Not only was his body so twisted that he walked bent over like a man on whom hundreds of seasons weighed, but his face was a mask such as might leer at the night from between trees of a haunted forest. Sharvana had an answer to that, but it was not enough to shield him entirely from the eyes of his fellows—though all were quick to avert their gaze when he shambled by.
She took supple bark and made a mask to hide his riven face. And that he wore at all times. But still he kept well out of the sight of all.
Nor did he return to his father’s house, but rather took an old hut at the foot of the garden. This he worked upon at night, never coming forth by day lest his old comrades might sight him. And he rebuilt it into a snug enough shelter. For, while the accident seemed to have blasted all else, it had not destroyed his clever hands, nor the mind behind the ruined face.
He would work at the forge at night, but at last Broson said no to that. For there was objection to the sound of hammers, and the people of Ghyll wanted no reminding of who used them. So Collard came no more to the smithy.
What he did no man knew, and he came to be almost forgotten. The next summer, when his brother married Nicala of the Mill, he never appeared at the wedding, nor ventured out in those parts of the yard and garden where those of the household might see him.
It was in the third year after his accident that Collard did come forward, and only because another peddler came into the forge. While the trader was dickering with Broson, Collard stood in the shadows. But when the bargain for a set of belt knives was settled, the smith’s son lurched forward to touch the trader’s arm.
He did not speak, but motioned to a side table whereon he had spread out a square of cloth and set up a series of small figures. They were fantastical in form, some animals, some men, but such men as might be heroes from the old tales, so perfect were their bodies. As if poor Collard, doomed to go crooked for as long as he lived, had put into these all his longing to be one with his fellows.
Some were of wood, but the greater number of metal. Broson, astounded at viewing such, noted the sheen of the metal. It was the strange stuff he had thrown aside, fearing to handle it again after the accident.
The trader saw their value at once and made an offer. But Collard, with harsh croaks of voice, brought about what even Broson thought a fair bargain.
When the man had gone Broson turned eagerly to his son. He even forgot the strangeness of that blank mask which had only eyes to give it the semblance of a living man.
“Collard, how made you these? I have never seen such work. Even in Twyford, in the booths of merchants from overseas— Before—before you never fashioned such.” Looking at that mask his words began to falter. It was as if he spoke not to his son, but to something as alien and strange as those beings reputed to dance about certain stones at seasons of the year, stones prudent men did not approach.
“I do not know—” came the grating voice, hardly above an animal’s throaty growl. “They come into my head—then I make them.”
He was turning away when his father caught at his arm. “Your trade—”
There were coins from overseas, good for exchange or for metal, a length of crimson cloth, two knife handles of carven horn.
“Keep it.” Collard might be trying to shrug but his convulsive movement sent him off balance, so he must clutch at the tabletop. “What need has such as I to lay up treasure? I have no bride price to bargain for.”
“But if you wanted not what the trader had to offer—why this?” Arnar, who had been watching, demanded. He was a little irked that his brother, who was younger and, in the old days had no great promise, could suddenly produce such marketable wares.
“I do not know.” Again Collard slewed around, this time turning his bark mask in his brother’s direction. “I think I wished to know if they had value enough to attract a shrewd dealer. But, yes, father, you have reminded me of another debt.” He took up the length of fine cloth, a small gold coin which had been looped so that one might wear it on a neck chain. “The Wise Woman served me as best she could.”
He then added: “For the rest—let it be for my share of the household, since I cannot earn my bread at the forge.”
At dusk he carried his offering to Sharvana. She watched as he laid coin and cloth on the table in her small house, so aromatic of drying herbs and the brews from them. An owl with a wing in splints perched on a shelf above his head, and other small wild things, here tame, had scuttled into cover at his coming.
“I have it ready—” She went to the cupboard, bringing out another mask. This was even more supple. He fingered it wonderingly.
“Well-worked parchment,” she told him, “weather-treated, too. I have been searching for something to suit your purpose. Try it. You have been at work?”
He took from the safe pocket of his jerkin the last thing he had brought her. If the trader had coveted what he had seen that morn, how much more he would have wanted this. It was a figure of a winged woman, her arms wide and up as if she were about to take to the skies in search of something there seen and greatly desired. For this was to the figures he had sold as a finished sword blade is to the first rough casting.
“You have seen—her?” Sharvana put out her hand as if to gather up the figure, but she did not quite touch it.
“As the rest,” he grated. “The dreams—then I awaken. And I find that, after a fashion, I can make the dream people. Wise Woman, if you were truly friend to me, you would give me from your stores that which would make me dream and never wake again!”
“That I cannot do, as you know. The virtue of my healing would then pour away, like running water, through my fingers. But you know not why you dream, or of what places?” Her voice became eager, as if she had some need to learn this.
“I know only that the land I see is not the Dales—at least the Dales as they now are. Can a man dream of the far past?”
“A man dreams of his own past. Why not, were the gift given, of a past beyond his own reckoning?”
“Gift!” Collard caught up that one word and made it an oath. “What gift—?”
She looked from him to the winged figure. “Collard, were you ever able to make such before?”
“You know not. But to see my hands so—I would trade all for a straight back and a face which would not afright a woman into screaming!”
“You have never let me foresee for you—”
“No! Nor shall I!” he burst out. “Who would want that if he were as I am now? As to why this—this dreaming and the aftermaking of my dream people has come upon me—well, that which I was handling in the smithy was no common metal. There must have been some dire ensorcelment in it. That trader never returned so we could ask about it.”
“It is my belief,” said Sharvana, “that it came from some stronghold of the Old Ones. They had their wars once, only the weapons used were no swords, nor spears, no crossbow darts, but greater. It could be that trader ventured into some old stronghold and brought forth the remains of such weapons.”
“What matter?” asked Collard.
“Only this—things which a man uses with emotion, fashions with his hands, carries with him, draw into themselves a kind of—I can only call it ‘life.’ This holds though many seasons may pass. And if that remnant of emotion, that life, is suddenly released—it could well pass in turn into one unwary, open—”
“I see.” Collard ran fingertips across the well-scrubbed surface of the table. “Then as I lay hurt I was so open—and there entered into me perhaps the memories of other men?”
She nodded eagerly. “Just so! Perhaps you see in dreams the Dales as they were before the coming of our people.”
“And what good is that to me?”
“I do not know. But use it, Collard, use it! For if a gift goes unused it withers and the world is the poorer for it.”