Into the Green

by Charles de Lint

  And Edrie had squeezed her husband's hand, for Paeter had the Summerblood in him, Hafarl's gift. It made him gentle, though strong. A poet, though he tilled the earth. It drew guests such as the three red-haired Summerborn who visited this evening, stopping at night before they traveled on.

  "Today we are all that's left of the old magic," the tale-teller went on. "Our small echo of the gift sets us well apart from those around us. But in the old days, when the Blood ran strong, there was yet a deeper magic still— held by those who knew the calling-on magic, born of threes. Tinker, harper and witch. Moon, music and the stoneworks of old.

  "Triads."

  Looking at the clothing she held, Edrie remembered.

  Triads.

  Like the woman whose room this was.

  Tinker, harper and witch.

  Did she know the old calling-on magic, born of threes? Could she wake the green and use its strength to put an end to that horror on the Hill? Aron Corser with his spiderweb of power that let him do as he willed, to whom he willed.

  Tears glistened in Edrie's eyes.

  For that old memory brought back more than the tale told by a red-haired Summerborn. It brought back the features of a man who died because he carried a sacred gift in his soul that set him apart from his fellows. A man set upon by his once-friends who'd been fanned into a witch-hunting fury by an itinerant priest. A man hung from a tall oak tree, his fingers broken and burned while he spun slowly from the hemp rope.

  Paeter. Her husband.

  Edrie wiped her eyes on her sleeve and returned the clothing and harp to the journeybag, the bag to its place under the bed. She stood and stepped quickly to the door, the room still blurry in her sight. The door swung open easily, but she paused before going through, wiping her eyes a second time before she looked about the small tired room.

  She could have helped her, Edrie thought. She could have guested Ann Netter like a queen.

  Instead she'd sent the girl off, alone into danger. Arn!

  Where to begin to look for her? She could be anywhere.

  Edrie stepped into the hall. As she began to close the door, she paused as a smudged handprint on the doorjamb caught her gaze. A child's handprint. An urchin's dirt.

  And she remembered.

  How Johnny Tow had come by the inn that afternoon, looking for the penny promised him by Owen. A penny's worth of information concerning a fishergirl.

  Had Tow come back to see what profit he could make from the girl himself? Led her off with his Lowtown lies, no doubt. Delivering her to the Upright Man for Arn knew what purpose...

  She shut the door quickly and started down the hall, only to find her way blocked by a tall rakish figure. Lammond d'es Teillion himself.

  "Edrie Doonan," he said. "What a pleasure. It appears we have a mutual friend."

  He made a quick half-bow as he spoke. Edrie gave him a careful once-over, trying to decide if he were mocking her or not, then shrugged.

  "Maybe we do," she said. "If she lives out the night."

  "What do you mean?" Lammond demanded, his grey eyes darkening.

  "I've a feeling the Upright Man's got her."

  "I think not. What would he want with a simple fishergirl?"

  Maybe, Edrie thought; more's to the point, what do you want with her?

  "Well, if he doesn't have her now," she said, "he soon will. Her room's empty and I've a fair idea that Johnny Tow's been by to see her. What does that tell you?"

  Lammond said nothing for a long moment, then he nodded.

  "Come," he said.

  Turning abruptly, he started off down the hall, not even looking to see if Edrie followed.

  Edrie regarded his receding back.

  Did she really want to get caught up any deeper in this? But then she thought of Ann Netter's innocent face, of how she herself had as much as tossed the poor girl out on the street.

  Sighing, she hurried after Lammond.

  24

  Johnny Tow could barely contain his self-satisfaction as he led the woman through the back streets and alleys of Lowtown. There was a skip to his step, a smirk only just kept from his lips.

  His one fear, going to the woman's room, had been that she was in tight with Lammond. No one— at least no one with their wits about them— crossed d'es Teillion. The best defense around him was not to be noticed at all. But since Lammond's rescue of the woman had been a chance encounter, as Tow had guessed from watching the pair of them at the time, he now knew that there was nothing to interfere with what he had planned for her.

