by Rick Cook
“You are more than welcome. Thank you for gracing my table.” He turned to Wiz. “And thank you, Lord. It was a privilege to meet someone from so far away.”
Wiz bowed as best he could.
“You do not know why you were Summoned then?” Aelric said suddenly.
“Beg pardon?” Wiz asked, confused by this turn of the conversation. “Ah, no Lord.”
“Well then,” said Duke Aelric with an odd, cold smile. “It will be interesting to see what becomes of you, Sparrow.”
“Thank you, Lord,” Wiz replied, not sure whether he should be thanking the elf or not.
“Then will we see you again, Lord?” Moira asked.
“I doubt it,” Duke Aelric said. “But it will be interesting nonetheless.” Again the alien smile, like a rather sleepy cat examining a newly discovered plaything.
“Lady, do you suppose he knows something about me?” Wiz asked as soon as they were back in their rooms.
“He knew who we were,” Moira said, yawning and stretching in a way that made her dress swell alarmingly and Wiz’s heart nearly stop.
“I mean do you think he knows why Patrius brought me here?”
“Who knows what an elf knows?”
“Shouldn’t we ask him?”
“Sparrow, if he knew and if he wanted us to know, he would tell us. It might be he was making sport of us. Elves are prone to such tricks. But I do know this. If he did not tell us there is no point in asking him.”
“But . . .”
“But I am going to bed,” Moira said firmly. “You may sit up and attempt to fathom the unfathomable if you wish.”
Wiz watched the door to Moira’s room close after her and then turned toward his room. He dropped his clothes on a chair in the corner and headed groggily for his own bed.
I wonder if he really does know. Or if he’s just playing head games, Wiz thought dreamily as he drifted off to sleep.
###
In the morning there were fresh packs in the main room. The clothes they had worn into the hill were waiting for them with all traces of travel stain gone. Somehow they had even restored the nap to the suede on Wiz’s running shoes. Moira’s cloak was clean and patched so expertly there was no sign it had ever been rent and tattered. There was a new cloak hanging next to Wiz’s pack to replace the one he had lost.
Sitting on the table was a round loaf of brown bread, still warm from the oven, a slab of pale yellow cheese, a pitcher of brown ale and a bowl of white onions.
“It appears we are to break our fast alone this morning,” Moira said, pulling her chair closer to the table. She poured herself a tankard of ale and used her knife to hack off a chunk of cheese and a thick slice of bread. With the knife point she speared one of the onions and took a healthy bite.
Although the idea of beer and onions for breakfast made Wiz a little queasy, he followed suit. In spite of his misgivings the combination was delicious. The cheese was sharp and tangy, the onions were mild and sweet and the ale refreshingly astringent on his tongue.
“Doesn’t time run differently in these places?” Wiz asked Moira around a mouthful of bread and cheese.
“Not if the elf lord does not will it so,” she said. “He promised me when we entered that it would not.”
“So that’s what that greeting was all about!”
“Just so. Albeit we had little enough choice should he have decided to make centuries pass like minutes.”
“I take it we’re going on this morning?”
“I doubt Duke Aelric’s hospitality holds for more than a single night,” said Moira, appropriating the heel of the loaf. “Besides, the sooner we reach our destination the better.” She looked at the bread and sighed. “I wish we could carry bread like this on our journey. It is unusually good.”
“It’s baked by elves,” Wiz said smiling.
“Their servants more like. What’s so funny?”
“Never mind,” Wiz chuckled. “I’m not even going to try to explain it to you.” Then he turned serious. “What are the chances someone is going to be waiting for us outside?”
“Small enough. Oh, they may watch the door we entered like cats at a mouse hole. But I do not think we will go out that same way. Not only time but space runs strangely in places the elves make their own.”
Wiz picked up the last crumb of cheese and popped it into his mouth. He let it melt away on his tongue savoring the bite and flavor. “Well, when do we leave?”
