Cast a Bright Shadow

by Tanith Lee

  Those that came to the Klow House now remarked on the number of amiable sprites and lesser elementals which hung about there. They were generally quite docile, for Rothger had tamed them. Only once or twice there was some mischief. Mostly you had the feeling of always being watched.

  Rothger was respected – or he was feared.

  In war he would fight, then be lost to view. Sometimes, when he returned, he seemed wounded in the face, for he dripped with fresh blood. But it was never his.

  Rothger glanced around the lodge hall. The seef was about. He could feel it hovering. It was troublesome, tickling up his lust for blood. Rothger looked sidelong at Lokesh, and wondered sportively how much blood was in this burly blockhead.

  All the other men here were drunk by now. They sprawled around, clanking their cups on the tables, spluttering drunkard songs or jokes. The sun had set an hour ago.

  ‘They say the old king’s dead in Karismi,’ observed Lokesh.

  ‘We’ve had no sending.’

  ‘Would they send to you now? They broke the marriage treaty when they heard Athluan’s Ruk wife was dead.’

  ‘They’ve had no fight on their hands,’ said Rothger idly. ‘They’re sunk in peace.’

  ‘That may change. Then they’ll call on you, broken treaty or not.’

  ‘True – and I shall be deaf.’

  Lokesh said, solemn and inebriated, ‘Have you never thought, Rothger, of those south-west-over lands? If all Jafn allied with Jafn, we might make a war force – Gullahammer – give the Rukar a slice of bother. All they ever fought in the past was city with city. Now not even that. They’re soft. Ripe enough maybe for plucking.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Rothger, as if they spoke of nothing, ‘do it if you want. I’m content at home.’

  There was a glint in Rothger’s lazy soulless eyes. Lax as a pillow, still he got smartly up. Lokesh watched him narrowly, the hair rising a little along his scalp. Something came for Rothger at such times, and led him away to his pleasure. No one would follow.

  Outside in the snow, Rothger slit his forearm open, and licked up the blood greedily, with the seef panting at his side, mewing and flushing rose-pink. From a narrow window up in the lodge wall, Taeb the witch stared down at this. Sometimes Rothger would signal to her, here or at the House, then she must fetch him something, some animal from the wastes. He loved the aftermath of battle, corpses everywhere. Tonight it seemed his own blood satisfied Rothger. Overhead, in the black, moonless sky, the eyes of stars also stared down, colder than Taeb’s, perhaps less kind.

  TWO

  By the door of the house, a dog was lying, at ease on the snow. Dark was coming down but with, as yet, no moons.

  The young man paused, regarding the dog. None of the hounds of the Ranjallans were at all like this, but shaggy maned beasts. This one was smooth, long-nosed, its ears up-pointed like the firm petals of certain flowers.

  Nameless called, wordlessly yet encouragingly, to the grey velvet dog – which got up as if to come to him, then vanished in a coil of smoke.

  ‘Good evening, Mother. There was a dog at our door.’

  She gave him her hand, a lady – and he kissed her cheek. Saphay was much shorter in height than her son.

  ‘Did you chase it off?’

  ‘It disappeared. A vrix, perhaps?’

  ‘Don’t talk in Jafn.’

  ‘A corrit, then?’

  ‘I said, don’t … Can you see such things?’

  ‘I can see all things, Mother, but nothing so well as you.’

  His flattery, transparent and flirtatious as it was, always charmed her. It was a game they played.

  The cat sprang to Nameless’s shoulder and clung there, purring. Stroking the cat with his right hand, Nameless strode into the house and slapped, in passing, the face of Bit-Nabnish.

  Saphay continued at her chosen task, moving about the ground floor of the snow-house, lighting candles on the shelves and ledges. From the stove issued a warm red light, and dishes of food stood under covers on its roof.

  Nameless gazed around him, plainly happy with the homely scene.

  Saphay said, ‘There has been a thing about for some days – for two Endhlefons. I’ve counted the times I’ve seen something. Once it spoke—’

  ‘A dog which spoke.’

  ‘No, then it wasn’t a dog.’

