Cast a Bright Shadow Read online

  Sleek as jet, erupting blazing water from its blowhole. It was horned with one single, whorled tapering tower, which had at its base a series of ivory spurs, each bigger than a wagon. Tenacious, deceptively slender forelimbs clutched the edge of the ice-pocket, and broke it in pieces.

  The whale had strayed far inland. It was not yet nearly full-grown, yet it was the size of the ice-lake, which it had smitten, indifferently, in two.

  Bellowing, men and mammoths were showered off its launching back. They went into the sea below the ice, and vanished. Only Guri, freakishly positioned by some anomaly of its trajectory, sprawled face-down on the whale’s spine, and kept hold. More, he began to scale the slope.

  He had drawn his knife in the second of awareness, and in his other hand was a hook of honed steel he had from the burnt village. These he drove into the whale’s unfeeling carapace, forcing his way up the monster’s length, towards its bulbous head.

  Reason had gone from Guri now. All he recalled was that Peb Yuve wanted the Rukar princess – and there she was. Unlike the others who had perished, the girl, the slee and its team were somehow caught and knotted about the whale’s tree-high horn. The spurs had meshed them. The deer were dead, the slee smashed, but he could see the girl was still alive. He pulled himself on towards the beacons of her fear-bright eyes.

  Saphay felt herself screaming, but could not hear it over the grinding of the ice. She saw the tiny Olchibe clawing, knife and hook, towards her. Yet he did not matter.

  The whale, still breaching, hurled itself ever upward.

  Guri made no sound as he was shaken loose. He dived, an involuntary acrobat somersaulting over the whale’s back, cast towards the moons. Then in mid-air, perhaps not even meaning to, the whale met him again. This time it impaled him with the tip of the horn. It had repayed the unnoticed little spikings of the knife and hook with interest.

  The monster arched over like a bow, downward now. It plummeted, its double leap ended, into the channel it had made, back to the familiar darkness – carrying its cargo with it.

  Midnight beyond all nights shut Saphay’s eyes, cold beyond all Winters covered her.

  Above, the rift in the ice healed over in an hour. By then the adolescent whale was halfway to open sea.

  Vuldir, King Accessorate, lifted his eyes from the pelts he was examining. Instead he observed carefully the man who had entered. Presently Vuldir drew him aside.

  He and the man stood in the deep embrasure of a window glazed crimson.

  ‘You have news, then?’

  ‘Yes, lord king. The tidings should reach Ru Karismi officially tonight.’

  Vuldir sighed. ‘The wicked Olchibe, so easily tempted and misled. Tell it all.’

  ‘The caravan was overtaken and wiped from the face of the earth. The guard was inadequate, as planned. No one survived except for the witch – that the Crarrowin will no doubt see to – and a couple of women nonentities the Olchibe have kept to sell as slaves in the dunghills of Sham.’

  ‘Excellent. And my daughter?’

  ‘Reports contain no evidence of her being among the Olchibe. They wouldn’t sell her, not a royal woman. They’d rape her to death or simply kill her. They hate all the lords of the Ruk so much, their honour would be at stake if they let her live.’

  ‘Yes,’ agreed Vuldir. He looked from the coloured window down at a crimson city. He thought of the Magician Thryfe, who had come to caution them, dressing the prognostication in all kinds of absurd direness – Thryfe who was so wise and yet had not seen the hand of Vuldir himself in this calamity. Thryfe was not usually obtuse. The gods themselves, Vuldir thought idly, their fouller aspects that was, must have muddied the mage’s oculum.

  The Jafn Klow, a rabble worth hardly more themselves than the Olchibe or similar scum, had grown powerful in their eastern fastnesses. Sallusdon, King Paramount of Ru Kar Is, had deemed it necessary to placate their war leaders with a small marriage. Therefore the Ruk had sent the girl. Alas, the filth of Olchibe had intercepted her. Was that the fault of the Ruk?

  Fastidiously, Vuldir had made certain nothing of his, even such a slight thing as a fifteenth daughter, entered Jafn possession. The thick-brained barbarians would never guess they had been cheated. Still they must hold to the pact. Indeed, the girl’s loss might even be partly blamed on the Jafn. It could be said that, if they had come out to meet her, she would have lived and been theirs.

