Several villagers came by as I played, but I ignored them. The first person I noticed was the whore, Ilka. She crept in close and sat hugging her knees, her huge blue eyes fixed to my face. The music changed as I saw her, becoming wistful and sad. She shook her head and rose, beginning a curious dance in the mud. I saw her then as a nymph, a magical eldritch creature trapped in a world that understood nothing. And the music changed again, lifting and swelling, still sorrowful but filled with a promise of new tomorrows.
At last my fingers became tired, and the music died. Ilka stopped, too, and looked at me with those wide, haunted eyes. Her expression was hard to read. I smiled and said something—I don’t remember what it was—but fear came back to her then, and she scampered away into the gathering dusk.
Toward evening I saw Wulf and his killers striding toward the village.
For a moment only I was filled with stark terror, but then I saw the children running up to meet them. The hunchback lifted one small boy high into the air, perching him on his twisted shoulder, and the sound of laughter filled the village.
Jarek was right, in part at least.
This forest was a garden of evil.
3
I SEE THAT you are quizzical, my ghostly friend. How, you wonder, does the laughter of children in such circumstances denote evil? Well, think on this … is it not comforting to believe that all acts of murder and malice are committed by brutes with no souls? Worshipers of unclean powers?
But how dispiriting to see a group of men coming home from a day of toil, ready to play for an hour with their children, to hold their wives close, to sit at their hearth fires, when their work has been the foul slaughter of innocent travelers. You take my point? Evil is at its most vile when it is practiced by ordinary men.
We can excuse a demon who stalks the night seeking blood. It is his nature; he was created for just such a purpose. But not a man who by day commits acts of murder and by night returns home to be a good, loving husband and father. For that is evil of a monstrous kind and casts doubts upon us all.
But I am running ahead of myself. Where was I? Ah, yes, the village by the lake. I had watched the whore dance, and I had seen the return of the village men. And now, as the winter sunlight faded, I was standing outside the hut staring out over the cold lake.
An old woman came walking across the mud flats. She was tall and thin, her bony body covered with a long woolen gown, her shoulders wrapped in a plaid shawl. Upon her head was a leather cap with long ear pieces tied with thongs beneath her chin. She was carrying a sack, and she walked with the long strides of a man. I took her to be more than seventy years old.
“Do you not bow in the presence of a lady, Owen Odell?” she asked, stopping before me.
I was shocked and did not move for a moment; then good manners reasserted themselves. “My apologies,” I said, extending my left leg and bowing low, sweeping my left arm out in a graceful half circle. “Have we met before?”
“Perhaps,” she answered, smiling. Her face was lined, but good high cheekbones prevented the skin from sagging. Her lips were thin, and her eyes, deep-set beneath shaggy brows, were bright blue. Forty years before she must have been a handsome woman, I thought.
“Indeed I was,” she said brightly. “Thank you for looking beyond the crone and seeing the true Megan.”
“You are a magicker, then?”
“Of sorts,” she agreed, walking past me to her hut.
Jarek was asleep on the bed. Megan carried her sack to the rear of the room, tipping the contents onto a wide table. All kinds of leaves and roots had been gathered, and these she began to separate into small mounds. I moved behind her, looking down at the first mound. I recognized the flowers instantly as eyebright, downy leaves with white petals tinged with violet and with a yellow spot at the center of the bloom.
“You are a herbalist also, madam?” I inquired.
“Aye,” she answered. “And doctor, meat curer, midwife. You know this plant?”
“My nurse used to make an infusion of its leaves for winter colds,” I told her.
“It is also good for preventing infection in wounds,” she said, “and for relieving swollen eyes.”
I cast my eyes over the other plants. There was wild thyme, figwort, dove’s foot, woundwort, sanicle, and several others I could not recognize.
“Your magick is strong, Megan,” I said.
“There is no magick in gathering plants,” she muttered.
“Oh, but there is when it is winter and none of them grow. You have a spell garden somewhere, and your enchantment works there even while you sleep.”
“You have a long tongue, Owen Odell,” she said, a short curved blade hissing from the leather scabbard at her waist, “and I have a sharp knife. Be advised.”
I looked into her eyes. “An empty threat, madam,” I told her, keeping my voice low.
“How would you know?” she asked. “You cannot read my thoughts.”
“No, but I like you, and that is purely on instinct. My magick may not be strong, but my instincts usually are.” She nodded, and her eyes lost their coldness. Smiling, she slipped the skinning knife back into its sheath.
“Aye, sometimes instincts are more reliable than magick. Not often, mind! Now make yourself useful and build up the fire. Then there are logs to be cut. You will find an ax in the lean- to behind the house. After that you can help me prepare the hanging birds.”
I learned something that evening: Physical labor can be immensely satisfying to the soul. There was a stack of logs, sawn into rounds of roughly two feet in length. They were of various thicknesses, and the wood was beech, the bark silvery and coarse but the inner bright and the color of fresh cream. The ax was old and heavy, with a curved handle polished by years of use. I placed a log upon a wide slab of wood and slashed at it, missing by several inches. The ax blade thudded into the slab beneath, jarring my arms and shoulders. More carefully I lifted it again, bringing it down into the center of the log, which split pleasingly.
