by Dave Freer
“Papers? What excuse do you have to travel? We’ve got war materiel.”
“I’m supposed to be an agent of Prince Maric. I’m not, but it looks good,” said Fionn. “And I can tell you Mage Spathos had a tragic accident and isn’t paying any rewards right now. I’ll give you ten silver pennies to travel along with you for the next three days.”
“Let’s see the color of your money,” said the traveler.
So Fionn produced and counted out the silver.
Avram tested and smelled the coins. Pocketed them. A couple of the others had wandered over from their chores and were watching. Fionn scented something that could be trouble. But there was cover nearby and not a bow in sight. “You can travel with Nikos. He lost his dog, but you’ll have to tie yours up,” said Avram. “You still got that rope we sold you, Finn?” he asked, grinning.
“How did you know?” asked Fionn.
“Heh. It was the first poster. Dravko took one look and said he had no idea having a sense of balance could make you so valuable. He was quite proud of having been gulled by a man that could make himself that unpopular. And it’s the way you speak and the way you stand. In our trade it pays to notice those things. What did you do to them?” There was serious admiration in that tone.
“The annoying thing,” said Fionn, “is that I don’t know, and I want to know. I know exactly what I’ve done to Mage Spathos since. He’s not going be paying any rewards, but he could only tell me someone was offering to pay him a great deal for me—dead. I have a description, but not a name. And I have been told who he thinks it isn’t…but that leaves a lot of people—and things which are not people—that I could possibly have made very angry over the years.”
The travelers laughed. “We’re making breakfast,” said Avram. “Come and eat. We can swap lies easier over bread and salt.”
“I’ll need to tie this dog up,” said Fionn as Díleas was sniffing the air hungrily and just about turning his neck all the way around to admire the come-hither look in Mitzi’s eyes.
“Let him go and get friendly with Mitzi,” said Avram. “He’s a smart dog.”
“You have no idea just how smart,” said Fionn, letting go. Díleas charged off, and leapt up on the seat of the wagon, to indulge in some more stiff-tailed fast wagging and some very personal sniffing.
Avram led Fionn to the fire, where bacon was being sliced into the long-handled skillet. “Ah, but when that starts thinking,” he said, pointing at his groin, “the brains stop.”
“Never a truer thing was said,” said Fionn, thinking that it might almost apply to him. But there was heart there too, which he had noticed actually made it less logical and more intense.
They ate rosemary-scented pot bread and salt, and drank ale. When the bacon was done, they all speared pieces of it on their knives and rubbed their bread in the grease as they passed the iron skillet around. Fionn was aware he was being watched carefully. They were friendly, but watching. When he handed the skillet on, Avram asked, “What are you Finn? You’re not one of the Beng. You’re too at ease with iron to be one of the alv, although I thought so because of the glamor. You’re too big to be one of the Dueregar. And the water-people don’t like rosemary.”
“I could be a giant,” said Fionn, trying to weigh this up, “that’s washed himself too often and shrunk.”
“Bit sharp-witted for one of those. But men don’t handle hot iron that easily either. And that’s not glamor. Simon has a special bespelled mirror for spotting that. He checked when he was fetching the salt.”
“I would have thought it was pretty obvious,” said Fionn, reading posture, preparing himself, trying to work out just how he would get Díleas, who was far too busy to even notice possible trouble. They had just shared bread and salt with him…that was not usually a precursor to treachery. “I’m a dragon.”
He was surprised to see them smile and relax.
“Welcome,” said Avram. “You are the kind that works the balances, I think? The others don’t change shape happily and don’t think as fast from what I have heard.”
“You don’t seem very surprised,” said Fionn guardedly.
Avram shrugged. “You said you came from a plane of dragons. And we have met your kind of dragon before.”
“Oh? There were never that many of us. I thought I might be last. It’s been a long time since I met another one. We each had our planes and subplanes. I was trapped in Tasmarin for a long time. Like you, I used to travel around. Which is what I need to ask you about. These paths between planes…”
“The Tolmen Ways, yes.”
