The Reavers of Skaith-Volume III of The Book of Skaith

by Leigh Brackett

  18

  At first they had threatening sails behind them out of Cereleng, sweeping the sea in search of the lost prince. Whenever the sails came too close, the Fallarin sent adverse winds, sudden gusts to split canvas and snap spars. After a time, they saw no more sails except those of fishermen; and sometimes, far out on the horizon, the topsails of a deep-sea trader that seemed to stand still, like a tiny patch of cloud caught between sea and sky.

  They were seldom out of sight of land. Avoiding cities, or towns of any size, they ran in to fishing villages for fresh water and supplies. They had nothing with which to barter and so were reduced to stealing, with the aid of the hounds, but they took no more than was necessary to keep them alive. And the country was fat, so that a modest theft of fish and fruit wrought no hardship even on the poor.

  But as they went farther down the curve of Mother Skaith's last green girdle, the Fertile Belt, this richness began to wither. The air, which had been soft and indolent, turned sharper. The milky sea grew dark. Along the shore, plantations of trees that ought to have been in blossom, or bearing fruit, were blackened by unprecedented frost. There began to be abandoned farmsteads beside blasted orchards and cold fields where seed had died in the ground. Forest as well as orchard had suffered heavily. They passed miles of skeletal trees, and where these gave way to scrub hills and open savannah, they began to come upon plundered villages, often with squattering tracks on the foreshore where the Children of the Sea had been. Farther inland they could see smoke and knew that other villages were burning.

  They were careful where they landed now. Old Sun's face was hidden more and more behind dark clouds, and the Northhounds roused and snuffed the wind that blew against them out of the White South. Snow, N'Chaka! Snow!

  They began to encounter the elements of a vast army, advancing northward.

  Some came by land, entire villages marching with their women and children, or bands of stragglers wandering wild along the shore. Others came by sea, in single sails or in squadrons that dotted the gray water with bright-painted hulls. All shared one thing in common. Hunger.

  "My lady Cold has been beforehand here," said Gerrith. "See how her daughter walks with these folk, like a faithful sister. The winter has been long, and it shows no sign of leaving. All their stock is used up and they are driven north toward the green lands." She smiled, without joy. "I told you the Goddess would move this wintertime. I had forgotten that the seasons are upside down in this underside of Skaith, and she has been at work through all these long months while we were lulled by summer."

  "The whole south seems to be on the move," said Stark. "The people of Iubar may be among them."

  Gerrith shook her head. "No. This is only the first wave of the Second Wandering. Iubar has not yet stirred."

  "Well," said Stark, "if they migrate, it will be by sea and not by land. We can keep watch for them."

  "It will not be necessary," Gerrith said. And it was not.

  Meanwhile, by radio, Ashton kept track as well as he could of Penkawr-Che and his ships. He heard much talk back and forth between Arkeshti and the other two. The second ship, which had found leaner pickings on its way back from Iubar, joined Arkeshti on the heath at about the same time that Stark's party attacked the third ship in Andapell. Stark and Ashton listened to some furious conversations. Ashton's call for help, and his message about Penkawr-Che and his captains, had caused panic in some quarters.

  Penkawr-Che held it down. There was no certainty, he said, that the transmission had been picked up, or that it would be forwarded if it had been. And one man's statement was no proof of anything, even if that man were Simon Ashton. Assuming the worst, it would still take time for any GU ship to reach Skaith.

  It was decided to finish up and get out well before the earliest possible deadline, calculated on the dispatch of a ship from the nearest GU base. But the big problem facing Penkawr-Che was the Andapell ship, which Stark had severely disabled. The owner-skipper insisted on repairs and demanded help.

  Prudence dictated abandonment, since repairs would cause more delay than they could reasonably afford. Greed considered the loss of a fat cargo, which could not be easily transshipped because of the logistics involved, and also because there would not be room for it in the two remaining ships unless the attempt to loot the House of the Mother should be dropped. Nobody wanted to drop that, especially not the skipper of the second ship, who felt disadvantaged.

