That last Jarik had not known. He had liberated the Pythoness, after she had tried to kill him, and she had been happy — for the few hours before one called Clarjain had murdered her. That had enraged him, and his real trouble had begun when he sent Clarjain’s soul racing after that of the Pythoness. He believed what Jilain said. He noted that she made no mention of the bonding of gemstone to flesh, which must be accomplished in pain. Yes, she was right. Still, Jarik remembered his own life, and he clamped his teeth.
“Much exists off Kerosyr that is … more cruel, Jilain.”
“This one shall survive. This one is Guardian, warrior. The best but one! Second only to you, Jarik Blacksword. And one would wager that one is better wit’ the bow than you, best warrior!”
“I have not seen you use that old bow of Kerosyr,” he said, in deliberate challenge, although his skill with a bow was little better than with the loom or the flute.
“You will see this one use it,” she said, sitting straight. “Others would have been dead or wounded on this ship, had Jilain been among those on the beach when this ship departed Kerosyr’s shores. Jilain is the best.”
“And as modest as Jarik,” Jarik said ‘I believe you, Jilain. But warrior women do not exist.”
“This one exists, Jarik. Jilain exists.”
“Uh — what I mean is, no one employs warrior women, Jilain Kerosyris.”
“Employ?”
“I am … ” His voice dropped even lower. “I am employed by the Iron Lords, gods on the earth. I serve them. I am also employed by the Lady of the Snowmist, but that is unwillingly. For Her I had to come to your island, for the White Wand of your god.”
She cocked her head like a bird double-checking before trusting itself to one swift peck at the grain. “And you tell this one that no one uses warriors who are women?”
He nodded.
After she had said nothing for a long while, he heaved and turned to face her. She was staring at him in shock, in disbelief.
Then she laughed, assuming that he jested.
Chapter Four
The fate of man lies with the gods;
His life’s fabric is by their leave.
Let no human misdoubt the odds!
The gods decide; the weavers weave.
The infant pules, and mayhap grows old —
Its life’s fabric is by gods’ leave.
Changes come, mind and body enfold
The fabric that the weavers weave.
Each hap marks the mind with a scar,
All lead to what he will achieve.
Mayhap each aids; doubtless some mar.
Events befall, while weavers weave.
Racing, the ship slobbered in a way of a racing horse champing its bit, and that foam shaded from frothy white to crystal bubbles to grey to a washed-out green like that of dying plants. All about, sunlight trembled on the waters undisturbed by Seadancer’s dipping prow. The sky was almost eerie in its unwavering luminosity. More eerie was the unnatural breeze that never paused or changed direction, but blew them steadily to the north and east. All aboard the ship were aware of it but no one spoke of it. They were not in the hands of gods, but of one god. Her dove accompanied them still, and from time to time soared forth on brief sallies that signaled small course corrections to Kirrensark and his steersman.
Then an orange stain spread across the sky, and deepened into rose with gold only at the western edge. Slowly, one by one, the stars appeared in pearl and white, blue and pink and watery green.
Jilain and Jarik talked quietly in darkness. She talked of Kerosyr and he of the warks of Lokusta in which he had lived. They compared customs and knowledge, suppositions and expectations, and he talked about the land he presumed to be that of his birth.
The Lokustans called it Akkharia, he told her. His people had not. He had lived in Oceanside, a farming community above a chalky cliff overlooking the sea. They were farmers, not seafarers. He was called Chair-ik there; it was their pronunciation, as some also said Jairik and some Yairik, or something like. He was different from those people of Oceanside, even from those he called parents, in the color of his hair and of his eyes. And in other ways; he was of a restless nature that hardly existed in that community. Akkharia, he told her, was an island — so the Lokustans said — not far from Kerosyr, though it was a considerably larger island.
