1 - Rose
2 - North
3 - Hag
4 - Nogth
5 - Passages
6 - Answers
7 - Travel
8 - Curse
9 - Blessing
The sun was just setting, the guards just about to close the castle gates when the tall stranger appeared. He must have walked out of the deep shadows along the road because the guards had not noticed him approach.
"Pardon, sirs?" The hooded figure raised a thin, pale arm.
The guard sergeant cast a hard eye on the stranger. "Yes?"
"Is this Castle Morna?"
The sergeant squinted at the man. A goatee'd chin was all he could spot under the shadow of the hood. "Of course it is. Where did you think you were, man? This is Castle Morna, the residence of King Karel. Have you business here?"
"Not with the King, I admit. Would Prince Calian be within, as well?"
The light was growing dim and the sergeant tired. "Prince Calian and Princess Guinna are in Morna. Where you from, traveler? Do you have business with the prince? You'll have to take it up tomorrow."
"I do indeed have business with Prince Calian. I would like to speak with him this evening."
The sergeant made the decision he was trained to make. "Tomorrow," he announced firmly. He and the other guard turned their backs on the man and pulled the lever that closed the heavy wooden gate. When they looked through the door's arrow slit, the dusty road leading from the castle was empty.
"How do you feel, Guinna?"
The princess nodded that she was all right. She squirmed on the couch, rearranging the half-dozen pillows that surrounded her. Nearly seven months pregnant, how she felt was measured in degrees of discomfort.
"You want anything?"
"Calian, if I do, I can get it myself. Or I can send one of the girls. You don't need to hover all the time."
"I'm not." Calian poked a pillow into place near the small of her back. "I don't hover."
"You do." She pushed back against the pillow he was punching, flattening it back out. "You're like a hawk, waiting for me to drop something. Or a vulture!"
"I am not." He shifted another pillow.
"Calian!"
"Excuse the interruption." A messenger stood in the archway leading into the room.
Calian turned to the young man. "Yes?"
"Excuse the interruption, but there is a man to see you, Prince Calian. Says he has come far to speak to you."
Calian glanced out a window at the shadows gathering in the court yard. "A bit late, isn't it? I'd have thought the gates would be closed by now."
"So they are, Prince Calian," said a soft voice from behind the messenger. "I managed to slip in just before your guards rang down the door." The tall hooded figure stepped into the archway beside the messenger. "I know it's late, my Prince, but my need is urgent."
Calian waved away the messenger who bowed and disappeared down the hall way. "Come in, friend," the prince said. "Rest yourself. You say you've come far?"
The figure glided into the room and laid back his hood. "Quite far." The man's age was indeterminate but he was older than the prince. He was bald on top with a short fringe above his ears. His hair in back was long and held in a ponytail, and in addition to the goatee the sergeant had seen, the stranger had a whispy moustache. He was very pale, but his smile was very warm and his green eyes twinkled in the evening light. He bowed to Guinna. "My princess. I trust you are well?"
Guinna nodded again and poked on the pillows.
The man smiled and bowed again. "My name is Malcolm Rose, Your Highnesses. I am a scholar, a sometimes teacher. I am as poor, as humble and as little known as a library mouse."
Calian waved an arm toward another of the couches in the room, indicating again that the man should sit. "Indeed, sir, your name is unknown to us, but our land sees few strangers, and we travel little ourselves."
"But if I may, Prince Calian, I have heard that you are a bit traveled. I have heard that you traveled to the land of faery and returned." Rose made no move to take the offered seat.
The prince looked sideways at the stranger and took a small step toward Guinna's couch. "There was an incident a couple of years ago. What business is that of yours? What business do you think you have with me?" Guinna reached up and took his hand.
Rose bowed to the royal couple. "I beg forgiveness for my impertinence, Your Grace. You are, of course, correct. That incident truly was not my business. However, I have a great need and have felt compelled to make it my business." He bowed low, and when he stood upright again there were tears sliding slowly down his cheeks. His shoulders shook.
Calian eyed the man in silence for a moment. "No offense was taken, sir. Tell us, then. What is this business you have with us?"
"It is, Your Highness, my daughter." The man's jaw clamped shut and tears flowed freely down his face. Calian waited. After a few deep breaths, Rose continued. "You see, sire, she has been taken."
Calian waited again. "Taken?"
"Taken by a foul, demonic creature from another land!" Rose bit his lip and quivered in silence. He bowed again. "Forgive my outburst, Your Highness, but my concern is great."
Guinna squeezed Calian's hand and dropped it. "You need not ask our forgiveness, sir," she said. "Please, sit and tell us your story and how we can help."
Still without taking the proffered seat, Rose stood upright again. With the occasional pause to compose himself, he told his tale.
He told of his daughter Jillian, and of how she had been taken by the Sidhe. A demon using human shape came to her night after warm spring night, and convinced her to go to his realm. There, he told her with sweet words and dulcet tones, she would be a queen, even worshipped by lesser beings of that world. Surely that was a better life than wasting away as the daughter of an impoverished scholar?
Tearfully, Rose told of his arguments, his pleadings with his dark-haired daughter. He had reasoned with her, he had yelled at her, he had even played the horrible guilt card by reminding her that since her mother had died, she was all the man had left. But his pleas were useless. The charm of the daemon in human shape had been more than he could combat. She would have nothing but to be queen of a world no mortal could know. She had gone with the faery being.
Rose had been inconsolable. Reliving it for the young couple brought on great racking sobs that nearly knocked him to his knees. With a pause and some deep breathing, he composed himself.
Weeks had passed, and he had given up on seeing his daughter again. Then, last month, small notes started to appear where they had no business. Small notes addressed to him, stuffed between the pages of his books, hidden under cups, lying on his bed when he woke in the morning. At first they were indecipherable, but as he received more and more of them, the handwriting became clearer, the sentences more complete. Rose still did not understand who or what delivered the notes, but he knew now they came from Jillian.
"She is begging me to rescue her, Your Highness. My child is calling to me from the other side to rescue her. And I am a frail, old man who cannot help her." Sobbing overtook him again.
Guinna did not like this at all. The past two years had taught her much about her prince. She knew his trip into 7inch's well was not a fluke. Diving into unfamiliar wells was Calian's way. He knew he was not invulnerable, but he was young and he had faith that took away his fear. The princess knew Calian's reaction to this story, and at seven months pregnant, she did not want him to leave.
"My child has seen her mistake," Rose said in a damp and quavery voice. "God only knows what horrible experiences taught her this hard lesson, but now she wants to come home."
Calian stepped slightly away from Guinna's couch. He knew she was about to grab his hand. He didn't want her thoughts yet. "And how is it we can help you. I'm afraid that well you heard of no longer sits beside Lake Guilden."
Rose shook his head. "No, there is no well involved. I have another way. I flatter myself with the name, but I am a bit of a scholar. I have researched the matter, spoken to people the Church advises against, looked into books that men are not to see, learned things men are no longer supposed to know. I do not ask for a rescue mission, sire. I have a way of opening a door for her to come back on her own."
Calian nodded. Guinna allowed herself no breath of relief; smoething else was coming. "What then?"
"The door I can mentioned, I require certain items to open it, things an aged scholar cannot procure of his own." He gazed through his tears at Calian. "Things their owners will not surrender easily."
"These things and their owners, they are, I suppose, somewhere down a well?"
Rose smiled a little. "In a manner of speaking, sire. They are in a place of the faery. They are in a place only a hero would go. And a hero who has been to the land of Sidhe and survived. Not every man can cross that divide and return." Rose turned one eye to Calian. He said quietly, "You, sire, can."
The items Malcolm Rose needed to open his `door' were hairs from a demon. Through arcane methods he did not explain, and Calian did not want to know about, Rose could use the power inherent in the physical form of one demon to open a portal to another demon. The problem was finding a demon who was routinely in the non-faery world, one whose body could be regularly touched. Rose had found such a one.
Far to the north of Morna, farther than Calian could imagine the quiet people of Morna ever travelling, there was the island Nogth. It was named for its sole known inhabitant, Dawydd Daev Nogth, a creature of the Sidhe who had either been cast out from his fellows or had withdrawn from them; Rose's sources conflicted. Those sources agreed, however, that Nogth lived in the world of men, walked on the planet with men, could touch and effect men - and could be touched and affected by them.
It was this place Rose requested Calian go, this demon he asked the prince to meet. "I know full well, sire, that you owe me nothing. I am not even one of your subjects. I can only throw myself on your well-known mercy and pray for your help."
For two days after that request was made, Calian walked the halls of his adopted Morna, stared out windows at clouds and stars, sat silently with Guinna, and felt the kicks of his growing child. Guinna passed on news from the court, gossip from the village and details of everything she felt the baby doing.
"My father's sister is coming to visit," she told him that second evening. "You've never met her. She's a bit of a hermit, but she will probably want to tell me how to have the baby. Promise me you'll be nice to her?"
"Guinna, I never stopped to think about diving into that well after you and your sisters." If he had heard her mention her aunt, he did not show it. "I knew no more about King Karel than I do this Malcolm Rose, nor you any more than this Jillian. Why am I hesitant to help save this man's daughter?"
"Maybe your own coming son or daughter has something to do with it." Guinna's tone had a bite she felt, but had not planned to show. Now that it was out, though, she gave Calian all of it. "Why should you have to do this? You're no longer young and free, you know." The wrong words, and she knew it as she said them.
"I know what I am," Calian said quietly, "and what I am not. I'm worried that what I am is a man who values people for their position, who values a king more than other men. Not an attitude for a leader, and even less one for a Christian. Guinna - " The prince's voice dropped to a whisper. "Guinna, you know I have to do this."
Guinna tried to sound understanding and reassuring. "I know, Calian." She failed.
"But -" His voice dropped farther. He bent forward, his elbows on his knees, his hands rasping they rubbed together so hard. "Guinna, did you know I'm scared to go?"
She wrapped her arms around his right arm and hugged it close. "Calian, you'd have to be an idiot not to be afraid." The princess was whispering, too. "Being afraid will bring you back to me."
He rubbed his hands together harder. "You don't understand. Everyone thinks being in the other land had no effect on me." He rasped his hands again. "That's not wholly true." The prince stood and walked to a window. The casement was wide and deep, and he held his arms to cover it all.
