by Angus Wells
Chief amongst them was my report to Laena, and that meeting I approached with some trepidation.
The gray-haired mage showed me only friendship throughout my sojourn in Mhorvyn, but still I hoarded such secrets as prompted me to anticipate that meeting with no great enthusiasm. As it was, Lan was again proven right, and the fears I created for myself were the worst I must face. It was the second day of Lantaine that she suggested we withdraw to her chambers, that I might tell her of my year. I agreed without demur (I had little option, and I felt I had sooner confront the affair than allow the maggot of fear to gnaw further) and so found myself ensconced in a comfortable room, settled in a deep-cushioned chair before a blazing fire. Laena took a seat opposite and offered me mulled wine. I thought perhaps it might contain some electuary to loosen my tongue and so, pleading a sufficiency already drunk and more to come, refused. Laena showed neither surprise nor disappointment and filled herself a cup. As she drank, I began to suspect myself of paranoia. Neither did she seek to employ her talent in any quarrying of my mind, but only asked that I tell her of my wanderings.
I spoke freely enough, holding back what I knew of the Changed and that mysterious encounter I had witnessed; in all other specifics I was honest. Laena heard me out, interrupting from time to time to ask that I repeat some observation or clarify some point. Occasionally she raised a hand to silence me and sat awhile with closed eyes, her lips moving without sound.
I asked her what she did, and she told me, “I’ve not your talent, Daviot, else I’d be Mnemonikos and not mage. I must employ my magic to commit all this to memory.”
“Your magic will hold it all?” I asked.
“Long enough,” she answered. “Not as you do, but until what you tell me is passed to Durbrecht. That I’ll do once we’re finished, and then it will fade and I’ll recall no more than my own natural memory retains.” She chuckled then and added: “That shall not be very much, nor for very long,” which set me more at ease.
So I gave my report, and Laena dismissed me.
“It will take a while for this to reach Durbrecht,” she advised me, “and then some days ere word comes back. I’ll tell you as soon I may what orders your College has.”
“I hope,” I said, gesturing at the closed shutters, “that I’ll be allowed to stay here until then.”
Laena nodded, smiling a trifle wanly as she cocked an ear to the wind’s howling. “I think there’ll be no choice in that,” she said. “Until this weather breaks at least.”
I nodded and left her to her magic. She gave no sign that she suspected me of dissimulation, and whilst I could not entirely dismiss unease, I was somewhat relieved. I felt I was granted a reprieve, at least until Durbrecht returned word.
That took longer than was usual. I had anticipated a response within six or seven days, but none came in that time and I began once more to fret. Was my case such as occasioned lengthy deliberation? Or did this freakish weather somehow disrupt the channels of occult communication? I did not know, nor had I any wish to question Laena, for fear she wonder at my impatience. I had no one in whom I could entirely and honestly confide. Lan was the nearest to that ideal, but even to him I could not tell all, and when I ventured to express some small measure of my concern, he only bade me wait, seeming no more disturbed by this than by the weather.
And then the storm died, the wind’s place taken by snow. The louring black that had spanned the heavens took on a livid hue, and a white curtain fell over Mhorvyn. This, I was told by Lan and Yanydd and Laena—indeed, by all I asked—was unprecedented. Snow was rare enough here; snow in such quantity was unknown. I had seen enough in Durbrecht, but very little in Whitefish village. There, what fell was soon translated into rain or sleet, the salty seaside air melting the flakes even as they descended. It should have been thus here, but the precipitation came so thick and strong, it blanketed the island between dawn and dusk and after built steadily up. It was a marvel to many—who had never seen snow—and to the children sheer delight. They rampaged through the streets, tossing snowballs, rolling in the stuff, constructing forts and follies even as gangs of Changed were set to clearing the roads and walks and roofs. It was, in truth, a pretty scene, the keep and all the rooftops decked pristine, but at the same time unnerving.
