Lady Cherusay's Daughter, Book I: The People

The sun was low behind them when they came out of the trees back to the river, much younger now. Across the gravelly shallows, wide fallow fields lay already in shadow; but beyond them, steep tree-crowned hills glowed with green fire in the long golden light. To the south leaped up the cloud-dark bulk of the Dur Nefraith, the great mountain-wall that warded Peria’s southern border; above, their snowy peaks gleamed saffron and rose. Over all, the windless sky softly blent turquoise into gold, preparing an unearthly cloth to receive the white jewels of night.

Tiny yellow jewels were appearing, on the knees of the hills only a mile or so distant: a small town of neat white houses nestled in two neighborly hollows, and the villagers were lighting their lamps. Rothesay could see a few wains, drawn by oxen, heading homeward in the evening. There was no sound of surf, but it was a pleasant, homely place, and she was heartened, splashing across the broad ford with Dark Walking’s tail in her fist.

But Dav turned south, along the river and not across the fields, and she saw it: black and sharp against the pale sky, dark crown of a broken spur of rock, the high towers and toothy battlements of Colderwild Hall.

Coming just now, at the fag end of a grim day, it was a dreadful sight. Rothesay let go the tail and stood, stock-still and staring, too tired to weep. A far cry from Padriag’s snug little bungalow atop his windswept knoll rolling soft under sweet green grass: from the westernmost tower of this fortress one could drop a pebble five hundred feet down into the feisty waters below. And as evening fell over Harrowater far away, Padriag’s diamond-glass windows would be flowing cheerfully with lantern-light; but in yonder fastness not one light shone.

Dark Walking tossed his head and snorted. Freeing her feet by main will, Rothesay stumbled after him like one bogged in a nightmare. She wanted to cry, or scream and bolt for home; but there waited only Kelmhal and the justice of the Dunhaldring. Ahead lay the demon-house of traitors and derelict priests. Now, crazy Dagn of the hills about Teginau seemed not so crazy after all; but the city tried to kill him, just as Dav—and she, and she; she could not forget that—slew the outlaws of the forest here. There was no place for her but Colderwild. Bard, smith, healer, mage and king alone might lawfully travel; all others remained bound to village, clan, or temple, and could hope only for decent mastery. In the Runedaur, she seemed to have lost on that score; but at least she could tell her new master what she thought on her first view of this, the mother house of his accursed, treacherous, murderous Order.

“It’s awful.”

“Don’t be petulant.”

She glared at him, knowing herself to be in the wrong and resenting the admonishment. But, hungry, and tired more from the boredom of walking than from exertion, Dark Walking was eager to be home; for his sake, Rothesay clutched his tail again and forced herself into a quick trot, and thought less of unwelcoming fortresses and more of clean stables sweet with hay. The surprised Runedaur allowed his horse the extra speed, and the beast took all he was offered and pressed for more. Soon they were flying over the springy lawn, Dark Walking with native graciousness making no better speed than Rothesay‘s best. So they crossed the half mile of grass from the ford to the foot of the cliff, and Dav checked them.

“So eager to come to my awful place, chit?”

Rothesay sucked air. “Dark-wal—er, Winddancer,” she puffed, “wants to get home.”

“My horse again,” sighed Dav in aggrieved tones. “It is a little thoughtless of you, girl, not to suppose that I might want to get home. It is, after all, home, however awful.”

She squirmed under his caustic mockery, and wondered if she would ever hear the end of that unfortunate remark. “Would it help if I said I’m sorry?”

“That would depend on why you said it,” he replied coolly.

She glanced up at him, then up at the cliff, tree-studded and narrowly climbable on its north face, sheer and smooth upon the west above the water. “It wasn’t really fair,” she admitted. “I haven’t seen it inside, yet.”

“Can it be?” he laughed. “Is there hope for the hayseed, after all?”

