She saw with wonder that the horse was real enough, but the rider was stranger to behold than the Shee themselves. He was a wraith—his long gaunt face under the hood half-transparent, with bright burning eyes that glowed like a cat’s eyes in darkness. When she came up, he said in a low voice, penetrating as winter wind:
“Captain Maddoc—I am called Waltan—I have been sent to fetch you!”
It was the name of a mythic figure, one of the shades who fetched the dead to the heaven of the warriors or to other heavenly abodes. Gael could see him as a warrior himself, a ghost, a man who had once lived. She saluted and gave a polite greeting. He bade her take one of the misty pennants from the tip of his lance and lined up Ebony close beside the patient white mare. Then he set the tip of his lance on the cobblestones before him, and a circle of blue fire sprang to life, ringing the two horses. That cloud of mist Gael recalled from the rescue at Silverlode settled down as he uttered the spell. The sensation was not precisely one of flying, and the journey was very short, for Tulach, the hall of the Shee, was not more than a few hours ride from Aird.
When she arrived all was as before, with lights burning inside the ancient hall although outdoors it was a sunlit afternoon; servants came to take the horses, and Waltan led her in. He brought her as far as a hearth in the west, then excused himself and was gone, fading swiftly behind an arras. Then down the staircase came bright Lady Ethain, holding out her hands and smiling:
“So here is our messenger! Come, Gael Maddoc; we will go to Little Hearth again!”
Before they reached the head of the stairs, there came the sound of deep, excited barking. There up above them was the great dog, Bran, and he came galloping down and leaped to welcome Gael Maddoc, waving his plume of a tail. She made much of him, and the Lady Ethain sighed and said:
“There now! What a fuss he makes!”
They came into Little Hearth again, the same chamber where she had first met the Shee, and settled before a small spring fire. Bran crowded against Gael’s feet. Lady Ethain rapped upon the tabletop, then turned aside, listening.
“My son will come, and we will instruct you in this first task. It is a happy occasion …”
“My lady,” said Gael warily, “I hope I may send greeting to all those I saw on the hill, near the Palace Fortress …”
“You are a good child,” said Ethain. “Yes, we continue well and happy in our retreat.”
Then all at once Luran was with them, smiling, and he greeted Gael in his own serious fashion. He spoke of an easy task, a time of rejoicing, and she felt the smallest twinge of regret. Yet she knew that adventure was not a thing she should crave, let alone danger of any kind.
“You will bring a wedding gift into the Chameln lands,” announced Luran, “a gift for the young queen, Tanit Am Zor.”
Lady Ethain waved her hand gently over the table, and there stood a bronze case, gleaming darkly and decorated with leaves and flowers and bird shapes. Gael knew that it must contain jewels. When Luran turned its key and opened the lid, there they lay, giving off their own serene light. The coffer was lined with blue velvet, and the necklace was of graduated blue white stones, uncut but highly polished.
“This is a work so perfect that it has a name,” said Luran. In a dark-born man, Gael would have called his manner reverent. “It is called Moon of Erris—the work of a master craftsman of Eildon, completed not so long ago by our reckoning.”
Lady Ethain brushed the necklace with her hand, excused herself, and was gone. Luran went on, very matter-of-fact, about the journey. Gael must travel by magic to the Dannermere and ride into the Chameln land near Nesbath, through the historic pass at Adderneck.
There she would meet two officers from Eildon, part of the escort of a noble guest She would give her precious gift to the ranking officer and go along with them to Chernak New Palace, where the feast would be celebrated.
“From Eildon?” she asked, intrigued.
“From the Knightly Order of the Fishers—Prince Beren Pendark and his wife, Princess Nairne of the Wells, will also be attending the wedding, together with the Princess Dowager, Merigaun—a born cousin of Sir Hugh McLlyr. These noble folk will come with a great company out of Eildon, bringing in the bridegroom, Count Liam Greddaer of Greddach,” continued Luran. “Your two companions are the Princess Merigaun’s personal retainers.”
“The Eildon princes have already come into the Chameln lands?” she said. “Did they sail up the River Bal?”
