Dragon Scale Silver

2 Cup Spell

That was the beginning of the tale, before it was mine. I learned it mostly from Aufrica, a little from my father, who was Truan, the Far Stranger. For I am Elys.

There was more that Aufrica told me concerning the Lady Almondia. Neither she nor my father were of High Hallack nor of the Dales blood. They came from Estcarp, though my father said nothing of their life there. And what my mother had told Aufrica was little.

Aufrica, being a Wise Woman, had the lore of herbs, knew charms, could make amulets, ease pain, bring children, had the powers of the woods and the hills. Though she never attempted the mastery of high sorcery, nor called upon the Great Names.

But my mother had been more, though she used what she knew sparingly. Aufrica believed she had set aside much of her power when she fled her native land with my father, the reason for that I was never to learn. But my mother was witch-born, sorceress trained, so Aufrica was like a newly schooled child in her presence. Yet there was some barrier so that she might not turn much of her past authority to use in High Hallack.

Only when she wished children had she invoked what she had once been able to call upon freely. And then she paid a high price—her own life.

“She cast the rune sticks,” Aufrica told me. “On that table there, she cast them one day when your father was afar. In those she read her own future was short. Then she said that she must not leave her lord without what he longed for—a son to bear sword and shield after him.

“It was the nature of her kind that the bearing of children is not often known. For they put off much of the woman when they take on the cloak, put out their hand for the wand of power. They must break vows and that is a fell thing. But she was willing to do this for her lord.”

“He has Elyn,” I nodded. At that moment my brother was indeed with our father, down with the boats drawn out of winter seas to be worked upon against summer out-faring. “But there is also me—”

“Yes.” Aufrica’s hands were busy as she crushed dried herbs into a scented paste in the mortar she held between her knees. “She went to a place of the power to ask for a son, but also she spoke for a daughter. I think that she, also, wished one to take her place in the world. You are witch-born, Elys, though what I can teach you is very little beside what your mother knew. Yet all I have learned shall be yours.”

A strange upraising indeed. For if Aufrica saw in me my mother’s daughter, to be nurtured with the learning of old powers, my father saw a second son. I did not wear the kirtle and skirt of a village maid, but breeches and tunic like my brother’s. This was to suit my father, as he was uneasy if I appeared before him otherwise.

Aufrica thought that was because as I grew older and taller and more of a woman I resembled my mother and that made him unhappy. So I kept to the likeness of Elyn and he was satisfied.

It was not only in apparel that my father wished me son rather than daughter. From the earliest years he taught me arms-play, matching Elyn and me. First we thrust and parried with small, mock swords made from driftwood. But as we grew older he beat out twin blades in the smithy. And I knew as much of the art of battle as any Dales squire.

However, he yielded to Aufrica, that I had my time with her. We quested into the hills for herbs, and for her to show me certain places of the Old Ones and relay to me the rituals and ceremonies which must be observed at phases of the moon should it be desired.

I saw the star-walled place where my mother had wrought her High Moon Magic, but that we never ventured in. Though we brought harvests from about the walls.

I had seen many times the cup my mother had brought from that final sorcery. Aufrica kept it among her most precious things, never touching it with her bare hands, but always with a square of green-blue stuff she valued highly. It was silver in color, that cup, but also other colors ran across its surface when it was turned this way or that.

“Dragon scales,” Aufrica told me. “This is dragon scale silver. I had heard of it in old legends, but never did I see it before the dragon fire itself wrought this at the Lady’s bidding. It is thing of very great power; guard it well.”

“You speak as if it is mine—” I marveled at the cup, for it was a thing of such beauty as one might see only once in a lifetime.

“Yours it is when there is time and need. It is bound to you and to Elyn. But only you, being what you are, can make use of it.” Nor did she say more then.

I have spoken of Aufrica who was very close to me, and of my father, who walked, talked, and lived as if a thin sheet of some invisible armor cut him away from the rest of mankind. But I have not spoken of Elyn.

We were born at one birth, yet we were not close copies of one another. Only in our faces and persons was that so. Our interests were never the same. He loved action, swordplay, and he chafed at the narrow life of Wark. He was reckless and often disciplined by my father for leading other boys into trouble or danger. And he used to stand outside at times, staring at the hills with such longing in his eyes that he seemed a hawk in chains.

