Tales From High Hallack, Volume 3

by Andre Norton

  Krista expected her host to frown, to draw back in aversion, to order her from his hut with a curse, but the Keeper’s inquiring expression had not changed. He was still merely expectant, not judgmental.

  “Tell me, from the beginning,” he said, as though he were greeting her in the village lane.

  Her listener’s attitude was soothing. Even though the young woman was still cold with fear, she found that she could, indeed, recount her vision from its start.

  “I—I think I was at the inn. It was market day, and an outlander had come with a wagon filled with wares that were rich and strange. He did not cry aloud these goods—rather, he stood to one side and let the people look for themselves, with no pointing out of this or that item. Yet even without merchant’s patter, the folk took many things, bringing out long-stored savings so that they might deal with him. But they did not need such monies, for the trader’s prices were small—too small for what he had to offer. With each sale he made, I saw that his eyes looked like—” Krista took a swift breath, “like a hunter’s watching a fook-hare nose at a trap!”

  Shivering at the memory, the girl continued. “Most of the goods had soon been taken from the cart. It was as though no one thought the cost was set too low—they seemed not to wonder.”

  “But you did—and chose nothing from this wagon of strange wares?” the Keeper asked.

  The dreamer shook her head vigorously. “I wanted nothing of what I saw; truly, I would have gone away, but I seemed to be held there.”

  Taking up the thread of her tale once more, she continued, “Soon all the money was gone, and the people had to bring items for trade to do their buying: hides, jars of preserves, lengths of weaving. At last the wagon stood filled once more, this time with the work of our neighbors’ hands. Then the trader turned and started onto the mountain track. Yet none watched him go—they were all too busy comparing their bargains, boasting of their good fortune. But—” The young woman shuddered, raising hands to cover her eyes as if she could thus blot out an evil sight before her.

  “But—?” the loremaster prompted gently.

  “It was as though all they had taken from the stranger had been dipped into the blackest of shadows, and those shadows had passed into the folk themselves.”

  Krista halted, but her host continued to look at her, evidently awaiting more.

  “What was then shown to you?” he asked.

  “I—I went after the merchant up the mountain trail: again, something made me act against my will. And I found myself holding,” the dreamer stretched forth her arms, gazing down on them as though they still held a burden, “my marriage quilt, the bride-piece I have stitched on ever since Gregor spoke for me before he went to the summer pastures. The quilt—or all I have done so far—is of patchwork. It has red in it, and yellow, like to those flames yonder.” The young woman gestured toward the embers. “And it seemed that, when I held up the fabric, the colors blazed as does a fire newly fed. The quilt twisted in my hands; then it tore away from me and floated toward the trader and his cart. He and the wagon together turned black as a dark o’ moon night until the cloth flapped down upon them both.

  “There came fire at that touch, not the clean blaze of a home-hearth—this was black in flame. But it did not consume the quilt; rather the quilt smothered it. Then I woke, but a terrible fear was with me that that shadow-stuff had taken me prisoner also. This was a dream of evil, Keeper,” the girl finished in a low voice, no longer daring to look at her host, and waiting for his judgment.

  However, instead of accusing her, the loremaster asked a very unusual question. “Of what, Krista, is your bride-quilt made?”

  His visitor shifted on her stool, relieved and also irritated—why ask about matters that had nothing to do with the coming of Evil?—but she answered.

  “Because I am the only girl of our house, my mam and my aunty opened an ancient chest, long stored, for my use. They brought out odds and ends of fair finery and of other bride-pieces stitched long ago. Then my mam drew forth a pattern, clearly drawn, which she said my grandmam’s mother had lined because she had seen it in a dream—”

  Startled by her own words, Krista stopped. For the first time she remembered mam’s tale. As she pondered what it might mean in the light of her own dream, the Keeper pushed the ink and pen a little away and began leafing through the record book. Shaking his head, he arose quickly to reach down another such volume from a nearby shelf, then began flicking through its pages.

