The Winged Hunter

by F. T. McKinstry

  He could agree to the sioros’ demand and then try to save Tansel anyway. He would die of course, and so would she. But at least it would only happen in this life. He could do it with a clear conscience, for having tried.

  The appeal of this idea began to fade as he considered the exchange with his father. The god had hinted at something far less convenient. He had hinted at something utterly terrible, in fact, something bad enough to cause Eaglin to choose physical death over...some other kind of death. And what would that be? The death of his heart for having condemned a girl and the flower in Caelfar’s eye to a horrible end he could have prevented?

  All things fall to the Destroyer.

  He gazed into the night. The moon had faded beneath the gathering mists, casting the mountains into a sea of black shadows. In the reflection, he remembered.

  Shadows enveloped the palace of Eusiron as he had stumbled from the trees to the lower gate. In the wavering light of a cresset, his mother stood, tall and dressed in black. Slowly, he dropped to his knees and stared through a shroud of tears at her hands holding a damp scrap of finery, pale as a maiden and stitched with flower-laden hawthorn boughs. We found her in the river, she said softly.

  But I did not— he blurted, shattered by the news.

  You did not understand that you cast the shadow of a god.

  Eaglin swallowed against a bone-dry throat as the memory faded into the mists. His shadow had caused the death of a maiden whom, by the Rites of Hawthorn, he had sworn to initiate into womanhood. The river had taken more than her innocence, that day. It had taken his as well.

  Hours passed; days passed. The Raven of Eusiron sat in the sioros’ lair through the night, all the next day, and into the night after. So it seemed. Time didn’t feel right; he couldn’t rely on the references that governed the physical world. He didn’t need food, and rest was only a way to pass time—an uncomfortable way, as every time he lay down, he dreamed of water.

  Another day passed. Eaglin’s physical body began to pull at him. Emptiness pervaded his mind, a hollow, sucking well of indifferent despair.

  She’s only a girl, he thought. One of many.

  It is not for you to decide.

  We found her in the river.

  Eaglin’s sentiments had dried up like a drought-stricken spring when the sioros materialized in the air some distance from the lair’s edge. The immortal hunter flapped his wings in three gliding thrusts to reach the entrance. He alit with a snarl and folding the black, glistening tower of feathers behind him. Blood stained his hands, his chest and his mouth. In one hand, he held the limp, mangled remains of an animal that was, in that state, impossible to identify.

  “Wizard,” he growled. “I grow weary of you here.”

  “I have changed my mind.” Had Eaglin not been so deep inside the hollow of his despair, he would have been careful to keep his expression and the tone of his voice empty. As it was, he didn’t need to.

  The sioros eyed him as he turned and melted into the shadows of the lair. “You cannot. You have chosen.” The animal hit the bone pile.

  Over the mountaintops, a single star twinkled like the last of Eaglin’s hope. Bargaining with the sioros would be every bit as tricky as bargaining with the Old One, if not more so. A sioros was just as crafty, but not as whole. He didn’t spin his webs with love or care. He made a subtle art of plucking and re-weaving the tiny threads holding the boundaries between violation and balance; he knew just where the lines were, and he left it to the gods to re-balance the scales through the lives of mortals.

  To get out of this, Eaglin would have to do the same.

  “Have you lost interest in your maiden already?” he asked.

  “Have you?” the sioros purred, appearing instantly at his ear. He smelled of death.

  “It’s not for me to decide,” Eaglin echoed.

  “Not anymore,” the beast whispered, raising the hair on Eaglin’s neck. “The maiden will choose me of her own desire.”

  Eaglin raised his brow. “You may have an opening into me, but you don’t have one into the Raven of Muin. He won’t let her out of his sight for a moment, trust me.” He smoothed his voice with casual amusement. “He knows what you’re after. I told him. How long do you think it’ll be before he gives Tansel to a mortal man?” He winced inwardly at the lie. “Not long! A fleeting thing, a woman’s innocence.”

  The sioros stood up, flexed his wings and released a growl that shook the tree and caused the wooden chimes to wail with wrath. “You will give her to me!” he roared, trembling with immortal fire.

