There is silence in the hall as Grimstroke’s underlings wait and watch. But there are other chieftains in the hall, from other tribes, whom Stronghand has called together to witness the rebirth of the Namms Dale chieftainship. It is his way of overturning Nokvi’s victory, of calling notice that he, Stronghand, will say who lives and who dies, who will flower and who will merely bark at his heels like a dog. Yet he needs these same allies to defeat Nokvi. And they need him. Alone, they will be sucked one by one into Nokvi’s jaws to become puppets dancing to the tune of human magic. They all know what transpired when Rikin’s tribe raided Moerin, that the Alban sorcerers ensorcelled their own human brothers to charge as berserkers into a battle they could not win. Perhaps some even hoped Stronghand would die there, caught in Nokvi’s trap, but he did not. They know now that Nokvi’s alliance with the Alban tree sorcerers threatens them all, and that they have no protection against Nokvi’s magic unless they join with Rikin.
The dead hatchling shows no change as the venom dissolves into its lifeless body.
“You carry the curse,” says Grimstroke suddenly, claw still extruded, a lingering threat or something simply forgotten.
“I do not,” says Stronghand, and he pitches his voice so that it carries to all of the gathered chieftains: eight tribes have sent representatives, have come, as the humans say, when he called. He is not sure it will be enough.
“I do not carry the curse,” he repeats. “I did not weave the death magic spell when I took Rikin’s standard for my own hand. Any of my rivals who is strong enough and cunning enough to kill me is welcome to his victory.”
Grimstroke laughs. He is beholden to Stronghand for his chieftainship, and because he knows it and resents it, his gratitude, like old fish, stinks a little. “I will gladly walk behind you until your shoulders bow under the weight of your arrogance. Then I’ll kill you and take your place.”
Stronghand grins, baring his teeth as humans do to show fellow-feeling. “Then we understand each other,” he says, although the words are meant for all of them.
The priest croaks out a garbled phrase and shrinks back from the altar. Like all priests, who prolong their lives by unnatural means, he fears anything that smells of death.
The chest of keeping is brought and opened beside the dead-white hatchling that still lies limp on the altar. The late summer sun spills in through the western doorway, pouring light down the central aisle and veining the dark wood altar with its amber glow.
The little corpse shudders, stirs, and comes to life, out of death, for that is the other legacy of the ice-wyrm’s venom, that it can bring life out of death or death out of life, the horror that is both and neither.
Priest-words are spoken that seal it, the dead hand, to the life of its killer, and Grimstroke claps shut the lid and shuts the corpse inside the box that will hold it now and until he dies.
* * *
Alain screamed, trapped in darkness.
But it wasn’t his voice he heard.
He heard the scream again, a shriek, a frantic call for help. A horn stuttered, wavered, and sputtered out. From the camp, he heard answering shouts made faint by a wind rushing in his ears like a tempest, and as he came fully to himself he found himself kneeling on the ground, braced on his hands. Water gurgled past his fingers, and as he stared at the water, he realized that he had shifted forward during his lapse until his hands fetched up in the stream, pressing against the moss-covered stone track.
The stream was running the wrong way.
Sandaled feet stopped in mid-stream right in front of him. From this vantage, all Alain could see was leather winding up muscular calves. An obsidian spearpoint slid into view, drifting in front of his nose. Although there was no moon, there was light enough to see clearly the man standing before him: as Alain looked up from calf to thigh to a torso fitted with a cuirass ornamented with strange, curling beasts, he knew with a chill that it was no man.
A white half cloak was clasped at the figure’s shoulders.
He looked up into a beardless face more bronze than pale, with deep, old eyes under a sweep of black hair tied up in a topknot and adorned with an owl feather. The spearpoint remained fixed before Alain’s nose.
At this instant, Alain became aware of two things: the tense murmur of men gathering to fight in the brush behind him, and the silence of the hounds, who sat alert but unmoving at his feet.
“I do not kill you only because the sacred ones attend you,” said the prince. Alain recognized him now, but it was not at all clear that this prince of a lost people recognized Alain. “Move off the road. Let us pass.”
