Horn Crown

10

I prepared my campsite with care, breaking off branches, which I leaned against stout limbs I had driven into the ground, fashioning so a roof to hide me from sight of flying things. Whether the winged creatures could track by scent like other hunters I could not tell—but I would light no fire in this country to attract any prowler of the dark hours.

Remembering what Gathea had said concerning the power of cold iron against the unknown, I drew my belt knife and set it upright in the earth before my shelter, while my bared sword lay ready. The girl’s wallet I put to one side; my own I explored for food, which I must ration carefully.

My headache had returned and the pain of my burns, though the salve had assuaged that somewhat, was still enough to keep me wakeful. I watched and listened.

The wood near my camp was not silent. There were small noises, a thin cheeping now and then, the rustle of leaves and brush as if the life sheltered there had come awake by night and was now going about affairs of its own. Once, there came a hooting from the sky and my hand tightened quickly about my sword hilt. However, if one of the winged people passed he or she had no interest in me.

Always my thoughts were busy now with what had happened since the night before when Gathea ran into the wilderness. I was convinced that in some way I had missed whatever path she had followed, forcing myself to accept the fact that it would only be by fortunate chance that I might ever pick up her trail again.

In spite of my struggle to keep awake I dozed, awoke with a start, only to fall into a new snatch of sleep. Still I listened and held guard, eyes and ears alert.

What I would do in the morning I did not know. To return up that road to the pass was not to be tried. I had been highly fortunate in my first encounter with the winged people. I could not hope for more luck in a second. My best chance was perhaps to journey along the foot of the heights seeking traces of Gathea—or perhaps of any Sword Brothers who had earlier ridden westward. My spirits hit a desolate low as for the first time since Lord Garn had exiled me from the clan and House I realized what it meant to be utterly alone. There was no worse fate, I decided in those night-dark moments, for any man. My hope of reaching the Lady Iynne was, I made myself accept, a dream which bore little chance of realization since Gathea had vanished.

Still, I remained stubborn enough to vow that my search would not be over until I was dead—for I had nothing else left to me.

The night was long, my broken rest was short. However, nothing approached my lean-to, as if I were invisible to anything which prowled or hunted in the dark. With the coming of dawn I ate again, only a few rationed mouthfuls, mended the carrying straps of both wallets, and, slinging those upon my back, set out once more, my guide still the blocks of the road.

Those led me into the wood, where the branches of trees met overhead to form a ceiling, keeping out much of the sunlight. Once more the blocks were clear from encroachment of growth. In fact, so bright were they that they appeared to give off a dim radiance of their own. Nor were there any here which were marked with those disturbing symbols.

The road, however, did not run straight; rather swing right or left from time to time to allow full growth space to taller and thicker trees. Their bark was smooth, of a red-brown, while their crowns were lifted high, with few branches below.

I came a good way along before I noted that those trees also differed in other ways from their fellows. For, when I skirted about them, their leaves (which were a brighter green and seemed as fresh as the first tentative sprouting of spring) began to rustle—though no breeze blew. At the third such reaction to my passing I halted to look up. No, I had not been wrong. Those leaves immediately above my head were more and more in motion—almost as if they formed mouths by rubbing together, calling or else commenting on my presence.

Had the poison which had struck me yesterday disordered my wits? I tried to think that was so—far more believable than that trees talked, were sentient beings.

I felt no fear, only a dull wonder. Nor did I move on, though had one of those mighty limbs come crashing down it would have meant my death. Still more violently the leaves rustled. I began to truly believe the sound was indeed speech—though alien to my own.

The rustling now, I decided, sounded impatient, as if my attention had been sought and I had not made the proper response. So deep was I caught in that fancy that I spoke aloud:

“What do you want of me?”

The leaves above twirled on their stems, rustling as if a gale had closed about this tree, sending it into a frenzy. Even those weighty branches swayed as a desperate man might toss up his arms to attract the notice of some, heedless sluggard.

There was a shimmer in the leaves as they tossed, giving me a queer sense that they were not leaves any more but flames of greenish hue such as might spring from a thousand candles all set alight. Green they were, but they also now sparked blue, and yellow—and a deeper violet—until I stood beneath a web woven in an unknown pattern which hung above me as might a fine tapestry in some rich Keep,

That light flowed downward, or did it drop from leaf after leaf as they might fall with the coming of winter? I found that I could not look away as they—or the pattern of light which they emitted—swirled about me.

I was no longer in the wood. Where I stood then I could not have said, save it was a place in which my kind had not walked and was unknown. The bright swirl of color wove tighter about me. I felt no fear, rather awe that I could see this, which I understood was never meant for eyes like mine. Then that web parted, drew to either side like a curtain, and another faced me.

