Shadows of the New Sun: Stories in Honor of Gene Wolfe

by Bill Fawcett

  The gray fog tendrils swirled around the wound in the mountain’s granite flank. Misty scraps twisted down into it. The haze obscured its black depths, but even its absence would not have let Kellach see much. Standing high on the wooded ridge as dusk came on, he could see little of the slender footpath leading down into the narrow valley. He saw nothing of where it came back up through the forest toward the hole.

  “Just as well you’ve stopped here, friend. The valley will be as much your enemy in the night as what waits in that abyss.”

  Kellach turned slowly but did not raise his double- bitted great axe. The warmage stood half-hidden by a rock, and far enough away that he could cast a spell well before Kellach came into axe range. He wore a red cloak, which the dusk made the color of drying blood—save where iridescent crimson pulsed through webwork veins. He bore a slender sword, which could only function when stiffened by magick. Similarly, the brown leather jerkin and silken trousers could be sorcerously fortified, giving each the strength of the mail Kellach wore.

  Since the warmage’s words had carried no threat in tone or meaning, the Cengar elected to respond with caution over hostility. After all, if the man needed killing, later would serve just as well as now. “You wait here for the same reason?”

  “I came as quickly as I could, but it appears she eluded me, as well.” The smaller, wiry man smiled easily as he slipped from cover. White teeth split black mustache from goatee. “Both of us thwarted. We should make the best of it. I would have company over a fire this evening, and aid of that axe in tomorrow’s endeavor . . . if you are of a mind of sharing my hospitality.”

  Kellach nodded.

  The warmage pointed back down from whence he’d come. “On this side is a sheltered outcrop. Easy to defend, not easy to see, even for the maggot-folk.”

  Kellach glanced back. “Nothing hospitable back for a mile or more.”

  “Then you shall be my guest.”

  Kellach, taller, broader, and heavier than his companion, slipped along in the man’s wake. The Cengar made less noise than the lonely breezes washing through the pines. Kellach did not carry much kit, and his mail rustled with a serpent’s whisper. The forest, though old, was but an infant to the forests in which he had been raised, and these mountains mere molehills to the icy rock spires of his homeland. Here, in the north, noise would get a man noticed. In Cengaris, it would get a man killed.

  The warmage stepped to the center of the clearing, and then spread his arms as if a noble welcoming a favored vassal. “Hardly a proper display of hospitality, but it must do. I, Praetor Azurean, bid you welcome.” His cloak clung to him as a jealous lover might, and the hem snapped as if angered to be sharing the camp with Kellach.

  Wood had been gathered inside a ring of stone, awaiting the kiss of a spark. A metal pot for tea, a cup for same, a different cup for wine, a thick sleeping carpet and blanket to cover, and a small folding chair had all been arranged on one side with measured precision. Back away, beyond the carpet, sat a small leather chest. Straps, now loose, would bind it; the brown skin had been worked with a variety of symbols arcane.

  The man might have been making haste in pursuit, but was not so hasty that he could not see to his comforts. Kellach smiled, not surprised. Civilized northerners often entangled themselves in unnecessarily complex circumstances.

  Kellach shrugged off his bedroll, waterskin, and a small satchel with a dwindling supply of trail rations. He piled everything by a small rock, then sat. He leaned his axe on the rock and unbuckled the wide belt that gathered his mail and supported a Haranite longknife. He set the belt with his pack, but did not doff his mail.

  “That rock looks none too comfortable.” Praetor looked at this chest. “I’ve got another chair in there, but I doubt it would support your weight. Some pillows, perhaps?”

  Kellach shook his head, his emerald eyes tightening. “I will be fine. I would contribute to the meal. I can make the fire.”

  “No need for that, my friend.” Praetor dropped to one knee and thrust a hand into the woodpile’s heart. His eyes closed for a moment, then he yanked his hand away and slapped at a spark on his sleeve. His hand got it a half second before the cloak’s tail did. Smoke rose from the wood, then flames licked up. “See; done easily.”

  Yet my way would not have threatened to catch my sleeve on fire. Kellach stood. “Let me fetch water.”

