The Letterseeker: Chapter Eight

Bull (bul), n. [<ME. bul, bule, bol, bole, <AS. *bulla = Icel. boli, a bull (Cf. Icel. baula, a cow); prob. from the root of bell, bellow <AS. bellan, roar, bellow, grunt, to bellow like a deer in rutting-time. = Sw. bala, roar, = G. bailen, bark, to cry out with a loud full sound.] 1. The male of any bovine, as of the different species of the genus bos.

Bull (bul), v. t. [= Icel. bola, butt, push.] 1. To toss or throw upward, as cattle do.

Stoneglow woke shivering. Grey morning light filtered through the close-knit firs. A gentle breeze rustled the branches. With an effort he sat up. His entire left side ached from the blow he had taken in the vortex of Needle-eye. Slowly the realization came: Gretta was gone. Had she been captured? No, or he too would be in bonds. Then she had run away—Proud Gretta!

He got up stiffly. His cloak was gone, but he still had the Bodla in its case. He had the knife, too—but not the sword; in his rush to escape he had left it protruding from the bear's chest. A foolish mistake, perhaps, but then he still seemed "unused to swords" as Garufel had put it. Yet even had he taken it he might have had to discard it at Needle-eye, where its weight would have been an encumbrance. He took the empty scabbard from his belt and dropped it to the ground. It was of no use now. Then he plunged his hands into his pockets. In the right pocket he found the last of the herbs Garufel had given him. The wrapping was damp on the outside. Perhaps the contents were ruined. The concoction was of no use in his present dilemma anyway, since he dared not take more this soon. He thrust it back into his pocket.

There was no sign about him of a struggle or a track; but there was a natural passageway through the trees that led down and southwest. Gretta might have gone that way. He decided to follow it. Hungry and cold, he made slow progress. After a while he came to a low rocky rise that blocked the way. He began to climb. As he neared the top he heard voices.

Carefully Stoneglow peered over the rocks. Close by at the edge of an open space were two of Maegeth's soldiers with their backs toward him, speaking in low tones. Then he saw Namon, accompanied by several more soldiers at the far side of the clearing. The captain was pacing back and forth, searching the ground for tracks. He withdrew his head from view and backed down the rocks. At the base of the rise he turned and moved slowly away until he had several stands of thick brush and trees between himself and Maegeth's captain. Then he stopped, trying to decide what to do next.

If he stayed in the area hunting for Gretta, Namon would find him. He remembered the scabbard—he was a fool for leaving it behind to mark his presence, but he could not take the time to go back for it now. No, he would have to forget about the scabbard and press northeast. He could make his way around the north slope of the mountain to Mindilfir's camp. As for Gretta, all he could do was hope that she was well on her way back to the Narrow Woods by now.

He labored up for about an hour, taking his direction from the sunlight that slanted through the trees. Then the skin at the nape of his neck tingled in warning. Something was nearby, something he could not quite hear or see. He stepped behind a cluster of dark trunks, listening and waiting. Nothing came, so after a while he slipped stealthily forward again. Suddenly the woods came to an end. He stopped in the shadows of the trees and looked out upon the rocky slope that stretched upward from that point to the sawtoothed ridge he and Gretta had descended the day before. The sense of danger grew greater.

She was there, mounted upon one of her bears, clad in her nightblack robe. The bear was sniffing at the rocky ground, searching. The Dark Maiden sat erect upon the powerful shoulders, holding her sword unsheathed in her right hand, too far away for Stoneglow to read the expression upon her face. She seemed alone. He did not see the other bear...

The other bear! Stoneglow turned to look behind. There was no beast about to crush him—yet.

He had to get away, but he could not go back toward Namon. He began moving very slowly southeast in the direction of the river valley. There was no pursuit. Soon the trees began to change: there were fewer of them, but they were larger and woven so thickly that the light overhead dimmed. There was also less undergrowth. Taking advantage of the open space, he started running again, putting as much distance as possible between himself and Maegeth.

He ran until the light grew very faint and the trees began to close in again. At last he entered a deep thicket where the trees were so frequent that he had to slow to a walk. He threaded this maze for a little longer before stopping. Hunger and exhaustion were catching up with him, making his legs tremble. He gripped a treetrunk for support.

His eyes adjusted to the darkness. The trees here resembled firs but they were very large and very old. He had the feeling that no one had disturbed this thicket for years—perhaps never. There were no sounds of birds, insects, or wind; only a faint creaking that might have been branches rubbing or some other whisper of the trees. The carpet of discarded needles at his feet was deep and springy and almost black in the gloom. Then he became aware of a dull white glow near the base of a tree a few feet from where he stood.

