Shadow of the Seer

by Michael Scott Rohan

  The sun now plummeted across the sky, behind clouds infused with purple, edged with blazing gold; across them, untouched somehow, a great feathery, wispy sweep of grey stretched like a heron’s wing. The Seer studied it, and shook his head. ‘Come! I had thought to spend the night here, for we could lap the dew from the rocks. But the best path for us is downward, I see. All has its place and time. We need severities to train and toughen you. Life provides them all too readily. Yet it seems we cannot even choose the time. Such it is to be a Seer.’

  The boy looked back as they turned away; and for a moment the unimaginable misty distances of the Ice became a haze of gold. Yet through it, in the low light, he thought he glimpsed great crags, less high than the abyss, and yet more terrible by far. ‘Yes!’ said his father, though he had said nothing. ‘For this mountain is made of stone, and fixed, changing only with the slow rhythm of the world. But those white walls, they are a marching army, slow though they seem. Their patience is deadly. Many fair lands they have already laid waste; and one day even this, too, they shall grind down. For who can fight them?’

  His voice took on a cold sneer. ‘But we men may at least slip and skip about their feet, like granary mice. Survive thus, perhaps, until a change of days. Till then our Sight must be our greatest friend, closer even than wife or child; for it serves the greater good. On the far side of the Wall lies all we know, all we can achieve; and that you must surmount, to find it.’

  ‘It seems hard,’ said Alya guardedly. ‘But I will succeed.’

  ‘It is. You will. There are easier paths. One can reach out to touch other minds, and be carried by them across the Wall. Chiefly those of beasts; for all creatures, and birds especially, slip to and fro over its bounds, all unknowing, as if to them it is a dream – or our own world is. But you cannot direct the sight of beasts, as you can your own. You will see only what they can see – or what they are shown. Such glimpses out of the dark are hard to trust. You can ride human thoughts, if only you are stronger than they; but Seers who try this too often inevitably come to grief. Sooner or later they will touch a mind stronger than theirs – even the mind of a Power. The Seer who rides one does not live to dismount. So follow the firmer paths, stony though they are; and trust in yourself.’

  Their way down was slower, as is often the way, slipping and sliding over steep ways they had bounded up. The boy had time enough to ponder those words, and to find himself in some ways at war with his father’s wisdom. It was a new experience, and one he found half daunting, half exhilarating. Slipping and skipping! Like granary mice indeed, for sooner or later the cat took them, to play with and slay. Surely they could do more! Surely they could fight!

  And the mention of these far lands intrigued him, as such tales always did. Alya the boy would keep his countenance for now; but one day soon Alyatan-kawayi the Seer would look farther afield, to the very ends of the earth.

  He forgot that, though, as they wound their way through the foothills at evening, and looked no farther than home, whose odours the wind brought them, first woodsmoke and then roasting meat. That would be from a deer he had brought down with his father three days since, another time of freedom and delight. He was shaping into a fine huntsman, the workers said.

  But as they rounded the slope into the last small vale, minutes from sight of the farm, Alya saw the smoke plume ahead, against the last luminous blue. It billowed dark; and far too high.

  The sight held them rigid; and then the Seer slapped hand to side. No sword hung there. ‘Accursed am I,’ he breathed, ‘that I heeded your Seeing so much, and my own so little! Come, boy!’

  Both were weary, neither in prime manhood; and yet their leather-hard legs bore them in great loping strides across the twilit slopes, scarcely feeling the grass that twined around their shins to trip them, the patches of soft wet bog that sucked at their deerskin shoes, the bite of briar and thorn. The boy strung his bow as he ran, as if this were the hunting trail, and the father grunted approvingly.

  Fear ran cold in their bellies as they crested the vale’s rim; and grew colder yet. The farm was ablaze; had been, for some time, so that already the low roof-ridges with their bark shingles were consumed and gone, and the fire roared at the top of the encircling walls. Even as they watched, a gable-end collapsed in a flare of yellow flame, spilling blazing beams across the ground before them; and by its light they saw only too clearly what awaited them.

