Northlight

by Wheeler, Deborah

  Northlight

  Deborah J. Ross

  writing as Deborah Wheeler

  Book View Café

  Copyright © 1995 Deborah J. Ross

  ISBN: 978-1-61138-039-2

  February 2011

  Dedication

  For my children

  Acknowledgments

  Warmest thanks go to Bonnie Stockman, who rekindled my love of horses, to James Brunet for his insights into the politics of Laureal City, to Sheila Gilbert, my editor at DAW, for encouraging my first attempts at telling this story and being patient while they gestated into maturity,

  But most of all, this book owes a special debt to Kung Fu San Soo Grandmaster Jimmy H. Woo, who taught me how to fight and when not to. “You can take my life, but not my confidence.”

  Introduction

  Every story contains at least one other story, sometimes in its creation, other times in how the telling affected the writer’s life or what came about as a result of the completed tale. Northlight is no exception.

  My first professional sale was a short story, “Imperatrix,” to the very first Sword & Sorceress anthology, edited by Marion Zimmer Bradley and published by DAW Books in 1984. Buoyed by that first sale, I embarked on a novel set in the same world. I created a race of “Weires,” giant silver-coated ape-like creatures that travel between dimensions. I intended to go back in time to the first contact between this race and humans to show how the Weires became devoted to the “Imperial” family, those who could sense the “paths between the worlds.” At least, that was the general notion.

  I bumbled through a rambling, disjointed approximation of a novel (which was about my skill level at the time) and sent it off to DAW. To my great surprise, I received a thoughtful and encouraging rejection letter from Sheila Gilbert. Meanwhile, I had drafted another novel (Jaydium) and joined a writer’s critique group. The group minced no words in telling me what was wrong with the early drafts of Jaydium, and I applied myself to the daunting task of learning to write at novel length. Finally, I sent off that book to Sheila and settled in for a long wait.

  I continued to write and sell short stories, not only to Marion’s anthologies but to other markets as well. By 1990, I had made my first sale to a major magazine (“Madrelita” to F & SF). The “Weiremaster” story kept calling to me. Armed with my new skills, I took out Sheila’s letter and began revisions. As is often the case, the story took off in directions of its own, until the Weires completely disappeared. How I could lose track of eight-foot telepathic Yetis, I don’t know, but between one draft and another, they wandered off into their own world.

  I found myself more and more drawn into the politics and relationships of the people of “Newarth” (“New Earth” — I cringe to admit it). I kept adding more and more fore-story, pushing the point of entry farther back in time. My group said it was all very well written and incredibly boring. Kardith (whom you will meet on page 1 of this edition) didn’t make her entrance until page 150, but when she did, she set the story on fire.

  Two things happened about this time: I slashed those first 150 pages and I lived in France. My family had a rare opportunity to stay in a furnished house in Lyons, an adventure too marvelous to pass up. For the first time since I’d started writing seriously, I had child care most of every weekday, no day job, and very few other distractions. I set up my portable computer and got to work.

  “Newarth” metamorphosed into Laurea as Kardith’s twisted past pushed the story in new directions. Terricel opened his heart to me as I watched him grow from a young scholar to a visionary leader. The horses, especially Kardith’s nameless gray mare, carried me through a landscape I’d never guessed was there. When I stood with Terricel in the northern light, I had no idea what would come next. I just typed as fast as I could, trying to keep up with the unfolding scenes.

  By the time we returned to California, I had a solid revision. No Weires, no Imperial bloodlines, just a world full of wonders...and characters I cared deeply about. Even though it was financially terrifying, I folded up my day job to focus on writing.

  Three months later, Sheila called me with an offer for Jaydium . I couldn’t have dreamed of a more perfect affirmation that I was on my true path.

  Here you have Northlight, the book I wrote in France, a tale of healing and adventure and some very cool horses. It came before and after that breakthrough first sale. I’m glad it stuck with me long enough for me to make it the best it could be.

