surrounded Aderyn. Wildfolk crouched or lounged all over the tent, sprawling on the floor, clinging to the walls, perching on the many-coloured tentbags hanging from the poles. A small fire smouldered under the smoke-hole in the centre, and the dweomerman himself was sitting cross-legged nearby on a pile of leather cushions. He was a small man, fully human, with enormous dark eyes in his slender, wrinkled face and dead-white hair which swept up from his forehead in two peaks like the horns of an owl. When he saw Jill he grinned in honest delight and rose to catch her hands in his.
‘Ah, it’s good to see you in the actual flesh! Come sit down. Can I offer you some mead?’
‘None for me, thanks. I don’t have your head for the stuff. I wouldn’t mind a cup of that spiced honey-water the Westfolk make, though.’
The apprentice put the saddle-bags down and hurried out again, heading for the main camp to fetch a skin of the drink in question. Aderyn and Jill sat down, facing each other, and she began pulling some cloth-wrapped bundles out of her gear. A gaggle of gnomes clustered round to watch, including the small grey fellow that followed Jill everywhere.
‘Nevyn wanted you to have these books.’ She handed Aderyn a pair of ancient folios with crumbling leather bindings. ‘Though what you’re going to do with a matched set of Prince Mael’s writings, I don’t know.’
‘Lug them around with all due honour and respect, I suppose. Actually, these particular volumes mean somewhat to me. The man who gave them to Nevyn was someone I much admired.’ He ran slender fingers over the stamped decorations, flecked here and there with the remains of gold leaf, a roundel enclosing a pair of grappling badgers, and under it a motto: we hold on. ‘But fancy him remembering that, after all these years! I’m quite surprised that I do, actually.’
‘And here’s a trinket from Brin Toraedic. He said to tell you that since it was older than both of you put together, it was a marvel indeed.’
Aderyn laughed and held up the golden cup, made of beaten metal and decorated with a ridged pattern utterly unlike any made by human or elf. Jill found herself studying the old man; he seemed no older, no weaker than he ever had, but still she worried. He picked up her thought.
‘My time won’t be for a little while yet. I have Gavantar to train, and he’s just begun his studies.’
‘Ah. I just … well, wondered.’
‘Things have been hard for you with Nevyn gone.’ It was not a question.
‘They have. It’s not just the missing of him, though that’s bad enough. I feel so wretchedly inadequate, little more than an apprentice myself, truly, and not fit to be the Master of the Aethyr.’
‘Oh, here, we all go through that! You’ll grow into the job. It’s like becoming captain of a warband, I suppose. All that responsibility at first – why, it must overwhelm a man, thinking of all those lives that depend on his decisions.’
‘True spoken. But I’ve got Nevyn’s work to finish. I keep feeling that I’ve absolutely got to do it right for his sake.’
‘Wait a moment now! It’s not his work, any more than it’s your work. Don’t let that kind of vanity enter in, or you’ll find yourself worrying indeed. It’s all our work, and the work and will of the Great Ones. Think of it as an enormous tapestry. We each weave a little piece, what small amount we’re capable of, then hand the grand design on to the next worker. No one soul could possibly finish the entire thing by himself.’
‘You’re right enough, aren’t you?’ Jill smiled, feeling her dark mood lift. ‘I’ll drink to that! Here comes your Gavantar now.’
Carrying a leather bottle, dripping wet and smelling of Bardek cinnamon and cloves, Gavantar ducked through the flap and joined them. Once the drink was poured round, he sat down by the door on guard, and with a shy duck of his head refused to move closer even when Aderyn invited him. He was new to the dweomer, Jill supposed, and still in awe of what he considered strange and mighty powers. Soon enough, when he came to see how natural in their way Aderyn’s magicks were, he would begin to feel at ease.
‘Is Rhodry still with Calonderiel?’ she asked.
‘He is, O Wise One. The whole camp wants to meet him.’
‘Good. Then he’ll stay out of trouble for a few hours, anyway.’ She turned back to Aderyn. ‘Rhodry is one of the things that’s vexing me.’
‘Ah. He’s still in love with you?’
‘That, too, I suppose, but that’s not the important thing. I wonder what’s going to happen to him now, mostly. No, I worry about him, worry badly. We’ve snatched him away from everything he knows and loves, which is harsh enough, and then beyond that, there’s his Wyrd. For so long his whole life was ruled by that prophecy, and now he’s fulfilled it, and well, what’s going to become of him?’
‘Prophecy?’
‘The one Nevyn received all those years ago. Don’t you remember it? Rhodry’s Wyrd is Eldidd’s Wyrd, it ran.’
‘Oh, that! Of course – he became gwerbret in the nick of time, didn’t he?’
‘You seem to take it all blasted lightly, but so he did. Look, there would have been a long and ghastly war in Eldidd if Rhodry hadn’t been there to inherit the rhan.’
Aderyn merely nodded. Jill supposed that he was so old, and had seen so many wars, that one more conflict would have meant nothing to him.
‘And then there’s the rose ring, too,’ she went on. ‘I’ve been vexing myself about that bit of jewellery for months now. That’s why I want to talk to Devaberiel, you see, to ask him about it and the strange being who gave it to him. I’ll wager he wasn’t an ordinary elf.’
‘You’re right about that.’ Aderyn’s voice had gone tense and strange. ‘I’ve got my own ideas about who that mysterious benefactor was.’
‘I want to hear them. And what about that wretched inscription? If we knew what it meant, we might be able to unravel the entire mystery.’
Although she was expecting him to tell her his ideas or at least acknowledge that she’d spoken, Aderyn sat for a long time merely staring out into space. At last, though, he spoke in a voice that was half a whisper, half a sigh.
‘The ring – that cursed ring! Dwarven work, and it had a life of its own, just like their trinkets always do. Stranger than most, this one, and I’ll wager its work isn’t over yet.’ He shook his head, then went on in a normal voice. ‘But, oh yes, the prophecy … so a man of elven blood finally ruled in Eldidd! Fancy that!’
‘Well, you know, his son has a good dollop of elven blood in his veins, too. Young Cullyn.’ Jill had to smile at his expression. ‘Here, Aderyn, you look shocked to the very heart!’
The old man shrugged and looked away, and at that moment the weight and sadness of all his long years seemed to press him down. Wildfolk clustered round, patting his hands, climbing into his lap, glaring at Jill as if accusing her of causing their friend pain. In spite of his shyness Gavantar inched himself closer, looking back and forth between the two masters of his craft with a worried little frown.
‘Well, the land did belong to the People once,’ Jill went on. ‘I’d like to see them welcome there again.