  “Yes, splendid idea.” The warmage opened the chest and pulled out a small leather bucket. “This should hold all we need.”

  The Cengar caught the bucket and headed into the forest, assuming he’d be making more than one trip. The bucket might hold enough to fill the teapot, but not much more. He figured the warmage would have some ritualistic ablutions to perform. If he wants a bath, he hauls his own.

  Kellach followed the trail Praetor had used coming from the west, then cut over a hill to the north and down into a ravine. A little brook trickled. Kellach ducked the bucket into a small pool. Instantly the pool lost two fingers’ width of depth and ceased spilling downhill.

  The Cengar’s brow furrowed. He tugged on the handle to pull the bucket free, but the wet leather slipped greasily out of his grasp. Bending, he gripped the handle tight with both hands. Muscles bulged, but he couldn’t shift it. He stepped into the pool, squatted, and lifted with his legs, again to no avail.

  He grunted and tipped the bucket as if pouring water out. The pool’s level rose and the stream flowed again. Kellach cautiously hauled the bucket out of the water. At best it should have held a quart, but weighed as if it contained five gallons. Kellach really didn’t appreciate his companion having so casually tricked him. Deviltry— like the bucket and cloak—and trickery did not inspire trust.

  He thought he had hidden his concern, but Praetor smiled broadly upon Kellach’s return. “Amazing little thing, isn’t it? The magick is aeons old. Sorcerers made those buckets to try to stem the flooding sea. Problem was, no one could lift the buckets. Eventually the buckets all burst—magick does have its limits—and the flood was unabated.”

  “Even if they could have lifted them, there was no spout to pour the water.”

  “Very good point, my friend.” Praetor smiled, firelight playing over his short black hair. “But let us not be coy, shall we, since most likely, tomorrow, we shall be staunching each other’s wounds. How much is the bounty on the girl?”

  Kellach’s dark brows narrowed. “Her parents sent me after her.”

  “Truly? How interesting.” Praetor slipped off his swordbelt and coiled it round a hand. “Do you know how to read this?”

  Kellach deftly caught the swordbelt. A number of symbols had been burned into it. Neither Praetor nor his belt were unique. The symbols identified schools and traditions of magick, as well as honors he’d been given. Kellach recognized a few of them. He grunted, then rolled the belt and lofted it back.

  “I knew you for a warmage by your . . . blade.” He’d almost said he’d known him for hiding behind a rock, but that would have been an unnecessary complication of circumstance. “Aught else means nothing to me.”

  “You’ve figured some things out, though. You know I am from Athanis, or perhaps Peris. Born in one, trained in the other. I am a student of the College of Ktheru, in good standing. You’ve heard of it?”

  Kellach nodded, his long black locks brushing forward of his shoulders. “It is a school not without honor.”

  “Good. Then you know why I am out here, Cengar.” Praetor’s smile straightened itself. “You are a Cengar, though I can’t read the clan from the plaid of your trousers. Well worn, though, so you are an adventurer or in exile. Strong, and your axe has more scars than you do, so well trained. Not a bandit, I think, but certainly a mercenary—now, or in the past, and certainly in the future.”

  Kellach’s head came up. “A warmage who divines the future?”

  The Athanite laughed. “That would be the trick, wouldn’t it? No. War magicks create chaos. Divination seeks to impose order. They are an a
nathema. But, tell me truly, why are you hunting the girl?”

  Kellach pointed back south. “She and her family were running. We shared a campsite.”

  Praetor arched an eyebrow. “You were not afraid?”

  “Afraid? Of the snowchild? Why?”

  “Is that what you call them? Here, in the north, they are fell things. In their presence milk sours in the udder, hens cease laying, crops wither. If a child is born white and misshapen and squiggly, he is left on a hillside to die. If he’s lucky, that’s what happens. If not, the maggot-folk find him and keep him as their own. But for one such as she, who changes as womanhood beckons, of them the tales are yet worse. They become witches of great power, with no schooling, no allegiance, and no discipline. They live alone, shunned, hated, feared; unless courted to work their magicks. Often they are vengeful. Those tales you must have heard.”