She whirled on him at this last bite at pride and hope, and suddenly there came back to her the Darian youth’s remark about “the Orthundrysel, who tried to be queen,” and the Runedaur Peridar’s phrase in Floodholding about the ‘Daughter of Daria.’ She drew herself up with queenly pride. “I’ll thank you not to address me in that fashion,” she said with icy hauteur, a tone she had never before used and which secretly delighted her.

For answer, she received the back of his hand across her face, a solid cuff and not a slap, that knocked her back a step and made her vision swim. It frightened her particularly in that it was delivered wholly without passion, without anger, quite matter-of-factly.

“No action without understanding.” He dismounted with a bound and led Winddancer up under the cliff, where a narrow ledge had been cut into the rock, barely five feet above the level of the water and rising with the streambed. The river, dark and swift, stretched no more than seven or eight yards broad here, frayed white where it was torn by great stones, broken bones of the hills. Trees stood tall on the further shore, where a steep shoulder of the westward hills blotted out the sunset and half the sky.

Robbed of her fleeting pride, Rothesay followed in weary resignation; but the beauty of the land seduced her. The evening air, river-chilled, was sweet with the clean scent of the breaking waters and a bounty of mint nearby. The sleek rock, a grey schist richly streaked with galaxies of mica, glittered as they passed in the last light. Above the rapids, the rock ledge leveled off and bent away to the left, skirting a small lake where the river widened and the tops of the western hills reflected upon its rippling surface.

Just before they stepped from the narrowing ledge onto the thin strip of sand between water and wall, Rothesay noticed a door set in the stone, cunningly worked so as to appear a part of the cliff, but door it was, perhaps six feet high at the top of the arch and scarcely two feet wide. She opened her mouth, intending to mention it to Dav, but hastily reconsidered: he would scorn her for supposing that he did not know or could forget his own domain, and doubly for not bearing the horse in mind. Under the lacerating tutelage of the Master’s sarcasm, she was quickly learning to think first.

The sandy beach broadened, and soon blended into firm soil, overgrown with fresh-smelling small plants. Beside them, the mountain wall roughened and fell back away from the water, till at last their path turned up the hillside by way of a few broad steps cut into the stone, and from there circled up the southern flank of the hill. A little way to her right, Rothesay heard the rush and gurgle of a small stream hurrying down to the lake, and through the trees caught now and then a glimpse of pale foam.

Dusk lay thick about them under the trees, and for a time there was a deep silence as the day-dwellers retired and the night-dwellers had not yet awakened. The horse’s hooves fell almost silently on the loam. The world seemed to shrink down to no more than they could see about them, manifesting just so far ahead of them, and vanishing imperceptibly behind. She murmured her twilight-song, as she had every night and dawn, the more fervently as her Runedaur companion never made any such protection; but this place seemed more like the Dunhaldring woods around Harrowater than masterless wilderness.

The path wound to the left about the hill, rising gently and steadily, bending a little in and out of small hollows and glades where the trees stood thicker or a small spring bubbled. Now and again it would zig sharply left for a stretch before zagging back to the right again. To Rothesay, not knowing how far they had yet to go, it seemed endless, every step ached, and she felt wearier and sorrier than she had since Floodholding. Dark Walking would have borne her willingly, but the Master, himself dismounted, made no offer. He strode buoyantly, and she set herself grimly to match him.

At last, bearing full north again and meeting a broad track sweeping in from the east, the way left the trees below and, curling up westward around a tall outcrop, opened onto a great stone circle, as flat and smooth as a silent lake: a temple to the Air. North away spread a clear black horizon, empty below, a glory of stars above; eastward rolled endless miles of the stiff and shaggy hills; at their back to the south, the dim crowns of the Dur Nefraith; and over all the vast glittering bowl of stars; and they were come at last to the gates of Colderwild.

It was still black. The mother house of Runedaur stood in blackness unrelieved, somber and smooth as night. Songs told of nine towers; at this hour, they might have made a veritable forest, for all she could make out. But the two foremost, twins above the Gate, rose clearly to two merciless horns, their crowns shaping between them the bow of an empty crescent.

