For three days he had been riding through empty land. It was not bare—Spring had run crazy through the fields, as if drunk on rose wine, flinging wildflowers and garlands of new greenery about with inebriated extravagance. The hills were ablaze with suncandle and Goddess’s-delight, tall yellow Lovers’-cup lilies and heartheal. Butterwort and red and blue never-say-die clambered up the gullies toward the hillcrests, and white mooneyes covered the ground almost everywhere that grass did not. But there were no people, no homesteads. For one thing, the land was poor for farming. For another, that part of the country was full of Fyrd.
The Fyrd had always been in the Kingdoms. They were said to be children of the Shadow, sent by Him to spread death and misery in the Goddess’s despite: or even creations of the Dark itself, changed things which had been made from normal animals when the Dark still covered the world. Whatever the case, most of North Darthen was still full of the major Fyrd species—horwolves, nadders, keplian, lathfliers, maws, and destreth. In Herewiss’s time, the land around the Wood was free of them, kept that way by constant use of the Power and the cold-eyed accuracy of Brightwood archers. But outside the Wood’s environs the Fyrd raided constantly, taking great numbers of livestock, and also men when they could get them. Sheep were pastured here in the hill country, but all the shepherds came up together after the Maiden’s Day feasts. Both flocks and men stood a better chance in large numbers.
The hills were thinning out now, and farms were slowly beginning to appear. They became more frequent as Herewiss and Dapple descended into the lowlands, and one very large farm with stone markers at its boundaries indicated that Herewiss was close to the town he had been expecting to reach that evening. The farm was the holding of a prominent Darthene house, the Lords Arian. He could have stopped there and received excellent hospitality, being after all the next thing to a prince; but attention drawn to himself was the last thing he wanted at this point.
He rode on down from the hills, crossing a rude stone bridge over the Kearint, a minor tributary of the river Darst, and came to the forty-house town of Havering Slides just as dusk was falling. Most of the people who lived there were hands on the big Arian farm. Herewiss rode up to the gate in the wooden palisade around the town, identified himself and was admitted without question.
The inn was as he had remembered it from earlier visits, a motley-looking place with a disjointed feeling to it; new buildings ran headlong into old ones, and afterthought second storeys sagged on their supports over uneasy-looking bay windows. It seemed that some of the artisans who had done carving work in the Woodward had also passed this way. The gutterspouts were fashioned into panting hound-faces and singing frogs; crows stealing cheese in their wooden beaks leered down from the cupolas.
Herewiss rode up to the stable door and handed Dapple over to the girl in charge. As he strode toward the doorway of the inn, his saddlebags slung over his shoulder, he was greeted by the sudden and beautiful odor of roast beef. After three days of nourishing but tasteless journey rations, the prospect of real food seemed almost an embarrassment of luxury. He paused at the door just long enough to admire the carving over it, a cross-grain bas-relief of a local Rodmistress casting the Shadow out of a possessed cow.
Herewiss pushed open the door and went in. It took his eyes a few minutes to get used to the dim interior of the place, though there were oil lamps all around. He was standing in a fairly large common room crowded with tables and chairs and long trestled benches. The room was not too full, it still being early in the evening. Several patrons sat about a table, dicing for coppers, and off in one corner a hulking farmer was devouring a steak pie in great mouthfuls.
The steak pie particularly interested Herewiss. Bags in hand, he went to the kitchen door, which was carved with dancing poultry, and knocked.
The door opened, and the innkeeper looked out at him cordially. She was a tall slender woman, gray-haired but pretty, in a brown robe and a long stained apron. “Can I help you, sir?” she said, wiping her hands on a dirty gray towel.
“Madam,” Herewiss said, bowing slightly, “food and lodging for the night for myself and my horse would do nicely.”
“Half an eagle,” the innkeeper said, looking at his clothes, which were in good repair.
“A quarter,” said Herewiss, smiling his most charming smile at her.
She smiled back at him. “A quarter eagle and three pence.”
“Two.”
The innkeeper smiled more broadly. “Two it is. Your horse is inside?”
“He is, madam.”
“Dinner?”
