“They are high bred,” she said, “and cast away in a strange land.”
He pressed her again to try the schnapps, though she doubted he took very much himself. She was restless, for it was one of the longest days before them on the road to the Halfway House. She was soothed by the view of the plateau and the cloud shadows moving over the plain.
“Were you ever in the Eastern Rift, Sergeant?” she asked.
“Not me, Captain,” he grinned, “but my father was there, years ago, before the war. It is a rich corner of this land.”
At that moment Wennle stepped a little away from the others and stared in her direction. Lord Malm called “Meddoc,” and she ran smartly to the picnic place. The obrist had risen to his feet, and now he stood close, looking at her down his nose with a half smile. She saw how Lord Malm watched from his place on the ground and how Lady Malm veiled her face with her headdress and turned aside impatiently.
“Captain,” said Hem Lovill, “you served in the Southland. How far have you ridden upon the Plateau?”
She could not see his drift at all, but she knew that the Malms had somehow approved his right to question her.
“To the Halfway House many times,” she said.
Before she could finish, Hem Lovill turned back to Lord Malm, spreading his hands.
“My lord, my lady,” he said, “our meeting was a happy chance. Cut your losses!”
“And to Goldgrave,” said Gael Maddoc, sudden catching his drift.
“Oh, to Goldgrave,” said Hem Lovill, mocking. “How often to Goldgrave?”
“Once,” she replied. “My Lord Malm, what is played out here?”
“How dare you!” snapped Lady Malm.
“Lord Malm,” said Gael, “you accepted my service. Whether I have been to Goldgrave once or a hundred times, you have never been there. I am your escort!”
“No more!” blustered the old lord, climbing to his feet. “Be not so bold as to address me! Wennle …”
“Steward Wennle,” said Gael, “tell the lord I meant no disrespect What do you say to all this?”
“Captain,” said the steward sadly, “this officer, Obrist Hem Lovill, travels clear across to our goal at the king’s court. Lord Malm will end your service.”
“Then I must have part of the sum agreed upon,” said Gael Maddoc. “Not for myself, but for Coombe, a poor and needy village that has done its best to serve these noble folk, come by chance to our door.”
“Hungry for gold!” breathed Lady Malm.
“And what of the horses?” asked Gael.
“Broken-down nags the lot of them!” said Lord Malm.
“My lord,” said Wennle, “we must use the horses until we reach the Halfway House.”
“Yes, yes,” said the lord, “and then Lovill will fetch us some decent mounts. Meddoc, you’re insubordinate, my wife doesn’t like your looks, you stink of the midden, and the chicken last night was tough. You’re dismissed. The steward will give you two gold pieces, quite undeserved.”
She said no word. It occurred to her that Lord Malm was
mad, and no one dared correct him because of his noble birth. She was bitterly resentful of the part Hem Lovill had played in her dismissal and thought he was of the breed of “bull-bocks” who hated kedran. They were few in the Southland, and she had seen no lord, not even the sly and selfish Blayn of Pfolben, fall into childish abuse of the kind Lord Malm had uttered.
She turned and walked away toward the thorn tree and the horse trough. Lady Malm’s sharp voice followed her and was carried away by the wind. She saw Badger Breckan standing among the horses. Wennle, the steward, touched her arm, and when she looked back, he pressed the two gold pieces into her palm.
“This was not my doing, Captain,” he said. “The horses will be left at the Halfway House. It was so arranged, was it not?”
She could only nod. The folk from Coombe planned to come to the Halfway House on the next long watch to find out if the party had obtained new mounts or ridden the old ones on over the plateau.
Then came a loud shrieking neigh and she saw Ebony rear up while the sergeant laughed and flinched back out of his reach behind the horse trough. The black horse was unhitched from the rail, and now he galloped free, bucking and twisting, to the west. Gael Maddoc ran after him as fast as she could. She ran, and Ebony galloped, far ahead, over the rough, pitted ground of the plateau. She ran and called to him and prayed to the Goddess that he would not lame himself or ride off down the cliff road to the plains.
At long last he stood still and she came closer, soothing him with her voice, but he would not yet allow himself to be caught and tossed his head and was off again. So the pair of them went on for a long time, until at last Ebony hung his head, foam flecked. She came to him, put on a leading rein, stripped off her saddle and saddlebags and wiped him down with his own special cloth. She gave him drink from her water bottle in her wooden food bowl and put on his blanket. She examined his body all over to make sure he had done himself no mischief and wondered how Breckan had caused him to misbehave. A slap or a tweak might have done it … Ebony was a capricious animal.
At last, under the noonday sun, they walked side by side, exhausted,
back to Rieth’s Rest, having run so far it was less than a mile away. She looked back down the road and could see no more than a dust cloud, far beyond the thorn tree at the crossroads. Her service with Lord and Lady Malm was ended. She had two gold pieces to bring Reeve Oghal.
