The Blue Sword d-1

by Robin McKinley

  "Yes," she sighed, and tapped a finger on Gonturan's hilt, and thought of the red-haired rider on the white horse. He had looked as though he knew where he was going, although she had to admit that he had also looked as if the knowledge gave him no joy.

  "Not he," said the man with yellow hair. "The Lady Aerin. You should begin to recognize her, you know; you have seen her often enough."

  She blinked at him.

  "You carry her sword, and ride to a fate not entirely of your own choosing. It is not surprising that she in some manner chooses to ride with you. She knew much of fate."

  Not surprising. It continued to surprise her. She would prefer that it surprise her, in fact. She permitted herself—just briefly—to think about her Homeland, with the wide grassy low hills and blue rivers, when the only sword she knew was her father's dress sword, which was not sharp and which she was forbidden to touch; and where the only sand was at the seaside. She rediscovered herself staring at a silver pot over a tiny fire.

  "I'm afraid I can't comfort you very much with predictions; it is pleasant when I can comfort anyone with predictions, and I always enjoy it as much as possible because it doesn't happen too often. But I can tell you even less than I can usually tell anyone, and it hurts my pride." His hand closed around the dark stone at his neck; it glowed through his fingers like fire.

  She looked at him, startled.

  "You have already begun to see the hardness of the choices that you will soon be forced to make; and the choosing will not be any easier for your not knowing why you must choose." His voice took on a singsong quality, the red light of the stone pulsed like a heart, and the heavy eyelids almost closed.

  "Take strength from your own purpose, for you will know what you must do, if you let yourself; trust your horse and the cat that follows you, for there are none better than they, and they love you; and trust your sword, for she holds the strength of centuries and she hates what you are learning to hate. And trust the Lady Aerin, who visits you for your reassurance, whether you believe it at present or not; and trust your friendships. Friends you will have need of, for in you two worlds meet. There is no one on both sides with you, so you must learn to take your own counsel; and not to fear what is strange, if you know it also to be true." He opened his eyes. "It is not an enviable position, being a bridge, especially a bridge with visions. I should know."

  "You're Luthe, of course," she said.

  "Of course. I told Corlath in particular to bring you—although he has always brought his Riders if he brings anyone. And I knew you had been made a Rider. I don't ask for anyone often; you should be pleased."

  "I can see the two worlds I am between," she said, unheeding, "although why the second one chose to rise up and snatch me I still don't understand—"

  "Ask Colonel Dedham the next time you see him," Luthe put in.

  "The next—? But—" she said, bewildered, and thrown off her thought.

  "You were about to ask me a question important to you, for you were trying to put your thoughts in order, when I interrupted you," said Luthe mildly, "although I won't be able to answer it. I told you I am not often comforting."

  "What are your two worlds?" she said, almost obliterating the question as she continued: "But if you can't answer it, why should I ask? Can you hear everything I'm thinking?"

  "No," he replied. "Only those arrow-like thoughts that come flying out with particular violence. You have a better organized mind than most. Most people are distressing to talk to because they have no control over their thinking at all, and it is a constant barrage, like being attacked by a tangle of thornbushes, or having a large litter of kittens walking up your legs, hooking in their claws at every step. It's perhaps also an effective preventative to having one's mind read, for who can identify the individual thorn?"

  Harry laughed involuntarily. "Innath said you lived where you do, high up and away from everything, because lowland air clouds your mind."

  "True enough. It is a little embarrassing to be forced to play the enigmatic oracle in the mountain fastness, but I have found it necessary.

  "Corlath, for example, when he has something on his mind, can knock me down with it at arm's length. He's often asked me to come stay in his prison that he calls a city, saying that I might like it as it is made of the same stone as this—" He gestured upward. "No thank you." He smiled. "He does not love the stone walls of his city, and so he does not understand why I do love my walls; to him they look the same. But he knows me better than to press it, or to be offended."

  "If it is only within arm's length you find Corlath overwhelming, I have no sympathy for you," Harry said ruefully, and he laughed.

