The Book of Atrix Wolfe

by Patricia A. Mckillip

  He helped soap and water and debris down into the drain and swept on. Saro stared a moment into water, looking for her listening eyes. Seeing only the task at hand, she put her hand to the task.

  Eight

  Talis rode into the green wood.

  It was morning; gold light poured among the trees. The leaves hung still, shining green flames; if a wind rose, it seemed they would ring together like fine glass. Sun laid soft, warm hands on Talis’ hair; he lifted his face to it blindly, felt light like sweet wine on his lips. He whispered, “I don’t know your name.” The leaves did not speak. She was there, he felt, flowing ahead of him in the light, fading into shadow just as he glimpsed her in his unbroken lens. Crossing a stream, he saw the reflection of her face among leaves, just before his horse’s hoof broke the reflection into a thousand crystal pieces. She had been there, in the oak’s shadow; there, beside the slender, graceful birch.

  He could not find the place where she had appeared to him; every sunlit glint of water, every outstretched oak bough seemed to promise her. He rode slowly, aimlessly, wandering through light and shadow, seeing one clear world and one blurred, and her in neither of them. He did not know if he rode deep into the wood, or circled near its boundary; he did not care. He had not been in the wood since he had killed the boar. Movement still strained him; until then it was all he could do to climb the stairs in the keep and look for her there, among the shadows, though she did not come again. But he had dreamed of her that morning, standing in a ring of birch, saying his name. He felt her touch and woke, and her hand turned into light.

  He rode with the sun until noon. The still trees rose aloof and solitary around him, holding secrets, he sensed, but they would tell him nothing. He heard horns, from far away; he recognized the fanfares. Wind rose, blowing out of his own world, breaking the enchanted silence. He turned toward the horns, rode out of the wood onto Hunter’s Field.

  He did not go to eat in the hall; he went up into the keep again, limping a little, haunted by her shadow. Someone noticed his absence: He was interrupted by game hens seasoned with rosemary, tiny potatoes stuffed with mushrooms, soup of leeks and cream, a braided loaf of dark sweet bread, a compote of cherries in brandy. He recognized the girl who brought it.

  “You didn’t drop it this time,” he commented. She didn’t smile. He studied her face a moment. The guards standing beside the door glanced at her, puzzled by his interest, then looked disinterestedly away. She was wax-pale, chafed with water. All the joints in her fingers seemed to be in odd places, out of proportion to one another, and far too long. Her face, without changing expression, seemed to change constantly, as if the position of her features was never quite fixed, never quite aligned. He tried to see the color of her eyes and failed, since her eyes had moved beyond him unexpectedly, to look through the open door.

  He glanced back, wondering what had drawn her attention. A shadow had crossed the wall, he guessed. Or, on the table, the tiny diamonds in his grinding cloth had caught fire.

  He said impulsively, “Set the tray on the table.”

  He followed her in, watching her face turn slightly, her attention drawn here, there. The window moved as she set the tray down; light spilled suddenly over it. She did not seem surprised by that, or by the restless ghosts roaming in and out of the whitewash. Perhaps, he guessed, nothing surprised her, or everything did. She turned her head suddenly, surprising him: She caught his eyes in an intense, unblinking gaze that was like a question in a private language.

  Her lips moved a little; she turned her head swiftly, her face hidden again. He realized that she had stared straight at him, and he still could not remember the color of her eyes.

  She went out again, quickly and noiselessly, left him staring at the door.

  “I’m seeing things,” he murmured, “without my lenses.”

  Several hours later, he was interrupted by the King.

  He heard Burne announce himself, cursing the stairs before he entered. Talis fitted the new lens into the frame and slid the lenses on. His brother’s face, distinct in one eye and imprecise in the other, seemed relatively calm in both.

  “I came to see if you were still alive up here,” Burne said. “You’ve been far too quiet. No lightning bolts, no explosions. The physician said he had not seen you today.”

  “I went riding,” Talis said. “And then I came up here to finish my lens.”

  “I don’t know why he bothers to give you advice, when you don’t even listen to me.”

