II: Outlaw

Dawn slipped rosily into the attic, waking Rothesay gently. She lay in peace for a long moment, listening to Padriag putter about in the kitchen below, raising a fragrance of tea and toast. She leaped happily to her feet, tumbled the width of the room and bowled hard into the last of the wizard’s potatoes. Her stomach knotting, she remembered. She was a bewitched murderess, and an outlaw.

Rolling to her back, she lay among the vegetables and stared into the careless rafters. Kelmhal came seldom to Harrowater; even his seasonal clan-moots, held at Fair-times, took place three miles away in Outing. Rothesay had seen him twice, that she could recall. It was often so; nonetheless a sense of a chieftain’s presence pervaded a clan: in the setting aside of produce or product for the paying of levies, in Fair prizes awarded in his name, even in casual mead-hall threats to haul a neighbor before his justice. If one’s lord was a source of nuisance and trouble at times, still in his hand was found justice, in his walls, safety, and in his name, family. And if the bonds of fealty frayed a bit at the edges, among the whores and the beggars and the slaves, still they wove the cloth of community: an outcast was as good as dead.

She was as good as dead. What would the king’s justice demand of her?

She sat up, carefully, thinking grim thoughts. What would she demand of justice? Who the devil were they, the men at her home, arrayed as if for war-moot? Why were they there? If they had not come storming out like that, frightening her, shoving Brannar around like a bunch of bullies—

She squelched that line of thought, not without a shudder: Padriag would not like her making excuses, and she had unarguably done—what she did. She desperately wanted an excuse, a way out, a way back to her old familiar self, raunchy pursuers and all; but she wanted Padriag’s friendship still more: in thirteen years, no punishment had weighed so heavily with her as being sent home, away from his enchanting hall, disgraced.

Well, she thought, I’m still here. She drew a firm breath, straightened her tattered tunic, lifted her chin—and slunk down to the warm, dim kitchen. The teapot whistled at her familiarly, and Padriag looked up from the fire.

“Good morning, dear!” he called brightly, not at all the address for a desperate felon, and it snatched her from the grip of nightmare guilt more powerfully than secret runes and mystic passes. Startled, she began to consider her predicament afresh, and sat down at the table abstractedly.

“Excellent,” said the wizard, pulling toast from the fire and piling it on a trencher.

“Hm?”

He touched her hand lightly. “You are bigger than anything that can ever happen to you,” he reminded her.

“‘I am bigger than anything that can ever happen to me,’ ” she repeated back as she always had, dutifully, without believing a word of it, but wishing, as she always had, not to disappoint him.

“A little butter, a little of Pinnar’s raspberry sauce—?”

“I made that.” She often worked with the old edgeling widow, trading chores and gossip for scraps of half-forgotten Imperial cookery.

Padriag chuckled. “Did you indeed? You have taken to heart my counsel to study only with the best! Will you continue to heed it?”

“Of course! Er— why?”

Padriag seated himself comfortably, broke a sweetcake, and dipped it unhurriedly in his tea. Rothesay drew a deep breath and tried to practice her patience.

“I’ve made inquiries,” Padriag said suddenly. Rothesay glanced at the hearth and saw an empty saucer there: for the cat, Minalece, or Kri the rat?

“Yes, Master?”

“You’ll have heard of our lord Kelmhal’s Darian visitor?

Of course. The clan had been abuzz with the gossip. Men boasted of the deer or goose they had taken for Kelmhal’s hosting, women bragged of their ale or pickles chosen for the guest’s table. Indeed, she had heard of little else.

“The one you would not let me go ask about my mother?” she replied coolly, and not without some vinegar.

Padriag’s little eyes twinkled. “Sheath your claws: they’ll never scratch my old hide. Aye, the same— who, hearing of a half-fay whore’s child in the neighborhood— your pardon, dear— took a fancy to, ah, try you himself.”

Rothesay grinned wickedly. Her canine teeth were ever so slightly too long, an inheritance from her mother, had she known it; it gave even her prettiest smiles a somewhat feral character, and made others suitable for scaring misbehaving children.

Padriag paid no heed.

“Those were some of Kelmhal’s hearthguard, sent to fetch you to Dunford Keep. A handsome place, the Stonekeep,” he went on reflectively; “not much changed from Alcieta’s time. . . . The wounded man has been lodged at the Hall and Thyrne has taken the children— as I always thought she should; and the other fellow lit off for Dunford last night. I think it goes without saying, dear, that you ought not stay here and wait for Kelmhal. His sense of humor is widely underrated, but it runs a little on the rough side.”

Rothesay, who in thirteen years had not travelled even the ten miles to Dunford, stared aghast. “‘Go’? Go where? Wait! Pinnar’s Marigold is farrowing soon, and I have to help!”

