Oak tossed a leather drinking-skin to her father, who uncorked it, spilled a drop in libation and took a swig before he handed it around; it was water cut with wine or possibly vice versa, and made them all formally guests on the Dun’s land. The old clansman went on:
“We’ve got the watermill’s Pelton wheel and the hydraulic ram working; the Dúnedain from Stath Ingolf just over the hills have been most helpful. The last harvest was good and the next looks to be even better-”
He spat aside and made the Horns with his left hand to show that he wasn’t tempting the Fates.
“-this is fine land and we’re learning its ways and how to please the spirits of place, who’re happy to have humankind about once more. What brings you and your Da here, so far from Dun Juniper and so near Beltane?”
Rudi answered: “Seeing the land, and introducing Órlaith to it. And to mark out what we of the two-footed kindred and the animals who live with us may use in this valley, and what’s rightly the domain of Lady Flidais and Her especial children.”
Oak and his people nodded solemnly; so did Órlaith and Heuradys. Flidais was the Goddess in Her aspect as Mistress of the Beasts; She drove a chariot pulled by sacred white deer, and Her very name meant doe; the wildwood and its dwellers belonged to Her and Her consort, the Horned Lord most often hailed as Cernunnos.
Órlaith knew that in other parts of Montival her father would have used different terms-in the United States of Boise he’d have talked of National Parks, and in the Association fiefs of the old north-realm about the rights of the Crown and Counts and baronage under Forest Law. In Corvallis, where the Faculty Senate of the University ruled, they’d speak confidently of the biodiversity of riparian wetlands and watershed maintenance; in the territory of Mt. Angel the learned warrior-monks of the Order of the Shield of St. Benedict would say the same, but also cite God’s command that the sons of Adam exercise wise stewardship. The Lakota said White Buffalo Woman had told them what men might rightly take, and there were so many other stories. .
It all meant more or less the same thing, and she preferred the Clan’s way of describing it. Besides, she’d seen Flidais in dreams herself, though not to speak to, and had a proper awe of Her power after a single glance from those moon-pale eyes. Wise folk asked Her permission to enter the unpeopled lands and walked lightly there, just as they thanked Cernunnos for luck in the hunt, and showed respect to the prey itself for its gift of life. You never knew when the Hour of the Hunter would come for you yourself-except that soon or late, it would come.
“It will be Órlaith’s business soon enough,” her father went on. “And-”
His blue-gray-green eyes narrowed. The High King was just as old as the Change, born near Yule of that terrible year as darkness turned towards light, a tall handsome man with close-cropped red-gold beard and shoulder-length hair of the same sunset color; it suddenly shocked her a little to see how the wrinkles at the corners of his eyes were deeper than she remembered. Your parents seemed to go along changeless while you were small, but she was getting beyond that stage now.
Allowing for gender and age they were much alike, something more obvious now that she’d reached her full growth, save that her eyes were cornflower-blue and her hair wheat-blond with only a slight tinge of copper; she was about three fingers shorter than his six-foot-two, taller for a woman than he was for a man, with a similar long-limbed build.
“-and. .”
His hand fell to the pommel of the sword by his right side, a sphere of milky crystal gripped by antlers. He wore it on that hip because his right arm had been injured long ago, on the great Quest to the eastern sea that brought the Sword of the Lady back from the fabled magic isle of Nantucket. The wound still pained him sometimes, and it had leached a very little strength and speed from the limb.
Everyone looked grave for a moment; the Sword of the Lady was far more than a weapon. Far more than merely a symbol of sovereignty, even, though it was that in truth. The bearer never talked much about it, but common knowledge was that it conferred powers, only the first of them being the gift-or curse-of telling truth from falsehood.
“. . and a feeling that I should be here, somehow.”
“You’ll guest with us?” Oak asked, plainly assuming they would.
“If it’s not an imposition to feed four-score. We’ve supplies with us.”
“There’s plenty for the Beltane feast, and we’re glad to share it. The lions and leopards and catamounts and tigers and wolves are a troublement to our herds, not to mention the grizzlies, but the hunting here. . ah, you’d have to be blind and have no string-fingers to go short of meat. We’ve wild beef and fine yearling buck and a sounder of pig hanging in the icehouse right now, thanks be to Cernunnos, and everyone who isn’t here pulling this last Annwyn’s-Hounds-devour-it stump is cooking or baking or making ready to do so. Or rolling out barrels, the which requires a liberal testing of samples to make sure they’ve not gone off. Forbye we’re also making trial of roasting a whole young ostrich overnight in a pit with hot stones. Halfway between chicken and veal, the taste is.”
“Now you’re making me drool. Offer accepted! You know Sir Aleaume?” the High King went on, indicating the commander of the men-at-arms. “He’s come to the Guard since you hung up your bow.”
The knight was a man in his twenties with bowl-cut reddish-brown hair, regular high-cheeked features only slightly marred by somewhat juglike ears, and slanted blue eyes.
Órlaith had known him off-and-on for years and thought him toothsomely handsome as well as brave and able and a fine singer and with a pawky sense of humor when you could get him to unbend a little. Unfortunately he was paralyzingly conscious of the gap in their ranks, or too much given to the troubadours’ wilder flights of chivalry. The ones about true knights pining chastely over a fair maid from afar. Or both.
Particularly with her father about; Associates just thought differently about such things, and Christians were plain-and-simple strange. She understood, being half of that stock herself, but it could be a hindrance.
It’s a fine thing to journey with Da, but it has its drawbacks. Not to mention that it took me and Herry falling about laughing at his painful discretion to convince Aleume that we’re not lovers. Mother-of-All, but men can be idiots sometimes.
Oak gave a nod, friendly but not particularly deferential to the heir to the Barony of Tucannon; Mackenzies didn’t pay much attention to rank.
“Aye, we’ve met,” he said, to the knight’s evident surprise. “Your father Baron Maugis and I worked together a good deal in the Prophet’s War, young lord. I saw you once back then, but you’d not remember it, most likely. As I recall you were tugging at your mother’s skirt and asking for a honey-tart. I hung up my bow about the time he became Grand Constable, and that in time of peace.”
“I’ve heard the stories about what you and my father did at the battles around Corwin, good Clansman,” the knight said in the clipped formal tones of a north-country noble minding his manners, leaning over to shake hands. “You and he and the others of your generation had all the grand adventures!”
Oak snorted, but declined to comment directly; a similar sound came faintly from Edain Aylward Mackenzie, the commander of the High King’s Archers, who was riding just behind them. Órlaith could read the minds of both the old soldiers:
Adventure? You’d be welcome to my share, that you would, boyo.
She caught Heuradys’ amber-colored eyes, and her liege-knight gave an almost imperceptible shrug. In theory she dutifully agreed with all the scarred middle-aged veterans who’d helped raise her; a ruler responsible for the homes and safety of her folk couldn’t wish the wild times and deadly deeds back for their own sake. . but they both understood young Sir Aleaume de Grimmond as well.