Along the Edgemere Road strode a lithe young man of spare build, his cowl pulled back and his tunic unbuttoned, his sparkling blue eyes a sharp contrast to his thatch of thick, sable hair. Morning had dawned bright and clear, heralded by the robin's song, but the air still held a chill which set a tinge of frost on his breath. It was unseasonable, considering they were already more than a week into May. But these were strange days, full of omens and portents not seen in a generation, not since the death of King Colurian and the abduction of his Queen and the Crown Prince.
Take this year's Candle Festival, for example. As usual, the men, women, and children of the remote highland Clanholding of Lammermorn had come together for the Festival on the first day of May, known in the Old Arvonian calendar as Tramys, the Month of Fire. Only the Hordanu, the High Bard of all Ahn Norvys, had been able to keep his candle lit with the new fire on that blustery, sodden evening, but just for a short while after two false starts. Everybody else had been forced to lay aside their candles in favour of sputtering rushlights and flaring links of tow and pitch.
The Festival was followed by eight days of unrelenting rain and wild storms. The constellations wheeled through the sky and formed irregular, quirky shapes that were there for the space of one watch of the night, and then gone the next, blown, it seemed, by the same great winds that were buffeting the whole valley from end to end.
For the first time no one in the Holding could mark the outline of the Longbowman in the spring sky. In its place Sarmel, the Holding's garrulous old pedlar, spent so much time and energy insisting that he could make out the unseasonable outline of the Shepherd that most folk came to agree with him, if only to keep him quiet. Others, more reticent than old Sarmel, murmured that they saw more sinister patterns traced out in the strange new star groupings.
On the horizon, spectacular columns of the Boreal Lights leaped and frolicked like motley giants reaching with long arms for the roof of the world. The air itself was cumbered with a foul, heavy odour like that of ripely fermented must. And more portentous still, despite all the storms and rain, the water level of Deepmere had dipped yet lower, lower than anyone had thought possible, leaving a calcified white ring along the shoreline that gave the ancient lake the look of a grimy, unscoured washbasin.
But the storms had broken, and at long last spring was once again remaking the sheltered valley of Lammermorn. From the south a breeze blew in, freshened by the snowcapped ranks of the Radolan Mountains, bending the grass alongside the hedgerows, wave upon wave. The air smelled pure and clean, full of the sweet heady scent of earth, dew, leaf bud, and the early wildflowers that filled the pastures.
The young man smiled. With a skip-step he picked up his pace, and then broke into full-voiced song.
"There were three ravens sat in a lone tree
Downe a downe hay downe downe dee
There were three ravens sat in a lone tree
And they were as black as black may be
With a downe downe derrie downe derrie downe dee—"
"That's a right strange tune to be singing on a bright day, Kalaquinn, lad. Can you find nothing better than 'The Three Ravens' to vent your spring fever?"
"Briacoil, Diggory!" the young man called out the traditional highland word of greeting to a cheerful red-faced man of middling height, built as stout and strong as his team of dapple-grey workhorses. "I do beg your kind pardon for my choice of songs. You should count yourself lucky. I was all set to sing 'The Ferret and the Coney.' "
The older man had been working the headland close by the road and stopped now within hailing distance of the young man, in order to give himself and his horses a much-needed rest after an early morning's start on the day's ploughing. Even as he spoke, Kalaquinn left the road and made for him over a stile in the hedge of hawthorn already growing white in blossom.
"Where's that pet of yours?" said the ploughman, casting an eye towards the sky.
Kal laughed. "Up in the hills, I imagine, hunting for his breakfast."
"Old man Dobbins lost a ewe with lamb night afore last. He's blaming that bird of yours. Says it's not right a body should keep a fellhawk." The ploughman shook his head.
"But, Dhu would nev—"
"Aye, never touch anything he weren't allowed to. So you've told me before, and so you'll tell me again, no doubt." Diggory Clout rubbed the back of his neck. His eyes twinkled in the morning light. "A safe fellhawk . . . I believe you, lad, I do, I do. Though thousands wouldn't, I do . . ." He chuckled to himself, shaking his head, then looked up at Kal. "But tell me now, where are you off to on this fine morning singing away as if you had the entire Holding to yourself while the rest of us sober bodies be busy at our work? It ain't right, by my ten fingerbones, it ain't, that we old ones moil and toil while you young gamecocks walk abroad with not so much as a care in the world to bother you," bantered the stout Holdsman, his broad gap-toothed smile and flashing blue eyes set deep in a ruddy weather-creased face.
"Ah, Diggory, you know full well I hate having to tread this road back and forth all the time, a glorified errand boy. I'd much rather be working with Father in his wheelwright's shop or putting my hand to the plough," Kalaquinn said, as he regarded the bulging shoulders and hindquarters of the powerful workhorses. "I'd step into your shoes and take my place behind your team any time you please. Just say the word."
"I know you would, lad, and I wouldn't be against letting you take a turn or two around the headland. But it be pleasing to our revered Hordanu to have you and our Galli as his helpers, especially you, Kal. He's taken a real shining to you. That's clear. He says you've got an uncommon knack for the strange and foreign ways and speech. He told me once you're right near his equal when it comes to talking the Old Tongue. Sure, he's taken to you, Kal. I think you'd be adding to his hurts, the poor old fellow, if he heard you giving voice to your discontents and with him in such a state, having his head full of all them thoughts about the troubles that are sore afflicting Arvon these days."
"Yes, I know. I wouldn't want to hurt dear old Cloudbeard and make things harder for him. Believe me, I wouldn't. I don't half mind spending time with him and hearing his stories, even though I don't really understand a lot of what he's saying, especially when I'm alone with him in his keeil and his eyes glaze over and he begins reciting those strange songs of his in the Old Tongue. Whenever that happens, it's as if he's entered another world. It scares me. Sometimes I get the feeling that he might never come back. It's happened more than once, let me tell you, that there's a long pause, and I end up tugging gently at his cloak, then a bit more roughly, then as roughly as I dare, to get his attention, but to no avail. I can't get any response from him, and then I feel his hands to find them as cold as a stone in winter, and I begin to think he's gone and died on me, sloughing off that tired old body of his."
Leaning against the plough, Diggory nodded his head, then stooped to pluck a withered stalk of grass that he began to chew.
"At times like that, a cloud'll flit across the sun and the wind'll pick up and I'll feel that I'm the only person left in this whole world. It's so unnerving that I'll set myself to leave him those times, but then all of a sudden his eyes open and he calls me back. 'Come, stay here with me,' he says and then picks up the thread of our conversation, like nothing had happened. After that, it's as if he's making up to me for it. He'll start explaining all kinds of things to me about our history, I mean the history of Arvon and the Holding here, really fascinating things, and the day just races by, 'til he sends me on some errand or other or has me fetch Galli so that the two of us can weed his garden or clean his dovecote or do some other chore that needs doing. And believe me, he's got an endless supply of chores. There's always something." Kal sighed and gazed at a swallow darting in the air over the ploughland. "Re'm ena, I'll never be free. I feel like a serving boy. Look at the other fellows my own age. They're finished their apprenticeships already or clearing their very own farmsteads. Take Galli, setting himself up as a beekeeper in those clover-rich meadows next to Mantling Moss. But here I am, doing all these blasted little jobs, patching the stonework of the Great Glence, sweeping the floor, and running here and running there, rushing to Wrenhaven for this and off to Broadmeadows for that."
"I'd advise you not to get too onion-eyed and sorry for yourself. You think you're not free? Just give a thought to all them hordes of people in the lowlands. They're the ones who've lost their freedom in very truth, swinking and sweating under the overseer's lash. Your father can tell you all about it from his days as a young man in Dinas Antrum, stories that'll curdle your stomach."
"I know," conceded Kal, looking aside again to the fresh-turned soil, "but still . . ."
"Aye, there be a good reason why we call the lowlands the Dungheap. I can think of no better word to give a proper notion of the place. You know it was old Sarmel that came up with it one evening at the Bottle while deep in his cups. About the only sensible thing to come out of the old codger's mouth in an age, save for his talk about strange signs in the night sky, but don't go telling him that.
"Kal, you're a Holdsman born and bred. Be right thankful you're not stuck in them rat-infested lowlands providing another strong young back for them thieving scoundrels. Still and all, we're in a sorry state these days, a right sad and sorry state." Diggory paused, his eyes straying over the younger man's shoulder to the Edgemere Road. "Now look at that! Who's that raising the dust like a windstorm?"
Kalaquinn fetched a look back at a mounted figure who approached, riding furiously in the direction of the clanholding's only town, Wrenhaven.
"Somebody from the court of the Crown-Taker," Kal said. "Can you see the mastiff's head on his surcoat? Yet another unwelcome messenger come from seeing Wilum, I expect, hoping to bend his old bones to their wishes." The rider drew closer. He passed near the two Holdsmen, rounded a bend in the road, and disappeared from sight into the woods. "The fellow does seem in an awful hurry, though, doesn't he? Can't get out of the Holding fast enough, by the looks of it. Heading straight for the Pass, no doubt." Kal looked back at Diggory. "And, no doubt, Master Wilum has sent the man scurrying back to the Mindal with a few threats of his own."
The ruddy ploughman chuckled, then furrowed his brow in thought. He pulled on his jaw and looked to the north. "Now, who's on watch up at the Aerie now?" Kal followed Diggory's gaze to a slight break in the wall of mountains—the Wyrdlaugh Pass. There stood a watchtower—the Aerie to the folk of the Holding—which overtopped a massive iron gate that blocked the only point of entry into the secluded valley. The gate and watchtower, fixed solidly into the flanking granite walls of the Pass, had helped to keep the small highland clanholding free from invaders for years beyond count. "Nemdin, I think . . . Aye, and Drusil, and that young lad, Laggis!" Diggory said, nodding with satisfaction, obviously pleased with himself for his good memory.
Kal looked again to where the rider had thundered into the woods. "I wonder what that old fox Gawmage is up to now," he said. "One more thing for Wilum to worry about, I expect. I should hurry."
"Sure he's up to no good. He and his greedy lot want to set new boundary stones to the Dungheap, bring it all the way to our doorstep and then some. Room to expand, they call it, claim it's their right. A surly lot they are, like those two lowlanders that have been skulking around the Holding for days on end now—"
"Friends of Enbarr's, brought in by him," Kal said. "Aye, they're a suspicious pair."
"Well, I'd sooner give those two scoundrels the back of my hand than the time of day. If it weren't for the fact that they enjoy the protection of Kenulf, that hog-grubbing son to our good thane, they'd have been run out of the Holding long ago. Each as brash as a rooster on a manure pile. Why they even treat our good Thane Strongbow like he was just another flunky." Diggory clucked to himself and shook his head. "The lowland dogs! They're all like their master. And Gawmage's not one to be trusted, not in the least ways. By my ten knucklebones, Kal, I have a queer feeling we'll not be left in peace."
"How's that? They've been threatening and ranting for as long as I can remember."
"And that goes back a far, far ways, don't it, lad?" said Diggory with a grin. "But you're right, you're right, they've been showing us them claws of theirs for some while now. But one day, when the time is ripe, they'll make good on their threats. You know how the old saying goes, 'As often as not it's the sheep what's been warned that the wolf takes for his supper.' Well, Kal," he ended abruptly, returning to his place and balancing the plough point behind the two great horses, "I've had my little rest. It's back to the furrows or I won't get my ploughing done today, and who knows but that it might rain tomorrow."
"Will I find Galli up at the house?"
"Aye, he's expecting you. So's Gammer Clout, clucking and fussing, I'll warrant, like a broody hen about her nest. She's spring cleaning, doing her carpets, and that with a vengeance. I'm glad I've got my ploughing to do. It don't pay to be anywheres near her when she's at her cleaning. Briacoil, Kal—on we go then. Come Sandalfoot! Up Jobber!" he urged the horses.
"Briacoil," Kal said, and, with a final wave, sought his way again. He broke into another song, one which Diggory, if he was cocking an ear in the growing distance, would find much more to his liking. Indeed, Kal soon gave up the song and listened instead to the ploughman, who took up the tune lustily as he plodded along the furrow fresh-turned by his team and plough.
". . . Come fellows, and hearken, by the tun or the firkin,
For I know that you know beyond doubt
That nought brings as good cheer as good comp'ny and beer!
So let's drink to Ale, Porter and Stout!
Three damsels come daily, to me they sing gaily . . ."
Diggory began the song again, and its strains faded as Kal strolled out of earshot. He left the Edgemere Road and passed over a stile in the quickset hedge, beyond which ran a path that took him past the woodlot of the Clouts. Along the edge of the woods, Kal came to a cart track that twisted and turned from the main road to the Clout homestead, set comfortably, amid a burst of foliage, on a gently rising hill. He had hardly emerged from a tangle of yellow overwintered grass and set foot on the trackway to the Burrows, as the Clouts called their farm, when he was almost bowled over by Nightshade, Galli's coal-black retriever. A mere few steps ahead of Nightshade flashed a light brown hare, running for its life. The dog was almost on it, only to be frustrated when the animal bolted for the safety of a hare-hole in the base of a drystone wall. At the entrance to the hare-hole, Nightshade began to bark, pressing his snout into the narrow opening, pawing at it in a vain effort to follow his quarry.
"Come here, Night, leave him be. He's long gone. You'd best come along home with me. Come, Night. Come on, boy, let's go! I'm not the only one with spring fever today, eh Night?" said Kal, stroking the dog's head when he had bounded back to him, his tongue lolling and his tail wagging. Even the brindled cow who had been tearing complacently at some meadow grass moved off towards a clump of alder trees to give the energetic dog a clear berth.
The laneway began to mount the rise of land on which the Burrows was set. Kal could now see the house and its outbuildings through a screen of tall poplars that acted as a windbreak. Reaching the farmyard, he decided he'd have a look around before he tried the house. It was likely that Galli was hard at work around one of the barns, getting a new hive ready to set in his tract of meadowland.
"Galli," he shouted, "are you there?" Again he shouted. No answer. His presence caused a flurry of excitement among the clucking chickens and squealing piglets, which had found their way into every nook and cranny of the muddy farmyard. Kal greeted a group of cows who were tugging lazily at a bundled sheaf of winter hay.
"Why ladies, what are you doing with that old stuff, when you've got a whole farm's worth of fresh grass?"
One of the cows started to pull out of the group and lumber towards Kal. But it was not one of the cows at all, rather the bull, and with a look of ill-concealed annoyance about him. Nightshade barked at him.
"That's all right, fellow, no harm meant, honestly—Quiet, Night. Get out of his way, don't bother him—I'm just minding my own business, can't you see? Moving right along, honestly. Good bull . . . nice bull . . . easy bull. That's a good bull—Leave him alone, Night, you'll just get him riled. Get away from him! Quiet! Stop barking!" The bull kept shambling closer, lowering his shaggy head, gently rocking it side to side inches above the muck of the barnyard. Clearly he wanted to show man and dog who was in charge. Kal broke into a brisk walk that quickly turned into a run. Looking over his shoulder, he remembered with dismay the things Galli had said about this ill-tempered monster. Probably it was all exaggeration on Galli's part. He had no intention, however, of staying to find out, for the bull was coming closer and closer, picking up speed along the way. Kal passed near the pond, where a bold gander gave him a violent start when it jumped out from a curtain of bulrushes, hissing at him and buffeting Nightshade with his wings. This aggressive display from the gander checked even the bull, who seemed to have adopted the opinion now that none of this was worth the bother and so pulled away to rejoin his cows.
A few swift strides and Kal was clambering over a lofty stone wall that kept the animals out of Gammer's kitchen garden. He jumped down into a soft patch of garden soil. Nightshade had slunk through a gap in the gate at the far corner of the enclosure. Kal breathed a sigh of relief and smiled at the sight of the dog.
"Did you get some sense knocked into you? It serves you right, you crazy dog. 'Deadly Nightshade' would better suit you. I almost got myself killed there thanks to you."
Kal looked up, and a discreet smile lit his face at the sight of Galli's aunt and her eldest daughter. Armed with thick birchwood clubs, they were both busy beating a brightly coloured carpet stretched out on a long trestle under an apple tree white with blossom. At their backs stood open the door of a thatched cottage of buff-yellow stone trellised with ivy.
"Briacoil, Gammer!" hailed Kal.
"Briacoil, Kal," greeted Marya demurely, to which Kal replied in kind.
"Briacoil! How are things going, young Master Kalaquinn, this fine spring morning, a long overdue one at that?" Gammer peremptorily took up the conversation from her daughter, lifting an eye in her direction. "And what brings you to the Burrows so early in the day? And so breathless?"
"I've come to collect Galli. We're needed by Wilum. He wants us to spruce his place up properly now that the Candle Festival's come and gone. And then there's his garden that needs turning. He said he wanted us to report to him first thing in the morning come rain or shine. 'No sleeping in on the nones of May.' Those were his words, Gammer, no mistake," said Kal. He knew what was coming.
