Shadow of the Seer

by Michael Scott Rohan

  ‘As if any lake, large as may be, would hold back the cruel hand of the Ice, or place men beyond its grasp! It gathers the world into its cold palms, and who can restrain it? Yet fools have set out to seek that land, following the Eye of the Swan that looks forever eastward – whatever that may be! And indeed by such a fool’s portent they may find it! For this could only be the land of the dead, where the pale-faced ghosts dance.’ He sighed. ‘No, my son. The way of the Seer is wiser. To seek wisdom through the spirit, and guide his folk in ways where the hand of ill does not fall. Learn now, learn swiftly, and be wise.’

  Alya was about to ask more, but the sting of his face made him hesitate. By then the Seer had opened his bundle, and with a tender grasp he lifted out a strange sight, that yet was somehow very familiar to the boy. As a toddling infant in dead, distant days, living in a town with others, he had gaped in delighted awe at the spirits that came and danced on holidays – at the turning of the year, at the veneration of the ancestors in the sowing and the harvest, and the festivals of children and unmarried girls at summer’s height, when the days seemed endless and the Ice far away.

  They were like men, these spirits, but with their bodies streaked and circled in glorious gaudiness, bright as jaybirds on rainbows, and their heads stranger and brighter still, mingled visions of beast and man with jaws that chomped and beaks that clapped. Their ancestors, the children were told; their forebears, at one with the prey they had hunted in richer, more plentiful lands.

  Ancestors who would, with enough propitiation and offerings, bring back the game and the good seasons. Ancestors who danced out the old tales, and the prophecies of tales to come, and most magically of all scattered gifts and sweetmeats to the children of their children. Ancestors who, after dancing and eating and drinking and coupling with their descendants till they were dizzy, fell writhing and shouting into the arms of their fellows. When they had left the town, Alya saw them no more, though at times the beat of drums from his father’s hut would bring them back to mind.

  But this, here, rising from the box – this was one of them, itself. It was with deep wonder he saw for the first time that that awesome head was made of painted wood and metal, beautifully carven and shaped.

  His father nodded. ‘You understand now. The spirits need us, as we need them. They need our solid shapes to live within the pleasures of life once more, and for a while enjoy the offerings we give them. We can receive them within us only at the height of our powers, in the grip of the living dream – just as, in that state alone, can we penetrate the Wall and its terrors. To scan what lies beyond and share its many eyes and ears and thoughts, to draw upon its powers to influence the world – even, for the most supremely powerful of us, to carry us throughout it, from one place to another, by unseen paths …’ He shivered with evident delight at the idea of the power. For that also we need to take their form, to beguile the many Guardians. And therefore they taught us how to don the Shapes that are their aspect, and to dance the dance of the Mask.’

  The old Seer had been building a tiny fire of dry twigs as he spoke, and kindled it now with a spark of flint into dry moss tinder, sputtering and smouldering. He raised the heavy mask reverently above his head, into the warming rays of the sun. ‘This is the dearest of all the shapes given to our folk, most precious of my masks.’ After an instant the warming wood creaked and sang, and he laughed aloud.

  ‘Hear the voice of the ancient wood, speaking to its beloved children! It is said that in that foolish cuckoo-country, that ghostland, the pale men make their magics with hammered metal! As if the earth’s cold blood could contain any such life force as this once-living wood! As if it could give you eyes to see through, and a mouth to speak and sing!’

  Swiftly, deftly, the Seer lowered the heavy wooden shape about his forehead and slowly down, until his face was hidden. The mask seemed to float lightly above his shoulders, long beak with crooked tip, huge eyes painted in red and white, picked out in glittering obsidian, but hollow at their hearts. Then he knelt, pulled the rough barkcloth shirt from his back, and streaked himself with earth from the ledge, and smearings of chalk and coloured sand in fat from the bundle.

  ‘This is Raven, great patron of our folk! Friend of Men, who stole the Sun for them to defy the first coming of the Ice. You are the last Seer of his most ancient line, Alya; so learn now how to invoke his power. You know this dance, this chant; you have been taught it since you could barely walk. See now the use of it, and the meaning.’

