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After all, it’s quite a surprise to learn you’ve got a full-grown son you never even knew existed. Though Lovyan could hardly have sent me word, of course, with her still married to that other fellow. He was a very powerful man, one of high rank, too.”
    “I see your point.” Valandario suddenly looked up, right at Jill. “Here! Who are you, to come spying upon me in the spirit?”
    When Jill tried to answer, she found that she couldn’t speak. In exasperation Valandario threw up one hand and sketched a sigil in the air. All at once Jill found herself awake, sitting up in bed with Rhodry snoring beside her. Since the room was cold, she lay down and hurriedly snuggled under the blankets. That was a true dream, she thought, oh, by the Goddess of the Moon, my lover’s half an elf!
    For a long while she lay awake, thinking over the dream. Of course Devaberiel would look familiar since he was Rhodry’s father. She was honestly shocked to find out that Lady Lovyan, whom she much admired, had put hornson her husband’s head, but then, Devaberiel was an exceptionally handsome man. She had the brief thought of telling Rhodry about the dream, but Valandario’s warning stopped her. Besides, finding out that he was no true Maelwaedd, but a bastard, would only drive Rhodry deeper into his hiraedd. She could barely tolerate his dark fits as it was.
    And then there was the silver ring. Here was another proof of something that Nevyn had told her the summer past, that Rhodry’s Wyrd was deep and hidden. She decided that if ever she saw the old man again, she would tell him of the omens. As she was drifting back to sleep, she wondered if her path would ever cross his again. For all that his dweomer frightened her, she was very fond of Nevyn, but the kingdom was very large, and who knew which way the old man would choose to wander?
    On the morrow the full significance of the dream came to her as she and Rhodry sat in the tavern room. Yet once again, the dweomer had irrupted into her mind, taken her over with no warning. For a moment she shrank into herself, just as when the hare hears the dogs baying and crouches frozen in the bracken.
    “Is something wrong, my love?” Rhodry said.
    “Naught, naught. I was just … oh, thinking about last summer.”
    “It was a strange thing, sure enough.” He shuddered as if a cold draft had run down his neck. “That fellow Loddlaen and his stinking magicks! It’s a hard thing, knowing someone wants to kill you, and here you don’t even know why.”
    “Well, Nevyn said he was a madman. Right out of his head, the old man told me, stark raving.”
    “He said somewhat of the same to me.” Rhodry dropped his voice to a whisper. “All that cursed dweomer! It’s enough to drive anyone mad! I pray to every god we’re never touched by sorcery again.”
    Although she nodded her agreement, Jill knew that he was praying for the impossible. Even as he spoke, her little gray gnome manifested onto the table and sat down byRhodry’s tankard. All her life Jill had been able to see the Wildfolk, and this particular skinny, big-nosed creature was a close friend. Oh my poor Rhoddo, she thought, you ride with dweomer all around you! She felt both angry and frightened, wishing that her peculiar talents would go away, fearing that they never would.
    Yet once, last summer, Nevyn had told her that if she refused to use her talents, they would eventually wither and be gone. Although she hoped that the old man was right—and certainly he knew far more about the matter than she did—she had her doubts, especially when she considered how dweomer had swept her into Rhodry’s war and Rhodry’s life last summer. She’d been an utterly obscure person, the bastard daughter of a silver dagger, until her father had taken what seemed to be a perfectly ordinary hire, guarding a merchant caravan that was traveling to the western border of Eldidd. Yet from the moment that the merchant had offered Cullyn the job,