CHAPTER THE TWENTY-THIRD
Days passed, and so too did the storm. A colder, harder, calmer air settled across the Veld, and it seemed to Sigurd that not only did the birds and beasts grew quieter, but the people too. Eyes that had been wet with mourning were dryer now. Everyone seemed to speak in a strange, hushed undertone, as if they did not wish to disturb something indefinable that hung in the air.
Those days passed much as the sun passes through winter skies: too fast, too dim, too grey.
Dusk came too soon each day. And today evening light meant that an hour Sigurd had been trying not to think about had arrived.
He had clothing to pull on. There was a cloak and tunic that Rosa had ordered made for him. A fine velvety show of wealth, stitched with lapis from the east, and blue glass and embroidered with cloth-of-gold from northern seas. And then there was the feast to attend. All movement, all action slowed to a morass for him. His thoughts stretched long and ponderous. He imagined himself elsewhere as he dressed. Imagined himself in the saddle and cantering out of the Veld, riding away to... he wondered where in the world his imaginary self was riding to.
Stepping into the great hall was much like stepping into a world of foreign beauty. The wreaths of ivy and holly that hung from the rafters were not merely green, but emerald, and the berries a fiery red. The bunches seemed to bright to look at. It was as if the air were painted with a thin veil of glistening light and everything--the flames in the hearth, smoke darkened timbers, the plastered walls, the rich scent of food, the scrubbed-clean churls--all of it, were somehow finer for a touch of charm.
The illusion though, if it were not purely Sigurd's own imaging, was not spread evenly. It grew thicker and denser about one person, a graceful young woman. She moved with such an otherworldly grace that once Sigurd put his eyes on her, he found it painful to remove his gaze again. It frightened him that her piercing, knowing eyes seemed to blaze with that englamoured charm whenever she laughed.
He watched Rosa glide through the slowly filling hall. He edged closer to her, circuitously, like a puppy circling something strange and curious it has found in a field. He was not close enough to draw her attention yet, but near enough to hear as she greeted her subjects. "Dear, Anno," she said touching a jittery churl lightly on the shoulder, "How is your wife? Good? So pleased to hear it. And, Hincmar," she turned to a merchant whose belly was so wide it pulled at the buttons of his jerkin. "How is business? Wonderful. Hrothar, how are the hounds? Lummerslint. So long since I saw you last. You are well?" The monger nodded, and shrugged, and murmured, "Very good," said Rosa perhaps not even hearing him, "Wonderful." Moving on with raw self-assurance. "Are the men-at-arms in good order, Mareshal? Excellent. And Ermengarde, how has the kitchen performed? Very good then. We shall look forward to a grand feast." Passing her aunt with a cordial, if to Sigurd's mind uneasy, smile, Rosa strode to her place at the head table and paused by her seat. She smiled and sat not in her comfortable oaken chair, but for the first time in the throne of her dead father.
If this surprised anyone in the hall other than Sigurd they dared not show it. Sigurd himself glanced about, and noted barely a flicker of raised eyebrows or clandestine frowns. He steeled himself in his mind, adjusted the brocade on his cuffs and proceeded to the throne.
"Sigurd, dear thane." Rosa's voice danced across the air.
He nodded and increased his pace a degree.
"You may sit," she extended a hand to the seat on her right, at the chair that was once hers.
"My lady, it would be improper."
Laughter arose in a golden note, and her eyes lit up with intricate joy. His heart beat faster just to hear the sound of it, just to watch her laugh. How could he not fall completely in love with this woman if he were not already there?
"Freer? Where is he?"
The balding little man, with his restless hands, and worried face appeared. He was making of pretence of not hurrying, but Sigurd could still see a tense jerk in his stride.
"My lady?" He did not bow. It would not befit a man of the temple to do so. That at least gave Sigurd some hope. Even if every other subject were to be swallowed up by the glory and fear of Rosa, the man of the temples and Bright Mother, he would not falter.
"What was it you said earlier, that clever little turn of phrase about whims?"
"Oh yes, eh, Lady of Veld, your whims are law unto everyone but yourself."
Sigurd felt his blood run into coldness.
"Yes, delightful, do you not think so, Sigurd? What is propriety beside a whim of the Lady of Veld?"
"I see," said Sigurd. He adjusted his cloak on his shoulders and took the seat.
