THE LETTERSEEKER

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

            Ferenth the wary could not conceal his trembling. He had faced immortals before, having served the warrior queen Maegeth Crowhair since his youth. But always he had avoided her rage, knowing how to keep his place. Now he had no place. Two of his ships were destroyed, the men and cargo lost. The third, his personal command, lay damaged upon the beach. He and his crew, and the soldiers they carried, were prisoners.

            Like the others, he was weak from hunger and fatigue. It was hardly a time for him to challenge the Golden Wizard of the Narrow Lands, whose control of his anger well-bespoke the impending swiftness of his judgement. Ferenth shook. He would have to speak truthfully. There was no other choice.

            He glanced from side to side. It was difficult to gaze directly at the yellow-eyed immortal, from whom a painful light seemed to originate. To the right of the seated wizard stood the fierce Hunterchief, still in war clothes but with a gleaming circlet of gold upon his brow. With him were his captains, eyes glittering wolflike, red with menace in the fireglow.

            On the other side of the wizard stood that same greencloak whose command of the archers kept Ferenth's ships away from the beach until the storm forced them to run. Beside him was the Red Prince; and seated before them on a stool of carven wood and leather, her right hand resting upon the wizard's bare and mighty forearm, was the woman whose arrow stroke, already become a legend, had killed Namon. She wore battle garb no longer, but a woolen gown, rust-dyed and of simple cut. Her hair the color of autumn sunset fell in ringlets about her shoulders.

            “Speak, wave-man!” boomed the wizard into the still morning air. “I will not ask again. Where were you, when you saw them?”

            “I—I do not know, Master,” Ferenth said. “Not far. North with the gale. No time for navigation! The ship sprang a hundred leaks. Soldiers cowered in the hold like a cargo of rotten smelt. Three of my crew fell into the seas. The mast went with them. After that— desperate labor! There was a calm at last. Four hundred yards to port we sighted the vessel you ask about. We marvelled that it stayed afloat. More like a rock-seal than a boat it seemed to us, dodging about in the swells.”

            “There were two aboard her—two?”

            The wizard shifted forward. He had his right hand wrapped about the handle of his sword, the hilt down and the sword point resting in the sand. The steel shone white with a hint of death. It had been wiped clean, but Ferenth already knew from rumor how the wizard had come upon the battle just as Namon fell. Men had dropped before the wizard's blade like grain before a scythe and his spear had leaped among them flying, some said, like a living thing from kill to kill. Then the Red Prince had broken the defense on the beach. Leaderless, caught between the fury of the wizard and the grim southern warriors, Maegeth's former army made a swift surrender.

            “As I have said, Master,” Ferenth insisted, “a woman, we think, holding a sword. And a man, bailing water like a fiend. Then a squall struck and the little boat was lost to our sight. Our own leaks turned bad. We gave up the oars and all hands bailed. After a long time the wind abated. Then we saw the wreckage of our other two ships.”

            “And you picked up these two?” The wizard glanced toward the two men bundled in blankets who crouched beside Ferenth.

            “We picked up four, but two died of injuries and cold.”

            Now it was the woman who spoke. “These men—have they said what happened to their ships? Mayhap they have word of the small boat.”

            “Lady, their tale is strange. The little boat, alas, was not seen again. Yet their story may bear upon its fate. The other two ships, like my own, were driven before the gale. At last, the sailors say, they heard pounding. And suddenly—forgive me, Master, I only tell you what they have told me—suddenly both vessels were caught up in a terrible surf.”

            Mindilfir interrupted. “Surf? There is no land so close.”

            At this one of the sailors rasped, “Surf it was, and a great black rock!” He broke off coughing, eyes wide with a memory of fear.

            “They insist, Master, that their ships were wrecked upon a tower of rock,” said Ferenth. “We saw no sign of it. There was nothing— nothing but wreckage. Those you seek—perhaps they too came upon this phantom. As for us, we had no will to search for it. We pulled all night for shore and were compelled to land here this morn or drown, as you know.”

            “Then they are lost!” whispered Gretta, her knuckles white where she gripped the wizard's arm.

            The wizard turned to her, a faint smile upon his lips. “Do not come to hasty conclusions, Gretta. I do not think the sea has claimed the life of Stoneglow Threescar.”

* * *

            Stoneglow's shirt was wet with tears, for Liesa Summercurls turned to him after the Dark Maiden disappeared, her eyes glistening with an emotion she could never have defined. Out of deep intuition, she sensed the ultimate doom of a soul, and she wept for it. She held her face against Stoneglow's shoulder, shutting from her view that hole in the sand. She did not see the sand fill it and rise again.

            Stoneglow put his arm about her trembling shoulders. Her yellow hair touched his cheek. A faint fragrance came to him: the delicate odor of Summercurls. Even this he scarcely noticed. His mind spun from the agony of unvoiced words that had come from below: words not to him, from a mind beyond all his experience, yet words he had understood. By the daring of his intellect and the demand of his heart he sought for and gained the meaning of that primeval tongue. Compelling it had been, almost drawing him to destruction. But at the moment of greatest desire when he was about to plunge downward, whatever was behind the door turned away.

