“Stay!” she cried, and stepped into his path a second time, curious what other venturers would come, and on the heels of such as he. “I do doubt they’ll come this far. What name do you give, who come disturbing the peace of Eald?”
He was wary, surely knowing the power of names; and perhaps he would not have given his true one and perhaps he would not have stayed at all, but that she fixed him sternly with her eyes and he stammered out: “Fionn.”
“Fionn.” It was apt, for fair he was, tangled hair and first down of beard. She spoke it softly, like a charm. “Fionn. Come walk with me. I’d see this intrusion before others do. Come, come, have no dread of me; I’ve no harm in mind.”
He did come, carefully, and much loath, heeded and walked after her, held by nothing but her wish. She took the Ealdwood’s own slow time, not walking the quicker ways, for there was the taint of iron about him, and she could not take him there.
The thicket which degenerated from the dark heart of the Eald was an unlovely place…for the Ealdwood had once been better than it was, and there was yet a ruined fairness there; but these young trees had never been other than what they were. They twisted and tangled their roots among the bones of the crumbling hills, making deceiving and thorny barriers. Unlikely it was that Men could see the ways she found; but she was amazed by the changes the years had wrought—saw the slow work of root and branch and ice and sun, labored hard-breathing and scratched with thorns, but gloried in it, alive to the world. She turned from time to time when she sensed faltering behind her: he caught that look of hers and came on, pallid and fearful, past clinging thickets and over stones, as if he had lost all will or hope of doing otherwise.
The baying of hounds echoed out of Caerdale, from the deep valley at the very bounds of the forest. She sat down on a rock atop that last slope, where was prospect of all the great vale of the Caerbourne, a dark tree-filled void beneath the moon. A towered heap of stones had risen far across the vale on the hill called Caer Wiell, and it was the work of men: so much did the years do with the world.
The boy dropped down by the stone, the harp upon his shoulders echoing; his head sank on his folded arms and he wiped the sweat and the tangled hair from his brow. The baying, still a moment, began again, and he lifted frightened eyes.
Now he would run, having come as far as he would; fear shattered the spell. She stayed him yet again, a hand on his smooth arm.
“Here’s the limit of my wood,” she said. “And in it, hounds hunt that you could not shake from your heels, no. You’d do well to stay here by me, indeed you would. It is yours, that harp?”
He nodded.
“Will you play for me?” she asked, which she had desired from the beginning; and the desire of it burned far more vividly than did curiosity about men and dogs: but one would serve the other. He looked at her as though he thought her mad; and yet took the harp from his shoulders and from its case. Dark wood starred and banded with gold, it sounded when he took it into his arms: he held it so, like something protected, and lifted a pale, resentful face.
And bowed his head again and played as she had bidden him, soft touches at the strings that quickly grew bolder, that waked echoes out of the depths of Caerdale and set the hounds to baying madly. The music drowned the voices, filled the air, filled her heart, and she felt now no faltering or tremor of his hands. She listened, and almost forgot which moon shone down on them, for it had been so long, so very long since the last song had been heard in Ealdwood, and that sung soft and elsewhere.
He surely sensed a glamor on him, that the wind blew warmer and the trees sighed with listening. The fear went from his eyes, and though sweat stood on his brow like jewels, it was clear, brave, music that made—suddenly, with a bright ripple of the strings, a defiant song strange to her ears.
Discord crept in, the hounds’ fell voices, taking the music and warping it out of tune. She rose as that sound drew near. The song ceased, and there was the rush and clatter of horses in the thicket below.
Fionn sprang up, the harp laid aside. He snatched at the small dagger at his belt, and she flinched at that, the bitter taint of iron. “No,” she wished him, and he did not draw.
Then hounds and riders were on them, a flood of hounds black and slavering and two great horses, bearing men with the smell of iron about them, men glittering terribly in the moonlight. The hounds surged up baying and bugling and as suddenly fell back again, making wide their circle, whining and with lifting of hackles. The riders whipped them, but their horses shied and screamed under the spurs and neither could be driven further.