“How do you find them? I didn’t know they existed, and I think I need to know, to…do what I have to do. To go on with the balancing. I am not going to close them. They seem well made, very convenient, and magically near neutral.”
“The dragon Corran made them and showed us. He helped us with the protections against the Beng and alv, and the tree-people too. We regard ourselves as his people.”
“Oh?” This was possibly dangerous territory. Some dragons could be quite possessive. The last thing he needed was a fight with another planomancer. That could be ugly. And he should have guessed that the Ways between planes were planomancer work. No wonder they were stable and hard to find.
“Yes, the legends said he was very rude about the idea,” said Dravko, “which we like too. We don’t do very well with overlords. But we are the friends of the dragon.”
Fionn bit his knuckle. “Take my advice on this. Don’t be. Most of them are not our kind of dragon and would eat you and steal your gold.”
“Not just trick us out of it?” said Avram cheerfully.
“That was a fee, for teaching you a valuable lesson, and organizing water and a safe spot in future in Gylve,” said Fionn. “And as a lesson to not sell other travelers into slavery.”
“We only talked about it,” said Mirko. “We might have changed our minds.”
“You might have ended up being sold instead,” said Fionn.
CHAPTER 18
Earl Alois was grateful for his own magical skills, which included the ability to divine a way home. That was how they finally got back to the Dun—the troop had blundered through places he would swear were not in Lyonesse, let alone his familiar Southern Marches. He’d been aware that his people had been encountering the various non-humans more and more frequently. But suddenly they seemed to have turned inimical, to him in particular.
And now, thanks to rude piskies who had misled them, and pelted them with pine cones, he knew why. Somehow they’d heard that he’d tried to kill the Defender. And the fay—at least the piskies—were taking it out on him and his. He needed help. Allies. Not this.
***
The spriggan escort handed Meb and Neve on to a fair of piskies. “They’re flighty and troublesome,” said the spriggan as the piskies stuck their tongues out at them. “But they’ll see you further north.”
“Thank you. I’d like to be further from Dun Tagoll, but north was a direction chosen for no good reason. I’m really not too sure where we should go,” admitted Meb.
The spriggan smiled wryly. “So now you’re asking me for advice, and my thoughts, beyond that it will all end in tears I shouldn’t wonder. And if I know humans, you want more than that. Go north. We don’t really believe in chance or coincidence. There are forces pushing you north. Powers in the land itself. The humans believe the King is the Land and Land is the King, and it’s been without one for too long. Humans, of course, have a poor understanding of it, but that’s no surprise. Anyway: the forest people in the deep woods are closest to the Land, of all those in it. They could give you refuge. And they have a freedom of movement across the country that we don’t.”
Meb thought of her brush with the sprites—Lyr—for they were all, effectively, the same vegetative intelligence. They hadn’t liked people much. “Oh. You also have sprites here?”
“Sprites?” asked the spriggan.
“Tree people…sort of like trees
but people too,” explained Meb.
“Ah,” said the spriggan, nodding. “The dryads. This is far from their realms. We’ve had a few once, long ago. No, I speak of the Wudewasa, the wild people of the deep forest. Lyonesse was once all theirs when it was also almost all forest. They’re touchy and dangerous.”
“And that was supposed to cheer me up, was it, as well as help?” said Meb.
The spriggan smiled. “Can’t have you getting too enthusiastic. May the Land stay with you.” And he turned and left.
So they were left to travel on with the piskies. They were flighty travel companions, needing to be reminded that they weren’t actually here just to play little practical jokes on the two humans with them. The idea that humans might not like their hair tweaked, and that it was a bad idea to do, took a while to get into their heads too. Neve finally did it, catching one shrieking with laughter in her ear as he did so, and holding him up in front of her. “It’s being put over my knee for a good spanking that you’ll get if you do that again. Go and tweak the squirrels’ tails instead.”
“They bite,” said the piskie, looking sulkily at her. “It was no harm we were doing. Just a bit of fun.”
