The Seventh World Trilogy omnibus

by Rachel Starr Thomson

  * * *

  For Stocky’s sake Michael hired a band of experienced men to accompany them on the mountains. They set out together early the next morning under a heavy grey sky. Kris went with them, watching Michael carefully. The young clann leader had drawn into himself. He said very little as they hiked up the steep sides of the northern heights.

  Michael trudged forward silently, every step full of determination. The weight of responsibility was heavy on him. His troubles loomed like the mountains before him, and he knew he must conquer them or die trying. His worry and despair focused themselves on the peaks they traversed, high sentinels of rock and snow. Could he only reach the top of a single peak; could he stand at the highest height of the far north; then he might see what his father had seen, might hope as his father had hoped, and nothing in the Green Isle could defeat him.

  The sun failed to lighten the world as it rose, disappearing instead behind ever-greyer clouds. Snow began to swirl around them, drifting in strong blasts of wind. Short-lived flurries swallowed them entirely, the guides disappearing ahead of the little band only to reappear when the wind died down. The snow vanquished place and time, and for a moment Michael found himself alone.

  The wind in his ears echoed from the past. As a child Michael had begged his father to tell of the time when he climbed the highest mountains in Fjordland. Michael would lay by the fire while his father told the story, and he would shiver when the winter wind blew through the crack under the door. The power of his imagination would transform the gentle wind of the Green Isle into the fierce gales of the far north; and Michael would lay in bed afterwards and dream of climbing the mountains with his father beside him—up to the mystery that waited at the top of the world.

  Up to the vision that had changed his father forever.

  Michael stopped his forward motion and let the snow drift around his booted feet. His heart beat hard and fast. For a single moment he had felt as though his father was there—as though he could touch him. He lifted his face and let the cold bite at him. The clouds had cleared in one place, just enough to show the sheer, snowy side of a mountain.

  The others were far ahead, pushing their way around the cliff. Michael took his eyes from them and looked up to the waiting height.

  The day was half-gone when Kris realized that Michael was no longer with them. He gave a shout, and the party stopped their trek. The leaders turned their heads to look back, but they saw only the broad back of Kris of the Mountains as he left in search of the Green Islander. The wind was beginning to howl, bringing with it snow in earnest.

  “The snow will fill in Michael’s tracks,” Stocky said, dark with worry. “He’ll never find him!”

  “Kris of the Mountains could follow a flea through a snowstorm,” said one of the Fjordlanders. “Do not worry your head about it.” But the man could not help but lift his head to the peaks and the falling snow, and Stocky saw the worry etched across his face.

  * * *

  Ice and wind whipped Michael’s face as he clutched the face of the cliff and slowly pulled himself higher. The sky had grown black with clouds; snow blew around him in every direction. Michael could see neither where he was nor where he was going, but he continued to move upward, driven now by desperation as much as determination. His eyes searched the rock face above him for some glimmer—some sign—anything.

  The storm lashed at him. He clung to the rock and closed his eyes against its ferocity. He would die in Fjordland, he thought, and Clann O’Roarke would have a new leader. It was best. For a moment he thought that his father would take good care of them; then he remembered that his father was dead—that the same death stalked them all.

  Awareness was fading from Michael’s mind. A sudden sharp need to survive drove into him. He had to keep moving, or he would freeze there on the cliff face and become part of the mountain; someday someone would climb up the cliff and go over him without even knowing. He moved one stiff foot and one cold hand. In horror he felt the rock slip away. He was falling. Was it light he saw above him? He reached up as he fell.

  Michael fell for what seemed like a long time, and then he hit rock and heard a horrible breaking sound. He knew it was his own body that had broken. Pain shot through his eyes and blinded him. He could see nothing but blackness in a world that was deathly white. He tried to move, and pain took him like a torturer. He screamed out. Just before his mind slipped away from him, he thought he heard the answering shout of Kris of the Mountains.

  The mountain had defeated him.

