Wildfire (47 page)

 
  

 

  
The next day, on the way down the ice field, Mox rode his gelding across an ice bridge that many had crossed safely before him, and the bridge gave way. He fell into a crevasse and his horse landed on top of him. Divine Volator climbed down a rope and found Mox was dead, his neck broken. The priest finished the horse, as there was no way to get him out. They left Mox’s body down there; no wood for a pyre.

 

  
Death was so commonplace. I thought it had lost the power to surprise me.

 

  
We were safe from the queenmother’s malice now, but so long as we wandered in the mountains we were not safe from the malevolence of the Ferinus. When a cornice of snow gave way underfoot and spilled men and horses down a precipice, or a stone fell from the heights and crushed a man’s skull, or an avalanche swept away the ponies carrying the last of our barley, or for the third time in a day we had to retrace our steps on paths that led nowhere—men blamed the mountains, and I too felt the cruel antipathy of the Ferinus. We trespassed where we were unwelcome.

 

  
King Corvus had led us there. I thought to myself,
Blame the king.
But if they lost faith in him, what was left?

 

  
I had at last convinced the king I was a true dreamer and not a thrush sent by his father-in-law, the arkhon. And now he looked to me as if I could guide us out of the Ferinus, and yet I wasn’t a true dreamer. False dreams wouldn’t serve now. I didn’t want to lie, I wanted to live. But true dreams didn’t come at my bidding; they were gifts of the gods. I threw the bones, asking what to do. As always, the Dame and Na spoke most clearly of the gods to be feared and appeased. They both pointed to the Queen of the Dead.

 
  

 

  
For two days we were blinded by a blizzard, unable to march. Catena and I lay among varlets in a hollow in a snowbank and overnight more snow covered us with a thick blanket. I had my arms around Catena and I felt the rising and falling of her chest as she breathed through her mouth. She had coughed a long time before she slept. I was afraid to sleep, convinced that
if I succumbed, my hearthfire would go out; my body would stiffen and my shade would rise, and I—the remnant of me—would go forth in that other land. I wouldn’t be hungry or weary or cold or half blind or tongue-tied anymore; I would no longer suffer pains and weariness. But it was lonely among the dead.

 

  
I began to shiver. I clamped my jaws together so my teeth wouldn’t chatter. A shrill whine approached my ear—a buzz.

 

  
Sire Rodela. He was pleased I was dying.

 

  
I’m glad you can take pleasure in something, I told him.

 

  
He laughed his hissing laugh, and showed me the corpses: Catena and I lying under snow until the thaw. The thaw comes late in the heights, in the month of Midsummer. In the warmth our flesh softened and began to stink. A bear found us and took us apart limb from limb, and other creatures came, vultures and crows, a fox, a stoat, a few voles, and scattered our remains. These bones with shreds of flesh engendered maggots and swarms of flies. Sire Rodela made me look. This is why corpses must burn, he said.

 

  
It was hideous to look upon, until I saw that when I was eaten I became part of other creatures and other lives. I partook of a fly that buzzed above a fast creek and perched on a bending stem of horsetail rush and preened its glossy wings. I partook of many flies, or they partook of me; I saw through many eyes, and each eye was faceted, so that everything I saw was fragmented and multiplied. I flew everywhere and saw the terrain in darting glimpses as I zigged and zagged. The flies were short-lived, but each bred other flies, and some followed the goats and the boys who herded them up into the high pastures, and some stung the rumps of chamois that leapt from boulder to boulder, and some pestered the horses of traders who rode through a pass, and some buzzed around the heads of men who climbed down a precipice toward a long lake in a valley, carrying burdens on their backs. It was confusing to be so many and see so much at once, but I began to make sense of it, to bring together what had been divided.

 

  
When I understood what I was seeing, I saw the way out.

 

  
I told this to King Corvus and his priest—calling it a dream—and the king insisted we were nowhere near Sapheiros. He asked me about the shapes of mountains and routes of roads to see if he might recognize landmarks. I had my doubts too, for why should I trust Sire Rodela? But I kept them to myself, and arranged the folds of my green cloak to show the ranks of mountains we still must overcome.