  Greed won. From the three ships, technicians and spare parts were mustered to patch up the control system. The third ship finally lifted off and went into a stationary orbit above the heath. Arkeshti and the second ship joined it there. Then they shifted orbit together and dropped down over the curve of the world, and Ashton lost them.

  The three ships landed on the Plain of Worldheart, under the wall of the Witchfires, where the aurora danced on glittering peaks.

  The triple shock of that landing was felt in the deep levels where the Children of Skaith-Our-Mother tended their gardens and fretted at the change of temperature that had lately become apparent. Only a matter of two or three degrees; but in a closed environment, where there had been not the slightest change for centuries, the rich crops seemed suddenly frail and vulnerable.

  Word of the shock was carried upward through the maze of carven halls, to the ears of Kell à Marg, Skaith-Daughter. And presently she looked down once again from her high window above the plain.

  She saw the hoppers rise and bumble along the mountain wall, a droning swarm of inquisitive bees searching for the doorway to the honeypot.

  Kell à Marg set watchers where there had been no need of watchers since the last of the Wandering. She spoke to her captains. Then she went with her chief Diviner through long, dim corridors past monastic quarters where young Diviners were trained—so few of them now, she thought, so very few, with how many deserted chambers on all sides—to the place where the Eye of the Mother was kept, in the great Hall of the Diviners.

  The hall was circular, with a high vault from which a lamp of pierced silver depended. The lamp was unlit. Small lamps flickered round the circumference of the walls, which had once been hung with an ancient and holy tapestry known as the Veil, from which the face of the Mother, many times repeated, had looked benignly upon her children. Nothing was left of the Veil now but blackened tatters, and the walls themselves were scorched. This sacrilege had been done by a creature from the Outside, by the sun-haired woman who came with Stark, and both of them prisoners of the Wandsman Gelmar. As always, a small spasm of rage caught at Skaith-Daughter's heart when she looked upon the destruction.

  Acolytes brought down the silver lamp on its chain and lighted it. The Diviners gathered round that which was beneath it, a thing waist high and some three feet across, covered with a finely worked cloth.

  The cloth was withdrawn, and the Eye of the Mother caught the gleaming of the pierced lamp that swung above. The huge crystal, pellucid as a raindrop, seemed rather to absorb the light than to reflect it, so that the golden rays went glimmering down, and back and forth—now deep, now shallow, ever shifting—and the Diviners bent their heads, gazing with their souls into the depths of the crystal.

  Kell à Marg, suppliant, stood waiting.

  The Eye of the Mother darkened. The clear shining became curdled and ugly as if it were suffused with blood.

  The chief Diviner straightened, sighing. "The end is always the same. And this time is now upon us."

  "What comes after it?"

  The Diviner bent his head again obediently, though he knew the answer well enough.

  Slowly the crystal cleared to the placid blankness of a summer pond.

  "Peace," said the Diviner, "though the Mother does not tell us of what sort."

  The Eye was covered again, the silver lamp extinguished. Kell à Marg stood in the dim hall, pale-furred, large-eyed, a royal ermine graceful in bands of gold and jewels that made a rich, soft shining even in that half-light. She stood for a long time, and the Divin
ers stood also.

  "If we fled from this place," she said at length, and she was speaking not to the Diviners nor even to herself, but to Someone beyond them all, "what would there be for us in the bitter world? We have given ourselves to the Mother. We cannot go back. Nor can we ever build again as we built here under the Witch-fires. We ourselves are dying. Better to die where we are loved, in the arms of the Mother, than on the cold spears of the wind Outside."

  The Diviners sighed, with infinite relief.

  "Nevertheless," said Kell à Marg, "if there are those who wish to go, I shall not stop them."

  She went from the Hall of the Diviners back to her own place on the knees of the Mother, and she called together her counselors and the Clan-Mothers and the heads of all the guilds—as well as the foremost of the scholars, those who were not too far lost in the vast labyrinthine House that contained the history of a planet, where generations of scholars had studied and catalogued and recreated, deciphering ancient literatures, surmising ancient musics, enjoying learning for its pure and only sake, their minds free, their bodies safe from want.