  Talis eyed him. He pulled the lenses off, cleared a place on the table and sat. “I listen to you,” he said mildly. “Now what have I done?”

  “You’re spending all your time in this place, for one thing. It’s stifling with memories. Look at that.” They watched silently as the shadow of a boy with a torn cloak and a handful of arrows edged to the window and knelt to shoot. “I don’t,” Burne said tightly, “know how you stand it up here.”

  “They’re not my memories,” Talis said gently. “I only see the magic.”

  Burne averted his eyes from the walls abruptly, afraid, Talis guessed, or recognizing one of the figures. He frowned down at his lens, wishing he could share some of Burne’s past instead of only his memories: the ghostly king Talis had never known, the horror of Hunter’s Field. Burne had told him tales, as everyone had. Someone living, he realized early, who had not been scarred by the siege or haunted by memory, was valuable to the storytellers. Having no memories of his own, he became their receptacle for memory, and, with his untroubled past, for hope. He waited silently, knowing what hope Burne had in him now.

  “They never found who did that sorcery?” Burne asked, still troubled by the keep. “Not even the mages know, in Chaumenard?”

  “No.”

  “Some stranger, then, hired by Riven of Kardeth.”

  “Maybe. But it was a very powerful piece of sorcery. Mages that powerful don’t bother to hide their names.”

  “An evil mage might,” Burne suggested.

  “But where is he? She? Why would an evil mage not use such power again, or a good mage use it in the first place?”

  Burne shook his head. “No good mage would have done it. Mages’ lives are not separate from their magics. Isn’t that what they teach you at the school?”

  “Which explains my accidents,” Talis said wryly. “I lead a reprehensible life.”

  “You know what I mean. Anyway. Outside of trying to kill me now and then, the life you lead is far too respectable. This house is full of company, and you’re shut up here in this keep ignoring half a dozen young women who didn’t come to look at my greying hair. It’s high time you married.”

  “I just came down and killed a boar for you,” Talis protested. “And broke my lenses. Isn’t that enough to ask of me for a while?”

  “I won’t have heirs,” Burne said. “You’ll inherit Pelucir, and you need to give this house another heir. We lost a king when you were born; no telling, with our history, when we’ll lose another.”

  Talis dropped his face in his hands, murmuring. He emerged almost as quickly, to gaze at Burne. “It was that boar. It frightened you, seeing me in danger.”

  “It terrified me,” Burne admitted. “Seeing you spellbound, oblivious to shouts, hounds barking, horses, birds, trumpets, the boar splashing straight at you across the stream, and you in another world…”

  Talis opened his mouth, closed it. Words filled his mouth. Three white deer, he wanted to say to Burne. Three white hounds. Three white horses and the Queen of the Wood with her hair like dying oak leaver, and her voice like mourning doves…He felt Burne’s attention, focused, acute, as it could be when he sensed something concealed from him.

  “Talis,” the King said, and Talis slid off the table, still silent. A white fire caught his eye; he detached the new lens from the frame and picked up the grinding cloth.

  “I met someone,” he said finally, working at the lens. “In the wood.”

  “Who?”

 
; “A woman. She distracted me. The hunt startled her away.”

  “Well, who was she?”

  “I don’t know. She didn’t tell me her name. We barely talked. I fell off my horse and then I saw three white deer, then three white hounds and then three white horses. And then—and then she let me see her face. She was very—she was more beautiful than—”

  The King grunted. “They always are,” he said unexpectedly. “The women you meet in a wood, or a meadow, or beside water, whose names you never know. Far more beautiful than those you know too well.”

  Talis held the lens to his eye. “It wasn’t like that.”

  “It never is.” Burne met his brother’s exasperated eye within the lens. “You may lose your heart to a dozen women in a dozen woods, but you will marry a woman with a name and a family suitable to your rank, not some nameless someone without sense enough to tell you to get out of the way of a charging boar.”

  “It wasn’t,” Talis said tensely, “a moment when common sense seemed applicable. And if you tell me such moments never are, I will pick up this table and throw it out the window. If the window stands still long enough.” He ground the lens furiously a moment; Burne watched silently. Talis’ hand slowed; he said finally, without looking up, “What does it matter? I killed it, anyway.”