I found my freedom inwardly, he wanted his outwardly. He had impatience for Aufrica’s teachings. And as he grew he spoke more often of Jurby, of going there to take service with a Dales lord.

That my father would have had to let him go at last we knew. But in the end war answered that for us. For in the Year of the Fire Troll the invaders came to High Hallack.

They were seaborne, and, when my father heard of their raids upon the coast keeps and towns, his mouth set hard. For it seemed that they were enemies long known to his own people. He put aside those moods of other-being when he walked apart and one night he spoke to us and Aufrica with the determination of a man who had decided upon a course and would not be turned from it.

He would go to the Lord of Vestdale and offer his sword—and more than his sword, for knowing this enemy of old, he had that to offer which could prepare resistance the better. Looking upon his face we knew that nothing we might say or do could turn him from this course.

Elyn then arose and said if my father would go, then he also as squire. And his determination was as set and stern—their faces alike, one to the other, in that moment as if one was the mirrored reflection of the other.

But my father won that battle of wills, saying that Elyn’s duty was to me and to Aufrica for the present But he swore a binding oath that he would send for Elyn later, so his authority held.

However, my father did not depart at once; rather, he wrought in the smithy day and night. But first he went into the hills with a pack pony. When he returned his animal was heavily laden with lumps of metal which might have once been worked and then congealed into these masses.

From these he wrought, Kaleb aiding him, two swords and two shirts of fine and supple chain mail. One of these he gave to Elyn, the other he brought to me. When he laid it down he spoke as one who would have his words heeded, to be remembered in days to come.

“I do not have the gift of foreseeing that she had”—seldom did he mention my mother, and then never by name—she might have been some great lady he held in reverence and awe. “But I have dreamed, and of my dreams has come this—that there lies before you some venture in which you must go girt with more than your strong spirit and courage, my daughter. Though I have not treated you as a maid—yet—”

It seemed that words failed him. He stroked the mail shirt as if it were silk, nor did he look directly at me, but turned sharply and went before I could speak. And in the next dawn he took the hill path to Vestdale. Nor did we ever see him again.

The Year of the Fire Troll passed, and as yet we dwelt safe in our small clift pocket, we of Wark. But Omund made no year-end voyage to Jurby, for a small band of hard-used folk came over the hills to tell us Jurby had fallen to the enemy in a single night of red wrack and ravage. And that Vestdale Keep was now besieged.

The villagers met and tried to plan. They had always lived by the sea, yet it seemed now that the sea might be their bane and to flee inland meant safety. The younger men, and those without strong family ties, spoke to make a stand where we were. But others thought it better to abandon the village and return later if no invasion came nigh.

Tales of the refugees swung the day, for those hearing their accounts of the red ruin the raiders left urged retreat, and that decision won.

During all debate my brother listened but did not speak. I read in his face that he had made his own decision. So when we went back to the house I faced him and said:

“There comes a time when one can no longer keep sword in sheath. If you would go—go with our blessing of good fortune. You have served your time here; be sure we shall have safety on our side when we take to the hills, for who knows their secrets better than Aufrica and I?”

For a long moment he was silent and then he looked at me straightly.

“There is bred in me that which I must answer, for a year I have been trapped here. Yet I was promise-bound.”

I went to Aufrica’s cupboard, and she, sitting on a stool by the fire and watching, said not a word. What I brought forth was the dragon cup of our heritage. When I set it on the table between us I let fall the wrapping and set my two hands boldly about the cool curve of its sides. So I held it for the space of a few breaths.

Then Aufrica arose in turn and brought from her stores a bottle of herb brew I had never seen her open before. She drew its stopper with her teeth, keeping both hands about it as if she feared she might drop or spill what she carried. Into the cup she poured a thick golden liquid, and a spicy odor filled the room, carrying with it the plentiful ripeness of a good harvest, the slumberous fullness of early autumn.

Halfway she filled the cup as I held it; then she drew back, leaving Elyn and me facing each other across it. I loosed my hold, reached out, catching his hands, drawing them to the smooth silver.

“Drink,” I told him, “half of this, drink. For it is the cup we must share before we part.”

Without question he raised it two-handed, and did not set it down again until he had swallowed half the potion. Then I took it in turn and finished what was left.

