A Time of Exile - Katharine Kerr [185]
“Well, a good morrow to you,” Jill said in Elvish. “Is your alar nearby, or are you riding alone?”
The woman tossed back her head and wailed, one high keen of a spine-chilling note, then vanished. Slowly Jill got to her feet, and she was shivering from more than the damp.
“A banshee, was it? Oh, ye gods! Rhodry!”
Immediately she tried to scry him out, but she could find no trace either of him or the elven camp. Just before she panicked she realized that Aderyn might well have set seals over them all for some reason of his own—if so, a portent of horrible trouble indeed.
All that day, while the storm cleared and the sun and wind dried the tall grass, she pushed herself and the horses mercilessly, but even so, it was on the morrow noon—the fifth day after she’d left the islands of Wmm—that she finally saw the elven camp, a huddle of round tents on the horizon, and the horse herds, spread out and grazing peacefully. The young elf on watch greeted her with a shout that brought Calonderiel and half a dozen men riding hard to gallop her into camp.
“Take her horses,” the warleader called. “I’ll escort her to the Wise One’s tent. Jill, by every god, I’m glad to see you!”
“Is Rhodry dead?”
“No. Aderyn didn’t tell you? Rhodry’s gone mad. Straight off his head, raving, seeing things—I don’t understand it one bit, but it’s terrifying, truly. Just trying to get him to eat is a battle and a half.”
Aderyn’s tent was standing in the middle of the camp instead of at its usual distance. With Calonderiel right behind her and a crowd of Wildfolk shoving and pushing round them, Jill rushed inside. Aderyn was standing by the dead fire and waiting for her. The dweomermaster looked exhausted, pale and stooped, with dark circles round his eyes that were worthy of a drunken warrior. Behind him, crouched in the curve of the leather wall like an animal at bay, sat Rhodry. At first she barely recognized him, just because he sat so quietly, his eyes stripped of all feeling and fire.
“What’s so wrong?” Jill snapped.
“I haven’t slept much in a week, for starters,” Aderyn said. “But I’ll wager you mean our Rhodry.”
Rhodry never moved or looked up at the mention of his name.
“I was afraid he was dead. I met a banshee on the road.”
“It wasn’t a banshee. It—she—was the trouble.” Aderyn turned to the warleader. “Cal, stay here with him, will you? Yell at the first sign of the usual madness. We’ll just be outside, where we can talk privately.”
They went round to the side of the tent, and Jill noticed that no one dared come near, not even the normally curious children, not even one of the dogs.
“It’s a woman from the Wildlands.” Aderyn wasted no time on fine phrasing. “The little bitch has gone and ensorceled him, but it’s hurting her worse than it is him, truly. She’s linked to him from other lives, and there was no way for me to warn him adequately without spilling truths he shouldn’t hear.”
“We’ve got to trap her and turn her over to her lords.”
“Easier said than done. I’ve been trying, but she’s a wily little thing.”
“Look, Rhodry’s a man of honor. Can’t you explain that he’s hurting this poor innocent spirit, and—”
“I did, and that’s the only reason he’s still with us at all. He did his best to resist her, but in the end, she pulled him back.”
“I still don’t see how—”
“She’s his lover. And I mean exactly that. As much his lover as ever you were.”
Her sudden anger caught Jill by surprise—nothing so strong as rage, no, but a definite resentment, a flickering of old jealousies. Aderyn misunderstood her silence.
“You do know about such things, don’t you?” the old man said. “She’s one of the Wildfolk, but many years ago she ran afoul of one of the Guardians, who gave her a false body of sorts. Ever since, she’s been working on becoming a physical being, sucking magnetism from him and other lovers to—”
“Of course I know what she’s doing! Oh, my apologies, Aderyn, I didn’t mean to snap at you. How long has