“As soon as we gather our things,” said Moira. She stood up from the table and fastened her cloak at her pale freckled throat with the turquoise and silver clasp. Wiz followed suit, throwing his cloak over his back.
“Don’t we need to ring for someone to show us out?”
“I doubt it,” said Moira as she reached for the door handle. “If a guide is needed one will be waiting when we open the door.”
The door swung outward at her touch and brilliant morning sunlight flooded in. Instead of a marble corridor lined with travertine pillars the door opened into a sunny forest glade. An orange and brown butterfly flitted lazily above the deep green grass that ran to their threshold.
Moira looked over at Wiz, smiled slightly and shrugged. Wiz shrugged back. Then they adjusted their packs and set out under the warm morning sun.
Six: Heart’s Ease
The morning was bright and sunny. Instead of dark and sinister, the Wild Wood was fresh and green. There was almost nothing among the trees and ferns to remind them of the night before.
Their path led out of the glade and back up the heavily wooded hill above the door. There was no hint or scent of danger, but still they moved along quickly.
They climbed a series of forested ridges, each looking down on the tops of the trees in the valley below. At the top of the third ridge, Moira scanned the valley while Wiz sat puffing on a rocky outcrop.
“There!” the hedge witch said, pointing. Below and off to one side a square stone tower stood rough and gray above the trees of the forest. About its base clustered outbuildings enclosed by a stockade of peeled logs. Heart’s Ease,” said Moira. “Our journey’s end.” She shifted her pack as Wiz struggled to his feet and they headed off down the path.
“Will we be safe here?” Wiz asked as the trail flattened out in the valley and he found he had breath for more than walking.
“In daylight nothing dare come close,” Moira told him. “Anything magic here would be immediately known to the Watchers. There are non-magic agents, of course, human and such, but . . .” she shrugged. “We are safe here as anywhere.”
“Thank God!” Wiz said fervently.
Moira frowned. “Do not be so free with names of power.”
“I’m sorry,” Wiz said contritely.
The forest enclosed them until they were almost on top of the castle. The trees were as huge and hoary as anywhere in the Wild Wood, but they didn’t seem as threatening here.
“It feels friendly,” Wiz said wonderingly, aware for the first time how oppressive the Wild Wood had been at its most benign.
“It is friendlier,” Moira agreed. “The forest folk hereabouts are kindly disposed toward the inhabitants of Heart’s Ease. They watch over the place and those who live there.” She shifted her pack with a swell and jiggle in her blouse that made Wiz’s heart catch. “Besides, this is a quiet zone. There is almost no magic here, for good or ill.”
###
Atros returned to his sleeping chamber fuming. It had been a long, frustrating evening. Damn those elves and their impudence! They had spirited his quarry out from his very grasp, humiliated him in front of the entire League and ruined his plans. His impromptu army disintegrated once they knew the elf duke guested the two they sought.
So they had been making for the elf hill after all, the wizard thought as he stripped off his bearskin cloak by the light of a single lamp glowing magically in one corner. He did not understand it and he was too tired to really think upon it. Perhaps the one who had been Summoned was some stran
ge kind of elf and not a man at all? True, Toth-Set-Ra’s scrying demon had called the Summoned a man, but demons could be wrong.
Too many possibilities, he thought as he pulled his silken tunic over his head. For now sleep and in the morning . . . He moved toward the great canopied bed and then stopped. There was something, or someone, making an untidy lump under the sheets. He stepped back cautiously and possessed himself of his staff. He muttered a protective spell and then moved to the bed again. Reaching out with his staff, he flipped back the fine woolen coverlet and recoiled at what lay beneath.
There on the gore-clotted sheets was a thing which had once been a man. His back was broken, his ribs were smashed, his arms and legs dislocated and cruelly contorted, and his head lay at an impossible angle. But worse, he had no skin. He had been so expertly flayed that even his nose remained in place. His pallid eyeballs stared up at the ceiling and his ivory white teeth seemed to smile out of the mass of bloody tissue that had been a face.
