Authors: Alexei Panshin,Cory Panshin
Tags: #Fiction, #Fantasy, #Epic, #Science Fiction, #General
Haldane dug a shallow grave with his sword blade there where the bushes were thickest, and laid the sword away with its hilt to the east, returning the good iron to the earth from which it had come, tucking the warrior in for his final rest. As Oliver watched, Haldane covered the sword over with dirt and mold and leaves, and then laid the lone daffodil with its crushed stem on the grave.
Haldane said, “Rest, Morca. You will be avenged.” And then backed out of the bushes. There were tears again on his cheeks.
It was now well along in the morning. They were being hunted, the son of Black Morca and Morca’s wizard. They were not safe. Safety would be Arngrim’s fort on high Little Nail, or better Palsance. And Haldane was dizzy-witted.
Oliver grabbed up his bag and led Haldane away. He paused at the last protection of the copse. When he had spied the land he had seen nothing, but he had an unbearable presentiment of danger. He feared the Gets who lurked, waiting for them to step from cover to cut them down. But though he looked again, he still saw nothing, and because he must Oliver led the way from the thicket.
They raised a deer with their first steps. It started up, thrashing to its feet, and bounded away.
In time, Oliver’s heart mended.
Chapter 9
A
LONG THE FOREST TRAILS THEY WALKED
to find the Pellardy Road, first grandson Giles trudging, then old gnarled Noll with his bag. Their pace was slow. There was no spring in Giles’ stride, the poor wounded, spell-confused peasant boy Haldane. He still was not sure of himself. And his head ached.
For all that the day was green and gold, Noll was content with the pace. He was stiff. He had spent too much of the night awake and then slept as badly as a sailor his first night on land. At his age he needed a good night’s rest. The bag he carried with all their lives within was a burden. He would cough frequently but could not clear his lungs.
Haldane was still fuddled. Sometimes he would ask questions like, “I can’t remember who killed Hemming. Tell me again?” Other times he would turn and look at Oliver as though he didn’t believe in him and expected the stranger behind him to have disappeared. But it was Haldane who led the way, now they had found a trail to follow.
In the blind dash through the morning night to the forest and panting concealment, Oliver had taken them farther than he could recognize the land. It was as strange to him as any place three leas from his native hearth in Palsance. Since he was a boy he had always been best occupied indoors. He knew this country from what other men had let drop of it, and from an old map he had that showed all the duchies of Nestor before the Gets took the land. He knew the map well. It had brought him at the first from Palsance to Morca’s dun in the old duchy of Bary.
So, when they set out, Oliver took the map from his bag and studied it. It told him only that they were in the forest. Haldane was a silent mind-spun boy and asked no questions, but Oliver was embarrassed for the map. It showed the road, but not how to reach it. By his map, but more by guess, Oliver led them until they reached a trail.
Then Oliver found he could let Haldane lead the way. Haldane had hunted all over this land since he was small and he did not need his head to be a guide. His feet knew all the trails.
It was a quiet morning with many rests. Oliver called a halt whenever he thought Haldane needed one. Haldane continued distracted. He looked often at his hands and smock and shook his head. He asked questions for his vengeance too, but Oliver did not encourage the boy with the answers he gave him. Oliver was usually a ready talker, but today he thought much on the Chaining of Wild Lightning and was a silent gnarly red-man.
They reached the Pellardy Road near midday. They ate more dried beef as they walked. It was all they had.
There were many rests in the afternoon too. Oliver called a halt now whenever he thought Oliver needed one. His chest tightened and the bag weighed heavily, a fat stone on his back as great as the stone on his mind. His price for being a red peasant.
In the afternoon, Haldane began to throw off the effects of his spell, the Pall of Darkness, or so it seemed. He was still fey, but more coherent. He continued to peer at Oliver as though to spy him out beneath his strange skin, but he needed to ask less often who killed Hemming or Ludbert or Rolf, and remembered the answers better. He remembered Ivor Fish-Eye without further reminder. He spoke sometimes with great glee about reaching Arngrim and raising an army. He was often silly.
