The sound of footfalls suddenly stopped. Who is there? a voice came—Alik!
“Alik!” Saria exclaimed, running forwards but stumbling in the dark. Something slithered over her foot. “Halai’ia,” she mumbled—she was thinking the word “light,” but this other word came to her lips, and the shard in her hands flashed its white light through the darkness.
It was a cramped, narrow valley they were in, with icy rock walls reaching up on either side and only a few twisted trees reaching high up towards the faraway sun, and it was night. The flash of the shard revealed thousands, maybe millions, of slithering serpentine shadows making their way down the rocks and through the snow toward their feet. The air was filled with their shrieking hisses as the light flashed over them, burning the nearest ones to ashes around them. Then Saria screamed and the light went out.
Running steps in total blackness, then Alik hugged Saria and they turned back to back to face what was there. “Halai’ia!” commanded Alik. The white shard sprang to light again, but this time, it was joined by purple and brown and blue. Shadowserpents, Alik’s voice came to her. They will not approach the light.
This voice seemed so different to her from the shocked, strange young boy of the sea whom she had known before! He seemed taller, stronger…built of iron. His voice was full of authority and experience and came without accent—no, she realized: it was coming through her mind.
Yes, he confirmed. But no, I am no hero, nor built of iron.
She flushed but then shouted out, “Alik, look, in the snow!”
Lines of snow were mounding up, running toward them. They are burrowing through the snow, Alik’s voice came. We will see about that. “Hyosse shaudarai’ia!” he commanded: and all of a sudden all of the burrows ended abruptly about five feet from them. Ice, he explained.
“Will it break?” she asked.
It will hold: see? he answered. Back this way: we have to get out of here. He gestured in the direction he had come from. She could see it, but barely. Her eyes were throbbing. She held onto his hand and they ran along the narrow ten-foot-wide path. One shadowserpent burst out of the snow, hissing virulently and spitting venom, but it disintegrated into ash immediately.
The path ahead seemed to narrow. The rock walls of the valley closed in almost together, with a high, craggy pillar of snowy rock on one side and the skeleton of a reindeer protruding from the snow below it. The rock walls seemed to writhe with shadows. Alik seemed to read her fear—what else could he read?—and reassured her, Not far.
Not far, she thought, but the shadowsnakes are all racing there ahead of us.
Come on, he pulled.
She followed. They ran. The eye sockets of the reindeer’s skull stared toward them. Snowy roots like corpses’ hair ran down the walls. The walls themselves seemed to run. Where are you, O silence? she pleaded, where have you gone?
The cliffs groaned above them. Alik’s steps deftly circled the reindeer’s hooves. Saria after him crashed through the legs, sending a bone flying. There was the open plain ahead! Past the rocks, down the slope, and home.
Down came the snow with a scream, sheets of ice and snow collapsing from the left and from the right. For a moment shadows, light, and falling snow mixed with each other in complete confusion, and then there was dark.
“Alik!” cried Saria, digging herself out of the snow with a speed that betrayed her snow elf ancestry. “Halai’ia, shards! Alik!” she cried. The shards blazed out, disintegrating a wave of descending shadowserpents in its glory. She found Alik’s hand protruding from the snowpack. “Alik!” she shouted, and began shoveling away the snow with her hands and feet.
Several shadowserpents slid through the snow toward her. She did not stop digging but the words, “Bhakai’ia, bhakai’ia,”—lightning—came to her mind and she shouted them out to the left and the right. A blast of energy shot from the white shard to the left, piercing the snow and vaporizing the shadowserpent there, then another blast burned away a serpent on the right. She cleared away his face and pulled him up out of the snow.
His skin seemed dark, bluish or grey. “Alik!” she cried again. He did not respond. She dragged him out onto the slope of the hill below the canyon mouth. The shadowserpents followed. “Bhakai’ia, bhakai’ia,bhakai’ia,” she repeated the spell over and over again. Lightning slashed back and forth. She bent over Alik. There was a bite mark on his hand. Everything was cold. “Help,” she cried, “help!” More lightning flashed back and forth. She could feel the tingle in her skin. “He-elp! Please save us,” she prayed. The night was pitch-black and the shadows closed all around, and there was no one anywhere around. She could feel her strength draining but it did not seem to disappear. It carried on long past her ability to see, dazzled as she was by every lightning bolt—but she could sense them all around her.