Somewhere far inland they knew, or presumed, a king lived. He was “their” king, presumably. None had ever seen him. Somewhere nearer dwelt the lord of the barony of which Oceanside, Tomash-ten, was a part. The name of the barony was Oaktree. Jarik could not remember its lord’s name, and was not sure he had ever heard it. A few had seen the baron. Orrik of Oceanside had liked to tell the tale, glowingly, with pride and some wonder, of How The Baron Came to Tomash-ten And Only Two Sevenights After His Accession. The boy Jarik was had tired of the story. “King” and “Baron” — those were only words. Oceanside was the world, and it was dull and not big enough.
Jarik told Jilain of his sister Torsy. Though the difference in their ages was less than nine months, it had not occurred to him then that she was not his sister. He was Orrikson Jarik then, and had not known that Orrik was not his father, nor his wife Jarik’s mother.
Tomash-ten was dull and placid and Same, deadly boringly Same. All that people did was always done the same way, and that was The Way. Every bit of it changed; the world changed, one day when Jarik was not quite eight.
First had come the two hawks that did not flap their wings and that shone and glinted in the sunlight. They came from the sea or seemed to, but Jarik saw that they swung wide to approach the community from inland, that the awed, staring, pointing farmers of Oceanside would not know they had come from the sea. Then Jarik had not understood; now he felt that those great gleaming birds were spying out the land.
(“Birds?” Jilain asked.
(“Yes. Birds. As birds, a gull and a dove of Her, have led us to your land and are leading us home. They use birds, the gods on the earth.”)
Then came the ship, though at the time Jarik did not know what a ship was. He had seen only fishing boats — two. At its prow was the fierce head of a hawk and off it came helmeted, mailed men who slew and slew everyone in placid, calm, peaceful, complacent, nearly weaponless Oceanside. And Jarik saw it all or nearly, for he and his sister were shirking, watching in secret from a clump of bushes at woods’ edge.
Jarik saw his stepmother Thanamee sworded through the belly. That belly was gross with him Jarik knew would be a brother. The old women had said it would be a brother to him, too. He had looked forward to having a brother; looked very much forward to it. Orrik and Thanamee had already decided on what they would name the child: Oak. That man from the hawk-prowed ship, that hawk-man or Hawker, had slain two then, all in a stroke. Another had slain Orrik. Jarik would never have a brother, now.
Jarik and Torsy were not killed. Everyone else was. Everyone else, and there was fire as well, roiling greasy black smoke rolling and puffing up from what had been Tomash-ten. Why?
Not quite eight, Jarik saw Torsy faint. He jumped up to run out there and kill all those bad men, and then a blackness saved him. A blackness came before his eyes, and over his brain like a cloak, a pall. While black smoke rolled and puffed skyward, Jarik fell down unconscious. When he awoke, he was kneeling beside Orrik and Torsy was screaming his name. Orrik was dead. Yet he was bandaged. A badly frightened Torsy told Jarik that he had bandaged his supposed father … but he had been mean and snarly to her, and called himself Oak.
(“While I was senseless, Oak was born and tried to save Orrik. While I was senseless, I … traveled, saw visions. I saw Her that day, Jilain. I had never heard of the Lady of the Snowmist! But that day, while I lay senseless, I saw Her. Years and years passed before I saw Her again — really saw Her, that second time. I saw the Black Sword that day, too, though it was far across the sea in Blackiron, and I did not see it in fact, with my eyes I mean, for nine years. I remember that in that …
that dream, I called myself Jarik son of Orrik of Oceanside in the barony of Oaktree of the Kingdom, and I remember saying that I was ‘Jarik, son of Orrik, true son — no, servant of the Lord Baron and the Lords of Fog Themselves’ and that I was taking vengeance for my half-brother, Oak!”
(Jilain said, “You said, in your dream you said — half-brother? Then you did know.”
(Jarik reflected. “Yes, I suppose I did — and yet I did not. Somehow I knew it, but did not know I knew it. Do you think we all have two minds, Jilain?”
“No — that is, one has never thokht about that at all. Now one thinks that you have two minds, Jarik. You see? Oak was there then — and Oak knew that you were not Orrik’s son.”
(“That doesn’t make sense,” Jarik said. “Since none of the rest of it does, it may be right.”
(“Whose son are you then, Jarik?”
(“I — do not know. Ask … ask Oak, if ever you see him again.”
