Yes — but not directly to Jarik, Jarik told them, and turned away.
They wondered in their minds and aloud, but Jarik would not talk.
Jarik did not dare. He was agent of the Iron Lords, but he was among loyal people of the Lady of the Snowmist; people who lived at the very base of her mountain. It appeared that his patrons wielded more power than theirs, but asea, all alone among them, he dared not speak of it. There was a simple answer to the question of what befell a man when he was far from shore on a small ship among men given cause to hate and fear him. Jarik was brash; he was not stupid. The others wondered, opined, surmised; he tried not to do. He made his way to the stern and, standing well away from the steersman, stared asea along the rippling bubble-dotted line of Seadancer’s wake. He thought on the Iron Lords. Behind his staring eyes he saw the Iron Lords, and he heard their voices. He remembered how those voices rang metallic and hollow, rang dully from within daunting iron masks that were part of iron helms. Black, all black.
They were not iron, he had learned. No. They were god-metal, which was stronger than iron. Jarik knew. He wore a chaincoat of the black god-metal, and the Black Sword was stronger even than it. Sword and armor were of and from the Iron Lords. Yet his Black Sword was not so powerful as theirs, which appeared identical. One of them had extended his sword, and Jarik had seen that it was pointed at a man, an attacker of the wark called Blackiron. That Hawker stood fully eight paces away. And when the sword was pointed at him he burst into flame, and died where he stood. Utterly consumed he was, in clothing and in flesh and hair and bone.
“I am the lord of Dread,” one Iron Lord said.
“I am the lord of Destruction,” another said, for they were all identical, all three.
“I am the lord of Annihilation,” the third said that day in Blackiron, and he too extended his sword. He twitched it as he did, and this time not one but two of those hawkship attackers of Blackiron burst afire and died in roaring flame of white and yellow, so that nothing remained of them.
They took up the wounded of Blackiron then, and vanished with them. Before dark they returned those people — healed. Only the dead could not be healed. And the Lords of Iron brought it forth that the ravening avenging maniac with their Black Sword, had sent three attackers to the realm of the Dark Brother — and laid low no less than six others, some of whom were also certainly slain. (It did not matter, for those terrible swords that spat fire burned all the remaining attackers, wounded and dead alike. Jarik’s sword would not do that. It clove. Oh, it clove!)
When first they came, they saw him as Oak the Healer, and heard him deny Jarik. When they returned, they called him that, but Oak was gone and he was Jarik. So he told them. “Ah,” an Iron Lord said in an aside to the others, “once there are none to tend, he reverts to his main personality, then” The helms of his brother gods nodded, but only they understood what had been said. And they took him up to their keep within the mountain, though he was not anxious to go; to disappear in Blackiron and reappear inside a mountaintop. There Jarik had visited and talked long with those gods on the earth. He remembered how at first he had asked them which they were, so that he might know them apart, though they looked identical.
“I am the lord of Annihilation” one said, from a yellow chair, and “I am the lord of Destruction” another said, from the chair-for-two that was among other things Jarik had never seen before. Naturally then Jarik had looked expectantly at the third of those gods, but he did not speak. Annihilation advised him: “One learns not to utter the profoundly obvious,” and Jarik remembered. “And not to ask the profoundly obvious,” Destruction said, and Jarik remembered that lesson, too. He was not all that fond of talking anyhow. (Not until recently. Not until Jilain.)
That third god had not spoken for long and long; it was profoundly obvious that he was the Lord of Dread, and was not silence an ally of dread? (Later it was Dread who suggested that Jarik, foundling, had been abandoned originally because he was a male child. He had only suggested that, not stated it. Now Jarik understood, and knew that even gods did not know everything; for Dread thought perhaps Jarik had been born on Kerosyr.)
Learning that Jarik had been adopted into an inland wark of Lokusta, they asked if those people there had spoken of Elye Isparanana. And Jarik had said Aye to them, for Elye was “highly respected woman; Lady” and isp was “snow” and arnan meant “mist,” as arnan or haman meant “fog.” Jarik told the Iron Lords what little he knew of Her: the Lady of the Snowmist. He told them how now and again, across years, Milady Snowmist came down and took up a youth, and returned him only a day or two later — and after that the Chosen was not only very popular with maidens of the wark, but enjoyed perfect health, all the days of his life.
