The Snowmelt River

by Frank P. Ryan

  ‘Whatever the truth of such legends, all people who now live in Monisle know them in some shape or form, whether by different names or in their stories of beginnings, for these were the first people to gather the fruits of land and shore. Some stories suggest they came here from another world in a great ship, which was known as the Ark of the Arinn. For, if the legends are to be believed, their vessel had powers bequeathed to it by the Changers themselves.’

  ‘The Changers?’ asked Mo.

  ‘Another name for the Arinn, my friend. You see, the Ark responded, sense for sense, with the Changers’ wishes and desires. As you might imagine, such a wonder was beyond the comprehension of ordinary senses, for it was one thing and all things to those who travelled within it. Some believed it retained the capacity to fly through the air, with great wings beating, like the black-headed swan. Others that it could transform its substance, according to the instruction of its masters, even as the creatures, whether of myth or fact I cannot pretend to tell, known as changelings.’

  Qwenqwo’s eyes caught Mo’s fleetingly, and their sparkle of delight reminded her of their mind-games in the false Mage’s chamber.

  ‘Stranger still are the stories of the Arinn themselves. For it appears that above all they venerated knowledge. If the oldest legends are true, so arrogant did they become that they challenged the very immortality of the gods. Such arrogance became their downfall.’

  Of the many faces enraptured by the storytelling, none was more intrigued than Mark, though he made sure to conceal his interest from his friends, waiting behind until the stories were over and everybody but he had withdrawn to other tasks and interests, so that he could be alone with the dwarf mage.

  ‘I’ve heard stories,’ he spoke with a show of scepticism, ‘of women, with faces like dolls, who visit men in their dreams. In your tales around campfires, have you ever come across any mention of these?’

  ‘Possibly I have, and possibly I have not.’

  ‘You’re not really answering my question.’

  ‘If I am reticent it is because I wonder why a young man like you would be interested in succubi?’

  ‘Succubi?’

  ‘Supposedly, in all manners and appearances they are deceivers and seducers, whose purpose is to ensnare the souls of men.’

  ‘Supposedly? Does that mean you don’t believe in them? You’re just talking about legends?’

  ‘Oh, I suspect they are real enough. Though, thank the Powers, I have never set eyes on such.’

  ‘I don’t understand. I mean, how is it possible for these – these succubi – to control the men they prey on?’

  ‘If legend is to be believed, they do so not merely through the seduction of the eyes but even more so through a hidden scent.’

  ‘A scent?’ Mark shook his head disbelievingly.

  ‘A scent, in its capacity for seduction, can be a thousand times more powerful than sight or hearing. Surely it cannot be sight or sound that attracts the moth to its mate, across miles of forest, against the wildest storm and in the dark of night.’

  Mark pretended to laugh. ‘Oh, come on – it’s just myths and fairy tales!’

  The dwarf mage shrugged his shoulders. ‘Perhaps it is a myth, also, that they serve a mistress mighty and foul, a mistress so wicked I would not wish to describe her lest I burden you with nightmares.’

  ‘What mistress?’

  ‘One who stands second in the powers of evil in this world, eclipsed only by the Tyrant himself. I speak of the Great Witch, known as Olc, whose domain is far from here, in the southernmost region of the Wastelands, and whose purpose it is to harvest the souls of men.’

  Mark could not hide the pallor that invaded his face. He fell back onto his haunches, blinking rapidly, while the dwarf mage inclined his head and studied the youth through the arched red hairs of his eyebrows. ‘Will you not speak to me, young Mark, openly and honestly?’

  ‘Please, Qwenqwo – don’t tell the others.’

  ‘It is foolish to conceal the truth from them.’

  ‘Please. You have to promise me.’

  ‘Very well! I give you my word.’ The dwarf mage inspected the bowl of his pipe, which contained nothing but ash. He tapped the ash away against the rail of the ship, his face still deeply thoughtful. ‘You do have a friend, of a curious kind – as I have increasingly witnessed.’

  ‘What friend?’

  ‘Your friend is the ship – or am I altogether mistaken?’

  ‘I … I don’t know what you mean.’

