by Jon Wilson
He made a fist, opened and then closed it. His son, Gahari, came forward on his knees, placing the white wand into his father’s hand. Raot, Katawanif and the others of the assemblage, recognizing the moment of decision, remained tensely silent. Slowly, Moitunic began to speak.
“ M y grandfathers spoke of a time before thefeldyshcrossed the sea. Then the jirranlands stretched to the three shores and the godJirblessed his children with bounty. Those days are gone. Thejirran of those times are no more. For good or ill the hand of thefeldyshgod has corrupted us andJir, if he as yet survives, no longer looks upon us with favor. To seek those days is a waste of the daylight left us. Besides, even if the makkadarare driven from the land, I fear the bilftanimasters would soon send shiploads of settlers from the south to replace them. Indeed, the ships may already have set sail. No, if thejirranare to survive, it will be by carving their share of the land from the greedy grasp of themakkadar.
“We know that what thefeldysh recognize most is force. We have seen this in their dealings with one another—in their treaties to build their strange towers along the edge of our forests to guard against their bilftanienemies. If they are to recognize us, it will be through force, and I believe that force will be gained through the rolling fire.
“When this council agreed to follow the demon and fight alongside thekaol,it was to be in exchange for this gift. Now the demon has left us to face the wrath of themakkadar and denied us the promised power.” He inclined his head sharply. “Katawanif. You will take four guards of the Huerunan into the reaches. Seek the hiding place of the demon and demand what was promised. You have twenty days. If in that time the demon is not found, he will be either dead or back among thebilftaniand beyond our reach.”
Katawanif nodded, solemnly. “He will be found, Moitunic.”
“I pray it is so. Raot. You will carry the torch of your anger through the lands of the jirran.If others would follow you, tell them to gather at the foot of the RedMountain when the ice is gone from DrekkofyshLake. There we will weigh our options. If all goes well and we have the rolling fire, perhaps it will come to pass that the time to make war with the makkadaris at hand. That is a decision for all to make together and not in the heat of argument.” He nodded slowly, meeting the younger troll’s angry stare. “The snows will fall again.”
The ancient troll lowered the wand, stretching his gaze out across the assemblage. “This is the way of Huerunan. These are the seeds of the white wand. My people, I fear these seeds we shall tend for many seasons to come.” He nodded, slowly. “Let us hope they bear fruit before we starve to death.”
Chapter 2 Holt awoke to find himself walking again. That could not be. People did not get up and start walking while they were still asleep. But he found he could forget walking, forget the pain in his legs—pain that made him feel as if his limbs were being burned and twisted, snapped from his body and cast aside. He could release those concerns and go back to sleep—go back to the white room where there was no pain, only cold—cold he was beginning to know as a friend, a lover; its numbing embrace called out to him and he would fall into it soon.Soon.As soon as he succeeded in ridding himself of the awful shining stone.
The stone was blinding him. Everything was growing white—the land, the sky, the air. Everything except the rock. He was driving into trees, tripping over shrubs. His feet were no longer the fleet, steady appendages he had briefly known them to be. He would feel himself falling and climbing back to his feet and staggering, one knee colliding with the ground until he trudged a few more steps and then the other went down.
If only he could discern shapes. Shapes had meant something to him once—shapes he had once recognized as his house, his bed, his mother’s body lying in the snow. A great, black-winged man with clawed talons. The white world churned around him and he found himself sitting on the frozen throne.
“Where have you taken him?” No, no, no! The man was there again— the dark-haired man with the shining stone— the shining stone and the shining eyes and the knowledge of Holt’s betrayal. He was there in the ice, trapped but coming, making his way toward the white room. The man. The man that could see the black poison in Holt’s veins.