Padriag chuckled. “A old sow like Marigold can manage, even without the elf-child’s aid.” From the folds of his robe, he pulled two pieces of parchment, each folded to a small square and one sealed with honey-gold wax. He opened the other. “This is a map of Peria. Here is Harrowater; Andrastir, the capital: I should avoid that, were I you; the Myrinine Forest; and,” he finished triumphantly, “Colderwild Hall.”

“What!”

“This,” he indicated the sealed paper, “is a letter for Dav.”

“What?”

“Well,” said the wizard placidly, “no one will follow you into Colderwild.”

It was spring, and the early sun ran slender fingers through the forest, turning the new leaves to green jewels glowing in a dark matrix of branches. The air was cold and sweet; washed clean of winter’s staleness, it was scented like a bride in a fragrance musky with wet loam and spiced with resin. A noise of water from freshened creeks filled the world. Rothesay had no attention to spare for the splendor of the dawning year.

She had a number of skills, of sorts: raspberry sauce and small charms aside, she could put a sling-stone through a bullseye at a hundred paces; climb a tree like a cat; catch a fish barehanded; and she could hide, like a stone on a mountain, a splinter in a woodpile, a raindrop in a creek. Later that morning, sitting almost nose-deep in a hollow behind a knee-high waterfall, she had watched half a dozen horsemen gallop through the shallows not ten feet away. Then she had crouched still as a boulder, dark soggy cloak plastered to her, among the mossy rubble where the track from Harrowater cut deeply through the grey Coast-ridge rock, and heard conversation not meant for her:

“What’s a wizard want with a girl-thrall, anyway, Breagga?”

“He’s a wizard, you dolt, he’s not a corpse!”

Incensed by the sniggering that followed this witticism, she almost betrayed herself with a quick-flung stone; mastering herself swiftly, she had dropped back down just in time to be missed by a last, suspicious survey before Breagga and friend entered the cutting.

Now she lay, damp yet but no longer dripping, stretched thin and low as a cat along a branch of a huge old spruce, its thick needles shadowy and green about her, while horsemen conferred in a jumble of irritable voices on the road below. Here the Outing track joined the North Road, that ran west to Dunford and far Feillantir, east towards Sparca, arrow-straight under the overarching trees: the remains of an ancient Sferan highway. Most of the men wore the vibrant red-and-yellow striped cloaks of Kelmhal’s household, but two she recognized as nobles as much by their casual arrogance as by the glory of their plumage: surely these were the Darian lord and his— nephew, was it? Their raiment was of unfamiliar cut and subtle of color, and the wide borders were stiff with rich and jewelled embroideries; unfamiliar, yet they nagged at memory. Perhaps her mother’s kin had worn such?

The Dunhaldring warriors chafed before the strangers’ silent disdain. Crossly, their leader summoned them as for battle-muster, and his harsh bark subdued their grumbles.

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

“Clansmen! Stout Dunhaldring! You fret like war-horses yoked to a farmer’s cart. And why not? It seems more a nursemaid’s part than a warrior’s, to fetch home a truant brat. But think again! Though no task is too mean even for a king, if it be done in the name of hospitality,” at which he shot a grim glance at the foreigners, “remember! Our cousins Ottu and Forld, on this same errand were slain or broken. We seek, not for a child, but for a kinslayer!”

A great cry broke from the foremost horseman: “Ottu!” His spear flashed, thrust skyward; and his comrades roared and their spears leaped up like a bronze thicket. Rothesay gripped her branch and cowered. Guilt for the death and injury at her hands racked her till her stomach roiled, guilt, and terror of the warriors’ vengeance; that it was an accident, a freak of an ancient magic, might count for something, but she doubted if, in this mood, they might not dismember her before she ever saw King Kelmhal’s court.

Presently Kelmhal’s men rode out, some east, some west; to her frustration, the two strangers lingered under her tree. She considered how accurately she could drop a fat blob of spit down the neck of the elder one, but restrained herself, as much from a dry mouth as good sense.

The younger man, possessed of brown hair in three tiers of meticulous curls, turned to the elder. “Respects, Uncle; and if that ravening horde does find her, just how do you propose to extricate her from their fangs?”

The language was the High Sferan— and accented Darian. So, these were her homewreckers: one false-haired old tub— fifty, if he was a day— and one primped, horse-toothed ferret? For all their blatant wealth, she curled a fastidious lip: the wizard’s apprentice could afford a little choosiness. But she pressed forward to catch Uncle’s reply.

“Why, I shall offer to pay the honor-price of the dead and wounded, on her behalf. She is poor, they say,” he chuckled strangely, “and surely cannot do so herself? Then, being thus indebted to me, she must be bound to— me.”

