Lord of Mountains

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

LOST LAKE

PLACES OUT OF SPACE AND TIME

So bright, so bright! Mathilda thought.

The chaos of images faded, lost in light. As if she stared point-blank into the sun, but there was no pain. A whirling feeling, as if she were being swept away, dissolving without losing herself, perishing and yet more conscious, more aware with each passing instant-

And she was on a hillside. She blinked and staggered a little. It was a sunny afternoon and warm beneath a sky that was a pure arch of blue. The ground beneath her was rocky but starred with small blue flowers. It was not quite a desert, but it smelled a little like the deserts she was used to, dust and spice, yet subtly different. More like…

Fennel, she thought. And thyme.

The hillside was dotted with small gnarled trees, their trunks twisted and curved and ancient, sometimes hollow. The leaves were silvery-gray and green, flickering in a slow hot breeze and providing a thin but welcome shade. Mathilda was acutely conscious of everything, each passing instant, each scented breath of air, the distant tinkling of a bell. Downslope the land leveled out, and became small straggling fields much greener than the dusty faded color that covered the hills; she recognized growing wheat and barley. A patch of low goblet-trained vines drowsed in the sun not far away, in full leaf but before bud-set. Here and there a tree was in flower, fruit-trees but not ones she was familiar with. The shrilling of insects was a murmur in the background.

More distant was a village, dun mud-brick buildings with flat roofs huddled together, twists of acrid woodsmoke rising from beehive-shaped ovens that stood in the yards, carrying the smell of baking. Beyond that were more rocky hills shimmering in the heat and stillness.

Mathilda bent over and touched a flower, a blade of grass, watched an insect scurry.

“Is this a dream?” she said. “I don’t think so.”

It was more real than waking life, not less. The grass blade was soft enough beneath her fingertip, but she felt that it had been carved out of something harder than diamond-something like the idea of diamond in the mind of Eternity. Each leaf-flutter and crawling beetle and anonymous little brown bird flitting by struck her like war hammers forged from purest meaning. She panted a little at the strain of it, as if taking a step here was like fighting for her life in plate armor.

But I’m not in armor, she thought, looking down at herself.

It was herself, down to the little scar on a thumb she’d gotten from a sharp stone in a brook one summer when Rudi taught her how to tickle fish. But she was wearing a long robe of coarse wool, and a headdress of wrapped linen that framed her face and a shawl. Sandals were on her feet, plain but honestly made with straps of soft leather. She began to pick her way down the hill, until the sound of rocks clicking against each other came to her.

A man worked, building a drystone wall. The work went steadily, though she could see his hands were scuffed and bleeding in a few places, and sweat rolled down his skin. He had a cloth wrapped around his head and a beard of brown hair, and his robe had been shrugged aside so that the top of it also hung down to his knees and left his sun-toughened torso bare. His face was square and strong, the eyes a yellow-brown.

“Father,” she said softly, clutching at the bark of an olive-tree beside her. “Father…do you know me?”

Norman Arminger looked up. “Peace, maiden,” he said.

I’m not speaking English, she realized; the language was unfamiliar, harsh in her mouth with glottals and rough breathings, a language for poets and prophets and warriors.

“No, I don’t know you,” he answered after a moment, pausing with one stone resting atop the half-built wall. “But I did. I will. Now I must work. I must serve the sheep.”

“The sheep?” she said.

“Wolves or robbers may come,” the man said, turning the rock and fitting it, with the weary half-grunt of a man doing hard labor and knowing that he’d do much more. “I must build the wall strong for them. I failed before because I thought it was for me. Now I must work for them. Peace be upon you.”

“And upon you, peace,” she whispered.

It seemed a long time that she watched him work, and she took a few steps and sat on a chunk of white limestone that heaved up like the bones of the world. The shadows lengthened, and the day grew cooler. A figure came up the track that led to the valley, a woman in the same dress as she, with a blue mantle draped across her head. She carried a bundle wrapped in coarse cloth and set it down on the half-finished wall…that seemed to be no nearer finished for all the long day’s work.

The man faltered as the woman approached; he was exhausted now, like a convict pushed beyond what could be borne by a harsh overseer, and the smell of his sweat was rank. He gave a single tired sob and sank to his knees as she stopped, tears among the sweat on his haggard face.

“You are weary,” the woman said. “I have brought you food; eat and drink and rest a little.”

She unfolded the bundle and laid it on the wall. There was a clay jar within it. Mathilda knew the scent of watered wine as she unstoppered it. Two flat wheatcakes were wrapped around some soft cheese and a handful of small blackish fruits she recognized as olives, from rare treats brought from over-sea.

“Take and eat,” the woman said again, and the man did.

His hands were still bleeding, and they were callused and strong, but they moved gently on the plain food, as if it were something delicate and wonderful. As he ate he straightened, and smiled as he finished.

“Thank you,” he said. “The food strengthens me. I must work until my task is finished.”

“Work until you have built yourself, child of Adam,” the woman said.

She turned, and Mathilda caught a glimpse of a face under the shadowing mantle; a thin middle-aged face, large dark eyes and the marks of work and grief, and a smile…

Suddenly she was sobbing against the woolen robe. A hand stroked her head. When she could, Mathilda spoke:

“You brought my father food?”

“My Son offers all men nourishment,” she said. “Many come to it through me.”

“Thank you! Then…then there’s hope for him?”

“There is always hope, if we accept it,” she said, laying her hand on Mathilda’s head for a moment. “Because he loved you and your mother, your father can receive it from me. Blessings and peace upon you, daughter of Eve; and upon your children and the children of your children.”

