“I don’t—”
“That’s what it was, wasn’t it?” Burne interrupted. His hands locked suddenly around his cup; he did not look at Atrix, or at what Atrix’s thoughts disturbed around them. “In the keep? Just one of his dangerous accidents.”
Atrix grew still. He felt the tension in the silence behind him, then; he scarcely heard breath or thought. In the uncertain mingling of light and smoke and shadow, something threw its own shadow across the hall. Atrix watched it form, nebulous and imprecise, out of all the fears that the strange magics and mysteries had aroused. They felt the Hunter’s presence, he realized. They knew, and they did not want to know they knew, what they feared. They wanted Atrix to tell them anything but that, anything but legend, terror, mystery, death, anything but that the tales spun out of Hunter’s Field had no ending yet. Burne stared into his cup, waiting; his fear lay like a streak of dark between them, cast by nothing visible.
Atrix relinquished truth for the moment; the air grew brighter, calmed itself, shadows attached themselves to visible objects. “Talis brought a book of mine from Chaumenard.”
He heard the King’s breath again. “Yes.”
“It seems simple, but it’s very complex, and very dangerous.”
“I knew it,” Burne said, his voice loosening. “I told him so.” His hands loosened around his cup; he drank. Atrix heard movements, murmuring again behind them. “He’s had other accidents; he nearly—Never mind.” He looked at Atrix finally. “What did he conjure up? They say it tore the room apart.”
“Something he could not control.”
“But you can. If it’s still around.”
“Yes,” Atrix promised flatly. “I will control it. If it’s still around. But the sorcery in the keep has nothing to do with a woman in the wood. I don’t know how to rescue him from moonlight.”
“It’s like him,” Burne sighed, “to leap from the bog into the morass. He didn’t seem to fear her, though; he seemed—under some enchantment. It was impossible for him to be reasonable. Even to admit she may not be real.”
“Real.”
Burne shifted, his mouth tightening. “Human,” he said reluctantly, as if to say what she was not somehow made her real. He shook his head. “Such things don’t happen to princes of Pelucir.”
“And yet,” Atrix said, watching the King’s expression, “you have seen her.”
“I have not.”
“You don’t question her existence, even though she may be living in light.”
The King shifted again, uncomfortable with wonder, or with memory. “There are always tales…Besides, I saw him vanish.”
“Do you remember anything else he said about her?”
“Other than that she is as beautiful as the sun and the moon and the stars? No. I wouldn’t listen to him. I didn’t want to hear such things from him. I need him to fall in love with someone human, highborn and healthy, to give Pelucir heirs. Not a woman who wanders around in a wood without a name, who lives in moonlight and is probably as ancient as the moon. Something about deer.”
“What?”
“White deer. And three white hounds. She was hunting, too, that day he saw her. And three—” A sound came out of Atrix, and the King stopped.
“Three white—” He stared at Burne, seeing the wood again, not the terrible, leafless wood he knew from the winter siege, but the sweet, secret green wood of his dreams. “Three white deer, three white hounds, three white horses, and the woman—”
“Yes,” Burne said sharply. “What is it? A song?”
“A dream.” Atrix shivered a little, chilled with wonder, remembering the empty oval of her face, the arrow striking his heart, so that he woke suddenly before he dreamed of pain. “She rides through my dreams. But I have never seen her face.”
“Talis did,” Burne said grimly. “He wasn’t dreaming.”
“There’s always a shadow where her face should be, though her hair and her voice are beautiful. She raises her bow and cries ‘Sorrow,’ and shoots me.”
“She does what?” Burne stared at him. “She shoots you? Does she kill you?”
“I don’t know. It’s a dream—I haven’t died, yet.”
“It’s not a dream, and Talis is in it, too.” The King’s voice was rising. “Did she shoot him, too? What is she? Some nightmare out of the wood?”
