A Sterkarm Tryst

by Price, Susan;

  Mistress Crosar stopped just short of the Sterkarm and considered the Elf-May. Elves, it was said, could live three hundred years; but they died at last. If they could die, they could sicken.

  The Elf-May was a huddle of muddied clothes on the ground. Mistress Crosar shifted her attention to Per May. Seen close, the ferocious, murdering, treacherous Sterkarm was an ailing and exhausted boy, his hair plastered to the sweat of his pale face.

  He returned her stare and said in his hoarse voice, “Lady, you’ll no take my word, but in truth, your lass came with us of her own will. We told her to gan her ways, but she would no. We’ve done her no hurt, in no way. But, Entraya …” He choked and coughed. “Be so good …”

  Mistress Crosar resisted the tug at her sympathy. The Devil can quote scripture and hang his head and sob. She half-turned, meaning to step back and leave the way clear for Davy to finish his work.

  Joan, seeing that, in an eye blink, Per was going to be dead, cried out, “She ate wolfsdeath.”

  Mistress Crosar remained between Davy and Per and turned a disbelieving face to her niece. “How came she to do that?”

  Joan looked away. “They all did. They … drank water from where wolfsdeath grows.”

  Davy, who had no interest in plants, being no farmer, said, “Lady, stand aside, be so good.”

  Mistress Crosar remained where she was, her eyes narrowed. She knew plants. Wolfsdeath was not a water plant, but one of shady woods and hillsides. She had never known it to taint water.

  Per Sterkarm said, “She fetched us water.” He paused, as if remembering. “She no drank herself.” He remembered more. “She drank first, before she brought water to us.”

  Mistress Crosar turned to stare at her niece. So did Aidan and Sandy Yonstone. No one spoke. Killing Sterkarm … Well, that was something any Grannam approved. It could be said she’d been defending herself, since the Sterkarms had abducted her. …

  But Joan saw in their faces that giving trusting people poisoned water didn’t sit well with them, even if the people were Sterkarms. Sandy Yonstone looked at her with something like horror.

  “I did no!” Joan said. “They sickened. It was water where wolfsdeath grew. Its leaves had tainted water.”

  Mistress Crosar turned back to the Sterkarm. Wolfsdeath was a strong poison, possibly the strongest. There was honor to be won here, in the saving of one almost dead of it. Interesting that it killed Elves as well as people … And young Sterkarm would have to bow his head and thank a Grannam woman.

  “Let me look at her. …” Mistress Crosar stumped forward, hampered by the slope, her skirts, and stiff knees. Clumsily, she lowered herself to the ground beside Andrea.

  The Elf-May’s cheek was pressed against the ground, her hair stuck to her face with vomit. Awkwardly, Mistress Crosar pulled at her shoulder, trying to roll her onto her back. The Elf was no lightweight.

  Per Sterkarm leaned across the Elf-May, pulling her over on to her back. Her uppermost arm fell to her side, her head rolled, but otherwise she lay as if dead. There was no sound from her, and her face was blue-white.

  Mistress Crosar glanced up at Per and was startled. His lips were drawn back from set teeth, and his eyes, so pale a gray-blue as to be almost silver, glared as if he would stare a hole through her skull. He didn’t need to speak. Mistress Crosar had never been so eloquently begged to save a life before. It was a pleading that disregarded all barriers between a lady and someone who was truly no more than a farmer, disregarded all barriers of enmity between Sterkarm and Grannam. It was hard to ignore.

  In her mind, she heard what she might say: Your whore is dead. In the upper room at Brackenhill, she might have said that with satisfaction. There, on the hillside, looking into the boy’s sick and anxious face—and with her own brother, and Joan, Davy, and herself all in danger—she could not say them. “I am sad for it, but she may be beyond—”

  The boy reached out and plucked a stem of light feathery quaking grass. He held it beneath the Elf-May’s nose. Both of them saw the grass head quiver to the very slightest disturbance of air. The boy raised his silvery-blue eyes to hers again.

  “Joan,” Mistress Crosar said, “bring that cloak here.”

