by Kate Elliott
Into the silence left by the effect of her words, a wind came up suddenly and rushed through leaves, rattling the undergrowth. As if a cloud had covered the sun, the light dimmed abruptly and quickly, like a reversal of the dawn that Chryse had just experienced.
Faint, for in the distance, a horn sounded, and hounds belled.
The professor and Maretha both started at the sound, and turned to look around. Only the earl’s gaze remained fixed on Chryse, and hers on him.
“I’d start running if I were you,” she said.
Chapter 24:
The Paladin
SANJAY WAS LEANING OVER the slab of stone that lay in the center of the great circular chamber, examining it with both eye and touch, when a wisp of a breeze stirred the close air of the room and his lantern flame wavered, guttered, and went out. He sighed, a little exasperated, and crouched to re-light it just as his gaze caught on a faint pattern glowing on the stone floor. He stretched out his arm and brushed at it with two fingers.
“Chryse. Come look at this. I could swear these are footprints leading away. It’s as if—I don’t know—each step left a tiny bit of life energy that marked the stone. I feel sure that this is Maretha’s trail.”
Chryse made some reply, but he did not really hear it, he was so intent on following the track. It was like a pale dusting, barely discernible, but unmistakable once the eye caught it. He traced it out of the chamber and down one corridor, turning into another and another before he realized that he was lost and that the trail of footprints was fading behind him, so that he could not follow it back to his wife. He had no choice but to go on.
He was not entirely surprised when the traces led him to a straight length of stairs that led up into the rock. He looked back once, into the dark tunnel behind, and then climbed.
The transition from under to above ground was almost imperceptible, until he realized that of course it was now night. There was no moon, only the brilliant scattering of stars above to illuminate the forest.
It was warm, for autumn. He found a smooth bole of a tree and sat against it, yawning. To his right he could barely discern the opening of the stairway set into a low rise. After all, he reasoned, Chryse was surely as likely to be drawn out this way as he had been.
He could see by the nature of the forest around him that it was as much a labyrinth as the maze of tunnels below. At first, sitting quietly, he let his eyes adjust to the way the dim light fell among the trees. Though it was night, his sight penetrated farther than it should have in such conditions. A quality of uncanny shifting permeated the woods. It was as if no thing or no point in the forest was ever entirely at rest, as if some force sifted randomly through it, changing its aspect from one moment to the next.
A double-trunked oak that grew some meters in front of him, when he looked again, had shifted position a good ten feet to the right. Later, looking a third time, the oak had shifted back, but now bore three trunks. A glade opened out to his left. Its boundaries altered when his attention strayed to other areas. None of this was abrupt, or even, he felt, conscious on the part of some unseen manipulator, but rather the natural result of a power that, loose in the forest, manifested itself by these constant transformations.
Above, he heard the quick beat of wings and a bird’s cry. Out of the brush loped a light blur that materialized into a white wolf. It stopped dead in its tracks and stared at Sanjay as if surprised to see him there. Some creature made a faint chuffing noise out in the gloom, and the wolf flicked its ears and vanished into the woods behind. An insubstantial form that could as likely have been a wisp of smoke settled into the nook of a branch and coiled itself around the limb.
Wind rose from far away, fluttering the last leaves, talking in the branches. Its timbre changed as it grew stronger until it sounded like the snap and rush of a sail in steady wind, and Sanjay felt it push at his back and then subside abruptly. A thick, rumbling sigh shook the air behind him, followed by a hot gust of sulphurous breeze that brushed his cheek and made the hair on the back of his neck tingle as if someone was touching it. He turned his head to look.
And stood up, one hand on the tree to stop himself falling over from sheer amazement.
The most beautiful creature he had ever seen had settled into the glade. As he watched, it folded its wings against its body, an action incongruously graceful in so huge a creature. Light shimmered along its skin. It might have been moonlight trapped in the lustrous silver of its scales, running like water along the lines of least resistance as the creature shifted position, then flowing back again.
