A Time of Exile - Katharine Kerr [37]
“Is somewhat wrong?” Halaberiel came up beside him.
“Not in the least. Quite the contrary, in fact. You don’t need to worry about me trying to escape or suchlike, believe me.”
After a meal they forded the river and walked the horses slowly into the forest, which soon turned so thick and tangled that they had to dismount and lead their mounts along a deer track. In a few miles the trail disappeared, leaving them to thread their own way through the trees. For three agonizing hours they picked their way west, stopping often to urge on the balky horses or deliberate on the best way to go. Finally, just when Aderyn was ready to give up in frustration, they came to a road: a proper, hard-packed, level dirt road about ten feet across, running straight as a spear through the forest.
“Here we are,” Halaberiel remarked. “Few of the Round-ears would push on long enough to find this, you see.”
“I take it you don’t trust my kind.”
“And how should I?” Halaberiel considered him with cool violet eyes. “No offense, good sir, to you as a man, but first we gave the Round-ears the coast; then they started pushing up the rivers; now I see them breeding like rats and swarming all over the country. Everywhere they go, they make slaves out of the Old Ones who were here before them. Where will they stop? Anywhere? Or will they keep on pushing north and west, plowing up the grasslands for their fields and killing the grass for our horses? Are they going to look at us and covet us for slaves one fine day? They’ve already broken at least one treaty with my kind that I know of. Trust them? I think not, good sir. I think not.”
“I assure you, those of us who serve the dweomer hate slavery as much as you do. If I could free every bondsman in the kingdom, I would.”
“No doubt, but you can’t, can you?” With an irritable shrug, Halaberiel turned away and called to his men. “Let’s get on the road. We can rest the horses when we come to the big spring.”
The spring turned out to be some two miles farther west, a stone pond with a stone culvert that led the overflow down to a stream among the trees. Inside the stone wall water welled up clear and noiselessly from the sandy bottom. Before anyone drank, Halaberiel raised his hands over the water and called out a short prayer in a soft musical language to thank the god of the spring. Then they unsaddled their horses, let them roll, and watered them before sitting down to their own meal of smoked fish and soft ewe’s-milk cheese. Aderyn was beginning to be able to tell the young men apart: Calonderiel, taller than the rest; Elbannodanter, as delicately handsome as a lass; Jezryaladar with a quick flash of a grin; and Albaral, who said very little and ate a lot.
“Banadar?” Calonderiel said. “Has Nananna told you where she is?”
“Not far beyond the forest. She and her escort met up with a couple of big alarli yesterday, and they’re all camping together by the haunted pool. The rest of our warband’s on the way to join them, too. We’ll all move down to the winter camp together.”
When he finished eating, Aderyn went for a closer look at the spring. The stonework was carved with looping vines and flowers, and peering out from among them were the little faces of the Wildfolk.
“Halaberiel?” Aderyn said. “Your people do beautiful stonework.”
“Well, they used to. This is over eight hundred years old. There’s not a man or woman alive now who could do as well.”
“Indeed? Here, your men call you banadar. Is that like a lord or prince?”
“In a way, but only in a way. We’ll have to start teaching you our speech, Aderyn. Most of us here in the east know a bit of the Eldidd tongue, at least, but farther west the People don’t care for the barbarous languages.”
Late in the afternoon they followed a little stream out of the forest into the grasslands and made their night’s camp. As he was unloading his mule, Aderyn realized that