by David Keck
Time passed where he and the wind made the only sound, and then the tentative blackthorn men surrounded him. Needles played over his back and sides. "He is grown," a voiced croaked.
For a time, Durand thrashed like a landed fish. They waited.
A talon knotted itself in his hair, jerking his head up. He saw a face. It was as brown and stiff as long-tanned leather. The nose was puckered like a rotten fruit.
"What do you want?" Durand breathed.
The face split, baring teeth like yellow knives. It turned to the others. "It speaks to us," it hissed.
"Who was he?"
"I do not know. It becomes more and more difficult." 'The old lines cross and recross." "Not this one."
"No. This one runs pure back to the beginning."
The voices rasped and bubbled and whined. Durand closed his eyes and strained against the swaddling web as the brutes circled, stroking him with fingers that snagged at his tunic and leggings.
"Could he be Bruna himself?" one asked, speculatively. It was a name from the first pages of the Book of the Moons. First of forefathers.
There was a pause, then answers circled him.
"Yes."
"Yes."
"Another Bruna." "Bruna of the broad shoulders." "He was a strong man." "Too strong."
"I remember his smile in those days after the first dawn," one said close by. Its long-fingered hand took Durand by the face and lifted his head until he gagged. He could feel the fingers meet and slither at the nape of his neck, long as a bat's wings. Then the leather-faced thing inserted its fingers into Durand's mouth, and pulled his lips apart. "Yes."
"Yes, Ilsander! I see Bruna in him."
"Do you think so? Bruna? What a chance! I remember him walking the hills with us when we were known to the Creator. Him smiling. Him with his brittle honor. Circling. Speaking hollow truths. And on the fields before our Maiden. And the Mother."
"She should have come before."
"She should have come in time."
"And here he is, Bruna of the broad shoulders. Bruna the slayer. Betrayer. He breeds true. And he lives in the light, while we must cringe in copses. He lives through this one while we wither among the thorns." The monster's eyes closed for a moment, in a kind of fixed rapture—suddenly a peaceful corpse. "I can see his face as though I close my eyes and return to the dawn of Ages."
Then the face soured, and the hand let Durand's head fall. He gasped for air.
"How she looked at him. I remember how he strutted. The gift of the Mother was full upon us. I remember how he struck. Oh, how I remember the scream!"
"Injustice, Ilsander. It is injustice."
"Perversion," a voice bubbled.
Fingers ran over his buttocks and back and played through his hair. Their claws were black, needle-pointed, and glistening. They seized him and rolled him firmly onto his back. Somehow, the sight of the things was worse than their voices alone. They minced around him, staring. Sack bellies swung between their shins.
He had felt the pommel of his knife dig as he rolled, and all his thoughts fixed on its angular hilt.
"The perversion."
One stepped in, and its talons skittered across his chest, finding his nipples through his surcoat and tunic.
"The Mother's mark is upon them all."
"The Creator ought to have known there would be death for us. He should have known there would be pain."
"Bruna and his ilk should not have been saved while we suffered. Who would fashion a world with one birth and a thousand deaths?"
"He did not know."
"The Lord of Dooms? The King in Silence? The Mother should have brought birth before so many of us were lost." The horror that spoke lifted its monstrous hand, curling its fingers. 'Their blood lives while ours curdles and putrefies in our veins."
Durand worked his fingers under the tight threads. "If she had brought birth to the world only a little sooner..."
"Bruna's blood is so warm in him. Oh, that Bruna's progeny still live, while I, so long ago, was slain. I can feel the blood mocking us. Spinning through these veins."
"Oh, Ilsander! It is an abomination!" one shrieked, overcome with despair.
"We are dead and he lives."
"Perversion!"
"We are separated from the world." "So should Bruna be!"
Their eyes blazed. Wrath carried them in a dance like tempest leaves. He could feel the momentum of their anger push them to the brink of setting upon him. The copse shook with their screams, and a body landed on Durand's stomach. Orange teeth flashed, but Durand tore the belt knife free, gouging the horror.
