The Hidden Stars Part 19

Tears sparkled on her eyelashes; her lips trembled. "Had the hand that pulled the bow been steadier, if the shaft had pierced his heart instead of his side, that spell would have melted him like a wax candle. Even as it was, to make a new shape for himself-you can't imagine the strength of mind and will-and then to follow after us all of this time, in pain and confusion-" The words caught in her throat, and she could not go on.

"He came back for you," said Jago, with a perfect air of conviction-Jago who had sons and daughters of his own. "It was a father's love that kept him alive, that brought him so far. That was how it was."

And seeing how her face lit up, how her fine eyes glowed, Ruan wished that he had been the one to speak those words.

She turned somber again examining the falcon's injuries. Even the Prince could see that the bird was in a bad way, reduced to little more than bones and dirty feathers. The place under one wing where the crystal shaft still protruded was particularly nasty. He thought he could see maggots moving beneath the skin, and there was a strong odor of rotting meat or mortifying flesh.

Sinderian sat down cross-legged in the gra.s.s, cradling the falcon in her lap. "There are medicines in my saddlebags. If someone could get them-?"

Aell immediately went back to the campsite, where Gilrain had prudently stayed with the horses, and returned a minute later with the leather saddlebags slung over one shoulder.

She spent a long time gently removing the arrow, then cleaning out the wound, applying a poultice of herbs, cobwebs, and honey, reciting charms of healing. By the time it was over, she was white with exhaustion, but her eyes were bright, and her hands remained steady and sure throughout.

As she worked, a series of silent messages seemed to pa.s.s between father and daughter. "He has been many things since we parted at Saer," she told the others. "An eagle, a gyrfalcon, a hawk, a wyvaerun. He's changed shape again and again, but it doesn't seem possible for him to go back to being Faolein."

"But can you change him back?" asked the Prince, kneeling on the ground beside Sinderian. Like the two men-at-arms, he had gained considerable respect for her abilities during the course of the journey.

"Undo a spell that defeats even Faolein?" She sounded incredulous. "I have done all I can; all that I know how to do.

"It's possible, I suppose, that one of the other Masters on Leal can help him," she added wistfully. "But until we come home, we're not likely to see my father as we knew him again."

They came down from the mountains and into a land of rolling hills and springy green turf, of flocks and cultivated fields. For a long time, Sinderian was simply content to ride rejoicing in the warm sunlight, with a fresh color in her face, her dark hair blowing in the light breeze, and the falcon perched on her saddlebow.

Her first transports over Faolein's return had subsided, replaced by a more quiet joy. One she had loved and believed lost was miraculously restored to her (albeit in altered form), and it was more than present happiness, it was healing for past hurts, and armor against future pain.

Jago's words continued to echo in her mind. For her sake Faolein had come back; a father's love had sustained him through unimaginable suffering and confusion; and her love for him had proved not a curse but a reason to return.

As for the dreams that had haunted her all through the mountains? Faolein's return had banished them entirely. She felt redeemed, strengthened. As she had saved him, he had saved her.

Only one thing shadowed their reunion: the wizard had set limits, their communion was imperfect. There were dark places in his mind where he would not let her go, experiences he did not wish to recall or share.

Yet time must dull the pain of memory, she told herself. Surely as the horror of what he had been through began to fade he would finally be ready to confide in her-as she, eventually, would be able to confide in him. It was easy for her to be glad and to believe good things on such a glorious day.

But a little of her brightness faded when Gilrain surprised everyone by announcing that it was time to part company. They had all grown so used to having him with them, no one had remembered he was not to go along for the whole way. No one, that is, but Gilrain himself.

"I have seen you safely through the Cadmin Aernan, as I promised. Now I need to go home and attend to unfinished business."

"But where will you go? What will you do? You can hardly go back to Saer," Sinderian exclaimed.

"Oh, but I will return to Saer, later if not sooner. I still have questions about Lord Goslin's death, and I don't intend to be put off with half-truths forever...or denied my revenge, if what I suspect should turn out to be true," he added, with a sudden fierce smile.

An odd, unreadable look pa.s.sed between him and the Prince. It almost, almost seemed as though they came to some better understanding there at the end.