Sanjay came as close as he ever had in his life to swearing, except that he was too staggered to speak, never having expected, even here, to see a dragon.
As if he had spoken aloud, it turned its great horned head about and fastened its gaze on him. Unalloyed power radiated from it. Its eyes held both sheer terror and utter fascination, so that as he stared he felt progressively less that he had any will of his own and more an inchoate yearning, some longing buried deep that had surfaced only now. Like a famished man finding golden apples, he desired this thing more than anything and was yet afraid of the effect it had on him.
It spoke. Not a voice, pushed by air through vocal cords, but a melisma of sound that could yet be understood as words.
>Thou art known, child< said the dragon, not so much examining Sanjay as encompassing him. Its sinuous neck arched in a move as smooth as the flow of water.
“How do you know me?” asked Sanjay, finding speech at last. After the sonority of the dragon, his voice sounded thin, one-dimensional.
>That which has already passed, is yet to be< it said, a rising and falling of tones on one syllable. >It is thy task to see the truth and let it therefore be known<
It gathered itself, claws pulling at the turf like a cat pulls at a rug, tail sweeping and curling as it unfurled its wings. It had a fluid beauty, never complete, never imprisoned in any one aspect.
Unlike mortal humans, thought Sanjay, trapped in time.
Than it sprang. Up—the force of the air displaced by its wings brought him to his knees and sent gusts of leaves scattering over the ground. He remained kneeling as he stared up, following its path with his eyes until the trees hid it.
As if the dragon had pulled all sound up with it, the night was covered with utter silence. Even his own breathing did not sound, or the rustle of undergrowth as he stood.
A hound bayed, then a chorus of hounds. A horn-call lifted on the breeze just after it, as if in pursuit. Sanjay brushed at the last dirt clinging to his trousers. The barking grew in volume, and under it he could hear the noise of horses passing through undergrowth. He stepped to one side so that his back was protected by the tree trunk, and waited.
The dogs came first, a pack of red-eared, brindle hounds that moved forward like some many-limbed, exciteable creature. They barked and bayed and bellowed and, spotting Sanjay, thronged to him and sniffed at a safe distance. They had huge, brown, weeping eyes and a look of such doleful exuberance that Sanjay had to laugh and crouch and put out a hand. The hounds swarmed over him, licking and snuffling as if he was their long-lost master.
The horn sounded again. The hounds, whining, retreated into a great quivering mass of dog. From out of the forest swept a phalanx of hunters. They pulled up their horses and the hounds crowded around them.
Sanjay tried not to stare until he realized that the hunters had evidently not noticed him. The horses had coats of burnished white, some shading to grey or gold. Each was arrayed with a spun-gold saddle blanket, fringed with strands of black pearls and brilliant feathers. Jewels blazed in their braided manes and tails.
The riders wore the same spun-gold fabric fashioned into clothing rich with interlaced patterns that seemed to expand and contract like an unbroken path of spirals through unfamiliar countryside, unending motion, unending change. Belts of intense red bounded their waists, and each bore an elaborately hafted knife in a sheath stitched with gold thread. All the riders
carried spears.
Sanjay could get no clear idea of their faces. They had a kind of blurring focus about them, as if they existed on a different plane of time than he did. He only knew that they were not human.
One raised a horn to her lips. Before the high call rose on the wind, a riderless, grey horse cantered into the glade and halted before Sanjay. He felt a sudden shifting of focus so strong it was disorienting, had to put his hand on the horse’s neck to steady himself. When he looked up, he saw that all the riders were now gazing at him in a half-curious, rather flat way.
He could see their faces now. They were not beautiful, but splendid, graceful faces too exotic to be handsome to a human eye. He understood that they expected him to mount, so he did.
