The Second Ardath Mayhar Read online

  I had, of course, no excuse. The unreasoning terror we had all felt while besieged by the throngs of veaules was nothing I could offer as an explanation. So we were, perforce, returned to the surface as a unit, although thankfully not to the precise spot we had left.

  Howell and his staff chose a similar meadow some thousand kilometers from the first. That should, they felt, leave behind the disturbed birds and give us a fresh start. The group sent after our earlier work and equipment delivered it all to us in orbit, and we took it back down with us.

  Again we chose a location and inflated the domes. Again we gathered information about local plants and living creatures. The silver moon waned, for we had missed the transit of the green one by the time we were reassigned and re-equipped.

  When the red moon rose, the veaules crept out of the forest, stalking along on those glass-rod legs or hopping, with much flapping of wings, into the meadow. A few daring ones took to the air and swept above the domes, as if scouting out the situation.

  Jooss decided to see if it would be safe to go outside. We were almost unable to drag him back to shelter before we would have been sliced and skewered by claws and beaks. Then, breathless and horrified, we watched them hurl themselves at the distant shuttle, shattering the almost unbreakable permaplast, stopping the vents with their bodies, freezing the guidance vanes with a dreadful glue of flesh and blood and feathers.

  They trapped us here. We believe they assessed our situation in that earlier encounter and designed a strategy to counteract our escape. Where they had numbered in the millions, before, now the entire world seemed filled with veaules, crowding close in the light of the red moon and retreating to the forest by day.

  They have not attacked the domes, as yet, although I suspect those saw-edged beaks could rip them to shreds, given the time. Jooss cannot get through to the ship, for the creatures seem to have jammed our frequency with signals of their own.

  Do they have some kind of technology? We cannot know, and the days are not long enough for us to do any long-distance exploring to find some center of activity that might hold such matters.

  The red moon has begun to wane. Surely when the green moon rises again we will be safe and can find some way in which to get a signal to our ship. We cling to that hope, though we all have similar fears. What if the veaules come inside after us? I shudder at the thought.

  We do not go outside while the red moon shines.

  MAY BANKED FIRES RISE ANEW

  I was a middle-aged woman myself before I realized that few, if any, sf or fantasy stories involved a middle-aged woman as protagonist. Yet I also realized that I was only just beginning to have the understanding and the skills to deal with almost any situation, be it life-threatening or otherwise.

  Yarusha drew her fingers down Jarob’s face, closing the eyelids over his staring eyes; that familiar angular jaw, with its stubble of unmanageable beard, had become cold and distant, infinitely withdrawn in death. She took a new sheet from the chest beside the bed they had shared for fifteen years and spread it over him. The children were pale with terror, as they saw their father lying still and bloody in his own bedroom.

  Outside the impenetrable stone walls of the fortress, she could hear dim shouts, the crackling of flames. Kenir’s men were firing the village. She hoped the survivors there would have the wit to run into the forest, where even Kenir could not track them down. And if the invader should venture into the forbidden wood—she smiled grimly. Shapes of hideous fear would find him there, for she had set them in place herself, over her husband’s protests.

  That had been her sole use of the Gift, after her marriage. Jarob had been strongly opposed to such practices, and she had foregone them for his sake. But now he was dead, the stone of his house dented and scorched, the fields about fired and ravaged. The men who defended the House were scattered...or dead. Their children huddled, crying, in the corner of the great room where the family had slept. Because her man was too proud to ask for help, his people faced the sword or starvation.

  She sighed and turned toward her offspring. Elisse, the youngest, ran to her; she caught the child up in her strong arms. The other three followed her, Rebesh slowly, his adolescent face pale and taut. She could see that he longed for the comfort of her arms too, but at fourteen he felt himself too old to indulge in childish needs. She reached to draw him, with his siblings, within her embrace.

  “Your father is dead,” she said, her words stark. “We are left to hold to what is ours, though we are surrounded by danger and death. I must find aid, or everything will be lost, not only for us but for our neighbors. Rebesh, your task is to care for your sisters. See to the defense of the House and gather what food can be salvaged from the crops, when the invaders withdraw.

  “As soon as they are out of sight, blow the great horn to summon any villagers nearby into the walls. This is a hard task for one so young, but you are the only Halonath left to do what must be done. Your sisters are small, but you must make them help as well. There are things they can manage to do, and you must find them and set them to work.”

  Her son stared at her, eye-to-eye, he had grown so tall. Behind his grief, she could see excitement begin to dawn in his eyes. “Will the people obey me?” he asked her.

  She drew herself up, gently loosing the hands of her children. “I will see to it.” Her rawboned body held both promise and threat. She was a Kellen born, a Halonath by marriage, and when she spoke, those in her care listened.

  “I will send for my mother, and she will come, through battle if need be, to your aid. Blind she may be, but she will be here. It will take time, however, and I have no time to wait. I must find those perilous allies in the wood and rally forces against Kenir. Every fort stead this side of the mountains will fall, and no man will walk free between the highlands and the sea, if I cannot gather a force to stop him,” she said.

