LIFTING A CURSE
When they alighted in the courtyard Luran and Ethain were
waiting, their faces grave. Gael had arrived in the brightness of a beautiful spring morning, but Tulach was shadowed and dark.
“My Lady—my Lord Luran … ?” cried Gael.
“Come, Gael Maddoc,” said Ethain, taking her sleeve and moving swiftly with her toward the inner hall. “Myrruad’s light is fading.”
Other servants were in the courtyard, attending to Ebony. As they went through the mighty oaken doors, Luran said:
“Myrruad will pass into the sunset. Yet before she goes, she will speak with you and give you a special task.”
Only a few candles were burning in all the reaches of the great hall and the corridors. At the grand staircase Luran touched her arm before she set foot upon the first step. Ethain made an impatient gesture, and they were transported with a rapid gliding motion up and along to a vast shadowy chamber where Myrruad lay in a bed with golden hangings.
Gael hardly marked the other ladies and Sir Hugh McLlyr, who sat in the shadowy reaches of the chamber. She hurried to the bedside where Myrruad lay in a cloud of draperies. Her face
seemed to glow with its own golden light and her eyes, very old and bluish green, burned like flames. She held out a hand and clasped the hand of Gael Maddoc.
“Thank the Goddess of us all, light and dark, who has sent me a messenger!” she said in a cracked voice.
“Fion Myrruad,” said Gael, “I will serve you faithfully!”
“It is an old tale,” said the lady of the Shee. “I will tell you, and then Luran can give you further instruction.”
She gestured feebly, and Ethain gave her drink from a jade goblet. Her voice was stronger—she had become a storyteller:
“It seems but yesterday to one of my race,” said Myrruad,
“though the dark folk will have found it longer. I was a young maid in the distant fields and woods of beloved Eildon and in the beautiful island of Eriu before I was betrothed to my Lord Eilas of Tzurn, in a bonding of two Eilif families, the Helevelin and the Tzurn, I led a carefree life, and I fell in love with a mortal, one of the dark folk, a man of Eriu so handsome and strong he was like a godson. I will not say his name—he is long dead.
“In that far off springtime of my life, I bore a lovechild, a daughter. I have heard that the dark folk set great store by maidenhood and ill treat children born out of so-called wedlock. With the Shee it is not so, especially if the child is of the half-blood. I went off with my ladies to the kingdom of the princes, to Athron, and there bore my daughter, sweet Veelian. I loved her with all my heart, but I did not remain with her after I had nursed her—it is so in great houses—children are not always reared close to their parents. Veelian remained in the care of a true companion of mine, a woman of the half-blood who raised her as her own, in her own great house at Wennsford, not far from Varda. Athron was not a rich or magical land in those days, but the manor houses and domains of the great families were places of peace and protection.
“I returned to Eildon and was married to my dear Lord. I bore him two sons and a daughter. My sweet Veelian was their elder half-sister, who came to visit us very often in our house on the Grantoch Burn, among the border mountains.
“Alas, time has passed, and now I am the last of all my line, the Helevelin, and of my Lord’s house, the Tzurnu. Yes, it is hard to be rid of the light folk, but there were battles in those
days with the Eildon clans, and magic was used, and my eldest son fell victim to a bolt of magic. My other children lived on and wedded and had children themselves. I never thought to outlive them all—some were taken in battle, others by that melancholy which sometimes afflicts our kind.
“My dear lord and I lived on as comfortably as we might, being of the Eilif folk, and the move to this high ground made our many years easier. But I must speak to you tonight, Gael Maddoc, of the fate of my daughter of the half-blood, lovely Veelian. She lived in Athron, that was her true home, and in time she was betrothed to an Athron knight, a great lord in his own land. Then we were parted by a time of battles and unrest in Eildon—finally, I went to Athron myself and was faced with another dreadful sorrow. My dear friend, Veelian’s foster mother, had hardly dared to tell me what had happened in what for her had been the year since I had sent troth gifts and blessings for my dear child.
