The Song of Andiene (13 page)

The corpse-carriers came nearer. They talked, and he marveled that their talk was like all men’s talk. The city gossip told him nothing new, neither did their jokes, their boasting. One wagered his companion that one vulture would rise before another one did. They stood still for some time, watching.

The fur of the golderlings was soft against Ilbran’s skin, but their claws were sharp as they climbed onto his back. His muscles twitched against his will, as he imagined their sharp teeth tearing into his flesh. Instead, their soft tongues licked his back, washing it where it was torn. Their teeth caught at his shoulder bandage, drawing it back from the swollen arrow wound. No corpse would bleed, but they lapped the blood as it welled up, before the idle watchers had a chance to see it, and they nuzzled underneath his chest to lick the ragged hole where he had drawn out the arrowhead.

Ilbran knew that he was dizzy with fever. He would be no match for the two men that still gossiped and wagered. He lay still and listened, letting the little ones do what they would. At last, the one who had proposed the bet laughed and cursed, and handed over his money. Ilbran could hear the clink of coins, and their footsteps lighter as they walked away.

When he opened his eyes, he could see where they had laid the dead one. The vultures descended, landing heavily, and skipping along the rocks like children playing. The golderlings came and surrounded him. He had been a young man, clad like Ilbran, wearing only a pair of ragged trousers. Only a narrow dark line between his ribs, to show how he had met his death. Ilbran closed his eyes. When he opened them, in spite of himself, he saw a golderling tugging a ring from the dead man’s hand. The corpse-carriers had been true to their trust. They had left the dead man his one bit of finery. The golderling tucked the ring securely into its cheek, and skittered away.

And here came more of the saffron-robed ones, treading heavily under their burden. Ilbran lay still, unable to move even if he had wished to.

The sun was not so molten hot this day. About noon, the wind died down, then turned and blew from the east, a blessed relief to smell the fragrance of grass and leaves again.

The corpse-carriers came and went around Ilbran. He lay quiet till nightfall. When they were gone, he rose up, pushing aside the golderlings that cuddled close to him. If there was still fever in him, its flames had died down, for he could think more clearly than he had for a night and a day; he could walk firmly and not stumble.

In front of him, the white of ribs and breastbone caught his eye. Another one they had brought this day, wearing a gold chain around his neck, the golderlings swarming and tearing at his flesh, while one gripped the chain in his teeth, tugging it off over the silver hair.

The rich ones, they weigh them down with gold, and think it will pay their passage. And this is where it goes, to a little creature with an eye for brightness.

This city of the dead stretched for miles. He would not—could not—travel through it. So, the north was barred to him. When Ilbran turned east, the campfires of the kingsmen starred the hillside again. Westward led only back to the city and death.

All ways were cut off to west and east and north. Southward, Ilbran had seen the dark-green shadow on the horizon. All ways were cut off except the paths that led into the forest.

Chapter 10

As Ilbran entered the forest the next morning, he looked from side to side in fear and awe, though it gave no outward sign of the terrible legends. He had seen trees and groves aplenty, blessed lanara, tall kingswood, dainty spicewood, and the lesser trees that give man nothing but shade.

He had never seen ones to match these. They were huge and gray-trunked, with blue-gray fingered leaves, woven together with dense underbrush, tall ferns, and vines.

They stretched their arms to the sky. Though the path he traveled was wide enough for three men to ride abreast, the dark branches met overhead, so that he walked down a gloomy tunnel.

Little trails led off through the brush, paths beaten by animals or others. Ilbran knew better than to take those. Forestlings might chance them, but only the main roads were charmed and safe for the stranger, and those only safe while the sun shone.

The silence was unnerving, unlike the peaceful stillness of the meadows, filled with the tiny sounds of insects. This was a watchful quietness, that made him glance over his shoulder and quicken his step. People lived here, he knew, but how? He could see no fruit, no grain, no signs of the Gifts that are given to men.

He saw tiny flickers of motion in the undergrowth. They stilled when he looked directly at them. As in any place, more creatures lived here than could be seen. The path was rutted and pocked with holes from some burrowing animal.

