Power's Shadow

by Richard Parks

  A sending?

  Marta rushed to the other side of the clearing, found the tree where the figure had been sitting. She touched her fingers to the bark, felt the warmth that should not have been at the place where the sun did not touch. Not a sending. Whoever or whatever he was, he had really been there. Until he wasn’t.

  Marta thought about what the stranger had said about her Mother, and about Amaet, and the changing systems of magic, and could not quite get a handle on any of it. Mostly, however, she wondered just who had contacted her there in that ancient grove, what he wanted, and how much it was going to cost her to find out.

  Ω

  13 Well begun, half undone

  “I’ve never been a monster, but I’ve had friends who were considered such. I don’t necessarily disagree with the assessment and nor would they, but I’ve always found that, in the body of every monster, there always beats a human heart.” – Seb of the Kuldun Order

  “All is prepared,” Prince Dolan said when he met Marta and Sela at the north gate of the city. Bonetapper rode serenely on Marta’s shoulder.

  “All” appeared to be something of an understatement. There were two covered wagons packed to the brim, three horsemen aside from Prince Dolan himself, plus extra horses and a pack train of four horses led by another man wearing the prince’s livery.

  “This seems a bit much,” Sela, now again dressed in her mailshirt and padded gambeson rather than court dress, said as she surveyed the caravan.

  “Does it? Let me see…yes. As the escort is not at my discretion, that makes three armed men to equip and feed, plus the pack train driver to handle the horses who carry the extra fodder, plus our own supplies, plus a generous cargo of gifts for the monastery, as the monks are not likely to look kindly on our intrusion without the appropriate offerings—“

  Sela held up her hand. “Enough. I see your point, Highness. I’m just used to traveling lighter.”

  “For some journeys, ‘lighter’ does not mean ‘better.’ I judge this to be one such. If events prove me incorrect, please feel free to remind me of the fact.”

  “I will take that under advisement,” Sela said, smiling.

  “Lady Marta, I hate to ask, but I understand you can drive a wagon. Would you be willing to handle one of these? One of the escort can handle the other.”

  “Hmmm? Oh, certainly. I’d rather ride in the wagon anyway.”

  “Pardon my saying, Lady, but you appear distracted this morning,” Prince Dolan said.

  “Something’s on my mind,” Marta said. “But it won’t prevent me from keeping the wagon on the road.”

  “Splendid. We’re ready then. Let’s get going.” Prince Dolan strode over to where one of the escorts held his mount and he climbed into the saddle.

  “I’ll ride with you, Lady Marta. If you don’t mind. Never had the knack of horses,” Sela said.

  “As you wish,” Marta said. “Though I’m sure Prince Dolan would be glad to instruct you.”

  Sela blushed a little, and shook her head. “I do wish you wouldn’t do that.”

  Marta frowned. “What did I do?”

  Sela just sighed. “Never mind. Let’s be off.”

  Marta climbed onto the wagon seat and took the reins as Sela followed her on the other side. The seat was cushioned, another reason Marta preferred the wagon to the saddle. With a slight flick of the reins she brought the wagon into line with Prince Dolan’s horse and the others slowly followed her example. The guards saluted as they passed through the gate and onto the open road leading north. The White Mountains were visible as a misty line in the distance.

  “North of Amurlee is really the best place to enter the mountains from Conmyre,” Dolan said. “The entire range dips south here. Further west toward Borasur-Morushe it does the opposite. From here we’ve only got a few days travel to reach the foothills. Once we’re through the Snake Pass we turn west and then re-enter the mountains barely twenty leagues from the monastery.”

  “You’ve been there before,” Sela said.

  “Once or twice,” Dolan admitted. “Looking for the wrong thing, it appears.”

  “Doesn’t that put us into Wylandia?” Marta asked.

  “Yes, and it would be considered rude for one such as myself to visit King Garan’s domain unannounced.”

  Marta smiled. “Where royals are concerned, for ‘rude’ shall I substitute ‘dangerous’?”

