by Larry Niven
The cold became wet cold. Ice crystals blew around them. The magicians below were half-hidden. Orolandes climbed with one hand on the rock wall. The other side was empty space.
The snow-fog thinned. They were climbing out of the cloud.
They emerged, and it was glorious. The cloud bank stretched away like a clean white landscape, under a brilliant sun and dark blue sky. The Warlock rubbed his hands in satisfaction. “We’re here! Orolandes, let me get into that pack.”
The others watched as he chose his tools. If the Warlock had told them what he was about, Orolandes hadn’t heard it. He did not speculate. He waited to know what was expected of him.
The attitude came easily to him. He had risen through the ranks of the Greek army; he could follow orders. He had given orders, too, before Atlantis sank beneath him. Since then Orolandes had given over control of his own fate.
“Good,” muttered the Warlock. He opened a wax-stoppered phial and poured dust into his hand and scattered it like seeds into the cloudscape. He sang words unfamiliar to Orolandes.
Mirandee and Clubfoot joined in, clear soprano and awkward bass, at chorus points that were not obvious. The song trailed off in harmony, and the Warlock scattered another handful of dust.
“All right. Better let me go first,” he said. He stepped off the stairs into feathery emptiness.
He bounced gently. The cloud held him.
Clubfoot followed, in a ludicrous bouncing stride that sank him calves-deep into the fog. Mirandee walked out after him. They turned to look back at Orolandes.
Clubfoot started to choke. He sat down in the shifting white mist and bellowed with a laughter that threatened to strangle him. Mirandee fought it, then joined in in a silvery giggle. There was the not-quite-sound of Wavyhill’s chortling.
The laughter seemed to fade, and the world went dim and blurry. Orolandes felt his knees turn to water. His jaw was sagging. He had climbed up through this cloud. It was cold and wet and without substance. It would not hold a feather from falling, let alone a man.
The witch’s silver laughter burned him like acid. For the lack of the Warlock’s laughter, for the Warlock’s exasperated frown, Orolandes was grateful. When the Warlock swept his arm in an impatient beckoning half-circle, Orolandes stepped out into space in a soldier’s march.
His foot sank deep into what felt like feather bedding, and bounced. He was off balance at the second step, and the recoil threw him further off. He kicked out frantically. His leg sank deep and recoiled and threw him high. He landed on his side and bounced.
Mirandee watched with her hands covering her mouth. Clubfoot’s laugh was a choking whimper now.
Orolandes got up slowly, damp all over. He waded rather than walked toward the magicians.
“Good enough. We don’t have a lot of time,” said the Warlock. “Take a little practice—we all need that—then go back for the pack.”
The layer of cloud stirred uneasily around them. It was not flat. There were knolls of billowing white that they had to circle round. It was like walking through a storehouse full of damp goose down. The cloud-stuff gave underfoot, and pulled as the foot came forward.
Orolandes found a stride that let him walk with the top-heavy pack, but it was hard on the legs. Half-exhausted and growing careless, he nearly walked into a hidden rift. He stared straight down through a feathery canyon at small drifting patches of farm. A tiny plume of dust led his eye to a moving speck, a barely visible horse and rider.
He turned left along the rift, while his heart thundered irregularly in his ears.
Clubfoot looked back. Mount Valhalla rose behind them, a mile or so higher than they’d climbed, blazing snow-white in the sunlight. “Far enough, I guess. Now, the crucial thing is to keep moving,” he said, “because if the magic fails where we’re standing it’s all over. Luckily we don’t have to do our own moving.”
He helped Orolandes doff the pack. He rummaged through it and removed a pair of water-tumbled pebbles, a handful of clean snow, and a small pouch of grey powder. “Now, Kranthkorpool, would you be so kind as to tell us where we’re going?”
“No need to coerce me,” said Wavyhill. “We go east and north. To the northernmost point of the Alps.”
“And we’ve got food for four days. Well, I guess we’re in a hurry.” Clubfoot began to make magic.
