Cast a Bright Shadow

by Tanith Lee

  Lionwolf sat in the small room they had given him. He sat on the floor of hard chipped wood.

  Darhana came in. She had borne him up here, in her arms, from the frozen wheat fields. Several days had passed before he gave over sleeping. It was as if he had not slept enough in his life ever before.

  The girl, without her snow-visor, had bright, pale-brown eyes, and she looked at him intently.

  ‘Here’s food.’

  He nodded, thanked her, looked away.

  She put the bowl down beside him.

  The language of Kraag had been more difficult for him to learn than any other, but that was because he was changed, lessened. It had taken him five days to begin to speak it at all coherently, and perhaps he had only mastered it because some of the house people spoke a little Rukarian.

  ‘The Father,’ said Darhana, ‘is inclined to talk to you. In one hour – will that be reasonable for you?’

  ‘Yes, if he wants.’

  Darhana went to Lionwolf. She stroked his forehead and down his mane of hair, quietly, kindly, once only. Then she went out.

  He thought he could have had her. Maybe not. The last woman he had lain with—

  Lionwolf leapt up. He kicked the bowl of grain porridge across the room and watched it shatter against the wall. He was sorry then. He sat down again.

  Outside the rippled glass of the window, gemmy cedar branches melted and reformed.

  The Father had a room up under the eaves, reached by a twisting stair of logs. He was a man of about thirty, and many other men in the dancer-house were older. The Mother though was an old woman, and she had not once spoken to Lionwolf.

  ‘I will call you Vashdran.’

  ‘Yes, if you want.’

  ‘It isn’t what I am to want. Do you prefer another name?’

  ‘Yes, my first. I was called No-Name – Nameless.’

  ‘Very well.’

  They talked Kraag, a lilting tongue with sudden gutturals.

  The Lionwolf heard every Kraag word he himself used, grasping its meaning belatedly, as if his body could speak the language and he could not. This psychological aphasia disturbed him, but so did everything now. His mental skin was pulled taut, fragile.

  ‘You are from the northern south,’ said the Father. Lionwolf – Nameless – nodded. ‘Rukarian?’ said the Father. Nameless did not reply. The Father said, ‘We know nothing of your past. We know little of the northern south and east.’

  ‘Splendid,’ said Nameless. ‘They no longer exist.’

  The Father regarded Nameless attentively, yet made no comment. He said, ‘To where are you travelling?’

  ‘Not to – but away.’

  ‘Do you know anything of the Kraag country?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘To us,’ said the Father, ‘reality is not real.’

  Nameless raised his head and looked at the Father properly. ‘What else can reality be but real?’

  ‘You mean in Rukarian philosophy, or among the easterners?’

  ‘Universal.’

  ‘Ah, only a Rukarian would speak of a universe. It is the general way, besides, for men believe what’s before them, and hesitate to believe what is not. For example, would you believe in other lands far off over the seas, to east and west, north and south?’

  ‘There are the reivers’ lands, northwards.’

  ‘And many more,’ said the Father, ‘but few credit their existence, for no one has seen them in centuries.’

  ‘Have you seen them?’

  ‘Never.’

  ‘You believe in them.’

  ‘Yes. I believe in many things I’ve not yet seen. What is called reality is very determined that we believe only in it. For this reason it makes itself hard as steel, and will not give way. But, too, it may be parted like liquid or blown off like smoke. Reality is malleable and can be reshaped. But the more you are able to do this, the more it will fight you. It’s like a true liar found out; it can’t stop its lying, becomes more inventive.’

  Nameless stretched, a young man who was bored and would rather be off hunting, or with a girl. All that was in the gesture – and his royalty, this too. These had remained, for good or ill.

  The Father said, ‘I tell you of such things, not to educate but to prepare you. Have you heard of Summer?’

  ‘Oh, Summer. Sometimes the Jafn remember Summer-thaws, the land floods and they lose cattle and people—’ Nameless paused. He shrugged. None of this would concern the Jafn now – they were all lost.

