by Helen Lowe
“Nine!” Kalan heard his voice crack with strain and relief. “What was that?”
Malian stumbled to a boulder and sat down. She was shaking, and her hands trembled badly as she lifted off the helm. “Whatever it was—an earthquake, the enmity of Jaransor—it very nearly took me as well. It would have, if not for the hawk.” She stopped, her teeth chattering together, and when she spoke again her voice was strained. “I pity any living creature a death like that.”
Tarathan slung his bow across his shoulder. “I did not think the Derai wasted compassion on their enemies.”
Malian lifted her drawn face to his. “It was very nearly my death, too. It was—terrible!”
Tarathan nodded. “It was,” he said, his tone gentler. “But terrible or not, the intervention was fortunate. Even the four of us together were no match for that one Swarm minion.”
“Five,” said Kalan. “I thought the falcon must be spying for our enemies, but it turned out to be a friend.”
“So it seems,” agreed Jehane Mor. “But we should not tarry here, for the one who fled has friends as well and will return with them.” She glanced at the sky. “There’s more snow on the way, too.”
“How can we go on while they have Nhairin?” Malian protested. “We must rescue her.” She frowned when Tarathan shook his head. “We can’t just abandon her to the Darkswarm!”
“You may be right to believe in her,” Jehane Mor said quietly, “but it was by no means clear to me that Nhairin was a prisoner.”
Kalan rubbed a hand across his hair. He had not noticed his wound during the fight against the Night Mare, but now it had begun to throb. “Malian,” he said, “you know that Nhairin tried to kill me yesterday. Today she’s with the Darkswarm warriors. You have to admit that doesn’t look good. Besides, Kyr would say that your first duty is to elude your enemies.”
Malian considered this, poking at the gravel with one booted toe. “I think it was the madness of Jaransor that took her yesterday, not treachery,” she said at last, but he sensed the cold current of her doubt. “How can I believe that Nhairin would betray me, when she has been a friend all my life?”
“Someone did,” Kalan said bluntly, then looked away from the desolation in Malian’s expression.
“Whatever the circumstances,” said Tarathan, “there is nothing we can do for Nhairin now. There are only four of us while your enemies are still many. We are in no position to attempt a rescue.”
Malian said nothing, just stared down at the battered helmet between her hands as Kalan began to pick up the water bags. “I thought that was on your saddle,” he said, nodding at the helm.
She shook her head. “It was, but I took it off. I just wanted to look at it again, to feel it in my hands, so I put it down by the bags while I watered the horses. When the Night Mare went invisible I knew the helm was probably my only chance. As soon as I put it on,” she said softly, “I could see the demon. And I knew how to call the fire out of myself. The knowledge was just there, as though it was something I had always known.” She stood up slowly, her voice stronger now, but bitter, too. “It’s a recompense, I suppose, to set against losing our way, our companions, and now our horses.”
“But you are still alive. That is worth a great deal.” Jehane Mor took the water bags from Kalan and tied them behind the gray horses’ saddles. “Besides, I think we may find your horses soon enough. Once their first terror has passed they are unlikely to push very fast, or far, into unknown country. In the meantime, our horses will bear a double load easily enough.”
Kalan looked at the gray horses, really taking them in for the first time. “They are big, aren’t they? I’ve never seen anything like them before.”
Jehane Mor patted her mount’s neck. “They are Great Horses out of Emer, bred to wear armor and carry the Emerian knights into battle. They are very strong, and with armorless heralds on their backs, tireless as well.” She mounted and extended a hand down to Kalan, while Malian scrambled up behind Tarathan. Kalan caught her quick look up as the gray horses turned away from the ford, but although he, too, looked for the falcon, the sky remained as empty as the road ahead.
