Shadow of the Seer

by Michael Scott Rohan

  Nightingale giggled. ‘That one? Nice. Big eyes, like me. He was right, though – skinny. No meat.’

  Alya held Vansha back. ‘Where, Nightingale? Don’t ruin it all now!’

  The creature shrugged petulantly. ‘Northward. Westward, turning northward. Where else is there, for the Ekwesh? The only place they are at rest. North, along this road. In wagons. We see them go.’

  ‘When?’ put in Vansha. ‘How far ahead?’

  Another shrug. ‘Not sure. A day and a night? Two days? Three? He was drunk. All drunk.’

  Vansha groaned. ‘You useless little vermin! If we only knew—’

  ‘We don’t need to!’ snapped Alya. ‘We know she’s on this road ahead, and that’s enough! We’ll ride out at once!’

  ‘Agreed!’ said Asquan, who had stood fascinated. ‘To horse now and as fast as we can! Did you not hear? The Ekwesh have some kind of guardians. Choosers of the Slain! The Powers alone may guess what that means, but I know I’m not lingering till they find what we’ve done here!’

  ‘I think I can guess!’ said Tseshya grimly. ‘And if I’m right, my lord, so are you!’

  Alya nodded. ‘That’s it then! You can explain later, scholar. Ride with the Nightingale meanwhile, learn as much from him as you can about the road; how long? What might we meet along it? Such things. Do you have the skill to make one of these pictures, these map things? Then begin as soon as you can!’ He reached for his saddle, and winced as his bruised side complained. ‘Wounds and smarts will have to wait, too. Darzhan, Chiansha, Almur, rope up the new horses, any food as well – we’ll sort out what we can stomach later. We’ll be riding in the dark, but don’t complain. It may save us worse troubles!’

  Within minutes they were mounted and away, the captured horses trailing behind. The way was so deeply shadowed that they could risk nothing faster than a trot, and Alya watched the horizon uneasily. The overcast was ragged, there; and before long it would be moonrise. Normally he would welcome that; not tonight.

  Suddenly Vansha’s tall silhouette rode up, breaking into both his line of sight and his black thoughts. ‘Alya, brother! I must speak! This damned demon – now he’s demon and Ice-warrior in one!’

  Alya held up a hand. ‘I know. Do you think I haven’t been turning that over and over? Can we possibly trust anything that lives – that feeds – like that?’

  ‘Yes! How can we? Powers, how can we? He seems so harmless! Just a little gawk! You start thinking he’s halfway human, a brat almost – and then … Ach, Powers! My guts won’t stand the thought!’ His horse whinnied softly as he sagged in his saddle.

  ‘Then don’t think it. He may be the best guide we can find. And I believe he may be true enough, in his way. He simply isn’t human, and you cannot blame him for that alone.’

  ‘Maybe not! But that makes me feel no better. Could you not at least try your Sight once again? To check on what he says?’

  Alya sighed. ‘I could not! You saw, when last I tried. It was – difficult. Painful, even. As if there were a barrier across my path – across the Trail. The same feeling this new strength gives me – but turning against me, like a shower of hot sparks in my head. And there was more. Another vision entirely, not within me; from outside. Wings … great wings, against the clouds. Maybe not a vision. Maybe something that saw me. Like a hawk that hovers an instant, before it falls … And it might be on the lookout, once more.’

  Vansha sat silent awhile. ‘My father could never believe I had little of the Seer in me, you know that? When I understood nothing of what he prattled about, when I could see nothing, he thought I was pretending, wilfully. He said I was his son, I could not disgrace him so. He called me lazy, weak, coward; he thrashed me, till I grew too big to take that! In the end he made me pretend, so as not to shame him, so as I could still be chieftain and shaman both. He was wrong; and I have seldom been so glad he was wrong. I wouldn’t want the troubles that Seeing brings you. Yet I still wish I had at least a fraction of his power, to try, at least. To try!’

  Alya hugged himself in the darkness, jerking the reins, making his horse toss its head and whinny. ‘All right. When we stop, I will try.’

