by Morris, Dave
The sun rose, throwing up a sheet of dazzling light from the ice. There was no sense of warmth, but the malignant cold of the night-time withdrew a little like a spider into its web.
‘We might as well get going,’ said Caelestis. ‘We’ve a long walk ahead.’
All through the day they trudged north. The feeling was soon drained from their legs by the cold, so that they could only stagger along like stiff wooden puppets. Above whirled the sun, cheerless and icily luminous amid a welter of cloud. Its watery beams, reflected from the ice, drowned out the contours of the landscape so that it became a featureless pulsing glare. Exhausted, half-blind, weak with hunger, Altor and Caelestis began to feel like motes of dust drifting in an immense white void.
The sun reached its zenith and began the inexorable descent into the west. The savage cold crouched there waiting to pounce with the darkness.
Altor’s lips were blistered, his jaw numb. He dropped back to where his friend was struggling across a deep trench in the ice and offered him his hand.
With an effort, Caelestis clambered up out of the trench.
‘T-tell me you’ve s-sighted dry land,’ he said.
Altor shook his head. ‘We ought to call the Faltyn.’
‘It wouldn’t do any good. Even if it could help us, we’ve nothing to pay it with.’
‘There’s my magic sword...’
Caelestis shook his head. ‘No.’ Surprising himself, he mustered a smile even though it hurt his lips. ‘I wouldn’t want to give that wretched creature the satisfaction.’
They turned again to the north. Grim resignation had lent them a last reserve of strength and they set out together. Live or die, at least they would never give up while they still had a breath in their lungs.
Low in the sky now, the sun grew swollen and red. Its beams now fainter, the dazzling ice-haze gave way to long pools of violet shadow.
Caelestis and Altor saw it together. They clasped each other’s shoulders and pointed excitedly into the gathering dusk.
Dull amber sunbeams caught the outline of cliffs—cliffs lined with the silhouettes of tall pine trees. It was the coast of Wyrd.
They quickened their pace, almost breaking into a run. It was impossible to tell how far away the coast was, but if they could just reach solid ground before nightfall then there was a chance of building a fire—even finding something to eat.
The cliffs loomed. They could not be far off now. Pine trees sprinkled with snow made a feathery outline against the twilit sky. Then, as the last of the daylight shrank away, Caelestis spotted something out of the corner of his eye.
It was a fur-clad figure lying prone on the ice.
Caelestis looked up from the figure. Altor was still trudging towards the shoreline. Caelestis was about to call out but hesitated. Surely the stranger must be dead, and to tarry out on the ice with night coming on was foolhardy.
He took a few steps away from the stricken figure, then stopped. ‘Altor!’ he yelled. ‘There’s someone over here!’
By the time Altor reached the scene, Caelestis had rolled the stranger over. It was a young girl with raven-black hair. Under her thick woollen cloak she wore a peasant’s simple homespun. She was agonizingly thin and her skin was blue with cold.
‘She’s alive—just,’ said Caelestis. He started to try and lift the girl.
Altor picked her up and put her over his shoulder before setting out again towards the coast.
They reached Wyrd just as the stars came out. The northern lights were a lacy curtain of spangles against the black backdrop of night.
Altor laid the girl down and set about gathering firewood. Caelestis looked back across the ice. The five orbs of the True Magi had yet to rise, but he shook his fist at them all the same.
‘We beat you again, you hear?’ he cried. Then, realizing the ordeal had left him feverish and close to hysteria, he slumped to the ground with a sob of relief.
Altor had lost his flint-&-tinder in the explosion at the igloo, but he knew how to survive in the wild. With two stones he made sparks, and soon the branches he’d gathered were blazing nicely. Caelestis crept over and, shivering, warmed himself beside the fire. After the ravenous cold of the day it felt painful, but deliciously so.
Altor lifted the girl and moved her nearer. Hotspots of colour appeared on her cheeks, but her body remained limp and cold. She gave a soft moan and her eyelids fluttered open.
‘She’s barely more than a child,’ said Caelestis in surprise now that he had a clear look at her in the firelight.
‘Can you hear me?’ said Altor.
