A Time of Omens - Katharine Kerr [87]
“No doubt, and truly, I’m honored by your invitation, but I’ve another kind of marvel to find. If I remember the tales about you rightly, it’s one that I think you’d find interesting yourself, the island refuge of the sea elves.”
He grinned, revealing teeth that were more than a little sharp.
“And someday, perhaps, I’ll come visit you there.” He turned to Dallandra. “I’ve found the road we want. Shall we travel it?”
For an answer she merely smiled and caught his hand. Jill walked alongside as they sauntered off down the middle road, as casually as a lady and her lover taking a stroll through the park lands of his estate. All round the mist hovered, parting directly ahead in swirls of watery sunlight to reveal dark mounds of trees. Off to her right she could hear a distant ocean crashing big waves onto some unseen shore.
“Those three roads you saw at first? They’re the mothers of all roads,” Evandar remarked. “Men and elves, every thinking creature under all the suns everywhere—they like to think they’re following a road of their own building, don’t they? But all those earthly roads are just the daughters of one of these three.”
“Indeed?” Jill said. “I won’t argue with you when you could well be right, for all I know.”
“And since the three are the mothers of all earthly roads, all those earthly roads start and end here. You can move from one to another and come out where you choose, providing, of course, that you know how to get here in the first place.”
“I see.” Jill allowed herself a smile. “That’s the trick, is it?”
“Just so.” He smiled in return. “And not so easy a trick to learn.”
“I well believe that.”
“Now, of course, I could show you that trick, if you’d care to stay and learn it.”
Jill felt a pang of temptation as strong as a stab of pain, but she merely laughed and shook her head no.
“I’m grateful for the offer, mind. But I’ve got a bit of work on my hands just now.”
“Your choice, of course.” Evandar bowed, a half-mocking sweep of his arm. “Now, it does take a bit of learning to untangle the roads from their mothers. It’s rather like a tapestry weaver’s remnants, a big basket of yarn of all colors, all tangled up together, and pulling just one strand free without knotting it round the rest isn’t such an easy thing to do. Which is why we’d best stop for a moment and let me think.”
They had reached a low rise, dropping gently down in front of them to another wide and grassy plain, crisscrossed with tiny streams and dotted with thickets of trees. Off on a far horizon in a gathering mist Jill could just make out a rise of towers, all white stone flecked with the occasional glint of gold, as if some mighty city stood there. Although Evandar had talked of many roads, she could only see one, meandering through the plain like a stream. He seemed to hear her thought.
“It’s all in the walking, which road you end up traveling. They all do look alike at first. Come along, we’ll just head down past those gray stones, there.”
Now that he pointed them out, Jill could indeed see the boulders, shoving themselves clear of the earth about halfway down the rise. As they strolled past, she noticed that the stones seemed worked, shaped into flat slabs with some crude tool, and arranged into a roughly circular ring.
“We turn here, I think,” Evandar said.
The sun turned brighter by a sudden streamside, all dappled with coins of gold light and bordered with a spill of yellow wildflowers. Even though it seemed they had traveled a long way, Jill could still hear the mutter of the invisible ocean.
“And what of the sea roads? Do all ships sail on that sea I hear over there somewhere?” She waved vaguely in the direction of the sound. “Is there a harbor where all sailors come to port?”
“There is, truly. Again, if they can find their way to it. If. Your ancestors sailed that sea when Cadwallon the Druid brought them free of slavery and defeat in the land they called Gallia. But, of course, you know that.”
“What?” Jill stopped walking and turned to him. “I don’t know in the least. What