The Letterseeker: Chapter Ten

Chalice (chal'is), n. [<ME. Chalice, also calice, <OF. *chalice, calice, mod. F. calice = PR. calitz = Sp. caliz = Pg. calis, calix = It. calice = AS. calic = OS. kelik = D. kelk = G. kelch = Icel. kālkr = Dan. kalk, <L. calix, a cup, = Skt. kalaça, a cup, water-pot: see calix and calyx.] 1. A drinking-cup or bowl.

Calyx (kā'liks), n. [<L. calyx, <Gr. kalyx, the cup of a flower, a husk, seed-vessel, <Gr. kalyptein, cover.] 1. The outer envelope which forms the cup of a flower-bud.

The cries began as a distant sighing, but soon filled the air near and far, louder than cricket-speech on a summer's eve, joining the steady hiss of the wind in the reeds to form a subtle harmony.

Threescar looked up. Light from the little reedfire sharply defined the triple ridges that had given him the name, marring his left cheek from eye to chin. Together he and Garufel were forming the gathered reeds into long tapered bundles. After a simple dinner, Garufel had shown him how to twist the reeds together and shape the heap, tying at intervals with lengths of the strong grey cord he supplied from his pack.

“November is here,” Garufel replied. “Those are the reed owls that begin their calling this month. Yulet is their name; brown and yellow are their feathers—though it is rare to see one in the daylight. They are small creatures that hunt at night, occasionally grappling with prey larger than themselves. Usually they eat the mice that live in the reeds, or small fish and eels.”

“But not lonely. There are thousands of Yulet along the river. There, that does it.”

Garufel knotted the last tie at the end of the bundle. They rose from the fireside and carried it to the boat-shaped structure they had been assembling at the river's edge—a heavy mat of reeds for its bottom, bundles laid carefully on this to form the sides. The stem and stern were pointed, each formed by a single long group of reeds with the side-pieces tied to it.

Stoneglow surveyed the result. “Well, Garufel, it has the general look of a boat, but it's not a real vessel. We can't put it into the water. It would fall apart as we moved it.”

“Yes,” he said, “in the ordinary course of things the reeds must be dried for weeks, and proper binding takes a long time, too. But remember, light is my friend. It will aid in the drying. With Vrrjhri's help we may bind the fibers, for She is the mistress of woven things and confers the command of them to those whom she favors.”

“By knowledge and desire, Stoneglow. Such things may appear supernatural to the credulous. But magic, after all, is only making.”

The wizard took a length of pointed reed and walked completely around the boat-shaped stack, scratching an oval in the sand. He stopped at the bow, motioning Stoneglow to the stern. “Step within the mark, and touch the reeds—so,” he said. He placed his palms to the stem-bundle.

Stoneglow followed his example. The pile of reeds stretched about twenty-five feet between them, but it seemed longer in the firelight.

Slowly Garufel began to sing. The flames cast a ruddy glow upon him. His beard and hair sparkled. The song became a chant: timeless it seemed, and in many tongues. It entered Stoneglow's heart and mind, bringing a nostalgia that seemed to reach back to the origins of intelligence. And the reeds beneath his hands met him afresh, as he heard the tale of their eternal kinship with the works of art and skill.

Radiance sprang from the wizard's fingertips as he sang, impregnating the reeds with hue of gold. Stoneglow was reminded of the cottage in the glade where the light-mist gilded the candles, the twigs of the fire, and the wicker chairs. The aureole spread along the reedform, closer and closer to the stern.

Trembling, he accepted it—hot without burning, an echo of the solar milk he had drunk so thirstily upon Garufel's meadow. Against the impulse to withdraw his hands, his desire to drink yet more deeply of that once tasted mystery held sway.

As the last reed absorbed the light, the boat seemed to come alive. The bundles expanded, then drew together sharply with a sighing sound into a finer shape: the true form, which had been hidden within the rough image, was released and made perfect.

Still radiant, the form was almost weightless. It came off the sand easily, shining like newly polished brass, no longer a cloddish heap; graceful as a gondola, ready to float upon the air with a cloud for a sail!