“Yes indeed,” Luran smiled. “The Kingdom of Lien, however set against magic and influenced by the Brothers who serve the Lame God, still has a duty toward its old liege land. Kelen and Fideth must grant the knightly orders safe passage—there is always a busy traffic of traders upon the river. Rulers and governors of the dark folk and the light keep up some relations, however chilly, with lands who do not share their views.” Luran smiled again.
“It was a sight to behold—the caravels of Eildon left the ship at Lesfurth Strand and were escorted through the territory of old Balbank, in a grand progress. Kerns, kedran and their horses, the carriages and palanquins of the princes. This was not long past, in the first days of the Willowmoon. There were some folk there who were known to you—Lord Auric Barry led the wedding guests, along with his henchwoman, Yolanda Hestrem. Then, at the Adderneck Pass, they were greeted by King Gol himself.”
“Our good king is far gone in years,” put in Gael timidly. “How is he faring, Lord?”
“Yes,” smiled Luran, who seemed determined to be cheerful. “By dark standards he is old, but the Duarings are tough and long lived. The king was there with Queen Nimoné, along with his heir, Prince Rieth, and a few members of his household. He accompanied the noble guests through the pass into the Chameln lands. The wedding will be celebrated, of course, at Chernak New Palace, in the lands of Queen Tanit Am Zor.”
“We have heard something of all this in Lort city,” said Gael. “Is there nothing more in this task? Must the jewels be guarded?”
“We expect no treachery!”
“And where shall I say I come from? Not from the Southland … ?”
“Tell the truth,” he smiled. “You served in Pfolben and have ridden escort duty as a free lance, bringing visitors from Eildon over the high ground. You can be recruited at the Halfway House.”
“Will my comrades know that I serve the light folk?”
“You all serve the light folk, more or less,” he smiled. “Be more trusting and cheerful, Gael Maddoc. Learn the ways of Eildon—enjoy the beauty of the Chameln. See—here is gold for you, for your soldier’s pay. Your uniform, all your new accoutrements, waits in another chamber. The women will see to it!”
Gael had one more question.
“Will there be guests from Pfolben? From the Southland?”
Luran gave her a questioning look.
“I long to see my old companions again,” she said. “Riding escort duty, perhaps …”
“It is possible,” Luran said. “For the dark folk, it is a long journey from the Southland, and I feel sure they will have joined the ships of Eildon.”
After the wedding duty, she would have a furlough. She could return to Lort until she was summoned to make a report or perform a new task. Luran finished his instructions and was gone. An old woman came bustling in with a tray of food—roast meat, salad, new bread, a flagon of wine, and a jug of water. She spoke very cheerfully and pointed out, from the door of Little Hearth, the bedchamber where Gael would spend the night. And yes, her clothes were there—very handsome—and she should try them on before bed. But her measure had been taken, the old woman smiled, and they would fit perfectly.
“I am the Widow Menn,” she said. “My son was a soldier in the service of the old dark King, Ghanor … and my daughter was a kedran, far off in the city of Krail, in the Westmark. Ah, Captain, it is good to see young folk ride out, finely clad, from an ancient hidden place like poor Tulach …”
So Gael and Bran sat very comfortably by the
fire, and she gave the big dog meat and drink from her own plate. She peered from an unglazed window in the corridor and saw that the sun had already set; she found herself tired, though she had had little exertion. After preparing her lessons in writing and in reading given by Tomas, she simply bade the fire burn low. Later, Bran took his run down an ancient outside staircase near her bedchamber. There was another fire burning in the pleasant room; her saddlebags were there and, on a tall rack, her new clothes.
They were certainly very fine—two tunics, a tabard, extra sleeves, tight trews, all in black and silver, together with blue-green. The swirling patterns woven into the clothes came from the sea waves; there were decorations of pearly shell and buckles of silver, with coral. This was not all—she found something she took to be a nightshirt, undershirts, breast binders, and underdrawers, finely sewn. There was a spacious new set of saddlebags with a crest, the waves and silver-green fishes of the house of Pendark.
Gael tried on several garments and looked at herself in a long glass, very old, its silver backing worn thin. In the soft light of the candles, the room in the mirror was another place, a magic place, where she might see some other figure, not the kedran in her new clothes. On the wall hangings of the bedchamber, there were scenes of men and women dancing, together with tame beasts—lions, leopards, unicorns.
