The Deed of Paksenarrion (67 page)

“But it’s just another pile of rock.”

“No, it’s not just a pile of rock. It’s a particular pile of rock. Look—do you see anything else like that?”

Paks looked. Rocks everywhere, but nothing that tall and narrow. “No.”

“Now, look here.” He pointed to a smaller pile on one side. “This is the direction.”

“What is?”

“This—Paksenarrion, pay attention. The big pile tells you that this is the trail, and the little pile tells you which way is downhill.”

“But are we across the pass? Aren’t we going uphill?” Then she realized the simple answer, and felt her face burning. “I see,” she said quickly, before Macenion could tell her. “I know. We go the other way.”

“Yes. And we know it’s the right trail because of the runes.”

“Runes?”

“Look at this.” He lifted the top rock of the small pile and turned it over. On the under face were angular marks gouged in the rock. “That’s the rune for silver, which means that this is the way to Silver Pass.”

“Oh.” Paks looked around again. “But that only says what’s downhill. Can we tell where this will come out?”

“Easily.” Macenion’s smile was as smug as ever. He turned over the top rock of the big pile and showed her another rune. “This means gnomes, and means that this trail ends at the rock shelter on the border of Gnarrin-fulk, the gnome kingdom south of Tsaia.”

“I didn’t know there was one.”

“Gods, yes. And you don’t want to wander in there without leave.” Macenion replaced the stones carefully. “It’s simple, really. The big pile points uphill and has the uphill trailend rune, and the small one points downhill and has the downhill trailend rune. Can you remember that?”

“Yes,” said Paks shortly.

“Good. Let’s hurry. I don’t like the smell of this weather.” Macenion looked at the sky above the peaks, which was, as they had often seen from below, thickened into cloud. As if his words had been a signal, a cold rain began to leak down, thin at first. They started upward.

As they climbed, forty paces at a time, Paks watched the stones near the trail darken in the rain. Instead of the rustle of rain on leaves, the water tinkled, as if a thousand thousand tiny bells rang in the stillness. The slopes around them closed in, and the trail steepened. It was more like a stairway than a trail. When they stopped for rest, Paks looked up. The clouds seemed lower. She looked back down the trail. The cairn had disappeared into a hollow behind and below them. She was surprised at how far they had climbed.

Macenion shivered beside her. “It’s getting colder—we’d better keep climbing. There’s no good place to stop until we’re over the top.”

“You mean, this is the actual pass?”

“Yes—didn’t you know? What I’m afraid of is snow—it can snow all year up here. We’ve been lucky with weather so far, but this rain—and if it gets colder—”

“What if it does?”

“Then we keep going. There are some undercut ledges near the top, but they aren’t good shelter. We won’t stop if we can possibly make it through.”

But as mountain weather changes from minute to minute, so it thickened around them. Rain changed to sleet which coated their cloaks and the horses’ packs, and made the trail treacherous. Paks did not even suggest stopping to eat. She fumbled a strip of meat from under her cloak and chewed it as they climbed. Wind funneled the sleet, now mixed with snow, down the trail. Macenion showed Paks how to wrap a cloth around her face to keep it from freezing.

All too soon the rocky slopes around them whitened as snow flurried past. They climbed higher, leaving clear tracks that filled quickly behind them. Rocks disappeared under the snow. Macenion had to shout in Paks’s ear that he thought the snow had been falling at this height for more than a day. As they came around a shoulder of mountain on their right, the pitch flattened. Paks expected a change to a downhill slope, but instead met a blast of wind that nearly took her off her feet. Macenion, ahead of her, disappeared in a white fog of snow. She stumbled, and forced her way on, dragging Star behind her.

Paks finally found Macenion by stumbling into him. Windfoot was sideways to the wind, trying to turn. Macenion grabbed her arm and yelled into her ear.

“Paks! We can’t go any farther this way. Drifts! Go back!”

“Where?”

“Back!” He pushed her a little, and Paks turned carefully, bracing against the wind. Star had already turned, and Paks followed her back the way they had come. At least, she hoped it was the way, for nothing remained of their tracks. With the wind at her back, shoving her along like a giant hand, she could see a little way. A dark smudge to one side caught her eye; before she could ask, Macenion’s arm on her shoulder pushed her that direction. “It’s one of those overhangs,” he yelled in her ear.

