The land before them had no horizon. The road had led Alya’s little band down out of the low hills and dells, to a wide, low-lying expanse of country, a massive floodplain as it seemed, cut through by great cold rivers such as the one that led them, carving their way down across it from the North. Only their meandering, blackish-brown flows broke the constant flatness of the surface; but it looked no more firm than they. Alya wondered if the sea would be like this, a green waving expanse stretching out into misty infinity. To the eye there was no solid land at all. Even the road was hidden, visible only where it emerged briefly along the banks of the great stream ahead. Near or far, the landscape waved and surged like a grey-green swell in the constant, biting wind, and though Vansha claimed he could make out small plumes of smoke rising from what must be wide clearings, far in the distance, the only life to be seen above it was wheeling, plaintive birds.
It was not water, though there was marsh enough beneath. It sighed and rattled down the wind like the dead mocking their own bare bones. It was a vast field of tall cane, the stems of all sizes green shading to yellow, the leaves long and spearlike, sharp at the edge. It grew taller than a mounted man, and it clustered ever closer about the road, on both sides, until it became hard to see more than a few paces through it. And at last, rustling and heavy, it blotted out even the remaining patches of weak grey sky, and closed in a roof over the narrow road. A shifting, hissing roof, yet solid and stifling; it drew the force from the wind, and the air hung heavy and clammy about them. Kalkan, leading the way down the narrow road, rose in his stirrups to spy out the way, and cursed as it leant and bowed over him, almost mockingly.
‘My lord Kalkan?’
‘Nothing, my lord Asquan! I see only more bloody canes. And Vansha and I are the tallest, and with the sharpest eyes. We’ll see nothing of what’s ahead, until we reach one of those open patches. Unless …’
‘No!’ said Alya firmly, as everyone looked to him. ‘It’s too dangerous. I very nearly drew down disaster on us all. I won’t risk that again, until there’s real need.’ Even if I still can.
‘Then we plod on!’ shrugged Kalkan irritably. ‘But I can’t even tell what hour it is, beneath this infernal cane!’
Tseshya grinned, and poked his spear upward, parting the topmost leaves. ‘Not so long till evening, I think. At least we’ll have a dry camp, and plenty of firemakings. Hot soup.’
Vansha stretched in his saddle, rubbing his backside. ‘Sounds good! I might even go fishing, if the river’s near enough. We could smoke ourselves up a few days’ worth, too.’
‘Maybe,’ said Alya. ‘But fish from cover. I’m growing wary of what might frequent these rivers.’
‘I’ll take Rysha!’ laughed Vansha. ‘Maybe she can blind the fish, as well as men.’
Rysha sneered. ‘It’s harder. Fish have more sense!’
Vansha chortled. ‘You think? Try giving them a sniff of your pants, they’ll be leaping out!’
Rysha spat a word at him and rode on into the rustling green. Alya caught Vansha’s eye. ‘You shouldn’t antagonise her so! Look at how much she did for us, back then!’
Vansha looked sulky. ‘Maybe! But you can’t trust her! You ask Kalkan, he knows!’
‘Will you always take your cue from Kalkan, brother?’
‘Sooner that than Asquan! Hate to think where he got his wisdom, as you call it.’
‘Through experience! He’s done so much, seen so much more of the world. And you’ve seen how he fights!’
Vansha lowered his voice. ‘Oh, aye! Asquan can fight, I’ll give you that. Little as I’d have credited it! Like a shrivelled old snake on a rock, you think it’s dead till it ups and strikes. And he’s been places, all right! Just the thought of them makes my eyes water! I wouldn’t trust that scrawny old debauchee with my bloody sheep, let alone anything more precious.’
‘I might, brother. Maybe sooner than Kalkan. Oh, Kalkan’s sensible enough, a straightforward upright man. Too upright for his own good! And from all I’ve read, sometimes your upright men find it all too remarkably easy to accommodate their desires. Do you think he only plotted against Volmur out of public duty? Who was supposed to take the King’s place, d’you suppose? Or benefit from the grateful successor?’
Vansha was silent. Alya chuckled. ‘Whereas, yes, Asquan’s a puzzle. He’s probably tried anything you can think of, and a few you can’t! And yes, it makes me shudder, sometimes. But do you not see? He’s found them wanting. He’s disappointed. And I guess that’s stripped away a lot of self-deception. He knows what he is, better than you or I; his dreams have died. He has nothing, and wants nothing he can still have. I suppose that makes ambition or treachery pretty meaningless. I don’t understand him, not fully; but I do believe he’s really glad to find an honourable task once more. Oh, I know Kalkan’s your friend, I’m grateful to have him along. We’ll need him and his men. But we need the others, too. For just the very reasons you don’t trust them!’