It shrieked and sprang into the branches, spidering backward. Durand stabbed and slashed at the web cocoon, heedless of injury.
They tumbled, shrieking away from the iron blade, and he threw himself through the slashing thorns and into the open hills. The blackthorn spirits poured into the rent he left in the bushes like corruption from a flyblown corpse. Suddenly under the sky, Durand spun on them. He raised his knife, and those who had stumbled out froze where they stood. Every eye fixed on each movement of blade.
He held it like a talisman. "Mother of us all," he swore. The pinched, twisted faces sneered. Where they remained in the bushes, he could imagine that they were only a trick of the light.
"By the Warders at the Gates, you fear iron, do you?" he said. "You do!" Durand grinned wildly. Across the Atthias, peasants hammered horseshoes over their thresholds. Wise women circled cradles with iron—shears, knives, needles— warding off the Banished. The slinking creatures retreated to join their brothers among the branches.
Durand heard a whispering then. Or, perhaps, a rustling like any bushes would make at the passing of a breeze. It occurred to him that he might have blundered past such a gathering many times.
He pushed the thought from his mind, and risked a sideways glance in a desperate hope of finding Brag still nearby. "Brag, lad? You here still?" He began to circle the bushes, sidling with the knife between himself and the denizens of the blackthorn.
Brag stood two-dozen paces away from the copse, his eyes wide and flashing. Durand hadn't picketed the horse, but Brag had hardly wandered. Durand felt gratitude as complete as a child's.
He backed toward the animal, watching with queasy horror as the blackthorn fiends slipped into the grass. They came no closer, but neither did they let him free.
The horse whickered on the point of bolting.
"Good lad," Durand said, trying to hold the poor brute with his voice. Brown heads bobbed in the grass as if swimming. "Good lad, Brag. Just a moment and we'll be away."
Finally, Durand's fingers knotted on the bridle. Riding or dragged behind, he was leaving. After a last menacing wave of the knife, he turned his back on the blackthorn fiends and threw his leg over Brag's back. The horse screamed.
The fiends shot forward in an explosion of angular limbs as the knife went out of sight.
Durand locked his legs round Brag and charged their ragged line. The horse leapt at the last instant, bowling one brute into a tangle.
As they landed, charging the thicket, Durand twitched the reins, urging Brag into a hard turn. The horse leapt again, this time into a full gallop.
They put leagues behind them before dawn.
BUT DAWN WAS a strange thing, only a blooming light in the fog, at first dim and then painful as polished steel.
The weight of exhaustion crushed Durand to Brag's neck. If not for the horse's balance, fatigue would have pulled him to the ground.
HE WOKE SHIVERING over the saddlebow.
Somewhere in the mist, he heard a staff falling. Tock. Dry wood and a metal heel.
Tock.
Tock.
"God. No more."
After several moments passed ...
"What're you two doing out so early, eh?" said a voice. "A rough night for a ride in the hill country. Now who's this balanced on your neck, eh boy?"
There was a hand on Durand's shoulder.
"Gods," a voice swore—the plural blasphemous. "Col's boy!" The homely skald goggled down at him. "What in God's name has happened to you, lad?"
Durand's gaze took in the man's smashed nose and the crumpled hat mashed down around his ears—upside down and peering. He found himself laughing, like pottage on the boil. He could hardly stop.
"Here, we've got to get you inside somewhere." The skald turned, casting about. "Uh... Ah! The shepherd's hut. It's warm enough. We'll head back that way."
The small man's hand caught Brag's bridle and led them along the track.
The last thing Durand noted was that the little man had no staff in his hand, and that there were no cobblestones in the track they followed.
"HERE. HERE. GODS. "
Each lurch of Durand's horse brought a gray stone hut closer. Three fieldstone walls erupted from a bank like a flash of gray teeth. As the skald flung open a door, Durand let himself slide from Brag's neck. He ducked under the lintel into what seemed little more than a damp cavity in the hillside.
The skald bustled ahead, kneeling at a hearth set into the earthen floor. Durand watched for a moment, then sagged against the wall.
