by J. V. Jones
Long moments passed and then Lan nodded firmly. “It is so.” Shifting his position he reached for the coupled scabbard at his waist. One fork of the sheath held his sword and the other held a dagger. Lan drew the dagger. Ice mist curled across the rug as he held the dagger’s blade in the flame. Ash smelled the metal heating. Oil on the blade blackened then disappeared as the edge began to glow. The flame burned hot and clean, fueled by a substance purer than oil. When the knife edge became a wavering red line Lan removed it from the heat. Speaking the Sull words “Gods, judge me” he pushed the blade tip across his forearm. Fluid sizzled. Skin opened but did not bleed, instantly cauterized by the heat. Pumping his hand into a fist, Lan waited out the pain.
Ash held herself still, tried not to breathe in the stench of cooked meat. Why had he paid such a high toll? Letting a few drops of blood was one thing, but this. He’d burned through skin and into fat and muscle. What came at such a cost? She could tell from the many old and silvery scars on his arm that he normally opened veins, so what made tonight different?
He was no longer here, either, on the south bank of the Flow. His eyes were vacant and there was a hollowness to his presence that Ash felt, but couldn’t explain. One minute she had been sitting opposite a whole and living man and in the next something integral, like the weight of his awareness, was gone. Excised.
The final thought that struck her was that Lan Fallstar was a Far Rider of a different make from Mal Naysayer or Ark Veinsplitter. At first she had thought it was just his age that set him apart, but now she realized there was more. The fine carpet, the city men clothes. And neither Mal nor Ark had ever paid a toll in burned flesh. What she couldn’t decide was how these differences affected Lan’s status. Did they add up to less or more?
An eerie hiss, like the sound of air being sucked through a crack, puffed through Lan’s lips. It was traveling inward. The Far Rider’s chest bellowed out and his clenched fist sprang open, and he began falling forward. Straightaway he stopped himself, slapping down his palm on the rug. Blinking, he took in his surroundings, his seared arm, Ash.
“Break the bread. We must leave.”
Ash wasn’t sure what she had just witnessed, but her instincts warned her to be cautious. Things were moving fast. An hour earlier this man had been a stranger to her, and now he was not only commanding her but doing so with possessiveness in his voice.
“And if I chose not to?”
“This Sull believes that would be a mistake.”
Ash couldn’t decide whether his words were a threat. Not waiting on a response, Lan unwrapped the bread. Studded with tiny black horsemint seeds and baked hard for travel, the bread was placed on a small wooden board. Lan sprinkled it with water from his hip flask, placed a palm upon it, and then pressed down with his free hand, breaking the bread into crumbs. He waited and after some time had passed he said, “You wish me to take bread before you?”
Ash nodded. She did not know the Sull custom here, but she had remembered one from her foster father: Always let your enemy eat first.
Lan chose a piece of bread the size of an acorn and brought it to his mouth. Ash waited until she saw him swallow before doing the same. The bread tasted bitter, the horsemint seeds like little drops of bitumen.
“Drink.” He passed her his hip flask. Fluid was traveling to the burn site on his arm and his skin was becoming bloated. He watched her as she drank, his expression giving away nothing. When she was done, he stood and collected his things. As he rolled the carpet he said, “If you continue alone on your current route you will be lost. Your gelding is snow-, not iceborn, and he has not been bred to thal axtha, the path lores. That he has brought you this far is a testament to his intelligence and training. Do not make the mistake of believing he can take you further. Two days’ walk from here lies the birch way. Every tree that grows there has been seeded from a single mother tree. What this means to you, Ash March, is that all look the same. Enter the birch way untrained and alone and you will fall into madness. All do. The birches are beautiful, but you will find no end to them. During the first day you will be hopeful. You will say to yourself ‘I must simply stay on my course.’ The second day you will become afraid and the rattle of the birches will begin to haunt you. On the third day your mind will begin to wander and you will catch yourself forgetting your purpose. On the fourth day you will begin to love the birches, and take long rests to admire them. On the fifth day all is lost.
“No Sull has ever counted how many trees grow there. We do not concern ourselves with such things. But know this: the birch way is just the start. We are Sull and we are hunted, and we will not make it easy for our enemies to harm us.”
