A Princess of the Chameln

by Cherry Wilder

  “I have heard that you know something of magic,” said Jessamy Quade, looking away from Aidris, “so you will believe me if I tell you that the Wilds of Wildrode are accursed. A bane has fallen over the family, and on this ancient keep. I think it even pursued us on our last quest.”

  “I have heard of such things but not believed them very much,” said Aidris. “Yet I know what it is to be pursued by misfortune.”

  “The history of Sir Jared’s line for more than fifty years is one of accident, disease and death. His mother lost ten children. His elder brother Garl, a fine man on whom so many hopes were centered, died after a fall from his horse, on his wedding day, five years past. His father, Old Sir Garl, was found dead in his chamber, mysteriously burned. With the lands it has been the same: even the kind magic of the Carach trees could not heal this corner of Athron. Some have said, pardon me, that we are too close to the wild Chameln lands and the mountains, but I believe it is a curse.

  “We swore, Jared and I, to escape this dreadful thing. We went off questing and did well and suffered no harm. Then Jared became the heir of Wildrode. We went off on one last quest. We travelled, as I told you, through all the lands of Hylor, and I must say we thought of ourselves more as travellers than as questors. We used no violence, did not seek quarrels. Then we came at last to the High Plateau of Mel’Nir.

  “We searched in that enchanted place, that wilderness of mists and rocks and grass tussock, for the Ruined City whose Chyrian name is Tulach-na-Shee. I have told you and all our questioners that we did not find it, but now I am not so sure. Certainly we found no ruins; but one day we came through a mist and were in a place that was green and flourishing. It was beyond a small, dried-up riverbed no more than a league from the village of Aird on the plateau, travelling to the east.

  “In this green place there was a spring near a stone cell, like a chapel to the Goddess, and beyond it, among the tall spreading black pines that grow on the plateau, we saw a grey stone gateway. It was finely wrought with statues of beasts, and through the gateway we could see a tall house, a mansion.

  “We drank at the spring and watered the horses and then turned to approach the gateway. A young man stood before us. No giant warrior, no brigand, but a slender youth in a russet tunic. We began to walk across the grass to greet him when he called to us to halt. He spoke in a strange way, lifting up his voice and calling to us as if we were far away or as if he could not see us plainly.

  “‘Are you dark or light who come to us?’ he called. I remember the words. I remember everything he said. We took it for no more than a queer greeting, on the order of ‘Do you come in peace?’

  “Sir Jared called back and said his name: ‘Wild of Wildrode, come out of Athron.’

  “Then the young man said: ‘Stay back! You are not yet summoned! You must follow the way to the end!’

  “We made nothing of it, but the words sank into my mind. I spoke up myself then and said, ‘Good Sir’ or ‘Good young sir . . . may we not approach the great house?’

  “But the youth flung up his hand before his face and cried, ‘Go back! Go back!’

  “We stood stockstill, and he gave a whistle, putting his fingers to his lips, like a village boy. They came from nowhere, he summoned them up: two gigantic hounds, like Eildon mastiffs but far more terrible. They were of a color between black and grey, their eyes glowed red. I had only a moment of terror, and then they flung themselves upon us. We were struck to the ground; I saw my dear liege overwhelmed, and I fell down and my head must have struck a stone, for I knew no more. I lost my senses.

  “When I came to myself, I was surrounded by a thick, cold mist. I cried out and began to crawl to the spot where I had last seen Jared. There he still lay, horribly stained with blood. I found the pulse in his throat; he was alive. His face had been mauled and one eye deeply scratched at the corner, but the wounds were not as bad as they seemed at first. I still had a leather bottle at my belt with brandywine out of Lien, so I was able to tend to him a little. The mist was slowly clearing; it was night on the High Plateau, the stars blazing overhead.

  “We were in a bare, dry waste, without grass or chapel or gateway; it had all vanished away. I almost screamed with fright when I saw an animal shape nearby, but it was my horse, my own good Ilsand, and not far away was Sir Jared’s charger, Snow Cloud, a white wraith in the night. They were unharmed, our accoutrement was untouched, the knight’s lance lay where it had fallen from his hand. I took blankets and wrapped us both and sat trembling until the night was over. In the light of dawn, streaming over the plateau, I saw the strangest thing of all. Not far away there was a little heap of stones that might have been the coping of the stone basin about the spring of water, the only sign that anything had ever stood in that lonely place.”

