Shadow of the Seer

by Michael Scott Rohan

  ‘They are,’ said the older woman, and turned to the stove. The younger women huddled back and watched them, fearfully as it seemed.

  ‘Then tell me, woman,’ enquired Asquan, ‘how do you live here?’

  ‘We watch our backs,’ said the woman calmly. ‘And go about in pairs. They seldom come near houses, anyhow, or anywhere there’s more than one person. Your horses should be safe out the back. It’ll be on the road you’re in trouble.’

  ‘Still don’t think he’d go haring after one, alone!’ suggested Chiansha.

  ‘Without warning the rest of us?’ grunted Darzhan. ‘No! Almur was green enough, but not that stupid! Tseshya was nearest, he’d have told him!’

  ‘Except for the baggage ponies!’ Chiansha reminded him; and his voice changed. ‘Maybe he did tell someone! Maybe he told that little vermin! Who happened to forget to tell us!’

  Nightingale shrilled. ‘No! He would have told me nothing! He hated me! He thought I killed his father!’

  ‘Who disappeared in your wood, certainly!’ said Kalkan slowly. ‘But how did you know that, creature? He told me, once, when I pressed him; but no other, as I advised him. He was a quiet fellow. He would have hardly told you!’

  The picture that had momentarily vanished burst fully formed into Alya’s mind. ‘I thought it could not be you, Nightingale!’ he said quietly; and no other spoke. ‘When I heard of the smashed skull, I wondered. For a moment.’ He did not need to elaborate. Perhaps they had all felt the same. ‘But the stab? You have neither the strength nor the weapon, that I can see; and why strip him? So I dismissed the thought. But it seems you have knowledge you cannot account for. And you were very nervous, and trying to make us see all manner of monsters in the cane. To distract us from the one closer at hand? Well?’

  The creature whimpered in the gloom. ‘No! Noble lord, master of masters, no! I keep my word! Bound by my bond! Did not slay, never slay, never, never, save as you command me!’

  Kalkan seized his spear from the wall where it rested, and the Nightingale’s shrills rose in hysterical crescendo. ‘Never! Never! I did not, I did not, didn’t!’

  A child, wailing over some unfairness. ‘Wait, my lord!’ said Alya softly. ‘Nightingale, you are no infant, and you choose your words too carefully! You did not slay Almur, you say – but what else did you do?’

  Vansha gasped aloud; but there was no response, only the suggestion of a whimper. ‘Well, Nightingale?’ demanded Alya sharply. ‘You were tempted, weren’t you?’

  Another whimper; but then Alya put hand to sword, and it became a shrilling scream. ‘No! Noble lord, master, no!’

  ‘Why not? You have served me faithfully in your own way. I know it must have been hard for such an one as you. But now it seems – no? Then you must tell me all!’

  ‘Saw him …’ said the voice, more childish than ever. Kept watching, looking back … Something in cane, something I smelt, saw only a little, a shape … scared! Then saw him ride off suddenly, looking about, as if he didn’t want to be seen … Nobody else in sight, nobody to tell! I wait, he doesn’t come. So I leave horse, go after!’

  ‘Liar!’ spat Fazdshan. ‘The scholar or I, we’d have seen your tracks, for sure! And you were afraid, you said!’

  The voice sneered at him out of the dark. ‘You too, if you had any brain worth the eating!’

  Fazdshan yelled in rage, but to Alya’s surprise Kalkan thrust him back, before Alya had to.

  Nightingale tittered. ‘You, ape, you stomp in the mud. Me, I go through the cane! High up, where nothing sees me, nothing gets me! And I go fast! I hear man cry, I hear horse run, I come on him almost at once lying out all white in his blood – sweet blood, so savoury!’

  ‘But did you see anything?’ demanded Asquan furiously. ‘Anything, anyone else?’

  ‘Or did he?’ demanded Alya. ‘Do you remember?’