Atrix rose restively. “I don’t know.” He paced a little, aware of men moving out of the path of his shadow, in case he kept his sorcery there. He came back to Burne’s side, leaned against the table, trying to find his way back into the dream without dreaming. “She is not a nightmare. No. She is a mystery…” His voice faded; he heard the Hunter again, just before he had vanished at dawn. Sorrow, he had said, and then the moon set.
The hall had grown soundless again around Atrix. He stirred, seeing but not knowing what he saw, and quelling the terrible, urgent impatience he felt at his ignorance.
“What is it?” Burne asked tautly.
“I don’t know…I need the prince’s lenses.”
“He saw her face through them,” Burne sighed. “I knew she meant trouble. Help me. Please. He is all that Pelucir has left.”
“I will find him,” Atrix said. He stood silently again, trying to remember, past one night too full of sorcery and twenty barren years, what nameless shapes of beauty and mystery he had encountered that might point toward an undiscovered land. He saw the wood again in two worlds: one lifeless, dark, blanched with winter, the other drenched with light, green leaves trembling in a sweet, soundless wind, and both on the edge of Hunter’s Field.
Burne seemed to glimpse them, too, as if Atrix’s dreams and nightmares fashioned themselves just beyond the morning light. “Why,” he asked slowly, “would you dream in Chaumenard of a wood in Pelucir?”
Atrix shook his head wordlessly, having no answer Burne wanted to hear. “I will find Talis,” he promised again. “But it’s her wood, not yours, I must enter, and I do not know the way.”
“You’ll find it,” Burne said. “You can do anything. You are Atrix Wolfe.”
He turned in his chair, gestured to the waiting crowd, and they entered, tentatively, uncertainly, to meet the legend of Chaumenard who was, when the King turned back to him, no longer there.
Thirteen
Talis woke.
He woke in a dream of the wood, he thought dazedly, raising his head. No true oak grew that shade of gold, though that gold was what the eye looked for in the golden oak. No true grass felt so silken, no true shadow laid a swath of such dark velvet across it. No true leaves burned that tender and fiery green in the morning light. The long grass glittered under a web of jewels. He moved his out-flung hand, touched a jewel and it melted down his finger like a tear.
Three white hounds.
He stared at the tear of dew, remembering.
Three white horses.
One white stag with golden horns, trying to outrun the fire in its horns.
The black moon rising in a crown of horns.
Atrix Wolfe.
He rolled onto his back, blinking at the sudden light glancing across his lenses. White birds soared out of the oak into light. He dropped his lenses on the grass, hid his eyes in the crook of his arm and watched the Hunter, blood running from his mouth, eating the page out of a book.
Eating words.
For a moment, Talis tasted the dry, cloying parchment again in his own mouth. He tried to kill me with words…
He heard horns.
He recognized them immediately: Burne, hunting again after last night’s wearying hunt. How had it ended? Moonlight…Burne riding toward him down a long shaft of moonlight…Something had happened; he had fallen; Burne had missed him in the dark. So the King had returned to the wood.
Talis slid his lenses on and rose. He felt, and knew he looked as if he had been dragged for a mile or two behind a horse. The horns sounded close. He waited, standing under the oak, searching the wood for movement, color. An arrow, snicking past hi
m, struck the tree above his shoulder. His brows lifted; his lenses slid. The tree gave a sudden shudder, leaves rustling, whispering. Talis ducked behind it. The deer the arrow hunted burst out of some bushes, ran deeper into the wood.
He saw the hunters then, fanning out in front of him, some pursuing the deer, others searching the wood. As he stepped out from behind the oak, he saw Burne.
The King rode toward him; he stepped clear of the tree’s shadow, calling urgently as his brother rode past him: “Burne!” The King turned his mount abruptly beneath the oak. Talis saw his expression, a mingling of hope and confusion, change as he circled among the flickering shadows. He said wearily to their lanky, fair-haired cousin Ambris, who reined his mount where Talis had stood a heartbeat earlier,
“She must have some reason for taking him. Surely she’ll give us some sign, some message. She wouldn’t just take him, for the sake of taking something human. Would she?” He sounded unconvinced. Talis, standing between the horses, said through clenched teeth: “Burne.”
