“You would need to protect a magic stone,” she said, “against thieves and sorcerers.”
“Say rather the stone protects our house and our goods!” Culain Raillie answered, coming to her side.
He patted the lid of the tall iron strongbox under the window,
where her hands had come to rest. He had come uncomfortably close to her.
“Your mother and mine sit at their spinning together,” he said. “They make plans like two chattering magpies …”
She understood suddenly that he was nervous with her, and for the first time Gael Maddoc had an inkling of what object those motherly plans might have come to. She stepped away from the window and looked Culain Raillie in the eye.
“Master Raillie,” she said, “I have seen a little of the world and do not think I can bide long in Coombe village.”
He made her a small bow. His smile was polite but mirthless.
“We will speak further,” he said. “My greetings to your family.”
He strode out of the room and out of the house without even a word to his mother. Gael came back to the widow, who was as bright and talkative as ever.
“What has brought you and your son to Coombe, Mistress Raillie?” asked Gael.
“A farm such as the Long Burn is harder to come by than you think,” chattered the widow, so precisely fitting her son’s image that Gael, despite her reservations about these people, found herself cracking a private grin. “Most folks hold their land by ancient deed and heritage, as your father holds Holywell Croft. There were no heirs to the Long Burn, and the deed was sold us by Reeve Oghal, who had it in his keeping.”
Presently Gael took her leave and galloped back to Coombe ahead of a shower of rain; the stormy winds of autumn had already begun to strip the leaves from the trees. She took a back lane to come to the Druda’s house again and sat with him indoors without a fire.
“The Raillies are strange folk indeed,” she said.
“Go on …” nodded the priest.
“They are not farmers,” said Gael, “and the son has never gone for a soldier though he is well grown. His hands are soft as his mother’s. I would guess he has been a trader of some kind. They are rich, richer even than they seem to be. There is a hint of magic about the pair of them.”
“Were you shown the magic stone?” asked Druda Strawn.
“The pretty stone on the household altar is no more than a polished ornament. But in a chest by the window there is some powerful magical source and much treasure. Druda, what do these folk want, coming here to Coombe?”
“Child,” said the priest, “I do not know. We live too quiet in this part of the world; perhaps we are too distrustful of newcomers.”
He drew out her gold coins again and fastened them upon her wrist.
“Gael Maddoc,” he said, “I do not doubt that you have a calling. You must take these medals of the lost hallows up to the High Plateau and beg the Shee for guidance.”
She drew her cloak about. A threshold had been crossed. Only the Druda himself ever consulted with the Shee.
“Will they speak with me?” she whispered.
“Who knows? Many a time they do not speak with me, and I am well-known to them.”
He turned away, pacing a well-worn track in the dirt floor of the hut.
“There is unrest among the Eilif lords,” he said at length. “The light folk have been seen more often in the past year or so. They warn travelers from their sacred grounds with bolts of fire or with singing.”
“I have heard that the Voimar are about on the moor and on the high ground,” said Gael, “but I hardly believed such a tale.”
The Druda, who was as brave as any man she knew, put his hands to his lips again, warding off evil.
“It is some working of the Shee,” he said. “Nothing passes on the High Plateau without their knowledge. The earth moved up there two years past … a strong quake near the ruins of Silverlode. I do not know if it was their doing.”
He sighed heavily.
“I have it in my mind that the Shee will depart. It is time for them to take leave of this dark and mortal world and set sail in their glass boats for the Islands of the Sunset.”
“But they are not mortal!” said Gael Maddoc, shocked. “They are the light folk! They cannot die!”
“Their nature is not like ours,” said the priest. “But I fear even the Shee do not live forever.”
“What must I do to speak to them?” she asked.
So at last Druda Strawn told her of the summoning of the Shee and the places on the high ground where it was best to call them.
“We have new moon,” he said, “and a great storm brewing, coming in up the coast. You must not ride out until the moon is full”
Gael remembered that this was how things were in Coombe. Life was slow as a desert journey. She had been too eager to set out on her quest. She thought of the great storms they had sat out in the small house when she was a child and of the preparations that must be made—for this was a part of village life, too.
She was riding slowly past the smithy, where the fire still burnt very low, when she was hailed by Vigo the Smith himself. He was a barrel-chested man and a great gossip; now he cried heartily:
“By the Huntress! It is Maddoc’s daughter from the Holywell Farm! And a captain already! D’ye need anything for your black beauty there?”