The figure in the blue robe rose and walked away, and it was like a rupture in her heart, but somehow the thought of crying out didn’t occur to her. After a while she walked up the hill. It wasn’t a surprise when a figure in a plain Benedictine habit fell in beside her, and she smiled at him.

“Is this real, Father Ignatius?”

The monk was as she remembered him, telling his rosary as they walked, something of a warrior’s stride in the way his sandaled feet crunched on the loose rock and dirt.

“Very real, my child, though that is a complex matter. Do you remember a time I heard your confession, at the beginning of our journey together?”

“In the desert, Father? We looked up at the stars, and you said that all that glory and beauty would be finished someday, and still I would go on.”

He nodded. “That was true. There are truths, and then there is the Truth, the One, the Wholly Real.”

“That…light I saw?”

“That for which the light is simply a symbol. There is the Real, but we are like…as a wise man once said…like prisoners in a cave, seeing only shadows cast upon the wall. Until we waken, and go further up and further in, always closer.”

Mathilda nodded. “And you’re here to help me?” she said. “Thank you, Father.”

Ignatius laughed. “We help each other; that’s how we progress along the road ourselves. I’m returning a favor done to me, my daughter, and one done for me a very long time ago, if time has any meaning as I am now. Returning it the only way one really can; by passing it along to another.”

They stopped on the hilltop; vision stretched all around them.

“You will see what you need to see. High Queen, daughter of Eve, mother of sons and daughters, Mathilda Arminger.”

For a long moment Rudi stood in wonder with the wind ruffling his hair and the edges of his plaid; wonder, but no fear. He felt balanced and strong, motionless but implicit with swiftness in muscle and bone and nerve.

The mountain was there and the sun was at the same angle, but the very shape of Hood was different; more naked, rougher, steeper, with a plume of either cloud or smoke off eastward from its summit. The lake was a deep tarn, lost among rock and patches of rotted snow. The slopes about him were nearly bare, though from the mildness it was no longer winter, and there was a very faint tinge of sulfur in air otherwise clean as crystal.

Only a few little blue flowers starred the bare ground, and moss, and one or two tiny dwarf spruce, as if life had only just begun its conquest here.

This is the beginning, he knew. Not long after the Ice withdrew; long enough that wind and water have changed the very bones of the mountain from this day to mine. Before our kind were woven into the story of the land. Long and long ago, before the Gods who were before the Gods.

A stone rattled behind him. He made himself turn calmly. There were two men there, one in his late teens, another old enough to show grey in the knot of dark hair they both had tied and twisted above their right ears. Both wore leggings and loincloth and hide shoes; one had a tunic of yellow-brown leather besides, worked in patterns with shell beads.

Their faces were marked with blue and yellow tattooed stripes, and they had the broad high-cheeked look and ruddy-brown skin of the First Peoples, though not of any tribe he knew. There were hide rolls over their backs, knives and hatchets thrust through their belts, stout spears in their right hands. The spears had long lanceolate points of flint so finely worked that it had a metallic luster, of which he had an uncomfortably businesslike view since they were poised to thrust or throw.

Everything about their gear was beautifully made and often carved or colored, but it was all hide and wood and stone or what appeared to be implausible amounts of ivory, no trace of metal or cloth. He took all that in an instant, and also saw their eyes wide with the shock and fear that could turn to rage in an instant. His appearance would be outlandish beyond belief to them, and he suspected they were far less used than he to seeing outlanders or strangers. They were tall well-muscled men as well, and his instant, instinctive appraisal was that they would each be deadly quick as wolverines.

“Peace,” he said, and slowly lifted his hands palm out. “Peace between us, brothers.”

A woman stepped from behind them, pushing them casually apart. She wore a longer version of the tunic the older man sported, deerskin worked until it was butter-soft, hers bleached white and bearing patterns of colored feathers as well as beads and shells. Her face was framed by greying braids and had a hard strength just starting to sink into a net of wrinkles.

“E’mi, e’mi,” she said to the two men, putting her hands on their spear-arms and pushing them downward. “E’mi, woam. T’t’shui-Ta.”

Rudi blinked, astonished when he thought his capacity for wonderment filled and overfilled. He understood the words, and not just the words but the meaning behind the strange forms and structures that knit them together:

“Be still, be still. Be still, my brave ones. Here is no enemy.”

The men looked at each other, scowling, then stood aside. They stayed ready for instant action, but they grounded their spears. Rudi slowly brought the back of his right hand to his brow and bowed, the greeting a Mackenzie male made to any new-met hearthmistress.

Loremistress, I think, he decided, meeting her eyes. They were dark and warm and somehow reminded him of his mother in their kindly strength. A High Priestess of the triple cords, we’d say; one who’s walked with the Powers.

She looked him over with a fearless intelligence. Then she reached into a pouch at her waist and blew a pinch of some powdered herb into his face. He suppressed a cough; the scent was green and spicy, but not unpleasant. After that she took a baton of carved ivory from her belt, looked at him through a loop in one end and started to tap him lightly with it from head to toe, chanting as she did.

When she had finished she considered him with a bird’s bright curiosity, fingering a lock of his hair and looking at his eyes. She smelled of woodsmoke and tanned leather and the wilderness, and a faint scent of healthy well-washed human. Then she spoke again in the quick-rising, slow-falling language that he now understood:

“Are you of Those Others? Is this land forbidden to us?”

Of the Fair Folk, he guessed; there was more to talking than the surface meaning of words.

He shook his head with a smile:

“No, wise woman. I am a man like these with you, a child of Earth born to die.”

