A Time of Exile - Katharine Kerr [95]
At the entrance to the causeway leading out to the dun stood armed guards. As Aderyn walked up, he wondered if he’d be allowed to pass by.
“Good morrow, good sir,” said the elder of the pair. “Looks like you’re a peddler or suchlike.”
“Not truly, but a herbman.”
“Splendid! No doubt the ladies of the dun will want a look at your goods.”
“Now here!” The younger guard stepped forward. “What if he’s a spy?”
“Oh, come now! No one’s going to send an elderly soul like this to spy, lad. Pass on by, good sir.”
The words hit Aderyn like a slap across the face. Elderly? Was he really elderly now? Since the ladies of the dun, including the queen herself, did receive him hospitably, during his stay in the dun he had many a chance to study himself in one mirror or another. Yes, the guards were right: his hair was snow white, his face all lined and sagging, his eyes droop-lidded and weary, impossibly weary from his long grief over his stolen woman. He saw then that Dallandra’s loss had burned his youth away like grass thrown into a fire. During those days in Casyl’s dun the last of his hope died, too, that ever he would see her again. He realized it when Nevyn asked him to stay an extra day and he agreed without a thought; he simply no longer felt the need to rush back to the alar on the off chance that she’d returned in his absence.
When he did return to the elven lands, he told the bards to add a new bit of lore to the tales about the Guardians: not always did they keep their promises.
• • •
To Dallandra, that same hundred years passed as four days, bright glorious days of feasting and music, laughter and old tales. At odd moments, she remembered Aderyn and even stored up things to tell him when she returned, because she knew that the information Evandar possessed about the lost cities would fascinate him as much as it fascinated her. Just as she never tired of hearing about the cities, Evandar never tired of talking about them, and with such affection that she began to see a possible strategy. Late on the fourth night, they sat together on a hillside overlooking a grassy meadow, where among glittering torches harpers played and the young folk danced in solemn lines, all bowing and slow steps.
“It’s so different from the dances my people do,” Dallandra remarked. “We like to leap and yell and dance fast as the wind.”
“Oh, I remember your dances, too—country dances, they called them then.”
“I see. You know, I’ve been thinking. I wonder if the cities could be rebuilt. It’s too bad the Round-ears are such a treacherous folk; otherwise we could make some kind of alliance with them, or at least learn how to work iron again. I know, I know—you hate iron—but we really would have to have it to cut stone and suchlike, and we’d need to know how to work mortar and weave cloth and build bridges that wouldn’t fall down and streets that wouldn’t buckle. It might only be one city at first, but still, it seems such a pity to think of them lying there, all broken, with only the owls nesting and the wolves prowling through to keep them company.”
“You’re saying that to tempt me.”
“Does it?”
“Well, yes, more perhaps than you can know, because I know better