  For a fraction of a second, Nameless checked. You saw, in this fragment of time, how seldom it was that he lost his flying fearless balance in the world. For his face, taking on this abstraction and unease, ceased – for just that second – to be his. Then the look was gone. He said easily, ‘Was it him?’

  ‘Never,’ she said. She put down her taper and slid her hand over her lips. Then she said, ‘That one has never found us here. The dog is a vrix, if we must speak Jafn.’

  ‘Guri believes the ignorance of the people here rubs off on the trees, and hides us.’

  ‘Perhaps it does.’

  Saphay resumed her household activities. She began to take the dishes off the stove. The cat jumped from Nameless to the floor, in order to note this procedure carefully.

  ‘Mother, stop that a moment. Sit with me.’

  They sat down on the rugs before the stove.

  Nabnish had slunk away behind the ladders to the dankest dimmest cubby of the house. Saphay stared at her son. He seemed, in the firelight, made of golden fire, and red fire, and his eyes were blue coals.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, quiescent.

  ‘I mean to leave this place, Mother.’

  ‘Of course,’ she said, ‘one day. How could you stay?’

  ‘I mean to leave this place tonight.’

  ‘Tonight?’ Her face was the whitest thing in the house of snow. ‘Then I—’

  ‘Guri will go with me. He’s off now, the way he goes, running after deer, catching stars … Soon he’ll be back, then I mean to set out. You can’t dissuade me. When I’m ready, I’ll send for you.’

  At that she lifted her chin. ‘Oh, so kingly you are. My thanks.’

  ‘When I’ve found my road, then—’

  ‘What road? You know what you are.’ Her voice was rough.

  ‘No, I don’t know what I am. Of all things, that I don’t know.’

  ‘Must I write it out for you on the floor? A god’s son – and mine.’

  ‘Yes, yours—’

  ‘How shall I live,’ she cried, ‘if you leave me—’ and heard in horror the whining of her old nurse, forgotten these ten years, left behind in Ru Karismi on the night of departure for the Jafn east.

  And Nameless, anyway, seemed to take no notice. He only said, ‘You’re safe here now, but Guri will visit you often. You know how he can be anywhere he wants in a blink. He’s given me something to give you that you can employ, a magic token, to call to him or to me, if—’

  ‘If what? If I’m attacked? If I am bored – you and your ghost, this cutch of the undead Olchibe scum who caused it all, or so he confessed to me when I failed to recollect that part – caused it by chasing me … the whale and the ice … and then that death in the blackness and he came – he—’

  Nameless rose. He turned his back on her. He was angry, and she saw it, and it no longer mattered. As a child sometimes, when she went against him, he had scorched her with a look. It burnt through her like a sword, then and now, but she was accustomed. He was so schooled in getting his own way.

  ‘Mother, I’m going now. No supper, thanks. I’ll eat as I travel.’

  ‘How will you travel?’ she said, snarling. ‘On Guri’s shoulders, as you did in childhood?’

  ‘You’ve seen what I can do. I can run all night fast as a lion, and never stop for breath.’

  ‘Go then. What are you to me – half mortal, not even that? To leave me here …’

  Then he turned after all and came back. He kneeled beside her and held her as she wept the bitter tears of her coming loneliness and rage. He stayed so long, stroking her hair, telling her gentle things, that she thought she had w
on from him at least this one night remaining. But she had not.

  And all this while, Guri was kicking his heels on the snows outside. And the cat, inside, having nosed the lid off a dish, was eating the meal no other wanted.

  Presently Nameless left the snow-house. A moon had risen, and the shut forest had begun its eerie glow. Nameless again looked about him. He did not mean to return.

  ‘She fell asleep.’

  ‘I warned you. If you’re honest about it, they make a fuss. Only a Crarrow knows how to use a man, then let him go. The Crarrowin are like men in that.’

  ‘Guri, she is my mother, not my whore.’

  ‘You’ve had plenty of those here too. In this it’s all the same.’

  They walked through the trees, by the derelict houses, along the avenues of snow, away from the village-city.

