Wolf moon charles de l.., p.8
Wolf Moon - Charles de Lint, page 8
Kern told the whole tale twice: once on the walk back to the inn, and again sitting around the kitchen for Fion and Tolly. Tomtim was abed now. Outside it had begun to rain, starting with a fine drizzle, but once the wind picked up, the rain battered against the inn’s shutters as though demanding entrance. Interspersed with that roar was a staccato of hail.
Watching the storm’s tumult through the thick smoky panes of the kitchen window, Kern shivered, appreciating that he was in out of the weather, in manshape, instead of crouching for shelter in the undergrowth of the forest, wearing his wolfshape.
“That there can be men such as that,” Fion said, shaking her head.
“How did you best them?” Tolly wanted to know. “You’ve said nothing about that. There were four of them, and you unarmed. Did you steal a sword and lay at them with it?”
Kern shook his head. “I caught them unawares. The first stumbled into the fire while I grappled, with another. The other two, hearing their comrades’ screams, must have thought a small army was attacking. It was dark, remember, for all the fire’s light. They bolted. I meant only to scare them off, if I could, but…’
’ He shrugged uncomfortably. “They left me no choice. I killed two of them. Perhaps they deserved death for what they did to Tomtim and the stars know how many others, but I feel no pride in their deaths.”
Tolly was too caught up in his imagination to let it go at that. “But four of them! And you unarmed!”
“Do not make me out the hero, Tolly. There was nothing heroic about the way they died.”
“Well, I’m not sorry they’re dead,” Ainsy said. “And I’d feel safer knowing the other two weren’t out there still.”
Kern remembered all too well how he himself had felt, seeing the brigands torturing her uncle.
“They won’t be back,” he said, and tried to keep from his mind the image of wolf jaws snapping at a man’s neck and the taste of hot blood…Those other two would remember too. They fled because of fear and that same fear would keep them away.
“They shouldn’t have tried to hurt Master Tomtim,” Wat said firmly.
Kern looked up, startled. For a moment he thought he’d been thinking aloud, then he saw that Wat had merely taken his time worrying through the problem before making his pronouncement.
“Too true, my friend,” Kern said, and Wat beamed.
“You’re our hero,” Tolly said.
“And a modest one too!” Fion added.
Kern forced himself to relax. They knew nothing of the manner of death that had come to the brigands, saw only that one of their own had been threatened and that he had rescued him. It was one more link in the bond that was forming between them and himself. They were not bloodthirsty. They wished only to see justice being done. And, to all intents and purposes, it had been.
The rain had let up somewhat. Tolly rose and added a log to the fire. The wood was still damp and it hissed and crackled as it dried out. Kern finished his tea and tried to suppress a yawn with little success. Ainsy was instantly concerned. It was off to bed for him, then and there, and she’d brook no argument. As Tomtim was occupying his own room, she took him into hers. Kern’s tiredness came over him so suddenly that he simply let himself be led to a bed and tumbled into a deep slumber, giving no thought as to where it was that he lay.
Standing over him, Ainsy sighed good-humoredly. She tugged and pulled at his clothes, dropping them one by one on the floor, and rolled him under the covers.
Kern slept soundly until the middle of the evening. Then his eyes snapped open and his nostrils flared as he sought what had awakened him. It was only Ainsy, setting a candle holder on the nightstand. She sat down on the bed and smiled at him, albeit a little nervously. There was an unreadable something in her eyes that set an echoing emotion thundering through him.
“What time is it?” he asked.
“Late. Time for bed.”
Kern nodded a little stupidly, sleep still claiming a part of his mind. Then he looked around, and though he’d never been in her room, he knew where he was. The whole of the room whispered Ainsy, from the vase with its swirling designs and dried flowers, to the pattern of the curtains and the watercolor of a meadow that hung across from the bed. The candlelight flickered and, in the painting, the grasses that the artist had caught with brush and paint seemed to move.
“I’ve stolen your bed,” Kern said, and made to rise.
Ainsy pushed him back against the pillows. “Kern,” she said gently. “Don’t go—unless you want to.”
