V: Initiate

Rothesay knew many casual epithets for madness; for two days she applied them all methodically, over and over like an incantation, to Padriag. As magic, it had no effect, except to make her wonder from time to time if the words did not more properly belong to herself: there was a certain wonderful unreality in the idea of chasing the Master of Runedaur cross-country in order to become, like him, one of the elite guard of a Perian High King who no longer existed. But no: the rigor of the journey had a solid reality that was dismally convincing.

They moved on just after breakfast under a clear pink dawn. Dav, mounted on his great black war-horse, plunged down the south slope of the hill at full gallop; Rothesay dashed after, clutching at her cloak, her small pack pounding rhythmically between her shoulderblades and Arngas’s rag-wrapped sword banging the back of her head. The Runedaur vanished at once, of course; but the damp ground kept a clear track for her, and taking this in the nature of a trial, she followed doggedly.

The day turned fine and bright, and her spirits recovered. All about her rose the sweet green fragrance of high spring and now and again a wood thrush sang out or squirrels chased across her path. Gradually she slowed, just till she could sing a little, and answered the birds with her own song, clear and low.

Around noontime, she caught up the Master, leaning on a rock in the sunshine, almost as straight as if he were standing. The horse cropped nearby at a small patch of thyme. Dav did not trouble himself to speak, merely nodded at the saddlebags as an invitation to eat; and as he seemed disposed to stay put, she rested gladly.

When she recalled the point of this woodland wandering, a chill of apprehension closed around her, and she wondered what Master Padriag could have been thinking. The Runedaur, kingless for centuries, uncontrollable by the warring Geillari or the embattled Sferiari, had become lawless, plunderers who took by force what had once been given them by right. She did not want to be a thief, and could not imagine herself stealing anything. Excuse me, poor old widow-wife, I was just passing through and took sort of a fancy to this fine little piglet, if you don’t mind too much. . . . Surely Padriag did not mean for her to be a robber! What, then? She had never seen a Runedaur before, not even the one rumored to live at Dunford, nor heard of one in Harrowater which, though small and not renowned for anything, was nonetheless a well-fed community. Hearsay was a rotten nut; but the nut once had sound meat.

“Master?” she ventured warily. “Do the Runedaur truly live by plunder?”

His eyes flashed, but he grinned. “Perhaps—if you choose your words carelessly.”

“Ha? What? What’s the difference?” she babbled, her heart sinking.

He shrugged, his grin remaining. “Any stupid brigand can burn out a farmer, take his grain and his stock, and live well enough for a few weeks. We cultivate our sources; that way they continue to, er, provide. I don’t think they begrudge us the provender,” he went on mockingly, “so much as the daughters.”

She bristled. “I don’t think I could ever steal from the poor folk.”

“Poor folk have nothing to steal. But as you wish. You may fleece the rich.”

Rothesay stared, her sense of humor fled before the dread of him, and she gave the light words the gravity of cold lead. Rich meant noble, for the most part, and therefore sacrosanct; certainly, she thought, they would at least stick together. “Who’s ‘rich’?”

“A very good question, chit,” he said, and she marked his approval if not his amusement. “We are not indiscriminate. We have friends, a few, who make gifts freely: naturally, they and their people and lands are respected. Your lord Kelmhal—your former lord—,” and he grinned wider at her start, “is one such. Then there are, er, friends by duress, you may say, who must be reminded from time to time of the path of wisdom. They are the source of most of our goods, for we despise them. And then there are enemies; another rich source.”

Rothesay shivered; the sun seemed clouded over. “I don’t want to be a thief,” she murmured.

“If I thought you did, I would not have you. An untrustworthy ally is worse than none.” When she looked up, puzzled, he laughed. “As to the rest, you may come to think differently of it. Come, girl.”

He had mounted up then, but rode no faster than she could comfortably walk. He was a hard man to read, but as they travelled together, scarcely speaking, she imagined that he was both surprised and pleased that she had caught up with him in the first place, and that she was with him now. And slowly she began to sense a dark aura of amusement about him which she thought she should resent if she knew its springs.

In the evenings, by their fire, he told her tales of the Runedaur. He did not have the storyteller’s art, to cast his listener into the web of the story to forget herself; he seemed to be reciting things learned off by heart. Yet in his plain speech, neither did he intrude himself, and she listened hard, wondering what they were to mean to her.

