Shadow of the Seer

by Michael Scott Rohan

  There, in the growing light, Alya and Vansha, Seers’ sons, beheld one another for the first time. Neither liked what they saw.

  Vansha, perhaps a year the elder, was already the image of a man in his hunter’s garb, little more than loincloth and light sandals, his skin oiled for warmth, with bow at his back and quiver and bag at his side. In him his father’s gauntness looked sleek as a snowcat; his muscles moved with careless feline ease, and his narrowed eyes had the same glitter. Beneath his oil-spiked hair his face was hard but very handsome, and his open smile suggested he knew it all too well.

  It also told Alya that he looked like a gawky starveling by comparison, his bony limbs ungainly and ill-proportioned, his protruding ribs marred by the blood-blackened gash. His face was flecked with scratches, scars and spots, and to him it seemed ordinary, oafish and blank, accustomed since childhood to hide any outward feeling. It did not occur to him that he wore marks of experience the other did not, of enviable strength and achievement beyond his years; or that some might also think him handsome.

  ‘Don’t want to hunt!’ announced Vansha, making it sound contemptible. Alya was aware of the girl Saviyal, though she would never meet his gaze.

  ‘But when I heal—’

  ‘Then we’ll see how well you handle a bow,’ said Vansha crisply.

  ‘You may see that now,’ said Alya, and held out his hand.

  Vansha unwillingly passed his over. Alya strung it, a little clumsily because it hurt his wound, flexed the string a couple of times, then drew it to his chin, swung around and loosed. The effort burned along his side; but the arrow hissed into the pines some hundred paces away, and struck a narrow sapling with a humming thud. A flock of pigeons erupted in protest. A second shaft struck a span below it. Vansha made a great show of being impressed, then lazily handed him another shaft. Angrily Alya seized it and drew, but his side stabbed at him suddenly and shook the strength in his left hand. The shaft went into the ground some ten yards short.

  Vansha shook his head as he hurried to retrieve it. ‘Bad for a hunting point. Now I’ll needs sharpen it. Never mind, boy, we’ll make a hunter of you yet.’

  And so the seal was set upon their meeting. As it was then, so it was to be.

  Always Vansha was the leader among the other boys. They took their tone from him; and, less obviously, the rest of the village echoed them. That first day, though his side still ached, Alya worked with the women and children and old men. He dug the stony ground with hoe and stick, till by evening his hands blistered and his wound cracked a little, mingling blood with sweat. But when the hunters returned Vansha greeted him with a ringing cry. ‘Hoi there, Alya, you lazy bag of bones! Did you foresee the fine deer we’ve caught you? It’ll fatten you up for a man’s work!’ He spoke merrily and without open malice; but the others laughed, and Alya saw his labours set at nothing.

  From then on, whatever he did, Vansha put his laughing words upon. The good was made negligible and slight, the ill a matter of laughter and tale retold; and soon Alya could do no right.

  In the eyes of many. But the chieftain seemed to be sympathetic, and was careful to praise Alya when he could. And of Saviyal’s regard, Alya was never sure; for though he could never meet her eyes, he often found them upon him. But they would always turn instantly away. That first day in the fields he had seen her, working like all the rest stripped to the breech-cloth, and he had admired her litheness, thinking how slender and willowy she seemed among so many plump village girls. He had tried to work his way over near her, not so hard in this shapeless patchwork of fields; but he got no more from her than a quick smile and a turned head. Yet that smile’s warmth heated him more than sun or labour, and eased more than one pain.

  When he was well enough to hunt, Alya hoped to win better opinions; for he had always been a keen tracker and a good shot. But at first he did not shine, for hunting and tracking in this barren land was different from the well-watered vale he had grown up in, at the mountains’ roots. He learned, soon enough. He had more patience than most of his age, and a tenacity even Vansha could not mock. He would track his quarry beyond all hope, and often bring it back. But it did him no good. Whatever he took, Vansha would exert himself to take more of. Often he shadowed Alya, as if teaching or guarding a helpless child, and would loose his own arrow too early, either to claim the quarry himself or scare it away. When their arrows both struck, he would claim the kill, for none would believe otherwise, and belittle Alya in the guise of praise.