  “If you wish, since the two terms in this context are not dissimilar in meaning. But we’re on good terms, relatively speaking, with Garan, and we’ll keep to the pilgrim trail. It’s considered neutral territory for the purpose of travel to the monastery, so no protocol violated.”

  Dolan took the lead as the rest of the escort and wagons set off behind him. The Prince’s bodyguards quickly took up positions just off the road to the left and right. Marta turned to the raven on her shoulder.

  “Fly ahead of us and take a look around.”

  “Why? We’ll be in Conmyre still for a few more days. What do you expect to be lurking about?”

  “Nothing at all, which is all the more reason to be cautious. Now go.”

  Still grumbling, Bonetapper did as he was told. Sela watched him fade into the distant sky. “If I could fly, I don’t think I’d complain about it.”

  “Complaining is one of Bonetapper’s few joys in life. I try not to spoil that, so long as he doesn’t get too annoying.”

  They spent the first night camped in a meadow, and the second at an inn that catered to pilgrims, an inn located almost in the shadows of the White Mountains. By the following afternoon they had passed into the foothills and soon stood at the entrance to the Snake Pass.

  “Why do they call it that?” Sela asked, and Prince Dolan smiled.

  “Once we get inside, you’ll find out.”

  The answer was indeed clear once they were well into the pass. Unlike a high mountain pass mapped along a route of least resistance, the Snake Pass followed a natural defile almost at ground level, but it was never a straight path. It followed an undulating course like its namesake as it worked through the mountains. Sheer cliffs formed the walls reaching up several hundred feet, with the mountains on either side rising higher still. At its widest point, no more than two wagons could travel side by side, and it sometimes narrowed even further. As the day wore on, however, Marta and Sela were grateful to find that there were occasional side branches. They never reached very far into the mountains and none were even wide enough to accommodate a wagon, but they did make convenient and private places to answer nature’s call.

  They rode until early afternoon, and down in the pass the shadows were already gathering.

  “Snake Pass indeed,” Sela muttered.

  Prince Dolan rode beside the wagon. He raised his voice a bit to be heard over the creaking of the wheels.

  “It’s presumed that the pass was created by some great cataclysm in times past, but if so it’s not in anyone’s living memory. Look up there,” Dolan said, pointing ahead to where a giant boulder the size of a house had fallen off the cliffs only to become wedged perhaps thirty feet above the narrow road. “We’ll pass under several of those along the way. I know they’ve been there for centuries, but I always cringe. “

  “What happens when a smaller one blocks the pass?”

  “Stonecutters and masons are engaged from either side depending on where the block occurs. They break up and take anything that reaches the ground. They gain materials and the path is kept clear.”

  “I suppose one could invade either way through this, given enough time,” Marta said.

  Sela looked doubtful. “I wouldn’t think so.”

  “Why not?” Prince Dolan asked, though Marta had the feeling that the prince already knew the answer.

  “Too easy to defend,” Sela said. “All you’d need on either side would be a few dozen mountaineers with pry bars. You could rain stones all day from the cliffs and never even be within bowshot of anyone unlucky enough to be below y
ou. If that failed, it wouldn’t be difficult to rig stones large enough to block the pass entirely and have them ready to go at need, and then keep harassing anyone either trying to reach the mountaineers or clear the block.”

  “I see you have a talent for strategy, Lady Sela. Absolutely right,” Dolan said. “There have been small raids—none in recent history, thankfully—but no more than that. The Snake Pass is only practical in times of peace.”

  “It’s just ‘Sela,” Highness,” Sela said. “It was fun pretending to be Lady Sela for a while, I admit, but I’m just Sela.”

  Dolan smiled. “I don’t pretend to know a great deal,” he said. “But one thing I do know is that you will never be ‘just Sela.’ Now excuse me, I want to check with our scout.”

  Dolan had sent one of their escort ahead as soon as they’d entered the pass. Marta and Sela saw the man return and confer with the lead soldier. Dolan soon joined them. Yet before he could return, Bonetapper glided down the defile and landed on Marta’s shoulder.