“Oh, ye s,” Herewiss said. The good smells coming out of the kitchen were making his stomach talk. “Some of what that gentleman is having, if there’s another one…”
She nodded. “Anything to drink? We have wine, red and white and Delann yellow; brown and black ale; and my husband made a fresh barrel of Knight’s Downfall yesterday.”
“Ale sounds good: the black. Which room should I take?”
“Up the stairs, turn right, third door to your left.” The innkeeper disappeared back into the kitchen’s steam.
Herewiss hurried up the creaking stairs and found the room in question. It was predictably musty, and the floor groaned under him. The shutters screeched in protest when he levered them open to let the sunset in, but he was so glad to have a hot meal in the offing that the place looked as good as any king’s castle to him. He dropped his bag in the corner, under the window, and changed into another clean dark tunic; then headed for the door. Halfway through the doorway, an afterthought struck him. He raised his hands to draw the appropriate gestures in the air, and since no one was near, spoke aloud the words of a very minor binding, erecting a lockshield around his bags. Then down the stairs he went.
Herewiss sat down at an empty table in a corner and spent a few moments admiring the window nearest him, which was a crazy amalgam of bottle-glass panes and stained vignettes. One of them, done in vivid shades of rose, cobalt, and emerald, showed the end of the old story about the man who fooled the Goddess into lifting her skirts by confronting Her with an illusion-river. There he lay under the trees at Harvest festival, inextricably stuck to and into an illusionary lover, while the Goddess and the harvesters stood around and laughed themselves weak. The man looked understandably mortified, and very chastened. He had been very lucky that he’d played his trick on the Mother aspect of the Goddess; had She been manifesting as the Maiden at the time, She might not have been so kind. The Mother tends to be forgiving of Her children’s pranks, but the Maiden can be fatally jealous of Her modesty.
Someone blocked the light, and Herewiss looked up. Before him stood a girl of perhaps eighteen years, pretty in a bland sort of way, with a droopy halo of frizzing black hair. She bent in front of Herewiss, putting his steak pie and ale on the old scarred table. Herewiss took brief disinterested notice of the view down her blouse, but much more of his attention was on the steak pie.
“Nice,” he said. “A fork, please?”
“Hmm?” She in her turn was being very interested in Herewiss.
“A fork?”
“Oh. Yes, certainly—” She reached into her pocket and brought one out for him. Herewiss took it, wiped it off, and hurriedly dug into the pie.
“Ahh, listen,” she said, bending down again, and Herewiss began an intensive study of a piece of potato, “are you busy this evening?”
Herewiss did his best to look up at her with profound sorrow. She really wasn’t his type, and there was a mercenary look in her eye that sent him hurriedly to the excuse box in the back of his head. “If you’re thinking what I think you are,” he said, “I’m sorry, but I’m under vows of chastity.”
“You don’t look like you’re in an Order,” she said.
“Perpetual chastity,” Herewiss said. “Or until the Lion comes back. Sorry.”
The girl stood up. “Well,” she said, “if you change your mind, ask the lady in the kitchen where I am. I’m her daughter.”
Herewiss nodded, and she went away into the kitchen. He sagged slightly as the door closed behind her, and settled back against the wall.
That was a bit panicky of me, Herewiss thought as he began to eat. I wonder what it is about her that bothers me so—
He put the thought aside and concentrated on the hot-spiced food and the heavy ale. The common room began slowly to fill up while Herewiss ate, as the local clientele came in from the fields and houses to enjoy each other’s company. Soon the big table nearest him was occupied by a noisy, cheerful group of farmers from the Arian landholdings, nine or ten brawny men and lithe ladies, all deeply tanned and smelling strongly of honest work. They called loudly for food and drink, and hailed Herewiss like a brother when they spotted him in his corner. He smiled back at them, and before long they were exchanging crude jokes and bad puns, and laughing like a lot of fools.
When their table and Herewiss’s were being cleared of emptied plates, and tankards were being refilled, the inn’s cat came strolling by. It was greeted politely by the farmers, and offered little pieces of leftover meat or game. The cat accepted some of these, declined others graciously and in silence, and went on by, making its rounds. As it passed it looked hard at Herewiss, as if it recognized him. He nodded at it; the cat looked away as if unconcerned, and moved on.
