The Snowmelt River (The Three Powers) (26 page)

So be it!

Immediately, there was a rush of cold air and Mo looked up at the towering figure that was faintly outlined against the moonlight. Her heart faltered as she recognized that cunning and vicious face.

“Trust the guile of old Snakoil Kawkaw to know the tricks of those back-stabbing Storm Wolves! Eh! What say you, brat?”

The Sister-Child

A fire of brushwood flickered by the head of the dying Valéra, as Ainé and Muîrne sat cross-legged on either side of their wounded companion, under a rough bower of pine branches. The remaining Shee had withdrawn to the forest, leaving these two to tend her through the night. The only concession to the presence of Milish was the acceptance of healwell from her hands, yet even this Muîrne insisted on administering herself in the privacy of the bower.

It had been snowing gently all night, and dawn of the following day broke with a leaden sky, heavy with foreboding.

During the intervals when Muîrne left the sickbed to fetch more brushwood, Alan caught glimpses of Ainé, her cloak covering her sagging shoulders,
her great frame rocking slowly with the litany of her nightlong lament.

His Olhyiu overcoat and fur-lined boots had been recovered from the main Storm Wolves encampment by the Aides, which, as Alan had discovered, was pronounced Ay-des, and was the same term for one or many. He had dried the coat and boots over a fire and resealed the leather with a rubbing of tallow and a thin, pine-scented oil. He was glad to have them back, since the cold, even several hours after dawn, was still extreme. The boy they had rescued slept more soundly than any of them, thanks to herbs administered by Milish, who came to join Alan by the fireside for a breakfast of bread and salted meat. She asked about his aching joints but, given Valéra’s condition, he was in no mood to grumble about his own aches and pains. Then Milish made a signal to hush any further discussion before leading him away from the scene of tragedy.

“I still don’t understand.” Alan shook his head at her as they were walking into the pine woods. “Other Shee have died and there was less grieving over them. And Valéra’s condition, surely you could do more to help her? You’ve got herbs, and I guess you also have knowledge too that might help her.”

“There is a deeper injury to Valéra than a mortal wound, even from the blade of a Preceptor.” The eyes of the Ambassador caught Alan’s and he glimpsed there some special grief he didn’t understand.

Alan couldn’t help thinking about Mo and the fact that they had been unable to find her. He couldn’t bear to think of what those sadistic soldiers might have done to her. For all he knew, she might be dead by now. Milish had to shake his shoulder to bring him back to full attention. They walked over the snow-dappled forest floor for another thirty yards or so, and Alan took this time to study Milish more closely.

Her hair was a lustrous blue-black, the long straight strands parted down the middle and falling over her forehead. Some was swept backward in careful arcs from each temple that hid the top of her fleshy ears, then gathered together at the back and lifted above her head. This plume of raven hair was held in place by an ornamental clasp of silver filigree at least nine inches high. It was a beautiful creation, encircled at the base by bottle-green and copper-blue enamelwork of intertwined foliage and blossoms.

He spoke softly, reflectively. “I can’t see how you knew my name. You talked as if you were expecting me.”

“Mage Lord—all of Monisle has been expecting you and your companions for a generation.”

“Then maybe you can tell me why we’re here. Why us? How come my friends and I were brought here?”

“Is it possible that you know nothing of the sacred honor that was entrusted to you? Are you not the chosen ones of the last High Architect of Ossierel, Ussha De Danaan—falsely scorned as the Great Blasphemer?”

Alan sighed with irritation. All he ever seemed to get in answer to his questions were more riddles. “I don’t understand anything of what you’re telling me.”

Then, suddenly, Milish was embracing his head with passion. Her eyes roamed his features in what appeared to be wonderment.

“Oh, believe it, Alan Duval! There can be no mistaking the Oraculum of the First Power of the Holy Trídédana! The force of the land—of the very elements! It is true! You bear it on your brow. You, and the companions you speak of, are the hope of an entire world!”

He just shook his head in disbelief. There were so many questions he would have liked to ask Milish. But she escorted him onward, leading them farther away from the scene of lamentation to emerge from the trees into the smaller battle arena, where the bodies of several Storm Wolves still lay in the scatter of their deaths, their spilled blood frozen on the snowy ground.

