“Then your weight will pull me up, and off over the other side right after you! No!”
“I will drop low,” I repeated patiently. “Not off. I will use my knife to stop myself from slipping. This is dangerous, but truly, not that dangerous. Do not argue. Come here and let me tie the knots.”
“Men,” she muttered in a disgusted tone. But she did as I said.
-22-
After all our fears, the ice was not as bad to walk upon as I had expected. Strange as it had been to watch Tano’s body cant abruptly forward at so sharp a slant, when I stepped over the edge and onto the sharp drop of the ice and the same change in direction happened to me, it felt entirely normal. The world seemed to have become slanted around me, while I walked on ice that ran out utterly flat and level before me. This was not bad to walk upon. Except that this time, the empty sky fell away to both sides.
The drifting mist hid the land that lay below. Sometimes a glimpse might appear, a little patch of green very far below, where some small valley made a sheltered place for a meadow. To one side and behind us, the glorious sky. To the other side and ahead of us, the disturbing emptiness that was the shadow of the Saa’arii tide spread out. Beyond the sky in every direction, the serried heights of the mountains, one behind another as far as I could see. Dominating the view, towering above every other mountain, the great bulk of Talal Sabero. To climb to the great heights of the sacred mountain, a man needed rope and steel stakes and a hammer to drive them; and time enough; and the favor of the gods. We had none of those things now except the favor of the gods, but that was better than all the rest. From the pull, I knew Aras was far above us. He had already come to the heights of that mountain, or nearly.
Then, between one step and the next, something changed. I felt it as sharply as the crack of a whip against my skin, though it did not hurt, or not in the same way. It came so suddenly that on better ground, I might have flinched. Here, I suppressed that reflex, relaxing into the feeling that was like pain.
Before me, Lalani had gasped. She took a quick, unconsidered step and slipped, then tried to catch herself and slipped again. I dropped low, driving my knife into the ice, bracing myself, not trying to help her. One person’s struggle can unbalance someone else. If she fell, I would catch her, but if I fell, no one would catch me. So I waited. She recovered her balance after a moment and looked at me. She was panting with terror, probably for at least two reasons. “Ryo—” she began.
“Ryo!” Iro called. He had paused to turn back toward those of us behind him. “This is the tie?”
“Yes,” I agreed. “Aras is certainly calling more urgently now.” Much more urgently. He needed me—needed us all—he needed us, and we were still so far away, I could not see how any of us could come to him in time.
But we had to try, and hope the gods arranged our path to bring us to the place before it was too late. I said, “Iro, you should run as fast as you feel you can manage. Tano, the same. Lalani and I will make our way more slowly. Do not wait for us.”
Iro turned without a word and jogged away, slowly at first and then taking a faster pace. But Tano hesitated. “Ryo—” he began.
I clicked my tongue in disapproval. He checked himself, catching back the protest he wanted to make. “Better,” I told him. “Follow Iro, but only as fast as you feel is safe. Do not try to run as fast as he is running. Watch him carefully. If he falls, take better care when you come to that part of the bridge. Take more care altogether. If you both cross safely and you come up to him, take his orders. I know you may not like to, I know he has only three winters more than you—”
“I will do it,” Tano interrupted me.
“Good. Once you come to Aras, take his orders above all. Will you obey me in this?”
“Yes, Ryo.”
“Good. If Iro does not wait for you, or if he falls, then do not wait for me. Go on at your best speed. Find Aras and help him if you can.”
“Yes,” he said again, reluctantly but firmly. He began to turn away, but paused and looked back at me. “You may not believe me now, Ryo, after the other time. But I think I can hear your sister singing.” He did not wait for me to answer, but turned and jogged after Iro.
I stood still for a heartbeat, listening. Far away, just at the edge of hearing, I thought that I too might hear Etta’s high, pure voice.
“Ryo,” said Lalani. “You should get past me so you can also run. This isn’t so bad, truly. If I go slowly enough, I’ll be fine.”
