Part Two
Chapter 12
PASTORAL
M onwyrt had almost forgotten.
He ran the untracked mountainsides with abandon, drank of the clean bubbling freshets, and slept the sweet chaste slumber that only physical fatigue combined with an unburdened concience can allow. There was no longer a tether, and he made the most of it. Without having to return to any pre-arranged point, he had followed the slopes and valleys capriciously for many, many hand-days: exploring every new crevice and rivulet; every glen, clearing and thicket, every cliff and crag. He mischievously rousted the grunddwellans out of their holes and sent them scampering, he chirped merrily in amateurish imitation of the treowdwellan's morning tirades. When he tired of cold forage he practiced his thriddahype call, struck a fire and made camp a few days, eating his fill and drying some meat in the smoke for later on.
That was luxury: cooked meat in the open air; and Monwyrt indulged himself without guilt. He had never heard of any hunter doing such a thing - the kill always went to the mines - but then, he was not a hunter any more, he was a morwegiestranweard.
And what a farce that was! What a saelig conceit! The few apprentice loremasters he had known (sallow, fragile, nervous thriddaglofs all!) had filled him with disgust. They served no constructive purpose, all they did was listen and talk, but mostly listen - and to what? Dry, dusty reminiscences of days long dead, by decrepit old Traeppedelferes soon to be dead themselves. The odd lot in the draw was the Giestranweard, though - Monwyrt could not, for the life of him, figure out how a hunter like Snecchen could ever wind up being the Giestranweard. It was this mystery, as much as anything, which had finally brought him to become a morwegiestranweard. At least, he thought, it wasn't unprecedented.
But that mystery, along with the others, had almost instantly flown out of his head the moment he emerged from the caves. He ran like a possessed morwetraeppe until he lost the trails, and since that moment his life had been pure fun.
He followed the slopes, and climbed up and up, and, after being out from the mines a very long time, emerged onto an untrod pass, and gazed out on a sight which he had not even dreamed existed.
The end of the mountains.
Far off, in a yellow haze beyond the rapidly failing foothills, extending on out of eyesight, lay a broad plain. The mountains marched on toward the dusk sun in a wide arc bounding one side of the vast plain, but from the pass Monwyrt could not see the mountains off to the dawn side, and in that direction, the same as straight in front of him, the plain stretched on forever.
Descending the far side of the pass, toward the foothills, Monwyrt soon lost sight of the plain behind the lesser peaks and mounds before him. But the other extension of the mountains (which he knew was in the direction of the mines) came into view, and far on the edge of sight a great stream issued from some sudden chasm in the line of jagged teeth. He continued on, always descending, the mountain rearing ever higher on the one hand, the foothills melting into the plain on the other, until after another journey of some hand-days Monwyrt found himself on the edge of the plain and at the base of a very steep slope, almost a cliff, which towered right up to the top of the mountain. He soon saw evidence of an ancient trail, and following it into a relatively narrow strip of forest at the base of the mountain, discovered with a shock that he had arrived at the Low Entrance of the Traeppedelferean mines.
He had circled the mountains! or part of them, anyway. There was no mistaking the wide, straight road now crossing his path, issuing from the Low Entrance and disappearing in the distance of the sloping plain. The plain was known to all those who traveled across it to the Great Bazaar every season, but Monwyrt had never seen it, and no Traeppedelfere had ever before come to it from over the mountains. Monwyrt suddenly remembered that he, as a morwegiestranweard, was to report back with any discoveries of significance.
He had almost forgotten.
Since he was right there at the caves, it seemed quite appropriate to enter, seek out the Giestranweard, and fulfill part of his (to him) frivolous duty.
Snecchen was anxious.
It had been an agonizingly long time since Monwyrt had been sent out, the better part of a season, and she feared that he had proved after all to be mortal - that is, susceptible to drygeslaep - and was withering away on some remote slope somewhere if he was not long dead already.
Not that she necessarily mourned his loss, except to the extent that it thwarted her efforts toward enlightenment. On the contrary, in the brief time she had detained him after his conversion to morwegiestranweard-hood, it had become obvious that she and Monwyrt were basically incompatible on many fronts.
She had been stymied at every attempt to interest him in lore. At the end of one particularly long-winded exposition of hers, for example, she flew into an absolute rage when Monwyrt, obviously daydreaming, asked a question about something so far off the topic that she couldn't believe her ears. When he tried to explain - something she had said early on in the spiel had set him to thinking, and it was this train of thought that had led him to his question (after undergoing uncounted permutations), so the question really was relevent after all - she went straight off her cork, threatening him with physical violence if he didn't immediately leave. This threat, which of course was patently idle, elicited an unfortunate chuckle from Monwyrt, who did however see the wisdom in abandoning her to her wrath for the time being. He could hear her venting her gleet from far up the corridors.