One hidden part of me knew a flash of uneasiness such as comes whenever a man faces the utterly strange. Yet the rest of me was waiting, wanting to know what was expected of me. There had been a summons of a sort, of that I was aware.

She was tall and slender, this woman whom the leaf colors had now revealed to me, clothed in a shimmering green which I could see was formed of many small leaves which never lay still but flowed about her, showing now her slender limbs, now a single small breast, now her shoulders, or thickened again until she was hidden from throat to ankle.

Her hair hung free but it did not lie still upon her shoulders, long as it was. No, it played outward in a nebulous cloud about her head, swaying and twining, loosening and tightening, even as the leaves of her clothing moved. It was also green, but of a pale shade touched with threads of red-brown here and there. Red-brown also was her skin where and when it showed in contrast to her garment, smooth—

Against that, her great eyes, which overshadowed the rest of her features, were a brilliant green like those gems cherished by our wealthiest lords. As brilliant, and of a harder luster, were the nails on the hands which she raised now to tame the weaving of her hair.

She had such beauty, strange though it was, as I had never believed could exist, as I had never dreamed of-— even in those dreams of the body which came to any youth when he passes into manhood. Yet I could not have reached for her with any desire fiery in me, for there was no bridge between us that I might cross. I could only look upon her as a wondrous thing like a flower of perfect blossom.

Those huge eyes reached into me and I had no defense against such sorcery, nor did I want any. I felt the touch of her mind, far more intimate than any touch of hand or body.

“Who are you who travels the old way of Alafian?”

Not speech, but thought. Nor did I shape any answer with lips in return. Rather it was as if her asking set my memory alert and I found myself recalling vividly, with detail which I thought forgotten, all that had chanced with me since I had come into Gam’s dale.

By no will of my own did I remember. Somethings I wished I had truly forgotten—but of that there was no chance. I remembered and she learned.

“So—”

My mind seemed sucked dry, though I did not even resent that she used me so. In a dull, dim way it seemed only right that I thus vindicated to her why I intruded in a land which was hers, where there had long been peace, where my very coming had broken a slumberous, happy rest.

“This is not your place, half-man. But your seeking will drive you still. And—”

Her thought withdrew for a moment, leaving me strangely empty, feeling even more that burden of loneliness which lay on me.

“What you would do—that will drive you. Your need is not of our choice, nor can such as me mar or mend. Seek and perhaps you will find more than you now expect. All things are possible when a seed is well planted. Go in peace, though that is not what you will find, for it does not lie within you.”

Again her thought withdrew. I wanted to cry out for her not to leave me. But already the shifting curtain of light closed between us to move in a dizzying pattern, breaking into sparks which flew apart with a burst of light which left me blinded for what seemed a long moment.

Once more I stood beneath the tree, my feet planted on the ancient road. No leaves rustled above me. The tree was quite as if the life which had filled it had withdrawn. Lying at my feet was a single leaf, perfect in its shape, a bright green, as gemlike as the lady’s eyes. About its edge ran a line of red-brown like the trunk of the tree, or like her body which had shown so fair.

Some vision borne out of bodily weakness? No, that I did not believe. I stooped to pick up that one perfect leaf. It was not a tree leaf, or at least not like any I had seen or fingered before. There was weight and thickness to it, a leaf which had been carved out of some precious stone my people did not know, a leaf which would not wither, powder at last into dust, as do those which fall in an ordinary woods.

I loosed the pouch fastening of my wallet and carefully set that leaf within. For what purpose it had been given to me (for I believed firmly that it was a gift) I might not yet know, but it was a treasure which I would ever carry with me.

For a while I could not go on. I stared into that tree, until my longing at last died in the realization that what I had seen would not come again. Horror I had met on the ledge of the winged creatures; here I had met beauty, a vision which tugged at me powerfully and might never now be satisfied. In this land one swung between fear and awe, with no safe middle path.

Still, I went on down that road which wound in and out among those trees, but now no leaf voices called to me. I wanted to be away from them, for even to sight one made me aware of a loss which was an ache, not of the body, but of some inner part of me.

I did not stop to eat, though I hungered, only kept doggedly on, until, at last, I emerged from the wood into open land again. There I left the road, for that still held northward and it was westward I believed I must go. Not too far away another line of heights reached skyward, while the land before me was overgrown with brush and scattered trees. Beyond the fringe of growth something caught my full attention.

A Keep—here?

Stone walls, a tower—the building was so much like those which even the Gate’s power had not erased from my past that I could believe I had returned to the land of my birth, save that no lord’s banner flapped in the wind above that tower, no signs of life were to be seen about its walls.

