Shadow of the Seer

by Michael Scott Rohan

  Louhi snorted. ‘Life! All its age, and pain, and sickness, and foul decay? You are fair, yet your body feeds on filth, will turn one day to carrion, unless entombed within the immortal Ice! Do you wish that?’ She shook her head, as if to shake off the vision. ‘How can you even contemplate it? I can give you more. But if that is what you truly want … then you shall have it. I will learn to give – to forgive – if only you will go on loving me!’

  Savi said nothing, did not look down at Alya. ‘Do you truly mean that, lady? Do you promise?’

  ‘I do!’ There were tears in her voice, thought Alya, astonished. Perhaps she had learned something from Savi, after all. ‘I swear it!’ Her voice hardened. ‘But nothing more! Ask nothing for him – for that boy! His doom is fixed. He dies here, among our snows, for the ruin he has wrought; and will serve Taoune, who was my consort of old.’

  ‘Do you swear?’ insisted Savi; and her voice also had changed. Alya struggled to speak, but could not. ‘Will you keep your oath? If then you grow weary of me, and seek some new love, what force could bind you then?’

  Louhi stammered a protest, but Savi’s voice was firm. ‘I know you, as none does, my lady! You must swear by yourself, by all that you are, and imprint your oath within the fabric of the Ice itself. So that though you may still break it, you will never again be sure of yourself! Never trust the strength of your own will, in human form or any other. Never trust the Ice itself to fulfil your purpose.’

  ‘He cannot have his life back,’ muttered Louhi insistently, ‘his strength, anything … You care so little for him?’

  Savi’s voice was bitter. ‘I know you will not spare him, whatever I ask. When Vansha struck you down, then their cause was lost; and I will not go down into ruin with him, not so young, when there is life to be lived, good I may yet do. So I ask only for my life,’ repeated Savi. ‘Only for me. And I swear I love you as I say I do, and will forever.’

  Louhi gave a sudden wild laugh, and a furious wind came whistling in off the Ice. The smokes dispersed, to show the chill sky darkening as the short day neared its end.

  ‘So be it,’ she whispered. ‘I humble myself for you, child of men. I swear by the Ice, by myself, by all else that you wish. I will give you your life, in its fullness. Teach me love, teach me all of it. Forever.’

  ‘I will,’ whispered Savi. ‘I also swear.’ Her words were soft, still; but behind them was the urgency of one who hastens along a cliff-edge, crumbling at every step. ‘I do love you. I never lied. I shall never forget you. That love for you is part of my life, and only one thing can ever drive it out.

  Louhi, puzzled, reached out her arms; but Savi took only her hand, and held it to her cheek. ‘Hate. If you break your oath, you will break my love. It will turn to hate, if you fail to give me life in its fullness. But what that is!’ She laughed a little, breathlessly. ‘That you could not understand. That you could not have foreseen!’

  Numbly Alya watched Savi reach out to touch the pale face, and heard the change that came over her voice. ‘So now, my lady – listen, and learn once more! To live is to grow, to flourish, to change. And for me, as for many women, it is one thing more. You offered me immortality, Louhi, and it was a great prize. But I will seek it my own way. I will have children!’

  Louhi’s arms dropped to her sides, but she said nothing. Savi’s voice was gentle now, though she trembled like a leaf in the wind. ‘And love you as I do, those you cannot give me! Children; and where I may raise them free from fear and tyranny. The Ice is no such place. And, my lady, I will have them by the man I choose; and that can be one only. That alone is the life I will embrace! That, and no other. If he is dead, or crippled, or harmed in any way – as he was, first, by your hand – it can never be. And your oath can never be fulfilled.’

  Louhi stood rigid, as if returned to ice. Her eyes closed a moment, the lids fluttering. When she opened them again, her very look seemed to suck the last shred of warmth from sky and ground together. She threw back her head and laughed again, loudly; and the stragglers who heard it ring across the Ice clapped hands to ears and redoubled their speed. ‘I could break it more easily than breathe!’

