Silverlock (Prologue Books) Read online

  “What’s your boy going to do for a living, now that he’s left home?” I demanded.

  “Well, father says he — ”

  “Is your dad here, too?”

  “He’s been in the forest ever since he lost his dukedom, but he’ll get it back, I expect.” She shrugged and beamed. “But if he doesn’t, why we’ll just live here.”

  I let it go. “Where have you been living meanwhile? Did you make yourself another one of those flower-lined shanties?”

  “No, I bought a shepherd’s cabin.” She took a last look in the pool and smiled at herself. “I’ve got to go there now, so I can get my hair dry. Can you stop by? I’d love to talk with you.”

  Dumping the bucket, I took it by the bail. “About Aucando?”

  She chuckled. “Maybe other things, too, though there probably won’t be time.”

  Her cabin was a cozy-looking shack, but I stared beyond it. Only a fringe of trees separated the clearing it was in from a meadow.

  “Is that just a break in the woods,” I asked, “or are we really at timber edge?”

  “That’s the beginning of open country,” she affirmed. She seated herself on a patch of grass, her back to the sun, and began spreading out her hair. After a moment I stretched out beside her.

  “And people live there?”

  “Shepherds. There’s farming land beyond, of course.”

  “And towns?” I persisted.

  “Oh, there are always towns.”

  “But which ones are they, and how far?”

  “I never asked,” she closed the subject. “Silverlock, you’re not going away, are you? I couldn’t bear to be alone now.”

  Well, at least I was out of the woods, and from then on I would have some way of keeping my bearings. “I’ll stick around until it’s time for your date,” I assured her, “but I expect to get supper out of it.”

  A fine meal it was, when she got around to making it. Afterwards I mooned around outside, while she bathed and dressed. She was going to have a good night for spooning, mild but not sultry. And while she and her fiancé were cooing at each other, I would be bunking in rugged solitude.

  “How do I look?” she asked, when she at last stepped through the doorway.

  It was such a pleasure to find out that I temporarily forgot to be sorry for myself. Her dress was one of those long, simple jobs, which neither concealed nor exhibited her. She wore no ornaments, but to slur the effect of low decolletage a lock of hair, wrapped around her throat, pinch-hit for a necklace.

  “Honey,” I said, “get out of my sight before you break my heart.”

  “I’ve half a mind to try, just to test the effect I’ll have on Aucando.”

  “He doesn’t seem to be in a hurry,” I was mean enough to point out.

  She made a face at me. “He’s not coming here. As Nicolind, I promised that if he’d meet me by the wishing well at moonrise, I was magician enough to produce Rosalette for him. He doesn’t really believe it, but he’s so much in love — ” Here she did a dance step and a pirouette. “ — that he’ll try anything. Isn’t he silly and magnificent?”

  She was gone then, seeking the moment for which she was designed. I watched her leave with a dog in the manger grudging. When she was no more than a simmer in the twilit woods, I turned and grumpily headed in the other direction.

  In the morning I would strike out across fields, but the forest was the better place to bed down. When I had found a likely spot, however, it was still too early to think of sleep. Wishing that I had another of Dr. Tensas’ cigars, I sat leaning against a tree, waiting to feel drowsy.

  The hallucinations that go with moonlight under the leaves diverted me somewhat from my moodiness. Several times I was convinced I saw something move. Finally there was no doubt about it. Shadows blacked parts of it out like the missing pieces of a jig-saw puzzle, but there were enough left to make it easy to identify a male lion.

  Although not happy about it, I stayed where I was. The wind was blowing toward me, and I knew that whatever keeps still is apt to be safe from the eyes of animals. That knowledge didn’t offer as much comfort as I could have used. Its course would take it within a dozen feet of me.

  At that point it entered a pool of moonlight and became an entity. Its belly sagged, and it rolled in its ponderous stride. Noting these things, I lost much of my fear. Here was just a fat, happy king of the beasts making port after a good feed.

