I glanced at Inhejeriel. She was sitting with her legs tucked up and her head bowed. She had not looked up when the wolves began singing. She trusted my opinion regarding the wolves—or she was too weary to care whether they might be dangerous.
When the waterskin came to me, I drank and then weighed the rest of the water in my hand and gave it back to Aras. “You did not drink enough. Drink as much as you want and give the rest to Geras.”
“We don’t need more,” he told me in darau. “Our people don’t need nearly as much water as yours.”
I paused. I had never noticed any such difference. Geras, leaning comfortably back on one elbow, said, “He’s right, Ryo. We drink more when water’s easy to come by, but we don’t need nearly as much as you do. You’ve never traveled with Lau in the drylands or you’d have noticed.”
“Nearly all of the summer country is drier than the borderlands, generally very much drier,” Aras added. “Towns and cities follow the rivers and the coasts of the Long Sea, or pipe water from a distance, or build deep cisterns and hope the rains arrive in their proper season. Around the bitter lakes of Surakaket, in addition to the public cisterns, every family has their own still, by which they distill lake water and make water to drink.”
“Bitter lakes?” Etta said doubtfully.
Aras smiled. “This is not the same meaning as bitter feeling. Bitter water is hard to describe. It’s salty, but not only salty. It’s not potable—”
That word had been in darau. It was not a common word. “Drinkable,” I said. “This water is poisonous?”
“Thank you, Ryo. Drinkable. Yes, that water is poisonous to people, and to most kinds of animals. A few kinds of fish, not many, can live in water like that. Large flocks of birds live around those lakes, where there are fewer people. They feed in the waters. A little like a heron, but different. Pink.”
“Pink herons,” my sister repeated, raising her eyebrows.
“The color of flowers, I promise you. Anyway, Geras and I do not need more water right now. Your people should finish this.”
I had been distracted, thinking of flocks of herons as pink as flowers, but after a moment, I drank again and passed the waterskin to Etta. She drank a little more, then broke a piece off her journey stick, but before she put it in her mouth, Iro lifted a hand and she stilled. Everyone stilled, following the direction of his gaze. Wolf tracks were coming toward us, visible where patches of snow lay. The shadow of the wolf rippled over the grass, strangely translucent. Iro had noticed before I had.
I got to my feet. Everyone was getting up. Geras had a hand to the hilt of his sword. Though he had risen as well, Iro said, “There is no need to be concerned. She is not offended, only curious, or she would not come so directly.”
I nodded. I thought he was right. Probably she was indeed curious to see Lau and Tarashana here—or living people. As Iro said, most likely this wolf was female, judging from the size of her tracks where she crossed through patches of snow, though she had an uncommon length of stride.
The wolf halted near us, not couching in a threatening way, but standing square. Then she came into our sight. She was like a wolf made of air, of mist, but I could see her clearly. Her head was elegant, her chest deep and narrow, her legs, as I had guessed, even longer than usual for a wolf. Her head was tilted like the head of a curious dog, one who is ready to be friendly. She was gazing at Etta. Then she turned her head, considering Aras. Geras stepped half in front of him, not drawing his sword, but ready to do it. Aras said nothing, but he permitted Geras to take that position.
Then, instead of the wolf, a young woman stood there. Every feature was that of a woman. But not an Ugaro woman. To my astonishment, to everyone’s astonishment, this was a Lau woman. There was no color to her; she was made of air, of mist, but her long limbs and slender build and narrow, elegant face were all most perfectly those of a Lau. She tilted her head in the same way as before, but now her smile was a woman’s smile rather than the smile of a wolf. She asked the Lau, in darau, “Are you friends of these Ugaro people?”
Aras answered softly, “Yes, we are.” His expression was difficult to read. He had recovered from his own surprise and now studied the woman with great curiosity.
The woman smiled at him. Then she asked Etta, in taksu, “Little sister, are you a friend of these Lau?”
