The Bristling Wood

  “Rhodry, Jill,” they whispered. “How could you have forgotten your Rhodry?”

  She doubled over and wept, sobbing aloud. When Perryn came rushing to comfort her, she shoved him away so hard that he tripped and fell. Like a frightened animal she ran, racing through the long grass of the clearing, plunging into the forest, only to catch an ankle on a root and sprawl headlong. For a moment she lay there panting, seeing how dark the trees were, how menacingly they reached down to grab her. Now they looked like a line of armed guards, raising weapons high. When he came to fetch her back, she went without arguing.

  That evening he built a fire and skewered the trout on green sticks to roast them. Jill ate a few bites, but the food seemed to stick in her mouth, the fish suddenly as cloying as pure honey. Perryn, however, wolfed down his share as if he were starving, then fell asleep by the fire. She watched him for a long time. Although it would have been ridiculously easy to kill him, the memory of the forest stopped her. If he died, she would be alone, trapped out there, starving, wandering in circles, growing more and more panicked—with the last of her will she wrenched her mind away from the thoughts that were threatening to turn her hysterical. Shaking, suddenly cold, she stared into the fire, where the spirits were forming and falling in the flames, dancing along the wood that this pair of humans had so thoughtfully provided. Jill could almost hear them talking in the hiss and crackle. Then a log burned through and fell with a shower of golden sparks. In the rushy dance of flame, a proper face appeared, golden and shifting. When it spoke, it was in a true voice, and one with authority.

  “What is this, child? What’s so wrong?”

  “Wrong?” She could barely stammer. “Is it?”

  For a moment the face regarded her; then it was gone. Somewhat bewildered, unable to think, Jill lay down next to Perryn and fell asleep.

  As formless as water, the days slipped into one another. Jill couldn’t count them; she’d lost the very idea of counting, as if the part of her mind that dealt with things like nights and coins had fallen out of her saddlebags and gotten lost in the grass. Whenever he spoke to her, it was hard to answer, because her words became lost in the splendor of the forest. Fortunately he rarely spoke, apparently contented with her silent presence near him. At night, when they made camp, he was an eager lover, wanting her in their blankets often before they’d eaten, then bringing her dinner like a page as she lay drowsily by the fire. His slow hesitance, his shuffling walk, his vague smiles and stumbling words—all were gone. He was all laughter and calm efficiency, all strength and life as he strode through the wild country. She supposed that his daft mousiness was simply a shield he put up when he was forced to live in the lands of men.

  She was proven right when they rode into a village to buy food at the open market. Perryn became his old self, looking aimlessly this way and that, stumbling through every simple sentence as he haggled for cheese and peaches, for loaves of bread from the baker. Since Jill could speak no more clearly than he could, she was of no help to him. Once she saw a farmer’s wife watching them in puzzlement, as if she were wondering how a pair of halfwits like they could survive on the road.

  With the shopping done, they went to a tiny tavern for ale. After nothing but spring water to drink, the ale tasted so good that Jill savored every sip. Although the little room had dirty straw on the floor, an unswept hearth, and battered tables, she was happy there. It was good to see other people, her own kind, good to listen to human voices instead of the endless wind through the forest and the chatter of streams. A balding stout fellow, wearing the checked brigga of a merchant, gave her a friendly smile.

  “Here, lass,” he said. “Why do you carry a silver dagger?”

  “Oh, ah, er, well,” Jill said. “My father was a silver dagger, you see. It’s a reminder of him.”

  “A pious gesture, truly.”

  Jill had the sudden startling experience of hearing him think: A pretty lass, but stupid; ah well, wits don’t matter in a lass. The thought was as clear in her mind as if he’d spoken aloud, but she decided that she was only deluding herself. When it was time to leave the tavern, she wept, simply because they were going back to the lonely wilderness.

  That afternoon they rode through low rolling hills, where the pine forest thinned, and farms appeared in sheltered valleys. Jill had no idea of where they were; all she knew was that the sun rose in the east and set in the west. They made camp, however, in a place Perryn knew well, or so he said, a tiny vale, along a stream, and bordered with white birches. Before he lit the fire, he gave Jill a kiss.

