The Snowmelt River (The Three Powers) (47 page)

The Cost of Battle

Alan stood in the rain on the elevated platform of Nantosueta’s tower, heedless of the storm winds blowing from the southeast, from Carfon and the sea. How he had made his way here—how long he had stood here—he didn’t recall. The battle was over. And now the implications were only beginning to sink in to his mind.

Ainé and Kemtuk dead. Kate lost—taken! And Mark . . . Oh, sweet Jesus, what had happened to Mark?

“Mage Lord!”

Qwenqwo’s face looked up into his, the dwarf mage’s stout body wounded in several new places. Alan became gradually aware of the sky, the hard, high green sky of early evening, with its wrack of storm clouds, wheeling over him. His jaw ached from being clenched in anger
and sorrow as he gazed up at the entwined stone figures towering above them. His friend, Mark, bearing obvious wounds, was entwined with the smaller figure of the Dark Queen, the two locked in an embrace, as if for eternity.

“What does it mean, Qwenqwo?”

“Mark saved you—saved us all.”

“Is he dead?”

“He is not dead. Though dead he most certainly would have been, in flesh and spirit, had his iron heart failed him, for he carried twice a death sentence of poison in his blood.”

“I don’t understand. How can he not be dead?”

“Look at their brows.”

Alan stared more closely at the faces of the entwined figures. Each brow enclosed a black inverted triangle.

“It’s an oraculum, isn’t it?”

“The Third Power—the fates protect us!”

“Mórígán’s power . . . Death itself?”

Qwenqwo’s face wrinkled into a frown. “Yes.”

“If Mark isn’t dead, where is he?”

“Subsumed, body and spirit. He is now bound to the Third Power, as was the Dark Queen.”

Alan shivered, staring up at the entwined figures, a fateful realization flooding his mind. As bound as he was himself?

“If my ruby triangle is the First Power and Mark’s is the Third, what happened to the Second Power?”

“If I interpret rightly, it should have been Kate’s.”

Alan reflected, with a dizzying resentment, on the complex pattern of what had brought the four friends here—of what still directed, perhaps even controlled, their very lives and actions. “What is the Second Power?”

“Perhaps the power of new birth—but also that of healing—of healing, perhaps, that which was thought to be unhealable!”

Alan sighed. So that was why the dark forces had so focused on Kate. What more would the Tyrant fear and hate than the power of new birth, of healing, in such a ravaged world! And how he wished Kate was still here! Her loss brought a terrible sense of emptiness.

“And Mo?”

The dwarf mage said nothing.

Alan recalled Mo in that awful moment, when her tiny figure had confronted the Legun, with the shadow of Granny Dew supporting her like a guardian angel. What did it mean? How was he expected to make sense of any of it?

Grief rose in him again, that same grief that he had felt with the loss of his parents, but now it boiled within him, as unbearable as madness.

Qwenqwo preceded him down the winding staircase cut into the sheer face of the rock until they emerged onto the battle-scarred ruins of Ossierel. Here, amid the rain-washed ruins and flagstones, the smell of death hung in his nostrils. The dwarf mage took him to Mo, who lay where she had collapsed after the
Legun had fled. Mo was still being nursed by Milish. Alan knelt beside her petite body. With gentle hands he touched her face, the matted black hair. He heard Bétaald’s voice, an anxious insistence from the background. “She will live. There are others, more desperate, who need our help.”

He didn’t like to leave Mo. But Bétaald was right: the need for ministering to the survivors overrode all others. Alan stood shakily erect to face the dark-skinned spiritual head of the Shee, noticing that her arms were streaked with her own blood.

“I’m sorry about Ainé. She was incredibly brave.” He inclined his head.

Bétaald’s yellow eyes searched his, as if looking for some additional explanation, or words of comfort, before she replied. “A great many of those who answered the call to arms lie dead among these stones.”

So he became aware of the gravity of the catastrophe that surrounded him; in addition to the losses of the defending Shee, many Olhyiu were also dead. And many of the survivors lay injured among the ruins. Even the survivors, haunted by grief and loss, faced an uncertain future. Where would they go now that the Temple Ship had been destroyed?

He walked among the wounded and the dead, witnessing the price paid by those who had sacrificed so much to help him and his friends. He didn’t have far to wander. At every step, pools of blood, broken bodies—and worse—met his gaze. The groans of the injured
scourged his ears as, one by one, he came upon their pain-racked figures, often in small huddles, blood-soaked and pitted by livid wounds. On and on he wandered among them, absorbing the blankness of shock on their faces, the ebbing of life from their eyes.