“While we are parted,” I told him, “I shall read your fate in this. For while the silver remains clear as you now see it, then all is well. But if it clouds—”

He did not let me finish. “These are times of war, sister. No man walks safely forever.”

“True. Yet sometimes ill can be turned to well.”

Elyn made an impatient gesture. Never had he taken any interest in wise knowledge. It was as if he deemed such of little value. Still we had never brought this difference into words. Nor did we now.

Rather I put away the cup and worked with Aufrica preparing what he must take with him, covers to sleep warm in on the trail, food and drink, as well as a wallet of healing herbs. And, like my father, he went.

But those of Wark left also. Some of the younger men followed my brother like an ill-drilled menie. For he was, in spite of his youth, a leader amongst them in his knowledge of arms. The rest of us barred the doors of our houses, loaded our pack ponies, and took to the hills.

That was an ill winter. We found refuge, first in an inland village, until an alarm of raiders came—then farther inland in barren country. Until we lived in caves and other rude shelters. Always came tales of farther and farther invasion, more and more taking of High Hallack.

Aufrica and I were much called upon for our knowledge of healing, not only of wounds when wanderers from lost battles chanced upon us, but of the many illnesses which come from hard living, hunger, and even of hearts giving up hope. Since we faced dangers which were more sharp and sudden, I wore the mail my father had fashioned for me, knew sword-weight at my belt. Just as I learned to use the bow for hunting, both for the pot and for those who would prey on us for what sorry possessions we had left.

As it always is when there is no law in the land and only war and more war, season after season, there were those who had been born of our own kind and now skulked as filthy scavengers, preying on all too weak to defend themselves. I killed in those days and knew no sorrow for it, for those I so slew were not truly men.

One thing I kept ever by me was the cup, and each morn I took it forth to look upon it. Never was its brilliance dimmed, so I knew all was right with Elyn.

Sometimes I tried to reach him by a dream bridge, using a sleep potion. Yet all I bore back into wakefulness was a confusion of half memories. At those times I hungered for more than Aufrica could teach me, for what my mother must once have had.

In our wanderings we came nigh now and then those places of the Old Ones. From several we urged our now small and stumbling band away. For what crept like a foul fog from those was evil malevolence, wholly alien to our kind. Others were empty—as if what they had once cupped was long fled or had seeped away through the years. A few were welcoming, and to those Aufrica and I went, hoping to evoke something of what centered there. Yet we had not the proper training to take more with us when we left than a sense of peace and inner refreshment.

There were no longer named years for us, just the passing of seasons. In the third summer we found refuge at last. Some of our band had split away, choosing other roads. But our small remaining group, with Omund at its head (he was now much crippled with an aching ailment of the bones), his younger brothers, their wives, two daughters with children whose husbands had followed Elyn (for which they sometimes looked ill at me yet never spoke their feelings aloud), and three more households in which the men were elderly, remained together.

We found a way into a small upland dale which had never been settled or visited save by shepherds in season, or cattle drovers, who left huts where they had sheltered during the grazing months. There we stayed, our handful of sheep, our half-score of footsore ponies, glad to be at rest. And the people who had spent their lives combing a living from the sea turned with patient labor to win some sustenance from the hills.

In high places overlooking the two passes we kept guards. So different had life become that those guards were mainly women, armed with bows and with spears which had once been the harpoons of deep-sea fishermen. Well did we keep watch and ward, for we had seen several times what chanced in small settlements when those raving wolves of scavengers came down.

It was midsummer of our second year in that pocket of earth, and most of the others were at labor tending what grain and roots we had saved for this season’s planting, that I was on hill watch and saw for the first time riders on that faint track which would bring them to the south pass. I raised my bared sword and with the sun flickering on its bright blade signaled the alert down valley. I myself went by previously learned ways to spy closer upon those who came. For by this time we judged all strangers enemies.

As I lay upon a sunwarmed rock and watched, I could see that they were little threat to us. For we made up in will and preparedness enough to handle these two.

They were plainly fighting men, but their mail was rusted and gashed. One had been tied to his saddle and drooped so he might have fallen to the ground had it not been for those ties and the fact that his comrade rode close beside him, leading his mount.