  Aidris listened to the tale and was caught up by it. The quick, almost blunt way that Jessamy Quade used in telling it, convinced her more than flowery speech or traditional flourishes. She saw too how deeply the tale affected the lady herself, as if she lived it all again. Now she drew a shuddering breath and finished the story.

  “There was nothing for us to do but stanch our wounds . . . my legs were scratched and torn but not deeply . . . and go on our way. The worst of it was that Sir Jared had no memory of the encounter at all. It had all been . . . taken from him. I told him all that had taken place, and we have puzzled over it from that day to this but found no true answer to some of the things that were said and done.

  “Dear Aidris, I swear to you I have told no other person of this strange meeting, and I believe Sir Jared has not either. We felt Shame and fear. It might seem a reason to smile now, but there was something Shameful about an attack by two dogs, even if they were like the Hounds of the Dark Huntress herself. We have sometimes lied and told of brigands, but mostly we have said nothing at all.”

  “Could you ride away?” asked Aidris. “Sir Jared at least seems to have been gravely injured.”

  “Not at first. We rallied our spirits and made haste through the Adz and into the border forest as far as Vigrund. We were prepared to make light of this dreadful adventure and rode through the forest and searched for the goblin folk quite cheerfully. But we were both growing sick, a sickness of body and spirit. By the time we reached Vigrund and rested at the inn, Sir Jared had a fever; I was terrified lest it prove to be woundfever, lockjaw, or the raging sickness from a mad dog. When we spoke to Gerr of Kerrick, still keeping up some pretence that we were merely fatigued, he urged us to go by the Wulfental Pass into Athron.

  “Instead we dragged ourselves across the plain to Zerrah, where we had lodged once before, at the manor house. At Zerrah before there had been only a friendly steward who kept the manor for the Daindru. Now we found a garrison, led by a captain of Mel’Nir, but he was kind and let us stay there and had us nursed back to health. Sir Jared’s wounds festered, he lost the sight of his right eye; I was nearly as bad. It was a vile sickness, which would not leave its hold; it wracked our joints and does so sometimes to this day. Sir Jared tires easily and is halting in his speech.”

  “And you see some link between that meeting on the High Plateau and a curse laid on the house of Wildrode?”

  “I do. I think of what was said by the magic being we saw there. As if Wild of Wildrode was a name well-known, as if some old spell first drew us to the place and then caused Sir Jared to be cast out, driven away, because the curse was not yet worked out. Even the sickness was part of this family misfortune.”

  “Was there ever in the family a history of some wrong done to a person with magic powers who might have placed the curse?”

  “None that I know of. But the story goes that the bane set in during the lifetime of old Sir Dirck, Jared’s grandsire, a violent man, in the days when Athron was poor and full of misery. He buried three wives and died mad, chained to the wall of his chamber lest he do himself a mischief.”

  Jessamy Quade stared about the chamber, as if the telling of these old dark tales brought no
relief but rather increased her unrest.

  “You must leave all this,” said Aidris. “Let us think rather of your new life. Let me write to Prince Terril.”

  “My dear,” said Mistress Quade, “you have given me new spirit. I am glad I have told this tale and hope I have not burdened you with it. Guard it well. I know that I can never repay your kindness in coming to me today.”

  “Do you recall the story you told me at the Varda Benefit . . . concerning the royal children of the Chameln lands?” said Aidris as casually as she could.

  “Another accursed race!”

  “Not so!” said Aidris. “For I have heard out of Achamar that both of these persons still live.”

  “I cannot think this is possible. The captain I told you of was not a brute or a fool.”

  “Maybe not,” said Aidris, “but he was a man of Mel’Nir. It was in his interest to believe such lying tales.”

  “How can we know the truth?”

  “I know Nazran Am Thuven very well. He was a friend of my family. I know that he would never have harmed the Heir of the Firn or the Heir of the Zor. I pray you, do not repeat this tale you told to me.”

