by K S Nikakis
After a time, Caledon stopped, and as Kira drew near she heard the spill of water and glimpsed a mist-filled cleft.
‘The Aurantia Stream comes out below us,’ said Caledon, slipping off his pack. ‘It’s a pity it’s misty because the crevice is full of ferns and mosses fed by the water’s spume. When the sun’s higher, it paints the air with rainbows and the scintil moths carry the colour in their wings. It’s worth suffering Shardos’s scowls to look on them.’
Caledon’s description was beautiful and Kira felt real regret the sun wasn’t shining.
‘Hopefully I’ll pass by one day on my return journey,’ she said.
‘This is the last place on this side of Shardos where it’s sheltered enough for such things to grow,’ he went on. ‘From here, there’s only scantha and brittle-bite. It’s the last place for water too. Is your waterskin full?’
‘Nearly. How far is it to the summit?’
‘Two days. Here, I’ll fill it for you.’
Kira handed Caledon her waterskin and he scrambled into the cleft. The mist swirled round him, making him look strangely insubstantial.
‘Is the path well marked?’ she asked, the possibility of two days of sliding stone and belly-churning cliffs filling her with fear.
‘It depends which way you go. There’s an easterly route and a westerly route,’ he said, returning her waterskin and climbing from the cleft.
‘I need go north towards the Terak city of Sarnia,’ said Kira.
He looked surprised. ‘Journeying in mountains is never as simple as going north or south,’ said Caledon. ‘There are only two ways over the summit of Shardos: the Kindrin Pass many days east of here and the Draganin Pass, to which we journey. The Draganin breaches Shardos in two places, east and west of Watchman’s Wall. Some argue it’s really two passes. It’s too early to judge whether East Draganin or West Draganin is best for us.’
‘I need go the way that will take me north soonest,’ said Kira.
Caledon turned to her, the sunlight catching his clear grey eyes. ‘The most direct path is not always the quickest, or the safest,’ he said.
Caledon’s response made Kira uneasy for it seemed to avoid a direct answer, and she wondered whether she should leave him. But she dreaded returning to the awful loneliness of her trek over the Dendora.
‘Come. The day grows old,’ he said gently.
They went on, and the mist dissipated abruptly as they came round a spur. One moment they were immersed in its dim clamminess and the next, blue sky arched overhead, empty of everything but circling brown specks.
‘Dwinhir,’ said Caledon as Kira squinted up at them. ‘Hunting birds.’
‘Dwinhir,’ echoed Kira, the birds bringing to mind Kest’s chimes in the Morclan longhouse. As well as the creatures of Allogrenia, the Morclan carvers had fashioned silverjacks, dwinhir and horses. She’d seen her first silverjacks as she’d emerged from Allogrenia, and now she’d seen a dwinhir. Perhaps she would see a horse as well before her mission was over.
3
Caledon picked the best path by habit while his thoughts ranged like the birds above. Where had Kira come from and why was she going north? And if she came from the south, why did she have Kessomi hair, a Kessomi face and a Kessomi build? And ‘prasach’ was a Kessomi word. Yet if she’d grown in Kessom, he’d have known. Everyone would have known, because of those eyes.
She’d fallen behind, intent on the dwinhir, and he stopped and waited for her.
‘Surely you’ve seen dwinhir before,’ said Caledon.
‘No,’ she replied.
‘But you’re Kessomi.’
‘I didn’t say that,’ replied Kira warily.
‘Then you’re from the forests south of the Dendora,’ said Caledon. It was the only place he could think of. He’d travelled most other places and not heard tell of a gold-eyed woman before. In fact, the only gold-eyed woman he’d heard of was Queen Kiraon, from years long past.
Kira nodded reluctantly.
‘You’re far from home then,’ he observed.
‘Not as far as you. Why are you here, Caledon?’
He hesitated, thinking how best to answer. When the stars sent dreams that told him to travel, he filled his pack and travelled. It wasn’t always thus. His father had resisted his departures when he was younger, constraining his movements. But his father’s acceptance had grown less grudging with time. Having a Placidien son brought him honour, though less silver than a son who dealt in brocades and spices. Luckily, his father had been fortunate in the husband Caledon’s sister Roshai had chosen. Mechtlin had been more than willing to take Caledon’s place in the Saridon enterprise.
