Rudi sat up. "Wait a minute!" he said sharply. "What's this we?"
Mathilda looked at him, her brown eyes hurt. He'd seen it done better… and they'd spent a lot of time together since they were children.
"We're anamchara."
"Yes, we are," Rudi said.
They'd been children when they went through that rite, back during the War of the Eye, when she was held prisoner by his people and before he'd been taken captive by hers; they'd done it to make sure that they weren't caught up in the quarrels of their parents. That didn't make it any less real, or less binding.
"But that doesn't mean you can run off with me, soul sister," he said. "You're heir to the Protectorate, for sweet Brigid's sake!"
"And you're heir to the Mackenzie," Mathilda shot back.
Her back had gone stiff, and she wasn't trying the puppy eyes on him anymore. Rudi ran a hand through his red-gold mane.
"I am not! It's not hereditary!"
She made a rubbing gesture between thumb and forefinger. "That's the world's smallest violin playing for you 'cause you'll be tossed out to starve or go beg in the gut ters of Corvallis, Rudi. The assembly made you tanist, didn't they?"
He flushed, which was unfortunately obvious with his complexion; not quite as milk white as his mother's but pale enough to show the blood mounting to his cheeks, particularly in winter. There wasn't much doubt who the Clan would hail as Chief… but he didn't want to think about his mother taking the voyage to the Summerlands, not yet. That might be a long time, anyway; she was only in her fifties, strong and healthy.
"Look, Matti, I'd love to have you along. There's nobody in the world I'd rather have my back. But you can't go. Your mother would never let you do something that crazy."
She pounced. "If it's that crazy, why is your mother letting you do it?"
"I'm of age," he said, and instantly regretted it as her lips narrowed.
Oops. Matti doesn't come of age until she's twenty-six. That had been part of the agreement at the end of the War.
"And besides, you heard about the dream Ingolf had. I'm supposed to be doing this. Mom doesn't like it, of a surety she doesn't, but she knows I have to."
"Pagan superstition," Mathilda spit.
"Hey!" Rudi replied, dismayed. I did get her angry, and no mistake!
Then she took a deep breath and relaxed. The problem was that she relaxed the way a lynx did, waiting on a branch for something edible to pass by. And he recog nized that expression; it was too much like her mother's. She was thinking.
"Well, who is going with you?" she said reasonably.
"Ingolf, of course," Rudi said. Anamchara did have to share their secrets. "And one more-I think Edain, Sam Aylward's son. He showed very well in that dustup with the Haida last year."
Mathilda nodded; they both knew the young man well. "And?" the young woman went on ruthlessly.
"And two Rangers."
Mathilda's eyes narrowed dangerously again. "Any particular Dunedain?" she said.
"Well… my sisters." At her look: "Well, half sisters."
She nodded quietly, got up and left. Rudi stayed and sat staring into the fire. Then his eyes turned towards the staircase where his best friend had gone. They'd known each other half their lives…
"That was much too easy," he muttered to himself.
Chapter Nine
Stardell Hall, Mithrilwood,
Willamette Valley, Oregon
January 30, CY22/2021 A.D.
"E-ndan Ingolf warn?" Astrid Larsson said, when Ritva finished the tale that Ingolf Vogeler had told.
Mary and Ritva Havel halted on a footbridge. For privacy they and the commanders of the Dunedain walked the Path of Silver Waters, past waterfalls frozen into arching shapes of glittering white, fantasies that shone with an almost metallic luster beneath the pale bright ness of the winter sun. Likely they would melt in the next few days. Mithrilwood-what had once been Silver Falls State Park, and a good deal around it-was higher than the Willamette valley floor, and colder, but not as winter frigid as the great mountain forests that ran eastward from here until they met the glaciers of the High Cascades.
"Then the man Ingolf surrendered?"
The language they were speaking was Sindarin, the tongue most often used in a Dunedain steading. There was a slight tinge of distaste in her voice.
"Alae, duh! naneth-muinthelen Astrid," Ritva said, in the same language.
Her version used more loan words than Astrid's book-learned variety; she had come to it as a living tongue.
"Well, duh, Aunt Astrid."
