Shadow of the Seer Read online

  There was a fearful rushing and roaring in his ears, and he felt as if a flood was carrying him off, turning and tumbling him through a myriad chill eddies and currents, scraping him past sharp stones. The Wall towered in his mind. The firelit corpses whirled and gyrated, thrust out wild arms to stop him—

  His head jarred within the mask. He clawed at the ground, trying to get up, to crawl forward at least; but fell back gasping. He saw nothing now, he could feel only the dry crumbly soil beneath his fingers. He bore up the mask with his hands, managed to lift his head, and stared. Had he been stumbling about for hours? The view had changed. He was looking at raw earth, turned and loose, in neat rows. Tilled and planted; shoots were poking through, already gnarled, but alive and growing. His arms gave, and he slumped down, gasping at the burning blade in his side.

  ‘See!’ shrilled a voice. ‘See! What’d I tell you?’

  ‘Is it a man? Is it a bad man?’

  Children’s voices – his sister’s, maybe. Something dabbed at his side, hurt him terribly. He moaned, stirred but could not move. The voice fled, shrieking.

  ‘Baad maaaannn—’

  The voice seemed to spiral away into echoing emptiness.

  Then, shockingly, he was swaying, sickeningly. Stones rattled, voices cursed; the sky hurt his eyes—

  The mask! He flailed around, choking on his dry throat. It had gone.

  ‘Easy, boy!’ said a calm voice, a man’s, in his own tongue and accent. ‘Lie still now, we mean you no harm. You are heavy enough to bear already.’

  There was a hissing rattle, like a small rockfall. His eyes were so gummed he could hardly keep them open. His cheek lolled against something dry and taut, smelling faintly unpleasant. A hide, with four heavy brown hands clenched in its edges, bearing him along like a new-born babe. Gingerly, he realised, as if over unsteady ground. Another sharp swaying, curses, more rocks falling. He tried to croak a question.

  ‘The mask? Safe and in good hands, boy. The drum – well, that’s got burned, by the look of it, but we have it also. You’re a Seer, then? Young for it. I also, though I don’t see far or clear. We have a better man, for that. But your mask’s kept for you, fear not. Lie still. You will soon be safe in the Citadel.’

  Alya could do little but believe him. His head rocked so with fever that he hardly noticed when at last they set him down; the solid earth still swayed beneath him. The drum had burned? How? And how had he got here? He slid away into dreams of churning darkness.

  Agony shot him awake again, a fresh sting in his side. Hands seized his limbs, quelling his struggle. He broke into a convulsive sweat and retched.

  ‘Easy!’ said a quiet voice in his ear, that he thought was his mother’s. ‘Your side’s been cleaned, but it needs stitching up. Only one more to endure. Here, hold my hand …’ The fingers felt slender and blissfully cool. He was afraid he might crush them, when the pain came again. When it did, it was blinding; yet somehow more bearable than the sickly ache it pierced. His hand was squeezed gently. ‘There! That is all. Here …’

  Water trickled on to his face, cracked the encrusted dirt about his mouth, freeing his tongue, loosening his throat. He gulped it greedily.

  ‘So, so!’ said the soft voice, with a severity that still had a touch of the child about it. ‘Too much at once will make you more ill. So my father says, and he is our chieftain!’

  An old woman’s voice cackled. ‘Savi! If you must wag your jaw, help chew these bitter leaves!’

  The boy relaxed, remembering his mother chewing herbs to poultice his cuts and grazes. The sting of warm water on his side was breathtaking, then blissful; and he sighed as the cool dressing drew the sting. ‘Bear up now, lad,’ said the old woman, ‘so we can bind it!’

  Hands lifted him, while soft ragged cloth was wound gently about his body. His head still sang, but he found he could look around for the first time. He was in a room of some sort, but no hut; more like a cave, with sunlit greenery at its mouth. The roof was rock, but the walls on either side were a mess of piled stone and crude mud-bricks, plastered with pale earth. Around them, around him, sat a ring of women, all ages and kinds, looking at him with pity and concern. The one who tended him was a walnut-faced crone, though her eyes twinkled very black and bright among the wrinkles. But at his other side dark eyes shone with a softer lustre in a face that was only just finding its true shape. They held his; and from that moment forth, so says the tale, to them both all other eyes seemed dim.