A hardening of purpose established its hold on Alan Duval’s heart on this wet and bitter evening.

He stood aside to allow two survivors to pick up one of the dying Shee. He watched them carry her through the wisps of smoking ruin, heading for some vestige of cover. A rank pestilence still seeped from the earth, as if the darkness still struggled to seed itself everywhere. The shadow of that darkness mocked him still with the evidence of murdered innocence, of so many faces that had once smiled at him, looked to him for hope and protection, the precious life now taken from them. It was difficult to conceive that any of the more vulnerable had survived such a pitiless assault. Yet the Aides were opening up avenues into subterranean passages and cellars, from which the surviving children and elderly were being assisted into the light. Others were tearing apart the rubble to discover still more dead and wounded.

Milish left Mo to the ministration of others and sought him out.

Though every bit as exhausted as he was, she insisted on walking beside him. “The wounds caused by sword and arrow we can repair. The Aides will stitch sinew to sinew, or set broken bones. And healwell will support
the loss of blood and the shock of scorched flesh. But some bear wounds worse than those struck down by sword or even the foul green flame of the legionaries’ weaponry.” Outrage pained the diplomat’s voice as she led Alan to the entrance of one of the underground chambers, where a dozen or so of the youngest children had been hidden. The Aides, assisted by able-bodied Olhyiu, had carried them out of the cellar and now they lay in the cobbled alley, every face pallid and feverish. It was here that Alan found Turkeya, kneeling in grief by the body of Kemtuk.

Alan fell to the ground beside Turkeya and embraced him, tears welling up in the young Olhyiu’s eyes.

Milish spoke softly, with a comforting hand on both their shoulders. “A group of Gargs, led by one so powerful it may have been their leader, forced entry here, though the portal was guarded to the death by three of our bravest. Here it was that your friend, Mark, was wounded by a Preceptor even as Kate was taken. And it was in this cellar that the shaman was himself killed while attempting to protect Kate. The leader of the Gargs was killed by the dwarf mage, who arrived too late to prevent their purpose. Its remains, together with those of the Preceptor, are nearby. Unfortunately, the dwarf mage arrived too late to prevent the Gargs from spreading their poison among the children.”

Alan climbed back onto his feet and examined the children where they lay, eyes glazed and red-rimmed, the cherry-red lividity on their lips, that same glow
aflame in their cold flesh. One of these innocents he recognized: it was Amoté, the little girl who had danced to Mark’s harmonica on board the Temple Ship and pulled Kate’s hair.

“Oh God, Milish!”

In the first glimmer of dawn, Alan wandered alone to the easternmost reaches of the third fosse, where a thousand feet of sheer cliff face bolstered the defensive ramparts. Here, the air was cold and refreshing. The cyclopean stones of the great defensive rampart supported him, standing high on a promontory and gazing out over the spectacular panorama.

The Vale of Tazan yawned before him, too colossal in its wandering valleys and soaring mountains to take in with his tired eyes. How serene it must have appeared in the eyes of the young queen before war and death had invaded that tranquil scene. Even now thunder still rolled among the distant calderas, charging the air with casts of lightning, and an icy rain squalled among the trees, quenching any remaining flames, with palls of mist blanketing the ground where ash and embers had been most extensive. Here and there, in the distance, the drums of the Fir Bolg reminded him that they had not yet completed their terrible purpose, a purpose that would continue until not a single legionary or Garg remained within the sacred valley. And even then, as Qwenqwo had explained with a look of outrage, the
warrior guardians would be condemned once more to their living graves. Alan felt the grief of the dwarf mage like ice in his heart.

Had he, and his friends, caused these terrible events? Was vengeance enough to make all of this worthwhile?

Alan turned his face up to the cleansing rain, washing away the reek of death. In the rumbling detonations that still shook the tor under his white-knuckled fingers, he sensed the same relief in the very rock. Evil was receding, although its defeat could only be temporary, and even this victory had been bought at a very great price.

Kate was somewhere out there, unconscious and taken away from him. Yet even in that situation there was a small ray of hope. The enemy had some purpose in keeping her alive. If all they had wanted was to kill her, the Garg would have left her dead in that cellar. The swell of grief within him peaked. From his brow a pulse of light flared, and a signal surged out of the valley and far beyond, until it located an unconscious mind caught in the soaring flight of a gigantic V-shaped cloud over the Eastern Ocean. He sensed the tens of thousands of leathery wings flapping and gliding on the prevailing currents of wind. He had no way of knowing if Kate could hear him as he cast his promise, carried upon his pent-up anger into the universe of morning.