A fine selection of dainties--cuts of bread, apple butter, fruit minces, medlars and nuts--were laid out for the privileged to pick at. With an absent mind Sigurd sampled this, or that, or drank a swallow of sticky sweet white. He did not have a strong appetite tonight.
When all the guests, thanes, courtiers, and damosels had arrived Rosa stood. "Welcome," she said, "Lords and ladies of mine father's blood, retainers, thanes, householders, churls and strangers alike. Let the Feast of Samenight begin, for it has been overdue, and we've a good end of harvest to celebrate. Let this be a feast like no other that has ever graced our fine hall. Let there be dancers to amuse you. Let there be wonders to baffle you." Her eyes gleamed with passion, "Let there be magic."
There was food and drink of course, but the richness of it was startling even for those well-travelled wanderers who had been to kingdoms beyond. Honey beer, cowslip wine, three-spiced mead, mulled red, expensive cheeses, boulbelier of wild pig, veal, venison, and a dish called heathen pie--beef, bacon, apples, pepper and eggs.
As the night drifted itself into the deeper hours, the promised entertainment filtered into the hall. Men and women dressed in an elaborate, sometimes scandalously revealing richness of silks and silver bells. There was singing, dancing, riddles and games. Through all of this, Sigurd felt increasing unease. He ate the food without tasting it. Drank the mulled wine without noticing the warmth of it.
He was silent as Rosa laughed and chatted and admonished those performers who did not meet her expectations.
Spotting something that displeased her, she said just barely loud enough for Sigurd to catch, "No, it will not do. I will have nothing near me that is not beautiful." Then louder with a pointing finger. "You there, dancer."
The woman stepped toward the high table, reluctantly it seemed. She must have known she was doing poorly. Where had she come from? This stranger, with odd, red ochre looks, copper hair, and the silvered bells, and a flowing white skirt. Was she one of the rootless folk who occasionally passed through the Veld, selling the odd treasure, scrounging the odd coin, thieving the odd trinket. Rosa's eyes slid subtly to Sigurd. "I have sought hungrily and paid handsomely for dancers and troubadours fit to make the Veld a place of wonder." Then, turning those jet-dark eyes back on the dancer, "You dance well enough, but I would have more from you." Come closer. Leaning forward Rosa brushed her red lips across her fingertips, then reached out lightly to touch the dancer upon her forehead.
The stranger's pale reddish coloured eyes widened, then grew vacant, then full of a drifting, pleasant glow. Something that Sigurd did not fathom had passed between the two. With a thick accent, and layered with hints of campfires, and wending caravans in wild places, and nights under stars she said simply, "Yes, my lady."
Returning to the floor she began to sway slowly, then faster, then she became a graceful storm of swirling, leaping, and twirling. Eyes were drawn to her. Mouths formed hollow circles.
Soon the troubadours and minstrels were each summoned to Rosa, and each bowed or curtsied before her. There passed again some whispered encouragement, and a kiss-by-hand. The music grew note-by-note more powerful, and bar-by-bar, it demanded greater self-will to resist getting up and giving into the urge to dance. Old men who had not capered for twenty years, tottered to their feet to spin and whirl like youths. Matronly ladies, their bodies hef
ty with the fat of many past pregnancies and births, too dour now to smile at a jest, were soon up on their feet, cavorting like drunken revellers.
And Rosa clapped and laughed at them until her eyes watered.
There grew a strange fixated look in the eyes of the young maids and men, too. They began to dance shamelessly. Sigurd licked his dry lips, and lets his eyes flicker over the hall. There were stranger things now. A juggler passed the high table keeping what looked like glowing orbs of soft light in the air. In one moment the masks the tumblers wore took on a life of their own. Weird eyes squinted and weird smiles bore sharp teeth for a flicker of a moment. But, in the next heartbeat those masks were masks again--plain, lifeless leather. Another dancer's eyes changed colour as she whirled by, filling with a bright sky blue, before clouding back to their original hue. Sigurd felt dizzied. Everything moved too fast. He looked up, hoping to take a gulp of clean, cool air and his eyes widened. A hundred unearthly lights were dancing in the beams of the hall, black and red and white.
Did no one else see it? Did no one else care?
Snatching at a goblet of wine, Sigurd drank deep, swallowing gulp after gulp. It did not help. There were things swirling through the air. Snowflakes? Crystalline flames?
