A Time of Exile - Katharine Kerr [174]
“He was dead, I take it.”
“Just that. He had one of his coughing fits and bled to death.” Lord Gorddyn’s pudgy face turned a sudden pale. “But here’s the cursed strange thing. He was lying on his back with his hands crossed over his chest. Someone had laid him out, like, for burying. And me and my men asked around in town and in all the farms, and we never found anyone who’d even seen him that night, much less anyone who’d admit to doing such a thing, and frankly, I know my folk, and none of them would have done it without fetching me first.”
Although Lord Gorddyn wanted Aderyn to take his hospitality for the night, he made a raft of polite excuses and left well before the dinner hour. A farmer he met on the road told him exactly where young Meddry’s body had been found. On the far side of a meadow from the dun stood a copse of pale birches, standing silently now in the chill of an autumn afternoon as if they mourned the boy who’d died there. Since there was a nearby stream to water his horses, Aderyn made camp in the copse. He had a light meal, then drew a magic circle round the camp, sealed it with the pentagrams, and waited.
She came with the moonrise, an hour or so after sunset that night, came walking up to the trees just like a human woman, but her long blue hair waved and drifted around her face as if it blew in some private wind, and she was barefoot, too, in the rimy frost. Unlike a human woman, she could see the magic sphere glowing golden over the camp. She greeted it with a howl of rage that sounded more like a wolf than a human. Slowly and carefully, so as not to frighten her, Aderyn walked to the edge of the circle and erased a portion to welcome her in. She refused to come any closer, merely balled her fists and made a show of threatening him.
“Where is he?” she snarled.
“The boy you love? He’s dead, child.”
She stared with mindless blue eyes.
“You killed him, child. I know you didn’t mean to hurt him, and indeed, you need my help, too. Come now, let’s talk.”
Again she stared, her mouth slack.
“He’s gone away.” Aderyn tried to make her see. “Gone far, far away under the ground. He did that once before, remember? When you tried to take him to see Elessario.”
Her howl took him by surprise, because it was such a human sound, that time, as if all the grief and pain and mourning of the world were tearing her heart.
“I’m sorry. Please, child, come in and sit by my fire. Let me help you.”
She howled again, then vanished, leaving him to curse himself for a clumsy fool that he should let her escape so easily. Never had he expected her to love her victim so deeply and so well that she would react with true grief. He camped there in the copse for a fortnight, and every night he went searching the etheric plane for her, and during the day he meditated upon the matter and discussed it with the Lords of the Wildlands, but never did he or they find her again. (He did find out, though, that it was the lords who’d laid the poor lad out properly, as a small token of their desire to make amends.) Finally he was forced to admit defeat and leave to rejoin the People out in the grasslands, because winter was coming on, driving them down to the south coast. He reproached himself with his failure for years.
And for years the folk around Drwloc heard a banshee, or so they called it, wailing in the lonely places whenever the moon was at her full. At length she came less often, and finally, after a long, long time, she vanished, never to be heard again.
EPILOGUE
THE ELVEN BORDER
SUMMER 1096
For six nights the alar camped near the ruined dun and waited for news of Rhodry’s father. Because of the stock, they did have to move on the seventh day, heading north a day’s ride to fresh pasture. After two days there, though, the alar split up for Rhodry’s sake. Calonderiel and his warband, with their women and children, along with Aderyn’s magical company and of course Rhodry himself, drove off a herd of extra horses to leave the best grazing for the sheep.