RESCUE IN ATHRON
The town of Wennsford was still decorated for Erran’s Eve,
the
Spring Festival. Thick garlands of flowers and leaves, woven in the courtyards, were strung along the balconies of the houses. Gael had not gone to the Carach on the hilltop after all, but ridden on a well-worn track round the hill and come to the river crossing, a ford in old times but now a solid causeway, well above the moorings where the Lienish ship and other craft had been made fast.
Over the causeway, there was a livery stable at a busy crossroads, with market stalls, a pen for fowls and the first lambs. One road led to the north past a gate to the town. The other joined the high road that led through the meadows and on to the handsome main gates of Wennsford, never shut in these peaceful times.
Gael rode this way, beside a fine grove of trees, with ash and apple and a tall larch, all green for the spring. She observed the old roundhouse across the highroad. There was plenty of cover in the roadside meadows for those watching: she saw a place where a great tun of ale had been tapped, and drinkers sat on tavern benches.
She turned back and went to the livery stable at the crossroads. A gaunt old woman called the Widow Craine led Ebony to a stall and let Gael lock up his saddle and her own saddlebags in a numbered chest. She asked cheerfully where Gael was traveling—ah, yes, the tourney in the town of Hatch.
Gael strolled across to the tavern benches, carrying her lance at the trail. She sat in the shade of a tree with her small ale, watching. Talking to trees, she thought, and now on a wild goose chase—or “herding the cloud sheep” as they said in Coombe—for the Witch-Queen of the Chameln.
O Tomas, when will I see you again?
She was scanning the crowd for “someone known to her,” as the queen had said—for some reason she thought of Gwil Cluny and of her old comrades Amarah and Mev Arun from Pfolben. Then she saw them—a man and his wife, both strongly built, good folk for a rescue indeed. She caught the woman’s eye and waved.
“Here you are then!” said Marta Finn in a hushed excited tone. “Look, Tam—”
Tam Finn, of Finnmarsh by Nightwood, smiled and gripped Gael’s hand.
“By the Goddess, Captain,” he said in his rich, rumbling voice, “this is a work of mercy we will do—and I’m glad to see you come to our aid.”
Then, before she could ask anything else—the plan, the other rescuers—where was the poor prisoner, where was the Witchfinder?—she was hailed aloud and truly surprised.
“Captain Maddoc! Gael, my dear friend!” cried a rich sweet voice.
There stood none other than Yolanda Hestrem, Lord Auric Barry’s henchwoman, last seen serving the nobles at the wedding of Queen Tanit Am Zor. She was beautiful as ever and arrayed in a kind of kedran dress, with trews and a long tunic. Of course—it was her fencing costume; Gael recalled that Yolanda excelled in the art of the thin blade. Now she sat down at their rustic table, and it was clear that Yolanda was known to the Finns—in fact the leader of the whole enterprise. She quickly found out how much Gael knew and filled in the rest.
“The poor old woman is pent up in the old castello, yonder,
but we have two women there who can send us word how she does and when the procession will begin,” said Yolanda. “These Brothers have guards but not close to the prisoner herself, lest they be ‘defiled.’ There was no way we could go in and take her from her cell.”
“They will make a procession through the town?” asked Gael.
“I would guess at the hour of noon,” said Tam Finn, squinting up at the sun. “We’ve time in hand!”
By this time another kedran, a young ensign, had joined the group. Then there came two young men in sailors’ dress, with long striped tunics and tall sea boots of purple leather.
“What is played out here?” Gael asked. “Where have the Brothers found this poor soul? What is this cruel campaign against witches?”
There were witches indeed in all the lands of Hylor, and there were many women and men who used magic in everyday life. But charges of bewitchment or evil workings were dealt with by law or by custom—outbursts against a particular witch, wizard, or sorcerer were not common. Witches like the O’Quoins at Silverlode, who had aided the renegade Huarick-son, might demand harsher measures, magic against magic. But to strike out against a woman for owning witchcraft, in and of itself—this was new.
