A blue deer with antlers clear as ice.
But that cannot be! Kor, do you see it too, or am I mad?
Look, he answered me, a hush in him. There are more ahead.
The deer ran before us, sharp hooves flashing, grass swishing around its flanks, high-held antlers glinting in the light, all beneath the green seawater. And there were more proud heads raised, dark eyes regarding us. Spotted deer, and dappled deer of soft hues, and a stately yellow deer with antlers that spread as wide as its body was long, and the great-maned elk towering over the others, and a tined deer, no larger than a middling-small dog, that jumped clear of the grass and swam a small distance, gazing at us. And everywhere the does, the hinds, the long-legged fawns as creamy as rich milk, and the blue stag prancing—I trembled, feeling something catch in my throat worse than any fishbone.
Ai, the eagles!
I heard it in Kor, too—the anguish, the wonder. Then I saw. Birds were flying in the water. The ernes, the white sea eagles such as I had never seen, but I knew them from the lore, the campfire tales told since I was a boy. And the black eagles of the mountaintops—them I knew, for it had been but a few years since they had disappeared from over the eversnow. And great swans—the sight of them filled me with such joy and longing that I hurt. And many smaller birds of varied bright colors, the pink doves, yellow wren, bunting, redbird, jay of Sakeema with feathers each of a color more true than the last. And the white owl, long gone from the world of men … And, by my grandfather’s braids, the peregrine! Soaring with an easy majesty that made me gasp and sputter on salt water. And many, many others, as many as the deer below.
Follow, Kor ordered.
Though they dipped and flocked and eddied and swirled like the sea currents, nevertheless the birds seemed all bound toward one place. We drifted after them, gawking. I saw an undersea hilltop all in a pattern of round trees bearing bright, downhanging fruit. I saw a gliding squirrel slip through the water while small fishes crossed its path. I saw a pair of ringtails questing with their soft paws and curious pointed snouts. Kor and I surfaced for air. The world above the waves, empty sunlit sky, seemed strange and distant now that we had seen what wonders lay below.
The green-lit land beneath us seemed to be rising from hilltop meadowland to steeps and dark crags. I glimpsed a bear rounding a brown spine of rock. Ahead of us, then around us, spires soared in crazy shapes, steeper than any alps on dry land, pitted with caves. On the lip of one of them lay a great tawny cat, stretching.
Ai, Kor, the wolves—
Don’t, Dan. I cannot bear it.
The wolves, standing regally to watch us pass, their eyes green and yellow and dusky violet, their pelages red and raven black and buff, milk-white and gray and as orange as the trunk of a drymountain pine. They opened their mouths as if they were panting. Their tongues lolled, their white teeth glinted like stars. One seemed to bark, but we did not hear him. Except for the burble of water swirled by our passing, we heard nothing. All seemed as silent as death.
Black peaks loomed ahead.
Mountains of Doom.
Legendary heroes, Chal and Vallart, had sailed here once. This was Mahela’s realm.
She has—she has taken the creatures, Dan, all the creatures of Sakeema, taken them away from the land.
Grim peril in that. We would meet with enmity here.
But why?
Already I knew the answer. Were they not beautiful? I could not hate Mahela too harshly for coveting such beauty. But she had bereft us.
The great glutton, my folk call her, Kor mindspoke me. She feeds and feeds. Her maw is as wide as the sea.
We rose for air, cast a glance at the sky, wider yet, wing of the nameless god who cherishes all but sometimes sleeps.… In the sunshine we could see on the water the wavering forms of dark peaks, like shadows. The Mountains of Doom reached to within an arrowshot of the surface.
We breathed well, looked at each other, able to tell nothing from the look—two seals, forsooth!—unwilling to mindspeak our fears. Flippers touched, perhaps by chance. Then we dove.
Have you any plan, Kor? It was my quest, but he had been here once before, however briefly.
Only to scout, for now.
Are there guards?
I do not remember any. And why would they stop us? This is ocean, after all, and it is not so strange a thing, two seals swimming in the ocean.
He was querulous, not as sure as he tried to sound. And I should not have asked, for I knew as well as he that there was nothing for it, when we did not know the ground, but to go on as best we could.
