Or a goddess?
“How did she come to you?” he asked.
“Well, now.” Fledelius’ voice rumbled hoarse, coarse, and reverent. “The story is a bit long. You must know, I am—was—the squire near Lemvig, as my fathers before me since the first Valdemar. That’s a poor district, we Fledeliuses were never of the high haughty houses, we were close to our peasants; and in Jutland to this day the commons are more free than in the islands, where serfs may be bought and sold. On my grounds there is a kæmpehøj—” I know that dolmen, Lockridge thought in eeriness—“where folk were wont to make little offerings. They spoke of wonders glimpsed from time to time, strange comings and goings, I know not what. But if the priest said naught, who was I to meddle with old usage? Bad luck comes from such. The Lutherans will learn that, to the land’s sorrow.
“So. I fought in the wars. Let me say naught against my lord King Kristiern. Sweden was his by right going back to Queen Margrete, and I call Sten Sture a traitor that he raised the realm against Danish rule. Yet . . . I am no milksop, understand, I’ve split my share of pates . . . yet when we entered Stockholm, pledges of amnesty had been given; and still bodies were piled high and headless, like cordwood, those freezing days. So with some heartsickness. I returned home and vowed I’d stay on my own sandy acres. My wife died too—well, she was a good old mare, she was, and our only son studying in Paris and no doubt looking down on me who can scarcely write my name.
And then one summer eve, when I walked the fields by that curious dolmen, She came forth.”
From his clumsy words, as he struggled to describe her, Lockridge knew Storm Darroway again.
“Witch or saint or eternal spirit of the land, I cannot say what She is. Belike She put a spell on me. What of that? She sought not to lure me from Christian practice, rather She told of matters I’d not known about, like the Coven, and warned of troublous times to come. And She showed me wonders. This poor old brain cannot well grasp Her notion about travelling from past to future and back; but are not all things possible under God? She gave me gold, which I had sore need of after being so long in the wars with so little plunder. But chiefly I serve for Her own sake and the hope of one day seeing Her anew.
“My duty is light. I am to be at the Inn of the Golden Lion each All Hallows Eve for twenty years. You see, She is in a war. Her friends and Her enemies alike flit about, even through the air; they may be anywhere, any time. The warlocks—not the commons, who come only for a bit of heathendom, but their leaders who can command them—the warlocks are Hers, part of Her net of spies and agents. But they cannot show themselves in respectable places as I might. If any came, like you, needing aid, I was to be there, and direct them to the Sabbath where they might find strong arms and magical engines. Another man was chosen for May Eve, but he is dead now. Easy service for much gold, not so?”
The equinoctial nights, Lockridge thought; those belonged to the earth gods. Summer and winter solstice were the sun’s—the Rangers’.
Fledelius’ words roughened yet more. “No doubt She thought that in my embitterment I would stay neutral, and thus safe, in the struggle She must have foreseen. But I failed Her. Far too often, I could not be there. Do you think any died on that account?”
“No,” Lockridge said. “We found you. Remember, the war is worldwide and agewide. Yours is only one outpost.”
He wondered, chillingly, how many there were. No one could oversee every part of space and time. Storm would have had to establish such small half-comprehending alliances: like a pagan cult, born of despair, founded on immemorial symbols that she furnished and interpreted. Other eras had other secrecies. All were created just to be there in case of need.
And the need was very great now. She lay bound at Brann’s triumph, thirty-three hundred years ago; when his technicians arrived, they would suck her dry of what she knew and cast the husk aside; and more and more, Lockridge saw what a keystone she must be of her whole cause. If this one band of Jutes could help her, it would—maybe—justify the thousands upon thousands throughout Europe who were caught and burnt alive by the witch hunters of the Reformation.
He didn’t want to pursue that thought. Instead, he speculated on what enclaves the Rangers maintained. In Akhnaton’s court? Caesar’s? Mohammed’s? The Manhattan Project?
“You see,” Fledelius pleaded, “after the king fled to Holland—well, I’d forgiven him Stockholm, when he gave so many rights to the people—why, even sorcerers were only to be flogged out of a city—I went with Søren Norby to fight the usurper. And afterward I sailed with Skipper Element, and stood at Aalborg last year when they finally broke us. Hence I am outlaw. But I did find a priest who would forge for me a letter and seal by which to enter Viborg. And mine host Mikkel knows me of old, and belongs to the Coven himself. So I was on hand when you came. Is that not so?”
“Indeed so,” Lockridge replied most gently.
Fledelius slapped his sheathed sword. Doubts and guilts departed; he became again the man who had gibed at Junker Erik. “God be praised! Now your turn, friend. Who’s it our task to send to the devil?”
As nearly as language and concepts allowed, Lockridge told him.
On a hill in the wastes burned the witchfire. Light flickered red off a high boulder to which Auri made obeisance. It had been an altar in her own time. Overhead the stars of All Hallows Eve glittered many and remote. The land was still, the air frosty.
Lockridge paid little attention to the worshippers. They were a handfuclass="underline" shaggy peasants in smocks and woolen caps, villagers in patched jerkin and hose, their teenaged children an incongruous bawd from Viborg whose finery was pathetic in this skyey dark. They had stolen from hut and house and trudged across miles for an hour’s release, reassurance, appeasement of the land’s ancient Powers, and a little, little courage to meet their masters next day. Lockridge hoped he could remove Auri hence before anything started. Not that the orgy would shock her as such; but he didn’t want her to see what must be a degraded remnant of her own joyous mysteries.
His look and mind went back to the Master.
Tall and lean stood Marcus Nielsen, his alien features shadowed by the cowl of a tattered Dominican habit. In this age they knew him as a hedge priest. Unlike England, where he called himself Mark of Salisbury, Denmark did not persecute Catholics; but magicians were once more in danger of their lives. He was born Mareth the Warden, two thousand years after Lockridge, and he flitted the byways of Reformation Europe to serve Storm Darroway his queen.
“You bear evil tidings,” he said. The diaglossa gave him French to use with the American, incomprehensible to his flock or to stolid Fledelius, and he had ordered Auri to stand beyond earshot.
He paused, then: “You may not know how critical she and Brann are. So few are capable on either side. They become like primitive kings, leading their troops into battle. You and I are nothing, but her capture is a disaster.”
“Well,” Lockridge said brusquely, “you’ve been warned now. I suppose you have access to the future. Organise a rescue party.”
“Matters are not that simple,” Mareth answered. “In the whole period of history from Luther to—beyond your time—the Rangers are ascendant. Warden forces are concentrated elsewhen. We maintain only a few agents like myself in this century.” He twisted his fingers together and frowned at them. “In fact, frankly, we seem to be cut off. As nearly as our intelligence can learn, every gate through which one might go very far futureward is watched. She should have told you to seek the point of Danish time when the Wardens are better established. Frodhi’s reign, for instance. However, she was personally involving in setting up this watchpost, because the milieu is so difficult and dangerous. So I imagine it was what first crossed her mind, in the short while you had to talk.”