The Sky-Blue Wolves

by S. M. Stirling

  Deor went on: “That place . . . it isn’t just a fortress. Lady Juniper described to me what the Prophet’s capital in Corwin was like when she visited there to help cleanse it. How it felt to her, how it looked to an eye that sees beyond the light of common day. I’ve felt places like that myself; most lately and most strongly in Baru Denpasar, where Carcosa was like an oozing sore in the fabric of the world. This was like that—a different flavor of wrongness, but the same feeling that something had burrowed through the walls. Only here it was ripped wide.”

  He hesitated, and bowed to the two monarchs. “And in a very different way, there is something of the same about the blades you bear. They don’t feel hostile, or evil; but they are also . . . interventions. A finger from elsewhere in the Nine Worlds, stretching into Midgard.”

  The Christians in the room looked a little uneasy. Órlaith didn’t, and the Japanese were even less so once Reiko had murmured a translation to her bannerman. Like hers, their faith encompassed many Powers; and some were hostile or dangerous to human-kind. Even Reiko’s personal name was shared with the Ghost Fox, whose sly presence was perilous to mortals.

  “Melkor has many servants, and his power was woven into the music of Arda from the beginning,” Morfind said. “The Dark Lords always return.”

  “Like Han and the Double-Faced Woman,” Susan nodded, her lips tight and the usual smile absent from her eyes.

  “What we did in Baru Denpasar was a journey of the spirit, into the place where the enemy . . . that enemy, the King in Yellow and his servant the Pallid Mask . . . kept Prince John’s spirit captive. I think we can do the same here. The shadowed fortress is very strong both here in the world of common day and in the Otherworlds, but its very nature, its dual nature, opens a way, if we dare to take it. But remember! Our bodies may be safe . . . but in that place, we will face real peril. We can perish there; and then we will never return to our bodies, and they will die in truth.”

  John’s lips quirked. “Hurrah, I get to go to Hell, literally, twice.” He crossed himself again. “Saint Michael, aid me!”

  “And the Lord and Lady be by my side,” Órlaith said, and Heuradys touched her owl amulet. “I don’t think we have any real choice. Not when we think of what the cost of not doing this may be.”

  Dzhambul sighed. “I don’t like depending on foreign magics,” he said, looking at the sketches again. “But I don’t want Mongols dying under those walls, either—and I am afraid my uncle would drive many to do so, for his own credit’s sake.”

  Börte nodded vigorously. “He would, brother. You know it.”

  Órlaith looked around the table. “Is there any disagreement? No? Then . . . let’s say three days. That will give a little more time for Prince Dzhambul’s messenger to get to his army and for word to return to ours. If nothing changes, we’ll try it then. Our cover story will be that we’re praying together for the success of the army . . . and I suggest you all do just that in the interim, as well as resting. Because we’re going to need all the help we can get.”

  They rose; Órlaith caught Heuradys’ eyes, and saw perfect understanding as she flicked them towards the exit. That made collecting Dzhambul’s attention without attracting too much of the others’ relatively easy—and she suspected that like Heuradys, if not in exactly the same way, he was used to the games you had to play around Courts and other crowded venues to have a little privacy.

  Usually a monarch didn’t have any more than a peasant in a tiny cottage in a village where everyone knew everything everyone did—only those in the middle levels of society could go unnoticed, particularly if they lived in a city. If you were the heir to a throne at least three people and a brace of bodyguards knew when you were so much as going off to empty your bladder and probably discussed it among themselves afterwards.

  You didn’t have any privacy at all if you didn’t have close-mouthed, loyal and skillful friends ready to run interference for you. She thought that Reiko’s brow cocked ironically as they bowed each other farewell, and let one of her eyelids droop just a fraction in reply.

  When they were alone and the door-flap was fastened, Órlaith poured Dzhambul another cup of the sake, lifted hers, and said:

  “Sláinte!”

  He hesitated a moment with the cup raised. “Slan-cha?” he asked.

  “A toast. To your health, in one of our languages.”

