Owlflight

by Mercedes Lackey

There were times when he thought that even the appearance of a monster from the Pelagiris Forest would be preferable to the day-in, day-out sameness. It might wake up some of these people, show them that there were more important things than complaining about one small boy.

  No one ever makes songs or tales about people plowing their bean fields. What’s the point of living on the edge of a perilous and magical place like the Forest if you don’t go looking for adventure in it? Or if not adventure, why not just—life? People used to go looking for adventure—or for mosses and other dye-stuffs, anyway—but now they would rather hide in the village and pretend the Forest wasn’t just beyond their carefully cultivated fields. They’d rather do without prosperity than take a chance against danger, and Darian could not understand that.

  My folks went out looking for adventure; maybe there is something in my blood. Only it isn’t bad blood, it’s just—I don’t know. I just know if I don’t do something different soon, I’m going to burst. I don’t know how these folks stand living like this. Maybe they don’t burst because they’re hollow.

  He looked back over his shoulder at the Forest with longing. He always felt more contented when he was in there, and the temptation to keep going, to keep on looking to see what was beyond the next stand of trees, behind the next patch of undergrowth, was often overwhelming. It always felt as if there was something exciting out there waiting for him, if he just went far enough in.

  And maybe Dad and Mum are still alive in there, somewhere… .

  His belly wrenched. He was thinking that again, as he had for ages, and he still could not let that hope go. Until someone found proof otherwise, he would always be certain that they weren’t dead, that they were trapped or imprisoned somewhere, waiting for someone to find them. As long as he could believe that, he couldn’t give up, and he had something to hold onto in the middle of the night, when he woke up and found himself beneath a thick, thatched roof instead of the open sky, or tent canvas, or forest canopy.

  That hope faded a little more with each passing day, though. It got harder to believe they were still alive somewhere, when there was never any trace, either of what became of them, or of a force or person that could have imprisoned them.

  Maybe when a trader comes, I can get him to take me with him. I could work for him until we get somewhere where there are more people, then I could join the Guard. I bet I’d be a great fighter—in fact, I bet I’d be one of the best fighters there ever was! He was easily one of the best bowmen in the village; more than half the time he’d been apprenticed it was his skill that put meat in Justyn’s stew, and not the “gratitude” of the villagers.

  Then again, all the wars were supposed to be over now, and maybe they wouldn’t need fighters. Well, that was all right. I could remind people about the furs and the dyes that used to come from here—I could get them to put together an expedition to explore the Forest, that’s what I could do! I know all Dad’s trapping trails; I could be famous for opening up the Forest!

  Or maybe he could just work for the trader until he had enough put by to buy his own supplies and traps. He could go out into the Forest himself, and become as good a trapper as his Dad was. He remembered his Dad saying more than once that he was doing the villagers a favor by trading those furs for “kind” instead of “cash” and that the traders never gave but a fraction of the worth of the fur. If I took my furs to a big city myself, I could get a lot of money for them. I could get rich—and I’d probably be famous, too.

  As for the people of Errold’s Grove, well, when they saw how he was prospering, maybe they would stop cowering in their houses like rabbits in a burrow, and dare the Forest themselves again.

  I haven’t seen that many monsters, and most of them weren’t dangerous if you kept your wits about you. I’ve never seen any “forest spirits” or “vapor demons” or anything you could even mistake for something like that. Hellfires, I haven’t even seen Hawkbrothers, and I know they’re supposed to be out there somewhere—so how dangerous could it be now that the mage-storms are over really? I’ve probably spent as much time in the Forest as anyone here, and I just don’t think that hiding in your house and pretending that the Forest isn’t there is going to do anyone any good.