"Going over and coming back," he said to the darkened window, "I gained a lot. You. And that little one you're going to give us. Your father and family. It's good." He stared at the black clouds that blotted out the stars. "But sometimes, sometimes I feel I lost something, too. Not my faith or my sanity or anything I have a name for. The best I can call it my sense of `normalness.' There are times when I look at the most common, mundane scenes and places - and suddenly they seem strange, odd - alien. I don't know why."
His voice had dropped to a whisper. Guinna tried to stand beside him, but the way he held his arms, he filled the window sill. He did not want her beside him, didn't want to see her eyes, and she could only stand at his shoulder.
"Sometimes," he said, "sometimes a melancholy comes over me. I get longings for - I don't know what! Hearing certain songs or seeing a certain shade of green out of the corner of my eye - I get so lonely, feel so out of place. I get homesick for places I've never been. Sometimes the `strangeness' washes over me, and I'm afraid I'll drown."
He was quiet for a moment, but made no move to let her beside him. "I'm not afraid of what this Dawydd Daev Nogth or any other faery may do to me." He clamped his jaw shut. He wanted to tell her, but he was afraid to say it out loud. "Guinna," he whispered, "I'm afraid if I cross over, that other land will just keep me. If I go away again, I may not come back. I may not want to come back."
Then he let her beside him. For a long time.
The next morning, Calian loaded a leather pack, pocketed a handful of coins, and strapped on the short sword he had never drawn in anger. He held Guinna a long time before he was ready to leave, and then she held him a long time. With a final caress and kiss for the baby-on-the-way, he left their private chambers for the courtyard.
Rose waited near the gate where he had first talked to the sergeant. He gave Calian a map and a sheaf of handwritten notes about the route and the demon. Blinking behind a thick layer of tears, he tried to speak, perhaps to express his gratitude, but could not talk. A last nod and smile for the prince and he walked off down the dusty road, vanishing behind a stand of trees.
With a few more words to the family around him, Calian also walked through the gate and strode to the north and the island Nogth. Guinna watched until he disappeared. And then she watched some more.
Calian quite enjoyed the peace of hiking in the countryside of Morna, eating from his bag and sleeping under the stars. It was peaceful, it was quiet, it was a pleasant, pastoral change from the life in Castle Morna. Court life was quite pleasant and peaceful itself, but there were constant demands for his attention, his concern. Rarely had he time to let his mind wander, and in the two years since his marriage he had not spent a full day without Guinna by his side and on his arm. He had forgotten what it was like to walk in the country, listening to the bugs and birds, eating berries that grew wild along the sunken road.
But nice grows old. Fields and cottages drifted by on either side, stands of trees grew thick and then thinned again. Small villages appeared and left, each filled with curious children, old gossips, distrustful merchants. Some fished, some farmed, some herded, but life was life and it was mostly the same wherever he walked.
Day blended into day and Calian was on the road for a week, and then a week and a half. At two weeks he entered a town where there stood a dry fountain in the city square. A dozen armed men guarded it and pagan priests performed rites Calian did not understand. Asking a town gossip, he learned that the fountain had been built by the city founder and instead of water it had, for centuries, given a soft red wine. A month ago it had stopped flowing. The city fathers feared a curse, but no one knew (or admitted) its source. Did the stranger, perhaps know any helpful magic?
Calian did not, but he realized that, even if the fields and farms looked familiar, he was getting far from home.
More days passed, more nameless villages. The air grew cooler each day, the sun set later and there were new stars in the night sky. Three weeks into his march, Calian entered another city with armed guards in a village square. This time there were only two of them, and there were no priests, though there was no shortage of village philosophers to explain things.
The tree, they said, was the reason the town had been founded in that place. For as long as anyone could remember or the town records could tell, the tree had given a regular crop, summer and winter, of gold apples. Not just gold colored, mind you, but soft, glowing, easy to work gold that made the town famous and prosperous. But last summer, the harvest had failed. No apples had grown for months. A curse? Perhaps. Old age? Perhaps. Did the stranger know anything of trees, perhaps?
No, Calian did not, and he moved on. His thoughts drifted to home, to Galand, to Morna. To Guinna. He wasn't in Morna any more.
A month of the journey saw him reach the edge of the map. This meant he was near the swamp surrounding the island Nogth. He had been two days without seeing a village, a day and a night without seeing a house. The road was a path, but an easy path to follow; there had been much foot traffic here before.
Days were damp and nights cool in this land. The sun was late in setting but gave less heat than it should. Nevertheless, the trees and brush grew thick and dark green, if silent; no birds twittering in the trees, no rabbits or lizards diving through the dead leaves alongside the path.
With no more map to guide him, Calian simply continued to walk north, following what remained of the footpath. That evening, a light drizzle of gray rain began to fall, and he was grateful for the thick cover of branches above him. The patter of raindrops on the leaves gave the forest some sound, and Calian felt almost relaxed when he pushed aside a wet frond and nearly ran into the ferryman.
The ferryman and Calian stood nose to nose for a few seconds that seemed to stretch for minutes. The man's eyes were as lonely, as mournful, as tired as Calian cared to see in this life. The ferryman was soaked, thick black hair pasted to his head by the rain, threadbare, dusty clothes cold and water-logged against his skin. He held and leaned against a long rowing pole, and his expression never changed.
Calian realized that, if nothing else, he was being very rude in staring. He blinked and glanced at the longboat that rode in the swamp behind the man. "Good day to you, sir," he said. The ferryman simply stared back at him. "Are you in the business of ferrying travelers?" Stupid question, the prince knew, but what else was there to say.
"I am." The voice had the rumble of a strong man, a man in his prime. It also had the same limitless exhaustion that shone dully from the eyes.
"Good." Calian shifted his weight from one foot to another. "I need passage across this swamp." He waited. Silence. "Is the island of Nogth near here?"
"It is."
Encouraging, thought Calian. "Can you take me there?"
"I can." More silence.
Calian shouldered his leather bag. "Then please, sir, do so."
The man shuffled slowly over to his craft and waded into the swamp. He stepped in with a heavy but practiced stride and held the craft steady while Calian boarded. The boat rode low in the water, and the swamp weeds grew thick around it. The ferryman leaned heavily on his pole and forced the boat out into the swamp.
The journey through the swamp was slow and uncomfortable. Thin rain fell the entire time, and the boat made laborious headway through the tangle of moss and reeds. Calian could tell it had been a long, long time, perhaps years since the ferryman had poled through this mess.
"Do you get many passengers here?"
"No."
Calian watched the brackish water slide slowly by the boat. "I forgot to ask. What do you charge for this service."
"Nothing."
This answer spun Calian around to stare at the ferryman. "Nothing?"
"Nothing."
The prince watched the man strain against the pole, just barely strong enough to force the craft a little further through the reeds. "Why?" He knew it was rude, but the man was strange enough he probably would not notice. "Why do you do it, then, if you do not make a profit?"
Arms bulging against the thick reeds, the ferryman pushed them a little further. He paused for a moment to catch his breath, then answered, "I don't know."
This was not what Calian had expected. "You don't know?"
Push, strain, move. "No." The ferryman paused, his pole raised. "I don't know." He sounded slightly confused by the answer himself. "I don't know. I don't know why I do this. I wish..." He shook his head slightly and then stared directly at Calian. "I wish I knew why I do it." A spark of life showed in the ferryman's eyes. "I wish I knew why I do it. I haven't always done it, and I don't enjoy it." His gaze drifted back to the swamp around them, and he leaned heavily on the pole again.
Calian was fascinated by the man. In all the swamp there were no sounds but the rain hissing into the water and the pole raking against the reeds. The ferryman's slow swing and lean were the only movements to see.
"I don't know why I do it." He pulled the pole out of the mud. "Do you know?" he asked Calian.
The prince shook his head. "I've never seen you before. If you don't like doing it, why don't you just throw away your pole and leave. After you get us out of this swamp," he added quickly.
"Leave?" The ferryman spoke as if the thought had never occurred to him. "Leave?" He leaned on the pole. "I can't leave." He pulled up his pole. "I can't leave. Why is that?"
Calian slowly shook his head and then looked slowly around the silent, stinking swamp. "I don't know, sir. I don't know. How far are we from the island of Nogth?"
The ferryman pushed against the mud. "Just ahead." The little life that had been in his eyes and voice was draining away even as Calian watched. In a few moments, with a few more pole strokes, the ferryman returned to the automatic, pole-pushing creature Calian had met on the shore. The prince shivered as he watched the transformation, as the mind-robbing exhaustion settled on the man.
The boat bumped softly against something mushy. The ferryman strained against the pole and slid the craft up onto a water-logged shore. He shipped his pole.
"The island of Nogth," he announced in a dead voice.
Calian climbed stiffly to his feet and stepped out of the craft. "I will need a ride back. Will you stay and wait?"
"Yes."
"I may be a couple of days." No response. "Will you wait anyway?"
"Yes."
Calian prayed silently for the man, then shouldered his bag, straightened his sword and slipped quietly into the heavy woods along the shoreline. The ferryman had unnerved him. Now, along with his fear of his reaction to the land of faery, he had a normal man's fear in his belly as well.
Cold rain drizzled on Calian through the rest of the afternoon and the early evening. This far north, the gray light filtering through the clouds stayed with him long after it would have been dark at home. But it was a dismal gray, and it only made Calian feel worse.
The prince decided that even a demon would stay close to mainland access, so he hugged the shore as he pushed roughly north. A couple of mud-slogging, weed-beating hours later, he stumbled across a hut sitting in a... well, a clearing. Actually, "clearing" would be a very loose and Christian description, but the land had been cleared at some point to build the shack. Now, the weeds and creepers pressed against the structure on all sides, cattails reached as high as the thatched roof where mushrooms sprouted and a thin trickle of anemic smoke creeping out of the stone chimney was the only sign of habitation.
Calian crept toward the hut. Now he was grateful for the slow, misty rain; the hiss of drops on the leaves helped cover the sound of his approach. It took several minutes of slipping between stands of grass, but he finally covered the few remaining feet to the hut and peered into the cracked, smoky window.