As I have said, I was not a small man, though I had little muscle. I was tall and bony, but my shoulders were naturally broad, my arms long, and my balance good. It was a matter of a few minutes before I was swinging the ax like a veteran woodsman, and my woodpile grew.
I worked for almost an hour in the moonlight, stopping only when my fingers became too sore to hold the handle. There was a deep ache in my lower back, but it was more than matched by the pride I felt in my labor.
For the first time in my life I had labored for my supper, working with my hands, and the flames of tonight’s fire, the warmth I would know, would be the result of my own efforts. I laid the ax against the lean-to and began to stack the chunks I had cut.
Megan walked out into the night and nodded as she saw all that I had done. “Never leave an ax like that,” she said. “The blade will rust.”
“Shall I bring it inside?”
She laughed then. “No, young fool, leave it embedded in a log. It will keep the blade sharp.”
She waited as I stacked the firewood, then bade me follow her to a small hut at the rear of the building. Even with the winter wind blowing, the stench was great as she opened the door. There were some twenty geese, seven turkeys, and more than a dozen hares hanging there. I cast a swift spell, and the aroma of lavender filled my nostrils.
“Have you ever prepared a goose?” she asked.
“For what?” I answered, forcing a smile.
“I thought not. Nobleman, are you? Servants to run your errands, build your fires, heat your bed? Well, you will learn much here, master bard.”
Stepping forward, she lifted a dead goose from a hook and pushed it into my arms. The head and neck flopped down against my right thigh. “First pluck the bird,” she said. “Then I will show you how to prepare it.”
“It is not a skill I wish to learn,” I pointed out.
“It is if you want to eat,” she replied. After working with the ax, I was extremely hungry and did not argu
e. My hunger, I should point out, did not last long. Plucking the bird was not arduous, but what followed made me wonder if I would ever eat goose again.
She carried the carcass to a long, narrow bench. I followed her and watched as she sliced open the skin of the creature’s neck. Then she cut away the bones and head and pulled clear the crop bag, which she flung to the floor. “Useless,” she said. “Even dogs wouldn’t touch it. Now give me your hand,” she ordered me, and took hold of my wrist. “Insert two fingers here on either side of the neck and rotate them inside the beast.” It was slimy and cold, and I could feel the bird’s tiny tendons and veins being torn as my fingers slid over the brittle bones. She pulled my hand clear, then inserted her own fingers into the hole. “Good,” she muttered, “you have released the lungs, the gizzard, and the heart.”
“I’m so pleased.”
Turning the goose, she took up a small knife and then pushed a finger into its body. Extending the skin, she cut a circular hole at the rear and discarded the sliced flesh. “Push your hand in and pull out the insides,” she ordered me. I swallowed hard and did as she instructed. My stomach turned as the oily, dark, and bloody mess pulled clear. I stepped back from the table.
“Don’t you vomit in here!” she snapped. Stepping forward, she continued to clean out the goose, removing what appeared to be oceans of fat. “Good tallow,” she said. “Candles, grease for leather, ointment for the rheumatic. Liver, heart, and lung make for good broth. A fine bird.”
I couldn’t speak and turned away to where the hares were hanging head down. Each of them had a small clay pot suspended from its ears. Walking toward one, I glanced into a pot; it was full of blood, but worse than this, there were maggots floating there. I watched another emerge from the hare’s nostril and drop into the congealing blood. Sickened, I leapt back.
“This one’s rotten!” I said.
Megan walked over to where the creature was hanging. “Not at all. It is just high. The meat will be soft and full of flavor. Wulf will be coming for it tonight. We’ll prepare that next.”
I could not watch and, without the usual courtesies, ran from the hut.
The sound of Megan’s laughter echoed after me.
It is hard for a young man to discover that he is useless. We have such pride when young. I was a good bard and a fine musician. As a magicker? Well, there might have been twenty or thirty men in the southern kingdom who were better than I, but not more.
Yet here in this village I was little more use than a mewling half-wit. It galled me beyond words. I wanted to leave, to march away to some larger settlement. But the forest was vast, and my knowledge of it scant.
That evening I sat disconsolately before the fire tuning my harp and thinking back to the days of childhood in the south. Jarek awoke sometime before midnight and, without a word to Megan, took up his cloak and walked from the house.
“Where are you from?” I asked the old woman.
“Not from here,” she answered. Her speech was clipped, the pronunciation good. But the voice was disguised, I felt.
“Are you noble-born?” I inquired.
“What would you like me to be?” she responded.
“Whatever you wish to be, madam.”
“Then take me as I am. An old woman in a small village by a lake.”
“Is that all you see when you look in the mirror?”
“I see many things, Owen Odell,” she told me, an edge of sadness in her voice. “I see what is and what was.”
The fire was crackling in the hearth, the smoke spiraling up through the small hole in the high thatched roof, the wind hissing through cracks in the wooden walls.
“Who are you?” I asked her.
She smiled wearily. “You want me to be some mythic queen or ancient sorceress? Do you seek always to make the world fit into a song?”
