Year of the Unicorn

1 News of Far Faring at Norstead

How does one know coming good from coming ill? There are those times in life when one welcomes any change, believing that nothing can be such ashes in the mouth, such dryness of days as the never altering flood of time in a small community where the outside world lies ever beyond gates locked and barred against all change. From the bell tower of Abbey Norstead—and how many years had sped since a bell had pealed from there?—one could see the unending rippling of the Dales, on and on to the blue-gray of Fast Ridge. On bright days, when the sun drove away the mist curtain, the darkened fringe of the forest cloaking Falthingdale broke the moss-carpet to the west, and the harsh, sky-clutching claws of Falcon-Fist made a sharp point to draw the eyes eastward. But otherwise there were just the Dales with their age-old shutting out of man and his affairs. They had lain so before his coming; they would remain so at his going. But as yet he had his part in them, and here in Norsdale it would seem that quiet land had conquered the natural restlessness of the breed of mankind, slowing all life force to the pace of those everlasting hills.

Yet this was a land lately embattled, wherein war flashed like a drawn sword, thrust as a cruel spear, sung in the flight of arrows, or lay panting of breath behind a half-riven shield. War...uneasy peace for a hand-finger count of years...then war again. In the first days open field battle, with one army at the throat of another. And then, as men fell, as time gnawed, small raiding bands flashing out of a wilderness to use wolf-fangs. Then—with the invaders from overseas driven back to their first handhold on the coast—a final destruction and peace which those, who had been nurtured from their cradles under the flapping hawk banners, who had heard naught but sword talk for the span of their lives, met awkwardly and ill at ease.

This we of Norsdale knew, yet the war tongues had never licked inland so far as to sear our valley. And only those who had survived terror and worse and fled to us for refuge bore battle tidings within the gates of the Abbey. We had never seen the Hounds of Alizon at their harrying, and for that, the Dames of Norstead gave thanks on their knees night and morning in the Chapel.

Abbey Norstead held me because of that war tide, and there were times when I thought that its stifling peace would choke me. For it is very hard to live among those who are no kin to you, not only in blood but in spirit and desire and mind. Who was I? Anyone walking those precise paths in the garden below could have given me name and past, and would have told you at the asking:

“That one? Ah, that is Gillan, who works with Dame Alousan in the herbarium. She came here eight years ago with the Lady Freeza, being a handmaiden of her household. She has some small knowledge of herbs, a liking for her own company, no beauty, no great kindred—naught to give her any importance in the world. She comes to the Chapel services morn and night, she bows her head, but she takes no vows. She sits with the maids at times and plies her needle as is fit, but she has not asked to serve the Abbey. She speaks little—”

Aye, she speaks little, my Dames, and maids, and those ladies who have taken refuge here. But she thinks much, and she tries to remember. Though that is another thing which time denies, or perhaps the unchanging pattern of this land and life denies.

For Gillan is not of the blood of High Hallack. There was a ship. Always can I remember so much, of the tossing of a ship on a sea where waves ran high, avid to feed upon the work of men’s hands. A ship of Alizon, that much also I remember. But that I am of Alizon—no. There was a purpose in my being on that ship, and, small and young a girl child as I then was, I feared that purpose. But he who brought me there was under a mast which the wind and wave brought down upon the deck. And then no other of his company knew why I was among them.

That was during the time of raids when the lords of High Hallack, fighting to free their homeland from the Hounds of Alizon, swept down and struck a lightning blow at the port through which came the invaders’ life-blood of supplies and men. And so was I also swept up with those supplies and taken to one of the mountain holds.

The Lord Furlo, I believe, had some private knowledge or suspicion of my past. For he sent me under guard to his lady wife, with the command that I be well cared for. Thus I was a fosterling in that household for a space. But that also did not last, for Alizon arose in might and the Lords were driven back and back. In the depths of harsh and heavy winter we fled across the barren land and into the upper dales. At last we came to Norstead, but the Lady Freeza came only to die. And her lord lay with an arrow in his throat back in the passes—whatever he had suspected concerning me unsaid. So that I was again adrift in strange, if placid, waters.

