So that when a princess royal
shall have tasted of the tree,
Then far from Esternesse 's
city, these things:
A gathering of gargoyles,
a feasting on the stone, The witch of Westernesse 's
hag overthrown."
Aeriel gazed at the keeper, but the other shook his head.
"I was made long before the Ions, wayfarer. I have never heard that riddle before. I do not know its meaning."
Aeriel cast down her eyes. Disappointment bit her heart, and dread.
"I must go on to Orm, then," she answered quietly, "and seek my answer there." She hesitated, then made herself say it. "Can you tell me the way?"
"You must follow the coast road," the keeper said, "northward until you reach Talis. Get there by nightfall, for the city gates are barred at Solset. In the morning, take the road going west into the hills. That should see you through the pass and into Zambul, which is as much of the way as I know.
"Do not stray from the road, for the woods are wild. Do not travel by night, and go with some caravan if you can, for in the time since Bernalon was taken away, the land hereabouts has grown thick with thieves."
Aeriel put on what smile she could. She gave the keeper her thanks for his warning of thieves, as he led her down the tower stair.
"But before you go," he said, "take this, will you? The last traveler before you left it, and I have no use for it."
He laid one hand upon a peg beside the door. Aeriel had not noticed it before. The garment the keeper was holding out was very small, the outside pale cream or grey—its color seemed to move and shift. The inside was some darker thread.
Aeriel threw it about her shoulders, found it, to her surprise, exactly the right size. The hem fell a little below her knees; the sleeves stopped halfway between her elbow and the wrist. The peaked hood, when she tried it, fitted, shadowing her face.
"I thank you," Aeriel began, throwing back the hood. "But I have nothing to pay you with."
The keeper shook his head. "No need. Take it as my gift—to keep the road dust off."
They emerged from the tower into the morning light, and Aeriel noticed, with a start, that the weeds were gone. What had been rocky ground was covered now with fruiting creepers. A narrow path led to the road. Aeriel spotted five more fruits hanging upon the tree.
"Keeper," she said, "what does it mean?"
The keeper halted, a frown creasing his brow. "Five more travelers upon their way across the Sea-of-Dust?" A new feeling of unease overtook her—why she could not say. She expected no pursuit from Isternes. The keeper stood considering. At last he shook his head.
"We saw no sail from the tower. And the tree fruits only at need." He scratched his head a moment, glanced at her. "How do the fruits appear to you?"
Aeriel gazed at them, puzzled. "They look exactly the same as the first one: reddish gold and shining in the light."
"They must be yours, then. The tree never fruits the same twice. A different gift for each that comes." The keeper went to the tree, and Aeriel followed. "I have not seen such a thing before, that one wayfarer should receive so much."
He pulled the ripe fruits from the bough.
"Take them," he said. "It must be you will have need of them." Aeriel slipped them carefully into the yellow silk wrapping her bandolyn. The keeper walked with her as far as the road. "But save the seeds," he said. "There is great virtue in them."
Aeriel adjusted the cloak about her shoulders again; the hood lay flat along her back. She bowed to the keeper then, and he to her. She started away, but she had taken no more than a dozen steps when the other called, "What, a wayfarer that has no staff?"
Aeriel turned, walking backward now, but her smile was full of rue. "I had one once, in Pendar," she said, "when I lived among the desert folk. But I lost it, returning to Avaric."
She turned again, walked along the road, shielding her eyes from low Solstar's glare. She raised the hood of her traveling cloak, glanced over one shoulder, her hand lifted to wave, but the keeper had already vanished, back into his lighted tower.
Aeriel fared steadily north. The road threaded along between the wood's edge and the brink of the cliffs overlooking the shore. She walked for a very long time with neither hunger nor fatigue.
Sometimes she unwrapped her bandolyn, reciting the tales she had learned in Isternes, how the young Lady Syllva had been courted by a stranger, a bold prince of Avaric, and gone with him for a time to be his wife in Westernesse, and other stories.
She did not venture into the woods, but from time to time caught glimpses among the slender trees of wood-deer standing no higher than her knee, treerats with their double tails, and sweet-voiced flitterwings.
