Rhapsody blinked in astonishment. “Look at him, for goodness’ sake—he’s blessing children.”
The Dhracian’s expression melted into amusement. “And you think evil priests walk the land randomly throwing curses around and smiting waifs with their walking sticks? Evil priests do the same things that regular priests do. It’s the price that’s different, and the tender it’s paid in, that’s all.”
“Well, I think this is the best chance I’m going to get to meet someone who might be able to get me to port. I’m going to risk it.”
This time Grunthor took her arm. “Don’t take a chance, Duchess.”
Rhapsody smiled at the giant. “He looks like a nature priest, Grunthor. What does your tie to the Earth say about him?”
Grunthor looked back through the thicket and closed his eyes. A moment later he opened them with a sigh.
“’E’s tied to it, too, in a big way. ’E cares for it, knows about it. You’re right, miss, ’e’s a nature priest o’ some sort.”
Rhapsody patted the enormous hand and slid free again. “I’ve got to chance it. If anything happens, and you can’t intervene, I’ll understand, and I won’t give you away.”
Achmed exhaled. “All right. I guess this is as good a time as any. Be careful.”
Khaddyr spoke to the head farmer with as much patience as he could muster. “Now, Severhalt, I know poor old Fawn is getting on in years, but surely she is still performing her religious duties to your community.” The look in his eye had a tinge of annoyance to it, but his voice was gentle.
The man’s hands came to rest on his hips, and he looked down at the ground. “Services, yes, Father, but we’re not gettin’ the kind of support we need with the animals anymore. We need someone younger, someone who can handle the winter.”
Khaddyr sighed. “Well, I certainly understand your frustration, my son, but these are difficult times. I know Fawn isn’t as hale as she once was, but she still performs the rites for the congregation, doesn’t she?”
“Yes, Father.”
“And your village and homesteads are very near the Tree; there are certainly more than enough Filids there to aid you in times of great need if Fawn cannot. The Circle is in a bit of a bind, and unable to spare a new priest at this time. And I’m afraid Llauron granted Fawn the privilege of keeping her congregation here, in proximity to the Tree, as a boon for her years of faithful service. He wants to see her final years be holy ones. You can understand that, can’t you?”
Severhalt sighed. “Yes, Father.”
Khaddyr smiled. “Let’s talk about this again in the spring. I have some acolytes who are spending the winter studying medicine with me. They should, by rights, go on to Gavin to train as foresters next, but perhaps we can reroute them here for a few months to assist with planting and the birthing of the calves. How does that sound?”
The faces of the men who had clustered around lit up, as did Severhalt’s. “Wonderful, Father, thank ya. Can ya come in for a spot of supper—Father?” The delight on the farmer’s face disappeared, replaced by concern. The Filidic priest was staring into the forest, his face drained of color.
A woman had walked out of the woods, appearing as if from nowhere. For a moment Khaddyr was not sure whether he was imagining her or not. She was caked in long-dried mud and clothed in filthy rags, but she was without question at the same time the most beautiful thing he had ever seen.
The hair beneath the clots of clay was as brilliant as the sun, and glistened in the filtered light of the gloomy afternoon. She was slight, but long of line, and walked with a grace that belied her unkempt state. Her eyes, even as far away as she was, were visibly green, deep and dark as a forest glade in the height of summer.
Then she smiled, and it was as if the clouds had cleared suddenly. The warmth in the look she gave him radiated into the coldest places of his heart. Khaddyr feared he might cry for want of her. He instantly began chanting under his breath, throwing himself into his rote religious rituals to ward off whatever spell she had cast on him.
As she approached his heart began to pound, and he leaned on the knotted staff to steady himself. She stopped at a respectful distance and opened her hands in a peaceful gesture of greeting. It was only then that Khaddyr noticed she was armed; a thin, rough-hewn scabbard, seemingly carved from rock, adorned her side. It seemed more decorative than utilitarian, and she was hardly threatening, even equipped as she was.
