by Janny Wurts
* * *
Night fell. The dunes muffled the boom of the surf and the snap of burning logs seemed brittle, almost crushed by the weight of a greater silence. When the gelding sucked a sudden, sharp breath into its damaged lungs, the sound parted the air like the rip of a knife through cloth.
"Snail!" Korendir leaped to his feet. A barley cake fell from loosened fingers as he ran, but his action came too late. The gelding gathered itself on bony haunches and launched itself over Anthei's garden wall.
The horse's forehooves flung a spray of gravel as it landed on the pathway beyond. Its form became hidden in darkness, but a quavering scream betrayed its suffering. Haldeth surged to his feet. He seized a brand from the fire and raced for Anthei's front gate.
Korendir checked, whirled, and saw the streaming sparks thrown off by the torch. Guessing Haldeth's intent, he shouted. "Don't touch the latch!" But his warning was masked by the gelding's dying convulsions. The smith rushed heedlessly onward.
Running also, Korendir tore the belt from his tunic. The buckle was plain wrought metal, next to worthless. But earlier he had noticed Anthei's gates were forged entirely of bronze; perhaps, like an earth witch, she could not make a spell which ruled cold iron.
The horse's cries shuddered into silence. Korendir reached the wall, unslung belt in hand. Again he shouted, but not before Haldeth raised the outer bar. Utterly deaf to his peril, the smith flung wide the gate.
Torchlight grazed flickering highlights across bronze as the heavy grille swung inward. The white expanse of a footpath glimmered through the gloom beyond. At first glance it appeared deserted, but a closer look showed a red-cheeked country matron with a bucket; two pretty, dark-eyed daughters clung to her gray wool skirts. The sight of Haldeth lit their faces with radiant welcome. The girls called to their father and joyously skipped toward the gate.
Haldeth gasped in hoarse disbelief. "Lindey!" He surged forward.
"No!" Korendir jerked his friend cruelly back. "Lindey's dead, slaughtered by Mhurgai along with both of your children."
Haldeth twisted around in rebuttal. He lifted his torch in a vicious swing straight at his companion's head.
Korendir ducked, showered by sparks. "Lindey's dead! Anthei's conjured her image to trap you."
Haldeth wrenched free. The child in the lead had nearly reached his outstretched hand. Left no space for finesse, Korendir spun the smith away and chopped his hold free of the latch. Next he whipped his belt in a wide arc before him. The buckle passed clean through the cheek of the running little girl. Her face crumpled, marred like a reflection on ruffled water. Briefly Korendir glimpsed spread claws and a ravening beast's mouth before Anthei's illusion restored the innocent features of a child. Without break in motion, he hooked his belt on a wrought bronze spike and dragged the gate panel shut. The bar fell with a clank. Korendir stepped back. Narrowly spared from one threat, he had no thought for another. The fist that slammed his shoulder from behind caught him utterly unprepared.
Korendir staggered sideways in a half-spin. Blinded by flamelight as Haldeth jabbed the torch at his face, he blocked the attack with his forearm. Fire licked his sleeve. Seared by pain, he shouted again. "Lindey's dead!"
Crazed by Anthei's sorceries, Haldeth charged in for another blow. Korendir lashed back with the belt, then launched shoulder first into his companion's stomach. Haldeth clawed for balance and fell. He dropped the torch. Fire laced through dried grass and lit the hellish struggles of the men.
Locked in conflict, Korendir and Haldeth rolled across the ground. Crushed against a shoulder corded with muscle from the forge, Korendir counterstruck with precision. Haldeth jerked once. He released his hold on a grunt of agony, and the fight raged on in unchecked, primordial ferocity. The grass fire spread by the torch became quenched by tumbling bodies.
Trapped in a second hold, Korendir fought to suck air past the knuckles which ground at his windpipe. Dizzied to the edge of consciousness, he banged his belt buckle edgewise on the side of Haldeth's skull. The smith's head snapped back, a nasty gash opened above the ear; his arms went mercifully limp. Korendir shook off his friend's unconscious bulk and swore with expressive vehemence. After a pause to assess his own damages, he arose and searched with bleeding fingers among the grass until he hooked the cord of Snail's hackamore. He used the reins to bind Haldeth hand and foot. Then, after a lingering glance toward Anthei's darkened tower, he fetched the pan used to mix barley dough and stumbled through the dunes to fetch seawater.