He began to inquire at his smock with his hands. At last he asked Oliver, “Do I still wear my clothes? When I forget myself in walking, I can feel my belt. But when I reach for it, it isn’t there. And sometimes I feel the wind touch me through the tears in my clothes.”
Haldane was still following his feet. Oliver, for his part, followed his map and looked about him for what the map told him he could expect to see. Wizards are fools for illusion. That is why they become wizards. Oliver followed maps and believed in them, and he could almost forget that Giles was not a Nestorian peasant boy.
Oliver said, “You still wear your belt and your old clothes. But men’s eyes are led to see what they expect to see. When they look at us, they will expect Nestorians and see them. The reality is unchanged and the wind is not fooled.”
“Then why can’t I touch my belt? I know I can really expect it. Can’t I?” Haldane added unwittingly to the illusion he wore by acting the young boy.
To silence Haldane and occupy him, Oliver said, “You can do it, but only if you clear your mind of all thoughts of yourself. When you cease to think of your belt, your hands will be able to touch it.”
It was a game that Haldane could not but lose. He played it visibly as they walked along the Pellardy Road through the forest. His hands could not fool his mind. They would try to touch before he could think, and they never could. It made him angry and he gave up in disgust. But natural habit won him what concentration could not and sometime later he found himself for the briefest moment with his thumbs hooked in his belt.
“I felt my belt, Oliver,” he said. “I did feel my belt.”
“Noll,” said Oliver. “You are Giles. And speak Nestorian.”
When Oliver remembered to think of it, he worried of what would happen if they were come upon by Gets. But he had strength only to plod the road.
“Noll,” said Haldane, and he did speak Nestorian. “Give me my knife back from your bag. I’ll wear it now. My hands will know where to find it when I have need of it.”
That was why Oliver continued to carry the bag, even though he plodded.
“We cannot give your hands the chance. We cannot afford to kill. We are safest as simple peasants. Besides, you could not forget yourself long enough to fix the knife in place.”
“Safest. Safest,” mocked Haldane in Nestorian. “That’s all you can think of. What do I do when I need to unbuckle my pants?”
“If you wait until your need is great enough, you will find it no problem. Now, by my map there is a bridge over the next hill. Let us rest there.”
“We cannot rest there,” said Haldane.
“Why not?”
“There is no bridge on the other side of the hill,” Haldane said. And laughed as though he had made a great joke.
“By my map, there is a bridge,” said Oliver, “and I believe my map.” Even though it of occasion embarrassed him.
When they reached the top of the hill above New Bridge on Rock Run, Haldane said, “As I told you. There is no bridge. It fell down.”
“That is bridge enough for me,” said Oliver, “My map was right.”
“Then you walk across your bridge and keep your feet dry,” said Haldane. “I will wade the ford.”
But Oliver wet his feet too. He waded past the broken pilings standing surprised in riffling water. The two peasants threw themselves down in the sun on the farther bank to dry and rest. Oliver dropped their bag on the ground and panted and coughed. The spell had struck deep. He should not have been abroad wetting his feet.
Wild onion grew profusely around them in little clumps of green. Haldane plucked a spray. He rolled one narrow tube between thumb and forefinger until it broke, and savored the odor. He tasted it and found it good. Then he chose out shoots that pleased him best, discarded the rest, and rolled those he kept in a slice of dried beef.
Oliver was content to watch as he ate, and more content to nod.
The riders were on them almost before they knew. Oliver was struck to the heart. They were Gets. No one else in Nestor rode. The three did not pause at the hilltop as Haldane and Oliver had done.
Haldane leaped to his feet as soon as he saw them. He crammed the last of his meat and onion into his mouth. It was all that his mouth could hold. Oliver feared what he might do, but lacked the force and quickness to prevent the boy.
“Haldane!” he said, forgetting his own injunctions. “Do nothing rash!”
And then had to become more circumspect. There was no place to run or to hide. They must face these Gets. Oliver tried to become Noll in his mind.
