A Princess of the Chameln Page 6

Loeke rode on without answering, and she repeated the question, thinking he had not heard. He gave her a single glance over his shoulder, frowning, then seemed to recollect himself.

  “Horse troopers,” he said. “Questioning travellers.”

  There was a burst of laughter at her side.

  “You made the bird talk!” said a sweet voice.

  Aidris looked and was amazed. The third member of the party was a young girl not much older than herself. She was pretty, more than pretty, a beautiful girl with loose red-gold curls escaping from her green hood, a beauty even by comparison with Hedris and Aravel and the ladies who had served them, Riane and Fariel and the rest. Her elaborate gown, her slender hands in their green gloves, all told a tale that Aidris thought had ended. This was unmistakeably another lady of Lien.

  “Don’t gape, little kedran,” said the girl. “I know I look a fright.”

  Aidris looked away; she felt herself blushing. Loeke rode on, surly and unperturbed, and they followed. They had to follow, thought Aidris; he was their guide.

  “You come out of Lien, I think,” she said to the girl.

  “From the capital of Lien, from Balufir,” said the girl proudly. “I have been presented at the court of the Markgraf Kelen, and I have walked in the rose gardens with his Markgrafin, Zaramund. You may call me Sabeth—”

  “But that is . . . a royal name,” said Aidris. She almost said, “. . . one of my names.”

  “Ask me no questions and I’ll tell you no lies,” said Sabeth smiling. “I was expecting a battlemaid, hard as wood. But you are not yet trained, I suppose. What shall I call you?”

  “Aidris.”

  The name, she saw, had no associations for this strange girl.

  “I was expecting to travel with a widow and her daughter,” she said.

  Sabeth cast a sidelong glance; her eyes were blue as cornflowers.

  “My lady mother is unfit to travel,” she said. “I must journey alone into the magic kingdom of Athron. There is a destiny waiting, I am sure. A place will be kept for me. Perhaps the Prince—Prince Terril, the elder Prince Flor is married—will catch sight of me one day, playing a stringed instrument, harp or lute, at an open casement. . . .”

  “Sabeth,” growled Ric Loeke, “stop your blethering.”

  Sabeth, checked in the midst of her romance, gave Aidris a quick, shy, knowing smile. They rode on in silence. The path was broad and level, carpeted with pine needles. The majestic trees rose on either side in thick, dark ranks, like giant warriors. The wind sang a constant song in the upper branches.

  They made a brief halt at midday, then rode on steadily until sunset. The going was easy, but Aidris was tired; Sabeth drooped in her uncomfortable saddle, cramped and exhausted. When Aidris came to help her dismount, she waved her aside and waited for Ric Loeke. She slid into his arms with a tired, melting smile, and he carried her and set her down in the bracken. Their camping place had been used by many travelers; it had a clump of stones for a fireplace and a spring nearby. They had come up the side of a low bluff and could look down to a forest pool, fed by the spring.

  Aidris went about helping Loeke to put up the two ingenious tents that he carried; she gathered kindling for the fire. When Sabeth revived, she set out the food, some from each of their saddlebags. The guide, dour and quiet as ever, grilled a trussed fowl from Aidris’s store of provisions. He drank apple brandy, and it made him suddenly more cheerful. Sabeth peeled an apple with a little silver knife and fed pieces of it to Loeke with all kinds of teasing looks and pretty gestures.

  She produced a tiny Lienish harp of bone and sang songs in a low, sweet voice. Aidris found herself a shade embarrassed by the performance, perhaps because all Sabeth’s behavior was a performance. It seemed strange for this lovely creature to perform for the surly forest guide, even if she was his betrothed or his sweetheart. Whenever Loeke slouched off into the bushes, Sabeth left off singing and threw Aidris an exhausted grin. Then after a few more tots of brandy Loeke swore aloud and told her to stop that damned yowling, it was giving him a headache. Sabeth yawned prettily; Aidris crawled off to one of the tents. She lay on her bracken bed hearing the forest all about her and slept, too tired to puzzle over the ill-assorted pair.

  In the dawn she heard riders pass through the camp, going west towards Vigrund. Ric Loeke greeted a fellow guide. She lay still, holding her breath, and came cautiously out of the tent when they had gone.