“She was the third wife of the Athron lord, though he was still in the prime of life—it seemed that his two young wives had died in childbirth. Now Veelian was dead, not a year after her wedding day. But her foster family, being of the half-blood themselves, had some magic—some ways of finding out the truth. Her lord was a cruel tyrant, who took pleasure in women’s pain; I cannot speak of the torture my sweet child had suffered in his keeping.
“I was filled with rage and sorrow. I remember it very clearly even now. I went out alone under the crescent moon and stood on a wooded hilltop, above the river Wenz. I summoned up all the magic I had learned and the most intense power of my own nature. I cursed the man who had killed my daughter, I set a powerful curse upon his house for all succeeding generations. I cried out for these folk to beware their marrying and giving in marriage; their happiness would be blasted and their lands barren.
“I know that the cruel tyrant himself died mad, but I did not follow all the working out of the curse—Luran may be able to tell you more. All that I can say is this: now that I must pass into the sunset like so many others of my race and my family, I will remove this grievous curse. There are some of this family who
still live. You, Gael Maddoc, must journey into Athron, to the far northeast beyond the Ettling Hills, and remove the curse that I, Myrruad, placed upon the Wilds of Wildrode. Do you accept this charge?”
“I accept the charge, Fion Myrruad,” said Gael firmly.
“Then it is well—” said the ancient lady. Her voice sank to a dry whisper.
She released Gael’s hand and fell back upon her pillows. At a glance from Ethain, Gael rose up and left the bed chamber. She saw all the others draw in closely about the bed. She knew the way through the corridors to Little Hearth, the room for her briefing. The dog Bran rose up from the hearthrug, overjoyed to see her again, but even he was subdued by the sad time.
Presently Luran joined her and summoned to the table a huge map of Athron worked upon ancient leather, like the map of Silverlode. He was very brisk, like an officer instructing his troops.
“By the reckoning of your people, the Curse was set down by Myrruad some one hundred and sixty years past,” he said, “but the land has changed since then. Athron will always be a rustic kingdom, but now it has its own magic, and it remains always at peace.”
They concentrated upon the town marked Wennsford, to the west of the city of Varda. There was a hill where the river Wenz rose up from a spring and curled around the base of the hill; Luran traced its course southwest to the sea by the harbor called Westport. He explained that the river, once no more than a stream, had been widened, with a canal system and a river haven near the town of Wennsford. Further north, the river Flume flowed down to the Western Sea through sea-oaks and salty marshes; there was a picture of the wild white horses, the Shallir, who roamed there.
Luran moved his hands over the map familiarly and said that he knew Athron well.
“There are true friends of the Shee in that land,” he said. “Some of the half-blood, some dark folk—you might call them our watchers, who send us intelligence of the sort that still interest the folk in Tulach Hearth.
“The family called Wenns were nobles in Athron,” he went on. “Veelian Ap Helevell, Myrruad’s daughter, was raised there in the great house and given the name of Wenns. Myrruad’s friend of the half-blood was the Lady Elfridda of Wenns, who did not marry and remained head of the house. Later the estates passed to a male cousin, but there has always been a strong tradition of women who ruled this domain—much later there was a battlemaid, Frieda of Wenns, who fought against the troops of King Ghanor of Mel’Nir, in the Chameln lands.
“There is a sacred grove with a Carach tree, the magic tree of Athron, on the top of this hill … I think this is where Myrruad uttered the curse—it would be a fitting place for you and your good Ebony to set yourselves down.”
The magic trees, each with its own blessed piece of ground, were marked upon the map. Luran pointed out that the curse had best be lifted at dawn or at dusk, and the ritual should be done in the presence of someone who still lived in the old keep.
To the northeast of Wennsford, Gael traced with her hand more hills, the Ettling Hills, and a barren, brownish expanse marked like the Burnt Lands. The estates of the Wilds of Wildrode ran right up to the mountain border with the Chameln, although there were no passes marked through the mountains.
