The Knight

I said—and meant—that I would follow her anywhere.

“I can climb to your world, too, as you’ve seen.”

I nodded. “Could I get to the third world the same way? I’ve been wondering.”

“I have no idea.” She paused, studying me. “You’re a knight, Able. You say so, and so does this boy. You also say you have no sword. A knight requires one.”

“If you say so, Queen Disiri.”

“I do.” She smiled. “And I do have an idea about that. A great knight, fit to be a queen’s consort, should bear no common sword, but a fabled brand imbued with all sorts of magical authority and mystical significance—Eterne, Sword of Grengarm. Do not contradict me, I know I am right.”

“I wouldn’t think of it. Not ever.”

Her voice fell. “Such swords were forged in the Elder Time. The Overcyns visited Mythgarthr more often then and taught your smiths, that you might defend your world from the Angrborn. No doubt you know all that.” I shook my head.

“It is so. The first pair of tongs was cast down to fall at the feet of Weland, and with them, a mass of white-hot steel. Six brands Weland made, and six broke. The seventh, Eterne, he could not break. Nor can the strength of the Angrborn bend that blade, nor the fire of Grengarm draw its temper. It is haunted, and commands the ghosts who bore it.” She stopped to look into my eyes. “I have done an ill thing, perhaps, by telling you.”

“I’ll get it,” I told her, “if you’ll let me go after it.”

Slowly, she nodded.

Just the thought of it had grabbed me the way nothing else ever has except Disiri herself, and I said, “Then I’ll get it or die trying.”

“I know. You will try to wrest it from the dragon. Suppose I were to beg you not to.”

“Then I wouldn’t.”

“Is that true?” She bent over me.

“As true as I can make it.”

“Just so.” She sighed. “You would be a lesser man after that, and your love would mean little to me.”

I looked up, crazy with hope. “Does it mean a lot now?”

“More than you can know, Able. Seek Eterne, but never forget me wholly.”

“I couldn’t.”

“So men say, yet many have forsaken me. When the wind moans in the chimney, O my lover, go into the wood. There you will find me crying for the lovers I have lost.”

Trembling, the boy Toug came forward. “Don’t send him after that sword, Aelfqueen.”

Disiri laughed. “You fear he will make you go too?”

Toug shook his head. “I’m afraid he won’t let me come.”

“Listen to that! Will you, Able?”

“No,” I said. “When we get out of here, I’m going to send him back to his mother.”

“See?” Toug reached toward Disiri, though he did not dare touch her. “More than both of you together.” She straightened up. “Will you obey, Able?”

“In anything. I swear.”

“In that case I have things to say to this boy, though he will have nothing to say to me. You need not fear he will return a man. There will be no such transformation.” She raised her sword and struck my shoulders with the flat of its blade, surprising me. “Arise, Sir Able, my own true knight!”

A step or two, and she had vanished among tall ferns as green as she; like a dog too fearful to disobey, Toug hurried after her and vanished too. I waited, not at all sure either would come back. The time passed slowly, and I found out that my new, big body was tired enough to die. I sat, walked up and down, and sat again. For a while, I tried to find two trees of the same kind.

All were large and all were very old, for Aelfrice (as I know now) is not a place in which trees are felled. Each had its own ma

In that glade, I paused at my planting to look up, and saw the comings and goings of men, women, children, and many animals—not each step each took, but the greater movements of their days. A man plowed a field while I blinked, and returned home tired, and chancing to look in through his own window, saw the love his wife gave another. Too exhausted to be angry, he feigned not to have seen and sat by her fire, and when his wife hurried out, looking like a dirty bed and full of lies, he asked for his supper and kept quiet.

As I finished planting the seed, I thought about that, and it seemed to me that the things I had seen in the sky of Aelfrice were like the things my bowstring showed in dreams; I had unstrung my bow the way you do, but I strung it again and held it up so I could study my string against that sky, but Parka’s little string vanished into the great gray sky, so that I could not make out its line. I did not understand that then and do not understand it now, but it is what I saw. When I had tamped earth over the seed, I would have gone back to the spot where Disiri had left me if I could. Unable to find it, I wandered in circles—or at least in what I hoped were circles—looking for it. Soon it seemed to me that the air got darker with every step I took. I found a sheltered spot, lay down to rest, and slept.

I woke from terrible dreams of death to the music of wolves. Bow in hand, I made my way among the trees, then paused to shout “Disiri!”

At once an answering voice called, “Here! Here!”

I hurried toward it, feeling my way with my bow, entered a starlit clearing, and was embraced with one arm by a woman who clasped an infant in the other, a little woman who rushed to me weeping. “Vali? Aren’t you Vali?” And then, “I’m so sorry! Did Seaxneat send you?”

It was a moment before I understood. When I did I said, “A gallant knight sent me to find you, Disira. His name is Sir Ravd, and he was concerned for you.

So am I, if you are out here alone.”

“All alone except for Ossar,” she told me, and held her baby up so I could see him.

“Seaxneat told you to hide in this forest?”

She nodded, and cried.

“Did he say why?”

She shook he head violently. “Only to hide. So I hid and hid, all day and all night. There was nothing to eat, and after the first day I wanted to go back, but—”

“I understand.” I took her elbow as gently as I could and led her forward, although I had no idea where we were or where we might be going. “You tried to find your way back to Gle

“Y-yes.” A wolf howled as she spoke, and she shuddered.

“You don’t have to be afraid of them. They’re after fawns, and the new calves of the forest cattle. They won’t dare attack as long as I’m with you. I’m a knight too. I’m Sir Able.”

She huddled closer.

At dawn we found a path, and in the first long beams of the rising sun I recognized it. “We’re not far from Bold Berthold’s hut,” I told Disira. “We’ll go there, and even if Bold Berthold has nothing for us, you and Ossar can sit by his fire while I hunt.” Looking down at Ossar, I saw he was at her breast, and asked if she had milk.

“Yes, but I don’t know if it will last. I’m awfully thirsty and I haven’t eaten.

Just some gooseberries.”

We both drank deep at the crossing of the Griffin, and I shot a deer not a hundred strides after it, and merrily we came to Bold Berthold’s hut. He welcomed us and said he had thought, because of the wound that he had gotten from the Angrborn, that I was much too young to be his brother. Now he was glad to see I was as old as I ought to be, and bigger than I ought to be, too (I was much larger than he was), and felt sure he was getting well at last. There was mead and venison (that some people would call tough, although we did not), and the last hoarded nuts to crack. Bold Berthold played with little Ossar, and talked about how life had been when his brother was no bigger than Ossar, and he himself (as he put it) only a stripling.