Willow Read online

  “I know, Sire.” Franjean’s green eyes twinkled mischievously at the memory. “Before I knew your mission. Now, you have been chosen by Elora Danan. Now, Cherlindrea has appointed us to guide you, Rool, and me.”

  “Rool?”

  “Me! Me!” The grinning, big-eared brownie hopped up and down, waving both hands.

  Willow took a deep breath. “When do we leave?”

  “Now, Peck. I mean, Sire. Beyond the Woods of Cherlindrea, the way is very dangerous.”

  Rool nodded wide-eyed agreement. “Trolls! Brigands! Death Dogs!”

  “We should travel at night. We should begin this night. Now.”

  “But the child . . .”

  “She’s been fed,” Franjean said. “Fairies did that. Come!” He started northward, beckoning.

  Rool followed, waving happily to his friends with both hands.

  “Farewell, Rool!” they shouted in great merriment. “Try to stay on the path! Don’t forget to eat, Rool! Look after the King of the World!”

  Sighing, Willow tucked the wand into the long pocket of his coat where, once upon a time, he had hidden a piglet at the Nelwyn fair. He touched the three magic acorns and the braid of Kiaya’s hair concealed near his breast. He picked up the papoose-basket with Elora Danan inside and followed his two guides into the forest.

  V I I

  HILDA

  Dawn found them north of the woods.

  The landscape was the bleakest and most awful Willow had seen. Great fires had raged there, leaving charred rock and cadaverous forests. No flowers grew in that place; no birds sang. Noises echoed down sepulchral valleys, distorted and magnified like the groans of Earth itself.

  Willow shivered. The brownies communicated by signs, speaking rarely and then only in whispers although, for miles around, they could see no other living creature.

  They kept to the high ground; Willow was soon to wish they had been even higher.

  Near noon, Rool crouched suddenly and hissed, slapping Willow on the leg. “Death below!”

  They took cover in a shallow crevasse with charred shrubbery in front. Cautiously, Willow peered through this screen and down the slope. All morning weird sounds had echoed and rebounded, surrounding them with the clamor of a ghostly battle. Now at last the real battle swirled into view. Clutching Elora close, Willow watched in horror. The remnants of the majestic force he had seen pass through the Daikini crossroads were being driven down the valley in a rout. All semblance of order had vanished. The banners had fallen, the baggage train had been captured. Only the pennant of the commander was still aloft where Airk Thaughbaer and his standard-bearer, besieged by a sea of Nockmaar troops, fought desperately. All around them men died, pinned by lances, hacked by swords, crushed under thrashing hooves.

  So horrified was Willow, and so loud was the clash of battle, that he was unaware of the approach of Nockmaar horsemen behind him until he heard a harsh bellow.

  “No quarter! Kill the scum!”

  Willow cowered over the child, expecting to be struck down the next instant, but when no blow fell on him he peeked around.

  The man who had spoken was mounted on an enormous black stallion. The crimson ensign of the Nockmaar commander fluttered from the staff of his standard-bearer. A purple cape drifted from his shoulders. Black plate and chainmail covered his thick torso and his huge arms and legs. Splashes of blood stained his sword and gauntlet. But the most terrifying aspect of this man was not his size. Where a human head should have rested there rose a massive skull, a thing with glowering sockets and an immense, protruding jaw ringed with fangs. A scrap of rank black hair clung to it. A pair of iron horns arced from its forehead.

  As Willow stared, the rider lifted off this terrible helmet to reveal a face almost as terrible—a face thickened and brutalized by savagery. A face scarred and broken. A face beyond all pity.

  He was oblivious to Willow and the brownies. His gaze was riveted on the battle in the valley below. “Galladoorn scum!” he growled. “Clean them up! Charge when ready!”

  “Yes, General Kael!”

  One of the two adjutants with him wheeled his mount and trotted back along the ridge, shouting commands; the other raised a ram’s horn to his bearded lips and blew such a resonant, throbbing blast that Willow felt the very stones quiver under him. Over the rise trotted a legion of fresh Nockmaar cavalry, dressing themselves in battle-order as they came. When their captain’s sword arm dropped they surged down the slope and over the wretched Galladoorn survivors. The howl they uttered—pure blood lust—turned Willow cold.

  Death Dogs charged with them, hot for the throats of men.

