A Time of Exile

Although she was expecting him to tell her his ideas or at least acknowledge that she’d spoken, Aderyn sat for a long time merely staring out into space. At last, though, he spoke in a voice that was half a whisper, half a sigh.

‘The ring – that cursed ring! Dwarven work, and it had a life of its own, just like their trinkets always do. Stranger than most, this one, and I’ll wager its work isn’t over yet.’ He shook his head, then went on in a normal voice. ‘But, oh yes, the prophecy … so a man of elven blood finally ruled in Eldidd! Fancy that!’

‘Well, you know, his son has a good dollop of elven blood in his veins, too. Young Cullyn.’ Jill had to smile at his expression. ‘Here, Aderyn, you look shocked to the very heart!’

The old man shrugged and looked away, and at that moment the weight and sadness of all his long years seemed to press him down. Wildfolk clustered round, patting his hands, climbing into his lap, glaring at Jill as if accusing her of causing their friend pain. In spite of his shyness Gavantar inched himself closer, looking back and forth between the two masters of his craft with a worried little frown.

‘Well, the land did belong to the People once,’ Jill went on. ‘I’d like to see them welcome there again. Or is it a wrong thing for men and elves to mix their blood like this?’

‘Not in the least.’ Aderyn threw off the mood and half the Wildfolk with a shrug and a wave of one hand. ‘And it would be splendid, in my opinion, anyway, for the People to have some say in ruling Eldidd, too. It’s just hard for me to believe, when I remember some of the things that have happened over the years. There’s been a lot of bad feeling, Jill, just a terrible lot of bad feeling between my two tribes. That’s how I always think of elves and men, you see, as both mine now, though once, truly, I hated thinking that I might still be a human being. Of course, Rhodry’s the one who’s really caught between the two worlds, isn’t he? It’s not going to be easy for him, either. I can testify to that, from my own experience.’ He paused for a long moment. ‘Well, it’s going to be much worse for him, truly. There are things that have happened to him in other lives that are bound to come to a head now. That’s one reason I made sure to be here on the border when he came.’

‘Indeed? What sort of things?’

‘Well, it’s a long and winding tale, truly, and one that runs hundreds of years, all told, though I think me that we’re about to get to the end of it at last. You do remember, don’t you, that his soul in another body was my father?’ The old man grinned. ‘If anyone can remember that far, way back in the mists of time when I was born.’

Jill smiled with him, but she felt a touch of dweomer eerily run down her back. She had, after all, in another body been his mother. Aderyn was too courteous to mention the point.

‘But Gweran – my father, that is, and Rhodry in other flesh – was the most human man I’ve ever seen.’

‘But he was a bard. You’re forgetting that. There’s a touch of … well, what? madness? the Wildlands? somewhat strange and magical and crazed and inspired, all at once, in the soul of every bard.’

‘Well, so there is. I hadn’t truly thought of it that way before. Wyrd and the tangles of Wyrd! They always say that no man can know the truth of it.’

‘Or woman either, but we’ve all got to try to untangle our own.’

‘Just so, and we were speaking of other people’s work earlier, weren’t we? But Rhodry might well be my work now – no need for you to bother and all – though I might end up needing your help one fine day. After Gweran died, I doubt me if you were involved in much of this.’ He thought hard, chin in hand. ‘You’ve always belonged to the human race, Jill, not to the Elcyion Lacar like I do – not that Rhodry’s soul was ever supposed to be so mixed up with the elves, either, truly, bard or not. It’s an odd thing, how tangled a man’s Wyrd can become, and all through muddles and blunders. But you don’t need to trouble your heart over it. Truly, I don’t think you were involved, except in the most casual way.’

And in spite of herself, Jill was vexed that there was some deep part of Rhodry’s soul and Rhodry’s Wyrd that had nothing to do with her.

PART ONE (#ulink_fb5829ab-adf4-505e-89ae-9180c043e7d1)

ONE (#ulink_4b4fff4c-af2e-58d3-9120-233b8d634313)

In the cold grey morning, when the mists rose from the surface of Loc Tamig, one could understand why the local farmers thought it haunted. All Aderyn could see of the lake surface was a few patches of rippled water, broken by a drowned tree and four steel-grey rocks, while on the far shore the pine-black mountains rose up in peaks and shadows. The sound of a hundred waterfalls chattered and murmured through the mists like spirit voices. At the moment, though, Aderyn was more worried about the coming rain than possible ghosts. He was, of course, still a young man then, with his hair a nondescript brown and always hanging in an untidy lock over his forehead rather than swept up in the owl-shape it would later assume, and he was even skinnier, too, because half the time he forgot to eat when he was deep in his dweomer studies. That particular morning he was down on his knees in the tall spring grass, digging up valerian roots with a small silver spade.

