Sword and Sorceress XXVII Read online

  The mountains rose and rose, row after distant row, ghostly white. They rested more frequently now, and drank from rushing streams. The water tasted of rock and wildness, so cold that their lips turned blue. Days passed, and in between, they slept huddled in whatever shelter they could find in the shallow, wind-sculpted caves. The storm clouds covering the Blue Beyond darkened, so that noon took on the aspect of night.

  Now that they had come so far, leaving behind everything they knew, Moon still refused to give up, for fear that all their suffering would have been for nothing.

  #

  Moon awoke to iridescent light. She crept out from beneath the overhanging rock where she and Dew had slept, blinking in the color-drenched brightness that swept across the horizon. Her belly cramped with hunger and every joint in her body throbbed, yet she stood, for a moment oblivious to all pain, caught up in the glory above her. Red and gold, blue and green and orange rippled like curtains waving in a celestial breeze. They beckoned her onward.

  The trail led her upwards a short distance, then widened. For a moment, Moon thought she had reached the crest, for the lights now glimmered all around her. She breathed them in. A strange energy flowed through her.

  A sound, a clink of one pebble on another, alerted her. She whirled, reaching for the knife that was not there, and realized too late that she had left her weapons behind in the shelter.

  Ahead she could make out only shades of gray and shifting silver. Something moved in the brilliance. She forced herself to stand still. Whatever it was, bow or axe could not harm it. Nor, she realized, would she wish to destroy a thing of such beauty.

  Do not be afraid. The words shimmered in her mind.

  The next instant, the brightness faded. A man stood there, tall and well-formed. Despite the cold, his chest was bare, and as he held out one hand to her, muscles moved easily beneath his smooth skin. By his features and fringed leggings, the cut of his moccasins and the slant of his eyes, he must be one of her own people, yet she did not know him. His braids were tied with feathers of deepest blue.

  Moon had never seen such a color, except in the Blue Beyond on a cloudless day. Surely, this must be a god. Trembling, she dropped to her knees and covered her face with her hands.

  His touch was warm and strong as he lifted her, but she would not look directly at him. She stammered, “How shall I address you, O god of the mountains?”

  “I am no god,” he said. His voice was deep and as beautiful as himself. “You shall call me Bluejay. What is your name?”

  Moon looked up in astonishment. Truly, a god would already know her name and her quest, and all her hidden sins. As strange and beautiful as this stranger appeared, he must be as mortal as she herself. Emboldened, she answered his questions. Who she was, her people, what she was doing so far from her home territory.

  “And now I cannot go back,” she concluded. “I failed to find the bull and put an end to his pain. I have shamed my people.”

  “The bull you sought does not suffer.”

  “You may not be a god, but even if you were, I would not believe you,” Moon said with spirit. “I must make certain for myself.”

  At that, Bluejay laughed. “Since you refuse to go home, will you come with me on an even greater adventure? I have come here seeking such a hunter as yourself, one with heart as well as courage. I promise that if we succeed, and you still wish to return home, you will do so with honor.”

  Moon thought for a long moment. If Bluejay were not a god, perhaps he was a malicious spirit sent to entrap her. She had heard tales of such beings, songs sung around campfires in the Time of the Ice Raven. When she consulted her heart, however, she felt nothing but a surge of irrational joy.

  “I will go with you, but first I must bid farewell to my sister.”

  Together, they went back down the trail to the overhang. Dew had made a fire, from what fuel Moon could not tell, and on that fire, a small bird roasted on a spit. Dew got to her feet and greeted the stranger, inviting him to share their meal. Politely he declined, for there was scarcely enough for one person, let alone three. He explained that he had come into this country to bring Moon back with him.

  “You wish to marry her?” Dew said, eyes narrowing.

  Moon began to protest, but Dew waved her to hush. If their mother had still been alive, she would have arranged the marriage contract. Dew was clearly determined to act in her stead.