“I don’t know,” Ambris said heavily. “Didn’t the mage tell you?”
“He didn’t know, either. All she ever did was shoot him, in his dreams.”
“Burne,” Talis said, amazed; his voice shook.
“Well, then,” Ambris said. “She might have taken him for any reason. Any reason at all. He’s young and likely looking, it’s spring—”
“Ambris,” Burne said irritably.
“Well, you asked. I don’t quite understand what you think she is. If you’re thinking she is what I think you’re thinking, and she took him lightly and carelessly as they take humans, then we might be old men before she tires of him.”
“Burne,” Talis whispered. Not even the King’s horse flicked an ear in his direction.
“Fine,” Burne said explosively. “As long as she sets him loose before I die. What are you saying? That I shouldn’t bother looking for him?”
“No, but—”
“I warned him. I tried to. You don’t offer your heart to what shapes itself out of water or light or white birch. But would he listen?”
“They never do,” Ambris said, and Burne’s face reddened; his mouth clamped shut on a word. Ambris added hastily, “It’s likely she wants Talis for some important purpose, and she’ll give us a message. Or he will. She is not a monster, the mage told you, but a mystery.”
Talis felt his bones melt into air and light with horror. “Burne!” he screamed, trying to hold the King’s reins. “Am I dead?” He might have been the leaves talking above Burne’s head, the wind trying to grip the silver-scrolled reins. I’m a ghost, he thought, cold with terror. Like the ghosts of Hunter’s Field. This is how they feel…Except that they must remember dying, and I can’t remember…
“What exactly did Talis say about her?” Ambris asked.
Message, Talis thought desperately. Message.
“She was more beautiful than dreams and that was why he didn’t hear the boar charging him, or the hounds, or the horns, or all of us shouting at him to move.”
Ambris grunted. “So that was it. She could have warned him. Did she want him dead?”
“How do I know?” Burne shouted. “Why would she want Talis dead?”
“I don’t know,” Ambris said. “Why would she ride without a face through a mage’s dreams? I don’t understand any of this. I’m just trying to—”
“Do you think she was luring him to his death?”
“I don’t think,” Ambris said carefully, “we should assume anything beyond what you saw. He ran down a shaft of moonlight and was taken by the wood. He must be here somewhere.”
“Do you think,” Burne said starkly, “it’s because of all the animals we kill?”
“No,” Ambris said emphatically. “I don’t. Nor the trees we cut and burn. So don’t ask that.”
Burne’s face lifted toward the leaves that rustled now and then, like slow, ancient breathing; boughs creaked like old bones. “Do you think—” Talis heard him ask tentatively as he knelt on the ground in front of the King’s horse.
“No,” Ambris said again.
Stones could speak, if he could hold them; the ground could speak, if he traced his name through dead leaves. He brushed at them; they moved, responding to his touch in one world or the other. Burne, he began to write.
“When the mages come from Chaumenard,” Ambris said, “they’ll help Atrix Wolfe, they’ll know what to do.”
“Mages,” Burne said tightly. “Nothing they taught him could save him from this.”
“Maybe you’re wrong,” Ambris argued. “Maybe he’ll find a way to save himself.”
Burne grunted dubiously. Leaves lifted, swirled over Talis’ word. “What can she want?” Burne asked helplessly. “At least she could tell us that.” He urged his horse forward abruptly, over what was left of his name. Talis, crouched stubbornly in the horse’s path as it rode through him, caught a glimpse through its eyes of leaves and light and a pale, misty shadow on the air that humans could not see.
I ran down a shaft of moonlight, he thought, trembling with the aftermath of horror. I was taken by the wood. Maybe I’m not dead. Wonder eased through him, then; he leaned against the oak, looking around him at the bright, golden world. Maybe I’m in her wood…
“But,” he asked the oak, “where is she?”
The oak did not answer. The hunt had passed; he heard its horns in the distance. He searched for some sign, some message, saw only the dreaming oak, the birch with its leaves of green fire.