Wildfolk clustered round to watch him work – two small grey gnomes, skinny and long-nosed, three blue-green sprites with pointed teeth and pretty faces. Just like children they crowded close, pointed mute questions, and generally got in the way. Aderyn named everything they pointed at and worked fast with one eye on the lowering clouds. Just as he was finishing, a gnome picked up a clod and threw it at his fellow. Snarling and baring his teeth, the sprites joined in a full-scale dirt fight.

‘Stop it! Your great lords would find this most discourteous!’

One sprite pinched him on the arm. All the Wildfolk vanished with little puffs of air and dust and a gust of smell like clean leaf-mould. Aderyn gathered up his things and ran for shelter in the spattering rain. Down among a stand of trees was the round stone hut he shared with his master in the dweomercraft. Two years before, he and Nevyn had built the hut with their own hands and made a small stable for their horses and mules. At the back was their garden, where practical food such as beans and cabbages grew as well as exotic cultivated herbs, and a flock of chickens had their own little house. Most of their food, though, came from the farming villages at the north end of the lake, where the local people were glad to trade supplies for medicine.

When Aderyn dashed into the single round room, he found Nevyn, sitting by the fire-circle in the centre and watching the play of flame. A tall man, with a thick thatch of white hair and deep-set blue eyes, Nevyn was close to a hundred years old, but he had more vigour than most men of twenty, a striding walk and the erect carriage of the great prince of the realm that once he had been.

‘Back just in time, you are. Here comes the storm.’

A gust of wind eddied smoke through the draughty hut as the drops began pattering on the roof. Nevyn got up and helped Aderyn lay the valerian to dry on clean cloths. The roots had to be sliced thin with a small silver knife, a nose-wrinkling smell, and they had to wear fine leather gloves, too, lest the strong juices poison them.

‘Nevyn? Will we be leaving Loc Tamig soon?’

‘You will.’

Aderyn sat back on his heels and stared at him.

‘It’s time for you to go off on your own. I’ve taught you all I know, and your Wyrd runs different from mine.’

Even though he’d always known this day would come, Aderyn felt close to tears. Nevyn laid down one last slice of root and turned to look at him, his piercing blue eyes unusually gentle.

‘It’ll ache my heart to see you go. I’ll miss you, lad. But it’s time. You’ve reached the third nine of your years now, and that age marks a turning-point for everybody. Come now, you know it, too. You’ve got your herbcraft to feed and clothe yourself, and I’ve opened the gates of the dweomer for you as far as I can. Now you have to walk through those gates and take up your own Wyrd.’

‘But what will my Wyrd be?’

‘Oh, that’s not for me to say. No man can see another’s Wyrd. You have the keys to open that door. It’s time for you to work a ritual and use them. The Lords of Wyrd will reveal what you need to know – and not a jot more, doubtless.’

On the morrow, when the rain stopped, Nevyn took his horse and two pack-mules and rode off to the villages to buy food. He told Aderyn that he would stay away three days to leave him alone for the working, but as to what that working would be, he said nothing at all. Only then did the apprentice realize that the most important moment of his life was strictly in his own hands. He would have to draw on all his knowledge and practice to devise a ritual that would open his Wyrd and put him in contact, at least for a few brief moments, with his secret and undying soul, the true core of his being that had invented and formed the young man known as Aderyn for this lifetime the way a potter takes clay and makes a bowl. As he stood in the doorway and watched Nevyn ride away, Aderyn felt a panic tinged with excitement, an exultation touched with dread. It was time, and he felt ready.

That first day, Aderyn did his usual chores in the garden and hut, but he kept thinking about the task ahead. He had at his disposal a vast amount of ritual lore – tables of correspondence, salutations to the gods, invocations and mighty calls to the spirit world, signs, sigils, and gestures to set in motion streams of force and direct inner energies. In his excitement, his first thought was to use them all, or at least, as many as possible, to create a ritual that would sum up and climax all rituals, as elaborately decorated, braided, laced and spiralled as a beautiful brooch fit to give a king. While he weeded cabbages, his mind raced this way and that, adding a symbol here, a prayer there, trying to fit twenty years of work into a single mighty pattern. All at once he saw the irony: here he was, grubbing in the dirt like a bondsman and making grandiose plans. He laughed aloud and contemplated his mud-stained fingers, calloused with years of menial work such as this. The Great Ones had always accepted his humble status and lowly sacrifices before. No doubt a simple ritual would be best now. With the insight came a feeling of peace, because he’d passed the first test.

But just as with a simple meal or a simple garden, every element would have to be perfect of its kind and perfectly placed. The second day, Aderyn worked furiously all morning to finish his chores by noon. He ate a light meal, then went outside to sit under a willow tree by the shore of the lake, sparkling in the soft spring sun. On the far shore, the stony hard mountains rose dark against a blue sky. He looked at them and thought over his lore, rigorously pruning instead of proliferating it. A simple approach to a central symbol – he looked at the peaks and smiled to himself. For the rest of the day he practised every word and gesture he would use, mixing up the order so no true power would run through them. In the evening, by firelight, he prepared his magical weapons – the wand, cup, dagger, and pentacle that he had made and consecrated years before. He polished each one, then performed the simple rituals of consecration again to renew their power.