His nephew eyed him suspiciously. “And—? What’s the fuss? Kelmhal’s got some pretty ones you haven’t tried yet, handy in his own kitchen! Why so keen for this one?”

Uncle was slow to reply; Rothesay bared her teeth. If the spruce’s needles had been thicker and more concealing, she would indeed have spat down his neck.

“You are young, Ebya, but you must have heard tales. The clansmen called her name ‘Roshi.’” He gave the youth a tutor’s glance.

“So?” his unwilling pupil retorted.

“So how would you shorten ‘Rothesay’?”

Ebya— short for Ebier— stared. “That’s a Darian name.”

Hautiger sighed. “Perhaps ‘Cherusay’ means more to you?”

“The Orthundrysel, who tried to be queen?”

Rothesay lost her grip on the branch, dislodged a chunk of bark in the recovery, snatched it from the air as it fell and missed the segue.

“— Runedaur, to help her take the throne. She had a child—”

“Named Rothesay?” Ebya guessed eagerly, his ennui dispelled.

“And rumored to be a Ceidhan bastard,” Hautiger said smoothly. “I hardly think Cherusay herself still lives. No. There would have been a considerable noise from Peria if she had! But if she lived long enough to reach shore, and the child survived . . .”

Ebya’s enthusiasm ebbed as swiftly as it had flowed. “You fancy returning the girl to the embrace of her family?” he mocked, then brightened with new interest. “Would there be a reward?”

Hautiger laughed. “The embrace of her family? As well send her to the embrace of a nest of serpents! The girl will do well to stand clear of the House of Orthunder, at least without powerful allies! As for my interest— well, bastards have threatened thrones before, and Cherusay’s would be particularly threatening, even should she prove to have none of her mother’s, er, spirit. Think of the House of Eirenseld, or of Cashellan! Who waves her under our good King Rumil’s nose just may be able to lead him by it— don’t you think?”

Ebya and Rothesay both thought Hautiger’s interest ran still deeper, but she was in no position to inquire, Ebya did not, and Hautiger went on to suggest, meaningfully, that he breathe nothing of this to their host.

“Why?” his nephew demanded. “What would he care anyway?”

“Boy!” Hautiger scoffed. “Not Darians alone would command Daria’s power, if they could! The old Perian clans want their country back. The Geillari want to crush the Sferan power— what remains of it. Daria keeps herself carefully neutral: we should not like to betray old alliances; but neither do we care to incur the enmity of powerful new neighbors. If Rumil could be goaded into taking sides here—eh?”

Ebya stared at his uncle for some while before remarking, with a breath of genuine compassion, “Glad I’m not her,” and kicked his horse and set off westward, impatient for his dinner.

“Well, that’s pretty spiritless of you,” Rothesay called after him, after Hautiger, too, had gone; but her voice trembled in her throat, and she could not at once muster the strength to climb down.

‘Tried to be queen’—! Padriag had never hinted at an ambition so exalted. Did he know? she wondered, and crushed the thought: of course he did, but what did such things matter to one who could not remember (so he said) Kelmhal’s father’s name, yet could tell the local wolf-lineage back seventeen generations? She laid her cheek along the branch, feeling the living strength within, the innocent power of a being concerned only with the great matters of wind and weather, and wondered if she would ever find the strength to climb down.

Presently a lone rider passed beneath, returning to Dunford, red and yellow stripes aflutter at his back. What had the boy meant— ‘Orthundrysel’ simply meant a woman of Orthunder’s clan, regardless of her rank; though that was the ruling house in Daria, there were many families therein, both noble and lowly; what was ‘the’ Orthundrysel? And ‘Don’t tell Kelmhal.’ In that case, while she might be a valuable pawn, as yet only one man knew about it, and the more distance she could put between herself and the smooth Darian baron, the happier she was likely to be. She slithered swiftly down the tree and faced away from the road, southward, where no

track made by humankind led at all.

And Dread gripped her like the hand of Winter. At her feet the tamed land ended: before her lay the ancient Waste, empty, inhuman. The world was vast and dark to men; only here and there over Earth’s broad breast flickered the hearthlights of homestead or clan-hall, a few lonely stars in an impenetrable night of wilderness.

Cobweb threads of road linked the little stars, and here she imagined leaving even that wisp of order. Wilderness was jealous. Subtly, relentlessly it strove to reclaim its usurped domain by root and tendril, web and nest, wherever the vigilance of mankind faltered. Not for cleanliness alone did a housewife beat her rafters and change out her rushes, but rather as a holy guardian, defender of the ordered hearth against the encroachment of the Wild. And people too long away from roof and hall, alone in the heart of its cold power— they went queer, it was said, forgetting their names, becoming wild creatures themselves, gathered back into His fold by the lord

of the Waste, the Hunter in the Green, Dagn the Piper.

