The banshee sensed warmth and movement.
Therefore, it must be something like the
kyrri
; and the only way to outwit it was with cold, and stillness. But they could freeze to death and it could outwait them. Or else—
The idea struck him.
“Listen! You run one way and I’ll run the other—”
Kennard said, “Drawing lots for death? I accept that. Whichever one of us he takes, the other goes free?”
“
No
, idiot!” Larry hadn’t even thought of that. It was a noble Darkovan concept and honorable, but it seemed damned unnecessary. “We both get free—or neither. No, what I’m thinking about is to
confuse
the damned thing. I move. He’s drawn off after me. Then I stop, burrow in a snowbank, stay still as a mouse—and while he’s trying to scent me again,
you
start running around. Somewhere else. He’ll start to move in
that
direction. Then you freeze and I start again. Maybe we can confuse him, keep him running back and forth long enough to get across the pass.”
Kennard looked at him with growing excitement. “It just might
work
.”
“All right, get ready—
freeze
!”
Larry jumped up and started running. He saw the huge lumbering bird twitch toward him as by a tropism, then come speeding. He yelled to Kennard, dived into a snowbank, scrabbled frantically in and lay still, not daring to move or hardly to breathe.
He felt, rather than seeing, the great bird stop short, clumsily twitch around, jerking in irritation. How had its prey gotten over
there
? Kennard dashed about twenty yards toward the pass, shouted and dived. Larry jumped up again. This time he tried to run too far; the evil creature’s foul breath was actually hot on his neck and his flesh crawled with anticipation of the swift, disemboweling clawing stroke. He fell into the snow, burrowed in and lay still. The siren wail of the confused bird rose, filling the air with screaming terror, and Larry thought,
Oh, God, don’t let Kennard panic again.
...
He raised his head cautiously, watched Kennard dive down, rose again and dashed. The bird twitched, began to lumber back, suddenly howled and began to dash madly in circles, its huge head flopping and flapping.
The banshee howl fell to terrified little yelps and the creature fell on its back, twitching.
Larry yelled to Kennard, “Come on! Run!” He was remembering psychology courses. Animals, especially very stupid animals, faced with a situation wholly frustrating and outside their experience, go completely to pieces and crack up. The banshee was lying in the snow squealing with a complete nervous breakdown.
They ran, gasping and trembling. The clouds seemed suddenly to thin and lift, and the pale Darkovan sun burst suddenly forth in morning brilliance.
Larry hauled himself up, exhausted, to the summit of the pass. He rested there, gasping, Kennard at his side.
Before them lay a trail downward, and far away, a countryside patched with quiet fields, smoke rising from small houses and hearthstones, the tree-laden slopes of low foothills and green leaves.
Exhausted, wearied, famished, they stood there feasting their eyes on the beauty and richness of the country that lay below. Kennard pointed. Far away, almost out of sight range, a gray spire just visible through the mist rose upward.
“Castle Hastur—and we’ve won!”
“Not yet,” Larry said, warningly. “It’s a long way off yet. And we’d better get right out of the high snows while this sun is bright enough to keep any of that big fellow’s sisters and his cousins and his aunts from coming around!”
“You’re right,” Kennard said, sobering instantly, and they trudged off down the narrow trail, not really liking to think what had made it. But at least the sun was bright, and for the moment they were safe.
Larry had leisure to feel, now, how weary he was. His dislocated shoulder ached like the very devil. His feet were cold and hot by turns—he was sure he had frostbite—and his fingers were white and cold from scrabbling in the snow. He sucked them and slapped them together, trying hard to keep from moaning with the pain of returning circulation. But he kept pace with Kennard. He’d taken over the leadership—and he wasn’t going to give out now!
The slopes on this side were heavily wooded, but the woods were mostly conifers and spruce, and there was still no sign of food. Lower down on the slope, they found a single tree laden with apples, damp and wrinkled after the recent storm, but still edible; they filled their pockets, and sat down to eat side by side. Larry thought of the peaceful time, so few days ago really, when they had sat side by side like this, before the alarm of forest-fire. What years he seemed to have lived, and what hills and valleys he had crossed—figuratively as well as literally—since then!
