“Why, it sounds for all the world like the old song of Aidan, ‘The Warlock of Ryall.’ It will make a Ballad!” declared Bress.
“What, will you put words to that old air?” asked Rab Maddoc, with a wink at Vigo.
“Well, if you do not think I can do it, Da,” grinned Bress, “I’ll have Shim Rhodd to help me!”
The men chuckled approvingly, for they knew the innkeeper’s son to be a bright spark.
Now the preparations for the storm were in full swing; everything was made fast, the livestock were brought into shelter. Bress was working on Rhodd the innkeeper’s land, so Gael turned to with her father to secure the roof and hew firewood. She helped to bring the six sheep down from the top of the hill to the pen behind the house that they shared with the milch goats.
She rode out one day on Bretlow’s behalf. After packing the priest’s cupboard with the food that she and her mother had been baking, she told Druda Strawn the full story.
“I think you must write this letter you have spoken of to Hem Duro of Val’Nur,” said Druda Strawn. “Not that he will be so very happy to be hearing from us! But we cannot have poor Bretlow set aside like this. These pirates must indeed be the same Black Sheep who threatened Lord Knaar’s life when one of their brethren’s farms was taken by a dam.”
“Well, I have set down a few beginnings,” Gael said shyly, for her writing would never please her. She drew out her sheet of paper. The priest accepted several of her sentences and together they worked them into a letter, not too long, that the Druda promised to write out fair on a parchment. Then, storm or no storm, it could be brought to Hackestell under his name and sent on from there to the lord’s son, in the palace at Krail.
“Once again,” the Druda told Gael seriously, “we must consider ourselves lucky that these folk have resorted to magic in their own defense.” His gaze was fixed far in the distance. Gael knew he was thinking of more than Bretlow’s future. “Lienish refugees—we may speak out against those, but not against Lienish men. Indeed, open talk against those of Lien is no more welcome these days than it was four summers past when you rode out with me as a Green Rider. Our Lord Knaar desires to keep the peace—and maintaining our relations with Lien outward friendly and smooth is a part of that.”
Gael had heard a whisper of this since her return to Coombe. There was unrest in Lien—it was rumored that Lien’s queen had taken on a coterie of evangelical counselors, men who desired to push the worship of Inokoi the Lame God and the preaching of his prophet across Lien’s borders.
Still, Lien seemed little closer today than it had before her journey into the Southland. The Melniros were a vigorous, active people, a people who worked hard to wrest a living from their broad open land. Inokoi’s Prophet, Matten Seyl of Hodd, had been a nobleman, and it had been a noble’s dissipations he had renounced. It seemed unlikely to Gael that the severe preachings of the Brown Brotherhood—men who ranted against the “pleasures” of the world, by which they seemed to mean everything from the love between a man and a woman through to heedless spending, could ever take hold here.
Nevertheless she went home from the Druda in a thoughtful mood, glad that she had been able to aid Bretlow, but unsettled once again in the particulars of her own return.
The first night of the storm uprooted trees and hurled the well bucket a hundred yards out onto the road. Gael and her brother ran around the hillside at dawn and found that the big whitethorn tree outside the sacred cavern had fallen. They dragged it aside and set about clearing leaves and twigs that had been driven into the grotto’s passage, even into the sacred chamber. Gael was sweeping the uneven stone of the floor clear of the last of the torn silver-green leaves when Bress came in, filling the doorway, and went to take a drink of spring water.
“I will ride to Banlo Strand,” he said. “Let me take that black demon of yours.”
“No,” she replied, her hands full of broken whitethorn shards, tree of magic and of sacrifice. Her mother had cut rods from this tree every spring for the font’s altar; Shivorn would certainly mourn its passing. “Ebony will hurl you down. What’s at Banlo?”
“Pickings,” he said. “Bits of wreckage. Maybe a haul of kelp.”
“Run to Banlo!” she said. “You are the best runner in ten crofts, I am told.”
“Maybe I will,” he said, brightening. “Sister …”
“What?”
“Is it true you will not have Culain Raillie?”
“By the Goddess, now I know I am in Coombe!” she said. “He has not spoken for me and I have said no more than two words to the man, but even in this the gossips have found their food.”
