A Time of Exile - Katharine Kerr [87]
“But I’ve never heard of such a thing.”
“No more have I. That’s why they intrigue me so much. You know, I left my parents for the dweomer because I loved hidden things, secret things.”
“So did I. I can understand. But please, be careful around them. I just don’t trust them.”
“Neither do I. Don’t worry.”
“But suppose they did incarnate. What would they become?”
“I have no idea. Neither do they, truly. I think that they’ve been here so long now that they’d become beings much like us—like the elves, I mean, not you Round-ears.”
The words rang in his mind like a shout of warning. Not since their marriage had she made that sharp distinction between herself and his kind. Yet it hurt so much that he hesitated, letting her talk on, until the moment was irrevocably lost.
“They’d have to give up a lot to become like us,” she was saying. “So much, truly, that I wonder if they ever will, but if they don’t, well, they’re the ones who keep telling me they’ll fade away and be lost forever. I’d hate to see that happen to any soul. It would be a tragedy indeed.”
“Just so. But it’s their choice.”
“Is it? Unless they get someone to show them the way, they have no choice.”
“Indeed? What do they want you for, then? Some kind of cosmic midwife?”
“Well, yes.” She looked surprised that he didn’t already know. “Just exactly that.”
In the bright grass by the stream Evandar lounged, half sitting, half lying, his harp at his side. Up close Dallandra could see that the harp was real wood, like the arrow she’d been given, and of elven design, though more elaborate than any she’d ever seen, all inlaid with mother-of-pearl in a pattern of seaweed and sea horses. He noticed the way she studied it.
“This harp is from the lost cities, from Rinbaladelan, to be precise—a thing that doesn’t come easily to my folk.”
“You must have taken it away before the city fell.”
“Oh yes.” He frowned suddenly. “I tried to help defend Rinbaladelan, you see. It was hopeless, of course, even with me there. But it was a very beautiful place, and I hated to see all that beauty lying broken in the mud.”
“Was it only the beauty? What about the elves that lived there?”
“They live, they die, they come and go, and it’s no concern of mine. But stone and jewel endure, and the play of water on stone, and the play of light on jewels. The harbor at Rinbaladelan wrung my heart with its beauty, and those hairy creatures filled it with rubble and let it silt and threw corpses into it to turn the water mucky and foul. And then the crabs and the lobsters came to eat the corpses, and the furry creatures ate the crabs and got the plague and died, and I laughed to see them crawling on their bloated bellies through the gutters of the city they’d broken.”
When Dallandra shuddered, he was honestly puzzled by her reaction.
“They deserved to die, you know,” Evandar said. “They’d killed my city and, for that matter, all of your people. I don’t know why you keep saying you don’t remember Rinbaladelan, Dalla. I’m sure that I saw you there.”
“Maybe you did, but I wouldn’t remember from life to life. You don’t remember much after you’ve died and been reborn. A soul that remembered everything would be too burdened to live its new life afresh.”
It was his turn for the shudder.
“To forget everything. I couldn’t bear it, and to live bound down the way you do!”
“Evandar, it’s time for some honest talk, if indeed your folk can do such a thing. You keep asking me to help you, yet you keep saying you don’t want my help.”
“Well, that’s because this is such a new thing for me.” He picked up the harp and ran a trill, notes of such unearthly sweetness that her eyes filled with tears. “It’s not myself. It’s Elessario.”
“Ah. You do love her, don’t you?”
“Love? No. I don’t want to possess her. I don’t even want her at my side all the time.” He looked up from the strings. “I only want her to be happy, and I’d hate to see her fade away. Is that love?”
“Yes,