  Vuldir struck a bell – the man with news was gone. The king’s servants brought in the furrier. ‘I will take these pelts,’ said Vuldir, ‘but they are not enough. Are your men lazy? Get them to shoot more.’

  No thought, no sight, no breath. No self.

  Unravelled and adrift, cold as diamond, silently.

  There came to be a hollow in the black. And in the hollow, after all, a radiance. A lamp was burning there, deep in the water, like the jewelled egg of that mythic bird her nurse had told her of once long ago, the Firefex …

  Thoughtless and unbreathing still, dead still, nameless and forgetting, she must allow the current, which had washed her from the back of the whale, to bear her on through gargantuan colonnades of night towards the jewel of fire.

  TWO

  Over the petrified fields of the sea the lion-drawn chariots came flying, winged with ice-spume. Torches spat green against a night long emptied of its moons. Far out, miles away and invisible, liquid waves moved with a sullen sound. The riders, used to ocean in both its forms, paid neither any heed. The grey, densely furred lions, their black manes plaited with coloured beads and metal, were as indifferent as their masters.

  Along that bleak coast stood the Thing Place. It was an area of truce, and here the Jafn – those of their peoples allied or otherwise – would meet, summoned by magical sendings. Five allied groups would be there tonight, in the dead of the moons.

  The marble shoreline curved.

  The Thing appeared. It was ancient and curious, a huge, seventeen-masted ship changed to ice and buried up to its waterline in the shore. It gleamed, spectral, strung with crystal cryotites.

  Athluan knew it well. He had been brought here to Thing meetings since the age of nine, then the Chaiord’s second son. Now, father and elder brother dead in war, Athluan himself was Chaiord.

  The chariots slowed, their runners squealing.

  ‘All already here,’ commented brown Rothger, the charioteer, Athluan’s younger brother. ‘Regard them: banners of the Shaiy and the Irhon too. When did those peoples last bother themselves with a Thing meet? We’re honoured.’ His voice was smooth with sarcasm. Athluan took no notice; his mind was on other matters.

  At the edges of the Place ran pillar-markers of black spar, dragged there centuries before and washed only once in two lifetimes by the sea, perhaps. Rothger reined in. Athluan leapt, dismounting from his chariot, and went forward on foot, as Jafn law decreed – presently followed by his brother and nineteen picked men.

  Similarly equipped, the other Jafn Chaiords stood attentively. They had been kept waiting on the Klow, for the weather had been variable. Ice floes on the move, cracks cutting the frozen shore, had delayed Athluan’s excursion.

  Allies then, these five leaders, but also enemies once, and quite likely to be so again soon. All Jafn peoples fought against each other. That was necessary, for their lands were harsh and every advantage coveted.

  Rothger, behind his brother, ran his cool eyes over the assembly. The Jafn Shaiy were restless, both those staying outside the markers of the Thing Place and those within. The Irhon and Vantry faces were blank as the riding masks they had removed. Under his banner of a snow-ox, the aged Chaiord of the Kree, Lokinda, was the only man whose expression openly showed grievance.

  ‘Well,’ he said, as Athluan strode to the centre of the Place, ‘I’m big in years to be out of my House tonight. What’s so urgent, eh?’ He had the face of a toad.

  ‘I’ll tell you,’ Athluan said, meeting their eyes, gaze to gaze. His were grey as lions under his pelt of hair that was
whiter than old Lokinda’s own. ‘As you know, the Rukar made a pact with the Klow, and therefore with you, Klow’s allies. A royal daughter was to be sent to wed me – or Conas my elder, if he’d lived. As you know too, the Rukar lords hesitated. Then came word the girl was on her way. Now there’s other news sent us from her city.’ All the Jafn in the Thing Place listened now. Somewhere a lion growled softly and they heard, in the great silence, the charioteer’s rod striking on its flank. ‘Olchibe attacked the caravan. The girl was killed.’

  After a moment, it was Lokinda again who spoke.

  ‘So, one more to feed the snows. They must send you another bride.’

  ‘Chaiord Lokinda is playful. Does he truly believe they will? They’ve offered us friendship by intention. By our own law, we must keep faith with them, but now they need pay nothing.’