The girl’s lips moved. She was barely strong enough to speak, and they had to bend close to catch her words. ‘I’m Enais,’ she said. ‘I tried to escape from him. My brothers too, but they...’
Her voice began to trail off. ‘She’s going into shock,’ said Altor.
Caelestis looked around in agitation. ‘Bring her nearer the fire, then. Quickly!’
‘It’s no use. She’d lost too much body-heat before we found her.’
‘We’ve got to do something!’
Bunching his hands into fists in his anguish, Caelestis suddenly remembered his heavy gold ring. Swivelling it around so that the dark gem faced outwards, he called to the Faltyn.
The fire briefly flared lavender and the Faltyn stepped from the flames. It bent to look at the girl the way a scholar might pause in his walk to study a dying insect.
‘This mortal is not long for the world,’ it murmured. Fluttering its fingers to cover a yawn, it went on: ‘Well then, you have made it as far as Wyrd. I must admit your fortitude quite surprises me.’
Caelestis gritted his teeth. ‘Save this girl’s life,’ he said.
The Faltyn’s mouth formed an O. ‘Her life! This is what you mean by ‘a small service’?’
Altor felt Enais’ pulse. ‘I think she’s gone...’
Caelestis realized he still had the jar of salve he’d found in Augustus’s laboratory. He fumbled in his pocket and pulled it out, thrusting it towards the Faltyn. ‘Take this, whatever it is! Just save her.’
The Faltyn peered at the jar and licked its lips. Altor, kneeling beside Enais, happened to look up. He saw the jar and his eyes narrowed. Just as the Faltyn was reaching to take the jar, he snatched it out of Caelestis’s hands.
Unscrewing the lid, he sniffed the contents. ‘By the Saviour’s merciful grace!’ he cried. ‘This is jeshroot ointment—worth more than its weight in diamonds, Caelestis. Its healing properties are second only to God’s own!’
He smeared a little ointment on his finger and dabbed it on the girl’s lips, her throat, her eyelids.
They waited. She gave a small groan and her eyes flickered open.
The Faltyn leaned closer and made a grab for the jar of salve. When Altor snatched it away, the Faltyn pretended it had just been idly reaching for sparks blown from the fire. ‘I am gratified to see the little soul is alive,’ it said. ‘Now, if you’ll hand me the ointment I was promised I’ll be going...’
Caelestis angrily dismissed it by closing his hand on the ring.
Enais looked up at them in the firelight and smiled. ‘I saw you both approaching a huge Palace,’ she said. Her face clouded and she added: ‘He was there. It must have been a dream.’
‘Who?’ said Altor, laying his hand on her brow. ‘Who was there?’
‘The Warlock King. He gave me a message. He said that he is waiting for you.’
Ten:
The Seer
Down in the valley, darkly outlined by the moonlight, were a few buildings built of stout pine logs. A plume of hearth-smoke rose in the still night air. There was no-one in sight.
Enais, resting in Altor’s arms as he carried her, craned her neck. ‘This is my village,’ she said.
Passing between the black boles of a few scattered trees, they descended to the village. The moon had risen, making the world seem to glow. The only sound in the stillness was the crisp tread of boots through d
eep-piled snow.
Overlooking a frozen pond and stream, the village consisted of a longhouse with a massive thatched roof, surrounded by a few isolated cottages and some small stone huts used for storage.
The smoke came from a vent in the roof of the longhouse. They headed towards it, shivering as they emerged from the shelter of the slope into a sudden blast of wind. Inside the longhouse, a dog began to bark.
‘Hello!’ called Caelestis, knocking on the door.
It opened at once and a lantern was thrust out. They could not see the man holding it because of the glare in their faces. Aromas wafted warmly out from the smoky interior of the house—of parsnip stew, baked bread and potato-spirit. Also the sweaty stench of men and animals.
‘What do you want?’ demanded the face behind the lantern.
Caelestis shielded his eyes. ‘Shelter, for one thing.’
As their vision became accustomed to the light, they could make out the details of the man’s face. He was balding and squint-eyed, scrawny as a sick rooster. He looked old. In Wyrd, where life was harder than perhaps anywhere else in the world, that meant that he might be nearly thirty.
