Tales From High Hallack, Volume 1 Read online

  Somehow Matt finally struggled to his feet, but it was long before he could walk erect. For many days his face was so swollen that he would not show it in the village, nor would he ever tell what happened to him.

  But for many a year thereafter Ully’s pipe led the people of Coomb Bracket to their feasting and played for their dancing. Sometimes, it was known, he slipped away by himself to the place of pillars and there played for other ears, such as did not side mortal heads.

  Dream Smith

  Spell of the Witch World (1972) DAW

  There are many tales which the songsmiths beat out in burnished telling, some old and some new. And the truth of this one or that—who knows? Yet at the heart of the most improbable tale may be a kernel of truth. So it was with the tale of the Dream Smith—though for any man now living to prove it—he might as well try to empty Fos Tern with a kitchen ladle!

  Broson was smith in Ghyll, having both the greater and the smaller mysteries of that craft. Which is to say that he wrought in bronze and iron and also in precious metals. Though the times he could use tools on the latter were few and far between.

  He had two sons, Arnar and Collard. Both were, in boyhood, deemed likely youths. So Broson was looked upon, not only in Ghyll (which lies at river-fork in Ithondale), but as far off as Sym and Boldre, as a man well fortuned. Twice a year he traveled by river to Twyford with small wear of his own making, wrought hinges and sword blades, and sometimes brooches and necklets of hill silver.

  This was in the days before the invaders came and High Hallack was at peace, save with outlaws, woods-runners, and the like, who raided now and then from the wastes. Thus it was needful that men in the upper dales have weapons to hand.

  Vescys was lord in Ithondale. But the dalesmen saw little of him since he had heired, through his mother, holdings in the shorelands and there married a wife with more. So only a handful of elderly men and a wash-wife or two were at the keep, and much of it was closed from winter’s midfeast to the next.

  It was in the third year after Vescys’ second marriage (the dalesmen having that proclaimed to them by a messenger) that something of more import to Ghyll itself occurred.

  A trader came down from the hills, one of his ponies heavily laden with lumps of what seemed pure metal, yet none Broson could lay name to. It had a sheen, even unworked, which fascinated the smith. And, having tried a small portion by fire and hammer, he enthusiastically bargained for the whole of the load. Though the peddler was evasive when asked to name the source, Broson decided that the man was trying to keep secret something which might well bring him profit again. Since the pony was lame, the man consented with visible (or so it appeared) reluctance to sell, leaving in one of Broson’s metal bins two sacks of what was more melted scrap than ore.

  Broson did not try to work it at once. Rather he spent time studying, thinking out how best he might use it. His final decision was to try first a sword. It was rumored that Lord Vescys might visit this most western of his holdings, and to present his lord with such an example of smith work could only lead to future favor.

  The smelting Broson gave over to Collard, since the boy was well able to handle such a matter. He had determined that each of his sons in turn would learn to work with this stuff, always supposing that the peddler would return, as Broson was sure he would, with a second load.

  And in that he gave his son death-in-life, even as he had once given him life.

  For, though no man could ever learn what had gone wrong in the doing, for all those standing by, including Broson himself, had detected no carelessness on Collard’s part (he was known to be steady and painstaking), there was an explosion which nigh burst the smithy to bits.

  There were burns and hurts, but Collard had taken the worst of both. It would have been better had he died in that moment. For when he dragged back into half-life after weary months of torment and despair, he was no longer a man.

  Sharvana, Wise Woman and healer, took the broken body into her keeping. What crawled out of her house was no Collard, a straight, upstanding son for any man to eye with pride, but a thing such as you see sometimes carved (luckily much weathered away) on the ruins left by the Old Ones.

  Not only was his body so twisted that he walked bent over like a man on whom hundreds of seasons weighed, but his face was a mask such as might leer at the night from between trees of a haunted forest. Sharvana had an answer to that, but it was not enough to shield him entirely from the eyes of his fellows—though all were quick to avert their gaze when he shambled by.

