Magesong (2 page)

The rocky and storm-torn coastline curved back to the west
to where he had seen the pinpoint of light, but he didn't think he could make
his way along the shore.  A steep ridge ran down from the peaks to the north, plunging
into the sea at nearly the vertical.  The flank of the ridge stood barren, but
the crest bristled with pines and firs, and promised fresh water on the other side. 
He eyed the distance to the top and figured he could be there by noon.

The first half-hour was the worst.  Fever and chills marched
and countermarched the length of his body like two armies in the field
maneuvering for tactical advantage.  When they met in battle he stopped to
rest, half-sitting, half-leaning on the huge stones jutting from the barren
soil like giant thumbs and knuckles.  As the day grew warmer he was able to
close his eyes and walk in the way Ty'kojin had showed him.

It had been the first thing his old master taught, telling
him very seriously that it was a magical way of walking.  Ty'kojin never had a
name for the walk, and never said right out what use it had when Reyin asked,
always giving a different one word answer such as "balance," or
"breathing."  Late in his apprenticeship Reyin had begun thinking of
it as a master's joke, particularly when he asked Dimietri during one of his
rare visits what was the purpose of the magic walk.  Dimietri shook his head
with a grimace of pain, as if the question had plagued him for years, and said
that he did not know.  Ty'kojin finally had Reyin walking the strange gait with
his eyes closed, still earnest about it giving him some kind of power.

Years later he mentioned it to Artemes with a smile and a
wink.  Artemes had risen to his great height, bear-like in his long shaggy
coat, and stared him down.  "Do not be a fool," he had said, "to
walk that gait as a master is to be unstoppable."  Reyin began to practice
the walk again after that.  Like so many ways Ty'kojin had started him upon, he
had to continue on this one alone.

The noontime sun passed him during the long climb, moving
westward before he crested the ridge.  His pocket watch read three o'clock when
he at last let his overloaded backpack slip free and threw himself down on the
ridge top.  The downhill slope before him lay carpeted with evergreens, and
beyond that a narrow valley ran down from the north in four long terraced
steps, each one over a league across.  Another forested ridge on the other side
walled out the ocean, a pinnacle of granite rising from the trees. He scanned
the patchwork of brown and yellow that followed a stream along the floor of the
valley.  They were regular enough to be fields, but through the afternoon haze
he couldn't make out anything that looked like a village.  Some of the shapes
near the edge of the bay looked too square and regular to be natural —  houses
possibly, but he couldn't be sure.

He stood there a short time, watching for movement in the
valley, but the wind drove him downhill to find cover among the pines and
firs.  An hour of rest banished very little fatigue, and he knew he was
approaching his physical limits.  When he started down, his knees began aching
dully, the dullness turning to sharp pain on the steeper parts of the descent.

Something moved ahead of him and he froze — some kind of
deer, a small one.  If he could bring it down without killing it he could use
the Heartleech to find the nearest people, or water if nothing else.  It would
have seemed a hard thing to him only a few days ago — shoot down a defenseless
creature just to draw the life force from it, just to do the simplest magic —
but now, his own life in peril, his only worry was that his gun would misfire. 
He reached into the oilskin bag and drew out the pistol.

It's a long shot, and I'll be lucky to hit it anywhere, he thought
as he slowly turned the little crank.  But the metallic click of the mechanism
spooked the deer, and it galloped off into the trees before he could finish
locking the wheel.

Artemes had come as close as he ever did to an apology when
he had given him the Heartleech.  It was Artemes' odd way of making up for what
he couldn't teach.  The magic of the Heartleech was simple.  It allowed anyone
who knew a spell to cast it, using the vitality of a living being to replace
the Essa.

"It's a foul piece of work," Artemes had said, handing
him a black lump of metallic rock.  "Its power is invoked by rubbing a
drop of blood on it.  Then you simply place it over the heart of the one you
wish to draw, um, draw the life force from.  I don't think it would take enough
from a full-grown man to kill him unless you cast a very powerful spell with
it, but obviously you would want to use it on an animal, and only if the need
was great.  Ty'kojin always thought it should be destroyed; I never could
decide.  Now I'll leave that to you."