She knew she was wedded to Monwyrt if she was to pursue her plan, though; so she eventually reined in her temper, bolstered her resolution, and gave it another go, with less irritating, but no more fruitful, results.
It was important that she not let Monwyrt know that she was looking for a Waeccelang. In the first place she herself couldn't be sure there was one to be found. And in the second place she wanted a first-hand and candid report, not merely some sycophantic regurgitation of something he heard before. This strategy did nothing to unravel Monwyrt's confusion, though. Throughout his indoctrination he became more and more convinced that his mission was some sort of fool's errand which he could exploit to his walkabout heart's content.
Snecchen soon tired of her frustrating attempts to bring Monwyrt around to the spiritual side of things and, throwing up her hands, let him go. Her feeling was that if she was going to expect the impossible from him anyway, what's the difference, let him go. And in fact, although she hadn't realized it, Monwyrt had accidentally achieved more in bringing her to his relaxed and laissez-faire approach to life than she had in instilling a sense of heritage and respect in him. So, out he went, to the great relief of both.
But if Monwyrt had meantime forgotten his errand, Snecchen certainly had not. Long past the time when any other hunter would have been given up as dead she fretted and paced, anxiously expecting his return. The more time that went by, the more she fervently believed his arrival was imminent, and the true morwegiestranweards became alarmed at her behavior. She was sending them out on the slopes to watch for Monwyrt, which they were ill-equipped to bear, until they finally found the gumption to complain to the Yldras. The Yldras uncharacteristically came up with a seemingly wise and somewhat sacrificing solution: they temporarily assigned several morwetraeppes to the Giestranweard, and the morwegiestranweards were delivered from their plight. The poor morwetraeppes were instructed privately, however, that they should not neglect their duties as morwetraeppes, regardless of what the Giestranweard told them to do, so they were saddled with added chores. They were quick to sieze on this excuse when some hunters noticed their inefficiency, and the hunters in turn mentioned this slacking off in explanation of their missed quotas. The cooks were soon complaining that the hunters weren't supplying them properly when some maciantol or other would grumble about his meat and then carry the rumor to his fellows at the forges: and before anyone knew what had happened, the whole mountain was in a panic about the threat of starvation!
Haegtesse, who always knew everything that went on in the caves, and this time was in a position to know why, and was furthermore well known to have been in close and deep consultation with the Giestranweard, came to Snecchen's aid in a devious, appropriate and effective way. She began to mention to a few sliefenumens, offhand, how she had noticed a subtle change in the Giestranweard's appearance: if she wasn't actually getting younger, it certainly looked like she was. In her occasional dealings with the Yldras, Haegtesse would hint at the Giestranweard's rumored ability to enchant her pupils into drygeslaep at will, and just as easily release them from the spell. To petitioning couples, she would add a blessing that the Giestranweard may wish them unending rapture. Thus it came about that, at the same time the entire tribe was cursing Snecchen aloud for the impending (but imaginary) famine, they were whispering privately among themselves about her impressive and mysterious powers. The combination had the effect of raising the title of Giestranweard to unprecedented prestige, until the Yldras had no choice but to let her carry on her eccentric search for the obviously long-gone Monwyrt.
It was just as Snecchen was about to become finally and completely unglued, and the Traeppedelfere were practically groveling at her feet in awe and fear, when Monwyrt burst upon the scene, unannounced. No one, naturally, was looking for him to approach from the Low Entrance. This created a sensation in the caves, and the reputation of the Giestranweard, however undeserved, was established and secured for all time. Monwyrt himself became something of a celebrity, albeit a reluctant one; and when Snecchen released the morwetraeppes from her service, there suddenly seemed to be an abundance of meat for table, and plenty for all, although in reality nothing had changed a trice.
Snecchen was not permitted to enjoy this bounty of good fortune, however, without some disappointment. When Monwyrt triumphantly told her that he had circled the mountains and come in at the Low Entrance, and a moment had passed to allow her to grasp that that was why the morwetraeppes had not seen him coming, and not only that, but that Monwyrt had not even been in the Haunted Lands all this time as she had thought - well, a storm swelled up between her ears, and lightning flashed in her eyes, and she loosed a deluge of epithets on Monwyrt which would have embarassed a maciantol.
Monwyrt felt very much the same way he had felt upon finishing his first run as a morwetraeppe and being told he had flummoxed it. He was considerably deflated. The seasons he had laid by had made him wise, though, and he had soon shelved this excoriation of Snecchen's alongside those other quaint legends she found so endearing, in the dusty stacks of his insignificant past.
