by Greylady
“No. Nor of the folk of Elthan, either.” Youenn was pointed in his correction of Bayrd’s geographic error. “But who can say what a man will do when he has been so completely tricked, so totally betrayed?”
Who can say indeed? Until it happens? Bayrd ar’Talvlyn drank his beer and kept his thought to himself. “And what happened after that?”
“The fortress was abandoned. Dunarat was eight years in the building, but its existence was no more than another year before the long, long dying that took a hundred years and more. No-one cared to live in it after what had happened, and as time went by it was picked to pieces by those who could see better uses for good, worked stone than just letting it crumble into dust.” Youenn laughed shortly. “Why waste it, after all. Parts of many villages are made of that fortress. Parts of this village too, I’m sure.”
Bayrd looked quizzically at the headman. “Are you? Sure, I mean?”
Youenn shook his head. “No,” he said, “I’m not. Nor have I any great desire to be so. I said before, this is a story. Nothing else. Stories are meant to be just stories, no matter how much meaning and accuracy you try to fit into them. They’re fictions. Entertainments. Tales for a winter evening, like this one. That way we who live too near them can be assured of sleep at night.”
“And the haunting? When did that begin? As soon as it was convenient to keep the lord’s-men away, perhaps?”
“Something like that.”
“So what you’re telling me—” Youenn shook his head again, this time in deliberate denial of everything he had said, “—or not telling me, is that the fortress of Dunarat is haunted just as much or as little as you need it to be.”
“Ayelbann’r horselord, if a place can be haunted by the feeling of misfortune that hangs around it, then Dunarat is haunted indeed.”
“By the dead lord and his lady? By the lost child?”
“By all of them, and maybe by none of them. And perhaps only by the sorcerer who made the sword that began it all. Or claimed he made it. After so long, and so many retellings, who can say what really happened any more?”
Bayrd held his breath to control the little gasp of triumph it so wanted to be, and let it out easily between his teeth. “A sorcerer, eh?” he said, interested – but not too much. “You didn’t mention any sorcerer to me.”
“Margh-arlut’, you gave me little time and opportunity to mention anything but the barest bones. And now you want to put the flesh back onto them. This is a backwards way to learn anything.” For the first time there was an edge of annoyance, even of accusation, in Youenn Kloatr’s voice.
“But I still want to learn it, and I ask you to help me do so.” Bayrd bowed his head, not bothering with any of the formal obeisances that the headman wouldn’t recognize but going straight to a simple gesture of respect. “I ask it politely. And I offer you an apology for my hastiness.”
“The apology is accepted, horselord. Not that there was any real need for it, but – but I appreciate your courtesy. I would never have received any such thing from our own Lord Benart, or his men.”
“I had guessed that much for myself,” said Bayrd with a wry smile. “Just as I guess that Lord Ared’s son returns as a grown man and a great hero.”
“Now there you would be wrong,” said Youenn, doing a poor job of hiding his satisfaction at finally seeing Bayrd make a mistake in his all-too-learned commentary on the story.
“But usually…?”
“Usually, yes. In a story with a happy ending. I never claimed that this was one of those stories. Because it isn’t.” The headman considered his small cup and the severely-depleted flask of honeyfire, then changed his mind and poured himself some beer instead. “Oh, there are some storytellers who make links to other tales for the sake of that happy ending – and the sake of their pay for the night – but no. The child was never seen again. Nor the wizard who took him away.”
“Tell me about the wizard,” said Bayrd, setting aside for the time being his curiosity about how the word had changed, as if unlike the Alban language, the Elthan dialect made no difference between them. “And tell me about the sword.”
“Yes,” said Youenn, his eyes shifting sidelong to where Bayrd’s pile of gear and weapons were stacked by the wall, “you’d be interested in that, I think. More than sorcery, at least.”
Bayrd nodded at him, and chose not to correct the error.
