Haven Magic (9 page)

“But how?” he demanded, knowing the answer, but not wanting to hear it. “How is such a thing possible?”

“Because it is a magical beacon. I’ve had visions about how to make it—the tallow is not normal tallow, there are many ingredients—but none of that matters now. I—” she came forward and took his hands. “I’ve got a bit of the power in me, Brand, just a spark. I’ve known it for a long time, the visions, this beacon, other things….”

Fear came over Brand, a more direct and immediate fear than even the shadow man brought. He felt that he was losing Telyn. How could she ever be his when they reached marrying age if she indeed had some kind of power?

“Telyn, in the River Haven, such things aren’t looked upon favorably. Magic is strictly to be kept out of the Haven—for the River’s sake girl, that’s what the Pact with the Faerie is all about!”

Telyn looked up at him. “I know. That’s why I must meet the Faerie.”

This time he reached out to her. He took her hands into his. “No, that’s impossible, Telyn. I won’t have you following a will-o-wisp or becoming a new trophy for the Wild Hunt.”

Telyn pulled away from him with an irritated gesture. “I’m not suggesting anything so drastic. If I could just learn a few more things from them. They are so wise….”

Brand’s mouth felt dry. “Wise yes, but fickle and as full of malice and deceit as kindness and wisdom. No one but those performing the ceremony can even watch them in safety.”

“I could. I could use your help as well. We’ll go around behind the Faerie mound, to the side where the forest comes close, and then—”

“But we have no wards! We would be at their mercy!” burst out Brand.

She shushed him with her delicate hand. She looked to the door and listened a moment before speaking further. Satisfied that no one had heard his outburst, she lifted her hand from his mouth. “I’m not a fool. I have wards. We will be in no danger.”

Brand sighed aloud, finding it difficult to believe that he was having this conversation. See the Faerie? This was one of the greatest fears of any sensible person, not something that was planned for and sought out! Truly, this plan of hers topped them all.

“Are you with me, or do I go it alone?” she demanded. She had the cast to her face that Brand knew meant a bout of stubbornness was near at hand. She had a stubborn streak as wide as the slowest part of the river.

“I’ll have to tell your mother. I’ll tell everyone, I can’t let you be led astray,” he said resolutely.

Telyn tilted her head and gave him an amused half-smile. “You think you can stop me? You think you or anyone else in the Haven can even catch me?”

Brand paused for a moment, considering. He sighed and looked dejected. “No, probably not. You’d just disappear into the trees or something....”

“That’s right,” she said, walking around him in a slow circle as she spoke. “I would. And then I would face the Faerie alone.”

Brand rolled his eyes, unbelieving of his misfortune. “Okay, I’ll come with you.”

Telyn, who was halfway around on her circle jumped up with a happy sound and kissed the back of his neck. This sent a wave of nerves tingling and singing down his back.

After that, she swore him to secrecy and he bid her goodnight. Just as he left, he looked at the candle again. She had placed his beside hers. His candle guttered and danced with the drafts, but hers burned steady and clear. This time there was no doubt of it. Telyn had worked magic.

He went to bed for a second time that night with troubling thoughts. As he fell asleep, he wondered what other things might be attracted to her beacon.

* * *

By the following morning the blizzard had stopped. The world had changed from green and brown to white and dark gray. Hoarfrost and icicles were already growing from the house’s eaves. One particularly long icicle hung down in front of the doorway like a frozen dagger. It broke way and shattered when Brand went out to fill two tin pails at the covered well in the yard. Corbin followed him out to help.

“Well, what do you think of them?” asked Corbin as they wound up the rattling chain. Far down in the echoing depths of the well the bucket sloshed and clattered against the stones.

“I don’t like this whole thing,” Brand replied.

“Oh now, let’s not be like your brother Jak,” said Corbin. “They are a bit rough in their ways, but I can imagine that Gudrin has many an excellent tale to spin. I’ve never heard one of their stories first hand, but they’re said to be the best. Wouldn’t it be quite a feather in our caps if we could present them at the feast?”

