Five Senses Box Set Page 35

  Lord Harmond's features twisted as if he could no longer control some tumult within.

  “You speak of things you do not understand—”

  One of the armed men behind him, his helmet well shadowing his face so he could not be well seen, moved forward.

  “This has no bearing on what should be done here, my Lord. Let the un-man go and mouth his blasphemies in the Wood he has embraced. He is nothing—and he can do nothing—”

  Twilla moved. She had no conscious bidding, but it was set upon her as much as if she were one of those soldiers under orders. She was behind Ylon now, mirror raised in both her hands. Standing on tiptoe she passed it over his head, bringing the reflective side down before his face.

  In the brilliance of the moon his face was sharply denned, except for that mask of filmy silver across his eyes.

  She spoke and her voice was meant for him alone but it carried.

  "See not with eyes but with the mind.

  The evil spell cannot now bind.”

  And she willed, willed him to do as he must do, look within himself for his cure. Lotis had laid the sorcery on him; Lotis was gone. But before her going he had already broken free of most of the spells she had set upon him.

  Her voice arose, a little shrill. She was aware of nothing now but that reflection, of the need for turning within Ylon himself the key to freedom.

  "See not with eyes, but with the mind.

  The evil spell cannot now bind.”

  And—she saw! Saw that misty strip lose substance become mere threads, and the threads themselves disappear.

  And—she heard—heard Ylon's great cry from the innermost of his being.

  “I see!”

  There were answering cries from those watching him, even from the captive men. The women were on their feet and now they were shouting in turn.

  “The healer! The healer heals—”

  Through the line of mounted men moved Rutha and Leela.

  Leela's horse shouldered away from that of the officer who had ridden out earlier.

  “This is the healer,” Rutha's voice was near as cold as Lord Harmond's had earlier been. “This is the healer your foul priest denied—that you denied, saying that nothing good comes of such wisewomen. Be sure of this, Lord, no more will you order us under the lash for saying your right is wrong. You shall not take our men to fight your battles.”

  She turned a little in the saddle to face those in line by the forest's fringe.

  “Let there be peace—let mage craft go for good and not for ill. Is it your will also, you who are women?”

  Twilla saw Karla, Musseline, Catha move forward.

  “This is no affair for women!” The officer who had been pushed aside used his mount to come beside Rutha. “Keep to your hearths and your man's bed, woman!”

  Lord Harmond had been staring at Ylon, even as his son was regarding him. Now he roused.

  “Walthar, I am the king's voice here. If you think to speak for Izearl you are a voice alone.

  “I have heard much of healers,” he had urged his horse a step or two further ahead. “And much did I think was but idle talk. You have proved me wrong.”

  “No,” Twilla shook her head. “It was your son's belief which returned his eyes. I was only the small means of opening the way. But this talk of Izearl—that is not for healers, my Lord. Nor"—she studied his face for a moment—"do I think it is for you either.”

  He raised his head high, and the moonlight turned his graying hair to silver.

  “I listened to orders but the greater man chooses which orders he will harken to. I have come to parley and there are no secret thoughts to be held in hiding. Son,” his face was no longer set, there was a wonder in it, and a kind of weariness as if he had carried far too long a burden he loathed, “let us speak with these tree rulers in peace. I will be grateful if they loose my men who have been so bond this day through.”

  Oxyle had come to Ylon's side. “It shall be so done, Lord—”

  “Not yet!” Ylon interrupted. “Father, there are still those among your command who would follow another path. We have heard one even now spout forth his foulness. Give us Arvanis Sword Oath and we shall know that you are one in mind with us.”

  Lord Harmond frowned. His hand went to the hilt of his sword, but it would seem from his look that he would sooner cut down his outspoken son than yield. Then he sighed.

  “How can I deny what you may think of me? If I stood where you stand I would ask such in return.” He drew his sword and held it high by its blade.

