CHAPTER 18.
Earl Alois was grateful for his own magical skills, which included the ability to divine a way home. That was how they finally got back to the Dun-the troop had blundered through places he would swear were not in Lyonesse, let alone his familiar Southern Marches. He"d been aware that his people had been encountering the various non-humans more and more frequently. But suddenly they seemed to have turned inimical, to him in particular.
And now, thanks to rude piskies who had misled them, and pelted them with pine cones, he knew why. Somehow they"d heard that he"d tried to kill the Defender. And the fay-at least the piskies-were taking it out on him and his. He needed help. Allies. Not this.
The spriggan escort handed Meb and Neve on to a fair of piskies. "They"re flighty and troublesome," said the spriggan as the piskies stuck their tongues out at them. "But they"ll see you further north."
"Thank you. I"d like to be further from Dun Tagoll, but north was a direction chosen for no good reason. I"m really not too sure where we should go," admitted Meb.
The spriggan smiled wryly. "So now you"re asking me for advice, and my thoughts, beyond that it will all end in tears I shouldn"t wonder. And if I know humans, you want more than that. Go north. We don"t really believe in chance or coincidence. There are forces pushing you north. Powers in the land itself. The humans believe the King is the Land and Land is the King, and it"s been without one for too long. Humans, of course, have a poor understanding of it, but that"s no surprise. Anyway: the forest people in the deep woods are closest to the Land, of all those in it. They could give you refuge. And they have a freedom of movement across the country that we don"t."
Meb thought of her brush with the sprites-Lyr-for they were all, effectively, the same vegetative intelligence. They hadn"t liked people much. "Oh. You also have sprites here?"
"Sprites?" asked the spriggan.
"Tree people...sort of like trees but people too," explained Meb.
"Ah," said the spriggan, nodding. "The dryads. This is far from their realms. We"ve had a few once, long ago. No, I speak of the Wudewasa, the wild people of the deep forest. Lyonesse was once all theirs when it was also almost all forest. They"re touchy and dangerous."
"And that was supposed to cheer me up, was it, as well as help?" said Meb.
The spriggan smiled. "Can"t have you getting too enthusiastic. May the Land stay with you." And he turned and left.
So they were left to travel on with the piskies. They were flighty travel companions, needing to be reminded that they weren"t actually here just to play little practical jokes on the two humans with them. The idea that humans might not like their hair tweaked, and that it was a bad idea to do, took a while to get into their heads too. Neve finally did it, catching one shrieking with laughter in her ear as he did so, and holding him up in front of her. "It"s being put over my knee for a good spanking that you"ll get if you do that again. Go and tweak the squirrels" tails instead."
"They bite," said the piskie, looking sulkily at her. "It was no harm we were doing. Just a bit of fun."
"And it"s no harm I"ll do to your tail end. No worse than you did to my hair."
"Then you wait and see what I"ll do to you next," said the piskie crossly.
Meb thought it was wise to try for a distraction. She"d started to try and learn the cartwheels and tumbling and flick-flacks that Fionn used as part of his gleeman showmanship. She wasn"t particularly good at them, in skirts...but then the piskies seemed totally unaware of clothing"s purpose being to cover nakedness. "Can you do this?" she asked, managing a credible cartwheel...and resolving never ever to do it in a skirt again.
They didn"t seem to notice that part at all, and next thing they were all cartwheeling and tumbling and spinning. From there it was natural enough for Meb and Neve to start singing. And the piskies found that a good reason to weave dances around them, and between their legs, rather like cats. It was noisy, but it beat having your hair tweaked and ears pulled by bored piskies. It was a relief to come to the point where the fair said: "Thus far and no further," and left them with capers and cartwheels and a raspberry or two.
"You know, m"lady," said Neve tiredly, when they were out of sight of the little people. "They"re like little children. There"s never been anything quite like piskies to make even spriggans look very nice."
"I had always wondered what they were good for," said the spriggan, who had been doing a good job of looking like an old milestone. "But they"re not always or all quite such flighty fellows. They"re fast workers, when it takes their fancy. Of course they"ll usually leave you in the lurch just when you needed them most."
"And spriggans do a good job of frightening me out of a year"s growth, and you can rely on them to come up with the next glum prediction," said Meb.
"Yes. Those are the things we do best," agreed the spriggan. "I"ll tell you there is a group of Angevins prowling the lanes in the next few miles, along this way. They"re best avoided, I would say. They"re hungry and mean. If you detour a bit west, that trail has got nothing particularly nasty that we can"t discourage."
