Dallandra gave him a wide-eyed stupid stare.
‘Eldidd.’ He sighed and pointed to himself. ‘I’m a lord. I lost a bondsman. Have you seen him?’
‘Bondsman?’ Dallandra said slowly. ‘What is bondsman? Oh – farmer.’
‘That’s right.’ The lord raised his voice, as if she would understand if only he shouted. ‘A kind of farmer. He has a brand here.’ He pointed to his cheek. ‘A mark. He’s my property, and he ran away.’
Dallandra nodded slowly, as if considering all of this.
‘He’s a young man, wearing brown clothes,’ the lord bellowed at the top of his lungs. ‘Have you seen him?’
‘That I not. No see farmers.’
The lord sighed and looked doubtfully at the alar’s gear, as if a bondsman wrapped in blankets might be hidden on a travois.
‘Which way have your people ridden? North? South?’ He pointed out the various directions. ‘Do you understand? Where have you come from?’
‘North. No see farmers. No farmers in north grass.’
‘Well, you would have seen him out in those dismal plains.’
‘The dis-what?’
‘Oh, never mind.’ The lord made a vague bow in her direction, then turned and yelled at his warband. ‘All right, men, we’re riding east. The bastard must have doubled back.’
As soon as the warband was out of sight, the alar burst into howls and cackles. Dallandra leaned into her saddle-peak and laughed till her sides ached.
‘Oh, a splendid jest,’ Wylenteriel gasped with his perfect Eldidd accent. ‘No see farmer! By those hells of theirs, Dalla!’
‘No speak good. Me simple elf. Hard of hearing, too.’
On a wave of laughter the alar rearranged their riding order and continued their slow trip south.
About four days’ ride west of Elyrdd, Aderyn came to a tiny lake fringed with willow trees. In a nearby farming village were a woman ill with shaking fever and a man with a jaw abscessed from bad teeth. Aderyn made a camp on the lakeshore, with a proper fire-circle of stones, a canvas lean-to to cover his gear, and a neat stack of firewood donated by the grateful villagers, and rode daily into the village to care for his new patients. Once they were out of danger, he lingered to gather and dry wild herbs. On his tenth night there, as he was eating bread and cheese by his fire, he heard his horse whinny a nicker of greeting to some other horse, but one he couldn’t see or hear. When the mule joined in, Aderyn felt profoundly uneasy. He was a good two miles from the village, far away from help if he should need it.
Off among the willows a twig snapped; then silence. Aderyn spun around and stared into the darkness. He thought he saw something moving – too slender for a deer – no, nothing but tree branches. Now here, he told himself, you’re letting your nerves run away with you. But in the distance he heard another sound – a footfall, a twig. He retreated close to the fire and picked up the only weapon he had, a table dagger.
The five men materialized out of the willow trees and stepped quietly into the pool of 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.