Fall of Angels (40 page)

  
"You are a mage, a different mage, but a mage, and how will I learn about what you do if I do not listen? I can see your actions"-Relyn lifted the artificial metal hand-"but not your thoughts."

  
"I'm not sure that my thoughts are terribly important." Nylan laughed. "The marshal's perhaps, but not mine."

  
"She thinks great and terrible thoughts, I fear."

  
Nylan thought the same of Ryba's thoughts, but he only answered, "She does think great thoughts, and she will change this world."

  
"So will you, Mage."

  
"Me? Only so far as .. ." Nylan stopped. "I do not think so."

  
Relyn laughed. "More so than you think." He stood. "But I must think more. Thinking is harder than the blade."

  
Nylan frowned. "There's no reason why you couldn't re-learn the blade with your other hand. Saryn could certainly teach you."

  
Relyn paused. "A left-handed blade?"

  
"No worse than a black mage," countered Nylan.

  
Relyn laughed harshly, then turned.

  
As the former noble walked toward the stairwell and up the steps, Nylan glanced back at the now-empty tables and the cold hearth. After a moment, he crossed the great room and headed down to the tower's lowest level.

  
In the kitchen, the heat radiated from the stove where the long loaves of bread baked. Nylan took a deep breath, enjoying the aroma. Kyseen and Kadran worked at the blocky worktable, its surface already marked with the imprints of knives, slicing potatoes into circles and dropping them into the largest caldron. Both wore rough shirts with the sleeves rolled up. Kyseen set down her knife and, taking a pad made of rags, opened the stove grate, easing in two chunks of wood, one after the other.

  
"We'll need to saw some more small stove wood," Kyseen told Kadran, checking the coals in the stove, with the door open.

  
More heat welled out into the lower level, enough that Nylan, even by the foot of the stairs, could feel himself getting warm and dampness on his forehead. He unfastened the light ship jacket.

  
"It's your turn," Kadran said back to Kyseen.

  
"All right."

  
Cloaks wrapped around them, Narliat, Hryessa, and Murkassa stood in the alcove between the side of the stove and the central stairwell.

  
"Narliat, and you two-you could do some woodcutting," suggested Nylan. "It might even warm you up."

  
"Friggin' right," whispered Kyseen to Kadran, who nodded.

  
"Kyseen will show you what to do," Nylan suggested, before heading toward the other side of the lower level and the rudimentary carpentry which awaited him. Carpentry? He really didn't have that much of a feel for wood, but he had no real tools for working metal. By the next winter, he really should think about building another structure, a small smithy where he could learn, one way or another, more traditional metalworking. Even with his ordering ability, he suspected it would be a long summer and hard work, but there were too many tools and items that Westwind needed-and too few coins to purchase them. On the other hand, with the lander shells, there was metal, even if it did take his strange ability to work it.

  
Ayrlyn gave him a crooked smile as he stepped toward the planks.

  
"Where do I start?" he asked, repressing a shudder at the thought of trying to cross deep powdery snow on a pair of carved boards.

XLVIII

WITH A NOD to the guard in the corridor, the Lord of Lornth closes the tower door and crosses the room to the alcove where the lady Ellindyja sits.

  
"Good day, my lady mother."

  
"Good day, Sillek. You are kind to continue to visit me."

  
"Since I have a consort? You will always remain my mother, and a woman from whom I have learned much." As the wind whistles, he turns and eases back toward the window. "The wind is stronger than usual, this time of year."

  
"It may be a cold winter. It's not been this cold in several years." Ellindyja's eyes drop to the embroidery hoop. "I hope it will not be too chill for your consort."

  
"Zeldyan? Carpa is almost as close to the Westhorns as Lornth, and farther north. I'm sure she's used to winter. Her father did teach her to hunt and basic blade skills."

  
"She is rather accomplished." Ellindyja pauses, but Sillek's eyes drift back to the window. She clears her throat. "Sillek, your Zeldyan has been such a dear... so solicitous and so faithful in paying her respects to me."