  “If you wish it,” said Jessamy Quade with a smile. “I will be quiet.”

  She rose up in her trailing red velvet gown and walked to one of the slit windows of the tower. Aidris followed and stood by her side. She saw the mountains, towering close by, only a few miles away across the fields and the downs.

  “How fine to see the mountains!”

  “The hour is late,” said Mistress Quade. “Come to me tomorrow, and I will have pen and paper ready. I must prepare for my journey.”

  As she went down from the tower on its dark, winding stair, Aidris took out her scrying stone. It had no light in it at all, it was a cold grey-blue. She looked around at the blackened stone walls of Wildrode Keep and felt it for the first time as a place accursed.

  Next morning Sir Jared Wild was married in the Great Hall of Wildrode. The sun was shining and a concourse of young maidens from the Wildrode lands and the neighboring manors carried spring flowers. His bride was the lady Corlin Ault, youngest child of Lord Bran of Aulthill. The visiting kedran, looking down on the bright scene from a gallery near the musicians, saw that she was a fair-haired girl, slender, smiling as became a bride. Sir Jared, in his knight’s surcoat, looked handsome, carefree, unmarked, just as Aidris remembered him from the streets of Achamar where he had ridden among the autumn leaves with his true kedran by his side.

  After a ceremony among the maidens, of flowers offered to the Goddess, the marriage was performed by the bride’s uncle, Sir Kenit Ault, a travelling justice out of Varda. The trumpets blew, the guests sat down to feast, nothing marred the happy time. Who could not believe that the darkness had lifted from this corner of Athron?

  Yet before evening Aidris had spoken again with Quartermaster Roon and heard what only a few retainers knew. In the night Mistress Quade had dressed herself in her old kedran tunic with the emblem of the Foresters and had climbed up to the battlements of her tower and had cast herself down to her death. She had been found at dawn and her body carried secretly away and buried no one knew where and no word brought to Sir Jared to disturb him on that day.

  Jessamy Quade had left no words of farewell but a few packets with jewels for those members of the household who had been her friends in happier days. One packet, which the quartermaster now pressed into her hand, was labelled for Kedran Venn of Kerrick Hall. Inside Aidris found an enamel brooch with a pattern of white jessamine flowers and a piece of thin, shaped grey stone, a mere chip of stone. She knew at once where the stone had been found. Now she was one of the very few persons who had heard the tale of strange adventure on the High Plateau of Mel’Nir. She was not sorry when Sergeant Lawlor took the troop away early and set out for Kerrick.

  They rode another way this time, and the highroad carried them a little to the north into the lands of Lord Bran of Aulthill. The spring weather had made the countryside a lush soft green; they came into a village called Hatch and might have ridden right through the place without stopping. As they came gently into the square, however, they heard some kind of commotion in the distance, and two or three villagers ran up and hailed Grey Company.

  “Pray you help us, good Sergeant,” panted a fat man. “They are killing each other on the fairground!”

  “Who then?” asked Sergeant Lawlor, raising a hand for the troop to stop.

  “The tumblers and the kemlings, the hill-folk,” put in a young woman. “They are tearing the ground to pieces and fouling the duckpond!”

  Then the crowd that had gathered all begged the kedran to stop the fight.

  “We are travelling to Kerrick,” said Sergeant Lawlor. “Where are your own watch or your lord’s kedran?”

  “At the wedding by Wildrode!” was the reply.

  The sergeant gave a signal, and Grey Company trotted out of the square in the direction of the riot. The fairground lay at the bottom of a gentle slope, and a fierce fight was laid out before them like the diagram of a battle. Twenty brightly clad tumblers were locked in combat with a clump of dark, shaggy folk clad in hides and beaded headbands.

  “All right,” said Lawlor, with a weary gleam in her eye. “Part them. Use your lances as staves, d’ye hear? Herd those hill-folk back to their tents.”

