The Song of Andiene - By Elisa Blaisdell Page 0,64

him to the howling of the forest creatures. That night he could not sleep. It troubled him as it had not for years. They had never hunted him again, once those first nights of terror were over. But their song of death was ever present. “You are a stranger in our land,” it seemed to say. “One false step and you will be ours.”

Perhaps his ear had grown keener because his daughter would be named tomorrow. What kind of a life could she have, to grow up with the sound of evil in her ears? He listened with love to Malesa’s breathing, deep and slow by his side. This life was all she had known; she was not restless in it. She had grown to womanhood gentle and good—that was great fortune, and a sign of her strength—but still, he wanted a better life for his daughter.

Through his mind ran the same thought as always, never spoken for fear of grieving Malesa. Maybe I have gotten another child—daughter or son, I do not care.

He wondered if she thought the same, ever. She had never said a word to show it, but then, she thought and felt many things that were never voiced. She had lived alone for too long, and had learned the ways of silence.

He made his plans, half-waking, half-sleeping. If we were to have another child, then we would need to stay here longer, through the summer’s heat, at least. More time for me to find a safehold. The roads cannot stay shut forever. Kare will be seven, taller and stronger. Unlucky to name a child before her proper time. Unwise to love her even, but who is made with a heart of stone, to hold by those rules?

So Ilbran drifted into sleep, and dreamed a dream of horror. He stood in the forest clearing and it was bare of plants, of birds, of all its rich life. Only the spiral of silver-trunked lindel trees remained, standing golden in a dusty wasteland. To his troubled mind, they seemed like the coils of a serpent tightening itself on the clearing where he stood. He walked toward them, and with every step he took, the dust and ashes rose in choking clouds.

At last he stood by the farthest tree, the one closest to the forest. He waited, though he did not know why. The silence lay heavy on the earth. Then the coil of trees shimmered and changed, and in their places were men, gray-faced, with the look of death about them. Each held a child by the hand, a child with a ragged hole in her breast. He looked down the long curving line. All the same, all cold, all dead.

The first one took a stiff step forward. Though his flesh was whole, his clothing hung in rotten rags. His shadowed eyes looked through Ilbran into the forest. His lips writhed for a moment, then he spoke.

“I was Conar, a soldier of Reji Taulb. I lived with your lady for six years and got a daughter. I died of bitter poison, my daughter died of cold steel. Our bones lie under the lindel tree.”

Ilbran tried to speak, to question him, to wake from this horror. His lips were numb; his blood and bones were cold; he was held by chains more strong than any in Nahil’s dungeons.

The next man stepped forward. “My name is Larys, a gatherer of blaggorn on the wide plain. I lived with her six years and got a daughter … ”

The toll went on and on. More than twice ten stepped forward and spoke. The same story, relentlessly repeated. “I died of bitter poison, then she of cold steel.” The men were not the same, pale-haired northerners and dark southerners. The children were alike, dark eyes and hair, girl-children, all of them. They did not speak.

The last man stepped forward, the greatest horror of them all. No tree had grown where he stood. He was tall, fair-haired, his face twisted in agony. Ilbran tried to close his eyes, stop his ears—useless.

“My name is Ilbran; you should know me. I die tomorrow, and my daughter too.”

Then the ghostly parade vanished, and Ilbran woke. The voices still echoed in his ears, driving all reason from him.

“My name is Raneh, minstrel in many lands. My name is Weyron, exile from the red mountains.”

And Malesa was gone from the house, and their child too. Terror seized him for a moment, then died down. The child had gone with her