Then suddenly it was noon. She had been walking with her hood thrown back, the past few hours. Aeriel halted, astonished, staring up at the black, starry heavens. Solstar, like a brilliant jewel, blazed nearly at its zenith. Raising her hood, she sat down against a tree at wood's edge. Its boughs leaned out over the road.
"Have I truly traveled half a daymonth without pause?" she murmured. Even now the taste of apricok lingered in her mouth.
She had no time to murmur more, for just at that moment, nearly directly overhead, she heard a great clapping and beating, like the slapping of a sail.
"Now where can she have vanished?" a weary voice muttered. "I was certain I spotted someone very like her faring along this road."
Aeriel scrambled to her feet, peered up through the twining branches. A long-billed bird hovered with difficulty just above. It had a long neck and strong wings, snowy white, and was clutching something unwieldy, straight, and dark.
"Could she have gone into the forest?" it panted, wingbeats becoming more labored still.
It glanced the other way. "Perhaps she fell over the cliff."
As Aeriel ducked out from under the tree, her hood fell back. "Whom do you seek?" she called.
"Odds!" cried the bird, starting upward in surprise. Its toes lost their grip upon the long dark object. Aeriel threw up her arms, fell back a step —realizing too late that only brought her more directly beneath the falling shaft. She felt a blow upon her head. The world went stars, then dark.
"Duck," someone was urging her.
Her knees buckled. She pitched face-forward onto the road.
Aeriel awoke to the feel of some-thing tugging at her garment. She brushed at it groggily, and raised herself. Her vision was blurred. A sharp ache throbbed in the back of her skull.
Something stepped lightly on the small of her back. Aeriel jerked, rolled, batted at the long, sticklike legs of the heron. The white bird danced awkwardly away.
"Thank Ravenna," it exclaimed. "I thought I'd killed you."
"You came near it," Aeriel murmured, rubbing the lump on the back of her head. It was the size of a gamelizard's egg. "What fell on me?" "I beg your pardon," the bird answered. "It slipped."
Aeriel's vision cleared. "I know you," she said, suddenly.
She remembered a heron-prowed boat the duarough had made her to escape the darkangel's keep. She had sailed as far as the little craft could take her, then had set off overland—and looking back, she had seen no boat, only a long-necked white bird winging low between the riverbanks.
"Wind-on-the-Water!" she exclaimed.
The heron lifted one wing and preened. "The same," she replied, "though my name in this form is Wing-on-the-Wind."
Aeriel remembered the lyon of Pendar telling her once how a heron of that name had come to him, bearing news of her coming.
"You are she, then," the heron was saying, "Aeriel of Terrain?"
Aeriel nodded.
"Well, you must take this," the heron sighed. One-footed, she clutched the long, dark stave lying in the roadway, and hopped toward Ariel. "The Ancients made me for a bearer of tidings, not of heavy objects. I have searched all Wester-nesse for you for daymbnths."
Aeriel smiled a little. "I have been in Isternes.
"
The heron laid the object at her knees. Aeriel drew in her breath. She recognized the dusty thing at last.
"My walking stick," Aeriel exclaimed, softly. "The one Orroto-to made me."
She ran her fingers over the straight, smooth-weathered shaft, remembering how that chieftess of the desert folk had fashioned this staff out of dark driftwood. As tall as Aeriel it stood, very slender, very strong, with a pointed heel to bite into the sand, and heavy knob upon its crown. She had killed a witch's jackal once, with this stick.
She put it from her suddenly. "I should not have it. It was my own carelessness lost it in the desert."
The heron scratched the side of her head a moment with one ungainly leg. "The lyon told me something of these staves," she said, "that are the throwing sticks and digging sticks, tent poles, and a thousand other things to the Ma'a-mbai, the people of the dunes. There is power in them, he said."
The heron cocked her head the other way.
"Perhaps you did not truly lose yours, but only laid it by awhile, its task of the moment being done and it not yet time for you to take it up again."
