The Lens of the World Trilogy

by MacAvoy, R. A. ;

  “Now let me tie that up quickly or you’ll die,” I said as the fellow sprang to his feet, screaming much shriller than was his horse. He did not even staunch the wound with his left hand, but held the horrible thing out before him and ran into the fields of snow.

  I followed as best I could, but my legs were frozen and overused. By the time I caught up with his bright trail, he was face downward in the snow and there was no more blood pumping.

  I floundered back to my mare and got on her. I had to check that my feet were in the stirrups, for I could not feel them at all. I took the road that ran between Ekesh and Norwess as fast as I could make her go, before other border guards came. They would be no more willing to listen to explanations than this one had been.

  Now, after fifty-five years, I had finally announced myself to be royalty, and had immediately to kill a man to enforce my claim. As Powl said it would be. What would Powl think of me?

  At least he could not say I had ceased to change.

  Fir branches brushed my head and made me aware of my kerchief. Having just created of myself a Rezhmian aminsanaur, I decided to put him away again. The cold bit at my ears, but bareheaded I was no longer so recognizable as a foreigner. Of course, being a foreigner in a country at civil war might be an asset. I folded the kerchief and put it carefully away.

  In my life I have been in nine countries, not counting the various principalities in the Felonk Islands, but I have never seen a place more beautiful than Ekesh Territory. The hills are gentle, the farms rich, and the waters many and clean. Now these waters were thoroughly frozen, but I did not want to test any ice with the weight of a laden horse, so I kept to the road and let the inviting white countryside be.

  We began to pass these rich farms, and with the snow cover so even, I could not tell whether strife had hurt them or not. I looked for marks of passage, and first I saw the occasional hoofprint, traveling with the road or perpendicular to it, and then I saw the boot prints of people, and then I began to see people themselves. So gently did I enter my own country and culture I marveled at the number of years I had been away from it; nor did my first sight of it convince me that there was trouble here.

  At a crossroads I saw a row of shops, and behind one frostdotted window was a saddle. The price was not exorbitant. In the doorway a man was standing, looking out the glass top of the door. I suppose he was desperate for entertainment, for he stepped out and called, “You oughta feed that horse!” Then he laughed, in a manner to cut the offense of the remark. I did not reply.

  None of the buildings were inns or liveries, so I couldn’t take the man up on his suggestion, and it was too early to be giving up the day’s travel. But I took the right-hand turn of the crossroads and within a few miles had begun to notice the climb. I was in Norwess.

  Five miles later we passed a burned building, too badly ruined for me to tell what its function had been. Sabia gathered enough energy to shy at the smell. I didn’t know what to make of the damage. Had there been aggression, either of troops or rebels? Had people been burned to death in this black shell? Enough houses went up in smoke in a peaceful winter because of fireplace sparks; I didn’t need to invoke the god of war here.

  The ruins were capped in snow, and the surrounding snow was bumpy with half-obscured footprints. No great evidence of horse. I rode on.

  I came to Longfield just as the mare and I were used up. I would have preferred to stay the night in a smaller town, but at least here there was choice of accommodation, and warm stabling. I gave my name as Timet Glass.

  Another guest had reserved the bath when I arrived, but the manageress said if I wasn’t too proud to use soapy water I could warm up in the tub for free. I accepted her offer, and treated the hot water with great respect. I had been a stranger to both cleanliness and heat for too long. My cracked hands seemed to be locked onto invisible reins; I swished them through the water until they relaxed. My hair I scrubbed under the pump. My one change of clothing was Rezhmian silks, so I manufactured a history for Timet Glass while I soaked.

  There were only five of us in the public room that evening, but there was talk enough for a multitude. I needed to give only three pieces of information about Master Glass: that he sold optical supplies in both Velonya and Rezhmia, that he was born in the west of the country, and that he had been away from home for a long time this trip.

  It became the duty of the other men and the barmaid also to bring an old exile up-to-date. The difficulty was that no two of the guests had the same idea as to what had been happening this winter in Velonya.

