by Tom Deitz
It had been clumsy going at first—fearfully so. They’d set out at midnight three days back, but their departure from the hold had been ridiculously easy compared to the logistics of navigating those first crucial shots beyond—those in which they were still visible. Being blind, Kylin had been able to tell nothing about the terrain, save to take Rann’s word that it was largely featureless as far as the top of the ridge that surrounded the vale in which the hold was lodged. But Strynn and Rann alike were handicapped by the darkness and the fact that they couldn’t burn torches until out of sight of the hold. Kylin had actually had the advantage there, and once they’d managed those first two shots—which had taken almost two hands—the going had been better. Eventually they’d established a rhythm, with him tethered to Rann by a three-span rope around his waist, through which he’d eventually learned to sense the directions he needed to take by the play of pressures alone. In some ways, in fact, it had been better than walking, for skiing let one slide one’s feet along, and that rendered progress less vulnerable to unexpected shifts in elevation.
Too, they’d acquired an additional advantage they’d neither expected nor could effectively define. It was a kind of … sense of where the others were, or what the others were thinking or doing. Rann said it was almost certainly a function of the way they’d been linked through the gems, the effect amplified by the fact that they were, so far as they could tell, alone out here, with only each other’s thoughts to draw upon. Indeed, at times it seemed they were almost one being, which was also fortunate, because necessity had honed their reality down to three foci: the pure act of steering themselves along, the necessity of maintaining direction, and shrugging off the fatigue that had become a real presence halfway through the first night.
For all his wasted wiriness, Rann was strong, and had spent the previous half eighth in the Wild, skiing constantly. But Kylin got far less exercise in the hold, excused as he was from all but volunteer pedaling on the mining machines, which activity he’d abdicated of late. And Strynn—Though strong for a woman, much of that strength lay in her upper body, for she was a weaponsmith, accustomed to standing in one place and hammering; her legs weren’t conditioned to steady action, and certainly not with the added, clumsy weight her pregnancy conferred. The upshot was that Kylin and Strynn had been forced to rest more than expected, and suffered shooting pains in their calves and thighs that required massages when they halted for meals or sleep. There’d been a small hot spring at the station where they’d sheltered the first night. But since then …
Well, it was getting worse, and they still had, by Rann’s reckoning, half a day to go.
But dawn was approaching, for Kylin could sense a change in the atmosphere, a subtle warming, perhaps, or a shift in humidity as a tiny bit of snow evaporated. And there was a change in the light even he could detect, for they faced full into the sunrise, and the noonday glare that had burned away his sight as a foolish child had not taken all his vision, so that he could still tell extremes of dark and light. The snow went pink at times like this, Strynn said. But he had to work to recall what pink was.
In any case, Rann was slowing, and not only from the increased pitch of the slope they’d been navigating for the last half hand. Kylin likewise slowed, lest he impact his companion unaware. He heard Strynn swish up beside him as Rann came to a halt.
“Something wrong?” Strynn asked breathlessly. Kylin felt the warmth of her closeness, more real to him than the trees he only assumed loomed about.
Rann shook his head—Kylin could tell by the way his clothing rasped against itself. “I don’t think so. But something feels … odd.”
“Can you be more specific?” Strynn persisted, leaning against Kylin for casual support.
“Not really. Just a feeling that there’s one more element out here than there ought to be. It could just be the presence of birkits. It has something of that feel. But my ability to sense them had all but vanished by the time I reached Gem-Hold.”
“You didn’t have a gem then,” Kylin countered.
“That may be the difference,” Rann conceded. “In any case, you two have been pushing harder than you ought since our last stop. So why don’t you make breakfast? I’ll check out that next ridge east. It should be full daylight by the time I reach it, and it’s higher, so it’d be better for comparing the lay of the land with the map.”
“I’m too tired to argue,” Strynn sighed, fingers already working at the tether. The knot gave, and Kylin felt something less tangible diminish at that, as though that length of mingled hemp, sylk, and cotton had carried some sustaining energy between him and Rann. Not that he much cared at the moment, as he sank down against the tree trunk to which Strynn had deftly steered him.
“Back in half a hand,” Rann called, and sped off down the slope.
Rann couldn’t have explained the sensation any better than he had, and while it wasn’t unpleasant, it was still cause for alarm. The Wild in Deep Winter wasn’t empty of human activity, in spite of what one heard. There were people like Div, eking out an existence by trapping through even the coldest seasons. And there were the ghost priests, who were certainly prepared to dare extended trips outdoors at need. Never mind fools like him, Strynn, and Kylin. And Avall, but best not to think about Avall until they could be reunited. He still lived, and that was enough—for now.
In the meantime, he’d made it to the valley between the ridge where he’d left his companions, and the higher one that was his goal. Indeed, the terrain was smooth enough that he’d been able to build sufficient momentum to carry him partway up the facing slope. But now that he had slowed, he could hear something approaching from the opposite side of the ridge. He glided to a stop, listening, trying to winnow those other sounds from the hiss of his own breathing.