  Savi stumbled back as if struck, and with a supreme effort Alya reached up his hand to hers. Instinctively their fingers entwined, chill and bloodless; and between them a scrap of warmth sprang up, as their fate wavered on the balance, and they waited for an end. Louhi stood frozen, staring at the sky, ignoring them.

  At last she lowered her gaze, and sighed, a very human sound. ‘Stop trembling, girl. My wrath is against myself, for the most part. The fault is mine, that I sought such understanding in the first place. That I let my guard fall so, and let it draw me in. And that I let you teach me. Indeed you did so, only too well. I am become all too human, for now; and being human, I could break my word without a qualm.’

  She snorted with disgust. ‘Yet having already caught one of your weaknesses, I dare not catch another! Human doubt, human hesitation, human compassion, I’d have them forever hovering at the edges of every thought. And surely they would drag me down.’

  She shuddered violently. ‘You have learned to think, indeed, girl. An elegant paradox you have trapped me in! I must save myself, I must cut away this infection of humanity. And I will, I must do it memorably, so that the sting returns to remind me how dangerous this taste of human love has been! And how costly! As before, I must punish myself, to make the lesson stick. For that reason, more than any other, I will keep my oath.’

  Her voice choked, and she whirled abruptly about, as if to look back at the smoking ruin of the vale, now glaring red in the dusk with the slow seething of the earthfires. After a moment she stamped her foot lightly, like a furious child.

  ‘Go, idiot! Take your life, as you conceive it. Short and rotten, at the mercy of time and chance. Take your growth, that only speeds decay! And take him, since you lust for that, though he lives only to spoil your body with his seed! Since you must, take him whole. But nothing more!’

  The light that flashed in his mind was intolerable, blinding. The shaft of pain was like white-hot impalement, and for an instant, in the agony of it, he saw Vansha stiffen and die again. Then it passed, and he felt an onrush of more normal pain, that throbbed and faded slowly. For a moment he missed the familiar tingle of the fires, winced in numb discomfort, feared he had been cheated somehow. Then he understood what he was feeling. The cold snow was stinging his feet, and its leaden bite felt sharp and delicious as a kiss. He waggled his toes, and began to laugh idiotically and cry, all at once. Slowly, awkwardly, he clambered to his feet, realising how momentous such a simple act could be, and how unnatural his former healing had been compared to this.

  ‘Nothing more!’ said Louhi, still turned away. ‘He has only his own miserable strength now. I will not let such a warrior loose in the world, to challenge me ever again.’

  Alya reached up, stripped off his torn mailshirt, and threw it down on his ripped and blood-soaked cloak. ‘Lady, for that I thank you. Whatever your reason. Well as it served me, the gift of the Powers was a burden past mortal bearing.’

  ‘Then you also have learned something,’ the woman said, and bowed her golden hair.

  She turned abruptly to stare at Savi, and her face was streaked and ugly. She had indeed learned to weep, but not to control it. ‘You are a flower among filth, and you fade fast. Take your beauty to where the Ice cannot preserve it. Take it far from here! Go!’

  Savi was draping her coat around Alya’s shivering shoulders. ‘But if you leave us here in the night, on the barren Ice – no clothes, no food, no way to escape – you only give us death by another way!’

  ‘I need give you no escape!’ said Louhi grimly. ‘The means exist. If you are too foolish to seize them, that need no longer be any concern of mine. That is life.’

  And the Lady of the Ice turned her face away, and spread her arms to the darkness.

  Back to my kingdom I go now,

  Bested by what I may neve
r subdue,

  Never by the strong but by the weak,

  By the unshielded heart, the open mind,

  By what in this illusion of a world

  Reflects the faintest trace of what is true,

  That even from the Powers lies hidden.

  She had no music in her voice, though it was clear and strong. Darkness fell about her, enveloping her like a tide, leaving only her golden hair gleaming in the last faint light. And then even that was gone. The bitter air crackled; and the sky above them lit suddenly, from far horizon to horizon, with the great rippling curtain of the Northlights, a cascade of green and gold, so vast and fair the mere humans sank down on their knees beneath its majesty. But it shook once, and was gone, leaving only darkness and the whining wind.

  ‘Savi …’ managed Alya; but his teeth were chattering too much to say more, and his heart was too full.

