“If steel could talk, so to say?” Órlaith replied. “Being more mobile than walls, despite those having ears. And the pattern holds here as well.”
The Dúnedain had built their settlement at levels from fifty feet to little lookouts at thrice that. Most of the individual flets scattered between weren’t large, like this one just enough to hold a fair-sized cottage with a railed walkway-verandah all around. The circular platforms were supported from below by a ring of graceful curved beams that flared up like giant bowstaves from a support collar around the trunk, the tops rising above the floor planks to make the balusters of a four-foot parapet railing, their ends carved into the heads of birds where they bent outward.
Reiko nodded. “Hai. The battle, the kangshinmu, and now”—she made a pointing gesture with her fan—“this. Once more, terror and then peace. And though these happenings are part of the history of Montival, it will also be part of ours, as much as Nagashino or Dan-no-ura.”
A few flets held structures of several stories, or the platforms merged to form larger areas from trunk to trunk where the master trees grew in close-spaced arcs, legacy of offspring sprouting from the stumps and roots of ancestors fallen a thousand years ago and more. Flexible foot-bridges suspended from swooping arcs of cable linked the flets, woven of lath and cord and light planks; they and the balconies were all fringed with planters of wood or wicker, mostly growing vines with colorful blossoms, trails of greenery and flowers falling into space, or arching over pergolas or trailing from pots. The whole looked as if it had grown, and then been pruned by the hands of human kind.
Reiko made a small appreciative sound, and Órlaith nodded.
“They know how to use wood here, sure and don’t they?” she said.
The basic construction material was redwood also, culled from trees fallen in storms or taken in carefully-judged thinning operations from younger growth where the kingly trees had recolonized their former range over the generations since the Change. The timber was highly and rightly prized, a lovely golden-red-brown color brought out by varnish and polishing, strong and light and easily worked. With only a little care it was nearly impervious to decay and insects, too. There was other wood in plenty, skillfully chosen for its look and character and use, and here and there designs were picked out in colored glass or metal.
“It is not as we would do it—there is more, ummmm, intervention with the material,” Reiko said. “But in its own way, for its own place and its makers, very good. The forest itself provides the fukinsei, the irregularity of nature. So do the homes, adapting to the places and shapes of the trees. Yet in them there is also design, intentionality, an order that springs from thought, each contrasting with the other. So grand, yet so small when one sees it against the forest: that gives seijaku, tranquility. And it is made of wood, of materials that grew and must ultimately decay and pass as we do, as even these giant trees must: transience, a beauty that fades, wabi-sabi.”
Most of the wooden surfaces were lightly carved, with running sinuous designs based on leaf and tendril. Sometimes on larger walls there were scenes from life or what the Rangers called their Histories—not far away someone had been working on a panel of low-relief and inlay work that depicted a dragon stooping on a town built over piles in the midst of a lake, with a great mountain looming beyond. The chips had been neatly swept up and used as mulch in a nearby planter, and the tools hung in a net bag from a peg as the artist had just stepped away—which they probably had, when the call to arms came.
Órlaith inhaled deeply of the cool damp air. Eryn Muir wasn’t actually within sight of the sea; Amon Tam and a set of lower hills shielded this valley to the west. But you could feel the Mother Ocean in the air keenly even in high summer once evening began, scented with the pungent-spicy smell of the trees and the deep vegetable decay of the woodland floor far beneath the platform of this flet. It was never hot here, and she was glad of the green Montrose jacket of fine green wool she wore beneath her plaid; someone had found one to lend her that almost fit. Her House badge and a spray of Golden Eagle feathers rested above her brow on the Scots bonnet, and she and Heuradys had renewed each other’s Dutch Braid—or the Ranger fashion, depending on how you looked at it—left to fall loose now and not clubbed.
It didn’t rain here in warm months, though the fall and winter were wet, but the sort of fog whose last tatters drifted through the great trees now was a daily thing and kept growth thriving. That included the vivid moss on shingle roofs, and the dense green turf on others, starred with flowers, many like white-and-pink mountain yarrow that had medicinal uses or the dwarf lavender grown for their scent.
