A Time of Exile - Katharine Kerr [189]
“Go with your lord. He’ll make you well again.”
The silver shaft glowed with warm light, then glided forward to envelop the sprite. The vague man shape within stretched out one hand to stroke her hair; then they both vanished. Rhodry fell forward, fainting, into Jill’s ready arms. Swearing a little at his weight, she laid him down on the floor, then grabbed a blanket and covered him, because he was dead pale and icy cold, shivering at the loss of the magnetic link he’d made with his White Lady. When she looked up to say something to Aderyn, she realized that the female presence was still there, in fact more substantial than before. As she stepped free of the pillar of light, her flesh seemed almost solid, though translucent. She herself seemed elven and very beautiful, with hair so pale that it was almost silver and eyes of a cold storm gray. As still as stone, Aderyn watched her, his expression forced into such a hard-set indifference that Jill suddenly realized who she must be.
“Dallandra?” she whispered.
The presence turned her head and considered her un-speaking for a long moment.
“Do you follow the paths of the light?” Her voice was more a thought touching the mind, but Aderyn heard her, too, judging from the flicker of pain that crossed his face.
“I do.” Jill spoke aloud.
“Good.” She turned to Aderyn. “Elessario’s sorry now. She didn’t realize what she was doing. She was trying to help the poor thing when it loved the man called Maer.”
“I assumed your friend was guiltless.”
Aderyn’s voice was so cold that Jill was honestly shocked, but Dallandra ignored him.
“There is a child that will be born,” she said to Jill. “Soon. Or soon as we judge time. It might be a long time in your world.”
“Does this child concern me?”
“I’d hope so. I see danger all round her.”
“I’ll help if I can.”
She nodded in a sort of wordless thanks, but her attention was drifting already to some other world. She was growing thinner, like a smoke curl in the wind.
“What of the ring?” Jill put all the urgency she could into her voice to try to pull her back. “Do you know the meaning of the rose ring?”
For the briefest of moments she smiled, and for that instant she seemed mortal again and solid.
“I don’t. They never did tell me. They’re like that, you know.”
Her chuckle seemed to hang in the air. She was gone. Aderyn let out his breath in one sharp sigh, tossed his head, and knelt down beside Rhodry as if nothing had happened at all.
“Jill, you’ll stay here for a few days, won’t you? I could use your help.”
“Of course. I’m always glad to pay you a service, and I’d like to see him well again, too. I loved him so much, once.”
“Once and not now?”
“Once and not now.” Jill got up with a sigh. “And I regret it, in a way, losing a love like that, but it never should have been, and now it’s gone, and that’s that.”
Aderyn was silent for a long moment. When he spoke his voice cracked with unnatural calm.
“Too bad you never knew Dalla. I think you two would have gotten along quite well.”
When Rhodry woke from that faint, some twenty minutes later, it seemed to him that he’d slept for days. He was muddled, too, wondering what he was doing, lying in Aderyn’s tent with Jill and Gavantar standing round, as solemn as priests.
“What’s wrong?” he mumbled. “Have I been sick?”
“You might say that.” Aderyn handed him a cup of hot liquid. “Drink this, will you?”
The water tasted faintly of herbs, and drinking it made his head clear enough for him to remember the White Lady. All at once he couldn’t bear to look at any of them, and especially not Jill; he felt his cheeks burning with shame.
“Ah, the blood’s returning to your face, I see.” Aderyn sounded amused. “Come on, lad, it’s all ended well enough. I can’t blame you for losing a fight when you didn’t have a weapon to your name and she had a whole armory.”
For days Rhodry refused to leave Aderyn’s tent except in the dead of night, when everyone else was asleep. Under