  She pulled his ragged and filthy shirt close about him. ‘Ssh! Come! We’ve got to get you away from here, somehow, fast as we can. Can you walk now?’

  ‘Barely!’ he managed. He reached down for the sword, where it had fallen, and tried to lean on it, like a stick; but as it felt his weight, the ancient blade bent and snapped, where it had touched Louhi’s neck, and dropped useless in the snow. He stood swaying and staring at it, while Savi tugged at his arm.

  ‘It’s done its work! Come! Lean on me! I won’t break!’

  Alya managed a smile. ‘You never did. You never would have! I could have saved myself the trouble of rescuing you!’

  ‘No,’ she said softly. ‘I knew you’d try, somehow, against all sense. It was knowing that that let me endure. That let me turn to her, even; though I told her no lies. You even warned me, I know. That strange bird – what is it?’

  Alya had stopped dead, gasping, reaching for his belt. Then, pulling free of her, he staggered back through the snow to where his cloak lay, searching, scrabbling with frantic energy. He gave a great cry, suddenly. ‘There! I feared I’d lost it sooner. But I must have fallen on it when I was stabbed!’

  Savi stared aghast at the ancient mask. ‘It’s covered in your blood!’

  ‘So much the better, maybe!’ He held it high, stained and cracked, and laughed quietly, and drew the Raven image down upon his head, like a crown. ‘Father, your gift comes home at last! And I have no fires to keep me from it now!’

  Savi stared. ‘What good can that do?’

  ‘Every good, girl!’ He felt strong suddenly, young and strong as a prince of men in the first bright dawn of the world. ‘Take my hands, Saviyal, chieftain’s daughter! Dance with me!’

  She stared around at the howling waste, at the bitter black sky in which the first stars were shining, merciless and hard as gems. Even the earthfires in the vale were fading and subsiding to a sullen glow, and the bared black rock was turning slowly white again, cracking in the grip of frost. Over the distant horizon of the glaciers, the first faint gleam of moonlight shone, mirrored from far below the edge of the world; and by its light it seemed that distant shapes were stirring against the dark, inchoate, huge and menacing. Shadows flickered and swept across the slopes above them, and the wind seemed alive with half-heard voices, chiming like icicles.

  ‘Dance?’

  He seized her hands and swung her around, singing wildly, singing anything he could think of that had a beat, nonsense, scraps of old songs that set his feet stamping on the stiffening snow. Wild-eyed, astonished, she shook her head and sang with him, stamped her feet, whirled about him.

  ‘At least it keeps us warm!’

  Warmth! He thought of warmer lands, of his dreams, of fertile meadows, green-clad hills, the verdant woodlands whence Rysha’s talisman had come, the mighty forests by the Sea …

  ‘The Sea!’

  All at once the strength boiled up and burst out of him, through his very bones, more swiftly and sharply than the ice that had destroyed Vansha.

  Hunger and cold …

  They were indeed his friends. To his legacy, that the inner fires, well given as they were, had so long denied him, hunger and cold were his mark of birthright, his stamp of achievement, his endurance and his reward in one. They created the emptiness within him that the shaman’s strength must fill.

  His eyes were open beneath the mask, his mind clear; but it was as if he saw the Ice surge up before him, smoothly, a distortion in the world, and merge with the descending dark. And behind them, as they blended, the sudden glow burst into flame. The Trail, vaster and brighter than ever before, burned an incandescent path in the darkness, faster than sight, and exploded into glittering night.

  He was face to face with the Wall, and at last he understood it – the Wall, that as his father had told him, every Seer must build within themselves, and somehow overcome. His Wall was built out of visions of his past and his destiny, of glassy Ice and overwhelming darkness, and boiling fire. He had learned to rise above it, to look beyond it, with the minds of others. Now, though, his strength was his own, and that strength was what raised the Wall in the first place. A fearsome force, that now he must confront. Go up against it, yet not over it. He must go through.

