Some two weeks later, Paran heard a very strange story about Addaric’s disappearance. While in Aberwyn, he lived with his father, a widower, and his unmarried sister. They had one of the biggest houses in town, a two-story roundhouse set on a couple of acres where they kept a cow and three pigs, while a flock of chickens roamed among the greens and turnips in the kitchen garden. That particular afternoon he was working in the garden, in fact, when a horseman rode up to the gate in the earthen wall that surrounded the homestead. At the hysterical barking of the family dogs, Paran got up, dusting off the knees of his brigga, and recognized Matun from Lord Cadlomar’s warband.
“Morrow, lad! What brings you here? My sister’s down at the market with my father, if it’s either love or commerce.”
“Neither, truly, but a word with you.”
“Come in, then. Ye gods, hounds! Will you stop your demon-get barking?”
Inside, the central fire smoldered under the smoke hole. In the curve of the round wall, under a row of tankards hanging from pegs, stood a big barrel of ale. Paran dipped them both out some drink and sat his guest down at the wooden table by the hearthstone.
“It’s about Addaric,” Matun said. “Did you hear that he was killed in that god-cursed forest you warned us about?”
“I hadn’t, but it aches my heart to hear it now. What did he do, charge right in there?”
“Just that.” Matun looked up, his eyes snapping rage. “He and the kennel master went in, but only Omillo came out. We searched and searched, and finally we found the place where he’d been killed. Here, you might have warned us about the blasted bears!”
“Bears? I didn’t see any bears.”
“But that’s what got him. We found its tracks, and they were huge. It must have been an enormous bear, or so the kennel master said. There was a tuft of black fur caught on a thorn, too. Addaric’s bloody sword was nearby.”
“Did you ever find his body?”
Matun shook his head no. There were tears in his eyes.
“He was a good friend of yours, was he?”
“I loved him, and I don’t give a pig’s fart who knows it, either.” He had a long swallow of ale. “I loved him better than that rotten little bitch he had in the village did, too, her and her cursed mincing and flirting with the rest of us lads.” Then he did cry, dropping his face into his hands and sobbing aloud.
Paran got up and wandered to the doorway to look out while Matun got himself under control. He wondered very much about that huge black bear, very much indeed, because the only bears he’d ever seen to the west were small brown ones. He glanced back to find Matun sniffing into his sleeve and swallowing heavily, gave him an encouraging smile, and wandered back to the table again.
“So you came here to reproach me for your friend’s death?”
“I did, but it seems stupid now. You did warn us about the forest, and even if you’d told us about the bears, that wouldn’t have held Addaric back anyway. He was all keen to go into the cursed place because he felt shamed.”
“And why did he feel shamed?”
“Oh, the night before he woke us all up. He said he heard someone talking to him, but when he got there, she was gone.”
“She?”
“That’s what he said. Some woman’s voice.”
“Oh, did he now? Well, lad, my heart truly aches for you and Addaric both. I only wish he’d listened to me and left the forest alone. I think me it’s wilder than we can know.”
For the rest of that day Paran tried to talk himself out of the idea that kept haunting him, but when his father and sister returned from the marketplace, he announced that he was leaving on the morrow to set off west again. He couldn’t quite bring himself to say why.
Since he’d already traveled this stretch of country, Paran reached the forest with no trouble. Round about noon on a hot summer day, he even found the exact spot where Addaric and his men had camped, thanks to the scar left on the land by their fire pit and the bones of the fawn, scattered all over the meadow by the ravens and badgers. He shrugged off his pack, laid it down by the pit, and stood for a long time, shading his eyes with one hand and staring at the dark and silent wall of forest. Now that he’d come so far, he certainly wasn’t about to turn round and go home again, but he had to admit that he was frightened, and more than fear, he felt futility. For all he knew, Addaric might be wandering through a ghost forest in the Otherlands.
“Well,” he said to nothing in particular. “I might as well wait till the morrow, go in right at dawn, like, when there’s a whole day’s light ahead of me.”
