The Song of Andiene

CHAPTER 16



“Touch not a leaf,” Lenane said to her companions as they entered the dim green light of the forest. “Though the paths are safe from the greatest evil, still they are perilous. Easy for the trees to gain their revenge, if we mistreat them.”

“All things are perilous,” said Andiene.

“Did I not see you break down boughs to make our beds, over on that other shore?” Syresh asked her. “And I watched my men hew down trees by the score, and we went untouched.”

“And where are they now?” Her gray eyes met his. “Do the tides trouble their slumber?”

They walked a little ways apart; she lowered her voice, so that Lenane could not hear her. “I have been thinking of my power, of its limits. It is not as great as I thought it would be. Those ships came to my call easily, only because of the grudge they bore your men, and even so, I did not gain my heart’s desire.

“As for the boughs that you saw me break, they were from the lesser kind, like dumb beasts. Even then, I asked their pardon.”

She looked up into the gray-branched darkness that roofed them over. “These ones—though I have never entered the forest, I recognize their breed. They are older than our race, and stronger, and wiser.”

Her tone convinced him, as Lenane’s warnings had not. He did not stray from the middle of the dark-earthed path, nor did he set a hand to any of the trees.

Before noon they came to a safehold, like a heap of children’s blocks. Wide shallow steps led up to a three-sided shelter, roofed with another dark slab of stone.

“What are these?” Andiene asked, pointing to the ridges of stone that went out from the entrance. Then she looked again and answered her own question. “The dragon’s paws … ”

“City or forest, you cannot escape it,” said Lenane.

Syresh glanced at the sun. “Do you want to go or stay? We have two-thirds of the day left to us. We can go on for a little while, then return if we can find no safe place.”

“We will go on,” Andiene said.

“Wait,” said Lenane. “Remember what I told you. Give me your dagger. We must mark the threshold with blood, so that the shelter will be here if we are forced to return.”

“How can a building of stone move?” There was scorn in Syresh’s voice.

The minstrel did not take offense, merely smiled and shrugged her shoulders. “I do not know. I only know what I have seen.”

Syresh watched in amusement as she took Andiene’s dagger, nicked the back of her wrist, squeezed out a small drop of blood, and smeared it on the bottom step. “Why borrow a knife? Why did you not use your own claws?”

Her eyes gleamed with mischief. “Perhaps because they are poisoned.” Then she burst into laughter as Syresh reached up to touch his slow-healing cheek.

“Enough of that,” said Andiene. “Enough of your foolery, or you go one way, and we go the other.” She gravely copied Lenane’s actions, then looked expectantly at Syresh.

“I am no superstitious fool,” he exclaimed. “These stones will be here when we return. They cannot grow legs and walk away, or sprout wings and fly through the air, or turn to mist and disappear.”

Lenane looked at him in exasperation. “I knew you were a fool, but I did not know you were so much of a fool. You will mark this step if I have to shed your blood myself.”

“That would be nothing new.”

Lenane grinned at that, and flexed her claws experimentally, but Andiene was not so amused. “Remember your oath,” she said. “And remember what you saw when you left that other land.” He drew his dagger grudgingly and did as he was told.

Then they went on. Lenane glanced up at the sun, glinting lowly through the trees. “I dreamed a strange dream last night. I dreamed that the path of the sun stretched across the sky like a bar of gold, and lesser ones grew alongside it, like the bars of a cage, and they grew till it seemed that the whole sky was a cage that surrounded us and held us captive on the earth. And outside, a great gray dragon who watched us, his prisoners.”

Andiene stared at her, her eyes widening. “Spare us your dreams,” said Syresh. Ahead, they saw a safehold, and hurried toward it.

It was the same as any other; they walked up its wide shallow steps quietly. The shadow of forgotten times lay heavily on them, and they moved as though they were trespassers in a stranger’s dwelling. “Are they all set the same way?” asked Andiene. “Open to the east?”

“All that I have ever seen,” answered Lenane. “Why it is so, no one knows, unless it be the grizanes, who know all things.”

“Look,” whispered Syresh. The guardian of the safehold stood in the corner. He was carved of gray stone that gave no semblance of life, but his eyes were inlaid with black onyx, so that they sparkled and seemed to follow the intruders as they moved. His head was crowned with a pair of wide-branching antlers sprouting low from his brow. In his hand he held a bow.

“He is the guardian of this path,” Lenane said. “All along our road we may find him, though he might wear a different face. So if any ask how we came through the forest, we may say that we came on Carvarinelan’s way.”

