The brute rose sharply to tower over Ehomba. Simna and Ahlitah both tensed—but the hulking creature was only showing his eagerness and enthusiasm. “Hunkapa know! You want Hunkapa take you?”
“We want very much.” Ehomba smiled reassuringly.
“Hunkapa not like people cities, but—you save Hunkapa from cage. Hunkapa owe you. So—Start now!” Without another word, their humongous friend turned and headed off in the direction of Mount Scathe, eating up distance with inhumanly long strides.
“Hoy, wait a minute there!” Simna struggled to get his kit together. Ahlitah was already padding off in the brute’s wake, with Ehomba not far behind. It took the swordsman some awkward running to catch up to the rest of them.
He hoped they would not run into any free-living, isolated mountain dwellers like old Coubert. Not with Hunkapa Aub and the black litah in the lead. Simna did not want to be responsible for inducing heart failure in some poor, unsuspecting hermit.
Like all high mountain ranges everywhere, the peaks of the Hrugars were loftier than they appeared from a distance. Towering over them all was Mount Scathe, a ragged, soaring complex of crags whose uppermost pinnacle clawed at any cloud passing below sixteen thousand feet. Gashed by deep valleys through which angry, rushing streams commuted to the lowlands, they presented a formidable barrier to anyone advancing from the south.
True to his word, Hunkapa Aub seemed to know exactly where he was going. When Simna complained about having to scramble up a particularly difficult incline, Aub remarked in his own subdued, laconic fashion that the slopes to either side of their ascent were far more difficult. When Ehomba wondered one afternoon why the river valley they were following was curving back southward, their shaggy companion implored him to be patient. Sure enough, by evening the stream and its valley had turned north once again.
They climbed until the air grew thin in their lungs, hardly fit for breathing. In this rarefied clime Ehomba and Simna moved more slowly, and the black litah padded on with head down instead of held high. But their guide was in his element. In the chill, dilute air he seemed to stand taller. His stride became more fluid. His confidence expanded even as his companions began to suffer from second thoughts.
Wearing every piece of clothing he had brought with him and as a consequence looking not unlike one of the unfortunates who haunted the back alleys of Bondressey, Simna kept slapping his hands against his sides to keep warm.
“Are you sure this is the way, o bushy one? We’ve been walking for many days now.”
Hunkapa looked back at the swordsman, who was huffing and puffing to keep up. Actually, Simna welcomed the fast pace. It helped to keep his body temperature elevated. “Right way, Simna. Only way.” A thick, woolly arm rose to indicate the soaring rock walls that hemmed them in on both sides. “Go up that way, or over there, and you die. Hunkapa okay, but not you, not Etjole.” A guileless grin split the bewhiskered face. “You not got hair enough.”
“I not got a lot of things,” replied the swordsman peevishly. “Right now, patience happens to be one of them.”
Though equally as cold and uncomfortable as his shorter companion, Ehomba did not manifest his discomfort as visibly or as vocally. “The mountains lie between where we were and where we are going, Simna. I am as sorry as you that there is no easier way. But we are making good progress.” He turned to their pathfinder. “We are making good progress, yes?”
“Oh very good, very good!” Back in his beloved mountains, their great, lumbering guide was full of high spirits. His enthusiasm was infectious, and some of it could not help but be imparted to his companions. This lasted for another couple of days.
Then it began to snow.
Only once before had Ehomba seen it snow, during a hunting journey to the far distant mountains that lay to the northeast of his home. It had taken many days to get there, during the coldest time of the year. He remembered marveling at the wet white splotches that fell from the air and melted in his hand, remembered the soft, silent beauty of the sky turning from blue to gray and then to white. It was an experience that had stayed with him all his life.
That snow had melted quickly upon striking the warm ground. This snow remained, to be greeted by that which had preceded it. Instead of melting, it accumulated in piles. In places it reached higher than a man’s head, just like drifting sand in the desert. That was what the big, fluffy patches were, he decided. Cold white dunes, rising on the mountain slopes all around them.
Familiar with snow and all its chill, damp manifestations from his homeland and many wanderings, Simna was less than overwhelmed with wonder. What he was, was uncomfortable and increasingly nervous.
