The Snowmelt River (The Three Powers) (31 page)

“You speak of Shee?”

“They’re waiting just outside the town. They know we’ve got to get away from here.”

The shaman nodded, then took a step back to examine Alan in amazement. “You appear to have matured years in mere days.”

Alan’s gaze turned to Mark, who had just appeared from the shadows to one side, his head bowed. Kate, who was standing next to him, put her arm around his shoulders and looked at Alan, a warning expression in her eyes.

Alan and Mark embraced each other, though there was none of the passion he had felt with the others. Mark looked tired. His red-rimmed eyes lifted to look directly into Alan’s. “Where’s Mo?”

“I’m really sorry . . .

“What do you mean?”

“Mo was taken by the Storm Wolves. We did our best to find her . . .”

“Are you telling me that Mo’s gone?” Tears glistened in Mark’s eyes, which shied away from contact with Alan.

Alan recalled the words of the figure of light in the forest. “I don’t know—but I think, maybe, she’s still alive. If so she has to be here, in Isscan. Where else can they have taken her other than here?”

Mark shook his head, unable to believe him, then dashed away. Alan felt like chasing after him, but Kate held him back. Nevertheless, there were urgent questions he needed to ask Mark, and no matter how much he chose to avoid him, Alan was determined to get answers to those questions.

Siam found him again, accompanied by Kemtuk and Milish. He spoke in that same urgent undertone: “Though you have just arrived, and doubtless are tired and in need of rest, nevertheless we need to make plans to flee.”

The shaman nodded his head. “I have been pressing Siam to make plans for immediate departure.”

Milish also nodded in complete agreement.

“Not without first trying to find Mo,” Alan insisted. “Make all the plans you have to, but I have plans of my own.”

Siam grasped Alan’s shoulders, gazing at him eye-to-eye. “We have no time.”

“I’m not going to abandon her.”

“In war, sacrifices must be made!”

“Plan we must, with the council woman, Milish,” interrupted Kehloke, taking hold of her husband’s arm. “In the meantime, we shall leave the Mage Lord to the welcoming arms of Kate. Surely we must show our guests a little of the traditional Olhyiu courtesies. Food and shelter we do possess, though the quality of both is meager.”

Kate took the hint to drag Alan away, taking him on a tour of the warehouse, meanwhile holding tight to his arm the whole time, as if still only half believing that he was back with her.

The Olhyiu occupied three communal rooms, with pallets made up from grimy old sacks distributed about the floor. Most of the ground level was a single huge chamber, its ceiling supported by beams fashioned from whole trunks of trees, many still retaining the bark. The reek of fish came from two long tables set aside for fish-gutting and packing, work that the Olhyiu—men, women and children—had taken on in return for food and shelter. The whole chamber was thick with dust, old packing cases and piles of the moth-eaten sacks. At least the plentiful supply of packing cases fueled a grate in a great brick fireplace. Here, in the shadows, they found a few moments of privacy to really talk.

“Don’t you miss your uncle, and Bridey—the Doctor’s House?”

Her eyes moistened. “I never stop thinking about them—and Darkie.”

“Me too! I can’t help thinking about things. Grandad!” He brought her close to him and kissed each of her tear-filled eyes.

She kissed him back, long and passionate. “I’m never going to let you out of my sight again, Alan Duval!”

“I don’t ever want to let you out of my arms.”

Their giddy heads were only brought back to reality by the clanging of two great copper pans being beaten together.

“Everybody—let me have all of your attention!”

It was Kehloke, standing on the top of a table, and swirling from one side to the other with a spin of her elegant body and a wave of her pan-wielding arms. She called for a celebration.

“The Mage Lord has returned from what we all assumed to be a watery grave to give us new purpose! Put aside your fears for one evening and gather more timber to feed the fire. Let our guests warm their weary bones. And then we shall feast as best we can in these limited circumstances.”

While Kehloke oversaw the preparations for the meal, Alan, Milish, Kemtuk, Siam and Kate sat around one of the fish-gutting tables and shared information. Siam described how they had been forced to pawn any precious objects they still had to buy vegetables and corn from the market, always with the certainty they were being cheated. “Every little coin or trinket is gone. They have even robbed us of the wedding amulets from husbands to their wives on the first night of their marriage.”