The horn sounded. The hounds belled and set off again on the scent. A strong sense not of antiquity but of timelessness settled on Sanjay as the air rushed past and they galloped through the trees. He felt caught up in some archaic sacrament that he did not understand. There was a relentless purpose to this chase; the trees themselves seemed to create a path where none had been before. He did not even attempt to guide the horse, but knew rather that he was being carried along toward a consecration far older than he was or could ever hope to become.
The baying of the hounds intensified. They had sighted their prey. Sanjay felt a surge of blood-taste in his mouth and his emotions, as he too sighted a single figure fleeing the inexorable pursuit. Beside him, the riders lowered their spears.
The hounds coursed alongside their prey, closing and nipping at its heels to drive it out into the open. Not until it turned did Sanjay register that the distant figure was a man.
Golden-haired. His white shirt had been pulled free in his run and now hung over the top of his black trousers. He had a spear; as the hunt neared, Sanjay watched him thrust at the hounds, who were merely harrying him. He had a sharp eye, this trapped man, but each spear-thrust, however well-placed, dug into turf, not flesh, though a hound had been in that spot an instant before. His steps slowed as he tired, and at last, when he thrust, two of the hounds slipped inside his guard and nipped and yanked and he fell, sprawling on the ground, his spear slipping from his grasp.
The hunt pulled up, and at a piercing whistle from one of the riders the hounds retreated to form a circle about their hapless prisoner. They yapped and panted and wagged their tails as one by one the riders dismounted with preternatural grace from their white and golden steeds.
The hunted man lifted his head. His gaze still had force, even under such circumstances: arrogant and resigned, feverish, desperate, and, most shocking to Sanjay, familiar. Familiar, and human, in that most ordinary and yet deepest level of humanity that is the most binding of all connections. It was the earl, but reduced, trying at once to get to his knees and also to reach the spear, which one of the hunters lazily pulled out of his grasp with the point of his own. All around the fallen man, more spears lowered to surround him.
Sanjay swung down from his horse with more haste than skill and ran forward, wading through the hounds. They slavered at his legs but let him pass. He could feel the imminence of the kill like the press of a hand closing around a haft. From the ground he scooped up the loose spear and placed himself squarely between the earl and the nearest hunter.
“I won’t let you kill him,” he said.
Attention focussed swiftly and penetratingly on him. All the hounds sat, seemingly perplexed by this turn of events. The only sound was the rasp of the earl’s breathing, ragged and irregular.
Far in the distance a woman’s voice called out unintelligible words, ending on a question. Like a spell, it broke through the paralysis of action that had frozen the scene of the hunt.
“Do not interfere,” said the foremost hunter. His hair had the blaze of fire in it, shining like a beacon for benighted travellers in the darkness. “Once begun, this hunt must end in blood. This man called us back to the old ways that your kind have long forsworn, and ours used only in greatest need. Chosen of the chosen one, he has awakened the power of the heiress, and thus becomes the sacrifice to seal her power.”
“It is all true,” said the earl in a low voice that Sanjay could barely hear. “I knew there was treasure here for the taking. But I misread its agent.” His tone might have borne the faintest hint of irony. He was still breathing hard.
“Nevertheless,” said Sanjay, standing firm. “I cannot simply stand by and let it happen.”
“You do not understand.” The hunter lifted one hand and the hounds and his companions all moved back to form a still greater circle around the three in the center. “These are forces that once raised will run their course. You cannot will it to cease, any more than will can halt the wind or corrupt the purity of one of the Great Ones. Let us through.”
After the last words, Sanjay could hear clearly the resonance of the hunter’s voice, an uncanny echo that faded in on itself. The other hunters hefted spears. The hounds edged forward. Closer now, he heard a woman calling, and the faint thrash and rustle of disturbance in the undergrowth.
“Nevertheless.” He did not move.
“So be it,” said the hunter. “We will have blood.” He lowered his spear.
“Sanjay!”