  He looked up slyly for a moment, and realized that he had managed to kick his stone up to the back of the inn—or what served as an inn here in the village. It really wasn’t much more than another cottage with two rooms, one large room full of benches and tables, one a kitchen, and a loft above the kitchen where the owner slept—it was owned by Hanbil Brason, who brewed the beer and dispensed it to the men who gathered here of an evening, and in earlier years besides selling beer and food, he at times had sold floor space at night to passing traders. Nowadays, when there wasn’t much in the way of coined money in the village, Hanbil sold his brew by tally—you brought in a bushel of barley, a bunch of hops, a dozen eggs, some pork or chicken, and he would reckon up how much in “real” money that represented and put it on a tally-stick for you. Then you drank and ate until you used up the tally. Hanbil was the only man with whose tallies no one argued, because he was the only source of beer, and his was the only place in the village where men could gather to complain about their wives in relative peace.

  He was aided in his endeavors by Lilly, who served beer and meat pasties, cleaned and washed up, and dispensed some other unspecified services that caused the good wives of Errold’s Grove to frown and pronounce her “no better than she should be.” Whatever that meant. It might have had something to do with the fact that she wore skirts kilted up above her knee, extremely tight bodices, and blouses that continually fell off one shoulder, showing a great deal more of her than the wives liked. Lilly was no girl; she was older than some of those wives, and really no prettier. The women had no cause to feel any jealousy about her looks. But they did, and they took some pleasure in snubbing her at every opportunity. However, like poor old Kyle, folks said she was not especially bright, so she didn’t seem to take any notice of being slighted. Or if she noticed, she didn’t care; maybe having the approval of the husbands was worth the snubs of the wives.

  Darian had some doubts about that; he didn’t think it was that Lilly was stupid at all. He thought it was probably more the case that she was so resigned to her lot and position that she just didn’t think about it anymore.

  The boys said she was also not quite bright enough to count past ten—anything more than ten was simply “a lot”—and as every child in the village knew, if there were more than ten pasties or fruit pockets cooling on the windowsill, Lilly would never notice one missing. Once again, Darian had doubts, for he’d seen her taking in the plates of cooled baking with a slight smile when one or more was missing. He had the feeling that she knew very well that the baked goods were gone, and that she rather enjoyed the fact that bold children were snitching Hanbil’s goods.

  And since Hanbil was notoriously parsimonious when it came to his share of the support for Justyn, Darian always considered it his duty to filch something to eat from the inn when he got the chance.

  This was his day of golden opportunity. Lilly must have been out berrying on the old road this morning, for there was a line of fine, golden-brown berry-pockets cooling in pans on the windowsill and just beneath it, sitting on upturned buckets so she could reach them from the window. Juice oozed from them enticingly, and there were at least two dozen of them.

  Darian sidled up to the window and took a quick glance around to see if anyone was watching, but the area was deserted, and he could hear Lilly talking to Hanbil up in the loft. He snatched, and ran, juggling the pocket from hand to hand to keep from getting burned, while his mouth watered with anticipation.

  A moment later he was safe in a spot he often used for strictly temporary hiding, the hollow behind some juniper bushes under the window of what passed for a shop in Errold’s Grove. Nandy Lutter and her husband used to buy their goods from traders, but with fewer and fewer coming through, they had to go fetch the
ir own goods. They were the only people in the village who ever went up the road to the outside world. Once every three months, Derrel Lutter would hitch up his horse to his wagon and drive off across the bridge with a wagon full of whatever he and Nandy had traded for over the previous three months. When he came back, he would have the things that the village could not make for itself, and he and Nandy would set them up in the shop, and make trades over the next few months. They brought in things like needles and pins, ribbons and colored thread, sugar-loaves, spices, and salt. They were two of the Errold’s Grove elite, and as a result, Nandy had gone to the effort of planting things around their house that were pretty, but impractical, as a means of displaying their wealth. She had beds of spring bulbs, flowering trees that had no real fruit, rose vines, and evergreen-holly and juniper. The latter were planted against the side of the house, and the hollows against the wall where the branches had died back for lack of sunlight made a good hiding place. That was where Darian went when he’d filched a pie; better to get under cover, eat it quickly, and dispose of the evidence at once. They couldn’t accuse you for having a blue tongue; you could claim you’d been berrying yourself.

