Plum Duff, page 23
But to the south there shone a great golden planet I was sure I had never seen before.
“What is that?” I asked the Hunter. “It’s not a comet, surely.”
I had heard of comets but never seen one outside of a diagram in a book of astronomical marvels. They were called bearded stars for their long trailing hair.
This was not a bearded star. It was a shining beacon in the south, over the mountains, like the familiar four planets but larger, brighter, impossible.
The Hunter gave me a sad, grave look. “So long has it been since that planet last cast his light over the world, his name even has been forgotten and lies mouldering with the dreams of days long past.”
I stared at the planet. A fifth planet. I did not have even a distant echo of something I had once read to chime in my mind. No story from my mother, no tale from my father, no poem of the classical poets.
“Long ago,” the Hunter said, “our Lady walked the earth, which grew green under her feet. The sky her raiment, the winds her attendants, all good and growing things about her. She was the goddess of the morning and the evening, of the day and the night. When the seasons turned she was the Lady of the Winter as well as of the Summer.”
I nodded. So said all my mother’s stories.
“Her care and her charge was this hemisphere of the world,” he went on, making a wide gesture from the west to the east, his hand arcing over the north. His horns caught the pole star and seemed to tug it out of its place. Shooting stars followed his hand, blazing down into the dim blanket of snow covering Middle Fiellan on the other side of the Arguty Forest. My breath caught at how right it was that the stars should follow his hand.
“To the South she had her partner and her friend in the Lord of the Purple and Gold; the Lord of Spring and Autumn; the Lord of Mountain and Sea.”
I stared up at the Hunter. His eyes were as deep and fathomless as the sky above us, as brilliant with the stars. My throat was dry and my skin prickling with goosebumps.
“Two halves of the world, two hemispheres. They joined in the dance of the seasons, at solstice and equinox meeting and parting and meeting again. The world, blessed in their joy, peopled by their love. Magic in their meeting and in their parting. Lady of Green and White, Lord of Purple and Gold.”
We turned to look at the great planet riding high above the south, with Dwile and Heorl and Kivroth and Tazra and the crescent moon his attendants, the southern constellations clustering around him.
The Hunter said, “There were those who lived in the Bright Countries, whose nearest edges you have glimpsed, who grew jealous that the Lady and the Lord would let the mortals whom they loved into Paradise. They strove against our Lord and Lady, and were cast out of the Bright Countries into the shadows between worlds.”
“The Dark Kings,” I whispered.
“And their servants.”
I swallowed. “What then?”
“They waged war.”
It was a simple statement. The source of evil, so said the Lady’s priests in their sermons. I wasn’t sure about that—surely there were those born to, raised in, those traditions who were not evil?—but it was true that the power of the priests of the Dark Kings as I had experienced it was unholy, broken, diseased.
“The Lord and our Lady fought, but by their very nature they brought the divine realms close. They held open the gates of Paradise with every step, every smile, every touch of their hands upon the world. Our Lady chose to withdraw so that those who had once joined her dance in the Bright Countries could no longer find their way thither. In her withdrawal she left behind what gifts she could, each to come in its own times and needs.”
The Hunter himself. The unicorns. Magic. Sir Peregrine. Any of the saints, major and minor. Mr. Dart.
“And then you,” the Hunter in the Green said. “Of this world, but yet not fully; kin by your mother’s line to those who live in the places between worlds, neither of the Bright Countries or the mortal realms nor the Abyssal deeps. Friends with a champion, promising in his own right. There have been many such, over the years. Some of their names you know. Others were lost in the battle.”
“I was lost in the battle,” I said, and then the whole world seemed to lurch under my foot. The Hunter’s hand was warm and strong on my shoulder. “Like my father.”
“Another who knows the fight. And like him, you were not entirely lost.”
“I came back so the gate would not open for the Dark Kings. Mr. Dart was the one who held the passage open.”
The Hunter pointed to the glowing planet to the south, the Lord whose name no one now knew. “The Lady returned to the meads of Paradise, where she gathers those who seek her. I am her reeve and her hunter, keeping guard and keeping watch along the borderlands.”
He was giving me metaphors and analogies I might understand, I knew that, grateful for the consideration. What was really happening … oh, it was an allegory for which we had no other words; the veil thrown over the invisible statue, giving us a glimpse of its shape and form.
“Just so,” he said. There were clouds at the edge of the horizon now, black against the stars and royal sky. The shadows rising. And yet the bright planet, the Lord, in his place.
“You saw Sir Peregrine, and accepted his gift.”
I swallowed again. This was what Mr. Dart had meant: that the sword, the Ánhorn, had come to me, and not to him. I clenched my left hand, the one marked by the spiral horn, the spiral scar. It was warm in my mind. “I did.”
“You have found secrets.”
Many; most recently that banned and lost poem of Fitzroy Angursell’s, which had the key to unravelling half the magic of Alinor.
“It is only half,” the Hunter said softly. “The invaders from other mortal worlds came. Our Lady was not unwelcoming, and the wizards of the iron roads did not like the Dark Kings either. But they bound both the green magic and the black, both the white magic and the red. What they brought into their sway was kept from the Dark Kings, but they did not bring all.”
