At the summit there was another little clearing. Within it was a monument which Janet told me was Miles Cross. Whoever Miles was, his notion of what was cruciform differed from my own. It was a cross only in the sense that a capital ‘T’ is one, though in this case there were two vertical columns. Actually all the thing was was a big slab of stone supported by a couple of shafts of untailored rock. It could have been an accident of glaciation, yet one glance assured me it was not. Nature’s work may be uninviting, but it cannot look abandoned. This structure smelled as strongly of the past left in the lurch as a haunted house does.
The clearing was overgrown, with twisted shrubbery looming here and there above coarse grass, gray in the moonlight. In a huddle around it were spruce trees, looking as if they had just arrived to take a look at the body. Where we stood it was silent, but somewhere downhill a stream imitated faint, croupy laughter.
“Which way are these birds supposed to be coming from?” I asked, when I had cased the situation.
“I don’t know,” she whispered. “All he said was that they’d pass right by Miles Cross.”
Seeing no reason to be conspicuous, I chose a resting place for us under the overhang of a large bush a few feet from the monument. Aside from providing us with both a vantage point and a haven of deep shadow, there wasn’t much to be said for it. The ground was damp, dew fell from the leaves above, and, now that we had quit exercising, the chill got to us.
“What do you want me to do when they show up?” I demanded.
She squeezed the hand I had given her, as much to bulwark my own nerves as hers. “Nothing, thank you. Getting a man is something a woman must do for herself, and so is holding him. I won’t be scared when the time comes — or I don’t think I will; and you’ve done all you can by coming here and waiting with me.”
Relieved, I peered out at the empty clearing once more. “But how about you? Aren’t you in any danger from these varmints?”
She caught her breath. “I don’t know, Shandon, but if they stop me from getting Tamlane, I don’t care what else they do.”
The only thing that happened in the next half-hour was that we grew more depressed as well as more miserable physically. At the end of that period I smelled the cold turning point of darkness, which usually comes around midnight. There had been no breeze, but now one commenced to gasp in the spruce tops. It brought other sounds.
I couldn’t identify them, but the girl did. “Bridles jingling. They’re coming!”
She cringed against me as she spoke. “You’d better lie doggo,” I advised her out of my own nervousness. “You can’t make any headway against wizards and what not.”
My words seemed to stiffen her backbone instead of softening it. “I couldn’t look my child in the eye if I hadn’t tried.” She was crawling out from under the bush as she made this statement. Then I saw her take an object from inside her cape. “This is holy water. I don’t think they’ll see you, but would you like some just to be safe?”
I wanted some, but I didn’t take it. “You’re the one on the firing line. Use it all yourself.”
She started sprinkling it in a circle around her, praying as she did so; but for the moment she was getting only the leftovers of my attention. The jingling was getting closer, and there were faint accompanying sounds. It seemed to me that horses should make more noise than that. As it turned out, though, she was right. She had hardly finished her preparations when riders began to appear.
They came out of the woods like smoke, their horses making easy work of it because they no more than brushed the top of the tall grass. That was not the only thing that astonished me. Although the moon was on the far side of them, neither the riders nor their mounts cast any shadows.
Careful not to make a sound, I watched the first draw near to where Janet waited. It looked as if the nigh horse would run her down; but she stood fast, and it shied around her. None of the riders showed any inclination to bother her, so, feeling better about the whole business, I turned my eyes toward the woods again.
A second straggling echelon of three or four was almost on us, and behind there came another. The inside horse of this third group was the only white one in the parade so far. Following standard procedure, it started to give the girl, or perhaps the holy water, room; but with a passionate cry, Janet went into action. Riding the grass tops, the fellow in the saddle was out of reach. He wore a long cape, though, and she got both hands on it when she lunged. Bracing herself, she brought him to the ground, wrapped her arms around him, and hung on.
Her second cry, a strangled mixture of love and triumph, stopped the parade. “Tamlane’s freed!” someone called.
Up until that instant I hadn’t known that any of the riders was feminine. The screech I then heard showed the presence of at least one. If there was grief in it, it was the grief of jealousy, not of loss. Mostly it sounded to me like a war cry, and Janet read it the same way.
“He’s mine!” she defied them.
It was noticeable, even if I was too excited to notice it much, that Tamlane had neither helped the girl nor resisted her. Possibly this neutrality was the result of wanting to be with Janet while still under control of the enchanters with whom he had herded. At any rate the latter still had the Indian sign on him and proceeded to use it, holy water or no holy water.
One of the things which made it peculiarly terrifying was that they operated by remote control. Nobody did anything as far as I could see, but when Janet screamed I saw that she was holding a snake instead of a man. Even when it struck at her she didn’t let go, though, and in another minute it became a monstrous frog or toad, trying to kick loose and grunting horribly.
They had plenty of tricks, but in Janet they were up against a determination they couldn’t face down. She squealed with fright, she sobbed, she wailed, she begged them to cease their machinations. In fact she showed every symptom of being a quitter except that she didn’t quit. A man and a father for her baby were what she wanted, and short of killing her they couldn’t make it too tough for her to take.