Stoneglow let go of the trunk beside him and drew closer to the patch of white. The white broke up into separate forms. Mushrooms, large ones. He plucked one and held it up in the dim light. It seemed the same kind as those Garufel had served him many times. Carefully he broke off a tiny piece and nibbled. It was slightly bitter, but it gave his stomach something to work with. He began to eat, slowly at first, then faster, until he was wolfing down the fifth mushroom. Then he stopped as suddenly as he had begun. He felt bloated. Water. An unbearable thirst came over him. He started wandering again through the trees, searching for a sign of water, and as he went the bloated feeling in his stomach grew into a discomfort.

All at once his knees and forehead banged hard into a treetrunk. He staggered back and clapped a hand to his brow. bringing it down black with blood. He peered into the gloom, trying to focus his eyes. Then he drew back in awe.

The tree was gigantic. A fir, perhaps, so large that the trunk loomed before him like a wall. The lower limbs were as thick as ordinary treetrunks and they twisted upward at fantastic angles that faded into utter darkness. The outer perimeter of the foliage was hidden too, the branches extending from the massive trunk in all directions past the reach of sight.

At last he realized that the light by which he saw the trunk came from the tree itself. A delicate luminescence played about the textured bark: the life force within, immeasurably strong in so ancient a being. He had entered a dark glade, and now he stood before its only sun—for so the tree had been to the clearing for uncounted centuries. Perhaps it was the first tree to grow here, that had spawned all the others.

The Forest-Mother, thought the Letterseeker. He sank to his knees before the immense rippled trunk. His stomach twisted violently, a cry sprang to his lips—and turned into an anguished prayer.

There was an answer. A rustle, a faint sighing breath from behind the tree. Stoneglow edged painfully around the trunk, feeling his way with his palms against the rough bark. Then he saw it, a white-furred flank moving toward him in the dim light.

He let out a choked cry and turned to flee, but a stabbing pain in his bowels doubled him over. Instead of running he dove headfirst into a tangle of dead limbs. Rotten, they crumbled beneath his weight. He found himself lying face down enmeshed in a cage of jagged leafless branches.

He lay still, expecting to be torn and killed by Maegeth's bear. Instead he heard another gentle stirring and a brief, derisive snort. Gritting his teeth, Stoneglow twisted his body around until he was sitting up. The dark glade seemed to reel. Through a haze of pain he brought the animal into focus.

A great white stag it seemed with its head raised looking up into the branches of the tree. For a moment Stoneglow forgot his desperate situation. He was hypnotized by this vision of silent, mysterious beauty. His gaze roved above the albino forehead to the pair of shining horns. They were like twin prongs of a lyre, curving upward until the points seemed to merge with the gloom. They were not antlers. The animal was not a stag. It was a bull—a magnificent, enchanted bull!

Stoneglow got to his feet, fighting the ache that had begun to spread through his body. The bull turned its head slowly until the ivory barbs were aimed straight at him. He stiffened.

Stoneglow could hear the steady unhurried breathing of the bull. It was a sharp contrast to his own weak gasps. Then the bull snorted and backed up a few paces. Something in its behavior seemed familiar. An image of Moon-eyes rose up, and of Garufel saying: She has named you a friend of the Maukyn.

“I am a friend,” Stoneglow whispered, his voice cracking. His mouth was dry as sand.

“A friend of Moon-eyes and the Maukyn of the Narrow Woods. I am called Stoneglow.”

Like molten silver pouring into a form, the bull lowered itself—the same gesture Stoneglow had seen before when the brown bull of the Maukyn had offered him a ride. Would this bull carry him? He stumbled toward it. Unmoving it watched his every step. He came to its side, reached out and clutched the silken fur, and with a great effort pulled himself up until he lay face down upon the bull's back with his scarred cheek resting upon the broad shoulders. In a half-delirium he felt the bull heave to its feet. Then it began to trot.

It went slowly at first, following a winding course through the trees until the light gathered overhead as the branches thinned; faster then, until as they came out upon a long, grassy slope it broke into a run. Stoneglow could barely hang on; but the bull knew its rider's weight and strength. With uncanny skill it countered every slip with a shrug, exactly balancing. Stoneglow kept his place, moving in and out of dreams, waking at times to a blur of movement and the roar of the hooves cleaving the sod.

Sometimes it seemed the voice of the ocean bidding him to drown beneath merciful waves. Then a white porpoise bore him up and carried him. He slipped from its gleaming side, but always it dove below and raised him again. At last they came to a shore. The bull halted. Stoneglow dropped from its back in a swoon. The ground was sandy, and there was a gentle hissing. It was a fairy- whisper; or perhaps Divine Nature saying Shh, calling all the things of the world to silence while he slept.

When Stoneglow opened his eyes again the light about him was yellow and rich—late afternoon sunlight. The pain in his entrails was gone, but his legs and arms were sore. There was a chill in the air, and a sound: that hissing!

Slowly he sat up. He was on a strip of sandy beach that formed the west bank of a wide dark river. There were clumps of tall reeds on each side of the beach, and dense masses of them lined the opposite shore to make an impenetrable-looking wall. A steady breeze played among the reeds, crossing and uncrossing their tops. Their scraping was a flutter of tongues; and as they sang, the river's voice gave body to the melody.

He looked behind, into the glare of the westering sun. Above the tops of the reeds he could see the peak of Barallas. He was east of the mountain—at the River Mim, certainly. Would Garufel and the others search for him? And would they think to search so far?

By the water stood the bull. He was drinking. As Stoneglow watched, the bull tossed his head, then walked majestically to the left, where he began to graze at a patch of green close to the reeds. He was a creature of pristine beauty, white as new snow, his hide clean and gleaming; he might have just bathed in the river. And there was something else—something beyond the physical: an air of confidence, power, a great reservoir of strength.

Water. Remembering his thirst, Stoneglow took his gaze from the bull and crawled on hands and knees across the strip of sand to the brink. He lowered his head and sipped the cold dark water from cupped hands. The draught brought a certain clarity. He was no longer hungry; he had entered a fasting-trance, a suspension of appetite coupled with a feeling of lightness and calm. The sunlight at his back had been a source of welcome warmth, but suddenly a piercing cold struck him.

“Well, bearkiller, now you have lost your toy sword. How will you murder the last of my pets?”

Slowly Stoneglow got to his feet and turned. She stood a distance away, at the reeds where they were parted by a narrow path. Her sword was in her right hand, a coiled black leather whip in the left. Beside her was a white bear on all fours, its shoulders as high as her head. The long sharp teeth were dirty white behind the drawn- back gums.

“The last one, Maegeth? I slew one; but there were three. Where is the third?”

“Ah, Urku!” Maegeth's eyes blazed. “He was strong! He broke the chains, and in his fury he killed many of the henchmen of Namon the Traitor. But in the end they speared him—many times. It was long before he fell!”

“Traitorous Namon!” Maegeth hissed. “He fled with the survivors, leaving only myself, the dead, and gentle Lurla, here...” She gave a wry smile. “But in a while I broke free from the curse of the green fire. I followed. We swam the whirlpool together, Lurla and I—didn't we, Lurla my faithful?”

“Lurla found the scent. We followed and came upon your cow- tracks. After that I rode like the wind. You cannot escape my wrath.” She lifted her sword menacingly.

Threescar smiled. He was so obviously helpless before her sword and her beast; her boasting seemed inappropriate.

Maegeth saw the smile. She drew back, a small gesture that others might not have noticed; but Stoneglow perceived the hesitation and took heart from it.

“I have escaped the wrath of your creatures,” he said, and he turned his head to put his left cheek fully in the sunlight. “These scars are proof that against me your commands are useless. I warn you. I am not helpless. I carry the verge that split your chamber.”

But Maegeth replied with a tone of unexpected sweetness in her voice. “You are alone here, without companion or direction. Where is your pretty lady? Have you used her and sent her away? She is proud. She has spurned you and abandoned you, has she not?”

“But I am here,” she said. “I have not abandoned you. I can help you. Who knows—I might please you as well. Give me the Bodla. It is of no use to you. Give it to me, and I will lead you from this wilderness where otherwise you will surely die.”

So that was it—She wanted him to give her the Bodla rather than take it from him by force. Perhaps, then, it had to be given or it would harm the taker.

“To my island, where I am Queen.” A tight smile came to her lips. “An easy journey if you have a guide. You will become an officer and a lord there. And in time, you may win those favors you most desire.”

A harsh laugh escaped Stoneglow's lips. Favors! She was mad! He felt a kind of pity mixed with aversion.

