A Time of Exile - Katharine Kerr [62]
“Done then, and my thanks.”
As it turned out, Aderyn wasn’t the only healer and dweomermaster who insisted on riding with the army. That night, when Dallandra came in to tend his wounds again, she was close to tears.
“What’s so wrong?” Aderyn said.
“Nananna. She’s coming with you to the Lake of the Leaping Trout.”
“What? It’s going to be a forced march. She’ll get exhausted.”
“She’s exhausted already. It’s time. She’s going to die.”
Dallandra wept, her face running tears while her whole body shook in silent grief. When Aderyn scrambled to his feet and flung his good arm around her in a clumsy attempt to comfort her, she pulled away.
“It’s wrong of me to weep like this. It’s her time, and that’s that.” She busied herself in wiping her face on her sleeve. “I should accept it and be done with it.”
“Easy to say. Not so easy to do.”
She nodded a distracted agreement.
“Are you coming with her?” Aderyn said. “And us, I mean?”
“Of course. Do you think I’d let her go alone?” She turned on him with an expression so fierce that he stepped back. “Oh, I’m sorry I snapped at you. I’m all to pieces over this.”
“As well you might be. It’s all right. I was just worried about her.”
“So am I. I’m bringing Enabrilia along, too, to help me tend her. She’s sending the baby and her man off with the others. I’m sorry, Ado. I meant to tell you earlier.”
He hugged it to himself like a treasure: she’d used his nickname, just casually, as if they’d known each other a good long time.
During the long, hard march to the lake, Aderyn traveled at the rear of the line with the two elven women. Thanks to Dallandra’s healing dweomer, his wounded hand bothered him hardly at all, but even if it had pained him, he would have ignored it in his concern for Nananna. Often he wondered if the old woman would live to reach the burial ground. In the mornings she mounted her horse easily enough, but after a few hours her energy would ebb, and she would ride hunched over, clinging to the saddle with both hands, her frail fingers like the talons of some ancient bird, gripping its perch in a desperate fear of falling. By their late camps she would be unable to dismount—Aderyn and Dallandra would lift her down from her horse and carry her like a child to her blankets. Since she could barely eat, she grew lighter every day, all bone and sheer will.
“I’ll live long enough to see the death-ground,” she would say. “Don’t fuss over me, children.”
In the end, she was right. Just at noon on a late autumn day, warm and hazy with false summer, Halaberiel led his army—because an army of some two hundred warriors it was by then—up a low grassy rise. Riding in the rear, Aderyn heard sudden yells. Since he couldn’t understand the words, he thought the men in the van were seeing the enemy, drawn up and ready for them.
“Stay here with Nananna!” he yelled at Dallandra.
He turned his horse out of line and rode hard, heading for the head of the line. As he rode, the shouts resolved themselves, then spread down the line of march: dal-en! dal-en! the lake! the lake! Just at the crest of the rise Aderyn came up to Halaberiel, who was calling for a temporary halt. Far down the green slope lay the silver lake, a long finger of water caught in a narrow valley pointing southeast to northwest. To the north a thick forest spread along the valley floor, the dark pines standing in such orderly rows that obviously they were no natural growth. Halaberiel waved his hand in their direction.
“The death-ground. And the trees of my ancestors.”
They set up camp that afternoon between the forest and the north shore of the lake in a grassy meadow clearly planned as a campground: there were stone fire pits at regular intervals and small sheds, too, for keeping firewood dry and food safe from prowling animals. After he helped Dallandra make camp—as best he could with his clumsy broken hand—Aderyn joined the council of war, consisting of Halaberiel and ten other elves, hastily elected squad leaders and temporary captains. For over an hour they argued strategy in Elvish while Aderyn tried to