She pursed her lips. “We have seen no man-sign since we came south of the Great River. I walk here to make friends of the Mountains and Rivers and the Mothers of the fur and feather tribes. Is this your people’s hunting range? We have heard of none like you, and the beast clans here have no fear of men.”

“No,” he said, suddenly sure that he spoke the truth. “This land lies empty for you. It holds no ghosts until yours come, and you will dwell in it for many lives of men, beyond counting, and the line of your blood for longer still, and always the stones and the trees will remember you.”

She stood and looked at him while the wind whistled down from the glaciers.

“You are speaking truth, man of Earth,” she said at last, and then smiled like a girl. “All the kindly spirits go with you, then. We will hunt south of the river that our children may eat and grow strong; and you are always welcome on our runs, Sun Hair.”

“That’s remarkably authentic garb,” a voice said. “Late fourteenth century, isn’t it?”

Mathilda turned, a smile still on her face; the crowd was so wildly varied, like figures seen in a dream. The jugglers that had held her attention just now were quite good and in familiar motley garb like something from a court masque in Portland’s City Palace or Todenangst. But there were cars nearby, beyond the bright pavilions and the merchant’s booths of the fairground, and not the rusted wrecks that had been part of the background of her life.

Moving cars, purring along unworn roads of dark fresh asphalt as if there were great cats beneath their hoods. And the air smelled different, with an odd odor like burnt turpentine. That mixed with the more familiar scents of frying food and warm people, but there was none of the horse and ox that had always been part of her life.

“Ah…it’s just my clothes, demoiselle,” she answered the stranger politely, with a slight courtesy gesture like the beginning of a curtsy and an inclination of the head. “God give you good day.”

The young woman was about her own age, dressed in a simple dagg-sleeved green kirtle and white wimple bound with a silver chain. Mathilda had found herself…here…in a court cotte-hardie; a day dress she recognized as one that rested in the cupboards in her chambers at home in Castle Todenangst. She even remembered having it taken in a little when she got back from the Quest…

“This stitching is lovely,” the other woman said. “Is that handwork?”

“Yes,” Mathilda said; then she looked up agape as something huge and roaring went by overhead.

An airplane! I’m seeing an airplane! she thought.

“Marvelous!” she whispered aloud in awe, crossing herself. “Jesu!”

Her chance-met companion laughed aloud, a warm chuckle like a hand stroking velvet. She had an ice-cream cone in one hand, and finished it with a catlike delicacy before she said:

“You are staying in character!”

It was the laugh that told her. The laugh and the warm brown eyes, deep with thought, and the height that was exactly the right six inches shorter than Mathilda’s full-grown five-foot-eight. The strangeness was seeing those eyes look at her like a stranger.

“You’re…Sandra Whittle, aren’t you?” she said.

“Actually, my Society name is Eleanor,” she said. “But yes…have we met?”

“I’ve heard of you,” Mathilda said. “I’m…Mathilda.”

The sharp gaze focused on her belt, which was white leather worked with silver flowers.

“Is that dagger live steel?” she said. “Those are the best costume jewels I’ve ever seen, too.”

Mathilda blinked in puzzlement; it was certainly good steel, but it was one of her everyday ones, the type she’d worn since she was twelve and which marked her as an Associate. The blade was ten inches of watermarked Damascus steel, severely plain except for the rippling patterns in the metal, but the hilt was gold and silver wire braided together, and the pommel held a ruby the size of her thumbnail. She drew it from the tooled leather of the sheath and flipped it to reverse it and present it with the point towards herself and the flat of the blade along her forearm, as was courteous.

Sandra’s eyes widened as she took it and weighed the solidity of it in her small hand.

“That is live steel, and not peacebonded!” she said. “Naughty! Though I won’t tell the marshals.”

“Be careful, it’s-” Mathilda began, surprised that her mother was acting as if she’d scarcely ever held a dagger before and knew no better than to put her thumb to it like a kitchen knife.

“-sharp,” she finished, taking it back as Sandra sucked at the slim little cut on the ball of her thumb.

“Sorry,” Mathilda added.

The deep eyes were already looking over her shoulder, though. “Oh, now that’s nice,” she said cheerfully.

Mathilda realized what she’d see even as she turned her head. A man in armor was walking down the laneway towards them. Simple old-fashioned armor, a chain-mail hauberk to the knees, split up the front and rear in horseman’s fashion, a sword belt with a rather broad-bladed sword, an acorn-shaped helmet with a flared nose-guard concealing most of his face and a teardrop-shaped shield four feet long slung point-down over his back; it was black, with the Lidless Eye blazoned on it. And he moved easily under the weight; a lot of the men about were as out of condition as merchants or the worst sort of cleric, even if they went armed, but he looked like a fighting-man to be wary of. Broad-shouldered and long-legged and with a thick wrist in the hand casually on the bevel pommel of the broadsword and an arrogant assurance in the way he strode along. The crowd parted for him, sometimes with a resentful murmur.

“That’s…Norman,” Mathilda said.

“It certainly is, and authentic-notice the cross-gartering and the loose trews? Not my favorite period; I’m more a thirteenth, fourteenth century sort of girl. Nothing like a good pair of legs in tight hose, I say.”

“No, I mean it’s Norman Arminger.”

A gurgling chuckle. “That’s his actual name? He must have a sense of humor, then, and not be a complete Period Nazi. Well, look at the shield!”

“He’s a, uh, going to be a professor of history. Eleventh-century specialist.”

“Definitely interesting!”

She left Mathilda’s side without a backward glance, sinking down in a perfectly executed curtsy before the knight of the Lidless Eye. He halted, sweeping off his helmet by the nasal and bowing; his hair was bowl-cut, but close behind the ears in a fashion Mathilda remembered vaguely from her youth.

