The Reavers of Skaith-Volume III of The Book of Skaith

by Leigh Brackett

  The flowers had marked their passage. Long ripples ran across them, streaming far away, out of sight; but there was nothing strange in this except that the ripples ran crosswise to the wind.

  Ashton said, "Eric, when I was lying there pretending not to exist, with the grass and flowers close against me, I got the feeling that—"

  "So did I. There's some kind of sentience there. Maybe the sort of thing that tells a Venus flytrap when to snap shut."

  "Do you suppose they're carrying a message? And if so, to whom?"

  The heath stretched away on all sides, tilting toward the horizon, rough and rumpled, dotted with the twisted thickets and occasional blasted trees. Stark lifted his head and quartered the wind, scenting strangeness, scenting nothing welcoming to man. The faint and somehow treacherous sweetness of the flowers—endless miles of them—caught in his throat. There was nothing in all that emptiness to catch the eye, and yet he sensed presences, things awake and knowing. Whether these were human, animal, or quite other, he could not tell.

  He did not like it. "I'll be glad to leave this upland," he said, "and by the quickest way."

  "That's the way we just came," said Ashton. "Penkawr-Che picked his spot because the hoppers can raid down into the jungle on about a 180-degree perimeter without having to go much more than a hundred miles in any direction. Eventually, the other two ships, which are raiding elsewhere, will rendezvous with him and they'll head north together to see if they can crack that treasure-house under the Witchfires. How much did you have to tell him?"

  "Not as much as he wanted. With luck, he might find that balcony within half a year." Stark frowned. "I don't know . . . The Diviners said that I would bring more blood to the House of the Mother. That's why they tried so hard to kill me. Well, they must fight their battles. We've got one of our own to worry about." He swept his hand across the limitless horizon. "We can't go eastward because of Penkawr-Che. Otherwise, we have a free choice. Any suggestions?"

  "Pedrallon."

  "What about Pedrallon?"

  "He's a prince in his own country. His people bought him back from Penkawr-Che. He has position and power—"

  "Unless his people decided to feed him to Old Sun for his sins."

  "I suppose it's possible, but he's the only person I can think of who might help us, and who is also located where we might conceivably reach him. Andapell lies along the coast somewhere southwest of here."

  "How far?"

  "I don't know. But we could strike for the coast and perhaps get passage on a ship. Or, failing that, steal a boat."

  "The last time I saw Pedrallon," said Stark, "he had very little use for off-worlders even though he was intriguing with them for his own ends. He will have even less use for them now."

  "I came to know him quite well, Eric. There was a lot of time aboard ship, while Penkawr-Che was making up his mind whether to take us to Pax and be satisfied with the payment he'd been promised, or to gamble on his heaven-sent opportunity to loot a world. I think I gave Pedrallon a better understanding of what the Galactic Union is and how it works, and I think he came rather to like me as an individual. Also, he is a dedicated man, to the point of fanaticism. He swore he would go on fighting the Wandsmen, even though his hopes of ever achieving the freedom of starflight are gone. He might even find us useful."

  "A faint hope, Simon."

  "Worse than faint. But do we have another?" Stark brooded. "Irnan has nothing left to fight with. Tregad and the other city-states are an unknown quantity. They may go either way. In any case, as you say, they're out of reach." He shrugged. "It might as well be Andapell."

  Stark let Ashton sleep for an hour. During that time he rattled around the thicket and, by dint of tearing his hands painfully, managed to fashion two clubs from thorn-wood, snapped to the proper length beneath his boot heel. When he could find the right kind of shattered stone, he would be able to provide hand axes or knife-blades as well. In the meantime, the clubs were a comfort.

  The heath was without landmarks, a country in which a man might easily lose himself and wander until he died, unless something took him first, and unaware. Here in the outer reaches of the galaxy the starfields were thin, but Stark found enough old friends to set a course by. When he roused Ashton, they headed west and south, away from Arkeshti, hoping to reach the rim of the upland, where it dropped down to the jungle that lay between it and the sea. Neither one had any idea how far that rim might be.