  Joan, standing within the circle of Sandy’s arms, wrapped in his cloak, was warmer than she had been for a long time. She did not wish to give up the cloak for the dirty Elf-May. “I’m cold.”

  Mistress Crosar raised herself to her knees and vented on Joan the irritation she could not aim at the Sterkarm and his woman. “Tha’ve been happy to run about these hills like a tinker’s whore. Every man here has seen all there is of thee to see. It be a little late, madam, to turn coy! Give it here!”

  Davy and Aidan turned away, horrified to hear their lady say such things of her own niece and fearful that they’d live to regret it entering their ears. Sandy let go of Joan and stepped away from her.

  Joan wrapped herself in the cloak more tightly. Why should she obey when spoken to so? Why should she give up a good cloak to be ruined by wrapping around that filthy woman? But when Per turned to look at her, she unwound the cloak from herself and threw it to him.

  Mistress Crosar snatched the cloak and spread it over the Elf-May. “Davy, be so good—build a shelter.” A thicket of birch grew in a hollow at a little distance. “Light a fire.”

  “Lady,” Davy said. “There be no sense in this.”

  “Davy, be so good—a shelter and a fire.”

  Sandy trudged off toward the thicket. “I’ll make a start, Mistress.”

  Mistress Crosar looked pointedly at Davy.

  “Mistress,” Davy said, “we should move. To stay here is to be found.”

  “Davy,” Mistress Crosar said, “if tha’rt are for moving on, gan, and God speed. Take my niece—maybe tha canst do something with her. I can no. My mind be to stay here. God willing, we shall meet again.”

  Davy snorted with exasperation. She told him to go while knowing that he wouldn’t, and couldn’t, leave her in open country with Sterkarms and Elves about. Her wilfulness endangered herself, him, and his men. She was worse than her brother, had twice the guts of her brother, and Davy loved her for it.

  Looking at him, she said, “Gan then, if tha’rt ganning.”

  He gritted his teeth, and said to Aidan, “We build a shelter.” He wished that he’d killed the Sterkarm, disarmed or not. He might still have to. Never shake hands with a Sterkarm.

  16th-Side A:

  The FUP Compound

  Changeling Per

  Carrying fire, as Anders and Rane did, was a delicate business. Not every man would take the trouble. It meant taking a cow’s horn and fashioning a pierced lid for it. If the holes were too few or too small, they let in too little air, and the embers died. Too large or too many, they let in too much air, and the embers flared into flame at the carrier’s belt.

  The horn was filled with tinder, such as the dry, powdery wood from the center of rotting logs. Hot embers from a fire were added and were half-smothered by more tinder. If the horn’s cap let in just enough air, the tinder smoldered sulkily, never quite going out, never quite burning. With luck, a new fire could be quickly started by introducing the smoldering embers to dry tinder and air.

  With bits of dry twig and sheets of paper crunched into balls, Anders built a fire on the floor of the Elf-House. While he knelt over it, blowing on it, other men smashed the box on the desk, throwing it to the floor, breaking its glass, dragging out the lead that tethered it to the wall. They smashed the eyes in the corners, which they knew for spies, and broke windows with more crashing and tinkling of Elvish glass.

  The breeze through the broken windows soon had Anders’s fire burning, and Per set men to lead the nervous horses to the other side of the Elves’ steel fence. Sterkarm horses were trained to tolerate a lot, but they didn’t like fire. All the men scanned the hills
, watching for the arrival of the Elves.

  Per broke an Elf-Chair, set fire to a stave, and carried it into the Elf-Gate’s great tunnel where he used it to light a bonfire of cushions, chairs, and paper. The flames liked the through-draft in the tunnel and roared up the curved walls. Large tiles buckled, cracked, bulged, and fell. The stink as it burned was unearthly and atrocious.

  Per ran down the ramp to where a few men, including Sweet Milk, still waited for him. The others, outside the fence, waved urgent beckoning arms.

  The Elf-Gate woke, the din startling them into stillness. Then, as bright colored lights flashed beside the Elf-Gate’s mouth, they snatched up weapons and ran across the compound. Behind them, the Elf-Gate shrieked.