  But the sunlight was barred suddenly, and all eyes turned away at the sound of a harsh voice. ‘How does he fare? Does he wake yet?’

  The old woman half rose from her knees and pushed back the figure that stooped in. ‘Away now, Ushaya! This is women’s business!’

  He thrust her aside with a wiry arm, a rangy, goatish man with greying braids and a sour, bony face. ‘It is everyone’s business, old fool! It was wrong to bring him here without first consulting me! Am I not the chiefest healer? And who knows how he came here, or what he brings with him? There is a cloud about him, in my sight. The ways he trod are hidden. We must be sure he is not of the Aikiya’wahsa, their slave or spy!’

  ‘I am no man’s slave,’ croaked the boy indignantly. ‘My name is Alya, as was my father’s, an outliver in a sheltered vale in the shade of the northern mountains. The men of the Ice you name came down upon us, and slew all my family. He died in helping my escape, bidding me seek out our kin far to the south.’

  The women groaned with sympathy. ‘Hear! Our kin! Does he not speak our tongue as we do?’

  The grey man angled his head, like a nod. ‘Near enough. Though I have never heard of an outliver called Alya. Whence came your line?’

  ‘I … remember only a town. Many huts. He took us all from there when I was small. I believe he foresaw its downfall.’

  ‘He was a Seer? Ah. The mask, yes. Seers often knew one another by name and repute, in the old days. The Seer Alya … Yes. Alyatan-kawayi’wale Atar. Of Teoquhan. So that is what became of him! I heard much of him, in my youth. And Teoquhan the town was indeed laid waste, in war. So, then.’ He glared at the women. ‘Turn away. Here is men’s talk!’

  They snorted with disdain or annoyance; but they obeyed. The old man squatted beside him, and dropped his voice to a whisper. ‘Are you a Seer also, that you dare bear that mask? Have you passed the Wall?’

  ‘I have come close. Seen over it once, I think. My father said I was on the path, and should keep trying.’

  The old man sat back, as if disappointed. ‘Perhaps it would not be much use, not now, without him. Such a mask should only be used by a Seer of great experience, such as he was. I will take it for you, and if you show promise I will train you as I train my own son …’

  ‘You will take nothing!’ blazed the girl suddenly, thrusting a bundle behind her back. ‘My father orders it kept for him! He knew your greasy fingers would be itching for it!’

  The old man looked at her contemptuously. ‘I do not answer to a child. If he seeks refuge among us, this boy, he must win his place. Power misused may doom us all! And if he seeks to become a Seer, he will achieve that only with my guidance. I will tell your father of that, and your insolence.’

  ‘Go shake your ears!’ shrilled the old woman after him, as he stooped out under the rock arch. The women laughed, but there was a nervous edge to it, and the girl shivered.

  ‘He is a terrible man,’ she whispered to the boy, as she helped him lie back on the hide once again. She smiled, and it seemed to him like a new dawn in his life. ‘He can see both life and death, they say, and move between their worlds freely; and to look at him I can believe that. But do not fear, my father holds him on a tether, and he has many times served our need. And his son is a fine boy, you will like him. So rest now, and heal – Alya! You are safe among us of the Citadel. Safe, and welcome!’

  Such was Alya’s coming to the place that became his new home, and the nurturing of his extraordinary life that was to be. But how it was he c
ame there out of the wilderness, he only began to guess.

  He was given a drink of sour herbs, that refreshed him deeply, and a little mess of beans and brown wheat. He slept long, and awoke stiff and sore still, but shed of his fever. The old woman who kept watch on him gave him more food, and when he mentioned another need she helped him to the mouth of what he had thought was a cave. There he looked for the first time on the strange place the Chronicles name the Citadel.

  It was a peaceable village, as it stood then, of only some three hundred folk; yet so great, and so defensible, that it could have held a whole garrison and their people, large as a town. That place was not a work of man, in its beginning; but men had made it what it now was. It had no high towers, no outthrust buttresses, battlements or any other defence traditional to citadels; yet it stood no less secure. It was a mirror of a citadel, behind walls which did not rise, but sank deep into the earth.

