“My mother commands spirits,” Tirilan said dismissively. “You can’t scare me with that tale.”
Woodpecker was sure that was true, but her mother was not here. Distracted, he let the boat graze a hidden stump and dug the paddle into the water to ease it away. The craft was solid enough, but could easily be overturned.
By the time they neared the ridge of higher ground from which the hill rose, it was nearly noon and the breakfast porridge seemed very far away. Still, the marshes held food for those who knew how to find it. They would have to keep their eyes open when they reached the isle.
The stream narrowed, curving around the base of what seemed to be a hill, though it was hard to make out its shape through the trees. If he remembered right, a little ways ahead it joined another stream and continued on toward the Watch Hill. This was it, then. Woodpecker stood, balancing carefully, and leaped to a protruding root. Grebe tossed him the rope tied to the boat’s bow, and when the others had clambered out, they pulled the craft onto the muddy shore.
“Now we walk.” He grinned at Tirilan’s expression as she eyed the morass of mud and scum and decaying leaves. “Better you take off your shoes,” he told her. He and the other children were already barefoot. Relenting, he held out a hand to steady her until they reached firmer ground.
“I AM HAPPY TO see how well the Village has survived the winter,” said Anderle. It was a fine day, and after weeks of cloud and rain they were grateful to sit on benches set on the platform on which the headman’s house was built and take in the sunshine.
Badger grinned. “Here we already know how to live with water. Otter’s house got wet, but this summer we build his platform higher.”
“We look already at the places where we plant and gather,” added his mother. “We won’t have so much seed for bread this year, but more water is good for fishing and birds. We won’t starve.”
Anderle nodded. “I will send some of our younger ones to help you. It will be good for them to learn just how much work getting food can be. Most of our food used to come from Azan. We are still getting some from farmers who are grateful for our help in the past, but of course there is nothing from the king.”
“I hear that Galid of Amanhead rules now in Azan-Ylir—” Badger, who was sitting on the edge of the platform, leaned over to spit into the water below.
“He
says
it is as protector for the queen. But Zamara is still kept at Carn Ava, and I am told that these days his house guards are all Ai-Ushen wolves.” She shivered, remembering.
“I think King Eltan glad to have some place to send them, so they don’t make trouble at home. Eltan’s cousin tries to kill him last summer, but Galid owes him everything, makes a dependable ally.”
“Dependable?” Anderle laughed bitterly. “He betrayed his own king. Why should Eltan think that Galid will not do the same to him?”
“Maybe the wolf warriors are there to watch
him
,” observed Redfern’s husband, who was called Stalker.
“I think there’s few chieftains who sleep easy these days.” Badger picked up his own clay mug of tea. “If good men, they grieve because they can’t save all their people, or they use all their wealth to help, and get weak. And they fear their people if they are bad.”
“Fear and hunger make good excuse for hate,” said Stalker. “Many old scores get paid off now.”
“Then everyone ends afraid of everyone else,” observed Willow Woman, “and when enemies come they don’t stand together.”
Anderle shivered again, although the spring sun was warm on her shoulders. They could ask the stars whether there would be a good harvest, but if the stars foretold disaster, they could not conjure food from grass. Against the forces that were changing their world the magic of Avalon seemed to have little power. If the prayers of a priest had no more effect on the floods than a chieftain’s curse, why should the clans share what little they had with Avalon?
“What we cannot cure, we must learn to endure . . .”
Kiri’s watchword came to mind. Surely the future held more than this slow disintegration of all order, or why had the visions driven her to Azan to rescue Mikantor?
When the Son of a Hundred Kings is grown, he will restore our world,
she told herself sternly.
Our task is to preserve the pieces until then.
She shook herself and looked at the others. “Surely it is past time for the noon meal. Shall we call the children to share it? I had only a glimpse of Woodpecker this morning. I should like to see how he has grown.”
“Grown?” grinned his foster father. “He grows like the marsh reed in the spring. Every day taller.”