In the end they got tired of trying. Suddenly Tamlane changed from a buck deer to a buck naked man. She threw her cape around him with a crow of victory, and he stopped standing there like a dummy. Their shadows, for now he had one, too, came together as he got a good grip on her.
She was dead game, that girl, and deserved a kiss, but everybody wasn’t in the cheering section. “You’re welcome, my dear,” a woman’s voice said. A rider on a second white horse had drifted up and sat looking down at the pair. “I’m quite through with him.”
If that blow landed in foul territory, so did Janet’s counter punch. “Thank you; and I hope in time you’ll learn enough magic to hold on to a man.”
Tamlane had sense enough not to say anything, but now the rider turned to him. “If I had known your eyes were so bad that you couldn’t distinguish burs from blossoms, I’d have scratched them out for you. Now leave, both fools!”
They took that advice, which was sensible, although it upset my own plans. Undoubtedly Janet had forgotten me for the moment, and I didn’t feel like calling attention to myself while indignant wizards were present. My visions of spending the rest of the night in comfort vanished as the young couple hurried to the edge of the clearing. When they had gone, I gave my head a regretful shake, carelessly stirring the branches beneath which I crouched.
Having watched them go, too, the night rider near me was in the act of turning her mount. Now she halted.
“What moving brightness could the moon find there?” she wondered aloud.
When nobody answered, she slipped from the saddle. “Whatever you are that gleams so, come out.”
Unwilling to wait until I was exposed, cringing in hiding, I crawled forth and got stiffly to my feet. Her eyes went over me.
“What a fine glow worm to pluck from a bush,” she congratulated herself. Standing above me on the grass tops, she reached out and touched my white hair. “Who are you with this vein of s
ilver?”
I was uneasy, but more than anything else I was disgruntled at having been caught skulking. “Nobody you know,” I growled. “Just a man.”
She read me and had fun doing so. “Oh, a man?” she said. “And hugger-mugger under a bush like a rabbit. I must pay more heed to the shrubbery in the future.”
Meanwhile, she hadn’t been the only one to take notice of the other. She was, at least by the favor of moonlight, singularly attractive. Moreover, she was certainly not being unfriendly. I quit being truculent.
“It mightn’t be safe for you,” I ventured.
She didn’t hesitate; she paused for effect. “Or you,” she put it to me.
Moving closer, I could see that she was even lovelier than I had thought. Her voice matched her looks, and so did her fragrance. As yet neither of my other senses was gratified, but both knew a foretaste of ecstasy that couldn’t share the same body with caution.
“Let the others go on, and we’ll make a test case of it,” I urged.
“I’ll send them on,” she said, giving me my first intimation that she bossed the outfit. The rest had gathered into little groups, but at a word from her they broke it up and commenced gliding into the woods again.
“Wait under one of those trees yonder at the rim, and I’ll join you as soon as I’ve arranged for somebody else to take charge of what must be done,” she whispered, as she turned to remount.
Her horse shifted, offering us a modicum of privacy, and I thought it time to take some charge of proceedings myself. Snatching her off her feet, I swung her face in line and kissed her. That kiss made connection with rejoicing nerves throughout me. The impact was such that I felt light-headed when I released her, and I laughed a little.
She laughed, too. “Now I know you will wait for me.”
I thought that an odd comment, though my attention was quickly diverted to things I found far more remarkable. For as I walked away at a tangent to the route of the riders, it was no longer necessary to slog through the thick, wet grass. Instead I stepped lightfooted atop it; and no shadow matched strides with me.
It was immaterial to me how long I waited for her. The purpose of existence was in escrow until she returned. Meanwhile I leaned against a tree — gratified rather than astonished to find that I wore different clothes, and dry ones — steeped in contentment.
So I don’t know. In five minutes or a couple of hours she came to find me, singing as she rode. It was not just a voice, it was her voice, and I listened enraptured.
There’s no other sport so fine,
Never out of season,
As this lovely game of mine,
Stealing men from reason;
Taking them into my will,
Holding them with might and skill,
Mine to damn and mine to bless,
I their hell and holiness.
I couldn’t yet see her, but with the next stanza her voice grew so merry that I smiled myself.
There’s one now fixed in my spell
Like a moth in amber,
Lust for me his darling cell
Whence he dare not clamber.
Let him freeze or let him burn;
Thrust him out and he’ll return,
Deft chameleon to my mood,
My commands his drink and food.
By the time she had sung the last line she had halted beside me. My desire alive again, I clutched her to help her from the saddle, but she chuckled and shook her head.
“Mount up behind me, sweet my heart.”
It happened that my closest previous dealings with a horse had been hanging around stables as a boy visiting in the country. Yet if she wanted me to ride with her, I certainly wasn’t going to demur. I got aboard, making easier work of it than I expected. Then I held her so that my right arm was snug up under her breasts. To complete the intimacy she leaned back against me. A portion of my cheek found its way through the soft scented hair to burn deliciously against her temple. My eyes were closed, because they weren’t in position to see her, and nothing else seemed worth looking at.
