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‘What’s he been doing?’
‘Whoring after strange gods. Gods? Did I say gods? One of the three hundred sixty-four kinds of demon, more like! False gods, anyway. They’re supposed to be new gods. Now I ask you. If a god wasn’t around to help make the world, what kind of a god can she be? Gods don’t just pop up all of a sudden like, out of nowhere, appearing at your table like some unmarried uncle in search of a dinner!’
Jahdo giggled.
‘Just so.’ Meer nodded firmly. ‘But for some years now these false prophets have been coming round, preaching these new gods to anyone stupid enough to listen. These so-called seers come from the wild tribes of the far north, where the demons have been appearing and working marvels, or so they say. Alshandra’s the name they mention most, a powerful goddess of war, or so they call her.’
‘Your people, they’d be liking her, then.’
‘Just so. But most of these prophets are gone now. Some got themselves caught and strangled in the public square by the authorities, and the rest haven’t been seen for some while. They’ve turned sensible, if you take my meaning, but a few fools have listened to them. And my brother, my own blood kin, little Svar as I’ll always think of him, he’s one of them, claiming allegiance to this Alshandra creature. It broke my mother’s heart.’
‘I’ll wager it did. That be too bad, Meer, really tis so.’ Jahdo was trying to imagine what the mother of a man such as Meer would be like – even more formidable than his own mother, he supposed. ‘I guess she could talk no sense into him, huh?’
‘No one could make him listen to reason, no one, not our mother, not our aunts, not our uncles. But anyway, some weeks ago Thavrae led his men out east.’
‘Why?’
‘Well, partly to spare our city outright war between his warband and that of his rivals. He did listen to our mother about that, when she begged him to take his men away before citizen slaughtered citizen in the streets. The authorities wanted to strangle him for blasphemy, you see, but you don’t just arrest a razkan when he’s got his warband round him.’
‘Then he does have some honour left.’
‘Some, truly, though a poor comfort to our mother it is.’
‘Wait a moment. You said these demons live in the north, right? Why did Thavrae head east?’
‘I’m coming to that part. Hush. Apparently he’d received an omen from the gods, sending him to fetch a particular thing from the lands of the Slavers.’
‘What was it?’
‘How would I know? But I was sent to find him and beg him to come home.’
‘Sent by your mother?’
‘Just so.’
‘Do you think you – I mean we – can find him?’
‘I don’t know.’ Meer sighed, running both hands through his tangled mane of hair. ‘By now he and his men should have found whatever this mysterious object is and be returning. I hope we’ll meet them on the road back.’
‘What road? We don’t even know where we’re going.’
‘True.’
‘Then how do you think we’ll ever find him?’
‘If I can get within a reasonable distance, the brother bond will guide us.’
‘The what?’
‘The brother bond.’ Meer hesitated for a long time. ‘Now, that’s one thing I can never explain to you, Jahdo, even if you were to walk away again and leave me here to starve. It’s a magick, and some magicks are Gel da’Thae. They cannot be shared. In the temple we swear holy vows.’
‘Well, all right, then. My mam does always say that if you swear a thing, it’s needful for you to do it. But I still don’t see how we’re going to find him. What if he goes north and we go south or somewhat like that?’
‘It might happen, truly. But a mother’s charge is a sacred charge, and I must travel and try.’
Jahdo hesitated, considering.
‘Be you sure this is all you’re doing? I did hear you talking to Verrarc back home, Councilman Verrarc I mean, and you were talking about your mother and stuff, but I did get this strange feeling. You weren’t telling him everything, were you?’
Meer laughed.
‘I figured I was choosing the cleverest lad in town, and I was right. But actually, I wasn’t lying. I was merely editing. I didn’t want to go into detail. There is somewhat about Councilman Verrarc that creeps my flesh. I hear things in his voice, somehow.’
‘Things?’
‘Overtones, odd hesitations, a peculiar timbre. He sounds enraged, but at the same time, he reeks of fear.’ Meer paused, considering. ‘I can barely put it into words, it’s such a subtle thing. But he’s an ominous man, in his way, an ominous man.’
Jahdo shuddered. Yet once again the buried memory tried to rise, bringing with it a cold shudder. He caught his breath with a little gasp. Meer turned an inquiring ear his way.
‘Geese walking on my grave,’ Jahdo said. ‘O ych, I wish I hadn’t said that.’
