by Larry Niven
He took another shallow breath. Too slow. Shalindra nerved herself to touch his hand. Icy, and his lips were blue. She shook his shoulder; his head lolled. After an eternity he breathed again.
She could see no hurt, yet he would not wake. In wintertime she’d seen folk stumbling with cold, wits slowed enough that they eventually lay down to sleep forever. She shook him again. No response.
Panicked, she looked about. This was taking valuable time. In earlier days she could have warmed him with spells, wakened him, set his blood moving, but she no longer carried charms now that magic was fading. She could abandon him—no. Evil would spring from such a deed. She sighed.
She needed strong muscles. Not far off was Gilm’s cottage. The carpenter and his grown son could help carry the stranger home. She ran and beat on the door.
Gilm swung it open. He grumbled about the stiffness in his back and hands, but he and his son came. They lifted the man as if he were a kitten.
Shalindra went ahead to make things ready. She must light a fire, gather blankets, brew tea, anything to restore warmth.
Up the ramp to the College, where merfolk formerly squelched from the water, bearing fish and sunken treasures; she spared scarcely a glance for the dragons that flanked the gate. Once they had gleamed with iridescent scales: now legs, tail, and trunk were dull gray. They had almost turned to stone. One bent its head as she passed.
The library was the only building that had not slumped to rubble. Here Shalindra and Llangru made their home, amid moldering books no one else could read.
She pushed open the door—its rusting hinges creaked—and stopped, surprised. Already fire blazed, a kettle steamed, and the long copper tub gleamed on the hearth. Llangru was holding blankets near the heat. He looked up when he saw her. His hands twitched, and the blankets tumbled.
His eyes sought the outlander. Strange eyes, they were, gray-blue bordered with paleness. They were often dreamy, but at this moment seemed intent. “I watched you find him, Mother,” the boy said. “I knew you’d want warmth. Is he badly hurt?”
Shalindra frowned, puzzled, but voiced no question as Gilm and his son shuffled through the door. “Where you want him, lady?” Gilm growled.
“Over there, near the fire.”
They set the man down and backed away, casting fearful glances at the shadows. “It’s a cruel cold day for m’ hands,” Gilm hinted.
“Thank you for your help,” said Shalindra. The two left as quickly as they could. She bent over the victim; he still breathed shallowly. “Help me strip him,” she ordered Llangru, then bit her lip as the boy fumbled at fastenings. Keep silence, it’s not his fault he was born that way. “Better yet, fetch more blankets.”
It was difficult for a frail woman to remove his clothing—he lay a dead weight—but at last she heaped the sodden garments on the floor. Where sun had not seared him, his skin gleamed white. She had not seen an unclad man since Zaerrui died—and that was ten years gone, while she was pregnant with Llangru.
This man was of ordinary height, shorter by far than Zaerrui, but he would weigh as much or more: powerful muscles bulged arms, shoulders, and thighs. His chest was broad. He must be used to heavy work. Square-jawed and blunt-nosed, his features were somewhat rugged. In the manner of the Southerners, he wore his brown hair short, and was accustomed to shave his beard, though several days’ worth of stubble showed.
“Help me lift him,” Shalindra told Llangru. Mother and son strained, and finally eased the stranger into the steaming tub. “More hot water.”
First came shivering, then awareness returned. The man opened gray eyes. She answered his unspoken question: “You are in the town of Tyreen, in the old College library where I make my home. I found you on the beach, half-dead. Who are you, and whence from?”
The cracked lips parted. She leaned forward to catch the words; “I am Brandek. I was on a ship, trying to—teach men—” He swallowed. Yes, his accent was Southern. In the years before the pass closed, folk from Aeth had often visited the College to confer with Zaerrui.
“Never mind talking,” Shalindra said. She helped him from the tub, wrapped him in warm blankets, and fed him hot tea. “You can tell us all about it later.”
He slipped into slumber. Shalindra thought she might leave Llangru on watch, and go back to the beach, but suddenly Gilm knocked on the door.
The old carpenter grinned, held out the sea-unicorn horn, and said, “See what I found on the strand, lady. It’s yours in trade for a bit of magic.”
