“What a lardhead you can be!”
“If I talk like a madman, it’s because I’m mad all for the love of you. Haven’t I loved you for years? Have I ever looked at another woman in all that time? Haven’t I brought you gifts from down in Eldidd? Please, won’t you walk with me a little ways? If I die for lack of your kisses, my blood will be on your head.”
“And if I get a headache from listening to you babble, then the pain will be in my head, too. Cal, the alardan’s full of prettier women than me. Go find one and seduce her, will you?”
“Oh, by the gods!” Calonderiel tossed his head, his violet eyes flashing with something like rage. “Doesn’t love mean anything to you?”
“About as much as meat means to a deer, but I don’t like to see you unhappy. We’ve been friends for ever so long, since we were children, truly.”
Just seventy that year, Calonderiel was a handsome man, tall even for one of the People, towering a full head above her, his hair so pale it seemed white in the summer sun and his eyes as deep-set as a dark pool among shade trees. Yet Dallandra found the thought of him kissing her—or worse yet, caressing her—as repellent as the thought of biting into meat and finding a maggot.
“Besides,” she went on, “how would your pack of friends take it if I chose you?”
“They’d have to take it. We threw knucklebones to see who’d get the first chance to court you, and I won.”
“You what?” Dallandra slapped him so hard across the face that he reeled back. “You beast! You gut-sucking sheep worm! Am I supposed to be flattered by that?”
“Of course you are. I mean, aren’t you glad to have four men all ready to die for you?”
“Not if they dice over me first like a piece of Eldidd ironware.”
“I didn’t mean it like that!”
“Horse turds.”
When Dallandra started to walk away, he grabbed her arm again, bobbing his head and ducking before her like a bird drinking from a stream.
“Please, wait! At least tell me this: is there someone you love more than me? If there is, then I’ll ride off with a broken heart, but I’ll ride.”
“Since I don’t love you at all, it wouldn’t be hard to find someone I loved more, but actually, I haven’t even looked. Why don’t you believe me, you cloudbrain? I don’t love you. I don’t love anyone. I don’t want to get myself a man. Plain truth. No more to say. There you are.”
Rage flared in his eyes.
“I don’t believe it. Come on, tell me: what can I do to make you love me?”
She was about to swear at him, then had a better idea.
“I’ll never love any man who isn’t my match in magic.”
“What a rotten thing to say! What man’s ever going to match you? That’s a woman’s art.”
“It doesn’t have to be.” Dallandra gave him a small smile. “A man could learn it, too—if he had the guts, and most of you don’t.”
This time, when Dallandra shook free and walked on, Cal stayed behind, savagely kicking at a tuft of grass with the toe of his boot. She hurried on to the lakeshore, where Nananna and Halaberiel were sitting in the long grass in the shade of a willow tree, their heads together and talking urgently.
“I’ve asked the banadar to do us a small favor,” Nananna said. “Concerning yesterday’s vision.”
“Of course I’ll go look for this man, Wise One. I’ll take my escort with me, too.” He thought for a moment. “Let’s see—the last of the Round-ear merchants is still here. I could ask him if he’s seen anything of a stranger.”
“No,” Nananna said. “I know this is only making your task harder, Banadar, but I’d prefer that you speak to the Round-ears as little as possible.”
Halaberiel shot her a troubled glance, then nodded his agreement.
“Take Cal with you, will you?” Dallandra broke in. “I want him out of my sight.”
“Oh, now now.” Halaberiel gave her an infuriatingly paternal smile. “He’s a decent boy, really, if you’d only give him a chance.”
When Dallandra crossed her arms over her chest and glared at him, Halaberiel hastily looked away and made the sign against the evil eye with his fingers. Although the evil eye was only a myth, most dweomerfolk found it a useful one.
“Very well, Cal will ride with me,” Halaberiel said. “Now, about this Round-ear we’re fetching, can you give me a sign to look for, O Wise One?”
“Come to my tent after dark. I’ll give you a riddle to ask him, too, just to make sure you’ve cut the horse out of the herd of cows.”
“Good.” Halaberiel rose, bobbing his head at her. “Shall I escort you to your tent?”