Suddenly the floor erupted with a great cracking of ice. Like two wooden doors it flew asunder and Kawika rose toward him, reaching out, grabbing his ankle. But this was not the living Kawika. It was the ranger as Holt had seen him last: ivory and still in the monster’s embrace. His blue lips were moving, forming words that his empty, ruptured lungs could not infuse with sound. But the words were in Holt’s mind. He could hear them as plainly as if Kawika were whispering in his ear. He could feel the desperation in the words—the need. “Do not lead him here.” And Holt looked up at the man in the ice; he saw the man was looking only at Kawika.
“Kawika, Kawika. Let me die. Let me die. Take the stone.” Holt heard his own voice, the sound waking him. He was marching still—ever marching. Northward now he thought by the sun. Soon he would reach the end of the world and stop marching. But not before. Not even if the land erupted and thrust its old and worm-eaten bodies up into his path. He would just step around them. Like this old ragged one. He would step around.
A hand clutched his shoulder. He looked up into living eyes, not the eyes of a corpse. Yes, there, around the edges of the grey beard the flesh was pink, alive.
“Where you headed, young fellah?” Holt tried to speak, to form words in the alien language of thefeldysh. Kawika. Kawika. Let me die.“Let me die. Take the stone.” He was offering his hand; the stone lay in his palm.
“What’s that beauty?” The old man stooped for a closer inspection. “Ah, very nice.” He straightened once more. His brow furrowed. “You lost?” When Holt did not respond, the old man touched his cheek. “That’s some scar. You’re sick’s what you are. Better get you back. Darnouth?”
Darnouth?That sounded familiar to Holt. He nodded, timidly. “How in blazes did you get so far out here? Another day and you would have been troll food. They eat little boys like you, you know that don’t you?” The old man laughed— a completely foreign sound to Holt who could not remember ever having heard anyone laugh. The aged, bearded face lowered again. The old man came onto one knee, peering intently into Holt’s eyes.
Holt squirmed. Enough that the other man—the dark-haired man—already knew of Holt’s shame; he did not wish this one to discover it. He turned his face away.
“Don’t cry.” Was he crying? “No need to cry. I’ll get you back. All safe and sound.” The old man was trying to sound friendly, comforting. Holt recognized this only as something that had come too late. He had never let them comfort him. He had never let them warm him. “You hungry?”
Holt felt his face twist in confusion. Food?When had he last eaten? Had he ever? Kawika had asked him some years ago if he was hungry.
“Here, boy,” the old man was saying, offering something to Holt that looked like a flat stick. “Have a bite of this.”
Holt blinked, trying to understand. He felt his hand lifted; his numb fingers were twisted around the flat stick. The hand was pushed up toward his mouth. Holt shook his head, unable to comprehend, and then he bit the stick. Immediately the memory of nourishment returned to him and he attacked the jerky ravenously. The old man chuckled again and told him to slow down.
Finally Holt’s hand was pulled away— the jerky removed from the proximity of his mouth. He felt another hand on his shoulder. Oh, the memory! But this was a different hand: fatter and harder and somehow not as powerful. His head was angled back; warm fluid began to splash upon his tongue. Wine! He did remember. Shock. He said I was going into shock.Holt swallowed the liquid even more desperately than he had the jerky, immediately feeling the warmth form deep in his chest. He had stood at Kawika’s side. The others had followedthem.
The flow of the wine seemed to ebb, and for the first time Holt’s hands rose of their own volition. He pulled at the skin, abandoning neither the jerky nor the stone, but determined to continue
the flow of wine. More, more!“You’ll be sick,” the old man was saying, but he let Holt take several more mouthfuls before pulling the skin completely away.
Holt sensed the man rising once more to his feet. And then he continued to rise and Holt knew he, himself, was kneeling, searching for the steadying ground as the wine and the food fed the warmth in his chest and seemed to weigh too heavily for his legs to support them all. He tried to look up at the old man, squinting in the growing white light that was again overtaking everything. The bearded face was smiling.