“I…”
“When you left last night, I…I thought perhaps you’d never come back. That something terrible would happen to you. If you’d not killed those brigands, if they’d killed you…” She shivered. “I don’t know what I’d’ve done.”
She looked as if she wanted to say more, but couldn’t find the words. Instead, she began to unbutton the top of her dress. Kern’s gaze was drawn to the movement, then lifted to her face. What had been unreadable in her eyes earlier was so no longer.
She stood and slipped off her dress, leaned forward to blow out the candle. That one vision of her, before the light died in the room, flared in Kern’s mind. Then she was in his arms, smooth and warm, her sweet scent filling his nostrils, her unbound hair tumbling about them.
Kern awoke late in the morning. He was alone in the bed, but Ainsy’s scent still drifted up to him from the pillows and sheets. Outside the window, the autumn sun was bright. A few hardy sparrows were lifting their voices in a chirping song. Kern stretched and rose with a singing in his own heart. He found his clothes draped over the back of a chair and put them on. Humming to himself, he ran his fingers through his hair and left the room. He met Fion in the hallway.
“Well, good morn to you,” she said. Humor bubbled in her eyes.
Kern grinned. “A good mom indeed! Do you know where—”
“Ainsy’s in the kitchen.”
She left him with a laugh.
He went out through the front door, washed up at the well, then came in through the kitchen. Ainsy glanced up from the hearth where she was frying com cakes in a flat pan on the hearthstones. She smiled when she saw him, lifting her face for a kiss when he stood by her.
“Last night.” she said and blushed a little. “You didn’t think I was too bold? I…I’ve never done anything like that before.”
“Never too bold,” he said, and kissed her again.
Working with Tolly in the barn that afternoon, Kern couldn’t help but wonder at his good fortune. To fall in with folk such as these, and to be accepted so readily…He thought of Ainsy and lifted her features in his mind. More than accepted. To be loved.
They were cleaning out stalls for Tomtim’s horses. The scent of hay was strong in the air— hay mixed with dung, a homey smell, an honest smell. The pitchfork felt good in Kern’s hands as he spread the hay. He thought of the woods and knew that, once in a while, he would still seek out its wonders in wolfshape, but he promised himself, here and now, that he’d wander no more. He had all he needed and could want for nothing more.
“How was the party?” he asked Tolly when they were done.
They were sitting on bales of hay, watching the horses munch their handful of oaks and apple. In all the fluster of yester-eve, Kern had never gotten around to asking.
“Grand,” Tolly said. “Just grand. I met a girl—ah, such a girl! Her name’s Sara and her father works a tract of land just the other side of Hay-on-Pen. I tell you we danced such as I’ve never danced before. And later, when the harper got up to play and we sat together at a comer table…” His eyes closed as he relived the memory. “There was only the one chair, you see…”
But Kern was no longer listening. At the word harper, the warmth of the day froze into a bitter lump in the pit of his stomach. Images of black leather and silver fur flashed through his mind and he heard again the hated music that had driven him to run until he could run no more. Then…the cliff’s edge…the feragh’s blow… falling and the cold water closing overhead…
“A harper?” he asked, trying to keep his voice level. “What was he like?”
“Like you’ve never heard before,” Tolly said. But then he remembered that Kern wasn’t from the valley. “Then again, seeing how you’ve traveled the wide world around, perhaps you have.”
Perhaps I have indeed, Kern thought bitterly, though not where you might think I did.
“Still,” Tolly went on, “this man was magic itself. He played like I’ve never heard before. He could make you weep or laugh, just with a tug of the strings. His fingers moved like water over them and the sound…ah, the sound.” He shook his head, the words simply not there to do his description justice.
“He’s staying in Hay-on-Pen?”
“At the Foxfire—till the end of the week. But he means to winter in the valley. Tomorrow’s his last night near here for a while, for he’s off to Bridgeford for a fortnight. We’re going back tomorrow night—Fion and I, and perhaps Wat. Sara promised to be there, so I wouldn’t miss it for the world. The music and her…” He sighed.