The Warlock did not take part. He knew that Clubfoot was a past master at weather magic. Instead he watched Mirandee’s hair.
Yes, her youth had held well. She had the clear skin and unwrinkled brow of a serene thirty-year-old noblewoman. Her wealth of hair was now raven black, with a streak of pure white that ran from her brow all the way back. As she helped Clubfoot sing the choruses, the white band thickened and thinned and thickened.
The Warlock spoke low to Orolandes. “If you see her hair turn sheer white, run like hell. You’re overloaded with that pack. Just get to safety and let me get the others out.” The Greek nodded.
Now the clouds stirred about them. The fitful breeze increased slightly, but not enough to account for the way the mountain was receding. Now the clouds to either side churned, fading or thickening at the edges. Through a sudden rift they watched the farmlands drift away.
“Down there they’ll call this a hurricane. What they’ll call us doesn’t bear mentioning,” Clubfoot chuckled. He walked back to where Orolandes was standing and settled himself in the luxurious softness of a cloud billow. In a lowered voice he said, “I’ve been wrestling with my conscience. May I tell you a story?”
Orolandes said, “All right.” He saw that the others were beyond earshot.
“I’m a plainsman,” said Clubfoot. “My master was a lean old man a lot like the Warlock, but darker, of course. He taught half a dozen kids at a time, and of course he was the tribe’s medicine man. One day when I was about twelve, old White Eagle took us on a hike up the only mountain anywhere around.
“He took us up the easy side. There were clouds streaming away from the top. White Eagle did some singing and dancing, and then he had us walk out on the cloud. I ran out ahead of the rest. It looked like so much fun.”
“Fun,” Orolandes said without expression.
“Well, yes. I’d never been on a cloud. How was a plains kid to know clouds aren’t solid?”
“You mean you never…realized…” Orolandes started laughing.
Clubfoot was laughing too. “I’d seen clouds, but way up in the sky. They looked solid enough. I didn’t know why White Eagle was doing all that howling and stamping.”
“And the next time you went for a stroll on a cloud—”
“Oh, no. White Eagle explained that. But it must have been a fine way to get rid of slow learners.”
Mirandee was saying, “Do you really think Piranther can’t follow us?”
“There’s no way he can travel this fast on the ground,” said the Warlock. “If he’s in the clouds, we’ll know it. Just as our weather pattern must be fairly obvious to him. Do you see any stable spots in this cloud canopy?”
“No…but there used to be other ways to fly.”
The Warlock snorted. “Used to be, yes.”
Mirandee seemed really worried. “I wonder if you aren’t underestimating Piranther. Warlock, I had occasion to visit Australia not long ago.”
“Mending fences for me?”
“If you like. I thought he might be ready to forget heated words long cooled. He wasn’t.” She gestured nervously. “Never mind that. I saw power. There are roc chicks in that place, baby birds eight feet tall, that breed as chicks and never grow up. Piranther’s people raise them for the eggs! and let children ride on their backs! I watched apprentice magicians duel for sport, with adepts standing by to throw ward-spells. It was like stepping two hundred years into the past. I watched a castle shape itself out of solid rock—”
“And now all the castles are falling down, or so says Piranther. The mana can’t be that high, not if the rocs have turned neotenous. Piranther can’t be as p
owerful as all of us put together.”
“He’s their leader. The most powerful of them all.”
The Warlock settled his back against a soft billow of cloud. “This place is paradise for a lazy man. Orolandes!” he called.
Orolandes and Clubfoot came chuckling about something. The swordsman let the Warlock put his hands on his head and mutter an ancient spell.
“That should break the link between you and Piranther. Now, Wavyhill, tell us about the last god.”
Orolandes settled himself cross-legged. He felt no different…and he was never going to relax here, despite the infinity of feather bed. But he would not show it either.
“Roze-Kattee was male and female,” said the skull on the Warlock’s shoulder, “and his attributes were love and madness. He was god to the Frost Giants, way north of here, where we’re going. He hasn’t been heard of in half a thousand years, not since the Nordiks conquered the Frost Giants. But he’s said to be dormant, not dead.”