  But Rebesh looked stubborn. “Father would not ally himself with those rebels in the wood,” he said. “It will bring dishonor.”

  “The dead have no honor,” she said. “Do you want to die with your sisters? I must go, and I will.”

  Elisse put her lips close to her mother’s ear. “Will you take the not-men who seem to guard the keep with you?” she whispered.

  Yarusha shook her head. “You know they are illusion,” she said. “All they can do is to keep Kenir from storming the House, for they seem to be a strong force waiting to defend it. They will thin to mist slowly, after I am gone, but when Mother comes she will reinforce them. No, I go alone, but I hope that I will return with help. From the forest.”

  Rebesh reached to touch her shoulder. “The League of the Clanless!” He still looked rebellious.

  She nodded. “When you see me again, you will not recognize me. My graying hair will be black again; my face will seem young and smooth, for those who flee the steadings have no respect for the old or even the middle-aged. I must seem young, in order to gain a hearing from them. They would kill me at once otherwise.”

  She hugged them again, fiercely. “You will know me by this scar,” she said, drawing her finger down the side of her chin, tracing the silvery streak that remained from her warrior days. “Now, go to Marilda and help her ready your father for his pyre. When I come again, I will be changed.”

  She felt a fierce pride as they turned obediently and went. Her children had been nurtured to be strong and capable people. Even so young, they showed the result of that rearing. If she could stop Kenir, they would have a chance to live; if she could not, they would surely die.

  She turned to her brass mirror. Her harness and mail hung beside it, with her sword. She had wielded it only in practice for many years, but her muscles still held their old strength, though not, alas, the enduring elasticity of youth.

  She took them down and let out straps, for her shape was larger now. The sword hooked onto the belt with accustomed ease. When she looked into
the mirror, she saw a formidable warrior, grim and forbidding—and middle-aged. She must change that image now.

  She closed her eyes and crossed her hands on her belt. “Goddess, grant me illusion. Grant me the semblance of youth. Grant me the ability to return to my hard-won self when I choose. I, Yarusha, ask it.”

  She felt the surge that signified the rising of the Gift, the kindling of fires that had been banked for fifteen years. Flame walked up her body, invaded her skull, bloomed outward through her flesh. She opened her eyes again and looked into the mirror. A tall, rawboned young woman stood there, clad in mail, blade at her side. The black eyes burned and the unveined hands grasped the sword-hilt.

  Yarusha smiled and saluted. “If I truly held all that young energy! But I do not truly regret it.” She turned to meet the children in the hallway.

  “Is it you, Mother?” asked Rebesh, staring. “Yes, there is the scar. But you seem so strange….”

  “I am strange,” she replied, feeling the Gift raging below her skin. “I cannot stay to light your father’s pyre. Send my love with him into ashes. And pray that I return with Kenir vanquished and our home made safe again.”

  She strode down the long flights of stairs to the guard-bay, where Hameth, the Master at Arms, was busy among the wounded. He was on his knees, slicing expertly at the base of a shaft. Without speaking, she knelt on the other side of the wounded man and held the cut apart as Hameth pried the metal bolt from the bloody socket. When they were done, she stood.

  “Hameth, I go to gain grim allies. While I am at that, be certain that all obey my son. Only in matters of war will he defer to you. Whatever you feel against me, do not let it temper your loyalty to Jarob’s heir. He will listen to you.”

  The Master stared at her, his hostility, as always, plain in his gaze. He had never approved of his lord’s choice of a wife. There had been tension between the two of them for fifteen years, but now he looked at the change in her, the notched blade, the mail, and he nodded. Respect stood between them now, if no liking.

  “It is just. If Jarob had listened to me....” He shook his head. “You will leave those Seemings on guard here? There are few to defend the House, if Kenir should decide to return.”

  “They will stay, and my mother will come, for I loosed a pigeon to summon her. I go now to rally the Clanless Ones.”

  “Then go. I will do as you say. I have not been your friend, Lady, but I am not your enemy. Believe that.”

  “I do.” She nodded. “Be blessed, Hameth.”

  She slipped from the sally-port and crawled up the trench in the shelter of a hedgerow, to emerge in the forest beyond. Turning, she looked toward the village, where smoke still rose. She smelled ash, but she could see no glint of armor. Kenir and his men were moving again, toward the fortress to the north. Rostath’s house was now in danger, and Kenir would fall upon it without warning as he had done the House of Jarob. She must bring help in time!

  She moved into the wood swiftly, picturing in her mind the terrible illusions she had placed there to guard the rear approach to the House and the village. The fanged fog she called, summoning that image. It slipped through dark boles toward her, tendrilled hands groping, fanged mouth a-drool.

  “Go,” she said, pointing to the north. It fled along the breeze after Kenir. One by one she called its companions from the wood, and bone-chilling chimerae fled in the track of her enemy. When the last was gone, she sighed. Anyone courageous enough to stand and face those would find them illusion, yet few had ever dared that.

  She sighed, wishing that she had the power to bring into being real warriors armed with true steel blades and stout bows. Yet that was futile. She must recruit those who were of flesh and blood.