* * *
Haldeth groaned as Korendir knelt to cleanse the cut on his scalp. The sting of salt water roused him back to consciousness, and the first words he uttered framed a ritual malediction that would have shaken a seasoned man-at-arms. Korendir continued his ministrations without twitching a muscle. He rinsed the blood from Haldeth's hair, emptied the fouled pan over a tuft of smouldering grass, then returned and looped his belt securely around the smith's neck. Haldeth's curses continued as he tethered the end to a log by the fire. After testing the knots, Korendir climbed into a tree overlooking Anthei's garden. There he remained, though Haldeth screamed abuse at him for the remainder of the night.
Silence returned with the sunrise. Beyond the wall, where the gelding had leaped, the new morning revealed shrubbery festooned with gobbets of flesh. The path was splattered scarlet for yards in each direction, and not so much as a sliver of bone remained of the equine victim of the carnage. Korendir removed a gaze cold as ice from the garden. He lowered himself to the ground and guardedly approached the ash of last night's fire.
Haldeth lay asleep. Torn earth at his hands and feet told of exhaustive struggles to free himself. Korendir bent to check the frayed cord at his wrists, and roused by that slight movement, Haldeth stirred. He attempted to rise and gagged, jerked up short by the belt.
The smith let his head fall back. "Great Neth," he murmured. Lucid at last, and afflicted with a misery of aches, he focused on his companion. Beneath the soot which smudged cheek and forehead, Korendir's skin was raw with burns; absent was the grim expression, replaced by an intense compassion. Haldeth caught his breath, and as if startled by that slight sound, Korendir turned sharply away.
Unsure whether the moment's revelation had been supplied by his own imagination, Haldeth spoke gruffly. "Neth, lad, you're a sight to make a young maid faint. You'll scar badly unless you tend those cuts."
"Stay clear of Anthei's gates, and I'll try." Korendir yanked the stake from the ground. All businesslike efficiency, he loosened the belt and set his hands to the knots restraining Haldeth's wrists. "Have you any more barley flour?"
Still prone, Haldeth gestured at the satchel left beside the dead embers of the fire. While Korendir tossed away the hackamore string and busied himself with the contents, Haldeth worked the bindings from his feet.
The smith sat up. Wincing from stiffened muscles, he accepted barley gruel from fingers as marked as his own and said, "What do you plan to do?"
Korendir never looked up. "Avenge Snail." The words left no space for compromise. Finished with eating, he vanished beyond the dunes, and later reappeared with a clean face. For an interval after that he stared at Anthei's tower, the agate walls now innocently mellowed under sunlight. At length he retrieved his belt.
"I have a task for you," he said to Haldeth as he cinched the buckle at his waist. "Half a league back lies an abandoned forge. Would you go there and make a fire hot enough for tinker's work?"
Affronted, Haldeth set his bowl aside. "Better you asked whether any tools remain for my use."
"The Blight will have warped them, I expect." Korendir bent and adjusted his boots. "I'll come at noon. Wait for me, and try not to crush your great thumbs under any hammers."
Haldeth took a swipe at him. Korendir ducked clear and with maddening purpose strode off into trackless bracken. His companion stared after, and only then realized he had neglected to ask what Korendir wished him to forge.
"Arrogant get of a sow!" Haldeth y
elled. "What idiocy are you about?"
But Korendir had vanished beyond earshot into the scrub behind the dunes.
* * *
Shivering beneath mouldering thatch, Haldeth bent over the firepit in the abandoned smithy and coaxed damp kindling into coals. He cursed steadily in monologue, and did not see Korendir enter, laden with rusted ironware. Looted without discrimination from the surrounding farmsteads, the collection included anything from chipped axe blades to punctured buckets. Warned by a metallic clank, Haldeth looked up in time to cringe; Korendir unburdened his load with an ear-jarring crash just beyond the threshold. He ignored the smith's yelp of annoyance, but moved to the canted work table and laid out his other acquisitions: a dusty lump of tallow, the haftless remains of a kitchen knife, and several soggy grouse feathers.
"Have you ever cut fletching?" he inquired of Haldeth.
"No." The smith swung around and gave free rein to irritation. "Nor will I. If you plan to make paste with my barley flour, take it from your dinner ration."