“I think the Dúnedain would say that to build well you must use Aulë the Maker’s gifts of skill and thought and planning, but remember that Yavanna his Lady grieved for the trees which His children used in their crafts, and that they have a beauty of their own which we cannot match. Which may be another way of saying the same thing.”
Reiko nodded. “This place is itself a shimenawa about the body of the forest,” she said.
That meant the sacred rope of rice straw draped with white plaits that marked a place—often a tree—as the abode of kami. The two friends were dropping into and out of English and Nihongo sentence by sentence and sometimes phrase by phrase. That was easy for Órlaith, and it helped Reiko perfect her originally purely theoretical command of Montival’s common English tongue . . . which was something she’d made truly astonishing progress with in the scant few months since her arrival, grinding out results by sheer intelligent persistence.
I’ve known many who are strong-willed, Órlaith thought admiringly. But few more . . . more focused than Reiko-chan! She makes me feel a little sloppy and careless, sometimes.
The Nihonjin gestured to the view before them with her fan and returned to contemplating the sight as the lanterns came on among the trees, like twinkling stars of different colors but scattered at different levels among the giant redwoods. One of the things Órlaith liked about her was that she was fully comfortable with silence. In fact, she could talk quite eloquently with it.
The sun was falling westward, beyond the low mountains and the sea beyond. This wasn’t Órlaith’s first visit, but it was the first as anything like an adult, and the settlement had grown much and matured in the years since. She’d slept all the while the horse-litter had brought her here from the battlefield and through that night and morning, woken up half-conscious long enough for the baths and to wash down some bread and fruit, then slept until well into the afternoon.
The Sword could mobilize every reserve within her, but it was the wielder who eventually had to pay the price. The duel with the skaga had drained everything that the fighting had left. She’d been busy since she woke, partly to reassure the rest that she’d taken no lasting damage, and this was her first chance just to look. Every Stath in the far-flung Dúnedain network considered itself unique. Often they went out of their way to be so. But they’d all willingly sent help, skilled workers and materials and supplies, once they saw the plans for this, despite the expense of distance.
Now she felt alert and relaxed, though still faintly tired; and ravenously hungry with a gnawing in the gut, which could be a pleasant sensation when you knew you could eat soon and well. Grief for Luanne and the other fallen was there, but like the pain of her minor cuts and fairly extensive bruises could be put aside for now. There was no shame in feeling the joy of life more fiercely after coming so close to losing it. The shadow of the Hunter’s wings would fall on her too one day, and she suspected she would not outlive the tally of her father’s forty-six years, if that many, nor would she die in her bed surrounded by consort and children and kinfolk.
We of House Artos are not a long-lived breed, it seems. Da knew it long before he met his fate, but he was the happiest man I knew—with his mate, with his children, in his work.
Even the ugly memory of edged metal slamming past before
her face, close enough to feel the wind on her skin, was faded for now; even the memory of the skaga’s eyes, when the Thing he had thought to control and use took him at last. Dreamless sleep and time added a little distance. She watched the slanting beams of light shift and fade, the lanterns seeming brighter as the sun sank beneath the mountains westward, and then spoke quietly.
“My father said more than once that you should live each day as if it was your last, and as if you would live forever . . . always both at the same time.”
“Hai, honto desu,” Reiko replied. “Unquestionably true. Simple . . . but very hard.”
A quirk of a slim eyebrow. “As you told me your grandmother put it, if the path of wisdom was easy, any fool could follow it.”
The sough of wind in the branches above was the undertone of the trees’ millennial existence, and a barely perceptible sway moved the fabric of the flet beneath them. The sound was like the slow breathing of some great dreaming beast, and the movement the flexing of its ribs.
“That is music, neh?” Reiko said, turning her head and closing her eyes to listen.
Órlaith looked up and let the sound echo through her mind, watching as the crescent moon gleamed through a gap in the boughs, like faded silver against purple-black.
