Masters of Fantasy Part 40

In the morning, he could scarcely understand his panic of the night. He stood, stretched, and looked around him. His backward path was clear, a trampled line that twisted and turned like that of a fleeing rabbit. He thought he had gone straight, but by day he could see that he had not come half so far from the . . . the highway . . . as he hoped.

Remembering that, he looked again at his sister's gift. Clearly wood, carved to the likeness of a knife, and polished. In the low slanting light, he could see the incised design he'd felt before. He ran his forefinger over it, but nothing happened, and the lines themselves meant nothing to him. Whatever it was, it had driven away those . . . whatever they were.

He was hungry, but he often woke hungry at home, and nothing to eat until ch.o.r.es were done. He was thirsty, but he would come to water soon; all he had to do was go on. He looked around at the wide, green, flower-spangled world, and saw nothing he knew. He told himself he was happy about that. No father and brothers to bully him; no sisters to scold and laugh.

As morning wore on, hunger and thirst vied for his attention. Thirst won; by afternoon, he could think of nothing but water . . . and no water could he see, or sign of it. No friendly line of trees beside a brook or river . . . all around the gra.s.s lifted and flattened in the wind, billowing . . . the hills as distant as ever, flat and s.h.i.+mmery against the pale sky. He went on, into the lowering sun, hoping to get to the hills . . . surely he would find trees and water there.

Instead, he trod on something that yielded beneath his foot, and sharp pain stabbed his leg. With a gasp and cry, he threw himself away from whatever it was, and caught a glimpse of a long, sinuous body, checkered brown and yellow, as he landed hard on his side. He scrambled to his feet, but whatever it had been did not follow him. His leg burned and throbbed; the pain ran up and down his leg like scalding water. Groaning, he sat down again, and pulled up his trews. Two tiny dark holes a thumbwidth apart, and a rapidly purpling bruise around them. He felt sick and shaky. It must have been a serpent, but the little gra.s.s and water snakes near home had been smaller. They never bit anyone-of course he'd never stepped on one . . .

Suddenly his mouth was full of sour mucus; he spat, and blinked away tears. Poison. It was some kind of poison. His mother's mother, before she died, had said something about poison from evil creatures. Cut it out, she'd said, or cut it off. The wooden knife could not be sharp or strong enough, but it was all he had.

He touched the point of it to one of the fang-marks, but he could not make himself push it in . . . the pain was already beyond bearing, and how could he cause more. Thick yellow ooze came from the wound, running down over his leg like honey. He stared, blinked, and realized he felt better. The flow of liquid stopped. He moved the knife point to the other fang-mark, holding his breath . . . and again, the thick yellow oozed out, ran down his leg. His belly steadied back to the simple ache of hunger; his mouth was dry again. As he watched, the fang-mark closed over, leaving a dry pale dimple. The other one still gaped; he moved the knife tip back to it, and it too closed over.

Gra.s.s rustled; he jerked up, stared. Unwinking eyes stared at him from a narrow head on a long, coiled body. Another serpent, this one much larger. A pink forked tongue flickered out; he flinched, scooting backward, and held the knife forward. The serpent's head lowered.

Slowly, trembling, he clambered to his feet. He wanted to back away but what if there was another

one . . . ? Holding the knife toward the serpent, he dared a quick glance behind him.

At his back stood someone he had never seen, someone who had appeared . . . he almost forgot the serpent, in that astonishment, but the serpent moved, and that caught his eye. Slowly, without appearing to move at all, it lowered its coils until it lay flat to the ground, and then, too fast to follow, whipped about and vanished into the gra.s.s.

"You're very lucky," the person said.

Dall could say nothing. He shook his head a little in his confusion. How could a full-grown man, dressed

in fine leathers and a s.h.i.+rt with a lace collar, and boots to the thigh, have walked up on him without making a noise?"I surprised you," the person said. "As you surprised the serpent's child.""I don't know you," Dall said. He could think of nothing else to say."Nor I you," the stranger said. "But it needs no names to befriend someone, does it?""I-I'm Dall," Dall said. He almost added Gory the Tall's third son, but didn't because he had left home and could no longer claim his father's name.