“What are you gaping at, Etjole?” Shivering, he did his best to match his stride to that of the tall southerner. “If we don’t start down from this place pretty quickly we could freeze to death up here.”
“I was just admiring the beauty of it,” the herdsman replied. “The land of the Naumkib is all earth colors: yellow and orange, gray and brown. To be surrounded by white is an entirely new sensation for me.”
“Is dying a new sensation for you?” Simna indicated their guide, striding along blissfully in front of them. “This is his country. What if he decides to abandon us up here some night, or in the middle of a storm like this? We’d never find our way out. Treasure’s no good to a man frozen stiff as an icicle.”
“Then think of the treasure, friend Simna. Maybe thinking of it will warm you.”
The swordsman’s eyes widened slightly. “Then there is a treasure?”
“Oh yes. Greater than any an ordinary king or emperor can dream of. Mountains of gold in all its many manifestations, natural and crystalline, refined and fashioned. Gold as bullion and jewelry, gold that was coined by forgotten ancients, gold so pure you can work it with your bare hands. And the jewels! Such treasures of the earth, in every cut and color imaginable. There is silver too, and platinum in bricks piled high, and precious coral in shades of pink and red and black. More treasure than one man could count in a hundred lifetimes, let alone spend.”
Simna eyed his friend reprovingly. “And all this time you’ve been denying its existence to me. I knew it, I knew it!” One hand clenched into a triumphant fist. “Why tell me now, in this place?”
“As I said. To warm you.”
“Well, it’s done that.” Straightening slightly, the swordsman forcefully kicked his way through the steadily accumulating snow. “Let it blizzard if it wants to! Nothing’s going to stop us now. I will not allow it.” Tilting back his head, he shouted at the sky. “Do you hear me, clouds? I, Simna ibn Sind, will not permit it!”
By the following morning, with the snow still falling, his energy had flagged. In this the swordsman knew he need not be ashamed, because none of his companions were doing well. Lowlanders all, the unrelenting cold had begun to pick at their remaining reserves of strength, stealing their body heat like vultures biting off mouth-sized bits of flesh from a fresh corpse.
Seated around the morning fire they had managed to build in a snow cave, the two men and one litah huddled as close to the flickering flames as they could without actually catching themselves or their clothing on fire. Seemingly immune to the cold, their good-natured guide had left the cave early to go in search of wood for the blaze. Locating sufficient tinder dry enough to burn had taken him several hours. By the time he had finally returned, it was snowing harder than ever.
“This is not good.” Rubbing his long fingers together over the flames, Ehomba spoke solemnly to the hulking form that blocked the entrance hole. Hunkapa Aub was shutting off some of the wind and cold from outside with his own body. “How much farther? How long before we can start down out of the mountains?”
Overhanging brows drew together. “Still several days, Etjole. Hunkapa see this hard for you. I can carry, but only one at a time.”
“Our legs are not the problem, Hunkapa.” The herdsman fed one of the last dry branches to the little blaze. “It is too cold for u
s. Our bodies are not used to this kind of weather. And the snow makes it much worse. The wetness freezes our skin when it touches, and blocks out the sun.”
“Start down soon.” The massive shape shifted its back to seal the entrance to the snow cave more tightly.
“Several days is not soon, Hunkapa. Not in these conditions.” Ehomba cast his gaze upward. “If the snow would stop and the sun would come out, then maybe.”
Simna shivered beneath his thin clothing. “Bruther, I swear by Gaufremar I’m not sure anymore what you are: sorcerer or steer herder. Maybe both, maybe neither. This cold makes it hard for a man to think straight, so I’m not even sure of what I’m saying right now.” He lifted anxious eyes to his friend. “But if ever there was a time for magic, it’s come. The rug that walks says it’s several days before we can start down? I’m telling you here and now I don’t think I can take another morning of this. My skin feels like frozen parchment, my eyes are going blind from staring into this damnable whiteness, and I’m reaching the point where I can’t feel my legs anymore. My hips force them forward and when I look down I see that I’m still standing. That’s the only way I know that I haven’t fallen.”