Gael had that persistent feeling of strangeness that was part of all her dealings with the Shee. She told herself that this was partly the contrast with her simple origins in the cottage by the Holywell. Perhaps this night, with her lessons and her room, was like the life of any young pupil, new to a great household.
Bran lay down on the hearthrug, and Gael, when she had washed in the small tiring room, dowsed her candles and climbed into the small soft bed. She fell asleep and dreamed a long kind dream of dining with Tomas and others and even Bran, the dog, in a house, as it was in dreams, that she knew yet could not recognize.
Then it was daylight—Widow Menn had just flung back the hangings at a window to show a bright spring morning. There was her breakfast, with a milk posset and fried bacon and apple pancakes. The old woman led Bran away; he swept his tail unhappily from side to side and looked back at Gael.
Later she was to remember this first leave-taking as the best and brightest she ever had out of Tulach and the strange world of the Shee. The Fionnar were grouped on a balcony overhead, in the sunshine—sadly, ancient Myrruad had kept to her bed. Sir Hugh, with Luran and Ethain, led Gael, now garbed as a kedran captain of the Fishers, into a grassy round before the hall. It was another blessed cantreyn field; within already stood Ebony, arrayed in magnificent trappings of blue and silver and green. A groom stood by, holding a full head covering, and a wreath of silk flowers—Ebony, he said, would not wear these things. Gael, while she checked the girths and set on the new saddlebags, laughed aloud.
“We must let him have his way,” she told the groom.
Luran shrugged and nodded to the groom, consenting to this omission. When she had mounted, he handed her the leather traveling pouch with the wedding gift, the jewels of Erris, and she slotted it into the holding place before her on the great saddle. Lady Ethain made a finger sign, and the case became invisible, though Gael could feel it still and knew this handy scrap of magic herself. Then, unexpectedly, old Sir Hugh stepped up with a small soft package wrapped in silken cloth.
“There now, brave Captain,” he rumbled. “My gift for my cousin, Merigaun.”
Soon everything was stowed—she took her own leather cloak on the back of her saddle and wore a plain black riding hat without a plume. The groom couched her lance in its carrying straps. Then the whole company began to wave, and the ladies upon the balcony threw bright leaves and flowers. Gael turned the restless Ebony about, and Luran, speaking the ritual for the landing place, drew the line of light all about them in the blessed meadow. The mist gathered; horse and rider were taken up and moved, in the way they knew, toward the borders of the Chameln.
The landing place, behind three birch trees in bright leaf, was on the Nesbath road, not a hundred yards before the Adderneck pass. There was the Dannermere, the inland sea, calm and still in the spring sunshine. She could glimpse the peninsula of Nesbath, with its fine old mansions. To the west, beyond the wide grassy verge of the road, was the border with Lien. For years now it had been an actual wall of grey stone, with an ingenious fence of piles and dressed logs blocking the waterway, the confluence of the two Lienish rivers, the Bal and the Ringist, where they flowed out of the inland sea.
Gael’s landing place was beyond this bridge. She came out from behind the trees and praised Ebony and rode on smartly into the shadow of the high cliffs that enclosed the Adderneck pass.
The chronicles she had read over the past winter with Tomas made much of the historic ambush in this place. The Red Hundreds of Ghanor, the Great King, led by the General Kirris Hanran, had ridden into the pass, unsuspecting, with martial music and insufficient scouts. For all they had known, the main part of the Chameln army was safely bottled up on the shores of the Dannermere, their tribal reinforcements delayed, far in the north. Yet, on the wooded heights and in the narrow way, there lurked the Morrigar—the Giant Killers. The troops of Mel’Nir had been given up to the Chameln by the lost race of the Kelshin, the kin of that other small race, the Tulgai.
These small folk had guided an army through the border forest, and Aidris the queen had gone with them, to drive the invaders from her land. The strategy of the ambush was good: its success not only severed the Melniros’ Supply lines, it also allowed the divided armies of the Chameln to rejoin. Soon the main force of Mel’Nir had had no choice but to fall back into its own country.
Legends had grown up around this disaster for Mel’Nir. At home, the few surviving warriors had been ill treated, disgraced; Ghanor the Great King fell into a long fit of violent rage from which the healer Hagnild must rescue him.
