Cast a Bright Shadow

by Tanith Lee

  Lionwolf, despite any form or illusion, thought of the wind as a wind, with ice on it.

  ‘We’ll hunt then,’ said Peb Yuve. ‘Do you know how we hunt, we Olchibe bands?’

  Lionwolf unslung the Olchibe bow from his back. ‘Perhaps you will decide if I do or not.’

  The Olchibe men ululated. Their mammoths were unlocked, all at once, into a prolonged sprint. The Jafn had heard of this, some had seen it before. To Lionwolf, of course, such mobility had long ago been described in detail.

  He set his chariot to keep pace, the reins around his waist.

  Peb beheld below, from the gallery of his mammoth’s back, a flame of man and chariot, keeping pace and next outstripping him.

  They surged northward. The Olchibe, who had already come out this way, had started up game en route. Now deer dashed from the frozen thickets before the hunters.

  Peb Yuve saw how the one charioteer ahead of him loosed three arrows, sometimes four, every time all at once from his bow. Each found a target, and cleanly. The Olchibe leader could not see quite how it was done. He had never known any man, himself included, who could release and successfully guide more than two shafts together, while riding.

  Soon they let the remainder of the deer go, having taken enough. The hunt had been hard, lucky, and extremely short.

  They dismounted, Peb Yuve waiting until his beast had kneeled. He went over to the young man who now, amid the sea of death and meat on the blood-smoking snow, attended to his own kills – there were twenty-three of them. No other single man, Jafn or Olchibe, had felled so many.

  ‘I ask again, who are you?’ said Peb Yuve.

  Lionwolf smiled at him. Was ever any creature so beautiful? Even women were not, even Olchibe women of fifteen years, with their hair unbound and rubbed with spice. But it was less simple in that way, too, for Peb did not fancy this man.

  Disgusted at himself, at his own wonderment which this out-tribe foreigner had kindled so very fast, Peb Yuve knew enough to be staid. He judged swiftly, judged himself, then put the judgement aside.

  He had been told, after all. There was still much in reserve.

  ‘I don’t know, Great One,’ said Lionwolf, ‘I don’t know what I am.’

  ‘Still the Riddle?’

  ‘No, the truth.’

  Peb Yuve blinked again. He stared. Then, not turning his head, he ordered some of his own warriors forward to gut and blood Lionwolf’s deer. ‘There are white bear near our sluhtin,’ he said. ‘Have you hunted bear?’

  ‘Now and then.’

  ‘Our wise-women value the bear, so we let them alone. However,’ said Peb Yuve, ‘one’s been annoying us, going after our kiddles, mauling our animals and leaving them useless to us.’

  Lionwolf stood quickly to wipe his hands clean on the snow. Peb noted they were callused, workmanlike, but also, in shape, the hands of a prince. Yes, he had Rukar blood, he was god-gotten – even if the god was worthless and cracked, and he lied about it. The god-gotten one straightened. Peb said, ‘If you wish, ride the mammoth there. My second will allow you.’

  Lionwolf glanced across. The second had already dismounted. He was grinning, waiting for this paragon to make a fool of himself in front of them all.

  ‘You honour me too much,’ said Lionwolf.

  He went over to the mammoth, which had now stood up to its full towering height. He did not attempt to order it to kneel, although Guri had taught him how. Instead, as was his habit with heights, hills, trees, Lionwolf walked calmly up the beast’s hairy side. The Jafn, who had observed this before, watched in reverence. The Olchibe watched too, but with faces of iron.

  At the top of the mammoth, Lionwolf swung easily into its curious saddle-seat. He scratched firmly over the animal’s head, through its greasy hair, and above the trunk and tusks. Enjoying this, the mammoth snorted softly.

  Leaving the Jafn to their butcher business, the Olchibe and the Stranger, who knew some of their ways, went on after bears.

  Peb’s wife, the Crax, had said to him, ‘To kill the bear is a true test. If he makes a mess of it, he’ll rouse up the wrath of the forests. If he fails to complete the task, whatever else he is he’s no warrior and is worthless.’

  But when the red-haired man was shown the place of the lair, high up in a shelf of snow, among the crystalline branches of the fig trees, again he performed magic.

