Yet on they strove, running sunwise-south, Roel would say-and among hills they fared, and they passed through vales and they splashed across streams. A woodland slowed them greatly, yet in the candlemarks of midafternoon, in the near distance ahead they espied the twilight wall rising up into the sky.
“What be the crossing?” called Roel.
Celeste opened the map and looked, and then called back, “A small waterfall on a bourne.”
“A brook?”
“Oui.”
And on they rode.
When they reached the twilight bound, no stream did they see.
“I’ll take the left,” said Celeste, raising her silver horn. “Mayhap even here left is right and right a mistake.”
“I’ll take the right,” said Roel, his face grim, for this was the day of the dark of the moon, and but nine or ten candlemarks remained ere the mid of night would come.
Away from each other they galloped, remounts trailing behind. And within a league Celeste topped a hill to see a stream in the vale below. Down she rode, and there a small waterfall tumbled o’er a rock linn and into a pool beneath, to run on into the boundary.
She raised her horn to her lips and blew a long call.
And in but moments it was answered by Roel’s clarion cry.
Celeste let her animals drink, and she fed them a ration of grain, and as Roel rode up, she moved her bow and arrows to the horse of hers whose turn had come.
Roel shifted his own gear likewise, and as soon as his steeds were fed and watered and he had changed mounts, with his shield on his arm and his sword in hand, and with an arrow nocked to Celeste’s bow, across the stream they splashed and into the twilight beyond.
They came in among high tors, nearly mountains rather than hills, and a passage wound downslope before them and out into a land of woodlands and fields.
“I don’t know what I was expecting,” said Celeste as they carefully wended their way down the narrow slot,
“but certainly not a land such as this.” Then she grimly laughed. “Mayhap I thought it would be all ashes and cinders, much like Senaudon, with fire beyond the horizon and the smell of brimstone on the air. But this, the Changeling Lord’s realm, is rather like much of Faery elsewhere.”
“Me,” said Roel, “I was expecting bare stone and a cold wailing wind, yet it seems to be rich farmland and bountiful forests.”
Even as he spoke, Roel’s gaze searched the horizon for as far as he could see, yet no Changeling Lord’s tower did he spy nor a building of any sort. In the far distance ahead, dark mountains rose up, and a black storm raged among the peaks. Roel studied the crests and rises, and no tower or other structure on those stony heights did he see, yet they were far away and a tower could easily be lost to the eye against the rocky crags.
As they reached the foot of the passage and debouched into a grassy field, just ahead a child of a goosegirl, a willow switch in her hand, herded her flock toward a mere, the drove gabbling as they waddled forward.
Roel and Celeste reached the girl just as the geese reached the pond and splashed in.
“Ma’amselle Gooseherd,” said Roel, “know you the way to the Changeling Lord’s tower?”
“Oui, Sieur,” replied the child, her voice piping as she looked up at the man on his horse. She pointed. “That way, I think.”
“Roel,” murmured Celeste, “no matter what Lady Lot said, this fille can be no more than eight summers old. Let us leave her and ride on.”
Roel nodded, and as they turned to look toward the mountains-the direction the child had indicated-a darkness came over the girl, and she bared her teeth.
“Merci, Ma’amselle Gooseherd,” said Roel, turning back, even as the glaring child sprang, spitting and hissing, her leap carrying her shoulder high to mounted Roel, her hands like claws reaching for his throat.
Roel wrenched up his shield barely in time to fend her, and as she fell away, with a sweep of Coeur d’Acier, Roel took off the child’s head. She struck the ground, her body dropping one way, her head tumbling another.
Celeste cried out at the sight of the decapitated girl, and Roel looked on in horror at what he had done, for he had slain nought but a poppet, a wee fillette but seven or eight summers old. Roel looked at Celeste, tears in his eyes, and he started to speak, yet no words came. But then Celeste gasped, for in that moment both body and head changed into a monstrous thing with fangs and glaring eyes and a hideous bulbous brow and a twisted face and a barrel chest and long hairy arms and legs and broad hands with lengthy, grasping fingers ending in sharp talons. And even as the horses danced aside, the hideous creature dissolved into dark mucus, and a putrid stench filled the air.
The horses snorted and blew and backed and sidled as the slime liquefied and seeped into the ground, leaving barren soil behind, the grass burnt away as if by virulent acid.
“Oh, Roel,” said Celeste, “Lady Lot was right.” Still shaken, Roel merely nodded, and Celeste intoned:
“Kill all those who therein do speak; Question not; you’ll understand.
“Roel, the girl was a Changeling, a monstrous thing, even though she seemed nought but a beautiful and innocent child.” Celeste looked away from the charred soil and toward the distant mountains and chanted:
“Ask directions unto his tower
In the Changeling Lord’s domain; The answers given will be true,
Yet the givers must be slain.”
Roel nodded in agreement and said, “Oui, the Fates are right. Even so, it seemed a dreadful thing I had done.”
“But necessary,” replied Celeste, yet looking in the direction the Changeling had pointed.
Roel’s gaze followed hers, and he said, “Somewhere yon lies the tower and my sister, perhaps my brothers as well. We must ride, for time grows perilously short.” And so, once again they took up the trek.
Often changing mounts, across the land they hammered, passing o’er hill and riding down through dale and across wide fields, as toward the mountains they raced. Occasionally they stopped at streams to water the horses and feed them rations of grain to keep their strength from flagging. And Celeste and Roel took food and drink themselves to keep their own vigor from falling any further, though fall it did. Even so, after but a brief respite, they would remount and fare onward, heading ever toward the mountains.
And along the course they asked a herdsman the way to the Changeling Lord’s tower, followed a candlemark later by a tinker, and later still by an old lady. Each pointed toward the stormy mountains, and Roel beheaded them every one, and hideous and garish monsters they became and then a gelatinous mucus that dissolved into a dark, foul-smelling liquid that burned the soil as it seeped away.
As the sun set, the mountains seemed no closer, and on galloped Celeste and Roel. Twilight turned into darkness as night pulled its black cloak across the world, and stars emerged, yet there was no moon to light the way. Once more taking great risk by riding swift in the night, the pair hammered on, hooves striking the ground at a trot, a canter, and a gallop.
And candlemarks burned away as on they raced, and it began to drizzle. They pulled up the hoods of their rain gear and sped on, hooves splatting against the wet ground.
They came to the foot of the mountains, and there a road led up into the massifs and crags, up into the raging storm, and a gate stood across the way. An elderly gatekeeper bearing a lantern hobbled out in the pour to ask them their business, and Roel said, “We seek the Lord of the Changelings’ tower.” Lightning flashed and thunder boomed, both riving the air.
“Eh, eh?” The keeper put a hand behind an ear.
“What’s that?”
“The tower of the Changeling Lord, old man,” cried Roel, louder.
“Oh. Up the road.” Slowly shuffling in the wetness, the man opened the gate, and as Roel charged by, he swept the old man’s head off even as the creature began to change into a monstrous Ogreish form.