  Surely, thought Kell à Marg, there is no place under the sky for such as these.

  She spoke to her people, naming the choices.

  "I, myself, will stay," she said, "with those who wish to join me in defending the Mother's House from these off-worlders. Those who wish to face the future elsewhere are free to go by the western gate and the pass that leads to Thyra."

  No one chose to leave.

  Kell à Marg rose. "Good. We shall die well—now, if we must, by the hand of the invader, or later, by the hand of time. In either case, we remain true to ourselves and to the choice we made long ago. It would not become us to outlive the Mother."

  She turned to her chamberlain. "There is armor somewhere, I believe. Find it."

  The Children of Skaith-Our-Mother made ready.

  The attack did not come.

  The hoppers bumbled up and down along the mountain wall, searching. The high windows of the Mother's House were not easily distinguished among the million rough, ice-coated crevices of the rock. The hoppers were plagued by winds, and by blizzards that hid the Witchfires in blinding snow. The Children began to hope that the off-worlders would go away.

  They stayed.

  Twice, hoppers swept in over the pass and battered the blank stone under the Leaning Man, and the Children slid the great blocks of their inner defenses into place. The second time, explosive charges burst in the outer gate. The Leaning Man fell down and sealed the opening with more tons of shattered rock than the off-worlders cared to move. They returned to the plain and continued their stubborn search. Though Kell à Marg could not know it, their time was growing very short.

  In the end, it was the carelessness, or the over-eagerness, of a watcher that betrayed the Children: he allowed himself to be seen on one of the balconies, and the invasion began.

  The winds were calm that day, with Old Sun blinking a dim eye above the peaks. The craft were able to maneuver close to the cliffs. Lightning bolts struck through the opening, licking along the corridor within. The watcher had given warning, and the Children were not there, so that the laser beams struck only unoffending rock.

  After the laser beams came men. They entered the House of the Mother.

  The invaders entered into darkness, for the Children had taken away the lamps; but they brought lights of their own, harsh white beams that slashed the blackness without really illuminating it. They took up positions in the corridor, with automatic weapons at the ready, covering the arrival of more men, winched down on swaying cables like the first.

  The corridors and lightless chambers all around remained silent. The air smelled of dust and sweet oil and something else the off-worlders could not quite define—time, perhaps, or the subtle breath of decay exhaled from the millions of stored, separate things gathered in the uncounted rooms cut from the heart of the mountain.

  They heard sounds. Whisperings. Breathings. Soft, hurried footfalls. But the stone vaults distorted sound so that they could not be sure whether what they heard was the echoes of their own movements, or something more sinister.

  They found the weight of their heavy weapons comforting, knowing that there was nothing in these catacombs that could stand against them.

  The Children knew that, too.

  "Wait," said Kell à Marg in her beautiful, useless armor. "If they believe that we will not attack them, they may become careless."

  "But they have already begun to plunder our treasures," said one of the younger captains. "Is it not our place to die well, defending them?"

  "There is always time for that," said Kell à Marg, "and opportunity will not be lacking. Meantime, prepare more poisoned shafts for the crossbows."

  The Children had not been forced to fight since the turbulent days of the Wandering, and that was long ago. They were not skilled with weapons, and their swords were wrought more for beauty than for use. The small, light crossbows they carried were not built to throw their bolts for long distances, because in these catacombs all distances were short; and they had little power of penetration. But once dipped in the paste made from a certain fungus grown in the lower levels, the slender bolts did not need to penetrate. A scratch was sufficient.

  The Children, with their flitting lamps, kept out of sight of the intruders, moving in side corridors and through the maze of adjacent rooms. When the captains came, they knew it. When the men, growing bolder as nothing appeared to threaten them, spread out through the rock-cut chambers, the Children knew that, too, spying secretly from carved doorways.