            Now he watched the depression fill to the level of the beach, and the sand continued rising. It became a low symmetrical mound. At its top, a radiance developed: a soft, roseate glow. Something new stirred his senses. He drew in his breath. Amid the flavors of Liesa's hair, which still caressed his nostrils with the subtle urgings of human desire, another odor mingled now.

        Roses, he guessed—but from no flower grown on earth. It was The Essence of the Rose, immortal, springing from the very blood of love!

            He breathed it in deeply, drawing the impossible sweetness of it into his mortal lungs. It intoxicated his mind and salved as nothing else the dark anguish of the void-spawned thoughts. He began to smile. Liesa lost her tears, looking into his face in wonder. Then slowly she turned, following his eyes.

            Above them stood a woman at the heart of the light. Rose- lavender was her skin: a color of passion, purified by infinite depth of spirit. Her robe was crimson. About her shoulders was a shawl of fine blue mist that flicked lightly as in a gentle breeze. It glittered white at moments, seeming frost-rimed: cold even while all else about was warm.

            Her hair, of the same blue-white, spilled over the shawl and faded into it, as though the cloth might have been woven of that very coif—a fabric spun of holy trimmings. Her bare feet did not touch the ground; She stood upon a cascade of rosebuds, petals matching the color of her skin, covering the mound in thousands. And from these the fragrance lifted. Her right hand was raised. Her smiling lips parted for a moment. She called out in a soft tone:

            “Na Nitoo—na, na!”

            There was a flash of movement. Out of the sky a small winged creature darted, breaking its circling flight. Having sensed the menace of the Door when it had opened, the bird had risen from the boat where it slept and assumed an airy post of watchful guard over the man who had cradled it against his breast all the cold night before, and fed it bits of boiled meat by the morning fire. Nor had the yulet flinched when Urtri's image cast its full attention to them. Instead it met the Shade of Arem with a bestial stare: owl eyes fierce, fearless, glaring, always a challenge to the night! But the thing behind the door had drawn back then and closed the hole in the sand.

            Then the mound was raised and the Lady came who called the bird by its ancestral name, but before the sounds escaped the Lady's lips the yulet knew her, speeding to her upheld wrist: Vrrjhri the Wise, goddess of Love and Understanding, Protectress, rebellious Daughter of the Mirror, bride of the great Berainn.

            “Henceforth the yulet is your companion, Stalkworth. Forget not that it comes to you from my hand.”

            So saying, the goddess glanced again at the bird. Its sharp talons rested soft as snowflakes upon the rose-hued flesh. She whispered softly to it.

            Shree—uit! the owl screamed, blinking. It snapped its wings and rose into the scented glow above the Lady. Then it turned in the air, gliding in a smooth descent to Stoneglow's left shoulder, where it sat unmoving.

            Stalkworth! The title jolted The Letterseeker like a shower of icewater. Yulet gripped his shoulder firmly, yet he felt not the press of the little claws. Who is this, that she knows that name?

            “Lady Vrrjhri!”

            It was Liesa who spoke, young eyes aglow with the look of one for whom a dream has been fulfilled. She let go her embrace and sank to her knees; partly out of worship, partly because her slim legs trembled so she feared they would fail her.

            Then Stoneglow Threescar understood. For the briefest instant his gaze shifted to the Bodla, still held firmly in his left hand along with the strap from which hung its case. He took a step forward, looking up again at the Rose-Woman.

            “As Stoneglow or as Stalkworth, Lady, I see my doom close at hand, for I have failed.”

            He spoke haltingly, holding out the charred stick to the goddess, seized by a sense of responsibility and loss which the hearing of his Midlands surname had accentuated like a whiplash. A thought came to him of O'Kuern's message: Take care of it—and then the Bodla had first come into his hands, old as alder, yet vibrant as a young snake. And he thought too of the Golden Wizard, saying You must take it to Stonehenge. How distant was it from Stonehenge now, this bolt She had helped to fashion in elder time? In it lay not only the protection of the Lands, but also the assurance of Her continued love, for it alone held back the Vengeful Mother's shadow. That much he knew.

            Shame flushed the Threescar's features to a hue not unlike that of Vrrjhri's own passionate flesh. She was both amorous and cold, a beating heart within a crystal chamber. He loved her even as he feared the doom that now grew about her like the heavy air that precedes a storm. Then she spoke again, her voice a heartrending mixture of compassion and regret.

            “It is marred. Already the Lands have begun to suffer.” And her next words were stern. “Take it to the Treegorge. Refashion it from a fresh branch. With old and new, enter the Stoneshield.”

            So Stalkworth received the command of the Ice-Woman. And so also it was heard by Liesa Summercurls, beach-daughter of the Broadlands, whose life until that moment had lacked for purpose.

            The goddess turned slightly and shrugged. Her shawl fell from her shoulders to her hands. Its movement was a blur. “This I will loan you,” she said. “It may be of help. But take care! You may use it only once, then it will return to me. Choose the time wisely. Now farewell!”

            There was a rush of wind. The goddess seemed to recede. The shawl, tossed into the air, swirled in the gust as if poised for a leap, until she vanished completely and the multitude of roses followed. Then the cloth dropped to the top of the mound as a bluesilver cap.