“I might warn you,” said Dav, remounting and starting across the stone circle, “it gets a little riotous after sundown.”

Rothesay studied the silent castle intently as they approached, and wondered what Dav’s idea of riot might be. It looked about as riotous as a tomb.

A cold wind greeted them as they crossed the circle, embraced them with dim swan wings, swift, feathery, strong. Beside her, suddenly Dav began to sing softly, under his breath: she could make out neither tune nor words, but thought it was a hymn to the Lord of Winds. It was oddly comforting.

They crossed the dike that defended the eastern wall by a swaying rope and timber bridge. Ahead, the empty Gate loomed wide before them. Now Rothesay could see, above and to the sides like skeletal eye-sockets to the Gate’s gaping mouth, two archways too large for windows, and rather large for doorways. Doubtlessly they served some device for defending the Gate; doubtlessly, too, their evocative design was no mere quirk—hard on a peaceable visitor, and dampening to his spirits, to say nothing of how it would work on a simple footman under orders to assail these grim walls. Rothesay squashed a wild terror that she was about to be swallowed alive; besides, how Master Dav would sneer if she ran!

Yet just before she passed into the shadow within, she saw the grim stone glint and glimmer, sparkle in the hard starlight as with crystal atomies. Then they left the starlight and the glitter and the rushing wind behind for the quiet dark of the tunnel.

It was broad enough for three horsemen to ride comfortably abreast; and it wound curiously, side to side, in a graceful serpentine line. Dav, however, did not, except the slightest bit to give his new belonging some room, for down the center it was just possible for one to hold a straight line, and Rothesay could see, many yards ahead, a slim oblong illuminated dimly, but redly, as by torchlight. As she clung to his cloak-hem, the Master went his straight, even way, and Winddancer’s hooves rang loud in the silence, a quick, steady heartbeat of homecoming. No, not silence: the tunnel echoed to a confused, chaotic sound from beyond. Riot?

In the third bend to the right, however, Dav, his pace unvarying as ever, bent aside to follow the curve of the wall for no reason that Rothesay could see, however she strained, then once again took up the straight path.

What had he skirted? Even as she wondered, the end of the tunnel opened broad and ruddy before them into a cobbled courtyard, walled ahead, with torchlit arches to left and right. Three people raced through in pursuit of another unseen; two more battled with quarterstaves on the top of the wall before them; wild whoops and yells rang in the night. Only her companion’s imperturbability assured Rothesay that the castle had not been overrun, that no massacre, such as ended the rule of the Kings of Peria, awaited them within.

A shadow hurtling from above barely missed the horse’s nose as it emerged from the passageway. Dav never checked, or even looked, as his would-be assailant rolled aside with alacrity, but remarked placidly, “Nice timing, Rory.” The young man stared up at him in plain awe, then turned to Rothesay with the beginnings of a wry remark that died in his throat as he met her face. Then they were past, and she did not catch what he yelled to others behind him.

The right-hand archway took them through a quieter yard and past a garden-hemmed house, then left through a small portico of fountains and more arches, and she was lost in the labyrinth of Colderwild.

A seeming battle stormed through the place. Ahead, up a sloping way, a lone swordsman neatly fended off three others; down from a low wall tumbled grappling wrestlers; and from beyond a row of flowering cherry trees came suddenly the rhythmic chanting of people preparing to swing or heave something heavy—but her amazement was lost in profound embarrassment. The skulker from above had worn no shirt at all, nor shoes nor leggings, having indeed nothing but a tattered loincloth between him and a complete state of nature. Even Alrulf coming in hot from the fields wore more than that!

