“I thought… I hoped I might find you awake,” the scholar said. Breath smoked ragged with each word. “I am pushing matters, true, but well, every moment’s delay is a moment additional before I can seek out a, a certain lady andCould we talk, my dear?”
“Of course, old friend.” Lona rose. “Let me put this stuff aside and clean my hands, then I’ll fetch us a bite of food andBut what do you want?”
FAIRY GOLD
51
“Your property,” said Jans. “I can give you an excellent price.”
Again by herself, for her visitor had staggered off to his bed, Lona stood in her home and looked down at the coin. It covered her hand; its weight felt like the weight of the world; strange glimmers and glistens rippled across the profile upon it. Silence pressed inward. Wicks guttered low.
So, she thought, now she had sold everything. Jans would not force her to leave unduly fast, but leave she must. Why had she done itand in such haste, too?
Well, four hundred aureates was no mean sum of cash. No longer was she bound to the shop which had bound her father to itself. She could fare elsewhere, to opportunities in Croy, for example; or, of course, this was a dowry which could buy her a desirable match. Yes, a good, steady younger son of a nobleman or merchant, who would make cautious investments and
“And hell take him!” she screamed, grabbed the coin to her, and fled.
Arvel tried for a long while to sleep. Finally he lost patience, dressed in the dark, and fumbled his way downstairs. Lamps still burned along the street, but their glow was pale underneath a sinking moon and lightening sky, pale as the last stars. Dew shimmered on cobbles. Shadows made mysterious the carvings
52
The Unicorn Trade
upon timbers, the arcades and alleys around him.
He would go to the farmers’ market, he decided, break his fast, and search for a horse. When that was done, the shops would be open wherein he could obtain the rest of his equipage. By noon he could be on the road to Croy and his destiny. The prospect was oddly desolate.
However, no doubt he would meet another girl somewhere, and
A small, sturdy figure rounded a corner, . stopped for an instant, and sped toward him. “Oh, Arvel!” Echoes gave back Lena’s cry, over and over. Light went liquid across the disc she carried. “See what I have for you! Our passage to the New Lands!”
“Butbut how in creation did you get hold of that?” he called. Bewilderment rocked him. “And I thought youyou and I”
“I’ve sold out!” she jubilated as she ran. “We can go!”
She caromed against him, and he wasted no further time upon thought.
When they came up for air, he mumbled, ‘JI already have the price of our migration, dear darling. But that you should offer me this, out of your love, why, that’s worth more than, than all the rest of the world, and heaven thrown in.”
She crowed for joy and nestled close. Again he gathered her to him. In her left hand, behind his shoulder, she gripped the fairy gold. The sun came over a rooftop, and smote. Suddenly
FAIRY GOLD
53
she held nothing. A few dead leaves blew away upon the dawn breeze, with a sound like dry laughter.
Poul Anderson
BALLADE OF AN ARTIFICIAL SATELLITE
Thence they sailed far to the southward along the land, and came to a ness; the land lay upon the right; there were long and sandy strands. They rowed to land, and found there upon the ness the keel of a ship, and called the place Keelness, and the strands they called Wonderstrands for it took long to sail by them.
Thorfinn Karlsefni’s voyage to Vinland, as related in the saga of Erik the Red
One inland summer I walked through rye,
a wind at my heels that smelled of rain
and harried white clouds through a whistling
sky where the great sun stalked and shook his
mane and roared so brightly across the grain
54
ARTIFICIAL SATELLITE 55
it burned and shimmered like alien sands.