The path went up, down, left, right. At times, I could have sworn that we were doubling back on ourselves. Yet the chill night was beautiful, and peaceful, and I felt an effervescence filling my veins. I carried my burden lightly, walked with ease on the moonlit path, and viewed the world with unfolding delight.
Hours were spent on the winding route, and as the path dropped from a ridge into a pine-strewn valley, I thought I heard a waft of melody on the air, perhaps a figure played on a viol. “Listen!” I said, and we paused as my ears strained the night.
The sound was difficult to hear over the sough of wind in the pines, but at last I heard it clearly: a viol, tambour, and a fipple flute, all playing a coranto.
“Hear you?” I said. “There are folk ahead.”
“You need not fear musicians,” Orlanda said.
“Musicians are as other men,” I said, “and as greedy for silver. We may not be safe.”
“Perhaps we will join them.”
“In that case, I am heartily sorry that you abandoned your mandola on my account. I will buy you a new one, and a better.”
We continued through the trees, and the sounds of music grew clearer. Other instruments joined the ensemble as the coranto was followed by a galliard, and the galliard by a canario. I fancied I heard laughter and the sounds of clinking glasses.
“For the revels to last so long, they must be celebrating a wedding,” I said. “The charivari runs late.”
Orlanda looked at me over her shoulder. “A wedding indeed.”
She took my hand and drew me forward, and we advanced together. A shimmering, indistinct light flittered ahead, like a bonfire eclipsed by tossing trees. We crossed a small stream, almost dancing along the stepping-stones, and then continued until the forest died away, and I saw before us a steep, bare round hill. The hill seemed to cast off a shimmer, like an aurora, that silhouetted it against shifting spears of white light.
Every detail, every blade of grass, was perfectly visible. The hill itself was crowned by an ancient earthen rampart, and on its summit was a ruined tower of black stone, like a broken fang. The music rang on, like tuned bells tumbling joyously down the slope.
Doors thundered open in my mind, and in a moment of staggering revelation I realized who I was dealing with. I knew why the guards and monsters had slept, and why the temple doors had opened to she for whom the temple was built.
Perhaps I had been a cretinous fool, but I had not till this minute realized that I had walked out of the world and into a song.
I turned to Orlanda in astonishment. She gazed at me expectantly, her eyes dark in the shadow beneath her tranquil brows.
“My lady,” I ventured. “Whose home is this?”
“Mine,” she said, “and you are welcome to abide in it this night.”
“And whose wedding,” I asked, “do those musicians celebrate?”
Her hand tightened on mine. “Ours,” she said, “should you prove willing.”
“O my lady of the fountain,” I said, “you have been toying with me.”
The goddess then put on her full beauty, her perfect face a luminous glory, her hair a flame, her simple clothing now a silken gown sewn with pearls, the skirt embroidered with figures of animals and birds. A diamond necklace cascaded down her breast like a sparkling fountain, and a vaunting ruff framed her head like a halo. A coronet shone gold in her hair.
The radiance of her figure struck me with such weight that it bore me to my knees. For a moment, she imitated the pose of the nymphaeum’s marble statue, one hand lifted to her cheek, her smile a promise of mischief, and then she dropped the pose.
“I am caprice, am I not?” she said. “Yet my deceptions have done you no harm.”
“You have done me nothing but service,” I said. “I owe you my liberty.”
“Shall we go then to our wedding feast?” She helped me to my feet, and began to lead me toward the hill. Yet I found myself reluctant to follow; and as I began to drag my feet, she turned.
“My lady,” I said, “is it true, as the stories have it, that this wedding feast may last an hundred years, and that I will come staggering from my marriage bed into the land, bewildered by a world no longer my own?”
“You need never leave,” she said.
“That,” I dared to point out, “is not quite an answer to my question. Should I desire to visit my friends, my city, the world at large . . . will I find the world I know, or some other, stranger land?”
She regarded me with something like compassion. “Do you know of Benat?” she asked. “Benat the Bear, Benat of the Copper Spear, Benat the Champion?”
“I do not recognize the name,” said I.
“The greatest hero this country has known? Victor in a hundred fights, slayer of beasts and monsters, founder of a kingdom?”
“I know neither he nor his kingdom,” said I.
“A thousand songs were made on Benat. Poets labored to create grand word-pictures for his great shoulders, his flashing eyes, his mighty laugh, his deadly spear. The epic of Benat was chanted by every bard in the land. But where is Benat now that the songs are no longer sung and his kingdom is not even a memory?”
“Under yon hill?” Nodding toward the hill, the rampart, the stone fang.
“Nay. I laid my lover a few leagues from here, in a tomb dug into a cliff, with his bright spear beside him. His monument is the golden rambler rose I planted there, and which, like my love, blooms in all seasons.”
“Did he leave your bed?” I asked. “Did he wander and die in a world that knew him not?”
Orlanda slowly shook her head. “I was different in those days,” she said. “I helped his rise. I aided him in his battles, I advised him in ruling his kingdom, I shared in his glory. When he finally came to my home, he came as a grizzled warrior, unbent but weary, and he left only in death.” Her emerald eyes searched mine. “Death comes to all mortals, and all my aid can only postpone that end. But in my house Benat lived long, and in honor, until I laid him to rest.”
She stepped close to me, her voice low and in earnest. “Hard it was to lose Benat, but harder it was to watch as he faded from memory—to watch the kingdom slip away, the great stone monuments tarnish and crumble, the songs fall from memory. That was a harsh lesson, that all earthly ambition is impermanent, and never in the ages since have I so aided the aspirations of a mortal.” She drew lightly on my hand. “Better to come away from this perishable world when you can, and escape the bitter knowledge that your deeds will fade from memory, that all greatness is dust, that your aspirations were doomed before ever you came weeping into the world. Celebrate youth and joy for all the years I can give you, and avoid all sadness.”
I allowed myself to be pulled forward, but came only a few steps before slowing to a halt.
“My lady,” I said. “I have certain responsibilities—to bear a message from my city to Selford, and to lay my family to rest not in a stolen tomb but a monument worthy of them.”
“Well do you know that Ethlebight is mortal,” she said. “What difference will your message make in ten years, or twenty, when the harbor is sealed? All too soon Selford itself will crumble, and the river carry its glories to the sea. And as for your family, it is no longer in their power to care where they lie.”
“I do not honor my family for the sake of the dead,” I said, “but for my own self-regard, so that I can view myself in the mirror and not feel shame. If I fail them, how can I be worthy of the proposal which you have so generously offered me?”
Orlanda’s eyes narrowed. “I am myself the judge of who is worthy to guest in my house,” she said.
“Yet I would know—”
Orlanda turned on me with green fire blazing from her eyes. “What are these questions?” Orlanda demanded. “What is this lawyer’s artful chop-logic and crinkum-crankum?” She stepped close, and cold fear chilled my blood as I felt her power surge through the air, lifting the hair on the back of my neck.