Wheel of the Winds

by M J Engh

  “Look,” Repnomar said suddenly. “Ahead and up.” And for a time they stood all three staring. What reeds still grew here were thin and scattered, and they had a clear view of what hung softly shining, low in the black sky ahead. “What do you make of it?” the Captain asked, and there was an unaccustomed tinge of awe in her voice.

  Lethgro, after a moment, cleared his throat and answered, “It's not the Soll we're coming to, Rep. It's the Mountains.”

  10

  Walking

  It's land, I suppose,” the Captain said reflectively. “But I wouldn't moor a boat to it.”

  “If you had no other choice—” Lethgro began, but the Captain interrupted, saying, “There's always a choice, if you look for it.”

  What they sat on, though indeed it was land enough for sitting, was not much more, being spongy watery stuff like fleeces of sodden wool. Yet it seemed to serve as shore to that mucky Reed Soll behind them, and their legs were tired with the wading. So they had chosen to sit, as soon as sitting was possible, searching no farther for solid ground; and they sat now and gazed at the glowing peaks before them. The Captain, who had never seen a mountain till now, was hard put to understand how the summits could shine out like lamps while all the lower slopes were dark and unseen, till the Exile declared that they were like distant ships, whose rigging you may see while their hulls are still hidden; but on that word she jumped up, saying, “Then let's move on, for it will be a long journey on foot,” and the Warden had to remind her, with something like a groan, that they had not waded that muck-field to seek the Mountains, but the Exile's precious things.

  These, however, they seemed not likely to find at once. The Exile—who, it appeared, had counted on somehow recognizing the place as soon as they came into darkness—confessed that all hereabouts was as unfamiliar to him as to the others. The Warden was for searching left and right along the shore (such as the shore was) till they found the place; but the Exile seemed now uncertain in his mind, looking often toward the lit peaks, and at last declared that he had been slightly mistaken, and the precious things were waiting at the other edge of the darkness.

  “What other edge?” the Warden said ungraciously, for he did not much like the sound of this remark. But the Captain, who had sat down again when it appeared they were going nowhere for the time, now turned quickly to the Exile, asking, “How far?” as if it seemed reasonable to her that darkness should have edges like a pancake.

  At this the Exile began to speak apologetically of the shape of the world, declaring that it was round like an apple ("It's what I've always said,” said Repnomar) and added that as all things balance, so the world was half light and half dark.

  “By which you mean,” Repnomar asked after a minute's thought, “that your things are halfway around the world from here?” And Lethgro shuddered inwardly, for he thought her voice had a dangerous ring to it, part angry and part eager. And the Exile answered yes.

  “Well,” Repnomar said with decision, and once more leaping up, so that the spongy bank quivered under them, “the longer we sit here, the hungrier we'll be before we get there.”

  The Warden took her firmly by the arm, reaching up for a good grasp. “Hold still for a while, Repnomar,” he said. “It was your mad steering out of Beng harbor that started us on this miserable voyage. But we're on land now, or what passes for land in this godforsaken country, so get your hand off the tiller.”

  “Where would you steer us to, Lethgro?” the Captain demanded impatiently. And he answered without much hesitation, “Upstream, if you can call it that.”

  Repnomar snorted. “Wade through the muck, pole ourselves through the marsh, sail against the current till we come to the falls—for what, Lethgro? You want us to climb that cliff and wave good-bye to the Mouse and my crew again, and build a new ship, and sail upstream like rain falling upward, and fight through the midges and the pirates, and row ourselves across the Soll (for we'll be long past Windfall, and no current that way to carry us), and hand ourselves over to Beng Council?”

  “Better a journey on water you can see than on land you can't,” Lethgro said. “And better journeying to a place you know is there, than searching in the dark for a place that's always on the far side of something else.”

  Repnomar would have answered; but now it was the Exile who sprang up (clumsily enough), saying that all this was needless, and thanking them very courteously for their kindness to him. And with no more words he turned away and trudged off into the darkness.

