Judgment at the Verdant Court

by M. C. Planck

  “Two?” By his count, he’d returned one without taking any.

  “The Lady last saw her daughter two years ago. You saw her within the year, and held her affection. And yet you let her walk into the Wild with a dangerously unstable man.”

  That seemed unfair, to both Cannan and himself. He opened his mouth, but Lalania silenced him with a finger.

  “I tell you how she will see it, Christopher. Now her son is seduced away from their religion and serves you like any ordinary knight. She will not thank you for reviving him, any more than she will thank you for getting him killed in the first place.”

  Christopher yanked on the girth, and Royal snorted at him.

  “Sorry,” he muttered, trying again.

  “Indeed,” Lalania answered for the horse. “If you’re done feeling sorry for yourself, you might ask me what to do next.”

  “Okay. What do I do next?”

  “Be polite, but do not think she is your friend simply because she is Bright. Remember that in her eyes you have wronged her, yet she knows that in the eyes of the world you have not. This means she cannot seek compensation. Which means there is nothing you can do to appease her.”

  “Except killing Cannan.”

  “Yes,” Lalania said, frowning at him, “which I know you do not intend to do. That might not be wise.”

  Christopher met her gaze. For all the bard’s skill at reading character, she had misjudged him.

  “I don’t desire to kill him. That’s not the same thing.”

  “It may come to it. You will need all your strength to fight the monster he has become. You cannot afford vacillation.”

  A change of subject would be nice. “Why didn’t you ask the Skald to scry on Cannan?”

  Lalania vigorously brushed out her horse’s mane. “Because I didn’t care about Cannan. The High Druid can scry her own problems.”

  Of course everybody else had their own magical TV set. Christopher wondered how many of them had been spying on him. If the number was high, should he be worried or flattered? “So why did it take them this long to find him?”

  She sighed. “I imagine they looked in on him every day. And to what avail? One patch of forest is much like another. How could they tell from his immediate surroundings where in the great Wild he was?”

  Christopher waited a moment, until he realized she wasn’t asking a rhetorical question. Then they went inside to find out.

  Lady Io perched on the edge of a chair in his lecture hall, underneath the wooden gaze of the carved frieze of Marcius, as uncomfortable as a canary in front of a cat. To Lady Io, the god Marcius wasn’t a remote employer, a curious alien, or possibly an impressive piece of computer programming. He was a person, a real individual with goals and fears, likes and dislikes. He might be watching her right now, looking for any hint of offense. The distant, impersonal force that passed for modern deities back on Earth was unknown here. This was what it must have been like for the Greeks: gods who lived, loved, and hated, rarely seen but only a mountain away.

  A strange set of thoughts, no doubt brought on by his recent discovery that unknown parties could be watching him at any time.

  D’Kan stood behind her, looking equally uncomfortable.

  “Ser D’Kan!” Christopher reached out to shake the young man’s hand, happy to see him alive and well again. D’Kan stared at the outstretched hand in perplexity.

  “I, uh . . .” Christopher stalled, trying to think of an intelligible explanation for his odd behavior. Sighing, he gave up, as he usually did, and put his hand in his pocket. “It’s good to have you back.”

  The young Ranger turned another shade of miserable.

  “Lady Io,” Lalania smoothly interjected, “since time is short, perhaps we should cut to the quick. Where is Cannan?”

  “Close at hand, yet where we cannot reach him. He ranged far afield, trying to flee beyond our ken, but he found the world of the living a hostile place to one so foul as he. He has run to ground where only his own dark kind dare tread: the Moaning Lands.”

  Christopher, still waiting for some kind of definitive answer, looked to Lalania. The bard had an unhappy grimace on her face, as if she’d eaten a bug. “So you’ve heard of this place?” he asked.

  “Legends,” Lalania answered. “I’m not sure I credit them.”

  “You should,” Lady Io admonished her. “The truth is worse. The land is haunted by creatures of night and darkness that cannot be touched by iron. Our law forbids us from entering the region, but even if it did not, common sense would stay us. The murderer is protected by his wickedness, but any Bright who trespasses on that cursed land risks awakening horror.”

