In the Red Lord's Reach Page 19

  Softly, he said, "I remember." And at that memory, he felt a momentary dizziness, almost as if he were back in her tent, enveloped by smoke. He blinked hard, and the feeling passed. "I don't doubt your power, lady."

  "You don't know my power, minstrel."

  "Then I must judge it by the respect your people have for you. By which measure, it must be great indeed."

  Her mask barely tilted toward him. "You have a flattering tongue, Alaric. It comes of depending on strangers for your meat. But leave off with me; words will not win you my favor."

  Alaric smiled a little. "I had hopes that these many days I've ridden and walked in your service, and these many nights I've shivered, might count somewhat toward that end."

  "You have done your duty," she said.

  He sighed. Well, he thought, at least I've done the work of a good pack-deer.

  And he also thought: I am a stranger, I must not judge what I haven't seen. She had potent potions, that was true enough, and smoke that befuddled a man, and a presence to cow the bravest warrior. She had power, there was no denying it. But he could not help wondering if her claims might not exceed her abilities, if she might not be using her own rather potent tricks to awe the less gullible folk of the north.

  He especially wondered, just now, about her ability to control the weather. For a storm was rising.

  The wind came first, blowing from the north, as usual, but colder than ever, and stronger, biting deep into unprotected cheeks, penetrating furs and leather to raise gooseflesh. And with that cold wind came clouds running like sheep before the wolf: swiftly they cloaked the sky, transforming the bright and endless day to sullen twilight. The snow arrived before the travelers had finished setting up their tents—tiny flakes gusting before the wind, stinging exposed flesh like needles, and swirling and swooping as if reluctant to touch the ground. Alaric was the last man inside the larger tent, his furs thickly dusted with white motes; and as he laced the entry flaps, he saw through their narrow gap that Kata had not gone into her own shelter at all, but was still standing out in the storm, her arms raised to the sky.

  In the darkness of their tent, Alaric and the other men held fast to the bottom edges of its leathern walls, to give them extra anchorage against the storm. The wind grew wilder and began to howl an eerie, high-pitched note. Intermittently, it shook the shelter as a dog might shake a rat, and more than once it found an entry, beneath a flap or at a seam, and sent a spray of snow-laden air to chill the space that had been warmed by their bodies and breath.

  But for all its force, the storm was short-lived in the end, the last tatters of clouds blowing away before the sun had made an eighth part of its circuit in the sky. Though a mountain of snow seemed to have tumbled from those clouds, little of it was left behind, except for the shallow drift against the northern wall of each tent; the rest had been scoured away by the wind, scattered upon the vast flat whiteness of the ice. A summer storm, the nomad men said as they emerged from their shelter—nothing to be concerned about. Yet each of them touched one of the tent's Pole Star symbols as he spoke, and when Kata came out of her own tent, they bowed to her and thanked her, as if she had been responsible for the storm being so brief and mild.

  Alaric thanked her, too. It seemed the proper thing to do.

  But it made her look at him long and searchingly before she ordered the march to resume.

  ****

  IT WAS THE day after the storm—they had slept, at any rate, in the interim—that one of Zavia's fears came true.

  They had been walking as they often did, Kata in front, the rest strung out at irregular intervals behind her. In this case, Alaric was the one who trailed the group. There was no special reason for him to lag behind—he had done it often enough. There was no reason, either, for him to lift his eyes above the heels of the man ahead, for he knew there was nothing to see in any direction but the flat white landscape. And so, when he heard a strange creaking sound, as of a rusty hinge being forced, and when the man he followed stopped suddenly and gave a wild cry, he did not know what had happened.

  He looked up and saw the flat white landscape. He saw Lanri and Velet, three and four paces ahead of him. He saw Kata, just turning back to face them.

  Grem, who had walked behind her, was gone.

  He took two quick steps forward, and Land's arm shot out to halt him. It was then that he saw the crack in the ice between the three of them and Kata.

  From within the crack came Grem's voice, shouting for help, echoing, as if from far away.

