Daughter of Regals (24 page)

“Now!” he said gladly.
It pleased him to think that I understood his desire. “I only came to tell you
before I left.”

“You are wiser than you
think, my brother,” said I. And because I am not a man who hesitates when he
has made his decision, I swung my fist at once and hit mad Festil a blow that
stretched him on the dirt of the smithy. “I have no wish to lose my only
brother,” I said, though it’s true he was not like to hear me. Then I bore him sleeping
to our hut and put him in his bed and contrived a way to bolt his door. When I
was sure of him, I went back to my forge.

But I was wrong. The
blood of our father flows in him as well after all, and he is stronger than he
seems. When I returned home at midday, I found him gone. He had been able to
break the wallboard that held my bolt in place. Without doubt, he was on his
way into the Deep Forest.

I went after him. What
else could I do? He was a dreamer and a loon, and he knew more of witches than
of smithing. But he was my brother, and no other could take his place. Pausing
only to slip my hunting knife into the top of my boot, I left the house at a
run. It was my hope to catch him before he managed to lose himself altogether.

I ran to the stables and
threw a saddle onto Leadenfoot, the gray nag that draws my wagon when I go to
do work at the outlying farms. Leadenfoot is no swiftling—what need has a
blacksmith’s wagon for swiftness?—but when I strike him hard he is faster than
my legs. And he fears nothing, because he lacks the sense for fear—which is an advantage
in a blacksmith’s nag. So he heeded the argument of my quirt and did not shy as
many horses do when I sent him running down the old road into the Deep Forest.

That road is the only
way which enters the Forest; and all the talkers at the Red Horse had agreed
that when the Lady in White left the village she walked this road. It began as
a wagon-track as good as any, but it has long been disused and no longer goes
to any place, though surely once it did in times so long past that they have
been forgotten by all the village. Now only mad priests claim knowledge of the
place where the old road goes. They say it goes to Hell.

Hell, forsooth! I have
no use for such talk. Yet in its way Hell is as good a name for the Deep Forest
as any. As I ran Leadenfoot along the road at his best speed, the trees and the
brush were so thick that I could see nothing through them, though the sun was
bright overhead; and birds answered the sound of Leadenfoot’s shoes with cries like
scorn. I called out for Festil, but the woods took my voice and gave back no
reply.

In a league or two the
road grew narrower. Grass grew across it, then flowers and brush. Fallen limbs
cluttered the way, and the black trees leaned inward. Leadenfoot made it clear
to me that he would not run any more, though I hit him more than I am proud to
admit. And nowhere did I see any sign of Festil.

How had he eluded me? I
had not left him alone more than half the morning, and he had been sleeping
soundly when I had bolted his door. He could not have awakened immediately. He
could not have broken the wallboard without effort and time. He could not have
outrun me. Yet he was gone. The Deep Forest had swallowed him as completely as
the jaws of death.

Railing against him for
a fool and a dreamer, I left Leadenfoot and searched ahead on foot. Shouting,
cursing, searching, I followed the road until it became a path, and the path
became a trail, and the trail vanished. Almost I lost my way for good and all.
When I found it again, I had no choice but to return the way I had come. All
about me, the birds of the Deep Forest cried like derision.

At the place where I had
left Leadenfoot, I found him gone also. This day everything was doomed to
betray me. At first, I feared that the senseless nag had broken his reins and
wandered away off the road. But then I found his shoemarks leading back down
the road toward the village. I followed as best I could; and now there was a
fear in me that darkness would come upon me before I could escape these fell
trees.

But in the gloom of
sunset, I gained a sight of Leadenfoot, walking slowly along the road with a
rider upon his back.

I ran to catch the nag
and jerked the reins, pulling the rider to the ground. Mad Festil.

“Mardik,” he said. “Mardik
my brother.” There was joy in his voice, and there was joy in his face, and all
his movements as he rose to his feet and clasped me in his arms were as certain
as truth. And yet he was blind. His eyes were gone in a white glaze, and I did
not need the noon sun to see that there was no sight in them.