Alan remembered the tiny jewels that had once decorated the married women’s throats. Clearly for Siam this had been the greatest act of betrayal by
these corrupted city people. Yet in return for accommodation and shelter, the fisher people had taken on the lowly task of fish-gutting and packing for the fleets of others, working all the waking hours in this rat-infested ruin. They were allowed enough fish to guarantee their supper, which tonight would accompany a soup of vegetables in which to soften their corn bread.

Alan was puzzled by what Siam had said about gutting and packing for others. Surely the Olhyiu had the use of their boats?

A scowl contorted Siam’s face. “All confiscated, from the moment of our arrival in the harbor!”

“Confiscated?” Milish questioned sharply, glancing with alarm at Alan. “For what transgression?”

“None! We are compelled to join the legions of beggars.” It was Kemtuk who replied on behalf of the furious Siam. “They call us primitives to our faces. We, the Olhyiu! All our boats lie chained and guarded, even the Temple Ship itself, pending the decision of the High Preband.”

Alan turned to Milish, whose anxious face reflected his own. “How can you flee,” she asked, “without boats?”

Kemtuk spoke up. “It is still worse, I fear. Even if we could somehow free our boats, the Death Legion has placed a boom, a great spiked chain, across the river. No vessel can leave the port without the boom being lowered.”

Silence fell over the gathered company.

Milish nodded, her worst fears now confirmed. “The Mage Lord’s arrival was surely anticipated. It was foolish to imagine otherwise. I am now convinced that there are forces of Death Legion massing within the city.”

Kemtuk confirmed her fears. “Aye! The town and the surrounding district has more legionaries than a rotting tree has termites. Some, if our sources are reliable, have already moved on southward in large numbers by land and river.”

“What can it mean?”

Kemtuk shook his grizzled head. “It can only mean that they intend to breach the power that guards the ancient Vale of Tazan, with its forbidden forests.”

Milish clutched at Alan’s arm. “Ainé must be made aware of this. If they succeed, Carfon will be vulnerable to attack.”

Alan said, “Tell me more about Carfon. What about this council—the Council-in-Exile, as you called it?”

“There will be time enough to introduce you to the politics of Carfon if we succeed in passing through the Vale of Tazan ourselves,” she murmured. “Suffice it to say that our mission to save you was an act of rebellion, contravening the orders of the Council-in-Exile.”

A common foreboding weighed on every heart as they settled down for the frugal meal around the bare wood tables that stank of fish. The Olhyiu ate the meal raw and spicy but they made provision for those who preferred their fish cooked. Alan deliberately took a seat next to Mark. He kept his voice to an urgent whisper.

“What happened back there on the ship?”

“What do you mean?”

“I saw you struggling with Kate. You pushed Mo.”

Mark’s face turned beet-red. “I wasn’t struggling with Kate. I was trying to save her. I—I sensed she was in danger. I was trying to persuade Kate and Mo to get below deck.”

Alan gazed at Mark, eye-to-eye. Was Mark telling him the truth? Why did he feel that Mark was keeping something important from him? He shook his head, not satisfied with Mark’s explanation. He would talk to Kate about it. But for the moment, with all that was threatening, his main concern was Mo.

The Mage of Dreams

With nightfall, as a cold wind rattled the clinkered walls of the warehouse, scraping the wood with a bitter mix of sleet and snow, the company was entertained by a dance of three young men in the center of the floor. Turkeya organized the music, which sounded a little like pan pipes but was played on a mixture of pipes made out of the bones of animals and pots that resembled ocarina, but longer and more carrot-shaped. Alan’s eyes darted about the large room, searching for Mark, who wouldn’t normally be left out when it came to music, but Mark had made no effort to join in.

He returned his attentions to the festivities, noticing three young women who stood back, shy in their demeanor, yet with eyes excited by the dancing of the youths. Milish, who had come to sit beside him, explained
the significance of the dance. Three families had perished and three couples were being bonded. Alan smiled across to Kehloke, who returned his smile. While they had young men to dance and young brides to respond, death would have no hegemony over the Olhyiu people.