“What about Myrrdin?”

Corbin made an expansive gesture. “Perhaps Gudrin could perform the ceremony. She seems as wise as any.”

Brand looked at him quizzically. “Everyone around here seems so taken with outsiders lately.”

“What’s wrong?” asked Corbin, squinting at him. Just then the bucket came into view and they hauled it up and filled one of the tin pails. The bucket dropped back down with a long clinking rattle of the chain and a distant, echoing splash.

Brand frowned before answering his cousin. Should he tell Corbin of Telyn’s insane plans? She would be angry when she found out, but perhaps he could come up with some way to stop her. Still, he was reluctant to tell Corbin something she had told him in confidence. It was a troubling dilemma, he couldn’t recall ever having held something back from Corbin before.

“I don’t know,” he said at last. “Nothing seems to be the way it was a few weeks ago.”

They hauled up the bucket a second time, and Brand waited for Corbin’s mind to digest this. He began to fear that somehow Corbin already knew everything. It sometimes seemed as if he knew things that no one else did, simply because he reasoned them through so carefully and clearly.

“It must be something about Scraper—Telyn, then,” he said slowly, piecing it together. Brand oftentimes thought of Corbin’s head as a miller’s wheel and stone. He always ground down hard facts into a fine dust. “She was acting oddly last night...almost as if she expected someone besides Myrrdin. Not a pair of the Kindred, either.”

Brand glanced at him and chewed a bit on his lower lip. He looked away, lest his eyes give away the rest of the puzzle somehow to Corbin’s millstone. The bucket rose to the top a second time and they filled the second pail in silence.

“Ah, I have it!” said Corbin triumphantly. “She expected to see the Faerie at the door!”

Brand and Corbin looked at each other. Brand shook his head in defeat. “I was never good at deceit, and you are like a wolf hunting a lost lamb if there is a fact missing in the world.”

Corbin’s look of triumph faded quickly, as more ramifications came to him. “But how is such a thing possible? And why would anyone
want
to meet the Faerie on their doorstep during a midnight blizzard?”

Brand sighed. He explained what little he knew. He cautioned Corbin to secrecy, but knew that there was little hope that Telyn wouldn’t figure out that Brand had told him of her schemes. She was almost as good as Corbin at delving into the truth, and Corbin was probably worse than Brand at hiding it.

It was when they were trudging through the new fallen snow back to the house that Corbin dropped his pail of water.

“Corbin, what are you doing, man?” Brand demanded. Then he stopped as he noticed that Corbin was standing stock still, looking out through the opening in the hedge where the path led down into the apple orchard. “What’s wrong?”

Corbin backed way to Brand’s side. He pointed into the white encrusted trees. “There,” he hissed. “Beyond the fourth row. I saw something moving about.”

They crouched down like hunters, Corbin pointing. To both their ears then came the sweet music of distant pipes. Corbin looked into Brand’s eyes, their faces close together, the white plumes of their breath fogging the space between them. Brand knew the truth before his friend spoke.

“It was your shadow man, Brand. I’m sure of it. I feel his spell now, calling us to come and dance.”

The two of them rose up and ran into the house. Behind them the two tin pails spilled their water onto the snow, melting dark patches in the smooth expanse of white.

Brand, always fleeter of foot, won the race to the door and burst through it. “Jak!” he shouted to his brother. “Get your crossbow!”

Jak, who had been sitting on his favorite chair with his feet hanging over the arms, jumped up in alarm. He spilled the tea that he had been sipping. Modi surprised everyone by producing his battleaxe, which he had placed out of sight behind his chair. He leapt up and charged to the door as if an army was on the island. Brushing Brand and Corbin aside, he pushed shut the door and barred it, putting his broad back against it. Only then did he turn to the boys.

“What did you see?” he demanded, his bass voice ringing with command. He gripped his battleaxe in both hands, at the ready.