  ‘Something!’ shivered Nightingale, like a man forced to face an accuser. Once again his speech changed, grew clearer. It moved, it glided – maybe it called. But a mist was about it, and the call was not for me! Yet I understood it, through things I have tasted through many others, eyes and lips, long hair over white skin and supple limbs, hot huddlings and beastly ruttings – funny, they seem to me! Yet him they beguiled. And still …’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I am not sure of men in myself. But from all I have tasted, I do not think such visions alone would have called him, enough. Not away; not alone, and in silence. And … yes! In his thoughts they did not. There was more, something more solid … But I do not see, not clearly. All is blurred by the sudden struggle, the confusion, the pain – so great! And there he fell, as I found him. I went, to see if I might help – no, lord! True, lord! To help, as you would wish! Though my heart burns, and my mouth flows; and I have not dined these many weeks, and little enough of common food. But he is twitching and shivering, and the shivers fade already, I see the light die in his eyes – and I must take and eat, what would otherwise run wasted and be lost. So now, yes, he lives in me, a little; and I remember. But I am not guilty of his blood. Not I!’

  Fazdshan snarled in furious disgust, and others echoed him. But Vansha, with an incoherent noise of rage, simply lunged forward with drawn sword and slashed before Alya could stop him. Nightingale screeched loudly, and sprang away, racing on all fours for the stairs, dribbling dark blood from his side.

  ‘No, Vansha!’ shouted Alya; but Vansha was on the creature’s heels, his sword thudding into the wooden doorpost as Nightingale wriggled out. Vansha bounded up the steps, and Alya, appalled, ran after him.

  Outside on the twilit road he saw what he feared; the horses, milling about at their tethers, and Vansha flat on his back in the dust, his sword lying beyond his reach, and the wounded Nightingale astride his chest, pinning him down with one skinny hand to his throat.

  ‘No, Nightingale!’ shouted Alya despairingly; but the creature only turned those pit-deep eyes upon him and snarled a few half-formed words. Then the terrible jaws parted, the lapping tongue emerged, and the great blunt teeth lunged for Vansha’s forehead.

  Alya sprang; and the flat of his sword knocked the creature backwards, but left no cut. Nightingale sprang up, arms swinging, and Alya opened his mouth, to speak to the milder half, the gentler aspect of what stood before him; he knew better than to call it the human side. But a spear hissed past him, far too close, and struck between the creature’s feet as it flinched, and another followed it, as the others came running up. Nightingale swelled with rage; and that extraordinary mouth pursed itself into a whistle.

  The note was piercing, though soft at first, almost hard to hear among the rattling canes. But it swelled with frightening intensity, and the red tongue turned it to a stabbing, vibrating trill that shook the air and them with it. They stood, wavering on their feet, held by the shuddering power of that whistle. Kalkan and many others spurted blood at the nose. And then the gust came.

  The canes bowed sharply; the shutters rattled and slammed. Vansha, scrambling up, was hurled from his unsteady feet and sent tumbling. Those still standing planted their feet hard, and held, though dust whipped up and into their eyes, and pebbles leaped and stung. Tseshya staggered and lost footing, but he fell on to the wind, and it picked him effortlessly up and slammed him back against the house wall. Vansha was dashed sprawling into a roadside ditch, and the others were whipped around or sent staggering away. Another moment and they would be hurled into the canes, perhaps impaled on them. Only Alya held his footing; and he inched forward, step by step, and caught hold of a whipping cane, as thick around as his arm but still creaking with the strain.

  Nightingale, seeing this, turned the full force of the whistle against him, and the air juddered about his head, hammered on his breast. He could not breathe; and he allowed the force of it to fling him back. But he did not let go of the cane; and it flung him around, right around the cane-stem and out of the focus of the blast. The fires in his limbs roared still louder as he sprang.
The hero’s sword slashed the very blast asunder, and sliced as effortlessly through the bristling fur. The Nightingale spun around with a shrill bubbling hiss that came not from his throat but his lungs, and was caught up in his own whirlwind even as it sank and died, laying him almost gently upon the earth.

  His dark eyes were wide, his uncanny face distorted in agony. The thin lips writhed, and he pawed up at Alya who knelt beside him, horrified.

  ‘Kept …’ was all he could make out, and he nodded. He hoped the creature saw him, because the eyes were already still, and even as he watched the red tongue lolled, and they grew fixed. The wound bubbled, the entrails gurgled and emptied, the limbs kicked and spasmed, but without any effort. The dark pulse died.

  ‘Black blood!’ said Vansha sombrely. ‘Stinks worse dead than alive! Thank you, brother!’

  ‘Thank me?’ demanded Alya bitterly. ‘For what, brother? For destroying our best hope?’