“We cannot tell you what she does with those youths, Jarik,” the Lord of Destruction told him; “we dare not tell you, mortal lad. For what she does with them is horrible, revolting. A monstrous thing.” And then he told Jarik that She was dedicated to absolute evil, to ridding the world of mortal humans to replace them with … something else. She must have sent those killers to Blackiron, he opined, in direct challenge to the Iron Lords, whose chosen wark it was.
“Evil” Dread muttered of Her then, in his deep voice of dread.
Jarik remembered other things they had said to him. One thing he was told was that the fire-hurling was an ability of the Iron Lords, not of the swords. “Gods may not slay gods,” Annihilation said. “It is a law of the universe. Too, long and long ago the Lady of the Snowmist wove a powerful spell, and it keeps us here, confined. As she herself is confined to her territory, her domain. We cannot leave here to extend our protection to others as we wish, for she prevents us. The power of the gods wanes in proportion to the distance from their own territory.” It was hardly unknown, he told Jarik, that often gods must ask the aid of mortal men.
(Though that was unknown to Jarik, he nodded sagely and listened.)
“She will know the identity of your parents, Jarik,” he was told. “We are convinced that it was at her bidding that you were left to die, as an infant … For reasons known to herself, Jarik; doubtless it would somehow further her plans. Perhaps she foresaw that it would be you who would come in time to end her reign of evil. Not for vengeance; for all of humankind, for men as you know men.” And they told him too that She knew much of both past and present, and of the time to come, as well.
Jarik learned the true names of the four gods, then, and they were similar. Were they kin? No, Annihilation told him; Karahshisar, Milady Snowmist, was of their kith, not kin. “She is of our people,” Dread said then, and Jarik listened attentively, for Lord Dread did not speak the profoundly obvious — or often. “Was,” that god corrected himself. “Now, as you have seen, she is our enemy. The enemy of your fellow men, of all humans. Like you, Jarik, we are exiles; homeless, kinless on this — in this place. Because of her.”
Jarik absorbed that, and spoke, using the respectful pronoun: “She is of your kith, and imprisons yourselves. She is god of my people and bade them leave me to die. Then she is not sister or kith of yourselves, Lords, and she is no god of mine. She is our enemy.”
He heard himself say that word our. Surely they smiled within their helmet-masks, helm-masks of harsh dark god-iron. For they wanted Jarik to act for them against their enemy Karahshisar who was Snowmist, and now he had renounced Her and spoken words that allied him with these gods. A glow of excitement sent heat flushing all through him. I, Jarik had thought. I! Jarik! I am important! I belong at last! Ally and agent of the Iron Lords’.
Now, only a month later and seemingly longer, he stood tall at the rearward rail of Seadancer and stared asea. Stared at nothing, while he remembered and tried to sort out the confusion and darkness in his mind. He reflected more, dwelling on that interview and their words to him. For he had had great need then to be important and to belong — and even more now, when he wore the bracers that made him a slave to their enemy.
To my enemy, he thou
ght, and his face was grim and taut.
More important than he knew or could know, he stood alone and tried not to suffer.
Behind him, Strave Hot-eye approached Jilain, carrying his bow that was as long as he and all of wood. His cognomen was meaningless, now, and had been nearly so when he had got it. It had been loaded on him in his youth, when supposedly he had been less able to keep his eyes off the maidens of Kirrensark-wark than any other hot-eyed youth. He was the best archer among the men aboard Seadancer, but none called him Strave Archer or Strave Bowman.
“Elye,” he said; “Lady; will you talk with me of bows?”
Jilain jerked sharply at his voice. She was sitting with her knees up and her hands around them, while she stared at Jarik’s back.
“Oh! Y-yes. Of course. Call this one her name; it is Jilain.”
“Strave,” he told her.
“Oh yes,” she said, as if she remembered, though she had not.