  The horses, the kine, the goats were rounded up, tethered in lines to be led away. Their wagon stood out, its shafts to the heavens, ready for its team; and by it, still unloaded, lay their stores, and what little of their goods was worth plundering. Their people …

  By the fire’s edge Alya saw the bodies stacked, naked save for slathered blood, sprawled and broken, his mother’s dark hair, so much younger than his wolf-grey father, spilling grotesquely from under the watchman’s shrivelled flank. All, save one he sought. But he saw that also, by the light of a lesser fire; the child’s arm that dangled above it, skinned, stretched out and split, broiling on a makeshift spit.

  The same harsh flame had also shown them to the men around that fire – not many, some ten or twelve men much like themselves in kind, with ruddy-brown skin, swarthier than their own, hard bony faces, and straight dark hair. Theirs was cut short about the neck and caught up in black rags; and they wore black breastplates of stiffened leather, studded with nailheads and streaked with white patterns that echoed the markings smeared on their scarred faces, making them look like cruel masks themselves.

  ‘Aikiya’wahsa!’ groaned the Seer, as they snatched up swords and spears. ‘The Ekwesh! Wolves of the Ice!’

  He clutched Alya by the arm, and snarled like a wolf himself. ‘One single tear, and I disown you! Linger, and I curse you!’

  He thrust the boy away with a force that sent him staggering, but himself dashed forward into the glare. A blazing beam he stooped and caught up, and even as it kindled his sleeves he bore it forward, against the oncoming raiders. The first of them yelled as it swung at their faces, and fell back, but the force of his rush carried them with it, against the three behind. Swords flashed, but he seemed not to feel their bite. Their hair flamed as they stumbled and fell, blinded and burning; one man was slammed against the glowing house-wall, and ran howling in a banner of flame. The rest gave back before the blazing madman and his mace of fire, into the dark. The Seer laughed a great screeching laugh. ‘So, so! Pretty, pretty! Let others’ women do the weeping! Run, Alya! To the south and east, to the warmer lands! To our kin! Run!’

  He hurled the beam across the fire, and the attackers scattered from its rolling onslaught. Then, catching the mangled body there by its hair, the old chieftain lowered his head and ran into the flame-filled doorway of the farmhouse. It roared like an open mouth.

  Alya, stepping instinctively forward, tripped over something cold and sank to one knee. The bundle his father had thrown down—

  A spear hissed. Broad-headed, not meant for throwing, it would still have skewered him, otherwise. It gashed his side and stuck quivering in the ground.

  One of the raiders, stalking forward, paused blinking at the edge of the firelight to see if he’d hit his mark. In a frenzy of fear, ignoring the pain, the boy drew his arrow to his chin and loosed. It hissed past the bow’s fur wrapping and sailed almost lazily to its mark. The boy had hit rabbits running at greater range. With a snapping thud the arrow sank deep beneath the lower lip of the breastplate, and the man screamed and doubled over around it, tugging at the shaft.

  Alya ground his teeth, imagining the barbs biting home in the liver. He had slain beasts in the hunt, but never before a man. Even now he hardly felt he had killed one, for this horror kicking away its life was worse than a clean animal.

  The others shouted, seeing the peril of arrows out of the dark, and backed hastily into shadow. His heart pounded, but his stomach was steady. They would circle around, now, and come after him. But he would not be here, and they could not know the gro
und as he did in the dark.

  He ran, light and fleet, wishing they would come after him on their horses, so he could shoot a rider and steal one. But he knew the rest of the raiders, hardier men on horseback, would soon catch him up. Better to be small, and slip by unseen. Over rough ground, marsh and trackless scree lay his safety, such as it was; and his long wandering he knew must be, with naught but the few arrows at his belt and the bundle that bumped at his shoulder, already a burden.

  The night flooded Alya’s spirit, chilly and black. He felt nothing, not even the long gash in his side. Even when he glanced back at the dying flame it was to see if it showed him another enemy. His mouth was set and thin; his eyes dry. He would never come back, that was certain. He ran.