  As a final note, the book is dedicated to my kung fu teacher, Jimmy H. Woo. Jimmy brought kung fu san soo to the United States, and schools run by his students and their students still carry on this marvelous tradition. Many of the techniques Kardith uses are based on moves I learned in san soo. (Not, however, the crazy leap.) Jimmy passed away while I was in France.

  Deborah J. Ross

  Boulder Creek

  2011

  Chapter 1: Kardith of the Rangers

  Scaling the final hill was like climbing into a sea of ice. Up and up we went, one shivering, dogged step after another, woman and mare. My fingers had gone numb, laced in her mane, and I could no longer tell if she pulled me along or the other way round. I envied her, with no thought but to keep going.

  As we neared the crest, I squinted up at the sky, as white and airless as if some vengeful god had sucked it dry. I reminded myself there were no gods here in Laurea, vengeful or otherwise.

  The mare plodded on, head lowered, one ear cocked toward me and the other flopping, snapping at a sucker-fly without breaking stride. Her neck and shoulders were so wet they looked black, the dapples hidden under flecks of foam. Suddenly her head shot up, ears pricked. She snorted and lunged forward, nearly yanking my arm off.

  The next moment, I stood on the crest of the hill, sweating and shivering at the same time. As far as I could see stretched green and yellow patches of wheat, barley and hybrid oats, all outlined by orange bug-weed. A farmhouse flanked a silo, pond, and vegetable plot. The mare nickered, scenting the ripe grain.

  On the horizon, a line of trees marked the river. Serenity, it was called, typical dumbshit Laurean name. The trees looked blue from up here and I could almost see the smaller tributary snaking in from the northwest. Where it dumped into the Serenity, colder than winter snot, the trees bunched as if they’d scrambled up on each other. Buildings hid among them, glass and rock as pale as weathered bone.

  Laureal City. Back on Kratera Ridge, I thought I’d never see it again. Now I remembered the streets, so smooth and flat, the rows of trees in flower and fruit at the same time. The courtyards with their fountains and gardens, set between angular geodesics or inside tall, square houses where a dozen families might live together.

  I remembered standing in the Starhall with the other Ranger candidates. Pateros hearing my oath, just as Guardians have heard Ranger oaths for hundreds of years. The light in his green-gold eyes and the grainy softness of his voice as he talked about beginnings and moving beyond the past. But it didn’t sound like the usual Laureal wishcrap. It seemed to me the demon god of chance had finally turned my way and smiled.

  I remembered too much.

  The gray mare shook her head and stamped one hind hoof. The metal shoe clicked against a stone buried under the trail dust. By now I’d stopped sweating, but I was still shaking and my hands hurt. I opened my fingers and pulled free of her mane. My right hip twinged as I mounted up and swung my leg over the rolled sleep-sack and saddle bags. I let my body sway with the mare’s east gait and my lower back popped and felt looser.

  The gray mare tucked her hindquarters like a cat and started down the hill, reaching and sliding in the loose dirt. She was Borderbred from the wild hills between Archipelago and the Inland Sea, the best horse I ever owned. I spent a year’
s pay to buy her rough-broke, then started her gentle all over again. The first thing I did was take that Mother-damned bit out of her mouth...

  Listen to me, nattering on to hide how scared I am.

  Me, Kardith of the Rangers. Scared.

  I don’t scare easy. The Rangers still talk about “Kardith’s Leap” as if I were some kind of hero. Six or seven years back, three of us got jumped by a pack of hothead norther kids out for their manhood blood or shit like that. That was before the northers came looting and burning clear past Brassaford until General Montborne’s army stopped them. There was Derron, just made Captain, and me, and a blustery man named Westifer who didn’t make it back from Brassaford alive.

  I’d unhorsed one norther kid, vaulted on his pony’s back and wheeled around, trying to spot the breaker. Not the leader — the breaker. The heart of them. Not the big one screaming orders. Take him out and some other damned fool will jump up and do the same. But kill the breaker and all you’ve got left is a bunch of solo heroes.

