Now choices must be made.
“There is much to learn, Princess,” said the crone-who-was-not-a-crone. “Your inner eye has opened. Now you must decide u m
Sharadza stood on the hilltop, watching the sun sink into a fog of scarlet and purple.
“My father,” she said. “Do you see him alive or dead?”
The crone looked west toward the Cryptic Sea, somewhere beyond the woodland horizon.
“Look for yourself…”
Sharadza sent her mind into those faraway waters, gliding like a silver fish through the depths. A great ravine in the sea bed called out to her, glowing with a weird phosphorescence. She floated over the edge and saw the spires of a splendid city carved from coral. In shades of amber, scarlet, saffron, and azure it rose from the depths, and glistening sea-things darted about its towers like birds. It was not so unlike a city of the dry world, with its ramparts, gardens, bridges, colonnades, and domes. Amid the winding streets swam crowds of glittering mer-folk, busy as the citizens of Uurz or Udurum, yet wrapped in the bubbling peace of the marine world.
A great palace stood amid the city, and she knew it must belong to the Mer-Queen. A black-skinned leviathan circled it like a sentinel, and fishy guards with trident and spear manned its battlements. The scene wavered in the aqueous light, and her gaze could not penetrate those high walls; the palace was guarded somehow against her vision. Neither could she feel her father’s presence, there or anywhere in the sea.
She opened her eyes and was back atop the hill with the crone. The sun had gone and stars gleamed above the roof of the forest. Winter winds blew from the north.
“The Mer-Queen is of the Old Breed,” Sharadza said.
The crone nodded. “She is.”
“I cannot see into her palace.”
“Nor can I. It is her will.”
“My father could be dead.”
“Yes,” said the crone.
“Then teach me about the World of the Dead,” she said.
“This can be easily done,” said the crone. “If you are sure.”
“I am,” said Sharadza. She turned to meet the old one’s eyes. “Teach me when I return.”
The crone narrowed her old eyes. “Return? You are leaving?”
“Yes,” said Sharadza. “I will take what I have learned and go seek my father, living or dead.”
“But you have learned almost nothing,” said the crone.
Sharadza’s eyes caught the moonlight, and suddenly she was a bear… a wolf… a stone… an eagle… then herself again.
“I have remembered everything,” she said.
The crone smiled. turn sm herself aYes, you are descended of the Old Breed. But that is not enough… A child learns to walk before she can run.”
“Enough, Fellow,” she said, looking away from him, into the depths of the forest night.
Now it was the old storyteller who stood next to her on the hilltop. The crone was gone, if she ever had been there. The night wind whipped through Fellow’s gaudy robes.
“You know?” he asked, shocked yet amused.
“How could I not? Is that even your real name?”
“It is one of my many names. Most call me Iardu the Shaper.”
“Tell me, Iardu,” she said. “How long have I been here, learning from you how to remember?”
“Not long, Princess,” he said. “Not nearly long enough.”
“Then I will return. When I have done what I set out to do.”
“The Mer-Queen is no fool,” said the Shaper. “Stay a while longer and learn all you can.”
“If I stay, I may never go,” she said.
He nodded. “Your father did the same thing. He learned the smallest thing from me and hurried on his way. The rest he discovered through trial, pain, and strife. As you will do.”
“The part is the whole,” she reminded him.
“It is,” he agreed. “But I would spare you that pain. There are easy lessons, and hard.”
“Yet these things are the same,” she said.
He smiled.
“I will return,” she said. “What I have not learned by then, you may teach me.”
“Look for me in the cit y,” he said.
“Come with me!” She turned to grab his shoulders. “Together we can-”
His hands waved her away. “I cannot, or I would have gone already.”
She crossed her arms. “You fear the Mer-Queen?”
“No,” he said. “I love her. I betrayed her.”
She was silent for a moment. Then it burst from her like tears: “And my father? Did you betray him too?”
Iardu said nothing. He became the wrinkled crone again and stared up at the stars.
Now Sharadza was a black owl, and she flew into the westward night.
Already she had wasted too much time.
13
The Grim Mountains were well named. Four days riding up Vod’s Pass and the sun had broken the gloom only once. Each day there was rain, and as the cohort rose higher into the range, rain turned to sleet. The deep ravines and twisting gorges shared a roof of leaden clouds. At times it seemed the company traveled through some gray, subterranean realm. Small, hardy trees stood along slopes every now and then, and often green valleys stretched away to east or west like hidden oases. Ripe fruits plucked from highland glades enhanced the company’s rations. Hawks and eagles soared above the ranks of cavalry, arcing from peak to peak in search of prey. The roars of prowling tigers were common, but the predators never showed themselves. D’zan was glad of his well-armed escort, but the shadows of the great peaks weighed on his heart like chains of iron.
The pass had followed the Uduru River into the uplands until it reached the Great Falls. There a torrent of whitewater roared over a precipice, feeding the river from its source somewhere beneath the mountains. Clouds of mist cast tiny diamonds across the cloaks, armor, and helms of the Uurzian legionnaires. D’zan had found it refreshing, standing near to that raging cataract, the mist cool on his skin. The stop at the falls was a brief one, for they had lost too much time already. The company had lingered for two days at the foot of the mountains, waiting until D’zan’s bruised ribs could stand the bucking and swaying of a horse. Each night he clutched the Stone’s blade to his chest as he slept, fearing the return of the beast, or something worse. He knew Elhathym had set the demon to watch for him at the edge of the mountains, so could he not set more watchers along those heights? But no more evil spirits came. Perhaps they lay waiting for him somewhere along the pass.
The bandages tight around his midsection helped, but still he rode in discomfort. He claimed to be free of pain, but Lyrilan could tell by his eternal grimace that D’zan lied. Tyro, riding at the head of the gold-and-green column, took D’zan at his word. D’zan decided to bear the pain – he could not lie beneath those dark peaks any longer. Now, after four days of crawling up the pass, the cold numbed his pain. Despite his heavy cloak of fur and gloves of scaled lizardskin, he could barely feel his fingers and toes. The complaint of his aching ribs was a distant thing, hidden under the frigid air like grass beneath snow. He had been raised in the heated southlands, where cold came only at night and never with such violence. He marveled at the frozen peaks with their ice-clad summits, shivering in the white gleam of their glory. The wind tore at his face and cloak, a wailing ghost of winter.
Lyrilan drew his mount closer. “Yonder obelisk marks the summit of Vod’s Pass,” he told D’zan. “We should see the towers of Steephold rising directly ahead, as I remember.”
“How long?” D’zan said into a gust of wind.