It took him more than a few moments to find his voice. The farmers with whom he had been conferring were staring, slack-jawed, as well.
“What are you?” he asked. His voice broke, and he cleared his throat in embarrassment. “What are you?” he repeated gruffly. The woman merely blinked. “Can you understand me?” She nodded. “But you don’t speak?” She smiled uncomfortably, and shrugged.
Khaddyr’s eyes ran up and down her exquisite, if unbathed, figure, causing his breath to come out more shallowly. Until this moment his vow of celibacy, a pledge not required of any Filid priest but him, had seemed an easy sacrifice in exchange for being sworn as Llauron’s Tanist, the ancient leader’s religious successor. Suddenly, the privilege of being named Invoker himself one day paled in importance. He cleared his throat again.
“I am Khaddyr. I am a Filidic priest and the Tanist of Llauron, the Invoker.” What is this? he wondered. A wood nymph? A tree spirit? A dryad? He had heard the legends of forest creatures but did not believe them, at least until now.
The dazzling woman bowed her head. Well, Khaddyr noted, she’s respectful, whatever she is. Something else that made her attractive.
“Well,” he said finally, “I’m afraid you’re a bit beyond my powers of understanding. I have no idea who or what you are, so I suppose I shall have to take you to Llauron and let him have a look at you. Don’t be afraid; the Invoker is a kind man. Will you come with me, please?”
The strange woman nodded, and smiled at him again. He held out his hand and allowed it to come to rest, trembling slightly, on her upper arm. Beneath the rotten fabric of the tattered shirt, her skin was deliciously warm. Khaddyr left his hand there long enough to turn her in the appropriate direction, then quickly dropped it down to his side. He turned west himself as well, only to find a wall of blank-faced townspeople blocking their path back to the Tree.
“I say,” he growled, “do clear the path, please.” The farmers didn’t move. “Ahem,” he repeated, glaring at them, “get out of the way.”
The woman looked at him, then back at the people obstructing the path, and took a step toward them. Instantly they scattered like leaves, retreating to a safe distance, and continued to stare at her. Khaddyr didn’t know how long they would stay at bay, so he took her arm again and led her to the silver-gray horse, lifting her easily off the ground and mounting behind her. He rode away just as the townspeople seemed to recover their wits. A shout went up as a few ran to their own stables, determined to follow him.
Khaddyr was becoming anxious. At each small village or large homestead along the roadway his unintentional caravan had taken on riders and followers on foot, creating crowds that blocked the forest road.
Farmers on the outskirts of the towns along the road had stopped and stared as they rode by. Villagers had swarmed to see the strange, beautiful creature riding before him in the saddle. There were scores of them now, perhaps hundreds, men and women alike, and a fair number of children, all clamoring to see or touch this filthy dryad with the dazzling green eyes.
He fully understood their unnatural desire to do so. Even the continual state of consternation he had been in since leaving Tref-Y-Gwartheg had done little to arrest the light-headedness he was experiencing.
Initially he had ascribed it to trepidation over what Llauron was going to say about the chaos of the surrounding villages and the arrival of some of their occupants on his lands near the Great Tree. After hours had passed, however, and the feeling had not abated, he began to realize that his anxiety about the Invoker’s potential disp
leasure had little to do with it.
It was the giddy sensation of inhaling the surprisingly sweet scent of the filthy creature whose back occasionally pressed up against his chest, causing dark and lascivious thoughts unsuited in a celibate man of the cloth. At one point, to his great embarrassment, she had taken his hand and removed it gently from her breast, not bothering to turn around to face or glare at him. He felt humiliated; he had not even known it was there.
Finally he lost the half-dozen or so determined men who had continued to follow him after he had guided the horse past the crowds. Since the same problem was arising in each village, Khaddyr decided to abandon the road and take the narrower forest trails in the hope of avoiding further difficulty.
