Queen of Fire (Raven's Shadow 3)

Astorek frowned, shaking his head in bafflement. “Ally?”

• • •

“And it lives in this . . . beyond place? A place beyond death?”

Vaelin struggled to formulate a precise answer. Explaining the concept of the Beyond to someone raised without any form of faith was proving difficult. Also, unlike the people who had adopted him, Astorek felt no worshipful tendencies towards the green fire that continued to flicker in the night sky, though its light was now just a dim glow on the northern horizon. “One of nature’s many mysteries,” was his only opinion.

They had begun the march the day before, the Wolf People’s warriors gathering together in loose affiliation and moving south without particular order or ceremony save brief, intimate farewells to family. However, there were some who would neither be travelling south nor staying on the tundra. Vaelin watched as a group of people gathered on the shoreline, men and women of advanced age each with his or her own canoe carrying only a small stock of provisions. He saw Far Walker among them, handing out various items to a group of younger folk he took to be the elder’s children or grandchildren: a knife, a necklace, a spear. They all accepted the gifts in silent respect, the youngest sniffling as the old man climbed alone into his canoe and pushed away from the shore, paddling off towards the north without a backward glance. His will, Vaelin thought.

Later he joined Astorek at the head of the army, leading Scar at a walk as the shaman sent his wolves ahead to scout their line of march.

“I realise it may be hard to credit,” Vaelin said. “But I have been there, and heard his voice. Much as I would like to dismiss him as a figment of legend or delusion, his hunger for our destruction is all too real.”

“I thought you had to die to gain entry to the Beyond.”

Vaelin turned his gaze to the horizon. Talking of what had happened at Alltor was never easy, perhaps because so much of it still escaped his understanding. “You do.”

“Then how do you come to be here?”

Vaelin glanced back at Dahrena, laughing with Cara as their cats rolled together in a play fight a short way off. “I have always been greatly fortunate in my friends.”

Another week’s march brought them in sight of the mountains, a range of steep-sided ridges and peaks stretching away south for as far as they could see. The valleys seemed rich in pine but the peaks were mostly bare granite, painted a pale blue in the haze. Off to the east a dim orange glow could be seen beneath a low bank of dark cloud. “Fire mountains,” Astorek said. “Even the tribesfolk don’t go there.”

“Do your people trade with them?” Vaelin asked. “Speak their language?”

“They speak Volarian, of a sort. Difficult to make out for the less-attuned ear. And no, there is no trade between us. They keep to their hills fighting their endless feuds, or the Volarians when they come to fill their slave quotas, rarely venturing across the tundra.” Astorek glanced up at the ever-present swirl of spear-hawks as a group separated from the main flock to fly towards the hills. “Mother will warn of any who come to greet us.”

But there was no one waiting as they crested the foothills, the heights ahead free of any sign their way might be barred. “My people would do the same,” Alturk said, eyes narrowed as he scanned the silent hills. “Allow us to enter, march on until we imagine ourselves safe then attack in the night.”

“There are no eyes on us,” Kiral said with a note of certainty. She turned to Vaelin, her expression grave, “But someone comes. My song is clear: we should wait.”

They camped on a series of hills affording good views of the surrounding country, the spear-hawks providing constant vigilance and the wolves kept in tight packs on the perimeter. But still the hills remained silent. As night fell the glow of the eastern fire mountains grew bright, occasional flashes of lightning threading through the smoke they cast into the sky.

“So Nishak’s arm reaches around the world,” Alturk observed in a rare fireside comment, his gaze lingering on the distant fires. He had recently abandoned his usual practice of eating and sleeping away from the main body of the company, his head once again shaven to stubble. The contempt still felt by some of the Sentar was evident in their faces, but others showed a grudging resumption of respect.

Looking around the company, Vaelin noted how they were mingled now, guardsmen and Lonak sitting alongside each other with a natural ease, the Gifted among them, their cats snapping at the scraps tossed to them by the warriors. The ice was a forge, he decided, recalling distant days spent watching Master Jestin at the anvil, the three rods of an unborn sword gradually melding under his ceaseless hammer. It beat us into something new.

“Did you really hear his voice?” Dahrena asked.