With trembling hands he blundered for some food, taking a ripe medlar, Sigurd bit into it. The crisp fruit was bitter. Screwing up his face Sigurd spat out rotten flesh and stared at a squirming worm in the core.
Rosa was seething with joy now. Her laugh infected everyone who heard it. Everyone except the one man she had left to himself. Sigurd stared at her, gazing from under knotted brows until she noticed and turned those bright, powerful eyes on him.
"Sigurd, what is wrong? Would you like to dance? I can teach you how to dance as fine as anyone in the room."
His eyes worked over her, up and down, her skin was the white of moonlight, her hand stretched out and caressed his face. Pleasure tingled in his skin.
"Danger. There is danger here."
The words cut the air like a sickle, leaving harsh and bitter tatters in the gauze of lights and shadows. Sigurd wondered for a moment who had been so piggish that he would disturb the feast with such a tone before he recognised his own voice. Stumbling awkwardly to his feet he wavered, both in mind and in body, and his numb hand sought his sword and lay heavily upon the hilt.
He felt drunk, and sickened, but the wine could not have worked so fast.
"Sigurd?" Her voice sounded hurt. There were tears beginning behind those black, bright eyes. "Sigurd?"
He set his fingers firmer about the hilt, and took a step back, but in that moment several things happened.
All the flames and fires in the hall guttered, and turned to low flickering tongues of burning roan as a wind burst through the hall--there were cries of alarm from somewhere beyond the great arch, away down at the furthest reaches of the great hall--the doors to the hall, shut tight against chill winter, shuddered as something heavy struck them from the outside.
Eyes shot to the archway, and the folk that crowded hall began to fall back from it, crushing into to the tables and walls. Something on the other side of the door collided with it again, and the heavy wood trembled and groaned again.
"There is something at the door." Sigurd said this to himself, but Rosa, mistaking it for a warning, looked at him with a curious expression.
"There is. But, how did you know? Sigurd, why did you not warn me clearly, rather than leap to your feet and scare me. For a moment I thought... I was afraid of you."
And the doors burst inwards.
Cold wind swirled in with the night air, and hair and dresses, hanging sleeves, and leafy garlands all fluttered, and then it came.
"Dear Ladies of the Bright Host deliver us," whispered Sigurd, and his sword slid forth from its scabbard.
Rosa had hoped aloud that this would be a feast unlike any before in the Veld. She was getting her wish. All eyes fixed unblinking on this new and uninvited guest as it trotted haughtily into the hall. Mostly it was built like a stag, but silver and dapple in colour, and married, much the same as a mythical centaur, to a manlike torso, head and arms. His hair was a tumble of moss and raw silver, his face, more deerlike than human, was set with moonlight eyes and crowned with the spreading horns of a hart. In one inhumanly graceful hand he held a bow of ivory. Over his shoulder was slung a quiver bristling with green-fletched arrows.
Rosa rose languidly, and without so much as blinking an eye, she let a smile play on her full lips and said: "I do not recall inviting the faer folk to our joyous feast." A graceful curtsey. "But, and yet, all are welcome. All are welcome here tonight. Will you drink wine with us, and dance to my minstrel's revelry? Or challenge one of my thanes to a friendly contest of strength?"
Every other face in the hall was fixed with awe and fear.
It pawed the reed-strewn floor with one hoof, and shook its mane of silver-green hair. "I thank you for your grace in welcoming me, Rosa, Lady of Veld. I cannot tarry. I will not drink of your wine, nor of your song." That voice, thought Sigurd, the voice was half the sound of a herd of deer splashing through a stream, half a huntsman's horn. "I am the Hunter of the Hollows, and I am a newly appointed herald, sent by mine King Alraun, Lord of the Green."
"Newly appointed?" said Rosa.
"His previous herald ran into some trouble, recently."
"Pray tell then, herald, what regal proclamation does the king of faer and weird folk see fit to make? He, who has never afore sent a messenger to this, the hall of my ancestors."
"Alraun, King of all that lies within reach of the shadows of the trees of Veld wishes to advise you to make ready for his coming."
"King of the wild woods only, you mean." Rosa's voice was now perilous with a creeping irritation. "King of the squirrels and jays and blackbirds. King of wild sprights and wood-ghaists?"
