Tathea

by Anne Perry

  What kind of city or people could they be seeking in this bitter place? What more experience awaited them? After Malgard, what more was there to learn? Were they now entering that terrible darkness of the soul of which Ishrafeli had sung, so that they might find the indescribable glory of joy at the end? If so, then she would go forward with fear filling her heart and mind but without hesitation. No price could be too great because, once seen, the light of God could not be forgotten, and no other sweetness could assuage its loss.

  Salymbrion knew that just as she did. He too had heard Ishrafeli’s song and it had driven him from Malgard.

  The settlement was tiny, a village of no more than a few houses. They did not stay. Ishrafeli purchased fur-lined clothes, hoods, and boots and sharp, curved knives for them, and oil with which to cook and to give light in small, portable lamps. Then they set out across the icy scree towards the mountains. This was the Land of the Great White Bear, and they were to travel northward.

  They journeyed without speaking. All their strength was needed in the labor of movement, and they kept their faces covered against the steadily increasing cold. They ate fish caught in streams and cooked over fires built of dried bog peat and wind-blasted wood from long-dead trees. They slept at night close together in a tent made of furs and skins they carried.

  On the third day they climbed a high ridge and looked out on a vast landscape of snow; every escarpment, peak, and valley as far as the eye reached was dazzling, mantled in unbroken perfection. The silence was absolute.

  Tathea looked at Ishrafeli, then at Salymbrion. She saw in both their faces the same awe she felt.

  Ishrafeli turned towards them. His eyes were soft and troubled, but he did not speak.

  Salymbrion drew a deep breath and nodded.

  “Onward,” Tathea agreed.

  They continued through snow and over freezing rock and then under pines dark in the shade and dazzling white in fantastic, motionless towers above until twilight cast long shadows across the snow and they met a group of men, apparently a hunting or war party. Their leader stepped forward. He was of less than average height, strong and lean. His skin was dark, his mouth subtle and humorous. It was a face of both intelligence and power, but there was reserve in it, and the knowledge of grief. He did not speak. His demand for explanation was in his silence and his unwavering gaze.

  Ishrafeli saw the warning in it and stood still with his hands away from his sides and the knife in his belt.

  For long, icy seconds they stared at each other; then the other man relaxed.

  “Who are you? Where are your other followers?” he asked.

  “I am Ishrafeli, and I have no others but Tathea and Salymbrion, whom you see. We travel for the love of knowledge.”

  The other man’s face quickened. “Knowledge? What knowledge is it you seek?”

  “The knowledge of all things good and evil, the bitter and the sweet that is called wisdom,” Ishrafeli replied.

  The man’s face broke into a slow smile. “My name is Kolliko. We go north. This land is easy. It will be terrible where we go, but we must follow Tascarebus to the eternal night if we do not catch up with him before then. He raided our houses and took the woman Sophia, and we are pledged to free her from him. If you come with us, you must serve the same cause and give your obedience without question. We know this land and how to survive in it. Otherwise go your way alone.”

  “We will go with you,” Ishrafeli answered. “Your quest will be ours also.”

  “Good.” Kolliko nodded. “Then eat with us and sleep, and tomorrow we shall begin again.”

  The food was sparse but well cooked, and afterwards they sat huddled together, sharing the warmth of each other’s bodies. A lean, windburned man with eyes as green as sea ice played a small instrument of hollow horn. Tathea had never heard music like it before. It was a deep, rounded note of mournful sound, pure and haunting, and the tune he played was unbearably melancholy. He lowered the instrument and began to sing. It was an ancient tale of love and betrayal before the beginning of the age of ice which had overtaken the world and would end all things.

  Tathea looked around at the faces in the flickering lamplight. The song was not a new one to any of these men. She knew that from their calm eyes, the impassive, almost comfortable ease with which they listened to the words of despair. For them there was a familiarity in the returning rhythms of the refrain and the falling half-notes.