That night was their first full night beneath the stars, sleeping rough. Meb had the feeling they were being watched but no piskies or spriggans or knockers or even Angevin mercenaries disturbed their rest. It was cold, but survivable, thanks to the fur blanket, and a layer of bracken to keep them off the ground, fire and a bit of shelter from the wind with an old stone wall and a tree. Food, however, was getting spa.r.s.e. They had some of the dried meat they"d got from the knockers, and some fiddlehead fern shoots that they boiled in a bark bowl, and a last oatcake divided between them and washed down with what the knockers probably considered quite a lot of apple wine. It didn"t really go very far. Meb was seriously thinking magic was going to have to be employed to find them food, soon.
Except that morning brought food. Food laid out neatly in precise rows next to their bed...nuts-some squirrel had plainly not eaten his winter store-and a pile of sulphur-yellow bracket fungus neatly laid out on some young leaves. Meb recognized that from her time with Fionn, mushroom hunting. "Chicken-of-the-woods! And there are two small bird"s eggs. We have breakfast."
"But who brought it?" asked Neve. "The gra.s.s-look it"s full of dew, but there isn"t a sign of a footprint in it."
There wasn"t.
"Maybe piskies?" suggested Meb, yawning, looking around.
"I don"t see them laying out the food precisely. It"d be tossed in a heap and probably tumbled in the gra.s.s. And look how neatly the fungus is cut," said Neve, pointing. "My ma is...was a fussy housekeeper. And she was never that picky."
"Well, let"s make a little fire and cook the chicken-of-the-woods. I"m just grateful for it. We should have got a cooking pot from the knockers," said Meb, suddenly thinking of mushrooms and bacon. "Finn always had a little iron skillet."
"He must have had a pack horse to carry everything he had...I am sorry, m"lady. Didn"t mean to make you cry."
"You didn"t," said Meb, sniffing determinedly and rubbing her eyes. "Something just got in my eyes, that"s all." And out of my memory box, she thought. It was the mushroom smell and the mention of that skillet. Determinedly, she thought of where the food could have come from rather than dwelling on happier times. It was good to have food, at least. It seemed they"d better hang on to it, because a determined team of ants were rolling one of the walnuts away...
And then she looked again. They weren"t rolling the nut away. They were bringing it to add to the rows. She peered closely. The ants all had remarkably human faces. And they stared back at her.
"Neve," she said quietly, as the young maid picked up twigs from the leaf litter to start the fire, "I think I found out who brought us the food. Look."
Neve followed her pointing finger. Clung to her arm.
"Muryans. As I live and breathe, muryans!" said Neve, incredulously. "Whatever you do, m"lady, don"t make them angry. They"re small but there be millions and millions of them.
Meb looked at the tiny creatures positioning the nut, which was far bigger than they were, with meticulous precision. "Right now I"d rather work out how to thank them. The spriggans said they were very serious and hard workers. I don"t think juggling or tumbling will have much appeal."
"They say they are ruled by a queen," said Neve, "and she looks just like a person, only tiny. They say if she"s your captive, they"ll serve you."
It brought to mind the doll"s house stuff that Meb had seen in Aberinn"s workshop. Well, why not? She"d been fascinated enough to study it, to remember it in detail. The queen"s chamber with its little mirrors and brushes and combs...She called them. Wanted them. It produced a very strange feeling...and an entire little room in her hands. Meb put it in the basket, but picked out the tiny silver comb, which was smaller than her pinkie fingernail. It was perfect and must have taken some artificer many hours of painstaking labor to make...or some form of magic. She knelt down and looked at the laboring muryans. They stopped, little ant antennae twitching at her. She held out the comb, balanced on a finger. "A small gift. For your lady, with thanks for your breakfast."
One, and then a second of the muryan approached her finger. They had antlike, sharp-biting jaws-doubtless what had cut the tough bracket fungus. They took the comb-it was still big enough to need two of them to handle it-and ant-handled it back to the wall, and down between the stones.
A little later, just as they"d got the fire lit, a small sea of muryan came pouring out from between the rocks. Then came several hundred larger muryan, with jaws like scimitars, nearly an inch long. And then, carried on a litter made of gra.s.s stalks with highly polished seed handles...their queen. The soldiers arrayed themselves watchfully. Meb was sure that if either of them made the slightest move toward the muryan queen they would attack with suicidal ferocity.
The little queen was human-looking. Her clothes-probably woven from something like spider web-were remarkably fine, and bright colored. She was perhaps six inches tall-big compared to her subjects. And she had the comb in her hands.
Meb and Neve stared at the perfect doll-like little woman. Her skin was porcelain white and her hair long and dark, and intricately braided. There were little sparkling lights set in it. "My subjects are very worried about me being aboveground," she said in a piping little voice. "But I wished to thank you for the gift, Land Queen." She admired the comb, delight written on tiny features. "You did not have to do that."