"And I am Verthan," the stranger said. "You're a long way from a village, Dall. Gone hunting a lost sheep?"

"No . . . I left home," Dall said.

"You travel light," the stranger-Verthan-said. "Most men setting out would take at least a waterskin."

"Didn't have one," Dall muttered.

"Then you're thirsty, surely," Verthan said. "Have a drink of mine." He unhooked from his belt a skin

dyed scarlet, bound in brown.

Dall reached for it, his mouth suddenly dryer than ever, but then pulled his hand back. He had nothing to trade, nothing at all, and the deepest rule he knew was hearth-sharing. He shook his head and shrugged.

"Nothing to share? You must have left in a hurry." Verthan shook his head. "You've set yourself a hard

road, lad. But you'll not go much farther without water-water you must have."

Dall felt the words as if they were a hot summer wind in the hayfield; he felt dryness reach down his throat to his very marrow.

"I'll tell you what," Verthan said. "Why not trade your knife? Come evening, if you'll travel with me,

we'll come to a place where you can gather early fruits, and we can trade it back to you. How's that?" He held out the water skin. Dall could see the damp surface of it; he could almost smell the water inside it; he could certainly hear it as the man shook it.

His hand jerked, as if someone had caught it from behind, and he felt the edges of the knife against the insides of his clenched fingers. The memory of the snake venom oozing out, and the sickness leaving . . . the memory of Julya's face, as she handed him the knife . . . He shook his head, mute because his mouth was too dry to speak.

Verthan's expression sharpened into anger, then relaxed again into humor. "You are not as stupid as you look," he said. Then, as wind blows a column of smoke, he blew away, and where he had stood a rustle in the gra.s.s moved off downslope.

Dall's knees loosened and he slumped down into the gra.s.s, frightened as he was of the gra.s.s and all that lived in it. He sat huddled a long time, hardly even aware of his thirst and hunger, while fear fled ice- cold up and down his veins.

Some while later, when fear had worn itself out, he became aware of something wet touching his hand.

Too tired now to jump away, he looked. The wooden knife in his heart hand, blunt as it was, had poked a little way through the gra.s.s stems into the soil beneath. The wet soil, he now saw, for the base of the gra.s.s stems around it glistened with water, and his hand and the knife.

At once his thirst returned, fierce as fire, and he scrabbled at the place, digging with the knife. He could see it, he could smell it . . . when he had opened a s.p.a.ce the size of his cupped palm, he pushed his face into it and a sucked in a half-mouthful of water flavored with shreds of dry gra.s.s and dirt. He spat out the mud, and swallowed the scant water. The tiny pool refilled; he drank again, this time with less mud in his mouth. Again. Again. And again. Each a scant mouthful, but each restoring a little of his strength.

When he had drunk until he could hold no more, he sat up and looked again at his sister's gift. Through his mind ran the events since he'd left home-the attack of the little people, the snakes, the phantom of the air, his thirst. Each time the thing had saved him, and he did not understand how. It looked like something an idle boy might whittle from any handy stick of wood. He himself had no skill at carving,

but he had seen such things: little wooden animals and people and swords. As far as he knew-which seemed less far than the day before-none of those were magical. And so . . . his mind moved slowly, carefully, along the unaccustomed paths of logic . . . this must not be what it looked like. It must be something else. But what?

By now the sun hung low over the hills. He looked around. He had no idea where to go, or how to avoid the dangers he now knew inhabited these apparently harmless meadows. Only the gift that had saved him . . . could it help him find his way?

He bent again to the tiny pool of water, and then stood, holding the knife as always in his heart hand.

How could he tell it his need? His hand twitched, without his intention. The thought came into his mind that he had not needed to tell the knife what his need was before. He held out his hand, palm up, and opened it. The knife squirmed on his hand-he almost dropped it in a moment of panic-and the tip pointed the way he least expected, downslope and back the way he had come. Toward that perilous footpath. Even-if he thought about it-toward home.