I need only to look into any mirror within these walls to know that I was not of the breed of Hallack. Whereas their womenkind were fair of skin, but with a fine colour to their faces, their hair as yellow as the small flowers bordering the garden walks in the spring, or brown as the wings of the sweet singing birds in the stream gullies, I was of a flesh which browned under the sun, but held no colour in cheek. And the hair I learned to plait tightly about my head, was of a black as deep as a starless night. Also...I thought odd thoughts. But even before I came to Norstead, while still I played the part of fosterling, I had learned to keep such thoughts to myself, for they alarmed and dismayed those about me.

There is a loneliness of spirit which is worse than loneliness of body. And in all Norstead during those years, I had found only two to whom I might turn for company of a kind. The Dame Alousan was past the span of middle life when I came. She, too, was apart from her companions of the Order. Her life was in the gardens, and in the rooms wherein she worked with herbs, distilling, combining, making those powders and salves, those flasks of liquids, which soothed, healed, pleasured mankind. Noted she was, so that fighting bands in the high hills would send men trained for swift travelling to beg her for those products of her knowledge and hands which would aid in the healing of sore wounds, or the fevers and rheums which came of living in the open no matter what the season or weather.

And when I was set adrift in Abbey Norstead, she looked upon me, keenly, as usually she looked only on some herb new come to her (for she was sent packets of strange things from time to time, by her ordering gifts). Then she took me into her service and I found that at first all I needed, for it was learning of a demanding kind, and my mind was thirsty for occupation. For some years thereafter I was content.

I was working in the garden, weeding beds, when I first knew that other one who was to trouble my balance of learning and labour. There was always a humming of bees, since bees and gardens needs must lie close together, each serving the other. But now there came another thread of sound, entering my ears, and then my mind. And I sat back on my heels to listen, because my memory stirred, yet I could not summon aught clearly to the surface of my mind.

As if that humming were a cord to draw me. I arose and went through an arch into the inner garden which was for pleasure only, a place with a fountain and a pool, and flowers according to the season. A chair had been placed there, half in sun, half in shade. And in it, well cushioned, draped about with shawls though the day was warm, was one of the very ancient Dames, those who seldom ventured from their cells, who were almost legend among the younger members of the community.

Beneath her hood and coif, her face was very small and white, yet the wrinkles of age were tight only in the corners of her eyes and about her lips. They were wrinkles, too, such as come from smiling, and looking upon the world with a blithe spirit. Her hands were much crooked with the painful twisting of one of the blights of ageing, and they lay in her lap unmoving. But on one of her fingers perched a jewelled lizard, its small head raised, its sparks of eyes fixed upon her as if they two communed happily together.

She looked still at the lizard, but the humming stopped and she said quietly, “Welcome, my daughter. This is a fair day.”

So short a speech, and words such as you might hear from any lips, yet they drew me into a warmth of spirit, and I came and knelt by her chair eagerly. Thus did I meet with Past-Abbess Malwinna and from her, too, I learned. But hers was not the lore of plants and growing things, but of those winged and four-footed, and wriggling lives which share our world, and yet so often are made servants or foes of man.

But the Abbess was in the far twilight of her life, and she was to be my friend for only a short, so short, a time. In all of Norstead she knew my secret. I do not know just how I betrayed myself to her, but she showed no uneasiness when she learned that sometimes I could see the thing behind the thing that was. On the last meeting between us—she was abed then and could not move the body which imprisoned her free ranging spirit—she asked me questions, as she never had done before. How much could I remember...aught at all behind the ship from Alizon? And when had I learned that I was not like those about me? And to those questions I made the fullest answers.

“You are wise for one so young, my daughter,” she said then, her voice the thinnest thread of speech. “It is our nature to mistrust that which we do not understand. I have heard tales of a country overseas where some women have powers beyond the common. And also that Alizon stands enemy to those people, just as her hounds now tear at us. It may well be that you are of that other race, prisoner for some reason.”