  ‘Reality is Winter,’ said the Father calmly. ‘We do not believe in Winter. Our men and our girls go out to dance, to call the sun back from under the sea. The unreal sun, which was once the real sun, lies there drowned. Kraag knows this true unreal sun will be reborn. We have no priests, for we say the gods are all one with us and we with them. Our dances therefore are our prayers.’

  ‘That’s quaint.’

  The Father ignored this Rukarian jibe, spoken in Rukarian. He went on.

  ‘Through us, then, there is sometimes a place of the Summer, here in Kraag.’

  Nameless said, ‘A thaw? Perhaps you’ll tell me how to avoid the area and the high waters.’

  ‘There’s no flood. The land is firm and green with plants. This unreal real Winter sun shines there with a greater heat. Flowers cover the hills.’

  ‘An oasis with hot springs.’

  ‘Oh no.’

  ‘Then you report some dream, or its sorcery. The Jafn peoples saw demons and spirits everywhere; that was their knack. This Summer, then, is yours.’

  ‘At the centre of the Kraag Summer,’ said the Father imperturbably, ‘stands the ruin of a high tower. It is the Sun’s Tower. It was built far back in time, to call the sun as a visitor – as the dancers of Kraagparia pray to the sun through dance.’

  ‘Very well. What’s any of this to do with me?’

  ‘You were told that a woman of sixteen years carried you here in her arms?’

  ‘Yes, I was told.’

  ‘Darhana can turn her head, for example, to the south, while her body faces northwards. Many of our dancers can do likewise.’

  ‘Yes, you’re mages.’

  ‘No, something other than that. It isn’t what you would call magic. Darhana too is able to pass her sword through her own heart, draw it out, and continue dancing. She could do this from the age of three. Again, many of us are thus able.’

  ‘You?’

  At the challenge, the Father laughed. ‘Once, but the skill left me. It was a harsh time of my life. My handfast wife died. Some of my belief soaked into the earth with her blood.’

  Lionwolf bowed his head. He murmured, with genuine contrition, ‘I’m sorry for your cruel loss, sir.’

  ‘Yes, I see you are. I give you thanks.’

  They sat in silence a short while. Around them, the everyday noises of the house – drums, pipes, clack of dancers’ swords, clatter of kitchen pots, and voices calling through the corridors – wove a tapestry like those that hung in such wild greens and blues on the house walls.

  ‘I’ve called to your mind, Nameless, the skills of my people, so that you may partly trust us. The area of the Summer and the Sun-Tower are stamped on you as evidently as if you were written over with the map of that place. Some piece of you has been taken out and has run before you, into Summer – into the Tower.’

  Inside the tan of the nameless young man’s face, whiteness and horror showed themselves.

  ‘There?’

  ‘What is it you fear, Nameless?’

  ‘Only one. Then – then he is there.’

  ‘Something is.’

  ‘He took my shadow from me,’ said Nameless.

  ‘I see your shadow, Nameless, cast plainly on the wall.’

  ‘I had another shadow. There was fire in it. I think that he was in it, too. Now it’s free of me. And he’s waiting – she told me of this, the woman who was starry night and death. She said—’ Nameless sat rapt in his own bleak reverie. Then he
said, ‘She told me I’d go to it. My fate. Guri said, my kind … have no choice.’

  ‘I think,’ said the Father, ‘your kind are what my kind would name gods, if we thought the gods separate from men.’

  ‘Once,’ said Nameless. He smiled. ‘Like you, sir, I lost the skill. It soaked into the earth, not with blood but with ashes.’

  Darhana danced with her three sisters and four brothers. The swords cracked together. The dancers spun the swords, fell back to the ground, took the points directly into their bodies, sprang up and whirled away, the honed steel sparking as they drew it out again from uncut flesh.

  Two moons rose in the ice-cedar.

  Darhana came from the white shadows under the window. ‘The Mother says I shall guide you to the Summer, Nameless.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘She says I must. I don’t mind to.’

  ‘No, there’s danger. I can find my own way.’

  ‘The Mother says you’re afraid, and so will become lost in order to avoid the way. But as you must still take the way, I must go to make sure you reach the place.’

