Winterbirth

by Brian Ruckley

  Taim Narran looked bleakly down at his hands. He should be there, at Croesan's side.

  'I am sorry,' said the Secretary. 'You know how such times breed fear and fancy. Perhaps things are not as grave as they appear.'

  'Even if the tales are only halfway to truth . . .' Taim did not finish the thought. There was, in the end, little to say. The Craftsman cleared his throat. He shifted a fraction closer to Taim.

  'Word has been sent out from Vaymouth, summoning new armies. There will be gatherings here, and in Drandar. The greater strength must triumph in the end, and that belongs to Haig, not Gyre.'

  'My home will be a wasteland by then. If the High Thane had stood shoulder to shoulder with my Blood, and with Kilkry-Haig, from the start instead of caring only for the southward spread of his shadow, this would not have happened.'

  He regretted the words as soon as they were out of his mouth. The Crafts were greater powers here than in his own lands, more woven into the fabric of rule and influence. Although the Woollers were not known as great friends of the Haig Blood, it was still rash to speak ill of the Thane of Thanes without knowing when and to whom the words might be repeated.

  The Secretary looked at Taim with an indecipherable expression on his face.

  'Is it true,' he asked softly, 'that the High Thane had Igryn blinded?'

  'It's true. The Mercy of Kings.'

  The Secretary nodded slowly. After a few moments' thought he drew a deep breath.

  'Gryvan oc Haig stands shoulder to shoulder with none save the Shadowhand. Those two make for poor friends in times such as these. Armies have been summoned, yet there are no great companies on the road. Why is that, do you think? I heard tell of a man - a captain of Haig archers — whose tongue ran free in a tavern near here. He claimed there will be no move north until your Blood is ruined. There will be no more Lannis Thanes in the Glas valley, he said.' The Secretary shook himself and glanced around.

  'Mere rumour, I am sure, but not one you heard in these precincts.'

  'No,' murmured Taim.

  'I should return to my business. I have a meeting with the master of our almshouse. The work of the Craft never ceases.' 'No,' said Taim again. 'Thank you. I am grateful.'

  Taim walked back through the streets of Dun Aygll, lost in thought. When he marched south all those months ago, he had promised his wife he would return to her. Now he was doing so, but perhaps too late for her; for all of them. He feared that he was taking his men back to die upon the fields of the Glas valley. It was, at least, a more fitting place to find the Sleeping Dark than the mountains of Dargannan-Haig where they had left so many of their comrades, and the Bloods of the Black Road were a foe worth the sacrifice. But if there was truth in the words of the Craft Secretary - and they were of a piece with Taim's instinct - there must be, somehow, a reckoning with the Haig Blood too. Taim had the clear sense that whatever happened in the weeks and months to come, he would never again know peace or rest. What time was left to him would be bloody.

  II

  THE DYN HANE swallowed them. As the willows crowded in, daylight was replaced by gloom and shadow. Orisian struggled on, lost in a daze of disbelief. He wanted to cry out, to stop them and turn them back. This was all wrong. It was not supposed to be like this. But Rothe was close on his heels, and they could not stop. And it was, after all, like this.

  Thin branches lashed at his face. The trees pressed close. There was no path through this place of the dead. Orisian felt something on his cheek and flicked at what he thought must be an insect, only to find that it was a tear.

  They came abruptly out from amongst the trees. A sheer rock face rose before them. Close by, Sarn's Leap plummeted from the heights into a churning pool, throwing out a mist of spray. Orisian looked up, and felt the cold touch of a thousand water droplets on his skin.

  'We should go back,' he whispered. Only Rothe heard him above the sound of the waterfall.

  'It was a grave wound, Orisian. There was nothing we could do. Perhaps they will tend to him.'

  Orisian stared at the cliff. It was a seamed and cracked wall of stone. Mosses and ferns clustered by the cascade, immersed in its saturated breath. Elsewhere, the cliff was naked of life. Boulders were jumbled at its foot.

  Ess'yr had started to climb, following a crevice that angled up beside the falls. Varryn went after, gesturing for the humans to follow.