Thigh deep they waded then into the cold Mim. Water flashed yellow as it caught the sheen beneath the keel. Then they put it down, a vessel now, buoyant, tugging toward the current, trim, eager for the voyage.

The stem was like a swansneck, yet firm as steam-bent wood. The beam was broad without clumsiness. A deck covered the bows, making a protected space for storage and sleeping. And there was a short afterdeck covering the lazarette.

Where the reeds touched the water, the glow began to fade. Slowly the boat selected its proper depth, true weight returning. As the light retreated the reeds retained a deeper ochre than before, for they were changed within. A ripple of current struck the bow; swan-neck bucked and nodded.

“Our ship, Stoneglow,” said Garufel, “for you helped shape her in thought as well as deed. Your will entered the making even as my own. She must have a name! What would you name her?”

His will! Yes, something of himself was there, for together they had wrought it! A feeling came over him, a pleasant flush of—

“Pride,” he said, “for not all pride is harmful. I would name this vessel Pride.”

Bright stars wheeled overhead as the Pride turned in the current, following the riverbank as keenly as a trailing hound. Stoneglow Threescar lay awake on the foredeck. At his back he felt the friendly woven reeds through the fabric of the woolen blanket Garufel had given him. Starlight bathed the face of the Golden Wizard at the stern, where in the gathering morning he spoke softly to the craft, guiding it by unknown counsel.

The letterseeker recognized the constellations above. The lion sickle, dawn-rising, red Regulus at its handletip; and mighty Jupiter hovering beside it to herald the yet-hidden sun. Fierce Capella, who with her three kid-stars, looked down from the vertex. Orion dipped slowly to the west.

A fragment of poetry nudged upward from the vaults of Stoneglow's memory: Tonight I have walked in the aura of Jove, and marked Orion where he fell...

A hundred or more small dark forms skimmed the air above them. Pairs of glowing eyes turned downward to the boat.

“Aye,” replied the wizard, “it's the best hour for their hunting. Things stir in the reeds just before the sun.”

“They are not like some owls that are blind in daylight. When need drives them, they will hunt in the day. Sometimes fisherfolk make pets of them. They are not stupid. They can be taught to return part of their catch, paying for their keep. Even then they would not hunt in daylight by preference.”

By midday the peak of Barallas shifted noticeably south as they drifted north. Still Stoneglow did not sleep. The wind grew colder and more penetrating. Other than the mountain there was little to see, for the reeds crowded the banks. At last they rounded a long bend where not far from the bank was an outflung hill, a memory of the greater peaks—brothers of Barallas that had been worn away in ages past. Wooded it was, most of the trees leafless, entering their patient wait for spring. The Pride, at Garufel's quiet urging, slipped close to the bank. The wizard took a line and leaped ashore, securing the boat to a growth of reeds.

“We need mast, oars, rudder,” he said. “Yon hill carries on its back the only wood between Barallas and the sea.”

They took their swords, an axe, and Garufel's spear, which the wizard used to press aside the reeds, making a path to the hill. After a short search, Garufel selected a fallen log that had seasoned without rotting, from which he split three broad sections “for paddles and a rudder.” Then he cut two slender saplings as oar sticks, and a longer one for the sweep.

“I don't see the use of these,” said Stoneglow. “You seem to be able to propel the boat by yourself. Why do we need oars and a mast?”

“Not propel, guide,” Garufel corrected. “I can only enhance those forces already in operation. It is the river current that has been taking us along. When we reach the sea it will be different. The wind blows north. We must sail broadside to it, and it will be much faster and easier with a sail to help and oars to pull. Besides, I do sleep from time to time—although not as often as yourself. You will steer then.”

“In that case I would be grateful for a sail and rudder after all,” said Stoneglow. “I know how to sail a boat of this size, but not how to command its course by words.”

“If you know how to sail, you already know something of that magic,” replied the wizard. “Every sailor must whisper to his craft a little, coaxing it along—surely you have done so? And the Pride, fashioned in part by you, might listen carefully if you spoke.”

