by Andre Norton
When the man had gone Broson turned eagerly to his son. He even forgot the strangeness of that blank mask which had only eyes to give it the semblance of a living man.
“Collard, how made you these? I have never seen such work. Even in Twyford, in the booths of merchants from overseas—Before—before you never fashioned such.” Looking at that mask his words began to falter. It was as if he spoke not to his son, but to something as alien and strange as those beings reputed to dance about certain stones at seasons of the year, stones prudent men did not approach.
“I do not know—” came the grating voice, hardly above an animal's throaty growl. “They come into my head—then I make them.”
He was turning away when his father caught at his arm. “Your trade—”
There were coins from overseas, good for exchange or for metal, a length of crimson cloth, two knife handles of carven horn.
“Keep it.” Collard might be trying to shrug but his convulsive movement sent him off balance, so he must clutch at the tabletop. “What need has such as I to lay up treasure? I have no bride price to bargain for.”
“But if you wanted not what the trader had to offer—why this?” Amar, who had been watching, demanded. He was a little irked that his brother, who was younger and, in the old days had no great promise, could suddenly produce such marketable wares.
“I do not know.” Again Collard slewed around, this time turning his bark mask in his brother's direction. “I think I wished to know if they had value enough to attract a shrewd dealer. But, yes, father, you have reminded me of another debt.” He took up the length of fine cloth, a small gold coin which had been looped so that one might wear it on a neck chain. “The Wise Woman served me as best she could.”
He then added: “For the rest—let it be for my share of the household, since I cannot earn my bread at the forge.”
At dusk he carried his offering to Sharvana. She watched as he laid coin and cloth on the table in her small house, so aromatic of drying herbs and the brews from them. An owl with a wing in splints perched on a shelf above his head, and other small wild things, here tame, had scuttled into cover at his coming.
“I have it ready—” She went to the cupboard, bringing out another mask. This was even more supple. He fingered it wonderingly.
“Well-worked parchment,” she told him, “weather-treated, too. I have been searching for something to suit your purpose. Try it. You have been at work?”
He took from the safe pocket of his jerkin the last thing he had brought her. If the trader had coveted what he had seen that morn, how much more he would have wanted this. It was a figure of a winged woman, her arms wide and up as if she were about to take to the skies in search of something there seen and greatly desired. For this was to the figures he had sold as a finished sword blade is to the first rough casting.
“You have seen—her?” Sharvana put out her hand as if to gather up the figure, but she did not quite touch it.
“As the rest,” he grated. “The dreams—then I awaken. And I find that, after a fashion, I can make the dream people. Wise Woman, if you were truly friend to me, you would give me from your stores that which would make me dream and never wake again!”
“That I cannot do, as you know. The virtue of my healing would then pour away, like running water, through my fingers. But you know not why you dream, or of what places?” Her voice became eager, as if she had some need to learn this.
“I know only that the land I see is not the Dales—at least the Dales as they now are. Can a man dream of the far past?”
“A man dreams of his own past. Why not, were the gift given, of a past beyond his own reckoning?”
“Gift!” Collard caught up that one word and made it an oath. “What gift—?”
She looked from him to the winged figure. “Collard, were you ever able to make such before?”
“You know not. But to see my hands so—I would trade all for a straight back and a face which would not afright a woman into screaming!”
“You have never let me foresee for you—”
“No! Nor shall I!” he burst out. “Who would want that if he were as I am now? As to why this—this dreaming and the aftermaking of my dream people has come upon me—well, that which I was handling in the smithy was no common metal. There must have been some dire ensorcelment in it. That trader never returned so we could ask about it.”
“It is my belief,” said Sharvana, “that it came from some stronghold of the Old Ones. They had their wars once, only the weapons used were no swords, nor spears, no crossbow darts, but greater. It could be that trader ventured into some old stronghold and brought forth the remains of such weapons.”
“What matter?” asked Collard.
“Only this—things which a man uses with emotion, fashions with his hands, carries with him, draw into themselves a kind of—I can only call it ‘life.’ This holds though many seasons may pass. And if that remnant of emotion, that life, is suddenly released—it could well pass in turn into one unwary, open—”
“I see.” Collard ran fingertips across the well-scrubbed surface of the table. “Then as I lay hurt I was so open —and there entered into me perhaps the memories of other men?”
She nodded eagerly. “Just so! Perhaps you see in dreams the Dales as they were before the coming of our people.”
“And what good is that to me?”
“I do not know. But use it, Collard, use it! For if a gift goes unused it withers and the world is the poorer for it.”
“The world?” his croak was far from laughter. “Well enough, I can trade these. And if I earn my bread so, then no man need trouble me. It is young to learn that all one's life must be spent walking a dark road, turning never into any welcoming door along the way.”
Sharvana was silent. Suddenly she put out her hand, caught his before he could draw back, turning it palm-up in the lamplight.
He would have jerked free if he could, but in that moment her strength was as great as that of any laboring smith, and she had him pinned. Now she leaned forward to study the lines on the flesh so exposed.
“No foreseeing!” He cried that. The owl stirred and lifted its sound wing.
