The Song of Andiene (22 page)

He had gone into the forest, because he had no other choice. He had killed Malesa, because he had no other choice. He had trusted his child to a bloody-handed stranger, because he had no other choice.

It seemed as though, all his life, he had walked on the one road he was allowed. There had been one decision to be made—so long ago—to save Andiene or betray her—and the grizane had told him that both paths led to the same end.

He tried to think ahead. What could he do, once he and Kare were free of the forest? He could try to find his way to Carvalon. What had the grizane said? He had babbled of dragons, but little else that could be understood. The message he had been charged with was six years old and dead, even if it had ever been more than a dying man’s fantasy.

And though the thought of Carvalon had seemed a refuge once, now the memory of the grizane’s magic chilled him. Though blind, he had seen to work his charms. Ilbran thought of Kare in fear and dread. Indeed, she had half her mother’s blood in her. He would keep her far from the taste and taint of sorcery.

Chapter 15

The trunks of the lindel trees showed clearly through the gaps in the forest. Kallan dismounted, spoke softly to his horse, and knotted the reins around a low-hanging branch. He glanced up at the sun; it had not quite reached the peak of the sky.

Reluctantly, he took off his metal cap. He pulled off his ring-mail still more reluctantly. Since the day that he first saw the king’s mistrust of him, he had not put off that mail, waking or sleeping. That wariness had saved his life.

His hair was wet; his tunic and trousers of felted lanara clung damply to him. Though the breeze blew lightly, it chilled him as though he stood in the northern snow. The space between his shoulder blades felt cold and naked.

He kept his sword and dagger—he would not disarm himself to seem harmless. No child was worth such risk. As he went forward, he tried to glance from side to side, to cover his back. This place had a treacherous look to it. Those white-trunked lindel trees never grew in such a seashell-curving line by their own design. Someone had worked sorcery here once, had broken the laws of the land.

It was a rich place, though. He could see the empty blaggorn stems—a fine harvest. The air was sweet with the smell of overripe thornfruit, growing too well-guarded to be picked. And the young crop had set thick on the bushes.

A grasskit yelped and scurried across the path. There would be good hunting, too. “Kare,” he called. “Kare!” The child could be hiding anywhere. Countless little trails mazed their way through the shoulder-high blaggorn. “Kare!” She would expect no stranger. She ought to come.

He saw the blaggorn stems swaying far out in the field, the movement coming closer. She had ignored the paths and nestled into the grass like a little wild animal. Then she was out and onto the path, running toward him. “Daya! Daya! I was frightened!”

She stopped and stared, realizing he was a stranger—dark eyes widening in her grimy face. Black hair and eyes—her father had not said that her mother was a southerner.

“Your father sent me,” he said, trying to speak as he would to a nervous horse. He started to squat down, to put his eyes on a level with her. At the movement, she whirled and ran, using the paths this time. There was no telltale movement of the blaggorn stems to show where she had hidden herself.

Kallan was not dismayed. He had not expected matters to be simple, not with a forest-bred child, raised on nothing more than tales of the outside world.

He studied the ground for his campaign. On the western side of the house, the grass grew shorter. He seated himself there, where he was clearly visible from anywhere in the clearing. Curiosity would draw her, he thought. He had chosen well, so that on all sides she could hide, see him and not be seen.

The waiting was pleasant. He was the hunter, as he had been so often, but this time there was no danger, no urgency. No men would die for his cleverness, or in spite of it. It was good now, to sit in the sun and wait for a child’s curiosity to overcome her.

Black bees crawled over the thornfruit flowers like little lumps of soot, and the drugging smell of the fruit filled the air. A raven flew up into the lindel tree. A grasskit yelped in the blaggorn straw, and his mate answered him.

The sun sank lower in the sky. It was slower work than he had expected. He could not wait forever; Alonsar would have to be brought in from the forest before nightfall. He thought of a trick he could try. Rising slowly, he walked back to where he had tied his horse.

