Claudia J Edwards - [Forest King 02] Read online

  The greathorses with their huge thudding hooves and the fiery mountain horses were somehow out of place in this tame and gentle landscape, and Adelinda felt herself to be alien here, made on a different scale, bold in a subtle land. But she could not deny that it was very beautiful.

  In the late afternoon, Adelinda and Orvel turned their horses to where Li-Mun rode, clinging grimly to the pommel of his saddle.

  “I think we’d better think about stopping for the night soon,” Adelinda called up to him. “The horses will need to graze.”

  “We’ll stop in the next village,” Lin-Mun jolted out. “The priest there has room enough for all of us.”

  “Oh, we don’t mind camping,” Adelinda returned.

  “We can’t camp here; this area is infested with succubi and incubi.”

  “What are those?” Adelinda asked. The words Li-Mun had used were unknown to her.

  “Supernatural beings which approach their victims in the form of lovely girls or handsome young men of irresistible physical attractiveness. They feed upon the life force of their victims while seeming to make love to them.”

  Orvet straightened in his saddle and looked keenly at Li-Mun, clearly startled and alerted. Adelinda wondered, but Li-Mun, absorbed in trying to ease his aching bones in the saddle, failed to notice.

  The rectory of the lovely little village was almost a small hotel, with accommodations for all of them, though the horses had to be picketed. Sleeping arrangements were simple benches around the walls of the communal sleeping chambers, made of the same pale rough stone as the walls from which they projected. The food they were offered consisted of crisp vegetables, very lightly cooked in hot oil, and bland boiled grains. Nothing was seasoned, even with salt. The drink they were given was a thin, colorless, very sour wine.

  Supper over, Orvet disappeared. Karel laid out the weapons they had brought and began to test them for corrosion from the sea air. Len helped him, and Ina and Tobin began to unpack and prepare their room for the night. Adelinda strolled out in the last fading twilight to check on the horses and found Orvet walking briskly about. He checked, hearing her step, and seemed to peer into the gathering darkness. He raised his head as if smelling the air, as a hound will do when it scents a wisp of odor. Then he moved quickly on, Adelinda got the definite impression that he was searching for something that was not readily discoverable by sight alone.

  Adelinda double-checked the security of the picket lines, untangling those horses that had gotten their legs over the ropes, and gave Red Hawk a last pat. Then she sought out Orvet. He was still scouting restlessly about.

  “What are you doing?” Adelinda asked. Orvet jumped; Adelinda customarily moved as quietly and as gracefully as a cat, and he had been intent upon a pillar of stone set in the midst of an open meadow, intricately and meaningfully carved,

  “I’m looking for succubi and incubi,” he answered crisply.

  Adelinda looked sharply at him; she had taken the hierarch’s words to be more mythological nonsense. But Orvet seemed perfectly serious. “Have you found any?” she asked, cautiously.

  “No. But there are supematurals of some sort about. Look at this.” He pointed to the pillar. “This is a guardian stone, set to ward off creatures of the night. And I can feel them, not very near. Not quite what I’m used to, though. Perhaps the supematurals are different here.”

  Adelinda regarded her employee with astonishment. This was a facet of the sober, hardworking, taciturn man she had never seen. He seemed to vibrate with intensity. “What sort of supematurals are you used to?”

  “Vampires, mostly, although I have tangled with a few others in my day.” Orvet sighed. “I expect I had better tell you a few things about myself that you don’t know. It’s a very good tiling for you that I happened to come along.” Adelinda goggled. Until this minute, “modest” and “unassuming” would have seemed too strong to describe Orvet. He glanced at her dumbfounded expression and grinned wryly. “You see, this whole land absolutely reeks of supernaturals, of every kind I’m familiar with and many I can’t identify. Not Karel, with all his warlike skill, nor you with your courage, and certainly not the farmer folk, handicapped with superstition as they are, could prevail against any of them.”