  * * *

  Kris of the Mountains carried Michael on his broad back all the way to the village. Stocky followed close behind, tears in his dark eyes. They pushed through the blizzard most of the night and reached the tavern just as the veil of snow began to thin and reveal the light of early morning.

  Kris laid Michael down on a cedar bench beside one of the fire pits and called for help to revive him. Stocky knelt by Michael’s head and called his name while the men of the village tried to wake him. Word of the injury spread quickly, and the tavern filled with the curious and the concerned. Men, women, and children surrounded the makeshift bed where Michael O’Roarke lay dying.

  Kris retreated from the crowd and stood against the wall of the tavern, his massive arms folded across his chest. There were tears in his eyes. The lines of his mouth betrayed the suffering of a stoic. Michael would not recover, and Kris knew it. He had carried the young man through the mountains; he had felt Michael’s body move and bend as it should not; he had felt the heat of fever come and go. The young chieftain’s body was broken. There could be no healing now. Only pity for Stocky kept Kris from ordering the would-be physicians away: the Green Islander must be allowed to feel that he had done his best for his chieftain.

  A real doctor arrived. He was making his rounds of the small villages along the fjords. He inspected Michael quickly and stood, wiping his hands on his pants.

  “There’s na good for it,” he said. “The young man will not last till evening.”

  At these words Stocky put his head down on the bench in front of Michael’s closed eyes and wept.

  The back of the tavern stirred as the door opened and a howling wind rushed in, cut off abruptly as the door shut again. Kris heard murmurs of wondering surprise from the villagers. Women gasped and whispered thanks to the stars. The mountain man lifted his grey head.

  A young woman was moving gracefully through the crowd in the tavern. The villagers fell back from her approach like floating petals before a swan. She was indeed much like a swan, possessed of an unearthly beauty that quieted all around her. Pale hair fell in waves to her waist, glinting now silver, now gold in the light of the fire pits. She wore the simple clothes of a peasant; her dark cloak, lined with sheepskin, was patched and frayed. A silver chain-link belt around her slender waist contrasted sharply with the poverty of her garments. Tucked into the belt was a pink rose. The scent of it mingled with the cedar smoke and perfumed the tavern. Its petals were bright and new.

  She reached Michael’s side, and for a moment she lifted her violet eyes to the dark corner where Kris stood. She bowed her head slightly, and he bowed his; and then she knelt at Michael’s side and touched Stocky’s shoulder gently.

  He started. His tear-stained face filled with awe at the light that seemed to shine from the girl’s face. Slowly, without protest, he moved away from his friend and chieftain and joined the people of the village in watching.

  The girl bent her head until her face nearly touched Michael’s. Cascades of her hair fell around him. Her forehead creased with sympathy and pain, and then slowly, tenderly, she touched him. She put her hands behind his neck and laid her head on his chest, and the villagers heard her whisper, pleadingly; but to whom she was speaking or what she was saying they could not make out.

  Then she stood and smiled down at Michael, and without a word she turned to go. She had not yet traversed the length of the tavern when Michael drew in a strong breath and let it out agai
n in a rush. The villagers exclaimed and gathered around him, the girl momentarily forgotten. Michael gasped again for breath, and his eyes opened. He sat up just in time to see the young woman disappear through the door of the tavern.

  Stocky fell on his knees beside Michael. “Stars bless you,” he said. “Michael! We’d given you up for dead.”

  Michael looked at Stocky as though he had never seen him before. “What happened?” he asked.

  “You fell in the mountains,” Stocky said. “You broke your own back like the fool you are, and your father’s friend carried you all the way home. You were going to die, Michael.”

  Stocky stopped and looked up at the tavern door. A cold draft reached his face.

  “You would have died,” he said. “That girl healed you. If I hadn’t seen it with my own two eyes…”

  Stocky turned to Kris at the same moment that Michael looked to him. Kris stepped out of the shadows and drew near the fire pit.