  Eaglin let his gaze slide up. “Agreed.”

  Silence fell; the hum of the tree ceased. Holding his wings in a half-suspended arc over his head, the sioros breathed a creepy smile that swept the pit of Eaglin’s stomach out from under him like a riptide.

  “Swear by Menscefaros,” the sioros hissed, soft as a moth wing.

  “I swear.”

  “What do you swear?”

  A nasty curse came to Eaglin’s mind, the sort of curse wizards are taught never to use. “I swear to give you Tansel’s maidenhead,” he said shortly.

  The sioros barked a laugh. “Journey swiftly.” Then he swung out and struck Eaglin over the edge of the cliff.

  *

  Eaglin awoke with a choke, as if he had just landed into his body from a great height.

  “There you are,” said a familiar voice. Something rustled near the ground.

  Eaglin blinked up, breathing heavily. A cool breeze carried the scent of wood smoke and food. His clothes were damp and rank from his having soiled himself, and his body hurt as if he had been thrown down a mountainside.

  Lorth leaned down, put his arm beneath Eaglin’s head and held a flask to his lips. Most of the water ended up on his chin and chest. He rolled over and coughed, reminding him of his broken ribs.

  “Och,” the hunter said. “Let’s try that again.”

  Eaglin got up on one arm and breathlessly drained the flask. His companion rose, went to the fire and slopped something from a pot into a wooden cup. He returned and helped Eaglin into a sitting position, his back to a maple tree. “Icaros’ famous rabbit stew,” he said, reaching for the cup. “I’ve never been able to duplicate it. Helps if you have potatoes and carrots.”

  Eaglin took the cup with shaking hands. He could hardly hold it, and the smell made his head spin. He took a sip and caught a piece of tender meat between his teeth, gasping as it burned his tongue. As he worked the food into his stomach, he relaxed and glanced over the rim of his cup into the dimness of the evening. Water burbled in the distance. Nearby, Lorth had built a sturdy shelter of hemlock boughs against a towering rock. “Where are we?”

  “Not far from where you fell. It’s been three days. I dared not move you.”

  Eaglin took a deep breath. His experience in the sioros’ lair hung on him like a curse. He had to assume Lorth had successfully warned Caelfar, since Tansel still lived. The sioros wouldn’t have been able to make Eaglin swear an oath to the Old One if he had already taken her. “What happened after I went down?”

  The hunter placed a piece of wood on the flames, and then related his account of finding Caelfar and Tansel in the woods. As the hunter talked, it occurred to Eaglin that the sioros could have taken Tansel at any time before Lorth returned her to Caelfar’s Pentacle. He did not—which meant the Old One still protected her. So why did the sioros demand that Eaglin drop Caelfar’s spell, or go through the drama of appearing to Tansel on the wrong side of it?

  Lorth continued, “When the sioros came upon us, I stayed out of the way and intervened only indirectly. But he wasn’t concerned with me.” He cleared his throat. “He put Tansel under some kind of spell and tried to lure her out of the circle. I told him that if he could affect her will as easily as that, we wouldn’t need a Formation Pentacle. He laughed at me, and rightly so, because Tansel had every intention of leaving that circle for him. It was all Caelfar could do to hold her, and I only broke her out
of it by describing her mother’s death. I don’t think that’ll hold for long. Caelfar will have to watch her closely.”

  Eaglin’s meal went sour in his stomach as he recalled the sioros’ claim: The maiden will choose me of her own desire. It hadn’t occurred to him that the immortal hunter would put a spell on Tansel to seduce her. Neither the Old One nor a Formation Pentacle would protect Tansel if she chose to go to him.

  Law of Free Will. It was the same trick the sioros had used on him in the lair.

  “Have you ever heard of a sioros seducing a mortal girl?” Lorth asked.

  Eaglin wiped his palms on his thighs. “Only in stories. I never gave them much serious attention. As far as I know, the only interest a sioros has in mortals is to kill them.”

  “Losing his voidstone and wanting Tansel is a notable coincidence, don’t you think?”