  “By the steel which is stainless I do swear that I have no thought of ill against these I would swear truce with, not shall any under my command show them ill. By the Great Smith who beats out the souls of men do I now swear this!” And he set his lips to the cross hilt of his sword.

  He resheathed his sword and swung from the saddle, dropping the reins so the well-trained mount stood untethered. A gesture brought three other men to join him, one in armor—but not Walther—and the other two in townsmen's drab wear. Together he led them forward.

  “Release now my men,” he said as he came to a halt but a sword's distance from Oxyle.

  The forest lord gestured to Chard and that under leader held high the boar-headed staff. From its eyes shot rays of red gold, arching up and over the heads of the men, soaring into the night sky to bring a semblance of sun to counter match the moonlight.

  As a fisher's line well cast could trouble the surface of a pool so did those rays touch the netting and from those points of contact ran light along each strand—leaving nothing behind so that men lurched free, stiff from their bondage. Then the tops of the crawlers arose and men pulled themselves out of those prisons. Toward them the women ran, brushing aside the soldiers, each seeking her own.

  “Your men are free,” Oxyle said. “Deed for oath. Now do we speak in truth, outland lord?”

  “Yes.”

  Oxyle gestured and the brush parted so they could see the vast roots of one of the giants curling its upper length from the trunk along the surface of the ground.

  “Let us then sit in council.”

  Stiffly, Lord Harmond and those he had chosen came. The townsmen, Twilla thought, flinched when the shadow of the tree overcame them. But they seated themselves upon the roots and faced the forest dwellers and the under men staring curiously at both.

  “You came unasked to this land,” Oxyle spoke first. “What need have you for it—slavery? Have you no proper rooting of your stock elsewhere?”

  “We needed food. There are many of us over mountain and the land—” Lord Harmond hesitated.

  “The land?” it was Catha who prompted him. “What of your land? Can it not bear any growth then?”

  “For many seasons we have ploughed it not for planting but for mining of what lay beneath—metal—”

  It was as if Lord Harmond could answer them with nothing but the simple truth. Yet Twilla could detect nothing of bespelling. Even the silver mists had withdrawn to a distance so that they could barely be seen among the tree-walled aisles.

  “Metal,” it was Chard who spoke. “We, too, live by metal but we do not make it our master, rather it serves us. It would seem you have put yourself to slavery by your own wills.”

  “So you come here to grow food,” Oxyle took up the confrontation. “Well, the land is rich, it will repay those who do not force themselves upon it as masters. But why do you trouble the forest?”

  “In our own land wood forms our shelter, our heat to beat winter's chill.”

  “So you kill with the cursed iron. Even as you now seek metals for your use. Do you know no other way but that of force to take what you believe you need? We have met force with force and you name us demons and take strange precautions against us. What of the women you drag over mountain to be your shields? Are they, also, to be mastered and used as wood, as metal?”

  “They shall not be so again,” Karla said when there came no quick answer from Lord Harmond.
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  His eyes dropped under her probing. “Lady, until this hour I served my king, his orders were my will. You have broken that. I cannot foresee what will come.”

  “If you continue to provide this king of yours,” Catha asked, “with the food his mine slaves need will he be moved to question how you rule here?”

  “Lady, kings do not ask how one provides what they desire, they only hold interest in its arrival,” Lord Harmond answered. “But I am honor broke—”

  “Not so!” Ylon challenged from where he stood, neither with one of the parties or the other. “You have but given sword oath as an honorable swordsman. And I do not think that any of Izearl are those you will listen to. Give all peace and plenty and there will be an end. If the Dandus power rises, father, would you not rather stand with those of the light than those who go willingly into the dark?”

  There was a silence. Lord Harmond did not look toward his son. Strangely enough it was one of the townsmen who broke that silence first.

  “Lord, we also are a part of this though we carry no arms. Sometimes a truce can end in a bargain—” his voice trailed away as if he were suddenly aware he had overstepped some rigid ruling.