“And it’s no harm I’ll do to your tail end. No worse than you did to my hair.”
“Then you wait and see what I’ll do to you next,” said the piskie crossly.
Meb thought it was wise to try for a distraction. She’d started to try and learn the cartwheels and tumbling and flick-flacks that Fionn used as part of his gleeman showmanship. She wasn’t particularly good at them, in skirts…but then the piskies seemed totally unaware of clothing’s purpose being to cover nakedness. “Can you do this?” she asked, managing a credible cartwheel…and resolving never ever to do it in a skirt again.
They didn’t seem to notice that part at all, and next thing they were all cartwheeling and tumbling and spinning. From there it was natural enough for Meb and Neve to start singing. And the piskies found that a good reason to weave dances around them, and between their legs, rather like cats. It was noisy, but it beat having your hair tweaked and ears pulled by bored piskies. It was a relief to come to the point where the fair said: “Thus far and no further,” and left them with capers and cartwheels and a raspberry or two.
“You know, m’lady,” said Neve tiredly, when they were out of sight of the little people. “They’re like little children. There’s never been anything quite like piskies to make even spriggans look very nice.”
“I had always wondered what they were good for,” said the spriggan, who had been doing a good job of looking like an old milestone. “But they’re not always or all quite such flighty fellows. They’re fast workers, when it takes their fancy. Of course they’ll usually leave you in the lurch just when you needed them most.”
“And spriggans do a good job of frightening me out of a year’s growth, and you can rely on them to come up with the next glum prediction,” said Meb.
“Yes. Those are the things we do best,” agreed the spriggan. “I’ll tell you there is a group of Angevins prowling the lanes in the next few miles, along this way. They’re best avoided, I would say. They’re hungry and mean. If you detour a bit west, that trail has got nothing particularly nasty that we can’t discourage.”
That night was their first full night beneath the stars, sleeping rough. Meb had the feeling they were being watched but no piskies or spriggans or knockers or even Angevin mercenaries disturbed their rest. It was cold, but survivable, thanks to the fur blanket, and a layer of bracken to keep them off the ground, fire and a bit of shelter from the wind with an old stone wall and a tree. Food, however, was getting sparse. They had some of the dried meat they’d got from the knockers, and some fiddlehead fern shoots that they boiled in a bark bowl, and a last oatcake divided between them and washed down with what the knockers probably considered quite a lot of apple wine. It didn’t really go very far. Meb was seriously thinking magic was going to have to be employed to find them food, soon.
Except that morning brought food. Food laid out neatly in precise rows next to their bed…nuts—some squirrel had plainly not eaten his winter store—and a pile of sulphur-yellow bracket fungus neatly laid out on some young leaves. Meb recognized that from her time with Fionn, mushroom hunting. “Chicken-of-the-woods! And there are two small bird’s eggs. We have breakfast.”
“But who brought it?” asked Neve. “The grass—look it’s full of dew, but there isn’t a sign of a footprint in it.”
There wasn’t.
“Maybe piskies?” suggested Meb, yawning, looking around.
“I don’t see them laying out the food precisely. It’d be tossed in a heap and probably tumbled in the grass. And look how neatly the fungus is cut,” said Neve, pointing. “My ma is…was a fussy housekeeper. And she was never that picky.”
“Well, let’s make a little fire and cook the chicken-of-the-woods. I’m just grateful for it. We should have got a cooking pot from the knockers,” said Meb, suddenly thinking of mushrooms and bacon. “Finn always had a little iron skillet.”
“He must have had a pack horse to carry everything he had…I am sorry, m’lady. Didn’t mean to make you cry.”
“You didn’t,” said Meb, sniffing determinedly and rubbing her eyes. “Something just got in my eyes, that’s all.” And out of my memory box, she thought. It was the mushroom smell and the mention of that skillet. Determinedly, she thought of where the food could have come from rather than dwelling on happier times. It was good to have food, at least. It seemed they’d better hang on to it, because a determined team of ants were rolling one of the walnuts away…
And then she looked again. They weren’t rolling the nut away. They were bringing it to add to the rows. She peered closely. The ants all had remarkably human faces. And they stared back at her.
