A Time of Exile - Katharine Kerr [182]
“This is very bad,” the old man said. “She’s come right after you.”
Aderyn stepped back, stretched out his hand, and began turning slowly in a circle while he chanted under his breath in some language that Rhodry didn’t recognize. It seemed that he was using his pointing finger to draw a big invisible circle around the tent and to scribble some sort of figure at each quadrant, too. As soon as he’d gone round three times, Rhodry felt as if he’d been suddenly shaken awake after a night of vivid dreams. While he could remember that he’d seen marvels, he couldn’t remember a single detail, and the tent seemed far more real and solid than it had in weeks. Yet the world around him was also strangely bleak—tawdry, somehow, and dirty round the edges, as if it were some rich and beautiful shirt, all embroidered in Bardek silk, that he’d worn and worn until it was frayed bald and stained, fit only for giving to a beggar to keep off the cold.
“You’ve got to give her up.” Aderyn’s voice was cold and harsh. “Do you understand me? She’ll kill you if you don’t.”
The anger he felt caught Rhodry by surprise. He wanted her, wanted the marvels, wanted them so badly he had a brief thought of killing anyone, even Aderyn, who stood in his way. The old man stepped back so sharply that Rhodry knew his rage must have shown on his face.
“Please, Rhodry, listen to me. You’ve touched on the edge of forbidden things, and it’s hard for me to explain, but—wait, I know. Think of it this way. That dream you had? It’s an omen. She’ll kill you without even meaning to do it if you keep going to her. She’s sucking the life-force out of you, and soon enough your body will weaken and die, because there won’t be enough force to sustain it. I know that doesn’t make a lot of sense, but—”
“Cursed right it doesn’t! Ye gods, don’t you understand? Dying seems a small price to pay for what she gives me.”
Aderyn stared, simply stared at him for a long time.
“Things are worse even than I feared,” the old man said at last. “But there’s one last thing you don’t understand. Maybe you’re willing to die, but what about her? Are you going to drag her down with you? She thinks I hate her, but she’s as much my charge as you are. She has no mind to understand what happens between you. She loves you, and that’s everything and all that she knows about this world.”
Almost against his will Rhodry was remembering her confusion over simple things like names and time passing.
“She’s become the way she is because she knows you want her that way,” Aderyn went on. “You’re doing this to her, Rhodry Maelwaedd. If she goes on trying to please you, she’ll be utterly ruined, caught between the lands of men and elves on the one side and the Wildlands on the other. The Wildlands are her true home, but soon she’ll lose them, get herself shut out of them, and all because of you. Do you want that? She’ll be doomed, a bit of cosmic refuse, suffering for half of Eternity, and all because of—”
“Stop it! Oh, ye gods, hold your tongue! I could never do that! I’ll give her up, then! I swear it on the gods of both my peoples!”
“And I’ll hold you to that vow. Good. Well, then, let me just call Gavantar back in. Looks to me like you could use some dinner.”
Rhodry forced down food that was strangely tasteless, then went to his blankets and fell asleep without even bothering to undress. Almost at once he was dreaming so vividly that he knew it was no ordinary dream, that she’d come to him when he could set no guard against her, because in the land of dream she was the lord and he the vassal. When she reproached him for betraying her, he fell to his knees and begged her to forgive him, groveled at her feet like a bondsman until she graciously reached out a hand and bade him take it. She swept him back to the rose meadows, where even in dream the perfume hung thick in the golden air, and led him to a stream, where fish as bright as jewels slipped through golden