  "Is it much further?" the woman asked as one narrow twisting street led endlessly into another.

  "Can't be too careful," Tow told her.

  "That's not what I asked you."

  Oh, do give it a rest, he thought. You'll get yours quick enough.

  "Not far at all," he assured her.

  "It had better not be."

  He gave her a quick glance. The annoyance was plain in her voice and it didn't surprise him. What he did find odd, though, was how she retained her confidence where another woman would have been at least somewhat fearful by now, what with having been taken so deeply into Lowtown with no one but an urchin to show her the way out again. And then there was how easily she maneuvered her way by his side. The lighting was poor. The route he took her by was deliberately bewildering. He knew Lowtown as he did the back of his hand, but even he stumbled from time to time over some new bit of refuse.

  The woman never once missed a step.

  She had, he realized, the eyes of a cat. There was a feline grace to her stride as well, and a silence to her every movement that he was beginning to find unnerving.

  Best see to business. Best see to it now.

  He led her into a dead-end alleyway.

  "This goes nowhere," she said.

  How could she bloody tell?

  "I know," he said. "This is where we'll meet them."

  He put fingers to his lips and blew a shrill whistle.

  "You trust these friends of yours?" she asked.

  "With my life." Because they knew what was good for them.

  "Even when they require payment for a favor?"

  Tow shrugged. "There's risks. And they need to eat."

  "Business been slow, then?"

  "Business?" What was she driving at?

  "Do you think I don't know a thief when I meet him?"

  Tow blinked. "Think you're so bloody clever, do you? Then why'd you follow me down here?"

  Now it was her turn to shrug. "On the off-chance that you could help." Her cat's eyes studied him in the dark. "I think it's best we go our own ways now."

  There came movement at the mouth of the alleyway.

  One by one, a near dozen street urchins moved into place, blocking the exit. There were both boys and girls in their number, each of them as raggedly dressed as Tow.

  "A little late for second thoughts now," Tow said smugly.

  The woman remained calm. "I'll be fair," she said.

  "Leave me now and there'll be no harm done."

  Tow laughed. "No harm? Who gets hurt here tonight is up to us, you silly cow."

  He reached under his tattered coat, a knife filling his fist when he brought his hand out again. The other urchins brought out their own knives and cudgels.

  "We'll have our payment now," Tow told her.

  "With the job undone?"

  "Don't make things worse for yourself," Tow said.

  Dath, was she a half-wit? They were seven to her one. True, she had a staff, but she couldn't defend herself from all sides at once, no matter how good she was with it.

  "Put your staff down and give us your coin," he said. "All of it. Who knows? Do as you're told and we might even let you go unharmed."

  One of the other urchins tittered at that.

  Tow grinned. "It'd be a pity to have that pretty face cut up," he added.

  "I think not."

  Tow nodded to his companions and they moved in closer, brandishing the
ir weapons until they had her boxed in at the dead end of the alley. They faced her in a half circle.

  "Last chance," Tow said. "Put the staff down."

  She merely regarded him with those cat's eyes.

  "Silly cow," Tow murmured, shaking his head. He glanced up at the roof above them. "Do it, Chaffer."

  Johnny Tow was no fool. He'd ordered one of his boys to get up on the roof as soon as he had the woman in place— all the threatening chat was just to give Chaffer time to get himself in place.

  Why cut the woman when, pretty as she was, she could bring a handsome price if delivered all in one piece? He hadn't yet decided who to sell her to— Aron Corser, perhaps. Or the owner of one of the hussyhalls over on Akkers Street that catered to too rough a trade to be able to hire their girls.

  Before the woman could make a move, Chaffer leaned over the edge of the roof and dropped a weighted net on top of her. She went down, trapped by the net. She still held her staff, though what good she thought it would do her now with her limbs all tangled with netting, Tow couldn't begin to guess.

