Cast a Bright Shadow
Page 17
The Kree chariots rode round the snow-packed outer rim of the oasis, while the lions sneezed and growled in the steam. The air was heavy, perfumed; the water had a fermenting odour, as if to swim there might make one drunk.
The House Mage was dead. His fever had burned him up, and the interminable coughing burst his heart. The funeral rites of such a personage were prolonged – and arduous for a Chaiord. Afterwards, a new House Mage having been promoted into authority, Lokesh and some of the men had ridden away to visit the oasis.
‘My father Lokinda used to talk of another such spot. It happened when he was a child, but over on Shaiy land, and they were churlish with it, wouldn’t share. It survived only ten months – God’s reproval of them, he said.’
Lokesh spoke openly, and many had noticed how he referred far more often to the former Chaiord, his father, since Nameless had come here, as if something in Nameless inclined him to do so.
Nameless swung out of the chariot which he had been driving, acting as the Chaiord’s charioteer and therefore brother. He had a look of Athluan about him as he did this, some thought.
Where the others hung back a little, almost wary at first of the oasis, Nameless strode into it. He was its match for colours.
Beneath a mulberry tree, thick purple with its mutated, tough-skinned berries, Nameless paused a minute, glancing round. Then he walked up the tree. They had seen him do this before, but still watched spellbound. Climbing in this way, he was now almost horizonal, and next upright again. Reaching a broad bough, he sat there, gazing out across the breadth of the oasis, the hot steam billowing by.
Where had he learned his magecraft? He had claimed it was inherent, but also he half told them how his mother and he had met a sorcerer in the waste, along with the Olchibe man who had taught Nameless archery. His meetings, it seemed, had always been auspicious.
When the men were ready for their swim, stripped bare in the heat, Nameless rejoined them. They had seen him naked before, as with all their own, in the garth bath-house, so were not intrigued. He was entirely tan, and at his groin the hair was also a flame. His weapon was large and well made, but consistently modestly presented at such times; he seemed to have some control of it that other men lacked, but the Kree girls whispered different things, if equally complimentary.
They plunged into the water and splashed about, roaring, and later they took the lions in, and the great lean beasts swam too, for they had learned it in the bath-house with their masters.
After the dip, they threw shavings of bronze into the largest pond, as an offering of thanks to the sprite of the waters. It was clearly visible at certain times under the surface, weed-haired and sinuous. If Nameless saw it, he did not say. They assumed, as a Jafn, he did.
Above, the grey sky gave on darkness in slow waves. By then the fire was lit to broil the meat they had hunted down en route. When grilled in the fire, fruits detonated from their skins, filling the air with added fragrance. No stars appeared but then two moons came up, one dark silver, one a smoking jewel.
‘I’ve seen an opal like that moon,’ said Lokesh. He and Nameless sat slightly back from the fire. They were scooping boiling fruits out of their kernels, spreading this on their meat with knives.
‘It looks,’ said Nameless, ‘like some witch’s secret eye.’
‘Or the eye of the dead.’ Lokesh’s face drew in on itself. Of all the confidences and hints, he had not meant to utter this.
‘The eye of the dead would be rotten,’ replied Nameless, naively enough, ‘or, in the Other Place bright and clear again.’
‘Set in a skull-cup – I meant that,’ said Lokesh. He absorbed wine in gulps. ‘I feel that you know what I did,’ he blurted out like a boy.
‘Of course I do,’ said Nameless, and added softly, ‘I am a friend to you. How else would I be your friend, if not knowing you?’
‘I value your friendship. We swore the oath of warrior-brotherhood—’
‘So we did.’
‘But if I say more, it must be blood-feud between us.’
Nameless waited. Then very gently he remarked, ‘But I know that and, look, my knife is only for the food.’
The other men kept their distance, seeming to take no notice. They knew Lokesh was in love with Nameless, but any one of them would gladly have changed seats with Lokesh now. Valued alliances had been constructed, and dynasties begun among the Jafn, out of such passionate male love. If the pair talked low, no one else minded it or sought to pry.