“That’s right. You go ahead and sleep now. I’ll build a fire.” And with a strange feeling of contentment, Holt nodded, closing his eyes as he felt himself expand. He stretched up into the sky and out over the forest, a great circle of consciousness dilating like ripples on a lake, like a smoke ring in the air—moving in all directions at once until he felt the hand pulling him off toward the west. The hand of the dark-haired man. The man who tugged at Holt, pulling him open. Opening him up to look inside.
Chapter 3 Sensations returned slowly. He knew at one point he was being carried, but he saw nothing, neither sky nor snow. He drifted in and out of sleep, and with the same confusing abruptness of his earlier march, but he no longer fell and climbed and staggered. It felt good to be carried—like flying.
Later he thought he might have been put in a bed, but that was ludicrous. Who would have a bed in the forest? But gradually he discerned walls and a ceiling—not the frozen barriers of the white room, but a real enclosure made of wood. A person was there with him. The old man? No, this one was blonde. And the face looked younger. The blonde hair was tied back and bound. He heard a voice, sometimes got confused and thought he heard several voices. Hadn’t he once dreamed about trolls? Hadn’t they spoken in his dream—spoken just like men?
After a very long time he thought he began to recognize the person with him. A handsome blonde man with a broad friendly face. No, a woman, with a narrower, more determined expression.
“Feeling better?” It was a woman’s voice. The blonde woman with her hair pulled back was leaning over him. “You had us worried.”
Holt experienced a tickling sensation on the lower part of his face. “Don’t try to speak,” the woman told him, and he understood the feeling had been his lips moving.
“Sleep,” another voice said—a man’s. Holt felt a bewildering stab of fear but, turning his head, saw it was a blond man. The fellow had a broad friendly face, an encouraging smile. Holt closed his eyes, doing as the man bid him.
When he woke again, he sensed immediately he was alone. For the first time he saw the room, noting its familiarity. He did not know the place; it simply looked like many homes he had been in. He tried to sit up, surprising himself with success. A heavy quilt tumbled down into his lap. He turned, putting his feet over the edge of the bed and considered rising. It seemed impossible, but, with some wobbling, his feet finally held him. He reached down and gathered the quilt, pulling it up around his shoulders.
There was a window and he made his way toward it. The shutter opened easily, revealing a tiny patch of snow-covered ground and then another, facing wooden wall. Was he in a town? Nothing seemed to make sense. He had been marching into the wilderness—he had known only that fact for so long that, finding himself in a town, his ability to comprehend anything at all felt threatened.
Something was missing. Something, something. He patted absently at his hips, only then realizing he wore a nightshirt.No pockets.Pockets?The stone.The stone was gone! He looked desperately around, but almost immediately spied it lying on a small table near the bed. Yes, he remembered reacting frantically at one time when the blonde woman had tried to take it from him.
He went to it, lifted it, and savored once again the smooth texture of its face against his palm. But he thought it had felt hot once. He thought once he had wished it to be taken away.But why?Why would he give up the stone Kawika had placed in his care? It was a beautiful stone; he never wanted to give it up. He must have been delirious to ever feel otherwise. He wanted to put it in his pocket. He decided to dress just for that reason.
When he had found his clothes and donned them he moved hesitantly toward the door. How would they react to finding him up and wandering about on his own? He could not imagine. He did not even know who they were.
The next room was larger but empty. It was clearly appointed to serve as a main living chamber, its furniture arranged around an open hearth. A fire was beginning to die in the bowels of the stone pit. This room even more than the other triggered some recollection. He proceeded to the large door that would undoubtedly let him outside.
As soon as he stepped into the snow, he knew he was back in Darnouth. Even if nearly all the surrounding structures had not been reduced to blackened skeletons, he would have recognized the town. Perhaps all frontier villages did look the same, but they could not all feel the same, not to a boy born and bred there. Not to a boy who had stood there and watched it burn.
He was somewhere on the north side, near the town wall. He made his way slowly southward, examining the debris with a detachment he feared somehow betrayed it. He should have felt more, he thought. He should be able to look at the ruined houses and see the life that had once dwelt within— the life that was gone for good.
