“Who says this — Aviyya the Ranger or Aviyya the daughter of Esmelda of Laurea?”
“I don’t have any choice on that one, do I?” She paused. “Will you trust me and let us go? Will you come with us?”
“Are you offering an alliance?” In the near darkness, one sandy eyebrow arched upward.
“Would you accept one?” she shot back.
“Will you dance again, Aviyya of Laurea?”
“Jakon! You still don’t understand! This is serious business, not a gods-damned carnival! A war’s going to come smashing down on both our heads if we don’t stop it! And more than that, it’s a chance to end all the years of fighting between us. Don’t you see what — ”
“I know what’s at stake here, even more than you.” Jakon’s voice cracked like a whip through the near darkness. “Tell me how much of your own blood ran red at Brassaford and how many brothers you lost to the Butcher?” He struggled for control and continued, “Yes, what you offer could change everything between us. But what you ask — to turn back now — is unthinkable, no matter what the cost. I’ve never given a hundred-years-putrefied elk turd what any souther thinks, but I want you to understand — I dreamed the Light. I danced it. We’re in the middle now — we can’t know how we’ll see things at the end. At Northlight, everything is different.”
“‘Everything is different...’“ she repeated in a completely unconvinced tone. “Does that mean Montborne will wake up tomorrow and send you flowers? Or this wire-grass will suddenly sprout sausages? Give me one good reason why we have to continue on this superstitious trek to the middle of nowhere!”
“Because it is our way. Because if we give up everything we believe in, everything that gives our lives meaning instead of mindless suffering, then we are nothing. Nothing.”
“But — ”
“You asked for my trust, Aviyya of Laurea,” Jakon said quietly. “Where is yours?”
Aviyya reached over to his plate, which lay in front of him, and rubbed her fingers across the surface, gathering up the crumbs.
“Bread...salt...” She didn’t add, Damn you, though she looked as if she’d like to. She held up a solid pinch and downed it. Grissem drew in a short audible breath.
Terris sat up straight. Tension hung in the air like a physical weight. Kardith, standing near the outside of the camp, watched with wide eyes. No one moved.
For a long, heart-stopping moment, Jakon continued to study Aviyya, his face expressionless. Then he said to Grissem, “Give their knives back.” There was something in his voice that made Terris wonder if Aviyya had just eaten Jakon’s salt or he had eaten hers.
Grissem reached into his pack and drew out a bundle wrapped in thin, supple elkskin. He unrolled it on the ground in front of him. Aviyya picked up two of the knives and wordlessly put one of them in the empty sheath on her belt, the other in her boot.
Etch knelt and gathered up the rest of the knives — all that had been taken from them — as well as Kardith’s belt. He went to Kardith, reversed the long-knife and held it out to her. She slipped it back into its sheath without a word.
Terris felt no desire to reclaim his small utility knife. He had no right to a weapon he couldn’t use, just as Kardith had said. But he picked up the wrapped dagger and carefully put it away in his travel pack.
Later he drifted into an uneasy sleep with Jakon’s words still in his ears — In Northlight, everything is different.
Does he mean everything appears different, the way colored glass tints whatever you see? Or...does he mean everything becomes different? Permanently, forever?
Chapter 29
The morning air was so thick and damp, the breath of animals and riders alike spurted out in plumes of white smoke. For the past week of travel, they had all worn the hooded, fur-lined parkas and outer pants that the northers supplied, instead of their Laurean wool cloaks. The cloaks they used as extra blankets for the horses at night.
The ground-hugging mist lifted for a moment and Terris saw they were making their way along a row of standing stones. The stones, like those scattered behind them, were pale and fine-grained, irregularly shaped, ten to twelve feet high. None of them bore any trace of artificial shaping. They ran in a straight line along a shallow, scooped-out valley. The broken hills on either side were dusted with snow, and a herd of shaggy, long-bodied animals grazed along the western slopes, well away from the road.