I wondered once more what had led the Bards to open the Gate for us into this world. Had indeed people of my own kind once before come this way? What had we fled? Why need the knowledge of that be erased from our memories when so much else was allowed to remain? This I looked upon now might well be the hold of any of the greater lords; it was more impressive certainly than Gam’s. If it had not been built by those of my own blood then it had been the abiding place of some so like us that we might find allies here, kin in part.

The very familiarity of that fortress-hall drew me. I set a faster pace to push through the brush. There had once been fields here. Stone walls, some of them tumbled into mere scattered rubble, cut through grass and shrubs so that in my headlong path I had to climb, seeing what could have been stunted patches of grain already sun-warmed to a yellow for harvesting.

I caught a handful of the bearded heads and rubbed them in my palm, then chewed them as I had done with the harvest of fields I had known since childhood. They had a familiar taste. How close were the worlds which the Gate had bound together. At least this untended harvest would testify that seed grains which our landsmen had brought with them would grow here, promising better for the future—if the alien life did not battle against us, for invaders and strangers have no homestead rights.

As I chewed on that mouthful of grain I walked on toward the building ahead. The closer I got the more it appeared to be one of our own homesteads. I believed as I studied it that those who had built here had also had need for defense, since there were stout walls, windows which were narrow and well above the ground.

Only, the massive gate was not only open, but had broken free of one hinge, half of it hanging askew, allowing free entrance, making it plain that this was a deserted place. The stone from which it had been built was not native to the heights behind me, for it was of a plain rose-red displaying none of the somber veining of those rocks. Also it glinted here and there in the last rays of the sun (fast being shut off by the stand of highland beyond) as if bits of burnished silver were entrapped to give it alien beauty, belying the plainness of the structure into which it had been wrought.

Over the gate where that door hung open was a panel which flashed with even greater brilliance. Just so might the insignia of a House be set in the grander Keeps of the clans, save that this was wrought into the form, sharp against its background, of a cat, a silver and white cat like Gruu himself. The creature did not snarl defiance against any assault as one might expect by its placement—rather it sat upright, its tail curled about so that the tip lay snug over the forepaws.

Green eyes (as brilliant as those of my lady of the leaves) had been set skillfully in the head so one could not escape the half belief they had life, that this beast surely saw all who passed under its niche. Why, I could not tell, I brought up my right hand in a warrior’s salute to that motionless sentry who had kept faith for so long.

I pushed under the cat’s perch to a large inner courtyard. Directly facing me stood the bulk of the structure, topped by the tower, which would certainly house, not only the great hall for the assemblance of all who sheltered here once, but also the private apartments of the lord, the armory, and the special storerooms, while around the inner side of the wall were clustered smaller buildings—stables, storehouses, and some which must have been for dwellings of landsmen and servitors, barracks for my lord’s meiny, and the like.

There was no sign (save that drooping door) that time had rested any heavy hand here. From the outward show, one of our clans might well have marched within to make a home in greater comfort than they would certainly know for a score of years in the sea-girt dales. Always supposing that they did not bring down upon them such enemies as the winged ones—or those Silver Singers of the night.

I went boldly. Perhaps because this was so like a dwelling of my own people, I did not have the uneasiness which had ridden me ever since I had followed Gathea’s guidance into this sorcery-shadowed land. The door to the tower structure was wide open and there was a banking of blown earth and winter-withered leaves against it to testify that it had been more than one season since any had sought to close it.

Over the arch was a broad band of smooth stone, a half circle, on which there stood out, with the same boldness of the gateway cat, a series of runes. Warning? . Welcome? dan name? I might guess but I would never know.

Again I passed on into the great hall. What remained of furnishing there was also stone. There was the dais with high-backed seats of honor—four of them—each of a sleek green stone, their backs carven with an intricate design, the details of which I could not distinguish from a distance. There was a table of the same stone, and then, running partway down the hall to make that upper table a bar across its top, a second board—this of rock matching the walls.

The place lay mainly in shadow, since the windows were high set and small. Still, near the tables I could see a massive hearth, smoke blackening up its chimney throat, nearly of a size to take a section of one of those giant forest trees. This was topped with an over-mantel supported on either side by sitting cats which out-topped me in height. That was again carved with runes which glinted brightly in spite of the lack of full light.

Curiosity, together with that odd feeling of familiarity, kept me exploring. I found chambers above, reached by a stairway set in the wall behind the chairs of honor. Those were bare, though two had fireplaces with carven mantels and rune signs. Perhaps once hangings had veiled the walls, but there were none left. Nothing lay on the floors but dust in which my trail boots left the first marking perhaps for years.

