Consorts of Heaven (12 page)

When she returned, Sais took one look at her face and asked, ‘What is it? What’s happened?’

‘Tis Manawn, one of the Penfrid drovers,’ she said dully. ‘He has the falling fire.’

‘Shit.’ Distracted by the rigours of the drove, Sais had almost forgotten about that. ‘What’ll they do? They could probably fit him on one of the sleds now we’re on even ground.’

‘No,’ said Kerin, ‘the men will leave him.’

‘Leave him?
Out here?
He’ll die.’

Looking at her feet, Kerin whispered, ‘If the Mothers will it.’

After a brief discussion the leaders called everyone up to the front. People offered up prayers for the sick man, who lay beside the track, staring wide-eyed at the sky. They left him a water-skin and some food, in case, Huw said, the Mothers showed their mercy.

Then they carried on. No one looked back.

Two days later they came to a large village in the centre of a wide, fertile valley.

‘If the drovers knew we were passing this place, why didn’t they bring Manawn here to be looked after?’ Sais asked Kerin.

Kerin pointed to a line of dark smoke curling up from behind the cluster of huts. ‘That is a pyre; the winnowing times are upon us, and each must look to their own and not presume upon others.’

Sais hung back while the drovers went up to trade rush mats and capes for fresh food. Damaru was greeted with awe. People made the circle sign whenever they looked his way and several of them darted up to touch him. He shied away and flapped his hands at them. Sais was surprised Kerin didn’t intervene.

Huw asked the villagers if anyone recognised Sais, as he would have come this way to get to Dangwern from the lowlands, but no one had.

When they left Sais asked Kerin why she’d let the villagers paw at Damaru.

‘They wish the blessing of a sky-touched child against the winnowing times. I cannot deny them that.’

‘Aren’t you worried they might infect him?’

‘Infect him? The falling fire is not something you
catch
. It is the judgment of Heaven. Besides, he is a
skyfool
. He can no more succumb to the falling fire than a priest could.’

That night, for the first time, the sky was clear. As twilight faded into darkness, stars began to emerge. Sais sat on his bedroll watching the turquoise sky come alive with light. It was spectacular, and totally unfamiliar.

After a while he realised Kerin was standing near him. He said, ‘I don’t know how I can have forgotten this.’ Unless he’d never known it, of course.

‘I am glad you have finally seen it.’ Then she added tentatively, ‘May I sit with you?’

‘Of course.’ He moved over.

‘Do you understand a little of what Heaven must be now?’

‘Perhaps I do. It’s beautiful. So bright, so . . . big.’

‘Aye.’ He could tell by her voice that she was smiling.

After a while he said, ‘Why are there so many stars above us, and almost none round the edge of the sky?’

‘Because that is Heaven! The stars are the light of Heaven that we are given to see, so the further from Creation - and from the Abyss that lurks below us - the more light there is.’

‘How about the Skymothers?’

‘They are nearer their Creation because they watch over it.’

He pointed to a reddish star near the horizon. ‘So is that one?’

She pulled his arm down and said quickly, ‘Do not point! Not towards a Skymother!’

‘Sorry. I forgot.’

‘No, I should not have reacted like that. But that is a Skymother, aye. Medelwyr, our lady of the dusk.’

‘And is another one coming up over there, where the horizon’s glowing?’

‘No, that is silvermoon rising, or perhaps cloudmoon.’

‘I’ve forgotten about the moons too. Can you remind me?’

‘The two moons and the sun that light the day are places of spirit and fire. When we die, our soul goes to one of those places - men to the sun, women to cloudmoon, children to silvermoon - where it is purged and judged. Most times, it will be found wanting, and returned to be clothed in flesh again. After all lessons have been learned, all suffering endured and all temptations overcome, a spirit may break free and ascend. Or, if it has fallen under the influence of the Cursed One it may be lost, banished forever to the Abyss.’

‘Right, I see.’ Sais started as a trace of white light, gone in an eye-blink, streaked across the sky. ‘What was that?’

‘Ah - I missed it! That was an early one.’

‘An early what?’