33
The Door into Winter
The day grew steadily colder as they rode, with snowflakes floating intermittently out of the iron sky, and although they kept watch behind them, there was no sign of immediate pursuit. Malian frowned as the spray from another small stream flew up in their faces. “Why did the Night Mare make itself visible at all,” she asked abruptly, “when it could have caught and killed us far more easily if it had stayed concealed?”
“I know why,” said Kalan. “Many Darkswarm magics can’t be sustained over running water. It had to relinquish its concealing spell to cross the creek.”
Malian shut her eyes, then opened them again. “So it was only our crossing over before we stopped that saved us.”
“It was almost pure luck,” Kalan agreed soberly. He slanted a look across at Tarathan. “I suppose you found us by seeking, but what I really want to know is how you got here? It was like the air just opened and out you came.”
“Some kind of portal,” said Malian. If she craned, she could just see the curve of Tarathan’s profile, but not his expression, so she looked at Jehane Mor instead. “I didn’t think you had that power.”
“We don’t.” Jehane Mor was rueful. “We were riding hard, but even with Emerian horses we would never have reached you in time.” She shrugged. “We are not entirely sure what happened, but it was as though Jaransor thrust us through from one part of itself to where you were.”
Tarathan nodded. “The ground started to split and tremble, very like what happened at the ford, and then the air in front of us tore apart. A second later we were riding into your melee.”
“It was utterly terrifying,” Jehane Mor said simply, “which was fortunate in a way since we were already grabbing for our powers and our weapons when we emerged.”
They had reached another rise in the pass, and the heralds drew rein in the shadow of the close-growing trees. All that could be discerned ahead, beyond an immediate fall in the road, was the pass swooping up again to meet the lowering sky, and Malian wondered whether they would ever see an end to Jaransor.
“I don’t think our powers would have made any difference,” Tarathan said, as they moved forward again, “if the one that seized us had been ill-disposed. The power here is elemental, drawn from the earth itself. Ours are puny by comparison, bound to the anchor of our physical bodies.”
“Fortunately,” agreed Jehane Mor, “it did not seem ill-disposed, at least not then. Yet it is volatile and unpredictable, as we saw when the crack in the earth almost took Malian along with the demon.” She fell silent and Malian, looking across, saw that her expression was deeply thoughtful. “Jaransor is a strange place,” the herald said at last. “Even the Guild knows little of it. The watchtowers were ancient long before your people came here; they are said to have been built from the roots of the hills themselves. That is why the ruins endure long after the builders, and those who came after them, have passed away.”
“There is anger here,” Malian said slowly, remembering the voice in the earth as well as the crack that had pursued her. “And the madness that attacks my people and took Nhairin.”
Tarathan half turned his head. “The Madness, we call it. Yet how could the hills love those whose coming destroyed the towers, throwing down the knowledge and power of the wise?”
Malian exchanged a quick, puzzled glance with Kalan. “There is no record of any war between the Derai and Jaransor,” Kalan said uncertainly.
Jehane Mor shook her head. “What need for war, when your coming caused devastation across this entire world? Haarth itself was shaken to its foundations when the heavens split and you descended upon us from the stars. Fire ran from the earth’s core in molten rivers, cities were tumbled down in ruins, rivers changed course and the seas rose, drowning farmlands and cities, people and animals together. When
the immediate devastation was over our ancestors found that a bleak and bitter mountain range had been flung up in the north of the world, with the blasted waste of the Gray Lands adjoining it. Mighty fortresses were strung along this mountain wall and they bristled with an alien and warlike race who called themselves the Derai. Later, we found that the Derai had brought their own dark enemy with them, one that consumed all life, and we needed both their Alliance and their Wall to hold its power in check. But Jaransor was closest to the cataclysm and did not survive it.”
Kalan whistled softly, but did not speak. Malian, too, was silent, because although she had always known how the Derai reached Haarth, it had never occurred to her to ask how and why the Swarm had arrived at the same time. The constant presence of the enemy was simply a given in Derai history, the same history that never mentioned the impact of the Alliance’s arrival upon the new world. Most annals praised those who had opened the gate in the stars, and Derai honor and dedication in continuing to hold to the Wall and protect Haarth.