“She is a woman of the Merwin, or the River Tribe,” said Yolanda Hestrem. “She had long since left the sea but was sailing with her kin, to celebrate the Holy Days. When their ship put in at Westport, the largest port of this land, Athron, she went ashore to buy supplies from the market. She was seized by a party of Lienish soldiers and the Brothers serving Sebald, the Witchfinder, and placed upon their ship, the
Sacred Fire.
”
“How did these men know the woman for a witch?” asked Gael.
She had heard tales of the River Tribe, a strange band of wanderers who roved up and down the rivers that flowed into the western sea.
“The woman was wearing a Merwin cloak, with a pattern of sea creatures,” said Yolanda. “Was it not so?”
“Aye-aye, Yolandee,” one of the sailors murmured his reply, revealing his origins as a Merwin. In this interchange, Gael became
aware of a great anxiety and unrest in Yolanda herself, though the woman fought bravely to keep up a face of calm.
“Then this Lienish ship was brought up the River Wenz to the river haven, yonder,” Yolanda went on, “and Brother Sebald sent word to Prince Joris in Varda, with a treaty claim, a right of way for travelers returning to Lien. They plan to bring the prisoner through Wennsford, then overland through Varda, and so on to the pass into Lienish Cayl, at Benna. We have heard that Brother Sebald will display the old woman along the way and preach against witchcraft.”
“There are those in Athron who will cry out at this!” said the ensign, whose name was Bly. “And the consort of Prince Joris, Princess Imelda of Zerrah, in the Chameln lands, is known to be strongly against the passing of the Witchfinders!”
“Ah, ’tis all wretched spite,” said Tam Finn. “It is the Brotherhood in Lien working against the Chameln lands because they are now the Land of the Two Queens! They would draw the Chameln into open conflict against them!”
“How do the Witchfinders mean to travel?” asked Gael. “They will surely not walk every step of the way!”
“They’ve two wagons hired from the Widow Craine’s livery stable,” said Marta Finn. “Got them set out ready at the other end of the town, on the Varda road.”
Gael got up from her seat and stared through the gates at the broad street curving down through Wennsford toward the square in the center of the town, with the statue of the Lady Elfridda of Wenns. The place was not crowded as it would have been on Erran’s Eve. She returned to her place and said quietly to Yolanda Hestrem:
“What was your plan?”
“Magic!” said Yolanda. “A version of the bloodless rescue at Silverlode, though we lack the skills you were given for that task. We would have tried the Grand Bewitchment, but we are not sure of the shielding spells.”
“And the escape with the poor prisoner?” asked Gael, pleased that they had not planned to meet violence with violence in their own turn. “Would you use one of Sebald’s wagons?”
“We have our own small cart behind the trees,” said Yolanda, pointing.
“Better than that!” said the older of the two sailors—Gael never learned their names. “We’ve our own good boat, the
River Queen,
in the first lock of the Wenz canals, just astern of that accursed Lien boat!” Yolanda gave Gael a look that had a little of amusement in it, as if she had not intended to reveal her plans so far, but was unwilling to curb these sailingmen’s enthusiasm.
Bells overhead, perhaps in the roundhouse itself, played a little round and then two single chimes.
“Our good kerrick clock,” smiled Ensign Bly, “from Lord Niall—the Wizard of Kerrick!”
A young girl carrying a washing basket came to Yolanda at the table and whispered urgently, then went on into the meadow.
“Aha!” said Yolanda. “The Brothers are astir—they will pass through the town sooner than we thought! The guards in the roundhouse have spoken with the prisoner’s women.”
“Look there!” whispered the young sailor. “The devils have slept on their ship.”
A party of Brown Brothers in robes and raised hoods were coming round the trees from the harbor; at their center was a pale man in a black hood. Guardsmen in the blue and silver tunics of the Kingdom of Lien led the way to the high road and through the city gates. The team of rescuers watched in grim silence as these men turned to approach the roundhouse.