Lan Fallstar turned away from her and began stowing the carpet and other items in his stallion’s saddlebags. Ash watched him pull on his gloves and mount his horse. When he clicked his tongue and headed east she was not surprised.
He knew she had no choice but to follow him.
SIX
The Lamb Brothers
The dreams were like deep wells; once you stepped into one you kept falling. The sense of dizziness, and suspension of thought as you waited for the landing, was the same.
Most of the time Raif knew he was dreaming. Dreams had a texture to them, a vivid thickness, as if you were viewing them through an inch of clear glass. And they always had an edge, a point beyond which you could not see. Most of the time Raif didn’t even think to look. He fell. Days passed, or perhaps they only seemed to, as he plunged deeper and deeper into a floor-less world.
All the people he loved were there. Da and Drey, Effie, Ash, Uncle Angus. The world made no distinction between those who were alive and those who were dead. Bear was there, watching with solemn interest as she chewed a mouthful of grass. Da told him never to leave his boots wet overnight. Shadows ebbing and swelling formed a cycle, not unlike night and day. When the shadows lifted, people came to visit him. Some watched, others spoke. Angus Lok usually had something to say. “A pretty shot,” he offered more than once. “What’s next?” None of it made much sense, but it was not unpleasant, just vaguely frustrating. Raif seldom had the chance to answer back.
When the shadows gathered and deepened, the nature of his dreams changed. Drey left, that was how the nightmares began. His brother would be there, at his side, and they’d be facing the danger together and it felt scary yet somehow good. They were brothers, and that was how it was between them. Then Drey would leave. One moment he would be there, his shoulder brushing against Raif’s, and the next he would be gone. Disappeared. Raif’s gut would clench. His hand would snap out in the darkness, and his fingers close around air.
He fell alone after that. Head spinning, fingers splayed like pinion feathers, he plunged deeper into the darkness. There was no going back, that was the true horror that lay waiting in the shadows.
Drey had gone, and there was no going back.
Time passed. Sometimes Raif would experience a deep bone-numbing cold and grow frightened as he lost sensation in his hands and feet. If the cold continued he would become certain that his hands and feet had broken off and his limbs now ended in stumps. Panic came then. Without hands, how could he break his fall?
An eyeblink could change everything. Cold could be replaced by heat, silence by animal howls. Things huffed and grunted on the far edge of his perception. Feeding. Shadows ebbed and swelled, creating an undertow that sucked him down.
Raif saw things he did not understand: a face staring up at him through a foot of pressure-formed ice; a wound smoking like a piece of kindling about to burst into flame; a thick and unlovely sword without fullers or decorations sinking to the bottom of a lake. Clan and kin loomed from the darkness, then fled.
Effie called out his name, and Raif’s heart jumped in his chest. Where was she? He could not see her. Effie, he screamed at the darkness, EFFIE!
Bitty Shank came then, smiling with a closed mouth. He was dressed in armored plate bossed with iron studs and mounted with hammer chains.
The chains rattled as he approached. He was shambling slightly, as if he’d had too much to drink or wasn’t well. Raif smiled back at him. Bitty spread his lips in a death grin, revealing teeth pointed like fangs. Suddenly he lunged forward, and as his hand shot from his chest Raif saw a fist-size hole in Bitty’s armor. The skin and rib cage were gone, and something black and gristled and not quite heart-shaped beat in Bitty’s chest. Raif turned and tried to flee, but Bitty’s hard, pincerlike fingers grabbed hold of his shoulders and bit into his flesh. Corpse breath pumped along Raif’s cheek. Bitty hissed, “Where you running to, Raif? I’ve got a new heart for you to kill.”
Stop! Raif cried, trying to wrench himself free. Bitty’s armored fingers sank deeper and deeper, ten knives slicing his muscle like cheese.
From somewhere far in the shadows Angus asked calmly, “What’s next?”
Bitty jumped on Raif’s back. Stumbling forward, Raif struggled to keep his footing and failed. Air punched from his lungs as he landed hard on his stomach. Bitty clung to him like a spider, strong and inhumanly fast. Panicking, Raif bucked against Bitty’s hold. Every time he took a breath Bitty squeezed him harder. Bitty’s knife-fingers slid through the spaces between Raif’s ribs, and Bitty was laughing, laughing, and Raif could feel the heart-shaped thing in Bitty’s chest thumping against his back.