From an evil, Malian thought now, that we may well have brought here ourselves.
She could tell from Kalan’s expression that he was thinking much the same thing. Jehane Mor, looking around, seemed to read their faces. “It was a long time ago,” she said, “and it was not the two of you, or any of the Derai who live now, who destroyed Jaransor.”
Kalan shook his head. “I wonder if Jaransor knows that? Getting out of here seems like an even better plan than it did before.”
“If we can,” said Jehane Mor, “with the weather against us.”
The gray horses strode on into a world that was whitening rapidly. Snow had begun falling in thick, soft flakes, and although Malian huddled deeper into her coat and closer to the warmth of Tarathan’s back, the cold penetrated anyway. Soon, she thought, we will just be shadows moving through a curtain of falling snow, lost in Jaransor.
Behind them, a horn echoed in the hills. The horses snorted and Malian and Kalan looked at each other, alarmed, as another horn call answered the first—and then a third sounded, more faintly this time and further away. Tarathan and Jehane Mor exchanged a silent glance and the gray horses sprang forward as though the heralds had spoken aloud. Yet despite the horses’ ground-eating stride, the snow was swifter. It swirled whitely around them, settling heavily on the ground, and Malian tried not to think about how many of her father’s retainers had died in the storm that drove him into the Winter Country, three years before. Instead she peered ahead, trying to see through the whiteness. But there was nothing, just the snow and the looming walls of the pass—until she looked again and saw shadows clustered, waiting on the road.
Malian drew in a sharp breath, intending to call a warning, but the heralds were already stopping. They issued no challenge, simply walked the gray horses forward until the shadows became a single rider on a white horse, the two black messenger horses standing beside her. The falcon rested, still as stone, on the rider’s left forearm, its feathers ruffled against the cold. The rider was wrapped in a robe of white hide that blended with the snow; it was stitched with patterns of sun and moon and wild animals that circled across it in whorls of russet thread. The peak was pulled well forward, shadowing the rider’s face, and Malian wondered for a moment whether she was looking at a flesh-and-blood person or some apparition of Jaransor.
The heralds, however, did not seem to be in any doubt. “Hail, Lady of Winter,” said Tarathan of Ar. “This is an unexpected meeting.”
“Is it?” the rider asked, in a voice that Malian knew well. A gloved hand lifted the robe back, revealing Rowan Birchmoon’s face. There was a glimmer of humor in her gray gaze, and Malian saw the same gleam lurking in Jehane Mor’s expression.
“Perhaps not completely unexpected,” the herald conceded. “The winter did seem very—unseasonal.”
Snow swirled around the Winter woman, but her smile was warm. “Greetings, Heir of Night,” she said. “My greetings to you also, Kalan, although we have not met before. I am Rowan Birchmoon.”
Malian hurriedly closed her mouth, which had opened in her surprise. “Did you summon the winter?” she asked.
“Is that your hawk?” Kalan said at the same time. “Have you been shadowing us all this time?”
“Say, rather,” Rowan Birchmoon replied, “that I asked, out of my need, and Winter answered. As for the hawk, he is not mine, but these are his hills and he has chosen to hunt with me for the moment.” She turned her head and the snow around them drew back, so that they sat in a clear space where the air seemed warmer. “You need not fear this weather, so long as I am with you.”
Kalan drew in a deep breath. “So you really are a witch,” he said, then went bright red. “I mean, if you did summon the winter!”
Rowan Birchmoon smiled at him. “We do not use that word in the Winter Country, Kalan. I am called a shaman there.”
“Yet even when there is need,” Tarathan observed, “it is only the most powerful of shamans whose call will be answered by Winter.”
