The Silver Lake (21 page)

As Kursk laid Graize gently down on a sheepskin in his own tent, he opened his eyes, staring past him to the open flap in Ozan’s hand. He’d not stirred from his stupor of bright lights once during the afternoon’s ride, not even after the first drops of rain had begun to sprinkle against his face.

“Drops of blood and gold,” he whispered, his eyes white and wispy again.

Kursk glanced behind him as his kardos made a warding gesture.

“It’s the setting sun shining through the rain,” he replied.

“No. It’s the future.”

The Yuruk leader shrugged as he rummaged through his saddlebags. “Is it, now? Well, that’s a good sign, then. Blood and gold feed the people.”

Ozan sidled away, the strings of the small kopuz at his back strumming faintly.

“I ... um ... should see to our defenses, Kardos.”

Kursk nodded. “Send Rayne in with some water.”

“I will.”

The younger man withdrew quickly as Kursk very carefully helped Graize out of his tattered jacket.

“You make him nervous,” he said bluntly, setting the bloody cloth to one side.

Graize shrugged. “He makes me think of hooves tearing up the ground and metal flashing in the moonlight.”

“He’s a fine rider and a good fighter.”

“I see him playing music in the blood and in the gold.”

“He’ll like that.”

Graize turned his luminescent gaze on Kursk’s face. “I see you in the blood, too, but not in the gold,” he said almost defiantly.

Kursk just shrugged. “Pity.” Easing off the boy’s bloody tunic, he tossed it onto the pile, his sandals beside it. “I’ll just have to rely on my children to keep me in my old age, then.”

Graize said nothing and Kursk smiled down at him. “What, no old age either?”

For the first time the boy looked uncertain.

“I ... don’t know. I can’t see that.”

“Well, that’s for the best. Too much of that kind of knowledge can drive a person mad.” He looked quizzically down at him. “And you’re about halfway along that path already, aren’t you, child?”

Graize just shrugged. “Maybe.
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.”

The breath hissing between his teeth as he recognized Rayne’s words from the day before, Kursk made himself smile easily.

“Well, we’ll have to see what we can do to slow its progress, won’t we?” The Yuruk leader turned. “Ah, Rayne, there you are. Come and help me,” he said, as she pushed open the tent flap with a questioning frown.

While Kursk washed and doctored Graize’s wounds, Rayne hovered nearby to help. No single part of the boy’s body was free from injury, and her eyes narrowed as she studied the long, red scratches with a dark expression.

“Did the spirits do that to you?” she asked bluntly.

Graize nodded.

“Last night?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“They wanted to kill me.” He stared out at the sunlight reflecting in the rain for a long moment. “They wanted to suck my life away.”

“But they failed.”

He nodded. Breathing in the few tiny spirits that had returned to hover about his lips, he gave her a toothy smile. “I sucked theirs away instead.”

“So you’re strong, then, that’s good. The Yuruk can’t afford to coddle weakness.”

Kursk gave her a deep frown at this discourtesy.

“Well, we can‘t,” she protested. “Abia said so.”

He sighed. “Your abia’s from the west. They live a harsher life.”

“My abia came east to find new blood to breed with,” she told Graize proudly. “She picked my aba because he was the strongest and fastest kazak on the Berbat-Dunya.”

“She told me she liked my tent,” Kursk said mildly.

Rayne ignored him. “Where’s your abia?” she demanded.

For a moment Graize thought he could remember soft arms and an expression of pain and love, before it, too, vanished like the image of the gray-eyed man.

“I never had one,” he said, the defensive tone back in his voice, but Rayne just gave him a sympathetic look.

“I’m sorry.”

He shrugged. “You don’t miss what you never had,” he said carelessly.

She touched him on the hand, her expression gently disbelieving. “Yes, you do.” She straightened before he could answer. “When I’m ready to have children, I’ll do the same as my abia,” she continued. “I’ll be the most powerful wyrdin in the Rus-Yuruk and I’ll go out and find the strongest, fastest kazak there is and make him mine. He’ll have to be strong in mind and in body,” she added, “strong enough to control the spirits and make them talk to him, and strong enough to ride all night long and raid a fat and lazy village in the morning.” She studied him speculatively. “You seem strong,” she noted, “but are you fast?”

Graize felt his cheek go unaccountably red. “I ... uh...”

“Raynziern, go and ask Ozan to heat up some kimiz,” Kursk interrupted sternly.

“Yes, Aba. Oh, here,” she dropped Graize’s beetle into his hand before skipping from the tent. Clutching it tightly, he watched her go with a dazed, but equally speculative expression, ignoring Kursk’s frown of disapproval.

She returned with the cup a few moments later. While Graize drank the unfamiliar fermented drink, Kursk washed each of his wounds with a comfrey-and-rosemary tincture, then eased a clean tunic over his head. Graize allowed the ministrations in silence, gathering his scattered sense of self and watching the sun beyond the tent flap pour through the gathering clouds like a spill of fire. Behind it, the spirits merged and flowed, waiting for nightfall to breach the walls of... He shook his head as the thought slipped from his mind.

Kursk followed his gaze. “It’s a fire sun tonight,” he noted conversationally as he handed Rayne the blood-soaked clothes. “Here, burn these.

“A harbinger of your blood and gold and a fine morning ahead,” he continued.