“Said by whom?” Mirandee asked. “The Frost Giants are nearly mythical.”
“Oh, the Nordiks still have a few Frost Giant slaves. But the Frost Giants never talked about Roze-Kattee. All I’ve got is the old Nordik epic, the Hometaking Wars Cycle, which is certainly slanted and possibly garbled.”
Mirandee was shaking her head. “I’ve heard other tales of sleeping gods.”
“This one’s different. Mirandee, when I was still an apprentice, my master Harper was interested in the Hometaking Wars. He didn’t see how the Nordik gods beat the Frost Giant gods on their home ground. In fact they won every war except the last one.”
“But we know that,” the Warlock said. “The Nordik gods were destroyed when the Nordiks were driven out of the Fertile Crescent. They had no gods. So they fought with swords, and the Frost Giants used magic, and over three generations they used up the magic.”
“Right, and the Nordiks came swarming in before the Frost Giants could learn swordsmanship. But Harper never learned about mana depletion. That was left to you, Warlock. You and your damned Wheel. Harper and I spent some time trying to learn why Roze-Kattee failed his and her people.”
“Well?”
“It’s an unusual story,” said Wavyhill’s skull. “According to the Hometaking War Cycle, the Frost Giants took it on themselves to protect their god, instead of the other way around. When the Nordiks beat their army, three of the Frost Giant hero-priests were taking Roze-Kattee to safety. The god had lost all his power. He could barely move.”
Clubfoot said, “That’s not the kind of tale someone makes up about his enemies. But, look: why didn’t the Nordiks just find out where the god was and dig him up?”
“Oh, they probably tortured a few Frost Giants. Maybe they got the wrong ones. Maybe the hero-priests migrated afterward, or cut their own throats. But maybe the Nordiks didn’t try too hard. Why should they? Roze-Kattee did not save the Frost Giants. He went peacefully to sleep, somewhere. The poor time-weakened thing might be barely capable of killing any Nordik who found him.”
The setting sun was still brilliant, under a higher cloud canopy that thickened as night came on. Mount Valhalla was a mere point of splendor far to the southeast. The clouds were soft against Orolandes’ back. He was relaxing in spite of himself. It was all so unreal. Could one die in a dream?
“The magic went away and the gods died,” the Warlock said. “What makes you think Roze-Kattee didn’t? What would a Frost Giant consider a place of safety?”
“The cycle speaks of a ‘god within a god’.”
“You’ve already said Roze-Kattee had a dual nature.”
“Harper and I found another interpretation. We have to stretch the definition a little, but…if we’re right, then Roze-Kattee could still be alive. And the Nordiks had plenty of reason not to go looking for him.”
“And we don’t?”
“Time has passed. We know more than those barbarians did. We have more to gain. And less to lose,” said Wavyhill.
An upper cloud layer covered the stars. It had not been cold during the day, when sunlight was bouncing back at them from all of the reflecting white landscape; but it was cold now. Orolandes lay in the dark, afraid to move, hoping that a rift would not form where he was lying. When the silence had become unbearable he said, “I wish I could see your hair.”
Mirandee was nearby. She said, “Why, swordsman! Is that a compliment?” as if she didn’t much care for it.
“If your hair turns white, we’re about to fall.”
After a time she said, “Magicians and swordsmen go together like foxes and rabbits. What are you doing among us?”
“Ask Wavyhill.”
“But you didn’t have to come.”
“I did a terrible thing. I don’t want to talk about it.”
She laughed, invisible silver. “Tell me now, or I’ll read your mind. Wavyhill said you had no defenses.”
Out of the need to confess; out of his sure knowledge that the words would block his throat, rendering him mute, as he had been mute among the fishermen; out of some obscure need to be punished…Orolandes said, “Go ahead. Piranther did.”
There was a long dark silence. Then the witch woman said, “Oh, Orolandes!” in a voice filled with tears.
“I’m sorry.”