  Too narrow to be a true valley, it was a great cleft sliced deep into a slope of stone, by a fast-flowing stream that now meandered along its floor. On its way down the water had cut through layers of softer rock to create great ledges and overhangs. And into these, struggling along sheer cliff-faces and treacherous scree-falls, its builders of a bygone age had cut first narrow pathways, and after that piled up walls of stone and mud-brick to turn the space beneath the rocky overhangs into chambers that might hide and hold an army and its stores. The paths were left narrow and treacherous, for those who did not know them well, cutting across the perilous scree slopes. Seen from within, those steep flanks did look like the sternest of citadel walls; yet from without they were almost invisible, till you stood on the very rim. From any distance it seemed nothing but another gully. It was a place of power, and a strong force was quartered within it, dominating the lands about.

  Now, though, only the villagers dwelt there. Some said they were the descendants of the original garrison, soldiers turned to peaceable farmers when their kingdom fell apart about them; others that they had arrived later, in flight from other lands and towns the Ice and its agents had laid waste. Probably both tales were true.

  They had taken over the ancient strength, dividing and extending its halls to make storerooms and dwellings. Its high gatehouse at some time collapsed, or was thrown down, and never repaired; but the rubble was used to narrow the valley entrance and keep it defensible. Windows and doors were left as few and as small as possible, against both foes and weather, and on the bare lower flanks they planted trees and thorny bushes to screen them, and hide the paths. Most of these they left as narrow and uneven as before, adding only a few wider platforms before the granaries and storerooms. The old muster-ground, before the tall rock hall that had been the commandant’s and was now their chieftain’s, they made a gathering place with a firepit, shielded by more trees, where of an evening they sat and talked. Their fields they kept at some distance, beyond a barrier of wiry woodland.

  In this way the strength of the Citadel was largely hidden. It was difficult to find, harder still to attack, and by then it had already endured long after many greater towns had been swept away.

  ‘For we want nothing of little kingdoms and brief alliances,’ said Saquavan the chieftain that night, having called a much-restored Alya to eat in his house. ‘They rise from villages, within a generation or two. They build their walls and their palaces, they play a little while with peace and war, bask in the reflected glories of the past. And then one day the Ice stretches forth its fell hand, and all is brought low to the dust.’

  The chieftain looked up, into the shadows of the uneven ceiling above. Alya saw that there, upon the vast wooden beam that supported its man-made portion, hung a blackened, cobwebbed shape. It was of a length that might reach from a tall man’s waist to his ankle, flat and broad; and it drew Alya’s eye strangely. ‘There is a relic of one such. A blade from another age, a sword that was of our ancestors, traced with wild old characters none can read. Some say, the mighty Zvyataquar, greatest of our line, in whom strength ran like fire in the blood; and who, when old age stilled it, did not die, but turned instead to indomitable stone. What good did his heroism do him? His land lies now beneath the Ice. None now draws that blade, for it is too weighty for even the mightiest among us. I would beat its metal into hoes and ploughs, if I had the means. Better it hangs useless there, as a symbol of a way that has failed.’

  He scooped beans from his bowl with a coarse crust. ‘Even now, within ten days’ journey of us, beyond the forest to the south, another little kingdom puffs itself up, rising within the ruined walls of a greatness long departed. We could ally with it, if we wished, have trade and traffic and a richer life – if we cared to leave our hoes and hunting-bows, and draw that sword. And with it we could fall. Better to live simply, as we do. Make no wars, hoard no wealth, but dwell in peace by the smoke of our cooking fires, and leave no mark upon the world of our coming and going. We can do no better.’

  Alya was silent a moment, enjoying his corn porridge. He was inclined to like Saquavan, a tall man in early middle age, whose calm face and quiet manner carried great authority. And for the girl Saviyal, whose dark eyes and high cheekbones gleamed in the shadows on the women’s side of the fire, he felt more than liking. He did not want to contradict her father; but a resentful flame kindled in him.

  ‘You are wise, chieftain,’ he said, carefully, with the courtesy his father had taught him. ‘And concerned for your folk. I am lucky to have fallen among you, grateful that you have accepted me so readily. Yet forgive me, but could we not at least seek some other way of defying the Ice? Less openly than of old, if we must – but defy it still! For otherwise do we not simply shape our own prison, and save the Ice the trouble?’