  Willow cowered while the charge went past and over him. The child shrieked such a long and piercing scream that he thought they would surely be discovered, but even that cry was lost amid the cries of dying horses and dying men, and the clang of steel on steel.

  As soon as the last rider had swept down into the valley, the brownies were on their feet, tugging at Willow. “This way! Hurry!” Choking in dust, they clambered to higher ground and lost themselves at last among great boulders, where horses could not follow. Death Dogs might have tracked them there, but they were busy with richer work below. They had no noses, then, for two brownies, one small Nelwyn, and a baby.

  Gradually the sounds of slaughter faded. Gradually Willow and the brownies found their way down through tortuous goat tracks among the crags, back onto greener slopes. Birds sang again, drifting among the trees. Gradually Willow stopped shaking enough to comfort the child.

  “A-awful!” he said, sinking down at the base of a great tree.

  Franjean’s jade eyes glinted. “And they call brownies cruel! I tell you, Peck, no brownie would be part of what you’ve seen today.”

  “Un-unh,” Rool grunted, shaking his large ears, eyes sorrowful. “Only Nockmaars kill. Only Galladoorns. Only . . .”

  “Only the big people,” Willow said. “Daikinis.”

  The brownies nodded.

  Gradually their horror and fear subsided. They stayed safe in the tall woods until the exhausted child fell asleep in Willow’s arms, and then they started down through lengthening shadows toward a lush valley in the distance. Lights twinkled there, although the western hillsides were washed with sun. “We’ve got to find food for her,” Willow said.

  Franjean nodded. He pointed to the lights. “An inn.”

  Three hours more they walked, down into darkness. Rain began, a steady drizzle that soaked them through and made it impossible for Willow to keep Elora dry. Wet and hungry and miserable, she wept pitifully, and by the time they emerged from the forest and reached the inn, Willow was not just worried about her, he was alarmed. “We’ve got to get her dried and warm,” he said.

  Franjean nodded, looking skeptically at the inn ahead. “You might do it here, Peck, if you keep your wits about you. But it’s no place for brownies, I can tell you that!”

  Willow’s heart sank. It was no place for a Nelwyn, either. The inn hunkered into a hillside at a bend in the muddy road. It was a sprawling and ramshackle structure, with two long balconies hanging over the stableyard. Its thatched roof drooped, moldy and rotten. Raucous shouts and laughter spilled out of the banquet hall on the second floor. Dishes smashed. Fiddles and bagpipes played a lurching song. Even as Willow watched, two tattooed Pohas, snarling and grappling, sprawled through the door, fell over the railing, and plunged into the manure pile outside the stable. A Nockmaar deserter followed them, so drunk that when the huge man holding him by the collar let him go, he skidded down the steps bawling hysterically, loose as a rag doll. The bouncer on the balcony growled something unintelligible and shook his fist. Black hair hung over his ears and eyes. A thick beard brushed against an apron stiff with grease and grime. He growled again and lumbered back inside, bumping against another patron who, with a frowsy barmaid, was heading for one of the rough lodgings farther along the balcony. Underneath, tethered mules and horses stamped and shivered in the rain.

&nb
sp; Willow shivered, too. This was a nest of cutthroats and brigands, no place for brownies, Nelwyns, or for the child in his arms. Still, he had to have food and shelter.

  He took a deep breath and trudged down toward the inn. Franjean and Rool scampered up his clothing and dove into the coverings of the empty papoose-basket.

  Through the muck of the yard he went, up the stairs, and into the main hall. The place was hot, noisy, and incredibly foul. Tallow stumps guttered in crude chandeliers. Swaggering louts and ruffians clanked tankards, arm-wrestled, reeled on table tops. At the edges of the room, a few families huddled, travelers who had been caught at nightfall with no other shelter. Watchfully, they munched the coarse bread of that place and drank goat’s milk from earthen jugs. Willow pressed close to the wall in the shadows, edging toward the nearest family. He tried to be as inconspicuous as possible, but he had not gone far before a drunken Poha spotted him.

  “What’s this? A Nelwyn, by the gods! A Peck!”

  Another laughed harshly, thumping his fork on the table. “Just in time! Just when we need meat!”

  “Spit him!” shouted a third, lunging at Willow with his dagger. “Throw ’im on the coals!”

  Willow dodged and scrambled away between legs, under chairs and tables, and the three let him go with more laughter, quaffing their ale. Elora began to shriek again, and he tried to hush her, although his heart was racing. A boot kicked him and he sprawled in a corner, stunned.

  “Get up!” Franjean whispered from the basket. “Get us out of here!”

  “Oooooo!” Rool’s head popped out of the blanket, eyes wide at the sight of a buxom barmaid. “Look at her! Franjean, quick! The Dust of Broken Heart!”

  “No! Get back, you fool! Get down! You can’t have it!”

  “Yes!”

  “No!”

  “Ha! Got it!”

  “Give it back, Rool!”

  But Rool was already scrambling onto the edge of the basket, gaze fixed on the barmaid, who was delivering jugs of ale to a nearby table. He pulled open the pouch of magic dust just as Willow heaved himself to his feet.

  “Look out!” Franjean shouted, holding on. Rool toppled to the floor. Dust from the pouch spilled out into his eyes, and when he opened them again he found himself in love with a yellow cat crouched under the table. “Oooo,” he crooned. “You’re so beautiful!”

  The cat was a tom, a rangy veteran of many brawls and scuffles. He was missing one ear, one eye, his tail, and two claws from his right forefoot. He fixed Rool with his good eye, spat, and clouted him with a left that sent him sprawling. He scrambled frantically up into Willow’s pocket.

  Willow edged close through the noise and confusion to a low table where a family sat munching pigs’ knuckles. They were churlish folk. The mother and father glanced his way and kept chewing, but the son, a lout of ten or eleven, stopped and stared at Willow with a malicious grin.

  “Excuse me. Could you spare a little milk? For the baby?”

  Still grinning, the lad pushed a pitcher of goat’s milk close enough for Willow to almost reach, then jerked it away. He chortled, wiping his mouth with a greasy hand. Again he pulled the jug close, but this time when Willow reached for it he tipped it and slopped thick milk across the table and into Willow’s face.

  “Thank you,” Willow said, mopping the milk up with his shirt tail while he kept a sharp eye on the boy. “Very kind.”

  Then, as he put the end of his shirt into Elora’s mouth, the boy kicked him. Willow staggered back against the wall so hard that the rotten boards gave way and he fell through. He had no time even to cry out before he was dropping into another room, hearing the guttural laughter of the boy’s parents as he fell. He shut his eyes and held Elora tight, braced for the impact, hoping only to land on his back and so cushion the child. He was ready for any landing—on bricks, on timbers, even on the edges of mangers or the tines of hayforks.

  But he hit something soft. He bounced.

  He opened his eyes. He had landed on a straw mattress in the innkeeper’s own bedroom. By dim candlelight he saw clothes, men’s and women’s, hung on hooks on the wall. A ring of keys dangled from a peg near the door. Sounds from the revelry above drifted through a high window, under which stood a washstand. Near it, two women were hurriedly getting dressed.

  “A Peck!” one of them exclaimed, pointing at Willow. Her voice was curiously hoarse. She was a large, big-breasted woman in an ample mauve gown, one fold of which she pulled up to hide her face. A shawl covered her head.

  “Don’t worry about him,” said the other. “Hurry up! Llug’s coming! My husband’s coming!” She was struggling into her skirt and blouse, kicking her petticoats under the bed, and trying to straighten her disheveled blond hair, all at once.

  “Peck!” said the big woman, laughing oddly. “How do I look, little Peck?” She came close, grinning, packing thick powder onto her face.

  “Madmartigan!”

  “None other! Stick close to Madmartigan now, small friend. Nelwyns should keep clear of angry husbands.” He snatched Willow off the bed and set him on the floor behind him. “What’s this?” Franjean and Rool had stuck out their heads. “You’re crawling with brownies!”

  “Brownies!” the innkeeper’s wife screamed. “I hate brownies!”

  The door burst open and Llug stomped in, rolling massive shoulders. He stared at the rumpled bed and at his rumpled young wife. He glared at Madmartigan and at Willow cowering behind him with the child. He roared, “What the hell’s all this?”

  “This?” his wife said. “Why, Llug dear, this is my cousin, Hilda. She just arrived.”

  “Hilda?”