  With Vansha it was always words. He might have dominated Alya with force, but never did. Some of his oafish cronies joked that since Alya was fit only to work with the girls, they might use him as one. But they found him agile enough to evade their grasp and strong enough to leave bloody denials on their faces. The stone that smashed a ringleader’s nose settled the matter. They never bothered him again, but they often sought to trip him, soak his bowstring or steal his catch, and suchlike mean tricks.

  All this Alya bore, because he knew he had no choice. But often, in the long cold nights, when only the watchfires still burned and all others huddled together on their mats and skins for warmth, he would sit naked in his hut door, feel the icy night-breath on his skin, and think, slow and deep. He had many memories to relive, good and bad; and many questions to ask of himself. At first, he wondered how he had come here, whether he had simply wandered in blindness and fever, whether the mask or something behind it had guided his steps, or whether some other force had somehow come into play. As the weeks wore on, though, and his battle for regard grew ever harder, he no longer wondered how, so much as why, and whether he could leave, and start anew. But that was no doubt what Vansha wanted; and there was the girl.

  Often, from behind the carefully loosened stone in the wall, he would take out the hide bundle, and reverently unwrap the mask, and the drum he had remade as best he could, repainting the figures from memory on a scrap of gut. He strove to pursue his discipline, as the chieftain wanted; but that too seemed increasingly hard and hopeless. These days he would don the mask, dance a little, trace the smoking path of the Trail on the soil and in his thoughts; but with no serious intent, save to savour the sense of power, and the memories of his inheritance. But these, like tears, he held back; for they might yet serve his purposes.

  At last, though, there came a night when his blood was hot, and bitterness in his mouth. He had an urgent question to ask, a path to seek; and for the first time it was neither vengeance nor guilt that filled his heart. The mask slid on as always, and, very softly, he began to tap the drum, to shuffle his feet on the trodden earth floor. This way and that he swayed, relishing the extra swing the mask gave his head, the pulse in his excited blood. The pattern flickered and grew, the Trail smoked like a maze of incense, leading him inward and upward, as to the foothills of a range of mighty cliffs. The darkness of the hut came rushing in upon him suddenly, glittering, solid, shining black as ice on wet stone or deep water; and he was staring at the million facets of the Wall.

  The flames were gone. Instead there was a churning, seething mass of pale forms in motion, threshing fish in a tightening net. But they were not fish. Now, though, instead of accepting what was shown him there, he drove against it in rebellion, in desperation, striving to see something in its place. He summoned up the face before his eyes, the look he had at last met and held for an endless second; and his blood seemed to boil with the sudden urgency of his need.

  For an instant, as the air trembled between, and he shook with it, he thought he glimpsed something, some glimmer beyond the fleshy turmoil. Instinctively he reached out – and found the Wall solid under his hand. Solid, and cold, numbing cold – and razor sharp, on its faceted rim, like the obsidian it resembled, stinging his hand as if he clutched a handful of reeds. He let go with a yelp, and fell, plummeting away down into infinite dark below. He landed with a thump, on his knees, on the hut’s earth floor, panting. A figure squatted at the low door; and he felt giddy with achievement.

>   ‘Alya! Is anything amiss? I’d risen – I heard you call—’ She had a skin clutched around her, and moonlight shone on one bare shoulder, translating copper to silver.

  He rose, still in the mask, and stood looking at her. His call? Of voice, or of mind? She gasped a little, shrank back as if to run; and he realised what a frightening sight he must make, imbued with the awe that surrounds a Seer. Quickly he plucked the mask off, ducked down to clutch her hand.

  ‘It’s nothing, Savi. Please don’t go! I sought a path, that was all. And found it – blocked, guarded. As always.’

  She shivered, visibly, and still did not cross the threshold. ‘It must be a great mystery. And a great power. Vansha always tries to make it sound so, but I think he doesn’t really know much, yet.’

