Two to Conquer (25 page)

“Nothing. I see nothing, only the fog. They are trying to hide from me, they say it is impious for a man to be here.”

Bard jeered, “Do you call yourself a man?”

“No,” said the child, “but
they
call me one and say I must not come here. Please, my Lord Wolf, let’s go back! The Dark Mother has turned her face to me, but she is veiled, she is angry—oh, please, my lord, we are forbidden to come here, we must turn and go away again or something terrible will

happen!”

Furious, frustrated, Bard wondered if those witches on the island thought they could frighten him by playing their witch tricks on a harmless little boy with a seeing-stone? “Hold your tongue and try to act like a man,” he told the boy severely, and the child, sniffling, wiped his face and rode in silence, shaking.

The fog thickened and grew darker still. Was it an oncoming storm? Strange; for on the hill above the lake, the weather had been fine and bright. Probably it was the dampness from that unhealthy marsh.

What a superstitious lot his men were, grumbling that way about a little fog!

Suddenly the fog swirled and flowed and began to shape itself into a pattern; he felt his horse nervously step aside, as directly before him, it flowed, moved within itself and became the form of a woman. Not a fog ghost, but a woman, solid and real as he was himself. He could see every strand of the white hair, braided in two braids down the side of her face, covered, all but a few inches, by a thick, woven black veil. She wore a black skirt and the thickly knitted black shawl of a country woman, simple and

unadorned over some form of chemise of coarse linen. Around her waist was a long belt, woven in

colored patterns, from which hung a sickle-shaped knife with a black handle.

She held up her hand in a stern gesture.

“Go back,” she said. “You know that no man may set foot here; this is holy ground, sacred to the Dark Mother. Turn your horses and go back the way you came. There is auick-sand here, and other dangers about which you know nothing. Go back.”

Bard opened his mouth and had a little trouble finding his voice. At last he said, “I mean no harm or disrespect, Mother, not to you or to any of the devout servants of Avarra. I am here to escort home my bandfasted wife, Carlina di Asturien, daughter of the late King Ardrin.”

“There are no handfasted brides here,” said the old priestess. “Only the sworn sisters of Avarra, who live here in prayer and piety; and a few penitents and pilgrims who have come to dwell among us for a season for the healing of their hurts and burdens.”

“You are evading me, old Mother. Is the Lady Carlina among them?”

“No one here bears the name Carlina,” said the old priestess. “We do not inquire what name our sisters bore when they dwelt in the world; when a woman comes here to take vows among us, the name she

bore is lost forever, known only to the Goddess. There is no woman here you may claim as your wife, whoever you are. I admonish you most sincerely: do not commit this blasphemy, or bring on yourself the wrath of the Dark Mother.”

Bard leaned forward over his saddle. “Don’t you threaten me, old lady! I know that my wife is here, and if you do not deliver her up to me, I will come and take her, and I will not be responsible for what my men may do.”

“But,” said the old woman, “you will certainly be held responsible, whether you take responsibility for it or not.”

“Don’t chop words with me! You would do better to go and tell her that her husband has come to take her away; and if you will do that, I will commit no blasphemy, but await her here outside your holy precincts.”

“But I do not fear your threats,” the ancient priestess said. “Nor does the Great Mother.” And the fog swirled up around her face, and suddenly there was no one where she had been standing, only empty swirls of mist rising from the reeds at the water’s edge.

Bard gasped. How had she vanished? Had she ever been there at all, or only an illusion? Perversely, he was more sure than ever that Carlina was there, and that they were hiding her from him. Why had the old lady not seen the sense of doing as he bade her, going to Carlina and telling her that he had come in peace, willing no harm or blasphemy, to take her home to his fireside and his bed? She was, after all, his lawful wife. Must he be forced, then, to commit a blasphemy?

He turned and drew up his horse beside Melisendra.

“Now is the time to use your sorcery,” he said, “unless we are all to be caught in quicksand. Is there quicksand here?”

She drew out her starstone and gazed into it, her face taking on that same distant, abstracted look he had seen so often on Melora’s face.

“There is quicksand near, though not dangerously near, I think. Bard, are you resolved on this folly?

