by Tom Deitz
“The river will take us there,” Eddyn announced, after consuming the rest of the morning consulting the maps he’d salvaged from the ghost priests’ camp. He thrust a sheet of parchment beneath Rrath’s nose. They were back in the boathouse and the light was bad, for they were letting the fire coast down to embers. Even so, it was sufficient to show the wavy blue line that continued more or less southeast from Woodstock Station, through at least two more days’ travel to the plains. Other abandoned stations were marked along the way, lavish reminders of the plague’s depredations. A few fish camps were likewise indicated, but they’d be closed for the winter. Right at the point where the Wild met the plain, a tower was sketched: a winter hold.
“There’d be people there, if we need them,” Rrath observed.
“Then we don’t stop,” Eddyn replied flatly. “We’d have no choice but to report to our sub–clan-chiefs, who’d ask all the wrong questions. Never mind that anyone in your clan could be a ghost priest agent.”
“Eddyn–”
Eddyn rounded on him. “What’re you going to say? That it’s over? That you’ll conveniently forget that you joined up with a bunch of people no one knows exist, who may be playing major power games here? Do you think they’ll let you back out now? Eight, Rrath, who can you trust? The only protection you’re going to get from here on out is from my clan–or the King. And neither of those is guaranteed.”
Rrath didn’t reply, though Eddyn gave him plenty of time. “The river’s the straightest way,” he said at length, “and the most level. I’d say we ski on it as much as possible, keeping watch for weak spots. Otherwise, we hug the shore. When we find empty stations, we avail ourselves of whatever supplies remain. Same for fish camps. When we near the hold, we travel down the opposite bank under cover of darkness. There’re outbuildings on both shores. If we’re lucky, we can shelter in one without getting caught. In any event, we have to get going. There’s a fish camp that looks to be no more than a half day’s hard trek away. We can target that, and if we make good time, we can think about pressing on to the next one. The map shows the river’s fairly smooth that far: no rapids, so the ice should be plenty thick. And there’re buoyancy vests in one of the boats we can wear, in case one of us falls through—though we should still travel with rope to hand.”
Rrath eyed him neutrally, and the sky with more trepidation. “At this point, I’d simply say we should travel.”
The sun was driving their shadows before them when Rrath and Eddyn finally swung around a particularly imposing granite spire—one of many that ornamented this section of the Wild—and at last caught sight of the snowcapped cluster of low stone domes that comprised the first fish camp. Their shadows obligingly swung left as they turned right, which took them off snow and across bare ice that showed green, and which snapped ominously as Eddyn’s weight skimmed across it.
In spite of the weather, it had been an uneventful afternoon, if perhaps the most tiring of Eddyn’s life. The frozen river had been monotonously smooth, and there’d been little to appreciate in the endless leagues of trees beneath whose shadows they passed. Trouble was, whichever of them was in the lead (they alternated once every half hand, and tried to keep four spans between them) had also to keep an eye out for patches of open water and thin or rough ice. Never mind checking every pile of flood wrack for signs of Avall. All of which tired the mind out of all proportion to the physical effort involved.
Not that they’d found any trace of his kinsman, or really expected to. His body, in all likelihood, was lodged beneath the ice. If it surfaced at all, it would be around Sunbirth, at the equinox.
There were hot springs, however, which often generated sufficient heat to permit stretches of open water. And there were animals that either dug down to water or broke through to it with their weight—sometimes to their detriment, as evidenced by the unfortunate elk they’d found drowned two hands back, supported above the ice only by its magnificent rack.
There were fish, too—a few: enormous, ancient catfish that rose now and then for a gulp of air to augment that which sustained them in the cold, dark depths where they drowsed away the winter unmolested.
But they were closing in on the fish camp now, and that promised sleep of a warmer kind, not to mention a reliable source of food in the form of salt fish stored away to season for the winter.
Eddyn and Rrath ate well that night and slept decently—in an actual bed.
