Darkling Fields of Arvon

by James G Anderson

  "You'd best be telling that to the Wood Maid, not her bard. I was just to mind you, not hear your story."

  "Bard . . . But you are also captain of her force?"

  "Aye, chief, but no better than any of these others in warrioring. Every man of them is a worthy warrior of the wolf hide." With that the big man threw back his head and gave forth a long, rising howl, the like of which Kal had not heard until just a few hours before. Soon the entire column of men had taken up the haunting, mournful cry. The howl swelled louder and louder, held sustained for several moments, then fell away. As the echoes faded in the Woods, the cry was taken up again from far off to the west and then joined by others to the south. Gelanor walked on, a broad grin spread across his face.

  Kal stared at him, incredulous. The sound that returned to the men from far away in the Woods . . . "Waldscathes?"

  "Aye." Gelanor still grinned.

  "But . . . but what are they?"

  "Woa-ho! But . . . we are they! We are they!" Gelanor howled again, but this time with ringing peals of laughter.

  "So . . . you are the dread terror of the Woods of Tircoil?" Kal said when the bard had recovered himself somewhat. "You and your men? Ah . . ." The Holdsman nodded with dawning comprehension. "All clad in wolf pelts and howling out warning to all trespassers and fear to all hearers."

  "Aye," Gelanor said, touching the side of his nose with a large finger. "That by popular superstition we are regarded as a fearsome and terrible scourge is really quite convenient. Aye, we are the waldscathes. We make our home in the Woods, venture out when needs be, usually to take what we might be in want of. Mostly, though, we keep to ourselves, provided others keep to themselves. And if a good tale serves, who are we to argue? To be sure, it's more often than not the happenings of the commonplace and the things familiar that are most like to be bent into fireside tales of legendary proportion by the strong draught of imagination spiced with fear."

  Kal smiled. It was true. Why, that's what the oldlings of the Holding fed the young a steady diet of in the snug hearth glow of a winter's night, yarns spun from aged imagination for the sake of young imagination by the likes of Old Sarmel, a long-toothed spinner if ever there was one.

  "So, waldscathes is it?"

  "Aye, waldscathes it is."

  "Then it was you I saw on the path to the Well earlier?"

  "Aye, one of the men."

  "Why were you there? How did you know to save us?"

  "Again with coupling questions, little brother!" Gelanor grinned more broadly yet. "Well, it was the Wood Maid herself that sent us to follow you. We were to keep an eye—there are terrors in the Woods, you know."

  "Aye, and worse ones than the waldscathes."

  "To be sure, worse than the waldscathes to you, but not to the waldscathes. The Wood Maid knew that you were being tracked. Well, she sent us along to do some tracking, too. Sure enough, there were the Black Scorpions, a whole troop of them, Telessarian trackers besides, and their lymers—that's a nasty looking brute, is that dog. There were a couple dozen Southwoldsmen besides. They were none too happy to be trotting down Hoël's Dyke, let alone be driven into the Woods by their masters. Aye, but we've got them well trained." Gelanor winked and nodded his head sideways. "They balked. Wouldn't move more than a few paces into the Woods. Stopped dead. And dead is what a couple of them became, at the point of a Scorpion's sword sting, before the Scorpions gave up on them and the rest turned tail and ran away howling." The big bard laughed again. "It was sweetness to behold."

  "But if you saw them, why didn't you come and warn us?"

  "Aye, little brother, but do you think we were howling for our own sake?"

  "You chased us back to the Well . . ."

  "Aye, and the Well is the one sure safe place in the Woods, that and Mousehold. To be sure, Ruah's Well is hallowed ground, and no evil has ever broached the Wellvale. You see, little brother, it is sacred and protected, not just the Well but the whole valley, sacred and protected by Ruah herself. There was a time, a time long ago, that people might actually see the white hind there. The white hind, mind you, looking just like herself's stone image in the Well." Gelanor fell silent, lost in thought, taken by the thought of an ancient memory, one far beyond his remembering.

  "I saw her."

  "What?" Gelanor jerked his head up, looking at Kal.

  "I saw her." Kal said softly, lifting his gaze from the ground in front of his feet and facing the bard. The big man had lost his grin, a look of stark disbelief now settling over his features.