Light flickered bright through the boughs of the firs and hemlocks, and the bare branches of oak and maple; it was still three hours to sunset, though there were clouds gathering in the north and she thought it smelled like more snow tonight.
She went on: "E-ndan i guina." Which meant: The man lives.
"His friends asked him to avenge their blood," Astrid pointed out.
There was a persistent rumor that she was an elf, or at least half Elven. Ritva had to admit that as far as looks went it might have been true; her mother's younger sis ter was tall and willowy-graceful, with white-blond hair that fell almost to her waist and features that had an eerie cast, eyes too large and rimmed and streaked with silver through their blue, chin a little too pointed. Which was the way elves were supposed to look, pretty well. Only the slight lines beside those disturbing eyes belied it; she was thirty six this year.
"Apa rasad pilinidi terealdamo mengiel?" Mary Havel scoffed. "Sort of hard to avenge anyone after he'd gotten a dozen arrows through his brisket. As it is, he escaped eventually-we didn't get the details on that-and he still has a chance to get vengeance someday, maybe."
"You have a prosaic soul, Mary," Astrid said regret fully; she used the same tone she would have to diagnose a skin disease.
The Lady of the Dunedain could tell Mary and her sister Ritva apart easily. How, nobody knew; their own mother had more difficulty. Her consort Alleyne was with them, and her anamchara Eilir and her man John Hordle, but the six of them were alone apart from that.
The thing that worries me most is this story about the sword, Eilir Mackenzie said in Sign.
Eilir was the same age as the Lady of the Dunedain, the same five-foot-nine height, and had the same grace ful sword-blade build; her features were a little blunter, her hair dense raven black and her eyes green. She had been deaf since birth, as well.
John Hordle snorted, and spoke in a basso rumble: "Well, if there's a bloody magic sword involved, at least the sodding thing isn't stuck in a stone!"
Astrid scowled at him for a second; the big Englishman could make even the Elven-tongue sound as if it were being spoken in a country pub over a pint. Or possibly at the top of a beanstalk, since she barely came to his shoulder, and he was broad enough that he looked almost squat. Beside him Alleyne Loring walked like an Apollo, six feet of long limbed blond handsomeness, with the first gray threads appearing in his mustache in his fortieth year.
Astrid nodded at her soul sister, speaking with hands as well as voice, as had become second nature since they met in the first Change Year.
"It's the sword that bothers me, too. Obviously, it's important; obviously, this Prophet doesn't want us to get it. Or at least that's the way it looks to me. From what Ingolf said, he made at least two attempts to probe Nantucket-one that failed completely, and then by stealth with Ingolf's band, through the spy they had at the court of the bossman of Iowa."
Alleyne spoke thoughtfully: "Or the Prophet could have planted it all as a story to get Rudi out of the valley and where he could get at him. Plenty of people know that… ah…"
"Prophecy," Ritva said helpfully.
"Yes, that prophecy about Rudi."
Astrid smiled at him. "No, I don't think so," she said. "If they just wanted to kill him, there are a lot less complicated ways."
Which they seem to have tried at Sutterdown, Eilir pointed out.
"No… no," Astrid said. "
Rudi got involved with that only by chance-if chance you call it. They were after In golf. Which means they didn't want us to hear the story; and it couldn't have been collusion to give credence to his story; he very nearly did die before he told us."
"They were trying to kill him, all right," Ritva said, recalling the night in the Sheaf and Sickle's upper corridor; her nostrils widened slightly, smelling again the iron-copper rankness of blood and fear sweat.
Her sister Mary nodded: "That slash on his shoulder and arm must have let out half the blood in his body. From the look of it, the Cutter was aiming at his neck."
She described it again, and they all nodded; everyone here was a warrior, and intimately familiar with the ways edged metal had with human flesh.
"We're both going," Mary added flatly, preempting her aunt as she drew breath to speak.
"Going where?" Alleyne said, arching one brow.
"On the quest, Uncle," Ritva said, feeling a great hap piness bubbling up under her breastbone. "The quest for the sword, with Rudi
… with Artos. I mean, isn't it obvious?"