“Please, Mother Abbess”—I took fire from her words—“where lies this country? How might I—”

“Find your way thither, my daughter? There is no hope of that. Accept that fact. And if you venture to where Alizon may again lay hands upon you—that may be courting greater pain than any sword thrust which ends life cleanly. Do not shadow your years with vain longings. Naught moves save by some purpose of Those Who Have Set The Flames. You will find that which is meant for you to do in the proper time.” Then her eyes smiled, through her lips could not. “Ill hearing for the young this promise of a better future. But accept it as the last gift I have to give you, my daughter. I say it by the Flames, there will come that which will fill your emptiness.”

But that had been said three winter seasons past. Now there was a stirring within Norstead with the war’s end. Lords would come riding to claim wives, sisters, daughters. There would be a marrying season and there was a fluttering in the narrow rooms below my tower perch.

A marrying—which made me think of that other tale which had come to us through many lips—the Great Bargain. Now would come the settling of the Great Bargain.

It was during the days of the first spring flood in the Year of the Gryphon that the Lords of High Hallack had made their convenant with the Were Riders of the waste. They had been sore driven by Alizon, knowing the fading hope of very desperate men, and the fear that they faced the final shadow of all. Thus hate and fear drove them to set up a call banner in the salt dunes and treat with the Riders.

Those who came to speak with the harried lords wore the bodies of men, but they were not humankind. They were dour fighters...men—or creatures—of power who ranged the north-eastern wilderness and who were greatly feared, though they did not trouble any who touched not upon the territory of their holding. How many of them there were no man knew, but that they had a force beyond human knowledge was certain.

Shape-changers, warlocks, sorcerers...rumours had it they were all that and more. But also when they spoke upon oath they held to that oath-taking and were loyal. Thus they would fight, under their own leaders and by their own strange ways, yet for the right of High Hallack.

The war continued through the Year of the Fire Drake, and that of the Hornet, until Alizon was utterly broken and downcast. From overseas came no more ships to supply her men. And now that last port was taken. Her forts on the high places were stinking rubble, and she was erased from the coast she had invaded.

Now approached the new Year of the Unicom, and the Great Bargain must be kept with the Riders as they had kept theirs with High Hallack. The promises of the Riders had been two: that they would come to the support of the Lords; and then, they would ride out of the wastelands, withdrawing from the land they had helped to cleanse, leaving it to the humankind alone.

And the other side of that bargain—the payment the Lords of High Hallack had sworn dire and binding oaths to render? That was to be in their own blood, for the Riders demanded wives to carry with them into the unknown.

As far as the Dales knew, the Riders had always been. Yet among them no female had ever been sighted, or talked of. Whether they were the same, with a life span far beyond that of humankind, was not known. But it was true that no child had ever been sighted among them—though Lords from time to time had sent envoys into their camps, even before the Bargain.

Twelve and one maids they asked for—maids, not widows, or those who had chosen to live beyond custom’s bonds. And they must not be younger than eighteen years of age, nor beyond twenty. They were also to be of gentle blood, and well of body. Twelve and one to be found and delivered on the first day of the Year of the Unicorn at the borders of the waste, thereafter to ride with their strange lords into a future from which there would be no return.

How would they feel, these twelve and one? Fearful? Yes, fear would be a part of it. For, as Abbess Malwinna had said, fear is our first reaction to that which is alien to us. Yet to some of them it would be an escape. For the girl who had no dowry, nor face bright enough to excuse that lack, no kinfolk who would shield and care for her, or who might perhaps have kin who wished her ill—for such this choice might be the better of two evils.

