Three Hearts and Three Lions Read online

  Unless one had escaped from a zoo... He was going hog wild. What he must do was learn the facts, and cope with them.

  Was he crazy, or delirious, or dreaming? Not likely. His mind was working too well by this time. He sensed sunlight and the fine dust motes which danced therein, leaves that formed long archways down the forest, the sharp mingled smells of horse and mold and his own sweat, everything utterly detailed and utterly prosaic. Anyway, he decided, as his naturally calm temperament got back into gear, he could do nothing but carry on, even in a dream. What he needed was information and food.

  On second thought he reversed the order of importance.

  The stallion seemed friendly enough. He had no right to take the beast, nor a suit of clothes, but his case was doubtless more urgent than that of whoever had so carelessly left this property here. Methodically he dressed himself; the unfamiliar stuff needed some figuring out but everything, to the very shoes, fitted disturbingly well. He repacked the extra garments and the armor and lashed them back in place. The stallion whickered softly as he swung himself up in the stirrups, and walked over to the lance.

  “I never thought horses were that smart,” he said aloud. “Okay, I can take a hint.” He fitted the butt of the weapon into a rest he found depending from the saddle, took the reins in his left hand, and clucked. Papillon started sunward.

  Not till he had been riding for some time did Holger notice how well he did so. His experience had hitherto been confined to some rather unhappy incidents at rental stables, and he recalled now having always said that a horse was a large ungainly object good only for taking up space that might otherwise be occupied by another horse. Odd, the instant affection he’d felt for this black monster. Still more odd, the easy way his body adjusted to the saddle, as if he’d been a cowboy all his life. When he thought about it, he grew awkward again, and Papillon snorted with what he could have taken oath was derision. So he pushed the fact out of his mind and concentrated on picking a way through the trees. Though they were following a narrow trail—made by deer?—it was a clumsy business riding through the woods, especially when toting a lance.

  The sun went low until only a few red slivers showed behind black trunks and branches. Damn it, there just couldn’t be a wild stretch this big anywhere in Denmark. Had he been carried unconscious into Norway? Lapland? Russia, for Pete’s sake? Or had the bullet left him amnesiac, for weeks maybe? No, that wouldn’t do. His injury was fresh.

  He sighed. Worry couldn’t stand against thoughts of food. Let’s see, about three broiled cod and a mug of Carlsberg Hof... no, let’s be American and have a T-bone, smothered in French-fried onions—

  Papillon rested. He almost tossed Holger overboard. Through the brush and the rising darkness a lion came.

  Holger yelled. The lion stopped, twitched its tail, rumbled in the maned throat. Papillon skittered and pawed the ground. Holger grew aware that he had dropped the lance shaft into a horizontal rest and was pointing it forward.

  Somewhere sounded what could only be a wolf-howl. The lion stood firm. Holger didn’t feel like disputing rights of way. He guided Papillon around, though the horse seemed ready to fight. Once past the lion, he wanted to gallop; but a bough would be sure to sweep him off if he tried it in this murk. He was sweating.

  Night came. They stumbled on. So did Holger’s mind. Bears and wolves and lions sounded like no place on earth, except maybe some remote district of India. But they didn’t have European trees in India, did they? He tried to remember his Kipling. Nothing came to him except vague recollections that east was east and west was west. Then a twig swatted him in the face and he turned to cursing.

  “Looks as if we’ll spend the night outdoors,” he said. “Whoa.”

  Papillon continued, another shadow in a darkness that muttered. Holger heard owls, a remote screech that might be from a wildcat, more wolves. And what was that? An evil tittering, low in the brush—“Who’s there? Who is that?”

  Small feet pattered away. The laughter went with them. Holger shivered. It was as well to keep in motion, he decided.

  The night had grown chilly.

  Stars burst into his sky. He needed a moment to understand that they had emerged in a clearing. A light glimmered ahead. A house? He urged Papillon into a jarring trot.

  When they reached the place, Holger saw a cottage of the most primitive sort, wattle and clay walls, a sod roof. Firelight was red on smoke rising from a hole in the top, and gleamed out the tiny shuttered windows and around the sagging door. He drew rein and wet his lips. His heart thumped as if the lion were back.