  He sprang lithely to his feet, and the beak snapped cruelly. Out of the bag he took a small roundel of steam-bent wood, topped with a taut skin of dark deerhide; hanging from it was a short length of antler, polished by many years of wear. On the drumskin were painted symbols hard to make out against the age-blackened hide, stark, sticklike figures in black and red. The Seer tapped the drum once, twice, on different symbols, and then again, in a different, wilder measure. He beat the skin with the antler stick, and the deerhide thrummed and rang. He sang, in a low husky voice, the same syllables again and again, sounds that were not words but were all the more heavy with meaning. The arms, streaked now like rows of dark feathers, flapped once, twice, and thrust out, fingers spread, in a gliding curve. The drum stuttered to silence, the feet stamped and shuffled in the same soft pulsing beat, but the upper body remained still, as it seemed, wheeling and gliding like the dark specks over the woodlands below. Back it swooped against the rockface, then up and away, out to the very edge of the rim as if to join its brethren in the airs below. Small stones skittered and crumbled into emptiness, but the feet did not falter, whirling and kicking with the energy that infused the effortless glide above.

  When the arms came down, the drum thuttered again. Alya thrilled at the sight of his Ancestor, felt the pace of the dance in his blood, and drummed exultantly on the moss with his flat palms. He felt no fear for his father, as he trod the thin line of the cliffs edge; to him also it seemed as if the masked figure would take flight and soar any instant, out of the abyss and into the face of the climbing sun. He longed to follow.

  The voice grew higher, harsher, and faster, gasping and dry. The syllables merged and blurred into a raw rasping cry. The voice, not of a single bird, but of many, the cawing clamour of a rising flock; and out of the empty air distant voices knew and answered it. The figure stood straight up suddenly, arms outflung. The jaws opened, wider than before, gaping; and within them, set deep at the throat, shimmered the metal mask of a man, smooth-skinned, impossibly serene, the features bland and general save for the white-painted beard, a rare thing among his folk. And yet the boy clenched his fists in wonder; for within it, within the very metal itself, like glimmering trout in a clear stream, flickers of cold light came and went, and the bland metal eyes blazed and glittered into his own. A single rasping cry rang out among the rocks.

  Suddenly the cliff face behind them flashed and shone bright as a mirror, as solid obsidian—

  Just as suddenly, the light vanished. Warm darkness was around him, the smell of sweat and leather. His father was putting another mask over his head, telling him to try it, to dance with it in place. ‘This is an easier ancestor to bear, the Hawk, the young hunter who feeds his brood; he will carry you as far as you should need. Remember the pattern, the earths, the pebbles! Think hard upon its tracks, for it is through the Trail you are dancing. Dancing on your journey, to the Wall; and one day, beyond.’ He settled the mask in place, and let Alya swing his head, grow used to its weight.

  ‘How shall a man get there? Seers seldom agree. Some say you may fly over its summit, some say you may burrow under. For that matter, some say it is not a wall at all, but a very range of mountains, in which paths and passes must be opened and explored. Some others seek to ride thither in the minds of birds and beasts, which know no distinction between it and the outer world; or even through the minds of other Seers. But I who am the Seer and son of many Seers, and carry within me now the words of many more, I say it is a Wall; and that f
or the strong Seer there is but one way, to rise over it himself, by his own power. Unless he is among the great – and they go through! Dance now, boy. Dance, Hawk. Dance!’