  ‘Perhaps you do not sense it as I do. Yet it is true. You care deeply for her – as no doubt she cares for you.’

  Mark placed his left hand on the bare oak of the deck and brushed the wood, an unconscious movement, as if stroking it. ‘Ships can’t hurt you. Not like …’

  ‘Not like people – is that what you mean?’

  ‘Oh, God – is there no hope? I mean, what would I have to do …?’

  The dwarf mage saw how Mark’s throat tightened. He saw how sweat glistened over his face. Qwenqwo’s voice fell to a kindly whisper. ‘When, my friend, did the succubus seduce you?’

  Mark began to tremble. He could not answer.

  ‘Let me guess. It was before the capture of your sister?’

  He nodded.

  ‘During the river journey, then?’

  He dropped his head.

  ‘She made promises. You gave yourself to her?’

  He nodded again.

  ‘And in return? She made demands of you?’

  He shook his head. He would die before he answered.

  ‘Her price was your betrayal of your friends?’

  ‘No – no! I’d … I would never … !’

  ‘If I am to help you, Mark, you must tell me everything.’

  ‘I … I just can’t talk about it.’

  Qwenqwo put his hand on Mark’s shoulder. ‘Your sister talked to me a great deal while we were prisoners of the warlock. I know some of what happened. I would like to hear your explanation.’

  ‘I … I was asked just to push her.’

  ‘To push Mo on the deck of the ship at the Dragon’s Teeth?’

  He shook his head. ‘Not Mo.’

  Qwenqwo fell silent a moment, deep in thought. ‘Yet there were but two others with you: Mo and Kate.’ He frowned, then his eyes widened. ‘It was Kate?’

  Mark nodded. ‘But honestly, I fought her will – the succubus. I fought and fought. I tried to warn Kate. Oh – if only Mo hadn’t been there. All I did … I put my arm around her. I tried to save Kate. I never pushed her.’

  ‘You pushed Mo instead?’

  ‘Not instead … by accident. I just pushed her out of the way. She was trying to get between us, between Kate and me. I sensed that Kate was in terrible danger. I wanted to protect her. I didn’t think …’

  ‘You never realised that when the Garg saw you push Mo, it assumed the girl you pushed was the target of the succubus?’

  ‘The Garg?’

  ‘The bat creature that carried Mo overboard.’

  ‘That’s the horrible memory that keeps going through my mind. That creature carrying off Mo. It’s been haunting my nightmares, over and over.’

  Qwenqwo fell deeply in thought. ‘So it was Kate the succubus was really after?’

  ‘It isn’t over, Qwenqwo. I can’t sleep. I daren’t. I know she’ll come again. I keep thinking maybe I should throw myself overboard.’

  ‘Such thinking ill becomes you.’

  ‘What else can I do? Tell me what to do.’

  ‘You spurned the power offered to you by one who might have protected you.’

  ‘I didn’t mean to smash the crystal … Oh, God – what a mess I’ve made of everything! Qwenqwo – what can I do?’

  ‘Perhaps there is a way. Perhaps there is only one way – through asking for forgiveness.’

  ‘Forgiveness?’

  ‘The Powers, believe me, have long recognised the folly of human passions. Yet true contr
ition would count for much if it came from the heart – in the circumstances it surely must be from your heart alone, in honest and open repentance.’

  On the second day after leaving Isscan, the wind blew from the north, and its chilly breath whipped about the decks and rigging. Winter howled about Mark’s ears as he walked the decks, and men and women passed by in his vision as dark silhouettes, bent into their fur capes against the cold. The night landscape was once again showered with snow, and the bitter squalls cleared all but the essential mariners from the deck. Yet Mark felt safer here in these harsh circumstances, when the ship’s timbers were folded around him.

  Qwenqwo was right, he did love the ship. He loved her in a strange, altogether secret way – maybe like he loved music. A ship, like music, rewarded your love with what it had to give in return. Neither was capable of hurting you.

  Mark’s eyes watered with the cold as he peered out through a porthole in the cabin he shared with Alan, currently busy on deck.

