The Snowmelt River

Home > Other > The Snowmelt River > Page 28
The Snowmelt River Page 28

by Frank P. Ryan


  Alan shook his head without knowing the answer. In the drama of Valéra’s nightlong suffering he hadn’t given a thought to Kawkaw, or to the Storm Wolves. But now he gazed at the horror of so much death. Some of their insignia, on epaulettes and over the right breast of the matt-black chest armour of the centurion, must signify military rank. On every helmet, hammered out of that same metal, he found the malevolent symbol of the triple infinity.

  ‘What does this symbol mean, Milish?’

  ‘It is the mark of the Tyrant. Every division of his army of occupation – aptly named the Death Legion – wears this accursed sign.’

  Alan recalled how Kawkaw had talked about the Master, who appeared to be a god to the Storm Wolves.

  ‘Look at them! Even in death they look fierce,’ Milish spoke in wonder. ‘The Tyrant does not permit children to be reared as any normal child might be, in a family or a village. The soldiers are culled as children from the Daemos.’

  He asked, ‘The Daemos?’

  ‘The barbarous peoples who populate the Wastelands across the Eastern Ocean. Some say it wasn’t always like this: that the Wastelands were once fertile and well governed. But the Tyrant spoiled that. Now his overlords harvest people as a breeder might select dogs – or wolves.’

  ‘That’s vile!’

  Alan gazed over the carnage in silence. What kind of world was this? A world, it seemed, in which magic was accepted as normal and where forces, spiritual forces, whether for good or evil, openly played a part in people’s lives. It had begun to snow again, in hard, dry flakes, as large as petals. There was a chill in the air that made him shiver.

  ‘Why does the Tyrant do these monstrous things?’

  ‘I lack the wisdom of a High Architect.’ Milish’s eyes returned his gaze. ‘Yet it seems to me that in the wonder of existence there is dark and there is light. The impulse that attracts one spirit towards the light might lead another to a darker, more desperate path.’ She hesitated, shook her head. ‘Some say the Tyrant came from another world, as you do. If so, he has escaped the bonds of natural control. Has he not lived for several thousand years, and perhaps a great deal longer? Speak to Ainé if you wish to learn more of it. But choose your moment carefully, for the Kyra does not care to be reminded of her trials as a child in the great arena of Ghork Mega.’

  ‘It’s incredible.’

  ‘Yet it is true that every advance in truth and understanding on Monisle has been opposed in war and despoliation by the Tyrant and his malice. Where the Council at Ossierel valued and treasured life, the Tyrant was ever bent on pillage and destruction. Soon every river in his land was polluted, and with that the very oceans they flowed into. Mountains of spoil grew where his slaves were made to tear elements from the earth. Not a forest was left standing, but the wood was hacked and burnt, always to fuel even more destruction until all that was left was a wasteland that covered an entire continent. Thus war between our peoples became inevitable. Mine is a world that, for all the history we know, has never known peace.’

  Alan caught an inflection in her voice, a hint of an unasked question in her eyes, but it wasn’t the right time to probe this. They had already begun to walk back to the fires when a young Aides came running.

  ‘Come quickly – the Kyra is calling for you.’

  They hurried back to the clearing, where Ainé stood outside the bower, her downcast face evidence enough of Valéra’s condition.

  ‘My sister-in-arms is dying,’ she stated bluntly. Then, lifting her eyes to look directly into Alan’s, she added tersely, ‘I have tormented myself through wondering why you, a mere youth, should be granted the First Power of the holy Trídédana. Why so? Unless through a grace that I am not given to understand …’ She checked herself, inhaled deeply. ‘Yet in asking assistance of you, what I ask I dread, for it is anathema to my race.’

  Then, her eyes sweeping across to the snow-encrusted bower, she continued, ‘I know that it is beyond hope to save Valéra, but if only there were some power that might yet grant her peace by saving the immortality of her lineage!’

  Alan turned in puzzlement to Milish, whose eyes opened wide in a deeply anxious and troubled face. He felt out of his depth. But still he murmured simply, ‘Valéra took the wound that was intended for me.’

