by Tim Stead
He’d tried. Half his life he’d tried to blind himself to reality. Faith was important. As a boy, as a student, as a man, he’d tried every philosophical trick he could imagine to drag his unwilling mind into agreement with doctrine, but some clever part of him always stayed behind, taunting him with buts and hows, ifs and therefores.
In the end he had given in. He had accepted reason, or so he had believed. Marik had built himself a fortress of superiority, a stronghold within which he could smile at the antics of his fellow students, his fellow soldiers. He knew he was right, even if he could not speak of it.
And now the irony was reversed. Where once his reason had prevented him from becoming a man of faith, it now seemed that some last vestige of his faith had clawed him back from reason, betrayed him at the moment he least expected. Yet it was a last throw of the dice from the believer within him, and now that particular demon was finally exorcised, he was sure.
The step he now had to take was irrevocable. To stay true to his beloved reason he must abandon his faith entirely, betray his teachers, his comrades in arms, his family, his entire world. But the greater crime would be to betray himself, to deny the truth.
It’s not as if he meant harm to all those that he must betray. He believed that he was doing it for them, too, for their good, for their lives, and to rescue their corrupted, naïve honesty. They and he were both deceived, and now that his eyes were finally open. By hook or by crook he would open their eyes also. The war itself was a lie.
Marik stood and walked to the locked door of his prison room. He banged on the door. The small window in the door opened and he saw the eye of a guard looking through. Over the months Marik has learned the faces of his guards if not their names. This one was Pretty Boy. It was the name Marik had given him. Pretty Boy was young and good looking but not very bright. He didn’t speak a word of Afalel.
“I need to talk to the Wolf,” Marik said. The guard didn’t reply. He could see Pretty Boy’s eyes searching the room to see if there was a problem. “Narak!” he shouted. “Narak!” It was a word that he knew the dimwit would understand.
Pretty Boy looked him in the eye and then dropped the hatch, cutting him off again. He listened at the door. He heard footsteps. The guard was walking down the corridor with a measured tread, unhurried as a grazing cow. He heard voices.
* * * *
Havil was sitting in the war room alone. These winter breaks in the war irked him. He was not a man given to inaction, and he resented the nature of this particular war. Narak had insisted that they fight a defensive campaign, build walls, force Seth Yarra to make moves that they knew could be countered. Havil knew that the Wolf was right, they could not hope to overwhelm such numbers as the enemy possessed, but it did not sit well with him.
The prince of Berash was never happier than at the head of his Dragon Guard, thundering down on the enemy on an open field. This wall warfare did not suit his cavalry at all.
So now he sat and read dispatches, trying once more to live the battles in his head, studying maps to get the feel of the terrain. His current reading was an account of the second fight at Fal Verdan. It was a sorry pass that he had missed the first battle there, but to be absent from a second? It was intolerable. In a hundred years there had been two major battles at the wall, and he had missed them both.
He envied the young Lord Skal Hebberd his adventures in Telas. He wished that he was with him. It would be a wild thing indeed to ride through the kingdom, both pursued and pursuing, never safe for a night, a sword always to hand.
He could not really complain, though. He supposed that he was greedy, wanting to be at every battle. He had fought in the borderlands. It had been the first victory of the war, and entirely his, though no more than a small affair. He had been at Finchbeak Road as well. He had ridden with Narak and played his part in the rout of the Seth Yarra army there, and he supposed it should be enough for any man, but his warrior’s heart cried out for more.
His reverie was broken by a polite knock on the door. He dragged himself back from his imaginings of blood, back from Lord Skal’s cavalry charge at Fal Verdan.
“Come,” he called out.
The door opened, and one of his personal guards entered. “Lord Prince,” the man said. “I would not disturb you, but your father is still in bed, and the matter may be trivial, but I do not know.”
“You do not know? What it is then?”
“The guardsman Tinnat, he who was set to guard the Seth Yarra that Narak questioned, he says that the prisoner is calling for the Wolf.”
“Does he say why?”
“Lord Prince, the guard does not speak Afalel.”
Of course. Havil knew that already. There were only a handful of Afalel speakers in the palace guard and although one or two of them had been assigned to guard the prisoners there were two Afalel speaking prisoners to guard. Havil himself was not at all fluent in the tongue, though he had endured the teaching of it in his education.
“I will come,” he said, putting aside the battle reports.
Tinnat was waiting outside, and led the way down beneath the castle to where the prisoner was held. It was not a place that any man would have chosen to live, but they had made it comfortable at Narak’s insistence. The prisoner had a bed, a chair, a fire of his own, and more space than any Berashi soldier would have been given.