  His arms were already outflung; his feet already stamping the moss. The drum rattled, the chant droned on in his father’s exalted voice. Dizzy with exhaustion and altitude and the essence of the dry leaves, Alya threw back his head, and felt the short beak clack and clatter. The mask wobbled, ill-fitting, and he staggered. He knew he should stop. His father’s singing took on a harsh, angry tone, the contemptuous voice that made him shrivel when he faltered or failed at anything, worse than any slap; and at the very thought of it his shaking legs thrashed harder. He could not stop. He wagged his head to and fro, desperately trying to balance the mask. The chant burst from his lips in an answering torrent, higher than his father’s, almost like a wounded bird piping. Beyond the narrow eyeholes there were only the clouds. He thrust back his wings, trembling as he glided, hovered, stooped …

  The mask half fell sideways, the eyeholes away from his eyes. Hunger shook his legs. Stone cracked and turned beneath his weary feet—

  Everything vanished. He was staring into that jagged, glassy surface, silken smooth yet savagely etched and fanged. High above him it loomed, as far below; and flame boiled in the depths. It was as if he were torn in two. He heard a voice scream, knew his own, and the glassy rock wheeled sickeningly as his legs failed him. He fell back, felt the ledge hit him hard in the back, but his head fell back out into empty space.

  He stared upside down into the abyss, and the fiery mouths clamoured in his roaring ears. Light and air smote his cheeks once again. Into the distant depths something small turned and wheeled away, and he convulsed with horror. It was the Hawk mask.

  He flung out useless arms, but it was far gone. A distant, hollow smash rose from below, and the rattle of a few rocks. He stared in mute horror and humiliation. He had destroyed a thing he knew must be unimaginably precious. What would his father do to him now? He could almost let himself slide after it.

  A firm hand hooked in his shirt, hauled him back up, and dropped him hunched and shaking on the moss. He curled up like a baby, shivering, and awaited the rain of blows that would almost be a relief. ‘I’m sorry. I let the Hawk fall! I’m sorry.’

  ‘You did nothing,’ said the Seer’s grim voice, sternly enough but evenly. ‘I saw. The mask sat awkwardly upon you from the start. That, it should not have done, not with any man, and never has before. And yet you achieved the pattern of stones … Strange. I thought the mask would settle. I should have taken it from you at once. When I did not, it fled you of its own choosing, and for its own reasons. You are not meant to have the Hawk, that is clear.’ There was a note almost of sadness as he added, ‘And no more, now, am I.’

  Deep misery must still have marked the boy’s face, for the Raven mask lifted to reveal his father’s features, as ever stern and unbending, yet not without a touch of concern. To the boy’s surprise he reverently raised the great mask from his own head. ‘Here. Don this!’

  Passively, dumbly, Alya let the thing be slid over his head, the beak closed once more, the leather lining positively hot to the touch and slick with sweat. It seemed to cling to his cheeks, yet once in place it did not feel too hot. It was heavy, draggingly heavy; but the boy nodded very carefully, and felt it fit across both scalp and jaw, moving with them, but never itself stirring in its seat.

  The Seer gave a long, low grunt of satisfaction, and struck the drum hard. So sudden was the thrill that Alya surged to his feet, hardly heeding the wooden weight. ‘Now can you dance?’ growled the older man. ‘Now, yes? Yes!’

  Cold fire ran in the boy’s legs, where a moment before milky weariness had flowed. He clattered the beak and cawed as his father had, and flung back his head wildly, and as the drum stuttered he once again echoed the chant. Wheeling, diving, the blue sky spun crazily in the eyeholes, but he knew now why his father had not stopped for the cliffs edge, for fear or even for the mildest caution. He could no longer even feel the stone beneath him; but the wind was cool and thrilling beneath his wings.

  All at once the light whirled into the spiral of the Trail, the blackness roared in his head and drew him in. The jagged gloss of the Wall arose again, its innumerable facets now mirroring his naked face, bare of any mask. Endless facets, countless faces, eyes wide, jaws slack, gasping for breath – infinite selves. Then hands scrabbled within the dark glass, clawing, burning at their finger-ends even as they reached out. The faces were no longer his. They were faces he knew. They opened to him, in menace or mute appeal, and glows burst from their eyes, their gaping mouths and distended nostrils. Mother, sister, the tillers of the farm, the few friends of his early life – he fought to rise, to break free of their fearful clutches, to soar above them and crest the grim barrier. For an instant he seemed to see through it, to make out a distorted image, such a wide spread of lands as he had seen from the ledge, but from far higher. And among them, standing out sharply, the valley, the farm, the figures around it like dots, and far, far above them the ledge itself, with a figure that squatted grim and motionless, and another that wheeled and turned—

  He could not rise further. Instead he struck the black surface, like a windblown bird. Agony speared one arm, and he felt the tangle of limbs, and the screaming, sickening fall.