“Start him up,” I suggested.
I remember how Nimue felt in my arms, as well as her hair fluttering across my face. That’s about all I recall of most of that ride. The wind whizzed past us; but the horse’s ground-skimming gait didn’t jar us, and he somehow avoided whipping us into any branches. Although I didn’t pay much attention, I do recall that when we came to a certain hill, he rode right into it. Opening my eyes from time to time, I noted without concern that it was pitch dark within. There were roaring noises like surf on a stormy day, but they didn’t make much of an impression, either. I could hardly hear them above the pounding of the pulse that signified the building up of my passion.
When we emerged into the light again, it was neither moonlight nor dawn but full day. Blinking, I gazed upon meadows whose lush grass was glossy with sunlight. Peeping out of the grass were flowers of every color, and here and there were trees whose leaves had the green of spring rather than of late summer. They held their branches, laden with blossoms and bright singing birds, over a pair of winding streams or the clear pond into which these flowed. Beyond the little lake there were more trees and grass and flowers, but with a difference. In and out of sight amidst them was a road. Nobody was on it, but anyone who cared to could have followed it to the shining city whose towers broke the horizon.
To a man filled with unslaked desire all beauty is an aphrodisiac. Not only what I saw, but the sweet calls of the birds and the smells of grass, flowers, trees, and clean water were confused in my mind with the body I held and wanted.
“Is this the place?” I pleaded. “Is this the place?”
She didn’t answer, though her breathing was almost as fast as mine. Snuggling closer against me, she let the bridle drop. The horse had slowed to a walk, yet he kept on to where a tree made a canopy of blossoms which touched the fresh, tall grass. In a moment then we were standing in that perfumed shade. It was my first full look at her, and I found that, lovely as was the sketch of her which the moonlight had shown me, it was no more than a slander on the reality.
She saw the way I felt and smiled before she closed her eyes. Her head was thrown back, and her arms hung limply.
“Take me, Shandon,” she commanded.
21
Avarta’s Nag
THAT COUNTRY was always fragrant with spring. The smell and the feel of it were never absent even from the gay, clean city where we lived in luxury. Not that I would have cared if the surroundings had been less fine. Nimue was glorious, I was her joyous stud; and there was my happiness without looking farther.
It was only occasionally, in the rare intervals when we spent some hours apart, that I so much as thought of anything else. Then I recalled Golias and Jones, but with no feeling of immediacy. I merely wondered how they were getting on, just as you might speculate as to the whereabouts of old schoolmates you never expected to see again.
Then, when I had been there a while, Nimue went on an expedition, leaving me behind. I thought myself miserable, but I didn’t know what the word meant until she returned. She had a fellow called Tom Learmont with her, and I was relegated to second string. From that point on I weltered in a sort of feeble-minded madness.
I wanted to kill him but had no power to lift my hands against him. I wanted to hate her but could only continue to desire her. Time away from her might have helped; but it wasn’t in her nature to be willing to lose an idolater. She let me see her, and caress her occasionally, just often enough to make sure I wasn’t getting out of hand.
In between times I infrequently saw that my salvation was escape, but I couldn’t imagine a course of action. Having lost Tamlane by taking him on one of her expeditions, Nimue kept me on the premises, wherever they were. I only screwed up the courage to ask how to skip the country once. The fellow I asked got a queer look in his eyes and told me Nimue was the leading authority on that point.
The sole person who could possibly have h
elped me I didn’t like to ask. I never understood too much about the political set-up, but I did grasp that the authority of Nimue, as queen, was matched by that of her husband, Gwynn Uriens MacLir. His ideas of what constituted a marriage were as liberal as her own. You might think she would have been glad of it, but she hated him for being free of her power. This didn’t feaze him, nor did anything as far as I could see. A jolly chap, he might have been willing to give me a hand if my emerging consciousness hadn’t dredged up a grain of pride. I couldn’t quite bring myself to ask a fellow I had cuckolded how to get out of his wife’s clutches.
Yet most of the time I couldn’t conceive of wanting to; and the town was such a concourse of happy lovers that I couldn’t stand it. On those days when Nimue had no time for me, therefore, I used to hurry outside the city limits. Those scented fields were a constant reminder of lost joy, but at least I could find a place there where my misery wasn’t scandalized by the contentment of others.
Yet once as I drank gall in a stupor of wretchedness, even privacy was denied me. “He’s right around here,” a voice said. “I watched him tear out of town while I was breakfasting on the balcony this morning.”
“And you’re sure it’s the one?” That was Golias’ voice, yet I lay where I was, face down in the deep grass.
“I couldn’t swear to it. All I know about him is that he’s one of Nimue’s culls.” When he spoke the second time I knew him to be King Gwynn. They were closer to me, and I held my breath.
“He must be having a bad time of it,” Golias said.
“Nah, he just thinks he is. Suppose she’d put him under a rock like a grub the way she did with old Merlin. Then he’d have something to squeal about; but all that’s happened to him is that she hung somebody else’s pants over the foot of her bed.”