“It was mother’s plan for you to wed Culain,” said Bress. “She has kept a part of your own silver for the dowry.”
“I know it,” said Gael ruefully. “And the widow is her friend and we’re in their debt. But the gossips are right … I will not have him.”
“The Raillies are incomers. They’re rich.” He stared around at the worn ceremonial cups, the broken edge of the ancient altar. “What can they want with poor folk like us?”
He flung out of the cavern and turned back to say:
“Shim Rhodd says that they are witches!”
The storm came down again in the afternoon and by midnight the yard was a sea. Shivorn Maddoc could stand it no longer, she and Maddoc brought the six sheep one by one into the house, and also the two goats. The chimney was half blocked by a board so that the torrents of rain would not put out the fire. Gael made a hot mash and took it to Ebony and Grey Lass, the donkey mare, in the lean-to.
The family were all in good spirits; Gael remembered the excitement of stormy nights as a child. She and her mother cooked a second supper of griddlecakes, then they snatched a few more hours of sleep in the woolly, smoky darkness of the small house. Another yellow morning showed that the road was flooded, almost to the boundary wall. Their croft was like a hilly island. Maddoc said to Gael:
“Can you ride round the hill? I fear the Cresset Burn has come up by Ardven ruin.”
Mother Maddoc loaded up the saddlebags with hot oatcakes, a crock of porridge with honey, a bottle of applejack. Bress helped his sister mount up in the flooded yard.
“I’ll be running to Banlo Strand,” he said. “I’ll look for a piece of sailcloth for a new horse cover.”
Gael rode behind the house and urged Ebony onto a dryish track that spiraled round the hillside. She came to a spot where she could look down on the Cresset Burn and the ruined manor on its banks. Ardven had been a fine house, taller than the Long Burn farmhouse, and it had stood a good distance from the stream. Now part of it was unroofed, with grass and nettles growing through the floor, and the stream had changed its course. She knew that the few rooms still in use were farthest from the bank of the river, but there was water ankle deep inside the streamside rooms.
Overhead, one mighty stone chimney that climbed the house’s western wall had a thread of smoke arising from one of its fine brown chimney pots. There was a fire alight somewhere on the upper floor—Old Murrin must have taken shelter there.
She saw a way to ride through to the ruin. She came carefully downhill, skirting the water, Ebony found his way, snorting, over a flooded causeway. At last she called:
“Ahoy, Ardven House! Are you there, Captain Murrin?”
She called again, and a white head came up at one of the staring dark windows of the upper floor. The old woman answered the call in a strong cracked voice and directed her through the ruins. There were some bedraggled fowls, one goat and a scatter of smaller wild creatures, rats, voles, conies, all taking shelter from the flood in the ruined house. Gael let Ebony stand in a good dry place and climbed up a ladder.
“Now then,” said Old Murrin. “Kedran Maddoc is it? Ensign?”
“Captain …” she grinned.
“Blessed Huntress!”
Old Murrin showed a few strong yellow teeth in her wrinkled leathery countenance. She was short, straight backed. She
was two-and-seventy years old; she lived alone.
“Sit ye down,” she said. “Bless your mother for this warm food. Water’s as high as ever I’ve seen it.”
There was a small fire on the hearth and an iron trivet for heating food. An alcove was filled with cut wood, pinecones, and kindling—Gael remembered hearing that Bress and Shim Rhodd had hauled fuel for Ardven in the summer. The room was not warm: Gael kept her cloak, and the old woman was wrapped in a blanket. The large neat room contained piles of Murrin’s goods. She had carried up food baskets, garden tools, pot and pans. A grey cat lay curled on the narrow bed. On the wall behind the bed hung Murrin’s riches: a magnificent banner in colored silks, green and blue, enriched with silver thread and writing in a strange language. There was a bronze shield, two banners with Chyrian words, one from Eriu, and a newer pennant from the Westlings, with a brown hill surmounted by a bolt of lightning for the house of Val’Nur.
Murrin questioned Gael about her service in the Southland, workaday stuff that only a kedran would know about or care. Was it a soft duty at Lowestell and in Pfolben city? How were the horses and the stabling?
“Whence comes your beautiful silken banner?” asked Gael.
