Isle of Glass by Judith Tarr

it.”
    Jehan held his cloak out of his reach. “Tomorrow,” he
repeated, “we ride like the wrath of God. Tonight we rest.”
    The wide eyes scarcely knew him. “I see, Jehan. I see .”
    “I know you do. But you’re not leaving tonight. Go to bed
now, Brother Alf. Sleep.”
    The priest backed away from them, crossing himself,
muttering a prayer. He remembered tales, demons in monks’ guise, servants of
the Devil, elf-creatures who snatched men’s souls and fled away before the
sunrise. Even solidly human Jehan alarmed him: soul-snatched already, maybe, or
a changeling mocking man’s shape.
    They signed themselves properly and prayed before they went
to bed, Latin, a murmur of holy names. He was not comforted. They slept to all
appearances as men slept. He knew; he watched them.
    The novice did not move all night. The other, the pale one
with the face like an elf-lord, dreamed nightlong, murmuring and tossing. But
Wulfric could not understand his words, save that some of them were Latin and
some might have been names: Morwin, Alun,
Gwydion ; and often, that name he seemed to hate. Rhydderch.
    When they roused before dawn, he had their horses ready.
They acted human enough; stumbling, blear-eyed, yawning and stretching and
drawing water to wash in though they had bathed all over only the night before.
They helped with breakfast, and ate hungrily, even Alf, who looked pale and
ill.
    Nor did they vanish at cockcrow. In fact it was closer to
sunrise when they left, with a blessing from the monk and a wave from the
novice. Well before they were out of sight, the priest had turned his back on
their strangeness and gone to his work.

9
    Alf rode now for three kingdoms. Jehan had caught his
urgency, but the old gelding, for all its valiant heart, could not sustain the
pace they set. In a village with a name Jehan never knew, Alf exchanged the
struggling beast for a rawboned rake of a horse with iron lungs and a startling
gift of speed—a transaction that smacked of witchery. But it all smacked of
witchery, that wild ride from the borders of Bowland, errand-riding for the
Elvenking.
    o0o
    Three days past their guesting in Wulfric’s house, they
paused at the summit of a hill. Fara snorted, scarcely winded by the long
climb, and tossed her proud head. Almost absently Alf quieted her.
    This was a brutal country, empty even of the curlew’s cry: a
tumbled, trackless waste, where only armies would be mad enough to go. An army
in rebellion and an army to break the rebellion—hunter and hunted pursued and
fled under winter’s shadow.
    Rumor told of a hidden stronghold, a fortress looming over a
dark lake somewhere among the fells; the rebels sought it or fought in it or
had been driven out of it, always with the King’s troops pressing close behind
them. Fifty on either side, people had whispered in the last village, no more;
or Richard had a hundred, the enemy twice that; or the rebels fought with a
staggering few against the King’s full might.
    Truth trod a narrow path through all the tales. The rebels
had taken and held the town of Ellesmere, and the King had laid siege to them
there; driven forth, they had fled away southward, pursued by four hundred of
Richard’s men.
    Neither force could have gone far, for this was no land to
feed an army. The enemy were starved and desperate, ready to turn at bay, the
King eager to bring the chase to its end.
    Alf gazed over the sweep and tumble of the moor, casting his
other-sight ahead even of his keen eyes. "They’re close now,” he said: “to
us, and to each other.”
    Jehan’s nostrils flared, scenting battle. “Do you think
they’ll fight before we get to them?”
    “More likely we’ll arrive in the middle of it.”
    The novice loosed a great shout. " Out! Out !”
    The echoes rolled back upon him in hollow Saxon. Out!
Out! Out! Out ! He laughed and sent his mount careening down the steep
slope.
    Before he reached the bottom, Fara had passed him, bearing
Alf as its