She stood, one foot braced against the rock, and regarded men and beasts with cold curiosity, for she found them strange, harder and wilder than Men she had known; and strange too was the device on them, that was a wolf’s grinning head. She did not recall it—nor care for the manner of them.
Another rider clattered up the shale, shouted and whipped his unwilling horse farther than the others, and at his heels came men with bows. His arm lifted, gestured; the bows arched, at the harper and at her.
“Hold,” she said.
The arm did not fall; it slowly lowered. He glared at her, and she stepped lightly up onto the rock so she need not look up so far, to him on his tall horse. The beast shied under him and he spurred it and curbed it cruelly; but he gave no order to his men, as if the cowering hounds and trembling horses finally made him see.
“Away from here,” he shouted down at her, a voice to make the earth quake. “Away! or I daresay you need a lesson taught you too.” And he drew his great sword and held it toward her, curbing the protesting horse.
“Me, lessons?” She set her hand on the harper’s arm. “Is it on his account you set foot here and raise this noise?”
“My harper,” the lord said, “and a thief. Witch, step aside. Fire and iron are answer enough for you.”
In truth, she had no liking for the sword that threatened or for the iron-headed arrows which could speed at his lightest word. She kept her hand on Fionn’s arm nonetheless, for she saw well how he would fare with them. “But he’s mine, lord-of-men. I should say that the harper’s no joy to you, you’d not come chasing him from your land. And great joy he is to me, for long and long it is since I’ve met so pleasant a companion in Ealdwood. Gather the harp, lad, and walk away now; let me talk with this rash man.”
“Stay!” the lord shouted; but Fionn snatched the harp into his arms and edged away.
An arrow hissed; the boy flung himself aside with a terrible clangor of the harp, and lost it on the slope and scrambled back for it, his undoing, for now there were more arrows ready, and these better-purposed.
“Do not,” she said.
“What’s mine is mine.” The lord held his horse still, his sword outstretched before his archers, bating the signal; his face was congested with rage and fear. “Harp and harper are mine. And you’ll rue it if you think any words of yours weigh with me. I’ll have him and you for your impudence.”
It seemed wisest then to walk away, and she did so—turned back the next instant, at distance, at Fionn’s side, and only half under his moon. “I ask your name, lord-of-men, if you aren’t fearful of my curse.”
Thus she mocked him, to make him afraid before his men. “Evald,” he said back, no hesitating, with contempt for her. “And yours, witch?”
“Call me what you like, lord. And take warning, that these woods are not for human hunting and your harper is not yours anymore. Go away and be grateful. Men have Caerdale. If it does not please you, shape it until it does. The Ealdwood’s not for trespass.”
He gnawed at his mustaches and gripped his sword the tighter, but about him the drawn bows had begun to sag and the arrows to aim at the dirt. Fear was in the men’s eyes, and the two riders who had come first hung back, free men and less constrained than the archers.
“You have what’s mine,” he insisted.<
br />
“And so I do. Go on, Fionn. Do go, quietly.”
“You’ve what’s mine,” the valley lord shouted. “Are you thief then as well as witch? You owe me a price for it.”
She drew in a sharp breath and yet did not waver in or out of the shadow. “Then do not name too high, lord-of-men. I may hear you, if that will quit us.”
His eyes roved harshly about her, full of hate and yet of weariness as well. She felt cold at that look, especially where it centered, above her heart, and her hand stole to that moon-green stone that hung at her throat.
“The stone will be enough,” he said. “That.”
She drew it off, and held it yet, insubstantial as she, dangling on its chain, for she had the measure of them and it was small. “Go, Fionn,” she bade him; and when he lingered yet: “Go!” she shouted. At last he ran, fled, raced away like a mad thing, holding the harp to him.
And when the woods all about were still again, hushed but for the shifting and stamp of the horses and the complaint of the hounds, she let fall the stone. “Be paid,” she said, and walked away.
She heard the hooves and turned, felt the insubstantial sword like a stab of ice into her heart. She recoiled elsewhere, bowed with the pain of it that took her breath away. But in time she could stand again, and had taken from the iron no lasting hurt; yet it had been close, and the feel of cold lingered even in the warm winds.
