The Queen of Air and Darkness Read online

  A bustling followed, rearrangement, settling down to listen, coffee cups refilled and brandy offered on the side. The boy explained, “The last line is the chorus. Everybody join in, right?” Clearly he too hoped thus to bleed off some of the tension. Catharsis through music? Sherrinford wondered, and added to himself: No; exorcism.

  A girl strummed a guitar. The boy sang, to a melody which beat across the storm noise:

  It was the ranger Arvid rode homeward through the hills

  among the shadowy shiverleafs, along the chiming rills.

  The dance weaves under the firethorn.

  The night wind whispered around him with scent of brok and rue.

  Both moons rose high above him and hills aflash with dew.

  The dance weaves under the firethorn.

  And dreaming of that woman who waited in the sun,

  he stopped, amazed by starlight, and so he was undone.

  The dance weaves under the firethorn.

  For there beneath a barrow that bulked athwart a moon,

  the Outling folk were dancing in glass and golden shoon.

  The dance weaver under the firethorn.

  The Outling folk were dancing like water, wind and fire

  to frosty-ringing harpstrings, and never did they tire.

  The dance weaves under the firethorn.

  To Arvid came she striding from where she watched the dance,

  the Queen of Air and Darkness, with starlight in her glance.

  The dance weaves under the firethorn.

  With starlight, love and terror in her immortal eye,

  the Queen of Air and Darkness—

  “No!” Barbro leaped from her chair. Her fists were clenched and tears flogged her cheekbones. “You can’t—pretend that—about the things that stole Jimmy!”

  She fled from the chamber, upstairs to her guest bedroom.

  * * *

  But she finished the song herself. That was about seventy hours later, camped in the steeps where rangers dared not fare.

  She and Sherrinford had not said much to the Irons family, after refusing repeated pleas to leave the forbidden country alone. Nor had they exchanged many remarks at first as they drove north. Slowly, however, he began to draw her out about her own life. After a while she almost forgot to mourn, in her remembering of home and old neighbors. Somehow this led to discoveries—that he, beneath his professional manner, was a gourmet and a lover of opera and appreciated her femaleness; that she could still laugh and find beauty in the wild land around her—and she realized, half guiltily, that life held more hopes than even the recovery of the son Tim gave her.

  “I’ve convinced myself he’s alive,” the detective said. He scowled. “Frankly, it makes me regret having taken you along. I expected this would be only a fact-gathering trip, but it’s turning out to be more. If we’re dealing with real creatures who stole him, they can do real harm. I ought to turn back to the nearest garth and call for a plane to fetch you.”

  “Like bottommost hell you will, mister,” she said. “You need somebody who knows outway conditions, and I’m a better shot than average.”

  “M-m-m… it would involve considerable delay too, wouldn’t it? Besides the added distance, I can’t put a signal through to any airport before this current burst of solar interference has calmed down.”

  Next “night” he broke out his remaining equipment and set it up. She recognized some of it, such as the thermal detector. Other items were strange to her, copied to his order from the advanced apparatus of his birthworld. He would tell her little about them. “I’ve explained my suspicion that the ones we’re after have telepathic capabilities,” he said in apology.

  Her eyes widened. “You mean it could be true, the Queen and her people can read minds?”

  “That’s part of the dread which surrounds their legend, isn’t it? Actually there’s nothing spooky about the phenomenon. It was studied and fairly well defined centuries ago, on Earth. I daresay the facts are available in the scientific microfiles at Christmas Landing. You Rolanders have simply had no occasion to seek them out, any more than you’ve yet had occasion to look up how to build power beamcasters or spacecraft.”

  “Well, how does telepathy work, then?”

  Sherrinford recognized that her query asked for comfort as much as it did for facts and he spoke with deliberate dryness: “The organism generates extremely long-wave radiation which can, in principle, be modulated by the nervous system. In practice, the feebleness of the signals and their low rate of information transmission make them elusive, hard to detect and measure. Our prehuman ancestors went in for more reliable senses, like vision and hearing. What telepathic transceiving we do is marginal at best. But explorers have found extraterrestrial species that got an evolutionary advantage from developing the system further, in their particular environments. I imagine such species could include one which gets comparatively little direct sunlight-in fact, appears to hide from broad day. It could even become so able in this regard that, at short range, it can pick up man’s weak emissions and make man’s primitive sensitivities resonate to its own strong sendings.”