  “Trouble,” he said. “Someone’s been murdered at…well, I guess it’s some sort of way station about a league ahead. Dolan’s scout found the evidence at about the same time as I did. He’s good—I don’t think most humans would have spotted the signs just riding by.”

  “You’re human, underneath those feathers,” Marta pointed out.

  “Lately I’m not so sure,” Bonetapper said. “Sometimes I forget. There was a time when I wouldn’t.”

  “I thought the Snake Pass was clear of bandits,” Sela said.

  “No one mentioned bandits,” Bonetapper said. “Frankly, I don’t think we yet understand what happened, or to whom.”

  “You have a nose for death, Bonetapper,” Marta said. “Can you really tell no more than this?”

  The raven shrugged his wings. “Possibly. I’ll need to get closer, but under the circumstances it’s probably best if we don’t go there.”

  “I’m thinking we may not have a choice.”

  When Prince Dolan returned, he confirmed both Bonetapper’s report and Marta’s own suspicions—the pass was simply too narrow where they were to turn the wagons around until they reached the way station. “It’s against my better judgment, but I think we have to go on, and assess the situation at that point,” Marta said. “Unless you think we can back the wagons all the way to the border?”

  Dolan nodded. “Not really, so I’m inclined to agree. All my men know to stay alert regardless, but especially so now.”

  When he had rested for a bit Marta sent Bonetapper back up the pass, with instructions to scout but otherwise keep below the level of the cliff, as he had also reported that there were many nesting birds of all sorts established there who did not take kindly to ravens in their territories and were more than willing to demonstrate that opinion en masse.

  “They’d do the same thing to any raptor in the area, I’d wager,” Marta said. “Such things do sometimes curtail Bonetapper’s freedom of movement.”

  “So a goshawk wouldn’t have been any more useful,” Sela said.

  “Rather less, considering the goshawk,” Marta said dryly. “At least Bonetapper generally does as he’s told.”

  “Good. It would pain me to think we could have actually made use of that strutting—“ Sela stopped. “I was going to say a word I heard my father use once about one of my potential swains, but I don’t want Longfeather in the same thought as my father.”

  It occurred to Marta, perhaps not for the first time, that Sela showed a great deal of reverence to the memory of a man who had not considered her well-being or provided for her future as much as he might have. Then again, Master Solthyr would not have been the first to consider himself immortal only to discover, too late, that this was not the case. Marta then considered her own mother, whose time had also ended with much left undone and unsaid, and she thought that, perhaps, she understood a little of what Sela felt.

  The pass was slowly widening as they got closer to the way station. It was still too narrow to even attempt to turn the wagons if needed, but Marta estimated that it wouldn’t be too much longer before such a move might be possible. As they approached, they came to another of those fallen rocks that were wedged into sides of the canyon overhead. This one was more like a flat table of rock rather than a simple boulder, and much wider than any other she had seen. The pass was only about fifteen feet wide at the bottom there, but higher up the cliff faces were about thirty feet across. The overhang itself stretched at least forty feet along the pass itself, so as they passed under it Marta felt almost as if they were passing through a tunnel. When they emerged Marta looked up she could see the scar on the rockface over a hundred feet up where the overhang must have originated. Over the centuries the flat top of the overhang had apparently collected enough fallen dust and blown seeds to grow a small forest there above the pass.

  “Odd place for trees,” Sela said.

  Marta shrugged. “Life wants to happen, and plants grow where they can, though I imagine in another few centuries their roots will weaken the rock until it cracks and comes the rest of the way down.”

  “More work for the stonecutters,” Prince Dolan said. “But, I sincerely hope, not today.”

