by Andre Norton
Trees and wondered.
Queen Ysa could look upon the Trees in the Fane's forecourt from the window of her tower room. This was a place in the castle that was hers alone. More than thrice the height of any twisted tree of the Bog, the tower rose from the very heart of the castle. This tower, higher than any of the other lofty towers in
Rendelsham, had long been deserted as too inaccessible before she took it for her own. At a distant time, it had been a place of farsee-ing, centered as it was in the main stronghold of the Kingdom. No spot was loftier, and only Ysa ever came here, by her own command. From this aerie she could see the entire city, and from here she frequently looked down upon the Four Trees in the courtyard of the Fane of the Glowing. Its very isolation was what she desired.
Gazing down at the trees, she was not alarmed. Yew, symbol of her own Family, grew ever strong and healthy, and that had always been her aim, even if the other three faltered, even if they perished.
And when had the decline of Oak begun? She fingered the pendant about her neck, the shape of a yew leaf and set with a cabochon emerald, Yew's color. It had been about the time when Ash's sickness could no longer be ignored, when the
Fane gardeners who were charged with tile care of the Four Trees had begun to consult among themselves, trying to find the cause of Ash's ailing, and perhaps a cure. Eight years—
Ysa tried to cut off the thought before it could be fully articulated. Yes, eight years, but certainly the timing had to be merely coincidental with the unfortunate death of the last Ash rival to her power. Why King Boroth seemed drawn only to pale, wispy Ash-women, she had never been able to fathom. But drawn he was. She could overlook the serving-wenches and those from the common folk he was constantly taking to his bed, but highborn women connected to the great ruling Families she could not ignore. And so each of them had—she delicately rephrased it in her mind—met with an untimely end before Boroth could be tempted to bed them. Such folly would have led to civil war as Yew turned against Ash and, if encouraged, Rowan marched on Oak.
At one time early in Rendel history, Ash had been the wellspring of kings. As a consequence, the main branches of the House of Ash had always been quarrelsome among themselves as they sought precedence of place. It took just a little prodding to make Ash turn against Ash, each faction thinking that the other was plotting its downfall.
Alas, so many Ash-kin had died that the entire Family was now in danger of being extinguished. However, Bor-oth had only himself to blame for this. If he had had the sense to forgo flirtation with Ash- women, she would not have found it necessary to put the rivals aside. She could not risk the appearance of another heir to rival her son, Florian, born a year after the last highborn Ash- woman had perished so unfortunately in the Bog.
Her son. On a sudden impulse, she left the tower room and in a sweep of dark green velvet, trailing skirts, and spicy perfume, descended the winding stairs to pay a visit to the Prince's apartments.
Florian had arisen late and was still at his morning meal. She noted that he had merely pushed the oat porridge around in the bowl, though he had eaten the boiled bacon and a single bite of the fresh-baked bread. A covered dish, the kind that contained fruit, sat untouched.
"I want a pony," the young Prince said to his mother by way of greeting.
"Say 'good morning,' " Ragalis, his nurse, prompted him. "Even Princes must mind their manners."
Florian stuck his tongue out at Ragalis. "I want a pony," he repeated to Queen
Ysa. "And I want it now."
"This morning?" she said, trying to find amusement in the boy. It was far from the first time he had shown such rudeness, and no nurse or tutor she had ever found had been able to teach him otherwise. He seemed more than healthily aware of his station in life, and even more willing to take full advantage of it.
His face darkened. "Now! Now, now, now!"
Ysa knew the signs. In a moment, Florian would begin throwing things. Then he would hurl himself to the floor and scream himself into a black- faced fit. "Eat your breakfast and do all your lessons, and then we will talk about a pony," she said hastily.
"I will eat the rest of my bread and do half of my lessons. And then I will ride the pony you promised me." He opened the covered dish. His face took on a horrified look and he wailed aloud as he slumped to one side, as if he had been mortally betrayed. Then he picked up the dish of preserved fruit and his porridge bowl and emptied both onto the floor.
"It is nobody's fault that there was no fresh fruit for you, young sir," Ragalis said. "It is yet too early in the season. Please. I will send for more, if only you will eat it."
"No!" But he did begin stuffing the bread into his mouth, for he knew that his mother would hold him to his own bargain.
Ysa sighed. She and Ragalis exchanged glances over the boy's head. She could read in the nurse's expression her disapproval of the way the boy was constantly spoiled and pampered, but she felt herself unable to do anything to avoid it.
Florian had too much of his self-indulgent father in him, Ysa thought. He even looked like his father—dark of hair, without a trace of her own vibrant auburn tresses. She refused to consider how much her own actions, or lack of them, were contributing to her son's lack of discipline.
Upon making her return to her tower, she encountered Lord Lackel. As Commander of the House Troops of Her Gracious Ladyship the Queen, he had been entrusted with far more urgent errands than obtaining a pony for the Prince. However, he received her instructions with a bow and a salute and went off to find a suitable animal. The Powers help us all, Ysa thought wryly, if there were none of the mounts presently in the stable.