‘More likely the evening breeze, lad. I wouldn’t take it as an omen.’
Later, as Jahdo was falling asleep, he remembered that Meer had found him clever. In spite of the trouble this opinion had got him into, he was pleased.
It took three more days of their slow journeying before they left settled country behind. The road climbed steadily, and the last few farms they passed nestled in hills where sheep, not cows, grazed the sparse pasturage between huge grey boulders. What trees there were, scrubby pine and second growth alders and suchlike, hugged the narrow valleys, leaving the hill tops to grass and the wind. As the road diminished to a rocky path, Meer began to worry about the horse and mule, stopping often to run a huge hand down their legs to check for swellings and strains. He told Jahdo how to pick up their hooves and look for tiny stones or thorns that might have got stuck in the soft frogs. Although Jahdo was afraid of getting a kick for his trouble, as long as Meer was holding their halters or even simply touching them, the horse and mule stood still and docile.
‘If either of these creatures comes up lame, lad, we’re in for a miserable time of it.’
‘I do see that, truly. Well, I’ll be real careful and take good care of them.’
The next day early they left the Rhiddaer behind, not that there was a formal boundary or cairn to mark the border. It was just that Jahdo happened to glance back from the top of a hill and realize that he could see nothing familiar – not a farmhouse, not a shepherd, not a cultivated field nor a coppiced wood – nothing to mark the presence of human being or Gel da’Thae, either. For a long moment he stood looking back west and down across the low hills to catch a glimpse of the valley, all misty in the blue distance, where he’d spent his entire life. He felt torn in half between missing his family and a completely new sensation, a wondering what lay ahead, not behind, a sudden eagerness to see the new view that would lie east of these hills.
‘Jahdo?’ Meer called. ‘Somewhat wrong?’
‘Naught, truly. Just looking behind us. Meer, you’d better let me lead the way now. This be a road no longer, just sort of a trail. I don’t think your staff will be enough of a guide.’
‘Well and good, then. Lead on. And please remember, lad, that you’re my eyes. You’ve got to tell me everything you see.’
‘I will then.’
Remembering to keep up a running commentary for the blind bard turned out to be difficult. At first Jahdo had no idea what information would be useful to him, and he tended to describe distant vistas rather than the footing just ahead. Thanks to Meer’s constant and sarcastic comments, he did learn fast that a lovely view of trees in a valley wasn’t half so valuable as news of a rock blocking the path.
The path, such as it was, wound along the sides of hills and ran, basically, from one grassy spot to the next, which confirmed Jahdo’s guess that it was a deer trail. It was a good thing they were heading directly east; without the sun’s direction to guide them, they could easily have circled round and round the broken hillsides and steep valleys. Water, at least, ran clean and abundant in a multitude of little streams and springs. Here and there they came to a deeper stream, roaring with white water at the bottom of shallow but steep ravines. It was one of those, in fact, that nearly proved fatal.
Late in the afternoon, as they skirted the edge of a fast-moving stream, Jahdo was so intent on telling Meer where to walk that he lost track of his own feet and stepped too close to the ravine edge. The moment his foot hit he felt the damp soil crumble under his weight. He tossed the mule’s lead-rope back toward the animal just in time to avoid pulling Gidro after him.
‘Meer!’ he shrieked. ‘I’m falling!’
The sky spun blue and bright, and the roar of the water far below seemed to fill the world as he went over, twisting, flailing, grabbing out at empty air. With a smack he hit a wall of pain and lay gasping for breath on a little ledge. Above, what seemed like miles and miles above, he heard the frightened mule braying and Meer yelling his name, but though he fought sobbing for air he could not speak or call out. My ribs be broken, he thought. I’ll never be able to walk. I’ll have to die here.
All at once he realized that the sounds from above had stopped. His first panicked thought was that Meer had left him behind, but he realized almost immediately that the Gel da’Thae needed him too badly for that. His second panicked thought was that Meer was going to fall over the edge himself.
‘Meer!’ he managed to force sound from his burning lungs at last. ‘Careful! The edge be soft!’
‘Jahdo! You’re alive! Thank every god! Lie still, lad, lie still and get your breath.’
Jahdo did as he was told, letting the pain subside as he listened to odd scrapings of sound above him. Suddenly Meer’s face appeared at the cliff edge. Jahdo realized that the bard was lying on his stomach and feeling for the edge with one hand. In the other he held a rope.