(At that weirdness he felt her shudder, and he bit his lip, and then went on with his story. It was as if he was compelled to tell her of that young Jarik, of Oak and his homing. And of that first … dream?)
“The one I was going to kill, in vengeance for Oak, sneered and said, I remember, ‘You don’t have a half-brother or a brother either, Baron of Oaktree!’ — and I killed him. Yes, he called me that. Baron of Oaktree. He told me I had no father or mother on this earth, and all the while I was … I was chopping him up. In my dream, Jilain, at age — not quite eight. It was then that he died, and I saw Her. She was there. She spoke, too.”
He sat, remembering, until Jilain asked him what She had said.
In a strange new voice, Jarik half-sat, half sprawled on Seadancer, and repeated the words he had heard in that vision — that first of his several visions — so many years ago. “‘You are come to slay me, Jarik, poor mystery man idiot Jarik without parents. Come to slay me with your reward already in your hand and dripping blood. You cannot slay me, Jarik, poor adopted abandoned exiled brainless peopleless Jarik. Not me. You cannot be suffered even to live! You are less than an ant beneath the world-stamping feet of the gods on the earth, Jarik the ever-Different!’ Those were her words to me in that dream, Jilain, so many years ago — and in my hand I held the Black Sword I have of Blackiron, and the Iron Lords. But then, I had never heard of Blackiron, or the Black Sword, or the Iron Lords — or even Lady Snowmist!”
He ground out her name with an ugly voice and an audible twisting of his mouth, and Jilain Kerosyris knew that he was no friend or respecter of that god he said he served unwillingly, the Lady of the Snowmist.
“Did you speak to her? Then, in that vision?” Jilain sat close. She felt chilly, and only part of her chill came from the air over the night-darkened sea.
“I awoke then. Beside Orrik, with Torsy yelling and blood on my hands. Because I had bandaged his wounds, you see. Or rather Oak had. It was a good job of bandaging, too. I could not do that well, now. But … now … Jil — Jilain … let me tell you what She said to me less than one month ago. So many years later! This time I was really there, in her keep above Kirrensark-wark, and She was really there, where She had taken me. She was no vision. She said, ‘Poor Jarik! You are but a rusty hoe in the hands of a stout farmer. A tool. Had you — ’” Jarik paused, because he was not ready just yet to tell Jilain what his mission was, for the Iron Lords; that his mission as their agent was to kill Karahshisar, the Lady of the Snowmist. He did not want to tell Jilain that he had tried, and failed, and endured awful punishment, and awakened with these terrible bracers on his arms, They made him hers, for if he strove against Her or even tried to disobey Her, the pain and terrible cold in his wrists was instantaneous, and moved rapidly up his arms into his body. Nor had the bracers, the Bands of Snowmist She called them, any seam. Nor could they be cut. Only She could remove them, and so he had to fetch the White Rod and now he must carry it back to Her, a fearful controlled slave. Perhaps of all the things that had befallen him, all that he had endured, this was worst. Because he was so in need, so in need to belong and to be in control, the precise opposite of that of which slaves are made. His resistance of authority was as if systemic. Gladly had he believed the Iron Lord, and joined with the Iron Lords, and become their liege man, for they showed him how he could Be someone; truly important. Gladly had he taken their superb armor coat and kept the beyond-superb new sword he had himself appropriated. Gladly had he let them transport him — somehow — across the impassable mountain to the farmlands at the base of her keep on Cloudpeak. Right gladly had he greeted Her when She came down, all misty until She coalesced into a vision of silver and grey and white, snow and mist, and more than gladly had he agreed to be transported by Her into her keep. There he had tried to carry out his mission.
And She had mocked him, and enslaved him. Sneered at him and enslaved him. Defeated him and enslaved him. Forced him to set forth on this mission for Her — in company with him Jarik had for so many years hated above all men in the world. For it was Kirrensark who had led the men who annihilated Oceanside, and Jarik’s life.
He was her slave, and perhaps that fact was the very worst of all that he had endured in all his life.
Jilain said, “Jarik?”