  There he was — a skinny kid who had not got his growth yet, the only sane one of the bunch. Edging toward Westifer, who was down on his knees in the freezing mud. I booted the pony into a gallop, drew my long-knife and stood up on the saddle pad.

  Westifer was about half a second from explaining his sins to the father-god. I leapt for all I was worth. Landed splat on top of the norther kid. He twisted out from under me, grabbing for leverage. I shoved my knee hard into his balls. His grip went slack for just an instant, long enough for me to whip the knife around. He let go just as I nicked his face, high on his cheekbone, a nasty cut that would leave a scar. Then the yellow-haired kid galloped by and scooped him up and they all bolted out of there.

  “Wolf-bitch,” Derron said to me back at camp, “isn’t there anything you’re scared of?”

  Not what gives him nightmares, that’s sure. Norther steel, a quick death or a long bloody one, it’s all the same to me. The twisted places on the Ridge you can’t quite see but can feel on the back of your neck, the nameless things that came snaking into your dreams. He was right, they didn’t scare me.

  Going back empty-handed without doing what I’d come to do, that scared me.

  o0o

  It was past dark when I reached the city and I’d mostly shoved my ghosts back into their graves. I let the gray mare pick her own pace and browse in the grain fields along the way. I couldn’t take her into the city, and besides it was too late to do anything more today. I was tired, bone tired.

  The trail broke into part-cobbled roads, warehouses, and stock pens of smelly brush-sheep. Blue Star Stables had a big dirt yard, raked clean and smelling of sweet alfalfa, a barn on one side and a house on the other, solar lanterns hanging above the door. I caught the familiar sounds of stamping and hay-crunching.

  I swung down and dropped the reins and the mare stood as if I’d tied her. I rapped on the house door. For a long time I heard nothing, just the soft pat-pat-pat of moth wings against the lantern glass and the animals settling down in the barn. The mare sighed and tipped one hind hoof. The shadows made her flanks look hollow.

  Heels clicked on a bare wood floor and the door opened. A big-handed man, clean, no smell of drink on him.

  “You got room?”

  “Sorry, I’m full up.” He stepped down into the yard. He was no fighter, that was sure, but there was something about the way he moved through the darkness... He held the shadows close, as if he belonged to them instead of the open yard. This man had secrets, I thought, or maybe it was my own I was seeing in him.

  “You know how it goes,” he said. “Noon today I was empty except for the rental stock and a few head for sale. Then suddenly everybody’s either coming or going. You could rub your mare down, feed her and tie her in the yard here with a blanket, but if she were mine, I’d get her a decent box indoors. It’ll be cold tonight.”

  The mare butted her head against my hip, rubbing the places where the dried sweat itched. I liked it that the stableman hadn’t tried to touch her. He wanted to. He knew horses and his eyes were hungry on her.

  “Where else?”

  “Cheap or good?” he asked, looking right at me for the first time. His eyes flickered over my Ranger’s vest, half-hidden under my cloak, and the long-knife strapped to my thigh. “Never mind. God help anyone who tries to cheat you.”

  “Which god?”

  “Any one you like. They’re none of mine, I’m Laurea-bred.”

  Who would I pray to, anyway? The father-god, whose secret name is death for any woman to pronounce? Mother-of-us-all? I’d sworn by her, though she never answered me. The demon god of chance — ay! there was one worth praying to...if I were the praying kind.

  The stableman scratched the stubble on his chin. “All the big places are likely just as full, but if you don’t mind the feathers, Ryder’s got a stall or two extra. He runs a barnfowl yard. The feathers go to the bedding factory and the meat for sausages. The yard gets pretty bloody then, but it should be all right now. The priest comes the first of the month to give the blessing and Ryder cleans up good afterward.”