  "We soothsayers have other means of resistance," he said, "But I shall be sure to tell him you said so."

  She sobered. "I'd rather you didn't, if you don't mind. I'm afraid we're—we're not on the best of terms just now."

  Luthe drummed his fingers on the wooden armrest. "Yes, I did rather suspect that, and I'm sorry for it, for you need each other." He drummed some more. "Or at any rate he needs you, and you could do a lot worse than to believe in him." Luthe rubbed his forehead. "But I will grant you that he is a stubborn man at times."

  He was silent a moment. "Aerin was a little like that; but she was also a little like you … Aerin was very dear to me." He smiled faintly. "Teachers are always vain of the students who go on to do great things."

  "Aerin?" said Harry. "Aerin? Lady Aerin of this sword?"—and she banged the hilt of Gonturan.

  "Yes," said Luthe gently. "The same red-haired Aerin who troubles you with visions. You asked me about my two worlds: you could say that they are the past and the present."

  After a long cold moment Harry said, "Why did you ask Corlath to bring me here?"

  "I told you that, surely. Because I knew he needed you; and I wanted to find out if you were the sort of vessel that cracks easily."

  Harry took a deep breath. "And am I?"

  "I think you will do very well." He smiled. "And that is a much more straightforward answer than anyone consulting an oracle has a right to expect. I shall stop feeling guilty about you."

  Corlath and his Riders spent two days in Luthe's hall; the horses grazed in a broad meadow, the only wide stretch of sunlit green within a day's journey of the tree-filled valley where Luthe made his home. Harry found Sungold tearing across the field, head up and tail a banner, on the first morning, the toilsome way up the mountain apparently forgotten. He galloped over to where Harry leaned on the frame of the open stable, where a few of the horses still lingered inside, musing over their hay. "You make me tired," said Harry absently, thinking of her conversation with Luthe. "You should be recuperating, not bounding around like a wild foal." Tsornin thrust his nose under her chin, unrepentant. "You realize we will have to do the whole thing again shortly? And then go on—and on and on? You should be harboring your strength." Sungold nibbled her hair.

  The other Riders and the fifteen other horsemen slowly seeped out of the tall stone house. Harry tried to decide, watching them, if any had had bewildering conversations with their host; but she couldn't guess, and it did not seem the sort of thing one might ask. They all looked only semi-awake, as if the journey so far—this was the first real halt since they left the City—combined with the sweet peacefulness of Luthe's domain prevented the lot of saddle-hardened warriors from feeling anything but pleasantly drowsy. They smiled at one another and leaned on their swords, and even tended their precious horses nonchalantly, as though they knew that the horses did not need them here. Narknon, so far as Harry could tell, never moved from her bed; she merely stretched out when Harry left it, and reluctantly permitted herself to be shoved to one side when Harry re-entered. Harry, although she felt the same gentle air around her, was surprised; whatever it was, it had less effect on her.

  Corlath himself strode around in his usual high-energy fashion; if any sense of ease was trying to settle on him, it was having a hard time of it, for he was no different than he
ever was, although he did not seem surprised at the condition of his followers. Harry stayed out of his way, and if he noticed this, he gave no sign. Mostly he spoke to Luthe—Harry saw with interest, on the occasions she saw them together, that Corlath seemed to do far more talking than his companion—or muttered to himself. The mutter-ings couldn't have been pleasant, for he was often scowling.

  The two days were fine and clear; warm enough during the day to make bathing in the pool at the edge of the horses' meadow pleasant, cool enough at night to make the blankets on the beds in the sleeping-chambers of comfort. The torches that formed a ring outside the front gates of the hall were not lit again; Luthe was willing to welcome his guests, but did not deem further illumination necessary.

