He had never gone in for reading romances, scientific or otherwise, but it began to seem more and more as if somehow, by some impossible process, he had fallen into the past. This house, and the old woman who took his knightly accoutrements as a matter of course, and the language, and the endless forest…But where was he? Not Denmark; they had never spoken this dialect there. Germany, France, Britain?…But if he was back in the Middle Ages, how account for the lion, or for this casual talk of living at the end of the world, on the boundaries of fairyland?

  He thrust speculation aside. A few direct questions might help. “Mother Gerd,” he said.

  “Aye, good sir. With any service wherewith I can aid ye, honor falls on this poor and humble house.” She stroked the big black cat, which watched the man with steady yellow eyes.

  “Can you tell me what year this is?”

  “Oh, now ye ask a strange question, good sir, and mayhap that wound on your poor head, which doubtless was won in dauntless battle with some monstrous troll or giant, has addled your memory; but in truth though I blush to say it, such reckonings have long slipped from me, and time is so uncanny a thing here in the wings of the world that—”

  “Never mind. What land is this? What kingdom?”

  “In sooth, fair knight, ye ask a question over which many scholars have cracked their heads and many warriors have cracked other men’s heads. Hee, hee! For long have these marches been disputed between the sons of men and the sons of the Middle World, and wars and great sorcerous contests have raged for long and long, until now I can but say that Faerie and the Holy Empire both claim it while neither holds real sway; and it may be that the Saracens assert some title as well, forasmuch as their Mahound is said to have been a spirit himself. Eh, Grimalkin?” She scratched the cat’s throat with a claw-like finger.

  “Well—” Holger clung to his patience with both hands. “Where can I find men—Christian men, let us say—who will help me? Where is the nearest king or duke or earl or whatever he is?”

  “There is a town not too many leagues away as men reckon distance,” she said, “yet in all truth I must say that space, like time, is wondrously affected here by the sorceries blowing out of Faerie, so that betimes it seems near to where ye are bound, and then again it shrinks into great and tedious distance beset with perils, and the very land and way ye go remain not the same—”

  Holger gave up. He knew when he was licked. Either this hag was a maundering idiot, or she was deliberately putting him off; in neither case could he hope to learn much.

  “Yet if ’tis advice ye want,” said Gerd suddenly, “though my own old head is oft woolly, as old heads are wont to be, and though Grimalkin here is dumb, yet ’tis possible counsel could be summoned for ye, and also that wherewith to allay your hurt and make ye whole again. Be not wroth if I proposed a little magic, for white it is—or gray, at least: were I a great witch, think ye I would dress in these rags and dwell in this hovel? Nay, ’twould be a palace all of gold for me, and servants on every hand would have welcomed ye. If by your leave I might summon a sprite, he could tell ye what ye would know better than I.”

  “Hm.” Holger raised his brows. All right, that settled it. The old creature was nuts. Best to humor her if he intended to spend the night here. “If you wish, mother, then go right ahead.”

  “Now I perceive that ye come from strange places indeed,” she said, “for most knights are forever calling on the Most High, though oft in great oaths that will cost them hellfire pangs, nor live they overly godly lives; yet must the Empire use what poor tools it can find in this base and wicked world. Such is not your manner, Sir Holger, and it makes me wonder if indeed ye are not a Faerie yourself. Yet shall we try this matter, though ’tis but fair to say that the sprites are uncanny beings and may give no answer, or one which means little.”

  She hobbled over to the chest and opened it. There was a curious tautness in her, and the cat never stopped watching Holger. He wondered what the hell she was up to, and there was a little crawling along his spine.

  Out of the chest came a tripod and a brazier, which Gerd set up and filled with powder from a flask. She took out also a wand, which seemed to be of ebony and ivory, and drew a circle on the dirt floor around the tripod, muttering and making passes. Outside it, she drew a larger circle, and stood between the two of them with her cat.

  “The inner device is to hold the demon, and the outer to stay what enchantments he might try to make, for they are often grumpy when summoned out of airiness so swift,” she explained. “I must ask ye, Sir Knight, to make no prayer nor sign of the cross, for that would cause him to leave at once, and in most foul humor too.” Her eyes glittered at him, and he wished he could read expression in that web of wrinkles.