  ‘The point is, sir Chaiords,’ said Rothger silkenly, ‘they reckon us all too stupid to object. We had the betrothal, which makes us their kin. Soon they’ll be busy at one of their own wars. And though we, without the woman, will never have any claim on them, they’ll expect things of us, since we are allied through our own law to them – even if my brother must bed and cutch a ghost.’

  One or two glowered at Rothger’s foul language. In a Thing Place neither blasphemy nor coarseness should be uttered.

  But Lokinda let out a laugh. ‘By the Face of God, they’ve been clever. Do you think they companionably helped the Olchibe kill the girl?’

  ‘Most probably,’ said Athluan. ‘All that was needed was to let Olchibe scouts get wind of a special caravan. But now there’s another happening.’

  ‘Say it.’

  ‘A wise-woman of a whaler village downcoast has sent to me. Her message was brought in the hour after the death-news came from the Magikoy lords at Karismi.’ Athluan paused, then said, ‘A wonder was shown the whalers. A pyramid of ice came up out of the open sea, and drifted inland. Such things, of course, occur. Sometimes these floating ice-hills even ground on shore, and this one did so. The village went to see because, as we know, occasionally such hills contain riches: birds, fish or grain, or seeds that can be used.’

  Lokinda said, ‘So they do. One time in my youth, a whole fruit forest came in a hill of ice to a village of my father’s. At the Kree House we ate apples and peaches for half a year.’

  No one else added anything.

  Athluan went on, ‘The whalers, when they reached the ice-hill, were afraid of it. It was of too regular a shape; it had no look of anything natural. Yet something was inside it. The Rukar princess lay there, in the ice.’

  Used to weird miracles of the ocean, in the green torchlight men nodded their heads.

  Only Lokinda said, ‘But is it so? Or was it just some vision the whaler witch had?’

  ‘No vision. Look, here’s a piece of the ice she sent me.’

  From the rimed bag at his belt, Athluan removed a shard. He gave it to Rothger to take in his gloved hands and show them.

  One by one, they stared down into the milky ice, at the tiny scarlet gem which glittered there inside, cut and perfect.

  ‘How did the girl get into the sea?’ Lokinda finally asked.

  ‘Perhaps the Olchibe dirt threw her there when they were done. Or else, even dying, she escaped from them. The Ruk deer-teams run fast and far – perhaps even to the sea,’ Athluan mused, his eyes burning cold, ‘and then the ice gave way, as recently it does.’

  ‘And she is in the ice-hill? It’s her?’

  ‘We were told her hair was yellow as lamp oil. Or we were told it was like gold … The one in the ice is royally dressed, and has such yellow hair. It’s her.’

  It was Rothger who ended the pronouncements: ‘Give the Klow leave to ride on over your lands. The village is downcoast to the west of here, three days and two nights’ journey. Come with us if you will. She’s dead, but ours. The Ruk hasn’t cheated us of everything.’

  Jafn law had been old, time out of mind. There were supposed reasons for all of it, or most of it. That a chieftain who had lost his wife to sickness or childbirth might not call out her kindred as allies, while he himself – and his – stayed bound to assist these same kin in any fight, thus prevented, they claimed, his making too light of a wedding. For that cause, too, a wife who vanished left him no rights at all. However, should his spouse continue to receive honour after her demise, her bones locatable and wholesome, and offerings made her in a proper tomb, certain other claims could be advanced by the grieving widower. To this, through the betrothal, the Ruk had made themselves party.

  Athluan pondered this law as they rode on along the coast, westward.

  He had, he thought, no illusions. To wed some garish-haired female of the Rukar had never appealed to him, in itself; but to be friends with the Rukar nation was no bad thing. Everywhere the frigid world was at war – Jafn with Jafn, with Olchibe and their ilk, and with any greater inland power that chose to stir; while from the black outer ocean there came, now and then, tides of water-reivers such as Vorms, Kelps, Blue Fazions – raiders whose ships were made of whalehide and whale ivory, lean and deadly as the snakes they carved on them, and whose minds were more blindly benighted than the open sea.