  He stilled the dance suddenly, and clutched Savi tightly to him, close as the single flesh they must be. The height of black glass seemed to rush up at him, the flames burst high about him; and Savi screamed, for in that moment she also saw it. But he held his head high, and struck the release of the mask. The Raven’s beak gaped wide, and revealed the human face within. The Wall reflected it back to him, but plain and featureless no longer. Within the mask shone the face of the grizzled minstrel, eyes glittering, laughing wildly; and the fires danced about and above it, like a vast crown.

  And then Alya struck the Wall, and the obsidian mirror shattered. The Wall exploded about him, and was gone.

  Light rushed in on him, light and confusion. He saw, as he had seen from above the Wall; but not now from a distance. Sights and sounds, visions and images whirled past him so fast they merged into a whirling grayness, and only Savi in his arms seemed real and solid. To her, and to his single thought, he clung.

  The roaring in his ears seemed slowly to subside and still; and yet, as he heard his own trembling breath, it did not fade away completely. He heard another breath then, felt warm skin in his arms, and strove to haul himself up, as his vision cleared.

  Savi lay beside him, looking as dazed as he felt, stretching out a hand to touch something that lay on the ground before them. It was the mask, no longer bright, no longer coloured at all, but scorched and smoking. There was a smell of singeing in his hair, and he reached up and plucked out a scrap of twig, that stung his fingers, and crumbled, smoking. He stared at it a moment, raised himself on one arm, and saw his soiled sleeve drop and fall away, as if charred.

  ‘My hair stinks!’ protested Savi. ‘As if – it’s burned! The ends are scorched! Yours, too!’

  Alya’s ears were still rushing. ‘But not my skin! Are you—’

  ‘I’m all right.’ She sat up, and laughed as her thin garments dropped away, streaking her skin with char.

  ‘More than all right!’ he told her. ‘You’re so beautiful …’

  She still stared at the mask, reached out, touched the ground beside it. ‘What are these? Like dead leaves, but thin.’

  Alya blinked at the carpet of brown stuff. ‘I don’t know … Where are we?’

  ‘I thought you must know!’ she said, alarmed again, and rolled over, ready to spring up and run. But wonder far greater than any fear held them.

  ‘These trees!’

  They were gigantic, far above anything that grew in any land he knew, noble columns vaster and more numerous than all Louhi’s colonnades, rich brown and soft grey, with a fresh wind rushing through their strange branches. Part of the sound in his ears, he realised; yet not all. Fresh, and yet soft, scented with a strange tang he could not name, and a mildness that felt good on his newly naked skin.

  ‘I thought of forests,’ he said softly, lifting the mask. ‘War
mer forests. And the mask carried us to them.’

  ‘Carried?’ Savi stared. ‘But only the greatest of shamans …’ Her eyes gleamed suddenly. ‘The greatest. Of course.’

  ‘The most foolish, more like. Look at this poor wood, it’s burnt to charcoal almost. Beyond wearing. I feel the same. I doubt I’d ever have the nerve to try that again, or the strength. The mask did most of the work!’

  He burst out laughing suddenly. ‘As it carried me once before! Only I never knew, I never dreamed, then! But it felt the same, I recognise it now. When I wandered at the very edge of death, it took me up and carried me southward to the kin I sought. To the Citadel – and to you!’

  Savi clung to him, wordless. But suddenly she broke away, pointing. ‘Through the trees there! There’s light – look at it! So great, glittering … Is it the Ice?’

  ‘I don’t think so!’ said Alya excitedly; and seizing her hand, he led her through the sighing trees. The remnants of their clothes dropped away from them as they walked, and their boots with them; but the strange carpet of needle-like dry leaves was kind to their bare feet, and the air seemed like a caress. And as they reached the margins of the trees, and looked out into the open, they understood at last.

  A land fell away before the forest, a downslope of lush green grass far richer than the richest of their plains, marshy or arid, but much narrower; for within their sight it was bordered by a golden strip of sand. What lay beyond that glittered as bright as the Ice, but infinitely more mobile and alive. Its surface coursed with enormous rhythmic ripples, like desert dunes restored to life. To Alya it seemed that they raced to shore with sheer elephantine joy, spilling high upon the sand in glorious excitement, racing away again as if to lure him down to that radiant expanse, down and far away.