“It is from the far-off land of Palmur,” said Murrin softly. “It was made by craftsmen from the lands of Kusch.”
“That is much farther than I have been,” said Gael. “I have been only to the Burnt Lands.”
“I am the only one left of our company of adventurers,” said Murrin. “It is fifty years past. Tell me about the Burnt Lands. Were you in Aghiras?”
So they sat in the dark, ruined house in the flood and told marvelous tales. Long after Gael Maddoc had told all about her journey to the Burnt Lands, Emeris Murrin went on. She had been as far as any traveler; she had served with the fighting women of Palmur, she had seen the mountains that pierced the clouds. She had sailed southward to the Lands Below the World and fought battles in Eildon and in the Western Isles. She took a gulp of applejack, laughed and said:
“What will you do, girl?”
“Ride out again,” said Gael. “My mother would have me stay”
“Stay and marry, I’ll be bound,” said Murrin. “I was wed in Athron, five years long. He was a handsome man, a drummer from Varda. I had a child, a sweet girl child, but she was taken.”
“So you went back to soldiering?”
“I rode off. It was a cruel thing, I’m not proud of it. My old love returned, the tall Eildon girl I told of, the companion of all my wild journeys. I left the poor man and his cottage and the grave of our little maid and went with my kedran lover. We were together then for nearly twenty years.
“We sailed for Eildon and served in a long campaign against the last Kings of Eriu. I was wounded again, and we took more peaceful duties in Athron and in the Chameln lands. Ylla died far north of Achamar, fording a river, in peacetime. It was before the Great King, old Ghanor, made his bid for the Chameln. I left the service and came home, all the way home here to Coombe, and settled in the ruins of this house, home to the Murrins of Ardven.”
Gael hardly liked to ask: “How fared your brother—your sister, in Rift Kyrie? You must have nieces and nephews …”
“I have had a few words with all my kin, over the years,” said Murrin dryly. “They did well. Avaurn, in Rift Kyrie, went to the Goddess six years past. The children are grown men and women. My brother’s son has the name Oweyn and still lives in Balbank, though it is King’s Bank now, part of Lien. This house belongs to him, of course. One day—before I am gone perhaps—the house will be restored …”
Gael felt keenly the old woman’s loneliness and tried to cheer her.
“Ah, but you had one more adventure, Captain,” she said, “after you came home!”
“By the Goddess, I had!” said Old Murrin. “Riding with the Westlings by the side of Yorath Duaring and his free company. There was a mighty man and a noble heart!”
“It must be fine to be remembered,” said Gael Maddoc. “To have folk bless your name, as we do the name of General Yorath.”
“Psst,” said Murrin. “You are young. You will have fame and fortune.”
They played several games of Battle with well-worn wooden figures. Murrin was a master player; for her sake, Gael wished that she could play better. They took up the tale of Bretlow Smith’s adventure far away on the shores of the Western Sea.
“These Black Sheep are newcomers,” said Murrin, “but they have a strong whiff of Eriu still about them. It is a rare green island full of the beauty of the Goddess and with old harsh magic. It would surprise me if their current liege, Kelen of Lien, does at all well by them.”
Gael was reluctant to leave the old woman alone, but Murrin urged her to get home.
“There’s another wild night coming,” she said. “I’m snug here, with Oona the Cat. I can play Battle by myself for hours together. I have much to remember.”
II
The storm wind raged again all night long, but the rain had edged off to the northwest. From the top of their hill the Maddocs could see sheets of water on the plain by Hackestell. Bress had run home from Banlo Strand with news of an Eildon ship, stranded on the beach. The ship’s captain and the crew were guarding their vessel, ready to get her off again when the blow was over.
There were some travelers taken from the ship coming through to the inn at Coombe in a farm cart. No, they were not hurt, not even shipwrecked, properly speaking, but they were fine folk who complained in loud voices.
Two mornings later, when the wind had dropped, there came the sound of a horse splashing through the yard and then a thunderous knocking on the door. When Mother Maddoc lifted the bar, there was a grinning, shock-headed fellow: it was Bress’s boon companion, Shim Rhodd, the innkeeper’s son. He stood by their fire and spoke up, full of importance. The reeve, Master Oghal, begged their pardon. Would Captain Maddoc please to ride up to Coombe without delay, in full kedran kit, ready for a journey.