  Orisian and Anyara hesitated, but Rothe said softly, 'We must go,' he said. 'We cannot go back now.

  We've no choice but to trust them in this.'

  In the moment his foot left the earth, Orisian felt himself to be irretrievably alone. He was as small as a beetle scaling the wall of a tower. His mind was filled by the texture of the rock beneath his fingertips and by the howl of Sarn's Leap. To fall would be nothing; the world had already receded from him. There were surfaces only - the thin skin of rock to which he clung, the transparent roof of the sky above — and nothing at all beyond them, save a void. He could hear its inchoate voice inside his head. Perhaps it was the thunder of the falls, perhaps not.

  The crevice petered out. He looked up, and saw Varryn and Ess'yr climbing on above him. He followed, for little more reason than that his body kept moving. The Kyrinin reached a perilously thin ledge that fractured the cliff face. As Orisian hauled himself on to it, they were shuffling themselves sideways, drawing ever closer to the plummeting mass of water. The mist of the falls swirled about them and they disappeared from sight. He stood up to go after them and for the first time looked over his shoulder. He saw the canopy of the dyn bane stretching out down the gorge. The waterfall cast clouds of vapour over the treetops, glistening in the autumnal sun. His body swayed as the space sucked at his back. He edged along in the footsteps of the Kyrinin.

  Ess'yr and Varryn had entered a narrow, vertical fissure in the rock, half again as high as a man.

  The Snow River was crashing down through the air within an arm's length.

  'Come,' a voice beckoned from within, and Orisian squeezed through into the cliff face.

  The Kyrinin were waiting inside. In the half-light, Orisian found a tight, oppressive chamber. A flight of steps vanished up into the mountain. A malign breath seemed to descend out of the gullet of the stairway.

  It laid clammy fingers on his face and sent damp tendrils down into his lungs. The smell of a hundred stagnant years pressed upon him.

  Anyara and Rothe came in. Varryn led the way up the stairs. Ess'yr followed, and then Orisian. He discovered what true darkness meant. They went in single file. Orisian fell into a numb rhythm, the distant weariness of his legs growing but not troubling him. He could tell that the stone beneath his feet had been worn smooth. The tread of centuries had bowed the steps. He could hear the others before and behind him. In the lightless tunnel, as black as a distillation of night, patterns began to swirl and writhe inside his eyes. He could not catch them, for they faded when he tried to turn his gaze upon them. And in his strange, lost state of mind, he wondered if it was the Sleeping Dark he would see if he could hold one of these fleeting glimpses. Perhaps that was what lay beyond the wall he was burrowing through. His stride faltered. He almost tripped, and came to a halt.

  'Orisian,' snapped Rothe from behind them, 'keep going, keep going.'

  He took another step up into the darkness and the shapes were gone.

  'Do not stop,' Ess'yr was calling back from above.

  Do not stop, Orisian thought, and came back to himself with a dizzying sense of immediacy. He felt a fluttering in his chest, the sudden bloom of fear. He reached out and brushed the wall. It steadied him, told him the world was still there even though he was blind. He began to climb again. The minutes dragged by. Orisian's legs were flimsy twigs, a mass of aches. He thought of his father, brother, mother without being able to recall from one moment to the next what he had thought. For a while he felt Inurian walking at his side. The feeling passed. Inurian was behind him, he knew. They all were, save Anyara and Rothe. He had come loose f
rom everything he had known like a boat slipping its mooring and riding the current out into a limitless sea.

  There came a point when the thought was clear and certain in his head that he could go no further. He must stop, let the exhaustion in his legs and lungs abate. Then, without warning, it was over. There were no more steps and he stumbled forwards into a flat passageway. Ess'yr and her brother were standing together, waiting for Orisian and the others. He could see them. Ahead, there was a sliver of white daylight that shone in his eyes like a blade of white fire. Robbed of the mechanical rhythm that had sustained him, he slumped against the wall, sliding down to the cold floor. Anyara came and sat down beside him. Rothe stayed on his feet, but grasped his thighs and bent forwards, his chest heaving.

  Ess'yr gazed down into the black pit they had climbed out of.

  'They do not follow,' she said.

