“Nay, Morgan will garb you in silk and vain. But let us not anticipate my sorrow when you must depart. Come!” The nixie arrowed off. Holger followed, threshing by comparison like a paddle-wheel steamer. She returned and laughed as she swam circles around him. Often she darted in to touch his mouth with her own, but slipped free before he could grab her. “Soon, soon,” she promised. The pike trailed after. Their eyes were dull lanterns behind the jaws.
Rusel’s house was not the coral palace he had half expected. Walls or roof were useless here. A ring of boulders bore weeds that streamed upward out of sight, forming curtains of green and brown which stirred, shifted, rippled. Fish darted in and out, minnows that fled at the nixie’s approach and trout with iridescent scales that nuzzled her fingers. As he passed through the weeds, Holger felt their touch cool and slimy on his skin.
Beyond, partitions of the same sort marked off a few large rooms. Rusel conducted him to a feasting chamber. Here stood ghostly frail chairs woven of fish bones, around a stone table inset with shell and nacre, laid with covered dishes of gold.
“Observe, my lord,” she said. “I’ve even gotten rare wines for you, by the help of Queen Morgan.” She handed him a spherical vessel with a stoppered tube, not unlike a South American
bombilla.
“You must drink from this, lest the lake water spoil the contents. But do drink, to our better acquaintance.”
Her own clinked against his. The wine was a noble vintage, full and heady. She leaned close. Her nostrils dilated, her lips invited him. “Welcome,” she repeated. “Would you dine at once? Or shall we first —”
I can afford one night here
, he thought. His temples hammered.
Of course I can. I’ve got to, even to disarm her suspicion before I try to make a break.
“I’m not very hungry at the moment,” he said.
She made a purring noise and began to unlace his jerkin. He fumbled again with his own belt. As he took it off, her eye fell on the empty sheath and the filled one beside.
“But that can’t be steel!” she exclaimed. “I’d have sensed the nearness of cold iron. Ah, I see.”
She drew the blade and regarded it closely. “The Dagger of Burning,” she spelled out. “Strange name. Faerie workmanship, not so?”
“Yes, I won it from Duke Alfric, when I overcame him in battle,” Holger bragged.
“I’m not surprised, noble lord.” She rubbed her head against his breast. “No other man could have done so; but you are no other man.” Her attention wandered back to the dagger. “I’ve never seen that metal before,” she said. “All I have down here is gold and silver. I keep trying to tell the barbarian priests I want bronze, but they are so stupid even when conscious, let alone in a prophetic trance, that it never occurs to them the demon of the lake might have use for something with a good cutting edge. I have a few flint knives left from ancient times when such were offered me, but they’re worn down to nubbins.”
Holger wanted to grab her, when she curved and floated beside him. He needed his entire will to say, with such overdone casualness he was sure she would pounce on it, “Well then, keep this blade as a souvenir of myself.”
“I shall find many ways to thank you, bright lord,” she promised. She was about to continue unlacing him, with fingers that kept playfully straying, when he took the dagger back and tested the edge with his thumb.
“Pretty dull at the moment,“ he said. “Let me ashore and I’ll whet it for you.”
“Oh, no!” Her smile turned predatory. She wasn’t used to humans, wherefore his clumsy acting could fool her, but neither was she stupid. “Let’s talk of more likely things.”
“You can hold my feet, or tether me, or whatever,” he said. “I do have to get into the air to sharpen this knife. Such metal requires the heat of a fire, you see.”
She shook her head. With a wry grin, he relaxed. It had been a long shot anyway, and for the moment, with this supple creature beside him, he wasn’t sorry to have failed. “As you wish,” he said, dropped the knife and laid his hands on her flanks.
Perhaps his lack of insistence deceived her. Or perhaps, thought Holger, not without an inward exasperated curse, his destiny had too much momentum to end here. For she said, “I have a grindstone among my sacrifices. Will that not serve? I understand such a device will sharpen a blade.”
He fought down a shiver. “Tomorrow.”
She darted from his embrace. “Now, now,” she said. Her eyes glistened. He had noticed that lunatic capriciousness in the Faerie folk too. “Come, you should see my treasures.” She tugged his hand.
Reluctantly, he followed. The pike glided behind. His throat was almost too tight for speech, but he managed conversation: “Did you say the barbarians make you offerings?”