He had never used the Heartleech, and he often cursed
Artemes for giving it to him.  Surely Artemes knew how tempting it would be.

He continued downhill and tried to keep veering left,
wanting to get the shoreline back into sight.  He nearly stepped into the tiny
stream before he saw it.  No more than one foot across, it rushed swiftly,
clear and cold, down a slope thick with ivy and evergreens.  His knees hurt now
with every step, and he didn't think he could take many more.  Here was a good
source of water.  He could camp here for days, or as long as it took for him to
recover.  He could even snipe at game with his pistol.  Not pleasant, but he
could do it.  But the weird returned then, and he knew that if he laid his bed
there he would never rise from it.  He didn't know why and it didn't matter. 
He simply knew it.

He drank as much as he could, and it was hard — the icy
water made his chest ache.  After a short rest, he filled his skins and started
down the slope, looking ahead for the shoreline.  More than that, he also
looked without looking for a place of safety, using his inner eye.  He began to
cross game trails, yet still did not pass near the safe place.  The chills
struck again and he almost laughed aloud.  Maybe he would die here anyway
because he misjudged the weather on his way to a troubadour gathering, because
he wanted to learn the songs of the Pallenborne.

He thought of Ty'kojin's death.  It hadn't been bad, he
supposed, compared to other deaths he had seen.  His teacher had lived beyond
eighty and had left behind a legacy of true magicians.  Reyin had seen the
death coming longer than anyone, had tended to Ty'kojin on days his teacher
couldn't rise from bed, had climbed the short way to the top of the mountain
with the old man that last month so they could sit in the flow of the Essa and
share its mystery.  And so he had romanticized the old magician's death.  He
had imagined his teacher would commit a final act of power as he departed the
mundane plane to become a spirit of the Essa itself.  But Ty'kojin had died in
a fever, calling out a woman’s name in the end.

That had disturbed Reyin for a long time.  Artemes and Dimietri
said that he was calling a greeting to the very essence of the universe, to the
life source to which he returned.  They had not been with him that last year.

He woke from his thoughts with a start to find himself
walking down a game trail on nearly level ground.  Although the sky still
showed brightness — if his watch read correctly it was about eight o'clock —
the sun had sunk behind the rocky headland, now far away behind a veil of fir
trees and across the inlet.  A few yards ahead his path crossed another
meandering trail, and he knew this to be a good place.  Not the place of safety
he sought, nonetheless a good place.  Throwing his bedroll down in the middle
of the crossing and himself on top of it, he took one bite of cold potato, then
drifted into a shallow sleep.

Dreaming of a song, a beautiful melody rising from the
nearby ocean, he opened his eyes.  Morning already?  No, dusk.  He had slept
only an hour.  Had he really heard something, or was it . . . there, a light. 
He peered down the narrow alley of pines into the deepening twilight, and yes,
it was there, larger than a pinpoint, disappearing if he moved his head too far
to one side.  He struggled to his feet, wavering there for a moment, and
started toward the tiny point of brightness, leaving all his things behind.  He
lost it at once then found it, pursued it through the dark like a child chasing
a firefly, never holding sight of it for long, yet getting closer with each
pulse of light.  The forest thinned ahead of him, opening onto clear ground. 
He held a steady course for what was now a bonfire surrounded by people, and
beyond that the outline of houses bathing in the last of the western
afterglow.  He heard singing, a beautiful song of many voices.  Not having the
strength for even a clumsy lope, he dragged himself toward the circle of
singers, toward the poetry he could not understand, toward the music, the
language he did speak.

Later he remembered stepping into the hole and crying out in
pain as he twisted his ankle.  And he remembered crawling.  More than anything,
he remembered the blue-eyed folk pressing in all around him, each one holding
out a gentle hand.

