A Time of Exile - Katharine Kerr [94]
“Oh. Well, my apologies. Truly, that’s a serious matter.”
“It is.” Nevyn paused, considering him. “You know, I’m beginning to feel hideously old these days. Ye gods, there’s all that gray in your hair, and here I still remember the little lad I took as an apprentice.”
“I feel even older than I am, frankly.”
“Ah.” Nevyn was silent for a long, tactful moment. “Um, well, how are you faring these days? Without her, I mean.”
“Well enough. I have my work.”
“And your hope?”
“Is feeble but alive. I suppose it’s alive. Maybe it’s just one of those embalmed corpses you read about, like the Bardekians make of their great men.”
“I can’t blame you for your bitterness.”
“Do I still sound bitter? Then I guess my hope truly is still alive as well.” For the first time in about six years, he nearly wept, but he caught himself with a long sigh. “Well, what about this civil war, then? How long do you think it will last?”
Nevyn considered him for a long, sour moment, as if he were wondering whether or not he should let his old pupil get away with such an obvious change of the subject.
“Too long, I’m afraid,” Nevyn said at last. “All three claimants are weak, which means no one’s going to win straightaway. I’ve gotten the most ghastly set of warnings and omens about it, too. Somewhat’s gravely out of balance on the Inner Planes—I’m not sure what yet. But I intend to do what I can to put an end to this nonsense. I’d wager that the war will burn itself out in about ten years.”
In truth, of course, Nevyn’s hope was ill founded in the extreme: the Time of Troubles was to last five and a hundred years, although of course Nevyn was indeed the one to finally and at great cost put an end to it. If either of them had known how long the wars would rage, they might well have lost heart and done nothing at all, but fortunately, dweomer or no, they were forced to live through them one year at a time like other men. Although Nevyn immediately involved himself in the politics of the thing, a story that has been recorded elsewhere, Aderyn and the People were little affected for some thirty years. Only then, after the demands of the various armies started ruining the delicate network of trade that held Deverry and Eldidd together, did the merchants stop riding west as often as they had. Iron goods were becoming too rare in Eldidd itself for the merchants to take them freely out of the country. The People grumbled, but the Forest Folk gloated, saying that the Guardians had somehow arranged to stop the trade in demon metal. Aderyn had a brief moment of wondering if they were right.
Nevyn, of course, kept him informed of the various events of the wars, but only one meant much to Aderyn personally. Indeed, he felt himself so emotionally distant from the slaughter and the intrigues that he realized that he’d become more than a friend of the People—he was thinking like a man of the People. The Round-ears seemed far away and unimportant; their lives flashed past too quickly for their doings to endure or to take on much significance unless one of them somehow touched his heart or his own life. But in 774 Nevyn mentioned, in one of their infrequent talks through the fire, that two friends of his had died. Nevyn’s grief was palpable, even through their magical communications.
“It aches my heart to see you so sad,” Aderyn thought to him.
“My thanks. You know, this concerns you, too, I suppose. Ye gods, forgive me! I might have told you when they were still alive. I’m speaking of the souls that were once your parents, you see—Gweran and Lyssa, reborn and then killed again so soon by these wretched demon-spawn wars. Do you still remember them?”
“What? Of course I do! Well, that aches my heart indeed. I suppose. I mean, it’s not as if they were my kin anymore. Huh. I wonder if I’ll ever see them again.”
“Who knows? No one can read another’s Wyrd. But I must say that it seems unlikely. Their Wyrd seems bound to the kingdoms, and yours to another folk entirely.”
But as it turned out, Aderyn did indeed have a small role