For that matter, no one but she and the Master, and the solitary swordsman, wore much more, and the wrestlers, she fancied, were wearing less. Runedaur women—did they retire while the men ran thus wild? Did they care? What did they wear? As she worried this unforeseen issue, a singularly well-dressed person, all in black, appeared by the horse’s head, and Dav stopped. This was an old man, but very erect, with thin white hair swept back from an imposing profile. He took the bridle with an air that brooked no opposition, but his voice was mild.

“Welcome home, Master.”

“It certainly is, Nessian,” Dav replied heartily, if cryptically. “I’ll see to the horse.”

Nessian did not budge. “You are injured, Master, and you will wish to see the lady Carialla. As will your young guest.” He held up a hand for the reins.

Dav glanced down at her. “Damnably true. Why don’t I just give you my Chain and be done with it?”

“The reins will be sufficient,” said Nessian blandly, still waiting.

Dav flipped them to him, swung his leg over the horse’s head and slid from the saddle. Nessian bowed slightly, Dav snorted and swept past. But as Rothesay, unbeckoned, scurried after him, he called back over his shoulder, “Watch out, Ness—he talks, and my young guest is going to teach him to read and write, too!”

He strode on up the wide promenade with vigor, giving Rothesay no chance to ask about the impeccable old man. They turned northwards again, crossed a small brook by a graceful wooden footbridge, and the massive keep towered before them: two wings pale as a fog flanked a great round tower, beyond which loomed one of even greater height. Two or three tall windows glowed with light inside.

The footbridge ended at a grey-flagged circle with a fire-pit a good four yards across at its center, cold now and clean of any ash. Then stretched a broad white pavement ringed about with black pillars, and set with two crescent-shaped pools between whose horns their path lay. Swords clacking woodenly, a dueling pair of men, one rapidly losing ground to his much smaller opponent, moved onto the pavement from her right; Rothesay stopped and watched as finally the big fellow’s foot, forced to another step back, met nothing, and he dropped heavily into the water, shattering its black stillness into spray. He came up swimming for the far side; as the little man darted around and leaped across the crescent’s narrowing arm, though, he retreated to the middle, treading water and inviting his foe to come in and get him. This invitation was declined with silent dignity, the dry one reaching in daintily to retrieve the other’s weapon eddying on the ripples. Rothesay ran after the master of this riot, and wondered, among other things, just how deep the pools were.

Dav bounded up the broad steps to the great bronze doors and swung one open with ponderous ease. As he hesitated to one side, something hurtled out, pale, fist-sized and chest-high. It narrowly missed Rothesay, and flew on, vanishing into the night. Then he entered and she followed after, blinking and dazzled.

The echoing entryway, bright and warm with golden lamps in mirrored sconces, was empty of any missile launcher, but full of stunning beauty. The wealth of the Runedaur was not wholly in skill at arms and macabre jest. Pale grey stone, almost misty-looking, flowed up in the likenesses of silver-laced trees whose slender branches met, braiding and knotting loosely in the vaults, and flowering in white marble blossoms with jewelled hearts. Underfoot, water-lilies bloomed in an intricate mosaic, white, green, black and silver, polished bright as water so that one walked, as it seemed, unsupported between the heights and the depths. From somewhere unseen, the harplike ripple of falling water echoed from the stone.

Rothesay had not seen such magnificence since infancy, and that was heavy and dark with aged woods; or maybe since the golden weight and somber geometries of the palaces of Teginau; nothing like this cloud castle. Bewildered she gazed on mirrors and mosaics, tiles and tapestries; through archways glimpsed further halls and illuminated passageways. Seeing so much, she saw almost nothing, but the stone trees and the water-lily flags, and the lights.

A short sculptured corridor brought them under the great dome. Above, and again above that, the lofty vaults were ringed about with two levels of balconies, and filled with a radiance like immanent moonlight. No lamps burned there: a silver chandelier carried instead countless crystal spheres that shone as if by imprisoned stars. Magelights of some sort, she supposed silently, but made permanent by powerful magics.