The hardest part had been getting the hot soup into him
without his gagging, delirious and half-conscious as he had been.  He had only
winced and mumbled a few words in his native tongue when she wrapped his
swollen ankle.  Now he slept deeply in her grandfather's bed in the second
house, this brown-skinned man from the southern lands.  He had the blackest of
black hair cascading in large curls past his thick moustache and stubbled chin,
and looked to have passed six and twenty summers, the same age as her first
daughter.

"Mother?  Will he be alright?" came a whisper from
the doorway.  It was Jonn.

"I believe so," Syliva said, taking the candle
from the side table.  "Go and tell your father to lay a fire in here, the
stranger must be kept warm tonight.  You can go and chop some extra wood for
him."  The fireplace was of the old style, a large bowl of close-fitting
stones in the center of the room.  It used a lot of wood.

"It's not very cold out."

“I know, son, but the man has suffered the deep chill.  He
needs more warmth."

"How can you get the deep chill when the snow's all
gone?  Winter is over."

"He probably got wet somehow."

"I could keep the fire going all night," Jonn
said, "since I don't sleep much anyway."

"It's kind of you to offer, dear, but just tend it
until midnight, then bank the coals and go to bed when you feel sleepy.  That
will be enough."  She joined him at the door, and together they walked the
dozen steps to the main house.  The evening stars had climbed a little higher
in the sky; midnight couldn't be too far away.

Jonn huffed his breath so that it came out misty in the
night.  "Are you going to bed now?"

"Yes.  I've folk to see in the morning and I must go
into the forest and try to find some spindlewort for Lovisa.  She's getting big
now — well, as big as her thin little body can get."

"Will her baby be born soon?"

"It'll be a few months, should be born about
midsummer."  She turned to go.

"Mother?"

"Yes, son?"

"Is the Cycle of Ice coming again?  Will there be a
summer this year?"

Syliva looked at her son, the only one of her boys to live
more than a few days.  He was a tall, thickly-muscled man of twenty-one years,
yet in almost every way his mind lagged a decade behind his body.  His bright
green eyes and straight yellow hair, already streaked with silver, mirrored the
features of her own youth.  She thought about telling him that she didn't know,
but if he became frightened he might turn confused and distant, and speak
softly with a lazy tongue like a shy little boy.  She and her husband would
wake to find him sleeping on the cedar chest at the foot of their bed, or he
would take all the dogs and be gone before sunrise, returning after dark
wild-eyed and exhausted.  Then Aksel's face would get the squint that masked
his anguish at having such a strange son.  Why couldn't he just be happy to
have had a son that lived and walked and laughed at simple pleasures.  It
didn't matter to Syliva if Jonn never brought home a wife or never learned a
trade.  She didn't care that he didn't fit the mold of a man of the
Pallenborne.

She did care about the way everyone in the village treated
him.  She did care about his pain.  She, to whom all came for healing, she who
could cure bonebreak fever, the big pox, the bleeding waste, who had even
discovered how to cure the madness that comes with the bite of the fenwolf, she
who could take away many pains could not heal the mind of her own child.  Everyone
assumed he was simple-minded, that he wasn’t aware of his own handicap, but
Syliva knew he was smart enough to know that he was different —
wrongly
different.

So she gave him what comfort she could, and he was happy
some of his days.  But she didn't always tell him the truth.

"Of course there will be a summer," she said with
a smile.  "The Cycle of Ice was hundreds of years ago and you just told me
that winter is over.  As soon as we get a good warm rain the spring flowers
will start popping up everywhere — red and yellow and blue and purple — you'll
see."

Jonn flashed her a grin. 
"I'll go tell father about the fire."

Syliva stirred the morning barley-meal, adding the cup of
goat's milk that remained from the day before.  She longed to have honey with
the breakfast porridge but was saving the last jug for the more bitter
extracts.  At times, she knew, it was best not to honey-coat her medicines. 
Some folk needed a foul-tasting cure to make them believe it was really potent.