Even in its present state, Atros had no difficulty identifying the body as Kar-Sher, Keeper of the Sea of Scrying.
“Do you like my little present, Atros?” hissed a familiar, hateful voice. The dark-haired giant started and looked around. In the shadows behind the feebly glowing lamp a face took shape. The face of Toth-Set-Ra.
“I told one I know what he was called,” the wizard’s voice went on, soft and full of menace. “Not his true name, Atros, just what he was called. And you see the result.” The old wizard cackled. “Oh, I did take his skin afterwards. I needed it, you see. It is amazing what you can do with the skin of a wizard, even a wizard who set himself so much above his station. A wizard who was such an inexpert plotter as this one.”
Atros looked around wildly, swinging his staff this way and that to try to ward off an attack.
“I tell you again Atros, the League is mine!” The skull-face image said. “You, all of you, exist to serve me. And serve me you shall—one way or the other. Meditate upon that, Atros. Meditate upon it while you sleep.”
The image winked out, leaving Atros alone in the chamber cold and shaking. Did the old crow mean to spare his life? Or was this just some torture designed to shake his will before he too was killed?
Atros spent the rest of the night in sleepless suspense and confusion. Plots to replace Toth-Set-Ra were very far from his mind.
###
A woman waited to greet them at the stockade gate. She was beautiful, tall and stately as a ship under sail. She was not young, yet not as old as her long white hair proclaimed. As Wiz got closer he saw that the lines around her eyes and mouth were those of one who had lived hard, not long.
She wore a long gown of midnight blue velvet, caught with a silver cord at her waist. The dagged sleeves of her dress fitted her upper arms tightly and swept halfway to the ground at her wrists.
Her right hand rested on the shoulder of a bent, manlike creature with a long sharp nose and huge hairy ears. He was as ugly as she was beautiful, but the contrast was not incongruous.
“Merry met and well come,” she said in a voice like ringing silver. “I am Shiara, the mistress of this place, and Heart’s Ease is your home for as long as you care to stay.”
“Thank you, Lady,” said Moira, curtseying. Wiz hastened to bow.
“Not ‘Lady’,” the woman told her. “Just plain Shiara.”
“Not plain either,” said Wiz, moved by her beauty.
Shiara smiled but did not look in his direction. She’s blind! he realized.
“Your companion is gallant,” Shiara said to Moira.
“He has his moments,” Moira sniffed.
“You are called ‘Sparrow’, are you not?”
“Yes, Lady. Ah, yes Shiara.”
“Well, merry met at Heart’s Ease, Sparrow,” the lady said. “You must both be tired. Ugo will show you to your rooms.”
The ugly little creature sniffed and shuffled through the stockade gate without a backward glance.
The ground within covered perhaps two acres. There were six or eight small buildings, huts and storehouses and a large garden laid out behind. Attached to the base of the stone tower was a large building, also of peeled logs, roofed with shingles and chinked with moss.
“Is she a wizardess?” Wiz whispered to Moira as they came up the flagstone walkway.
“She was of the Mighty,” Moira said and motioned him to silence.
Ugo led them into the building and Wiz saw it was a single large room, a great hall with a huge smoke-blackened fireplace in one side and a table big enough to seat twenty people down the center. In spite of its rude exterior, the hall was richly furnished with heavy velvet drapes on the walls and massively carved furniture placed carefully about. The whole effect reminded Wiz of a picture he had seen once of J.P. Morgan’s hunting lodge.
Ugo took them down the hall without pausing and through a low stone door into the tower proper. There was a narrow stair twisting off to the right and climbing so steeply Wiz was afraid he would lose his balance. At the second floor landing Ugo opened a door for Moira and bowed her through. Wiz started to follow but Ugo blocked him with a rough hairy arm.
“Lady’s room,” he said gruffly. “Come.” He led Wiz on up the stairs to the very top of the tower.