  “Your great-grandman was Mistress Magda.” He put down the book, opened to a mid-point page. “That was in the time of Keeper Whitter—near to a hundred year-lengths ago. He noted her vision carefully, for he was certain it was more important than it seemed. Indeed, it must have been a true foreseeing.”

  Setting the record aside, the Keeper turned directly to Krista. “You have dreamed of evil, yes, but you have also been shown a weapon—”

  “A quilt?” she exclaimed.

  “All defenses are not arrows, swords, or axes, maiden,” he replied, smiling at her bewilderment. “The Powers Beyond at times use other tools. How near done is your bride-piece?”

  “I have the backing of the patchwork side, then the quilting itself to finish,” the young woman answered. “There is still much to do—it is my rest-time work, you see.”

  “No,” the loremaster shook his head. “It is your true work, and from now on you will sit to it every day. Through you, we have again had a fore-glimpse of the future, though that may not run in the same path shown in your dream. The Powers have granted us a warning, and we must abide by it.”

  Nothing was told to the village concerning the subject of the latest dream to visit the people; yet Krista had, each day of her work with thread and needle, an audience that came and went. A few of the men paused to examine her labor, and, while they could see no sense in what she did, they did not gainsay the Keeper that it should be done. However, all the women and girls, down to the smallest tot holding to her mother’s skirts, came and watched, went and came again. There was always a cushion close to hand full of ready-threaded needles, and most of the womenfolk who viewed her work would add to that supply.

  Each stitch must be set by her own hands—that Krista somehow knew without being told. Hers was not the lighthearted task that a bride’s work should be—in fact, the girl no longer considered that her quilt was destined to serve any purpose of her own. Still, the design was bright and cheerful. Shades of red formed the hearts that promised joy to a new-wedded couple, and bright gold backed those symbols of love, each set into its proper square. The quilting lines themselves, though, were strange, and the young woman had to concentrate intently on the placing of nearly every one. The pattern was like no other she had ever tried, and several times she saw Mam and Aunty shake their heads over those swirling lines made up of tiny stitches.

  The dreamer kept at her task, though her shoulders grew sore from continual bending over the frame set up near the hearth of the cottage. Sometimes her head ached, too and, when she closed her eyes for an instant, those lines appeared before her once again, running red as threads of blood. At first she expected to dream again, but when she stretched wearily onto her bed at night she slipped quickly into a sleep that was untroubled.

  At the second seventh day after Krista had begun to work at her stitchery full time, from overmountain came a curious arrival—not the trader’s wagon she feared but rather a ragged straggle of folk. Mothers trudged along, gaunt from hunger, striving to nurse infants who seemed close to the Lasting Sleep. Here and there among them limped a man held up by a crutch, or one who stumbled blindly, guided by a woman or a half-grown child.

  Nothing of the Dark clung about these unfortunates—indeed, they were so far spent that they could not remember what had happened to them. But it was plain that an action of the Shadow Power had driven them into the valley.

  On the twentyday after she had begun her work, the girl at last overheard one of the strange women, to whom Mam
had opened the door, stammer forth some of the story. Beyond the mountains, the newcomer said, disease and death had ravaged the earth and all who walked it. Hope was at its lowest ebb when a fine lord had come riding into the town with many liveried men in his train. He had offered true gold for land whereon to build a dwelling, and he had been very free with his riches.

  Joyfully, the men, and the women as well, had gone to labor on his walls and towers. When they had finished, a feasting had been appointed. To this, too, they had gone eagerly—only—

  The woman who spoke shook now, holding close her silent baby. To that celebration had also been summoned Something Else. The fair nobleman had become foul, drawing about him black clouds, and from those—though it was the height of summer—fell pellets of ice. The trees drooped and died. Then his underlings had come among the people (who had found they could not escape) and sorted out all the men who were hardy. Meanwhile, monsters issued forth from the unnatural darkness to torment and herd all the other folk over now-blasted fields, past dead horses and cattle, to the very feet of the mountains. And the lord himself came to the place where the townsfolk huddled and laughed hatefully, boasting that more power existed in the world than those dolts could ever know and that he had seized such might and made it obey his will. He then pointed to the mountains and swore that not the rocks themselves would hold from him what he wished.

