Shadow of the Seer

by Michael Scott Rohan

  ‘The gaoler seemed to know you well enough!’ said Alya, wonderingly. ‘You come often?’

  ‘It suits my view of humanity,’ said Asquan. ‘A microcosm – but you would not know what this is? Yes? Of course, your fathers were Seers. A world in a little space. A realm of chains and torment, where the stronger fastens on the weaker amid the slime. I almost said “feeds upon” – and that is not unknown, down here. Oh yes, I have come here often enough.’

  The gaoler motioned to one of the guards, who held the lantern high. They saw they were in a vaulted chamber, lower and wider than the rest, held up by rows of squat pillars supporting the broad flattened arches. The work looked strong, ancient, but void of decoration or finish. The pillars seemed to grow out of the miry floor, as if it had risen to envelop them; and they were hung about with chains. Here and there a gaunt figure was chained right up against the stone, immobile; but others had enough slack to move away, to sit or lie upon the filth about them. They hid their eyes as the light fell upon them, ragged, half naked and half skeletal, like dark spirits flinching from the dawn. But some moved swiftly towards it, only to shrink back from the gaoler’s cudgel, snarling like beasts.

  When they saw Asquan, though, their manner changed. Some catcalled insults and jeers; some launched shrill invitations. Asquan acknowledged them with a regal wave, and once even stopped before a crouching, staring woman to run a light caress over her matted hair. But he said nothing of their errand, until he had led the way deep into the chamber, and still not found its further wall.

  ‘A sorry crew, gaoler,’ he remarked carelessly.

  What’d I tell you, my lord? Scum, and starveling scum at that.’

  ‘Indeed. I want those whom chains will not hold. I want the manner of men who break away from the herd. I want the ones who when they were banished to this place banished it from themselves. I want those who have had the strength to found their own place apart in the heart of this infernal realm. Come out, all of you! His voice echoed beneath the roof. ‘I know you are here! Come and show yourselves. Or have you forgotten the sun?’

  And, astonishingly, they came.

  It was as if the darkness itself swelled, a mere curtain billowing. As the lanternlight swung this way and that they appeared, never in its centre, always as it passed, half-seen shapes that slid cautiously from behind pillars, or darted forward an instant and skittered back, thin, spidery, insubstantial. Alya’s hand went to his sword as a pair of eyes glinted suddenly on a level with his own, and another; but they came no closer, hovering, ready to escape.

  Asquan looked around. ‘You know who I am. I have given you food before now, some of you, to increase the little you wrest from the vermin still enchained.’

  ‘Given?’ said a thin voice, whether man’s or woman’s Alya could not tell. ‘Traded, rather. You give us nothing. You feed our bodies, and feed upon them in return.’

  Asquan shook his grey hair with calm disdain. ‘How else could I help? What I took from some among you only repaid my risk. I had nothing better to offer. But now I do. You are all beyond the common herd, here. You are all proud enough to prefer your own small shred of freedom to mingling with the beast-men nearer the door, even with their faint chance of release. You are the uncounted, the disappeared, the living dead. You survive no more than months, but you are not afraid to die free. I need a few who would sooner face death under the sun.’

  ‘And what filthy favour buys that?’ demanded a woman’s voice. ‘What new sport have you dreamed up, Asquan? There are only men and women, more or less. And a body only has so many portals, you know!’

  There was a little soft laughter among the pillars. Asquan seemed not at all concerned. ‘I offer you freedom, in a good cause. You will offer your lives. We are going up against the Ice, and very likely few will return. I do not greatly expect to.’

  Silence grew, till it seemed to press on their chests like a dead weight. ‘Against the Ice?’ said a voice that seemed to belong to the dark, cavernous and deep. ‘In what manner? On what cause?’

  ‘Hold that lantern up!’ snapped Asquan. ‘That is never you, Kalkan? Not after so long?’

  ‘Some endure a little longer here, my lord!’ growled the voice. If they are willing to do what they must to survive. Has Volmur sent you to gloat?’

  ‘Volmur sends me to my death, my lord. And I was never your enemy.’

  ‘You were never my friend.’

  Asquan sighed. ‘Your folly was your own, in attacking Volmur so openly. Why should I share it? But does your son live also?’

  The blackness was silent a second, before it answered. ‘He is free.’