The wind turned bitter the next day, and blew snow in their faces, forcing them to raise mouth-masks, wrap gauze around their eyes, and fret about their ears. Still, they persevered, not altering their pattern until the following evening, when another fish camp did double duty as a way station. And then the storm fell upon them in earnest, forcing them to remain where they were.
Nothing moved outside that second night, in all of eastern Eron.
CHAPTER II:
WISHFUL THINKING
(WESTERN ERON-DEEP WINTER: DAY XXXVIII-EARLY MORNING)
The hold had been built as a hunting retreat in more prosperous times, and had been deserted eighteen years—since the household to which it was attached had succumbed, every one, to the plague. Four stone slabs, each rougher than the last, marked the ashes of a father, two sons, and a mother. There’d been no one to bury the daughter, but Div and her husband had found her bones in bed when they’d found the hold, four years ago. They’d also found the phial of poison.
It was Div’s hold now, and typical of such places in the Wild. Which is to say it had thick, rough-log walls; many shuttered windows; steep-pitched roofs of split-board shingles; and a massive fireplace that heated a large common hall and ducted to smaller bedrooms and the bath. Div had lived there with a man from Tannercraft at first, and, later, alone. Now it was filled with her scourings from the Wild: tubers, nuts, and berries she scavenged in season; herbs to flavor the dried or salted fish and flesh that were her staples. And, stretched from countless frames and racked against the walls, the pelts of the beasts she hunted for the trade scrip that bought other food. Like barrels of flour and cauf, jugs of butter, and wheels of cheese.
The rest—notably beer and wine—she’d learned to make on her own from resources at hand. From the forest that enclosed her, ominous and silent, for shots unending.
Her untitled realm.
She was a middle-sized woman of twenty-five, lean and fit, with muscular arms and legs. She was also Eronese, albeit of Common Clan, which meant she had her fair share of beauty—dark blue eyes, black hair worn long for warmth, and fine bones masked by skin scoured rough by weather.
She’d had love and lost it, and had hope and lost it as well—and now, she thought, she might be regaining both. If nothing else, she’d renewed her sense of wonder, her feeling that mysteries beyond her ken still dwelt in the world unsuspected, and that she might yet achieve something worthwhile before she died.
An eighth ago … She’d been empty then: hunting competently, trapping often enough to ensure next year’s trade; usually full, usually warm—yet listless and numb, with no ties to anyone alive. Her husband was dead of a wound acquired during a blizzard, when no one moved in the Wild. Her womb was bare, courtesy of a late-term miscarriage that had rendered her unable to conceive again.
But she now knew things and people she hadn’t known before, and, for the first time in ages, felt some stirrings of passion.
So she sat on her front porch that morning, feet on the carved wood rail, gazing out at a grove of pines poking through snow that would’ve reached her thighs. The sky was blue as thick ice, and the mountains of Angen’s Spine rose like a purple wall to her right. The air was crisp but bearable, and she’d pushed back her hood and unlaced her overtunic. A mug of mulled cider steamed beside her.
Her back itched, down by the crest of her hip, where an arrow had found her five days ago. She clawed at it through layers of leather, grateful for the fact that it had healed far faster than it ought, yet perplexed that it seemed to heal that way no longe
r, as though whatever had driven that healing had been exhausted.
She assumed it was a function of Avall’s curious gem. The Eight knew it had healed him more than once, and seemed to work its … magic on her and Rann as well. But whatever virtues it possessed were locked within it, and in its absence—whether from time or distance—those powers were dissipating.
More proof lay before her.
A female birkit had ambled from the woods soon after she’d sat down, falling lazily at her feet in a wash of thick silver-white fur that a year ago she’d have been tanning this very moment. It was safe now, it knew, and had suffered her to run her hands through that marvelous pelt, feeling the strong heavy muscles that powered it. She’d even dared scratch between its calm green eyes. But when she’d tried to touch its mind, as the gem had previously allowed, she’d found only a blur of startled recognition.
So that was fading, too.
