Tancreda pulled on a cloak, found her talisman for the library, and pulled on a hood and a mask. “No. He doesn’t always communicate well, but he’s not mad.”
“Why the sudden fascination with lenses? We were reading Old Archaic, and then-zip! That’s all done.” Stefanos laughed. “Like a small child.”
“He can be hard to follow,” Tancreda admitted. “But if I read him aright, he decided that the working does function, and that it is killing or removing or perhaps summoning something very small indeed. And now he needs to create the means to observe and prove his theory. Hence the lens.”
Stefanos looked at her a moment. “You understood that from what-his grunting?”
Tancreda shrugged. “Give me twenty ducats. Yes-and the way his hand moved on the passage, and the way he picked up the glass. Yes.”
“You’re as mad as he,” her brother said. “And don’t imagine I don’t know you’ve kissed him, you wanton.”
The last was said with less venom than might be imagined.
“I still know where you keep your little Ifriquy’an,” Tancreda said with equanimity. “So we’ll have no holier than thou here.”
“You can’t marry him,” her brother said. It was more a question than an answer. In fact, he whined it.
“I can, and I will,” Tancreda said. “You’ll see.”
Stefanos had been seeing his sister get her way on all things since he was born. He didn’t doubt her.
“Family dinners…” he moaned.
But the door slammed, and she was gone, leaving the young man alone with a fabulously ancient manuscript, a cat, and a glass of algae.
He patted the cat.
Two hundred leagues further west, an old man made a solitary camp where the mighty Cohocton met with the Dodock coming from the hills to the south. He moved stiffly, unpacking his mule and laying things out, then carefully feeding his fine riding horse and big mule. By the time the two animals were fed and calm, it was dark, and his fire of birch and dry maple was the only light-or warmth-for many miles.
He warmed his hands for a while and then fried some bacon in a small iron skillet with a folding handle.
The horse began to be restless.
The old man finished the bacon. Then he raised his head and looked into the darkness as if he could see into it.
After a while, he went to the bags that the patient mule had carried all day, opened one, and took out a bottle of red wine. It was an incongruous thing in such a rough camp-the old man had no tent, no bed, and no cups.
After a moment he produced a pair of horn cups.
He went back to his fire and built it up. He produced a folding brass candlestick-cunningly wrought-put a beeswax candle into it and lit it with a snap of his fingers.
A puff of wind blew it out.
He relit it. When he turned his back, it went out again.
He growled. Walking carefully in the darkness, he went over to the downed birch tree-the reason he’d chosen this site to camp-and stripped a long curl of bark.
He went back to his candle stick and made a wind shade from the bark, and then relit the candle with another snap of his fingers.
Then he sat on his rolled cloak and ate his bacon.
When he was done, he looked around carefully-again-and then took his small iron skillet down to the brook and washed it with sand and small pebbles. The horse snorted.
The old man went back to his fire, threw on a pair of small birch logs, and settled comfortably into a tree’s roots to rest. He looked at the stars, and at the moon high above him.
He couldn’t help but smile.
Carefully, he took a small pipe out of his purse, took tobacco from his hunting bag, and packed his pipe.
“A new vice,” he said, the first words he’d said in days. “Well, well.”
He was a handsome man, and not so very old, at that. He had heavy dark brows and salt and pepper hair tied back in a rough queue with deer hide thong. He wore a fine red caftan of wool lined in silk, and under that a good linen shirt, and he had Alban-style braes and hose and wore leather boots that would have reached his thighs if he had not rolled them down to his knees.
A long sword rested against the tree by his head.
He packed the pipe carefully, and then lit it from a coal at the outer edge of the fire. Sucked the smoke into his lungs and coughed.
Blew a tentative smoke ring.
“Come and have a cup of wine,” he called suddenly.
Or maybe I’m just going mad, he thought.
There was a rustle by the stream. The babble of the brook covered many sounds but didn’t cover them all.
His new body had wonderful hearing compared to his old body. And was particularly good at waking up without stiffness.
“Isss it good wine, I wonder?” asked a voice from beyond the fire.
“It is,” the man said. He waved to the cups. “Would you pour?” He put the long-stemmed pipe to his lips and drew, then gradually blew the smoke out. It billowed in the light of the fire, seeming to flow and spread like water.
When a breeze blew it away, there was a man-or rather, a human-like figure-standing by the fire. He was dressed all in red; red hose, red pourpoint, laced in red and tipped in gold.
By the stream, a dozen faeries hovered, burning in their incandescent wonder.
The old man-not so old-drew in more smoke. “Good evening,” he said.
“A merry meeting, and you a mossst pleasssant tressspassser,” the figure said. “But the wine isss good.”
“I am sorry for my tresspass,” said the man with the pipe. He waved it. “I have done little damage except burn some downed wood. I have not hunted.”
The other man tinkled slightly as he moved-his clothes had tiny golden bells attached, and when they rang, the faeries laughed. “You might be consssidered a good guessst in better timesss,” the figure said. The firelight revealed the inhuman perfection of his face-he was an irk.
“Do I have the honour of addressing the Faery Knight?” asked the man.
“You do! The sssmell of your wine drew me asss sssurely asss an incantation and the calling of my true name!” The irk laughed.
“I don’t know your true name, and I wouldn’t say it aloud if I did,” said the human. “But I was once told that you liked good wine. And Etruscan reds must be a trifle thin on the ground out here.”
The irk laughed-and drank. “It isss very good. Perhapsss I will let you live-even let you hunt. The caribou will move in a few weeksss. I could ssspare a half million or ssso of them.”
The man’s eyes moved. “Caribou,” he said aloud.
The Faery Knight nodded. “Ssso many all move at onssse that no forssse of man or the Wild can crosss their path. Millionsss and millionsss, all trekking north.” He shrugged. “Almossst I could put a name on you. Who told you I liked wine?”
“The King of Alba,” the man said.
“Ah. I pity him. A weak man and yet so ssstrong.” The irk shrugged. “I liked hisss father better, but they come and go ssso ssswiftly.”
The human was sucking on the foul smoke at the bottom of the pipe. He tapped it out on his boot sole.
“You do not fear me,” said the irk.
“Should I?” asked the man.
“Do you want sssomething? The wine isss very good.” He held out the horn cup. “May I have more?”
“Take the bottle if you like,” said the man. “Though in truth, I’d be cheered by a cup myself. Will you go to war with Thorn?”
The irk did not betray startlement-but he did move. “I do not dissscusss sssuch thingsss with chanssse met ssstrangersss.” Suddenly the irk was covered in a bubble of fire.
The man shook his head. “Truly, I mean no harm. Indeed, I’ve come to offer my fealty.” He nodded. “For a time.”
The red-clad irk let down his shield, poured wine into both cups and held one out to the man. “The lassst time I sssat with a man in thessse woodssss, Thorn attacked me.” He frowned. “I did not come off bessst.”
The man took a cup of wine from the irk’s outstretched hand. “We must see to it that doesn’t happen again,” he said. “But Thorn is not the real enemy. Thorn is only another victim.”