The sorcerer had not been at the feast Lord Ared gave for Dunarat-hold’s completion, or if he had, none had seen him there. Thus afterwards, when all was over, there was a deal of antagonism about how he had learned of the Lord’s contest and its vaguely-worded prize. There was still more bitterness that he should have learned of the mare whose foal was meant to be the prize, and of the Lady Elyan’s pregnancy – both deep and well-kept secrets, for their own separate reasons. Someone, it was claimed, had told him, and all forgot that because he was a sorcerer there had been no need for anyone to tell him anything at all. Workers in the Art Magic have their own ways of learning what they wish to know, and few of those ways are revealed to ordinary men. But whether he had been there the year before or not, when the anniversary of that feast and that rash oath came round, he was there without a doubt. And the sword was with him.
Lord Ared had required the best sword in the world. What the sorcerer gave him was a sword that he claimed was better than the best, for the metal of which it had been forged came from beyond the world. That was starsteel, the black iron that fell from the sky on clear or frosty nights. The quick-eyed could see it fall, could watch the long white scratch of its passage across the starry dark, as though a star itself had come adrift from the great vault of Heaven.
Lord Ared accepted it at once, giving the judgment in its favour and the prize as well, and – until the truth was learned of what that over-hasty acceptance had lost him – there were none among his vassals or retainers or supporters of equal rank who thought their lord and friend was wrong. It was a superb weapon, double-edged and straight-bladed, a shape which at once set it apart from the long curved cutting-swords carried by the warriors of Lord Ared’s day. That blade was polished bright, but no polished surface could ever quite conceal the darkness of the steel from which it had been made, so that it gleamed grey as smoke. As befitted something of such rarity and beauty, it was a named-blade. Though the newer custom was for the sword’s owner to name it as he claimed it, the sorcerer had claimed an older privilege, where the right to name the blade went to the man who had created it. And to honour the shadow in the depths of the bright steel, he had called it Greylady…
Bayrd ar’Talvlyn stared down at the puddle of beer and at the wooden mazer spinning slowly in the middle of it, then raised apologetic eyes to meet Youenn Kloatr’s questioning gaze.
“I think,” said the headman, “that you might have had enough to drink by now.” He bent over, stopped the still-turning cup with one finger and picked it up, then glanced thoughtfully at Bayrd’s face, noting the sudden pallor that was the wrong colour for a drunk. “Or was it something else? Something I said, perhaps?”
Bayrd nodded. “Yes,” he said, “it was. ‘Greylady’.” As Youenn raised his bushy eyebrows, the Alban scrubbed his hands against his face and tried to sort out the sudden tumble of questions and doubts that had spilled through his brain like dice from a shaker. “Greylady,” he said at last, “is the Overlord’s sword. Albanak’s sword. It always has been. It’s as much a part of him as his own name.”
“Since the name is a title that doesn’t mean anything but ‘Landmaster’,” Youenn pointed out, “and he obviously doesn’t have a name of his own, you aren’t saying much.”
“You don’t understand. Greylady is—”
“The Overlord’s sword. Yes. I understand. I understood when I heard you the first time.”
“But it’s been the same sword for hundreds of years. Like a mace. Or the sceptre that the outlander kings carry, that’s no more than a civilized mace anyway. It’s a badge of rank.
And even the shape is old; out of date. Archaic. A sword from the Old Time.”
“Perhaps it was a name taken from the story I’ve been telling you – no, trying to tell you – all afternoon?”
“No. It couldn’t be, because that isn’t one of our stories. Not even with the names and places changed. I’d know otherwise. I’d have heard or read it already.”
“Oh, would you indeed,” Youenn began to say. Then he closed his teeth around a sharp rebuke against unnecessary boasting, and considered instead the way Bayrd had been talking with such authority about the elements and common features of the construction of old tales. “Well, maybe you would at that. But don’t you think it odd that your Overlord Landmaster has a sword of the old shape, while the Greylady in the story is so plainly described as a modern blade. That was the description I was taught to remember when I heard the tale for the first time. As modern as, as—” he pointed towards Bayrd’s taiken, laid across the top of the rest of his gear as though put there deliberately to guard it “—as modern as that.”
