by Larry Niven
Shalindra watched the worst of the blood rinse away. Brandek was right, the injuries were minor. She was ashamed of her outburst. “Come inside,” she said, “and you both can tell me what happened.”
Brandek sat on the floor, his back against a pile of books. Most of Shalindra’s furniture was gone, broken or traded. He gulped herb tea from a fragile ceramic cup. Around its rim writhed red-and-golden dragons. Llangru and Shalindra drank from wooden mugs.
“I was walking out Searoad, by the market, when I heard shouting. There was Llangru in a knot of older boys—six of them, but he was putting up a good fight. I think Mintu led them, as usual. He’s the one with the loud mouth. I should take that bully out hunting aurochs—if he brings a good supply of dry breeks!”
Llangru, who sat between his mother and Brandek, nodded. “It was Mintu. He didn’t like what I said.”
“I’ve told you not to get into arguments with those boys,” Shalindra began, but Llangru cut her off.
“Mintu was telling lies. He said he’d gone hunting alone and killed an elk. It was too big to drag home, and a pack of wolves ate it. He killed most of them, too. He said he was every bit as good a hunter as Brandek, and knew how to chip sharper spearpoints. I couldn’t let him go on bragging like that, so I told them I’d seen what really happened.”
Shalindra frowned. Her son often had wild fancies.
He continued: “Mintu never killed any elk. He’s scared to be out alone, and he made so much noise in the woods that even the weasels were laughing. He found an elk that had been dead since last fall. They don’t even have antlers in the spring.” He looked up at Brandek. “You know that; you told me.”
The man nodded.
“It was by the river, upstream, mostly just bones. He’d borrowed his father’s saw. He finally cut one antler loose, but he was too lazy to take the other, so he left it and came back with a made-up story. I saw it all.”
“Llangru,” Shalindra said, “how far upstream was this, did you say?”
“Most of a morning’s walk, for Mintu. I flew.”
“You flew.” Shalindra’s tone was flat.
“Of course. I was an eagle. I like that. You can see everything, and swoop down on rabbits, but I feel sorry for them, they squeal so. You can soar with the sun warm on your wings and the world tiny down below. The roof on the library is gray-green, and tiles are missing on the west wing, where the ceiling leaks. You can hardly see the dragon statues—” His eyes were brilliant.
Shalindra slapped him. Llangru’s head rocked back; his nose dripped fresh crimson. Aghast, Shalindra looked at her blood-smeared palm. “I, I shouldn’t have struck you, dear,” she stammered. “But you shouldn’t tell stories.”
“That’s what Mintu said, before they beat me.” Llangru set down his mug and shuffled from the room.
Silence settled, broken only by fire-hiss and the boom of a wind turning raw. Brandek frowned but held his peace, while Shalindra stared into the depths of her mug. The wood was warped and cracking. He had told her hot liquids caused that, and added with a laugh that the tavern had no such problem. Well, he swilled enough of its beer—
Finally Brandek spoke. “The business was more serious than Llangru told you. Those boys were afraid. They were ready to tear him apart for being different. If I hadn’t come along they might have killed him. I don’t know what I think of his story, but they half believed it, Mintu most of all.”
“Llangru has always been a strange one,” Shalindra admitted. If she gazed straight ahead, into the fire, she could almost imagine that Zaerrui sat in his accustomed chair. But if she looked he would not be. And the chair was gone too, traded off last autumn. She gulped. “Maybe it’s my fault. Llangru’s father died before he was born.” She bit her lip.
“Tell me,” Brandek urged.
Shalindra was about to refuse, but words spilled forth: “It was a fine fall day eleven years ago. We were expecting a guest from Olanna, beyond the mountains. Zaerrui and the scholar wished to confer on why magic was fading, and whether anything might bring it back.
“We flew to meet the party at Icehold Pass. It was an easy journey, Zaerrui on his great black griffin, I on my winged unicorn.
“The air was crisp as apples. We raced, and arrived before our guests. As we landed, we could see them far off down the road. The scholar did not care to fly, so his group moved more slowly. While we waited, I told Zaerrui what I’d learned by divination that morning: I was carrying his son.