  As the fair-foul one rode away, his shadow monsters moved in once more, and the outcast people strained to climb above the sad twilight that held them. Thereafter they had wandered, for how long none of them could count.

  This tale was, indeed, the meat of an evil dream, but it did not contain the mysterious merchant and his wagon. Krista raised her voice: “It was a lord who used you so? Not—not an outland trader?”

  The woman started, as though the question had pierced through a mist in her mind and a memory had suddenly become clear. “There was a merchant, but in an earlier season,” she answered hesitatingly. “He brought many fine wares and was eager to trade—so eager that he asked under-price for what he offered. He took, in the end, bags of grain from the fields and fruits dried and preserved. Those goods he loaded into his wagon and was gone with the dawn, and we never saw him again.”

  Now she frowned, sitting up straighter, and fixed Krista with an oddly compelling stare. “He had strange eyes—” She paused, then added, “So did the evil lord and his men. Why do I think of that now?”

  “Strange eyes?” The Keeper had come in and was standing behind the woman, listening. “In what manner were they strange?”

  The speaker shook her head. “I do not know why—that is gone from my recalling.”

  The loremaster turned to Krista. “How near are you to your task’s completion?”

  The young woman surveyed the frame-stretched quilt. “Perhaps—yes. I shall finish by tomorrow’s eve.”

  “I think.” he said then, “that our time grows short. Why this Dark One hungers for land I cannot tell, save that the Shadow, which is lifeless, is ever greedy for what can bring forth things truly living. I doubt that these who have already suffered at the hands of the fair-seeming lord were meant to reach us; yet perhaps the Great Power wrought their fate so, even as It forewarned us with two dreams, separated by ten tens of years. Stitch well, Krista—the weapon must be ready when the enemy appears.”

  There was much stirring in the cottage after he had gone as the woman from overmountain was pressed to tell all that had occurred. Her audience grew and grew until they threatened the quilt-frame. Then Krista’s mother came back inside and stood looking down as the girl set one precise stitch after another.

  “You dreamed,” the older woman said after watching the work for a few moments, “and the Keeper has said your vision was a foretelling. We know of old that such night-seeings can be hard to understand, for they seldom show what must be—only what might come to pass. In truth, I know not how a maid’s stitchery can aid against a great servant of the Dark, but—” Laying her hand gently on Krista’s head, she ended, “do what must be done, daughter. You have the skill to do it well.”

  But do I? the young woman asked herself silently as she straightened shoulders stiff from bending over the quilting frame. Her many-times-pricked fingers were sore, as well, yet she dared use no ointment on them lest it stain the cloth. Her bride-piece. Krista pushed her chair back a little and looked at the design measuringly. Why had she thought the pattern so fine? Now the colors seemed to clash, and she knew she would never want so gaudy a spread of stuff across her marriage-bed. Marriage . . . she did not seem even to remember clearly what Gregor himself looked like, how his speech sounded—it was as though he were a dream long past. (Take another threaded needle between thumb and finger; place another stitch with care.)

  That night Krista worked as long as she could by the light of the five candles her mother had brought; and, just as her tired eyes blurred, she knew she had achieved her goal. Save for the edge-binding, which was the last and easiest task of all, the quilt was finished.

  The same heavy sleep that had followed each day’s labor on the bride-piece descended upon her, and once more she slept with no troubling dreams. When she awoke, she found her workday clothes gone from the chair where she had left them; in their place was her feast-day finery. She was starring at these rich garments blankly when mam came in, a cup of new milk in her hand.

  “The Keeper has sent word,” the woman said breathlessly. “Two of the outcast folk who built a hut up-mountain have seen what we await. The trader comes!”