Etch and Grissem had been riding side by side, carrying on a spirited debate about the relative merits of horses and ponies. Now Grissem urged his mount forward and led the way. He raised his voice in a chant. This time, Terris thought he recognized scattered phrases: the wisdom of time...the two gates...a ceremony of remembrance...
The stones ended in a wall of rock jutting across the horizon, as sheer and jagged as if some mad giant had turned the layers of bedrock on end. A deep cleft cut through the wall where the last of the stones formed a sort of gatehouse or fortress.
It began to snow. Fluffy clumps drifted and billowed like feathers, soon giving way to icy pellets that fell faster and faster. The norther ponies lowered their heads and plodded on, tails clamped against their rumps. Terris’s sorrel gelding snorted and shivered the skin over his shoulders.
“Poor Miserable Beast,” Terris called the horse.
Visibility sank to a few feet in front of Terris’s nose. The snow muffled his senses — sight, hearing, smell. Iced-over snow crusted his beard and eyebrows. His body went numb in the saddle, his fingers frozen around the braided reins.
He closed his eyes and concentrated on the inner pull from the north, as clear and strong now as if it were a magnet. He felt no fear of it, for it was the antithesis of the thing beneath the Starhall. That had repelled him to the point of physical illness, but this exhilarated some deep part of him even as it drew him in.
An image flared up in Terris’s mind and he saw himself standing naked on a road. Paths radiated out like a spider’s web, the Ridge to the east a tangle of glowing nuggets. Far to the south, the filaments ended in a single node that pulsated, red and black, as if it were swollen with blood and bile.
He turned north to face the spot where all the strands came together. They gleamed like silk, inviting the touch. How easy it would be to let himself go sliding along them, to plunge headlong into the shimmering pool of light at their center.
Terris opened his eyes. The snowfall had eased, and before him lay a building of charcoal stone, once a sprawling fortress, now crumbling with age and weather. Yellow light streamed from the central windows. Overhead, the sky looked murky, as if with a gathering storm. The temperature was falling.
The horses’ shod hooves clattered over the cobblestoned yard. The hall door opened, and an old man came out and walked toward them with a rolling gait. His face was round-cheeked and squint-eyed, his wisp of a beard indistinguishable from the straggly yellow-gray fur of his parka. He beckoned to the travelers, humming and droning as if he’d been alone so long he’d forgotten proper human speech.
Grissem dismounted and walked up to him, bowed deeply and made a gesture Terris didn’t know. The old man returned the greeting. After a moment, Grissem called the others to come forward.
They led their horses through a double wooden door. The room inside might have once been a low-ceilinged banquet hall but was now partitioned into a snug stable. The place reeked of wet horsehair, oat hay, and a strange, musky animal smell. The old man grunted and left them alone. Within a few minutes, the body heat of the animals began to melt the crusted snow.
As soon as Terris hauled off the gelding’s saddle and bridle, the horse tore into the overhead hay net as if it hadn’t eaten in a week. As he twisted a double handful of straw into a wisp, Terris noticed saw how sharp and angular the horse’s ribs looked, how sunken the flanks, how dull and ragged the coat. Slowly and methodically, Terris rubbed the horse until it was dry and as glossy as it was going to get and its ears had flopped sideways with contentment. By the time Terris finish
ed, the others had stowed their gear on the nearby racks and gathered up their personal gear. They were ready to go in to their own dinners, except Kardith, who was fussing over the gray mare’s off hind hoof.
Kardith let the mare’s leg down, her mouth twisted in disapproval. Her face looked drawn, her eyes dark and withdrawn in a way Terris had never seen.
Or perhaps the remoteness was his. Kardith had saved his life and brought him to where he could never have come on his own. She was tied to him in ways he couldn’t understand. Yet she might as well have not existed ever since they’d left the lake. Nothing had mattered except the pulling from the north.
o0o
The yellow light Terris had seen from the courtyard came from a fireplace so massive it spanned the length of the wall. Made of the same pale stone as the lined-up boulders, it bowed outward to direct the fire’s heat into the center of the room. Three-tier wooden bunk beds ranged along the other two walls. Coarsely woven wool rugs had been laid out in a half-circle around the fire, and the old man was already setting out steaming bowls and platters.