  He wriggled into place just below a window, and proceeded to nibble delicately at his treat so as not to waste a single crumb. For such a poorly regarded woman, Lilly was a remarkably good baker, and her efforts certainly surpassed anything Darian could produce. The pastry was flaky and light, perfectly browned and crunchy, the filling sweet and juicy without being too runny. He took a great deal of satisfaction, not only in the fact that he’d cheated Hanbil out of something, but out of the fact that taking it by sleight-of-hand had been a great deal more efficient than trying to get it by levitation or some other daft method Justyn might have suggested. I don’t need his stupid magic to get what I need. I can do anything I have to do with my two hands and my wits.

  The more he thought about it, the more discontented he became. This was no life for anyone with any courage or ideas! This was no place for anyone who wanted something besides a place to sleep and steady meals and—predictability! Errold’s Grove was dying, or dead, and no one had noticed it but him. And he had to escape before he died, too.

  Nandy and another woman were talking inside, but he didn’t pay any heed to them until the tag-end of a sentence caught his attention. “—that old fraud who calls himself a wizard.”

  “I don’t know why we give over anything to support him,” the other woman replied querulously. “It’s not as if he was like Kyle, and useful.”

  “I’ve said as much to my husband,” Nandy replied with an air of triumph. “I’ve said to him that there’s nothing that man could do that one of the girls couldn’t learn. Take Ida’s Saffy—” she chuckled cruelly, “—and the gods know there isn’t a boy in Errold’s Grove who would.”

  “Nandy!” her visitor exclaimed in mock shock. “Now how could you say a thing like that?”

  “Twenty years old and not married, a face like a horse and a body like a washboard? It’s only plain speaking,” Nandy retorted, with obvious pleasure. “Now look, my man could take her up when he next goes off to the city and leave her at the Healer there. He’ll train her for nothing, we’ve already asked. In a year she comes back, and we can send that good-for-nothing fraud off to swindle some other village. Saffy could go back to living with her parents, just like before, but then she’d go from being a burden to a blessing. The rest of us could pay for her services as we need them, not before, and there won’t be that drain on everyone, which is purely cruel. And now there’s two to feed, him and that useless, feckless, bit of bad blood that he calls an apprentice.”

  “Well, it isn’t fair,” the other agreed. “If you’re never sick, it doesn’t seem fair to have to keep giving over food and clothing and all. Of course, he does do Finding, and Weather-watching—”

  “And a careful person don’t need a Finder, and as for Weather-watching, we got along well enough without it before.” Nandy pronounced that as the end of the argument. “As for the boy, well, I don’t doubt that if he doesn’t manage to bring the Forest down on us all as his rootless parents tried to do, he certainly won’t amount to anything. He hasn’t the intelligence of Kyle and he’s as shiftless as Lilly, and the sooner we’re rid of both of them, the better off this village will be.”

  Nandy and her customer moved away from the window at that point, and Darian couldn’t hear anything but the murmur of voices.

  He sat where he was, not out of shock, but suddenly struck by a sense of hopelessness so deep he couldn’t have moved if his life had depended on it. Now they grudged even the scant food they provided him—they were going to turn him out to fend for himself as soon as they could get away with it. And they were going to do the same to Justyn, too—but of course, Justyn would have a year or so to try to find a new place to go, because they couldn’t do without him until Saffy was trained. It sounded as if—supposing Nandy had her way—they were going to just throw Darian out as soon as Nandy could get enough people to agree with her. And Justyn at least had some skills he could barter for a new place somewhere. Darian had nothing except the clothing he’d brought with him, the ability to shoot a bow, and whatever he could convince folks he could do.

  So what am I supposed to do? Go live off the Forest, with no supplies and no weapons but my bow and few arrows? It was one thing to plan to become a great hunter and trapper when he was older, and had built up all the things he needed to properly live in the wilds—it was quite another to know that he was going to be cast out to make shift for himself with nothing whatsoever to help him. No point in asking Justyn for help either—the old wizard would have a hard enough time finding a new place for himself.