Then he looked about and came close to her stirrup.
“Captain Maddoc—I must ask a boon in the name of my son, Bretlow! Pray you come to the forge tomorrow morning. We’ll groom your horse—what’s he called, Ebony?—and check his hooves. We must talk, and secretly!”
“Of course, Master Smith!” said Gael. “I’ll be there before noon.”
“And keep your own counsel, lass!” said Vigo, anxiously.
At home she gave an account of her visit to the Druda and then her meeting with the Widow Raillie and her son Culain. Her mother seemed pleased and said no more about any plans or any debt they owed the newcomers. Gael was glad when they all settled to rest: even Coombe was full of secrets.
The next morning she rose up and presented herself back at the smithy, where the forge was going full blast, and, after yesterday’s quiet, unexpectedly noisy. Vigo himself came to hold her bridle, with a young prentice. Ebony allowed this groom to lead him in. The big horse was taking all the arrangements at Coombe better than she had expected. Then Vigo led her into a small room some way from the forge, and a maid from the
house brought applewine. Vigo was tense and serious, not at all his jovial self. He came at once to his son’s adventure. Yes, Bretlow had taken to the life like his father who had been a farrier in the service of Val’Nur, and his brothers who were officers now in the Westlings. All the smith’s sons had ridden in the “heavy cavalry” mounted on the great war horses of Mel’Nir. It was the Third Span of the Westlings, fifty riders in five companies, and now Bretlow was in Elmtree company: he was second ensign, second-in-command. Yes, they were all well-grown Chyrians, and there was another trooper from the Summer Riders, it was young Egon Baran. “It was at Midsummer,” Vigo went on. “There was this call came in from the headman of a village by the Western Sea, a place too small even to have a reeve. Name of Little Bay, a nest of deep sea fishers. Their boats had been stolen—not by pirates on the seas but by marauders from the land. It was a garbled report, and the officers at the Plantation thought it was a dispute between some fight-able fishermen. They sent off two companies to see to the matter, one lot of regulars, the second a city company of heavy cavalry, called ‘Valko’s Own,’ and with them, drawn by lot, Elmtree Company of the Westlings. Our lads were glad to have the duty, I can tell you that!”
A voice said: “Let me tell it, Da!”
Gael turned her head, startled. The room was half in daylight, half in shadow, with leaping firelight from the forge. There stood Bretlow himself, like a ghost, with a cotton bandage round his head and his right arm in a sling.
“Dear Goddess!” Gael said. “Bretlow, old comrade, you’re wounded! Here now—”
She and Vigo helped him to a chair. There was indeed some mystery here, not just a skirmish—a wounded ensign at home, months afterward. Had he even been treated by the army healers at the Plantation?
Bretlow started in with his tale—no, he said, he had had a blow on the head, but it had healed, and he had no brain shaking. The ten new Westlings of Elmtree company, with Bretlow as their second officer, had done very well in their drill at the Plantation; they were pleased to go on this mission to the Western beaches. With good roads lacking, it was more than ten
days’ ride from the Plantation back of Krail, so they went part of the way by barge on the great river Demmis which flowed to the sea further north, at Valmouth. They came ashore at a haven called Demford and rode on for four days, making camp at night in the quiet countryside, until they reached the inn at Fiveways, only a mile or so from Little Bay.
“The headman, called Old Scaith, met us there and told a strange tale indeed,” said Bretlow, smiling at the memory. “At Midsummer the fishing fleet usually went out in daylight, except for some late runs of blinny, along the shore. First sign of trouble was that a small boat, newly mended and just down from its blocks, was stolen away by night. A guard was set by another vessel—a small sea-going ketch. It was the kind of boat which the fishers hoped to sell to the gentry inland for cruising to Banlo Strand, or for the crossing to Eildon. At dawn the guards were found lying as if dead and this larger ship had gone—‘spirited away,’ said Master Scaith.”
“No one saw the thieves?” asked Gael.
“Luckily someone did,” grinned Bretlow. “There was this guard whose wife brought them all some breakfast, before first light—fishermen keep the same cruel hours as soldiers! This woman—I spoke to her later—saw this ketch moving down the slipway to the sea. She had the wit to hide herself by an old stone hut on the strand. She was in great fear that her man and the other guards were knocked down, even dead. She described the marauders very well—four men, all in dark seamen’s cloaks—three were big built and tall. The thing was that they could take out the ketch with a skeleton crew—their leader, a tall old man, simply threw up his arms, gesturing with his staff.”