  “A man and his wife,” said Loeke, “coming home from their daughter’s wedding in Athron.”

  They packed up quickly and rode on. Sabeth was fresh and fair, full of high spirits. Even Ric Loeke was more communicative. He pointed out signs of the Tulgai to Aidris; knotted grass at the foot of an oak, runes cut through a dead pine. As the path narrowed along the side of a ridge, the brown mare stumbled, Sabeth was nearly thrown. An hour later the mare was lame; Loeke got down, cursing under his breath, and took stones from the injured hoof.

  “We need a smith. The shoe is half off,” he said to Aidris. “I must go by Aldero, the forest village.”

  Deliberately, thinking things out, he changed the clumsy sidesaddle to his own horse and let Sabeth ride it. He put his own saddle on the mare and handed the sealed pouch to Aidris.

  “Aldero is no place for valuables,” he said.

  He turned off, leading the mare tenderly down the ridge; the village was out of sight but they could see a thin trickle of smoke rising. The two girls rode on slowly towards a crossroad with an elm, where Loeke would come up from the village again. Sabeth, in high fettle, was giving Aidris some advice.

  “You should grow your hair out and have it ironed straight,” she said. “It gives a pleasing effect. You are what my mother calls a ‘pony girl.’ Green eyes are rare and attractive. You should wear a touch of green to bring out the color.”

  Aidris laughed aloud, and the laugh died in her throat. Telavel had heard the sound too; she pricked her ears and danced about. Riders coming behind them. She turned Telavel aside into the trees and called urgently to Sabeth.

  “We must let them pass.”

  “The path is wide enough . . .”

  “We must hide. Quickly!”

  Elster, the well-mannered black gelding, obeyed, and they went further in.

  “I don’t see why . . .” whispered Sabeth.

  “There is trouble in the Chameln lands,” said Aidris. “You saw the troopers at Vigrund. And I have Master Loeke’s gold pouch.”

  The riders came on, and she saw them with a stab of fear. Ten troopers of Mel’Nir, in painted strip mail, mounted on the monstrous horses bred to bear their weight. She heard at last the jingle of harness, the earth-shaking hoofbeats.

  Sabeth shivered deliciously.

  “Such big men,” she whispered. “I have heard such tales . . . Some women are too small in the hips to bear their children. It happened to the Markgraf’s youngest sister.”

  “Be quiet!” said Aidris.

  She felt a wave of revulsion, remembering Aravel by her side, dropping poison. Up ahead the troopers drew to a clashing halt at the crossroads; now Sabeth was afraid.

  “If they search?”

  “We can outride them,” said Aidris firmly. “We will go straight in among the trees. They cannot follow.”

  “We would be lost!”

  There were shouted commands, then came a murmur of voices. Aidris urged Telavel gently through the trees and came just within earshot. The ten great horses stamped and snorted; she heard the rumbling voice of the officer, and a high quavering reply. The troopers were questioning an old woman. At first she wailed and pleaded for them to leave her alone, then came the end of a reply.

  “. . . Grafell Pass?”

  The officer spoke again, and the old woman repeated the question.

  “Travelers? Young maid? Shame on you, big bocks. There be no maids in Aldero!”

  A ripple of laughter from the soldiers; the old woman cried out again:

  “Am Firn? Am Firn? H
ere in the forest? Today or yesterday?”

  The questioner prompted.

  “Ah,” she cried, “those ones? The black, the brown mare and the chameln grey? What about those ones?”

  Aidris held her breath.

  “Thank you,” sang the old woman. “You’re a king’s son, my darling. Prince Pine will bless you, and Lady Rowan will deck your first-born’s cradle. Those travellers are four hours ahead of you along this road to Grafell Pass. Straight on . . . turn downhill at the stone slide!”

  There was a shout, and the whole troop took off at a gallop. Sabeth came up.

  “They’ve gone!”

  “She sent them away,” said Aidris. “The old woman saved us. She had no love for the warriors of Mel’Nir.”