“Surely,” said Gael, who had been stirring Ebony’s hot mash. “What does he want with me?”
“I’m not supposed to know,” said Shim, “but I do. The lord and his lady, they from the ship, they will have an escort.”
He winked at Bress.
“There’s money in it,” he said. “They are the finest folk ever in Coombe. Their man gave me two pieces of silver just for cleaning three pair of boots.”
Maddoc spoke up from his place by the fire.
“Money or not, our family will be pleased to come at the reeve’s call, seeing he asks so politely.”
Shivorn sent all the men out of the kitchen and warmed water for a soldier’s wash. She packed the saddlebags—all her daughter’s kit was in good order. Gael strode out of the cottage in her rust red “dress” tunic, dark brown cloak and green riding cap with a kestrel feather. As she fed Ebony and groomed him, she thought of the summer day she had run to Lowestell behind Blayn of Pfolben’s horse, Daystar.
The floodwaters were draining away on the road, but it was still heavy going in places. Shim Rhodd and Bress, both mounted on the big brown workhorse from the inn, splashed ahead. They sang for her, the kind of teasing old Chyrian song with which the folk of the coast greeted newcomers who did not understand the language.
Here comes a girl
Dressed up so fine,
Is it Queen Meb, fairest of the Shee?
Or is it the Swineherd’s daughter?
So they came up the hill to Coombe, and there was Leem Oghal, the reeve, peering out of his porch, waiting. He had been reeve as long as Gael could remember, and his father before him. He was a solid, comfortably built man, with a lined face. Even those who envied his fine house and his land had to admit that his life was not easy. Now he smiled at the crofter’s daughter and a boy came to hold her horse.
“Step in, Captain,” said the reeve. “You must pardon my wife, she’s not down yet.”
They sat together at a long table in the very room where Maddoc had asked f
or relief from his taxes. Ronna, the reeve’s daughter, brought a milk posset and new-baked bread.
“Gael Maddoc,” said Reeve Oghal, fixing his eyes on her. “You must help Coombe village out of a hole.”
“How can I do that, Master Oghal?”
“The shipwrecked folk over yonder in the General Yorath … you’ve heard of them? It is an Eildon nobleman, Lord Malm, his lady, and their one servant. They were taking ship to Bala-mut, but the storm landed them on Banlo Strand. They are traveling with little state, almost secretly, and I have no idea of their business. They will come with all possible speed to the court of King Gol. They need an escort or guide, as well as horses …”
He stopped short, gulped at his drink, and ran a hand over his thinning hair.
“You are the only soldier here in Coombe today who is fit to ride as their escort. We have no Westlings on leave and no riders who have had dealings with such high and mighty folk,” he said. “They are giving Rhodd a terrible time.”
He smiled a little, for the reeve had a running fight with the innkeeper, that other pillar of the community.
“I will do it gladly,” said Gael Maddoc.
“Good girl!” said the reeve. “But hear this—the ways are cut. The road past Hackestell is under water. You must ride the high ground. Have you ridden far on the plateau?”
“I have traveled on the new roads as far as Goldgrave,” she said, “with Druda Strawn and other Summer Riders, three years past.”
“Of course,” said the reeve, seeming relieved. “That is but a step from the city of Lort and the Palace Fortress of our king.”
Gael thought of the High Plateau, home of the Shee, a fine, deserted place where one could watch the stars. It could not be chance that now took her to those heights, these nights as the storm had risen. She had been called. Strangers had come from Eildon, the magic kingdom of the west. Surely all must hang together with her quest …
“Now we come to the money,” said the reeve bluntly. “I will hire you to serve the village of Coombe. We will provide horses and a kedran captain as guide, and I believe the Lord Malm will pay as much as twenty pieces of gold, five before setting out and the rest when the journey is done. If you please these folk they may add to this … a gratuity. In any case you can keep four pieces of gold for yourself when you return. All the rest is for Coombe. Rhodd may enrich himself with his inn prices, but I can do no such thing. I trust you, Gael Maddoc. You are the daughter of a crofter of Coombe … the Maddocs were there when the Standing Stones were set up!”
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