Orlanda’s angry voice fell against my ears like the crack of a whip. “You spoke very differently not long ago, when you needed my aid to flee the bandits’ den! What of those loving, admiring words with which you addressed me? Were you playing me false?”
Through my terror, I managed to find my tongue. “I loved a mortal girl,” I said. “I loved a mortal girl who climbed trees and played the mandola and left me in burning hope of sweet kisses. Yet now it seems that girl is something different than what I had believed.”
Her anger faded. “I am that girl,” she said. “I may be that girl or any girl whosoever you choose. But,” she conceded, finally, “if you have questions, ask.”
I composed my whirling thoughts, and of the many questions that crowded my brain, I asked the one I deemed most harmless. “Why am I bearing this load of silver?” I said. “What use will you make of it? Is there some great hoard in your house?”
“There must be an exchange,” she said, “that is all. To live in my world, you must bring something of value. The silver was at hand.”
I remembered the story of Menasso, and what part of himself the goddess Sylvia had demanded as a toll in her domaine, and I felt grateful for my brief stay in the bandits’ treasury. I asked the question that was both of greatest import, and perhaps the greatest peril.
“How much time will lapse in this mortal world while our wedding night passes beneath the hill?”
“I hope it will be long,” Orlanda said. “For its duration depends on the strength of our desire, and how long that desire may be prolonged and renewed and protracted and satisfied and re-satisfied before our love reaches its uttermost, if temporary, satiation.” And, seeing me about to ask another question, she pressed her fingers to my lips, and said, “If you leave my house after that night, you will indeed be an exile in whatever world you find. No one will remember you, and no one will believe your story.” She took her hand away, then raised warm lips to mine and kissed me. “Therefore do not go, and stay with me for night after night, for song and revels and dance, for raiment of rich fabrics sewn with gems, for the long span of life I can grant, and for the many long nights of mutual pleasure that will be ours beneath the eternal stars.”
She kissed me again, and the taste of her lips made my mind whirl. But I forced my thoughts into the form of words.
“And if I choose to take up my worldly duties, and decline this sublime offer you have made? Will you curse me, or pursue me into the world on some mission of vengeance?”
Her eyes flashed again, and she took a step back. “I cannot answer your question,” she said, “for no man has ever refused my favors.”
I took her hands and raised them, and kissed the warm, fragrant skin. “I would give you anything in thanks for my rescue,” I said, “anything but spending all my days as your lodger.”
Orlanda’s face blazed with fury and scorn. “It is your ambition that is behind this refusal!”
Against her power I could summon only the truth. “I will not deny it.”
Nor would I put into words my other thought, that I had not escaped slavery at the hands of the Aekoi to become the house-pet of a capricious nymph.
She gazed at me with eyes both cold and magnificent. “Adventure and worldly power you may have,” she said, “but it will be swept away. Love you will have, but it will thrive only in the shadow of death, and the grave will be its end.”
My blood ran chill. “Is that your curse?”
“Pah! As if I needed to expend an ounce of my power to make this augury!” Her lip curled. “You are cursed only as all other men are cursed, to death and misery and futile striving.”
I kissed her hands again, but her fists were clenched.
“I esteem you above all others,” I said, “and I would give you anything but this one thing.”
“The only thing that matters.” She gave me a cold look from her green eyes. “There will be a price for this decision of yours.”
“A dear price it is that I shall not see you again.”
A smile touched the corner of her mouth. “Perhaps,” she said, “that is not quite what I meant.” Orlanda drew her hands away, and pointed toward the trees that rimmed the hill. “There you will find the path that will take you down into the valley. From there, follow the stream until you reach the road. Turn left, and you will enter a village where you can find a horse, and then you may go about your precious, useless, pointless errand. The errand that leads only to the grave.”
“My lady.” I bowed deeply, and backed away from her until I reached the limit of her radiance, and then with a last look at the beautiful figure standing before me, I turned and walked into the woods. Whole worlds seemed to be crumbling around me.
The trail was plain in the moonlight, and I made good speed through the pines, which turned to aspen as I descended the slope, and then to willows as I reached the floor of the valley. A cold stream laughed and plashed alongside the narrow trail, which soon turned to a narrow cart-track. The sky in the east was brightening, and I found my heart surge. The farther I walked from Orlanda’s hill, the greater was my sensation of freedom and release; and after I found the promised village. There, I looked at the contents of my rucksack and was faintly surprised to discover that the silver had not vanished like the morning mist.
I rented a post-horse from the mean, wretched posting inn, and heard the sound of the hooves on the road, and as I felt the surge of the horse beneath me and the breath of freedom in my face, I laughed aloud.
Surrounded by a storm of falling leaves, I rode hard from stage to stage, changing horses at every stop, and paused only for the bread, meat, and beer that were offered me. None of the horses had the gliding gate of my palfrey, Toast, but they all carried me closer to the capital. And by afternoon I had left the steep, winding roads of the Toppings behind, and was in the fertile plain of the Saelle on a good road that ran straight as an arrow’s flight across the country.
I rode all day and through the night, and in the morning, when exhaustion overcame me, I rented a small, light carriage, and slept as the coachman drove through the day. As I drowsed, I realized that I was not scratching, and that Orlanda had given me a parting gift: I was no longer prey to vermin. By late afternoon I was riding again, passing through rich farmland, where smoke curled from the chimneys on every horizon, and workers picked apples from the groves. I paid a penny for a pearmain, and relished the sweet remembrance of home as I rode into the night.
Again I rode on past dawn and into the morning, and passed through villages large and small. At noon of that brilliant day, as the high sun glowed gold on the stubble of the fields, and the sky dappled with silver cloud, I came within sight of the walls of Selford, and on a bluff above the river beheld the white towers of the royal palace. There was a great crowd of people outside the walls, surging under a brilliant array of flags, and on a conical hill in the center of the mass I could see a tall canopy, striped red and gold, and beneath it a throne, and around the throne an array of men and women in silks and gay colors; and at once I knew that I had come to the capital on the day that the princess Berlauda would receive her crown, and reign as Duisland’s new Queen.
CHAPTER TEN
But what follows is historical-factual. There are many witnesses, and if you can find one, you may consult that person.
The crowd surrounding Coronation Hill was so large it would have overspilled Scarcroft Square in Ethlebight. I eased my horse through the mass until from horseback I could see the figures standing beneath the spreading canopy in the red and gold of the Emelin dynasty. The canopy was held aloft by men in the robes of knightly orders. A little below the throne, a man in the garb of a monk addressed the crowd with well-bred sentences, while an armored man with a naked sword stood guard. Other guards, red-capped and clad in black leather, pressed with their pikes to keep the crowd well back.