An old woman bent double over a miserable little fire. She poked a little more turf onto the coals and a feeble flame popped up. Then she hung a pot over the blaze and stirred it with the same stick she had used to poke the ashes.
`I suppose a demon can use the shape of an old woman,' Calian thought. `Who else would live in this awful place. This has got to be the right hovel.' He pushed his leather bag into the weeds by the window and crept around to the hut's door.
The "door" hung by rotting leather hinges, and the boards were warped enough from the weather to let the weather in. Calian stepped in front of it - and froze. Surely it would not do to threaten an old woman at sword point, even one who might be a demon. On the other hand, how would a demon take it if he just asked to pluck a couple of hairs? Maybe he should have planned on the road, but he figured that whatever he found would be a surprise. He had been right.
The prince was still standing indecisive at the threshold a moment later when the pitiful door flopped open. Bent at the waist, just as she had been at the fire, stood the old woman. She was the oldest and worst kept human Calian had ever seen, and what he had taken for her cook-fire posture was simply her posture - folded over in the middle and squinting. Skin hung off her arms in flaccid, wrinkled wads from wrist to shoulder, her cheeks sank in over toothless gums and baby fine, dingy yellow hair hung over her ears and in her eyes. When she breathed, her nostrils flared, causing her long moist nose to constantly bob up and down, nearly touching her chin. She stank.
"Get in, get in, get in!" She flapped a boney arm at Calian, waving for him to enter the hut. The prince, who had no plan, decided an open invitation was a good start, and he stepped past her. She banged the flimsy door behind him.
Calian knew he was in the right place. The hut inside was nothing like it looked from outside. The front room was larger than the entire outside of the shack, and Calian saw doors leading to three other rooms and stairs leading both up and down. Much like 7inch's trim little cottage down the well, the inside was in the land of faery.
"Go on into the kitchen," the hag croaked. She shuffled past him to lead the way. Calian noticed she rose and fell with each step, as if one leg was several inches longer than the other.
Without moving, Calian said "Dawydd Daev Nogth?"
The hag whirled on him, faster than he had thought she could move, the skin of her cheeks flopping. "Don't use that name!" she said. "You don't know what you're saying. What business have you with that name?"
"I have a favor to ask of him," Calian replied.
The hag laughed or coughed, the prince could not tell which. "No favors will you get from that one." She turned to again lumber toward the kitchen. "Not unless you want to be eaten raw or tortured for fun."
"You are not Dawydd Daev Nogth, then?"
She spun on him again. "I told you not to use that name. Now come into the kitchen before it gets home and bites off some part of you."
This time Calian followed her. What choice did he have?
The kitchen was not as Calian had seen from the window. He was not surprised. A fire blazed brightly in a large stone fireplace making a cauldron of indeterminate stew bubble thickly. Bright copper pans and fine steel knives glittered along the paneled walls, and beside the fire were two comfortable, overstuffed chairs, their wooden frames blacken with age. Sitting beside the hearth, they looked like they were made for warm dry naps on gray, drizzly days.
"What is this boon you plan to ask of the demon?" The old hag shuffled by Calian and stirred her stew.
The prince eased toward the chairs, hoping he would be asked to sit. He wasn't. "I need three of his hairs," he said.
Another laughing cough (or coughing laugh) from the old woman. "You figure it'll give you a kiss on the cheek to go with them?"
"You keep calling him `it,'" Calian said. "Why?"
"Because the demon is not a `him,' that's why." The hag spun on him, the stew ladle dripping in her hand. "Dawydd Daev Nogth is not human, no matter how it tries to look." She shook the ladle at Calian. "It's not a `him.'"
The prince nodded. She seemed to know her subject. "And you don't think he'll give me the hairs I want?"
Another laugh/cough. "The only thing he'll give you is an early death. Maybe not a quick one, either." She turned back to her stew.
"Then how should I get them?" Calian was afraid of many things. Asking for help wasn't one of them.
The hag tapped the stew out of the ladle and laid it aside. Stiffly, she wobbled to a chair and fell into it with a grunt. She did not offer the other to Calian. "Why do you want these hairs, boy?"
Briefly, Calian explained the problem to her - the seduction and kidnapping of a human by another demon and the girl's desire to return to the real world. He told how the girl's father, Malcolm Rose had a way to bring her back, if he had the hairs of a demon. Was the lady all right?
The hag had gone into a coughing fit at the name of the scholar. She shook hard for several minutes and waved away Calian's attempts to help her. "Go on," she finally rasped.
"There's little else to tell. This Rose person asked that I obtain the hairs." He explained that he had walked for weeks to get there, and mentioned the odd fountain, the town with the barren tree and the strange individual who had sculled him across the swamp.
"Why you?" she asked, ignoring the details of his trek.
"I have dealt with the faery world before," Calian answered quietly. He looked into the fire. "Few others in my world have done so and been in any shape to return."
When he looked back at her, the prince found the old woman staring at him. Her gaze was straight, clear and supremely intelligent. After several minutes of returning the gaze, Calian finally asked a simple, "What?"
The hag stared silently for several seconds more, then climbed to her feet. She limped back to the fireplace and stirred the pot of stew again. "I'll help you," she said into the fire.
"You will?" asked Calian. "How?"
"But it will cost you," the woman continued as if Calian hadn't spoke. "It will cost you two things, and they are not small." She turned to face him, the ladle again dripping between them. Her eyes had gone from the dark cloudy green of the swamp to a bright new-grass green. "First, you will have to help me escape from this place. When you leave, you take me too. Understand?"
Calian nodded. He wasn't sure how he would get this crippled creature through the tangle of marsh grass around the cabin, but he would not leave her behind if she wanted to escape this purgatory. He nodded again.
The old woman's hand quivered, and small drops of stew dripped from the ladle. "Second," she said, "second, and it's the one you have to do first, second, you have to trust me." She stared that clear green stare at him.
"What does that mean, `trust you'? Trust what about you?"
"Trust my way of getting the hairs. Trust that I won't turn on you and use you to gain favor with the demon." She paused. "Trust that what I have to do to you is for your own good and that I'll undo it. That kind of trust." She turned back to the pot. "You have to agree to both," she said without looking at Calian. "Otherwise, I can't help you and you will have to take your chances and fight your own fight." She laid the ladle aside and fell into her chair again. "And you better decide soon."
Tired of waiting for an invitation, Calian eased himself into the other well-stuffed chair. `Be with me, Father,' he silently prayed, then talked to himself. `Trusting people who ask for it has done you well so far. And trusting God has gotten you through. Go with what you know.'
"I trust you," he said aloud.
"And you'll take me with you when you go?"
Calian nodded. "I'll take you with me. Off this island and back to your own land, if you direct me to it."
She laugh/coughed. "Never mind my land. First, you get me safe away from this island and then we'll worry about where to go from there."
"Agreed."
She gave him another of those long, green stares. "Agreed," she echoed quietly. She paused, then struggled to her feet. "Now, stand up and lay your hand on me," she patted her right shoulder, "right here."
Covering his hesitation with action, Calian jumped to his feet and laid his hand on the woman's bony shoulder. Act like you trust, he thought, and soon you will.
"Now," she told him, "get a grip on the cloth." He did. "Whatever happens, however you feel, don't let go of my frock. It will be the only chance you have. Understand?"
He didn't, but Calian nodded anyway. He would do as the woman said, trusting her as he agreed.
"Good. Now stand there and don't talk." She closed her eyes and began to talk to the air. The language was full of `s's and occasional clicks and pops, and Calian understood none of it. With her left hand, she traced figures in the air. One of the figures hung in the air after she dropped her hand, a strange and complex character formed of green fire. Calian gripped the filthy frock tighter.
The world began to enlarge. The old hag grew in size, the rough wooden ceiling of the shack sailed far into the distance, forced up by the walls which suddenly sprouted far over Calian's head. He felt very light and a little nauseous. In fact, he felt so light that his feet lifted off the board floor. It was then that Calian realized he was the only thing changing. The woman and hut were not growing; he was shrinking.
Smaller and lighter he grew, and he kept a death grip on the old woman's ragged clothes; that grip was all that kept him from crashing to the floor. The green fire shape was slowly fading, and Calian felt the change in him slow. His clothes stiffened around him, and then hardened. With a strange detachment, he watched his hand stiffen and form into a hard, red claw. He was glad he couldn't see his face.
A moment later the green fire faded completely and the old woman collapsed backward into her chair, gasping for breath. "Nogth didn't think I had it in me any more," she wheezed, "else he would never leave me alone. But I still had one left. You there." She called out at her shoulder where Calian was buried among the folds. "You hide. Nogth will not think twice about a bug crawling on me, but we don't want to take any chances. You just sit and wait."
An ant?!? Calian was very glad he could not see himself. In his own ant way, he started praying. Hard.
Calian settled into a fold in the woman's rags, and the woman settled into her chair. Together they rocked and waited for David Daev Nogth to get home. It was not a long wait.
The sun was finally setting, and the gray mist fading into a miserable black when the front door moaned open.
"Now you stay still," the old crone whispered to Calian. He finds you and it's awful luck for us both." She struggled to her feet and was stirring the stew when Nogth entered the kitchen.
The "demon" looked nothing like what Calian expected. It looked like a man, a tall, slim athletic man with pale skin and incredibly bright blue eyes. It was clean-shaven, well-dressed in a woodsman kind of way with an off-white linen shirt, dark green pants and knee high deerskin boots, and its baby-fine light blond hair fell to its shoulders. With every movement or stray breeze, the thin hair floated independently behind and around the faery creature, tugged along at the last moment when the demon moved. Though its clothes were soaked and boots caked in mud, the creature's hair and face were bone dry.
The demon was so striking, Calian was glad he was in his ant form. Meeting it as a man, the prince would have felt a little outclassed.
"Woman," said the demon with a rumbling bass voice, "I smell human. How did we get man-meat for the stew tonight?"
`Can ever faery creature smell a man?' Calian wondered. Every bad-tempered Sidhe he'd ever met had raised their noses when entering a room where he hid.
"It's me you smell, Nogth," said the hag. "There's naught but fish and crawdads to fatten this stew."