From behind, Alain heard Thiadbold’s strong voice. “Roll away, Alain, and we’ll loose a volley. There are more behind him, a host of them. My God.”
Was it starlight alone that lit them, or an unnatural light that flowed with them like witchfire? Cautiously, Alain straightened until he knelt, upright, before the prince. His knees pressed hard into paving stone. Behind the prince, the procession trailed off down the path into the forest, a host he could not count because he could not see them all. They all had that wonderful, disturbing consistency to them, more shade than real and yet real enough. Their weapons looked as deadly as his own spear, which lay as a dark spar in the grass. They looked deadly enough to kill, these shades, bows and spears held ready by grim-faced soldiers, both female and male and yet manifestly not human men and women. Light rose from them in the same way that steam rises from a boiling pot. The old track gleamed as well, a silvery thread piercing the land east to west.
“What are you?” asked Alain. “Are you Dariyan?”
“I know not this tribe,” answered the prince. “Stand aside.”
“If we stand aside, will you go on your way without harming us?” asked Alain, not moving from the path.
“Let us shoot, Alain! Move aside!” cried Captain Thiadbold, and by the stillness of the prince’s face and the unblinking regard of those soldiers closest to him, Alain realized that the prince and his followers could not hear Thiadbold’s voice.
“Nay, Captain,” said Alain. “Let them pass in peace. Their fight is not with us.”
“Are there others with you?” demanded the prince.
A shade-woman crowding behind the prince hissed, raised her bow, and drew down on something behind Alain’s head just as he heard grass rustle behind him and Thiadbold’s voice, much closer now. “They’re spread thin,” said the captain. “Use cover to give you room to shoot.”
“I’m standing up,” said Alain, and with infinite care he did so, moving as slowly as he could to make sure no one would be startled. He was careful to keep his feet on the old track. “I beg you, Captain Thiadbold. Call your men back. Let them pass in peace. They have no quarrel with us.” He lifted a hand, palm up and open in the sign of peace. “Where is Liathano, my lord prince?”
“She is walking the spheres,” said the prince, eyes widening with elegant astonishment. “How is it you know of her? Yet there is something familiar about you—”
“Go on your way in peace, I pray you,” said Alain. “I swear on my God, the Two who dwell in Unity. Swear on your own god, and we will step back. We will not molest you. There is no war between us.”
The shade-woman standing behind the prince spat on the ground. “There is always war between us!”
“Nay, be not impatient,” said the prince, setting his spear haft down on the path. “We have our own troubles. This ijkia’pe tells the truth. They are fully of the world. We need not fight them.”
“Not now,” said the woman, “but if the tide washes us back to shore, then it is better if there are less of them.”
“Nay, reckless one. Or have you forgotten the army of shanaret’zeri which pursues us?” He lifted his spear and shook it. Bells, tied to the base, rang softly. “So be it, ijkia’pe. I swear by He-Who-Burns that as long as you touch no one of us, we will touch no one of you. But I will stand here beside you while my people pass, and my spear will pierce you
r heart if you have lied to me.”
Alain stepped back from the path. “So be it. Captain Thiadbold, I pray you, tell the men to stand down. Let these people pass, and there will be no fighting.”
A woman’s voice, very human, spoke. He thought it might be that of the blonde Eagle who rode with them. “Listen to him, comrade. I think he sees more than we do.”
“Stand down,” said Thiadbold. “Let no man attack, by my order.”
The command passed down through the gathered Lions, an echo of the whisper of the shadowy procession as it moved on. The prince stood aside to wait beside Alain, although he kept his feet upon the stones, and now the shade-woman led the way, striding forward with her bow taut before her. She, too, wore a cuirass of gleaming bronze, but she had no sword, only an ugly obsidian dagger strapped to her thigh.
“God have mercy,” swore Thiadbold. By the sound of his voice, he seemed to be standing a few steps behind Alain. “I’ve never seen a woman that beautiful. I’d die happy if she plunged her dagger into my heart at the moment of release.”
