A Time of Exile

‘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.’