Out of the corner of her eye she saw Aunt Astrid opening her mouth. They moved to forestall her.
"You can't go! You're Hiril Dunedain, the Lady of the Rangers, and there may be war here-you can't go off into the wilderness," Mary said.
"You're like Elrond or Theoden," Ritva added, using the clinching arguments. "You have a people and a place to ward. We're just ohtar."
The word meant warrior squire, one rank down from Roquen, knight-commander.
"But there should be Dunedain involved," Ritva added.
She did not go on to say that it was the best they could do in the absence of real hobbits, dwarves or elves, though the thought made her smile and exchange a glance with Mary. They loved the stories of the elder days-the two of them wouldn't be here if the tale didn't speak to their hearts-but Aunt Astrid took them with an appalling literal mindedness sometimes. So did a lot of other people in the Dunedain Rangers, for that matter.
But this is the Fifth Age of Middle Earth, or possibly the Sixth; the Third was who knows how long ago, and things have changed.
Alleyne caught her eye, and one of his moved in the slightest hint of a wink.
"I think that would be wise, my lady," he said gravely to his spouse. "After all, Thranduil sent his son Legolas on the quest of the Ring, and Gloin sent Gimli likewise-they didn't go themselves."
Eilir and Hordle nodded vigorously. Astrid sighed deeply, and Mary hid her relief. Wild horses hitched up with triple-reduction gearing couldn't shift Aunt As trid once she got her mind set on something; she was the only person the twins knew who could outstubborn them, though their mother, Signe, came close.
Eilir went on, signing emphatically: I'm not leaving Beregond and Iorlas. They're too young. And I'm your anamchara, not your nanny; you're most certainly not dumping your three on me and going off on an adventure!
"I suppose so. Though Thranduil was thousands of years old and I'm thirty-six. Oh, well, it's the Doom of Men."
"I suspect we're all going to get our fill of adventure much closer to home," Alleyne said grimly. Then he shook off his mood. "But we'll have some time to get ready… and time to live in."
Astrid sighed again. "Yes, yes, Mary and Ritva have leave go on the…" She hesitated, then brightened. "The Quest of the Sunrise Lands."
"Ring!" Mary said.
"Cool!" Ritva echoed.
You have to admit that Aunt Astrid has a way with words. She always comes up with a neat phrase.
Voices were singing as they turned and walked along the path beneath the cliff towards Stardell Hall, a party of hunters in from the woods with their dogs trotting at their heels, bows in their hands and a brace of elk over their packhorses. But it might have been anyone here; a good singing voice wasn't exactly an essential qualification for membership in the Dunedain Rangers, but it helped. This tune had a happy sound with a fast-tripping chorus:
Sing ho to the Greenwood!
Now let us go Sing hey and ho!
And there shall we find both buck and doe
Sing hey and ho!
The hart, the hind, and the little pretty roe
Sing hey and ho!
Stardell had been old when the Change came, origi nally built by the CCC as the headquarters for the park. There was some cleared land nearby for turnout pas ture and gardens, snow covered now. But this steading got more from hunting, and more still in payment for the services of the Rangers. The core of it was tall forest with the high-pitched shingle roofs of the log buildings scattered beneath; homes and workshops, stables, barns and a granary built of rough stone, a Covenstead and a small chapel for the Catholic minority.
Ritva looked up. Several of the larger trees bore flets, round platforms cunningly camouflaged high above the ground, some with walls and roofs above; there were more of those farther up in the mountains, and cave re doubts as well. The flet on the big Douglas fir was where she and her sister stayed when they were in the steading; it had bunk beds and a very pleasant little cast-iron stove.
There were people in plenty bustling about on the ground, near two hundred at this time of year. This was the largest of the Ranger stations, and their main work was as seasonal as farming: guarding caravans and running down bandits and evildoers, with a sideline in destroying man eaters, carrying messages and small valuable parcels, rescuing the afflicted and defending the helpless. Evildoers liked camping out in the cold no more than respectable folk, bandits were no more able to cross snowed in passes than mer chants, and this was the time of year when messages could wait.