  At the fence, they turned. The screeching rose to a painful whine and the missing half of the Elf-Gate’s tunnel appeared out of the air.

  Per grabbed his bow. Sweet Milk and Rane did the same. With arrows on the strings, and their bows held horizontally, they waited and watched.

  Smoke poured in a long tail from the Elf-Gate. Flames leaped in the tunnel, rising like water up the walls and across the roof. The gate spat out flame like a Hell’s Mouth—and yells and howls came from within, as if from the damned. The newly appeared half vanished. The rest continued to roar and burn.

  The Sterkarms let down their bows, laughed, and whooped. Slipping arrows back into quivers, they ran to join those who waited with the horses.

  Sweet Milk looked back and saw Per still inside the fence. He had dropped his bow and drawn his long knife. “What?” Sweet Milk shouted to him.

  Per nodded toward the dead Elves, still pinned to the fence by arrows. “Their heads.” The others, some already mounted, stared at him. “Gifts,” Per explained, “for Patterson.” He went to the nearest Elf and dragged back the body’s head by its nose.

  Anders left his horse to join by Sweet Milk in the gateway. “We’re ganning back to shieling. No to Patterson.”

  Per busied himself with hacking through muscle and gristle. Light and shadow played over him as the flames behind him rose and fell. With the head partially severed, he said, “Patterson killed mine daddy.”

  Many of the men nodded. No one doubted that Patterson owed them blood. If they were stuck here, in the same world as him, it was hard to overlook that.

  Ash spiraled down from the air like hot snow. “So,” Anders said, “we call on Patterson?”

  Per succeeded in severing the head, but its hair was cropped so short, he had nothing to hold it by. He let it thud to the ground.

  “Tha’ll no tie that to tha saddle,” Anders said.

  Rane had gone to work on the guard at the gate’s opposite side. “Nor this one!”

  Sweet Milk turned to the fence. Many Elvish bags, in bright colors, had blown against it and become trapped in the mesh. He picked one up and unfolded it. The material was extraordinarily fine and rustled in his hand. It was a brilliant, pure white, which no one human could have made, with a blue and red design, equally bright. It was large enough to hold a head and, best of all, had holes which formed handles. With a length of twine, it would be easily tied to a saddlebow.

  While Sweet Milk held the bag open, Per picked up the head and dropped it inside. Anders snatched another bag from the fence and took it to Rane to hold the head he was freeing from its neck. All of them, by then, sweated inside their jakkes from the fire’s heat. Time to leave.

  Black smoke rose from the Elf-Gate’s wreck, coiling away on the wind. It would be seen for miles. They left at a canter.

  Several turned to look back. The air roared. Orange and yellow flames burst from the top and sides of the Elf-House. Ash and debris whirled into the air and fell. The Elf-Gate was closed against Elves and to them. All hope of returning to their own world was ended.

  21st Side:

  The Time Tube’s Headquarters

  Mick

  Behind the Hall was one of those prefab buildings, raised up on stilts with steps leading to the door. Next to it was an enormous concrete pipe, supported by a cradle of steels. The terrible noise came from there. As the sound rose higher, Mick clamped his clipboard under one arm, so he could jam a finger in each ear. He watched men in camouflage troop up a ramp and disappear into the concrete tube.

  James Windsor

  At its highest pitch, the noise from the Tube was painful and so all-pervading it became a kind of noise-silence. Windsor stood on the grass near the corner of Dilsmead Hall, fingers stuck deep in his ears, watching the last of Tuzzio’s privates run silently into the Tube.

  The wide plastic strips that masked the mouth of the Tube fell silently back into place. Silently, a bubble of flame belched from the Tube’s mouth. Heat washed across the gravel path and lawn. Windsor’s skin tightened and his eyes dried in the heat.

  Windsor’s legs turned him around and carried him away without his having to think. He didn’t want to be there. The pain in his gut felt as if something was chewing at him, and for a moment, he leaned against the house wall, doubled over. As soon as he could, he hurried on.

  This is not happening, he thought. It’s not. I won’t have it. Behind him, the Tube’s noise wound down and died with a scream. Then other, lesser screams were heard. Windsor refused to listen. He ran up the hall’s elegant steps to its front door.

