The Snowmelt River (The Three Powers)

by Frank P. Ryan

  Alan was busy in the plaza with a war council of Shee and Olhyiu. Meanwhile Kate and Mo were preparing in their own intuitive ways. The girls had painted the Aides’ lines of ochre, blue and black across their own cheeks, with ribbons of the same color knotted in their hair, which had deteriorated to wiry bushes of fiery red and mahogany in the absence of shampoo and hair-straighteners. “The way I see it,” Kate had explained to Mark, determinedly, “Alan isn’t the only one who came here for a purpose.”

  He could only admire their spirits. They knew, as he did, that even with the thousand or so of Shee that had arrived, they were still grossly outnumbered. The Legun had herded them into a killing zone.

  “Ah! There you are!” All three wheeled around to hear the dwarf mage’s voice coming from the spiral staircase that opened out onto the roof level. Qwenqwo emerged onto the windy terrace and strode toward them.

  “Why,” he guffawed, in his boisterous way, “I would be making no more than an inspired guess, but I see now that you girls have joined the Aides?”

  The very presence of Qwenqwo lifted both the girls’ spirits.

  “However, it is young Mark here that I have most specifically come to address! I think that our young friend will understand.”

  Mark looked up warily at the dwarf mage, who could hardly miss how bloodshot and puffy his eyes were from lack of sleep.

  “My young friend—all I ask is that you remove your coat and shirt.”

  Mark stared at Qwenqwo. “Why—what are you up to?”

  “On my honor, no harm will befall you.”

  Mark sighed. His hands trembled as he removed his fur-lined coat and then his leather jacket and shirt. Kate and Mo gasped to see the black oval that covered his left shoulder.

  “Oh, Mark!” Mo brought her hand to her mouth, seeing the flickering silver matrix within the oval.

  “Are you satisfied now?” Mark dropped his head in shame.

  “I would prefer to demonstrate rather than explain.” Qwenqwo produced his runestone and passed it to the tormented youth. “Gaze into it and tell me what you see.”

  Mark shook his head. “Don’t do this to me! Please, Qwenqwo—you know I can’t do it.”

  “Before doubt overwhelms you—observe!” Qwenqwo gazed up into the sky to where, a mere speck in the distance, the eagle once again hovered. He lifted Mark’s hand so the plane of the runestone was perpendicular to that flight and an arm’s breadth above a flagstone in the center of their small circle, where it would be illuminated by sunlight. There on the flagstone all four of them could see the emerald eye projected onto the stone.

  “The eye of truth!” Kate exclaimed.

  “Indeed, the eye of truth—and you recall what the soul eye tests?”

  “The heart of the holder!”

  “So now you know—the heart of your friend is true. As well I anticipated, for I have been observing Mark’s struggle with the dark force that sought to take his soul. Your friend has a heart of iron.”

  Mark shuddered as Kate and Mo hugged him.

  Qwenqwo accepted the runestone back from Mark. “Now tell them what happened on the Temple Ship during the attack of the Storm Wolves.”

  Red with embarrassment, Mark told them his story: how he had been seduced by the doll-faced woman, how his lips had been sealed by her wile and treachery. He explained how she had instructed him to push Kate. And how, rather than threaten her, he had tried to protect her in the confusion of the Dragon’s Teeth pass.

  The two girls stared at Mark in a shocked silence. Kate, blinking in bewilderment, turned to Qwenqwo. “But what in heaven’s name is a succubus—and why me?”

  “One thing at a time!” The dwarf mage nodded. “From Mark’s tale we learn several things. We discover that you, Kate, are important to our enemies—so important that the succubus went to considerable lengths to have you destroyed. We also need to consider that the succubus does not act for herself. She has a mistress, a very terrible one, half in league with and half in violent jealousy of the Tyrant—a great witch, known as Olc, who inhabits the Wastelands beyond the Eastern Ocean.”

  “Oh, Lord—I don’t know what to believe!”

  “There’s much I don’t yet understand myself,” continued Qwenqwo. “But we know enough to conjecture. The succubus has not completed the will of her mistress. She will try again. And this time Mark must be ready for her. We must ensure that rather than becoming the puppet of her scheming he will become the instrument of her undoing.”

