Shadow of the Seer

by Michael Scott Rohan

  ‘They were what I thought of last,’ he said. ‘The forests, and the Sea. Thanks to one I’ll tell you of – if only as a caution! But I never dreamed they could be so fair.’

  ‘Fair and terrible,’ said Savi. ‘As terrible as the Ice, in their power! And the Powers that rule them, also. But so such things are bound to be. And they draw us to them, none the less.’

  ‘I would have loved her, too,’ he said. ‘In your place.’

  Savi sighed. ‘Who would not? For good or ill, she is higher and greater than we, and that shines through her. I will never forget her, as I promised – and yet I am so glad to be free!’

  He nodded. ‘As I of the fires within me. We have strayed too close to the ancient Powers, you and I; and all the ancients told that they were no safe company for mere men, even the kindly ones. We are better as we are. And together, best of all!’

  He drew her close, and they clung, while the waves and the wind played about them.

  ‘Yet are we?’ she asked at last. ‘Alone, without home or friends or food, or any purpose? How shall we make our lives, and where?’

  Alya smiled, and pointed. Down the beach, a long way off, smoke was rising. They could make out shapes there, long straight shapes with a made look about them.

  ‘Some kind of huge huts?’ said Savi doubtfully. ‘But who would build them on the sand, so near the sea?’

  ‘Not huts,’ said Alya. ‘Ships. The ships that Tuma the Rider spoke of – that he besought us to join! Ships, to seek the lands across the Sea! If they can only find a way!’

  She looked up at him, excitement in her eyes. ‘And I know one! She showed me pictures of the world, of the seas, of great streams and currents and winds that run from shore to shore. There was one such stream – it ran almost from this shore to the other, in a great graceful curve north and east and south again, like the neck of a bird …’

  Alya stiffened. ‘A swan? With head – head and eye?’

  She stared. ‘Why, yes! An island in its path, that had the place of an eye! Only a short way from the other coast! I could draw it on a map—’

  Alya felt a great calm steal over him. ‘Then we know what to seek! What will bear us there swiftly enough to live!’

  ‘Are you sure?’ She stared doubtfully out over the rolling infinity, more like the Ice than anything else she had ever seen. ‘But it’s so great, with no marks or measures! The ships would need some way of keeping their direction …’

  ‘But there is!’ He clutched her hand. ‘We find our way by the stars on land, don’t we? And I’ve seen them afar, farther than any man, I guess. They move, but they don’t change, not halfway across the world! There must be men who can steer boats by them, lead us along these currents of yours.’ He shook his head in wonder. ‘Tuma said they’d welcome us. More than that, now, I think, with the gift you bring them. A true path to the other shore!’

  She smiled. ‘It’s your gift also. What do you think we’ll find there?’

  ‘New lands. Kind lands like these, lands where the hand of the Ice still doesn’t ruin all, and root up every shoot before it can flower. Lands where we can live and love and grow freely. Isn’t that the life you asked for?’

  ‘In all its fullness!’ she said fiercely, and flung her arms around him. ‘You risked all to love me and to free me. Now all I have is yours. All that she gave me, all that I am I give to you! To build our life together!’

  ‘That’s all that I want, now and forever,’ he said softly; and though neither of them realised it then, the ruined mask fell forgotten from his hand. ‘The gifts we give one another remain our own. For our sons and our daughters to share.’

  Hand in hand, naked, they ran down to the ships.

  There legend leaves them, save to tell that they were indeed among those who eventually crossed the dividing sea, to a new life. For it was the great current, a secret hidden and forgotten since the days of the first voyagers, that made the crossing practicable. It was through the eye of the swan, in many senses, that it was spied out anew; and for that, and their courage and wisdom, Alya and Saviyal won great honour in their time, and remembrance thereafter.

  No greater heroism is recorded of them, if any were possible; but their line flourished and grew strong in its eastern home. The Chronicles record that it gave rise, as well it might, to many great and brave folk, men and women alike; and so their story was preserved, beyond the passing of the Ice itself, and the dark days of the Winter of the World.