“No, but thank you. I think I’ll take a bit of sun.”
Nananna waited until the banadar was out of earshot before she spoke.
“And why are you breaking poor Cal’s heart?”
“I don’t love him.”
“Very well, then, but there’s nothing wrong with your finding a nice young man to keep you warm in the winter.”
Dallandra wrinkled her nose and shuddered. Nananna laughed, patting Dallandra gently on the arm with one frail hand.
“Whatever you want, child. But a cold heart may find it hard to work magic as it grows older and more chill.”
“Oh, maybe so, but I hate it when they hang around me, yapping like dogs around a bitch in heat! Sometimes I wish I’d been born ugly.”
“It might have been easier, but the Goddess of the Clouds gave you beauty, and doubtless for some reason of her own. I wouldn’t argue with her now that you have it.”
That night was the first in what promised to be a long series of feasts. Each alar made up a huge quantity of a single dish and set it out in front of their tents—Dallandra stewed up a vast pot of dried vegetables heavily spiced with Bardek curries—and the People drifted from one alar to another, sampling each dish, stopping to talk with old friends, then moving on to the next. Dallandra took a wooden bowl and trotted back and forth from alar to alar to fetch a selection of favorite treats for Nananna, who sat regally on a pile of cushions by a campfire and received visitors while she ate. By the end of the alardan she would have seen everyone at the meeting and dispensed wise advice, too, for most of their problems. Someday this role of wise woman would be Dallandra’s, but she was filled with the dread that she was too young, not ready, nowhere near Nananna’s equal. Her worst fear was that she would somehow betray her people’s trust in her.
Slowly the night darkened; a full moon rose bloated on the far empty horizon. Here and there, music broke out in the camp, as harpers and flute players took out their instruments and started the traditional songs. Singing, or at least humming along under their breath, the People drifted back and forth through the light from a hundred campfires. Just as the moon was rising high in the sky, the Round-ear merchant came to pay his respects to Nananna. Since she was supposed to be polishing her knowledge of the Eldidd tongue, Dallandra moved close to listen as Namydd of Aberwyn and his son, Daen, made Nananna low bows in the Round-ear fashion and sat down at her feet. The merchant was a portly sort, graying and paunchy, and his thin wisps of hair made his round ears painfully obvious. Daen, however, was nice-looking for one of his kind, with a thick shock of blond hair to cover what Dallandra thought of as his deformity.
“I’m most grateful you’d speak with me, O Wise One,” Namydd said in his barbarous-sounding speech. “I’ve brought you a little gift, just as a token of my respect.”
Daen promptly handed over a cloth-wrapped parcel, which his father presented to Nananna with as much of a bow as he could manage sitting down. With a small regal smile, Nananna unwrapped it, then held up two beautiful steel skinning knives with carved bone handles.
“How lovely! My thanks, good merchants. Here, Dallandra, you may choose which one you want.”
Eagerly Dallandra took the knives and studied them in the firelight. One knife was decorated purely with interlacements and spirals; the other had a picture of a runnin
g horse in the clumsy Eldidd style. She chose the abstract one and handed the other back to Nananna.
“My thanks, good merchants,” Dallandra said. “This is a truly fine thing.”
“Not half as fine as you deserve,” Daen broke in.
Dallandra realized that he was staring at her with a besotted smile. Oh no, not him, too! she thought. She rose, made a polite bob, then hurried to the tent on the excuse of putting the new knives away.
By the time the moon was at her zenith, Nananna was tired. Dallandra shooed the last visitors away, then escorted Nananna to their tent and helped her to settle into bed. In the soft glow of the magical light, Nananna seemed as frail as a tiny child as she lay wrapped in her dark blue blanket, but her violet eyes were still full of life, sparkling like a lass’s.
“I do love an alardan,” Nananna said. “You can go watch the dancing if you’d like, child.”
“Are you sure you won’t need me for anything?”
“Not while I sleep, no. Oh—I forgot all about Halaberiel. Here, go find him and tell him I’ll speak to him in the morning.”
