Rhapsody, Child of Blood (34 page)

c,'Vhaddyr was becoming anxious. At each small village or large homestead along the roadway his unintentional caravan had taken on riders and followers on foot, creating crowds that blocked the forest road.

Farmers on the outskirts of the towns along the road had stopped and stared as they rode by. Villagers had swarmed to see the strange, beautiful creature riding before him in the saddle. There were scores of them now, perhaps hundreds, men and women alike, and a fair number of children, all clamoring to see or touch this filthy dryad with the dazzling green eyes.

He fully understood their unnatural desire to do so. Even the continual state of consternation he had been in since leaving Tref-Y-Gwartheg had done little to arrest the light-headedness he was experiencing.

Initially he had ascribed it to trepidation over what Llauron was going to say about the chaos of the surrounding villages and the arrival of some of their occupants on his lands near the Great Tree. After hours had passed, however, and the feeling had not abated, he began to realize that his anxiety about the Invoker's potential displeasure had little to do with it.

It was the giddy sensation of inhaling the surprisingly sweet scent of the filthy creature whose back occasionally pressed up against his chest, causing dark and lascivious thoughts unsuited in a celibate man of the cloth. At one point, to his great embarrassment, she had taken his hand and removed it gently from her breast, not bothering to turn around to face or glare at him. He felt humiliated; he had not even known it was there.

Finally he lost the half-dozen or so determined men who had continued to follow him after he had guided the horse past the crowds. Since the same problem was arising in each village, Khaddyr decided to abandon the road and take the narrower forest trails in the hope of avoiding further difficulty.

At the peak of the afternoon they arrived at their lodging for the night, the hostel of the forester Gavin. One of the same order as Khaddyr himself, Gavin kept the barracks on the eastern border of the deep forest, training the Filidic acolytes in the art of forestry. Upon completion of Gavin's training they served three years as pilgrimage guides, escorting the faithful from their villages to the Tree for holy-day celebrations and religious rites, though these days they had been more often utilized to defend the forest outposts against attack. War is brewing, Khaddyr thought. There was no doubt about it.

Khaddyr brought the horse to a stop outside the main cottage, reserved for the use of Gavin and other senior Filids. The Filidic religion was one of service to nature, and as such did not require its priests to remain celibate, except for him. Most of the Filids, men and women, were married, although acolytes usually refrained from matrimonial ties until their training and forestry service were finished. As a result, many of them lived within the villages that were their congregations or in the main settlements closer to the Tree. He expected the cottage would be empty, and it appeared that he was correct.

His enchanting passenger was looking around, taking in the sights with obvious interest. Khaddyr dismounted, finding some relief in his groin area, which had been experiencing considerable discomfort during their ride. He put his hands up to the strange creature to assist her down from the horse, but she shook her head and dismounted by herself. Swallowing his disappointment, he tied the horse to a slender sapling and nodded curtly to the hut. She followed him inside.

The hut had two low wooden beds topped with stuffed sackcloth mattresses filled with sweet hay and covered with blankets of undyed wool, as well as a sizable wooden table. None of the foodstuffs had been left in the cottage; they would have to eat what he could find out in the root cellar or share his meager dinner, which had gone uneaten in all the excitement. He turned to his odd guest and pointed outside.

'I'm going to see what I can find for us to eat," he said in a slqw, exaggerated tone.

"Will you be all right in here alone for k few moments?"

The woman smiled and nodded. Khaddyr felt the unwelcome rushxof heat and blood again. He took hold of the cord that served as the door's handle.

'Good. Now, make yourself comfortable. I'll be back in a bit." He pointed to one of the two beds and left the hut hurriedly.

When he returned a few moments later, an armload of roots and winter apples in hand, the woman was sound asleep in the bed he had indicated, smiling as if in paradise.

cXhapsody woke to the warmth of a cracking fire burning peacefully in the small fireplace. She sat up with a start, dis oriented in the dark, to see the man who had introduced himself as Khaddyr watching her intently from across the room. Night had fallen while she slept. She had no idea how much time had passed since she had slipped, gratefully, into the first bed she had occupied since the night before the world had been turned upside down an eternity ago in Easton.