"I'll have a fire ready in no time," the skald said. "Sod roof holds the heat as well as thatch." He glanced back at Durand and saw the open door.
"Best close that," he said, and stalked across to shut out the light. Durand found himself amazed at the other man's mobility.
"Here," Durand protested. "I've got to see to Brag." "It's a good horse you've got."
"Years," Durand mumbled. "Had him from Kieren. Too big, he said. It's a thousand leagues by now."
"He'll want more care than you're fit to give. I'll just get this started."
Soon, the skald had smoke rising from a clump of moss on the floor. A flame no bigger than a hatchling's beak filled the space with smoke.
"Here," he said. "Sit. Get some of that wet gear off."
Durand crouched over the tinder.
"I'm going to assume that you've left your father's hall in haste," said Heremund. 'That's safe enough ground, I think. The rest, though, I'll have to work for."
The flame blossomed between the skald's hands. Then, as he fed twigs into the tiny blaze, the blush of heat swelled.
"Or you could tell me."
With an effort Durand murmured, "I left."
"Aye?"
"Got into the hills where the forest breaks."
The skald waited.
"And the rain," Durand added.
"I waited that bugger out in here," Heremund said, looking up at the blackened roots of the ceiling.
"Took shelter under a thicket of bushes."
"That'd explain the scratches."
"No," Durand said. He closed his eyes.
When he opened them, the skald had turned full to him.
'There was something under the leaves," Durand said. "Withered things. Long arms. Teeth. Pointed ears. Hands like taloned spiders."
"Hosts Below, lad."
Durand exhaled.
"How did you get free of them?" Heremund gasped. "Skald. What were they?"
"I might've heard a story," the skald hedged. After a moment, he looked hard into Durand's eyes. Durand was too tired to look away.
"Not unheard of in the wilds. Creation's frayed at the seams. Sea and shore. Crossroads. Borderlands. Wastes." He kneaded his chin. "Ancients in the blackthorn, though. Those will be the First Ones, you've met." He looked into the knobbly rafters. "The priests will tell you about a whisper among the first pages of the Book of Moons. There are men in the stories of the Second Age and the coming of the young spirits to Creation. The Book only hints at their end, really." He looked up. "It's all First Dawn business. The wise women know that lot. They're prophets, your new friends, I suppose. That's what you'd have to call them."
Durand found it vastly easier to say nothing, and the skald explained.
"You see, they knew our first fathers. Way back before there was an Atthi or his Sons. Before Isle Kingdoms and High Kingdoms, all fallen now. And they know which a man favors. Which grandsire's grandsire's grandsire you're most like."
"How?"
"The Silent King's dreamed the world. Time before time. Right? Man's awake." Heremund made an expansive gesture over the fire. "Marvelous. No death. No suffering. No pain. And the little souls breathing and dreaming and walking. Stewing till they're done. Rising like loaves. Cooking till they're stiff enough to stand among the Powers. Wonderful. Yes?"
Durand drew a breath of mildew and smoke into his lungs. "You hungry, skald?"
"And it was wonderful, for a time, I reckon. But the King of Heaven wasn't the only Power in the Otherworld. Still ain't! The Hag, she worked the Son of Morning round: 'Why's He left you here to lavish His attention on these little souls? Has He no love left in his old heart for His own darling, His own Son of Morning?' That's how she turned him. And they wracked Creation. They fired the passions. Sowed disease. Spawned jealousies and grief. Folk died and weren't meant to."
Durand blinked, forcing his thoughts into order. "Skald. What's this got to do with those buggers in the bush?"
The skald smiled. "No death. Not in the plan. Yes? But men were dying—sort of. Right? No birth. None of that. But some of them died before the Mother was moved to join us. No Queen of Heaven. Check your Book of Moons."
No birth. No crying babes. No silver moons. It was nonsense.
"There was a time before the Queen came," Heremund declared. "Before she sorted men and women, birth and death. Right? So what happened to those who died before, eh?"
"I'm no priest, skald."