  And he rose in wrath against Vansha. For destroying our most powerful ally? And why? For nothing, brother! Could you not have held your damned hand? He didn’t kill Almur! What he did do, I also loathed! But it was his nature! And not against his pledge to serve us! That he kept, in his fashion!’

  ‘Kept? He was trying to kill us all!’

  Alya seized him by the shoulders and shook him as a hound, a rabbit. ‘Aye, kept! It was you who broke it, you and your temper! He kept faith till then, and he reproached me with that as he died! And he was right!’

  ‘You owe nothing to a thing like that!’ said Vansha tautly, unable to move in that grip. ‘Think of all he’s killed, and fed on! But you owe it to me – brother! – not to humiliate me thus! Who made you the only voice in command?’

  ‘I try never to think what I owe to you,’ said Alya, and the words were like sharp-edged stone. He dropped Vansha on his feet. ‘You have your life, brother. I preferred yours to his. Be content with that. But it has cost us dear. Our best hope, perhaps.’

  ‘Come now!’ rumbled Kalkan. ‘Come! The lad was a shade hasty, I’ll agree – but don’t blame a man too much for acting on decent feelings! And our best hope, surely that’s the strength in your arms! Why, a mad bull would hardly have stood against that blast!’

  ‘I am not a bull,’ said Alya numbly. ‘Mad or otherwise. And I do not think either madness or strength will avail us much against the forces that stir the glaciers.’

  ‘Would the little monster?’ enquired Asquan. ‘Useful, I grant you; but no more decisive than your strength, or your other powers. What will serve us best, we still have; in you, most of all. I have served few men gladly; but I count it an honour to follow you.’

  And hand on heart, he bowed. But whether it was to Vansha as well, it was hard to say. Kalkan, surprised, bowed likewise, but to them both.

  ‘Feel the same way m’self!’ he said stiffly. ‘Bold fellows, smart as well. Salt of the earth. Good huntin’ with you!’ And all the others bowed as he did, which left Alya no alternative but to bob up and down to each in turn. Last of all he saw Rysha, still standing on the steps with the women, as if guarding them; and she had not bowed. But to his surprise she gave him a slight toss of the head, like a nod; and again, to him alone.

  ‘Well, we’ve two to bury or burn,’ said Kalkan heavily, and order was restored. ‘Which, my lords?’

  ‘Bury,’ said Vansha. ‘An unusual smoke might attract attention. But we can toss that thing in—’ And then he exclaimed in disgust; for where the Nightingale had fallen there lay only bones and a black puddle; and the bones looked barely human, a crude likeness, flattened and translucent as fishbones.

  ‘A poor caricature,’ said Asquan gravely. ‘They say many Powers have great trouble passing as human, that our bodies and our minds are hard for them to counterfeit without long labour. This one’s father made a rotten job of his seed. Small wonder he brought forth a monster.’

  Even as they watched, the ribcage bent inwards, and the sutures of the skull, still free as in human infants, fell apart and subsided. The thighbones withered to bare fibres, pitiful remnants. Vansha looked around at their faces, and swallowed uneasily. ‘Well, then, bury him where he fell, I suppose. Not all his fault, maybe. I want my dinner!’ He stalked away into the house.

  ‘I wonder how many others there are in the world like that,’ mused Asquan. ‘Better counterfeits, perhaps. The leavings of a Power who hungered to taste a little human love, such as it is.’

  ‘They say that’s how we all came about,’ grinned Alya, though he had little good humour left in him then.

  ‘Shaped by the Powers? Aye, out of the earth, or the waters, or the back end of some hairy southern ape – I can believe that of us only too easily! But if so, at least we were shaped deliberately, with care. Think of other casual by-blows, looking human, living human, yet never wholly humans, doing things because others do but never really understanding why.’

  ‘I could credit that of some,’ mused Alya, fascinated by the idea despite the fears and preoccupations that welled up around him. ‘Some of the great tyrants and villains in the old tales, maybe.’

  ‘And some great heroes, perhaps. Provided they were on the right side. Selfish, ruthless, fearless, victorious. A handsome exterior would help. Whatever their origins, such men exist, believe me. But you at least are not of that breed, young lord. Therefore be wary of them, look for them in those you meet. For now, though, the river mists are rising. Let us go in and eat. Eat, and forget.’