Kennard was frowning at him and Larry remembered, with an absolute wrench of effort, that they had exchanged harsh words in the pass.
Kennard said, “Now that we are out of danger—you spoke words to me beyond forgiveness. We are
bredin
, but I’m going to beat them down your throat!”
Oh no! Not that again!
“Forget it,” he said. “I was trying to save both our lives; I didn’t have time to be tactful.”
Kennard is sulking because I saved our lives when he couldn’t. He wants to settle it the Darkovan way—with a fight.
Larry said, aloud, “I won’t fight with you, Ken. You saved my life too many times. I would no more hit you than—than my own father.”
Kennard looked at him, trembling with rage. “Coward!”
Larry took a deliberate bite out of his apple. It was sour. He said, “Calling me names won’t hurt me. Go ahead, if it makes you feel better.” Then he added, gently, “Anyhow, what would it prove, except that you are stronger than I? I’ve never doubted that, even for a moment. We’d s
till
be in this thing together. And after coming through all this together—why should we end it with a fight, as if we were enemies instead of friends?” Deliberately, he used the word
bredin
again. He held out his hand. “If I said anything to hurt you, I’m sorry. You’ve hurt me a time or two, so even by your own codes we’re even. Let’s shake hands and forget it.”
Kennard hesitated, and for a flooding, bitter moment Larry feared he would rebuff the gesture, and for that same moment Larry almost wished they had died together in the pass. They had grown as close as if their minds were one—and being closed away, now, hurt like a knife.
Then, like sunlight breaking through a cloud, Kennard smiled. He held out both hands and clasped Larry’s in them.
“Have another apple,” was all he said. But it was enough.
CHAPTER TWELVE
The trail downward was hard, rough going; but with the fear of the banshees behind them, and Larry’s growing skill at rock-climbing, they managed the descent better than the ascent. Weary, half starved, Larry felt a relief all out of measure to their present situation—for in a trackless, almost foodless forest, they had still several days walking to cover before they came to inhabited country. They had seen it from the pass, but it was far away.
And yet the optimism seeded in him, growing higher and higher, like a cresting wave, like ...
Like the growth of his fear when they had been in the acute danger of capture by the trailmen and he had not yet known it!
What kind of freak am I? How did I get it? I’m no telepath. And it can’t be learned.
Yet he felt this cresting, flooding hope—almost like a great joy. The woods seemed somehow greener, the sky a more brilliant mauve, the red sun to shine with brilliance and glory overhead. Could it be only relief at escape? Or—
“Kennard, do you suppose we might meet a hunting party who are in these woods?”
Kennard, learned in woodcraft, chuckled wryly. “Who would hunt here—and what for? There seems to be not a sign of game in these woods, though later we may find fruit or berries. You looked damned optimistic,” he added, rather sullenly still.
He’s mad because I faced him down. But he’ll get over it.
They scrambled their way to the lip of a rocky rise in the land, and stood looking down into a green valley, so beautiful that in the grip of this unexplained joy Larry stood almost ecstatically, entranced by the trees, by the little stream that ran silver at the bottom. Songbirds were singing. And through the birdsong, and the clear-running water, there was another sound—a clear voice, singing. The voice of a human creature.
In another moment, through the trees, a tall figure appeared. He was singing, in a musical, unknown tongue.
Kennard stood half-enraptured. He whispered, “A
chieri
!”
Human?
The creature was, indeed, human in form, though tall and of such a fragile slenderness that he seemed even more so. He? Was the creature a woman? The voice had been clear and high, like a woman’s voice. It wore a long robe of some gleaming grayish silky substance. Long pale hair lay across the slim shoulders. The beckoning hand was white and almost translucent in the sunlight, and the bones of the face had an elfin, delicate, triangular beauty.
Flying around the head of the elfin creature were a multitude of singing birds, whose melodious voices mingled with that of the
chieri
. Suddenly the
chieri
looked sharply upward, and called in a clear voice, “You there, you evil tramplers! Go, before you frighten my birds, or I put an ill word on you!”
