by Dave Duncan
choice--for an atheling must never show fear, no
matter how dry his mouth.
"Go home and learn to spin then."
"No. We both go. Now, Radgar! My
dad says you're always getting me into trouble and
if I didn't follow you around all the time he
wouldn't always be having to switch me!"
"Oh, it's a sore butt you're afraid
of?"
Aylwin's face crumpled. "No."
Radgar shrugged. "If I'm not back by dark,
tell Father where I went and why you did not come with
me."
Aylwin shuddered. Better death than that! When
Radgar rode forward, he followed. He always
did.
They were wearing only breeches, so the torrent
of air they met in the ravine made their eyes
water and threatened to freeze the tears on their
cheeks. If no one ever went to Weargahlaew,
then why were there horse droppings on the trail
to it? Why was there a trail at all? It wound up
and down and in and out in a labyrinth of fallen
boulders, but when it suddenly descended to the mouth
of a cave at the end of the ravine, Radgar was not
surprised. He knew of many caves around
Waro`edburh. They were usually long pipes, with
no branches or bigger chambers, just tubes that
eventually ended in rock falls. Some were used as
animal shelters; others made good play
holes. But now he had another misty memory
of a dark tunnel leading through to daylight somewhere
else, and none of the familiar caves did that.
Aylwin howled. "You can't go in there!" His
teeth were chattering.
"Why not? Only girls are scared of bats!"
"Weargas!"
"Weargas?" Radgar said
scornfully. "How can there be outlaws in there?
What would they eat?"
How would they see? He dismounted, handing his reins
to his trusty retainer, and stepped cautiously
into the cave. There was a draft blowing out of it, so
his vague half memory of a tunnel was
probably correct--but he would not tell
Aylwin about it in case he was wrong. The entrance
was black as an icehouse and littered with jagged
pieces of rock fallen from the roof. Cwealm
wouldn't go in there. If this were Radgar's front
door, he would keep a tinderbox handy ...
somewhere easy to reach, out of the rain. ... He found
it in few minutes, also some old-looking horn
lanterns and a box of candles.
"How did you know those were there?" Aylwin
squeaked.
Radgar shrugged. "Had to be. Do I light
one lantern or two?"
"Two," Aylwin said miserably.
"You sure?"
"Course I'm sure!"
So was Cwealm, when he was granted some light.
He let Radgar lead him into the tunnel as
happily as if it were the palace stables. Even with
this example of model horsiness to follow, the
normally docile Spearwa gave Aylwin a
lot more trouble. The passage was more than high enough
to walk along. Fallen rocks had been cleared
aside and the worst holes filled in with gravel
to make a level path.
"What happens if Cwicnoll shakes while
we're in here?" Aylwin demanded, his voice
quavering oddly in the echoes.
"Perhaps the cave'll close behind us." Now there
was a skin-shivering thought! On the other hand, it could
be that falling rocks were all that parents were fussing
about and there weren't any weargas at all.
The way curved into total darkness and then
brightened, returning to daylight at the top of a
short scree slope within a small, almost
circular, valley enclosed by high black
cliffs. The cave was at treetop height,
providing a view over a wild, shaggy forest.
Here and there steam clouds promised hot springs,
but there were no signs of buildings.
"This is the real Weargahlaew!" Radgar
explained as if he had known all along what
to expect.
Again it was almost-sort-of familiar,
especially the precipitous path down the slope
in front of his toes--and he would not even try
to imagine what might happen to a horse caught
on there by a tremor. If he injured Cwealm,
he would never get another horse, not ever. And
just inside the cave mouth stood three sacks of
meal, two unopened, one still half full, and also
a small stack of empty sacks weighted down
with a rock. The explorers exchanged shocked
glances.
"Somebody's feeding the weargas!" Aylwin
squealed.
Four lanterns stood in full view on a
ledge, plus what was certainly another
tinderbox. Fresh droppings. Cwealm whinnied
and was answered. Down in among the first trees
stood a horse. It had been hobbled and left
to graze, and the pack saddle was still on its back!
"He's still here!" The fear in Radgar's
belly was an agony and also a glorious
excitement. His mouth was so dry he could hardly
speak, and wonderful shivers ran up his arms.
"Whoever brought that horse is still here!"
Aylwin was sickly pale. "Let's go!
Now, Radgar! Please!"
"You go. My father must know about this. You go and
tell my dad--or your dad, I suppose.
Bring the house thegns! I'm going to stay here and
keep watch, so we know who the traitor is."
