A Time of Exile - Katharine Kerr [24]
“So, you deigned to contact me, did you? I’ve been worrying myself sick.”
“My humble apologies, but truly, everything’s been fine.”
“Good. Well, now that you’ve made the first link, I can contact you again without wounding your dignity, I suppose, but kindly don’t let me brood about you for months at a time, will you?”
“Of course not. And you have my heartfelt apologies.”
“That’s enough humility for now, please. What have you been doing with yourself?”
Aderyn told him what little there was of interest in his summer’s wanderings, then turned to his plan of traveling to Eldidd. As the old intimacy between them reestablished itself, Nevyn’s image grew in the fire, until it seemed that they were standing face to face, meeting in gray void swirled with violet mists.
“Well, it seems that Eldidd would be as good a place to go as any,” Nevyn said at last.
“Do you know of any others of our kind there?”
“I don’t, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t any. Keep your eyes open, lad, and see what you find. Remember what I’ve always told you: in these things, there’s no need for hurry.”
“What do you think about this strange tribe, the Westfolk?”
“Very little, because I’ve never heard of them before. If naught else, this is all very interesting.”
At that time Eldidd was an independent kingdom, whose rulers were ultimately descended from the legendary warriors known as the Hippogriff and the Dragon, the two foster brothers of King Bran himself who joined him for the Great Migration. In the year 297, after a bitter struggle over the kingship of Deverry, Cynaeval and Cynvaenan, their descendants and the current leaders of the two clans of the Dragon and the Hippogriff, with all their allies, kinsmen, supporters, and dependents, left Deverry to sail west and found their own throne and royal city. For years, the small colonies eked out a precarious existence along the seacoast, but in time the Hippogriff’s people flourished and spread up the great river valleys of the Dilbrae and the El, while the Dragon clan spread north from their town of Aberwyn up the Gwyn and the strangely named Delonderiel. In the year when Aderyn crossed the mountains of the Belaegyrys range into Eldidd, the kingdom boasted a respectable two hundred thousand people.
Because he needed to gather more medicines, Aderyn avoided the sandy coast road and chose the easy northern pass through the mountains. On the western side, he reached rolling hills, brown and scruffy with frostbitten grass, and there he stumbled upon a tiny village in a secluded valley. The small square huts, roofed with dirty thatch, were made of rough-hewn wood packed with mud to keep out the chill. Grazing on the brown and stubbled grass were goats and a few cows. The village belonged to some of the Old Ones, those unfortunate folk who’d lived in the land before the bloodthirsty Deverrians had ridden their way to seize it from them. Dark-haired, on the slender side, they had their own immensely complex language, or rather a mutually incomprehensible group of them, which in the settled parts of Deverry and Eldidd were forbidden by the laws of their conquerors but were kept alive by stealth. When Aderyn rode up to the huts, the folk came running out to stare at him and his fine horse and mule. In a group, the eight men of the village advanced upon him with their rough spears at the ready, but when Aderyn spoke in their language and explained that he was a herbman, they lowered the weapons. Dressed in a long brown tunic, a man of about forty stepped forward and introduced himself as Wargal, the headman.
“You’ll forgive our greeting, but we have great reason to fear these days.”
“Indeed? Are the men of Eldidd close by?”
“The despicable blue-eyed ones are always too close by.”
For a moment they contemplated each other in an uneasy silence. Wargal’s eyes flicked back and forth between his folk and the stranger. He had a secret, Aderyn supposed, and he could guess it: the village was sheltering a runaway bondsman.
“Are there any