Stalking Darkness n-2

by Lynn Flewelling

  Timan presented a young man to him. "I am too old now to make the journey, but my grandson, Turik, knows the place. He can guide you. These others will carry your belongings and gift offerings for the spirit."

  Seregil groaned inwardly. The last thing he wanted was an audience, but he was too close to his objective to risk offending the village. Amid much cheering and singing, they set off for the head of the valley.

  The Dravnian youths marched along easily, talking and joking as they broke trail. Seregil toiled doggedly in their wake, struggling with the thin air and a poor night's rest. One of Retak's sons fell in beside him, grinning.

  "You had good hospitality last night, eh? My sisters were happy this morning."

  "Oh, yes," wheezed Seregil. "I was kept very warm, thank you."

  They reached the base of the pass just after midday.

  Turik called a halt while an older man named Shradin went ahead to scout the snow.

  Turik pointed up the pass. "The spirit home is there, but it's difficult going from here—fissures beneath the snow and avalanches. Shradin can read the snow better than anyone in the village."

  Squatting on their snowshoes, the others watched as the guide explored the pass.

  "Well, what do you think?" asked Seregil when Shradin returned.

  The Dravnian shrugged. "It's only a little dangerous today. Still, it would be better if just a few go on from here. Turik knows the way and I know the snow. The rest of them better go home."

  After some disgruntled grumbling, the others headed back to the village.

  Shradin took the lead as they began their cautious ascent. Seregil and Turik following in single file. Seregil watched in silent admiration as the man probed ahead with his pole, leading them safely around deep fissures concealed just beneath the deceptively unbroken snow. Glad as he was of this, however, Seregil couldn't help glancing nervously up at the tons of snow and ice clinging precariously to the mountainsides above.

  As they neared the top of the pass, Turik took the lead. "We are almost there," he said at last, pausing for Seregil to catch his breath.

  Struggling up a last, steep face, Turik halted again and began casting around where the lip of the glacier met the rock face. After frequent sightings up at the peaks and much prodding with his pole, the young Dravnian raised his hand and waved for the others

  Hung with icicles and half drifted over with snow, the opening of the passage resembled a fanged and sullen mouth. Digging with hands and snowshoes, they soon cleared the opening and peered down the steep black tunnel that descended into the ice.

  Seregil felt a strange tingling in his hands and up his back as leaned over it; strong magic lay below.

  "The first part of the way is slick," Turik warned, pulling a sack of ashes from his bag. "We'll need to scatter these as we go, or it's nearly impossible to climb back out again."

  "I have to go alone from here," Seregil told him. "My magic is strong, but I can't be distracted worrying about the two of you. Wait for me here. If I'm not back by the time the sun touches that peak, come down for me, but not before. If your spirit kills me, give all my things to Retak and say he is to divide them as he sees fit."

  Turik's eyes widened a bit at this, but neither he nor Shradin argued.

  Seregil took off his bulky hat and tied his long hair back with a thong. Taking the small lightwand from his tool roll, he grasped the handle in his teeth and shouldered an ash bag and the cumbersome box.

  "Aura's luck be with you," Shradin said solemnly, using the Aurenfaie name for Illior.

  Let's hope it is, Seregil thought nervously as he began his descent.

  The steep tunnel was narrow and slick as glass in places. Scattering ash in front of him, he crawled down, dragging the box behind. By the time the ice gave way to a more level stone passage, he was smeared black from head to foot.

  The magic permeating the place grew stronger as he went down. The uncanny tingle he'd first noticed increased swiftly. There was a low buzzing in his ears and he could feel an ache growing behind his eyes.

  "Aura Elustri malrei," he whispered, speaking the invocation to Illior aloud to test the effect. The silence absorbed his words without an echo and the tingling in his limbs continued unabated.

  The tunnel ended at a tiny natural chamber scarcely larger than the passage itself. The shards of a broken bowl lay against the far wall.

