Through Dalszystron
THEY WENT AS swiftly as only dracons might. Muscular, reptilian legs ate up the miles. The desert receded, drawing further and further away from the mountains as the party went north, until it became a black line on the horizon and the spikes of the warding obelisks small as thorns. Eventually the line and the obelisks vanished beyond the sea of grass. A brown haze in the distance became the sole sign of the Black Sands’ presence. The steppe began to climb, and the mountains to the west became taller.
They camped every forty miles or so. On the seventh night they stopped early to allow the dracons to hunt. The eighth day they went more slowly, the beasts sated and torpid. Rel felt increasingly at home in the saddle. Zorolotsev showed him how to rig his saddle in the proper Khusiak way—there were marked differences to the saddles of Karsa. All the men were excellent riders, Deamaathani especially, but Rel was feeling less embarrassed of his own abilities.
The land dropped unexpectedly away, sheared by a steep scarp east-west across the steppe. The desert reappeared, coming in a wide bight across the base of the slope, so that their position atop the ridge overlooked sand more than the steppe, both lightened here by thin, icy snow. The grassland widened again to the north, but became hillier and more broken so that the mountains did not rise so abruptly, being fronted by a swathe of foothills absent further south.
The major pulled up his dracon and slid from its back. He gave the call to dismount, and directed his men to stake their mounts away from the slope’s brow.
“Keep down,” he urged them as they gained the edge. He beckoned to Veremond, who passed him a brass telescope. Zhinsky extended it and set it to his eye. He grunted.
“What do you see?” asked Rel.
“There, about three miles out.”
Rel squinted against the brightness of the day. Ripples chased one another over the yellow grasses.
“There,” Zhinsky said, directing him to the north east.
A line of black dots moved across the plain, heading from the desert into the mountains. “I see a line of figures,” Rel said.
Veremond drew in his breath. “There are no herders this far out at this time of the year.”
Zhinsky passed Rel the glass.
Rel brought it up to his eye. The figures blurred, and leapt into close view. Rel gasped. “They are not men.”
What he saw walked like men, but they were too tall and too thin. Their bodies were covered in long, feathery hair. Their faces were dark and flat, dominated by wary eyes.
“Some say they are a kind of men.” Zhinsky rolled onto his back and looked at the clouds hurrying through the sky. “Or that they were men and are no longer, because they angered a Tyn. Or a sorceress. Or a demon. Take your pick. They were transformed into those half-beasts you see. Whatever they are, we of Khushashia call them Yeven.”
Dramion muttered some minor cantrip under his breath. Deamaathani had his own glass out and was watching intently.
“Are they dangerous?” asked Olb.
“Probably not,” said the warlock.
“And what would you, native of less uncanny deserts, know of them?” said Zhinsky.
“I know enough,” said Deamaathani. “I can feel little malice from them.”
“You can do that?” said Rel, surprised.
“When one is engaged in waging war with magic, it is well to know whether or not your opponent bears you ill will. So yes, I can do that.”
“They are dangerous,” said Zorolotsev. He gestured for the glass. Rel handed it over reluctantly. “There are many legends of them in my village. I come from other side of the mountains, not far from here as the eagle flies. They sometimes come over the mountains and down into the forests in hard winters. Never cross them. They are cruel to those that anger them.”
“It does not matter, dangerous, not dangerous,” said Zhinsky. “They will avoid us, and we will avoid them. What is of note here, is that they walk directly from the desert, up into the hills, and there the mountain peoples of the Dalszystron live.”
“They stay away from people,” said Zorolotsev. He spoke rapidly in Khusiacki to Zhinsky, then added in Low Maceriyan, “These are in poor condition. The bull that leads, his fur is matted.”
“A sign then,” Deamaathani said. He snapped his telescope shut. “I’ve learned to be wary of signs.” He looked at Zhinsky. “It’s not them we should be afraid of.”
“It is not,” said Zhinsky. “It is what they are running from we should be concerned with. They come from there.” He pointed. “We make small detour, go look. Now! Up up, my bold warriors.”
