Shadow of the Seer

by Michael Scott Rohan

  The others skipped back with shrill yells, and that gave both boys the moment they needed to mount. They spurred the horses forward, stooped low against their necks, and rode down any who sought to block their way. Shrill cries sang after them like a rookery disturbed, stones and sharp flints whizzed into the trees around them, but nothing new or dangerous. The wind whistled about them, and the trees bent and slapped at them as they passed, but there was no pursuit. ‘All right?’ called Vansha cheerfully enough, when they were far enough ahead. He reined in, looking as rattled as Alya felt, but also as relieved. ‘Pretty pathetic, those outlaws. Can’t get many travellers through, these days. Must live on rats or something most of the time, no diet for any man.’

  ‘I don’t think they were men,’ said Alya, reining in alongside and looking back. ‘Not any more.’

  Vansha shivered. ‘The smell …’

  ‘Yes. Gets your hackles up, doesn’t it? And those long limbs. They say the Powers can change some people, over generations, make servants of them.’

  ‘Yes. You think these ones were serving someone? Something?’ Vansha seized his bow again, and looked angrily about. ‘Damn them, they might be driving us ahead! Making us feel we’d scored some kind of victory! And all the time herding us just where they wanted us to go—’

  The whistle of wind that cut off his words was deafeningly shrill. The boughs above them stooped and struck, dead twigs and mast flew up off the forest shore and stung their eyes.

  No – ordinary – storm!’ yelled Alya, struggling to steady his horse. ‘Only one safe way!’

  ‘Right!’ yelled Vansha. ‘Run, now! Right into the teeth of it—’

  The two young men struggled to subdue their frightened horses, to head them into the wind. It gusted a great roaring laugh about their ears, whipping Alya’s long hair into his eyes – a monstrous, threatening sound. They shouted to counter it, cracked the reins across their horses’ cruppers, and the frightened beasts sprang madly away. Alya’s hair streamed out in the rain, Vansha’s gleamed slick with water as they crashed through bush and briar, the horses breasting the seething undergrowth and snapping branches in their eagerness to be gone. Alya, holding reins and saddle with one hand, slashed at bush and branch with the great sword, while Vansha, clinging with his knees, fitted another arrow and cast about.

  Faster and faster they raced, sending great sprays of leaves up and dancing in the stormy air. A wild laugh erupted to one side, and Vansha, bow still in hand, loosed the long shaft at the source. Through the leaves it sliced, and stuck quivering in the trunk of an ancient elm. More laughter rumbled. A huge branch flailed into their path; Alya slashed at it, but only scored the bark. It whipped back, there came a great shriek of wrath, and a blast of wind that strove to lift them both from their saddles. Alya ducked as the branch flailed back, and together, cresting the wall of trees, they burst out into a wide clearing right at the brink of the hill.

  Nothing grew here within that wide oval, though one dead tree stood at its heart on a hillock of half-exposed roots, blackened and twisted as if by lightning. Even the earth seemed barren and dead, slipping away from the hilltop to lay bare its stony heart – and with it, half buried, a heaping scatter at the tree’s foot. Some of it was stone, carven and shaped, though worn now almost beyond all recognition; here and there a stony face gaped like a skull. But around and between that lay mostly human bones, scattered, skulls and ribcages with all manner of other bones between them, but cracked and split, glistening in the mire.

  The horses reared and plunged, the rain lashed like flails, and the booming voice spewed mockery in their ears. A loud whistle blasted the air, and the wind charged against them like a beast, sending them staggering. Again the whistle, and they were almost hurled across the clearing, hooves dragging among the bones but finding no purchase. The whistle changed, and they were spilled back again, stunned and winded. Again that horrible laugh sounded, and it seemed to shake the ground beneath them. But it had a source now. It came from above; and looking up with dazed eyes they saw it, squatting high on the branch of the dead tree like some form of horrible growth or parasite, a shapeless bundle of fur with skinny limbs dangling in the air below.

  Vansha yelled in answer, ‘What are you? We want nothing of you but to pass!’

  The bundle stirred. ‘But there’s much I want of you. You’re in my realm now!’ The voice was human, casual, though it seemed impossible it should come from that spidery shape.