  He called to the bear, gentle like a lover – a mother. And the bear came shambling from its cave. It was old and black-toothed, and that was why it had gone for the babies and the lamasceps. Nevertheless, its coat was like the driven snow.

  The red magician climbed up towards the old, malevolent bear. He did this without any sign of nervousness or even caution. Reaching the bear, he softly touched it on the side, and it lay down before him. That was all.

  Peb and his nearest seconds had dismounted, and stood around in a semicircle below the snow-cave. They looked in silence. When the magician called to them, they climbed up, too, to see. The bear was dead, as if it slept. There was not a wound on it, the pelt unmarked.

  ‘Tell me your name now,’ said Peb Yuve. ‘You’ve shown you’re the mage-kind. You’ll have no fear in being known.’

  ‘Lionwolf.’

  Through the jungle something passed. No wind now; perhaps it was the departing life-force of the dead bear.

  ‘Who named you with such a name?’

  ‘I,’ said a man whom Peb Yuve saw, only in that moment, positioned by Lionwolf’s shoulder.

  He was Olchibe, and young enough, about thirty years of age. His hair had been elaborately braided for this social event, that of meeting his leader after eleven years of death.

  ‘What are you?’ said Peb.

  ‘I was yours,’ said Guri. He was rigid with emotion – with the anguish of this excrutiating scene of refinding.

  Did Peb remember Guri?

  Guri thought he did not. Why would he? A leader’s warriors came and went, lived and died, just like bears.

  No other man could make out Guri. They could see only the footprints he had let them see, appearing without him in the snow.

  ‘If you were ever mine,’ said Peb Yuve, ‘now you’re his. You’re the one he calls “Uncle”. You taught him Olchibe customs?’

  The vandal band heard Peb talking to another that was not to be seen, above those disembodied footprints.

  Jafn magic.

  Guri said to his leader, who had forgotten him, ‘Great One, as your wife, who is a Crax, foretold you, this man, though son-by-law to a Chaiord, is in fact the son of a god through a mortal woman. Her name’s Saphay. Do you recollect a princess of the Rukar you meant to steal? That was her. You sent me to fetch her, but I failed.’

  ‘You speak like a Rukar,’ said Peb Yuve.

  Guri was taken aback. He felt ashamed, aware that was possible. He had spent a long while with Saphay, and with this nephew.

  He only said, ‘If you remember the woman, you’ll know you might have kept her. She was young and good-looking and strong of mind, spirit and body. She would have borne you sons. One of them might have been this one.’

  Peb Yuve looked away from the revenant of his warrior. He looked again at Lionwolf, who had collected the name of a mystic hybrid of Gech, and a blue sun standard. Gazing back at him, over the white bear, Lionwolf was not humble, nor vainglorious.

  You, Peb thought stonily, you, Wife, you have done this. By telling me he would win me, you put it on me. Now I can only be won.

  ‘Since you woo we Olchibe, what do you want of us?’

  ‘To make war pact with you. All Jafn is here already.’

  ‘The Jafn despise Olchibe. Olchibe has contempt for Jafn.’

  ‘That can be put aside. Mutual tolerance will advance mutual benefit.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Gech will come over to us. Do you want to miss what Gech can have?’

  ‘Which is?’

  ‘Let us grow great enough, and we ride south together against the Ruk. Tho
ugh Olchibe scorns the Jafn, the Ruk you hate.’

  ‘Yes, that’s true. We hate them. In the long ago, the Rukar disembowelled our land. They had our kind as slaves, and burned the sluht-city of Sham, which is now a dunghill.’

  ‘Well, then. You’ve taken little bites off the Ruk for centuries. Don’t you have a taste now for the whole dish? We’ll rend the Rukar all in shreds, Peb Yuve,’ said Lionwolf, using the leader’s name, as fellow leader, or magician, either, might do. ‘The spoils of their cities shall be ours and yours, to redress the sorrow of Sham. They shall cover us in liquid gold and pearl, give us their women to breed on, and their gardens to feed on, for a thousand years.’

  ‘Your mother is Rukar, so your shadow-uncle says.’

  ‘My mother,’ said Lionwolf, ‘will mount the flat ruins of Ru Karismi and dance.’