  It didn’t neglect all security measures, however. Just after passing me, it stopped, its head lifted, one foot up in the air. It did not hold this classic pose long. It had hardly got set, when an animal stole upon its moonlit rear. No, it was human, or something very like it. Out of the shadows he skipped, to swagger forward in a manner so suggestive of the lion’s weighty dignity that I grinned. Three such strides brought him as far as the beast’s gently waving tail. With an ineffable gesture he pushed it to one side with his hand. At the same time his left hand jerked forward. I couldn’t see what was in it, but anyone who has ever had the youthful pleasure of applying a pin to the bulge in a hammock would recognize the motion.

  No occupant of a hammock ever reacted as satisfactorily as that lion, though. In almost the same breath it yelped, snarled, and roared. In almost the same action it jumped, whirled, and struck. His tormentor had to be fast to live to enjoy his joke, and he was. By the time the lion had turned around he was stretched behind a clump of fern, near enough for me to kick if I had wanted to move. I had no such inclination, while that beast was having a tantrum. It pawed the air as if it hoped to manufacture an enemy to take vengeance on. Several times it sprang and spun around to make sure it wasn’t again being taken from the rear. In the end it made itself nervous by this shadow boxing. Giving a sudden screech, it bounded out of sight.

  Now that the lion was gone, the fellow who had jabbed it proceeded to have a good time. He rolled over on his back, kicking his feet and nearly strangling on his mirth. My own shoulders shook, too. In part I was amused by what had happened, but what really tickled me was a glimpse of the mind that would buy a moment of slap-stick comedy with a mortal risk.

  Feeling that the lion was out of earshot, I finally laughed outright. “That’s nice for a hobby, bub,” I complimented him, “but it couldn’t be steady enough work for a living.”

  It was his turn to be startled. He shot up from the ground, stayed aloft in a manner best known to himself, and backed away a little. Almost instantly, however, he alighted.

  “I had him talking to himself, didn’t I?” he chuckled. “That’s what’s known as letting something get under your skin.”

  In shadow as we were, I couldn’t make him out too clearly. He was very short, with his head and shoulders large out of all proportion to his underpinnings. To judge from the outline of his noggin, his hair was thick and tousled. Nevertheless, his ears, or something that grew where ears belonged, were long enough to stand free of it.

  “What did you jab him with?” I enquired.

  “A fine, three-inch black thorn; and I sheathed it to the hilt. He’s got a hasty temper, eh?”

  I thought of the furious speed with which the lion had wheeled and struck. “He was hasty,” I agreed. “How do they figure your life expectancy hereabouts?”

  He snickered. “Oh, better than a lot of people’s, I reckon. That is, if you go by past performance.”

  “They must die early in these sticks.”

  “Not necessarily.” He seated himself and hugged his knees. “I’ve started counting by centuries instead of years, but then I’m the oldest.”

  “It must be rough to be an orphan,” I sympathized. Still if you cut a good lie in two, you might find that the small end of it had an alloy of fact. “If you really are the oldest inhabitant,” I went on, “perhaps you can tell me how to get where I want to go. Nobody else that I’ve met has even heard of the place, though.”

  “It doesn’t exist if I couldn’t tell you,” he said. “I know the country and what’s in it li
ke our lion’s rump knows that thorn. Never mind asking the big things. I know what Geri and Freki feed on and what Jack Wilton did at the house of Pontius Pilate. I know what the Dagda said to call his harp and the stakes Setna played for. I know who Kuwarbis got tight with and why Ilmarinen didn’t have much fun with his second wife. What’s your question?”

  “Well, I have a date to meet a friend — if he’s still alive, that is — at a place called Heorot. Do you know it?”

  “Know it!” he snorted. “You might as well ask what the suppliant maidens wanted. Not what you’d think at all. Why if you want to go to Heorot — ” I didn’t hear anything, but he jumped to his feet. “Oops! There’s my signal. I’ve got to skedaddle.”

  “Hey, nix! Not yet!” The thought of losing a knowledgeable guide just as I was on the verge of learning what I wished to know was too much. I made a determined grab for him, but he was on his way.