  Broz rose with a whine, and the Captain lunged forward to stop the Exile by what means she might; but it was the Warden who settled matters, standing up with an angry snort and shouting out that if they were all crazy enough to do this thing, they should at least find food before they started. So the Captain laughed, and the Exile turned back sheepishly, protesting many times that there was no need for them to come with him; but the Warden only grunted. He was angry with himself for ever beginning this journey, which was like a path with no end and no room to turn around in; for certainly the Captain's talk of what it would be like to go back was true enough, and certainly it would have been a hard thing to see the Exile walk off alone into that darkness half a world wide. “But,” said Lethgro, as he scooped little shellfish out of the oozy mud with his fingers, “it will be more miracle than I've ever seen if we live to see the light again.”

  Shellfish, it seemed likely, would be what they lived on, together with certain little bulbs from the roots of the sword-reeds. They found no fish in the mucky waters they had last waded through; and though they heard rustles in the reeds, and the crows found small things enough creeping in the mosses of the bank, neither Broz nor the others could raise any game—"or,” said Lethgro, “catch it if we raised it.” So they filled their pockets with the little shells (no bigger, mostly, than Lethgro's thumbnail) and the fleshy bulbs, and the Exile filled a flask he had brought all the way from the Mouse, straining marsh water into it through a corner of his shirt. For, as he said, they did not know when they would come to water again; and Repnomar thought this so prudent that she filled the little bailer that dangled always at her belt. But the Warden was more troubled by their lack of fuel, either for heat or for light, so that in the end he gathered a great bundle of dead reeds and spongy mosses, and slung this from one shoulder, keeping his bow and quiver handy on the other. “And Broz could carry a load, too,” he told the Captain. “We've carried him far enough.”

  “Broz is no sheep to carry freight,” the Captain retorted. “And if we raise game, he'd better be free to chase it, without a pile of sticks on his back.” So they set out, with the bright peaks before them, and all around the darkness of a ship's hold with all hatches sealed, and the ground like wet sponges under their feet.

  This was slow going at first. But presently the Captain took the lead, leaning forward into the wind, and the journey went more swiftly. For the Captain, quite against her expectation, found this quaggy navigation in the dark so much to her liking that before long she had laid bets with the others that they would reach the lit peaks within twenty watches, “though we waste ten of them sleeping. For,” she said, “it can't be longer than the way from Beng to Sollet Castle.”

  This the Warden disputed. “You're too used to judging the distance of a sail on open water, Rep, where you have a good idea of the size of what you're looking at. Those peaks might be a thousand feet high or ten thousand—and the taller they are, the farther they are. And even if your guess is right, I've wasted sixteen watches between Beng and Sollet Castle many a time—and that was by canal and trodden road, that didn't sink and squelch underfoot, and in the light. So I'll take your bet, and your money too, if we ever come again where we can spend it.”

  “Wasted is right,” said Repnomar. “That's the pace of the Sollet traders ambling along with their laden sheep, and those so-called boats on the canal, that are no more than wool carts set afloat. On your own, Lethgro, with hunger to swell your sails, you could have done it in
half the time. As for this boggy ground, it's no worse than a dinghy on choppy water; and you've said yourself” (as indeed he had) “that it will get firmer as the land rises. And as for the dark—”

  Here she stumbled and swore, giving Lethgro time to put in morosely, “As for the light, we'll find it on the other side of the world, if we get there, but that doesn't help us see our feet on this side.”

  “Even in the dark, you can see a little,” the Captain persisted (though in fact she could not see her hand before her face, for she did not like to admit that this darkness was deeper than the familiar darkness of under-hatches). “And if we were blind as oysters, we still have Broz's nose and our own ears to pilot us, and the wind and that landmark to steer by.” Here she pointed toward the glowing peaks, not caring that no one saw her gesture. “So don't toddle along like a baby, Lethgro. Stretch your legs! What is it you're afraid you'll bump into—a tree, or a stone wall?”

  “It's more what we're likely to fall into worries me,” Lethgro answered. “You can stride along as you like, Repnomar; but it's the rest of us who'll be hauling you out if you step into a pit, or a river, or quicksand. And if it's a cliff you step off the edge of, there'll be no hauling.”

