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By Root 746 0

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 gray 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 their 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 mold. 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. Out in back was their garden, where practical 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 center 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 vigor 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 drafty 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 than 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