  “That would account for a lot, wouldn’t it?” Barbro said faintly.

  “I’ve now screened our car by a jamming field,” Sherrinford told her, “but it reaches only a few meters past the chassis. Beyond, a scout of theirs might get a warning from your thoughts, if you knew precisely what I’m trying to do. I have a well-trained subconscious which sees to it that I think about this in French when I’m outside. Communication has to be structured to be intelligible, you see, and that’s a different enough structure from English. But English is the only human language on Roland, and surely the Old Folk have learned it.”

  She nodded. He had told her his general plan, which was too obvious to conceal. The problem was to make contact with the aliens, if they existed. Hitherto, they had only revealed themselves, at rare intervals, to one or a few backwoodsmen at a time. An ability to generate hallucinations would help them in that. They would stay clear of any large, perhaps unmanageable expedition which might pass through their territory. But two people, braving all prohibitions, shouldn’t look too formidable to approach. And… this would be the first human team which not only worked on the assumption that the Outlings were real but possessed the resources of modern, off-planet police technology.

  Nothing happened at that camp. Sherrinford said he hadn’t expected it would. The Old Folk seemed cautious this near to any settlement. In their own lands they must be bolder.

  And by the following “night,” the vehicle had gone well into yonder country. When Sherrinford stopped the engine in a meadow and the car settled down, silence rolled in like a wave.

  They stepped out. She cooked a meal on the glower while he gathered wood, that they might later cheer themselves with a campfire. Frequently he glanced at his wrist. It bore no watch-instead, a radio-controlled dial, to tell what the instruments in the bus might register.

  Who needed a watch here? Slow constellations wheeled beyond glimmering aurora. The moon Alde stood above a snowpeak, turning it argent, though this place lay at a goodly height. The rest of the mountains were hidden by the forest that crowded around. Its trees were mostly shiverleaf and feathery white plumablanca, ghostly amidst their shadows. A few firethorns glowed, clustered dim lanterns, and the underbrush was heavy and smelled sweet. You could see surprisingly far through the blue dusk. Somewhere nearby, a brook sang and a bird fluted.

  “Lovely here,” Sherrinford said. They had risen from their supper and not yet sat down again or kindled their fire.

  “But strange,” Barbro answered as low. “I wonder if it’s really meant for us. If we can really hope to possess it.”

  His pipestem gestured at the stars. “Man’s gone to stranger places than this.”

  “Has he? I… oh, I suppose it’s just something left over from my outway childhood, but do you know, when I’m under them I can’t think of the stars as balls of gas, whose
energies have been measured, whose planets have been walked on by prosaic feet. No, they’re small and cold and magical; our lives are bound to them; after we die, they whisper to us in our graves.” Barbro glanced downward. “I realize that’s nonsense.”

  She could see in the twilight how his face grew tight. “Not at all,” he said. “Emotionally, physics may be a worse nonsense. And in the end, you know, after a sufficient number of generations, thought follows feeling. Man is not at heart rational. He could stop believing the stories of science if those no longer felt right.”

  He paused. “That ballad which didn’t get finished in the house,” he said, not looking at her. “Why did it affect you so?”

  “I couldn’t stand hearing them, well, praised. Or that’s how it seemed. Sorry for the fuss.”

  “I gather the ballad is typical of a large class.”

  “Well, I never thought to add them up. Cultural anthropology is something we don’t have time for on Roland, or more likely it hasn’t occurred to us, with everything else there is to do. But—now you mention it, yes, I’m surprised at how many songs and stories have the Arvid motif in them.”

  “Could you bear to recite it?”

  She mustered the will to laugh. “Why, I can do better than that if you want. Let me get my multilyre and I’ll perform.”