I held him with all the
strength of my anger and pain. “What has she-done to you?” I said.

But my grip gave him no
hurt. “I have seen her,” he said.

“You are blind!” I cried
at him, seeking to turn aside the joy in his face.

“Yet I have seen her,”
he said. “I have seen her, Mardik my brother. I have entered her cottage and
have won through its great wonders to the greatest wonder of all. I have seen
the Lady in White in all her beauty.”

“She has blinded you!” I
shouted.

“No,” he said. “It is
only that my eyes have been filled by her beauty, and there is no other thing
bright enough to outshine her.”

Then I found that I
could not answer his joy; and after a moment I gave it up. I did not say to him
that he was mad—that there was no cottage, no place of wonder, no Lady who
could blind him with her beauty unless she had seduced him to eat the mushroom
of madness and had done him harm by choice. I stored these things up amid the
anger in my heart, but I did not speak them. I put Festil onto Leadenfoot’s
back and mounted behind him; and together we rode out of the Deep Forest in the
last dusk.

That night, with mad Festil sleeping the
sleep of bliss in our hut, I went to the Red Horse as was my custom. I said
nothing of my brother’s folly—or of his blindness. I listened rather, sifting
through the talk about me for some new word of the Lady in White. But no word
was said, and at last I spoke my thought aloud. I asked if any of the young men
who had followed the Lady into the Deep Forest had returned.

The older men were
silent, and the younger did not speak; but in his own time Pandeler the weaver
bestirred himself and said, “Pendit. Pendit my son has returned. Alone.”

I saw there in his face
that he believed his other son Paoul dead. Yet I asked him despite his grief, “And
what says Pendit? How does he tell his tale?”

With head bowed,
Pendeler said, “He tells nothing. No word has he spoken. He sits as I sit now
and does not speak.” And in the firelight of the hearth it was plain for all to
see that there were tears on the face of Pandeler the weaver, who was as brave
a man as any in the village.

Then I returned to our
hut. Featil my brother slept with a smile on his mouth, but I did not sleep: My
heart was full of retribution, and there was no rest in me.

The next morning, I
spoke with Festil concerning the Lady in White and the Deep Forest, though it’s
true that all the speaking was mine, for he would say nothing of what had
happened to him. Only he said, “My words would have no meaning to you.” And he
smiled his joy, wishing to content me with that answer.

But when I asked him how
he had come to be riding Leadenfoot out of the Deep Forest, he did reply. “When
I had seen her,” he said, “I was no longer in her cottage. I was in the dell
that cups her cottage as a setting cups its gem, and Leadenfoot was there. I
heard him cropping grass near at hand. He came to me when I spoke his name, and
I mounted him and let him bear me away. For that I must ask your pardon, my
brother. I knew not that you had ridden him in search of me. I believed that
the Lady in White had brought him for me, in consideration of my blindness.”
Then he laughed. “As in truth she did, Mardik any brother—though you scowl and
mutter to yourself at the thought. You are the means she chose to bring
Leadenfoot to me.”

The means she chose,
forsooth! He spoke of magic again, though he did not use the word. And yet in
one way he had the right of the matter, despite his blindness. My scowl was
heavy on my face, and I was muttering as I mutter now. Therefore I swore at
him, though I knew it would give him pain. “May Heaven damn me,” I said, “if
ever again I serve any whim of hers.” Then I left him and went to the smithy to
bespeak my anger with hammer and anvil. For a time the fire of my forge was no
hotter than my intent against this Lady in White.

But all my angers and
intents were changed in an instant when a soft voice reached me through the
clamor of my pounding. I turned and found the Lady herself there before me.

She bore in her hands a
black old pot which had worn through the bottom, and in her soft voice she
asked me to mend it for her. But I did not look at the pot and gave no thought
to what she asked. I was consumed utterly by the sight and sound of her.