“And they’ve been making that sound here every day for ten thousand years—the ancients’ books say this forest is that old. It’s stood here since the Ice withdrew, since before the first tribes of human kind found these shores, when only the beast-kindreds and the wild Powers walked here.”
The redwoods dominated the life of the place, but they were far from the only giants; some of the Douglas fir were nearly as tall. The floor was dense with fern and flower wherever a little sunlight penetrated, and the upper reaches and the canopy held scores of other plants that made their life on those living monuments, down to the algae that grew on moss. Game was mostly invisible from this height but thick on the ground, not least because the Rangers carefully spread their hunting and gathering in time and space to avoid stressing any one spot.
Birds fairly swarmed. Just here a flock of rufous-colored chickadees chattered and swirled about a set of thick planks bored with the holes they preferred for nesting, swooping after insects in acrobatic drifts, but they had competition from emerald-green flycatchers, and hummingbirds flitted among the flowering morning-glory vines that lined this balcony or over the flowering roofs.
Reiko smiled. “So your voice and mine and these others are woven into something very ancient at this sunset.”
The stillness of evening didn’t quite swallow the sounds humanity made, but encompassed them, like a warm bubble of hearthlight seen across hillsides in a lonely place. Folk were busy on the walkways and bridges and around the flets, the permanent dwellers and their children, and lately incomers from elsewhere in Stath Ingolf and warriors from other Staths of the Rangers come south since the spring on the news of the High King’s death and the presence of new enemies here. They had provided many of the fighters who’d ridden to the relief of the encircled force at Círbann Rómenadrim, and given the blow its crushing weight.
And today, there were the guests; of the Crown Princess’ followers, of Reiko’s party, and from Deor’s folk.
Diarmuid and Karl and Mathun were frankly gaping as they came off one of the connecting walkways and stood a few paces away; Órlaith smiled a little at the homely forthright sound of their voices, lowland lilt and mountaineer burr. They seemed to have become fast friends and comrades on their journey here, which she was glad to see. For its own sake, and because putting Mackenzies and McClintocks together like that was a little risky, like asking dogs and cats to cooperate on a hunt. Sometimes she thought they were divided by their similarities.
“Sure, and while I’m fair certain the hospitality will be of the best, not to mention the food and drink, I’m just a wee bit fearful that we’ll wake up tomorrow naked on a green mound with long white beards and a hundred years will have passed,” Karl said. “You feel that just a wee bit at Dun Juniper sometimes—more in the nemed there, the sacred wood—and more at Mithrilwood, but not so strong as here, so.”
Diarmuid grinned. She still liked that smile of his and the way it made the swirling blue tattoos on his handsome face shift, apart from fond memories of the Beltane Bower. It didn’t produce the old tingle and flutter that seeing it had brought once, the desire to touch and be touched, which was convenient but . . .
Sad, she decided. Da and Mother loved each other from their days as children; you could warm your hands at it like a fire on a winter’s night. And you could see that the years just added new layers to it, each in its appointed time, and would have into their deep age. Well, Clíodhna’s three sweet-songed birds will whisper a name in my ear one fine day, and in the meantime I have work to do. And supper to eat!
“Weel, at the least we didna get here by chasin’ a white stag heedless over hill and dale and leaving oor fellows behind, eh?” Diarmuid said.
The three young men laughed, and the McClintock tacksman hitched at his plaid and shook his head.
“How’ere often a white deer leads ’em astray in the tales, still the puir fools do it, though if they ever heard a ballad in their ain lives they must ken nae guid will come o’ it. It never does.”
“Worse luck than refusing an ugly, smelly old beggar-woman a tumble or a lift across a ford running high with spring, that it is,” Karl agreed. “White deer are not sent to guide you to a pot of gold, so.”
“Did I see hide or hair of sich unchancy creature, I’d say to mesel’, Diarmuid lad, past time tae gang aboot fur home, where the parritch is bubblin’ on the hob and yer wumman waitin’ with a mug o’ beer. And then I’d run like buggery, screamin’ as does a wee bairn afeerd. Nor stop until I was tae hame wi’ cold iron hangin’ above my door.”
