The Lady of the Snowmist (War of the Gods on Earth Book 3)

by Andrew J Offutt

“Ah! It’s a terrible thing to do to a man.”

  “It was done to you. Would you rather be dead?”

  “Alive,” Kirrensark said softly, “though there are times when I have my doubts.”

  “That is Shranshule’s choice. I do it or he dies. I may have waited too long already, in too much hope. Stupid, stupid!”

  Kirrensark put his hand on the shoulder of the tall, powerfully built warrior become healer. “You have done more than anyone could have done, Oak. You need sleep, badly. Do not blame yourse — ”

  “Don’t patronize me!” Oak hissed with an intensity filled with malice. “I will sleep when this is done. When I sleep, I sleep long and long, while he owns this body and misuses it. Just unpack that blighted saw!”

  When Oak was preparing (complaining about the tools he must use), Delath suggested one clean blow with an ax. Or the Black Sword, perhaps. Oak glowered and his eyes were like knives that pierced.

  “Don’t be stupid, slayer! The shock of such a blow would kill a man in Shranshule’s condition! It must be sawn off. Right now Jilain is trying to fill his gut and brain with ale so he will feel less.”

  Delath was flushed and almost quivering. “You … try me, Healer.”

  “Slay me then, slayer. I will not fight you. I have work to do.” And he stared suddenly into Delath’s eyes. Just as straightforwardly and in a quiet tone he said, “I need your help, though.”

  Delath gave it, and it was done. Shranshule passed out almost at once, clinging to the squirrel’s tail Jilain had “traded” him for his big leathern mailcoat. A third of Seadancer’s complement lurched to the rail, to be sick, and Coon could not understand why he was not among them. Blood soon covered the whalehide sheet on which Shranshule lay. Of a sudden blood spurted high. Oak grunted a command, sharply. Delath swallowed and hesitated, staring at the scarlet fountain. Jilain clamped her hands on Shranshule as Oak had directed. The freshet of blood lowered, ceased to spurt. The fire Oak had commanded stank. Shranshule lay still, in his faint, while his arm was removed. The stench of the smoking iron on flesh was worse than the stink of the fire in which the iron had been readied, and even in his unconsciousness Shranshule lurched and sweated a barrel.

  Oak gave it over an hour. He staggered when he had finished, and with an angry glare at Jilain ordered them to get him out of the mailcoat. Out of it and the padded underjacket, he stood panting in a sodden tunic — and he shivered. This time a man gave him a severe look, and swung a cloak about him. Oak went to the foremost part of the stern and stared ahead. He hardly squinted. Behind him steam hissed and rose, for the fire must be killed, not merely dumped overboard; sparks might return to the ship and smoulder for hours before killing them all in a floating pyre.

  Shranshule lay one-armed, cauterized, bandaged, shaded. The sun was bright. The dove remained aboard while the continuing strong breeze blew Seadancer in a direction experienced men swore was homeward; toward Lokusta. As if any could be sure; but they swore nevertheless. It beat rowing.

  A hand came onto Oak’s shoulder. He did not turn. The shoulder was cloaked, wet-tunicked, and no longer mailed.

  “One does not understand, Oak.”

  “One does not! Two do not understand! Jarik and Oak do not understand, woman! Three then, with you. Hmp! And many more do not understand Oak and Jarik. Get some sleep.” He had not glanced at her. It was hard, being Jarik; it was hard dealing with this other personality that shared his body and hated him so.

  “One would try to understand, Oak.”

  “So would I. You should nap. We are not through. I think I waited too long with Shranshule.” Oak stared ahead.

  “One does not know what — ”

  “I know that one doesn’t know, woman! No one knows. Only me. I — ”

  “One has a name. Why do you continue calling her ‘woman’?”

  Interrupted, he stiffened in affront. Yet he decided to answer: “Have you noticed how I call most of the others ‘man’ when I address one?”

  “Well, yes … ”

  “Leave off then, and try not to be a bigot. I have no different rules for females. Now I think I waited too long to remove Shranshule’s arm, and that was stupid. I put it off because of unworthy emotion — only a butcher would want to take a man’s arm off. The wound was high though, near the shoulder, and the poison came swiftly into the blood. I fear it may already have entered the body. Stupid, stupid.” She moved her fingers on his shoulder. They were unexpectedly strong fingers. Under them was a tension-stiff shoulder. “No. Not stupid. Oak is … great.”