Sunlight shot horizontally through the rear door.  The
morning sky was blue and clear, promising a warm afternoon.  Aksel came in, his
barnyard chores done, as she swung the kettle away from the open flame.  He
took off his boots in the entryway and bowed his head to the little
spirit-totem resting on a shelf in the far corner, near the pinewood table.  He
had begun to do this each time he entered the house this last week, not just on
the ceremonial days.  His face a solemn mask, he went to the table and sat in
his chair.

"Fodder's running low," he said, not looking at
her.

"How about the apple trees," Syliva said,
"the vegetable garden?"

"Same as the fields — not a sprout."

"But Jonn spent all of yesterday watering them."

"It's not the drought," he said, his eyes narrow with
the squint.  "There's something else wrong, and I don't know what it is. 
The soil smells rich and good, doesn't have pests in it; the seeds are still
there yet they just won't grow."  He wiped his hands with a wet rag. 
"I figure we have enough to last the three of us until the end of summer. 
A month longer if we butcher some of the livestock."

"Maybe they'll sprout tomorrow."

"That's what you said yesterday.  And the day before. 
And the day before that."  He shook his head.  "No, it has been warm
enough for weeks now.  The valley is blighted and we have to face it.  If we
keep pretending that there'll be a harvest this year it will only make it
worse."

"Even if it turns out that there is some kind of blight
and nothing ever grows, I think we can stretch what we have all the way to
winter solstice."

"Maybe.  Last year's harvest was so very poor.  "Remember
the winter when Jonn was born?  We had to give away food that year."

"The bees have gone," she said, filling two wooden
bowls with hot mush.

"What?"

"I spoke with Havorla the younger last night.  He says
all the bees went away, there's none left here or in Hyerkin."

"No flowers, no bees," Aksel said stoically, as if
quoting the Poem of Ancient Truths.  "But beeswax and honey are the least
of our problems.  The nanny goats are only giving enough milk to keep their
young alive.  I suppose we could slaughter one of the kids."

She brought the steaming bowls to the table.  "We can
do without fresh milk for now.  I still have a bucket of sour in the cold
room."

"What I had in mind," he said cautiously,
"was for Jonn to take all the goats to the upper end of the valley.  They
can graze on the winter barley up there."

"For how long?"

"Till the grazing is all gone."

Syliva looked at her husband.  It was a simple enough thing
to do now that the days were longer and the nights less cold.  The Svordens of
Hyerkin still owed her for the tooth-rot potion she had given the old
grandfather.  If they couldn't bring a little extra food to her son, they could
at least keep a friendly eye on him.

"You know he's not very good with the goats," she
said.  "And it's long way."

"It's only a one-day walk from here."

"Not driving goats it isn't."

"If you would stop trying to shield him from the hard
parts of life he wouldn’t be so soft.  It’s time for him to take on some
responsibility, something more that the few chores he does around here.”

"He does a lot that you don't notice," she
whispered strongly.

“Little things.  This would really help me and it could be
good for him.  And speaking of help, why did we have to be the ones to take in
the stranger?  Anyone else would have done it gladly.  Why is it always us, as
if we don't have enough work for ourselves?

Syliva set her spoon down.  "Because I'm the cure-giver
for this village, and you know it.  I don't believe that you are
complaining
about helping someone in need, as if you weren't raised in Lorendal Valley.  We
have the privilege.  What has got into you today?"

Silent, he looked down at his porridge and began to eat. 
She had lived with him too long not to know him.  He was a generous man who
loved his son, but this strange season frightened him.  Never had she seen him
so afraid that he made angry noises.  Nudging his hand with her fingertips, she
said, "All will be well, my husband.  You'll see.  All will be well."

When she had cleaned and cleared away all the breakfast
crockery, and she had spoken to Jonn about the goats, Syliva tied her hair back
with a kerchief, as was the custom of married women in the Pallenborne when
going outdoors.  She took her satchel of tinctures, dried flowers, ground
roots, extracts of tree bark, salves, poultices, and teas, and walked the hard,
dry path across the neighboring fields, making her way to the village.