  Tapping his finger on the tabletop, Christopher made his own grimace. “Then what do you expect me to do about it?” His guns shot lead. It seemed unlikely that monsters immune to iron would be discomfited by a metal a few steps over on the atomic chart.

  “Servants of the Mother are masters of the living. But you are a priest.” Lady Io sat back, having served her devastating comeback.

  When she finally realized he was still waiting for her to explain herself, he scored his first point. She arched her eyebrows in surprise.

  “Go on,” he said.

  “Surely you jest? Your divinity grants you the power to repulse or even destroy the soul-trapped. As you must know, this is barred to me, being the province solely of the priesthood.”

  Oh. Now he remembered driving animated skeletons out of his chapel, holding his glowing sword in front of him. He’d followed Pater Svengusta’s lead without knowing exactly what he was doing. Later, it hadn’t seemed important to follow up on. He didn’t encounter skeletons on a regular basis.

  Lalania still wasn’t happy. “The Vicar is only sixth rank. I’m not sure how much evil he is proof against.”

  Lady Io didn’t care. “More than we.”

  “Where is this place?” he asked, although he was pretty sure he’d already asked that question once. “Wait, let’s get a map, and then you can show me.” It would be a lot more helpful than more of her verbiage.

  The only maps he had were of the Kingdom. But Lady Io pointed to a spot off the south end, and D’Kan offered a reference point.

  “Due east of your fort, my lord. On clean ground, a day’s hard ride. In that swamp, four days or more.”

  He’d figured out how to not get killed by ulvenmen, and now they were trying to get him killed by . . . well, he didn’t know what exactly. The skeletons had been creepy, but they were plenty vulnerable to iron. And dynamite.

  “What am I looking for?”

  “You will know the land by its absence of any warm-blooded creature. Only insects live there. Bring your own provender, for you will find little otherwise. The murderer occasionally strays out in search of meat, but mostly he stays at the center of the taint. Look for a long and narrow path free of scrub-trees: the Avenue of Fear. He will be close at hand.”

  Christopher wasn’t sure he could find a patch of swamp in the middle of a swamp. It was all swamp to him.

  “How will I find him, when and if I do find this place?”

  “I know his track,” D’Kan said. “I will lead you to him.”

  Lady Io sprung to her feet. “No! You are forbidden by our law. You cannot tread there, not even to hunt the criminal.”

  “What Cannan did was forbidden by our law, too. Yet he did it all the same.” D’Kan was standing up to his mother, although Christopher didn’t think comparing himself to a murderer was a particularly judicious tack.

  “Lady Io,” Christopher said, “D’Kan should be safe with us. I mean, with me.”

  “It is folly to sunder one law to redeem another. There will be no more talk of it: the boy cannot go into the Moaning Lands.” She was harder-edged than the Vicar Rana, and Christopher had thought of that old lady as made of flint.

  Lalania stepped in to help. “The Vicar might be able to use his magic to locate Cannan once near, but he will be hard-pressed to find th
e Moaning Lands at all. Perhaps D’Kan could take us to the edge, but no farther?”

  Lady Io glared at her. D’Kan glared as well, though for an opposite reason. Like any good compromise, it left no one happy.

  “Ser D’Kan pledged his service to me,” Christopher said. “I can’t expect him to break your law, but I can ask him to stop just short of it. If he’ll take me to the edge, I’ll go in and try to drag Cannan out.”

  “No,” said Lady Io, but her boy had become a man.

  “I will do this,” he told her. His face was on fire, but his voice was steady. “I gave my oath, and I loved my sister. I have already paid too high a price to turn back now.”

  “Men and their pride—may the Mother weep mercy for them.” Lady Io didn’t sound merciful. “See that you do not step even a toe into the haunted realm, lest you be dragged under. There is no honor in destroying a mother’s love. Swear to me that you will not risk your very soul, or I will take you home against your will.”

