The Silver Lake (12 page)

Traditionally the white standard was used only in battle—herders used red—but ever since she’d been made standard-bearer two years before, Rayne had refused to use anything else. She would be a powerful wyrdin and a dangerous raider one day if she learned to control her wayward nature. With a fond expression, Kursk watched her wheel her pony about with effortless grace to join her kardon—siblings—in gathering the few straggling sheep that had failed to keep up when the kazakin had brought the rest from their more sheltered winter pastures, then returned his gaze to the evening sky. These first spring storms were dangerous ones. The spirits were drawn by the chaos in the air, and although not usually a threat to adult livestock, they could still suck the life from a newborn lamb or kid in a heartbeat if the herders dropped their guard.

Closing his eyes, he tasted the warm scents of new life and growth on the wind, then frowned.

Something was happening.

Opening his eyes, he stared out at the distant horizon. The land was still, but there was a dark and heavy portent behind the clouds. Choosing a hawk fetish from the hide bag at his belt, he held it up. The three tied tail feathers wavered in the breeze. He added a plains fetish, four stalks of last year’s grasses still smelling sweetly of meadow flowers. They, too, began to tremble. He nodded, then took out a fine piece of hide with several knots tied at one end. Whistling quietly between his teeth, he slowly sliced through the smallest of them with the tip of his kinjal knife.

The spirit he’d summoned replied immediately, snatching the plains fetish from his fingers and flinging it away. It then made a grab for the hawk fetish. Kursk gave a sharp, commanding whistle and it settled for knocking the plains fetish farther down the hill before calling up a small whirlwind to whip about Kursk’s head. Reading the fine strands of prophecy that feathered out from the spirit’s wake, he nodded, then thanked it with another tiny seed of power. It sucked it from his fingertips, then sped away over the hills while Kursk retrieved his fetish with a thoughtful expression. Something would be born over the Berbat-Dunya tonight. He could not respond until morning, but at dawn he would take his kazakin out to see what the spirits had written on the land and try to divine what it foretold. Mounting up, he turning his pony toward the encampment, allowing it to find its own path, his mind still unsettled by the portents on the breeze.

Rayne met him at the bottom of the hill. Commanding her pony to a series of sidesteps with only the faintest pressure of her knees, she turned her head slyly to see if he was impressed, then, at his smile, fell into step beside him. Noting the plains fetish still held loosely in one hand, she gave him an eager, wide-eyed look.

“What did you see, Aba? Will the storm be worse than you foretold?”

Kursk gave a noncommittal shrug. “The strength of the storm hasn’t changed,” he allowed. “But there’s something else on the wind that could be many things.” He swept his hand before him. “Tell me what you think it might be, child. What do
you
see?”

Shaking off her deep hide and woolen hood at once, she quickly scanned the horizon.

“The clouds are densely packed,” she observed, her voice taking on a lecturing tone. “And I can see the wild lands shivering in anticipation of the coming rains. The storm will be nurturing, but cold, and the force of it may shred the younger, more delicate grasses.

“Timur
would say it was an omen of flooding, pestilence, and starvation,” she added, rolling her eyes.

“Yes. But Timur is...” Kursk searched for as respectful a word as possible, knowing that it was likely to be repeated to the Rus-Yuruk’s most venerable wyrdin. “An elder,” he said finally. “And a dense packing of years often sees different omens in a dense packing of clouds. What does
youth
see?”

“Not
flooding,” she replied forcefully. “Strong rains maybe, but nothing the plains haven’t seen before and nothing they can’t recover from. Abia taught me that.”

“Your Abia’s very wise. So, no pestilence?”

Rayne snorted. “Nor starvation.”

“What, then?”

Turning her attention to the west, Rayne’s gaze clouded over as she reached out for a sense of the vast world of power and potential that lay just below the surface of the physical plains. “The spirits are rising from the hollows in the earth, drawn by the awakening power of spring,” she answered, her voice taking on a singsong tone. “But they do that every year,” she added impatiently, her eyes clearing. “Still ...”

“Still?” Kursk prodded.

“They’re ... agitated,” she decided after a moment. “Like they’re waiting for something to happen; something besides the storm.” She tugged thoughtfully at her yak’s tail standard. “Danjel says the spirits are made up of raw prophecy and that they sing songs of power to each other as they rise. If you can capture their words, you’ll gain the power to see the future, but if you capture too many, the song will drive you mad and you’ll chase after the rest of it forever.” She glanced over at him, a tinge of worry darkening her features. “Have you ever heard them sing, Aba?”

Kursk nodded. “Once, just before I became wyrdin. Your tayin, Ozan, dared me to walk out into the storm. The spirits swirled all around me like a thick fog and I heard them singing of hunger and of rage. They wanted my life, my power.” He smiled reassuringly down at her. “But they couldn’t take it. I’m too wily.” He turned his attention to the shimmering plains in the distance. “They frightened me that night, but they also taught me that they’re no different than any other wild creature, regardless of what they’re made of; when hungry, they’ll attack the weak but flee the strong. And sometimes they can be tamed just enough to give up a little of their prophecy in exchange for the power they crave.” He smiled. “But that prophecy’s hardly ever given in song, and even less often in words. Usually it’s more like a vague sense of anticipation, much like what you’re sensing now. And the responding emotion it evokes: dread, or caution, or joy, speaks more to the future than the anticipation itself.”

