The Summer Tree

His daughter materialized instantaneously. She had, of course, been listening behind the door. Ivor suppressed a smile. “We have guests for the morning meal,” he said. “Will you find Tabor and have him request Gereint to come? Levon, too.”

“Gereint won’t want to,” she said impertinently. “It’s too far, he’ll say.” Ivor observed that she was keeping her back to Tore. It was shameful that a child of his should treat a tribesman so. He would have to speak to her of it. This business of the Outcast must be ended.

For the moment he said merely, “Have Tabor say that he was right this morning.”

“About what?” Liane demanded.

“Go, child,” Ivor said. There were limits.

With a predictable toss of her hair, Liane spun and left the room. The stranger, Ivor saw, had an amused look on his face, and no longer clutched the sheaf of papers he carried quite so defensively. It was well, for the moment.

Loren Silvercloak, though, and an urgach in Faeli

This, it seemed, was it.

Chapter 11

They had found a horse for him, not an easy task. The Dalrei tended to be smallish people, quick and wiry, and their mounts were much the same. In winter, though, they traded with the men of Bre

His arms were in pretty rough shape, but Tore had to be just as bad, or worse, and he was hunting; so Dave figured he could manage to ride a horse and watch.

Tabor, ski

“We used to carry our houses with us when we moved,” Tabor was saying as they jogged along. Up front, Levon was setting an easy pace eastward into the rising sun. Tore was beside him and there seemed to be about twenty other riders. It was a glorious, mild summer morning.

“They weren’t houses like we have now, of course,” Tabor went on. “We made them of eltor skin and poles, so they were easy to carry.”

“We have things like that in my world, too,” Dave said. “Why did you change?”

“Revor did it,” Tabor explained.

“Who’s he?”

The boy looked pained, as if appalled to discover that the fame of this Revor hadn’t reached Toronto yet. Fourteen was a fu

“Revor is our brightest hero,” Tabor explained reverently. “He saved the High King in battle during the Bael Rangat, by riding through Daniloth, and was rewarded with the land of the Plain for the Dalrei forever. After that,” Tabor went on, earnestly, “Revor called a great gathering of all the Dalrei at Celidon, the mid-Plain, and said that if this was now our land, we should have some mark of ourselves upon it. So the camps were built in those days, that our tribes might have true homes to come to as they followed the eltor about the Plain.”

“How far back?” Dave asked.

“Oh, forever and ever,” Tabor replied, waving a hand.

“Forever and Revor?” said Dave, surprising himself. Tabor looked blank for a second, then giggled. He was a good kid, Dave decided. The ponytail was hilarious, though.

“The camps have been rebuilt many times since then,” Tabor resumed his lecture. He was taking his guide duties seriously. “We always cut wood when we are near a forest—except Pendaran, of course—and we carry it to the next camp when we move. Sometimes the camps have been completely destroyed. There are fires when the Plain is dry.”

Dave nodded; it made sense. “And I guess you have to clear out the damage the weather and animals do in between times, anyway.”

“Weather, yes,” Tabor said. “But never the animals. The shamans were given a spell as a gift from Gwen Ystrat. Nothing wild ever enters the camps.”

That, Dave still had problems with. He remembered the old, blind shaman, Gereint, being led into the Chieftain’s house the morning before. Gereint had trained his sightless eye sockets right on him. Dave had met the look as best he could—a staring duel with a blind man—but when Gereint had turned away, expressionless, he’d felt like crying out, “What did you see, damn you?”

The whole thing u

“If Silvercloak was going to Paras Derval,” he’d said, “then that is where he’ll be. I will send word of you with the auberei to Celidon, and a party of us will guide you south to Bre

“The urgach?” a voice had said then from by the door, and Dave had turned to see Liane again, Ivor’s brown-haired daughter.

Levon had laughed. “Father,” he’d said, “we may as well make her part of the tribal council. She’s going to listen anyhow.”

Ivor had looked displeased and proud, both. It was at that point that Dave had decided he liked the Chieftain.

“Liane,” Ivor had said, “doesn’t your mother need you?”

“She said I was in her way.”

“How can you be in her way? We have guests, there must be things for you to do,” Ivor had said.bemusedly.

“I break dishes,” Liane had explained. “Is it the urgach?”

Dave had laughed aloud, then flushed at the look she’d given him.

“Yes,” Ivor had said. But then he added, looking levelly at Liane, “My daughter, you are being indulged because I dislike chastising my children before guests, but you go too far. It ill becomes you to listen at doors. It is the action of a spoiled child, not a woman.”

Liane’s flippant ma

“She hates missing things,” Levon had said, stating the obvious.

“There they are.”

Tabor was pointing southeast, and Dave, squinting into the sun, saw the eltor moving northward across their path. He had been expecting buffalo, he now realized, for what he saw made him catch his breath, in sudden understanding of why the Dalrei spoke not of a herd, but of a swift of eltor.

They were like antelope: graceful, many-horned, sleek, and very, very fast. Most were colored in shadings of brown, but one or two were purest white. The speed of their sweep across the plain was dazzling. There had to be five hundred of them, moving like wind over the grass, their heads carried high, arrogant and beautiful, the hair of their manes lifting back in the wind of their ru

“A small swift,” Tabor said. The kid was trying to be cool, but Dave could hear the excitement in his voice, even as he felt his own heartbeat accelerate. God, they were beautiful. The Riders around him, in response to Levon’s concise command, picked up speed and changed approach slightly to intersect the swift at an angle.

“Come!” Tabor said, as their slower mounts fell behind. “I know where he will have them do it.” He cut away sharply northward, and Dave followed. In a moment they crested a small knoll in the otherwise level sweep of the prairie; turning back, Dave saw the eltor swift and the hunters converge, and he watched the Dalrei hunt, as Tabor told him of the Law.