by James Enge
Then the brightness in the west became intolerable to look at; the sea became a darker blue as the sky above grew pale and bright. The sun was up. The waters settled. Aloê concluded her song and ran on northward to find a man and kill him.
Presently she came upon a village, a knot of farmers’ houses by the road. If she had not been misled, the man she sought was here. She approached a house and knocked on its door.
There was no answer. This was strange, and had Aloê been raised on a farm she might have thought it stranger that no one was moving about this farming village, though dawn had come and gone. Land-farming was not one of Aloê’s talents, though. But she knew by the smoke coming from the chimney that this house was occupied. She pounded again on the door and called out, “Your courtesy, this is the Graith’s business. I need not enter, but I must speak with the holder of this house.”
“Go away!” a girl’s voice screamed within. “You can’t fool me! He killed them, and now you’ll kill me! I know you! I know you!”
“Listen,” Aloê said urgently, “who is ‘he’ and who do you think I am? I am a vocate of the Graith of Guardians. I seek an exile who killed a man at Anglecross Port, southward on the coast.”
Silence.
“He is a tall man, white-skinned, red-haired, speaks with an eastern accent,” Aloê continued. “He calls himself—”
“That is Clef,” the girl within said, with the false calm of weary hysteria. “He killed them. He would have killed me too, but I hid. Then he left, before dawn. That was when you killed him. Now you’ll kill me. But I won’t let you kill me, Green Man!”
“I’m not a man,” Aloê said, somewhat miffed. “And I am a vocate, a member of the Graith of Guardians,” she explained, more patiently. “My name is Aloê Oaij. I’ve come to kill no one, except perhaps the man you call Clef. Look out at me!”
“I didn’t say you were a man. You’re the Green Man, the one who hunts along the coast before dawn! I won’t look at you! No one who sees you lives!”
Aloê threw up her hands in despair and shook her head. If the exile had been here and left she was wasting time. There was a chance he was within, though. She gently pressed against the door, felt the stresses in the old wood, and guessed where the hinges and bolt were.
“I’m sorry,” she called out. “It seems I must come in after all. Stand away from the door.”
“You won’t!” the girl screamed triumphantly. “The Green Man won’t break gray wood!”
Aloê braced her left foot and kicked in the door with her right.
She stepped in and found the girl standing, barely, to the right of the doorway. The girl held a hand over her mouth, eyeing Aloê with pale terror. Then she dropped her hand and laughed. She pointed at Aloê’s face, and laughed and laughed. “You’re not him!” she cried. “You’re not green; you’re all black and gold!”
It was true that Aloê’s skin was darker than the norm in Westhold, and her hair lighter. Farm folk, in particular, seemed to be surprised by her appearance, and she had heard this description of herself often enough to find it annoying. But she said nothing about it. Behind the hysterical girl, two battered bloody forms lay on their backs without moving.
“Your parents?” Aloê asked.
The girls turned, looked, turned back to Aloê. “Yes,” she said, almost as if she were unsure. “Clef killed them, then left. Did you really kill him?”
“Not yet,” said Aloê, moving to the motionless forms on the floor. By custom and the Graith’s own First Decree, she was supposed to expel Clef from the Wardlands, and kill him only if he resisted. But Aloê had already decided that Clef would resist.
The sprawled man Aloê did not bother with—his throat was cut deeply and the wound was already drying out. But the fallen woman’s flesh was still warm, and her breath stained with mist the glitterstone hilt of Aloê’s knife when she held it before the woman’s face.
“Your mother’s alive,” Aloê said. “Go get help.”
“No one will open their doors until the sun’s up,” the girl said faintly.
“The sun is up. Hurry, girl. You’ve been brave, but you must do more. Don’t you understand? Your mother is not dead, and may live.”
When the girl’s mother had been put to bed, her wounds bandaged and her bones set, Aloê stepped out into the street to find the village’s Old Women waiting for her. They introduced themselves, and their chief, Naege, said, “We owe you a debt, Vocate. The thing is bad, but it might have been worse.”
“Tell me about Clef, then,” Aloê said. “When did he come here?”