  He heard the quick gasp in the shadow; but the chieftain only nodded. ‘Your tongue is quick, with something of the serpent’s. That is as it should be, for you are young. Some thirteen summers, yes? Much the age I was, when I said the same thing. I yearned for some way to strike back – or simply to escape, to that land over-sea that men tell of. But I never found such a way, and I no longer believe those idle tales. The Seers can tell us nothing certain. All we can do is endure.’

  Alya almost choked on a mouthful, but the chieftain leaned forward and spoke more quietly. ‘For my days, at least. But in yours – who knows? You, boy, you are a Seer in the making. Perhaps already, in the world of your dreams, you make out the first steps of some path others have missed! And that is one reason I welcome you among us. Ushaya … he is our best Seer, many times proven right. But he is a man to value his own interests highly. And those of his son …’ He glanced into the shadow, and chuckled. ‘Ushaya sees it as rightful that his son should succeed him as both Seer and chieftain. That I do not like. Vansha is a fine lad, strong as a horse and fond of a laugh or a scrap, but he is unproven as a Seer. And though he might make a sturdy chieftain one day, he is, well, headstrong. I think it safest to place our folk’s safety in more than one hand. And destiny sends us another Seer! One who owes nothing to Ushaya. One who may prove stronger. One who will at least give the people a choice.’

  Alya sat silent. Young he might be, but already he saw clearly enough into the minds and motives of men, as a Seer should. The chieftain’s kindly welcome he had not questioned; but that Saquavan should so firmly deny his own Seer the mask he coveted …

  Now he understood why. Kindness, yes; but more than kindness. ‘You place great trust in me, chieftain. I too am unproven.’

  ‘So far, perhaps. And yet you found us easily enough, did you not? Promise me that you will keep trying to learn, even while you share our daily labours. For all our sakes. For the sake, let us say, of your dream.’

  Saquavan was not chieftain for nothing, Alya realised. Deftly and without fuss he had been told his role among them – thankless enough, yet one he must accept. He wondered what this Seer’s son would make of it; for he too would surely see beneath the surface. And he wondered also what thoughts might lie behind those firelit eyes.


  He had not long to wait. They gave him a little hut no other wanted, a single room that was a relic of the ancient gatehouse. There he woke before dawn, and the first thing he knew was that his side, though still stitched, was no longer badly inflamed. Thunder crackled, somewhere far off; from the north whence he had fled, perhaps. Then he saw the figure that filled the low entrance, dark against dark.

  ‘Awake then, little Seer?’ said a light voice, a boy’s. ‘And feeling better, surely?’

  ‘No worse than tender, thank you.’

  ‘Well, then. Among we plain farmers even a Seer must sometimes earn his keep. I’m sent to ask if you feel fit enough to join our labours!’

  Alya stood up, slowly. The words were amiable enough, the tone even; yet there was that in it he disliked. He could guess who this must be. ‘I’ll do all I can. What’s wanted?’

  ‘Oh, a hunt’s afoot – a band or two setting out. Or, if that’s not to your taste, there’s planting and weeding enough for any.’

  Alya could not see the boy’s face, but he could hear the smirk it must wear. Putting on a performance for cronies lurking outside, perhaps. Alya picked his answer carefully. ‘I would hunt, gladly; but the spear wound’s still stiff, I would hinder you. I do not scorn to work the fields with the women and children, until I am well.’

  That left little room for mockery. He’d wager these boys had never faced a spear in anger.

  There was a moment’s silence. ‘As you wish.’ The tone was dull, disappointed. The new brat hadn’t been provoked. ‘You’re to eat the daymeal at the chieftain’s fire. Come now!’

  The three or four boys in the dimness outside – Alya had been right – shuffled along behind as Alya limped down to the chieftain’s hut. The path was especially difficult in this light, and from the sniggers at his back he guessed that they were pretending to push him – along, or over the edge. He ignored that; but he knew there would be more. Their feelings wreathed around him like acrid smoke, but until they reached the chieftain’s house he did not look around.