 

  
Divine Aboleo said the dream was a true omen, that Rift Dread, manifest in the swarm of flies, had shown us the way. The king believed him, though he didn’t believe me.

 

  

 

  

 

  

 

  

 

  

 

  

 

  

 

  

 

  

  
  
  
CHAPTER 18
  

  
Sapheiros
  
  

 

  

 

  

 

  

 

  
I
t cost us four arduous days and many men and horses to crawl across the handful of leagues I had flown over in my dream. I pretended to know where we were going, even when I was uncertain, for the snow smoothed and altered the shapes of summits and valleys. When the men burdened me with their hope—their blame too, when things went wrong—I understood, a little better, the strength of the king’s will. He had clung to his persistence, all else being doubtful.

 

  
On the forty-sixth day of my captivity, we stood on a ridge below a grim pinnacle and looked down on the Lake of Sapheiros. It was not as I’d dreamed it, the lake with bright blue waters, the mountains in their summer greens; but it was like enough. Here the Ferinus stretched out two low arms of mountains into the plains of Lambanein, embracing a long, narrow, crooked lake that shone silver under a gray sky. I was surprised to see the water wasn’t frozen. The sight of the lake—like the sound of its name in a tongue I didn’t remember—filled me with inexplicable dread. I might have been born there, but I knew nothing of how to live there, among strange people with strange customs.

 

  
The stone bones of the mountains around the lake were fleshed with dun meadows. There were gray orchards and stands of evergreens so dark they looked almost black, and here and there a dusting of snow on the summits. Terraced vineyards ascended the steep slopes from the lakeshore.

 

  
Our footing was precarious. We were buffeted by the same wind that had carved the snow on the ridge into a frozen wave and polished it to a hard gloss. We looked down at treetops. Lopsided pines and firs grew from the rock face, driving their roots like wedges into the smallest cracks. Impossible for anything but an ibex, King Corvus said, but I denied it. I crawled over the crest of snow to point out a ladder hidden among the trees—just as I’d promised, when I’d warned him we would have to climb down on foot and leave the horses behind.

 

  
The king called for his best climbers, saying there appeared to be a way
down, and the men sent up a cheer. Three men set out that afternoon, and by midmorning the next day, we thought they were lost. By dusk the climbers returned with guides and food and fodder and, best of all, southern wine. There was such a huzzah when the wine and food were handed out that the noise started a snowslide, which rumbled and roared past our camp, sweeping away Sire Molobus’s jack and horseboy, an armiger, and three ponies. Even that was greeted as a good omen because it missed the rest of us.

 

  
Catena said the wine made my nose red and my teeth blue. We had eaten well, and I would have been content were it not for the chain and manacles. I’d found a pass and still the king hadn’t released us.

 

  
He saw our suffering and refused us freedom. But he had led his men over the mountains and all of them had suffered to serve his will, and half of them, I reckoned, had died. Why should he be more merciful to us? Never was a king who did not require others to die for him, never was a king who did not make war. But war had been foisted upon this king. He had lost ingloriously—but defeated the Wolves gloriously—crossed the Ferinus in winter gloriously. No one knew it could be done. And by doing so he had perhaps gained sufficient coin of glory to raise himself a new army and march back again to Malleus in the coming summer. Tonight his warriors and his mud soldiers loved him. Rumormongers would sing of what they had accomplished.

 

  
I wondered what the king would do with Catena and me when he was safe in Lambanein. Would he still summon me every morning to hear my dreams? He might be ashamed to recall he’d relied on the fancies of a mudwoman. He might discard us, leave us to fend for ourselves in an unknown country where they spoke an unknown tongue. It was strange to think, when I’d chafed so long at my captivity, that the best I could hope for now was to remain in King Corvus’s service, so I might accompany him when he returned to Malleus. How else could I get back across the Ferinus?

 

  
But this was foolish. It was unwise to lift my eyes to look so far ahead—we were not out of the mountains yet.

 
  

 

  
The next morning we were summoned before sunrise to see the king, and wordlessly I held out my left hand with the manacle and chain.

 

  
The king smiled broadly enough to show his teeth. “For today you will be unchained from the girl,” he said. “We are going down the mountain and they say they can’t carry two at once.”

