The Eye of the Hunter (10 page)

“We raised him as our own.” Nelda took up the tale, pausing in her food preparation, the wild cherries and pitting knife forgotten, her eyes lost in the memory of that time. “Poisoned by Rūck blade and out of his mind—that’s how he came to us.”

Gwylly touched the nearly forgotten scar at the edge of his hairline, feeling the ridge running down from forehead to temple.

Faeril turned to the buccan. “Then you don’t know
who
you are,” she exclaimed. “And if you don’t know, then how will I know whether or not you are the one I am seeking?”

Gwylly felt his heart hammering. “But I
do
know who I am,” he protested. “I just don’t know what last name I was born with.”

Faeril slumped back in her chair, the look on her face pensive.

Black’s tail stopped thumping, and he gazed up at those about him, the tall ones and the small ones, sensing that something was amiss.

Orith stood and broke a long splinter from a split log beside the woodstove. He held it to the flames, and after
it caught fire, he used it to light his pipe. The fragrance of the leaf swirled throughout the kitchen area, borne on the drifting cross breeze flowing through the open windows.

Nelda set the plate before Faeril, and the damman smiled wanly up at the Woman, yet it was plain that the Wee One’s appetite had fled.

Faeril broke the silence. “There is no clue?”

Gwylly shook his head. “None.”

* * *

Faeril was wakened in the night by a murmur, the voices of Nelda and Orith. But what they said to one another she could not tell, for their words were too low, too indistinct. Even so, by the cadence alone she believed that perhaps they were arguing.

On the floor beside her bed, Black’s claws scrabbled on floorboards, the sleeping dog dreamchasing fleeing game.

* * *

Faeril stepped to the back porch. Pink dawn was turning blue in the eastern sky. She could hear the sound of an axe, and saw Orith at this early hour chopping wood and stacking it into cords near the byre, Black snuffling about the woodpile as if he had something trapped within.

Nodding to the Man, Faeril walked to the stables, intent upon caring for Blacktail. When she got there, she found Gwylly currying the pony while the horseling munched oats from the stall feedbox. Opposite, two great mules crunched away at their grain, while in a stall alongside Blacktail’s another pony, a dappled grey, also munched oats.

Faeril took up another curry comb from a shelf and stepped into the stall with the grey. “Yours?” she asked, slipping her hand through the leather strap handle, finding that it was too large for her.

Gwylly nodded. “Dapper is his name. He’s six.”

“Blacktail is five.”

Returning to the shelf to replace the comb, Faeril looked for but failed to find one which fit her hand. “Have you got another comb? One that I can use? Mine is in my saddlebags in the house.”

“No, but I’m almost done here.”

Faeril climbed up on the top rail and watched as Gwylly worked.

As the buccan moved about, suddenly Faeril drew in her breath.

Gwylly looked up. The damman’s eyes were wide and fixed upon his waist. The buccan looked down at himself. “Something wrong?”

“You have a sling!”

“Uh—”

“You have a sling!” she repeated, interrupting whatever he was about to say.

Gwylly unlooped the leather weapon from his belt. “Yes, but what—?”

“Where did you get it? Can you use it?”

“Of course I can use it. And as far—”

“Silver bullets!” Faeril interjected. “Do you have silver bullets, too?”

“Silver bullets…?” A vague fragment of memory plucked at the buccan’s mind.

“Oh, Gwylly,” cried Faeril, her voice brimming with urgency, “if you have silver bullets, then I will
know
!”

“Know what?” Gwylly was edging into frustration. “What’s my sling got to do with anything? And what if I
did
have silver shot? —Not that I think silver should be wasted that way.”

“Oh yes, you would,” declared the damman.

“Oh yes, I would
what
?” Gwylly was ready to scream.

“Yes, you would think that silver should be used for bullets.”

Gwylly slumped back against the side railings, staring up at Faeril in unalloyed bafflement.
Is this the way that all dammen act? Hopping about from idea to idea like grasshoppers in a field?
He spoke slowly and with forced calm. “And just why would I use silver sling shot?”

“Where did you get it?”

Flp! Flp!
Gwylly envisioned a thousand grasshoppers, leaping all at once in a thousand different directions. His voice gritted out between clenched teeth. “Where did I get what? Silver bullets? I
said
that I didn’t have—”

“The sling,” Faeril interrupted. “Where did you get the sling?”

