by Andre Norton
I didn’t know what to say to him, and so I kept silent. I blamed myself … not in the way I had when I had thought Lord Purvis looked for me, but just as strongly as I’d counted myself guilty before.
It was my fault that I hadn’t looked deeper, hadn’t realized there could be another answer beyond Lord Purvis coming to Nar because of me and slaughtering everyone I knew. I had believed Alysen. My father killed, Lord Purvis and his ilk wanted the bloodline ended. They wanted me dead, I’d thought. Alysen had said the Empress demanded me drummed.
Had Alysen believed what she’d told me? Had she truly blamed me? Or had she known the truth, that they wanted her? Could she not live with that truth and so pushed the fault to me?
Why did Purvis want Alysen t’Geer?
“Why?” I shouted the word over and over and over. Alysen was stronger in the wyse than I, perhaps stronger than the Nanoo because of her father. How did Purvis know about her? Why would—
The scry magic.
I pulled back on the reins in my realization, not intending to slow the horse, but doing so by accident. It gave Tillard the opportunity to catch up. His horse was larger, but older and slower, and froth flecked at its lips from the exertion. Tillard talked to me, the words a babble I rudely paid no attention to. In truth I didn’t know what he said, I was so caught up in the puzzle pieces I assembled.
Nanoo Gafna’s vision!
I closed my eyes and recalled the images, “the storm,” she’d called it when the men on horseback thundered into the Village Nar. I remembered Lord Purvis ordering Lady Ewaren’s fingers broken, ordering her death, then the deaths of everyone, swords flashing like lightning. Purvis said there could be no witnesses.
Alysen was a witness! The witness.
She’d scryed on him again and again … and she scryed on who knew how many others. But she’d scryed on him.
She’d told me she’d seen him with the Empress and outside my father’s room. She’d told me she scryed so often, compelled to use the magic, drawn to it like a tree-cat to nip. She was addicted to the spell. How many times had she watched him? And in return, how many times had he watched her? Had she seen more than she’d told me? Nanoo Shellaya had said one strong in the wyse could look back, and could discern your location … just as you could discern his. Nanoo Tillard had said the same.
So Lord Purvis must have discovered that Alysen had scryed on him from the Village Nar … and if she’d seen him kill the Emperor or my father, seen him commit other crimes—
“He would want her dead,” Tillard finished. “Again your thoughts are clear, Wisteria. If this girl called Alysen witnessed his crimes, he might fear her and want her eliminated to keep his ugly secrets safe. And if she kept scrying on him, even while she was in the fen—”
“Lord Purvis would know to find her with the Nanoo.” I nodded, once more urging the vanner mare to a trot. “He thinks he has to kill her. Not just because of what she’s seen him do, but because of what she might witness in the future.”
This time I kept a pace Tillard and his old horse could manage. I might well need Tillard’s help, though two people against Lord Purvis and his many armored men would stand no better chance than one. Too, a large part of me suspected that no matter how fast I could reach the fen, it would be too late. Lord Purvis rode days ahead of us.
The demon-of-a-man would fail or succeed before we could do anything against him.
“Tillard, Lord Purvis did not find Alysen in Nar.” I knew that was because of Nanoo Gafna’s no-see. “And he did not find her by questioning Gafna, by having her tortured. Though why Gafna did not tell me he asked about Alysen rather than myself is a mystery.”
Tillard let out an uneasy laugh. “The Nanoo are wise, Wisteria, most of them. But Gafna is…” His voice trailed off, words failing to express what he meant.
“Mad? Touched?” Perhaps, I thought. Certainly odd. Maybe Gafna didn’t know he wanted Alysen specifically. “He should have plied her with cow’s milk instead to gain her precious information.”
Tillard cocked his head and bounced his heels against his horse’s sides, urging it to a little better speed. “We are days away from Mardel’s Fen, Wisteria.”
I knew that.
The worry boiled in my stomach. Lord Purvis would be in the heart of the fen well before we reached the edge of the marshy ground. And he was going there because Alysen had without a doubt scryed on him again.