All Caledon’s journeys had a purpose, though they weren’t always clear at the beginning. As a Placidien he accepted this blindness. His place in the greater pattern was like the star trails that blazed before winking out – the pattern vast and enduring, and his part small but necessary.
His travels this time had been long and arduous. West of the Silvercades, across the Sarsalin, round the jut of the Fierway, and east through Moorton’s Meld to the Dendora.
He’d come from the west, and Kira had confirmed that she had come from the forests in the south. Yet their paths had brought them together at the precise moment of the second Shargh attack.
The understanding hit him like a blow. She was the reason for his journey.
Without her, he’d be dead. She had killed to save him, despite her abhorrence of swords and things metal. And she could take pain, a rare ability.
A sense of wonder swept over him, as bright and beautiful as the stars. He experienced a similar physical sensation whenever scattered dream images coalesced into a coherent whole. Ice melted more swiftly when smashed with a stone, and she was that stone, the quickener of an unravelling that had troubled his dreams and sent him from the lamp-lit streets of Talliel.
The same understanding also told him that were she to journey north – where gold eyes roused violent passions – the long peace might be no more. The Shargh attacks suggested that the peace was already fracturing in any case.
He glanced back to Kira, but she seemed to have been distracted from her question, her gaze on a point to the west. The otherworldly shiver of his skin dissipated as he looked that way too. Shreds of bright cloud edged over the peaks.
‘We need go swiftly,’ he said. ‘The next part of the climb is along Shardos’s shoulder. Not a good place in a high wind.’
‘Do you think the weather worsens?’ asked Kira.
‘Shardos is known for the violence of its storms and the swiftness of their birth. Some say the mountain dislikes travellers and sends wind and rain to rid itself of them, but the Azurcades straddle an immense plain – Dendora to the south and the Sarsalin to the north. The clash of winds meeting from each is a more likely cause.’
They trudged on as the sky darkened and the wind picked up. It buffeted them from one side, and then the other, and Kira and Caledon were forced to wrap their capes high and pull their hoods low to ward off the grit but, even so, each gust stung like a thousand bites. Day slid to dusk and then, abruptly, into an abyss of blackness.
Blinded, Caledon stopped and shouted back to Kira, but his words were eaten by the wind. Lightning rent the sky, and thunder clashed. A sudden fierce gust forced them both to their knees.
Rain began to fall, heavy drops quickly becoming a roaring deluge, battering them and clawing the ground from beneath their feet. Caledon caught Kira’s hand and fought his way forward, pulling her after him through the shrieking wind and pounding rain to where a darker slash opened in the night. It was a shallow crevice in the mountainside and he struggled up the slope of stone, all but dragging her. Little more than a body length in, Caledon turned, wedged his back against the rock and pulled Kira hard up against him. They lay there, gasping, while the wind roared and the rain sluiced down the mountainside.
Slowly the heat crept back into their bodies and they slid from the tossing blackness of
the night into the quieter darkness of sleep.
4
There was rain south of the Cashgars, too, the Shargh welcoming it to their dry pastures. The Shargh Grounds were quiet, the sorchas on the spur shut against the rain, the ebis out on the grasslands standing stiff-legged in sleep. The warriors and their join-wives slept too.
In the highest sorcha on the spur, however, Palansa didn’t sleep. She paced about with Ersalan bawling on her shoulder, Tarkenda watching. Round to the vent and back to the bed Palansa went, rubbing Ersalan’s back, crooning to him, letting him suck. If only his eyelids were as heavy as hers, his muscles as slack, his body as weary.
The bed creaked as Tarkenda heaved herself out of it. ‘Let me take him for a time. You need to sleep.’
Palansa handed Ersalan to his grandmother, then collapsed onto the bed, exhausted. The older woman rewrapped the baby’s swaddlings firmly and rocked him close. Ersalan’s bawling slowly wavered, turning into a series of hiccuping squawks. Tarkenda tickled his face with the end of her braid and he gurgled.
