It was a flat statement. Alya saw no need to challenge it. ‘For all that, I thank you. If it would cause hardship, we have food of our own. Or we can pay coin.’
The headman stopped him. ‘We grow plenty, though we do not grow fat upon it. I would sooner you have it than the Aikiya who spare even me and mine only the same poor portions, however much we grow. I am Oshur of the Hall, headman of this village and a descendant of this region’s ancient lords – though much that matters! You will pay me for your stay only with news of the far world from which you come, and lighten my cares.’
‘I doubt we can do that. All grows darker, as we have seen it, and even hope seems corrupted.’
The headman smiled. ‘Yet you are here, by your speech from lands whence none have come since my childhood. In itself that eases my heart of a great burden, and I shall not feel quite so alone this night. Sit and eat your fill.’
While they waited, and his household brought wooden bowls and cups, they told him as much as they dared of the outer world. ‘So there is Volmur’s kingdom,’ Asquan concluded, ‘ramshackle as it is. Others to West and East, in the warmer lands. Yet the raiders reach ever further, and treachery and corruption further still. We know many are under attack. And we hear of none strong enough to stand against the Ice, as of old.’
‘Yet you are here,’ repeated the headman, ‘and for some purpose – no! I do not ask, and I am sure you would be wise not to tell. Yet it can only be to serve the Ice some ill, even if only to bring back word of its evil grip. Whatever it is, I wish you well. I would not betray you even if I could. My course is almost run, and I have few fears left in the world.’
‘You are no older than I am!’ said Asquan. ‘And you have your home and your folk, as I do not.’
The headman’s chuckle was cold. ‘What do I have, that is mine? I cannot protect my people, not even my own family. They not only drive us as slaves in their fields, they levy our young men as foot and horse troops. In the first breath of spring they take them, as their campaigning season begins; and only at the end of harvest, when it ends, do they let some return, to help with the gathering in. All but a few are now back; and the last are expected tonight. The last.’
‘Yet the ferryman was less than eager to come out.’
‘We all dread the moment.’ It was said so curtly as to discourage any deeper enquiry; but Vansha would not let it be.
‘Why? Because so many will not return?’
‘All return!’ said the headman sullenly. ‘It is the manner of their return. Some stop, some ride by. Some … wish to stop, and may not. That we dread.’
The meal was plain enough, little more than grain and vegetables, but it was no less welcome. After it they relaxed, and told the headman more tales, for his curiosity was insatiable and he seemed to treasure every word.
‘You are like a ray of sun into a shuttered room!’ he said, shaking his head. ‘A wind from the outer world, telling me of sights and deeds such as are only distant memories. To our shame!’
‘Not so!’ said Alya. ‘This sword of mine was some hero’s, once, shaped with spells we no longer understand; but it hung in the roof of a chieftain’s house for declining generations, gathering dirt and smoke. That is the Ice’s doing – but now it is borne against them once again!’ He slid it out a short way, and was about to snap it back, when the chiefs hand stopped him.
‘May I see the writing upon it? I am one of only a few in the land who preserves the skill, save among the Aikiya – and what they read, I have no wish to!’ He pored over the characters, but sighed. ‘No. I can no more read them than the characters on my own lintel. They resemble them, as if they came from the same era, but they are not the same … So much is forgotten!’
‘Yet you asked us if we could see them.’
‘That was different. I know what they mean, and what they are for, but I cannot draw that meaning from them. They prevent—’ He stopped.
‘Evil from entering?’ suggested Tseshya.
‘Evil? No. Not exactly. I cannot say—’
The door boomed, and the blood drained from the headman’s face. Kalkan gestured to Fazdshan, sitting nearest the door, but the headman gestured urgently. ‘No! Leave it be! Leave it be!’
They heard hooves on the earth outside, the weary snorts and scuffles of tired beasts, but never a voice of men. Another sharp blow rattled both the doors. They all jumped. The others laid hand to sword; Alya half drew his again. The headman shook his head.
‘Oshur!’ came a voice from without. ‘Master Oshur!’
The headman rose, like a man in a dream, and went slowly towards the door. ‘Who calls my name?’