  "Aye, I saw her, when we first came to the Well, and then again as we returned in the afternoon, after you chased us back into the valley, like she was guiding us back to the Well."

  "And still you left? After seeing her? Bolted in the middle of the night?" The bard shook his woolly head. "Aye, but you'd do well to better mind her bidding in the future, little brother. But that you saw her . . ."

  "What of it, Gelanor? You make it sound as though it was—"

  "Aye, and it is! Rare, uncommon rare. More than that. To be sure, no one's seen the white hind in years upon years, and even longer. That—well, that you did. It's a rare gift, something precious. Aye, more than precious . . . significant!" The bard spoke the word with triumph, then nodded slowly. "You'd best tell that to the Wood Maid right off when you see her. She'll know what it means, little brother. She'll know what it means."

  Gelanor said nothing more, and neither did Kal. Both were lost amid their thoughts, pondering recent happenings and the strange meeting that was about to take place at Mousehold.

  The column marched steadily on without stopping, steadily through the never-ending forest. Gradually, light grew among the trees, a faint light that unveiled trunks stretching upwards to the roof of leaf and branch. Now the first birds of day began a swirling trill of interlaced song, melodies weaving and overlaying one another. Before long, dawn broke. The sun having cleared the spires of the Radolans to the east, a virescent light filtered through the trees, forcing the forest shadows to retreat to the narrow ravines and hollows scattered through the Woods.

  They had been walking for nearly three hours. No longer did Kal's head ache, nor did his knee, at least not badly. He felt tired and yet strangely alert. Perhaps it was his eagerness to meet the mysterious Katie Woodencloak again that imparted a lightness to his step and his spirit. Kal looked over his shoulder to where Gwyn plodded along. The mute Holdsman had withdrawn into himself once more, and Kal wondered if he had not been overwhelmed by the happenings of the night before. It must have been a horrible shock to the lad, and yet there was a depth of strength in Gwyn that Kal had only recently begun to notice—particularly so after the curious business at the Well. Something in Gwyn had changed, and for the good, of that Kal was sure.

  Beside him, Gelanor strolled, silent but smiling, evidently enjoying the early morning jaunt that they were having.

  "Kalaquinn Wright."

  "Hmm?"

  "Kalaquinn Wright," Kal said again. "My name is Kalaquinn Wright. It occurred to me that I hadn't yet introduced myself. My apologies. And this is Gwyn, Gwyn Fletcher." Gwyn blinked to life at the mention of his name and nodded at the bard, who looked back at him.

  "Aye, good then," the bard said. "Kalaquinn Wright and Gwyn Fletcher. It is good to have known you these past few hours. I trust we shall know you for a few yet to come!" Gelanor laughed.

  The column crested a small rise in the lay of the woodland, which fell into a narrow stretch of forest before climbing again up another small rise. A trail cut across their way, running along the depression, the rises on either side of it.

  "Ah, look now. Here we are," said Gelanor. "Lads! Lads, we rest here a moment."

  The column of men collapsed in on itself in the shallow depression that ran off to their left and right. Men sat on the ground or leaned against trees. It was the first time that Kal had got a chance to look at Gelanor's small army. There were, indeed, men of all ages, about seventy or eighty of them, a
nd all seemed attentive to their chief as he looked cross-eyed through his beard at his chest, pulling at his pios.

  "Methinks it be time for a tune!" the big bard cried as he managed to unfasten the tiny harp and hold it before himself, the thing barely visible in the man's huge hands. He looked over at Kal and winked. "Come, my lord bard. Let us play!"

  With that, Gelanor plucked, or rather, Kal noticed with amusement, struck the tiny instrument. Nevertheless, from the small harp rose a sweet chord, followed but a moment later by a wordless song of such deep, booming resonance that it sounded not unlike the rolling voice of a cataract, not unlike the voice of Skell Force. Kal realized with wonder that, even though the notes were deep and earth-born, the tune was unmistakable—they had come to Carric-thona.

