A Quest-Lover's Treasury of the Fantastic Page 25

  Mag didn't answer, but there was a quality in her silence that made Elfrida think that the old woman knew something—something important. Something that she hadn't yet told her pupil.

  Finally, as darkness fell, and the fire burned down to coals, Mag spoke.

  “We made the sacrifices,” she said. “But there was one—who didn't.”

  “Who?” Elfrida asked, surprised. The entire village followed the Old Way—never mind the High King and his religion of the White Christ. That was for knights and nobles and suchlike. Her people stuck by what they knew best, the turning of the seasons, the dance of the Maiden, Mother and Crone, the rule of the Horned Lord. And if anyone in the village had neglected their sacrifices, surely she or Mag would have known!

  “It isn't just our village that's sickening,” Mag said, her voice a hoarse, harsh whisper out of the dark. “Nor the county alone. I've talked to the other Wise Ones, to the peddlers—I talked to the crows and the owls and ravens. It's the whole land that's sickening, failing—and there's only one sacrifice can save the land.”

  Elfrida felt her mouth go dry, and took a sip of her cold, bitter tea to wet it. “The blood of the High King,” she whispered.

  “Which he will not shed, come as he is to the feet of the White Christ.” Mag shook her head. “My dear, my darling girl, I'd hoped the Lady wouldn't lay this on us …I'd prayed she wouldn't punish us for his neglect. But 'tisn't punishment, not really, and I should've known better than to hope it wouldn't come. Whether he believes it or not, the High King is tied to the land, and Arthur is old and failing. As he fails, the land fails.”

  “But—surely there's something we can do?” Elfrida said timidly into the darkness.

  Mag stirred. “If there is, I haven't been granted the answer,” she said, pausing as she spoke. “But perhaps—you've had Lady-dreams before, 'twas what led you to me…”

  “You want me to try for a vision?” Elfrida's mouth dried again, but this time no amount of tea would soothe it, for it was dry from fear. For all that she had true visions, when she sought them, the experience frightened her. And no amount of soothing on Mag's part, or encouragement that the—things—she saw in the dark waiting for her soul's protection to waver could not touch her, could ever ease that fear.

  But weighed against her fear was the very real possibility that the village might not survive the next winter. If she was worthy to be Mag's successor, she must dare her fear, and dare the dreams, and see if the Lady had an answer for them since High King Arthur did not. The land and the people needed her and she must answer that need.

  “I'll try,” she whispered, and Mag touched her lightly on the arm.

  “That's my good and brave girl,” she said. “I knew you wouldn't fail us.” Something on Mag's side of the fire rustled, and she handed Elfrida a folded leaf full of dried herbs.

  They weren't what the ignorant thought; herbs to bring visions. The visions came when Elfrida asked for them—these were to strengthen and guard her while her spirit rode the night winds, in search of answers. Foxglove to strengthen her heart, moly to shield her soul, a dozen others, a scant pinch of each.

  Obediently, she placed them under her tongue, and while Mag chanted the names of the Goddess, Elfrida closed her eyes, and released her all-too-fragile hold on her body.

  The convent garden was sodden, the ground turning to mush, and unless someone did something about it, there would be nothing to eat this summer but what the tithes brought and the King's Grace granted them. Outside the convent walls, the fields were just as sodden; so, as the Mother Superior said, “A tithe of nothing is still nothing, and we must prepare to feed ourselves.” Leonie sighed, and leaned a little harder on the spade, being careful where she put each spadeful of earth. Behind the spade, the drainage trench she was digging between each row of drooping pea-seedlings filled with water. Hopefully, this would be enough to keep them from rotting. Hopefully, there would be enough to share. Already the eyes of the children stared at her from faces pinched and hungry when they came to the convent for Mass, and she hid the bread that was half her meal to give to them.

