I hear a sour note marring your dulcet tones? A touch of pique, a nettle-ment, if indeed such a word exists, a certain jealousy or resentment of our demanding craft, or mayhap a …’
‘Will you hold your tongue, you chattering bastard?’
‘Ah, I was right. I did.’
At that moment Jill appeared on the other side of the fire. They were camped near a little copse, and in the uncertain light it seemed she materialized right out of the trees like one of the Wildfolk.
‘You two look as startled as a pair of caught burglars. Talking about me?’
‘Your ears were burning, were they?’ Salamander said with a grin. ‘Actually we were just wondering where you were, and lo, our question is answered, our difficulty solved. Come sit down.’
Smiling, but only a little, Jill did so.
‘We should be at the ruined dun on the morrow,’ she remarked. ‘That’s where the others are meeting us. Do you remember it, Rhodry? The place where Lord Corbyn’s men tried to trap you during that rebellion.’
‘Ye gods, that was years and years ago, but remember it I do, and that dun will always be dear to my heart, because it was there that I first saw you.’
‘You chatter like your wretched brother, don’t you?’ She got up and walked away, disappearing noiselessly back into the copse and was gone.
Rhodry winced and stared into the fire.
‘I think, O brother of mine, that there’s somewhat you don’t quite understand.’ Salamander paused for dramatic effect. ‘Jill’s beyond you now. Beyond us both, truly, for I’ll admit that there was a time or brief season in my life when I was madly in love with her myself – without the slightest result, let me hasten to add, but a cold and most cruel rejection, a sundering of my heart and the smashing to little bits of my hopes.’
‘Oh. Who is he, then?’
‘Not who, O jealousy personified. What. The dweomer. It takes some people that way. Why, by every god in the sky, do you think she left you in the first place? Because a love of dweomer is a burning twice stronger than lust or even sentiment, which it oft times overpowers.’
Rhodry and Jill had parted so long ago that Rhodry quite simply couldn’t remember its details, but he could remember all too well his bitterness.
‘I didn’t understand then and I don’t understand now, and cursed if I even want to.’
‘Then there’s naught I can say about it, is there? But I warn you, don’t let yourself fall in love with her again.’
Rhodry merely shrugged, wondering if the warning were coming too late.
On the morrow morn they splashed across Y Brog and left the settled lands behind. All that day they rode through fallow grasslands, dotted here and there with copses or crossed with tiny streamlets; that night, they camped in green emptiness. Yet early on the next day, Rhodry saw rising on the horizon a broken tower, as lonely in the endless grass as a cairn marking a warrior’s grave – which, he supposed, it might well have been.
‘Did this dun fall to the sword?’
‘I haven’t the slightest idea,’ Jill said. ‘Calonderiel might know.’
The elf in question, an old friend and a warleader among his people, was waiting for them near the empty gap in the outer walls that once had held wooden gates. They saw his horse first, a splendid golden gelding with a silvery mane and tail, tethered at his leisure out in the grass. Calonderiel himself was pacing idly back and forth in the ward, where grass grew round the last few cobbles and a profusion of ivy was sieging the broch itself. A tall man but slender, as most of his people were, the war-leader had dark purple eyes, slit vertically like a cat’s, moonbeam pale hair, and, of course, ears as long and delicately pointed as a sea-shell.
‘So there you are!’ he sang out in Deverrian. ‘I thought Salamander had gone and got you all lost.’
‘Spare me the implied insults, if you please.’ Salamander made him a sketch of a bow. ‘You must have been talking with my father, if you’d think so ill of me. Which reminds me. Where is the esteemed parent? I thought he’d be eager for a first look at this other son of his.’
‘No doubt he will, when he finds out you’ve ridden west.’ Calonderiel turned to Rhodry. ‘My apologies, but Devaberiel’s gone off north somewhere with one of the alarli. I’ve got my men out riding, passing the word along and looking for him. He’ll turn up.’
‘Blast and curse it all!’ Jill got in before Rhodry could say a word. ‘I wanted to speak with him before I rode on, and now I’ll have to sit around here and wait.’
‘Impatient, isn’t she?’ Calonderiel was grinning. ‘You should be used to elven ways by now, Jill. Things happen when they happen, and not a moment before.’
‘Well,’ Rhodry said. ‘I’ll admit to being a bit disappointed myself.’
‘And you must admit, Cal,’ Salamander broke in, ‘that my father can take his sweet time about things. He calls his progresses stately or measured; I call them dilatory, tardy, lackadaisical, or just plain slow.’
‘Well, you’ve got a point.’ The warleader glanced Jill’s way. ‘Aderyn’s at the encampment.’
‘That’ll make the waiting easier, truly. How far away is everybody?’
Not very far at all, as it turned out. A couple of miles to the west the camp sprawled along a stream: some twenty brightly coloured round tents, a vast herd of horses, a small flock of sheep, a neat stack of travois poles, all scattered through the tall grass in a tidy sort of confusion. As they rode up, a rush of children and dogs came yelling and yapping to meet them; about thirty adults strolled more slowly after.
Over the years Rhodry had picked up a fair amount of Elvish, more than enough to greet everyone and to understand the various speeches of welcome that came his way. He smiled and bowed and repeated names that he forgot a moment later. When Calonderiel insisted that the two brothers share his tent, there were plenty of willing hands to carry their gear and to take their horses. Skins of mead and bowls of food appeared as the camp settled in around the main fire for a celebration. Everyone wanted to meet Devaberiel’s son and tell him about the major feast planned for the evening, too. In all the confusion it was some hours before Rhodry realized that he’d lost track of Jill.
About half a mile away from the main camp, Aderyn’s weathered tent stood alone near a stand of willows at the stream edge. It was mercifully quiet there, except for the trill of birds in the willows. Jill tethered her horse out with Aderyn’s small herd, then carried her gear round to the tent-flap. Just as she was wondering whether to call out a greeting, the flap rustled open, and Aderyn’s new apprentice, a pale-eyed young elf named Gavantar, crawled out. He was even more slender than most of his people, and pale-haired, too, so that Jill found herself thinking of him as more a spirit than a man. But his hands were strong enough as he snatched her burdens from her.
‘Let me carry that gear for you, O Wise One of the East. You might have let me tend your horse.’
‘I’m not some withered old woman, lad, not yet, anyway. Is your master here?’
‘Of
