by Liz Williams
I helped her down and she stood wiping her hands mechanically on her torn jacket, her face weary and defeated.
“Eleres, you don't know how important this is. I have to get back. My companions—they're doing something that could affect everyone.”
“Everyone?”
“Everyone on this planet, perhaps. I don't know.”
“I don't understand,” I told her in alarm.
“It'll take a long time to explain, and we don't have time.”
“Can't you talk to your companions?”
“No, I keep trying but there's no response. I don't even know where they are.”
“Are you sure there's nothing you can do with the boat?”
“I told you, I don't even know what's wrong with it!”
“I know nothing about these things, but you said it had its own defense. Maybe the town defense had some effect on it.”
Shu stared at me. “That's not such a bad suggestion … I'm sure it affects the communication device. Maybe the fields interacted, somehow.” She rubbed a dusty hand over her eyes. “I've got to get back. But it's a hell of a long way— beyond the mountains, on the edge of the Great Eastern Waste.”
“You'd have to cross the Gulf of Temmerar, or go around it … There are supposed to be ways through the mountains, but very few people have ever gone there,” I said. “And it's a dangerous place. Is this the only boat your people have?”
“No. We brought two of them with us. I think my companions have taken the other one.” She frowned. “I was supposed to keep in regular contact. I don't know why they haven't come looking for me.”
“Maybe once we reach the high ground and we're well away from the defense lines, you might be able to speak to your companions,” I suggested. I understood very little of the ghosts'ways, but they seemed to be affected by the defenses, just as we were.
“Very well,” Shu said reluctantly. “Let me have one more try with the boat, first.”
I waited with Morrac while she vanished inside the curves of the boat. He was very quiet, for once. He stood watching the boat, narrow-eyed. At last he said, “How long have you been involved with such things, Eleres?”
“Long enough.”
“These dealings with ghosts could do nothing to help Sereth, though.”
“No,” I said shortly. “We had you to contend with for that.”
Shu stepped out of the boat, and shook her head.
“There's nothing you can do?” I said, but it was not a question I needed to ask.
She sighed. “Better start walking,” was all that she said.
We climbed higher into the mountains. When evening came, I lit a small blaze, to keep out the chill, and we ate in silence. Scrupulously, I gave Shu a larger portion of the rations: it seemed easier to treat her as though she were real and she gave me a grateful, embarrassed glance. I expected Morrac to object, but he said nothing. It had grown very cold, a welcome change to me after the stifling heat of the town. Shu rolled herself up in a light covering of some kind that seemed to unfold out of nothing, and was almost instantly asleep. I settled back against the rock wall, drew my sword to rest upon my knees, and wrapped myself in my coat.
Morrac came to lie beside me, uninvited, and I listened to his breathing deepen. At last he rolled over to embrace me in his sleep and we lay like this, back to front. I was glad of his warmth but I slept fitfully. Voices drifted in and out of consciousness, sometimes clear snatches of conversation, as if overheard. I remember hearing two men talking inTaittic, very clearly, as if the words had covered the thousands of miles from Attury, jumped the mountains and buried themselves in my ear. Somewhere around midnight, the wind rose, tearing at the ground and blurring the stars over the Otrade. I glanced up at the edge of Snakeback, rising in darkness. Nothing moved, only the slow progression of the stars across the sky, until the gray light of the rising sun drove them from the day.
The next day was cooler still, whether due to the waning of summer or to the higher climate of the mountains. The morning air was a cold breath against my skin. At the edge of the small plateau the earth was scuffed, freshly disturbed, and yet I had heard nothing. The air held a rank, pungent odor, spice and carrion, a human smell. Suspiciously, Shu sniffed the air.
“What's that?” she asked. “Animals?”
“Landwalker or road's children.” Jheru, I thought with a spark of hope.
“Someone was here during the night?” she whispered. I saw her shiver.
“Don't worry,” I said. “They'll leave us alone, unless they're very hungry.” As soon as the words were out my mouth, it struck me that this might have been a little tactless. Shu stared at me.