Zhinsky had them go swiftly down the slope to where the Yeven had come from. Their mounts had not eaten for two days now and so were quicker on their feet, if harder to control, and ran so quickly down the slope Rel feared he would fall from the saddle. The Khushashians and Deamaathani laughed and whooped as they hurtled down to the plain. The others cursed and held on tightly.
Once down, it was a short gallop to the boundary between desert and grass. Zhinsky sent Veremond, Olb and Dramion ahead to the point they judged the Yeven to have emerged from the Black Sands; the rest of the squadron ran along the edge cautiously, stopping every three quarters of a mile to examine the obelisks for damage. Rel had never been this close to the unwebbed desert. The line between sand and steppe was practically a blade-slash. Isolated tussocks of grass deformed the line of the turf here and there, but it was unnervingly close to dead straight.
“This does not look like a natural border,” said Rel.
“Who ever said it was? I did not.” Zhinsky leaned far forward in his saddle. “The say that the gods made it in ancient days, one side for men, one side for their other children. These obelisks are the border, to keep the bad things out from the lands of men.”
“Is it true?”
Zhinsky shrugged, preoccupied by the obelisk they had stopped by. A narrow pyramid twice as high as a man emerging from the turf like a tooth from a gum. It was a dull grey, like iron, although it was free of rust. Four-sided, a symbol on each face at just above head height. “Is a folktale, but there is much truth in folktales. If not for that devil-dog Iapetus, we could ask them, no?” He looked out over the desert. Sinuous loops of sand hissed over the surface. The pale grasses of the steppe rattled back in defiance. “But these things are true, the desert is not a natural place, and there are inhuman things dwell in it, brothers of mankind or not, and the obelisks work. Come! This one is fine.”
“It amazes me,” said Rel, “that there is one of these, every three quarters of a mile, for three thousand miles.”
“I told you before, little merchant boy, this is not Karsa.”
Veremond crested a low rise ahead. “Captain!” he shouted. “Major!”
Rel and Zhinsky wheeled their dracons about. Veremond was making his way rapidly down the divide between sand and turf with Olb and Dramion. They met the group halfway.
“The spires, major. You should see. One is down. The Yeven’s prints go past it.”
Zhinsky gave Rel a foreboding look, and spurred his dracon to a full gallop.
They passed two further obelisks before they reached Zorolotsev, standing guard over a toppled spire. The top part lay half on the desert, half on the grass.
The group reined their dracons in. The lizards clicked and chattered in agitation, raking at the ground with their running claws. Their massive fighting claws twitched. Zhinsky leapt down and crouched by the pylon’s broken end. “Merchant boy, you tell me your father is big industrialist. What do you think?”
Rel looked over the edge of the upright portion from the top of his dracon. “Looks like it happened recently. But I can’t tell, these things look like they were made last year.”
“How did it happen?” asked Merreas quietly. He hunkered into his clothes, and eyed the desert warily.
“It looks broken, but I don’t see how.” He peered closer. The outside and the inner portion were the same exact shade of dull
, silvery grey. “I’m sorry, I really don’t know. This stuff doesn’t corrode. If there were rust, we could guess when it happened...” Rel reached out to it.
“I would not touch it, if I were you,” said Deamaathani. “The spires gather in bad energy. It can cling to them, and discharge unexpectedly.”
“You don’t want to be a frog, eh captain?” said Dramion. Zhinsky shot him a look that reminded the Karsan who made the jokes in their group.
“Has it been overloaded?” asked Zhinsky.
“It is possible, I suppose,” said Deamaathani. “The sigils are intact. But I would have been aware of such a large discharge of energy. And I have never heard of such a thing happening before. Jakkar tells me that they are practically indestructible.”
“Could it have been broken, physically. Pushed over?”
Rel checked the sheared surfaces again. “Perhaps. The bottom would have shifted out of true though.”
“These things are sunk thirty feet into the ground,” said Deamaathani. “They do not shift.”
They looked around the base of the spire. The turf was close in to the metal, undisturbed.
“It could have been snapped by force, I suppose,” said Rel. “My brother would know.”
