“Justin?”
“Well, north,” she said vaguely, as if that alone explained itself. “It’s fey, beyond the border. Odd things happen. We must be watchful.”
We were silent. The tavern keeper came with our supper. Danica, pouring wine the same pale honey as her hair, looked thoughtful at the warning instead of cross. “What kinds of things?”
“Evidently harpers are stolen by dragons,” I said. “Dragons with some taste in music.”
“Black Tremptor is not musical,” Justin said simply. “But like that, yes. There are so many tales, who knows which of them might be true? And we barely know the harper any better than the northlands.”
“His name,” I said, “and that he plays well.”
“He plays wonderfully,” Fleur breathed. “So they say.”
“And he caught the queen’s eye,” Christabel said, biting into a chicken leg. “So he might look passable. Though with good musicians, that hardly matters.”
“And he went north,” Justin pointed out. “For what?”
“To find a song,” Fleur suggested; it seemed, as gifted as he was, not unlikely.
“Or a harp,” I guessed. “A magical harp.”
Justin nodded. “Guarded by a powerful dragon. It’s possible. Such things happen, north.”
Fleur pushed her dish aside, sank tableward onto her fists. She is straw-thin, with a blacksmith’s appetite; love, I could tell, for this fantasy, made her ignore the last of her parsnips. She has pale, curly hair like a sheep, and a wonderful, caressing voice; her eyes are small, her nose big, her teeth crooked, but her passionate, musical voice has proved Christabel right more times than was good for Fleur’s husband to know. How robust, practical Christabel, who scarcely seemed to notice men or music, understood such things, I wasn’t sure.
“So,” I said. “North.”
And then we strayed into the country called “Remember-when,” for we had known one another as children in the court at Carnelaine, and then as members of the queen’s company, riding ideals headlong into trouble, and now, as long and trusted friends. We got to bed late, enchanted by our memories, and out of bed far too early, wondering obviously why we had left hearth and home, husband, child, cat and goosedown bed for one another’s surly company. Christabel sniffed, Danica snapped, Fleur babbled, I was terse. As always, only Justin was bearable.
We rode north.
The farther we travelled, the wilder the country grew. We moved quickly, slept under trees or in obscure inns, for five armed women riding together are easily remembered, and knights dangerous to the harper as well as solicitous of the queen would have known to track us. Slowly the great, dark crags bordering the queen’s marches came closer and closer to meet us, until we reached, one sunny afternoon, their shadow.
“Now what?” Danica asked fretfully. “Do we fly over that?” They were huge, barren thrusts of stone pushing high out of forests like bone out of skin. She looked at Justin; we all did. There was a peculiar expression on her face, as if she recognized something she had only seen before in dreams.
“There will be a road,” she said softly. We were in thick forest; old trees marched in front of us, beside us, flanked us. Not even they had found a way to climb the peaks.
“Where, Justin?” I asked.
“We must wait until sunset.”
We found a clearing, where the road we followed abruptly turned to amble west along a stream. Christabel and Danica went hunting. Fleur checked our supplies and mended a tear in her cloak. I curried the horses. Justin, who had gone to forage, came back with mushrooms, nuts and a few wild apples. She found another brush and helped me.
“Is it far now?” I asked, worried about finding supplies in the wilderness, about the horses, about Christabel’s stubbornly lingering cold, even, a little, about the harper. Justin picked a burr out of her mount’s mane. A line ran across her smooth brow.
“Not far beyond those peaks,” she answered. “It’s just that—”
“Just what?”
“We must be so careful.”
“We’re always careful. Christabel can put an arrow into anything that moves, Danica can—”
“I don’t mean that. I mean: the world shows a different face beyond those peaks.” I looked at her puzzledly; she shook her head; gazing at the mountains, somehow wary and entranced at once. “Sometimes real, sometimes unreal—”
“The harper is real, the dragon is real,” I said briskly. “And we are real. If I can remember that, we’ll be fine.”
She touched my shoulder, smiling. “I think you’re right, Anne. It’s your prosaic turn of mind that will bring us all home again.”
