Magesong Read online

  The rocky and storm-torn coastline curved back to the west to where he had seen the pinpoint of light, but he didn't think he could make his way along the shore. A steep ridge ran down from the peaks to the north, plunging into the sea at nearly the vertical. The flank of the ridge stood barren, but the crest bristled with pines and firs, and promised fresh water on the other side. He eyed the distance to the top and figured he could be there by noon.

  The first half-hour was the worst. Fever and chills marched and countermarched the length of his body like two armies in the field maneuvering for tactical advantage. When they met in battle he stopped to rest, half-sitting, half-leaning on the huge stones jutting from the barren soil like giant thumbs and knuckles. As the day grew warmer he was able to close his eyes and walk in the way Ty'kojin had showed him.

  It had been the first thing his old master taught, telling him very seriously that it was a magical way of walking. Ty'kojin never had a name for the walk, and never said right out what use it had when Reyin asked, always giving a different one word answer such as "balance," or "breathing." Late in his apprenticeship Reyin had begun thinking of it as a master's joke, particularly when he asked Dimietri during one of his rare visits what was the purpose of the magic walk. Dimietri shook his head with a grimace of pain, as if the question had plagued him for years, and said that he did not know. Ty'kojin finally had Reyin walking the strange gait with his eyes closed, still earnest about it giving him some kind of power.

  Years later he mentioned it to Artemes with a smile and a wink. Artemes had risen to his great height, bear-like in his long shaggy coat, and stared him down. "Do not be a fool," he had said, "to walk that gait as a master is to be unstoppable." Reyin began to practice the walk again after that. Like so many ways Ty'kojin had started him upon, he had to continue on this one alone.

  The noontime sun passed him during the long climb, moving westward before he crested the ridge. His pocket watch read three o'clock when he at last let his overloaded backpack slip free and threw himself down on the ridge top. The downhill slope before him lay carpeted with evergreens, and beyond that a narrow valley ran down from the north in four long terraced steps, each one over a league across. Another forested ridge on the other side walled out the ocean, a pinnacle of granite rising from the trees. He scanned the patchwork of brown and yellow that followed a stream along the floor of the valley. They were regular enough to be fields, but through the afternoon haze he couldn't make out anything that looked like a village. Some of the shapes near the edge of the bay looked too square and regular to be natural — houses possibly, but he couldn't be sure.

  He stood there a short time, watching for movement in the valley, but the wind drove him downhill to find cover among the pines and firs. An hour of rest banished very little fatigue, and he knew he was approaching his physical limits. When he started down, his knees began aching dully, the dullness turning to sharp pain on the steeper parts of the descent.

  Something moved ahead of him and he froze — some kind of deer, a small one. If he could bring it down without killing it he could use the Heartleech to find the nearest people, or water if nothing else. It would have seemed a hard thing to him only a few days ago — shoot down a defenseless creature just to draw the life force from it, just to do the simplest magic — but now, his own life in peril, his only worry was that his gun would misfire. He reached into the oilskin bag and drew out the pistol.

  It's a long shot, and I'll be lucky to hit it anywhere, he thought as he slowly turned the little crank. But the metallic click of the mechanism spooked the deer, and it galloped off into the trees before he could finish locking the wheel.

  Artemes had come as close as he ever did to an apology when he had given him the Heartleech. It was Artemes' odd way of making up for what he couldn't teach. The magic of the Heartleech was simple. It allowed anyone who knew a spell to cast it, using the vitality of a living being to replace the Essa.

  "It's a foul piece of work," Artemes had said, handing him a black lump of metallic rock. "Its power is invoked by rubbing a drop of blood on it. Then you simply place it over the heart of the one you wish to draw, um, draw the life force from. I don't think it would take enough from a full-grown man to kill him unless you cast a very powerful spell with it, but obviously you would want to use it on an animal, and only if the need was great. Ty'kojin always thought it should be destroyed; I never could decide. Now I'll leave that to you."