Norstead now sheltered five maids who answered all the requirements. Two of those, however, were already betrothed, waiting impatiently for marriage in the spring. The Lady Tolfana was the daughter of a lord so highly born that surely a great alliance would be arranged for her, in spite of her plain face and sharp tongue. And Marimme, with her flower face, her winning softness—no, her uncle would have her out of this Abbey and off to the first Fold Gather where he could pick and choose wisely among her suitors for good addition to his standing. Sussia—

Sussia—what did anyone know about Sussia? She was older, she kept her own council, though she talked readily about the small concerns of Norstead in company. Perhaps few realized how little she ever spoke of herself. She was of gentle blood, yes, and had, I thought, a good and even quick mind. Her home was in the lowlands of the sea coast, and so she had been exiled from her birth. She had kin with the host, but how close they were...Yes, Sussia was a possibility. And how would she welcome news that such a choice had fallen upon her? Would that outward amicability crack and let us see what lay beneath it?

“Gillan!”

I looked down over the parapet of the tower. There was the sheen of rime, the covering of snow across the gardens. I had a doubled shawl about me against the bite of the wind, yet the sun made a diamond glitter on the cloak of winter and a small, sharp wind tugged at Dame Alousan’s coif veil.

To be summoned by my mistress in this fashion was a thing out of daily pattern. And in me stirred a feeling which I had half forgotten since I had so well schooled myself against that which was trouble. The dust of time was being blown upon—Dared I hope for a wind of change?

Though I had learned to walk calmly, with unhurried step according to Abbey custom, yet now I ran down the stairs, round and round the wall of the bell tower, setting a curb on my haste only when I came into the open.

“Dame?” I sketched the curtsy of greeting and she gestured in return.

“There has been a message, and a full convocation is ordered.” She was frowning. “Go you and tend the small still. This is not a time when my work should be so interrupted.”

She pulled at the flapping ends of her veil and went past me with a firm step as one who would speedily answer some hail that she might the more quickly return to her task.

A message? But no one had ridden through the Dale, past the village. The flapping of wings past the tower when I had first ascended? A bird? Perhaps one of the trained, winged messengers used by the host. Abbess Malwinna had lessoned many of them in her active days. The war—had our belief in peace been only rumour? Did the Hounds now bay on the borders of Norstead?

But these were only thoughts, and come war or lasting peace, if I did not give thought to Dame Alousan’s distilling there would be real trouble for me in due time.

The still room was odorous as always, though most of those smells were sweet and clean. And now there was a fragrance, arising from the vessel by the still which was so entrancing that I feasted my nostrils as I obeyed the orders laid upon me. That task was done, the liquid safely bottled, the apparatus washed thrice as was the custom, and yet Dame Alousan returned not. Outside afternoon became early winter evening. I blew out the lamps, latched the door, and crossed to the main hall of the Abbey.

There was the twittering of voices, growing the shriller by the moment as women’s voices do when there are no lower masculine notes to hold them in scale. Two lay sisters were setting out the meal for guests on the fable, but none of the Dames was present. By the fireplace gathered all those who had taken refuge, some for years, within these walls.

I hung my shawl on the proper hook by the door and went to the fire. In that gathering I was neither bird nor cat. I do not think that some ever knew just how to accept me: whether as a fosterling of a noble house once on a time and of the rank, say, of a Captain of company’s daughter; or whether I was to be counted one of the community though I did not wear the veil and coif. Now, as I joined them they took no note of me at all, and the chitter-chatter was deafening. I saw that some, usually sparing of word, were now striving to out-talk their companions. Truly a stoat had been introduced into our house of hens!

“Gillan, what think you!” The Lady Marimme was all rounded lips and wide, astonished eyes. “They are coming here—they may reach here by the Hour of the Fifth Flame?”

Kinsmen home from the wars, I thought. Truly something to set the Abbey a flutter. But—why the convocation lasting to this hour? The Dames would not be moved by any such guesting, not even that of a full company of horse. They would merely draw into their apportioned section of the Abbey until the men of the world had departed beyond their gates once again.

“Who comes?” I then named her nearest kin. “Lord Imgry?”

“He and others—the brides, Gillan, the promised brides! They march to the waste border by the north road and they will guest here this night! Gillan, it is a fearsome thing they do—Poor, poor ones! We should offer prayers in their names—”

“Whyfor?” The Lady Sussia came up in her usual unhurried way. She had not the soft beauty of Marimme. But, I thought, she will be regal all her life, and eyes will follow her after other beauty fades with the years.