  Kal saw the big bard wink at him even as he sang. In a flash, Kal plucked his own pios from his cloak and set his finger to its wires. Immediately, notes flew into the air, a chord blending with that of the other, even as Kal had heard the dawn-inspired birdsong do. Then, with the chiming harps echoing and re-echoing one another, Kal began to sing. To his astonishment, his voice had the mellow and pure tone of a flute, climbing and falling along the scales over the undercurrent of Gelanor's sonorous bass.

  Kal looked at his fellow bard. The big man beamed broadly, his blue eyes dancing in the morning light, and, as he winked at Kal again, both men burst into lines of song.

  "Along the narrow woodland way well worn

  Amid a viridescence, morning born,

  Beneath the leafing roof of oak and beech,

  Take heart, the way is done, its end in reach,

  Safe haven from dark terror's thunder-stroke—

  'Tis Mousehold! Home to Katie Woodencloak!"

  Even as the two bards played and sang, the men quickly reformed into a loose and broader column and turned east along the floor of the hollow, which ran for but a furlong and then gave onto the falling and open glade in which was nestled Mousehold.

  At the edge of the glade, Gelanor removed his hand from the pios and began pinning it back on to his wolfskin tunic. The men of his company had disappeared, disbanding unseen into the surrounding forest. Kal, too, stopped playing and held the pios in his clenched hand. Beside him stood Gwyn, a bemused expression on his face, looking around at the now empty woodland. In front them, in the centre of the dell, stood the grey-timbered cottage of Mousehold, and, between it and the men, flanked on one side by a stand of white birch, were the circular ruins and crumbling tower.

  "Aye, there . . . ," said the big bard, triumphing over the tiny brooch. "Such a fuss. Such a fuss, to be sure." He patted his chest and turned to Kal. "Right, then, you and Gwyn stay here while I go fetch the Wood Maid. She'll want to greet you right and welcome you to Mousehold herself. Peculiar, that way . . . So, I'll be right back, then."

  With that the great red-haired, fur-clad man lumbered down the path to the cottage. On his back, a wolf's head, upside down and swaying back and forth, stared vacantly back at the two Holdsmen.

  Fifteen

  Gelanor disappeared from sight through the low greenwood hedge and around the corner of the cottage, but his booming voice rose to where he had left Kal standing. "Wood Maid? Ho, Mistress Katie!"

  Kal smiled to himself and rocked his head slowly back and forth. Gwyn had drifted down the gentle slope and come to rest by the ruins of the glence. The young man sat on the grass, his weapons and codynnos beside him, his back against the crumbling stonework of the glence tower, which afforded him some shade from the sunlight that flooded the open glade. In a moment, the lad's head bobbed twice, then drooped heavily onto his chest.

  Minutes stretched as Kal stood waiting, pondering the scene before him, overhung by a peaceful languor as by a haze. The silence was disturbed only by the lazy drone of insects and the summer song of birds.

  Without even realizing it, Kal found himself descending the narrow path, following it as it skirted the tower beneath which Gwyn slept and bent around the tumbled walls of the broken glence itself. The path wound between stones that lay strewn in the grass about the ancient building, stones that had fallen from what was once the dome of the structure. The base of its circular wall remained, but for the most part it barely cleared waist height and rose higher only here and there, raggedly, overgrown with ivy and creepers. Only the glence tower, abutting the glence's wall, seemed to have more or less survived the ravages of time. It stood solid and intact, although roofless, crenellated by years of wind and rain, and covered with choking tendrils that overtopped the empty lip of the tower.

  Kal dropped his gaze again to the path as he rounded the walls and approached the front portal of the glence, now little more than a break in the low stone circle directly across from the tower not thirty paces away. The portal gaped open, a broken arch of smoothly cut fitted blocks flanked on either side by crumbling stonework. Its stout wooden doors had long since rotted away, leaving an incomplete set of heavy rusted hinges hanging loosely from pins still set in what remained of the arch.

  Having never before traveled beyond the mountain-ringed bounds of the Stoneholding, Kal had not set foot in any glence other than the chiefest of them all, the Great Glence itself. Now he breathed the still air of these ruins and traced the fractured curve of the portal's stone with his hand. It was cold to touch, and he shivered involuntarily as a chill of wonderment swept over him. He crossed the threshold, measuring the remains of this glence against what Wilum had told him about these structures that dotted the landscape of Ahn Norvys, their beehive domes a reflection of the Great Glence.