  
Sillek turns from the fitful flakes of snow that dance outside the tower window and crosses the room, dropping into the chair across from his mother. "She knows that you are very wise. She's told me so."

  
"She loves you, Sillek. That is very dangerous." Ellindyja lifts the embroidery needle like a scepter and points it toward her son.

  
"Dangerous?"

  
"She cares so deeply that she may counsel you against what is best for Lornth out of her fears for you." Ellindyja deftly secures the end of the thread, then begins the first stitch of the sword blade that will be golden.

  
"I am sure that there are many who will seek to counsel me otherwise," Sillek responds. "It might be refreshing to have someone actually interested in my health. Not necessarily good for Lornth, but refreshing."

  
"What would be good for Lornth will be good for you, Sillek."

 
 
"I would hope so." The Lord of Lornth stands. "I would hope so." His eyes turn back to the window. "Perhaps a long, cold winter will rid us of the evil angels on the Roof of the World."

  
"Do you believe that?" The embroidery needle flickers through the linen, trailing gold.

  
"Evil isn't usually dislodged by weather. Still... one can hope, and, since spring comes late to the heights, that will give us time to increase our resources before dealing with that problem."

  
"I am pleased to see you have not put that loss from your mind."

  
"Neither from my mind, nor from my plans, Mother dear. But I have no desire to leave my back unshielded while venturing into the Westhorns." Sillek studies the dancing flakes beyond the window. "Yes ... a long, cold winter might be helpful for many reasons." He walks toward the door.

  
"I am pleased that you are doing well, that you have chosen not to be cloistered, and that Zeldyan pleases you." He smiles as he holds the door ajar. "And I am also pleased that I took your advice and journeyed to Carpa." With a last smile, he half salutes Lady Ellindyja and closes the door.

  
The north wind rattles the tower window, and the snowflakes dance.

XLIX

CARRYING THE SKIS and the fir poles with the leather straps at one end out through the south door to the tower, Nylan followed Ayrlyn and Saryn up the beaten path toward the stables for several hundred cubits. Where the ground dropped away from the path on the south side, there was a ramp packed through the waist-deep snow, rising gently from the path for perhaps fifty cubits before the ramp merged with the snow. Beyond that point, the snow, swirled in drifts, generally dropped away toward the east.

  
The cairns down in the south corner of the snow-covered meadow were white hummocks with drifts extending almost to the drop-off that overlooked the forest far below. A light wind blew across the snowfieid, lifting and swirling the top powdered snow under a bright sun that gave no warmth and a clear green-blue heaven that seemed to suck the heat out of the engineer, despite the two jackets and heavy woolen scarf he wore.

  
Nylan set the skis on the flat part of the packed snow ramp, following Ayrlyn's example, and looked along the ramp that sloped gently upward through the walls of snow. A half-dozen dual ski tracks fanned out from the end of the ramp onto the snowfield.

  
"Who's been out already?" Despite the scarf around his nose and mouth, Nylan's breath formed white clouds in the air, and he could feel the ice forming on the wool of the scarf. As he watched, the ice crystals that had been Saryn's breath fluttered to the powdery surface of the packed snow.

  
"Gerlich, the hunters," answered Saryn, "and Fierral, Ryba, and the scouts."

  
If Gerlich could master old-style skis, then Nylan could, he decided, as he bent down and fastened the leather thongs around his boots, boots lined with wool scraps and bulging somewhat at the tops. He had to take off the outer layer of his gloves because they were really leather mittens covering woolen gloves, and he couldn't handle the leather thongs with the fingerless mittens. Neither mittens nor the gloves beneath fit terribly well, since he'd done the cutting and stitching himself.

  
"Ready?" asked Saryn.

  
Nylan straightened and pulled the leather mittens back over his gloves, then took a pole in each hand.