  ‘What d’you want?’ demanded Alya angrily. ‘The flesh on our bones?’

  ‘I? Perish the thought!’ A young man’s voice, drawling, amused, using words Alya barely understood. ‘My devotees insist on that. The ones you’ve already met. Poor fellows! A relic of their long servitude to the Ice, when they were taught to think of mansflesh as the reward of chieftains. They are no chieftains now, but I must let them have their way. I once tried a little myself, but frankly …’

  ‘You want something else. Like what?’

  ‘Oh, that’s terribly hard to define. Essence? Being? You’d never understand, so why waste time?’

  Vansha understood even less than Alya, and that made his anger boil over all the more. His bow hung ready, and he swung it up, drawing and aiming as one movement, and loosed as the string reached his chin. It was a fine shot, and the arrow soared into the tree. But just as swiftly a thin white arm darted from the bundle, and with an almost easy accuracy long fingers plucked the shaft from the air.

  The creature giggled, and pushed back its fur hood to reveal a face that Alya was startled to find so human. It grinned, a wide, thin-lipped gape, raised the arrow to its mouth and made great show of picking its teeth. Then it stuck the arrow in its lips, point outward, and spat. Vansha just managed to duck as it sang past his head on a whistling blast.

  The bundle uncoiled suddenly, swift as a snake’s strike; the thin limbs tensed. The first shiver of a whistle almost too high to hear hurt their ears and blurred their eyes. Hardly less swiftly Alya raised his sword, but the rising wind clutched the blade, shook it in his hand, shoved it rudely back; and the whine grew to a stabbing ache. The horses tossed their heads and threshed, too terrified to move.

  The new fire burned along Alya’s arm. He let the blade be driven back, gathering his strength. Then, standing suddenly in his stirrups, he flung it from his hand, as once the boy hunter had hurled sticks into rising flocks of birds, straight into the face of the wind.

  The blade-edge cut the air like gossamer silk. The sword flew straighter than the arrow, and struck, both the branch and the leg that dangled from it. The thud shook the tree from top to bole. The tree-limb, half cut through, creaked, tore and snapped, and the bundle was swept shrieking out into the air. Down on to the hillock it toppled, hit the upturned roots and bounced, curled up like a spider, to roll down among the bodies at the foot. It half opened; and then the sword came hissing down from the air, and stuck quivering in the earth a finger’s breadth away.

  The little monster curled up sharply, and the white limbs trembled. Blood trickled from the deep gash in one thigh, blood too dark to be a normal human’s. Alya sprang down and grabbed the thing, though the fur felt unpleasant in his hands, and Vansha after him.

  ‘Now that was a throw, brother!’ he laughed. And what a pretty little birdie it’s brought down!’

  He grabbed the head by what might have been fur or hair, and forced it back. The face leered up at them, and both men recoiled. Not that it was inhuman, or monstrous; it was human, in its fashion, indeed almost ordinary if the skin had not been so pallid, the mouth so heavy. Even so, the features were wholly unlike their own, rounded, smooth, puffy in the cheeks. It was a boy’s face, still half a child’s, wholly unlined. But the eyes were as dark as the slitted lids were white, and they peered out between them like pits of black malice, so strong it struck both men like a blow. This was a man, in its shape; yet they felt that some kind of creature grinned at them, the fat pale lips stretching unpleasantly wide over t
he large yellow teeth. The lips pursed suddenly. Vansha thrust his dagger to its side; Alya clamped his hand on its throat. It bucked at the touch, and the lips subsided.

  ‘You’ll whistle through every hole and a few new ones if you try that again!’ warned Vansha.

  ‘So you’ve caught me!’ mocked the voice. ‘Stars, that’s a handy talent, that sword-throwing. I must practise. But now, what’re you going to do with me? Can’t squat here holding on to me forever!’

  ‘What’s wrong with killing you, whatever you are?’ Vansha suggested.

  The bland face smirked. ‘Everything. People like me, we never wholly die, you know. We always come back. We change, but we come back, eventually. And then you’d be very, very sorry!’

  ‘I’ve heard that said about the Powers!’ grunted Alya.

  ‘That’s right!’ tittered the face. ‘That’s me. Oh, a very minor one, I grant you, but still nobody to trifle with—’ It shrilled. Alya’s grip had closed. He hauled the now silent creature upright.

