he said. “It couldn’t have been the same as for her. I think the command
was simply given us, ‘You will see what you most desire in the world,
running away from you into the forest.’ Of course, she didn’t travel many
meters before the nicor waylaid her. I’d no hope of trailing them; I’m no
Arctican woodsman, and besides, it’d have been too easy to ambush me. I
came back to you.” Grimly: “You’re my link to your overlady.”
“You think I’ll guide you to Starhaven or Carheddin? Try making me, clod-
man.”
“I want to bargain.”
“I s’pect you intend more’n that.” Mistherd’s answer held surprising
shrewdness. “What’ll you tell after you come home?”
“Yes, that does pose a problem, doesn’t it? Barbro Cullen and I are not
terrified outwayers. We’re of the city. We brought recording instruments.
We’d be the first of our kind to report an encounter with the Old Folk, and
that report would be detailed and plausible. It would produce action.”
“So you see I’m not afraid to die,” Mistherd declared, though his lips
trembled a bit. “If I let you come in and do your man-things to my people,
I’d have naught left worth living for.”
“Have no immediate fears,” Sherrinford said. “You’re merely bait.” He sat
down and regarded the boy through a visor of calm. (Within, it wept in him:
Barbro, Barbro!) “Consider. Your Queen can’t very well let me go back,
bringing my prisoner and telling about hers. She has to stop that somehow. I
could try fighting my
way through-this car is better armed than you know-but that wouldn’t free
anybody. Instead, I’m staying put. New forces of hers will get here as
fast as they can. I assume they won’t blindly throw themselves against a
machine gun, a howitzer, a fulgurator. They’ll parley first, whether their
intentions are honest or not. Thus I make the contact I’m after.”
“What d’ you plan?” The mumble held anguish.
“First, this, as a sort of invitation.” Sherrinford reached out to flick a
switch. “There. I’ve lowered my shield against mind-reading and shape-
casting. I daresay the leaders, at least, will be able to sense that it’s
gone.
That should give them confidence.”
“And next?”
“Next we wait. Would you like something to eat or drink’?”
During the time which followed, Sherrinford tried to jolly Mistherd along,
find out something of his life. What answers he got were curt. He dimmed
the interior lights and settled down to peer outward. That was a long few
hours.
They ended at a shout of gladness, half a sob, from the boy. Out
of the woods came a band of the Old Folk.,
Some of them stood forth more clearly than moons and stars and
northlights should have caused. He in the van rode a white crownbuck whose
horns were garlanded. His form was manlike but unearthly beautiful, silver-
blond hair falling from beneath the antlered helmet, around the proud cold
face. The cloak fluttered off his back like living wings. His frost-colored
mail rang as he fared.
Behind him, to right and left, rode two who bore swords whereon small
flames gleamed and flickered. Above, a flying flock laughed and trilled and
tumbled in the breezes. Near then drifted a half-transparent mistiness.
Those others who passed among trees after their chieftain were harder to
make out. But thev moved in quicksilver grace and as it were to a sound of
harps and trumpets.
“Lord Luighaid.” Glory overflowed in Mistherd’s tone. “Her master Knower-
himself.”
Sherrinford had never done a harder thing than to sit at the
main control panel, finger near the button of the shield generator, and not
touch it. He rolled down a section of canopy to let voices travel. A gust of
wind struck him in the face, bearing odors of the roses’in his mother’s
garden. At his back, in the main body of the vehicle, Mistherd strained
against his bonds till he could see the oncoming troop. ,
“Call to them,” Sherrinford said. “Ask if they will talk with me.”
Unknown, flutingly sweet words flew back and forth. “Yes,” the boy
interpreted. “fie will, the Lord Luighaid. But I can tell you, you’ll never