Gratefully Skilgannon released his hold. His arms were trembling, and he saw there were cuts upon his palms. Ignoring the pain, he ran to Harad. “There is no blood in his mouth,” he said. “That is a good sign. And his pulse is strong. With luck he is merely bruised and stunned.” He glanced around. “We must find Charis.”
“I found her,” said Askari, softly. “Let us see to Harad.”
14
W hen Harad opened his eyes he was surprised to feel no pain. He remembered the tree falling, and trying to push Charis away from it. He had hurled himself back, and the trunk had hammered into him, smashing him to the earth. His head had struck a rock, and he had been knocked unconscious for the first time in his life.
Now he felt fine, though the earthquake seemed to have caused incredible changes to the landscape. The sky was uniformly gray, and there were no trees growing anywhere. He sat up. In fact there were no trees at all, neither standing nor fallen. Puzzled, he looked around. He saw Charis sitting with Skilgannon, and a bigger man just beyond them. There was something familiar about the huge figure. He was wearing a black leather jerkin, with metal plates upon the shoulders and a round helm. And he was carrying Harad’s ax. None of this made any sense to Harad, and he looked at Skilgannon.
“What is happening?” he asked.
The man glanced back at the silver-bearded axman, who moved forward and knelt beside Harad. “How are you feeling, laddie?”
“Good.” Harad looked up into the ice-blue eyes. Then at the helm with the axes-and-skull motif. “You are Druss.”
“Aye, that I am.”
Charis moved alongside him, laying her hand upon his cheek. “You should not be here, my love,” she said.
“I should be where you are. Always.” He looked at Skilgannon. The warrior was dressed differently, in leggings and a tunic. There was no sign of his swords, and he looked more like a farm worker than a warrior. “I don’t understand any of this. Where is Askari?” he asked the man.
“I do not know any Askari.”
“Have you gone mad? We are traveling together.”
“I do not know you either, my friend. My name is Geoval. My home is . . . was . . . on the coast. Now it is here, in this gray horror.”
“Then I have gone mad,” said Harad. “Or this is a dream?”
“Aye, laddie, it is a dream of sorts,” said Druss. “There is no easy way to say this, so I’ll be blunt. Charis was killed on the mountainside. This is why she is here, in the Void. Why you are here is another matter.”
Suddenly something screeched down from the sky. Harad saw it and surged to his feet. The winged creature swept toward Druss, talons extended. The axman reared up and hammered Snaga through its ribs. The demon disappeared instantly. “Where were we?” said Druss. “Ah, yes. You should not be here, Harad. The life force is strong in you. Trust me, laddie, you cannot stay.”
Harad backed away from the axman, then moved to Charis’s side. Taking her hand he raised it to his lips and kissed it. “This is wrong,” he said. “It is all wrong. We will go back together. We will end this dream. Then we will make the life we planned.” Charis stepped into his embrace and kissed his bearded cheek.
“I cannot go back,” she said. “Oh, I so wish I could.” There were tears in her eyes. “You don’t remember, do you? Believe me, Harad, my dear, there is no way for me to return. You will understand when you go back.”
“I’ll not go back without you.”
“No, Harad. Please don’t say that. You are not dead. You have a life to live.”
“Without you I might as well be dead. And if I am not dead, then why am I here?”
“It was love that brought you,” said Druss. “I can understand that. A man should be prepared to face death for the woman he loves. Charis is right, though. This is not the place for you. Charis can feel the Golden Valley reaching out to her. I shall escort her there. And you—you can hear life calling you. I know you are resisting it, Harad. But the call will get stronger.”
Harad’s head dropped, and he kissed Charis tenderly. “You are my life,” he said. “I don’t want to go on without you. I won’t!”
“Love doesn’t die, Harad,” she whispered. “And I will be waiting for you in that valley.”
He wanted to answer her, but felt strangely light-headed. A sense of weightlessness flowed through him. “Not yet!” he shouted.
Then his weight returned, and he felt solid earth beneath his back and mountain air filling his lungs.