Still, Ruan said nothing. He watched Gilrain exchange a rough embrace with Aell, another with Jago, and merely raised a gloved hand in silent salute as the Ni-Ferys wheeled his black mare and headed back toward the mountains.

No one spoke for several minutes, listening to the sound of hoofbeats on the road receding in the distance. Perhaps even the Prince felt a little bereft. They were in Arkenfell now, a country far removed from the lands they knew, a place of strange customs. The High King's Ward and Law did not exist there, and whatever knowledge Gilrain had of the people and the land, it was no longer available to them.

"We've come among heathen folk," said Aell, under his breath. "Do they even speak our language?"

"More or less," answered Sinderian. "We may find the accents and the dialects of the north a little difficult at first, but on the whole we should be able to understand them, and they us."

Yet even as she spoke, she wondered if it were true. History, religion, culture: they were as much a part of language as the words themselves. Misunderstandings were practically inevitable; she could only hope that none of them proved fatal.

That they were in a foreign country and unwelcome there soon became woefully evident. At every farm, in every little settlement where they stopped to ask directions or to buy supplies, it was the same: dogs barked at them, geese hissed, farmwives shooed them away.

In the late afternoon, when they stopped by one of the turf-roofed farmhouses and asked to fill their waterskins at the well, a stout old man with a forked white beard waved them away. And when Prince Ruan offered a piece of ivory for a loaf of the bread they could smell baking, the old man threatened to set his dog on them.

"I don't understand it," said Sinderian, as they jogged back to the road, with the great villainous-looking hound following close behind and rumbling in its chest. "I've always been told that the men of the north remembered the Old Alliance fondly, that they were friendly to travelers from the west."

"Perhaps they've turned unfriendly to strangers generally," the Prince replied. "Hard times breed hard hearts, so it's said, and these people of Arkenfell strike me as frightened more than anything else."

"Frightened of what?" asked Jago.

It was what they all wanted to know. Though sunlight still shone in the sky, evening shadows gathered in the folds of the hills, and the air was growing chill. No one liked to think of spending the night out-of-doors in unfamiliar country, without the guide who had seen them safely through the mountains, with unknown dangers, maybe, lurking in the shadows.

In the fading light, they followed a beaten path through a cleft in the hills, filled their bottles and waterskins by a shallow stream, and continued north, down a road rutted and broken by the pa.s.sage of many carts and wagons.

At a place where two roads met, they found a gruesome answer to Jago's question.

There was a gibbet at the crossroads, and the body of some malefactor hung in chains swung gently back and forth in the dusky air. As they drew closer, they saw that the gallows bore even more grisly fruit: all along the oak crossbeam someone had nailed up seven naked skulls in a row, human from the eyes up but with long wolfish jaws and fierce yellow teeth. Beyond the gibbet there stretched a field of corn crushed and trampled into the earth.

"Werewolves," said Sinderian in a tight voice, taking in the b.e.s.t.i.a.l heads, the broken cornstalks. "There must have been a skirmish between men and beast-men right here. No wonder the people have grown unfriendly. In their eyes, anyone they don't know could be a skinchanger."

The chains creaked in the slight breeze, drawing her attention back to the dangling corpse. She felt a sudden queasy sensation.

Most of the flesh had been pecked away by hungry birds, but there were still some ragged sc.r.a.ps of dark woolen cloth clinging to the bones, and the scanty locks of straw-colored hair on the withered head were tied up in intricate charm knots. "Or anyone who uses magic a black sorcerer."

Weave no spells, make no signs on the air, said Faolein's voice in her head. Not even a simple ward or healing. If the people here fear charms and bewitchments, we don't wish to rouse the entire countryside against us.

23.

Though Sinderian could not know it, a thousand miles away the powerful, malicious mind of the Empress Ouriana was intent on her, and danger of a particularly malignant and personal nature was brewing where she least expected it.

For weeks after dispatching the nightmare, Ouriana had often amused herself by spying on the young wizard's journey across the mountains. In the secret conjuring room and alchemical laboratory where she performed all her most dreadful spells, the Empress had fashioned a crude figure, six inches high: out of tallow and salt and ash, three woolen threads rusty with blood, and other materials far more sinister and arcane.