She spent the whole day caring for Ebony at the waystation, going out to his stall, then coming back to the cool rooms. In the evening she lit the fire, brewed herb tea, ate the goat cheese and bacon her mother had slipped into her saddlebag. She thought of the good food from Coombe that the Malms carried upon their packhorse. She was in two minds about taking back the food she had laid in the store coffer of the waystation that same morning. Still brooding, she fell asleep very early before the fire and then woke, sometime after nightfall, and went to the door of Rieth’s Rest. She was on the High Plateau, home of the Shee, and the moon was full.
The certainty of her calling, her quest, grew upon her as she went on foot to the Black Menhir. There was no sound far and wide except her own footsteps upon the road. The stillness was quite unlike the stillness of the countryside, of the woods, or of the heather. There was a quality of waiting or listening about it. She stepped off the roadway and climbed up to the stone. The turf was soft under her feet, half overgrown with downy moss.
The black stone rose like a three-sided tower, glistening faintly in the light of the full moon. She stood before the eastern face of this monolith, lifted her arms, and prayed silently to the Goddess. Then in a clear loud voice, she cried out the words that Druda Strawn had taught her for the summoning of the Shee. The words were Chyrian and some so old she could only guess their meaning. Three times she repeated the words, walking to the three faces of the towering stone.
Then, as she had been instructed, she knelt, head bent, and waited. She waited thus, kneeling on the damp moss, for a long time, and received no answer. Her magic ring flashed and sparkled all the time she was near the stone, but still nothing happened. At last she rose up, stiff and disappointed, and in that same moment a wind, coming from nowhere, whirled all around the stone, lifted the hair upon her head, then was gone.
She walked quickly back to Rieth’s Rest, feeling sure that the
Shee had heard her and not deigned to speak. She had been snubbed by the fairy race. She went to Ebony in the stall, laying her head against the living heat of his warm black neck, and did not know whether to laugh or cry. Before she settled down to sleep again by the banked fire, she thought suddenly of the lance that Vigo the Smith had given her. It had been stuck in the ground with the Malms’ banner on the edge of their picnic place; perhaps it had been left for her or carried on to the Halfway House. She thought, too, of the next summoning place: the Green Mound on the edge of the Great Eastern Rift, where Yorath Duaring himself had once communed with the Shee.
Her dream that night was ugly and strange. She saw a woman with thick braids of golden hair crouched in a filthy cave, huddled beneath an old sheepskin. The woman’s face was in shadow, but she reached out with one white hand from under the fleece and made elaborate gestures in the air. Gael knew in her dream that the woman was making magic and wondered, still in her dream, if she was a witch imprisoned to be burnt by the cruel Brotherhood of the Lame God, far away in Lien. She knew the woman and did not know her, as it was sometimes in dreams. At length she heard the woman’s message, her summoning, muffled by fear:
“Forgive. Help us. Free us from demons.”
THE BRIGHT FOLK
Gael went deeper into her sleep and did not remember the cruel
dream until she was riding toward the crossroads again as the sun rose.
Her lance was still there, stuck in the ground, only the banner had been removed. Gael Maddoc laughed aloud and said:
“Well rid of them!”
Yet her words had the sour taste of failure. Captain Maddoc could lead her troop of lost ones across the desert, but she could not bring two Eildon nobles over the High Plateau. As she rode on in the autumn sunshine, she found herself falling into a wish-dream: the Malms were at the Halfway House, displeased in some way with Obrist Lovill and Badger Breckan … they begged her to be their escort again.
Yet as the day wore on and she could see the tall inn off to the east, she hoped the party had already moved on. She needed rest for herself and her horse, but she had no wish to be under the same roof as the Malms. Her reasons for continuing to the Halfway House alone were private, although she could give out that she was seeing to the Coombe horses. She was determined
to try for the Green Mound, and there to once again address the Shee as Druda Strawn had taught her.
When Gael looked toward the Eastern Rift, she always had a thought, a longing for Pearl of Andine, the wise woman who had known her destiny. Yet she believed she must not seek her out. Lady Pearl, she was sure, must have told her all that she felt able. Now Gael passed the road leading off northwest: to Silverlode, and she recalled the stirring tale of Yorath Duaring that had been set forth for the Summer Riders by the tutor from a great Rift household—yes, Pauncehill.
Now, in the autumn weather; dark clouds were scudding toward her, filling the sky. The weather here on the High Plateau had turned at last; she rode on at a smarter pace and came to the Halfway House in darkness and drizzling rain.
It was a spreading barnlike structure, built of wood and grey stone in the style of the great houses in the Eastern Rift. Faint lights shone out into the rain: inside a fire was lit. Gael took her way to the roomy stable and knew at a glance that the Malms were not among the guests. There were only two shaggy ponies stabled, brown and white; there was no groom though the place was lit with two lanterns. She rubbed Ebony down in the best stall and heaved up her saddle and saddlebags to take them into the house. A third horse nickered anxiously, and there, at the end of the stalls, she found a horse from Coombe. It was the roan gelding with one white foot from the Long Burn Farm … Wennle’s horse.
