The Bristling Wood

  Jill stared openmouthed at him.

  “Where do you think I get the coin we’ve been spending?” He was grinning in amusement. “I take a horse from some noble lord, sell it to one of the men I know, and well, there we are.”

  Somewhere, deep in her mind, Jill remembered that thievery was a wrong thing. She thought about it while she watched him repack the saddlebags. Thieving was wrong, and being a horse thief was the worst of all. If you took a man’s horse, he could die out in the wilderness. Da always said so. Da was always right.

  “You shouldn’t take horses,” she said.

  “Oh, I only take them from men who can afford the loss.”

  “It’s still wrong.”

  “Why? I need them, and they don’t.”

  Although she knew that there was a counter to this argument, she couldn’t remember it. She leaned back and watched the sylphs playing in the light breeze, winged forms of brilliant crystal, darting and dodging after each other in long swoops and glides.

  “I’ll be leaving you here later,” Perryn said in a moment. “We’re low on coin, and I’ve got to take a horse.”

  “You will come back, won’t you?” Suddenly she was terrified, sure that she would be hopelessly lost without him. “You won’t just leave me here?”

  “What? Of course not. I love you more than I love my life. I’ll never leave you.”

  He drew her into his arms and kissed her, then held her close. She was unsure of how long they sat together in the warm sun, but when he let her go, the sun was close to zenith. She wandered over the stream and lay down to watch the Wildfolk sporting there until she fell asleep.

  Late that same afternoon, Rhodry came to Leryn, one of the biggest towns in Cerrgonney with about five hundred houses huddled behind a low stone wall on the banks of the Camyn Yraen. Since Leryn was an important port for the river barges that brought the mountain iron down into Deverry, he was planning on buying a passage downriver for a ways to save himself some time and to give himself and his horse a much-needed rest. First, though, he went to the market square and asked around about Jill and Perryn. Quite a few of the locals knew the eccentric Lord Perryn well.

  “He’s daft,” said the cheese seller. “And if that lass is riding with the likes of him, she’s even dafter than he.”

  “A bit more than daft he is,” snorted the blacksmith. “I’ve wondered many a time where he gets all those horses.”

  “Ah, he’s noble-born,” chimed in the cloth merchant. “The noble-born have horses to spare, they do. But I haven’t seen him in many a long week now, silver dagger, and I’ve never seen a lass like you described.”

  “No more have I,” said the cheese seller. “She sounds a bit of a hard case, she does.”

  As he went back to the cheap tavern he’d marked earlier, Rhodry was wondering if Jill and Perryn had taken a different road south. If so, he’d have to abandon his plans for the river, in case he passed them by. As he was stabling his horse, a fellow came out to join him, a rather nondescript man with the bent back of a wandering peddler.

  “You the silver dagger who was asking for Lord Perryn?”

  “I am, and what’s it to you?”

  “Naught, but I might have a bit of information for you for the right price.”

  Rhodry took two silver pieces from his pouch and held them between his fingers. The peddler grinned.

  “I came up this way from the southeast. I stayed one night in a little village inn, oh, some thirty miles from here, it was. I was trying to get my sleep about dawn that night when I heard someone yelling out in the stable yard. So I sticks my head out the window, and I see our Perryn arguing with this blond lass. Seems like she was leaving him, and he was yelling at her not to go.”

  Rhodry handed over the first silver.

  “‘I’m going to find no one,’ she says,” the peddler went on. “Seemed like a cursed strange thing to say, so it’s stuck in my mind, like.”

  “So it would. Did she say where ‘nev yn’ was?”

  “Not truly. But she did say to his lordship that if he tried to follow her to Cerrmor, she’d take his balls off with her silver dagger.”

  With a laugh, Rhodry handed him the second coin, then dug out a third for good measure.

  “My thanks, peddler, and it gladdens my wretched heart that you lost that hour’s sleep.”

  When Rhodry left the stable, Merryc laughed quietly under his breath. It was a good jest, to make the silver dagger pay for the false rumors that were going to mean his doom.