"It seemed only polite to say thank you for breakfast," said Meb. "Fionn said that only a fool takes without giving something in exchange. Even if it is only his grat.i.tude making the giver feel good."
"That is wisdom. We struggle to fashion metals. And the knockyan work is not so fine as this. They are miners, not artificers. Thank you," said the muryan queen.
"It is our pleasure. We appreciate breakfast."
The queen nodded regally. "My workers want to know if you can spare them an ember on a stick. They struggle to kindle fire, and it has been damp and cold and we lost ours."
"Nothing easier," said Meb, taking a smouldering stick from the fire. Was Lyonesse full of such obliging fay? It was very different to Tasmarin then. "All of the non-human people here seem so...helpful. Generous. Thank you."
"It is our duty to serve. We have waited a long time for you," said the queen muryan.
Meb blinked. What? Then it struck her. It must be this prophecy. She did not want to be their "Defender." Although, she admitted to herself, it was easier to have to defend the knockers, spriggans, muryan and even the annoying piskies than the n.o.bles of Dun Tagoll. "I don"t know what I am supposed to do," she admitted.
The muryan queen toyed with the comb. "The Land knows. And you do it in a better fashion than the last one. He took it as his right. Never gave anything or thanked anyone for anything."
One of the soldier muryans clicked his mandibles.
The queen nodded. "He says there are large birds coming. I must go back to my palace."
The bearers literally whisked her away just as she was finishing speaking, carrying her back down into the mound.
"Large birds?" said Meb looking around. They were under a tree, and the un-farmed countryside was returning to woodland. A bird, she supposed, could be a grave danger to the muryan, especially a bird of prey, to their queen.
"You can see them over there," said Neve in an odd voice, pointing. "I think we need to hide, m"lady."
They gleamed golden as they caught the sun. It was a reflection off metal, but they flew and tumbled through the sky like a murder of crows. Even from here you could hear their harsh cawing cry.
"Aberinn"s crow." She"d seen it, in his tower, in the gilded cage.
"Yes, m"lady. One is the same as many. And what they sees, he sees," said Neve, fearfully.
"Let"s put that fire out, and think hidden thoughts," said Meb.
So they did, sitting tight, staying under the tree and cracking nuts.
The golden birds scattered across the sky. Hunting.
On the ground the piskies could maze and mislead, and the spriggans could give warning. Meb had a feeling that up close the muryan could deal with any attacker, just by sheer numbers. But the metallic crows stayed above, in the sky, and Meb honestly could not think what to do about them, except to wait them out.
They had to sit for a good hour, as the day grew warmer, before they could start walking again. It had given Meb a chance to think about what the various fay had said, and she"d perhaps not really understood. She had no desire to be some kind of savior. She"d just wanted...well, she knew what she"d just wanted, but as she couldn"t have that, she"d just wanted somewhere quiet to be relatively miserable and peaceful about it all. Then she"d said she would help...and found that she"d promised a spy. Vivien had been kind to her. She"d been grateful. The castle"s "little people" had been good to her. The non-human denizens of Lyonesse had been helpful...and in their ways, generous. Well, the piskies had helped rather than just generating mayhem, their most frequent habit. The spriggans had as much said they thought the whole process was using her. If it had to be that way, and she wasn"t sure why it should, she"d shape it to her, not the other way around. And why her? Neve said only those of Lyonesse"s n.o.ble ruling house had magic-but that just meant one of her parents had to have been. And she was a realist enough to know that could have been on the wrong side of wedlock. She was no lost princess: the last king had been dead more than fifty years, and the queen nearly sixty years. No one else at Dun Tagoll had been leaping up and claiming a child lost eighteen years ago. Or no one who was willing to admit to it, which put her as likely to be the love child of a servant. It would have been some small consolation for losing Fionn and Dileas to have loving parents waiting for her. She had never had a father. Hallgerd had at least been a kind of mother.
And then her type of magic was simply so different from the way they seemed to do things here. Did it really mark her as from their royal house at all? They knew precisely what and how they were doing what they were doing, and followed precise methods, but were quite weak in their degree of success. She had no real idea how she did what she did, had no real clear method, except that of a clear image and real desire or need, and a sort of daydreaming focus seemed to help. But she was far more successful than most, she gathered, excluding the likes of Aberinn.
She was still deep in thought as they began their walk. Eventually she asked Neve, "What would fix Lyonesse? If you could, I mean, just could...wave your hand and it happened."
Neve blinked. Meb had decided a while back that it wasn"t that Neve was stupid. She just hadn"t ever done much thinking and wasn"t too eager to start. Meb understood that too. In a village, being smart or daydreaming weren"t things that helped you to fit in, and it was easier to fit in than not to. "I"d stop the fighting. Stop the armies coming along the Ways. Never mind the Changes. Just leave us alone."