  ‘I think so too. But thank you for your concern, Savi. For coming to me.’ It occurred to him, crazily, that he could even ask his question directly, now. ‘But … why will you not come to me in the day? Even for a quiet word? There is so much I would like to tell you!’

  She hesitated a little. ‘What might that be?’

  ‘How kind you were to me. How much that meant. How beautiful you are, the most beautiful creature in all the world, sleek as a doe and as tender, as bright-eyed as a bird. Why can I never tell you that under the sun, Savi?’

  ‘Because I shall be of marrying age in only a few months. Because of Vansha.’

  ‘Vansha!’ Alya made his name a curse. Always Vansha! ‘What of him? You are a chieftain’s daughter, you may speak to whom you like.’

  She ducked her head from side to side, a sign of denial; but this was almost like a writhe of pain. Alya felt his blood burn, his heart grow heavy. ‘You are not bound to him, are you? Not before you are of age?’

  The writhe again. ‘No! Though he would have me so. Long since. We have …’ She looked away. ‘We have touched one another since we were children, and it pleased me well enough, though he was rough. He was always fair and strong and full of cheer, bright as the sun, and made much of me. But I have watched him grow more like his father, and liked him less and less for it. Then you came. And I saw how he looked at you from the first. He hates you. He has done so since you first appeared, the very look of you, the face of the Raven, the tale you told. He hates you so much his heart grows cold, his merriment hollow. Because you are everything he is not. He fears you, also. For what my father plans.’

  ‘That I guessed. But it always seemed like scorn and jest!’

  ‘That is how Vansha would have you, how he is happy enough for now. But if he finds any cause to fear you, to think you a real rival – then he would do worse, Alya! He might hurt you!’

  She seized his hand in her entreaty; and he caught it, and drew her over the threshold. ‘Don’t be seen out there if he worries you so! Vansha doesn’t frighten me. Remember how I ran rings around Chaquala and Miale, and flattened Balka’s nose across his warty face?’

  ‘But not Vansha. They are only what he made them, their own strength broken against his. He is stronger and cleverer.’

  ‘Let him be vicious as a bear-dog, if he wants!’ said Alya. ‘But if you do not want him, Savi, he shall not have you!’

  ‘Once … Oh, I do not know! I thought him so brave and strong once, and he is. But he is not … good, not as you are good, that I can tell. When I saw you, so full of sorrows and yet more than that … The flame in your eye is darker, yet it dimmed his to an ember. Yes, I want you! With him I might be happier, who can say? But it is you I want!’

  Their people seldom kissed on the lips; but they held one another, tightly, and he let his face rest against hers, upturned, their foreheads and noses touching. Their eyelashes fluttered against one another, their breath mingled. He had hardly remembered he was naked; it meant little among their folk. But he became fiercely aware of it now, and of her warmth against him, the skin held from him by no more than the stiff hide. He drew his lips down her face, her neck, to where the moonlight had made her shoulder shimmer like the enchanted metal of the mask. And from there, down, against the stiff stale hide, pressing against the warmth of her small breast beneath. She caught her breath, and leaned back in his arms, and ran her hands up his thigh, clutching at him. Panting, he buried his head in her shoulder again, slid his own hand beneath the hide, between her legs, held her as she him. They leaned together in the darkness, clutching and breathing as one, aware of little else and deeply content.

  She left him, after a time, with scarcely a word, threading her way back among the trees to provide an excuse, if she were seen. He watched her in the faint light, long bare legs steady on the rough slope, until she was out of sight. Only then did he begin to wonder how the world had changed. For the better, beyond doubt; yet it might bring so much evil with it.

  How much, he soon discovered. Neither said anything, and next day she shunned him as before. Yet before long something new infected Vansha’s jibes, an edge of spite that came worryingly close to a challenge. Perhaps a warning vision had come to him, though he was showing no other talent as a Seer.

  Old Ushaya, now, powerful and malignant, able to direct his sight by arcane means – he might well have perceived something. Whatever the cause, Alya knew a challenge would be disastrous, though his fiery heart ached. By fighting the village’s favourite son he would gain little, win or lose. When Savi became ready, then something must happen. Perhaps by then he could better his standing in other ways.