For an instant, I thought of doing as she said. But for many reasons, I had already decided not to do that, and all my reasons still seemed good to me. I said, “We will walk a little faster. Only so fast as is safe.” I gestured for her to lead the way. Then I continued. “Perhaps Iro will cross safely and follow the pull of the tie and come to Aras quickly. That would be one good thing that might happen. Iro might not defend Aras with as much determination as I would, but Etta is there. He will defend her with a dedicated heart.”
“Yes, I’ll grant you that,” Lalani conceded.
“Or it might happen differently. Perhaps Iro will fall because he runs too fast. Then Tano might come to Aras, and perhaps his help might be enough. But perhaps both Iro and Tano will fall. Should that happen, we must not.”
“Well, yes, all right, I can’t argue with that.”
“Or perhaps they will both come to the mountain, but meet enemies too strong or too numerous to overcome. We will come behind them, but not so far behind. Perhaps they may clear our path. Or perhaps their battle may distract those enemies and give us a chance to slip past unnoticed.”
Lalani paused to glance at me over her shoulder. “That’s cold.”
“Iro will expect me to try to use him that way, should anything of the sort happen. If he sees too many enemies there, if he knows he is badly outmatched, he will try to lead them away from the direct path if he can, so that you and I can go on without meeting those enemies.”
“Right, yes, I bet he will,” she agreed. “Fine, Ryo, I understand, you have a lot of reasons to hold back, but I bet if I can walk faster, you won’t object to that either.” She did not lengthen her stride, but she began to walk more quickly, taking small steps. She had already learned better how to walk on the ice. She barely lifted her feet, keeping her weight on the balls of her feet rather than the heels, each foot skimming lightly along the surface of the ice.
If she slipped again, that would slow us. But I only said, “Go no more quickly than feels safe.” Then I was silent, and we both put our attention on making the best speed we could.
The urgency of the tie burned in my chest. It did not precisely hurt even now, but certainly the pull distracted me from every other pain and discomfort. I knew Aras was in danger, I wanted to be there, I knew he needed me. But the tie also told me that he still lived, and the very urgency told me that whatever was happening, our efforts had not yet been spent for nothing. Whatever peril beset him, beset them all, our enemies had not yet won, or there would be far less reason for Aras to call for help.
Also, above the sounds of the wind and my own breaths, I was certain now that I could hear my sister singing.
Lalani slipped and fell twice. Each time I caught the back of her coat as she fell, followed her down, stabbed my knife into the ice, and used that to steady us both. She made no comment either time, only got to her feet and went on.
When we began to climb—something we had to judge with our eyes, as there was no sense at all that we were walking upward—the span narrowed, and then narrowed further, until it was hardly wider than two hands. We had no choice but to go more slowly there. Before us, Talal Sabero filled all the rest of the world, rising up to the sky before us and falling away to the distant earth beneath us. But because we walked at a slant to the world, the sky seemed to lie ahead of us, and the earth seemed to stretch out behind us, not below our feet. The highest peak of the mountain reared up directly before us. Moonlight ran like water, like milk, across the stone. Even now,
as high as we had come, I could hardly imagine we could climb as far as that peak. Certainly not in time to be of any use to anyone. I set my trust in the gods to shorten our path, having no choice.
Ahead of us and to our left, in a direction that now seemed below our feet, the Saa’arii shadow tide had eaten the sky and the stone until it seemed to fill all that part of the world. It was very close, so close I could have thrown a stone into it from where I stood.
I could hear my sister plainly. She was still far away, far above us, but her voice was so clear and so high that the sound fell through the air and came to us.
She was singing in long phrases, each separated by a pause from the next. I could not make out what words she sang, if she sang in words. It was not a song I knew, though from time to time I thought I heard a phrase of melody that was like something in the song we sing to the Dawn Sisters. That seemed appropriate. Two of those three stars had now emerged from the bright area near the Moon and come closer to the earth, so bright that they blazed with a cold, vivid fire even through the wash of moonlight. The other, I was very much afraid, had gone into the Saa’arii tide.