People!
Why should it have surprised me to see humanfolk walking on that undersea land, when I had already seen deer and wolves and creatures of many sorts? But it did, perhaps because some of them were in bright garb such as I had never seen, raiment out of one of Tassida’s tales of the old times long past, tunics and baldrics stitched in close broidery, and deep-hued cloaks that floated and flowed, and boots that reached to the thigh. And on some heads circlets of sunstuff, and on some shoulders clasps of sunstuff and jewels. These were goodly men, bearded, dark of wavy hair, of no tribe that I knew, and none of them old. And the women were goodly also, in long, full gowns of cloth that shone. And children! Many beautiful children, almost more than there were men, small children and taller ones, each supremely beautiful, their delicate, clear-skinned faces somber—for they did not act as children ought, but walked quietly in handsome clothing. The birds that flew above them were livelier.
And horses as shapely as Calimir, in all of the splendid colors, blue roan, blood bay, white sometimes spotted like a lily petal, many more colors than I can name. They were not ridden or even led, perhaps because of the steepness of the land, but roamed loose and unconstrained along with the people and creatures of varied sorts. I saw a singing heron walking on stiltlike legs, and gair fowl, and a white weasel running between the rocks, and a family of foxes, white, russet, blue. All were bound, like the birds, toward some single place, all toiling up the black crags.
’Ware, Kor warned, the thought as low as a whisper, as if he feared someone could hear us.
I looked ahead. The highest peak, stark and looming, nearly at a level with us as we swam. On it, aglow with a pearly gleam, a structure I could not understand. If it were a ruler’s seat of honor, the largest I had ever seen. A sort of platform, crowded now with people and beasts of every sort, and more stood on the crags round about, the throng of them flowing down the steeps like a mantle. An eminence centered on the platform, something carved into shapes stranger than those of the Greenstones, more fanciful than driftwood, and shimmering even at the distance like a full moon, ten times full. There sat—someone, I could not look. Kor and I drifted off to one side. It was she, Mahela, I felt sure of it. The place was her hold. But what might be the purpose of the bare pines, oddly branched, that towered above her nearly to the ocean’s surface? Hangings swayed down from them, banners decorated with many devices. On one I thought I saw the emblem of the Red Hart.
Dolphins, Kor mindspoke gladly. We are not the only swimmers here.
Indeed, we had seen no fish since we had come near the peaks. The dolphins came toward us from behind Mahela’s platform, a brace of them, somewhat above us and one to either side. We watched the graceful rainbow shapes of them as they swam, not at all afraid of any creatures so surely blessed by Sakeema. Moreover, they came nowhere near us, or even seemed to notice us. But the sunlight slipping down through the green water seemed to lessen slightly, as if a shadow had floated over us, a cloud had happened into the way of the sun.
Of one accord Kor and I started toward the surface. It was time and past time for us to breathe.
And the shadow caught us with fine mesh. We were netted as neatly as Kor in his youth had netted doves, caught like great, flopping fish. The dolphins circled below us and back toward Mahela, closing the trap.
No! Peril made me feel human again. My panic fear of drowning took hold of me
, and I could not think.
Tear it with your teeth! Kor thought to me.
I tried, and so did he. But the stuff was as fine as spiderweb, and far tougher, and the pounding of my heart seemed to take up all my strength. We were being towed along farther from the surface, toward the undersea goddess who ruled death. I did not care to think of death.… I needed air, my vision was blackening. Everything was going—black as the Mountains of Doom.…
Chapter Ten
I remember the spotted wildcat first. It was lying at Mahela’s feet. I saw only her feet, dainty feet, shod in slippers that lustered like pearl, draped by the slittered hem of a gown all the colors of abalone—I looked no farther, for I felt weak, and I was lying on the platform.
Kor?
Here.
Somewhere close by me. A low, wary tone in his reply. I centered myself and looked up. Just waking as I was, it did not much surprise me to see him in human form, and I half hoped we were back where we belonged, wandering some woodland.… But he was naked, and he stood before Mahela.