  He snorted. “Oak does not even exist. Oak is a chimaera. Jarik’s nightmare, that rotten slayer! Jarik’s sickness. I was born eight years old, do you know that? How many people are born eight years old, and able to bandage wounds — even the wounds of a man minutes from death! That was my first act. I was born at eight, into the body of another, and he was still in it. I was born of insanity and my first act was one of insanity. I bandaged one Orrik, a dead man.

  … our father.”

  “One understands none of this, Oak — ”

  “One understands precious little of anything, woman, but there is no sense bragging about it. Go and sleep.”

  “How,” Jilain said, “can a healer, one so concerned wit’ the well-being of others, be such an arrogant, nasty creature?”

  Oak stiffened under her hand, and did not turn. “Listen, you — ”

  “Why do you not look at this one when you are about to rail at her, healer?”

  Oak rounded on her and his eyes were full of blue fire. “Damn you! You are the only decent person aboard, woman! Why must you pester me? Why must you be … emotionally caught up with us?”

  She challenged: “Us?”

  “Us! Jarik and me! We are hardly alike, that poor twisted unhappy killer and I! You asked a question. Well, it is hard for us, Jarik and me, to look straight at the one we speak to. It is not your place or business to make mention of it, plague you! As to what you call ‘arrogance’ — it is not stupid or wrong to admit one’s superiority. What is wrong is for those who are manifestly superior to deny it. It is stupid not to admit one’s superiority. You are stupid, and you don’t admit it, and so you are stupid, deliberately. Bovine.

  A perfect assistant.”

  The queen’s champion of Kerosyr stared into his eyes. “One will not bother to insult you in return as you would like, healer. Have you more poison to spew? Spew it, then. This one is strong.”

  Oak stared. “Strong indeed,” he murmured at last, quietly, and he looked as if he was about to touch her.

  He did not. He whirled from her to stare asea again. “Invidious woman! How dare you? How dare anyone be so strong as to be able to remain equable when another wants trouble, and goads you. Have you no need for release? Where is your ego? You have right to one, Jilain Kerosyris! Listen. Attend me. Listen. Hear Oak, for Jarik hasn’t sense or nerve enough to speak his thoughts, his true thoughts. If that bloody machine-that-kills has thoughts! He is not sure enough of himself to speak them. Listen. You … attend me, now.” He was spewing words, fountaining a stream of words while he sought the ones he wanted to say to her. “Listen! You are … you are superior, Jilain. ‘Spew then,’ you said. Ah your shoulders are strong, Jilain, both physically and in the mind. You are strong, woman. You are … you are our strength. Jarik’s and Oak’s, who need it. Stay, Jilain. Jarik … Jarik is strong with weapons and weak of mind. No, no, that is not what I mean. There is no word. He is weak of … of mental construction. Ah, that’s stupid!”

  He struck Seadancer’s rail in frustration, and Seadancer fled on, eastward and northward. Off to steerboard a big fish leaped, armored in sleek blued silver. It returned in curveting joy to the water amid a dancing explosion of crystal droplets. Otherwise, despite the wind that drove Seadancer, the water was placid, glassy. The sea seemed bored.

  “Jarik … Jarik has a mind, he thinks, and it is not weak … it … it has a disease in it,” Oak said, groping, sta
ring at nothing. “Yes. A sort of disease in it. I am strong with this talent, and weak as well. Jarik … covers. I cover. You do not cover, Jilain Kerosyris. You can be our strength. We need — O we need, Jarik and I! Can you bear that weight, isolated unworldly islander who knows nothing really and is about to enter the world — born even older than I was? Listen. Attend. We are two, that bloody barbarian killer and I. Jarik and I. We are two. You are a third, and perhaps that — perhaps you can make us, make us one — three as one!”

  Again he struck the rail. “Bah! What a ridiculous concept! There are no words, not enough words. Three people, two bodies, one unit. Ridiculous. Jilain … Jilain, plague take you, go and rest. We … we … I … we think highly of you, Jilain. You are … to me, for me, with me while I have labored over these men, you have been … you have been … what I mean is, I — you are … pox and plague! I may need you more, woman! Do you go and sleep now!”

  Her hand came onto him again. “One understands, Oak.”

  “Stop that! You cannot understand! You are no god on the earth!”