‘How did you do that?’ asked Palansa.
‘Erboran shrieked worse than the marwings in his first moons,’ said Tarkenda. ‘I walked him, jiggled him, suckled him, ignored him, showed him the stars, bathed him, even threatened him with the Cashgar wolves, but only this worked.’ There was a short silence broken by Ersalan’s hiccups and the creak of the sorcha under the rain. ‘He’s like Erboran in looks and temper. It augurs well for the Shargh.’
‘Was Arkendrin the same as a babe?’ asked Palansa, wondering yet again what had made Erboran’s brother so different to him.
‘Arkendrin was quiet. It was only as he grew that he came to believe in the strength of bluster and the power of noise,’ said Tarkenda.
‘Well he’s strong and powerful now,’ said Palansa. ‘The wound to his leg the treemen inflicted makes him roar worse than Ersalan.’
‘An injured creature’s more dangerous than a sound one,’ warned Tarkenda. ‘Arkendrin’s desire to scour Erboran’s seed from the Chief’s sorcha hasn’t lessened because he must now drag one leg behind him. A flatsword kills whether it’s in Arkendrin’s hand, or the hand of his followers.’
‘They wouldn’t dare harm Ersalan,’ said Palansa, taking back her now sleeping son and holding him protectively.
‘Now the gold-eyed creature’s left the forests, they’d dare anything.’
‘Arkendrin doesn’t know she’s left,’ said Palansa.
‘Arkendrin and his followers believe it’s so, which is the same,’ said Tarkenda. ‘You’ve heard what Ormadon says. Arkendrin speaks of enchantment and foul sorcery, the creature of the Telling using shape-shifting to slip from his grasp.’
Ersalan started whimpering again and Palansa rocked him.
‘If it weren’t for Arkendrin’s injury, he’d be out scouring the Dendora, in spite of it being Weshargh land,’ said Tarkenda. ‘He has no respect for our ways, and none for the ways of others.’
‘Instead he sends his cronies,’ said Palansa.
‘Ormadon says Arkendrin’s wound doesn’t heal. It’s rumoured the treemen use tesat on their swords, too,’ she went on, slipping Ersalan into his sleep-sling.
‘It’s also rumoured that the Sky Chiefs withhold their strength in punishment for their dishonouring,’ said Tarkenda.
‘I’ve not heard that,’ said Palansa.
‘You will,’ said Tarkenda, with a sly smile.
Both women whirled as the doorflap stirred and Ormadon appeared, palming his forehead to the sling. ‘I saw your light, Chief-wife and Chief-mother,’ he said.
Tarkenda hastened forward. ‘The night’s turned, Ormadon, and you’ve no babe to keep you wakeful. What’s happened?’
‘Orbdargan’s come. He’s with Arkendrin.’
‘Orbdargan? The Weshargh Chief?’ asked Palansa.
Tarkenda’s face was filled with puzzlement, too.
‘Orbdargan’s come to Arkendrin to share his vision of taking back the north,’ said Ormadon.
‘What does Arkendrin say?’ asked Tarkenda in dismay.
‘That’s not known. But recovering our grazing lands would give him a claim to the chiefship none could dispute.’
‘And a far greater claim than capturing the gold-eyed creature. Nor would he have to wet his hands in the blood of his brother’s son, which might foment discontent on the Grounds,’ added Tarkenda. ‘Will the Soushargh and Ashmiri join them?’ she asked, pacing the sorcha despite her limp.
‘Only time will tell, Chief-mother,’ said Ormadon.
Caledon lay still so as not to disturb Kira, who lay snug against him. It was a long time since he’d had a woman in his arms, or his bed, and his father increasingly badgered him to seek a wife. Caledon’s sister Roshai had three beautiful daughters but his father wanted the son of a son for the Saridon scion. Caledon knew he was liable to disappoint his father on that score, too. The life of a Placidien was that of a wanderer, and some who set off never returned. Twice Caledon had loved deeply enough to have tried to shut the star-dreams from his life, but the dreams had proven more powerful than his will and, in the end, his love. The last woman he’d loved would never forgive him.