Harad opened his eyes. Skilgannon was beside him to the right—the real Skilgannon, an ivory sword hilt jutting above his shoulder. Askari was sitting by his left. “Thought we’d lost you,” said the warrior. “Your pulse faded for a while.”
“Where is Charis?”
“She died, Harad. I am sorry. Askari and I buried her.”
Harad tried to sit, but pain stabbed through his right side. He swore and sank back. Skilgannon spoke. “You are badly bruised, my friend, and may even have snapped a rib or two. You need to rest.”
“How did she die? I pushed her away from the falling tree.”
“A falling boulder struck her,” said Skilgannon. “Death was instantaneous.”
Harad looked at the swordsman. “I saw your twin in the Void. He was with Druss. His name is Geoval. He lived near the coast.”
“Druss told me he was protecting someone there.” Skilgannon sighed. “Landis Khan killed him in order to give me his body. We exchanged places in the Void.” He laid his hand on Harad’s shoulder. “Get some sleep. It will be night soon.”
“It will always be night for me, from now on,” said Harad.
S kilgannon moved away from the axman. Askari joined him, and together they walked through the ruined wood.
“That was a good lie to tell him,” she said.
“It was what a friend of mine once called a velvet lie. The truth would have crushed him.”
They paused by the graveside, and Skilgannon lifted Snaga from the ground. One of the blades was smeared with dried blood. He plunged it into the earth, then pulled up a section of long grass and rubbed at the blade until all sign of the stain had vanished. “We like to think of life as a constant,” he said. “Yet it can be ended in a heartbeat.”
“I know,” she said, “but that was a cruel way to die.”
“They are all cruel, in their own way. And it wasn’t a complete lie. When the ax flew from Harad’s hand I think it struck the boulder and ricocheted. She would have known nothing. It was a swift, painless death.”
“Yet pointless.”
“Most deaths are,” he said. “Even those that seem to have purpose. I died seeking to save a people I had grown to love. Now the nation no longer exists. The Angostin are part of the dust of history. Ultimately my sacrifice was worth nothing. But then, ultimately, all the works of man are as nothing.”
“I don’t agree,” said Askari. “When I was a child I remember Kinyon rescuing a little boy from a cliff face. He was trapped on a ledge, around a hundred feet above the ground. Kinyon climbed that rock face. It was raining, the holds were slippery. He almost fell several times. Yet he reached the child, swung him to his back, and made the long climb down. The boy died the following spring, of a fever. Does that mean Kinyon’s bravery was for nothing?”
“No, of course not,” he said. “My old swordmaster used to talk about the Now. It is all there is. The past is a memory, the future a dream, the present a reality. All we can ever do is live in the Now, and try to ensure that our deeds are worthy. Kinyon’s deed was worthy.” He sighed. “You are right to chide me. What counts is how we live now, not whether in a thousand years civilizations will fall.”
“So what will we do now?”
“We?”
“You don’t want me with you?”
“I don’t want you killed.”
“If we can end the reign of the Eternal, then I won’t be,” she said. “I don’t know much about destiny, and I don’t care about the Eternal
and her magic. I never did. All I wanted was to live in the high country, to hunt, to swim, to eat, to laugh. It seems to me, though, that we are here for a reason. You, me, Harad. Three Reborns, all from the same period in time. So tell me again of the prophecy, and let us try to make sense of it.”
“There is no sense to any of it,” he snapped. “Whatever Ustarte prophesied has become a piece of doggerel verse. Hero Reborn, torn from the gray, reunited with Swords, of Night and of Day. Landis Khan did not tell me the rest of it, save, as I said, that it involved killing a mountain giant with a golden shield, and stealing an egg from a silver eagle.”
“Perhaps the key to the riddle is in the tale of the eagle,” she suggested.
“A magical bird that flies around the sun?”
“Feeds on the sun,” she corrected, “and flies around the moon.”
“Granting wishes to wizards,” he said. “I was listening.”
“Only with part of your mind. All legends have a base in fact. Kinyon told me that. They just get elaborated. They distort as they grow.”
