2

Jalon lifted his face out of the mush and said, “Ouch!” The pressure on his arm eased immediately. “This is not easy for a jotunn, you know!” he said. “If I lose my temper, I may start using really vulgar language.”

With a hoarse chuckle, the weight vanished from his back. A moment later two big hands grabbed him under the arms and hoisted him bodily upright. He spun around and was enveloped in the big fellow’s hearty embrace. They thumped each other and laughed.

He backed off, wiping sap and leaves from his cheeks.

“Good to see you again, Rap! Hope I can stay around a little longer this time, though.”

“Hope so, too! It’s good to have you back.” Puffing slightly, the oversized faun grinned down happily at the undersized jotunn.

“And great to be in Ilrane!” Jalon said. Immature sugarcane rippled all around—oh, that green! He inspected his hand, which was bright with the same green. “You know, I’ve never found a stable pigment to capture this color? Not close, even! It’s almost glauconite, but with less blue in it. Do you think you could magic up some for me some time?”

Inexplicably Rap bellowed with laughter. “If that’s all I have to pay for your assistance, then I’ll be more than happy to oblige.”

“You will? Oh, thanks, Rap!” Jalon rubbed his shoulder. He must not get lost in thinking about painting, though, or singing. He must remember that they were here on very important business, and not go wool-gathering. Then he recalled the sky tree and swung around to take a proper look at it.

God of Beauty! Glorious! The nimbus of color on the sunward side, a spiky kaleidoscope of pale hues, contrasting with the low-value gentian blue of the shadowed face, and the cerulean sky beyond—he drank it in, memorizing the play of light.

“I said,” Rap repeated, “that if your shoulder hurts, I can take off my shielding for a moment and fix it for you, while we’re here.”

“Mm? No, it’s fine.” Even the clouds took on pearly tints near the tree.

“You’ve seen a sky tree before, haven’t you?”

“What? Oh, yes. Andor visited Valdostor years ago, and he called me to do some of the climbing for him.” But Jalon had never really had a good chance to study a tree at a distance, in its proper setting. The land rose in irregular waves to it—the root hills, elves called them—and here they were blotched with orchards and vineyards in malachite and shamrock green, streaked with deeper cypress. Might even be real cypresses.

“What? Oh, thanks.” He accepted his pack from the faun and let himself be led across the field toward the road. The air was honey and wine. Ilrane! At last! He had always wanted to visit Ilrane and had always let himself be diverted somehow. There would be songs to learn, too, because everybody knew that the elves had music they saved for homeland and sky trees.

“Aren’t you going to put that pack on?” Rap asked as they scrambled through the hedge.

“On? Of course!” Jalon hauled the straps over his shoulders. They were set for Andor, and loose on him, but they would do for now. Meanwhile he was far more interested in—

“This road!” the faun said. “I didn’t notice in the night—it’s colored!”

“All roads are colored in IIrane, Rap. Elves don’t like bare gravel or rock. The pictures tell a story to speed your journey. Two stories, depending which direction you’re going. Let’s see, this one seems to be—”

“We have to go this way.”

“Oh. Well, that’s all right. This way it’ll be better. The best tales lead to the trees, of course. Yes, this looks like the tale of Puil’arin. She was the daughter of Zand’arin, War Vicar of the Senior Sept, and she fell in love with . . .”

In a few paces, the ballad came flooding back. Wishing he had a lyre or a lute with him, Jalon raised his eyes to the road ahead and began to sing. Rap strode along at his side, listening contentedly.

There was something magical about the light in Ilrane. It made a man’s heart tingle. It roasted every warm color and froze every cool one; a million tints of green vibrated all around. The most banal motifs were transformed into marvels-willows over brooks, cattle under trees, cottages drowning in billows of flowers. Jalon’s head ached with the effort of storing up memories he would express in pigment when he returned to Hub. He would try watercolor first, he decided, then oils, but would he manage to capture that enchantment? Probably he would dash off a dozen or so landscapes in a few days, working in a frenzy until he was ready to drop. Thereafter they would lie around his studio until Thinal sold them off for a fortune to rich imps, or Andor gave them away to women. That was what usually happened. He didn’t care; it was the act of creation that mattered.

Sometime on that first morning, he lost his pack. Rap was annoyed. He said he’d been watching, and it had still happened, and how the Evil could a grown man lose a backpack without even remembering taking it off? Jalon apologized and promised to pay better attention in future. Yes, he did know how important this mission was. But why did they need packs at all? The climate was much like a warm bed all the time, and the hedgerows alone were laden with enough berries to feed them, even without having to raid the orchards.

Rap didn’t believe that, so Jalon marched over to the nearest hedge and began filling his hat with berries—some people just couldn’t see what was in front of their eyes! He would have collected a dinner in minutes, except he got distracted by a spider spinning a web. He wanted to see how she would finish it, but Rap came and said it was time to move on.

That night they bedded down in a copse by a stream. Jalon insisted on choosing the spot, because he wanted a good view of the sky tree. It seemed bigger now, towering over the hills. It reflected in the foreground pool, glowing begonia pink against the cobalt and manganese twilight, and sometimes fish set it rippling in circles. It was so beautiful it hurt. Perhaps an underpainting of madder scarlet, overlain with glazes of burnt umber and ultramarine . . .