  The ceaseless noise in his ears made concentration difficult as Seregil began a careful search of the place. It wasn't a steady tone, but rose and fell erratically. At times he seemed to catch a faint hint of voices beneath the rest, but put it down to imagination.

  Satisfied at last that no other passages were concealed by any method he could detect, he tucked his chilled hands into his coat and hunkered down to review the few facts he possessed.

  "Horns of crystal beneath horns of stone. Stone within ice within stone within ice," the palimpsest had said.

  Seregil looked around, frowning.

  Well, I'm certainly beneath horns of stone. And to get here I've gone through the ice first, and then stone.

  That left stone within ice still to go, but where? Though obscure in method, the palimpsest had been quite specific in giving the necessary directions. If there was some secret way beyond this point, then logic suggested that the final clues leading to it were also concealed in that same document.

  Massaging his throbbing temples, he closed his eyes and recalled the details of the palimpsest's various inscriptions. Could he and Nysander have missed something in the rambling prophecies? Or perhaps Nysander had been wrong in his assertion that only one side of the document concealed a palimpsest.

  Now there was an uncomfortable thought.

  He was startled from his reverie by a blast of cold air. Opening his eyes, he found himself lying in the snow outside the tunnel entrance with Turik and Shradin kneeling over him with obvious concern. Over Shradin's shoulder he saw that the sun was already low behind the designated peak.

  "What happened?" Seregil gasped, sitting up.

  "We waited as long as we could," Turik apologized. "The time came and went for you to return. When we went down, we found you in a spirit dream."

  "There's a storm coming," added Shradin, frowning up at the clouds. "They come on fast this time of year. We need to get back to the village while there's still light enough to go down safely. There's no shelter here, and nothing for a fire."

  Seregil looked around in sudden alarm. "My sword! And the box—Where are they?"

  "Here, beside you. We brought them out, too," Turik assured him. "But tell us, did you speak to the spirit? Do you know the reason for its anger?"

  Still chagrined at having fallen so easily under the spell of the place, Seregil nodded slowly, buying time as he collected his thoughts.

  "It's not your spirit who is angry, but another, an evil one," he told them. "This evil one keeps the other prisoner. It's a very strong spirit. I must rest and prepare myself to banish it."

  Shradin looked up at the sky again. "You'll have time, I think."

  Taking up their packs and poles, the Dravnian guides led Seregil back to the village for another night of exhausting hospitality.

  As Shradin had predicted, a savage blizzard roared in through the teeth of the mountains during the night.

  People fought their way through the howling wind to drive their livestock up the ramps into their towers, then sealed their doors and settled down to wait out the storm.

  It raged steadily for two days. One house lost its felt roof, forcing the inhabitants to flee to a neighboring tower.

  At another, a woman gave birth to twins.

  Otherwise, the time was given over to eating, storytelling, and general husbandry. The Dravnians were philosophical about such conditions; what was the use of complaining about something that happened every winter? The blizzards were even beneficial. They piled snow around the house and helped keep the drafts out.

  One family in particular regarded th
is storm as a stroke of luck, for it kept the Aurenfaie guest in their house for two nights.

  Seregil was less complaisant about the-situation.

  Ekrid had nine children, six of them daughters. One girl was too young, another in the midst of her menses, but that still left four to contend with and he didn't much like the competitive gleam in their eyes as they welcomed him.

  To further complicate matters, the lower level had been given over to Ekrid's herd of goats and sheep, and their bleating and odor lent little to the general atmosphere. For two days, Seregil had to choose between evading the amorous advances of the girls or trying to walk three feet without treading in shit. His success was limited on both counts and his concentration on the problem at hand suffered.

  Stretched out with two of Ekrid's daughters still twined around him the second night, Seregil stared up at the rafters and decided he'd had enough of women to last him for some time. Shifting restlessly in their musky embrace, he caught a hint of answering movement across the way where Ekrid's sons slept.

  One of them had made long eyes at him the evening before—He gave the possibility a moment's consideration, but resolved dourly that there was little to be gained in that direction. The young man smelled as strongly of goat tallow and old hides as his sisters, and lacked a front tooth besides.