One night the first Runedaur, Dekailos, walked a forest road alone. Oraay in Her fullness silvered his path and Fernog Forest-lord streaked it with sable shadow and Dere’s gems glittered over all.

A brigand leaped to the path before him with a blade that flashed in the light and vanished in the shadow. “Give over your weapons!” he cried.

And, “I have none,” Dekailos replied.

“Then give over your purse,” said the brigand. Dekailos loosed his bag, heavy with gold, and gave it over without a word.

“Now your cloak!” said the brigand. Dekailos unclasped his silver clasp and gave over his thick furred cloak.

“And your hat!”

Dekailos undid his cap strings and gave over his sable cap.

“And your boots!”

Dekailos loosed his laces and pulled off his fine bullhide boots and gave them over.

“Your belt!” the robber next demanded, and that, too, Dekailos gave him.

“Your robe!” he cried. Dekailos did off his silks and surrendered them.

The brigand gathered all the goods of Dekailos and vanished back into the darkness, leaving Dekailos naked beneath the moon and the stars and the trees.

Thus did Dekailos become the wealthiest man Night or Day has ever beheld.

“What?” Rothesay yelped when Dav stopped, apparently finished.

“Yes?”

“That’s it? He just—let himself be robbed?

Master Dav sighed. “Go to sleep, chit,” he said, and settled himself to do the same.

After his death, the followers of Dekailos said, Who shall lead us now?

Some said the leader should be determined by force of arms, as that would show who was most powerful. Others said the wealthiest of them should lead, he who commanded the greatest worldly skills. Some said they should draw lots, trusting to the gods.

Kossassos the sweeper laughed at them. “You will have to choose how to choose before you can choose!” he said.

“Very well,” they said, “you shall choose a leader for us!” And it was their turn to laugh.

Kossassos looked at them all, and then pointed to a boy of barely twelve winters. “You! You shall lead the Runedaur!” he said.

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Such folly could only be divinely guided. The Runedaur took the boy and set him on the throne of bones and laid the silver Chain about his neck. “Lead us!” they cried.

And the boy looked at them all, and rose from the throne of bones and went to the sweeper and did off the Chain from his own neck and put it on Kossassos.

“I don’t get it.”

“You will. Good night.”

One night they spent fireless on the floor of a small stand of firs in a hollow with a stony stream running through it. The water made a pleasant, soothing music to Rothesay, who missed again the distant boom of the surf at home. The spicy fragrance of the firs rose on the misty air; breathing deeply, she felt it drawn into her very blood as a sweet delight, at once new and as familiar as—her mother had worn fragrance rather like this. Her earliest memories were stirred, and, though tired, she lay awake long after the Master rolled up in his cloak and seemed to fall asleep at once.

She remembered a garden, a small grassy clearing, slate-colored in the moonlight, ringed by towering dark trees sighing under a gentle breeze. A tall fountain, all silver in the shivery light, whispered and gurgled. People in long pale ribbons and silvery silk garments that seemed to float about them danced around and about it, singing, with many laughing interruptions and someone complaining through his laughter, ‘Hey! Shape it up!’ A drum and a flute led the dance, and she was supposed to be asleep in some sort of a basket, under a tent of her mother’s cloak, with someone’s sword for a tent-pole. She must have gotten up to join the dance, or perhaps to play in the fountain; at any rate, she had fallen in: she remembered clearly the cold water enfolding her, and her nightdress (white, with pale blue flowers; it had been her favorite) plastered to her. And strong arms lifting her up and a deep laugh, belonging to someone she called uncle or cousin, though he wasn’t really, who carried her in the dance after that, to her everlasting delight and gratitude.

She remembered standing in a great hall that had been prepared for festival, for the winter solstice, with a big tree all decorated in the middle; but the hall was dark, for all the household was asleep, and she could just make out the tree by the starlike glitter of the gold and silver sun-ornaments on the branches. And someone came in, a guard, who was as far as she was concerned the captain of the guard; he had been away for some time and had not been able to help decorate the tree, and she was there because she wanted to share it with him, so he would not miss out. He had carried her back to her cradle: she remembered the feel of his mailed shoulder under her cheek, not cold, for he was warm underneath. . . . She shivered. She remembered him also from the time she and Mama were taken off the big boat and put into the little one, and she was too frightened to cry, for Mama was angry in a terrible silent way Rothesay had never seen before, that shook her young world to its roots.

