the tale is freely told, it and we may live on.”
Cadence put the pages away and leaned back.
Her chair might as well have been an open boat with no oars. She couldn’t help feeling a rush of waters, with Ara sweeping downriver to some treacherous cataracts.
And to mix metaphors, a clock, complete with tightly coiled springs of fate, was still ticking.
Her phone rang. Damn! It was Mel.
Chapter 33
OCTOBER 30. 4:18 P.M
“The coincidence of fear is no coincidence.”
Osley was talking too loud. She shouldn’t have told him about the call with Mel. He paced in front of the usual table at the Columbia Library, ignoring his own warnings of caution.
“First your grandfather. No, first Professor Tolkien. Then you. Then me. Now even him, this Mel guy!”
Cadence was thinking, replaying the call from Mel in her head. He was no longer being the deal guy. His voice had a quiver in it, like a blade rested against his throat.
“Cadence,” he had said, “don’t hang up this time, please. Just listen. I have received another offer. It’s one you … we … all should take
“O-kaay, Mr. Agent Man.”
“Don’t fool around. I’m not kidding. Here’s what it says.” He took a breath and began:
“Is that it?” Cadence asked.
“Yeah.”
“Who sent this?”
“I don’t know. It’s on plain paper, from an agent who got his AGA card only last week. Someone I’ve never met. It’s a swap. The references to forfeiture are clear enough.”
She now turned to Osley. “That’s all he said. So now even Mel is wigging out. Someone got to him. I told him no. If you’re up for it, let’s get back to the hotel and get on with the translation. Before I do anything else I want to know what finally happened to Ara.”
As they rode together in the subway, standing and jostled like bobble-dolls, Cadence looked at their reflection in the windows. They were moving in tandem, almost identical in posture and reaction.
Suddenly Osley broke into her reverie, speaking over the subway noise, oblivious to those around them. “It is not like elves to record a story of men and halflings. Such petty, low tragedies. Why not turtles and insects? We are but a footnote to their history. But here … here they have chronicled, at least from what remnants we have, many pieces of her story. Did the endurance of her tale bear import for them?”
Cadence ignored the other strap-hangars looking and listening to them. “I hope she was important to everyone.”
“One other thing has me worried, Cadence. This ‘Vow’, the one that keeps cropping up. The Elvish phrasing is deeply laden with meaning — alternatives and nuances and depths I don’t understand. It can also mean, roughly, ‘Secret Gate’.”
She listened as the train whooshed down the tunnel, as if hurtling them blindly into some hungry maw.
They spent the rest of the day secluded at the Algonquin, blending into the dreamtime of Mirkwood. Osley was parsing the texts, consulting the key, laying pages in different orders. Once “into” a page, it might be seconds or hours before he emerged.
The events in Thornland continued as Osley, in a far distant realm, toiled and scribbled to reveal them, his eyes bleary from exhaustion:
Lamps had been relit and merriment returned to the Great Hall in Thornland. The prince continued his speech.
“If food’s to be well served, it must be accompanied by the spice of a tale, that well-munching is married with well-thinking. Eat fully then, and listen.”
Fresh platters, piled high with dripping slabs of meat, came to each table. Knives carved. Hands reached, dodging knives. Mouths chomped and slurped.
“This tale … but a remnant in our time, reminds us of the seething and loss that the span of but a few lifetimes, much less a thousand winters, lays upon our lore. Be not unsettled, for this saga is clear enough and fit for telling still in our time.
“Much of it is buried beneath the words to a children’s song. You remember, of course:
“And here is what remains of the greatest tale of our time. To begin, you must see yourself as he did. I will take you to that world through his eyes. You are from the farthest south, a king not unlike the noble lord in whose hall we relax this eve. But his hall is a flowing, great-walled tent, four spans tall. It stands this night erected in a copse of trees, an oasis. Those trees are palms, and they bear the fruit called dates. Sweeter than blossom honey. You, that king, are restless. Once on a ride in the desert, on a clear night when the stars are of such number and brilliance as to drive a man crazy with the most profound of questions, you see on the far northern horizon — a wonder. A vision distant even in legend. Never before seen in living memory. A faraway, swaying curtain of light. It flows like the walls of a great tent in a celestial breeze.
“You resolve on this very night to see this great curtain in the sky. Nay, to strip it from the heavens, and bring it back, and form your royal tent from its glowing folds!
“Your house has ruled well, and your seitch is in order. As did our lord here in Thornland, you leave your realm.
“A thousand regal warriors form your train. Horses and strange horse-headed but back-humped beasts bear northward.”
The princess turned to Ara and whispered, “I wish we still had adventures and such heroes. Perhaps some may arise, for dread times have arrived. It is surprising, as you know, who arises in such moments. The meek and small may, if necessary, carry the day beyond men who bluster wildly while they inventory their armory, but do not show so much as a shield on the field of battle.”
“Now let us journey with this questing king whose travel has endured for years,” the prince continued. “The great curtain returns at times in the northern fringe of the sky, ever uncertain, and now only in the ever-colder winters. Great seas and mountains wild you cross. You yet rule your kingdom by daily sending southward one of your men, each with the day’s orders as you see fit. Though you have received back little notice, you send forth your
