I remember some of the things that have happened over the years. There’s been a lot of bad feeling, Jill, just a terrible lot of bad feeling between my two tribes. That’s how I always think of elves and men, you see, as both mine now, though once, truly, I hated thinking that I might still be a human being. Of course, Rhodry’s the one who’s really caught between the two worlds, isn’t he? It’s not going to be easy for him, either. I can testify to that, from my own experience.’ He paused for a long moment. ‘Well, it’s going to be much worse for him, truly. There are things that have happened to him in other lives that are bound to come to a head now. That’s one reason I made sure to be here on the border when he came.’
‘Indeed? What sort of things?’
‘Well, it’s a long and winding tale, truly, and one that runs hundreds of years, all told, though I think me that we’re about to get to the end of it at last. You do remember, don’t you, that his soul in another body was my father?’ The old man grinned. ‘If anyone can remember that far, way back in the mists of time when I was born.’
Jill smiled with him, but she felt a touch of dweomer eerily run down her back. She had, after all, in another body been his mother. Aderyn was too courteous to mention the point.
‘But Gweran – my father, that is, and Rhodry in other flesh – was the most human man I’ve ever seen.’
‘But he was a bard. You’re forgetting that. There’s a touch of … well, what? madness? the Wildlands? somewhat strange and magical and crazed and inspired, all at once, in the soul of every bard.’
‘Well, so there is. I hadn’t truly thought of it that way before. Wyrd and the tangles of Wyrd! They always say that no man can know the truth of it.’
‘Or woman either, but we’ve all got to try to untangle our own.’
‘Just so, and we were speaking of other people’s work earlier, weren’t we? But Rhodry might well be my work now – no need for you to bother and all – though I might end up needing your help one fine day. After Gweran died, I doubt me if you were involved in much of this.’ He thought hard, chin in hand. ‘You’ve always belonged to the human race, Jill, not to the Elcyion Lacar like I do – not that Rhodry’s soul was ever supposed to be so mixed up with the elves, either, truly, bard or not. It’s an odd thing, how tangled a man’s Wyrd can become, and all through muddles and blunders. But you don’t need to trouble your heart over it. Truly, I don’t think you were involved, except in the most casual way.’
And in spite of herself, Jill was vexed that there was some deep part of Rhodry’s soul and Rhodry’s Wyrd that had nothing to do with her.
In the cold grey morning, when the mists rose from the surface of Loc Tamig, one could understand why the local farmers thought it haunted. All Aderyn could see of the lake surface was a few patches of rippled water, broken by a drowned tree and four steel-grey rocks, while on the far shore the pine-black mountains rose up in peaks and shadows. The sound of a hundred waterfalls chattered and murmured through the mists like spirit voices. At the moment, though, Aderyn was more worried about the coming rain than possible ghosts. He was, of course, still a young man then, with his hair a nondescript brown and always hanging in an untidy lock over his forehead rather than swept up in the owl-shape it would later assume, and he was even skinnier, too, because half the time he forgot to eat when he was deep in his dweomer studies. That particular morning he was down on his knees in the tall spring grass, digging up valerian roots with a small silver spade.
Wildfolk clustered round to watch him work – two small grey gnomes, skinny and long-nosed, three blue-green sprites with pointed teeth and pretty faces. Just like children they crowded close, pointed mute questions, and generally got in the way. Aderyn named everything they pointed at and worked fast with one eye on the lowering clouds. Just as he was finishing, a gnome picked up a clod and threw it at his fellow. Snarling and baring his teeth, the sprites joined in a full-scale dirt fight.
‘Stop it! Your great lords would find this most discourteous!’
One sprite pinched him on the arm. All the Wildfolk vanished with little puffs of air and dust and a gust of smell like clean leaf-mould. Aderyn gathered up his things and ran for shelter in the spattering rain. Down among a stand of trees was the round stone hut he shared with his master in the dweomercraft. Two years before, he and Nevyn had built the hut with their own hands and made a small stable for their horses and mules. At the back was their garden, where practical food such as beans and cabbages grew as well as exotic cultivated herbs, and a flock of chickens had their own little house. Most of their food, though, came from the farming villages at the north end of the lake, where the local people were glad to trade supplies for medicine.
When Aderyn dashed into the single round room, he found Nevyn, sitting by the fire-circle in the centre and watching the play of flame. A tall man, with a thick thatch of white hair and deep-set blue eyes, Nevyn was close to a hundred years old, but he had more vigour than most men of twenty, a striding walk and the erect carriage of the great prince of the realm that once he had been.
‘Back just in time, you are. Here comes the storm.’
A gust of wind eddied smoke through the draughty hut as the drops began pattering on the roof. Nevyn got up and helped Aderyn lay the valerian to dry on clean cloths. The roots had to be sliced thin with a small silver knife, a nose-wrinkling smell, and they had to wear fine leather gloves, too, lest the strong juices poison them.
‘Nevyn? Will we be leaving Loc Tamig soon?’
‘You will.’
Aderyn sat back on his heels and stared at him.
‘It’s time for you to go off on your own. I’ve taught you all I know, and your Wyrd runs different from mine.’
Even though he’d always known this day would come, Aderyn felt close to tears. Nevyn laid down one last slice of root and turned to look at him, his piercing blue eyes unusually gentle.
‘It’ll ache my heart to see you go. I’ll miss you, lad. But it’s time. You’ve reached the third nine of your years now, and that age marks a turning-point for everybody. Come now, you know it, too. You’ve got your herbcraft to feed and clothe yourself, and I’ve opened the gates of the dweomer for you as far as I can. Now you have to walk through those gates and take up your own Wyrd.’
‘But what will my Wyrd be?’
‘Oh, that’s not for me to say. No man can see another’s Wyrd. You have the keys to open that door. It’s time for you to work a ritual and use them. The Lords of Wyrd will reveal what you need to know – and not a jot more, doubtless.’
On the morrow, when the rain stopped, Nevyn took his horse and two pack-mules and rode off to the villages to buy food. He told Aderyn that he would stay away three days to leave him alone for the working, but as to what that working would be, he said nothing at all. Only then did the apprentice realize that the most important moment of his life was strictly in his own hands. He would have to draw on all his knowledge and practice to devise a ritual that would open his Wyrd and put him in contact, at least for a few brief moments, with his secret and undying soul, the true core of his being that had invented and formed the young man known as Aderyn for this lifetime the way a potter takes clay and makes a bowl. As he stood in the doorway and watched