  Lying back, he allowed himself a moment's longing for his own clean bed and a freshly bathed companion to share it. To his surprise, the anonymous figure swiftly transformed into Alec.

  Father, brother, friend, and lover, the Oracle of Illior had told him that night in Rhiminee.

  He supposed that, after a fashion, he had been father and brother to Alec, having more or less adopted him after their escape from Asengai's dungeon.

  Seregil smiled wryly to himself in the darkness; it'd been the least he could do, considering that Alec was one of dozens of innocents captured and tortured by Asengai's men during their hunt for Seregil himself.

  In the months since then they'd certainly become friends, and perhaps something more than friends.

  But lovers?

  Seregil had kept this possibility resolutely at bay, telling himself the boy was too young, too Dalnan, and, above all, too valued a companion to risk losing over something as inconsequential as sex.

  And yet, lying exhausted among Ekrid's daughters, he suffered a guilty pang of arousal as he thought of Alec's slender body, his dark blue eyes and ready smile, the rough silken texture of his hair.

  Haven't you had enough hopeless infatuations in your life? he scowled to himself. Rolling onto his belly, he turned his thoughts to the palimpsest, running through its cryptic phrases once again.

  Horns of crystal beneath horns of stone. Stone within ice within stone within ice.

  Damn, but there seemed little enough to be wrung out of it at this point. Slowly he repeated the phrase in its original Dravnian, then translated it into Konic, Skalan, and Aurenfaie, just for good measure.

  Nothing.

  Start again, he thought.

  You're overlooking something. Think!

  After this came the directions to the chamber. Before it were the prophetic ramblings: first the dancing animals, then the bones, and the strange words of the unscrambled cipher that unlocked the secret—

  "Illior's Eyes!"

  One of the girls stirred in her sleep, running a hand down his back. He forced himself to lie still, heart pounding excitedly.

  The phrase! The phrase itself.

  Those alien, throat-scraping words. If they were the key to the palimpsest, then why not to the magic of the chamber itself?

  Assuming he was correct, however, this raised other considerations. If the words were simply a password spell, then he could probably use them without danger to himself or anyone else. But if they worked a deeper magic, what then?

  He could go back to Nysander now with what he already knew. Still, the Plenimarans might be beating a trail up the valley at this very moment and Nysander would be too drained from the first translocation spell to send him or anyone else back immediately. Unless, of course, he enlisted the aid of someone more magically reliable rather than risk mishap—Magyana perhaps, or Thero.

  To hell with that! I haven't come this far for someone else to see the mystery's end. First light tomorrow I'm going up that pass again, avalanches be damned.

  As he drifted happily off to sleep, he realized that the wind had dropped at last.

  Someone pounded on Ekrid's door just before dawn, waking the household.

  "Come to the council house!" a voice shouted from outside. "Something terrible has happened. Come now!"

  Extricating himself from a soft tangle of arms and thighs, Seregil threw on his clothes and ran for the council house with the others.

  Faint, predawn light painted the snow blue, the towers black against it. Snowshoeing through the icy powder, Seregil found the village almost unrecognizable. The storm had buried the towers up to their doorsills, leaving the exposed upper story looking like an ordinary cottage drifted up with snow.

  Shouldering his way through the crowd at the council house, he hurried downstairs to the meeting chamber.

  The central fire had been lit and beside it crouched a woman he hadn't seen before. Surrounded by a silent, wide-eyed crowd, she clutched a small bundle against her breast, wailing hoarsely.

  Retak's wife knelt beside her and gently folded back the blanket. Inside lay a dead infant. The stranger clutched the baby fiercely, her hands mottled with frostbite.

  "What happened?" Seregil asked, slipping in beside Retak.

  He shook his head sadly. "I don't know. She staggered into the village a little while ago and no one has been able to get any sense out of her."