The wind had come up, as if blown off the march itself, the procession winding by. They walked two abreast, with their unearthly bronze-complexioned faces and their strange garb, more beads and feathers than Alain had ever seen. Only a few wore metal, whether armor or decoration. All their weapons were of stone except for their arrows, which looked like slender, arm-length darts whittled out of bone. Not one man among them had a beard. Not one woman did not carry a bow. There were a few children, preciously guarded in the middle of the long line, naked bronze-skinned babies or long-limbed, silent youngsters with eyes as bright as stars. Every soul among them wore jade in an ear. Their passage was like the wind, and as Alain watched, he realized that in fact their feet didn’t quite truly tread on the ground. No grass bent. No dirt stirred.
They weren’t really here, not as he was.
Some man was crying in fear among the human crowd, babbling about a procession of shades come to haunt the waking world.
“Where do you come from?” Alain asked softly as the last dozen strode by, as silent as corpses, eyes alert although in truth they didn’t really seem to see him. “Where are you going?”
“We were caught between one place and the next when the world changed. We were swept out to sea where the ground always shifts beneath our feet. But I feel the tide turning. It is coming back in. As the reckless one said, mayhap the tide will wash us back onto the earth again. Then we will have our revenge.”
The prince swung into line behind the last of his soldiers.
Light rimmed the horizon. A cock crowed. The thin pinch of the last waning crescent moon floated just above the trees, fading into the dawn.
They vanished.
Had Alain been slugged in the stomach, he wouldn’t have felt any more like the wind had been knocked right out of him. The stream flowed past, gurgling over the stones, and now it ran the same way it had last night, northeast, into the forest. Or perhaps he had only been dreaming it, before.
“What was that?” demanded Thiadbold as everyone began to talk at once.
“Captain! Captain!” A man came running. “It’s Leo. He was sentry out by the forest. It’s elfshot, Captain! He’s terrible shot through with fever.”
Alain went to the forest’s edge with Captain Thiadbold, the blonde Eagle, and a nervous crowd of Lions, who promptly spread out in pairs to search among the trees. Dawn made them bold. There was no trace on the narrow track that any party, much less one of a hundred or more people, had passed over it during the night.
Leo was a man who didn’t say much, and then usually only to swear. He was shaking now, a hand clasped over his right shoulder, but the rash had already spread up his exposed throat. Sweat ran from his neck and forehead. His eyes had the glaze of shock.
“Nay, nay,” he was mumbling, trying to push away someone in front of him who didn’t exist. “Nay, nay. Be quiet now or they’ll hear you coming.”
“Get his mail off so we can see the wound,” said Thiadbold. He still wore his helm, covering his red hair, but Alain could just see the scarred ear where the leather ear flaps had been pulled askew. “I thought it was a dream,” the captain went on, looking at Alain. “That’s why I went along with what you said. That, and what Hanna said—” He gestured toward the Eagle, who had evidently scrambled up so quickly from her bed that she hadn’t belted up her tunic. “You sounded so sure of yourself—” He shook his head, frowning. Not quite suspicious, but looking as if he were sorry that he’d ever agreed to take on Henry’s new recruit.
“Many of us have seen strange things in these days,” said the Eagle. “Strange things in strange times.”
Her words produced a flood of anxious commentary from the assembled Lions, broken only when Leo screamed as three of his fellows pinioned him and pulled his mail coat up over his shoulders. Then, thrashing, he rolled on the ground like a madman.
“Hush,” said Alain, stepping forward and pressing him down by one shoulder. “God will help you if you will only be still.”
Leo moaned, spittle running from his mouth, then fainted.
There was no sign of any arrow in his shoulder nor, when Alain probed with his fingers at the little hole pierced in Leo’s shoulder, did he find a point or shaft broken off in the skin. But it was festering. Angry red lines already lanced from the wound, and his skin was rashing and blistering all around it. Alain set his mouth to the wound and sucked, spat, sucked again, spat again, until his jaws ached.
“Waybread and prayer for elfshot,” said Alain. “That’s what my Aunt Bel always said.”