Havil walked beside Tinnat.
“How did he seem?” he asked the guard.
“Worked up about something, Lord Prince,” Tinnat said. “He banged on the door and spoke words, Afalel, I suppose, and then he shouted Narak’s name over and over.”
Something to do with Narak’s last visit, he supposed. The wolf had come with papers that he had believed were written in the Seth Yarra tongue and asked their prisoner to translate them. The prisoner had become agitated and refused, but Narak still seemed to have gained something by it. Havil supposed this was something that followed on from that, and he had to admit that he was curious.
When they arrived at the cell door Havil indicated that they should open it, and Tinnat did this. The prisoner was sitting on his bed, and was clearly surprised to see Havil. Havil didn’t know what the man had expected. Surely not Narak?
* * * *
Marik heard them coming. He could not tell how many of them were coming, but it was certainly more than one. He sat on the bed and tried to calm himself. It would not be true to say that he was having second thoughts, but he was troubled by the enormity of what he was planning. But he was determined to jump off this particular cliff trusting entirely to the wings of his reason. It made his heart hammer.
The door opened and a big man came in. He’d seen this man before, and knew that he was someone of consequence. It seemed that the Wolf’s name had worked the desired magic.
“Speak,” the big man said.
“I wish to speak to the one you call Wolf Narak,” he said. “I have important things to tell him, and I need to see the documents again.”
The big man cocked his head on one side and smiled a wry smile. “Speak slowly,” he said. Marik smiled back.
“The papers,” he said. “The papers that Narak showed me, I want to see them again.”
The big man nodded. “You have…” he seemed to struggle for words. “You have changed your mind.” It was a surprisingly astute observation, and Marik revised his opinion of the big man.
“Yes, but there is more.”
“More?”
“The papers are important. More important than armies.”
The man looked at him with a look that said nothing was more important than armies. He should have guessed. The man was a soldier, a general perhaps. It was the wrong thing to have said.
“The papers,” the big man said. “A weapon?”
He was about to say no, not a weapon, more of a soaked blanket to throw on the fire of war, but he thought that it was not what this big soldier wanted to hear. He had to be careful. “A tool,” he said. “It may save man
y lives – the lives of your men.”
The big man nodded.
“I understand,” he said. Marik saw that he did understand. The big soldier understood far more than Marik had intended, and for a moment he was filled with doubt. He thought that he was clever, that he knew the workings of things, but he was a child compared to these men of the kingdoms. They lived every day with the anarchy of freedom and the mystery of choice – things that Marik had only imagined. They saw men in a different way, as different people who might or might not share part or all of their thinking. In his own land thinking differently was the first step of heresy, and to put words to such thoughts was to risk censure. Here it was normal. Here it was expected that other men should disagree.
“What will you do?” Marik asked.
“I will try to send words to the Wolf,” the big man replied. “He will want to know.”
It was that simple, then. If he was so bad at subtlety, then he must be honest.
Marik leaned forwards. “I am not like you,” he said. “The part of me that is like you has been forced to hide.”
The big man smiled again. “The Wolf says that you are all like us in your hearts. It is only that you do not see it.” He stood and moved to the door. Marik felt a surge of gratitude that he did not fully understand. “If I have news, I will tell you,” he said, and the door closed.
Marik looked at his hands. All men are the same. It was both an alarming and comforting thought. All men are the same. It is what they do to us that makes us different.
Five – Narak, Snow Wraiths
It was different now. The snow clad hills and valleys still passed as he had seen them in his dreams and distant mountains showed their familiar scarred faces where the frost had torn the rock into shapes too steep for even the driven snow to cling, but now he was not alone.
The thing called Avatar now walked at his side.
It walked with tireless steps that exactly matched his own, and he had the impression that it was holding back to match his best pace. It was a shocking thought. Nobody had physically condescended to him for fifteen hundred years.
It might possess awesome strength and stamina, but it was a crushingly poor conversationalist. Two dozen times he had tried to engage it, to find out some small fact that it had not yet revealed about itself, and each time he had failed. When it did not wish to answer it simply did not speak. It was like talking to a horse.
Its presence did provide some kind of companionship, however, and he was grateful for the mystery that it represented. It gave him something to think of that was neither Pascha nor the war. He still felt that he had abandoned Pascha. He felt guilty. He could not say why he felt this way. He could not help her. As far as he could tell she was asleep, though there was no doubt that it was not actual sleep. Nobody slept for weeks on end.
He had spoken with Jidian in the Sirash a few times, and it seemed that she was somehow being sustained even though she could not eat or drink. Apart from the sleep she was quite healthy. The truth, he supposed, was that she would have wanted him to be there when she awoke.
