He growled quietly to himself. He liked
Kittisha well enough, and had thoroughly enjoyed her company in his
tent just two sleeps before, but in his present mood he did not
care to talk to her. She tended to prattle on endlessly. When he
was in the right frame of mind it was funny and endearing, but just
now he knew it would only irritate him more. He pretended not to
see her—just enough darkness remained that he could do that without
risk of insulting her—and instead veered off to the right, around
the side of his own tent and those of the other unmarried young
men, headed out of the village by the shortest available route.
He marched on past the tidy herb gardens,
past the cornfields—which, he recalled with annoyance, were the
domain of Mardon’s father, cultivated by the entire family—and well
out into the surrounding grassland before he calmed sufficiently to
think at all. His pace gradually slowed, and on a whim he turned
his steps eastward.
He walked on, and he thought.
His life was not going right. He felt that,
but he could not really explain it. It all seemed to hinge somehow
on his encounter with Geste the Trickster, the most playful of all
the Powers. Before that he had seen nothing wrong with his life,
but now he could see little that was right.
Had Geste played some subtle trick on him,
perhaps? Something that altered his feelings, something far more
devious than the rather silly and simple-minded stunt with Lord
Grey’s mare?
He shook his head at the thought. He did not
really believe that was it.
Fifty wakes earlier he had been a normal
young man, happily pursuing wealth, glory, and young women. He was
a fine hunter, one of the best in the village—that was no boast,
but simple fact. He was tall, strong, and if not staggeringly
handsome, certainly not ugly. His family was respected and
respectable, his brother and three sisters all well enough behaved,
both parents alive and healthy, his various aunts, uncles, and
cousins causing no problems. He had had no bitter quarrels or
disagreements, nothing beyond the ordinary household squabbles that
every family had, and even those had been few and mild of late.
He had almost no money, of course, but that
was nothing. An unmarried man needed little enough. All he really
owned was his bachelor’s tent and a few personal items, but he had
never lacked for the essentials, and his future was bright. Hunting
was steady work, and prestigious, and a good hunter could make
plenty of money once he had paid off his debt to his parents.
Bredon’s debt was down to a matter of a dozen meals or so, and his
parents were not pressing him. If anything, pleased and proud as
they were at how quickly he was paying, they seemed to be
encouraging him to take his time.
As for women, for the past few seasons,
since he had reached man-height and his complexion had begun
clearing, he had had little trouble in finding willing females to
share his bedding—though not always those he might have preferred.
He had taken the occasional romantic setback in stride. He had had
friends of both sexes, and was rarely lonely.
He had been happy, he knew he had.
Then he had glimpsed the mare when she
wandered near the village, and he had set out in pursuit. A fine
horse was wealth he could appreciate. He had spent three wakes
chasing her, almost six full lights and five darks, with his
childhood friend and inseparable companion beside him, and they had
trapped her.
And that was where everything had gone
wrong. By rights, they should have struggled with her, tied her,
dragged her back home, and spent weeks breaking and training her.
They would have worked hard with her, certainly, but their efforts
would have been rewarded with the respect of the village, and with
the knowledge of their own skills proven, as well as with a superb
mount.
Instead, they had left the horse out on the
plain and had come back with nothing but the strange red disk. A
legend had come to life, appearing out of nowhere and snatching
their quarry from them.
Even coming back empty-handed because the
mare escaped or died would have been more satisfying, he thought.
They would have been honorably defeated, to learn from their
mistakes and be better prepared the next time.
Instead, they had come back, and told their
story, which Atheron the Storyteller had declared fully authentic
and consistent with the known characteristics of the Powers. They
had shown the disk. The villagers had smiled, applauded them,
honored them, feasted them—but it was all somehow unsatisfying and
empty.
Bredon realized, with a start, what was
really lacking. The villagers treated him with awe and wonder, they
honored him—but the respect that he had sought was not there.
And why should it be, he asked himself
silently. He had done nothing worthy of respect. He had not proven
his worth as a hunter, as he had set out to do. He had, instead,
been the butt of a demi-god’s stupid joke. People might stare at
him in awe, they might honor him outwardly for his contact with
divinity, but inwardly they thought no better of him than before.
His encounter had been sheer luck, after all. Geste might have
picked on anyone, anyone at all. He had not cared in the least that
Bredon was the best young hunter in the village. What did a Power
care about hunting?
And had Bredon come out of the encounter
with honor? No, not really. He had done nothing.
The respect that was truly lacking, he saw,
was his own self-respect.
He should have defied Geste, he thought. The
little man was a Power, certainly, but that was no reason for
Bredon to have stared at him so stupidly, gaped so awkwardly,
spoken so foolishly. He should have at least
tried
to take
the mare, despite what Geste said.
Of course, Geste was a Power, a
demi-god.
But then, the tales said that most of the
Powers, including Geste, respected those who stood up to them
despite the incredible danger of doing so. Some stories said that
the Powers were only men and women come from another, higher world,
a world where fortune had gifted everyone with immortality and
magic. If that was so, if Geste was just a man, then Bredon had
disgraced himself, given up his own dignity as an adult, in not
standing up to his tormentor. He had forsaken his own common-sense
view of the world and been overawed by Geste’s supposed
supernatural power.
He had done better than Mardon, though.
Mardon had cowered and cringed, and that had been eating away at
both of them since they had returned to the village. Their
friendship was breaking up, Bredon knew. Mardon did not want the
red disk so much as he wanted not to have behaved so badly, but
there was nothing either of them could do about it. It was all in
the past. Neither of them could change the past. The disk was just
a symbol of the parts they had played, and if he gave it to Mardon
he knew it would do no good. In fact, he suspected it would make
things worse, as Mardon could then accuse Bredon of patronizing
him.
