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My eyes half-closed as I concentrated. Even during a Northern winter, a forest is full of creeping life; small animals looking for food in the white wastes burrow when danger or storm approaches. Our morning ride had been surrounded by such tiny, stealthy motion, fading in stages as the overcast thickened at nooning and snow-scent turned dense as Albeig’s summer sweetcake.
Now our surroundings were utterly silent, and the hush was not the velvety brush of falling white. No, it was a cold deep unsound, the wind’s warning stoppered, raising the fine hairs all over my body. The pervading chill was not physical; another, more intense wave ofshivering passed through me. Farsight shook her pale mane and blew an unhappy snort, which Arn’s mount answered.
I had never felt this particular, nauseous anxiety before.Seidhrcurdled in my bones, my head tipped back, and I searched for the source of the spreading stain. Each step jarred me in the saddle.
My hood had fallen; I looked to Arn. She nodded, and I needed say nothing. At least she was with me.
Our pace quickened, though the horses would begin to sink if we attempted more speed. There was simply too much snow.
“We cannot move fast enough, not like this.” Elak was often the quietest of their number, a feat indeed, yet it was he who now spoke. “My lord Eol, shall I…?”
“Not yet,” Eol replied in an undertone. “Not until we must.”
I did not like the sound of that. I liked even less when another terrible, discordant cry lifted to the south; we were a few days’ worth of travel away, but I found myself hoping whatever this was, it would not approach Lady Hajithe’s steading.
They had many warriors, true, but I had not sensed a singleseidhramong her folk.
Some manner of dark weirding prowled beneath the trees, yet could not quite grasp us. I suspected the runestones leading the road through bands of shallower snow helped, for as we approached each one the creeping dread lessened, and deepened as we left it behind. Still, the light was fading as the clouds thickened, and as the wind died scattered flakes began to fall. Steam lifted from heaving horse-flanks, each mount a small coracle upon rough water.
I became aware of Aeredh singing softly. There wasseidhrin the words, the Old Tongue slipping free of solid meaning like a boat avoiding proper mooring upon a swift-rising river. The song lingered just outside comprehension, but you do not need to understand a chant to dance its rhythm.
It was like adding force to Idra’s weirding. Such aid must be given free and lightly, akin to resting your fingertips atop a spear-maid’s knuckles as she shepherds you between tables full of jostling feastgoers. Another thought occurred to me, tiptoeing catfoot-soft between worry, wondering, and mounting fear.
Snow is merely water, and air. The runestones, too—perhaps I could ask them? From one to the next, Sol, like hop-crossing a rocky stream.
Quick and delicate such work is, and would draw dangerously upon my inner reserves. My throat vibrated; I was hardly aware of my own singing,seidhrnaming the stones upon the left, then the right. Between them a carpet of soft cold white was glad to aid me, did I merely ask with politesse.
So I did, conscious of Arn’s familiar closeness. She was a sword of hot, disciplined brilliance at my side; Aeredh, leading our group, was much brighter, a warmer blue than the Elder lanterns’ gleam. The rest of the Northerners shifted oddly to my inward sight, but I had no time to examine them.
It took all my concentration to clear the road.
I could not coerce the snow away, of course. I could onlyask, and that faintly. Sometimes I wished I had been born with a deep affinity to one of the great branches ofseidhr’s tree, for such narrow channeling provides power much as a stone-girt stream will acquire speed and strength, pushing all detritus before it.
But I was elementalist. I could only whisper to the deep forces—water, wind, stone, metal, fire, good fruitful earth—though all of them were available to my urging.
Sometimes small persuasion is all one needs.
Arn hummed tunelessly, attempting to follow the thread of my quick-chant. Our mounts shifted from snow-walk to trot, and their hooves sometimes chimed upon leaves littered over stone. Ifeltthe road under us, freed of its snowy cover and quivering like a plucked string.
My throat burned, my eyes prickled. Fierce stinging cold swallowed my fingertips, my toes. Farsight’s hoof-rhythm altered again, gathering speed, and her fear was a sharp ragged blade against my concentration.
She scented something terrible, and very close. Only the Elder’s will and the presence of her fellows restrained her; she understood very well there was safety in a herd, however small, and had not yet been terrified into another wild flight.
I became aware of the Northerners exchanging terse half-whispers, and the slight scraping of steel drawn from sheath. The foulness was ever closer, dragging at my will, spreading like liquid ordure in clear water.
“If need be, I will hold them. Protect the girl.” Eol, in the Old Tongue, harsh finality snapping at the end of every syllable.
Aeredh’s voice changed, took on new urgency. My own diverged, soft and clear, persuading the snow to flow from beneath hooves, the infrequent runestones on either side adding help—but not nearly enough. I could not keep the weirding alive for much longer.
I did not have to. They boiled from the forest. Farsight and two other horses shrieked with fear, Arn cursed, and there was the clash of steel upon steel, married to a slavering, disorienting howl that is the battle cry oforukhar.
Edge of Foolhardy
You always remember your first, whether it be battle or love.
—Riverlands proverb
They are large, the thick-hide servants of the Enemy; their armor is blackened and their fangs sharp. Their bleached eyes are oft alight with a sickening, corrupt gleam when there is some chance of murder or torment, and rarely are they seen otherwise. Some say the lord of the Black Land took several Elder in the dawning of the world, and later the Secondborn when they appeared, blinking and barely capable of fire in the primeval woods. Those so kidnapped were held in thralldom, and slowly, surelychangedinto ashen foulness by merely existing under his rule.