  Asquan sighed again. ‘Truly, I am sorry. Even Volmur’s wrath seldom extends so far; but you frightened him, and that was very unsafe. But I offer you light now, and a slim chance at life. We need men who will not cut and run at once, who will not prefer the life of a hunted brigand to death with honour! Take what you can, man, and come!’

  ‘Leave me here!’ snorted Kalkan. ‘I want no light, to show me the injustices of men!’

  Alya stepped forward. ‘Hear me! Three days since, our home was raided, by the men of the Ice, that are called the Ekwesh. Women were stolen – dear to me and others. Volmur gives us scant aid to pursue them, save Asquan and whomever we can recruit. Do you dare complain of injustice, yet skulk in darkness while others suffer?’

  Kalkan laughed, loudly. ‘Your women are dead, boy, or whores to the Ekwesh, beyond reclaiming! Your cause is lost. Abandon the burden of hope and live for yourself. Dig no others from their graves.’

  ‘I was given hope!’ snapped Alya furiously. ‘I was raised from a living grave worse than yours! And since when was a lost cause less worthy? One way or another, you shall see the light!’

  Alya seized the chains that hung from the nearby pillar, some four or five in his hands, and pulled, hard. Two of the chains snapped at once, and flew up jingling. The gaoler and the guard gave back, and gasped. Alya set his foot against the stone and hauled. From the roof above, nitre cascaded into the lamplight, and small fragments of stone rattled down in falls of dust. With a horrible grinding squeal the mighty blocks in which the chainrings were set rose slowly from their sockets, and the pillar trembled.

  The gaoler yelped. ‘Make the mad bastard stop! He’ll have the tower down on us!’ The guard dropped the lantern, and ran.

  In the sudden blackness Alya felt a hand laid on his arm – lean and greasy, no doubt with the filth he smelt, but strong and steady. ‘Hold, boy! From a worse grave than mine, you say?’

  ‘The tomb of my living spirit! The prison of my own ruined body, barely able to crawl. The Powers gave me healing, and the might of ancient heroes! What they give, they give for a purpose! Will you dare gainsay them?’

  Asquan had retrieved the lantern, and at the click of his tinderbox it sprouted a feeble flame. The eyes that suddenly stared into Alya’s, half hidden by tangled hair, were bloodshot, and very intent; but they did not look demented.

  ‘You are a mere boy!’ boomed the voice. ‘But you feel as if you are filled with fire! You make me think. While such a flame is loose in the world, shall any hatred of mine stand idle? In hating Volmur I had half forgot the Ice, maybe.’

  ‘The Ice is the reason Volmur is,’ put in Vansha. ‘In happier times men will find better lords!’

  Asquan simply laughed. But Kalkan stood silent a moment. ‘It is good that you believe so, perhaps. I do not, not any longer.’ Alya could hear the effort in his voice. ‘I fear to emerge, as I have feared little in this world. But you remind me what it was to have a belief and a goal, and the free air on my face. If you can truly get me out, I will come.’

  ‘Thank you!’ said Alya. ‘And can you find others with that much spirit?’

  Kalkan snorted. ‘Few. Fazdshan, stand forth! And you, Darzhan! Chiansha, Almur, what say you? The enemy rolls across our land like black smoke. Shall we not raise a spear where Volmur dare not?’

  Darkness took on a
nother voice, younger, bleaker. ‘We come to your call, as we are sworn to. As we would from the grave, if we could!’

  Other shadows deepened in the darkness. They moved hesitantly, yet it was as if they grew taller, as if the blackness and the mass of the stone above no longer weighed upon them so heavily. Kalkan appeared to see them perfectly. ‘The old days are not wholly gone, then. But Tseshya? You also? You mere inky-arsed bookworm, you have never borne mail!’

  ‘A scholar can ride. And shoot a bow from the saddle. I have hunted so. And I cannot read or write in darkness. As the poet Paiolan says: I would have horse in hand again, were there no roof but the sky.’

  ‘You shall,’ said Asquan. The just cause affords its own shelter – as the poet Dzhanmur wrote, shortly before he froze to death.’ He glared around, as if he could summon more faces out of the darkness. ‘Is this all that remains of your knights and followers? What of Quyan the Landholder?’