He came upon the temple, as ruined as the rest. How many people had died here, he wondered. And then he recalled the pale face of the priestess, coming down the aisle toward him, serene in its knowledge of imminent death. Kawika had thought she should surrender the building and go to the storehouse. But she had believed others might be spared by her staying behind. Even then Kawika must have known no others would survive, but he had offered no argument. He had not even watched her go back toward the fighters in the rear.
A waste. Her death had been a waste and Kawika had known it would be and let her go.
Holt moved on, reached the square and the utterly destroyed great hall. All ashes. Even the skeleton to this once most formidable of structures had crumbled. The big bonfire. The flame that had attracted Holt again and again.
To his right was the storehouse. He considered going; he considered investigating the door. Had it been burned? Had any people survived that night? Had wasted deaths made a waste of all the lives Holt had ever known?
But something else was attracting him— something further on, further south. He moved around the black ashes of the great hall toward the broad lane that would lead him back to Fitts’ cellar.
A man was down on one knee at the side of the lane some distance ahead. At first Holt thought he did not recognize the man; he clearly was not the blond fellow with the broad face. This man was dark-haired, with angular features. His shining eyes seemed to be reading the dirty snow. The man’s right arm was extended, his hand flat, his palm pressed to the earth. And then Holt realized the man was touching the very spot he had knelt with Kawika’s head in his lap—where Kawika had given him the black stone. And Holt realized he did recognize the man. It was the man from the white room. His pursuer. The one who had tugged at Holt’s consciousness and come seeking the stone. Dressed all in black, he might have been the stone itself come to life.
“Hello.” Holt turned at the sound of the voice. A girl was walking toward him from the east. She was dressed in a red cloak, her delicate features framed by flowing auburn tresses. She was not the one who had tended Holt through his delirium. She was too young; Holt guessed she could not have been older than sixteen. “I’m Sihr. We’ve just arrived.” She reached him and pulled back her hood, unselfconsciously shaking out her long hair. She combed her fingers through it. “Where are the others?”
The girl was watching Holt as if she expected him to respond, but he had no words that he thought she might understand. Before she could take notice of his reticence however, something drew her attention to the south. Her brow furrowed. Holt turned to see what had caused her pale features to cloud.
The dark-haired man was striding toward them, his eyes pinning H
olt with their blazing gaze. The man’s jaw was set—his lips a thin, determined line. His black cloak flowed behind him, and Holt saw it was flecked with white patches; it was marked just as the stone was marked.The stone! He wants the stone!Holt stepped back, his hand digging in his pocket. As the man reached him, he raised it, the black stone resting in his palm. Here. Take it!And the man did reach out—his hand did close around Holt’s own. But once again Holt’s fingers were forced to encircle the stone, his fist clenched tightly within the man’s grasp.
The girl stepped forward, starting to object. Holt heard a word, a name, “Keone,” and then her voice was obliterated by a tremendous tearing sound from above. Holt looked up in horror, gasping as the sky came apart.
He saw the bright blue and the billowy clouds rend. He saw the night—heavy, black, and viscous—pour down over them.
The great hall was burning; people were screaming. Monsters roamed the village. And there he was coming up the broad lane from his house, his mother’s death still numbing his mind, fresh from narrowly escaping the others who had tried to draw him into Fitts’ cellar. But how could he be there? He was standing watching himself, he knew because he could feel the man’s crushing grip on his hand. He looked up, averting his eyes from the Holt in the lane. The man was there, still standing over him, but no longer burning him with those awful eyes. The man was watching the other Holt. Watching that Holt relive the night the village had fallen.
Holt—the other Holt—had seen Kawika at the storehouse, had picked up the spear and made his charge. Holt—the real Holt— and the dark-haired man moved with the boy, moved without moving, flowing through the world of Holt’s memory as if it were a stream and they were riders of a vessel plying its surface.