His apparent lack of proper appreciation for her bitter scolding filled Snecchen with indignation, as if she needed more, and she came this close to dismissing him back to the hunters, if they would have him, and forgetting the whole plan like a bad dream. Monwyrt, having recently enjoyed the freedom available to him only as a morwegiestranweard, perhaps understood how close he was to losing that privelege, and he entreated her to forgive him (although he was not exactly sure how he had erred). Snecchen softened a little, her quest came back to her, and she relented. Monwyrt was to secretly return(!) to the Haunted Lands, and report back to her anything he might discover there. The wounds were healed, if scarring, but the Giestranweard's plan was intact, and the prodigal morwegiestranweard was loosed to the forest again.
The Haunted Lands was an actual physical area, of course, even if its boundary was rather vague: usually defined amongst the Traeppedelferes with terms of absolutely delectible indeterminacy. But more than that, to the Traeppedelfere the Haunted Lands represented the embodiment of the state of drygeslaep. The bull handed down forbidding entry was for the most part utterly unnecessary: by the time the hunters or morwetraeppes had been that long out of the mines, they would already have succombed, anyway.
Monwyrt did not know, then, just when he entered the Haunted Lands or, continuing on, just when he may have exited them again, if at all. So it was in a continual state of uncertainty that he explored the region. There was no marked difference in vegetation, or wildlife, or climate, or pitch and roll of the mountains that he could find, to indicate the crossing over into a more sinister and mysterious netherland. One step exactly flowed after its predecessor, and he might have been strolling straight down the slope from the high entrance itself, for all he could tell by looking round him. All this homogeneity of scenery notwithstanding, though, Monwyrt thoroughly enjoyed his stay.
He had set up a base camp near a small stream in one of the wider valleys he had found. He might spend days at a time here, or only moments, between quick jaunts up the slopes on either side, or down the valley. On the way back from one of these jaunts, a leisurely trot up to look over the rim of the ridge at what lay beyond (more forest), he had playfully chased a grunddwellan out of its hole with a stick. When the chattering creature emerged, instead of running off in terror like he expected (and hoped; it was quite comical to watch), the bugger looked up at him, directly into his eyes without a trace of fear, and sat there, staring. Immediately he was reminded of his first run again, when he had tripped over a grunddwellan in the path. This could not possibly be the same creature - that one had been old then and would be an impossible age now - but the look they exchanged was just the same as it had been then. After a few moments, it simply turned and went back down its hole.
Monwyrt's thriddahype call worked as well in the Haunted Lands as anywhere else, and he soon had smoked and dried enough meat to last longer than he would care to carry it. His base camp was soon well stocked with other provisions, too, from his foraging and gathering expeditions. The same grunddwellan, or one very like it, found his camp, and he shared bits of coecil, while it lasted, then pieces of weodthuf with the little begger. It would take one mouthful of bits of food, crammed in as tight as tight, and run off to its hole in a rush. Monwyrt laughed, and upbraided himself for being so mean as to poke the beasts out of their homes with sticks.
A stiff, steady, cool breeze was blowing one morning, a breeze which seemed to scour the very air and purify everything. The begger was in camp again, and Monwyrt was feeding it and roaring with laughter from watching it stuff bits of weodthuf into its throat-pouch, using its thick tail as a ram-rod. Suddenly, it sniffed the air and scampered off, even though it had not yet got its full load. Monwyrt licked the roof of his mouth and instantly knew what the grunddwellan had scented: oxagrete.
Monwyrt turned to look for the beast - the scent was faint - and realized with horror that it had walked up behind him from downwind, and was now only a few paces away! He jumped to his feet and the beast snorted suspiciously, glaring at him. Somehow he had the presence of mind to remember the dried thriddahype meat, and he hurriedly tossed it all to the monster, nervously talking without thinking.
"Here, try this, you like, thriddahype! thriddahype! Um, smell it, it thriddahype meat, you eat thriddahype, I know," and so on. The oxagrete looked at the dried strips dubiously, but could not mistake the smell of them even masked in smoke. It picked up a huge mouthful of the strips along with a fair chunk of turf and began eating. "That right, thriddahype! Um, very chewy, very chewy and tough, but good, um? There, more on ground, eat, then go away, no more thriddahype today, no, no more," Monwyrt was deleriously looking around, for a place to hide, for some avenue of escape. The oxagrete placidly, patiently chewed the dried thriddahype, picked up what was left on the ground, and belaboredly started chewing that. "Um, eat that, no more, no more, go away, not come back, go away..." He spied a large-boled sceadutreow not too far away, and made a mad dash for it, thinking perhaps he could keep it between himself and the inevitible charge of the beast.
He ducked behind it, panting, heart racing, and listened... After an endless couple of moments he peeked around the bole. He was now crosswind from the brute, not downwind, but it was better than upwind. Even so, when the oxagrete finished chewing the last of the dried thriddahype, it turned and looked directly at him with terrifying deliberation - then solemnly turned the rest of the way around and walked away in the direction it had come!
"Well, not too graceful, perhaps, but effective; and, taken on the whole, quite well done, too! Nice work, my friend! Yes, nice work, indeed!"
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