  “I'll yell as I go down,” Repnomar said unrepentantly, “so you can back away when you hear me.” But the Exile was much of the Warden's opinion, and suggested by way of pleasing all (at least in part) that they rope themselves together as mountaineers sometimes do. And this is what they did, the Captain insisting only that Broz must not be roped. “For,” she said, “he's the one of us least likely to fall off the edge of anything—having four feet and a good nose—and he can't go after game if he's tied to us.” So they fastened themselves together like a line of floats along the edge of a net, using the rope from Repnomar's sail (which she had carried in a coil on her shoulder), and went on again. The Captain still led, but now the Warden went last, to have the most weight at the end of the line in case of trouble; and Broz snuffed and rummaged around them, seeming to turn up creatures now and then that led him on short dashes in the dark, but never getting his teeth into his quarry.

  It was a strange feeling to walk thus blindly into the dark, and not least so for the Captain, however boldly she strode along. Indeed, every stride for her was like the leap from the waterfall, a plunge into unknown space. But she said nothing of this, thinking that someone must be first on the rope, and that it would be a slow journey if the leader shrank from every shadow in a country where all was shadow. She believed, too, that the Exile could still see even in this blackness (for she had heard him muttering agreement when she spoke of seeing a little in the dark) and would give warning if they came close to any serious obstacle.

  Certainly there were urgent reasons to cover ground as fast as might be. In all her life the Captain had never lacked for water, but she had heard tales of travelers strayed in the dry plains of Perra, maddened and dead for want of it, and this within no more than a dozen watches. How much drink it would take to save them from the same end, she did not know; but the Exile's flask and the little bailer she cherished in her hand, swearing between her teeth when any drop splashed out, seemed small defense against the dark width of the world.

  And not dark merely. The warmth seemed to have vanished with the light, and the wind sang cold in their ears. The Captain's mouth shaped into a hard line as she thought of the watches to come when they must contrive to sleep somehow. Fuel they had, on the Warden's shoulder, but still damp and too little to squander, whether for heat or light. And what food they might find, in this sightless desolation, was beyond the Captain's guess. For all these reasons, she thought it well to move as fast as they might, and swung her legs in a long stride that compelled the Exile to jog along behind her like a puppy pulled on a leash. But with every step she took, her muscles braced against whatever her foot might come down upon. Sometimes it was a pool of icy water, sometimes a hard ledge of stone that jarred her leg to the hip, but most often it was a spongy wetness that sank unwholesomely beneath her tread. She walked with one hand stretched out before her, while the other steadied the bailer full of water against her waist; for, despite her mocking of Lethgro, her mind's eye conjured up trees and stone walls in plenty, and worse imaginings. Meanwhile, her bodily eyes saw nothing, turn them where she would, except the far peaks, glowing between the dark above and the dark below like the rough teeth of some great god that gaped for them.

  Gods, it seemed, were on all their minds, Broz perhaps excepted. The Warden muttered prayers as he went, naming every god known or hoped to care for travelers; and after a time the Exile, hurrying his trot to get a little closer to the Captain, asked her if it was thought that gods lived in darkness or perhaps in light. To which the Captain replied shortly that in her experience they lived in empty heads and the pockets of priests, both of which were dark enough. But she kept her eyes on the lit peaks.

  It was traveling like this, with eyes lifted and arm outstretched and feet finding their own way, that she came crack against some obstruction in the dark, and for a little while could not so much as mutter an oath, but stood silent and rocking a little on her legs, so that the others crowded into her before they were well aware of trouble, and then fell to questioning her anxiously, and the Captain answered, through her teeth, “Knocked my knee against one of those stone walls, Lethgro.” And when they felt it out with their hands, it was stone indeed, though whether to call it a wall was less easily settled.

  “Stone like this didn't cut and set itself,” the Captain argued. She sat now on the top of it (for it stood less than waist high), rubbing her knee tenderly. “There are people in this country, and that means food and drink.”

  “Or were people once,” the Warden answered; “if this is cut stone indeed, which from the feel of it I doubt. If this was ever a wall, it's long since in ruin. Your people may have died out a thousand years ago, Rep.” He spoke with some assurance, for he had been born in Rotl, where stone walls were not uncommon, and knew that one reason stone was so prized as a building material was that (besides being expensive and hard to come by) it lasted forever.