  “Let’s lie down,” he said.

  All at once, the thought of making love with him filled her with revulsion. When she shoved him away, he caught her by the shoulders and pulled her to him. Although she tried to wrestle free, his superior strength told against her. He grabbed her, lifted her, and laid her struggling on the ground. She fought against him, but even as she did, she knew that she was slowly, inexorably giving in to him, fighting with only half her strength, letting him steal a kiss here and there, then a caress, then finally surrendering, letting him take her, press her down, and turn her world to a fire of pleasure. When he lay down next to her, he started to speak, then fell asleep in openmouthed exhaustion.

  Jill lay next to him and watched the sunset coming through the branches like a shower of gold coins. The white birches glowed with an inner fire, as if they were watching them and blessing them in silent presences. She could hear the stream running nearby in little voices, the aimless chatter of the Wildfolk. Just as the sunset was fading into twilight, Perryn sat up with a yawn and a gasp. She saw dark circles under his eyes, two livid pools of shadow. For a moment he stared at her as if he hardly knew where they were.

  “Are you all right?” Jill said.

  “Oh, er, well, just tired.”

  Yet as the evening wore on, she realized that things went far beyond his being tired. When they ate, he gobbled the food, then fell asleep again. She sat by the fire and watched the birches glowing, bending close, it seemed, to study this pair of intruders in the grove. For one moment she thought she saw someone standing among the trees and watching her, but when she got up for a closer look, the shadowy form disappeared. In a bit Perryn woke again and stumbled over to the fire. A leap of flame washed his face with light and seemed to cover it with blood; his eyes seemed great hollow rents in a mask. Jill cried out at the sight.

  “What’s wrong?” he said.

  Yet she had no words to tell him what she instinctively knew, that their afternoon’s lovemaking had driven them to a crisis point, just as when a warrior rides a charge, thinking of naught but the flash of steel around him, only to find himself behind the enemy line, cut off and alone when it’s too late to ride back.

  When he left Graemyn’s dun, Rhodry had no idea of which way to ride. For the first day, he went west, but at sunset the gray gnome appeared at his camp and threw itself into his arms to cling to him like a frightened child.

  “There you are! Here, my friend, where’s Jill?”

  The gnome considered, pointed east, then disappeared. I’ve wasted a whole blasted day, he thought. Then, even in the midst of his despair, he felt that strange sensation of being watched.

  For three days more, he rode east. He felt more like a storm than a man, his rage and desperation mingling to drive his mind this way and that, tearing his reason to shreds as he swept down the forest road. At times, he wanted to find her only to slit her throat; at others, he swore to himself that if only he could have her back, he would never ask a single question about what she’d done with Perryn. Gradually he felt more hopelessness than rage. Perryn could have taken her any way at all, slipping deep into the forest where he’d never find them. His one hope was the gnome, who came to him at odd moments. Always it pointed east, and it was filled with fury, gnashing its teeth and clutching its head at any mention of Perryn. Sooner or later, or so Rhodry hoped, it would lead him back to Jill.

  Late on a day when
white clouds piled in the sky and threatened rain, Rhodry was riding along a narrow track when he came to a clearing. Beside the road was a small wooden round house with two oaks growing in front of the door. He dismounted, led his horse over, and called out a halloo. In a few moments an aged man with the shaved head and golden torc of a priest of Bel came out.

  “Good morrow, Your Holiness,” Rhodry said.

  “May the gods bless you, lad. What troubles your heart so badly?”

  “Oh, by the hells, do I look as wretched as that?”

  The priest merely smiled, his dark eyes nearly lost in wrinkled folds of pouched eyelids. He was as thin as a stick, his ragged tunic hanging loose, his fingers like gnarled twigs.

  “I’m looking for someone, you see,” Rhodry went on. “And I’ve about given up hope of ever finding her. A blond lass, beautiful, but she always dresses like a lad, and she carries a silver dagger. She’d be riding with a skinny red-haired fellow.”