  She rode Telavel boldly out onto the road, and Sabeth followed, protesting. They came up to the crossroads with the tall elm, and there stood the old woman. Aidris had pictured her as small and bent, a Firnish old woman, but she was tall and grey-brown, like a tree in winter. As they came up, she stared and then laughed and gave a whistle. A thin black hound crept out of the bushes and came to heel.

  “Look there!” sang the old woman. “Look there, dog dear—two beautiful princesses. Am Firn and Am Zor, the bright and the dark.”

  Aidris blushed; she looked at Sabeth, who only primped and laughed. She was used to compliments.

  “What will you give me, children?” asked the old woman boldly. “Those incomers gave me bronze bits.”

  “Don’t give her any more,” said Sabeth. “She has turned her trick for today.”

  Aidris did not like this rudeness from Sabeth. She had intended to give the old woman money, but she had none in her pocket and dared not open the sealed pouch. She took a silver ring, Nazran’s gift, from the little finger of her left hand.

  “My thanks . . .” she said. “What is your name good mother? Do you live in Aldero?”

  The old woman took the ring, slipped it onto the tip of a bony finger. She smiled, and Aidris saw that her teeth were perfect still.

  “I am Yekla,” she said. “I am the horse doctor.”

  “You sent the troopers away to Grafells.”

  “They may not come safe home,” said the old woman softly.

  Aidris remembered the curse that had sounded like a blessing: a coffin of pine and a wreath of rowan.

  “Give us a true blessing,” she said, “and tell us which way to go.”

  “Your guide on the brown mare will know that,” said Yekla. “The Carach trees will bless you when you come into Athron.”

  She strode off down the hill towards Aldero, followed by her lean hound, and turned back to cry out loudly, “A virgin should not ride with a whore!”

  Aidris turned to Sabeth and saw her sitting very erect in the saddle, lips pressed together, like Sharn Am Zor when he tried to hold back tears. She hated the old woman’s cruelty and felt ashamed of her own ignorance. She saw with pity that the cruel words were true. Sabeth was a fancy woman, one of the singing-girls of Balufir; anyone else would have seen it at once. She drew Telavel in close and bending over kissed Sabeth’s pale, perfumed cheek.

  “The old woman is mad!” she said. “She is teasing us.”

  Sabeth gave a wan smile. Ric Loeke was coming up the track from the village riding the brown mare. When he heard the story of the troopers, he became angry, his face dark as a thundercloud. Aidris caught a whiff of spirits on his breath, from the tavern at Aldero.

  “The old witch did us a good turn,” he said, “but now we must ride another way, by the Wulfental.”

  “Is it hard riding?” asked Sabeth. “Will it break my little bones?”

  “We must go through some dark places to reach this pass,” he said.

  He took back the gold pouch but kept to Imba, the brown mare. He turned off on to a narrow track, and they followed; he led them on, unspeaking, deeper and deeper into the forest.

  III

  They were among the foothills of the mountains. The trees were dense and strange; a black beech forest clothed the low hills. The valleys were dark as night, and the trails they followed through the shaggy pines were like dank tunnels. They came one nightfall up through the beech forest to an open place on the crown of a hill. An old standing stone rose up in the midst of a circle of hard, bleached grass, flattened by wind and snow. Squat trees crouched at the edge of the circle; the remains of a fire and some kind of shelter stood at the foot of the dolmen. Loeke cursed and unexpectedly thumbed his forehead in an old sign to ward off evil.

  “The place has become a witch-hold,” he said. “We must go on further.”

  Sabeth moaned for sheer weariness and was echoed by a faint bird cry. A small hawk flew up across the clearing and soared away into the wind.

  “It is a bleak place,” said Aidris, “but what are the signs . . .?”

  “The stone is marked,” said Loeke.

  She saw black marks on the side of the stone nearest them that might be runes.

  “Please,” she said. “Let me read those runes and speak a prayer by the stone. We can pitch our camp here on the edge of the trees. We are too tired to go further.”

  Ric Loeke stared at her a moment, considering, then nodded. Telavel was restless; she did not care for the place. Aidris dismounted, then dug into her saddlebag and found the bronze sword of the Firn. She did not buckle it on, but carried the glittering scabbard as she approached the stone. It seemed to be a long way off; she missed the shield of the trees.