“Aye.” Her laughter jeered. “Each spring they troop hither to do worship and cast into the lake that which they think will please me. Some does.” She parted a living arras. “I bring the gifts here to my treasury. The foolish ones are always good for a jest, if naught else.”
Holger was first aware of the bones. Rusel must have whiled away many hours arranging the parts of skeletons in artistic patterns. The skulls which studded that lattice had jewels in their eyesockets. Elsewhere were stacked cups, plates, ornaments, looted from civilized lands by the heathen or not unskillfully made by their own smiths. In one corner was a disordered heap of miscellaneous objects that must also have been considered valuable by the tribesmen (if they were not simply sloughing their white elephants off on the demon)—water-ruined books from some monastery, a crystal globe, a dragon’s tooth, a broken statuette, a child’s sodden rag doll at which Holger found his eyes stinging a little, and junk less identifiable after long immersion. The nixie burrowed into the pile with both arms.
“So they give you humans,” said Holger, very softly.
“A youth and a maiden each year. I’ve really no use for them. I’m not a troll or a cannibal woman to enjoy such meat, but they seem to think so. And the sacrifices do wear the most beautiful costumes.” Rusel threw him a glance over her shoulder, as innocent as the look of a cat. She had no soul.
With a surge of strength under the white skin she hauled the grindstone forth. The wooden framework appeared rotten and the bronze fittings were badly corroded; but the wheel did still respond to the crank. “Aren’t my baubles pretty?” she asked, waving her hand around the room. “Choose what you wish. Anything, my lord, just so you include myself.”
In spite of the bones, Holger must force his words: “Let’s take care of the dagger first. Can you turn the wheel?”
“As fast as you like. Try me.” Her look suggested he was welcome to try anything. But she planted her feet on the sand and whirled the crank till he felt a vortex in the water. More loud than through air, the drone entered his ears, and the whine as he laid the knife to the wheel.
The pike crowded close, their gaunt heads aimed at him.
“Faster,” he said. “If you can.”
“Aye!” Metal screamed. The frame vibrated; green flakes drifted from the bolts.
Christ, let this thing hold together long enough!
The pike flicked themselves closer. Rusel was taking no chances while he held a weapon. Her pets could strip him of flesh in three minutes. Holger rallied what courage remained to him and narrowed his attention to the dagger. He didn’t know if his scheme would work. But even here under the lake, the blade must be heating up, and he could see the fine cloud of metal dust grow thicker around its edge.
“Are you done?” panted Rusel. Her hair had plastered itself to shoulders and breasts and belly. The amber eyes smoldered at him.
“Not yet. Faster!” He leaned his mass against the knife.
The flare nearly blinded him. Magnesium will burn in water.
Rusel shrieked. Holger guarded his face with one hand and swung the knife at the fish. One of them slashed his calf. He kicked himself free, broke through the green curtains and upward.
The nixie circled beyond the blue-white glare, beyond the range of his own dazzled eyes. She yelled at her pike. One darted near. Holger waved the torch and it fled. Either the fish couldn’t stand the ultra-violet themselves or—more likely—Rusel’s influence over them was bounded by distance like all magic, and she couldn’t get near enough to Holger to set the water wolves on him.
He kicked with his legs and clawed with his free hand. Would he never reach the top? As if across light-years he heard the nixie’s tone change to softness. “’Olger, ’Olger, would you leave me? You’ll ride to your doom in a barren land. ’Olger, come back. You know not what pleasures we could have—”
He screwed his will power tight and plowed on. Her rage burst forth. “Die, then!” Suddenly he inhaled water. The spell was off him. He choked. His lungs seemed to catch fire. He almost dropped his magnesium torch. He saw Rusel dart near in a cloud of her pike. He thrust her back with the cruel light, closed his mouth and swam. Up, up, darkness roiled in his brain, strength drained from his muscles, but up.
He broke the surface, coughed, spat, and gulped his chest full of air. A gibbous moon touched the lake with broken light. He held the torch below while he floundered toward the gray shore. It burned out just as he waded into the reeds. He ran to get well inland before he collapsed.
The cold struck his wet clothes and went on through. He lay with clattering teeth and waited for enough energy to seek the camp. He didn’t feel victorious. He’d won this round, but there would be others. And... and... oh, damn everything, why did he have to escape so soon?