“What emotion did it evoke for you today?”

“Caution, but then, I’m an elder, too,” he said with a chuckle, “and riding toward flooding and pestilence at a gallop. Why don’t you call a spirit up yourself and tell me what it evokes for you.”

With a pleased smile, Rayne rose up in the saddle and, putting two fingers into her mouth, gave a piercingly high whistle.

The spirit that shot up from the ground beneath her pony’s hooves caused the animal to jump back nervously, and as the tiny, protective bells woven into its mane jangled with the movement, the spirit spun into Rayne’s hair in agitation.

She flicked it away with an impatient shake of her head. “Serves you right for trying to spook her,” she admonished. “Behave!”

The spirit froze a hand’s width from her face and she stared at it, watching it shimmer with a translucent, silvery light. Held by the force of her directive, it twisted in the breeze, growing first substantial and then insubstantial until she released it, tossing it a seed of power as Kursk had taught her to do. As it rose straight up into the air like a tiny shooting star, Rayne tucked a loose strand of hair back into her braid.

“They’re a lot more nippy than usual,” she noted with a disapproving frown. “And less playful.”

“How did that make you feel?” Kursk asked.

“Tense and ... annoyed,” she said after a moment. “But mostly...”

“Mostly?”

“Excited.” She turned. “Something’s going to happen, Aba, something big.”

He nodded his agreement. “And you see the difference between age and youth? Where one sees caution, the other sees excitement.”

“So what are we supposed to do?”

“Go and find out why we should be cautious about something exciting. But not tonight,” he added as she made to turn her pony toward the wild lands at once. “Tomorrow we go chasing after prophecy; tonight we bring in the flocks, and it seems that your kardon may have missed a sheep to the east.”

Her head snapped around instantly. “That was Caleb’s fault,” she huffed angrily. “He was supposed to have cleared that whole area by now. He’s so lazy!”

“He has a broken arm, Raynziern,” Kursk admonished gently.

She snorted unsympathetically back at him.

“Well, why don’t you go show him how it’s done, then,” he suggested.

“Don’t think I won’t.” With a wrathful expression, she urged her pony into a gallop, making for the distant figure of her youngest sibling already heading back toward the encampment.

Shaking his head, Kursk watched her go; then after a final glance toward the darkening plains to the west, he followed her.

Beyond the hills, the spirits slowly drew together as the sun continued its downward trek toward the horizon. They came from the wild lands of the west, rising from the pockets of power which dappled the Berbat Ridge, from the small Gol-Bardak Lake with its scattering of Yuruk encampments to the north, and from the southern range of the Gurney-Dag Mountains where the Petchan hill fighters still sprinkled their hair with goat’s blood to protect their people and their herds from the spirits’ touch as they had for over a thousand years. Merging and flowing like a huge flock of misty migrating birds, they slowly made their way east toward the great silvery lake of power, as they had every spring since the world was formed.

And every spring since the Lake Deities had risen from the depths and joined with their human worshipers to surround the source of Their strength with walls of stone and power, the spirits came up short against an impassable barrier. They pressed forward once again, and once again they were denied. Swirling in frustration, they began to hammer against the barrier, spreading themselves thinner and thinner along the miles of guarded shoreline seeking entry, but as always, the barrier held. Thwarted, the spirits withdrew, some to the south, some to the west, but most to the north—making for the great shining place the Deities had built at the mouth of the sea.

The barrier was at its weakest there—so far from the lake of power—and in the past a few tiny spirits had managed to thrust their way inside just long enough to snatch up the life of some tiny, incautious creature, especially on the nights when the Wind Deity screamed and gyrated in time with the High Spring storms, spinning their energy into ribbons of rain and balls of jagged hail. Yesterday the smallest of their number had managed to squeeze through the cracks in the wall of power just long enough to taste the fluttering life of a dying man unclaimed by any God. It had strengthened them as nothing had before and they wanted more. Tonight. As the cloud-obscured sun touched the distant horizon, a growing army of spirits began to press against the barrier around Anavatan.

Deep in the depths of Gol-Beyaz, the God of Prophecy sensed the spirits’ hunger and knew it was time. Calling up His newly fashioned prophecy, He reached out for the boys whose futures He had marked: one to feed the spirits so that they might have strength enough to breach the barrier about Gol-Beyaz, one to give them form and substance enough to take their place among the Gods, and one of two candidates chosen to possibly destroy them should Incasa deem that necessary. This latter choice was the most important and, as He cast a fine white mist over their thoughts and intentions, the easier to manipulate them to His will alone, the God of Probability reached out for His first candidate, the one with the greatest potential for both creation and destruction with a mind sharp but fragile and prophetic gifts both powerful and unrealized.