"But Vivien said it was needed to keep magic going in Lyonesse."
"Aye. It is," agreed Neve. "But no good that"s been to burned villages and burned fishing boats, and killed people."
Meb suspected that the n.o.bility of Lyonesse, whose power rested on that magic, would not see it that way. Well, she had no reason to care how they felt. But she did have reason to care for the spriggans and knockers, and the muryans and even the piskies. They needed magic. They were "wakening" because of the magic...then it dawned on her. They were wakening because the flows of magical energy had been restored because of the reintegration of Tasmarin, not because of the device in the tower. "So all we need is a bit of peace."
Neve nodded. "Mind you, stopping fighting usually takes some fighting." She swallowed. "I had...two little brothers. Only way to stop them fighting was to spank both of them, my mother said."
Meb suddenly felt overwhelmingly guilty. She"d never really found out much about Neve"s family, beyond stories of her grandmother. "What happened to your family? Your village? Could I take you back there?"
"It isn"t there anymore. No one along the coast near Dun Tagoll after the Vanar"s last raids. M"mother and the boys...they were killed. Later, in Dun Telas, my Gamma...Well, she had money and my uncles, they moved to Dun Telas. I am not going back there." There was a terseness in her voice that said "don"t ask me any more."
But Meb wouldn"t have anyway, because just then a javelin spiked the trail in front of them.
CHAPTER 19.
"So, Finn. How far do you travel with us?" asked Avram, as the carts made their way along the track. Fionn was sitting up on the box with him, and Dileas was fast asleep just behind him. He"d growled at Mitzi a little earlier, and she was still bright-eyed and eyeing him with interest. Fionn had been keeping an eye on Dileas for an entirely different reason. He was aware of gold, and had known just where in the dog"s digestive tract the bespelled gold coin was. The spell probably wouldn"t survive stomach acid, but the coin might do Dileas some harm, Fionn feared. He was relieved to know the coin wasn"t in the dog anymore, but had been deposited somewhere. Dileas had obviously made sure it was a long way from Fionn, and that was one piece of gold Fionn had no interest in finding.
"Until the dog tells me it"s time to go elsewhere. And right now he"s too tired and his mind seems elsewhere."
"You"re following the dog?" said Avram, incredulously.
Fionn nodded. "I told you he was smarter than you realized. He"s following his mistress. He"s taken me straight across four planes and back across a fifth. He takes me to these Tolmen Ways of yours, which are shorter, straighter, and less dangerous than the planar intersections that I know. Right now I believe you"re going in the right direction."
"What are you seeking?" asked Avram.
"I said: the dog"s mistress. She is very important and special to me."
Avram nodded. "She is a very desirable dragon then?"
"She"s a human," said Fionn.
Avram nearly dropped the reins. "There are some very fair young women among our people," he said cautiously.
"She"s rather special, and to be honest with you, given all the time rates out here, I am not too sure if she"ll be a young woman by the time I find her. The planes are extensive, although her magic use tends to make her stand out like a bonfire on a dark night," said Fionn.
"She"s a mage?"
"Of sorts, yes," replied Fionn, smiling, thinking about it. "More like an accidental mage with more innate power than most dedicated and trained pract.i.tioners."
"Has she enchanted you, Dragon?" asked Avram. "We"ve got a few back home who are good at undoing those things..."
Fionn shook his head, knowing it wasn"t entirely true, but preferring matters the way they were. "In theory, anyway, it is very hard for one human to use magic on our type of dragon. We are mostly proofed against magic for good reason. I think I love her in the same way and for the same reason the dog does. Because she is what she is, and she loves us."
"So...how did you lose her?" asked Avram, in the fashion of someone who knows this a bad question to ask, but is going to ask it anyway.
Fionn shrugged. "She used her power to go, and we don"t know exactly where. I believe she was misled by...by something. And I intend to find out, and I intend to find out why."
"We have a saying that if there is one thing more determined than a man led by his t.e.s.t.i.c.l.es, it"s one led by his emotions."
"It"s true of dogs and dragons too," admitted Fionn.
Now that he was accepted as a dragon, there were no major secrets, and Fionn had built up something of a picture of the travelers. Their base was on the Blessed Isles and there were ten carts in this venture, making it a small one. There had been eleven but one had had to be cannibalized to make a bridge. Twenty-two men, no women or children this trip; Annvn was considered too dangerous, as were the shifting gateways or Tolmen. There were several that the travelers never quite knew where they would come out. Some outcomes, like Broceliande and Finvarra"s kingdom were merely dangerous, and places they visited in the normal course of business anyway. But Annvn, despite being profitable, was so full of regulation-and corruption-that travelers had had major problems, entire parties being sold into slavery, and needing expensive rescues.