by Larry Niven
Llangru shivered. Most of these persons thought him half-witted, and their children taunted him, but he had a duty. He stepped forward into the lamplight. The greasy beer-soaked table reached to his breast.
Laughter greeted him. “A bit young for taverns, aren’t you, boy?” Terbritt japed. And from Gilm: “Is your mother all right? Do she and Risaya know you’re out?”
Llangru took a deep breath. Now, more than ever, he must not stammer. “I-it’s Bran-Bran-Brandek. He-he’s alive. I know where he is.”
Mirth barked around the table. “I, I, I do so. I saw him.” He gulped. “He’s on the west face of Ripsnarl, near the bottom. There was an avalanche. You couldn’t find him ’mongst all those rocks, but I found him from above, and on my way back I noticed how to get there on foot. I can guide you.”
Laughter tried to start afresh, but sputtered into silence. They stared. A couple of them drew signs in the air. After many heartbeats, Destog rose from his bench and whispered, “How did you do that?”
“I went. I flew.” Llangru struggled against tears. “He’s hurt, Brandek is, his leg and his arm both. He’s freezing, and I saw lions not far off, hunting, only there wasn’t any game nearby, so they’ll be hungry and look farther tomorrow—” The tears burst forth, but on a tide of rage. Llangru clenched his fists and, stamped. “And you sit here!” he screamed. “He taught you how to hunt, and make weapons, and keep food, and, and everything…and the first time he needs help, you just sit here!”
Kiernon the smith chewed his lip and stared at the table. Hente muttered, “The boy’s crazy,” and Lari whispered, “Magic is gone.”
Then Fyrlei said, most quietly, “It has seemed thus. But now I wonder if a little remains after all.”
Llangru swayed back and forth. “Ay-ah, ay-ah,” he chanted, “it’s cold and dark, the man lies by the water, hurt, he cannot run, and lions prowl. I found him, he did not know me and threw a stone at me, but I came back to take you to him. Ahh—Hoo-oo, hoo-oo.” His fingers crooked like talons. In the flickery gloom, his eyes seemed to glow golden.
Destog took a step forward and reached out a hand. The boy shrank back. “NO!” he coughed, in a voice not altogether human.
Most of the company sat stiff, or leaned away as far as they could without rising and perhaps drawing that eerie gaze. Fyrlei kept moveless, save for the lips within his white beard that said, “Here is either madness indeed, or something new and powerful. If it is simply madness, what do you risk by heeding?”
A flame leaped in Destog. “Yes!” the youth shouted. “Llangru, the men of Tyreen will follow us.”
Kiernon rose massive to his feet and said, “Count me among them when we’re ready, son. That won’t be till dawn, I suppose, and most won’t be in shape to travel as fast as you. But we ought to reach Brandek by tomorrow’s eventide, if this—” his tone stumbled—“this child really is a seer.” He forced a smile. “Meantime, suppose I try persuading his mother to let him go along.”
The sun went down once more. A single crimson streak marked the place, beneath the purity of a westering planet. In that direction the sky was green; eastward it darkened to violet and the earliest stars trod forth. There Ripsnarl peak stood windless under its snows. This would be another clear upland night, cold, cold.
Brandek woke when the lion roared nearby. He was barely half aware of that noise or what it meant. His skull seemed hollowed out, he could no longer sense a heartbeat, and pain was like the rocks everywhere around, eternal but apart from him.
Yet when the beast surmounted a ridge of debris and poised on top, he felt a certain comfort. Here came his last battle, and then peace. She was a lioness, her tawny flanks vague in the dusk but eyes luminous in the forward-thrusting head. He did see her tail switch, and heard the rumble from her throat.
Brandek reached for a spear. Sitting, he braced its butt against the boulder on which he leaned. If he was lucky, he might catch her charge on the sharp-flaked point. Doubtless that would not kill her, but she’d know she’d been in a fight.
A second and a third lioness appeared on either side of the first. A new roar echoed among the stones; their male waited behind them. Brandek sighed. “Very well,” he said. “This’ll be quick, anyhow.”
Something stirred at the edge of vision. He glanced aloft and saw an arctic owl. Was it the same as last night’s? It acted as strangely, wheeling about and winging off at an unnatural speed.
