Chapter 4

The Maiden from the Lake of Blazing Stars

-Part the First-

The main highway from the gnomish capital to Sén Serén, called the Silver River Way (as the Forest Folk named Gérlod), stretched more than twenty leagues along its gleaming waters ere reaching Oak Haven, only to meander further through woods and meadows towards the sea’s distant embrace.

Yet in Al, the bard’s love for wandering had bested the sensible desire to reach Farén Bernlas before the onset of the Season of Snows. He had veered from the route, a decision he now silently cursed.

Wearied from long travel, he descended from a minor road, where curiosity had led him astray. In the midst of the wood, he found a great stone and clambered atop it. Just as he’d hoped, the path lay plainly visible from there, making it easy to watch for any passing cart. He doffed his hat and wiped the sweat from his brow with the back of his hand, as a gentle breeze tousled his hair.

His gaze swept idly across the forest’s russet carpet of decaying beech leaves, lit here and there by the last rays of the setting sun. Reaching beneath his travel cloak, he drew forth his lute. Running his fingers slowly across the strings, he fell into thought, memories rising unbidden — memories of his father and an evening whenas he had still been a child.

The evening of his twentieth birthday. His father had taken him to the mountain river, to the place where, years before, he had planted a willow, Al's month tree. The moons gleamed brightly in the black, cloudless sky — one a slender crescent, the other full and round as a wagon wheel.

They had seated themselves upon the willow’s roots, which twisted above the damp earth and reached towards the water's edge. His father, cloaked in wool, had drawn forth a lute, much as Al did now.

“Look,” his father had said, plucking the strings with nimble fingers, “They say it was Mistress Willow who fashioned the first lute from spruce wood, while the Children of the Tree Lord wove its strings from the very fibres and veins of her own leaves. The first choir was spun by sylphs, giving the lute’s music the weightlessness of air; the second by tidecomers, who blessed it with the fluidity of water; the third by dragons, who imbued it with the searing heart of flame; and the last by gnomes, who shaped it to be strong as the earth itself.”

“And what about us?” Al had asked eagerly, watching in fascination as his father’s long, deft fingers danced across the strings, coaxing a soft melody that the river’s murmuring waves carried away into the night.

“We,” his father had said, smiling with that solemn, proud, and near-imperceptible smile of his, “we know how to play it. None play the lute better than the bardic folk of the elves. And you, my son, shall be one of us. Songs cry out within your soul — light as the mountain breeze, yet keen as its cutting edge. It has ever been thus.”

'Light as the breeze, yet keen.'

Lightness had always come easier to Al than keenness.

The image of his father blurred before Al's eyes as a sudden crack and a voice broke the stillness behind him:

“Cursed mud! Mischievous Likho must’ve wrought this ill!”

The boy spun around, but seeing nought, slung his bundle over his shoulder, leapt down from the stone, and made his way toward the source of the shout. He trudged a dozen yards or so, sinking now and again into the deep drifts of fallen leaves, until he reached the edge of a ravine. At its bottom ran a narrow road, barely wide enough to accommodate a four-wheeled cart of the sort that now caught Al's eye.

The back of the cart — particularly the right rear wheel — was sunk nearly halfway into the clinging, sodden earth, causing the entire contraption to list stubbornly to one side. It refused to budge, despite the efforts of a hedgehog yoked to its front and a burly carter, who strained mightily to push it forward.

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Al's gaze shifted from the carter to the hedgehog, for beside the creature stood yet another figure — a slender one clad in a russet-brown cloak embroidered with rowan motifs and wearing a dirty-red hat. She held the hedgehog's reins and seemed intent on urging it to greater effort.

After a moment, the figure glanced back, perhaps sensing someone behind her. Al realised she was a young maiden with elven features. Wisps of pale red hair, light as spider silk dyed with faded nasturtium petals, escaped from beneath her hat. Her freckled face looked thoughtful and intent, and nothing in it stirred at the sight of the stranger, save for her bright eyes, which gleamed softly — not with fear, but with curiosity.

Al regarded her for a moment ere turning his gaze back to the carter and grinning broadly.

“’Tis not the work of Likho, but the rain,” he called, nimbly skidding down the leaf-strewn slope of the ravine. “You’ll need something beneath it!”

The carter turned, squinting at Al ere narrowing his thick, bushy brows in what was surely a moment of inward reckoning — assessing just what sort of fellow had appeared before him.