Malian remembered how low the heralds had bowed to Rowan Birchmoon when they first met her in the High Hall, even more deeply than to her father who was the Earl of Night and lord of the Keep of Winds. “I take it,” she said, “that it is a very great thing to be such a shaman, in the lands beyond the Wall of Night?”
“It is a very great thing,” said Jehane Mor softly, “most particularly in the Winter Country.”
Malian considered this. “So why is so powerful a shaman here? What is your business with me, Rowan Birchmoon, and with the Derai?” She did not add, and with my father, but the question hung in the air.
The gray eyes met hers. “You are my business with the Derai, Lady Malian, although I did not know it, or was not sure until recent events unfolded. I am here now to help you escape your enemies and reach a place of safety, if that is still what you wish.”
Malian kept her face expressionless. “So you did not come to the Keep of Winds simply because you loved my father?” She paused. “Or perhaps you do not love my father at all?”
Rowan Birchmoon sighed. “Is there ever only a single thread to any pattern? My love for your father was one reason for my coming to the Keep of Winds. You need not doubt that. But it was not the only reason. Nor was it why Winter drove him into the Winter Country, where he met me.”
“Why, then?” asked Malian, and the falcon stirred on the Winter woman’s arm.
“Peace, brother,” Rowan Birchmoon murmured to the bird, although her eyes never left Malian’s. “It is a fair question.” She paused as though finding the right words. “We of the Winter Country understand that there is a darkness assailing our world, and we have looked into the patterns of both smoke and stars to learn how we may combat it. Those patterns told us that we must look amongst the Derai for the key to turning back the darkness and so we tried to learn more of your people and their ways. We were not,” she said, “very successful, for the Derai do not love strangers. We had almost given up when Winter itself brought your father to us. We knew, then, that he must be close to the heart of the pattern we sought to unravel. But you, Malian—I now believe that you lie at the very center of that same pattern, that you may even be the key itself.”
Malian looked away. “So was it you I saw riding behind the wind? Following the followers?”
Rowan Birchmoon nodded. “Winter spoke to me, out of earth and sky and wind. It told me of your plight and that you must not be permitted to fall into the power of the darkness.”
“You did not save Kyr and Lira.” Malian met the Winter woman’s eyes again. “Were they not part of your pattern?”
The gray eyes did not flinch from hers, although their expression was sad. “We are all part of the pattern, but Winter is of nature and so bound by natural laws. It takes time to call its full power—and in this case I was trying to bring it down early into the world. All I could do was trail you, and Winter came too late for Kyr and Lira. I am sorry.”
Malian bowed her head.
“I am sorry, too,” she whispered.
Tarathan placed a gauntleted hand over hers where they clasped his waist. “We would all rather have them alive and back with us again,” he said. “Your Nhairin, too, as she was before. But there are some things that cannot be undone, no matter how greatly our hearts may desire it.” His hand squeezed hers, the lightest of pressures. “It was not the Winter woman who caused these ills.”
Malian nodded, not wanting to look up and let him see the blur of her tears. “I know.”
The white horse moved a step closer to her. “Malian,” Rowan Birchmoon said softly, “my grief in this can never be as yours, but I, too, care for Nhairin. I have sought for her already, but it is not just the Madness. The Darkswarm have done something to her mind and I cannot separate her presence from theirs. But I am not your enemy—or your father’s enemy.”
“I know,” Malian whispered again. She blinked hard against the tears and risked a look up. The Winter woman smiled at her; Kalan cleared his throat.
“Speaking of enemies,” he said, “ours can’t be far behind. We heard their horns, not long before we met you.”
Rowan Birchmoon stroked the hawk’s head with her gloved forefinger. “You need not fear. Even now the storm blows thick around your pursuers and it will not abate. They will need to find shelter, or perish.”
Kalan glanced at the thickly falling snow behind them. “Can you really help us reach someplace that’s safe?”
Malian straightened. “And if you do, what will you ask of us in return?” She thought Tarathan might have sighed, but the sound was so slight that she could not be sure.