Half the world had never been conquered. South of Loe was an unknown continent. East of the Mountains of Desire on Eastern Oriole were countries whose universities had belonged to the Charter of Schools but which were merely names in the lists now. Westward over the ocean was the land—island? archipelago? continent?—which Hal had sent an expedition to find.
“And the Lord?” I asked, looking out at the fifth planet. “Did he too retreat to the Bright Countries?”
“He fought, and fell,” the Hunter said. “Was caught and taken captive. Until he is freed, the world will never be more than half of what it might be.”
I stared at the sky, the snow-capped mountains, the shadows and the starlight. The mysteries in those folds of land, the spine of the continent that wove from the Farry March in convoluted ranks into the southern mystery; the uninhabited, unexplored, unknown regions between Fiellan and West Erlingale, Ghilousette and Thourin south of Erlingale, and the countries beyond Loe.
What could catch and bind a god?
My father had fought his way through those shadows, those mountains, those darker nights and brighter days. He had not yet spoken of what he had seen and done on his way home.
“What do I need to know?” I breathed, the third time of asking. “What do I need to do?”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
The Hunter’s hand was warm, even hot on my back. The air was crisp on my skin, catching in my lungs as I breathed in the piercing clarity.
There might be shadows at the edges of the horizon, but nothing obscured the last light of the sun, the five planets set like jewels in golden rings, the crescent moon like the arc of the Hunter’s bow.
“What do you already know? What do you already do?” the Hunter asked.
I should try answering questions with more questions, I thought, not crossly. It was hard to feel cross with my feet planted on the span of a bridge high above the world and intensely a part of it.
What did I already know? What did I already do?
What did I do well?
“Running,” I answered. “Fighting.” I paused, but then Ariadne came to mind, her poem that had so shaped my life. Crescent and recrescent shadows, just the shape of the sickle moon when the sun had been shadowed by an eclipse. Solving puzzles. But that was not the right phrase, was it? There were that handful of stories from before the coming of the Empire … “Answering riddles.”
“Then answer me this,” the Hunter said, bending his head to look me in the eye. I looked back, unafraid of the stars or the shadows there. The Lady would not forget me, should I fail in the tasks before me and be lost in the dark and blasted landscape around the Grim Crossroads. She had promised me her Hunter would harry out all those who longed for her table.
“Such faith,” the Hunter murmured. “Let it burn brightly, son of twilight.”
The twilit countries were those of the Good Neighbours, where neither Sun nor Moon shone, it was said.
“What riddle do you pose me?” I asked, though his whole presence was a riddle and a puzzle I should likely never fully be able to answer.
“We are always here, we who serve our Lady and those who oppose her,” he said quietly in answer to my thought. “It takes a rare gift of sight for one to see us who has not been touched as you have been.”
I nodded in understanding. I had looked upon the Lady: the memory, bright if blurry, lifted my heart every time my mind landed upon it. I held that in the treasure-chamber of my memory, that gift of grace and miracle.
What a gift of grace and miracle Mr. Dart was, to call me back across the chasm between death and life.
The Hunter turned me, his hand a gentle pressure on my shoulder, and guided me to the very edge of the bridge. I stood there, calm under his touch, knowing I would not fall.
“Would you jump if I asked?” he asked.
I had jumped the Leap for my father when he asked.
I pretended to consider it seriously, but the words came truthfully from my mouth. “Probably.”
He laughed outright, and it seemed as if the stars could not help it, and laughed with him. I was sure the great golden planet, the fifth star, sign of the Lord we had lost, twinkled most brightly and brilliantly of all.
“Running, and fighting, and riddling you will have,” the Hunter declared. “A desperate race to run, a good fight to undertake, and riddles piled upon riddles to unravel.”
“My life is my Lady’s,” I replied, stepping away from his hand so I could turn and present him with one of my elaborate be-curlicued bows.
“Many are called, and few make it to the end,” he murmured, “but each relays the torch a step further, though it be only a step. Do you understand?”
I remembered the drums beating in the gorge of the Magarran Strid as the waters turned. I remembered the high ululating wail that had changed the cultists from foolish to terrible. I remembered the taste of wireweed in my mouth, dissolving my inhibitions and burning my inner magic into firework-brilliance.
“I do.”
“It is a simple riddle.”
“Those can be the hardest ones.”
It was easier to see that there was a mystery in a long and complicated poem … harder in a short and tightly constructed stanza. But yet the Gainsgooding Conspirators had managed to plan the assassination of an Emperor through their poems, and it was only the fact that I had successfully escaped the Orio City prison that would convince anyone of the truth of my analysis of On Being Incarcerated.
“When is a trail not to be tracked?”
I looked up at the Hunter. That was apposite but hardly a very good riddle. Though, then again—
The first answer, when it is a false trail, was not necessarily right. One might need to follow the false trail to find out it was not the true one.
