Year of the Unicorn

13 Beast Into Man

This was like journeying down a dark way in the cold of a winter’s night, making a turn, and seeing before one the open door of an inn from which streamed warmth and light, the promise of companionship with one’s kind. So did I scramble down from the safety of my moonlit mound-island and run to meet him who had ridden in such haste.

“Herrel!” Even as I had called to him from the tent when I was for a short space that other Gillan, so did I now reach out to him, voice and hand

But a swirl of that green light which was the Riders’ mark coiled between us serpent-wise, threatening—and when it vanished—

I had seen the beast which had crouched on the ledge before it leaped to go hunting the Hounds of Alizon. But then I had not fronted it—only watched it in lithe action. Now beast eyes were on me, lips raised in a snarl over cruel fangs—and there was nothing left I could reach.

“Herrel!” I do not know why I named that name—the man had gone.

Stumbling I tried to back away as that long, silver furred shape stooped low to the ground in a threatening crouch and I knew that I looked upon death. The firm earth of the mound was hard behind my shoulders, but I dared not turn my back upon that death to climb to what small safety its summit might offer.

There was a knife at my belt, but my hand did not go to it. This I could not meet with steel. Nor perhaps would my other weapon be any more than a reed countering a sword stroke. Still it was all I had left me.

Deep did I stare into those green eyes which now held nothing of man in them, were only alien pools of threat Within the beast was still Herrel—hiding, submerged, yet there. Or else man could not rise again from cat. And if my will—my power—could find the hidden man, then perhaps I could draw him once more to the surface. For to front an angry man was far, far better than to be hunted by a beast.

Herrel—Herrel—I besought him by mind rather than voice.—Herrel!—

But there was no change, only a small, muted sound from that furred throat, of anticipation—hunger—And from that thought my mind recoiled sickened, and my will nearly broke. But I fought our battle as best I could.

Suddenly that round head with the ears flattened back against the skull arose a little and from the beast bubbled a yowl such as it had voiced before the Hound attack.

Herrel!—

Its head waved from side to side. Then it shook it vigorously, as if to throw off some irritating touch. One paw, claws unsheathed was outstretched in the first step of a stealthy advance which could only end in a hunting spring.

Man not beast—you are a man!—

I hurled that at him—or it. For now was leaving me the conviction that man did lie within the cat. This was its own land. What new power or source of power lay open to it here?

Herrel!—

Long ago I had lost the talisman I had brought out of the Dales. I knew no power which might lie over this land to which I could raise voice in appeal—in protest—against this ghastly thing which was to pull me down. It is very daunting to stand alone with riven shield and broken sword as I did then.

I cried out—no longer his name—for what or who I had known as Herrel was gone as surely as if death had severed our worlds one from the other. I closed my eyes as my small power was swept away in a rush of hate. The beast sprang.

Pain raking along the arm which I had flung across my face in that last instant. A weight pinning me against the mound so that I might not move, I would not look upon what held me, I could not.

“Gillan! Gillan!”

A man’s arms about me, surely—not the claws of a beast rending my flesh. A voice strained and hoarse with fear and pain, not the snarling of a cat.

“Gillan!”

I opened my eyes. His head was bent above me, and such was the agony in his face that I knew first a kind of wonder. Held me in a grip to leave bruises on my arms and back, and his breath came in small gasps. “Gillan, what have I done?”

Then he swung me up as if my weight was nothing, and we were on the platform of the mound where the moon was very bright. I lying on my robe while, with a gentleness I had not thought in him, Herrel stretched out my arm. The torn cloth fell away in two great rents and revealed dripping furrows.

He gave a sharp cry when he saw them clearly, and then looked about him wildly, as if in search of something his will could summon to him.

“Herrel?”

Now his eyes met mine again and he nodded. “Yes, Herrel—now! May yellow rot eat their bones, and That Which Runs The Ridges feed upon their spirits! To have done this to you—to you! There are herbs in the forest—

I will fetch—”

“In my bag there are also cures—” The pain was molten metal running up my arm, into my shoulder, heavy so that I could not breathe easily, and around me the moonlight swirled, the pillars nodded to and fro—I closed my eyes. I felt him pull the bag from beneath the rug and I tried to control my wits so that I might tell him how to use the balms within it. But then he laid hands upon my arm again and I cried out, to be utterly lost in depths where there was neither pain nor thought.

“Gillan! Gillan!”

I stirred, reluctant to leave the healing dark—yet that voice pulled at me.

