firelight. While he gawked, too frightened to speak, they ringed him round, cutting off any escape. All five of them had pale blond hair, like moonlight in the fire-thrown shadows, and they shared a certain delicate kind of good looks, too, so that Aderyn’s first muddled thought was that they were brothers. They were dressed differently than Eldidd men, in tight leather trousers instead of baggy brigga, and loose dark blue tunics, heavily embroidered, instead of overshirts, but they all carried long Eldidd swords.
‘Good evening,’ one of them said politely. ‘Are you the herbman the villagers told us about? Aderyn, the name was.’
‘I am. Do you need my help? Is someone sick?’
The fellow smiled and came closer. With a twitch of surprise Aderyn noticed his ears, long, delicately pointed and curled like a sea-shell, and his enormous eyes were slit vertically, like a cat’s.
‘My name is Halaberiel. Answer me a riddle, good herbman: Where have you seen the sun rise when you see with your other eyes?’
‘At midnight, but that’s a strange riddle for a man to know.’
‘It was told me by a woman, actually. Well, good herbman, we truly do require your aid. Will you ride west with us?’
‘And do I have any choice about that?’
‘None.’ Halaberiel gave him a pleasant smile. ‘But I assure you, we mean you not the least harm. There’s a woman among my people with great power in what you Round-ears call dweomer. She wants to speak with you. She didn’t tell me why, mind, but I do what Nananna wants.’ He turned to one of the others. ‘Calonderiel, go fetch his horse and mule. Jezry, bring our horses.’
The two melted away into the darkness with hardly a sound.
‘I take it we’re leaving tonight,’ Aderyn said.
‘As long as you’re rested, but we won’t go far. I just want to put a little distance between us and the village. The villagers might go running to their lord with tales of Westfolk prowling around.’ Suddenly he laughed. ‘After all, we are actually thieving tonight, stealing the herbman away.’
‘Well, the herbman is curious enough to come with you on his own. I’m more than willing to speak to anyone who has dweomer.’
‘I can’t tell you how glad I am to hear that. It would have ached my heart to tie you up, but we couldn’t have you taking wing and flying away the minute our backs were turned.’
‘Flying? Not quite, but I have ways of moving in the dark, true enough.’
‘Ah, you’re only an apprentice then. Well, no doubt Nananna can teach you a thing or two.’
Halaberiel spoke so matter-of-factly that the implication was unmistakable. Could this Nananna fly? Did all the dweomermasters of the Westfolk have a power that was only a wistful dream for those of the human sort? Aderyn’s heart started pounding in sheer greed. If Halaberiel had somehow changed his mind and tried to keep Aderyn away, he would have had a nasty fight on his hands. Aderyn’s kidnappers-cum-escorts saddled his horse, loaded up his mule, then put out his fire and buried it for him. As the horses picked their way across the dark meadow, Halaberiel rode beside Aderyn.
‘I’ll tell Nananna tonight that we’ve found you.’
‘You can scry, I take it.’
‘I can’t. She’ll come to me in a dream, and I can tell her then.’
Just after midnight, Halaberiel ordered his men to make a rough camp by a riverbank. Aderyn judged they’d gone about ten miles. In the darkness, he could see nothing, but in the morning, he woke to the sight of a swift-flowing, broad river and, beyond on the farther bank, a primeval oak forest. He jumped up and ran to the water’s edge. It had to be – he knew it deep in his heart – it was the river of his vision. With a little yelp of sheer joy he jigged a few dancing steps there on the riverbank.
‘Is somewhat wrong?’ Halaberiel came up beside him.
‘Not in the least. Quite the contrary, in fact. You don’t need to worry about me trying to escape or suchlike, believe me.’
After a meal they forded the river and walked the horses slowly into the forest, which soon turned so thick and tangled that they had to dismount and lead their mounts along a deer-track. In a few miles the trail disappeared, leaving them to thread their own way through the trees. For three agonizing hours they picked their way west, stopping often to urge on the balky horses or deliberate on the best way to go. Finally, just when Aderyn was ready to give up in frustration, they came to a road: a proper, hard-packed, level dirt road about ten feet across, running straight as a spear through the forest.
‘Here we are,’ Halaberiel remarked. ‘Few of the Round-ears would push on long enough to find this, you see.’
‘I take it you don’t trust my kind.’
‘And how should I?’ Halaberiel considered him with cool, violet eyes. ‘No offence, good sir, to you as a man, but first we gave the Round-ears the coast; then they started pushing up the rivers; now I see them breeding like rats and swarming all over the country. Everywhere they go, they make slaves out of the Old Ones who were here before them. Where will they stop? Anywhere? Or will they keep on pushing north and west, ploughing up the grasslands for their fields and killing the grass for our horses? Are they going to look at us and covet us for slaves one fine day? They’ve already broken at least one treaty with my kind that I know of. Trust them? I think not, good sir. I think not.’
‘I assure you, those of us who serve the dweomer hate slavery as much as you do. If I could free every bondsman in the kingdom, I would.’
‘No doubt, but you can’t, can you?’ With an irritable shrug, Halaberiel turned away and called to his men. ‘Let’s get on the road. We can rest the horses when we come to the big spring.’
The spring turned out to be some two miles further west, a stone pond with a stone culvert that led the overflow down to a stream among the trees. Inside the stone wall water welled up clear and noiselessly from the sandy bottom. Before anyone drank, Halaberiel raised his hands over the water and called out a short prayer in a soft musical language to thank the god of the spring. Then they unsaddled their horses, let them roll, and watered them before sitting down to their own meal of smoked fish and soft ewe’s milk cheese. Aderyn was beginning to be able to tell the young men apart: Calonderiel, taller than the rest, Elbannodanter, as delicately handsome as a lass, Jezryaladar with a quick flash of a grin, and Albaral, who said very little and ate a lot.
‘Banadar?’ Calonderiel said. ‘Has Nananna told you where she is?’
‘Not far beyond the forest. She and her escort met up with a couple of big alarli yesterday, and they’re all camping together by the haunted pool. The rest of our warband’s on the way to join them, too. We’ll all move down to the winter camp together.’
When he finished eating, Aderyn went for a closer look at the spring. The stonework was carved with looping vines and flowers, and peering out from among them were the little faces of the Wildfolk.
‘Halaberiel?’ Aderyn said. ‘Your people do beautiful stonework.’
‘Well, they used to. This is over eight hundred years old. There’s not a man or woman alive now who could do as well.’
‘Indeed?