“The shadow man,” said Brand, pointing toward the orchard and the dock beyond. “Corbin saw the shadow man who has been following us for some time.”

Modi’s eyes narrowed. He went to the shuttered window nearest him and released the latch, peeking outside. White light illuminated his weathered face and hard eyes. “Just one man?”

“Yes, but he is very mysterious,” replied Brand.

“Are you sure it is the same one?” Jak asked them.

Corbin shrugged. “I don’t know. This time we heard the music of pipes.”

“Perhaps we should go out and thrash him,” suggested Jak, rolling up his sleeves and donning his cloak and boots.

Corbin shook his head. “He is not a normal man. It was like Brand said, I—I felt a cold dread come over me. Even to look at him was difficult. Perhaps he is one of the Faerie. One of the Dark Ones.”

Modi slammed the shutters and latched them. They all jumped at the noise. “I see nothing. Faerie, you say?” he said, snorting. “What do River Folk know of Dark Ones?”

Before any could answer him, Gudrin and Telyn came into the room. “I’m sorry, but I seem to have slept late,” said Gudrin. Brand was a bit amused to note that although she wore a nightshirt, she still had her package under her arm and her rucksack on her back. Gudrin looked at Modi and sighed. “I see your weapon is ready again, Modi of the Warriors. What is all the commotion about?”

Brand quickly explained about the shadow man while Jak went upstairs to get his crossbow. While Brand was describing the shadow man, Gudrin became increasingly concerned.

“And the length of the weapon you saw the first time....”

“I couldn’t be
sure
it was a weapon,” interrupted Brand.

“Yes, yes, but if it was, would you say it was the length of a dagger or a sword?”

Brand pondered for a moment. “In between, perhaps.”

Gudrin nodded, kneading her chin. She held her package to her chest, as if it gave her comfort of some kind. Brand watched her and noticed that her rucksack gave a tiny twitch again, as it had last night, a small movement. Brand blinked and frowned. He surmised that Gudrin must have some kind of odd tick in the muscles of her back. Perhaps it only showed up when she was thinking, the way old man Tad Silure’s cheek would twitch when he spoke before the Riverton council.

“We must investigate this, Modi,” Gudrin said to her companion.

Modi shrugged his massive shoulders. “It is but one man.”

“They describe not a man, but one of the
shirik
,” said Gudrin.

At this, Modi came alive. He strode forward to Gudrin’s side. They spoke briefly in their own tongue, which, to the ears of the River Folk, sounded both crude and subtle. It was a language of many hard sounds and careful inflections. Each word seemed clear and clipped; none ran into the next as words tended to do in their own tongue. Only Telyn seemed to enjoy the sound of it.

“There was one other thing,” said Corbin. “We heard the sweet music of pipes after the phantom had disappeared.”

Gudrin and Modi exchanged glances. “Man-sized? Bearing a long knife and playing sweet pipes? It can only be Voynod,” said Modi.

Gudrin nodded, but gestured Modi to silence. “It is best not to name them so casually when one is near,” she said.

Telyn had followed Jak and his crossbow to the door. In her hand she held a long thin dagger. Brand frowned at her blade.

“Wait,” said Gudrin. She raised up a thick-fingered hand. “You must not confront the
shirik
now. It is weak so far from home, I’m sure, but not so weak as to fall to an honest crossbow bolt or dagger.”

“I didn’t want to kill the man,” said Jak, a bit taken aback. “I just wanted to warn him off.”

Gudrin nodded. “It is not a man. It is a
shirik
—a
shade,
as you would call it in your tongue. A powerful servant of the Enemy. This one you saw, that Modi has already unwisely named, is the Enemy’s bard.”

“The Enemy? Do you mean Herla?” asked Brand.

Gudrin raised her hands to her face and made shushing motions. “Shhh! Don’t speak his name aloud with one of his servants near!”

All the River Folk stared at her with mouths open. Brand had heard stories of bogies such as the dreaded shades, free agents of Herla and his Wild Hunt, but the idea that there was one of them stalking about outside was just too much.