Vansha sat a moment, then shrugged. ‘If you say so, brother!’ He laughed, and rode on. That closed it, as near a quarrel as they had had of late; and Alya gave it little more thought. Natural enough, he reflected, that Vansha, being who he was, should prefer the open-air, right-and-wrong, sword-in-hand values of Kalkan and his men; so might Alya, normally. He still shivered at the memory of Asquan’s faded eyes, brightening briefly at unspeakable prospects; at Rysha, laughing as her enemy died beneath her; at the Nightingale’s feeding. But like it or not, the twilit world that Asquan and Rysha and that uncanny creature inhabited had its uses and values also; and they could be of more service on their road ahead. Its perils might leave little room for squeamish hesitation.
And at least, for all the bickering, nobody showed the least sign of turning back; that was something.
Not even Rysha. She did go with Vansha on his fishing, that evening; and he came back with a fair number of fish, familiar river types but darker and less brilliant, as if coloured by the muddy water. Some they cleaned and set to bake in a clay earth-oven under cane fronds, while Rysha gutted and scaled the rest for smoking later. Alya came to help her, though she did not seem to care.
‘Thank you for all this,’ he said to her. ‘Your darkness, and your fighting hand.’
She shrugged. ‘I’m no warrior woman. I’m a witch and a murderess, aren’t I? I was just doing what seemed natural.’ She slit a fish’s belly and held it up to check for worms.
‘It was valiant, all the same.’
‘Pig dung. I didn’t fight anyone much, just sneaked up or scared ’em and stuck them, mostly from behind. Get a thrill out of that, at times.’ She dug in her fingers and drew out a mass of guts, along with a tail of straggling white things.
‘You haven’t tried to hurt any of us. And you’re cheerfully going along to what might be your death.’
‘Me? Don’t get your hopes up. Can’t kill what they can’t see. And that’s not my only trick. Watch out for the scales.’ She flicked the knife expertly down its flank.
‘But there’s more than that,’ said Alya softly.
Is there?’ She picked up another fish. ‘If you say so. Nowhere much else for me to go, is there, now we’re out here? Back home I’d have been forever living on a knife-edge, and a dull one at that. Those towns on the steppe are deathtraps, that’s clear enough. And the dungkicker villages like you came from don’t sound like much fun. Specially if the word got round about who I am, what I did. Men don’t seem to take to that, somehow. They fear you; or they use you, to show they’re not afraid. No, this’ll do for now. I don’t ask much more from life, and I quite like the killing.’
She flicked guts away, too close to him, and eyed him. ‘I do, you know. Not screwing. That makes me sick, with anyone, man, woman. Plain sick. Dunno who invented it. Dirty. You just lace into your killing, I saw that. You don’t think. But take it from me, when you down the other man—’ She gave a little shiver. ‘You never felt more alive! ’Cause life’s what you’re taking a
way, right?’
‘No. And when you spoke of it, you suddenly said “you”, instead of “I”. So is it really that great a pleasure for you?’
She snorted with derisive laughter. ‘Clever little man! Really got to watch the mouth with you around, haven’t I? But – yes, there’s a thrill in it. Maybe not as much as I like to say, but – yes. Bit like that old goat Asquan and his torture lark, I guess. Maybe he’d teach me!’ She chuckled nastily. ‘On me, like as not. Just to put some wag back in his tail, the dirty old bugger. What men always do, isn’t it?’
She sighed. ‘Don’t like me much, do you? No, don’t answer. I’m who I am, that’s all. Rysha who murders men, no getting away from it. If I live through this, maybe I’ll find a way not to be. Maybe I’ll have had enough. Get myself a home, settle down, see if waving my legs in the air makes any more sense. But I wouldn’t wager on it. Are those fish done yet? My belly’s flapping.’
Vansha was taking them out of the oven, breaking away the clay and the skin with it, and the others gathered swiftly, gobbling down the fish with grain they had boiled beside the oven. But as they finished, Alya’s chewing slowed, and so did the others’. Only the Nightingale munched on, giggling to himself, but looking around nervously as if somebody might snatch the fish away.