  But Stark remembered how, months before, he and Ashton had set out together from the Citadel, far in the bitter north, two men alone on a hostile planet. Then, they had had weapons and supplies, and beasts of burden—and they had had the Northhounds. Now they were destitute, and all the labors of that earlier journey had been brought to nothing by the treachery of one man.

  Stark's bitterness was not alleviated by the knowledge that he himself had made the arrangements with Penkawr-Che.

  With all the persuasion of his considerable wealth, the Wandsman Pedrallon had not been able to talk the Antarean into getting involved in Skaith's problems beyond providing a transceiver and keeping a speculative finger on the pulse of things. Only Stark's last-minute intervention, when the starport was already in flames and the ships in the act of departure, had tipped the scales, along with his mention of Ashton's rescue and the rewards to be won by Penkawr-Che through taking him and the delegations to Galactic Center. Stark could not have known what sort of man Penkawr-Che was, and in any case the Antarean had been the only hope available. But these thoughts made Stark no happier now.

  He glanced sidelong at his foster-father, who ought by now to have been almost within sight of Pax and his office at the Ministry of Planetary Affairs.

  "It comes to my mind, Simon," he said, "that if all I saved you for was to walk Skaith perpetually like some landbound Flying Dutchman, I might better have left you with the Lords Protector, where at least your captivity was comfortable."

  "As long as my legs hold out," said Ashton, "I'd rather walk."

  The flowers watched them, rippling. The last of the Three Ladies rose, adding her silvery light to that of her sisters. The heath was flooded with gentle radiance.

  Nevertheless, the night seemed very dark.

  6

  The gray old city of Irnan crouched above the valley. The circle of her walls was unbroken, but the landing of Arkeshti had accomplished in a matter of hours what months of siege and suffering had failed to do. Faced with the choice of renewed fighting or surrender to the forces of the Wandsmen, which would surely come, she found that in fact she had no choice. She was exhausted, stripped, denuded. She had lost too heavily of men and wealth. Above all, she had lost hope.

  Under the light of the Three Ladies, a thin stream of refugees trickled steadily from the open gate and along the road that ran between ruined orchards and obliterated fields still littered with the rubbish of the besieging armies. Most of the refugees were on foot, carrying what possessions they could on their backs. They were those who felt themselves too closely associated with the revolt against the Wandsmen to hope for mercy, or who feared a general butchery when the hordes of the Farers were loosed upon them.

  Within the gate, in the main square of the city, where the buildings of weathered stone stood close around and a few torches burned, a company of men and women were clotted loosely together. More joined them from time to time, straggling from the dark mouths of narrow streets. These bore arms, all of them, for the women of the city-states were trained to battle like the men since they faced the same hazards from the roving Wild Bands and raiders down from the Barrens. They huddled in their cloaks in the cool night, for the valley was high and it was autumn, and they talked in low, harsh voices. Some of them wept, and not the women alone.

  In the Council Hall, beneath the high vault hung with ancient banners, a scant few lamps burned, husbanding precious oil. But there was tumult enough if there was a lack of light. The floor was packed with a shouting, shoving multitude, and on the dais,
where the elders sat, angry men and women crowded about, with raised voices and emphatic hands. The meeting, if it could be called that, had been going on since shortly after Arkeshti's departure.

  The subject was surrender. The mood was fear, the language cruel, and old Jerann was finding there his penultimate martyrdom.

  Beyond the walls, the encampments of the allies were in the final stages of dismantling. Tribesmen in wrapped veils and leather cloaks dyed in the dusty colors of the Six Lesser Hearths of Kheb—purple Hann, brown Marag, yellow Qard, red Kref, green Thorn, and white Thuran—moved among guttering torches, loading their tall desert beasts with provisions and plunder.

  Farther away from the city, arrogantly isolated, the dark-furred Fallarin sat muttering among themselves, striking little angry puffs of wind from out their wings. The Tarf, their agile servants in stripes of green and gold, with four powerful ropey arms apiece, did the work of breaking camp.