  9

  A Guide and No Guides

  AFTER MY ANNOYANCE had abated I lay down, but sleep wouldn’t come. Everything, indeed, conspired to keep it away. The soft air felt like a woman’s breath on my cheek. A nearby stream sounded like girls talking and chuckling. The leaves stirred by the night breeze rustled like silk skirts. Catching the moonlight, the ferns looked damnably like golden hair. A glowing stone had the curve and texture of a bare shoulder. Disgusted, I sat up again.

  For one little spot in the woods that was a busy place. In a little while I heard leaves crackling and twigs snapping as accompaniment to footfalls. Voices showed more than one person was coming, but I couldn’t make out what they were saying until they were almost opposite me.

  “Wait up!” the man’s voice begged. “Please, sweetheart. Oh, damn it all, why won’t you listen to me?”

  The girl, who was a pace in front, increased her lead by a little flouncing run. “I have better things to do, thank goodness.”

  Feeling sure that she must be Rosalette, I had risen; but when I heard her voice I sat down to mind my own affairs. “But what has changed you?” the man demanded, as he partially caught up. “What have you got against me?”

  “Your existence,” she told him.

  They disappeared, still quarreling. Hopefully I waited for something else to happen or for my lion-baiting acquaintance to return. Both soon took place.

  First there were sounds indicating a single person was approaching on the run. Sobbing, she probably couldn’t see where she was going. She had hardly entered my range of vision, when she tripped and fell.

  “Oh, Aucando!” she wailed. “How could you do this to me?”

  “Rosalette! What happened?” I demanded, as I scrambled to my feet.

  She was crying so wildly that she didn’t know or care who was speaking to her. “He — just — left me,” she wailed, rising to her knees, “and — I can’t find him!”

  “Well, hell — that’s too bad, honey.” I didn’t have much experience comforting people, but I started toward her. Halfway there I raised my voice. “You be careful what you do, or I’ll atomize you!”

  That trickster was back, flying not walking this time. Zooming up behind Rosalette, he paused an instant. I leaped to catch him, but he backed away like a humming bird leaving a blossom, turned with a laugh, and was gone.

  Rosalette didn’t shriek or jump, so all was probably well, but I knelt beside her. “Did he do anything to you?”

  “Who?” She had stopped sobbing. Now she raised her head and smiled. “Oh, Silverlock, I’m so glad you’re here.”

  The way she said it was something new between us. My pulse did a double shuffle, but my mind knew that she talked so because she was glad to see anybody.

  “What’s this about your boy friend,” I asked, “and why did the louse run out on you?”

  “Who?” she asked again, giving me her hands to help her up.

  “Who! Why, Aucando.” I was puzzled, but I couldn’t sound exasperated while holding her hands. She made no move to draw them away, so I hung on just for luck. “You told me just a few hours ago that you were going to marry him tomorrow.”

  “Oh, a few hours ago. But that wasn’t I. I’ve just been born now — this minute — when I opened my eyes and saw you.”

  It was not so much the words that I took seriously. I had once passed too much counterfeit myself to expect a dollar to have silver in it. It was her voice which persuaded me. Using those tones, she could have said: “There is no joy in Mudville”; and I would have known she was talking to the man she loved.

  There could be no mistake about it. And I wanted it to be so. It had to be so. There could be no future but agony unless it was true. Yet its suddenness dared me to believe it.

  “Rosalette,” I said shakily. “Oh, my — ” I didn’t finish the phrase, because I was kissing her. It was not so much conscious desire that drew us together as the knowledge we belonged with one another. Apart, each would lack entity. There was no match in life for one kiss but another.

  For the tenth or the hundredth time — I’ve no idea — I was closing my eyes the better to distill this sweetness when something brushed my face. Rosalette must have felt it, too, for she jerked away from me. Turning in anger to slap at the bug or moth which had disturbed us, I was just in time to see a familiar figure disappearing.

  Rosalette was walking away, and I sprang to catch up with her. “Rosalette!” I cried, taking her arm. “Did he hurt you?”