Only now did Alan remember to look for Kawkaw. He scanned the ground for his body but there was no sign of it. He did find the leather thongs that had bound the traitor but they were neatly cut, as if they had been maneuvered against the edge of one of many fallen swords. How likely was it that the hateful man, exhausted and maimed, would have survived the night in this bitter landscape?

Alan shook his head without knowing the answer. In the drama of Valéra’s nightlong suffering he hadn’t given a thought to Kawkaw, or to the Storm Wolves. But
now he gazed at the horror of so much death. Some of their insignia, on epaulettes and over the right breast of the chest armor of the centurion, must signify military rank. On every helmet was the malevolent symbol of the triple infinity.

“What does this symbol mean, Milish?”

“It is the mark of the Tyrant. Every division of his army of occupation—aptly named the Death Legion—wears this accursed sign.”

Alan recalled how Kawkaw had talked about the Master, who appeared to be a god to the Storm Wolves.

“Look at them! Even in death they look fierce,” Milish said in wonder. “The Tyrant does not permit children to be reared as any normal child might be, in a family or a village. The soldiers are culled as children from the Daemos.”

He asked, “The Daemos?”

“The barbarous peoples who populate the Wastelands across the Eastern Ocean. Some say it wasn’t always like this: that the Wastelands were once fertile and well governed. But the Tyrant spoiled that. Now his overlords harvest people as a breeder might select dogs—or wolves.”

“That’s vile!”

Alan gazed over the carnage in silence. What kind of world was this? A world, it seemed, in which magic was accepted as normal and where forces, spiritual forces, whether for good or evil, openly played a part in people’s lives. It had begun to snow again, in hard, dry
flakes, as large as petals. There was a chill in the air that made him shiver.

“Why does the Tyrant do these monstrous things?”

“I lack the wisdom of a High Architect.” Milish’s eyes returned his gaze. “Yet it seems to me that in the wonder of existence there is dark and there is light. The impulse that attracts one spirit toward the light might lead another to a darker, more desperate path.” She hesitated and shook her head. “Some say the Tyrant came from another world, as you do. If so, he has escaped the bonds of natural control. Has he not lived for several thousand years, and perhaps a great deal longer? Speak to Ainé if you wish to learn more of it. But choose your moment carefully, for the Kyra does not care to be reminded of her trials as a child in the great arena of Ghork Mega.”

“It’s incredible.”

“Yet it is true that every advance in truth and understanding on Monisle has been opposed in war and despoliation by the Tyrant and his malice. Where the Council at Ossierel valued and treasured life, the Tyrant was ever bent on pillage and destruction. Soon every river in his land was polluted, and with that the very oceans they flowed into. Mountains of spoil grew where his slaves were made to tear elements from the earth. Not a forest was left standing, but the wood was hacked and burned, always to fuel even more destruction until all that was left was a wasteland that covered an entire continent. Thus war between our peoples
became inevitable. Mine is a world that, for all the history we know, has never known peace.”

Alan caught an inflection in her voice, a hint of an unasked question in her eyes, but it wasn’t the right time to probe this. They had already begun to walk back to the fires when a young Aides came running.

“Come quickly—the Kyra is calling for you.”

They hurried back to the clearing, where Ainé stood outside the bower, her downcast face evidence enough of Valéra’s condition.

“My sister-in-arms is dying,” she stated bluntly. Then, lifting her eyes to look directly into Alan’s, she added tersely, “I have tormented myself through wondering why you, a mere youth, should be granted the First Power of the holy Trídédana. Why so? Unless through a grace that I am not given to understand . . .” She checked herself, inhaled deeply. “Yet in asking assistance of you, what I ask I dread, for it is anathema to my race.”

Then, her eyes sweeping across to the snow-encrusted bower, she continued. “I know that it is beyond hope to save Valéra, but if only there were some power that might yet grant her peace by saving the immortality of her lineage!”

Alan turned in puzzlement to Milish, whose eyes opened wide in a deeply anxious and troubled face. He felt out of his depth. But still he murmured simply, “Valéra took the wound that was intended for me.”

Ainé led him into the bower, where the overnight fire still burned. There was a strong smell of healwell
and applied liniments. Valéra tossed in a stupor on her bed of rushes. Her golden blonde hair had been freed in a sweat-soaked halo about her face, and the amber eyes that had once smiled at him were now restless in their sunken orbits. A lean, wizened woman with leathery brown skin and white hair wiped sweat from the warrior-in-noviciate’s face. Muîrne stood in the background, as if awaiting his arrival.