“Good Alonsar, brave creature, you will have fine grazing tonight.” He led the red horse into the clearing and tied him on a long rope, where he could graze on the blaggorn hay. He thought the lindel trees would keep him safe.

Then Kallan returned to the open clearing, walking slowly. The child was close—he was sure of it. A flash of white near the house, that was good. He walked unsteadily, trying to make it obvious. Then he stumbled and fell headlong, using his arms to catch himself only at the last moment. He lay motionless, trying to breathe quickly and irregularly. It was an old trick, but it had drawn many from hiding. Few can resist coming closer to a helpless enemy.

A flash of white again in the corner of his eye. Her padding bare feet made no sound on the ground. He breathed raggedly and lay still. Fingertips touched his forehead, then were gone, as though some little flying creature had landed for an instant, then taken wing again.

More silence. He waited. Hands tugged at his shoulder. He groaned and propped himself up on one elbow. The child knelt on the ground beside him, offering him a carved wooden cup. When she held it up to his lips, he sipped it tentatively, a meadowy taste like a summer night on the plains.

“What is this?”

“To help you. I didn’t know what was wrong.”

“I thank you,” he said. “I was merely tired, very tired. I have traveled far. Your father sent me to fetch you, Kare.”

She looked at him suspiciously, ready to turn and run again. “Your father is waiting for you, Kare. He told me your name, Kare. How would I know your name, if I had not spoken to him? My name is Kallan. He told me how to find your home.”

She stood nearer to him now, not so afraid. He sipped the thick dregs of what she had given him. Whatever it was, it seemed to be harmless. “Do you have some food you could give me, some more water?”

She brought the food and water to him. Kallan talked to her, gently, repetitiously. After a while, in the interests of realism and comfort, he decided that he could stand up. Her trust once given, she gave it utterly. She took him by the hand and led him into the house, explaining everything, the sword standing in the corner, the ranks of jars arrayed on the shelves, the herbs hung drying, gathered from forest and field. It was a rich household, but heavy with the scent of unlawful magic, as the lindel clearing had been. The child did not speak of her mother, but she had not been dead for long, for there was woman’s clothing lying here and there as though one had only just laid it down.

Kallan looked at the child and wondered again what had driven her father out into the forest. There was no lack of food, no sign that the forest had made a move to overwhelm them, as it sometimes will. Kare spoke proudly, precisely, as one adult speaks to another. She served him a meal as though he were an honored guest, and she the lady of the house. From her manner, no shadow of violence or want had ever touched her. Yet her father had run out into the forest like a madman, to almost certain death.

At nightfall, the forest creatures set up their song. She was more familiar with it than he was; she did not even pause in her talking. Then something caught her attention. She broke off in mid-word, every fiber of her body intent and listening. With her tangled black mane of hair, she seemed to him even more like a wild colt of the mountains, alert at the sound of a footstep.

It was the sound of a woman’s voice. “Kare!” or was he imagining it? The child ran to the door, to push the leather flap aside, and listen to the night. “Kare!” came the call again.

Kallan came to the door and reached for the child’s wrist. “What is it?”

She twisted her arm out of his grasp, and went running out. He followed, though he did not understand.

They ran down the blaggorn paths; the stars were bright. Though the lindel trees were protection from the forest magic, still, to go adventuring through the night was madness. “Kare!” he called.

“Kare!” the woman’s voice answered, a mocking echo. Then the path straightened. He saw her, standing where the forest met the clearing.

Only one kind of creature stands at the doorway and cannot enter. The hunters of the forest were silent. “Maya!” the child cried. The woman that was no woman smiled and held out her arms.

Kallan knew that the child was swifter than he; no persuasion or command would stop her. He reached down to the side of the path—a good sized stone there—and his arm was strong. It struck her on the side of her head, where the skull curves above the ear. She crumpled to the ground without a sound.

Kallan walked forward. He did not look at the woman-creature, but he was intensely aware of her. He knew that her black hair rippled nearly to her feet, that her thin shift did not serve her either for modesty or for warmth. He knew that she needed neither.

