checked his spear and his several knives; belt, sleeves, and, with a twitch of his calves, those in his boots. Then he turned the horse towards the distant figure and gently urged it forward.
For a while, it seemed that he came no nearer to the figure. Indeed, it was almost as if it were in some other place that must remain ever beyond reach. Ivaroth felt the unease of a strange dream rising within him.
He shook his head vigorously. You should've eaten before, he rationalized. You're just light-headed through lack of food and too much travelling today.
Then the unease was gone and the figure was just a man walking hesitantly over the hard ground.
Ivaroth admitted to a twinge of both disappointment and distaste as he neared the man. The stranger was wearing a dirty and unkempt robe, the large cowl of which was pulled over his bowed head. Briefly he seemed to Ivaroth to be the personification of his own dark thoughts of a moment ago; a wandering hermit ranting at the howling wind.
He was not given to idle musing however, his thoughts being invariably pragmatic. It was a pity the man didn't have a horse, but he looked old and feeble and he might have food or drink about him even though he carried no pack. Ivaroth soon concluded that a little effort now might well save him a day's hunting. All that remained to be done was to check that the man had no companions nearby.
A friendly smile lit up Ivaroth's face. To those who knew him closely, it was an indication that it was time to make a discreet leave-taking.
'Greetings, traveller,’ he said jovially, halting his horse some way in front of the still-approaching figure.
The man stopped immediately and, without looking up, twisted his head slowly from side to side as if he had just heard some faint but familiar sound. There was a birdlike, almost serpentine, quality to the movement that set Ivaroth's teeth on edge. Casually, he rested his hand on his sword hilt.
'Greetings, traveller,’ he repeated, more loudly. ‘This is a harsh place to be wandering on foot. Where are you bound? Have you lost your camp?'
The head twisted again and the whole body craned forward slightly. Then an arm reached out and swept slowly from side to side as if seeking something in darkness. A long bony hand emerged from the ragged sleeve and, clawlike, groped at the air. But there was no reply.
Ivaroth's eyes narrowed at this seeming defiance and he eased his horse forward until he was by the man.
'I said, have you lost your camp?’ There was an unexpected harshness in his voice which surprised him. Had he heard it in someone else's he would have called it fear.
His smile faded and was replaced by a scowl. He reached down to seize the cowl and expose the face of this impertinent stranger, but as he did so, the bony hand swung round and gripped his wrist.
Ivaroth's fighting instincts registered several things simultaneously: the hand was the hand of an old man, and the stranger's posture was that of an old man, but the movement had been effortless, swift and accurate, and the grip was full of the green strength of youth.
He did not, however, dwell on these contradictions, but instinctively tightened his legs about his horse for support so that he could tear his arm free. Even as he did so, however, he felt the grip controlling his balance.
With his free hand he drew a knife from his belt, twisting it so that he could slash the extended arm.
A sigh rose up from the stranger. Not a sigh of sorrow or despair, but one of … satisfaction … recognition even.
The sound made Ivaroth hesitate and he peered down at the cowled head, his face betraying both anger and curiosity. The head turned upwards to meet his inquiry and the cowl slipped back to reveal the face of the stranger.
It was the face of an old man, lean and haggard and with an unhealthy whiteness about it. But what made Ivaroth start was the sight of the ragged bandage bound about the man's eyes.
Blind!
Thoughts flooded into Ivaroth's mind. A blind man, here? So far from the normal range of any of the tribes. How? Most of the tribes either dispatched the blind or treated them as holy men. None that he knew would simply abandon them.
And the man did not have the look of a tribesman nor, for that matter, one of the southern city people.
He felt a brief touch of fear. It was said that across the great plains, far to the west, were other lands, strange mysterious lands full of great wonders, and peopled by tribes that were both beautiful and terrible.
Could this old man be …
The grip about his wrist tightened and he found himself being pulled down.
'I have been asleep. Lost in my torment. And now I am found again.’ The old man's mouth moved, but it seemed to Ivaroth that there was one sound in his head and another in his ears.
And there was a monstrous, insane delight in the voice. Ivaroth tightened his grip on his knife.
'I am not forgotten after all. I am guided yet. Guided to this place … to this man.'
The old man turned his head away from Ivaroth and took in a deep breath. He was like some predatory animal catching the scent of its prey and knowing that only patience was needed now before he would feed.
'Guided to this place so rich in the ancient power.’ The bandaged eyes turned back to Ivaroth. ‘And to you.'
A primitive terror filled Ivaroth at the recognition alive in the old man's face. His knife hand would not move.
'I don't know you, blind man,’ he blustered, his voice shaking. ‘But I'll give you your length of this rich place for all eternity if you don't release my hand.'
The old man chuckled. A disgusting, bubbling sound, full of great confidence and certainty. Then, with his free hand, he reached up slowly and pulled the bandage from his eyes. Ivaroth tried to look away, but his black-irised eyes were held by the stranger's sightless gaze as if it were a blazing spear, passing right through him and impaling his very soul. The orbs were white and cloudy as if the sight had been bleached from them by too great a light, though, Ivaroth suddenly knew, it was because they had seen too terrible a truth.
'There is blindness and blindness,’ said the stranger's voice. ‘I see more than you will ever know, yet you will be my eyes and I shall be yours … Ivaroth Ungwyl … fratricide, murderer of the young, and … chieftain to be … chieftain of all the tribes.'
Chapter 1
The light from the doorway sent Antyr's shadow leaping ahead into the swirling gloom of the dense fog that greeted him as he emerged from the inn.
He paused, an unsteady silhouette, at the top of the short flight of stone steps. Then he grimaced. He had lived in the Serenstad contentedly enough all his life, but these appalling fogs always reminded him of childhood holidays in the country. There, for all their cold dampness, the wintry mists had been grey and soft, but the fogs here were always tainted yellow with grime and smoke from the city's innumerable forges and workshops. They made the roads and footways slimy and treacherous, they clung to clothes, making them damp and sulphurous, and they made every breath a chest-burning ordeal.
His dark reverie was interrupted by mounting cries of abuse from the noisy inn parlour at his back.
'Go, if you're going, man. You're chilling us all,’ was their gist.
Without turning, Antyr waved a scornful dismissal to his erstwhile companions, then, seizing the heavy wrought-iron latch, he yanked the door shut. It was a heavy door, notorious for its stiffness, and its frequent noisy closing through the nights was the constant bane of the neighbouring sleepers. Now, however, its window-shaking slam was muffled by the clinging fog, and the image of a closing tomb came into Antyr's mind as an eerie reverberation echoed back at him out of the gloom.
The darkness of this unexpected image was deepened by the sudden ceasing of the clatter from the inn, and the equally sudden vanishing of the warm yellow light that had thrown his long shadow so boldly out into the fog. For a moment he felt disorientated, as if he had only been in someone's dream about the inn and his raucous friends and had wakened suddenly to find he had been sleep-walking.
It was an unsettling thought for a Dream Finder and involuntarily he reached back and briefly touched the