  ‘Dead these last two months, as I reckon them. And Marshal Jianshu took his own life after only two weeks. Shashan, Uien; even my old sergeant of horse Pazhen. My kin from the northern frontier, Landholder Laomer, Ulimer the Commander of Footmen, Hazhya of the Seventh Fort, Djakan of the Fifth Battalion. All dead, of festering wounds and deep despair. Volmur spared us only for a dirtier and more miserable end. Some others have turned away from me,’ Kalkan added grudgingly, ‘and from the line of duty. Taken to thieving and suchlike, joined the filthy herd that are content to squat by the door there for their muck-rations, aye, and your kind of bounty, my lord. I don’t recognise them now.’

  ‘A useful skill, maybe, thieving,’ said Vansha drily. ‘But timidity and turning coats will not serve us. I hoped for fifty, not five! Can’t we persuade any others?’

  ‘None that you’d want to have by you while you slept!’ answered Kalkan, ushering them towards the speck of light that was the distant door. ‘How swiftly do we leave? I doubt Volmur’s bounty will last too long, if he learns whom you are setting free!’

  ‘Agreed!’ said Asquan sardonically. ‘Gaoler, here is my warrant. Set down any names you will for those we are engaging. But if you will take my advice, let them be … everyday names. Free of associations!’

  The gaoler chuckled, as something chinked musically inside the warrant. ‘The Lord Kalkan perished of a plague four years past, my lord, the very day his gyves fell empty. Saved me a mort of explanations, that. No idea whom this fellow is!’

  ‘Very good,’ said Asquan, glancing around. ‘Did we not have a guard with us?’

  ‘Maybe, maybe,’ said the gaoler uneasily. His face was glossy with sweat. ‘Then again, maybe not. Could be wandering round anywhere, he could. He’ll turn up. Or not. Not a good idea to leave the lamp, down here, if you take my meaning! Now, my lords, if you’ll follow me …’

  He stopped dead. The glow that was the door vanished as if a curtain were drawn across it. Their own lantern guttered and dimmed to a feeble red glow. Instinctively they drew together. Kalkan growled; and a voice spoke out of the darkness.

  ‘Forgetting a woman may have talents, too, my lords? I should not waste time seeking that poor guard of yours, by the way. I saw him go by with some friends!’

  ‘Rysha!’ barked Kalkan. ‘I smell you, vixen! What does such as you want with us?’

  ‘No more than any woman with any man, old crow! Bartering and bargaining, as usual. What we’ve got, for what we’re grudged. That’s how it always works.’

  Kalkan spat. ‘I don’t want any of what you’ve got! We’re—’

  ‘I know. I’d sooner deal with this nice young lad.’ Alya shivered suddenly. Long fingers, icy cold and strong, slid beneath his waistband and down across his stomach. ‘Or the sleek one!’

  Vansha yelped; but he was standing feet away. The smooth soft voice was suddenly back behind Alya, so close he could feel the breath on his ear. ‘Ah! Now, they’ve got something to offer a lady, maybe. If they didn’t have their own little biddies so firmly in mind – no? Not two biddies, is it? One? Well, would you credit that, gentles? Whatever are they going to do with her – share her? Alternate days? Alternate ends?’

  Alya cursed and twisted away from the snaky grasp.

  ‘What’s amiss?’ sneered the voice, as silkily as before. ‘Don’t like playing games in the dark?’ The words seemed to come from all around them. ‘Never mind, you’ll learn! It’s better that way. You don’t see the end of it all.’

  The darkness seemed to recede a little. The yellow lanternlight picked out the merest suggestion of a form, a woman’s body, naked, defined only by vague curves and hollows, and by the faint fluttering rise and fall of quickened breath. A man’s mind might draw a vision like that upon unyielding dark. There were sharp breaths and exclamations all around, and someone – Vansha – stepped forward.

  There was no warning. The change was immediate. The face that glimmered in its own light, a finger’s breadth from Alya’s own, was livid, horrible, a mass of oozing decay. The nose was eaten away, maggots crawled about the pus-rimmed eye sockets, the lips hung yellowed over teeth that rotted in the pallid gums. But it was alive, and all too recognisable. Vansha’s cry was despairing as much as appalled. A shriek of laughter echoed across the roof.

  ‘Don’t like it, do you? Whoever it was you saw? I don’t know, not Rysha. Nobody tells her, no! But you know. Because what you saw there – it’s in you! That’s the end of all your piddling desires. That’s what you all chase!’

