“My lady fair, my lady fair,
was drunk as a duck and fat as a bear.
And if you saw her prancing there,
You’d lose your heart to my lady fair”
There was merriment in the sheriffs’ twinkling eyes, and they laughed and boasted as they gambled at dice and drank themselves silly with beer, hardly noting the presence of two bears wandering into town. One young man with long brown hair and a thin vee of a beard spotted Orick and shouted at him, “Och, why, we have strangers in our camp. Would you like to work your jaws a bit on something to eat? We’ve just boiled up a pot of stray lamb stew.”
“Stray lamb stew” was another way of saying “stolen lamb stew.” By law, a traveler could claim a stray lamb if it wasn’t with a flock and its ragged appearance made it look as if it were lost. In practice, if men traveled in a pack more than six, they tended to butcher any lamb they came across, figuring that they could intimidate the rightful owners.
Orick sniffed at the stew from outside the circle of the campfire. It was well seasoned with rosemary and wine. Bears were notorious for begging food from travelers, and were therefore not often so welcomed to camp. “Why, I thank you, good sirs,” Orick said in genuine surprise at the offer.
The lad got up from the rock where he sat, staggering from too much beer, went to the stew pot and made up two heaping bowls. He came and bent over, set the steaming bowls before Orick and Grits-then pulled them back.
“Ha!” he laughed, seeing how the bears’ mouths watered at the stew. “Not just yet. You have to earn it.”
“And how would I go about that?” Grits asked.
“With a tale,” the lad laughed. “You’ve likely heard more news out of County Morgan than we have. What tale have you? What rumor of demons? And make it straight for me!”
Orick was in no mood to humor the lads. Sheriffs or nor, this was a dangerous company of men, rowdy and full of themselves. “I’ll give you no rumor of demons,” Orick grumbled in his loudest, most belligerent voice, “for I’ve seen them, and what I have to tell isn’t the kind of idle gossip you’ve likely heard up north!”
Suddenly, the lutist stopped and over two dozen heads turned Orick’s way.
One old sheriff with a slash under his left cheek looked up and sneered, “Out with it, then. What did you see?” His tone said he was demanding an answer, not requesting it.
Orick looked at the sheriffs. They were weary from the road, and they weren’t in the mood for any slow tales. Orick licked his lips, remembering. “Two weeks ago yesterday night,” Orick said, “I was in the city of Clere, on my way north for the Salmon Fest, when the first of the sidhe appeared. It was a man and woman who came into town, late of the night, in the middle of a storm. I was begging scraps at the tables of John Mahoney, the innkeeper at Clere, when the sidhe opened the door and stepped out of that damnable rain.
“The woman was a princess of the Otherworld, more beautiful and powerful and fair than any woman who walks this earth. Oh, she had a face that an angel would envy.” Orick recalled Everynne’s face, and he let the memory of her beauty carry in his voice. Some of the men grunted in surprise at the sound, for it was obvious that Orick loved her, and the sheriffs seemed amazed that a bear would love a fairy woman, so they leaned closer. Orick decided to stretch the tale a bit, try to fill these men with the proper sense of awe. “Beside her was her guardian, an old bearded man who was stronger than any three men I’ve ever met, and swift as a bobcat. He guarded her jealously, with two swords that glowed magically. And though the rain was pelting the inn like a waterfall, neither of the two had a drop on them.”
Orick stopped a minute, gauging his audience to see if they believed that last bit about people walking dry through the rain. Some of the rough lads had their eyes popping out at his tale, and they gaped with open mouths.
“I’ve heard rumors of the sidhe coming to town, but I’ve never heard report of these two,” the old scar-faced sheriff said.
“That’s because you never heard the tale proper, from someone who was there,” Orick continued. “At first, no one quite believed what they saw. The princess sought dinner and a room for the night, and she asked to hire someone local to take her into the woods, to Geata na Chruinne, the Gate of the World.”
The sheriffs hunched nearer, and one of the younger ones muttered, “That’s where the demons were headed, too.”
“Ay,” Orick said. “Gallen O’Day, who legend says is the best of you good lawmen, happened to be in the room, and when the princess turned her eyes on him, he must have fallen under her spell-as we all did-for he agreed to guide her, never dreaming the consequences.”
At this point, Orick licked his lips. The sheriffs listened with rapt attention. He had begun to hear rumors of late, nasty tales where Gallen was named a conspirator with the sidhe. Orick couldn’t come right out and say that such tales were lies, couldn’t tell men that the Lady Everynne was no more a magical creature than any one of them, that she was just some woman from another world, trying to defeat the swarms of alien dronon that were sweeping across the galaxy. What did it matter if she carried weapons that could demolish worlds? She was still only something akin to human, and even though she had no magical abilities, she was still more marvelous and powerful than these men could comprehend. And Gallen had done right in becoming her servant and protector. But Orick could never convince these men of the truth, so he bent the tale, making it seem that Gallen had been a slave who couldn’t control himself, and maybe that wasn’t far from the truth, for even Orick had fallen under the spell of the Lady Everynne.
“So it was that the princess sought rest and refreshment that night, for she had been running long and hard, trying to escape monsters straight out of hell.”
“You saw them?” one of the young sheriffs asked, leaning nearer and spilling a wooden cup of wine in the process. His hands were shaking.
“Aye, I saw them up close, I did,” Orick said. “And I’ll never sleep deeply again. Some of them were giants, and the biggest of you would hardly stand above their bellies. Their skin was green, and they had large orange eyes as big as plates. They were strong creatures. When they walked into town, I saw one of them kick a wood fence just in passing, and it splintered into kindling. Others had the same green skin and walked like giant dogs, on all fours, sniffing for the scent of the princess and her bodyguard. And with them was a major devil. A creature with wings the color of ale and a skin blacker than night. It had great clusters of eyes both on the front and on the back of its head, and it had feelers like a catfish’s under its jaw, and when you saw him, you knew his name: Beelzebub, the Lord of the Flies.
“The demons walked into Clere just after dawn, and Father Heany confronted their master. Now Father Heany, there was a man of God. He had no fear for himself, only for his parishioners, and he rushed to block the path of the demons. And Beelzebub raised a magic wand, and a bolt of lightning flew out of it, striking Father Heany dead right there in the street, right in front of every woman and child in Clere. And when that lightning hit him, it melted the man. The flesh stripped from his bones and melted in a black puddle as if it were pudding.
“Then the demons marched on to Mahoney’s Inn and asked after the princess and her guard, but the princess must have slipped out in the night. When the demons learned that she was gone, Beelzebub flew into the air and bit John Mahoney, ripping his head off.”