Flp!
He took a deep breath. “It was my real sire’s sling, or so Orith says.”

Faeril’s face lit up. “Oh, that’s…that’s very promising.”

Floop! Dust boiled up around haphazardly landing grass-hoppers
.
Before Gwylly could reply—
Dlang! Glang!
—the sound of breakfast call knelled through the air.

As the buccan and damman strode back to the house, Faeril looked at Gwylly in puzzlement, and then remarked, “It’s not good that you grind your teeth together like that. Have you had the habit long?”

Throwing up his hands, Gwylly could do nought but burst out laughing in frustration.

* * *

At breakfast that morning Nelda looked haggard, as if she’d gotten little sleep. Too, she seemed to be avoiding Orith’s gaze, but as the meal ended, at last she looked at him and nodded. Orith then stood and left the room. He returned moments later, bearing a small cedarwood box. Placing it on the table, he cleared his throat. “Last might, Miss Faeril, you asked if there was any clue to Gwylly’s past. I didn’t think of it then, but later on, I remembered.

“Gwylly, of course, was the wounded babe I found there in the wreckage of the campsite, and I brought him straightaway here to Nelda, for he was in a bad way and needed healing. Later, I returned to bury his sire and dam and to collect for him whatever I could, whatever remained of his parents’ possessions. But it was mostly gone, stolen, and there were just a few things I took from that place of death:

“I found a sling and some steel shot, which Gwylly claimed. Belonged to his sire, he said. When I gave him the steel shot, he asked a most curious thing: he wanted to know where the ‘shiny ones’ were. At the time I didn’t know what he referred to, though it
was
a puzzler that I worried over for weeks. But gradually it drifted from my mind, and I hadn’t thought about it for years…many years. This morning, though, as I was stacking wood, I overheard you and Gwylly talking, and you asked him about silver bullets. Oh, I wasn’t eavesdropping, but I did happen to overhear that. And suddenly that strange remark of baby Gwylly’s popped back into my head—‘Where are the shiny ones?’—and now I know what the ‘shiny ones’ must have been: they must have been silver bullets.

“Of course, the Rūcks and such would have taken all things precious, and that’s why I didn’t find any silver shot Else he would have had those bullets, too.”

Faeril glanced over at Gwylly, her excitement growing. Gwylly thought her eyes were fairly glowing gold, and it
seemed as if she were about to speak. Ere she could do so, Orith took up the cedar box and raised the lid.

“Regardless, there was something else in the wreckage which, unlike silver, had no value to those who raided the site: these.” Orith reached into the box and took out two journals and gave them over to Faeril. The damman eagerly began examining them as Orith continued. “I didn’t remember them until after we’d all bedded down, Miss Faeril. But you see, it’s been twenty years since I found them.”

Looking up from the pages, Faeril exclaimed, “This is it, Gwylly! Journals of the Firstborns, one old, one new. Perhaps…”

Quickly she flipped to the back of the newer one. “Yes, I am right. This one is the copy made by your sire, for here is your lineal tree, your name recorded at the end:
Gwylly Fenn
. And your sire’s name was
Darby
. And before him was
Frek
. It goes all the way back to
Tomlin
, here at the top.

“Oh, Gwylly, here’s the proof to show that you are indeed
Gwylly Fenn, Firstborn.”

She handed the journal to the buccan, open to the back. Gwylly looked curiously at the page, turning it this way and that, a frown coming over his features.

“And the old journal”—Faeril took it up—“yes, this is the one made by Small Urus from Petal’s original nearly a thousand years ago.”

Faeril glanced up at the Man. “Oh, Orith, had you only read it, there would have been no question as to who Gwylly was and is. But, then, I can’t hold you at fault, what with all you did for him. Besides, it’s too much for me to expect that anyone other than a Warrow would read Twyll, the Warrow tongue.”

Orith glanced up at Nelda and then over at Gwylly, and Gwylly cleared his throat and closed the journal and laid it aside. “Uh, Faeril, not Twyll, not Wilderan, not Common; the three of us, well, we can’t read at all.”

“Can’t read…?” Faeril was stunned.

Gwylly nodded. “Not a word. None of us. ’tisn’t needed out here in the Wilderland.”

