Daughter of Regals (25 page)

As the door opened, I
stepped inward, into the cottage, so that no effort could be made to deny me
admittance. Within, the air seemed somewhat dark to my unaccustomed eyes, and
for a moment I was not certain that I saw what I saw. But beyond question I did
see it, just as it was. Behind me through the doorway was the sunlight and the
green grass of the deli that cupped the cottage. But before me was no
cottage-room, no cozy hearth and small kitchen: I stood in a huge high hall
like the forecourt of an immense keep.

The ceiling was almost
lost to sight above me, but even so I could see that its beams were as thick as
the thickest trees of the Deep Forest. The floorspace before me was all of
polished gray stone, and it was large enough to hold a dozen cottages such as
the one I had just entered. A stone’s throw to my left, a stairway as wide as a
road came down into the hall from levels above mine. And an equal distance to
my right, a hearth deep enough to hold my smithy entire blazed with logs too
great for any man  to lift. The light came from this tire, and from tall
windows high in the wall behind me. And all about these prodigious stone walls
hung banners like battle-pennons.

Two of these held
something familiar to me. Woven large in the center of one was the weft-mark of
Paoul son of Pandeler the weaver. And displayed across the other was a great
bright apple. At this I ground my teeth, for it was known in all the village
that Forin son of Fimm the fruiterer took pride in his apples.

Now in truth there was
no hesitation in me, though this high castle-hall sorely baffled all my
reckoning. My hands ached to entwine themselves in the bronzen hair of the
Lady, and my mouth was tight with kisses or curses. When my eyes were fully
accustomed to the keeplight, I espied an arched entryway opposite me. It had
the aspect of an entrance into the less public parts of this castle; and I
strode toward it at once. As I moved, the air thronged with the echo of my
bootsteps.

Surprised as I was by
the strangeness of this place, and by the meaning of the pennons about the
walls, I had at first failed to note a small table standing in the very center
of the hail. But as I neared it, I considered it closely. It was ornately
gilt-worked; and it stood between me and the arched entryway as if it had been
placed there for some purpose. When I came to it, I saw that on it lay a silver
tray like a serving dish, polished until it reflected the wails and ceiling
without flaw. All its workmanship was excellent; but I saw no reason for its
presence there, and so I stepped aside to pass around the table toward the far
entryway.

At my next step, I
struck full against the outer door of the cottage. Of a sudden there was sunlight
on my back, and my eyes were blurred by the brightness of the whitewashed
walls. The dell lay about me as fragrant as if I had not left it to enter that
place of witchery, and the red door was closed in my face.

Then for a time I stood
motionless, as still as Leadenfoot when the fit comes upon him and he stops to
consider the depths of his own stupidity. It seemed to me that the mere taking
of air into my lungs required great resolve, that the beating of my heart
required deliberate choice, so unutterable was my astonishment. But then I
perceived the foolishness of my stance and took hold of myself. Though the act
gave me a pang akin to fear, I lifted my hand and knocked at the door again.

There was no answer. As
my surprise turned to ire, I knocked at the door, pounded at it; but there was
no answer. I shook mightily on the handle, kicked at the door, heaved against
it with my shoulder. There was no answer and no opening. The door withstood me
as if it were stone.

Then. I ran cursing
around the cottage and strove to gain entrance another way. But there was no
other door. And I could not break any window, either with fist or with stone.

At last it was the
thought of the Lady in White that checked me. I seemed to feel her within her
walls, laughing like the scornful birds of the Deep Forest. So I bit my anger
into silence, and I turned on my heel, and I strode away from the cottage and
the deli without a backward glance. And through my teeth I muttered to her in a
voice that only I could hear, “Very well, my fine Lady. Believe that you have
beaten me if you will. You will learn that you scorn me at your peril.”

But when I regained the
old road, I ran and ran on my way back to the village, wearying my unwonted
fury until I became master of myself once again.

When I returned to our
hut. I found Festil my brother sitting in wait for me on the stoop. Hearing my
approach, he said, “Mardik?” And I replied, “Festil.”

“Did you—?” he said.