“Perhaps Tomtim’ll lend me a horse so that I could give her a ride home. Wouldn’t that be perfect?”
Kern nodded.
“You should come along—you and Ainsy.”
“Perhaps we will,” Kern said, but his chest was tight with anger and fear.
He should have known that what he’d found here was too good to last. He didn’t know why the harper had raised the feragh with his music to hunt him, but the simple fact that he was still here in the valley meant that it would be unsafe for Kern to stay. Yet why should he be driven out? He had as much right as any… Kern shook his head. He’d been about to say as any man, but he wasn’t a man, was he? He was something else again—part man, aye, but part beast as well. And what were beasts fit for but to hunt? He clenched his fists at his side. He felt so helpless.
“Kem? Are you all right?”
He looked up. Tolly was regarding him worriedly. With an effort, he pushed the turmoil inside him back a little.
“I’m fine,” he said. “I was just thinking. Why don’t you see what else Ainsy wants us to do? I’ll be along in a moment.”
Tolly nodded uncertainly. Left to himself, Kern stared at the barn floor. If only he had some defense against the harper’s magic. Then he’d face him and be done with it. But there was too much power in the harper. He was not some brigand who could be frightened off by his wolfshape, and Kern didn’t want to make a habit of that anyway. Talk would start up, strangers would be sought out. In any case, the harper could call his own shapes to life with his music. The feragh. Perhaps worse. But to be so helpless …He stood and, picking up the pitchfork, flung it against the wall. It fell with a clatter to the barn floor and lay still.
He regarded the implement dully. Opening and closing his big hands, he wished he had the harper’s throat in them. Then slowly he squelched his rage. He didn’t have to flee. More than likely, the harper thought him dead. And if the harper remained ignorant, if Kern himself kept out of the mage’s way, how could he know that his prey still lived?
The idea of hiding from his foe filled Kern with repugnance, but remembering the power of the harpmagic and the feragh…What else could he do? Against them, his own strength was futile. He was helpless, but damned if he’d run again. He would stay out of the harper’s way, but if the time came, no matter that the thought of it filled him with a queasy fear, he would face it. What he’d found here was too precious. He had the choice of fleeing now and knowing the warmth no more, or staying, stealing what days he could, until he and the harper met face-to-face again. And perhaps, just perhaps, that day would never come.
But it wasn’t to be as easy as that. When he was with Ainsy later that afternoon, she was bubbling over with excitement over the harper and going to hear him. He couldn’t forestall their going—not without having to explain why. He would not lie to her, but he didn’t have the courage to tell her the truth. So, barring the arrival of paying guests, they planned to close down the inn and the whole lot of them would make the trip into Hay-on-Pen to hear the harper play.
Seventh
The Foxfire Inn was smaller than the Tinker, and crowded to the rafters that evening. It sat between a smithy and a carryall shop on Tander’s Row, one of two streets that began nowhere, cut across the King’s Road through Hay-on-Pen, and emptied into the river. There was a courtyard out back, with a well and three apple trees, and stables where Tolly and Kern put up the horses and cart while the others waited for them out front. Behind the stables were fields, some cultivated, some pasture, and beyond them an arm of the Tamwood.
The inn was half full when they arrived, and filling rapidly. In another hour or so there wouldn’t be free room to stand, little say a place to sit. Needles prickled between Kern’s shoulder blades as they stepped over the threshold, but he tried to put up as best a face as he could.
Having allowed himself to come this far, there was no sense in spoiling it for the others.
There came a general hubbub of greeting at their entrance—for many of the folk knew Fion and Tolly, if not the others—and no quiet way to find a table. Kern wanted to sit in the back, where the light wasn’t so strong, but Fion led them to a spot on the edge of the dance floor where tables and benches had simply been pushed aside to open a space, eight feet or so by ten. Room was made for them with a furor of jests and laughter, and there they were: dead across from the hearth where the fiddlers and flute players would stand to play for the dancers and where, later, the harper himself would sit to play.