  He had never used the Heartleech, and he often cursed Artemes for giving it to him. Surely Artemes knew how tempting it would be.

  He continued downhill and tried to keep veering left, wanting to get the shoreline back into sight. He nearly stepped into the tiny stream before he saw it. No more than one foot across, it rushed swiftly, clear and cold, down a slope thick with ivy and evergreens. His knees hurt now with every step, and he didn't think he could take many more. Here was a good source of water. He could camp here for days, or as long as it took for him to recover. He could even snipe at game with his pistol. Not pleasant, but he could do it. But the weird returned then, and he knew that if he laid his bed there he would never rise from it. He didn't know why and it didn't matter. He simply knew it.

  He drank as much as he could, and it was hard — the icy water made his chest ache. After a short rest, he filled his skins and started down the slope, looking ahead for the shoreline. More than that, he also looked without looking for a place of safety, using his inner eye. He began to cross game trails, yet still did not pass near the safe place. The chills struck again and he almost laughed aloud. Maybe he would die here anyway because he misjudged the weather on his way to a troubadour gathering, because he wanted to learn the songs of the Pallenborne.

  He thought of Ty'kojin's death. It hadn't been bad, he supposed, compared to other deaths he had seen. His teacher had lived beyond eighty and had left behind a legacy of true magicians. Reyin had seen the death coming longer than anyone, had tended to Ty'kojin on days his teacher couldn't rise from bed, had climbed the short way to the top of the mountain with the old man that last month so they could sit in the flow of the Essa and share its mystery. And so he had romanticized the old magician's death. He had imagined his teacher would commit a final act of power as he departed the mundane plane to become a spirit of the Essa itself. But Ty'kojin had died in a fever, calling out a woman’s name in the end.

  That had disturbed Reyin for a long time. Artemes and Dimietri said that he was calling a greeting to the very essence of the universe, to the life source to which he returned. They had not been with him that last year.

  He woke from his thoughts with a start to find himself walking down a game trail on nearly level ground. Although the sky still showed brightness — if his watch read correctly it was about eight o'clock — the sun had sunk behind the rocky headland, now far away behind a veil of fir trees and across the inlet. A few yards ahead his path crossed another meandering trail, and he knew this to be a good place. Not the place of safety he sought, nonetheless a good place. Throwing his bedroll down in the middle of the crossing and himself on top of it, he took one bite of cold potato, then drifted into a shallow sleep.

  Dreaming of a song, a beautiful melody rising from the nearby ocean, he opened his eyes. Morning already? No, dusk. He had slept only an hour. Had he really heard something, or was it . . . there, a light. He peered down the narrow alley of pines into the deepening twilight, and yes, it was there, larger than a pinpoint, disappearing if he moved his head too far to one side. He struggled to his feet, wavering there for a moment, and started toward the tiny point of brightness, leaving all his things behind. He lost it at once then found it, pursued it through the dark like a child chasing a firefly, never holding sight of it for long, yet getting closer with each pulse of light. The forest thinned ahead of him, opening onto clear ground. He held a steady course for what was now a bonfire surrounded by people, and beyond that the outline of houses bathing in the last of the western afterglow. He heard
singing, a beautiful song of many voices. Not having the strength for even a clumsy lope, he dragged himself toward the circle of singers, toward the poetry he could not understand, toward the music, the language he did speak.

  Later he remembered stepping into the hole and crying out in pain as he twisted his ankle. And he remembered crawling. More than anything, he remembered the blue-eyed folk pressing in all around him, each one holding out a gentle hand.

  CHAPTER 2: The Barren Springtime

  The hardest part had been getting the hot soup into him without his gagging, delirious and half-conscious as he had been. He had only winced and mumbled a few words in his native tongue when she wrapped his swollen ankle. Now he slept deeply in her grandfather's bed in the second house, this brown-skinned man from the southern lands. He had the blackest of black hair cascading in large curls past his thick moustache and stubbled chin, and looked to have passed six and twenty summers, the same age as her first daughter.