“A few days ago. Harl, poor Tarith’s father, hired him to help him clear some land. I knew something was wrong when I saw him stealing one of my horses early this morning.”
Aloê looked sharply at her.
“I keep a few horses in the stable yonder. Sometimes the others in town hire them; a few times travelers on the road have purchased or traded for them. This morning I heard someone mucking about in the yard, and looked out in time to see Clef ride off on my best stallion.”
“And you didn’t raise the alarm against him?”
“No one goes out before dawn.” There was a murmur of agreement from the other Old Women.
“Because of this Green Man Tarith spoke of.”
“You can call it the Green Man, or you can call it God’s will. People who travel by themselves on the coast road often disappear. The most dangerous time is at night; even the village street isn’t safe then. I’m not going to get myself killed for a stupid horse.”
“I’ll never catch him on foot. Can I borrow a stupid horse?”
Naege sighed. Clearly she thought it was throwing good horses after bad. But she was chief of the Old Women, not only because she was oldest, and she let Aloê have the horse.
Aloê did not expect to catch up with the exile especially soon. She was no great horsewoman, and her quarry had a considerable head start. So she was surprised at what awaited her, a little north of the village along the coast road.
A large form lay across the road, underneath a dark-leafed twisted tree. It was the dead body of a black horse; its blood had pooled on the road.
Aloê dismounted and approached the dead thing. She kept her eye on the trees near at hand, looking out for the exile who called himself Clef. She circled around, keeping her eyes and ears open, yet she saw nothing. Still, she felt very strongly that there was someone nearby, watching her.
Her eyes caught a gleam at the foot of the tree. There, in a strangely warm hollow filled with dark grass, she found a steel buckle in a Kaenish design and a handful of coins, all smeared with blood.
Aloê sighed in vexation. It was the buckle that had given Clef away in Anglecross. Had he abandoned it here to make himself harder to find? But why kill his horse? Perhaps he was trying to make it seem as if he, too, had been killed by a highway robber (this Green Man they spoke of in the village). Why, then, leave the coins? Any robber would have taken those, no matter how much blood they had on them.
She circled around into the line of trees and beyond them. She was a fairly good tracker, and it did not seem to her that anyone had passed that way recently. The ground was soft; her own footprints were clear in spite of the sparse grass and the dead leaves of former years blowing about.
Moving back to the road, she eyed the shore. There was no cover for a man. Still . . .
She went back to the coins in their dark blood-warm hollow beneath the twisted tree. She felt a bit queasy as she crouched down to fish out the coins and the buckle—possibly it was the bleeding horse nearby. She leaned on the old tree and, as she stood up, noticed an odd gooey sort of moss clinging to her hand. She shuddered with disgust and brushed it off on her red cloak. Then she put the coins and buckle in her wallet, mounted her horse, and rode back to the village.
She found Naege at the door to her stables, the spring sunlight golden in her gray hair.
“You’re back suddenly, Vocate,” Naege greeted her w
ryly. “Found your man?”
“Maybe,” Aloê replied, and dismounted. “This Green Man of yours—”
“He’s not mine.”
“—is he a robber or just a killer?”
“Hm. I could answer that question better if I knew what the skank you were talking about.”
Aloê showed her the coins and the buckle she’d found beneath the old tree. “I found your horse—I guess it’s yours—up the road a bit, dead. These were lying on the ground nearby, covered with blood.”
“That’s Clef’s belt buckle.”
Aloê nodded. “Then Clef was the exile I was looking for. I’m guessing that he ran into your Green Man.”
“He’s not mine. And you’re right—the Green Man never takes money. Just life. He never lets go of someone he’s marked. Mal Harl’s son got away from him once, but it didn’t do any good. The Green Man caught up with him a few months later, and no one’s seen Mal since. That was a bad time—the Green Man was in town all the time. Usually he stays on the road.”
“What does he look like?”
“I’ve never seen him.”
Aloê bit back the first reply that occurred to her, scratched her golden unkempt hair (it had been days since she’d properly washed it in fresh water), and said finally, in a neutral voice, “Then how do you know he was in town?”