  It wasn’t the death-stink I minded so much as the priests with their light and harmony shit. I’d seen the thrills they got from all that blood. They could sprinkle it on the ground and mumble their prayers to make it holy, but what difference did that make? They were all the same, priests everywhere.

  o0o

  I rubbed the mare down slowly, stroke after stroke, leaning my weight into the leather-backed brush. Trail dust and sweat crystals billowed into the air and clung to my face, my hands and clothes. The mare was slow to settle. She smelled the old blood out in the yard and every few moments she lifted her nose from the hay rack, jaw slack, ears pricked. Then she sighed, rubbed her whiskery nose across my shoulder, and chewed again. She finished the best of the hay, knocked over the empty grain bucket, and began to doze. I put away the brushes and closed up the barn.

  The holding coops were on the far side of the yard, but still I found little piles of feathers everywhere — between the wood slats of the box stall, in the corners of the tack room. Bits of fluff too light for any broom. You can never get rid of them or hold on to them. Breathe on them and they’re gone.

  Out in the yard, the air had a bitter edge. I drew my wool cloak around me and pulled the saddlebags across my shoulders.

  o0o

  A cobbled street led toward the lights at the center of the city and there I found the inn the stableman recommended, two rambling stories of weather-stained board siding, warm and well lit. I stepped over the threshold, from wooden steps to unglazed tile. The entryway led down a step and under an arch to the common room. The arch bore the usual carvings — flowers, birds, mythical insects with broad, bright wings, here painted in blue and yellow. A hum of voices reached me, along with the smell of ale and bread and maybe bean stew. I hated beans but my mouth watered anyway.

  In the common room, someone chanted a bardic to the beat of a drum. I never could understand them, long-winded things stuffed with fancy words. How Gaea Slew Teknos. How Man Stole Sorrow from the Ahtoms. The Triumph of the Cosmick Pod.

  Opposite the common room sat a clerk’s desk and staircase. As usual, sleeping rooms were upstairs and tub rooms along the corridor behind the office. Laureans were as crazy for baths as they were for bardics. You couldn’t find a house here without solar pipes across the roof. I remembered the first time I sank up to my ears in the hot springs near Darmaforge. All that water — Mother-of-us-all, so much water — and just to get me clean. Aviyya used to tease me about it.

  The warmth of the common room seeped through my cloak. Standing in the entryway, I wondered if I could stay awake long enough to both eat and bathe. I started toward the clerk’s desk and then stopped, caught by a ripple of music.

  The bardic chanter, another man and a woman in the bright woolens favored by Laureans sat on a raised platform holding lap harps and a small drum. They settled into a melody, the drum marking the beat and
the men’s voices weaving in and out of the woman’s clear soprano. First they performed a courting tune, followed by a jig-dance that had me and everyone else stamping our feet.

  Then an old, old song:

  “Harth now dons her robe of glee

  Flow’rs and trees embrace her.

  We go forth in harmony,

  Children of one Mother.

  For as we this glory see,

  All the sacred season,

  Reason learns the heart’s decree

  And hearts are led by reason.”

  Led by reason. I shivered. The lighted room seemed dim and far away. The saddlebags slipped from my shoulders to lie in a lump on my feet.

  Led by reason. Maybe here in Laureal City. But out on Kratera Ridge, there was no University to be the safeguard of all learning, no Guardian, no Senate. Only a handful of Rangers between these rich fields and the hungry north.

  Led by reason. Not me, and not here.

  The performers packed up their instruments and left the dais for a drink with their friends. I headed for the clerk’s office. A hollow-eyed man looked half asleep behind the desk. How could he serve me? he asked.

  “A room and a meal, meat if you’ve got it.”

  “No, magistra, we keep to the old ways here.”

  “Beans then, and plenty of bread but none of that yak-piss you call ale. What’s the charge for a bath?”

  “No charge, magistra, it comes with the room.”

  Ah yes, I sighed, this is Laureal City.

  o0o

  I left nothing in my room except a pile of dirty clothes. Bags, boots, and knives all came with me. The big wooden tub was set halfway into the tiled floor, with a shallow step outside and an inside ledge for sitting. It would probably hold four or five people if they were friendly. Hand-painted tiles in flowery designs decorated the floor and wood-paneled walls. I hung the pink cotton robe the inn supplied on a wooden peg.