“We are all friends here!” Etta agreed. “You must have been a very great friend to some Ugaro people to come here to this place. But I do not know your name. Are you ... what people are yours?”
The woman who had been a wolf smiled. “I had many names in life, but that is past. My skull rests in the tomb of my people, so I have found joy in the land of the shades. It is not easy for Ugaro and Lau to be friends to one another in the land of the living. I hope that your friendship may bring you both joy while you live, little sister.” Then she looked at me and Iro. “But you must take care, warriors! The tiger is hunting near this place. When the scent of living people comes to him, he may be curious.”
I nodded to her. “We are grateful for your warning.”
“Yes, thank you, sister!” Etta said. “We will be careful.” She was smiling, delighted, but she had not forgotten why we had come here, because she said then, “We are going to Talal Sabero. Do you know a short path to come there?”
The woman who had been a wolf tilted her head the other way. “If the gods are pleased to shorten your path, then the path will be short. I wish you luck on your quest, you who are friends with Lau, and more than luck: I wish that all shades will help you and the gods favor you.”
In the near distance, a single wolf sang, a long, lingering song that rose to the sky. The woman who had been a wolf shivered. Suddenly she had a wolf’s head atop a woman’s neck and shoulders. This looked peculiar, but not wrong, much as the Lakasha-erra seemed so strange, yet not wrong.
“Sister!” Etta said to her. “How do you do that? Is that something you choose to do?”
The shade of the Lau woman took an entirely human form again, smiling at my sister. “Sometimes I am a wolf for the joy of running.” Suddenly she was entirely a wolf again, narrow-chested and long-legged. The other wolf, her unseen companion, sang out once more, a thin, clear-toned call that seemed to echo in the air for a long time after silence fell, and the wolf who had been a woman turned and loped away. Before she had gone ten strides, she was invisible, only her tracks showing where she ran.
More wolves began singing, very close. At least four wolves. Then more. Many more, until I could not count all the voices. The sound of their singing echoed and re-echoed from the mountains, until wolves seemed everywhere, all around us.
In every direction great trees appeared, towering spruce and fir and larch, as though mist burned away to reveal those trees, though there had been no mist. We stood now in the great forest far to the south, not high in the northern mountains. Almost before I realized this, a little distance away, not far, one of the small deer, a stag, leaped out of the air and dashed away, not floundering in the deep drifts of snow as he would have in the land of the living, but bounding lightly across the surface. He was neither the red of deer in the summer nor gray as in the winter, but a soft, misty white. Other deer followed the first, some visible, but more revealed only by their tracks.
The wild, beautiful singing of the wolves stopped, and then the wolves poured past, pursuing the deer. As with the deer, a few of the wolves were visible—misty white like the stag—but many we could not see at all, only their tracks.
Then they were gone, deer and wolves together, and the great trees with them, and we stood again in the high mountain valley, where we had stood before.
For a long moment, everyone was silent. Then Geras, beside me, exhaled slowly. “That was ... did that really happen? Is it likely to happen again?”
“Who can say?” Etta said. “Things like that happen here. Except for a wolf who turns into a Lau! I have never heard any tale where such a thing happened!”
�
�I think that this was a good thing to happen,” I said. “I think the taiGara and all Ugaro shades will be less concerned that we brought Lau here after seeing that woman greet us in that way.”
My sister nodded, smiling. “I think that could be so. I think it will be so! I think that is why she greeted us—one reason why. I wonder very much how that woman came here!”
Aras said, his tone bemused, “I think ... never mind. Remind me later and I’ll tell you who I think our unlikely visitor might have been.” Everyone looked at him in astonishment of a different kind, and he said, “You children are all too young to have heard the tale, probably, though I imagine your people know it. It is not important now. You know, if I hadn’t seen that woman with my eyes, I would have had no idea she was there. I don’t think I can hear shades at all.” He was looking at Inhejeriel. “Perhaps we should have expected that.”
The old dead, the old shades here are not important, whispered Inhejeriel.
“She did not mean that as it sounded,” Aras said at once.