  However...

  He decided he was wisest to remain mounted, and struck the door with his lance butt. It creaked open. A bent figure stood black against the interior. An old woman’s voice, high and cracked, came to him: “Who are ye? Who would stop with Mother Gerd?”

  “I seem to be lost,” Holger told her. “Can you spare me a bed?”

  “Ah. Ah, yes. A fine young knight, I see, yes, yes. Old these eyes may be, but Mother Gerd knows well what knocks at her door o’ nights, indeed, indeed. Come, fair sir, dismount ye and partake of what little a poor old woman can offer, for certes, ye’ve naught to fear from me, nor I from ye, not at my age; though mind ye, there was a time—But that was before ye were born, and now I am but a poor lonely old grandame, all too glad for news of the great doings beyond this humble cot. Come, come, be not afeared. Come in, I pray ye. Shelter is all too rare, here by the edge of the world.”

  Holger squinted past her, into the shack. He couldn’t see anyone else. Doubtless he could safely stop here.

  He was on the ground before he realized she had spoken in a language he did not know—and he had answered her in he same tongue.

  2

  HE SAT AT THE RICKETY TABLE of undressed wood. His eyes stung with the smoke that gathered below the rafters. One door led into a stable where his horse was now tied, otherwise the building consisted only of this dirt-floored room. The sole dim light came from a fire on a hearthstone. Looking about, Holger saw a few chairs, a straw tick, some tools and utensils, a black cat seated on an incongruously big and ornate wooden chest. Its yellow gaze never winked or left him. The woman, Mother Gerd, was stirring an iron pot above the fire. She herself was stooped and withered, her dress like a tattered sack; gray hair straggled around a hook-nosed sunken face which forever showed snaggle teeth in a meaningless grin. But her eyes were a hard bright black.

  “Ah, yes, yes,” she said, “’tis not for the likes of me, poor old woman that I be, to inquire of that which strangers would fain keep hid. There are many who’d liefer go a-secret in these uneasy lands near the edge of the world, and for all I know ye might be some knight of Faerie in human guise, who’d put a spell on an impertinent tongue. Nonetheless, good sir, might I make bold to ask a name of ye? Not your own name, understand, if ye wish not to give it to any old dame like me, who means ye well but admits being chattersome in her dotage, but some name to address ye properly and with respect.”

  “Holger Carlsen,” he answered absently.

  She started so she almost knocked over the pot. “What say ye?”

  “Why—” Was he hunted? Was this some weird part of Germany? He felt the dagger, which he had prudently thrust in his belt. “Holger Carlsen! What about it?”

  “Oh... nothing, good sir.” Gerd glanced away, then back to him, quick and birdlike. “Save that Holger and Carl are both somewhat well-known names, as ye wot, though in sooth ’tis never been said that one was the son of the other, since indeed their fathers were Pepin and Godfred, or rather I should say the other way around; yet in a sense, a king is the father of his vassal and—”

  “I’m neither of those gentlemen,” he said, to stem the tide. “Pure chance, my name.”

  She relaxed and dished up a bowl of stew for him, which he attacked without stopping to worry about germs or drugs. He was also given bread and cheese, to hack off with his knife and eat with his fingers, and a mug of uncommonly g
ood ale. A long time passed before he leaned back, sighed, and said, “Thank you. That saved my life, or at least my reason.”

  “’Tis naught, sire, ’tis but coarse fare for such as ye, who must oft have supped with kings and belted earls and listened to the minstrels of Provence, their glees and curious tricks, but though I be old and humble, yet would I do ye such honors as—”

  “Your ale is marvelous,” said Holger in haste. “I’d not thought to find any so good, unless you—” He meant to say, “unless your local brewery has escaped all fame,” but she interrupted him with a sly laugh.