  He stepped over to where she lay and hunched down, sitting on his ankles, so that he could look her in the face.

  "What do you think now?" he asked.

  Her cat's eyes glared at him. Poor silly cow, he thought. But then he realized that she was smiling.

  And her staff began to glow with a flickering witch-light.

  25

  The Bell & Hogg stood at the corner of Akkers Street and Marner, a run-down excuse for an inn that catered to the rough trade from the nearby docks and those Lowtowners that could scrape together the price of a pint. The building was as shabby as its clientele; the interior worse than the weatherbeaten walls outside. There were mounds of refuse piled up against the stonework that was permanently stained a dark yellow from those beyond caring, or too drunk, to make their way to the latrines in back of the inn.

  The inn was owned by a merchant who lived up on the Hill, but it was run by Boesan Cark, a barrel-chested man with a peg leg who had little patience with his customers in the first place, and less when their purses were empty.

  With his head on a battered tabletop, his one good eye focused blearily on a pool of bile left behind on the floor by a patron even drunker than himself, Tom never knew Cark was coming for him until the innkeeper grabbed a handful of his greasy hair and gave it a pull. Tom's head lifted from the table, jerked upward like a marionette on a string.

  "That's enough for you," Cark told him.

  Tom tried to focus on the man's flat features, one hand scrabbling in his pocket for another coin. But the pocket was as empty as his life.

  "No... no credit... ?" he asked, slurring his words.

  Credit from Cark. That was a joke.

  Cark's only reply was to raise the hand holding Tom's hair, lifting him from his seat.

  The man just didn't understand, Tom realized. He couldn't see that old Tom needed to forget.

  Kind eyes.

  Features too similar to old hurts.

  The green...

  When Cark had him on his feet, he grabbed Tom by the back of the trousers with his free hand and propelled him towards the door, through it, out onto the street. There Cark released his grip with a final hard shove that sent Tom reeling, arms pinwheeling, his lame leg dragging him down. He fell in a pile of trash, thick with the stink of stale urine and rotting food.

  "Come back when you can pay," Cark said.

  He bore no grudges and cared not a whit for charity. Those that had coin could stay; those without were sent off until they could pay.

  Tom watched a blurry double image of the innkeeper return to his commonroom. He tried to rise twice, but failed both times. Finally he simply lay there in the refuse, staring upward where stars hung in the night sky. He turned his face away when he realized what he was looking at.

  Cark didn't understand. He needed the drink to forget. And he needed to be indoors at night. Otherwise the stars spoke to him. Sighing and whispering. Softly enjoining. Calling up the green from inside him...

  He stirred when he heard that sound he feared the most.

  It came from some great distance— from within himself, perhaps, or from some unimaginable faraway, it mattered not. Its source was that realm where the kowrie danced and enchantment bloomed green and wonder lay thick as the buzz of bees.

  The green.

  Called up in the belling of a stag.

  Always the stag.

  Its tines ringed with a gold nimbus. Its flanks red as a chestnut. Its eyes the dark of deep forests, green and dreaming. The moon reflected there. And wisdom. And mystery.

  Forcing him to remember.

  When he was a man.

  A whole man.

  When pain was a distant thing.

  And memories were warm.

  Tom dragged himself to his feet. Hands clapped against his ears, he bumped his way along the wall, his lame leg dragging along behind him.

  But the belling of the stag merely grew closer. There was no hiding from that sound for, like memories, its place of origin was in that part of himself that he drank to forget, but could not.

  "Damn her," he said, his eye shiny with tears.

  Damn her for not allowing him to forget.

  26

  Angharad derived A certain sense of satisfaction from Johnny Tow's reaction to the blossoming of her witch-fire. His skin went ashy pale under its film of dirt. His eyes opened comically wide.

  "Holy Mother of Dath," he said in a hoarse whisper.

  Involuntarily, his fingers began to shape the Sign of Horns between them.