  ‘There was a grey dog – either vrix or corrit. It can be like a man, it seems, too.’

  ‘Some bloody Ranjallan leftover – some lost thing, like me.’ Guri chuckled. He did not consider himself lost. He knew where he was and what his function was. The boy was Leader, Guri his second.

  The path was descending now, the trees lifting off higher and higher, and in spots great rents appeared which let in the moon and the black shadows. Although they walked, no two human men could have made such speed with so little effort. In a handful of minutes they were already many miles from the village. And from Saphay.

  Guri had already – mostly unseen and definitely not understood – covered Saphay’s snow-house with safeguards. Ever since he became such a magus, he found these actions simple. Also he had frightened Bit-Nabnish in his sleep, making sure he would keep to his cowardice. Probably Saphay would kill the slave in her fury, anyway.

  Guri felt sorry for her – a little. She was so strong and had been so brave, but she was only a woman. She could not come on this journey; it was for men. Later there would be time again for her.

  The notion of the grey dog did worry him briefly, but these things were always at large, and Saphay had been sensitized to seeing them – even though her Rukar brain clamped down on her with its blindfolds. Some slippage from the ’tween-world, that was what the dog was; or some vrix she herself could see off with spells learned from her husband.

  They reached the end of the forest suddenly. Guri – who had gone this way not infrequently – was surprised. A subsidence in the snow had come about, and the edges of the forest dropped into it. Nameless and he stood on the brink, and scanned out to the moonlit ice plains half a mile beyond. Then together they leapt, spanned the gulf, and hurtled away down the night.

  Over palisades of frozen larch and palm blew the banners of the Snow-Ox. In terraces, the torch-fluttering Kreean-garth climbed to its House. It was the Festival of the Five Nights, indigenous to the Kree. Though the wind poured low and slanting across the land, the Chaiord had come out to make the offering to Great God, walking, armed, sunwise round the palisade, with only the House Mage and nine picked men to escort him.

  This being the Fifth Night, traditionally one of the Chaiord’s sons would ritually question him later as to the purpose of the Festival and its acts. Lokesh – as had Lokinda before him, when Lokesh himself had been the questioner – would explain. Long ago a monster had emerged from the ice waste. It had stolen up from the white darkness, entered the Kreean-garth, and killed hundreds. The Festival now had sorcerous significance. If observed, it must prevent a recurrence of such mayhem.

  Lokesh walked on. He was sullen and in a bad mood, chilled to the bone and fasting for a drink.

  On these or similar nights, when he must be both lord and priest to his people, Lokesh became uncomfortable. He would recall how, with the help of sottish evil Rothger, he had seen an irritant half-brother slain, and had presently murdered his own father. Kree and Klow were staunch allies still, knit by the spilt blood of Lokinda and Athluan.

  Ritual nights too were thick with spirits and seefs. They gathered to spy, masking themselves in driving snow or sidelong winds, such as that which blew now.

  At the two gates of the garth, and at the points of guard, where long ago animals, or men, had been sacrificed to secure the palisade, Lokesh made offerings of beer, wine and meat. Before morning, fleers or other scavengers might well turn up to accept these snacks on behalf of God. The Mage brought fire. It was magenta for the occasion, a colour of power and protection.

  The wind moaned.

  Lokesh heard in it the voice of his father. ‘Here you are then, my cunning son, Chaiord in my place, eh? Is it good?’ But this had happened before. Nothing more ever came of the voice.

  The Mage spoke. ‘Wait, Lokesh.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Look.’

  They looked.

  Across the leaden sheet of snow under three dull crescent moons, something was blowing like the wind itself. Like the wind also it had a sound – not a lament, a rumble.

  ‘The ice is shifting!’ exclaimed one of the nine warriors.

  ‘Or the snow—’ another added.

  Each man stared towards the horizon, and then a fourth moon, more luminous and golden than the the other three, began to rise.

  The Mage gestured at this glow, but it did not falter. He stepped out in front of them, and called a glinting shield of air up across the men, the walls, the garth.

  The fourth moon went on rising. It rose.

  ‘Face of God!’