  Her gown was as sodden as the ground; cold and heavy with water, and only the fact that it was made of good wool kept it from chilling her. Her bare feet, ankle-deep in mud, felt like blocks of stone, they were so cold. She had kirtled her gown high to keep the hem from getting muddied, but that only let the wind get at her legs. Her hair was so soaked that she had not even bothered with the linen veil of a novice; it would only have flapped around without protecting her head and neck any. Her hands hurt; she wasn't used to this.

  The other novices, gently born and not, were desperately doing the same in other parts of the garden. Those that could, rather; some of the gently-born were too ill to come out into the soaking, cold rain. The sisters, as many as were able, were outside the walls, helping a few of the local peasants dig a larger ditch down to the swollen stream. The trenches in the convent garden would lead to it—and so would the trenches being dug in the peasants' gardens, on the other side of the high stone wall.

  “We must work together,” Mother Superior had said firmly, and so here they were, knight's daughter and villain's son, robes and tunics kirtled up above the knee, wielding shovels with a will. Leonie had never thought to see it.

  But the threat of hunger made strange bedfellows. Already the convent had turned out to help the villagers trench their kitchen gardens. Leonie wondered what the village folk would do about the fields too large to trench, or fields of hay? It would be a cold summer, and a lean winter.

  What had gone wrong with the land? It was said that the weather had been unseasonable and miserable all over the kingdom. Nor was the weather all that had gone wrong; it was said there was quarreling at High King Arthur's court; that the knights were moved to fighting for its own sake, and had brought their leman openly to many court gatherings, to the shame of the ladies. It was said that the Queen herself—

  But Leonie did not want to hear such things, or even think of them. It was all of a piece, anyway; the knights fighting among themselves, the killing frosts and rain that wouldn't end, the threat of war at the borders, raiders and bandits within, and the starvation and plague hovering over all.

  Something was deeply, terribly wrong.

  She considered that, as she dug her little trenches, as she returned to the convent to wash her dirty hands and feet and change into a drier gown, as she nibbled her meager supper, trying to make it last, and as she went in to Vespers with the rest.

  Something was terribly, deeply wrong.

  When Mother Superior approached her after Vespers, she somehow knew that her feeling of wrongness and what the head of the convent was about to ask were linked.

  “Leonie,” Mother Superior said, once the other novices had filed away, back to their beds, “when your family sent you here, they told me it was because you had visions.”

  Leonie ducked her head and stared at her sandals. “Yes, Mother Magdalene.”

  “And I asked you not to talk about those visions in any way,” the nun persisted. “Not to any of the other novices, not to any of the sisters, not to Father Peregrine.”

  “Yes, Mother Magdalene—I mean, no Mother Magdalene.” Leonie looked up, flushing with anger. “I mean, I haven't.”

  She knew why the nun had ordered her to keep silence on the subject; she'd heard the lecture to her parents through the door. The Mother Superior didn't believe in Leonie's visions—or rather, she was not convinced that they were really visions. “This could simply be a young woman's hysteria,” she'd said sternly, “or an attempt to get attention. If the former, the peace of the convent and the meditation and prayer will cure her quickly enough—if the latter, well, she'll lose such notions of self-importance when she has no one to prate to.”

  “I know you haven't, child,” Mother Magdalene said wearily, and Leonie saw how the nun's hands were blistered from the spade she herself had wielded today, how her knuckles were swollen, and her
cheekbones cast into a prominence that had nothing to do with the dim lighting in the chapel. “I wanted to know if you still have them.”

  “Sometimes,” Leonie said hesitantly. “That was how—I mean, that was why I woke last winter, when Sister Maria was elf-shot—”

  “Sister Maria was not elf-shot,” Mother Magdalene said automatically. “Elves could do no harm to one who trusts in God. It was simply something that happens to the very old, now and again; it is a kind of sudden brain-fever. But that isn't the point. You're still having the visions—but can you still see things that you want to see?”

  “Sometimes,” Leonie said cautiously. “If God and the Blessed Virgin permit.”