Only survive! No matter where they’re taking you, I’ll find you.

Alan was still standing there at full daybreak when Qwenqwo returned with a flask of liquor.

“My friend,” he said, his voice hushed. “A man’s drink.”

Alan was too grief-stricken to face Qwenqwo. His feet were frozen to the rampart of stone, his mind still locked in the direction of the Eastern Ocean. Qwenqwo squeezed the flask into his fingers. The dwarf mage spoke gently, insistently. “Yet still there is Mo who needs your help—though darkness appears to have taken hold of her very spirit.”

Communion

During the long night, Alan had done what he could to help Mo, but no probing of her body or mind using the power of his oraculum made any difference. The confrontation with the Legun had destroyed something subtle and personal in her, in her soul spirit perhaps, that Alan could neither understand nor restore. Milish had kept her going physically with regular sips of healwell, but mentally she remained unresponsive. Meanwhile, the people rested before beginning the descent to the causeway at first light the following morning. There were so many injured and sick among them that all able hands, including Siam’s and Kehloke’s, were put to carrying and stretcher-bearing.

Alan and Milish took the stretcher carrying Mo, though she appeared to weigh no more than a feather,
and her face was wasted almost to a skull. Much easier going downhill than it had been in the ascent, they made good progress following their own trail through the dense forest, hacked out only days earlier. The Fir Bolg heads were still and brooding again, while the mist-wreathed grandeur of the valley appeared to weep in its desolation about them. Alan was silent throughout the journey and, from time to time, Milish glanced at him, as if fearful of the anguish she already sensed there and uncertain of his additional reaction when they reached the shore. When finally Alan saw the wreck of the Temple Ship coming into view, its great masts reduced to stumps, and its timbers and decks reduced to charcoal and ash, her fears proved justified. A heart-wrenching sob shuddered through him, a grief that was suddenly unbearable, as much through remorse at having abandoned the ship as at the implications of that abandonment.

The stench of burning was acrid in their nostrils as they laid Mo down among the many wounded on the shore. Meanwhile Alan left Milish and headed into the shallows beside the wreck.

As he got closer to the shore, he wept openly and silently. The ship had given them its protection throughout their journey, but nobody had protected it from the Legun as it vented its hate over every inch of her flame-raddled superstructure. From behind him he heard the empathic voice of Turkeya, their new young shaman, in a piping hymn of woe so reminiscent in its cadences of
Kemtuk on the frozen lake, as he went down on his knees and lifted a handful of embers. Ash spilled from his fist, forming a sorrowful plume in the gusting air, drifting down and around the pebbled shore and the river’s edge.

The ruined ship lay unnaturally low in the water, as if in its suffering it had sought some small comfort from burrowing into the river bottom. Siam’s voice, joining them in offering his respect, was breaking with emotion. “Surely we may attempt to rebuild her. Is this not the greatest forest in all the land?”

“I don’t think so, Siam,” Alan spoke. “Nantosueta has been woken from her sleep. She guards her forests again, and long may she do so!”

“But if the ship cannot be made sail-worthy, all is lost. With so many sick and wounded we cannot travel overland.”

Alan turned to Siam, noticing his left arm and shoulder bloody with wounds, and still that old hat was twirling about in his hands. Minute by minute, the survivors began to gather around them, the exhausted Olhyiu and even the Shee. Bowing his head, Alan scratched at the wispy dark beard that sprouted over his cheeks and chin, and then, taking a deep breath, spoke hesitantly, awkwardly. “I want to thank you all. Heck, I don’t even know how to begin—how to say how much we owe you.” He shook his head.

Siam replaced his battered pilgrim hat and with a defiant stance he turned to face his people.

“In his modesty, we see the brave heart of our friend, the Mage Lord, clearer than he sees it himself. What if
we had stayed among the Whitestar Mountains—what then would have become of us? Had we not sacrificed all dignity and hope when we surrendered our fleet to that desolate place? What else but a slow and bitter humiliation confronted us? The Mage Lord came from another world, yet he took the burden of leading us out of winter. He battled the malice of a Legun incarnate. Would we not follow this man, the Chosen One of the De Danaan, to the gates of Ghork Mega itself?”

