A Time of Omens - Katharine Kerr [62]
“So it must. How many of their years is a day here?”
“What? How would I know?”
“Haven’t you ever thought to work it out?”
“Whatever for? Besides, it changes, how fast things flow.”
“It changes? Well, there’s a bother, then. On what principle?”
“On what?”
“Well, I mean, there must be some sort of rule or regular order to the way the changes come and go.”
Evandar merely looked at her, slack-mouthed and wondering. Dallandra considered and tried again.
“What about bard lore? Would there be any old sayings about Time among your people?”
“In summer the sun runs fast as a girl through the sky,” he said and promptly. “In winter like an old woman she goes halt and slow.”
“I’ve never noticed it being winter here.”
“Oh, but it has been. You can tell by the way Time limps. Now in the heat of the summer she moves like a bird on the wing.”
“And what about spring and autumn? Are there any sayings about them?
“About spring, no, but there’s one day in the fall of the year when our time and their time coincides.”
“And that is?”
“In the land of men, it’s the day between years.”
“A day between years? I’ve never heard of such a thing.”
He merely shrugged indifferently. They were sitting that evening—or seemed to be sitting—on a grassy hilltop, looking down into shifting mists that alternately covered, then revealed a plain crisscrossed by rivers and dotted with thickets. Far off on the horizon a moon was rising, bloated and golden.
“I don’t understand why you won’t tell me what that word inside the ring means.”
“I don’t understand why myself, but I’m still not going to tell you.” He caught her hand and kissed it. “Why do you want to help this human woman, anyway?”
“Because she’s going to help us. She promised me that she’d look after the child when it’s born, and in return, it’s only common courtesy to help her find out what she needs to know.”
“But it’s a riddle, and one of my best riddles, and I’ll not tell her the answer.”
For a moment she considered him, this strange creature who was in a stranger way her lover now. Although he looked like an elf in most ways, his hair was the yellow of daffodils, no natural blond, his lips were as red as sour cherries, and his eyes were a startling turquoise-blue, as artificial as one of the colors that elven craftsmen grind to decorate tents.
“This island to the south, now,” Evandar said in a moment. “That does interest me. Would you like to help her find it? That I will do for her, in return for her help when the child is birthed.”
“Bless you, my love. I would, indeed.”
“Splendid! You go tell her while I look for the island.”
“I will, but I think I’ll find Elessario first and take her along. She should be right nearby.”
And so, thanks to the vagaries of Time, it was some weeks in Jill’s world before Dallandra appeared to her again.
In the meantime, the troupe of traveling players, with Jill and Salamander tagging along, left Zama Mañae behind. The main island of the Orystinnian archipelago is shaped rather like an animal, with the head pointing due north and the long tail of a peninsula trailing some fifty miles off to the south. Once the troupe reached Arbarat, the city at the tail’s tip, they had a long, slow journey north with their tumble-down wagons and elderly horses to the next large city, Inderat Noa on the western coast of the animal’s body. Marka was delighted when Salamander insisted that she leave the bumpy wagon and ride on his horse, which he then led, walking nearby in the sunny road. They stopped often, of course, to perform in the smaller towns and marketplaces along the way. In every marketplace Salamander bought something for the troupe, a length of silk for a costume here, or a brand-new set of painted leather clubs for the acrobats there, out of his own always substantial earnings.
“It takes coin to earn coin,” he would say. “And between us, Vinto and I are going to make this troupe the most splendid show in all of Orystinna.”
Marka would merely smile and think that Salamander could no doubt do anything