“Gillan! By the Ash, the Maul, the Blade that rusteth never, by the Clear Moon, the Light of Neave, the blood I have shed to He Whose semblance I wear—” the murmur flowed over and around me, wove a net to draw me on out of the quiet in which I lay.

“Gillan, short grows the time—By the virtue of the

Bane-bloom, and the Lash of Gorth, the Candles of the Weres—come you back!”

Loud were the words now, an imperative call I could not nay-say. I opened my eyes. Light about me, not that of day, but of green flames. A sweet scent filled my nostrils and the petals of flowers brushed my cheeks as I turned my head to see him who spoke. Herrel stood against a silver pillar, his body to the waist pale silver too, for he had stripped off mail and leather and was bare of skin to his belt—save that across his upper arms and shoulders were welts, angry, red, and on some of them stood beads of blood. Between his hands was a whip of branch broken in the middle. “Herrel?”

He came quickly, fell to his knees beside me. His face was that of a man who has come from a battlefield, gaunted by exhaustion, too worn to care whether he held victory in his hand, or must taste the sour of defeat. Yet when he looked down at me he came alive again. His hand came out as if to touch my cheek, then dropped upon his thigh.

“Gillan, how is it with you?”

I wet my lips. Far within me something was troubled, as if it had reached and been denied. I moved my arm; faint pain, the lingering memory of that agony which had rent me earlier. I sat up slowly. He made no move to aid me. There was a bandage about my arm and I smelled the sharp odour of a salve I knew well; so he had plundered my bag. But as I so moved a covering of flowers cascaded down my body, and with them leaves hastily torn into bits, from which came the scent of herbs. I had lain under a thick blanket of them.

Herrel made a gesture with his hand. The green lights snuffed out. Nor could I see from what they had sprung, for they left no sign of their source behind them.

“How is it with you?” he repeated. “Well, I believe well—”

“Not wholly so. And the time—the time grows short!”

“What do you mean?” I gathered up a handful of that flowery covering, raised the bruised blossoms, the aromatic leaves to sniff them.

“You are two—”

“That I know.” I broke in.

“But perhaps this you do not know. For a space one may be made two—though it is a mad and wicked thing. Then, if the two do not meet once again—one fades—”

“That other Gillan—will go?” The flower petals dropped from my hand, once more I felt that cold within me, that hunger which could not be appeased by any food taken into the mouth, swallowed by the throat.

“Or you!” His words were simple, yet for a moment the understanding of them was not mine. And he must have read that in my face, for now he got once more to his feet, brought down his bare fists against the side of the pillar as if he smashed into the face of an enemy.

“They—wrought this—thinking that you—this you—would die in the waste—or in the mountains. This land has mighty safeguards.”

“That I know.”

“They did not believe that you would live. And if you died, then would that Gillan they had summoned be whole—though not as you, save in a small part. But when you came into Arvon—they knew. They learned that a stranger troubled the land, and guessed that it was you. So they turned again to the power and—”

“Sent you—” I said softly when he did not continue.

He turned his head so that once more I could read his face, and what lay there was not good to behold. There were no words in me which I could summon to assuage that wound as my balms and salves could have healed torn flesh for him.

“I told you—at our first meeting—I am not as they are. They can, if they wish, compel me, or blind my eyes, as they did when they brought forth that other Gillan who turned aside from me to welcome Halse—as he wished from the beginning!”

I shivered. Halse! Had that other me lain happily in Halse’s arms, welcomed him? I put hands to my face, knowing shame like a devouring fire. No—no—

“But I am me—” I could not set my bewilderment into words clear enough even for my own understanding. “I have a body—am real—”

But was I? For in this land I was a wraith, as its people were wraiths to me. I ran my hand along that bandaged arm, welcoming the pain which followed touch, for it spelled the reality of the flesh which winced from finger pressure.

“You are you, she is also you—in part. As yet a far lighter and less powerful part. But, should you cease to exist, then she is whole, whole enough for Halse’s purpose. They fear you, the Pack, because they can not control you as the others. Therefore they would make one by sorcery that they can.”

“And if—if—”

Again he picked the thought from my mind. “If I had done as they intended and slain you? Then they would not have cared had I learned the full truth, once I had accomplished their purpose. They do not fear me in the least, and if I had done myself harm on discovery of the murder they set me to, well, that would have merely removed another trouble from their path. To their thinking this was a fine plan.”

“But you did not kill.”

There was no lighting of his face. Still he was as one who had fallen into Hound hands and been subjected to their cruel usage.

