A Time of Exile - Katharine Kerr [6]
For over thirty years he had held power, and for most of them he had loved it all: the symbols and pageantry of his rank, the tangible power that he wielded in his court of justice and on the battlefield, the subtle but even greater power he exercised in the intrigues of the High King’s court. As he looked back, he could remember exactly when that love turned sour. He had been at the royal palace in Dun Deverry, and as he entered the great hall, the chamberlain of course announced him. At the words “Rhodry, Gwerbret Aberwyn,” every other noble-born man there turned to look at him, some in envy of one of the king’s favorites, some in subtle calculation of what his presence would mean to their own schemes, others with simple interest in the sight of so powerful a man. All he felt in return was irritation, that they should gawk at him as at a two-headed calf in the market fair. And from that day, some two years earlier, Rhodry had slowly come to wonder when he would die and be rid of everything he once had loved, free and shut of it at last.
He left the window and sat down in a half-round rosewood chair, intricately carved with interlace wound about the dragons of Aberwyn, to draw his newly returned silver dagger and study it. Although the blade looked like silver, it was harder than the best steel, and it gleamed without a trace of tarnish. When he flicked it with a thumbnail it rang.
“Dwarven silver,” he muttered to himself. “Ah, by the lord of hell, I must be going daft, to wish I was out on the long road again!”
He owned another piece of dwarven silver, too, a ring he always wore on the third finger of his right hand, a simple band of elven workmanship, engraved with roses on the outside and a line of elven writing on the in. Just as he held up his hand to look at the ring, a page opened the door.
“Your Grace? Am I disturbing Your Lordship?”
“Not truly.”
“Well, Your Grace, there’s this shabby old herbwoman at the door, and she’s insisting on speaking to you. One of the guards was going to turn her away, but she gave us this look, Your Grace, and I … well, I was frightened of her, so I thought I’d best tell you.”
Rhodry’s heart pounded once.
“Did she give you her name?”
“She did, Your Grace. It’s Jill.”
“I’ll receive her up here.”
The lad frankly stared, then bowed and trotted away.
While he waited for the woman he once had loved more than life itself, Rhodry paced back and forth from window to door. He hadn’t seen Jill in thirty years, not since the night when she left him, simply rode out of his life without a backward glance—or so he assumed—to follow a Wyrd even stranger than his own. At first, he thought of her constantly, wondered if she missed him, wondered if her studies in the strange craft of the dweomer were bringing her the happiness she sought. Yet as the years passed and his wound healed, he let her memory rest except for an idle wondering every now and then if she were well. Although she did come to Aberwyn to tend her dying father, Rhodry was at court in Dun Deverry at the time. Every now and then, some news of her doings came his way, but never in any detail. Now she was here. He was dreading seeing her, because she was only a few years younger than himself, and he hated the thought of seeing her beauty ravaged by age. When he heard her crisp voice thanking the page, his heart pounded once again. The door opened.
“The herbwoman, Your Grace.”
In strode a woman dressed in men’s clothing, a pair of dirty brown brigga and a much-mended linen shirt, stained green in places from medicinal leaves and stems. Her hair, cropped like a lad’s, shone a silvery gray, and crow’s-feet round her blue eyes ran deep, but she seemed neither young nor old, so full of life and vigor that it was impossible to think of her as anything other than handsome. Beautiful she wasn’t, not any longer, but as he stared at the face which coincided with the one belonging to his lovely young lass of past years, he found that it fit