  They halted at last, in the early hours, when weariness swayed them in their saddles. The moon was weltering in slow, heavy clouds, and showers of cold drizzle came and went; but they found only the grudging shelter of a clump of birch-scrub and blackthorn against the flank of a hill. There was nothing to be done then, and they curled up for what rest they could find. By dawn they were aching and clammy with the trickles that had somehow condensed under their oiled cloaks; and they greeted even the invisible sunrise and its thin glow with relief. Kalkan and Asquan began to bicker about building a fire, and whether it would cause too much smoke, if there were enemies nearby; which, of course, nobody knew.

  ‘Same old problem,’ observed Vansha. ‘Alya?’

  Alya nodded. Now he had made his mind up, it no longer seemed so terrible. ‘Yes. Now would be a good time, I think. Hunger and cold are the Seer’s friends. Meanwhile, you can also wake up the Nightingale and set him to work with the scholar.’

  ‘A pleasure.’ Vansha hobbled stiffly over to the ponies.

  Alya sat for a moment, cross-legged, head in hands. He would have to think about this, move carefully at every step. Better not to dance, at first; better to remain in control, ready to fall back at any moment. He had no sand, but under the bushes he grubbed up drier handfuls of the rich crumbly soil. After a moment he sat back, and crossed his legs. The others saw his eyes flutter closed, and his hands move, trickling the earth out on to the damp ground. After a moment it was exhausted, but still his hands moved as if pouring something fine and precious, with deadly care. It was a strange sight; but when Vansha returned he watched, fascinated, and they saw the sweat break out on his brow.

  ‘That is the true Path! he whispered to the others. ‘I know it! It draws me as I watch …’

  Then Alya jolted as if struck, and slumped forward. They rushed to raise him, and found him pale and sweating, but awake. ‘Only … a glimpse …’ he panted, before they could ask. ‘Blood, death – confused – but I saw it …’

  ‘You crested the Wall?’ asked Vansha softly.

  ‘I tried … I drew near, I was hurled back … then I touched thought … more as if I was caught up and borne over it … from a vast height, terrifying …’ He struggled to separate the impressions in his mind, a confused whirl of images and colours through sight that seemed far sharper than his own. ‘Vansha, I saw; but not by crossing the Wall, not directly. I saw through other eyes!’

  Vansha nodded. ‘My father said something about that. How you could see across the Wall – using the minds of beasts and birds …’

  ‘Mine told me that, too. Said it wasn’t the best way. But the fires bar me, whatever way I seek directly.’

  Vansha scratched his head. ‘If the front door’s blocked, hop around the back!’

  Alya nodded. ‘I’ll try again. I have the Trail still, I think.’ He looked at the others. ‘It might be better if you leave me alone. Go down the slope.’

  Maybe being alone would give him more strength, and in a high place, as high as there was in the lands around, anyhow. But after a few interminable minutes he shrugged, went to his saddle bags and drew out the crooked beak of Raven, and placed it reverently on his head. Then he stiffened; the fires had flamed up suddenly, driving a dart of pain down his back, from the crown of his head to the sinews of his ankles, breathtaking, icy. But he tapped one hand into the other in slow rhythm, like a drum; and gradually made it faster, clapping now, loudly, to the beat of the song he intoned beneath his breath. He stamped his feet to the beat, twisting this way and that; until at last, forgetting where he stood, forgetting all else, he began to dance across the hillcrest, shuffling and sliding his feet in a wide twisting pattern, the way of the Path.

  He found the pattern of earth written on the darkness, pulsing with the pulse in his eyelids, and he traced it further
, as he had before, found it ran ahead of him like a burning thread, faster and faster, turning with the force of the fire …

  The flames roared, the dark glass towered over him; but he ignored them, searching upward, searching for wings. Something found them, not sight, not sound; simple awareness. Abruptly they were his, and his eyes opened on dripping greenery flashing by on either side. It could be the bushes at his back, probably was; a small bird, a low flier.

  ‘I need hawks!’ he gasped, to whom he could not imagine. ‘Something greater! Give me height! Give me sky!’