  “And I sent you away for two years to learn to think like that,” Burne marvelled. He dropped a hand on Talis’ shoulder. “I don’t know who you met in the wood, but she sounds dangerous. Dangerously feebleminded, if nothing else. Tomorrow, I want you to join us for the hunt again. And stay with it this time.”

  “All right.” He listened to Burne linger a moment, then cross the room, open the door, before he raised his head. “Burne.” The King looked back at him. “It really wasn’t like that at all. It was like nothing I have ever known.”

  He heard his brother’s answer in the silence Burne left behind: It always is.

  He finished the lens as the sun setting beyond the yard and the rampart wall flooded the window with light. The light faded; the window moved, showed him the green and dusky blur of wood upon the hill. He put the lens to his eye, saw the wood clearly, a shadowy, secret place in the twilight. He looked at it for a long time, until the trees began fading and night rode toward him down the hill. He lit lamps, then, and fitted the glass into the thin gold frame, slid the finished lenses on.

  He went blind suddenly, both lenses filled with black. Wind rose within the tower, a strange, fierce whirl that nearly blew him off balance. He heard papers fly, books snap open, pages riffling and tearing. The black wind grew stronger; things of glass and wood crashed, broke. Something struck him. He stumbled, still blind, swallowing blood, and brought himself up against a corner of the stone hearth. Bewildered, shaking, he pulled the lenses off.

  His eyes filled with fire. Then he saw the horn woven into the flames, and the black moon of a hundred tales riding among them. He backed against the hearth, a sound shaking out of him. His heart beat so raggedly, he could scarcely breathe. There seemed nothing human in the fur-masked eyes gazing back at him. Hounds, enormous and shadow-black, swarmed around the Hunter; their noiseless claws struck sparks on the stones. Still holding Talis’ eyes, the Hunter lifted a fistful of torn pages to his teeth, bit into them. Blood ran down his mouth, as if words bled. Talis swallowed, his throat paper-dry. All the sorcery he had ever learned seemed crumpled in the Hunter’s hand, all the words he knew. He found one, as sweat from the flames burned down his face, and only the stones against his back held him on his feet; the word itself sounded choked, barely distinguishable. “Why?”

  The Hunter raised his hand. “Drawkcab,” he said. A book as ancient as Pelucir and heavy as a stone flew past him and slammed into Talis. His head snapped against the hearth; his lungs filled with fire instead of air. As he slid to his knees, he felt the Hunter’s hand in his hair, pulling his head back. Desperate for air, he breathed only words, dry, torn parchment, spells he had spoken forced backward into his mouth, until he grew blind again and winds roared through him, though he could not find a thimbleful of air.

  Then a wind out of nowhere, as fierce and wild as if it had blown down from the mountains of Chaumenard, dragged him to his feet. Scraps of words flew out of him; his eyes flickered open. He saw the Hunter blur and flow into black flames of horn and hand and waning moon; the wind, singing like a wolf, flattened the hounds into shadows among the ghosts. Outside, guards clamored at the wind, heaved against the door, pounded on it when it would not budge. Hands, barely visible, like windblown snow, gripped Talis, lifted him. He struggled and choked again, the keep reeling around him. The window, framing the green wood, rattled in the eerie whine and shattered; Talis, slumped in the wind’s strange hold, felt himself blown through broken glass. He glimpsed the keep growing oddly smaller, sending a long trail of torn scrolls and parchment in the wake of the wind, while, from the broken floor below, a white mist of owls fled the opposite direction. Then he saw the vast twilight sky wheeling toward him, and he closed his eyes.

  He woke again to birds crying. On his hands and knees, in a litter of dry parchment, he retched paper and words, then sagged onto his back, racked and sobbing for air. He felt a hand touch him and panicked, rolling wildly. Earth, leaf mold, scented the air; he opened his eyes, stared senselessly at the ground.

  “Leaves.” His voice, raw with pain, sounded hardly human. “I thought it was more words.”

  He heard a voice spun thin as cobweb. “Talis.”