  On the second afternoon Harry followed the stream that spilled out of the bathing-pool, and after a certain amount of fighting with curling branches and tripping over hidden hummocks she burst out of the undergrowth to a still silver beach bordering a wide lake. The Lake of Dreams. The stream stopped its chattering as it left the edge of the woods, and slid silently over the silver sand and slipped into the waters of the lake. Harry went to the edge of it and sat down, looking at the water. There was a step at her side; she looked up and it was Luthe. "There is a path," he said. "You should have asked." He bent down and detached a twig from her hair, and another from the back of her tunic. Then he sat down beside her. "I will show you the way to return."

  "Do you live here alone?" Harry said, extracting a leaf from the neck of her undershift.

  "No," he replied, "but my housemates are even shyer than I am, and have a tendency to retreat into the undergrowth when visitors are anticipated. There are quite a number of visitors, now and again."

  "The oracle is a popular one," said Harry, smiling.

  Luthe smiled back, but sidelong. "Yes; I think it may be private dismay that sends my companions away at such times; they have something of kelar and the Sight themselves."

  He did not seem disposed to go on, so Harry said: "Does everyone who comes here behave as though they're half asleep?"

  "No again; I and my friends are generally quite sharp. But yes, most visitors find it a sleepy sort of place—a reputation I, um, encourage, as it makes their thoughts sleepy too, and thus easier to dodge."

  Harry said, "Encourage?"

  Luthe said, "You are not a sleepy one, are you? The source of the Meeldtar taints all the water here; and the air that passes over the Lake of Dreams carries something of sleepiness with it. Only those bearing much kelar of their own do not find that faintest touch of the Water of Sight a little drowsy. Like you. And Corlath."

  Harry, at that, caught a thought just as it was streaking out, and stuffed it back behind her eyes.

  "Very good," said Luthe. "I thought you might prove apt. I didn't catch a glimpse of that one."

  Harry smiled faintly.

  "I suspect, however, that it might make you more comfortable to ask me it nonetheless," Luthe said, looking into her face; but she turned away.

  "Corlath, eh?" Luthe said gently.

  Harry shook her head, not denying it, but as though she could shake herself free of her anxieties; but Luthe said no more. At last she stood up, gazing across the lake; she could not see its farther shore. "It is so large," she said.

  Luthe rose to stand beside her. "No, not so large," he said, "but it is a private sort of lake, and hard to see. Even for me." He was quiet a moment, looking across the water. "I think perhaps the reason I stay in this particular uninhabited valley of all the uninhabited valleys in the Hills is that it comforts me by reminding me of things I cannot do. I cannot see the farther shore of the Lake of Dreams." He turned away. "Come; I will show you the path. Unless you prefer fighting your way through the poor trees, which are accustomed to being undisturbed."

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  The third morning dawned as bright and valiant as the two before; and still slightly bemused but cheerful, Corlath's entourage made itself ready to follow its leader back down the mountain. Harry contrived to be the very last of the file, and she looked around her as the penultimate horse and rider left the clearing before the hall and disappeared down the close-grown trail. She had been standing where she was standing now when Corlath had stepped into the clearing before the hall, Fireheart at his heels, to bid farewell to the man he had come to see. They spoke a few words, too low for her to hear as she skulked in the background, as well as anyone on a tall bright chestnut horse with a hunting-cat at its feet could skulk; and then she saw Corlath hold out one hand, palm down and fingers spread, toward Luthe. They held each other's eyes for a long moment, and then Luthe reached out two fingers to touch the back of Corlath's hand. Corlath turned away and mounted, and the Riders began following him into the mouth of the trail.

  Narknon was yawning hugely, leaning against one of Sungold's forelegs. She had been grumbling to herself all morning, although she seemed to know they were leaving, since she had at last deigned to climb out of bed and follow Harry as Harry took her saddle and gear and went to fetch Sungold. Harry thought with surprise that in just two days she had grown fond of her surroundings and was sorry to leave. This place felt like home; not her home perhaps, but someone's home, accustomed to shelter and keep and befriend its master. Its emptiness did not have the hollow ring of Corlath's castle, for all that the proud City castle was more richly furnished. She told herself straitly that her affection for this place could too easily be only that she dreaded what the path away from this haven was leading her toward. She found Luthe standing beside her, with a hand gently laid on Sungold's crest—a familiarity Sungold rarely permitted any stranger.