‘This tastes a little strange,’ said Asquan. ‘Just a faint aftertaste, but …’
‘Dull,’ agreed Kalkan, spitting out a bone. ‘Muddy. You can eat it, but, well …’
‘It’s a muddy river,’ said Vansha, inclined to defend his catch. ‘Healthy enough. That must be why the cane grows so high hereabouts. Lays down good fertile silt. It’d do wonders for grain – rice, even, with all this water.’
Fazdshan grunted. ‘Think so? Nobody seems to want to use it. They’ve all been living in the stony hills and steppes back there. Must be something wrong, here.’
‘There were those smokes!’ objected Vansha. ‘They could have whole farms deep in this lot, almost hidden. Like they tried to among the trees, but better!’
‘Hope we find ’em!’ said Chiansha, rubbing his broad stomach. ‘Pick up some proper food, maybe!’
Alya swallowed a last unrewarding mouthful. ‘They might not want to sell, remember; they might not produce enough. They can’t have much use for silver, out here. And what else have we, that they want?’
‘Almost everything, I’d have thought,’ said Tseshya cheerfully. ‘Why would they be here, otherwise? Not from choice, surely!’
He looked around, as if expecting applause.
‘Go on,’ prompted Alya.
‘But isn’t it obvious? This is rich soil, like Vansha says, plenty of water – mild enough clime, even. Not as sunny as further south, but not as dry either. You could clear this lot easily enough, make yourself a big farm, a plantation even. You could get your grain down south to trade easy enough, by the river maybe; keep boats either side of the rapids.’
‘Thinking of settling down and doing some honest work, inkslinger?’ grunted Chiansha.
‘No! And neither has anyone else. If there are farms here, they’re smaller than they should be. So, why not?’
Kalkan shrugged. ‘Too lonely?’
Asquan snapped his fingers. ‘The raiders! They must keep this road open. The Aikiya’wahsa would scare anyone off!’
‘That’s part of it, my lord,’ said Alya quietly. ‘But I think I see what our scholar is leading up to. If he’s right … well, we’ll have to tread very carefully indeed.’
‘Very carefully,’ agreed Tseshya. But leave it at that for now, Lord Alya. We may see, soon enough.’
‘Maybe even a farm-girl or two!’ grinned Almur.
The soldiers hooted and whistled, but quietly, experienced enough to be cautious in this first camp in new country. Fazdshan glanced around. ‘Might be glad of some new blood, in a dank hole like this is!’
‘Probably all got six fingers!’ suggested Darzhan. ‘And webbed!’
‘Growing moss, more like!’ put in Vansha. ‘Great fat thighs, all covered in moss!’
‘It’ll rub off!’ said Almur confidently.
Kalkan and the others chuckled, even Rysha.
‘But there may be no farms, nobody at all!’ Alya reminded them sharply. ‘And even if there are, do you think we can afford to linger? We’re in the chase, remember?’
He knew as he said it that he had been too curt. The atmosphere changed, and not for the better. But Asquan was contemplating him with narrowed eyes. ‘Somehow I don’t think lingering’s on anyone’s mind!’ he said suavely. ‘Quite the opposite, in fact! I suspect their speed will amaze them!’ They chuckled again, Alya with them, and the feeling improved. ‘But we’ll see soon enough,’ the old lord added. ‘We must, ah, contain ourselves in patience till then!’
Asquan could put a leer into the simplest word when he wished, and it caught the general mood. They settled down in their blankets among a hail of banter on the general theme of containment, and Asquan offered to take first watch – to put down, as he phrased it, any outbreak of blanket-tossing. When the others were snoring soundly, though, Alya joined him as he sat and watched the patchy moonlight through the shifting ceiling of the cane.
‘Thank you for that, my lord. For repairing my mistake. I should have left them their daydreams of food and women, they were harmless enough.’
‘My pleasure. Yes, let them dream. We all need dreams, the Powers help us.’
‘I can’t share theirs!’ said Alya, with quiet savagery, feeling the tensions that racked him whenever he allowed himself too much thought. The fires leaped up in stinging answer. ‘They gall me, them and their dung-headed lip-smacking over nonexistent farm-girls! Even Vansha! There are real girls in danger out there, deadly danger! He at least should know better! I don’t know how they can talk like that, how they can rest when—’
‘I do,’ said Asquan quietly. ‘To most of them, of course, your girl’s no more real than their own fantasies, and less interesting because she is yours. To your friend – well, he feels less deeply than you, I think. Perhaps for that same reason. But he may be wiser.’