I went about the town as usual, wrapped in my cloak, my boots padded against the chill, listening as much as I spoke. None connected either storm or snowfall with the Sky Lords, but all wondered at such weather. Some talked of omens, some zealots of the God’s wrath; fishermen complained of lost catches, merchants of undelivered goods, farmers of blighted crops. Most looked to me for answers, as if I were a soothsayer. I told them I did not know, and I hid my burgeoning suspicion that this was indeed the Sky Lords’ doing.
Then word came. It was not good.
Yanydd summoned me to his private quarters, where I found Laena already settled by the fire. The aeldor stood by the window, staring morosely over the white snowscape of his holding. He turned as I entered, and I saw from his face and the commur-mage’s that this should be no idle conversation. He waved me to a chair, inviting me to fill a cup. I did so and sat waiting, nervous again.
“Durbrecht’s returned word,” Yanydd said. “Laena, do you tell him?”
The sorceress nodded and set down her cup, folding her hands as if the chill pervaded her bones even in this warm room.
“First,” she said, “you are to leave us as soon you may.”
I glanced toward the window. Through the glass I saw only whiteness. I wondered how I should travel in such conditions.
“Not yet.” Laena interpreted my look correctly. “Your College and mine agree you must wait until this snow ceases and the roads are passable.”
“How bad is it?” I asked.
“Exceedingly.” Her tone was grave; I shared her chill. “Dharbek lies snowbound. The storm wrecked shipping the lengths of the Slammerkin and the Treppanek, both; also down the coasts. Roads are blocked, and whole keeps, towns, are cut off. There has never been such a winter.”
I said, “I know,” and she gestured apology, murmuring, “Forgive me, Daviot. Of course you’d know.”
I asked her, “Magic? Is it the Sky Lords’ doing?”
Her face was answer enough, the words redundant. “Durbrecht fears it so,” she said, “and Kherbryn agrees. We cannot understand how, but there seems no other explanation.”
I raised my cup; drained it. Yanydd cursed, and silently I joined him. Almost, I told them all I knew. I thought that if the Sky Lords now commanded the elements themselves, if the Kho’rabi wizards sent tempests and blizzards against us, they must surely soon mount the Great Coming. I thought that every scrap of information should likely be of use; and then that all my reasons for holding back pertained still. It was the Changed dug Mhorvyn clear; it was the Changed risked the causeway to fetch wood for our fires. Did ships venture out, it would be Changed crewed them; it would be Changed toiled to open the roads. To tell of those few I had seen in alliance with the Kho’rabi was surely to betray the many, to bring down suffering on the innocent. Urt should suffer, and Lan; poor cowed Thom, and Pele and her children. Betrayal was balanced by betrayal—of the Changed, or perhaps of my own Trueman kind. I was caught between, trapped by my own instinctive decision to hold my tongue. I felt wretched: I hid my expression, reaching for the wine jug.
“We cannot believe they’ll attack yet.” I set the jug aside, composing myself as Laena spoke again. “Not in such weather.”
She shrugged, looking to Yanydd. The aeldor said, “This must hamper them no less than us. It makes no sense to invade a land of blocked roads. How should they fight, how travel?”
“They’ve their skyboats,” I said. “Shall they need roads?”
“They must!” Yanydd’s fist set his cup to bouncing. “Shall they send skyboats against every keep? Can they have so vast a fleet? Even do they concentrate their attacks on the great holds—seize Kherbryn and Durbrecht, even—still there should
be sufficient lesser holdings to fight them. No, it’s my belief they must look to establish bridgeheads, do they plan real conquest. And what use a snowbound bridgehead?”
He fell silent, righting his spilled cup. I suspected his fierce words were a defiance based on hope, rather than genuine belief.
Laena said, “Yanydd believes they seek to grind us down. To disrupt the land and then send an armada against us.”
“And you?” I asked, meaning both her and the Sorcerous College.
“That likely Yanydd’s correct,” she replied. “That they shall send such weather against us as will blight our crops and wreck our ships—leave all Dharbek in chaos. Then that they shall end their sending and mount the Great Coming.”
