Into the Thinking Kingdoms (30 page)
Read Into the Thinking Kingdoms Online
Authors: Alan Dean Foster
Tags: #Fiction, #Fantasy, #General, #FIC009000
“This is not good.” Rubbing his long fingers together over the flames, Ehomba spoke solemnly to the hulking form that blocked the entrance hole. Hunkapa Aub was shutting off some of the wind and cold from outside with his own body. “How much farther? How long before we can start down out of the mountains?”
Overhanging brows drew together. “Still several days, Etjole. Hunkapa see this hard for you. I can carry, but only one at a time.”
“Our legs are not the problem, Hunkapa.” The herdsman fed one of the last dry branches to the little blaze. “It is too cold for us. Our bodies are not used to this kind of weather. And the snow makes it much worse. The wetness freezes our skin when it touches, and blocks out the sun.”
“Start down soon.” The massive shape shifted its back to seal the entrance to the snow cave more tightly.
“Several days is not soon, Hunkapa. Not in these conditions.” Ehomba cast his gaze upward. “If the snow would stop and the sun would come out, then maybe.”
Simna shivered beneath his thin clothing. “Bruther, I swear by Gaufremar I’m not sure anymore what you are: sorcerer or steer herder. Maybe both, maybe neither. This cold makes it hard for a man to think straight, so I’m not even sure of what I’m saying right now.” He lifted anxious eyes to his friend. “But if ever there was a time for magic, it’s come. The rug that walks says it’s several days before we can start down? I’m telling you here and now I don’t think I can take another morning of this. My skin feels like frozen parchment, my eyes are going blind from staring into this damnable whiteness, and I’m reaching the point where I can’t feel my legs anymore. My hips force them forward and when I look down I see that I’m still standing. That’s the only way I know that I haven’t fallen.”
“Simna is right.” Everyone turned to look at Ahlitah. The great cat was huddled in a ball alongside the fire. A force of nature, all ebony muscle and fang, even he had exhausted his strength. “Something has to change. We can’t go on in this.”
It was a momentous moment: the first time since they had begun journeying together that the litah and the swordsman had ever agreed on anything. More than any eloquence or deed it underscored the seriousness of the situation. Both looked to their nominal leader, to the lanky herdsman who sat cross-legged before the inevitably diminishing fire. Ehomba stared into the fading flames for a long time. There was no more wood.
Finally he raised his eyes and looked first at Ahlitah, then at the shivering swordsman. “You know, I am cold too.”
Reaching behind him, he dragged his pack to his side. Brushing snow from the flap that Mirhanja had embroidered and beaded herself, he began to search within. Simna leaned forward eagerly, expectantly. Ever since he had joined company with the herdsman, wonderful things had emerged from that pack. Simple things that in Ehomba’s skilled, knowing hands had proven to be much more than they first appeared. What would the enigmatic herdsman bring forth this time?
A flute.
Lightly carved of ivory-colored bone, it had eight small holes for fingering and was no bigger around than the herdsman’s thumb. Licking his lips to moisten them slightly, Ehomba put the narrow end to his mouth and began to play.
A lilting, sprightly tune, Simna thought as he listened. Foreign but not unfathomable. The herdsman played well, though not skillfully enough to secure a place in the private orchestra of any truly discerning nobleman. Next to him, the litah’s tail began to twitch, back and forth, back and forth in time to the music. Hunkapa Aub closed his eyes and rocked slowly from side to side, his immense shoulders rubbing snow from the roof of the temporary shelter.
It went on for some time as the fire died in front of them. Finally Ehomba lowered the instrument from his lips and smiled thoughtfully. “Well?”
Simna blinked uncertainly. “Well what?”
“Did you like it?”
“Pretty-pretty!” was their guide’s enthusiastic comment. Ahlitah let out a snort that was less haughty than usual—a compliment of sorts. But Simna could only stare.
“What do you mean, did I like it? What difference does it make whether I liked it or not?” His voice rose to a shout. “By Gilgolosh, Etjole, we’re dying here! I want to see some serious sortilege, not listen to a concert!”
Ehomba did not shed his smile. “Did it make you want to dance?”
The swordsman was so angry he might actually have taken a swing at his friend. What madness was this? That was it, he decided. The terrible, killing cold had manifested itself differently in each of them. With Ehomba, it had finally revealed its insidious self in the form of a hitherto hidden dementia.