The demon swung his perfect aquiline nose from side to side to try and catch the scent. From his perch on the hag's shoulder, Calian saw that there was a tiny fraction of a second when he swung his head before his face caught up. It was almost like a mask floating in space in front of a real face. Almost.
Nogth gave up for the moment. Falling into the chair Calian had used, the demon threw its hunter's pouch onto the heavy oak sideboard by the window. "Tomorrow's supper in there," it said. "Dip me out some of today's supper." It lay its head back against the chair's padding.
The hag ladled the oily brown stew into a stoneware bowl. "Tired?"
Nogth grunted. "This rain. It saps your energy. I think I could live in this world another thousand years and I would never get used to weather. Especially not when it got cold and wet." It held the bowl in it hands, letting the heat soak through the crockery and into it.
Shambling about quicker than Calian thought her able, the old woman fetched a large flagon of warm red wine for the demon. Before handing it over, she secretly fortified it with a shot of clear poteen. Then she ladled herself a bowl of the stew and sat opposite the creature.
They ate in silence, and the demon made short work of the flagon of wine. The cold had seeped into the creature, and the stout wine sent a needed warmth through what it had in place of blood. The hag fetched him another mug.
"Shall I rub your shoulders and brush your hair?" she asked as she passed the flagon over.
The demon's perfect blue eyes narrowed when it stared at her. "Here, why you offering such things? You know you don't like to do such?"
"Yes, but you're cold and wet. I'm sure you're miserable, and I'm eating what you have brought in. Besides..." She sighed and stared out the window at the rain that streaked across the glass in the dark. "Weather such as this makes me homesick. And when I get like that, I want to be close to some one."
It scooped up another mouthful of the stew and washed it down with a large gulp of the strengthened red wine. "I think I would like that," it finally announced. "It was awfully cold, and you rarely get friendly."
"Didn't say I was friendly, now," the hag muttered to Calian and herself. Flopping back into her chair, she watched the demon. She would occasionally take a bite or two of her stew, but her attention was on the wine flagon and how fast the demon was putting away the fortified spirits.
Pretty quickly was the answer to that. The wine warmed the faery creature from the inside out, and the demon poured down much more of it than the stew. Setting the stew bowl to the side, it rose, filled the flagon again, and sat in the floor at the hag's feet. It leaned back against her irregular legs, and laid its golden head on her lap.
The old hag's lip curled in revulsion when she picked up the brush from the table near her chair. Her hand hovered over the demon head for a moment before she could bring herself to touch it. But she remembered that this was a way out of the demon's cabin, and she began to brush.
"Hmmmm." The demon appeared to relax under the gentle brush strokes. It took a large draught from its wine flagon. "This is nice, Jillian," it said. "You ought to do this more. I could fall asleep this way."
The woman said nothing, but brushed steadily. When the demon looked as if he had settled comfortably, she gasped, twisted the brush in his hair and jerked - hard!
"Yow!" The demon rocked forward, rubbing its head. "Whatever are you about, woman? Are you trying to pull me bald?"
"Forgive me, Master Nogth," she said. She rocked from side to side in her chair, both hands clenched on the brush. She gasped again, her hands flew apart, and the brush sailed across the room.
The demon took another long pull from his wine flagon. "What ails you, woman?"
"I had a vision," she lied. "It must the weather or a charge from your hair or something. I had a vision." She placed her hand inside her shirt to feel her heart.
"A vision?" The demon took another drink. "What kind of vision?"
Satisfied that her heart was still in place and still beating, she brought hand back out and patted her chest over her heart. "There were three images, all crowded together. You know of such things, Nogth. Can you interpret these?"
Nogth leaned against her bony legs again. "Tell me of these visions," he said.
"There was a place, a town, a human town. It had a fountain that sprayed wine, but it didn't spray wine. Does that mean anything?"
The demon waved his flagon. "I know that city. They dwell under a curse placed by your good friend Kevinawe."
The old woman gasped again, and this time there was no show in it. "Kevinawe? What has he done? Can it be undone?"
"Why should you care? You have enough of your own problems given you by master K." It chuckled and took another drink. "Yes, that curse is easily lifted. Under the flag stones in the center of the fountain, there is a toad sitting and blocking the flow of wine. Wouldn't be surprised if the toad had been some one else before K got hold of it and put it this use. Kevinawe's good at that, eh, Jillian?"
The hag's teeth ground together audibly, and her fingers curled in the demon's hair. But she didn't pull. Her aged voice was steady when she said, "The second part of the vision concerned another human town, this one with a golden tree or tree that produced golden fruit - I don't know which."
"And it is not producing, eh?" The demon took another drink. "Shouldn't wonder. Kevinawe was upset with some one in that village, as well. He's easily upset, isn't he, Jill?"
The hag stared into the flames licking around the stew cauldron. "And can that curse be lifted?"
"Of course. The town's people have only to dig at its base to find the snake chewing on the tree's roots and preventing it from blooming." Another drink. "Another Kevinawe kind of trick, eh?"
She sat silent for several minutes. Calian could not imagine what she was thinking, but her jaw was working, her teeth grinding. Her green eyes were clear and bright and filled with cold hatred.
"And the third part of the vision?" asked the demon.
"It concerned a single man. The man was lost, confused. He did not know where he was or why. He was not born to the sea, but he had an oar and a boat."
"The Ferryman." The demon nodded. "He is near here. He was here before I built my home here on this island. He may have upset Kevinawe, too, for all I know, but he's cursed and stuck here."
The old woman showed some interest. "If he has been here that long, how do you know his story?"
"I don't. I know he's cursed because I can see the magic in the boat pole he uses. If he ever gives away the pole, he'll be free. Problem is, some one must take the pole from him and take his place, and until he gets rid of the pole, he doesn't know that. Good trap, eh?" The demon's voice showed he greatly admired the wizard who had invented that curse.
"Oh, just excellent," the hag said quietly. "Excellent." She looked so far away, Calian wondered if she were having a vision.
The little group sat in silence for a few minutes, the fire crackling warmly at their feet. Then, from nearby, there came a low rumbling sound. It grew louder, then louder, and Calian wondered that neither of them seemed concerned by it. After listening to it for several minutes, he finally understood why - it was the sound of the demon Nogth snoring.
Calian waited, patient in his little ant shape. He expected the old woman to get up at any moment and concern herself with her escape. Then he heard another noise, this one also low and raspy, but much closer. Daring a peek from the folds of her shirt, he scrambled out into the air.
The old hag Jillian was also asleep, head drooped forward, softly snoring in her little old woman way.
The ant prince stared at the peaceful, wrinkled face hanging above him. He thought he could wake her by running up to her ear, but there was a chance she would just swat him without thinking. Besides, she was old, and tired and it was very late. Better to start in the morning, he thought. And little chance of doing anything else.
Deciding the safest place was on her shoulder under her thin yellowish hair, Calian climbed into another wrinkle in her frock and settled in for the night. As he dropped off to sleep, he wondered, `Do ants snore, too?' He never found out.
It was an uneasy night for Calian. Every twitch by the old woman or grunt by the demon brought him wide awake and looking for the safest direction to dive. Being an ant gave one a strong appreciation of the benefits of non-ant-hood. But it also meant that Calian was awake when Nogth woke.
It was a remarkably ordinary affair considering Nogth was a demon. It shook itself to life at first light, stretching and scratching like a dog. Its appearance gave no sign of having spent the night in the floor. The face, the hair, it all seemed the same as the night before when the faery had first arrived. Except that the sliding, mask-like quality seemed more pronounced.
`Maybe he doesn't work at it hard in the morning,' Calian thought. `Not he,' he reminded himself. `It. It doesn't work at it hard in the morning.'
Without waking the old woman, the creature dipped himself another bowl of the stew, and ate it quietly. Then he picked up the crossbow standing in a corner, selected a slim birch rod from a pile on a low table, and left the shack.
The thud of the front door closing woke the old woman. Or maybe she had been awake all along but had not wanted the demon to know. Either way, he was no more than a step from the hut when she was up bustling about.
"Now," she said into the folds of her clothes, "you - I don't even know your name - you hang on again." She closed her eyes and again talked to the air in her foreign tongue. With her left hand, she traced out more figures of green fire and soon Calian felt his feet sliding down the old woman's frock, his weight returning to normal. Within moments he stood full size and smiling in front of her.
"That wasn't nearly as bad as I had always imagined. Being transformed, I mean."
The old woman gave him a hard look up and down. "Glad you enjoyed it."
"But," Calian held his arms out to measure against the fire place. "Did you bring me all the way back?"
"Of course I did! Why?"
"The cabin and all seem all right, but you seem taller. I just wondered if I was back to full height."
"You are. My back isn't bothering me as much as usual so I look a little taller." She rubbed her lower back. "That don't matter, now. We have to get out of here. You remember, you promised you'd get me out of here."
Calian nodded. "I remember. Can you get the hairs?"
She smiled a crooked, gap-toothed smile at him and reached into her shirt. When she brought out her hand, she held a tiny tuft of pale yellow fibers. "Pulled them out when I had my `vision.' Saved them when I felt my heart." She cackled at her own cleverness, then stopped. She pulled back the hairs and eyed Calian suspiciously. "You promised, remember?"
"I remember. Is there anything you want to take from this place?"
The hag snorted. "Nothing but me." She shuffled to a peg on the wall and took down a ratty cape
"You must be ready to go," Calian said. "You're walking a lot better, too."
Throwing the cloak around her shoulders, Jillian turned a green eye on the prince. "What's your name?"
"Calian pen Galandier," the prince replied. "I was born in Galand, many days walk from here. Now I live in a country called Morna, also quite a hike away." He stretched as tall as he could, his back cracking loudly. "If you're ready to go, I'd like to get back to it."
She shuffled to the door. "Family?"
Calian frowned at her bent back. "Yes. And I'd like to get back to them, too. Let's go."
He slowly opened the massive door and peered out into the misty-cool morning. Sunlight filtering through the branches had not yet burned off the vapors that had risen from the swamp, and he could not see far. What he could see was clear of demons, so he waved the old woman to go past him. Then he closed the rickety door, retrieved his pack where he had hidden it, and followed her.
"You're so nosy," he said quietly to her as they pushed through the damp reeds. "What's your name?"
