The baying of the hounds rose to a furious pitch as the five dogs confronted the wolf pack. A strange kind of equilibrium seemed to hold them in place, only a few paces apart. Ranthal, leading the hounds, stepped forward, stiff-legged and snarling, but the largest of the wolves moved forward from the pack to meet him.
The wild animal’s yellow eyes stared, unblinking, at the huge hound. Unconsciously Tristan held his breath. He felt certain that Ranthal would hurl himself at the wolf unless a command from the king held him back. But so powerfully did the hunting song pulse through Tristan’s veins that he gave no thought to restraint, never even considered telling his dog to hold.
Yet, surprisingly, Ranthal did not attack. In fact, after a few moments confronting the wolf’s baleful glare, the great moorhound crept backward, rejoining his four packmates with almost palpable relief. The wolves, meanwhile, made no aggressive move, instead holding firm in their protective ring. Any attack against the stag would have necessitated a charge through their bristling fangs.
Astonished, Tristan held his sword before him, angled toward the ground, and considered the merits of a short, deliberate charge. Shallot could carry him through the wolves with little danger, and he knew that the hounds would protect the flanks of the great war-horse. Yet still something held his hand—he didn’t know what the cause—as the bloodlust of the hunt slowly drained away. He felt as if he awakened from some kind of dream, not entirely certain how he had come to be where he was. Carefully he lowered his sword, no longer wishing to drive it into the flesh of his quarry.
“Greetings, King of Callidyrr, Monarch of the Ffolk, Uniter of the Moonshaes, and Slayer of Giant-kin!” The voice, heavy with irony, nearly knocked Tristan from his saddle with raw surprise, for the words had come from the great wolf.
“Who—who are you?” he demanded.
“Who am I?” The wolf sounded amused. “Rather, ask yourself who are you, High King Tristan Kendrick!”
“You’ve answered that question yourself!” he retorted, still shaken by the unusual speaker. He knew insolence when he heard it, and it wasn’t an attitude he was used to or accepting of.
“Have I? Or is there more to it than that?”
The creature’s irritating responses, meeting a question with another question, grated on the king’s nerves. Growing angry, he raised the tip of his sword again. “I tire of your word games. Explain your reasons for blocking me from my game!”
If the wolf had heard the king’s demand, he gave no indication. Instead, the lanky form sat on its haunches and regarded Tristan with those two impossibly bright eyes.
“Answer me, beast!” snapped the High King, yet even as his anger built, he felt a swirling sense of confusion enclosing him. This wasn’t right, he knew—and not just because a wolf spoke to him with a human voice. No, the protection the wolves offered to the stag, that was certainly unnatural, and the carefully neutral way they regarded his own dogs both combined to give the man a sense of caution.
“Tell me, human king”—the way the wolf said the word sounded as if humans made a very low grade of king indeed—“what great cause brings you to Myrloch Vale? Why do you ride here, frightening the animals and terrorizing the Earthmother’s own deer?”
“What business—” For a moment, outrage wrenched the words from Tristan’s mouth, but his brain, although it worked a little more slowly than his jaws, suddenly focused on the wolf’s question. Why indeed was he here?
With a quick look at the sun, he saw that his chase of the stag had carried him far to the west of his planned route. He had lost several hours in the exuberant chase, not to mention the time needed to retrace his steps and rest his weary horse.
“I ride against the enemies of the goddess!” he declared, as if to remind himself at the same time as he informed his questioner. He no longer thought of it as a mere beast of the forest. “Firbolgs and trolls have broken the peace of the vale, marching against their neighbors for war and plunder. My mission is nothing less than the restoration of the Balance in Myrloch Vale!”
“An interesting tactic,” murmured the wolf, the golden eyes taking on a sly cast. “This stag, for instance—he represents a great threat to the Balance, does he?”
Tristan flushed. “No! I was hunting. I grew tired of trail fare and desired fresh meat.”
The wolf cast an amused, skeptical eye at the great deer. The animal stood nearly as tall as Shallot, with a rack of antlers spreading farther to the sides than a tall man’s armspan. Finally the barrel chest had ceased its heaving, and the stag seemed to listen attentively, watching the exchange between the wolf and the rider.
