“Your ale is marvelous,” said Holger in haste. “I’d not thought to find any so good, unless you—” He meant to say, “unless your local brewery has escaped all fame,” but she interrupted him with a sly laugh.
“Ah, good Sir Holger, for sure I am ’tis a knight ye must be, if not of yet higher condition, ye’re a man of wit and perceiving, who must see through the poor old woman’s little tricks on the instant. Yet though most of your order do frown on such cantrips and call ’em devices of the Devil, though in truth ’tis no different in principle from the wonder-working relics of some saint, that do their miracles alike for Christians or paynim, still must ye be aware how many here in this marchland do traffic in such minor magics, as much for their own protection against the Middle World powers as for comfort and gain, and ye can understand in your mercy ’twould scarce be justice to burn a poor old goodwife for witching up a bit of beer to warm her bones of winter nights when there be such many and powerful sorcerers, open traffickers in the black arts, who go unpunished and—“
So you’re a witch? thought Holger. That I’ve got to see. What did she think she was putting over on him, anyway? What kind of build-up was this?
He let her ramble on while he puzzled over the language. It was a strange tongue, hard and clangorous in his own mouth, an archaic French with a lot of Germanic words mixed in, one that he might have been able to unravel slowly in a book but could surely never have spoken as if born to it. Somehow the transition to—wherever this was—had equipped him with the local dialect.
He had never gone in for reading romances, scientific or otherwise, but more and more he was being forced to assume that by some impossible process he had been thrown into the past. This house, and the carline who took his knightly accouterments as a matter of course, and the language, and the endless forest… But where was he? They had never spoken this way in Scandinavia. Germany, France, Britain?… But if he was back in the Dark Ages, how account for the lion, or for this casual mention of living on the boundaries of fairyland?
He thrust speculation aside. A few direct questions might help. “Mother Gerd,” he said.
“Aye, good sir. With any service wherewith I can aid ye, honor falls on this humble house, so name your desire and within the narrow limits of my skill all shall be as ye wish.” She stroked the black cat, which continued to watch the man.
“Can you tell me what year this is?”
“Oh, now ye ask a strange question, good sir, and mayhap that wound on your poor head, which doubtless was won in undaunted battle against some monstrous troll or giant, has addled messire’s memory; but in truth, though I blush for the admission, such reckonings have long slipped from me, the more so when time is often an uncanny thing here in the wings of the world since—“
“Never mind. What land is this? What kingdom?”
“In sooth, fair knight, ye ask a question over which many scholars have cracked their heads and many warriors have cracked each other’s heads. Hee, hee! For long have these marches been in dispute between the sons of men and the folk of the Middle World, and wars and great sorcerous contests have raged, until now I can but say that Faerie and the Holy Empire both claim it, while neither holds real sway, albeit the human claim seems a trifle firmer in that our race remains in actual settlement; and mayhap the Saracens could assert some title as well, forasmuch as their Mahound is said to have been an evil spirit himself, or so the Christians claim. Eh, Grimalkin?” She tickled the cat’s throat.
“Well—” Holger clung to his patience with both hands. “Where can I find men… Christian men, let’s say… who will help me? Where is the nearest king or duke or earl or whatever he is?”
“There is a town not too many leagues away as men reckon distance,” she said, “yet in truth I must warn that space, like time, is wondrously affected here by the sorceries blowing out of Faerie, so that often the place where you are bound seems near, and then again dwindles into vast and tedious distances beset with perils, and the very land and way ye go remain not the same—”