  One man—a poulterer, I think he was—told me that the old king had been killed by mushrooms, which will happen eventually to anyone fool enough to mess with them, that malcontents with foreign influences had chosen the event to try to undermine the succession.

  I saw the barmaid lift her head at this, but she said nothing. She really had no opportunity to speak, for another fellow, whose name and occupation I do not remember, said, “Mushrooms? Mushrooms? I never heard her called that before, but I guess the name fits: pale and deadly as she is.”

  The poulterer slammed his tankard on the table and sloshed good ale over us all. “You’d better tell me who it is you’re talking about, you braying ass, and it had better not be who I think it is!”

  The third man, who was slight and dark and had expressed an interest in playing cards, caught my eye and said, “Well, the truth is, Master Glass, we’ve been having a dusty winter in Norwess, and no doubt. There’s not much you can say that won’t start a fight these days.”

  “My fault entirely,” I said, and with one foot behind his knee, I sat the poulterer down in his chair again. “I ask awkward questions and of course I get awkward answers. Just tell me what roads a peaceful man should avoid to keep out of trouble.”

  “Avoid them all,” grumbled the poulterer. “The Wolf is all over the heights. They’ll strip you naked and leave you in the snow.”

  The slight man spoke up. “The king’s infantry held most of the lowlands until the last freeze. They did a bit of burning as they retreated. Probably they’ll try again as the weather improves.”

  “It’s not going to improve,” I said with some certainty, though I don’t know where my information came from. Perhaps it was the instinct honed in a man who has spent too many winters without fixed abode. The poulterer drank that part of his ale he had not splashed out, rose heavily, and left us in anger.

  We played does-o for hours. The slight, dark man was a cheater, not a very good one. I had been trained by the best, but I let him win a little Rezhmian gold from me, in payment for his information.

  That night I heard howling, but when I sat up in my bed to listen, I had the peculiar sensation that what I had heard was part of a dream just broken, so I listened again, heard nothing, and fell back asleep.

  Though I was not raised in Norwess, I have spent enough time there to know the roads, and most especially, the slow, bad roads. I picked the slowest, worst, and most meandering and used it to head north, in heavy-falling snow.

  In this portion of my journey, a horse of less speed and more knee action would have served me better, for Sabia was continually misestimating how high she had to raise her hoof on the long climb, and we stumbled. But to do her justice, she hadn’t stumbled on the passage of the Crescent Peaks, so perhaps her clumsiness meant that this intense work had finally gotten to her. It had certainly tempered her energy, though she was still more horse than I was used to riding.

  I passed through that zone of maples only ten miles or so from the former oratory where I had lived for almost ten years with Arlin and then with our daughter as well. It is a pretty place and dear to me, but I did not go out of my way to visit. The maple zone is rich-soiled, and the farms are clean and compact, but the first couple of buildings I rode past had been burned. There were frozen bodies scattered under the snow: not human, but of Sabia’s kind, and also a few goats. The mare snorted and groaned as she recognized the horses. I was a
little less nervous.

  Norwessen farmers seemed too rich to be revolutionary, and too hidebound. I found it difficult to believe in a rebel horde that could attract them, so I was forced to believe in a rebel horde that burned them. The prints, though, declared that troops had been by here. Too late, perhaps?

  We were passing the second ruin when I heard howling again. I do not say wolf-howling. The man who claims to distinguish the howling of a wolf from that of a domestic dog is a rare woodsman or a liar. It made my poor mare trot faster, whichever it was, and it chilled me so that I drew up the hood of my jacket.

  The first howl was answered from my right-hand side, and I lifted my arm behind to check that the dowhee would slip easily from its pack. Sabia seemed to understand this gesture, for she gave her biggest groan yet.

  I looked around us and saw nothing but shining white earth and dull gray sky, with silver trunks of trees stitched between. My eyes dazzled from the brilliance as I tried to focus; I wished I had equipped myself with smoked glasses. The mare did not appreciate being stopped. She swiveled back again and trotted on with all the speed the ground would allow.