  “Well, if God is ever going to permit it, I suspect He'd do so during Holy Week,” Mother Magdalene sighed. “Leonie, I am going to ask you a favor. I'd like you to make a vigil tonight.”

  “And ask for a vision?” Leonie said, raising her head in sudden interest.

  “Precisely.” The nun shook her head, and picked up her beads, telling them through her fingers as she often did when nervous. “There is something wrong with us, with the land, with the kingdom—I want you to see if God will grant you a vision of what.” As Leonie felt a sudden upsurge of pride, Mother Magdalene added hastily, “You aren't the only one being asked to do this—every order from one end of the kingdom to the other has been asked for visions from their members. I thought long and hard about asking this. But you are the only one in my convent who has ever had a tendency to visions.”

  The Mother Superior had been about to say something else, Leonie was sure, for the practical and pragmatic Mother Magdalene had made her feelings on the subject of mysticism quite clear over the years. But that didn't matter—what did matter was that she was finally going to be able to release that pent-up power again, to soar on the angels' wings. Never mind that there were as many devils “out there” as angels; her angels would protect her, for they always had, and always would.

  Without another word, she knelt on the cold stone before the altar, fixed her eyes on the bright little gilded cross above it, and released her soul's hold on her body.

  “What did you see?” Mag asked, as Elfrida came back, shivering and spent, to consciousness. Her body was lying on the ground beside the fire, and it felt too tight, like a garment that didn't fit anymore—but she was glad enough to be in it again, for there had been thousands of those evil creatures waiting for her, trying to prevent her from reaching…

  “The Cauldron,” she murmured, sitting up slowly, one hand on her aching head. “There was a Cauldron….”

  “Of course!” Mag breathed. “The Cauldron of the Goddess! But—” It was too dark for Elfrida to see Mag, other than as a shadow in the darkness, but she somehow felt Mag's searching eyes. “What about the Cauldron? When is it coming back? Who's to have it? Not the High King, surely—”

  “I'm—supposed to go look for it,” Elfrida said, vaguely. “That's what They said—I'm supposed to go look for it.”

  Mag's sharp intake of breath told her of Mag's shock. “But—no, I know you, when you come out of this,” she muttered, almost as if to herself. “You can't lie. If you say They said for you to go, then go you must.”

  Elfrida wanted to say something else, to ask what it all meant, but she couldn't. The vision had taken too much out of her, and she was whirled away a second time, but this time it was not on the winds of vision, but into the arms of exhausted sleep.

  “What did you see?” Mother Superior asked urgently.

  Leonie found herself lying on the cold stone before the altar, wrapped in someone's cloak, with something pillowed under her head. She felt very peaceful, as she always did when the visions released her, and very, very tired. There had been many demons out there, but as always, her angels had protected her. Still, she was glad to be back. There had never been quite so many of the evil things there before, and they had frightened her.

  She had to blink a few times, as she gathered her memories and tried to make sense of them. “A cup,” she said, hesitantly—then her eyes fell upon the Communion chalice on the altar, and they widened as she realized just what she truly had seen. “No—not a cup, the Cup! We're to seek the Grail! That's what They told me!”

  “The Grail?” Mother Magdalene's eyes widened a little themselves, and she crossed herself hastily. “Just before you—you dropped over, you reached out. I thought I saw—I thought I saw something faint, like a ghost of a glowing cup in your hands.”

  Leonie nodded, her cheek against the rough homespun of the habit bundled under her head. “They said that to save the kingdom, we have to seek the Grail.”

  “We?” Mother Magdalene said, doubtfully. “Surely you don't mean—”

  “The High King's knights and squires, some clergy and—me—” Leonie's voice trailed off, as she realized what she was saying. “They said the knights will know already and that when you hear about it from Camelot, you'll know I was speaking the truth. But I don't want to go!” she wailed. “I don't! I—”

  “I'm convinced of the truth now,” the nun said. “Just by the fact that you don't want to go. If this had been a sham, to get attention, you'd have demanded special treatment, to be cosseted and made much of, not to be sent off on your own.”