“There is another Carach,” she pointed out, “very close to the Wildrode lands. Suppose I went on at once to that place in the dawn and waited until dusk, surveying the territory?”
Luran agreed that this would do very well. He seemed ironical, as if this was a typical ploy of the dark folk, but Gael could not ask him how one of the Shee might behave.
There was a certain urgency about her mission, and there was always secrecy. If anyone asked questions, she could say she was riding to the nearby town of Hatch.
“Erran’s Eve, the spring festival in Athron, has passed,” said Luran. “But there is a tourney between spring and summer in this town. You may give it out that you are going there for training, as many knights and kedran do. Or you might say you are riding to consult a Shaman in the Black Plains, beyond the northern border of Athron.”
Gael asked for a name she might give for her liege or names for herself and her home.
“Just as before, in your first happy task,” said Luran. “Give your true name and your home village of Coombe. Say that you serve at the Halfway House and ride escort for travelers.”
He summoned by rapping on the tabletop a thin tablet of dark wood on a silver chain, which he handed to Gael. It lay on her hand very lightly and reached from the base of her palm almost to the tips of her fingers. The words for the lifting of the curse were written out fair in Chyrian and the common speech on one side of the tablet. There were small drawings of the appropriate gestures to be used with the words.
Luran took her carefully through the ritual, then for the first time he smiled, turned the tablet over, and rubbed his thumb across the smooth dark wood. He handed it to Gael, and it had become a kind of mirror. She saw first of all the chamber where Myrruad lay in her golden bed, surrounded by the last of the Shee. Now Ethain gave the ailing Fionar her drink again, from the jade goblet Then Gael beheld a certain place in the great hall of Tulach, a kind of inglenook by the eastern hearth, where Sir Hugh was seated, playing a solitary game of Battle. The ancient knight became aware of her watching and uttered a word of greeting. Luran indicated that she should thumb the wood as he had done, and the picture was gone at once.
“We have absolute trust,” said Luran, “but the dark world is full of chance and strange turns of fate—you can use this device to call upon us.” Then he added with a half smile:
“With this tablet you can summon whoever you will—if you know the room in which they stand. They will behold you in a mirror or perhaps a pane of glass …”
It was afternoon, and she had her instructions; Luran went away. Without asking leave, she took Bran down into the wild gardens of Tulach and walked with him until evening. Then, after their supper, she spent time going over the ritual to remove the curse. Gael was beginning to feel lonely and bereft, not exactly fearful, at the prospect of flying off alone, with only Ebony for a companion.
Tomas was never far from her thoughts, and she knew she would try to speak with him in his room at the Swan. Now she
thought wistfully of the gallant company of the Witch-Hounds, who had done so well at Silverlode. Yet she told herself that these were foolish thoughts—this was not only a soft duty but a worthy mission, to remove the curse from this family, members of the dark folk as she was herself, for all that they were of a noble house.
Then she and Bran went to her room again; she sent up a prayer for Fion Myrruad, going into the sunset. She slept soundly as before, but her dreams were of Coombe, clear as day, the house by the Holywell, and the grotto itself, with its flowing basin, lit by a single shaft of moonlight from above.
She awoke to a room lit with candles. Mistress Menn, the housekeeper, had just flung back the hangings at a window, to show the first streaks of dawn in the sky. Ethain stood beside the bed with food and drink to break Gael’s fast. She wore a white robe and draperies of black and green, colors of mourning.
“It is finished,” she said. “You must be on your way to Athron.”
“Fion Ethain,” whispered Gael. “I must wish you comfort in your sorrow.”
“You are a good child,” said Ethain with a sad smile.
Bran the poor dark dog was led away as before, with sorrowful glances at Gael Maddoc. The old woman helped her dress—there were new clothes in solemn dark greens and blues, not in the Pendark wave patterns—and told of the food and drink in her saddlebags. Gael went down into the courtyard, as before, and the steward, Hurlas, led her to the blessed round of grass, the cantreyn of Tulach, where a groom held Ebony. While the horse was laden, she wondered if she must set up her magic flight without further farewell.