In the chronicles had been gathered the many tales of signs and wonders that foretold the ambush or accompanied it. Black-clad women wept in the heavens. After the battle, the death-sendings of many of the doomed. Hundreds were seen throughout all Mel’Nir’s lands.
On the anniversary of Adderneck, in the middle days of autumn during the Aldermoon, milder on the Chameln border than in the lowlands of Mel’Nir, memorial services were held in both countries. Ladies from the court of Good King Gol walked into the pass with baskets of red flowers.
Today, in spring, thirty years or more after the Great Ambush, Gael Maddoc rode on into the pass and could feel nothing dreadful. The pines on the towering slopes of the pass showed tufts of tender green on the tips of their dark shaggy branches, sweet birdsong trilled through the air. The foresters had not been at work: dead trees lay where they had fallen or piled in heaps beside the road. The place teemed with birds and small animals: perhaps no hunters dared to come here. She rode on, and Ebony’s hoofbeats echoed through the narrow way. He gave a signal, pulling back a little. She saw that there was an old man ahead of them in the pass.
He was short and slight, and he wore a long grey blue robe, a priest’s garb, and carried a staff. Now he stood up and waited for her to draw level.
“Good morning, Captain!”
He had a long, bony face, lined with age; he bobbed his head in greeting.
“Good morning to you, sir,” said Gael. “My name is Gael Maddoc. Can I be of service to you?”
“You serve the Knights of the Fishers,” said the old man. “I think you must be bound for the wedding of the young queen.”
“Indeed I am,” said Gael. “It will be a great festival!”
She saw the badge or crest that he wore over his heart, and it showed three golden bells. She knew at once who he was.
“Good sir,” she said humbly. “I have been working with certain scribes of Mel’Nir in the town of Lort. I believe your name—your fame—is known there.”
He smiled a little. “My fame?”
“No one knows more than Brother L
ess!”
He gave a wry smile. “The scribes do me too much honor.”
Gael had seen that there was an arrangements of smooth rocks behind him, against the eastern wall of the pass. It was a well, not so big as the Holywell, of course, but still a blessed place, with a rough trough hewn into the stone of the pass’s side and an empty altarstone beside it.
“Good Brother Less,” she said. “Will you do me the honor of breaking bread and taking a sup of water?”
He nodded his agreement; she dismounted and took down her small sack of provisions. She removed the heavy saddlebags, and Ebony, in his finery, was able to nibble the soft grass on the roadside. They settled on the rocks; rays of sunshine still found their way down into this part of the Adderneck though the narrowed pass ahead was dark. As she signed the Goddess’s blessing over the cup she gave him, an ironic gleam came to the old scribe’s eye—she knew Brother Less to be a follower of Inokoi—but he accepted the cup from her hand with good grace.
“I have been thinking of the grandmother of Queen Tanit Am Zor,” said the old man. “Aravel Vauguens Pendark, a Princess of Lien … her tragic history.”
“I have heard that she was not in her right wits,” said Gael.
“For a time she was truly mad,” he said bluntly. “And it was the work of a cruel sorcerer, acting upon her frail wits and nervous disposition. Yet she was healed completely! Yes, good Captain—I saw it myself!”
“Perhaps this was a kind magic?” She wondered at the identity of the princess’s healer—for surely the cruel sorcerer was Rosmer, the deceitful vizier, Lien’s Kingmaker.
“Yes, there you have it,” Less said. “A kind magic and kindly sent from a young man with a noble heart. He sent the poor mad queen half of a magic fruit, and it restored her reason.” The old brother gave her a look—a testing look—and she remembered what Tomas had told her about Less knowing the secrets of Yorath’s supposed last hours. Perhaps this “noble heart” was Coombe’s hero? Gael Maddoc looked Less squarely in the eye and saw that this must be so. Knowing her task today—to bring a present to this madwoman Aravel’s granddaughter, she wondered why the old man should bring up this old history. Did he mean to warn her? This encounter must have been deliberately arranged. She wondered how much he truly knew of her purpose. The young queen also was rumored touched by madness—had this fallen to Tanit from her grandmother? And could this madness also, by kindness, be cured? She wondered if the Shee had thought of that when they had chosen their present.
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