Youenn looked at the wooden mazer in his hands, decided it wasn’t dusty enough to make any difference, and refilled it with beer from the jug. “Here,” he said, pushing it towards Bayrd. “I thought at first you’d drunk too much. Now I’m beginning to suspect you haven’t drunk enough, not if you want to get any sleep. And since you’re planning to ride up to the fortress tomorrow—”
“I’m going tonight. At once.”
The headman blinked at Bayrd’s declaration, studied the younger man’s face, then shrugged. “As you wish,” he said simply. “But you’ll freeze. And then what good will you be to whoever sent you here?” Youenn met the Alban’s startled eyes with a bland, humourless smile of his own, the smile of a man who has suspected something for a long time without finding the right time or place in which to voice those suspicions – and who has found them entirely justified after all. “Because you were sent, weren’t you? And not just to admire the winter landscape.”
Bayrd considered and discarded a dozen excuses in half that many seconds. “I prefer summer,” he said non-commitally.
“So do I. But as headman of this village, my duty requires me to stay in it whatever happens. Your duty, of course, requires you to go wherever your lord commands. But not tonight. Wait until morning at least. Otherwise you will freeze, I promise you.”
“I said I was going now. I meant it. I want to see Dunarat.”
“Horselord,” said Youenn in a voice of infinite patience, “look outside. It’s almost fully night. Dark, you see. Or rather, don’t see. There’s little to look at in the dark as it is, and there’s no moon. Even with a clear sky it won’t be any lighter by the time you reach the ruins.”
“I’ll see enough,” said Bayrd obstinately. “And anyway, by the time I get there it should be almost dawn. The days are short enough that I can’t waste them in travelling.”
“Father of Fires, but you’re a stubborn one, aren’t you? Stubborn enough to get yourself killed, if you’re not very careful. What was it your lord wanted you to do, anyway? – I mean, after the cold and the wolves and the bears are done with you, somebody should still know why you were sent here.”
Youenn put his head on one side, a quizzical little gesture like an inquisitive sparrow. Bayrd found it incongruous, and said as much. “Looking peculiar is safe enough, Ayelbann’r,” Youenn retorted. “Acting peculiar, especially in this weather – now there’s another matter entirely. But might you be here to offer your people’s services to Benart or High Lord Yakez – against Gelert, that is, especially since he’s refused you?”
“I doubt my people would thank me for that,” said Bayrd. “We’ve been sickened of foreign employers.” He weighed his options for a few more seconds, then gave up on the elaborate pretence he had successfully maintained in Redmer for the best part of a week. “What they would thank me for is if I came back with a wizard willing to help us.” He grinned sourly. “Against Gelert, that is.”
Youenn gazed at him in silence, twirling the tips of his grey moustache until they stood out to either side of his nose like the curved horns of a wild ox. “And why would you be wanting a wizard, pray?”
“Because…” and Bayrd told him.
About the old folk and the young, the frail and the healthy, those who might be expected to die after many years and those whose brief lives had been riven from them, all because of what Gelert of Prytenon and his sorcerers had been doing. He left out only his own very private involvement in the subject. That, like so much else, was none of Youenn Kloatr’s business – but unlike the various other matters that had fallen into the same category, Bayrd doubted he would hear much in the way of comfort after telling the headman about it. He seemed unconcerned enough about talk of sorcery and the Art Magic, but that could be only because it was safely distanced form him, something romantic in one of his stories or something reprehensible practiced by the High Lord of a safely-distant enemy province. To actually have a sorcerer sitting under his roof and drinking his beer, even an unwilling and involuntary one, might put a rather different complexion on things. Bayrd had no great desire to find out one way or the other. All of what he wanted to find out lay in the tumbled ruins of Dunarat-hold on the far hill, where it overlooked the forest and the lake; the one place in all his travelling that had a sorcerer associated with its name…
Bayrd reined in, staring up the long slope towards the hunched, angular mass of masonry that crouched on top of it like some sleeping beast from legend, and he felt a small shiver run through him that raised the fine hair at the nape of his neck. For all the drifted snow that lay across the ground, his long ride through the night had been a journey into blackness; but silhouetted as they were against the sky that was now slowly paling to a distant dawn, the tumbled ruins of the haunted citadel were blacker still.
