Chapter Eight
After the chaos and the Wars in the Heavens, the fire and ice crashed together to create the world. For many, many, many seasons the world was a place only of fire, water, earth, and sky, but from the marriages of these elements there grew strange plants from the earth and wondrous beasts roamed beneath the sky and swam within the great waters, and spirits of fire were not contained only within the bodies of tree or animal, but roamed freely as well. And the stars were much closer in those days, so close that one swung too close to the world and kissed the earth, obliterating the plants and beasts in the spirits of fire that it unleashed. There are tales of those days, and many stories of the Star Who Fell, but they will not be told now.
The world regathered her courage and brought forth new plants and beasts, and among these many types of beasts were those we call the Ancient Ones. The Ancient Ones lived well with their brothers and sisters for many, many years, and grew powerful and wealthy, and built from steel and stone enormous dwellings to rival the mountains, and laid rivers of stone across the earth so that they might ride the steel beasts they built between these villages. And they formed amongst them vast armies, and fought many wars between each other, and not only were many Ancient Ones killed in these wars, but so were the other animals and trees, till the four elements were made ill, for there was no longer any balance. In those days the sky was thick and choking, the waters poisoned, spirits of fire were leashed and enslaved, and the earth was ruptured by the efforts of the Ancient Ones. These were times of great destruction, but also times of great discovery and creation by the Ancient Ones. There are more tales and songs of these times than there are stars in the sky, but they will not be told here. And after the Ancient Ones, the world once more summoned the strength to purge what had remained of them, till all that was left were a few skeletons of steel buildings, the occasional stretch of stone river through a valley, and the large deposits of platik that those who mine for iron and copper ore sometimes find buried beneath the ground, or ocean fishermen find in their nets.
But there also remain scraps of the wisdom and knowledge the Ancient Ones had discovered, and it is The People, their natural successors, who became the beneficiaries of this knowledge. Among The People, it is the Tamaziaghat who are entrusted with safeguarding this knowledge of the Ancient Ones, as well as the wisdom gleaned over many, many years from the beasts, plants, stars, and rivers. The Tamaziaghat know how to hear the secrets whispered by the wind, to read the babbling creek, to understand the thrush’s song or the wolf’s cry, and it is the Tamaziaghat who watch that the balance remains strong, that the times of destruction and creation that so sickened the world do not return.
Aryn Steelshaft was not Tamaziaghat. He had only tasted a fraction of the Ancient Ones’ knowledge during his years spent with Torell, and he had never discovered how the older Roamer was able to open his senses wide enough to accept and absorb what the world had to tell him. He had never been accepted into the circle of the Tamaziaghat, and he did not consider himself under any obligation to fulfill their responsibilities.
But because of his history, he was no longer simply another hunter among The People. He knew the old songs, he had glimpsed through the door of the Ancient Ones’ knowledge and their view of the world, and in the depths of his heart he had learned much of the balance between beast, plant, earth, water and sky. And since his departure from the Storm Dancers, the one-eyed young man fit in no place across the whole world except as one within the world as a whole.
And so for the next three summers, Aryn Steelshaft wandered the world, seeking to understand it and his place within it. He pushed himself to understand what he saw, heard, tasted, felt. From the smallest tracks of the mice that ran between blades of high mountain meadow grasses to the roar of enormous waterfalls, he sought to glean from all things he encountered at least a part of what they had to teach. Beneath the constant wheel of sun and moon both the seasons and the miles rolled out beneath his feet, and he learned many things.
Although he was not Tamaziaghat, Aryn was human, and every now and then found that he craved the sound of other human voices, to be among the People, because they were, ultimately, his People. So every new moon or so he would make his way to the nearest camp or settlement and offer his services as singer of the old songs, or healer, or hunter with a supply of valued skins. He was always welcomed, even after he would correct those who addressed him as “Roamer”, they would still make a place at the fire for him and push bowls of food and wine into his hands, and listen to his tales, or bring him their sick and wounded.