  She omitted the hypnotic chorus line, though, when the notes rang out, except at the end. He watched her where she stood against moon and aurora.

  —the Queen of Air and Darkness cried softly under sky:

  Light down, you ranger Arvid, and join the Outling folk.

  ‘You need no more be human, which is a heavy yoke.’

  He dared to give her answer: I may do naught but run.

  A maiden waits me, dreaming in lands beneath the sun.

  And likewise wait me comrades and tasks I would not shirk,

  for what is ranger Arvid if he lays down his work?

  So wreak your spells, you Outling, and cast your wrath on me.

  Though maybe you can slay me, you’ll not make me unfree.

  The Queen of Air and Darkness stood wrapped about with fear

  and northlight flares and beauty he dared not look too near.

  Until she laughed like harpsong and said to him in scorn:

  I do not need a magic to make you always mourn.

  I send you home with nothing except your memory of moonlight,

  Outling music, night breezes, dew and me.

  And that will run behind you, a shadow on the sun,

  and that will lie beside you when every clay is done.

  In work and play and friendship your grief will strike you dumb

  for thinking what you are—and—what you might have become.

  Your dull and foolish woman treat kindly as you can.

  Go home now, ranger Arvid, set free to be a man!

  In flickering and laughter the Outling folk were gone.

  He stood alone by moonlight and wept until the dawn.

  The dance weaves under the firethorn.

  She laid the lyre aside. A wind rustled leaves. After a long quietness Sherrinford said, “And tales of this kind are part of everyone’s life in the outway?”

  “Well, you could put it thus,” Barbro replied. “Though they’re not all full of supernatural doings. Some are about love or heroism. Traditional themes.”

  “I don’t think your particular tradition has arisen of itself.” His tone was bleak. “In fact, I think many of your songs and stories were not composed by human beings.”

  He snapped his lips shut and would say no more on the subject. They went early to bed.

  Hours later, an alarm roused them.

  The buzzing was soft, but it brought them instantly alert. They slept in gripsuits, to be prepared for emergencies. Sky-glow lit them through the canopy. Sherrinford swung out of his bunk, slipped shoes on feet and clipped gun holster to belt. “Stay inside,” he commanded.

  “What’s here?” Her pulse thuttered.

  He squinted at the dials of his instruments and checked them against the luminous telltale on his wrist. “Three animals,” he counted. “Not wild ones happening by. A large one, homeothermic, to judge from the infrared, holding still a short ways off. Another… hm, low temperature, diffuse and unstable emission, as if it were more like a… a swarm of cells coordinated somehow… pheromonally?… hovering, also at a distance. But the third’s practically next to us, moving around in the brush; and that pattern looks human.”

  She saw him quiver with eagerness, no longer seeming a professor. “I’m going to try to make a capture,” he said. “When we have a subject for interrogation— Stand ready to let me back in again fast. But don’t risk yourself, whatever happens. And keep this cocked.” He handed her a loaded big-game rifle.

  His tall frame poised by the door, opened it a crack. Air blew in, cool, damp, full of fragrances and murmurings. The moon Oliver was now also aloft, the radiance of both unreally brilliant, and the aurora seethed in whiteness and ice-blue.

  Sherrinford peered afresh at his telltale. It must indicate the directions of the watchers, among those dappled leaves. Abruptly he sprang out. He sprinted past the ashes of the campfire and vanished under trees. Barbro’s hand strained on the butt of her weapon.

  Racket exploded. Two in combat burst onto the meadow. Sherrinford had clapped a grip on a smaller human figure. She could make out by streaming silver and rainbow flicker that the other was nude, male, long-haired, lithe and young. He fought demoniacally, seeking to use teeth and feet and raking nails, and meanwhile he ululated like a satan.

  The identification shot through her: A changeling, stolen in babyhood and raised by the Old Folk. This creature was what they would make Jimmy into.

  “Ha!” Sherrinford forced his opponent around and drove stiffened fingers into the solar plexus. The boy gasped and sagged. Sherrinford manhandled him toward the car.

