Lords of the Sky (43 page)

I opened my eyes and yelled in unalloyed terror as I felt hot breath on my face, saw eyes that I knew were real peering down at me.

My mare snorted and backed from the bed, tumbling furniture on her way. I sat up, groaning, rubbing at my eyes. I felt weary, as if I had not slept at all. I thought the dream should vanish, but it did not: it remained precise in my memory. I staggered from the bed, my legs unsteady as I found the water bucket and drank deep before giving the pail over to my horse. I was trembling, and sweat beaded my brow. I took the jug of distilled wine and gulped a cup, then sat, slumped against the table.

It was an effort to rise. I conjured the image of the dragon. I wondered if it was a true image or merely the product of my imagination. I went to the fire and stoked the embers, adding a few logs against the cold pervading the room.

My mare had soiled the floor, and I cleared her dung before heating what was left of last night’s stew. I fed her and tidied the cottage, then broke my own fast and doused the fire. I saddled her and led her out, still bemused by the odd dream. I swung the door closed and mounted. A trickle of smoke rose from the chimney, soon lost against the dawn-time gray. It was very cold, but the sun flirted on the rim of the eastern horizon, and I thought the worst of the night’s chill should be soon gone. I felt no wish to linger.

I never learned what became of the inhabitants of that cottage, though I was told their names the next night, when I sheltered in another lonely shepherd’s hut. The general opinion was that their bodies would be found come the thaw. If the thaw came: none were too sure of that.

Were they killed by this occult winter, they were not the only ones. The toll of lives and livestock was heavy throughout all Dharbek. Folk died in the lonely places, of hunger, of
the cold; in the cities and settlements, too, as food grew short; fishermen drowned as ice-caked boats capsized. Deer froze in the wilderness, and wolves came down from the highlands to prey on penned sheep and cattle. I saw it all as I wound my way eastward, thankful that I survived.

I was rounding the southern coast, and Whitefish village lay not too far distant. I came to Amsbry on a day the wind hurled frozen snow like needles against my face, and I was grateful for the warmth of Perryn’s hall, the strong stone walls and stout wood shutters. It stood like an eagle’s aerie atop a cliff, and beyond the land ran down broken to the east coast. They were on short rations—all Dharbek was on short rations now, I heard—but it seemed rich fare to me after long days sharing what poor shepherds and farmers could spare. I reported all I had seen along my way to Kydal, who was commur-mage there and not much older than I, and I had back what news she could give me. It was not much, nor different from all I’d got along my way: unlikely winter prevailed, famine threatened, the Great Coming was anticipated. I remained three days and then set off for Tarvyn, which lay some nine days away.

Those nine days stretched into thirty.

I quit Amsbry with the sun a silver disk in a steel-hard sky. There was no cloud, and the snowfields shone bright, undisturbed by wind. By the midpart of the day a breeze came out of the east. I paid it no attention at first, more concerned with boiling my tea. Then my mare whickered, and when I glanced toward her, I saw she stood with head raised, her nostrils flared. She seemed expectant, and I thought perhaps she caught the scent of wolves and rose warily. A flank of hillside loomed above us, a shallow valley below, pines straggling thin over the slope. I saw no sign of predators and went to where the mare stood. She greeted me with an almost amiable snort, her head tossing, her hooves pawing. I saw that her ears were up and her eyes not rolling, which I took for confidence. I did not understand her behavior: she seemed frisky, coltish, which was not at all her way. I stroked her neck, and to my surprise she allowed it, even going so far as to nudge me in return. I frowned; then gasped as I smelled what she had sooner known: the breeze was such a draught as heralds spring.

That night we found shelter in a village. Rhysbry, it was called, and it boasted a tiny inn where I was made welcome, bed and board offered in return for my stories. I told but one: the folk of that place, who had passed the last months snowbound, were entirely occupied with the weather’s shifting. All their talk was of the breeze; of its scent and strength, its promise. Spring came, they said, and soon the snow should be gone. My weather lore was no less than theirs, and I must agree it
was
a spring wind; but even knowing all I did of the sorcerers’ beliefs, still I could scarcely credit so sudden an ending of the Sky Lords’ winter.