The first lioness finished studying him and flowed down the rubbleheap. Her comrades followed. When they reached the moss, they moved to right and left. Brandek grinned. “Don’t worry,” he croaked. “I’m not about to make a break for it.”
The lead lioness gathered herself for the final dash.
“Yaaah!” cried from above. Brandek saw a hand ax—his own design—fly through the air, end over end. It struck her in the ribs. That was a heavy piece of flint, with keen edges. He heard the thunk. Blood ran forth, black in this dimness. She growled and crouched back. Her companions went stiff.
Brandek twisted his head around and saw men spring from between the boulders, into the hollow. They brandished spears, axes, knives, torches, they threw stones, they formed a wall in front of him. More by voice than sight, he recognized Cren, Destog, Kiernon, Wisnar—He fell into an abyss.
—When he came to himself, he was lying among them. They squatted, stood, danced, babbled their joy or bellowed their triumph. Few more stars were in sight; he had not been unconscious for long. The lions must be gone. Of course they would be, he thought. Animals are too sensible for bravado. They’re off after easier game, to nourish themselves and their young.
Brandek’s head was on Destog’s lap. The youth stroked his hair with anxious gentleness. “Are you well, sir?” he breathed.
If Brandek had had the strength, his laughter would have made the mountain ring. He did achieve a chuckle. “I haven’t caught the sniffles,” he replied in a whisper. Wonder smote. “How did you find me…and this many of you?”
Awe possessed the dimly seen face above him. “Llangru.”
As if that had been a signal, the boy came into sight. Men stepped aside to make a way for him. “He guided us.” Kiernon’s words were an undergroundish mumble. “We took turns carrying him on our shoulders, till…near the end, suddenly he swooned. When he woke after a while, he said we must hurry, because you were in great danger. So we did—”
The son of Shalindra knelt down at Brandek’s side, smiled shyly into his eyes, and murmured, “I’m glad. You were always good to us.”
Rain turned the world dull silver. It brawled over the roofs of Tyreen and gurgled between walls. The Madwoman River ran swollen, and from afar one heard the sea shout. The air was raw. Yet as she passed a hillock which had been a house. Shalindra saw that a tree which grew from it had broken into full blossom.
The door of Brandek’s dwelling was never barred, for he had nothing to fear from his tribe. Besides, she came in daily to care for his needs. Nobody disputed the right of Llangru’s mother to do that.
Entering, discarding her leather cloak, she must grope through weak lamplight till her pupils widened and she saw him, wrapped in furs, sitting up in bed. Restless, awkward, his left hand used a piece of charcoal to sketch plans for a weir upon a scrap of hide. “How are you?” she asked.
“Pretty well,” he said. “I hobbled around some more on a pair of sticks this morning, and it didn’t hurt. I can do a few things with my arm, also. Let me show you.” He raised it in its splints. “Oh, yes, I’ll soon be as good as new, and more annoying.” His gaze sought hers. “Thanks to you,” he added, not for the first time.
She winced at the memory. When he, brought back home, refused the attentions of Jayath the chirurgeon, she had gone to her books. There she found anatomical drawings. Holding those before her, she directed the sinewy hands of Kiernon as the smith properly set the broken bones. Brandek had declined wine, saying it ought to be saved for worse cases. He had not screamed. He had not even
fainted. But be had lain mute and white throughout the following day.
Afterward, though—She busied herself setting forth wooden bowls and filling them with the fish she had cooked in leaves and clay and brought here in a skin. It was lucky, she thought, that in the murk he could not see how she flushed. “Everybody will rejoice to hear that,” she said. “They need you.”
Brandek stirred uneasily. “I hope they don’t think they can’t get along without me. Someday—tomorrow or fifty years hence, no matter which—they must. They’ve got to learn the tricks of staying alive in the world as it’s become.” He plucked at the wisent robe across his lap. “So much to do,” he grumbled, “and I must lie in this stinking hovel. Caves, or shelters under overhanging cliffs, or tents, or…or nearly anything…would be more comfortable, and we’d get fewer people falling sick. Yes, I think Llangru would fare better too. But first we have to find our way to the how of such things. This very year I begin, after I’m truly on my feet again.”