I shrugged. “The songs are comforting, Megan.”
“You are a good man, Owen, in a world where good men are few. Take my advice and learn to use a blade or a bow.”
“You wish me to become a killer?”
“Better than to be killed.”
“Are you a widow?”
“What is this fascination you have with my life? I grow herbs and prepare meat for the table. I weave cloth and cast an occasional spell. I am not unusual or in any way unique.”
“I do not find you so.”
She stood and stretched her back. “Go to bed, bard. That is the place for dreams.” Wrapping her shawl about her, she walked out into the night.
I don’t know why, but I was convinced she was leaving to meet Jarek Mace. Taking her advice, I stripped off my clothes and stretched out on the bed, pulling the goose-down quilt over my body.
Sleep came swiftly, and I dreamed of a lost swan, circling and calling in the sky above an ice-covered lake. I knew he was searching for something, but I did not know what it was. And then I saw, beneath the ice on the water, a second swan, cold and dead. But the first bird kept calling out as he flew on weary wings.
Calling … calling.
There are, it seems to me, two kinds of pride. One urges a man to disguise his shortcomings for fear of looking foolish. The second spurs him on to eliminate those shortcomings. Happily, I have always been blessed with the latter.
I set to work during the winter months to learn those skills which would make me a valuable asset to my neighbors. Despite my loathing of carcasses and blood, I taught myself to gut, skin, and prepare meat for the table. I learned to tan hides, to make tallow candles, to identify medicinal herbs and prepare infusions and decoctions.
And I labored with ax and saw to supply Megan with firewood aplenty.
The villagers also taught me something valuable: how to live together in harmony, each man and woman a link in a chain, each dependent upon the other for food, clothing, shoes, bows, medicines. There was only one piece of communal property—a large cast-iron oven. It had been bought in Ziraccu and carted into the forest, where it was leased to Garik the baker. The rest of the huts made do with field ovens, bricks of clay erected over tiny trenches. Garik would make bread and cakes for the villagers in return for meats, hides, and home-brewed ale. Megan earned her living by supplying herbs and curing meats. Wulf, the hunchback, brought in venison and boar meat. Each person had developed a skill that enhanced the lives of the other villagers.
Even Owen Odell found his niche. Each week, on the holy day, I played my harp in the village hall, creating new vigorous melodies so that the villagers could dance. I was not popular, you understand, for I was an Angostin among Highlanders, but I was, I believe, respected.
In my spare moments, which were few, I sat and watched the village life, observing my neighbors, learning about them, their fears and their hopes. Highlanders are a disparate people, a mixture of races, and the ancestry of many could be seen in their faces and builds. Garik the baker was a short, powerfully built man with flat features, a jutting brow, and a wide gash of a mouth. It took no great imagination to see him dressed in skins, his cheeks painted blue in the spiral patterns of his Pictish ancestors. There were several like Garik, whose bloodlines ran from the earliest human settlers; they were dour men, hard and tough, men to match the mountains. Others, like Orlaith the cattle herder, were taller, their hair tinged with the red of the Belgae, their eyes dark, their souls fiery and passionate. A few showed Angostin lines—long noses and strong chins—but they admitted to no Angostin heritage. This was hardly surprising, since the Angostins were the most recent invaders, a mere few hundred years before. And Highland memories are long indeed.
My reputation among them was raised several notches when I used a search spell to locate a missing child. She was Wulf’s youngest and had wandered off into the forest during a cold afternoon. Wulf and a dozen of his fellows set off to look for her, but the temperature was dropping fast, and most of the men knew the child could not survive for long.
A search spell is not difficult to cast when one lives in a forest and people are fe
w, though only the very best magickers could cast a successful search spell within a city. This one was slightly more difficult for me because I blended the spell with one of warming. Even so, an apprentice could have cast it.
Essentially one pictures the object of the search and creates a glowing sphere of white light. The image of the object—in this case a yellow-haired child—is set at the center of the light sphere. Then the light is sent out into the woods, seeking to match the image at its heart to an outside source. It is not an unusually complex spell, and if by chance there were several yellow-haired children in the forest, it would probably alight on the wrong one. But on this day there was only one lost little girl, and the sphere found her wandering beside a frozen stream, her fingers and lips blue with cold.
It touched her, and the second spell became active, covering her with a warm, invisible blanket while the search sphere rose up above the trees, blazing with light and drawing the rescuers to the toddler.
The child was unharmed, and such was Wulf’s delight that he made me a present of an ornate dagger with a leaf-shaped blade and a ruby encased in gold at the hilt. He also grabbed my shoulders, dragged me down, and kissed me on both cheeks, an altogether unpleasant experience.
But in the days that followed, when I was out among the villagers, I would be greeted with smiles and people would inquire politely after my health.
It was two months before news of the war filtered through to the village. A travelling tinker, well known to Wulf and therefore allowed to pass through, came to us one bright cold morning. He told of the fall of Ziraccu, the slaughter of its inhabitants. Count Leopold had been found hiding in the granary; his eyes were put out, and he was placed in a cage and hanged from the ruined walls. Then the army had moved on to the north. Thankfully, they had avoided this part of the forest.