“But all Boskydell Warrows…”

Orith looked at the floor. “We’d always meant to send Gwylly to Stonehill—”

“Oh, it doesn’t matter,” burst in Faeril. “I have plenty
of time, more than two years, to teach him to read; Twyll and Common, too.”

The damman turned excitedly to Gwylly. “Oh, Gwylly, you have so much before you; reading, writing, numbers.”

“I can cipher,” said the buccan, somewhat stung. “You have to be able to do your sums to sell or trade farm goods.”

Faeril saw that she was treading on thin ice. “Well, read and write, then.”

She took up the newer journal. “Here, let me read to you about your ancestors, brave souls they were. About Tomlin and Petal. And Riatha, too, and Urus. And Baron Stoke.

“Once you hear the tale and the words of the prophecy, then you’ll know what brought me here and why I bear these knives, and why I have to seek out Arden Vale and find the Elfess Riatha. You’ll see just why I
must
go on a long and perhaps dangerous quest, why I must travel to the Great North Glacier in the far-off Grimwall.

“And you’ll see just why you must leave here, too, and go on the quest with me.”

At these words Nelda gasped, her eyes filling with distress.

* * *

Once again in the night, the voices of Orith and Nelda drifted to where Faeril had bedded down. This time, though, she overheard what they said, or at least part.

“He’s got to leave someday, Nelda, to find his own, to be with others of his Kind. Did you see how he and Miss Faeril took to one another? She and Gwylly were meant to be together.”

“But, Orith, she wants to take him off to the Grimwall, there where the Foul Folk live.”

“If that be his choice, Mother, then we cannot hold him back.”

“Orith, they could kill him. They killed his kindred.”

“Perhaps that’s all the better reason for him to go. To avenge himself for what they took from him.”

“But
we
took him in and loved him as our own. Shouldn’t that count for something?”

“I am sure it does…I am sure it does. He was raised in love and knows we cherish him. And anyone can see he
loves us, too. But he’s got to be with his own Kind, Mother, his own Kind.”

“They could just as well live here, Orith. There’s no need for him to go traipsing off, for either of them to do so. Taking up with Elves. Heading into the Grimwalls. Especially after what we heard of Stoke. I mean, if he is mixed up in this…”

“Stoke or not, prophecy or not, it’s Gwylly’s to decide. No matter the danger. No matter that we would keep him safe forever, were it up to us.”

“But he is so small!”

“Mother, he is full grown, full grown for his Kind.”

Faeril heard the sounds of weeping, and her heart went out to the parents whose son might now choose to leave them to follow a course of his own. And as with loving families throughout time, when faced with the prospect of a son or daughter setting forth, a sadness fills the breast even though happiness dwells there, too, happiness for the bright future shining before the child. Yet there are times when sadness turns to anguish, and happiness to fear, when the future is dark and full of uncertainty and, perhaps, woe—such as when duty calls and sons and daughters think to answer, think to stand in harm’s way; then souls tremble and hearts are rent in those who must let them go. And
this
is what Nelda and Orith faced, the prospect of their son standing in harm’s way. That Nelda and Orith were Human and their “son” a Warrow mattered not a whit, for still he was their child, and had they a choice, they would forever protect him from all harm.

Even so, Gwylly
was
the other Lastborn Firstborn, and Faeril knew the same destiny that called to her had now spoken to him. Still, unlike she, he had not heard that voice ere now; he had not been raised knowing that he had a mission to fulfill. And unlike Faeril’s mother, Lorra, neither Nelda nor Orith had known of the mission lying ahead. None in this family had been prepared for Destiny’s call.

And when late in that day Faeril had finished reading the journal to them, had told them of the prophecy, had shown them her own copy of Petal’s journal, and had asked Gwylly to set forth with her ere the week was out, Gwylly had not answered but instead had gotten up and looked out the window into the gathering twilight, his hands clasped behind him.

And so matters stood.

Unresolved.

And now as Faeril lay in her bed and listened to Nelda weep, the damman wondered when Gwylly might make his decision known, when he might choose to answer the voice of Destiny, and what that answer might be.

* * *

Again Black came to a point.

In a shushing gesture Gwylly put his fingers to his lips and motioned Faeril forward. Cautiously, the damman stepped through the bracken below the forest trees, her eyes fixed on the place where the ebony dog’s muzzle was unwaveringly set.