Yet, once the sun was well down and the not quite full moon rising, the sorceress came to him. Paran was on his knees, nursing a fire of gleaned deadfall, when he heard her laughing behind him.
“Good eve, my lady. Won’t you join me at my fire?”
“You are a civil man, Paran of Aberwyn. Unlike some as I could mention.”
Moving silently on bare feet, she came round and stood before him as he kneeled. That night she seemed more solid than he was remembering her, a young lass dressed in a boy’s tunic, a hunting bow dangling carelessly in one hand.
“I suppose you’ve come to ask me to give him back,” she said.
“Addaric? I have, at that. He’s got kinfolk at home who love him and miss him, you see. It’s for their sake I’ve come, to be honest, not so much for his.”
“Civil and a good judge of character.” She grinned, revealing sharp-pointed teeth. “What will you give me in return?”
“What would you like? Gold and jewels? I’m not a rich man, and no more are Addaric’s friends, but no doubt I could scrounge together a ransom once I know your demands.”
“I have no use for that.”
“Fine horses? Addaric’s lord owes a legal blood price for the lad, two war-worthy geldings and a broodmare.”
“No use for them, either. There’s no fodder for horses in my forests.”
“Well, then, won’t you name me a price?”
“You.”
Paran could only stare. All at once he understood what that tired old way of speaking, “feeling your blood run cold,” meant in the flesh. She was smiling, staring down at the dirt scattered round the fire pit, drawing a pattern in it with her big toe like some shy country lass.
“What would you want with me?”
“I don’t know, but I’ll wager you’re less boring than he is. He’s a pretty lad, but your gods didn’t give him much in the way of wits.” She looked up, and suddenly her smile was all malice, her eyes cold and snakelike. “But that doesn’t matter. I’ve named my price. Will you pay it or not?”
All at once he saw her as huge, towering over him, towering over the forest, swelling up the way a candle flame will do in a draught, and he knew that he’d been a fool to ever think her human and a sorceress.
“Are you a goddess, then?”
“Naught of the sort.” She flickered back to a normal shape, as a candle flame will do when the door’s been shut and the draft stopped. “This is my forest, and the folk who live here are mine to guard, but the gods are far, far above the likes of me.” She smiled again, but briefly. “You haven’t answered my question.”
“If I just go away again, what will happen to Addaric?”
“He’ll wander with my people till he dies.”
Sitting on his heels Paran considered his tiny fire as if it could give him advice. For all that he loved hidden things, at that moment he found himself thirsting for his family’s company and the familiar streets of Aberwyn. But he, at least, could learn from the lady, while Addaric would wander with her retinue like a tame beast.
“Well, I’ll tell you,” he said at last. “If I’m the prize you want, then you shall have me. But how will Addaric find his way home again? Without a guide, he’ll wander around out here and starve to death. Can you take him home with your dweomer?”
“I can take him to the edge of his lord’s fields, and surely even he can find his way back f
rom there.”
“I’m sure he will, my lady.” Paran got to his feet, but he felt as if he were hauling up an enormous weight. “Done, then. That’ll be our bargain. You take Addaric home, and I’ll come with you.”
She laughed, jiggling a few steps of a dance like a farm lass. For a brief moment she looked to be a lovely young lass, too, all golden and smiling as she held her arms out to him.
“Give me a kiss, Paran of Aberwyn.”
“Whatever my lady wants.”
“What? Don’t you want to take one?”
When he said nothing, she scowled, staring into his eyes as if she were reading his thoughts.
“Well, then,” she snapped. “I’ll do the taking!”
Never in his life had he been kissed like that, with a passion as sweet as it was urgent. With a gasp he caught his breath and reached to kiss her again. She was gone. He stood alone by a dying fire under the spread of stars and heard her voice, flying round like a lark.
“All that will have to wait, since you value your blood kin more highly than me. You drive a hard bargain, Paran of Aberwyn. I hope you like the terms of it once you’re home.”