At the peak of the afternoon they arrived at their lodging for the night, the hostel of the forester Gavin. One of the same order as Khaddyr himself, Gavin kept the barracks on the eastern border of the deep forest, training the Filidic acolytes in the art of forestry. Upon completion of Gavin’s training they served three years as pilgrimage guides, escorting the faithful from their villages to the Tree for holy-day celebrations and religious rites, though these days they had been more often utilized to defend the forest outposts against attack. War is brewing, Khaddyr thought. There was no doubt about it.
Khaddyr brought the horse to a stop outside the main cottage, reserved for the use of Gavin and other senior Filids. The Filidic religion was one of service to nature, and as such did not require its priests to remain celibate, except for him. Most of the Filids, men and women, were married, although acolytes usually refrained from matrimonial ties until their training and forestry service were finished. As a result, many of them lived within the villages that were their congregations or in the main settlements closer to the Tree. He expected the cottage would be empty, and it appeared that he was correct.
His enchanting passenger was looking around, taking in the sights with obvious interest. Khaddyr dismounted, finding some relief in his groin area, which had been experiencing considerable discomfort during their ride. He put his hands up to the strange creature to assist her down from the horse, but she shook her head and dismounted by herself. Swallowing his disappointment, he tied the horse to a slender sapling and nodded curtly to the hut. She followed him inside.
The hut had two low wooden beds topped with stuffed sackcloth mattresses filled with sweet hay and covered with blankets of undyed wool, as well as a sizable wooden table. None of the foodstuffs had been left in the cottage; they would have to eat what he could find out in the root cellar or share his meager dinner, which had gone uneaten in all the excitement. He turned to his odd guest and pointed outside.
“I’m going to see what I can find for us to eat,” he said in a slow, exaggerated tone. “Will you be all right in here alone for a few moments?”
The woman smiled and nodded. Khaddyr felt the unwelcome rush of heat and blood again. He took hold of the cord that served as the door’s handle.
“Good. Now, make yourself comfortable. I’ll be back in a bit.” He pointed to one of the two beds and left the hut hurriedly.
When he returned a few moments later, an armload of roots and winter apples in hand, the woman was sound asleep in the bed he had indicated, smiling as if in paradise.
Rhapsody woke to the warmth of a cracking fire burning peacefully in the small fireplace. She sat up with a start, disoriented in the dark, to see the man who had introduced himself as Khaddyr watching her intently from across the room. Night had fallen while she slept. She had no idea how much time had passed since she had slipped, gratefully, into the first bed she had occupied since the night before the world had been turned upside down an eternity ago in Easton.
The man smiled at her doubtfully. She returned the smile, hoping to assuage whatever concern was plaguing him. He seemed intent on treating her kindly. By now Achmed and Grunthor had undoubtedly caught up with them and were stationed somewhere nearby, or so she hoped. She felt around beneath the blanket and sighed in relief. The sword was still there where she had hidden it.
“Are you hungry?” Khaddyr asked. He had laid a plain meal on the table, one bowl of which had already been eaten. She nodded and rose from the bed, taking the chair opposite him.
The hut itself was simple in its construction, better built than the ones she had seen on the Island, with stone walls and a thatched roof. As they had approached she had seen something resembling barracks off in the near distance, long, thatched buildings with wattle-and-daub walls cased with skins and woven mats of forest brush. The buildings, for all their simplicity, seemed surprisingly solid, and reflected careful thought in their design. The Filids, whoever they were, must have some architectural or engineering knowledge not often seen in farming communities.
Khaddyr watched her as she ate; it made her self-conscious. When she had finished she pointed to the empty bowl and gestured her thanks. The man’s forehead wrinkled as he watched her in the firelight.
“What sort of creature are you?” he asked her again, as he had when she first emerged from the forest. Rhapsody had no idea what to say, so she shrugged. She tried to formulate a way to explain that she was a person—perhaps Khaddyr had never seen someone of Lirin extraction—but was blocked in her attempt by a sudden sound of shouting and commotion. The crowd had finally caught up with them.