She shook herself, and blinked thoughtfully in the blackness. Suddenly a certain wig-wearing Darian nobleman seemed unpleasantly familiar. Not from the great ship, but on the wharf some time before; he gave her—a candy? It was red, and it spooked her, or something about him had spooked her. She had carried it to the far gunwale, and dropped it in the water; she remembered leaning far over to watch it swirl into the green shadow of the ship, her doll clutched tightly under her arm lest she, too, fall in, and Mama had gasped a low strangled gasp, and gently but firmly pulled her back. That was only natural, she thought now; yet something still troubled her, something was not quite natural about it, but she fell asleep before she could work it out.

In the morning Dav coolly commended her to watchfulness.

“These eastern lands are placid enough, compared to the west of Peria; yet even here, outlaw bands prowl, and trooped warriors overeager for conquest; and there are other hazards.” He pointed westward with his chin. “It is a hundred miles to the edge of the Myrinine Forest, but the tendrils of its power are long and only high summer withers its reach. I have walked within it—but I will not willingly do so again.”

She did not press him for the story, for tales of the monsters of Myrinine were many; but Padriag had been there, too, more than once, and he said that behaving civilly, like an honorable guest, was entirely adequate passport, albeit one apparently inaccessible to most folk. She scowled pensively: the yellow-eyed thing that had hunted her over the Caelfell might be one of those ‘tendrils,’ and she could imagine no courtesy that would have turned its ravening hunger. Equally, she could not imagine anything eager to take a taste of Padriag, for all his image of fat jollity; and she wished he would not overestimate the potency of his apprentice by underestimating his own.

They breakfasted at a small but thriving farmstead, where the family could not do enough for their noble guest, all but chewing the food for him. They served Rothesay politely, though she sensed their mingled pity and contempt for her, and a freshened fear of the Master: their daughters, after a brief courtesy, were quickly shooed off to chase the chickens. Rothesay blushed, but did not correct their misconception, nor allow it to interfere with the best breakfast she could remember eating.

On their way again, crossing the farmer’s fields as though on Dav’s private highway, Rothesay tapped at the Runedaur’s knee. “Master? Maybe I’m stupid, but that didn’t look like theft, by any name.”

Dav glanced back at the farmhouse reflectively. “I believe we did him a favor once,” he replied vaguely, and returned to silence, alert, listening silence which was apparently habitual to him, leaving her to her thoughts.

She grinned at the sunshine, having no one else to share her amusement. You great fraud! she thought of her new master, and reflected that there were other things said of the Runedaur: it was whispered that if you had no other recourse, if your cause were just (or at least in line with the Order’s interests), and if you dared approach Colderwild Hall, Runedaur were powerful advocates. Presumably they were also expensive.

So it was true. The sunshine seemed suddenly warmer and brighter. She could enjoy that face of being a (Great Mother of the World!) Runedaur.

From somewhere nearby came a sense of deep amusement, connected, she thought, to Dav’s being a fraud. It was the horse, Dark Walking. He disagreed, however: the Master of Runedaur was not kind but crafty, building his power, like a lord stallion, from a calculated mix of fear and endearment. He was a sire who took meticulous care of his vast herd—Dark Walking seemed to regard anyone Dav had any business with as a kind of subordinate horse—to profit it; but there was no sentiment behind, to give an example, Dark Walking’s own airy stable or the sweet, fresh water.

Rothesay apologized for not having bespoken the stallion since that first night, but she was a little distracted, uncertain of her place or fate; moreover, Dav evidently never considered Dark Walking more than ‘just a horse,’ an attitude that was unfortunately catching, for which she apologized further. Dark Walking ignored this, his equine sense of courtesy unable to grasp either point as an offense. Perceiving only that this half-human wished for harmony, he extended his casual welcome to the Runedaur community, letting her know she might visit with him when she would feel overwhelmed by her new life.

What was it like at Colderwild? Overly busy, like all human pursuits; with rather less malice and more gaiety than Dark Walking observed at other halls; for the most part, it was just fine—for a horse. Rothesay laughed.