  He was on his knees on the grass, choking and shaking within the mask, desperately afraid. He plucked it off, and it came willingly, for all it had fitted so close. And again, as he stared at it in his shaking hands, the coursing gleams and glows came and went within the metal. They were continuous things, like serpents, like fish that dived in one piece of metal and surfaced in another, as if there was some incredible unity in the metal, threading the painted wooden sections together. The wood had another feeling entirely, something strange under his hands …

  He cried out as the thing was taken from him, leaving him alone with the fear. His father grunted as he wrapped the beaked form away in its bundle. ‘It is well! Well enough for now. Much you have learned, and that is good. For you may need the knowledge swiftly.’

  His father’s black eyes, dark and remorseless as the Wall, surveyed him, as if weighing up whether to say something. At last he flung the boy a thick collop of smoked meat from his bag, and a large dried oilcake – a rich feast, to a boy raised so harshly, and his first since the evening before. Gratefully Alya fell to, while his father watched him still. The old man did not eat, but simply stroked his chin thoughtfully. When he spoke at last, it was unexpected.

  ‘It is often the strongest of Seers, when young, who find the craft most thorny to grasp …’

  Greatly emboldened, if only by a greater fear, the boy stared back. It was hard to imagine his father needing to learn anything; or even young; and yet … ‘My father! Did you?’

  The Seer nodded, distantly. ‘So hard, I thought the mask would wring blood from my eyes and break my neck like a stalk. This very mask. Your grandfather also, as he admitted to me only in his age. He reached his eighteenth summer ere he completed the pattern, his twentieth ere he even saw the Wall; and that after weeks of fasting in the wilderness.’ He rounded on the boy. ‘But do not take that as a licence to idle! Every seeker of the paths is different! It’s rare that the Sight endures through so many generations, as it has in ours – and through your mother’s, also. Once our ancestors were more than shamans! Once they were wonderworkers who dwelt in great halls of stone, and travelled the world at will, and spoke with the Powers whose task it is to steer it. And in the bones I cast at your birth, while your mother still screamed and strained you out of her, it was written that you would yourself speak with Them, one day.’

  There was both pride and trouble in his harsh voice. ‘But which Power? There are many it is ill to speak with, unprepared. There are some it is ruin to encounter at all! For such a destiny as that, Alya my son, you must be strong. And strong I shall make you. From your mother you will learn tenderness; I have none.
Others will teach you to be happy; I would not know how. But from me you will learn a warrior’s pride and honour, and reverence for the Powers – yes, even for those who hate us, for their might is awesome, and not to be taken lightly. And you will learn your duty as a Seer, to those who will one day depend on you.’

  Never before had the old man spoken so openly; and in years thereafter the boy Alya wondered whether it was something he himself had seen that provoked it. If so, his vision was not clear enough; or the tale of Alya, and of Savi, and of the Mask, might have turned out very differently.

  The Winter Chronicles, archives of the ancestors of legend, record it only as a legend in their terms, brought by the incomers who fled across the ocean to the haven of Nordeney. They mention many versions and variations, with as many embellishments as there were tellers; but equally they insist that the tale itself was true, and that many who acted within it, for better or worse, lived to bear witness.

  A dark legend it is, too, as befits those times. Yet it is not without its shafts of light, showing that even in those lands west of the sea which the glaciers and their lords most thoroughly overran, that even in their shadow the sparks of defiance could still catch fire in human minds. And that even deep within the bitter heart of the Ice itself, with its devouring hatred for all that lived, with the myriad deaths it contained and contrived, the ashen fires of life could sometimes still be rekindled.