  Mark’s eyes narrowed. “Just tell me how.”

  The dwarf mage shouted a single word, “Aides!”

  They waited as lighter footsteps ascended the stairs and an old but sprightly figure emerged from the shadows of the stairwell holding a glittering weapon in a leather harness. They recognized the Aides, Layheas, who had been introduced to them by Alan. Layheas went down onto one knee and slid the weapon out into the sunlight, revealing a bronze twin-bladed battle-axe. It was smaller and lighter than Qwenqwo’s weapon, but it was unmistakably a Fir Bolg battle-axe.

  She laid the blade across her open palms.

  Qwenqwo nodded to Mark. “Take your blade. It is cast of bronze from the mines of the Geltigi Mountains, made rune-worthy with crystals of jet and cobalt. It was forged by weapon masters as skilled as any known to the Fir Bolg.”

  Mark accepted the weapon with a clumsy bow to the Aides. He stared at the battle-axe in his hands, closely, disbelievingly.

  “And now, if you will pass it to me. There is a gift in my power that even Layheas cannot provide.” Qwenqwo accepted the axe from Mark and sat down against the low wall, laying it across his knees and running the runestone along the cutting edges of the blades. His eyes were closed and his face turned skyward as he intoned a mantra. A pattern of runes appeared over the cutting edges, glittering in the sunlight as Qwenqwo returned the weapon to Mark.

  “For a warrior his weapon must also be his friend. Perhaps its new master would test it for balance?”

  Mark climbed to his feet and, ignoring the fact that his upper body was exposed to the bitter wind, he felt the battle-axe vibrating faintly in his left hand. He swung it through repeated figures of eight, as he had seen Qwenqwo exercise prior to combat. The matrix in his left shoulder pulsated. He could feel the pulsation over and above the vibration from the axe itself—and from the expressions on the girls’ faces, they could see that something was happening too. He gazed down and saw for himself the flickering arabesques of silver that ran down his arm from the pulsating black oval on his left shoulder. He lifted the battle-axe high over his head, feeling his soul spirit become one with its being.

  Qwenqwo pressed the runestone against Mark’s left shoulder. “Let warrior and weapon be united in life as in death!”

  Too amazed to speak, Mark stared up at the bronze battle-axe, feeling its runes and arabesques pulsating with his heartbeat.

  Layheas spoke. “Every weapon calls for its name when newly presented to its warrior—but this is a deeply personal thing, something the warrior alone must share with it.”

  Mark thought without hesitation: I name you Vengeance!

  Qwenqwo laid down the runestone and clapped his hand on Mark’s right shoulder. “Now you must test the union of warrior and blade. Cast your weapon, as if at a distant enemy!”

  “I’m not sure what you mean.”

  The dwarf stood next to Mark, who was several inches taller than him, though Qwenqwo was as broad and gnarled as a truncated tree. “Now cast it as far and high as you can into the air. As it reaches the point where you imagine it has struck your enemy, call it by its secret name—in the intimacy of your own heart and mind.”

  Mark grasped the central hilt and twirled the battle-axe a few times to get a sense of balance. Then, bringing it back over his left shoulder, he spun his wrist at the same time as he hurled it with all of his might. Tempted to close his eyes from sheer panic, he waited, with his left hand stiffly extended. The axe emitted a high keening note as it
flashed, spinning into the distance . . . But then he saw its whirling form returning, completing a broad arc, before smacking into his hand again, his fingers and thumb closing around it in an instinctive clasp.

  Qwenqwo held the runestone against Mark’s heart, and intoned, “Swear in all that is good and just that you will fulfill the role I now entrust to you. I now charge you with the duty of Kate’s protector. You will become not only her shadow but also her shield, if necessary to the death. Do you swear it?”

  Mark looked for a moment into Kate’s eyes. With tears dimming his own eyes, he nodded.

  “You must say it in words—and mean it.”

  “I will protect Kate to the death. I swear it.” Then, allowing the battle-axe to fall to his side, he turned to Qwenqwo and met his eyes. “Thank you!”