But she was wrong.
The sun, setting behind a bank of sullen clouds, left a message: a final shaft of light hit what looked like solid stone ahead of us and parted it. We saw a faint, white road that cut out of the trees and into the base of two great crags: the light seemed to ease one wall of stone aside, like a gate. Then the light faded, and we were left staring at the solid wall, memorizing the landscape.
“It’s a woman’s profile,” Fleur said. “The road runs beneath the bridge of her nose.”
“It’s a one-eared cat,” Christabel suggested.
“The road is west of the higher crag,” Danica said impatiently. “We should simply ride toward that.”
“The mountains will change and change again before we reach it,” I said. “The road comes out of that widow’s peak of trees. It’s the highest point of the forest. We only need to follow the edge of the trees.”
“The widow,” Danica murmured, “is upside-down.”
I shrugged. “The harper found his way. It can’t be that difficult.”
“Perhaps,” Fleur suggested, “he followed a magical path.”
“He parted stone with his harping,” Christabel said stuffily. “If he’s that clever, he can play his way out of the dragon’s mouth, and we can all turn around and go sleep in our beds.”
“Oh, Christabel,” Fleur mourned, her voice like a sweet flute. “Sit down. I’ll make you herb tea with wild honey in it; you’ll sleep on clouds tonight.”
We all had herb tea, with brandy and the honey Fleur had found, but only Fleur slept through the thunderstorm. We gathered ourselves wetly at dawn, slogged through endless dripping forest, until suddenly there were no more trees, there was no more rain, only the unexpected sun illumining a bone-white road into the great upsweep of stone ahead of us.
We rode beyond the land we knew.
I don’t know where we slept that first night: wherever we fell off our horses, I think. In the morning we saw Black Tremptor’s mountain, a dragon’s palace of cliffs and jagged columns and sheer walls ascending into cloud. As we rode down the slope toward it, the cloud wrapped itself down around the mountain, hid it. The road, wanting nothing to do with dragons, turned at the edge of the forest and ran off the wrong direction. We pushed into trees. The forest on that side was very old, the trees so high, their green boughs so thick, we could barely see the sky, let alone the dragon’s lair. But I have a strong sense of direction, of where the sun rises and sets, that kept us from straying. The place was soundless. Fleur and Christabel kept arrows ready for bird or deer, but we saw nothing on four legs or two: only spiders, looking old as the forest, weaving webs as huge and intricate as tapestry in the trees.
“It’s so still,” Fleur breathed. “As if it is waiting for music.”
Christabel turned a bleary eye at her and sniffed. But Fleur was right: the stillness did seem magical, an intention out of someone’s head. As we listened, the rain began again. We heard it patter from bough to bough a long time before it reached us.
Night fell the same way: sliding slowly down from the invisible sky, catching us without fresh kill, in the rain without a fire. Silent, we rode until we could barely see. We stopped finally, while we could still imagine one another’s faces.
“The harper made it through,” Danica said softly; what Celandine’s trou
blesome, faceless lover could do, so could we.
“There’s herbs and honey and more brandy,” Christabel said. Fleur, who suffered most from hunger, having a hummingbird’s energy, said nothing. Justin lifted her head sharply.
“I smell smoke.”
I saw the light then: two square eyes and one round among the distant trees. I sighed with relief and felt no pity for whoever in that quiet cottage was about to find us on the doorstep.
But the lady of the cottage did not seem discomfitted to see five armed, dripping, hungry travellers wanting to invade her house.
“Come in,” she said. “Come in.” As we filed through the door, I saw all the birds and animals we had missed in the forest circle the room around us: stag and boar and owl, red deer, hare and mourning dove. I blinked, and they were motionless: things of thread and paint and wood, embroidered onto curtains, carved into the backs of chairs, painted on the rafters. Before I could speak, smells assaulted us, and I felt Fleur stagger against me.
