The Queen of Air and Darkness

by Poul Anderson

  Sherrinford wreathed his head in smoke. “Never mind what I experienced,” he said. “It couldn’t have been the same as for her. I think the command was simply given us, ‘You will see what you most desire in the world, running away from you into the forest.’ Of course, she didn’t travel many meters before the nicor waylaid her. I’d no hope of trailing them; I’m no Arctican woodsman, and besides, it’d have been too easy to ambush me. I came back to you.” Grimly: “You’re my link to your overlady.”

  “You think I’ll guide you to Starhaven or Carheddin? Try making me, clod-man.”

  “I want to bargain.”

  “I s’pect you intend more’n that.” Mistherd’s answer held surprising shrewdness. “What’ll you tell after you come home?”

  “Yes, that does pose a problem, doesn’t it? Barbro Cullen and I are not terrified outwayers. We’re of the city. We brought recording instruments. We’d be the first of our kind to report an encounter with the Old Folk, and that report would be detailed and plausible. It would produce action.”

  “So you see I’m not afraid to die,” Mistherd declared, though his lips trembled a bit. “If I let you come in and do your man-things to my people, I’d have naught left worth living for.”

  “Have no immediate fears,” Sherrinford said. “You’re merely bait.” He sat down and regarded the boy through a visor of calm. (Within, it wept in him: Barbro, Barbro!) “Consider. Your Queen can’t very well let me go back, bringing my prisoner and telling about hers. She has to stop that somehow. I could try fighting my way through—this car is better armed than you know—but that wouldn’t free anybody. Instead, I’m staying put. New forces of hers will get here as fast as they can. I assume they won’t blindly throw themselves against a machine gun, a howitzer, a fulgurator. They’ll parley first, whether their intentions are honest or not. Thus I make the contact I’m after.”

  “What d’ you plan?” The mumble held anguish.

  “First, this, as a sort of invitation.” Sherrinford reached out to flick a switch. “There. I’ve lowered my shield against mind-reading and shape-casting. I daresay the leaders, at least, will be able to sense that it’s gone. That should give them confidence.”

  “And next?”

  “Next we wait. Would you like something to eat or drink’?”

  During the time which followed, Sherrinford tried to jolly Mistherd along, find out something of his life. What answers he got were curt. He dimmed the interior lights and settled down to peer outward. That was a long few hours.

  They ended at a shout of gladness, half a sob, from the boy. Out of the woods came a band of the Old Folk.

  Some of them stood forth more clearly than moons and stars and northlights should have caused. He in the van rode a white crownbuck whose horns were garlanded. His form was manlike but unearthly beautiful, silver-blond hair falling from beneath the antlered helmet, around the proud cold face. The cloak fluttered off his back like living wings. His frost-colored mail rang as he fared.

  Behind him, to right and left, rode two who bore swords whereon small flames gleamed and flickered. Above, a flying flock laughed and trilled and tumbled in the breezes. Near then drifted a half-transparent mistiness. Those others who passed among trees after their chieftain were harder to make out. But thev moved in quicksilver grace and as it were to a sound of harps and trumpets.

  “Lord Luighaid.” Glory overflowed in Mistherd’s tone. “Her master Knower—himself.”

  Sherrinford had never done a harder thing than to sit at the main control panel, finger near the button of the shield generator, and not touch it. He rolled down a section of canopy to let voices travel. A gust of wind struck him in the face, bearing odors of the roses’in his mother’s garden. At his back, in the main body of the vehicle, Mistherd strained against his bonds till he could see the oncoming troop.

  “Call to them,” Sherrinford said. “Ask if they will talk with me.”

  Unknown, flutingly sweet words flew back and forth. “Yes,” the boy interpreted. “He will, the Lord Luighaid. But I can tell you, you’ll never be let go. Don’t fight them. Yield. Come away. You don’t know what ’tis to be alive till you’ve dwelt in Carheddin under the mountain.”

  The Outlings drew nigh.