“Well, that's very reassuring,” she remarked dryly. Morrac and I scouted around, but could find no one, and so, cautiously, we moved on.
It was a barren land, golden with lichen, and the earth was dusty. The rocks grew tall around me and the wind blew dust into my face so that I covered my mouth with my collar. Morrac and Shu too were coughing. I smelled water and blood and the warmth of living things, and then that familiar pungent odor again, carrion and rotten skins and the prickle of eyes on my back.
Morrac said, very low, “They haunt the hills. Do you think your friend Jheru's gone to them?”
“I don't know—” but the thought gave me added hope.
The going was rough, this high in the mountains, and I helped the ghost over the steeper places. We made our way slowly, trying to locate a path among the splintered shards of rock. The light passed early and we found ourselves walking through a great curtain of cloud, trailing down from the heights. We had climbed so high that there was already snow on the ground. Toward sunset, the cloud lifted and the wall of the Otrade appeared behind us, touched with rose by the dying sunlight. The light glittered across the snow, running red over spills of ice and vanishing into the hazy air. Above us, high on the cliffs, I saw a house. It was a squat stone tower, the walls glowing a little in the sudden sunlight.
“Look,” Shu said hopefully, chafing her cold hands. “There's a place up there.”
“We could claim hospitality for the night, perhaps,” Morrac agreed.
I did not know the people in this part of the world, although they should be closely enough related to us not to be wholly hostile. I started to walk toward the side of the cliff, seeking a path, but then it seemed as though a great black shadow rose out of the snow and a hollow note rang through the air. For a moment, my vision darkened and when it cleared I was on my knees in the snow. Morrac was helping me up, his face blank with incomprehension and dismay.
“What happened?” Shu gasped.
“Some kind of defenses. Dark energy, underneath the ground.”
The sun went in, and the day was abruptly gone.
“I know this place now,” Morrac said in a whisper. “Satra Dasaya. The winter home of the ai Staren. They say they came from the forests north of Darramada, and that they breed only with one another or those they catch. That house is built on a night line, a dead road.” Shu was gazing at him in horror. He paused, and shivered. “It's said they hunt for pleasure.” This was not a place to walk beyond dark. Hastily, we set off through the snow, heading west, disregarding the falling mist. I did not think that anyone followed.
Here and there lay pockets of fog, trapped in the deep gullies of the mountain, and we took a wrong turning somewhere, losing the path. We struggled along, trying not to miss our footing on the treacherous rocks, and eventually deemed it best to stop and make camp. When the cloud cleared, we found ourselves in an unfamiliar place, a narrow gorge winding between the russet rocks. We picked our way carefully. It is in such places that predators gather. I could not sense or smell anyone's presence, but this was not to say that no one was there. We had been passing through this narrow crevasse for some time when we rounded a corner and the rising wind dashed rain into my face, blinding me.
I felt Shu's hand on my arm, steadying me as I stumbled. I passed a hand across my
eyes to clear my vision, and when I could see clearly, I found myself standing before a column of stone. This was no natural formation, although I had to look carefully to see it. The marker rose from the floor of the crevasse, a rough pillar of mauve-gray stone, bearing, very faintly, the carved whorls of signs. None was familiar to me except one: the series of dots and lines which mark the passage of birds, the migration patterns of ethiet or serai, which leave the mild lands in the autumn and head out to sea to cross the roaring world and spend the winter in the south. Even here, the world rose up to remind me; Sereth had been named for one of these birds, pale eyed and white winged. Morrac recognized the sign as well, for his face grew remote and closed.