  This must have been one of the smaller glences, Kal mused as he surveyed the jagged rise and fall of the circular wall and the space within. At least the harpstone was still standing, just a few paces in from the doorway, a square pillar beneath which would be found the glence mark. Kal moved past the harpstone, across the broken and heaved flagstone floor towards the large round slab of the temen stone. It lay at the very middle of the structure, rising less than half the height of a man. Kal lifted his gaze. Directly across from him, on the other side of the temen stone, near the farther curve of the rear wall and overshadowed by the tower behind, stood the hindstone. These—the tower, the hindstone, the temen stone, along with the harpstone—would all stand on the songline. To his left and to his right, on opposite sides of the temen stone, were the dexter and sinister stones, the one still standing firmly planted, the other toppled and lying on its side amid grass-grown rubble.

  Kal ran his hand over the smooth top of the temen stone and saw the telltale grooves worn into it. Here, for generation upon generation, the bard of this glence had placed his stool. Here he would sit and face the harpstone and, beyond that—far, far, beyond that—the Great Glence. Then, to the tune of his harp, the bard would chant the orrthon or recite passages and sing ballads from the Criochoran.

  Kal turned around and hopped up to sit on the broad slab of the temen stone. He looked about himself slowly and let his gaze rest on the harpstone in front of him, the empty portal beyond that, and the grey cottage still farther beyond. Then he closed his eyes and let the morning sunlight bathe him.

  To his mind flitted a picture of terrific desolation, eerily fleeting but overpowering. A wave of ashen sadness washed over him. As through a gossamer veil, he saw the Great Glence before him—its keeil a scorched shell, its tower fallen, the stone fragments of its vaulted dome strewn over Wuldor's Howe like a child's wooden blocks knocked over and abandoned. But—his heart leaped, his breath caught in his throat—there, stark in the midst of the desolation, rising bare and unshielded from the sky, remained the dark bulking mass of the Stone. The Glence Stone, standing where it had always stood, hallowing the spot even now.

  Kal opened his eyes and blinked in the light, the vision of aged ruins replacing that of freshly wrought devastation. How long he had been lost in thought, he was unsure, but, over his shoulder to his right, he saw that Gwyn had awoken from his napping. The young Holdsman was now seated on a fall
en block of masonry beyond the glence wall, hunched over an arrow, adjusting its fletchwork. The sun was growing warmer, and a tang of woodsmoke touched the air.

  "Ah, there you are, little brother." Kal spun around. Gelanor filled the space beneath the broken arch of the doorway, grinning. In front of the big bard stood the lady who had sped them on their way the day before. She wore the same sad smile Kal had seen when last they met, and in her grey eyes lay the same depth of wisdom, still mostly veiled as by a shining mist. A friend, Kal remembered her saying, and known to Aelward.

  "I'd wondered if we'd lost you," Gelanor continued, entering the ruins and coming to stand beside the woman. "Thought you might have wandered off into the Woods. Wandered off again, so that me and the lads would have to come and save your wayward hide!"

  The woman placed a hand on the big bard's arm, looking up at him.

  "I do not think that you realize in whose presence you have been this past night, Gelanor." She let her hand drop. Then, turning to Kal, she bowed her head slightly, still smiling, and said, "Welcome. Welcome to Mousehold once again, my lord Myghternos Hordanu."

  Gelanor reared to his full height, blinking with surprise.

  The woman's smile broke into a gentle laugh that sounded as sweet as the warm spring rain pattering on a slate roof. Kal found that, while his shock at the woman's revelation of his true office was evidently not nearly as profound as was Gelanor's, he wondered nonetheless how the strange woman could have discerned that he was indeed the High Bard. She had called him by title before, just yesterday, when he and Gwyn had been taking their leave of her, but he had dismissed it at the time as something that she had not actually said, considering it rather something that he had only thought he heard—but now, here it was.

  "For once, my good bard is caught speechless," the woman said. "Come, come, Gelanor, do bid welcome our master to Mousehold."

  "And you . . . you, Wise Mother. You must be Katie Woodencloak," Kal stammered as he scrambled off the temen stone and stepped across the narrow distance towards her.