The man smiled at her doubtfully. She returned the smile, hoping to assuage whatever concern was plaguing him. He seemed intent on treating her kindly. By now Achmed and Grunthor had undoubtedly caught up with them and were stationed somewhere nearby, or so she hoped. She felt around beneath the blanket and sighed in relief. The sword was still there where she had hidden it.

'Are you hungry?" Khaddyr asked. He had laid a plain meal on the table, one bowl of which had already been eaten. She nodded and rose from the bed, taking the chair opposite him.

The hut itself was simple in its construction, better built than the ones she had seen on the Island, with stone walls and a thatched roof. As they had approached she had seen something resembling barracks off in the near distance, long, thatched buildings with wattle-and-daub walls cased with skins and woven mats of forest brush. The buildings, for all their simplicity, seemed surprisingly solid, and reflected careful thought in their design. The Filids, whoever they were, must have some architectural or engineering knowledge not often seen in farming communities.

Khaddyr watched her as she ate; it made her self-conscious. When she had finished she pointed to the empty bowl and gestured her thanks. The man's forehead wrinkled as he watched her in the firelight.

'What sort of creature are you?" he asked her again, as he had when she first emerged from the forest. Rhapsody had no idea what to say, so she shrugged. She tried to formulate a way to explain that she was a person—perhaps Khaddyr had never seen someone of Lirin extraction—but was blocked in her attempt by a sudden sound of shouting and commotion. The crowd had finally caught up with them.

Khaddyr rose from his seat in consternation, and went to one of the two cottage windows. Even in the light of the waning moon Rhapsody could see his face grow pale.

The hunting party of determined villagers must have grown larger in the course of following them.

The priest hurried to the coat pegs near the door. On each of them hung a soft gray forester's cape with a hood and caplet. On a man the size of an average villager it would hang to the top of the thigh. Khaddyr draped it around Rhapsody and exhaled in relief when he saw that it only brushed the backs of her calves. He pulled the hood up over her filthy hair.

'Come with me," he said, urgency in his voice. "We can cut through the woods here to Llauron's." He seized his own staff and cape and held open the back door, which led out to the root cellar. Rhapsody followed him out into the darkness, running from the throng like a fox before the approaching hounds.

•Jt took three days' travel to reach the place in the deep forest to which Khaddyr had been referring. The towns along the main roadway, though seeming to be in a wooded land when she had first seen them, were out in the open compared with the place through which they now traveled.

The forest to the west was virgin, primeval, and thick with stands of dark evergreens that blotted out the light and returned some of the green of the warmer months to the otherwise unbroken blanket of snow.

Their pace was slower than hers had been with the two Bolg. Khaddyr was a much older and fatter man than either Achmed or Grunthor, and so had to rest more frequently, but he had an innate knowledge of the terrain. The forest seemed to welcome him, easing his passage through the heavy underbrush.

More than once Rhapsody had looked off into the distance and caught a glimpse of a dark cape or a large shadow, and sighed in relief. Achmed and Grunthor had caught up and were making that known to her. Though she and Khaddyr seemed to have lost the mass of townspeople for the moment, the presence of the Bolg served to reassure her even as she followed the priest through the deepening woods.

Each morning Rhapsody would wait until Khaddyr had disappeared into a copse of trees to attend to the call of nature before finding a spot from which to sing her dawn devotions. Out of deference to Achmed's concern about revealing their history, she sang wordlessly, maintaining only a melody line without the Ancient Lirin verse. On more than one occasion she had turned around after finishing to find the Filidic priest staring at her as if she were a mythical beast.

At night Khaddyr built a small fire, from which she maintained a respectable distance. Given the way fire often reacted to her, she thought it wise to keep away from it. She could see that her withdrawal from the proximity of the fire caused Khaddyr to assume she had an aversion to it and to make note of this fact. He had ceased trying to question her about what she was, and instead spoke to her only when giving directions.