‘Make noise,’ Meer called out.
‘You be right above me.’
‘Hah! Thought I heard you panting down there.’
If Meer had heard him breathing, no matter how noisily, over the sound of the white water below, then, Jahdo decided, his hearing must have been amazingly keen. When Meer tossed the rope, the end spiralled down and fell across his chest. Jahdo grabbed it with one hand and carefully felt round him with the other. He had just the room to sit up, and as he did so, he realized that while he ached from bruising, nothing was broken.
‘I be whole enough, Meer!’ he called out. ‘And I do have the rope.’
‘Splendid, splendid. Tie that end round your waist, lad, not too tight, now. You’ll need to ride her up like a sling. I’ve got the other end on Gidro’s pack saddle.’
With the mule pulling and Jahdo walking up the steep side of the ravine, he got to the top easily enough, but scrambling over with the rim so soggy and soft was something of an ordeal, because his back and shoulders ached like fire. At last he was crawling on solid ground. By grabbing Gidro’s pack saddle he could haul himself up to his feet. Meer inched back from the edge and sat up into a crouch.
‘My thanks,’ Jahdo said. ‘You did save my life.’
‘And my own as well, eh?’ Meer felt the front of his shirt and began brushing off mud and grass clots.
‘I do thank you anyway. You could have fallen and broken your neck, trying to save me.’
‘I feared your mother’s curse worse than I did dying. A mother’s curse follows a man into the Deathworld, it does. And I thought we’d lost you for sure, lad. What happened?’
‘I did step too close to the edge, that’s all. This soft dirt, it be a jeopard, Meer. It’s needful that you do test every step with that staff you carry.’
‘And so I shall from now on. Here, do you see a good place to camp? How late is it? I feel a powerful need to rest, I do.’
‘Well, the trail runs downhill from here, and I see some trees and grass down over to our left.’
‘Downhill, does it? Huh, I wonder if there’s mountains ahead. Can you see any, off on the horizon?’
‘I haven’t yet, not even from the top of a hill. I did never hear any stories about mountains between us and the Slavers. I think that’s why the ancestors could escape. They never would have survived in mountains.’
‘True. Huh. Another thing I wonder. This city, where Thavrae was heading, I mean, is it northeast or southeast?’
‘You don’t know?’ Jahdo heard his voice rise to a wail.
‘I’m afraid I don’t. The lore’s a bit sketchy when it comes to details like that. Well, we’re in the hands of the gods. In them lie our true hope and our true safety. Let us pray for guidance.’
Although he never would have dared to voice such a thought, Jahdo decided that he’d rather put his trust in a man who’d travelled there and back again. Yet, much to his surprise, not long after they did indeed receive a sign from the gods – or so Meer interpreted it.
For the next few days they travelled slowly, stopping often to let Jahdo rest his sore back. Although he soon realized that out of sheer luck he’d broken nothing, he hurt worse than he’d ever hurt in his young life. Sleeping on the ground did nothing to ease his bruises, either. At times, thinking of his warm mattress at home would make him weep. At others, he would simply wish that he had died, there in the fall, and put himself out of his misery. Yet, of course, he had no choice but to keep travelling. Going back would have hurt as much as going forward, after all, and he learned that, much to his surprise, he could endure a great deal and still cope with the work of tending animals and making camps, to say nothing of a hard walk through broken country.
On the fourth day it rained, a heavy summer storm that boiled up from the south. Although they were soaked within a few moments, they took shelter from the wind in one of the wooded valleys. Meer insisted that they unload the stock for a rest while they waited out the rain in this imperfect shelter.
‘They might as well be comfortable, anyway,’ Jahdo said. ‘Even if we can’t. I hate being wet. I do feel all cold and slimy, and my bruises from that fall, they do ache in this damp. My boots be wet inside, even. This be miserable, bain’t?’
‘I take it, lad, that you’ve not spent much time in wild country.’
‘Why would I?’
‘No reason, truly. You’re not Gel da’Thae. Our souls belong to the wild places of the world, you see, and deep in our souls, all of us yearn for the northern plains, the homeland, the heartland of our tribes.’
‘But I thought you did live in towns, like we do.’