And the boy—she went striding through the shades and shadows in greatest anxiety until she found him, where he huddled hurt and lost within the deepest wood.
“Are you well?” she asked lightly, dropping to her heels beside him. For a moment she feared he might be hurt more than scratches, so tightly he was bowed over the harp; but he lifted his face to her. “You shall stay while you wish,” she said, hoping that he would choose to stay long. “You shall harp for me.” And when he yet looked fear at her: “You’d not like the new forest. They’ve no ear for harpers there.”
“What is your name, lady?”
“What do you see of me?”
He looked swiftly at the ground, so that she reckoned he could not say the truth without offending her. And she laughed at that.
“Then call me Thistle,” she said. “I answer sometimes to that, and it’s a name as rough as I. But you’ll stay. You’ll play for me.”
“Yes.” He hugged the harp close. “But I’ll not go with you. I’ve no wish to find the years passed in a night and all the world gone old.”
“Ah. You know me. But what harm, that years should pass? What care of them or this age? It seems hardly kind to you.”
“I am a man,” he said, “and it’s my age.”
It was so; she could not force him. One entered otherwhere only by wishing it. He did not; and there was about him and in his heart still the taint of iron.
She settled in the moonlight, and watched beside him; he slept, for all his caution, and waked at last by sunrise, looking about him anxiously lest the trees have grown, and seeming bewildered that she was still there by day. She laughed, knowing her own look by daylight, that was indeed rough as the weed she had named herself, much-tanned and calloused and her clothes in want of patching. She sat plaiting her hair in a single silver braid and smiling sidelong at him, who kept giving her sidelong glances too.
All the earth grew warm. The sun did come here, unclouded on this day. He offered her food, such meager share as he had; she would have none of it, not fond of man-taint, or the flesh of poor forest creatures. She gave him instead of her own, the gift of trees and bees and whatsoever things felt no hurt at sharing.
“It’s good,” he said, and she smiled at that.
He played for her then, idly and softly, and slept again, for bright day in Ealdwood counseled sleep, when the sun burned warmth through the tangled branches and the air hung still, nothing breathing, least of all the wind. She drowsed too, for the first time since many a tree had grown, for the touch of the mortal sun did that kindness, a benison she had all but forgotten.
But as she slept she dreamed, of a dose place of cold stone. In that dark hall she had a man’s body, heavy and reeking of wine and ugly memories, such a dark fierceness she would gladly have fled if she might.
Her hand sought the moonstone on its chain and found it at his throat; she offered better dreams and more kindly, and he made bitter mock of them, hating all that he did not comprehend. Then she would have made the hand put the stone off that foul neck; but she had no power to compel, and he would not. He possessed what he owned, so fiercely and with such jealousy it cramped the muscles and stifled the breath.
And he hated what he did not have and could not have, that most of all; and the center of it was his harper.
She tried still to reason within this strange, closed mind. It was impossible. The heart was almost without love, and what little it had ever been given it folded in upon itself lest what it possessed escape.
“Why?” she asked that night, when the moon shed light on the Ealdwood and the land was quiet, no ill thing near them, no cloud above them. “Why does he seek you?” Though her dreams had told her, she wanted his answer.
Fionn shrugged, his young eyes for a moment aged; and he gathered against him his harp. “This,” he said.
“You said it was yours. He called you thief. What did you steal?”
“It is mine.” He touched the strings and brought forth melody. “It hung in his hall so long he thought it his, and the strings were cut and dead.” He rippled out a somber note. “It was my father’s and his father’s before him.”
“And in Evald’s keeping?”
The fair head bowed over the harp and his hands coaxed sound from it, answerless.
“I’ve given a price,” she said, “to keep him from it and you. Will you not give back an answer?”
The sound burst into softness. “It was my father’s. Evald hanged him. Would hang me.”
“For what cause?”