At that point it was nothing more than a misshapen lump of animal fat and other matter. But when Ouriana worked her spells, the mite took on Sinderian's likeness-perfect to the smudged face and windblown hair, the ragged gown and cloak, and scuffed boots. And whatever Sinderian did, the doll did also: eat, sleep, walk, cry, laugh-though there was little enough of that, as time went on.

It was pleasant for the Empress to watch the tiny counterfeit move about the cluttered table where she first set it down, to see it try to negotiate pathways through the green gla.s.s bottles and silver flasks, between the ancient parchments in gilded scroll-cases, or to scale great stacks of books, as though they were in fact the mighty chain of mountains it had to cross.

And it was pleasanter still, as the days and weeks pa.s.sed, to see the homunculus lose its color, bite its lip, hide behind a curtain of tangled dark hair as if avoiding the too-familiar, too-solicitous gaze of unseen traveling companions, or to sit down at the end of a long bitter day, burying its tiny head in its miniscule hands as one overcome by weariness, dread, and remorse.

But most gratifying of all were the unmistakable physical signs of mental and moral decay: the hollow cheek, the haggard eye, the increasingly listless manner. The poison injected by the imp was doing its work so well, Ouriana was convinced that sooner or later, probably sooner, Sinderian must either destroy herself in a fit of despair or else repudiate the teachings of the Scholia, renounce her allegiance to Thaerie and Leal, and no longer count herself among the enemies of Phaorax.

In either case, the Empress congratulated herself, the messy business of killing a wizard of unknown innate power directly by magic had been neatly avoided.

But then more pressing matters intervened and Ouriana was forced to give up her new plaything. An entire fortnight pa.s.sed during which Sinderian never once crossed her mind. And even when interest revived, it was only as a matter of idle curiosity, so confident was the Empress of her own success.

After so long a period of neglect, the homunculus had gone dormant. When Ouriana opened the little silver casket in which she had stored it away, she found that it had returned to its former lumpen, shapeless, condition-more closely resembling dirty candle drippings than anything human.

She sprinkled the thing with water and wine, repeated her former spells, and so, in the course of time, brought the doll back to a semblance of life.

But the moment the effigy climbed to its feet and began to scamper about on the tile floor amidst the symbols and diagrams of dreadful import, Ouriana's alabaster skin went whiter than ever; her green eyes narrowed. Gazing down at the little tallow figure from her superior height, she shook back her fiery hair, ground her teeth, then looked around the room for someone she could punish.

If the evidence of the homunculus was to be believed, a change had come over Sinderian. No longer angry, terrified, and on the brink of self-destruction, she was glowing with life. The face that had been growing every day colder, more sullen and withdrawn, was mobile and expressive again. Either the girl had resources not immediately apparent, or someone or something considerably more powerful must be protecting her.

And it was then that Ouriana remembered her initial misgivings, the presentiment that whatever Faolein's daughter might be, in and of herself, she was almost certainly a part of something much, much greater. For a moment she could almost see a pattern of most subtle design, linking Nimenoe on her deathbed, the child who was whisked away, and this young healer-But no, whatever it was, she had failed to fully grasp it, and it slipped away.

I have been too tender, too merciful, she thought. Regarding the chit as a possible tool, I aimed to seduce rather than destroy. But no more. No more.

Yet even now, she reminded herself, it would not be wise to do anything rash, anything too overt. Not while her understanding of the situation was still imperfect.

But then the bolder, more dangerous, infinitely more cunning part of her said, You know what to do. Against one pattern, create another. Against one web of circ.u.mstance, fashion a curse of your own.

Ouriana hesitated. What that inner voice suggested was a spell born of deepest malice and deepest pain. It could never be created except at great cost. Nor was it anything that, in the normal course of events, she would ever consider waging against so insignificant a figure as Sinderian, daughter of Faolein.

But would you, then, brook defiance of your will-and from such a minor wizard? Make an example of her. Let whoever or whatever is guarding her know: you are not to be balked in even the smallest particular. Work the spell. It may be that her protectors will also be involved in her doom.

Again, Ouriana felt the fury building inside of her. She would not be balked. She would not allow any wizard, great or small, to live once she had willed their destruction! This girl would be but the first of many.

In a whirlwind of temper, she began to pull energies out of the earth, out of the air, and spin them into filaments stronger than iron, finer than silk. On the table beside her there was a dagger with a slender, wicked blade, all made out of bone. Catching this up, she opened a vein in her arm, tempering the strands with her own heart's blood.