Syresh shook his head. Those eyes, it would be a brave one who would dare to look into them. “What were they, the ones that built these places?” he asked.

“They were blasphemers,” said Lenane cheerfully. “But great and mighty blasphemers. We must be grateful to them.”

Then they went out to pick blaggorn from the clearing for their supper. The kernels hung brittle on the stems, summer-dry and ready to fall. When they lit a fire to cook their food, the smoke eddied and choked them, at last finding its way out through the doorway and the cracks at the eaves. The stones of the safehold made a hard bed. They slept little that night as they listened to the song of the forest.

The next day was the same, and the days after that. The forest wore on their spirits. Syresh bickered with Lenane; that gave him some pleasure, and amused her as well. Impatient to get on with her plans, Andiene seemed to fret under the monotony, like the old songs of swords that were restless in their sheaths.

The constant threat of danger hung over them, even though there was no sign of the forest creatures that Andiene and Syresh knew from the songs only. No sign of anything but innocent grasskits, coursers, and hawks.

“I thought that people lived in the forest, men and women?” asked Syresh. “Where are they?”

“We follow the broad path,” Lenane said. “It is the little ones that lead to the clearings, where one may live, or a family, or a whole village.”

“How much farther to the open fields?” asked Andiene.

“Not too many more days, I would think. We have made good time, only having to retrace our steps twice.”

“I will be glad to see the sun and hear the birds sing.”

“And so will I,” said Syresh. “Still, I do not see where the danger lies in your forest. From all that we have seen, we would have been in more danger walking down a city alleyway on a star-dim night.”

“Maybe,” Lenane said. “But the danger of the forest is swift and sudden, and no man may defend utterly against it.” Her voice rang as though she were quoting, from the Law of the Forest, perhaps.

They walked on, through the green underwater forest light. It was a never-changing scene, or so Syresh thought. Only the safehold clearings gave a pleasant change, the sight of clear water and bright flowers.

“Look,” said Lenane, and she pointed to a low-hanging bough. Syresh shook his head, seeing nothing. “Blind! See the edge, the golden line of death on the edge of the leaf. Summer will be upon us soon. It comes swift and cruel in the forest, and path and forest are made the same. We are leaving it just in time.”

“Good that there is always water where the safeholds are. We have not gone thirsty.”

“The streams make paths of their own, though we cannot follow them,” Lenane said, as if she were speaking to a tiny child. “The safeholds are strung on them like beads on a string.”

Syresh looked at her and said nothing. She was a commoner and a thief. For one who ought to have walked meek and silent among her betters, she had a saucy tongue and arrogant way. Still, he wished that he had not shown his resentment as clearly. Clever and pretty, she would have made a pleasant traveling companion, if matters had not begun so badly.

He watched her as she stiffened, suddenly alert. “Listen!” They were quiet and still. The air throbbed with a faint sound, almost like a man sobbing.

“Where is it?”

“Behind us,” Syresh said.

“Then we are cut off from shelter. Run!”

Syresh stared stupidly at her. Andiene laughed, and her face lit up with excitement. “Here is my chance to do something worth the doing!”

Lenane looked at her in incomprehension. “Run!” she shrieked. Behind them, the sound grew louder, a deep-throated mockery of human sorrow. Then they ran, and ran in earnest.

No sign of the shelter they needed, the safehold. No time to wonder what hunted them. No time to wonder how it could hunt in daytime when the forest paths should have been warded against evil.

The sobbing lost its note of grief as it grew louder. Laughter echoed around them, hollow as a madman’s laugh might be. They entered a long stretch of straight path, a half-clearing. Syresh glanced backwards, and saw the first rust-red hound lope out of the shadows, lean and thin as a symbol of death itself.

“No use,” he gasped. “Let us make a stand, and take some with us.” More of the hell-hounds poured out of the shadows, falling silent as they saw their prey. “Lady, whatever powers you have, use them now,” he said to Andiene, in desperate hope. Then there was no more time for talking.

The leader sprang at him. He stabbed at it, shook it off his sword to the ground. These were mortal creatures, at least. The next ones did not slacken their pace. They flew at his throat from opposite sides. Frantically, he cut at one with his sword, drove his dagger deep into the other’s chest. Teeth slid down his sleeve harmlessly as the body fell to the ground.

The three of them, Andiene, Syresh, and Lenane, formed a circle, to guard their backs the best they could. What Andiene was doing Syresh did not know, but he trusted her to defend herself. Lenane was the weak link, he thought. Her claws were short weapons that would not hold the beasts away from her.