  His attempt to bring Saphay to Peb Yuve had cost Guri his earthly life. Peb Yuve perhaps somewhat remembered Saphay, Guri he mislaid.

  And Guri had now betrayed Peb Yuve anyway, acting as Lionwolf’s second, setting himself before Peb as the ally of another – doing all he had promised Lionwolf he would.

  This seethed inside Guri like a fermenting bane. His birthrights were gone for ever.

  So, he ran, he flew, as he had so often and often, over the ice floes, along the crinkled black edges of the sea, inland through forests of turquoise and caverns of night.

  Returning to the snow-forest and the village-city of Ranjal, Guri saw none of his journey. He had not been concentrating on that.

  The Olchibe, as he departed, were at a meal, eating the bear meat of Lionwolf’s kill, the faultless pelt having been presented to the Crax, Peb’s wife. All this had … offended Guri.

  So, it was the chat about the woman that he kept hold of – Saphay. They had left her there; Lionwolf had left her. Now she was for her son just a symbol, it seemed, dancing on the wreck of a city. Lionwolf – worse than Peb – forgot, he forgot his mother, forgot his goddess there in the bloody cart, which was haunted by an intermittent old woman. He forgot Guri.

  He was a child, the Lionwolf, but without a child’s affectionate need or awareness of fair play, however harsh. His situation had developed: he had more to occupy him now.

  Guri landed in the snow-forest, cursing and bristling. It was almost sun-up. He must make sure of Saphay.

  Presently he noticed the lanes of packed ice and snow were melted everywhere, like candles, into grotesque shapes. Sky thrust through, embarrassed and flushing with dawn.

  When Guri came to the village, it was over. Everything had thawed and gone down. Metal pipes and other objects, pieces of wood and purposeless implements, lay everywhere. Trees sprang acid green among the debris. Berries drooped, arrested, bleeding.

  Nabnish’s house was also a thing of the past. Yet Guri discovered the decomposing corpse of Nabnish himself nearby. Of Saphay no trace remained, though, kicking through the snowy rubble, Guri saw a woman’s combs, a Jafn ring, bits of clothing with black irises growing up about them. Where had she gone?

  The holed stone for calling, which he had given her, Guri located. It too was broken.

  Even her cat was not to be summoned.

  Guri crouched on the melted floor, looking up through the space where the snow walls had formed their chimney. The sky was peach-pink. Into that, Guri deduced, she had been carried.

  Ghosts and gods did such things. Yes, it was a god, again, who had her – the second. She was a slut. One god had not been enough for her.

  Second Intervolumen

  Since no mortal man can be, save he grows in a woman’s womb, God first created Woman.

  Truism of the Crarrowin: Olchibe

  Among all the changes that occupy a sky, how could you detect one image that moves constantly, yet never alters?

  Clouds – they were clouds where he lived. Perhaps they were clouds, of a kind.

  Pale, neutral, assuming shades of sunrise and set, sometimes hardly to be seen at all. Catching sun or moon, a piled cumulus with a bulging upper storey, heavy yet weightless, gossamer that was granite.

  Ddir, Placer of Stars, sailed slowly over the air. He was quite mindless. His genius, since he was a god, did not require a mind. He looked down often at the iceball of the world. More often he looked up into the vistas of the sky. He did not really place stars. Stars had their places already. In his unmind, though, Ddir did place the stars, and so, despite making no physical impression on the constellations, yet he did. Now and then mages, even ordinary men, had seen what Ddir had done. How among the stars the form of an animal, or an object, suddenly became evident in the heavens, clear as if drawn on in diamonds. Tonight, Ddir had designed a formation in the night sky like a huge toad. It had been noticed, by the observant or trained, in many lands, glittering. Only those in the Ruk who knew his name knew who was responsible.

  Beyond Sham, sacked city of rambling markets and mud, lay the Copper Gate, whose metal-plated archway led to Gech. Ice swamps formed the landscape of Gech. Netted by frozen willows and mangrove, it teemed with striped wolverine, apes whose dun fur trailed to the ground, and tree-nesting wolves. Here mankind constructed beehive houses of coldest sludge. Cousin to Olchibe, Gech was different – a people older, more obscure and occult.