Then she began to weave the aniffath, and set Sinderian's name at the center of her spell.

Two days later, Sinderian and her friends were in the gra.s.sy flatlands where the tiny, isolated farms of the hill country gave way to vast herds of s.h.a.ggy white cattle and sleek grey horses. Sometimes there were orchards, or fenced-in land where sheep grazed peacefully. Sometimes they pa.s.sed by ancient stoneworks-cromlechs, standing stones, and stone circles so heavy with age they were sinking into the earth.

And sometimes, riding past some barrow or pa.s.sage grave covered in flowering weeds, Sinderian thought she could see out of the corner of her eye the pale spirits of long-dead kings and warriors: figures of mist and shadow, showing here and there a glittering armring, a jeweled circlet, a glimpse of bare bone.

For Arkenfell (Faolein told her) was a haunted land. Every village had its tutelary spirit, every graveyard and barrow its guardian. Marsh lights appeared where there was no standing water; any traveler on the road after nightfall was likely to see uncanny things. The Men of the north practiced ancestor worship, glorifying their forebears in songs and sagas; they left out offerings of milk and ale for the recently dead; so ghosts were inclined to linger.

That there were more hostile things than ghosts abroad in the flatlands soon became evident. Bandits harried them, skinchangers stalked them, farmers and villagers threw stones wherever they went.

The footpads who attacked on three different occasions were small bands of hungry-looking ragged men who leapt out of ambush, and were so readily discouraged by mounted men with better armor and weapons that Sinderian could only marvel they had found the courage to attack in the first place. She could almost believe that some will not their own was influencing them.

But the skinchangers were a more serious problem altogether. A pack of werewolves followed the travelers for several days, slinking through the shadows morning and evening, often unseen but never quite absent, as the horses could sense them at all times, growing increasingly skittish as the days went on.

Such glimpses of them as Sinderian had chilled her to the marrow. It was odd and disquieting to see the eyes of men staring out of those b.e.s.t.i.a.l faces, above those dirty grey muzzles; unsettling to watch them loping along with their unnaturally long legs and their grotesquely clubbed hand-paws.

And if the creatures kept their distance at first-having, it would seem, no love of fire-they eventually attacked in broad daylight, coming in from all sides at once, some on two legs and some on four, hamstringing one of the pack animals and inflicting much damage on Sinderian and the horses before the Prince and his men were finally able to slay the entire pack.

Afterward, winding yards of linen bandage around her own badly bitten and savaged ankle, then hobbling over to see to the injured horses, Sinderian felt her first stirrings of sympathy for the angry, unfriendly farmers and villagers.

Prince Ruan was right, she thought. Hard times do breed hard hearts, and the people here have good reason to be wary.

While she tended the surviving horses, the men made a pile of the s.h.a.ggy grey bodies and gathered wood to make a fire. Horribly, one of the creatures had died in the process of changing, and his corpse was a disturbing mix of skin and fur, beast and man. What patches of skin showed through were very fair, and tatooed with strange patterns in blue and scarlet. When Prince Ruan finally set the pyre ablaze, no one could bear to look at that one body; the idea of watching it burn was simply unsupportable.

The stench of burning followed Sinderian for many days, for the smoke got into her hair and her clothes; nor did any amount of brushing or rubbing with sweet herbs make the least difference. She could smell it on the horses and on her fellow travelers until it nearly maddened her. When she sat down to eat, she tasted it in the food and water they carried with them. She began to wonder if she would ever be free of it.

Meanwhile, the mauled ankle was slow to mend. For all Sinderian's efforts to heal it, the wound wept and throbbed incessantly. One of the horses, less seriously injured than she was, died. It simply stopped in its tracks and fell over, dead as a stone. Though she said nothing to the others, she feared hydrophobia. Healers were not all-powerful, there were some things they could not cure, and the bite of a rabid animal was one of them.

There came a night when Sinderian found sleep impossible. Every time she closed her eyes and started to drift off, she thought she could hear voices and movements under the earth. But when she opened her eyes again all was still, all silent.

Finally, she gathered herself up off the ground and limped over to speak to Aell, who had been a.s.signed the first watch. Offering to take his place, she settled down cross-legged by the fire.