"What's become of the poor buggers who died then, before death? Then and in all the Ages since? The Book is silent. That's who you met."
Durand didn't much like the thought of those twisted men and their dark eyes festering in the Dawn of Creation. He had had enough. One explanation eluded him.
"And they're prophets?"
"No. Not exactly. They hate us, is all, and they want to know whose blood is in us. They want to know which of their old friends is laughing at them, living on. But sometimes they'll let slip. The wise women reckon you can divide us up by which of those forefathers we favor. The old buggers are accidental prophets."
Durand tried to remember the name he'd heard. "I was Bru—"
"—No!" snapped Heremund. The man actually clapped his hand over Durand's mouth—only surprise let him get so close. 'Talk to the wise women. Tell your bloody horse. I won't hear it!" The man took a breath, lifting his palm. "Still, it's something you've met the old buggers. That's something. And it's something else that you've got loose. There ain't many alive." The skald was thinking now.
He smiled, waving the whole thing away. "The wise women make too much fuss over the First Ones. Most of us are muddled up. A bit of one, a bit of the other. Mongrel pups. It's only when the line pops out pure, you've got to worry. Then things can start happening. New songs chiming with old tunes."
Durand closed his eyes. "Why the blackthorn?"
"Hmm? Oh that? There's poetry in the old world sometimes. Blackthorn: the dark tree of fate, with its guarded, bitter fruit?"
Durand grunted, his head swimming. "My horse." Brag was likely freezing. "Someone's got to do something about the horse."
"Yes. I'll see what I can manage."
HE OPENED HIS eyes on the cottage dark.
"It was you with the tapping as well, yes?" Heremund's voice was very quiet.
"What?" said Durand. He had been sleeping.
The skald abruptly bustled to make a meal of bread, cheese, and beer.
"So you're awake, are you?" he called across the low room.
Durand had no notion of whether it was morning, night, or noon. Little light found its way into the windowless hut. "Good morning," Durand replied warily, climbing to his feet. He was sure he had heard the other question, but his bladder was full to bursting, so he slipped out through the door into what did indeed seem to be a morning mist.
Brilliance swelled the eastern Heavens. Durand thought of the King of Heaven and his perfect world all those Ages ago, and felt an urge to drop in the wet grass to pray the Dawn's Thanksgiving. Instead, he untied his breeches and did what he had come to do.
Brag whickered, likely thinking of oats. Heremund had heaped blankets across the horse's back and freed him of his saddle.
When Durand pushed back into the low darkness of the hut, the bow-legged skald's pack was loaded and he was busily grinding out the fire's last embers with his toe. Looking round, Durand discovered that the man had brought Brag's saddlebags inside. Bread and beer of his own was stowed away.
When he had finished eating, Heremund stood. "And where am I taking you?"
"What?"
"Well. I'm not one to leave a thing half-done, and I'd feel an awful fool if you died tomorrow after I saved you today."
Durand was legitimately surprised. "There's no call for that. You've business of your own, I'm sure."
The little man caught hold of the various bags and waddled past Durand into the light.
"Ah," said Heremund. "But you are a knight errant, are you? You are fixed on it?"
Durand called out through the low doorway. "I thought we'd agreed I was no priest." He curled and uncurled a callused fist. A decade of drills, sparring, hunting, and tilting at the quintain had given him the hands of a woodcutter.
Noticing, Heremund winced. "Or milkmaid either, I'm sure. Poor cows'd never forgive you."
"One thing is certain: I cannot stay here forever."
Heremund was heaping bags around Brag's ankles. Abruptly, the little man stopped, peering round at the close hills and mist.
"No," he agreed. "The shepherd will likely come back."
Durand ducked under the doorframe, and stood up under the pale skies, twisting his neck. 'There's one way, as I see it I must catch the train of some lord at tournament and show the man I'm worth keeping."
The skald was now busy, swinging saddlebags over Brag's back. Once more he seemed distracted, squinting off into the mist.
"If there's a wellborn man who needs another strong back among his retainers, you might hold on. Still, it's late in the year and an awfully long shot."