“Neve,” she said quietly, as the young maid picked up twigs from the leaf litter to start the fire, “I think I found out who brought us the food. Look.”
Neve followed her pointing finger. Clung to her arm.
“Muryans. As I live and breathe, muryans!” said Neve, incredulously. “Whatever you do, m’lady, don’t make them angry. They’re small but there be millions and millions of them.
Meb looked at the tiny creatures positioning the nut, which was far bigger than they were, with meticulous precision. “Right now I’d rather work out how to thank them. The spriggans said they were very serious and hard workers. I don’t think juggling or tumbling will have much appeal.”
“They say they are ruled by a queen,” said Neve, “and she looks just like a person, only tiny. They say if she’s your captive, they’ll serve you.”
It brought to mind the doll’s house stuff that Meb had seen in Aberinn’s workshop. Well, why not? She’d been fascinated enough to study it, to remember it in detail. The queen’s chamber with its little mirrors and brushes and combs…She called them. Wanted them. It produced a very strange feeling…and an entire little room in her hands. Meb put it in the basket, but picked out the tiny silver comb, which was smaller than her pinkie fingernail. It was perfect and must have taken some artificer many hours of painstaking labor to make…or some form of magic. She knelt down and looked at the laboring muryans. They stopped, little ant antennae twitching at her. She held out the comb, balanced on a finger. “A small gift. For your lady, with thanks for your breakfast.”
One, and then a second of the muryan approached her finger. They had antlike, sharp-biting jaws—doubtless what had cut the tough bracket fungus. They took the comb—it was still big enough to need two of them to handle it—and ant-handled it back to the wall, and down between the stones.
A little later, just as they‘d got the fire lit, a small sea of muryan came pouring out from between the rocks. Then came several hundred larger muryan, with jaws like scimitars, nearly an inch long. And then, carried on a litter made of grass stalks with highly polished seed handles…their queen. The soldiers arrayed themselves watchfully. Meb was sure
that if either of them made the slightest move toward the muryan queen they would attack with suicidal ferocity.
The little queen was human-looking. Her clothes—probably woven from something like spider web—were remarkably fine, and bright colored. She was perhaps six inches tall—big compared to her subjects. And she had the comb in her hands.
Meb and Neve stared at the perfect doll-like little woman. Her skin was porcelain white and her hair long and dark, and intricately braided. There were little sparkling lights set in it. “My subjects are very worried about me being aboveground,” she said in a piping little voice. “But I wished to thank you for the gift, Land Queen.” She admired the comb, delight written on tiny features. “You did not have to do that.”
“It seemed only polite to say thank you for breakfast,” said Meb. “Fionn said that only a fool takes without giving something in exchange. Even if it is only his gratitude making the giver feel good.”
“That is wisdom. We struggle to fashion metals. And the knockyan work is not so fine as this. They are miners, not artificers. Thank you,” said the muryan queen.
“It is our pleasure. We appreciate breakfast.”
The queen nodded regally. “My workers want to know if you can spare them an ember on a stick. They struggle to kindle fire, and it has been damp and cold and we lost ours.”
“Nothing easier,” said Meb, taking a smouldering stick from the fire. Was Lyonesse full of such obliging fay? It was very different to Tasmarin then. “All of the non-human people here seem so…helpful. Generous. Thank you.”
“It is our duty to serve. We have waited a long time for you,” said the queen muryan.
Meb blinked. What? Then it struck her. It must be this prophecy. She did not want to be their “Defender.” Although, she admitted to herself, it was easier to have to defend the knockers, spriggans, muryan and even the annoying piskies than the nobles of Dun Tagoll. “I don’t know what I am supposed to do,” she admitted.
The muryan queen toyed with the comb. “The Land knows. And you do it in a better fashion than the last one. He took it as his right. Never gave anything or thanked anyone for anything.”