“Simna is right.” Everyone turned to look at Ahlitah. The great cat was huddled in a ball alongside the fire. A force of nature, all ebony muscle and fang, even he had exhausted his strength. “Something has to change. We can’t go on in this.”
It was a momentous moment: the first time since they had begun journeying together that the litah and the swordsman had ever agreed on anything. More than any eloquence or deed it underscored the seriousness of the situation. Both looked to their nominal leader, to the lanky herdsman who sat cross-legged before the inevitably diminishing fire. Ehomba stared into the fading flames for a long time. There was no more wood.
Finally he raised his eyes and looked first at Ahlitah, then at the shivering swordsman. “You know, I am cold too.”
Reaching behind him, he dragged his pack to his side. Brushing snow from the flap that Mirhanja had embroidered and beaded herself, he began to search within. Simna leaned forward eagerly, expectantly. Ever since he had joined company with the herdsman, wonderful things had emerged from that pack. Simple things that in Ehomba’s skilled, knowing hands had proven to be much more than they first appeared. What would the enigmatic herdsman bring forth this time?
A flute.
Lightly carved of ivory-colored bone, it had eight small holes for fingering and was no bigger around than the herdsman’s thumb. Licking his lips to moisten them slightly, Ehomba put the narrow end to his mouth and began to play.
A lilting, sprightly tune, Simna thought as he listened. Foreign but not unfathomable. The herdsman played well, though not skillfully enough to secure a place in the private orchestra of any truly discerning nobleman. Next to him, the litah’s tail began to twitch, back and forth, back and forth in time to the music. Hunkapa Aub closed his eyes and rocked slowly from side to side, his immense shoulders rubbing snow from the roof of the temporary shelter.
It went on for some time as the fire died in front of them. Finally Ehomba lowered the instrument from his lips and smiled thoughtfully. “Well?”
Simna blinked uncertainly. “Well what?”
“Did you like it?”
“Pretty-pretty!” was their guide’s enthusiastic comment. Ahlitah let out a snort that was less haughty than usual—a compliment of sorts. But Simna could only stare.
“What do you mean, did I like it? What difference does it make whether I liked it or not?” His voice rose to a shout. “By Gilgolosh, Etjole, we’re dying here! I want to see some serious sortilege, not listen to a concert!”
Ehomba did not shed his smile. “Did it make you want to dance?”
The swordsman was so angry he might actually have taken a swing at his friend. What madness was this? That was it, he decided. The terrible, killing cold had manifested itself differently in each of them. With Ehomba, it had finally revealed its insidious self in the form of a hitherto hidden dementia.
“Me dance!” Hunkapa Aub was still rocking slightly from side to side, remembering the music. “Etjole play more!”
“If you like.” Bringing the slim flute back to his lips, the herdsman launched into another tune, this one more lively than its predecessor. Simna would have reached out and snatched the accursed instrument from his companion’s fingers, but his own hands were too cold.
Rocking to the music, Hunkapa Aub backed out of the opening and into the snow where he could gambol unconfined. Picking up his pack, Ehomba followed him. Ahlitah was not far behind. Muttering to himself, an irate Simna remained in the snow cave until the last vestige of the dissipating campfire vanished in its own smoke. Then he donned his pack and, with great reluctance, crawled outside to rejoin the others.
Halfway out of the cave he stopped, staring. When he finally emerged it was in silence and with eyes wide, gaping at the sky, the ground, and the surrounding mountains. The air was still icy cold, and it was still snowing as hard as ever.
But the snow was dancing.
Not metaphorically, not as the component of some ethereal poetic allusion, but for real.
Across from the entrance to the snow cave two triple helixes of ice crystals were twirling about one another, rippling and weaving as sinuously as a sextet of bleached snakes. The twirling embrace conveyed snow from the sky to the ground in loose, relaxed stripings of white. Nearby, the powdery stuff fell in sheets. That is to say, not heavily, but in actual sheets—layer upon layer of frosty rectangular shapes that sifted down from unseen clouds with alternating layers of clear air between them. As they descended they fluttered from side to side like square birds.