  The dolmen was of grey-white stone, twenty feet tall and subtly shaped. It had grown into the earth. Colonies of lichen, yellow, brown and white, patterned its surface. It had the grace of a veiled woman brooding on the lonely hilltop. Large, angry marks defaced the stone; there was a rune om and a rune thorn and there were runes she did not know. She thought this must be a strange speech with even the runes om and thorn having a different sound. The writing was done in a gritty brownish black paint or ink; she guessed it was a mixture of charcoal and blood.

  “O Stone, O Goddess in the stone,” she said, “I pray for deliverance, I pray that we may pass a safe night. I pray that rain will come to wash away the runes and purify this place. Grant my prayers in the name of the house of the Firn!”

  She drew the sword and held it upright so that the runes on the blade were near the stone. Then, as she lowered the sword, she felt another person standing at her elbow and jumped, nervous as a shrewmouse. There was no one beside her. She walked to her right, sunwise, round the stone and came to an old tent frame and the ashes of a fire.

  The evening wind was cool, here on the hilltop, but now she felt a thick, icy cold seeping up out of the ground. Among the ashes were bones and the blackened round of a small skull. A dead bird hung from a thread on the tent frame. She had come to a place where everything was crooked, where time and the natural world slid and shifted. Just out of earshot there were gusts of sound: shrieking, howling, cold voices, the hiss of arrows in flight and the beating of dark wings.

  She turned, she was turned towards the stone, and it was black and shining, like a mirror of basalt. A man stood in the depths of the stone, half-turned towards her. He was pale faced, with flowing dark red hair, and his loose robe was blue, a midnight color, with snakes and vines writhing upon its hem. His arms were upraised; he turned slowly as if to make a circle, and in her mind a voice said: “Sheath the sword. He will know you.”

  Aidris gathered all her strength of will and sheathed the sword. Then she felt a stab of pain in her chest, a small bolt of lightning, and before the man in the stone had turned towards her, she fell backwards. She came out of the power of the stone and lay sprawling on the cold grass of the hilltop. The stone was grey and lichen-covered again, with an old campsite at its base. Yet she knew the stone for what it was: a watch post where that sorcerer looked out upon the world.

  She felt the scrying stone, her own jewel, swinging cool against her skin; it had stabbed her with pain and driven her out of the circle of the
sorcerer’s power. She drew it out now, but it was without light; a few sparkles around its frame were all that remained. She scrambled up and ran back to the others.

  “What is it?” cried Sabeth. “You look so pale. The witches have stolen your soul away!”

  “Not yet,” said Aidris. “You were right, Master Loeke, the standing stone is bewitched.”

  Ric Loeke cursed under his breath.

  “Shall we go further?” he asked.

  Aidris stared at the distant stone.

  “No,” she said. “We might as well stay here, in the lee of the stone.”

  They sat down, bone weary, and ate cold food. There was a spring across the clearing, but they watered the horses from their own water-skin. It was not a night for singing; Loeke stayed on watch, red-eyed, drinking his brandy.

  “You’re a brave lass,” he said to Aidris.

  She lay down to sleep in her tent and was glad when the moon, the great avatar of the Goddess, rose full and white over the hilltop. They broke camp early, just before dawn, and rode back the way they had come, then turned off on a new path into the next valley.

  From this time, she believed, their journey was perilous. They were accursed, all three, and she could not tell whether this was the work of that watcher in the stone or whether it was their brief meeting with the accursed spot working on their own natures. They entered another damp, pine-filled valley, and all that day Ric Loeke paused to listen. He was silent as they rode, and when the girls talked in whispers, he called for silence. He said at last, “We’re followed!”

  Aidris could hear nothing but the noises of the forest: water trickling, the sough of the branches. Her old fear was awakened; when a bird flew up she started and made Telavel nervous. Sabeth had lost her cheerfulness; the long way was telling on her; her hands were blistered. She whispered to Aidris, “He’s haunted. Don’t you know why?”

  Aidris shook her head.

  “His applejack has run out.”

  It seemed no more than a joke, but Sabeth was perfectly serious. They camped again in a pleasant place, half out of a valley on a hillside, with a running stream where Loeke caught crawlers, delicious shell-backed creatures that lived under the stones.