Oh, God!

She turned and…

The forest was about him, the one he knew.

No, he thought. Not quite.

It was towards the end of the day, and summer, but late-late August, in these cool uplands, when the aspens and vine-maple started to turn and there was frost in the small hours of the night. The trees were thicker, he thought; perhaps taller. Birds were thick too on the water of the lake, and when a flock took fright at a jumping trout and cataracted skyward it was like a turning skein of smoke. Four horses grazed by the water, and as he stepped around a tree he could see a campfire burned there-an expert’s small hot fire, little fume and much heat. He could smell the savory scent of roasting duck, and a man rose as he approached.

“Bonjour,” the man said, then went on in thickly accented English. “You come share our fire, eh?”

He was shorter than Rudi by a foot, but barrel-chested and strong, with a full dark beard flowing down his chest and long hair of the same almost-black, his skin weathered and tanned oak-brown; there were deep wrinkles beside his hazel-green eyes, and he was missing the little finger of his left hand. A rifle was held casually in his right, the type with an external flint-tipped hammer at the side, and a steel-headed tomahawk and long knife in a beaded sheath thrust through his belt. He wore leather trousers and moccasins strapped about the ankle, a red wool shirt and a knit cap with a tassel. A briar pipe between his yellow teeth gave off a foul-smelling smoke.

“That I will, friend. My name is Rudi Mackenzie.”

“Étienne Bélanger, me. This my woman, Pe Ku Nen Mu.”

She was a tribeswoman, younger than the man and pretty, wearing a deerhide dress and about five months along, he judged. She handed her man a bottle and sat down easily on her hams across the low fire, watching the newcomer with a candid stare of wonder.

“You got friends close?” the man asked casually as he pulled the cork with his teeth and offered the bottle.

He didn’t let the rifle go far from his hand, despite his friendly manner. Rudi wouldn’t have expected otherwise, for a man with horses and gear and a good-looking woman alone in lands beyond settled law.

“I do; I’ve not the gear to travel else. Sláinte mhaith,” Rudi added courteously as he raised the square bottle to his lips and took a swig, then fought not to cough as he handed it back. “To your good health!”

The which you will not keep if you drink that every day! he thought as he squatted also.

“Salud!” the coureur de bois said and drank deep, his Adam’s-apple fluttering blissfully under his beard. The word meant more or less the same thing. “I hear that one before, plenty Company men are…Gael, you say, no?”

He indicated Rudi’s kilt.

“You’re a hunter, then?” Rudi said.

“Trapper, me!” the man said, jerking a thumb at a bundle of pelts among the gear stacked nearby. He sighed. “But maybe not no more. The beaver, she gets thin unless you go far, far east. Not like the old days. I miss them, me, miss the sound their tails make when they whack the water, but a man he must make a living…”

The woman handed them each a bark plate, heaped with duck and flour bannock and with a peck of berries in a twisted cup of leaves. Rudi signed his food and put a morsel aside for the spirits of place, then ate. He didn’t think the man noticed, but the woman did, and gave him a sharp look. She had a small gold crucifix around her neck, which might mean anything or not much, depending.

“Indeed, the beaver are few the now,” Rudi said, eating the plain good food with relish. “And…”

If that history book is to be believed…

“…they’ve taken to wearing hats of silk instead, in the lands across the great water.”

“Oui, I hear that. Mebbe this my last trip; not a young man no more, me, to travel and trap and fight. I go to the prairie de les Française, west of here in the valley, be habitant and grow wheat like my father does back around Trois-Rivières. Better for les enfants, eh?”

“Indeed it will be,” Rudi said softly. “I’d say it will be a good place for them, and that they’d do well indeed.”

He nodded to the woman and rose. “My thanks for the drink and the food and your company, my friends,” he said. “But I’d better be getting along.”

Portland, Mathilda thought.

But that was only from the river before her and a turn that showed her the wooded heights westward that she knew as the New Forest. There was no city wall, no ruined towers of the ancient world, no great bridges across the Willamette. The street around her was deep in mud, though she stood on a wooden sidewalk out of the worst of it. The city-smell was heavier than in the Crown City of her own day, ranker, but with the horse-dung and woodsmoke she had grown up with. The river swarmed with boats from canoes to great three-masted full-rigged ships, and also with curious things like rafts with metal chimneys and mill-wheels to either side or at the stern that she recognized as steamboats after a moment.

Fascinated, she walked closer. Nearer to the water the crowds were even thicker and rougher: fewer of the men wore the dark garb with stovepipe hats she’d noticed earlier, and there were fewer women as well. That wasn’t a complete surprise; something like that would have been true of her Portland. She got more odd glances here too. Her cotte-hardie wasn’t impossibly different from what the women wore here, but it wasn’t identical either…and the rich fabrics and jewels attracted attention in this part of the town.

The edge of the water itself was a chaos of noise and loads going overhead on nets, of bowsprits overhanging the roadway and piles of boxes and bales, of sweating men in floppy trousers held up by suspenders over collarless shirts shifting loads heavier than they were. A stink of sweat and tobacco and now and then cheap whiskey from a staggering drunkard came through a slight cold drizzle and the more wholesome smells of cut timber, flour and barreled produce; it was evidently well into the Black Months here. She edged back and back to avoid the traffic and then dodged a wagon piled with bundles of bar iron stock beneath a tarpaulin and drawn by eight straining platter-hooved horses.

Suddenly a voice from one of the narrow alleys between tall warehouses painted with the names of their owners or gaudy advertisements for goods and patent medicines:

“Aidez-moi, pour l’amour de le bon dieu!”

