The Seventh Daughter

by Frewin Jones

  “Do you live on your own here?” Tania asked.

  “Nay, my lady,” Bryn said. “I share this valley with all the beasts and the birds.” He hauled on a rope that dangled from the sloping ceiling and a section of the roof lifted to let sunlight come flooding in. He secured the rope and moved around, putting out the rushlights. “You must be hungry and weary,” he said. “Come, eat and drink and take your rest.”

  They sat on the floor while Bryn ladled the stew into wooden bowls and handed one to each of them. Tania ate hungrily, more than glad of warm food after the chilly night in the hills of Weir.

  “Is it normal for the folk of Weir to dwell apart from their kind as you do?” Cordelia asked curiously. “I had not heard that it was so.”

  Bryn sat on the edge of his bed. “I believe that I am unique in my choice of home,” he told her. “I do not seek the company of people, and I have here all that I need. The unicorns protect me from unwanted visitors and the birds keep me informed of all that goes on in the outside world.” He frowned. “That is how I know that the Sorcerer of Lyonesse is loose. A curlew fleeing north brought me the news some days ago—she said that the land is barren and burned where he treads, and that all life withers at his touch.” A deep sadness came into his eyes. “Is that true? Does he have such domination over the land?”

  “Yes, he does,” said Tania. “But we’re going to do something about it.” She hoped she sounded more confident than she felt.

  “It is seventy leagues or more to the northernmost coast of Fidach Ren,” Bryn said. “You will need speedy mounts.”

  “Are there horses we could use?” Edric asked.

  “None south of the two Erls. But I was not thinking of horses. The unicorns of Caer Liel run swifter than any horse.”

  Tania felt a flicker of unease. “Would they let us ride them?”

  “I believe they would if I made clear to them the importance of your journey.”

  “But how would we control them?” Cordelia asked.

  “Once they know to trust you, they will be compliant to your requests,” Bryn told her. He smiled at her. “Would you like to speak with them, my lady?”

  Cordelia’s eyes brightened. “Indeed, I would.”

  “Then come,” he said. “New friends shall meet with old.”

  They followed him outside. The herd of unicorns was grazing nearby. Bryn gave a whistle and the animals came trotting over to him. Tania found herself taking an involuntary step back as they approached. She still couldn’t quite get over the strangeness of them, and those sharp-edged, spiraling horns certainly looked capable of running a person through and through.

  “Brethren,” said Bryn, resting his hand on the curved neck of the foremost unicorn, “these good folk are in sore need and would crave your aid.” Tania felt herself scrutinized by the weird purple eyes. She tried to return their unfathomable gaze, but had to look away. The proud heads bowed and several of the animals stamped their hooves.

  “To the far north, and with great haste,” Bryn went on, as if in answer to an unheard question.

  One of the unicorns stepped up to Cordelia and allowed her to rest her hand on its mane. “Hail to thee, child of the lone hills,” Cordelia whispered, pressing her cheek to the creature’s neck.

  “His name is Zephyr,” Bryn said.

  The unicorn snorted and nodded its head.

  “I never knew they could behave like this,” said Edric. “I was always told they were untamable.”

  Bryn looked at him. “They are untamable, Edric Chanticleer. Nothing can take their wildness from them. They choose to befriend you, or they choose not to.”

  Another of the unicorns moved toward Tania. She swallowed hard, her eyes fixed on the needle-sharp point of the horn as it came closer. The head lifted and the wide mouth came up to her face, the nostrils snuffling.

  “He is named Tanzen, my lady,” Bryn told her.

  The unicorn snorted and turned its head so that the curve of the neck was displayed to her. Cautiously, Tania laid her hand against the smooth gray-white coat of the animal’s neck. It was warm under her fingers. Tanzen nudged up against her in an almost playful way, sending her rocking back on her heels.

  “I think he likes you,” Edric commented.