  Jill woke suddenly at the sound of horses coming. She sat up, wondering why she hadn’t tried to escape before Perryn returned. Now it was too late. She stood up, very slowly, because the ground seemed unsteady under her feet. As she walked back to camp, the grass swelled and billowed, as if she trod on a huge feather mattress.

  “Jill! Fear not! Rescue is at hand, though truly, as a shining avenger one could want better than I.”

  Startled, she spun around and stared openmouthed at the man dismounting from his horse on the other side of the clearing. For a moment she thought he was Rhodry, but the voice and the pale hair were all wrong. Then she remembered him.

  “Salamander! Oh ye gods!”

  Suddenly she was weeping, doubling over as she sobbed, throwing herself from side to side until he ran over and grabbed her tight.

  “Whist, whist, little one. All’s well, more or less, anyway. You’ve been ensorceled, but it’s over now.”

  The tears stopped, and she looked up at him.

  “It was true, then? He has the dweomer?”

  “I’m not so sure of that, but you were ensorceled well and truly. Where is he?”

  “Off stealing a horse from someone.”

  “And the horse dung, too, no doubt. This lad sounds stranger and stranger.”

  “You might well say that and twice. Please, we’ve got to get away before he gets back.”

  “Not that, because I’ve got a thing or two to say to him.”

  “But he’s dweomer!”

  Salamander smiled lazily.

  “It is time for all truths to be known. So am I.”

  She pulled away, staring at him.

  “How else did I know you’d been ensorceled, and how else would I have found you? Now come along. Let’s get your gear on your horse. I want to curse this fellow to the three hells, and then we’ve got to be on our way. Rhodry’s got a long head start on us.”

  At the mention of Rhodry’s name, she began to sob again. Salamander pulled her close into his arms.

  “Na, na, na, little one. Remember you’re a warrior’s daughter. There’ll be time enough for tears later, when we’re well away from here. We’ll find your Rhodry for you.”

  “Oh ye gods, I don’t know if your brother will even want me back.”

  “My … here! How did you find out?”

  The urgency in his voice stopped her tears.

  “I … well, I had a true dream. I saw your father.”

  “Gods! If you have that kind of power, and this fellow still … well, he may be a bit more powerful than I thought, but cursed if I’ll run until I get a look at him. Let me saddle your horse for you, and you tell me the tale.”

  As best she could, Jill told him about Perryn and the events of the last few days, but it was difficult for her to find words to put things in any sort of order, or indeed to remember exactly how long she’d been traveling with Perryn. At times it seemed a few years, at others months. She was shocked when Salamander told her that it had been at most a fortnight. While he listened, he grew angry, until finally he cut short one last stumbling sentence with a wave of his hand.

  “I’ve heard enough, little one. This ugly bastard should be flogged and hanged, if you ask me. I wonder if I can get him to a lord’s justice.”

  “Not here. All the lords are his kin.”

  “And who will believe me when I come to them talking of dweomer, besides? Well, there’s other kinds of justice in the kingdom.”
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  When she looked at him, she saw his anger like ghostly flames burning over his face and looked away again. Yet the vision jogged her memory.

  “Was it you I saw a while back? I saw an elf all covered with silver fire in the sky.”

  “It was, true enough. But you were seeing only a well … call it an image of me.”

  She nodded, the thought and the memory slipping away again. She wondered why he was so angry with Perryn, but it seemed that somehow she should know the answer.

  Salamander was just finishing tying her bedroll behind the saddle when he paused, cocking his head to listen. It was several minutes before she heard the sound of hoof beats, three horses coming fast. Ducking and dodging among the trees, Perryn rode up with two chestnut colts following him along. As Salamander walked to meet him, Perryn dismounted and ran the last few yards.

  “Who are you?” Perryn shouted. “Jill, what are you doing?”

  Although she was shaking too hard to speak, her saddled and loaded horse was an obvious answer. When Perryn started to run to her, Salamander stepped in between. Perryn swung at him flat-handed. All at once Wildfolk swarmed into existence and mobbed him, a good hundred of them biting pinching kicking punching as they fell upon him like dogs on a tossed bone. Perryn screamed and yelped, hitting blindly at an enemy he couldn’t see, and finally went down under them, a tossing, heaving mound.

