by Clark Bolton
It slowly became a valley, and when it did As-Cheen led them through some trees to a cliff face. Here plants formed a thin curtain, blocking off a shallow airy cave. As-Cheen peered silently in, and then for the first time Ich-Mek saw her kneel and pray.
“Is it a shrine?” Ich-Mek asked softly of Tass, who had come to stand beside him.
“It was her home,” Tass replied reverently.
Ich-Mek raised his eyebrows in wonderment, then began slowly walking along the thin wall of plants. These plants did look intentionally planted to him, for each narrow trunk was planted an equal distance from the next. The tops of the plants were grasping the rock face of the cliff, almost as if they were holding it up.
“Is this where you lived?” he asked her after a few minutes.
She nodded her head solemnly before coming to her feet. “They are gone,” she declared with a tear in her eye.
“Not all of them,” Tass whispered urgently as he gestured cautiously behind them.
Turning, Ich-Mek could see a number of elves staring at them from the foliage. He could see immediately that they differed from those under the Cold-Mountain. They had brown eyes and black hair; no sign of the white that graced much of As-Cheen’s head.
“I am As-Cheen,” she told them with a smile.
The elves then slowly crowded in to touch her, and then eventually Tass and Ich-Mek. They were obviously intrigued with As-Cheen’s white hair and began pulling on it painfully; some even plucked strands of it. She took all this in stride and even seemed a little flattered by the attention.
Their next journey was a short one. The elves, some of whom were armed with bows and spears, led them to a kind of meeting place that had tall trees protecting it. Here they were asked to stay until decisions could be made about them in the village, further down the valley.
They seemed fearful to speak to either Ich-Mek or Tass, so they let As-Cheen do all the communicating. She didn’t seem too worried, and so Ich-Mek tried to appear the same. Sleeping under the sky was tolerable enough, and here it was actually warm for a change.
As-Cheen ventured off long enough to forage for food, which she brought back in the form of sugar-cane, and even coconuts. The latter intrigued Tass so much that he volunteered to crack them for her.
“The southern province has these,” Tass commented as he used As-Cheen’s dagger to cut the husk away. “You have not seen them in Key-Tar-Om.”
“No, I haven’t,” Ich-Mek admitted. “Seems everything grows here. Do you have apples?” he then asked As-Cheen.
“Not in spring, Ich-Mek.”
“Spring! Are you sure?” he asked as he tried to count the moons since leaving the school. “Too early, right?”
“No, Ich-Mek.”
When he turned the subject to her family, she refused to say much about them. He concluded they were deceased, and that it was taboo to mention even their names. It happened years ago, apparently, after she had been taken to the Cold-Mother. It made him wonder if all the elves here had short lives, particularly since they all looked youthful to him.
When night came he did his best to lure in one of the visiting elves, but they remained aloof. Tass thought it was because they normally hid from the world, and that they didn’t wish to become friendly with those they normally executed.
“I don’t think they intend to murder us,” Ich-Mek said in the elves’ defense.
Tass shook his head adamantly. “To protect one’s home is not murder.”
“You sound like Shu-Whet!” Ich-Mek retorted. “Killing for no reason is murder.”
“Spirits have reasons.”
“Yes, and the Regent has reasons!” he replied angrily. “He is still trying to murder me.”
Ich-Mek was beginning to think he understood why Tass called elves spirits. They were so rarely seen by men that they became only stories, and legends. This place was one, he thought.
Chapter 20
Utak-Bek-Tambaloon, or just Loon, was one of the few elves Ich-Mek was able to have conversations with. Ich-Mek concluded he was an elder, though he looked younger than Tass. Somewhere along their short journey down the Valley of Steam they had picked him up, and though others followed they tended to disappear after a day.
“This the only village?” Ich-Mek had ask Loon, though As-Cheen had already declared it was.
“Yes, Mek, it is our place.”