  Ainé led him into the bower, where the overnight fire still burned. There was a strong smell of healwell and applied liniments. Valéra tossed in a stupor on her bed of rushes. Her golden blonde hair had been freed in a sweat-soaked halo about her face, and the amber eyes that had once smiled at him were now restless in their sunken orbits. A lean, wizened woman with leathery brown skin and white hair wiped sweat from the warrior-in-noviciate’s face. Muîrne stood in the background, as if awaiting his arrival.

  It was Muîrne rather than Ainé who now addressed him in a whisper. ‘We saw how you destroyed the shield dome, turning their green malice back against the Storm Wolves. Here we face a malice even more vicious. The poison of a Preceptor’s blade runs deep within her. If you cannot help us, the daughter-sister will be lost.’

  Alan shook his head, looking at the Shee teacher. ‘This crystal in my head – this oraculum, whatever power it is supposed to give me – I don’t know if it has any kind of healing property.’

  The Kyra shifted restlessly on her feet behind him. ‘Rather than anticipate failure, will you use the oraculum to probe her wound? Then you will understand the nature of our despair.’

  ‘Maybe Muîrne could help explain things to me so I get a better idea what you really want of me.’

  The teacher instructed Alan to copy her in washing his hands in a bowl of herb-scented water. Then, gently, she lifted aside the packing cloths to show him Valéra’s wound. It was to the right of her abdomen, low down, barely above the pubic bone. It was almost a foot long, ragged and livid about its edges. He had seen the black and twisted blade plunge to its hilt so he knew it had to be deep. Now the reek of gangrenous flesh made him gag.

  ‘Feel it!’

  ‘Aw, gee!’ He gagged again. As soon as his fingers touched her skin, Valéra stiffened and moaned.

  Alan spun aside, and could not stop himself retching. ‘I … I don’t know if I can go any further.’

  Behind him the Kyra grew angry with him. ‘Did you not admit mere moments ago that Valéra accepted the blade intended for you?’

  The Aides woman stepped forward and put her hand on his arm. ‘I am Layheas, skilled in herb lore and battle wounds. If the young Mage Lord will permit me, I will help him.’

  Alan nodded his gratitude, breathing slowly and deeply through his open mouth.

  He gazed down once again on that terrible wound, then, as gently as he could, he prised apart the edges, eliciting another tormented moan. He spoke to Layheas, whose eyes willed him on. ‘I can’t see into the wound. It’s too narrow and dark. Do you want me to see what I can feel?’

  Layheas nodded.

  With his left hand Alan probed the flesh deep within the wound. The muscles, membranes, organs – everything within reach of the twisted blade had been ripped open. He had to pause so he could overcome a new wave of nausea.

  Layheas nodded again, encouraging him.

  ‘I’m going to feel a bit deeper.’ Swallowing hard, he inserted his hand as far as the wrist. Suddenly he encountered the shock of the venom that had been implanted there. An intense pain froze his fingers. It gnawed deep into his bones. The shock made him stagger back, and shove his hand instinctively into the bowl of hot water. When he lifted it out again, his fingers had turned a livid purple.

  ‘What the heck … ?’

  Layheas grasped his hand with surprising strength and stopped the trembling so she could inspect the fingers. ‘The blade of a Preceptor carries more than just a physical poison. It is infused with the malice of its Master. The Preceptor discharged the evil of his life force through that debased weapon before he died.’

  Alan clenched his teeth against the agony that was already ascending into his wris
t from the poisoned fingers. He tottered back against the bower wall, feeling the structure sway. With a heightened alertness, he heard a shuffling patter of snow falling from its disturbed branches. He saw the anguish on the faces of Muîrne and Ainé. Only Layheas had remained absolutely calm. ‘The Mage Lord must use the oraculum.’

  The Aides woman was right. But how could he relax his mind when his fingers were in such torment? Don’t think about your own pain, he urged himself. Think of Valéra – how she has suffered all through the night! Forcing his fingers back into the wound, he pushed them deeper than before, as deep as they would go. Then a new shock of realisation entered his unprepared mind. He jerked his arm, bloodstained to halfway up the forearm, out of the wound.

