Sunrise Lands

Morning sunlight speared through gaps in the forest canopy, thi

Good people, he thought.

They'd had plentiful reason to fear and suspect out siders from the mainland, but they'd taken the travelers in without hesitation once they saw they weren't wild men. One girl in particular had been very friendly later that night… though he suspected part of it was that they had a real limited selection of mates here if they wanted to avoid inbreeding. Singh was looking sort of sleek, too.

They moved forward; the trail was overgrown, and Singh and Kaur unlimbered their shetes and cut at ferns and blueberry bushes. Then they were in open country, on a neatly trimmed stretch of green, though that might be the angora goats the Sea Land People kept, descendants of the original na

Light flashed, through his eyes, through his upraised hands, through his mind as he shouted in protest. The moment of pain was endless, and over instantly. And****

Sheriff Ingolf Vogeler sat in his chair of judgment, look ing down at the bound thief. It was a formal room, with a shelf of books, and black bordered pictures of his father and brother Edward on the wall behind…

"Christ!" he wheezed.

For an instant, two complete lives warred for posses sion of his mind, and he realized he didn't even like the pompous self-righteous bastard he might have been.

Troop-lieutenant Ingolf Vogeler looked down at the Sioux arrow that sprouted in his chest; he toppled slowly forward in the flame-shot night, dropping his shete as the choking salt invaded his lungs, dead on the day of his nineteenth birthday…

Ingolf Vogeler looked at the slowly rotating hologram model of the molecule and knew he wasn't going to get the parasmallpox to do what he wanted…

"Save, store and restart from one-C," he growled, reaching for the can of Mango cola.

Somewhere his body took another step forward. Images of the land ahead of him strobed through his eyes-or perhaps not through his eyes. A quiet cobbled street lined with brick buildings. Ruins. The same cobbled street, with people in weird clothes or nothing, and vehicles that floated on turning silvery balls that seemed liquid somehow.

Planes of crystal light turning through spaces that hurt his mind like razors slicing at his flesh, too big, too big. Something stretched, gave way, like a guitar string stretched around the universe, shivering with a note that vibrated from fire to darkness and back to fire.

And Ingolf Vogeler was stumbling forward. He walked; there were stones beneath his feet, but someone else was walking just a second to the side of him, like standing between two mirrors and watching yourself recede into infinite distance. The building ahead of him was square, with five windows across the upper story, four and a door flanked by white pillars below, comely in an antique fashion like some of the older buildings back home, what an old man had told him once was called the Federal style. A flag hung from a pole over the white-painted door, the old US flag of Stars and Stripes.

The door opened. His hands and feet moved at nor mal speed, but somehow it took an endless effort of will to keep them in motion, a harder struggle than freeing a bogged horse once, when he stood in the muck and strained until the muscles of his stomach started to tear loose. Blurred afterimages floated behind every movement.

A hallway, with strange magnificent pictures-one of a blond woman in a skirt made of strings. And a voice, a voice that spoke within him, a roar of white noise that he struggled to understand. He felt like a tiny spout, with a torrent vaster than a waterfall trying to force its way through. He could not, and he must.

You are not the one. You must find him. Travel from sunrise to the sunset, and seek the Son of the Bear Who Rules. Tell the Sword of the Lady what awaits him.

A door swung open, slowly. The light behind it was terrible, and more than anything in all the world he wanted to turn away, turn aside, but he knew it would shine wherever he turned his head. Blood dribbled from his bitten lips, and the sting was sweetness.

The sword hung there. He craved it, and dropped to his knees, beating his fists on the floor, wailing the anguish of denial.

Chapter Six

Dun Juniper,

Willamette Valley, Oregon

December 17, CY22/2020 A.D.

"You poor man," Juniper said, leaning forward and putting her hand on Ingolf's.

The easterner looked wasted again as he stopped. Rudi frowned; he wanted to know about the sword.

First and foremost if it's real, he thought. That was a wild tale!

A glance at his mother's face brought him back to a host's obligations. She frowned at Ingolf's silence, then leaned forward and tapped him on either cheek.

"Uh!"

His eyes were wild and blank for a moment. Then he licked dry lips and took the cup of hot borage tea she pressed on him, drinking with a trembling hand and spilling a little.

"Sorry," he said huskily. "Haven't… I tried to keep from thinking about that." He swallowed again. "So, I'm crazy, right?"

"This sword," Juniper said. She met his eyes and held them with her own. "It was a longsword, double-edged, with a guard like a crescent moon, and a pommel of moon-opal held in antlers. Is that it?"

Rudi's breath caught. She had shared that vision with him, but as far as he knew with no other. A great re laxation came to Ingolf's face, as if some tension were unwound at last.

"Christ, I'm not crazy, then?"

"No, my poor Ingolf, you're not. It's far worse than that."

Just then Aunt Judy walked into the hall. She gave an angry hiss as she saw Ingolf's face, came up and took his pulse. Then she examined his eyes; he moved his face obediently to her prodding, passive as a child.

"Juney, are you trying to kill my patient? I said he could talk, not be wrung out like a dishrag!"

"I'm sorry, Judy," Juniper said meekly. "We can stop now."

"We certainly can! I want this man in bed, now. I'll get some green oat milk in wine to calm him."

"I want-" Ingolf began.

"You want a good night's sleep, so you can tell us the rest tomorrow," Juniper said. "We've a guest room ready for you here in the hall. And Judy's word is final on matters of health!"

Unprompted, Rudi came forward and helped the other man rise, then took an arm around his shoul der. When they'd put Ingolf to bed he stopped in the corridor outside the guest room and looked at his mother.

"Who's the sword for?" he asked bluntly.

Juniper looked at him, and he was shocked to see that the leaf-green eyes were full of tears.

"Oh, my son," she whispered. "You know as well as I. What did they call Mike, your blood father?"

The Bear Lord.

"And what did the Powers speak through me, when I held you over the altar in the nemed?"

He didn't need to speak that, either. That was when she'd named him Artos, in the Craft. And… to himself, he whispered what she'd said:

Sad winter's child, in this leafless shaw Yet be Son, and Lover, and Horned Lord!

Guardian of my sacred Wood, and Law His people's strength-and the Lady's Sword!

"I don't want to go," he said softly. "I thought… not yet." His eyes went out past the walls of his home. "I'm not a boy anymore, Mother."