Stardust

Tristran and the driver unhitched the horses, and roped them to the oak branch. Then the two men pushed, and the star; four horses pulled, and together they dragged the branch to the side of the track. Tristran said a silent thank you to the oak tree whose branch had fallen, to the copper beech and to Pan of the forests, and then he asked the driver if he would give him a ride through the forest.

“I do not take passengers,” said the driver, rubbing his bearded chin.

“Of course,” said Tristran. “But without me you would still be stuck here. Surely Providence sent you to me, just as Providence sent me to you. I will not take you out of your path, and there may again come a time when you are glad of another pair of hands.”

The coach driver looked Tristran over from his head to his feet. Then he reached into the velvet bag that hung from his belt, and removed a handful of square red granite tiles.

“Pick one,” he said to Tristran.

Tristran picked a stone tile, and showed the symbol carved upon it to the man. “Hmm,” was all the driver said. “Now pick another.” Tristran did so. “And another.” The man rubbed his chin once more. “Yes, you can come with me,” he said. “The runes seem certain of that. Although there will be danger. But perhaps there will be more fallen branches to move. You can sit up front, if you wish, on the driver’s seat beside me, and keep me company.”

It was a peculiar thing, observed Tristran as he climbed up into the driver’s seat, but the first time he had glanced into the interior of the coach he had fancied that he saw five pale gentlemen, all in grey, staring sadly out at him. But the next time he had looked inside, nobody had been there at all.

The carriage rattled and pounded over the grassy track beneath a golden-green canopy of leaves. Tristran worried about the star. She might be ill-tempered, he thought, but it was with a certain amount of justification, after all. He hoped that she could stay out of trouble until he caught up with her.

It was sometimes said that the grey-and-black mountain range which ran like a spine north to south down that part of Faerie had once been a giant, who grew so huge and so heavy that, one day, worn out from the sheer effort of moving and living, he had stretched out on the plain and fallen into a sleep so profound that centuries passed between heartbeats. This would have been a long time ago, if it ever happened, in the First Age of the world, when all was stone and fire, water and wind, and there were few left alive to put the lie to it if it was not true. Still, true or not, they called the four great mountains of the range Mount Head, Mount Shoulder, Mount Belly and Mount Knees, and the foothills to the south were known as the Feet. There were passes through the mountains, one between the head and the shoulders, where the neck would have been, and one immediately to the south of Mount Belly.

They were wild mountains, inhabited by wild creatures: slate-colored trolls, hairy wild-men, strayed wodwos, mountain goats and mining gnomes, hermits and exiles and the occasional peak-witch. This was not one of the really high mountain ranges of Faerie, such as Mount Huon, on the top of which is the Stormhold. But it was a hard range for lone travelers to cross nonetheless.

The witch-queen had crossed the pass south of Mount Belly in a couple of days, and now waited at the opening of the pass. Her goats were tethered to a thorn bush, which they chewed without enthusiasm. She sat on the side of the unhitched chariot and sharpened her knives with a whetstone.

The knives were old things: the hilts were made of bone, while the blades were chipped, volcanic glass, black as jet, with white snowflake-shapes frozen forever into the obsidian. There were two knives: the smaller, a hatchet-bladed cleaver, heavy and hard, for cutting through the rib cage, for jointing and segmenting; the other a long, daggerlike blade, for cutting out the heart. When the knives were so sharp that she could have drawn either blade across your throat, and you would never have felt more than the touch of the lightest hair, as the spreading warmth of your life’s blood made a quiet escape, the witch-queen put them away and commenced her preparations.

She walked over to the goats and whispered a word of power to each of them.

Where the goats had been stood a man with a white chin-beard, and a boyish, dull-eyed young woman. They said nothing.

She crouched beside her chariot, and whispered several words to it. The chariot did nothing, and the witch-woman stamped her foot on the rock.