“You must be very hungry,” noted the great lupine, after completing his comparison.
Shaking his head in annoyance, Tristan was about to retort that he didn’t intend to eat the whole stag when a cautious voice urged him to hold his tongue. Suddenly he understood the wolf’s point. “My hounds must eat as well,” he finished lamely.
“Of course—all things must eat! This is the way of the Balance. But I will tell you something, King of the Ffolk: You were chasing a lord of Myrloch Vale, one who has ruled over his domain for as long as you have held sway in your own. It is a domain that has been free from humans, except for such as honor the vale and its life. Now, is it the purpose of this great animal’s life, the purpose of the Balance, that he should feed a human trespasser and his dogs?”
Suddenly Tristan felt an appalling sense of sadness. The wolf was right, of course—the wolf, or whoever this was speaking to him.
Consumed by the force, the magic, of the hunt, he had all but forgotten the threat of the firbolg army, the monsters that even now menaced his subjects to the north. For a moment, he remembered the urgency that had seized him upon the first notion of his grand quest. He had delayed no more than an hour before taking to the trail. Now he had wasted many times more than that on this frivolous chase!
No, he chastised himself, it was worse than frivolous. When he looked at the proud stag, which still stood before him even though it had recovered its breath, it occurred to him that slaying the beast might be as great a crime, in its own right, as was the firbolg sacking of Cambro.
“Who are you?” he asked again.
This time, he felt certain that the wolf’s long, narrow jaws curled upward into a smile. “A friend,” came the reply. Then, in a flash of movement, the wolf whirled and sprang away, followed by the others of his pack. In seconds, they had disappeared into the woods.
The stag remained standing on the hummock before Tristan, facing the five hounds. The dogs sat attentively, eyes fixed upon the stag but hindquarters planted firmly on the ground. Then, as if dismissing the interlopers gathered around him, the great animal lowered its muzzle to the fresh grass and began to graze.
“Come,” the High King said firmly, and the dogs fell into file behind Shallot. The war-horse plodded back through the marsh, the hounds bounding along behind as they struggled to keep up. Finally they reached open woods and dry land, and Tristan urged the stallion into a lumbering trot.
He had a good deal of time to make up.
* * * * *
Even the shelter of the narrow strait did not improve Brandon’s mood. The blasting of the storm and the lashing of the wind had diminished remarkably, but gray clouds scudded quickly across the sky. For its part, the sea remained angry, too, as a series of long, rolling crests swept against the Princess of Moonshae’s hull from the north.
The vessel heeled to starboard, plunging steadily eastward between the islands of Gwynneth and Oman. Despite the smoother waters near the Oman shore, Brandon ordered the ship to follow the southern coast of the strait, for there the wind was stronger and the longship’s speed correspondingly improved.
“By Tempus!” muttered Brand, in his usual post beside Knaff at the stern. “Might as well have left it to the whimsy of the gods. I’m sure we could have sailed to the south and met a storm coming from that way as well!”
“As sure as t
he sunrise,” Knaff agreed. “Best to hold steady on a nice, easy course.”
Not sharing the young prince’s urgency, the old helmsman didn’t see any particular problem with their change of course. In fact, he felt that his captain could use a little calming down on that point, and Knaff was the only member of the crew who would dare make even a gentle insinuation along those lines. Even as he reflected, the thickest of the clouds blew past the sun, and bursts of illumination began to break through. Where it struck the water, the sea turned from ominous gray to a dark but powerfully beautiful azure.
“I like the change in the weather, myself!” Tavish announced, coming to the stern to join the two men. “Though you did a nice job of riding it out,” she added.
“Those are the squalls that give the Sea of Moonshae its character,” Knaff joked. The bard was forced to smile. Weeks earlier, before the rescue of King Kendrick, the old helmsman had been appalled at the thought of a female sailing on his ship. Now he welcomed her with easy grace and humor.
