The Knight. Part 51

Water surged about me, carrying me with it. A school of fish like scarlet j ewels pa.s.sed, and met a second school of iridescent silver. They intermeshed, pa.s.sed. The iridescent fish surrounded me, and were gone.

The girl-face of Kulili lay below me as an island must lie below a bird. Her vast lips moved, but the only sound was in my mind. I made them. I shaped them as a woman molds dough, taking something from the trees, something from the beasts that felled the trees, and something from myself. I saw her hands then, hands knit of a million millions of thread-worms, and Disiri taking shape as they labored.

That dream was lost among other many others, dreams of death, long before my eyelids fluttered.

But not lost completely.

I woke at sunset, and in less than an hour I was riding north, with Gylf trotting beside the stallion. About the time the moon came up, I said, "I think I've got it. Not everything, but a lot of the things that were bothering me." Gylf glanced up. "About me?"

"Other stuff, too. I was thinking you only changed at night."

"Mostly."

"Yeah, mostly. But not always. Not when you and me and old man Toug fought the outlaws, for instance."

We went on in silence, the stallion picking his way through the darkness as the moon through the cold sky.

"Do you remember your mother, Gylf? Do you recall her at all?"

"How she smelled."

"You got separated from her, somehow. Do you remember anything about that?"

"Wasn't to go." Gylf's deep voice sounded thoughtful. "Went anyhow." I thought of little kids at home. "You wandered off?"

"Couldn't keep up. Brown people found me."

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"The Bodachan."

He grunted a.s.sent.

"They bowed to me when they gave you to me. Remember? They tried to hide their faces."

"Yep."

"I think somebody in Aelfrice educated me, Gylf. I feel like I was taught a lot there. But I don't know why, or what I learned."

"Huh!"

"I don't even know if I really learned it. Only I think the Bodachan educated you. Trained you, or whatever you're supposed to say about that. Taught you to talk, maybe. And I think probably they told you about changing shape, how to do it, and you shouldn't do it in the suns.h.i.+ne, not here in Mythgarthr."

"Pigs."

I reined up. "What did you say?"

"Pigs. Smell 'em?"

"Do you think they're close?" I strained to look about me in the darkness, and sensed rather than saw that Gylf had lifted his head to sniff the wind.

"Nope."

"We might as well go on," I decided after a minute or two. "If we can't ride through this country at night, we sure can't ride through it in the daytime." When we had topped the next hill, Gylf remarked, "Like 'em."

"The pigs?" I had been lost in my own thoughts.

"Aelf."

"They were good to you then. I'm glad."

"You, too."

"You've had a rough time of it with me."

"Just once."

"In the boat?"

"In the cave."

I rode in silence after that. There was a nightingale singing in the trees beside the river, and I found myself wondering why a bird that would be we lcomed wherever it went would choose to live in Jotunland. It made me remember how I had stayed at the cabin so I would not get in your way. I had not minded it, and in fact I had liked it a lot; and that made me realize that I liked 434.

being by myself out there in Jotunland, too. People are all right, and in fact some are truly good; but you do not see the Valfather's castle when you are with them.

Besides, it was good to be alone with Gylf again. He had been right about the forest, and I had not thought nearly enough about that while it was ha ppening. I thought a lot then about how he had gotten bigger, and about riding on his back instead of the stallion's. He was a big, big dog even when he was small, because it was the smallest he could make himself. If he could have, he would have been puppy-sized, like Mrs. Cohn's Ming Toy. It seemed to me a dog--a big dog like Gylf--was the best company anybody could have. I tried to think about who I would rather have with me than Gylf. Disiri, if she would love me. But what if she wouldn't? Disiri was wonderful, sure, but she was hard and dangerous, too. She would not be with me again until I found Eterne, and maybe not then. I thought that if she felt about me the way I felt about her, she would stick with me every second.

Garvaon would have been all right, but no Garvaon was better, because he was really Setr. Idnn would have been a terrible worry. Pouk would not have been bad. He would have wanted to talk, and I would have had to shut him up--but I knew how to do that.

