The Dragon Revenant - Katharine Kerr [208]
“Brangwen?” he said at last. “Do you forgive me?”
“I never held one single thing against you.”
“Then you loved me too much. It was all false pride and carelessness, but I betrayed you as surely as if I’d drowned you myself.”
Jill remembered the night-dark river, the coldness of the water covering her, choking her. With a shudder she moved closer to the fire.
“Well, perhaps you did,” she said. “And truly, I did love you too much.” She hesitated, groping for words, wondering if she had the wisdom to say such things but knowing somehow that she remembered their truth. “And that’s why I had to lose you. That blind, dog’s love had no room in it for the dweomer. Ah ye gods, I wanted to bury myself in you, to drown myself in you! It was my doing as much as yours.”
“True spoken. But if I’d told you honestly what I was up to instead of sneaking around like a bondsman, if I’d only let you know that you were running toward freedom and not a life of exile and naught more, wouldn’t you have found some way to escape from your brother’s dun?”
“Well, truly I would have. I would have seen the choice as between life or death, not just as Gerraent or you.”
“You would have. You were never a dolt, Gwennic—just so young, so very young.” Nevyn was silent a long moment. “But do you forgive me?”
“I do. Easily.”
“Then my thanks.” His voice almost broke on the words.
Jill sat down next to him again. For a long time they sat in silence, watching the Wildfolk sport in the fire and the light dance over the walls, light and shadow, endlessly moving, endlessly changing, one into the other and back again.
GLOSSARY
Aber (Deverrian) A river mouth, an estuary.
Alar (Elvish, plural alarli) A group of elves, who may or may not be bloodkin, who choose to travel together for some indefinite period of time.
Alardan (Elv.) The meeting of several alarli, usually the occasion for a drunken party.
Angwidd (Dev.) Unexplored, unknown.
Archon (translation of the Bardekian atzenarlen) The elected head of a city-state (Bardekian at).
Astral The plane of existence directly “above” or “within” the etheric (q.v.). In other systems of magic, often referred to as the Akashic Record or the Treasure House of Images.
Aura The field of electromagnetic energy that permeates and emanates from every living being.
Aver (Dev.) A river.
Banadar (Elv.) A warleader and a legal judge for a given group of alarli, elected by their members to serve for a hundred-year term. At any time after the election, new alarli may choose to place themselves under his jurisdiction, but withdrawing from the same is a serious matter, requiring the agreement of all the other groups under his rule.
Bara (Elv.) An enclitic that indicates that the preceding adjective in an Elvish agglutinated word is the name of the element following the enclitic, as can + bara + melim = Rough River (rough-I-name marker-I-river).
Bel (Dev.) The chief god of the Deverry pantheon.
Bel (Elv.) An enclitic, similar in function to bara, except that it indicates that a preceding verb is the name of the following element in the agglutinated term, as in Darabeldal, Flowing Lake.
Blue Light Another name for the etheric plane (q.v.).
Body of Light An artificial thought-form (q.v.) constructed by a dweomermaster to allow him or her to travel through the inner planes of existence.
Brigga (Dev.) Loose wool trousers worn by men and boys.
Broch (Dev.) A squat tower in which people live. Originally, in the Homeland, these towers had one big fireplace in the center of the ground floor and a number of booths or tiny roomlets up the sides, but by the time of our narrative, this ancient style has given way to regular floors with hearths and chimneys on either side of the structure.
Cadvridoc (Dev.) A warleader. Not a general