A Time of Omens - Katharine Kerr [86]
“Maybe so. Somehow I managed to forget that.”
“Silly.” She laid her hand on his arm. “My beloved idiot.”
“You do love me, don’t you? Truly, truly love me?”
“What? More than my life.”
“Don’t say that.” He grabbed her by the shoulders so tightly that it hurt. “It’s ill-omened.”
“I didn’t know.”
“But do you love me? Oh, by the gods! If you don’t love me, I’ve—” His voice caught in a sob. “Of course I love you. I love you so much I can’t even say.”
“I’m sorry.” He let her go, caught her again, but gently this time. “Forgive me, my love. I’ll admit to having had days when I’ve been in better humor.” He kissed her mouth. “Why don’t you leave me to my fit, sulk, temperament, or whatever this may be?”
All morning he stood there alone, brooding over the sea and sky. Mama had a sudden premonition that had nothing to do with dweomer, that even if their marriage lasted for fifty years or more, she would never truly know her husband, realized it then, when by every law in Bardek and Deverry both it was far too late to change her mind. She also remembered the old fortune-teller in Luvilae. The knave of flowers, she thought. That’s who it was: Ebañy. I’ve married the knave of flowers, and I’ll never be the princess now.
After she watched the ship sail out of sight, Jill returned to the inn, paid off the bills that the troupe had left behind them, then gathered a pack’s worth of possessions: her clothes, the various maps and bits of manuscripts that she’d found in the archipelago, a judicious selection of herbs and oddments, then in a fit of thrift stored the rest with the innkeep, just as if she might come back again someday. Laden like a peddler she strolled out of town by the west gate and followed the road, keeping more on the solid shoulder than the mucky middle, for about a mile. As soon as she turned off into the tangled forest, she saw Dallandra, waiting for her between two trees. In the sunlight the elven woman seemed as insubstantial as a wisp of fog caught in branches.
“You’re ready?” Dalla said. “Now remember, Time runs differently, even on our borders. We won’t seem to be in the Gatelands very long, but we might come out again years later or suchlike. We have to travel fast.”
Together they walked through the dappled shade and between the enormous trees. At first Jill thought that nothing had happened, but then she realized that the thick jungle foliage was so intense a green that it seemed fashioned from emerald. When she took a few steps, she saw ahead of her windblown billows of grass. She spun round and found the jungle gone, swallowed by a mist hanging in the air, opalescent in a delicate flood of grays and lavenders shot through with pinks and blues. As she watched, the mist swelled, surged, and wrapped them round in welcome cold.
“There,” Dallandra said. “You’re not truly in your body anymore, you see.”
Jill felt a weight round her neck and found, hanging from a golden chain, a tiny statuette of herself carved from obsidian. Dallandra laughed.
“Mine’s of amethyst. That’s rather rude of Evandar, to use blackstone for you. It’s so grim.”
“Oh, it suits me well enough.”
Ahead three roads stretched out pale across the grasslands. One road led to the left and a stand of dark hills, so bleak and glowering that she knew they had no part in any country that Dallandra would call home. One road led to the right and a sudden rise of mountains, pale and gleaming in pure air beyond the mist, their tops shrouded in snow so bright that it seemed as if they were lighted from within. Straight ahead on the misty flat stretched the third. Dressed in elven clothes, a man was walking to meet them down that middle way, whistling as he came, his hair an impossible yellow, bright as daffodils. When he drew close Jill noticed that his eyes were an unnatural sky-blue and his lips red as cherries. She felt magical power streaming from him as palpably as she felt the mist.
“Good morrow, fair lady.” He spoke in Deverrian. “My true love tells me that you wish to hurry on your way and not linger here in my beloved land. What a pity,