“He whooped for joy: We’ll name him Llangru! He spun me a veil of sunbeams, and wove a crown of golden leaves. A simple magic, that. Only a small, simple magic.” She swallowed. She dared not weep.
“Then it happened. Zaerrui clutched his chest. His hair bleached white, and his face wrinkled. He gasped one word: Run. I did not want to leave him; he hurled a lightning bolt, and my mount screamed and took flight. His own griffin stood like black stone. I looked back once to see the mountains slump and the glacier grind green ice across the pass; then my unicorn fluttered earthward like an autumn leaf, and died.
“When I reached Tyreen, my feet were bleeding, and I was half-starved. The town had fallen to rubble. Folk crouched amid wreckage. Snow howled early that year. When spring came, the pass did not open.
“I took shelter in the College library, and here I bore Llangru, Zaerrui’s last son.”
Silence, again. A gust through an empty window fluttered some sheets of paper that lay on the table, weighted down by a useless scrying stone. Shalindra had been practicing calligraphy, lest her work stiffen her fingers till she also lost that equally useless art.
“And was Llangru always—the way he is?” Brandek’s question was soft.
“Yes,” she said. “He talked at the normal age—nothing wrong with his mind—but he had trouble learning to feed himself and walk. I don’t know the reason, or what went awry. It may be that the magic that wards babes has faded too.”
“All magic is going, Shalindra, you know that. There was just so much in the world, and men used it up. We can only keep on, and in different ways. It won’t be easy.” Brandek leaned forward, almost touching her. “I have an idea I want to try this summer. Boats.”
“You nearly died when your ship sank,” the woman said, a trifle shocked. “Haven’t you seen enough of the sea?”
“I dared too much. This time I’m minded to build small craft, not sailed but paddled, to venture no farther than the mouth of Tyreen Bay. We could do offshore fishing, and gather eggs on Geirfowl Island. Maybe, as our skill grows, we can advance to larger vessels and longer trips, begin re-opening coastwise trade routes—” He went on.
Shalindra merely half-listened, until he mentioned hides. She remembered the stench.
“I’m finding new ways of treating leather. We can already make it supple, for clothing, but now we can make it strong and waterproof as well. I can cover a wooden frame, lashed together, with skins smeared in grease. Given careful stitching, that should produce a reliable hull.”
It was if Shalindra heard the drip, drip, drip from the west wing in every downpour. “Hides can keep water out?”
“Yes,” said Brandek, “if first you cure them in—”
Excitement flared through her. “But that means I can save the books! The damp is killing them! Look at that stack, I’ve been trying to dry them by the fire. The rain comes in through holes in the roof that nobody can repair. A watertight shelter—”
Brandek reached back and took a volume. The cover was black with mildew. He opened it; moisture had freckled the pages. “Longevity spells,” he grunted, and shook his head. “Those haven’t worked for years—generations, most places. What’s the use?” He set the book on the floor.
Shalindra rose. Staggering under the weight, she returned it to the stack. “If you misfile an item in a library this size—” she gestured at shelves stretching endless down the gloom of halls beyond this chamber—“you have lost it.”
Brandek shrugged. “And what if y
ou have? I’m educated, like you, and you’ve taught your boy, but how many others in Tyreen care a belch about writing? You’ve told me how you couldn’t find recent employment as a scribe. People are cold, hungry, and afraid. Better they learn to hunt, make tools, build shelters, not read crumbling books of worthless wizard-lore.”
“Worthless wizard-lore!” The words stung Shalindra like a slap. “Barbarian! Would you make all men illiterate? Have them trust naught but half-remembered tales?”
Brandek flushed, gnawed his lip, and finally replied: “Haven’t we squabbled about this often enough? Books were good to have once. Today…they might serve to start fires.” He shook his head. “No, I can’t spare you any hides for their shelter. Well need all we can get, and then some, to make those coracles.” His curbed anger broke loose and he almost shouted, “Or would you rather keep reading until everybody starves to death in this ice-trap that’s got us?”
“Well I know,” Shalindra said, word by word, “that the ice has us trapped. My Zaerrui’s bones lie beneath it. Would that they were yours instead.”