‘Of course, so that we may better serve the gods here in the latter days of the world. But in our souls, ah, we yearn for the days when we rode free in the heartland. Our warriors make their kills to glorify its memory, and singers like me make our music in its honour.’
‘Well, if you do miss it so much, why don’t you go back?’
‘We can’t. Jahdo, listen. This is very important. When the Slavers attacked the homeland, we fled. We deserted our north country and fled south, stinking in our shame, cowards and slave-hearted, every one of us. For what is one of the thirteen worst things but to desert one’s homeland in its hour of need? And in our rage and shame we fought and burned and pillaged our way through the cities of the south. Oh, woe to the Gel da’Thae! That we should desert the homeland and then destroy the cities that the gods themselves had built for their children! Woe and twice woe, that we raised our hands against those children themselves and did slay and smite them! And for that shame and that sin, we can never return. The long meadows of the north, the fire mountains of the ancestors and the warm rivers that forbid winter their banks – all, all are lost forever. Do you understand?’
‘I don’t, truly. Meer, you must be awfully old, to remember all that.’
‘I don’t remember it, you irritating little cub. This is lore.’
‘Well, I do be sorry if I were rude again, but it does seem to mean so much to you. It’s like it just happened last winter.’
When Meer growled like an enormous dog, Jahdo decided to let the subject drop.
Once the horses were tended and tethered, Meer hunkered down beside the leather packs, which they’d piled up in the driest spot. Although Jahdo was expecting him to pass the time in prayer, instead he merely sat, as still and in the same way as one of the tree trunks around them, alive but utterly silent. At times he turned his head or cocked it, as if he were hearing important messages from every drop of rain, every scuttling squirrel. Even when the rain slacked and died, Meer sat unmoving, until Jahdo finally could stand it no longer.
‘Meer? I feel so awful.’
‘No doubt you do, lad. My apologies. Here, take off those wet boots. Wet boots rub wet feet raw. What does the sky look like?’
‘Clearing up pretty good. It must be twixt noon and sunset by now.’
‘Huh.’ Meer considered for a moment. ‘And what does the land ahead look like?’
‘More hills. Bigger ones, and all broken up, like.’
‘We’ll camp here, then. I hear a stream nearby.’
‘I can just see it, truly. I thought I’d take the waterskins down. Do you want a drink?’
‘I do, if you don’t mind fetching me one. The lore says that one of the fifty-two contrary things is this: sitting in the rain makes a man thirsty. And as usual, the lore is right.’
Jahdo slung the pair of waterskins, joined by a thong, across his shoulders and picked his way through the trees and tangled bracken. The little stream flowed between shallow banks, all slippery with mossy rocks and tiny ferns; predictably enough, he lost his footing and slid into the water. Stones stung his bare feet, and he yelped, righting himself.
‘Careful.’ The voice sounded directly behind him. ‘It’s not deep, but it’s treacherous.’
When Jahdo spun round he saw a strange man sitting on the bank and smiling at him. He was a tall fellow, slender, dressed in a long green tunic and buckskin trousers. His hair was the bright yellow of daffodils, his lips were the red of sour cherries, and his eyes were an unnatural turquoise blue, bright as gemstones. Yet the strangest thing of all were his ears, long and delicately pointed, furled tight like a fern in spring.
‘That Gel da’Thae has no eyes,’ he said.
‘He be a bard. They get them taken out.’
‘Disgusting custom, truly, but no affair of mine. You’re his slave?’
‘I am not!’
‘Then what are you?’
Jahdo considered.
‘Well, I didn’t even know him a fortnight ago, but he’s my friend now.’
‘Very well. Give him a message. What the legends say is right enough, and east lie the Slavers, sure enough, but south, south is the way to turn. Follow this stream, and it will swell to a river. Cross at the ford marked with the stone, and head into the rising sun. Beware, beware that you go too far, or you’ll reach the Slavers’ towered dun. Can you remember that rhyme?’
‘I can indeed, sir, but please, who are you?’
‘Tell the bard that my name’s Evandar.’
‘I will, then. But sir, will you come back if we get lost?’
‘Now that I can’t promise. I have other affairs on hand.’
With that he disappeared, so suddenly and completely gone that Jahdo was sure he’d dreamt the entire thing – until he realized that he could never fall asleep standing knee-deep in cold water. He filled the skins and rushed back to the bard, who was currying the white horse.