“You poor children.” Old as we were, she was old enough to say that. “Wet and weary and hungry.” She was a bird-like soul herself: a bit of magpie in her curious eyes, a bit of hawk’s beak in her nose. Her hair looked fine and white as spider web, her knuckles like swollen tree boles. Her voice was kindly, and so was her warm hearth, and the smells coming out of her kitchen. Even her skirt was hemmed with birds. “Sit down. I’ve been baking bread, and there’s a hot meat pie almost done in the oven.” She turned, to give something simmering in a pot over the fire a stir. “Where are you from and where are you bound?”
“We are from the court of Queen Celandine,” I said. “We have come searching for her harper. Did he pass this way?”
“Ah,” she said, her face brightening. “A tall man with golden hair and a voice to match his harping?”
“Sounds like,” Christabel said.
“He played for me, such lovely songs. He said he had to find a certain harp. He ate nothing and was gone before sunrise.” She gave the pot another stir. “Is he lost?”
“Black Tremptor has him.”
“Oh, terrible.” She shook her head. “He is fortunate to have such good friends to rescue him.”
“He is the queen’s good friend,” I said, barely listening to myself as the smell from the pot curled into me, “and we are hers. What is that you are cooking?”
“Just a little something for my bird.”
“You found a bird?” Fleur said faintly, trying to be sociable. “We saw none…Whatever do you feed it? It smells good enough to eat.”
“Oh, no, you must not touch it; it is only bird-fare. I have delicacies for you.”
“What kind of bird is it?” Justin asked. The woman tapped the spoon on the edge of the pot, laid it across the rim.
“Oh, just a little thing. A little, hungry thing I found. You’re right: the forest has few birds. That’s why I sew and paint my birds and animals, to give me company. There’s wine,” she added. “I’ll get it for you.”
She left. Danica paced; Christabel sat close to the fire, indifferent to the smell of the pot bubbling under her stuffy nose. Justin had picked up a small wooden boar and was examining it idly. Fleur drifted, pale as cloud; I kept an eye on her to see she did not topple into the fire. The old woman had trouble, it seemed, finding cups.
“How strange,” Justin breathed. “This looks so real, every tiny bristle.”
Fleur had wandered to the hearth to stare down into the pot. I heard it bubble fatly. She gave one pleading glance toward the kitchen, but still there was nothing to eat but promises. She had the spoon in her hand suddenly, I thought to stir.
“It must be a very strange bird to eat mushrooms,” she commented. “And what looks like—” Justin put the boar down so sharply I jumped, but Fleur lifted the spoon to her lips. “Lamb,” she said happily. And then she vanished: there was only a frantic lark fluttering among the rafters, sending plea after lovely plea for freedom.
The woman reappeared. “My bird,” she cried. “My pretty.” I was on my feet with my sword drawn before I could even close my mouth. I swung, but the old witch didn’t linger to do battle. A hawk caught the lark in its claws; the door swung open, and both birds disappeared into the night.
We ran into the dark, stunned and horrified. The door slammed shut behind us like a mouth. The fire dwindled into two red flames that stared like eyes out of the darkened windows. They gave no light; we could see nothing.
“That bloody web-haired old spider,” Danica said furiously. “That horrible, putrid witch.” I heard a thump as she hit a tree; she cursed painfully. Someone hammered with solid, methodical blows at the door and windows; I guessed Christabel was laying siege. But nothing gave. She groaned with frustration. I felt a touch and raised my sword; Justin said sharply, “It’s me.” She put her hand on my shoulder; I felt myself tremble.
“Now what?” I said tersely. I could barely speak; I only wanted action, but we were blind and bumbling in the dark.
“I think she doesn’t kill them,” Justin said. “She changes them. Listen to me. She’ll bring Fleur back into her house eventually. We’ll find someone to tell us how to free her from the spell. Someone in this wilderness of magic should know. And not everyone is cruel.”
“We’ll stay here until the witch returns.”
“I doubt she’ll return until we’re gone. And even if we find some way to kill her, we may be left with an embroidered Fleur.”
“We’ll stay.”
“Anne,” she said, and I slumped to the ground, wanting to curse, to weep, wanting at the very least to tear the clinging cobweb dark away from my eyes.
