be
let go. Don’t fight them. Yield. Come away. You don’t know what ’tis to be
alive till you’ve dwelt in Carheddin under the mountain.”
The Outlings drew nigh.
Jimmy glimmered and was gone. Barbro lay in strong arms, against a broad
breast, and felt the horse move beneath her. It had to be a horse, though
only a few were kept any longer on the steadings and they only for special
uses or love. She could feel the rippling beneath its hide, hear a rush of
parted leafage and the thud when a hoof struck stone; warmth and living
scent welled up around her through the darkness.
He who carried her said mildly, “Don’t be afraid, darling. It was a vision.
But he’s waiting for us and we’re bound for him.”
She was aware in a vague way that she ought to feel terror or despair or
something. But her memories lay behind her-she wasn’t sure just how she
had come to be here-she was borne along in a knowledge of being loved. At
peace, at peace; rest in the calm expectation of joy . . .
After a while the forest opened. They crossed a lea where boulders stood
gray-white under the moons, their shadows shifting in the dim hues which
the aurora threw across them. Flitteries danced, tiny comets, above the
flowers between. Ahead gleamed a peak whose top was crowned in clouds.
Barbro’s eyes happened to be turned forward. She saw the horse’s head and
thought, with quiet surprise: Why, this is Sambo,
who was mine when I was a girl. She looked upward at the man. He wore a
black tunic and a cowled cape, which made his face hard to see. She could
not cry aloud, here. “Tim,” she whispered.
“Yes, Barbro.”
“I buried you-”
His smile was endlessly tender. “Did you think we’re no more than what’s
laid back into the ground? Poor torn sweetheart. She who’s called us is the
All Healer. Now rest and dream.”
— “Dream,” she said, and for a space she struggled to rouse herself.
But the effort was weak. Why should she believe ashen tales about
. . . atoms and energies, nothing else to fill a gape of emptiness
. . . tales she could not bring to mind . . . when Tim and the horse
her father gave her carried her on to Jimmy? Had the other thing
not been the evil dream, and this her first drowsy awakening from
it?
As if he heard her thoughts, he murmured, “They have a song in Outling
lands. The Song of the Men:
“The world sails to an unseen wind. Light swirls by the bows. The wake is
night.
But the Dwellers have no such sadness.”
“I don’t understand,” she said.
He nodded. “There’s much you’ll have to understand, darling, and I can’t see
you again until you’ve learned those truths. But meanwhile you’ll be with
our son.”
She tried to lift her head and kiss him. He held her down. “Not yet,” he
said. “You’ve not been received among the Queen’s people. I shouldn’t have
come for you, except that she was too merciful to forbid. Lie back, lie
back.”
Time blew past. The horse galloped tireless, never stumbling, up the
mountain. Once she glimpsed a troop riding down it and thought they
were bound for a last weird battle in the west against . . . who? . . . one
who
lay cased in iron and sorrow. Later she would
ask herself the name of him who had brought her into the land of the
Old Truth.
Finally spires lifted splendid among the stars, which are small and
magical and whose whisperings comfort us after we are dead. They
rode into a courtyard where candles burned unwavering, fountains
splashed and birds sang. The air bore fragrance of brok and pericoup,
of rue and roses, for not everything that man brought was horrible.
The Dwellers waited in beauty to welcome her. Beyond their
stateliness, pooks cavorted through the gloaming; among the trees
darted children; merriment caroled across music more solemn.
“We have come-” Tim’s voice was suddenly, inexplicably a croak.
Barbro was not sure how he dismounted, bearing her. She stood before