“I will not become your fool,” he said, “for desire felt is not desire realized. And I am not lost or alone. These are the reedfields of the River Mim. Friends are even now seeking me here: Erek and Flarann, captains of Mindilfir. And another whom you may not wish to see—the wizard Garufel.”

“Friend!” she spat the word. “The Redbeard Magician is your friend? Ha, ha, ha! If you count on him for help you will soon be slain. Always he fears to confront me. He is terrified by my strength!” She moved toward him and the bear moved with her. Stoneglow backed to the water's edge.

“I am its keeper,” he replied. “If you touch it unasked you shall regret it.”

But Maegeth was sure now that the alien could not use the Bodla against her deliberately. She had suspected that the destruction of her Chamber was not due to any knowledge of his, and his inaction convinced her of that. She raised the sword into the air above her head. The bear was several steps ahead of her, straining as if held by an invisible leash.

The leash snapped. The bear lurched forward, its eyes fixed upon Threescar as though to create a bond between them—a bond of death!

But as the beast hurtled across the few yards separating them, a terrific bellow split the air. It was not bear-sound, nothing learned in the secret games of cubs in caves. It was a call of green earth, of fields and grazing and the mighty resilience of the grasses.

Like a cataract's white crest it charged across the sand, full upon the bear's unprotected side. The stroke of its massive neck was almost a caress. The two horns pierced the flesh. The bear's head turned toward the bull—too late.

In slipped the ivory points, the left one straight to the bestial heart, the right to the heaving lungs. Then a miracle of power: The bull's head surged back, carrying the body of the bear aloft. The arc took the bear off the horns. It flew back over the bull, a spinning, dying carcass. Blood shot from the twin wounds like red milk from the teats of a devil, spattering the bull's back with a galaxy of dying stars.

The bear's body crashed into the reeds. It let out a long breath, then lay still.

She sank to her knees as the bull turned to face her. Its head lowered again. She looked up, agony in her eyes.

In a sudden motion, she seized her sword by the hilt and threw it. It landed by the bull's feet. “Take my sword,” she said. “You are the ruler.”

A redness like the bear's blood filled Stoneglow's mind. I, take Maegeth's sword? Then I will rule!

He stepped forward to the bull's side. There lay the sword in the sand, gleaming with the light of the reflected sky. This light too was red: the sun was setting and the clouds were aflame. Was the whole day dyed in red? Death had come with it! He drew a deep breath of the cool evening air. Maegeth was a shapeless dark patch in the shadow of the reeds.

“Ho, ho! Still not interested in swords, eh?” Garufel stood at the parted reeds where the path entered. Behind him was a sleek white cow, a pack slung over her shoulders, her fur streaked with sweat.

The yellow hiltstone of the wizard's unsheathed sword flashed as he strode forward. He reached Maegeth's untended weapon, swung his own down upon it in a powerful stroke. The narrow steel of the Maiden's blade shattered.

“A Warrior-Queen's sword should always be in her hand,” he said. “You are Queen no longer. Your men are defeated, your bears destroyed, and your sword cleft in twain. Maegeth Crowhair, your power is broken and now I may confront you. Beware!”

Within Maegeth's heart burned livid rage. Her last ploy was ruined by the wizard's arrival. She rose silently to her feet. Her left arm snapped up and back, then forward again. For an instant there was a hiss like the sound of the reeds in the wind. An answering hiss, sharper, came as Garufel's blade made a silvery flash in the twilight. Snick! A black snakelike thread flew upward, silhouetted for a moment against the greying sky. The other half of the Maiden's whip hung useless from her hand.

Maegeth dropped the cut whip end and seized her robe with both hands, drawing it off in a swift motion. She flung the cloth toward the wizard as she raced naked for the shore. Her body shone with a blue light in the dusk. Before Stoneglow or Garufel could respond, she plunged into the water.

The surface was nickel-grey beneath the deepening sky, but as they watched the light faded and the grey slipped into blue- black. Moments passed. Nothing broke the surface. Maegeth was gone.

But after a longer time an irregular patch appeared. It was a fluid blot, scarcely discernible, spreading in the water like a drop of ink. Yet it held together and moved steadily away from the shore. Was it Maegeth's black hair, swirling like the night behind her as she swam just beneath the surface? Or was it some other dark thing caught in the river's pull?

The uncertain mark soon passed out of sight downstream. Into its place swam the reflected image of the full moon, red-rising now above the reedfields. There was a sigh, deep and regretful.