Leave us. The voice that spoke was chilling, an icy wind blowing through an open door.
Bitty froze, yet even as he stilled he became something other. Something dark and malleable, a heavy shadow spilling over Raif’s shoulders and rolling across his face. Gasping for breath, Raif sucked in the shadows and breathed in the substance of Death.
Air crackled as she approached. Light failed her, sliding off her presence like dark wine poured over glass. The sweetly corrupt scent of spoiled pears preceded her as she leaned forward and laid a kiss on Raif’s brow.
I believe I will call you son.
Noooooo, he screamed at her. NOOOOOOOO!
“Sshh.”
Raif moved his head, tracking the new voice. As he shifted his attention one way, Death withdrew. Chuckling softly, she pulled her nightmare robes behind her, beckoned the darkness, and left. She always had the last laugh.
Droplets of lukewarm water pattered across Raif’s face. As he scrunched his eyes tightly closed, he became aware that he was no longer falling. Somehow he had landed on solid ground.
Light filtering through his eyelids flickered as something moved between Raif and the source. I am awake, he said to himself, testing, his mind carefully calibrating each word. When water began to patter against his face a second time he cracked open his lips and let it fall into his mouth. His tongue soaked up the droplets like a sponge, and there was some pain as parched flesh expanded. As if that first pang had opened a door marked “Pain” Raif’s mind began receiving signals from his body. His throat felt raw and scratchy, and his back and rib cage were stiff. A deep, unsettled ache in his left shoulder seemed the worst thing. It moved through his muscle like liquid.
Noises began to register. A strange chittering was followed by a rattling sound, like stones being shaken in a jar. Then footsteps, or rather footfalls for the sound was soft, subtle, owing more to the yielding of floor than the striking of feet.
Raif wondered whether he should open his eyes. Caution made him hesitate. The same instinct that told him his memory was working even though he had not probed it, told him his position here—wherever “here” might be—was vulnerable. So he listened and waited.
Time passed. The quality of light changed, the colors filtering through his eyelids shifting from blue to red. Air cooled. A sharp, burnt odor reached Raif’s nose, followed by the scent of unfamiliar cookery. Bittersweet spices, licorice, clove and sumac floated upward with the scent of pungent smoke. Footfalls sounded again. A light was struck, then silence.
Raif waited, limbs still, body cooling. After a while it seemed to him that the silence had an expectant quality to it and he began to imagine he was being watched. As the hour wore on he grew more and more certain that someone was waiting for him to make a move. Raif wondered how long the watcher could keep silent, how long he or she could play the game.
More time passed, and aches and needs began to assert themselves. A muscle in Raif’s damaged shoulder had tightened and needed to be flexed. Thirst gnawed at his throat, and he became aware of the fullness in his bladder. Quite suddenly he had to move.
He opened his eyes, and blinked against the light. It took him a moment to understand what he saw. He was lying in a small, high-roofed tent braced with slender yellow bones that were double-curved like sycamore wings. The tent canvas was made from clarified hides; skins of stillborn animals that had been melted to the point of translucence. Clan did not have the knowledge to prepare them, and Raif imagined he was looking at great wealth. Rays from the setting sun shone through the hides, illuminating whorl patterns where fur had once grown. Raif could not guess what animal they came from.
Lines of silky blue smoke rose from three seaglass lanterns raised on longbone poles. To his left Raif saw a loose pile of saddle blankets dyed in colors of yellow: saffron, ocher, wheat. The tent floor consisted of thickly piled pelts and fleeces. Raif recognized the curly-haired fleece of a bighorn sheep and the dappled white pelt of a snag cat, but he did not recognize the others. One was orange with black circles, another was horse-shaped and striped black-and-white, and another still was stiff and ridged and green as pondweed. He was lying on a mattress of mounded earth overlaid with sheepskin, and he was covered by a single blanket woven from a wool softer and lighter than musk ox.
When he was ready, Raif turned his attention to the figure standing by the roped-down tent flap. The man was tall and lean. Sable-colored robes so dark and richly dyed they absorbed light were wrapped around his head and body in loosely twisted folds. The headpiece consisted of tiers of fabric hung from a curved hood. A single bow-shaped slit revealed his eyes.
