A Time of Exile - Katharine Kerr [108]
“Done. We’ll leave at dawn, then, the day after tomorrow.”
When the time came to leave, Maer turned up promptly. Nevyn was loading up his newly purchased riding horse and pack mule in the little innyard just at dawn when the silver dagger appeared, leading a splendid black warhorse, laden with a pair of saddlebags, a bedroll, a plain white shield, and a pot helm, all tied in a messy sort of way to his saddle. He looked over the mule packs with some interest.
“So you’re a herbman, are you?”
“I am. Don’t worry about falling sick on our journey.”
Maer grinned and finished loading the mule without being asked. They led their horses through the busy morning streets, then mounted outside the west gate just as the last of the sea fog was burning off into a late-summer morning. To their left, the turquoise sea sparkled and churned at the foot of pale cliffs, and to their right, the winter wheat stood ripe and golden in the fields. As they rode, Maer burst into good cheer, whistling and singing in a fine clear tenor that with training could have made him a bard. Nevyn was so genuinely glad to hear the man he would always think of as Maddyn sing again that he had to give himself a stern warning. This was Maer now, not Maddyn, and it was against all the laws of dweomer as well as common sense to treat the one as the other.
When he turned in the saddle to pay Maer a compliment on his voice, he was in for a surprise. Riding behind the silver dagger’s saddle and clinging to him like a child was a good-sized blue sprite. Just as he was telling himself that of course it couldn’t be the same creature, not Maddyn’s favorite still loyal after all these years, the sprite grinned at him in such smug contentment that he was forced to recognize her. Over the next few days, as they made their slow way to Cannobaen, Nevyn saw the sprite often, hovering around Maer during the day, cuddling up to him like a dog while he slept at night. It became obvious, though, that Maer never saw her, because often he would have stepped on her if she hadn’t jumped aside. Once, when Maer was off at a farmhouse buying food, Nevyn got a chance alone with her. Talking about death to one of the Wildfolk was, of course, a complete waste of breath.
“He doesn’t see you anymore, you know. He’s changed since the last time you found him.”
She snarled, exposing long and pointed teeth.
“It’s not good for you to follow him this way. You should be off with your own kind.”
At that she threw back her head and howled, a thin wisp of sound. Since normally the Wildfolk were incapable of making noise, Nevyn became even more troubled.
“I’ll talk with one of your kings,” he began, “and we’ll see what …”
In a screech of fury she seemed to swell, sucking up substance from the material plane and turning for one brief moment quite solid and as large as a growing child. Then she was gone in a gust of cold air.
Besides seeing the Wildfolk, Maer had been a silver dagger in his last life, too, of course, but Nevyn tended to consider that a simple coincidence. Although he would never had pried into the reason for this dishonor, Maer himself volunteered the story as they sat round the campfire on their second night out.
“You’re not an Eldidd man, are you?” Nevyn had asked him.
“I’m not. I was born in Blaeddbyr, over in Deverry, and that’s where I got this blasted dagger, too. I was riding for the Wolf clan, you see, and one night, well, me and the lads got a bit drunk. So one of my friends got this daft idea. There was this lass he fancied—oh, bad it was, good sir—he was like a boar in rut over the tailor’s daughter, but her da, he kept an eye as sharp as one of his needles on the lass. So my friend puts us up to helping him. We went round to the tailor’s shop and Nyn calls the lass out of her bedroom window, while me and the other lad went round the front. We pretend to get into a brawl, you see, and old Da comes running out. So we led him a merry dance, insulting him and having a fine old time, and truly, we got a bit carried away.” With a sigh, Maer