The old woman paused to pull her foot from the soft mud. "Jillian," she said. She pulled the cloak tight about her. "Jillian Rose."
"Jillian Rose?" Calian waited for a response that did not come. "You know that Jillian Rose is the name of the daughter of the man who got me in on this quest?"
"I had picked up on that." She gave a vicious swipe at a stand of reeds, then stomped off to the south.
Calian followed, content to let her take out her anger on the foliage. "Any connection between you and her?"
Jillian didn't answer. Instead, she beat aside any reeds, grasses or branches within reach, whether they were in the way or not. After a quarter-mile or so of this, she said, "That was dangerous of you, back there, trusting me that way. How did you know I would turn you back to a person, or that I wouldn't crush you under my thumb while you were an ant?"
"I didn't. But a man has to have faith in something. I'm a happy idiot." He smiled at her and pushed aside another damp branch. "I have faith that everything will work out all right. I have people at home I need to get back to. I've asked to get back to them. I have faith it will happen. I just don't know what will happen in the mean time. You're moving better."
Calian was right. The old woman's walk had become steadier as the morning wore on. Instead of tiring and bringing them to a halt as Calian had feared, Jillian was standing straighter and leading the way.
"I feel better than I have in a long time. But I am getting tired." She leaned one hand against a tree trunk. "You lead the way for a while."
Calian nodded and stepped in front of her. "So," he said, as if there had not been an hour gap since he had last asked, "are you connected with the daughter of Malcolm Rose?"
"Do NOT mention that name to me!" Jillian stomped past Calian and took the lead again. "Not now or ever, you understand?" She hacked at a mound of brush.
The prince watched her at work, her back straighter, her legs stronger than they had been an hour ago. He prayed a silent request for protection for them both. "Yes, ma'am," he said aloud.
The sun was just touching the treetops when the pair popped through the brush to the thin ribbon of shore beside the swamp. Calian had guessed pretty much right. The ferryman was about two hundred yards south.
"That's where we're going," he told Jillian and pointed at the boat.
She squinted at the craft. "That the man you told me about? The one Nogth said must lose his pole to free himself?"
Calian nodded. "That's him. You think you can make it."
Jillian took a few deep breaths. "Just give me a minute to rest and we'll get there. I ain't stopping now."
"Night fall should see us off this island," Calian said, and crossed himself.
Jillian squinted at him. "Let's go."
The weeds were thinner, but the mud sucked around their feet with every step. The two-hundred yards were slow going. When the two reached the small boat, Jillian was so exhausted Calian had to lift her into the craft where she promptly collapsed. The prince rummaged around the mud of the bank until he found a long, stout tree branch, and then he climbed in after her.
"Ferryman," he said to the statue-like occupant of the boat, "can you row us to the other side?"
"Yes." The man's clothes had dried in that day's sun, but he wore the same dreary expression Calian had seen the previous afternoon.
"Well then, take us there, please."
Without a word, the ferryman turned to face the mainland and pushed his pole into the soft muck of the bank. Calian pushed his tree branch into the mud and helped shove the boat off from the shore. With the two of them working, the boat made good time through the morass, and soon was in the middle of the foul smelling swamp. They had just planted their poles for another push when Jillian sat up from where she had been resting in the bottom of the boat.
"Ferryman, stop."
The muscles in the ferryman's arms sagged and he stopped. He sank his pole into the thin mud of the swamp until it touched something solid, and then he leaned on it.
Torn between confusion and relief at getting a break, Calian leaned heavily on his own pole. "Jillian, what are you doing? I thought you'd want to reach the shore before sundown." Sundown was not far off.
The woman shifted in the bottom of the boat, trying to get comfortable. She stretched, and seemed taller and more lithe than Calian remembered. When she raised her arms over her head, the skin stayed in place instead of falling in wattles as it had earlier.
"You've been good to me," she said simply. She scratched her hair and rubbed her face. "I want to tell you my story."
Calian raised an eyebrow. "This can't wait till we're on the other shore and have a campfire going?"
She peered at him in the dimming light. "You may not want to build us a campfire, once you hear this." She waited.
Calian sat on a gunwale and shipped his pole. "All right," he said quietly. "Tell us your tale."
Jillian cast an eye on the ferryman who still stood with his back to them, facing across the bow to the mainland that lay in the gathering darkness. He showed no interest.
"I do have a connection with the Malcolm Rose who sent you on this quest. I am the Jillian Rose he spoke of, though that creature you saw is not my father." She spat over the side of the boat into the swamp. When he saw she was waiting for him to acknowledge this, Calian nodded.
"The thing who claimed to be my father is actually Kevinawe Daev Arwyn and is no more human than Dawydd Daev Nogth. Kevinawe Arwyn, whom you saw as Malcolm Rose, is a demon and wizard." She paused and stared at Calian. He waited for her to continue.
"My father's name was Malcolm Rose, and he was a penniless scholar. He was not a religious man, but he was fascinated with religion. He had no `calling' as your people use the word, but he could recall nearly everything he ever read or heard on the subject of religious rite and experience, and he could connect the material, piece by piece. He saw patterns in the way different worshippers saw and expressed things. He thought he was on the way to discovering something new and important and powerful. And he was right.
"For a while he styled himself a Christian, just like you, and he told me that I was one, too. He was born a pagan, he said, and tried other faiths. Christianity, though, was beating the other religions so he felt he should go with it. Not to be on the winning side, but because it was proving the strongest. For all that he knew about Christian philosophy, after knowing him and then seeing some real Christians, I doubt he ever understood its core.
"Eventually, his studies led him into other, darker areas. He learned much about the Sidhe, but he learned much about other, darker powers, too. He learned enough to acquire certain power, and to pass that power on. You've been witness to that. My small abilities were a `gift' from my father." She sighed and stared into the dark. "He had the best intentions, I'm sure, using his only daughter as a test animal.
"Now, when he started experimenting with the power, he didn't know that some creatures can spot that power like a bonfire in the night. Kevinawe Daev Arwyn," she spat again, "spotted my father's use of the power - and the demon wanted it.
"It first appeared to my father in a human shape and posing as a fellow inquirer. They talked together for many nights before Kevinawe realized my father was not going to impart the knowledge and power he had gleaned from his studies. Arwyn turned to threats, demanding my father teach it or it would use its already considerable powers to destroy him. And me.
"The monster harassed my father. And me. Imps and faery beings invaded our home. Birds would attack us by day, bats by night. Nothing that would kill us, you understand. The demon would learn nothing from that. But to harass us, to make our lives hell. My father delved further into those forbidden works, looking for some power that would save us, something that would destroy Arwyn but leave us intact.
"He didn't find it. One night Arwyn appeared in our home, though the doors were barred against it. My father threw a magic shield around us and Kevinawe caused a tremendous storm inside our little cottage. It wore my father down, keeping that magic wall around us, and he finally collapsed. His heart gave out and he died that night on our cold wet floor."
Jillian stared into the night, her wrinkled face faintly lit by the cool steady stars that filled the sky. The three of them stood and sat motionless for many long moments, living statues in a small boat on a swamp.
"Now, Arwyn was mad," she continued finally. "I've never seen any living being as angry as it was at my father's death. It did some things to me." She paused again, staring at the night. Her breath was a little shaky. "It did several things to me. And then it cursed me."
Jillian turned her eyes on Calian. He could see starlight glint in the clear green. "I wasn't always like this, Calian. I was tall and straight and slim and new when all this happened." She turned back to the night. "It did some things to me, and then it cursed me to look like this. Old, haggard, worn out. One leg too short, my sense of smell and taste gone, my skin hanging in wrinkled bags all over me. Joints twisted and knotted with arthritis, teeth turned and yellowed and rotted away in my head. I'm old and deformed and I ache every hour of the day and night. Cursed creature said he was `freeing' me. Thought it was funny, I guess.
"The villagers were terrified of what happened to me. Chased me out. Just as well. I couldn't bear them seeing me this way. So I wandered. As awful and painful as it was and as bad as I was treated by strangers, I wandered for months. Finally, through a long chain of events I don't wish to describe, I met Dawydd Daev Nogth. It's a demon, too. It sees this form that you see, but it also sees the real me, the one I was before this. It accepted me and asked me to come take care of its home. And, Mother help me, I accepted.
"You just don't know!" She faced Calian again. "You don't know what it was like to wander all that time, always in pain, always rejected. I had no illusions about this demon. The phony face and long blond hair did not fool me. I know how true demons look and think and act. But I had been so completely rejected by humans, I took up with it, and became its housekeeper."
Jillian pulled her knees close to her chest and wrapped her arms around her legs. "That was longer ago than I care to remember. And since time passes differently in a faery world, I don't know how long it's been in your world, how many years have passed since I went to that cabin." She laid her face on her knees and seemed to speak at the night. "Nogth would bring me news of the human world. It never explained why it was so involved in us, and I never asked, but it was forever crossing back and forth.
"Anyway, I knew the creature that cursed me had taken to using my father's name and shape when it suited him. Made it easier for him to work in the world of humans." She rested her chin on her knees, staring back at Calian. "And now it's come to you with this lie about rescuing me. Arwyn must not have known I was with Nogth. Not even Kevinawe would have the audacity to use my name and then send you to me. There's no telling what power it thinks it can derive from having some piece of Nogth, but there's sure to be power in it for Arwyn or it wouldn't have bothered, And sure it's afraid to fight with Nogth."
She rocked back and forth a few minutes, looking at the night. "Now, you've heard my tale. My father was an apostate Christian and a wizard. He passed magic powers on to me, which I guess makes me a witch and I'm sure cursed. You've been sent on a dangerous wild goose chase by a demon, and you're sitting in the middle of a swamp with a witch and a man with a cursed sculling pole. Still want to build us a fire?"
Calian prayed a small, silent prayer of thanks that the story had not been as bad as he had feared. His imagination conjured up worse things than she had said.
"Nothing you've told me makes you any less cold and wet," he said. "Nor me. Can we go to the shore?"
She stared at the prince for a full minute, the star light glittering in her green eyes. "You're a good listener, Calian," she said. "Bet the women like you."
Calian gave her a small, lop-sided smile. "Just one," he said quietly. He dug his oaring branch into the mud and told the silent ferryman to start rowing to the shore.