  “Bargain,” Chard nodded. “Now you speak of what any can well understand. But it is well to remember in such bargaining that greed must not be fed. Over Lord,” he addressed Oxyle with a little more formality than he had shown before. “These men speak of the need for wood. What if they are made free of that which died in its own time and not of that which lives. When the storm winds rage do not always some of the elders die, crash of their own weight to the ground. In doing so do not their heavy trunks blot out the lives of saplings which would have been great in their turn? Let the dead serve the living as is the way of life by the First Law.”

  “So we give our dead,” there was a snap in Oxyle's voice. “And what give you, worker in metal—access for these to reach your cherished mines?”

  “We can give a portion of ore if they wish,” Chard replied simply.

  “Any bargain has two sides,” Karla spoke with a certain sharpness. “What have these earth grubbers, wearers of the cursed metal, would be rulers of all—what have they to offer us?”

  Lord Harmond looked to the village man, “Well, Kather, what have we to bargain?”

  The man spread his hands and shook his head slowly. “Lord, certainly all men have their needs. It is only that we find such—”

  Oxyle frowned. “The forest gives us all—we have no needs such as you know.”

  “But,” Twilla again did not know from where the words came or why it was her who must say them, “if both forest and land dwell in peace is that not a need you have reached for, my Lord? When we grow to know each other perhaps there will be more—perhaps even friendship though you are far from kin. If Lord Harmond holds this land, and so it has been promised him by the king, without any troubles thereafter, he will be serving the forest and the underworld also. For the king will be too pleased with the lack of trouble to ask the reason. I am a healer—and to my mind this is the beginning of a healing—”

  She was suddenly aware of the warm weight of a strong arm about her waist, of being drawn closer to a support which to her was as tall and deeply rooted as any of the great trees.

  “Do you doubt this healer?” Ylon's voice was firm.

  Karla and Catha were both on their feet now. “There is no doubt—this is a healing and let it be so!”

  More slowly the men arose. Slowly, as if he believed his gesture might be without welcome. Lord Harmond held out his hand and Oxyle's flesh showed startlingly white against the hilt-calloused bronze.

  Then Ylon had retreated, drawing Twilla with him. He made no move toward either party. Now his voice became a murmur for their ears alone.

  “Healer, what will you do now?”

  Twilla laid one hand on the mirror and with the other sought the green jerkin above his heart. The strong beat caught her own in rhythm. She looked into eyes which saw, not by her skill, but by his will—a will which was flowing into her and finding there a welcome.

  “I follow my craft,” she half whispered in turn. “And you, My Lord, do you again become Lord Harmond's heir, a man of war?”

  “No. I have learned that there is far more in any world than a man can see, and that there is more he can see in the world than be easily believed. This rooting here will need nourishing—

  “One,” Twilla felt his other arm encompass her, “one who is of the land—both out and forest—and can speak to both. Welcome, healer, who has healed thrice over!”

  She lifted her head a fraction and felt the touch of his lips. In time to come there might be many shadows rise but never one between the two of them.

  The Scent of Magic

  For the support system which has meant so much to me this past year—

  Rose Wolf

  Ann Crispin

  Mary Schaub

  eluki bes shahar

  Lyn McConchie

  Marj Krueger

  and

  Caroline Fike

  1

  The great bell in the central watchtower of Kronengred boomed the same warning as it had for more years than the most diligent scholars could remember. A heavy vibration of sound penetrated every one of the aged buildings huddled comfortably together, rising even to the castle on a mount which rivaled the height of the bell tower. Though the dark of the passing winter season still held in thick blots around alleys and doorway, yet the bell's call now sounded to all responsible citizens—those who had kept Kronengred's prosperity and safety alive—to be up and about the day's labors.

  His Highness, the Duke, might wriggle deeper into the covers of his great bed, but in the tiny cupboard (one could certainly not dignify it with the title of “room") off the vast kitchen of the Wanderers Inn, Willadene sighed herself into sitting up, the musty straws pricking through the ragged cover of the pallet beneath her, meeting her every movement with familiar scratching.