Aryn had very early in his travels left the territory that he had known when wandering with Torell or even heard of from the travel tales of his tribesmen. He had followed the Wolfang mountain range south until it flattened to high plains, then moved west towards the coast, followed the coast south, then moved east again to meet another mountain range running generally northwest-southeast, which he explored in depth. His travels were slow, because he had no destination and only a vague sense of the passage of time, measured by the phases of the moon. He was wandering in regions unfamiliar to him and meeting tribes whose accents and clothing became increasingly unfamiliar, but he had found that the People lived much the same way as they had in his own lands: those in the mountains and high plains built seasonal camps in rotating hunting grounds, those in the low lands and along the coast had built more permanent settlements of stone and heavy timber where they tilled the earth or docked their fishing boats. Despite the surface changes among the people, such as the cut of their tunics, they way they spoke their “R”s, or their preferred method for cooking rabbit, Aryn decided that the People were all essentially the same in all lands: they wished only that their children grow healthy, that they are certain of their place within the cycle of the world, and that tomorrow be the same as today, as it had been the day before.
Three years after having walked away from the Storm Dancers camp, Aryn discovered something else that it seemed all of the People shared. For many moons, Aryn’s path had followed the coast, keeping the heaving iron-colored sea off his left shoulder. He had not travelled so far north again to return to the lands he knew, and had not passed this way before in the past three years. His own path had for the last two days been guided by the trail of a coastal fox he had discovered at the pebbled beach and which he had begun following out of curiosity, not realizing how far the creature would travel. He had been led away from the coast and into the hills beyond, through dense bramble and around the perimeter of several glades, only finding two lays used by the fox. Aryn had slept rolled in his cloak against the salt chill of the coastal night beside one of the lays, then continued to track the well-travelled fox the next morning.
By the time the sun reached its apex, Aryn’s readings of the spoor told him that he was near enough to the fox to be noticed, and that the fox had changed his stride from a confident trot through its hunting grounds to an animal seeking to evade a predator. The fox’s path now turned from the low foothills it had been traversing eastwards, towards the higher mountains and thicker forest. Aryn did not wish to disrupt the fox further and decided to end his project. He bid the fox a silent goodbye and found a rock outcropping to rest.
Aryn had noticed increasingly common signs of human activity as he had followed the fox north, and knew that by continuing north he would find a settlement of the People, no more than a slow half day’s walk from where he now sat. It had been some time since he had last ate, laughed, and danced with the People, and an urge to once more be among his own kind rose up in his heart. After a light meal of nuts and dried meat from his food pouch, he carefully repacked his gear and set off north at an easy trot.
His guess was correct, for within an hour he was able to smell the smoke of cooking fires, and soon after heard the hum of voices woven with the rhythmic pulsing of the sea. Aryn emerged from a thicket of wind stunted pines to find a permanent human settlement sprawled across a clearing, sheltered from the ocean breeze by dunes of sand to the west and from the rest of the world by mountains to the west. The town was typical of other coastal settlements: perhaps two dozen low-roofed homes made of wood and stone, the gardens fenced from animals with driftwood were smaller than those seen at villages further inland, and on the far side of the dunes Aryn spied the line of idle boats lying in the sand, while those currently being used for net and spear fishing could be seen far out across the waves, near the horizon. But what caused Aryn’s breath to catch in his chest was what rose from the exact center of the village: a long pole that towered over even the tallest home, upon which was affixed a bear skull.
For hours Aryn sat at the edge of the thicket and watched the People who inhabited this settlement. He watched as they played, laughed, squabbled, worked, travelled from house to house with gossip or borrowed tools or gifts of food. He watched the fishermen return periodically with their boats laden with fish and kelp, and the line of villagers that left off their own chores to go to the boat and help carry the fruits of the fisherman’s labors back to the village. And as the sun sank lower towards its watery bed, he watched the shadow of the bear skull grow longer across the village and the villagers, creeping towards the dark shadows that seeped out of the surrounding forests as night fell. When the sun was crimson and rapidly descending into the waves, and the last fishing boat was dragged onto the sands, the shadow of the bear skull had joined with the shadows of night, wrapping the village in its darkness. Aryn now rose and walked to the village with a heavy heart.