  “Yes, I think he does,” Tania agreed in surprise. She looked over Tanzen’s back at Edric, who was stroking the neck of a female unicorn that Bryn said was called Drazin. “We’re going to ride unicorns,” she said. “How cool is that?”

  It was midday and the sun was beating down on the heather-clad hills. Tania and the others sat astride the wild unicorns of Caer Liel. They had come to a halt in the valley between Great Erl and Lesser Erl. In front of them the crumpled land stretched away into a blue haze.

  Bryn had come with them this far. “I will leave you now to go on alone,” he said, and Tania noticed that his eyes lingered longest on Cordelia and that she met his gaze for a few moments, then blushed and looked away.

  “The River Lych lies five leagues hence,” he continued. “Once it is forded, you will have entered Prydein. The mountains of the north are full of dangers,” he warned. “And it is said that a race of terrible creatures haunts the glens of Fidach Ren.”

  “Do you know if they have wings?” Tania asked, wondering whether he was speaking of the Karken En Ynis Maw, the very creatures they wished to meet.

  “I know not, but they are said to be murderous and without pity,” Bryn said. “Be watchful at all times.”

  “We’ll do that,” said Tania. “But we were told the same about these unicorns, so they may not be as bad as you think.”

  “Had I not been close by, you would have been killed,” he reminded her. “Do not hope to meet friends in the north, my lady—there are none.” He was about to turn his unicorn and ride back the way they had come when he paused for a moment. He reached into his tunic and brought something out, riding to Cordelia and holding out his hand. Tania saw that he was holding a curious kind of twin-bodied whistle or flute.

  “The unicorns delight in music at day’s end, my lady,” he said.

  Cordelia gave him a puzzled look. “I have not the skill,” she said. “My sister Zara has the gift of music, not I.”

  Bryn said nothing, but continued to hold the pipes out. Frowning, Cordelia took them. “Thank you,” she said.

  “Farewell, then,” said Bryn, breaking the odd silence. “Good fortune attend your quest, my friends. Maybe we shall meet again when all is done.” He tapped his unicorn’s flanks with his heels and the creature wheeled around, its forelegs striking the air, before galloping away.

  Cordelia gazed after him, and there was a wistful look on her face that Tania had never seen before. Then Cordelia pushed the pipes away into her tunic and turned away.

  “Come,” she said. “Onward to Ynis Maw!”

  XVII

  They were in a place of knuckled hills that climbed and climbed into the white sky. Grasses and moss clung to ridges and banks of gray rock, leaving bare ledges that sloped inward to form a long cleft worn over the years by the gush and flood and sparkling fall of a tumbling white river. Tania sat astride her unicorn, gazing spellbound at waterfall after cascading waterfall, the spray catching the evening light and filling the hills with shimmering rainbows.

  Below, the river came to a time-gnawed cauldron of turbulent water and then flowed southward through a deep-cloven valley of heather and gorse. It was there, where the land was less furrowed and bony, that they had forded the river at a wide, stony place full of the rush and scurry of the bubbling water.

  “This is Reganfal,” Edric said.

  Tania looked at him: This was the place he had mentioned at Crystalhenge. His eyes were shining, his face spangled with fine water droplets. “It’s beautiful,” she said.

  He smiled. “I told you it was.”

  Cordelia had ridden higher into the crags; she had halted on a wide flat platform of rock some twenty feet above them, gazing away to the south. She
had been strangely silent all that day, answering when spoken to, but otherwise riding along with a preoccupied look on her face. Tania had a suspicion she was thinking about Bryn; of all her sisters Cordie had always seemed the least interested in people, but perhaps she had never expected to meet someone just like her, someone who loved animals as she did.

  “Come on,” Edric said. “I’d like us to be over the mountain by nightfall.”

  Tania eyed the peaks doubtfully. “Okay,” she said, nudging Tanzen into movement with a touch of her heels to his flanks. “Last one at the top gets first watch.”

  “So be it!” called Cordelia and a moment later Zephyr was leaping up the rocks like a mountain goat.