Sanjay had time only to register Chryse’s voice, rising with surprise and confusion, before the hunter thrust with his spear. Sanjay dodged, felt the point sigh past his ear. He knocked the haft aside and switched his grip on his spear, dipping it and coming up underneath the other. But the hunter met and parried it, a hard snap, dipped and circled his own point and thrust for Sanjay’s belly.
Sanjay barely deflected the point, driving it down. It tore at the fabric of his coat, catching in a pocket. The hunter jerked it back just as Sanjay riposted; as the pocket ripped, the hunter stepped left and with ready instinct pushed the point of Sanjay’s spear past himself and on the same stroke drove his point down and into Sanjay’s left thigh.
Someone cried out; Sanjay knew only that it was not his own voice. The searing pain in his thigh enflamed his reason and narrowed the focus of his concentration.
He saw the undefended chest of his opponent and thrust for it. For an instant he had an hallucination that the hunter was dancing with him, turning sideways with a lift of one arm, until he realized that his leg was free and that the point of the hunter’s spear, yanked abruptly and desperately out of his thigh so that the haft could deflect Sanjay’s thrust, now lay on the ground.
The hunter was grasping the very end of his spearshaft with his right hand, and Sanjay, his spear point knocked wide of its target but still controlled, stepped right and forward to straddle the grounded point of his opponent’s weapon. As Sanjay advanced he felt the haft of the hunter’s spear, now trapped, pressing against the inside of his thigh.
With a sweeping motion, Sanjay struck for the hunter’s head with the haft. The hunter ducked, and the spear passed over his head. Sanjay began a backswing, but the hunter turned into him and, grappling at his waist, tried to throw him down. Sanjay braced, lifting his spear high, and brought the haft down square onto the hunter’s back.
The hunter collapsed flat on his chest. His spear lay tangled beneath him. Sanjay had followed him down and was now on one knee, the haft of his spear pressed hard along the hunter’s back.
With more instinct than thought he drew the hunter’s knife and laid the edge against the man’s throat. A thin line of blood welled up along the pale skin.
He felt a haze lift from him, and with its passing a steady throbbing in his left thigh. With a move like disgust he flung the knife away and stood up slowly, finding that his leg barely supported his weight. Blood trailed down the cloth of his trousers. The hunter lay still.
“Is that enough blood?” Sanjay asked. His voice was hoarse. He glanced about himself, at the golden-clad riders, the hounds. It seemed to him that three faint shades stood among them, but they were almost impossible to see.
The wind rose. Leaves fluttered and lifted, skittering across t
he earl’s hands as he lay, still half stunned, on the forest floor. The hounds whined and slunk into a close pack. The hunter raised his head and, when Sanjay offered him a hand, took it and with Sanjay’s help got to his feet.
“There are greater forces even than ours,” the hunter said. The rising wind tugged at his voice, giving it a soft reverberation. He lifted a hand and his companions mounted. “Ones you cannot fight.” His face was taking on that peculiar blur again, as if he were somehow retreating from Sanjay without actual physical motion. His horse stood beside him and he mounted. Sanjay could barely distinguish the line of blood at his throat. “But you may wear your scar with pride.” His voice was so resonant that it was almost impossible to understand. He reined his horse away from Sanjay and with an incomprehensible command led the riders into the forest, the hounds racing out in front.
Sanjay stared after them. Wind whipped at his back. Above, it tore through the branches until they slapped at each other, a sound that blended into a vibrant humming punctuated now and again by the snap of a breaking limb.
“Sanjay!” He turned to see Chryse running to him across the dim, starlit sward. Maretha was beside her; behind her, Professor Farr. And behind the professor—
It was nebulous at first. It was the power that stirred these branches, or the embodiment of it, and he understood the hunter’s words with such piercing clarity that for a moment he could not act.
A human figure, or at least human-like. Female, he thought, but neither clothed nor naked in any sense he knew. She held a bow, and with the fixed, unalterable expression of a justice sentencing death she drew and steadied her aim.