“Whyfor?” repeated Marimme, “Whyfor? Because they ride into black evil, Sussia, and they will not come forth again!” She was indignant.

It was then Sussia repeated aloud what had been something of my own thinking on the subject. “Also they may ride from evil, birdling. All of us have not soft nests nor sheltering wings about us.” She must be speaking for herself. Did she indeed have some foreknowledge that the train which would guest with us this night would take her with it in the morning?

“I would rather wed steel, in truth,” cried Marimme, “than ride on such a marriage journey!”

“You need not fear,” I said then, for I guessed she spoke the truth, if somewhat wildly. Her fear was like a sickness, stretching out its shadow from her mind and heart.

But over Marimme’s shoulder I saw Sussia look at me oddly. Again it was as if she had foreknowledge. And in me a second time that warning of my own stirred. I could breathe in trouble as I could the aromatic smell of the leaves burned with the firelogs to freshen the hall.

“Marimme, Marimme—”

I think she was glad to turn from us to answer that call, to join the maids who were betrothed and so safe from alarms, as if their safety could cloak her also. But Sussia still faced me, her face locked as ever against any revealing of herself.

“Watch her, as shall I this night, “ she said under cover of their chatter.

“Why?”

“Because—she goes!”

I stared at her, for the moment struck dumb with amazement. Still I knew she spoke the truth.

“How—why—?” I did not finish either question for she was speaking swiftly, her hand on my arm drawing me a little away, her voice low and for my ear alone.

“How do I know? I had a private message this seven night. Oh, yes, I thought that I might be chosen, there was much to warrant it. But my kinsmen have had other plans for a year, and when the suggestion was made that I might be included in the Bargain, they made sword troth for me at once. While war raged I was landless. Now that the Hounds are hurled back into the sea from whence they came, I am mistress of more than one manor, being the last of my immediate line.” She smiled thinly. “Thus am I a treasure for my kin. I go to a wedding indeed this spring, but one in the Dales. As to why Marimme—beauty draws men, even when there is no dowry to fill the purse or line manor with manor. But a man who wants power can try for it in different ways. Lord Imgry has the granting of her hand. He is a man who hoards power as a captain hoards his men—until the attack trumpet. Then he will risk much to get what he wants. He has offered Marimme in return for certain favours. And the others believe that such a flower offered the Riders will sweeten the dish, since all the brides are not so choice.”

“She will not go—”

“She will go—they shall see to that. But she will die—such a draught is not for her drinking.”

I glanced across to Marimme. Her face was flushed, she made quick graceful gestures with her hands. There was a feverish gaiety about her I did not like. Though what was all this to me, who was an outsider and none of their blood or company?

“She will die,” again that statement delivered with emphasis.

I turned to Sussia. “If the Lord Imgry is set on this and the others agree, then she can not escape—”

“No? Oftentimes have men agreed upon a thing and women changed their thinking.”

“But even if another were offered in her place, would they agree to the choice, seeing as how it is her beauty which made her it in the first place?”

“Just so.” Sussia continued to watch me with that strange, knowing look, almost as if she sensed in me something so closely kindred that we thought with one thought and had no need for words between us. And I was thinking of Norstead, of the dust of changeless years, of my own place and part in this my world. And as many thoughts, some less than half formed, sped thus through my mind, the Lady Sussia retired a little, dropped her hand from my arm. Once again there was a curtain between us and matters were as they had always been.

I knew a spark of anger then, thinking—“she has used me!” But that lasted only for the space of an eye-wink. For it did not matter what tool of That Which Abides is used to open the future. To let some small resentment cloud one’s mind is the action of a fool. Twelve brides would guest here tonight, twelve and one would ride out in the morning. Twelve and-one!

As to planning, I knew much about the Abbey and its inhabitants. Much I could learn through eyes and ears in the hours to come. And proudly I set my wit and will against any of High Hallack, be they Dame, lady, or lords of the host!