  She took supple bark and made a mask to hide his riven face. And that he wore at all times. But still he kept well out of the sight of all.

  Nor did he return to his father’s house, but rather took an old hut at the foot of the garden. This he worked upon at night, never coming forth by day lest his old comrades might sight him. And he rebuilt it into a snug enough shelter. For, while the accident seemed to have blasted all else, it had not destroyed his clever hands, nor the mind behind the ruined face.

  He would work at the forge at night, but at last Broson said no to that. For there was objection to the sound of hammers, and the people of Ghyll wanted no reminding of who used them. So Collard came no more to the smithy.

  What he did no man knew, and he came to be almost forgotten. The next summer, when his brother married Nicala of the Mill, he never appeared at the wedding, nor ventured out in those parts of the yard and garden where those of the household might see him.

  It was in the third year after his accident that Collard did come forward, and only because another peddler came into the forge. While the trader was dickering with Broson, Collard stood in the shadows. But when the bargain for a set of belt knives was settled, the smith’s son lurched forward to touch the trader’s arm.

  He did not speak, but motioned to a side table where-on he had spread out a square of cloth and set up a series of small figures. They were fantastical in form, some animals, some men, but such men as might be heroes from the old tales, so perfect were their bodies. As if poor Collard, doomed to go crooked for as long as he lived, had put into these all his longing to be one with his fellows.

  Some were of wood, but the greater number of metal. Broson, astounded at viewing such, noted the sheen of the metal. It was the strange stuff he had thrown aside, fearing to handle again after the accident.

  The trader saw their value at once and made an offer. But Collard, with harsh croaks of voice, brought about what even Broson thought a fair bargain.

  When the man had gone, Broson turned eagerly to his son. He even forgot the strangeness of that blank mask which had only eyes to give it the semblance of a living man.

  “Collard, how made you these? I have never seen such work. Even in Twyford, in the booths of merchants from overseas—before—before you never fashioned such.” Looking at that mask his words began to falter. It was as if he spoke not to his son, but to some-thing as alien and strange as those beings reputed to dance about certain stones at seasons of the year, stones prudent men did not approach.

  “I do not know—” came the grating voice, hardly above an animal’s throaty growl. “They come into my head—then I make them.”

  He was turning away when his father caught at his arm. “Your trade—”

  There were coins from overseas, good for exchange or for metal, a length of crimson cloth, two knife handles of carven horn.

  “Keep it.” Collard might be trying to shrug but his convulsive movement sent him off balance, so he must clutch at the tabletop. “What need has such as I to lay up treasure? I have no bride price to bargain for.”

  But if you wanted not what the trader had to offer—why this?” Arnar, who had been watching, demanded. He was a little irked that his brother, who was younger and, in the old days had no great promise, could suddenly produce such marketable wares.

  “I do not know.” Again Collard slewed around, this time turning his bark mask in his brother’s direction. “I think I wished to know i
f they had value enough to attract a shrewd dealer. But, yes, father, you have reminded me of another debt.” He took up the length of fine cloth, a small gold coin which had been looped so that one might wear it on a neck chain. “The Wise Woman served me as best she could.”

  He then added: “For the rest—let it be for my share of the household, since I cannot earn my bread at the forge.”

  At dusk he carried his offering to Sharvana. She watched as he laid coin and cloth on the table in her small house, so aromatic of drying herbs and the brews from them. An owl with a wing in splints perched on a shelf above his head, and other small wild things, here tame, had scuttled into cover at his coming.

  “I have it ready—” She went to the cupboard, bringing out another mask. This was even more supple. He fingered it wonderingly.

  “Well-worked parchment,” she told him, “weather-treated, too. I have been searching for something to suit your purpose. Try it. You have been at work?”