  ‘Power or not, you can be brought down. You can be choked, I think. Feel the strength in my hand. It runs through my body. That is the strength of Powers, as much as any whistling tricks of yours. Tell me now why it should not destroy you. You might be slow to return from that.’

  The fur quivered, and a deep shuddering breath whistled in the constricted throat. ‘Because – because I can serve you?’

  Vansha chuckled incredulously. ‘A Power serve a mere mortal? There’s a comedown!’

  ‘I am a Power!’ it squalled petulantly. ‘Oh, my mother was a mortal, maybe! She died. But I didn’t. Not ever, not in many lifetimes of men. Some Power had got across her, who’d made himself human, no doubt. They can do that, you know! Oh, easily enough, all but the greatest ones. And equipped his nice new body with human seed he probably never thought of; and that seed made me!’ The creature gave a high wheezing cackle, and tossed his tousled mane. ‘For that I’m deeply indebted to him – me, half shaped, pale of cheek, strong in magic but weak in limb, never dying but never young, hating the strong and the happy, despising fools who ride free through the world! Their lives are my true food, their essences make me live as their carcasses feed those beast-witted worshippers of mine! Well, now you know. So go ahead, slay me now and watch my cursed blood stain your swords forever. Or take me for what I am!’

  Alya considered those black eyes for a moment. He could imagine himself weakened, helpless, staring into them and feeling his life draining away, all his memories, his experiences – his essence, pouring out into that hungry mind.

  ‘Why should you prefer that, creature? What lure is in it for you, better than a death you claim not to fear? And why should we trust you?’

  The voice grew almost serious. ‘Because you are a hero of the Powers. You are the first such ever to cross my path, in year upon year; but I know you, oh yes, I know. I cannot see your strength, but I feel it, feel the thunder of it, fire that flows beneath your skin like waters racing beneath the earth. Strengths like that are given to cut fiery courses across this cold world. I want to follow it awhile, and see where it leads.’ Again the giggle. ‘And because somehow, despite all this, despite a gift that mortals rarely taste, you are not – either of you – happy.’

  Vansha’s dagger moved across its throat. ‘Never less happy than looking at you! I say, speed him on his journey and rid the world of one more foulness. Let him find his own way back, if he will!’

  ‘Look at his thigh!’ said Alya. Vansha snarled. There was no more blood; there was not even a scab, only a brown mark.

  ‘We could hew him in pieces—’ began Vansha. The creature shrilled horribly.

  ‘Maybe,’ said Alya thoughtfully. ‘He is uncanny enough; but then so was my healing. You, creature or man, you have not answered us fully. Why should we trust you? Why should we sleep easy with you at our heel, you and your Powers?’

  ‘What, strive against you, now that I know you? Look where it got me last time. No, you’re one to run with, not against, as all but fools can see. So, bind me if you will, gag me even – oh, cruel torment! – and I’ll be your outrunner, before your horse or beside you. Not behind, I don’t like the view. And a sword I can be to you, greater than that you bear. I will fell your foes, defend your friends, drink only the lives you give me. I will be another strength to you, such as you now possess! And maybe even make up for the brains they never gave you!’

  Vansha spat; but Alya, after a long moment, lifted his hand and Vansha’s from the narrow throat. Beside him the sword stood half its length in the earth, but he did not lay hand to it. ‘Do you have a name, creature?’

  The head waggled. ‘None I can remember. My followers called me the Nightingale, by times. For the grace and beauty of my song, upon moonlit nights in the wild wood.’

  ‘I can see why. Well, Nightingale, you’ll have your wish. I will spare you, unless and until you menace us ever again! You’ll be something to show to the King.’ Alya silenced Vansha’s protest with a gesture. ‘But something more will bind you. Your word – no, spare me! You need not swear to either of us. You would break that the first time we turned our backs on you, or slept. But to the Powers that poured this strength into me – to Their purpose, whatever that was.’ The creature sat up with a squeal, its white face suddenly livid. ‘To that, to Them you will swear. And bring down Their wrath upon you, should you fail.’

