The Wanderer

by Wilder, Cherry;

  “Oh Captain!” she said, tears streaming down her cheeks. “Oh my dear, you have done a great work of charity, pleasing to the Goddess and to all the poor dark folk. Come in, come in …”

  Gael was glad to see that the boy led Ebony ahead of them and right into the hall itself before crossing to an open door for the stables. There was a living space lit by candles next to a small fire upon a large hearth. Mistress Roon carefully dowsed her torch. When Gael had set aside her lance, she gave her food satchel, from the saddlebags, to Mistress Roon, and asked her to use what she pleased—the chickens, the terrine, the salads—for supper. The good woman was delighted and went off, not to the kitchens of the keep but to a small kitchen alcove in one of the window embrasures.

  “It is a time of magic and the settling of old debts,” said Sir Jared. “Who knows what else will befall in the lands of Hylor before Midsummer? We have heard of the great wedding feast for the young queen of the Zor, long may she reign. But there are dark rumors, Captain—sad and bitter tales out of Lien have reached us, even in this part of the world …”

  “Out of Lien?” prompted Gael.

  “The Brown Brothers. Ah, Captain—why would men with a God be so cruel? Witch-burning! This new young firebrand …”

  He broke off when Abel Roon came back and sat down with them, saying that Ebony was a fine fellow—and no, he had given no trouble. He seemed to like the old white mare who was stablemate to Sir Jared’s charger—which Gael guessed might be rather old too.

  “I sent them all away to safety!” burst out the old knight, following always his own thoughts. “I mean my dear wife Corlin and our two grown children, the ones who lived …”

  “Where are they now, Sir Jared?” asked Gael.

  “In Achamar,” he said, “in the care of Queen Aidris Am Firn. She is a great queen and a friend to all in need. I fought for her cause, long ago, and before that she spent a little time in this very keep, during her exile …”

  “Ah, I have read the scrolls!” said Gael. “Queen Aidris served as a kedran seven years long at Kerrick Hall, near the river Flume and the town of Garth!”

  Then Mistress Roon brought their fine supper and stoups of water and of plain red wine. They ate and drank with good appetite, then Sir Jared bade them good night and was helped to his bed, still in the hall, with thick hangings.

  When the old knight had left them, Gael began to question Abel and his mother a little about the family. Abel fetched from a chest a sheaf of paper and parchment and showed her some old pedigrees and some new work that he had done, written out fair.

  “This is good work,” she said. “It should be seen by an archivist.”

  “Ah, that is his dream, Captain,” said Mistress Roon. “To be a scribe and to work upon the history of this family and of others.”

  “Oh, it could be done!” said Gael. “I have spent the winter in the town of Lort in Mel’Nir, where scribes and apprentices from many lands work upon the scrolls. Now that your fortunes have changed here in Wildrode, I do believe that Abel might join these scribes!”

  She was rewarded by the look of eagerness and hope on the face of the young lad.

  Presently, Mistress Roon showed Gael a comfortable pallet made up in a small room leading off the hall, that might have once been a bower for ladies. There were mirrors, a washing place, and even a green-cushioned privy. In the bed was a warming pan. She accepted all this luxury with a smile, but it could not mask the poverty and the wretchedness that still lingered about the Wilds of Wildrode. She sent out only her thoughts to Tulach Hearth—“It is done! The Curse is lifted! Pray heaven it was not too late!” She saw the mirrors and thought of her dear Tomas in his room at the Swan, but decided that she would speak to him from some happier place on her travels, perhaps from Wennsford.

  She slept and began to dream a little, and a voice began to call her name. She answered in her dream, and suddenly it was no dream …

  She was awake, and there was a soft light in her “bower.” She said softly, “Who is it?” Then she saw that in the largest mirror, clearly visible from her bed, another room was reflected, and in this room sat the woman who had called her.

  “Captain Maddoc …” said the woman, “I hope I did not startle you!”

  She was seated by a fire in a room richly furnished; there were books on her table and a large jewel, like a scrying stone, and some children’s toys, carved animals of painted wood. She was almost an old woman, though spry and active; on her tunic, she wore the silver locket of a widow. She had tightly curled hair of grey and black; her face was alert, fine boned, and her eyes were a striking green.

