The Shadow at the Gate (57 page)

It is in my mind, Drythen Wulf, that this sceadu we trail may be the same creature that brought the Dark to the mountains years ago when I hunted with your pack.

Perhaps, Mistress. But there is a difference. Once we reach the eyrie, you will see. Aye, the sceadu was there, but something else was there as well. Something quite different.

There were different sorts of evil. The evil that men hid in their hearts was one kind. The ancient words of the Dark were another evil, of much greater deadliness than anything a mere man could set his hand to. But words were only words, and they always required someone to speak or read them. There were creatures who had old and abiding allegiances to the Dark, such as ogres and cobolds and sceadus. They were yet another sort of evil. The sceadus were ancient, older, and more terrible than all the works of darkness. They had walked the earth when she herself had still been young. And then there was the Dark itself. The Watcher in the silence.

“Deep within the darkness, further e’en the void, Nokhoron Nozhan built himself a fortress of night,” Levoreth said out loud. The wind held its breath at the brashness of her words and then, when nothing happened, it blew into the silence with a relieved sigh.

They walked along a ridge that fell away into the plunging depths below. Swallowfoot shivered beneath her, but she calmed him with a touch of her hand and he stepped along again with assurance. The wolves were strung out before and behind her; some were black against the snow with their dark fur, but many of them were lighter colored and so almost vanished into the glittering white. But the light was fading fast. High above them, past the ridge, was the peak. It waited for them, darkening in the dying light.

We are near, Mistress.

The old wolf came and stood by Swallowfoot’s side. The wolf’s breath steamed in the air, and she could see the anxiety in his eyes.

A little farther
, said Levoreth,
and then I will go on my own.

No, Mistress. We shall go with you.

They again came upon the trail of the sceadu and were forced to follow it, for there was no other way up. The mountain dropped away into the depths below on one side, down into an awful emptiness. On the other side, a steep rock wall, sheathed in ice, angled up at such a slant that it seemed it would fall over on them at any second.

I would not mind being a mountain goat
, said Swallowfoot.
One more look over the side and I shall be dizzy.

And then, around a corner, they hiked up into a flat space. It was a narrow bowl bounded on three sides by steep rock and on the fourth by the sky and the sheer fall of the mountainside. The bowl was deep in snow.

There
, said the old wolf.

But Levoreth already knew. She swung down from Swallowfoot. On the far side of the bowl, where the rock walls came together to a cleft, the opening of a cave was barely visible behind a snowdrift.

Wait for me here
, she said.

By the time she neared the cave, the snow was past her waist. Her clothes were stiff with ice. The cold had worked its way deep into her, deep in her bones, but she did not mind. She had once stood on a mountainside in winter for three months, absentmindedly listening to the sounds of the snowfall and the slow, creaking sleep of the earth. She had turned to ice then, but it had not mattered because she was Eorde. She was the earth.

Here, though, something else strove to creep in with the cold. The Dark. Levoreth shut her mind to it, strengthened with the memory of stone and the weight of earth. She wove her thoughts with the green of spring and the long, slow fall of autumn that finds its strength in its inexorable descent. But still, something fluttered against the edge of her mind.

“Avert!” she said.

Levoreth kicked at the bank of snow obscuring the cave mouth until the crust crumbled. The snow collapsed inward. Ice lined the walls of the interior. The cave was silent, but outside she could hear the wind moaning. It was dark inside but Levoreth did not need much light to see. What was sufficient for a cat or an owl was sufficient for her. A rough stairway was carved into the stone at the back of the cave. Whatever waited for her was at the top of those stairs. She began to climb.

And the Dark reared alive. No more than a whisper on the edge of her thought.

It battered at her.

Shadow, deep and dark and heavy as stone.

Thou wilt die.

As all shall.

All flesh is like grass.

Withers and fades.

Into the night without end.

But the earth in her was heavier still. Immovable and fixed. Levoreth hunched her shoulders, staggered a little under the weight of the voice, and then trudged up the stairs. She did not know how long she climbed those stairs. It could have been only a few minutes. It could have been an hour. It could have been a day. She came to the top of the stairs. The darkness lightened to a gloom. Levoreth stood in an empty space carved from the rock. An eyrie. Above her head was a high ceiling of stone, sheathed in ice and stalactites. On all sides, however, openings like windows looked to the north and south and east and west. She moved to one of the windows, the one looking south, and found that the window was large enough to serve as a porch. She stood on the edge of the mountain. Snow blew and swirled around her. She gazed south, and stretching away before her, the peaks of the Morn range stood in all their lonely grandeur, some shining bright in sunlight, some shrouded in darkness and storm.

And in the eyrie was the Dark. It was a memory only. Whatever had been here was now long gone. But the memory was alive and powerful.

“Who were you?” said Levoreth.

The thing lashed at her, striking at her mind with malice as sharp as shattered stone and as cold as ice. But she stood firmly and would not move. She could feel the mountain beneath her, heavy with sorrow and still remembering what it had been forced to harbor for so long.

“Who were you?”

A nobody. A nothing.

The voice was sneering. A voice devoid of life. A voice as thin as the blade of a knife.

“Who were you?”

The thing thrashed on the edge of her mind but it could not escape. It had been in the eyrie for so long that it was rooted to that place.

“Who were you?” said Levoreth. “Speak!”

The rock beneath her shuddered with the force of her words. The mountain shook. Outside, ice shattered and a great mass of snow slid several feet down the face of the crag before pausing. But the pause was only for a second. The snow slid away then in earnest, roaring and billowing down the slope. In the bowl at the cave’s mouth, Swallowfoot and the wolves trembled.