  “Tansel had that stone for seven years. He never came looking for it.”

  “Aye, but Aradia made a pact with Maern to keep that from happening. When Caelfar took the stone, I think it threw this.”

  “Where is Tansel now?” Eaglin asked wearily.

  “Muin. Caelfar will keep her there until we arrive. I told him to hold onto the voidstone. We might be able to bargain with it.”

  “You think that’ll work?”

  “Unless you can think of a reason it won’t.”

  Eaglin blanched under the full scope of his situation. He had a reason, all right. He had sworn an oath to the Old One herself to give Tansel to the sioros, and that was what he would do—protection spells notwithstanding.

  All things fall to the Destroyer, whispered his father’s words.

  “It’s worth a try,” he said, feeling sick.

  The Scary Garden

  Tansel lay in her bed in Muin Hall as the moon rode high and filled the scary garden with silvery ghosts and hollows. Mushroom stretched out near her head, purring, one paw draped over the pillow.

  She inhaled the fragrance of fresh linens. Sigen had changed the bed and cleaned the dust from the room, brought in a tub and prepared her a bath. He had also built her a roaring fire and left plenty of wood by the hearth. Later, he had brought her a meal worthy of a princess, enough for both her and the cat. He had said nothing, nor had he displayed any of the skepticism he had previously. Something had changed.

  The Raven of Muin told her that he would cast a protection spell over the hall like the one that had protected them in the forest. Tansel had little doubt it would be just as effective. But as she gazed outside from the soft shelter of her bed, she imagined tall black wings and pale limbs in the moonlit landscape. She had left the windows cracked, to smell the air. The wind sounded like the crowharrow’s voice, whispering.

  You must not leave the hall, Caelfar had said, his expression grim and not much like a sheltering oak tree at all.

  Far more unnerving were the eyes of the warrior-wizard’s apparition as he had left them by the entrance. Remember your mother, were his parting words to her.

  Tansel sleepily pondered the eerie contrast of those two statements. The abyss between grief and desire had somehow made them one. You must not leave the hall...remember your mother. Remember your mother...you must not leave the hall.

  She drifted to sleep, thinking about tansy.

  *

  Moonlight flooded the garden and forest around the river-stone cottage. Now in high bloom, every flower and herb grew strong and fragrant in the height of midsummer. Frogs sang in the distance. The stream behind the cottage murmured. No wind blew.

  She knelt before the center pool. The scent of thyme and clover filled the air. She leaned over her reflection in the smooth, black water. Her mother gazed back. Around her head, shining on the surface of the pool, rose a pale figure cloaked in black.

  She whirled around, then stumbled back, tripped on the edge of the pool and fell in. Cold hands pulled her down as the crowharrow reached out, baring his teeth to the moon with a scream as the water closed over her head.

  Down, down she went, into the ice-cold well. Something still pulled her, only now it felt like the water itself. Blind and unable to breathe, she struggled against it. The water rushed forth with a tremendous force, driving her upward.

  She broke the surface of a swiftly running river. She heaved air into her lungs as her cottage flowed by on the bank. She tried to swim to the edge, but the current held her. She flailed downstream as the wooded shore moved by with terrifying speed on either side.

  A dark figure stood on the shore. His hood was drawn over his face, hiding it. She saw him clearly, as if she flowed with the water and hung still at the same time. He raised his hand and spoke a word that caused the river to calm. Then he beckoned to her. With the last of her strength, she paddled to the bank, dragged herself from the water and collapsed at his feet.

  Strong hands lifted her up. The figure pushed back his hood. He had gray-green eyes and black hair that hung around his face in shining strands. His skin was otherworldly fair, and glowed with light. He said something that felt like sunlight on leaves.

  A shadow in his eye slipped aside and showed itself. It rose into a towering light that stirred the wood with a raven’s rustling whisper. His eyes paled and deepened with malice and his fingers grew nails that dug into Tansel’s arms. As she wriggled like a hare in his grip, he opened his mouth into a triumphant howl.

  *

  Tansel awoke with a cry that caused Mushroom to bolt from the bed and out the open door. The faint light of dawn filled the room.