Again and again.
The tree-cat drawn to the nip.
Lord Purvis had watched her as she’d watched him, and divined her location. She might as well have burned a pyre atop a mountain, so bright a beacon she’d made to lead him to her.
“My fault. My fault.” I ground my teeth together and squeezed my hands so tight I once more drew blood from my palms. “My fault.”
My mind had been too narrow to see all the possibilities. And my mind was also too narrow to plan anything other than killing Lord Purvis.
Tillard and I rode until his horse was too tired to go another step and we worried he might become lame. My mare was past exhaustion, too. The day remained bright until sunset, when thin clouds bled into the darkening blue sky, then became thicker and gray, scudding along and threatening rain. The air smelled full of water and was laced with the scents of hundreds of wildflowers and long, thick grass.
A small part of me praised the Green Ones for nature’s perfume and for the stars that shone down through gaps in the clouds, tiny diamonds on a goddess’s velvety dress. I thought looking at the stars might calm me, as I stretched on my back in the night-cool meadow and pretended I was resting on the feathery bed in Lady Ewaren’s manor, quilt pulled up to my chin. But vengeance and worry and guilt burned unchecked inside me, and my stomach roiled uncomfortably and kept me from sleep.
We didn’t talk, though Tillard spoke softly to the horses before lying beside me. There was nothing to be said beyond the words we’d already spoken about Lord Purvis, Alysen, and the Nanoo.
Nothing new to be learned without scrying again. I’d thought about doing that.
A stream twisted through the meadow only yards away. It gurgled pleasantly and accompanied crickets and tree frogs, which sounded like chirping birds. But I didn’t want Lord Purvis to see me and to know we headed his way, and so I resisted the scry magic.
I would fight him, with Tillard. Though what two people could do against his force of armed men was, perhaps, nothing.
I finally fell asleep, fingers resting on the handles of the knives at my waist, head churning with horrid thoughts and biting memories as the rain started pattering down.
28
When we stopped the second time the following morning, allowing the horses to graze and drink from a farm pond, Tillard gathered mushrooms and gave me the largest ones.
“I don’t eat much,” he explained.
“I can well see that, Nanoo Til—”
He shook his head.
“No titles,” I said, recalling that Shellaya had asked I call her just by that name.
“No titles.”
Could he still read my thoughts, which whirled around Alysen, Lord Purvis, and Lady Ewaren? His face didn’t reveal him, and his eyes did not meet mine. Was I still shouting my private musings?
“I should eat more, I know,” he said. “My friends in Derilynn constantly scold me, and some of the ladies there bring me cherry and blueberry pies in the summer. They know I don’t eat meat.”
I finished my share of the mushrooms and wondered just where he’d found them. Before I could ask, he handed me his portion.
“I’ll gather more, Wisteria. You will need to keep your strength.” He left me to my deliberations and searched on the other side of the pond, where he could keep an eye on the horses, and when he looked up, on me.
I ate the rest of the mushrooms, finding them less pleasing than the bulb fruit he’d given me in Derilynn yesterday. In fact, I’d never cared for mushrooms or any morels, but I could not be choosy. I was th
ankful he’d provided for us. He certainly would not have eaten what I would have chosen—a rabbit or a pig.
Judging by the landmarks we’d passed, it would be late this day before we reached Mardel’s Fen. And that was if we pushed the horses beyond the point of fatigue. I looked to them, his horse standing still, eyes closed, sleeping, my vanner drinking, flicking flies with her silky tail. I hated forcing the older animal at this punishing pace, but I had no choice.
More than once I’d considered leaving Tillard during the past night, as the vanner could manage a faster pace, and for longer. It had rained in the early morning hours, and I knew the water would wash away my tracks. I doubted he had the skills to follow me … but he knew where the heart of the fen hid in the woods, and wisdom suggested that I keep his company. He knew the enchanted grove of the Nanoo far better than I did.
He returned, shirt hem held out in front of him like a basket, filled with more mushrooms and with raspberries that were not wholly ripe. I quickly plucked out the fruit, eating until all the berries were gone, then feeling guilty about it.