Finally I hit on Bold Berthold. He would have been perfect, and as soon as I thought of him, I missed him a lot. He had never been right the whole time I had known him, because of the way one side of his head was pushed in. He forgot things he should have remembered, and most of the time he walked like he was drunk. But when you were around him a lot you could see the person he had been, the man who had wrestled bulls, and there was an awful lot of that left. There had been no school where he grew up, but his mother had taught him. He knew a lot about farming and woodcraft, and about the Aelf, too. I had never asked him what I was supposed to say when I spoke for them, and now it was too late. But I felt like he might have known. Bold Berthold would have been perfect.

Ravd would have been wonderful too. Why did the best people I met have to die? That got me thinking about his broken sword--how I had picked it up and put it down again, and cried, and I thought that cave, where we had found Ravd's broken sword, must have been the one Gylf meant. At last I said, "We've 435.

never been in a cave, except for the cave where the outlaws hid their loot, and we weren't in there long. Were you thinking of the cable tier? That was pretty bad for both of us."

"Just me," Gylf explained. "You weren't there."

"Ga.r.s.ecg's cave? I heard something about that. You were chained up in there?"

"Yep."

So Ga.r.s.ecg had chained Gylf up like the Angrborn had, and for a while I wondered why Gylf had let either one of them do it. Finally I saw that he did not like to change into what he really was. He did it when he had to fight, but he would rather let somebody chain him up than change.

"Ga.r.s.ecg's cave brings us back to shapechanging," I said, "and your shape does change, but mostly you get bigger. Ga.r.s.ecg told me once that though the Aelf could change their shapes, they were always the same size."

"No good."

"Oh, I'm sure it can be nice. Uri and Baki can take flying shapes, and I'd love to be able to do that. But if it's true, it isn't what you do. We're looking at differ ent things that only seem to be about the same." I searched for an a.n.a.logy. "When I first left the s.h.i.+p with Ga.r.s.ecg, there were these Kelpies, Sea Aelf, all around me. I was afraid I'd drown, and they said not to be afraid, that I couldn't drown as long as I was with them." Gylf raised his head again, sniffing the wind.

"Later it was just Ga.r.s.ecg and me, but I still didn't drown. After that, I dove into a pool on Glas. It went down into the sea, the sea of Aelfrice, and I was alone under the water until I found Kulili, but I still didn't drown."

"See the hedgerow?" Gylf inquired.

"I see a long, dark line," I said. "I've been wondering if it was a wall."

"Somebody's in it."

I loosened Sword Breaker in her scabbard. "I think the best thing might be to pretend we don't know he's there for a while yet. When we're closer, you might have a look at him."

"Right."

"What I was trying to say is that the Kelpies probably could protect people who were with them, but that wasn't what was protecting me. What was pro-Gene Wolfe - The Knight 436 tecting me was something I'd picked up when I was first in Aelfrice, something that looked the same 'til you looked close."

"Huh!"

"So you don't change like the Aelf change. Disiri's tall and slim, but when we were alone--it was in a cave, but you weren't with me then at all--she made herself, you know, rounder." My cheeks burned, thinking about it. "And that was nice. Only she had to be shorter, too, to do it. Is there just one person in the hedge?"

"Badger, too."

"But just one human?"

Gylf sniffed again. "Think so."

"I told Ga.r.s.ecg about Disiri, how she had to be shorter to be rounder. But I should have thought about him. He turned himself into a dragon, and the dragon was a lot bigger than he was. He made himself look like me, too, although I'm bigger than he was. Could you make yourself look like me?"

"Nope."

"Could you be that really big thing you are sometimes? Right now?" Gylf grew. His eyes blazed like coals, and fangs two feet long pushed his lips apart. A moan of fear, faint but not too faint to hear, came from the hedgerow, and he bounded away. I urged my stallion after him.

437.

CHAPTER 64.

