Poul Anderson - New America

“What?” However eldritch, the bound one remained a human adolescent. “Mistherd, then.” The lilting accent of his English somehow emphasized its sullenness. “That’s not the sound, only what it means. Anyway, it’s my spoken name, naught else.”

“Ah, you keep a secret name you consider to be real?”

“She does. I don’t know myself what it is. She knows the real names of everybody.”

Sherrinford raised his brows. “She?”

“Who reigns. May she forgive me, I can’t make the reverent sign when my arms are tied. Some invaders call her the Queen of Air and Darkness.”

“So.” Sherrinford got pipe and tobacco. He let silence wax while he started the fire. At length he said:

“I’ll confess the Old Folk took me by surprise. I didn’t expect so formidable a-member of your gang. Everything I could learn had seemed to show they work on my race—and yours, lad—by stealth, trickery, and illusion.”

Mistherd jerked a truculent nod. “She created the first nicors not long ago. Don’t think she has naught but dazzlements at her beck.”

“I don’t. However, a steel-jacketed bullet works pretty well too, doesn’t it?”

Sherrinford talked on, softly, mostly to himself: “I do still believe the, ah, nicors—all your half-humanlike breeds—are intended in the main to be seen, not used. The power of projecting mirages must surely be quite limited in range and scope as well as the number of individuals who possess it. Otherwise she wouldn’t have needed to work as slowly and craftily as she has. Even outside our mindshield, Barbro—my companion—could have resisted, could have remained aware that whatever she saw was unreal… if she’d been less shaken, less frantic, less driven by need.”

Sherrinford wreathed his head in smoke. “Never mind what I experienced,” he said. “It couldn’t have been the same as for her. I think the command was simply given us. ‘You will see what you most desire in the world, running away from you into the forest.’ Of course, she didn’t travel many meters before the nicor waylaid her. I’d no hope of trailing them; I’m no Arctican woodsman, and besides, it’d have been too easy to ambush me. I came back to you.” Grimly: “You’re my link to your overlady.”

“You think I’ll guide you to Starhaven or Carheddin? Try making me, clod-man.”

“I want to bargain.”

“I s’pect you intend more’n that.” Mistherd’s answer held surprising shrewdness. “What’ll you tell after you come home?”

“Yes, that does pose a problem, doesn’t it? Barbro Cullen and I are not terrified outwayers. We’re of the city. We brought recording instruments. We’d be the first of our kind to report an encounter with the Old Folk, and that report would be detailed and plausible. It would produce action.”

“So you see I’m not afraid to die,” Mistherd declared, though his lips trembled a bit. “If I let you come in and do your manthings to my people, I’d have naught left worth living for.”

“Have no immediate fears,” Sherrinford said. ‘You’re merely bait.” He sat down and regarded the boy through a visor of calm. (Within, it wept in him: Barbro, Barbro!) “Consider. Your Queen can’t very well let me go back, bringing my prisoner and telling about hers. She has to stop that somehow. I could try fighting my way through—this car is better armed than you know—but that wouldn’t free anybody. Instead, I’m staying put. New forces of hers will get here as fast as they can. I assume they won’t blindly throw themselves against a machine gun, a howitzer, a fulgurator. They’ll parley first, whether their intentions are honest or not. Thus I make the contact I’m after.”

“What d’ you plan?” The mumble held anguish.

“First, this, as a sort of invitation.” Sherrinford reached out to flick a switch. “There. I’ve lowered my shield against mind-reading and shape-casting. I daresay the leaders, at least, will be able to sense that it’s gone. That should give them confidence.”

“And next?”

“Next we wait. Would you like something to eat or drink?”

During the time which followed, Sherrinford tried to jolly Mistherd along, find out something of his life. What answers he got were curt. He dimmed the interior lights and settled down to peer outward. That was a long few hours.

They ended at a shout of gladness, half a sob, from the boy. Out of the woods came a band of the Old Folk.

Some of them stood forth more clearly than moons and stars and northlights should have caused. He in the van rode a white crownbuck whose horns were garlanded. His form was manlike but unearthly beautiful, silver blond hair falling from beneath the antlered helmet, around the proud cold face. The cloak fluttered off his back like living wings. His frost-colored mail rang as he fared.

Behind him, to right and left, rode two who bore swords whereon small flames gleamed and flickered. Above, a flying flock laughed and trilled and tumbled in the breezes. Near them drifted a half-transparent mistiness. Those others who passed among trees after their chieftain were harder to make out. But they moved in quicksilver grace and as it were to a sound of harps and trumpets.

“Lord Luighaid.” Glory overflowed in Mistherd’s tone. “Her master Knower—himself.”

Sherrinford had never done a harder thing than to sit at the main control panel, finger near the button of the shield generator, and not touch it. He rolled down a section of canopy to let voices travel. A gust of wind struck him in the face, bearing odors of the roses in his mother’s garden. At his back, in the main body of the vehicle, Mistherd strained against his bonds till he could see the oncoming troop.

“Call to them,” Sherrinford said. “Ask if they will talk with me.”

Unknown, flutingly sweet words flew back and forth. “Yes,” the boy interpreted. “He will, the Lord Luighaid. But I can tell you, you’ll never be let go. Don’t fight them. Yield. Come away. You don’t know what ‘tis to be alive till you’ve dwelt in Carheddin under the mountain.”

The Outlings drew nigh.

Jimmy glimmered and was gone. Barbro lay in strong arms, against a broad breast, and felt the horse move beneath her. It had to be a horse, though only a few were kept any longer on the steadings, and they only for special uses or love. She could feel the rippling beneath its hide, hear a rush of parted leafage and the thud when a hoof struck stone; warmth and living scent welled up around her through the darkness.

He who carried her said mildly, “Don’t be afraid, darling. It was a vision. But he’s waiting for us, and we’re bound for him.”

She was aware in a vague way that she ought to feel terror or despair or something. But her memories lay behind her—she wasn’t sure just how she had come to be here—she was borne along in a knowledge of being loved. At peace, at peace, rest in the calm expectation of joy…

After a while the forest opened. They crossed a lea where boulders stood gray-white under the moons, their shadows shifting in the dim hues which the aurora threw across them. Flitteries danced, tiny comets, above the flowers between. Ahead gleamed a peak whose top was crowned in clouds.

Barbro’s eyes happened to be turned forward. She saw the horse’s head and thought, with quiet surprise: Why, this is Sambo, who was mine when I was a girl. She looked upward at the man. He wore a black tunic and a cowled cape, which made his face hard to see. She could not cry aloud, here. “Tim,” she whispered.

“Yes, Barbro.”

“I buried you—”

His smile was endlessly tender. “Did you think we’re no more than what’s laid back into the ground? Poor torn sweetheart. She who’s called us is the All Healer. Now rest and dream.”