Within an hour of the boat landing on the mainland, the sun was gone, the ferryman had resumed his tired position of leaning on his sculling pole, and Calian and Jillian were drying their feet at a campfire.
"What do you figure is his story?" Jillian waved a slim, wrinkled hand at the ferryman.
Calian rummaged in his pack for some supper. "Don't know," he said. "Wish there was some way to get that pole away from him without having to stay in his place. Just have to pray for him. Here." He offered the woman some of his deer jerky rations.
Jillian stared at the meat. "Not enough teeth left to me to do it great damage. But still, it might be tasty." She took the strip of dried meat and began to gum it. "It's good." She sounded surprised. "Tender, too. Falling right apart."
Calian clamped his teeth on a chunk of the jerky and pulled. The dried deer stretched and snapped. `Just like leather,' he thought. `Just like always.' He poked up the fire.
"Do you think Nogth will come after us?"
The old woman looked out into the darkness. "I wouldn't think so. It always leaves at sunrise, returns before sunset. In all the time I've been there, I've not known Nogth to go out in the dark."
"I never had to trail you before." The voice came from the starless darkness of the trees that lined the shore of the swamp.
Calian jumped to his feet. His first thought was to step into the darkness, get away from the firelight and make a harder target. Then he remembered he was dealing with a creature of the Sidhe. Lack of sunlight would be no barrier to this one.
Dawydd Daev Nogth stepped into the circle of campfire light. "You didn't tell me you were leaving with this ant, Jillian." It sat on the log Calian had vacated.
The old woman glared at him through the flames. "If you knew, why didn't you do anything?"
"Of course I knew." Nogth stirred the campfire and tossed on a couple of branches. "I'm faerie, remember? I see magic, remember? Like that mans cursed sculling pole." Nogth waved a smoldering brand at the ferryman. The ferryman stared into the darkness.
"You didn't answer, me," Jillian said. "Why didn't you do anything?"
"What was I to do? This man was no threat to me, certainly not while he was an ant. And in all the time you have known me, Jillian, have you ever really known me to eat human flesh?"
"Well, you've talked about it."
Nogth snorted and the perfect mask of a face blurred slightly. Calian wondered if that were the demon equivalent of a laugh.
"Talked is right. Talked is all. I have never hurt a human who did not attack me. I have never hurt you, have I Jillian?"
"I can't think of anything right now." She shifted uncomfortably on her seat.
"That's because there wasn't anything. Why did you feel you had to sneak away?"
Jillian shifted some more and stared into the darkness. "Didn't think you'd let me go. You always talked about eating people, and you needed me to take care of your house."
The perfect demon face showed no change of expression but the voice was confused. "Jillian, I am a wizard. I can tell the house to take care of itself."
"Then why did you keep me a prisoner?" The woman yelled across the campfire at the placid blond demon. "I thought you kept me there to do your work. Why did you keep me there, then?"
The bland, perfect face stared back at her. "I guess I never told you. I enjoyed having you there." The mask hovered expressionless in front of the face. "I never kept you locked in. You never said anything about leaving. And I thought you wanted to be there because of Kevinawe's curse."
Jillian jumped to her feet and stomped away from the light of the fire. "Can you see through this, too? You know what I used to look like?"
"I can, if I choose." the demon said softly. "I know what you look like now."
From the protection of darkness, Jillian watched the expressionless mask of the wizard. "Why do you stay in the human world?"
"If you really are leaving, perhaps I can give you some things to help you on the road." It reached a hand into the small pouch on its belt and withdrew several blankets, some dried meat, a bag of coins and a heavy cloak.
Calian felt a twinge of worry; such sights were becoming commonplace to him. Nodding his thanks, he took the items from the demon and stacked them with his own meager possessions.
"Are both of you as brain dead as this thing?!" Jillian pointed at the ferryman but shrieked and Calian and Dawydd. "Why are doing this?"
Calian was genuinely confused this time. "Doing what?"
"This!" She waved in the general direction of the campfire. "You left your people to creep into a demon's den and steal hairs to help free some one you don't know. Now you're going to slow yourself on the return home by carrying me with you. Why are you doing this?"
"I thought I had explained that," Calian said. "The creature masquerading as Malcolm Rose said he needed my help to free his daughter." The prince threw some branches on the fire. He shrugged. "I was misinformed."
"But why did you do it?!"
Calian squinted at her through the fire. "Because it needed to be done and I was the one who needed to do it." He cocked his head to one side. "I can't explain it any better than that. Poetry and rhetoric were my weak subjects."
"And you!" She threw this at Nogth. "You can see so much. Could you see how much I hated you for being a demon?"
Nogth grunted and the mask shivered again. "I didn't need second sight for that."
"But you let me stay in your home?"
The wizard tried to imitate Calian's shrug. "I enjoyed your company, Jillian," it said simply. "And what was I to do, put you to living on the roads?"
Jillian stomped around the edge of the firelight for a silent, angry minute, her arms folded, eyes glaring a hole in the ground at her feet. Calian noticed that she no longer rocked from side to side when she walked and that she stood much straighter.
"Do you know what would release me from this curse?" She asked this of Nogth, but Calian got a sinking feeling in his stomach. He really did not want to go questing after something to cancel a curse.
"You never told me," answered the demon.
"But do you know?"
"No."
She stomped some more, half in darkness, half in firelight. "Well, then, I'll tell you. After it had killed my father, that demon," she spat the word, "it pulled itself up real tall, and it dropped all the fake, changling human shape and it hit me with its cursed faery powers and it said - " she stopped and faced the man and the demon sitting by the fire "`the only release you'll see will be the day you do an unselfish act!'" She stared across the campfire as if expecting them to challenge her. They didn't. "And then it laughed. It was so confident, so sure I would never do anything unselfish, it made that the sole release condition for this." She pinched a chunk of the skin of her face.
The man and demon silently watched her from their log seats. Calian could think of nothing to say. He could not tell what was happening behind the demon's perfect mask.
After a moment of staring, Jillian's eyes dropped, and then the hand the pinched her face, and then her head. "And I guess it was right," she whispered. "I still look like this." She turned her back to the fire.
"Do you?" Nogth asked.
"Do I what?"
"Do you still look the same?"
"Of course I do," she mumbled into the darkness. "Why would I not?"
"You are standing straighter," Calian offered. "And you had no trouble walking through the woods on the island. You're legs must be feeling better."
Jillian turned to look at them. "You're not going to tell me that the curse is lifted?"
Calian shrugged again. "I don't have the sight to see a curse. I just know you move better today than when I met you last night."
"You look more like yourself tonight than any time I have known you," Nogth said.
"More like myself." Jillian felt her face and pinched her arms in several places. "More like myself. It's you!" She jabbed a wrinkled finger at Calian. "I took a chance and helped you. That's why this is clearing." She paced quickly back and forth along the edge of the firelight. "I need to do more. I need to do something big. I need - " She froze and stared into the darkness.
Nogth's perfect face blurred to a fuzz. "Jillian! No!" He leaped to his feet and jumped over the campfire.
The woman dashed across the few feet of damp shore to the ferryman. Without slowing, she grabbed the sculling pole and her momentum carried her further, pulling the pole from the man's clawed hands. For a split second, the two were lit by a flash of bright green light as the pole exchanged owners. Then darkness wrapped them again and they collapsed to the spongy turf.
When Calian and the demon reached the pair, they were still sprawled on the ground. Both lay flat of their backs staring at the night sky, but the ferryman actually seemed to see it, where Jillian only happened to be facing it.
In the dim light, Calian saw Nogth's face blur and refocus several times. The prince decided this was a show of emotion.
"Jillian," Calian called to the old woman on lying in the mud. "Jillian, do you hear me?"
"Do not bother," said the demon in a hollow voice. "Did the ferryman show you recognition when you spoke to him? She is in the grips of the curse. She has settled into a form of melancholy that only human beings can know. There will be no answer as long as she holds that rod." Nogth rose and walked slowly back to the campfire.
Calian crouched beside the fallen woman and watched as she slowly struggled to her feet. Leaning heavily on her newly won sculling pole, she drug herself to the little boat and stepped in.
"But why does she look the same? She improved during the day. This did nothing for her."
The demon poked up the fire again. "She told the truth about her curse. She must perform a wholly unselfish act. Taking the pole from that man was not done to help him, but to help herself." The face blurred again. "There was nothing unselfish about that. Help him over here."
Nogth indicated the ferryman slowly struggling to his feet. "Are you all right?" Calian asked as he helped the man walk stiffly to the fire.
The man responded in a gibberish Calian could not interpret.
"Do you understand him?" he asked the demon.
"Maybe." The demon spoke a rapid-fire stream of syllables that sounded like all vowels. The ferryman nodded and responded. The two struck up a conversation, and though the demon's perfect face showed no change, the voice sometimes sounded genuinely surprised.
"I have no idea how long this man has stood here," the wizard told Calian at last. " He and his pole were already here when I arrived on the island so long ago. It has been many, many summers since I heard anyone speak this language and never in this land. He remembers his family and his life before, he remembers being cursed, and he remembers every second of the long years since. Every second." It stared across the darkness to the boat and its new driver. The face blurred again.
Calian watched the ferryman, who stared at the fire, sky and trees as if they were all brand new. Maybe to him they were. "Did he say why he was so cursed?"
Nogth shook its head. "I doubt he wants to dwell on that. He just wants to go home. Understandable, though there may not be much home left for him." The demon pulled a hood over its head. Much of its perfect face vanished into the shadow. "He told me something of how it feels to hold that pole. I can see the magic in it, but even I cannot know the lonely, hopeless, helpless melancholy it brings."
`And that Jillian is going through right now,' Calian thought. He knew that was also on the demon's mind. "What are we going to do about her?"
"Do? Nothing. Unless you wish to take that oar from her, there's nothing to be done now. Perhaps on another day I can find a way to free her, but not now." It pulled the hood closer around its face. "You should sleep now, both of you. You have a long journey to start tomorrow."
"I don't know how to handle the Kevinawe creature when I get home."
"Are you not a man of faith?" asked the demon.
"I try to be."