Then she forgot about the incident. A book awaited her, a volume of nearly forgotten lore. Though she had no measure of the Power as far as she knew, she felt that such lack could be compensated for by study, and in that book were many spells. Today she wanted to try one of them for summoning a creature out of invisibility, a creature that would be seen or unseen at her will, that could fly unmarked wherever she directed it to go and then return with what knowledge it had gained. Such a little servant, she knew, could prove very helpful indeed in the intrigues that were always cropping up both in the court and in the country itself. The visible supernatural entities she had once summoned had proved unsatisfactory for most errands, as they caused too much fright, and human spies could always be bought by the other side. One of these tiny, invisible creatures, however, could not.
The lands to the north had fared ill when the thunder-star struck. The earth for a dozen days' ride in every direction rang like a gong, and in the cities, buildings fell as if victims to a giant scythe. Out on the tundra, the story was much the same as felt yurts collapsed upon their inhabitants and great rents opened in the ground. There, too, as with other countries, fire- mountains awoke and began sending plumes of foul-smelling smoke into the sky. Streams of burning rock cut paths through ice fields, and steam mixed with the smoke to shroud the land in a well-nigh impenetrable fog.
At the southern shore of this far-north land, two enormous waves had come and worked devastation on the cities of the Sea-Rovers. Only those of their ships that happened to be out of port had had any chance of surviving, and of those, more than half perished. And so the sea-people went to the court of the
NordornKing.
"We'll not stay here, by the King's grace," declared Snolli, now High Chief and leader of the Sea-Rovers after so many of his kindred had died. "We are a restless people at the best of times, and these border on the worst of times.
Our one city is gone. Like our people in times past, we will take our women, our children, our goods, and live on our ships if need be and if we cannot find a more hospitable spot upon which to build a new city." He put his hand on the shoulder of his son Obern. Barely a man as the Sea-Rovers reckoned manhood,
Obern nonetheless showed much promise as the eventual worthy successor to his stalwart father.
Cyornas NordornKing nodded his snowy head. "If y
ou wish to leave, we will not detain you," he said. "Were it not for the grave burden we bear as guardians of the Palace of Fire and Ice, we also might be tempted to seek a happier clime.
But our choice was made for us long years past. Now we must make the best of the disaster that has befallen us and survive it as we will. However, I know that some of our people have not the heart to remain in the face of the very heavens turning against us. For those who wish to inquire elsewhere if they will be welcomed, I will send as emissary Count Bjauden."
A slender man with hair the color of honey stepped forward from those who stood respectfully, attending on the meeting between Cyornas NordornKing and Snolli
Sea-Rover. He bowed. "Thank you, my King, for entrusting this grave mission to me. I ask only that you take my son Gaurin as your ward, to foster and protect the lad while I am gone, and to rear him as your own if I do not come back."
"Gladly, Bjauden," Cyornas said. "He shall be to me as my son Hynnel, neither holding precedence over the other." He turned to Snolli. "Will you agree to having Bjauden with you, on your own ship, where he will be safest?"
"I will," Snolli said. "And if he meets with welcome news, I further promise to send him back on as swift a ship as we have, to bring you his report."
"Then we both are satisfied," said Cyornas. "Come, drink a horn of fair ale with me, and let us exchange a drop of blood to seal the bargain."
According to custom, Cyornas and Snolli pricked their forefingers and touched them so that their blood mingled.
Then they locked arms, and with their heads so close that each could count the eyelashes of the other, they emptied horns of ale at a single draught. Snolli looked rather more at ease in this activity than he did in courtly courtesy, which he had obviously found to be a strain.
Nevertheless, Cyornas NordornKing discouraged any great rejoicing over the good bargain struck between the Sea-Rovers and the Nordors. He knew what he had not yet divulged—not even to his most trusted advisers— what was only whispered about by the frightened workmen who had seen. The Palace of Fire and Ice had suffered great harm from the thunder-star's impact. One wall—that adjacent to the tomb that held the sleeping body of the entity that was known with unspeakable trepidation as the Great Foulness—had cracked. Inside the tomb, unseen but felt by those whose task it was to guard it, the Foulness had begun to stir, and perhaps to awaken…
Three
Ashen knelt on a small hillock of island where she had found a goodly stand of the best kind of weave-reeds. She tensed within, but now, at age sixteen, she had learned to disguise her awareness of danger until the last possible moment.
Through the many odors that were thick in this place, she had caught a trace of one particular scent that might mean trouble. However, she did not yet raise her head but, rather, kept on sawing at one of the reeds whose milky fluff could be collected, spun, and woven into a kind of cloth. Her shell blade was almost unequal to the task. Weave-reeds were tough, this one especially so. She pursued her task energetically enough to raise droplets of sweat on her forehead.