  By morning, they would all be gone.

  Beyond them all, the valley lay empty and quiet. But at its upper end, where the mountains closed in and rocky walls narrowed steeply together, was the grotto from which generations of Gerriths, wise women of Irnan, had watched over the welfare of their city.

  The grotto had been robbed of all its furnishings, so that it was more than ever like a tomb. Gerrith, the last of her name, had renounced her status as wise woman, saying that her tradition had ended with the destruction of the Robe and Crown at the hands of the Wandsman Mordach. Yet there were beasts tethered below the entrance, and a dim reflection of light shone from it. On the ledge by this entrance a Tarf stood sentinel, leaning on his four-handed sword and blinking horny eyelids with the timeless patience of his kind. His name was Klatlekt.

  In the outer chamber of the grotto, the anteroom, eleven great white hounds couched themselves, with drooping heads and half-lidded eyes that glowed with strange fires where they caught the light of a single lamp that burned on a high shelf. From time to time they growled and stirred uneasily. They were telepaths born and bred, and the human minds they touched were far from tranquil.

  Three candles lighted the naked inner chamber, throwing wild shadows on the walls of what had once been the wise woman's sanctum. Some few items of furniture had been brought in—a table, a chair, the candelabrum, and a broad, flat basin filled with shining water. Gerrith sat in the chair, a sun-colored woman with the candle flames shining on the thick bronze braid of hair that hung down her back. She had been in this place ever since Eric John Stark walked out from the gates of Irnan into Penkawr-Che's ship. Weariness had drawn shadows at her eyes and etched tight lines about her mouth.

  "I have made my decision," she said. "I await yours."

  "It is not an easy choice," said Sabak, the young leader of the hooded tribesmen. Only his eyes showed between hood and veil—blue, fierce, and disturbed. His father was Keeper of the Hearth of Hann, and a power in the north. "The Wandsmen will surely try to retake Yurunna and drive us back into the desert to starve. We followed Stark, and gladly, but now it seems that we must go home and fight for our own people."

  "For me," said Tuchvar, "there is no choice." He looked at the two huge hounds shouldering against him, and smiled. He was young, a boy only, and he had been an apprentice Wandsman in service to the Houndmaster of Yurunna. "The Northhounds will find N'Chaka if he lives, and I go with them."

  Gerd, at his right side, made a thunderous noise in his throat. Grith, at his left, opened her muzzle wide and let her tongue hang red across her sharp teeth. Both beasts turned their lambent gaze on Halk, who stood at one end of the table.

  "Keep your hellhounds leashed," he said, and turned to Gerrith. "Your mother, in this room, foretold the coming of a Dark Man from the stars, who would overthrow the Lords Protector and free Irnan, so that we might find a better world to live on. So much for your mother's prophecy, so much for the Dark Man. I am not in love with Stark, to waste what life I have in searching for him. My people are waiting for me. We intend to go on fighting the Wandsmen, at Tregad or wherever else we can. I would advise you to come with us, or to go north with Sabak and the Fallarin. Alderyk might even give you sanctuary at the Place of Winds."

  Alderyk, King of the Fallarin, whose shadow lay upon the wall like the shadow of a great bird with brooding wings half stretched, looked at Gerrith with his falcon eyes and said, "You would be safer in the north. If you go southward, you challenge the full power of the Wandsmen."

  "And what of you, Alderyk?" asked Gerrith. "Which way will you go?"

  He cocked his narrow head. He had a smile like a dagger. "I have not yet heard the prophecy. For there is a prophecy, is there not? You would not have called us all here to speak of Stark unless there were one."

  "Yes," said Gerrith. "There is a prophecy." She rose up, standing tall in the candlelight, and the hounds whimpered. "I have seen my own path in the Water of Vision. It lies south, and then south, into a terrible whiteness stained with blood, and the end of it is hidden in the mist. But I have looked beyond the Water of Vision."

  Between her two hands she held a skull, a small frail thing carved in yellowed ivory and worn with the passing of much time. Its tiny, grinning face was flecked with old blood.

