The Forge in the Forest (45 page)

Elof and the others exchanged startled glances, and hurried after her. Rarely had he heard anything to match the bitterness in her voice. "My lady," demanded Kermorvan, "are you all right? Or how have we distressed you?"

But he had no answer. She was slow to follow their path, and when Kermorvan laid a hand on her shoulder to draw her away she writhed and slapped it off. She walked with them then, but wreathed in a silence that spoke, black fury upon her brow. The others too were silent, for despite her words they found themselves constantly scanning the skyline for unfriendly eyes. Though they saw nothing, they were glad when near sunset they rounded a sharp bend in the river and saw that the peaks ahead, reddening in the last rays, were much lower; the end of the pass was near. The river they had followed up from the forests came tumbling down here from its sources among the heights; they quitted its cold company for a smaller stream that led them downward a long and winding way between the lower peaks. They camped some way down, in a pocket of rock that would be easy to defend, and built a good fire of scrub. But Ils curtly refused food, and slumped down in a corner; the others gazed at her in some concern. A look Elof could not read had closed over her face like a visor. It reminded him forcibly of how strange she could be, of how alien her stock. He thought of the cold countenances of the duergar court, of the harshness of old King Andvar, hater of men; he had never seen her look so like them.

"Ils," he ventured. "I am sorry that your folk dwell here no longer, truly sorry. But why should that lead you to shun us so, your friends? When you have come so long a road with us…"

She raised dark eyes to him, glittering through the dusk. "And should I have? Should I not have fled you, as my folk have ever done, you who live and breed so much faster than we? Around half the wide world we have fled,
and those who would not, they
have
stayed and
. . . dwindled." Her eyes narrowed, as if some new and chilly light shone upon her. "Those signs, they were rough, crude, scrawls that had all but lost their meaning. The work of near-savages! Yet there was a time when no duergar lived thus; it was newmade savages who drew them, children of wealth tumbled to the gutter." She gave a bitter little laugh. "Aye, now I have seen whither that road of yours leads! I have seen what we can come to, how great will be our fall, when it comes! Aye, when! We cannot flee forever. Before us there is only the Western Ocean, and beyond it the Ekwesh lands. So why do I walk with you, why do I dream of bringing our peoples closer?" There was a dull flame now in her eyes, burning like a low fever. "Will that not simply hasten our last and losing conflict? I think I understand old Andvar a little better now. If we can come to… to that, should we not indeed shut you out with gulf and stone, and slay all who intrude? If we are doomed in the end, why should I seek to speed it?" She turned away furiously, and flung her cloak about her. Elof would have put an arm about her shoulders, but Kermorvan drew him back. Concern furrowed his brows, but he shook his head.

"Better to leave her be," he said quietly, turning the strips of venison that toasted among the ashes. "She is angry, afraid, as who would not be? But in all she said I heard only questions. Doubt wracks her, not certainty. We shall try to find answers when she is ready to listen. For now, do you let her rest. And when you have eaten, rest yourselves, you and Roc. I shall watch, for now."

So Elof sought sleep. But the unease of the day seeped into his dreams which beat and fluttered like great birds caged, or stalked with menace around the margins of waking. It seemed to him that he heard voices speaking of dark things, of war and death and decay, and then turning to higher yet hardly more hopeful matters, and he knew suddenly that he was awake, although his limbs and body seemed too heavy to move. It was Ils' crisp voice he heard, and Kermorvan's clear answer.

"And will it not happen again, wherever men are? More than our shape divides us. The tides of our thoughts flow apart. We can think and live as you do, upon the surface, but into deeper waters few may follow us. Elof, perhaps, and yourself. Roc, no, though at least he would see and respect. But there would always be many others, lesser men who would not see, only resent."

"And among the duergar also, I do not doubt! I have met only too many of both races. But if enough of each are willing, it would take scarcely two generations…"

"If? That is the greatest gulf of all, one that reason is too weak to bridge. A greater force is needed, and you humans are not equal to it. You could not feel as deeply as we. You cannot comprehend our thoughts, still less the passions that speed us on. You would ground on the shallows of your souls."