  The succubus had not yet reappeared. The ship, somehow, had something to do with that. The ship was protecting him. Mark sensed this although he didn’t know how. He just felt it. But he knew it was only a question of time. Her first attempt had failed. He had not pushed Kate overboard, as she had asked him to, and so, here, in this terrible valley, she would try again. He knew it, sensed it deep within him, and the dread of it made sleep impossible. In the lonely hours of darkness, prowling the decks and avoiding the company of the Shee or the Olhyiu sailors, he had overheard snatches of their conversations about Alan.

  ‘Is the Mage Lord a demon?’

  He had recognised the voice of Topgal, Siam’s brother-in-law. Topgal never seemed to speak without bitterness. It seemed that the Olhyiu alternated in thinking Alan might be a demon or a god, but never just a youth, as he was.

  With morning, the land to either side of them seemed to rise in scarps, capped by plateaus, hills and valleys, gripped in the white thrall of winter. He gazed out at the passing copses of evergreens, often in clefts of hills or rills. Great trees overhung the water, and sparks of light glittered in the green-black depths of their shadows. A deep and brooding menace was gathering in those black rocks, as if the angry landscape was showing through its sparse cover of mist and snow. The sky was massing with clouds, their edges shrouding the caps of the mountains so that they became a single dome with the shoulders of rock and the coiling mists rising from the river. Everybody saw that they were drawing closer to the jaws of the pass, through which they would enter a valley where new dangers awaited them.

  Mark had never felt so frightened and alone as he felt right now. He welcomed the piercing barbs of snow that whipped his face in the bitter wind, ignoring the pain as his lips cracked and his ears became numbed. He avoided his friends, even his sister, Mo – especially Mo after his confession to Qwenqwo.

  The dwarf mage knew the truth. Would he keep his word? Who would he tell about it? Who had he told already?

  Back in his cabin, the grief of his betrayal tormented him like an iron fist closing around his heart. And now, with another night drawing in, he peered morosely through the porthole at the wraiths of mist that ran among the great trees like hunting wolves, his growing alienation making him consider all over again whether they might all be better off without him.

  Such thinking ill becomes you …

  Inside his mind, his own voice berated him, ‘What … what can I do? What can I do?’

  The dwarf had talked about forgiveness. Forgiveness from whom? Granny Dew, the bag lady he had ridiculed, the one into whose black eyes and wrinkled face he had shone his mobile screen light?

  Mark sneaked out to stand disconsolately before the stern rail, hearing the sigh of the water under the flanks of the great ship, watching the ripples spread out towards the wide-spaced banks, reflecting the moonlight. He took a deep breath and imagined what it would feel like, falling into the darkness, the cold … An end to this torment. He recalled Granny Dew’s very words:

  When the darkness is worst, child, then will you find love.

  He licked his lips, bowed his head. ‘Granny Dew! It was a really stupid thing I did with the crystal you gave me. I know I’ve gone too far for forgiveness, but please help me at least to pay back my friends.’

  No voice answered his call. Instead, he felt an intense pain flare in his left shoulder. The pain was so agonising, he ripped off his shirt and rubbed at the skin. There was no point calling again for help. It was useless. She had abandoned him, like everybody had always abandoned him. A new stab of pain brought him to his knees on the hard oak deck. It was so agonising his whole body began to tremble. He couldn’t help the rush of tears that came into his eyes. When he touched the skin over his shoulder, it burned.

  He staggered back to the tiny cabin, sat on his bunk, hugging his shoulder. Sweat ran in rivulets over his face and dripped off his chin. He staggered over to the basin of water, examining his reflection in the pallid lamplight. His face was haggard and drawn, with blue crescents under his eyes. He went to dip his hands into the icy-cold water, thinking that he could splash it onto his burning skin. In doing so, he saw in his own reflection what was happening to him. A dark oval, like scorched flesh, covered his left shoulder. With a cry of anguish, he twisted his upper body one way and then another, to examine it closer. Within the black oval, whorls and arabesques of silver were pulsating with his heartbeat. That same heartbeat quickened to a sickening acceleration. It pounded in his head and throat. He fell back onto the bunk and just lay there in a daze.