"No," said the herald calmly. "King of all betwixt Weeping River and the Deepling Dusk Hills. King of the Veld. King of you. For Alraun claims again that realm that was once his, long ago. All of it."
Rosa gripped the table, her nails dug into the wood. "Impudent spright. Do you think I am unwise in the ways of glamour and shadows? Look in my soul. I know you for what you are. I will not quail before an airy nothing such as you."
He was dismissive. "Mark this as truth. Alraun is more than glamour and shadows. Your magics are petty to him." He looked around then. "But where is the other?" He threw his gaze about the hall, and men and women shrunk under it. "The mortal Lilia, for I was told to speak with her too."
"You may tell to me, that which you would tell to my dear sister." An uneven smile passed over her full lips. "We have no secrets."
The hunter of the hollows blinked the great pools of silver that served him for eyes, and his brow barred with lines. "Very well," though confusion rifled his voice, "My Lord, King Alraun wishes that Lilia make herself ready to be his wife. Once the marriage is made, he will then rule over the whole of the valley. The world of mortals shall be one with his timeless magic. It is a great honour."
"Is there nothing else?"
He attempted a mockery of a bow, crooking his front legs. "That is all." And with that, the Hunter of the Hollows turned about, and pranced away, as proud as any stag.
Amongst the rising tide of wondering conversations, the sobs, the whispered words, Rosa stood like a statue of an ancient queen carven and painted and still as stone. She raised a hand and whispered, "Hark." Though she said it almost too hushed for even Sigurd to hear, who sat beside her, every last set of bewildered eyes in the hall was drawn to her.
"Smith Lummerslint," she said. The stout man, about the girth and general build of a barrel, came tentatively forward, cap in hand.
"Yes, my Lady."
"Make for me swords and spears of cold iron. No steel or other metals. Just iron. Arrowheads too and barbed darts. Get every hand you can to help you. Melt down the pots and pans, the nails, the horseshoes, any scrap of pig-iron you can find."
"Yes, m
y Lady." He began to edge away.
"I am not done yet. No overgrown spright will wear for himself a better crown of words than I. King Alraun," she sneered, and then was thoughtful. "I think," her eyes deepened as her thoughts wandered," I think that I shall no longer be your lady, and the Veld shall no longer be an Eorldom. You may address me hence forth, as her regal ladyship, if you please. But, for title, I shall be Rosa: Princess of Veld," Sigurd caught her glancing furtively at him, though he pretended not to notice. "And in time... in time, I will be queen."
-oOo-
"You nasty little whore."
Lilia started. She dropped the shawm she had been running an idle finger over, and it clattered on the wooden floor. Without thinking, she stooped down to pick it up and check that it was not damaged. Standing up quickly then, turning about, she found that the door to her chamber had been swung open. A shadow from the ill-lit hall beyond stepped into the room and resolved into her sister, Rosa. With burning eyes she looked Lilia up and down: once, slowly, coldly.
Lilia held the shawm close to her chest. "I did not hear you at the door. Nor did I hear the door open. I..."
"You snivelling, craven little vixen." Rosa's skin was paler than usual. She began to tread closer. Her breath came in short, sharp gasps between words. "Why? Why, Lilia, why? Must you soak your hands in so much blood to revenge yourself on me?"
Lilia took a small step backwards. "What are you speaking of?"
But Rosa cut her off. "Oh, you know perfectly well, you ill-begotten, heartless she-pig. You ugly little peddler of your own flesh." Lilia moved away in a curve, trying to keep the distance between her and Rosa, trying not to back into a wall. But Rosa adjusted her stride mid-pace, and rounded on her, Lilia froze. She was fixed by her sister's glaring eyes. "I'll have you burned for a poisoner. I should have ordered it done as soon as the mutt died, but I thought... I thought, maybe I could just forget about you. Leave you to your childish daydreams behind a locked door. With your toys, and yours songs. Just forget about you. Until you turned grey and old and harmless." Her eyes looked momentarily distant. "It would have been one less shade to haunt me." With trembling lips she let each word form into a droplet of venom, "But no, no you were not happy in your little tower, not even when I told them to bring up all your dresses and playthings. No, my dear sister, you had to get your revenge."