“Just like old times, isn’t it?” Rap said wistfully. “Like you and me and Gathmor marching across Dragon Reach.”

Yes, Jalon agreed, just like old times. They talked about that for a while. It didn’t seem all that long ago to him, but Rap had certainly been much younger then, so perhaps it was. Gathmor had been a likable guy for a sailor; short-tempered, of course. Fortunately Rap was more understanding—Jalon was almost certain he had started out the morning with a sword, and now he didn’t have one, and he felt guilty about that. Not that he was any use with a sword, but he might have to call Darad. He wondered if Rap had noticed its disappearance yet.

“I suppose it would be safe to have a dip in that pool?” Rap said suddenly.

“Why not? I expect at least a dozen girls will appear as soon as we get our clothes off.”

“Will they? We haven’t seen many so far.”

“Then why did you keep pulling me into hedges?”

Rap hauled off his shirt. ‘Three times. Only three times all day have we seen people. No livestock, nobody in the fields! The farms all seem deserted.” He pushed off his boots, and then stayed sitting, frowning. “Where is everybody?”

“Fled, I expect.”

The faun scratched his head. “Or taken refuge in the sky tree?”

“No. We’d see lights up there if it was inhabited.”

“Barnacles! Why didn’t I think of that?” Rap stared at the great bulk of Valdorian, slate blue now against the emerging stars. The play of starlight on it was unforgettable, but not a lantern nor a torch flame showed.

“Because you’re not an artist,” Jalon said, feeling rather pleased at having been useful for once. “And you can’t swim worth a spit.”

“Oh, yes? Think you’re better? Want to prove it?”

It was too bad there were no elves around. They might have been difficult with strangers, of course, but Jalon wanted very much to talk with real Ilrane elves. Later, when he and Rap had enjoyed their swim, had eaten, and were lying on heaps of ferns, bone weary from their long trek but not quite ready to sleep, they fell to talking about elves. And Jalon found himself telling a little of himself, and what it was like to be a mixture of such impossible opposites as elf and jotunn.

Apparently he had already told Rap once, long ago, that he had elf blood in him, although he did not recall doing so. Normally he never mentioned it. Apart from his size, he was so completely jotunn on the outside that no one would ever guess. Only the inside of his head was elvish.

“You must have had a difficult childhood,” Rap said sleepily from the darkness.

Jalon stared up at the star dust above the branches and said yes, he’d had some troubles then. “As long as I stayed away from jotnar, it wasn’t too bad, though. Imp boys didn’t mess with me, on account of my looks.”

“But elf boys would have nothing to do with you?”

“There weren’t any elf boys in our part of town.” He did not mention his mother, because he could remember so little of her. Whether she’d been raped by a jotunn or had acquiesced in his conception, he had never known. The fact that she had lived apart from the elf community in Malfin suggested that she’d been driven out. Certainly an elf woman who had gone into domestic service must have been in sore straits. He liked to assume that she’d died of a broken heart. “I lived with Darad’s family. He was a younger brother to me, although he was always bigger. He used to defend me from the others—mostly so he could beat me up himself.”

“Sounds like friend Darad,” Rap murmured. “Did he have more wits in those days, before they got banged out of him?”

“Not that I recall. And I used to stay close to Thinal as much as I could.”

“Thinal? The Thinal I know?”

“Yes. He was older than the rest of us. He took good care of us, too. We worshipped Thinal!”

Rap snorted but said nothing. It was certainly curious that the boyhood hero had turned out so despicable. Yet Thinal had always had his own standards. Inos’s father had liked him, but that had been long before Rap was born.

“I suppose being a faun in Krasnegar wasn’t exactly cream buns either?”

“Oh, I was jotunn enough to get by. Besides, no one sneers at mongrels there because most people are, especially the royal family.”

“The present king, you mean, and Inos? What are your kids like?”

Rap sighed.

“Sorry!” Jalon said. “Shouldn’t have asked.”

“It’s all right. I think of them every day, so why not talk about them? No fauns, thank the Gods. The twins are the oldest, Gath and Kadie. Kadie’s pure imp, except she has Inos’ green eyes. She’s a little minx! No need to worry about Kadie. Gath and Eva are jotunn in looks. Holi’s turning out a sort of blond imp—or he was when I last saw him. He may get picked on when he’s older, I suppose.”

Jalon prepared to change the subject, but Rap went on, speaking softly to the night breeze.

“Gath bothers me a little. He’s a jotunn on the outside, like you, although he’s going to be tall. Inside . . . I don’t know! I can’t figure Gath out at all. He’s placid and unassertive and sort of dreamy. Not stubborn like a faun or aggressive like a jotunn. Not greedy and meddlesome like an imp.”

“My sort of guy.”

“Almost. But he shows no artistic vices, so I can’t accuse Inos of having an affair with an elf.”

“Will he be king after you?”