Then a woman’s scream. Mathilda turned and plunged in without an instant’s hesitation, her left hand pulling up her skirts and her right drawing her dagger. The alley was dark, but she could see three men surrounding a slighter figure, and cloth ripped.

“Unhand her!” she snapped; it was the Crown Princess’ voice, that discounted the very possibility of disobedience. “Unhand that maiden, you stinking curs!”

Bristly faces turned on her, topped by shapeless caps or in one case an odd domed hat with a narrow brim over rat-tails of greasy red hair. They hesitated for a long instant. Then:

“Get out of it, ye hoor-watch, she’s got a knife, Jim!”

She cut; you didn’t stab, not fighting with a knife against someone with shoulders the breadth of the one reaching for her. He shrieked himself as the steel laid open his forearm and turned and ran, clutching it with one hand, bright blood red in the gray light and heavy boots squelching in the mud. The other two spread out, and one flicked his hand. There was something in it, a straight-razor held with the blade in his palm. He started to move, swift as a snake, then halted as he took in the way Mathilda held her dagger and stood poised. His eyes went wide in surprise, then narrowed as rat-thin lips lifted to show yellow teeth.

“Is that the way of it, then, fancy miss? I’ll have that sticker for payment, and more besides.”

One hand shot out to restrain his larger companion, and when he came forward again it was in a shuffling flat-footed crouch, eyes on her face rather than the blade.

The woman they’d been holding was beside Mathilda, panting and gabbling in French-a slurred quacking nasal dialect nothing like the courtly version Mathilda had a little of-and holding the blouse of a cotton dress closed where it had been torn from her neck. The men edged forward-

And a hand grabbed one by the shoulder, the slim quick one with the razor. It whipped him around right into the path of a fist like an oak maul, and there was a sickening crack sound; he dropped like an empty grain-sack tossed aside at a mill. The bigger man wheeled and grappled with the newcomer and then they were staggering back and forth. There was no science and little art in the way they fought, but plenty of strength and a vicious determination to do harm. Mathilda exchanged a glance with the woman…

Girl, she thought. In her teens.

Short and dark, pretty and olive-skinned and with snapping black eyes, part tribeswoman despite the cotton dress and ruched sunbonnet that contained much of her long black hair. Her full lips firmed and she nodded at Mathilda, then bent to take up a length of sawn timber buried in the mud of the alley and lifted it overhead like the handle of a threshing-flail. They poised together, Mathilda’s knife ready as well, waiting for the right back to come towards them.

It wasn’t necessary; the other attacker was down on his hands and knees an instant later, and the newcomer gave him a boot to the ribs that made bone crack audibly. He rolled away, then dragged himself upright and fled clutching his ribs.

The victor was panting and grinning; he picked up a knit cap and bowed, moving aside to make it clear he wasn’t blocking the exit of the alleyway and glancing back to see if anyone had paid attention. Yellow lights were coming on, gaslights in cast-iron standards, gleaming on the puddles.

“Josiah Whittle, at yur service, ladies,” he said. “And that was more lively and better fun than anything since the Dreadnought sailed from Portsmouth town.”

The accent reminded her of Sam Aylward, a little, or John Hordle, though a bit crisper. He was a young man in bell-bottomed canvas trousers and a shapeless sweater beneath a blue cloth jacket with brass buttons, with a kerchief around his neck held by a ring of carved bone. Stocky-strong in build and about Mathilda’s height-she’d noticed walking down to the river that she was a couple of inches taller relative to the average than she had been where she was raised. A shock of corn-colored hair was plastered to his forehead with sweat and rain, and his face was broad and freckled and gap-toothed.

She sheathed her dagger and extended a hand. “Mrs. Mathilda Mackenzie, sir,” she said.

His grip was careful and extremely strong, and even more callused than her own, the hand of a man who’d spent years heaving on tarred hemp rope.

“E…Elaine Bélanger,” the dark young woman said. “Thenk you very much, sair.”

“You know these longshore rats, ma’am?” the sailor said, looking at her in a puzzled way-evidently the dress didn’t match the hand.

“No,” Mathilda said. “I’m not familiar with this part of the city; I was here to meet my husband, and heard this young lady cry out.”

“Brave of you to come running in!” the man said admiringly, and then noticed the improvised cudgel in the younger woman’s hands. “And of you, miss! I thank’ee, though it warn’t needed.”

“I…” Elaine dropped the wooden batten and gave him a look of admiration. “I am here wit’ my father from the farm…I wander off, not used to cities, me…those men…”

“Perhaps you could escort the young lady to her parents,” Mathilda said. “My husband will be anxious…”

This time Rudi heard the men coming down towards the lake. It was later in the season, and the ground had the cold damp smell of hard rain; the snowline came low on Hood to the south, seen across the rising green carpet of the forest.

There were four of them and twice that many horses. All the animals had game slung across their backs; roughly gralloched black-tail deer and one big brown-black hide that must contain the quarters of a butchered bear. There was only a slight smell of blood and few flies at this season. The horses looked worn-down and so did the men; they also looked tough as rawhide, dressed in a mixture of coarse cloth and leather, both much patched. They all had rifles in the crooks of their left arms, the type with hammers but no flints. They stopped when they saw Rudi. Though they didn’t level the weapons, their eyes did flicker about, and one beanpole with a mop of shaggy fair hair under a tattered felt hat faced about to scan the trail behind them for a moment.

“How do, stranger,” one said after a moment; his voice had a harsh twanging rasp. “You from these here parts?”

“That I am,” Rudi said with a smile. “Rudi Mackenzie is my name.”

The lead man’s face split in a smile; he was about Rudi’s own age and only an inch or so shorter, though lean; his hair was a familiar shade of copper-red, and his eyes were the green of willow leaves.