His trusty thegn put up a few more protests,
but his heart wasn't in them. It was very
important to take word back, Radgar said; and
Aylwin would not be running away when he was ordered
to go. For once, Aylwin didn't even question his right
to give such orders. He led Spearwa back
into the tunnel.
Radgar scrambled up on to Cwealm's great
back. Feeding outlaws was an unfri`ed, a
breach of the King's peace, so he was right
to investigate. It was a wonderful chance to do something
interesting and not be punished for it; but even without that
excuse, curiosity ate at him like a plague
of mosquitoes. He still had the lingering sense of
having been here before, so there were two mysteries or
even three--because Cwealm had obviously known the
tunnel too. Cwealm had been one of Dad's
own mounts, but other men in Cynehof had ridden him
--the hands who exercised him, for example.
Suppose the traitor turned out to be someone in
the palace itself!
The precipitous track down the scree brought
him to the tiny meadow where the packhorse had been
left to graze, but beyond that stood real forest--huge
cypresses and cedars hiding the sky. Very little
undergrowth could flourish in that gloom, but the ground was
so hummocky that he could rarely see more than two
or three trees ahead. The path was clear, going
up over rocky knolls and down into mossy,
squelchy hollows. Whenever it divided, he let
Cwealm choose, hoping he would follow the scent
<
br /> of the traitor's horse--Dad said horses went
by scent much more than people did--and that seemed to work,
because sooner or later he would find another muddy
patch showing hoof marks. There were too many marks for
just one horse and all going the same way he
was. He wished he could muffle Cwealm's
hooves like heroes did in stories, like Dad and
his men carrying the scaling ladders to the walls of
Lomouth. ...
The heavy, soporific smell of the trees was
achingly familiar, but there was no forest like this anywhere
close to Waro`edburh. No one would log here because
there was no way to drag the trunks out. It was
creepily silent, without wind or birdsong,
only rarely a distant tattoo from a
woodpecker or the harangue of a squirrel. A
couple of times his nose caught the stink of hot
springs, and once he was close enough to see wisps
of steam drifting through the trees.
Then he reined in his trusty steed on one of the
hillocks, looking down into a puddled hollow with
no tracks in the mud. "You made a mistake,
big one! We should have gone the other way at the
last fork."
Cwealm raised his great head and twisted his
ears. The trees muffled sound, but then Radgar
heard, too--hooves! On the trail he had just
left.
"Don't whinny, big one! Please,
please, don't whinny!"
Amazingly the big fellow did not whinny.
Perhaps the heavy tree smells confused the scent,
but whatever the reason, he stood in silence as a
horse went by the junction. A fleeting glimpse
of the rider was enough to let Radgar recognize
Uncle Cynewulf.
His initial anger was followed at once
by dismay--there was no great secret after all! Dad
would not be amazed and grateful to hear the news that
somebody was feeding the outlaws in
Weargahlaew if Uncle Cynewulf was the one
doing it, because Dad must have ordered him to. As
tanist he was Dad's main helper and ran the
shire whenever Dad was away foering or just being
king somewhere else. That might even explain how
Cwealm knew the tunnel, although the tanist was
notorious for always choosing docile mounts.
So perhaps Dad himself fed the weargas sometimes!
Obviously there was a secret here that nosy boys
were not meant to know. He would be a brat, not a
hero. Aylwin would tip the fish out of the creel the
moment he got back to Cynehof--unless Uncle
Cynewulf caught up with him on the road, in which
case it would happen sooner. Either way, the
result would be sore-butt time and perhaps even
take-Cwealm-away time, which did not bear thinking
about; but when a man found himself in this much trouble, he
might as well satisfy his curiosity. Radgar
turned Cwealm around, kicked in his heels, and
said, "Move, monster!"
He had ridden about three bowshots along the
other track when Cwealm let out a whinny that could
have been heard at the top of Cwicnoll.
Radgar had not even started to curse him before the
answer came, and round the next great rock he
found a treeless hollow wide enough to admit some
sunlight. It contained a pile of firewood, a
very small stream, and--at the sunny end--a
tumbledown thatched shack of poles and wattles that
blew war horns in his memory. Yes! He had
seen that shack before, when he was very small.
The solitary horse tethered there was Sceatt,
Cousin Wulfwer's usual mount. That was really
annoying. At seventeen, Wulfwer grew pink
hairs on his lip and had almost completed his
cniht training; but he was still only the tanist's
son, and if he was trusted to keep a secret then
an atheling should be. Radgar slid to the ground and
hitched Cwealm alongside Sceatt. They were good
friends, which explained the whinny. Their owners were not.