“I failed,” I said. I
had become myself again and was not afraid to speak the truth.

For a moment, I saw a
strange pain in my brother’s face; but then the gaze of his blindness
brightened, and he said, “Mardik my brother, did you take the Lady a gift?”

“A gift?” said I.

Then Festil laughed at
my surprise. “A gift!” he said. “What manner of suitor are you, that you do not
take a gift to the Lady of your heart?”

“A gift, forsooth!” I
said. “I am not accustomed to need gifts to win my way.” But then I reflected
that mad Festil my brother, loon and dreamer though he was, had had more success
than I with the Lady in White. “Well, a gift, then,” I said. Considering his
blindness and his happy smile, I asked, “And what was your gift?”

His laugh became the
mischievous laugh of a boy. “I stole a white rose from the arbor of the
priests,” he said.

Stole a rose? Aye,
verily, that had the touch of mad Festil upon it. But I am not like him. I am
Mardik the blacksmith, wheelwright and ironmonger. I had no need to steal
roses. Therefore I slept confident that night, planning how I would make my gift.

Dawn found me in my
smithy, with the music of the anvil in my heart. The blade of a discarded
plowshare I put into the forge, and I worked the bellows until the iron was as
white as sunfire. Then I doubled the blade over and hammered it flat while the
smithy ran with bright sparks as the impurities were stricken away. Then I tempered
it in the trough and put it in the forge again and worked the bellows so that
the fire roared. Again I doubled it, hammered it flat, tempered it. Again I
placed it in the forge. And when I had doubled it once again, hammered it to
the shape I desired, and tempered it, I had formed a knife blade that no hand
in the village could break.

To the blade I attached
a handle of ox-horn; and then I gave the knife a keen edge on the great
grindstone made by our father in his prime, when Festil and I were young. And
all the while I worked, my heart sang its song, using the name of the Lady in
White for melody.

My task was done before
the passing of midday. With the new blade gleaming in my hand, I determined at
once to assay that cottage of bewitchment without awaiting a new day. I
returned to our hut to take food. I spoke pleasantly with Festil my brother,
who listened to my voice with both gladness and concern in his face, as if the
hazards of the Lady were as great as the rewards. But when I sought to learn
more from him concerning the “test,” he turned his head away and would not
speak.

Well, I felt that I had
no need of further counsel. He had told me of the gift, and that was enough. I
put the new knife in my belt and went just as I was, begrimed and proud from
the smithy, to visit again the dell and the cottage of the Lady in White.

On my way between the
dark and forbidding tree-walls of the Deep Forest, my confidence was weakened
by a kind of dread—a fear that the branching of the road would be gone or lost.
But it was not: it lay where I had left it, and it led me again to the dell of
flowers and grass and the cottage of white walls and red wood.

At the door I paused,
took the blade from my belt and held it before me. “Now, then, my fine Lady,” I
muttered softly, “let us see if any man in the village can match such a gift as
this.” With the butt of the knife, I rapped on the door.

Again the door swung
inward. And again I saw no one, heard no one.

I entered at once and
found myself once more in that huge high hall, castle-forecourt spacious enough
to hold a dozen such cottages. But now I did not waste my time in wonder.
Though the image of the Lady in White filled my very bones with desire—and
though the pennons of the dead (young men consumed by whatever hunger drove
that cruel and irrefusable woman) did not fail to raise my anger—still I had
not lost all sense. I knew my time was short. If I were to fail another test, I
meant to do so and be gone from this place before day’s end. No man would
choose to travel the Deep Forest at night.

So I strode without
delay across that long stone floor toward the table in the center of the hall.
The light was dimmer than it had been the previous day—the afternoon sun did
not shine into those high windows—and this dimness seemed to fortify the
echoes, so that the sound of my feet marched all about me like a multitude as I
approached the table. But I did not hesitate. Nor did I trouble myself to
make any speech of gift-giving. I held up the knife so that any hidden eyes
might see it. Then I placed it on the silver tray.