The next day, however, the gusting came again, and the sky was a warmer blue, the sun golden, and the air warm enough I shed my scarf. By noon, I rode without my cloak. By dusk, my mare’s hooves left deep prints in which water puddled, and when I halted at a shepherd’s cottage, I must walk her awhile to cool her. That night I threw off my blanket.

As I readied for departure the shepherd, whose name was Tarys, gave me warning.

“You ride for Tarvyn, no?” he said, and when I confirmed this: “Then best ride careful, Daviot. ’Tween here and the keep, the way’s all valleys and ravines, and does spring come on us swift as this God-cursed winter, there’ll be flooding with the melt.”

He stabbed a thumb skyward in emphasis. I looked up and saw a spring sky; the air was balmy, and I suspected he might well be correct. I thanked him, and he ducked his white head, declaring that he’d not see a Storyman drowned. I mounted my mare and turned her east, thinking that he gave me sound advice: I came to accept the winter fled.

Clear of the high country, the slopes were forested, and all that day water dripped relentlessly from the branches overhead, and the snow beneath my mare’s hooves grew soft, rivulets forming to trickle downslope. For all I sweated under it, I donned my cloak. I studied the valley bottoms and ravines carefully and saw the streams there swollen, no longer iced, but running swifter and gray with snowmelt. In the afternoon, as I crossed a valley, I heard a rumbling from the far slope and saw a great mass of snow break loose, trees and boulders tossing in its passage, leaving behind a scar of muddy brown earth. I began to worry again.

I found no shelter that night, for I was forced to detour from my route by three more avalanches. I made camp atop a ridge spread with looming cedars that no longer dripped, which in itself was disturbing, for they should not have dried so soon. Neither should the ground there have been visible yet. It was as though the seasons accelerated, winter fleeing before onrushing spring in a matter of days. I wondered what manner of summer might follow.

Whatever it should be, I did not think I should need wait long to find out. Day by steady day, the temperature rose. I could no longer follow my chosen path, for I must all the time ride around landslips or find some way over streams become rivers, rivers swollen to torrents. Valleys lay waterlogged, bridges were washed away, and fords become impassable. Pastureland was rendered quagmire, swaths cut through timber. I saw animals—sheep and cattle and horses, deer and wild pigs, twice bears—washed drowned and bloated past me. Sometimes I saw human bodies, tumbled by so swift, I could not tell whether they were Truemen or Changed. When I found the road, it was awash with mud and ofttimes blocked by the detritus of landslides. Farms and villages stood wet and miserable, and everywhere folk told sad tales of ruined planting, of fields lost to the excessive melt, of deaths by drowning or landslide. They forecast a poor harvest, if any harvest at all might be reaped. And all the while the heat increased, until all the snow was gone and it seemed Kellambek was become a land of swamps and lakes. It seethed under the sun, vapors rising thick as mist from ground that dried as rapidly as it had flooded. Save our world was somehow drawn closer into the sun’s orbit, there could no longer be any doubt that frightening magic was brought against us.

By the time I reached Tarvyn, the floods were gone and the earth baked as if midsummer were come. Rivers that had run in spate were now thin streams, streams were dry gutters. Trees that had been denied the chance to bud stood withered, what grass had not been washed away lay sere. There were fires in the hills and dread throughout the land.

Tarvyn Keep stood beside the sea, where the southern ocean met the Fend. The sun sparkled off slow waves and the still air was heavy with the odor of rotting seaweed. Boats stood along the beach with tar oozing melted from
their caulking, their crews lounging idle, paying me only the slightest attention, as if the heat leached out their curiosity. I rode in shirt-sleeves, a cloth wound around my forehead to hold off the sweat that would otherwise blind me. My gray mare had long since lost her springtime friskiness and walked sullen, her head low, panting in the excessive heat. She seemed not even to have the vitality of her usual ill temper. Nor was I in much better fettle. This heat—and belief in its origin—drained hope as surely as it leached energy. I thought it must be very hard to fight in such weather.