  "That is Vara, my husband's cousin from Torgud's village," a woman cried, pushing her way through the crowd. "Vara, Vara! What's happened to you?"

  The woman looked up, then threw herself into her kinswoman's arms. "Strangers!" she cried.

  "They came out of the storm. They refused the feast, killed the headman and his family. Others, many others, my husband, my children—My children!"

  Throwing back her head, she let out a scream of anguish. People gasped and muttered, looking to Retak.

  "But why?" Retak asked gently, bending over her.

  "Who were they? What did they want?"

  Vara covered her eyes and cowered lower. Seregil knelt and placed a hand on her trembling shoulder.

  "Were they looking for the spirit home?"

  The woman nodded mutely.

  "But they refused the feast," he went on softly, feeling a coldness growing in the pit of his stomach.

  "They affronted the village, and you would not deal with them."

  "Yes," Vara whispered.

  "And when the killing started, then did you tell them?"

  Tears welled in Vara's eyes, rolling swiftly down her cheeks. "Partis told them, after they killed his wife," she sobbed weakly. "He told them of Timan and his clan. He thought the killing would stop. But it didn't. They laughed, some of them, as they killed us. I could see their teeth through their beards. They laughed, they laughed—"

  Still clutching her dead child, she slumped over in a faint and several women carried her to a pallet by the wall.

  "Who could do such things?" Retak asked in bewilderment.

  "Plenimaran marines," Seregil growled, and every eye turned to him. "These men are enemies, both to me and to you. They seek the evil that lurks in your spirit home. When they find it, they'll worship it and sacrifice living people to it."

  "What can we do?" a woman cried out.

  "They'll come here," a man yelled angrily.

  "Partis as good as set them upon us!"

  "Do you have any weapons?" Seregil asked over the rising din.

  "Nothing but wolf spears and skinning knives. How can we fight such men with those?"

  "You're a magician!" shouted Ekrid. "Can't you kill them with your magic?"

  Caught in a circle of expectan
t faces, Seregil drew a deep breath. "You've all seen the nature of my magic. I have no spells for killing men."

  He let disappointment ripple through the crowd for an instant, then added, "But I may have something just as effective."

  "What is that?" the man demanded skeptically.

  Seregil smiled slightly. "A plan."

  Retak called a halt at the base of the pass as the first lip of sun showed over the eastern peaks.

  Shradin went ahead to assess the danger. The others—every man, woman, and child of Retak's village waited quietly for word to move on.

  Mothers whispered again to their younger children why they must keep silent in the pass. The infants had been given llaki to make them sleep.

  Seregil climbed an outcropping and shaded his eyes as he looked back across the snowfield. Blue shadow still lay-deep in the valley, but he could make out a dark column of men closing in on the village. It wouldn't take long for them to see that their prey had fled, or what direction they'd gone.

  "There they are," he whispered to Retak. "We have to move on quickly!"

  Hardly daring to breathe, they continued up the pass.

  It was a fearsome journey. The villagers moved as swiftly as they could, some bowed under loads of fuel and food, others carrying children on their backs or aged relatives on litters. Only the muffled creak of snowshoes and pack straps broke the silence.

  Old Timan trudged painfully along near the rear, supported by Turik and his brothers.

  Mercifully, Vara had died and she and her child were hidden now in the drifts beyond the goat enclosures.

  But her death was not in vain; she'd given Retak's village time to prepare.

  Shimmering veils of snow blew across the pass, dislodging small falls down the slopes.

  These gave out harmlessly in fine bits of crust, rolling down to leave mouse trails across their path.

  Ominous cracks and groans echoed between the cliffs overhead, but Shradin gave no warning sign and Retak silently motioned his people on.

  Trudging along in their midst, Seregil was deeply moved by the mix of fear, trust, and determination that drove these people forward. They'd welcomed him—a stranger-given him the best of all they had. When Retak claimed him as a member of his clan, it was meant literally. In the eyes of the Dravnians he was now a blood member of the community for as long as he wished to claim kinship.