On the third day, he was quiet as he went through his work. His mind seemed as still as a deep-running river, only rarely disturbed by what most men would call a thought. Yet in his heart, he renewed, over and over, the basic vows that open the secret of the dweomer: I want to know to help the world. He was remembering many things, sick children he’d helped heal children who had died because they were beyond the help from herbs, bent-back farmers who’d seen the best of their harvests taken by noble lords, the noble lords themselves, whose greed and power-lusts had driven them like spurs and made them suffer, though they called the suffering glory. Someday, far in the future, at the end of the ages of ages, all this darkness would be transmuted into light. Until that end, he would fight the darkness where he found it. The first place he would always find darkness would be in his own soul. Until the light shone there, he could do little to help other souls. For the sake of that help, he begged for the light.

At sunset, he put his magical weapons in a plain cloth sack and set off for the shore of the lake. In the twilight, he made his place of working, not a rich temple glittering with golden signs and perfumed with incenses, but a stretch of grassy ground. He used the dagger to cut a circle deosil into the turf, then laid his cloth sack down for an altar in the middle. On the sack he laid the dagger, the wand and the pentacle, then took the cup and filled it with lake water. He set the cup down among the other objects and knelt in front of the sack to face the mountains. Slowly the twilight deepened, then faded as the first few stars came out, only to fade in turn as the full moon rose, bloated and huge on a misty horizon. Aderyn sat back on his heels and raised his hands, palms flat upward, about shoulder high. As he concentrated his will, it seemed the moonlight streamed to him, tangible light for building. He thrust his hands forward and saw to the east of his rough altar two great pillars of light, one all pure moon-silver, the other as dark as black fire shining in the star-strewn night. When he lowered his hands, the pillars lived apart from his will. The temple was open.

One at a time, he picked up each weapon, the dagger for the east, the wand for the south, the cup for the west, and the pentacle for the north, and used it to trace at each cardinal point of the circle a five-pointed star. Above and below him he finished the sphere, using his human mind alone to trace the last two stars, the reconcilers of the others. When he knelt upon the ground, he saw the temple glowing with power beyond his ability to call it forth. The Lords of Light were coming to meet him. Aderyn rose and raised his hands to the east between the pillars. Utterly calm, his mind as sharp as the dagger’s point and deep as the cup, he made light gather above him, then felt and saw it descend, piercing him through like an arrow and rooting itself in the ground. His arms flung out as he felt the cross-shaft pierce him from side to side. It seemed he grew huge, towering through the universe, his head among the stars, his feet on a tiny whirling sphere of earth far below, enormous, exalted, but helpless, pinned to the cross of light, unmoving and spraddled, at the mercy of the Great Ones.

The voice came from everywhere and nowhere.

‘Why do you want knowledge?’

‘Only to serve. For myself, naught.’

With a rush like cold wind, with a dizzying spin and fall, he felt himself shrink back until he stood on the damp grass and saw the temple around him, the pillars glowing, the magical weapons streaming borrowed light, the great pentangles pulsing at their stations. He nearly fell to his knees, but he steadied himself and raised his hands in front of him. In his mind he built up the vision between the pillars – a high mountain, covered with dark trees and streaked with pale rock under a sunswept sky – until it lived apart from his mind and hung there like a painted screen. Calling on the Lords of Light, he walked forward and passed through the veil.

Pale sun glinted on flinty rock. The path wound steep between dead shrubs, twisted through leafless trees, and over everything hung the choking smell of dust. Aderyn stumbled and bruised himself on rock, but he kept climbing, his lungs burning in the thin cold air. At last he reached the top, where huge boulders pushed out from grey soil like the bones of a long-dead animal. He was afraid. He had never expected this barrenness, this smell of death as thick as the dust. Although the wind was cold, he began to sweat in great drops down his back. It seemed that little eyes peered out at him from every rock; little voices snarled in cold laughter. He could feel their hatred as they watched him.

‘Would you serve here?’ the voice said.

Aderyn had to force the words from his lips.

‘I will. I can see there’s need of me.’

There was a sound – three great claps of thunder, booming among the dead rocks. As they died away, the eyes and the voices died with them. The mountain top was lush with green grass; flowers grew, as vivid as jewels; the sun was warm.

‘Look down,’ the voice said. ‘Look west.’

Aderyn climbed to the top of a boulder and looked out, where it seemed the sun was setting on a smooth-flowing wide river. Oak forest stretched on the far bank.

‘West. Your Wyrd lies west. Go there and heal. Go there and find those you will serve. Make restitution.’