  Appendix

  OF THE ORIGINS, AND TRUTH, OF THE TALE

  The story of Alya and Savi, who for a brief moment melted even the heart of the Ice, is the only major account of life in the lands west of the ocean at this time, under that bleak dominion. And yet, to judge by the way it is recorded, it would appear almost purely legendary – if it did not bear the stamp of the Winter Chronicles.

  For one thing, there have been innumerable versions, surviving mostly in fragments elsewhere, which gave the tale some very different slants. The later ones especially are written more like epic romances, spruced up for courtly audiences. Alya’s father is made an exiled king or duke, surviving by his sorcerous powers, Savi a princess in disguise – even, in one version, Volmur’s long-lost daughter brought up in secret. In several versions they become rulers of the seaward lands. In almost all of them, other famous heroes are roped in to accompany Alya, even those from impossibly remote lands and times; they supplant or replace his original followers, and the narrative is padded out with their own often completely irrelevant tales.

  One version introduces the great Zvyataquar himself, an anachronism of several centuries at least, who is made to hand over his sword in person, and with it his strength, before turning to stone, somewhat inconveniently, at the gate of the Citadel. There is even a wildly erotic version, more remarkable for ingenuity than credibility. Possibly more outrageous, though, is a separate epic of King Volmur, which all but usurps the story. He is portrayed as a wise and noble figure who leads Alya at the head of his army and does much of the hard work, inspiring the slaves’ rebellion, downing the dragon and even slaying Vansha, depicted as a melodramatic, cringing traitor throughout. Savi becomes a helpless, hand-wringing cipher. However, as this account is full of sickeningly sycophantic and historically impossible references to one of Volmur’s very minor successors, and appears to have been commissioned by him, it can safely be discounted.

  Chronology

  The extent to which all these versions obviously draw upon the Chronicle account, however, suggests that this is almost certainly the original, or as close as one can expect to get. It is told very much like a pure folktale, with little reference to contemporary events or places to give it a firm foothold in history. This, though, is common enough with records from the bleak lands, where the Ice forever strove to stamp out not only cultures but any records they might leave. It seems to have been afraid, above all, of enduring knowledge; and it acted on that fear. No complete or consistent chronicles survive; even the most authentic histories endured only as oral tales. Care was taken to preserve them, but inevitably in generations of retelling they were altered.

  However, the tale of Alya and Savi passed across the ocean with them, and must have been first written down very soon afterwards – perhaps even during their lifetime. From that standpoint, it can be seen as better authenticated than most; for it was also the best known and remembered, far more so than any others. The very Chronicle book that contains it, although it treats of many matters in the lands beyond the Sea, is itself named the Book of the Mask, showing in what regard the tale was held. And in other narratives the tale is frequently referred to, even sworn by, with the evident assumption that everyone would know it and accept it as true. Alya and Savi themselves are always treated as real people, ancestors of great repute, and bloodlines traced back to them in detail.

  Unfortunately the detail does not always agree; but then not every bloodline is complete, or every claim genuine. The best-authenticate
d ones concur sufficiently to place the lifetimes of Alya and Savi between a thousand and thirteen hundred years before the coming of Elof Valantor, and the turning of the Ice. That would be consistent with the Chronicle’s own records, which set the great migrations into Nordeney at just this period. They had evidently been happening already for a very long time, beginning with a continual trickle of individual refugees and small groups, most following the ocean route whose secret was continually lost and rediscovered throughout the centuries.

  Some references even suggest that the voyage Alya and Savi joined was the last great escape from the Westlands, and that they were among the refugees rescued by the mastersmiths Gille and Olvar. If one accepts the most recent date, that would just be possible; but they are not specifically mentioned in that account, as one would expect. And the refugees of that day seem to have been even more desperate and harried, and culturally primitive, suggesting that the forces of the Ice were overwhelming even the coastlands at last.