  “Ah, good Sir Holger, for sure I am ’tis a knight ye must be, if not of yet higher condition, ye’re a man of wit and perceiving, who must see through the poor old woman’s little tricks on the instant. Yet though most of your order do frown on such cantrips and call ’em devices of the Devil, though in truth ’tis no different in principle from the wonder-working relics of some saint, that do their miracles alike for Christians or paynim, still must ye be aware how many here in this marchland do traffic in such minor magics, as much for their own protection against the Middle World powers as for comfort and gain, and ye can understand in your mercy ’twould scarce be justice to burn a poor old goodwife for witching up a bit of beer to warm her bones of winter nights when there be such many and powerful sorcerers, open traffickers in the black arts, who go unpunished and—“

  So you’re a witch? thought Holger. That I’ve got to see. What did she think she was putting over on him, anyway? What kind of build-up was this?

  He let her ramble on while he puzzled over the language. It was a strange tongue, hard and clangorous in his own mouth, an archaic French with a lot of Germanic words mixed in, one that he might have been able to unravel slowly in a book but could surely never have spoken as if born to it. Somehow the transition to—wherever this was—had equipped him with the local dialect.

  He had never gone in for reading romances, scientific or otherwise, but more and more he was being forced to assume that by some impossible process he had been thrown into the past. This house, and the carline who took his knightly accouterments as a matter of course, and the language, and the endless forest... But where was he? They had never spoken this way in Scandinavia. Germany, France, Britain?... But if he was back in the Dark Ages, how account for the lion, or for this casual mention of living on the boundaries of fairyland?

  He thrust speculation aside. A few direct questions might help. “Mother Gerd,” he said.

  “Aye, good sir. With any service wherewith I can aid ye, honor falls on this humble house, so name your desire and within the narrow limits of my skill all shall be as ye wish.” She stroked the black cat, which continued to watch the man.

  “Can you tell me what year this is?”

  “Oh, now ye ask a strange question, good sir, and mayhap that wound on your poor head, which doubtless was won in undaunted battle against some monstrous troll or giant, has addled messire’s memory; but in truth, though I blush for the admission, such reckonings have long slipped from me, the more so when time is often an uncanny thing here in the wings of the world since—“

  “Never mind. What land is this? What kingdom?”

  “In sooth, fair knight, ye ask a question over which many scholars have cracked their heads and many warriors have cracked each other’s heads. Hee, hee! For long have these marches been in dispute between the sons of men and the folk of the Middle World, and wars and great sorcerous contests have raged, until now I can but say that Faerie and the Holy Empire both claim it, while neither holds real sway, albeit the human claim seems a trifle firmer in that our race remains in actual settlement; and mayhap the Saracens could assert some title as well, forasmuch as their Mahound is said to have been an evil spirit himself, or so the Christians claim. Eh, Grimalkin?” She tickled the cat’s throat.

  “Well—” Holger clung to his patience with both hands. “Where can I find men... Christian men, let’s say... who will help me? Where is the nearest king or duke or earl or whatever he is?”

  “There is a town not too many leagues away as men reckon distance,” she said, “yet in truth I must warn that space, like time, is wondrously affected here by the sorceries blowing out of Faerie, so that often the place where you are bound seems near, and then again dwindles into vast and tedious distances beset with perils, and the very land and way ye go remain not the same—”

  Holger gave up. He knew when he was licked. Either this hag was a maundering idiot or she was deliberately stalling him. In neither case could he hope to learn much.

  “Yet if ’tis counsel ye want,” said Gerd suddenly, “though my own old noddle is oft woolly, as old heads are wont to be, and though Grimalkin here is dumb, however cunning, yet ’tis possible that counsel could be summoned for ye, and also that wherewith to allay your hurt and make ye whole again. Be not wroth, fair sir, if I propose a trifle of magic, for white it is—or gray, at worst; were I a mighty witch, think ye I would dress in these rags or dwell in this hovel? Nay, ’twould be a palace of gold for me, and servants on every hand would have welcomed ye. If by your leave I might summon a sprite, only a little one, he could tell ye what ye would know better than I.“

  “Hm.” Holger raised his brows. All right, that settled it. She was nuts. Best humor her if he intended to spend the night here. “As you wish, mother.”