He did not want to go that way. Surely, with the knife's help, he could go on the way he wanted, into the

hills . . . he might find more dangers, but the knife would protect him. It might even feed him.

His hand fell with the sudden weight of the knife, and lost its grip; the knife disappeared into the tall gra.s.s.

Dall cried out, wordless surprise and fear, and threw himself into the gra.s.s, feeling among the springy stems for something stiff, unyielding, wooden. Nothing. He tried to unthink the thought he'd had, promising the thing that he would follow its guidance always, in everything, if it would only come back.

Always? The question hung in the air, unspoken by mortal voice, but ringing in Dall's ears like the blow of a hammer.

"I'm sorry," he muttered aloud. "Julya gave it to me, and she loved me . . ."

A gust of wind flattened the gra.s.s over his head; pollen stung his eyes. He turned to blink and clear them, and there it lay, on top of the gra.s.s he had flattened while sitting on it. He reached out gingerly, wondering if it would let him touch it, and picked it up.

No heavier than at first. No less plain wood than at first. It lay motionless in his hand and when he stood he was facing the way the blade had pointed.

"All right then," he said. "Show me."

With water enough in his belly, the worst of the day's heat past, and the sun and high ground behind him, he made quick progress down and across the slope. Now his feet found good purchase wherever he trod, now the wind at his back cooled him without burning his face.

In the last of the light, he came to a stream fringed with trees. Was it the same stream he had crossed at the ford near his home? He could not tell, in the gloom. The knife had led him between the fringing trees to a flat rock beside the water, and there he drank his fill again, and there he found ready to hand the green leaves he knew could be eaten safely. He fell asleep on the rock, warded on three sides by clean running water, and woke before dawn, cold and stiff but otherwise unharmed, the knife still in his hand.

He expected the knife to lead him back home, to return it to his sister Julya, but instead it led him upstream, and insisted (for its guidance strengthened as the day went on) that he stay within the trees beside the stream, and on this. .h.i.ther side. Because of the trees, he could not see the land around, but he knew it rose by the ache in his legs from climbing, always climbing, ever more steeply as the water's note changed from the quiet gurgle lower down to the high, rapid laugh as it fell over taller and taller

rocks.

Near the stream he found a few early berries, gleaming red, and ate them, along with more of the greens.

He pried loose a few clingsh.e.l.ls from rocks and sucked out the sweet meat inside; he managed to tickle one fish in the noon silence, when the knife had made it clear (how he was still not sure) that he should

rest by the stream awhile. Always he had water to drink, so by nightfall he was well content to sleep again, this time in a hollow between oak roots.

Midmorning the next day, following the stream ever higher, he came out of the woods into a wide bare

land of low gra.s.s, with here and there tussocks of reeds and an occasional gnarled shrub. Now he could see over the land-see how the trees traced out the stream below in its twists and turns and joinings with others . . . see little columns of smoke far in the distance that might have come from farmhouse chimneys . . . see the great green sea of gra.s.s breaking on the hills' knees, was.h.i.+ng up this high as gra.s.s that would not cover the top of his foot.

Upslope, where the stream leaped in silver torrents from rock to rock, the land heaped up in mounds as far as he could see, all the way to the pale sky. Off to his right a great rocky wall, blue-shadowed and white-topped, had risen as if from nowhere . . . far higher than the hills he'd seen from home.

You wanted adventure. Again that voiceless voice, those words with no breath, hung in the air. Now will you follow? Or shall I take you home?

Against the memory of home-sweeter now than it had been when he left-came the memory of that first night and day of terror, and then the pleasanter but still strenous days of travel since. What finally determined him to keep going was the memory of Julya. She would be glad to see him come home, but she alone had believed he might do something . . . become something. For her he would keep going until he could bring her . . . something worth the gift she had given him.

"I'll go on," Dall said.