  ‘She’s … she’s pregnant!’

  ‘Yes,’ Ainé responded tersely. ‘The warrior-in-noviciate carries her own sister-child.’

  ‘I don’t understand what’s going on here.’

  Muîrne’s stone-grey eyes confronted his own. ‘Is it not obvious? Surely it is the point of everything. Such is the focus of Valéra’s torment and the grief that consumes us.’

  Alan fell onto his knees and retched. Now he understood that the Preceptor’s dagger-thrust had not been random.

  Layheas took hold of his shoulder, a look of pleading in her eyes.

  But he just couldn’t take any more of this. Tearing himself free from the Aides’ hand, he blundered out of the bower, running blindly into the snow. The bitter wind excoriated his skin, like a swarm of stinging wasps. Hunching forward against the elements, he called out, with great urgency, ‘Granny Dew!’

  The cry was ripped from his lips by the spite of the wind.

  Never in his life had he felt so useless. He fell onto his knees, his head bowed, his arms adrift by his side, his fists clenched.

  He was so exhausted with his own fever, and the cold was so bitter, that within moments he felt exhaustion fall over him like a heavy blanket. He poured his anguish into the oraculum. It evoked an unreal, disorientating feeling, one similar to that he had experienced when he had seen those visions in the mind of the shaman on the icy lake. It seemed as if he had abandoned the snowy landscape to find himself standing in a flat wilderness that stretched to the horizon in every direction. A presence hovered before him. Though the presence assumed a human form, it remained as insubstantial as moonlight reflecting off the surface of a dancing ocean, glimmering and metamorphosing from moment to moment.

  ‘Are you Granny Dew?’

  I am not the one you call, yet I might have the answers you seek.

  The voice was calm, little more than a whisper, but he heard it with the utmost clarity. He hesitated, peering into the region where eyes might be. ‘I’ve had it with mysteries. I need more explanation than anybody appears willing or able to give me.’

  Ask then what you will.

  ‘Where is this place?’

  It is all places and all times and therefore nowhere and timeless. To some it does not exist while to others it is the only reason for existing. But take care – for those of good heart are not the only True Believers.

  In exasperation he called out, ‘What the hell is that supposed to mean? What is a True Believer?’

  One who enters here.

  ‘Why won’t you give me clear answers to my questions? I need to understand where this journey is leading me. I need to understand – why the hell me?’

  You ask too much in this place and this time. Such understanding is surely the object of your journey.

  ‘What’s the goddamned use!’

  But no anger on his part seemed capable of fracturing the calm of that answering voice.

  Be patient in your search for answers. There is great danger even in a single word, for the understanding you seek is power unlimited. In Carfon is one of the three portals that lead to the very gates of eternity.

  He shook his head again in bewilderment. ‘What does that mean – a power unlimited?’

  I must caution you again. Do not question such things in this unguarded moment. It is enough that it holds all truths, including the truth of Dromenon.

  ‘Dromenon?’

  Here you stand on its exalted plain. You are not entirely unfamiliar with it, for it was through Dromenon that you entered Tír from Earth.

  ‘Tír?’

  The ancient name for this world.

  He clutched at a single important possibility. ‘What are you really implying? Are you saying that we can return to Earth? My friends and I, we can use this – this Dromenon – to go back to our world?’

  Your will is your blade, though you must discover through trial how best to wield it.

  Alan hesitated, considering this. When he spoke again, he did so thoughtfully. ‘What is the importance of Dromenon to the Shee, Valéra?’

  She knows it as the Harbour of Souls.

  ‘Does that mean that Valéra must die? That nothing can save her?’

  Silence only in answer.

  Then it seemed that something in his own grief triggered the metamorphosis: the being became brilliantly incandescent so that it flooded his senses with wonder.

  ‘Is my friend, Mo, dead?’

  The one you call Mo is not dead.

  What did that mean? The one he called Mo? ‘Then where is she? Is she a prisoner of the Storm Wolves?’

  She is a prisoner, though not of the Storm Wolves.

  ‘For goodness sake, tell me where to find her.’