  “Enough!” Salamander yelled.

  The Wildfolk disappeared, leaving Perryn trembling and whimpering on the ground.

  “That’s better, dog,” Salamander snarled. “A fine scion of the Wolf clan are you, a horse thief and a wife stealer both!”

  He flung up one hand and chanted a long string of Elvish words under his breath. Suddenly Jill saw a green-and-gray glow streaming around Perryn—no, it was emanating from him in a cloud of light. From it stretched long smoky tendrils that tangled her round. She suddenly realized that she too stood in a similar cloud, but that hers was pale gold.

  “Do you see that, Lord Perryn? Do you see what you’ve been doing?”

  Perryn looked from her to himself and back to Salamander, then suddenly moaned and hid his eyes with his hands. The gerthddyn said a few more Elvish words, then snapped his fingers. A golden sword made of what seemed to be solid light appeared in his hand. He swept it back and forth, slashing at every tendril that bound her to Perryn. The light lines snapped like cut tether ropes and slapped back to him. Perryn screamed, but she felt her mind and her will come back to her, and with them, a revulsion, a burning hatred for this man who’d broken her like a wild horse. When Salamander chanted again, the glowing ciouds and the sword vanished. Perryn raised his head.

  “Don’t look at me that way, my love,” he whispered. “Oh, by Kerun himself, you’re not going to leave me, are you?”

  “Of course I am, you bastard! I never want to see you again in my god-cursed life.”

  “Jill, Jill, I beg you, don’t go! I love you!”

  “Love?” She felt her hatred burning in her mouth. “I spit on your idea of love!”

  When Perryn began to weep, the sound was beautiful to her. Salamander looked as if he was thinking of kicking him, then restrained himself.

  “Listen, you!” he snarled. “Out of sheer pity I’ll tell you one thing: you’ve got to stop stealing women and horses this way, or it’ll kill you. Do you hear me?”

  Slowly Perryn got to his feet to face the gerthddyn, and his face worked as if he was desperately trying to summon some dignity.

  “I don’t know who you are,” he whispered. “But I don’t have to stay here and have you pour vinegar in my wounds. I can’t stop you from taking Jill away, so go. You hear me! Get out!” His voice rose to a shriek. “Go away! Both of you!”

  Then he fell sobbing to his knees again.

  “Very well.” Salamander turned to Jill. “Let us leave this whimpering dolt to whatever justice the gods have in store for him.”

  “Gladly.”

  In a swirl of joyous Wildfolk, they mounted their horses. A big black gnome with purple splotches threw the lead rope of the pack horse up to Salamander, then disappeared as they rode away. Jill glanced back once to see Perryn stretched out on the grass, still weeping in a sea of swelling emerald, with his gray nuzzling his shoulder in concern. Nothing had ever pleased her as much as his pain.

  For about a mile they rode in silence, until they came free of the trees to one of the muddy tracks that passed for a Cerrgonney road. There Salamander paused his horse, waved at her to do the same, and turned in his saddle to look her over in sincere concern. She could only stare blankly back at him.

  “How do you feel, Jill?”

  “Exhausted.”

  “No doubt, but you’ll get your strength back in a bit.”

  “Good. Will the world ever hold still again?”

  “What? What’s it doing at the moment?”

  “Well, everything’s all … not hazy, exactly, but nothing will hold still, and these colors … everything’s so bright and glowy.” She hesitated, struggling with the unfamiliar task of forming sentences. “Nothing has edges, you see. It all sparkles and runs together. And there’s no Time anymore. Wait, that’s not right. But it is.”

  “Oh ye gods! What did that lout do to you?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “My apologies, just a rhetorical question. Jill, this is blasted serious.”

  “I could figure that out myself, my thanks. Will I ever see the world like it really is again?”

  “You mean, will you ever see it as you used to, because as for the world as it really is, my turtledove, that’s what you’re seeing right now. Before, you’ve only seen the dull, dead, dark, and deceiving surface, as most people do.”