“It had quite enough character for me,” she replied. “And personally I think that sunlight does a lot to improve the look of the waves.”
“Aye—sparkle like diamonds, they do,” Knaff said, resting his elbows on the transom with a sigh. Tavish leaned against the stern beside him, and the two of them watched the wake trail across the rolling blue waters of the strait.
“Well, someone’s got to pilot this ship!” grumbled Brandon, annoyed that the two found it so easy to relax.
The prince cursed softly, then stalked through the hull, irritated that Knaff could be so calming when the prince didn’t want to be calmed. He didn’t want his tension soothed, and he wasn’t even certain that his anger was caused by the diversion in their voyage. When he thought about it, he didn’t want to be in Gnarhelm now, either.
No. Instead, he wanted to be with Alicia Kendrick.
“Smoke, Captain—off the starboard bow!”
The cry came from a lookout perched near the longship’s sweeping figurehead as the Princess of Moonshae rushed along the shore of Gwynneth. With one arm wrapped around the proud and beautiful image carved from dark hardwood, the sailor at the bow shielded his eyes against the bright morning sun and then pointed to shore.
They all saw it then: a thin black plume rising a dozen or more miles away. As they watched, the column seemed to thicken, as if more and more tinder was added to the blaze.
“It’s coming from the shore, inside a small bay,” the lookout amplified.
“Codscove!” Brandon immediately guessed. There were only a few towns along these remote coasts, and though he had never been there, as a good captain he had learned of every possible haven and landfall in the Moonshae Islands.
“Take her into the bay,” he commanded without a moment’s hesitation. He was propelled mainly by curiosity, but the volume of smoke in the air indicated that they might have come upon a scene of real trouble.
“Hop to those oars, you laggards!” barked Knaff, wheeling on the rudder to send the ship running in toward the shoreline. The sail still bulged from the wind, but the experienced helmsman knew that the crew would likely have to row once they entered the sheltered bay.
Soon the Princess of Moonshae swept between the out-flung peninsulas that bracketed Codsbay and protected the cozy town along the shore—protected it, at least, from the ravages of impersonal nature.
Now that community was anything but cozy, however, and it was obviously in need of more practical protection. Brandon saw numerous buildings ablaze and struggling figures on the wide commons in the center of the town. Riders dashed back and forth, and hulking attackers loomed beyond. They swiftly drew closer, and more details became apparent. The attackers were large and green-colored, with wiry limbs and beaklike noses, readily identifiable even from half a mile at sea.
“Trolls!” shouted the lookout, for the benefit of his less keen-eyed crewmates.
Once again the men looked to their captain for orders, and again Brandon didn’t hesitate. This wasn’t their fight. Most of the inhabitants of Codscove were Ffolk, although a few northmen had settled here in centuries past. Nevertheless, the frustration that had nagged at him, plus the knowledge that these were King Kendrick’s subjects—Alicia’s subjects—gave him no room for consideration or doubt.
“Take up your arms, men!” he bellowed, hefting his own double-bitted axe. “We’re going ashore!”
With strong strokes of the oars, his crewmen pushed the Princess of Moonshae straight toward the broad docks of Codscove.
* * * * *
Deirdre stalked the halls of the palace, more and more agitated by the enclosing walls, the deferential servants, and her solicitous family. By nightfall, she knew that she had had enough.
She returned to her apartments with the announcement that she intended to go to bed early. Then she barred the door, ostensibly so that no one would disturb her rest. She knew that her mother would no longer hear crying out in the night, nor any of the sounds of distress and agitation that had marked some earlier evenings.
Deirdre shuttered her window, lit several candles, and assumed a posture of meditation in the small parlor beside her bedroom. The princess grew more and more proficient at this ritual of faith. This time she rested in silence for only half an hour before she felt the world falling away from her.
Once again the infinite expanse of the void yawned around her. The Moonshae Islands sank to insignificance, and the words of the New Gods sang in her ears.
