“Pretty dull at the moment,“ he said. “Let me ashore and I’ll whet it for you.”
“Oh, no!” Her smile turned predatory. She wasn’t used to humans, wherefore his clumsy acting could fool her, but neither was she stupid. “Let’s talk of more likely things.”
“You can hold my feet, or tether me, or whatever,” he said. “I do have to get into the air to sharpen this knife. Such metal requires the heat of a fire, you see.”
She shook her head. With a wry grin, he relaxed. It had been a long shot anyway, and for the moment, with this supple creature beside him, he wasn’t sorry to have failed. “As you wish,” he said, dropped the knife and laid his hands on her flanks.
Perhaps his lack of insistence deceived her. Or perhaps, thought Holger, not without an inward exasperated curse, his destiny had too much momentum to end here. For she said, “I have a grindstone among my sacrifices. Will that not serve? I understand such a device will sharpen a blade.”
He fought down a shiver. “Tomorrow.”
She darted from his embrace. “Now, now,” she said. Her eyes glistened. He had noticed that lunatic capriciousness in the Faerie folk too. “Come, you should see my treasures.” She tugged his hand.
Reluctantly, he followed. The pike glided behind. His throat was almost too tight for speech, but he managed conversation: “Did you say the barbarians make you offerings?”
“Aye.” Her laughter jeered. “Each spring they troop hither to do worship and cast into the lake that which they think will please me. Some does.” She parted a living arras. “I bring the gifts here to my treasury. The foolish ones are always good for a jest, if naught else.”
Holger was first aware of the bones. Rusel must have whiled away many hours arranging the parts of skeletons in artistic patterns. The skulls which studded that lattice had jewels in their eyesockets. Elsewhere were stacked cups, plates, ornaments, looted from civilized lands by the heathen or not unskillfully made by their own smiths. In one corner was a disordered heap of miscellaneous objects that must also have been considered valuable by the tribesmen (if they were not simply sloughing their white elephants off on the demon)—water-ruined books from some monastery, a crystal globe, a dragon’s tooth, a broken statuette, a child’s sodden rag doll at which Holger found his eyes stinging a little, and junk less identifiable after long immersion. The nixie burrowed into the pile with both arms.
“So they give you humans,” said Holger, very softly.
“A youth and a maiden each year. I’ve really no use for them. I’m not a troll or a cannibal woman to enjoy such meat, but they seem to think so. And the sacrifices do wear the most beautiful costumes.” Rusel threw him a glance over her shoulder, as innocent as the look of a cat. She had no soul.
With a surge of strength under the white skin she hauled the grindstone forth. The wooden framework appeared rotten and the bronze fittings were badly corroded; but the wheel did still respond to the crank. “Aren’t my baubles pretty?” she asked, waving her hand around the room. “Choose what you wish. Anything, my lord, just so you include myself.”
In spite of the bones, Holger must force his words: “Let’s take care of the dagger first. Can you turn the wheel?”
“As fast as you like. Try me.” Her look suggested he was welcome to try anything. But she planted her feet on the sand and whirled the crank till he felt a vortex in the water. More loud than through air, the drone entered his ears, and the whine as he laid the knife to the wheel.
The pike crowded close, their gaunt heads aimed at him.
“Faster,” he said. “If you can.”
“Aye!” Metal screamed. The frame vibrated; green flakes drifted from the bolts. Christ, let this thing hold together long enough!
The pike flicked themselves closer. Rusel was taking no chances while he held a weapon. Her pets could strip him of flesh in three minutes. Holger rallied what courage remained to him and narrowed his attention to the dagger. He didn’t know if his scheme would work. But even here under the lake, the blade must be heating up, and he could see the fine cloud of metal dust grow thicker around its edge.
“Are you done?” panted Rusel. Her hair had plastered itself to shoulders and breasts and belly. The amber eyes smoldered at him.
“Not yet. Faster!” He leaned his mass against the knife.
The flare nearly blinded him. Magnesium will burn in water.
Rusel shrieked. Holger guarded his face with one hand and swung the knife at the fish. One of them slashed his calf. He kicked himself free, broke through the green curtains and upward.
The nixie circled beyond the blue-white glare, beyond the range of his own dazzled eyes. She yelled at her pike. One darted near. Holger waved the torch and it fled. Either the fish couldn’t stand the ultra-violet themselves or—more likely—Rusel’s influence over them was bounded by distance like all magic, and she couldn’t get near enough to Holger to set the water wolves on him.
He kicked with his legs and clawed with his free hand. Would he never reach the top? As if across light-years he heard the nixie’s tone change to softness. “’Olger, ’Olger, would you leave me? You’ll ride to your doom in a barren land. ’Olger, come back. You know not what pleasures we could have—”
He screwed his will power tight and plowed on. Her rage burst forth. “Die, then!” Suddenly he inhaled water. The spell was off him. He choked. His lungs seemed to catch fire. He almost dropped his magnesium torch. He saw Rusel dart near in a cloud of her pike. He thrust her back with the cruel light, closed his mouth and swam. Up, up, darkness roiled in his brain, strength drained from his muscles, but up.
He broke the surface, coughed, spat, and gulped his chest full of air. A gibbous moon touched the lake with broken light. He held the torch below while he floundered toward the gray shore. It burned out just as he waded into the reeds. He ran to get well inland before he collapsed.
The cold struck his wet clothes and went on through. He lay with clattering teeth and waited for enough energy to seek the camp. He didn’t feel victorious. He’d won this round, but there would be others. And... and... oh, damn everything, why did he have to escape so soon?
20
AT LAST HE MADE his plashy way back. The stone lifted from the ground like a ship, black in the night, and those moon-tinged clouds that the wind whipped along behind it gave an illusion that the ship was under weigh. Through what seas? wondered Holger. The fire had burned to embers, a riding light the color of clotted blood. As he crawled up on top, he saw the horses bunched together in a shadowy mass that might have been a cabin amidships. Carahue stood at the prow, staring north. The wind that skirled as if through unseen shrouds flapped his cloak with cracking noises. Moonlight shimmered off his drawn saber.
A furious little form seized Holger at the waist and tried to shake him. “Mon, where’ve ye been the while?” cried Hugi. “We’ve been fretted sick o’er ye. Na word or track past the lake’s edge, till ye return soaked and reeking o’ wicked places. Wha’ happened?”
Carahue half turned, so that Holger caught the gleam of an eye under the spiked helmet. But the Saracen’s attention remained afar. Holger looked that way. The edge of this vale cut off view of the mountains beyond; he thought, though, he saw a dim wavering redness, as if a great fire burned somewhere there.
Fear struck him. “Where’s Alianora?” he snapped.
“Gone in search of you, Sir Rupert,” Carahue answered. His tone remained smooth. “When we could not trace you, she assumed swan guise to look from above. That blaze yonder had already been kindled, and I fear she went thither. There can be no good gathering around it, in this land.”