“Thank you,” Shalindra said. “What do you wish?”
He spread knotted fingers. “It’s m’ hands and back, they pain me sore. Make the hurt go away, an’ I’ll give ye this pretty thing.”
Shalindra held the horn. White, slender, spiral, it was heavy with mana. Any fool could see that. “Very well,” she said, “sit down.”
The healing spell would not last, and Gilm would complain he had been cheated, if she did not add something special. For a few moments she admired the flawless beauty of the horn, before picking up a rasp. She felt almost physical anguish as she scraped. There, that much should suffice. She measured out the usual herbs and powdered pearl, and mixed the medicine with wine. Zaerrui’s wine. She whispered the activating spell and handed Gilm the goblet. “Here, drink. This will help for a time.” She watched him gulp; she’d brewed it bitter.
After the carpenter left she picked up what remained of the horn, a great length, but flawed, now. She set it in the corner, against a stack of musty books. It no longer held power to help Llangru. Perhaps nothing did.
She looked down at Brandek. The fault, stranger, is yours. There you lie. Were you worth it?
The moon had swung through two full cycles when Brandek returned to Shalindra’s home. First, as propriety required, he had moved elsewhere after he could walk again. The household of Kiernon the blacksmith had been glad to take him in for the sake of hearing about the world beyond Tyreen and its hinterland; no outlander had crossed these ever-narrowing horizons for years. The place was soon beswarmed by people just as eager for news. His vigor regained, Brandek set about earning his keep. When he learned how lacking in huntsman’s skills they were hereabouts, though big game was frequently seen, he offered to lead forth a party of young men and teach them something. First, he discovered, it was necessary to prepare weapons for the chase, mainly spears, knives, and slings. With metal become scarce and precious, he chipped stone into points and edges, an art he had seen practiced in wild parts of the South but must largely re-invent himself. Thereafter he must drill his would-be followers in the use of these things. At last they were ready.
Their band was gone so long that kinfolk worried, for it made countless mistakes—but it learned from them, and came home triumphant.
Next day Brandek laid across his shoulder a haunch of venison that he had smoked in the field. Stepping out of Kiernon’s door, he turned toward the abandoned College of Wizards where Shalindra dwelt alone with her son.
It was a bleakly bright summer morning. Wind harried white clouds through the sky so that their shadows and its whistling swept through grass-grown, ruin-lined streets. Gray-green with glacial flour, the Madwoman River poured noisily into a bay where whitecaps danced on water the hue of steel. On the southern bank, rubble heaps and snags of towers marked the totally abandoned half of Tyreen. There had been no sense in anyone living across the stream after the bridge collapsed and only rafts were available. Beyond lay the country where Brandek had been hunting. Often he had spied fallen buildings in those reaches, for that had once been a land of great plantations. Now it was tundra and taiga, bearing naught but grass, moss, dwarf birch and willow, gnarled shrubs. They called it the Barren in Tyreen, and no one in living memory had gone far into it—for what could a man find there to keep himself alive?
Brandek struck out northerly through the town. The village, rather, he thought: just a few hundred souls remained. After weather spells failed and the glaciers marched south, while p
ests and murrains that were no longer checked by magic ravaged the farms, famine had taken off most of the population. Disease, cold, storm, fighting for scraps accounted for others. Eventually a certain balance had been struck, but everyone who could think knew how precarious it was.
Kiernon’s house was better than most. Being clever with his hands, the smith had shored up a crumbling structure, even made an addition of timbers salvaged from tenantless places, roughly dovetailed together and chinked with mud. He had ample time for that, since no new iron ever came in and implements were wearing out, rusting away, or getting lost. (Still, the demand for repairs, paid for in kind, was sufficient to keep his family reasonably well off.) Striding along, Brandek passed dwellings that were little more than caves grubbed out of wreckage, or lean-tos against remnant walls. The bright colors of bricks, the occasional grace of a colonnade, the vividness of a phoenix in a mosaic of which half was gone, somehow made the scene doubly forlorn.