“What, have you gone lame?” she asked softly. “Gone lame and been left behind?”
She could see no sign of lameness, but the light was not good; she promised the roan to come again after her dinner. She wondered how the Malms meant to return the Coombe horses if they had ridden them on to the north. Had the party ridden down into the Eastern Rift to find other mounts?
Gael went up the steps and came into the Halfway House from the stable. She remembered the atmosphere of the place, which was welcoming, almost cozy, although the building was shadowy and vast, with a vaulted roof. There were two hearths, in the west and in the east, but now only the eastern fire was lit.
Well-worn settles and generous tables provided room almost for an army; overhead hung two huge round candleracks, each with a few sputtering candles. Two staircases, to the west, led to a gallery with finer rooms for noble guests. Along the southern wall there were curtained cells which contained pallet beds for other travelers.
Tonight there were two attendants in the house—a tall woman stirred a cauldron over the fire, and a young man came to take her saddle. She had seen others, years past in the summertime, and recalled that they were all of the same family, name of Cluny. The young man was short and brown as a Danasken; he smiled but did not speak and motioned her toward the fire.
“How came that roan gelding into the stable?” she asked.
He gave no answer so she walked on and repeated her question to the woman, addressing her as Mistress Cluny. The woman bore a strong likeness to the young man, but she was as tall and bony as he was short and well covered; she took a long look at Gael Maddoc.
“The horse is from Coombe,” said Gael, “hired by a party bound for the king’s court. Have they gone through? Why was the horse left?”
Still the woman said no word, and Gael, for the first time, began to be alarmed. Then the woman made a small gesture of resignation as if she could hold back some news no longer. Gael followed her glance to the chimney corner. An old man sat there shivering, wrapped in his cloak. His face was marked, his hand, holding the cloak, was wrapped in a bloodstained rag.
“Master Wennle!”
He stared at her with a look of shock and terror that slowly faded into recognition.
“Oh Goddess!” he whispered. “Oh Maddoc! Maddoc!”
He tried to stand, but his legs would hardly hold him. She went to his side, and the hostess, Mistress Cluny, was there offering a leather bottle, with spirit finer than applejack. Gael held it to his lips; he sipped and choked, sipped again.
“Master Wennle,” she said, “in the name of the Goddess, what has brought you to this pass? Where are …”
“Hush!” he said. “Do not say the name! They are taken!”
He watched fearfully as Mistress Cluny took back her bottle and returned to the fire.
“I should not speak,” he said, “or worse will befall. Yet the news must be brought with all possible speed … you can help me, Captain. You must have found your good black horse again!”
“I will help you,” she said, “but what is this wild talk? Where are—your companions? How are they taken?”
“For ransom!” he said. “You saw nothing amiss? No one saw through those two brigands. Oh Maddoc, if my lord and lady are harmed, life holds nothing for me!”
She took his hands in hers. She understood all at once several things about “Hem Lovill” and “Badger Breckan.” How Lovill’s garrison, “The King’s Longhouse,” came out so pat after she innocently named the travelers and their destination. How the kedran escort with the best horse, who might give trouble or ride for help, was quickly dismissed. How Breckan deliberately sent Ebony to bolt over the plateau.
“Master Wennle,” she said urgently, “you must put all your trust in me. Tell me the tale!”
Wennle drew a long, shuddering breath.
“We rode on,” he said, “while you were almost out of sight, chasing your horse. The warrior who gave himself out as Obrist Hem Lovill scolded the sergeant for making your horse bolt … I thought it did him credit. My lord and lady were very pleased with their new companion.
“We had lost some time, so the pace was a little faster. As it was growing dark, we came to another crossroads where a track ran off to the northwest. Then of a sudden, Lovill, who rode first, with Lady Malm, seized her bridle, and Breckan, who rode behind Lord Malm and myself, leading our packhorse, uttered a long whistling cry.
“Half a dozen dark shapes rose up from behind the bushes and were all amongst us. Two seized my bridle. Breckan held a huge dagger at the lord’s throat, and when I cried out and tried to break free, I was struck from my horse by one of those on the ground. Lovill swung a halter of rope about Lady Malm’s neck;
he called to his creatures for light, and there were torches. Then he spoke up in a loud voice and said they were his prisoners: the hostages of Tusker Lovill, the Wild Boar.
“Then Lord Malm spoke or asked to speak, and when the knife was taken from his throat, he begged this brigand to take him alone and the gold they carried and let his good lady go free, for she was on an errand of mercy. But Lovill told him to be silent, and Breckan gave the lord a blow on the head.
