A Time of Exile - Katharine Kerr [7]
“Aren’t you going to say one word to me?” she said with a laugh.
“My apologies. It’s just a bit of a shock, having you turn up like this.”
“No doubt. You’re in for a worse shock than that, I’m afraid.”
Without waiting to be asked she sat down in one of the chairs by the hearth. He took the other facing, and for a few moments the silence deepened around them. Then he remembered that his silver dagger must have been coming home at the same time as she was riding into Aberwyn, and he shuddered, feeling a cold touch of Wyrd that made the hairs on the nape of his neck bristle.
“And what is this shock?”
“Well, for starters, Nevyn’s dead.”
Rhodry grunted as if at a blow. He’d known Nevyn, her teacher and master in the craft of magic, very well indeed—in fact, Rhodry owed him his life and his rhan both.
“May the gods give him rest in the Otherlands, then. Somehow I thought the dweomer would keep the old man alive forever.”
“He was beginning to wonder himself.” She grinned so broadly that it seemed inappropriate. “He was glad to go, when the time came.”
“How did it happen? Was he ill, or was there an accident?”
“What? Oh, naught of that sort. It was time, and he went. He made his goodbyes to all of us and lay down on his bed and died. That’s all.” Her smile faded. “I’ll miss him, though. Every hour of every day.”
“My heart aches for you, truly.”
As if to share his sympathy Wildfolk came, sprite and sylph and gnome, materializing like the fall of silent drops of rain to float down and stand around them. When a skinny gray fellow climbed into Jill’s lap and reached up to pat her cheek, she smiled again, shoving the mourning away. The sight of the Wildfolk reminded Rhodry of his own problems. Whatever else Jill might have been to him, she was a dweomermaster now, the possessor of strange powers and even stranger lore.
“I’ve got a question for you,” he said. “How long does an elven half-breed like me live, anyway?”
“A good long while, though not so long as a true elf. I’d say you’ve got a hundred years ahead, easily, my friend. When I’m buried and gone, you’ll still look like a lad of twenty.”
“By all the ice in all the hells! That can’t happen! How long will it be before all of Aberwyn figures out that I’m no true Maelwaedd, then?”
“Not very, truly. The common folk are already whispering about you, wondering about dweomer and suchlike. Soon enough the noble-born will, too, and they’ll come to you with a few hard questions about exactly how much elven blood there is in the Maelwaedd clan, and whether or no those old rumors about elves living forever are true. If someone found out who your true father was, it would be a nasty blow to your clan’s honor.”
“There’s a cursed sight more at stake than the honor of the Maelwaedds. Can’t you see, Jill? My sons disinherited, and civil war in the rhan, and—”
“Of course I see!” She held her hand up flat for silence. “That’s the other reason I’ve come.”
He felt the cold again, rippling down his back. Thirty years since he’d seen her, and yet they still at times shared thoughts.
“I had an omen,” she went on. “It was right after we buried Nevyn—me and the folk in the village where we lived, that is—and I went walking out to a little lake near our home, where there’s a stand of rushes out in the water. It was just at sunset, and there were some clouds in the sky. You know how easy it is to see pictures in sunset clouds. So I saw a cloud shape that looked just like a falcon catching a little dragon in her claws. Oho, think I, that’s me and Rhodry! And the minute I thought it, I felt the dweomer cold, and I knew that it was true. And here I am.”
“That simple, is it? You think of me, and here you are?”
“Well, I had to ride to Aberwyn like anyone else.”
“Not what I meant. Why did the omen in the clouds make you come here?”
“Oh, that! None of your affair.”
He started to probe, but her expression stopped him: unsmiling, a little cool, like the cover of a book abruptly slammed shut. He could remember