  “But you can?”

  “I am an exorcist.”

  Adelinda had passed beyond surprise. She looked at her employee with new eyes, and found that she could believe the preposterous claim without any difficulty. “Let’s sit down on that log and you can tell me how you came to be cleaning out stalls oh my brother’s farm.”

  “Not that one; it’s outside the ring of guardian stones. I don’t want to be warding werewolves and night stalkers off as we talk. Come over here.”

  As they crossed the meadow to the log Orvet indicated, Adelinda considered his position. The exorcists were a small and elite group, seven in number, whose purpose was to battle the supernatural. Most of the time they lived in King’s City, studying and preparing themselves, but when any part of the Kingdom was threatened by infestations of supernatural beings, they could be summoned to deal with the problem. Legend had it that in the early days of the Kingdom, after the fall of the First Civilization, hundreds of kinds of malign creatures had ran riot over the lands, feeding off its miserable inhabitants. The exorcists had straggled for centuries to overcome them, at great cost to themselves. They had succeeded so well that most kinds of supernaturals were just legends in the Kingdom now, and many were extinct and forgotten.

  “I left the exorcists several years ago when I was sent out on my first call. A village in the Clearwater sheep country

  was being plagued with vampires, and they sent for an exorcist. When I left King’s City, I was pretty well convinced that the whole thing was a fraud,

  “But it was not so. There were vampires there, three of them . They were a male and his mate and baby, pitiful creatures, lost and alone and on the verge of starvation. A crippled goatherd had taken them in, providing milk from her goats for the baby—the mother was unable to provide enough—and acting as host to the male. The vampires had been searching desperately for others of their species, and at last had come to believe that they were the last of their kind.”

  Adelinda had been following the story with amazement. “How did you find all this out?”

  “They told me.” Orvet grimed at Adelinda’s startled reaction. “Oh, yes, they can speak, and they use our language. I don’t doubt that if there are vampires here they use the local language. Of all the supenaturals, vampires have the closest relationship with human beings. They are parasites, not predators as so many of the other supernaturals are. It’s very much in their interest to keep their hosts alive and well. In fact, in the bad old days they often protected whole villages from other, more destructive supernaturals. A colony of vampires was associated with a particular village for generations, each with his or her host among the villagers, and if ‘their’ village was threatened, they fought off the attackers. Many gave their lives in defense of their hosts.”

  “I always heard stories that vampires were the undead human victims of other vampires.”

  “Superstition. You wouldn’t think so if you had ever seen one. They’re human only in general outline. I believe that they’re more closely allied to the bats than to humankind. They even have enormous mobile ears and little vestigial flaps of skin that once may have been wings. But they are certainly semiintelligent, perhaps not much less intelligent than we are. I came to know those three well.”

  “You seem to have liked them.”

  “Not liked, exactly, but pitied. I couldn’t kill them, as was my clear duty. The goatherd gave me their baby to hold, poor tiny starveling creature, and it trusted me.” Orvet paused, face somber, lost in the memory. “I had read an account of a journey into the wild lands to the east of the Republics. The travelers had met vampires and even been saved by them from the attack of a predator that would have undoubtedly destroyed the whole party.”

  “
East of the Republics? That sounds like the journey of my ancestress Mara.”

  “The very same. I sought your family out for that reason, and because I thought you might have more complete records of the journey.”

  “We haven’t kept any written records, and the stories that have come down from that time are unreliable. They claim, for example, that Mara brought a slave with her from the Republics and that this slave was our ancestor.”

  Orvet regarded her and the comer of his mouth twitched. Fortunately, the gathering darkness hid his amusement from Adelinda. “That happens to be true. Mara did rescue a man from slavery in the Republics and later married him. I think you can trace your blond hair right back to the slave-breeding farms of the Republics.”

  “I don’t believe it. All our family has always loathed slavery.”

  “Who should loathe slavery more than a slave? And teach his descendants to loathe it, too?”