“If we win this war . . . Well, who knows?” Rap sighed again. ”For all I know, Zinixo has leveled Krasnegar to the wave tops.”

Jalon stumbled over hasty words of comfort. “You’d have felt that happen, wouldn’t you? Grunth would, at least, or Tik Tok! Someone on Dreadnought would have told you if anything like that had happened.”

“Probably. I just hope Inos had the sense to go into hiding with the kids. I told her she should.”

“Where could anyone hide near Krasnegar?” Jalon demanded, thinking of the bleak tundra. .

There was a long pause, then the king said, “She could have gone south. There’s a way. Trouble is, the goblins were down in Pithmot, right? How did they get there?” His bedding rustled as he rolled over. “Well, Lith’rian will know. Think I’ll catch me some shut-eye.”

Guided by Grunth, who had once been there, the meld of sorcerers on Dreadnought had set the intruders down about two days’ ride from Valdorian—or so they had thought. They had not anticipated that there would be no horses to be found. So Rap and Jalon were forced to walk, and a long trek it was. In the root hills the land was heaved into a maze of ridges and steep-walled canyons. Elvish roads never led directly anywhere, but always took the most scenic route possible.

Jalon lost count of the days, because he was enjoying himself so much. He rarely worried about time, anyway. Rap was fine company—humorous, soft-spoken, even-tempered. Despite his apparent clumsiness and his homely looks, the big fellow was as good for a chat as he was in a brawl. He was impatient to achieve his purpose, yet he never let his frustration show, except for an occasional obscure mutter about Longday.

The land was an artist’s dream, prosperous yet beautiful, a blend of garden and apparently virgin nature that only elves could have achieved. It seemed uninhabited because elvish buildings, no matter how picturesque, were always tucked away out of sight. Rap said that the amount of agriculture in the district showed it must normally support a large population and he debated where all the people had gone, and why. Since the first day, the intruders had seen no one at all.

There were advantages to that, of course. Soon they began a little discreet looting-eggs from the farmyards, fish from the ponds, smoked hams from the larders. They took to sleeping in elvish beds. About the third night Jalon discovered a lute on a high shelf. It had been so coated with dust that he felt justified in taking it with him when he left the next morning, certain that its loss would not upset its owner. He would never steal a musician’s favored instrument, but this one had obviously been superseded. After that he could play upon the road, and the leagues seemed even lighter:

As Rap pointedly pointed out, he did not lose the lute as he had lost the pack and the sword.

The land rose steadily. Far to the south, two more sky trees came into sight like ghostly pinecones and then vanished again behind the bulk of Valdorian. Valdorian itself grew ever more enormous, day by day, until it obscured the sky and overhung the world. Its summit was no longer visible, only the ribbed undersides of the great petals. At their fringes they shone bright as diamond, darkening inward to the trunk in rich translucent tones, like a glass mountain.

Then one day, just as Jalon finished the “Lament of the Lonely Sisters” and was adjusting the tuning on his E string, Rap said, “Hold it a moment.”

Jalon said, “Mm?” and took stock of his surroundings. There was nothing especially interesting in sight, even the road itself, which had just reached the sad end of ill-starred Loah’rian and was doodling in arabesques and chinoiserie before starting another tale. The scenery was concealed by high grassy banks. A dull patch like this invariably hinted at something spectacular just around the next bend; it was designed to clear the palate.

“Let’s take a brief break here. Come and sit down.” Uneasy, Jalon followed his companion to the verge and settled beside him on the grass. They traveled light now. Rap had retained only his boots and sword and long breeches, abandoning all baggage. Jalon wore cerise elvish shorts and mauve bootees, while his third layer of skin was coming in tanned. His slim build and fair hair might escape notice at a distance, but elves were golden, not red and peeling.

Oddly, Rap never wore short pants. Funny guy—you could tease him about his hair or his face, you could even address him as “Master Thume” because of the word tattooed on his arm, and he would smile tolerantly—but breathe one word about his furry faun legs and a dangerous jotunn glint would flare in his gray eyes. It was nice to know he was human enough to have tender spots.

A faun and a jotunn in elfland—add a sword and a lute, and you had the makings of a ballad; like “The Minstrel and the Knight,” for instance. He hadn’t sung that one since . . .

“If you don’t mind?”

Jalon started. “Sorry, Rap. You said?”

Rap smiled fondly. “Is the sun bothering you, then?”

“No.” Jalon looked upward. “Oh!” They sat in shadow. The noon sun was almost vertical and the underside of Valdorian’s first petal completely overhung them, a pellucid roof whose depths gleamed in indigo and parrot green.

“We’re almost there, Jalon.”

“Yes . . . I didn’t hear what you asked, Rap.”

“I would like to consult Sagorn, if you don’t mind.”

“Of course I don’t,” Jalon said, with an outward smile and an inward sigh. He had been so much looking forward to another visit to a sky tree, hopefully a much longer visit than those few hours he had enjoyed in Valdostor, years ago. Now he must go, and the next time he was called he might be a thousand leagues from Wane. Still, this mission of Rap’s was important, and he must settle for these few idyllic days he had been granted. Without argument he called: