elven woman, her pale-blond hair bound into two braids that hung behind her ears, which were as long and delicately pointed as seashells. Her visitor pressed his palms together and bowed to her, then doffed the cloak and sat down on the carpet nearby. His hair was as pale as moonlight, and his dark-blue eyes were, like all elven eyes, slit vertically with a pupil like a cat’s. Yet Jill thought that he was as handsome as her Rhodry in his alien way and also oddly familiar.
“Very well, Devaberiel,” the woman said, and though she spoke in Elvish, Jill could understand her. “I’ve been studying my stones, and I have an answer for you.”
“My thanks, Valandario.” He leaned closer.
At that point Jill realized that a cloth, embroidered in geometric patterns, lay between them. At various points on the web of triangles and squares lay spherical gems: rubies, yellow beryls, sapphires, emeralds, and amethysts. In the middle of the cloth lay a simple silver ring. Valandario began moving the gems along the various lines, finally bringing one of each color into the center to form a pentagon around the ring.
“Your son’s Destiny is encircled by this ring,” she said. “But I know not what that Destiny may be, except to say that it lies somewhat in the north and in the air.”
“In the air? What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Doubtless all will be revealed in time.” Valandario waved a vague hand. “But I know the ring is his.”
“As god and Guardian wish it, then so be it. You have my solemn thanks. I’ll see to it that Rhodry gets the ring, then. I might ride to Dun Gwerbyn myself to have a look at this lad of mine.”
“It would be unwise to tell him the truth. Very, very unwise.”
“Of course. From what Calonderiel tells me, he stands to inherit a lot of property from his supposed father, and I don’t want to meddle. I just want to see him. After all, it’s quite a surprise to learn you’ve got a full-grown son you never even knew existed. Though Lovyan could hardly have sent me word, of course, with her still married to that other fellow. He was a very powerful man, one of high rank, too.”
“I see your point.” Valandario suddenly looked up, right at Jill. “Here! Who are you, to come spying upon me in the spirit?”
When Jill tried to answer, she found that she couldn’t speak. In exasperation Valandario threw up one hand and sketched a sigil in the air. All at once Jill found herself awake, sitting up in bed with Rhodry snoring beside her. Since the room was cold, she lay down and hurriedly snuggled under the blankets. That was a true dream, she thought, oh, by the Goddess of the Moon, my lover’s half an elf!
For a long while she lay awake, thinking over the dream. Of course Devaberiel would look familiar since he was Rhodry’s father. She was honestly shocked to find out that Lady Lovyan, whom she much admired, had put horns on her husband’s head, but then, Devaberiel was an exceptionally handsome man. She had the brief thought of telling Rhodry about the dream, but Valandario’s warning stopped her. Besides, finding out that he was no true Maelwaedd, but a bastard, would only drive Rhodry deeper into his hiraedd. She could barely tolerate his dark fits as it was.
And then there was the silver ring. Here was another proof of something that Nevyn had told her the summer past, that Rhodry’s Wyrd was deep and hidden. She decided that if ever she saw the old man again, she would tell him of the omens. As she was drifting back to sleep, she wondered if her path would ever cross his again. For all that his dweomer frightened her, she was very fond of Nevyn, but the kingdom was very large, and who knew which way the old man would choose to wander?
On the morrow the full significance of the dream came to her as she and Rhodry sat in the tavern room. Yet once again, the dweomer had irrupted into her mind, taken her over with no warning. For a moment she shrank into herself, just as when the hare hears the dogs baying and crouches frozen in the bracken.
“Is something wrong, my love?” Rhodry said.
“Naught, naught. I was just … oh, thinking about last summer.”
“It was a strange thing, sure enough.” He shuddered as if a cold draft had run down his neck. “That fellow Loddlaen and his stinking magicks! It’s a hard thing, knowing someone wants to kill you, and here you don’t even know why.”
“Well, Nevyn said he was a madman. Right out of his head, the old man told me, stark raving.”
“He said somewhat of the same to me.” Rhodry dropped his voice to a whisper. “All that cursed dweomer! It’s enough to drive anyone mad! I pray to every god we’re never touched by sorcery again.”
Although she nodded her agreement, Jill knew that he was praying for the impossible. Even as he spoke, her little gray gnome manifested onto the table and sat down by Rhodry’s tankard. All her life Jill had been able to see the Wildfolk, and this particular skinny, big-nosed creature was a close friend. Oh my poor Rhoddo, she thought, you ride with dweomer all around you! She felt both angry and frightened, wishing that her peculiar talents would go away, fearing that they never would.
Yet once, last summer, Nevyn had told her that if she refused to use her talents, they would eventually wither and be gone. Although she hoped that the old man was right—and certainly he knew far more about the matter than she did—she had her doubts, especially when she considered how dweomer had swept her into Rhodry’s war and Rhodry’s life last summer. She’d been an utterly obscure person, the bastard daughter of a silver dagger, until her father had taken what seemed to be a perfectly ordinary hire, guarding a merchant caravan that was traveling to the western border of Eldidd. Yet from the moment that the merchant had offered Cullyn the job, she’d known that something unusual was going to happen, felt with an inexplicable certainty that her life had reached a crossroads. How right she’d been! First the caravan went west to the land of the Elcyion Lacar, the elves, a people who were supposed to exist only in fairy tale and myth. Then, with some of the elves in tow, they’d returned to Eldidd and ridden right into the middle of a dweomer war.
Just in time for her to save Rhodry’s life by killing a man who, or so the dweomer seemed to declare, was invincible—Lord Corbyn will never die by any man’s hand, or so a prophecy declared. Like all dweomer-riddles, this one had two sharp sides, and a lass’s hand had slain him sure enough. As she thought about it, it all seemed entirely too neat, too clever, as if the gods shaped a person’s Wyrd the way a Bardek craftsman shapes a puzzle box with its precise little workings that mean absolutely nothing in the long run. And then she remembered the elves, who were not men in any true sense, and Rhodry himself, who was only half of one. She saw then that Rhodry might have slain his enemy himself, if only he’d believed he could, and that her coming, while convenient, need not be foreordained any more than a snowstorm that appears in winter could be said to be a mighty act of dweomer.
Yet dweomer had brought her to him; that she was sure of, if not to save his life, then for some obscure purpose. Although she shuddered at the thought, she also found herself wondering why dweomer should frighten her so badly, why she was sure that following the dweomer road would lead to her death. Suddenly she saw it: she was afraid that if ever she tampered with dweomer, it would bring not only her death, but Rhodry’s. Even though she told herself that the idea was stupid, the irrational fear seemed to hang round her like smoke, acrid and choking. For a moment, in fact, she thought she could see gray tendrils, curling through the room. When she leaped up, ready to shout fire, the smoke disappeared—a dweomer-vision.
She had no way of knowing that the smoke of her vision came from a fire that burned some three hundred years in the past, when she and Rhodry both had lived another life, as all souls have many lives, as many