The rules were different, the whole cloth of life was an alien weave, out there. At home she was ‘the fairy-child,’ ‘the madwoman’s foundling,’ ‘the wizard’s apprentice’; she was ‘a friend of pigs and edgelings’ and she was ‘the stranger’— the stranger: words like these wove her into the tapestry of Harrowater and the clan of Dunhaldring, words like these shaped her place, herself. What would she be, out there, without a word at all? In wilderness was oblivion. What if she could not win through?

She unfolded her map, and tried to wring reassurance from its laconic marks: after ‘forest’ was marked ‘field’; after that, ‘moors’; she could name the distances, but the leagues were meaningless, and she could not tell when she would next see another human face, friendly or un-.

More hooves thudded far down the road, drawing nearer. She sprang away from the tree and barged into the undergrowth, slipped on leaves and crashed to her back upon the sword and her small pack. There she lay, frightened and annoyed, till the hoofbeats faded again. A moment longer she stayed, to glower back at a trio of inquisitive squirrels. She had not vanished into infernal phantasmagory as she crossed the border of her imagination; indeed, she was just as conscious of embarrassment over the edge as at home. Thus reluctantly comforted, she dragged herself up and limped, clammy and bruised, away down the tangled slope.

Still she kept uneasy watch, her eyes starting at shapes in bark, at knotholes and curious crotches, at ruffles on the leafy floor, straining to see the eyes she felt watching her with no compassion for the trespasser from the tilled fields. She fingered her little bag of charms where it dangled above her quickened heart, and stumbled in thought over rhymes and words to fend off unfriendly power; but it was the land itself that she feared. Wilderness was jealous, and her charms were small.

She might be lost entirely to the human world.

Not any time soon, she realized quickly. The rugged land made for slow going. It was often difficult to find a way up the rougher northern faces of the ridges, and the undergrowth on the gentle southern slopes grew rampantly, a melee of viny strife. Struggling through a dense stand of laurel, scratched and sweaty, she paused, toying with the notion of presenting herself to the Darian lord and peremptorily demanding his aid in establishing herself in her mother’s land, deigning to permit him to be one of her court. She sucked distractedly at a bleeding knuckle, and looked about her at the thick tangles of laurel, quiet and tranquil in the silver light. Through the branches she could see, a few yards off, a young doe rabbit, sitting up on her haunches, nose atwitter with bright interest in Rothesay’s scent.

“Look at you,” Rothesay grumbled at her, forgetting her knuckle. “All you’re supposed to be, and no more, and right where you should be. Nobody cares if your parents were married, nobody cares what your mother was, was she a queen among rabbits or— well, I guess there aren’t rabbit whores, are there?” she laughed. “Aye, well, Mother Rabbit, you’d best head on down the hill: I passed a fox’s den not too far back up the slope there. That’s it. Get along, ywysta.”

Delicately the rabbit lowered her forepaws to the serene earth and bobbed off with perfect nonchalance. “Shall I be superstitious and read this as an omen, that there are foxes back homeward while rabbits go in peace southward?” Rothesay called after her, but only a robin answered.

She looked back up the way she had come. The laurel seemed equally thick, and wearisome, in all directions. She made a rude gesture with her thumb and nose in Hautiger’s imagined direction, and then pressed on down the ridgeback. An imperious attitude alone would not compel the Darian lord to her bidding; Padriag had taught her how to acquit herself with courtesy among the wild folk that wandered the tamer woods around home; but she had no idea how to move her own kind. And at that, there might be some contention over just what that kind was.

No, she was ill-prepared to take on the likes of Orthunder and Cashellan and— that other one. She would leave the foxes behind. But she did not mean to be always a rabbit.

In the afternoon, she struck a path going her way, and strode more briskly, her confidence bolstered by this unexpected human token. An old Sferan lane, it climbed the next ridge by aid of wide, clean-cut steps in the rock. At the switchbacks, weathered stone benches nestled beside stony troughs or pools, choked now with loam and debris, though at one a spring still trickled from the breast of a carved goddess. The Elanic style, she knew from Padriag’s comments about his house, which was— about the same period as her sword, she realized with a start, and hurried past.

At the ridge’s crest, she found the remains of the villa which the path had served: one more of the haunted fragments of that great civilization that had faded southward like the ebbing of a tide, leaving behind these ghostly ruins, pale empty shells abandoned on a dark shore. The broken buildings, silent proof of Dagn’s relentless power, unnerved her as a broken body never had, and she fled, wild and heedless through the heedless wild.