Ilbran stared up through the branches to see the sun. Well after noon. He quickened his steps as much as his aching muscles would allow. This strange silent wood was no place to be alone at night, even if he had never heard the tales of terror.

The path curved its way through the trees. The forest remained silent, no birds, no little animals, none of the rustlings and singings that would have told Ilbran that he was walking through a living world. Ahead of him, a clearing opened out, a meadow of stunted blaggorn and other plants of the open plains, growing thicker and higher in the far corner where a stream cut through the clearing.

Ilbran walked into the clearing. In its center, wide shallow steps led up to a shelter of dark stone, but his attention was all for the man that lay at the foot of those steps.

He was dead, for certain, though the animals had not yet begun their work. Ilbran looked at him in grief. For all the death he had seen in these last weeks, it had not lost its power to move him.

There was no sign to show how the stranger had died. The sword in his outstretched hand had no speck of blood on it. His face was peaceful, as that of all the dead is, unless they die of some poisons; he stared at the sky blankly enough. But his teeth had bitten through his lower lip; his fingernails had left crescents of blood on his palms, signs of an uneasy passing.

He was a man like any other, beak-nosed and wide-lipped, his pale hair cut short to fit under his metal cap, of an age that could have made him Ilbran’s father, perhaps. He wore soldier’s mail, a long leather shirt sewn close with iron rings. The badge he wore was green and silver, the colors of some far-off king.

Ilbran looked at him and grieved for him, and at last stooped and took the sword from his hand. “Forgive me for this,” he said. “Your sword did not save you, but I take it not for greed or for power, but to guard me against your enemies, and maybe avenge you.”

He unbuckled the sword belt, with its sheath and dagger, and put it on. Strange and awkward seeming, as if he were a child playing soldier. It was not to his liking. Though he had grown tall and strong, he had never thought of taking the colors of the king.

He spoke again and asked the dead man’s pardon. Little courtesies can help appease the spirits of the dead.

Then he looked up the wide, shallow, rough-shaped steps to the platform where three great slabs of rock leaned against each other to form the sides of a pyramid, and another slab of rock balanced on top of them, overhanging the sides and forming the roof. The wide cracks in the sides were filled in with smaller stones and masonry. In the front, the tall triangular doorway was left open.

It was a strange rough building, like some child’s toy. Still it would give shelter from the rain, and other things as well, he hoped. This was a safehold that the songs told of, built to give travelers protection from the evil of the forest.

From the eastern corners of the platform walls of stone stretched out, crudely shaped, but reminding Ilbran of something he had seen, something much larger. Then he saw the slashes cut into the end of the stones, scoring them like claws. The makers of this place had had the same grim humor as the builders of the city. The traveler who would shelter for the night must walk in between the dragon’s paws.

Sword in hand, Ilbran stepped softly as he climbed the nine steps and entered the shelter. Movement? A person standing in the corner? He whirled to face it. No person, but a statue so real that she seemed ready to move and speak if he would once look away. The sculptor had carved her naked and serene and beautiful. Necklaces and bracelets of thornfruit flowers and strands of blaggorn were all she wore. Her eyes were inlaid dark and light with bits of stone—strange eyes that seemed to follow him as he moved.

Ilbran looked out to the forest again. The trees were tall, their branches were wide. A safer shelter, it might seem, than this place. But he was not so foolish in the ways of the forest. Besides, he had the warning of the other man who had reached this place—his pack of travel food lay in the corner—and had gone out from it and died, away from shelter.

He looked again at the statue, so clean and finely shaped. He looked at the rough walls, as crude as any cave of the hills. Two minds had been at work here.

It was the work of those long gone. He wondered, with a passionate and sorrowful curiosity, who they had been. The city where he had spent his life had been built also by alien hands, but it had never touched his imagination so. He had been too busy, too set in the knowledge of what he must do, to wonder about unnecessary things.