“Look upon your arm, Gillan. No, I did not kill, but in this much did I serve their purpose. And should this hurt keep us from the road we must take, then I have done as commanded—”

“Why?”

“Time is our enemy, Gillan. The longer the twain of you are apart, so will you fail in strength—so finally you may not reach uniting in time. I speak thus that you may know what truly lies before us, for I do not believe that you are one to be soothed with fair words and kept in ignorance.”

Perhaps he paid me a compliment in that judging. I do not know. Only then I wished that he had not thought so highly of my courage, for I was shaken, though I tried not to let him know it.

“I think,” I tried to push aside fear for a space and think on other things, “that you are more than you believe—or they give you credit for being. Why did you not carry through this geas they set upon you? I have heard, by legend, that a geas is a thing of great power, not lightly broken.”

Herrel came away from the pillar, stooped and took up from the ground a shirt which he drew on over his welted shoulders.

“Do not credit me with any great thing, Gillan. I give thanks to the forces above us, that I awakened from their spell in time. Or that you awoke me—since your voice came to me in that darkness where they had me bound. If you believe you can ride, then we must be gone. To catch up with the pack is what we need to do—”

He donned leather under-jerkin and then his mail, belting it about him. But when he picked up his helm he stood for a long moment, staring down upon the snarling cat crest and his eyes were hooded as if he looked upon that which he would like to thrust from him. However, after that short pause he put it on his head.

Then he turned to me, aiding me to my feet, putting about my shoulders not the heavy rug, but his own cloak. Then he half led, half carried me from the mound.

The moonlight was waning; it must not be far from dawn. Herrel whistled and his horse came to us, snorting a little, glancing from side to side, as if it perceived more lurking in the forest shadows than we could see. Yet Herrel displayed no interest in the woodland. He lifted me to the saddle and then mounted behind me. The stallion showed no distaste for a double burden but set off at a steady, ground covering pace.

“I do not understand.” I began. Herrel’s arms were about me warm and safe, the mail of his sleeves not harsh to the touch but rather reassuring in its rigidity. “I do not understand why Halse wanted me. Was it because his pride suffered when you fared well and he went bride—less?”

“It may have begun so.” he answered me. “But there was another reason, which came because you are you, and no maid of the Dales. From the first, the rest were one with those whose cloaks they wore in spell. You were not held so. They feared that. There was a chance, a last chance to bind you to us. When that failed, then you were open to what they would do.”

“A chance—?”

His voice was low, and I was glad he was behind me, that he did not see my confusion when he made answer.

“That night in the Safekeep, you refused me. Had it been otherwise, then all their spells could not have prevailed.”

I broke the silence which followed. “Then you named me witch, Herrel. Was that out of anger—or out of knowledge?”

“Anger? What right had I to anger? I do not take by force that which one chooses to withhold from me—for such must be freely given and in liking, or it has no meaning, not in my sight, nor that of Neave. I named you as what I think you are. Being so—you could do no else than say me nay—”

“Witch.” I repeated thoughtfully. “But I am not learned in aught but healing lore, Herrel. That is a craft, yet, but owes nothing to sorcery. Had I been what you named me, then never could I have dwelt at the Abbey-stead. They would have expelled me within an hour of my coming. The Flames and sorcery had naught to do with one another, and the Dames of the Abbey-stead would have thought themselves defiled by my presence.”

“Witchery is not the evil the Dalesmen think. There are those of another blood who are born to it. Lessoned in its use they must be, but the power over wind and water, earth and fire, is theirs by natural gift and not just from study. In the old days Arvon was not walled against the rest of the world. For all men then had touch with powers which lay not in their strength of arm, nor their minds, save as their minds could control such forces. We knew of other nations overseas which also used sorcery as a way of life. There was one wherein witches walked. And when we rode the waste, still we heard of that land, or what had come from its dwindling, for as Arvon, it had aged. There are witches still in Estcarp and with them Alizon wars.

“You think then I am of this witchblood?”

“True. You have not the lessoning, but within you lies the force. And there is this. They believe that a witch who gives her body to a man must put aside her witchhood.”

“If they never do, then how does their nation survive?”

“It dwindles amain by report. Also, this was not always true. It followed when some blight fell upon them long ago. Not all women of that land are witches, though they may mother daughters with the power. But she who has it is not wont to put it aside.”

“But I have had no lessoning. I am not truly witch.”

“If the power is in you, then it will strive to make you a proper vessel for its encompassing.”

“And the other Gillan?”

“The Gillan they try to fashion is not witch. They would not take such a threat among them.”