  The dwarf mage returned his gaze unflinchingly. “You will best thank me by discovering your affinity with the weapon, and its affinity with you.”

  Mark nodded, but he saw something else in the eyes of the dwarf mage, a barely concealed pain. “What’s really going on, Qwenqwo? There’s something else—something you want me to do?”

  Qwenqwo lowered his head and softened his voice, so that he spoke slowly, in a bitter whisper. “Not you alone—both of you, Mark and Kate—your destinies must now be revealed to you. Though it pains me deeply to instruct you so, I speak of the Rath of the Dark Queen.”

  Kate looked from Mark to Qwenqwo. “Are you asking us—telling us—we’re to climb up there . . . to the tower?”

  There was no mistaking the look of anguish that invaded the dwarf mage’s face as he instructed them with a sigh, “Look for the shade of one whose fate it is to linger there. Long ago she faced a situation as grim as that which we face today. Discover what lesson, if any, is to be learned from it.”

  The Dark Queen

  Kate turned back to look questioningly at Qwenqwo, his arm around Mo’s shoulders, as, accompanied by Mark, she made her way in an awkward silence toward the great stairway ascending to the Rath high above them.

  Mark asked her, “Are you alright, Kate?”

  “I’m far from alright.” She paused to look at him, with his battle-axe strapped to his back within the leather harness. “What in heaven’s name was that all about?”

  “I’m no wiser than you are.”

  “Oh, come on, Mark. Our destinies—those were the words Qwenqwo used. What are we to make of that?”

  “I know one thing. Qwenqwo is right—the succubus will come back.”

  “And you’re what—my protector? Even if it kills you? My God—do you have any idea how bonkers that sounds?”

  “Hey—you’re looking at Mark the Barbarian!”

  The ghost of a smile dimpled Kate’s cheeks as they emerged from the paved streets at the very northern edge of the city, arriving at a point where any defensive wall would have been superfluous. Below them the mountainside fell sheer for several thousand feet. Kate exclaimed, “You know what I think? This is the mountain we dreamed about, back home!”

  “You’re probably right.”

  For a few moments they stood and gazed up at the stone staircase that led to the Rath, hacked out of the living stone of the crag and winding up hundreds of feet. The passage was so ancient that the treads had been worn down to saddle-shaped depressions. There were no handrails in spite of the precipices to either side. Awed into silence, they started to climb. The staircase twisted and turned, at this lower level delving under the canopies of evergreens or bridging over swiftly running streams. At one turn they passed under a gossamer fall of water, perhaps a hundred feet high, that fanned their sweating faces with a refreshing mist of rain. To look down was to invite a swooning dizziness.

  Soon they were above all vegetation, so high their gazes soared over the entire Vale of Tazan, including the river that encircled the island and the forested slopes beyond the tributaries to either side.

  “I’m sorry, Kate. Well, you know—”

  “Oh, Mark!” She knew what he meant. But what did it matter any more? She just squeezed his arm for a moment.

  “Still friends?”

  “We never stopped being friends.” Kate blinked with embarrassment, looking past Mark and up to the tower that was surprisingly intact despite the fact it had been abandoned so long ago. Judging from the dense proliferation of lichens, it had remained uninhabited ever since. She said, thoughtfully, “That stuff—about fate—our destinies—you know Qwenqwo really has me in a panic, wondering what we’re going to find.”

  She stared up at the tower, with its single glazed window, and farther above it at the statue of the queen, Nantosueta, now looming much larger than Kate would have imagined from below. “Doesn’t it strike you as odd that the Tyrant’s armies—the Leguns—didn’t trash all this?”

  Mark blew out through pouched cheeks and did a cartoon voice, “Thuffering thuffocats! Another mythery!”

  Kate laughed, a jittery union of spirits.

  “I think we’re expected to explore the tower.”

  There was a doorway up ahead under a triangular arch of stones. Some of the stones of the walls had tumbled out onto the approach. They skirted the rubble to enter an atrium, where a spiral of marble steps led higher. Here the sense of foreboding became so oppressive that Mark reached up and touched his battle-axe. With a rising nervousness, they continued to climb.