“Oh, yes, that kind of coaxing...it's like whistling for the wind. But I meant real magic.”

“It is the same thing,” said Garufel. “Now, if you will carry these saplings to the boat, I will find a mast. Lash these to the deck and wait. I won't be long.”

Stoneglow gathered the wood and walked slowly back along the path they had made through the reeds. The Pride lay obediently alongside the bank, hardly straining the painter, for the current was less inshore. He lashed the saplings as instructed, then, finding himself yawning, stretched out in the cockpit. Exhaustion caught up with him. They had worked all of one day and night, and nearly a day again.

Deep in the curve of the stern, shielded by the bend in the river, the wind was not as biting. He put a hand to his mouth as he yawned again. Where was Garufel? Well...

Garufel was delayed. He found a suitable mast and cut it, but as he prepared to leave the hill, there was an interruption. A black dove, panting from long exertion, fluttered to a branch nearby. It looked carefully at him, then flew away again. He recognized it as one of Mindilfir's birds and called softly, but it did not return for several minutes. It brought with it a second dove.

Now both of them rested on the branch, breathing fast. Again Garufel spoke to them, and this time, gaining confidence, they flew down to a stump. Garufel sat next to them and heard their story. They told of Mindilfir's concerns and of his plan to march to Rivermouth with Thierknut and his men. Keep an eye out for Namon! Mindilfir had cautioned. But the birds were tired, and their speech was slow. When at last they were done, Garufel hefted the mast-wood to his shoulder and the birds flew to it, perching there as he walked carefully along the path, turning over plans in his head for dealing with Rivermouth.

Stoneglow will be happy to see the doves, he thought as he neared the river bank. The Letterseeker has a fondness for birds.

“Ho, ho!” he began, “look here: two more friends from the Hunterchief!” But the smile faded instantly from his face as he stepped out of the reeds. The Mim was there, as it had been for ages, flowing dark and deep; but of Stoneglow Threescar and the Pride there was no sign.

Namon's desire for the Bodla of Berainn had reached the status of an obsession. Falsely, Maegeth's former captain believed that the destruction he had witnessed in the Grimdale caverns was due to a force in the stick. Never before had he encountered such a weapon. Maegeth was dead, was she not? He had abandoned her inert form, still seated in its chair, to be crushed among the falling rocks.

Thirsting to become the wielder of the awesome rod that had quenched her crimson flame, Namon led the survivors in pursuit of the scarred one who had fled with it. Following the bear, he found the path through which the alien and the huntress had escaped. Five of his men drowned in the vortex that filled the mountain's exit, but forty-seven passed it, drawing their clothes and weapons after them in bundles, having carried lines through the water-tunnel for that purpose.

Yet, having neither the skill of a wizard nor the tracking power of one of Maegeth's bears to aid him, Namon had lost the trail. And when a group of hunters appeared among the ravines and were routed by his men, he supposed that a similar party would soon find the former hostage and her rescuer, if they had not done so already.

So Namon wasted no more time searching. Fresh troops were to arrive within a few days at the rendezvous point where the river issues into the sea, coming by boat from Dunclose. It had been Maegeth's plan to attack Mindilfir from behind with these men, trapping him in the Valley of Caves. As for any who had been left alive in the caves, perhaps some would also find their way to the river's mouth.

Namon's strategy was simple: he would make a forced march to the sea, proclaim himself the new master of Dunclose, and pursue Mindilfir, hoping to achieve an ambush and capture the Bodla for his own use. With the Dark Maiden defeated and his daughter restored, the Hunterchief might be off guard and on his way back to the Narrow Woods, not expecting further attack. This, thought Namon, was his hour of opportunity. He would not let it slip from his grasp. He drove his men at a demon's pace, skirting the western limit of the reeds, north toward Rivermouth. And in the midst of Namon's headlong rush, trouble came.