  Out from the woods came a giant. It might itself have been a tree, black and rugose, bearing four great gnarly boughs; but earth quivered and boomed beneath its leg-roots, and its hoarse bellowing filled sky and skulls.

  Barbro shrieked. Sherrinford whirled. He yanked out his pistol, fired and fired, flat whipcracks through the half light. His free arm kept a lock on the youth. The troll shape lurched under those blows. It recovered and came on, more slowly, more carefully, circling around to cut him off from the bus. He couldn’t move fast enough to evade it unless he released his prisoner—who was his sole possible guide to Jimmy.

  Barbro leaped forth. “Don’t!” Sherrinford shouted. “For God’s sake, stay inside!” The monster rumbled and made snatching motions at her. She pulled the trigger. Recoil slammed her in the shoulder. The colossus rocked and fell. Somehow it got its feet back and lumbered toward her. She retreated. Again she shot, and again. The creature snarled. Blood began to drip from it and gleam oilily amidst dewdrops. It turned and went off, breaking branches, into the darkness that laired beneath the woods.

  “Get to shelter!” Sherrinford yelled. “You’re out of the jammer field!”

  A mistiness drifted by overhead. She barely glimpsed it before she saw the new shape at the meadow edge. “Jimmy!” tore from her.

  “Mother.” He held out his arms. Moonlight coursed in his tears. She dropped her weapon and ran to him.

  Sherrinford plunged in pursuit. Jimmy flitted away into the brush. Barbro crashed after, through clawing twigs. Then she was seized and borne away.

  Standing over his captive, Sherrinford strengthened the fluoro output until vision of the wilderness was blocked off from within the bus. The boy squirmed beneath that colorless glare.

  “You are going to talk,” the man said. Despite the haggardness in his features, he spoke quietly.

  The boy glared through tangled locks. A bruise was purpling on his jaw. He’d almost recovered ability to flee while Sherrinford chased and lost the woman. Returning, the detective had barely caught him. Time was lacking to be gentle, when Ou
tling reinforcements might arrive at any moment. Sherrinford had knocked him out and dragged him inside. He sat lashed into a swivel seat.

  He spat. “Talk to you, man-clod?” But sweat stood on his skin, and his eyes flickered unceasingly around the metal which caged him.

  “Give me a name to call you by.”

  “And have you work a spell on me?”

  “Mine’s Eric. If you don’t give me another choice, I’ll have to call you… m-m-m… Wuddikins.”

  “What?” However eldritch, the bound one remained a human adolescent. “Mistherd, then.” The lilting accent of his English somehow emphasized its sullenness. “That’s not the sound, only what it means. Anyway, it’s my spoken name, naught else.”

  “Ah, you keep a secret name you consider to be real?”

  “She does. I don’t know myself what it is. She knows the real names of everybody.”

  Sherrinford raised his brows. “She?”

  “Who reigns. May she forgive me, I can’t make the reverent sign when my arms are tied. Some invaders call her the Queen of Air and Darkness.”

  “So.” Sherrinford got pipe and tobacco. He let silence wax while he started the fire. At length he said:

  “I’ll confess the Old Folk took me by surprise. I didn’t expect so formidable a member of your gang. Everything I could learn had seemed to show they work on my race—and yours, lad—by stealth, trickery and illusion.”

  Mistherd jerked a truculent nod. “She created the first nicors not long ago. Don’t think she has naught but dazzlements at her beck.”

  “I don’t. However, a steel jacketed bullet works pretty well too, doesn’t it?” Sherrinford talked on, softly, mostly to himself: “I do still believe the, ah, nicors—all your half-humanlike breeds—are intended in the main to be seen, not used. The power of projecting mirages must surely be quite limited in range and scope as well as in the number of individuals who possess it. Otherwise she wouldn’t have needed to work as slowly and craftily as she has. Even outside our mind-shield, Barbro—my companion—could have resisted, could have remained aware that whatever she saw was unreal… if she’d been less shaken, less frantic, less driven by need.”