  “Your wife left you for another man?”

  “Well, she did, but how did you know?”

  “It’s a common enough tale, lad, though I’ve no doubt it pains you as if you were the first man ever deserted by a woman.” He sighed with a shake of his head. “I haven’t seen her, but come in and ask the gods to help you.”

  More to please the lonely old hermit than in any real hope of getting an omen, Rhodry followed him into the dim, musty-smelling shrine, which took up half the round house. On the flat side stood the stone altar, covered with a rough linen cloth to hide the bloodstains from the sacrifices. Behind it rose a massive statue of Bel, carved from a tree trunk, the body roughly shaped, the arms distinguished by mere cuts in the wood and the tunic indicated only by scratches. The face, however, was beautifully modeled, large eyes staring out as if they saw, the mouth so mobile it seemed that it would speak. Rhodry made a formal bow to the king of the world, then knelt before him while the priest stood to one side. In the shadowy light it seemed that the god’s eyes turned his worshipper’s way.

  “0 most holy lord, where’s my Jill? Will I ever see her again?”

  For a moment silence lay thick in the temple; then the priest spoke in a hollow, booming voice utterly unlike his normal tone.

  “She rides down dark roads. Judge her not harshly when you meet again. One who holds no fealty to me holds her in thrall.”

  Rhodry felt a cold shudder of awe laced with fear. The god’s eyes considered him, and the voice spoke again.

  “You have a strange Wyrd, man from Eldidd, you who are not truly a man like other men. Someday you’ll die serving the kingdom, but it’s not the death you would ever have dreamt for yourself. Men will remember your name down the long years, though your blood run over rock and be gone. Truly, they’ll remember it twice over, for twice over will you die.”

  Suddenly the priest threw up his hands and clapped them together hard. Dazed, Rhodry looked around. The statue was only a piece of wood, cleverly carved. The god had gone.

  All that day, while he traveled fast along, Rhodry puzzled over the omen. What did it mean, that Jill rode down dark roads? He desperately wanted it to mean that Perryn had somehow forced her to come with him rather than her going willingly, but it was hard to convince himself of that, because Jill could have slain the lord easily if he had tried violence. Still, he clung to the first bit of hope he had that she still loved him. His heart was so torn for love of and fear for her that he never remembered the rest of the omen until years later, that, contrary to all nature and all sense, he would die twice over.

  On the morrow, the meaning of the part of the omen that dealt with Jill came clearer when he reached a small village. In the tiny tavern he got his first hot meal and tankard of ale in days. As he was eating mutton stew by the unswept hearth, the tavernman strolled over to gossip.

  “You’re the second silver dagger we’ve seen in here lately,” he said. “Or, well, I don’t suppose this lass was truly a silver dagger.”

  “A blond lass?” Rhodry’s heart was pounding even as he spoke casually. “Beautiful, but dressed like a lad?”

  “Just that! Do you know her?”

  “I do. How long ago were she and her red-haired lad in here? I’d like to see Jill and Perryn again.”

  The tavernman considered, scratching his bald spot.

  “Not more than four nights ago, I’d say. Friends of yours, are they? Neither of them are much for words, I must say.”

  “Oh, Perryn never says much, truly.” Rhodry tried to sound cheerfully friendly. “But usually his lass is good for a bit of chatter.”

  “Indeed? Then she must be ill or suchlike, because it was hard for her to say two words together. One of those thick-headed lasses, think I, all pretty face with nothing between her two ears.”

  “Here, I hope she wasn’t ill. She’s usually as bright as a lark and twice as merry.”

  The tavernman considered a long moment.

  “Well, maybe she and that man of hers had a bit of a scrap. From the way she looked at him, I’d say he beats her a good bit. Fair terrified, she looked.”

  Rhodry’s hand tightened on the tankard so hard that his knuckles went white. Riding down dark roads, he thought, I see.

  “But be that as it may, lad, they went south when they left here. She said she was riding south, to find her grandfather.”

  For a moment Rhodry was puzzled. Nevyn! he thought. Of course that’s how she’d describe him.