“I have heard they use no magic,” said Gael, coming quickly to a decision. “But Lien is known to have as much magic as anywhere in Hylor. We must put on shields. You and I will perform the Grand Bewitchment at the center of the town, Mistress Yolanda!”
She remembered how she had “donned the shields” in the mounted troop of Witch-Hounds before Silverlode. Now there was a witch to be rescued, and a somewhat different shielding must be used. She bade them all draw in closely and said:
“We must concentrate our minds for this working—it will be done with good Athron magic!”
Then she drew out the four green gold leaves shed for her by the Carach tree on the hill above them. The leaves were divided into seven pieces and moved around and into a circle in the center of the table. They all whispered the words of the shielding
ritual after Gael, using the common speech, then tucked away their Carach fragments. She repeated the words in Chyrian: uttering the final words of binding, she held her lance upright. A large spark of blue fire shone out for a moment upon its point.
“Come, then!” said Gael. “We’ll get into position!”
Tam Finn paid their score, and they wandered away to the second gate into the city on the west road. There was a good clear street leading down into the square with the statue of the Lady Elfridda, a tall woman with bound hair and a look of the Goddess in a sacred grove. Gael and Yolanda took up places on either side of the statue, in the midst of the square. The roundhouse was out of sight, up a hill. Now the kerrick clock struck the hour of eleven, and soon afterward there was a trumpet call. The people in the streets, men and women going about their business—marketing, carting, taking garlands down from balconies—turned to the curb to see what was going on. Gael was glad to see that not many were lining the streets. The rescuers were placed beyond the statue, ready to spring into action when the hour was at hand.
Now the procession could be seen approaching, led by a duty escort of two Athron guardsmen in green uniforms with the device of a golden stag’s head for Prince Joris Menvir, the ruler. The Athron folk were law abiding, and they were puzzled by the procession. Yet some understood and were bold enough to protest and cry out to the guardsmen. The shouts of “For shame!” and “Set her free!” increased as the prisoner came into sight. Still some way off by the statue, Yolanda Hestrem drew forth her long sabre.
The old woman was guarded by three tall soldiers in the uniform of the Royal Guard of Lien, all in bright blue with the emblem of the silver swan. One went ahead, with a rope strung around the prisoner’s throat. Her face was down bent; the way the rope was tied, if she tried to hold her head proudly, she would choke. The two other guards held her on either side, tightly by the arms; they wore mailed gauntlets.
The prisoner was a tall old woman; even now in a filthy, ragged kirtle of reddish drugget, she retained some marks of what must have been a formerly striking beauty. Behind the old
woman walked three members of the Brotherhood of the Lame God Inokoi; two were in the familiar brown habits, with their hood raised; they carried scourges, cats of more than nine tails. In the center, directly behind the prisoner, strode a young man with a long black and silver tabard over his brown robe, his face shielded from the sun by his black hood. This was Brother Sebald, at present Queen Fideth of Lien’s most favored counselor, known in his own land as Hagbane and everywhere else as the Witchfinder. Gael thought his thin young face had the look of harsh determination she had seen in certain officers, both male and female.
The procession came on, step-by-step, at an orderly rate; Gael had her hand raised to Yolanda across the square. Now the prisoner was near the statue and the Lienish soldiers led her to the right a little, and now the Witchfinder himself was behind the statue and she let her hand fall. Working in perfect unison with Yolanda she raised her lance and pronounced in a loud voice the hour of Stillstand, the Grand Bewitchment.
There came that crackling in the upper air as the spell took hold, and it seemed louder in the clear air of Athron. The Witchfinder, the brothers, the soldiers, the prisoner herself, all stood like statues now. The spell had grasped and held everyone in the high street and a few were off balance: children and their mothers, an old man before the inn, tumbled down and remained still. Already, Yolanda had run to the prisoner, unbuckled her halter, and loosed the chains at her wrists with a spell of unbinding. In a few pulse beats, she had thumbed the old woman’s forehead with another spell. Thus released, the former prisoner began to move her limbs and cry out feebly in the eerie half-silence of Wennsford town.