One word from her unhuman throat, and the dark hounds would come to do her will; the hunters who can kill at a touch would come. The forest ones have many faces.

Kneeling and gathering the child into his arms, he could feel her presence, just a few paces away, her watchful eyes as dark as the shadows in a skull. Nothing stood between them but the doubtful guardianship of a lindel tree that is born of magic. She did not speak. There were no words that would draw him as she had drawn the child. If she had all the power in the world, even though she knew his name, there was no form she could take to mimic one that he loved, for there were none. It was his safety. He turned and walked back along the starlit circling path.

Kare lay unconscious all that night. He had thrown the stone harder than he needed to. He sat beside her, and counted her breaths, took her pulse, compared it to his own. He had kept this same useless vigil once beside a comrade thrown from a horse, and had watched helplessly as pulse and breathing slowed and faded to nothingness. But this time the child’s life held strong.

When she woke the next day, she walked around unsteadily, and complained of a headache; she did not ask him what had happened. When evening came, he took a rope, knotted one end of it around her wrist, the other around his own. The calling came again out of the darkness. “Kare, Kare,” a voice that knew but the one word.

The child listened intently, but did not struggle. “That is not my mother,” she said at last.

“No,” he said. “I do not think it is.”

She slept much, those next few days. Kallan had little nursing to do, but much watching and waiting. He only hoped that her father would be as patient. The calling mixed with the howling of the forest, and became so familiar that he scarcely knew when it ceased.

They might have left sooner, but he was afraid for the child to travel. A blow to the head can do strange things. Alonsar waited patiently enough, and grazed greedily in the blaggorn field. When they were ready to go at last, Kare was awestruck by the horse, and stepped warily around him.

Kallan tried to reassure her. “See,” he said as he slipped the bit into the horse’s mouth, “his teeth are big, but they are grinding teeth, not fangs to tear flesh. And he is brave and gentle, and can travel faster and longer than a man can run.”

She came a little closer, but still ready to flee.

“See, though he was trained as a war-horse, yet he will go willingly as a pack-horse.

Indeed, Alonsar was a patient creature, as he stood loaded with the other man’s sword, and bundles of food better than anything they would find as they traveled, and bundles of the child’s choosing, herbs and clothing, things she did not want to do without.

Kallan had looked into the jars she had chosen, the simple herbs, though he did not recognize them, that stood on the lower shelf. There had been some jars—high above a child’s reach—whose contents had sickened him, when he browsed idly along the shelves. Evil had dwelled here, sure enough, but when he looked into the child’s eyes, he could see no sign of it.

Kallan saw her reach out and touch the horse cautiously, almost won over. Then she turned and saw him, armored again in his mail shirt, his iron cap, and she backed away from him, not trusting his metamorphosis into a strange metal creature.

More explanations were needed. He stumbled over them. His life was nothing he was able to explain to a child that had never seen the world. “You know, the forest is not safe, even in daytime,” he said. She looked at him gravely, knowing full well that armor would be no guard against the ones that run through the woods.

But at last she let him lift her up onto the horse. She sat light as a wisp of cloud, wide-eyed and astonished. He urged Alonsar to a canter, an easy gait. She was too amazed to speak, but every now and then, she laughed. Kallan seemed to see things as she must see them, the forest swiftly floating past. It had been so long, the city seemed far away, another life, so gladly discarded.

A movement between the forest trees, a cry that no human had made. Alonsar shied, stumbled, and went down, with a agonized scream.

Kare was thrown, to lie stunned in the path beyond. The horse sprawled on the ground, awkward and ungainly, making a sobbing noise in his throat. Kallan knelt beside him, and felt his front legs. Alonsar would not walk again.

He glanced to either side. Whatever had frightened the horse was not to be seen. Places enough for it to hide and wait till night. The forests are never safe. Kare watched him, not sure of what had happened, but wise enough to recognize a disaster. “Walk on slowly,” he said, “and do not look back.”

She had the habit of obedience. Kallan rejoined her soon. He had wiped his sword clean of blood on the grass that grew by the side of the path.