“And where’s your brother?” said Merreas.
“About two thousand five hundred miles away,” said Rel.
“Watch your tone with the captain,” warned Veremond. Merreas scowled.
“So we’re here, in the middle of nowhere, sent to deal with a monster. And now this, broken by something,” said Merreas, uncowed by Veremond’s rebuke.
“Purposefully, I’d say,” said Deamaathani.
“The dead. Is this why we saw them? Is this why Wiatra died?” said Rel.
Zorolotsev made a noise in his chest.
“With this broken the dead are the least of our troubles. This is how the changeling came out of the sands,” said Zhinsky.
“And it may not be the only thing to come through,” said Deamaathani.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
Changeling
ON A BRIGHT but freezing early afternoon they rode into the village of Alu-mal, if such a place were worthy of the term ‘village’. A rough collection of hovels made of dry stacked stones and low, turfed roofs. Bones and sun-bleached wood were the rafters. There were few trees in these mountains, and the dark forests of the valleys were haunted by demons, so Zorolotsev said.
Snow lay thick upon the peaks all around the village, but even at the altitude of Alu-mal it was limited to a thin crust, frozen hard. In many places wind had scoured the snow clean away, exposing close-cropped turf of a vibrant green, speckled with goat droppings.
The majority of the huts were in two irregular lines, either side of what Rel generously chose to call a road. Those houses not lining the road were set haphazardly on knolls of stone. They clustered together, half-built into one another. Flimsy ladders led to upper entrances. Many remnants of older dwellings lay further out. Whether they were empty due to depopulation or some cultural practice Rel could not tell.
Dark faced men stared at the troop as they rode in. They were subjects of Khushashia, but they were not Khusiaks. Their skin was a deeper shade than Zhinsky’s, almost red. They were short, with narrow brown eyes hooded by folds of skin, and solemn expressions. As different to Zhalak Zhinsky and Zorolotsev as Zhinsky and Zorolotsev were different to Rel. They watched the dracons with faces devoid of curiosity, turning silently on the spot as the troopers rode up the track.
Some of the huts were recently tumbled, stones still scratched white where they had been pushed apart. By these veiled women kneeled. They bowed repeatedly from the waist, beating the frozen ground three times with their fists every time their foreheads touched the ground.
On the slopes around Alu-mal, brown and white goats with clanking bells about their necks watched disinterestedly, their yellow eyes blank as those of the human inhabitants, mouths always working.
Few children hid behind their mother’s skirts. There were far more women than children, and they guarded each child in small phalanxes.
“This is where it happened,” said Rel. If he had any doubts about the old man’s story, they were gone and buried.
“This is where it happened,” agreed Zhinsky grimly. They pulled up in the middle of the village. A large slab of rock, almost flat, bordered the road. A shrine of flat stones was stacked at its centre around a crooked pole holding up five lines of triangular flags which snapped in the freezing wind. There was no other sound. Rel looked about uneasily. Zhinsky dismounted and walked toward a hut Rel could not tell apart from the others. He waited respectfully outside. A small woman pushed aside the goatskin across the door. A few moments later, an incredibly ancient woman emerged. Her face was so heavily lined her eyes were near-invisible in the folds. Her lips had vanished, her mouth a slit in leather. She was bent almost double, but the other villagers touched their breasts when she emerged and bowed. They murmured as they did so; the sudden noise, though quiet, startled Aramaz and Rel patted his neck to soothe him.
The elder leaned on a stick of bone-white wood as crooked as all the other timber in the village, and festooned with fluttering feathers and small bones that clicked.
Zhinsky haltingly exchanged a few words her, then beckoned Rel.
“Captain, with me. The rest of you, stay here.”
Rel handed his reins to Merreas and dismounted. He winced at the stiffness of his limbs.
There was room only for Rel, Zhinsky, the woman and her servant in the hut. A low cot took up a good quarter of it, clay cooking pots in neat piles occupied another quarter. Wizened bird and dracon-bird claws hung from the rafters amid bunches of herbs. Sunlight shone in through gaps in the turves of the roof and its smokehole, netting the blue fumes of a low dung fire in shafts of light. The hut smelled of smoke and hard, marginal lives. Rel’s eyes watered.