“Then we were all forced a short way along the track; I was made to walk with my hands tied behind, and two of the brigands rode upon my horse. I did not see plainly what happened next, but there was a little flash of light, and Lady Malm tried to escape. I believe she used a simple bit of magic, a hand movement and a spell that twisted her halter from Lovill’s grasp. But her horse stumbled, and Lovill cried out again, calling her a witch and worse names. And then … oh Maddoc …”
Wennle shook his head, and his face, turned to hers, was deathly pale with staring eyes.
“What, Master Wennle? What was it?”
“There was a strange light,” he whispered. “The torches burned with a strange greenish light. It played around all of them, Lovill and Breckan and their followers. They changed before our eyes—their faces—their whole bodies. Maddoc, I swear that they took on the shapes of monsters, hideous, half-human creatures! They reeked, they had slavering mouths and sharp teeth, their hands were huge, hairy, claw-like …”
“The Voimar …” Gael found herself whispering too. “Creatures from the old tales. I heard they were seen but could not bring myself to believe it.”
“It was the shock!” said Wennle ruefully. “I saw Lady Malm, who is a brave woman, faint dead away and slip from her horse. Yet I swear, Maddoc, that their true shape is human, as we first saw the two warriors. This is-magic!”
“What happened next?”
“We went on, the whole monster pack, with the lady slung across her saddle. After a few miles, I thought I saw the walls of a town.”
“Silverlode,” said Gael, “an abandoned mining town.”
“I never entered it,” said Wennle. “Tusker Lovill drew me
aside, just as he was in this terrifying guise. He sorted me out and my horse, while the others went on into the town. A single henchman from the demon pack remained and held me. Lovill was suddenly himself again, yet very fierce.
“He shook me and swore that my lord and lady were lost forever if I tried any tricks. I must ride, he said, on to the Halfway House and on to the king’s court and there find ransom for them …”
“Master Wennle, they must be rescued!”
The steward slumped in his chair, worn out with the mere telling of his ordeal.
“It would endanger them,” he whispered hoarsely. “Who … who would rescue …?”
“There is the garrison at Hackestell,” said Gael Maddoc. “There are the Rift Lords and their followers.”
“I was told not to try any tricks.”
“How will they fare, the lord and lady, in the hands of such creatures?” she asked. “It will take ten, twenty days, a whole moon of days, to go to the king’s court and convince them of the need for ransom.”
Wennle had begun to tremble in all his limbs; he could not answer her. Gael looked about for the old woman, who came anxiously to observe the sick man.
“We must put him to bed,” said Gael. “See, here is gold for his lodging in one of the rooms.”
Mistress Cluny blinked, did not take the money. Between them they half-carried the old man to one of the traveler’s cells on the south wall and laid him on a pallet bed with clean coarse sheets. He seized Gael’s hand feebly.
“Oh, kedran …”
“Rest, Master Wennle,” she ordered. “We can undertake nothing till the morning. I will think what is best to do.”
She sat by him in the small curtained cell, listening to his rattling breath. Mistress Cluny fetched a draught, which she fed to Wennle; he breathed easier and fell asleep. Gael Maddoc tiptoed away and returned to her place at the eastern hearth. She had her supper, scarcely knowing what she ate. The steward’s story had awakened strange echoes of that stirring tale of the Bloody Banquet of Silverlode.
There was a name she recalled from the aftermath of this terrible feast. Huarik the Boar and some of his followers were buried in Silverlode: they had come home no more. Yes, here was the name—Huarik’s young wife, mourning her fallen lord, took her infant son home to the hall of her father, Lovill of the Eastmark!
Who could doubt that Tusker Lovill, the Wild Boar, was this same child grown to manhood? Surely, at a word, the Lords of the Eastern Rift would raise a company to root out the young boar whose father had killed their fathers! Gael stirred the remains of her posset with a wooden spoon, shaking her head. This might cost the life of the hostages, Lord and Lady Malm. Perhaps, instead, the Wild Boar, entrenched in the dark underground labyrinths of Silverlode, could be taken by stealth or magic? Who would be bold enough to risk such an effort?
Gael Maddoc saw her ring flash in the firelight, and she thought of another saying of Druda Strawn. She had her answer. “Nothing passes on the High Plateau that is unknown to the Shee.”
She looked toward the hostess and the young man who were seated quietly under one of the candleracks, playing Battle. Mistress Cluny came to her at the fireside, bringing drink. Gael Maddoc fixed her eyes upon the old woman and said:
“How came the old man, Master Wennle, to such a pass?”
“How should we know?” answered Mistress Cluny warily. “He told us nothing. He very nearly did not come here at all …”
“What do you mean?”
“The roan horse came in riderless, about noon,” replied the old woman. “My son, Gwil, followed its tracks as best he could and found the old man where he had fallen and brought him back.”