They hung their parkas and outer pants on the hooks on either side of the fireplace, well away from the direct heat but warm enough to dry quickly. Boots went on a rack beyond, to be replaced by felt slippers. They all sat down on the mats and began eating.
The bowls contained an over-salted porridge of grain and nuts, and the platters, coarse bread and slices of a hard, tangy cheese somewhat reminiscent of Laurean sheep-cheese. To go with this were pitchers of something hot, very strong and heavily sweetened, covered with a scum of slightly rancid butter. Terris couldn’t identify it. It was not something commonly drunk in Laurea.
They ate in silence and their dishes were refilled as soon as they were emptied. Terris couldn’t remember having eaten so much in his life. He hadn’t noticed he was hungry, but as soon as he started eating, he couldn’t stop. They’d been traveling all day and the lowering sky, he now realized, was not another brewing storm but sundown.
Terris laid his empty bowl on his platter, got up, and wandered to the window. It looked south, along the avenue of stones. He had no idea who could have put them there or why. At this moment, he didn’t care. Behind him, Grissem was answering Aviyya’s questions about the religious symbolism of the standing stones, the ritual greeting, and the ancient, isolated clan that supplied porters to the fortress house.
Terris sighed and rested his forehead against the glass. It was single-paned, thick and chill. He gazed out into the darkness, where he could almost see the shining road beneath the standing stones, running south through the snarls and jumbles to the red-black rottenness beneath the Starhall.
The Starhall thing and the Northlight. Two ends of the road, two poles with all of Harth strung out between them.
Not literally true, he knew. There was Archipelago and the ocean to the west, the bitter-alkali steppe to the east, the Inland Sea and vast, unexplored forests to the south beyond Laureal City.
Not literally true — but true in some deeper sense. The Starhall and the Northlight defined Harth.
Shivering, he turned away from the window and back to the room. The fire had died down and orange sparks flickered across the bed of embers. Jakon alone sat before it, his back straight, hands open and relaxed on his knees. Everyone else had gone to sleep.
Eyes half closed, Jakon gave no sign that he was aware of Terris’s presence as Terris sank down on the mat beside him, arched his back and willed his muscles to relax. They sat together in the snug dense quiet, the only sound the rustle of collapsing embers.
Terris had no thought of what he would do, beyond continuing north, no idea of what he would find. He could hear his companions breathing as they slept, and through the rock walls now grown paper-thin, the horses twitching and shifting in the thick straw bedding. The strange shaggy animals ambling slowly down the slopes to the yard, moons-light glinting on their stumpy nose horns. Tundra elk lay close together for warmth, drowsing, their legs tucked under their bellies. Brush-sheep dreamed in their pens. Horses ran wild under the moons across the rich Border pastures. Tree branches fragrant with blossoms and heavy with fruit bent low over the streets of Laureal City. His head swam with the memory of their perfume. It filled him, overpowering and nauseatingly sweet.
Sweat broke out all over his body. For a moment he thought the old caretaker had poisoned the fire. He tried to call out to Jakon, but he couldn’t draw the air into his lungs. His vision went dark and he felt himself falling, endlessly falling...
o0o
Terris opened his eyes and squinted in the sunlight angling through the southern windows. It flooded the room, as brilliant as if it were full noon. He lay on a lower bunk, still fully dressed except for his boots, but cocooned in layers of unfamiliar furs. The room looked empty, the other beds neatly made up. A sharp, charred odor emanated from the fireplace.
Aviyya burst through the door in a gust of frosty air, her boot heels clattering on the stone floor. She wore her parka, her black hair spilling over the thrown-back hood. Kneeling beside the fireplace, she clucked in disapproval and picked up a wooden spatula.
Terris pushed himself up on one elbow, tangled in the elkskins, and almost fell out of bed.
His sister looked up from poking at the shallow pan that she’d just removed from the hearth. “When you were little, you never missed a meal. That at least hasn’t changed.”