Across the meadow, the dark forest stretched like a rampart. Paran dropped to his knees and wept, just from the missing of her.
In the morning, with the first light of dawn, Addaric came stumbling out of the forest, and he was carrying a leather sack stuffed with food for their journey home, as well. He tossed the sack down, fell at Paran’s feet, and threw his arms around his rescuer’s knees so fervently that he nearly tumbled Paran to the ground.
“Thank the gods, oh thank the gods you came! How did you—what did you—that bitch! That wretched rotten bitch! How did you get the better of her?”
Paran nearly slapped him across the face, but he restrained himself.
“Get up, lad, get up. We’ve got a long walk ahead of us.”
“Walk?” Addaric let him go and slouched back on his heels. “Walk? Walk the whole cursed way? Didn’t you bring any horses?”
“I didn’t at that. Now get up before I leave you here.”
The long walk home improved neither Addaric’s moral fiber nor his temper, and Paran was more than glad to leave him at his lord’s door by the time they reached it. He was also glad to take the lord’s reward, too, not so much for saving Addaric, as for enduring him on the walk home, and he gave the fine horses in question to his sister for her dowry. No one believed Addaric, of course, when he talked of being ensnared by a beautiful sorceress. The lad had just plain gotten himself lost, or so the popular opinion ran, and he was too piss-proud stubborn to admit the truth. For some months their adventure was the talk of Aberwyn, but by spring, the folk found other things to marvel over and, as folk will, forgot.
Paran, however, always remembered that kiss in the wild meadow. Torn as he was between fear and regret, her memory haunted his dreams for years, while awake he shuddered at the thought of her. Although his mapping took him back to her forest many a time, he never saw her or her strange shy people again, not even when he lingered by her river in hopes of catching a glimpse of her—not, of course, that he could admit he was lingering. During all those long years he never married, living alone in the roundhouse after his father died and his sister found a man of her own. Finally, when his hair had turned steel gray, and he knew that his legs were beginning to lose their spring, he gave away everything he owned and left Aberwyn for the west. When he never came back, most people believed that he’d died in the wilderness, eaten by bears, maybe, or drowned, more likely, or just plain starved to death somewhere in the wild.
The truth of the matter is, though, that he walked into her forest and found the circular clearing, not far from the river that we call Delonderiel, which was the place where first he’d seen her. He shrugged off his pack and stood for a moment, staring around at the silent trees.
“Lady?” he called. “My lady Briaclan, can you hear me? I’ve come as a suppliant. I’ll sit here and starve myself at your doorstep, just as if you were a great lord who’d wronged me, and the last word I speak will be the name you told to young Addaric, all those years ago.”
He stooped and turned out his pack, strewing the stuff about to show her that he carried not a morsel of food, then sat down cross-legged in the grass. He’d barely settled himself, though, when she came strolling through the trees. She was wearing a dress of some pale stuff that shimmered round her like sunlight.
“So, you’ve come back to me, have you, Paran of Aberwyn?”
“I’ve come back many a time. You never showed yourself.”
“You never asked, nor did you call to me, nor say one word about me. Why?”
“Why didn’t you ever call out to me?”
“I asked my question first, and so you answer first.”
“Fair enough. I was afraid that I’d love you more than any man should love a woman, and then I’d be a different man.”
“Odd, that. I was afraid I’d love you more than one of my kind should love a mortal, and then I’d have changed beyond thinking. I’d say our answers are much alike.”
“And I’d say the same.” He looked away with a sigh for the foolishness of pride. “Is it too late for you to have me back?”
“Never. Come here.”
Hand in hand they walked off through the woods, and never once did he look back nor think of his pack and his gear, lying scattered over the grass. And some say that thanks to the lady’s great dweomer, Paran is still alive, wandering with her and her people under the wheel of the sky, but as to the truth of that, I couldn’t say.
Sisters in Fantasy Page 28