  Her first real act was always the same. Before she reached for undersmock her hands went to that small bag, warm between her small breasts, and lifted it to her tormented nose. A deep sniff of the crushed spices and herbs within cleared her head, but the dull ache from last night's long service in the taproom did not go away.

  Now she dressed hurriedly, pulling on clothing which had been cobbled down from a much larger size, so worn that its color was now a uniform muddy gray. Smells—it was always the smells against which she had to brace herself each morning. She was sure sometimes that those invaded her very dreams, bringing shadows of nightmares. The kitchen was no flower garden for the pleasuring of some lord's daughter, that was certain.

  She was still twisting her lank hair up under a kerchief when she heard, as she had feared, the clang of pans harshly slammed down together on the long table. Aunt Jacoba was the only one who dared to use those utensils without order, and, by the sound of it, she had a monumental temper to work off this morning.

  “Willa—get you here, you lazy slut!” That voice, which even sounded like a badly scrubbed kettle, arose on the end of one crash. Certainly Aunt Jacoba had deliberately swung the big porridge kettle on its hanger so that it had rebounded from the smoke-darkened stone of the wide hearth.

  Willadene (sometimes she forgot she had once been called that—it had been years now since the great plague had decimated the inhabitants of the city and she had been grudgingly accepted under the orders of the district Reeve by her father's cousin as a scullery maid, or scullery drudge) hurried into the kitchen.

  Wisely she had been on guard and so dodged the heavy tankard which might have struck her senseless if it had landed true. There was no easy greeting from Jacoba when she was in this foul mood. Swiftly the girl reached well over her head and pulled down a flitch of bacon. She had to fight with all her strength against the smell of the meat—it was never of the first quality and always kept too long. Jacoba pinched each pence when it came to supplies for the majority of those
eating early in the morning. Perhaps they were still so drowsy they were able to choke it down in a dull fog of half sleep.

  Jacoba had turned to the stirring of the vast pot of porridge which had been set to cook slowly the night before. Figis, the waiting boy, his face still masked with most of yesterday's grime, was slamming bowls onto a tray. He did not look up, but Willadene sighted the bruise near his eye. There was an ever-going feud between Figis and Jorg, the horseboy.

  She sawed away at the bacon with a knife which Figis should have sharpened yesterday. What she turned off now were not smooth slices but ragged hunks to be put in the footed skillet, when she knelt in the ashes which had drifted out from the fire to thrust her burden close enough to the flames for its contents to begin to sputter.

  Longing to pull out her spice bag and use it as a defense against the heavy odor of the now-crisping meat, Willadene hunched her shoulders and held on, grimly determined not to attract any attention from Jacoba.

  The big woman was sawing at rounds of yesterday's black bread—now near stone hard. These were the plates waiting to hold the bacon and wedges of cheese. The fare might be of third or even fourth grade, but Jacoba did not stint on portions.

  Then she turned to ladling out porridge—there were five bowls waiting. Willadene haunched in upon herself.

  So fortune had not favored her. Wyche had stayed the night. When she had crept away as the last two candles were near to guttering out in the taproom he had still been there, the huge bulk of his body half sprawling out of the one large chair which the inn owned. The odor of mulled cider of the strongest had not been enough to hide that other stench exuding from him. It was not only that of unclean flesh and/or filthy clothing but something else of which she was aware but could not put name to—though now and then the inn sheltered other patrons who carried the same odor and mostly they had been an ugly lot.

  She must ask Halwice—

  “Burn you that and you'll feel the fire yourself.”

  Willadene jerked the skillet back, its three legs grating on the stone. She had wrapped her hand as tightly as she could against the bite of the flames, but she still could feel the heat as she approached the table, striving to hold the heavy pan straight. Jacoba took her time inspecting the bacon.