“There’s truth in that,” he said. He laughed. “When Landis Khan first woke me I went to his library and studied all that was known about my life. I had no memory then, and wanted to learn about myself. Much of what I did was there, but hidden beneath ludicrous tales of flying horses and fire-breathing dragons. Yes, you are right. We need to examine the fables. Tell me again all you can recall about the eagle.”
He listened as she spoke. “Why wizards?” he said, suddenly.
“What?”
“Why would the bird grant wishes only to wizards? Why not heroes? Why not farmers?”
“I don’t know. Righteous wizards, so the story goes. What are you thinking?”
“Wizards understand the nature of magic. They use magic to weave spells. So it is not a question of the bird making a choice to grant wishes. It is the wizards who take magic from the bird.” He fell silent, thinking it through. “The eagle is not alive. It is merely a source of power the wizards call upon. It is silver,” he went on. “Created. An artifact, just like the machines in the temple, and back at Landis Khan’s palace.” He paused and shook his head. “What am I saying? A machine that floats in the sky and, somehow, sends power to the earth. It makes no sense. How would they send it into the sky? And why would it not fall back down?”
“The why is not important now,” she said. “Any more than your winged horse. The eagle is the answer. And the egg that you must steal.”
“Or destroy,” he said. He swore softly. “There is something we are missing. Something central. If the eagle was placed in the sky by the ancients, and if all magic began in that moment, why is it only in this time that the artifacts of the ancients can be used again? We had a few Joinings in my day—Jiamads, as you call them. They were created by Nadir shamans. But nothing on the scale we see now.”
Skilgannon paused by a fallen log and sat down. “This is making my head spin,” he told her. “We are building theories about something implausible and impossible. A metal bird that had great power, lost it, and then had it returned. And what of the giants with golden shields?” He suddenly froze.
“What is it?” she asked him.
“The shield of gold. I have seen it. It is not carried by a mountain giant, but sits upon a giant mountain, above the Temple of the Resurrection. It is huge. The priests called it the Mirror of Heaven. It is coming back to me now. A young man I knew took me to the temple. He talked of it on the way, about abbots in the ancient days, and of the Mirror. They called it a mirror because when it first appeared, lights blazed within the darkened halls. Lights with no flame, like captured sunlight. They believed the Mirror somehow reflected sunlight into the mountain. That was when the ancient artifacts had their magic renewed. I think I have it now. The metal bird always had magic, but only when the Mirror appeared did that magic flow freely back from the sky. It also explains the vanity.”
“Vanity?” queried Askari. “What are you talking about?”
“Landis Khan said the eagle was vain—in love with its own reflection. The eagle gazes at itself in the Mirror of Heaven. Only then does the magic flow.”
“And it flows into the egg,” she said.
“Exactly. And it is from the egg that the artifacts somehow draw their power. If I destroy the egg, the machines will be useless again. No more Reborns. And the Eternal will be human, and face death like the rest of us.” He took a deep breath. “I must find the temple.”
“We must find the temple,” she corrected him. “How far is it from here?”
“That is hard to say. I did not travel to it from this direction. I took a ship from Mellicane, a city on the eastern coast. It journeyed to an estuary on this side of the ocean, on the River Rostrias.”
“Kinyon would know. Originally he came from the north.”
A nother hunt had ended successfully, and Stavut sat contentedly by the fire, cutting slices of roast venison. Shakul and nine of his pack were stretched out on the ground nearby, bellies distended, sleeping soundly. A second pack of eighteen Jiamads had returned earlier. Led by the small, mottled-gray Grava, they had also been successful, though it had taken Stavut a little while to grasp this. Grava’s speech was horribly mangled by his overlong tongue, and Stavut had to struggle to understand a word he said. It was no surprise, however, that Grava yet again had returned with two more Jiamads than he had started with. Before long, thought Stavut, every runaway Jem in the high country would be part of Bloodshirt’s pack.