  Step by step, they ascended the first story to emerge into an elevated cloister. Mark warned Kate back from where broken pediments hovered over an abyss. Peering around herself carefully, she could see that a section of outer wall had collapsed, exposing the cloister to the howling wind. Mark helped her inch past the danger, passing through into a pentagonal loggia. This was lined by colonnaded arches, each double pillar of shining marble coral red and surmounted with carved reliefs. This inner architecture lacked the exquisite sophistication of Ossierel. It looked much older, more primitive. They padded, single file, along a narrow cloister, past openings leading to individual cells. Each cell was illuminated by a single unglazed window. Kate had the impression of some kind of a convent community, like the nuns back home.

  Entering one of the cells, her instincts picked up an aura of violence. Though there were no bones—time would have withered bones to dust—the floors were littered with green-encrusted bronzes, scattered and broken, too precious to have been willingly abandoned. It confirmed what Qwenqwo had told them of the history. There had been a violent invasion of Nantosueta’s religious order in this secret valley with its brooding forests. It had ended badly. Kate couldn’t help but shiver, calling out for Mark to hold on to her.

  They arrived at another entrance, cut deep into the wall at the end of the cloister. It was sealed by a bronze door, thickly encrusted with green verdigris. The door was battered and torn from its hinges, presumably a result of that same violence long ago.

  “You want to stop and turn around here?”

  “I . . . I don’t know.” Kate was feeling increasingly scared.

  “You don’t have to go on. Just say the word and we’ll head back down.”

  Kate shook her head. “You heard what Qwenqwo told us to do. He thought it was important. I think we’ve no choice but to carry on.”

  Mark squeezed through the broken door and ascended a spiral staircase of marble. It was pretty obvious now where this was leading. He was inside the corner tower, with its flashing window, like an eye watching out over the valley. After another climb of perhaps thirty steps he came to another bronze door, its hinges fractured like the last, that led into the summit chamber. Dust as white as a swan’s breast carpeted the floor.

  The dust was inches deep, so undisturbed through time it looked like virgin snow. The dust was much thicker than Mark had seen in the ruins of Ossierel. It suggested that nobody had come here for centuries. His initial impression was of an empty room, at least thirty feet in diameter, his gaze lifting to the star-shaped window on one corner, glazed with stained glass. Though only a poor light pen
etrated the dusty panes, a profusion of colors flowed into the chamber, projecting shapes and hues onto the walls and floor like a slightly out of focus phantasmagoria of a coral lagoon.

  Kate appeared in the doorway behind him.

  He shook his head. “There’s nothing here—it’s empty!”

  “Let me have a look.”

  She came into the chamber with a noiseless blur of footsteps, leaving impressions as clear as his own in the virgin dust. He watched her turn in a full circle at the center of the chamber, as if examining the strange patterns of light and color over the walls and ceiling, before blinking several times and then standing utterly still, her eyes falling shut. Mark had the impression that it was Kate, rather than the room, who was the focus of the light show coming in through the stellate window. Mark jumped when Kate reopened her eyes and he saw that they had been invaded by a brilliant matrix of green, in which motes of gold pulsed and flickered into life.

  “Kate! What’s happening to you?”

  “I . . . I don’t know.”

  Mark tried to swallow but his mouth was too dry. Staring at Kate’s familiar oval face framed by her auburn hair, he hardly recognized her any more, not this new Kate with the crystal matrix in her eyes. He murmured, “What you said about the chamber—what did you see, exactly, when looked inside?”

  Kate walked stiffly across the floor, as if moving in a dream, and confronted the stellate window. Then, hauling herself up onto the broad stone sill, she wiped the dust from the central portion of the stained glass. She held her crystal against it, so the incoming light passed through it. Mark’s eye caught a sparkle of movement in the air, a rainbow diffraction of colors, before a series of what he initially took to be holograms took shape in the beam of light. But the images were too vivid for holograms. They seemed to be infused with life. With a gasp of surprise, he joined her at the window, wiping clear a greater portion.

  He had mistaken the panes for stained glass. Now he saw that they were crystals of many different shapes and colors.