Ich-Mek had been expecting something on a par with the Pus-Don village outside of Key-Tar-Om, but they had no permanent structures, and certainly none of stone. Bamboo appeared to be the choice construction material, but there wasn’t even much of that. Instead the elves were spread out in the thin forest, he had been told.
They were provided a hut, plenty to eat, and then seemingly all but forgotten about. There had been a brief discussion of the Cold-Mother, but that had quickly been hushed by others, including Loon. The only sign of contention seemed to be the ever present ice-fog.
“How many days do you think, Tass?” Ich-Mek had asked on the subject of when they would depart.
“Spring would be best,” Tass replied.
Loon was sitting and watching them, and seemed particularly interested in the scrolls Ich-Mek had produced. They were Ich-Mek’s only possession now, and he had been a little wary to reveal he had them at first.
“Spring will not come to the mountain, I think,” Loon ventured as he looked up toward the hidden sky. “You should not wait.”
“Do you want us to go, Loon?”
Loon shook his head. “I see wonder in you, Ich-Mek. You would make a good friend.”
Ich-Mek smiled at him, then went back to his scrolls. He had brought every spell-scroll he had found in the remains of the library under the Cold-Mother. It seemed obvious to him now that the previous Owesek-mages had hidden the library from the elves. It had been placed in a seemingly forgotten cavern, which had clearly been outside the influence of the Mother.
He had also brought a few scrolls that had no spells inscribed on them. These he had come across by accident, and they included a letter between two mages; Owesek-mages, he knew, for their seal was upon it. It made him wonder how they produced it.
“Do you know of the Owesek?” he suddenly thought to ask Loon.
“No, Mek. I cannot read.”
He thought for a moment, then asked, “Can anyone here read, Loon?”
“Only As-Cheen,” the elf replied. “She will protect us from the Mother’s wrath.”
He thought to ask then how many elves there were, but stopped himself. It would be prying, and that As-Cheen didn’t like, so he expected Loon wouldn’t either. By his own estimates, Ich-Mek guessed there were only a few hundred in this valley. Tass had commented that there were no cultivated fields of any kind, so the both of them had concluded few could live here.
When As-Cheen walked out of the trees, he could see she was concerned about something. He wondered if it was because he was showing scrolls to Loon – not that she suggested he not do it, but rather that it would seem demeaning somehow.
“Just memorizing,” Ich-Mek told her as she came into the hut.
She ignored him after a glance, then turned to tell Loon, “The Mother is distracted.”
Loon jumped to his feet, and came to squat at the hut’s door. Ich-Mek got up to look out as well, and could see now that the skies looked clearer.
“She is tired of looking for us, maybe?” Ich-Mek suggested.
“No,” As-Cheen replied in a low tone. “She looks upward.”
Loon then stood, and walked out into the trees, followed closely by As-Cheen. Looking back at Tass, Ich-Mek wondered if they should follow. Tass looked uninterested, so he left him behind.
The two elves moved quickly, and so Ich-Mek had to nearly run to keep up with them. It wasn’t until they could clearly see the peak of the Cold-Mother that the two stopped. Ich-Mek hadn’t been able to see it in half a moon, and now it looked truly spectacular.
“It’s like a reflection of itsel
f,” Ich-Mek commented as he came to stand beside them.
The peak now had a vast cone-shaped cloud over it that seemed to mimic the mountain itself, only it opened skyward rather than downward like the mountain. Ich-Mek couldn’t recall ever seeing such a cloud before, but then he thought differently.
“Reminds me of the dragon-cloud,” he told the two elves.
As-Cheen looked at him somberly for a moment, then went back to staring at the mountain. “Something flies within the cloud,” she said calmly after a minute.
A chill ran up his spine as he looked to see how serious she was. He then swallowed hard as his heart began to race. I need to get my scrolls together, and more food, he told himself in a panic, though he still couldn’t actually see anything in the cloud.