  OF THE LANDS IN WHICH THE TALE IS SET

  Unfortunately far less is said about these than is usual in the Chronicles. That, again, is common in stories from across the seas. The chroniclers of Brasayhal were determined to record as much as possible of the land they must lose, as the Ice melted; but not so the emigrants. To them Nordeney’s craggy landscape seemed so much better and sweeter than their homeland that they hardly cared to remember it; such is the quality of freedom, perhaps. Most that can be said or deduced has been included in the tale; but all too often times and distances have had to be guessed at, or left deliberately vague.

  What little information there is makes sense, however, and corresponds with what we can deduce about the land. The continent on which these events took place lay over the oceans to the west of the lands of Nordeney and Brasayhal where the Chronicles were begun, themselves forming the western shore of the continent of Brasayhal. This western continent had no single name that anyone remembered. It was then as now enormous, extending a great part of the way around the world to the subcontinental lands of Kerys, and made vaster by the fall in sea levels. Much of this expanse, though, lay under the Ice; and it was the Ice that defined the climates and conditions of the remainder.

  Of the Ice in these lands

  As in the lands of Kerys and Brasayhal, the Ice flowed slowly but inexorably down from the north, driving as far as it could into the wanner latitudes. As Alya saw them, the glaciers formed a wide northern ice-sheet from east to west, absorbing or grinding down the older mountain-barriers in their path. But while in other lands one found smaller, separate glaciers and even small ice-sheets detached from the rest, here another complete sheet almost as vast had taken shape among the mountains to the extreme west. This effectively split the whole enormous continent in half, a vast ice-curtain that had swept down to bar all of the east, where this tale is set, from the west.

  There at this time the great realm of Kerys still held sway under the kings of the formidable Ysmerien line, and did much to keep the Ice at bay. But Kerys, if it considered any outside lands at all, looked across its westward oceans to Brasayhal’s east coast, whence their kin fled. For what lay east they cared little, assuming it was a barrier of solid ice. Had they known otherwise, it would have made little difference. Even Kerys in its might could have done little to pass the great ice-sheet. And supposing they had, it is most likely that the later Ysmeriens, imperious and arrogant, would have only brought the suffering easterners another kind of conquest and domination. That the Ice might even have encouraged, although its roots were and are in human nature.

  Of the nature of the western lands

  The east, therefore, was cut off, and no true maps remain. But it is certain that this whole tale, save for its end, took place well inland, in the centre of the western continent, where the glaciers reached furthest to the south; and, as we can tell, not far from that southernmost tip.

  The lands bordering the Ice

  As has been noted in previous books, the effect of the ice-sheets closing about the world was to compress its climatic zones into a smaller space. This increased their extremes, so that, surprising as it might seem, the equator became distinctly hotter, and the regions in between varied more sharply over shorter distances. That, for example, is how the Ice was able to create a fertile and (relatively) temperate zone of grassland within only a month or so’s journey of its southern rim, separated from it by a fairly narrow strip of tundra. This is well enough described in the tale. However, it is also obvious that at the point Alya and his followers approached, both the grassland belt and the ice-barrens were especially narrow; this strongly suggests it was the southerly glacial extreme. To east and west, tundra and temperate zone were wider, especially where mountains held back the glaciers.

  It was to just such a region of the grassland belt, and a happily sheltered enclave within it, that Alya’s father had fled with family and followers in the hope of founding a new community, flourishing within the Ice’s own preserve, yet in a spot it could not see. It was a bold and clever action, to take refuge beneath the very claw of the beast; but in the end it did not hide him from its eye. It may be that in practising his art Alya’s father even gave himself away, perhaps touched one mind or memory too many and drew the doom down upon himself. His words in the tale suggest some presentiment of his own end; but he cannot have realised it would include everyone.