Kennard stepped forward, raising his hands in a gesture of surrender and respect. Larry remembered the respect the Darkovan boy had shown Lorill Hastur. This was more than respect, it was deference, it was almost abasement.
“Child of grace,” he said, half-audibly, “we mean no harm to you or your birds. We are lost and desperate. My friend is hurt. If you can give us no help, give us at least none of your evil will.”
The beautiful, epicene face, suddenly clear in the patch of sunlight, softened. Raising the thin hands, the
chieri
let the birds fly free, in a whirling cloud. Then the creature beckoned to them, but as they began to trudge wearily down the slope, it ran lightly upward to them.
“You are hurt! You have cuts and bruises; you are hungry, you have come through that dreadful pass haunted by evil things—?”
“We have,” Kennard said faintly, “and we have crossed all the country from the castle of Cyrillon des Trailles.”
“What are you?”
“I am Comyn,” Kennard said, with his last scraps of dignity, “of the Seven Domains. This—this lad is my friend and
bredu
. Give us shelter, or at least no harm!”
The
chieri
’s fair and mobile face was gentle. “Forgive me. Evil things come sometimes from the high passes, and foul my clear pools and frighten my birds. They fear me, fortunately—but I do not always see them. But you—” The
chieri
looked at them, a clear piercing gray gaze, and said, “You mean no harm to us.”
The glance held Larry’s eyes spellbound. Kennard whispered, “Are you a mighty
leronis
?”
“I am of the
chieri
. Are you wiser, son of Alton?”
“You know my name?”
“I know your name, Kennard son of Valdir, and your friend’s. Yet I have none of your Comyn powers. But you are weary, and your friend, in pain; so no more talk now. Can you walk a steep path?” The
chieri
seemed almost apologetic. “I must guard myself, in this land.”
Larry, drawing himself upright, said, “I can go where I must.”
Kennard said, “You lend us grace, child of light. And blessed was the lord of Carthon when he met with Kierestelli beside the wells of Reuel.”
“Is that tale still known?” The alien, elfin face was merry. “But time enough later for tales and old legends, son of the Seven Domansa. No more talk now. Come.”
The
chieri
turned, taking an upward path. It was a long climb and Larry was sweating in exhaustion, his injured arm feeling ready to drop off, before they reached the top. At the end, Kennard was half carrying him. But even Kennard was too weary to do more, and the
chieri
came, put an arm around each, and supported them. Frail, almost boneless as the creature looked, it was incredibly strong.
They came out upon a flat space, screened with living boughs, and entered a door of woven wicker into the strangest room he had ever seen.
The floor was of earth, not mud or of sun-dried brick, but carpeted thickly with grass and living moss in which a cricket chirped; it felt warm and fragrant under their feet.
The
chieri
bent and removed his sandals, and at his signal, the boys removed their wet and soaking boots and worn socks. The grass felt comfortable to their weary feet.
The walls were of woven wicker, screened lightly with thin hangings of cloth, heavy but not coarse, which admitted light but could not be seen through. In the roof of thatch, vines with great trumpet-shaped blossoms were growing, which pervaded the whole place with a fragrance of green and growing things. It smelled fresh, and sweet. An opened door at the back led to an enclosed garden where a fountain splashed into a stone bowl, running out and away in a little rivulet. A fire burned there in a small brazier of hardened clay, and over it was a metal crane on which a steaming kettle swung, giving forth a good smell of hot food. The lads felt their eyes watering at this steam. Furniture there was little, save for a bench or chest or two, and at the edge of the room an upright loom with a strung web on it.
As they entered, the
chieri
raised its hands, saying in its clear voice, “Enter in a good hour, and let no fear or danger trouble you within these walls.” That done, it turned to Larry, saying “You are hurt and in pain, and you flee from evil things. I sensed your minds within the pass. I will ask no more till you have had rest and food.”
It went to the brazier, and Kennard, sinking down on the grass wearily, said, “Who are you, child of grace?”