A Time of Exile - Katharine Kerr [169]
“It’s going to keep rising,” Aderyn remarked. “I don’t need dweomer to tell me that.”
“Just so, Wise One. Very well. Let’s give the order to strike the tents.”
As they turned to head back to camp, they heard a woman shriek, a howl of terror and agony. A chorus of voices cut through the pound of rain: “He’s gone in!” Cursing under his breath, Halaberiel dashed to the river’s edge. Aderyn could just barely see a small blond head bobbing toward them some five feet from shore. Howling and keening, the child’s mother tried to throw herself into the river after the boy. Her man grabbed her and held her back just as the banadar dove, as smoothly as a seabird, into the torrents. Aderyn heard himself yell aloud, invoking the Lords of Water, as he ran downstream. At first he could see nothing but the surging brown and silver race; then two heads popped up, a small blond and a larger gray one.
“Hal! I’m keeping pace with you! Oh Lords of Water, help me now if ever I’ve aided you!”
With one arm crooked round the boy’s neck Halaberiel was struggling to swim with the other even as the raging current swept them both inexorably out to the estuary and the pounding, foaming sea. Although Aderyn never actually saw the Lords of the Elements, they must have appeared in answer to his cry, because Hal never would have been able to reach shore without some supernormal aid. As it was, he managed to struggle to within a bare foot of the muddy bank and thrust the boy into Aderyn’s grasping hands. Then the current grabbed him in turn and swept him on, swept him under in the churn and mill of white water pouring down to the waiting sea waves. Aderyn clasped the shrieking child in his arms and wept until the others caught up to him. Sobbing hysterically, the mother snatched the child from him as if he’d been the one who nearly drowned it.
“The banadar!” Calonderiel came running. “Hal! Hal!”
“He’s gone.” Aderyn caught his arm. “You’re the warleader for this alar now.”
Calonderiel threw his head back and screamed his grief into the howling wind. Aderyn grabbed him by the shoulders and shook him.
“The tents! You’ve got to order the alar to strike the tents!”
With one last convulsive sob Calonderiel pulled himself together. As he ran off, he was shouting orders in a voice of command.
It was close to dawn, and the rain was slacking to a drizzle, before anyone said, “By the way, where’s Maer?” With a lot of snapping and cursing the warband rushed around through the sopping, improvised camp. Just as the gray and sullen dawn was breaking they returned with the news that Maer and his horse both were missing. Aderyn felt an icy finger of dread run down his back.
“He must have been caught in the storm,” Calonderiel said. “And these wretched Round-ears don’t know how to take care of themselves in open country. We’ll have to start searching for him right now.”
“If you’ll wait for five ticks of a heart together,” Aderyn said with some asperity, “I’ll scry for him and make your task a good bit easier.”
Since fires were out of the question, he used water for a scrying focus, appropriately enough, and saw Maer’s heaped and tumbled body against a hazel. With a high-pitched keen he broke the vision.
“Dead?” Calonderiel said.
“Drowned. But I don’t understand why. I found him in the midst of trees. Why didn’t he climb one? Ye gods, the water’s only a foot or so high around him.”
At the head of a grim procession Aderyn led them to Maer’s body. Calonderiel was as overwhelmed as he’d been by losing the banadar, but in this case, it was guilt as much as grief that was ripping at his heart. Maer was his guest-friend, and he’d failed him—that’s how Cal saw it, no matter who tried to argue otherwise. While Calonderiel wept and stormed, and Albaral wrapped Maer in a blanket with the ritual prayers, Aderyn left the hazel thicket and walked a few feet downstream to the place where three streams joined for the river. Three streams.