I could not distinguish any other marking; signs change as the world changes and the patterns which this stone had shown were no longer there. Inconsequentially, I thought of the ruins which are said to scatter the face of the north; all the places deserted by the world, the meridian lines of earth energy withdrawing or changing. In response to Morrac's questioning glance, I went down on one knee beside the base of the marker and laid my hand on the wet earth. Deep down below the rock itself I felt a current, very faint but very strong, running northward into the mountains. It was not water, but some kind of mineral, and it was continuous, without a pulse. I looked to the south, but could see nothing through the sudden rain. Above the marker, however, a series of footholds in the rock face crossed diagonally upward, and we climbed, slipping on the damp stone but at last reaching the top of a low ridge. The whole of the twilight Otrade was wreathed in cloud, moving swiftly among the peaks. Below, in the valleys of the lower slopes, mist boiled up like steam from a kettle, to be picked up by the wind and tossed streaming into the air. To the southwest, I found what I was looking for: a notch in the cliffs which ran dark against the storming sky, in line with the marker and, to the north, with an outcrop of eroded rock.
“A line of three signs,” Morrac murmured. Those who had marked these old paths knew what they were doing: drawing signs on the face of the world to help the lost. Shu's face was puzzled.
Descending the ridge, we set off to the south.
At length, the dip in the cliffs lay above us. It rose over a steep-sided basin in the cliff face, and there was a curious smell in the air, a chemical odor still strong above the freshness brought by the rain. There were gaps in the rock, steaming with what I first took to be mist, and then saw was smoke. There are such places in Eluide, where the earth opens up and vents gases and even fire. It was not a comfortable place, and only the rain made it tolerable, but it was also clear that the storm had set in for the night and that if we were to go any farther, we would be drenched.
We took refuge in a high cave up in the cliffs and it was there that we discovered the second sign of habitation in the Otrade. The cave widened out toward the back, not deeply, but enough to provide shelter, and someone had hacked out a low bed in the rock wall. There were more of them as one went farther back into the cave, like a series of steps in the rock. This was nothing recent, for there were no signs of life, and no sense of it, either, only the underlying mineral odor. Nonetheless, we investigated the place thoroughly before we judged it safe, and then we sat down on the low ledges to wait out the rain. I do not remember falling asleep, and I do not think I dreamed. When I awoke, with Morrac curled against me, I found that the storm had blown itself out and a wind that spoke of the sea slipped through the valleys. We walked on, with the cloud-ringed summit of the Otrade behind us and the memory of Jheru, like a shadow in the unchanging silence of the mountains, running from me like water.
We camped that night in a cleft in the mountain wall. By early evening, the weather had cleared and the stars lay in a band across the sky: a great sheaf of light like grain. It had grown very cold, and I could smell snow in the air, drifting down from the high lands that rose dimly above us. We lit a fire and slept early. I lay awake for a long time, staring up at the skies and watching the stars wheel across the arc: the ember of Rhe which never leaves the northern heavens for long, the blue star Achaut which heralds snow and the little constellation of Rereth, the marshbird. They were not my stars, not yet. The constellations that rise at your birth make you what you are, so they say, and I was a winter child.
The next few days fell into a rhythm of travel. We saw no sign of the mehed. By now, I had half hoped to have found some evidence of Jheru, who was likely to have followed some of the same paths, but it was as though the world had opened up and swallowed him and all life. I remembered the house of the ai Staren with dread. To while away the time, I had long conversations with the ghost, whom Morrac still preferred to ignore. Shu avoided him, and even though her shoulder was healing, I could understand why. We spoke of all manner of things: places, legends, families,ourselves. At length I began to forget that Shu was a ghost at all, merely a different kind of being, but one that was not so different from myself. One who was, slowly but surely, becoming a friend. Morrac and I spoke little, but there was peace of a sort between us. Once, however, I glanced across the path to look at him. His hair whipped in the rising wind, and his eyes were narrowed against its blast. He did not look human at all, at that moment, and the hair at the nape of my neck prickled.