  * * *

  Jimmy glimmered and was gone. Barbro lay in strong arms, against a broad breast, and felt the horse move beneath her. It had to be a horse, though only a few were kept any longer on the steadings and they only for special uses or love. She could feel the rippling beneath its hide, hear a rush of parted leafage and the thud when a hoof struck stone; warmth and living scent welled up around her through the darkness.

  He who carried her said mildly, “Don’t be afraid, darling. It was a vision. But he’s waiting for us and we’re bound for him.”

  She was aware in a vague way that she ought to feel terror or despair or something. But her memories lay behind her—she wasn’t sure just how she had come to be here—she was borne along in a knowledge of being loved. At peace, at peace; rest in the calm expectation of joy…

  After a while the forest opened. They crossed a lea where boulders stood gray-white under the moons, their shadows shifting in the dim hues which the aurora threw across them. Flitteries danced, tiny comets, above the flowers between. Ahead gleamed a peak whose top was crowned in clouds.

  Barbro’s eyes happened to be turned forward. She saw the horse’s head and thought, with quiet surprise: Why, this is Sambo, who was mine when I was a girl. She looked upward at the man. He wore a black tunic and a cowled cape, which made his face hard to see. She could not cry aloud, here. “Tim,” she whispered.

  “Yes, Barbro.”

  “I buried you—”

  His smile was endlessly tender. “Did you think we’re no more than what’s laid back into the ground? Poor torn sweetheart. She who’s called us is the All Healer. Now rest and dream.”

  “Dream,” she said, and for a space she struggled to rouse herself.

  But the effort was weak. Why should she believe ashen tales about… atoms and energies, nothing else to fill a gape of emptiness… tales she could not bring to mind… when Tim and the horse her father gave her carried her on to Jimmy? Had the other thing not been the evil dream, and this her first drowsy awakening from it?

  As if he heard her thoughts, he murmured, “They have a song in Outling lands. The Song of the Men:

  The world sails to an unseen wind.

  Light swirls by the bows.

  The wake is night.

  But the Dwellers have no such sadness.”

  “I don’t understand,” she said.

  He nodded. “There’s much you’ll have to understand, darling, and I can’t see you again until you’ve learned those truths. But meanwhile you’ll be with our son.”

  She tried to lift her head and kiss him. He held her down. “Not yet,” he said. “You’ve not been received among the Queen’s people. I shouldn’t have come for you, except that she was too merciful to forbid. Lie back, lie back.”

  Time blew past. The horse galloped tireless, never stumbling, up the mountain. Once she glimpsed a troop riding down it and thought they were bound for a last weird battle in the west against… who?… one who lay cased in iron and sorrow. Later she would ask herself the name of him who had brought her into the land of the Old Truth.

  Finally spires lifted splendid among the stars, which are small and magical and whose whisperings comfort us after we are dead. They rode into a courtyard where candles burned unwavering, fountains splashed and birds sang. The air bore fragrance of brok and pericoup, of rue and roses, for not everything that man brought was horrible. The Dwellers waited in beauty to welcome her. Beyond their stateliness, pooks cavorted through the gloaming; among the trees darted children; merriment caroled across music more solemn.

  “We have come—” Tim’s voice was suddenly, inexplicably a croak. Barbro was not sure how he dismounted, bearing her. She stood before him and saw him sway on his feet.
/>
  Fear caught her. “Are you well?” She seized both his hands. They felt cold and rough. Where had Sambo gone? Her eyes searched beneath the cowl. In this brighter illumination, she ought to have seen her man’s face clearly. But it was blurred, it kept changing. “What’s wrong, oh, what’s happened?”

  He smiled. Was that the smile she had cherished? She couldn’t completely remember. “I-I must go,” he stammered, so low she could scarcely hear. “Our time is not ready.” He drew free of her grasp and leaned on a robed form which had appeared at his side. A haziness swirled over both their heads. “Don’t watch me go… back into the earth,” he pleaded. “That’s death for you. Till our time returns—There, our son!”