Less good to hear than my sister’s voice, but unmistakable: I could now hear the sounds of battle. The ringing of metal against metal is a sound that carries a long way. I assumed Iro and probably Tano had met enemies. I heard the piercing scream of an eagle. We were too high above the world for ravens, but probably the eagles were impatient for an end to the battle. I wondered again what fate might come to a living man who died here. It seemed very likely I would find this out, that we would all find that out. I wished I knew something to say to Lalani, who might die so far out of her own place. She would recognize the sounds of battle as easily as I did. But there was nothing I could say. We had no choice but to go on.
And all the time, the tie dragged at me, as though I heard Aras shouting for help. The terrible sense of urgency, of desperation, made my heart pound as though I were the one in danger.
Then we came to the mountain. This happened all at once, between one step and the next, so that at one instant we were far out on the span of ice, walking upward at a steep angle that seemed level only to us, and the next we were walking along a narrow ledge of ice with the face of the mountain to either side, only a short distance below us. Except I knew it was not below us, but in front of us. I tried not to imagine how we must look, walking up what must be a nearly vertical streak of ice. Directly before us, the ice ran into the stone at an angle that seemed awkward and difficult. My ears hurt, and though the sounds of battle were much clearer, much louder, those sounds seemed muffled to me at first. I shook my head and swallowed and breathed out hard, and finally my ears cleared.
Beyond the sounds of battle, my sister’s voice came clearly, though she was still far away.
Lalani did not hesitate when she came to the stone, but stepped from the ice and took one more step forward and over the lip of stone there. Suddenly she seemed to me to be standing at a very peculiar tilt. I followed as quickly as I could, and with that last step, the world swung around me, sky and stone and earth pivoting around to take up their proper places. I had never had difficulty with high places, but that shift, I felt in my stomach. I staggered, and Lalani caught my arm. She said in a terse way that was not much like her ordinary manner, “The air is much thinner here, Ryo. Keep that in mind if you have to fight.”
I nodded. I could tell she was right; we had come very much higher in those last few steps. This was also clear when I looked around; many high peaks now fell away below us. We must be very close to the highest peak of Talal Sabero. That was good. But as we had stepped across so much distance in a heartbeat, we had not had time to become accustomed to the bad air of the heights. I had to take deep breaths, and even then I felt dizzy and light-headed. It would take me some time to become accustomed. This was unfortunate, because the sounds of battle were close, to our right and below us, no more than a bowshot or two away. I heard steel ringing against steel, but I did not hear anyone shouting or screaming. This was very different from an ordinary battle. I did not understand what I was hearing.
“Shades, I think,” Lalani said. “I think maybe the shades of your people are fighting the shadows of those Saa’arii warriors and we’re only hearing a little of what’s happening.”
She had followed my thought. Of course, she was probably as familiar as I with the clamor of ordinary battle. As soon as she suggested this, the idea seemed right. We had met no taiGara at all in all our long journey through the land of the shades—or none who had said that name and asked our names. That absence had not struck me hard, but now I realized that perhaps those shades might be here. Perhaps a great many shades might be here, of many different peoples.
Whatever was happening there, that was not our battle.
Iro was not in sight; nor was Tano. Their fate made no difference to what Lalani and I needed to do, so I tried not to wonder what might have happened to them. I looked around, judging the best way to follow the pull of the tie without coming nearer the sounds of battle.
The slope was steep here, but the footing was not bad. More ice streaked the mountain’s face above us, but little lay across the ledges where we would have to walk. We could go to the right or the left. Unless the gods tilted the world for us, we could not walk straight up the mountain. I tested that, setting my foot against the sheer face of the stone, but the world did not shift to let me walk up the cliff. I put my foot down again and gestured to the left, away from the ringing of sword against sword. That direction was not right, but that was the only obvious way we could go. There was something like a path there, where the stone had cracked and some of it had fallen to make a wide ledge.