Fionn shrugged, and never ceased to play. “For truth. For truth he sang. So Evald hanged him, and hung the harp on his wall for mock of him. I came. I gave him songs he liked. But at winter’s end I came down to the hall at night, and mended the old harp, gave it voice and a song he remembered. For that he hunts me.”
Then softly he sang, of humankind and wolves, and that song was bitter. She shuddered to hear it, and bade him cease, for mind to mind with her in troubled dreams Evald heard and tossed, and waked starting in sweat.
“Sing more kindly,” she said. Fionn did so, while the moon climbed above the trees, and she recalled elder-day songs which the world had not heard in long years, sang them sweetly. Fionn listened and caught up the words in his strings, until the tears ran down his face for joy.
There could be no harm in Ealdwood that hour: the spirits of latter earth that skulked and strove and haunted men fled elsewhere, finding nothing that they knew; and the old shadows slipped away trembling, for they remembered. But now and again the song faltered, for there came a touch of ill and smallness into her heart, a cold piercing as the iron, with thoughts of hate, which she had never held so close.
Then she laughed, breaking the spell, and put it from her, bent herself to teach the harper songs which she herself had almost forgotten, conscious the while that elsewhere, down in Caerbourne vale, on Caer Wiell, a man’s body tossed in sweaty dreams which seemed constantly to mock him, with sound of eldritch harping that stirred echoes and sleeping ghosts.
With the dawn she and Fionn rose and walked a time, and shared food, and drank at a cold, clear spring she knew, until the sun’s hot eye fell upon them and cast its numbing spell on all the Ealdwood.
Then Fionn slept; but she fought the sleep which came to her, for dreams were in it, her dreams while he should wake; nor would they stay at bay, not when her eyes grew heavy and the air thick with urging sleep. The dreams came more and more strongly.
The man’s strong legs bestrode a great brute horse, and hands plied whip and feet the spurs more than she would, hurting it cruelly. There was noise of hounds and hunt, a coursing of woods and hedges and the bright spurt of blood on dappled hide: he sought blood to wipe out blood, for the harping rang yet in his mind, and she shuddered at the killing her hands did, and at the fear that gathered thickly about him, reflected in his comrades’ eyes.
It was better that night, when the waking was hers and her harper’s, and sweet songs banished fear; but even yet she grieved for remembering, and at times the cold came on her, so that her hand would steal to her throat where the moongreen stone was not. Her eyes brimmed suddenly with tears: Fionn saw and tried to sing her merry songs instead. They failed, and the music died.
“Teach me another song,” he begged of her. “No harper ever had such songs. And will you not play for me?”
“I have no art,” she said, for the last harper of her folk had gone long ago: it was not all truth, for once she had known, but there was no more music in her hands, none since the last had gone and she had willed to stay, loving this place too well in spite of men. “Play,” she asked of Fionn, and tried to smile, though the iron closed about her heart and the man raged at the nightmare, waking in sweat, ghost-ridden.
It was that human song Fionn played in his despair, of the man who would be a wolf and the wolf who was no man; while the lord Evald did not sleep again, but sat shivering and wrapped in furs before his hearth, his hand clenched in hate upon the stone which he possessed and would not, though it killed him, let go.
But she sang a song of elder earth, and the harper took up the tune, which sang of earth and shores and water, a journey, the great last journey, at men’s coming and the dimming of the world. Fionn wept while he played, and she smiled sadly and at last fell silent, for her heart was gray and cold.
The sun returned at last, but she had no will to eat or rest, only to sit grieving, for she could not find peace. Gladly now she would have fled the shadow-shifting way back into otherwhere, to her own moon and softer sun, and persuaded the harper with her; but there was a portion of her heart in pawn, and she could not even go herself: she was too heavily bound. She fell to mourning bitterly, and pressed her hand often where the stone should rest. He hunted again, did Evald of Caer Wiell. Sleepless, maddened by dreams, he whipped his folk out of the hold as he did his hounds, out to the margin of the Ealdwood, to harry the creatures of woodsedge, having guessed well the source of the harping. He brought fire and axes, vowing to take the old trees one by one until all was dead and bare.
The Big Book of Modern Fantasy Page 62