Star and Windfoot shouldered their way to the back of the shelter and stood, heads down and together, their breath making a cloud in the gloom. Paks swiped the snow off Star’s pack and rump, and wiped the pony’s face clear. Ice furred her eyelashes and muzzle. Both animals trembled with cold and exhaustion. Macenion, meanwhile, was doing what he could for Windfoot. When he had the saddle off, he turned to Paks.

“We need to block the ends of this completely,” he said. “Snowdrift will help, but we’ll have to work hard before we dare rest.”

Paks groaned inwardly; she wanted nothing but to fall on the ground and sleep. She looked where he pointed. Snow blocked most of the uphill end of the overhang, but some blew in above the drift. Wind roared through the gap, swinging the horses’ tails wildly and freezing their sweat.

“We’ll use the cover off your pack,” Macenion went on. “Anchor it with rocks—” He was picking rocks off the floor of the shelter as he spoke. “If we’re lucky, we won’t have to compress the snow much—that’s the hardest work.” Paks struggled with the cover on Star’s pack. The knots were frozen, and the rope stiff as iron, but she dared not cut it. She took off her gloves to fight with it, and muttered a curse as the rope scraped her fingers raw.

“Here—” said Macenion suddenly. “Let me help with that. Get your gloves on; you don’t need frozen hands.” Paks sat back. Macenion glared at her and she backed farther away. He moved his body between her and the pack, and said a few words she did not know. When he stepped back, the knots were untied, and the ropes were supple again. Paks shook out the pack cover, and Macenion reached for it.

By the time Macenion was satisfied that their campsite was safe, Paks felt she could not move another inch. They had managed to secure the pack cover in the upwind gap. Snow drifted against it quickly, and now—so Macenion said; Paks had not gone back out in the wind to see—covered it several feet deep. The other end of the shelter was still open; they had nothing large or strong enough to block it. Macenion wanted to form blocks of snow, but finally gave up when Paks simply stared at him, exhausted. He managed to light a small fire of the wood they had packed along, despite the wind that still gusted in and out of their overhang. Paks helped steady their smallest pot above it. She thought longingly of hot food, hot mugs of sib. But the snow that finally melted and boiled was hardly hot enough to warm her hands.

“It’s the cold demons,” explained Macenion. “They’re jealous of their territory; they hate the warm-bloods who come up from the plains. So they steal the heat from fire, up on these heights.”

Paks drank the lukewarm sib, and decided she might never be warm again. Marching in a cold rain now seemed like a pleasant excursion. Only a few feet away, the wind whirled veils of snow past their shelter. She huddled in every scrap of clothing and blanket she could find. But as the afternoon wore away, she regained both strength and warmth. The horses, too, seemed to recover. Paks gave them some of the warm water, and dampened Star’s grain. Macenion claimed that elven horses didn’t need such coddling, but Paks noticed that Windfoot tried to push Star away from hers. She poured warm water on the pile of grain Windfoot had been ignoring, and the horse ate eagerly. Macenion glared, but said nothing more. He ventured outside several times, trying to judge the weather. As the light faded, he reported that both snow and wind were lessening.

“We might get through tomorrow, if the drifts downhill on the other side aren’t too bad. It’d be easier without the beasts—”

“You wouldn’t leave them!” said Paks, horrified.

“No, of course not. We need the supplies. But we can walk over drifts they’ll stick in. Anyway, get what sleep you can. If we can get out tomorrow, it will be early—as soon as it’s light. I’ll watch tonight—I’m more used to the cold and the height.”

Paks resented his usual tone, but was too tired to resist. She fell quickly into a light doze, waking as Macenion replenished the fire. She squinted around the shelter. The horses stood head-to-tail near the rock wall; she could see firelight reflecting from Star’s eyes. Hardly man-high, the ledge of rock overhanging them glittered as if it were full of tiny stars. Paks blinked several times, and decided the rock itself had shiny fragments to catch the light. Firelight turned the snowdrifts into glittering gold and orange—pretty, she thought, when you didn’t have to be out in it. She snuggled deeper into her blankets, took a long breath, and slid back into sleep.

Macenion’s choked cry brought her halfway out of her blankets with sword in hand before her eyes were open. He stood rigid beside the fire, mouth open. Paks tried to see beyond him, to the outside. Nothing but a wavering dark. She glanced back at the horses. Both of them were alert, heads high, nostrils flared. Star’s ears were back; Windfoot’s tail was clamped tight. Paks began to untangle herself from the blankets as unobtrusively as possible: she felt they were both easy targets, in the firelight.