“Am I telling you?” she asked. “Have it as you wish, Collard. I have said naught.” She released his wrist.
He was uneasy, drawing back his hand quickly, rubbing the fingers of the other about that wrist as if he would erase some mark she had left there.
“I must be going.” He caught up the parchment mask—that he would try on only in his own hut where none could see his face between the taking off of one covering and the putting on of another.
“Go with the good will of the house.” Sharvana used the farewell of their people. But somehow those words eased his spirit a little.
Time passed. All avoided Collard's hut, he invited no visitors, not even his father. Nor did another trader come. Instead there was news from the greater world outside the Dale, a world which seemed to those of Ghyll that of a songsmith.
When the Lord Vescys had wedded, his second wife had had already a daughter, though few had heard of her. But now the story spread throughout all of Ghyll and to the out-farms and steads beyond.
For a party had ridden to the Keep, and thereafter there was much cleaning and ordering of the rooms in the mid-tower. It was that Vescys was sending his daughter, the Lady Jacinda, to the country, for she sickened in the town.
“Sickened!” Collard, on his way to the well, paused in the dark, for the voice of his sister-in-law Nicala was sharp and ringing in the soft dusk. “This is no new thing. When Dame Matild had me come into the rooms to see how much new herb rushing was needed for the undercarpeting, she spoke freely enough. The young lady has never been better than she is now—a small, twisted thing, looking like a child, not a maid of years like to wed. Not that our lord will ever find one to bed with her unless he sweetens the bargain with such dowry as even a High Lord's daughter could bring!
“The truth
of it is, as Dame Matild said—the new Lady Gwennan, she wants not this daughter near her. Very delicate she is, and says she cannot bear my lord a straight son if she sees even in bower and at table such a twisted, crooked body.”
Collard set his pail noiselessly down and moved a step or two nearer the window. For the first time in seasons curiosity stirred in him. He willed Nicala to continue.
Which she did, though he gained little more facts. Until Broson growled he wanted his mulled ale, and she went to clatter at the hearth. Collard, once more in his hut, did not reach for his tools, but looked into the flames in the fireplace. He had laid aside his mask, and now he rubbed his hands slowly together while he considered word by word what he had overheard.
This Lady Jacinda—so she was to be thrust out of sight, into a country Keep where her kin need not look at her? Oh, he knew the old belief that a woman carrying dared not see anything or anyone misshapen, lest it mark the babe in her womb. And Lord Vescys would certainly do all he could to assure the coming of a son. There would be no considering the Lady Jacinda. Did she care? Or would she be glad, as he had, to find a place away from sight of those who saw her not like them?
Had she longed to be free of that and would be pleased to come to Ghyll? And was it harder for her, a maid, to be so, than it was for him? For the first time Collard was pulled out of his dreams and his bitterness, to think of someone living, breathing, walking this world.
He arose and picked up the lamp. With it in hand, he went to a wall shelf and held the light to fully illumine the figures there. There were a goodly company of them, beasts and humanoid together. Looking upon them critically, something stirred in his mind, not quite a dream memory.
Collard picked several up, turned them about. Though he did not really look at them closely now, he was thinking. In the end he chose one which seemed right for his purpose.
Bringing the figure back to the table he laid out his tools. What he had was a small beast of horselike form. It was posed rearing, not as in battle but as if it gamboled in joyous freedom. But it was not a horse, for from between its delicate ears sprang a single horn.
Laying it on its side, Collard went to work on the base. It was cockcrow when he was done. And now the dancing unicorn had become a seal, its base graven to print a J with a small vine tracery about it.
Collard pushed back from the table. The need which had set him to work was gone. Why had he done this? He was tempted almost to sweep the piece into the melting pot so he could not see it again. But he did not, only pushed it away, determined to forget his folly.
He did not witness the entrance of the Lord Vescys and his daughter, though all the rest of Ghyll gathered. But he heard later that the Lady Jacinda came in a horse litter, and that she was so muffled by cloaks and covers that only her face could be seen. It was true that she was small and her face very pale and thin.
“Not make old bones, that one won't,” he heard Nicala affirm. “I heard that Dame Matild has already sent for Sharvana. The lady brought only her old nurse and she is ailing, too. There will be no feasting at Ghyll Keep.” There was regret in her voice, not, Collard believed, for the plight of the Lady Jacinda, but rather that the stir at the Keep would be soon over, with none of the coming and going which the villagers might enjoy as a change in their lives.
Collard ran fingers along the side of his mask. For all his care it was wearing thin. He might visit Sharvana soon. But why, his hard honesty made him face the truth, practice such excuses? He wanted to hear of the lady and how she did in a body which imprisoned her as his did him. So with the coming of dark he went. But at the last moment he took the seal, still two-minded over it.
There was a light in Sharvana's window. He gave his own private knock and slipped in at her call. To his surprise she sat on her stool by the fireplace, her journey cloak still about her shoulders, though its hood had slipped back. Her hands lay in her lap and there was a kind of fatigue about her he had never seen before.
Collard went to her quickly, took her limp hands in his.
“What is it?”