Her form was robed all
in whitest samite, and her head was crowned as if in bronze by a wealth of
red-yellow hair that fell unbound to her shoulders, and her eyes were like the
heavens of the night, star-bright and fathomless, and her voice was the music
that makes men laugh or weep, according to their courage. Her lips were full
for kisses but not too full for loveliness, and her breasts made themselves
known through her robe like the need for love, and her skin had that alabaster
softness that cries out to be caressed. Altogether, she struck me so full with
desire that I would have taken her there in the dirt of the smithy and counted
the act for treasure. But her gaze had the power to withhold me. She placed her
pot in my hands with a smile and turned slowly and walked away. Her robe clung
cunningly to the sway of her hips, and I did nothing but stare openly after her
like the veriest calf.

But I am not a man who
hesitates; and when she had left my sight among the huts on her way back to the
old road and the Deep Forest, I did not hesitate. I banked the fires of my
forge, closed my smithy, and went home. There in my room I bathed myself,
though I do not bathe often, it’s true; and when I had removed some of the
grime of smithing from my limbs, I donned my Easter garments, the bold-stitched
tunic and the brown pants with leather leggings which the widow Anuell had made
for me. Thus I readied myself to depart.

But when I turned from
my preparations, I found Festil before me. He was laughing—not the laughter of
derision, but the laughter of joy. “A bath, Mardik!” he said. “You have seen
her.”

“I have seen her,” I
said.

“Ah, Mardik my brother,”
he said, and he groped his blind way to me to embrace me, “I wish you well. You
are a good man. It is a test she gives you now. lf you do not falter or fail,
she will fulfill your heart’s desire.”

“That is as it may be,”
I answered. But in my own heart I said, Then I will not falter or fail, and you
will not be blind long, Festil my brother. I returned his embrace briefly. Soon
I had left our hut, and the village was behind me. I was walking along the old
road into the Deep Forest, and there was an unwonted eagerness in my stride.

Stricken with desire as
I was, however, I did not altogether lose sense. I took careful note of the
passing trees on my way, finding landmarks for myself and searching for any
path by which the Lady in White might have left the road. I discovered none, no
sign that any Lady lived near this track, no sign that any Lady however white
had ever walked this way. In a league or two, my heart began to misgive me. Yet
in time I learned that I had not missed my goal. For when I neared the place
where I had tethered Leadenfoot the day before, I came upon a branching in the
road.

A branching, I say,
though I do not hope to be believed. I will swear to any man who asks it that
no branching was there when I came this way in search of Festil. But that is
not needed. It is plain to all who dare travel that road that there is no
branching now. Yet I found a branching, that is sure. If I had not, then none
of the things that followed could have taken place.

In my surprise, I walked
along this other road and. shortly came to the deli and the cottage of which
Festil my brother had spoken. And he had spoken rightly: safe and sunlit among
the gloom of the trees was a hollow rich with flowers, soft with greensward; and
cupped in the hollow was a small stone cottage. Its walls had been whitewashed
until they gleamed in the sun, and all the wood of its frames and roof had been
painted red. White curtains of finest lace showed in the windows, and beneath
the windows lay beds of columbine and peony. Faint white smoke rose from the
chimney, showing to my keen desire that the Lady was within.

I went with heart
pounding to the red door; and there I paused as if I, Mardik the blacksmith,
were unsure of himself, so great and confused were my lust and my anger.

But then I recollected
myself, put aside my unseemly hesitation. With my strong hand I knocked at the
door, and there was both confidence and courtesy in the way I summoned the Lady
in White.

The door opened, swung
inward, though I saw no one, heard no one.

Then in truth began the
thing for which I have no other name but magic. Many things in the world are
strange, and magic is not needed to explain them. But in this thing I am beyond
all my reckoning, and I know no explanation other than that I became ill in my
mind, or ate of the mushroom of madness, or by some other means lost myself.
But Festil my brother, who is wise in his way, says that I am neither mad nor
all; and I must believe him when I cannot believe the thing of which I speak.
He was there before me, and this thing named magic cost him his sight.

But magic or no, I have
chosen to speak, and I will speak. My word is known and trusted, and no man in
the village dares call me liar or fool, though at times I seem a fool to
myself, it’s true. This, then, is the thing that befell me.