An ilala sang, then whistlers intruded, shouting their presence to the world. Kira jerked and stiffened, and he thought the birds had woken her. But then he realised she still slept. She jerked again, her head tossing from side to side, her anguished mutters taking on recognisable sounds.
‘Kandor! No! Forgive me!’ she cried, waking with a start, her face etched with terror.
‘You’re safe, you’re safe,’ he said, tightening his arms around her as she wept, her silent shaking more distressing than if she’d cried aloud. He smoothed the hair from her face and kissed the top of her head.
She’d used northern words, either Terak or the purer Kessomi from which Terak had come. ‘No’, ‘forgive’ and ‘me’: the dream had betrayed her. He wondered who Kandor was, and what she asked forgiveness for.
Eventually Kira calmed, then half crawled, half slid down the sloping stone into the open. Caledon followed. Shardos was beautiful at this moment, each hollow within the rocks filled with sparkling pools, as if the mountain were making amends for its behaviour of the night.
5
The travel that day was pleasant. The sky was as blue as a springleslip’s egg and, away in the distance, the dwinhir circled again. It was fitting the northern lands were overseen by birds that killed, thought Kira.
At least the dwinhir gave her reason not to look down. The route Caledon followed had taken them back to the mountain’s shoulder, where not much grew apart from grey thorny bushes. Kira had never travelled in so empty a place – even the Dendora had more life.
This was their third day on the mountain and Caledon had said it was another three down the northern side. She knew little of the mountains and found it hard not to think about the likelihood of the Ashmiri or Soushargh or Weshargh, or maybe all of them, coming round the western spur into the northern foothills. They would surely know which Pass Kira and Caledon would use, and wait for them to descend.
‘Kira! Come! We’ll rest and eat when we reach the Pass,’ called Caledon, his voice impatient. She noticed he’d drawn further ahead. Did he fear another storm? Or perhaps he had business to attend to somewhere. But what, and where?
The land went steadily upward and Kira’s hunger and weariness grew as the light ebbed. She took to chewing scavengerleaf. Kasheron’s people had eaten scavengerleaf when they’d hungered in the forests, but had discovered to their cost that you could waste away on it, even when your belly felt full.
The path wound back towards the mountain’s heart and steepened. Huge rocks jutted from Shardos’s skin, plunging the path into shadow. The going was difficult and Kira used the boulders to haul herself up. The sweat ran into her eyes, and on the occasions she looked up all she could see was Caledon’s back moving inexorably away.
It was damp and mossy between the
stones, as if the sun never reached there, and the smell reminded Kira of the Warens. She cut off the memories before they took hold. Bone-achingly weary, she forced her legs up yet more stone steps, failing to notice that Caledon had stopped.
‘Welcome to West Draganin Pass,’ said Caledon, steadying her as she bumped into him.
They drank from their waterskins as Kira took in her surroundings. They were on a broad backbone of open ground, the mountain running away in front and behind.
West Draganin, thought Kira, remembering Caledon’s description of how the Draganin Pass twinned.
‘We could stay here,’ said Caledon, breaking into her thoughts, ‘but the land is kinder further down, with places to shelter, though I don’t think it will rain again.’
Kira groaned, exhausted. Shelter always seemed further than her legs wanted to carry her. If it weren’t for her dread that the Tremen might still be under attack, she would have given up long ago.
Caledon looked up at the sky to where a single star glimmered, bright against the purpling dusk. ‘Aeris, the wanderer’s star,’ he said, pointing, then raised the back of his hand to his forehead and murmured something in a strange tongue.
‘The night draws on, Kira. We must use the last of the light to find a good sleeping-place,’ he said, setting off again, but Kira hesitated.
They were atop the great sprawl of mountains she’d first seen on a map deep in the Warens. To go on now was to put these mountains between her and Allogrenia, a barrier she had little hope of re-crossing.
‘Kira?’
‘If I pass these mountains, I might never see my home again,’ she said miserably.
Caledon came back to her side and she smelt the sweet spice scent of him. It had become familiar now and comforting.