There were bloodied rags bound around the head and the shoulder of the half-unconscious rider, and about the forearm of his companion.

That companion looked time and again to their back trail, as if he expected pursuers. He still wore a helm topped with a crest of a swooping hawk, though one wing of that was shorn away. And both had the ragged tatters of heraldic coats over their mail, though whatever device those had once displayed was so raveled as to be unreadable. Not that I was learned in the symbols of the noble Dale houses.

Both men had swords, now sheathed. And the helmed one a crossbow. But they had no field packs, and their mounts ambled at a footsore pace, as if nigh to floundering.

I inched a little back and got to my feet in the shadows, setting arrow to bow cord.

“Stand!”

My order must have seemed to come from empty air. The helmed man jerked his head. I could not see his face clearly because of the overhang of his headgear, but his hand was on sword hilt in swift, sure movement. Then he must have thought better of what might be useless defiance, for he did not draw.

“Stand forth yourself, lurker, steel to steel!” His voice was hoarse and low, but he bore himself as one ready to meet trouble as it came.

“Not so,” I answered. “I have that which will pin death to you, bold man! Come out of your saddle and put your weapons from you.”

He laughed then.

“Cut me down as you will, voice from the rocks. I put aside my blade for no man. If you want it—come and take it!”

Now he deliberately drew his weapon, held it at readiness. Even as he faced me so his comrade stirred and groaned, and the other urged his horse a little on, pushing between the wounded man and where he must believe I stood.

“Why do you come here?”

His constant glancing at his back trail remained in my mind and I wondered if he led more trouble to us. Two such men we could handle—but more—

“We come no place.” There was vast weariness in his voice. “We are hunted men as you can guess if you are not blind. Three days ago Haverdale stood rearguard at the Ford of Ingra. We are what is left of that force. We bought time as we promised, but how much—” He shrugged. “By your speech you are of the Dales, not the Hounds. I am Jervon, once Marshal of Horse—this is Pell, my lord’s younger brother.”

That bristling defiance seeped from him; the weariness lay like a heavy burden on him. And I knew—as if I had cast runes on it—that these men were no menace to my people, unless they drew after them what we could not handle.

So I came out of hiding. As I wore mail, he believed me a man, and I let him think it. But I brought them into the Dale and to the tending of Aufrica.

Those with Omund were first ready to find me at fault, saying trouble rode with such strangers. But I asked what else I might have done—slain them out of hand perhaps? And that shamed them, for though their hard life had brought a certain callousness to them, yet they still remembered the old days when a man’s door stood open to the world, with bread and drink set always at the table as welcome to all travelers.

Pell was gravely injured and Aufrica, for all her skill, could not hold back the shadow of death, though she fought valiantly for his life. Jervon, though he had appeared strong and ready to fight, took a fever from his ill-tended wound, and lay with wandering wits and burning flesh for some days. Pell had slipped beyond help and was laid in our small Field of Memory (where four others of our people slept) before he spoke again rationally.

I had been standing by his bed, watching and wondering if he, too, in the fierce burning of the fever would go from us, and thinking that would be a sad waste of a man, when he opened his eyes and looked straight at me. Then he frowned a little as he spoke:

“I remember you—”

His greeting was odd, but many times a person out of grave illness carries half dreams which are confused.

I brought a cup of herb drink and put my arm about his shoulders to raise him to drink of it.

“You should,” I told him as he sipped. “I brought you here.”

He said nothing more, though he still watched me with that faint frown. Then he asked:

“My lord Pell?”

I used the saying of the country people. “He has gone ahead.”

His eyes closed, but I saw his mouth tighten. What Pell had been to him, I did not know. But they were at least battle comrades, and I guessed that he had done much to try to save him.

But I did not know what to say then. For to some sorrow is a silent thing which they must battle alone, and I thought perhaps Jervon was such a one.

However, I surveyed him as he lay there. Though he was wasted and gaunt from fever, and perhaps from earlier hardship, he was a man of good presence, tall, if spare of body, but, like my father a swordsman born. He was a Dalesman in that his hair was golden-brown (lighter than the skin of his face and hands which were darkly browned by the weather) and his features well cut. I thought I could like what I saw, save there was no reason to believe that I would ever have any closer contact to continue or deepen such liking. He would heal and then ride away, as had my father and Elyn.