  “Her name is Miracle,” he said. “She does not often come down to the village. No one knows what brings her.”

  “She comes when we are in need of healing,” said an old woman. “She healed myself when I was sick of the cold and ready to die.”

  “It was her hands made my crop grow after a fire destroyed the fields,” said a young farmer.

  “She grows roses in the dead of winter,” said another.

  Michael was no longer listening. He strode for the door, breaking into a run before he had reached it. He had to say thank you, he told himself—he could not be so ungrateful as to let her go without thanks. Or, whispered his heart, so cold as to let her go before he had clearly seen the beauty he had only just glimpsed in the doorway.

  The High Police were in the street.

  Their horses formed a circle around Miracle. The animals stamped their hooves and tossed their heads impatiently. The cruelly handsome young man in black, the Nameless One, smiled down at his captive.

  Michael rushed forward with a shout. The heads of the police turned, as did Miracle’s. She ducked beneath the neck of the one of the horses and ran. The circle broke. The soldiers rode after Miracle, with the Nameless One at their head. Two soldiers spurred their horses in Michael’s direction. He reached for his sword and found that it was not there.

  One of the soldiers slashed at Michael’s head with his spear. Michael ducked away from the blow and grabbed the shaft, wrenching it from the soldier’s grasp. He spun around and let the spear fly. It lodged itself in the leg of the soldier who had come up behind. The man cried out in pain, and his horse bucked. He lost his seat and fell to the snowy road.

  Michael turned his attention to the first soldier once more. He dodged the man’s sword easily. In one fluid motion he mounted the horse behind his startled enemy. Michael grasped the man’s sword arm at the elbow and twisted until the sword dropped in the snow. With a heave, he sent the soldier flying after it. Michael dug his heels into the horse and galloped after the rest of the High Police.

  He rode into their midst, yelling and brandishing a spear that had been tied to the horse’s saddle. He was faster and stronger than the High Police. He knocked two off their horses using only the shaft of the spear—but he was too late. The Nameless One had caught Miracle. He held her tightly in front of him on his horse. He turned to face Michael, eyes were glittering dangerously. He held a knife at Miracle’s throat.

  “There is no need for either of you to die, foreigner,” he said. His accent was that of Fjordland, but lighter and more refined than the villagers’. “Throw your spear down and go back to your ale.”

  “What do you want with her?” Michael demanded, breathless from the fight.

  “What do you want with her?” the man in black returned. “I have as much right to her as you do. More.”

  “You have no right to take an innocent woman,” Michael said.

  “I have every right, Green Islander,” the Nameless One answered. “I have orders from the Overlord of the Northern Lands himself. Turn around. Go back to your tavern. Better yet, go back home. You have no business here.”

  Michael only tightened his grip on the spear. As he did so, Miracle stiffened. The knife at her throat pressed harder, and the man in black smiled.

  “Go ahead,” he said. “Attack me. Attack my men. Beat them all, as I have no doubt you can. The moment you move, I will kill her.”

  Michael turned anguished eyes on Miracle. Her violet eyes met his beseechingly. He understood what she wanted. With a broken heart he dropped the spear, point down, in the snow. Once again he met Miracle’s eyes, and without saying a word, he poured out a promise to her. She gasped suddenly as the knife pressed harder. The point drew a single drop of blood.

  “Ride away, foreigner,” said the Nameless One. “I am tired of you.”

  Michael lowered his head and reined the horse around. Slowly he rode away, toward the tavern, and did not look back. Something in the snow near the tavern door caught his eye. He dismounted and bent to pick it up, and a thorn pricked his finger. Miracle’s rose. His heart quickened. Rose-grower—like his father. His finger bled, and he looked at it as though the blood would give him answers.

  He felt a hand on his shoulder, but he did not look up. “I let them take her, Kris,” he said.

  “You could not have done more,” said the grey-haired man.

  “I will do more,” Michael answered. “I am going after her.”

  “Yes,” said Kris. “And I am going with you.”