  “Hey!” Tania yelled, urging Tanzen on after her. “You won’t win that easily!”

  The night sky was blind with cloud. Tania was on watch. They were in a high saddle of land between two rearing peaks. She could hardly see a thing in the darkness, but she could feel the enormous presence of the mountains—and it wasn’t a comfortable sensation. The farther north the three of them traveled, the more she got the feeling that the land resented them. It was crazy, she knew, but she couldn’t shake the feeling that Prydein didn’t want them there.

  Before he had gone to sleep, Edric had warned her to be extra vigilant. “I’ve heard some strange stories about these regions,” he had told her. “Stories about the Ghostlights of Prydein. People caught at night in these hills speak of vivid hallucinations—they see things that aren’t really there.”

  “I, too, have heard of the Tricksy Spirits of Prydein,” Cordelia had added. “Wicked phantoms that lure people to their deaths.”

  That wasn’t what Tania wanted to be told just before starting her watch. But so far nothing had happened, except that she was having trouble keeping awake. She rubbed her eyes, forcing herself to stay alert. The unicorns were nearby, lying together with their legs tucked under them and their necks stretched, their heads resting on each other’s backs.

  Tania caught a glimpse of the moon through thinning skeins of racing cloud. She was getting used to the speed with which the weather changed here. It had been happening all day: One moment the white sun would be burning down on them and then, within moments it seemed, a cold wind would come sweeping in from the west, carrying layers of thick gray cloud on its back. Rain would spatter briefly, then the clouds would turn to rags and tatters and the sky would be blue again.

  Tania’s eyelids became heavy as the long night crept slowly past. Edric had told her to rouse him when she couldn’t stay awake anymore, but she wanted to give him as long a sleep as possible. Her head nodded and her eyes closed. The mountains were whispering, the great dark hulks of ancient stone leaning toward her, creaking and groaning. They were going to crush her….

  She woke with a gasp. A misty gray figure stood in front of her. It wavered like a pale flame as it beckoned to her. “Come to me,” said the man. His face was familiar somehow. “Come to me and all will be revealed.”

  She found herself getting to her feet. “Gabriel?”

  “There is little time, my lady. You must come to me.”

  Tania’s voice was hesitant, her head full of dark swirling clouds. “No…I have to keep watch….” There was something dreadfully wrong about this, but she couldn’t remember why she shouldn’t follow the flickering silvery figure. She walked forward, holding her hands out toward Gabriel as he floated back from her.

  “Just a few more steps, my lady.”

  “Yes.”

  A voice shouted behind her. “Tania!” Hands grabbed her, bringing her to a jerking halt.

  She was at the edge of a cliff, about to stride out into nothingness.

  Edric spun her around. Cordelia was running up behind him. Tania realized she was about forty yards from the camp. She blinked stupidly at Edric. He grabbed her shoulders, looking into her eyes.

  “It was Gabriel,” she murmured. “He wanted me to follow him.”

  “This is an evil turn,” Cordelia said. “If the Great Traitor can enter your mind and force you to his will, how can we ever be safe from him?”

  The clouds lifted from Tania’s brain and fear took their place. “Does this mean he knows where we are?”

  “I don’t know,” Edric said. “But it might not have been him. It might have been the Ghostlights I warned you about. Were you nodding off just before you saw him?”

  “Yes, I was,” Tania admitted. “I was having these really weird dreams about the mountains.”

  “The Ghostlights prey upon those who sleep,” said Cordelia. “I think that Master Chanticleer is right: What you saw was but an illusion.”

  “I’ll keep myself awake from now on,” Tania said, shivering at the thought of what might have happened if Edric had not woken her. “I don’t want that to happen again.”

  “No, you should get some sleep now,” Edric told her as they walked back to their camp. “I’ll keep watch for a while.”

  Tanzen was watching them, but he put his head down as they approached, as if reassured that everything was all right. Tania lay down, pulling her cloak over her ears. She was too tired to stay awake. As she drifted off she had the strongest feeling that, deep within the mountain, something with a cruel, cold heart was laughing at her.