  He lifted his head. A stranger crouched among the roots of an oak tree on the hill overlooking Hunter’s Field. He had white, shaggy hair, eyes an odd blur of light and dark. He wore a torn, grass-stained tunic; his feet were bare. He looked lean, craggy, weathered, both old and timeless, like a tree or a stone, and as wild as anything that lived among them. He had ridden the wind to rescue Talis from the keep: a mage, Talis knew, but no one he had ever met.

  He straightened, and wiped tears off his face with the back of his fist. His fingers were locked around something; he opened his hand, amazed. “I brought my lenses.” He put them on, and saw the expression change on the hard, worn face.

  “You,” the mage said grimly. He closed his eyes briefly, opened them, as if he expected Talis to disappear. “I thought so.”

  “Who are you?” Talis asked. “You know me. I don’t know you.” Then the answer came to him; he felt the spidery touch of wonder glide over him. “I know you.”

  “Yes.”

  “Atrix Wolfe.”

  “I saw you on the mountain,” the mage said. “You were looking for me. You climbed too high and dropped your lenses.”

  Talis stared at him. “But you’re here. In Pelucir. You saved my life.”

  The mage’s face tightened. “Barely.” He turned, gave a hawk’s glance across the field. Talis shifted to kneel beside him. On the field nothing moved but the twilight trembling on it like a gathering army of ghosts.

  Talis swallowed dryly; a word he had swallowed licked like fire at his throat. “Is he still here?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you know what he is?”

  “Yes.”

  “He is the Hunter of Hunter’s Field.”

  “Yes.”

  “He killed my father.” Talis was still trembling, watching things drift, eluding definition, on the shadowy field. “I recognized him from tales. The black moon, the burning horns…” He tensed. “He is in the castle with Burne.”

  Atrix Wolfe shook his head. “The Hunter is no longer in the keep.”

  Talis looked at him. “You know him, too…What made you come to Pelucir? As if you knew I needed help.”

  “I knew you needed help,” the mage said. He seemed to sense Talis’ confusion, and turned his attention from the field. His eyes, the bruised grey of the twilight, met Talis’ eyes. He studied the prince a moment, as expressionless as stone. Then expression welled into his eyes, like water breaking through ice, and he looked back across the field. “I was trying to fin
d my spellbook. When I learned you had it, I knew you were in trouble.”

  “How—”

  “Hedrix told me you had it. After I dreamed that you were using it. A young mage wearing lenses…”

  “You dreamed—” Talis’ voice sharpened with amazement. “But why? You’ve hardly been seen since before I was born. Why did you appear twice out of nowhere to help me?”

  “I don’t know. Our paths keep crossing. I used magic for the first time in twenty years, to show the wolf to you on the mountain…And again, today…I came a long way to cross your path in Pelucir.”

  The wood was soundless now, leaves as still in the twilight as if they were spellbound. The full moon, rising among the great, tangled branches of the oak, made Talis’ throat close. He whispered, “He tried to kill me with words.”

  “He summoned me with them.”

  Talis shuddered. He touched his lenses, trying to see more clearly in the night closing around him. “Why you? Was he hidden in the keep all this time, or did he just appear there, knowing you would come for the book?”

  “Where exactly did you find it?”

  “In a mop closet.”

  The mage turned again to look at him. “A mop closet.”

  “We had been instructed to hide. I saw your book on the shelf and hid in it. Something about it made me curious. I asked Hedrix if I could take it with me back to Pelucir. You saw me,” he added, remembering, “just before I left.” He touched his lenses again; his hand shook, left them slightly askew. “Why did you keep the book there?”

  “I buried it in solid stone,” Atrix Wolfe said. “It found its way to you. And then to Pelucir.”

  Wordless, Talis watched the mage; the mage watched the field. Horns sounded into the twilight, bright, urgent, drawing Talis’ eyes to the curve of battlement wall against the sky, the oblongs of fire spiralling up the round towers, the flickering wash of torchlight across the upper window of the keep, where someone within searched frantically among the ruins. He said softly, “The spells don’t match the words.”