What people he met were less miserable than their surroundings…thus far. They were of his own race, though usually lighter-complexioned, sometimes blond, and might have been taller than him had not undernourishment stunted growth. However, they were wiry, and his young hunters had not lacked endurance. Their clothes, such as he necessarily wore, would have seemed archaic in Aeth—tunic and trousers for men, long gowns for women, hooded cloaks for both sexes—but were, after all, generally old, when wool and linen were in short supply; if dyes had faded, the patching and darning were carefully done.
Brandek did not encounter many persons. Most were out tending their meager fields and sparse flocks, gathering firewood, fishing along the river and bay shores. Those who stayed behind were children, housewives, the aged, the sick, the rare artisan like Kiernon. They hailed him in friendly wise. The meat he had gotten made him a hero.
“Hoy, my son told me how you tied a rack of antlers off a reindeer skull to your head, and threw a skin over your back, and went on all fours to within spearcast of the herd,” said Hente the weaver. “And that hooked stick of yours for throwing the spear, he claims it doubles the range and force. Won’t you show the rest of us?”
“Of course,” Brandek replied, a bit curtly. He was impatient to be on his way. “You’ve a whale of a lot to learn here.”
“A what? A whale of a lot? Hee, hee! That’s a clever ’un. A Southern turn of speech, eh?” Hente cocked his head and regarded the burly man closely. “You’re settling down for good, then, are you?”
Brandek shrugged. “I’ve no choice. Therefore I’d better do what I can to make this place fit to live in.”
“Hoy, you’re a gruff ’un, aren’t you?” Hastily, Hente smiled. “Um, you’ll be wanting a wife, and my daughter Risaya—well, I think you might like meeting her.”
“No doubt. Later.” Brandek nodded and went on. Hente stared after him. The weaver had little else to do, these days, and hunger was often a guest at his board.
Crossing Searoad, Brandek reached the College. Well-nigh all its proud buildings had fallen; he could look across weedy grounds and the ruins and hovels beyond, to city walls in nearly as bad repair. He cursed under his breath, not for the first time. Like any prosperous, populous community, Tyreen had made lavish use of magic. Indeed, because of this institution in its midst, it had been still more prodigal of mana than most were. When enchantments began to fail, so did the delicate, fantastic works, or the massive ones, which they had upheld against gravity and weather. Knowledge was lacking of how to rebuild in mundane fashion. The rot had gnawed less far inward in his homeland, but he had seen it there too—yes, in Aeth itself, which had been the capital of an empire that reckoned Tyreen a rich provincial town.
One hall of the College survived, in part. Ivy crawled over amber-hued masonry, would pry it asunder in due course, meanwhile hid friezes and inscriptions. Windows gaped glassless or were crudely boarded up. A fountain before the entrance held rainwater in its basin but did not spring any more, and its statue of a dancing maiden was lichenous and blurred. Nevertheless, here was shelter of a sort for many books, and for Shalindra and her boy.
Llangru sat on the stairs, rocking to and fro. His gaze was vacant and he did not seem to notice the newcomer. He was towheaded, handsome of face, but small and thin for his nine or ten years of age, unkempt despite everything his mother could do.
Brandek found her in the library, reading. A sunbeam like a flickery swordblade came in an ogive window and fell on time-browned pages; in that light, those shadows, the volumes shelved behind seemed to stir, and the sound of the wind was as if they sighed. Wrapped in a cloak against the chill, her slight form was hidden from him. He saw only a finely shaped face, large brown eyes, waist-length cataract of russet hair.
“Oh—” She peered nearsightedly before recognition came. Well, he thought, she’d scarcely seen him since he left her. “Brandek of Aeth! What do you wish?”
“To give you this,” he said. The nearby table being piled high with tomes, he laid the meat down on the carpetless, stone-flagged floor. “I reckoned you could use it.”
“Why—” She rose, stooped over and handled it, straightened and looked at him in wonder. “I know not how to thank you.”
“No thanks needed, lady,” he growled. “You saved my life, didn’t you?” He paused, forcing himself, before he could add: “I hope I gave no offense. If I did, well, I was newly hauled from the sea and half out of my head from grief at lost shipmates and, and everything.”
“Oh, no, you never did,” she murmured.
“Then why—I mean, everybody else wanted to hear what I could tell of the South. You never came to listen. Why not?”