One large fire blazed from its circle of stones next to the base of the bear skull’s pole at the center of the village, and a few lit torches spat and danced against the night outside of random homes, but it was mostly from the light of a full moon that Aryn made his way to a cluster of People to the side of the fire. A long, high bench stretched for at least twice the length of a man, and on this were crowded bowls of food and drink from which the villagers were helping themselves with gusto. Aryn swung his pack behind him, careful to keep the hilt of the sword protruding from his bedroll unseen but ready, and cleared his throat to announce his presence before stepping laterally into the fire’s light and offering a loud and cheerful greeting.
All talk ceased among the villagers, and Aryn noted that a few hands moved quickly towards belts. These People were not warriors, nor had they any reason to be, but far more of the villagers than Aryn would have expected wore weapons at their sides. Aryn was used to startling his prospective hosts and always tried to lessen the impact, but he normally did not encounter the suspicion and fear that was noticeable in these eyes even in the dim glow of the fire. A moment of tension lasted longer than Aryn was comfortable with before an older woman spoke. “What is your name, stranger, and where do you come from?”
Although the tone was less friendlier than Aryn was accustomed to on these occasions, he decided to act as if nothing was unusual and launched into his well worn introduction. “My name is Aryn Steelshaft, of the North Wind” he smiled, moving slowly towards the frozen group. “I have been walking for many seasons; I have travelled far, and seen many wonders of which I will gladly tell you. I came across your beautiful village and wondered if I may trade a few songs for a mouthful of bread and good company.”
The knot of villagers visibly relaxed. Hands moved away from weapons and returned to transferring food from bowl to mouth. The older woman who had spoken went so far as to smile. “You are welcome, Roamer. My name is Wianja Waar, and this is the village of Shelf. We would be honored to have you eat your fill of the humble food we are able to provide.” She spoke with the nasal drawl Aryn had become accustomed to in these southern lands, enunciating her words in the way that he had found so difficult to understand when he had first encountered it.
Aryn shook his head in self-deprecation as he took his place at board. “Nay, I will not eat under false pretenses. I am a wanderer, but not Tamaziaghat. I know many of the old songs and have discovered some new of my own, but I have never been initiated. I am only walking.”
This confession seemed to return the group to the uncomfortable silence it had just recovered from, but not to the degree that anyone stopped eating. Wianja told him he was welcome in any case just as a youth from farther down the bench asked, “Then what are you searching for, Aryn Steelshaft of the North Wind?”
Aryn shrugged as he lifted a handful of shredded fish and some type of grain to his mouth. He swallowed before answering her, “Perhaps I am searching for something to search for. I don’t really know.” He knew that the People, especially settled villagers, were wary of humans (other than Roamers) who chose solitary travel over the comforts and safety of a village or tribe, but also knew they recognized and appreciated honesty.
Although he had promised them the old sagas after the meal, Aryn continued a steady flow of tales as he ate, building their comfort with him. He told the story of the fox that day, and then of his adventures in the caves behind a waterfall only a few days’ journey south, then described for them the enormous open lands many days farther south than that. As time went on he became more aware of a large figure at the other end of the table, features obscured in the dark, who neither ate nor drank, and who only spoke to interrupt Aryn’s most recent tale. “And in all your travels, Aryn Steelshaft, how many bear skulls have you seen protecting those who live beneath them?”
Aryn took a long pause. “None, I suppose. For my part, I’ve found that bears are more effective protectors of the People as a whole bear. They tend to lose some essential guarding qualities when you separate the head from the rest of the body.”
This earned a titter around the table, but it was hushed and hurried, and every face carefully then assumed a disinterested expression. The studiousness with which the villagers avoided turning in the direction of the large figure caused Aryn to take note of anything that may be important. The figure was that of a man, the shape of a large axe head slung over his left shoulder could be made out in the gloom, and the figure stood in a pose that suggested he expected combat at any moment. Aryn had become familiar with such affectations among young Storm Dancers desiring to become warriors, but as the man turned to spit into the fire, Aryn caught a glimpse of a scarred, hawk-nosed face that had indeed seen battle before. “Do you not recognize the skull, wandering man?” the warrior now asked Aryn, his sneer invisible in the night but obvious in his voice.