It was the second evening of the march. They were huddled about their campfires; and where the firelight danced among the shadows of the reeds a wraith materialized—in semblance of dead Maegeth, wet and naked, hair matted, eyes wild! Four men saw it, including Snypp, Namon's corporal. They cast their spears. There was a search. But the thing vanished like smoke.

Some of the men dismissed it as hallucination: all of them were exhausted and hungry. Others, perhaps out of guilt for leaving their mistress dead or dying in the caves, said it was a vengeful ghost, pursuing them from the Shadow of Arem. A few began to wonder if their former queen still lived: one of the spears had not been recovered from the reeds.

The haunting was useful, however. It pushed them on through that night, doubting, frightened, eager to reach the sea where they expected supplies and friends.

As for Namon, he told himself that the spear was merely lost in the thickets, the Maegeth-image a figment of weary eyes. Yet it nagged at the edge of his thoughts, and for a time regret tinged his countenance. He had hated her even as he served her, but he had also basked secure in the aura of her power. And there had been that special thing about the Dark Maiden—shadows she communed with in secret moments; magic she alone knew.

He did not realize that what he missed most was Maegeth's independence: lust for power alone was to her a crudity. She sought something else, unnameable, akin in a grotesquely reflected way to that quest of the spirit that more often seizes healthier beings. It was this that led her to dark paths and darker, and at last to that terrible isolation that had left her tainted with madness. Its origin, whatever its outward form, lay in reaches of the soul forever beyond Namon.

For this very reason Namon was inferior to her, and beneath the surface of his mind he knew it. So he feared and regretted her loss even while he exulted in the chance it gave him for domination. The image of her, unreal as it seemed, cast a pain upon him that he could not understand. And never did he guess that she had not desired the Bodla in order to possess and use it.

It was a dream of light and shadow, bright vapors and dark hollows. It took the Letterseeker beneath the veil of images to those depths of sleep where things move together in defiance of the limits which the waking eye imposes.

He sought something there. His desire drew him closer and closer to it: an alabaster bowl, deep-bellied, white as sea foam, incised with spirals. The bowl was the light; and within it the darkness waited. He hovered above the milky lip, straining to discern what lay hidden in the dark. It was what he wanted, what he needed. He had to have it. Then it was within his reach. But a current pulled him up again, swifter than desire, wrenching memory away. The shapesounds swirled about him, clinging, then falling reluctantly away in a silvery, winding stream as he closed with the surface.

Stoneglow's eyes blinked open. Thick overcast lined the dome of sky above, backlit by a splash of white fire where the moon, four days past full, rode high above the wind. The reed hull within which he nestled shone in the filtered glow like an ivory bassinet. The night air bit where it touched face and hands, but the wicker was warm at his back. How long had he lain asleep?

A yulet cried nearby, answered by another, and a sudden rush of wind shivered acres of reeds, hurling aloft a muffled scream that told of sharp winter coming, sang of sleet on the sea-swell, seemed the very soughing of the clouds. But through that moan as the Pride swerved there came a steady chink! chink! of riplets breaking where they pressed the bow.

And now as his senses slowly whispered what enrounded he recognized the bitter taste that faintly tinged each breath: brine, and the decay of saline weed! With the wind striking from the south toward the sea, it could carry no hint of surf. There could be only one source of that odor: they had reached tidewater, where fresh and salt intermingled.

At this realization Stoneglow sat up—only to freeze in shocked surprise as he saw the speartip, a frosty thorn in the moonlight, not a foot from his throat. Unbelieving, his eyes followed along the dark shaft to the dim figure that held it.

Frail she seemed: a waif, cold and homeless. She had wrapped herself in one of Garufel's blankets, binding it with cord into an artful dress. Another blanket was cast over her shoulders as a cloak. Her bare white arms were stark against the grey cloth, hands bloodless where she gripped the weapon. Across her knees his short sword lay like a sharp white tongue prepared for bitter testimony. And behind it, cradled in her lap—the Bodla case!

He rubbed his eyes, hoping to cast away the unwanted vision, replacing it with the rightful helmsman; for Maegeth sat where the Golden Wizard should have been.