She winced. Her gaze dropped. “I…don’t like crowds.” He could barely hear her. “Llangru would have wanted to come along, and…too many of them have been cruel to him…because he is different…I kept hoping you would visit us.”
“I should have, but it seemed I was always busy, finding my way around, getting things set up for that hunt, and then off on it—Shalindra, I came as soon as I could, honestly.” Brandek smote fist into palm. The noise cracked loud through the dusty stillness. “But you—they—they’re so ignorant! They don’t see what’s under their noses. And chaos take it, this is a survival matter. I’ll have to live here too, you know. And I admit I’m not a very patient man.”
She smiled and touched his arm. “Well, you came. Now I can hear your story at leisure, as I’d wanted to. Sit down.” She pointed to an elaborately carved chair opposite hers. “I’ll brew us a pot of tea—No.” She laughed, and the clarity of that sound challenged the gloom around them. “I’ve some wine left that my husband made. Noble stuff; I swear that whatever magic he used has not gone out of it. A guest from Imperial Aeth, who’s brought such a magnificent gift, yes, surely this is worth a small bottle.”
In addition, she fetched bread and cheese—not much, for she had little—and she and Brandek settled down to a lively conversation. They had heard something about each other from third parties, but this was their first chance to become really acquainted.
Brandek was shorter-spoken. “I was a younger son of a baron at home. It’s barons and petty kings there; the Empire is just a memory. The climate is milder than here, but not notably, and worse every year. I saw things falling apart, the same as they’ve already done for you, and wondered what to do about it. Hunting—hunting was always a pleasure of mine, and I learned a lot from the wild tribes that’ve drifted into the Homptoleps Forest, these past hundred years. But I also thought we might try reviving coastwise shipping, get in contact with lost provinces, start trade again and—Well, I had a ship built and headed north, exploring. Without magic, she proved unseaworthy, for the wrights had small skill. She foundered in the storm, outside Tyreen Bay. I clung to a plank, and that’s all I remember till I woke up in your care. Everybody else must have drowned.” He grimaced. “No way for me to return, hey? North and east, the mountain passes are choked by the glaciers. South, the Barren is too wide; it’s r
ich in wildlife close by, but I found that farther on it’s still almost empty and a man would starve before he got across. So here I am.”
Shalindra told her story at greater length, though there was actually less of it. Her husband, Zaerrui, had been the dean of the College, a wizard as learned and accomplished as the dwindling of mana in the world allowed. She was his tenth wife, for he was centuries old and had never been able, in this gaunt age, to cast a longevity spell on anyone else. Yet he and Shalindra were happy, and she was carrying their firstborn when suddenly the enchantment that kept him young guttered out and—She did not care to talk about that. Since, she had lived by the scant magic, ever less, that she commanded, and by trading off possessions for food, and by what work she could get as a scribe or clerk or the like; she was nearly the last literate person in Tyreen.
Mostly, talking with Brandek, she sounded him out about the South, as her fellow townsfolk had done. Did she press him too closely, or did he simply feel too deep a wound? He could not say. He only knew that at last he exclaimed: “The demons take that! Cities, books, riches, peace, leisure, yes, farms, metals—they’re done! They’re going the way the magic has gone, and you’ll go too if you don’t learn how to live in the world we’ve got.”
She stiffened in her chair. “What do you mean?”
“You people! Fumbling around on your niggard acres, with your starveling livestock, when more and more big game is moving south ahead of the glaciers, elk, reindeer, boar, horse, aurochs, wisent, mammoth…Your trying to patch up junkheaps like, like this building, when you could find out how to make shelters that’re warm and weather-tight.” His fist struck his knee. “I tried to give the old world new life, by my ship. The sea taught me better. Now I’ve got to teach all of you!”
Shocked, she whispered, “Do you mean we should give up our whole civilization—all the old ways—and become savages? No!” Pride straightened her back and squared her shoulders. “Quit if you wish, Brandek. I had expected more from a man of Aeth, but do as you will. I, though, I am a sorceress in my own right, the wife of the dean of the College—yes, still his wife—and mother of his son. No, I’ll not betray that heritage. Nor will Llangru after me.”