"So they were, and a hard time I had of it keeping my Galli from gloating that Wilum wanted him and you up at the Great Glence and that he'd be having to leave the house just when I'm in the middle of my spring cleaning and me and my four girls in sore need of a man's strong arm lifting these carpets and giving them a proper wallop to get out all the dust and grime of winter!" To give weight to her point, she delivered a flurry of blows to the carpet. Kal, grinning, glanced at Marya.
"He told me of Wilum's instructions this morning," Gammer puffed, "but I told him right crisply, 'A likely story you're giving me, Galligaskin Clout. I weren't born yesterday. Just you wait here and help your aunt Gammer, 'til Kalaquinn Wright comes to collect you, if what you says is honest truth.' Many's the time in the past, old Gammer's had the right notion of things, when my Galli's set his mind on gadding about the Holding, getting into heaps of mischief. Oh, when I think of how often I told his poor old mother, bless her soul, to watch that young one, her little Galli! Mischief-maker he were already even as a child. Little did I ken I'd be left pulling in the reins on him with precious little help from his uncle. Mercy, if it were up to Digg, Galli'd be roaming the Holding without a care day and night."
She stopped abusing the carpets and turned a feigned scowl on Kal. "That's what I said to that young scamp of mine, Kal, and mercy me if he didn't up and disappear on me before I could catch my breath. Next thing I know he's up on yon grassy knoll pointing and waving his arms like a witch-ridden huskin, yelling down to me that he sees something out of the ordinary up in the woods above the Shaad, that he's going to have a look. 'Tell Kal I'll meet him at the Howe,' he shouts and off he goes like a rabbit in fright. Into the woods and he's gone without so much as a 'by your leave.' That's our Galli for you. What's a body to do with a feckless lad like that? Now tell me honest truth, Kalaquinn Wright!" demanded Gammer as the young man fidgeted under the burden of her lighthearted invective.
"Well . . . um . . . I'd best be moving, Gammer, or I'll be late getting to the Howe. I'm sure Wilum has a pile of work for us to do," Kal said, edging away from her.
"And good luck to poor old Wilum if he thinks he can get more out of the lad than his very own flesh and blood can. Tell your friend that he can save some of that armpower for when he gets back home. Mind you bring him home the gainest way, Kal. I'll be counting on you not to let him malinger in the bypaths. There's plenty of things I need lifted and moved and rearranged before the girls and me are done. Oh, woe is me, so much to do, so few hands to lighten my burden, and me getting older, not younger."
"I'll get him back to you as soon as I can, the worthless layabout," replied Kal with an impish grin, "as soon as we're done at Wilum's."
"You're a good lad, Kal. For that matter so's Galli, most nearly always, except when he's out roaming the hills and dales and keeping other honest folk from their work."
At that Gammer and Kal eyed each other and both broke into broad smiles, while Marya watched with shy bemusement.
"And you're a good Gammer, Mother Clout. And I'm sure Galli wouldn't trade you for any other aunt in the world!" Kal put his arm around the small fubsy matron, whose face shone out from her violet kerchief like an overripe pippin.
"Well then, come in, Kalaquinn, for some toast and tea and thimbleberry jam before you goes your way. Marya, heat up the kettle and get out a tablecloth," Gammer said, her air of pique now gone. "By the gingers, if young Galli can take a break from his labours, then so can we, especially seeing as we've got to leave the lad some work to do when he gets home to the Burrows, don't we, Marya?"
"I'm sorry, Gammer, no thank you, but really I can't stay. I think I'll be late even if I leave right now." Kal began again to turn away. "Perhaps on our way home. Right now I'd best be off to Wilum's, if I'm to get any work done at his place today. Briacoil, Gammer! Briacoil, Marya!" bade Kal, anxious to extricate himself from Gammer's toils, for he knew from bitter experience that she could hold a body up for ages, as she discoursed on her favourite and endlessly various topic—the shiftlessness and misdemeanours of her nephew Galligaskin.
"Ah well, if you must, you must," huffed Gammer, who turned, threatening a carpet with her cudgel. She glanced back to Kalaquinn. "Briacoil, lad. And mind you keep an eye on Galli."
Skirting Gammer's kitchen garden, he made for the edge of the orchard, where there was a swinging wooden gate set in the wall that he had gamely climbed to escape the bull moments before.
The Clout farm was the last farm on the Edgemere Road before the glencelands, which consisted of the lands attached to the Great Glence and Wuldor's Howe. About a hundred hides of land fell to the oversight of Wilum, the Hordanu. This was an immense, mostly forested tract of land that encompassed much of the southern shoreline of Deepmere as well as a sizable swath of the trackless mountain heights. By contrast Thane Strongbow, who oversaw the entire Clanholding of Lammermorn, owned only fifty hides of land, while the average farm in the Holding was just one or two hides in extent. Wilum and most of the Hordanus who had preceded him allowed the Holdsmen to hunt and fish in certain parts of the glencelands. A few folk were allowed to pasture some of their sheep and cattle in the handful of open fields that could be found scattered here and there.
In a hurry to make Wilum's, Kal decided that instead of retracing his steps and following the Edgemere Road he would take a shortcut by a little-used footpath that wound its way through the woods, ending up at the Shaad, a field close by the Great Glence. Leaving the knoll on which the Burrows rested, Kal turned his steps down its eastern terrace of stone, where it merged into a lush pasture that lay within a cordon of hills, brimming with coppice woods. Above the horizon the sun climbed slowly into the cloudless sky, lighting up the snowcapped spires of the Radolan Mountains and beginning to send broad, glistening bands of gold onto their dusky flanks. In places there were long gloomy gashes on the sun-soaked hillsides, where deep ravines and stony river courses gave shelter to woodland creatures.