With a rasping croak, one of the Bog-luppers soared over the edge of the hillock only a hand's reach away. It splashed into the dank water ringing her perch and disappeared. Now she allowed herself to turn partway around. She touched the circular disk of smooth stone, holed in the center, that hung about her neck by a twisted cord. When first she had discovered the amulet lying dusty and forgotten on one of Zazar's shelves, she had innocently mistaken it for an ornament. So thinking, she had threaded it on the cord, one woven of fibers through which shifted muted shades of blue and green, and put it around her neck.
The only other ornament she had ever owned was a pair of earrings, gold wires with brownish stone dangles. They had come from a Trader, Zazar said. Ashen had lost them when, unthinking, she had laid them aside while she bathed and someone had stolen them. When she started wearing the disk, Zazar had corrected her and taught her the true use of the stone. She had also given Ashen a bit of wood, which she called a hearth-guide. She claimed that it would point the way home should Ashen become lost. The disk, which Zazar told her was called the power-stone, interested her more, though. Now she wore it knowing it to be greater than a mere ornament.
Though there was not as yet the faintest of movement behind her, that warning odor was stronger. She recognized the stinking grease that any roving Bog-hunter used as a shield against the continuous assaults of insects in these raw pockets. Ashen dropped the last half- shredded reed into her carry- basket.
There were at least two, possibly three of the intruders; of that she was now sure. They might bear spears and shoulder turtle-shell shields as if they were engaged in a regular hunt, but she was certain—as if some light breeze carried guttural half whispers—that she was their quarry. If she was right, she knew them, and had known them from the time they all toddled.
Having made sure of her harvest, she did not look up but suddenly spoke clear-voiced, her words lacking the heavy accent of the Bog- folk. "How goes your luck, Tus-ser?"
She might have been seated by Zazar's fire-hole, casually addressing one who passed by the Wysen-wyf's home place. Hopefully, she trusted her tone did not convey anything but confidence.
Yes, there were at least three of them out there, and their purpose was one of ill will, for they had not shown themselves. If it were Tusser playing leader, then his fawning liegemen, Sumase and Todo, would be his aides.
Ashen knew very well that her difference from the Bog-born was a matter for hatred. At one time or another, almost every one of the villagers had made it plain to her that only her having been claimed within the very hour of her birth by the Wysen-wyf had kept her from being tossed into one of the sluggish streams as food for the bottom- dwellers. She was Outlander through and through, her breed clear to read in her slender height, her finely marked features, the pallid strands of her hair.
No, there were none among the Bog-folk who would ever welcome her. They loathed her kind, but even more, they feared Zazar, by whose quirky favor she was allowed to live.
Only a few moon-turnings ago, when she reached womanhood by Bog- folk standards,
Ashen had begun to realize a shift in the way she was regarded not only by
Tusser, but also by some others of those only recently promoted to manhood and allowed to attend the talk-fires of their kindred. Perhaps it was her very oddity that led to this waking interest in her as a person, no longer seen as an outcast. But perhaps not. Of the way matters stood between men and women, whether of Bog-kind or Outlander, Zazar had told her only enough to make her wary.
She could almost taste the bile rising in her throat when she suspected what might be the reason Tusser and some of the others stared at her. She gave thanks again that Zazar's dwelling was set apart from the settlement and that the reputation of the Wysen-wyf raised enough awe that her quarters were shunned.
Ashen knew she could not depend upon the Wysen-wyf to come to her aid now. It was impossible.
She had come this deeply into the Bog trying to follow the Wysen-wyf on one of her mysterious errands. Zazar, as usual, had eluded her—whether accidentally or by design, Ashen could not determine. Under other circumstances, she was able to follow even faint trails. When tracking Zazar, however, at some point she was always baffled; it was as if Zazar had suddenly grown wings and taken to the air. Sometimes she wondered if the Wysen-wyf was testing her in some fashion, a testing that so far she had failed.
And so, once more Ashen had turned aside to find another errand. She often went out alone even when not following Zazar, the way she had done since she was eight years old. Today, her harvest of superior weave-reeds would be her excuse upon her return, and Zazar might even forget to interrogate her. She was well aware that Zazar could read minds—or at least past actions—by a mere survey of one's person.
This day, however, Ashen must have been careless, thinking more of what she wished than of what might happen. She had found herself on one of
the lesser-known ways, where even hunters did not ordinarily go. Because of her thoughtlessness, now she was to be prey—or so the trackers intended.
The bushes shook and three of the squat, sallow-skinned, ill-smelling youths emerged into plain sight. But they took only a step or so and then halted abruptly.
Acutely aware, she knew what they saw. An Outlander, crouching and apparently vulnerable, on a tiny dot of island. Between the hunters and the one they hunted, there lay like a moat, a sullenly dark pool. No Bog-man except one totally lacking in proper wit would ever attempt to wade through that. She could see the puzzlement spread from face to face and could almost read their thoughts. There she was, safe on the only good footing for some distance around—how had she gotten there? A flicker of something like fear crossed first one countenance, and then another and another.