  "Don't go near!" Kata called. Shedding her webbed footgear, she lay down on the ice spread-eagled and crawled to the lip of the opening. It was a man-height wide and so long that its ends were invisible with distance. She looked down into it, then shook her head and eased away from the edge. "We can't help him," she said, rising to her feet and dusting a thin film of snow from her clothing. "We'll have to look for a narrow place where you can cross."

  From within the crack came another shout, higher pitched than before, more desperate.

  Alaric pulled off his thong-meshed hoops and squirmed to the edge of the crack, ignoring Kata's sharp "Stay back!" The opening was deep and heavily shadowed; he could see no bottom. But he could hear Grem clearly. And the sound of splashing water.

  "Can you see me!" he shouted, waving one arm as far over the chasm as he dared.

  "Yes, yes, yes!" called Grem.

  "We must get him out!" Alaric said.

  "No!" cried Kata. "He is lost."

  "We have the rope. Toss it down to him. There are three of us here to anchor it." He turned to Lanri. "You have the rope."

  Lanri glanced at Kata, then back at Alaric.

  "It won't be long enough," said Kata. "These cracks are deep. And the freezing water brings death quickly. Get back from the edge before you fall in, too."

  "We have to try," said Alaric. "We can't just leave him here to die!" He wrenched at Lanri's pack. "You won't stand by and do nothing, will you?"

  "He is lost!" shouted Kata.

  Lanri hesitated just another moment, then he began to uncoil the rope. Quickly, he and Velet and Alaric each took a turn of it about their prone bodies and dropped the free end down into the crack. It was the same line that had raised their supplies to the top of the ice, and more than half of it seemed to disappear into the shadows in the crevasse.

  "Grem, can you see the rope?" called Alaric.

  There was no answer.

  "Grem!"

  "He's lost," said Kata.

  "Or injured, unable to catch hold of it. Grem!"

  The voice was fainter than before. But the words were still clear: "Help me."

  "One of us will have to go down," said Alaric. He looked at Kata. "I believe I'm the lightest."

  "No!"

  "You'd want me to do it if you were down there!"

  She showed her teeth at that, but said nothing.

  "I'll hold him fast," he said to Lanri and Velet. "Pull us up as quick as you can."

  Lanri nodded.

  Alaric slipped out of his pack and threw off his mittens and furs. The air was sharply cold, but he scarcely noticed it; he was sweating. He reeled the rope in, knotted a loop in the end, and pulled it tight under his armpits. He cast Kata one final glance. "Remember," he said, "you made me promise. That means there's no other way."

  She said nothing.

  As they lowered him into the shadowed depths of the crack, he pulled his muslin mask down. Without it, the shadows were not so dark as he had thought; rather, they were blue with light filtering through the ice. To either side, the walls were sheer, and they glittered here and there, as if scattered with gemstones. Below, in the deepest light of all, he could just make out where ice and water met, and the water was black as pitch. Of Grem, he saw nothing.

  When his descent finally halted, he hung in air, his heels dangling just above the dark water. "Grem!" he shouted, and the name echoed all around him. "Grem!"

  A moment later, a splash answ
ered him, and Grem's head broke the surface. The man coughed and choked and made wordless noises as he flailed weakly at the water.

  "More rope!" Alaric shouted. "Just a little!"

  In response, he was eased downward till his ankles were submerged, then his knees. The water was bitterly cold; he could feel it seeping into his boots, and it burned his feet like fire. He grabbed for Grem, caught the man's fur wrapping, and pulled with all his strength. Grem was heavy, his clothing waterlogged. He clutched at Alaric, at his arms at first, and the rope, and then, when his grip slipped, at the minstrel's legs. Alaric tried to peel the furs away and lighten the load, but the thongs that held them were knotted tight with water and ice, and would not yield. He locked his legs about Grem then, and shouted to be lifted upward, hoping that the weight would not be too much for the two stout men above.

  Slowly, jerkily, he rose from the water. His knees were clear. His ankles. His feet. And then, of a sudden, the weight on his legs was too much, and the loop of rope could not hold him—he was ripped down through it, arms snapped upward beside his ears, and he was in the water, deep, deep, and his mouth was full of its freezing salty taste.

