Enchanted Pilgrimage

17

The noses of Sniveley and Oliver were greatly out of joint. They had been dealt a grave injustice and had been the victims of heartless discrimination; they had to share a horse.

"Look at me," said Hal. "I am sharing mine with Coon."

"But Coon's your pet," said Oliver.

"No, he's not," said Hal. "He is my friend. The two of us together own a tree back home. We live there together. We share and share alike."

"You only took him up," said Sniveley, "so he wouldn't get wet when we crossed the river. He won't ride with you all the time. He doesn't even like to ride."

"The horse," said Hal, "is his as much as mine."

"I do not think," said Gib, "the horse shares in that opinion. He looks skittish to me. He's never been ridden by a coon."

They had crossed the river ford, the old historic ford once guarded by the tower. But as they wheeled about once the river had been crossed, the tower and wall that flanked it on either side seemed rather puny structures, no longer guarding anything, no longer military, with all the formidability gone out of them, age-encrusted ruins that were no more than an echo of the time when they had stood foursquare against invasion from the Wasteland. Here and there trees grew atop the wall, while the massive stones of the tower were masked and softened by the clinging vines that had gained footholds in the masonry.

Tiny figures, unrecognizable at that distance, grouped together on one section of the ruined wall, raised matchstick arms to them in a gesture of farewell.

"There still is time," Cornwall said to Mary, "to turn back and cross the river. This is no place for you. There may be rough days ahead."

She shook her head stubbornly. "What do you think would happen to me back there? A scullery wench again? I'll not be a scullery wench again."

Cornwall wheeled his horse around, and it plodded slowly along the faint path that angled up the low hill that rose above the river. Once the river had been crossed, the character of the land had changed. South of the river, thick forests crawled up the flanks of massive bluffs, gashed by steep ravines. Here the hills were lower, and the forest, while it still remained, was not so heavy. There were groves of trees covering many acres, but there were open spaces here and there and, looking to the east, Cornwall could see that some of the bluffs on this northern side were bald.

He could have wished, he told himself, that there might have been a map—any sort of map, even a poor one with many errors in it, that might have given some idea of where they might be going. He had talked with the bishop about it, but so far as the bishop knew there was no map and had never been. The soldiery that through the years had guarded the ford had done no more than guard. They had never made so much as a single foray across the river. Any forays that occurred had been made by the people of the Wasteland and these, apparently, had been very few. Duty at the tower had been dreary duty, unbroken, for the most part, by any kind of action. The only people, it seemed, who had ever ventured into the Wasteland had been occasional travelers, like Taylor, who had written the account that now lay in Wyalusing. But whether any of the few accounts written by such travelers had been true was very much a question. Cornwall wrinkled his brow at the thought. There was nothing, he realized, that would argue the Taylor account as any more factual than the rest of them. The man had not actually visited the Old Ones but had only heard of them; and he need not have even traveled to the Wasteland to have heard of them. The ancient fist ax, carried by Gib, was better evidence that they existed than had been Taylor's words. It was strange, he reminded himself, that the bishop had instantly recognized the ax as belonging to the Old Ones. He realized that he should have talked further with the bishop about the matter, but there had been little time and much else to talk about.

It was a matchless autumn day. They had made a late start and the sun already had climbed far into the sky. There were no clouds and the weather was rather warm and as they climbed the hill, the panorama of the river valley spread out below them like a canvas painted by a man mad with the sense of color.

"There is something up there on the ridge," said Mary. "Something watching us."

He raised his head, scanning the horizon.

"I don't see a thing," he said.

"I saw it only for a moment," she said. "Maybe not really seeing it. Maybe just the movement of it. That might have been all. Not really seeing anything, but seeing it move."

"We'll be watched," said Sniveley, who along with Oliver had forced their horse toward the head of the column. "We can count on that. There'll never be a moment we'll be out of their sight. They'll know everything we do."

"They?" asked Cornwall.

Sniveley shrugged. "How is one to know? There are so many different kinds of us. Goblins, gnomes, banshees. Maybe even brownies and fairies, for respectable as such folk may be considered by you humans, they still are a part of all this. And other things as well. Many other things, far less respectable and well intentioned."

"We'll give them no offense," said Cornwall. "We'll not lift a hand against them."

"Be that as it may," said Sniveley, "we are still intruders."

"Even you?" asked Mary.

"Even we," said Sniveley. "Even Oliver and I. We are outlanders, too. Traitors, perhaps deserters. For we or our forefathers deserted the homeland and went to live in the Borderland with their enemies."

"We shall see," said Cornwall.

The horses plodded up the path and finally reached the ridge. Before them spread, not a plateau, as might have been suspected, but a succession of other ridges, each one higher as they spread out horizonward, like regularly spaced and frozen waves.

The path angled down a barren slope covered with browning grass. At the lower edge of the slope, a dense forest covered the span that lay between the hills. There was not a living thing in sight, not even birds. An eerie feeling of loneliness closed in about them, and yet in all that loneliness Cornwall had an uncomfortable feeling between his shoulder blades.

Moving slowly, as if unwilling to go farther, the horse went down the trail, which twisted to one side to bypass a giant white oak tree that stood alone in the sweep of grass. It was a tall, yet squatty tree, with a huge bole and widely spreading branches, the first of which thrust out from the trunk not more than twelve feet above the ground.

Cornwall saw that something apparently had been driven deeply into the hard wood of the trunk. He reined in his horse and stared at it. About two feet of it extended out beyond the wood. It was a couple of inches in diameter, an ivory white and twisted.

Behind him Sniveley involuntarily sucked in his breath.

"What is it?" Mary asked.

"The horn of a unicorn," said Sniveley. "There are not many of the creatures left, and I have never heard of one that left his horn impaled in a tree."

"It is a sign," Oliver said solemnly.

Cornwall nudged his horse closer and reached down to grasp the horn. He pulled and it did not budge. He pulled again and he might as well have tried to pull a branch from the tree.

"We'll have to chop it out," he said.

"Let me try," said Mary.

She reached down and grasped the horn. It came free with a single tug. It measured three feet or so in length, tapering down to a needle point. It was undamaged and unbroken.

They all gazed at it in awe.

"I never saw a thing like this before," said Mary. "Old tales, of course, told in the Borderland, but…" "It is an excellent omen," said Sniveley. "It is a good beginning."