Alturk’s gaze lowered in discomfort, though there seemed to be no anger in him, just regretted memory. “I heard it, a sound that could only have come from the mouth of a god.”

“The Cave of Mists,” Kiral said. “The Mahlessa told me only one other besides her has ever seen it.”

“It was the Mahlessa who guided me to it. Though my club and my knife had made me Tahlessa of the Grey Hawks, husband to six wives and father to a fine son, I was still a youth dreaming of greatness, a greatness I thought I would find in the Cave of Mists where the voices of the gods are said to still echo. So I went to the Mountain and asked for guidance from the Mahlessa. I was not permitted in her presence, for no man is worthy, but she gave me a guide and sent us forth with words I thought a blessing but later knew as a warning—‘There is only truth to be heard from the gods.’”

Alturk paused to regard Kiral with a faint grin. “My guide was a woman of grim aspect who spoke rarely except to voice insult, calling me a fool, and a braggart, and son to a mother who had clearly spread her legs for an ape. Were she not a Servant of the Mountain I would have pitched her from the highest cliff, as she well knew.”

“You would have tried,” Kiral said in a hard voice.

“Your blood-mother was the harshest-tongued woman I ever met,” Alturk returned. “And I married the worst six bitches in the mountains.”

“And wanted her for the seventh.” Kiral returned his grin. “Only she had more sense.”

Alturk grunted and waved a dismissive hand. “In any case she guided me to a cave, a small gap in the side of an unremarkable mountain. ‘You’ll die in there, ape-spawn,’ she told me, then walked off with no other word spoken. I could feel the heat flowing from the cave, knowing that what lay beneath would prove the greatest trial. But I wanted so much to hear Nishak’s voice, I knew he had great things to tell me.

“At first all was blackness, my torch the only light as I climbed ever lower. Sometimes the walls of the cave would fall away, leaving me crouched on a narrow ledge with the void all around, not knowing if a single stumble would send me tumbling to my death. Then I came to the bridge, in truth a narrow arch of rock spanning a great chasm, with a fierce torrent of water falling like a curtain halfway across. On the far side there was only blackness. The test was clear, if I went on my torch would die in the torrent and I might never find my way again. The gods are wise in their tests, choosing only those worthy of their voice, for a coward would have turned back.” Alturk paused, the softest laugh escaping his lips. “And only a fool would have gone on. And I did.

“The bridge was slippery, the water chill as ice, and all became dark when it claimed my torch. I dropped to my belly and crawled, feeling my way forward until the narrow bridge became broad rock and ahead, the faintest glimmer of light, drawing me ever onward. The light grew as I neared, the walls of the great cavern I had entered giving off a green glow and in the centre a pool of roiling water, constantly bubbling and birthing a fine mist. At first I found the smell of it harsh and like to turn my stomach but the scent faded as I drew close to the pool, as close as I dared for its heat was vast . . . And I heard it, low at first, like a tremor in the earth, but building, becoming clearer and stronger until I felt my ears might burst from it.

“I knew then I was a fool, a bug crawling across the feet of a giant, for what would such a voice have to say to a speck such as I? But . . . he did. ‘Do you know who speaks to you?’ he asked me and through my fear I babbled his name. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I who gave the gift of fire to all mankind. I who saved you from the all-dark. I who has succoured you with warmth for all the ages. For I am the most generous of gods, and yet you always ask for more.’

“I would have fled if my legs had not failed me, left me crawling on the cave floor like the bug I knew myself to be. I begged him, like a captured Merim Her facing the just knife, I begged and wailed and soiled myself in fear. But Nishak knows neither pity nor anger, he is generous but his gift can burn as well as succour, for truth is a flame that burns deep. ‘I know what you came for, Tahlessa of the Grey Hawks,’ he told me. ‘Your mind is so easily picked apart. So much anger, so much ambition, and what’s this? A child you imagine worthy of a great future, a child you believe will lead the Lonak against the Merim Her. Look closer, see more.’

“And through the fog of memory I saw it; the boy’s cruelty to all around him, the time I had found him with a strangled pup, the older boy who had fallen to his death when they climbed together, the lies I deafened myself to as he told of an accident, a missed handhold that led to a broken neck. I saw it all.”