Relations between the cousins had never been warm and had
recently become extremely strained.
Wondering why no one had appeared to greet him
yet, Radgar headed boldly for the shack
to announce himself, then stopped in his tracks as he
realized that what was going on in there was very
probably forlegnes. That was a word he was not
supposed to know, the name of a game that grown-ups very
much disliked having interrupted. About a
month ago Radgar and some friends had caught
Wulfwer doing the forlegnes thing in the barns and
had raised the traditional uproar and
pandemonium, inviting everyone to come and watch.
Boys being boys and youths being youths, this was not an
uncommon source of amusement around the palace;
but in that case it had turned out that the woman was
another man's thrall, so Wulfwer had not only
been exposed to ridicule but also required to pay
a sizable compensation.
Worse, having guessed that his young cousin had
been the ringleader--always a safe bet--he had
waylaid him one evening to administer justice.
Radgar, who would hold still for a beating from Dad but
no one else, had flown into one of his infamous
temper tantrums and managed to kick Wulfwer
in the eye before a band of house thegns came
to investigate the uproar and pull them apart. For
days after that Wulfwer's spectacular shiner had
prompted his fellow cnihtas to mock him for being
beaten up by a child half his size. He was
probably still hankering for revenge. Out here in the
wilds of Weargahlaew, discretion would be
advisable.
As Radgar mulled over his options, he heard
a voice. It was not a forlegnes sort of
sound from the hovel. It was chanting, and it came from
somewhere in the woods nearby. Forget about discretion!
He went up the bank like a squirrel.
He approached with care, slipping from trunk
to trunk until he could peer around one of the
closest and see what was going on. The open
space where the enchantment was taking place was a
flat clearing ringed by trunks like enormous
pillars. No sunlight reached the ground, and had
he wandered through the dim space by chance he might not
have noticed the tiny octogram marked out there
by lines of black pebbles half buried in the
loam. At the moment it was obvious because a small
horn lantern marked fire point, with a pottery
jug two to the right of it for water point, and a rock
opposite for earth. There was no easy way
to designate air or any of the four virtual
elements, and Dad had told him that even marking
those three was just a convenience for the mortal
operators, not something that influenced the spirits.
What was an octogram doing here in the wilds
and out of doors? It was minute compared with the one in the
Haligdom, where prisoners were
enthralled, smaller even t
han the ones the healers
used. There was one person inside it and he was neither
chained up nor lying flat like a patient--he could
not have stretched out inside the lines of rocks
anyway. He was squatting on his heels with his
head down and his arms wrapped around his shins as if
trying to scrunch himself as tiny as possible. He
had no clothes on. From the redness of his hair he
was obviously a Bael. A very big one.
Much more surprising was the chanter. First, he was
all alone, although conjurations were always performed
by eight conjurers, one for each element; and second
he was running around the outside of the octogram
instead of standing inside it. Third, he was a very
scary-looking person indeed, tall and misshapen,
although he would not stay still long enough to be studied
properly. Nothing of the man himself could be seen
inside a long drab robe; he wore a
baglike hood of brown cloth over his head.
He must have considerable trouble seeing anything at
all through the eye holes; and yet there he was,
lurching wildly around the clearing, wielding a
staff as tall as himself and shrieking out the invocations
and revocations in a voice as shrill and
discordant as a knife on steel. Back and forth
he flapped, sometimes pivoting on his staff from one
point to the next adjacent, sometimes lurching
halfway around the clearing, all the time calling out
to the various elements and raising puffs of dust as the
hem of his robe swept the dirt.
Could this be a real conjuration? What good did
Cousin Wulfwer think he was doing being shouted at
by a maniacal scarecrow here in wild
Weargahlaew? Radgar's skin rose in goose
bumps. He had watched enthrallments often enough
to know that this was a much longer and more complicated
conjuration than that, if it was a real conjuration at
all. What was going on? Wulfwer's father had
brought him here and then gone away as if he did not
want to watch. Radgar was not alone in not liking
Cousin Wulfwer much--nobody did. His mother had
been a thrall, and he was surly and sullen, although
not as witless as most of the thrall-born. It was
common knowledge that he was having trouble finding a werod
willing to take him, in spite of his royal
breeding and his size. Could this ritual be intended
to un-thrall him somehow? Make him more
talkative and likable? Smarter? Could conjuration
give a man a sense of humor? Radgar had