I shall find Liaze, and then we will get Borel and Celeste, and then… and then… — Then what?
Camille frowned in concentration. Then what? Then what? Then what will we do? What can we do?
As she took up a small bronze knife-like the ones she had given Papa and Giles-she paused and looked at it, and opened and closed the blade.
Ah, then, that is what we can do: raise a warband and find this Olot and his daughter and make them tell us where Alain and all the others have gone. A warband, that’s it.
She slipped the knife into the kit and again paused and looked about. What else do I need? — Oh, if for some reason I must travel far, I will need Moments later, Camille rifled through her jewelry boxes and took brooches and rings and necklaces and bracelets and other such jewelry of significant value. Then she went to the steward’s office, and in Lanval’s desk she found a small lockbox, which she bore to the smithy and broke open using Renaud’s great bronze hammer and a chisel. From the box she took up a handful of gold coins, yet she paused. It won’t do to flash a gold piece just anywhere, nor the jewelry either. There may be thieves about, and-Oh, but I did send that poacher’s woman away with nought but a gold piece. I should have specified silver and bronze. Camille added silver and bronze to the coinage, then she buried the lockbox in Andre’s compost pile.
Yet thinking of thieves, she went to the seamstress chamber, and there she sewed jewelry and coins into the lining of her all-weather woolen travelling cloak and behind a panel in the rucksack. And she stitched together a money belt to wear under her jerkin.
Night fell, and she spent it in one of the abandoned stables, sleeping in straw, where perhaps Olot and his Goblins would not think to look if they came that eve.
The next morning, she took breakfast in the manor, eating rapidly so as to be away without delay.
I wonder if there are enough folk in the Forests of the Seasons to raise a warband? Perhaps that great man with a scythe has kindred elsewhere. I know of few living in the Summerwood: a handful of smallholders who came on business, that poacher’s wife-now gone-and the Lynx Riders and those of us here at the Camille paused, a biscuit partway to her mouth.
The Lady of the Mere, a seer, and she lives not far from here, or so Alain did say. Perhaps she can help. But wait; Alain also said, “.. she only appears in circumstances dire.” Then he said the disappearance of his sire and dam would not seem to be one of those events. Since that is the case, what chance have I that she will be about, even should I find the mere? I mean, if the disappearance of a king and queen was not enough to cause her to show… — Ah, fille, if you do not try, then you will never know.
Bearing her rucksack and bedroll and waterskin, Camille spent the day walking through the woodland surrounding Summerwood Manor, her path spiralling ever outward in a pattern she hoped would swiftly bring her to the Lady of the Mere. And from time to time she called out for aid, yet no one answered, though birds and small animals flew and scuttled away from this creature disturbing their lives, a doe and a fawn fleeing as well.
As twilight fell across the land, adding its silvery light to that of the ever-present twilight of Faery, Camille made a small camp on a hill rising above the forest, and she was dismayed to see the manor standing what seemed to be but a stone’s throw away, yet, in truth, it was full mile or two off. Even so, she cried herself to sleep that night.
For three days did Camille search without success, for she knew not how far or which way the mere of the lady did lie. Too, she could have easily passed by a small pool without ever knowing it was there. And Camille’s spirits fell into a pit of despair at the futility of her quest.
And on the eve of that fourth day of fruitless searching, with her head in her hands she sat on the remains of a long-fallen tree and quietly wept.
“Why do you weep, Lady Camille?” came a voice.
18
Startled, Camille gasped, her tears stemmed. And she looked up to see a Lynx Rider stepping out from the tall grass, his cat following. Reaching nearly to his knees, a brace of voles dangled from the rider’s belt, and he carried his bow in hand. He stopped before Camille, and she thought from the markings on his face, she knew him.
“Lord Kelmot?”
Kelmot bowed. “At your service, my lady.” Then he turned and signalled the lynx, who sat, and began licking a paw and washing its face and ears.
“May I aid you, my lady?” asked the tiny lord.
He smiled, again revealing a mouthful of catlike teeth, and as close as he was, in spite of the failing light, Camille could see that his eyes were catlike as well-yellow and with a vertical slit of a pupil.
“My lord, I am most desperate,” said Camille, “for I seek the Lady of the Mere, and I know not where I must go.”
Kelmot took a deep breath. “My lady, I can take you there; yet heed: none seek the Lady of the Mere unless somewhat dire is afoot, and even then she may not appear.”
Camille burst into tears anew, and though Lord Kelmot was nonplused, his lynx merely looked up from its grooming, and then went back to washing itself. Finally, Camille regained control of her weeping, and though tears yet welled in her eyes, oft to break free and stream down her face, she haltingly told him of her disastrous attempt to put an end to the curse, speaking of the candle and her mother’s urgings, of Alain’s remark concerning the geas, of her readings in the great library, and her hesitancy to light the candle within the darkened room but then succumbing, and of the wax falling onto Alain, and the wind and the screams therein, and of Alain becoming the Bear, and the disappearances of all in the thunderous blow, and of the wind itself vanishing, leaving nought but destruction in its wake, and of her search for anyone yet within the manse, but finding all were gone.
Full night had fallen when she came to tale’s end, a waning half-moon high in the sky, and Kelmot, now seated on the ground, looked up at her and nodded as if unto himself. “Ah, so that was it. The night my sons and I came to the manse because of the poacher’s wife, Steward Lanval told us the prince would be wearing a mask, yet he did not tell us why; but now you, my lady, have; ’twas all because of a curse.” The tiny Lynx Rider then frowned and shook his head. “There is great magic at work here, and none I know has such at his command, most certainly not a Troll, for they are not natural wizards. Tell me, my lady, was there about him some token, some item of power?”
Camille thought back to the only time she had seen Olot, there in the Winterwood. Slowly she shook her head. “Nay, Lord Kelmot, I think no-Oh, wait. There was about his neck on a leather thong an amulet of sorts. But it was quite insignificant, or at least seemed so.”
“An amulet?”
“Yes. Small and round and dull, almost as if made of clay.”
Kelmot gasped and then looked about as if seeking eavesdroppers. “It must have been one of the Seals of Orbane,” he whispered. “I thought them long-lost or long-gone.”
“My lord?”
Kelmot took a deep breath and let it out. “Orbane was a great wizard, yet evil grasped his heart. As to that which you thought was but a clay amulet, it was a seal holding within a great and fearsome power; there were seven seals in all, each one capable of invoking a terrible curse when broken-speak the curse, break the seal, and such will it be.”
“Though you numbered them seven, I saw but one. What of the other six seals?”
“Two were destroyed when we trapped Orbane in the Castle of Shadows in the Great Darkness beyond the Black Wall of the World. The missing five: we thought them gone, used up by Orbane or perhaps lost. But it seems we were wrong, for nought else I know of has the power to do that which you described-the wind, the vanishment, Prince Alain cursed to be the Bear in the day. Too, it would explain how Olot, and indeed his daughter, could cause such great harm, and it’s just like a Troll and his spawn to use such for their own vengeful ends. Most certainly they had at least two of the seals: the daughter one, the sire another. Wherefrom, I cannot say.”
Camille frowned. “Lord Kelmot, you say Alain was cursed to be the Bear in the day, but on our journeys he
