Willow Page 2

  When Sorsha had returned from the field three months before, and Bavmorda had seen her abundant red tresses, the queen’s fingers twitched toward it. A spell began to form on her lips. But Sorsha was no longer a child. “No!” she had said simply. “It is not my father’s hair. It is mine. Please leave it alone.”

  Sorsha supposed she hated her father, but she wasn’t sure. When she thought of him he was just . . . distant. He was just another man, no better and no worse than the rest.

  All men were distant for Sorsha.

  She strode down the last staircase and into the dungeon corridor, looking neither right nor left at the pathetic women in their cages. Some groveled, stretching their arms through the bars and pleading for water, for food, for any attention. Others had taken themselves out of the dungeons, out of their bodies. These sat rocking on their straw pallets, smiling, whispering, singing softly. Still others stood defiantly, glaring their hatred.

  Sorsha ignored them all. She entered the birthing room, knowing exactly what she would see. The walls glistened with seepage. Trolls crouched in the shadows. The exhausted mother lay on her filthy straw pallet, staring terrified at her.

  Ethna cradled a small bundle, and her gaze, too, was full of dread.

  “Well?”

  The widwife swallowed hard. Mouth grim, she folded back the blanket to reveal the child.

  Sorsha stopped.

  The child had red hair, she was looking directly at Sorsha with steady eyes, and she was laughing.

  To some of the women who heard it, that laughter sounded like the tinkling of crystal once made by the elfin glasssmiths far south of Nelwyn Valley, but to most it was the sound of water—water free in a green world.

  It turned all sounds to silence in that grim place. Murmuring women hushed. Even the trolls stopped their guttural chatter and turned large ears toward the sound, astonished.

  Sorsha stepped forward then. Her hand closed over Ethna’s wrist, and her dispassionate eyes held the midwife’s, for Ethna had recovered the child too quickly. “Wait! The inspection.”

  Ethna’s chin rose defiantly. “Your Highness, this child . . .”

  “The inspection,” Sorsha said again.

  She unfolded the blanket.

  Naked before them lay the laughing child, perfect in every way except that on the soft flesh inside the left elbow she bore a faint brown mark—the Sign.

  Sorsha knew it well. When she had been assigned this task, Bavmorda had scratched the Sign on the wall of the banquet hall. “That!” she had cried. “That is what you look for!” And then she had obliterated it with white-hot jets of flame, leaving the wall scoured clean. And Sorsha had seen it often since. Sometimes Bavmorda would sear it into the oaken hearts of trees before she had them hacked to kindling. Sometimes she would carve it into the backs of screaming prisoners before they were loosed for the sport of Death Dogs.

  Now, when she saw it on the arm of this laughing infant, Sorsha felt only relief, nothing more—relief that her onerous duty had ended. Relief that she could go back to the field. “I must get Mother,” she said. Then, remembering that it was dawn and that her mother would be chanting an invocation to the sun, high in the conjuring room where only priests were permitted, she pointed to the nearest troll squatting beside the door. “You. Come with me. Ethna, prepare the child. You know what must be done!”

  As soon a Sorsha had gone, the mother struggled up. “Ethna!” She grasped the midwife’s shirt. She was trembling and weak, but her grip held like a vice. “Ethna,” she whispered hoarsely, “you must save her! You know you must!”

  Tears brimmed in Ethna’s eyes. She bit her lip and shook her head, glancing at two trolls, who were creeping close now, muttering.

  “You must!” The woman clasped her with both hands. “Listen to me! The child is larger than we are, Ethna, larger than anything! Don’t think! Feel! Do what you feel! Save her!”

  “Here!” One of the trolls said, kicking Ethna’s leg. “Get away from her!”

  “Back!” said the other, elbowing her in the stomach. “Back! Back!”

  Ethna swallowed. She brushed away the tears. She took a deep breath, then moved. Clutching the child close, she kicked hard into the face of first one troll then the other. They fell back shrieking, and Ethna dashed past them, through the door and down the corridor, past the arms of women reaching to touch her as she ran, and to touch the child.

  Seconds later, Bavmorda arrived with Sorsha close behind. When she heard the howls of the trolls she knew what had happened. “Guards! Where are you!” She swept into the birthing room and bore down on the mother, snatching away the pathetic bundle of rags the woman had hastily gathered. “Where is that child?”

  The mother smiled. She lay back and closed her eyes.

  “Kill her!” Bavmorda snarled, and vengeful trolls leaped to do her bidding.

  “Find that baby, Sorsha! Use dogs! Bring her to me alive, do you hear me? Alive!”

  The queen swooped back through the door just as the commander of the dungeon guards hurried up with two men. He was trembling. His face was ashen under the black helmet.

  “You! How could you let this happen?”

  “Your Majesty, I . . .”

  “Listen!” The sound Bavmorda heard lifted her beyond rage into blind fury.

  Laughter.

  Throughout the dungeon, in all their loathsome cells, women were laughing. Laughing at her.

  “Kill the lot!” Bavmorda flung out her hand.

  White flames seared the corridor.

  Ethna did what the mother had told her. She did not think, she felt. And her instincts served her well.

  She went to earth like a threatened animal, into the network of tunnels beneath Nockmaar. Over the years she had discovered their secret entrances and used them when she could. She preferred that dark labyrinth to the horrors of the castle. She was safe there from the drunken advances of the guards, from the horrid gropings of the trolls. She could escape in those tunnels from the cold efficiency of Princess Sorsha. She could think there, and remember, and dream. Sometimes, safe and alone in the deep silence, she slept. But the greatest comfort her secret gave her was the knowledge that someday she might escape through that tangle of passageways. She might flee. Someday, when she had summoned her courage, she might take her chances with the Death Dogs and the troopers and, perhaps, reach Galladoorn again. Now she followed her first impulse, pausing only long enough to snatch up a little sugar and a gourd of milk for the child. Deep in those passages she waited, shivering, holding the child close, listening to the rumble of alarm drums far above.

  Go to water: that was her second impulse. She knew better than to attempt that immediately. The hills of Nockmaar were high and barren, and the nearest south-flowing stream was Eastern Brook, two leagues distant. In that terrain among the crags, the dogs would have her in no time. For a day and a night she waited, until the hue and cry died down.

  At midnight on the second day, she crept out of a brush-covered opening among the crags. Behind her, Nockmaar volcano smoked and growled on one side and the castle loomed on the other. Ahead lay the headwaters of Eastern Brook, flowing away south into the great fens of Galladoorn.

  It was an ideal night. Clouds hid the waning moon, and a restless wind covered the sounds of her passage. Furthermore, she would have the perfect companion. She had taken only a few soft steps before a white goat waiting among the outcrops lifted its head. The animal stared placidly and rose at Ethna’s approach. The goat’s udder was full, so Ethna was able to feed the child well, diluting the rich milk with water trickling from the rocks. When she had finished she climbed with her precious burden onto the goat’s back, and the sturdy little animal set off east away from Nockmaar, taking the highest path.

  Ethna’s plan was to follow Eastern Brook all the way down to Galladoorn. Then she would swing west and cross the River Troon under cover of darkness. After that, she would work her way northwest again until she reached the safety of the
fabled kingdom of Tir Asleen. It would mean a journey of many months.

  She had guessed that Bavmorda and General Kael would send troops and dogs fanning to the west, assuming she had fled that way in panic, and she was right. No one anticipated her cunning. The land between Nockmaar and Eastern Brook was only lightly patrolled. Just twice that night the goat paused, and Ethna heard the distant howling of Death Dogs and the clatter of hooves in the valleys below. Each time she muffled the laughter of the child against her bosom until the dread sounds faded.

  At dawn they reached the brook and bade farewell to the goat, who pushed up its muzzle for the child to touch. Ethna waded into the cold water and turned south. For many nights she persevered, taking shelter by day, accepting the succor of shy animals who came to the need of the child, and in time the brook deepened into the river and the river broadened into the fens. Bog people found her drifting half-dead, clinging to a floating log. They took her into their huts, and warmed her, and nursed her back to strength.

  Even here in the depths of the marshes, where fogs hung like drapes and the swamp gasses sometimes gleamed like spectral lanterns, the oarlocks of Kael’s boats creaked in the darkness. Death Dogs clambered into stilted huts. Women shrieked. Men cursed and died, throats gone.

  Cautiously, always by night, the bog people moved Ethna and the child south into the safety of their small fortress. Thence, cavalry escorted her west across the River Troon and a few leagues beyond. Alone in the wild, their food exhausted, Ethna and the child once more relied on the kindness of animals, who succored them and guided them along secret paths. At last, when they reached the headwaters of the River Freen, Ethna rejoiced for she knew that only a few leagues beyond, high in its lush mountains, stood their destination—the sanctuary of Galladoorn.

  But here the brave midwife’s good luck ran out. Here roaming Death Dogs chanced upon her scent and bore down upon her fast, long frustrated and eager for blood.

  She had only a little warning, only time enough to bind together a makeshift boat of driftwood, using vines and strips of her clothing. She had time enough to spread a little cradle of soft reeds inside, and to wrap the child in her shawl and lay her in. She had time enough to kiss her, and just time enough to launch the frail little craft into the waiting arms of the current.

  Then the first dogs were on her.

  Bavmorda swept into the conjuring room at Nockmaar that dawn to find her three priests ecstatic. Robes high, they were prancing skinny-legged around the vision-bowl. Caught up in their mirth, even the tower-trolls were chortling and swatting themselves.

  “Oh, Your Majesty,” the chief priest greeted her, “what a vision we have for you! What a vision!”

  “Look!” said the second, stepping back.

  “Behold!” said the third.

  Staring suspiciously, pulling her cloak tight, Bavmorda drew close.

  Milky fluid cleared in the crucible. Bavmorda saw a thinly wooded riverbank. A knot of Death Dogs ripped and tore at a corpse, while several more raced to join them. A squad of Kael’s cavalrymen followed, with a few wiry dog-trainers loping beside them, clinging to their stirrups. When they reached the corpse, one of these trainers ordered the dogs back, and with a few lance jabs at the torn throat, severed the head from the body. He lifted it by the hair, high enough for the troopers to recognize Ethna. The troopers uttered a ragged cheer, fists raised. The man dropped the head back onto the bloody corpse, and the dogs swarmed in.

  Bavmorda granted in brief satisfaction. “And the child?”

  “The child,” said the first priest, clearing his throat. “Yes. The child.”

  “The child.” The second priest turned to the third. “Did you notice what happened to the child?”

  The third priest sighed. “The fact is, Your Majesty, we don’t know. But now that they’ve found the midwife . . .”

  “Fools!” Bavmorda murmured. But she did not fly into a rage. She kept gazing into the bowl, beguiled by what she saw.

  Even feeding, how magnificent were the Death Dogs!

  I I

  UFGOOD REACH

  From the mountains of the two High Kingdoms, the River Freen flowed southward a hundred leagues to the sea. At first its course was swift, plunging down the steep descents of the foothills, but then it slowed as it approached the Lake of Fin Raziel and eddied there, coursing through the deep caverns at the lake’s south end until it surged out in a spectacular cascade, as if from the spout of a great pitcher, dropping twenty fathoms to the pool below. Then it crossed the Middle Plains in slow meanders and wound through the Hills of Cherlindrea, ever south, and broadened down the whole length of Nelwyn Valley, and then narrowed once more and hurried on for three-score leagues until it touched the sea with five salty fingers, thirty leagues south of the Troon.

  Once, the people of those lands called the rivers the Two Sisters, for legends said that before Bavmorda tightened her grip on the High Kingdoms, they had been alike as twins. The Troon had flowed as pure and fresh as the Freen, the legends said, and salmon had once swum up it to spawn, as far as the ford of the Western Road. Herons had once poised along its marshes, and great bears had taught their cubs to scoop fish from its falls. So clear had the Troon been in its still pools, the legends said, that elves journeyed to them to read prophecies in the magic sand-tracery of clams, five fathoms down, and to preserve those patterns forever in their crystal chalices. Once, the legends said, like its sister, the Troon had been a river of life.