  There is another whose endurance will be rewarded. It is already preordained that your paths will cross.

  He shook his head with bewilderment. ‘What does that mean? Why can’t you speak plainly?’

  I will give you a guide to what you seek. All wisdom is contained within the Fáil. Yet such wisdom is perilous beyond your understanding. You must approach your purpose elliptically, not directly.

  While Alan struggled to understand this communication, the being returned to human form, though the voice now sounded like a chorus of many speaking urgently within his mind. The future is shrouded in uncertainty. The seed of chaos, long dormant, is coming into flower.

  ‘Gee – don’t confuse me with any more mysteries. If you want to help me, show me how I can save Valéra’s baby.’

  In a moment the spirit of the golden-haired Shee stood before him. She appeared on the white plain, her form a shimmering transparency, barely visible in the light of the glowing luminosity of the first presence. Then, Alan noticed that what he was seeing was not a single figure but two. Before the towering shape of the Shee warrior-in-noviciate was a much smaller body, so slender and delicate as to be almost invisible, yet also standing perfectly still, no higher than mid-calf. The two shapes seemed almost to mingle as if identical in spirit, as if Valéra’s spirit cradled that of her unborn child.

  Alan’s voice was taut with emotion. ‘Valéra’s daughter is born from her alone? There is no father, only Valéra as mother?’

  She is the sister-child of Valéra’s lineage. Thus do you witness the mystery of her immortality.

  The full realisation of Valéra’s pregnancy was clear now to Alan – and it was astonishing. A Shee was born from the cloning of her mother’s egg. Every sister-mother was replaced by her identical sister-daughter. It was a form of immortality. If Valéra’s sister-daughter could be saved, Valéra would live again. But if her sister-daughter died, Valéra’s lineage was lost forever.

  Shocked by this knowledge, Alan found himself back within the snowy landscape. The storm had heightened, as if the dark forces had strengthened against him. He just had to feel it, to make his way to the solution, through instinct.

  Your will is your blade.

  He clenched his fists, frustrated still by this vagueness. Then he realised that there was no longer any pain in his fingers. He tried to look at his left hand but he was so blinded by the snow he found it difficult to see his hand before his eyes. But he could feel that it was healed. My will! He thought about that. He recalled the way the poison h
ad so quickly invaded his fingers, how, within what appeared to be moments, it had run up his wrist and into his arm. That had to mean some kind of bloodstream spread. Yet now the poison had completely cleared. There was only one explanation he could think of. The First Power had saved him. It had made him immune to the poison.

  He stood once more in front of the bower, pausing only long enough to gather his courage before returning to the side of Valéra.

  ‘I need a sharp, clean blade.’

  The Aides passed him a bone-handled knife.

  Under the watchful eyes of Layheas and the two Shee, he exposed his left arm, then cut across a vein in the crook of his elbow. He squeezed his upper arm until the blood began to flow from it, then held his arm out horizontally over Valéra’s abdomen so that his blood could pour down into the poisoned wound.

  Valéra’s need was great, and Alan gave generously of his blood. His heart pumped the precious gift of immunity into her, so that, minute by minute, he weakened and her tissues strengthened. He couldn’t expect to cure her. Valéra’s condition was too far advanced for any false hope. But he was determined to do all in his power to save her sister-child. By degrees, through the progressive loss of his blood, Alan drifted into a physical stupor before Layheas removed his arm from over the wound and stopped the bleeding.

  Alan would have only a vague awareness of events as they unfolded, although his memory would retain the cry of a newborn baby, more lusty and powerful than any he had heard before. He dozed off and on, lulled by the nightlong litany of lamentation that accompanied the birth within that bower, buffeted and tossed by the wind and snow.

  Shikarr’s Hunger

  In the moonlight Snakoil Kawkaw was forced to rest in the shadow of an old lightning-struck oak whose maimed form dangled precariously out over the shallows by the bank of the great river. He was peering up at the night sky, as if bemoaning the fact that, although the snow had lightened, the wind still sighed through the forests and the ground snow whirled and eddied in their faces.

 

‹ Prev