  The stinging shower filled his mind, but it seemed less tormenting, more distant. Then suddenly he was through it, and into a dazzling realm of light, flashes of whiteness, slashes of blue, pure blazing light that exploded into rainbow hues on the margins of his wide vision, inhumanly wide. The whiteness was the eternal clouds; but he was above them now, where the sun shone in a constant cold blue sky. He wheeled and dived among the troughs of grey moisture, screaming for the sheer delight of it. And then he turned to the northward, by the sun; and saw the Wall once more, its dark facets flashing the rays of the sun into lancing spears. He was level with it; he was looking across it – and suddenly there was no Wall there at all, only a vast, an infinite landscape over which he drifted, desperate to orient himself, fighting to pick out the details that flashed by with the stark clarity of a dream.

  So much seemed to be happening, wherever he turned. He could see right across the lands he knew, as it seemed, and beyond, from sky to sky. It could not be a real landscape, to be seen in so much detail; and yet all that it showed him was real enough, a glimpse of the moment throughout the real world. That he knew, both from his father’s teaching and from the feeling in his bones; yet what he saw came as a revelation.

  He had thought these lands so empty; but they were not. To east and west, all across these great expanses of brown and green and stony grey, veined silver by a net of southward-flowing rivers, were scattered little pockets of humanity, towns and cities like Volmur’s. Some seemed to have risen up on the bones of others more ancient, looking weak and scrappy among those massive grey relicts. They were everywhere he looked; but they were just too far apart, the nearest four weeks’ ride or more, usually much more – too far to be neighbours, near enough to be remote rivals, a distant, uncertain threat. And across the lands, as he saw, long lines of dark-armoured horsemen rode, not merely a few reiving bands but huge campaigns. And here and there black smoke curled above a city’s towers, or from the scorched lands close around another, held in a tight ring of siege.

  Seeking the way, he scanned the rivers nearest, and swiftly saw what looked like the great bridge they had crossed, the trampled camping ground, the greater road westward. He was about to follow their track, when smoke caught his eyes. Out along the other road it lay, and looking that way he saw a burst of red light, too early to be the sunset, too intense.

  His eyes – could he call them his? – followed it to its source, and he went dropping down the wind in search. It could not be that far beyond the bridge, surely; a few weeks’ march. Already, at this distance he could take in buildings in flames, whole streets outlined in curling blossoms of fire, already dying down as their hearts turned ashen. A city, of sorts, as great as Volmur’s; yet not nearly so great as those he had seen in flames, in his distant dreams. Without will, his flight somehow carried him low towards it, almost into the flames, as if sporting with their licking heat. Nothing stirred; and still shapes lay among the burning streets. This must have been the task of the main band of raiders; and indeed there were files of horsemen and laden wagons leading away from the ruined walls, and lines of chained captives, men and women both. Leading away across the brown lands to the northward; and there was nothing he or his could hope to do for them. Dark wings circled the column of smoke, wings that beat in slow unison, massive shapes that rode the heated air and climbed away skyward. He thought of the great vultures of the mountains. Even the carrion birds had finished their task here.

  It had been easy to forget his purpose, for a moment, in the sheer joy of this airy existence, both real and unreal, in the hunger to take in all that it showed him. But the sad sight brought it all back to him, sharp as a spearthrust, and guiltily he sought to gain height again, to turn the eyes back the way he sought. It was not so easy; they seemed to be growing recalcitrant, and the clouds and the land plunged and whirled around him for long moments. Struggling to fix them, he saw the river go by, and the bridge once again, even the dell where he knew he must truly be. Beyond it, stooping once again, he made out a great strip of the landscape that looked rougher, taller than the grassland, like a forest; and yet he could imagine no trees of that strange grey-green hue, flecked with dark yellow.

  He struggled to see more closely, saw instead green hills beyond it, a hue richer even than the mountain valley he remembered, and not without woods and other greenery. A fair enough country, yet ominous somehow, draped in trailing mists that rolled leadenly along the dark metallic rivers. For to the north of it, here and there where the haze grew thinner, he saw the green vanish quite suddenly and give way to brown, a brown that spoke of bleaker lands of a kind his father had told him about, thinner soil, scrubbier grass, and beneath it, even under the hottest sun, an undying layer of frost.