  The pass continued to widen and they reached the way station, still in sight of the forest growing from one cliff to the other. Though to call it any kind of proper way station was to exaggerate a little. In fact it wasn’t anything more than a temporary shelter cut into the rock of the north wall of the pass at a place where the pass finally widened far enough to allow the wagons to turn. The scout and Prince Dolan had dismounted, and they were both looking at something Marta couldn’t see. She rose, stretched and winced a bit as the reality of her time sitting on a jolting wagon seat asserted itself. She climbed down, closely followed by Sela.

  “What are they looking at?” Sela asked.

  “Let’s find out.”

  Sela hopped down from the wagon seat and followed Marta toward the rock shelter where Prince Dolan and his bodyguard had gathered while the man leading the pack train stopped behind the wagons. A commotion overhead stopped all three where they stood. There was a harsh croaking sound followed by a man cursing.

  Bonetapper…?

  In another moment the raven appeared out of the trees of the overhang behind them and swooped down toward the wagons.

  “Take cover!”

  The raven had no sooner raised the alarm than an arrow whistled down from the overhang and buried itself in the back of Marta’s wagon not more than a foot from the pack train leader, who dropped to the ground and frantically crawled under the wagon. The next arrow skipped off the side of the canyon wall and snagged in one of the escort soldiers hauberk. Marta judged the distance and sprinted for the rock shelter, Sela close behind. The third arrow missed clipping her heel by inches. Two of the escort rushed out of the shelter, shields raised to give them cover, then followed them inside.

  Bonetapper landed on Marta’s shoulder. “I should have seen them when I passed over, but I swear no one was there!”

  “They are now,” Prince Dolan said dryly. “How many?”

  The raven turned toward the prince. “I counted four, but I might have missed one. I just happened to be returning from my loop around the pass or I wouldn’t have seen them at all.”

  “Where did they come from?” Sela asked. “There’s no way to climb up or down there that I could tell.”

  “There must be,” Marta said.

  Dolan turned to the escort, two of whom were stringing bows. “We’ll need to return the attack and keep them busy, or their next step is to start killing the horses.”

  “The angle favors them,” said the man Marta recognized as Kian, Dolan’s personal bodyguard. “We might get lucky, but at best we can make them keep their heads down.”

  “That will have to do for now,” Dolan said.

  The two archers placed their shields at either side of the entrance to the shelter, using their feet to prop them in place. On
e shield was hit immediately and another arrow buried itself in the dirt, but the two men both drew and loosed almost at the same time and there was no answer from the overhang right away. Sela darted out and returned with the second arrow.

  “Lady Sela, what are you—“ Dolan began, but she cut him off.

  “Highness, whoever they are, it’s safe to assume they have more arrows than we do, so we might need every one we can get. Besides, I’m not a fool—by the time any of them can mark me, I’ll be out of sight.”

  “Yes, but—“

  “Highness, she’s right,” Dolan’s bodyguard said. “They’re not bad archers, and we’re certainly in danger. But I haven’t seen anything to convince me that we have any masters among them. Devan and Loken are in more peril, and poor Akan is stuck under the wagon.”

  “We can’t stay here,” Marta said. “And if we try to leave we’ll get picked off. As your bodyguard pointed out, Highness—they’re not bad archers.”

  Dolan frowned. “True, but we’re safe from arrows in here and they don’t dare a direct assault, even if they can get down here. Only four? Feh. Kian could handle that many by himself, and he won’t be alone.”

  Marta was a little embarrassed to think that she only now knew the names of their companions other than Kian, but there were more pressing concerns, as Kian was quick to point out.

  “Your Highness flatters me, but all our supplies are in the wagons which we can’t reach. The bandits—for so I presume they are—can wait longer than we can. But at least we know now who was responsible for the murder.”

  “Sir Kian? I understand your scout discovered a killing?”

  “In here, in fact. Look at the dirt by the entrance, Lady Marta.”

  Marta did so. What she saw was that it had been disturbed. Further into the shelter, the floor became rock, but the first few feet were bare earth, and it looked as if someone had turned it with a spade. Bonetapper hopped down to the ground, gave a sniff, and fluttered back up to Marta’s shoulder.