A hand stirred before my eyes—it was my own. As human and as naked as he, I stumbled to my feet and stood by my comrade’s side, swaying like seaweed for a moment until my head cleared. As if bound in one place my eyes looked only at Mahela’s bosom, the white rise of her breasts covered by a ruffle of gown that floated in pink and lavender frills like those of a sea slug. Floated.… Green water all around me, and I knew it was chill, but I did not feel it. I was breathing it.
Kor … are we dead?
If we are, then it is the third time for me, and that is three too many.
“Cover yourself, fool,” a cold voice said.
Like a snake through the water the words came, smoothly, eerily, nothing of earth about them, no waft of breath, no mortal warmth. Deity had spoken: I felt the sense of it crawl through my shoulder blades to my spine. With small dignity I layered my hands over my cock. It seemed all too meager a modesty. Kor, I saw, had done the same.
“Not you, Korridun.” Something different in the watery voice. “You, I want to regard. All of you.”
Startled, I raised my caught eyes and saw—how could it be Mahela who spoke? She was—feathered neck and head of her, a huge cormorant, a glutton-bird, glossy black crest and white throat, hard eye that did not blink, great, hard hooked beak with a dangling pouch like that of a pelican. Her snake-long bird’s neck rose erect from just above her half-naked human breasts.
“Come, Korridun, my prize.” Yes, it was she who spoke, for I saw the horrible clacking of her beak. “Be more easy.”
She sat on a massive sort of cushioned bench with mighty arms and a tall back, the cushions edged with fringe and tassels, the whole of it carved in shapes of all the creatures of Sakeema. Stones glittered where their eyes should be, and their lifeless bodies gleamed with sunstuff and pearl. One of her pale hands draped over a carved eagle’s beak. A real eagle—if it could be called real, breathing green salt water as it was—a snow-white eagle perched on the back of her seat above her shoulder. A great moon-gray horse stood beside her, and a mighty maned elk, and bearded men with no expression in their eyes, and by her right shoulder in a pot of carved wood stood—a tree, a small tree, no taller than I, its slender branches bent with the weight of round, blue fruits. That tree was a prisoner like the others, Mahela’s most prized captive and shaper of our fate, all of us, though at the time I did not know it. My glance ran past it to the other trees, the strange bare trees, birds clinging to them, long banners hanging down. Devices on them of every tribe I knew, the Herders’ six-horned sheep, the fanged stallion of the Fanged Horse Folk, the hook-jawed salmon of the Otter River Clan, snowpeak of the Cragsmen, and Kor’s people’s emblem and mine, and many more symbols I did not know. The ends of the banners were feathered into seaweed shapes, and they twisted and floated in the currents—everything was aflutter in the shifting seawater. This place dizzied me, and the sight of Mahela made me feel faint. Her great seat lifted her well above the level of us who stood before her.
“Raise your hands,” she ordered Kor.
He had not moved except to stiffen where he stood, but now he complied, saluting her, turning humiliation into an envoy’s gesture of greeting. Mahela was not deceived. She lifted her long, bone-colored beak in a gesture of victory. “My people, is he not beautiful?” she cried.
There was a murmur of assent, a muted cheer. The wildcat raised its head and snarled. I had scarcely been conscious of the throng of folk and creatures at my back, but now I felt my nates tighten at the thought of them, and I wished I had hands to place there as well.
“How come you by all these people?” Kor spoke to Mahela with all comity, the courtesy so inborn in him, so that even though he stood naked, heart knew he was one monarch addressing another. But she laughed at him, beak gaping wide.
“How? Why, by taking of them! I am Mahela, I take what I will, tame what is wild, conquer what is strong. That which is beautiful pleases me. I have gathered much of it around me.”
Anger gave me courage. “Will you take the mountains, then?” I demanded. “And the sun?” But she did not answer me. She looked only at Kor.
“But nothing so comely as you, young Korridun,” she said in a way that might have been gentle were it not so gloating. “Welcome to Tincherel.”
I blinked, and had I not felt so daunted I would have bitterly laughed. The haven, the name meant. Tincherel: a sheltered place, a refuge. Mahela so named her deathly realm? But of course she would not call it the Mountains of Doom, as we mortals did.
