He slashed at the plants with his knife. Except for the dagger belt, he was unarmed, having doffed his heavy mail on making camp. So had Carahue; but Holger lacked the Saracen’s gift of elegance, he was muddy and sweaty and rumpled. He didn’t even wear his own face any more. No wonder Alianora—Well, what did she matter to him? He ought to be glad if she found someone who’d take her off his hands. Goddam bulrushes!
He emerged on the water’s edge. Very still it lay under the black cliffs, the purple eastern sky where a moon and one star hung, the sullen red to the west. The surface was touched by that sunset light as if with blood, but in so thin a shimmer that he could sense the darkness below. The reeds shivered and rustled; Holger’s footsteps plashed startlingly loud. Frogs leaped from an old log that had drifted into the bank. He spread his lines out on this and started to bait the hooks with meat scraps.
The cold enveloped him, ate inward and made him shake. His fingers were clumsy, he must squint through the failing light to see a hook. And I could be on Avalon this minute, he thought. Or even, by hell, under Elf Hill with Meriven. Doesn’t that hillbilly swan wench know what she’s doing to me, parading around half naked? Satan take all women, anyway. They’ve got exactly one purpose in the world. Judas, but Meriven sure served that purpose.
His hand slipped. The hook went into his finger. He pulled it out with a blasphemous oath, drew his steel dagger and stabbed the log because he must stab something.
Laughter rang like the cataract. He flung his head around and glimpsed the white shape risen behind him. Then his wrists were pinned at his back. An arm clamped about his neck. He felt himself heaved backward and down. The lake closed over him.
19
THROTTLED, HE TRIED to kick, but the faintness was already upon him. His brain spun toward night. When he was let go, sheer reflex opened his mouth in a gasp.
He did not drown. He sat up. For a moment he couldn’t think who he was, or why or where. Awareness returned. But he needed minutes to see what lay about, for his eyes were not trained to such things.
He sat on white sand that reached beyond sight in graceful ripple marks. Here and there lay stones covered with a brilliant green overgrowth of algae, whose long filaments wavered upward. A luminosity filled the air, akin to the sourceless un-light in Faerie, but faintly greenish. Only… not air. For bubbles streamed from his mouth and nostrils, to rise like tiny polished moons. He saw a fish go by, from the wanness on his left to the perspectiveless distances on his right. He sprang to his feet, bounced, and drifted down with ghostly slowness. His body seemed to be without weight. The water flowed sensuously around each movement.
“Welcome, Sir ’Olger.” The voice was cold and sweet.
He turned. A woman poised lazily before him. She was nude and paper white, with delicate green traces of veins under the skin. Long hair floated about her shoulders, fine and green as the algal weeds. Her face was broad and flat-nosed, with yellow eyes and a heavy sensuous mouth. Neck, torso, limbs, and hands were by contrast not quite human in their slenderness. Holger had never seen such grace as was hers, save in eels.
“Who, who, who?” he choked.
“Nay, now,” she laughed, “you are no owl, but a highborn knight. Welcome, I say.” She edged closer with a kick. He saw her feet were mostly toe, and webbed. Lips and nails were pale green. But the sight was not horrible. On the contrary! Holger had to remind himself he was in serious trouble.
“Forgive my impetuous invitation.” Bubbles swarmed bright from her mouth. Some clustered like jewels in her tresses. “I must needs seize the fleeting moment when you had no iron and were in an unblessed mood. Truly, no harm was meant you.”
“Where the devil am I?” he exploded.
“Beneath the lake where I, its nixie, have dwelt these many lonely centuries.” She took his hands. Her own were soft and cool, with an underlying sense of the strength that had captured him. “Fear not. My spell guards you from drowning.”