Gordath Wood

by Patrice Sarath

  “My son saw him first, in the field with the cows and our old mare,” he said. “I knew at once he was one of the lord’s horses, or one of the fine ones from Wessen, gray as a ghost. So we brought the gate closed at the end of the pasture. We thought we’d keep him there until someone could bring him home.”

  “Did he have a rider? Anyone with him?” With difficulty Crae kept from describing the guardian. All he needed was an eager-to-please farmer telling him what he wanted to hear.

  The farmer shook his head.

  “What happened?”

  “We couldn’t get close to him. He was too wary. And then—he flew, sir. Or so it looked like. He trotted over to the fence when he saw us coming, and then he broke into a gallop and he flew into the air and was gone. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

  Crae kept his expression calm and interested. “How high is your fence?” he said, regarding the man. The farmer looked up and held his hand about a foot over his head. He squinted up at it and moved it about six inches higher.

  Stavin snorted and turned it into a cough. The farmer reddened and brought his hand down quickly. Crae hid his dismay. Stavin was a good man and a good friend, but if he thought it, he said it.

  “All right,” Crae said. “Tal—” He gestured to the young man to come close and turned them both so their backs were to the old man. Guardians were well-trusted by the farm folk who lived on the outskirts of the woods; they faced its secrets and its dangers so closely, they knew what they owed the protectors of the gordath. Crae would rather not trust this oldster with his orders. Speaking low, he told Tal, “Take Brin and two others and ride out at once. Search where the horse was last sighted; see if you can find where the guardian might have fallen.” He took a deep breath. “Even if you just find the horse, be sure to bring him in. He’s almost as important. Do you understand?”

  Tal nodded, his young face intent upon his responsibilities. “Yes, sir. Who should I choose?”

  “Use your judgment, but go.”

  Tal saluted and spun on his heel, practically bolting for the door. Crae turned back to the farmer and Stavin, both watching him go with some surprise.

  Crae half bowed to the old man, which the old man returned with stiff courtesy. “My thanks for bringing this news. I will have someone escort you back to your smallholding. You may go, and if you ever sight the horse again, send word.”

  The old man nodded, then added forthrightly, “We need to know, sir. Is the guardian well? The earth shakings have been getting worse, and the fire destroyed the harvest of some of the outer smallholders.”

  Willing Stavin to keep his mouth closed, Crae said, “The guardian is working to calm the forest. The fire was the doing of Lord Tharp’s enemy, General Marthen.”

  “We know that,” the crusty old-timer said. He glanced at Stavin, clearly a lord, and lowered his voice. “We need to know that the guardian is caring for the Wood.”

  Crae chose his words with care. “He is. And we are searching for another, any other, who can help.”

  The smallholder nodded. “No one with the skill has been born to the forest smallholders for a generation now,” he said.

  Next to Crae, Stavin started, clearly bursting with something to tell. The old man clamped his jaw, and Crae knew he would get nothing more out of him. He bowed again. “Send word if you sight the horse again, or anything else amiss.”

  When he had sent the farmer off with one of Lord Tharp’s men, with orders to give him a few coins and provisions from the kitchen for his trouble, Crae closed the door behind him. He looked at Stavin. “What?”

  “I told you, the woods of Trieve don’t shake, quake, mutter, or talk.”

  “Yes. And?”

  “I think, we, uh, have a guardian.”

  “What?!”

  Stavin shrugged sheepishly. “He’s another old-timer. He wanders around the woods, talking to himself and scaring the daylights out of anyone on the road to Trieve. We’ve never called him anything except for the guardian. I never knew it meant anything until just now.”

  Never knew it meant anything . . . Crae didn’t know whether to laugh or punch his friend’s easygoing face. “High god, Stavin, write to Jessamy. I’ll carry the note myself.”

  “Crae, he’s older than dirt. You come at him like that, he will die of fright before he gets a mile from Trieve.”

  “We need him, Stavin. Don’t you understand?”