Aeriel lifted her walking stick from the dust. She hardly could keep her hands from the shaft. She laid it across her lap, feeling the wood, its shape growing once more familiar in her grasp. Orroto-to had taught her all its uses. It lacked only a single thing to make it a true desert walking stick.
"No figurehead," murmured Aeriel.
In the beginning, when she had first been among the Ma'a-mbai, she had thought the heads of their walking sticks were nothing more than shapeless knobs. But gradually, as she had lived among that people longer, she had begun to see in each stick a figurehead.
Vague shapes these all were, oddly half formed, as though their true forms lay a little deeper than the surface of the wood. But Orroto-to had given Aeriel a staff with only a blank knob on top, and when Aeriel had asked her why, the dark chieftess had drawn back a little, surprised.
"I did not know your green eyes had learned to see the shapes in our walking sticks," she had said. "It is not a thing we speak of much, even among ourselves, and our children may not be called grown until they have seen it. Only then may they be given a grown person's staff, with a figurehead."
"But Orroto-to," Aeriel had said, "am I a child, then, that my walking stick has no face?
Yet, surely no child, since you have given me a long-stick and would teach me to use it."
Aeriel saw the wisewoman's eyes turn away then. She said nothing for a space. At last the dark headwoman answered.
"Little pale one, I have made you no figurehead upon your stick because I have no inkling what to make. Your spirit baffles even me, the best seer-of-spirits among our band."
She turned and looked at Aeriel then.
"But something tells me, sun-fair one who is growing now so tall, that you do not yet need a figure on your staff. When the time comes, you will find one."
"How is that?"
Aeriel looked up, hearing the heron speak. The desert faded from around her, and she sat once more upon the coast road of Bern.
"My staff has no figurehead," Aeriel said.
"Easily remedied," the heron replied. Aeriel glanced at the bird, frowning, not following.
She sat holding the staff across her knees. The heron took wing, alighting upon its knob.
Aeriel darted to her feet in surprise, nearly dropping the shaft. The white bird settled, folding her long wings, nestling her long bill to her breast.
"I have been figurehead upon a boat," she murmured. "I can do the same upon a staff."
And as she settled, she seemed to diminish. Aeriel held the stick fully upright now, staring at it. Smaller and smaller the heron grew until she was no longer than the knob itself, seemed to have merged with it. Aeriel could not take her eyes away.
"How have you done that?" she cried. "I had thought it was the duarough's magic made you a boat, and then into a bird again."
The heron laughed, soft clucking laughter. "Oh, he merely conjured me out of storage and set me to working again. The rest I am able to manage myself."
Aeriel still studied her. "What are you?" she said.
The white bird shrugged, seemed to have grown suddenly sleepy. "A mere plaything of the Ancients that they left behind—a bringer of tidings, a messenger. I can pick locks and open doors, gain access where the way is barred, find hidden paths and things disguised___But I am weary now."
The heron closed her eyes then, tucked her bill beneath one wing. Her color began to deepen, the texture of her feathers change. Before Aeriel could draw three breaths, it looked for all the world as though her staff were all dark wood from heel to crown, but that there the grain changed to a heron-shaped knot of blond.
Aeriel turned the staff in her hands, gazing on it. "But," she murmured, half to herself, "if your name changes with each new form you assume, what am I to call you now—Bird-on-a-Stick?"
The heron's eye snapped open. "You make light of me," she said, "who have headed the staves of wisewomen and kings."
"No, truly," said Aeriel, instantly rueful. "I meant not."
The heron settled her wing more comfortably over her bill. Her movements were growing sluggish and stiff, her voice like green wood creaking. "No matter," she muttered. "You will not need to call me anything just now. Flying about these many daymonths, so burdened, has wearied me. Now you may bear me for a little while, and I will sleep."
Her grey eye closed and her form became suddenly even more like the wood. Her outline faded and blurred so that after only a half dozen heartbeats, Aeriel could not tell without looking very closely that the staff's crown now had the shape of a bird.
Aeriel felt lighter suddenly, renewed in strength. Her terror of Orm subsided a little.
Though the road there might be long, she had a companion now—such as it was. Aeriel eyed the wooden head of her walking stick, then laughed.