Lokesh said, ‘I must tell you what I did.’
Nameless, who had said that he already knew, answered, ‘Then tell me.’
‘I’m afraid of it.’
Nameless reached across. He put his hand a split second on Lokesh’s shoulder. That was all it required.
Lokesh then recounted, in rapid sentences, how Rothger had made a pact with him – and with a selection of demons, seefs and other brutes. Lokesh described how Rothger had arranged the supernatural slaughter of Lokesh’s unwanted bastard brother during the fight with the Fazions, and had later given Lokesh an uncanny utensil with which to destroy Lokinda. Rothger also, through his demons, sent a copy of Lokesh – a thing so like him it convinced any who had seen it – which left the garth and went out to shoot at a mark, in full view of the men on the garth walls, while Lokesh himself attended to the business of murder.
‘It – this thing – was even spoken to when it walked down through the street. It replied in my voice, but I was in the inner room with Lokinda. It was a blade of ice Roth had given me. I showed it to my father as a curiosity. Then thrust it through his guts. He died before he could even draw breath to shout. It melted in him, but left no sign – his skin was whole. And I ran and hid myself. Then, when the thing Roth had made to look like me itself came back, I took its place in the apple grove behind the yard well. By then they’d found my father’s corpse.’
Nameless still waited, saying nothing.
Lokesh went on with his confession.
He detailed how Rothger had psychically killed Athluan inside a web of magic, with the aid of a witch Lokesh himself had discovered for Roth, a woman of the furthest north beyond the Northlands. She had leached Athluan’s sword and spirit, and Rothger had maimed him mortally. Outside the web, his flesh-and-blood body perished openly in battle by an arrow – but that, too, was uncanny.
‘I wasn’t there. Athluan had let me go to conquer the Faz Mother Ship. Later Roth described what he had done, gloating as he told me. He hated him, your father. Oh, I regret your father more than mine. Athluan was a good man. I’ve drunk from the cup of his skull that has opal eyes like that moon. And I helped Roth traduce him after, told of his weakness and a hundred invented failings – and kept the Kree allied with Rothger’s Klow. I am ashamed.’ Water rolled down Lokesh’s cheeks.
Still silent, Nameless sat by him.
Lokesh, blinded by crying, did not notice the centres of Nameless’s eyes, now red as the coals.
Calmly Nameless said, ‘Listen to me. It wasn’t you, brother, did any of that. It was heartless Rothger, whose soul reeks like the anus of this earth, he alone who made you do it all, and left you to suffer all the guilt.’
‘You’re right in that. Yes, you are right in that …’
Concerned, the other men about the fire all stared at them now: at Nameless sitting so still, at their Chaiord weeping.
Nameless put his hand once more on the Chaiord’s shoulder. He looked about at the men, holding their eyes with his, which were now indigo again as the sky around the moons.
‘By your leave, we were speaking,’ said Nameless, ‘of our two fathers’ deaths.’
The rigidity went from them. One said, ‘Yes, we all owe such men a little grief.’ They drank the health of the murdered dead.
White crows beat across the night sky. A stream of ice-moths, translucent as thinnest milk, trailed after them like a brief disturbance of vision.
Lokesh sat beside his new brother and friend, who had no name.
&nb
sp; Nameless had said very little since the revelation. He seemed merely thoughtful, as anyway he often did.
The other men were unconscious, for it was a sleep nocturnal. Lokesh could not or would not sleep.
The two moons went down. The third one had appeared late, also darkly pale, wandering over the sky as if searching for them.
‘What …’ faltered Lokesh, ‘what will make it right?’
‘Oh, that,’ said Nameless pleasantly, but as if distracted from other more urgent meditations.
‘My crimes, against you, my father …’
‘They are Rothger’s crimes,’ said Nameless. Now his tone was implacable.
The other men, sleeping, lay like the dead. Lokesh regarded them uneasily. Did he fear some ghost or higher power would smite him if he slumbered too?