  “Yes,” Madmartigan squeaked, batting his eyelashes. “Just arrived.”

  Llug wiped his mouth. He leered at Madmartigan’s bulging chest. He shambled forward, groping.

  “Pecks!” Madmartigan exclaimed, bending suddenly and snatching Elora from Willow. “They make terrible nursemaids!” He pressed the child to his bosom.

  “Here!” Willow jumped up and down. “Give her back!”

  “Too excitable, you see.”

  Llug kept advancing, groping at Madmartigan’s blouse. He snorted. A little drool dribbled off his chin.

  “Charming,” Madmartigan said. “You have a lovely husband, my dear, but we must be on our way, mustn’t we, Peck.” He dragged Willow with him by the collar. “Off to our room to feed the child. Don’t bother to come with us, Llug. We can find . . .”

  A Nockmaar trooper blocked the doorway. More crowded down the hall. They barged in, large and dark, smelling of sweat and wet horses. The whole inn had fallen silent. No more drunken shouts and laughter. No more revelry. Only the tread of heavy boots and the clear, stern voice of a young woman: “Check them all. Every child. And look carefully. The mark is very small.”

  “What are you doing?” Llug’s wife pressed her knuckle against her mouth. “We’re not hiding anyone.”

  The troopers laughed harshly. “I hope not,” one of them said. “If the princess finds the child under your roof, that’ll be the end of it and you.”

  Sorsha strode in. She looked cool, calm, dispassionate. Wisps of red hair spilled out around the edges of her helmet. In one glance she took in the whole situation. She pointed to Llug and gestured with her riding crop. “Get him away from her!”

  Three troopers shoved the big man back against the wall, where he continued to leer at Madmartigan.

  “Now then,” Sorsha said, coming close to Madmartigan, “are you the mother of that child?”

  “Certainly! Of course!” He had drawn a fold of the gown across his face and backed up as far as he could into the shadows.

  Sorsha’s eyes narrowed, searching his. “Uncover it!”

  “No!” Willow leaped forward; she brushed him aside with her boot.

  “Let me see it! I gave you an order, woman! Uncover that child now!” She grabbed for Elora, and Madmartigan flung out his arm, striking her across the throat and knocking her off bal
ance. Her helmet clattered to the floor, and her long red hair tumbled free about her shoulders.

  Madmartigan gasped.

  Troopers surged forward, daggers at his throat, Sorsha waved them back. “You’re very strong,” she said, eying him. “Very strong. In fact, you’re not a woman!” She pulled open Madmartigan’s gown; two round bundles of rags tumbled out.

  Llug growled. “Not a woman!” He shook off his captors and lunged. The blow he aimed at Madmartigan’s head, with all the momentum of his charge behind it, hit the lieutenant beside Sorsha. Blood spurted. The lieutenant struck back, and the two men went down together, grappling. Madmartigan ducked under a stabbing lance, walloped a Nockmaar trooper in the belly, and shouldered his way through the door. “Outside, Peck!” he shouted. “The stables!”

  “Hold on!” Willow said to Franjean and Rool. In one bound he was on the washstand. In another, he grabbed the windowsill and scrambled out onto the balcony. Just ahead of him, Madmartigan swung over the railing and slid down a rope, still clasping Elora in one arm. “Come on!” he shouted to Willow. He ran for the stables and the Nockmaar horses, only to find his way blocked by three troopers. They advanced, lances at the ready.

  Madmartigan spun around.

  In the gray dawn, a farm wagon came creaking along the road toward the inn. Skirts flying, Madmartigan dashed for it and vaulted into the seat. He pushed off the startled farmer, seized the reins, and snapped them, jolting the horse into action. Baskets of bread and cheese went flying. The wagon swooped in under the balcony. “Come on, Peck! Jump!”

  Willow jumped, landing on the hay in the box of the wagon. The brownies spilled out of his pocket.

  “Here! Take the baby! Put her under the seat! We’ll have some fun, now!” Laughing wildly, Madmartigan whipped the horse into a snappy trot, then into a gallop. Franjean and Rool scrambled under the seat with Elora. Willow braced himself and looked back.

  Sorsha shouted orders from the balcony. In the muddy yard troopers were mounting up. The first away jerked too sharply on his reins and his horse twisted and fell, legs thrashing, blocking the others.