"Then have more of your faith. Have faith that this, too, will some how work out for the best." The demon threw a blanket to the ferryman and one to Calian, then pulled its cloak close and curled up on the ground by the fire. "Sleep, Prince of Morna. Tomorrow you travel."
`Good idea,' thought Calian. With a smile and nod to the ferryman, he curled up on his side of the fire and fervently prayed for them all and all the people at home. The clouds were breaking and a couple of stars peeping down on the little party when he finally slid off to sleep.
7a - Swamp
Breaking camp was a remarkably business-like affair the next morning. Nogth pulled more material from his bottomless bag and told Calian to take whatever blankets, food or other supplies he needed; the remainder went back in the bag. The Ferryman, who refused to give his real name, was going to stay with Nogth until he regained his strength, cleared his head and decided on his next step.
Jillian leaned on her oar, stared dully into the space in front of her, noticed nothing, ignored all. Only in the eyes of the Ferryman had Calian seen such lethargy, such apathy, such depression and indifference. The dew settled on her that dawn and the sun baked off her that morning and she ignored both.
After breakfast, the men and the demon packed up the supplies, put out the fire and shouldered their bags. With handshakes and waves all around, Nogth and the Ferryman climbed into the little boat. "Take us to the island," said the demon from behind his perfect mask, and they set out their different ways - Calian walking alone to the south, Nogth and the Ferryman ride slowly to the island to the north.
Nogth guided the boat so that it came to shore in front of his home. It took Ferryman to the cabin and showed him around. When its visitor seemed at home and comfortably situated in a padded chair with a warm flagon of wine, Nogth went back to the boat.
The demon ordered Jillian to walk onto the shore. She took a few halting steps, but would go no further than ten feet from her boat. The curse had its limits, but it was enough for Nogth. It pulled a knife from its boot and waved the blade back and forth until it grew long enough to suit the wizard. Then it hacked out a clearing in the reeds ten feet in all directions of Jillian. Nogth cut tall cane poles with the knife, and with tent cloth and ropes pulled from the bottomless bag at its belt, the demon built a rough shelter around Jillian. It would keep the night air, scorching sun, the stinging bugs off her, and that was about all that could be done now.
Satisfied with its handiwork, Nogth went back into his cabin. Ferryman was asleep in the overstuffed chair. Nogth quietly bustled around, fixing supper the way Jillian had done - with hands instead of magic. The demon was content to let the man rest. Ferryman had much to recover from, and Nogth had plans to make.
Calian knew what to expect on this return walk, nor was he disappointed. The second day on the road, he found the first house south of the swamp; it was still deserted. The third day, he found the first small, suspicious village; he didn't stop. His pack was full, there was plenty of fresh water on the road, the natives were not friendly - and somewhere far down the road was Guinna.
A week into the southbound journey and he came to the city of the tree of golden apples. There were still armed guards in the village square, and still plenty of philosophers to explain the problem. They gave the story, just as before, and just as before they asked if he, perhaps, knew anything of trees.
"Perhaps," he replied.
This mildly amused the village wisemen, who had seen so many others try to find a cure. Did the stranger, perhaps, know anything of the curse?
"No, I know nothing of magic. But I do know a tree with parasites when I see it. Dig at the roots of the tree. You are looking for a worm or snake."
This set the village gossips into a complete uproar. What had the stranger in mind? From whence came his knowledge of trees? Were they to go about digging on the advice of any stranger that wandered through the city gates?
The men argued among themselves, ignoring Calian. The prince stepped to the middle of the square and asked one of the guards to help him left the flagstones that surrounded the tree. The guard had heard the old men argue the tree's problem until he was ready to impale them all. He welcomed the chance for some novelty, especially if it would upset the old men. Working the shaft of his spear under the flagstone, he and Calian flipped it over.
In a pocket of earth under the stones there lay a small white snake, busily gnawing the bark off the tree's roots. Much of the wood was exposed, and some looked dead, but the snake was hard at its work.
Before the old men realized they were being ignored, Calian had grabbed the flagstone and the guard had speared the tiny serpent. It writhed on the end of this spear, then burst into a ball of green flame and vanished. Calian let the flagstone drop.
The old men surrounded him, all talking at once, some asking, some telling, some ordering. Calian understood none of it.
"'Ere, be off with you!" The guard who had speared the snake popped a couple of the men on the feet with the butt of his spear. "This lad's tryin' to 'elp us, and what do you do?" The other guard happily joined in, and within minutes the square was empty but for the tree and the three men.
The guards took off their helmets and bowed to Calian. "Young sir, we've no idea who you are or how you know of these things, but you have the thanks of this village."
"And especially us. If I'da had to listen to them tell anyone else, I'da had to kill some one."
"Oh, aye. It were pretty bad standin' here listenin' to 'em, day after day."
The guards offered Calian this reward and that, and offered to let him pick his own. He finally convinced them that he wanted only to be on his way. The guards promised that, whether the tree prospered or no, they would speak favorably to the city leaders about him. They gave him a bottle of local wine, escorted him to the south side gates and bid him God speed.
Inside the canvas of Nogth's makeshift tent stood Jillian and her pole. Day after day she stood, sweating in the pent up heat in the tent, freezing in the far northern nights. The cloth was some protection, but the bugs found her and dined on her.
She had been angry so many times in her life. Indeed, she had spent years angry with Kevinawe, with Dawydd Daev Nogth, with her father and with herself. Sometimes Anger seemed the only emotion she knew.
But it wasn't. She also knew Depression, the black and bottomless emotion that rode close to Anger. At least she had thought she knew Depression. Since taking the rod from the Ferryman's hands, she had come to truly know Depression, know it like she knew her own voice, her own skin, her own smells. It was the only emotion she had, hopelessness the only thought she had. She knew, she knew with all the faith and certainty of all the saints and priests that her position was hopeless, useless and endless. She would not kill herself; she had not enough hope and energy to do such a thing. But she would not have stopped anyone who tried to kill her.
Jillian had no idea how long she stood against the pole. She was intensely, painfully aware of each passing second, of the grating slow pace of the sun across of the sky, of the lazy hum of the insects that fed on her. In her anger she had pictured dreadful, blasphemous things to do to her father who had `blessed' her and to the demon who had cursed her. But she had never imagined anything as horrible as this.
After a timeless eternity of standing in the stinking tent, Nogth and the Ferryman came and took it down. They threw the poles into the wood and put the canvas into the demon's bottomless bag.
"Jillian," said the demon, its false face close to her mask-like one, "I want you to row me to the mainland."
Without a word, she shuffled to her boat, climbed in and pushed off. The demon helped oar the craft, and at sundown they reached the shore. Nogth told her where to stand, then reached inside her shirt. When its hand came out, the demon was holding the hairs she had pulled from its head so long, long ago. The wizard stuffed the hairs into a crack near the top of the sculling pole. Then, drawing some characters in the air with his hand, a green fire enveloped him and then consumed him.
Jillian wished some one would kill her.
Kevinawe looked up from its book. The knock at the door was timid, barely there at all, and the demon did not wish to be disturbed at its studies. Gathering its mental energy, the demon constructed the Malcolm Rose face and went to the door.
"Yes?"
"Please, sir, I have a message for Master Malcolm Rose. Is that you, sir?" The voice in the darkness was as timid as the knock had been.
"I am Malcolm Rose. Step up where I can see you, boy."
The messenger boy stepped forward. Lamplight from inside the cabin showed dirty blond hair, ragged clothes, thin shoulders, scared blue eyes. "Please, sir," he repeated, "I have a message for Master Malcolm Rose. Is that you, sir?"
Rose frowned. "I told you, I am Rose. What is the message you have for me?"
The boy's eyes showed terror. He looked in every direction but toward Rose. "Please sir, I am to tell you, sir, that Prince Calian has returned to Castle Morna, sir." The boy twisted his hands together harder and faster, and he looked at the ground in front of him. "Please, sir, I am also to tell you, sir, that Prince Calian did not bring what you asked, sir. I am also, sir, to tell you, sir, that Prince Calian orders you to return immediately to your own land, sir." The boy trembled all over. "I am to tell you, sir, that you are to leave tonight, sir. Now, sir." The boy dropped half-way to his knees, then rose again. "I am also to wait for an answer, sir."
Rose reached into the darkness and grabbed the messenger by his ragged shirt. The demon let the false human face drop and appeared as its true self.
"What are you playing at?" it roared in the messenger's face. "Do you not see that I am faerie, too? I can see through your pitiful disguise. You do not fool me!"
The messenger stopped trembling in Kevinawe's grasp. A shimmering blur ran across the boy's body and suddenly Kevinawe found itself clutching the shirt of a fellow demon.
"Of course I don't," said Nogth. "I told him it would never work."
Kevinawe shook the other demon. "Who are you, and why do you come to me in this ridiculous disguise?"
"My name is Darwyyd Daev Northelta," Nogth lied. "I make my home far to the east of this wretched place. It shames me to say it, but a summer ago I was captured by Prince Calian." The demon spat. "I do not wish to describe how it happened. It happened. Since then, I have been under geas to come to perform an errand for Calian. That and to never harm him or his family. This was the errand." The demon looked at the hands grasping its shirt. Kevinawe let go.
Kevinawe closed the door and motioned the other demon in. "And what is this errand?"
"Calian did not believe you were Sidhe. He sent me to you in that silly disguise. If you had been taken in, it would have proven you were a mere human. You would have turned tail and run into the night, ending his problem with you. If, however, you really were faerie, you would see through my disguise. As you have done."
Kevinawe nodded. "So, what is the true state of things?"
"Calian will not face you if he learns you are Sidhe. He caught me by subterfuge and knows that you will be watching for tricks. He will try to destroy you by main force and the power of his priests."
Taking his pouch from the back of a chair, Kevinawe bustled around the small cabin, stuffing books, clothing and other items in the bottomless bag.
"Did Calian get Nogth's hairs?"
"Yes." The lying Nogth said this with relish.
Kevinawe crammed a handful of birch branches in the bag. "Where are the hairs now?"
"He has hidden them. They are stuffed in the cracks of a magic rod held by a woman. The woman is under a curse to ferry Nogth across that stinking swamp where he lives."
The Malcolm Rose demon took a last look around the cabin. "Is your geas finished?"