As we traveled the weather grew colder. By the afternoon of the fourth day, thin drifts of snow had begun to spiral down from the mountain slopes, born on a wind that spoke of winter. Down in the lowlands, summer still lay across the land; here, in the heights, winter prevailed. This far up into the mountains, the skies were blindingly clear, for the formidable winds scoured the cliffs and crevasses clean of mist and revealed a translucent sky, pale as glass washed by the sea. The stars of twilight and sunrise were bright at these altitudes, hanging low over the peaks and casting curious moving shadows visible only out of the corners of the eye. Toward late afternoon, they withdrew from sight behind the mountains, and their evening companions, Eldem and Aro, rose up to lie rosy over the distant peaks. It was a strange, silent journey, with no sound but the soft shuffling of our feet through the light snow save sometimes, at evening, when the ground mumbled to itself far beneath the earth and sent whispers up through the cold air. It was a dry cold, pinching the skin and burning the lungs, but without the shivering aches that the lowland dampness produces in winter, and it was bearable, even invigorating. We slept under canvas now, one of the small light bivouacs typically taken on campaign, which Morrac had—with more foresight than I might have expected—brought with him.
On the fifth day, we gained traveling companions of a kind, a group of the mehed. Anxiously, I scanned their ranks for Jheru, but there was no one among them whom I knew.There were four of them. They came out from a narrow crevasse in the rocks, creeping like animals and bundled in ill-cured furs. Two were women, and two men; their leader was a huntress in middle age, straight backed. They did not lack dignity. The leader reminded me of the old mehedin that Sereth and I had met that day on the road to the summer tower, with a similar sense of pain carried uncomplaining and long. The group did not greet us, but stood and watched our progress for a time, then fell in behind us. They followed us all the way up the pass, and camped when we camped. Morrac and I walked with our hands on the hilts of our swords; Shu kept close behind with her own strange weapon drawn.
We chose an open place to camp, under the circumstances, but had difficulty lighting a fire in the strong wind that flew up the pass. Getting the spark to catch distracted me, and when at last I looked up I saw that the party had been joined by a fifth person, a girl. Her face was pale and peaked; she did not seem well and she shivered in the cold wind. She crept closer to the fire, her gaze on Morrac and me. Shu came round the corner of the rocks and stopped dead. The girl's companions made soft clucking sounds of alarm.
“Put up your blade,” I told Morrac.
He grinned. “If you say so,” he said, mocking.
The girl came closer. Her mouth worked, but she made no sound. She huddled in her furs close to the heat, and soon th
e others joined her, one by one. I knew that they sometimes made fires of their own; I presumed that they came to ensure her safety. They did not eat with us, though we offered them cooked rations, and remained sitting, their glassy gaze upon us. Morrac and I remained wakeful. Shu crawled inside the bivouac.
As the night wore away, Morrac said, “You sleep. You're more tired than I am; you're yawning. I'll keep watch.”
“It's all right,” I said. “I can stay awake.”
“Don't you trust me?” he asked.
I said nothing. Unless he was even more devious than I'd given him credit for, he hadn't touched a drop of alcohol since we left Tetherau. I wondered how loudly the world might be calling to him.
“Get some sleep,” he said irritably.
“Very well,” I said. I intended to lie down, nothing more, but Morrac was right. Sleep overtook me quickly, and I remember seeing him sitting by me, his eyes as golden in the firelight as the blade of his sword and the stars bright about his head.
In the morning, I again awoke to find all around me sleeping, except Morrac, who was perched on a rock nearby, whittling at his nails against the edge of his sword—a habit that always set my teeth on edge.
“I told you I wouldn't sleep,” he said, without looking up.
I wrapped myself more closely in my coat; the morning air was bitter cold. I could tell he was watching me, but I did not look at him. I kicked the embers of the fire into life; caught up by the wind they smoldered and flamed, sending a smell of charcoal into the morning air. Our companions began to stir, rising swiftly like animals, straight into wake-fulness, and Shu emerged sleepily from the bivouac.
Morrac coughed, and his breath rattled in his throat.
“You're not coming down with something, I hope?” I asked him, in some alarm. We were days from anywhere as far as I knew, in a wintry wind. And besides, he was intolerable when he was unwell.
“No, I'm perfectly all right,” he snapped. “Stop fussing. It's the smoke, that's all.”