This time the songs of these gods called the princess to action. As Deirdre listened, she began to understand. She came to know that she was uniquely positioned to carry this word, this fresh doctrine, across the lands of her people. She was a High Princess of Moonshae, after all, and one of no little knowledge and power. The absorption of the mirror, she knew, was not a crippling thing—instead, it was a birth of power and might undreamed of in what she had come to remember as her mortal existence.
Yet at the same time she knew that she would meet tough, entrenched resistance. Much of that friction would come from the most potent enemy Deirdre had—the only one, in effect, who might be able to block her ambitions and desires.
That one was her mother, Robyn Kendrick—the druid queen of the isles.
* * * * *
“Go now and become the Wrath of Chaos!” The will of Talos passed through the ether, grasping the princess in a smoky but unbreakable embrace. Vigilant as ever, Helm looked on, pleased with the power he saw there.
And in the north, where he slumbered in his glacial vale, the demigod Grond Peaksmasher stirred. There was in existence only one key to his icy prison, but now—after all these centuries—he sensed that this key drew near.
8
A Princess in Defeat
“How long do we wait?” muttered Finellen as Brigit and Hanrald joined her around the breakfast fire. The dwarven column had marched the breadth of Winterglen, remaining a day or two behind the giants and trolls. The trail had been easy to follow. Several experienced dwarven woodsmen preceded the main body, probing the forest thoroughly in order to discover any potential ambush.
“It’ll take a few days for the king’s army to get here,” Hanrald cautioned. “We have to hold off until we can unite our forces.”
“Bah—caution!” exclaimed Finellen, making a curse of the word. “It doesn’t become me. It doesn’t become any dwarven warrior when there’s a plain enemy before us, and a blood foe at that!”
“But think how much more damage you’ll do to that enemy once you have the force to properly strike them!”
Finellen huffed, spitting into the coals of the fire. Yet she found it hard to argue with that point. The monsters’ trail, a wide swath through Winterglen, bespoke of a large force, and several smaller paths had intersected it along the way. The latter led to speculation that the army of monsters had grown since the sacking of Cambro.
On the other hand, Finellen had merely her fifty veteran warriors. Even if they were m
otivated to glory by battle against a blood foe, the outcome of such an unequal battle would be a foregone conclusion: a disaster for the outnumbered dwarves. Still, that didn’t make it any easier for the dwarven captain to accept her forced inaction.
She looked around the quiet camp. Numerous well-screened cookfires dotted the woods, sending the aroma of bacon wafting through the trees but raising no telltale plumes of smoke. The dwarves took their time about eating, since they all knew that there was no purpose in haste. Still, it agitated Finellen even further to see such a lackadaisical attitude among dwarves on the trail of war.
A human stepped from a clump of trees beside the dwarven captain’s group, and Finellen spun on her heel, sputtering with surprise, as Danrak bowed politely and settled to the ground beside the others. The druid’s comings and goings were always abrupt, and he had a distressing way of appearing in the center of the dwarven camp without having been observed by any of the pickets.
“Well, what did you find out?” demanded the dwarfwoman bluntly.
“They march on Codscove, as we feared,” replied the druid sadly. “I left the army last night as it gathered into two great camps beside the town. I don’t doubt that by now they’ve attacked.”
“Damn!” snapped the dwarf. “And we sit here a day’s march away! How many towns have to get sacked before we—” Abruptly she clamped her mouth shut, her bristling chin fixed in determination.
“Everybody up!” she bellowed, her voice ringing through the forested camp. “Douse your fires and swallow your bacon! We march in three minutes!” Finellen turned back to her immediate companions. “Maybe we can’t take ’em in a fixed battle, but if they’re occupied with Codscove, we might be able to hurt them from behind.”
“It beats sitting around waiting for help that might come too late,” Hanrald agreed.
“It will come too late,” noted Danrak, “if what I saw last night is any indication.”
The dwarves responded with alacrity to their leader’s command, and within the allotted minutes, the full column took to the trail. The light-footed scouts scattered to form their wide screen, while the two riders followed at the rear. Finellen had made the indisputable point that the pair of horses were a lot noisier than the sure-footed dwarves leading the formation.
The Druid Queen Page 15