Truly, it is unwise to brave the wrath of Avarra. If Carlina wished to come to you, she would come; she is not held prisoner there.”

“I have no way of knowing,” Bard said. “These are madwomen, who try to live alone, putting chastity and prayer into the place of those things which are proper for women—”

“Do you think chastity and prayer improper for women?” she inquired, sarcastically.

“By no means; but surely a woman can pray as much as she wishes by her own fireside, and no wedded wife has the right to commit herself to chastity against the will of her lawful husband! What good are these priestesses to anyone if they flout the laws of nature and of man this way?”

He had meant the question rhetorically, but Melisendra took it literally. “I am told that they do many good works,” she said. “They know much of herbs and medicines, and they can make the barren fertile; and prayer is always a good thing.”

Bard ignored her. They had come through the fog and out on to a small sandy beach, free of the reeds that lined the lakeshore elsewhere; and there was a small hut there, and a tethered boat

Bard got down from his horse and shouted.

“Hi! Ferryman!”

A small slouched figure, wrapped in shawls, came out of the hut. Bard was outraged to discover that it was no ferryman but a little old woman, crippled and gray and bent.

“Where is the ferryman?”

“I keep this ferry,
vai dom
, for the good ladies.”

“Take me across this lake here to the island, quickly!”

“I can’t do that, sir. It’s forbidden. Now the lady there, if
she
wants to go over, I’ll take her. But no man, it’s not allowed, the Goddess forbids it.”

“Rubbish,” Bard said. “How dare you pretend to know what the immortals want, even assuming that

there are any gods, or any goddesses either? And if the priestesses don’t like it, well, there’s nothing they can do about it.”

“I won’t be responsible for your death,
vai dom
.”

“Don’t be foolish, old dame. Get into that boat and take me over, at once!”

“Don’t call names like fool, sir; you don’t know what you’re talking about. That boat won’t take you over to the other shore. Me, yes; the lady, yes; but it won’t take you, not at all.”

Bard decided the woman was a halfwit. Probably the priestesses had given her the task of ferrying, out of charity, but her main task was to scare people away. Well, he didn’t scare. He drew his dagger.

“See this? Get into the boat! Now!”

“Can’t do it,” she wailed. “Indeed I can’t! The water’s not safe except when the priestesses want it to be! I never come over unless they call me from the other side!”

Frowning, Bard remembered the spelled ford near Moray’s mill, where a quiet, shallow stream had

suddenly become a torrent. But he gestured, menacing, with his dagger.

“The boat!”

She took a step and then another, shaking, then collapsed, sobbing, a sodden bundle of rags. “Can’t,”

she wailed. “Can’t!”

Bard felt like kicking her. Instead, his jaw set, he stepped over her cowering body and got into the boat, picking up the paddle and driving it, with a few long, strong strokes, out into the water.

The lake water was rough, with a savage undertow unlike anything Bard had ever felt before, tossing the little boat around like a cork; but Bard was very strong, and had learned to handle small boats on the troubled waters of Lake Mirion. He drove the boat through the water with firm strokes…

… and discovered, to his dismay, that somehow he had gotten turned around, and instead of heading for the shore of the Island of Silence, the boat was heading right up on the sandy beach where the

ferrywoman’s hut was located.

Bard swore, impotently, as he felt the boat being rushed by the savage current, right back on the shore he had left. He thrust with the paddle, fending the boat out into the stream again. It took every scrap of his strength to keep the boat in the channel, but try as he might, he could make no headway toward the island. Slowly, inexorably, the boat turned in circles, drifting, no matter how he paddled it. The ferrywoman had hauled herself to her knees and was watching him, cackling with laughter. The boat moved on shore, no matter how hard he paddled, scooted up, scraping on the sand, and his last paddle stroke actually drove it hard aground.

The little ferrywoman cackled, “I told ye, sir. Not if you was to try all day and all night. That boat there won’t go to the island unless the priestesses
call
it there.”

Bard fancied he saw grins on the faces of some of his men. He glared around with such rage that they quickly assumed total impassivity. He took a threatening step toward the old ferrywoman. He felt ready and willing to wring her neck. But she was only an old simpleton, after all.