She turned her back. Brandek sprang up. She heard something crunch, and turned again. In his haste he had kicked his cup across the floor and it shattered, the fragile ancient cup for guests. She saw a dragon’s eye gleam gold on one fragment, as if to cast a look of despair upon the world.
She held her tone steady. “So you’ve smashed that too, as you’d smash everything else that was ours. You’ll never rest, will you, till you’ve ground the last spark of civilization under your heel and we’re all filthy, stinking savages, hunkered in caves with blood on our hands. Tell me, Brandek, shall we still cook our meat then, or do you want us to forget about fire also?”
“You seemed well pleased to eat the meat I left here, while you huddled among your precious books,” he growled, and snatched a volume from the nearest shelf. “A Dictionary of the Mer-Tongue. How fine! What a shame the merfolk are gone!” He chose another at random. “Raising the Dead. Yes, I can see how you’d like that, Shalindra. You’re more at home with the dead than the living, no?” He dropped both tomes. The spines broke. Loose pages swirled across the room. “Meanwhile you take in laundry from the village. That’s the best your sorcery can do for you, and you refuse to learn anything new.” He drew an uneven breath. “Teeth of doom, woman, it’s magic that is dead. Give it a decent burial and come alive again yourself!”
Shalindra knelt, gathering scattered paper. Her hands shook. Brandek was right, in his way: her powers were gone. How many more years could she do heavy labor? Tears blurred her vision, and she turned away.
There, in the corner, gleamed something white and slender. She remembered, suddenly, what it was. She surged to her feet and strode across the room.
The sea-unicorn’s horn was long, heavier than it looked. She laid hold of the spiral-curved lance. “Get out,” she said. “Get out. Take this with you. It was the price of your life. I made a poor bargain. This, at least, once held mana.” She proffered it, point first. He thinks I’ll stab him. She stifled a laugh.
His eyes narrowed; he touched the hilt of his knife, then let his hands fall, and backed away. He fumbled at the latch; the door creaked open. He gathered his spear, throwing-stick, and ax. In his furs, he looked like a savage. He began to say something. Shalindra threw the horn after him. It shattered on the cobbles beyond. “Take it, you barbarian,” she screamed, “and begone!”
Llangru pushed past her. “Brandek, don’t leave,” the boy pleaded. Shalindra leaned against the wall, put an arm across her eyes, and wept.
She heard Llangru stumble after Brandek, calling. The man soon outdistanced him. Llangru called once more, gave up, and started back. Afar, a mammoth trumpeted, harbinger of the oncoming ice.
Cren, son of Wisnar, and Destog, son of Kiernon, waited as agreed outside the Great Gate. It was no longer much more than a hill of tumbled blocks, from which a sculptured head, noseless, stared blindly eastward. The youths were about the same age, probably twenty winters. Though Cren was blond and Destog dark, somehow they looked alike as they stood there. Perhaps it was their outfits, garb of fur-trimmed leather, spear in hand, throwing stick and knife tucked into belt, two extra spears and a sleeping bag and packet of dried meat secured by thongs across the back. Or perhaps it was their build. Undernourished in childhood, they shared a leanness which long tours on the hunt, after Brandek came, were turning rangy. In their eyes, too, was a feral quality Tyreen had never known before.
“What kept you, sir?” Cren asked.
“A spot of trouble. Never mind about that,” Brandek snapped. Inwardly he recognized that it had been well to rescue Llangru, but wrong to dawdle with Shalindra when his followers expected him. Why had he done it? Did some remnant of witchcraft still cling to her? “Let’s be off. The morning’s already old.”
“Where are we bound this time?” Destog inquired eagerly.
Brandek’s plan had been to go after horse. A herd had been spied yesterday, north of here. A large party would alarm the beasts too early, but a few men, sound of wind and limb, could get sufficiently close that, when the creatures did bolt, they could run one down, driving it between them as wolves do. Lately he had been experimenting with a noose on a long cord, to cast around the neck of an animal, but this was a skill which would take a while to develop.