A BLIND MAN WITH A WHITE BEARD.

B y the time I reached Gylf, he was his everyday self again, having decided that one large ordinary dog was more than enough to pin and hold an old woman. He backed away from her when I told him to, leaving her weeping and gasping, curled up like a prawn on the dry leaves under the hedge.

"Now, now." Dismounting, I knelt beside her and laid a hand on her shoulder. "Cheer up, mother. Gylf won't hurt you, and neither will I." The old woman only wept. Something dark connected the hands that covered her face, and examining it more by touch than by sight, I discovered that it was a chain of rough iron a bit longer than my forearm. "I wish I had a lamp," I said.

"Oh, no, sir! Don't wish for that!" The old woman peeped between her fingers. "Master'd see us sure, sir, if you was to light a lamp. You won't, will you?"

"No. For one thing, I don't have one. Did your master put that chain on you?

Who is he?"

"Yes, sir. He done, sir. You're one a' them knights, sir, ain't you? Like down south?"

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"That's right."

"When I was a girl, sir, I seen some that come to the village. Big men like you they was, on big horses. An' iron clothes. Has you got iron clothes, sir?" One hand left her face to stroke my arm. "Well, I never."

"Are you a slave?" An eerie wail filled my mind as I spoke; I s.h.i.+vered, but it soon dwindled to nothing. "I asked your master's name. Whose slave are you?"

"Oh, him, sir. He's not a good one, sir, not like his pa, but I've seen worse, sir. Hard though, sir. Hard." The old woman t.i.ttered. "He'd like me better if I was younger, sir. You know how that is. His father did, sir, Hymir that was, sir. I didn't like him, sir, for he was bigger'n your horse twice, sir, only he was kindish to me because a' it, only I didn't know it was kindish then, sir, only he wisht I was bigger, sir, you know, an' I found out after, for I'm too old now, sir, so Hy ndle leaves me be. It's the warm work for women, sir, is what they say, or else cold an' starve. Only I don't know which is worse."

"Hyndle is your master?"

The old woman sat up, nodding. "Yes, sir."

"Hyndle is Angrborn, from what you've said about him."

"Is that the giants, sir? Yes, sir. They do claim her for their ma, sir."

"If you're running away from him--"

"Oh, no, sir!" The old woman sounded shocked. "Why, I wouldn't do that. Why, I'd starve, sir, an' never get back to where the regular people live. An' if I did, I'd starve there, sir. Who'd feed a old woman like me?"

"I would if I could," I told her. "But you're right, I couldn't. Not now, at least. Why are you out here at night, instead of home in bed?" She t.i.ttered.

"Are you an Aelf? Have you taken this shape to have fun with me?"

"Oh, no, sir!"

"Then why are you out?"

"You wouldn't believe, sir."

Gylf whined and I stroked his head, telling him we would leave in a minute or two.

"It's a man, sir. It is, and I shouldn't have laughed. Only it's a sore long way, sir, an' I'm a-weary with working all day. If--if you could ride me on for but a 439.

little a' it, sir, I'll bless you 'til the day I die, sir." I nodded, thinking. "I was about to say that if you were running away I wished you all speed but I couldn't give you much help. I have to go to Utgard as quick as I can. I hate to put any more weight on this horse, because he's lame already. You can't weigh half what I do though, and my armor weighs half as much as I do." I stood and helped her rise, noticing just how thin and worn she looked in the moonlight. "So we'll just sit you up here." She gave a little squeal as I lifted her onto the white stallion's war saddle.

"That's it. You don't have sit astride, and I doubt that you could in those skirts. Leave your feet where they are and hold on to the cantle and pommel. I'll lead him, and he won't be going any faster than I can walk. Where are we going?"

She pointed down the hedgerow. "It's a long, long way, sir."

"It can't be." I was watching where I stepped, and did not bother to look over my shoulder at her. "Not if you were planning to walk it tonight. You would have gone home after, too? And gone to bed?"

"Yes, sir."