  She turned to Salymbrion. His face was shadowed, but in the line of his brow and the curve of his lips she could see confusion and the beginning of a new kind of hurt. He had never encountered quiet, courageous despair before. He could hear the pain in it, but all the rest was mystery. She had seen it far from here, among the old, the ill, and the dispossessed in the heart of Shinabar. Then it had seemed merely an inevitable part of life. Now it was sharper, and the individual reality of it hurt. Perhaps it would always be so now because of the joy that she had seen for those few moments in the amphitheater in Malgard.

  In the morning they continued northwards with Kolliko and his companions. Travel was hard. There was no strength to spare for anything but the effort of setting one foot before the other. If Salymbrion was exhausted, he did not complain. If the endless waste of ice and rock frightened him or crushed his spirit, he hid it, although Tathea saw the lines of weariness and fear in his face. His innocence was gone.

  The terrain grew more mountainous, great gleaming blades of rock like sword-edged backbones of the earth shone white in the sun, dazzling the eyes. Storms blew up suddenly, darkening everything within moments. Vast-bellied clouds tore themselves open and sleet and snow whirled around them, buffeting and shrieking with high-pitched whine and roar. They staggered on, close together, footsteps muffled in a virgin landscape.

  On the fourth day at noon they climbed to the top of an escarpment and ahead of them opened a valley, at its center a motionless lake as green as jade. Beyond it a glacier curved upward in a lazy arc towards massive peaks in the distance. Between it and where they stood, the vast expanse of ice was scored with crevasses spattered with perilous mounds of snow and stained with dark moraine at the edges.

  Tathea’s heart sank. “How do you know Tascarebus passed this way?” she demanded of Kolliko. “Who is he?”

  “I do not know if he passed this way,” he answered. “There is an easier way, but this is shorter.”

  “Who is he?” she repeated, staring at his weathered skin and figure leaning forward into the wind.

  “He takes that which he has not earned,” he replied without turning look at her, his eyes narrowed against the light as he searched the way ahead.

  “He destroys what he has not built,” Vartreth, with the green eyes, added.

  “He kills without need.” These words were from Shaki, a man who had chosen to walk beside Ishrafeli and stood now sharing water with him, as Kolliko did with Tathea, and Vartreth with Salymbrion.

  “What will you do when you catch up with him?” she pressed.

  “Whatever is necessary to free Sophia,” Kolliko replied, taking the water bottle and fastening it to his belt. It was heavy to carry. “Then we will return home. You would do well to do the same. There is nothing beyond here but ice and the gates of hell.”

  They trudged onward through the heavy snow that clung and weighed down their feet. The sky above was a dark, cold blue, as though it swallowed the light, yet some far glow radiated into it. Perhaps it was the reflection of endless snow beyond the horizon. The green lake, when they came to it, was milky with ground ice. Ahead of them the glacier roared and groaned as it shifted in its infinitesimal journey downwards.

  They were climbing up a steep slope towards a pass, beyond which lay a plateau, when a slow rumble broke the silence.

  Kolliko stopped, his body rigid, his head towards the sound as it gathered in intensity.

  “Avalanche!” he shouted, flinging his arm out towards a buttress a hundred yards ahead of them.

  Ishrafel
i grasped Tathea by the arm and dragged her forward through the heavy snow. She looked around for Salymbrion and saw that Vartreth was with him.

  “Run!” Ishrafeli shouted, hauling her upright as she stumbled. They were all lurching and falling in their haste. Above them millions of tons of snow loosed and gathered speed as it roared down the mountain, consuming everything in its path.

  They reached the lea of the buttress just as the first white torrent swept over them in a howling, thundering darkness. They huddled together, Tathea in Ishrafeli’s arms, feeling the strength of his body holding her, shielding her from white, smothering, primeval death. On and on the torrent crashed, deafening and blinding as if the whole world were collapsing in on them, entombing them forever in snow.

  At last the tumult ceased and there was silence, utter and total. Not a crystal of ice moved. Wordlessly Kolliko stirred, uncurling his body inch by inch until he was on his feet. The others followed his example, and then very gently, handful by handful, they began to dig their way out, moving only a little at a time, in case they began another slide.