‘How so? In caring less?’
‘In not dwelling too much upon what he cannot alter. Say, cannot yet alter, if that disturbs your faith. In dreaming sweeter dreams, and sleeping while he can.’
Alya rubbed his eyes. ‘My dreams always hover on the brink of nightmare.’
‘Naturally. But at least you have them. It is one of the things that makes folk follow you. Only one.’ Asquan looked at him keenly. His spidery hand hovered close to Alya’s thigh.
Then, to Alya’s deep relief, he appeared to change his mind. ‘What’s to come, farm-girls or fiends, that we shall see in good time!’ His hand fell on his own knee, as perhaps it was always intended to. ‘Go now, find happier times to sleep in – ones to come, maybe. I shall take your watch, and keep company with the moon, what I can see of her. We are old lovers, she and I.’
Unnerved, and yet strangely comforted, Alya slid gratefully away. When he awoke at dawn, he felt that he had slept better than of late, for all the seeping dampness of the ground; and he was surprised to see Asquan still sitting up, as grey as the light around him, listening to the breeze that rattled like a skeletal horse through the cane.
‘I smell smoke,’ he said, as the others stirred and stretched wearily. ‘Just faintly, but smoke it is. The wind is from the north. So perhaps our friends will get their fat thighs and six fingers soon enough, after all.’
But that day brought them nothing save more damp winds driving dank mists, and the lonely calls of waterbirds, and the cane, always the cane. The next was no better, and the next and the next after that, wary but infinitely dull. For long hours nothing changed, least of all the canopy of canes. Alya was growing to hate its rustling, rattling voice, and its shrouding blindness, which blotted out any sense of progress, and the dripping caress of its spear-shaped leaves, decanting the mists and dews in droplets down their necks.
‘
We should have you huff and puff and blow all this away, demon!’ said Kalkan.
The Nightingale was hunched in among the baggage for warmth. ‘Mist? Little use! Fast as I blow one way, in it rolls another.’ He leered up at them. ‘Much prey it’s cost me. Many tasty lives!’
‘That’s enough of that!’ said Alya sharply. He hated this dank obscurity more than the rest. At times he felt it was a trap set for him, to wander around forever in circles, while the world passed him by outside and Savi was drawn further and further from him. The others seemed to feel much the same, and the wind bowed their heads and whipped away words. Nobody spoke; they all seemed lost in thought, in memory perhaps, while the horses plodded patiently on.
When the winds blew strongly, it was like a rainstorm under the green canopy, and when they were lower and gusty the mists trickled between the stiff stalks in disturbing shifts of shadow and movement. Things would plunge through the canes, large things by the sound of it; but always at a distance, never visible; and whether that was curse or relief was hard to be sure. Every so often one of the fighting men would curse and lunge out with his lance at something he saw from the corner of his eye; but there was never anything there, not, at any rate, by the time the spear arrived. Once Tseshya loosed a precious arrow at a fleeting shadow, and they were rewarded by a wild pig’s squeal, a welcome promise of meat; but the beast broke the shaft and fled.
‘At least we know it was a real pig,’ said Darzhan with evident relief. ‘And not …’
‘Not what?’ demanded Alya. There was a sullen silence.
‘They’ve been seeing things!’ said Vansha scornfully.
‘Not us!’ Fazdshan sounded defensive. ‘Your little pal on the baggage-moke. The Nightingale. He’s saying there’s been something around us here, something that doesn’t smell right. Like nothing still walking around has a right to smell!’
‘What’s it to him?’ demanded Vansha. ‘Couldn’t be anything much spookier than him! Could there?’
But when he and Alya let themselves fall back down the file to the baggage ponies, he found the Nightingale’s white face and wide black eyes peering apprehensively out from among the panniers. ‘It’s not there now!’ was the first thing he said; and the only thing, for a while, except to gibber. Eventually they got some sense out of him. He had been seeing things, all right, and since they first entered the cane, it seemed. Only at night; but his eyes were better than anyone’s, then. What he saw, though, was uncertain. Once or twice, far distant, there had been something hairy and bestial, perhaps no more than a bear. More often there was some kind of laughing demon, which could take on the semblance of a woman. And sometimes it was dark and shapeless, a tall shadow slithering through the canes or gliding through the river mists.
Shadow of the Seer Page 26