  Krista half staggered to her feet. “The binding—”

  “It is ready, dear heart, save for the last stitches. Drink now, and dress in your best, for this is the day toward which you have labored.”

  And the binding did go forward smoothly—even the pain in the girl’s fingertips did not delay those straight and simple stitches. She put in the last of them just as the noonday sun placed a golden patch of its own on the floor within the edge of the open door.

  That light was eclipsed as the Keeper came swiftly in. He did not seem to see Krista but had eyes only for what she held. “It is done? That one is coming past the mill—”

  The young woman began to fold the quilt, trueing up the edges of the bulky square.

  “It is done.” she answered, hugging the bundle to her and stepping toward the door and the waiting lore-master. If the merchant was as close as the mill, then it was certainly time they were gone. Mam had assured her that the overmountain folk had all hidden themselves well out of sight so the trader would see only what he expected—a small village busied with its own affairs.

  Then the girl was out in the sun, caressed by summer air. Her back straightened as she moved away from the cottage with her mentor; somehow she was sure of the worth of the work she held.

  There was, indeed, a tall canvas-topped trader’s wagon just pulling to a halt before the inn. The beasts that drew it—four of them—were certainly not the oxen that the villagers knew, nor were they true horses. These creatures had rust-red coats now matted with road-dust, and horns sprouted from their heads, short, stubby, and black—black as the hooded cloak their driver wore.

  Though the day was fine and warm, the new arrival had wrapped that cape about himself as though he felt deep winter’s bite. But the hood shifted a little as he moved to the rear of the wagon to loose the ties of the canvas and open to sight his wares.

  The villagers surged forward as if they had been summoned by hunting-horn, fully intent on what was now on display—and that which lay within the cart seemed truly a hoard of treasures. The merchant stood to one side, merely watching the people as they milled about, pointing, reaching, urging each other to look at this wonder or that.

  Fighting the pull of a strong desire to join them, Krista broke free of that surge of folk and moved nearer to the trader. Then she might have called to him, for he swung around and faced her directly. His eyes—At once the girl recalled what the exiled woman had said. Nei
ther blue, nor brown, nor gray, nor green was orbed there—rather it seemed as though two coals, black save for a spark of fire in their hearts, had been set into his skull.

  The young dreamer did not know what was expected of her, but she shook the quilt out of its folds, and the gold and scarlet blazed in the sun, even as did the outlander’s coals of eyes.

  Two strides he took toward her, then stopped abruptly as the heavy length of cloth unfurled, dropping a corner at his feet. For the first time, he shrugged the cloak away, revealing a jerkin and breeches the dusty gray of wood-ash. About his waist was a broad sash-belt divided into pockets. With his eyes still fixed on the girl, his fingers sought one of those compartments, fumbled within (for he did not look down), and withdrew, a-glitter with gem-hung chains of silver and red gold.

  The outlander did not speak but dangled these baubles at eye-level before her; however, when Krista made no move to take his bright bait, he abruptly dropped the necklaces into the dust of the road as if they were worthless trash. Again he opened a pocket in his sash, and this time—

  He seemed to have caught the end of a rainbow and tossed it out onto the air. So fine was the substance of the shawl-scarf he now displayed that a goodly length had been folded into the belt-pouch before being freed to expand and float in the breeze.

  The young woman gasped before she could control herself. This web was out of dreamland itself! The trader whirled the stuff closer, wordlessly urging her to take it—and this time he also made clear his own desire by pointing with his other hand at the quilt.

  This time Krista found her voice. “No—this is not for trade.”

  The glowing embers of the merchant’s eyes flared, and his lips twisted in what was close to a snarl. Loosing the scarf to the pull of the wind, his hand sought yet a third pocket.

  What he drew forth this time was neither gems or fine fabric but a book. The girl’s gaze was drawn to the scuffed hide that served as its cover, the symbol set thereon in dark metal—a design like to, yet unpleasantly unlike, the one graven into the door of the Keeper’s cottage. Though her tempter made no move to open the volume, the young woman drew a deep breath.