I looked out at the patterns of field and copse, hedgerow and road, river and human habitation. I could name half the fields I could see: there was the Ten-Acre Field which the baron spent far too long each year ploughing; there was the field in which the races were run at the Dartington Harvest Fair; there were the water meadows of the lower Raggle where Mr. Dart was worried the wireweed had washed down from the Talgarths’ illicit operation.
When it leads into danger was another answer that, while true, was unhelpful. One did not always know that a trail did; and sometimes it was the only way, and one might have to hazard the danger to win the prize.
My father had gone into danger any number of times in order to follow his duty or save his life or those of his comrades and commanders. No, sometimes one needed to follow a trail no matter where it led.
I looked at the dark mass of the Arguty Forest. From up here I could see a lighter grey splotch I thought might be the hill on which stood that one singular tree, the Hanging Tree on which I had thought my father had been hanged to his death. The burial mound of the Bloody Queen. The location of Myrta the Hand’s camp.
When is a trail not to be tracked?
When it was false; when it led into danger; when …?
I looked down to the south, at the edge of the Coombe and the hills where the Lady’s Pools and the Ellery Stone lay. There was a faint pale glimmer, some body of water catching the starlight. The spring behind the old chapel.
That night, solstice night, I had been required to stay in the circle while Mr. Dart and my father held the line. I was the weak point; I could neither run, nor fight, nor even answer riddles. I could only hold myself inside the circle and have visions.
I looked up at the Hunter. “When one is not the hunter.”
He smiled without moving his face again. “It is a hard lesson for some.”
To accept help. To await rescue. To allow another to fight on one’s behalf. None of those were things I was good at.
“Why are so many things happening?” I asked, gazing out at this small diamond of land. Such a tiny portion of the world and yet stage enough for a lifetime of adventure. Surely it was impossible that it had been only four months since I came home.
A lifetime, indeed. Mine had ended and then … begun again.
“Things happen at all times, in season and out of it,” he replied evenly. “Many do not notice.”
“I am noticing,” I muttered. There was the Talgarth’s house, in all its Late Bastard Decadent glory. There was the Little Church where Violet and I had tumbled in a fight. There was Ragnor Bella. There was Magistra Bellamy’s cottage, with the smoke rising up in a steady spiral. There was Dart Hall, with all its windows lit. There was the Big Church and the White Cross and the Arguty Forest—
There was almost all the compass of my life.
I looked back at the golden planet. It gleamed, majestic and gorgeous, like the sunlight catching in Ballory’s eye. It hung above the mountains behind the Woods Noirell, beyond the gate that once led to Astandalas.
“Where does the Gate of Morning lead?” the Hunter asked, his voice soft and full of portent. “Who holds the shield of the lost Lord? What banner shall be unfurled over the Lady’s Champion?”
I stood a few steps away from him now, just over the crest of the invisible bridge. Far below us was Dartwater; far above us was the constellation of the Archer, with its stars caught in the Hunter’s horns.
Answer questions with questions. I lifted my head. The air was moving about us, cold winds scented still with those flowers from the meads of Paradise. There I could desire nothing wrong, choose no ill path. That was not a grace given to us here in our mortal life, bounded and binding as it was; but yet—
“Who led my father home?” I asked in reply. “Why was the Ánhorn given to me? What am I to tell those who wait for me?”
The Hunter lifted his head and laughed, and the heavens shook and thundered with his laughter. The shadows curling about the horizon flinched and trembled. I could hear a joyous barking and baying coming from the heavenly hounds leaping through the sky, the stars in their eyes.
“You must choose your allies,” the Hunter said. “The enemies test the guards at the gates. This is the year’s midnight and its birthing-time alike, this passage from light to dark to light again. Not all trails are true. Some are false, laid to deceive; others are laid to test and teach.”
“And some are red herring pies,” I muttered.
The Hunter was not rumoured to be omniscient, and certainly did not seem to know what to make of my comment. After a brief flicker of hesitation he ignored it and went on.
“It is the time of riddles,” he announced. “When the unicorn bloodies her horn will be time enough to fight.”
“And to run?” I asked quietly.
He gave me a soft, steady glance. “You know well enough that there are many ways and times for that.”
I met his glance. The wind was moving faster around us now. It reminded me of Mr. Dart’s magic, powerful and uncertain, tentative but yet with such a steadily unfurling core of joy. The stars were bright above us, in the horns of the Hunter’s crown, in his dark eyes, in his beard. I had imagined such stars when my father whispered of what the night sky looked like on the other side of the Border, outside of Astandalas.
“There is beauty there,” he said very softly.
And knowledge and wisdom to be learned. Plants to be found, even.
“Am I … to find it?”
“You might seek him,” the Hunter said even more quietly, as if there were ears that might hear, high up on his magical bridge.
I looked at the golden planet, the unknown Lord, the lost partner of the Lady. “Where?”
It was not a real question, because if the Hunter had known surely he would already have gone searching. He did not answer, but merely looked at the fifth planet and then back to me. His curly hair was moving in the wind, and his antlers caught the stars in streamers and banners. I blinked, dizzy with the sense of otherness, of dislocation, of divinity.