Footsteps, and breathing harsh as his own. Something big, somewhat clumsy, making no care for the noise it made, which ruled out all large predators. Close, too; whatever it was would crest the rise at any moment.
All Rann could think of were the ghost priests, and he had no idea what he’d do if he encountered a band of them out here, with Kylin and Strynn in tow. But this sounded like one entity, though that didn’t negate it being a ghost-priest scout. Holding his breath and moving as quietly as he could, he crouched in the scanty shelter of a patch of snow laurel. Waiting. Grateful for the white cloaks he and his companions had affected.
Closer. Skis appeared, towering over a head so muffled in furs the features would’ve been invisible even had the face-mask not been raised. And then shoulders. It paused there, turning, searching the landscape, as though it too had heard someone. Once that gaze swept by his screen, but on the return, it locked on him. Hands dropped skis and snatched up a crossbow.
Rann’s logic completed the picture. “Div!” he blurted. “It’s me, Rann!”
Fortunately, he had sense enough to remain where he was, though impulse would’ve set him bursting through the brush—likely to receive a bolt from pure reflex.
“Rann?” the figure ventured, even as the crossbow came up.
Rann stood. “It’s me—and two friends one ridge back. But what are you …?”
The bow lowered. They met on the crest of the hill. Fingers fumbled at masks; breath ghosted into the air. Surprise and concern stole what joy would properly have marked their meeting. They hugged perfunctorily, almost shy with each other. “What—?” Rann dared.
“On my way to Gem to see you, of course,” Div snorted. “It was know something or know nothing, and I chose the former.”
Rann shook his head to clear it. “And we were going to your place. Things got too dangerous in the big hold. We’d heard of an abandoned private hold halfway between, and—”
Div pointed back the way she’d come. “Over that hill, no more than two shots.”
Rann’s laughter rang loud in the cold, still air, sounding almost giddy. She regarded him curiously. “What’s funny?”
He grinned. “Nothing—except that yo
u’ve just cut five days off our journey. Now come with me; you need to meet two of my favorite people.”
CHAPTER XIV:
TROUBLE AFOOT
ERON: TIR-ERON-DEEP WINTER: DAY LI-MIDAFTERNOON
Gynn syn Argen-el had been High King of Eron for a little more than two years, but had been a smith all his life. He’d spent most of his youth in North Gorge, where lay the principal seat of his sept, Argen-el, which ruled machines. He’d therefore been spared the bulk of the intrigues that kept Argen-yr and Argen-a perpetually at each other’s throats, and had thus acquired a reasonable level of objectivity. So he thought. So Eellon had also thought, when he’d conspired with the Sub–Clan-Chief of Argen-el and the Chiefs of War, Lore, and Stone to put him on the throne when his predecessor had revealed an invisible imperfection by proving unable to sire even one child, despite three healthy, fertile consorts.
Gynn had no such trouble, and had given-el two boys and one girl, the last of whom had cost her mother’s life when labor had come an eighth too soon and found pale, quiet Ortrarr becalmed, with the rest of her trek, at Five Tree Station. The child had started out rump first, and there’d been no choice but to cut her free. Which Ortrarr had survived. What she hadn’t survived was the plague.
Neither had the elder son. The younger, now twenty-two, lived quietly in Mid Gorge, where he was a subcraft-chief. The daughter was with her mother’s clan, learning how to heal. He’d had no choice. He’d cost them a daughter; he was obliged to give one back.
Now he claimed no consort but Eron.
Yet sometimes he liked to recall that power and position—and royalty—had been thrust upon him, whereas he was first and always a man.
And with all those terrible revelations Avall had bestowed upon him to keep him awake at night, to the point he’d started making lists of projected allies and foes and votes and favors and opinions—well, sometimes it was nice simply to work with his hands, as he was doing now, in the forge beneath the Citadel.
Few outside his clan would have known him: stripped to the waist, with his legs cased in leather hose and his thick black hair bound back in a tail beneath a plain sylk scarf. He could’ve been any healthy man his age in Eron. Except there were almost no men his age, courtesy of the plague, which was another reason he’d gained the crown.
But that wasn’t why he was here—pedaling happily away at a complex lathe that spun a rough-cast cylinder of a new alloy, while cutting edges trued it down to match a metal bore he’d already fashioned. No, he was here to indulge his first passion: making.
He’d been at it a good while, too, by turns pedaling and pouring oil over the involved surfaces lest they get too hot and warp. His legs were sore, his spare-muscled torso sweaty, but the pain was one of achievement, to be enjoyed, not endured.
Still, he’d have to stop soon. He had a meeting with Eellon about whether or not to tell Dallonn of Stone about Eddyn’s disappearance, on which topic he’d changed his mind twice that day already. In any event, the cutting edge had worked its way to the end of the cylinder. It was time to replace it with a broader one, to remove the tooling grooves.
Sighing, Gynn climbed off the pedal platform. His legs were stiff—sign of a winter’s inactivity—but the floor felt so cool beneath his hose that he didn’t bother retrieving his shoes. Blissfully unshod, he padded to the tool cabinet and sorted through cutting heads until he found the one he needed. It looked more like a chisel than anything else, save that the edge was as keen as the sharpest knife and made of the hardest metal Argen-el had yet contrived—a secret his sept didn’t share even with-yr and-a.