  CHAPTER 2

  The Citadel

  ALYA ran; and it was as if the lands flew past beneath his feet, as night gave way to day. When light came the dark plume was a streak against the low hills; and pursuit, if there was any, he had left far behind. Nor did he fear he would be tracked. Beyond their sheltered valley the land was as hard as he had seen it, at best rolling hills crowned with brown grass, more often bare and stony, with great outcrops of weathered rock that held no trace for long. He had cut across these many times to hide his trail. He was alone, now, in every sense.

  But the barrens held a worse peril for him. At this season, with the spring snows barely melted and the icy underfloor still unthawed, they offered little that lived, still less he could eat.

  A day passed, in growing hunger; and another, worse, a pain to add to the fire in his side. There were some signs that men had lived here, but too long ago to be of any help. Only once did he see any other living men, and those a baleful sight. A column of black-clad horsemen, all too like those at the farm, came riding in a number he could not reckon across the plains, following the ghost of a great track, barely visible in the lank grass. They made no attempt to conceal themselves, and he had plenty of warning. They passed in cascading thunder no more than a few hundred paces away, kicking up the brown earth in a great scar, and sped northward in a close column whose regimented lines looked to him both ridiculous and sinister, with wagons rattling along at their tail. They spared scarcely a look for the land around, let alone for the thicket that hid him.

  Alya watched them go with hatred, wondering how these men, if men they truly were, could come to serve the Ice and its Powers, that were supposed to hate all things living, and most of all men. Hunger gave his mind an edge of false clarity. He wondered cynically if there really were such things as Powers. His father had thought so, had revered them deeply, had believed his son would speak with them; and what good had that faith done him?

  He missed his father more than he could say, for all his grimness; and his mother’s voice, his sister’s laugh. The farmhands and their simple banter, friends since he could first remember. All stilled, horribly; nothing but the low wailing of the wind on the open plain. More likely Powers were lies or deceptions, mere reflections of human hopes and fears. More likely these black-clad beast-men had shaped deities in their own image, to justify their own cruel desires.

  He saw no man else. He was alone.

  Otherwise he found only relics of huts very like those at his home, low rings of stone, many cracked and whitened by ancient flames. His father’s huts must look like that, now, and the farm with them. Its remains would soon be overgrown; but not these. How folk had lived in such a barren land was hard to understand, unless it had not always been barren. More immediate was how he could manage to survive; for he was not ready to give up the only thing that had been left to him, not yet. He journeyed on, in bitterness.

  Alya was well schooled in living in the wilds. Shelter of a kind he could contrive from the scrubby bushes that grew in patches, and even, when he could find dry kindling, fire. But what he roasted over it was scanty – frogs from the many rivulets, tiny fish he had scooped up, snails that rasped the red lichen from the rocks, such roots as grew in the bleak cold soil. At need he ate even fat worms and slimy dark things from under rocks. They would hardly sustain him for long.

  Before many days, though, he passed the spring snowline, where the ground grew softer. It was too early for berries, but there were more small animals. He was able to set snares, knock down an occasional bird with a throwing stick, and twice he felled a young deer, though others escaped him. He did not dare risk his few arrows too often. But he had been hungry to start with; and though the gash in his side seemed to heal, bound up in its own blood, the effort of throwing and drawing his bow soon opened it. He tried to staunch it with chewed herbs, but he had little lore of healing, and his weakness told; it would not close, bled often, and burned him more and more fiercely as the days passed. As they grew into weeks he felt his strength ebbing, his head grow light, his stomach sicken; and grief and solitude clawed at his heart.

  The night within it sustained him, like cold iron stiffening his spine; but the night also brought terror. For as he lay curled and sweating under his fan of branches, though he was never warm, the Wall seemed to rise up unbidden behind his eyes, and in its dark glass show him visions no man should see. There came to him then his mother, as he had seen her on that fell heap, and his sister, their eyes hollow, their faces beseeching, their ravaged bodies all too clear in the red light. His sister raised up one blood-streaked hand, and the roar of the devouring fire would fill his ears. Then he would start awake in blank terror, scattering the branches, to see only more blackness, moonless and comfortless. It would be long before fear and cold brought their own numbness, and allowed him to sleep once more.