Again the blow, high up the door, as if from a mounted man; and a harsh voice. ‘Oshur! It’s I, alive and well!’
The headman started violently. ‘Tavao?’ he demanded.
‘The same. And ten of our lads with me, going to our homes.’ The door rattled again. ‘Hear that? I can see it well enough!’
The headman ran to the door, and scrabbled at the bars. At Alya’s sign the others rose and came behind him with hands on swords. When the doors swung back they saw shadowy shapes of horses out in the mist, and one man, hard-faced and swarthy, leaned down from his saddle into the lamplight. Alya stiffened; he wore a battered Ekwesh leather breastplate.
‘Tavao! Welcome, welcome! Come in, warm yourselves, these are strangers but friends, with tales to tell, and no friends of – but are there only this ten with you? No more? Only ten?’ The headman’s face was creased more deeply, a sweating mask.
Tavao’s face was stiff and expressionless. ‘No more, old man. I am sorry.’
‘Only ten. Come and talk to me, then, Tavao.’
‘I hear, headman. I will come. But best not tonight. Best we get to our homes.’
The horses moved off with dragging pace, and the headman slammed the doors and slumped back into his carven seat, his lean shoulders drooping.
‘Perhaps we also should leave you,’ said Alya quietly.
He looked up, with a crooked smile. ‘No, you should not. It does me good to have others here, who do not share our troubles. And I would not send you out into the night, not now. There may be others coming west along the road, even if the ferry will not carry them. I would not send you in their company …’
‘What others, headman?’ demanded Vansha keenly. ‘Aikiya’wahsa vermin, do you mean?’
‘Aikiya?’ snapped the headman. ‘We are the Aikiya! And you may well be, yourself, for the blood of many lines has fed that dark soil! All whom the Ice overruns and binds in thrall, all whom it raises and corrupts to be its ruthless slaves, oppressed that they may oppress – that name is now given them. But once that name was honourably ours! And before that, long before that, it stemmed from the great realm and empire the glaciers first destroyed, the first flowering of men.’
‘And you know something of this?’ demanded Tseshya keenly. ‘Here, in this remote corner beneath the very shadow of the Ice, when everywhere else it is hardly more than a legend?’
‘As it is here,’ said Oshur sombrely. ‘A legend to my ancestors, even. They had nothing of it but distorted tales, and a vision, that men had once been greater, better, wiser and more civilised. That, and a few remote records; the stones from which those characters were traced, I believe, and others. Perhaps the characters on your sword came from such a source, copied and recopied, as was our inscription. But what little my ancestors had, they fought to keep! Even as we were cut down, reduced from kingdom and town to a folk of clan and village, chieftains and Seers struggled to keep some shred of our past pride alive.’
Alya and Vansha looked at one another. ‘It sounds like our home!’ exclaimed Vansha. ‘Just as we knew it – Savi’s father, mine …’
‘And my father!’ said Alya. ‘Fleeing a doomed town, to try to keep alive some little of its wisdom and its skills …’
Oshur bowed his head. ‘As many of our folk did, some hundreds of years since. And as we are no
w, so your folk may be one day, unless the Ice is somehow halted.’ He smiled thinly. ‘The common folk still recall that time as a golden era of peace and plenty. They mix it up with legends older still. But in truth it must have been savage and divided, for it was then that the lineages were established that became the clans of the Aikiya, the raiders accursed of all other men. Do you know, I am of the Herons myself? Though now the feathers are deeply caked with blood!’
‘We apologise,’ said Asquan gently. ‘We did not realise these things. We see the Ekwesh only as the bloody hands of the Ice.’
‘I cannot blame you for that. Raiders! Yes, they are us – as the Ice has made us, and makes us still!’ He brooded a moment. ‘So, yes, in a sense it is raiders who come, now. In a sense … Though the ferryman will not take them unless by terror or force, still they come. They come, sometimes they knock, they speak; they want to stay. But we cannot allow them, although once they were dear to us. To harbour them brings great ills. The summons is too strong.’
He was sweating, still, and clamping his leathery hands on the rough table as if to tear it board from board. Alya felt as if he were poised over the brink of a great tragic secret. ‘Can you tell us more? For our own good? Who are they, who summons them?’