  'I thought that was the whole point,' Rothe gasped.

  Varryn had moved on. He was silhouetted in the opening for a moment, then stepped outside.

  'Come out,' he called.

  Ess'yr went first. With the last vestiges of his strength Orisian rose and he, Anyara and Rothe followed the Kyrinin out. The daylight was harsh. The wind blew sudden, cold air on to their faces. They gazed up in silence at the landscape before them. They had emerged amongst a great chaos of boulders that hid the entrance to the stairway. A bleak valley ran away from them, rising gradually between stone-crowned ridges into the heart of the range. Not a tree was to be seen as the land mounted in buckled ramparts towards the towering peaks of the Car Criagar. The summits were muffled in clouds. A narrow, fast-flowing river - the Snow - cut its way down the valley between boulders and tussocks of sharp grass, rushing towards the waiting falls somewhere out of sight.

  'What a place,' muttered Anyara.

  The wind was keen, and carried a wintry edge, but it filled Orisian's chest and washed the stale, dead air of the stairway out of him. His head spun, his skin tingled as if his blood was only just starting to flow once more.

  Varryn glanced around. 'Rest,' he said, pointing towards a small dip in the ground close by. 'For a little.'

  They sat on the ground. Orisian pulled at the rough grass. Varryn was murmuring to Ess'yr, his mouth close to her ear. She left him and walked slowly towards the river. She knelt by the water for a long time.

  Orisian could not take his eyes off her. She undid the thongs that held her clothing and raised her tunic up over her head. Her naked back was white and flawless, revealing every lithe movement of the muscle and bone beneath the skin. She raised handfiils of water in her cupped palms and spilled them over her face and head. It ran down her back and matted down her hair.

  He saw Ess'yr lean forwards and dip her face, then her whole head into the river. He glimpsed the pale curve of her small breast as it brushed the surface of the water. When she straightened again, she did so violently, flicking her head and loosing a shower of droplets. She held her hands to her face. It all looked like grief.

  'She was his lover,' he heard Anyara say at his side.

  'I see that,' he snapped. 'I'm not stupid.'

  He at once put his arm around his sister, ashamed of his vehemence. She leaned her head on his shoulder. When Ess'yr came back from the river the rims of her eyes were red, but she was eerily calm.

  'We must move on,' she said.

  'I cannot,' said Anyara.

  'Nevertheless,' whispered Ess'yr. She stooped to take up her small pack, bow and spear and walked off, heading north into the wilderness.

  Orisian stood. Varryn was following his sister. Orisian watched him for a moment or two.

  'Anyara, Rothe,' he said, listen to me. Whatever happens from now on, no one is left behind.' He looked at each of them in turn. 'Do you understand? Enough loss. This is our fight, not theirs,' he gestured towards Varryn. 'The choices are ours to make. And I will not leave anyone else behind.'

  First Anyara, then Rothe nodded. Orisian could see the trace of surprise in his sister's eyes. I am not quite the brother she knew, he thought. I am not quite the person I knew myself.

  'Let's go, then,' he said.

  'Fill your waterskins first,' said Rothe.

  The water of the Snow was icy cold.

  They climbed steadily, trudging over tussocks and heather. They followed as close to the river as they could. Sometimes for a short distance they were forced to work their way around boggy patches of ground, but always they came back to the edge of the rushing water. It rained a little. The temperature fell quickly and the rain-drops turned to a wet sleet. White smudges appeared on their clothing, but melted away in the blink of an eye. The sides of the valley grew steeper and shed their thin covering of turf and grass, exuding boulders and sheets of rock. The sun was hidden behind a flat grey sky that deadened sound and light. Even what little vegetation there was took on the muted shades of the rock and cloud.

  Each of them was lost in their own thoughts. Orisian's legs took each monotonous step unbidden. He felt himself to be huddled in some corner of his mind, longing to forget for a time all that had happened. This was a place he knew, the same place he had found himself when the Heart Fever had picked apart the seams of his life, but it was none the easier for having been there before. He told himself again and again that Inurian might not be dead. He lifted his eyes briefly from the ground. Ess'yr, a little ahead of him, was shivering as she walked. She must be dangerously cold, after her strange, ritualistic bathing in the river, he thought. He knew better than to suggest that they stop.