“I don’t,” he whispered, “even know your name.”
“I am the Queen of the Wood,” she said. He whirled and saw her standing where a birch had been. Or had he only imagined the birch? “That is all you need to know. My name is as old as this wood; it is never spoken in your world.”
He was mute, gazing at her, wondering, if he touched her hair, would it burn like fire, wondering what her eyes had seen to make them at once so powerful and so troubled. He had bridged worlds; he could not seem to bridge, with a touch, the step between them. He knelt finally, scarcely knowing what he did, gathered cobweb cloth blowing between his hands, and raised it to his lips.
“Tell me,” he said, his eyes closed, her silk against his mouth, “what you want.”
“And you will do it.”
“Yes.”
He felt her hands light, like small birds, on his shoulders, and he stood, dazed again by the light in her hair, in her eyes. “You ran from me last night,” she reminded him.
He made a helpless gesture, remembering the confusion of hunts. “I know. I was torn. There were too many—”
“Too many hunters,” she said softly, her eyes narrowed, glittering dark and amber. “There was my hunt—”
“And there was Burne—”
“Burne?”
“The King of Pelucir.”
“Ah. The human hunt. He is still troubling my wood.”
“He is searching for me. Last night, I was searching for him, to warn him—I was afraid for him—”
“Afraid?”
“Of the third hunt.”
“Yes,” she whispered. He saw her hands close, her face close, smooth and pale as ivory. “The third hunt…I heard the cry of the Wolf.”
He was silent again, gazing at her, his eyes wide. “The White Wolf,” he said finally, “of Chaumenard.”
“Yes. I called him in his dreams. Where is he?”
“I don’t know.”
“Find him.” She moved closer to him then, her silks flowing on the wind, one hand falling like silk on his bare wrist. “Find him for me. Bring him into this world. He cannot seem to find his way here, though I have called him again and again—”
“Him.” His voice was flat. “Atrix Wolfe.”
Her face opened slightly at the name. “Yes.”
“You couldn’t call him here. So you called me.”
“To bring him here,” she said. “Yes. Because no other human knows both him and me, to brid
ge the boundary between our worlds.”
He opened his mouth, closed it. His eyes closed; his lips caught between his teeth. He tasted blood before he spoke again. “He killed my father.”
He heard the faintest of breaths, a butterfly flying out of her mouth. “I need him,” she said inexorably, and he opened his eyes to stare at her.
“For what?” he asked in amazement. “You are powerful enough to pull me out of my world. Why do you need a human mage?”
“Because I need him in the human world.”
He swallowed, feeling chilled again in the soft spring light. “He is very powerful. I can’t find him if he doesn’t want to be found. And,” he added, precisely, bitterly, “I do not want to find him.”
He heard a slightly more substantial sigh, of cobwebs torn, or thousand-year-old tapestry threads breaking apart. “Then,” she said as precisely, “you will never return to Pelucir. You will remain here forever, human in an inhuman time and place. No doubt you will forget Pelucir eventually. But Pelucir will never forget you: the prince who vanished in the wood on the hill and never returned.”
He drew breath to shout at her. The shout dissolved into fire, burning down his face. He tried to turn away; she seemed everywhere. He closed his eyes; the hot tears ran between his lashes. “The thing that hunts him killed my father.” His voice held no sound. “On Hunter’s Field. He made the Hunter that hunts him. It was a war between kings, men—Pelucir had no mage. No sorcery to fight his sorcery.”
“Who could?” Her voice sounded hollow now; she averted her face, hiding a sudden flick of memory. “He is the greatest living mage.”
“He is a lie. He tried to run from what he had made—tried to hide. But it found him.”
“And I found him. And I want him, before he and this monstrous thing he made destroy each other.”
He opened his eyes finally; she blurred behind the tears caught in his lenses. He made some impatient, despairing sound; she slid them from his face. He felt her fingers brush his skin; a tear clung to one fingertip. Mesmerized, he watched her gaze at it, then touch her own face with it.
The Book of Atrix Wolfe Page 13