“I know. I can see it. All charged up with the need to prove you were a man. Running into death waving that big damned sword. Crawling to kill the priests because they were killing your friends.”
“Yes.”
“I shouldn’t have looked. That’s usually the way of it. I find out I shouldn’t have looked.”
“I can’t do anything about the people that drowned. Maybe I can help put the magic back in the world. What does Wavyhill have in mind for me? Do you know?”
“No. His mind’s locked tight. I trust the Warlock, though. He’ll control Wavyhill. Go to sleep, swordsman.”
Little chance of that, Orolandes thought. He looked toward where her voice had been. Was there a pale spot in the enveloping darkness? Long hair turning white?
“There’s circulation in the clouds around and beneath us. The mana circulates. We won’t fall. Go to sleep,” she said.
Something touched his sword arm and he woke and rolled hard to the left, and came up on his feet, sword in hand. It was black as the inside of a mole’s belly. The footing was unfamiliar, treacherous. A woman’s voice cried, “Don’t!”
And he remembered.
“Mirandee? Did you wake me up?”
“You were having nightmares.”
“Sorry. Was I screaming or something?”
“No. Just the nightmares. I wish I’d stayed out of your mind. I’ve never met anyone so unhappy.”
“Can you blame me?” He sank down in unseen softness.
“Yes. You’ve killed a dozen men at least with your sword. Why be so upset about Atlantis? You killed more people, but it’s the same thing, isn’t it?”
“When I kill a man with a sword, it’s because he’s a soldier. He’s trying to kill me.”
“If you weren’t on his territory—”
“Then he’d be on mine! If Greece didn’t have an experienced army she’d be meat for the first wolf that came at the head of an experienced army. Magic didn’t help the Frost Giants, and that was a long time ago. These days magic doesn’t even slow down an army. So everyone needs armies.”
“Wars of magic aren’t much prettier. Get the Warlock to tell you about his duel with Wavyhill. Or get Wavyhill to tell you.”
“All right.” Orolandes was sliding back into sleep. But the nightmare waited for him…
The touch of her hand on his arm startled him. “You’re still unhappy.”
“I can’t do anything about it.”
“I can.” Her hand moved up into his sleeve, caressingly.
He laughed. “Does the fox bed with the rabbit?”
“We are two human beings. How long has it been since you were with a woman?”
“A long time.
I—” He hadn’t wanted one. He would have thought: she is sharing love, all unknowing, with a man who murdered thousands. When the women of the fishing village came, he had turned them away without speaking, as if his voice alone would tell them what he was.
This Mirandee: he had never seen her as a woman. A figure of power she had been, a dangerous being who tolerated him, whose presence was necessary to his goal. Her mockery had hurt—
“Well, but you were so frightened! You should have seen yourself. I was frightened myself,” she confessed. “I’ve never been on a cloud before.”
Her hand felt good on his arm. It was so cold and so lonely here. He found her face with his fingers. He traced the contours gently; he stroked her temples, and scratched her behind the ears, as he would with a Greek woman. They lay against each other now, but he felt only a double thickness of fur, and the cold of a mountain night on his face…and then her cheek against his, barely warmer.
This was better than going back to the nightmare. And she knew; he was hiding nothing from her. She knew, yet she was willing to touch him. He was grateful.
He was half asleep when the lust rose up in him, burning. She sensed it. They began opening each other’s robes, leaving them on to protect their backs against the cold. Even now his urgency was tempered by that uncharacteristic gratitude. He wanted to make her feel good.
He succeeded. In climax she was wildcat and python combined: her arms and legs clasped him hard, pulling him into her.
They lay against each other with their robes overlapping. Orolandes was pleased and proud.
A thought crossed his mind…and she laughed softly in his ear. “No, I did not falsify my pleasure to give you confidence. And no, you have not become a lover fit for a queen’s harem. Your mind is in mine. I feel what you feel. It’s…exciting.”
Ruefully, but not very, he said, “What joy you would have had of another mind reader!”
She laughed more loudly. “If I were ready to die, yes, that would be a fine way to leave the world!”
“Oh.”