“You handled that nicely, young woman. So I’ll tell you. You can feel it when he’s around. Kind of a sickening feeling.”
Aloê nodded, remembering how she had felt on the road.
“Tell you something else. You can spot someone he’s marked. Someone he’ll come for, sooner or later, when he can find her alone.” Her glance at Aloê was freighted with meaning.
“Are you talking about me?”
“I’m talking about you. I’m sorry to say so. There isn’t a skank of a lot I can do for you, young woman. But you can keep the horse, if you’d like, and ride it down to Anglecross. It’s crowded there—and you could take a ship far away. Maybe the Green Man wouldn’t follow. As far as I know, no one’s ever tried it.”
Aloê shook her head. “I’m not done here. Clef may have faked an attack by your Green Man—”
“More yours than mine.”
“—and may be hiding somewhere nearby. You should watch out for him.”
“He’s dead. But you’re going to look for him along the coast road.”
“Yes. Him or the Green Man—one or the other will be able to tell me what happened.”
“Uh-huh. The Green Man, they say he doesn’t say much. But who knows? Any messages for your kin?”
Aloê smiled gently. She didn’t care for her relatives. She shook her head. “But,” she said, “if I’m not back in a month or so, you might send a message to Vocate Naevros syr Tol in A Thousand Towers, and let him know what has happened here.”
New respect, tinged with fear, entered Naege’s eyes. “Naevros, eh? I send my son Easthold-way on business every now and then. I suppose it could be done.”
“Thanks.” Aloê turned and walked back to the road.
Aloê nearly missed the place on the road where the dead horse had been. She did pass it, her eyes intent on the trees alongside the road. (There, if anywhere, the Green Man—or Clef—would be waiting.) Then, glancing forward along the road, she noticed that ahead, looming over the trees, was the blue shoulder of a distant hill. She’d already come farther than she had before. She stopped and turned on her heel. This time she kept her eyes on the pavement of the road, with occasional glances to the left and right.
Soon she found the spot: bloodstains, unmistakably fresh, on the dusty road-stones. There was no sign of the horse; there were strange marks in the blood—splashing, as if the horse had been dismembered by blunt force. And then . . . ?
Well, Aloê herself had eaten nastier meat than horseflesh. But she suspected Clef had come to a juster and more gruesome demise than Aloê’s oath to the Graith would have permitted.
This Green Man, though . . . clearly he was a greater threat to those under the guard than Clef had ever been. How long had he been here? What was he?
Where he had come from was at least clear. Many things from the Sea of Worlds washed up on the coast, driven there by the dawn storms that opened the western gate of the world. There were strange beasts in the waters that no one dared fish or swim. There was strange flotsam on the beaches from day to day. And it was not utterly unheard-of for something to make it to the coast alive—a traveller, a refugee, a wild animal. Aloê guessed the Green Man was one of these.
She also knew full well that she was a match for Clef, but not necessarily for mysterious Green Men from beyond the world. It might be smart to seek out reinforcements. Illion the Wise, for instance; his home at Three Hills was fortunately not too many days’ travel away on this same road.
Aloê turned again and trotted northward at a wolf’s pace, long springing strides she could sustain all day, if there was need. Her sense of being watched faded as she ran, was gone by dusk.
Aloê sat up in the darkness, her eyes gaping for light. There had been a crash—or was that a dream?
No. Something had fallen across her campfire, she saw: a tree, scattering coals across the campsite and killing the flames. In the red light of the last embers she rolled to her feet and drew her knife with the glitterstone hilt.
Light, kindled in the crystalline blade, threw back the curtain of night. Aloê held the magical blade high, so as not to be blinded by its glare, and turned toward the fallen tree. Her stomach twisted within her. The tree had been pushed to the ground: she saw force-marks on the trunk, saw the green living roots that had been torn from the ground. Her stomach twisted again, and then she knew.
“Green Man!” she called. “Show yourself! I feel your presence.”