“What is wrong, Ich-Mek?” Loon asked.
“Ahh…we could be…seeing something,” he replied.
Unable to say the word dragon, he thought again about running back to Tass, who might have a suggestion about what to do. Not that there really was anything to do other than run, he told himself. Tugging on As-Cheen’s arm, he tried to get her to come back to the hut.
“You know what this is,” she declared as she looked at him fiercely.
“No!” he was quick to say. “Just another reason to leave, I think.”
He was now thinking it unwise to mention dragons until they were alone. Elves and dragons were often mentioned together in legends, but not these elves, he suspected. He pulled on As-Cheen’s arm again and she finally relented, and so the three of them headed back to the hut.
Other elves were there now, and they looked as agitated as As-Cheen. She did her best to calm them, and, to her credit, he thought, never once suggested dragons. They were like the Pus-Don, he realized suddenly, which made him wonder where their equivalent of dragon-mages were.
“The Cold-Mother,” he mumbled to himself as an answer.
“Can you signal the Cold-Mother?” As-Cheen asked him without warning.
The question threw him for a moment. He wasn’t sure what she was asking, and looking at her questioningly didn’t help.
Ich-Mek shook his head. “I don’t have such a spell…if that’s what you’re asking.”
“No, can you show the Mother we have gone? That we have left the mountains?”
He thought for a while before saying, “I could maybe get her attention…if I tried hard enough. But that…would be stupid.”
“Not stupid!” she declared as she turned and hurried into the hut.
He found her hurriedly packing when he walked in, with Tass looking on with concern. There was no need to discuss anything, he told himself as he motioned for Tass to get ready as well. Folding up the scrolls carefully, he then stuffed them back in the bag they had made from a blanket. He considered asking As-Cheen if the elves had something better, then decided now wasn’t a good time.
“We will find food along the way,” As-Cheen declared as she stowed her dagger, and then grabbed a bag.
“Where do we go?” Tass asked Ich-Mek with a warning glare.
“To your village, Tass,” Ich-Mek then volunteered.
As-Cheen didn’t object when he looked at her. She instead just shouldered the bag and walked out.
__________________________
Loon led them for most of the first day after they had left the Valley of Steam behind. The south entrance to the valley was protected by cliffs, which they had to climb up, rather than descend, as Ich-Mek had expected.
“It is a bowl,” Tass told him when they had paused at the top of the first cliff to look back down into the valley.
The way up involved countless little steps, and finding concealed ropes, and even ladders. Numerous handholds carved into the rocks helped, but still the two men found it prudent to use the climbing techniques they had honed previously. Loon and As-Cheen had no need for ropes, or levitation spells, and so were always a distance ahead of them.
Loon left them when they came in sight of a rushing river. Ice still clung to its banks, and it looked more than capable of carrying them further south if they were to fall in. At first there seemed no trail to follow, but with instructions from Loon, As-Cheen was then able to lead them against the flow of the river.
“We don’t have to cross the Cold-Daughters, right?” Ich-Mek asked Tass, who was walking behind him now.
“No, this is the Poss River, I have been near its headwaters.”
“Then we are near your village?”
Tass chuckled sadly for a moment. “No! We are very far,” he said crossly.
As-Cheen seemed in an equally bad mood and wouldn’t speak to him. He began to wonder if he had done something wrong but couldn’t fathom what that might be. It wasn’t until the Cold-Mother came back into view that she spoke.
“When will you alert the Mother?” she suddenly asked him.
He looked at the hovering cloud far off on the horizon, and decided it would be best if they put even more distance between it and them before doing something they might regret. Not knowing exactly how to do what she was asking made him a little embarrassed suddenly.
“I think we should wait…until we are closer to Tass’s village.”
“Ahh!” Tass objected loudly. “I will not lead spirits to the home of my people.”
Ich-Mek held up his hands to try and calm his friend. “Halfway, then?” he suggested to the two of them.