Kal spared little thought to what might have caught Galli's attention in the distance. He was always chasing after will-o'-the-wisps, ranging up and down the hills of the Holding with reckless energy. After all, the woods were to him what water is to a fish. It was the Telessarian blood that he had inherited from his mother, or perhaps it was his father's wanderlust.
As a young man, Cammas—Galli's deceased father, Gammer Clout's young brother—had up and left the valley to explore the wider world. He was never seen again. A few years later, though, a young Telessarian woman, half-starved and with a babe in arms, surprised the gatewardens, claiming in halting lowland Arvonian that she was the wife of Cammas Cornkister. He had counselled her to take their infant son and make her way to the Clanholding of Lammermorn in the highlands of Arvon to escape the strife that was enveloping the folkdom, as had happened to so many of the lands of the East beyond the protective palisade of the Coolcower Alps, as well as the lands beyond the Great Wall. Cammas was not heard from again. It was thought he had died of the Black Fever.
Cairderga and her son were taken in by the Clouts. The young mother did not outlive her young son's fifth birthday. Gammer had said straightaway, when Cairderga first came to the Holding with her boy, that "her heart's broke, poor thing" and gave out the opinion that "she's not long for this world. Ah, but I'll feel sorry for the wee lad left without mother nor father." And so, lacking sons of their own, Diggory and Gammer took in and indulged their orphaned nephew. From an early age, Galli's Telessarian browmark caused him to stand out from the other boys of the Holding. When he grew older, in his eagerness for understanding of his ancestry, he sought out Wilum, who took him under his wing together with Kal. While Galli was not a particularly good student, he soaked up the lore and legends of his Telessarian forebears that were passed on to him by the elderly Hordanu.
Passing to the edge of the pasture, shrill with the chirping of crickets, and staying within sight of a few scattered head of grazing cattle, Kal came to a very old yew. Its larger branches riddled with holes and cavities, the ancient tree was thick with pairs of starlings busy with the task of nest-building. The air boiled with their ceaseless chatter. Here the pathway turned into the woods and rose to a boulder-studded hillcrest, from which Kal looked across to the Burrows. The lone squat figure of Gammer Clout still beat her carpets. Beyond her, past the winding laneway leading into the Burrows, lay Deepmere, bright and sparkling in the light of the morning sun. Kal waved to Gammer and looked around him, wondering for a brief moment what Galli might have seen. He himself could not see anything. Then again he did not have Galli's keen Telessarian eyes or boundless curiosity.
Kal pressed on through the forest, following the ups and downs and meanderings of the path and breathing deeply the earthy smells. At his feet lapped vivid green bracken fronds that had pushed themselves up through last year's bed of mouldering beech leaves.
Soon, his way took him up a sharply sloping ridge crowned by a grove of trees, the Craythorne Firs. On the other side of them lay the Delf, a deep trench which separated the Clout farm from the glencelands. From the Firs he could see the Great Glence itself, built with granite slabs quarried from the Delf. Adjoining the Great Glence at right angles to it stood Wilum's keeil—his living quarters and scriptorium. Farther towards the west lay Stillfields, which remained the ancient burial ground of the Hordanus from the time of Hedric. Dominating Stillfields were the Haltadans, an avenue of massive towering stones that flanked the entrance to Ram's Knap, the mausoleum where Hedric, the first Hordanu, was interred. Not far from the Great Glence, just below it, could be seen the southern extremity of Deepmere, which gathered itself into a sheltered basin to the lee of Raven's Crag Island. The turreted ivy-clad walls of Owlpen Castle, the ancient seat of the Thanes Strongbow, now deserted, overtopped the thick-growing trees of the Island. At the opposite end of the lake, some four leagues distant as the crow flies, lay the town of Wrenhaven and beside it Broadmeadows, the manorial home of generations of the family Strongbow, Thanes of the highland Clanholding of Lammermorn. Beyond Wrenhaven was the Wyrdlaugh Pass, a narrow breach in the majestic ring of mountains that cordoned the Holding on every horizon. So far as the folk of the Stoneholding knew, this was the only way in and out of their lakeland clanholding, the most ancient and venerable of all of Arvon's clanholdings, and the smallest too.
The Craythorne Firs grew straight and smooth as ships' masts and towered above Kal, as he approached the edge of the Delf, making for a place they called the Channel. Here he slid down a steep chute of scree to the bottom of the deep ravine, about two hundred yards—a good bowshot's distance. Behind him thundered a hail of stones.
He followed the gulch of the Delf farther up into the mountainside out of which it had been hewn by some mysterious force of nature, passing long-disused quarry pits gouged from the flanks of the mountain by pick and shovel. Soon he arrived at some ancient stone steps that had been cut into the granite for the convenience of the pit workers.
The Holdsman mounted these steps, emerged from the Delf, and entered the wooded depths of the glencelands. At first the footpath took him higher up into the hills, but only because a curving ridge of rock had to be skirted before he could strike a downward course towards Wuldor's Howe and the Great Glence. The Howe was a little apron of land at the very southern tip of Deepmere, where Ardiel, the first High King of Arvon, after his great victory at the Velinthian Bridge over three thousand years ago, had caused the Great Glence to be built around the Glence Stone. And even before then, in a mistier time, the Howe was a spot where the echobards gathered to sing their ancient runic lays at the Stone and at the standing stones that towered over nearby Stillfields.