  “Go ahead,” he said, a little thickly.

  She began dancing around the inner circle, and he caught something of her chant. “Amen, amen—” Yes, he knew what was coming next. “—malo a nos libera sed—” He didn’t know why it should raise his hackles. She finished the Latin and switched to a shrill language he did not recognize. When she touched her wand to the brazier, it began throwing out a heavy smoke that almost hid her but, curiously, did not reach beyond the outer circle. “O Beliya’al, Ba’al Zebub, Abaddon, Ashmadai!” Her voice was screaming now. “Samiel, Samiel, Samiel!”

  The smoke was—thickening? Holger started forward, muttering a curse. He could barely see Gerd in that dense, firelit haze, but it was as if something else hovered over the tripod, something gray and snaky, half-transparent— By Heaven, he saw red eyes, and the thing had almost the shape of a man!

  He heard it speak then, a whistling unhuman tone, and the old woman answered in the language he did not know. Ventriloquism, he told himself wildly, ventriloquism and his own mind, blurred with weariness, it was only that. Papillon snorted and stamped in his stall. Holger dropped a hand to his knife, the blade was hot. Did magic, he thought crazily, induce eddy currents?

  The thing in the smoke piped and snarled and writhed about. It talked with Gerd for what seemed a very long time before she finally raised her wand and went into another chant. Then the smoke began to thin. It seemed as if it were being sucked back into the brazier. Holger swore shakily and reached for the ale.

  When there was no more smoke, Gerd stepped out of the circle. Her face was completely blank, and the eyes that met his were hooded. But he saw that she was trembling. And the cat arched its back and spat at him.

  “Strange rede,” she said at last, tonelessly. “Strange rede the demon gave me.”

  “What—did he say?” whispered Holger.

  “He said—Samiel said ye were from very far away, so far that a man might travel till Judgment Day and not reach your home. Is’t not so?”

  “Yes,” said Holger slowly. “Yes, I think that’s true.”

  “And he said help for your plight, the means for returning ye whence ye came, lies within Faerie itself. There must ye go, Sir—Holger. Ye must ride into Faerie, and they will help ye.”

  Holger sat still, not knowing what to say.

  “Oh, ’tis not so bad as it sounds.” Gerd chuckled, returning to her old merriment. “If the truth must out, I am on not unfriendly terms with Duke Alfric, the nearest lord of Faerie. He is a strange sort, as all his breed are, but he’ll help ye if ye ask it. And I shall also furnish a guide, so ye can go there with all haste.”

  “And why?” asked Holger. “I can’t offer repayment.”

  “None is needed,” said Gerd airily. “A good deed may be remembered to my credit when I depart this world for another and, I fear, warmer clime; and in any case, it pleasures an old woman to help a handsome young man. Ah, there was a time, very long ago—! But enough of that. Let me dress your hurt, and then off to bed with ye.”

  Holger submitted to having his injury washed, and a poultice of herbs bound over it with an incantation. He was getting too sleepy to deny anything. But he remembered enough caution to refuse her offer of her own mattress, and to move in and sleep on the hay next to Papillon. No use taking chances. This was an odd house, to say the least.

  -3-

  Waking, he lay for some time in a half doze before remembering where he was. Then he sat up with a yell, sleep draining from him, and glared around.

  A stable, yes! A crude earthen shelter, smelling of mold and manure and hay, with the huge black horse looming over him and nuzzling him tenderly. He climbed to his feet, picking straws out of his clothes and squinting through the vague light.

  Sunshine poured in as Mother Gerd opened the door. “Ah, good morrow, fair sir,” she cried cheerily. “In truth ye slept the sleep of the just, and I’d not the heart to waken ye. But come now and see what waits.”

  That proved to be a bowl of porridge, with more bread and cheese and ale, and a hunk of half cooked bacon besides. Holger consumed it readily and, afterward, thought wistfully of coffee and a smoke. But wartime shortages had somewhat weaned him from those pleasant vices, and he settled for a vigorous washing from a trough outside the house.

  When he came back inside, a newcomer was waiting. Holger didn’t see him till a hand plucked at his trousers and a bass voice rumbled, “Here I be.” Then, looking down, he saw a gnarly, earth-brown man with jutting ears, an outsize nose, and a white beard, clad in jacket and breeches of brown cloth and wearing wooden clogs. The man was not quite three feet tall.