  But the Captain maintained that whatever it was she sat on, it had been built by human hands, for it was made of smooth upright columns set close together, each as thick as the Mouse's mainmast and neatly squared. “Or six-sided,” the Warden said, running his hand thoughtfully along the rock face.

  “The more sides, the more work it took,” said the Captain. “Do those angles feel like accidents to you, Lethgro?”

  Lethgro blinked his eyes uncertainly—a useless motion in the dark. If this were a wall, it would be a very strange one, filled to the top as it was on the far side with solid earth or rock. “It might be a terrace wall,” he said dubiously, peering up into the blackness ahead in the questionable hope of seeing the lights of some fort or castle there. For in such a country, he thought, what welcome would a fort give to strangers out of the dark?

  Here the Exile, who had been feeling his way along the row of columns, returned, saying that he knew these stones. But when the Captain had jumped up in excitement and sat down again, cursing the pain in her knee, and the Warden had clapped him on the back, asking eagerly how far they were from his precious things, it transpired that they had been misled by the Exile's clumsy speech. Indeed, he meant no more than that he had seen such stones in his own world; worse, that he knew them to be an accident of nature and built by no hand at all. For, as he explained it, all this rock must once have been hot and flowing like melted wax; and as it cooled, these columns had shaped themselves, as frost crystals form out of cooling air, or arrowheads of ice along the edges of a freezing pool. And when the Captain asked him where was the heat that could melt rock, he answered that in this world he did not know, but that in many worlds such heat lurked underground, melting great beds of rock and spewing it forth in fountains and streams, so that it hardened sometimes into mountains that opened now and then to spew again.

  The Warden sa
id that in all his years at Sollet Castle he had never heard of such, though strange things enough and stranger tales came down from the Mountains. Nevertheless all their eyes rose again to the peaks before them, as if those shining rocks were strange sponges that had soaked up all the light of the world and must now soak up the beams of their eyesight. And they shivered in the cold wind, so that the Captain said brusquely that they had best move on, unless they wanted to sit till they turned to frost crystals themselves.

  So they roped again and clambered over the little wall and pushed on, the ground hard now and drier, being mostly bare rock so far as they could tell. The Captain was glad enough that the others could not see how she walked, for the pain in her knee, though it did not slow her down much, constrained her to a clumsy and uncaptainly limp.

  When at last they stopped to camp, they were all bone-weary, and yet the peaks seemed no nearer than when they had first caught sight of them. “Nevertheless we've come a long way,” said the Warden, “both forward and up.” For the ground had risen always, sometimes at a steady slope, sometimes in giant stairsteps of rock, faced with those angled columns that had so puzzled them at first. In places these were so tall that they had been hard put to manage a way up them, the Captain scrambling sometimes onto the Warden's shoulders before she could find the top, and poor Broz roped after all in a rude harness and hauled up like so much cargo. And the wind whistled and shrilled down those vast steps, buffeting them as they climbed. At the foot of such walls there would be many loose stones and sometimes whole columns lying flat—cracked away and fallen from the rock face, so the Exile said.

  Now the Warden spread his fuel out to dry as well as it might, and with much difficulty got a little fire burning in the corner between two rocks, so that they were able to roast some of their shellfish and make a scanty meal—all the scantier because the Captain insisted that Broz must have his share. Certainly the question of food now loomed large before them, and one by one they cast hard looks at the crows. These had taken the journey quietly enough, clutched one on the Captain's shoulder and one on the Exile's, and now scavenged uneasily around the campfire, picking at the empty shells and scratching through the Warden's fuel for edibles. But for the time, at least, all bellies had their bit, and the water was shared out so sparingly that the Exile's flask was untouched and a little remained even in the Captain's bailer, though she had to cover it with a rock to keep Broz from finishing it. They had good hope, besides, of finding a stream or spring or pool, for in many places the rocks were damp. “And it's too bad,” the Captain said, “that the crows can't see to scout for us.”