Three hearts and three lions

2

HE SAT AT THE RICKETY TABLE of undressed wood. His eyes stung with the smoke that gathered below the rafters. One door led into a stable where his horse was now tied, otherwise the building consisted only of this dirt-floored room. The sole dim light came from a fire on a hearthstone. Looking about, Holger saw a few chairs, a straw tick, some tools and utensils, a black cat seated on an incongruously big and ornate wooden chest. Its yellow gaze never winked or left him. The woman, Mother Gerd, was stirring an iron pot above the fire. She herself was stooped and withered, her dress like a tattered sack; gray hair straggled around a hook-nosed sunken face which forever showed snaggle teeth in a meaningless grin. But her eyes were a hard bright black.

“Ah, yes, yes,” she said, “’tis not for the likes of me, poor old woman that I be, to inquire of that which strangers would fain keep hid. There are many who’d liefer go a-secret in these uneasy lands near the edge of the world, and for all I know ye might be some knight of Faerie in human guise, who’d put a spell on an impertinent tongue. Nonetheless, good sir, might I make bold to ask a name of ye? Not your own name, understand, if ye wish not to give it to any old dame like me, who means ye well but admits being chattersome in her dotage, but some name to address ye properly and with respect.”

“Holger Carlsen,” he answered absently.

She started so she almost knocked over the pot. “What say ye?”

“Why—” Was he hunted? Was this some weird part of Germany? He felt the dagger, which he had prudently thrust in his belt. “Holger Carlsen! What about it?”

“Oh... nothing, good sir.” Gerd glanced away, then back to him, quick and birdlike. “Save that Holger and Carl are both somewhat well-known names, as ye wot, though in sooth ’tis never been said that one was the son of the other, since indeed their fathers were Pepin and Godfred, or rather I should say the other way around; yet in a sense, a king is the father of his vassal and—”

“I’m neither of those gentlemen,” he said, to stem the tide. “Pure chance, my name.”

She relaxed and dished up a bowl of stew for him, which he attacked without stopping to worry about germs or drugs. He was also given bread and cheese, to hack off with his knife and eat with his fingers, and a mug of uncommonly good ale. A long time passed before he leaned back, sighed, and said, “Thank you. That saved my life, or at least my reason.”

“’Tis naught, sire, ’tis but coarse fare for such as ye, who must oft have supped with kings and belted earls and listened to the minstrels of Provence, their glees and curious tricks, but though I be old and humble, yet would I do ye such honors as—”

“Your ale is marvelous,” said Holger in haste. “I’d not thought to find any so good, unless you—” He meant to say, “unless your local brewery has escaped all fame,” but she interrupted him with a sly laugh.

“Ah, good Sir Holger, for sure I am ’tis a knight ye must be, if not of yet higher condition, ye’re a man of wit and perceiving, who must see through the poor old woman’s little tricks on the instant. Yet though most of your order do frown on such cantrips and call ’em devices of the Devil, though in truth ’tis no different in principle from the wonder-working relics of some saint, that do their miracles alike for Christians or paynim, still must ye be aware how many here in this marchland do traffic in such minor magics, as much for their own protection against the Middle World powers as for comfort and gain, and ye can understand in your mercy ’twould scarce be justice to burn a poor old goodwife for witching up a bit of beer to warm her bones of winter nights when there be such many and powerful sorcerers, open traffickers in the black arts, who go unpunished and—“

So you’re a witch? thought Holger. That I’ve got to see. What did she think she was putting over on him, anyway? What kind of build-up was this?

He let her ramble on while he puzzled over the language. It was a strange tongue, hard and clangorous in his own mouth, an archaic French with a lot of Germanic words mixed in, one that he might have been able to unravel slowly in a book but could surely never have spoken as if born to it. Somehow the transition to—wherever this was—had equipped him with the local dialect.

He had never gone in for reading romances, scientific or otherwise, but more and more he was being forced to assume that by some impossible process he had been thrown into the past. This house, and the carline who took his knightly accouterments as a matter of course, and the language, and the endless forest... But where was he? They had never spoken this way in Scandinavia. Germany, France, Britain?... But if he was back in the Dark Ages, how account for the lion, or for this casual mention of living on the boundaries of fairyland?

He thrust speculation aside. A few direct questions might help. “Mother Gerd,” he said.

“Aye, good sir. With any service wherewith I can aid ye, honor falls on this humble house, so name your desire and within the narrow limits of my skill all shall be as ye wish.” She stroked the black cat, which continued to watch the man.

“Can you tell me what year this is?”

“Oh, now ye ask a strange question, good sir, and mayhap that wound on your poor head, which doubtless was won in undaunted battle against some monstrous troll or giant, has addled messire’s memory; but in truth, though I blush for the admission, such reckonings have long slipped from me, the more so when time is often an uncanny thing here in the wings of the world since—“

“Never mind. What land is this? What kingdom?”

“In sooth, fair knight, ye ask a question over which many scholars have cracked their heads and many warriors have cracked each other’s heads. Hee, hee! For long have these marches been in dispute between the sons of men and the folk of the Middle World, and wars and great sorcerous contests have raged, until now I can but say that Faerie and the Holy Empire both claim it, while neither holds real sway, albeit the human claim seems a trifle firmer in that our race remains in actual settlement; and mayhap the Saracens could assert some title as well, forasmuch as their Mahound is said to have been an evil spirit himself, or so the Christians claim. Eh, Grimalkin?” She tickled the cat’s throat.

“Well—” Holger clung to his patience with both hands. “Where can I find men... Christian men, let’s say... who will help me? Where is the nearest king or duke or earl or whatever he is?”