Rann would know for certain, but Rann was gone. She’d urged him to go—on to Gem-Hold while she stayed here to recover. He’d left the previous morning.
Rann …
Rann changed everything. He was young, beautiful, talented, and loyal. If not rich, he was at least attached by adoption to a powerful clan. He liked her enough to treat her as an equal, which was not a given with High Clan men. He’d also made love to her—at first from raw need and afterward as though he cared—though she had sense enough to know he’d likewise sought solace for the loss of his bond-brother, whose death he still denied.
Which was stupid. She’d seen Avall fall: on the brink of the escarpment one moment, then grasping his chest and tumbling over the next. Arrows had flown, and whether or not they’d caught him as they’d caught her, Avall had fallen into icy water.
No one survived such things.
But wounds like hers didn’t heal in five days, either.
And women didn’t converse with birkits.
So Div sat and pondered, and looked to the west, where lay hope in the form of Rann, on his way to Gem-Hold-Winter.
And then looked east, to where more hope, and yet more danger, lay: in Tir-Eron.
Which way she would go when the time came for going, she had no idea. But she knew she’d spent her last winter in the Wild.
(GEM-HOLD-WINTER—DEEP WINTER:
DAY XXXVIII—MIDMORNING)
Strynn san Ferr was wondering if she should send a hall page in search of the breakfast that ought, by rights, to have arrived by now—one of the perks of being pregnant—when a knock sounded on the door to her suite.
Stifling a yawn, she rose slowly and made her way to the vestibule, wishing she felt less lethargic. Then again, she’d been lucky; most women in her condition were throwing up half their meals by now. “Who is it?” she called, having learned that caution when she’d pretended to nursemaid an Avall who was supposedly ill with flux. That little bit of subterfuge hadn’t lasted as long as it might, she reflected. Not that she’d expected it to.
“Breakfast—lady,” came a muffled reply—female, but no one she recognized.
She shot the bolt without thinking, and stood back to admit a page in gemcraft livery, bearing the delinquent breakfast tray. Too late she realized that the page was not alone, and who was looming behind her, though not in her official cloak and hood.
Crim, the Hold-Warden.
Strynn’s heart skipped a beat. She should’ve expected something like this. After all, hadn’t Pannin, Sipt, and Brayl all paid what they claimed to be courtesy calls during the last few days? Not to mention, Ikkin, Sub-Craft-Chief of Smith, and Nyss of Priest-Clan—who’d offered condolences for her loss and stressed the availability of her clan, should Strynn feel her soul in any way … encumbered.
Of course the subchiefs of Ferr, and Argen-yr and-a, respectively, had also managed to quiz her quite thoroughly on her whereabouts during a recent period. Which didn’t surprise her, either, since she’d heard from her own sources that they were trying to account for every moment of her time since Brayl had last seen Eddyn. And there’d also been questions about Avall’s progress on the helm, though no one had been tactless enough to request a viewing. Which was fortunate; she’d found the evidence of its destruction and hasty removal. It was the hardest thing she’d ever done not to report that to the relevant authorities.
The most ranking of whom was now waiting just beyond her threshold.
She wasn’t up for verbal fencing this early, yet had no choice but to admit the Warden. But not until the breakfast had been deposited on a nearby table, and the page had bowed her way out, did Crim clear her throat, the meaning of which was clear.
“Lady Warden,” Strynn murmured, “be welcome in these rooms, where I dwell by your largesse.” It was the full formal greeting, which thereby indicated that she intended to play the following interview by ritual rules. There would be no confidences exchanged here today—not from her.
“I am honored,” Crim replied tersely, stepping across the threshold. Only then did Strynn notice that she was carrying something at waist level. Something draped in a black-velvet pall, barely visible against a robe of the same fabric and color.
Her heart skipped again. Something about that shape …
“You look … pale,” Crim continued, nodding to the page to close the door behind her. “Then again, you have been under a certain amount of strain.”
Strynn looked Crim straight in the eye. “I assume this is not a courtesy visit.”