  “But—” Leonie protested frantically, trying to hold off unconsciousness long enough to save herself from this exile.

  “Never mind,” the Mother Superior said firmly. “We'll wait for word from Camelot. When we hear it, then you'll go.”

  Leonie would have protested further, but Mother Magdalene laid a cool hand across her hot eyes, and sleep came up and took her.

  Elfrida had never been this far from her home village before. The great forest through which she had been walking for most of the day did not look in the least familiar. In fact, it did not look like anything anyone from the village had ever described.

  And why hadn't Mag brought her here to gather healing herbs and mushrooms? The answer seemed clear enough; she was no longer in lands Mag or any of the villagers had ever seen.

  She had not known which way to go, so she had followed the raven she saw flying away from the village. The raven had led her to the edge of the woods, which at the time had seemed quite ordinary. But the oaks and beeches had turned to a thick growth of fir; the deeper she went, the older the trees became, until at last she was walking on a tiny path between huge trunks that rose far over her head before properly branching out. Beneath those spreading branches, thin, twiggy growth reached out skeletal fingers like blackened bones, while the upper branches cut off most of the light, leaving the trail beneath shrouded in a twilight gloom, though it was midday.

  Though she was on a quest of sorts, that did not mean she had left her good sense behind. While she was within the beech and oak forest, she had gleaned what she could on either side of the track. Her pack now held two double-handfuls each of acorns and beechnuts, still sound, and a few mushrooms. Two here, three or four there, they added up.

  It was just as well, for the meager supply of journey-bread she had with her had been all given away by the end of the first day of her quest. A piece at a time, to a child here, a nursing mother there …but she had the freedom of the road and the forest; the people she encountered were tied to their land and could not leave it. Not while there was any chance they might coax a crop from it.

  They feared the forest, though they could not tell Elfrida why. They would only enter the fringes of it, to feed their pigs on acorns, to pick up deadfall. Further than that, they would not go.

  Elfrida had known for a long time that she was not as magical as Mag. She had her visions, but that was all; she could not see the power rising in the circles, although she knew it was there, and could sometimes feel it. She could not see the halos of light around people that told Mag if they were sick or well. She had no knowledge of the future outside of her visions, and could not talk to the birds and animals as Mag could.

  So she was not in the least
surprised to find that she could sense nothing about the forest that indicated either good or ill. If there was something here, she could not sense it. Of course, the gloom of the fir-forest was more than enough to frighten anyone with any imagination. And while nobles often claimed peasants had no more imagination than a block of wood—well, Elfrida often thought that nobles had no more sense than one of their high-bred, high-strung horses, that would break legs, shying at shadows. Witless, useless—and irresponsible. How many of them were on their lands, helping their liegemen and peasants to save their crops? Few enough; most were idling their time away at the High King's Court, gambling, drinking, wenching, playing at tourneys and other useless pastimes. And she would wager that the High King's table was not empty; that the nobles' children were not going pinch-faced and hungry to bed. The religion of the White Christ had divorced master from man, noble from villager, making the former into a master in truth, and the latter into an income-producing slave. The villager was told by his priest to trust in God and receive his reward in heaven. The lord need feel no responsibility for any evils he did or caused, for once they had been confessed and paid for—usually by a generous gift to the priest—his God counted them as erased. The balance of duty and responsibility between the vassal and his lord was gone.

  She shook off her bitter thoughts as nightfall approached. Without Mag's extra abilities Elfrida knew she would have to be twice as careful about spending the night in this place. If there were supernatural terrors about, she would never know until they were on her. So when she made her little camp, she cast circles around her with salt and iron, betony and rue, writing the runes as clear as she could, before she lit her fire to roast her nuts.

  But in the end, when terror came upon her, it was of a perfectly natural sort.

  Leonie cowered, and tried to hide in the folds of her robe. Her bruised face ached, and her bound wrists were cut and swollen around the thin twine the man who had caught her had used to bind her.