The Sword of the Lady

Rudi sat for a while watching the fire, his long hands around the scabbard of his sword and his chin resting on one of the crossguards. As he looked into the red-gold glow that wavered over the embers he thought he could see the shape of a sword indeed; the one he and his mother had seen in the nemed when Raven came for him, fourteen years ago, after the War of the Eye. The one Ingolf had seen on Nantucket-a great longsword, with a guard like the crescent moon, and a pommel of moon opal held by branching antlers.

Why must it be there? he wondered. It?s hints and visions and parables I?ve had when I asked why, and the Cutters make war on our people back home with me not there to aid… but they also pursue us across mountain and plain and river. Their leaders think this journey is a danger to them. ?A pe

Rudi looked over. Edain yawned, but he obviously wasn?t going to sleep with local company-he was too wolf-wary for that, in the Wild Lands. Instead he was setting his blanket roll in the usual place, not far from Rudi?s, with Garbh curled up close by. She?d burrowed down into the dry duff that made up the floor of the overhang, and only tufts of her shaggy hair showed, and an ear that flopped over at the top. Though even asleep she was a better sentry than half a dozen men. ?Of home,? Rudi said. ?Ah, that?s a thought that steals over a man just before sleep, when he?s far away, eh? I can see Dun Fairfax now, and the houses garlanded when we brought in the Queen Sheaf, and my mother standing there to break the first loaf before the altar-?

He stopped. Then with forced cheerfulness:?But it would be Dun Juniper for you, sure, and the gates swinging wide, and a fine set of cheers, and the Chief Herself Herself there to bless you home.?

Rudi opened his mouth to say, Dun Juniper, of course. But it wasn?t his mother?s steading that was really in his thoughts, dear though it was, nestled amid the forest edge beneath the Low Cascades. Nor even all the lands of the Clan, the forests and the little villages and their checkerboard fields along the eastern edge of the Willamette… ?That too. But there was more to my thoughts, my friend.?

Edain?s square face looked puzzled, and he scratched at his curly mop of hair. Rudi went on: ?Say we gain this sword on Nantucket, the one Ingolf saw and was told was for me-the Sword of the Lady for the Lady?s Sword.? ?Ah!? Edain said.?By Ogma the Honey-Tongued, you know, that never occurred to me! They are different words.?

Rudi nodded and murmured the words of the prophecy his mother had spoken when she held him over the altar in the nemed at his Wiccaning at the end of the first Change Year: ?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!?

They weren?t a secret. Wiccaning was a public rite, not even limited to Initiates, and rumors had been spreading up and down the Willamette ever since, and through the whole Columbia Valley. For all he knew, they?d reached south of Ashland and up to the Okanogan. ?But who are the people I?m to be the strong right arm of?? he went on. ?The Clan Mackenzie of course, and who else might it be?? Edain said, sounding a little indignant but throttling it down in respect for the sleepers. ?Them to be sure. But them alone? My father, my blood father, was Mike Havel, the Bearkiller lord. Many of my blood kin are there in Larsdalen; Mary and Ritva are my half sisters, which makes Aunt Signe really my aunt, in a sense. And Lady Astrid too, the Hiril Dunedain. And Mathilda is my anamchara, my soul sister, and I?ve spent months every year these last fourteen in the Association lands. You and I fought those Haida raiders there and shed our blood for the folk of County Tillamook. I?ve studied at Mount Angel and in Corvallis, and Rancher Brown of the CORA is my mother?s guest-friend and mine, and I?ve shared tobacco with the Three Tribes. You see what I?m after saying??

Edain?s brows knotted.?That?s a substantial herd of people you?re after being the strength of, Chief. Peoples, you might say, and each of them a different folk with different ways and names for the Gods.?

Rudi chuckled a little. His eyes were halfway between turquoise and emerald as he stared into the bed of coals that almost matched the color of his hair. The hot clean scent of burning oak drifted through the dampness of the night air. The shoulder-length mane fell forward, framing the chiseled lines of his face. ?A mix-up it is, and no mistake; a mispocha as Aunt Judy would call it. So many peoples and so large a land we don?t even have a name for them all. The lands or the peoples-together, either one.? ?Oregon… well, Oregon and Washington and Idaho, I suppose.. .?

Rudi shook his head.?Those are the names of the old world. They?ve lost their magic, even for our parents, and they never meant much to us; they don?t stir men?s souls or make music in their hearts anymore, they?re not ours. It strikes me that we need a new name for the whole of it, a footing that we can build the walls of our dreams upon.? ?You could say the lands of the Corvallis Meeting,? Edain replied.?But that would be just a wee bit cumbersome.?

Rudi nodded. Images tumbled through his head. Masked dancers in the streets of Sutterdown on Samhain Eve; the perfect snowpeak of Mt. Hood; the towers of Castle Todenangst rising over green vineyards and wheat fields gold to the harvest; the Columbia flowing like molten silver between high cliffs with hang gliders dancing in the air above; waterfalls like threads tumbling down from green heights in the mountains; the bells of Mt. Angel calling the monks to prayer on their hilltop aerie; trumpets and splintered lances in a tournament beneath the ruins of Portland; a student hangout in Corvallis and the smell of beer and hamburgers and the sound of sharp young voices arguing the whichness of the wherefore; tall ships spreading their white canvas wings off Astoria amid a storm of gulls, and whales sporting in the gray Pacific waters… ?Montival,? he whispered, and the sound had a… rightness, like an echo of music heard over the hills by moonlight.?It?s called Montival. Though the folk there don?t know it yet.?

He looked up and saw Edain shape the word silently a few times, then nod and look up with a light kindling in his direct gray gaze. ?Now, that?s a name with the blessing of the Powers upon it, Chief! Montival. It takes all the names-the Clan and Portland and the Yakima and Corvallis and Bend and the others-and puts them together, without making them any the less each by themselves. And it?s ours, a Changeling name, not handed down.?

Rudi tapped his fingers on the black tooled leather of his sword scabbard.?It does have that sound, eh? And this Sword we?re after.. . that could be the symbol for it, do you see? For we go to fetch it through great trials, clansman and Princess and baron, monk and Ranger, and we bring it back through fire and peril to its new home, there to guard the land.?

Edain nodded slowly.?The sword of the High King,? he said, as if testing the sound.

His words dropped into the noises of the night like a distant horn-call that makes men stop and listen amid the work of field and street. ?The High King of Montival.?

Rudi?s head came up. A complex shudder went through him; he closed his eyes and shook his head. ?I?ve no desire for that,? he said with quiet vehemence.?Tanist of the Mackenzies and Chief in my turn… that would be more than enough.?

Edain gri