“A poultice of wormwood to draw out the poison,” added the Eagle, but she gestured toward Thiadbold. “Your healer may know other charms.”
“I’ve never seen so strange a sight,” said Thiadbold. “Not once in my ten years as a Lion.” He wasn’t looking at Leo at all, but at Alain. “You were speaking to them, but I couldn’t hear a word they said. They were only shades. Shadows of the Lost Ones. How could you speak to them, who are ghosts? What manner of man are you?”
Folquin and Ingo shoved their way through the crowd of Lions. “Here, Alain,” said Folquin too heartily, but he reached down to grasp one of Leo’s legs. “Let’s carry him back to camp.”
“We can rig a place on one of the wagons,” said Ingo, drawing Thiadbold aside. “It won’t take much time. We won’t lose much on the march. I’d just as soon be through this forest before twilight.”
In this way, they moved on. Folquin and Stephen jested with Alain and with the men around them as the day passed swiftly, a steady march under the canopy of the forest. By evening they cleared the thickest portion of the wood and, from a ridgetop lookout, could see the Veser River a half day’s march beyond. Incredibly, Leo was recovering and he ate so much at supper that they joked they’d all have to fast. No one mentioned Alain’s part in the incident, or at least not within his hearing.
Yet Alain was so tired he was dizzy, and he couldn’t eat. He bundled up his bread and cheese and eased away from the fire. He found Hathumod easily enough, sitting in the last twilight trying to mend a torn skirt, squinting at the needle. As he came up beside her, coughing softly to let her know of his approach, she started, jabbed the needle into her fingers, and cried out.
“I beg your pardon, Lady Hathumod,” he said. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”
“Nay, my lord,” she said in a soft voice. Blood welled up on her forefinger, and without thinking she lifted the finger to her mouth to suck. She had gotten thinner. He wondered if she ever had enough to eat or if, like Tallia, she chose to fast.
He held out the bread and cheese. “You must eat this, Lady Hathumod, for you must keep up your strength. You can’t fast and also march all day. Truly, I don’t begrudge these beggars their share, but I haven’t enough to feed them all.”
She looked at him strangely. “Of course there will be enough, my lord, if it comes from your hands.”
It was impossible
to argue with someone who talked like that. He wondered how many beggars she had really seen before running off in the wake of the Lions. Did she cherish an innocent belief that Lady Fortune smiled equally kindly on every soul, here on this earth? Was her faith more pure than his, or only more naive?
He left her, because he couldn’t bear the calm zealotry of her expression. He wandered up on the ridgetop, stumbling on rocks because he couldn’t see his feet well. Up on the ridge, he felt the open land to his left, falling eastward into mystery, the uncharted land that is every footstep into the future. He felt the forest off to his right, a restless, breathing beast that had much to say in the wind of night and many secrets to hide. Had the prince and his followers been marching into the forest, or out of it? He couldn’t now remember. Maybe it had been a dream.
But there was a flavor in the air tonight, something new that he hadn’t tasted there before. At times the world seems to shift and invert: inside turns out, and outside turns in; dreams become waking, and waking becomes a dream.
Crickets thrummed. An owl hooted.
When he closed his eyes he could see Stronghand riding the waves, his ship turning as the tide turned, heading out to sea.
Something was going to happen. He would gather ships and allies, and he would drive Nokvi to a final confrontation in which one would emerge the winner, and the other would be thrown into the sea.
A watchfire burned in the distance, marking Namms Dale’s new hall, so freshly built that the timbers still wept pitch and the aroma of pine was as heavy as incense. He was dizzy tonight, or perhaps it was only the veil of time opening and closing like bellows pumped by vast hands. Had dream become waking, and waking turned into dream?
The water chopped against the hull as the rowers set to. Stronghand shifted as they hit a swell, rode it, and plunged forward into the sound. A single lantern blazed at the stem, held aloft on a post. He knew the waters well, here. They would beach at a sand spit out in the sound and there he and his favored advisers—four warriors of his own tribe, two from Hakonin, and two human slaves—would take council, where the merfolk could send an emissary: a place between sea and land where neither held the advantage.