“Why, dang if I ain’t a Mackenzie myself!” he said. “Jeb Mackenzie. Pleased t’ meet you. You’d be Scottish? My folks wuz, back a ways.”

I know, Rudi thought. Mother told me about you, I think…

“Scots, Irish, this and that,” he replied aloud, giving the man’s hand a firm shake and then exchanging handshakes and names with the others. “You’re new to the Oregon country, then?”

That’s what they’d call it.

“Just in over the Trail. Doin’ us some huntin’ whiles our party gets the wagons ready to cross the pass and the workin’ stock rests,” the man said. “Come out to claim us some growin’ land. Just wish I’d done it earlier!”

“Hain’t sittin’ on th’ stoop sucking on a jug more your way, Jeb?” one of his friends said; the sharp twanging accent made him almost as hard to understand as the Quebecois trapper had been. “Your pa was late to Tennessee too.”

“Hell-fire, if stoop-sittin’ and jug-suckin’ were all I could do, I’d’a gone to Texas instead, Billy,” Jeb said. He turned back to Rudi: “We’d admire to have you come t’ camp and share our meat, Mr. Mackenzie, and tell us ’bout the Territory.”

“Alas, I’ve places I must be,” Rudi said; the regret was sincere, for a fascination was growing on him. “You’re heading for Lolo Pass, then?”

Jeb nodded. “We had a guide, ’n he said it was th’ best if you wuz drivin’ stock. But he up ’n died back around Grande Ronde.”

“Got hisself likkered up ’n drowned in six inches of water,” another said mordantly. “It wuz alkali water, too.”

Rudi looked up at the sky. “I’d not waste time, then. Not a day, not an hour; break camp at dawn tomorrow, ready or no. Lolo is high enough that the snow can come any time now. And you’ve never seen snow like ours, friend.”

The men chuckled. “We’ze from East Tennessee, Mr. Mackenzie, not Louisiana!” one said. “Mountain men. Winter we knows about.”

Rudi shook his head and met their eyes grimly. “Even so. When the wind from the sea hits these mountains, it can bury a horse or a man in an hour. Wagons in a single day or night, or houses for that matter. Lolo can get drifts thirty feet deep by January. Believe me, for I’m not drawing the long bow. I’ve seen it myself, yes, and near died of it, and that with only a small party of men who knew the woods and had good gear. Much less mothers and infants and livestock.”

That sobered them. “Is the Willamette country’s good as they say?” Jeb asked.

“Better,” Rudi said, with a smile of his own. It grew fond as he remembered. “Gold to the harvest in summertime, and the pastures green near all the year and the orchards like froth of pink and white in the spring. Land soft beneath the plow, brown as chocolate, rich as cream and sweet as the first kiss of a maiden’s love.”

“Dang,” Jeb said, reverently this time.

One of his friends even removed his hat. Rudi could see the hunger in all their eyes, that special desire of men of the land.

“In fact, if it’s advice you want-the which is worth its weight in gold, mind you-”

Jeb Mackenzie blinked and then laughed. A moment later the others did as well.

“-I’d say you should go south down the Willamette. Around Sutterdown, say; that’s a town there on the Sutter River, with a gristmill and a sawmill and good hunting in the hills just west, if that pleases you.”

“It surely does, seein’ as I come from Sullivan County, with the purtiest hills an’ best hunting in the east. Land to break a farmer’s heart, though. Well, the wife is expectin’ something to cook up. Good luck to you, friend, and maybe we’ll meet again.”

Early spring, this time, Rudi thought. And this is my time, or close to it. I recognize the lightning scar on that tree, and the old path’s there under the new growth.

His breath smoked, but the sky was clear, save for a band where the setting sun made crimson streaks. He turned into the woods northward, letting his feet lead him uphill towards the sound of voices and the hollow clop of hooves. After a few minutes he came to a little clearing, about where he’d expected the sleigh-born party from Timberline to halt, and stopped to watch. None of those who crowded it seemed to notice him this time, ignoring him as if he were a ghost indeed, though he was in plain sight and they armed and wary. He shivered a little and drew the plaid closer; he felt he could walk among them unseen at arm’s length…but also as if this was as far from the Lake as it was wise to go.

There were more than a few of them, with pavilions and a banner and grooms leading away horses and men working to start fires. The flag on the big central tent’s peak was the Crowned Mountain and Sword of Montival, and from their dress the folk came from half of the High Kingdom or more. His eyes went wider as he sought faces in the crowd.

Sam Aylward? But-

At first he thought it was the old bowman, but he looked as Rudi remembered him from his own childhood, middle-aged and strong as a weather-scarred boulder.

No, he thought with wonder. It’s Edain, the hair’s lighter than old Sam’s and he’s an inch or so taller. Different scars, too. But not the Edain I saw a few hours past. My friend as he might be in a generation’s time.

Others were wholly strange. Who could the striking young woman in exotic lamellar armor be, the one with the Asian features and the twin curved swords, gripping a naginata? The sound of their voices was a murmur through a hundred yards, under the sough of the evening breeze through the boughs of the tall conifers. Two broke away after embraces and salutes, walking towards him.

A man and a woman, with the look of close kin, and both young, the male around twenty and the other a few years older. Both tall, walking with a quick springy stride he recognized, warriors and hunters both. The man had dark-brown hair to his shoulders beneath a Montero cap that sported a peacock’s tail-feather and green hunter’s garb, with a short heavy falchion at his belt and a bow and quiver over his back. His eyes were the changeable color that can be light honey-brown or green depending on the light, and very keen; his heels had the small golden spurs that marked a knight.