Flash after flash after flash, the lights continued on all through the night. And when morning came, it found a frail young woman and an ashen young man collapsed together in the icy, dust-strewn snow.
VII.iii.
Alik awoke inside with a feeling of complete disconnect from everything that had gone before in his life. The face of Saria sitting over him and the feeling of pain all throughout his body brought back the reality of his dreams…but everything was so strange.
“Welcome back,” Saria clasped his hand warmly. He had no power to withdraw it. Beyond her, his eyes were gradually able to focus on a tall, pale, elvish figure with a bear cloak over a white leather tunic who was leaning against a sturdy tentpole.
“Saria,” he murmured. He was laying in a bed of furs. She was kneeling beside him. There were several others of these pale elves in the tent: a few women and a younger man who appeared to be a doctor’s assistant.
“Take it slowly, the doctor says,” Saria told Alik. “You nearly died of shadowserpent’s venom. You have been out for nearly three weeks.”
“Three weeks,” murmured Alik. The concept seemed strange for some reason. The shadowserpents—he looked down at his hand. It looked like a rock to him. There was the bite mark, sure enough, but he felt no pain there. That was the only part that felt no pain. It felt nothing at all. He felt a bit sad, as though he had lost an old friend. “And the shards?” he asked.
“They are there,” said Saria, opening a small knapsack lying on the bed next to him. “They were afraid to touch them. But this one is here.” She showed him her other hand, which was wrapped in thick bandages. There, sure enough, was the little white shard. He nodded. She placed it on the top of the shards gleaming from inside the knapsack.
“What?” Alik tried to rise.
“Do not rise, Master Alik,” spoke the tall elf by the tentpole. “Your strength will not yet support of it.”
“Eldirik is your doctor,” Saria told him. “But he says that the shards did most of the healing. They are yours, Alik, but I will help you do whatever needs to be done about them as best I can.”
Alik relaxed. His strength really was too little to support him. He sunk back onto the bed, his eyes slowly unfocusing on the world. “You saved my life,” he smiled weakly to Saria.
“I would do it again,” she answered—but he was already back to sleep.
It was some time before Alik awoke again. When he did, it was dusk, and there was the sound of someone playing a flute somewhere outside: a calm, somewhat mournful tune without words. Eldirik was there. “Are you awake? Very good; try to eat some food,” the tall white elf told him. There was a bowl of soup there beside him. It looked warm and smelled very good. He tried to reach for it but his hands paid no attention to him. With an effort he dragged one arm across the bed to the stand upon which the soup was sitting. “Never mind, Master Alik, I will help you,” said Eldirik. The doctor took a spoonful of soup and touched it to his lips. Alik did not immediately open his mouth but first scrutinized Eldirik’s face. Eldirik met his stare patiently. There was something in that look…something familiar. He took the soup. Eldirik measured out another spoonful and r
epeated the process. When Alik was done, he closed his eyes and fell asleep again. “Rest, little wild one,” Eldirik said. He adjusted the furs over Alik, then stood and departed.
The next few times Alik awoke, it was always evening and the flutist outside was always playing on his flute. Eldirik took to calling him “Evening Boy.” This Eldirik was calm and self-controlled but he could see—or else thought he saw—a swift and deadly current running beneath his surface. He was tall and thin, but every inch seemed to have been carved by the icy winds of the northlands. When he called him “Master Alik,” it seemed more a formality or an exchange of equals than an act of honor. Everything in the medical tent had its place; everything there had its proper time—but the heart went beyond place and time.
After his meal and some simple exercises, Alik found himself thinking of the shard Saria had given him. He picked it up and turned it over in his hands. This shard felt different from all the others: not cool and familiar, not cruelly powerful, not lofty and haughty in strength. It was filled with wolf howls and long hours of introspection. It was a labor of love. The ones who had made the shards—he had never thought about them but now it seemed so natural to do so—had spent many hours in its presence, and yet there seemed only mystery left. What had they been looking for? What had they found? “Vojaehavai’ia,” he murmured—“It should be remembered.” A sudden flash of violence filled his mind, a young child shouting out something that was swept away in a world-rending explosion. He dropped the shard and the vision went dark.