There was no reply. Aloê peered among the trees beyond the fallen tree, but saw no one there. True, she thought she saw someone, for a moment. But that was just an odd shadow cast by one of the older, more twisted trees. It was leafless, and looked likely to fall soon itself. She moved closer, stuck by an odd thought. At the tree’s foot there was a dark hollow, filled with something that looked like grass. . . .
Aloê leapt back in the instant before the Green Man struck, lashing out with its leafless twisted limbs. Because she had no other weapon, Aloê struck back with the glow-knife—and thus lost the only weapon she had. It stuck, deep within the wooden flesh of the Green Man. The blade’s light grew yellowish, greenish, went out. So much Aloê saw in glances over her shoulders as she fled through the dark.
She ran, but she knew she could not run far. It had been a long road from Anglecross to here, and she was nearly spent. Illion’s house at Three Hills was several days’ journey north—it might as well be on one of the three moons. To the east, beyond the coastal woods, was the narrow plain of Westhold: a fine place to raise wheat, an unlikely place to discover monster-killing weapons. South was Naege’s village, and further south yet Anglecross Port. She could reach neither one without sleep, which meant she would not reach them alive. What did that leave? The empty sea westward, facing the closed iris of the world. . . .
Aloê nodded her head reluctantly. It was a long chance, and even if she succeeded she was likely to be killed along with the Green Man. But it had come from the Sea of Worlds, and to the Sea of Worlds it would return.
Aloê crossed the coast road and went down to the rocky beach beyond, to where the black water of the world’s last sea licked hungrily at the shore. The three moons were high overhead, giving plenty of light for her to see the Green Man leave the woods behind and creep toward the roadway. The ground seemed to ripple around its base when it moved, as if it were wading through the earth the way a man wades through the water. The road proved a significant obstacle: Aloê waited impatiently while the Green Man inched across the paved stone surface. But it moved rapidly once it reached the other side, and Aloê backed into the dark whitecapped waves until they were surging about her knees.
/> The Green Man came right up to the edge of the water and stopped. Aloê found herself hoping it had an aversion to water; then she could simply swim her way northward.
But that, of course, would leave the Green Man to prey on those travelling the coast road.
Aloê grimaced, bent down, and grabbed a stone from the sea-floor. She pegged it at the Green Man with annoying, if not deadly accuracy: it bounced off the thing’s barklike skin with a woody thump and dropped down into the dark mouthlike hollow at the Green Man’s base. After a moment’s struggle, the Green Man managed to push the stone out to fall among its fellows on the rocky beach.
Aloê bent down and fetched up another stone from the seafloor. She held it toward the Green Man—she had no idea what the thing used for senses, but it was worth a try—and said distinctly, “Nyaah, nyaah!” She lifted the stone as if to throw it.
Abruptly the Green Man entered the water. Aloê dropped the stone and dove. She swam like a seal toward the dark line in the west where the sky met the sea.
Over her own swift strokes Aloê could hear the even swifter progress of her enemy. She glanced back and saw the Green Man oiling through the hard whitecapped waves even faster than a seal. A seal with oars, perhaps: the leafless branches swung along in fierce circles, propelling the Green Man through the water. Awed, Aloê, who had some interest in ship-building, speculated on the possibility of a ship driven by mechanical oars—perhaps a series of oar-blades in a circle, like the blades of a windmill . . .
Then the enemy was upon her, and the invention of the propeller was struck out of her head by one of the Green Man’s branches. Aloê retained the presence of mind to dive below the surface. There, she guessed, the Green Man’s clublike blows would lose their force, slowed by the medium of water. And this was true enough. But she hadn’t bargained on the Green Man’s untreelike suppleness in the water. She found the Green Man coiling about her chest like a slimy green snake. When she realized she was being constricted she reached under the body of the Green Man and tried to push herself out through the tightening coil. But the barky skin was too slimy in water; her hands could get no grip. Then her right hand closed on something: the handle of the glow-knife she had left in its hide. It gave her the purchase she needed to push free. As she kicked herself away from the Green Man, toward the seafloor, she winked, through the stinging sea-water, at the knife blade glittering in the hide of her enemy.