There was more laughter at that; she thought some of it was bravado over genuine unease.
Mathun nodded and crossed his muscled bare arms and put on mock-solemnity: “Nor did any say enter of your own free will when we arrived, the which always made me want to say No, no, don’t do it, ye iijit! Don’t take sip nor sup they offer! When our Da came to that part with a tale, and we around his knees with our eyes like saucers.”
More lanterns were being lit as dusk stole through the heights, on posts or swayed out to hang from ropes overhead. The alcohol flames and mantles were bright as stars through the tinted glass and metal fretwork or globes of colored paper. Some of the Rangers were in their mottled working garb, with shaggy hooded cloaks and flexible strapped elf-boots, but others had donned the long full-sleeved embroidered robes of linen or fine wool that both sexes among this folk wore for festival and formal ceremony. Garlands of flowers were woven in hair mostly grown past their shoulders, now loose or elaborately braided.
Faramir and Morfind were in that style, since they had quarters here and their own clothes to hand. His robe was black with goldwork around the hems and in two bands down the front, hers a very dark blue worked with silver. Roses glowed against her black hair, and blue hyacinths in his yellow curls.
Susan Mika was walking between them as they strolled in from a flet around a trunk a hundred yards distant, also with flowers in her raven braids—and two eagle feathers over one ear—but wearing a deerskin tunic tanned butter-soft and bleached to a snowy whiteness, edged with fringes and a blue-and-red yoke of beadwork and elk teeth over the shoulders. Her leggings likewise fringed, and her strap-up moccasins decorated with colored porcupine quills. She looked small but not in the least childlike between the two tall Rangers; they were all three hand-in-hand, chatting, smiling at each other a good deal and snatching the odd light kiss.
Even Morfind was cheerful, who’d been scowling or blank-faced most of the time Órlaith had known her; though she granted that had been mostly in a desperate life-and-death battle and after a bad wounding and a sore loss. And as you’d expect w
ith a young man in his position Faramir looked like a cat who’d fallen into the cream-vat and was licking its whiskers with an expression of dazed self-satisfaction.
Órlaith raised a mental brow in mild surprise, then shrugged and smiled fondly. Happiness was rare enough that she wouldn’t grudge any to her friends, though she did feel mildly envious . . . and very slightly curious about some details. She couldn’t recall offhand what taboos Dúnedain had about first cousins; that varied widely from folk to folk, from forbidding such matings to encouraging them.
Her brother John was standing not far away on this guest-quarters flet and talking with Deor and his comrade Thora, but Órlaith didn’t think it had the same significance, though the two poet-singers—one aspiring and one of established reputation—were deep in animated conversation that was probably utterly technical. Evrouin was a tactful four paces away, with the lute-case over his back.
It’s amazing how boring it is to talk about music that’s a pleasure to hear, she thought.
The Bearkiller A-lister listened tolerantly with her thumbs in her sword-belt and sniffed at the odd waft of cooking odors that mingled with the clean, cool damp smell of forest.
The two men were peacock-bright beside her plain brown garb; Bearkillers tended to be ostentatiously unostentatious, while John . . . or more likely his valet Evrouin . . . had managed to dig up an Associate noble’s garb of tight hose and curl-toed shoes, loose-sleeved shirt and thigh-length jerkin and dag-sleeved houppelande coat and chaperon hat, and it all almost fit well. That had probably soothed his foppish soul, and prevented too much longing for the baggage chest aboard the Tarshish Queen, which Órlaith privately considered to be the equivalent of the tattered stuffed bear he’d dragged around when he was six. Deor wore the embroidered tunic, pinned cloak and cross-gartered narrow hose of his folk, with rune-graven gold bands on his upper arms.
The three of them looked up as musical notes sounded through the colored dimness, silvery tubular bells and icy bamboo flutes and some sort of plucked instrument strung with metal. Nearly everyone else in sight did too, and there was a general forward movement, checked by looks at her and Reiko. Only her samurai remained still, waiting and passionlessly alert.
The Desert and the Blade Page 33