“Me dance!” Hunkapa Aub was still rocking slightly from side to side, remembering the music. “Etjole play more!”
“If you like.” Bringing the slim flute back to his lips, the herdsman launched into another tune, this one more lively than its predecessor. Simna would have reached out and snatched the accursed instrument from his companion’s fingers, but his own hands were too cold.
Rocking to the music, Hunkapa Aub backed out of the opening and into the snow where he could gambol unconfined. Picking up his pack, Ehomba followed him. Ahlitah was not far behind. Muttering to himself, an irate Simna remained in the snow cave until the last vestige of the dissipating campfire vanished in its own smoke. Then he donned his pack and, with great reluctance, crawled outside to rejoin the others.
Halfway out of the cave he stopped, staring. When he finally emerged it was in silence and with eyes wide, gaping at the sky, the ground, and the surrounding mountains. The air was still icy cold, and it was still snowing as hard as ever.
But the snow was dancing.
Not metaphorically, not as the component of some ethereal poetic allusion, but for real.
Across from the entrance to the snow cave two triple helixes of ice crystals were twirling about one another, rippling and weaving as sinuously as a sextet of bleached snakes. The twirling embrace conveyed snow from the sky to the ground in loose, relaxed stripings of white. Nearby, the powdery stuff fell in sheets. That is to say, not heavily, but in actual sheets—layer upon layer of frosty rectangular shapes that sifted down from unseen clouds with alternating layers of clear air between them. As they descended they fluttered from side to side like square birds.
Individual flakes darted in multiple directions, as careful to avoid colliding with one another as a billion choreographed dancers. Miniature snowballs bounced through the air while hundreds of snowflakes combined to form many-pointed flakes hundreds of times larger. The instant they reached some unknown critical mass they fell with a thump into the fresh banks that lined the sides of the icy stream that ran through the narrow valley, leaving behind temporary holes in the snow that assumed the shape of a thousand dissimilar stars.
Snow fell in squares and spheres, in octahedrons and dodecahedrons. Möbius strips of snow turned inward upon themselves and vanished, while shafts of snow winkled their white way through the centers of snowflake toroids. And in between the snow there was light: sunlight pouring down pure and uninterrupted from above. It warmed his face, his hands, his clothes, and sucked the paralyzing chill from his bones.
All of it—shapes and swirls, giant compacted snowballs and individual flakes—danced to the music of the thin bone flute that was being wielded by Etjole Ehomba’s skillful hands.
“Come on, then,” he exclaimed, looking back to where Simna was standing and staring open-mouthed at the all-engulfing world of white wonder. “Let us make time. I cannot play forever, you know.” He smiled, that warm, knowing, ambiguous smile the swordsman had come to know so well. “As you have been so correctly and ceaselessly pointing out for past these many days, it is cold here. If my lips grow numb, I will not be able to play.”
As if to underline the seriousness of the herdsman’s observation, the minute he had stopped playing the blizzard had settled in once more around them, the falling snow distributed evenly and unremarkably from the sky, and the sun once more wholly obscured.
“You should know better by now than to listen to me, bruther. Keep playing, keep playing!” Simna struggled through the drifts to catch up to his friend.
Turning northward, Ehomba again set mouthpiece to lips and blew. His limber fingers danced atop the flute, rhythmically covering and exposing the holes incised there. The euphony that filled the air anew was light, almost jaunty in expression. It tickled the storm, and the snow responded. As before, a plethora of shapes and suggestions took hold of the weather, buckling and contorting it into a thousand delightful shapes, all of it composed of nothing more animate than frozen water.
As they trekked on, the herdsman continued to sculpt the storm with his music. The shapes it took were endlessly fascinating, full of charm and whimsy and play. But delightful as they were to look upon, Ehomba’s companions valued the sun that shafted down between them far more. After a little while Simna found that he was able to remove his outer coverings and hold them up to dry. Ahlitah paced and shook, paced and shook, until even the tips of his mane had regained their optimal fluffiness.