"Yes!" Nogth sounded appropriately relieved.
"Good," said Kevinawe. "You have done well. You fulfilled your obligation and betrayed your captor. I will remember you in time to come."
Nogth bowed slightly to Kevinawe. Raising its left hand, the demon twirled its fingers in the air. Dim green fire grew from them and spread to surround its entire body. The fire blazed brightly, then faded and with it faded Nogth.
Kevinawe raised its left hand and made similar gestures. In a few seconds, the last of the green fire faded and the cabin stood empty in the night.
Meanwhile, Calian had his own problems. Never knowing he now had the reputation of capturing a demon, he built a reputation of one who could cancel a curse. Passing through the village of the Fountain of Wine, he convinced the guards to pry up a flagstone near the center. There sat the toad, blocking the flow of wine. Calian remembered how Nogth had described the creature, so he did not let the guard kill it but simply knock it aside.
When the tiny animal landed, the flow of soft red wine started again, and the toad began to swell, shimmer and grow. In less than a minute the fountain was full again, and a large but confused man sprawled in the street where the toad had lain.
In the excitement that followed, Calian slipped away from the square and out of town. Lifting curses and saving villages was all very well, but he was still two weeks from home. And from Guinna.
In the damp blackness of a swamp night, faint green flame suddenly appeared in the air near Jillian's boat. The fire hovered, expanded, slowly took shape. Jillian had no interest in the flame, nor anything else, but she would have recognized the shape. She might even have found it encouraging, if she were capable of such feelings. The shape was the hated Kevinawe; the demon might relieve her misery - it might kill her.
The flame swelled, solidified, vanished. It left behind Kevinawe who crouched low in the blackness, scanning with second sight. It saw nothing save the indistinct form of the old woman by the boat. She had a magical glow of her own, but a bright faerie light came from the stave she held.
"You, there," the demon called to her. "I have heard that Dawydd Daev Nogth lives near here. Is that true?"
"Yes," she croaked in reply.
"And I have heard that you pilot his private ferry. Is that true?"
"Yes."
Kevinawe made a simple hand gesture. A bright yellow flame appeared on the end of the demon's index finger. The wizard pushed this into the woman's face to see her better. She did not blink.
"Jillian?" The demon was incredulous. "Jillian Rose? Is that you?"
"Yes."
The demon slowly shook its head as it peered into her clouded eyes. "You seem to draw curses, do you not? You've never recovered from mine, and here you are soaking up sun and rain in a swamp. Who would have thought? But, no matter." It turned its attention to the pole. By the light of the finger flame, Kevinawe saw the baby-fine blond hairs stuffed in the crack in the rod.
"You have something I want," it said. "Give me the pole."
For years afterward, Jillian wondered why she refused to give Kevinawe the cursed pole. Perhaps, she thought, the apathy was so intense she could not move; but she could row a boat when needed. Perhaps the pole controlled her thoughts as well as her actions and feelings, and it forced her to hold tight; but the Ferryman had not fought to keep the pole. Perhaps she was just stubborn and would do nothing as told, especially when told by Kevinawe; certainly the demon felt that way when she refused to move. Maybe keeping it was so awful that she felt it was penance for earlier wrongs; but she'd never felt penitent before.
Nogth and Calian explained the real reason, but she didn't like it as it sounded conceited. Jillian had decided that no one else, not even the hated Kevinawe, should live under the curse of the pole. No one, no matter who they were or what they had done (even to her) deserved the consuming depression and misery of the curse. She could not hate anyone or anything enough to subject them to that. Whether she would admit it or no, she tried to save Kevinawe from the pole's curse.
And this must be the truth of it, for when the demon demanded and Jillian silently refused, the curse fell away from her.
Her back limbered and she stood tall and straight, the jet black blossomed in her hair, and her blue-gray eyes cleared. Skin on face and arms tightened, legs grew long, slender - and the same length! Wattles under her chin disappeared, the bloom returned to her cheeks, and later, when she could smile again, the straight pearls of her teeth were back.
Jillian had overcome her hate, had refused to give up her curse and pass it on to a sworn enemy. She had done something Kevinawe had thought impossible - something self-sacrificing. She became beautiful again. And Kevinawe went insane with anger.
The demon, whose curse she shed before his eyes, saw the transformation as an act of defiance. "You've found power, Jillian. This Nogth has taught you something. I never thought you would shake my curse - never thought you would do anything unselfish. No matter. Give me the pole."
"No." The voice was young, but lifeless.
Kevinawe's left arm came up, the fingers drew in the night air. "I warn you, woman. I cursed you lightly before, and I will not tolerate this now. I need Nogth's hairs for my work, and you have no choice in the matter. Do not test my power or resolve. Give me the pole!"
"No."
"You will!" The demon dived through the night, green flame sprouting from its hands and arms. It grabbed the pole, planted its feet and pulled. Green light exploded between the two as the staff tore from Jillian's grasp, and they each collapsed to the damp turf, one unconscious, the other numb in body and mind.
Hours passed and the dew settled on demon and woman. Bugs feasted on her, avoided it. Stars wheeled above them and the only sounds came from the swamp.
As the eastern sky turned from deep black to deep blue, a tiny green flame appeared in the air near the boat. It grew, took shape and faded, leaving behind Dawydd Daev Nogth.
Nogth bent to waken Jillian. The wizard had worried away the night from far away so Kevinawe would not spot him. Now, with the approach of a new day, the demon arrived to see how the scheme had worked, and to do what he could for Jillian.
Sunrise found her sitting on a log, a fire crackling on the same stones Calian had used for a campfire weeks before. Wrapped in a blanket Nogth produced from his expandable bag, she watched mists rising ghostly from the swamp of her island home. She could not bring herself to look at the new ferryman / ferrydemon.
"Jillian," Nogth said as the sun crested the tree line, "we need to go home. You need to rest."
She nodded, but didn't move. "Isn't there some way to cancel the pole's magic?"
"Nothing I know of." He had long since recovered the strands of hair from the pole. "I still don't know whose curse it is. Maybe the rod was made before the time of men or Sidhe. I don't know. Do you really want to lift it?"
Jillian pulled the blanket close around her shoulders. "You haven't held that pole, Nogth," she whispered. "You don't know what he's going through." She shivered. "You don't know." Nogth helped her to her feet and into the small boat.
"Dawydd," she asked, "are you stuck with only one human face?"
The wizard climbed into the craft behind her. "I can conjure any face I can imagine."
Jillian smiled a tiny smile. She wrapped herself further in the thick woolen blanket. "Maybe I'll have you do some faces for me."
The perfect mask blurred. "I'd like that," Nogth said. He turned to the stern of the boat. "Take us to the island."
Silently, the ferrydemon pushed his pole into the turf and leaned against it. The boat moved out across the brackish dawn waters.
The sun was just rising, the guards just about to open the castle gates when the scruffy traveller appeared. He must have trotted out of the deep shadows of the early morning because the guards had not noticed him approach.
"Pardon, sergeant?" The dusty figure waved a deeply tanned arm.
The guard sergeant cast a hard eye on the traveller. "Yes?"
"Please open the gates, sergeant."
The sergeant squinted at the man. An unkempt bit of beard was all he could spot under the shadow of the hood. "This is Castle Morna, and the gates open at dawn. Have you business here?"
The traveller threw back the hood he wore against the night chill. "Indeed I do, sergeant," Calian called to the guard. "I miss my family."
"Cor! It's the prince!"
Dropping their spears to the stone floor, the two put their backs to the wheel that raised the castle gates. When it slammed open, they snatched up their weapons and stood to attention. The prince trotted in.
"And how are things in Morna?"
"Rumor is that it all goes well, Prince Calian."
The prince frowned. "`Rumor is?'"
"Aye. There are some gossips who whispered tales from the castle through the night. Let's the rest of us know how things are going. To be honest, my prince, I've my bet on a boy by prime!"
Calian frowned at him. "`Bet on a boy'? What are you talking about sergeant?"
It was the sergeant's turn to frown. "But that's why you're back this morning, surely? Did you not know, sire? Princess Guinna's time is on her. A little early, maybe, but not too --"
Calian broke into a run toward his apartments, cloak flapping behind. The guards watched him go.
"Cor," said the sergeant, "hope he speeds things along. It's almost prime now!"
"Guinna?" Calian slid around a corner into the sitting room where he'd first met Malcolm Rose. "Guinna!"
"Hush!" King Karel looked up from a couch in the room. "Stop that yelling! Whatever's wrong with you - oh, Calian. You're home." The king collapsed back onto his couch.
Calian did not like the king's look. "Father Karel, where's Guinna?"
The king looked up. His eyes were red and bleary. He nodded to one of the adjoining rooms. "Leave her alone. She's resting." His head hung again. "So am I," he added.
Calian stared at the closed door of the room. "And the child?" he whispered.
"Resting, too. Oh, go on in. I get so used to being king and father, I forget it's your wife and baby in there. They're fine. In better shape than me. They didn't spend the night worrying." The king waved an arm at the door. "Go on in."
Calian shuffled slowly across the room. On the other side of the door lay a different world. He held the doorknob for a long, long second, letting his mind settle and wave good-bye to parts of his life. Then he turned the knob and walked shyly in.
The sergeant lost his bet. The infant princess, Starla Anastasia, was born without trouble just before dawn that morning, the first of May. She had her father's mouth, her mother's eyes, straight brown hair and a cry that could wake the castle from scullery to belfry. In the years that followed, she showed other things inherited from her father and her mother. But we'll about those another time.
7inch's well - See the story The Three Crowns of Morna.
Galand - Calian's original home, the kingdom of his father and home of his brothers Thatele and Gorbath.
Poteen - A fiery, home-made liquor, sort of Irish moonshine. It is nasty to taste and potentially dangerous if not made properly, but it is also very popular.
Geas - A kind of curse, but one that allows the victim to lead most of his normal life. The curse could place a conditions on the person's life (example: cannot sleep two nights in the same place), or be a special service they must perform (example: must come and serve when called, no matter what).
Prime - The first prayer hour in the Church's day, normally 6:00 a.m. As church bells were rung for prayers, prayer hours were how commoners told time before public clocks.