I thought a moment on all I had learned in Durbrecht of military strategy, of past campaigns. None had been fought in winter, not the great battles. The transportation of armies was too difficult in winter. We Dhar fought our battles under the sun. Did the Ahn? Was winter truly an encumbrance to the Sky Lords? Yanydd’s prognostication made sense. The storm that had raged, the snow that followed, did not. None of this made sense, save that terrible powers were brought against us. I said, “Then we’ve time yet, be you right.”
“Yes.” Laena nodded. “But how much, we cannot know. Do they command the very elements, then this snow may cease as swift as it began.”
“Durbrecht’s no better notion?” I asked.
“We suspect …” She paused, seeming a moment lost. Then: “We suspect that their magic cannot entirely dominate the seasons. That they must bend nature to their will, shaping it, rather than controlling it utterly. Therefore, it seems unlikely they shall attack before spring.”
I glanced again at the window, wondering how long that season should be in coming.
“We looked to fight them,” Yanydd said, “sooner or later. It comes sooner.”
I thought that Laena whispered, “Too soon,” but her head was bowed, and I could not be sure. I said, “So I am to leave as soon I may. Where do I go?”
The commur-mage looked up, meeting my eyes. “East, around the coast,” she said. “Then north, to Durbrecht.”
I had not dared hope I might see my home again so soon; I had not at all thought to see it in such circumstances. I said, “And my commission? Do I say aught of all this?”
“Yes.” Laena ducked her head. “The Lord Protector deems it timely the people know what they face, that they be full ready. Durbrecht commands you tell brave stories, that you embolden the people. And learn all you may of their mood. Do you find any place unready, you are to report from the next sound keep. You are to hold nothing back.”
You are to hold nothing back. Almost, I laughed at the irony of it; almost, I wept. I only nodded and said gravely, “Yes, so I shall.”
As dusk fell that night—which was then merely a darkening of the white, a transposition of faint day’s light by silvery night’s—I told Lan I must soon depart, and why.
He nodded as he stoked my fire. “I think that shall be a hard journey,” he said. “But you’ll see your home again, at least.”
“It shall be no great homecoming,” I returned. “Not with such grim news.”
He added a log to the blaze and turned to face me. “At least you’ve the chance, Daviot.”
I was immediately chastened: Lan, as a Changed, would never have that privilege. Gently, I asked him, “Where are you from, Lan?”
“My parents served Kembry Keep,” he said. “I was born there. I came here when I was ten years.”
“Would you go back?” I asked.
He studied me a moment, his expression enigmatic. Then he shrugged and said, “One keep is much as another to we Changed. Lord Yanydd is kinder than the aeldor of Kembry, but otherwise there’s little difference.”
“But your parents,” I said. “Would you not see them again, were it possible?”
“It’s not,” he said. “I cannot travel as do you, free. Why dwell on the impossible?”
His tone was fatalistic, and I could not discern any regret in his expression or stance. I frowned: I spent much time dwelling on the seemingly impossible. I pondered the possibility of peace with the Sky Lords, I thought on the condition of the Changed, I wondered about the dragons of legend. It seemed to me that dreams were necessary. I said as much to Lan.
He smiled then and said, “Perhaps that is a difference between us, Daviot. We Changed have not the same feelings for family and past as you Truemen. Our lot is different—perhaps dreams should only bring us pain.”
“You’ve no feelings for your family?” I asked him.
“I think not as you do,” he answered. “Magic made us from the beasts, and beasts have few feelings for their sires, eh?”
“But you are not beasts,” I cried. “Don’t name yourself an animal!”
“I don’t,” he said gently. “But neither do I claim the same affection for kin and hearth as Truemen.”
I nodded, accepting. I thought perhaps I grew so ardent in my feelings for the Changed that I began to think them mirrors to my image. But they were not—as Lan pointed out, they were descended from animals, and though they were now (of this I should not be dissuaded) become far more than their progenitors, still they lived their lives to a different rhythm than I and my kind. It did not render them inferior, only different.