  Bluejay said that in his own country, the man presented the bride’s family with a gift. Moon saw no possessions at hand, except possibly the feathers of startling blue tied in his hair. Yet the next moment, he was offering Dew a bison robe. It was expertly tanned, supple and sweet-smelling. As he handed it to Dew, his gaze met Moon’s and she understood his words about the bull.

  “This is a treasure!” Clearly, Dew was of the opinion that any man who owned such a thing must be wealthy indeed. She kissed Moon, bidding her to send word of her new life.

  Moon took her bow and arrow case, her knife and hand axe. Following Bluejay, she continued back up the trail. For a long time, she was so beset with strangeness, she could not speak.

  A storm came up suddenly, swirls of white and gray that grew thicker with each passing heartbeat. Moon’s skin went numb with cold. Ice congealed in the pit of her belly. Still Bluejay kept on. The blizzard did not seem to affect him. Moon struggled to keep up, although she could barely make out his figure.

  Suddenly Bluejay came to a halt. Although the blowing snow obscured the terrain, Moon sensed that before them lay a sharp precipice. She could feel the shape of the mountains and the solidity of rock on three sides, but in front of them lay nothing but wailing emptiness. If she stepped off that cliff, she might fall forever.

  “What is this place?” she asked through chattering teeth. “It seems to me the very edge of the world.”

  He held out his hand. “You are right.”

  Moon remembered thinking that whatever happened on the search, she would never return home. She had thought she would die on the mountain face of exposure or starvation. She had not the slightest idea then of journeying past the edge of the world. In spite of this, or perhaps because of it, she took Bluejay’s hand.

  The moment their fingers touched, a change swept through Moon. She no longer shook with cold and fright. Something immeasurably powerful, yet gentle as feathers, caught her, held her. The whiteness of the storm fell away and in its place, across illimitable spaces, she beheld colors such as she had never dreamed. Drawn by Bluejay’s sure grasp, she soared like a frost falcon.

  How long the journey lasted, Moon could not say. It seemed to go on forever, and yet when she stood once more on her own feet, only the span of a single breath had passed. Too amazed to speak, she gazed at an ancient forest.

  She had seen plains trees, with their misshapen, wind-scoured branches and dusty leaves. Few of them grew taller than a man’s height. Now she craned her neck, straining to see the tops of the giants that rose around her. Their trunks were straight and smooth-barked, thicker than a man’s outstretched arms.

  Moon and Bluejay stood in a little pool of sunlight surrounded by dappled, blue-tinted shade. A jumble of lacy plants covered the forest floor. She inhaled, tasting scents that were pungent, unfamiliar, and deeply stirring.

  Bluejay slipped his fingers from her grasp. “We’re here.”

  “What is this place?”

  “My home.”

  She stared at him for the first time. Far above, branches swayed in a wind, so that motes of light danced across his bare skin.

  His eyes darkened. “You know there are many worlds, each with its own people, its own magic?”

  “So our songs teach us.” Her voice came in a whisper. “But I never guessed...” turning now, struggling to encompass the enormity and brightness of the forest, “...it would be like this.”

  “And in all these worlds,” he went on, as if he had not heard, “what is the greatest danger? The most dire threat?”

  “The
Ice Raven, who brings dark and cold, the sleep of the soul,” she answered as she had been taught. “It cannot be seen, or captured or—”

  He cut her off with an impatient gesture. “The Ice Raven is a part of the natural cycle. The fallow times give the land its rest, and we take no harm from the long sleep. My people offer prayers at such times, blessing the Ice Raven.”

  For an instant, Moon was angry. Surely he was making fun of her, treating the beliefs of her own clan as ignorant superstitions. Then she realized he was in earnest.

  “What, then?” she asked. “If you do not fear the Ice Raven, what do you fear?”

  “Something against which my people have no defense, no power.” Bluejay paused, an unreadable expression passing over his features. “But you do.”

  Moon wanted to laugh. What could she do and what beast could she hunt, that this strong warrior could not? He could walk between worlds! Now he truly was teasing her.

  Still, his expression remained grave, and she decided that no matter how far-fetched, he took his own words seriously. “What do you want from me?”