Korendir smoothed one of the feathers against his forearm. "You can forge a score of arrowheads, surely?"
"Out of iron?" Haldeth laughed, incredulous.
Korendir paused, a quill poised between long fingers. "They needn't be pretty to look upon."
"Pretty!" Haldeth kicked the nearest corroded pot and bashed a hole through its base. He dared not say what he felt, that arrows could never breach Anthei's fortress; Korendir would be killed. Too distressed to stay silent, he threw up his hands in disgust. "Neth, man, the Blight afflicts everything in this Kingdom, even the building of fires. Broadheads forged in this place will hold no edge, and anything iron will rust to nithering bits."
Now dangerously still, Korendir said, "I don't intend to keep them." He selected a stick from the kindling pile and deliberately began to strip the bark. Left no option but to work, Haldeth stalked over to the junk pile by the door and rummaged for suitable scrap.
By sundown, the two men had completed a crude sheaf of arrows. They returned to the campsite, where Korendir put the finishing twist on a bowstring fashioned from Snail's hackamore cord.
Haldeth looked on with a frown. "Those arrows would barely dent the skin of a pumpkin. No doubt Anthei is laughing at you."
"Let her." Korendir set the bow aside, dumped tallow into the cookpot and waited while it melted over the fire. He used the softened wax to stop his ears, then muffled his head under the hood of his cloak. "Shout at me."
Haldeth complied, splitting the evening stillness with an epithet.
Korendir nodded, oblivious, and shouldered his arrows and bow. He climbed the tree beside Anthei's garden. There, straddling a limb, he scratched numerals into five of the broadheads, thereby destroying the point on the sixth. He shot the first marked shaft in a long arc over the wall. After wobbly, erratic descent, the arrow cracked resoundingly against Anthei's door; rebound spun it clattering end over end down the stair by the entry.
Korendir adjusted his position against the tree trunk. Affected by the Blight, his shafts would win no tournament, but for the purpose he intended they would serve. Twilight settled swiftly over the land; only minutes remained before darkness spoiled his marksmanship.
* * *
From the tower's lancet window, Anthei watched Korendir drop arrows at intervals along her garden path. Their eccentric flight betrayed makeshift origins, and admiring a skill which mastered the adverse effects of the Blight, Anthei released the catch on her casement. Leaning outward, she began the song which had lured the horse the previous evening; only this time she tuned her spell for the archer who had ridden it.
Korendir's hand held steady on the bowstring. His final arrow bit just inside the gate, scattering white gravel in the gloom. Well into her song of summoning, Anthei waited for the man to display the first spoiling traces of restlessness. Korendir dropped lightly to the ground. Shadow flickered at his heels as he paused by the fire to collect a rusted heap of ironware. Deaf to the smith's encouragement, he removed the scrap to the gate and arranged a crude barrier between its posts.
Anthei frowned from her seat by the window. Had the man been susceptible to her spell, he should have entered her garden without any delay for precautions. Intrigued by his resistance, Anthei placed a perfectly shaped fist on the sill and pitched her call an octave higher.
Korendir glanced at the tower. His manner reflected no urgency as he arranged his remaining arrows point first in the dirt. He tested the tension of his bow, then raised a booted foot. Careful to keep his flesh from any contact with the bronze, he eased the bar from its setting and kicked the gate sharply inward.
Anthei abandoned her call mid-phrase. Against this man, the lure was useless. The witch's eyes narrowed with fresh interest as she assessed his poised stance between her gateposts. Korendir had withstood the murder of his beast and a summoning geas; Anthei waited to see how he would manage her guardians.
* * *
The bronze grill grated to a stop to reveal a pristine expanse of white walkway. But the path with its borders of flowering shrubs stayed empty only an instant. Motion flurried the plants on either side, and the cat-shaped forms of Anthei's guardians hurtled forth. They numbered three. Black-and-white striped coats rippled over muscle as they sprang for the intruder at the gate. Manes of stiffened quills framed eyes like coals and needle-fanged muzzles bared to snarls.
As the beasts bore down on him, Korendir bent his bow. With steady eyes he sighted their run, and the gravel which scattered under the stretch and spring of each stride. Lethal as they seemed, their charge was indirect; Anthei's guardians swerved to avoid the broadheads left imbedded in the path. Conjured from earth magic, they appeared to be chary of cold iron. Gratified to see his hunch confirmed, Korendir kicked a kettle into a clanking roll across their path.