  Maybe I should just run away now, and get it over with. If I go now, maybe I could steal enough to keep me alive until I get to the next town. That’s Kelmskeep, I think. Isn’t it?

  Assuming he could find the next town; he’d never been there, and he didn’t know how far it was, or if he could get there afoot. People said it was downriver, but how far was it? Could he get there on his own? And if he could, would anyone want him when he got there? Assuming he didn’t run into something else first, like maybe Hawkbrothers. It used to be that you wouldn’t run into them unless you trespassed in their territory, but that wasn’t the case anymore, or so their yearly Herald had said. Now they could be anywhere in the Forest according to the Herald; they were supposed to be much better at doing the new kinds of magic than anyone else was, and the Herald had been rather vague about just what these bands of roaming Hawkbrothers were supposed to be doing. Nor had he been able to tell the villagers how the Hawkbrothers would react to any strangers they met in the Forest.

  Of course, as long as he stayed on the road, he would probably be all right, but what if he couldn’t? He’d have to eat and drink, and that would mean going into the Forest to hunt for food and water.

  Well, he had warning now. If a trader came by before Nandy got enough people together to agree to throw him out, maybe he could get the man to take him along. Or maybe the Herald would come soon, and he could beg help there—and hopefully, the Herald wouldn’t decide that the best “help” would be to persuade the villagers to give Darian “one more chance.” That “chance” would last only as long as it took for them to get rid of Justyn, and then he’d be out on his ear, too.

  Now so thoroughly depressed that the filched sweet lay like a leaden lump in his stomach, seeing no future now but a choice between uncertainty and endless drudgery, Darian crawled out of his hiding place and slunk like a beaten dog back to the dubious protection of his Master.

  The short distance to the other end of the village seemed shorter than usual—and Justyn was waiting for him outside the cottage when he came into view of the building.

  Darian knew by the set of Justyn’s chin and the look in his eye that it would do him no good to tell his Master what he had overheard. At best, Justyn would dismiss it all as idle gossip, betray his hiding pla
ce to Nandy, and hand him over to her for punishment. At worst, Justyn would assume he was making it all up in an effort to avoid punishment.

  In either case, nothing would happen until it was too late for Darian.

  Justyn had evidently pondered Darian’s punishment for some time, and had come up with something both appropriate and suitably quelling.

  “It’s about time you decided to show yourself,” he said, his face set in a fearsome scowl. “I used the last of my mycofoetida on Kyle, as you would know, if you had been here, as you ought to have been. I had to clean up his mess, and then clean up the dishes from last night that you were supposed to have attended to.”

  Darian just hung his head and looked at his feet, saying nothing. There was nothing much he could say, after all. Justyn was right; he should have been there. If he had been there, Nandy would have less ammunition to use against him. There was little doubt that he had caused all of his misfortunes all by himself.

  “So, since you happen to like roaming around in the Forest so much, you can just go out there and collect enough mycofoetida to fill this basket.” Justyn dropped the basket contemptuously at his feet, without waiting for him to reach for it.

  Darian winced, and picked the basket up without a word. Mycofoetida was a fungus, a particularly noxious shelf-fungus with a perfectly nauseating aroma when fresh-picked. The aroma faded to nothing within a few candlemarks of being gathered, and when dried and packed in a wound, it was a powerful preventive against infection. But for those few hours, it was best that both fungi and picker stayed away from anyone else. It grew best on live tree trunks where there was a fair amount of indirect light, which meant that you didn’t have to go far into the Forest to find it. Only Justyn knew how to dry it, prepare it, and use it properly, so only Justyn ever went after it.

  It was not a choice task, to say the least. Justyn knew how to gather it without losing the contents of his stomach, but Darian didn’t, and he doubted that Justyn was going to impart that information in his current mood.