  A sudden rumbling of the mountain cut off his words. As the stone floor jerked out from beneath them, they grabbed the table and held on. Outside the room they could hear shouts and cries of folk taken by surprise. As the shaking went on, dirt sifted down from the ceiling, caught in the shaft of sunlight from the small window.

  “Damn it,” Stavin half whispered when the shaking subsided. He was pale under his beard and held on to the table very tight. When it finished completely, they looked at each other, Stavin clearly a little sick. “Nothing like an earth shaking to make you realize you are underneath a mountain.”

  His words fell flat. Crae laughed hollowly nonetheless.

  “Write the note, Stavin,” he said. Stavin nodded. He rummaged in a small cabinet by the door, finding paper and pen and ink. He wrote quickly, the words flowing. “Jessamy will think I’ve gone as mad as you,” he said, waving the paper to dry the ink. He folded it and handed it to Crae. “My commission. ” He raised a brow. “What will Lord Tharp say?”

  Good riddance. Crae didn’t say it out loud, just took the letter. “Just be very convincing when you talk to him, Stavin.”

  Stavin nodded. “Sweet as honey, that’s me.”

  He left Crae alone in the little antechamber, and the captain sat at the end of the table, looking out the window, thinking hard. He had to ride to Trieve at once, find the old man that Stavin called guardian, and bring him back to Red Gold Bridge. There was little time to waste; tomorrow Tharp went to war. Stavin had only one chance to convince him to abandon the gordath and any other weapons that came through it.

  Crae knew that his friend would have to be honey-tongued indeed to turn Tharp from his course. He pushed himself away from the table. The old guardian of Trieve had damn well better be alive when he got there.

  The long rumbling of the mountain faded away, and Lynn got to her feet. Sand sifted down from the ceiling, and she brushed it off her hair and shoulders and got back to work on prying the hinges off her door with the poker from the fireplace. At least it keeps my mind off the earthquakes, she thought, half-wry, half-grim. She didn’t like to think of them shaking the mountain and the stronghold, and the sand from the mortar in the ceiling didn’t help.

  A week’s imprisonment had been a week too long. She had watched from her window as the army dispersed from its encampment, draining itself of men, wagons, and horses. She never saw the Jeep again or any other vehicle other than ox-carts and wagons. The maids who brought her meals and took away the chamber pot looked blank when she asked about other cars.

  Looks like it’s just me and Bahard, she thought. The poker slipped, gashing the wood frame of the door. “Crap,” she muttered.

  She had to find Bahard. He had to know how to get out of there. The poker caught underneath the crude hinge, and she pried with all of her strength, the metal shrieking. But the wood splintered, and the plate began to pull away from the door.

  If she couldn’t find Bahard, she needed to find the supply depot where he was storing his guns. There had to be a road for the Jeep. All she had to do was stick to the road, follow the tire tracks. She’d be home in no time. She shied away from thinking about what came next. How to explain what had happened to her, to Dungiven. “First things first,” she grunted, and pulled at the hinge, working the poker under the metal. After she got home, she could figure out what to say to Mrs. Hunt. To Joe.

  The plate pulled away with a final shriek, leaving behind shredded wood and thick nails. Lynn gave her arms a rest and then began work on the second hinge. This one gave way more easily, and th
e door listed drunkenly. It was still locked on the other end, but she could reach one arm through and feel for the bolt. She strained, her fingers slipping on the bolt over and over again.

  God dammit, she wanted to shout. She didn’t. With determination she pushed at the door with her shoulder, forcing her arm to reach as fully as it could. Her shoulder ached where it was pressed by the heavy door. She caught the bolt, pulled with all her strength, and grudgingly it came free, sliding along the rusty channel. It caught her fingers for a moment, bringing tears of pain, but she pulled her hand back and pulled the door open, leaning it against the wall.

  Lynn pushed back her hair. She was free. She sucked her throbbing fingers and cast a look into the corridor. There was no sign of anyone. Usually the maids came only in the morning and at night, and she was left alone all day. She began to gather up her things.