Alan was embarrassed then by Siam’s lofting of his hat and by the strained cheer that sounded from these brave and injured people.

“Though our sacrifice has been great, we thank you and your brave friends, three of whom have suffered in our cause. What greater purpose might befall the Olhyiu people than to help you in such a quest? And that quest has not ended. It still leads us to Carfon by the Eastern Ocean. And there, if I have to drag this hulk by its keel along the bed of the great river, is where we shall take you.”

Taking heart from the chief’s words, Alan addressed them all in reply. “Siam is right. We’ve got to do the best we can—use whatever presents itself to us. His courage should be our guide.”

They prepared a meal from what was left of the dried fish and ate it together on the riverside, in the shadow of the hulk. Over this frugal fare, they debated what best to do. In the situation that faced them there really
wasn’t much alternative: their only hope, no matter how desperate, remained with the Temple Ship.

They resolved to find out if it could be made to float, even if it was rudderless, like a raft. Ropes were passed about the trunks of the trees on the bank so that using this leverage, they could attempt to drag the hulk into the deep water of the central stream. A party of Olhyiu went out into the forest and returned with long poles, taken only from trees already fallen. If it was a hope at all, it was a very slender one. Even if they succeeded in refloating the ship, a Herculean task awaited them, since they would still have to pole their way all the hundreds of leagues to Carfon.

Some of the fitter men took up key positions, a leg clinging to a beam or inside a crumbling porthole. Shouts of encouragement willed on the tired limbs and sweat-drenched brows. They strained and pulled with every ounce of strength until the muscles of their brawny arms and shoulders bunched like the gnarled roots of the encroaching trees, and the veins on their brows swelled like hawsers. The labor continued until the midday sun broke through the wintry mists that still bathed the valley. Alan, who had climbed onto the fire-ravaged deck, was watching out for the slightest response.

“One more time!” He waved to the chief in the thick of the struggling figures on the aft deck.

But the enormous ruin would not budge an inch: it was stuck fast, resistant to every effort.

“It’s no good!” Siam shook his head. “She’s dead in the water.”

Alan flopped down onto the charred deck. He didn’t notice Milish climb onto the deck, but now her hand found his arm, and she sat down beside him as they gazed around them at the demoralized Olhyiu.

“I have to do something, Milish.” His eyes met hers. “I know it’s going to look kind of desperate—but the situation is desperate.”

He climbed to his feet, then called out to Turkeya to throw up the Spear of Lug. Turkeya did as he asked, casting the great spear so high it went through a parabolic arc and impaled its head in the center of the middle deck. Alan went over to stare at the spear.

But Milish clutched at his arm, as if to stop him. “What is it? Tell me what you’re planning.”

“Remember when Valéra was dying? Do you recall the cure for the poison that threatened her unborn daughter?”

“Mage Lord, no! It is much too risky.”

“I have to try, Milish. Please don’t try to stop me.”

Milish stared at him as he fell to his knees on the deck before the spear, running the flesh of his forearms against the cutting edges until blood welled out of the cut veins and ran onto the spearhead, where he clasped it with his hands.

Milish called out to Siam, “You must stop him!”

The chief ran forward from the aft deck, arriving by the kneeling youth, whose head had fallen onto
his chest. The oraculum was throbbing powerfully in Alan’s brow as the blood ran over the Ogham-glowing blade and seeped out into the ruined timbers.

Siam put his arm around Alan’s shoulders. “My friend, have there not been deaths enough in this accursed place?”

“She isn’t dead, Siam. She can’t be.” Alan took his blood-soaked hands away from the blade and spread them, with splayed fingers, on the charcoal-grimed wood. He implored the ship, through the oraculum, “Show us there’s even a spark of life left in you!”

Siam exclaimed, “What’s dead is dead! Come, let the Aides bind your wounds. Then let us attempt the long and perilous way on foot. I cannot promise deliverance, but we must take whatever measures are available to us, no matter what the risk.”

Alan allowed himself to be helped to his feet. He turned around through half a circle, facing the bulk of the ship, as if wishing his final farewell through the oraculum. Then he sensed the faintest tremor.

“Siam, did you feel that?”

“What is it?” Siam still kept a firm hold of Alan’s shoulders, as if to make sure he didn’t bleed himself again.

Alan probed again, this time more purposefully directing his oraculum into the depths of the ship. He felt it again: a weak response.