He sank back against a rolled-up bearskin. His left hand reached toward her. His voice dropped. “Of course,” he said low, “that means the end of your books and other treasures. We can’t save them if we move out. We can only take along in our heads what knowledge they give us that we can use, like how to treat fractures. I’m sorry, Shalindra.”
He seldom spoke at such length, or so mildly.
She gave him his food and sat down on a bedside stool, a bowl on her knees. “It can’t be helped,” she sighed. “I’ve come to see that.” As you have come to regret it, my dear, her mind added. Which is worth many books to me.
She took a chunk of fish. Utensils of metal and porcelain would presently belong to the past, like tableware. Maybe a craftsman could produce substitutes of wood, bone, or horn, but probably none would have the time. They would be too busy inventing tools more urgently needed by hunters on the fringe of the glacier. She might as well practice how to eat in mannerly wise with her fingers.
“It’s the future, you know,” he said. “Lake it or not, it is. And you…you’re not just borne along helpless, Shalindra. You can have a great deal to say about how it goes, in your own right and through Llangru.” He paused. “After all, in spite of his power, he’s still a boy. He still has much to learn from you and—and any stepfather he might get.”
Her pulse, her blood cried out. She barely kept from spilling her dish.
Brandek stared at the shadows beyond his bed. “Where is he today?” he asked. “He usually comes here with you.”
“He may arrive later,” she replied in chosen words. “He told me he meant to—Well, do you remember Mintu, that brat who took the lead in persecuting him because he was odd? Mintu has become his most abject follower, after what happened. Llangru told me he thinks he…he will need helpers…and he had ideas about what Mintu can do. They were going to experiment with a drum and—I don’t know what.”
“You know more than I do,” Brandek said. “I’m so ignorant about magic that I nearly got myself killed under the Heewhirlas. I’m sure of nothing except that it’s not altogether gone from the world, and some of it remains in him. You, your studies—” He turned his head to her. “Can you tell me more?”
She had expected this, once he regained strength and, with it, his liveliness of mind. Again he reached out, and this time, she gave him her hand. His closed around it, hard, warm, comforting. “I’ve ransacked the library and my own thoughts, of course,” she said, while she brought her face near his because she was talking softly. “I’ve discovered little. This is such a new phenomenon. However—the principle is basic, that anything different, peculiar, has a certain amount of mana by virtue of that same differentness. And Llangru was always a strange one, wasn’t he?” Of a sudden she heard herself add, “I don’t imagine any other children I bear will be like him—” and stopped in total confusion and saw Brandek’s mouth curve happily upward.
The smile died. His glance went past her. She twisted about and saw Llangru.
Today the slight form moved with catlike grace. She wondered: in what shape would his soul next travel forth?—and shivered. How dank the house was. Yes, open-air life would be hard, but would in truth be healthier.
Llangru had not shed his rain-wet cape. From the cave of its hood, his gaze sought Brandek. Those eyes gleamed like a lynx’s. He raised a hand in salute and declared with a gravity beyond his years, “Chieftain, Mintu’s drumming sent me out of my body and I met the Reindeer Spirit. He told me a big herd of them is moving this way, and we can have plenty of meat. But he also told me this will not be—they will go elsewhere—unless we give him and them their due respect.”
Breath hissed between Shalindra’s teeth. Her grip on Brandek tightened.
He took the news calmly, almost matter-of-factly. “Aye,” he said, nodding, “I thought it’d come to something like this.”
“What do you mean?” Shalindra gasped. Llangru sat down on the floor at her feet, cross-legged, facing the brightest of the lamps.
“Why, we’re no longer masters of the world,” Brandek told her. “We’re back in the world, as much as animals or trees or stones or anything. What was killing our souls was that we didn’t realize this, we had no idea of where we belonged or what we should believe or how we should behave…I found, myself, skill’s not enough.”
Understanding rushed through Shalindra. “No,” she whispered, “it isn’t. But we’ll always have a few among us who are wise about the hidden things.” She bent her mind toward her son, though her hand stayed with Brandek’s. “What should we do, then, to please the reindeer?” she asked.
“I do not yet know,” Llangru answered, “but I will find out.”
The first of the shamans fixed his eyes upon the lamp flame.