There were shouts of greeting as the Hiril Dunedain and her kinfolk came back from their long stroll. A pair of tow-haired girls of not quite three came out of the hall, stumping along in their snowsuits with the mittens dangling on strings. At the sight of Ritva and Mary they sent up a shout:
"Gwanun! Gwanun!"
"Yes, we are twins," Mary said, and took Fimalen up on her hip; Ritva took Hinluin.
"And so are you, little Yellow Hair," Ritva said.
"And you too, little Blue Eyes," Mary said.
They're so cute, they almost make you want some of your own, Ritva thought. Someday. Not yet! And it was a bit thoughtless of Astrid to give them interchangeable names like that.
The Larsson family ran to blonds, as did the Lorings. The Larssons also tended to produce twins, both fraternals and identicals, but Astrid's eldest-her son Diorn-was a singleton. He was also black haired and gray-eyed and preternaturally serious for a ten-year-old.
"Mae govannen, gwenyr," he said gravely, putting hand to chest and bowing: Well met, my kinswomen.
They replied with equal formality; Ritva remembered her struggles with the complex vocalic umlauts in the Elvish plural form and envied his being brought up with it from birth. Then everyone trooped into the hall, after shaking out their cloaks. Stardell looked a little like the hall in Dun Juniper, but there was no second floor, only a gallery around what had been the roofline before they raised it. And the carving on the pillars and vaulting raf ters above was more restrained, the colors mostly greens and pastel blues and silver-grays, and the old gold shade of oak leaves in the fall.
The style was what her mother, Signe, had once told her was more Art Nouveau and less Book of Kells than that the Mackenzies favored, eerily elongated dancing maidens and their lords, sinuous trees with blossoms of iridescent glass, and little gripping trolls grinning with bone teeth, peering from corners and holding up the stone finials of the hearth.
The sisters went over by the fire; there was a pleas ant smell of pine boughs and hemlock amid the grateful warmth, and a scatter of children's toys on the floor-a hobbyhorse, a little elk on wheels, a stuffed tiger on a rug made from the hide of a real one. The black gold embossed leather covers of the Histories stood above the hearth on the mantelpiece, flanking images of the Lord and Lady as Manwe and Varda. A Corvallan was waiting there, a small rather dumpy man in the four pock
et jacket and pants that people from the city-state favored when they were traveling.
Ritva hadn't seen him here before, and he was look ing around with the I'm seeing it but it can't be real ex pression outsiders often got in Stardell, lost amid the pleasant liquid trilling of Sindarin conversation.
"Mae govannen," Astrid said curtly, and then dropped into English: "Well met, if you prefer the common tongue."
"Lady Astrid, Lord Alleyne," he said, bowing courte ously. "I'm here about that little problem you were concerned with."
Alleyne grinned to himself. Ritva caught the expres sion and suppressed an urge to giggle, and heard Mary snort as she did the same. It wasn't a good idea to diss Aunt Astrid at the best of times; right now she was feel ing sore as a tiger with a nail in its paw because there was finally a real quest, for a sword of power… and she couldn't go.
I'd feel mangly bitter about that myself, in her position, Ritva thought. Mary gave her a little nod. Squared. This is going to be fun
… to watch.
"It isn't a little problem," Astrid said, glaring at him with a cold fury that made him wilt visibly. "By the treaty which ended the War of the Eye, all the realms of the Meeting pay a subsidy to the Dunedain Rang ers for the work we do. By the same treaty, the People and Faculty Senate of Corvallis, as hosts of the Meeting, are responsible for collecting it and forwarding it to us. Quarterly."
"There have been problems-not everyone pays on time, and I'm sure you realize that means we have to take out short-term paper-"
"And I'm sure that is your problem and not mine!" Astrid roared, an astonishing husky sound.
Everyone in the hall stopped and looked; Fimalen and Hinluin hid their faces in Mary's and Ritva's necks, and Diorn stared with bristling suspicion at the man who'd angered his mother.
Astrid went on: "Spay snur khug! What do you think I am, some huckstering dog of a merchant like you, a banker, a debt collector? I have my people to feed and my warriors to arm! You have a debt of honor for the blood we shed in the wilds to keep you fat!"
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