The way broadened, winding down the naturally occurring terraces of the mountain. With its many ancient oak trees, their twisted boles bearded with outcroppings of moss and draped with mistletoe, the forest gave the impression of venerable age. Serenading him was a colony of ring-ouzels with their mellow plaintive whistles. As he approached the floor of the valley, he could see the granite stone cupola of the Great Glence rising above the treetops. To his right grew more mammoth oaks, keeping guard over thick ranks of bluebells, bladder campions, and wood anemones. A field mouse pushed aside the scaly stalk of a fern and scampered quickly for cover. A hawk hovered above the crown of a neighbouring oak.
Soothed by the drifting melodies of warbler and thrush, Kal moved along the edge of Oakenvalley Bottom, an ancient wood that had stood unscathed by woodsman's axe for century upon century from the time of the First Age, the Age of Echoes. None save the Hordanu dared enter its strange depths, where the life of its birds and beasts and flora, as rich and colourful as it was, seemed different, natural and yet somehow wholly out of the ordinary. It was in a brazier set in the heart of the Bottom that the Sacred Fire of Tramys was kept perpetually burning. The Hordanu entered the wood himself on the evening of the Candle Festival to bring the inhabitants of the Holding new fire for their yearly celebration.
Whenever he passed the Bottom, Kal felt its mystery as well as its strange peace. It was a place that the folk of the Holding were forbidden to enter. The few scoffing adventurers who hazarded their way into it were invariably gripped by an overpowering fear before they had trodden more than a step or two of the hallowed ground. Nor were they ever the same after the experience. Indeed, many of them met an untimely death.
The road turned down, clinging fast to the southern margin of the Bottom. Dropping into a hollow, it crossed a small brook over a weathered stone bridge, then rose again steeply. Where the road resumed its descent to the Great Glence in Wuldor's Howe, a branching footpath clung to the steeple of the ridge which overlooked the Bottom. This was the Echobard's Walk, trodden only by Wilum whenever he entered the strange haunts of the wood.
The ground of the Echobard's Walk, made soft by the rainstorm of the previous evening, showed two distinct sets of prints, one far larger than the other. Clearly the smaller set belonged to the Hordanu. But the other?
Kal stooped down to examine one of the big prints, made by someone with an odd cut to his boots and in a hurry. Galli would be able to read much from these tracks. Straightening his frame, Kal set off again, quickening his pace, eager to relate what he had discovered to Wilum.
From the Echobard's Walk the way broadened out again into a wider avenue surrounded by great-boled oak, beech, and maple. It was as if the woods of Oakenvalley Bottom had spilled over their enclosing ridge. In the same way the lone flute-like rolls of some bird, tremulous with mystery, drifted down from the lip of the Bottom. Its soft tones intensified Kal's growing unease. The ancient forest ended abruptly and Kal broke into a run across the Shaad, a field thickly covered with clover and alfalfa.
In the near distance loomed the Great Glence. Set on a low hill, it looked like a massive granite skep, tall rectangular window openings rising at regular intervals along its hive-shaped circumference. The great carved oaken doors of the entrance, rounded to fit the contours of the stone on either side, were shaded by a portico resting on two stout square pillars. As Kal drew closer, he could discern the fragrance of herbs carried on the faint breeze. Master Wilum, he knew, would no doubt have them cleaning the portico, still strewn with marjoram, meadwort, and thyme from the ceremonies of the Candle Festival.
Kal slackened his pace as he made for the long low building that abutted the Great Glence. Smoke drifted in a thin curl from a chimney set in the slate roof—old Cloudbeard chasing away from his keeil the chill that clung yet to these spring mornings.
Kal's eyes strayed up into the hills. There flashed a glint of what looked like sun on metal. Now gone. Then again. A gleam of light, coming, it seemed, from a dense clump of bushes that crowded a small ledge on one of the forested ridges that overlooked the Howe. "Is that you up there, Galli? What are you up to?" he muttered, as he stopped to scan the area more closely. The light flashed again as the screening leaves were caught in the breeze.
Kal cupped his hands at his mouth, bellowed his friend's name, and paused to listen. No answer came. He called a couple of times more, then gave up to turn back towards the keeil.
As he turned away, something caught his attention in the corner of his eye. He strained now to pick out detail. Yes, there, not two good stone's throws away, still as a hare, a man crouched in the greenery close to a patch of bare rock not far below the telltale sparkle of light. Certainly not Galli, Kal realized with shock from the outline of the man's figure and the colour of his clothes. The man remained bent over, his face turned towards the clearing in the Shaad. Because he kept still, his green tunic hid him against the foliage. As it was, Kal would surely have missed him, if it had not been for the gleam of light drawing his eyes to that spot on the hillside.
Nobody ever skulked around in the woods of the Howe. Kal quashed his first impulse to rush and investigate. That would put the intruder on his guard and might scare him off. Better to carry on in the direction of the keeil. After quickly informing Wilum, he could circle around the Great Glence and scout stealthily back to the Shaad along the edge of the forest.
He shouted Galli's name once more by way of a ruse, indirectly watching the hidden man. Animal or person—it doesn't matter what you're stalking—they'll feel you staring at them, his father had always told him. Use the corner of your eye, he had advised.
It was then Kal saw the spyglass the lurking figure held up against his eye. He swallowed hard, his neck hairs prickled. With a shrug, trying to look carefree, he broke into a loud rendition of "The Three Ravens" and made his way towards the keeil again.
Towards the woods on his left, the Shaad was broken by a stretch of rich dark soil where Wilum had his garden. A wall of mortared stones enclosed it and an adjacent orchard. Kal passed the draw well from which they watered Wilum's vegetable patch. A wooden bucket dangled from its jack-roll, which was covered with an open roof of cedar shingles.
The dreamy sound of cooing pigeons grew louder as he approached the keeil, skirting a six-sided stone dovecote. Before he could reach the door of the building, it swung open, the doorhandle clasped in the crook-fingered grip of an old man.