"Would we? There are some whose thoughts flow deep as your dark mountain streams, aye, and passions also! Look at
him
. Within him embers are quietly smoldering, ready to burst into flame at a touch of his thought. All this long road they have driven him for love of a girl he has seen in all his life for barely an hour together!"

There was a silence, and Ils' voice changed when she spoke again. "He is more like us, indeed."

"So, not all men are as cold in heart as I…"

Ils snorted in surprise. "You? You're no blindfish!" Her voice was tinged with gleeful malice. "You love, all right. The lady Teris might have had something to say on the matter, had you but the wit to ask it!"

"I? I was raised to treat women properly! With respect, with reverence, with…"

"Spare me! And you love him…"

It was all too obvious whom she meant. Elof almost sat up in astonished outrage, then struggled to stifle a smile at the strangled sound Kermorvan emitted. "Not like that!" For a moment his voice was a model of stately outrage, and then he collapsed into a rare rueful chuckle. Elof guessed Ils had prodded him in the ribs. "Oh, I know, the more I struggle the deeper sinks the barb! I suppose I am fond of him, yes. As I am of Roc. And of you, though Amicac knows why!" His voice took on a mild edge of its own. "He is a fine fellow, after all; it is not hard to be fond of him, in- one way or another. It seemed to me, lady, that even you…"

"Even I!" She spat the words out with a force that startled Elof. "What would you know of that? As well he does not so much as notice me, him and his damned embers! And you're the man who'd have our races mingle! Can you not see, fool, blindworm, sluggard, how slow either will be to do that? Do you not understand what alone can drive them to such an unheard-of act? We look odd to each other, we even smell odd…"

"To men you could not look less than fair, lady…"

"Aye, thank you kindly, sir, but fair as one of your own, all willowy and wispy? Golden or red, aye, or auburn about the hair, like a certain lady of Lys Arvalen? I take leave to doubt that. To us, long man, you look stretched out like a shadow, weak as a hank of straw, thin as a dribble…"

"No doubt," interrupted Kermorvan calmly. "So, to awaken feelings we must look past that, to what is common in us. It can be done. Have we not come to that, in some degree?"

Ils' voice was grudging. "Perhaps we have, thrown together in strange circumstance. But others will need some motive to try. In such matters rulers cannot rule. But leaders may lead… if they can."

So long now was the silence ere Kermorvan replied that Elof almost lost the fine tether of attention that held him awake. "Neither leader nor ruler am I, as I have said ere now. But should things change, princess of the Elder folk, shall we not speak more of this?"

"Aye, if I can hold back from laughing. But at least you lighten my mood, long man, you and he. Look at him, sleeping like the child he is! And within him a force to break the will of a Power! Perhaps we should ask his aid, have him weld races as finely as he does metals, mix an alloy of hearts, an amalgam of minds…"

"Perhaps we should," said Kermorvan, with no mockery in his voice. Elof heard him shift position, and sigh.

"For now, this child also would sleep, and leave you the remainder of your watch. But think on this night! Remember it well!"

All that Elof heard then was the faint crackling of the dead embers. Was that truly how they saw him? He had never felt less ready to take flame. And yet… He sought to open his eyes, to search the sky above. But the effort was too great; he felt his mind whirl away into a cavern of blackness. Like foam upon the deep waters of Ils' own realm it swallowed him. But his last fading thought was that there were deeper waters around him yet.

Next morning he awoke in a pool of spring sun, much refreshed, and all things seemed so much as usual that Elof viewed his memories with deep suspicion; he could not tell whether or not he had dreamed all or part of what he had heard. Kermorvan was his customary calm self; more significantly, perhaps, Ils was also hers, and of yesterday's horrors there was no trace. In the warmer air it was possible to bear washing in the chill stream, and she even sang a merry little song to herself as she splashed about. And though that needed no better explanation, Elof had to fight down a sudden twinge of doubt and confusion. Her feelings for him, his for Kara, Kara's for him, how much did he truly know of any of these? What did he want of any of them? Unreasonable, ridiculous, to wish Ils at his heels like a dog, while he pursued… what? A shadow, a girl of a single hour. What did he know of her, save the cold and dangerous chains about her, the creature that held her bound? Why chase after her, when right at hand… He could not finish the thought. But nor, in the days to come, could he throw off a haunting sense of loss, not even in thoughts of Kara.