As the ale flowed and the evening flowered, the storytelling and singing began in earnest. Most of the stories were ones already known to everyone there, but no one seemed to care much about that—Kingdoms people have a love of stories, as long as the story wears a different face each time. Someone began with the old one about what Ealor the Prince of Darthen had done with the fireplace poker, which was later named Sarsweng and had its haft encrusted with diamonds. Then someone else got up and told about something more recent, news only a hundred and five years old, how the lady Faran Fersca’s daughter had gone out with her twelve ships to look for the Isles of the North, and how only one ship had come back after a year, and what tale its captain told. The story was related in an unusual fashion, sung to an antique rhyme-form by a little old lady with a surprisingly strong soprano. There was a great deal of stamping and cheering and applause when she finished; and several people, judging correctly that the lady was quite young inside, whatever her apparent age, propositioned her immediately. She said yes to one of the propositions, and she and the gentleman went upstairs immediately to more applause.
In the commotion, the lute was passed around to the farmers’ table and one of them started to sing the song about the Brindle Cat of Aes Arädh, how it carried away the chief bard of a Steldene king on its back because of an insulting song he had sung before the Four Hundred of Arlen, and what the bard saw in the Otherworld to which the cat took him. Herewiss joined in on the choruses, and one of the ladies at the farmers’ table noticed the quality of his voice and called to him, “You’re next!” He shook his head, but when the man with the lute was finished, it was passed back to him. He looked at it with resignation, and then smiled at a sudden memory.
“All right,” he said, pushed his chair back, and perched himself on the edge of the farmers’ table, pausing a moment to tune one of the strings that had gone a quarter-tone flat. The room quieted down; he strummed a chord and began to sing.
Of the many stories concerning the usage of the blue Fire, probably the most tragic is that of Queen Béaneth of Darthen and her lover Astrin. Astrin was taken by the Shadow’s Hunting one Opening Night, and Béaneth went to her rescue. That rescue seemed a certain thing, for Béaneth was a Rodmistress, one of the great powers of her time. But the price demanded of her for Astrin’s release was that Béaneth must mate with the Shadow, and take into herself whatever evil He would choose for her to bear. Béaneth, knowing that the evil to grow within her would warp her Power to its own use, lay down with the Shadow indeed, but killed herself at the climax of the act, thereby keeping her bargain and obtaining her loved’s release.
Her little daughter Béorgan was five years old when all this happened. Béorgan made the decision early to avenge her mother, and determined that she would meet the Shadow on His own ground and destroy Him. She trained, and grew great in Power—and also in obsession—waiting and preparing for Nineteen-Years’ Night, that night when it is both Opening Night and full Moon. All the Kingdoms know how the story ends—how Béorgan went down to the Morrowfane on that night, being then twenty-four years of age, and opened the Morrowfane Gate beneath the waters of Lake Rilthor, and passed through into the Otherworlds. There she met the Shadow, and there she slew Him, on one of the only nights this may be done, when the Goddess’s power conjoins with the returning Sun past midnight. Béorgan’s triumph was shortlived, though, and so was she. She had never planned her life past that night, and in a short time wasted away and died. Even her victory was hollow, for however bright the Lover may be, still he casts the Shadow: seven years after He died, He was back again, leading the Hunting as always.
Freelorn had always loved the story, and some years back had composed a verse form of it, and a musical setting that Herewiss had liked. At the time, though, Freelorn’s voice had been changing, and Herewiss had had to restrain himself from laughing as his loved sang that greatest of tragedies in a voice that cracked crazily every verse or so. He had even refrained from singing it himself for the longest while, for the sound of his pure, clear, already-changed tenor had made Freelorn twice as self-conscious as he usually was.
He sang the setting now, letting his voice go as he would have liked to all those years ago, pausing between verses to insert the last dialogue between Béaneth and Astrin, and later the farewell of Béorgan to her husband Ánmod, who later became King of both Arlen and Darthen because of her death. Herewiss forgot about the hot, smoky room, forgot about time and pain and the systematic destruction of swords, and just sang, feeling very young again for the first time in ever so long.