  “Erüül mendiin tölöö,” he said, and drank.

  Which meant exactly the same thing in Mongol.

  She leaned back in the chair and put her stocking feet on the table; he’d removed his boots, as she had, when he came in. That was only courtesy if you walked around where livestock did, and the Japanese had the same habit. The thought of courtesy prompted an impulse; she stood, went over to the sword-stand by the entranceway, took the Sword of the Lady down and carried it into the store-chamber at the rearmost of the pavilion.

  “There,” she said when she returned and sat again. “Now you can lie to me, Dzhambul.”

  He laughed and filled her cup in turn. “But you can still speak Mongol.”

  “Oh, that’s in my head, not the Sword. If I need a language, I have it as if I’d grown up speaking it, and it never goes away; there must be . . .”

  She stopped to think. “Let’s see . . . English, Old English, Gaeilge, Español, Français, Lakȟótiyapi, Nihongo, Hànyǔ, Mongol, Ivrit, Sindarin, Quenya, Hangul, Wolof, Norrænt mál . . . quite a few, in fact. Thanks be to Brigid and Ogma of the Honey Tongue, I don’t keep the other, the truth-telling, unless I have the Sword by me.”

  “Convenient! But anyway, Börte says I’m so stupidly honest that the Sword is no threat to me.”

  Órlaith laughed. “Brothers and sisters! Perhaps she meant your commander.”

  “Oh, Gansükh,” Dzhambul said. “He’s a good tricky soldier, and brave as a bull yak. And about as thoughtful as a bull yak about anything off the battlefield, too.”

  He emptied the cup. “And I shall continue to tell the truth, Oor-la,” he said. “I shall praise your beauty to the skies; I’ve already done that for your wits and courage, and you know that’s my true thought.”

  She laughed. “Now you are being tactful . . . or dishonest. I know people of my looks don’t suit a Mongol eye, there not being any like that on your ranges. I seem strange and odd to you.”

  He grinned. “Oh, but my mother was Russki. She didn’t look much like most Mongols either.”

  “How did that happen?”

  “It was a marriage of state, between the Kha-Khan’s family and that of the Hetman Nicolai of the Ussuri Host.”

  “Not all that far from here . . . I think I’d heard of them, but hadn’t kept the details.”

  His face softened. “She was homesick for her own people and their songs and their tongue, often enough—and their food! She missed the mountains of her homeland, too; often she spoke of her birthplace, Dalnerechensk, of the green flowery meadows by the river and the sound of the bees and smell of the cut grass in summer, the tall pine forests, and the Sikhote Mountains where the great tigers roam.”

  He lifted his cup. “I drink to her spirit. May the merciful Bodhisattvas bring you to your home again, my mother, Darya Nikolaevna Rodchenko, and to fortunate rebirth by the banks of the river you loved.”

  Órlaith began to lift her cup to join the toast, hesitated for a moment as a bolt like the fabled electricity of the ancients ran through her, and then continued it. There were certain things you couldn’t tell an outsider.

  Even if . . .

  She looked at him again and remembered the pathway up from Lost Lake, and the earnest comely face of the woman her own age, her daughter.

  Yes, it could be. Very likely could be . . . and perhaps that was part of the Queenmaking too, what I learned from her? But the years and the Gods tell many stories. It doesn’t have to be . . . if that makes any sense at a
ll. Even the past isn’t fixed, much less the future, and isn’t that a thought to keep you wakeful of nights!

  “You recognize the name Darya?” he said, not surprising her.

  “Yes, many Russki settled in the lands that became Montival, and their names endure. Faramir’s father was named Ivan, for instance, and the commander of the Lakota with us here bears the same, as well as Brown Bear. Darya would be a bit rare among us, but not enough to be outlandish.”

  She felt a prickling tension, and drank once more to give her hands and eyes something to do.

  “Do I resemble her, then?”

  “Oh . . .”

  He examined her carefully; she thought he flushed, though his olive coloring made that a little hard to see. When he spoke it was with as much care as her glance.