  Tathea did not count the time it took them to tunnel their way to freedom. She was bitter cold. Even in the heavy fur gloves her hands were numb. She was aware of Ishrafeli beside her, and she kept turning to Salymbrion to see that he was all right and not too frightened or exhausted to continue. His back was bent, his dark face pinched with cold and concentration. Only once did he look up and meet her eyes, and in that moment she could see his thoughts, the immensity of his surprise at this vast and terrifying world outside Malgard with its physical violence and crushing weight of despair. He had never known danger before, or loss. It was still like the brilliant blade of a knife whose wound he could only imagine.

  She smiled at him.

  He smiled back and went on working.

  They emerged into an unrecognizable landscape. Everything had changed. A great gouge had been ripped out of the mountain, and the valley floor was filled with walls of impenetrable, blinding whiteness.

  A sudden panic overwhelmed Tathea. She was dizzy. They would be locked in here forever! This shifting mountain would fall again and cover them, buried and frozen into eternity. It was as if in the silence of this lifeless cold she could hear Cassiodorus’s laughter and see Dulcina’s blazing eyes. This was the paralyzing ice of endless hate. She stared at the band of men, Ishrafeli beside her, Salymbrion blinking in the light. She saw in his face a momentary reflection of all she felt, the same horror, the same weakness. Then he straightened up. Kolliko was already moving forward with Vartreth, Shaki, and the others.

  In her heart Tathea heard the echo of Ishrafeli’s song, and as Kolliko moved off, she leaned her weight across the snow and followed.

  For four more days they traveled, always northward into the ice, building shelters at night and sharing the warmth. There was nothing to hunt, and food was rationed: frozen meat, thawed over small oil lamp fires and scrupulously divided. The land was too harsh for anything but elemental survival. Each man protected his neighbor. Nothing must be done alone. Salymbrion watched with fascination and a kind of awe. He had always shared generously; selfishness and envy were not in his nature. But he had no knowledge of interdependence, where life itself rested on a sharing born of necessity. The land was beautiful, but it punished every mistake, without exception and without mercy.

  As Tathea traveled beside Kolliko, her admiration for him grew. He was not without error, but he knew how to recognize and retrieve his mistakes. Whatever terror, pain, or doubt he felt within himself, he never permitted it to show in his face, for the momentary weakness of the individual could become the weakness of the group.

  It was a stark and pitiless land. Between the ridges, shallow lakes reflected the color of the sky. At sunrise they were apricot and such a shade of green it seemed there must be sunken forests within them. At sunset they became purple and bronze and a pink so fierce the water seemed to burn.

  At dawn on the fourth day after the avalanche, a cold, blue day with wind from the north, heavy with the smell of snow, Tascarebus struck. Tathea’s first awareness was the thud of spearheads landing in the ice and a man falling with a shaft sticking out of his back. She watched in sick horror as scarlet blood stained the white fur of his coat.

  She looked up. A score of men breasted the ridge ahead of them and charged down its slope, weapons in hand. She stood paralyzed. Ishrafeli seized her and forced her inside the rough square Kolliko’s men were already forming. Salymbrion stood still, dazed. He had no idea what was happening. He had never seen violence.

  “Salymbrion!” Tathea screamed at him.

  He swung round. Vartreth caught him by the hand and hurled him into the square, still uncomprehending.

  They stood back to back, swords out, ready to fight. For a long moment there was silence. The sky arched milky blue overhead. All around them gleamed the white sheet of ice, and over it moved the attacking men, as if caught in some radiant dream. Then the illusion snapped. As they came closer it was possible to see their hate-twisted faces and the glint of raised steel. The clash of metal soon followed, and the cry of pain as steel bit flesh.

  The fight was fierce and long, but the square held. As one man fell another took his place. The wounded were hauled to the center to join Tathea and Salymbrion. Tathea knelt to do what she could for them, binding their wounds with strips torn from their own clothing. Salymbrion stared at her without understanding. She realized with a new sense of shock and sharp pity that he had never seen physical injury in Malgard. He knew the word for “death” because Ikthari had spoken it, but he did not know the reality. He was only now truly beginning to taste the first terrible comprehension of the choice he had made.