  The cold bit to his marrow, seemed to turn his eyes, his blood, his very heart to ice. His limbs went numb, and he knew he was sinking fast. But Grem was beneath him. He willed his arms to clutch the man, willed his senseless fingers to press into those impossibly heavy furs. They sank together, and dizziness assailed him as he felt rather than saw the yawning darkness below.

  And a heartbeat later, the two of them were falling through air, falling for a long, long moment, as from the high branches of a tree, and then they struck an unyielding surface, and it knocked the breath from Alaric's lungs and the water from his throat.

  Gasping hoarsely, he lay with his cheek against the ice. He was not cold; he was past that. He felt nothing but an all-encompassing languor; he knew he was too weak to move, too weak even to open his eyes. Vaguely, he heard someone speaking, but the sound was muffled, distant. Then hands were lifting him, shaking him, stripping his clothing away and chafing him all over, and wrapping him in something. He opened his eyes at last but was blinded by whiteness and closed them again. Finally, it seemed a very long time later, hands moved him again, and he saw the grayness of his eyelids darken, and he knew he was inside a tent.

  Someone slapped his face. And again.

  He opened his eyes. A thin line of light showed where the entry flap had been loosely laced, and it was bright enough to show the tent's interior. Velet and Lanri crouched over him, Lanri's hand raised for another blow. Alaric pulled his own hand free of its enveloping furs and caught the other's before it could strike again.

  "Kata said to slap you till you woke," Lanri said in an apologetic tone.

  "I'm all right," Alaric whispered, sitting up, clutching the furs about him. The languor and the numbness were passing, and now he began to shiver violently. He curled up inside the furs, knees against his chest. His teeth clacked together so hard that he could scarcely speak. With some effort, he managed to say, "How is Grem?"

  "Grem is dead. Come, she said you should exercise, if you could."

  "Dead? Are you sure?"

  "Sure as I'm here with you." Through the furs, he gripped Alaric's arm. "Come, minstrel, we mustn't lose you, too."

  With assistance from both of them, Alaric managed to don dry clothing in spite of the shivering that kept his fingers from working properly. Then Velet went out while Land helped him to his feet and steadied him. He could stand in the tent, if he stooped a little, and with only two of them inside, there was room for him to thrash his arms and legs till the blood seemed to thaw in his veins and the shivering subsided.

  "I'm all right," he said again, firmly this time, and he gathered his furs right about him and pushed past Lanri to go outside.

  The other tent was up, too, a short distance away, and Velet was pacing back and forth beside it, three steps each way. As Alaric approached, he cast him a questioning glance, and Alaric nodded, not knowing the question and not bothering to ask. At the entry to Kata's small shelter, which was laced tightly shut, he called her name.

  The laces slipped from their eyelets, and the flap opened a bit to show a sliver of Kata's face. "You," she said. "Not dead, I see. And still here." She twitched the flap aside. "Come in."

  Inside, illuminated by a tiny oil lamp, and enveloped by the sweet smoke that spiralled outward from that flame, lay Grem. He was covered to the neck with a fur, and above it, his face was a pale, sickly color, and his eyes were open, staring at nothing.

  "You see," Kata said, "he was lost. You risked yourself for nothing. And you used your power for nothing. Even though you promised."

  Alaric knelt by the man and touched his cheek; it was cold as winter-chilled leather. He licked the back of his hand and held it beneath Grem's nose and felt not the slightest breath of air. He laid his fingers against Grem's neck, where the vein of a living person would beat strong, and there was nothing.

  "Oh yes, he's dead," said Kata. "And now get out and I will raise him to life again. Get out!"

  Outside, he stopped the pacing Velet. "Can she really do it?" he asked.

  "Sometimes," was the answer.