  “Not really. You’re much taller; she was a little shorter than me, about Börte’s height; tall for a Russki woman, very tall for a Mongol. Her skin was pale, but didn’t show the blood beneath it as much as yours. And she was fuller in her figure, and her hair was brown, the color of deep polished beechwood. And her eyes were gray. Börte got that from her. Her face was more like ours, too. Short nose and high cheeks, and flatter. Perhaps because one of her grandmothers was Han, and they resemble us.”

  “Ah, well, I’m a beanpole even by Montivallan standards, and was as a girl too—they said my feet and hands were a sign of it, even newborn,” Órlaith said. “I was teased about it sometimes.”

  “They dared!” Dzhambul said with a laugh.

  He has a good laugh, she thought. And good teeth. And kind eyes, though he’s obviously a man of his hands and a tried warrior. Let’s take the bull by the horns . . . or rather . . .

  “Dzhambul,” she said. “We’re going to be risking our lives, and souls for that matter, in three days’ time, and there’s something I’d like to do first. Or before you return to your country and I to mine, as well. Nor is there much time for gentle hints.”

  “I was hoping you were going to say something like that,” he said, grinning a young man’s grin. “But I didn’t dare speak!”

  She rose and extended a hand; and he did and gripped it.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHOSŎN MINJUJUŬI INMIN KONGHWAGUK

  (KOREA)

  DECEMBER 18TH

  CHANGE YEAR 47/2045 AD

  “I don’t expect this to take very long,” Órlaith said quietly to General Thurston three days later, as the standard afternoon staff meeting broke up.

  She drew on her gloves as they walked out between the guard of Boisean legionnaires who came to attention with a clank of accoutrements and a thump of javelin-butts on the hard dirt.

  “It’s not as if we’re in a hurry,” she added, looking up at the gray louring sky.

  It won’t take long because Deor says time is different where we’re going, she thought but did not say aloud. Though I don’t envy you, General, if this goes wrong! Still, you’re perfectly competent to fight this war as war of human-kind. . . .

  “I and my ’tru brethren have managed to find a genuinely surplus-to-military-needs horse for a Blót ourselves,” Thurston said, referring to the sacrifices his faith made.

  “Please don’t disturb us unless absolutely necessary,” she added, then touched a finger to the pommel of the Sword. “This is a matter of . . . special circumstances.”

  Thurston’s tough brown face was calm, though he touched his valknut ring himself, the three linked triangles that marked him as Odin’s follower, as most of his family and many in his realm were.

  “Yes, Your Majesty,” he said.

  Then with a fleeting grin: “I remember your father saying pretty much the same thing several times.”

  She could smell more snow coming. And . . .

  “I think something’s pushing that snow at us,” she said.

  “It’s the time of year for snow, of course,” he said.

  “Yes, it is, General. And . . . interventions . . . sufficient to upset the cycle of the seasons are, thanks be to all kindly Powers, rare. Thought I’ve seen them; and I assure you that report of what happened on the beach at Topanga wasn’t in the least exaggerated.”

  Thurston looked understandably grim and signed the Hammer. Reiko’s appeal to her Ancestress had been answered . . . in an absolutely unambiguous manner. The fact that the result had been good for Montival didn’t mean it wasn’t enough to make the bravest uneasy, when such things walked in the light of common day.

  “But even short of that level, it’s not necessarily the day for snow,” she added.

  “Ah, I see your point, Your Majesty.” He shook his head. “We thought the weather was suspicious, a couple of times, fighting the Prophet. This is worse.”

  “Doors that were half-open then are more so now,” she replied. “The Change was a beginning, not an end. The Wise One knows what it’ll be like in my children’s time. Or maybe even They don’t.”

  The oak trees sheltered her pavilion from most of the wind. Within bedrolls were stretched out in a circle. She took a deep breath and entered.

  * * *

  • • •

  Deor closed his eyes for a moment after Órlaith entered the tent and nodded briefly to him. In this state he felt the presences with him. It was easier, because he had done it before with some of these. . . .