Haldane, desperately chewing and trying not to choke on what he chewed, took no notice of the Gets. He stepped down into the water, leaving Oliver on the bank to wonder at him. What did Haldane intend?
Haldane stooped and began to grum among the rocks, fingering the stream bottom. He paid the riders no attention as they splashed by him. He forced the last of the meat and onion down his throat and came up smiling like a simpleton with a dripping bemired shell.
Was the boy being cunning like Wisolf? Oliver could scarce believe it.
The riders reined over them. It was Aella of Long Barrow and two carls. Oliver was glad Haldane lacked his knife. He was sure the boy would have dragged Aella from his horse and dealt with him as Aella had dealt with Svein. But Haldane touched his forehead with respectful muddy fingers. Oliver tremblingly touched his forehead too.
“What do you do here?” Aella asked. He spoke to them in Nestorian, their language. His tone was preemptory, as though he were an important man. Oliver knew him for an errand runner. Anyone who knew Aella knew him for an errand runner.
“We gather clams to make a meal, your lordship. My grandsire and I,” Haldane volunteered. He held out his shell. He was the perfect guileless boy. “It is yours if you like, noble sir. All that we have gathered is yours.”
Aella made a disgusted noise,
“Faa!”
He waved it away with a flicking of his right hand. “We seek three on foot. A young girl dressed in white and blue. A Western girl. She is the one we want most. Morca’s wizard, Oliver by name, a Western man in red robes. He is a funny little man with a round face and a white beard. And Haldane, the son of Black Morca. Have you seen any of these?”
Haldane said, “Do they travel together?”
“We know not. Have you seen them together?”
Oliver spoke hurriedly then in Nestorian so that Haldane would have no need to speak again. “No, lord. We have seen no one today. You are the first strangers we have seen.”
“How long have you been here?”
“All the afternoon, lord. See, our bag is nigh to full,” Oliver said, hefting his bag as though it contained clams.
“At last a straight answer from one of these cattle,” Aella said in Gettish to his men. “They have been here the afternoon and they say they have seen no one. We had best return to the dun. It is no use to seek farther along this road. They could not have come so far by noon.”
One of the carls spit in the water beside Haldane and did not take note of the Gettish glower in the Nestorian boy’s face. “Unless these lie,” he said. “I never saw a Nestorian that would talk straight when it could lie.”
“Lie to us? You jest. They would not dare,” Aella said, making a rooster of himself. “And they have no love for Morca or his cub. They would not lie for him.”
“If they walked all night without stopping, they might have passed in the morning,” said the other carl.
“Na,” said Aella. “We’ll find them when we set the pigs to sniffing them out. The wizard is no countryman. We’ll find him under a bush. And the boy is a stubborn ass. Him we will find waving a sword in the shadow of the dun.”
“Just as well,” said the first carl. “If we are to find one of the three, let it be the girl. There is more reward.”
They clapped their heels to their horses and splashed back across the ford. Haldane remained in the water looking after them, burned by their words.
In a rage, he called after them, “When will you raise our bridge again?”
The second carl looked back at them. Haldane bent immediately to the stream and pretended he had said nothing. He paddled in the water until they were gone, and then he straightened again, shaking his hands. He looked at Oliver, uncertain of what the wizard would say of his rashness, but proud of himself too.
He said, “He called me an ass.”
Oliver looked at him for a long moment. All the words that Haldane had spoken to the Gets, including his last call, had been in Gettish. Oliver thought the power of the spell to mislead had been strongly taxed.
He sighed. He said, “You have mud on your forehead.”
Chapter 10
T
HE WOODCUTTER’S HUT STOOD IN A CLEARING
not far from the road, close enough to be seen by tired and hungry eyes. It was Oliver who spied the thatch near about sunset when their feet were so weary they would scarce carry them from one rest to the next. Haldane saw nothing until Oliver pointed. It was Haldane who carried their sack now and Oliver who led the way.