  The second day of her captivity the maids had brought her a basin for washing and a change of clothes. They had provided her with a long split skirt, once blue but faded gray, and thick tights and socks that felt good on her blistered feet. She wore her vest over her white shirt, which the maids had washed for her and mended. Of her expensive breeches there was no salvaging; they had been badly torn at the knee and the seat. Her underwear was still useful, and the maids had washed that as well, but they had been reduced to fits of giggles at the sight of her bra and panties.

  Dressed for escape, Lynn bundled up her telltale vest in the thin towel she had been given for her bath. She hoped her boots would escape notice; the skirt came down to her ankles, but the expensive leather paddock boots peeked out brazenly. She tied the blue kerchief on her head, praying she got the little bow just right. Out of habit she felt for her cell phone. For a moment, she let herself think about calling Joe, hearing his voice. Hi, honey, I’m home.

  Lynn shook her head. Concentrate, she told herself sternly. She gathered up some flatbread she had hoarded and after one last look around took a deep breath and ducked out the door.

  Confidence, she told herself. Walk with confidence. Her heart hammered as she headed toward the tower stairs, following the daylight that fell across the dark corridor from the archway to the outside tower. A sharp wind blew keenly, almost whisking the kerchief off her head. Lynn grabbed at it and nearly dropped her bundle of clothes. “Crap,” she muttered, and ducked against the wall, trying to put herself back together. Looking both ways, she stepped through the archway and the crisp air of daylight, the sunlight shining on the red gold stone and the fluttering vines. She had not gone two steps before she heard voices. Lynn froze. Men, coming up the stairs, their voices loud and bold. She couldn’t understand what they were saying, and for a moment she hesitated. Then she thought: No. That’s not right. The only place to go up here is to my room. She felt suddenly sick to her stomach. She backed up into the corridor, then bolted.

  She left behind all pretense of acting with confidence. Lynn ran down the stone halls, clattering down the stairs. From behind her she heard shouts, and then running footsteps echoed through the mountain. They found the door, she thought grimly and hid in a small niche, pressing her body into the shadow. There was a pause, then booted feet thudded past her down the corridor.

  She peered out and saw a cluster of men milling about at the far end of the corridor. She plastered herself back against the niche again. Think, Lynn. They would backtrack, call for reinforcements. If she didn’t move, she’d be caught. I need a distraction. She reached into the bundle and wormed her hand into her rolled-up vest, pulling out her cell phone.

  It always took forever to program the damn thing, but fear gave her focus. She set up the alarm for one minute hence and, hands shaking, leaned out of her little hidey-hole and slid the phone back along the corridor the way she had come. It scraped along the stone until it was lost in the darkness, but the little noise it made caught their attention.

  “What was that?” That was clear enough. She waited, sweating, pressed up against the cold mountain rock. Footsteps approached her niche, paused, and then passed her, back up the corridor. She heard more voices, exclamations of discovery, questions. Her fingernails carved dents into her palms.

  An unearthly rippling shriek began repeating itself with piercing insistence. Even Lynn, who knew it was the phone, jumped; down the hall the men practically exploded with fright.

  In the resulting hubbub, she ran off, the phone shrieking its fool head off behind her.

  In the south tower guardhouse, Crae looked up from packing his gear when Lord Camrin came bursting in, followed closely by his men and three of Crae’s guards.

  “My lord?” Crae said. Lord Camrin was wild-eyed, disheveled, and red-faced.

  “You had better do something, Captain! Your prisoner has escaped.”

  Crae dropped his pack and picked up his sword, buckling on the sword belt as he hastened out the door. Stavin’s commission would have to wait. He would need to set up a guard on all the gates and the lesser-known posterns, as well as send searchers through the outbuildings. He shouldered through the door as he fired questions at the old lord. “What happened? Did you see her? When did you discover this?”

  The short, stout lord panted hard, struggling to keep up. “Her door was shattered, torn off by the hinges. We chased her down the corridor, but she gave us the slip.” He shook his head. “She set off a weapon, a shrieking weapon. I—I don’t know what it was. But she got away.”

  Crae stopped to look at him. “A shrieking weapon?”

  Camrin reddened even more than usual. “Yes, Captain. Do you doubt me? It shrieked. You would have run, too.”