  She had to fling her gaze around. Kneeling, she spread wide her arms. Jimmy struck her like a warm, solid cannonball. She rumpled his hair; she kissed the hollow of his neck; she laughed and wept and babbled foolishness; and this was no ghost, no memory that had stolen off when she wasn’t looking. Now and again, as she turned her attention to yet another hurt which might have come upon him—hunger, sickness, fear—and found none, she would glimpse their surroundings. The gardens were gone. It didn’t matter.

  “I missed you so, Mother. Stay?”

  “I’ll take you home, dearest.”

  “Stay. Here’s fun. I’ll show. But you stay.”

  A sighing went through the twilight. Barbro rose. Jimmy clung to her hand. They confronted the Queen.

  Very tall she was in her robes woven of northlights, and her starry crown and her garlands of kiss-me-never. Her countenance recalled Aphrodite of Milos, whose picture Barbro had often seen in the realms of men, save that the Queen’s was more fair and more majesty dwelt upon it and in the night-blue eyes. Around her the gardens woke to new reality, the court of the Dwellers and the heaven-climbing spires.

  “Be welcome,” she spoke, her speaking a song, “forever.”

  Against the awe of her, Barbro said, “Moon-mother, let us go home.”

  “That may not be.”

  “To our world, little and beloved,” Barbro dreamed she begged, “which we build for ourselves and cherish for our children.”

  “To prison days, angry nights, works that crumble in the fingers, loves that turn to rot or stone or driftweed, loss, grief, and the only sureness that of the final nothingness. No. You too, Wanderfoot who is to be, will jubilate when the banners of the Outworld come flying into the last of the cities and man is made wholly alive. Now go with those who will teach you.”

  The Queen of Air and Darkness lifted an arm in summons. It halted, and none came to answer.

  For over the fountains and melodies lifted a gruesome growling. Fires leaped, thunders crashed. Her hosts scattered screaming before the steel thing which boomed up the mountainside. The pooks were gone in a whirl of frightened wings. The nicors flung their bodies against the unalive invader and were consumed, until their Mother cried to them to retreat.

  Barbro cast Jimmy down and herself over him. Towers wavered and smoked away. The mountain stood bare under icy moons, save for rocks, crags,. and farther off a glacier in whose depths the auroral light pulsed blue. A cave mouth darkened a cliff. Thither folk streamed, seeking refuge underground. Some were human of blood, some grotesques like the pooks and nicors and wraiths; but most were lean, scaly, long-tailed, long-beaked, not remotely men or Outlings.

  For an instant, even as Jimmy wailed at her breast-perhaps as much because the enchantment had been wrecked as because he was afraid—Barbro pitied the Queen who stood alone in her nakedness. Then that one also had fled, and Barbro’s world shiverered apart.

  The guns fell silent; the vehicle whirred to a halt. From it sprang a boy who called wildly, “Shadow-of-a-Dream, where are you? It’s me, Mistherd. Oh, come, come!”—before he remembered that the language they had been raised in was not man’s. He shouted in that until a girl crept out of a thicket where she had hidden. They stared at each other through dust, smoke and moonglow. She ran to him.

  A new voice barked from the car, “Barbro, hurry!”

  * * *

  Christmas Landing knew day: short at this time of year, but sunlight, blue skies, white clouds, glittering water, salt breezes in busy streets, and the sane disorder of Eric Sherrinford’s living room.

  He crossed and uncrossed his legs where he sat, puffed on his pipe as if to make a veil, and said, “Are you certain you’re recovered? You mustn’t risk overstrain.”

  “I’m fine,” Barbro Cullen replied, though her tone was flat. “Still tired, yes, and showing it, no doubt. One doesn’t go through such an experience and bounce back in a week. But I’m up and about. And to be frank, I must know what’s happened, what’s going on, before I can settle down to regain my full strength. Not a word of news anywhere.”

  “Have you spoken to others about the matter?”

  “No. I’ve simply told visitors I was too exhausted to talk. Not much of a lie. I assumed there’s a reason for censorship.”