“I did not pick them for me,” he said.
So he was reading my—
“I often keep to myself in Derilynn. It is difficult for me not to listen.”
“The wyse is strong with you.”
He shrugged and picked at the mushrooms cupped in his shirt. “Stronger in my brothers and sister.”
I closed my eyes and tried to clear my thoughts, intending to use my wyse-sense now. I opened my mouth and tasted the breeze, and shoved to the back of my mind all the things I expected to taste—the tiredness of the horses, the wonderful scents of this place, cows we could not see that grazed beyond a thick line of old poplars.
I searched for the presence of men and horses, not ones now nearby but ones that had passed this way some time ago. I didn’t find what I looked for, meaning Lord Purvis and his men had come another way to the fen … probably used the road that stretched by the Village Nar and that Nanoo Shellaya and I had avoided because I had not wanted to smell the blood and run into ghosts.
I tasted other things, however, anxiety the strongest and pounding like a loud heartbeat inside my head. Tillard worried over the Nanoo, over Alysen, whom he’d not met, and mostly over me. What else I tasted bothered me, as I did not believe it proper or possible for a man to care about a woman he knew little about.
I opened my eyes and saw him looking at me. I glanced away and got to my feet.
“We’ve dallied overlong.” I stretched and rolled my head, working a nagging kink out of my neck.
“I am not worried about my people in Mardel’s Fen.” In a few strides he was past me and ruffling the mane of his horse, hoisting himself on its back and folding his fingers around the reins. “They are among the most magical people of this world, Wisteria. And they are more numerous than the men you saw riding with Lord Purvis in your scry vision.”
“The demon-of-a-man,” I hissed.
“It is those men who I think I worry over. The Nanoo have been known to deal quite harshly with uninvited visitors.”
His tone was flippant, but I didn’t believe him. The set of his eyes, and the way his lips worked when he didn’t talk, gave him away.
I was right when I’d tasted his worry.
Was I also right about the other feelings I’d tasted?
29
It was well after sunset when we neared Mardel’s Fen. Though only a few miles from the southern edge of it, even with all the starlight in this night’s cloudless sky, we were too far to see the first of the dense trees. But I didn’t need to see the trees to know that something horrific had happened.
The redolence of the woods slammed into me, and I pulled back on the reins to get the vanner to stop. The mare whinnied and dug at the ground with a hoof, drew her ears forward. Tillard’s horse didn’t seem to be as bothered, but it was older and its senses had no doubt been dulled by the years.
“Fire. I can smell it.” Tillard slid off Winter Sky. He started to tug the horse, as he alternately looked ahead and at the ground so he wouldn’t stumble.
I stayed on the vanner for a few moments, watching Tillard and finally sticking my tongue out so the breeze could swirl around it. I’d been using my wyse-sense so often lately, ever since Lord Purvis had destroyed my home, that it came effortlessly to me. I’d never had to use it so often before—never wanted to. Alysen was right; I relied on my skills and weapons more than I relied on the magic of the world. I dropped my right hand to the knife handle, keeping the left on the reins.
“Tillard, wait a moment. There is no fire. Not now. But there was.”
He paused but didn’t stop. After a moment, he walked faster, this time not looking down and not worrying about the uneven ground. I tasted his uneasiness and fear, his horse’s fear, which was not as thick. I tasted no other emotions; I was too far from the Nanoo community to pick up their thoughts. But I picked up many more things, so many it took me a few minutes to sort through them all.
Tillard disappeared into the shadows ahead, but I tracked him by his fear.
The scent of the burned trees was so sharp and painful, it felt like needles jabbing at my tongue. They’d fought hard against the blaze, the trees, being damp from the very essence of the fen, being filled with sap and life. Some of them yet clung to life, though the taste of that life was so faint and sour that I knew they were dying.
Ferns, low-growing evergreens, fescue grass, and reeds also had been caught in the fire, as had small animals. The fire had been set; lightning had played no part. And Tillard and I well knew that Lord Purvis and his men were responsible. I got off the mare and dropped her reins, letting her follow or not. I’d not force her to enter this place.