“Your room,” Ugo grumbled as he opened the door.
The room was small and simply furnished with a narrow rope bed, a table and single chair. But there was a fire laid in the fireplace and a basin and pitcher of steaming water sat on the table. The bed was covered with a bright counterpane and a snow-white towel lay beside the basin. Against one wall, next to the fireplace, stood a full-length mirror.
“Dinner at sun’s setting,” the goblin told him. “Do not be late.”
Dinner was simple but savory. Most of the dishes were vegetables and tubers from the castle garden, with wild mushrooms from the forest and forest fruits for dessert. There was very little meat, which suited Wiz.
“Moira has been telling me of your travels,” Shiara said. She held a knife in one hand and extended the other hand, palm down and fingertips spread, over the table, finding her plate by the heat from the food.
“It was quite a trip,” Wiz said. “Lady,” he added hastily as Moira frowned.
“I understand you rescued Moira when you were beset by trolls.”
“Well, kinda. Mostly she rescued me.”
“Still, from what Moira tells me it was a bravely done deed.” She smiled slightly. “Though perhaps charging a troll with a stick is not the wisest move.”
“Thank you, Lady,” said Wiz, ignoring the second sentence. “Uh, Lady, do you know if they are still looking for us?”
Shiara turned serious. “Somewhat, I understand. Although your guesting the night in an elf hill seems to have thrown them off the scent and dampened the ardor of many of the Leagues allies. There are few who would willingly try conclusions with any of the elven kind, much less an elf duke.”
“Then are they likely to find us here?”
She considered. “Perchance. But in this quiet place it would be hard. We do not use magic at Heart’s Ease, so they cannot find you directly. There is little magic here to reflect off us and show us those with the Sight. No, Sparrow, if they find you at all it will be by accident.
“Besides,” she continued, “finding you and getting here are very different things. In a quiet zone such as this any attempt at magic would be seen instantly by the Watchers and countered. We are a hundred leagues or more from the shores of the Freshened Sea so they cannot come at us overland. The forest creatures are our friends, so they would find it difficult to sneak close. All things considered we are safe enough.”
“That’s a relief.”
“Just do not get careless,” Moira said sharply.
“True,” their blind hostess said. “Safety is at best relative and we are deep in the Wild Wood. Do not wander off, and leave things you do not understand strictly alone.”
There was silence for a bit while they a
te.
“Lady, what do we do now?” Wiz asked at last.
“You remain here as my guests while the Mighty consider your situation.”
“And Moira?” Wiz asked, dreading the answer.
“I am to remain as well,” said the red-haired witch, in a tone that showed she didn’t like it. “In their wisdom, the Mighty have decreed that even here you need a keeper.” She grimaced. “And I am chosen for the task.”
“You don’t have to stay on my account,” Wiz protested.
“I stay because the Mighty would have it so.”
“Peace, peace,” said Shiara. “Lady, I think your quarrel is with those not present, not the Sparrow.”
“True, Lady,” Moira said contritely. She turned to Wiz. “I am sorry I spoke so.”
They contrived to get through the rest of dinner without snapping at each other.
###
At first Wiz simply luxuriated in life at Heart’s Ease. He had a bed to sleep in, a roof over his head, no one was chasing him and, best of all, he didn’t have to walk all day.
But that palled quickly. There was nothing for him to do. Moira made herself useful, cooking and helping to clean, but Wiz had no domestic skills.
“Is there anything I can do?” he asked Ugo one day as the goblin was sweeping out the great hall.
“Do?” Ugo grunted.
“To help.”
Ugo bent to his sweeping. “Don’t need help. Take care of Lady by myself.”
It wasn’t that he was interested in doing housework, Wiz admitted to himself; he was bored and he felt completely useless.
He wandered out into the garden where Moira was on her hands and knees weeding an herb border.
“Can I help?”
Moira looked up and did not rise.