The urgency of the tie had eased a little. I had not realized that until this moment, but now I felt the difference. I hoped that meant the danger Aras faced was less. It might mean Iro had already found him. Perhaps Tano as well. He certainly felt close now, much closer than before. I hoped very much that were so.
“Go ahead of me,” I told Lalani. She nodded and wordlessly did as I said, scrambling up the steep rocks with little difficulty because of her long limbs. Where her strength was not enough, she set her foot on my hand and I lifted her up. This kind of movement pulled hard at the cuts across my stomach. I set the pain aside. There was nothing to be done, and I was reasonably confident most of the stitches would hold.
Lalani did not speak much. Nor did I. The thin air was difficult. I could not spare breath for talking, even if I had not been concerned that enemies might hear us. Behind us, the ringing of swords gradually fell away. We turned back across the face of the mountain, and then turned again, however the footing was better and the way lay upward. Eventually, I realized we had come to a true path, though a difficult one. Every now and then, a steel spike driven into the stone showed where someone had once climbed to the heights by this same path.
After a time, I could not tell how long, we came to a good ledge where we could stand and breathe, and paused there. The tie still pulled hard and I knew we could not stop long, but we were both tired. Only then I followed her gaze out and down, and almost forgot the tie.
Below us, the shadow of the Saa’arii tide crossed the face of the mountain. The stone disappeared into the ragged edge of that empty darkness—a terrifyingly broad swath of the world seemed to disappear there—and now we could see how the edge of that shadow was eating away at the mountain, chewing its way up higher and higher, the way moving water throws spray up a stone. All along that edge, the strange, dark shadows of Saa’arii warriors fought opponents I could not see.
The Saa’arii seemed carved of empty blackness in the moonlight, without true substance, yet somehow hard-edged. Their armor seemed glittered, blackly transparent. Their weapons were the same, gleaming and black.
All along the edge of the shadow tide, the shades of many, many Ugaro had met those shadow warriors, and fought now to hold them back. Most of the shades were invisible to my eyes, but her
e and there one took a form I could see, though misty and indistinct. In one place, I saw the shade of a warrior mounted on a pony. Others must have been there with that warrior, for he did not fight in the manner of a man alone. But I could not see those people—I could barely see the pony, which seemed to my eyes like an animal made of air. The warrior cut down one of the shadow warriors, but then was thrown down himself by a blindingly fast strike from another. The pony leaped away, trampling the fallen enemy and wheeling, angry and fierce.
The shade of a great wolf hit the shadow warrior from the other side, tearing at his neck, as though white mist struck at shadows. Both shattered into shards of light and darkness. The shade of the pony lunged forward, biting as a stallion will bite, seizing an enemy I could not see, shaking his head to tear his enemy, then rearing up to strike with his hooves. I saw the shadow of another enemy there only as the stallion tore it to pieces.
In another place, three—four—five shadow warriors went down, one after another, very fast, crushed and broken beneath impossibly fast and powerful blows. At first I could not guess what opponent they faced; those blows had not been struck by man or wolf or stallion. Then moonlight glimmered along the barest outline of an enormous tiger’s face and neck and shoulder as the shade of the great beast turned to look for further prey. The air shivered with the faintest echo of his coughing roar, and enemies fell back before him.
But for all that, for everything the taiGara and the wolves and even the vast shade of the tiger could do, some of the shadow warriors that came out of the Saa’arii tide were getting past the shades of my people, making their way upward with fixed intent. They did not care about this battle at all; that was plain to me. They wanted to reach Inhejeriel and kill her. After that, they would have everything their own way. They cared about nothing else. That was what I thought when I saw the determination of our enemies, the way they disregarded the shades that tried to beat them back and hold them from the heights.
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