“Go call them,” said Willow Woman, setting a hand on her son’s shoulder to steady herself as she got to her feet. “I will give another stir to the stew.”
The old woman had brought out wooden bowls filled with a steaming mix of roots and grains with some dried meat before Stalker came back again, and when he climbed up the ladder to the platform he was frowning.
“It is good you started eating. The children are not here. People say my boys and your daughter go off with Alder and Beaver and the twins, the ones they usually play with. Their boats are gone.”
Anderle looked from him to Badger. “They went out in boats? Is that safe?”
“Our children learn boats when they learn to walk,” the headman replied. “But it’s strange they don’t come back for food.”
“Could they have gotten lost in the marshes?” Suddenly the patchwork of greenery and gleaming water seemed more confused than beautiful. Anderle had grown up among the marshes, but when she had to cross them she stuck to the wood-paved trackways.
“I would not think so—” Badger said slowly. “Always you can see the hills to north and south, and today the sun shows the way west. They know the way to come. Still . . . they might be stuck somewhere . . .”
“Nothing in the marsh to hurt them!” Willow Woman said quickly. “But maybe you men best go looking, eh? We wait—”
“And plan how to make them sorry for frightening us so!” added Anderle. Tirilan was a good-natured child, but she had a mind of her own. This would not be the first time she had eluded her watchers.
By the time Badger and Stalker returned, the sun was halfway between its nooning and the horizon. They had searched the area around the Lake Village, but boats left no tracks upon the water and of the children there was no sign.
“They must have gone farther, but which way?” Stalker asked in frustration.
“When they see it’s getting dark they come back to us,” offered Willow Woman.
“If they can. . . .” Anderle got to her feet, staring out across the landscape. Which direction would they have gone? A priestess of Avalon might not know how to navigate the reedbeds, but she could ride the currents of power. She closed her eyes, inner senses extending to the borders she herself had strengthened the previous summer, feeling for the ebb and flow of energy within the area they protected, and the particular signature of her child.
She turned to the men. “We will go out again, and I will go with you. There is something that way”—she pointed northward—“that calls me. When we are closer, I will know for sure.”
THE BANK OF THE stream was choked with willows whose lower branches were still draped with drying clumps of reed left there by the winter floods. Woodpecker heard a muffled squawk, and turned to help Tiri pick fragments of a wagtail nest from her hair. Beaver and Grebe followed. After a vigorous discussion, Alder had agreed to stay at the boats with the twins.
“I thought you said that people came up here sometimes,” Tiri complained.
“At Midsummer,” he answered repressively. “But comes winter, shoreline always change. Still, should be—there, you see, by birches? Path goes up the hill.”
A stand of white trunks glimmered beyond the buckthorn thicket. When they emerged they could see a wavering line of short green grass leading upward. At first Woodpecker wondered if it really was a path, but presently he noticed where branches had been intentionally trained so that they would not block the way. The hair rose on his neck. Humans were only guests in this place, and not very welcome. But he was not yet frightened enough to turn tail.
“Be careful,” he said aloud. “Don’t break branches, and . . . keep your voices down.”
Grebe gave him a curious look. His brother had always been a canny one, using wit to make up for his lack of size, and he would know that although Woodpecker could move as softly as any boy trained to hunt the small, cautious game that was all a child’s bow could bring down, he was not noted for caution.
As the path grew steeper, the others glanced at him more often. They felt it too, he thought uneasily, that feeling that they were being watched by Something that, if not an enemy, was certainly no friend to humankind.
“I wish we had brought an offering,” said Grebe softly.
“I have a piece of bannock,” whispered Tirilan.
I should have thought of that.
Woodpecker bit his lip. That was the least of the things he should have thought of. When they got home,
if
they got home, Redfern would have his hide. But he sensed that to show fear now would attract the kind of attention they wanted to avoid. Finishing the climb carefully, but boldly, was their best choice now.