  Gael Maddoc knew her at once. She had last seen her upon the balcony of Chernak Palace, richly dressed.

  “Queen Aidris,” she said. “How may I be of service to you?”

  “You served Merigaun at the wedding!” smiled Aidris Am Firn. “And my beloved niece besides. I know your name and some of your deeds from a friend of the Daindru, we rulers of the Chameln lands—Mistress Vanna Am Taarn, the Guardian of Hagnild’s House in Nightwood.

  “I am eternally grateful to you and to the Eilif Lords and the Fionnar for the lifting of the curse upon the poor Wilds of Wildrode.”

  “Good Queen, I have heard that you visited this keep,” said Gael.

  “I came as part of an escort, bringing a gift of horses to Sir Jared, at the time of his wedding,” said the old Queen. “I had a friend in the keep, poor Jessamy Quaid, Jared’s esquire as a knight questor. They could not marry. It is a sad tale. But he had a good marriage with Corlin Aula, though they lived always in fear of the curse. They made sure there was no marrying nor were any children born in the keep. Now Lady Corlin and her son and daughter live here in Chameln Achamar.”

  Aidris Am Firn laid her hand on her scrying stone and continued.

  “I have news of evil deeds that are to be done very soon—in a day, no more—beginning in Wennsford, not far from Wildrode.”

  “In Wennsford?”

  “A ship has come up the river, the canal system of the Wenz, from Westport—a ship out of Lien!”

  “I saw it, good Queen,” breathed Gael. “The silver swan …”

  “The emblem of my mother’s house,” said Aidris Am Firn bitterly. “On the ship are a troop of deluded men, with a prisoner. They mean to take advantage of a friendly agreement with Prince Joris and march their prisoner from Wennsford, to Varda, and so on over the pass into Cayl at the town of Benna.”

  “Good Queen, who are these men?”

  “Their leaders are Brother Sebald, the so-called Witchfinder, and a senior Brother Advocate. Sebald and his followers are bringing a poor woman into the Kingdom of Lien, where she will be put to the question and burnt alive!”

  “Dear Goddess, no!” cried Gael Maddoc, incensed to think of Lien’s madness, reaching into this quiet country. “This must not be!”

  “It is a long way from Wennsford to Benna,” said Aidris Am Firn. “Brother Sebald is too bold! He takes this way so that he can preach in Varda and try to win people of Athron for his vile witch hunt.”

  “Could this march be … prevented?” asked Gael cautiously.

  “You had good success with a rescue at the town of Silverlode!” said the old queen.

  “I had brave comrades,” said Gael, hardly daring to accept what was being asked of her, here in the night, in Wildrode keep. The thought of a woman on a forced march through this gentle land, trending always toward a burning stake, turned her stomach. Yet she was quite sure that the Shee did not mean her to intervene here, would not want her to turn the gifts they had given her of magic to other purposes …

  If the old queen saw Gael’s hesitation, she did not heed it. “I do not ask you to go alone,” Aidris Am Firn said. “There are some others who keep a vigil near the roundhouse, in the old walls at Wennsford. They do not expect your coming, but one at least is known to you …”

  “The Carach tree on the hilltop,” said Gael. “It bade me return �
�”

  “There, you see …”

  Aidris Am Firn gave the warm and friendly smile of a grandmother and vanished as the mirror filled with a sparkling mist. Gael was excited, shivering a little, not sure what she should do, yet already resolved within herself.

  She reflected that Aidris Am Firn was not called Witch-Queen for nothing.

  CHAPTER XII

  RESCUE IN ATHRON

  The town of Wennsford was still decorated for Erran’s Eve, the Spring Festival. Thick garlands of flowers and leaves, woven in the courtyards, were strung along the balconies of the houses. Gael had not gone to the Carach on the hilltop after all, but ridden on a well-worn track round the hill and come to the river crossing, a ford in old times but now a solid causeway, well above the moorings where the Lienish ship and other craft had been made fast.

  Over the causeway, there was a livery stable at a busy crossroads, with market stalls, a pen for fowls and the first lambs. One road led to the north past a gate to the town. The other joined the high road that led through the meadows and on to the handsome main gates of Wennsford, never shut in these peaceful times.