  “Help me!” she commanded him.

  Obediently he knelt beside her, his face twisted with knowledge of his own uselessness.

  Another injured man stumbled into the square, bleeding profusely, and Tathea eased him down onto the snow.

  “Stick your fist into that wound!” she ordered Salymbrion. “Tear the corner of his coat and pack it in to stop the blood.” She worked with her knife to cut strips from her own jacket.

  Salymbrion stared wide-eyed as one man’s life slipped away and there was nothing they could do to save him.

  “What happened?” he asked, bewildered as a child. “He’s gone! Why?” He swung his arms wide to embrace the battle only a few yards from them. “Who are they? Why are they doing this?”

  “He’s dead,” she said quietly. “We must help the next one.” She crawled over to a man with a broken and bleeding arm.

  Salymbrion stayed where he was on the ice. “But what about him?” he demanded. “We can’t leave him!”

  “Yes, we can,” she answered. “He’s dead. Come and help me here.”

  “But where is his spirit?”

  “I don’t know!” she shouted, suddenly sick and horrified and racked with nausea at the sight of so much blood. In the freezing air she could not smell, not as she could have in Shinabar, but her mind supplied what her senses could not, filling her nose and throat with the stench till it stifled her. “Help me!”

  He heard the panic in her voice, and the despair. Frightened, he came over and did as she commanded.

  Eventually Tascarebus withdrew, wounded but not beaten. The men stood in twos and threes, bloodied and weary, except for four who lay unmoving in the snow, never to rise again. Shaki bent over one of them, his face bleak, eyes narrowed to stare at the lowering sun, silent as one who sees the light fade and does not look for dawn.

  For a moment Tathea did not comprehend, then realization came like a wound to her own flesh, shocking her, robbing her of breath. Kolliko was dead.

  Each man looked at his neighbor, then at the bodies of the fallen. The shadows across the snow were long, and there was a thin, warm streak of light across the western sky.

  Shaki straightened. “Vartreth,” he said, and a moment later the name was repeated by a score of throats.

>   Salymbrion was close beside Tathea. “What is it?” he asked with a frown.

  “Kolliko is dead,” she whispered back. “A new leader is needed.” She looked at his face, grief dawning in it as he thought of the wounded men they had watched die and realized that this too had happened to Kolliko. The wonder of loss was in his eyes, amazement at the pain.

  There was no time to hesitate or think. The night and the cold would wait for no one. Vartreth accepted leadership. He detailed two men to bury the enemy’s dead. Tathea continued to do what little she could for their own injured, working with stiff fingers and a desperate urgency. Shaki began the ritual for the dead. With a knife he cut a small piece from each man’s clothing, shaved the fur from it and stitched it into a pouch. Then they all stood facing the westering sun, at attention, as if for inspection by a prince.

  Vartreth called each dead man’s name and asked if there were a kinsman among those left. That man then stepped forward and drew his sword. From its horn hilt he cut a small wedge and gave it to Shaki with the words, “He was my brother.” Shaki put it in the pouch, tied it tightly, and knotted it round the dead man’s neck. If there were no kinsman, then the man who had fought at his right hand took his turn with the words, “He was my friend; he stood beside me.”

  When this was done the jackets of the dead were filled with stones from the lake edge, and they were cast into the water, disappearing almost immediately beneath its murky depths.

  For Kolliko it was different. The sun was turning to flame on the horizon and the sky above arched green when they came to him. Tathea stood between Ishrafeli and Salymbrion as one by one the nineteen men remaining came forward and each cut a notch from his sword handle and gave it to Vartreth with his own words: brief, raw, final as death itself.

  “He led me in battle with perfect honor.”

  “He marked my way through an unknown land.”

  “His sword was my shield.”

  “He never failed me.”

  When it was Salymbrion’s turn, he walked forward and looked down at the motionless face, the spirit already gone, the flesh calm, empty of that which had made it unique and marvelous.