Now he looked east, away from the town, across miles whose emptiness was scarcely broken by a few tumbledown, abandoned farm buildings, until the snowpeaks of the Heewhirlas caught his glance. “Yonder,” he said, with a gesture. Bear had become plentiful in the uplands. Newly roused from winter sleep, such a brute would be gaunt and savage, but nonetheless a prize. And he needed a fight.
The others were astonished. “Spring is a dangerous season in the mountains,” Cren blurted. “Avalanches—”
Brandek fashioned a sneer. “Stay behind if you’re afraid.”
“I’m not!” Yet Cren added hesitantly, “It’s just that you’re always telling us yourself, sir, the chase is risky enough without taking chances we don’t have to.”
“But you mean we’ve got to discover how to get along in any kind of conditions, don’t you, sir?” Destog’s earnest question sealed the matter. Brandek felt he could hardly change his mind after it, though beneath the seething, a part of him regretted his impulse. Leading people starved for certitudes, he must always pretend to a kind of mana of his own.
He nodded and set forth at a steady lope. His disciples came behind. They could maintain the pace, with brief pauses, till evening, when it would have brought them well into the chaotic lands below the heights.
They could not spare breath for talk, however, and Brandek found himself locked up with his thoughts.
All his spears were tied to his shoulders. He gripped the ax he bore until knuckles stood white. It was another experiment of his, a flint blade set through a haft. After numerous failures, he dared hope that the lashings of shrunken rawhide would keep stone wedded to wood; but only heavy use would show if he had really found his way to making a trustworthy tool.
Wedded—He might as well go ahead and marry Hente’s daughter Risaya. She wasn’t bad-looking, and she had acquired the necessary new skills faster than most. Of course, Kiernon’s youngest had a fullness about her suggesting she’d be a lively bedmate, as well as bearing him strong children…They were chaste and monogamous in Tyreen, but he was the most desirable husband material they knew; and he must have offspring—daughters to bind him in family alliances, sons to aid him and in the end, if he lived to be old, care for him; and his loins often burned.
Curse Shalindra, anyhow! Too long had he buzzed about that slim body, that deep mind—no, that skinny, nearsighted, daydreaming jackdaw. Most of her childbearing years were behind her, too; she was doubtless good for three or four yet, but could expect to lose at least one in infancy…Why should he care? She and her books and her useless brat—He was being unfair. Llangru couldn’t help his own helplessness and bore it with a certain ga
llantry. But why had she and Brandek gone on, month after month, when nearly every meeting ended in a fight?
Well, whatever he owed her, he had paid back a hundredfold; and today she herself had screamed that there never was any debt, and had flung the token of it at his feet.
Must she take so hard the breaking of a cup? How like her. Oh, yes, Brandek thought, it had been a pretty object and he was sorry. He even wished he could offer her a replacement, however crude; but his attempts to make vessels of fired clay, during the winter, had come to naught. That was evidently an art whose development would take more time than anyone could spare, these days, from creating the means of stark survival.
His bootsoles whispered on stone. At the Great Gate, Searoad became Aiphive Way and ran across the coastal plain, over Icehold Pass, to the rich province beyond…formerly. Without magical maintenance, rains washed out the shallow bed, thin paving blocks slid apart and roots of grass cracked them to bits, the thoroughfare was already a mere trace and in a century or two would be erased. For that matter, the pass had been choked on the day when Shalindra was widowed.
Brandek glanced about him. To right and left he glimpsed stumps. Orchards had been cut down for firewood after frost killed them. Everywhere else, the grass of springtime billowed, pale green, beneath a wind that came sliding chill off the ocean. The air was full of water and earthy odors. Clouds scudded white; their shadows scythed across the land. Birds clamored aloft in huge flocks. Brandek wondered if he could find a means to cast a dart that high. Ahead, the range shouldered above the horizon, blue-gray where it was not whitened. He made out that tower-like peak men called the Bridegroom. A scowl seized his brow. He turned off the dying road, toward a different height, around which ice crystals flurried and glittered, the one they called Ripsnarl.
At eventide, the party made camp below that mountain. Although they were well into the chaotic land by then, they heard wolves howl after sunset, and later a deep-throated roar.