The stones of this shelter were a blue-black like the night sky, veined in creamy cobwebbing, star-trails. Though the houses in the city were built of many kinds and colors of stone, he had never seen ones like this.

But there were many things he had not seen in his short life. He took food from the dead man’s pack, muttering his apologies once again to the spirit of the dead. He was careful also to break off bits of the stale blaggorn cakes and sprinkle them in front of the statue. Half-shamefacedly, he muttered, “At least, they will serve to feed the mice.”

Night came slowly. The twilight filtered through the trees for a long time. Ilbran stepped outside the shelter and stood on the top step of the platform, looking up at the stars. He was no grizane, to read their meaning. His only guide was dead and turned to dust.

He shivered as the night air grew colder. Was there wind blowing in the distance, roaring through the trees, or was it the ocean, closer than he could have dreamed? No, the leaves were still; the sea was far away. But there were sounds moving in the forest, or inside his own head, that would drive a man to madness.

Hardly knowing what he did, he ran back into the shelter, his back set to the wall, holding the sword out before him as though it could save him from what hunted in the night.

The howling grew, fiercer than wild coursers or wolves of the high mountains. It became stronger, ecstatic, and he knew that they, whatever they were, had found his scent.

They were creatures formed of darkness, the ones who flowed from the shadows and ringed his refuge. As he stared straight ahead, he could see nothing, but his side vision caught glimpses of motion, creatures darker than the shadows. They did not sit quietly and bay their quarry, but wove a ring of motion like a school of fish boiling in a fisherman’s net. And their deadly joy sang itself to the treetops, to the stars.

Perhaps their weapon is fear alone,
he thought, as their song went on, and they did not venture within two paces of the steps. Then the howling died away to silence, but a silence full of great terror. Their masters came.

They were tall, and robed in black, but their faces and hands shone with light. It was not the pure light of sun or starlight, torch or lamp or candle even, but the phosphorescence of rotten wood. A score of them gathered, stepping slowly from the forest. At last one came forward.

If it were not for that deathly glow of face and hands, he might have been a lord of the city. His accent was harsh, though he tried to speak sweetly; he spoke the common tongue as if it were foreign to him.

“Greetings, good friend. Though our hounds brought you to bay, they would do you no harm. They hunt smaller game than men. You have the look of one who has traveled far and hard, on scanty rations. Come down and greet us and tell us the news from your land.”

Of all possible things, Ilbran was least prepared for such fair words. “What manner of men are you?” he called down.

“Men such as you,” the leader replied. “We paint our faces with light so that our fellows will not shoot at us mistaking us for forest creatures as we go our separate ways on the hunt.” There was a ripple of agreeing laughter from the crowd of ghostly-faced men standing behind him.

Who would trust such fair words? Only the desperately weary, who almost longed for death.

Ilbran watched and waited. If these were human, the enchantments would not hold them back. They would climb up the steps to meet him; they would not stay and parley at the foot of the stairs. They were many, and he was one. Swords hung at their sides, and heavy hunting bows across their backs. If they were nobles of a city in the forest—and he had never heard stories of such—they would know how to use their weapons. They would not fear him.

Had that man in the clearing—they had not spared a glance for him, and that was strange enough—gone down to meet such a crowd of friends as these? He lay at the base of the steps, and though his sword had been out, it had not drawn blood, nor had there been any mark on him.

Their leader spoke again, less sweetness in his tone. “Are you some outlaw, a kinslayer that fears all men, that you will not come down and greet us honestly? We do not wish to make war on you, but if we are forced to, we will—to the death!”

“To which of the Nine Kingdoms do you owe allegiance?” asked Ilbran.

“None,” replied the leader of the ghostly crowd. “We are our own lords, in our own land, and no stranger has reason to fear us, if he is an honest man.”

For all the fair words, his speech seemed strange. His mouth moved like the mouth of a puppet worked by clumsy hands. It did not move in true step with his voice.

Or was that an illusion, a terror born of the night? Ilbran found the courage to speak to them boldly. “Go about your hunt. I would not delay you. When it comes daylight, I will join you.”