It had been called Lorendal for more generations than anyone
knew.  In the center of the village a roughly circular outcropping of rock
jutted out of the ground an arm's length, ending in a flat level surface, a
natural stone table with an indention somewhat like a four-pointed star carved
into the middle.  This was the touching stone.  No one knew why it bore that
name, only that it was supposed to be good luck to touch it.  In the past it
was rarely done, except perhaps by young lovers who still sat there on summer
nights as Syliva had in her own youth.  Now almost everyone touched it when they
passed.

Three fishermen from Siadal stood near the stone trading
their meager catch for what butter and flour the farmers were willing to part
with.  The fisher folk had given warning around midwinter, though no one had
taken heed, that their nets held less herring and cod with every cast.  And the
salmon had not returned with the first month of spring.  The artisans faired
less well, for now an ax-handle would not trade for one fish.

The open shed next to Lovisa's house stood empty save for
the work table and the cabinet of saws and files, sitting mute now that her
husband spent his days hunting and trapping in the woodland on the eastern
fringe of the valley.  The door of the house was open, and Lovisa sat spinning
wool in the morning light. 

"You look as if you're feeling fine today," Syliva
said.

"Yes.  I slept well, and didn't feel at all sick this
morning.  I've had a feeling of good luck about the stranger who came to us at
the singing."

"Maybe that's because the last wayfarer from the south
turned out to be so good."

Lovisa kept spinning.  "Yes.  I was lucky then."

"Is he out hunting?" Syliva asked.

"He said the man kept babbling a name, so he thought
that there could be another, perhaps injured or too weak to walk.  He was going
to try to backtrack the man's trail and see what he could find."

"Hmm.  Wish I had known.  I could have gone with
him."  She went to the chair that had belonged to Lindan, Lovisa's first
husband, who had been killed in a logging accident.

Lovisa had been widowed at the age of twenty-four.  Her five
years of marriage were childless, and as it was well known in all the valley
she was barren, she expected no suitors to come when her year of mourning
ended.  Strangely, a Southern man had wandered into the village three years
ago, half-starved and ragged, dark-skinned with long tangled hair and a matted
beard that reached almost to his waist, looking more a yeti than a man.

He called himself Farlo.  He stayed.  The people of Lorendal
had guessed how he came to be there even before he began to mine and smelt ore
found in the mountains to the north.  But they did not judge him by what he may
or may not have done elsewhere.  They gave him work, even though he was
taciturn and solitary and spoke their language rather poorly.  And he gave them
an ironworks, and shod their wooden shovels and plowshares, making them
independent from the seafaring smiths who took only the best things for their
service.  He and Lovisa had married last year on the spring equinox.  On a grey
midwinter day in a thick snow, Lovisa trotted all the way to Syliva's house,
kicking up a spray of wet, newly-fallen snowflakes, arriving red-faced from the
cold, tears welling in her eyes, saying, "I'm going to have a baby in the
summer."

Large, with a back and arms, the chair had been made in the
old way, carved from one solid piece of tree trunk.  Syliva eased herself into
it.  "Did the salve I gave you help with the pain in your back?"

"A little."

"What you need is a poultice of sea greens and
spindlewort, but there just doesn't seem to be any sprouting right now.  Maybe
soon."

"It's not too bad," the younger woman said.

"Well, it will be worse two months from now."  But
Syliva was really thinking of the birth.  It could go badly.  Lovisa was such a
frail woman, so thin and small.

"Don't worry for me," Lovisa said,  "All will
be well."

They chatted while Lovisa spun, their talk turning to the
comfort of the ordinary:  wool and weaving, cooking and the weather.  A brief
visit was all Syliva could allow herself.  Celvake the carpenter was in pain
from the hand he had broken two summers ago, and the entire Monjor family had
contracted some sort of grippe.  Aksel had told her to ask for dried meat in
payment, but she already knew that she would ask for nothing.  Celvake would bring
them cut firewood, and the Monjors would give her butter.