“Unh...”
“There may still be some hot water left in the washroom,” she said briskly. “If you’re lucky. And these oatcakes are never going to be any less burnt than they are now. I’ll call the others.”
Terris extricated himself from his covers, pulled on his boots, and stumbled out the door. He remembered the washroom with its surprisingly comfortable indoor plumbing as being right next to the main chamber. There it was, a narrow wooden door. The water in the deep ceramic basin was lukewarm, but he found soap and a towel, and the toothbrush from his pack, which he had no memory of taking out the night before.
Kardith was just coming in from the stables as he sprinted back. She wore her heavy parka and a wool scarf over her curls. Her skin, under the cold-whipped flush, looked waxy.
“The horses are ready to go,” she said, not meeting his eyes. “The old man’s still in the barn, milking those — I don’t know what they are. Not sheep, that’s sure. Not ghameli, either. Horns on their noses and big flat feet.”
Kardith... His throat ached.
They breakfasted on Aviyya’s singed oatcakes, lumps of bitter brown cheese, and dried fruit, washed down with more of the hot rancid-butter drink from last night.
As they led their horses in the courtyard, Terris saw that it was not as late in the morning as he’d feared. The shadows were still long and blue, the sun barely a hand’s width above the eastern horizon. The unusual clarity of the air and the brilliance of the sunshine made it seem like noon.
Grissem stood by the sorrel gelding’s head as Terris mounted up. “You have the look of one who’s dreamed in the night — not peacefully, but well.”
Terris wanted to laugh in the norther’s face, but he kept his expression somber. It seemed he’d done very little except dream for these past few days.
“Ah!” Jakon, nearby, stood beside his own pony. “We will reach the Light today. I can’t do much more than take you there, you know. I can’t tell you what will happen.” For the first time, he looked uncertain. “You’re not one of us. It won’t be the same for you.”
“Can you feel it, even here, this Light of yours — like acid and honey along your nerves?”
Jakon shook his head — Dreams, for me it is only dreams — and Terris knew that he was truly alone in what he had to do.
Chapter 30
Beyond the cleft in the cliffs stretched a vast glaring plain, its surface crusted with ice-covered snow. Not more than a half-day’s journey away, a solitary mountain breached the horizon, squat and broad, carbon-gray, its top as flat and level as if it had been s
heared off with a knife.
They rode in silence now, single file. The horses broke through the surface of the ice and sank in the snow, sometimes hock-deep. The snow packed their rounded hooves and then the Laureans were forced to halt and pick them out. Nobody said anything during these stops, except to curse when a hoof pick slipped.
Terris could not have spoken even if he had anything to say. He could no longer feel the cold and was only dimly aware of the gelding struggling beneath him. A feeling grew in him that he was never coming back the way he’d come, that perhaps none of them were. He had no thought of resistance. He felt in his bones this was not something he could take on like a school assignment or even a promise. This something had taken him on, even as Etch had said back in Laureal City, had taken him on and swallowed him up until he was no longer Terricel son of Esmelda of Laurea, failed scholar and reluctant heir and accidental emissary to the north, but something quite different, something not yet fully forged.
Ahead lay the fire that would give him his shape.
o0o
Grissem had remarked that the trip from the way station to the Northlight and back was usually made in a single day. At first Terris didn’t see how that was possible. Before they’d gone very far into the glassy plain, his sense of movement and distance became completely unreliable. One moment it seemed they’d made no progress at all, the next they were so close he could make out the fissures of the ancient lava flows. When he tried to focus on the volcanic cone as a landmark, the distortion worsened.
The sun had traveled only a little past overhead when they reached the base of the volcano. They left the horses and ponies in a sheltered cove along the southwest flank, where the ridges of hardened lava had kept off the worst of the weather. A few tufts of hardy wire-grass sprouted beside a pool of melted snow. The ponies would stay close, Jakon said, and the horses wouldn’t go far alone. He didn’t add that if they failed to return, the animals would eventually make their way back to the way station, where they’d be cared for.
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