We were darkness
, said the voice.

We were a word, my brothers and I. We were a jewel that fell through the night sky. We fought wars in the dead lands. We laid waste to those who lived there and brought them to ruin. We were darkness, restless and hungering. Restless, old Mistress. So I left my brothers and came west across the great sea. I came hunting like a dog. I gazed over this land. I stood in the wind and rain, in the tempest and the storm, in the ice and the snow. Watching and waiting. I gazed from this mountain for a hundred years.

“I know you,” said Levoreth, shivering. “We fought you in distant lands. Before the land of Corvalea fell into darkness. Three brothers. The three sceadus.”

Aye
, sneered the voice.
And what else do you hide in your memory? I shall tell you one of mine. I saw the wind one day. I saw the wind one day, stretching his wings from this eyrie. This was his home, as it is mine now. He went flying to and fro in his careless way, as he was wont to do, and a thought settled in my mind that I would be the one to catch him as he fell.
I fed his curiosity with a dream. I drew him east. East from the mountains and across the great waste beyond, to the farthest shore where another sea laps. And he came to the sand of the shore so that he might set his hand on the jewel that sparkled there. But there was no jewel to be had. There was only my knife. And there he did die. On my knife. Such a sweet memory.

“You are a liar,” spat Levoreth, “as you and your kind always have been. Your knife did prove his end, but he did not die there. He fled you, did he not? He fled, with your knife in his side, and the Dark has been searching for the blade ever since.”

And find it we shall, old Mistress. The dogs are sniffing along the scent. We shall find it and the wind shall be ours.

No. Someone else found it first, thought Levoreth to herself tiredly. She could see Jute’s frightened face in her mind. Someone else found it first and you’ll have to kill him. You’ll have to kill the wind again.

“You are only a memory, a curse on this place. Where did your true self go? Where is the sceadu?”

I am only a memory from my past
, said the voice.
When I left this place, my future began. I am only the past. I cannot tell you, old hag.

“But you know. I can feel it in your voice. Tell me.”

The thing sought to escape. It tried to hide in the old, fading memories of the past, in what Levoreth had forgotten, in what she wished to forget, but she caught it and held it. And the thing told her. It told her in pictures that flooded her mind. It told her in hatred and darkness and ancient malice that had spied upon Tormay for so long.

My lord sleeps in Daghoron
, said the voice, dying away.
But I serve another. There is another and he stands in the shadows. We will rule Tormay. We will destroy as we have always destroyed.
And then the voice was gone, whirled away in a fit of laughter that vanished on the wind. Levoreth released the memory and stood staring blindly. She felt old and tired, unutterably weary.

“Another,” she said to herself in a daze. “I do serve another.”

Snow was falling when Levoreth emerged from the cave. The wolves were huddled around Swallowfoot to keep him warm. The snow lay across the wolves so that they were only little hills and mounds under it. One of the hills shook itself and cascaded away to reveal a furry snout, ears, and eyes.

The mountain shook, Mistress
, said the old wolf.

“The mountain?” Levoreth said, her mind blank. “Oh. I’m sorry.”

The other wolves emerged from the snow, sneezing and snuffling and shaking the snow from their coats. Swallowfoot levered himself up. Levoreth ran her fingers through his mane, breaking the ice free and warming him with her touch. She swung herself up.

“Let us go,” she said. “A storm is coming.”

Above them, the wind blew around the mountaintop, moaning in and out of the eyrie. It sounded forlorn, as if it were searching for an old friend who had gone away and was no longer there.

CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

THE STONE TOWER

Severan was right in his guess that they had already passed north of Lastane, for early that morning they topped a rise and looked down upon a river gleaming in the sunlight. Willows grew in thickets along the water’s edge, and through the dark arms of their branches they could see the gliding flow.

“A river!” said Jute. “Let’s go fishing.”

“The south fork of the Ciele,” said Ronan. “We’ve traveled farther than I’d hoped.”

“There,” said Severan. “What did I tell you? We’ll reach the coast road and be in Harlech in no time. The road’s safe this far north; I’d wager my neck on it.”

“Still many a mile to go,” said the hawk, “but fresh fish for breakfast would do me no harm.”

“I didn’t think hawks fished,” said Jute. “The seagulls and the pelicans do. I used to love watching them diving in the bay. I thought you hunted mice and rabbits and such.”

“Hawks don’t hunt mice. At any rate, when you’ve lived as many years as I have, you learn many things. Among them, a taste for fish. Even the taste of rabbit grows bland after a while.”

“I’ve seen fisherhawks,” said Ronan. “In the lakes north of Dolan.”

“Aye.” The hawk chuckled. “A rough-winged sort. They have a fondness for eels and they claim to speak with the giants.”

“Giants,” said Severan. “I’ve never met anyone who has spoken with a giant, let alone seen one. What language do these fisherhawks use when they speak with giants?”

But the hawk did not answer, for he had launched himself from Jute’s shoulder and swung steadily away from them into the sky.

“Dratted bird,” said Severan. “I know. I know—you needn’t look at me like that, Jute. Your hawk is probably the oldest and wisest creature I’ve ever had the fortune to meet, but he has a habit of ending conversations right when they get interesting.”

When they reached the river, they found the hawk perched on top of a rock at the water’s edge, busily devouring a fish.

“Trout,” said the hawk through a mouthful. “Plenty more, if you’re hungry.”

“I think I’ll have some of Ronan’s excellent stale bread,” said Severan, turning pale. “That is, if there is any more.”