As surreptitiously as possible, Kern studied the Foxfire’s patrons but couldn’t see anyone even vaguely resembling the harper. Where was he then? Had he already seen Kern and guessed/ known who he was? The knot remained in Kern’s stomach and he wondered again why he was even here. Pride? A need to end it? Or something simpler? He turned to his companions and his heart did its by now familiar flip when he looked at Ainsy.
She sat at his side, decked out in her best dress, radiant with the night’s promise of excitement. Her skirt was a deep rust that hugged her waist and hips, then fell down in plaits to just below her knee. The bodice was a rich cream color, with a laced throat and flounced sleeves.
Hanging over the back of her chair was a woollen shawl that matched the autumn rust of her dress.
She caught him watching her and leaned over to kiss him soundly on the lips. “Why so grimfaced?” she asked.
He found a smile for her. “Not used to parties, I suppose.”
“Neither am I,” she replied. “But that’s no excuse not to have fun. After all—”
The rest of her words were lost as the music started up. An old fiddler stood at the hearth, pulling quick notes from his instrument, his beard so bushy that Kern was sure he’d catch his bow in it. His leg went up and down, keeping time to the rhythm of the drummer’s bodhran. He was a sober-faced man, hunched over his goatskin instrument, the double-headed tipple a blur as he beat away. Completing the trio was a slender woman in her late forties, playing the flute.
The tune they played was a well-known jig called variously “The Rigs of the Tattershall” or “The Tattershall Jig,” depending on who the players were. Kern smiled. He’d heard that tune a hundred times before and never realized where in fact it was from until now. The Tattershall was the same river that had saved him from the harper. The harper. And where was he now?
“Let’s dance,” Ainsy said, and pulled him to his feet.
Kern loved to dance. He clomped about the dance floor in his borrowed boots—just a tad too large for him—careful not to tread on his partner’s feet. She was like a feather in his arms. One moment her hair was tickling his cheek, the next she was throwing her head back and laughing at the fun.
He saw Fion haul Wat to his feet and was surprised at the big man’s lightness of foot. There was already a crowd of young men standing about, asking for a dance, but Fion only shook her head, saying, “Later.” Tolly still sat at the table. Beside him was a dark-haired girl with her head full of curls and bows that must be Sara. She had broad friendly features and was giggling as Tolly whispered in her ear. Tomtim, his face still bruised, but his spirits much recovered, caught Kern’s eye and winked.
One tune led into another and the dancing went on. As the dance floor was so small, the folk took their turns on it, which was just as well since it gave them a chance to both catch their breath and fill up their mugs once more. The barmaids were kept busy running from tap to table, and standing behind the bar, drawing the pints, was a tall man with a wide grin who must, Kern decided, be the inn’s proprietor, he looked so pleased.
Kern almost forgot his fear as he became caught up in the night’s merriment. But when a hush fell over the crowd and he saw the tall harper working his way through the tables, instrument in hand, his good humor drained away.
There was no forgetting that lean face. The knot in Kern’s stomach drew tight again, and when the harper was settled on his stool and pulled the first chords from his harp, a deadly chill ran up the shapechanger’s spine. There was no forgetting his touch on the harp either.
Slouching in his chair, Kern tried to keep from sight, but it seemed he need not have bothered. The harper played, a small smile tugging the corners of his mouth as he bent over his instrument. His eyes were mild as he looked over the crowd. He passed over Kern without a flicker of recognition. He saw me only in wolf-shape, Kern thought. Why should he recognize me now as a man? Perhaps I’m still safe and the secret’s mine alone.
And so it would seem.
The harper played one tune after the other with heart-stopping skill. The airs were poignant, tenderly measured, with harmonies that gave the impression that two or three instruments played, instead of one. The dance tunes had a stately grace to them, so that it was the heart that kept time to them, rather than the feet. Images formed in the minds of the listeners, one dissolving into the next as the music changed its moods. Harping and images coalesced into one experience so that one couldn’t tell whether the ears heard or the eyes saw, they were so entwined.