I continued to taste the grove as I edged deeper into it. The char of wood set my head to aching fiercely, and so I tried to work that particular odor out of my mouth. Charred flesh from animals, and from a man, the lump of which I made out draped over a log … I worked those things away, too. The fire had burned so hot it had singed his hands off, and the pink of his insides glistened through a rent in his belly. No trace of armor, no sword; I figured him to be a Nanoo.
I just needed to see if there were more of them.
Again I tasted Tillard’s fear, my own rising with it. I’d wanted to believe the Nanoo could not be threatened in their domain because of the magic they commanded. But already I’d found one dead. And several yards later I found another. Near this corpse the trees were twisted, branches looking like snakes, the char on them scales. Some of the branches were low to the ground, as if the tree bent over to grasp something—like the weave had grabbed Grazti many days ago.
So the fen itself—or in concert with some of the Nanoo—had tried to snare the trespassers, like Grazti had been snared.
The taste of fear grew stronger, settling like a piece of spoiled meat in my mouth and making my eyes water. The fear lingered in the gaps between burned trunks and was thick. It felt like I swam through mud, fighting for each step.
The fear was from everything and everyone. The woods itself, frightened by the fire, which must have been aided by magic or alchemy. Still the fear—concern—pulsing from Tillard; fear from myself over the fate of Alysen and the Nanoo.
Fear from the two Nanoo who had died here.
And from the men with Lord Purvis, unaccustomed to fighting trees and walls of thorny growths. The sentiments were so thick now I had trouble breathing, the mud of emotions becoming denser as I took another step and then another.
Ahead, something sparkled on the forest floor, diamonds on a goddess’s dress. It took me a moment to realize that starlight reflected up from the water that stood in this part of the fen.
I was nearing the heart, where the Nanoo lived. By the Green Ones, I truly thought about turning away and getting on the vanner, riding far from here and using the three silver buttons to start a new life.
I’d seen so many horrible, horrible things in less than the passing o
f a month. Could I take seeing one more corpse? And what if that body belonged to Alysen, Shellaya, or Gafna?
What if I lost the last few people I knew in this world?
“Wisteria! Wisteria!” Tillard’s voice cut through the wall of fear. How long he’d been calling to me, I couldn’t say. Time had lost itself in the decimated grove, and the emotions I found my way through had slowed my course. “Wisteria!”
My gaze was fixed on the stars reflecting in the standing water. The one beautiful aspect of this ominous stretch of ground captured and held my attention. I couldn’t look away from them. If I did, I might see more bodies and taste more fear. Taste the anger, which welled inside me again. I might lose myself to every bad thing.
“Wisteria!” Tillard was at my shoulder, shaking me. I didn’t want to look away from the stars, but he turned me to face him. “Come on, they’re all in Rial.”
I raised an eyebrow.
“Rial, Wisteria. Come on.” He took my hand and led me through the burned tangle.
Suddenly we were sloshing through water and I looked down to see the reflected stars scattering away from my feet like fireflies dancing. The water was stagnant in patches, and the taste was strong and disagreeable, but preferable to the harsh flavor of charred trees and bodies.
“Where are we going?” I barely heard the words I spoke to Tillard, my head and heart pounded so loudly. All the scents and emotions—despair I detected now, too, hoplessness … I didn’t try to discover where those feelings came from.
“Rial, I say again. The Nanoo are waiting for us.”
Rial. So the center of the fen had a name.
I felt numb, and I let him lead me. The water was deeper here, seeping in the tops of my knee-high boots. Tillard took us around the body of a dark war horse, its bloated side rising above the water. I couldn’t see what it had died of; not enough of it was visible. But the starlight shown bright enough that I could see the maggots and flies deliriously feasting.
I saw two more dead horses and three dead men, the men run through by branches and suspended above the fen floor, haloed by clouds of flying insects. Their chain mail had not been enough to protect them from the enchanted grove. Somehow the branch tips were sharp enough and the branches themselves strong enough to punch through the links.