  “Well and good, then, and my thanks.” He tossed the man a piece of Benoic’s silver.

  Leaving the tankard unfinished, Rhodry rode out fast, heading for the crossroads and the track that would take him south.

  The tavernman watched, rubbing Rhodry’s coin, until the silver dagger was out of sight. All at once he felt both guilty and frightened. Why had he lied like that, and all for the couple of coins that the strange fellow had given him? He hated to lie. Dimly he remembered arguing with the fellow, but here, after all he’d said, he’d gone and done it. He wished he had a horse, so that he could ride after the silver dagger and tell him the truth. He shook himself and looked up. The village idiot, poor old Marro, was shuffling along the street. The tavernman flung him Rhodry’s coin.

  “Here, lad, take that home to your mother, and tell her I said she’s to buy you cloth for a new shirt.”

  Grinning from ear to ear, Marro ran off. The tavernman went back to his customers.

  “South?” Salamander said aloud. “How by every boil on the Lord of Hell’s balls did Rhodry know to turn south?”

  The Wildfolk clustered around his campfire seemed to be pondering the question.

  “My apologies, little brothers. Just a rhetorical question.”

  Stretching, Salamander got up and frowned at the night sky while he wished he’d scried Rhodry out earlier. Since he was not much more than an apprentice at dweomer, it was difficult for him to scry without a focus of some sort and impossible when he was occupied with something else, such as riding horseback. As he thought about it, he supposed that Rhodry was riding south out of a simple desperation that had brought him a silver dagger’s luck. Without dweomer, he himself would never have been able to track Jill down, because that strange man of hers knew the woods as well as a wild deer did. As it was, of course, he knew exactly where they were, just ten miles to the northeast of him, so that, indeed, Rhodry was to the north of them and on the right road by heading south. The question was, how did Rhodry know it?

  “Tomorrow, little brothers, tomorrow we track this bear to his den.”

  In unease the Wildfolk rustled around him, shoving and pinching each other, opening their mouths in gaping expressions of despair and hatred. Salamander shuddered in honest fear. For all he knew, the man that had stolen Jill was a dweomermaster of great power, and he was riding to his doom.

  “You know, I suppose I really should contact Nevyn and tell him about all this.”

  The Wildfolk all nodded a vigorous yes.

  “But on the other hand, suppose
I do, and he tells me that I should leave this nasty mess strictly alone. How then could I redeem myself for my dilatory ways this summer? I think me I’d best just continue on.”

  The Wildfolk threw their hands in the air, stuck out their tongues at him, and disappeared in a wave of pure disgust.

  In the morning, the dark circles under Perryn’s eyes looked as purple as fresh bruises against his unnaturally pale skin. His red hair no longer flamed; rather it was as dull and matted as the fur of a sick cat. He worked slowly, taking things out of his saddlebags, staring at them for a moment, then putting them back while Jill sat nearby and watched him.

  “You truly do look ill,” she said.

  “Just tired.”

  She wondered why she cared if he were ill or not, but in truth, she was coming to see him as much a victim of his strange powers as she was. The thought came to her only intermittently, however; thoughts of any sort were rare these days. The pieces of gear in Perryn’s hands seemed to be changing size constantly, sometimes swelling, sometimes shrinking, and they had no edges in any proper sense, just lines of shimmering force that marked where they met the air. Finally he pulled out a plain rod of iron, about a finger thick, set in a wooden handle.

  “Thank every god,” he said. “Here I thought I’d lost it.”

  “What is it?”

  “A rambling scribe. Never tell anyone I’ve got one, will you? You can get hanged for carrying one in Cerrgonney.”

  None of this made any sense at all. She forced herself to pick it apart, a little at a time.

  “We’re still in Cerrgonney?” she asked at last.

  “We are, but in the southern part. Nearly to Gwaentaer.”

  “Oh. And what’s that thing for?”

  “Changing a horse’s brand.”

  “And why will they hang you for having one?”

  “Because only a horse thief would carry one.”

  “Then why are you carrying one?”

  “Because I’m a horse thief.”