The bonding ended with the young men carrying away their brides and it was followed by merriment and more dance music. Kate dragged Alan onto to the dance floor.

“I’m not sure I’m capable, thanks to the attentions of the Storm Wolves.”

“I think we should at least pretend to join in,” she whispered in his ear.

In fact he needed no persuasion to take Kate into his arms.

Siam also joined his people on the floor, dancing with Kehloke, who swirled through the couples with all the grace of the swan in her name. The couple split up, as did others, exchanging dance partners. Alan glimpsed Siam’s daughter, Loloba, taking to the floor with a young Olhyiu in tow. Siam was the natural ringmaster, as with jokes and suggestive movements of his hands and body he circulated among his people, a jar of corn liquor in his hand to fill up their cups. And frequently, when their eyes met, the chief would hold the jar aloft, with liquor trickling from his laughing cheeks, before downing some more of the contents, then belching loudly.

Siam’s brown eye winked at him, and his head nodded to one side. Alan’s gaze drifted in that direction,
registering the fact that Kemtuk was signaling him to join him.

Something important was happening. When he maneuvered Kate up next to the shaman, he explained, “Turkeya has led a party of men outside—looking for spies.”

Alan gave up any pretense at continuing to dance, considering what this might mean. In a moment, Milish was by his side, her left arm thrown around Kate’s shoulders. With her right she pressed a cup into Alan’s hands. “Drink—and let any watching eyes observe your slurring speech and drunken limbs.”

He brought the cup to his lips, noticing it was nothing more than water. He made a play of taking a hearty swig. “Watching eyes?” he enquired.

Milish transferred her arm from Kate to Alan, as if to merrily entice him back onto the dance floor. “The walls are full of holes, easy to peer into. None,” she whispered, “are as drunk as they appear.”

Not needing to feign exhaustion, Alan sat down on a sack by the fireside, where through the plank floor he could hear rats squeaking and scurrying about the half-sunken wharf below. Minutes later he heard a scuffling outside the entrance and several men rushed in, led by Turkeya, who was holding a knife against the throat of a stranger. “Caught this one peering through the cracks in the wall.”

The stranger was on his knees in the dirt, his hands outstretched, his voice beseeching mercy. Siam took
him by the scruff of the neck and exposed his features to the light of a torch. Alan recognized the cringing face. “This is Gaptooth, the servant who led us here.”

“Save me, Mage Lord!” the man whined, his forehead dashed against Alan’s feet. “I do not come to spy, but to serve you. I bear a message from one who would offer you counsel.”

“What treachery is this?” Siam demanded. “How do you know to call our friend Mage Lord?”

“No treachery, I swear upon my honor.”

“You have no honor.” Siam took the hunting knife from Turkeya and pressed its point up against the spy’s scrawny throat.

In one of their captive’s pockets they discovered a dagger. But they found no money, not even the small gold coin he had haggled from them earlier. His beery breath suggested how that had been spent. However, they did discover a flattened oval of jade as big as a fist, which was inscribed on both surfaces with intricate carving. Kemtuk took the jade from the searcher’s hands and marveled at the art of it.

“This is strange indeed. It is ancient—I wonder just how ancient and what power might have made it. What remarkable skill guided the hand that inscribed such runes on an unyielding surface!”

The shaman passed the runestone to Alan, who weighed it in his hands, his eyes unable to read its message.

“What does this tell you, Kemtuk?”

The old man hesitated, as if his instincts were torn by contradictions. “Certainly it doesn’t belong to this dolt.”

Gaptooth whined. “It is as I have tried to explain—an invitation, from one who calls himself the Mage of Dreams.”

The man screamed as Siam’s knife blade drew a bead of blood from the cords of his throat. “The choice of emissary is evidence enough of treachery,” growled Siam. “I say kill the spy and make haste to the harbor.”

“Master, I beg you! I would not wish upon you the fate that beckons if you tried to cut free your boats.”

Alan said, “Siam—hold on a moment. Let him explain.”

“A thousand thanks, Mage Lord. I beg you and your companions to consider. I speak the truth. The Mage of Dreams is greatly venerated in this city. But his location is difficult since, with the perils of these dark times, his chamber must be hidden from the merely curious. I have been bidden to take you to him.”

