A Time of Exile - Katharine Kerr [86]
What finally made him face the truth was her growing distraction. At the autumn alardan, when the People brought their problems to her in her role as Wise One, she spent as little time on them as possible; if she could do it without offending anyone, in fact, she turned these mundane matters over to Aderyn. When they were alone, she was lost in thought most of the time; holding any sort of a real conversation with her became next to impossible. Yet in his mind he went on making excuses for her—she’s thinking about her meditations, she’s working on some bit of obscure lore—until he happened to have a conversation with Enabrilia when they met by chance out by the horse herd.
“Is Dallandra sick?” she asked him.
“No. Why?”
“She’s so distracted all the time. This morning I ran into her down by the stream and I had to hail her three times before she realized that I was there. When I finally got her attention she just kind of stared at me. I swear it took her a while to remember who I was.”
Aderyn felt fear like the tip of a cold needle just pricking at his mind.
“Of course,” Enabrilia went on, “she might be pregnant. I mean, you two have only been together for four years, hardly any time at all, but you are—well, no offense intended—but you are a Round-ear, after all. They always say things are different with Round-ear men.”
Aderyn hardly heard her chatter. Her concern was forcing him to see something that he hated. When Dallandra returned to the camp, he was in their tent and waiting for her.
“You’ve been riding off to see them again, haven’t you?” He blurted it out straightaway.
“Yes. I never said I wouldn’t.”
“Why haven’t you told me?”
“Why should I? It only upsets you. Besides, I never go to their country. I always make them come through into ours.”
He stood groping for words while she watched, her head tilted a little to one side, her steel-gray eyes utterly calm and more than a little distant.
“Why are you so afraid?” she said at last.
“I don’t want you to go off with them and leave me.”
“Leave you? What? Oh, my beloved! Never!” She rushed to him and flung herself into his hungry arms. “Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t know you were worried about something like that.” She looked up, studying his face. “For the work’s sake I might have to go off alone for a few nights, maybe, but that’s all it would ever be.”
“Really?” He wanted to beg her to stay with him every minute of every day, but he knew that such a plea would be ridiculous as well as impossible, given their mutual work. “Promise?”
“Of course I do! I’d always come home to you. Always.”
She kissed him so passionately that he knew that she had to be telling the truth, that at the very least she believed implicitly in her own words. His relief was like a warm tide, carrying all his fears far out to some distant sea. For a long time, too, all through the cold and stormwracked winter, she seemed to put her distraction aside and to devote as much of her attention to him as she could whenever they were together. By the time that spring came, he decided that he’d been foolish to worry about her work with the Guardians, even when she told him openly that she’d been talking regularly with Elessario.
“That child needs me, Ado. You know, I truly do think that she and her race are meant to be as incarnate as you or me. Something’s gone terribly wrong, somewhere. Some of the evidence I’ve gathered makes me think that these beings are scattered through the universe,