The woman was in a Mackenzie kilt and plaid and boots and jacket, long hair the color of ripe wheat in bright sunlight flowing down over her shoulders. Closer, and he could see her eyes were the blue of the lake behind him, and her features sharp-cut and regular, somewhere between handsome and beautiful, but worn with some great strain and marked by recent grief despite youth and strength. After a moment they slowed and the pair stopped, the man blinking a little and looking aside.

“This is as far as I think I should go, Orrey,” he said, turning his back on the lake.

“You may have to go further someday, Johnnie,” she replied soberly.

“God forbid!” he said, and crossed himself. “That’s for your kids.”

“Which I haven’t had yet. Until then you’re the heir.”

“God and all the saints forbid,” he said sincerely. “I’ve seen what the job did to Dad and what it’s doing to you. I’ll be the High Queen’s right hand and wailing wall when you need it, and that’s all I want, believe me.”

They hugged for a long moment-a sibling’s gesture, he decided, not a lover’s, from their manner and speech.

“Reiko will be nervous for me,” the woman said.

“Osian will help. I’ll keep them all laughing, don’t worry.”

She walked past him. At her belt…

The Sword of the Lady itself, he thought, numb with awe as he fell into step beside her, unseen…though from the way she moved and held her eyes she missed very little.

Just where the woods gave on the lake she hesitated, muttered: “Well, as Dad always said, the job doesn’t get easier if you wait,” and stepped out into the dying sunlight.

Rudi did as well, and faced her. “Órlaith?” he said softly.

Her eyes went wide and her face milk-pale. She staggered, and for an instant he thought she would buckle; he caught her by the forearms and felt her hands clench on his with hard force. Then she was intent, her eyes probing him.

“Dad?” she said. “Is that…you?” Then: “No. You’re too young!”

“It’s Rudi Mackenzie, I am, darling girl,” he said. “Just…let’s say I’m here on the same mission as I suspect brings you. The Kingmaking.”

“But I saw you-” she began, then rammed to a halt.

Rudi grinned, wonder and joy warring in him. “Die?” he laughed. “My delight, I never thought myself immortal. Except in the sense that we all are, and I’ve had abundant proof of that.”

“How?” she breathed. “How is this happening?”

“I haven’t the faintest idea; and I have it on the best of authority that Those responsible don’t explain it to us because they can’t. How can a man explain all his mind to a little child, or a God to a man? But I suspect that here, from the time the Sword plunged into the earth with Matti your mother and myself your father holding it, all times are one. And the dead and the living and those yet unborn are none so different.”

She cast herself against him and they embraced; her arms were like slender steel, and the sun-colored hair smelled of the woods and some flowery herb.

“I’ve missed you so much, Dad. And Mother has been so-”

He made a shushing sound and laid a finger over her lips. “Arra, there are things I should not know. Let me find my own joys and griefs, child! It’s a comfort to hear you, though. I’ve a fair confidence I will be a good King, but it seems I’m none so bad a father, too.”

She nodded vigorously and stood back, wiping at tears with the back of her hand.

“Come, walk with me,” he said.

They linked hands; hers were callused like his, the distinctive patterns left by blade-hilt and shield-grips. After a moment they came to the rock by the water; the Sword stood in it, as if it had been planted there since the land first rose from the sea.

The blue eyes looked at it and then up at him as her own blade-hand touched the moonstone pommel at her side.

“I’m not going to say how again,” she said, a hint of the wasp in her voice. “You’re as bad as Grandmother Juniper about answering questions with questions!”

“Sure, and I came by it honestly,” Rudi said. Seriously: “I think that the Sword is now here forever. More, I think that it always was here…now, if that makes any sense at all; we drove it not just through rock, but through Time itself. And that this has become a place of awe and sacredness, the pivot about which Montival turns.”

She nodded vigorously. “Nobody comes here except the High King or Queen and their handfasted,” she said. “But you never told me much about…this.”

“Because there are things that mean nothing until you live them,” Rudi said. He grinned. “Let me guess. You’re facing a great challenge, the realm is in peril, and-”

She laughed, but there were tears in it. “Lord and Lady, Dad, but I’ve missed you! Johnnie and Vuissance and Faolan have too, but…I…”

And I have your babyhood and girlhood and young womanhood to look forward to, darling girl, he thought. While you have the grief of loss.

Rudi faced her and laid his hands on her shoulders. “Now, this is what I’ve seen and done here-”

She frowned as he told her. “That’s…strange. Those were ancestors, weren’t they? Our ancestors.”

“Yes. Some of our ancestors, here in this land of ours. And I was led to see and do and know what a King must. What you will see…will be particularly tailored to yourself, I would say.”

“Will I see Grandmother…I mean Grandmother Sandra?”

“And how would I know?” Rudi said. “That’s your story, though I suspect you will. And perhaps your own children, or your heir at least. Come. Draw the Sword.”

She did, and gasped a little as he reached and pulled the other from the rock; it came free as easily as if that were the sheath. Light seemed to well about them as he reversed the blade and offered it to her. She took it reverently and he the hilt of hers.

“Quickly!” he said, and she sheathed the Sword he’d handed her.

They knelt on either side of the rock, and each touched a finger to the point, the red drops mingling.

“By the bond of blood,” he said, and laid the point against the rock.

“By the bond of blood,” she answered, and wrapped her hands around his.

Together, they thrust the blade forged beyond the world into the Heart of Montival.

“Rudi!” Mathilda gasped. “I’ve seen…I’ve seen…”

They fell together, shivering. She went on: “Oh God, I’ve seen such wonders!”