  ‘Speak Rukar. You speak Kraag as you dance, round and round, and then a sword strikes out.’

  ‘I’m to be your guide,’ said Darhana, whose Rukarian was excellent. ‘That’s that.’

  ‘I won’t take you.’

  Darhana stole up to Nameless. Standing on tiptoe, for she was not tall, she kissed him delicately on the mouth.

  ‘Don’t. Something else kissed there, some god-made demon out of the darkest night.’

  ‘It isn’t catching, Lionwolf.’

  ‘Don’t call me by that name.’

  ‘Look,’ said Darhana.

  He looked and saw she was not on tiptoe, but standing on thin air about seven inches off the floor. She dropped back with a giggle. Lionwolf, or Nameless, turned from her. ‘Then we’ll leave now.’

  ‘If you want.’

  ‘It’s not what I am to want,’ he said, like the Father, in Kraag, ‘I’ve no choice.’

  If he had expected her to protest, even beg time for farewells, she disappointed him. She was in love with him, then, like all the others. That was why she would leave everything, including security, to serve as his guide. But she was only a girl, his mother Saphay’s age when Vuldir had sent her to her death across the ice.

  Beyond the outbuildings, a small cart waited, drawn by two wide-horned deer. They and it were strung with bells and colours. In this vehicle the Lionwolf and his companion began their journey before moonset.

  During the first days the weather was fine. After the first night, they both slept in the cart after dark, among the furs. On the fifth night, he took her. She was willing, enjoyed herself, seemed to think the action as minor as sharing the blanket.

  ‘What if you conceive?’ he asked her.

  ‘You can’t make children.’

  ‘What? How do you guess that?’

  ‘Oh, you can’t – not yet.’

  It did not appeal to him, this statement. He had been nearly afraid he would not be able to rise to the occasion, after Chillel, after … all of that. To make love and find again the pleasure, for himself and this girl, had cheered him briefly. Now she wrecked it. He spoke harshly and coldly to her all the next day. Darhana was unaffected. The sixth night he kissed her. ‘Since you’re so sure you’re safe with me—’

  Later, in Rukarian, he said, ‘How do you know I’m sterile?’

  ‘I didn’t say that. I said now you are.’

  He lay thinking of this. He was unfinished and poorly made, for all his powers and all his glory.

  But, in any case, Darhana had not been a virgin. He had already seen that the Kraag reckoned sex on a level with music and food, and even when bonded they held any children communally.

  The deer cantered fast and well under clear skies, the bells singing on their antlers. The terrain was mostly flat, and the top-snow reliable.

  About the tenth day, fresh snow began to descend. By sunfall, the sky was black already. Then the storms started.

  Squalls of ice, sleet and winds flared over. Deep in the sky, thunder rolled like metal balls.

  He suggested they dig into the snow. Darhana said it made no odds.

  The deer leapt fleetly on through the gale and lack of visibility, only their natural blinders covering their eyes, while ice formed so thickly on their antlers he anticipated it might snap them.

  The rush of passage burnt his face. What did he care about that? He tried to make Darhana sit back in the cart and shield her head. She would not. Her cheeks blazed red from the smack of the wind, that was all. Her eyes gleamed.

  All night they ran. In the morning they broke out of the storm.

  They were on a range of hills. Ice-forests of pine and cedar and ice-jungles of fig, palm and terebinth crowded up the slopes. Through all this they had pounded, unable to see, and no harm had come to them.

  ‘You’re a witch,’ he told her.

  ‘No, it’s what I believe, that is all.’

  ‘That none of this is real?’

  ‘Real in its own way – but to be altered as we need. How else was any of it ever made if it wasn’t malleable?’

  ‘God – or gods – made it,’ he said.

  ‘But again, unless malleable, how?’

  Her view of this plasticine world, available for resculpting where necessary, amused him.

  The day was grey as the Mother’s hair. They rested in the afternoon, not sleeping but doing other things. Ice was shaken off branches and a flock of black crows with rime-silvered wings fled into the sky.

  ‘Are they real?’

  ‘As real as we.’

  ‘Are we real?’

  ‘As real as we make ourselves to be.’