  "Mother? Will he be alright?" came a whisper from the doorway. It was Jonn.

  "I believe so," Syliva said, taking the candle from the side table. "Go and tell your father to lay a fire in here, the stranger must be kept warm tonight. You can go and chop some extra wood for him." The fireplace was of the old style, a large bowl of close-fitting stones in the center of the room. It used a lot of wood.

  "It's not very cold out."

  “I know, son, but the man has suffered the deep chill. He needs more warmth."

  "How can you get the deep chill when the snow's all gone? Winter is over."

  "He probably got wet somehow."

  "I could keep the fire going all night," Jonn said, "since I don't sleep much anyway."

  "It's kind of you to offer, dear, but just tend it until midnight, then bank the coals and go to bed when you feel sleepy. That will be enough." She joined him at the door, and together they walked the dozen steps to the main house. The evening stars had climbed a little higher in the sky; midnight couldn't be too far away.

  Jonn huffed his breath so that it came out misty in the night. "Are you going to bed now?"

  "Yes. I've folk to see in the morning and I must go into the forest and try to find some spindlewort for Lovisa. She's getting big now — well, as big as her thin little body can get."

  "Will her baby be born soon?"

  "It'll be a few months, should be born about midsummer." She turned to go.

  "Mother?"

  "Yes, son?"

  "Is the Cycle of Ice coming again? Will there be a summer this year?"

  Syliva looked at her son, the only one of her boys to live more than a few days. He was a tall, thickly-muscled man of twenty-one years, yet in almost every way his mind lagged a decade behind his body. His bright green eyes and straight yellow hair, already streaked with silver, mirrored the features of her own youth. She thought about telling him that she didn't know, but if he became frightened he might turn confused and distant, and speak softly with a lazy tongue like a shy little boy. She and her husband would wake to find him sleeping on the cedar chest at the foot of their bed, or he would take all the dogs and be gone before sunrise, returning after dark wild-eyed and exhausted. Then Aksel's face would get the squint that masked his anguish at having such a strange son. Why couldn't he just be happy to have had a son that lived and walked and laughed at simple pleasures. It didn't matter to Syliva if Jonn never brought home a wife or never learned a trade. She didn't care that he didn't fit the mold of a man of the Pallenborne.

  She did care about the way everyone in the village treated him. She did care about his pain. She, to whom all came for healing, she who could cure bonebreak fever, the big pox, the bleeding waste, who had even discovered how to cure the madness that comes with the bite of the fenwolf, she who could take away many pains could not heal the mind of her own child. Everyone assumed he was simple-minded, that he wasn’t aware of his own handicap, but Syliva knew he was smart enough to know that he was different — wrongly different.

  So she gave him what comfort she could, and he was happy some of his days. But she didn't always tell him the truth.

  "Of course there will be a summer," she said with a smile. "The Cycle of Ice was hundreds of years ago and you just told me that winter is over. As soon as we get a good warm rain the spring flowers will start popping up everywhere — red and yellow and blue and purple — you'll see."

  Jonn flashed her a grin. "I'll go tell father about the fire."

  Syliva stirred the morning barley-meal, adding the cup of goat's milk that remained from the day before. She longed to have honey with the breakfast porridge but was saving the last jug for the more bitter extracts. At times, she knew, it was best not to honey-coat her medicines. Some folk needed a foul-tasting cure to make them believe it was really potent.

  Sunlight shot horizontally through the rear door. The morning sky was blue and clear, promising a warm afternoon. Aksel came in, his barnyard chores done, as she swung the kettle away from the open flame. He took off his boots in the entryway and bowed his head to the little spirit-totem resting on a shelf in the far corner, near the pinewood table. He had begun to do this each time he entered the house this last week, not just on the ceremonial days. His face a solemn mask, he went to the table and sat in his chair.