The war, on the other hand, had dragged into its winter hiatus and beyond that lay the final act of this tragedy. This would be a red spring, not a green one, unless he could find some way to stop it.
He had been so occupied with the presence of Avatar that he had not noticed that he was having problems with his vision. It seemed odd, but the immaculate white of the snow seemed to be drifting into grey. It was as though a layer of smoke lay between him and what he could see, and it was getting worse. His eyes were watering in the harsh glare of the sun on the snow. Perhaps he was tired. He would make the effort to trust his uninvited companion and sleep tonight. He was certain that the rest would restore him.
Avatar did not need to stop, it seemed. The white creature was equally at home in the dark, and never suggested a stop, forcing Narak to call a halt each evening. As darkness thickened into night he chose a spot where two rocks the size of houses jutted out from the side of a mountain. The space between them was fifteen feet across, and offered good shelter from the wind. The rock above was clear, so there was little chance of being buried by snow.
Narak crouched in the lee of the rock and made himself a meal of dried meat and nuts. He had nothing to heat it with, there being no wood or even moss to burn. He carried a flask tucked beneath his heavy coat so that it was warmed by his body heat, and in this he kept water. Whenever he emptied it he filled it with snow. This is what he drank.
His head ached. In itself that was a new experience. He must be tired indeed, but he supposed that a week without sleep and pushing twenty-five miles each day through thickening snow dragging a two hundred pound sled might have that effect. Even so he was surprised that he felt so poorly. He had gone weeks without sleep before and never felt this bad.
He wrapped himself in two blankets and turned his back on the world. He slept a mercifully dreamless sleep.
* * * *
Narak woke to a dark world. He felt quite rested, but he guessed it must still be the darkest part of the night. He rolled over and sat up. He could feel a breeze on his face. He looked up.
There were no stars, just a faint brightness that showed him where the sky was. He could not see a star, a cloud, the moon - nothing. His eyes felt gritty. Narak knew that wasn’t right.
He was snow blind.
He closed his eyes and cursed. He should have known better than this. For days upon days he had been walking through snow. Even as a child he had known what that could do. He had just assumed, foolishly it seemed, that he would be immune. Indeed, as a mortal man he would have suffered like this after one day, three at the most. It was remarkable that he had lasted so long.
He was confident that it would pass. His body fixed itself very quickly. He guessed a day, two at most, and he would be back to normal. His father had taught him to tie a slitted leather mask across the front of his face. You could see well enough through the slit and this didn’t happen.
At least he had a reason now to be grateful for his companion.
“Avatar, are you there?”
He didn’t hear any movement, but the voice came back from just to his right, no more than five paces away.
“I am here,” the bell voice chimed. “You are blind.” It sounded disappointed.
“It’s temporary,” Narak reassured him. “In a day or two I will be back to normal, but I’ll need to rest, to keep my eyes dark.”
“Will it happen again?”
“I’ll take precautions. No, it won’t.”
“That is good, because the Naren have found us.”
“The Naren?” Narak had never heard the word, and he was surprised that something lived here. There was nothing to eat.
“Snow wraiths,” Avatar replied.
“What is a snow wraith? Are they dangerous?”
“To you,” it replied. “They feed at the places where temperature changes. You are such a place. They will draw the heat from your body until you have none.”
Narak’s hands found the hilts of his swords. Now was not a good time to be blind. “How many are there?” he asked. “How do we fight them?”
“Steel will not help you,” Avatar said, and again Narak thought it sounded disappointed, as though he had failed some test.
“Then how are we to survive?” he asked. He could sense something now, almost as though he could feel the presence of the creatures with his skin. It was like being in the Sirash. They appeared as cold spots, and by their strength he could tell distance and direction.
“I will feed them,” Avatar said. “There are few enough.”
“Twenty at least,” Narak said. “And more come.”
“You can see them?” It was the first time that Avatar had asked him a question, and he felt a small victory at that, as though he had poked a tiny hole in its armour of superiority.
“I’m not just eyes and ears,” he replied. “Whoever sent you must have known that.”
Avatar did not answer. Narak felt warmth then, like a fire suddenly kindled nearby. The heat was slight but it quite overwhelmed his sense of the Naren. He could no longer tell where they were. Perhaps it would work in reverse, too. The heat would be enough to blind them to his presence.
“Is it working?” he asked. He did not ask how Avatar had managed to kindle a fire when there was nothing to burn.
“It is. You are safe for now.”
“But we should move,” Narak said. “We should move while they are distracted.”
“You are blind.”
“I do not need to see. Take my hand and show me the way.”