20
AT LAST HE MADE his plashy way back. The stone lifted from the ground like a ship, black in the night, and those moon-tinged clouds that the wind whipped along behind it gave an illusion that the ship was under weigh. Through what seas? wondered Holger. The fire had burned to embers, a riding light the color of clotted blood. As he crawled up on top, he saw the horses bunched together in a shadowy mass that might have been a cabin amidships. Carahue stood at the prow, staring north. The wind that skirled as if through unseen shrouds flapped his cloak with cracking noises. Moonlight shimmered off his drawn saber.
A furious little form seized Holger at the waist and tried to shake him. “Mon, where’ve ye been the while?” cried Hugi. “We’ve been fretted sick o’er ye. Na word or track past the lake’s edge, till ye return soaked and reeking o’ wicked places. Wha’ happened?”
Carahue half turned, so that Holger caught the gleam of an eye under the spiked helmet. But the Saracen’s attention remained afar. Holger looked that way. The edge of this vale cut off view of the mountains beyond; he thought, though, he saw a dim wavering redness, as if a great fire burned somewhere there.
Fear struck him. “Where’s Alianora?” he snapped.
“Gone in search of you, Sir Rupert,” Carahue answered. His tone remained smooth. “When we could not trace you, she assumed swan guise to look from above. That blaze yonder had already been kindled, and I fear she went thither. There can be no good gathering around it, in this land.”
“And you didn’t stop her?” Rage drove the cold from Holger. He walked stiff-legged toward the Moor. “By God’s bones—”
“Pray enlighten me, gentle knight,” said Carahue in his most buttered voice. “How was I to stop her when she announced her intention and was airborne before I could seize her?” He sighed. “Such a seizable damosel, too.”
“Ha’ done,” growled Hugi. “Tell us richt the noo where ye went... uh... Rupert.” As Holger hesitated, the dwarf stamped his foot and added, “Aye, well I know somehoo the enemy’s made a fool o’ ye yet again. We maun hear how ’twas this time, that we may know what t’ await.”
The strength poured from Holger. He sat down, hugged his knees, and recited fully how he had been caught and had escaped. Hugi tugged his beard and muttered. “Och, so, so, aye, a tricksy nixie. I’m no ane to boast I tauld ye so, and thus I’ll say no word about hoo I warned this were a bad spot for us. Remember the next time, and heed me. I’m more oft richt than wrong, as nobbut ma modesty forbids me to prove wi’ many a tale oot o’ ma past, like yon time when a manticore were lurking in the Grotto o’ Gawyr and I tauld puir young Sir Turold and I tauld him—”
Carahue ignored the background noise to drawl, “Meseems the fulfillment of your vow has more than common importance, Sir Rupert, if the way is made this difficult.”
Holger was too tired and discouraged to head off the Saracen’s suspicion with a claim that everything had been mere coincidence. He removed his clothes and was looking about for a towel when a whirr overhead and a white flash made him break all records for the resuming of soggy pants.
Alianora landed and became human. She drew a gasp when she saw Holger, took a step toward him, and checked herself. He couldn’t read her expression in the coal-glow; she was only a supple shadow edged with red. “So ye’re safe,” she greeted him, coolly enough. “Good. I o’erflew that encampment lighting up the sky, atop a bald peak, and got news.” Her voice trailed off. She shuddered and turned toward Carahue as if seeking warmth. Teeth sparkled in his beard. He took his cloak off and threw it over her shoulders.
“What saw you, bravest as well as fairest of maidens?” he murmured, making rather more fuss than necessary about adjusting the garment on her.
“A coven was met.” She stared past them, into the darkness that streamed and whimpered under the moon. “I’ve never seen the like erenow, but it must have been a coven. Thirteen men stood about the balefire that was kindled before a great altar stone where a crucifix big as life lay broken. Most o’ the men were savage chiefs, to judge from their plumes and skin garb. A few must ha’ flown hither from the south... old they were, old, wi’ sic evil writ on their faces in the firelicht that the sight nigh blasted me from the air. Beyond the licht, where I could scarce see them, waited creatures. Och, glad I am they were in the darkness, for I fear that wha’ little I saw will stand ’fore me in dreams. Yet the coven watched the altar stone, where bled a—” She gulped and must force the words out—”a wee babe, slaughtered like any pig. And a blackness were forming atop the altar, taller nor a man... I turned and fled. That were an hour or more agone. Not e’en for ye could I bring myself down again, ’twere no possible, ere the clean winds had blown some o’ the grue out o’ me.”