 

  
“And foremorrow?”

 

  
“Tomorrow we’ll see.”

 

  
The king summoned a brawny mudman named Rile who did what I’d been unable to do; he opened a link by hammering an iron wedge with a
lump of granite. When he first severed the chain, I was still hampered by it. Catena and I had been harnessed so long that I had a habit of curbing every gesture, and it seemed strange not to have to be mindful of her at every moment. We were glad to move freely again, but I didn’t count us free so long as we wore the manacles with their short tails of chain.

 

  
The king had decided to descend the mountain by way of the ladders with about three score men, a little more than a fifth of those who had survived the crossing. And Catena and me. The rest of his men would go on horseback, taking a longer route that led into the same valley. It was thought impassible from early fall to late spring, but the king’s men were not daunted, having come so far already. And now they had trustworthy guides, food, and fodder for the horses.

 

  
The Sun began to climb up as we readied ourselves to climb down. On the narrow windy ridge above the first ladder, Garrio had a blindfold ready for me, and he tried to persuade me to get into a basket on a porter’s back. He said it was the way it was done: all summer these fellows carried travelers and goods up and down the mountainside. Blindfolds prevented the passengers from screaming or fainting with fear.

 

  
I said, “I’d rather climb. I don’t want to be a bungle.”

 

  
The porter spoke to me in Lambaneish, and when he saw I didn’t understand, he spoke in the High, in a thick mountain accent. He said it was nothing to carry a skinny wretch like me—he’d carried a colt down on his back once, which had made less of a fuss than I was making. “If you climb yourself, you’ll likely balk halfway down like a stubborn hinny, and we’ll have to carry you after all. Or you’ll fall and take others with you.”

 

  
Still I refused. I couldn’t imagine being blindfolded and carried. Garrio said he’d rather ride, if he had the choice. He didn’t know that I dreaded confinement far more than heights. Catena sat down in the snow and began to whimper, and I saw my fright had made her more afraid. I crouched beside her and whispered, “Never mind, never mind. Look at those panters—they look very sturdy, don’t they? You shall ride and I’ll stay close to you.” I pointed out that Sire Refulgo, who had a broken arm, and the horseboy Quirt, who was afflicted by the shiver-and-shake, had been hoisted up in their baskets onto the backs of porters and waited their turn to descend.

 

  
Catena climbed into the basket and suffered herself to be blindfolded. I heard her crying quietly. The porter squatted and put his arms through the leather straps of the basket and rose with Catena on his back. I kept my hand on her head and tried to soothe her as I would a skittish horse.

 

  
It was a cunning trail. When danger threatened from the north, the people of the valley took the ladders down and forced invaders to go by way of a farther pass. The path was hidden under overhangs and down
chimneys of rock; here and there the path makers had carved a few steps or widened a ledge to make a resting place, or tunneled through a buttress of stone. All those contrivances would have meant nothing without the ladders that stitched the trail together. We climbed two to a ladder, no more, lest a rung break or a climber falter, and I descended just below the man carrying Catena. At first I talked to her, saying it was not so hard, it would soon be over, until I couldn’t spare the breath.

 

  
I’d gotten my way, and I had cause to be sorry for it. Wind from the south hit the mountain like waves against a sea cliff, shaking the ladders as if to shake us off, and it made a sound like waves too, roaring and hissing against the stone. The ladders were made of fir poles lashed and pegged together. The bark was rough and sticky with resin. My hands were numb, and I feared I’d lose my grip. Stones came hurtling down on us, dislodged by climbers above. Sometimes rungs that seemed sure twisted or broke underfoot and I had to catch myself with a jolt. My belly cramped with fear.

 

  
We halted, waiting for men below to cross a sheer rock face by wedging their feet into a narrow sloping crack, while clinging to a rope strung through iron rings. Catena’s bearer and I shared a small pinnacle with a crooked pine tree. At first I faced the wall, clinging to nubbins of rock. My legs trembled and burned from exhaustion. Then I turned and pressed my back against the cliff and slid down until I was sitting, and I hung my legs over the edge of the precipice. Catena asked if we’d arrived, and I told her, “Not yet.”