No, no, no offense, I meant no offense, only those who are lost, the desolate lost, all our lost, those are not the same as those who have taken the proper path and come to the proper place.
No one could be angry at that. I said, to turn the subject, “Etta, if you ask the gods to turn our path toward Talal Sabero, we may hope they might hear you.”
“Yes,” Etta said. She was still gazing after the wolf who had also been a woman. But now she turned and smiled at Aras. “Later, if the chance comes, I would like to hear that story.” Then she said to me, “Yes, Ryo, I will try. There is no song already made for that. Let me think.” She added “I can think while I walk. Probably it would be better to sing while I walk.”
“Close together,” I said. “Iro—”
Iro nodded. “Yes.” He swung his pack to his shoulders and shifted his weight, making sure he could reach the hilt of his sword easily. He looked speculatively the way we had been going, toward the impassable cliffs he had described. The great mountain of Talal Sabero must lie beyond, but we could not see the mountain from this place. The light of the moon turned the pale stone of the surrounding cliffs pure white, setting aglow the ice that streaked those cliffs. Snow began to fall, though the sky was high and crystalline and perfectly clear; the flakes caught the moonlight, so that sparks of silvery fire seemed to fall all around us, melting as they touched the green grasses. The air had fallen utterly still. I could hear the soft whisper of the falling snow. The sound was familiar and peaceful. More important, it was not loud enough to mask the sound of a tiger’s footfall.
I said, “We will walk quietly. Iro and I will be listening, so do not speak unless you have something to say. Etta, if you sing, that is different; do not hesitate. If we come to a cliff that we cannot climb, we will think about what to do, but if the gods tilt our path in some way that is more helpful, perhaps we will not face that kind of problem.” I added, to Inhejeriel, “I hope you can walk for a little while.”
I can walk. I will walk as far as I must.
I nodded, thought I doubted very much she could walk far. I said only, “Stay close to Etta. If there is any kind of danger, we can protect you both more easily if you are close together.” Then I added to Geras, “If there is a tiger, stand back to back and use your swords to keep him at a distance. I know it will be hard if we cannot see him, but we will try to give him reason to seek easier prey.”
“Oh, this sounds fine,” Geras muttered. “Can the weapons of living people even touch one of these invisible shades?”
“Tales say one thing and another thing,” I admitted. “But I do not know what else we can do should something of the kind happen. Is everyone ready? Then we will go on.” I nodded to Iro, who turned and set our direction, along the length of the valley.
Our steps shushed softly through the grass. The leather straps of my pack creaked gently with my movements. Though I saw nothing, I heard the small fluttering noise of a bird and a delicate rippling splash that was not quite the sound of the stream itself—an ousel, perhaps, from the sound. The moonlight poured down, turning the whole world luminous, so the running water seemed filled with light. We could see the whole width of the valley, but that was not very reassuring, as we already knew we would not see any shade that did not choose to be visible to our eyes.
Before we had gone very far, Etta began to hum quietly, almost too quietly for me to hear her, though we walked close together—
— we no longer walked through the valley. The stream no longer ran beside us, and the grass had gone, and the valley walls had opened out or fallen away or disappeared so that now to every side was only stone and light. All around us, the high, jagged peaks of the mountains rose up, streaked with ice that glowed like white fire in the moonlight. We stood upon a narrow ledge, hardly the width of a man’s outstretched arm, that ran along the face of a cliff. The rock lay broken and uncertain underfoot, and here, unlike within the protection of the valley, the wind came sharply, gusting hard from unpredictable directions. This meant no snow clung to the stone, but though there was no snow, there was plenty of ice.
Inhejeriel caught at me, and Geras grabbed Aras by the arm. Aras did not appear to need this assistance, but he certainly made no objection. His eyes were wide as he glanced to one side and the other. To the right, empty air fell away for a long distance. Far below, the silver thread of a stream might run through a valley, but I was not even certain I saw the glint of water, far less whether it was the stream and the valley where we had walked a moment before. To the left, a steep, high cliff rose, higher than I could see, ice running down its face, glimmering white in the flooding moonlight.