It was Muîrne rather than Ainé who now addressed him in a whisper. “We saw how you destroyed the shield dome, turning their green malice back against the Storm Wolves. Here we face a malice even more vicious. The poison of a Preceptor’s blade runs deep within her. If you cannot help us, the sister-daughter will be lost.”

Alan shook his head, looking at the Shee teacher. “This crystal in my head—this oraculum, whatever power it is supposed to give me—I don’t know if it has any kind of healing property.”

The Kyra shifted restlessly on her feet behind him. “Rather than anticipate failure, will you use the oraculum to probe her wound? Then you will understand the nature of our despair.”

“Maybe Muîrne could help explain things to me so I get a better idea what you really want of me.”

The teacher instructed Alan to copy her in washing his hands in a bowl of herb-scented water. Then, gently, she lifted aside the packing cloths to show him Valéra’s wound. It was to the right of her abdomen, low down, barely above the pubic bone. It was almost a foot long,
ragged and livid about its edges. He had seen the black and twisted blade plunge to its hilt so he knew it had to be deep. Now the reek of gangrenous flesh made him gag.

“Feel it!”

“Aw, gee!” He gagged again. As soon as his fingers touched her skin, Valéra stiffened and moaned.

Alan spun aside, and could not stop himself retching. “I . . . I don’t know if I can go any further.”

Behind him the Kyra grew angry with him. “Did you not admit mere moments ago that Valéra accepted the blade intended for you?”

The Aides woman stepped forward and put her hand on his arm. “I am Layheas, skilled in herb lore and battle wounds. If the young Mage Lord will permit me, I will help him.”

Alan nodded his gratitude, breathing slowly and deeply through his open mouth.

He gazed down once again on that terrible wound, then, as gently as he could, he pried apart the edges, eliciting another tormented moan. He spoke to Layheas, whose eyes willed him on. “I can’t see into the wound. It’s too narrow and dark. Do you want me to see what I can feel?”

Layheas nodded.

With his left hand Alan probed the flesh deep within the wound. The muscles, membranes, organs—everything within reach of the twisted blade had been ripped open. He had to pause so he could overcome a new wave of nausea.

Layheas nodded again, encouraging him.

“I’m going to feel a bit deeper.” Swallowing hard, he inserted his hand as far as the wrist. Suddenly he encountered the shock of the venom that had been implanted there. An intense pain froze his fingers. It gnawed deep into his bones. The shock made him stagger back, and shove his hand instinctively into the bowl of hot water. When he lifted it out again, his fingers had turned a livid purple.

“What the heck . . . ?”

Layheas grasped his hand with surprising strength and stopped the trembling so she could inspect the fingers. “The blade of a Preceptor carries more than just a physical poison. It is infused with the malice of its Master. The Preceptor discharged the evil of his life force through that debased weapon before he died.”

Alan clenched his teeth against the agony that was already ascending into his wrist from the poisoned fingers. He tottered back against the bower wall, feeling the structure sway. With a heightened alertness, he heard a shuffling patter of snow falling from its disturbed branches. He saw the anguish on the faces of Muîrne and Ainé. Only Layheas had remained absolutely calm. “The Mage Lord must use the oraculum.”

The Aides woman was right. But how could he relax his mind when his fingers were in such torment?
Don’t think about your own pain
, he urged himself.
Think of Valéra—how she has suffered all through the night!
Forcing his fingers back into the wound, he pushed them deeper than before, as deep as they would go. Then a new shock of realization entered his unprepared mind. He jerked his arm, bloodstained to halfway up his forearm, out of the wound.

“She’s . . . she’s pregnant!”

“Yes,” Ainé responded tersely. “The warrior-in-noviciate carries her own sister-child.”

“I don’t understand what’s going on here.”

Muîrne’s stone-gray eyes confronted his own. “Is it not obvious? Surely it is the point of everything. Such is the focus of Valéra’s torment and the grief that consumes us.”

Alan fell onto his knees and retched. Now he understood that the Preceptor’s dagger-thrust had not been random.

Layheas took hold of his shoulder, a look of pleading in her eyes.

But he just couldn’t take any more of this. Tearing himself free from the Aides’ hand, he blundered out of the bower, running blindly into the snow. The bitter wind excoriated his skin like a swarm of stinging wasps. Hunching forward against the elements, he called out, with great urgency, “Granny Dew!”