The man bowed his head slowly but did not speak. He had been waiting, Raif decided, allowing his visitor time to grow accustomed to his surroundings. Squatting, the man poured green liquid from a copper pot into a glass cup with a copper base. The liquid steamed as he crossed the small, circular space of the tent and laid the cup on the hides by Raif’s bed. The man’s eyes were an inky brown and his eye whites had a faint bluish tinge to them, like a bird’s. His skin was ash brown and there were three small black dots spaced evenly across the bridge of his nose that might have been tattoos.
Nodding once toward the cup and then to a wooden bowl close to Raif’s feet the man withdrew. Night air purled through the tent slit as he raised the guide rope and disappeared. Raif watched the tent flap spool back down. Thick raw air circled the tent, dragging down smoke from the seaglass lamps as it sank.
Raif sat up. Pain shot along his left side, spiking in his shoulder. Blood rushed to his head, making his skin flush, and then rushed back down, leaving him faint. Planting his feet on the strange green hide, he rested for a moment before standing. A question that had been waiting just beyond the radius of his thoughts came sharply into view. How long have I been here? He had no answer, he realized, no experience to relate his body’s condition to time.
Standing brought on a wave of dizziness, and he clung to one of the yellow bones as he waited it out. The bone echoed when he tapped it with his knuckle; hollow as a birdbone. When the tent stopped spinning, Raif reached for the green drink. It smelled of licorice and something his memory couldn’t find a name for. He did not taste it, simply drank in deep gulps, swallowing rhythmically. Done, he glanced down at the wooden pot. Shaking his head, he decided to go outside rather than piss in a bowl.
He was still in the Great Want. The knowledge came to him the instant he stepped upon the gray, powdery earth. Overhead, the great wheel of stars blazed and turned. Knowing better than to gauge the passage of time in the Want by lunar phases, Raif ignored the rising moon. A light wind was gusting, shifting the dust into dunes
and carrying the smelted-metal scent of new-formed glaciers. Raif was standing within a circle of five tents, all similar in shape and size to the one he had slept in. Outside the circle a corral consisting of tanned leathers hung from ivory tusks sheltered woolly mules and a single saffron-fleeced milk ewe. Inside the circle, at its center, four men squatted around a cook fire, spearing food from a black pot with sharpened sticks. No one spoke. All four glanced Raif’s way before returning to the business of eating. They were dressed in similar robes of varying shades and it was impossible for Raif to tell which one of them had been in his tent. One of the four had plunged a lean copper spear into the soft earth, and it stood, point-up, within reach of his left hand.
Raif walked to the far side of the tent and urinated. From what he could make out the Want looked flat here, with only dunes and boulders casting shadows against the moon. On impulse he bent down and scooped up a fistful of earth. The soil was pulverized pumice, and it poured through his fingers like cool, dry sand. Watching it he was struck with the idea that the Want had allowed him closer. Closer to what he could barely put into words. Something had happened long ago in this place. Sadaluk, the Listener of the Ice Trappers, had told how the Want had once been like any other land. It had a North and South and stars that could be relied on. Water flowed, trees grew, animals grazed and others hunted. People had lived here; if not Men, then perhaps another, older race. Raif had stood in one of their cities: Kahl Barranon, the Fortress of Grey Ice.
He shivered. Placing a hand on his left shoulder, he worked away at the pain.
A doom had been laid upon this place. Life had been destroyed. Time had been broken and now leaked. Space and distance had been stretched and folded, worn so thin in parts that you could see things on the horizon—mountains, hills, cities—that were thousands of leagues away, and so thickly gathered in others that you could spend all day walking and then turn to see your starting point less than a hundred feet behind you. Raif could not begin to imagine the magnitude of catastrophe that could break the bones of a continent, crush it so completely that its relation to nature and the heavens changed. He could not imagine it, but standing here, bare feet sinking into soft pumice as he watched the wind carve the dunes, he had the sense that its aftermath could be seen. Forces of heat and pressure had left scars. Angus had once told him that pumice was formed when mountains exploded and molten rock gushed up from the center of the earth. Was that what had happened here? Or something worse?