  She flung up her hand, gave the order, and Grey Company, in perfect order, with a walk, a trot, a canter, charged down the hill. Aidris had no time to feel elated or afraid. She was surprised at the way all the kedran shouted, herself included, as they descended on the fighters. Another tumbler went into the duckpond, a young kemling was nearly ridden down, but the effect of five mounted warriors, however untried, was overwhelming. The fight stopped, the shaggy ones were herded to the right, and the tumblers to the left. The fat man, who was the town reeve, came running down the hill.

  “What now?” asked Sergeant Lawlor. “Why were they fighting, good Reeve? Can we work out the dispute?”

  “The kemlings don’t have much of the common speech,” said the reeve. “I think the tumblers have wronged them some way.”

  “Goddess, what do they speak then, the bears’ language?” said Lawlor impatiently.

  Aidris, who had heard the shouting, let Telavel move a few paces forward. She gave a salute.

  “Sergeant,” she said, “it is the Old Speech. Shall I talk to them?”

  “Venn . . .” said the Sergeant, considering. They all stared at the hill-folk licking their wounds before a cluster of rude tents.

  “Venn,” said the Sergeant, “they are all yours.”

  Aidris gave her lance to Ortwen, got down from Telavel and led her across the soft, muddled ground towards the hill-folk. They were indeed hers. She perceived that kemling was a version of the word Chameln, just as Kerrick was another word for Carach. Yet these were the roughest, most primitive folk she had ever seen: by comparison the northern tribes or even the Tulgai were very tame and civilised.

  She stood a little way off and called, “Who is your leader?”

  The murmur of their speech was hushed; he came forward, a middle-aged man, gap-toothed, almost as broad as he was high. His face was black with anger and streaked with blood and sweat.

  “Ark, Chieftain of the Children of the White Wolf!”

  Aidris bowed her head but held her ground.

  “Good Ark,” she said, “tell me what is played out here, and I will see that you have justice.”

  “Justice,” he rasped. “Bleeding Athron, justice! What is a decent Chameln maid doing among these robbers?”

  She fixed him steadily with her gaze, looking straight into his black eyes as if he were a wolf or a mountain cat that must be tamed.

  “I am in exile,” she said softly.

  He dropped his eyes.

  “All right,” he said. “Come into the tent, lady. You will understand our plight.”

  “Let someone hold my horse,” said Aidris.

  A you
ng girl was pushed out of the crowd, and she took Telavel’s bridle and spoke soothing words to her. The crowd opened up, and Aidris walked behind Ark, the Chieftain, into the largest tent. It was dark but very orderly, and it smelled powerfully of pine and mountain and the Chameln lands. Ark sat down on a rough settle covered with hides and gestured to another. A younger man and a middle-aged woman had followed them into the tent; they fetched bone cups filled with a spirit that smelled and tasted like sour milk.

  “They have despoiled our treasure,” said Ark shortly. “A dancer named Enk or Ennerik came to have his future read and behaved lewdly and stole a fetish. We asked for it back. One thing led to another.”

  “I saw it done,” said the woman. “This was a practiced thief. He thought our treasure could not see, being entranced, but I was there watching.”

  “Your treasure?” asked Aidris.

  “The Blessed Maid,” said Ark. “The Spirit Child.”

  “And the fetish?”

  “A crystal,” said the woman. “Her smaller scrying stone called the Wolf’s Eye. The larger, called Garm’s Fist, is set into the table top.”

  “And he behaved . . . lewdly?”

  “He bent forward and stroked her hair and her arm,” said the woman. “She is a holy person and should not be touched familiarly.”

  “May I see the Blessed Maid?” asked Aidris.

  “Come then,” said Ark.

  They went out of the tent again and approached a smaller, colored tent set apart from the others. Aidris was aware of the kedran, the reeve and his people, even the tumblers watching them. Inside the colored tent there was a blaze of sunshine; the back flaps were rolled up and two older women had been helping the Blessed Maid to wash her hair. They were brushing it out to dry, a fine silky light-brown mass, longer than the hair of the bride at Wildrode.

  She was about twenty years old and pale skinned, more of the Zor than her Firnish companions. Her eyes were grey of two shades, a dark rim round the light pupil; she was thin, bird-boned, not quite in her right wits.

  “Blessed Ilda,” said Ark, “this kedran will help us find the Wolf’s Eye.”