  “It can’t be true,” Adelinda said hotly. “We’re pure mountain folk stock. Everybody knows that.” She paused and took a rein on her temper. “What did you do about the vampires?”

  “I took them to the place mentioned in the account. There were remnants of a once numerous colony of vampires there, and they were very happy indeed to have the three I brought from the Kingdom join them. But I couldn’t go back to the exorcists then. I would have been accounted a renegade—as I am, by their standards. So I wandered east, and then south, and met many strange peoples and many different species of supernaturals, and studied with those who deal with the supernatural in other ways than the exorcists use. But at last I had to come back to the Kingdom, though of course I dared not return to King’s City. I was tormented by the thought that although we—the exorcists—are skilled at destroying supernatural beings, so skilled in fact that we have completely wiped out several species, we really know very little about them. Some are benign and some are harmless. The vampires I knew healed my wounds on several occasions. We shouldn’t destroy whole species without knowing more about them.”

  “Did you become the host of one of the vampires?”

  “Of course not!” Orvet snapped, shocked. “The rest of the College of exorcists might not say so, but I am still an exorcist, and I follow the rules of conduct as much as I can. I don’t wear the robes, of course, but I have kept my virginity.”

  “So that’s why you weren’t interested in me.”

  “I was interested,” said Orvet wryly, “but I’ve had a lot of practice at resisting temptation. And also some very good reasons for doing so. For example, if there are succubi here, they will have no power over me. I can meet and study them without fear. You, on the other hand, I’m afraid, would be in deadly danger if approached by an incubus.”

  The nex* day they took their time and arrived at the head of the trail down into the Vale in midaftemoon, just as the sun gilded the land in an aura of hazy golden light. Adelinda and Karel left the horses bunched on the rich grass with the soldiers to watch them and rode ahead with Li-Mun to inspect the trail down into the valley.

  Adelinda had never seen, never imagined anything so lovely as the Vale of Misty Waters. If a superlatively talented artist had taken a palette of ethereally delicate colors and had painted an earthly paradise, he might have counted himself fortunate if his canvas were half so beautiful as the view which lay before them.

  The Vale of Misty Waters was a ribbon of land perhaps five miles wide, stretching out of sight to the north and south. The farther, west boundary of the Vale was bordered by low cliffs, shaded and blue now as the sun began its descent toward night. The eastern boundary, upon which they sat and gazed in wonder, was a line of sheer bluffs, illuminated and gleaming, a creamy white in the full light of the afternoon sun. The floor of the Vale was all clothed in

  soft green velvet, laid out into an irregularly divided but harmonious pattern of fields and pastures. Within view were half a dozen exquisite jewel boxes of villages. Every tidy cottage, every bam and fold and shop and temple was a separately sculpted little gem, unique and yet a harmonious part of the whole village. Even from the heights it could be seen that each village was itself unique and still belonging as comfortably to the landscape around it as if it had grown there of its own accord.

  The Vale of Misty Waters it was indeed, for waterfalls, brooks, streams, and (most astonishing to these children of the arid eastern continent) gushing artesian fountains were everywhere.

  There were many lacy waterfalls visible on both cliffs, as well as the spouting natural fountains, frothing with some great pressure from far below. The travelers were to discover later that the water from these artesian fountains had a different flavor from the surface water, a back-of-the-tongue, crystalline, mineral flavor, that brought to mind deep caverns filled with scintillating jewels far down in the cold granite heart of the earth. There were a multitude of more ordinary springs, too, bubbling up through sandy bottoms, their water pure and tasteless, but these were not visible from the heights.

  The Vale was filled with the music of the waters, a symphony of the rush of the falls, the singing of the little brooks, the rhythmical lapping of the streams, and the chiming of the fountains.