  ‘Riddles.’

  ‘Answers.’

  ‘Answers that are riddles.’

  ‘What are riddles but answers formed from questions.’

  ‘You,’ he said, ‘could argue well among the Magikoy.’

  ‘I’ve heard of them,’ she said. ‘Are they very great?’

  Nameless’s face changed. It became that of the Lionwolf. Rage and sadism strode there, pain and despair.

  ‘A while ago they were. But their weapons of war were greater.’

  It had taken him all this while to be certain what had happened on the plains about Ru Karismi. He heard the words issue from his mouth now, an answer formed from a riddle of doom.

  The deer cart ran on. The deer, too, seldom seemed to want rest. They craned their strong necks, and with their horns batted frozen leaves and creepers from the trees, and ate them as they bolted along, sometimes belching with fearful noises. Food had also been provided for the human travellers.

  ‘Are there no other houses in these parts?’ he asked her.

  ‘Look there.’

  He saw a distant thatched ramble of building, misty with warmth and smoke. It had appeared through the trees literally as she replied to his query. Was it real?

  ‘Did you fashion that house out of the air, to entertain me?’

  ‘Perhaps you did – or it fashioned itself. Or it was elsewhere but made itself visible here.’

  Sometimes she spoke the Kraag mantra: ‘What is real is unreal; what is unreal is real.’

  Low cliffs evolved in front of them. The deer and cart galloped straight up, never stumbling and barely jolting.

  Nameless Lionwolf thought of how he could walk horizontally up the side of things, could still do it even now – if with far less ease.

  One evening on the cliffs he said, ‘Don’t you regret making the gods angry, by not believing in them?’

  ‘The gods are born from mankind,’ she said. ‘If you want gods you need only call to them. Or else you let them be.’

  ‘He,’ said Nameless, ‘he is real.’

  She looked at him as she held and guided the reins of the racing deer. ‘That is the one you go to find?’

  ‘To find? No, to lose. I’ll kill him. It’s my only chance.
His foulness in me has destroyed anything I might have been.’

  She said gently, ‘Never believe it.’

  ‘Belief? I believe nothing,’ he said to her. ‘Therefore for me nothing is real. Not the real, not the unreal, neither you nor I – nothing.’

  The sun set and they stopped the cart, ate supper, and made love. Probably he did not believe in any of that either.

  The next day the storms returned. A wind came like a scythe. The deer dived through it like minnows dashing through a wave of the outer sea.

  Over the cliffs were valleys full of frozen grains, empty orchards podded and roped by cryogenized fruits and berries. The winds axed whole trees before they could dislodge what tenaciously grew on them.

  Darhana sent the deer eastward now; the land cascaded down. On heights to the left, staircases of frozen water hung above basins of snow, rocking and booming at the storm lash. Sometimes, due to falling snow, one saw nothing. It was like the very thing he had described: a world of nothingness.

  They reached an inlet of the sea. Against and through the white tumult, the water was inky blue – crinkling and liquid.

  ‘The sea moves,’ he said.

  ‘We’re near the place.’

  The storm ebbed away, and a sunset stained the sky over the indigo finger of sea below.

  That night she made a fire, striking it from a flint, as had Chillel.

  ‘Can’t you call it?’ he mocked her.

  Darhana turned her head and looked at him, the rest of her body still facing the hearth. ‘What else have I done with the flint?’

  ‘You struck the fire in the ordinary way, girl, even if your head’s on back to front.’

  ‘A flint’s magic too,’ she said. ‘For where does fire come from? It’s like the sun, which vanishes under the earth.’

  ‘The Gech say,’ Nameless said, ‘it shines then in Hell, but there the sun burns cold.’

  The food was all gone. She heated the last of the honey ale from the dancer-house, and they drank that. The rim of the snow bled wet from the fire.

  The Nameless Lionwolf thought of all he had done, and all there was to do. He would kill the god who had sired him, or the god would kill him. No longer afraid of it, he found the prospect dreary. He pondered what Guri was doing, and did not care any more. He thought of Saphay, and could scarcely recall she was his mother. Lightning flashed.