“Ah,” red-haired Noll said with relief. “We’ll seek our shelter there.” He coughed too deeply and spat to clear his throat. He had been coughing steadily since they crossed the ford, even after he had given over the bag. “Another night in the open will be the finish of me. Be Giles now, and let me speak for us. If you must speak, speak Nestorian.”
Haldane made no answer. His head ached fiercely and his mind wambled. He was very tired.
He could not read this man’s face as he could read Oliver’s. He did know this Noll did not have Oliver’s sharpness of wit and tongue. He would answer questions only if they were repeated. He ventured nothing. It was as though the spell had struck deeper than appearance. There were moments when Haldane could doubt that it was Oliver at all who walked beside him and wonder why he kept company with this strange peasant man.
It made Haldane mull over the changes that might have been wrought in him that he could not see. He kept testing himself to see if he was really Haldane. He thought he was. But how could he be sure? His hands were not Haldane’s. He might be a peasant dreaming he was a Get.
He followed Oliver as he led the way into the clearing, content to trail behind and watch Oliver do things that the Oliver he knew would not do. Stacks of seasoning wood made short walls everywhere. A small boy peeped abruptly from behind one like an archer behind a palisade, then ducked away.
The hut they had seen from the road stood in the center of the clearing. It was clinker-built, the lapping shakes brown under the hanging thatch, weathered to silver where they lacked protection. Over the door of the simple house was its one touch of color, the many-armed wheel of Silvan in red and yellow. A simple god for simple folk. The colors disturbed Haldane. They made him agitated and he did not know why. They matched the colors of Lothor’s traveling carriage, but he could not quite remember that.
Silvan’s beast, a little white nanny goat, was tethered to a stake beyond the house under the trees. Scrawny chickens scratched for their lives in the dirt before the door and around the woodpiles, too busy to notice them approaching. A lean shaggy dog lying in a heap did take note. It leaped up, lowered its ears, and advanced growling. It was no little yapper like Lothor’s toy. It showed yellow teeth and barked as though it meant them harm.
Haldane stayed safely behind red-haired Noll. He could not cope with growling dogs tonight.
A ragged untrimmed girling appeared in the doorway then and piped of their coming to those within. She was set aside by a man who filled the door. He stepped into the yard followed by a boy who resembled him nearly. The boy was older than Haldane appeared, but younger than Haldane’s true age.
The failing sun lit the thatch with evening red. Gentle smoke lifted lazily from the chimney and Haldane thought he could smell dinner simmering over a fire. His head buzzed with hunger and weariness. He ached within and without. At the best of times he was not used to walk like this.
He wanted to stop walking. He wanted food and sleep. He wanted to mend.
He wanted to cry.
The man lifted a hand. His words were courteous, but he was an unyielding wall after his many walls of logs. He said, “Well met. What do you seek, strangers?”
In his other hand he carried an axe and he did not look friendly. Haldane wondered how you could order such a man if you were not a Get. He could lie to one like Aella, but he did not know what to say to a peasant with an axe.
“Well met,” Oliver said. “My grandson and I are lost sailors out of Pellardy making our way home overland.”
“Lost you are,” the man said. “I have never seen a sailor here before.”
The dog continued to growl and glower.
“We are not used to walking and we have come far today,” Oliver said. He coughed his racking hacking cough. “My name is Noll. My grandson Giles. We seek shelter and food.”
“What are sailors doing so far from the sea?”
The strange man who pretended to be Oliver pretending to be a sailor said, “Put away your dog and I will tell you the tale.”
The woodcutter called the dog away. It ran behind the peasants barking proudly of its courage.
“I’ll hear your story.”
“Is it worth dinner to you?”
“Would you bargain with me, then?”
“Would you turn away a sick old man?” And Oliver coughed again. “My own tale is rich but it is nothing to the other stories I know. I can tell you of the secret beasts of the sea and how they play. I can tell you of strange lands and their treasures.”