"Well I'm here, Master Wilum," Kal said, relief in his voice, as he sprinted through the entrance.
"Thank heaven, lad!" The old man sighed, pushing the door closed behind the both of them. Bent over with age, he clutched at his staff. A dishevelled mane of hair brushed the collar of his long brown cloak, which swept down to his sandalled feet and was secured by a thick rope cincture around his waist.
"We need to get help—they've quenched the Sacred Fire. I still can't believe it's happened, never, not since Ardiel's time," he said, pulling at the white beard that framed his flushed and deeply lined face. A tremor seemed to run through his body. He gripped his staff more tightly and shook his head.
"Who's they?"
"Gawmage's messenger. He stole into the Bottom. Must have been early this morning before I came to see him off at the guesthouse. When I got there, he was already gone."
"Well then, that's what I saw when I passed by, his tracks. I wonder, I just saw someone up on the hillside above the Shaad, spyglass and all!"
"What are you talking about?"
Kal recounted what he had seen.
"So, that explains it," said Wilum.
"Explains what?"
"The feeling I've had . . . of being watched. But where's Galli?"
"He's not here yet?"
"No, I thought he was coming with you."
"When I stopped by the Burrows, Gammer Clout said he'd run ahead, chasing after something he'd seen in the woods. What if he's up on that hillside and in trouble?"
Wilum looked grim.
"I'm going to sneak out into the woods to where I saw the fellow and try to find out what's going on. Galli may be there."
"Aye, go find him quickly. I hate to send you out alone, but we've got no choice. There's no time to fetch any of the other men. You go look for him. You've got your shortsword?"
Kal nodded, grabbing at its hilt.
"You'd better take my longbow."
"You have a longbow?"
"Right here," Wilum said, as he opened the doors of a large closet built into the wainscotting.
"Really?"
"You needn't act so shocked, young Master Kalaquinn. I was young once too, believe it or not. I used this to lay in my supply of venison for the winter and it wasn't so long ago either." Wilum held out a bow and quiver to Kal.
"Nice weapon," Kal said, admiring the bow's horn-tipped ends and its finely carved grip. He accepted the bow and felt its balance, then unstrung the quiver's leather flap, flipping it back to reveal nearly a score of expertly fletched shafts. No common hunting tools these.
"A gift. These were a gift. But the main thing is it works. I just tried the bow the other day, when I fitted a new string on it," replied Wilum, with a half-smile and one snowy eyebrow cocked.
"Whatever you do, be careful and come straight back to me here once you've found Galli. Don't use the bow unless you've no other choice. No foolish heroics. Do you understand? We've got to get help. We must summon the Thane and the men of the Holding for a folkmoot. The Fire's out. We have grave matters to discuss." Wilum paused, placed his hand upon the young man's raven head, and, looking into his bright eyes, nodded. "Now go."
"All right. Lock your door and try not to worry. I'll be back as soon as I can."
"Briacoil." The old man raised his hand in parting.
Kal opened the door of the keeil and walked out as if nothing were wrong. A cold hand clutched at Kal's insides. Something sinister and threatening hung in the air. He could sense it bearing down on him from the hillside above. He must find Galli. Steeling himself against the looming menace of the watcher, he turned past the gabled endwall of the keeil. The young Holdsman made a wide circle around the Great Glence, aiming for woodland on the edge of the broad clearing that surrounded the stone structure. To the north he could make out the lofty battlements of Owlpen Castle, crowning the heights of Raven's Crag Island, set like a sentry picket in the waters of Deepmere's narrow southern limits.
Slipping into the woods—unnoticed he hoped—he turned onto the first footpath going in the direction he wanted. It ran well free of underbrush at first. As the path rose, the tangle of briars and brambles became thicker. Finally Kal left it in order to pursue a straighter course to the hill above the Shaad.
Pricked on by the unfamiliar thrill of adventure, he waded through the thickets, heedless of the thorns that tore at his leggings. He slipped down a slope of bracken and dogwood and came to the banks of a trout brook, where a kingfisher kept up an incessant chatter. In places the ground remained wet from the spring runoff, and Kal's feet and shins were soon soaked through. He followed the brook upstream to its source. Dripping with sweat, Kal paused to take a drink from the cool waters. He climbed up the ridge from the spring and joined a path that brought him to the woods above the Shaad. Peering through a gap in the foliage, he looked down on the dovecote and the keeil.
The green-clad intruder had to be close now, on the other side of a thin stand of white birch trees to the right. He stole forward, then stopped for a moment, listening. There was a stir of movement in the woods and the sound of a voice.
"Hey Grumm, will you look at what we've found us here. Sleeping like a baby. With moss for his pillow." It was a man with a thick lowland accent, hidden from view by two great oak trees that loomed ahead.
"Maybe you could speak a little louder, Skrobb, so's everybody in the valley will know we're here," another lowland voice said.
"It's that black-haired fellow's mate. You know, the two of them, always together, the old one's men. I don't know how we could have missed him. He's fast asleep here—or was asleep. Lookee here, our baby's waking up."
Kal crept closer, guarding his every footfall against any dry twig, stick, or leaf.
"What do you want me to do? One of us has got to stay put and keep watching the old man's place. Where's that blasted tracker gone to? He's supposed to be helping us."
"He's here with me. Weird bill of goods, if you ask me. Don't miss a trick in the woods, though, I'll grant him that. It's him that found this lad here. What do you say I stick this highland scum like a milk-fed pig?"
Kal listened, aghast. He launched himself forward into a run, trying to pinpoint the gruff lowland voice.
"Wh-wh-what's this?" It was Galli, groggy and disoriented.