Mardon was a coward, and had acted like a
coward, and was ashamed of it. He was redirecting that shame into
envy of Bredon, and it was destroying a friendship that had endured
since the days when both wore diapers.
Bredon sighed.
Geste had done more harm than he knew.
Bredon wondered whether the little man would laugh at the
unhappiness he had caused.
He stopped walking, pulled the disk from his
pocket, and studied it. It gleamed like a ruby in the light of the
fast-rising sun.
If he broke it, would the Trickster really
come?
And if he did, could he put right the wrong
he had done? Could he cure Mardon’s memory of his own cowardice,
give Bredon back his self-respect?
Surely, such things were beyond even the
Powers. They could move mountains, but could they repair a damaged
soul?
Even if Geste could cast a spell of some
sort, and make Bredon and Mardon once again happy and content,
would either of them want a magical cure of that kind?
He put the disk back in his pocket.
He turned and faced westward for a moment,
considering. The sun was well up; he had been walking toward it for
an hour or more. If he hurried a little he could get back to the
village before the sun reached its mid-secondlight zenith.
Did he want to?
What would he find in the village? Mardon
might still be in his tent, which would mean chasing him out. That
would be unpleasant. He did not want to see Mardon again for
awhile.
There was no one else he wanted to see,
either. None of his relationships with the village girls had
progressed beyond casual entertainment, really. His siblings were
busy with their own affairs, and were still amused by the story of
his meeting with the Trickster. His parents steadfastly refused to
intervene in his life now that he had reached manhood and pitched
his tent, and for the most part, despite their pride in him, they
acted as little more than polite strangers—strangers he owed money.
And most of his old friends had fallen away, somehow, in the last
forty wakes.
He would be alone in the village.
That was a depressing thought. He hated
being alone.
If he was going to be alone, he decided, he
might as well be alone out in the open. Having other people around
him would only make it worse. He turned eastward again and marched
on.
Only hours later, when the last light had
died and he had trampled himself a bed in the tall grass for the
sleeping dark, did he suddenly decide where he was going.
Not far to the east stood the so-called
Forbidden Grove. He knew the place was reputed to be the territory
of one of the Powers, a female Power, called Lady Sunlight of the
Meadows. She was by far the closest of the Powers—excluding the
wanderers like Rawl and Geste, of course, who could be anywhere.
She was more or less the patron deity of the area, as much as there
was one. He could not remember any tales about her, or at least
none of the details—he had never taken any interest in the stories
Atheron and or his daughter Kithen told—but she was said to be an
important Power all the same. Somewhere in the grove, or just
beyond it, she was supposed to have her personal demesne, her place
of power, a place called, naturally, The Meadows, where she had a
great glittering palace.
Bredon’s uncle Taredon had pointed the grove
out to him once, when a hunt brought them this way, so he knew
where it was. He should, he thought, be able to reach it by the
next wake’s second sunrise.
He would go there, he told himself, go right
into the grove, taboo or not. He had survived an encounter with one
Power already, but had lost his self-respect in doing it. Maybe if
he trespassed fearlessly on the lands of another he could regain a
little of his pride, show himself that it had been surprise, more
than fear, that had let the Trickster get the better of him.
Of course, that assumed he would survive
trespassing in the grove. He could not be sure of that.
Before meeting Geste he had never paid any
attention to the Powers. No one else in the village had ever met
one—at least, no one still alive, though tales were told about
various ancestors. The Powers had been nothing to him but stories
for children, and he had not considered them relevant to the real,
everyday world around him.
He now saw that he had been wrong. The
Powers were real and relevant, and if he wanted to understand the
world he needed to know how to deal with them, whether to ignore
them as he always had, or to actively avoid them, or to seek them
out. This mysterious Lady Sunlight was close at hand—if she
actually existed—and as good a subject for investigation as
any.
He would not embarrass himself again.
With that thought circling through his mind
he fell asleep.
“
...Lady Sunlight of the Meadows is among the
most shy and retiring of all the Powers, at least as far as mortals
are concerned. She takes no interest in worldly matters, and in
fact barely lives in our world at all—her glittering palace is
almost impossible to find, for the paths in the Forbidden Grove
twist and turn beneath mortal feet, always leading away from the
Meadows. When one perseveres and finally, by charm or luck, does
reach the place where her palace stands, one might not even see it,
for it is not always there. And no one can enter it, for there are
no doors. Lady Sunlight wants no guests. Her interests lie in the
sparkle of sunlight on a dewdrop, or the shape of a flower’s
petals, not in the mundane affairs of everyday people. She has no
desire to speak with mortals—if, in fact, she can speak at all, for
no mortal has ever heard her voice. Those who wander near the
Forbidden Grove sometimes glimpse her, as a flash of movement in
the corner of the eye, or a reflection in a stream, or a shadow in
the sun, but none has ever heard her speak. Those who dare venture
into the Grove, perhaps to the boundaries of the Meadows, can
sometimes catch sight of her briefly, as she runs laughing through
the fields, or tenderly cares for her flowers, or combs the golden
hair that reaches to her ankles. Of these who glimpse her, those
who return to their villages—and not all of them do, for some pine
away for love of her, spending their lives watching for another
glimpse or waiting in hope of hearing her speak—but those who do
return to their are never quite the same. They speak often of her
beauty, though they can never describe any details, and they spend
much of their time staring off into space, in the general direction
of the Meadows...”
—
from the tales of Atheron the
Storyteller
The grove made him uneasy. He moved forward
cautiously, the rich, earthy smell filling his nostrils with every
step.