  “The only White Witch we fear is she who sends storms north to bury us in winter.” Kellach slowly shook his head. “This girl, Serinna, is not that witch. Nor is she maggot-folk.”

  “I’d not be so confident of that, my friend.” Praetor dipped water from the bucket into his teapot and set it to boiling. “I’ve learned much of the maggot-folk. There are those who claim they are what men once were, when the Sepheri ruled over this world. Others say they are what we will become, with our living in sin and with profligate use of magick. They say the gods are not pleased, and send us maggot whelp to remind us to mend our ways. Both sides are persuasive. I’m not certain what I believe. How about you?”

  “Neither is what I am, so it is of no matter.”

  “Why, again, are you hunting her, then?”

  “I slept while she was taken.” Kellach stared hard at the warmage, watching his face for even the most fleeting sign of contempt.

  Praetor stroked a hand over his beard. “Your honor demands you recover her more than any beseeching by her family. Very good. Be assured that you were not inattentive. The maggot-folk appear to have an innate facility with magicks that befuddle and fatigue. Curious that they did not kill you all, however.”

  Kellach shook his head. “No signs of struggle. Her mother believes Serinna agreed to go willingly.”

  “Saving you from harm. She would tell herself that, of course. She would have to believe it.” The warmage’s brown eyes tightened. “However, in my pursuit of her I have seen no sign of struggle or unwillingness to travel. Perhaps she did sell herself for your sake.”

  “I followed her trail, but saw no sign of you.”

  “No, of course not. You followed the trail here. I used other means.” Praetor opened the arcane chest and removed a tea caddy, a small loaf of bread, and some cheese. He introduced several healthy pinches of tea into the boiling water, and then set it aside to steep. He tossed the small round of cheese to Kellach. “You can divide that in half. How much do you know of the Veils?”

  Kellach drew his longknife and sliced the soft cheese disk in half. He exchanged a portion of it for half of the loaf. “I have heard of the Veils. I have seen magick.” He actually knew more of magick than he’d admitted; and far more of it than would have made the warmage comfortable. Kellach saw no vice in letting the warmage draw his own conclusions—something that appeared to make Praetor quite happy.

  “There are many Veils, my friend. Were I to look at you through the first, I could see that you carry no enchanted weapons and have no trace of magick lingering about you—your encounter with the maggot-folk notwithstanding.” Praetor set aside the bread and cheese to pour tea. “It was through another Veil that I searched for the girl. She shines brightly— the sun to faint stars surrounding her. I could watch her course, and chose mine to cut her off. Alas, I was slow in my arrival.”

  Kellach accepted the tin cup of tea and set it at his feet. “Why do you seek her?”

  “I do the bidding of my College. My masters decry the barbarity of infanticide, and the superstition that haunts the lives of these poor afflicted. When rumors of a snowchild, to use your more gentle term, arose—and they travel swiftly through the Veils—I was dispatched to find her, to offer her and her family support and succor.”

  “Is she not better off with her own kind, if that is her choice?”

  Praetor sipped his tea and frowned heavily. “She is truly but a child, thus incapable of making such a decision. She does not know why they seek her. They desire her not as a companion. The maggot- folk are quite sterile, but they cling to a prophecy that says a white child will come to them. It will mate with their queen, or be taken for their queen, and produce a thousand whole and clean-limbed creatures of their kind. It will breed true and they will emerge into the daylight to reclaim a world that was once theirs.”

  “Or is destined to be theirs?”

  “Very good. You actually listened.” Praetor gave him a half- smile. “I appreciate that in a companion.”

  Kellach dipped a bit of the bread in tea to soften it. “If you listen well enough, even the emptiness will whisper wisdom.”

  “Cengar sagacity?”

  “I’ve heard it many places. It is seldom heeded.”

  “Such is the fate of wisdom, alas.” Praetor sat back in his chair. “I’ve noticed, my friend, that you’ve not given me your name. You are wise to withhold it from the Gifted, but we have broken bread together. We share a fire. Tomorrow we should likely die together. I should know your name.”