The woodcutter scratched his head as though in argument with himself. Then he said, “Oh, aye, stay for the meal. Come away into the house. Cob, run inside and say that there are two more to eat with us.”
“There’s little enough for us as it is,” said the son. “You know what Mother said.”
“Have you not heard that manners are better than meat? There will just be a little less for everyone,” the woodcutter said. “I want to hear about the sea and these secret beasts.”
Oliver was not content to have won him. He must shake his red head and say, “Ah, where is the old hospitality? Is Pellardy the only duchy that still keeps the true Nestor?”
“Pellardy is the only duchy not ruled by the Gets,” the woodcutter said. “They leave us little in Bary to spend in hospitality. These are not the old days of Nestor.”
He led the way toward the house. They were trailed by the little boy who had spied them first from behind the woodpile. He stayed a safe distance behind in company with the dog, burying his face in the dog’s fur when Haldane looked at him.
Haldane said in a whisper to Oliver, “Is a story all?” A story seemed too small a reason for the peasant to share his food. Noll didn’t answer but only gave his head so small a shake that Haldane could not be sure if he had shaken his head at all.
Oliver spoke loudly then. “It is my brother who did this to us. We own a boat in common but since he is older he thinks it is his. We quarreled in Eduna. He sent us ashore on an errand and while we were gone, he sailed off to Grelland. He left us with only a single small coin, and that is long spent.” He coughed again until he caught himself against the doorway and leaned there rattling for breath.
“That is a hard tale,” the woodcutter said. “It is a long walk from Vilicea. You must be weary.”
“We did not make it in a day,” said Sailor Noll. “A longer walk to Pellardy before us too. But every step I think of my brother’s face when he sees us waiting on the quay.”
He told what he would do to his brother when he found him and winked his shy eye. The peasant nodded and laughed with him, happy that sailor and woodcutter could think so much alike.
“Aye, hear that,” the peasant said, turning of a sudden to the small boy with the dog. “Did you hear? Mark what it is to be quarreling with your brother. Take a lesson from that.” To Oliver he said, “It is all I can do to keep them from fighting long enough to eat and sleep.”
“My brother and me exactly,” said Oliver. “Listen to what your father tells you.”
Haldane did not know from what source of strength this changed Oliver drew his strange lies. Haldane wanted nothing more than to set his bag down and put his face against it.
The hut was dimmer than the evening shadows of the forest and warmer than the evening cool. It seemed like a sanctuary to Haldane, a place to stop at last. Cob stood beside a shapeless peasant woman stirring her kettle over the fire. There were besides a gammer snoozing in the corner with a cat on her lap, and a girl suckling a baby at her breast. She seemed no older than Marthe, the Princess of Chastain who was sought by the treacher Gets. Children that Haldane was too tired to count were in and out the doorway.
The woman turned from the kettle, spoon in hand. “And who is this you’ve brought to eat my children’s food?”
“This is Noll, a sailor, and his grandson Giles,” said the woodcutter. “Noll is going to tell us stories of the sea.”
“I care nothing for that,” she said and swung her spoon at them. “There are too many of you in here. You are in my way. Take your stories of the sea back outside.”
The woodcutter did not try to argue. “Call on us when dinner is ready.”
The woodcutter picked up a stool from beside the table and grasped Oliver’s arm, turning him about. “Hey, come all ye who wish to hear tales.”
Tales from a sailing stranger were a treat, and everybody but the dozing grandmother and the cat in her lap leaped to follow the two men outside. A small boy, near a twin for the one with the dog but a touch smaller, gave Haldane a wary look and then scuttled past him out the door. Haldane didn’t follow. He had no wish to hear Oliver’s grandfather stories. He just wanted to stay here in this warm dimness and smell the rich simmer. He cuddled the bag, put his back against the near wall, and slowly sagged to the floor.
Young Cob took the girl with the baby by the hand. Was he a man with a wife of his own? The woman at the kettle reached out with her spoon and rapped him on the shoulder before he could get out the door.
“Bring me my wood in before you settle down, Cob.”