  "Fodder's running low," he said, not looking at her.

  "How about the apple trees," Syliva said, "the vegetable garden?"

  "Same as the fields — not a sprout."

  "But Jonn spent all of yesterday watering them."

  "It's not the drought," he said, his eyes narrow with the squint. "There's something else wrong, and I don't know what it is. The soil smells rich and good, doesn't have pests in it; the seeds are still there yet they just won't grow." He wiped his hands with a wet rag. "I figure we have enough to last the three of us until the end of summer. A month longer if we butcher some of the livestock."

  "Maybe they'll sprout tomorrow."

  "That's what you said yesterday. And the day before. And the day before that." He shook his head. "No, it has been warm enough for weeks now. The valley is blighted and we have to face it. If we keep pretending that there'll be a harvest this year it will only make it worse."

  "Even if it turns out that there is some kind of blight and nothing ever grows, I think we can stretch what we have all the way to winter solstice."

  "Maybe. Last year's harvest was so very poor. "Remember the winter when Jonn was born? We had to give away food that year."

  "The bees have gone," she said, filling two wooden bowls with hot mush.

  "What?"

  "I spoke with Havorla the younger last night. He says all the bees went away, there's none left here or in Hyerkin."

  "No flowers, no bees," Aksel said stoically, as if quoting the Poem of Ancient Truths. "But beeswax and honey are the least of our problems. The nanny goats are only giving enough milk to keep their young alive. I suppose we could slaughter one of the kids."

  She brought the steaming bowls to the table. "We can do without fresh milk for now. I still have a bucket of sour in the cold room."

  "What I had in mind," he said cautiously, "was for Jonn to take all the goats to the upper end of the valley. They can graze on the winter barley up there."

  "For how long?"

  "Till the grazing is all gone."

  Syliva looked at her husband. It was a simple enough thing to do now that the days were longer and the nights less cold. The Svordens of Hyerkin still owed her for the tooth-rot potion she had given the old grandfather. If they couldn't bring a little extra food to her son, they could at least keep a friendly eye on him.

  "You know he's not very good with the goats," she said. "And it's long way."

  "It's only a one-day walk from here."

  "Not driving goats it isn't."

  "If you would stop trying to shield him from the hard parts of life he wouldn’t be so soft. It’s time for him to take on some responsibility, something more that the few chores he does around
here.”

  "He does a lot that you don't notice," she whispered strongly.

  “Little things. This would really help me and it could be good for him. And speaking of help, why did we have to be the ones to take in the stranger? Anyone else would have done it gladly. Why is it always us, as if we don't have enough work for ourselves?

  Syliva set her spoon down. "Because I'm the cure-giver for this village, and you know it. I don't believe that you are complaining about helping someone in need, as if you weren't raised in Lorendal Valley. We have the privilege. What has got into you today?"

  Silent, he looked down at his porridge and began to eat. She had lived with him too long not to know him. He was a generous man who loved his son, but this strange season frightened him. Never had she seen him so afraid that he made angry noises. Nudging his hand with her fingertips, she said, "All will be well, my husband. You'll see. All will be well."

  When she had cleaned and cleared away all the breakfast crockery, and she had spoken to Jonn about the goats, Syliva tied her hair back with a kerchief, as was the custom of married women in the Pallenborne when going outdoors. She took her satchel of tinctures, dried flowers, ground roots, extracts of tree bark, salves, poultices, and teas, and walked the hard, dry path across the neighboring fields, making her way to the village.

  It had been called Lorendal for more generations than anyone knew. In the center of the village a roughly circular outcropping of rock jutted out of the ground an arm's length, ending in a flat level surface, a natural stone table with an indention somewhat like a four-pointed star carved into the middle. This was the touching stone. No one knew why it bore that name, only that it was supposed to be good luck to touch it. In the past it was rarely done, except perhaps by young lovers who still sat there on summer nights as Syliva had in her own youth. Now almost everyone touched it when they passed.