“Why would the Mage of Dreams want to meet me?”

“Read the message in full, Mage Lord. Its truth is sealed within the runestone.”

Alan returned the runestone to Kemtuk, who crossed to the fireside, where he spent many minutes running his fingers over its surfaces, even sniffing at it—exploring it through every sense before he returned.

“There can be no doubting that this is indeed a stone of power. It is very ancient, with markings unlike any I
have ever seen. If I am not mistaken, it is powerful—the property of a great and powerful Mage. There may well be a message concealed within it, though what message, I cannot tell.”

Kemtuk returned the runestone to Alan, who moved across to kneel in the firelight, where he could illuminate the jade in the cradle of his hands. Then, closing his eyes, he probed it with the oraculum.

“Oh my God! Kate—take a look!”

“What is it?” Kate hurried over to join him in front of the fire.

Alan held out the runestone so she could gaze into its crystal depths. Kate’s expression changed to astonishment as she saw, imprisoned there, the ghostly specter of Mo’s face peering back at her.

“But . . . but what on earth does it mean?”

“Mo’s lips are moving. It’s as if she’s trying to tell us something!”

“To warn you, perhaps?” Kemtuk spoke.

Alan could hear the murmur of excited and cautionary voices around him, although they seemed to come from a thousand miles away. He exhaled slowly, before climbing back onto his feet.

“All I need to know is that Mo’s alive! And she’s here, somewhere in Isscan!” He clenched the runestone so tightly his fingers crackled.

Kate hugged him. Mark’s worn face appeared out of the shadows to join them, his wide-staring eyes focused on the runestone.

“You believe what you see in that thing?”

“What do you think, Kemtuk?”

“There is much here that confuses and alarms me. Our enemies know where we are. They allowed us entry on the open river. The gates and walls are such as to put up a false impression of being unguarded. Once here, the authorities block our escape. They spy on all that we do. Yet still they withhold their attack. The logical inference is that they fear you, Mage Lord. Indeed I would wager that their overlords sit in counsel even now, considering a way in which they might destroy your power before they are ready to attack.”

“The shaman’s words express the thought I have dreaded every hour since entering this fallen citadel,” Milish agreed.

Alan nodded. “Thanks, all of you, for your concern. But I’ll have to take whatever risk is necessary to meet this Mage of Dreams. I can’t ignore the fact that Mo’s life is in danger.”

“I’ll come with you,” blurted Mark.

“No! It must be you alone, Mage Lord,” insisted Gaptooth, his eyes squinting with a sudden cunning. Even as he winced as Siam jabbed the blade harder against his throat, he insisted. “Entry to the Mage’s chamber is forbidden except to those he has invited.”

Kemtuk took Alan’s arm to draw him out of earshot.

“Let me offer my protection. For the lore of such a mage will be powerful indeed. And his presence here, in a city that has fallen to the Tyrant, might imply a
malicious allegiance. I will follow your path tonight and will be nearby if danger threatens.”

A bitter wind scoured the streets, blowing sleet as cutting as ice against Alan’s face as Gaptooth took him on a winding route, no doubt deliberately clouding any sense he might have of their direction. They passed the night’s drunks, lurching between hostelries in the meaner streets, with wooden houses almost meeting as they fell toward one another in their upper stories across the refuse-soiled passages. On and on they wove, through a degenerate labyrinth that seemed to extend for miles, arriving at a district of tall and rickety buildings closely gathered about walkways of iced-over cobbles. Here, they entered a poorly illuminated inner maze, ascending and descending staircases of age-worn stone, moving through hunched arches and uneven avenues.

At last his guide peered back into the darkness, listening hard to make sure that they had not been followed before opening a latch-gate concealed in a soot-begrimed wall of irregular and deeply shadowed boulders. They were close enough to the waterfront for Alan’s ears to pick up the creaking of rigging and for his nose to pick up the smell of polluted brine. The Mage’s chamber was a few hundred yards farther on in the twist and turn in what increasingly felt like a three-dimensional maze in solid stone. It was Alan’s impression that they had entered the fabric of the ancient city walls.
He was unaware of having entered a building, so confusing was the approach through tunnels and portals, yet immediately he felt the triangle in his brow pulse with a sense of numinous power as they arrived at an antechamber with a narrow window, looking down eighty feet onto the masts of ships. There was no time for him to see if the triple mast of the Temple Ship was among them.