Individual flakes darted in multiple directions, as careful to avoid colliding with one another as a billion choreographed dancers. Miniature snowballs bounced through the air while hundreds of snowflakes combined to form many-pointed flakes hundreds of times larger. The instant they reached some unknown critical mass they fell with a thump into the fresh banks that lined the sides of the icy stream that ran through the narrow valley, leaving behind temporary holes in the snow that assumed the shape of a thousand dissimilar stars.
Snow fell in squares and spheres, in octahedrons and dodecahedrons. Möbius strips of snow turned inward upon themselves and vanished, while shafts of snow winkled their white way through the centers of snowflake toroids. And in between the snow there was light: sunlight pouring down pure and uninterrupted from above. It warmed his face, his hands, his clothes, and sucked the paralyzing chill from his bones.
All of it—shapes and swirls, giant compacted snowballs and individual flakes—danced to the music of the thin bone flute that was being wielded by Etjole Ehomba’s skillful hands.
“Come on, then,” he exclaimed, looking back to where Simna was standing and staring open-mouthed at the all-engulfing world of white wonder. “Let us make time. I cannot play forever, you know.” He smiled, that warm, knowing, ambiguous smile the swordsman had come to know so well. “As you have been so correctly and ceaselessly pointing out for past these many days, it is cold here. If my lips grow numb, I will not be able to play.”
As if to underline the seriousness of the herdsman’s observation, the minute he had stopped playing the blizzard had settled in once more around them, the falling snow distributed evenly and unremarkably from the sky, and the sun once more wholly obscured.
“You should know better by now than to listen to me, bruther. Keep playing, keep playing!” Simna struggled through the drifts to catch up to his friend.
Turning northward, Ehomba again set mouthpiece to lips and blew. His limber fingers danced atop the flute, rhythmically covering and exposing the holes incised there. The euphony that filled the air anew was light, almost jaunty in expression. It tickled the storm, and the snow responded. As before, a plethora of shapes and suggestions took hold of the weather, buckling and contorting it into a thousand delightful shapes, all of it composed of nothing
more animate than frozen water.
As they trekked on, the herdsman continued to sculpt the storm with his music. The shapes it took were endlessly fascinating, full of charm and whimsy and play. But delightful as they were to look upon, Ehomba’s companions valued the sun that shafted down between them far more. After a little while Simna found that he was able to remove his outer coverings and hold them up to dry. Ahlitah paced and shook, paced and shook, until even the tips of his mane had regained their optimal fluffiness.
As for Hunkapa Aub, he danced and spun and twirled with as much joy as the snow, his fur-framed expression one of soporific bliss. Even so, he was not so distracted that he failed to notice important turnings in the path. Here, he declared, pointing to an especially large slab of granite protruding from the side of the valley, we turn to the left. And here we leave the river for a while to clamber over a field of talus.
As they marched on in ever-increasing comfort but without being able to truly relax, Simna kept a careful watch over his tall friend. Ehomba’s words of warning were never very far from the swordsman’s mind. How long could he keep tootling on that flute? Hiking and playing each demanded endurance and energy, both of which were in short supply among the members of the little expedition. Ehomba was no exception. Like everyone else, he was cold and tired. A lean, deceptive energy kept him going, but he was no immortal. Without food and rest he too would eventually collapse from exhaustion.
Even as the sun continued to slip-slide down between the pillars and spirals of dancing snow, Simna was keenly aware of the massed, heavy clouds overhead. Shorn of inspiring music, the snow they were dropping would meld once more into a dense, clinging blanket from which there might not be any escape. He willed what strength he could to his tall friend, and tried to remember the melodies of folk songs long forgotten in case the herdsman’s musical inspiration began to flag.
Ehomba played on all the rest of the morning and into the afternoon. Conscious of their precarious situation, the travelers did not pause for a midday meal, but instead kept walking. They would rest when the herdsman rested. Until then, it was far more important that they keep moving than eat. Their bodies screamed for food to turn into heat, but they ignored the demands of their bellies. Time enough later to feed their faces. Time enough later for everything once they were safely out of the mountains.