was sitting and drinking at their tables. Up by the honour hearth, Tieryn Melaudd was slouched in his carved chair and drinking with his two sons, Waldyn and Dovyn. The tieryn was a florid-faced, raven-haired man, heavy with middle age but still capable of swinging steel. Of the sons, Waldyn, the elder, had the blond hair he’d inherited from his Deverry mother, but the younger looked much like a slender version of his father. Everyone knew that Dovyn was his father’s favourite son, too – a pity, since under the new laws he could never inherit a share of the demesne. Cinvan knelt before the tieryn, who gave him leave to speak with a wave of his hand.

‘I’ve returned to your service as I pledged you, my lord. A thousand humble thanks for giving me leave.’

‘Welcome, lad. And how fares your kin?’

‘They’re doing well, my lord.’ Cinvan was lying, but he saw no need to burden the tieryn with a problem he could do nothing about.

‘Good, good. Get yourself some ale and join your comrades.’

Cinvan rose, bowed, and made his escape from the awesome presence of the noble-born. He dipped himself a tankard of ale from the open barrel in the curve of the wall, then strolled over to join the warband. Most of the men were watching Edyl and Peddyc play Carnoic, a board game where the players moved black or white stones along a pattern of triangles in attempts to capture each other’s men. Every move the two of them made was slow, studied, and accomplished by either cheers or oaths from the rest of the warband. As Cinvan stood watching them, Garedd came over and laid a hand on his shoulder.

‘So our falcon’s flown back to the nest, has he? Pity – I was hoping you’d drown on the road.’

Cinvan threw a mock punch his way.

‘Bastard! Anything happen while I was gone?’

‘Naught. And how was Elrydd?’

‘As well as it needed to be.’

Garedd shot him a look of honest sympathy. They took their tankards and sat down at a table far from the crowd around the game.

‘And your sister?’ Garedd said.

‘That’s the cursed worst thing of all. By the hells, I was minded to beat her black-and-blue. First she has to go and get herself a bastard, and now she’s given it up.’

‘She what?’

‘Gave the babe up. To her rotten cat-eyed man. He rides in and wants the little lass – because she’ll be only a burden on our Dewigga, or so he says, and so she up and lets him take her away.’ Cinvan slammed the tankard down on the table. ‘And Da was too cursed drunk to know or care. Ah, horseshit!’

‘Now here, maybe it’s for the best. Your sister’s got a chance at a decent marriage someday now.’

‘Ah, that’s what she said, blast her! But the shame of it, my own niece, one of my blood kin, riding with the Westfolk! What’s her Da going to do, I says to Dewigga, teach her to steal? And she’s got the gall to slap me across the face and tell me to hold my tongue! Women!’

Garedd nodded in silent sympathy. Cinvan drew his dagger and began fiddling with it, just for comfort. On the hilt was graved his personal mark, the striking falcon that had earned him his nickname in the warband. He ran a heavily calloused thumb over the mark and had thoughts of slitting this Gaverenteriel’s throat for him one sweet day.

‘And you know what else Dewigga had the gall to say? She’s always known her man was going to take the babe when she was old enough. You’re cursed lucky you didn’t let me know, says I. Why do you think I held my tongue? says she. Cursed good thing, says I, and she slaps me again.’

‘Why didn’t you beat her black-and-blue?’ Garedd said.

Cinvan shrugged, laying the dagger down on the table and picking up his tankard. The truth was too bitter to tell: he’d seen too much of that already, with his father beating his mother half to death every time she looked at the old man wrong. Her sobs still echoed through his dreams.

‘Ah, wouldn’t be worth the trouble,’ Cinvan said. ‘I just tell her that if she has another bastard, don’t come running to me for coin for the midwife this time, and she flounces out of the room like a high-born lady with her nose in the air.’