  It was a bright, fresh morning and Tania and her companions were galloping beside the banks of a long finger of smooth water. The silky surface of the lake reflected the scudding clouds and the distant brown mountains that rose sheer from the water’s far edge. The rushing air sang in Tania’s ears, blowing away all her night fears. The ground that sped away under their unicorns’ hooves was tufted with tall brown grasses. Where the country lifted itself from the lake the hills were soft with pine trees. The cool air was full of their scent.

  They paused for a while at the northern end of the long lake, eating a little of the food that Bryn had given them while the unicorns stepped down to the lakeside to drink. Towering white clouds edged across the sky. The pine woods had gradually moved closer to the long stretch of water, so there was now only a narrow spit of land between the trees and the lake. Heather-clad hills rose in the north, forming their next challenge.

  Edric was stretched out full length in the grass, staring up at the sky. Tania and Cordelia sat close by. Cordelia was cross-legged, holding in her lap the double-bored whistle that Bryn had given her.

  “Try playing it,” Tania said.

  “I do not have the skill.”

  “You just put your fingers over the holes and blow. Anyone can do that.”

  Cordelia didn’t respond.

  “Would you have liked it if Bryn had come with us?”

  “Perhaps,” Cordelia murmured. “He is in my thoughts, it is true.” She looked at Tania. “I would like to see him again.”

  “I’m sure you will.”

  Tania got up and stretched, gazing into the pine forest. Under their green canopy the slender brown trunks of the trees reached away into deep, rich shadows. Tania frowned. She had seen a movement under the trees: shifting shapes that echoed the curving mesh of the branches but were at the same time different somehow—something that was like tree shadows, but not.

  She walked toward the tree line, her eyes narrowed. For a few moments she lost the place where the movement had been. Then there was another stirring in the shadows and suddenly the curious lines and shapes snapped into focus and she realized that she was staring at a pair of great lordly branching antlers.

  She turned to the others with a thrilled gasp. “There’s a stag in there; it must be huge.”

  Cordelia and Edric got up and followed her. There was a brief silence while they tried to locate the sweeping antlers, then Cordelia spoke in a hushed, urgent voice. “Come away. We must go.”

  “Why?” Tania asked, surprised by the alarm in her sister’s voice. “It won’t hurt us, surely? Can’t you talk to stags?”

  “Indeed, I can,” said Cordelia. “That thing is not a stag. Do you see any hindquarters?�
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  Puzzled, Tania looked into the gloom behind the antlers. Cordelia was right; the stag didn’t seem to have—

  “It’s a man,” said Edric.

  “No, it can’t be.” At that moment the head turned and for a split second Tania found herself staring into a pair of leaf-shaped yellow eyes that burned like suns in a furred face that was half human and half animal. The wide mouth opened, the split upper lip drawing back to reveal long white teeth. A deep bellowing cry boomed out, sending birds rocketing into the sky.

  They turned and ran. The unicorns were waiting, their eyes rolling and their hooves stamping the ground. Tania leaped onto Tanzen’s back and he sped away, hardly giving her time to get seated before the turfs were flying in their wake. She risked one brief glance around. The antlered man-creature had stridden out of the forest and was watching them. He was broad-shouldered and deep-chested and covered in shaggy brown fur; Tania guessed that he must be at least ten feet tall. They galloped around a curve of the lake and she lost sight of him.

  “What was he?” she called to Edric.

  “Furlingsbarl,” Edric shouted back. “A forest demon.”

  “This is an evil land,” Cordelia called, the wind whipping her voice away. “A land where monsters breed!”

  Another night had come down, this time star-filled and still. They had climbed into the mountains again and were camped on a narrow stony place from which the land rolled down to a series of slender mountain lakes linked by the white threads of winding rivers.

  A soft voice and a hand shaking her shoulder woke Tania from a deep, dreamless sleep. “Is it my watch already?” she mumbled.