The chief of the encampment dropped in to see Alik as soon as Eldirik recommended it was safe. Eldirik took his time to make this recommendation, but at last he did. The chief was a tall, pale, muscular elf with a long, leathery white coat of some sort that Alik could not place. Knives and axes protruded from his belt, and a pair of long spears rode on his back. His face was gaunt and his eyes small and deep-set. “Master Alik?” he asked.
“It is I,” Alik answered.
“I trust you are being treated well and are making a speedy recovery,” the chief said. “I am Captain Alaveress. I am the leader of this camp. Have you been able to see anything of the outside as of yet?”
“Only what I…can be seeing…from that window,” Alik answered with somewhat more difficulty.
“Then go to the window now and look through the window-flap,” directed the chief. “Here, I will help you.”
“I can…,” Alik replied. He lifted himself to his feet—still something of a labor—and walked slowly to the window. Outside, standing beside one of the other tents, he immediately recognized Heao Sedhar and the man in the dark cloak, his half-brother Xaeland. He turned in surprise to the chief.
“They arrived the day after you did,” the chief explained. “They were following your trail. Are they friends or foes?”
“Friends,” said Alik decidedly.
“Why were they chasing you?” the chief put the obvious question.
“I…,” Alik began. Why? He knew well enough why, but to say it seemed to be to imply something wrong. “The answer is to being…complicated,” he answered.
“The answer is complicated,” the chief echoed. “I was only curious, but you may well keep your counsel to yourself, and I will bring them here.” He looked to the doctor, and Eldirik nodded his consent. The chief ducked out of the tent with the fluid motion of a sword unsheathed and then was gone.
Alik lay back down. Glancing at the knapsack beside him, he silently tugged it under the furs with him.
Saria darted in through the door as though about to say something. Instead she said nothing and went to sit beside Alik. Then the chief reentered with Xaeland and Heao.
Xaeland looked as stern as Alik remembered him. He pushed back the hood of his cloak and bowed shortly. The monster sword was there, Alik noticed, at his waist. The thought quickly went through his head what would you do if he suddenly attacked you? followed quickly by the thought of how much power he had at his command if he only said a word. But he was more ashamed of the second thought than the first.
“Brother,” Xaeland addressed him.
“Alik, we have finally found you!” Heao beamed—but he kept his distance. “Are you all right?”
“Better,” Alik shrugged. “Are you?” He noticed Xaeland’s arm was wrapped in bandages.
“Better,” replied Xaeland. He thought he saw a smile play on the grim man’s face.
“The others?” asked Alik. “They also…ah, succeeding to be living well?”
“Many have died,” said Xaeland. “Master Delossan is alive, or was when I left him. Scribe Stuart, Master Haleth, General Rigel, Generaless Sianna, and Sir Master Piachras, they are all alive, though some have been seriously injured on our way. Together with them we have followed you all the way from Labrion Plateau, through Therion, Aerisia, and Caranis, past drakes, monsters, and a dragon, enduring hunger, exhaustion, imprisonment, landslide, freezing cold, and falling islands, for the sake of the hope that you carry, the last hope of this present, falling world.”
“Falling islands?” exclaimed Alik. “Oh, no.”
“Aerisia,” explained Xaeland. “The country is no more.”
“It is to be…the fault of mine,” Alik mourned. “These shards….” He tapped the blankets where the shards were hidden.
“You have them here? All of them?” Xaeland asked urgently.
“Of course not,” Alik snapped, a little too defensively. “The emperor of the north is with the others.”
“But you have…you have….”
“I have…the power of liquid, of animal life, of the earth, and of the spirit. The powers of air and plant life and fire are in the north.”
“You can defeat him,” Heao broke in. “You can return the world to peace.”
“Or to die in the trying and turn the world to slavery,” Alik answered evenly.
“But the advantage is ours,” said Xaeland.