‘They who pause and pass by – they are the Lost. The Answerers of the Summons. They are riding to the realm of Taoune, along the fringes of the Ice. For them its serfdom has no end!’ He tore his fingers from the wood, and bowed his head.
‘Taoune!’ breathed Asquan softly, and something in his voice was more awful than all the headman’s racked anguish. ‘There is a name out of the dark! They say he was lord of all the Ice, once.’
‘They say truly,’ said the headman, with deep feeling. ‘Lord, of all its might and all its ruling Powers, when it was stronger even than it is now. When he and his pale consort Taounehtar last drove it forth across the world. And Taoune was opposed by the men of those days, and the Elder Brethren who dwelt among the hollow hills, and the younger Powers, the cunning of the Raven and the fury of Ilmarinen. And they drove Taoune and the glaciers back into the North and South, it is written, and so into the scorn of his own kind. They say it was his own consort who toppled him at the last and took his place, greater and more terrible than ever he was. Now, his might dwindled, he is Lord of the Grey Lands only, gatekeeper and doorward to the Ice, guarding all its frontiers and marches. And to do so, he gathers those who have already lost all in the service of the Ice.’
Vansha looked puzzled. ‘How, lost all?’
‘Their lives!’ barked the headman. ‘Those who have been slain in its service! And not even that earns them rest!’
Kalkan snorted derisively. ‘How can that be? Once you’re dead, you’re dead! Or you’re somewhere else!’
The headman looked at him. ‘Not if you are marked before your death. The Ice makes some impression on your mind, sets some barb within your spirit. It makes you cruel and evil, if you are not sufficiently so already; it makes you a fanatic for the cause of our cold masters. But it does more. When the campaigns are done, and the warriors ride home, then by that barb the spirits of those who have perished are also called back. And they must come. Within Taoune’s realm they are given some semblance of solid shape once more, to become his warriors and his sentinels.’ He stared into some endless void. ‘And his toys! It is said that for his black diversion they fight eternal futile battles, each day dying to be revived the next. Until time itself shall end, perhaps.’
‘A fable to frighten you, old fellow!’ scoffed Vansha, and Kalkan and some of the others rumbled agreement.
‘A legend the Aikiya sell you, no doubt!’
‘It is true!’ grated the headman.
‘Ach, how’d you know?’
‘Because we see them! If we are foolish enough to look! Riding by, never returning … our own folk …’ The voice was perilously close to a scream.
‘My friend is only trying to comfort you, in his fashion,’ said Alya quietly, with a black look at Vansha. ‘We would not cast doubt on what you say. But he thinks, perhaps, that this may be some cruel deception of the Ice.’
The headman closed his eyes once again. ‘Would that it were. I understand your doubt. Forgive my certainty.’
‘I had already heard something of it,’ said Alya quietly. ‘That these shadows return at this time, this night; and that they ride upriver to the Ice. I believe it. We seek to follow them.’
Vansha and the others stared, but Asquan slapped his thigh. ‘I thought that was your plan! Follow them, sneak past the guards on the river, and find a way in through the walls of the Ice! Into this town or whatever it is!’
‘That is it,’ Alya agreed. ‘If it works as I hope, it might smuggle us into that place, that town. Once inside, we may be able to lose ourselves. It looks large and turbulent. And …’
‘Follow …’ Vansha’s speech failed him. Even Rysha was gaping. Over the crackle of the fire they all heard it now, faint but clear; more horses, approaching from afar. Slowly, stumbling, as if they were not merely weary but utterly spent; but they were definitely drawing nearer. Only Fazdshan spoke, hollowly.
‘Where the dead go, can the living follow?’
‘We can only try.’
‘Will they not seek to stop us?’ demanded Asquan.
‘They may not even notice us, if we are careful. But there would always be sentinels; this way may help avoid them.’ Alya’s mouth was dry. ‘I had hoped, almost, that we would not find it open to us, that we would simply have to go scout out others into the Ice, and trust to luck to find the right one. But this will lead us far more surely and swiftly. Perhaps, for all its terrors, it will even save us perils and hard fighting. Well? Is the terror too great? Will any refuse?’