  "Harry," he said, and she blinked; no one had called her by her old nickname since that last day at the Residency, and it gave her a disconcerting flash of homesickness, for the Hillfolk could not say it as a Homelander would: Mathin called her Hari. "I believe all will go well with you: or at least that you will choose to stay on the best path of those you are offered, and that's the most any mortal can hope for. But I don't see so beautifully that I have no doubts, for you or anyone; and I am afraid for you. The darkness coming to Damar will not temper itself for a stranger. If you should need a place to come to, you may always come here. You will find it quite easily; just ride into these mountains—any Damarian mountains will do, although the nearer here the better—and say my name occasionally. I will hear you, and some guide will make itself known to you." There was a sparkle of humor in his hooded blue eyes, but she understood that she might take his words seriously nonetheless.

  "Thank you," she said, and Sungold walked forward, into the trees. Narknon, with a last stretch and tail-lash, bounded off before. Harry did not look back, but her peripheral vision told her how the sunlight dropped back, and the trees closed in behind her, and Luthe's clearing was only a spot of gold, a long distance away.

  The road down was much easier than the road up had been, for all the uncertainty of stepping downward and downward, Sungold's hocks collected under him, his hoofs delicately feeling the safety of the footing; but some cloud of foretelling, or chance, had been left behind them in the pleasant vagueness of the three days in Luthe's hall. Whatever doom lay before them now, it was a definite doom of definite shape, and the swifter they rode, the more swiftly they might meet it and have done with it, for whatever result.

  They camped at the edge of the foothills that night, and the army re-materialized around them; and everyone looked easier, and more relaxed, even obscurely comforted, by their few days' break, loitering in the forested feet of the mountains, listening to the birds, and catching hares and antelope for the cooking-pots. It was not all idleness, however, for Corlath's army on that morning after leaving Luthe had swelled by a few hundreds more.

  Terim rode up beside her as they set out, and stayed near her all day; they rode at the front, with Corlath and the Riders, and Murfoth, and the few other chieftains who led more than fifty riders to Corlath's standard. Harry saw Senay once, not many horse-lengt
hs distant—for the riding was close—and she caught her eye and began a smile; but suddenly uncertain how the winner of the laprun trials was expected to behave to one of those defeated, and one who besides wore a sash with one's own slash mark in it, dropped her eyes before the other had a chance to respond. In the evening, however, when Harry dismounted, she found herself staring at a bay flank she did not recognize for a moment; its rider dismounted also, and was found to be Senay. This time the two young women looked at each other directly, and both smiled.

  So several more days passed, and Corlath's little force made a glorious and frightening thunder when it galloped; and even as Harry thought that her Outlanders did not guess there were so many in all the Hills, she thought too of what each of the Hillfolk knew: of the Northerners there were many more. Harry rode now with Terim and Senay on her either side, and the three of them ate together. Harry noticed that while the Riders as a group stayed in the same area, all seemed to have friends or blood kin from the army outside who came closer to stand by them, as Terim and Senay, for whatever reason, had chosen to stand by her. Corlath's small force would fight shoulder to shoulder and friend to friend; it was a little comforting.

  Mathin found her once, head against Sungold's neck and brush hanging limply in one hand. "Hari—" he said, and she started and snapped upright, and began to brush Sungold's shoulder. "Hari," he said again, "it is only your old teacher, and there is no shame to your thoughts. We all have them; but it is the worst for you, and for all those riding with us fresh from the trials, but worst of all for you as laprun-minta and bearer of the Blue Sword. Do not be too hard on yourself."

  Harry said, "I am not too hard on myself."

  Mathin smiled grimly. "I don't believe you. Even young Terim, who worships the ground you walk on—" Harry snorted—"has spent the past three years riding the borders, under his father's wise and watchful eye, that he might strike his first angry blow and draw his first blood with his newly earned sword before the great battle of the Bledfi Gap. You do not have three years. It is not your fault."