  
"If I can do this, you can," said Saryn, slowly gliding up the ramp.

  
"Let's hope so," Nylan muttered, but he followed her example and, one pole in each hand, slowly slid the left wooden ski forward. Each ski felt like a building timber, but Ayrlyn had insisted that the skis needed to be wide and long because the snow on the Roof of the World was light and powdery.

  
As he tried to slide the right ski after the left one, he could feel himself lurching forward, and he leaned back to compensate. Then his left ski started sliding backward, and he jabbed a pole into the packed snow of the ramp, wobbling there before catching his balance.

  
"Start with slow movements," suggested Saryn, "and keep your weight forward-not too forward-on the skis."

  
"I've always tried not to be too forward," Nylan retorted, ignoring the cold air that bit into his nose, throat, and lungs.

  
"Slow movements, one ski at a time," ordered Ayrlyn.

  
Nylan inched the left ski forward, then the right, then the left until he had crept up the ramp to where the packed area ended. Squinting against the brightness of the sun, he looked out over the nearly flat and powdered snow that covered the meadows more than waist-deep.

  
"Just follow in my tracks," Ayrlyn instructed.

  
Nylan edged after the redhead, though her hair and most of her face were well swathed in a gray woolen scarf.

  
Despite his best efforts, his skis skidded out of the tracks Ayrlyn had made, then sank to knee depth. As the snow piled up in front of his shins, he slowed to a stop. When he shifted his weight, the skis sank even farther until the snow reached his knees.

  
"Making the first trail is the hardest," called Saryn from beside him, "especially if you're moving slowly. Speed helps-until you fall, and then it's a mess."

  
Looking at the snow that covered his skis completely and most of his lower legs, Nylan decided it was already a mess. "Just put one ski in front of the other. Make it a sliding sort of walk."

  
That Nylan could understand, and the process seemed to work, enough so that he actually had covered several hundred cubits, mostly staying in the trail Ayrlyn had cut through the snow.

  
"That's it," the singer called. "Just keep up that motion." At that moment, Nylan reached too far forward with his right pole, lost his balance, flailed, and went down in a heap, his entire upper body plunging through the powdery white crystals until a gloved hand slammed against something hard.

  
He lay in the snow, his feet pinned together by the skis, breathing both chill air and snow crystals that had oozed around his scarf.

  
"Straighten your skis."

  
"How?" he mumbled through the snow. Finally, he levered his upper body sideways, since his skis would not move, until his legs could separate slightly. Then he bent his knees and curled up into a ball as close to the skis as he could. That allowed him to rock himself over into a half-crouching, half-kneeling position. From there he struggled upright, his snow-covered face finally emerging into the glare, the snow almost chest-deep.

  
His skis felt mired, but he lifted each in turn, letting snow filter under each, climb-packing his way up until he stood on the skis-merely knee-deep in the powder that leached the heat out of his legs and feet.

  
"See . . . you can get out of it," said Saryn.

  
"This time," snorted Nylan, trying to brush the snow off himself, snow that clung to everything but the leather trousers and packed itself into every bodily crevice.

  
He started after Ayrlyn even more cautiously than before, then stopped as he saw a pair of figures sweeping from the ridge line above the tower.

  
Istril and Ryba skied slowly downward, a rope tied to a bundle they towed. As they neared, each leaving a graceful dual line of ski traces in the snow, Nylan could see the bundle consisted of a pale-coated winter deer.

  
He also marveled at their grace, doubting that he would ever match it. Part of him never wanted to try as the snow melted in cold rivulets down his neck, back, and legs. He forced a wave to the two skiers.

  
"There's the engineer!" Istril returned his wave.

  
As he started to follow Ayrlyn's tracks again, in a turn that would carry him back toward the packed trail the horses used, Nylan found himself again wobbling on the skis, conscious that the leather thongs provided no real support. He jabbed his poles back down to balance himself and let himself slide to a halt.