In broken Low Maceriyan, the old woman spoke. “I tell you, I say what happened.” She looked at Zhinsky, he nodded.
She settled back, took a deep breath, shut her eyes, and began a chant in her hard-edged tongue, rocking back and forth all the whole. Zhinsky leaned in close to Rel, and whispered a translation close by his ear.
“In the mountains, there was a shepherd. He was young, he was lonely. He watched in the mountains. His flock was scattered, his work was hard. He came to the village at doublemoon for food, for company. But for him there was only the mountain, only the flock. He yearned for a wife. He yearned for a son. But there was none for him, Erdgi the Lame. His flock was scattered, his work was hard.”
Zhinsky was concentrating hard on the woman, so hard his accent almost completely disappeared from the Low Maceriyan he rendered the chant into.
“He sat alone upon the mountain. He was young, he was lonely. He asked for the hand of Guhanki. She refused. For him there was only the mountain, only the flock. He yearned for a wife. He yearned for a son. But there was none for him, Erdgi the Lame. His flock was scattered, his work was hard.
“One night he sat, upon the mountain. A voice called from the dark. A woman’s voice, soft and sweet. ‘You yearn for a wife, you yearn for a son. Let me come to you and give of myself.’ Erdgi was frightened, and did not sleep. He stayed on the mountain. His flock was scattered, his work was hard.
“He sat upon the mountain. He was young, he was scared. The voice returned by doublemoon’s light. ‘I will be yours, you will be mine. Do not be lonely, upon the mountain. Let me warm your bed, let me warm your heart.’
“For nine nights this occurred, as the skies were lit with the gods’ green veils. He stayed on the mountain, he listened to the voice. It came with a shadow. Then it came with a shape. On the tenth night he saw her, well-rounded and sleek. ‘Let me be yours,’ she said. ‘You are young, you are lonely, as am I, as am I.’
“Her face was beautiful. More lovely than silver to the miser, more lovely than the baby to the mother. Erdgi’s dogs barked and whined. He did not h
eed them, only his heart, only his loins. Erdgi’s soul was caught. He went to her. ‘Why should I not?’ he said to the night. ‘I am young,’ he said the mountain. ‘I am lonely. My flock is scattered, my work is hard.’
“Into her arms he fell. He found no woman’s eyes, no woman’s love, Erdgi the lame. He is young no longer, he is alone no longer. He stays not on the mountain. None watch his flock, they are scattered and dead. Erdgi has gone, and his work is slaughter.”
The old woman’s eyes appeared in the wrinkles of her skin, shiny as beads. She breathed out a ragged breath. Zhinsky’s face was hard.
“Changelings,” he said to Rel, although he did not take his eyes off the woman. “They come out of the desert in the form of lithe women or beautiful youths. They arouse the lust of the young, and through their lovemaking plant a seed of change within them. If they are caught in time, then that is fine, they are killed and laid to rest. A big shame, but better than what happens if not.”
“Not a skinturner,” said Rel. The back of his neck prickled. Bannord, Guis’s friend, had once told him of Skinturners in the southern forests, at the top of the Sotherwinter, that had kept him awake for a week.
“These are worse. They change you, captain merchant boy. They shift. Their victims stop being men, they stop being women. They become monsters, and then they feast upon the flesh of their kin. This is not a fairy story for little rich boys in comfortable cities, this is real. Old magic, and terrible.”
He said some words to the woman. She closed her eyes and nodded gratefully.
“You told her we would kill it.”
Zhinsky bowed his head in respect to the elder. “Of course I did, little merchant boy,” he said under his breath. “What the fucking hells else do you think was going to happen?”
“Fair enough.”
Zhinsky’s grin flashed bright in the dimness and he punched Rel on the shoulder. “That is the right attitude!”
OUTSIDE THE HUT seemed even colder than before.
“Mount!” said Zhinsky. “We go to fight.”
The Iron Ship Page 40