  The sun made two complete circles of the sky while the two nomad men and Alaric waited for Kata to come out of her tent. Two complete circles while they paced the ice or huddled together in their own shelter or tried to sleep. They stayed well away from the crevasse. And they watched the ice beneath their feet quite a lot, and jumped at any sudden noise. But no new crack opened.

  Finally Kata emerged, and behind her, walking shakily, came Grem.

  Alaric stood very still, just staring, while the other two men brushed past him to hug Grem and babble excitedly. Grem smiled wanly; he looked like a man who had been ill for years. Slowly, he raised a trembling hand toward Alaric.

  "You saved me," he said, his voice feeble and cracked.

  Alaric went to him then, and gripped his hand. "Not I," he said, "She saved you." He turned to Kata, whose lips were curving in that tiny superior smile he had seen before. "Lady, you are a marvel. This man was dead, I swear it."

  "Yes," she said. She tapped Lanri's arm with the back of her hand. "He must be exercised. But be gentle at first. Now Alaric and I must talk."

  He followed her, thinking that she meant to lead him to her tent, but she walked past it before turning back to him.

  "So you forgot your promise at the last, my brave Alaric," she said, her voice low and tight. "I knew if there was any excuse for it, you would."

  He gave her look for look, his eyes steady. "If you knew, lady, then you should never have asked for that promise."

  "I thought possibly, just possibly, you were a man of honor."

  "You see no honor in saving a life?"

  "You swore to obey me!"

  "I don't recall it being quite like that."

  "You placed yourself under my command. And then you disobeyed me!"

  "There is a higher command, lady, in my heart at least."

  Her mouth twisted. "Oh, brave words from the disobedient child! I know you never believed in my magic, no more than in the meaningless tricks of the south. You drank my potions and swooned, but to you it was all the same as a knock on the head. Oh, the south breeds fools! Did I not tell you your magic might ruin this journey? What is the life of one man, compared to the lives of all the people of the north? We gather the magic of survival on this journey, and you would spoil it for the little spark of one man's existence!"

  Alaric crossed his arms over his chest. "I would beg your forgiveness, lady, except—what have I spoiled? You have raised the dead. Surely that proves your magic is undamaged. Working together, your magic… and mine… saved him. We are not at odds."

  "You wished to prove me wrong," she said sharply. "And now you have three witnesses to swear you crossed my will and saved the man I said was lost. You think they'll forget this? You think they won't spread the tale w
hen we return? And then what will you be but just as much a witch as before? Oh, you said you yearned to show that you were nothing compared to me, but you lied! What you really want is to sweep us all north with your power and take credit for the whole journey!"

  "It would be faster, would it not? All you have to do is point the way—"

  She slapped him then, so hard it rocked him back. "Who is master here?" she shouted. "Would you take my place? You ignorant lout!"

  He raised a hand to his cheek. He could feel the imprint of her palm there still, and the flesh stung, and the bone and teeth beneath ached. "You are master," he said softly.

  "Liar!"

  "Lady—"

  "You want my place! You show it in everything you do, in every step you take!"

  She raised her hand to strike again, but he caught it this time, and they stood there frozen for a moment, till Alaric opened his own hand and let hers go. Then he stepped back.

  "I am not the fool," he said in a hard, cold voice. All his exasperation, and all the days and nights of the long cold journey rose in him like bitter bile. "You see me through a veil of your own devising, lady. You think I want your piddling place here in the north? Your absolute power over this insignificant flock? I could have been a prince in the south. I could have had all the wealth and power I liked, over people who mattered to the world. You saw so clearly that I could not take Simir's place, and you fear so much that I want your own. I am not the fool, lady; no. I am not the one so jealous of her own importance that she is afraid to teach wisdom to her own daughter. I gave myself to you, Kata. But if you wish, I can leave, and you'll never need to fear me again. I can find a soft life in the south, and no jealous witch to make my life miserable. Now we can call a truce, you and I, or I can go this moment. And you can say I ran away from you, if you like. But you're the one to choose now, not I. And you're the one to say which is stronger magic—pulling a dead body from the water, or giving it back the spark of life." He clenched his hands at his sides, and he would not allow himself to look away from her face.