“Something amuses you?” said Dav.

“Er—oh—well, it was nothing, really,” she dissembled helplessly. It was usually quite pointless trying to describe these exchanges to other folk.

But she was to learn that nothing was insignificant enough to escape the Master’s curiosity. He reined up and awaited satisfaction. She opened her mouth, but that hot blue gaze withered all self-assurance. She dropped her eyes, writhed under her pack, and finally murmured to the ground, “Just something . . . your, um, horse . . . er, said. . . .”

In the stillness that followed, she heard high and away the liquid notes of a wood thrush as he rejoiced in the sunlight, untroubled by strange men with terrible eyes that bored holes in the skulls of the apparently impertinent.

“Look at me.” His voice compelled like a cracking whip. She obeyed, glumly, almost looking through her own eyebrows at him. He sighed explosively. “This is not your native humor, or I am no judge of character at all.” After a pause, he added, “Nor yet mad. . . . What—did—my horse say?” he asked politely, with acidity restrained.

“I asked what it was like at—your hall, and he said it was splendid for a horse. . . . It loses something in the translation, lord,” she mumbled, ducking her head in embarrassment and hunching her shoulders. Recalling that this was how Padriag said she resembled a heron, she almost stood on one leg, but refrained: she did not want to try explaining that, too.

“It does,” he agreed neutrally. “Ah—was that all?”

“No!” Rothesay shot back, stung at last. She met him gaze for gaze. “His box is at the southwest corner of the stables, and his is the nicest, though they all seem to be much to the credit of your Order. There is a well in the center of the yard, and you had a trench dug down the middle, and a pumping device built, so that twice a day the horses get fresh running water—boys do the pumping. He has a big beautiful patterned blanket which you gave him; and you often sit by the well in the moonlight when you want to be alone to think.”

Dav’s expression did not so much as flicker; but after a long, still silence, leather creaked softly as he swung slowly down from the saddle, never taking his eyes from her face till he stood solidly upon the ground. Then he stared at the horse, who munched at the weeds unheeding.

“This is a sorcery you learned from the old wizard?” he asked presently.

“No, Master; it isn’t sorcery at all.” Under Dav’s quick glare, she explained, wishing she did not babble so when startled, “No, no, not a bit of it. You talk to him all the time yourself; you just don’t bother to listen for an answer.” This revelation succeeded so well in startling him as to renew all her delight. She let him stand for awhile in silence, patently listening unsuccessfully. “It’s a bit of an art—like listening to anyone,” she said gently. She had not learned it from Padriag, she had always done it, and only been glad to discover that the old wizard had the habit, too.

Dav snorted. He folded his arms, hesitating. “How intelligent is he?”

“Very. You know that.”

“I knew he was intelligent for a horse. How intelligent is he?”

Rothesay shrugged. “I’d say you’re well suited.”

Dav shuddered. After a moment, he tried again. “Why does he allow himself to be ridden?”

“He’s a horse.”

“He’s intelligent, you said,” Dav snapped. “If that’s true, he should be out gamboling in the fields with his mares, not barging into battles where he might be injured or killed at any moment—Girl!” he barked, momentarily undone.

A gurgle of laughter burst from her lips. She clasped hasty hands to her face, but the damage was done, the genie loosed, and she collapsed to the soft bosom of the earth in a speechless ecstasy of merriment, her broad, fruity laughter ringing in the silent air, fair revenge for all Dav’s amusement at her. Silently the master turned away, expressionless, and pillowed his grizzled head against the stallion’s shoulder, till Rothesay recovered her senses and sat up, wiping her eyes and watching him uneasily.

Slowly he looked around at her. An unfathomable fire burned in his eyes. Slowly he touched one finger to his brow: a salute. “This is why we keep novices,” he said softly, as if to someone she could not see, “that their innocence may lay snares for our unchallenged follies.” The strange fire flamed suddenly into real mirth, crinkling all the lines in his hard face, and he reached down a hand to haul her to her feet, and slapped her shoulder, and launched himself back into his saddle.

“Come then, Winddancer!” he cried to the horse. “We dance to our foolish deaths together!” Dark Walking—Winddancer—pranced aside, then horse and rider raced ahead, danced a tight ring while she ran after, then charged on again.