“Poor Fleur,” I whispered. “She was only hungry…Harper or no, we rescue her when we learn how. She comes first.”
“Yes,” she agreed at that, and added thoughtfully, “The harper eluded the witch, it seems, though not the dragon.”
“How could he have known?” I asked bitterly. “By what magic?”
“Maybe he had met the witch first in a song.”
Morning found us littered across tree roots like the remains of some lost battle. At least we could see again. The house had flown itself away; only a couple of fiery feathers remained. We rose wordlessly, feeling the empty place where Fleur had been, listening for her morning chatter. We fed the horses, ate stone-hard bread with honey, and had a swallow of brandy apiece. Then we left Fleur behind and rode.
The great forest finally thinned, turned to golden oak, which parted now and then around broad meadows where we saw the sky again, and the high dark peak. We passed through a village, a mushroom patch of a place, neither friendly nor surly, nor overly curious. We found an inn, and some supplies, and, beyond the village, a road to the dragon’s mountain that had been cleared, we were told, before the mountain had become the dragon’s lair. Yes, we were also told, a harper had passed through…He seemed to have left little impression on the villagers, but they were a hard-headed lot, living under the dragon’s shadow. He, too, had asked directions, as well as questions about Black Tremptor, and certain tales of gold and magic harps and other bits of country lore. But no one else had taken that road for decades, leading, as it did, into the dragon’s mouth.
We took it. The mountain grew clearer, looming high above the trees. We watched for dragon wings, dragon fire, but if Black Tremptor flew, it was not by day. The rain had cleared; a scent like dying roses and aged sunlit wood seemed to blow across our path. We camped on one of the broad, grassy clearings where we watched the full moon rise, turn the meadow milky, and etch the dragon’s lair against the stars.
But for Fleur, the night seemed magical. We talked of her, and then of home; we talked of her, and then of court gossip; we talked of her, and of the harper, and what might have lured him away from Celandine into a dragon’s claw. And as we spoke of him, it seemed his music fell around us from the stars, and that the moonlight in the oak wood had turned to gold.
“Sh!” Christabel said sharply, and, drowsy, we
quieted to listen. Danica yawned.
“It’s just harping.” She had an indifferent ear: Fleur was more persuasive about the harper’s harping than his harping would have been. “Just a harping from the woods.”
“Someone’s singing,” Christabel said. I raised my brows, feeling that in the untroubled, sweetly scented night, anything might happen.
“Is it our missing Kestral?”
“Singing in a tree?” Danica guessed. Christabel sat straight.
“Be quiet,” she said sharply. Justin, lying on her stomach, tossing twigs into the fire, glanced at her surprisedly. Danica and I only laughed, at Christabel in a temper.
“You have no hearts,” she said, blowing her nose fiercely. “It’s so beautiful and all you can do is gabble.”
“All right,” Justin said soothingly. “We’ll listen.” But, moonstruck, Danica and I could not keep still. We told raucous tales of old loves while Christabel strained to hear, and Justin watched her curiously. She seemed oddly moved, did Christabel; feverish, I thought, from all the rain.
A man rode out of the trees into the moonlight at the edge of the meadow. He had milky hair, broad shoulders; a gold mantle fanned across his horse’s back. The crown above his shadowed face was odd: a circle of uneven gold spikes, like antlers. He was unarmed; he played the harp.
“Not our harper,” Danica commented. “Unless the dragon turned his hair white.”
“He’s a king,” I said. “Not ours.” For a moment, just a moment, I heard his playing, and knew it could have parted water, made birds speak. I caught my breath; tears swelled behind my eyes. Then Danica said something and I laughed.
Christabel stood up. Her face was unfamiliar in the moonlight. She took off her boots, unbraided her hair, let it fall loosely down her back; all this while we only watched and laughed and glanced now and then, indifferently, at the waiting woodland harper.
“You’re hopeless boors,” Christabel said, sniffing. “I’m going to speak to him, ask him to come and sit with us.”
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