  The invaders were choosy. They wanted small things, easily portable: statuary, jewelry, fine weapons, paintings, books, any objects sufficiently alien and strange to attract connoisseurs of the outré. They became engrossed in their search, pawing among large and heavy things for the little pearls. Load after load went to the hoppers. Men began to pick up what they could to hide on their persons. The weather held calm, and each room led to another, and still another.

  Suddenly, in one of the high windows above the plain, a watcher saw black clouds blot out the Bleak Mountains with trailing skirts of snow. He sent word to Kell à Marg.

  The invaders got the same news, and began to move toward the hoppers, which would soon be forced to land and wait out the blizzard. Strung out in twos and threes among the treasure rooms, the men grabbed what they could carry.

  The Children struck.

  They struck from dark chambers as the bright lights left. They struck from shadowy doorways. The invaders were professionals; they retreated in good order. But the Children were ahead of them and all around them. The aliens caught glimpses of white-furred bodies in glittering mail. They saw the mad eyes of night-dwelling creatures glowing at them, swiftly vanishing in the all-encompassing labyrinth. They heard the click and whir of the crossbows, such feeble little things against the bursts of their automatics that filled the stony spaces with chattering thunder. The automatics killed; they killed quite a number of the Children. But there were always more, and their little sharp bolts went whispering into flesh and it mattered not how quickly they were withdrawn.

  The star-captains and the last of their remaining crews were hauled up into the hoppers.

  After the sound of the rotors had died away, Kell à Marg and her captains, such as were left of them, came out into the main corridor. She looked at the scattered loot, and the scattered bodies.

  "Let the bodies of the off-worlders be cast from the balcony, and let those things which are ours be replaced. Then give orders to the Guild of Masons. Every window that looks upon the world is to be blocked up forever. The gates are already sealed. We will use whatever time is left us to further our knowledge and leave what records we may of the life-tale of Mother Skaith, here in her eternal House."

  It mattered not to Kell à Marg, nor to any of the Children, that those reports would never be read.

  Those whose duty it was lifted the fallen Children
and bore them down through the labyrinth to the Hall of Joyful Rest, where they were united with the Mother.

  Skaith-Daughter returned to her place upon the knees of the Mother. She leaned her head back, into the polished hollow between the Mother's breasts. She thought of the off-worlders and the ships and the rending of the barriers that had made this unique and holy planet only one of millions of planets, common as grains of dust across the galaxy. She was sorry that she had lived to see this. She was sorry that, in search of knowledge, she had brought the strangers into the House. She was sorry that she had not killed the man Stark. She hoped that he was dead, or soon would be.

  Her tiring-women removed her armor and smoothed her fur with golden combs. She could not hear the picks and hammers of the masons at work, but she knew that in a short time the last of the hateful Outside would be walled away forever. She felt all around her the great, warm, protecting House, the unchanging womb. She set her hands on the hands of Skaith-Mother, and smiled.

  In the bitter winds below the pass, where the huge ruin-mound of Thyra bulked, the hearths were cold and no smoke rose from the forges. The Ironmaster and his folk, clanking in their iron gear, burdened with beasts and impedimenta, marched southward under the sign of Strayer's Hammer.

  Some days ahead of them, the People of the Towers marched behind the Corn-King and his priests, down across the Darklands.

  Southward of both nations, in the Barrens, the Sea of Skorva froze six weeks before its normal time, and the people of Izvand looked with dismay at the drying and salting sheds, which ought to have been filled with the autumn's heavy catch, and which were empty. Izvand supplied mercenaries for the Wandsmen; and now the wolf-eyed fighting men began, in their turn, to wonder about the winter that lay ahead, thinking of fatter fields they knew below the Border, in the Fertile Belt.

  In the high passes of the mountains, early snows caught traders and travelers by surprise. Herdsmen moved their flocks from summer pastures struck by freezing rains. In the rich valleys of the city-states, harvests withered before blackening frost, and the tithe-gatherers of the Wandsmen found scant tribute.