Dennis McKiernan - Once upon a Spring morn

Besides, we need tack for Avelaine and Laurent and Blaise.”

“Speaking of needs,” said Celeste, “we need select enough supplies to feed us and the horses coming and going, and your siblings on the way back. How many days will we be in the Changeling Lord’s realm?” The hostler gasped upon hearing this. “Oh, Sieur, mademoiselle, you must not go unto the land of the Changeling Lord. Terrible things live therein, hideous things. They will kill you, Sieur, and take your demoiselle captive and do dreadful things to her-use her until she is worn beyond living.”

“You mean breed me?” asked Celeste.

“If you are a virgin, mademoiselle, then oui, they will use you to strengthen their line. If you are not a virgin, then they will merely use you for pleasure, one after another after another. Yet virgin or no, into the land of the Changelings you must not go.”

“We have no choice, Sieur,” said Celeste. “Three lives hang in the balance-a sister and two brothers.”

“Yours as well,” said the hostler, shaking his head.

Roel looked at Celeste, anguish in his eyes. “Cherie, I beg of you, stay here. I will go on alone.”

“Non, my love,” replied Celeste, “where you go, so go I.”

“Ah, zut !” declared the hostler. “Sieur, mademoiselle, it is but madness to venture into that dreadful realm, no matter the reason.”

Roel looked at Celeste, a plea in his eyes, but she shook her head in silent answer to his wordless appeal.

He sighed and turned to the hostler and said, “Mayhap indeed we are insane, yet go there we must.” The man then looked at the sword at Roel’s side and said, “If you are bound to take this unwise course, then this I will tell you: turn not your back upon any therein, for to do otherwise is perilous. This I tell you, too: the only sure way to kill a Changeling is to cut off its head, though an arrow through an eye will work as well.”

“Merci, Hostler,” said Roel. Then he turned to Celeste and said, “We have but the rest of this day and all of tomorrow up until midnight to reach the Changeling Lord’s tower and save Avelaine. And then we need to find Laurent and Blaise, and surely it will take no more than three days for the five of us to get back from there.”

Celeste nodded and she and Roel selected just enough supplies to last the journey to there and back and but a single day more, and they evenly distributed the goods among the six steeds to equal the loads. The remainder of their supplies they left with the stableman.

At last all was ready, and, with an au revoir to the hostler, out from the town they went. Behind them, the man watched them leave and smiled unto himself, and then stepped back in among the stalls, and the sound of looms weaving swelled and then vanished, and gone was the hostler as well.

Sunwise across the shallows splashed the horses, and upon emerging on the far bank Celeste and Roel broke into a run, two of the mounts bearing weight, four running but lightly burdened. Roel set their gait at a varied pace, and the leagues hammered away beneath their hooves. All day they ran thus: trotting, cantering, galloping, and walking unburdened, and then doing it all over again. Roel and Celeste changed mounts every two candlemarks or so, pausing now and then to stretch their legs and feed the horses some grain or to take water from the streams flowing down from nearby hills.

Long they rode into the late day, past sundown and well beyond, taking the risk of running at speed in spite of the darkness. When they stopped at last, it was nearly mid of night. They had covered some forty leagues or so, yet they had not come unto the twilight bound. But ere the two cast themselves to the ground to sleep, the horses were unladed and rubbed down and given grain and drink.

At dawn the next day, once more they set forth upon the sunwise track. Celeste was weary nearly beyond measure, and she wondered whether the horses could hold the pace; yet the steeds bore up well, for even though they had run swift and far, still half of the time they’d carried no burden. It was she and Roel who felt the brunt of the journey, for they had spent weeks on the quest, and little rest and but few hot meals had they had in those long days.

Yet on they strove, running sunwise-south, Roel would say-and among hills they fared, and they passed through vales and they splashed across streams. A woodland slowed them greatly, yet in the candlemarks of midafternoon, in the near distance ahead they espied the twilight wall rising up into the sky.

“What be the crossing?” called Roel.

Celeste opened the map and looked, and then called back, “A small waterfall on a bourne.”

“A brook?”

“Oui.”

And on they rode.

When they reached the twilight bound, no stream did they see.

“I’ll take the left,” said Celeste, raising her silver horn. “Mayhap even here left is right and right a mistake.”

“I’ll take the right,” said Roel, his face grim, for this was the day of the dark of the moon, and but nine or ten candlemarks remained ere the mid of night would come.

Away from each other they galloped, remounts trailing behind. And within a league Celeste topped a hill to see a stream in the vale below. Down she rode, and there a small waterfall tumbled o’er a rock linn and into a pool beneath, to run on into the boundary.

She raised her horn to her lips and blew a long call.

And in but moments it was answered by Roel’s clarion cry.

Celeste let her animals drink, and she fed them a ration of grain, and as Roel rode up, she moved her bow and arrows to the horse of hers whose turn had come.

Roel shifted his own gear likewise, and as soon as his steeds were fed and watered and he had changed mounts, with his shield on his arm and his sword in hand, and with an arrow nocked to Celeste’s bow, across the stream they splashed and into the twilight beyond.

They came in among high tors, nearly mountains rather than hills, and a passage wound downslope before them and out into a land of woodlands and fields.

“I don’t know what I was expecting,” said Celeste as they carefully wended their way down the narrow slot,

“but certainly not a land such as this.” Then she grimly laughed. “Mayhap I thought it would be all ashes and cinders, much like Senaudon, with fire beyond the horizon and the smell of brimstone on the air. But this, the Changeling Lord’s realm, is rather like much of Faery elsewhere.”

“Me,” said Roel, “I was expecting bare stone and a cold wailing wind, yet it seems to be rich farmland and bountiful forests.”

Even as he spoke, Roel’s gaze searched the horizon for as far as he could see, yet no Changeling Lord’s tower did he spy nor a building of any sort. In the far distance ahead, dark mountains rose up, and a black storm raged among the peaks. Roel studied the crests and rises, and no tower or other structure on those stony heights did he see, yet they were far away and a tower could easily be lost to the eye against the rocky crags.

As they reached the foot of the passage and debouched into a grassy field, just ahead a child of a goosegirl, a willow switch in her hand, herded her flock toward a mere, the drove gabbling as they waddled forward.

Roel and Celeste reached the girl just as the geese reached the pond and splashed in.

“Ma’amselle Gooseherd,” said Roel, “know you the way to the Changeling Lord’s tower?”

“Oui, Sieur,” replied the child, her voice piping as she looked up at the man on his horse. She pointed. “That way, I think.”

“Roel,” murmured Celeste, “no matter what Lady Lot said, this fille can be no more than eight summers old. Let us leave her and ride on.”

Roel nodded, and as they turned to look toward the mountains-the direction the child had indicated-a darkness came over the girl, and she bared her teeth.