“You mean he used magic!” said Gael.
“Indeed he did,” said Bretlow sadly. “And that is how I sit here disgraced and hidden away from the wrath of our liege lord, Knaar of Val’Nur.”
Vigo shook his head.
“Coombe has served Val’Nur faithfully,” he said, “and we have these special privileges—dating from General Yorath and the Westlings. A pity if all this is disturbed because of Lord Knaar’s hatred of magic!”
“At any rate,” said Bretlow, getting on with his tale, “the woman, Mallee, wife of Tamm, found her husband and his four companions struck down and sleeping. She ran to call warning, and Old Scaith, the headman, sent off runners to Demford, where his messages were taken down and sent in haste to Krail, up the river. We came as fast as we could—there had been ten days or more between the stealing of each ship. So we made plans with Headman Scaith and came as secretly as we could to Little Bay and took over the guard of a fine galley now waiting on its slipway—another ship for rich folk and by far the largest to be launched from Little Bay.”
“Do you think these Land Pirates had good informers?” asked Gael.
“They might have done,” said Bretlow, “but we were very careful. When we took over the guard for the first time—the second night the galley,
Brighthawk,
had been shown on the slipway, ready for launching—I swear we were well hidden, in a crude stone cobble hut, under rowboats turned up to drain. Darrah, our leader, First Ensign Darrah, stood forth as one of the guards in plain sight—four fellows in the same positions as before. I was half buried by a tangle of nets, along with Egon and a man from Tuana.
“Most of us were in position before the sun went down, with some warm provisions, but no ale or spirits. And, oh—we did not scorn to use a little humble magic ourselves, being Chyrian. Through Old Scaith, the headman, we were offered medals of protection, made by the village Helwyf or Healer. I took one—here I have it still …”
Vigo the Smith helped his son draw out the charm from the pocket of his tunic. It was a well-made round of bronze, decorated with mother-of-pearl. There were runes cut into the metal and it was threaded on a thong—instinctively Gael raised a hand to her own collar, missing still the long-departed lily, the amulet given to her by the wise lady of Cannford Old House. She remembered all the dangers she had passed in the Southland and in the Burnt Lands.
“The waiting was the worst part,” said Bretlow. “We heard Darrah and the others moving about a little—talking softly, sometimes giving a word to those hidden, to keep up their spirits.
There was some tilt-yard joking, I can tell you—about nature calls and so on. Then at last we got the signal—it was a knocking on a certain boat’s hull which gave off a hollow sound. This meant the Alert—and then the call to arms, a blast on a conch shell.
“We came out of hiding but not all of us at once. I came with my lads from the tangle of nets and saw that there were no more than six of the devils come to take this great galley. We took them by surprise, I believe—they had only seen Darrah and the forward guard. I marked my man—charged him from behind and flung him down. I might have stabbed him to death there and then, but this was not our plan. We needed one of them alive. I pulled off his hood and beat him behind the ear with the hilt of my dagger, knocked him senseless. As I bound his hands and took his own weapons, there were frightful cries and shouts all around … I saw—I saw Darrah standing transfixed in a blaze of blue light, I saw two of our men wrestling with another pirate, who suddenly flung them off as if they were chaff. I roared out—I remember all of Elmtree Company were roaring. One pirate already stood at the helm of the boat—it was the old man, the leader, and he called to his followers in a kind of Chyrian, which we half understood. Might have been telling them to get done with us. I came to another smaller man and this time I did use my dagger, drove it into his right arm; then I felt a blow to the head and half fell down among the overturned dories. I saw that Egon had been stricken with their accursed blue fire, and he stood swaying until another of his comrades caught him and laid him down on the sand. I shouted ‘Keep down! Keep down!’ More pirates had boarded the galley. Then the old man raised his staff and the galley
Brighthawk
moved steadily down the slipway. Just before it reached the water, one of the other pirates uttered a cry, raised a staff of his own and directed it at me. I was standing outlined for a moment against the night sky—the air burned blue all round me. I felt a tingling through all my limbs, then I seemed to feel myself float away, and all was darkness.”