And then turning around and heading home,
and accepting whatever punishment his parents chose.
A soft piping from above brought all four to a halt, staring.
“A redshank!” stated Grebe, but it did not sound quite like the red-legged marsh bird he remembered. Suddenly it seemed very dark beneath the trees. The way had grown steeper and Woodpecker’s legs were aching. He looked back to see how the others were doing. Grebe and Beaver were panting, but Tiri seemed to dance along. No doubt she was used to climbing, he thought resentfully, remembering the height of the Tor.
He jumped as the bird—it must be a bird—gave that odd piping call once more. It had sounded nearly at his elbow. He looked wildly around, but could see nothing but moving leaves. He had not heard the wind rising, only a vague whisper that seemed to come from all around him. Nor did there seem to be a direction to the movement of the leaves. It made his head swim.
He felt a small hand grip his elbow and turned. Tirilan had gone as still as a startled doe. “What is it?”
“Something is watching us . . .” she breathed in his ear.
He nodded, oddly comforted to know that she could feel it too. That sense of attention was all around them, but it seemed to him that it would only grow worse if they stayed here.
“There are no bears in the Vale,” Beaver was muttering. “There are no bears.”
No, thought Woodpecker, but there might be worse things. He wished he had paid more attention to the hunters’ tales.
“Hush—” murmured Tiri. “There are spirits here. I can almost understand their words.”
That doesn’t take magic
, Woodpecker thought, shivering.
They are telling us we don’t belong here
. But the branches were swaying so he could hardly see the path.
“Then tell them we mean no harm.”
“It’s coming!” Beaver exclaimed suddenly, and gathered himself to run.
Woodpecker made a wild grab for his tunic. “Shut up and take my hand!” The need to take care of the others steadied him, and he started upward once more. Only Tiri seemed unafraid. He put Beaver between Tiri and Grebe and took her other hand.
As they inched their way upward he was aware of surprise at how natural that seemed. For a moment he remembered holding on to her as the world fell apart around them, but in that memory they were both grown-ups, so perhaps it was a dream. As they moved along he could hear her whispering words in some other language; he thought it was the old tongue the priests used on the Tor. Woodpecker tried to imitate her sounds and found them coming easily, which also seemed odd, since he had never heard them before.
The tumult around them was increasing. Branches lashed angrily, and sticks and stones seemed to give way intentionally beneath each step.
Stop it!
he thought. He ought to be able to stop it—he used to know how—but that was ridiculous, he told himself. That must have been in his dream.
Tirilan said another word. Woodpecker started to repeat the syllables and felt them change in his mouth. For a moment a
Word
hung in the air. In the next moment it was echoed by a rumble of thunder. The world went black and then bright again, and everything was suddenly still.
The children looked at one another, too surprised to speak, though Tirilan was eyeing Woodpecker with an odd, considering gaze.
“There’s the path—” Woodpecker said finally. “Come.”
Light filtered through the young leaves to dapple the earth before them, but though the woods were still mysterious, the tension that had threatened them was gone. A golden butterfly floated across their path. Grebe touched his shoulder and pointed and Woodpecker glimpsed the graceful shape of a deer. Now that he knew to look he could see more of them, moving, like the children, toward the top of the hill.
Golden light filled the air before them. As their eyes adjusted, they saw a small clearing carpeted with new grass and open to the blue sky. Deer were grazing there, the rich russet of their summer coats gleaming through the ragged remnants of winter’s shaggy hair. He counted four hinds, two of them accompanied by dappled fawns. Beyond them, a little apart, another larger animal grazed.
As Woodpecker took a step forward, that other deer lifted its head. The boy stared as first the velvety half-grown antlers, then the massive neck and shoulders, rose into view. The hinds threw up their heads in alarm and vanished into the woods, followed by their offspring. But the stag’s head turned, and for a long moment Woodpecker was transfixed by that dark, dispassionate gaze.