There was no response
from the castle. No voices hailed my gift, and the Lady in White did not
appear. I stood there before the table for a moment, allowing her time for
whatever answer seemed fit to her. But when none came, I took my resolve in
both hands and stepped around the table toward the arched entryway at the far
end of the hall. Almost I winced, half expecting to find myself in the dell
once more with the cottage door shut in my face.

But I did not. Instead,
another thing came upon me— a thing far worse than any unexplained vanishing of
hall and locking of cottage door.

Before I had gone five
paces past the table, I heard a scream that turned the strength in my limbs to
chaff. It rent the air. It echoed, echoed, about my head like the howling of
the damned. A gust of chili wind near extinguished the blaze in the hearth,
and some cloud covered the sun, so that the verges of the hall were filled with
night. I spun where I was, searching through the gloom for the inhuman throat
which had made that scream.

It was repeated, and
repeated. And then the creature that made it came down the broad stairs from
the upper levels—came running with murder in its face and a great broadsword
upraised in its foul hands, shrieking for my blood.

It was fiend-loathsome
and ghoul-terrible, a thing of slime and scales and fury. Red flame ran from
its eyes. In the dimness, its broadsword had the blue sheen of lightning. Its
jaws were stretched to rend and kill, and it ran as if it lived for no other
purpose than to hack my heart out from between my ribs for food.

The fear of it unmanned
me. Even now, looking back on things that are past, I am not shamed to say that
I was lost in terror—so much lost that I was unable to take the knife from my
boot to defend myself. The creature screamed as it charged, and I screamed
also.

Then I was lying on the
greensward of the dell, and the afternoon sunlight was slanting through the
treetops to glint in my eyes. The cottage stood near at hand, but the door was
closed, and the windows had a look of abandonment. Only the curling of smoke
from the chimney showed that the Lady in White was yet within, untouched by any
desire or anger of mine.

Stricken and humbled, I
left the dell and returned to the old road. As the sun drew near to setting, I
went back through the Deep Forest toward the village.

But there was another thing in me beyond
the humbling, and I came to know it soon. For while I was still within the
bounds of the Forest, with the hand of the coming night upon me, I met a man
upon the road. When we drew near enough to know each other, I saw that he was
Creet the stonemason. He stood tall in the village; and it’s true that his head
overtopped mine, though may-hap he was not as strong as I. We were somewhat
friends, for like me he had done much wooing but no marrying— and somewhat wary
one of another, for we had only measured our strength together once, and there
had been no clear issue to that striving. But I gave no thought to such things
now. For Crest the stonemason was walking into the Deep Forest at dusk, and
there was a spring of eagerness in his step.

Seeing him, the other
thing in me was roused; and I shifted my path to bar his way. “Go back, mason,”
said I. “She is not for you.”

“I have seen her,” he
replied without hesitation. “How can I go back? Mayhap you have failed to win
her, blacksmith. Creet the stonemason will not.”

“You speak in ignorance,
Creet,” said I. “She has slain men of this village. That
I
have seen.”

“Men!” he scoffed. “Paoul
and Forin? They were boys, not men.” Clearly, he did not doubt himself. He
placed a hand on my chest to push me from his way.

But I am Mardik the
blacksmith, and I also can act without hesitation when I choose. I shrugged
aside his hand and struck him with all my strength.

Then for a time we
fought together there in the old road and the Deep Forest. Night came upon us,
but we did not heed it. We struck one another, clinched, fell. arose to strike
and clinch and fall again. Creet was mighty in his way, and his desire for the
Lady in White was strong beyond bearing. But the other thing in me had raised
its head: it was a thing of iron, a thing not to be turned aside by failure or
fear or stonemasons. After a time, I struck Creet down, so that he lay
senseless before me in the road.

Thus I chose my way—the
way that brought me near to dying in the end, lost in the maze of the Deep Forest.

From the moment that I
struck down Crest the stonemason, I gave no more thought to humbling or fear.
I was Mardik the blacksmith, wheelwright and ironmonger. I was accustomed to
have my will and did not mean to lose it at the hand of any Lady, however
strange. I lifted Creet and stretched him across my shoulders and bore him with
me and did not allow his weight to trouble me. So I became the first man in my
lifetime to find his way out of the Deep Forest in darkness. —