A Time of Omens - Katharine Kerr [144]
“Who or what is Evandar?” he said abruptly. “He’s not a man of the People, is he?”
“He’s not, and no more is he human. He’s not truly incarnated or corporeal at all. Do you know what those words mean?”
“Close enough.” He shot her a grin. “Not only did I spend a few years in the company of sorcerers, but I was raised a Maelwaedd. I’ve a bit more learning than most border lords or silver daggers either.”
“Well, my apologies—”
“No need, no need. I don’t suppose anyone else in this dun would know what you’re talking about, except maybe young Yraen, and he wouldn’t believe you.”
They shared a soft laugh.
“But Evandar’s only one of an entire host of beings, some like him—true individuals, I mean. The others are about as conscious as clever animals but no more, and there’s even some who seem to have never truly evolved at all into anything you could call a man or woman.”
“Indeed? And what about that badger-headed thing that keeps trying to steal this whistle?” Rhodry laid a hand on his shirt, just above his belt. “Is he one of Evandar’s people?”
“He’s not, but a renegade from another host, headed by Evandar’s brother, and a strange thing that is.” She shuddered again, remembering the sheer malice in the black and vulpine eyes. “I don’t truly understand them myself, Rhodry. I’m not trying to put you off. You’re probably thinking of the old stories, of how I left Aderyn hundreds of years ago, but you’ve got to remember that as Evandar’s world reckons Time, I’ve only been there a month or so.”
His lips parted in a soft “oh” of surprise.
“No more do I know what that whistle may be,” she went on. “I suspect that it’s not magical at all, but just a trinket, like that ring of yours.”
“Now wait! If there’s no dweomer on this ring, why does that female keep trying to take it back?”
“Alshandra? Evandar told me about your skirmishes with her. She doesn’t truly understand what she’s doing. I fear me that she’s gone mad.”
“Oh, splendid!” Rhodry snarled. “Here I am, chased round two kingdoms by a thing from the Otherlands and a mad spirit, and no one even knows why! I just might go daft myself, out of spite if naught more.”
“I couldn’t hold it to your shame, but it would be a great pity if you did. You’re going to need your wits about you.”
“No doubt. I always have, for all of my wretched life, except perhaps for those few years out on the grass. That’s the only peace I’ve ever known, Dalla, those years with the People.”
All at once he looked so weary, so spent, really, that she leaned forward and laid her hand on his knee.
“It aches my heart to see you so sad, but you’ve got a tangled Wyrd, sure enough, and there’s naught that I or any other dweomerworker can do about that.”
He nodded, putting his hand over hers, just a friendly gesture at first, but it seemed to her that a warmth grew and spread between them. His fingers, the rough, callused fingers of a fighting man, tightened on her hand. She hesitated, thinking of Evandar, but when she sent her mind ranging out, she could sense nothing but a vast distance between them. When Rhodry raised her hand and kissed her fingertips, just lightly, she felt the warmth spread as if it were mead, flowing through her blood. He rose to his knees, pulling her up with him. She laid her free hand flat on his chest.
“In a few days I’ll have to leave this world and go back to the one I’ve made my own. If you ride with his lordship to the settlement, I could well be gone by the time you return, and by the time I come back to your world, a hundred years might have passed.”
“And would it ache your heart, to ride back and find me gone?”
“It would, but not enough to keep me here. In all fairness, you need to know that.”
He smiled, but in the candlelight his eyes seemed wells of sadness.
“A silver dagger’s no man to make demands upon a great lady, or to tax her comings and goings.”
She would have said something to comfort him, but he kissed her, hesitantly at first, then openmouthed and passionately when she slipped into his arms. At first she was shocked by how strong, how solid he