  No, he thought. It’s not that, or not just that. It’s because of what those two carry, as well.

  The two great Swords prickled at the edge of his consciousness at the best of times. Now he came perilously close to seeing them as they really were, and a human mind was not made for such knowledge. They were like ideas, but ideas so strong that they could overwrite the story that was the world, or possibly just rip apart the page they rested on. As a storyteller as well as a practitioner of seidh he feared that.

  I am in no danger of the Christian sin of envy! he thought. I have felt a burning curiosity to know more of these mighty things, but to carry those is a burden. And a perilous one.

  He focused on the people instead.

  “Understand, all of you,” he said aloud. “We will have to journey to the heart of the enemy’s realm; to that part of it which stands on the border of worlds, and so partakes of both. A human’s spirit is not a single thing. Parts may be absent, though the man walks and speaks and eats. If enough is gone, then the body is an empty shell . . . but always until death bound to the spirit with a cord that some eyes can see and follow. We will leave only that cord and our bodies, because for this we will need all that we have.”

  Deor felt them all. Thora’s spirit, strong as steel, comradeship refined down through a generation of wandering and wild faring until it was a bond close as kinship, closer than most mated pairs. And by their common love of the daughter who was not blood of his blood, but tightly bound to him nonetheless.

  “You join me first, oath-sister,” he said aloud to Thora. “And you, Ruan, my heart, are the link back here. You do more than tend our bodies. You are my guide, for the return.”

  “Yet tending the body, sure and that is needful too. Ever will I guard your back.”

  Pip made an enquiring sound. “You and John next, and Toa.”

  John crossed himself and murmured a prayer to Saint Michael. That was no hindrance; it built the power.

  “Then you three,” Deor went on to Faramir and Morfind and Susan.

  His gaze shifted to the Japanese. “Then you, Majesty, and your bannerman.”

  He could sense the iron bond of loyalty between them. And something else, something washing back through time; a blood link that was not yet there, but would be in Reiko’s children and Egawa’s grandchildren. Something not yet real, but a real possibility becoming more and more so as it approached through time, harder and more definite by a tiny fraction as each second passed.

  He blinked in surprise. That was something
he hadn’t felt before.

  And it was as if he could also see a long line of figures stretching out behind Reiko as well, receding, deeper, deeper, to a shamanness in an antlered headdress and hide cloak who turned and looked at him and somehow saw or sensed this moment herself, over inconceivable gulfs of time. And behind her, a roaring torrent of raw Power—a cave, and a figure within—

  But I haven’t dealt with something like the Grasscutter before, either. How it burns! Focus, Deor Godulfson. Those are not your mysteries, though they touch the thread of your life and land.

  He wrenched his attention back to the here and now, feeling sweat rolling down his forehead and flanks. Deor had seen the riders of the surf-waves in Hawaiʻi and Australia, though he’d never had time to master that arcane skill. It must feel a little like this, not mastering the might of Ocean but dancing with it through each shift of body and balance, flying shoreward only a single misstep between you and disaster.

  I have undertaken something at the very edge of what my might and my main can do, he thought.

  That stiffened him.

  “Heart must grow harder, courage the greater, as our strength lessens!” he murmured, from a poem old among his folk.

  He spoke aloud to Órlaith: “Then you and Lady Heuradys, and Prince Dzhambul and his sister, Your Highness,” he said firmly.

  One eyebrow lifted as his focus sharpened. In her womb, tiny but intense . . .

  Dzhambul’s child.

  He wasn’t surprised that he could sense that; he had before, in like circumstances, with Thora and Pip.

  But again vision flared: a dark-haired woman with the High Queen’s blood-legacy in her face and that of the Mongol prince as well. The Sword of the Lady was in her hand, and she shouted defiance as it flared against something huge hidden in shadow amid tumbled ruins ancient beyond ancient. A ship, a star, a cyclopean palace amid the waves, and a darkling presence awaiting her whose countenance was like tentacles of ancient night weaving a scream of madness as they danced. . . .