Perhaps he hadn’t wiped all the oil from his fingers. Or perhaps his hand was a trifle numb from working the lever that moved the cutter. Whatever the cause, the head slipped from his grasp. He snatched at it vainly, swore in a most unroyal manner, then stared with dreadful fascination as the edge grazed the side of his right foot before he could dance away.
The leather parted neatly, and he thought he’d been spared injury—until his smallest toe informed him that it was, in fact, in pain. Indeed, once established, that pain was quite remarkable. Abruptly dizzy, he sat down on the floor, by turns grateful he worked alone and wishing one of his squires was present when he actually needed one. The pain vanished—returned—vanished again. Blood darkened leather and floor alike in troubling amounts. Holding his breath, he took his belt dagger and enlarged the hole in his hose far enough to inspect the wound.
It was hard to tell for the blood, but it didn’t look as bad as he’d feared. He’d clipped the toe smartly, right at the joint—probably down to the bone. He might lose the nail, but it would grow back. For now, it was a minor inconvenience. He’d limp for a few days; that was all.
But he’d do no more smithing today. Another breath, and he levered himself up—and almost passed out, as pain waged war up his leg. He sat down again, and inspected the wound more thoroughly. Dared to probe the toe—and discovered to his horror that he felt nothing when he moved the tip. And then he saw what blood and a few doughty sinews had obscured. He hadn’t clipped the toe at all; he’d all but severed the joint!
Which he was in no position to tend.
And then another thought struck him: one so dire his brain recoiled from it.
He was King of Eron, and the King of Eron must be physically perfect.
Which he would no longer be—if the toe could not be reattached.
But dared he have it tended? Word would get out, and that could spell disaster, with the matter of the gem still to ponder, most especially whether it should remain a secret or be made public knowledge. This was certainly no time for Eron to be changing Sovereigns. He would therefore wait. He’d limp awhile, but people did that. Broken bones were no deterrent to kingship, and he’d simply give out that he’d kicked a table while working barefoot.
Besides, the wound might heal.
And pigs could fly!
It took all the will Gynn possessed to bind his foot with his sweat-scarf, put on his shoe, and mop the blood from the floor. No point risking the questions such a mess might entail.
He snared his tunic and made for the door, dismissing the new guardsman, Myx, with a terse “I just kicked an Eight-damned table, and I want to be alone with my carelessness right now.”
Myx fled, and Gynn eventually made it up a little-used staircase to his chambers. Fortunately, he’d been his own man longer than he’d been Sovereign, and was perfectly capable of scouring the bath after he’d cleaned the toe. He was also capable of sewing the edges of loose flesh back together, renewing the bandage, and throwing the old one in the fire.
It was harder to hide his naked feet from his squires, but he managed. It was not so easy to hide the limp.
(ARGEN-HALL—DEEP WINTER:
DAY LIII—MIDAFTERNOON)
Tyrill was well aware that even her peers on the Council of Chiefs referred to her as the Spider Chief. Nor was she concerned by that appellation—save, perhaps, as a compliment. She’d even gone so far—once—to wear a gown embroidered with spiders and their webs to a royal fete. It was therefore with a certain amount of glee that, after a number of webs of a less obvious sort had been cast, she began to reel them in.
They took the form of her squires—young women who, in many holds, would’ve been called maids, but which term she despised, because it seemed less in status to that applied to young men—like Lykkon—who performed equivalent duties.
Well, not precisely. A number of Tyrill’s brood came from outside the clan, by way of rescues performed in the guise of good deeds, which coincidentally rendered these young women intensely loyal to her—or afraid, which had the same effect.
She was ready to receive the first one now, where she sat primly in her chambers, clad in clan maroon, with her Craft-Chief’s silver tabard prominently displayed.
A knock sounded precisely at the appointed time.
“Enter,” Tyrill called.
The girl who closed the carved oak door w
as named Lynee. She wore the beige of Common Clan, differenced with a sash of Argen maroon and a silver brooch of Tyrill’s service. Lynee bowed solemnly, and took the ritual cup of meeting silently, before seating herself on a low chair beside Tyrill’s high one. “It took me longer than I’d hoped,” she said clearly, “for which I apologize. But there was need for … circumspection.”
“There was,” Tyrill agreed. “But what I need is results. Confirmation, rather.”
“It is as you suspected,” Lynee replied. “The Roll of Arrivals at Eron Tower has been altered since you sent me there on the forty-first. It appears the whole thing has been recopied.”
“Which implies Lore’s collusion—or else Eellon had Lykkon do it. I don’t suppose you recognized the hand?”
Lynee shook her head. “I’m sorry, Chief, no.”
“No matter. What form did these changes take?”
“The earlier roll listed a visit from Lord Eellon and Lykkon as his squire, a hand and a half after sunset. It recorded the departure of them a hand after that—in company with Tower Warden Veen and two guards named Myx and Riff—along with an unidentified person. The later version only includes the departure of Veen, Myx, and Riff.”