Lilia looked down at her hands and was surprised to see the knuckles clenched white about the shawm. It felt like her blood was slowly turning thinner. Biting back anger, she strained to ask calmly, "And what is it that you suppose I have done, dear sister? I suppose a woman capable of murdering her own father will sink to anything?" It came out sounding too polite, sarcastic.
Her cheek stung with a flash of pain, and Lilia stumbled backwards. Putting out a hand she leaned against the bed for balance. She was shocked. "You slapped me."
Rosa held up a finger as if she were lecturing a child on manners. "I will not see the Veld crumble to ruin. I will not see it overrun by weeds and sprights. I will not see this land, the work of our forefathers and great grandmothers, slip away from the minds of mortalkind, and be lost from history." She almost screamed the last words. "I will not have it."
Staring blankly, Lilia began to grasp what must have happened. "Alraun," she said. "Oh, goddesses both. It was Alraun, wasn't it? What has he done?"
Rosa was already walking towards the door. Before she left she stopped and turned partly about. Her beautiful face, half-hidden in shadows, turned icy and her eyes lit up with exquisite anger.
"Have you ever seen a murderer burned at the stake, Lilia? Have you ever gone down to the town square and watched?"
She shook her head.
"There was a murderess caught when we were children. She stabbed her drunken husband one night, and left him retching blood for hours before he died. I suppose you were hiding in your daydreams and games, but I went with father to watch. I wanted to see what it would be like. I begged him to take me, and in the end he did. He relented. He never could deny me." She sniffed. "First the flames caught the slip they gave her to wear and every man there leered at her naked shame. Then her hair singed away, and she was as nude as the day the Mother of Brightness gave her into the world. She screamed like a babe too, Lilia." She held a breath. "Like a scared, frightened, tortured baby."
Echoes flapped about the room as the door slammed shut.
Trembling, and leaning against the wall, Lilia listened as her sister's quick strides faded away. Her mind felt dumb, cold, almost devoid of conscious thought. Shaking all over, she went to the window and looked out at bleak, cloudy sky, and the benighted castle below. The pitch-blackness was dotted here and there with the orange glow of windows. For some reason the smithy was hard at work, and a steady hammer of metal-on-metal clamoured through the air.
The noise pained her. As if they were hammering her skull.
"Well Lilia," she said to herself, and the sound of her own voice made her feel sick and repulsed by the fear in it. "What a fine fix you are in now? And here you sit, all day, all night. Too afraid." She looked at the drop. The tower was tall, the second tallest that the Toren Vaunt could boast, only the North Tower would have been more precarious.
"But I must make a decision, she thought. I must be brave, and not let fear rule me, or make me hesitate, or give in to hopeless hopes. No one is going to rescue you, Lilia." There was an edge of regret in her voice now. It would be nice, and warm, and comforting to expect rescue. She had dreamed of it for hours each day. Let the fantasy carry her away from this place. "There is no handsome knight in burnished mail riding to save you, Lilia. No help. No rescue. Just you... just Lilia the timid. Lilia the mousy."
Taking a deep breath, she crossed the room and carefully made sure the door was as secure as she could make it. There was no bolt on this side, but after scraping a heavy chest inch-by-inch up against it, she could be reasonably sure that any visitors would need a few minutes to get the door open. It wouldn't keep her safe for long, but it would buy her time if someone came calling at the wrong moment.
Tall, and curved and lovingly carved and polished, a wardrobe of antique manufacture stood up against a wall opposite her bed. Its doors opened on protesting copper hinges, and the smell of lavender to keep the moths away wafted around her. Stooping quickly into the darkness Lilia drew out, length-by-coil-by-loop, a rope of silks and sheens, of pearly whites, dark twilight greys and ivories. All her dresses knotted and tied together, one to another, to another, so that when had finished the work she had what looked like a white and silver hued snake twisted at her feet. It had taken almost a full night of work to knot and twine them together. And hours of fretful indecision followed, only to cram the makeshift rope back into the wardrobe.
There was a satchel in the wardrobe too, bulging with crusts of bread, and cheeses and a bottle of wine. All smuggled away, a bit at a time after every meal. She tucked the shawm into her belt too, not quite able to leave it behind.
Going to the window she put hands on the sill for support and looked out, and down. Heights always look greater from above than from below. She repeated that several times, but couldn't quite convince herself.