  “This is Hugi,” said Mother Gerd. “He’ll be your guide to Faerie.”

  “Ummm—Pleased to meet you,” said Holger. He shook hands, which seemed to astonish the dwarf. Hugi’s palm was hard and calloused.

  “Now be off with ye,” cried the old woman gaily, “for the sun is long up and ye’ve a long way to go through realms most parlous. Yet fear not, Sir Holger; Hugi is of the woods-dwellers and will see ye safe to Duke Alfric.” She handed him a cloth-wrapped bundle. “Herein have I laid some bread and meat and other refreshment, for well I know how impractical ye young paladins are, gallivanting about the world to rescue fair maidens with never a thought of taking along a bite of lunch. Ah, were I young again, ’twould not matter to me either, for what is an empty belly when all the world is green, but now I grow old and must think a bit.”

  “Thank you, my lady,” said Holger awkwardly.

  He turned to go, but Hugi pulled him back with surprising strength. “Wha’s the thocht here?” he growled. “Would ye gang oot in bare cloth? There’s a mickle long galoots oot in yon woods were glad to stick iron in a rich-clad knight.”

  “Oh—oh, yes.” A little mumbly. Holger began unwrapping his equipment. Mother Gerd tittered and went out the door.

  The medieval clothes fitted him so well that he began to wonder. He put on narrow breeches and a tunic; bound thongs about his calves while he slipped his padded coat on. The armor clashed heavily as he drew it over his head, and hung with unexpected weight from his shoulders. Now, let’s see—Obviously that broad belt went around the waist and carried his dagger, while the baldric supported his sword. Hugi handed him a quilted cap which he donned, followed by the conical iron helmet with its nose guard and crimson plume. Finally he buckled gilt spurs on his feet and a cloak at his throat and wondered whether he looked swashbuckling or merely silly.

  “Now away, Sir Holger, and good speed to ye,” said Mother Gerd as he came outside.

  “I—I will remember you in my prayers,” he said, thinking that would be an appropriate thanks in this land.

  “Aye—do so, Sir Holger!” She turned from him with disquieting shrill laughter and vanished into the house.

  Hugi gave his belt a hitch. “Come on, come on, ma knightly loon, let’s na stay the day,” he muttered. “Who fares to Faerie must ride a swift horse.”

  Holger mounted Papillon and gave Hugi a hand up. The little man hunkered down on the saddlebow and pointed eastward. “That way,” he said. “ ’Tis a two-three days’ ganging to Alfric’s cot, so off we glump.”

  The horse fell into motion, and the house was soon lost behind them. They rode under tall trees, in a still green light that was full of rustlings and bird calls. Holger sat listening for a while to the noises of the forest, and to the muted hoofbeats and the creak of leather and the jingle of iron. He remembered his injury, for the first time since waking. There was no feeling up there. The fantastic medication seemed really to work.

  But this whole thing was so fantastic that— He thrust the questions firmly back. One thing at a time. Somehow, unless he really was dreaming—and he doubted that more and more—he had fallen into a realm beyond his own time, perhaps beyond his whole world: a realm where they at least believed in witchcraft and fairies, and which certainly had one real enough dwarf. So take one thing at a time, go slow and easy.

  It was hard to do. Not only his own situation, but the thought of home, the wondering what had happened there, the terrible fear that he might be caught here forever, grabbed at him. Sharply he remembered the green roofs of Copenhagen, the moors and beaches of Jutland, the fair dales of the island and the little ancient towns nestled in them, the spired arrogance of New York, friends and loves and the million small things that were home. He wanted to run away, run crying till he found home again, till he was safe in the sanity he knew— No, none of that now! He could only keep going. If this duke in Faerie (whatever that might be) could help him, there was still hope. It was, he supposed, a good thing that he wasn’t too imaginative.

  He looked down at the hairy little fellow riding with him. “It is kind of you to do this,” he ventured. “I wish I could repay you somehow.”