Khaddyr rose from his seat in consternation, and went to one of the two cottage windows. Even in the light of the waning moon Rhapsody could see his face grow pale. The hunting party of determined villagers must have grown larger in the course of following them.
The priest hurried to the coat pegs near the door. On each of them hung a soft gray forester’s cape with a hood and caplet. On a man the size of an average villager it would hang to the top of the thigh. Khaddyr draped it around Rhapsody and exhaled in relief when he saw that it only brushed the backs of her calves. He pulled the hood up over her filthy hair.
“Come with me,” he said, urgency in his voice. “We can cut through the woods here to Llauron’s.” He seized his own staff and cape and held open the back door, which led out to the root cellar. Rhapsody followed him out into the darkness, running from the throng like a fox before the approaching hounds.
19
It took three days’ travel to reach the place in the deep forest to which Khaddyr had been referring. The towns along the main roadway, though seeming to be in a wooded land when she had first seen them, were out in the open compared with the place through which they now traveled.
The forest to the west was virgin, primeval, and thick with stands of dark evergreens that blotted out the light and returned some of the green of the warmer months to the otherwise unbroken blanket of snow.
Their pace was slower than hers had been with the two Bolg. Khaddyr was a much older and fatter man than either Achmed or Grunthor, and so had to rest more frequently, but he had an innate knowledge of the terrain. The forest seemed to welcome him, easing his passage through the heavy underbrush.
More than once Rhapsody had looked off into the distance and caught a glimpse of a dark cape or a large shadow, and sighed in relief. Achmed and Grunthor had caught up and were making that known to her. Though she and Khaddyr seemed to have lost the mass of townspeople for the moment, the presence of the Bolg served to reassure her even as she followed the priest through the deepening woods.
Each morning Rhapsody would wait until Khaddyr had disappeared into a copse of trees to attend to the call of nature before finding a spot from which to sing her dawn devotions. Out of deference to Achmed’s concern about revealing their history, she sang wordlessly, maintaining only a melody line without the Ancient Lirin verse. On more than one occasion she had turned around after finishing to find the Filidic priest staring at her as if she were a mythical beast.
At night Khaddyr built a small fire, from which she maintained a respectable distance. Given the way fire often reacted to her, she thought it wise to keep away from it. She could see that her withdrawal from th
e proximity of the fire caused Khaddyr to assume she had an aversion to it and to make note of this fact. He had ceased trying to question her about what she was, and instead spoke to her only when giving directions.
Finally on the third day they came to a place in the deep woods that appeared to be a large clearing. Dispersed throughout the area were many cottages and huts, some of stone and others of earth with turf roofs, or the wattle-and-daub walls that she had seen in the farming communities. In addition they passed a few very large buildings made of wood, with heavy doors and conical thatched roofs. Smoke rose placidly from the hearths of the buildings.
Above the doors of the huts and cottages were hex signs, similar to the one she had seen back on the road but in far more complex and colorful patterns. Most of the dwellings had sizable gardens or kraals, and had been whitewashed or faced with stone as ornamentation.
The people who milled about did not dress as the farmers and villagers had, but rather were attired in robes of wool similar to Khaddyr’s, some dyed with indigo or goldenrod or engilder leaves to bring forth hues of blue or yellow or green. Others, as Khaddyr’s, had been soaked in butternut shells or heather, producing tones more earthy, shades of dismal brown and somber gray. Often these robes had cowls like Khaddyr’s, which seemed to signify greater rank among the people of this forest community.
In addition to the robed clergy were armed men, carrying bows, spears, axes, and other weaponry of foresters and scouts, and attired in leather armor. These men were often haggard or injured, showing the signs of many months of travel or battle, and their appearance made Rhapsody wonder what might have attacked them in this seemingly peaceful place.
The prospect of war made her stomach twist in anxiety. War had been in the wind back in Easton, and it meant the restriction of travel. If this place was at war or preparing for one, it would complicate her getting to a port and passage home. After coming this far, she was unwilling to face that prospect.