Crim stifled a chuckle. “Oh, but it is, if you consider it courtesy to return lost property to those who have let it stray.” She looked past Strynn, toward Avall’s workroom. “I don’t suppose your husband …”
“He’s not here,” Strynn replied. “I don’t know when he’ll return.” Both of which statements were absolutely true.
“And you’ll say no more until it may be said before King and Council, if I know you,” Crim shot back. “Very well, I had hoped to win your cooperation, but I see it is not forthcoming.” Without further comment, she set the draped object on the table beside the food. “May I sit?” she continued. “I haven’t the patience for games, Strynn, and by the look of you, neither do you—at heart.”
Strynn gestured to a chair, then, after a pause, claimed another. She didn’t speak, however. This was Crim’s gambit; let her play it.
Crim took a deep breath. A variety of emotions played across her features before they settled on weary honesty—which might be an act and might not. “I have one thing to say, Strynn,” she began. “I don’t give a bucket of frozen piss about clan politics. Whatever is between Avall and Eddyn and whoever else they’ve managed to involve in this little escapade of theirs is none of my concern. What does concern me is that four people under my guardianship in this hold have gone missing, and for that I will be held accountable. Granted, my clan and yours have anciently been allies, and Rann is even distantly connected to it, but I honestly don’t care about that. I do care about my honor and my reputation. And, though I know it sounds hollow in light of what I’ve just said, I care about the lives of those who have … vanished. Don’t you understand that, Strynn? One can spend every moment imagining plots, discoveries, deceptions, rivalries—dares. You name it. The fact remains that four young men I have no cause to hate and some cause to admire, if not love, based on the little I’ve seen of them, may very well be dead. I have to do what I can to locate them. I have no choice. It’s my charge as Hold-Warden, my responsibility as clan-kin to one of them, and my duty as a human being. ‘There are no enemies in the Deep.’ You’ve heard that. I believe it’s true. So if there’s anything I can do to save those men’s lives—anything at all, Strynn—please tell me. I’ll muster this whole hold to search, if need be. It would be unprecedented, but I’ll do it. My honor means that much to me.”
Strynn didn’t look at her. Her mind was racing. Crim seemed sincere. Report named her among the most even-handed of Hold-Wardens. If she could trust anyone—and The Eight knew she was tired of bearing this alone, save for
Kylin—perhaps …
But would Avall then forgive her? It would remove his awful secret from the control of her husband’s clan. And if she hadn’t told her own Sub–Clan-Chief, why should she now confide in Crim?
“I’m sorry,” she heard herself saying. “I don’t think there’s hope of anyone finding them now. But I promise you, Crim, Ferr and Argen alike will be grateful for your … cooperation. You can only profit from my silence, and your clan can only profit from yours.”
Crim’s eyes narrowed, but finally she nodded stiffly and rose. “Consider what I have brought you,” she said. “I didn’t have to do that. And remember, Strynn, that by bringing you that, I have in effect brought you Eddyn’s head. That’s a nice symmetry, don’t you think?”
Strynn—almost—smiled. “Spring approaches,” she replied. “And I do thank you, Lady, for your concern.”
“Spring approaches,” Crim echoed, from the door. “Let us hope the melting snow brings no harsh surprises for either of us.” And then she was gone.
Strynn locked the door and managed to eat her breakfast. But another hand elapsed before she dared remove the black-velvet pall from Crim’s … gift. She spent the next half hand weeping.
CHAPTER III:
RING OF TRUTH
(THE FLAT-DEEP WINTER: DAY XXXVIII-MIDDAY)
Two rings.
Identical golden bands. Identical blood-red stones.
The black velvet on which they lay, a hand apart, set off their workmanship to perfection. Eronese workmanship: the best there was. Stolen or imported, it didn’t matter. The candlelight that was their sole illumination made them spark and glitter like things alive. And maybe, just possibly, they were.
Certainly everyone observing them had seen them move toward each other, so that the smooth-shaved faces bearing the cross-in-circle design had clicked together, as iron bars sometimes did.