  “Oh, hello, Silverlock.” Her voice had a nice friendliness. “You’re always worrying about me, aren’t you? No, nobody’s hurt me.”

  Chilled, I let go of her arm. “What’s the trouble, then?”

  “Nothing much,” she said. “Aucando went off — I forget just why, though it doesn’t matter — but he’ll be back directly. What are you doing here?”

  Then I knew. Somehow it had something to do with that practical joker. He had sold my heart down the river for a laugh. It was all over, and there was no use in being reproachful to a girl who didn’t remember. I was afraid my voice wouldn’t work, but it did.

  “I’m not doing anything. This is where I bunk, you see, but I couldn’t sleep and — ”

  She didn’t hear me out. Someone was coming, and she dashed to meet him. It was Aucando, but I was spared the introduction. They went off together in a rush of endearments to find privacy.

  Left stunned and gasping, I had a bad time of it. I felt as if I had been cut in half without an anaesthetic, nor could I catch sight of any future betterment. To stay still under this affliction was more than I could manage, so I caught up my belongings. With no bearings at all I started striding through the forest.

  Previously I had not known that passion can be a sweetness in the mind as well as a rage in the body. Nor had I known that the loss of its object can leave a gap too big for reason to jump. It must work its way around, and at that finds the going hard. I could tell myself that what had touched me so briefly could not have burned deep. I could tell myself that marrying, under my present circumstances, was an impracticality. It did no good for the time being.

  If only that little heel with the over-developed sense of humor hadn’t come back! My mind had used that track so many times that it had a hot box. Yet I was driving it along there again, when the cause of my grief caught up with me.

  Having learned how fast he was, I didn’t try to hit him. “What the hell do you want?” I growled.

  As usual he laughed, but this time in a deprecatory manner. “I’m sorry you got caught in the works, but I was only trying to follow orders. You see,” he went on, when I simply glowered at him, “a mess of lovers’ quarrels were disturbing the peace hereabouts, and I was detailed to straighten things out. Rest your legs, won’t you. I’m kind of tired.”

  Now that I had stopped moving, I was aware of weariness, too. “I miscued the first time around,” he continued when we had seated ourselves on a handy rock, “and I screwed up the assignment. As far as you are concerned, it was your tough luck to be around while I was pairin
g people off. There you were looking foolish, and there she was bawling. The set-up was a dead ringer for a lovers’ quarrel, so I patched it up.”

  “Why didn’t you leave us alone after that?” I muttered. “We were doing all right.”

  “Couldn’t,” he said. “The boss found out that I’d goofed off, and made me unscramble things and get the arrows in the hearts where they belonged. That meant you were out in the cold. Not so good?”

  “I’ll live.”

  “You will,” he agreed, “and you’ll forget this and you won’t, and be glad on both scores. But anyways I felt I owed you something for getting you into it, which is why I took the trouble to hunt you up. Now you wanted to go to Heorot.”

  I made myself realize that I couldn’t wander around, brooding on the might-have-been indefinitely. “Yeah, I guess so. But if you can even get me out of Broceliande, it’ll help. I’ve been walking around so long without knowing where I’m going that I feel like I’m slipping my chain.”

  “You’re as good as out now,” he assured me, as he hopped to the ground. “Look here,” he said, when I had followed him a ways. “There’s your path right under your feet.”

  I could feel it and follow it for a brief distance with my eyes, but I didn’t have much confidence in it. There had been other forest byways which I had followed, only to have them slip out from under foot.

  “Which way do I go?”

  “That way.” He pointed left. “This trail will take you to a road. Turn right on it and then take the first left-hand turn. Heorot will be the largest building in the first town you come to.”

  “How far is it?”

  “The way you’re going? H-m-m, let’s see. Watling Street couldn’t be more than twenty-five miles, and the turn off is about a mile this side.”

  His mention of Watling Street, of which Golias had told me, gave me the feeling of being on familiar ground. At last I began to believe in my guide.