We plodded slowly to the keep’s entrance, and I announced myself to gatemen whose look reminded me of boiled lobsters. They waved me by as if that effort cost them dear. As I crossed the yard, I saw folk all languid in the heat, stripped to decency’s minimum of clothing. There was no breeze, for all the sea was but a stone’s throw distant, and the aeldor’s banners hung limp from the tower. I dismounted, shirt and breeks clinging wet to my body, and walked my horse into the stable. It was thankfully a little cooler there, but not much, and the Changed ostlers who came to offer help plodded like their equine forebears. I gave them the warning that had become my custom and saw to the mare myself. She made no protest as I removed her tack and rubbed her down, not even her habitual attempt to bite me. I thought I had rather suffer her temper than see her thus.

I gave her oats and water and went to find Madrys, whose holding this was.

He was in the hall, a thin young man whose red hair was plastered slick to his skull. He rose to greet me, and when I made my excuses for this late arrival, he waved a weary hand and told me he knew of the road’s difficulties. He introduced me to his wife, Rynne, whose pale yellow gown was patched dark at breast and armpits. She held a baby that mewled, his tiny face bright red; for him and all the children, I felt most sorry. There was an air of lassitude in this hall; only the commur-magus Tyrral seeming unaffected by the heat. I was invited to take ale chilled in the well and sat sipping as Changed servants fanned us. Their efforts seemed only to stir the overheated air that had succeeded in pervading even the cool stone of the keep.

I gave brief report of my journey from Amsbry and had
back the news that Tarvyn had not long since seen two of the Sky Lords’ little craft, as if they came to check their occult handiwork. Madrys appeared resigned or drained of optimism, though he assured me his warband stood ready to fight. Tyrral was more sanguine. Indeed, he treated his aeldor brusquely, as if the younger man’s apathetic mood irritated him. As soon as was polite, I asked if I might bathe and change—and was shocked to be told fresh water was in short supply. I had thought the snowmelt must fill the aquifers.

I remained only a few days in Tarvyn. I gave them my best stories, tales of glorious victories and great battles, but received only a lackluster response. For all Tyrral put on a brave face, there was a feeling of despair about the keep, as if aeldor and warband had already given up. It saddened me, but also it threatened to affect my own spirits.

Also, I was now close enough to Whitefish village I thought of reunions, of seeing again my kinfolk and childhood friends, and that spurred me to impatience. So, pleading an urgency imposed by my delayed arrival, I made my excuses soon as was decent and left that sad keep behind me.

Within seven days I saw the boundary stones that marked the limit of Madrys’s holding and the commencement of Cambar land. Within seven more I came home.

I
t is a strange experience to go home after years away in a wider world. I had left Whitefish village an innocent, eager to experience the marvels of Durbrecht and all that lay beyond. Even then, I had had that double-edged gift of memory, and it fixed my home in my mind as it had been and was that day I departed. The village and its folk had been all my world, and I could yet conjure clear those impressions of my youth, so that—for all I knew I had changed—still I perceived my home immutable, preserved thus in my mind as the lapidaries set insects or flowers in glass. But places and people, both, shrink as we grow. Things change, and yesterday is a country of the memory that is no longer quite what you recall; even for a Mnemonikos.

I came north up the inland road, turning to the coast along the track that crested the pine-clad cliffs of my infancy to run down to Whitefish village. The meadowland there was parched, the grass sere, the soil cracked as an ancient face. The trees stood desiccated, needles fallen too soon crackling under my gray mare’s hooves. I halted atop the bluff, suddenly nervous. Below me stood a huddle of rude cottages such as should barely fill one of Durbrecht’s plazas. Along the beach stood fishing boats, beyond them the Fend, brilliant under the remorseless sun. There was no breeze—I had not felt a breeze in days—and the village baked. It seemed
to me a poor, rough place, and I felt ashamed to think it so: I heeled my mare and took her down the slope.