  They came to a broad expanse of moss and rushes - the Snow's source - where they could go no further without climbing on to higher, exposed ground. As they laboured upwards the wind sharpened its teeth and the sleet drove almost horizontally across the slope. They had to lean to keep their footing. Great rock out-crops reared from the hill like the heads of gigantic creatures frozen in the act of tearing their way out from the earth.

  When at last they emerged on to the brow of the ridge, a gale greeted them. Orisian lifted an arm to shield his eyes. What he saw was almost as unsettling as the buffeting wind: the true Car Criagar showed itself. For as far as he could see through the sleet and wisps of low cloud, there were bare slopes and peaks jostling against one another to reach up into the sky. The highest reaches were almost white with accumulated snow and ice. Varryn set off in that direction, into the barren heart of the Car Criagar.

  They kept to the lee side of the ridge as much as possible, but as they climbed higher it became more difficult to find a path among the eruptive, cold-shattered rocks, and several times they had to cross on to its exposed face. There, the wind shook them and they slipped and stumbled, scraping hands raw on the sharp stones. The ground plunged precipitously away in vast scree slopes. Clouds were spilling from the peaks ahead, boiling off into the vast spaces of the sky. They had neither the clothing nor the strength needed for such a battle with the elements, yet Varryn led them remorselessly onwards and upwards.

  At last the ridge broadened and opened out into the shoulder of a mountain. The ground rose in a great sweep broken only by occasional gullies and granite boulders. Lines of snow lay across the slope, and the wind strung it out from every hummock. There was a brief pause, then Varryn turned his back to the gale and set off around the mountain's flank.

  The light began to fade. Varryn halted beside a massive boulder that lay on the mountainside like the discarded toy of some giant's child. A diagonal fissure divided the stone, running a split through the lower two thirds of its body. The Kyrinin gestured at it wordlessly.

  'You don't mean us to spend the night here?' said Rothe. 'The cold will kill us.'

  'Wind kills first,' Ess'yr replied for her brother. 'This is shelter. We will be close, share warmth.'

  'No fire?' Anyara asked.

  Varryn's only answer was to upend the bark tube he kept embers in. Cold ash was all it held.

  'There's nothing to burn anyway, I suppose,' Anyara murmured.

 
; They pressed themselves into their unyielding crib. Though the crack was deeper and wider than it appeared from without, it was an oppressive space. There was no room to lie down, and all they could do was slump against the stone. The weight of rock above and around them filled Orisian with a grim anticipation of being crushed in his sleep, but then finding even a moment's sleep in such a resting place seemed an impossibility. The bodies of his companions blocked out most of the light. As Varryn, the last of them, scrambled into place Anyara murmured, 'This is some kind of nightmare.'

  It was the longest night of Orisian's life. The five of them stayed wedged in the hard centre of the stone, their bodies shaken by occasional shivers as the night touched, and then retreated from, its coldest hours.

  Ess'yr had been right, though. The heat they shared kept the fatal chill at bay. Through the long hours he could feel her body against his; her shoulder on his, the length of her thigh stretched alongside his own.

  Once or twice he thought he felt the warmth of her soundless breath upon his cheek and though he could see nothing, he imagined her face there, so close that a tilt of his head might be enough to touch it.

  It seemed an eternity before a diffuse light came seeping through the clouds. Staggering out into the open, Orisian groaned at the pain and rigidity in his joints. The wind had died. Formless banks of flat grey cloud now concealed all the high peaks, but he could feel their insensate mass lurking behind the veil. He gouged and rubbed at his legs with his numb hands, hobbling about like an old man. The others looked just as exhausted and battered as he felt, except for Varryn: he appeared as alert and rested as if he had slept in perfect comfort.

  'How much further is it?' Orisian asked.

  'Hours,' said Varryn.

  The weather was a little kinder to them that second day. There was hardly any wind, and instead they had to contend with clammy banks of cloud that drifted across the slopes. At such moments they could see no more than twenty or thirty paces ahead.