  She lay there for a time as her heartbeat returned to normal.

  Then she made a decision.

  A short time later, Tansel walked into the tangle of the wizard’s garden for the first time. The air was fresh, warm and filled with the singing of birds. She stepped past her sage and rue, across the patio and into the fragrant green like Mushroom, curious, cautious.

  The part of her heart she had almost forgotten since Maetor had frozen her garden came alive again. After all, she had agreed to be the Raven’s gardener. What else would she do besides mull over bad dreams?

  The garden path curved into a spiral. She walked by an old lilac heavy with pale purple blooms. Scores of shoots grew up around the base through a mess of white violets. Tansel plucked a bunch of the sweet lilac flowers and inhaled deeply, holding the velvet cluster to her nose as she continued.

  By the path grew thyme, woodruff, and ivies. A garter snake slithered in front of her; she let it pass, then knelt and pulled away the ground cover to see where it went. There, she noticed a stone the size of her palm with a triangle carved into it. She stood and kept walking, and began see more stones, some of them tall and thin, others flat, with five or three sides. They were all carved with geometric symbols. Rose-colored beams touched some of them.

  The path rose and fell, curving around sunny rises thick with hollyhock, foxgloves, bee balm, mallow, daisies and lupine, already in bloom. Columbines, also in flower, spiderwort, and starflower grew in the dappled shade. Trickling waterfalls fed small streams lined with carved stones. Beneath very old trees grew shade-loving things like ginseng, bunchberry and wood sorrel. There was a circle of apple trees and another of cherry, with green marble paths between. Stone structures held rough wooden slats laden with honeysuckle and clematis.

  She passed by a pond filled with reeds and lily pads and surrounded by irises just beginning to bloom in shades of violet-blue and yellow. Hawthorn trees laden with small white flowers rose along the far bank. Frogs and turtles sat on rocks near the water’s edge. A flycatcher swooped in and out of the light on silvery brown wings.

  Tansel recognized many things by only their leaves and shapes, since they wouldn’t bloom until summer. In every place, sun or shade, damp or dry, grew things that bloomed in spring, summer and fall, so that something would always be blooming when the seasons allowed. The shapes and heights of the flora had been chosen to complement each other, allow sun or make shade for things that needed shadows to thrive.r />
  Tansel also realized how far into wildness this splendid garden had fallen. Invasive things like mint, bee balm, and loosestrife dominated large areas—amazingly, she didn’t see any tansy—gentler things struggled beneath the shade and others had been ousted altogether. Vines had taken over trees, grass clutched the cracks in paths and walls, shrubs had overgrown the things they sheltered and rose bushes arced in wild, thorny sprays over each other and everything around.

  Tansel continued until she reached the center of the spiral. A larger pond rested there in the deeper shade of willow trees with ancient trunks and boughs hanging like beards to the ground. The pond was edged by a neat row of stacked stones, and thick beds of trout lilies and ferns with lacy fronds of silver, green and cinnamon surrounded it.

  In the center of the pond stood a sculpture of a woman in a flowing cloak with the hood down, hiding her face. The way she stood there in the water, the tilt of her head, the curve of her hand along her hip and the other on her heart, gave her a profound air of sadness and wisdom. The bottom of the woman’s legs, where her cloak wrapped around, became the tail of a fish submerged in the green-black depths. The slim figures of live fishes swam slowly in the water around her.

  Tansel backed away. For a moment, she had almost forgotten where she was. Through the tops of the trees, the dark red spire of the Waeltower caught the rising sun. She sensed the rose beams would touch the statue at one time or another.

  She returned to the path and headed back. She made a mental inventory of all the things she would do. She decided to start by exploring the shed visible from her room.

  Roughly half way back, someone appeared on the path ahead of her, through the trees. The Raven of Muin came into view carrying a basket.

  “Good morning,” he said kindly.

  “Master.” As he approached her, she remembered that he wished her to use his name. She started to say it, and then closed her mouth. She couldn’t bring herself to utter a high wizard’s name in casual conversation.

  “I brought you some breakfast,” he said. He held up the basket.