Shortly after dawn on the morrow, Halaberiel appeared at their tent with the four young men who were to ride with him. They all sat on the floor of the tent while Nananna described the young Round-ear she’d seen in her vision—a slender man, much shorter than one of the People, with dark hair and big eyes like an owl. He was traveling with a mule and earning his living as a herbman.
“So he shouldn’t be too hard to find,” Nananna finished up. “When I scried him out, he was leaving Elrydd and making his way west. Now, the rest of you leave us while I tell the banadar the secret riddle.”
Carefully avoiding Calonderiel, Dallandra left the tent along with the men and went over to Enabrilia’s tent, which stood nearby. Enabrilia was cooking soda bread of Eldidd flour on a griddle while Wylenteriel changed the baby. Enabrilia broke off a bit of warm bread and handed it to Dallandra.
“I’ve got something to show you later,” Enabrilia said. “We traded a pair of geldings for some marvelous things yesterday. A big iron kettle and yards and yards of linen.”
“Wonderful! I should take some of our extra horses over to the Round-eyes, too.”
The Eldidd merchants left the alardan the next day, taking away fine horses and jewelry and leaving behind a vast motley assortment of iron goods, cloth, and mead. The alardan settled down to its real business—trading goods among itself, and sorting out the riding orders for the long trips ahead to the various winter camps. Just at twilight, Dallandra took an Eldidd-made ax and walked about a mile to a stand of oaks where she’d spotted a dead tree earlier. In the blue shadows under the old trees, all tangled with underbrush, it was cool and quiet—too quiet, without even the song of a bird. Suddenly she was aware of someone watching her. She raised the ax to a weapon posture.
“All right,” Dallandra barked. “Come out.”
As quietly as a spirit materializing, a man of the People stepped forward. Dressed in clothes pieced out of animal skins, he carried a long spear with a chipped stone blade, the shaft striped with colored earths and decorated with feathers and ceramic beads. Round his neck on a thong hung a small leather pouch, also elaborately decorated. One of the Forest Folk, come so close to a gathering—Dallandra lowered the ax and stared in sheer surprise. His smile was more a sneer as he looked her over.
“You have magic,” he said at last.
“Yes, I do. Do you need my help for anything?”
“Your help?” The words dripped sarcasm. “Impious bitch! As if I needed your help for one little thing. That axhead is made of iron.”
Dallandra sighed in sudden understanding. The Forest Folk clung to ancient taboos along with ancient ways—or so the People saw it.
“Yes, it is, but it hasn’t hurt me or my friends. Honest. No harm’s come to us at all.”
“That’s not the issue. The Guardians are angry. You drive the Guardians away with your stinking filthy iron.”
To Dallandra the Guardians were a religious principle, not any sort of real being, but there was no use in arguing philosophy with the Forest Folk.
“Have you come to warn us? I thank you for your concern, and I shall pray for forgiveness.”
“Don’t you mock me! Don’t you think I can tell you despise us? Don’t you dare speak to me as if I were a child, or I’ll—”
When he stepped forward, raising the spear, Dallandra threw up one hand and summoned the Wildfolk of Aethyr. Blazing blue fire plumed from her fingers with a roaring hiss. The man shrieked and fell onto his knees.
“Now,” she said calmly. “What do you want? If you just want to lecture me, I’m too busy at the moment.”
“I want nothing, Wise One.” He was shaking, his fingers tight on the spear shaft for comfort. “I brought someone who does need your help.”
When he called out, a human man crept forward from the underbrush. His dark hair was matted; his tattered brown rags were filthy. He fell to his knees in front of her and looked up with desperate eyes. He was so thin that she could see every bone in the hands he raised to her.
“Please help me,” he stammered out in the Eldidd tongue.
Dallandra stared at his dirty face. On his left cheek was a brand, bitten deep into his flesh, the mark of some Round-ear lord. A bondsman—fleeing for freedom and his life.
“Of course we’ll help you,” Dallandra said. “Come with me. Let’s get you fed first.” She turned to the spearman. “You have my sincere thanks. Do you want to eat with us, too?”