  Stocky left his place in the half-open door of the tavern and joined them. He placed his hand on Michael’s other shoulder.

  “I’ll be with you too, Michael,” he said.

  Michael attempted a smile. “That I know, Stocky,” he said. “You are always with me.”

  They wandered into the street; the three together. Michael cradled the rose in his hands, looking to the horizon where she had gone. Stocky stood by him, fidgeting a little, biting his lip with a million things he wanted to say and knew he shouldn’t. Kris stood behind them with his arms folded.

  After a moment he spoke. “They are going to the castle of Ordna,” he said. “The ancient stronghold of the Northern Lands.”

  “The Overlord is there?” Michael asked.

  “No doubt,” Kris said. “And many men in black robes, or I am greatly mistaken.”

  “Who are they?” Stocky asked.

  Kris tightened his mouth. “They are Blackness,” he said at last. He turned and wrapped his cloak of skins around him. “Come, Michael,” he said.

  “But the tracks lead this way,” Michael said.

  “You are not ready to follow them yet,” Kris answered. “Soon.”

  “The tracks will disappear.”

  “Kris of the Mountains knows the way,” Kris said. He was already walking away from the village, up to the mountains. Michael lifted his eyes to the heights. He tightened his hold on the rose without thinking, and drew in a sharp breath as the thorns pierced his hand.

  * * *

  They wound their way up a mountain track silently. Stocky tried more than once to break the quiet and draw his companions into conversation, but neither wished to speak. Kris led them stalwartly, disdaining even to turn around and look at the Green Islanders who walked behind him. The rose in Michael’s belt released its dangerous perfume as he walked, still feeling the sting in his hand. He thought of beauty and the mountains.

  The track led them far off any road. They journeyed through the snow for miles, lost in their own reflections, passing under a craggy overhang of rock until the smells of cedar smoke, porridge, and horse dung met them. Kris stepped into a cleft in the rock and disappeared. Michael and Stocky followed him, wondering, into a dark cave.

  In a moment Kris lit an oil lantern. A warm glow illuminated the dry place where they now stood. A fire pit lay near the door of the cave, where the floor was more dirt than rock, and in a corner nearby, a heap of animal skins and furs served as a bed. On the other side of the cave was a pen b
uilt of logs and rope. It housed a small black mountain pony that stared at the newcomers out of huge marble eyes. In the joints of the pen was a scraggly nest, and perched above it was a small brown bird like those Michael had observed in the rafters of the tavern.

  Kris dug into a small recess in the rock and pulled out loaves of bread and a skin full of water. He handed them to Stocky, instructing him to wrap the bread in some rough cloth that hung over a well-carved wooden chair. A moment’s groping in another recess brought forth heavy northern swords, of sufficient length and weight to be worn on the back and not at the side of a warrior. Michael took the one handed to him with gratitude; he unsheathed it and swept a wide arc in the air. The sword fit his hand well.

  “Here, lad,” Kris said, holding another one out to Stocky.

  Stocky shook his head. “The weight of the thing will knock me over! The small swords of the Green Isle are quite good enough for me.” He wore two at his side. He drew them and whipped them deftly around in the air.

  Kris nodded. He strapped an enormous sword onto his own back and hung an axe at his side. He pulled a heavy wooden spear with an iron tip from the hole in the wall and passed it to Michael.

  When they had armed themselves sufficiently, Kris opened the door of the pen and led the black pony out. He and Stocky loaded the shaggy creature with food, water, and cloaks and blankets of animal hide.

  When they emerged from the cave, the sky was grey with clouds. The temperature had dropped. Only Stocky seemed to notice the cold.

  They followed another obscure path, the Green Islanders trusting that Kris knew where he was leading them. They went up for a long time, all in silence. Only the sound of their breathing and the occasional neigh of the pony broke the stillness of the mountains. At last they reached the top of a ridge. Below them, the ground dropped into a small valley. A lone house of stone huddled against the ridge.