‘Meer, Meer, the strangest thing just happened! I did see this man, and then he were gone, all at once like.’
‘Indeed? Suppose you start at the beginning of this peculiar tale, lad, and tell it to me slowly.’
Jahdo did, paying particular attention to the fellow’s directions. For a long time Meer said nothing, merely laid his huge hands on the horse’s back as if for the comfort of the touch and stared sightlessly up at the sky.
‘Well, now,’ he rumbled at last. ‘I told your mother, didn’t I, that you were marked for a great destiny?’
‘Well, you said maybe I was.’
‘And I was right.’ Meer ignored the qualification. ‘To have seen one of the gods is the greatest honour a man can have.’
‘That were one of your gods?’
‘It was. Did I not pray for guidance in our travelling? Did he not come to provide it?’
Jahdo shuddered. He felt as if snow had slipped from a roof down his back, and it took him a long time to be able to speak.
‘You be sure that were a god? He didn’t look like much.’
‘You ill-got little cub! It’s not for us to question how the gods choose to appear to us.’
‘My apologies, then, but you be sure it weren’t one of those demons you do talk about?’
‘Not if he gave his name as Evandar the Avenger, the archer of Rinbala, goddess of the sea, he whose silver arrows could pierce the moon itself and fetch it from the sky.’
‘Well, he only said Evandar, not all the rest of that stuff.’
‘The rest of that stuff, as you so inelegantly put it, happen to be two of his major attributes and one of his minor ones, as attested by the holy hymns themselves. Humph. I can see that I’d best attend to your education. Besides, if he’d been a demon, he’d have tried to snatch you away, to make me fail in my quest.’
Jahdo went cold again, a bone-touching chill worse than any god-induced awe.
‘I smell fear,’ Meer said.
‘Well, do you blame me?’
‘Of course not. Lead me over to our gear, lad, and open the big grey saddlebags. I’ve got some very powerful amulets in there, and a feather talisman wound and blessed by the High Priestess herself, and I think me you’d best wear them from now on.’
They met on horseback and alone at the boundary of their two domains, which lay far beyond the physical world in the peculiar reaches of the etheric plane. In this empire of images, a dead-brown moor stretched all round them to a horizon where a perennially setting sun fought through smoke, or so it seemed, to flood them with copper-coloured light. Evandar rode unarmoured, wearing only his tunic and leather trousers as he lounged on his golden stallion. Since he sat with one leg crooked round the saddle peak, a single shove of a fist or weapon would have knocked him to the ground, but he smiled as he considered his brother. Riding on a black horse, and glittering with black enamelled armour as well, the brother was more than a little vulpine. Since he carried his black-plumed helmet under one arm, you could see his pointed ears tufted with red fur and the roach of red hair that ran from his forehead over his skull and down to the back of his neck. His beady black eyes glittered above a long, sharp nose.
‘You’re a fool, Evandar,’ the fox warrior snarled. ‘Coming here alone like this.’
‘Am I now? Your message said you needed my help. Was it all a trap and ambuscade?’
He grunted, slung his helmet from a strap on the saddle, and began to pull off his gauntlets. Russet fur plumed on the backs of his hands, and each finger ended in a sharp black claw rather than a nail.
‘First you lose your wife, your dear darling Alshandra,’ he said at last. ‘And now I hear you’ve lost your daughter as well.’
‘Alshandra’s gone, true enough, and good riddance to the howling harridan, say I! My daughter? Not lost in the least.’ Evandar paused for a grin. ‘I know exactly where my Elessario is, though indeed she’s gone from this place. Elessario lies safe in a human womb, and soon she’ll be born into the world of men and elves.’
The fox warrior shrugged, indifferent to the fact now that the barb had missed its mark. He turned in his saddle and spent a long moment staring at the horizon, where the bloody-coloured light fumed and roiled. It seemed that the smoke was stretching higher, sending long red fingers toward the horizon.
‘What have you done to the Lands? Hah?’ His voice at times barked like a fox’s as well. ‘You’ve done somewhat, you bastard swine, you scum of all the stars. We can feel it. We can see it. The Lands are shrinking and fading. My court sickens.’
‘What makes you think that’s my doing?’
‘It’s always your doing, what happens to the Lands.’ He stared at the ground, grudging each word. ‘You made them, you shaped them. Doesn’t Time feed in your pasture as well?’