  The chink of her mail accompanied her down the dim path. In time she paused, listening. Then she called into the gathering darkness, “It is Yarusha. Are my people hiding here?”

  For a long time there was no reply, but at last a cautious hail came from the undergrowth. “Is it truly our lady?”

  She whistled the signal, and dark forms came from hiding. They were few, but she saw one that was taller than the rest.

  “Faron, is that you?”

  “Indeed, Lady.”

  “Kenir has taken his men toward Rostath’s keep. I sent after them the shapes of fear that guarded you, hoping to slow them until we can warn our neighbor. Is there someone who is able to run the hidden ways and give warning?”

  Faron nodded. “My son will go.”

  “Then give him this token.” She stripped from her finger a ring set with red stones, the symbol of the Kellen, her people. “Now make haste. If a single one turns and faces the shapes behind them, all will know that the host that harries them is only shadow.”

  She sent the rest to the fortress. In a few minutes she was on her way again, forging deep into the forest in growing darkness. Her feet found the track she sought, almost without thought, as she focused her mind toward the haunts of the League of the Clanless.

  A faultless sense of direction was an aspect of her Gift, and she followed it surely toward her goal. Yet she knew that this might be her last night of life, for her Gift did not include invincibility among its attributes. If the Clanless refused her plea, she would die there in the wood.

  As dawn touched the treetops, she caught a glimmer of fire among the trees. There was no sound of voices; the wood was still, except for the twitters of birds readying for the flight southward. She moved quietly, her soft-soled boots making no sound on the mulch of the path, and halted at a distance from the fire.

  She whistled the call she had used with her own people. Nothing moved. She called, “Will the Clanless hear a warning and a plea?”

  Birds went silent in the trees. A hare scuttled into its burrow. The fire burned before her, and she moved forward unhesitatingly. When she came to the blaze, she unhooked her sword and laid it on the ground, reached into the slit of her mail and removed a dagger, which she flipped to bury its point in a tree trunk. She took her strangling cord from its loop and laid it on a stone by the fire.

  Her hand shook a bit as she removed the golden chain holding her birthstone from about her neck. That was her birthgift, the sign of her power. Then she waited.

  When the sun rose over the treetops, a man stepped from the wood. The fire had burned low, and he kicked the butt-ends of logs back into the coals. When they flared up, he took a kettle from behind a stone and set it in the edge of the blaze, as Yarusha watched, wordless.

  Meat and herbs went into the kettle, and when savory smells brought the Clanless to the clearing, Yarusha still waited patiently. All of these newcomers were young. Very young. Several dozen people soon sat about on stones or billets of wood, eating their morning meal. They paid no heed to Yarusha, and she did not speak to them, nor did she sit. From her stance, it was clear that weariness was not a word she had learned.

  When the meal was done and the remnants removed, the man who had prepared it approached and stood facing her. “You spoke of a warning. We will hear that. I must warn you in turn that we have little use for pleas and seldom offer aid to anyone.”

  “I am no messenger,” Yarusha said. “But Yarusha Kellen Halonath, Lady of the fortress belonging to Jarob. My husband is now dead, his village in ashes. Kenir of Eastrank moves against his neighbors, seeking to weld all holdings into one, with himself as ruler. Those resisting die.

  “You will not find safety here in your forest. Kenir cannot abide those who are free and rule their own lives. He will axe the trees, burn the wood if necessary, to harry you out and put you to death or into chains. That is my warning.”

  The man laughed. “Why should he come into the forest? No soul has come here for fifteen years at least. The specters at its edge send ordinary folk shrieking away.”

  “He will come. The specters were set there by one who lives at Jarob’s fortress. Fifteen ye
ars ago she came. I have control of them now. I have sent them after Kenir’s troops, now moving toward Rostath’s House. No more terrible shapes guard your western border, Clanless One.”

  There came an uneasy buzz of talk. The man turned from Yarusha to consult with a cluster of his fellows. She heard worried note in their voices. When he again stood before her, he was less relaxed than he had been.

  “We hear. The warning will be heeded. One goes, even now, to see if those who wept in the wood are truly gone. Now...what of the plea?”

  “Come with me to stop Kenir. Help me to kill him. We might come upon him before he reaches Rostath, or shortly after, surely. “

  The hard young face creased, the smile holding no humor. “We live with death. She is our mistress, our goddess. Why should we court her at your bidding?”

  “Where do you find your new Clanless Ones?” she asked. “Do you have only those born in the forest to swell your numbers? Or do you find recruits coming to you from the fort-steads, generation after generation? If Kenir has his way there will be no more youngsters coming to find you.”

  He flushed. “We have no infants here. We rear no young. Those who want such go out and join the cattle living around the fortresses. Only the free are allowed among our number. But you are right; others come from the steadings. If none came, we would grow older and go out in our turn, and there would be no one to take our places.”

  She nodded. “You may rely upon it. Kenir would allow nobody to leave his holdings. He crushes his own with an iron fist. He would do no less with those not his own.”

  A long call quavered through the wood. The youth listened, and then he sighed. “You tell the truth. The watchers are gone.”