  Alya let himself be ushered inside once again. At another time he might have pondered long over the old lord’s words, but now he was preoccupied, both with what had happened and its aftermath, and the new worries that arose to entangle him. He still felt bad about the little monster’s death, richly deserved though it might be; and whatever others might say, it had indeed robbed him of his most potent weapon. Now he had no vision at all, no source of information on what lay ahead. Ghastly as its method was, the creature might have provided that, have given him some substitute for what the fires had blinded. For the first time he truly could have cursed his gift, felt that the old men, whoever or whatever they had been, had played him the cruellest of jokes. Immensely strong, but stripped of insight – they had made a real hero out of him, indeed.

  He could not hope to cross the Wall directly, not now; and riding the thoughts of others was now grown too dangerous, given the cold minds that searched for him and his. He had to find some other way to see ahead, to spy out his path; and what that might be, he could not imagine. He sat and thought, hardly tasting the bowl of meat and meal that Rysha thrust into his hand. The others let him be, at Asquan’s command, though they hardly needed orders, so much they were in awe of him now.

  He grew tired, at last, and his thinking faltered. Little by little he became aware of the others once again – Rysha, talking desultorily with the peasant women; Tseshya, preoccupied and gloomy, already wrapped in his blankets. Nobody had the heart for much talking, let alone singing. The wind rattled the door at times, and blew the flames of the crude rush lamps low. They jumped, half expecting someone to walk in – Almur, perhaps, or Nightingale. Finally Kalkan could stand it no longer, and with drawn sword he threw the door wide, to find himself facing impenetrable whiteness. The mists had been blown off the river, and hung thick about the house. The woman plucked the door from his hand and shut it, quietly, jamming heavy bars across it.

  Kalkan and the soldiers grew more cheerful, then, glad to be within four warm walls. Almur’s fate no longer weighed on them; they were warriors, after all, and to them it seemed his killer had been paid, and they were well rid of something unpleasant and, to them, unnecessary. They lounged around on the mats, exchanging their usual jokes and darting sly eyes at the peasant girls; and though they received little encouragement in return it did not seem to depress them. They sought to cheer up Vansha, still nervous and brooding; for he had done just what they wanted to do, and been given no credit for it. Curled up on his mat, he did not respond at first, but when d
arkness thickened the mists and the stove was damped down, and the women retreated to their side of it to undress, Alya saw him roll over and stare into the shadows with the others. ‘Maybe they’ll be freer in the dark!’ muttered Chiansha. It’s often the way!’

  Fazdshan chuckled quiet agreement. Leastways if we get any little hands stealing up our breeches now, they won’t be bloody Nightingale’s!’

  ‘One worry we’re shot of!’ remarked Darzhan. ‘Mind you, there’s still my Lord Asquan!’

  They snorted with half-stifled laughter, though Asquan seldom appeared to hear such jibes. ‘That’s enough of that, lads!’ said Kalkan, without heat. ‘Get your dreams in while you can – unless you’ve something better in hand!’ And on that, his usual line, he rolled himself in his blankets and slept.

  So, eventually, did Alya. He had hardly noticed the presence of the women; but when at last, surrounded by snores, he managed to shake off his mass of worries, he found that other thoughts took their place, almost as disturbing. At first it was Savi only, and that he almost embraced, for she seemed so real to him tonight, so close. It was as if the hint of her presence, the warmth of her skin, her faint fresh scent, hovered in the darkness about him, almost close enough to reach out and touch. As if he might see her small breasts swing as she stooped over him, in the faint light of the stove, as if he might reach up to stroke his hand across her thighs.

  Knowing he could not made him furious. He writhed uncomfortably in his blankets, turned this way and that and found it only made matters worse. Women, any women, danced before him; he had known few enough, hadn’t he? And they were here, not far away, in convenient shadows. He slipped down into a fitful sleep, troubled by vague frustrated dreams which seemed constantly about to take clearer shape. Then his eyes fluttered open, though he was still half asleep, and he saw her, half crouching there before him, the curve of shoulder and flank outlined in the red glow. One of the girls – which, he hardly knew. Beckoning him; standing slowly up, turning away to show herself to him, cocking her head slyly to the steps and the door, beckoning again.