Dav paused on the threshold. “Hessarif and his Tribe built this place for us,” he said softly, “and through the centuries the friendship of the Runedaur and the Móriad has not failed.” He glanced at her to see what she thought now of his awful house, but she did not notice, staring and staring like any peasant who ever made it so far; and he permitted one dark eyebrow to flicker.

Crisply he strode out across the floor. Rothesay stepped more gingerly, caught up wholly in the illusion of air and water. Then a shadowy motion caught the tail of her eye. From the first balustrade a great, black, winged shape like a vast and dreadful bat swept down at her and she leaped back. Abruptly it seemed to explode in midair, cobweb brushed past her face as the thing crashed to the floor and rolled and slid right to her feet. The silver light shivered weirdly as the great chandelier swayed and danced above.

Then it was bounding to its own soft-booted feet, shaking loose its black and tangled cloak, but not swiftly enough. Dav sprang past her, slender sword glinting, and smacked it smartly across one buttock. “Ghost!” he yelled.

“Yield!” it cried, a baritone bark of surrender.

Dav sheathed his sword. The apparition pushed a black hood back from the sheepish smile of a young man, and Rothesay’s still-pounding heart seemed to turn quite over. He was tall, taller than she, and rangy, smooth-skinned and curly-haired, and his eyes were dark and humorous.

“Welcome home, Master,” he said, his rueful smile acknowledging his defeat.

“Thank you, Kahan.”

“You were not supposed to have company,” said Kahan.

“But I did.”

“Yes.” Kahan’s wide grin came to full blossom. He made Rothesay a gracious bow. “Welcome to Colderwild.”

“Prove it!” she shot back. This was welcome?

Dav laughed. “The chit has a point! I wonder what a peaceful homecoming would be like?”

“Impossible?” she suggested, still rattled.

“Probably. I wonder also what else lies between me and my journey’s end? Your penalty, my Ghost, shall be to precede me to your Mistress’s chambers.” He pointed meaningfully toward a further hall. Kahan sighed, gathered up his cloak, and went with the air of a man marching to his doom.

Past bubbling fountains, down a soaring aisle in a stone forest in whose glens jewelled shrines to the Great Ones glimmered behind starlike candles, up cascades of stairs, around shadowy corners, his apprehension proved unfounded. No further assaults awaited them; indeed they met no other person, except a young boy, a page, perhaps, clutching a burden; as he overtook them on flying feet, he called out “Welcome home!” and sped on.

Before a beautiful carven door they stopped. Kahan, by this time jumping at shadows and fancies of shadows, raised a hand to knock, but the door opened before the blow landed and he nearly knocked on the nose of the woman there. He yanked back his hand as if burned, whipped himself aside and plastered his back to the wall. This was more than nervousness, Rothesay thought as his eyes closed in mute prayer; this looked like naked fear.

The woman in the doorway was small and slight, not pretty but striking-looking, pale with big dark eyes and a wide, unsmiling mouth; an incongruous spray of freckles dappled her nose, but she was not young, approaching forty, perhaps. Her glory was her hair, which she wore loose after the fashion of a maiden—or a queen: rich and glossy, chestnut-dark shot with white like captive lightning-bolts, it framed her face in a thick mane that seemed possessed of a living energy that defied braiding or binding. So Rothesay first beheld her whom reputation made more awful than her lord: Carialla, Lady of Colderwild, sorceress of fire and of night, Mistress of Runedaur.

Her keen eyes spared a fleeting glance for the vanished Kahan, flicked over Rothesay with remote curiosity, and swiftly began taking Dav apart.

“Damnation!” she exploded, catching sight of his arm. “Now what?”

Dav beamed like afternoon sunshine, “Ah, the tender concern of my gentle lady!”

Carialla swung at him a vicious backhanded blow, from which he weaved aside easily, still smiling. He seemed not the least put out by this assault, nor did she seem chagrined by its failure.

“I’ll have a look at it,” Carialla said icily, “but you can tell Sothia what you did to your shirt.”