At the end of it he received tremendous applause, and he bowed shyly and handed the lute to someone else, going back to his table and his ale. There Herewiss sat for a few minutes, recovering. Someone began singing something else almost immediately, but the farmers started talking quietly among themselves. The contrast between the sung verses of terrible tragedy beyond the boundaries of the world and the homely talk of the farmers was abrupt, but pleasant; they had slow, musical voices, and Herewiss dawdled over his ale, listening alternately to the words and the sound of them. One of the farmers started telling a long, drawn-out story of a loved of his who had gone traveling. “All the way to Dra’Mincarrath she went,” he said in a drawl, “aye, all that way south, and then east again into the Waste she went, not knowing where she was going. North she went, but ‘twas the wrong way; no way out of the Waste Unclaimed from there. And she came in sight of that hold in the Waste, indeed, and—”
“Ssh!” said several of the other farmers, looking upset. “She came out again,” said one of them, seemingly the eldest. “Count her lucky; that place is bad to talk of, even here. Leave it for now. Where did she go afterwards?…”
Herewiss sat nursing his ale, curious at the sudden and vehement response. Hold in the Waste—? What could that be? No one lives out there—
His thought was broken by the underheard feeling that someone was looking at him with unkindly intent. He glanced up and saw the innkeeper’s daughter. She was across the room, serving someone else, but he could feel her eyes on him. Herewiss looked down at his ale again quickly, not particularly wanting to see her bend over again.
There was a sudden motion to his right. He looked, and saw the cat, a big gray tabby with blue eyes, balancing itself on the table edge after its leap. It lay down, tucking its forepaws beneath its chest so that it looked like a broody hen, and half-closed its eyes.
“Well, hello,” Herewiss said, putting down his mug to scratch under the cat’s chin. It squeezed its eyes shut altogether and stretched its neck out all the way, purring like a gray-furred thunderstorm.
Herewiss went back to the c
ontemplation of his ale, rubbing under the cat’s chin automatically for a few minutes. Then suddenly the cat opened up its round blue eyes. “Prince,” it said in its soft raspy voice, “mind the innkeeper’s daughter.”
He laughed under his breath. “No one keeps a secret from a cat,” he quoted. “May I ask what you’re called?”
“M’ssssai,” it said. “That’s my inner Name, prince: the outer doesn’t matter.”
Herewiss blinked in surprise. “I’ll keep your secret,” he said in ritual response. “But I fear I have none to give you in return. I don’t know mine yet.”
“Well enough. Time will come, and then you can come back and tell me.”
“Forgive me,” Herewiss said, “but how did you know who I am?”
“I’ve been in your saddlebag.”
“It had a binding on it.”
The cat smiled, and after a moment Herewiss smiled back at it. Cats, the legend said, had been created second after men, and had a Flame of their own, one which they had never lost.
“The very fact of a binding,” M’ssssai said, “made me slightly suspicious. I could smell it from down here, and know you for its author. And the contents of the bags settled the matter. Only two men alive wear that surcoat, and you’re too young to be one of them, so you must be the other.”
“Granted.”
“What are you doing with those grimoires in your bags?”
Herewiss made a face. “Isn’t it said of my line that there’s no accounting for us? I’m a part-time sorcerer, out seeing the world.”
M’ssssai half-closed his eyes again. “Sorcerers usually stay home unless they have something in hand. And you’re more than just a sorcerer, prince. I know the smell of Flame.”
“I have no focus,” Herewiss said, very softly, “and no control. I can’t use a Rod.”
“The innkeeper’s daughter,” said the cat, “is a dabbler; she has just enough Flame to be able to smell it herself, though she has no control or focus either. But she’s looking for a way to free her Power, and I dare say she’s noticed at least part of what you are. If I were you, I’d keep the shields up around your bags tonight, or else sleep lightly. She’s a brewer of semi-effective love potions, and she throws her curses crooked. She has a most undisciplined mind. Not to mention that she’d probably try to drain you—”