Kalkan squared his massive shoulders. ‘No way’s free of peril. We’ll do as we pledged. It’s been better than rotting in gaol, anyway!’
There was no murmur of agreement; but nobody demurred.
Oshur shook his head. ‘You are bold men indeed! Heroes of old such as I would never have dreamed I would see! But you will surely perish in the attempt!’
‘Will we?’ demanded Alya fiercely, amid a disquieted rumble from his followers. ‘They take boats, and row north, against the flow, under cover of the dark. So will we! We will find another boat, and take it along behind them. The guards will see only one more boat.’
‘There are such boats,’ said Oshur slowly. ‘I can tell you where they lie, openly; for none would wish to touch them. But you will not succeed; for who do you think the guards are? They are Taoune’s creatures also; and who knows what they may sense, even in dark and mist?’
Alya sagged back on his seat, and the others fell silent, even Asquan. ‘I am sorry—’ Oshur began; but he was interrupted by a soft sound, the rustle of horses’ hooves upon the gravel, the soft snorts and whinnies of weary beasts seeking a stable. But Oshur sat without moving, and again the sweat shone on his brow. Now there were men’s voices, and he rose, and then slowly sat down once again.
Then a voice cried out, softer than Tavao’s, a young man’s tone. ‘Father! Open the door, Father!’
The headman trembled like a leaf. ‘Akkur? Akkur, is that you?’
‘Open the door! We’ve ridden far, Father! We’re cold and hungry!’
Like a puppet on strings Oshur rose, and stumbled towards the door, brushing off restraining hands as he passed. The few of his people still in the room drew back and melted away.
‘Open, Father!’ cried the voice again. ‘I want to come home!’
Oshur halted, breathing like a man running a course. ‘You are home, my son! But I cannot open the door to you! Not yet! Not till sunrise!’
‘It is dark, Father! The mist is heavy! There will be no sunrise, for many days, perhaps! Let me in!’
‘I will, my son, I will!’ gasped Oshur. ‘I will unbar the door at once! You have only to knock, and I will open!’
Silence reigned for an instant, save f
or the headman’s breathing. A log fell in the fire, showering sparks. Then the voice wailed again, despairing. ‘Father! Open! Please!’
‘Then knock!’ screamed Oshur. ‘Why do you not knock?’
‘Father! I cannot even see the door …’ The voice tailed off, to an incoherent wail, and Oshur plunged his face into his hands. Only for a moment; and when he straightened once again, his expression was stern.
‘Then begone, my son! For now I know what has become of you, and what must be your fate. It is written above the lintel; and you would do no more than drain the life from us all, if I let you in. And soon enough you would leave, as now you must. Do not deceive us any further, my son, nor ask more blessings that I cannot give. Now go your way, and trouble us no more.’
There was no answer; but the sound of horses lingered. The headman turned sharply away, and returned to his seat by the fire. The others stared at him, with sorrow and pity. There were tears even in Rysha’s eyes; and they streamed down Kalkan’s furrowed cheeks.
‘The third,’ said the headman softly.
‘Your third?’ asked Rysha softly. ‘Your third son? Have you others?’
‘Four. I had four. The first two were taken together. The others, only this spring … when the fourth was only twelve. I had hoped he at least would come back tonight. But not … so late. Perhaps he would have been with his brother; but I did not ask.’
‘I understand. Not to know will leave your hope alive for another year.’
The old man, for now he seemed so, nodded. ‘It is better, in any case. Those who pass thus never stay long. And while they do, there are more deaths; and those they love the most die first. Even the sight of them leaves only misery and bitter memory. And helpless wrath, at the cruelty of the Ice. Better to make an end.’
‘I have read much of such things,’ said Asquan into the long silence that followed. ‘That was how I divined my Lord Alya’s intention. All I have read bears out what you say. It is as if such returners from the dead draw the life from the living. The superstitious believe they drink their blood. So you are wise, Master Headman, to do as you do. But there is more that I can offer you for your comfort. I have read that such creatures are not in truth the people they seem to be; but only the shadows of such people in the memories of the Powers that master them – in this case Taoune.’
Shadow of the Seer Page 35