  It seemed I had chosen wrongly in taking the unobtrusive road, for we were heading nowhere but into darker woods, as pine began to replace the maple. I wondered if the mare’s huge heart and lungs were feeling the altitude yet.

  The howling repeated itself, ringing in the emptiness, and after a half-hour or so was replaced by the yips of a hunting pack. Sabia gave a stiff little buck and I myself cursed. “You have food in plenty, you stinking butchers,” I addressed the beasts. “Whole frozen horses. Cows, probably. Are you so spoiled you can’t waste your effort on frozen meat?”

  I did not hear the right-hand voice again, but our behind-follower was faithful. We did not stop for luncheon, nor to drink, but were driven up into the evergreens, where I know Sabia was feeling the thin air. The sun came out. Shadows of trees confused the path. There was a farm off the road, and it was intact by the look of it, but no tracks went in or out, not through the three layers of snow. I kept to the road.

  Now the rocky bones poked out of the earth, and the going was even worse. I could not see ahead or behind. The mare dropped her head to gulp snow, but she needed more water than that. I gave up hope we would reach a town and resolved to meet the pursuers on the best terrain I could find.

  A place where the road cut through a cliff provided cover from the back and one side. I pulled in the horse but might as well have been pulling in an equestrian statue. “Here, Sabia. It’s the best we’ll get!” I said, but she had other ideas. She broke into a gallop.

  I looked behind and something was running, pale, down the road. It shone in the sun.

  The cut through the rock was behind us now, and in front was a slight decline to a valley filled with men. Some of these had horses, most had not. They had come down from the North, turning snow to mush, and rooted up the frozen dirt for a rod’s width. I saw signs of organization among them. All were armed. They were very, very many.

  All this I saw in a moment, and then I grabbed the right rein in both hands and put all my strength into hauling the mare around. The dry leather snapped, and Sabia bolted forward like a racer when the rope drops. We were among the men, and I remember the sweat smell of them after the cleanliness of wind and snow. They probably noticed my sweating horse and me as well.

  Since I couldn’t stop the mare, I decided to drive her forward and through the crowd of them. I booted her and she leaped, slipped, skidded, and came to a stop on one haunch, with me still on her back. She clambered up again and shook her skin, rattling me and all my belongings.

  Many men were staring at us. Having nothing better to do, I stared back. One fellow, with a head of yellow hair and a harquebus as old as I am, pointed to me and behind me. “The wolf,” he said. “Look! It is the pale wolf.”

  I was still trying to understand this when I felt something touch my hand where it lay on my mare’s withers. A cold, wet nose had been thrust into the reins-slot of my mitten, and leaning up against the mare, frightening her not at all, was a long, lean body of silver-white. I felt its affectionate tongue slide across my palm. Its ruff was wide, and its eyes triangular and smiling. On its face, throat, and belly were stains of pink.

  I met its strange eyes and recognized them. “The last time we met, you never let me touch you,” I said to it. It got down on all fours, danced about, and leaped up again. “… Or was that the time before last?”

  As I muttered to the animal, I waited for the assemblage to become weary of talking about me and talk to me instead. No one did address me, though I lost interest in the wolf and my mare lost interest in standing still in the snow.

  I looked around and I saw pieces of Norwess—the populace of Norwess, that is—imperfectly mixed. The ring of men closest to me seemed pulled together from some small town shop-row, while only five yards distant stood a recognizable mass of Provincial Militia, still in their uniforms and with sergeants attending. Behind them were the countrymen who had fled from Sabia’s wild hooves as we charged into their camp, not mixing with the shopkeepers or the militia, and even the few women I perceived among the crowd were huddled together, shawl to shawl, as separate from the mass as so many nuns.

  The resemblance of these to religious women stirred a thought in me. Since no one addressed me, I spoke to them. I caught the eye of one of the whisperers and said to him, “I’m looking for a man named Jeram. Jeram Pagg, of Worrbltown. That’s Worrbltown by the Soun Falls at Ekesh line, south of here.”