  “Na, I do ’t in the witch’s service,” said Hugi. “No that I’m boond to her, see ye. ’Tis but that noo and betimes some o’ us woodsy folk help her, chop wood or fetch water or run errands like this. Then she does for us in return. I canna say I like th’ old bat much, but she’ll gi’ me mickle a stoup o’ her bra bricht witch ale for this.”

  “Why, she seemed—nice.”

  “Oh, ah, she’s with a smooth tongue when she wills, aye, aye.” Hugi chuckled morbidly. “ ’Twas e’en so she flattered young Sir Magnus when he came riding, many and many a year ago. But she deals in black arts. She’s no sa powerful, she can but summon a few small demons, but she’s tricksy.” The dwarf grinned. “I recall one time a peasant in the Westerdales did gi’ her offense, and she swore she’d blight his crops for him. But he was rich and had many broad acres, o’ which Mother Gerd, for all her sweating and striving, could blacken but a few. He cared naught; indeed, she killed off the thistles in that patch for him, and next year his corn flourished green there. She’s ever trying to win favor wi’ the Middle World lords, so that they’ll grant her more power, but so far there’s been little gain in ’t.”

  “Ummm—” that didn’t sound so good. “What happened to this Sir Magnus?” asked Holger.

  “Oh, at the last, crocodiles ate him, methinks.”

  They rode on for a while in silence. Finally Holger asked Hugi exactly what a woods dwarf did. Hugi said they lived in the forest—which, it seemed, was of enormous extent—off mushrooms and nuts and such, and had a working arrangement with the smaller animals like rabbits and squirrels. They had no inherent magical powers, such as the true Faerie dwellers did, but on the other hand they had no fear of iron or silver or holy symbols.

  “We’ll ha’ naught to do wi’ the wars in this uneasy land,” said the dwarf. “We’ll bide our ain lives, and let heaven, Hell, Earth, and the Middle World fight it oot as they will, and when yon proud lairds ha’ all laid each other oot, stiff and stark, we’ll still be here. A pox on ’em all!” Holger got the impression that the little people rather resented the snubs they got from men and Middle Worlders alike.

  He said slowly: “Now you’ve made me unsure. If Mother Gerd means no good, why should I follow her advice and go to Faerie?”

  “Why indeed?” shrugged Hugi. “Only mind, I didna say she was alway evil. If she had no grudge against ye, she might well ha’ decided to help ye in all truth. And Duke Alfric may help too, just for the fun in such a new riddle as ye seem to offer. Ye canna tell wha’ the Faerie folk will do next. They canna tell theirselves, nor care. They live in wildness, which is why they are o’ the dark Chaos side in this war.”

  That didn’t help a bit. Faerie was the only hope he had been given of returning home, and yet the whole thing might be a trap—though why anyone should bother trapping a penniless stranger like himself—

  “Hugi,” he asked, “would you willingly lead me to my death?”

  “Nay, seeing ye’re na foe o’ mine, indeed a good sort, no like some I could name.” The dwarf spat. “I dinna know what Mother Gerd had in mind, nor care I overly much. Sith ye want to gang Faeriewards, I’ll guide ye.”

  “And what happens then is no concern of yours, eh?”

  “Richt. We little uns learn to mind our ain affairs.”

  There was bitterness in the foghorn bass. Holger reflected that it might be turned to his own ends. He wasn’t altogether a stranger to people with overcompensated inferiority complexes. And surely Hugi could give more help than just guiding him into he knew not what.

  “I’m getting thirsty,” he said. “Shall we stop for a short snort?”

  “A short what?” Hugi wrinkled his leathery face.

  “Snort. You know—a drink.”

  “Snort—-drink—Haw, haw, haw!” Hugi slapped his thigh. “A guid twist, ’tis. A short snort. I maun remember ’t, to use i’ the woodsy burrows. A short snort!”

  “Well, how about it? I thought I heard a bottle clink in that package we got.”

  Hugi smacked his lips. They reined in and unrolled the witch’s bundle. Yes, a couple of clay flasks. Holger offered Hugi the first pull, which seemed to surprise the dwarf. But he took good advantage of it, his Adam’s apple fluttering blissfully under the snowy beard, then belched and handed the bottle over.

  He seemed puzzled when they rode on. “Ye’ve unco manners, Sir Holger.” he said. “Ye canna be a knight o’ the Empire, nor even a Saracen.”