  He took from the safe pocket of his jerkin the last thing he had brought her. If the trader had coveted what he had seen that morn, how much more he would have wanted this. It was a figure of a winged woman, her arms wide and up as if she were about to take to the skies in search of something there seen and greatly desired. For this was to the figures he had sold as a finished sword blade is to the first rough casting.

  “You have seen—her?” Sharvana put out her hand as if to gather up the figure, but she did not quite touch it.

  “As the rest,” he grated. “The dreams—then I awaken. And I find that, after a fashion, I can make the dream people. Wise Woman, if you were truly friend to me, you would give me from your stores that which would make me dream and never wake again!”

  “That I cannot do, as you know. The virtue of my healing would then pour away, like running water, through my fingers. But you know not why you dream, or of what places?” Her voice became eager, as if she had some need to learn this.

  “I know only that the land I see is not the dales—at least the dales as they now are. Can a man dream of the far past?”

  “A man dreams of his own past. Why not, were the gift given, of a past beyond his own reckoning?”

  “Gift!” Collard caught up that one word and made it an oath. “What gift—?”‘

  She looked from him to the winged figure. “Collard, were you ever able to make such before?”

  “You know not. But to see my hands so—I Would trade all for a straight back and a face which would not afright a woman into screaming!”

  “You have never let me foresee for you—”

  “No! Nor shall I!” he burst out. “Who would want that if he were as I am now? As to why this—this dreaming and the aftermaking of my dream people has come upon me—well, that which I was handling in the smithy was no common metal. There must have been some dire ensorcelment in it. That trader never returned so we could ask about it.”

  “It is my belief,” said Sharvana, “that it came from some stronghold of the Old Ones. They had their wars once, only the weapons used were no swords, nor spears, no crossbow darts, but greater. It could be that trader ventured into some old stronghold and brought forth the remains of such weapons.”

  “What matter?” asked Collard.

  “Only this—things which a man uses with emotion, fashions with his hands, carries with him, draw into themselves a kind of—I can only call it ‘life.’ This holds though many seasons may pass. And if that remnant of emotion, that life, is suddenly released—it could well pass in turn into one unwary, open—”

  “I see.” Collard ran fingertips across the well-scrubbed surface of the table. “Then as I lay hurt I was so open—and there entered into me perhaps the memories of other men?”

  She nodded eagerly. “Just so! Perhaps you see in dreams the dales as they were before the coming of our people.”

  “And what good is that to me?”

  “I do not know. But use it, Collard, use it! For if a gift goes unused it withers and the world is the poorer for it.”

  “The world?” his croak was far from laughter. “Well enough, I can trade these. And if I earn my bread so, then no man need trouble me. It is young to learn that all one’s life must be spent walking a dark road, turning never into any welcoming door along the way.”

  Sharvana was silent. Suddenly she put out her hand, caught his before he could draw back, turning it palm up in the lamplight.

  He would have jerked free if he could, but in that moment her strength was as great as that of any laboring smith, and she had him pinned. Now she leaned forward to study the lines on the flesh so exposed.

  “No foreseeing!” He cried that. The owl stirred and lifted its sound wing.

  “Am I telling you?” she asked. “Have it as you wish, Collard. I have said naught.” She released his wrist.

  He was uneasy, drawing back his hand quickly, rubbing the fingers of the other about that wrist as if he would erase some mark she had left there.

  “I must be going.” He caught up the parchment mask—that he would try on only in his own hut where none could see his face between the taking off of one covering and the putting on of another.

  “Go with the good will of the house.” Sharvana used the farewell of their people. But somehow those words eased his spirit a little.

  Time passed. All avoided Collard’s hut, he invited no visitors, not even his father. Nor did another trader come. Instead there was news from the greater world outside the Dale, a world which seemed to those of Ghyll that of a songsmith.

  When the Lord Vescys had wedded, his second wife had had already a daughter, though few had heard of her. But now the story spread throughout all of Ghyll and to the out-farms and steads beyond.