There, she spent the next several hours studying the sky, marveling at the changing patterns of the Hidden Stars: a half year's movement, under ordinary circ.u.mstances, compressed into a single night. She was still trying to puzzle this out when the falcon fluttered up and landed in the gra.s.s by her feet. He, too, was wakeful and anxious.

Tearing her gaze away from the heavens, she caught a glimpse of something moving just beyond the circle of firelight. With a creeping sensation she saw that while she was stargazing a host of pale, insubstantial figures had formed a ring around the camp.

Her own heartbeat seemed to shake the silence. Though the dead seemed curious and watchful rather than openly hostile, she could not believe that their presence meant anything good.

What do they want-do you know? she asked Faolein.

I think, he answered, that they wish only to speak with us-though why they should single us out I'm not certain.

Sinderian frowned. These were not the spirits of men who had died in peaceful times, or in their own beds. Their faces were seamed with scars; many were missing arms or legs. Some were hardly more than a collection of blurred and confused features, with bones shining through. Perhaps they had been dead so long, they had forgotten how they looked in life. One wore-in place of his own head-the skull of a horse that had been buried with him.

The falcon took several sideways steps. I do not think it would be wise to rebuff them-not without learning first exactly what they want.

Sinderian scowled. Yet her trust in her father was strong. If he said they should speak with the dead- Nevertheless, this is hardly the place, Faolein continued. I think we should go a little apart, away from our sleeping friends-what the dead have to say to us may not be meant for their ears.

Still frowning, Sinderian rose reluctantly to her feet. Limping through the high, moon-silvered gra.s.s, she left the circle of firelight far behind, trying to keep pace with the falcon as he swooped before her. The dead followed after, rank upon rank, their numbers seeming to swell the farther they walked from the camp.

At last, in a gra.s.sy dell screened from the fire by brambles, the falcon settled on Sinderian's shoulder and the gruesome parade came to an end.

By then there were dozens of them, perhaps even hundreds. They had come in their winding sheets and earth-stained shrouds, their armor and antique finery. Not all of them were men. There were shield-maidens and archers, tall and well formed, carrying long white knives and great yew bows.

The breeze did not stir any of their garments, nor did moonlight reflect from their eyes. They brought with them no taint of corruption, no reek of the grave or the tomb. If the air smelled of anything, it was of green and growing things: pastures and woodlands; hayfields and cornfields under the sun; roots clotted with earth. They had all been dead for so long, their fleshly parts had melted into dust and returned to the soil.

Yet seeing that they had all been so very long dead, Sinderian could not help wondering what business they could possibly have with the living-and especially with two foreign wizards, pa.s.sing as it were by chance through these lands.

As if he sensed her question, the man wearing the horse's head took several steps forward and spoke in a hollow, windy voice. "The world is changing. Things that were bound by magicians of old have cast off their bindings, and the banished creatures of the Dark are beginning to return. Things that have no place in this world are slipping through from Outside. They have formed an alliance with the men of Eisenlonde, and they go to wage battle against our cousins in Skyrra."

Another took up the tale, a tall gaunt man in armor of gilded leather and an iron crown: "Long ago, years beyond counting, we fought a great battle. We won a great victory against the Dark, but only because our kinsmen came from across the channel and fought alongside us, brother to brother. When the battle was over, we swore a most binding oath that we would aid them in similar circ.u.mstances. Now we wish to fulfill that oath. We must do so, or we will never rest.

"Yet the Necke lies between," he went on. "And the dead who have been buried and returned to the earth have not the power to pa.s.s over such a great body of water. We cannot do it without the help of the living."

Sinderian could scarcely credit her ears. "You want us to take you to Skyrra with us?"

"Yes. It should not be beyond you, sorceress and wizard. Will you not help us?"

If we were to help you, said Faolein, much to her surprise and dismay, you would have to swear again, swear no harm to living man or woman. Otherwise, we could not, in good conscience, loose you in Skyrra. Could you keep such an oath?

One of the shield-maidens moved a step closer. Her hair was the color of ripe wheat: but there was a spear embedded in her chest, and someone had horribly mutilated her face. "We wish only to fulfill our oath, to meet our ancient enemies in battle. What are the battles of the living to us?"