“We cannot compare bows or skill, Jilain. This is all we use, and it was your two arrows that hit that bird of sorcery. Mine missed. Would that I had thefted away a bow of your people when we departed!”
Her smile was fleeting. “Bows can be made, Strave. One can show you how to make such a bow as this. You — ”
“I heard you telling Jarik of it. I listened because I am interested, La — Jilain. Perhaps we can begin, and try. But it will be hard to wait seven years!”
She nodded. “One can see that,” she said, although her people were not afflicted with the impatience of these men. “Still, if one is to do it, there must be a beginning. After the sevent’ year, wood for bows is always curing, so that one need not think of waiting any more.”
“Well — what I wanted to ask you about was the way you hold arrow to bow.” His eyes came alight with the enthusiasm of a boy, which he was not. “You seem to cross your hand, somehow? — to hold the shaft even less than I do, and without a bracer. It was too fast and I too was shooting, so that I did not see. Will you show me that — your technique?”
“Oh of course, Strave.” Surely they do not use the child’s pinch? “One had not noticed … would you first show one how you draw and loose?”
He showed her. Her thick dark brows rose as she saw him lay the shaft along the left of the bow. Though he did not use the pinch — actually holding the arrow’s nock-end — she had never seen or thought of the grip he used instead. Naturally; she had learned what all Guardians learned while Strave had learned the way of his father, of Lokusta. He caged his nocked arrow with the index finger hooked around the string above it; and below the next finger’s last knuckle and the mere tip of the next finger. Thus he drew in demonstration, while Jilain stared.
“One would see you release,” she said, as he began to relax the tension in arm and string.
Strave looked around. “Ah — Kirrensark? We need practice, me and Jilain.”
“One of you does,” someone called, and a few men laughed; a very few, for most were too morose.
“I hope we have enough arrows aboard for … practice,” Kirrensark said, with the frown of a stern father bidding willful children to have care.
“Oh, we have plenty,” a man called. “Delath was at pains to tell Jilain so.” And he ducked a backhand swing from Delath, who saw no humor in the remark but would not look at the speaker. N
“We find that we hold and pull and release differently,” Jilain told the firstman. “We would compare, whick cannot be done without actually loosing a shaft or two.”
“Fr’m what I saw she don’ need no practice!”
“Don’t aim at the mast,” Tole called. “It’s seen enough hard knocks, that mast has.”
“Ah, blight all this blather,” Strave muttered.
He pulled slowly so that she could watch, tilting up his bow so as to send the arrow harmlessly aloft and into the sea ahead of them. He did, and Jilain heard both the twang of the gutstrip and the sharp little snapping sound. She only glanced at his arrow as it streaked away, although she squinted a little, measuring.
“That slap one heard … the string striking that leather cuff you wear?”
Strave nodded. “Right. The — ”
“And did one not see the arrow flex leftward?”
“Yes, of course. An archer adjusts for that, when he’s good. We both know an archer is not made in a day, or a year either. The string follows it — snaps to the left, I mean. So I merely wear a bracer a little different from these ax-wavers.” Strave wore a sword. A good archer had perhaps traded fresh game for someone’s swordmaking skill.
Jilain was nodding. “Ye-ess … one does see. Very different. Well, here is what this one does, and those of Kerosyr.”
“Well,” someone said, “do you want to trade or don’t you?”
“Just wait a little. Let’s watch these two. I like to watch her.”
Men, grateful for any diversion so long as it was not another sorcerous attack, summoned more interest than they might have done under other circumstances. Being ashore, for instance, with something to do. And women.
Strave did see that slight twist of the hand he had thought he noticed earlier: she hooked her right thumb over the string from the left. Two fingers came around to hook over her thumbnail, which was pared. Her thumb was below the arrow as she drew that strange and handsome Kerosyran bow. She looked asea as she started to pull. Then she stopped and relaxed.
“Your arrow — it floats point down!”
Everyone looked. Those who could not see the bobbing feathers so far away did not admit it. Strave saw.
“An arrow always floats so.”
She shook her blue-haired head. “Guardian arrows do not.”
“Oh. Your points are all bone?”