He grinned bravado at the darkness and exhaled a smug breath that drifted smokily away from his face. He had been right, and Youenn Kloatr had been wrong. There had been no wolves and no bears. Though he had heard small nervous rustlings and seen starlight reflected back from curious eyes in the deep shadows, the only other living creature he had seen was a single startled white owl, which had solemnly hooted its annoyance at him for spoiling the hunting by daring to be abroad at a time when all sensible men were fast asleep in bed.
But there had always been the cold. Youenn had been all too right about that at least. Neither he nor the horses had frozen – though it had been a close-run race, that contest between Bayrd and the cold, and the energy he had expended in fighting it had left him drained and weary. But the fight had been successful, sending a faint, far glow running through the marrow of his bones, just enough to keep the worst of the deadly chill at bay.
It had not been a spell, at least not as his scant knowledge of sorcery recognized the term; instead the meagre warmth had been conjured up from little more than his own bloody-minded determination. But it had suffused both himself and the two horses with a heat as fleeting and as often repeated as the rubbing of hands, at least for long enough that they had reached the shelter of the fortress walls where he was able to build a small fire.
For fear of what it might do if he over-extended himself, Bayrd had been wary, almost miserly, in that expenditure of power. There were memories of things suddenly catching fire to make him careful, and memories of agonizing blisters when the summoned heat exploded on the wrong side of the skin of his pointing fingertips. None of the three had been as warm or as comfortable as they might have wished, even under the swathing of furs and quilted blankets. But they had remained unfrozen, and that was the most important thing. Shelter and fire and a little food would do the rest; that, and sleep.
The remnants of the fortress walls had slumped together with the passage of years and the removal of the smaller masonry, until all that remained were the huge fieldstones of the lowest run, roughly shaped blocks that with the foundations had supported the weight of all the rest. They had been of no
use to even the most ambitious villager, for each one was almost as big as Youenn’s cottage in Redmer, and the headman’s home had been large in comparison with all the rest. With the loss of the iron clamps that had held them together – mortar had not been enough for such a weight, and according to Youenn the villagers had mined them as thoroughly as any seam beneath the ground – they had collapsed against each other into a jumble of caves and tunnels and small, near-windproof shelters. Bayrd was grateful for that at least. He had no energy left for digging in the drifted snow. What he wanted was the real heat of a fire, and the superficial comfort of a saddle-blanket spread across the rocks, and most of all he wanted to lie down. Even food could wait. If the remnants of the walls had not fallen flat in all this time, he was willing to trust that they would stay upright for just a little longer.
Having managed against the odds to make the journey from Redmer to Dunarat, and with all of the coming short winter’s day at his disposal for an exploration of the site – though exploring for what was still a question without a satisfactory answer – Bayrd felt secure in the prospect of a few hours snuggled in a corner with his eyes closed. The brightness of the sun on the snow would dazzle him awake in good time, as it had always done before when he was sleeping rough. Once his small fire was well lit, he banked it with the thickest logs that he could find and then, secure in the knowledge that he and the two horses were as comfortable as he could make them, he rolled up in his blanket and fell instantly asleep.
It wasn’t the sun that woke him, but the sound of voices drifting down the breeze. Bayrd ar’Talvlyn might have been weary to the point of exhaustion when he closed his eyes, but no kailin who hoped to see the sunrise had ever slept through night-noises where no noise should be. It was an art ingrained only through long practice, and Bayrd had practiced often enough on pointless campaigns for other people’s lords that he was good at it. His hand had closed on the hilt of his taipan shortsword even before he was fully awake; but the blade stayed in its scabbard. The scrape of steel drawn in a hurry in the stillness of the night not only carried an unfortunate distance, but if ever heard once in the proper context was impossible to forget, much less mistake for something else.