“But dreams,” I said. “Surely you have dreams?”
“Yes,” he allowed me, “but they are our dreams, and not like yours, I think.”
“Tell me,” I asked. “What are they?”
He shook his head, his expression veiled. “We hold our dreams private, Daviot.”
His voice was quiet, but in it I heard steel. I thought a moment to press him, and then that such as he had little enough privacy I should presume to intrude on those small areas that were his alone; not if I thought to name myself his friend. I said, “As you wish,” and he smiled again, nodding his gratitude.
“Perhaps one day you shall know them,” he said.
I said, “That should be an honor, Lan.”
He looked at me awhile, as if I puzzled him, and then he said softly, “You are a strange man, Daviot.”
The snowfall continued fourteen days, and then the sky cleared. It was good to see the blue again and the sun, for all the temperature dropped so low Mhorvyn now lay beneath a covering of white frozen hard as stone. There was no wind; the air was a knife. Water froze in the wells and cisterns, and the smoke of bonfires hung thick as folk sought to melt a way to the precious liquid. Streets that had previously resounded to the scrape of shovels now rang with the clang of pickaxes. To touch metal with ungloved fingers was to lose flesh. Yanydd opened his warehouses to distribute food stored against the possibility of siege. Ice sheeted in the harbor and the coves. The fishermen, though now able to put out, reported a dearth of fish. From the mainland, the farmers reported the ground iron hard, defying plow or harrow.
It was the same, so Laena advised me, throughout Dharbek, worse in the north. Both the Slammerkin and Treppanek were frozen over, and folk already spoke of famine. I had no great eagerness to travel in such conditions, but I had my orders and so I prepared to leave.
My last meal in Mhorvyn Keep was a solemn affair, for whilst the aeldor and the commur-mage still held their belief of Sky Lords’ magic private, it was quite impossible to quell suspicion. I had heard talk in the town, and the warband openly mooted the likelihood of occult manipulation. Also, these honest folk had grown fond of me, and I of them; I had not felt so grieved by departure since leaving Krystin in Tryrsbry.
Still, I put on as cheerful a face as I could muster and thanked them for their hospitality, urging they remain in the warmth of the hall when I at last rose to gather up my packs. I had sooner it be that way, I told them, and in deference to my wishes they came only so far as the great door.
Yanydd saw me well provisioned, my saddlebags bulked out with food and extra clothing (what little was not already on my back), and I went to the st
ables swathed like some mummer. My gray mare was shaggy under her winter coat and plumped by grain and leisure. She objected to the saddle, and it took some time and some adroit maneuvering to get her readied. She sensed departure and welcomed it not at all. As I led her out, I found Lan watching me. We had already said our farewells, and I was surprised to find him there. Obviously, he had slipped away from the keep, for he wore only tunic and breeks and shivered despite the braziers that warmed the stable.
“This weather suits me ill,” he said, “but there’s a thing I’d give you.”
I clutched the mare’s bridle as she stamped and gnashed her teeth, wondering what this thing could be. The Changed had few enough possessions they could afford to donate parting gifts. Thinking to be kind, I said, “Your company’s been gift enough, my friend, and all you’ve told me—your trust. There’s no need for more.”
He smiled and brought something from under his tunic, holding it toward me. It was a length of plaited hair, red and white and black, woven in alternating strands. I tethered my irritable horse and took it from him. I was not sure what it was, save a trinket given in token of burgeoning friendship, of trust between us.
I said, “My thanks,” and Lan raised a hand, silencing me.
“I’ll likely be missed ere long,” he said, “and you must go. But I wanted you to have this. There are Changed who will know its meaning and give you help, should you need it.”
There was an urgency in his voice that told me this bangle was far more than some simple token. I nodded, and he gestured that I hold out my wrist so that he might tie the thing in place.
Again I said, “My thanks,” and was about to ask elucidation, but he smiled and clasped my hand and said, “It may prove useful, Daviot. Ward it well, and do Truemen ask what it is, say no more than a trinket.”