A figure was waiting by a window, his white-cowled face in shadow. Alan spotted Gaptooth’s furtive hand return the runestone to its master.

With his guide melting away through the closing doorway, Alan saw the cowl drawn back on a face harrowed with age and bent forward over a frame as spare and fragile as a heron’s. The Mage of Dreams was a good half foot taller than Alan, even though he was bent over the staff he held in his right hand. He seemed old beyond the threshold where one bothers to count the decades. His locks of hair, thinning over the front and crown of his head, fell down over his neck and shoulders in a cataract of white, as fine as silk threads. As Alan’s hand was clasped in the Mage’s withered fingers, a dwarf with coppery red hair appeared from a gothic doorway, swaying in hesitation like a drunken man. The dwarf made a guttural sound, as if he had lost his tongue, and then, with a clumsy bow, led them down a sloping passage with damp-stained walls, into a close-walled chamber where a fire crackled and roared in a corbelled fireplace.

As he turned to leave them, the dwarf appeared to totter against the wall of the entrance passage, causing
a flicker of amusement to cross the eyes of the Mage. “Forgive my servant his unfortunate habit. I retain him out of loyalty after many years of service.” The Mage’s face wrinkled to a wry smile. “Would you indulge an old man in his amusement? In this poor dungeon, I nourish such simple creatures for the joy of their beauty.”

With a gentle clap of the Mage’s hands, clouds of brilliant color filled the air between them, dazzling and shimmering. They spiraled and fluttered until they filled the chamber, like the fall of blossom in a breeze. Alan was astonished to discover that they were butterflies of a diaphanous sapphire blue. Several alighted about the Mage’s eyes to create the illusion of a carnival mask around the clouded irises of venerable age. Alan couldn’t help sensing great power behind the gentleness. From the fire a fragrant incense cloaked a reek that Alan assumed must be rising out of the harbor.

For a moment, in the poor light of a chandelier and the flames of the fire, the Mage made a point of putting aside his staff to stand erect before Alan and, intertwining the fingers of his hands, as if in a refinement of passion, gazed even more deeply into Alan’s eyes. “These are troubled times. Yet such determination and courage do I read in your character!”

Those gentle eyes had curious pinpoints of gold invading the blue, like myriad fairy lights in a constant motion of weaving and whorling. For a moment Alan felt a dizziness pass over him but, with a pulse of his brow, it quickly cleared. The Mage stepped back a
pace, as if in surprise, before his voice returned with a new tenor of respect underlying the prodigious intelligence and learning.

“Indeed, young sir!” His skeletal hands, dappled with liver spots, waved him to a comfortable leather armchair by the fireside, while the Mage took his seat in an identical one opposite, with a low round table in between them. “A gentleman is a gentleman in all worlds—and it is such a rare pleasure to meet one these days. And the bearer of such a portal of power—known to the ignorant as the Oraculum of the Three Witches. You grace a lonely scholar with your visit. Alas, I am compelled to endure these reduced circumstances. But still I am able to offer some refreshment.”

The Mage’s blue eyes twinkled with merriment as he picked up a tiny silver hand bell and tinkled it above his head. Only four of his teeth still survived, all canines, which gave his smile the look of an old cat yawning. His nostrils, as if suffused with the emotion of their meeting, had begun to run with mucus, and the tip of his nose had turned a bright scarlet. With the forgetfulness of an old man, he wiped his running nose on a pendulous sleeve as silkily white as his hair and interwoven with cabbalistic symbols in gold and silver threads. Then, with a flourish of his hand, he beckoned entry to the dwarf, who stood cautiously in the inner door. Alan inspected the small yet heavily shouldered servant, whose features were different from those of any dwarf he had ever seen before. His skin was reddish bronze, his face square and heavy, his nose broad and
flattened and his lips thick and wide. There was a sense of unbreakable pride in his emerald-green eyes that belied the status of a servant.