“Myself also, anamchara mine,” he said, stroking her hair.

“And I talked with Dad,” she went on, longing and sadness in her voice. “He’s…he’s in Purgatory, I think. And he said he was sorry…”

She shook her head slightly and fell silent. He nodded.

“Yes, that’s between the three of you,” he said. “And now-”

They stood, and he drew the Sword from its stone sheath. Mathilda blinked, looking at the place it had stood.

“It’s still there, isn’t it?” she asked. “Even if we can’t see it.”

“It’s perceptive you are, darling. It always was and always will be there now.”

She looked around at the snowy trees and the dark-purple surface of the lake. “And I can feel it. Feel…everything, a little. Feel how I’m part of everything.”

“Myself also. It wasn’t a form of words. We are the land. Though I suspect it’ll become a bit less obtrusive as time goes on and we grow accustomed.”

“It feels strange,” she said. And after a moment: “But…you know, it feels pretty good, actually. Like being at home, with friends.”

Rudi nodded. They packed up the gear again; a sudden thought made him glance at a shadow, the usual way of judging time even if you could afford the luxury of a watch. His lips pursed a little in surprise.

“Hardly any time at all!” he said. “And it felt like an hour or more.”

“Rudi…” Mathilda said.

Wordlessly she pointed to their own footprints in the soft damp earth, where they’d walked to the edge of the water just after they arrived. The outlines were blurred, indistinct, and the water had seeped in to make each a miniature puddle.

“Carson a chiall!” he said mildly. “What on earth…well, we’ve skipped about…a day, would you say?”

“Just about.”

He felt tired, too, as if he’d been up a day; tired and hungry, but not bad. More the way you felt after you’d spent a day cutting timber or pitching sheaves onto a wagon. Mathilda suddenly put her hand to her stomach.

“I’m pregnant!” she said, wonderingly. Then: “I wasn’t sure…I’ve been working hard, sometimes that delays things…but now I know. Our daughter, our first child.”

“Sure, and it’s a wonderment,” Rudi said, warmth in his voice. “And I’m afraid this just past will be your last campaign for a while, a ghaoil!”

She nodded. “That’s OK. It’s not as if I won’t have enough to do, behind the lines, and essential work. It’s just…seeing what will come of things.”

They linked hands and walked up the trail. The Lake vanished behind them in a score of yards, and soon the musty-chill and resin smell of the woods was leavened by woodsmoke and cooking odors. It felt as if they were walking…

Back into the world, Rudi thought, and his stomach growled.

“And how the most exalted things give way to the fact that we must eat daily or regret it!” he said quietly.

Mathilda chuckled. “Just as it should be, dear,” she said. “When God’s own Son established the most holy rite of the Faith, He did it with bread and wine at a supper.”

The camp of the emissaries wasn’t anything fancy, but it did have some tents of considerable size. Juniper Mackenzie was the first to see the pair, and hurried towards them. Her pace slowed, and it was stately when she reached them rather than the dash and leap to an embrace he’d half-expected.

“Oh, my son,” she said quietly; there was a glitter as of tears in her voice, and her eyes shone. “Oh, my darling foster girl. What have the Powers done with you?”

Then, as the others came up, she gathered the skirts of her arsaid a little and sank to her knees.

“Hail, Artos, Ard Rí! Hail, Artos, High King in Montival!” she cried, the steady tones of her trained soprano ringing through the camp like a bell. “Hail, Mathilda, Bana-Ard-rí, High Queen in Montival! All hail!”

Rudi stood, waiting, meeting the eyes of the others. They knelt in a ripple and cried the pair hail. He suspected-

No, he thought. I know that there are few in Montival who didn’t feel something, however faint, when Mathilda and I thrust the Sword into the stone. Those with the Inner Sight would have felt a great deal; and these were very close indeed to the Heart.

When a ringing silence fell, he spoke aloud:

“I am High King.”

“I am High Queen,” Mathilda said, matching him.

“The land has accepted us, the ancestors and the Powers,” he said. “Our blood has been bound to the land and the folk, and so it shall remain so long as our line does-unless the sea rise and drown us, or the sky fall and crush us, or the world end.”

“This has been accomplished according to the will of God the Father, Son and Holy Ghost, and by the grace of the Holy Virgin Mary, Mother of God and my patron,” Mathilda added.

“Is there any here who denies our right?” Rudi asked, his voice firm but not menacing. “If so, let him speak now or hold his peace hereafter.”

Silence again; Professor Turner met his eyes and nodded once, slowly, before glancing down again. Yes, everyone had felt something. Rudi smiled and gestured with his palms up.

“Then rise, my friends, and let us speak together.” He laughed. “And by all the Powers, let’s eat as well!”

They rose and pressed closer; he hugged his mother to him and whispered in her ear:

“It was a big bit of a shout, eh?”

“Like the ringing of a bell the size of the Moon,” she murmured back.

“And you’re to be a grandmother again.”

She pushed back a little and tweaked his earlobe. “And you think I didn’t know?”

Sandra Arminger was looking a little staggered as Mathilda spoke to her, holding both hands in hers and whispering quickly and softly. Edain pushed forward and thrust something into Rudi’s hand. It was a bun, split length-wise and full of a grilled sausage.

“That’ll hold you, Chief,” he said, giving another to Mathilda.

“Ah, and with men like you at my back, what can’t we do?” Rudi laughed, and took a bite.

He inhaled the cold upland air, full of the scent of the firs, and chewed and swallowed with relish.

“Which is good,” Mathilda said. “Because there’s a lot to get done.”

“A lot for everyone to do,” Rudi said. “Every soul in Montival, to make it the kingdom of all our dreams.”