__________________________
“Your house made of bamboo, Tass?” Ich-Mek asked as they left the headwaters of the Poss River behind.
“You are dragon-mage…else I would spit on you,” Tass replied in a huff.
As-Cheen giggled at Ich-Mek, which he was happy to hear. She hadn’t done that in days, and now that the Valley of Steam was half a moon behind them, she must be finally getting into a better mood, he thought.
He then recalled what this moment meant: he had promised to attract the attention of the Cold-Mother somehow, once they had reached the source of the Poss River. Now here they were, crossing the barren steps that Tass assured them was a wide pass. On the other side of it they would descend into the next of the nine provinces of Ibu-Jek: the province of Wa.
“Are there no people around?” he asked Tass, who still looked a little cross with him.
“No.”
“Thought you had been near here. Why come if there are no people?”
“Traders come rarely. They follow the Poss River into Teng-Ju province.”
Ich-Mek looked around at the bleak landscape. They were above the tree-line – Tass had told him this earlier – so nothing but short, springy grass grew here. It was mostly free of snow, and turning green.
“Where’s the road?” Ich-Mek asked.
“No road! Only camel dung.”
“How—” Then he cut himself off, as Tass obviously wasn’t in a talkative mood. “Find a place out of the wind…then I’ll…do something,” he promised.
They settled for a group of lichen-covered boulders. Here Ich-Mek sat down and began combing through his scrolls, all the while thinking about how to grab the attention of the Cold-Mother. The best he could come up with was a dream spell.
“I can talk to someone in my sleep with this,” Ich-Mek informed As-Cheen, who had come to squat beside him, “…and maybe they can talk back.”
As-Cheen looked with concern off toward the southeast – the direction the Cold-Mother lay. The mountain had faded from sight many days ago, and since then they had hardly talked about it.
“What will you say to the Mother?”
He lifted his eyebrows in surprise, showing he hadn’t thought about that fact. “Aaagh…goodbye, I guess.”
“Nooo!” she objected. “Tell her I seek other snow-masters. Ones whose hearts are not frozen.”
“Where?” he asked incredulously. “Thought you never meet any other elves.”
She smiled weakly but didn’t say anything, so he turned back to the scroll. Thinking it was best he didn’t know anyway, sin
ce then he couldn’t inadvertently tell the Mother, he began to memorize the moderately difficult spell.
When he was done he noticed As-Cheen had laid out some blankets for him. It appeared all he needed to do now was fall asleep. He then realized he was way too nervous for that.
“I will calm you,” As-Cheen informed him when she apparently noticed his anxiety.
“Okay,” he said as she motioned for him to come lay down beside her.
He lay down, then rolled on his side, facing her, as she sat cross-legged. When her hands began messaging his neck and shoulders, he just stared blissfully at her legs, and soon he didn’t have a care in the world.
“Why does she want me?” Ich-Mek grumbled to himself as he walked.
He was surprised to see the door was open this time, and there were no guards to be seen. Leaving the white corridors behind him, he headed toward the Mother’s audience hall. In the entrance chamber, Shu-Whet was standing with his back to him, which was surprising as the elf was normally very aware of his surroundings.
When the elf failed to move at all, even after Ich-Mek cleared his throat softly, he felt compelled to ask, “The Mother calls?”
Shu-Whet didn’t even twitch, and when Ich-Mek dared to step around him, he saw that the elf’s face was partially covered. The whole right side of his face, in fact, had a swath of cloth that blocked the eye and even the corner of Shu-Whet’s mouth. Ich-Mek felt a twinge of guilt at the elf’s apparent injury before deciding it was best not to keep the Mother waiting.
He saw her now, standing at the end of the hall, near the throne she often sat on. Approaching, he then bowed low, and awaited the usual berating.
“Your apologies…dragon-mage apprentice…come too late,” the Mother informed him with her loud, gravelly voice. “How do you justify your life?”
