The Tale of Oriel (31 page)

THE NEXT MORNING THEY MOVED
along a sloping field of snow, going up slantward. They were heading towards the lightening sky, although the three peaks Oriel watched for rose at his left shoulder. There seemed to be nothing but bare rock and snowfields by the three peaks, which loomed close above them. Oriel didn't try to persuade Rulgh. He could barely persuade himself to take the mountain man's word. He could see no shadowy cut across the triple peak, just stone and snow.

But he had chosen to believe the mountain man, and he kept that belief frozen in his mind, like ice. When he heard the mountain rumble, hummphing, he looked up. It seemed to him there was a ridge of snow, on the peak that Rulgh had chosen to struggle up; and it seemed to him the ridge moved a little to one side.

Griff and Oriel were half a hillside behind the four Wolfers. “Drop your pack,” Oriel said to Griff. If there was a pass, and they were to find it, the packs would slow them down. If they were to have any hope—if they survived the avalanche, if Oriel could call it down with the horn—then that hope lay in moving as quickly as they could. There was half a day's light left to him.

The mountain hummphed again, and the Wolfers stopped, worried. Oriel raised the horn to his mouth, shoving Griff off to the side, in the direction of the three peaks. Oriel blew into the horn, and followed Griff, still blowing into the horn. They struggled sideways along the slope, as the Wolfers turned to see them.

The high calling of the horn curled around the ragged peaks, like a bird's cry, as Oriel hurried clumsily out of the way, and Griff climbed beside him.

The mountain rumbled, and then roared. Oriel halted, and lifted his eyes to the three peaks ahead, and the high central peak, and the blue sky beyond the ice mountaintops, in case he would never see anything again. He felt Griff standing at his shoulder. He turned, and blew the horn again, although he could barely hear it now, in the roar of the mountain. The Wolfers raced back down the slope, on their boards. The mountain followed them. Rulgh looked for his captives and his mouth was open, on a cry or a curse, and snow was tangled in his yellow hair.

Even the Wolfer's war cry was drowned out by the sound of the mountain, falling.

I
T WAS AS IF THE
Wolfers had never been. It was as if in the whole world there was no more than the stone mountains, cloaked in snow, and the blue sky, and the two of them, himself and Griff. All that moved were mists of snow, raised up by the rushing avalanche, and caught now in the tireless winds of the high mountains.

Griff's teeth showed in his face, and he was smiling broadly. “We lived, Oriel.”

Oriel stood, silent, dazzled by the brightness of the sun and the memory of the mountainside, moving.

“And now which way?” Griff asked. He sounded untroubled by what had gone before, or what might come.

Cold rose up around them, as heat rises from a fire. Boldly, as if all of this coldness couldn't reach it, the sun shone down. “To that middle peak, where he said there is a pass,” Oriel said. “That's my thought,” he added. “What's yours?”

“I follow you,” Griff said.

“We will have, I think, no chance for another choice,” Oriel told Griff, not wanting to conceal the danger.

“We haven't much time, either,” Griff said. “Since without food or shelter, if we rest it's likely we'll never rise again.”

“Don't you mind?”

“Of course I mind. Do you think that I don't value my life? But I'd rather meet death in your company than alone, and I'd be dismayed to be in a world where I couldn't follow you. So,” Griff said, with the same smile, “while I mislike death, aye, and fear the journey I must one day make at her side, I can't be low-spirited.”

As they climbed up the slope, their steps were long-footed and awkward on the boards, their progress slow and sideways.

“If there is a pass, and we can find it before dark catches us, we may live,” Oriel said to Griff. “The man named this place first, when Rulgh demanded. Although later he said that Jackaroo carried him through it, and Jackaroo comes out of Tamara's stories.”

“Is it not good to be free of the Wolfers?” Griff asked. “It was near a year they had us.”

“And four years ago the Damall had us—and here we are again, only the two, heading we know not where.” At that thought, Oriel smiled as broadly as Griff, letting the cold scrape against his teeth. “Only now it is full day. And now we have nothing to eat. And then I knew where we were going, but you did not, and now neither one knows.”

“Now we know the same,” Griff said.

They pushed on. What seemed a violet shadow formed by afternoon shadows became a narrow ravine, as they approached it. It was a cut into the mountain's neck that ran neither up nor down, to Oriel's eye. He looked into it, and hesitated.

Griff awaited his decision.

Oriel took a breath of the thin air. They had one chance, and this looked to be it. His singularity didn't cause the sun to creep along the horizon, gathering clouds around his head for protection. There was only one sun, and he traveled high and bold across the sky. If Oriel hoped to live—hoped to make his way across these mountains to whatever land lay beyond—then he must try the high way and boldly. He must risk the one chance.

His feet on the boards slid over the surface of the snow, as did Griff's. Sometimes the boards made whispering sounds in soft snow. Sometimes there was an icy crust, over which the boards crunched. Griff was behind him, as they followed the narrow ravine. The shadows grew milky blue. The air was suddenly colder. They pulled their furs close around them, and went on.

Oriel let the land give his feet direction. He could not think to choose a way: Darkness had descended, and to inhale this high mountain air was to breathe in an ice sword. Cold came at them from the stones of the mountain below their feet, from the wind that swirled around them, blowing from all directions, and only their own movements kept them warm. As the night grew colder, and longer, those movements became slower, and more difficult. Stars sprinkled the black sky, like a distant snowstorm.

They slogged on, having no other choice.

The white disk of the moon sailed out from behind a mountain peak, sailed into the sky. The moon came so sudden and bright and bold into the sky that Oriel had to greet her with a lifting heart. If, after all, they were going to die in the cold of the mountains, still they were not yet dead, and he chose not to despair.