  "You asked me," she said, "what do I think now?"

  Behind him she could make out the reactions of the other street urchins through the webbed netting that entangled her limbs, her nightsight so sharp and clear that she could read every nuance of their fear as the witch-fire woke from her staff.

  White rowan. Witch-wood.

  In the old days, when the Summerborn were closer to the green, when the green itself was stronger, rowan could call up a witch-fire that would have consumed them all— each raggedy urchin, tattered clothes, grimy skin and all— and propelled their spirits into the Land of Shadows with the force of a storm's wind. But the years had taken their toll. The borders of the Middle Kingdom had steadily folded in upon themselves, receding from the lands and memories of men; the green lost its potency. Now the witch-fire was far less powerful— merely a pale echo of what it had once been.

  But it could still burn easily enough through the rope netting so that she could free herself of its entangling folds.

  It could still cast the illusion of great power.

  Angharad rose to her feet, the witch-fire crackling all about her. The urchins remained frozen where they stood around her.

  "What I think," she said, directing her words to Tow, "is that you were too quick to dismiss witcheries."

  She let the fire flare about her arms and shoulders, arcing into a mantle of flames. When she pointed a finger at Tow, he broke and ran, his companions hard on his heels. Moments later, Angharad stood alone in the alleyway.

  So, she thought, surveying her surroundings. And what did this gain her? Wasted hours following Johnny Tow about Lowtown. A rumor to run the length and breadth of Cathal, fueled by fearful urchins, that there was a true witch abroad. The Summerborn still to rescue from Corser. The glascrow still to find...

  Her witch-fire died down, returning to the wood of her staff, from the staff back into the green. With its retreat came a sudden awareness. A shiver ran up Angharad's spine as she realized what she could have done.

  Sweet Mother Arn. She would have killed them.

  If the witch-fire still had its potency, she would have simply burned them all away.

  They were scarcely innocents, but they were still children. They were people and had as much right to this world as any. Yet, had she been able, she would have treated them with the same finality that mankind treated the Summerborn. As
it was, she had delighted in their fear...

  She leaned heavily on her staff and closed her eyes. And again the source of that new bloodthirstiness made itself evident.

  In her mind's eye she saw the pattern of the glascrow, writhing like a self-sentient shadow in her mind, feeding on her darker thoughts. A poison in her spirit. A corruption discoloring her green.

  Once more she called up the witch-fire, but this time she turned it inward, against the memory of the glascrow, against the hateful snakes that it had set writhing through her soul. Within her, the witch-fire still retained its potency, but the snakes fought hard against its scalding fire. In the end, she couldn't defeat them.

  The witch-fire reduced them to a tiny pinprick of darkness that she secreted deep inside her, a small core of nightmare against which, she realized, she must constantly stand guard.

  She could hide it away.

  But she must never forget it was there.

  She was slow to raise her head and study her surroundings once more. It took her a long moment to regain her bearings. Her staff was warm to her grip. Her head ached with a weary pain.

  No time to rest, she told herself. She must do what she had set out to do or, for Jackin at least, it might be too late.

  The Summerborn were her kin. No more of them would suffer— either the horrors that Aron Corser had in store for them, or the worse terror that the glascrow waited to loose on the green.

  Sighing, she set off for the Hill, her nightsight and memory allowing her to navigate her way back through the labyrinth of Lowtown's twisting streets with the sureness of a native. The Lowtowners kept out of her way, thieves and drunkards alike. From time to time she caught glimpses of street urchins, grimy faces turning quickly away when she looked in their direction, but she didn't pause to pursue them.

  Her business with Lowtown was done for the night— or so she thought.

  She paused near the mouth of an alleyway and looked down its dark length. Her witchy nightsight pierced the gloom to see what her spirit had already sensed. She walked the few steps it took to reach Tom Naghatty's new nest and stood there, biting at her lower lip, as she looked down at him.