Her hand was on his arm. He left out the sentence Snowmist had spoken: Had you succeeded in killing me, you’d not have lived out this day! That he elided, and told her the rest of what Snowmist had said, for it was incredible that She had said those words, after so many years. “‘The Iron Lords could not suffer you to live. Nor are you the sort of tool they would merely hang up in a place of honor on the shed wall. You would be less than an ant beneath their world-stamping feet!”’
Jilain trembled. “The same words.”
“The same words,” Jarik said.
“What … oh Jarik, this is … one’s mind will not accept any of this!”
He challenged directly: “Do you believe me?”
Small-voiced, she said, “Yes. One believes you, Jarik. Oh, Jarik.” And she pressed close, with her hands on him.
Jarik would not return the pressure, or put his hands on her or his arm around her. He had his reasons, which he thought were very good ones. Horrible ones. He did not want Jilain Kerosyris to die.
After a time she said, “What … what else did She say, this god who lives and talks?”
He remembered that she knew nothing of that, either. Her god was dead. All there was of Osyr was that statue in the temple on Kerosyr. A temple that was older than old; far older than the Guardians, Jarik was sure. The statue was fine work, in some black stone. The White Rod had stood out in stark contrast, held in one hand of the statue. That hand was made so as to hold the White Rod, which was a separate object, made of something like white horn. The dead god of Kerosyr no longer had that short staff. Jarik had it. Rolled in oiled sharkskin, it was stored away under the prow with the weapons of men who might be tempted to use them, in such close — and truly, boring — proximity.
“I will tell you another time,” Jarik said. “Not now. Let me tell you of Oak.”
Jarik and Torsy were not killed, that day of Oak’s birth in Akkharia. Everyone else was. Since then, Oak had returned three times — four, now.
Once, when Torsy and Jarik were departing their second home, a Lokustan wark where he had been Strodeson Jarik. (He had been exiled when he had slain the firstman’s son — purely in unwilling defense of self and goaded by sneers and insults against Torsy.) Two men came on Torsy while Jarik was foraging, and they attacked her. They were men of weapons, and experienced. Jarik was seventeen or eighteen, with a fair mailcoat and an ordinary sword. He killed both those men, in minutes.
When he bent over Torsy and saw blood on her, Oak came. As it turned out, Torsy needed little help and no treatment. Oak, who had feared internal wounds, saw none.
Another time was next day. Torsy and Jarik found an injured man in the woods they were passing through. Torsy squatted beside him and got some of his blood on her. Jarik th
ought it was hers, and Oak came. Oak repaired that hunter, badly injured in his own trap. Oak did everything right, knew everything. He and Torsy were gratefully taken into their third home, that man’s village of fisherfolk. That was Hamstarl: Blackiron.
They abode there for some time, years, but Jarik was Jarik, not the healer they wanted.
One day Torsy went into the woods with a girl Jarik might have loved. They were about the normal business of beating the squirrels to fallen nuts. The three raiders found them; mailed weapon men from the sea, and they raped and murdered the young women. Thus Jarik found them, and Oak could do nothing. It was then that Jarik returned to that little wark, a grim and quivering figure none dared challenge, for his face was awful. He took the Black Sword from its strange mounting in the wark. He returned with it the way he had come, with never a word to anyone. Over a day later he caught that trio of men off a hawk-head ship, and they were as half a man against the maniacal animal who came ravening among them with his awful weapon, the Black Sword.
While he was at that ugly business, the other men off that same ship attacked the village of Blackiron. Jarik had not known: the Black Sword was the wark’s link to the Iron Lords and should have called them down from their mountain keep in such a time of danger. Jarik had the weapon. He learned only later that he had been responsible for the Iron Lords’ failure to come. Yet with it, a ravening morbrin thing that day, he attacked the attackers. Slaying and slaying, he turned away the attack and thought that he was a hero. Then he saw one of his friends struck down and, the attackers beaten off and in flight and a friend wounded, Jarik collapsed. Oak came.
The Lady of the Snowmist (War of the Gods on Earth Book 3) Page 5