  No longer. Now, thickened by death, it flowed brown and sluggish. Banks once verdant were mud-caked and slimy, strewn with deadfalls and unearthly offal. Every day, the Troon bore its burden of bloated corpses to the sea. Every night, trolls crept from their lairs to the shores of that river, lured by the stench of carrion. Some eagerly followed it north, seeking the very evil at its source. The Troon had turned loathsome down its length, a running sore on the land, an infection in the sea.

  But the Freen was still pure. In its high tributaries, where the child began her journey, the waters of the Freen sang in their fords and rapids; they swirled like stately dancers in their pools.

  Swiftly from the place of Ethna’s death, the currents of the Freen bore away the strange little boat. So exultant were Kael’s troops over the slaying of the midwife that they failed to realize until too late what she had done. By then, the little craft was far to the south, bobbing through the rapids of the first canyons. Eagles swooped down, stretching their talons to snatch the child from danger, but their help was not required. The boat rode high, and the child laughed in the spray. Later, however, other creatures did assist. When the boat snagged in a quiet backwater, a brown bear shouldered through the undergrowth to nudge it free, and an otter dislodged it from a sandbar at the north end of the Lake of Fin Raziel.

  The child began her voyage down that lake at night, helped by a northern breeze. She kept silent. Something immense moved around her in those waters, searching back and forth, swelling up the surface over a round back, whipping up whirlpools with an enormous tail. Safely through this turbulence went the little boat, and safely past the island in the center of the lake, where the child turned her head in the darkness to hear sorrowing melodies and the chants of invisible choirs. Safely on—down the length of the lake and over the falls, where the little craft was taken into hundreds of tiny hands and borne down through the spray on a cloud of shimmering wings to the quiet pools below. She laughed as she drifted down, and small voices—very, very small voices—joined her in that laughter.

  At dawn, she moved into the quiet meanders of the Middle Plains. All that day fish swam out from overhanging banks to hasten the little craft downstream. Their dorsal fins surrounding it like protecting sails, they brought it to the ford where the Freen crossed the Western Road. The child made this last passage at dusk, escaping by only seconds a troop of cavalry picking their way across the stones. The child heard the clatter of hooves. She heard coarse laughter. She heard the clink of harness and arms. The
n she was past; the water deepened and the currents bore her on.

  Before midnight she came to the conical Nelwyn Hills, and through the rest of that calm night the boat passed down Nelwyn Valley, through and around villages where small people laughed, and ate, and slept beside their hearths in round houses. It passed the entrances of the copper mines and the flourishing gardens of the marshes. It passed many isolated farmsteads nestled among their hedgerows, until at last it rounded a broad bend and came to the tree-lined bank of Ufgood Reach.

  Here, just before sunrise, the boat slowed, turned gently in the current, and slipped in among the reeds under the trees on the north side. The child listened, wide-eyed. She heard reed stalks rubbing on the hull. She heard cattle lowing from the little farm nestled nearby. She heard blackbirds waking and muskrats creeping along the bank to gaze at her, their whiskers quivering.

  All of this the child heard, but still she waited. Then, close at hand, she heard the happy voice of a young girl, calling. Raising her arms, the child in the boat laughed in answer.

  Sun gathered on the hilltops, flowed down the slopes, filled the long bowl of Nelwyn Valley.

  The hawk, having circled all night above the driftwood boat, now rose in the new sun, spiraling slowly up and up until the whole valley lay beneath him, with the silver Freen winding down its center. Far to the north it saw the domes of the fisher-Nelwyns nestled among their marshes and their conical hills. It saw Nelwyn boats with arching prows and sterns winding through the channels to join others already fishing in the Freen. It saw nets cast, silver fish gathered up.

  To the south, the cabins of Nelwyn hunters and woodcutters dotted the hillsides and clustered beside streams that tumbled to the Freen. Farther south, where the farms began, the hawk watched cattle rising in their pastures and small sleepy men stretching in the sun. Far to the south, where the river left Nelwyn Valley and deepened and began its long run through the Low Kingdoms to the coast, the hawk saw a doughty little trading ship being loaded for a voyage.