“There is a town not too many leagues away as men reckon distance,” she said, “yet in truth I must warn that space, like time, is wondrously affected here by the sorceries blowing out of Faerie, so that often the place where you are bound seems near, and then again dwindles into vast and tedious distances beset with perils, and the very land and way ye go remain not the same—”

Holger gave up. He knew when he was licked. Either this hag was a maundering idiot or she was deliberately stalling him. In neither case could he hope to learn much.

“Yet if ’tis counsel ye want,” said Gerd suddenly, “though my own old noddle is oft woolly, as old heads are wont to be, and though Grimalkin here is dumb, however cunning, yet ’tis possible that counsel could be summoned for ye, and also that wherewith to allay your hurt and make ye whole again. Be not wroth, fair sir, if I propose a trifle of magic, for white it is—or gray, at worst; were I a mighty witch, think ye I would dress in these rags or dwell in this hovel? Nay, ’twould be a palace of gold for me, and servants on every hand would have welcomed ye. If by your leave I might summon a sprite, only a little one, he could tell ye what ye would know better than I.“

“Hm.” Holger raised his brows. All right, that settled it. She was nuts. Best humor her if he intended to spend the night here. “As you wish, mother.”

“Now I perceive that ye hail from eldritch places indeed,” she said, “for ye did not so much as cross yourself, whereas most knights are forever calling on the Highest, although oft in great oaths that will cost them hellfire pangs, nor live they overly godly lives; yet must the Empire use what poor tools can be found in this base and wicked world. Such is not your manner, Sir Holger, neither in one respect nor the other, which makes to wonder if indeed ye be not of Faerie. Yet shall we try this matter, though ’tis but right to confess beforehand the sprites are uncanny beings and may give no answer, or one with double meaning.”

The cat sprang off the chest and she opened it. There was a curious tautness in her. He wondered what she was up to. A small crawling went along his spine.

Out of the chest she took a tripod brazier, which she set on the floor and charged with powder from a flask. She took out also a wand that seemed to be of ebony and ivory. Muttering and making passes, she drew two concentric circles in the dirt around the tripod and stood between them with her cat.

“The inner curve is to hold the demon, and the outer to stay what enchantments he might essay, for they are often grumpy when summoned so swift out of airiness,” she explained. “I must ask ye, sir, to make no prayer nor sign of the cross, for that would cause him to depart at once, and in most foul humor too.“ Her voice was matter-of-fact, but her eyes glittered at him and he wished he could read expression in that web of wrinkles.

“Go ahead,” he said, a bit thickly.

She began dancing around the inner circle, and he caught something of her chant. “Amen, amen—” Yes, he knew what was coming next, though he couldn’t tell how he knew... “—malo a nos libera sed—” Nor did he know why his hackles rose. She finished the Latin and switched to a shrill language he didn’t recognize. When she touched her wand to the brazier, it began throwing out a heavy white smoke that almost hid her but, curiously, did not reach beyond the outer circle. “O Beliya’al, Ba’al Zebub, Abaddon, Ashmadai!” she screamed. “Samiel, Samiel, Samiel!”

Was the smoke thickening? Holger started from his chair. He could barely see Gerd in the red-tinged haze, and it was as if something else hovered over the tripod, something gray and snaky, half transparent—by Heaven, he saw crimson eyes, and the thing had almost the shape of a man!

He heard it speak, a whistling unhuman tone, and the old woman answered in the language he did not know. Ventriloquism, he told himself frantically, ventriloquism and his own mind, blurred with weariness, only that, only that. Papillon neighed and kicked in his stall. Holger dropped a hand to his knife. The blade was hot. Did magic, he gibbered, induce eddy currents?

The thing in the smoke piped and snarled and writhed about. It talked with Gerd for what seemed a very long time. Finally she raised her wand and started another chant. The smoke began to thin, as if it were being sucked back into the brazier. Holger swore shaken-voiced and reached for the ale.

When there was no more smoke, Gerd stepped out of the circle. Her face was gone blank and tight, her eyes hooded. But he saw how she trembled. The cat arched its back, bottled its tail, and spat at him.

“Strange rede,” she said after a pause, tonelessly. “Strange rede the demon gave me.”

“What did he say?” Holger whispered.

“He said—Samiel said ye were from far away, so far that a man might travel till Judgment Day and not reach your home. Is’t not so?”

“Yes,” said Holger slowly. “Yes, I think that maybe true.”

“And he said help for your plight, the means of returning ye whence ye came, lies within Faerie itself. There must ye go, Sir... Sir Holger. Ye must ride to Faerie.”

He knew not what to answer.

“Oh, ’tis not so bad as ’t sounds.” Gerd eased a trifle. She even chuckled, or rather cackled. “If the truth must out, I am on terms not unfriendly with Duke Alfric, the nearest lord of Faerie. He is a kittle sort, like all his breed, but he’ll help ye if ye ask, the demon said. And I shall furnish a guide, that ye may go thither with speed.”

“Wh-why?” Holger stammered. “I mean, I can’t offer payment.”

“None is needed.” Gerd waved a negligent hand. “A good deed may perchance be remembered to my credit when I depart this world for another and, I fear, warmer clime; and in any case it pleasures an old granny to help a handsome young man like unto ye. Ah, there was a time, how long ago ! But enough of that. Let me dress your hurt, and then off to bed with ye.“

Holger submitted to having his injury washed and a poultice of herbs bound over it with an incantation. He was too tired by now to resist anything. But he remembered enough caution to decline her offer of her own pallet, and instead slept on the hay next to Papillon. No use taking more chances than he must. This was an odd house, to say the least.