He didn't hope—that wasn't it. It was that he refused despair, while he lived. And they lived.

His legs moved of their own will, now, and he didn't even have a guess as to how much of the night remained. If they could live through the night then they could live through another day, before hunger and thirst joined with cold to bring them down.

He thought the sky must be lighter, but didn't know where east was, and did know how his eyes would try to deceive him.

But then the grey of a lightening sky paled the snowfields rising around him, and he looked up, to find the middle peak and be sure of their direction.

The peak was gone. For a heartbeat, he was afraid—afraid that in the darkness of night and the foolhardiness of continuing to go forward, he had undone them. Then he stopped, and slowly turned around, until he could see Griff behind him, and behind Griff the middle peak, rising up into a cloudy sky.

The narrow ravine twisted on, and the way grew easier, and then the ravine opened out.

Oriel halted. Ahead, steep hillsides gradually became filled with trees, like black bones set up in the snow. Ahead, under a pale cloudy sky, the land sloped downward. In the far distance, a single column of grey smoke hung suspended, visible, now, in the muted light between dawn and day.

That smoke was the only sign of life in the whole wide landscape. It was too far away to be reached by nightfall. As soon as the sun rose, the smoke would no longer show up against the sky.

If this was the Kingdom, then it might be that they had come at last to the Kingdom, so that they might die here. Even if it had been summer, and they well fed and well rested, the source of the smoke would lie a day's hard journey ahead.

Oriel looked to his right, where the mountain's face rose steeply, and giant icicles cascaded down it, and to his left, where snow slopes rose. The wall of mountains lay behind them now.

Griff stamped his feet in the boards, and Oriel followed the example. His mind felt as sluggish with cold as his body. Or perhaps both mind and body were sluggish with fatigue—because within the Wolfers' furs he was warm enough, and he had traveled beyond hunger.

He lifted his feet and stamped them again, but they slid out under him. He balanced, fingers clutching the furs, flying downhill for three heartbeats before he tumbled off sideways into the snow.

Griff, his own boards slipping on the snow, hurried after.

Oriel took the hand Griff held out, and pulled himself upright. They stood, breath smoking. “If only my legs were strong enough,” Oriel said, “I could ride the boards downhill. See that smoke? It's too far—I couldn't hold the boards under me all that steep distance. Could you? You go ahead, if you're strong enough.”

“I'm at the end of what little strength I had left. I'm sorry, Oriel.” Griff looked around him. “Icicles, Oriel. Look. Can we break one off? If any are small enough to break, and keep in our mouths until they melt. For drink, Oriel.”

“A waterfall,” Oriel whispered.

“Aye, it could be, when the ice melts,” Griff agreed.

“No, Griff, listen. A waterfall means a flow of water, a stream, going downhill. If we follow a stream downhill, or follow its bed, then it will come to a river, and rivers also always move downhill. And people live beside the rivers.”

“But how do we find the stream, under this snow?” Griff asked. “And wouldn't the river be solid ice?”

“Ice is easier to move on than snow, with the boards,” Oriel argued. “The stream—that we must hope to follow, because it will be cut into the ground, as water does. And Griff? If we take the thongs from our feet and tie the boards together, if we sit on them, instead of trying to stand, because if we sit we can't fall over as easily, and we can wrap our furs around both of us—can you see the idea?—like a raft.”

Griff had already sat down in the snow and was struggling with the leather thongs. Oriel sat beside him. When they were seated close on the bound boards, Oriel's back up against Griff's chest and the furs held tight around them like a tent, he said—before they pushed themselves loose from the holding snow, and rode this chance down—“The mid-peak is at our back, and see?—where the smoke rises? there are two rounded hills to its right and three sharper ones to the left with one overlapping the other? We'll be able to see the peak and perhaps the hills, long after we have lost the smoke. Will that guide us, do you think?”

“We can try,” Griff said.

They pushed with their hands into the snow, breaking through the crusted surface. Beneath them, the snow raft started to slide, slowly. They pushed again, and the boards moved more easily. They pulled their hands back under the furs, and leaned forward.

They were in flight. The wind whistled into Oriel's face, blew snow up into his eyes, and they were flying down the mountainside. Oriel had never dreamed of moving like this. He thought this must be the way birds felt, crossing the sky. He thought they might in fact be flying through clouds of snow. He thought that he wanted the ride never to end—his heart was soaring into laughter, and beating fast with the excitement of it, and the speed of it. He couldn't see anything, he had no idea where they were heading, he couldn't choose, or hope, or regret—all he could do was ride along, as a bird high in the air rides along on its wings.

The snow-covered mountainside seemed smooth to look at, but as they rode it they discovered it was filled with bumps, and curvings. Sometimes Oriel thought they might tumble off the boards, and sometimes he thought they might be flung off, and sometimes—as they jounced along in tooth-jarring fashion—he thought the boards must break up and drop the riders into the snow, as a boat breaks up and drops its sailors down into the sea under battering of waves.

They followed what Oriel hoped was the stream, descending. Certainly it was the land itself that steered them, and dropped away under them. The land itself carried the boards, and the two riders, down from the mountains. The journey took no time at all.

When they came to rest, Oriel's cheeks stung and his knees were stiff with having been braced to meet the unpredictable shiftings of the boards. He rose even more stiff than he had sat down, although that stiffness passed in the excitement of looking back—to see the three peaks, with the tallest at the center, rising in the distance behind them. “Look how far we've come, Griff,” he said.