  “One knows affection. One has had lovers. Some will be sorry, Oak, that this one has left Kerosyr. Lishain will weep for this one’s leaving, for this one’s not being there with her by nickt. And this one will weep for her, sometimes in the dark of nickt. Do you know that? This one knows what you say, and cannot say, Oak.” She moved her hand from his shoulder to touch his cheek, though he did not look at her. “Yow need rest and sleep, Oak, and Jarik does. This one will sleep when you do.”

  Oak stared asea. “Stupid,” Oak muttered, and Jilain, in Shranshule’s brass-bossed mailcoat of supple old brown leather stained dark unto black, left him. “So honorable,” Oak muttered in a low-voiced sneer, while men looked at Jilain, for her legs were long and beautifully curved with muscle under tight skin. On her forehead she bore the mark of Jarik’s sword. On his forehead, he bore the mark of her — or/and Oak did.

  *

  Oak was right. He had waited too long. The poison in the blood had gone from Shranshule’s arm into his body where nothing could be done about it. He was in pain, and it would be worse. Fever burned in him. He sweated and shivered, muttered and babbled. Already he was starting to experience that which was not; the wakeful nightmares of sepsis.

  “Kill me!” he got out coherently, with effort and in a hideous voice. None thought he was delirious then: “Show mercy and kill me!”

  “I cannot,” Oak muttered. He rose to shout it in anguish: “I cannot! I cannot kill … Jarik? Jarik, killer, you are needed.”

  But a man lay yet unhealed, and Jarik did not return to control of that fine body and maimed mind. So long as he was needed as healer, Oak ruled the body and the brain. And Kirrensark stared without comprehension. Once he had heard a man beg for the mercy of death. He had been unable to grant it. He had heard Jarik agree; that stranger who had come from nowhere to save the life of Kirrensark, without knowing who he was. He had heard Jarik agree. He had watched Jarik grant that man the mercy of death; a man who had waylaid and fallen upon Kirrensark, with two others.

  Now Kirrensark looked on Jarik — no matter that he called himself Oak and was most visibly obviously manifestly a healer — and heard him say that he could not kill. Kirrensark closed his eyes. His head hurt and he felt old. His arm tingled, where there was no arm. Nothing to rub or scratch.

  Oak went to Delath.

  Oak spoke quietly. Delath refused, and refused, and agreed. He knelt and muttered rite-words. He stripped himself bare, unwinding even his breechclout, and he prayed more. Then Delath, in mercy, slew Shranshule who was in agony with blood poisoning. The stroke was swift and far more merciful than the long death in pain he faced; far more merciful than poison.

  Oak stood and watched. Staring, glaring. His eyes glistened. Delath met his eyes.

  “I did not enjoy that.”

  Oak gazed steadily at this homely, not ugly man with the nigh colorless eyes. Then he nodded his respect and thanks to Delath, and turned away to stare at nothing. Jilain watched him, and perhaps she understood.

  Eventually he moved. He went about seeing to his patients. All would be hale in a bit of time. That one who would not heal had received the ultimate healing, from the hands of Delath. The healer had done his work and

  Seadancer was at peace — physically. Seadancer flew over the waves and windspray sparkled in air. Oak fell down and could not be aroused. They arranged him so that he lay in comfort. And Jilain, too, slept. After a long while, after some darted looks and remarks from others, Delath went and sat beside Jilain, and he looked at the others. He looked mean. No one went near either of them.

  She awoke hours later, but the Man Who Was Two Men did not wake.

  When he awoke, just under two days and nights had passed.

  Chapter Three

  My spirit wrestles in anguish With fancies that will not depart;

  A ghost who borrowed my semblance Has hid in the depth of my heart.

  — Hjalmar Hjorth Boyeson

  He awoke in the stern of a ship plowing the sea almost silently. Almost in silence; there was the creak of rope and of wood, the sound of moving water; the murmur of two or three conversations. He opened his eyes and looked up into anxiously staring hazel ones, set in a face framed by blue hair. How could he have thought those the eyes of a dog? And the mark of his sword’s point marred her forehead: h.

  “What color is your hair?”

  Those were his first words in so very long; she twitched. “Oak?”