  Nightingale scrabbled backward on the ground, uttering little shrill cries; then stopped, as suddenly, as he ran into Vansha’s dagger. Alya tugged his sword from the ground, and wiped it clean of soil against the oily furs. ‘I do not force you. My friend is only too eager—’

  Nightingale’s eyes narrowed. ‘You don’t know what you ask! You don’t even know the fire that burns in you! That alone would consume me in torments!’

  ‘Every moment of which you deserve. Consider this a chance to make amends. And do not delay, in the hope your hungry devotees will free you – what’s left of them, and when they catch up. Now, or never. Vansha?’

  ‘Now!’ shrieked Nightingale, and a gust thrashed the branches at his very word. ‘Now! I swear, I swear, to the Powers whose strength you carry. I’ll help you, I won’t betray you, I won’t, I won’t …’ He fell forward, foaming and drooling, almost in a fit as it seemed.

  Vansha picked him up bodily by the scruff of his skinny neck. ‘Heard and witnessed, demon! And the first wrong move you make …’

  Nightingale, dangling from his fist, smiled suddenly, and there was malicious strength in that smile. ‘That I make? If you must worry, handsome fellow, worry over yours! Oath made, oath kept, for me!’

  Vansha snorted. ‘See that you do!’ He set him on his feet, where he stayed, shakily, like an ugly child in ragged furs, stooped, thin and starveling. ‘Think he’ll be strong enough to run a step, let alone pace a horse?’ jeered Vansha. ‘We’ll end up carrying him!’

  ‘If we must,’ answered Alya, feeling a strange mixture of excitement and relief within him, as one might who has passed a barrier, or a test. ‘But Master Nightingale has more surprises for us yet, I think. Vansha, you have the way of knots; bind him tightly enough, but leave him ungagged. I think we might do well to endure his rattling and railing, for the specks of truth within.’

  Nightingale stole a look from under his fleshy brows, and giggled. ‘What’s this, brains between a hero’s ears? Coming up in the world, clearly. We live in an age of miracles. But be swift now, or my votaries will get their nerves and their appetites back, and perhaps include me. False god would be top of their table.’

  ‘Don’t give yourself airs,’ grinned Alya, as Vansha knotted two narrow cuffs at the end of a length of thin hempen cord. ‘You’d supply the toothpicks. Now lead us out of here, by the quickest and safest way, towards the city.’

  But when they hauled themselves into their saddles once more, it was the false god who set off at a startling pace out of the clearing and down the further slope, his skinny limbs skipping over
roots and underbrush more lightly than their mounts could follow. Vansha cracked the rope. ‘Slow down, ghoul! I’ll not have you steering us into any pits or peatbogs!’

  ‘They’re all on the other paths!’ Nightingale cackled, his furs bouncing and shifting as he loped down a winding path that none could see save he. ‘Along with worse things, holes and voles and bears in lairs with more bones outside than mine, and hanging vines that are no vines, yet hang very neatly by the neck! But we can take the pretty route, if you insist!’

  ‘Another day!’ said Vansha, looking uneasily around. The sun struck slanting beams down between the trees now, and the air was heavy, and sang. Dust motes sparkled, and insects glittered lazily this way and that. The slope was steep, and they came downhill faster than they would have liked, the horses whinnying as their hooves slipped in the loose soil. The trees changed around them, with fewer evergreens and more leafy crowns, and mercifully thinner underbrush. But it was still impossible to move quietly at such a pace. Over the crashing of their horses’ hooves, Alya was sure he heard other sounds, distant but distinct, keeping pace with them.

  ‘Nightingale!’ he snapped, after a moment. ‘Something’s pacing us! Many things. I thought it was your men, but they sound smaller, faster. Like a pack …’

  ‘No wolves here!’ snapped Nightingale, and bounded, if anything, faster. ‘Don’t ask! Just come, and be clear of the trees ere nightfall. They won’t strike till then.’

  ‘That suits me very well!’ snapped Vansha, though he had to duck under a whipping stand of grey ash saplings. Alya felt the same, though it cost him also a lashing, and once a fall, with his horse plunging around in fright before he caught and calmed it, while Nightingale capered and gibbered in his haste. The rushing sounds were louder now, and closer, and sometimes they were also in the tops of the trees as well as along the ground. And there they leaped and skipped among the leaves, like squirrels; only they were many times too large for that.