Graize blinked as a dozen tiny spirits whispered their prophecies in his ears. He sucked up the largest of them, feeling its energy flowing down his throat in a gush of warm potential. “It’ll be a cold morning,” he answered in a distant tone, passing on its words. “But it won’t snow.”

“It rarely does on the plains.” Tucking the tincture into his saddlebag, Kursk straightened. “Have you ever seen the snow, child?”

Graize’s mist-filled eyes grew very wide, the left pupil opening significantly farther than the right. “I see it now,” he answered. “It’s snowing on the southern mountains’ sides where the spirits can’t feed. The people are too strong for them there. Just like here.” He smiled. “So they’ll go to the shining city.”

“Anavatan.”

“Yes. They broke through last night and they’ll try again tonight while Havo’s Dance still hides their movements.” Lifting his hand up to his face, he stared at the spirit entwined around his fingers. “You won’t get in, though, not now,” he told it gravely. “The Gods are watching now.” He shook the spirit free and it feathered about his ears until it came to rest entangled in a lock of hair. “But they’ll try, anyway,” he said, returning his attention to Kursk. “‘Cause there’s so much there to feed on. It calls to them all the time. It drives them mad for it. But they can’t feed, not until we open the gates for them,” he added. “Then they’ll feed.” Watching as a half formed future blossomed in his mind, he nodded. “And so will we.”

Kursk’s gaze moved with deliberate casualness to the boy’s face. “We?” he asked.

“Yes.” Graize stared out at the setting sun again, watching as his lights took up the future, fleshing it out like a street poet might for a handful of coins. “But not now,” he explained, “not yet, but one day very soon. We’ll attack the shining city and feed the spirits ... and the lights,” he added silently.

“Oh, and why would we do that?” the Yuruk leader asked, carefully masking his sudden interest.

“Because the city and its villages walled off the lake of power.” Smiling, Graize watched as the events of centuries past played out before his eyes like misty shadow puppets. “They’ve grown fat just like their Gods while others have grown thin. And hungry.” His eyes cleared. “The Yuruk have attacked the villages every year to try and break through the God-Wall around the lake of power. Everyone knows that. This shouldn’t surprise you,” he added reproachfully.

Kursk shrugged. “We’ve never gotten away with more than a small flock or two,” he answered in an even voice. “We’re always driven back by the Warriors of Estavia. Their seers always know when we’re coming.”

Graize smiled coldly. “Not this time,” he whispered almost to himself as he watched the future unfold. “This time the lights will guide us and the spirits of the wild lands will hide us. We’ll flow over the God-Wall like a river, and the spirits will flow with us. I can see it.” He raised one hand to caress the image playing out before him, then yawned suddenly. “But not tonight. Tonight the Gods are awake and expecting a fight. They’ll protect the city tonight. They’ll eat all the spirits. But then They’ll think They’ve won and They’ll go back to sleep in Their silvery beds of broken marble and shimmering lake water and the people will get fatter and fatter and then we’ll attack.”

“Well, that’s wise,” Kursk allowed. “You never arrive when your enemies are expecting you and have had time to lay out a meal of their choosing.” He smiled as Graize’s eyelids began to droop. “So for now, come and eat a little something of my choosing before you go to sleep. There’s cheese and flat bread, even a bit of mutton to make you strong.”

“I am strong.”

“Stronger, then.”

Graize nodded, his gaze trailing back to the setting sun. “And fast?”

Kursk frowned. “That remains to be seen.”

Graize smiled slyly. “Fast.” He closed his eyes. “One day we’ll attack the shining city, but we’ll attack ... another place sooner,” he murmured as the lights supplied him with the name of a shadowy village that wavered in and out of sight. “We’ll attack ... Yildiz-Koy this season before the ewes have finished lambing.”

“Will we now?”

“Yes.”

“And the Warriors of Estavia?”

“Will be busy protecting the villages to the south. I can see them, standing tall and strong and alert. But the threat there is a feint.” He frowned as the lights showed him a fleet of oddly shaped ships sailing up the southern strait toward Gol-Beyaz. They fluttered like the flame from a half empty lamp before guttering out before the image of a tall red tower and a golden sun. “This season anyway,” he added.

“A feint?”

“Yes; a false trail laid by a tower on the sea.”

“To draw them away from Yldiz-Koy?”

Graize gave his sly, sleepy smile again. “Oh, no. It had nothing to do with Yildiz-Koy at first, but now that’s changed,” he said as the lights fed him new images. “Now something special will come there and we’ll get away with more than just a small flock or two.”

Kursk shook his head in wonder. “How do you know all this, child?” he asked.

Graize opened his eyes, watching as the dark-haired boy from his earlier visions appeared then disappeared behind a silver storm cloud. “The lights told me,” he answered truthfully.

“The lights?”

“The ones that came to me last night. They speak to me through the stream of prophecy they burned through my veins. They swim in that stream and so do I.”

“And they told you we would attack Yildiz-Koy?”

Graize smiled coldly, his eyes perfectly clear for the first time. “That,” he acknowledged. “And other things.”

Later, after Graize had eaten his fill and fallen asleep, Kursk and Ozan stood, staring at the last streaks of sunlight along the horizon and listening with half an ear to the sounds of the camp behind them. Far above their heads, the first stars were beginning to twinkle through the breaks in the darkening clouds and Ozan studied them intently as he strummed quietly on his kopuz.