For an answer he rose and ran, slipping back into the forest like a deer. Weeping a low animal mutter under his breath, the Round-ear staggered to his feet. When they reached the alar, the People clustered round with shouts and oaths. Wylenteriel pressed a chunk of bread into the man’s filthy hands and got him a bowl of ewe’s milk to drink—the roast lamb and spiced food would have only made him vomit.
“One of the Forest Folk brought him in,” Dallandra said. “They must have been waiting for the merchants to leave.”
“I heard your people help such as us,” the bondsman stammered. “Oh, please, I can’t bear it anymore. My lord’s a harsh man. His overseer flogs us half to death whenever it suits him.”
“This lord is probably coming after him, too,” Dallandra said to the crowd in Elvish. “I wish Halaberiel were here, but we’ll have to work something out without him.”
“My alar’s riding west.” Gannobrennon stepped forward. “We’ll take him with us, and we’ll leave tonight.”
“Good, but what if the Round-ears ride in looking for him?” Elbaladar said. “We’d better break up the alardan.”
At this a round of arguments, suggestions, a babble of good advice and drawbacks, broke out. Slowly Nananna came out from the tent and walked over. At the sight of her, everyone fell silent.
“Elbaladar is right,” Nananna said. “We’d better break camp tonight. I can contact Halaberiel through my stones and tell him the news.” She paused, looking around at the assembled people. “I need four or five young men to join my alar. We can’t ride fast, and so the Round-ears might catch up with us.”
Quickly the news spread through the alardan: they were rescuing a Round-ear slave, and the Wise One had given her orders. The People gobbled down the feast, then packed up gear and struck tents by firelight and the rising moon. A few at a time, the alarli cut their stock out of the common herds and disappeared, moving on fast into the silent dark grasslands, until the vast meadow stood empty with only the crushed grass and various leavings to show where the alardan stood. Just after midnight four young men brought their stock and their possessions over to join the Wise One’s group, the last two tents left of hundreds.
“I can ride for a few hours tonight,” Nananna said. “I want to turn back east. If the Round-ear lord finds anyone, it had best be me.”
They made a hasty, sparse camp two hours later on the banks of the river that flows out of the Lake of the Leaping Trout. In the
morning they forded the river and turned dead south through the grasslands. Enabrilia and Dallandra led the travois horses while Wylenteriel, Talbrennon, and one of their new recruits herded the stock in the rear. The other three rode in front, hands on sword hilts, eyes constantly sweeping the horizon, ready to ride between any Round-ear and Nananna. Toward noon, the trouble came. Dallandra saw a puff of dust heading toward them that soon resolved itself into six horsemen, trotting fast over the grasslands.
“Good,” Nananna said. “Let’s pull up and let them catch us. Dalla, you do the talking.”
Dallandra handed her the rope of the travois horse and rode up to the head of the line. The horsemen shouted and turned their horses, galloping the last half mile up to the alar. At their head was a heavyset blond man in the plaid brigga that marked him as an Eldidd lord; behind him were five of his warband, all armed and ready. The lord checked his men some twenty feet away from the alar and rode on alone to face Dallandra. He looked sourly over the small party; she could see him noting well the armed men—six of them, counting young Talbrennon.
“My lord! Shall we charge?”
“Hold your tongue!” the lord yelled. “Can’t you see the women with them? And one of them’s old at that.”
Dallandra relaxed slightly; so he had a bit of his kind of honor. The lord edged his horse up close to hers.
“Now, can any of you speak my language?”
Dallandra gave him a wide-eyed stupid stare.
“Eldidd.” He sighed and pointed to himself. “I’m a lord. I lost a bondsman. Have you seen him?”
“Bondsman?” Dallandra said slowly. “What is bondsman? Oh—farmer.”
“That’s right.” The lord raised his voice, as if she would understand if only he shouted. “A kind of farmer. He has a brand here.” He pointed to his cheek. “A mark. He’s my property, and he ran away.”
Dallandra nodded slowly, as if considering all of this.
“He’s a young man, wearing brown clothes,” the lord bellowed at the top of his lungs. “Have you seen him?”
“That I not. No see farmers.”