  Christopher looked at the slight, middle-aged woman threatening the lanky young man towering above her, and tried to remember she was fifth rank.

  “I swear it,” muttered D’Kan, looking as miserable as a middle-school student promising to do his homework.

  “I hold you to this oath also, Vicar.” Lady Io had plenty of motherly scorn to share. “As his master, your honor is bound up in his.”

  “Okay,” Christopher said. “All right, already. D’Kan won’t enter the bad place, we’ll take our own food, and I’ll scare off the spooks and find Cannan by myself.” It seemed like a pretty tall order.

  “Then I shall depart. If the murderer flees to other lands, I will contact you. I thank you for your hospitality.” She hadn’t touched the cup of water Torme had brought. “I thank you in advance for your justice.”

  That part, at least, she seemed sincere about. After stepping outside, into the fading twilight, she stood on the chapel steps and looked at her son. For a moment Christopher could see the woman under the rank, the mother under the Servant of the Mother.

  “We can find you a place in town, if you don’t wish to stay in the chapel.” Christopher was trying to be helpful, but as he was saying it he realized she’d already been there one night. She must have already made accommodations.

  “Thank you,” she said, smiling politely, “but I found your woods to be fair haven. Knowing that my daughter once slept there gave me solace.”

  Then, stepping off the stone steps into empty space, she transformed, her form running like stirred oil, and she was gone. In the place she had occupied, an eagle beat its wings, lifting into the air.

  Christopher stared in openmouthed awe as the bird did two turns above them, cawing to D’Kan, and flew out into the darkening sky.

  “Wow,” he said.

  “That is true shape-change,” Lalania said wistfully, “not the petty glamour I can do.” She had deep black eyes today, with remarkably long and thick lashes.

  “How am I supposed to get Cannan, if she can’t?” He’d promised to do a lot of tasks that he had no idea how to do, and the polymorphic druid seemed more capable than he had ever imagined.

  “You know,” Lalania said, “most people who make sixth rank already know how to use their powers. But then, most people get there after years of study, effort, risk, and single-minded devotion. Luckily, I am here to provide the education you skipped.”

  “Can you teach me to do that?” Didn’t hawks fly sixty miles an hour? He could cross the whole Kingdom in an afternoon as a bird.

  “No.” Lalania laughed at him. “Never. You will have to settle for reviving the dead as your signature power. Try not to be too disappointed.”

  There were three score young men, a half dozen wagons of supplies, and several teams of replacement horses going south to the fort. Torme had already seen to it all. Christopher’s only responsibility was to salute the men as they formed up to march.

  Men. They were only a year older than the recruits gawking at them, but the difference was palpable. These young men had already lived a lifetime. They had watched their life’s blood run out in the slavering fangs of a howling dog-man, their broken bodies and cries of pain buried under smoke and the din of battle. They had died and come back.

  Now they stood silently, in neat rows, waiting for the order to march back into the thresher. Christopher’s parting joke died on his lips, and he said something else instead.

  “I’ll see you down at the fort.” Except he probably wouldn’t. The wagons would take five long days to reach the new southern extremity of the Kingdom. Christopher and his cavalry escort would do it in three short ones. By the time the revived men got there, he would be off on his idiot hunting adventure.

  He turned his horse onto the road and started south. Behind him Lalania, Torme, D’Kan, and the dozen cavalrymen fell into a double line, their horses lightly loaded. They would buy food on the way, sparing the animals that had been working so hard for days.

  “You need to tell him,” Lalania said, when they were out into the open country.

  “Tell me what?” Christopher looked over his shoulder. D’Kan was looking ill again, and Torme was staring intently at his horse’s mane.

  “The Lady Io is unaware of the favor you have extended to Ser D’Kan.” Whenever Torme was that formal, it meant he was trying not to make Christopher angry. Usually, it worked. Every time he thought about how Torme had lived under Black Bart, where a single slipped phrase could cost a man his tongue or his life, Christopher found himself unable to get angry.