  Mark spoke not a word to Alan when, exhausted by some duties on deck, he arrived back in the sleeping quarters an hour or so later, threw off his clothes and fell into his bunk. He no longer cared that he couldn’t sleep. He spent the night thinking about what had happened.

  What did it really mean? Was he forgiven? Was the mark on his shoulder the hope he had begged for?

  He was still lying there, sleepless, as the first pale rays of dawn peered in through the porthole. Moments later, he heard the shout – it was the deep throaty voice of Qwenqwo from high in the crow’s nest. The words appeared to expand, like the light, as they entered the chamber, and they invaded his half-dazed mind. Mark ignored his sleeping friend and walked out onto the deck even as the dwarf mage shouted again, his cry flowing like a liquid, half proclamation and half warning, over the decks of awakening figures, and through every crack and crevice that led into the coursing labyrinth that was the ship.

  ‘Behold the Pass of Kloshe Lamah! Behold the face of Magcyn, keeper of the accursed Vale of Tazan and last king of the Fir Bolg, whose spirit in truth still guards it!’

  The Vale of Tazan

  Alan woke to excited voices shouting and calling. He dressed hurriedly and joined the multitude gathering over the decks. His searching gaze found Mark, who had taken up the helm in the stern. Then he headed forward, taking the steps to the foredeck two at a time to get to the prow, where Kemtuk Lapeep stood like a sentinel, peering through the dawn mists at the extraordinary vision that confronted them. Here the river had become deep and fast-moving, its great waters compressed to no more than a hundred yards wide. Siam and the Olhyiu lined the rails, peering up into the ragged crags and escarpments that reared to dizzy heights on either side of them. Towering above them – it seemed impossible, for the scale appeared beyond any human undertaking – was a great figure of stone rising out of the bedrock and soaring to several hundred feet above the river.

  People were shouting aloud the name of the figure carved out of the mountain – Magcyn, last king of the Fir Bolg – and indeed you could not mistake the figure as anything other than a great and formidable king. He was seated on the shelf of rocky outcrop on the port side, as if on a throne, with his legs crossed at the ankles and his arms folded about the unmistakable double-bladed battle-axe.

  Alan stared up at the massive sculpture, feeling so awed by its scale and power he had to hold onto the rail for support.

  More than a
ny other aspect, it was the head, a tumulus of granite as big as a two-storey house, that cast a brooding warning over their forward passage. The face was square, the nose broad, with prominent nostrils flattened across the bridge, and the eye-sockets were caves of shadow. The likeness to Qwenqwo was unmistakable.

  Alan’s attention wheeled to the portal on the starboard side, but there, though equally massive as the figure on the left, the shape that remained was only vaguely human. Some calamity more destructive than wind or rain had ruined the image – and recently, too. The upper portion was shattered into a profusion of jagged ledges and scattered fragments. Boulders of detached rock had tumbled down over the shoulders and torso, masking the presence that had once reigned opposite the figure of the king.

  ‘The profaned image was that of the youthful queen, Nantosueta!’ Alan heard Milish’s shocked whisper from his side as the council woman came to join him. And now, as they dropped sail to slow their passage, Alan did sense a bedraggled femininity in the desecrated right portal.

  ‘What does it mean?’

  ‘A malignancy has preceded us. As to what terrible malignancy would dare to profane the guardian – surely we journey into a vortex of danger!’

  With a grim set to his jaws Mark piloted the ship deeper, passing through Lamah’s pass and into the blue-black shadows of the crooked throat, or Kiwa Hahn. Towering cliffs overhung their passage, as if they were gigantic beasts that had slunk down to the water’s edge to drink. Even the Shee who stood guard on the deck looked apprehensive. The air became still and humid, and it seemed that the beating of their hearts echoed back at them from the massive keeps to either side for the hour or more that Mark picked his course, twisting and turning between these dreadful cliffs. And judging from Siam’s expression as he paced the decks, at every moment he expected those jaws to close about them and end it all in a splintering of oak and bone. All the while, the eagle followed their course, soaring high overhead, as if wherever the dwarf mage journeyed, his guardian would follow.