‘A falling star. We call them that but they are not stars, as the sky remains unchanged, no matter how many fall. They are a gift from the Consorts, for star-season: their bounty raining down.’

‘I think you mentioned that. You were talking about the red rain and this silver one.’ He remembered what she’d said now. ‘So these falling stars bring fertility?’

‘Aye. The land would not produce life save for this grace. And they bring skymetal too, sometimes.’

‘Skymetal?’

‘Aye, tis far stronger and brighter than ordinary metal. But only servants of the Skymothers may wield it. Arthen acts as priest for the village, so he has a disc of it.’

‘The thing he held up in the council?’ Besides a few bronze knives and spear-tips, Arthen’s disc was the only metal he’d seen here, which seemed odd to him. ‘And star-season is when this - ah - bounty, and skymetal, come to earth?’

‘In truth it happens for some weeks. The week when the fall is greatest is star-season. The end of spring and the start of summer.’ She laughed a little nervously. ‘I am surprised you have forgotten star-season. Status is put aside, the Traditions disregarded. No work is done, and people are free to do what they will.’

‘Sounds fun,’ he said.

‘Sometimes,’ she said, then added, ‘Neithion died at star-season, in a fight. I doubt he started it - most likely he tried to intervene.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘It was the will of the Mothers.’

 

They were two weeks in now - nearly a third of the way to the market - and Sais was adjusting to the bustle and slog of the drove. He accepted going to sleep each night with his nostrils full of the reek of damp wool, rancid fat and sweaty feet, then waking up feeling as though he’d hardly had any rest, to eat an inadequate meal of unidentifiable dried fruit or a jerky indistinguishable in texture - and probably taste - from the straps on his pack.

Whenever the exhaustion and the cold and the filth and the hunger got too much, he reminded himself that he had no choice other than to go with these people. Eventually he would eat hot meals and sleep in a bed again, if he just
kept walking
.

Though the first few nights on the road had been free of dreams, after the incident with the reivers, the nightmares returned with a vengeance. Every night he was chased through bright corridors, pursued down dark passages, or mired and paralysed, waiting for a terrible fate. Often the dark eyes were there, watching him, boring into his soul. Sometimes the unknown woman called to him, entreating, or encouraging, or even cursing him.

It wouldn’t have been so bad if the nightmares had led to him regaining any of his lost memories, but the details fled as soon as he woke up.

Kerin and Damaru took to sleeping away from him, in case his bad dreams triggered Damaru’s skyfool abilities. Whilst Sais would have happily revisited the sensation Damaru had caused if there was any chance it might help him connect with his past, given the violent way Damaru’s skyfool powers had manifested so far, he decided Kerin was wise to be cautious.

The valley they’d been following fed into one steeper and more dramatic, edged by the highest mountains he’d yet seen. Their tops were lost in cloud, and scree from their slopes swept down the valley sides in great grey fans. The stream from Maen Bulch, now a river, ran down the gentle creased slope to the valley bottom where it met a larger river called the Glaslyn.

They forded the Glaslyn at the bottom of the valley, rigging up ropes to guide the sleds across. From the caution they displayed, the drovers were terrified of falling in. Sais felt less concerned - he had an idea he could swim, though he didn’t much fancy testing this assumption in a fast-running, ice-cold mountain river.

The valley bottom supported stands of trees; they took advantage to shelter from the frequent showers and to light campfires at night. On those nights when it didn’t rain it was almost cosy sitting next to Kerin while she sewed, listening to the men sing and tell tales. Wild goats wandered the woods, and a couple of days out from Piper’s Steps, Gwilym managed to bring down a youngster with a well-aimed slingshot to the head. Kerin roasted the choicest cuts on a lattice of green twigs, a meal which Sais found unbelievably delicious.

He was less enthusiastic about the fresh meat the next morning, having spent much of the night crouched in a bush trying to get rid of it. He made more unscheduled stops that morning, and by the afternoon felt weak and feverish. Kerin said she would make him an infusion to calm his stomach when they stopped that evening.

Then, near the end of the day, Huw ran back and said, ‘The councillors have decided we need to press on through the night if we are to reach the Steps in time.’