  For a party had ridden to the keep, and thereafter there was much cleaning and ordering of the rooms in the mid-tower. It was that Vescys was sending his daughter, the Lady Jacinda, to the country, for she sickened in the town.

  “Sickened!” Collard, on his way to the well, paused in the dark, for the voice of his sister-in-law Nicala was sharp and ringing in the soft dusk. “This is no new thing. When Dame Matild had me come into the rooms to see how much new herb rushing was needed for the undercarpeting, she spoke freely enough. The young lady has never been better than she is now—a small, twisted thing, looking like a child, not a maid of years like to wed. Not that our lord will ever find one to bed with her unless he sweetens the bargain with such dowry as even a High Lord’s daughter could bring!

  “The truth of it is, as Dame Matild said—the new Lady Gwennan, she wants not this daughter near her. Very delicate she is, and says she cannot bear my lord a fine son if she sees even in bower and at table such a twisted, crooked body.”

  Collard set his pail noiselessly down and moved a step or two nearer the window. For the first time in seasons curiosity stirred in him. He willed Nicala to continue.

  Which she did, though he gained little more facts. Until Broson growled he wanted his mulled ale, and she went to clatter at the hearth. Collard, once more in his hut, did not reach for his tools, but looked into the flames in the fireplace. He had laid aside his mask, and now he rubbed his hands slowly together while he considered word by word what he had overheard.

  This Lady Jacinda—so she was to be thrust out of sight, into a country keep where her kin need not look at her? Oh, he knew the old belief that a woman carrying dared not see anything or anyone misshapen, lest it mark the babe in her womb. And Lord Vescys would certainly do all he could to assure the coming of a son. There would be no considering the Lady Jacinda. Did she care? Or would she be glad, as he had, to find a place away from sight of those who saw her not like them?

  Had she longed to be free of that and would be pleased to come to Ghyll? And was it harder for her, a maid, to be so, than it was for him? For the first time Collard was pulled out of his dreams and his bitterness, to think of someone living, breathing, walking this world.

  He arose and picked up the lamp. With it in ha
nd, he went to a wall shelf and held the light to fully illumine the figures there. There were a goodly company of them, beasts and humanoid together. Looking upon them critically, something stirred in his mind, not quite a dream memory.

  Collard picked several up, turned them about. Though he did not really look at them closely now, he was thinking. In the end he chose one which seemed right for his purpose.

  Bringing the figure back to the table he laid out his tools. What he had was a small beast of horselike form. It was posed rearing, not as in battle but as if it gamboled in joyous freedom. But it was not a horse, for from between its delicate ears sprang a single horn.

  Laying it on its side, Collard went to work on the base. It was cockcrow when he was done. And now the dancing unicorn had become a seal, its base graven to print a “J” with a small vine tracery about it.

  Collard pushed back from the table. The need which had set him to work was gone. Why had he done this? He was tempted almost to sweep the piece into the melting pot so he could not see it again. But he did not, only pushed it away, determined to forget his folly.

  He did not witness the entrance of the Lord Vescys and his daughter, though all the rest of Ghyll gathered. But he heard later that the Lady Jacinda came in a horse litter, and that she was so muffled by cloaks and covers that only her face could be seen. It was true that she was small and her face very pale and thin.

  “Not make old bones, that one won’t,” he heard Nicala affirm. “I heard that Dame Matild has already sent for Sharvana. The lady brought only her old nurse and she is ailing, too. There will be no feasting at Ghyll Keep.” There was regret in her voice, not, Collard believed, for the plight of the Lady Jacinda, but rather that the stir at the keep would be soon over, with none of the coming and going which the villagers might enjoy as a change in their lives.

  Collard ran fingers along the side of his mask. For all his care it was wearing thin. He might visit Sharvana soon. But why, his hard honesty made him face the truth, practice such excuses? He wanted to hear of the lady and how she did in a body which imprisoned her as his did him. So with the coming of dark he went. But at the last moment he took the seal, still two-minded over it.