“You have wood,” Cob said. “You don’t need any more. The woodbox is full.”
“That’s rainy day wood. Bring me in wood now, and no argument.” The ragged girling who had first called their arrival almost slipped out the door, but the peasant woman stopped her with a look and a wave of her spoon. “And where are you off to, Magga?”
“I want to hear the stories too,” the girl wailed, anticipating that she couldn’t.
“I need you to stir the pot.”
“You always say that.”
“It’s stir the pot or milk Nanny.”
“Why is it always me?”
Haldane paid the squabble no mind, even when the girl burst into hot burning tears. He put his cheek against the cool canvas of the bag, yawning, yawning. He was so tired and his head ached like a beaten drum. He felt wonderful and wretched as he tried to snatch sleep.
He felt the warmth of pleasure at the memory of his cleverness in fooling Aella of Long Barrow at the ford. He had taken the simple stupidity of the peasants he had met mucking in the water that day at New Bridge and made of it a polished shield to catch the sun and blind the eyes of traitor Gets. And who else but he would ever have thought of that? But he felt the warmth of embarrassment at the thought of mud on his hands, even to fool one like Aella.
All his mind was like that, as lost in strange seas as the brother of Sailor Noll. His sword had tasted blood and he had taken wounds. But his sword was buried and his wounds were lost in this disguise. He had fought bravely and given no ground. He had slain Heregar the Headstrong, who was a man of reputation. But what was that when Morca was dead?
If he believed Oliver. If he believed the man who pretended to be Oliver.
He did not remember killing Heregar. If he had killed Heregar, he would remember it, wouldn’t he? He didn’t. He had only Oliver’s word for it. He had only Oliver’s word for many things.
Yes. How could Morca be dead? How do you set down a mountain? You cannot do that. But that was part of what Oliver had said. Only one of many implausibilities. If Oliver were to be believed.
But Oliver, whom he knew, had changed before his eyes into a stranger. It came into Haldane’s head to doubt Oliver.
It was the only thing he could do.
The world was not right. The world was past caring whether it was right or not, and it was up to Haldane to see it put back right again.
To do that, he must think as carefully as he could, in spite of the distractions thrown into his mind to keep him from grasping two consecutive thoughts. They would not let his brain sit still. It must keep moving. But he would fox them, Oliver and those in league with him.
He was stubborn. He was known for being stubborn. In spite of these distractions, he would remember.
They had him locked out of the dun in this nightmare, this unending rush of awfulness, confusion and implausibility. That was first.
What was second?
Oh, yes. Second. This strange darkness of warmth and unfamiliar odors was a distraction. As long as it continued, he could not find his way home again to his bed where he belonged. But it was not real, this place. He knew that now.
Some while after, he thought about third.
Third? What had third been? In the search for third, he almost lost his grasp on the thoughts that came first and second, but by an effort of will—for Haldane was stubborn above anything—he held on to them, and brought third safe into his breast.
Third, knowing that he was caught in a snare, he knew the secret. If he could shut this place out of his mind, if he could concentrate long enough and hard enough, the nightmare would be over. It would be over now. He would wake to find himself home again in the bed he had been born in.
That was all.
Haldane scrunched his eyes, and knew the sensation as one more snare to trap him in this unreal world of never-ending shape change. He concentrated. He concentrated. He blotted out everything. But . . . but . . . but . . .
He could not blot out the insistent sound of crying. No matter what he did, he could not make it go away. It had him trapped here in the nightmare. He could not shake it from his eyes—his ears saw too much.
Resigned—for it meant that he was not ready yet, less than fully ripe for rebirth, and not that he had forgotten his hard-won truth—he opened his eyes.
He saw the most likely implausibility they could conjure to match the sound he had heard. The woman was gone out into the evening somewhere. The little girl—they had called her Magga, hadn’t they?—was stirring the hanging pot. She was barely tall enough. She stirred and stirred. And she bawled in open-hearted loss. Almost, he could believe that what he saw was real. Almost—it was that much familiar and that much strange.