As for Hunkapa Aub, he danced and spun and twirled with as much joy as the snow, his fur-framed expression one of soporific bliss. Even so, he was not so distracted that he failed to notice important turnings in the path. Here, he declared, pointing to an especially large slab of granite protruding from the side of the valley, we turn to the left. And here we leave the river for a while to clamber over a field of talus.
As they marched on in ever-increasing comfort but without being able to truly relax, Simna kept a careful watch over his tall friend. Ehomba’s words of warning were never very far from the swordsman’s mind. How long
could
he keep tootling on that flute? Hiking and playing each demanded endurance and energy, both of which were in short supply among the members of the little expedition. Ehomba was no exception. Like everyone else, he was cold and tired. A lean, deceptive energy kept him going, but he was no immortal. Without food and rest he too would eventually collapse from exhaustion.
could
he keep tootling on that flute? Hiking and playing each demanded endurance and energy, both of which were in short supply among the members of the little expedition. Ehomba was no exception. Like everyone else, he was cold and tired. A lean, deceptive energy kept him going, but he was no immortal. Without food and rest he too would eventually collapse from exhaustion.
Even as the sun continued to slip-slide down between the pillars and spirals of dancing snow, Simna was keenly aware of the massed, heavy clouds overhead. Shorn of inspiring music, the snow they were dropping would meld once more into a dense, clinging blanket from which there might not be any escape. He willed what strength he could to his tall friend, and tried to remember the melodies of folk songs long forgotten in case the herdsman’s musical inspiration began to flag.
Ehomba played on all the rest of the morning and into the afternoon. Conscious of their precarious situation, the travelers did not pause for a midday meal, but instead kept walking. They would rest when the herdsman rested. Until then, it was far more important that they keep moving than eat. Their bodies screamed for food to turn into heat, but they ignored the demands of their bellies. Time enough later to feed their faces. Time enough later for everything once they were safely out of the mountains.
* * *
Ehomba was starting to miss notes, to falter in the middle of alternate tunes, when a gleeful Hunkapa began hopping about with even more ardor than usual.
Simna muttered his reaction to the litah. “I’d say the simpleton has gone mad, except that it would be hard to tell the difference. What’s got into him now?”
“Perhaps he is especially inspired by the tune Ehomba is presently fluting,” the big cat replied thoughtfully.
“I’m surprised he can hear it.” Simna eyed the herdsman worriedly. “For the last hour or so his playing has grown quieter and quieter. I’m afraid our friend may be running out of wind.”
The swordsman was right. Ehomba was almost done, his fingers cramped from fingering the holes atop the flute and his lips numb from blowing into the mouthpiece. But Ahlitah was also correct. Their hirsute pathfinder was indeed singularly inspired, but not by the herdsman’s playing. As swordsman and cat closed the distance between themselves and their leaping, gyrating guide, they saw for themselves the reason why. Bellowing joyfully into their cold-benumbed ears, Hunkapa Aub confirmed it.
“Go down!” he was hooting. “Go down now; down, down, down!”
Ahead lay more snow-covered slopes. They were no different from the white-clad terrain the travelers had spent the past difficult days traversing, with one notable exception: all inclined visibly downward. Additionally, the stream they had been following intermittently now visibly picked up speed, tumbling and spilling in a series of crystal-clear cataracts toward some far-distant river, as if the water itself could somehow sense the proximity of gentler climes and more accommodating surroundings.
Cloud and fog continued to eddy around them as they picked up the pace. The downgrade enabled them to increase their speed without any additional exertion while simultaneously taking some of the strain off their weary legs. Falling snow sustained its miraculous waltzing, Ehomba’s faltering music inspiring ever newer patterns and designs in the air. The only difference was that now the pirouetting snowflakes began to surrender a gradually increasing percentage of the open sky to the unobstructed sun.
By evening they had descended from alpine hardwood forest to slopes thick with dogwood and bottlebrush, oak and elm. The ground was bare of snow, and flowers once more brightened the earth between trees and bracken. As Ehomba finally lowered the flute from his lips, the last dozen snowflakes trickled down from above. Concluding a miniature ballet in twinkling white, they corkscrewed around one another down past the herdsman’s face, and paused in the fragile grip of a passing breeze to bow solemnly in his direction. Then, one by one, they struck the warm, rich soil and melted away into oblivion, leaving behind only tiny snowflake ghosts that each took the form of half a second’s lingering moisture.
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