She frowned, tilting her head to one side, uncomprehending. “Not all; Guardians sometimes use stone. The sun-winking fleckstone.”
“Our points are of iron, Jilain.”
“Iron!”
“We brought only armor-piercing arrows with us.” His mouth twitched in the hint of a smile. “Although we didn’t need them!”
“And so it floats point downward! Yes, one … armor piercing,” she repeated, as his meaning became clear. “Oh. Then … then you have arrows designed for … ”
Jilain broke off, and swallowed. These non-Kerosyrans used arrowheads designed for use on human beings! The Guardians of Osyr had no such arrows. Yet she could not comment or show disapproval; these men well knew that the Guardians of Osyr killed. To anyone’s knowledge, Jarik was among the first men ever to visit Kerosyr and leave alive.
Again she began drawing her string, while Strave squinted at her thumb and fingers. “Wind,” she murmured. “Arc … distance — oh, we are amove … hmm … ”
She pulled, elevated her bow a trifle, and loosed. Strave wanted to examine her thumb at once. He found a heavy callus, but no mark of a snapping string. Obviously the arrow tended to flex rightward, with her technique, and there was nothing on the right to be struck by the string! He saw at once that this also sent the shaft whizzing on its humming way with no hint or possibility of being sent awry. His eyes narrowed, Strave was even then conceiving a thumb-protector, a tiny bracer or ring of leather, surely …
Then men were calling out, pointing ahead. He looked, to see her arrow floating horizontally — almost exactly beside the bobbing fleche of his submerged shaft. Strave looked at her with increased respect, and so did the other men.
He and she sat down to discuss bows, and grips, and arrows, and the loosing of them. And bracers, and calluses.
When she handed him her bow another surprise accompanied it; that bone-shining, serpentinely curving composite was far from easily pulled. Jilain earned more respect.
Jilain shrugged. “Your thumb is stronger than your fingers, is it not?”
“Ah.” Strave smiled, nodding, and they bent their heads close in conversation. Two archers, conferring. The one telling the other how he might improve his grip, his pull, his accuracy. That one was
a woman and one a man was of no import.
And in the stern, alone, Jarik was mentally reviewing the most thrilling occasion of his life.
To reach the wark at the base of Snowmist’s aerie on Cloudpeak, he must cross Dragonmount. That long, jaggedly towering range, he told the Iron Lords, was impassable. They made no reply, to his embarrassment: they would not speak the obvious. Obviously no mountain was impassable, when the sea was so close — or when one was allied with the Lords of Iron!
He remembered his words, as he sought to keep any plaintive taint from his voice: “And how can it be accomplished? — the death of a god?”
The Black Sword that was now his, along with an armor coat as gift from the Iron Lords, would slay even Her, a god, he was told, “ — and those she raises to menace and do death on you. Though you must have as much care as ever … warrior.” Thus the Iron Lords, and Jarik hesitantly suggested that the Black Sword might slay even them, then. Oh no, he was told:
“Think you we would place the means to slay us, us, into the dirt-grubbing hands of those stupid villagers below? Or into the hands of a man-of-weapons, warrior, such as you?”
He heard what these gods truly thought of mortal humans … but more loudly in his brain he heard himself called akatir for the first time: weapon-man or warrior. Jarik’s heart surged and within him his ego struggled to swell and be recognized. He paid no attention to their contempt for his kind: mortal men; he was ready to kill for the Iron Lords.
Jarik, who learned to distinguish them by voice and realized that Dread was both eldest of the three and old, learned then what became of those youths the Iron Lords occasionally took from Blackiron. They chose the best among the young males — and he did not return. Now Jarik learned why: that youth became an Iron Lord! He was assured that they were immortal; oh yes. The body aged and had to be replaced, the Iron Lords told him, but each entered a new body before the time of the mind’s deterioration. It occurred to him that that was most probably not true. Likelier the Iron Lords seized the minds of those whose bodies they would occupy. For if they could do the one, he reasoned in the very teeth of the unreasonable, why not the other?
The Lady of the Snowmist (War of the Gods on Earth Book 3) Page 7