  "This is the last fragment of the Crown of Fate. Stark brought it to me from the gallows, on the day we slew our Wandsmen. All the Gerriths who once wore that crown now speak to me through it. Their power has come to me at last." Her voice rang, clear and strong, with a haunting melancholy, a bell heard across hills when the wind is blowing.

  "Halk has said that the Prophecy of Irnan was false, and that Stark is a failed and useless man, to be discarded and forgotten. I tell you that this is not so. I tell you that Stark's fate and the fate of Irnan are bound together as heart and breath are bound, and one shall not survive without the other. Stark lives, and his way, too, lies southward. But he walks in a great darkness, and death lies ahead of him. His salvation depends on us. If he lives to walk that southern road, Irnan will yet be free. If he dies"—she made a gesture of finality—"the star-roads will not be open in our time, nor in any time until long after the face of Skaith has changed—and that change is coming. The Goddess moves, my lady Cold with her lord Darkness and their daughter Hunger. She has sent her spies before. This winter we shall see the first of her armies. And if the starships do not come soon, there will be no escape for any of us from the Second Wandering!"

  She lowered her hands and bent her head and caught a long, unsteady breath. When she looked at them again, and spoke again, she was Gerrith the woman, human and vulnerable.

  "There is great need for haste," she said. "Stark moves slowly, as a man on foot, a man with a burden, amid obstacles. Yet he is far away, and even a mounted force will have difficulty reaching the sea in time—"

  "The sea?" asked Halk.

  "That is where our paths converge, and where his will end if we do not meet."

  She moved around the table and put her hand on Gerd's massive head.

  "Come," she said to Tuchvar. "We, at least, know what we must do."

  They went into the anteroom, Gerd and Grith and Tuchvar and Gerrith; the other eleven Northhounds rose and joined them. They walked out onto the ledge, into the light of the Three Ladies, past the impassive Klatlekt, and down toward the tethered riding animals.

  A buffet of wind plucked at Gerrith's garments and rumpled the coarse fur of the hounds. They looked up.

  "I will consult with my people," said Alderyk. He came flapping down the path with Klatlekt behind him.

  Halk followed, cursing. Sabak, silent, followed him.

  "In one hour," said Gerrith, "we start south, Tuchvar and the hounds and I. We will not wait."

  They rode away, severally, along the valley. The dim light continued to shine from the entrance to the grotto. No one had thought to blow out the candles or extinguish the lamp, or cover over the Water of Vision. And not even the wise woman gave a backward glance.

  The last prophecy of Irnan h
ad been made.

  7

  Stark awoke instantly at the touch of Ashton's hand. The grudging rebirth of Old Sun stained the heath with a level flood of bloody light. The birds stood in it, their plumage touched to a burning gold on one side, shadows flung darkly on the other. There were about thirty of them. They watched the two men from a distance of a hundred feet or so, the flowers nodding around them.

  "They came so quietly," said Ashton, who had been on watch. "I didn't realize they were there until the sun came up."

  There was something unnatural about the silence of the birds, and their patience. Stark would have expected them to be noisy with greed and excitement. He would have expected them to attack. Instead, they simply stood there, unreal in that unreal light that caused the landscape to appear tilted and foreshortened, depthless, like a tapestry with golden birds embroidered on it.

  Stark took up his club. He searched for stones. One of the birds lifted its head and sang, in a very clear and flutelike voice—the voice of a woman singing through a bird's throat. The song had no words. Yet Stark straightened, frowning.

  "I think we've been forbidden to kill," he said, and clicked two stones together in his hand, measuring the distance.

  "I felt the same thing," Ashton said. "Perhaps we ought to listen?"

  Stark was hungry. The yellow birds represented both food and menace. He did not know what they would do if he did kill one of them, for they were numerous and powerful. If he provoked an attack, it would not be easy to fight them off. Besides, they seemed to have some purpose, and that wordless song had struck a note of strangeness which made him reluctant to do anything rash until he knew more about what was afoot.