‘Who are you?’ he said suspiciously. ‘You’re not from hereabouts, I can see that.’
‘We’re travellers,’ said Altor. ‘We’ve brought back this girl, Enais.’
‘Enais?’ The man raised the lantern and nodded as he saw the girl’s face. ‘We thought she was dead.’
‘She would have frozen out on the pack ice,’ said Caelestis, annoyed at being kept out in the cold. ‘We saved her life.’
The man returned Caelestis’s haughty glare with a sullen scowl. ‘Don’t expect thanks for that. Death is escape of a kind.’
Caelestis snorted in derision. ‘In that case you’ve only to lower your neck to the ground and with my sword I can hastily arrange your own ‘escape’. No? I thought not. In that case, spare us your melodramatic drivel and let us in!’
‘The girl needs food and warmth,’ said Altor quietly. ‘And we could do with the same ourselves.’
The man hesitated, then made up his mind. Grumbling, he opened the door wide. ‘Come in, come in.’
‘And be quick about it!’ snapped a toothless old woman sitting by the fire. ‘Once the cold gets in, it’ll only go out again with the spring.’ Cackling at this adage, she turned back to stare at the burning peat in the hearth.
Chickens ran between their feet, clucking and pecking at the cracks in the floorboards. Miserably underfed pigs snuffled and grunted in the straw beside the walls. Altor and Caelestis realized that the whole village and all of their livestock must cram into this one building for the winter.
No-one spoke a word. The man with the lantern led them through the silently staring throng. In a pot over the fire a thin broth was simmering. Seeing Caelestis look at it hungrily, a woman stepped forward and clanged the lid shut. Caelestis glared back at her.
‘We’ve not eaten since yesterday evening,’ said Altor, laying Enais down on a blanket by the hearth.
‘Bread,’ said the man to a small boy who had followed them from the door.
The boy bounded off to a curtained-off area at the back of the longhouse and came back with a wooden trencher containing slices of crumbly bread soaked in thin gravy.
‘Thank you,’ said Altor.
‘Words fail me,’ said Caelestis. He would have liked to leave the bread untouched to show his disdain, but hunger got the better of him. Stuffing it into his mouth, he reached for a wineskin hanging by the hearth.
The man took the wineskin, poured a little into a cup, and handed it to Caelestis. With another cupful he moistened Enais’ lips.
‘What about Duros and Glesh?’ said another man, breaking the general silence of the other villagers.
Altor guessed he meant Enais’ brothers. ‘I believe they didn’t make it.’ Noticing the reaction of man who had invited them in, he added, ‘You’re the father?’
The man kept his eyes on Enais, who was now sleeping, but he nodded. ‘My name is Shanans. I’m the headman of this village. Last week my wife died on the same day the steward came to demand the season’s taxes. There was a quarrel and the steward was killed. My sons fled, taking Enais with them.’
‘Leaving you to take the blame?’ said Caelestis.
Shanans shook his head. ‘No, our overlord would know who the culprits were. He could chase them in their dreams, even kill them as they slept. That’s why Glesh and Duros had to get away—once you leave Wyrd you’ve safe from his power...’ He hung his head and wept silently. ‘But of course, no-one ever leaves Wyrd.’
Altor put a hand on his shoulder. ‘There is always hope.’
‘Not while he rules this land,’ said a woman cradling an infant in her arms.
‘The Warlock King? We have come to make a reckoning with him,’ said Caelestis. ‘Just tell us where we’ll find his Palace.’
The villagers had begun to relax a little, but now they fell silent again and stared in shock at the two young heroes. Shanans tucked the blanket around his daughter, ignoring Caelestis’s question.
A baby started to cry softly. One of the villagers—a tall, lank-limbed girl wearing a hooded jerkin—got up and went over to the cot. Several women were sitting there, faces drawn with worry. They looked up and shook their heads.
The tall girl came over and dropped to sit cross-legged beside Shanans. ‘The child’s no better, I’m afraid,’ she said quietly.
‘An accident this morning,’ Shanans explained to Altor and Caelestis. He spoke wearily, drained of emotion by his many cares. ‘Boiling water was spilled over the baby—‘
‘Death will be a mercy,’ said the lanky girl.