“The emperor also has having many advantages,” Alik said. He bowed his head and shut his eyes. He was exhausted. “Time I need…thinking, thinking. Time.”
Xaeland nodded. “Rest, brother. We will be here. But know: there is little time remaining.”
Xaeland exited with Heao. Alik was not quite asleep yet. The chief accosted Xaeland in a lowered voice, “I apologize for our necessary mistrust. Allow me the honor to lend you a doctor for your own wounds.”
“It is not necessary,” Xaeland waved him away.
“I insist, it is,” the chief answered. “Treat us as if you were home.”
Xaeland hesitated, not sure how to treat that. “Very well,” he finally answered.
Alik awoke once again to the sound of that magical flute. The glow of evening tinted the medical tent. The doctor was out. Saria was there, sitting next to his bed with an intent gaze that made him a little insecure. She didn’t speak, but she didn’t have to. He glanced downward self-consciously, then looked up and met her gaze.
After a time the doctor reentered with his assistant. “How is our young patient?” Eldirik asked.
“Fine,” said Alik and Saria together.
“Does he want to try to go outside?” Eldirik asked. “It’s cold….”
“Yes,” said Alik.
Eldirik smiled faintly. “Very well, but first, have something to eat for me.” He sent the assistant back out for his meal, and while he was out, he checked Alik’s vital signs and tested his strength, which was somewhat better. When he had eaten, Eldirik simply said, “Do not wander far,” and they were off.
The evening cold bit into Alik immediately. It was insanely cold. The sun was just going down and there were few people out. The village was not large, but it was hard to tell exactly its extent. All of the homes looked the same as the snow-covered hills around them. Similarly, the people he did see were all tall, very white, heavily dressed in white furs, almost blending into their surroundings whenever they paused, sliding through it easily when they moved. Who are these people? He asked Saria.
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“Snow elves,” she said quietly. “This is a scouting outpost on the border of Tomeria. They found us the morning after the attack.”
Snow elves, he mused. I have not heard of them.
“Before the Tomerians came, they ruled most of the northern parts of this world,” she said. “Now we are in hiding and our numbers are few.”
We….
“Yes, this is where my parents were from,” she said.
They stopped at the top of a snowy knoll at the edge of the village. The wind bit deeply but the two youths simply held hands. The expanses of the northlands stretched on and on, hill over hill, till all was lost in a blurry line of grey darkness meeting luminous, snowy darkness. Alik brought out the shards, which were glowing unbidden, seemingly pulling at him.
“What are you going to do?” Saria asked.
I do not know, came his response. And then, as if to change the subject, what is out there?
“Snow, she said. “Miles and miles and miles of snow. And somewhere, there is Kar-Taron, the magical mountain.”
“Kar-Taron,” he murmured aloud.
“What are you going to do about the shards,” she asked.
The vision of the tower room and the wizards dueling over the shards—over the Stone, that is—and of the young boy crying out and of the world exploding, flashed through his mind in clearer detail than before. He felt her jump in his hand and knew she had seen the vision in his mind as well. I still don’t know, he said. Suddenly he became very aware of the bitter cold gnawing at him, and she became aware as well.
“Let us go in,” she said sadly.
It was very dark when they returned and Alik was beyond exhausted. Saria gave his hand one last squeeze and let him go, and he fell asleep almost at once.
He slept very badly. Almost as soon as his eyes closed it seemed the vision of the wizards in the tower room returned in different details, from different angles, in different tones. He sat up. It must have been nearing morning but there was no way to tell for sure. He was alone except for the doctor’s assistant sleeping across the way with the other patient—a snow elf scout had twisted his ankle the day before. The power of the shards was pulling at him. They are trying to tell me something, he thought. They are wanting to be taken home, back to that moment, back to that place. The tower. Where is the tower? Almost before he had thought the question, a vision fast-forwarded through his mind of exactly how to get there. He glanced furtively at the knapsack containing the shards. Yes, I should go there, he thought loudly in his head—but at the same time, the stream of his subconscious counseled him, can you trust the shards? Their malice, their pride? Then another thought entered his mind: can you trust yourself?
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