Guy Kay - The Summer Tree

The babies, as Tore insisted on calling the two thirteen-year-olds, seemed to be all right. If they were lucky, Tore explained, they would each see an animal before dawn. If not, the fast would continue, and he would have to watch another night. They were sitting with their backs against a tree in a small clearing midway between the two boys. Tore’s horse, a small dark gray stallion, grazed nearby.

“What are we watching for?” Dave asked, a little nervously. Night forests were not his usual habitat.

“I told you: there are svart alfar around here. Word of them has driven all the other tribes south.”

“There was a svart alfar in our world,” Dave volunteered. “It followed Loren. Matt Sören killed it. Loren said they weren’t dangerous, and there weren’t many of them.”

Tore raised his eyebrows. “There are more than there used to be,” he said, “and though they may not be dangerous to a mage, they were bred to kill and they do it very well.”

Dave had an uncomfortable, prickly feeling suddenly. Tore spoke of killing with disquieting frequency.

“The svarts would be enough to worry about,” Tore went on, “but just before I saw you, I found the spoor of an urgach—I took you for it, back there. I was going to kill first and investigate after. Such creatures have not been seen for hundreds of years. It is very bad that they are back; I don’t know what it means.”

“What are they?”

Tore made a strange gesture and shook his head. “Not at night,” he said. “We shouldn’t be talking of them out here.” He repeated the gesture.

Dave settled back against the tree. It was late, he supposed he should try to sleep, but he was far too keyed up. Tore no longer seemed to be in a talking mood; that was okay by him.

On the whole, it looked all right. Could have been a lot worse. He appeared to have landed among people who knew the mage. The others couldn’t be too far away; it would probably work out, if he didn’t get eaten by something in these woods. On the other hand, Tore obviously knew what he was doing. Roll with it, he thought.

After about three-quarters of an hour, Tore rose to check on his babies. He looped east, and came back ten minutes later, nodding his head.

“Barth is all right, and well hidden now, too. Not as stupid as most of them.” He continued west to look hi on the other one. A few minutes later, he reappeared again.

“Well—” Tore began, approaching the tree.

Only an athlete could have done it. With purest reflex, Dave launched himself at the apparition that had emerged from the trees beside Tore. He hit the hairy, ape-like creature with the hardest cross-body block he could throw, and the sword swinging to decapitate Tore was deflected away.

Sprawled flat with the breath knocked out of him, Dave saw the huge creature’s other hand coming down. He managed to parry with his left forearm, and felt a numbing sensation from the contact. God, he thought, staring into the enraged red eyes of what had to be the urgach, this sucker is strong! He didn’t even have time to be afraid: rolling clumsily away from the urgach’s short-range sword thrust, he saw a body hurtle past him.

Tore, knife in hand, had hurled himself straight at the creature’s head. The urgach dropped its awkward sword, and with a terrifying snarl, easily blocked Tore’s arm. Shifting its grip, it threw the Rider bodily away, to smash into a tree, senseless for a moment.

One on one, Dave thought. Tore’s dive had given him time to get to his feet, but everything was moving so fast. Whirling, he fled to where Tore’s tethered horse was neighing in terror, and he grabbed the sword resting by the saddle-cloth. A sword? he thought. What the hell do I do with a sword?

Parry, like crazy. The urgach, weapon reclaimed, was right on top of him, and it levelled a great two-handed sweep of its own giant blade. Dave was a strong man, but the jarring impact of blocking that blow made his right arm go almost as numb as his left; he staggered backwards.

“Tore!” he cried desperately. “I can’t—”

He stopped, because there was suddenly no need to say anything more. The urgach was swaying like a toppling rock, and a moment later it fell forward with a crash, Tore’s dagger embedded to the hilt in the back of its skull.

The two men gazed at each other across the dead body of the monstrous creature.

“Well,” said Tore finally, still breathing hard, “now I know why I didn’t kill you.”

What Dave felt then was so rare and unexpected, it took him a moment to recognize it.

Ivor, up with the sun and watching by the southwest gate, saw Barth and Navon come walking back together. He could tell—it was not hard—from the way they moved that they had both found something in the wood. Found, or been found by, as Gereint said. They had gone out as boys and were coming back to him, his children still, but Riders now, Riders of the Dalrei. So he lifted his voice in greeting, that they should be welcomed by their Chieftain back from the dreamworld to the tribe.

“Hola!” cried Ivor, that all should hear. “See who comes! Let there be rejoicing, for see the Weaver sends two new Riders to us!”

They all rushed out then, having waited with suppressed excitement, so that the Chieftain should be first to announce the return. It was a tradition of the third tribe since the days of Lahor, his grandfather.

Barth and Navon were welcomed home with honor and jubilation. Their eyes were wide yet with wonder, not yet fully returned from the other world, from the visions that fasting and night and Gereint’s secret drink had given them. They seemed untouched, fresh, which was as it should be.

Ivor led them, one on either side, letting them walk beside him now, as was fit for men, to the quarters set apart for Gereint. He went inside with them and watched as they knelt before the shaman, that he might confirm and consecrate their animals. Never had one of Ivor’s children tried to dissemble about his fast, to claim a totem when there had been none, or pretend in his mind that an eltor had been an eagle or a boar. It was still the task of the shaman to find in them the truth of their vigil, so that in the tribe Gereint knew the totems of every Rider. It was thus in all the tribes. So it was written at Celidon. So was the Law.

At length Gereint lifted his head from where he sat cross-legged on his mat. He turned unerringly to where Ivor stood, the light from outside silhouetting him.

“Their hour knows their name,” the shaman said.

It was done. The words that defined a Rider had been spoken: the hour that none could avoid, and the sanctity of their secret name. Ivor was assailed suddenly by a sense of the sweep, the vastness of time. For twelve hundred years the Dalrei had ridden on the Plain. For twelve hundred years each new Rider had been so proclaimed.

“Should we feast?” he asked Gereint formally.

“Indeed we should,” came the placid reply. “We should have the Feast of the New Hunters.”

“It shall be so,” Ivor said. So many times he and Gereint had done this, summer after summer. Was he getting old?

He took the two newest Riders and led them into the sunlight, to where all the tribe was gathered before the door of the shaman’s house.

“Their hour knows,” he said, and smiled to hear the roar that went up.

He gave Navon and Barth back to their families at last. “Sleep,” he urged them both, knowing what the morrow would be like, knowing he would not be heeded. Who slept on this day?

Levon had, he remembered; but he had been three nights in the grove and had come out, at the last, hollowed and other-worldly. A difficult, far-voyaging fast it had been, as was fitting for one who would one day lead the tribe.