Kerr, Katharine - Deverry 05 -A Time of Exile by Kerr Katharine

Author:Kerr, Katharine [Kerr, Katharine]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Speculative Fiction
ISBN: 0586207880
Publisher: Spectra
Published: 1991-01-02T07:00:00+00:00

As the days passed, Aderyn came to believe that he was more furious with himself than with either Dallandra or Evandar. He began to see himself as a warrior who spends all winter drinking, feasting, and lying around in his lord’s hall until, when spring comes, his mail no longer fits over his swollen belly and hefting a weapon makes him pant for breath just when the war is about to start and he’s needed the most. In all the long years that she’d been gone, it had never even occurred to him to look at another woman, never crossed his mind to grow fond of someone else.

No one could ever have taken Dallandra’s place in his heart, of course; never would he have thought of remarrying, even though elven law would have allowed him to do so as soon as she’d been gone for twenty years and a day. But he might have found friendship and affection, if not love, might have kept his heart alive instead of suffocating it in his work as he had in fact done. All the energy of his heart, all his capacity to love that he might have given to another woman—he’d transmuted them into something sterile and poured them into his pupils and his studies. He marveled at himself, that he had Dallandra back yet couldn’t really love her again, even though she treated him with all her old affection. She would have shared his bed if he’d wanted, but he used her pregnancy as an excuse and slept away from her.

He didn’t want her pity—that’s how he put it to himself. He was sure that she was treating him, an old man, withered and ugly, with pity, and he wanted no part of it. Even though he’d forgotten how to love, he knew that he wanted no one else to have her heart. As the days slipped into months, and her pregnancy began to show, he turned more and more into a hideous human stereotype that he hated even as he felt powerless to stop his transformation: he saw himself becoming a jealous old man with a young wife. All his dweomercraft, all his strange lore and his great powers, his deep understanding of the secret places of the universe and his conversations with hidden spirits—none of it helped him now, when he would see Calonderiel stop to speak to her and hate him in his heart, when he would see her smile innocently at some young man and wish him dead And what was he going to do, he asked himself, once the baby was born and she was lithe and beautiful again?

If he could have spoken with Nevyn, his old master might have cured him, but Nevyn was off in Bardek on some mysterious working of his own. If they’d lived in Deverry, among human beings in all their vast variety of ages and looks, he might have come to his senses, too, but as it was, every person they saw was young and beautiful except Aderyn himself.

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