  What in the unspoken name of all the gods was she carrying? “Was anyone killed or hurt?”

  Camrin made an impatient face. “Did you not hear me, Captain? It shrieked. It did not shoot.”

  Oh, a shrieking weapon. That explained all, then. Perhaps something of his derision leaked into his expression, because Camrin began to bluster.

  “You had best do something, Captain! You brought her here, and now she’s on the loose! You said she didn’t have any weapons, but she’s somewhere in the stronghold, and you need to do something!”

  Crae reined in his temper and bowed. He scanned the gathering crowd for his men and with a few terse orders dispersed them on their search.

  “My thanks, Lord Camrin. If you could set your men to searching as well, we should soon recover her.”

  Camrin nodded grudgingly. “All right, Captain, but if she has another one of those . . . things, don’t blame me if my men find other places to be.”

  Yes, such discipline, Crae said to himself, just as another thought struck him. “My lord, it is well you found her missing in her tower room, but why were you there?”

  Lord Camrin’s eyes flickered, but he stared Crae down. “Does the lord answer to the captain?” he growled.

  You are nothing more than an elevated smallholder, only here at the will of Lord Tharp and your own petulant whims, Crae thought. Yet you sought to meddle with one of Lord Tharp’s prisoners, no doubt to impress your men . . . This time he let his unspoken rebuke reach his eyes on purpose, along with a satisfying anger.

  Camrin still blustered, but his voice faltered. “It is none of your concern, Captain. Just find her.”

  He turned his back, and Crae let him go. Just find her, indeed. Well, she could hardly mix in . . . Then he remembered. He had asked the maids to bring her a bath and a change of clothes, as a courtesy, and he admitted, hoping that she would think of him fondly. It was too much to hope that she had kept her outlandish clothing. If she had played her cards right, she was probably outside the gates already.

  Crae set the searchers combing the mountain and the surrounding terrain while he took one of the search parties into the stronghold itself. Inside it was dim and cool, the only light from the rows of windows in the outer balconies. The fresh air mingled with the musty smell of the cavernous hold. Crae and his men moved without speaking, fanning out through the many corridors.

/>   They heard the weapon before they saw it, its rhythmic squalling drawing them near. It got louder and louder until finally Crae saw where the sound came from, a small gray device lying on the ground. He could understand why Camrin had described it as a weapon. The noise set his teeth on edge. Warily, he picked it up.

  It fit in the palm of his hand. It was hinged and came open easily. Inside it gleamed with lights and symbols, arrayed in a pattern. The little thing shone with a cold, hard beauty. His thumb pressed one of the buttons, and the symbols changed. Curious, Crae kept pressing at random, watching the symbols change, almost mesmerized. He was barely aware of his men coming up behind him, cautious in their approach.

  The dreadful shrieking stopped in mid-voice. Everyone started at the sudden silence.

  “That’s better,” Crae managed. He closed the little thing awkwardly. “Now let’s find her.”

  But before they could move on his words, an unwelcome voice stopped them.

  “First the guardian, now the lostling,” Tharp snapped. “Captain Crae, what is happening here?” He was flanked by the outlander, Lord Bahard, along with Lord Camrin. No doubt Camrin had given Lord Tharp an earful on the way back from the field.

  Crae bowed deeply to Lord Tharp, trying to keep his face wiped of expression. He glanced once at Lord Bahard, dressed as always in his mottled green, standing just beside Lord Tharp as if he were his equal. Not even Lord Camrin stood so.

  “We have the stronghold under heavy watch, sir. The postern gates and the outbuildings are all being searched. We will find her.”

  Bahard snorted. “You better. She can’t go back, Tharp. If she gets through, she’ll find the guns in the house on the other side. Once she goes to the police, that’s it. They shut us down.” He lifted his hands. “We just got the damn thing open again. You said yourself, you don’t know how long that will last. We don’t have a lot of time. If she gets through before we can stop her, it’s all over.”

  Crae stared at him. “The gordath is open?” So we are too late, he thought. Stavin had not even been able to talk to Tharp, let alone convince him to turn from his course.