  “Ah.” A frown briefly cluttered his forehead, which was also sword-marked. “So Oak has come, has he? Did he heal everyone who was hurt?” He turned his head and only then discovered that it was pillowed on her thighs. Good thighs; they were womanly round and manly firm with the strength and tone of them. The crown of his head pressed against her lower belly, which hardly existed. Thus he felt her long, long sigh. Thought came to him of what else lay beneath his head, at the base of that firm belly, and he thrust that from his mind. He also thought it best to tell her:

  “I am Jarik.”

  “This one is glad, Jarik. You — ”

  “Will you never call yourself T, Jilain?”

  “You have asked three questions.”

  He heard his belly growl, and felt it. He fancied that his navel and backbone had become unwilling lovers. Surely they were in conjunction. How long had Oak remained, this time? Jarik had no memory of the sensation of leaving his body that was too familiar to him, or of those … whatever the visions were. Harbingers of the future? How long since I have eaten? (At another level was the thought, Is Oak gaining strength, that he was here and I felt and knew nothing? But that was not to be considered. It could lead to terror.) His bladder was as full as his stomach was empty. He decided to ignore his body’s demands for both ingestion and elimination, and he chose which question to repeat. “Men were wounded, I know. Did Oak heal everyone?”

  “You do not remember, Jarik?”

  “I remember that an arrow hit you and you fell and I went to you. I remember nothing more. But you are not hurt.”

  “No, not at all. It has been four days, Jarik, although you slept for nearly two of them. You remember none of it?”

  “None of it. When Oak comes, I am not here. I know nothing. I asked — ”

  She told him what Oak had done, in her accent in which o’s were extended and softened, and such as “fight” and “thought” were “fikt” and “thokt,” and in which “One, two, three” became Woon, Twa, Thray. As memory came back to him he asked again about her. She assured him that she had not been hurt. All were hale on Seadancer, Jilain told him, save Shranshule. He told her that he did not even know Shranshule. She asked about that; how it was that he had “sailed and sistered” with men he did not know. He was astonished to discover that she knew everyone among the Guardians, which was everyone on the Isle of Osyr: one wark they called wairk.

  The men of Seadancer discovered that he had at last wakened, and question
s were asked.

  Jarik sat up, felt dizzy, and fell backward — to be caught by Jilain, who was lithely strong though her arms showed little musculature. He wanted to urinate, and he wanted food and drink — and he wanted more to remain with Jilain. Sitting, he gave the men of Kirrensark-wark, of Seadancer-werk, a shamefully brief explanation of what he knew of Oak, which was little. That of course was no explanation at all and satisfied no one. It was all he knew, he told them. When someone close to Jarik, beloved of Jarik, was hurt or seemed to be, Jarik lost all sense of himself, and Oak came. It was as though he was unconscious, he said (not troubling to introduce the subject of his visions and his experiences outside his body), except that Oak commanded this body and brain. He answered a few other questions and then tightened his lips and told them he would answer no more. That made no one happy and was manifestly unfair to men both confused and curious — and a bit frightened of the Man Who Was Two Men.

  Unfair! The accusing word was like a knife thrust at him. Jarik would not stand up for them, but he sat very straight. His eyes came alive so that some thought that perhaps Oak had returned. Jarik was the warrior and slayer and Oak certainly was not; yet they feared Oak more than Jarik.

  “Fair!” he snapped. “None of it is fair! All is unfair! I had no wish to come here with you on this ship. I have no wish to be servant to your god Snowmist — who is not soft as snow or mist, but shiny as silver and ice and just as hard. Lady Silver-and-Ice!” He thrust out his arms at them. “It is not fair that I wear these bracers that make me slave to Her. Slave, to your Lady Silver-ice! It was unfair that I had to descend alone and go alone to the temple of Osyr the Dead God, for that White Rod She desires! It is not fair that I was beaten. Beaten! Beaten with a whip, by the Guardians while you lot disported yourselves with them! Fair! You are alive because I saved you! And you say ‘unfair’!”

  And then he remembered, and Jarik grew a foot and years: “I am alive because Jilain cut me loose of Guardian ropes,” he said, admitting his reliance on another. “Scavengers! Go away. Oil your metal against sea-spray. Oil your leather against salt which hardens and cracks it. Pick your noses and wash your armpits with salt water. Jump into the sea.” He waved his arms, ranting at them. “Stand on your empty heads. I want to talk with Jilain Kerosyris, and that is what I am going to So. It will be the first time in many days that I have done what I want to do!”