often done when he was a child. The river ran full between lush green banks and sparkled in the sun with little fish-scale ripples of silver. When they sat down for a rest, Lyssa hunted through the grass and picked a few daisies like a young girl.
‘Ado? Do you remember the year of the Great Drought?’
‘I do.’ That was the year of the murder, too. ‘Did you know it was Nevyn’s dweomer that set it right?’
‘Of course. It was one reason I let you go as his apprentice.’
‘And do you regret that decision now?’
‘Well.’ Lyssa looked at her daisies. ‘If a mother is any kind of mother at all, she knows her sons will leave her. I have your sister and her babies nearby.’
‘Well and good, but Mam, truly I’ll miss you.’
Lyssa shrugged, turning the flowers this way and that between her fingers, fighting to keep back tears.
‘Do you think you’ll ever marry on this strange road of yours?’ she said at last.
‘I doubt it. It wouldn’t be much of a life for a woman, living out of a mule’s pack and sleeping by the road.’
‘True enough, but here – don’t tell me the dweomer lets a man carry on with tavern lasses and suchlike.’
‘It doesn’t, but then I’ve got no intentions of doing anything of the sort.’
Lyssa considered him, her head a bit to one side.
‘You don’t care much for women, do you, Ado?’
‘Care? Of course I do. Truly, Mam, I prefer their company and talk to that of men most of the time.’
‘That’s not what I meant.’
When he understood, Aderyn felt distinctly squeamish – after all, she was his mother.
‘Well, I don’t, not in that way. But Mam, don’t trouble your heart over it. I don’t care for other lads or suchlike.’
‘That wouldn’t have bothered me. It’s just that I’ve always felt you didn’t have much of a taste for that sort of thing with anyone. Do you feel you can’t trust us women?’
‘And why would you think that?’
‘Oh, you saw a bit too much, maybe, when you were a lad.’
Aderyn hesitated, then decided it was time for the truth.
‘You mean Tanyc’
‘Just that.’ Lyssa was studying the daisies. ‘He died because of me, no matter whose fault it was.’ She looked up sharply. ‘I’ll swear it to you, Ado. I never gave him a word of hope or encouragement.’
‘I never thought you did. But it’s not that, Mam. It’s the dweomer. It’s taken my whole life. Everything I would have given to a woman I’ve spent on the dweomer, heart and soul both.’
Lyssa sighed in honest relief, as if she’d been blaming herself for her son’s celibacy. Later, when he was alone, Aderyn wondered if in one way her fear was justified. He’d never blamed her, the woman in the case, for one wrong thing, but the murder had left him with doubts about being a man. To become obsessed with a woman the way Tanyc was seemed to lead to death; to love a woman the way his father did seemed to tempt crime. He decided that he’d better meditate on the subject and untangle this knot in his mind. It might interfere with his work.
All that summer, Aderyn made his way west, going from village to village, supporting himself nicely by selling his herbs – or nicely by his standards, since he was content with two spare meals a day and the occasional tankard of ale in a clean tavern. At times he settled for a week or two to gather fresh herbs or to tend to some long illness, but always he moved on, leaving grateful farmers and villagers behind. Every night when he performed his ritual meditations, he would brood on his Wyrd and wonder where it lay. Gradually his intuition grew that he should turn south-west in his wanderings, but no other signs or hints came to him, at least not in any simple way. When the first clue was given, it took him a long time to unravel it.
Near the western border of the kingdom was one last river, the Vicaver, where Aderyn went simply to take a look at it. Rather than the oak forests of his visions, however, he found the river bordered by farms, pastures, and the occasional stand of willow trees. Aderyn crossed it and rode to the village of Ladotyn, a straggle of some fifty houses scattered among poplar trees, though it did have a proper inn. The innkeeper told him that they got merchant caravans coming through the town, on their way to and from the kingdom of Eldidd to the west.
‘And if you’re thinking of riding west through those mountains, good sir, you’d best see if you can join some other travellers. Those louse-ridden savages up in the hills are always causing trouble.’
‘Well, I don’t intend to stay here all winter, caravan or no.’
‘It’s your burying, not mine – well, if you even get a burial in the ground and not in their stomachs, if you take my meaning, like.’
Although a caravan did indeed appear at the inn. it turned out that it was coming home to Deverry from Eldidd. and the caravan master doubted very much if Aderyn would see one going the opposite way so late in the season. As they stood talking together out in the innyard, Lillyc remarked that he’d been trading in some towns that lay on a river called the El.
‘Now that’s a strange name,’ Aderyn remarked. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever heard it before.’
‘No doubt.’ Lillyc gave him the grin of a man with a secret joke. ‘It’s not a Deverry word, nor an Eldidd one either. The name comes from the Westfolk. They live off to the west of Eldidd, you see. Used to range farther east, but now-the place is getting properly settled.’
‘Indeed? Are they some of the Old Ones, then?’
‘If you mean the squinty-eyed dark-haired bondsfolk, that they aren’t. Oh, the Westfolk are a different lot altogether, and a strange bunch. They won’t settle in proper farms and towns. They wander around with their horses and sheep, just where the fancy takes them.’ Lillyc paused for a small frown. ‘But they’ve helped me and many a merchant make his fortune. They love iron goods – can’t work the stuff themselves, I suppose. How could you, riding around with never a proper forge? They trade us horses, Look.’
At that moment one of Lillyc’s men walked by, leading a pair of the most beautiful horses Aderyn had ever seen. They were both mares, but they stood sixteen hands easily, and their wide deep chests and slender legs bespoke good wind and good speed both. The most amazing thing, however, was their colour, a dark rich gold like fresh clay dug from a riverbank while their manes and tails were as silvery-pale as moonbeams.
‘Gorgeous, good sir!’ Aderyn said. ‘I’ll wager any noble lord in Deverry would give you a small fortune for breeding stock like that.’
‘Just so, just so. But I had to spend most of a small fortune to get them, let me tell you.’
A strange folk, then, these Westfolk, and perhaps with strange lore to match. The very thought made a cold shudder run down Aderyn’s back as he wondered if they were in some way linked to his Wyrd.
‘Here,