  “Now I perceive that ye hail from eldritch places indeed,” she said, “for ye did not so much as cross yourself, whereas most knights are forever calling on the Highest, although oft in great oaths that will cost them hellfire pangs, nor live they overly godly lives; yet must the Empire use what poor tools can be found in this base and wicked world. Such is not your manner, Sir Holger, neither in one respect nor the other, which makes to wonder if indeed ye be not of Faerie. Yet shall we try this matter, though ’tis but right to confess beforehand the sprites are uncanny beings and may give no answer, or one with double meaning.”

  The cat sprang off the chest and she opened it. There was a curious tautness in her. He wondered what she was up to. A small crawling went along his spine.

  Out of the chest she took a tripod brazier, which she set on the floor and charged with powder from a flask. She took out also a wand that seemed to be of ebony and ivory. Muttering and making passes, she drew two concentric circles in the dirt around the tripod and stood between them with her cat.

  “The inner curve is to hold the demon, and the outer to stay what enchantments he might essay, for they are often grumpy when summoned so swift out of airiness,” she explained. “I must ask ye, sir, to make no prayer nor sign of the cross, for that would cause him to depart at once, and in most foul humor too.“ Her voice was matter-of-fact, but her eyes glittered at him and he wished he could read expression in that web of wrinkles.

  “Go ahead,” he said, a bit thickly.

  She began dancing around the inner circle, and he caught something of her chant. “Amen, amen—” Yes, he knew what was coming next, though he couldn’t tell how he knew... “—malo a nos libera sed—” Nor did he know why his hackles rose. She finished the Latin and switched to a shrill language he didn’t recognize. When she touched her wand to the brazier, it began throwing out a heavy white smoke that almost hid her but, curiously, did not reach beyond the outer circle. “O Beliya’al, Ba’al Zebub, Abaddon, Ashmadai!” she screamed. “Samiel, Samiel, Samiel!”

  Was the smoke thickening? Holger started from his chair. He could barely see Gerd in the red-tinged haze, and it was as if something else hovered over the tripod, something gray and snaky, half transparent—by Heaven, he saw crimson eyes, and the thing had almost the shape of a man!

  He heard it speak, a whistling unhuman tone, and the old woman answered in the language he did not know. Ventriloquism, he told himself frantically, ventriloquism and his own mind, blurred with weariness, only that, only that. Papillon neighed and kicked in his stall. Holger dropped a hand to his knife. The blade was hot. Did magic, he gibbered, induce
eddy currents?

  The thing in the smoke piped and snarled and writhed about. It talked with Gerd for what seemed a very long time. Finally she raised her wand and started another chant. The smoke began to thin, as if it were being sucked back into the brazier. Holger swore shaken-voiced and reached for the ale.

  When there was no more smoke, Gerd stepped out of the circle. Her face was gone blank and tight, her eyes hooded. But he saw how she trembled. The cat arched its back, bottled its tail, and spat at him.

  “Strange rede,” she said after a pause, tonelessly. “Strange rede the demon gave me.”

  “What did he say?” Holger whispered.

  “He said—Samiel said ye were from far away, so far that a man might travel till Judgment Day and not reach your home. Is’t not so?”

  “Yes,” said Holger slowly. “Yes, I think that maybe true.”

  “And he said help for your plight, the means of returning ye whence ye came, lies within Faerie itself. There must ye go, Sir... Sir Holger. Ye must ride to Faerie.”

  He knew not what to answer.

  “Oh, ’tis not so bad as ’t sounds.” Gerd eased a trifle. She even chuckled, or rather cackled. “If the truth must out, I am on terms not unfriendly with Duke Alfric, the nearest lord of Faerie. He is a kittle sort, like all his breed, but he’ll help ye if ye ask, the demon said. And I shall furnish a guide, that ye may go thither with speed.”

  “Wh-why?” Holger stammered. “I mean, I can’t offer payment.”

  “None is needed.” Gerd waved a negligent hand. “A good deed may perchance be remembered to my credit when I depart this world for another and, I fear, warmer clime; and in any case it pleasures an old granny to help a handsome young man like unto ye. Ah, there was a time, how long ago ! But enough of that. Let me dress your hurt, and then off to bed with ye.“