‘What am I to do? In the old times they had priests to stand between them and God – but now we dispense with priests. We must stand before God without an intermediary.’
‘I believed it was my wrath you feared, not God’s,’ said Nameless lightly.
‘Both … both. What am I to do?’
‘Be revenged.’
The words sounded like cool bells deep in Lokesh’s wide ears.
He sat back, his face hardening, growing solid again.
‘Rothger?’
‘Be revenged on Rothger.’
‘And you, my brother, what for you?’
Nameless shrugged. ‘We’ve sworn the brotherhood vow together. I’ll partner you in vengeance.’
‘The Klow are strong.’
‘So are the Kree.’
‘But they are allied with us – and with others.’
‘Smash the alliance.’
‘What grounds? What excuse?’
‘The truth.’
Lokesh started. ‘How can I speak that?’
‘Say this: As we sat here and your men slept, your father’s spirit came out of a moon. And he told us Rothger had slain him with a poison, for some old score. And Athluan he killed too, for the obvious reasons. Rothger is feared and mistrusted—’
‘With cause! I … I fear him.’
‘You are with me now. Don’t fear him, not one jot. Besides,’ said Nameless, with the same tender expression Lokesh had seen him wear when he slaughtered those first two deer, ‘right is with us. And I can provide omens, occurences – enough to convince your people.’
Behind Lokesh’s shoulder, unseen and unseeable by any but one, Nameless beheld his Uncle Guri, fresh from a race with the wind, and grinning wide as a skull.
When the men woke up, scattered about the ponds, dawn was rising. Four hours had elapsed. They looked about, and saw Lokesh and Nameless had gone away somewhere, perhaps for the purposes of nature. In the customary token of return, they had each left a coloured pebble lying on the ground.
As the Kree warriors ate their breakfast at the fire, two or three spotted a snake which trickled towards the water through the grasses.
It was a white snake, very large and long, with faint smudged markings on its scales. They watched the muscle rippling below its skin. Reaching the brink of a pool, it lowered its leonine, earless head. They thought it was drinking.
Abruptly the snake jerked backwards. In its jaws was clamped, diamond bright, a thrashing fish.
There were no fish in these waters. The heat alone would have cooked them.
Tethered to the trees, the Jafn lions stared and snarled softly.
The Kree did not exclaim, knowing now they witnessed a phenomenon.
So, when the wolf sped through the grass and seized, in turn, the snake that held the fish, they were less amazed than in the grip of a prescribed awe.
This wolf was white, a beast of the snow plains, normally found only in packs – unlike the solitary black wolves of the uplands to the west and south. The snow-wolves were not unduly fierce. Generally they avoided the haunts of men, unless starving, which this one did not look to be.
Now the wolf had hold of the snake which clasped the fish. Even with the wolf’s fangs closed on it, the snake did not let go its own prize.
As one, the men of the Jafn Kree – also their lions – raised their heads, and from the dawning light cascaded a huge bird. It too was white, with black-fringed, endless wings, perhaps a type of lammergeyer not common to those parts.
It stooped and caught the wolf between its silent talons. It swept upwards, bearing the struggling burden – a bird of prey which grasped a wolf which grasped a snake which grasped a fish.
The morning was steely and choked by cloud, which shut over the four creatures and hid them, whether they were illusory, spiritual or real.
Then the outcry started. As it did so, Lokesh and Nameless were back among the Kree.
Lokesh held up his hand. ‘Whatever you saw won’t startle me. In the night … in the night my father came out from the Other Place, to speak to us.’
During the chariot ride back to the Kreean-garth, further events happened. The atmosphere was packed with hovors, sprites, unmalign yet mischievous, tweaking the manes of the lions, pulling off mens’ riding caps, dislodging riding masks, or undoing their jewelry; dancing half-seen in the air.
When they began to approach the garth, and it grew visible up on its terraces of platforms behind the palisade, these beings drifted away. Then there was a sort of vacancy in land and sky, a gap which seemed needing to be filled.