  Gael rode this way, beside a fine grove of trees, with ash and apple and a tall larch, all green for the spring. She observed the old roundhouse across the highroad. There was plenty of cover in the roadside meadows for those watching: she saw a place where a great tun of ale had been tapped, and drinkers sat on tavern benches.

  She turned back and went to the livery stable at the crossroads. A gaunt old woman called the Widow Craine led Ebony to a stall and let Gael lock up his saddle and her own saddlebags in a numbered chest. She asked cheerfully where Gael was traveling—ah, yes, the tourney in the town of Hatch.

  Gael strolled across to the tavern benches, carrying her lance at the trail. She sat in the shade of a tree with her small ale, watching. Talking to trees, she thought, and now on a wild goose chase—or “herding the cloud sheep” as they said in Coombe—for the Witch-Queen of the Chameln. O Tomas, when will I see you again?

  She was scanning the crowd for “someone known to her,” as the queen had said—for some reason she thought of Gwil Cluny and of her old comrades Amarah and Mev Arun from Pfolben. Then she saw them—a man and his wife, both strongly built, good folk for a rescue indeed. She caught the woman’s eye and waved.

  “Here you are then!” said Marta Finn in a hushed excited tone. “Look, Tam—”

  Tam Finn, of Finnmarsh by Nightwood, smiled and gripped Gael’s hand.

  “By the Goddess, Captain,” he said in his rich, rumbling voice, “this is a work of mercy we will do—and I’m glad to see you come to our aid.”

  Then, before she could ask anything else—the plan, the other rescuers—where was the poor prisoner, where was the Witchfinder?—she was hailed aloud and truly surprised.

  “Captain Maddoc! Gael, my dear friend!” cried a rich sweet voice.

  There stood none other than Yolanda Hestrem, Lord Auric Barry’s henchwoman, last seen serving the nobles at the wedding of Queen Tanit Am Zor. She was beautiful as ever and arrayed in a kind of kedran dress, with trews and a long tunic. Of course—it was her fencing costume; Gael recalled that Yolanda excelled in the art of the thin blade. Now she sat down at their rustic table, and it was clear that Yolanda was known to the Finns—in fact the leader of the whole enterprise. She quickly found out how much Gael knew and filled in the rest.

  “The poor old woman is pent up in the old castello, yonder, but we have two women there who can send us word how she does and when the procession will begin,” said Yolanda. “These Brothers have guards but not close to the prisoner herself, lest they be ‘defiled.’ There was no way we could go in and take her from her cell.”

  “They will make a procession through the town?” asked Gael.

  “I would guess at the hour of noon,” said Tam Finn, squinting up at the sun. “We’ve time in hand!”

  By this time another kedran, a young ensign, had joined the group. Then there came two young men in sailors’ dress, with long striped tunics and tall sea boots of purple leather.

  “What is played out here?” Gael asked. “Where have the Brothers found this poor soul? What is this cruel campaign against witches?”

  There were witches indeed in all the lands of Hylor, and there were many women and men who used magic in everyday life. But charges of bewitchment or evil workings were dealt with by law or by custom—outbursts against a particular witch, wizard, or sorcerer were not common. Witches like the O’Quoins at Silverlode, who had aided the renegade Huarick-son, might demand harsher measures, magic against magic. But to strike out against a woman for owning witchcraft, in and of itself—this was new.

  “She is a woman of the Merwin, or the River Tribe,” said Yolanda Hestrem. “She had long since left the sea but was sailing with her kin, to celebrate the Holy Days. When their ship put in at Westport, the largest port of this land, Athron, she went ashore to buy supplies from the market. She was seized by a party of Lienish soldiers and the Brothers serving Sebald, the Witchfinder, and placed upon their ship, the Sacred Fire.”

  “How did these men know the woman for a witch?” asked Gael.

  She had heard tales of the River Tribe, a strange band of wanderers who roved up and down the rivers that flowed into the western sea.

  “The woman was wearing a Merwin cloak, with a pattern of sea creatures,” said Yolanda. “Was it not so?”