He considered, standing over her. The ford at Moray’s Mill had been spelled. Evidently the boat, here, had been put under sorcery as well. In any case, if the priestesses really meant to keep Carlina from him, and it was fairly obvious that they did, one man alone would meet only more bewitchment and sorcery.

Perhaps a
leronis
could calm the waters, as Melora had done at Moray’s Mill; and his men could swim their horses across.

“Melisendra!”

She came quietly. He wondered if she had been laughing behind his back at his struggle with the boat.

“If the priestesses have put a spell on the water, you can calm it and reverse it!”

She looked straight at him and shook her head.

“No, my lord. I dare not risk the anger of Avarra.”

“Is she the Goddess of whom you prate?” he demanded.

“She is the Goddess of all women, and I will not anger her.”

“Melisendra, I warn you—” He raised his hand, ready to strike her.

She looked at him with deadly indifference. “You cannot do anything to me worse than you have done.

After what has already befallen me, do you think that a few blows will make me obedient to your

will?”

“If you dislike me as much as all that, I would think you would be glad to help me recover my wife!

Then you will be free of me, if I am so hateful to you!”

“At the cost of betraying some other woman into your hands?”

“You are jealous,” he accused, “and want no other woman in my arms!”

She kept her eyes on him, straight and level. She said, “If your wife were held captive on that island and wished to rejoin you, I would risk the anger of Avarra to help her to your arms. But she seems not very eager to leave her place of refuge and come over to you. And if you are wise, Bard, you will leave this place at once before something worse happens.”

“Is that the Sight?” Frustration made his words sarcastic.

She bowed her head. She said, and he saw that she was weeping silently, “No, my lord. That is—gone from me forever. But I know the Goddess cannot be defied with impunity. You had better come, Bard.”

“Would you grieve if some dreadful fate befell me?” he asked, savagely, but she did not answer, only turned her horse about and rode slowly away from the lake.

Damn the woman! Damn all women, and their Goddess with them!

“Come on, men,” he shouted. “Swim the horses; the spell is only on the boat!” He urged his horse right up to the water’s edge, although it fought, shying nervously and backing, from the water under its feet.

He swiveled his horse and saw that they were not following him.

“Come on! What’s the matter with you? After me, men! There are women on that island, and they have defied me, so I make you free of them all! Come on, men, plunder and women—not afraid of some old witch’s jabberings, are you? Come on!”

About half of the men hung back, muttering fearfully.

“Nay, Dom Wolf, it’s uncanny, it’s forbidden!”

“The Goddess forbids it, Lord! No, don’t do this!”

“Blasphemy!”

But one or two of the others urged their horses forward, eagerly, hauling at the reins, forcing the unwilling beasts into the water.

The fog was rising again, thicker and thicker; and this time it had a strange, eerie greenish color. It seemed that there were faces within it, faces that grimaced and leered and menaced him, and slowly, slowly, the faces were drifting ashore. One of the men hanging back, unwilling to go near the water, suddenly howled like a madman, and cried, “No, no! Mother Avarra, have mercy! Pity us!” He jerked the reins savagely and Bard heard his horse’s hoofs suck and splash as he turned about and galloped back the way they had come. One after another, although Bard rose in his stirrups and yelled and cursed them, his men turned and bolted their animals back up the trail, until Bard was alone at the water’s edge. Damn them all! Frightened of a little fog! Cowards, he’d break them all and reduce them to the ranks, if he didn’t hang them one and all for cowardice!

He sat defying the fog. “Come on,” he said aloud, and clucked to the horse, but she did not move, quivering beneath him as if she stood in the chill of a blizzard. He wondered if she could see the horrid faces, drifting nearer and nearer the shore.

And suddenly a blind terror chilled Bard, too, to the bone. He
knew
, with every fiber in him, that if one of the faces touched him through the fog, all the courage and life in him would drain out, cold, and he would die, the fog would bite through to the bone and he would fall from his saddle, strengthless and screaming, and never rise again. He jerked at the reins of his horse and tried to gallop after Melisendra and his fleeing men, but he was frozen, and the mare sat trembling under him and did not stir. He had once heard that the Great Mother could take the form of a mare… Had she bewitched his horse?