  ‘Surely not still dreaming of your bride?’ Rothger annoyed him always, but protocol demanded his position in the chariot now. Third son, he must be groomsman at any marriage Athluan made. ‘Ice preserves, of course, so perhaps … like Lokinda’s peaches and apples …?’

  They drove all night, the Klow and the other Jafn who chose to go with them. At dawn, they rested the lion-teams, ate, stretched their legs, ran races and wrestled round the fires the mage had made. The Jafn took pride in their physical skills, also in their ability to do without sleep. On this rush down the coast, they would slumber only two hours in the second night.

  Inland, gloomy ice-forests and jungles went by, sometimes flowered after sunfall with village lights. Low mountains showed too, now and then, but these lay out towards the sea – other ice-hills which had stuck.

  Early on the afternoon of the third day, they reached the whaler village. This land was theoretically no one’s; it belonged to the sea. But the Shaiy were the nearest landholders, and no doubt they were not best pleased that the wise-woman had not sent also to inform them of the wonder. Or perhaps, prudently, she had, for they had not seemed at all surprised, and only four of their number accompanied the Klow.

  From the village up the shore, the men came in their tough fish-skin clothes. The wise-woman was the only female, but she stalked at their head. When she was twenty paces from Athluan’s chariot, she raised her skinny arms. A small wind, blew at her bidding, circling round her then approaching the Chaiord. It contained a silvery, translucent hovor, one of the lesser spirits of the upper air. Bound by the witch, the creature bowed low before Athluan. On the ice it deposited one flawless amber glass leaf, torn from some tree – a gift – then leered and dissolved. Rothger got out and fetched the leaf, turning and admiring it.

  ‘Greetings, lady,’ said Athluan. The witch wore a mask that hid all her face but for one pale wild eye. He continued, ‘I thank you. How far is the ice-hill?’

  ‘Curb impatience,’ she said. ‘You’re only a boy.’

  ‘I am three decades.’

  ‘A boy. Listen, no hill of ice, but a building of ice.’

  ‘So you’ve told me in your sending. Is that possible?’

  ‘All things are.’

  ‘Who then built the building of ice?’

  The witch said nothing.

  Not to offend her, Athluan left the chariot and stood quietly beside her, looking out along the near shore, which was devoid of any ice-hill. But the vista beyond the village sloped and swelled concealingly.

  ‘Behold,’ said the whalers’ witch, ‘this eye you see, sees you. The other eye is hidden. That sees elsewhere.’

  Athluan said, ‘I’ve brought you apricots from the hothouse tree, and jars of white wine.’

  ‘You bargain well,’ said the
witch.

  ‘There are other things.’

  ‘That will do. I’ll take you now to the place of the ice-pyramid. But you must come with me alone.’

  At that, the Jafn men made a protest. Catching their disturbance, Athluan’s pair of chariot lions, too, roved forward, pulling the vehicle, snarling, until Rothger sharply ordered them back.

  ‘I’ve nothing to fear,’ Athluan said.

  One of the Vantry shouted, ‘Yes you have, Chaiord. She’s a Shaiy witch.’ And now the Shaiy snarled.

  ‘Hush,’ said Athluan. ‘We’re here for profit not fight. Please to go on, lady,’ he said firmly to the witch.

  She chuckled, in her flat pale mask. ‘Boys.’

  He followed her up the shore between the knots of staring whalermen, and along the single street of their black narrow sheds.

  Some way beyond, the rising ground dropped suddenly, shelf on shelf of ice layered with stone, to an area of the ice fields some hundred feet below. Down there was a bay scooped into the ice, and in it a basin of blue-black liquid. On this, borne in from the further water, stood the thing from the sea.

  As she had told them all, it was an exact pyramid. Regularly constructed, coloured like emerald at its base, but higher up cloudily transparent as polished vitreous, it was like an artefact made in some city.

  First he climbed down the cliff. He was used to such exercise or he might have fallen. The witch stayed where she was. Alone, he walked out towards the hill in the bay.

  The shape was tall as the Klow House, two high storeys, seven times the height of a man. It stayed opaque to far up beyond his eyeline.

  So then Athluan waded out through the shallow edge of liquid water, and climbed the pyramid. This sort of climb too he had often done in his youth. But if the witch thought him still a boy, perhaps it was appropriate.