  But a day came, after a night of storm and driving rain, when a sudden warmth shone through his meagre shelter, on to his wounded side, and seemed to ease its stabbing a little. Alya sat up, wincing, and found the rays of a red dawn creeping over the world’s rim, warming the chill rocks under whose lee he had taken shelter, among the heavy undergrowth that cloaked them. He saw with wonder that they were not rocks at all; they were a wall, of loose flat stones, built rough but very thick and heavy. Tall as a man, in most places, it was the highest he had ever seen; and the outline of the ruin he made out through the foliage suggested it had been taller still. Grooves and scratches on some of the stones might have been carvings once, though now they were no more than rain-channels. He remembered the towering houses of his vision; but they were taller yet, and more strongly built. He wondered who had made this and lived in it, and whether any folk still remained in the land.

  Alya stood, carefully, and looked around. Perhaps he was coming into those warmer lands, at last; but they did not look very encouraging. There might be more trees, now he thought of it; but there was less grass about, save by the small streams. The ground looked drier and stonier, the soil more dusty, as if warmth drank up the water. But perhaps there was better country about. The southern horizon looked a little greener. It could even be trees, many trees – a woodland, such as he only dimly remembered. This might be the region where his kin could still live. Somewhere like the noisy townlet of his first and faintest memories, a place full of giants. His father had fled it with his family and household, foreseeing its destruction – but had he simply foreseen his own doom, and run to meet it?

  At any rate he must seek somewhere. He could not live long like this, not now. How long had it been since the raid? It had happened under the last new moon. Where was the moon now? Well, tonight he would see, if the sky stayed clear. Meanwhile there were small holes here, made by burrowing creatures; and no shortage of stones.

  The little brown beasts were fast, scurrying and chittering between their burrows, with sentinels posted like warriors; their white-striped flanks confused their outline, and Alya’s hand was no longer as steady as it had been. In two frustrating hours he felled only a brace, barely a dog’s meal for a long day afoot; but it would have to do. He cooked them both, poorly, and saved one for the end of his march. That might be all too soon. He trudged on, until the sun fell downwards into thin
cloud, and thence into the dark. If there was a moon, it was too faint to penetrate the cloud. It must be new again, probably; but he hardly remembered that many days passing.

  He tried to gnaw the miserable little carcass, sought sleep in the shelter of some thorn-bushes, but his burning side kept him awake and shivering. It bled no longer, but formed a yellowish crust that cracked painfully with every sudden movement. Eventually, at the first hint of light, he rose and stumbled on, sucking the last flesh and marrow from the bones; but then he was violently sick. His head swam as it had with the height, and his side was raw and swollen, and wept slow tears, not blood. His ears sang, and swift things seemed to flicker around at the margins of his vision, long-limbed insectile shapes which danced and mocked like sawflies. They grew bolder as the day advanced and the sunlight dazzled him, as the edged reddish granite which everywhere poked up through the soil tripped and cut him, as the faint paths he found among the unyielding stones seemed to swim and diverge before him. He was stifling with the heat, yet he knew the chill of night would be worse; and he had no idea which way to turn.

  If cold and hunger were a Seer’s friends, he had never had better company. And it came to him then that he might indeed make use of them.

  He fumbled for the mask, but at first he could not even untie the bundle. Then he had it free, set it on his head, which seemed slick with sweat, and held up the drum. The figures on it seemed to caper and cavort, mocking him, and he struck at them, pulsing, and tried to match their antics. But all he could do was sway and stagger painfully, unable to dance but too bewildered to remove the heavy mask. He struggled not to fall on the sharp raw stones.

  His mind roared, his eyes dimmed. The landscape faded into pinkish cloud, that flickered and pulsed alarmingly. Then all of a sudden it billowed like a storm-rent veil, blackness blazed with fire, and the Trail crackled swiftly before him. He dropped the drum, felt it smash underfoot. A spurt of flame coursed along the curves and windings of the Trail, and the coloured earths flared and turned ashen. He was toppling helplessly forward into it.