The warmth of day as the travelers set out lent a new zest to the air and a spring to their steps, and they scrambled down the rocky way as lightly as mountain goats. Not far below, the stream pooled beneath a low ridge between two rounded hills, and spilled over its edge with a noise of muted drums. Up the poolside rocks to the crest the travelers clambered, onto the level shelf beside the low falls, and realized that their view was no longer barred by peak or slope or standing rocks. It was from that ridge that they looked their first upon what they had come so far to reach, the ancient Eastlands of the land of Brasayhal.

Elof's first thought was of jewels, emerald and sapphire. For all the land below him, from the steep slopes that seemed almost to fall away from his feet to the wide expanses of forest beyond them, to the hint of softer hillsides on the northward horizon and lower, flatter grasslands to the south, all blazed with every shade of green, shifting, changing, glowing in the soft light. Sapphire was the water that flashed and winked among them, deepening the blues it plucked from the sky of lapis behind white clouds; and these also had their reflection upon the land. In the tree-girt basin far beneath the last of the morning mist was gathered, a whiteness purer than the Ice, a pool of gleaming milk whipped up by the first breezes into a towering wash of cloud that hung almost level with their eyes, like a sea wave frozen in the moment of breaking.

"Or like a hand that beckons!" breathed Kermorvan, poised tense and eager upon the very brink of the rock as if impatient to follow its behest. His gaze soared like a questing eagle across the verdant land outspread before them; its rivers sparkled in his eyes, its vibrant life in his voice. "See the richness of it! The Ice has never touched this place in many a long year. From where it now is, it could send little more than bad weather across these mountains. And near the sea the climes must be warmer, as they are in the west…"

"Aye, but see also the wildness!" chimed in Roc. "If the Ice hasn't touched it, no more has man. Doesn't look like we'll be finding many easterners!"

"There never were many," answered Kermorvan calmly. "Morvannec was small, and upon the seacoast, which must still be beyond our sight. Thither is our goal, to see what if anything still remains of it, and if these lands may be lived in."

Elof felt a warm bare arm slip through his and cling tight; it was Ils, who had no great love of heights and open spaces, and he felt obscurely pleased that she had come to him for support. "And after that we've only to get back home, without ending up stiff or daft by the way!" she growled. "No small order. But this I can say, we'll not hasten the search by perching on a cliff edge, gawking!"

They laughed, and admitted the justice of that. Yet to Elof, after lush forest and bleak realms of Ice the fair balance and harmony of the view refreshed both eye and spirit; he was loath to leave it so suddenly, as if quitting some spectacle before its climax. He lingered a moment after handing Ils down, and gazed due eastward, to where the sun shook off the clouds and poured down richness upon the mellow country. A faint flicker held his eye, a black speck amid those streams of molten gold, a shape that swooped against the dazzling distant clouds. Straight into the path of the rising sun he stared, shading his eyes, squinting till dots of color danced and blinded him and he could see no more. Now Ils had to help him down, while his sight cleared. "What'd you expect, idiot?" she demanded.

"Black wings," he muttered. "In the path of the sunrise, as I was bidden. Let us go down now."

Their descent led them by the lower slopes of the falls, where already grasses and flowers were burgeoning among the stones, and out at last onto steep slopes where the land's bared bones still thrust up through the thin skin of soil. Yet even here the grass grew ever thicker and lusher, most of all along the leaping streams; they came to a mountain meadow whose grass itself, breast-high to Ils, seemed like some deep pool of greenness where fish might swim among the waving stalks. They looked down its slopes to stands of tall trees, and although those around them were almost all evergreens still, they could see the crowns of seasonal trees spreading below, bright with new leaf. Before day's end they were among those trees, a woodland with light and air and running waters, all full of life. Among white pines and balsam firs, gray birch and tall beeches they walked, and found track and trail, heard scurrying and dashing among the mold; birds fluttered among the trees, fish rose in the deep pools of the streams. There was no need to fear hunger, at least; in so rich a country they could expect to hunt and fish and snare enough for their needs with little effort and delay.