  ‘Don’t worry, friends!’ said Kalkan loudly. ‘She can’t keep this up! She can only work her little tricks in the dark, and for a few breaths. If she could do anything meaningful, she’d have been out that door long since.’

  Alya himself recoiled, less at what he had seen than at the malice behind it, more visible to his inner eye than his common sight. The dark shape seemed almost to glitter with it. She must be a Seer, of a rare kind he had heard his father mention, with dire warnings; one whose power turned outward, almost always through malevolence and resentment, not to cultivate farsight and wisdom, but to obscure the minds of men with illusion and ill-will. But one with power such as this, however brief, he had never heard of.

  ‘A spae-wife …’he said, aloud, and the woman called Rysha laughed again, more softly.

  ‘A witch!’ Vansha was horrified. He had been brought up to fear such creatures, man or woman, almost more than the Ice. And it was true that they could work dreadful havoc in a tight-knit village, setting brother against brother or child against parent. Most often they were mobbed, if discovered, and stoned or hanged; few survived for judgement. And many innocents died in their stead.

  ‘She drove her husband to his death,’ said Kalkan, with savage relish. ‘His son slew him at her goading – if she didn’t do it herself! And then she did kill the son. Cut his throat while they coupled, and sought to blame it on the father, as if they’d killed one another. A merchant’s second wife, with kinfolk prosperous enough to spare her the disgrace of fire or gibbet. But they didn’t want her out of here. Nobody does!’

  ‘Who would?’ hissed Vansha. ‘We’ve got one demon too many, already. We don’t need her!’

  ‘That’s right, lad!’ said Kalkan roughly. ‘Setting folk at each other’s throats, that’s her little fancy! Been more trouble than the guards, down here!’

  ‘How many breaths has it been dark now, old crow?’ Rysha jibed. ‘And you, pretty one – you’ll need me, all right! I can ride like a man! I can fight like one, too! Which means I don’t have to kowtow to pretty boys! Though before your friend, now – I might just tag along!’

  ‘That is not your decision,’ said Alya evenly. ‘Yet she might be of great use. You have the power to cloud the sight, Rysha. But how clear is your own?’

  Suddenly, sharply, he reached out, following only his instinct. Whether through luck, or some element of inner sight, he caught a bare arm, clamped his fingers about it, and heard the startled hiss. The lantern flame swelled suddenly. He hauled hard, and a woman stumbled
into the spreading patch of light.

  He had expected the desirable vision to be nothing like her, save in mockery; and that was right enough. She was younger than he expected, though, a few years older than himself, tallish and rangy, though her soiled and shredded rags made it evident that she was better fleshed than most here. Her filthy hair, still shaded at the ends with henna, framed a face that surprised him, neither fair nor otherwise, not ill-shaped but lean and deeply lined, with furrows between the brows and around the nose and mouth. That face must normally hide its demons, behind eyes of weathered glass like river pebbles; it could be a mask of blandness even a husband might not penetrate. Yet it was not hunger that had pinched the nose or hollowed the cheeks before their time, or set the harsh twist to the mouth as she hawked and spat in his face, struggling to tear her hand free and failing utterly.

  Then she sagged. Only in the dark had the devils been unleashed, and they faded even as he saw them. She stood suddenly meek and demure, eyes downcast.

  ‘Look at me!’ said Alya, and when she would not, he tilted her chin up, sharply. ‘What I offer is not mere escape, understand that! You may live through it, or you may not. But you must forswear this vicious pleasure of yours.’

  She nodded, hesitant, eager to please. He thought of the long, cold salamanders that concealed themselves among the stones of the river bed, unseen, immovable, until the small fishes passed too close. ‘Hear me!’ he persisted, seizing her shoulders, shaking her, striving to drive understanding home through that frosty glass barrier, as opaque as the Wall, and as dangerous. ‘Save it for our foes, if you must. We are so few, and in so much peril, we can only live by depending on one another, utterly. And the moment you endanger our search, I promise you – I will strike you down.’

  There was something in the face at last, a flicker of expression. ‘You?’

  ‘I’ll spare him the trouble!’ said Kalkan. ‘I should have done so, long since.’

  ‘And yet you didn’t!’ remarked Vansha idly.