I found the kitchen, again furnished with stone tables set out for the convenience of long-vanished cooks—the wing holding this running out to join the wall on the other side of the towered inner keep. Here there was a cleverly set pipe spouting water into a long trough, something no building of my own people had ever had. I tasted the stream, found the water cold and sweet, and drank deeply. Then I returned to the hall, determined that here I would camp this night.

With the coming of dark another wonder was revealed. I had earlier noted that the runes above the fireplace had seemed over bright in the general gloom of the long hall. Now, as that grew darker, they in turn grew brighter. When I examined them as closely as I could (for the panel was set far above my head) I could see there were small scenes carved in and among those, coming to life with the runes.

I made out pictures of hunts. Still, there were no hunters who might be termed men. Rather cats crept, leaped, brought down the prey. And such prey! I had no difficulty in identifying the winged thing I had fought on the ledge. And that was the least strange of the enemies pictured there. To look upon them was warning enough against venturing on into this country. Unless passing years had brought some end to them.

There was a serpent (or at least one first thought “serpent” until I saw the thing better) with a horned and tusked head reared high enough to prove the head was not mounted on a reptile’s supple length, having instead a human torso, sliding into scales once again where a man’s lower limbs might join his body. Its outstretched hands held two blades with which it menaced the cat seeking to attack it, as if it were a swordsman well versed in battle craft.

Again another cat fighter reared its own head in victory, its mouth open to give vent to what I thought might be just such a roar as I had heard Gruu utter. Under his mighty forepaw, pinned flat, a smaller creature which looked to be a mass of bristly hair leaving one root like arm which still strove to bring knotted talons of fingers to bear on its captor—or slayer.

That these representations were accounts of real past battles I believed. I considered the recklessness with which I had set out into a land which still abounded perhaps in such monstrosities. Also I remembered both Gathea and my lady Iynne at that moment, though there was nothing that I might do to help either, until I could come upon some clue as to their path.

There was no wood here that I might light a fire in the vast cave of the hearth, but I sat upon its stone to allow myself that small portion of food I had put aside for the next meal, thinking that tomorrow I would doubtless find good hunting. For surely any animals that grazed would be drawn to the fields to cull that grain. At least I might drink my fill of water and that I did.

Having eaten, I once more went up the length of the hall which was now filled with shadows, so that I drew aside now and then from some darker clot, as I would for people gathering to talk and await the coming of the lord, his signal for the evening meal. In spite of the dusk it was to me a goodly place, one which I would have been full proud to make my own—were I a lord with a clan to house and an old proud name to hold in honor. But I was kinless, nameless—and my life was as like to be as empty of all such in the future as this hall was now, a shadow clan was all I might ever hope to head.

Yet when I had come to the high table I stepped boldly onto the dais and passed along the row of chairs seeking those four set in the middle. The openwork on the backs of those bristled with no horror scenes of cats and prey, but rather was formed by mingling of fruit-bearing stems and tall grain stocks, each bordered by flowers. Those made me think again of my leaf-clad lady and wonder of what manner of folk she was. Or had it been the spirit of the tree itself which had so confronted, weighed, and judged me?

Bold again I pushed to the fourth of those chairs and seated myself, discovering that indeed they had been fashioned for someone like me physically. Hard though that stone was to the touch, yet it did not seem uncomfortable to sit upon. When I placed both elbows on the table and supported my chin on my hands to look down the length of the hall, I saw that here, too, there had been symbols set into the surface of the table itself, gleaming enough so that I could make out their curves of design. I dropped my right hand, on which still showed the brand the blood of the winged thing had left upon me, as, with fingertip, I began to trace the line of the symbol which was before me, my flesh running smoothly and swiftly along the curves and sharp angles to another curve again. Idly so, and why I could not have told, I traced that three times—

Three times—

The lines grew brighter. Perhaps my action had cleared them of clogging dust. I could see other sets, each of which lay before one of the High seats, but none of those was as clear as this.

Somewhere—from out of the very air itself—came sound. It was like the deep note of a horn. Yet there was also in it the beat of a drum. Or was it a call of many voices joined together into a single lingering note? I only knew that I had not heard its like before. In spite of myself I shrank back from the table, braced both hands now on the carved arms of the chair, staring out into the hall (for that had grown very dark), hunting the source of that sound.

Three times it was repeated. The last time I imagined that an echo, or a reply, had followed from farther away. The dark (I could not even see the gleam of those pictures above the fireplace now though their radiance had fought the general gloom from the first) closed in deeper, thicker.

I had a giddy feeling that the whole building into which I had dared intrude was in a state of change, that, though I was now blinded, strange things were happening all about me. My grip on the arms of the chair was so tight that the edges of carving cut cruelly into my hands. The dark was thick—complete. I was falling, or flying, or being drawn, into another place—perhaps another time from which change there was no escape.