She had already planned it in her head. There was a ledge just down there, and then a little farther below that, a battlement, seldom if ever patrolled, looking, as it did, over the insurmountable cliffs of the southern flank of the Toren. All day, she had stood at the window as hours of indecision wallowed by. Hours of painful planning, imagining her escape, just on the chance she might actually find the nerve to do it. Then what? Flee? To where?
"Well, Lilia. This is it, I think." It was clear that Rosa was not joking. There had been a sort of madness in her eyes. Lilia sighed. "Escape now, or burn tomorrow. Which is it?" Finally, with a long out-breath she said. "If I slip. Well, a fall at least would be quick."
She paced around the room then, fretting. There were a few things she would need. She strapped a belt around her wa
ist, and a satchel over her shoulder, and then over it all, a cloak with a big hanging hood to conceal her features. Alraun's shawm she tucked under the belt.
The rope of silk and velvet was smooth and cool to touch. It tied easily to the bedpost with enough knots that it looked like the knot of a wagon-joint. Then, casting the coils out, over the window ledge, she listened as it slid and roiled into the shushing winds. Edging up onto the window, she paused and almost lost nerve, retreating like a hurt animal. She paced back across the room twice more. The window looked like a gaping mouth, with a throat of tattered clouds and a black, jagged line of distant towers for teeth. She didn't like heights. Never had.
"There is no rescue, Lilia," she said once more, "No rescue. No strong arms. No happy ending unless you make it for yourself."
It was like walking through a morass of dreamstuff, just to make it to the window. Without looking out at the blackness again, without giving herself a chance to give into fear, she hitched her dress, and slowly, with shivering arms, with fingers clenched like steel around the rope, she climbed over the stone windowsill, began to lower herself over the edge.
Despite being a waif of a girl, as Ermengarde so often put it, and therefore not weighing much, her arms burned and strained with every moment. Her knees and feet scuffed painfully on the uneven stonework, sometimes finding purchase, sometimes flailing free like the limbs of some mock marionette. When she found the small ledge she had gazed at optimistically from above Lilia was overwhelmed with a shocking, profound relief. She clung there to the wall, shivering and huffing for breath. The brief rest was made bittersweet by a knowledge that there was still farther to go. Collapsing a little, she was able to rest on her knees and peek over the edge. It was still so far. She wanting to do nothing more than nurse her sore arms and weep. Every muscle in her arms and shoulders was shivering with hot pain.
But there was no time to wait.
If she was found on the ledge, they would pick her off with arrows, or climb up here and toss her down like a sack of wheat. The wind was striking up a chorus of despair now. It flicked hair into her eyes, stinging them.
"Do not give in," she whispered the mantra through clenched teeth, "do not give up now."
One last glance, and she suppressed a twinge of fear. It was difficult to see if the silk-tied rope dangled all the way to the battlement below. What if there was a gap? A fall?
Even if there was, she still had to make the attempt.
Clumsy with exhaustion, Lilia began the second span of the descent, inch by inch, with worn-out arms, clinging to each knot as she lowered herself. When her feet found no more knots, she shut her eyes tight. This was the end of the rope. She didn't know how far there was, but there was nothing else for it. She forced her fingers to loosen just a little, just enough to slide, then fall. A moment of freefall passed in which the world turned to pure, crystalline calm, and then swiftly to sharp, red-black pain.
She lay there for some time, the wind stoking her hair, the tears bleeding over her face. There was relief at first, then a strange, sharp, wakefulness. Her teeth chattered in occasional spasms, her breath came in short, rapid wracks. Rolling onto her back she looked up at the tower. It looked like a cascade of rock falling out of a hole in the sky. The knotted silks writhed and danced on the wind.
She had been wrong. It did look a long way from below, too.
Wind. Storm. Stone. Emptiness. She heard, felt, smelled and saw these things. But she listened as the weary man listens to music in the high winds. She saw as a sick man sees faces in the knots and grain of floors and timbers. She smelled as the daydreamer will recall scents of long lost days. All was illusion. Naught seemed to be solid for a long span of moments.
Pushing herself up, testing one uncertain foot at a time, she stood, and tottered on her feet. As she wondered which way to go, a sound crept suddenly and softly upon the air. It was a noise that sent a lizard of fear crawling up her spine.
Footsteps.
Old Dark Things Page 28