“Young scoundrel, you have made me wait long for you.” Her cormorant eye on Korridun, hard, as a bird’s eye is always. Yet, something more than hardness in her voice.…
He held his head high and steady, his gaze level. “My comrade and I,” he said, “have come to make petition—”
“Since first I caught sight of you,” she went on as if she had not heard him, “when you were but a sweet ten-year-old with a gaze wise beyond your years. Ah, the dark, staring eyes of you! I love to have children by me, but for you I made exception. You were not old enough, then, to provide me with what I craved from you. So I acceded to your mother’s bargain, and waited until the sap had risen in you, and sent one of my minions to bring you to me after a few years had gone by.”
“Devourer,” Kor whispered. For the first time he looked shaken. As well he might.
Time, I decided, for me to try my wiles. I bowed, and as I had hoped, the movement brought her gaze to me. “Most gracious lady,” I said in as even a voice as I could manage, “King Korridun and I have come here to petition you for the sake of my father, Tyonoc of the Red Hart, and for Korridun’s mother, Kela of the Seal Kindred, and for their lifemates, Wyonet and Pavaton, if you hold them here.”
“Petition?” She eyed me vaguely, too bored with me even to laugh at me. “But I hear petitions only if it suits my purpose. As it suited me to grant a further span of life to Kela’s son here.” Her glance darted fondly back to Kor.
“You wanted me to live, and took my mother even so?” he demanded.
“I gave her what she asked, took what she offered.”
“You hag,” Kor breathed.
Kor, be careful!
“And you, my scamp, you have proved far stronger than I ever would have believed possible of any mortal.” She seemed not to have heard him, or had chosen not to hear.
“I will have to be stronger yet, it seems,” said Kor between clenched teeth.
“Why? You do not like this visage?” Mahela laughed carelessly, and changed with a watery swirl. She was wholly a woman now, a hard-eyed woman with a white face and hair as glossy black as a cormorant’s wings. Her features were fair enough, finer, indeed, than those of any earthly maiden I had ever seen, except perhaps for Tass. But her lineless face was daunting with vast age, as if it had been smoothed by the workings of water and time. It was like a face of white rock, or ice, rising oddly from the floating, tender-colored gown with its many flu
tings and ruffles, its fringes tipped with pearls. And though her beauty could not be faulted, and though I had never been one to refuse a woman’s offer, I think had Mahela been looking at me I would have backed away from her.
She was looking at Kor, and he stood hard-jawed.
“Nearly ten years you have thwarted me,” she said, letting her gaze caress his limbs, skim his shoulders. “But you are all the better grown for the delay.”
“Look at Dan,” said Kor in a grim voice. “He would like it better than I do.”
Kor! I protested.
Not so?
No!
“Dannoc is good enough for most women.” Mahela glanced at me briefly, and I felt all the peril of her regard. “A bold cock and a ready smile, that is all they want. But you, Korridun …”
She paused, and it seemed as if the sea paused with her. Even its washings grew still as she pondered.
“You are very fair, though you smile seldom. And very strong, but there is a gentleness about you. You are full of wisdom and dreaming. All runs deep in you, beneath a still surface. When you make love to me, your mind will touch me, and your soul, and your heart, not merely your body. You will be mine entirely.”
Her words chilled me. Ai, but she knew him well! “Bold cock” though I was, I could scarcely have borne what was promised him. How was he to endure it? And it was my folly that had brought him before her.
“Mighty lady, you are mistaken.” How could he speak so firmly, with such stark calm? “I can never belong to you.”
“No, my prize, you are mistaken.” Not even an edge to her voice, just a callous certainty. “I know you are not pledged. I know you are yet virginal. As for Tassida, I have sent my servants to dispose of her.”
He staggered as if he would fall. I felt as stricken as he, but also somehow to blame. Forgoing modesty, I reached out to support him, my arms around his shoulders.
“Separate them!” Mahela commanded, jealous, angry.
Handbond, Dan. It may be—the last time.…
Mindbond Page 11