This filling happened when they reached the main gate of the Kreean-garth.
Once, years ago, Lokinda had visited the Klow. Saphay had seen him, and described him, long after, to her son: an aged man, big and bundled in his clothes, his hair grey as a sword but whitening fast. He possessed, she had said, a face like a toad’s.
Now Lokinda, with his whitening hair and toad’s wrinkled face, was mistily present below the gate. He stood alone, a crag of sorrow and rage.
On the walls, sentries looking down made him out, and called to God. Women gathering ice for water in a grove beyond the walls dropped their pots and themselves turned to ice.
The chariots careered and halted. The lions growled, were stilled.
Lokesh, dead white, leaned on his chariot-rail.
‘Courage,’ Nameless said to him, now handling the restless lion-team as if he had done so since boyhood. ‘You’ve nothing to fear from him.’
When Lokinda spoke, his voice was not human at all, but like metal struck against metal. What else might you expect of one come back all this way – and from there?
‘My son, avenge me – you are sworn to it. Murderous Rothger of the Klow, who poisoned me, and turned like a fleer on his own brother, Athluan. Remember you are blood of my blood, bone of my bone. Do not live one day or sleep one hour more before you begin, and so lay my agony to rest.’
There would be those who might ask, ingenuously, why it had taken so long for the revenant of the old Chaiord to return and make this demand.
It was Nameless who explained. ‘Their time isn’t like ours. Our years to them are like an afternoon, or a night spent drinking and telling stories. But also, perhaps, he waited in courtesy for me to be of a proper age and strength to play my part. Remember how quickly God allowed me to grow up. Lokesh must avenge his sire, and I mine.’
Later Nameless said to Guri, ‘Uncle, you acted that old man Lokinda well.’
‘He was Jafn,’ said Guri with contempt. ‘Nothing so difficult then, but I’d be hard put to it to fake a man of the Olchibe.’
Above, the sky blazed with stars.
In the House of the Klow, Rothger was tossing and grunting in the stonewood bed. Taeb, the northern witch, sat at the far side of it, observing him.
Now and then he would have her in to pass a night with him. He never wanted her body. He preferred her to conjure sexual images on the wall, some of them perverse and some repulsive, while under the quilts he pleasured himself three or four times. Then he would, for a treat, invite her to lie by him and sleep, in her northern way, at the far side of the bed.
Taeb watched him. Did it enter her mind how she could discredit him if she revealed that he had slept out of turn? Probably not, since the mind of Taeb was not much like the minds of others. Besides, she could smell the electric upheaval that circled now above, between them and the motionless stars. Only the gods of night could put out the stars. Men were simpler to deal with.
Soon Taeb slipped free of the bed. She donned her furs and went noiselessly from the room. Descending by the ladder-stair to the hall, she moved, cloaked in a spell of non-apparency, behind the benches, among the hubbub of the House evening, and through the door into the yard.
Out in the garth, the Klow were used by now to seeing the green witch gliding around. Even sometimes she would go to the gate and leave the garth behind, off about mystic witch-work in the wilderness.
Once down on the plain, Taeb walked briskly.
The snow was exemplary tonight, crisp and firm. As Saphay had once done perforce, Taeb too now went away from the Klowan-garth. Any who noted this thought, naturally, she would be coming back. But in that they were quite wrong.
FOUR
It has come and gone, the meeting at the Thing Place. The presiding ancient ship trapped to its withers in the ice, the seventeen masts that drip with cryotites. Not truce torches of green fire, but blood-red, fashioned by the new House Mage of the Kree, the designated colour for alliance-breaking. Men of the Shaiy, the Irhon, the Vantry, all standing in the ring of black spar, watching as a nameless young man speaks to them, and at his side his vow-brother, Lokesh of the Kree.
They were sold, in an hour, the property of vengeance, and the unassailable rights of Lokesh, and the one called Nameless in honour of a father dead before he could coin his son’s name. They liked too, these peoples, the idea of taking something. Especially the Shaiy liked it, trustless and shifting as a cloud.