It was then she saw the pale blue glow of eyes.

“Paksenarrion!” Macenion’s whisper was hoarse and desperate.

“I’m awake,” she said softly. What, she wondered, had eyes like that? Farther apart than human eyes, that was all she could tell. Big eyes.

“Paks, it’s a—” he choked, and then recovered. “It’s a snowcat.”

“Holy Gird,” said Paks without thinking. When she realized what she had said, she wished she’d kept quiet.

“What?” asked Macenion.

Paks felt herself blushing in the dark. “Nothing,” she said. “Now what?”

“Can’t you see it?”

“No—nothing but eyes.”

“I don’t know what we can—” Macenion’s voice suddenly sharpened. “Paks! Your ring!”

“What?” For a moment Paks had no idea what he meant. Macenion spared a glance at her, furious.

“Your
ring,
human! your
special
ring,” he went on. Paks nodded, then, stripping off her glove to touch it.

“But are you sure it will work? Maybe the thing—the snowcat—will just go away if we let it alone.”

As if in answer to that suggestion, the glowing eyes moved closer. Now Paks could see a suggestion of the body’s outline, a long, powerful catlike form, crouching as if to spring.

“You fool!” cried Macenion. “It knows we’re here! It’s about to jump. Stop it! Hold it!”

Paks thought she could see a twitch in that long tail, like the twitch she had seen in the mousers at the barn, the last instant before they sprang on a rat. She pressed her thumb hard on the ring and thought “Hold still, cat.” She wondered if those words would work.

“Are you?” asked Macenion hoarsely.

“Yes,” said Paks. “How long does it—”

“As long as you concentrate. Keep holding it.”

Paks tried to concentrate. She wished she could see the snowcat better. Macenion turned to rummage among his things. She was afraid to look sideways at him, lest the cat jump. She forced her eyes back to the shadowy cat-form. Suddenly light flared around her, and she jumped.

“Don’t look,” said Macenion harshly. The light was clear and white, brilliant enough to show true colors. Now she could see the snowcat clearly. Its body was man-long; its shoulder would almost reach her waist. As Macenion had said, its fur was white and blue-gray, patterned with dapples that reminded Paks of snowflakes enlarged. The ears bore long tufts of white, and it had a white beard and short ruff. The eyes, despite the blue glow they’d had before, shone amber in Macenion’s spell-light.

“Macenion, it’s beautiful. It’s the most beautiful—”

“It’s spelling you,” he said firmly. “It seems beautiful because it’s trying to use magic on you.”

“But it can’t be. It’s—” She stopped as Macenion came forward into her field of view. “Macenion, what are you doing?”

“Don’t be silly, Paks. I’m going to kill it.”

“Kill it? But it’s helpless—it can’t move while I—”

“That’s right. Just keep holding it still. It’s the only way I have a chance—”

“But that’s not fair—it’s helpless—” Paks let her concentration waver, and at once the snowcat moved, shifting in a kind of constricted hop, as she caught her control back. She was distracted again by this evidence of her power and its limitations, and the cat managed to rear, swiping at Macenion’s head with one massive paw. He ducked, and Paks forced the cat to stillness again.

“Damn you, human! Hold that beast, or we’re both dead. Worse than dead—you remember what I told you!” Macenion glared back at her, then turned, raising his sword.

Paks felt a wave of fear and pain sweep through her mind. It was wrong, terribly wrong—but what else could she do? “Macenion—” she tried again, staring into the snowcat’s huge amber eyes. “It’s not right—”

“It’s not right for us to end up soul-bound to a snowcat, no,” he said roughly. “It’s easy enough, though, if you forget yourself one more time. If that’s what you want, go ahead.”

Paks looked down, biting her lip. She could not watch, and then she thought she must. The snowcat made no resistance—could make no resistance—but it could cry out, in fury and pain, and so it did. That wailing cry, ending in an almost birdlike whistle, brought tears to her eyes. She blinked them back, and watched stonily as Macenion wiped his sword on the dead snowcat’s fur. He came back to the fire almost jauntily.

“A snowcat. That’s quite a kill, even if you don’t think it was fair. I’ll just take the pelt before it freezes—”