  “Do you have the courage to face that which threatens all our worlds? Do you have the will to defeat it?”

  Moon lifted her chin and took her bow in hand. “I am no magician. All I have are these, my arrows. They are yours to command.”

  “Then come with me.”

  Once more, Bluejay held out his hand. This time, as she slipped her fingers through his, Moon felt a faint quivering, but she did not know if it were her own or his.

  #

  No blizzard rose up to blind her, no wall of whiteness, no whirl of space and light. Instead, they rose gently, following the arrow-straight trees. The air grew fresher, warmer, yet wilder. Birds passed them, not the olive-drab sparrows of the plains, but creatures adorned with extravagant rainbow plumage. They swooped through the air, their songs rising and falling. Moon cried out in delight, and Bluejay grinned.

  They left the birds behind and passed the tops of the trees. The branches were so far below that Moon imagined them as a soft carpet. Clouds wafted by until only the Blue Beyond lay above them. Such a blue it was, more intense than she had ever seen.

  Moon kept expecting that the next moment would bring them up against a hard blue surface, as if the Blue Beyond were the inside of a bird’s egg.

  We are hatchlings struggling to be born, came his voice in her mind.

  The end of their upward journey came suddenly. It was not at all what she expected. One instant, they soared gently through unchanging blue. The next, a strange uneasiness hovered at the edges of her senses, like a storm front poised to break.

  Bluejay looked at her with a grave expression. “This is your last chance to turn back.”

  “I have said I will help you,” Moon retorted with a touch of heat. Did he think her so lacking in honor that she would take back her word? Then she realized his words came not from any mistrust of her but from his own fears. He was tall and strong, clearly a warrior among his own people. Again she wondered what help she could give against an enemy that such a man as he dared not face.

  As if reading her thoughts, he said, “Each of these wild worlds has its own form of magic. No matter how I appear to you, I have no prowess with physical fighting. My people’s gift is the ability to travel between worlds. Yours—” and here he touched her chest over her fast-beating heart, “yours is courage. And you are the finest of them all. The only one who answered my call.”

  Before Moon could ask what he meant, he lifted his hand and under their feet stretched a wide path. One moment, it appeared to her as a beam of shimmering light, the next, a metallic cable, and still again, a twisted rope as thick as one of Bluejay’s trees. Along this path, images rippled and flashed, the pale green plains of her own world, then an ocean of surging tides, beyond that, sweeping sun-kissed meadows, and in the other direction, row upon row of stone houses with glowing jewel-toned windows. The richness and beauty of the worlds captured her senses. She longed to visit them all, to walk those streets and glades and beaches.

  “They are worth saving, are they not?” Bluejay asked.

  Moon swallowed her answer, for no words could convey her emotion. Another breath, and she was able to say, “What threatens them?”

  Bluejay pointed beyond his own world, where the visions disappeared into mist. “You will see for yourself. There.”

  Moon took her bow and strung it on the first attempt. Hawk had been wrong; it was not a man’s bow or a woman’s bow. It was a warrior’s bow. Holding an arrow at ready, she moved toward the distant mist.

  The haze began to flow and darken, like the storm on the day of the hunt. It curled around her, dampening her skin, and shutting out all other sight and sound. Something moved within the shifting currents of air and light and power. She halted, holding herself still against the hammering of her heart.

  A sound reached her, a gnawing, rending noise, as if the very fibers of the world were being wrenched apart. This was no bison, no wolf or eagle or emerald-striped viper, but something far more terrible. She moved closer, step by searching step.

  A shape emerged as the mist grew thin and parted to reveal a beast. It was unlike any she had ever seen, fully as huge as a bison, but long-bodied and low to the ground. Dull black scales covered its body, except for the tapering snout and the whip-like tail. A stench hung about it, the smell of rotten things, of must and slime and places best forgotten. But worse of all were its eyes, lightless pupils ringed in blood.

  Hooked claws and yellowed teeth sank deep into the shining rope. The beast twisted its head, snapping threads of light, then devouring them.