Caelestis jumped to his feet. ‘Escape? Mercy? What is it with you people? Death is death! You have to rail against it and go down fighting.’
The villagers only shook their heads sorrowfully at his outburst. ‘Now you’ve come to Wyrd you’ll soon learn differently,’ said a man.
‘Oh yes? Perhaps it’s you who ought to learn.’
Caelestis strode over to the cot, moving the anxious women aside so as to get a look at the baby. It was a shocking sight. His skin was terribly scalded, so raw and red that he could not stand to have blankets on him. He was too weak to do more than make faint mewling noises. Caelestis felt his normal cynicism desert him. He gave a gasp of horror.
Altor came up beside him. In his hand he had the jar of jeshroot ointment. ‘Brother Emeritus, the healer at my monastery, had a small sample of this,’ he said. ‘He kept it on a pinhead.’
Caelestis looked at the jar. ‘We have a whole thimbleful. It’s worth as much as diamond dust, you said?’
Altor nodded. ‘But what is a life worth?’
‘Much more than that,’ said Caelestis. He dipped his finger into the jar and quickly, before he even had a chance to change his mind, spread it on the baby’s scalded flesh.
The blisters disappeared and the inflamed skin became pink and healthy. The old women beside the cot drew back in awe. The baby himself just stared up at Caelestis for a moment, then began to gurgle happily.
One of the women gave a shout of pure joy and snatched the baby in her arms. Tears streamed down her face.
‘I take it that’s the mother,’ said Altor to Caelestis. He broke into a broad smile.
‘A miracle!’ cried one of the other women. ‘Are you from the home of the gods?’
Caelestis chuckled. ‘Hardly. It’s just ointment from a wizard’s laboratory. Have you never seen magic before? Aren’t there any wizards in Wyrd?’
‘Only the Warlock King,’ said someone.
After a moment of silence everyone began to gather around the baby, chattering merrily in an effort to dispel the sombre thoughts stirred up by the mention of their monarch. Altor and Caelestis went back to the fireside.
The woman who was stirring the broth poured some of it into a mug and handed it to Caelestis with a smile. ‘They say that virtue is its own reward,’
he said to Altor, ‘but a little food and drink doesn’t go amiss either.’
Shanans beckoned them over. ‘I forgot to introduce you. This is Oraba.’
They looked at the lanky girl sitting cross-legged by the hearth. She had pulled back the hood of her jerkin. Seeing their expressions, Shanans laughed. ‘Not what you expected?’
They had thought at first Oraba was an ordinary teenage girl; now they saw she was anything but that. Her head was shaved completely except for a long ponytail of yellow hair. A band of white paint ran across her eyes, and in the middle of her forehead there was a tattoo in the shape of an open circle.
Strangest of all was the look in her eyes. She had a tranquillity and self-assurance far beyond her years.
Caelestis was so disconcerted at her appearance that he forgot his usual gallantry. ‘Who—?’
‘Oraba is a seer,’ explained Shanans.
‘A seer? But... who would think?’ Caelestis stood open-mouthed.
Altor stepped in. ‘What my friend’s saying... That is, Lady Oraba, you’re very young. We thought that seers would be older...’
He fell silent too, aware that he was just making himself look foolish.
Oraba laughed. ‘I’m no great lady,’ she said. ‘I was born in a hut pretty much like this one, actually. No need for grand titles. Just call me Oraba.’
Shanans fetched goblets of mulled wine and the four of them found a quiet corner where they could talk. Oraba listened with interest as they explained the quest for the Sword of Life. After they’d finished, she nodded and said, ‘Destiny has led you by the right path. The Warlock King has something of yours—part of the broken sword. I sense it. But I think destiny had a double purpose in bringing you here.’
‘Speak on,’ said Caelestis expansively, reaching for the wineskin.
‘Time to sleep now,’ said Oraba. ‘We’ll talk again in the morning.’
She got up in one lithe motion and walked off to her pallet beyond the hides at the end of the hall. Caelestis nodded slowly and set down his goblet. He hadn’t realized until now how tired he was. He yawned and stretched like a cat.