  The air of the Vale was rich and sweet, spicy with the smoke of the cooking fires; the people of the Vale burned the wood of the dark spicewood trees that grew in orderly groves everywhere. The hazy atmosphere seemed as hard to breathe as syrup to the travelers, used as they were to the thin, crisp air of home. Balmy—neither too warm nor too cool—the very air of the Vale was as enervating as a drug, bathing the visitors in sweet luxurious languor.

  Besides the dark spice woods, the Vale was dotted with pale featherleaf trees, their plumelike leaves trembling with every breath of breeze. Fruit trees lined the fields and pastures, and the hedges were berry brambles. Whenever the peasants cut down one tree, for firewood or lumber or to clear a field, they planted three more like it; they were taught by their priests that if they did not offer the spirit of the tree a choice of new homes, she would be angered and turn their luck against them.

  To the travelers’ left, sited commandingly on a low shoulder of the cliff below them, was the Bishop’s Palace. An undecorated, rectilinear building constructed of the same creamy stone that protected its back, the palace was a rambling, one-storied structure with several wings and many rooms. In that place of gardens, there was no plant to mar its purity. The full light of the afternoon sun shone uncompromisingly upon it and only the soft, sweet air of the Vale transformed its severity into dignity.

  Adelinda and Karel gazed into the Vale for many minutes, and Li-Mun enjoyed their amazement. At last he suggested, “If you think the horses can get down the trail, we’d better go and meet the bishop. He’s been waiting since spring.”

  It was like the first clash of swords in a duel to the death. Adelinda sat her bay stallion and An-Shai stood on the low balcony of the Bishop’s Palace; their eyes were on a level. An-Shai was rigid with shock and anger; Adelinda was proud and bold. That they were enemies by birth and breeding glanced forth as the sun glitters on polished steel. Will thrust against stubborn will. Neither dropped an eye or flinched. There was no hatred between them—not yet. As yet there were only two people, equally matched, dark and light, courage set against courage, pride against pride, mind against mind. If the one was older and more subtle, the other was bolder and less hampered by convention; and which would emerge from the conflict triumphant and which would go down to defeat, the canniest of seers could not have foretold.

  It would have seemed that only An-Shai realized how deep the animosity between them was doomed to run, for he knew that he planned virtually to enslave these strangers; but Adelinda felt the more strongly of the two that this man before her was her enemy. Causes she could not have given, but in the instant of confrontation, she realized that there were only two possible outcomes for her: victory or destruction. An-Shai as yet underestimated his adversary.

  The hierarch chose to loose the opening volley o
f the war. “Woman, you will not ride into my presence.”

  “Hierarch, this is my horse and I ride him wherever I please.”

  “You are the servant of God the Father and you will obey His bishop or suffer His wrath.”

  Adelinda laughed. A woman’s laugh in the presence of the bishop was as unlikely a sound as if the stones had begun to play sweet music. “I respect your feelings for your religion, Hierarch, but it has nothing to do with me. Your secretary there hired my services for a year to help your people learn to manage the horses he bought from me and my family. The salary does not include adherence to outlandish cults.”

  An-Shai was no fool. He sensed that to bluster and threaten further would not serve his purpose. His most potent weapon, superstitious fear, was ineffective with this outrageous woman. He measured his next words carefully. “Very well, then. I bid you welcome to the Vale. Quarters will be made available for your people in the villages. You may begin to instruct the farmers in the use of the horses.” Without waiting for a reply, which he felt certain would be impertinent, An-Shai turned with dignity and went into the palace. “Li-Mun,” he said ominously, “I’ll see you in my library immediately.” The secretary battened down his mental hatches in preparation for the storm and followed.

  “Your Grace,” Li-Mun said as soon as the library door closed on his heels, “I know that bringing a woman to teach us was a surprise to you. But no one else would come.” An-Shai rounded on him. “You would have done better to have brought no one. But if you had to have brought a woman, you certainly should have indoctrinated her in the proper place and behavior of women in Godsland. You should have taught her to fear God the Father.”