  And it was not far, not far at all from the margins of this brown land, that he at last made out the thing he sought, the same road that he and the others now followed; and upon it a train of wagons. Like many others he might have seen that day, he guessed; save that this was shorter, and its escort light, and it moved more swiftly than he had expected. There was real urgency upon it, a constant speed that kicked up a trail of dust even in these dampening lands, and jolted and bounced the wagons along the track. At first he hoped devoutly it was not the one; but as he struggled to hold his vision firmly in mind he knew with a failing heart that it must be. The road unrolled beneath him, before and behind, back into that strange greenery and out again, across the brown fells ahead, straighter than the river it paced, with little compromise to the lie of the land; and there was no other such train upon it, not anywhere.

  Further ahead than he had tried to promise himself, far further. And at that pace …

  His sight was wrenched away again. He could not be sure how far; he had not seen enough to guess. Bitter, desperate, he fought the mind he touched, struggled to stifle its will with his own; but whatever creature it was, the steadiness he wanted was not in its nature, and he could not maintain it. He imagined a swift or a swallow or a small speedy hawk, a living, shrilling arrow made for dashing and diving through the air, suddenly constrained to sail steady as an eagle or buzzard, unable to evade its enemies or hunt its prey. He was asking too much of it. Eagle or buzzard indeed, that was what he needed; or one of those great vultures he had seen. He set his thoughts upon them, and sensed the easy gliding, the wind whistling beneath broad unflapping wings. He cast loose his hold upon the other, which shot away with explosive grace, and opened a new pair of eyes.

  Blankness greeted him, blind pallor that terrified him for a moment, till blue sky gleamed through a breach, and the cloud around them thinned. The first he saw was other wings, to either side; vast black wings; and others beyond. Vultures did not fly in formation, though; and these wings looked broader, the necks longer. But then they burst out of the cloud, and he forgot all else in the breathless awe of his vision.

  They were higher indeed, far higher. Lesser clouds hung between him and the landscape, gleaming in the cold sun. The rivers mirrored them. There was his; they were diving towards it now! A steep, plunging descent that took his breath away, as if he were falling from sun to earth like some ancient demigod. There was the great road, a line scored through the lands, there was their own way, a thread alongside the seam of the river. There that weird forest, there the hills, sweeping past his sight as they turned; their covering dwindling, their trees shrinking, huddling to the earth, vanishing, the very green fading all
too swiftly to that drained, half-barren brown, and beyond it only a deathly grey. And there the river again, blued steel fading to black, and over it, gleaming here and there with rainbow hues in the sun, a white haze that hid the horizon.

  Or did it? The horizon shimmered in the sun; but it was not all mist. Beyond cloud and hill, at the margins of what could be seen, a flash of dazzling light lit the edge of the world, and showed it jagged and broken, as if the very stuff of the rocks had been shattered by a titanic blow, and the world split away. There the land lost its colours. It looked to be a country of stones far colder and deader than the worst deserts east of the Citadel. They were dying lands, maybe; but this was long dead. The low rolling hills shone pale and colourless, the flat scraped land beyond them a stony, speckled grey-white, the mists that wreathed and rolled about it whiter still. Yet all looked pallid and tainted compared to the dazzling blue-white rim. There were cliffs there, cliffs that followed the very curve of the world to the ends of sight; white mountain-walls rising out of those mists, and opening only upon more of the same.

  He had reached the limits of his vision. He knew that from this great distance he looked upon his ultimate enemy and all men’s, all things that truly lived and were glad; he saw at road’s end the Walls of Winter, the fortress, domain and weapon of the Great Ice.

  Their sheer extent and scale struck terror into him, as well they might into the boldest of men: the grasp that encompassed half the world, and yearned with icy desire for the remainder. Before that his concerns, his self even, seemed diminished and daunted; he did not want to look upon it any longer, he did not dare. And he must concentrate upon the road!

  This was as bad as the other mind, this slow wheeling dive. He could hardly see straight. It was there! The road, the dust, the wagons once again, far below, far ahead but drawing nearer. If he could only dive a little lower, see the wagons, some trace of what they held! He bore down upon the eyes he looked through, strove to have them level out and fly straight, straight along the path he sought …