  “I am Kellach. I am a Cengar far from home.” Kellach swallowed some tea. “Clan names would tell you nothing. I am my own man. My chasing the girl is a matter of honor.”

  Praetor extended his cup above the fire. “To men of honor, then, Kellach. May we save the girl from the fate into whose arms she has been cast. And do it without dying.”

  Kellach took the dawn watch and let the fire die. Praetor lay cocooned in his cloak. Light pulsed through it in rhythm with the man’s heartbeat. It swelled and fell with his breathing—though it covered him completely. While the cool morning air allowed Kellach to see his own breath, he saw no steam rising from the cocoon. Yet the man breathes, so air must get to him.

  Having been raised in the south, amid snowcapped mountains where water was drawn from streams bleeding off glaciers, Kellach did not mind the cold. In fact, he found it something of a comfort. He breakfasted on cold water and dried beef from his own supplies while he waited for the warmage to waken.

  Praetor Azurean took his time in that. A momentary flash of disgust when he saw the fire had gone out revealed his dislike of the cold. The warmage made no complaint, however. The cloak reluctantly released him and he rolled to a knee. He warmed water for his tea by holding the pot in both hands, and even offered Kellach a steaming mug. Kellach declined with a shake of his head.

  Praetor busied himself cleaning up their camp. He folded his chair down and slid it into the trunk as if the box had no bottom. The bucket was yet half full of water, so the man poured it out, then deposited it on top of the chairs. Everything else went in as well. Then the warmage buckled the lid on tightly. With a wave of his hand he split the chest in half, stacked one half atop the other, and pushed down. One half slid into the other, producing a chest half the previous size. He did this again and again until he’d reduced the chest to a small case the man could have hidden behind his hand. Then he slid his belt through a loop on the back. He brought the box around to his right hip, opposite his sword, and smiled.

  “There; all set.”

  “You do not carry a staff or a wand?”

  The warmage chuckled as he set foot on the path leading back to the ridge. “Hedge wizards and paltry warlocks might use them, but we who are Yag-Ktheru eschew them. Hard to use them in conjunction with a sword, no?” He raised his right hand and flicked his thumb against a gold ring set with what appeared to be an ancient coin. “Easier to focus through something like this. As you and I focus our physical strength through my sword or your axe, so I focus magickal energies through this ring.”

  They paused at the ridge. Fog
completely filled the valley. No hint of the cave, no breeze stirred the fog. Higher clouds made it unlikely the sun would burn the fog off any time soon. Condensing moisture darkened the rocks and glowed from leaves.

  Kellach started down first, filling his right hand with the longknife. The trail was little more than a track for runoff, where thin soil had been eroded to bare rock. Traces of past rockslides required them to pick their way across the face of the mountain, switching back many times. The scrub brush up top and more lush forest below allowed them no more than a dozen feet of visibility along the trail, and often a quarter of that side to side. Kellach would never get to swing his ax in such tight quarters, but the longknife would more than suffice if they were attacked.

  Though the warmage had not seemed a likely companion when they camped, he redeemed himself on the trail. They did not speak. He would stop when Kellach did, and study places at which Kellach pointed. They each listened hard, and sometimes Praetor closed his eyes, looking through the Veils for danger. He reported nothing unusual with a head shake, and they moved on.

  They continued down to the valley floor, reaching it by midmorning. Kellach refilled his waterskin in the stream there. Praetor filled a flask that—from a faint scent—changed water into something else. They worked up and down the stream for a hundred yards or so each way, looking for other trails. Kellach found one downstream, almost directly below where the cavern mouth should be. Closeby he discovered a small sandbar where the stream turned north and broadened out for a bit.

  He crouched and studied the footprints. They belonged to two individuals. Because of the size he thought them a child and an adult. The adult had six toes on one foot, three on the other—and clearly had lost them through some sort of an accident. The child had a clubbed foot on the right.

  Praetor joined him, squatting on the shore. “In that little pool, berry pits.”

  Kellach nodded. “Bird berries. They ate a few while resting.”

  “Harvester’s wage, all fair.” Praetor shrugged. “Though I doubt they have the intelligence to know the old ways and abide by them. They’re little more than animals.”