I know that path! he thought.
It was nightfall on the roadway that ran westward from the waterfall and mill to the gates of Dun Juniper, where the schoolchildren practiced an hour or two shooting at the mark most evenings. The trees beyond and below were Douglas fir, taller and thicker and closer-set than the pine forests of the Tetons, each dark green branch heavy with its load of snow. It was a softer fall than the blizzard about him, of flakes larger and wetter… the snow of a winter in the western foothills of the Cascades, one that would lay a few days at most, not grip the land like cold iron until the end of May.
Close at hand a column of kilted children were walking through the gathering dark, cased bows and capped quivers over their shoulders, with a few adult warriors among them-one had a lamp slung on a spear over her shoulder, a globe of yellow light in the fog white of the snow.
"That's Aoife Barstow," he said slowly. "She and her lover died fighting for me when the Protector's men came, only a little later.. . I offer at their graves every year."
The children started singing. He recognized one clear high ten-year-old's voice. It was his own.
"Upon his shoulder, ravens
His face like stone, engraven
Astride an eight-hoofed stygian beast
He gathers the fruit of the gallows trees!
Driving legions to victory
The Bringer of War walks tonight!"
"By the name you invoked, by the blood she spilled, by the offering made beneath the tree where she died," the man said softly. "By these you called, and I answer at the appointed time."
"She… named others than you, lord Wanderer. As have I, full often."
Images passed before his eyes; he couldn't be sure if they were shapes formed in the swirling snow, or his own imaginings, or as real as the blood he could feel beating in his throat… because that too might be illusion. A tall charioteer's shape edged and crowned with fire, tossing up a spear that was a streak of gold across the sky and kissing it as he rode laughing to battle as to a bridal feast; a woman vast and sooty and bent, wielding a scythe that reaped men; a raven whose wings beat out the life and death of worlds. His hand went to the scar between his brows, where a real raven's beak had touched him in the sacred wood.
"When I hung nine days from the Tree, I became a god of death," the one-eyed figure said. "When I grasped the runes of wisdom I learned many names."
He looked up. One of the great black birds moved in the skeletal branches above them. It cocked its head and gave a harsh cry and launched itself away, gliding down the slope on broad-stretched wings.
"And Raven and I are old friends."
They turned back to the fire. If this isn't the final journey, then I must be dreaming, Rudi thought, as they crouched by the red flickering warmth, across from each other, sitting easily on their hams.
The gray-haired man reached into a pocket, brought out tobacco and papers, rolled himself a cigarette single-handed, then lit it with an ember he picked out with a twig. He handed it across the fire; the Mackenzie took it, and inhaled the smoke-he'd done the same before, visiting with the Three Tribes. For a flickering instant as he inhaled the harsh bite across his tongue the shape on the other side of the flames had a prick-eared, long-muzzled face, and two braids of hair beside it beneath the hat.
"Are you truly that One men named the Wanderer?" Rudi asked boldly.
He could feel his fear, but it was slightly distant, like the cold of the wind. And well might a man be afraid, to meet Him on a lonely mountainside. He was a god of death; the lord of poetry and craft who'd given the runes to men and established kingship, but also bringer of the red madness of battle, of everything that lifted humankind beyond themselves. His favorites got victory, but they died young, and often by treachery.
A puff of smoke. "What would your mother say?"
She'd answer a question with a question, some distant part of Rudi thought wryly. And if I complain, say that you can only truly learn the truth you find yourself. Aloud:
"That the forms the God wears… or the Goddess… are many.
And that they are true, not mere seemings or masks, but that they're not… not complete. As are the little gods and the spirits of the land, or the Fathers and Mothers of the animal kind. They speak to us as we need them, if we'll but listen. For how can a man tell all his mind to a child, or a god to a man?"
The other nodded. The great wolf raised its head and looked at him, then put its massive muzzle on its paws again.
"A wise woman, Lady Juniper, a very wise woman… and not least in knowing that what she knows isn't everything that is."
"You'll be talking to me in riddles and hints, then, I suppose, lord Wanderer?"
The eye pierced him. For a moment he felt transparent as glass, as if he could suddenly see his entire life-not in memory, but through an infinity of Rudis-stretching back like a great serpent to the moment of his birth… and his conception… and before. As if all time and possibility were an eternal now.
"Look, then," the Wanderer said. "If you can bear it."
For a moment the mountain about him stood stark and bare, only here and there a charred root exposed by the gullies cut by long-gone monsoon floods. Heat lay on it like a blanket, through air gray and clear and thick with the tears of boiling oceans. Then it changed and was green once more… but different, somehow; there was a wrongness to the way the trees were placed, a regularity that held patterns as complex as those you saw in a kaleidoscope, layer within layer. A rabbit hopped by…
… and silvery tendrils looped around it, thinner than the finest wire. The beast gave one long squeal and then froze as they plunged beneath its skin. Then it seemed to blur, as if it were dissolving, until nothing was left but a damp patch on the ground. Involuntarily Rudi looked down at his own feet. The Mother's earth was beneath him, and he expected to feed it with his body and bones someday…
But not like that! he thought.
"Those were evil fates, lord Wanderer," he said. "And true ones, I'm thinking."
"Evil for more than men," came the reply. "Now, tell me, Son of the Bear. What would you do with a little child you saw running with a sharp knife?"
Rudi's mouth quirked. "Take it from her, lord Wanderer. Swat her backside so that she'd remember, if she were too young for words."
"And a child who took a lighter and burned down your mother's Hall and all its treasures, so that many were hurt?"
"The same, perhaps with a bit of a harder swat. And call in the heart-healers to find the source of her hurt, and I'd see that she was watched more carefully, and better taught."
Walker nodded. "You wouldn't kill her? Even if you thought she might do the same again, and all within would die?"
Rudi made a sign. "Lord and Lady bless, no!" he said in revulsion, and then wondered if he'd spoken too quickly. "What a thought! If it was necessary, we… I… would keep her guarded always."
"Some men… and some women… would have that thought. Some would act on it, and kill the child."
The single eye looked out into a world that was once again pines glimpsed through snow.
"And some would have joy in the thought; or inwardly thank the chance that gave them the argument that it was necessary."
"Lord Wanderer, I don't understand."
"You don't need to. Just remember this: the world"-somehow Rudi knew he meant more than merely Earth-"is shaped by mind. And the world in turn shapes the stuff of mind. And now a question for you: what is the symbol of Time itself?"
"An arrow?" Rudi asked.
The tall figure laughed. "A hero's answer, if I ever heard one! And I'm something of a connoisseur of heroes. That's natural enough. You're at the age for it, for war and wild faring. So… watch."