  Mick

  Fingers still in his ears, Mick watched a spew of flames twist and lay hold of the prefab beside the concrete tube. The all-surrounding din stopped, leaving him deafened. He saw people throw themselves out of the office before he heard their cries.

  As he ran forward, he took his phone from his pocket. His thumb found and pressed 112.

  “Emergency. Which service do you require?”

  “Fire!” A man was on fire in front of him. Mick tried to pull off his parka, but its tight cuffs made it difficult, especially while holding a phone.

  “You require a fire engine, is that correct?”

  Mick dropped the phone, pulled off his parka, and threw it over the burning man.

  James Windsor

  Once inside the hall, everything was quiet, elegant, and cool. As it should be. If you knew what to listen for, you could distinguish the flames’ roar, but it seemed far away and harmless.

  A pretty receptionist sat at a desk beside a vase of flowers. “Emergency,” Windsor said to her, and she straightened, reaching for the phone.

  Windsor lowered himself into an armchair, clutching his stomach. “Call me an ambulance straightaway.”

  31

  16th-Side A:

  Wild Country

  Joan • Mistress Crosar

  It was cold there on the hillside, but her aunt insisted on staying to tend the Elvish whore. She’d ordered the men to hack down small timber to build a shelter. Joan refused to help, withdrawing instead to the shelter of a gorse bush, wrapping herself in the cloak her aunt had angrily given her “to cover herself up.” When no one was paying her any attention, she pulled on her gloves and took the wolfsdeath tubers from her pouch before throwing them under the gorse’s thorns. She couldn’t have them found on her.

  It wasn’t that she’d done anything very wrong. She hadn’t killed anyone, unless the Elf-May died. Even if she did, Joan hadn’t meant to kill her, and she was only an Elf, not a real person. Even so, she didn’t want to explain her actions, especially not to her aunt.

  The shelter grew rapidly as the men drove cut branches into the ground around the Elf-May. The branches were bent into a dome and lashed together with oat-straw string from their pockets. Thinner, whippier branches and heather twigs were woven into the frame, making thin walls, which they draped with cloaks. Inside the shelter, it grew warmer.

  Young Sterkarm—disarmed of sword and dagger by Davy—stumbled after them, trying to help. He was willing but useless. Given an armful of cut fern, he dropped it or wavered like a drunk, slipped, a
nd fell.

  Mistress Crosar, seeing that this annoyed Davy, sighed and rose, heaving herself up with her hands on her knees. Grudging every step, she picked her way across the slope to where the boy had fallen and sat, his head in his hand. Stooping over him, she set her hand on his shoulder and reached toward his face with the other.

  He reared back from her.

  “Tch! What art feared on?” He closed his eyes then, and let her feel his forehead, which was damp and cool, and the pulse in his throat. “Tha’rt still feeling poison. It’ll pass.” She offered him her hand, which, after a moment, he took, and rose to his feet. He caught hold of her forearms and helped her straighten, too.

  She chuckled. “Will we hobble back together, my laddie?”

  Something that might have been a smile appeared briefly on his face and they started back to the shelter, leaning on each other. “Tha’ll be better—” Mistress Crosar broke off, startled by something dark moving higher up the slope. An attack? Her head twisted, looking for Davy and the other men, for Joan …

  The dark thing darted behind a gorse thicket. A man, stooping as he ran? She called out in wordless alarm as the dark thing swerved and pelted for her, fast as a ball from a pistol.

  Then it was on them and rose up, taller than she was, before dropping down and circling them both. A black gaze-hound, long, lean, and silent. It came at Sterkarm again, stood on its hind legs and put its forepaws on his shoulders. He sagged beneath its weight, and sat, and the great hound stood astride him, lashing its whip of a tail and trying to lick his face, though he fended it off with one arm. It left him to sniff Mistress Crosar but returned to Per Sterkarm and knocked him flat again just as he sat up.

  Davy came up at a run, which made Sterkarm grip the hound’s collar and say, “Leave him!”

  Other Grannam men ran up. Davy said, “Be you hurt, Lady?”