  Behind the swamps, Northland Gech opened a wilderness. Huge boulders scattered the earth, which seemed to have been flung bad-temperedly from the sky to break. Next mountains pushed through, blind-white with snows. Up there, far above, a plateau spread itself, prehistoric, colossal, uncharted. This region was the Great Uaarb, the ice desert of the North.

  The Uaarb was a barren spot. The expanse of it was dry and bone-hard, yet covered by a deluge of white sand, like spillages of salt. This sand was itself made of volatile ice. The grains were tiny, and cruel as splinters. Out of their dunes sometimes ice mesas rose, through which daylight gleamed, or the moons.

  Those that lived there were nomadic, their skins pitted and darkened by ice-burn, their habits harsh. Like sen-snails, they carried their houses and temples with them.

  During that afternoon, there had been some banks of cloud. One of these never moved.

  That night, across the table of the Uaarb, nomadic astrologers discerned a Toad picked out among the stars.

  Presently the invented constellation itself began to change. After a while it was no longer a Toad but the sparkling outline of a Hand, fingers pointing down towards the world.

  Ddir, nondescript in his garments coloured like dust, descended, walking down the night as if it were a flight of stairs.

  Any who had seen – not what he did, but what he appeared to be – would not have given him a first glance, let alone a second.

  In the desert of the Uaarb, small winds, ice-devils, twirled and played about Ddir. He walked barefoot among them. With his unmind, the god was thinking.

  There had been Zezeth, scintillant and lethal, who had possessed a human woman in the sea under the ice, and so created, apparently unwillingly, a child. Then there was Yyrot, stimulated perversely by this act of Zezeth’s, its consequences, and the being who resulted. Yyrot had taken on his canine persona and coupled with a cat. Beings – of a sort – must result also from this. Ddir, pottering about in his cloud, had somehow been alerted; an artisan of great talent, he too now wanted to make. Nor would a mere constellation any more satisfy him.

  These gods, three of the millions known in the Ruk, themselves knew men. They had grown up amongst mankind, literally, for men had established such gods in their own image. No wonder they went mad.

  Having been given to Saphay had linked these three. It was a tenuous enough bond to begin with, for elsewhere they had been split up and awarded, in different trios, to other mortals. Again, it was the act beneath the ice which had so peculiarly fused Zezeth with Yyrot and Ddir. But even that act of lust, rape and insemination, had not been random. For it, too, there must have been some reason …

  This even the Magikoy had not fathomed. Perhaps they had not looked from t
hat particular angle. As for the gods, they never bothered to find out.

  The snow from the northerly mountains had slipped into a shallow valley of the plateau beneath.

  White, so white the snow against the swarthier white of the surrounding Uaarb.

  Down on to the snow floated Ddir.

  He stood looking at it, this blank canvas.

  Then he began.

  Whiteness parted. It was like a child blowing through thin cloth. Pieces were raised, then folded and blown back. A new slope began to form between, out of the virgin snow.

  Only the night and Ddir’s stars watched.

  They saw the shape in the snow become swiftly that of a woman. Her body was long and slender, perfect in proportion, initially featureless in all ways. Then the mound of the sex, the two breasts, lifted irresistibly upward, and upon the soft roundness of the breasts two budded nipples were expressed. At the same moment, from the smooth eggshell mask of face, two deep-lidded eyes spontaneously sculpted, and two lips, full and flowering; a nose, cheekbones, ears exquisitely arrived. From the modelled forehead, out across the snow, rivers of hair began to gush like steady liquid water from some inner dam. There were narrow flexive hands and feet. There were bodily curves of a slim voluptuousness, like that of some curved knife sheathed in velvet.

  Ddir paused assessingly. He, like the dark and the stars, watched carefully now. When at last the shifting planes of the snow finished their work, he walked round the woman, all about her sheer whiteness – this incredibleness he had made.

  Then, like some elderly nurse, Ddir clicked his tongue. He was chiding his own oversight. Equipped with limbs, breasts, loins and mouth, lashed eyes and a mantle of hair, unseen organs and teeth, yet this masterpiece had not, of course, been born. She therefore lacked one attribute to make her acceptable to men. Leaning over, he stuck his finger quickly into her level snowy belly, to print the faultless indent of a navel.

  Night, which had been attending patiently, believed now its own instant had come.