  Over the rim of the earth roared a gleaming cloud, like fire from the mouth of a dragon. It gushed forward, skimming the snow, reflecting in it as if in mirror, lighting up the night. Above, it was flame; below, it was a shadow which seemed to have a hundred parts.

  One by one they grew conscious of what it must be, of what it comprised.

  A herd of … deer, wild deer, which rushed across the snow, silent and in fearful unison, but winged with a conflagration bright as a moon …

  ‘Make no move,’ instructed the Mage. He was stern and composed. ‘A sorcerer is at work here.’

  ‘The Shaiy,’ said one of the men, who were jabbering together.

  ‘No, they’re quiet – some rubbish of the Irhon.’

  ‘Are they alight?’

  ‘No, look – no burning and no smoke. They’d be dead if they burned in that way.’

  ‘Are they real or an illusion?’

  ‘Sirs, hold your noise,’ said the Mage. He said to the Chaiord, ‘Lokesh, you and I will go to meet this thing.’

  Lokesh was ashamed. It was he who should have told the Mage that. Blustering, he said, ‘Yes, yes, I say we must.’

  The Mage strode out, piercing through and abandoning the air-shield. He was older than Lokesh, but looked vital. He stretched his staff forward as he went, towards the brilliant deer, and the tip of the staff started to crackle, as if dipped into fire. When the air-shield fell behind him, Lokesh felt his bones tingle.

  All the snow, from the uncanny herd to the walls behind, was now reflectively blazing, and the shadows of the deer striped weirdly black across it.

  ‘They’re slowing up, Mage.’

  ‘So it seems.’

  Behind them, high on the platforms of the garth, people had run out to watch. There was some disturbance back there, but not here. The deer were coming to a standstill. They now were motionless. Only some forty paces separated them from Lokesh and his Mage … less with every stride.

  How still they were, at last, the deer. Calmly they stood there. And then … their moon-bright light went suddenly out.

  The Mage himself now halted. Lokesh, brazen with his inadequacy, stalked forward and the Mage checked him – again with the caution: ‘Wait.’

  They waited then; they had halved the distance. Twenty paces off, the deer herd abruptly cantered about and dashed away, bounding back to the horizon and the invisibility of night – all but two of them. These two animals remained, sombre finally on the snow, and from between them shone the light once more, but now it was slim and slotted upright and of reduced inten
sity. It was not a light at all. It was a man, young and tall, his clothes of outlandish un-Jafn leathers and furs, catching some description from the opaque moons – some luminosity they had not previously seemed to have – mostly on his hair and face.

  Lokesh found he did not wish to speak. The Mage too said nothing. He had lowered his staff, and frowned with some inner effort.

  The man who stood between the two deer bowed low in a courtly way not found among the Jafn, but seen more often in the purlieus of city palaces. Then he turned his back, fearless, arrogant, on the gaping warrior-king and his magician. Quietly the stranger touched each of the two deer between its eyes.

  Himself bemused, Lokesh saw the animals grow sleepy. Their eyes closed. They lay down without hesitation.

  The stranger leant across one deer and slit its throat, precisely, almost with a sort of tenderness. Turning to the second deer he did the same. Their blood unfolded, black on white. Kneeling, the stranger kept one hand on each of the deer, gently caressing them as, without distress, asleep, they died.

  Then he got up. He sheathed the blade – some uncouth implement from some other land. He walked across the snow and stood in front of the Chaiord and his Mage.

  ‘The Kree feast tonight, don’t you? Please accept my offering of meat for dinner. Fresh-slaughtered, it should be tasty. Probably you don’t know, but kindly killed, the flesh is sweeter and more succulent.’

  Lokesh opened his mouth. It was the Mage who spoke.

  ‘Who are you?’

  ‘I am Nameless. My father died before he could either claim or name me. I’m Athluan’s son. Good evening to you both.’

  ‘Why is it, Chaiord, that on these five nights you and your Mage and your men march round our walls, and offer to God?’

  The ritual question came from the ten-year-old son of the king at the correct moment, lifting through the torchlit joyhall where so many widened eyes now caught the flames.