Finally on the third day they came to a place in the deep woods that appeared to be a large clearing. Dispersed throughout the area were many cottages and huts, some of stone and others of earth with turf roofs, or the wattle-and-daub walls that she had seen in the farming communities. In addition they passed a few very large buildings made of wood, with heavy doors and conical thatched roofs. Smoke rose placidly from the hearths of the buildings.

Above the doors of the huts and cottages were hex signs, similar to the one she had seen back on the road but in far more complex and colorful patterns. Most of the dwellings had sizable gardens or kraals, and had been whitewashed or faced with stone as ornamentation.

The people who milled about did not dress as the farmers and villagers had, but rather were attired in robes of wool similar to Khaddyr's, some dyed with indigo or goldenrod or en-gilder leaves to bring forth hues of blue or yellow or green. Others, as Khaddyr's, had been soaked in butternut shells or heather, producing tones more earthy, shades of dismal brown and somber gray. Often these robes had cowls like Khaddyr's, which seemed to signify greater rank among the people of this forest community.

In addition to the robed clergy were armed men, carrying bows, spears, axes, and other weaponry of foresters and scouts, and attired in leather armor. These men were often haggard or injured, showing the signs of many months of travel or battle, and their appearance made Rhapsody wonder what might have attacked them in this seemingly peaceful place.

The prospect of war made her stomach twist in anxiety. War had been in the wind back in Easton, and it meant the restriction of travel. If this place was at war or preparing for one, it would complicate her getting to a port and passage home. After coming this far, she was unwilling to face that prospect.

In the late afternoon she heard it, a song deeper and richer than any but one she had ever heard. It was the song of the Tree, Sagia's Root Twin. They must be coming closer to it.

As the sun was beginning to set they came to a vast meadow in the forest and she saw it, its trunk whiter than the snow, with great ivory branches that spread like immense fingers to the darkening sky.

Rhapsody stopped and stared in wonder. The Tree was easily fifty feet across at the base, and the first major limb was more than a hundred feet from the ground, leading up to more branches that formed a expansive canopy she wished she could see in leaf.

The last rays of the winter sun glimmered on its bark, giving it an almost ethereal glow.

Around its base, set back a hundred yards from where its great roots pierced the earth, had been planted a ring of trees, one of each species Rhapsody had ever heard of, and many she had not. It resonated a song of ancient power, different from Sagia's but with the same depth and magic. Rhapsody's eyes glistened with tears that did not fall.

Khaddyr was watching her face carefully. He stared at her silently for a long time, then seemed to shake his head as if waking. Finally he spoke to her.

'You respect the Tree?" he asked. Rhapsody nodded, still not taking her eyes off it.

Khaddyr smiled. "Well, then, you will be welcome here. Llauron will be very interested to meet you. Come; we are almost to his house." He led her through the meadow, past the outside of the tree ring and beneath the outstretched branches that blocked the sky above them.

On tile other side of the meadow stood a great copse of ancient trees, vastly tall and broad, though no match for the Great tyVhite Tree in height or breadth. Built throughout and around this grove of trees was a large, beautiful house, simple yet breathtaking in design.

It was set at many odd angles, with sections placed high in the trees or on stilts with windows that faced the Tree. Intricate woodwork dressed the exterior, in particular the large section with a tower that reached high above the forest canopy.

A great stone wall, lined with sleeping gardens, led up to a section on the side of the smaller wing, where a heavy wooden door was guarded by soldiers similar to the ones she had seen before. She turned to Khaddyr and pointed at the house questioningly. The hawk-nosed man smiled.

-

'This is Llauron's keep, where the Invoker lives. Not much of a rectory for someone of his religious and family stature, but he's comfortable here. Come; I will bring you to him." He led her through the winding gardens and up to the door, nodding to the staring guards, who moved aside as they passed.

Q) rom within the branches of their hiding place Achmed and Grunthor watched as the man knocked and a woman opened the door. After a moment's discussion with the priest she stepped aside and he led Rhapsody into the strange, angular house. The servant shut the door behind them.