  “But here! These colors, and the way everything moves—”

  “Are real enough. But, truly, most inconvenient withal. The gods are kind, turtledove. They let most men see only what they need to see, and hide the beauty away. If they didn’t, we’d all starve, because even a simple act like picking an apple from a tree would be a momentous and ominous event.”

  “I can’t believe that.”

  “No need for you to believe it, actually. Belief has no bearing whatsoever on your current and most dire condition. Belief is an illusion, and truly, all that men see is illusion as well, because the universe is naught but a rushy net of pure power.”

  “That can’t be true.”

  “It is, but this is no time for us to argue recondite matters like a pair of Bardek sages. That little round-ear bastard has hurt you worse than I feared, Jill.” He paused for a long, troubled silence. “I’m not truly sure what to do about this. Fortunately, our esteemed Nevyn will.”

  “Salamander, you’re babbling! What did Perryn do to me?”

  “Well, look, you saw those lines of light, didn’t you? What he was doing was pouring life force into you, more than you could possibly use or handle. Look, every time you two lay down together, he gave off a tremendous amount of life force. It’s not solid like water but it’s more solid than a thought, and it can be transferred back and forth. Normally, whenever a man and woman are together, they each give some out and get some back, all in balance. Now, I doubt me if this truly makes sense to you.”

  “Oh, but it does.” Her disarranged mind was casting up images, of Sarcyn and Alastyr, of the dark dweomer that had touched and tainted her life the summer before. For a moment she nearly vomited. When she spoke again, it was only in a whisper. “Go on. I have to know.”

  “Well, then, somewhat’s wrong with Perryn. He was pouring the force out like mead at a lord’s feast, more than you could ever possibly replace in the ordinary course of things. And all that extra power was running free in your mind, free to be used in any way you wished, but since, alas, you had no idea of what to wish for, or indeed that it was even there, then it took the first channel it found to run in, like water again, if we may expand and polish our image, my turtledove, that escapes from a river only to follow
a ditch. You can’t lie and say you’ve no dweomer talent, you know.”

  “I don’t care! I never wanted to have anything of the sort.”

  “Oh, of course not, you lackwit! That’s not what I’m saying. Listen, these are dark and dangerous matters indeed, and the source of many a strange thing. No one who studies the dweomer of Light would fool with them carelessly, the way Perryn seems to have done.”

  “Are you telling me he follows the dark path?”

  “I’m not, because that poor, weak, bumbling idiot obviously could do naught of the sort. I know not what Lord Perryn may be, my little robin, but I do know that we’ve got to get you far, far away from him. Let’s ride. We’ll reach some safe spot, and then I’ll see what Nevyn thinks of all this.”

  After Jill rode away, Perryn had just enough strength to unsaddle his horse and send him out to graze. He lay down on his blankets and fell asleep, waking for a few moments at sunset, then sleeping the night away. When he woke in the morning, he rolled over, automatically reaching for Jill, and wept when he remembered that she was gone.

  “How could you leave me? I loved you so much.”

  He forced himself to stop crying, then sat up and looked around the camp. In spite of his long sleep, he was still tired, his body aching as if he’d been in a fight. When he remembered the man who’d taken her away, he turned cold all over. Dweomer. What else would have shown him that peculiar vision of clouds of light and golden swords? See what you’ve been doing, Lord Perryn. But he’d done nothing at all, only loved her. What did ropes of mystic light have to do with love? And she’d said that she hated him. He shook his head, refusing to cry again.

  At last he forced himself up and began packing his gear. He’d already placed himself in danger by staying so long; the lord who once had owned these colts might come looking for them. As he worked, he wondered which way to ride. He couldn’t go back to Nedd, not for a long time, not with Benoic’s wrath waiting for him. You’re twice a dolt, he told himself, first taking another man’s woman—and then losing her. Benoic would heap scorn on him for years over this, he knew. After the splendor of having had someone to love, of having had someone who had loved him—he refused to believe that Jill had never loved him—his life stretched ahead like a bleak, foggy road. It seemed to take him forever to leave the spot. He would just get some small task done, like rolling up his blankets, when something would make him think of Jill, and he would weep again. The dapple gray stayed close to him, nuzzling his shoulder or nudging him in the back as if to say that he should cheer up.