A loud click ended that period of silence, as emphatic a sound as if the fist of a man had come smashing down. Hyron had given a final slam to the sword, smashing it back into the scabbard with full force.
He arose, not as a threatening stallion, but in man guise. Yet still he leaned across the board even as the stallion had done.
“There is much to be thought on,” he said. His frown had returned full force. Also there was a quirk to his lips as if he tasted something sour, perhaps his own words. “There is nothing in the Dales for which we choose to fight. On the other hand”—he hesitated as if turning some thought over several times to examine it the better—“there was once a geas laid—and perhaps that has brought us to this meeting. If we consult and discover that we indeed have a common enemy—that your purpose can answer ours—” He broke off with a shrug. What he said had no real commitment, but I guessed I would get no better answer. Then he asked a question.
“Whom did you really seek when you came so boldly into the Waste, Kinsman-by-half?”
“Whoever there might be who would listen, Lord.”
Now he raised a forefinger to scratch along the line of his beardless jaw.
“You are forthright enough,” he commented. From his tone I could not judge whether he thought me a fool for using the truth. “That being so—there are others here who might be interested in your warning.” He smiled and I heard muffled sounds from those about me as if they shared his amusement. Did he want me to beg him for directions to those “others”? Somehow I believed that if I did that I would lose any advantage I had held in this interview.
“This you may tell your Lord—or he whose scheme brought you to us—” He folded his arms across his chest, once more tossed his head so that the crest of his hair fell in a lock over his forehead. “We shall certainly consider all he has said. If we make a decision in his favor, he shall hear so from us. There will be a price for our services, of course. We must have time to think of that. Years ago we once sold our swords and sold them well. Those who bought had no reason to claim they did not receive full measure. If we choose to bargain again, your Dalesmen may find us worth any price we ask.”
“That price being?” I mistrusted this horse lord—not because I thought him a follower of the Dark, for I knew he was not. Still, legends say that there were those among the Old Ones who were neither good nor evil, but whose standards of right and wrong are not our measures.
“In due time and to your lord’s own face shall we state that,” he countered. “Also, if you wish to gather an army you need other allies.” He suddenly pointed to my hooves.
“Why not,” he asked, “seek those with whom you can claim kin?”
I knew that I dare not show ignorance now, that to do so would lessen me in their sight. My mother’s clan came from the northernmost Dales—there must lie the mixture that had made me what I was. So if I did have kin there I would find such.
I managed a shrug. “We have no maps of the Waste, Lord. I took the westward hills for my guide—that brought me here. Now I shall ride north.”
“North.” Lord Hyron repeated. Then it was his turn to shrug. “The choice is yours. This is not an easy land, none does ride or walk here without due caution.”
“So I have already discovered, Lord Hyron. My first meeting with a Waste dweller was his body—”
“That being?” He asked it idly, as if it did not matter.
Just because he would so dismiss my gruesome find, I described the mauled thing I had buried and was only halfway through my story when I felt the whole atmosphere about me change. It was as if I had brought portentous tidings without being aware of it.
“Thas!” It was a name, a word I did not know, and it exploded with force from Herrel. The indifference of Lord Hyron had vanished in the same instant.
7
Joisan
Elys stood on a small rise facing the forest land. She was frowning and the hands that hung by her sides twitched slightly. I thought that she was disturbed, that she felt some need for action, yet she was not sure what. Jervon had brought the packs and our saddles close to the mark of a recent Fire and was again off collecting wood. A small pile of branches lay at Elys’s feet also but she made no move to pick them up again. I paused beside her, turned also to face that line of trees that was so well protected against any invasion. Now that I regarded them more intently I could see that the leaves were darker green than those I had known in the Dales and they grew very thickly together.
“There are no birds.” Elys said abruptly.
For a moment I was at a loss. Then, thinking back, I could not remember having sighted, since we left the Dales, any wing- borne life. The Waste was indeed a barren land. Still—why Elys should now be seeking sight of birds puzzled me.
“In such a wood—yes, there should be birds,” she repeated; her frown grew heavier.
“But—I do not remember seeing any since we came out of the Dales.”
She gave an impatient shake of the head. “Perhaps over the desert—no—there would be few to wing there. But this is a wood, a place to harbor them well. There should be birds!” She spoke emphatically, her attitude one of foreboding. Then she glanced at me.
“You did not enter there after all.”
“Jervon was right—there was a barrier. As if a keep door was closed and no visitors welcomed.”
Her frown lightened a fraction. My answer might have supplied a part answer to her puzzle.
“There is a keep of sorts, I believe, in that wood. If that be so—then the land is closed, save when those who hold it wish otherwise, it will open to their desire only.”
I did not like the idea her words conjured in my mind. “But”—I spoke my thought aloud, trying to reassure myself, perhaps have Elys agree with some hope or comfort—“I cannot be sure that it was Kerovan who camped here, who was enticed within there . . .” Even as I spoke that denial I knew that any hope of it being so was folly.
“Enticed . . .” Elys repeated thoughtfully. “No. If he entered there he did so willingly. These are not of the ones who entice, they have no need to do so. They are—strong—”
“What do you know or guess?” I demanded eagerly. “Have you then found some trace—some clue . . .”
“I only feel,” she replied. “There is Power there, but I cannot say with any truth what it is. There is no sense of ill, but neither is there any of a force that is friendly, or beneficial. It is just—Power. “ She made a small gesture of bafflement with one of her hands. “But I wish that there were birds.”
“Why?” I still could not understand her preoccupation with them. Nor why the presence—or absence—of birds might be so important.
“Because”—again she sketched that gesture of helplessness—“they would be here if all was well, judged by our own world. Without them that wood must be very silent, a secret place—too secret . . .”
Jervon called and we turned toward the camp. But she had wrought upon my imagination. As I went I found myself straining to hear a bird call—one of those things I had taken so for granted in the world I had always known that I had not been aware of such until it was missing.
Back in the campsite I looked longingly at those other saddle bags, which had been left behind by the missing traveler. If I could only rummage through them, perhaps so discover for certain that they were Kerovan’s. Yet I could not bring myself to do that. I was sure, far too sure, that this was his camp—but a small hint of hope did remain battling within me and I feared to quench it and allow the dark suspicions that prowled among my thoughts entirely free.
As I sat beside the fire Jervon had kindled I still strained to listen, hoping for the comfort of the usual noises of the world. Even those made by the grazing horses, the thud of their hooves as they moved about was a reassurance. There was also the crackling of the fire . . .