"No! You no kill. He from Telessar like me. See mark on face," said another heavily accented voice.
"Ah, move out of my way, you idiot! Out of my way, quick, before the piglet gives us the slip."
"Galli!" Kal cried. The scrub caught at his legs and arms as he ran. He stumbled, pitching forward, and the bow was torn from his grip. He threw himself from the ground, regaining his feet, and drew his sword as he broke free from the underbrush. He could see them now, all three of them. They were farther away than he had thought.
Unarmed save for his hunting knife, Galli half-rose from the crook of an exposed tree root. He reached for his sheath and edged away from a huge man who had his sword drawn and was now sparing a distracted glance in Kal's direction. Kal recognized him as one of the lowlanders Kenulf and Enbarr had brought back with them from Dinas Antrum. Facing the man stood a tall rangy figure in green homespun. Kal came at them at full tilt, waving his shortsword.
"To me, Grumm, to me! It's the old man's lackey coming to the rescue! Here, I'll take care of this one first. Let him finish his nap in the grave." The lowlander turned to plunge his sword into Galli.
"No, leave man alone!" The tracker pulled at the lowlander's sword arm this time, even as the big man lunged forward to pin Galli. Deflected from Galli's stomach, the sword point tore instead at his arm, slicing through his tunic, causing him to drop his knife.
"Let go of me, you painted mongrel. Now I've had more than enough of you," the man snarled in anger and brought his sword around in an arc, cutting down into the Telessarian's shoulder where it met the neck. The tracker sank to his knees, blood gushing out from the wound in a flood. Galli clambered up over the thick tree root out of harm's way for the moment. The lowlander turned on Kal, who now confronted him, shortsword at the ready, looking for an opening.
The other man, hearing the commotion, had left his point of vantage nearby and hurried to the aid of his comrade. To Kal's horror, the man carried a crossbow, spanned and ready. Though he was screened by the trunk of the large oak, Galli must have heard the man grunting with the effort of running as he came, for Galli stiffened. From the corner of his eye, Kal watched as Galli peered cautiously around the tree and caught sight of the man stampeding through a patch of fern, clumsily raising his crossbow to his shoulder. He slipped from cover with quick stealth and circled wide. Deftly he stalked the lowland ox, lightly darting forward across the soft forest floor, until he stood close on the heels of his quarry.
"Watch out! Behind you! Grumm!" his companion shouted, taking his eyes off Kal for a brief moment.
Grumm turned, but Galli was ready for him. He pushed the fellow off stride and darted forward alongside him, knocking the crossbow from his grasp. But not before the lowlander had triggered it, letting fly the bolt.
Kal's opponent blanched and swore, bringing a hand up to caress his ear, which had been creased by the quarrel and now dripped blood on his collar.
"Leave him, Kal. Stand off. I'm fine. Let the big lout chase you if he can," cried Galli, as he snatched up the crossbow and smashed it against a tree trunk. Grumm staggered forward towards his partner.
"Let's be gone," he quailed, while backing off into the woods, timid without his weapon. At this, Skrobb also lost the heart to go it alone with Kal. He turned and took heel.
"There they go, Dinas Antrum's best and bravest," said Galli, slumping pale against a tree, favouring his blood-soaked arm.
"Let's take a look at that wound of yours."
"Forget about it. He just scratched me. What about him? A Telessarian."
"What's he doing here?"
"It doesn't matter. He saved my life. Look, I think he's still alive. What should we do?" Galli moved to kneel down beside the man and cradled his head. The stranger's breathing was shallow. Slowly his eyes flickered open.
"Cairderga . . . You face like sister . . . Cairderga . . ." It cost him great effort to give the words voice.
"Let's rig up a stretcher. We'll have to get him down to the keeil fast," said Kal and began a distracted search for something to use for poles.
"Kal . . . Kal. He's dead."
They searched the body, but found nothing to tell them the identity of the strange man, just his Telessarian features, his green homespuns, and a pouch with flint and steel, together with a long cruel knife he had not had time to extract from his belt. They pulled the body away from the path and laid it beneath a gnarled tree.
"Just a moment . . . before we leave him," said Galli. Kal watched his large well-muscled friend. A shadow of grief passed over the pug-nosed face full of freckles, his fair hair tied at the nape of his neck revealing the telltale birthrite tattoo worn by Telessarians over the brow along the hairline from ear to ear. He stooped to pluck a wildflower and touched it to his own forehead. "Let thy browmark be thy warrant," he intoned as he laid it across the dead man's forehead. "We'll come back later and see he's buried decently."
Kal nodded then said, "We'd better report to Wilum and let him have a look at that wound of yours."
"It'll be fine. Nothing but a scratch, only a bit worse than what I'm getting all the time from the nasty spikes on the blackthorns. Hardly more painful than some of the stings my bees have given me. Just a flesh wound, looks uglier than it is."
"Still, Wilum'll have some ointment or other to make sure the wound doesn't fester—"
"Wait, I need to fetch that dagger," Galli said and set off into the woods at a run.
"What dagger?" Kal scrambled to follow him.
"It caught my eye when I followed them up here. I left it lying where I found it . . ." Galli halted in a small clearing where he bent to pick up an object. "Will you look at the workmanship!" he cried, straightening himself out to admire the naked dagger he held in his hand, its beautifully jewelled hilt flashing in the sun.
"I wish you'd tell me what's going on."
"Let's get out of here first. I'll explain when we reach Wilum's."
Galli slid the dagger back into its polished leather sheath, while casting a wary look around him.
Kal stifled his curiosity. "Sounds good," he said, "but first I need to grab Wilum's longbow."
"Wilum's longbow? Wilum has a longbow?"
"I'll explain when we reach Wilum's . . ."