“Oh-ho! Full o' bright ideas, are ye?” he growled. “Right then, grab that flat branch o'er yonder!” He pointed to a hefty beech bough, stripped of leaves and side shoots. “I’ll try to lift the cart while you wedge it under the wheel. Then we’ll lever it up, and Féven here'll get the hedgehog to haul us free.”

The girl named Féven nodded in understanding and took hold of the reins once more, which she must have let slip whilst listening to Al and the carter converse. The elf-boy shot her a playful grin, but she merely tilted her head, as though studying him, before turning back to the hedgehog and murmuring softly, her hand gliding over one of the creature’s bristling spines.

Grasping the bough, Al glanced back at the carter.

“Are you not afeard I might be a brigand or a thief?” he asked with a hint of mischief, wedging the branch between the thick, clinging mire and the wheel’s rim as the carter hefted the cart, tilting it slightly.

“And what’s a thief to take from us?” the carter retorted, releasing his hold on the cart. He nodded toward a heap of branches jutting from between the cart’s beams and slats. “Firewood?”

“Mayhap your daughter?” Al teased.

“She’s no daughter o’ mine,” the carter laughed, casting a glance at Féven. The elf-maid looked up too, raising an eyebrow ere offering her first smile — small, barely perceptible, yet bright with mirth that seemed oddly out of place given her earlier solemnity.

Her sudden change amused Al greatly.

“And she’d not be easily stolen!” the carter added. “Right then — heave to!”

We’ll see about that, thought Al with a mischievous grin, seizing the bough alongside the carter and levering it downward to free the wheel from the mire’s grip. The mud splattered violently as the hedgehog strained forward, the wheel spinning at last. Moments later, the cart lurched ahead, leaving the clinging pit behind.

“Well, that’s done!” declared the carter, clapping his hands together to rid them of damp flecks of beech bark. Then he cast a shrewd glance at Al, his thick brows knitting once more.

“Time for us to head home. But what of you, forest wanderer? How comes it you’re roaming our lakeside wilds? You don’t look much like a thief, but what manner of fellow are ye?”

“I’m Algén — or just Al,” the boy replied, reaching for his bundle, which he had tossed onto the leaf-strewn ground. “I wander the woods, for it’s my calling to go from tree to tree, singing songs with my lute.”

“Ha!” The carter chuckled. “We’ve got ourselves a bard, have we? Hear that, Fév?”

“I hear, I hear,” Féven said without much enthusiasm, though a faint smile tugged at her lips. She ambled to the back of the cart, braced herself with her hands, and sprang up nimbly to sit on the bed, facing away from the direction they were bound.

“I’d gladly ride with you for a night or two, if there’s a snug hollow with a clay stove to be found,” said Al to the carter, though his bold gaze still lingered on the elf-maid. “I’ve grown weary of lighting fires in the rain and damp, and there’s a long road yet before me to Oak Haven, and further still to the City of Trees.”

“Why not, then? Climb aboard — the village’ll surely find space for ye,” the carter replied as he clambered onto the cart, settled himself on the bench, and took hold of the reins. “The Pine Festival’s the day after tomorrow, and the night’ll be as long as a trek through endless caverns. You’ll do well to play us a tune on that magical lute of yours.”

As Al tossed his bundle onto the cart and seated himself beside Féven, the carter chuckled under his breath.

“They say bard-folk carry fates in their songs and read secrets from souls. Nonsense, that!”

Onward they trundled. The blaze of the sunset, which had earlier seemed to burn far off where the Dragon Mountains and Dragon Volcanoes sharpened their peaks against the heavens, was now fading into the brownish-grey haze of dusk. The last vestiges of sunlight scattered into the air and melted into the chill of the approaching evening. Féven reached for a lantern nestled among the cartload of branches. Fetching a flint and striker from a pouch hidden beneath her cloak, she struck a spark, lighting the candle within. The freckles on her nose gleamed golden in the sudden glow as she cast a glance at Al.

“Show me,” she said abruptly, without explanation, though with a curious eagerness that was almost amusing.

Al laughed.

“Show you what?”

“What you play on.”

Still chuckling, Al reached beneath his cloak for the lute. He plucked a few strings, the notes soft and airy, then glanced fleetingly up at Féven from beneath his brow. She was studying the instrument with the intensity of a scholar examining some new and undiscovered marvel.

“Want to try it?” he offered, holding the lute out to her.

But she shook her head.

“No,” she said firmly. “Just play.”