  The fellow, who may have been a tailor or a draper or any one of a number of trades, squinted and stared and was incapable of any answer. Behind him another said, “Seek the banner, Your Grace. If Jeram has joined us, he will be with the silver banner.”

  There were a number of standards in this crowd, all of them furled. As I allowed the mare to wander, I counted heads as well as flags. Four flags and easily eight thousand followers. There was what must have been the red leaf of Norwess, borne by the militia; the swan of Velonya, borne by men in royal blue and white but with the badges of rank removed from their uniforms; a red-backed standard that I guessed to be the marten skin of Mackim, duke of Forney, who was now Norwess as well, and the fourth one, which I found amid an assemblage in undyed homespun, all with their heads bowed and all identically dour. This banner was very tightly furled, but unarguably silver.

  “Excuse me this liberty,” I said to the young man holding the standard. He glanced up at me somberly and then he stared. Forcing myself to smile, I took the staff from his hand and unlaced the binding.

  Silk and silver rustled out into the dry wind. This banner was simple and painted by hand in black ink. There was the outline of a wolf, running, and in the middle of it, an irregular splash of ink, which drew the eye. The wind blew, the silver wolf ran. I felt the ludicrous impulse to run with it. For no better reason than this I thought of Dinaos.

  “An artist did this,” I said to the lad, but I could not hear his answer. With effort I took my gaze from the banner.

  “Forgive my snatching this. I had to know. I come looking for Jeram Pagg; can you help me find him?”

  “He is probably already back at Norwess Palace,” the young man said. Carefully he rolled and cased the banner once again.

  I sighed because that was still a long way away. I wondered what to do now, and it came to me I could get off the horse. It seemed humorous that idea hadn’t occurred to me before. I slipped down from the saddle and slipped much farther than I had intended. Only the bracing arm of the young man held me from the trampled snow.

  “I haven’t used those legs lately,” I told him. I stamped as feeling came back into them. The mare stamped, too.

  The fellow was mumbling something. I asked him to repeat it. “I drew the flags,” he said. “I mean… you seemed to want to know. Sir. Your Grace.”

  This was the second person here to call me by that title. It was very peculiar. “What? Am I a bishop
, to be called Your Grace?”

  “You are Nazhuret of Sordaling, if I am not mistaken. Sir.”

  He was a tall blond boy, square-boned after the fashion of Norwess. His face was more pink than white. “You say you drew the banner, lad? I like it. Not the banner itself, but the art of it. Art and insight, perhaps.”

  His face went more red than pink. “I am third level, Your… sir. On the path of the void.”

  “I have no idea what you are talking about,” I told him, and I led the mare through the ranks of identical ragged beggars and went looking for anyone whose face I knew.

  I found no one, but Duke Mackim, whose honors included most of Norwess, found me. When last I saw him, Mackim had been a lad of twenty years, quite bright and likeable. He had been interested in the dowhee, which was unusual for a Sordaling-trained man, and I had sparred with him cordially. That had been almost eight years before.

  Now he was more than cordial. He pressed my hand warmly, and the look in his brown eyes would have done credit to a spaniel. “I have expected you these four weeks,” he said, and he called for food and fodder to be brought out of his personal packs.

  I took my hand back. “You expected me? How, when until this last week I had no idea to make the trip?”

  “I knew you would come to the banner,” he said with perfect certitude.

  I almost told the man what I wanted him to do with that particular banner and all it stood for, but my attention was caught by the sword he wore in his embossed and silvered belt. “Are you making your living with a hedger now, milord?”

  He faded back a pace. “I don’t pretend to be your equal, Nazhuret…”

  “It would be a peculiar standard of mankind in which you were not, Mackim. The dowhee’s strength was not in dueling, anyway, but in breaking blades off to eliminate the duel. And it was useful because it was unknown and therefore hard to counter. But no more. The saber or the hedger—both relics of the past. Now we just shoot each other.”