With each measured word Herrel sent me farther and farther into my own waste of exile. Would there ever be any rate for my return?

“Herrel—when I was with that other Gillan for a space—in the tent—and called to you—you knew me?”

“I knew—and learned then what had happened.”

“They dragged you away—then Halse sent me out of her.”

“Yes.”

“Would you have come searching for me, even if they had not sent you under geas?”

“I am not greater than the pack.” It seemed to me that he wished to evade my question. “I came—to their bidding.”

I had never been good at the understanding of people, the weighing of any emotions other than my own. Still, at this moment, was granted me a small flash of insight as profound, perhaps, as that any witch in the glory of full power could gain.

“You came because they could use your wish to lay the geas. Had there been no—no tie between us, then perhaps their bidding would not have sent you—”

I heard a sharp sound, or else a breath drawn in pain.

“Also, it was because of your thought of me that you broke that geas, Herrel! Remember that. For never have I heard of a man breaking a geas set in earnest spell—”

“What have you heard,” he demanded harshly, “save what lies in song and legend? The Dalesmen spin tales, and in them the kernel of truth is very small and hid. Do not find in me any virtue that I did not kill you to their bidding. I know well my shame—”

“Too long—” I put out my hands, resting them on his where he held the reins before my waist, “too long have you accepted a lesser naming, Herrel. Remember, I came to your cloak, when those others laughed to see you leave it. Through their clouds of sorcery, ill meant, have we broken thus far. You have not failed in battle, or you would not have continued to ride with the Pack.” I paused, but he said nothing, so I continued:

“An arrow shaft alone can be broken between a man’s two hands by small effort. Set two arrows together and the task is less easy. All my life I have walked alone, an onlooker of the lives of others. So perhaps have you. But do not tell me that you are less than Halse, or Harl, or Hyron. That I do not believe!”

“Why did you pick up my cloak?” he asked abruptly. “Not because it lay the nearest, or because I saw it of great beauty. For, remember, I saw it as it was. But because when my eyes fell upon it, I could not turn aside, or do aught else than gather it up.” The mailed arms about me tightened, and relaxed. “This then—this much I did!”

“And the spell you laid, Herrel, must have been greater than the others, for I saw beneath the illusion. And you as you are—”

“Did you?” The momentary elation was gone from his voice. “Are you sure that you did not rather see the truth this night? Halse showed it you once in your very bed—”

“Truth may be not a sword with only two sides to the blade, so you look upon one and then the other. Rather it is like a faceted jewel with many faces. You may think you know one well, and another; then you discover a third, a fourth. Still they are all truth, or truths. I have seen you as illusion would make you for a bride’s beglamoured eyes, as a Were Rider from the waste, as the beast—And I think perhaps there are still more Herrels I have not met. But it was Herrel’s cloak which brought me here and I have no regrets of that choice.”

Again he made no answer for what seemed a long time. Around us the grey light grew stronger; we were coming into the new day, although in the wood the transition from dark to light might be delayed. The stallion held to his steady trot, now looking forward as if he, too, sensed the need for reaching some goal with as little delay as possible.

“You build too high on a hope—” Herrel might have been speaking to himself rather than to me. “However we only live by hope and mine hitherto has been a poor, weak thing. But, Gillan, listen to me—the worst is not now behind us—rather does it lie ahead. Their geas is broken, but they have that Gillan of their fashioning. And we must get her forth from them. To do that the Riders have to be faced—in one guise or another.”

“Will they meet us as beasts?”

“You they can face so. With me, no—to me they must give Pack right—if I have my chance to demand it.”

“Pack right?”

“I may demand to meet Halse sword point to sword point in Right and Judgment—since he has taken the other Gillan. And with you at hand I have proof of that.”

“And if you win?”

“If I win, then I can demand repartment from Halse—perhaps of the rest. But they will do all they can to keep me from such a challenge. And here in Arvon they can bend much to their will. From this hour on we ride in danger. I know not what they may send against us. Were it otherwise we would ride for the border, but without that other Gillan that would bring you naught but ill.”

We came out of the woods at last, but the level meadow lands through which the road had led me before now gave way to rolling country, not too unlike the Dales, though perhaps their rises and valleys were not as steep. A bird flew from nowhere to hang above us.

I heard Herrel laugh shortly. “They are well served.”

“It means us some harm?” I questioned. The bird was small, rusty brown, unlike any hawk or winged instrument of war.

“In this much, it watches our path. But they need not keep such a check upon us. There is only this road for us.”

He called aloud in another tongue, that, I believe, of.