I could not tell in what direction the ledge ran, nor where we stood now compared to where we had been. I was completely disoriented. I turned to look in every direction as I tried to decide where we stood, but I did not recognize the shapes of the mountain peaks around and above and below us.
Ahead of me, Iro had also paused. He had been looking around as I had, but now, catching my eye, he pointed ahead. Our ledge led that way and then either turned around the shoulder of the mountain and continued or perhaps ended; from where we stood, I could not tell. Beyond that place, jagged crests of gray stone and white ice ran up and up, leading the eye out to the view of endless mountain peaks.
“Talal Sabero!” Iro called to me. Only then did I realize that Iro was not pointing along the ridge, but into the bright moonlit distance, where the sacred mountain, so much taller than the rest, stood against the sky.
“Good to have it in sight again,” Geras said. “I guess. Maybe, if the gods are generous enough, we’ll get there in six steps instead of the six weeks it looks like it ought to take.”
Iro started to answer him, but Etta interrupted him, her tone uneasy. “Ryo, what is that? Between us and Talal Sabero. Not a cloud ... not mist ... what is it?”
-17-
Between the place where we stood and Talal Sabero, stretching across sky and stone, lay a broad streak of ... something. Certainly not any cloud or mist, though it was a little like that. This was something else. An emptiness. To me, it seemed as though the sky and the mountains in that place had been erased, leaving nothing at all.
“That looks very wrong,” Etta said. “I think that is completely wrong.”
The dark tide, whispered Inhejeriel. She was staring at that smear of absence, her eyes wide and both her hands pressed to her lips. A shadow, the shadow of the black tide; the shadow of the dark tide has fallen here, into the land of the shades.
Aras asked sharply, “How is that possible?” Then he demanded, “Did you know your enemies could send a shadow of their darkness even here?”
Inhejeriel spread her hands, not in a gesture of concession, not in a gesture that asked for mercy, but in a gesture that I did not know. She said, I did not know, I did not know, but I see now they would try. Of course they would try, they know where I must go, they know they must prevent me from coming to the
heights of Sabahaje, to the heights where the mountain touches the sky. They have cast their shadow not only here, but through all the layers of the world, all the sky and the earth and all the lands below the earth. I am sorry, I am sorry, I should have understood they would cast their shadow here if they could, but still I must go on. Please, you must help me to go on.
A sickening wave of dread and despair washed through her silent words. Everyone felt it. I stepped close to her, setting my hands on her shoulders. Etta caught her breath, pressing a hand to her lips in exactly the same gesture as Inhejeriel. Iro pulled my sister to lean against him, though he did not cease his watchful attention to our surroundings.
“I believe ...” Aras said, and paused. He seemed impervious to her distress, his tone merely thoughtful as he studied the streak of emptiness. He added, even more thoughtfully, “I believe this probably means you are indeed a considerable threat to them. Why else would they trouble themselves? That seems reassuring, in a way. Can they attack you directly?”
They can die, whispered Inhejeriel. They can die, the warriors of the Saa'arii, and send their shades through the shadow of the dark tide. They will hunt me ... and they know where I must go. They know I must go to Sabahaje. They will put themselves between me and the high place if they can.
Geras said in darau, “Sure looks like they've done that already. Looks to me like we won’t have much choice but to go right into that gods-hated shadow, if we're heading for that mountain up there.”
“Perhaps the gods will be so generous as to rearrange our path,” Aras suggested. “I know, Geras, you aren’t particularly pleased to hazard everything on the generosity of the gods. That’s not my first choice either, I agree.”
Geras answered him, but I did not hear what he said. Inhejeriel was speaking, her voice coming differently, very clearly. We will go on. We will find a way. You will help me, you will all help me, you must bend all your strength to help me, because if I am defeated, your people will also be defeated. The Saa’arii will make the border shift.
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