Sais stared at him. ‘You’re joking.’

Unfortunately, he wasn’t.

‘They are here!’

Einon opened his eyes to the grey dawn light, confused for a moment to see grubby canvas, not smooth rock, over his head. Then he remembered: he was not in his room in the Tyr any more, he was in a tent halfway up a mountain with a bunch of hairy, ignorant uplanders.

‘What?’ he snapped at the man looking in through the flap.

‘I am sorry, Gwas, I did not realise you still slept. Tis the drovers from beyond the grass plain. They are coming along the valley now.’

Einon sighed, ‘Ah, give me a moment—’ as the man withdrew. He had rather hoped these last three villages would not make it in time. He already had eleven sets of bickering clansmen expecting him to act as arbiter in their interminable disputes over cattle and precedence and ancient, half-remembered feuds.

Perhaps Einon’s mentor had shown the wisdom of his rank when he dispatched Einon to this skyforesaken wilderness. Perhaps, as the terse letter that had ordered him out of the City of Light had stated, it
would
do Einon good to leave the confines of the Tyr and see new places for himself. More likely, there were hidden reasons for Urien, Escori of Frythil and the man Einon loved and trusted above all others, to send him out on a job better suited to a Rhethor from the estates. It probably came down to politics, something his mentor excelled in, but from which Einon had tried - and apparently failed - to remain aloof.

Yawning and shivering, he splashed water on his face, pulled his cloak around him and staggered into the morning twilight. The cattle were low shapes in the half-light, as still as the hills themselves. As the messenger led him past the fire the men sitting round it stood up and traced the circle. Einon nodded an acknowledgement.

By the time he reached the spot where he would greet this last group of drovers he could see an amorphous mass lumbering along the valley side. It began to resolve into individual figures as they closed the distance. His eye was caught by a lone figure walking a little apart. It loped along, then stopped abruptly to bend down, as if looking at some item of interest. Einon heard a faint, high-pitched shout and the figure appeared to hesitate, then came back towards the rest of the drove. The one who had called out went a little way up the slope and together they walked over to the sleds where they joined a much taller man. Even at this distance Einon could see he was different from the clansmen who surrounded them.

As they approached, Einon realised why the shout he had heard sounded so odd. It came from a woman. What in the name of the Mother of Secrets was a
woman
doing here?

As soon as the drove leaders were close enough to hail he called out, ‘Well met, brothers. Be welcome in the name of the Five and take your rest.’ Not that they would get much rest: the main body of the drove was already preparing to ascend the Steps.

The men at the front traced the circle, and one of them stepped forward and gave the ritual response: ‘We seek to join those under your protection, and submit ourselves to the will of the Mothers, as given through your words.’ Everyone traced the circle again, and the man added, ‘I am Howen am Dangwern, and I lead the drovers from beyond the grass plain.’

‘You have time for some food and to water your animals, Clansman, but we cannot delay much longer,’ Einon said a little apologetically. ‘We must climb the Steps today.’

A straggly-bearded youth with a scrap of cloth tied over one eye stepped forward and said, ‘Gwas, I beg your indulgence.’

The older man glared at him, but the boy ignored him. He made the circle and continued, ‘I come before you as guardian to a skyfool.’

So that was the strange figure who had broken away from the others! But surely this youth could not be his father, notwithstanding the rumours of sexual improprieties amongst uplanders. ‘Really, Chilwar?’

‘Aye, Gwas. He is from Dangwern. My name is Fychan am Dangwern.’

‘Kindly show me this, ah, skyfool,’ Einon asked. ‘The rest of you should make your way to the marshalling stations.’

As the drove started up again with whistles and cries, Fychan led him back towards the three figures he had spotted earlier. The skyfool paid the approaching pair no mind. He was trying to shake the woman off; he was on the verge of tears, she on the verge of exasperation.

The pale stranger sat on a rock, head in hands. He looked up as Einon approached, and Einon thought what a striking man he was, with a nobility entirely lacking in these uplanders. Fychan did not bother to introduce him, but Einon stopped anyway.