  Awareness shifted the beast’s eyes. It rose up, froth dripping from its jaws. Rumbling sounded in its throat. It extended its head, slit nostrils flaring wide, and bared its razor teeth.

  For an instant, Moon’s nerve almost failed her. How could she fight such a monster? Yet if she ran away now, as every instinct urged her, what then? The beast would destroy the paths that linked the worlds together. She knew, as certainly as if Bluejay had told her aloud, that all would then fall into darkness, a night without even the Ice Raven for comfort.

  The beast was already moving toward her. Whip tail lashing, it gathered itself for a leap. Moon drew her bow. Her arrow sped true, but the beast turned at the last instant. Hissing and thrashing, the monster caught the shaft between its jaws and snapped it into a dozen fragments.

  Moon slipped another arrow into place. Before she took aim, however, the monster leapt, quicksilver fast.

  She ducked and rolled toward the beast. The claws of its hind paws raked her as it passed overhead. Something snapped—the arrow she had drawn, not her precious bow. The creature’s body cast her into shadow and flooded her nostrils with its rank odor. Then it landed heavily on the path beyond her.

  Moon scrambled to her feet to face the beast. As her fingers touched her arrow case, she realized that she had only one arrow left. Only one.

  Fitting it to the string, she drew the bow.

  Growling, the creature took a slow, menacing step toward her. She could not see a vital target, only rows of overlapping obsidian-dark scales. Its skull was thick and she did not think even her bow could drive an arrow through its ribs head-on.

  She must choose her target. One more step and the beast would be upon her.

  The monster halted, as if daring her to shoot. Its tail lashed the air. She faced it, unflinching.

  One arrow, only one chance.

  The beast tensed its muscles for another leap. Moon crouched down on one knee and shot upwards just as its forequarters lifted. The arrow buried itself in the thin skin just to one side of the breastbone.

  The beast dropped, but Moon was already rolling free. The silvery rope shuddered under the impact, then began swaying and twisting. Clutching her bow, she flattened herself on its surface. Her vision whirled sickeningly. The entire universe seemed to have come loose from its moorings, bucking and heaving like a maddene
d bison. Below it, or perhaps above, for in Moon’s disordered sight she could not tell, yawned an enormous whirlpool, an abyss of swirling darkness.

  With a great cacophonous screech as if a thousand rusted bells rang out at once, the body of the beast slid sideways and disappeared into the void.

  Gradually, the path of light grew still. Moon dared to sit up. Her cheeks were slick with tears, and the air stung her eyes. She bled from four or five shallow gashes on her arms, most likely from the beast’s claws, although she could not remember being struck. Her bowstring had snapped, but the bow itself seemed to be sound.

  She clambered unsteadily to her feet and retraced her steps. The path felt solid, resilient, but she was trembling so badly that the slightest tremor might topple her over the side. To her surprise, she saw no sign of the frayed strands from the beast’s devastation. She hoped this meant the bond between the living worlds had taken no lasting harm.

  The mist closed around her as she went on, but this time she welcomed it as a friend. It stroked her torn skin, drawing out the pain. She thanked it silently. After a time, so gradually she could barely discern the change, the mist lifted. Bluejay stood there, waiting for her.

  Whether the battle with the beast itself had changed her, or whether it was something in the mist or the vision of worlds strung together by a rope of light, Moon now looked on the man before her with new eyes. When she had first met him, Bluejay had appeared as a warrior, a god. Certainly, the ability to walk the worlds was a magical gift. Yet he had sought her out to do what he could not.

  “It’s time for truth between us,” she said. “Who are you?”

  The air between them wavered like heat rising from the summer plains. Bluejay’s form shifted and grew more slender. He was still tall, but his shoulders were narrow, his hands graceful and soft. He wore a shirt of azure wool, touched here and there with gold, and belted over narrow leggings. Thongs of dyed leather tied a cluster of blue feathers to one of several gray braids. His face was angular, with heavy eyebrows and a long, straight nose, very different from the features of her own people. A band of cloth covered one eye; the other, golden as a hawk’s, met hers steadily.