The Knight

Garvaon would have been all right, but no Garvaon was better, because he was really Setr. Id

Finally I hit on Bold Berthold. He would have been perfect, and as soon as I thought of him, I missed him a lot. He had never been right the whole time I had known him, because of the way one side of his head was pushed in. He forgot things he should have remembered, and most of the time he walked like he was drunk. But when you were around him a lot you could see the person he had been, the man who had wrestled bulls, and there was an awful lot of that left. There had been no school where he grew up, but his mother had taught him. He knew a lot about farming and woodcraft, and about the Aelf, too. I had never asked him what I was supposed to say when I spoke for them, and now it was too late. But I felt like he might have known. Bold Berthold would have been perfect.

Ravd would have been wonderful too. Why did the best people I met have to die? That got me thinking about his broken sword—how I had picked it up and put it down again, and cried, and I thought that cave, where we had found Ravd’s broken sword, must have been the one Gylf meant. At last I said, “We’ve never been in a cave, except for the cave where the outlaws hid their loot, and we weren’t in there long. Were you thinking of the cable tier? That was pretty bad for both of us.”

“Just me,” Gylf explained. “You weren’t there.”

“Garsecg’s cave? I heard something about that. You were chained up in there?”

“Yep.”

So Garsecg had chained Gylf up like the Angrborn had, and for a while I wondered why Gylf had let either one of them do it. Finally I saw that he did not like to change into what he really was. He did it when he had to fight, but he would rather let somebody chain him up than change.

“Garsecg’s cave brings us back to shapechanging,” I said, “and your shape does change, but mostly you get bigger. Garsecg told me once that though the Aelf could change their shapes, they were always the same size.”

“No good.”

“Oh, I’m sure it can be nice. Uri and Baki can take flying shapes, and I’d love to be able to do that. But if it’s true, it isn’t what you do. We’re looking at different things that only seem to be about the same.”

I searched for an analogy. “When I first left the ship with Garsecg, there were these Kelpies, Sea Aelf, all around me. I was afraid I’d drown, and they said not to be afraid, that I couldn’t drown as long as I was with them.”

Gylf raised his head again, sniffing the wind.

“Later it was just Garsecg and me, but I still didn’t drown. After that, I dove into a pool on Glas. It went down into the sea, the sea of Aelfrice, and I was alone under the water until I found Kulili, but I still didn’t drown.”

“See the hedgerow?” Gylf inquired.

“I see a long, dark line,” I said. “I’ve been wondering if it was a wall.”

“Somebody’s in it.”

I loosened Sword Breaker in her scabbard. “I think the best thing might be to pretend we don’t know he’s there for a while yet. When we’re closer, you might have a look at him.”

“Right.”

“What I was trying to say is that the Kelpies probably could protect people who were with them, but that wasn’t what was protecting me. What was protecting me was something I’d picked up when I was first in Aelfrice, something that looked the same ’til you looked close.”

“Huh!”

“So you don’t change like the Aelf change. Disiri’s tall and slim, but when we were alone—it was in a cave, but you weren’t with me then at all—she made herself, you know, rounder.” My cheeks burned, thinking about it. “And that was nice. Only she had to be shorter, too, to do it. Is there just one person in the hedge?”

“Badger, too.”

“But just one human?”

Gylf sniffed again. “Think so.”

“I told Garsecg about Disiri, how she had to be shorter to be rounder. But I should have thought about him. He turned himself into a dragon, and the dragon was a lot bigger than he was. He made himself look like me, too, although I’m bigger than he was. Could you make yourself look like me?”

“Nope.”

“Could you be that really big thing you are sometimes? Right now?”

Gylf grew. His eyes blazed like coals, and fangs two feet long pushed his lips apart. A moan of fear, faint but not too faint to hear, came from the hedgerow, and he bounded away. I urged my stallion after him.

Chapter 64. A Blind Man With A White Beard

By the time I reached Gylf, he was his everyday self again, having decided that one large ordinary dog was more than enough to pin and hold an old woman. He backed away from her when I told him to, leaving her weeping and gasping, curled up like a prawn on the dry leaves under the hedge.

“Now, now.” Dismounting, I knelt beside her and laid a hand on her shoulder. “Cheer up, mother. Gylf won’t hurt you, and neither will I.”

The old woman only wept. Something dark co

“Oh, no, sir! Don’t wish for that!” The old woman peeped between her fingers. “Master’d see us sure, sir, if you was to light a lamp. You won’t, will you?”

“No. For one thing, I don’t have one. Did your master put that chain on you? Who is he?”

“Yes, sir. He done, sir. You’re one a’ them knights, sir, ain’t you? Like down south?”

“That’s right.”

“When I was a girl, sir, I seen some that come to the village. Big men like you they was, on big horses. An’ iron clothes. Has you got iron clothes, sir?” One hand left her face to stroke my arm. “Well, I never.”

“Are you a slave?” An eerie wail filled my mind as I spoke; I shivered, but it soon dwindled to nothing. “I asked your master’s name. Whose slave are you?”

“Oh, him, sir. He’s not a good one, sir, not like his pa, but I’ve seen worse, sir. Hard though, sir. Hard.” The old woman tittered. “He’d like me better if I was younger, sir. You know how that is. His father did, sir, Hymir that was, sir. I didn’t like him, sir, for he was bigger’n your horse twice, sir, only he was kindish to me because a’ it, only I didn’t know it was kindish then, sir, only he wisht I was bigger, sir, you know, an’ I found out after, for I’m too old now, sir, so Hyndle leaves me be. It’s the warm work for women, sir, is what they say, or else cold an’ starve. Only I don’t know which is worse.”

“Hyndle is your master?”

The old woman sat up, nodding. “Yes, sir.”

“Hyndle is Angrborn, from what you’ve said about him.”

“Is that the giants, sir? Yes, sir. They do claim her for their ma, sir.”

“If you’re ru

“Oh, no, sir!” The old woman sounded shocked. “Why, I wouldn’t do that. Why, I’d starve, sir, an’ never get back to where the regular people live. An’ if I did, I’d starve there, sir. Who’d feed a old woman like me?”

“I would if I could,” I told her. “But you’re right, I couldn’t. Not now, at least. Why are you out here at night, instead of home in bed?”

She tittered.

“Are you an Aelf? Have you taken this shape to have fun with me?”

“Oh, no, sir!”

“Then why are you out?”

“You wouldn’t believe, sir.”

Gylf whined and I stroked his head, telling him we would leave in a minute or two.

“It’s a man, sir. It is, and I shouldn’t have laughed. Only it’s a sore long way, sir, an’ I’m a-weary with working all day. If—if you could ride me on for but a little a’ it, sir, I’ll bless you ’til the day I die, sir.”

I nodded, thinking. “I was about to say that if you were ru