The leading guardian spat. It dropped into a crouch, forepaws flexed to expose claws like skewers, with barbs to entrap as well as maul.
Korendir fired his arrow. The shot took the creature point-blank through the eye. Smoke boiled from the wound. The beast's scream shivered the night, a sound that engendered terror to freeze the heart. By the fireside, Haldeth buried his head in his arms.
At the gateway, deafened by wax, Korendir nocked another shaft.
The remaining guardians circled their fallen, whose convulsions plowed furrows in the path. They paced to the barrier of ironware, ringed tails lashing with agitation. Korendir drew his bow. The nearer guardian hissed. It raked out with a barbed forepaw, and disturbed currents of air brushed Korendir's knuckles. He aimed for the soft triangle of the throat and released.
The arrow flew true. Maddened by the bite of iron in its flesh, the beast launched into the air. Smoke billowed from its muzzle. Korendir backstepped clear. Undeterred by its baleful, screeching cry, he sent a second shaft into its exposed underbelly. The guardian crashed full length across his barrier. Pots scattered from the impact and the beast's form unravelled into fumes. Stung blind by stinking vapor, Korendir blinked away tears and saw the last guardian leap over the corpses of its fellows. He nocked another arrow; and the Blight-cursed cotton bowstring snapped between his fingers.
The guardian sprang for the kill.
Korendir dove flat. Frantically he scrabbled for a fragment of metal as the guardian hurtled overhead. His hands hooked on nothing but weedstalks. The beast landed, whirled and charged again. Korendir rolled and fetched bruisingly against a farmwife's flatiron. Too late, his fist closed over the rusted handle. The guardian regained balance and lunged with a snarl for his throat.
Braced for impact, Korendir raised the iron. He thought to ram the beast between its gaping jaws, but understood his plight was hopeless. Claws would rake him before the silly wedge of metal could connect. His agonized death would follow swiftly.
Locked to the gaze of murderous red eyes, Korendir did not see the pan hurled in from the sidelines until it bashed the creature in the flank. The guardian twisted mid-leap and spun with bar
ed teeth toward Haldeth, who ran weaponless into the fray. Cat-muscles bunched for attack. In desperation, Korendir chopped his flatiron into the creature's neck. Smoke plumed from the contact. Choked by fumes, Korendir seized his last arrow and rammed the guardian through to the heart. Its dying swipe caught him in the calf. Hooked by barbed claws, he crashed to the ground while around him the conjured mass of bone and muscle unbound into ugly coils of smoke.
Haldeth dragged him clear. Coughing and dizzied from the acrid tang of spells, the smith labored to catch his breath as Korendir stirred, rolled, and violently vomited his supper.
Haldeth steadied his friend's shoulder until the spasms ceased. "Are you all right?"
Korendir ignored him, shivering. After a moment he picked the wax from his ears and raised a face transparently pale. "What a cruel end for Snail. Those horrors ate even his hooves."
"He's avenged," Haldeth said shortly. Unreassured by the small talk, he hauled Korendir to his feet. "Come back to the fire and let me tend that leg."
"Not yet." Korendir shook free and straightened. "I'm going in." His gray eyes shifted pointedly to the corpses left steaming on the path. "If I wait, Anthei will have another spell guarding her gates. I must go now, or not at all."
Haldeth responded with reluctance. "Will you be careful?"
Korendir brushed rust flakes from his hands and laughed low in his throat. "I'll watch the odds."
Haldeth looked on, appalled, as his friend tossed his tallow plugs aside. No words were suitable for the occasion, but as always Korendir did not care. He strode limping to the garden wall, and without an instant's hesitation, scaled the stone and dropped on his feet in Anthei's rose bed.
* * *
Curled comfortably on cushions in her tower window, the witch wrinkled her nose at the stench of ruined spells. "Clever man," she whispered.
Had Korendir entered through the main gate, he would now be quite dead. Since he had not, Anthei switched tactics to counter. Leaning her elbows on the sill, she framed the man between the angle of her thumb and fingers, and her voice measured phrases to a different tune. Darkness spread like a pall over her garden. Shrub, path, and starlight vanished, as if Neth's creation had never existed.