  “Aye-aye, Yolandee,” one of the sailors murmured his reply, revealing his origins as a Merwin. In this interchange, Gael became aware of a great anxiety and unrest in Yolanda herself, though the woman fought bravely to keep up a face of calm.

  “Then this Lienish ship was brought up the River Wenz to the river haven, yonder,” Yolanda went on, “and Brother Sebald sent word to Prince Joris in Varda, with a treaty claim, a right of way for travelers returning to Lien. They plan to bring the prisoner through Wennsford, then overland through Varda, and so on to the pass into Lienish Cayl, at Benna. We have heard that Brother Sebald will display the old woman along the way and preach against witchcraft.”

  “There are those in Athron who will cry out at this!” said the ensign, whose name was Bly. “And the consort of Prince Joris, Princess Imelda of Zerrah, in the Chameln lands, is known to be strongly against the passing of the Witchfinders!”

  “Ah, ’tis all wretched spite,” said Tam Finn. “It is the Brotherhood in Lien working against the Chameln lands because they are now the Land of the Two Queens! They would draw the Chameln into open conflict against them!”

  “How do the Witchfinders mean to travel?” asked Gael. “They will surely not walk every step of the way!”

  “They’ve two wagons hired from the Widow Craine’s livery stable,” said Marta Finn. “Got them set out ready at the other end of the town, on the Varda road.”

  Gael got up from her seat and stared through the gates at the broad street curving down through Wennsford toward the square in the center of the town, with the statue of the Lady Elfridda of Wenns. The place was not crowded as it would have been on Erran’s Eve. She returned to her place and said quietly to Yolanda Hestrem:

  “What was your plan?”

  “Magic!” said Yolanda. “A version of the bloodless rescue at Silverlode, though we lack the skills you were given for that task. We would have tried the Grand Bewitchment, but we are not sure of the shielding spells.”

  “And the escape with the poor prisoner?” asked Gael, pleased that they had not planned to meet violence with violence in their own turn. “Would you use one of Sebald’s wagons?”

  “We have our own small cart behind the trees,” said Yolanda, pointing.

  “Better than that!” said the older of the two sailors—Gael never learned their names. “We’ve our own good boat, the River Queen, in the first lock of the Wenz canals, just astern of that accursed Lien boat!” Yolanda gave Gael a look that had a little of amusement in it, as if she had not intended to reveal her plans so far, but wa
s unwilling to curb these sailingmen’s enthusiasm.

  Bells overhead, perhaps in the roundhouse itself, played a little round and then two single chimes.

  “Our good kerrick clock,” smiled Ensign Bly, “from Lord Niall—the Wizard of Kerrick!”

  A young girl carrying a washing basket came to Yolanda at the table and whispered urgently, then went on into the meadow.

  “Aha!” said Yolanda. “The Brothers are astir—they will pass through the town sooner than we thought! The guards in the roundhouse have spoken with the prisoner’s women.”

  “Look there!” whispered the young sailor. “The devils have slept on their ship.”

  A party of Brown Brothers in robes and raised hoods were coming round the trees from the harbor; at their center was a pale man in a black hood. Guardsmen in the blue and silver tunics of the Kingdom of Lien led the way to the high road and through the city gates. The team of rescuers watched in grim silence as these men turned to approach the roundhouse.

  “I have heard they use no magic,” said Gael, coming quickly to a decision. “But Lien is known to have as much magic as anywhere in Hylor. We must put on shields. You and I will perform the Grand Bewitchment at the center of the town, Mistress Yolanda!”

  She remembered how she had “donned the shields” in the mounted troop of Witch-Hounds before Silverlode. Now there was a witch to be rescued, and a somewhat different shielding must be used. She bade them all draw in closely and said:

  “We must concentrate our minds for this working—it will be done with good Athron magic!”

  Then she drew out the four green gold leaves shed for her by the Carach tree on the hill above them. The leaves were divided into seven pieces and moved around and into a circle in the center of the table. They all whispered the words of the shielding ritual after Gael, using the common speech, then tucked away their Carach fragments. She repeated the words in Chyrian: uttering the final words of binding, she held her lance upright. A large spark of blue fire shone out for a moment upon its point.

  “Come, then!” said Gael. “We’ll get into position!”