I will find the lost Ions of Westernesse, she told herself, before the White Witch does.
She fetched her bandolyn from beneath the tree and started with a swift, sure step northward along the road toward Talis.
6
City of Thieves
SOLSTAR SLID GRADUALLY ACROSS THE sky. Aeriel felt no weariness, no hunger still, nor did the little dustshrimp hidden away among hei garment's folds seem to require any food. She met no one. From time to time she spoke to the figurehead upon her staff, but the heron never awoke.
The land began to fall at last. The cliffs no longer rose so high above the shore. Solstar hung due east, directly beside her. She saw the city of Talis in the distance before. It stood upon a rocky arm of land jutting out into the Sea. A steady trickle of travelers approached from the north and west.
Aeriel lifted the hood of her traveling cloak. The wind off the Sea had begun to rise. No one paid her the slightest attention as she joined the others passing between the high double gates— not the women in long tunics that fell to their shoes, nor the men in trousers and sarks. Their skin was pale, dusky blue. Aeriel had never before seen Bernean skin.
The city was smaller than Isternes, had none of the graceful arches and spires of the east.
The buildings of Talis were all squat and square, half-timbered of silvery wood and grey pearly sea-stone. Aeriel found herself passing through market streets and jewelers' streets.
Perfumers brewed strange-scented stuff; knifemakers offered hilts set with carbuncles and pearls.
Once, in broad sunlight, Aeriel saw a jeweler draw from his sleeve a tiny glass vessel half-filled with blue fluid. Pure corundum, he whispered, offering it to the man widi whom he bargained: the blood of the Sea. One sup, he said, would keep one young for a dozen years, and he was willing to part with it for only a thousand times its silverweight.
He twirled the vial then, its contents gleaming, swirling like water—but leaning closer, Aeriel saw that it was dust, and very like the stuff she had scooped from the Sea, diough not so dark a blue. Neidier th
e merchant nor his buyer even glanced at her, though moments earlier, the seller had chased two ragged boys away. Aeriel moved on.
She crossed a square and found herself before a tavern. A high wall enclosed its yard, and two tall doorkeepers stood on the threshold of the sup-perhall, turning would-be guests and curious onlookers away.
Aeriel approached, expecting to be told the same, but neither so much as looked at her, and she passed between them without trouble. Shrugging, puzzled, she supposed a mere player who would sing for her supper and sleep on the hearth must be beneath their notice.
The hall was large, people and tables crowding the room. The last of the dusk light streamed through the windows. A great hearth took up half the far wall. Aeriel had never before seen so much wood burned at once. In Terrain, where wood was scarce, they burned oil in lamps, but here great boughs and branches blazed, not the white or yellow flame of oil, but red.
Only two others sat upon the hearth, one a solidly built young man with fair hair and pale green skin. His companion was a girl, younger than Aeriel, lank and straight-limbed still.
A circlet of twisted cloth kept her cinnamon hair from her eyes. Her skin was Bernean blue.
Aeriel knelt upon the hearth, stood her staff in one corner and threw back her hood. The blue-skinned girl, who had been gazing absently in her direction, started suddenly, staring at Aeriel. Aeriel glanced at her.
"Is anything amiss?" she asked. She unfastened her cloak and laid it down, began unwrapping her bandolyn.
The girl stared a moment more, then shook her head and seemed to recover herself. "How long have you been there? I didn't see you."
Aeriel smiled. "Only a moment. I am Aeriel." She sat, starting to tune her bandolyn.
The girl's expression abruptly brightened. "A storier? I think you must be the only storier in all Talis tonight. No wonder the doorkeeps let you in. How much did they ask?"
Aeriel looked up. "Nothing. They paid me no attention at all."
"They let you in for nothing?" the girl exclaimed, on her feet then, fists on hips, glaring sourly at the door. "We had to buy our way in."
She glanced at her companion, but the young man, though he watched both her and Aeriel closely, said nothing. In time Aeriel began to wonder if he had a tongue. The blue-skinned girl shrugged, sat down again.
A Gathering of Gargoyles Page 5