  The southerly lands

  What lay south of that temperate zone, and the border of the canes, was not so different in clime, but much less well watered. The great rivers that flowed from the Ice were largely split here, growing wider and slower. Many streams were diverted through hillier and less habitable lands; and the others seemed to promote less fertility than they normally would. It has even been suggested that these latter rivers in their slowing deposited the silt they carried down, and that this was somehow a subtle poison for the soil, an inhibitor of growth rather than a fertiliser, containing hostile minerals or metals, perhaps; hence the faint bitter taste Alya and others remarked. That would certainly be worthy of the Ice.

  Whatever the truth of it, the result was arid steppe country at best, punctuated with infertile bogs and unhealthy marshes, the kind through which Alya and his followers passed in the early days of their pursuit, and among which the tree-towns had struggled to live. At worst, in lower-lying land, it became a band of stony near-desert which increasingly desperate human farmers had only served to intensify and spread, into a barren dust-bowl; hence the deserted buildings that Alya came across. And hence the Citadel, once in relatively fertile ground, but now scraping a grudging living from subsistence agriculture at the desert’s margin, its irrigation precariously dependent on seasonal flooding from the north. Its fields had moved further south since its founding, not only to help hide the place, but because the immediate soil was exhausted.

  To the south there were other sources of water, not least seasonal run-offs from southerly mountain ranges not yet overwhelmed by their ice-caps. There may even have been some melt-streams from the lesser western ice-sheet, their malign effects diluted by distance, as in Brasayhal. In the south there could be greenery and even forest of a kind. And beyond that, it was still possible to create enough agricultural surpluses to build and maintain a series of kingdoms, the latest of which, absorbing the rest, was Volmur’s Volaghkhan. This was still a wide country, and he or another might have founded a great realm here; but the Ice, with treachery and force, forever conspired to thwart that.

  To the distant south, all ambitions were curtailed by massively mountainous country, where the earth’s rocky plates ground against one another, forcing up immense ranges young, steep and sharp, their peaks the tallest in the world then as now, an easy spawning-ground for glaciers. The climate was too warm for them to flourish or spread lower down, at least for this time; but they made an effective barrier in all directions. Beyond those peaks would have been tropical and equatorial lowlands, in that climatic compression almost certainly the same
blasted, impassable deserts as the Daveth Loscaouen wastes south of Kerbryhaine, or the Seghen barrens below Kerys – ironic mirrors to the wastes of Ice that had brought them about.

  The lands by the ocean

  There remain the realms to the extreme west, the sea-kingdoms from which Tuma the Lynx came bearing his summons and to which the lovers at last escaped. More is said of Tuma later, but his own tale, to which we owe the only extended account of the coastal lands, records that he found no greener or fairer country in all his long journey. Sheltered by mountains and distance from the reach of the Ice, warmed by sun and Sea, it had both wide, low-lying grassy prairie inland, and fertile river floodplains and deltas free of any contamination the Ice could unleash.

  At the same time, the tale describes wide reaches of swamp and saltmarsh, often spreading, and immense sandy-floored pine forests along the Sea margins that supported relatively little other life. Evidently even these lands were no paradise, by Brasayhal’s standards. Nonetheless, they supported ample agriculture to keep a civilisation alive, and in those forests the means for escape to freedom.

  Of the peoples of the western lands

  There were evidently several races of men in the Eastlands, all of whom seem to have appeared quite distinct – to one another. It is harder to distinguish between them, at this remove, for several reasons.

  They almost all seem to have shared strong physical characteristics, chiefly jet-black hair, often though not always straight and thick. Other colours were thought to belong only to ghosts or demons, and heavy beards and moustaches were considered somewhat coarse and bestial.

  Almost all races had the distinctive epicanthic fold about the eye which marks people from the same region today, and almost all had skin of the hues associated with it. However, within these common factors there seem to have been several definite physical types; but in every account they mostly lived in close company, sometimes dominating or being identified with a particular area, but never exclusive to it.