He grinned. The fear of the beasts had long since departed. Indeed, he found he actually enjoyed their company, and had taken to wandering off for longer periods. In some ways this was good. Kinyon and the villagers had become increasingly concerned, and, despite all of Stavut’s best efforts, remained frightened and wary around the huge creatures. There had even been some talk of returning to their village and taking a chance on the land not being invaded. Stavut had soon stopped this line of conversation. “Skilgannon says the enemy will come back. I don’t think he’s a man given to exaggeration. The best way is forward. I am sure Alahir will help us.”
Surprisingly there had been little argument. People just nodded and wandered away. In fact very few people argued with Stavut now. Probably, he reasoned, because he had proved to be such a good provider and leader.
When Grava returned with the two newcomers he had pushed them to stand before Bloodshirt. Stavut had stood and stared coolly at the Jiamads. It had become a ritual, and Stavut enjoyed the drama of it. “You wish to join Bloodshirt’s pack?” he asked them.
They were a scrawny pair, one heavily round shouldered, almost hunchbacked, the second tall and thin, his fur almost black. They stared at him, then looked at Grava, who said something unintelligible, but in a harsh growl.
“Serve Bloodshirt,” said the hunchback.
“Your names?” asked Stavut.
“Ironfist,” the hunchback answered. “This Blackrock,” he added, pointing to his skinny, black-furred companion.
“You will hunt with us. You will kill no Skins.”
They both nodded.
“Do not forget it. Now go.”
They shuffled away. Grava said something else, which Stavut did not understand, but it ended in a gargling sound that Stavut recognized as laughter, so he smiled and nodded. Then he settled down by the fire. Shakul awoke and stretched. Then he broke wind loudly.
“Charming,” said Stavut.
“Good sleep,” said Shakul. “No dreams.”
“The best kind.” Stavut scratched at the dark stubble on his chin. Normally he was clean shaven, but lately he had decided a beard would suit Bloodshirt. “Time to be getting back to the villagers,” he said. “They will be glad of the fresh meat.”
Shakul lifted his head and sniffed the air. “They have gone,” he said.
“Gone? What do you mean?”
“Head south.”
“They wouldn’t do that.”
Shakul shrugged, t
hen leaned down toward the joint of roasted venison. “Burned,” he said, shaking his head.
“When did they go?”
“We leave, they leave,” said Shakul.
That was yesterday morning. “Why would they do that?” said Stavut.
“Fear us,” said Shakul. “Fear Bloodshirt.” Stavut looked into the beast’s golden eyes, and at the huge fangs in the immense face. There was nothing now about Shakul that caused him any fear. But, of course, that would not—could not—apply to the villagers. He knew then that their lack of argument had nothing to do with his leadership, but everything to do with their terror of the beasts, and an increased fear of Stavut himself.
“I would never have harmed them,” he said. Shakul’s head came up. The wind was southerly, and he tipped his head, his nostrils quivering.
“Many Skins,” he said. “Horses. Jems.”
“Soldiers?” queried Stavut.
“They hunt us?” responded Shakul, his eyes glinting.
“I wouldn’t think so. Where are they?”
“South. Your Skins see them soon.”
Stavut swore. “We must get to them. If it is an enemy raiding party, they will be in danger.”
“Useless Skins,” said Shakul. “Don’t hunt. Do nothing. Better without them.”
“That’s true,” agreed Stavut, “but, as you say, they are my Skins. We help them.”
Shakul rose and let out a howl, which brought the other Jiamads to their feet. “Run fast,” said Shakul. “Bloodshirt slow. Shakul carry Bloodshirt.”
The suggestion put Stavut in a quandary. He knew it was the only sensible choice. The Jiamads could move at terrifying speed, and if they waited for him it would be a long, slow, and pointless journey. If the villagers were in danger now, that peril would be long past by the time the group reached them. On the other hand there were only two ways Shakul could run and carry Stavut. Either like a babe in arms, or with Stavut clinging to the fur on his back. The first would be ludicrous, and would—Stavut believed—severely dent his authority among the beasts. The second would be equally risible, for Stavut’s arms were not powerful, and he knew he could not hang on to the fur for a long journey. This left the prospect of falling off a number of times, and then having to revert to the first ghastly option, that of being carried like a babe.