“That poor little one, Collard, cruel—cruel—”
“The Lady Jacinda?”
“Cruel,” she repeated. “Yet she is so brave, speaking me fair and gentle even when I needs must hurt her poor body. Her nurse, ah, she is old and for all her love of her lady can do little to ease her. They traveled at a pace which must have wracked her. Yet I would judge she made no word of complaint. Just as she has never spoken out against her banishment, or so her nurse told me privately after I had given a soothing draught and seen her asleep. But it is a cruel thing to bring her here—”
Collard squatted on his heels, listening. It was plain that the Lady Jacinda had won Sharvana's support. But at length she talked herself quiet and drank of the herb tea he brewed for her. Nor did she ask why he had come, seemed only grateful that he was there. At last, to shake her out of bleak thoughts, he took the seal out of his belt wallet and set it in the lamplight.
It had been fashioned of that same strange metal which had been his bane. He was drawing on that more and more, for it seemed to him that those pieces he fashioned of that were his best and came the closest to matching his dream memories. Now it glowed in the light.
Sharvana drew a deep breath, taking it up. When she looked upon the seal in the base she nodded.
“Well done, Collard. I shall see this gets to her hand—”
“Not so!” Now he wanted to snatch it back but somehow his hand would not obey his wish.
“Yes.” She was firm. “And, Collard, if she asks—you will bring others. If for even the short space of the fall of a drop of water you can make her forget what her life is, then you have done a great thing. Bring to me the happy ones, those which will enchant her—perhaps even make her smile.”
So Collard culled his collection, startled to find how few he had which were “happy.” Thus he set to work, and oddly enough now his dream people he remembered as beautiful or with an amusing oddness.
Twice had he made visits to Sharvana with his offerings. He was working only with the strange metal now and found it easy to shape. But the third time she came to him, which was so unusual he was startled.
“The Lady Jacinda wants to see you, to thank you face to face.”
“Face to face!” Collard interrupted her. His hands went up to cover even that mask in a double veiling of his “face.”
Then Sharvana's eyes flashed anger. “You are—or you were—no coward, Collard. Do you so fear a poor, sick maid who wants only to give you her thanks? She has fretted about this until it weighs on her mind. You have given her pleasure, do not spoil it. She knows how it is with you, and she has arranged for you to come by night, through the old posten gate, I with you. Do you now say ‘no'?”
He wanted to, but found he could not. For there had grown in him the desire to see the Lady Jacinda. He had been, he thought, very subtle in his questioning of Sharvana, perhaps too subtle for the bits he had learned he had not been able to fit into any mind picture. Now he found himself agreeing.
Thus, with Sharvana as his guide, Collard came to the bower of the Lady Jacinda, trying to walk as straight as his crooked body would allow, his mask tightly fastened against all eyes, most of all hers.
She was very small, even as they said, propped with cushions and well covered with furred robes, as she sat in a chair which so overtopped her with its tall back that she seemed even smaller. Her hair was long and the color of dark honey, and it lay across her hunched shoulders in braids bound with bell-hung ribbons. But for the rest she was only a pale, thin face and two white hands resting on the edge of a board laid across her lap for a table. On that board marched all the people and beasts he had sent to her. Now and then she caressed one with a fingertip.
Afterward he could not really remember their greeting to one another. It was rather as if two old friends, long parted, came together after many seasons of un-happiness, to sit in the sun and just enjoy warmth an
d their encounter. She asked him of his work, and he told her of the dreams. And then she said something which did linger in his mind:
“You are blessed, Collard-of-the-magic-fingers, that you can make your dreams live. And I am blessed that you share them with me. Now—name these—”
Somehow he began to give names to each. And she nodded and said:
“That is just right! You have named it aright!”
It was a dream itself, he afterward thought, as he stumbled back to the village beside Sharvana, saying nothing as he wavered along, for he was reliving all he could remember, minute by minute.
With the morn he awoke after short hours of sleep with the urgency to be at work again. And he labored throughout the day with the feeling that this was a task which must be done and he had little time in which to do it.
What he wrought now was not any small figure but a hall in miniature—such a hall as would be found, not in the small Keep of Ghyll, but perhaps in the hold of a High Lord. Scented wood for paneling, metal—the strange metal wherever it could be used.
Exhausted, he slept. He ate at times when hunger pinched him hard, but time he did not count—nor how long before he had it done.
He sat studying it carefully, marking the furnishing. There were two high seats upon a dais. Those were empty—and that was not right. Collard rubbed his hand across his face, the rough scar tissue there for the first time meant nothing to him. There was something lacking—and he was so tired. He could not think.
He staggered away from the table, dropped upon his bed. And there he slept so deeply he believed he did not dream. Yet when he woke he knew what it was he must do. Again came that feeling of time's pressure, so he begrudged the moments it took to find food to eat.
Once more he wrought and worked with infinite care. When he had done, with that passing of time he did not mark, he had the two who must sit on those high seats and he placed them therein.
She—no twisted, humped body, but straight and beautiful, free to ride, to walk, to run as she never had been. Yet her face, it was Jacinda and none could deny it.