“If he is so powerful an esper as to be able to do so,” Gregory protested, “surely he could shield his thoughts so well that even Geoffrey and I could not hear them.”
“It may be,” said Alain, “but what of this ‘zonploka’ the hobyahs hailed? And the wall of mist from which the ogres came?”
“ ‘When several explanations present themselves, choose the simplest,’” Gregory quoted.
“Do not seek to shave him with Occam’s Razor, brother,” Geoffrey said, grinning. “I begin to realize that Alain’s sense of judgment is not a matter of logic alone, but also of intuition.”
“I do not think these matters through before I speak of them,” Alain admitted. “It is simply clear to me that your notion of a rider ahead of us does not account for all we have seen and heard.”
“Well, it was only a notion,” Gregory said, miffed, “but you cannot deny the possibility of an intelligence behind this sequence of creatures.”
“Nor do I,” Alain said. “I simply doubt that it rides ahead of us.”
“Where could it be, then?”
“Why, behind the wall of mist, brother.” Geoffrey returned a cheerful grin for the daggers Gregory glared at him.
“The sun is low.” Alain looked over his shoulder at the orange orb nearing the tops of the trees. “Where shall we pass this night?”
“Yon!” Geoffrey pointed at an orchard beside the road ahead. “Soft beds and fresh food both! How fortunate!”
“Suddenly I mistrust good fortune.” Alain smiled, though.
“Oh, be not so dour, Alain! We have hard biscuits and beef jerky; now we shall have apples for dessert!” Geoffrey turned his mount off the road and in among the trees. “In truth, I am so hungry I shall start where I should end! But there is someone else more hungry, and who must be served first.” He dismounted, unbuckled the bridle and took it off his mount’s head, then reached up, plucked an apple, and held it out to his horse.
“Well thought!” Alain dismounted and unbridled his horse, too, then plucked an apple and offered it to the stallion. Gregory followed suit, plucking his horse’s apple even as Geoffrey pulled a second off the tree and bit into it.
A swelling roar shook the whole orchard.
Geoffrey and Alain dropped the apples and spun, drawing their swords. Behind them, Gregory rested his hand on his hilt, but with an abstracted gaze, paying more attention with his mind than with his eyes.
The man who approached them looked like a tree come to life. His hair stood out in springy fronds, his jerkin and hose were rough and brown as bark, his fingers knobbly as twigs, his feet long and pointed as roots. He wore a crown of apple leaves that came down to frame his face like a beard. His mouth was a gash, his nose a burl; his eyes burned with anger as he stormed toward them, shaking his fist and bellowing, “Who are you who steal my apples?”
Geoffrey’s answer was a wolfish grin, but Alain asked mildly, “Are you the farmer, then?”
“Farmer forsooth!” the man thundered. “He who planted these trees is dead and gone these fifty years! I am the Apple-Tree Man, who cares for limb and root and nurses the fruit from bud to ripeness!”
“Do you watch them fall and rot, then, too?”
“That I do, for such is the fullness of their destiny!”
“Is there no more?” Alain asked. “Surely they have grown in vain if none but you has ever scented their perfume, no one tasted of their pulp.”
“Well said,” Gregory agreed, though his voice seemed abstracted. “You made no protest when we fed them to our horses.”
“That animals should eat when they are a-hungered, that is right and proper! That people should pluck more than they need is wasteful!”
“Come now, surely not.” Alain frowned. “If people store the apples away to see them through the winter, that is no waste of your charges—and surely it is a nobler fate for a farmer to plant the seeds in the spring, than for them to rot away.”
“Plant them? Will you do so?” the Apple-Tree Man demanded.
“No, but we shall take no more than will satisfy our hunger, either,” Geoffrey answered. “Where is there more harm in our eating of them, than in our horses?”
“You do not carry the seeds away to begin another orchard, as the horses do!” the Apple-Tree Man exclaimed. “And you seek to take the fruit before its time!”
“If it is not fully ripe, it is quite close.” Alain held up the apple he had taken. “Its color is full, though perhaps not quite so deep a red as it may become—and its aroma is rich and sweet.” He held the apple under his nose, then breathed a sigh of delight.
“Still, I will not take what is not freely given.” Geoffrey held the second apple out to his horse, who took it eagerly. He turned back to the Apple-Tree Man, spreading his hands wide to show they were empty. “Even so.”
“I too.” Alain held the apple out on his palm; his mount took it with relish.
“Well . . . I suppose the trees will not mind your eating of the fruit, if you promise to carry the seeds away as your horses do,” the Apple-Tree Man grumbled. “Eat, then, for you seem to be men of good heart—but mind you, no more than you need!”
“Nor will we,” Alain promised. “What say you, gentlemen?”
“One or two will satisfy me,” Geoffrey said.
“I, too,” Gregory agreed, “though my horse may seek more.”
“He is welcome to them—they all are,” the Apple-Tree Man grunted, “for such is the way of Nature. Eat, then, and sleep in peace—but mind you take the cores with you!” He whirled and went stamping off among the leaves, pausing now and then to examine a branch or a puckered apple.
Alain watched him go, muttering out of the side of his mouth, “Was he truly here fifty years ago, Gregory?”
“He thinks he was,” the scholar answered, “and he has memories of those years—here and there.”
“Bits and pieces, then?”
“Aye, with more holes than patches. Either he is what he seems and has very poor recollection, or whoever crafted him was careful to plant some scenes of his past.”
“Can you test authenticity?”
“Not really,” Gregory confessed. “One day walking among apple trees swelling with pride in their progress is quite like another. There are a few pictures of the farmer who planted this grove, at his work when young, then middle-aged, and at last limping about with a staff, smiling with pride at his handiwork full grown.”
“Such could be manufactured,” Geoffrey pointed out.
“Aye, but how should I tell that they were?”
“Is there nothing of his substance to tell you?”
Gregory shook his head. “There is no way to tell how old the witch-moss is, once it has been crafted into a being.”
“But you are sure he is of witch-moss.”
“Oh, aye. This is no ordinary man dressed up in a most elaborate costume, no. He is truly false.”
“Or well and truly crafted,” Geoffrey argued.
“True or false, he has told us all he can.” Alain turned back to unsaddle his horse and take a curry comb from the saddle bag. “Perhaps he is really as old as he claims, for why would a monster-maker set him here astride our path?”
The brothers were silent a moment, thinking over the question as they unsaddled their horses. Then Geoffrey offered, “A temptation?”
“To what?’ Alain asked. “To forgo the eating of apples?”
“No, to arrogance and injustice.”
The prince was quiet, thinking. Gregory nodded with approval. “Well thought, brother. When the Apple-Tree Man came storming up, we might well have taken his outrage as attack and turned upon him.”
“Run him through?’ Geoffrey shuddered. “An unarmed old fellow whose only crime is care for his trees?”