  Sherrinford looked relieved. “Good girl. It’s at my urging. You can imagine the sensation when this is made public. The authorities agreed they need time to study the facts, think and debate in a calm atmosphere, have a decent policy ready to offer voters who’re bound to become rather hvsterical at first.” His mouth quirked slightly upward. “Furthermore, your nerves and Jimmy’s get their chance to heal before the journalistic storm breaks over you. How is he?”

  “Quite well. He continues pestering me for leave to go play with his friends in the Wonderful Place. But at his age, he’ll recover—he’ll forget.”

  “He may meet them later anyhow.”

  “What? We didn’t—” Barbro shifted in her chair. “I’ve forgotten too. I hardly recall a thing from our last hours. Did you bring back any kidnapped humans?”

  “No. The shock was savage as it was, without throwing them straight into an… an institution. Mistherd, who’s basically a sensible young fellow, assured me they’d get along, at any rate as regards survival necessities, till arrangements can be made.” Sherrinford hesitated. “I’m not sure what the arrangements will be. Nobody is, at our present stage. But obviously they include those people—or many of them, especially those who aren’t full-grown—rejoining the human race. Though they may never feel at home in civilization. Perhaps in a way that’s best, since we will need some kind of mutually acceptable liaison with the Dwellers.”

  His impersonality soothed them both. Barbro became able to say, “Was I too big a fool? I do remember how I yowled and beat my head on the floor.”

  “Why, no.” He considered the big woman and her pride for a few seconds before he rose, walked over and laid a hand on her shoulder. “You’d been lured and trapped by a skillful play on your deepest instincts, at a moment of sheer nightmare. Afterward, as that wounded monster carried you off, evidently another type of being came along, one that could saturate you with close-range neuropsychic forces. On top of this, my arrival, the sudden brutal abolishment of every hallucination, must have been shattering. No wonder if you cried out in pain. Before you did, you competently got Jimmy and yourself into the bus, and you never interfered with me.”

  “What did you do?”

  “Why, I drove off as fast as possible. After several hours, the atmospherics let up sufficiently for me to call Portolondon and insist on an emergency airlift. Not that that was vital. What chance had the enemy to stop us? They didn’t even try—But quick transportation was certainly helpful.”

  “I figured that’s what must have gone on.” Barbro caught his glance. “No, what I meant was, how did you find us in the back-lands?”

  Sherrinford moved a little off from her. “My prisoner was my guide. I don’t think I actually killed any of the Dwellers who’d come to deal with me. I hope not. The car simply broke through them, after a couple of warning shots, and afterward outpaced them. Steel and fuel against flesh wasn’t really fair. At the cave entrance, I did have to shoot down a few of those troll creatures. I’m not proud of
it.”

  He stood silent. Presently: “But you were a captive,” he said. “I couldn’t be sure what they might do to you, who had first claim on me.” After another pause: “I don’t look for any more violence.”

  “How did you make… the boy… cooperate?”

  Sherrinford paced from her, to the window, where he stood staring out at the Boreal Ocean. “I turned off the mind-shield,” he said. “I let their band get close, in full splendor of illusion. Then I turned the shield back on, and we both saw them in their true shapes. As we went northward, I explained to Mistherd how he and his kind had been hoodwinked, used, made to live in a world that was never really there. I asked him if he wanted himself and whomever he cared about to go on till they died as domestic animals—yes, running in limited freedom on solid hills, but always called back to the dream-kennel.” His pipe fumed furiously. “May I never see such bitterness again. He had been taught to believe he was free.”

  Quiet returned, above the hectic traffic. Charlemagne drew nearer to setting; already the east darkened.

  Finally Barbro asked, “Do you know why?”

  “Why children were taken and raised like that? Partly because it was in the pattern the Dwellers were creating; partly in order to study and experiment on members of our species—minds, that is, not bodies; partly because humans have special strengths which are helpful, like being able to endure full daylight.”

  “But what was the final purpose of it all?”

  Sherrinford paced the floor. “Well,” he said, “of course the ultimate motives of the aborigines are obscure. We can’t do more than guess at how they think, let alone how they feel. But our ideas do seem to fit the data.