He tried harder. The oraculum flared, throwing Siam backward so he almost fell. Alan poured all of his concentration into the hulk. He maintained the pressure
of force until his head felt giddy. Suddenly, there was a muffled implosion as part of the superstructure fell in, showering them in charcoal and ash. Siam gaped, as if fearful the remaining structure was about to collapse.

On the shore below people started to back away from the ship. But Alan stood fast.

Siam, reading Alan’s mood, looked over the remains of the rail toward the milling crowds and bellowed, “What has become of the proud Olhyiu, who respond to every groan and shiver with startled eyes! Is the Mage Lord not here among us? Above all we must keep faith.”

But it wasn’t easy to keep faith against the groans of resettlement that were now taking place. All eyes were fixed on the region in the foredeck where the superstructure had collapsed. Yawning there into the dusty light was a gaping hole. Probing it with the oraculum, Alan sensed a responding shudder, like a moan issuing from deep below. Cautiously approaching the hole, he peered inside. He could make out little at first beyond the immediate opening, yet he sensed that a natural passage lay there, as irregular in its lining as a mountain cave.

“A torch—somebody!”

Siam got hold of a brand, lit it and then joined Alan by the opening. “I shall be your torchbearer!”

Alan shook his head, trying to take the torch from Siam’s hand. “Go back to the shore. Get everybody else to stay clear of the ship. It could be dangerous.”

“I am no stranger to danger.”

Alan shrugged. “Okay. But stay behind me.”

He was barely a step inside the portal when he recoiled from the odor of rot and decay. He was glad of the breeze that entered with him, fresh air rushing in as if to fill a vacuum, fluttering the torch as he held it aloft before him. Taking a second step into the tunnel, which led away into darkness, he descended, spiraling down ten or twelve feet, to a level where the lowermost hold of a normal ship might be. But clearly this was no ordinary ship. Here a cobweb-encrusted portal led into a new passage. As Siam probed it with the torch, wraiths of darkness appeared to swallow the light, as if darkness had become a force here, born out of misery. Caution ignited the oraculum so that it added the rubicund glow of its light to that of the torch as, with tentative steps, they continued their passage onward.

An eerie silence pervaded the gloom. Side tunnels confronted them as Siam held the torch aloft to inspect their organic walls.

“By the great Akoli, we have entered the throat of a dragon!”

Alan understood what Siam meant. They might be exploring the internal passages of some vast creature, with ridges at intervals like the rings of cartilage supporting a gigantic windpipe, but one that had long since ceased its expansion and contraction with the act of breathing the primal air.

The main throat—for throat was how Alan also thought of this passage—twisted and turned on itself,
with many diverging branches, often multiple, opening to either side, or above and below, so that he had to be careful to circumvent the pitfalls. He grasped what he could of the wall or the ceiling with his free hand. Yet though he had wandered a hundred paces into this labyrinth, still nothing looked familiar. The inner spaces seemed to defy reality. He counted his paces from that point and soon registered another hundred, yet, as he could determine from the absence of footprints in the grimy floor, he had never once retraced his steps. Stumbling to his knees over a protruding rib, he sensed how darkness closed about him, as if to devour him.

Panic yawned around him, an inchoate fear that caught his breath, yet, gaining his feet again, he asked Siam to loft the torch so that its glow reassured him, and then he paused in order to regain his composure. He was certain now of that answering tremor.

The ship is answering me, as if reading my innermost thoughts, my innermost feelings.

Now and then he detected new odors, sometimes pleasant—the scents of flowers—and at other times unpleasant, bog-tars and sulphur. And he heard the clashing sounds of distant upheaval, as if he were close to the embryonic forces of creation. He felt a shudder in the heart of the ship, if “ship” was an appropriate word for the real nature of this mystery. There was a feeling of being watched, and he almost shouted aloud, so overwhelming was it. Yet there could be no need to shout, even to whisper, only to think.

Then immediately, as if it had sensed his thrill of communication, he sensed a change. Slowly, almost imperceptibly, he was aware of the metamorphosis of its elements, although, from moment to moment, there was little visible change. “Siam—if what I’m sensing is true, it’s wonderful beyond belief. Maybe I just want to believe it. If only the ship would give me a sign so I know I’m not mistaken.”

“What you feel is true!” Siam’s growl sounded out from somewhere very close to him, yet lost in the dark.

“Then you sense it too?”

“I feel it.”

My God!
He hardly dared to think what it meant.