  Not this time. “Dark Hells, Torme. How could you not have told her?” Now he would have to tell the woman, and she’d scratch his eyes out. Or turn him into a newt. Cripes. She might actually turn him into a newt. He wasn’t even sure what a newt was.

  “The subject did not come up, my lord. I barely spoke to the Lady, except to tell her three times a day that you had not yet returned.”

  Christopher swallowed the rest of his curses. “Then why didn’t D’Kan tell her?” He swiveled his head around to look over his other shoulder.

  “I did not wish to undo your fine work, my lord.” D’Kan coolly stared back at him. The boy who had blushed in front of his mother had become the stiff young hero who first waltzed into Christopher’s camp. “She might have suggested that I undergo the Mother’s judgment, and that would have taken time we do not have to spare.”

  That was reasonable enough, except for the first part. “What do you mean, undo my work?”

  Lalania chimed in. She could always be counted on to deliver the most unpleasant facts. “It means they would have killed him again, and let the Mother judge what form he should return to life as.”

  “You can’t be serious,” he said automatically, even though he knew she was.

  “I considered it.” D’Kan spoke as if he wanted everyone to know how coolly he’d face a second death. “My father’s totem is a bear. If I were to return in the body of a great brown bear, I might be able to defeat Cannan by myself.”

  “Then why didn’t you?” It was a stupid question, but Christopher asked a lot of those.

  D’Kan shrugged and patted his horse’s mane. “Bears cannot ride.”

  Bears cannot marry and have human children, either. But Christopher wasn’t graceless enough to say that out loud. Aside from the misery of spending life in animal form, not being able to produce heirs would certainly remove D’Kan from the line of succession. He would never be Lord Ranger then.

  Christopher scratched his head and wondered why he was thinking like Lalania. “What about after we get Cannan?” He still needed the Ranger’s skills in his army.

  “We may very well all perish in the Moaning Lands. Worrying about the future is premature.”

  “Hold on, sonny. We are not all going in there.” Christopher had enough to apologize to Lady Io for. Breaking his word was not going to be added to the list.

  “You will never—” D’Kan tried to argue, but Torme interrupted him.


  “The Vicar gave his bound oath. There will be no more discussion on the matter.”

  D’Kan scowled, but Torme was a man of rank too. Christopher had to step into this dispute.

  “Go ahead, D’Kan. Ask us how we’re going to find Cannan without your tracking skills. I’d kind of like to know the answer myself.”

  “As usual,” Lalania said, “there is a spell for that.”

  The men welcomed him back into the swamp without fanfare. Not that they had any fans, or trumpets, or confetti, but they didn’t make a big deal out of it. Holding down a fort in the middle of ulvenman territory was just another job they did now. He hoped they weren’t getting jaded by danger. There was a fine line between courage and stupidity.

  He turned in the saddle to ask Lalania what she thought of his fort, and caught her looking at Ser Gregor and the priestess Disa, standing together near the tents that passed for the officers’ quarters. The bard’s face did not twitch; her smile was as genuine as any he had ever seen, but he knew her now, and he had far too much firsthand knowledge of loneliness. In the hollowness of her eyes he finally understood what should have been obvious weeks ago.

  He had told Gregor to see if there was more to their relationship than sex. And Gregor had discovered the answer was, “No.” Now the knight stood too close to a woman who had never, to Christopher’s knowledge, done anything but argue with him, shifting uncomfortably under Lalania’s welcoming smile.

  When Gregor had asked for advice, Christopher had given the best he had, even at the risk of loosening the tie that bound the knight to him. Now it appeared he had simply changed the color of the leash. He did not appreciate the way it made him feel.

  “Welcome back, Colonel.” Karl saluted him crisply.

  “It’s good to be back, Major, but we won’t be staying long. The druids have found Cannan’s trail.” He saluted back, and the men standing in orderly rows dispersed, returning to whatever tasks they had been doing beforehand. The sentries on the wall had never stopped their appointed duties. Christopher wanted an army that worked, not one that looked pretty on a parade ground, and Karl had given him what he asked for.