The long hours of sword-training came back to him; he struck and stabbed by instinct alone. Lenane stood to his right; he caught glimpses of her, slashing with her claws at a wounded hellhound. With his sword hand he tried to protect her too. As he turned too far to the right, his left side lay unguarded. Sharp teeth fastened in his wrist and the dagger fell from his hand. A hound dived low, and locked its jaws around his ankle. Then he was down on one knee, still fighting, but crippled.

One fastened onto his right arm, long teeth set like a snake’s fangs in a narrow muzzle. He saw Lenane’s claws hook into its side and tear it from him. Then she snatched the sword from his hand, and stood over him, fighting off the hounds as best she could.

One slipped under her guard, and he fended it from his throat with his already torn arm, while he groped for his fallen dagger to dispatch it. Lenane fought well and bravely, better than he would have guessed, but the hounds streamed from the forest in never-ending waves.

The sound of men’s voices roused him. Have their masters come? Then two more joined the circle; they pushed Lenane behind them. The taller one fought clumsily, but had great strength. The other was a master swordsman, making the hounds falter and lose the fury of their attack for fear of him.

“Girl, get your comrade on his feet,” he said to Lenane, a hard voice, used to command. “We may reach shelter if he can walk.”

Her strong hands tugged at Syresh. Dazed with loss of blood, hope gave him new strength, and he staggered to his feet. What he saw amazed him. Andiene was the focus of a half-circle of fire. She did not speak one word. Whatever she did took all her strength. The hellhounds circled outside the fires, but did not try to plunge through.

The strangers wove an arc of destruction with their swords, completing the circle with mortal strength. The bodies of the red hounds littered the ground, but still more poured from the forest shadows, sobbing in the distance, falling quiet as they saw the battle. They fought silently, making no noise even as they died.

Step by step, the circle of battle moved along the path. The stranger, the one more skilled in swordwork, laughed, as there came a brief respite in the fight. “Courage,” he called out. “Courage, we can but die!”

His companion shook his head, and fought on.

Lenane reached in her pack, still slung across her back, and pulled out bandages. Syresh’s arm and shoulder had taken the brunt of the attack. After she had wrapped his wounds enough to stop the flow of blood, his head seemed to clear a little, but still he clung to her. It took all his remaining strength to stay on his feet and stagger forward, as the battle raged around them. There came a time, much later, when they fought themselves around a bend in the path, and saw the broad steps of a safehold—perhaps a dozen paces ahead of them.

That short distance might as well have been leagues. The red hounds redoubled their fury. The taller of the strangers faltered a moment, and a hound slipped in under his guard; he went down. Then they swarmed over him, and he had nothing to do but to protect his throat as best he could.

Syresh staggered forward, picked up the other man’s sword, and tried to tear the hounds from him. They clung like leeches, lapping his blood, too intent on their one victim to turn on the others.

The other stranger could not aid them. His work was to keep the circle of protection from being broken again. His sword cut the air and seemed to be in all places at once.

Lenane caught the last of the hounds with her claws, and Syresh stabbed it and threw its body away from the stranger, but that was only a moment’s respite. They were at bay. They could go no further. The sobbing of another wave of the hounds grew louder. Death seemed twice as bitter, to come with shelter so near.

“Save yourself,” he gasped to the stranger and Andiene, the two left unharmed. “Leave us. You can do us no good.”

They might have been deaf, for all the answer he got.

A movement on the steps of the safehold caught his dimming eyes. A child? That was the last madness. No, the flutter of her white robe caught his eye again as she ran toward them. The red hounds turned, and one lunged at her. A flash of flame in mid-air, and the hound fell in a crumbled heap.

Then fire was all around them, leaping and crackling orange-red flames feeding joyously on air and nothingness.

The stranger stepped back into the circle of safety and sheathed his sword. He knelt beside his comrade, and urged him to his feet. Though he staggered under the other man’s weight, he managed to support him, to keep him walking. “If you cannot walk, then crawl,” he said to Lenane and Syresh. “I cannot carry you all.”

Lenane caught at his arm, and dragged herself to her feet. Syresh shook his head and crawled, one leg trailing uselessly.

Outside the circle of fire, the red ones set up their sobbing again. The short dozen paces seemed an infinity with that cursed sound ringing in Syresh’s ears.

The steps were agony, but he pulled himself onto them. His body was aflame with red pain. All that he saw was fire. Then the fires dimmed to darkness.