  By that crucial day he had lived in the Citadel perhaps a year and a half, and there had been few other intrusions from the outside world. From time to time strangers would pass by, of many kinds. They would spy the folk among the fields, and there they would be met and welcomed, eagerly greeted as bringers of news and diversions from the round of life. Never, though, would they be suffered to see where the Citadel lay, or its true size and strength, even the most harmless of them.

  There were travellers to and from one or other of the little kingdoms dotted about the land, wandering pedlars selling salt, spices, knives and trinkets and suchlike simple trade goods. Now and again there might even be a minstrel or jester, telling stories, singing to an instrument or juggling and tumbling, taking up a collection for his evening meal. But none had come for a long time already, and it was six months longer before another new voice was heard.

  Six months in which Alya and Saviyal stayed apart by day, and by night met rarely and briefly. Six months in which Vansha grew ever harsher and more contemptuous, so much so that a few in the village remarked it with displeasure, and showed some sympathy with Alya. That only made Vansha more disturbed. Alya came to hate that crooked smile, that smooth, commanding figure lounging its way through life, like a rock against which others might break, the greater their efforts. But he practised patience by day, and by night he sought guidance in his visions once again. He never conquered the Wall, but he began to master the fleeting images in its depths, just a little. He glimpsed much, and felt more in his heart. And it was through those warnings, perhaps, in his inner feelings, that he and Saviyal were never caught in their trysts; which, brief and restrained as they were, would have given his foes the excuse they wanted.

  But there came a night when another vision came to him, clearer than any yet, a glimpse beyond the Wall. With a soaring effort, his feet stamping the floor of his hut, he seemed to whirl above it for a brief instant, wheeling high against a bright blue sky, and glimpse a fragment of what lay beyond, before he was hurled bodily, as he felt it, back to earth. He brooded on his vision afterwards, struggled to piece together his shattered memories. A broad land he might have seen, and across it paths, a double way to far horizons. At their joining stood a crossroads with no marker-stone; and as he hesitated there for that single brief moment, he saw from horizon to horizon. But above them rose two very different skies.

  It was the task of a Seer to be a scout for his folk, to be the pathfinder of their destiny amid such brief and enigmatic glimpses. None save legendary figures had ever achieved clear
and consistent prophecy; and the clarity of his vision startled him. All day long he debated with himself whether he should bother the chieftain; and plucked up courage to do so only the next morning. Nobody else would listen, that was certain; save of course Saviyal. But as he was about to go to the Great House, he heard a rush of hooves through the narrow gate not far beyond his hut, and a stir and hubbub within the village beyond. Ducking beneath the low lintel, he ran out to see.

  It was a rider, on a tall chestnut horse that picked its way surefootedly down the path. Alya had never seen such a fine mount, nor such clothes as the rider’s, dusty and travel-stained as they were – breeches and shirt of some full brown cloth, thickly woven, a jerkin of heavy leather richly worked, a long rider’s cloak of black waxed material that could be stretched out over saddlebags and horse’s crupper, and to conceal the crossbow and sword at his saddle. His face was weatherbeaten and hard, but he did not bear the look of the raiders, nor their markings. His dark hair was gathered in a horse-tail at the crown of his head, bound with fillets of gold and silver, swinging from side to side. Rings gleamed on the bare arms he raised in greeting.

  ‘Your chieftain, good folk!’ he called, as he reached the narrow open space before the Great House. Your Seer! I bear great tidings for them!’

  Saquavan himself, tall and calm, came out to meet him with raised and empty palms, but also a forbidding frown; and many others had weapons to hand and ready, Vansha included. ‘You do well to ride so calmly into this vale of ours, stranger; for we take great pains to keep it apart and hidden, and the paths are difficult. How came you upon us so, and past our sentinels? Upon what cause?’

  The weatherbeaten face cracked in a smile. ‘I did not mean to upset you, chieftain, nor to intrude. I came here because I knew of this place already, and had been told the ways and the paths. The first, from the old accounts of its finding and making; the second, in all secrecy, from one who dwelt here long ago, by name Atuqua.’