Aryn made a show of allowing his eyes to travel slowly up the pole and linger on the skull thrust so far into the stars, though still illuminated by the fire below. This skull had been painted with a variety of cryptic symbols. At last Aryn said, “Not particularly. What does it do?”
The warrior produced a bark that may have been a laugh. “Why, it spreads overwhelming fear in the hearts of our Enemies,” he said. “Those who see it know immediately that the village and People beneath it are under the protection of Tryon Blackfeather and his Storm Dancers. They would never dare to attack us while we sleep beneath such a symbol.”
Aryn nodded and pulled again from the wineskin. The mention of the Storm Dancers, and Tryon’s name in particular, this far from where he had last seen them, had filled him with an inexplicable dread, but he struggled not to show it, to remain light-hearted while learning more. “Then I thank you for explaining it to me. I will be sure to gather the appropriate amount of fear in the morning, when I can see it better.”
“How did you lose your eye, wanderer from the North Wind?” the large one asked abruptly.
Aryn hesitated, displeased with the direction this was going. He tried to steer the conversation away from himself. “So all one needs to strike fear in the heart of an enemy is to hoist a perfectly good bear’s head up a pole? I am surprised I haven’t seen more of them than this one.”
A greybeard with the years of sun and salt carved into his cheeks said slowly, “Well, no. It’s no good you putting it up yourself. The Storm Dancers, they come and protect you, and then they put up this symbol to show you are protected. You can’t just do it yourself…” He was obviously well into the wine bag by this point, but it was the cold looks and mutters of his fellows, not a spinning head, that caused him to trail off into silence.
Aryn recognized the reluctance of the People of Shelf to speak about the strange pole, but he had one pressing question. Carefully, he asked, “From what enemies are you in need of protection?”
Wianja forced a laugh. “Please, you are our guest, do not concern yourself with our troubles. And we do not have troubles. We have the Storm Dancers; they will protect us, in return for so little…” she stopped again and this time dared to glance at the large warrior still motionless at the other end of the table.
“In return for?” prompted Aryn, unable to resist.
Wianja shook her head. “There is no price. There is only opportunity. Many of our young men and women yearn for adventure, for more than they will ever experience on the fishing boats. And we always have plenty of food and provisions, and are happy to share our good fortunes. We would share our food, and our youth would seek out the glories of war even if the Storm Dancers did not so generously assume the responsibilities of our defense.” She smiled sadly at Aryn and wordlessly handed him a full wine skin.
It was the same young woman who had first asked him what he searched for who broke the tense silence that followed. Her long chestnut hair was streaked with blonde from the sun, her full lips were twisted into a grin, and a mischievous sparkle was reflected in her eyes from the fire light. “I want to hear more about your eye. How did you lose it?”
Aryn decided to avoid any further suspicion by changing his inquiries into flirtations, a decision made much easier by the effects of shadow and firelight dancing along her supple figure clearly defined by the cut of her tunic. “I may have lost an eye, my sweet, but I have been compensated for it in other ways.”
She looked him over with appraising eyes. “I would be interested in exploring how,” she said softly.
AAAA
Aryn woke before dawn, when the sky was the color of steel and the air tasted the same. He found himself between the hulls of two beached fishing canoes, and untangled his limbs from those of the young woman, being careful not to wake her. He wanted to leave before she woke up, and without attracting any attention.
He packed quickly and quietly, and was among the foothills before the sun crested the ridgeline to the east. His original plans to spend a few days among the People of this village had dissipated over the course of the night. The presence of the bear skull was an oppressive weight on his soul that grew heavier the longer he stayed there, as thoughts of what the “protection” of Tryon meant these days, and so far from home. Aryn had kept up his end of the bargain, singing the old songs and regaling them with tales of his own adventures during his journeys throughout the night, but the smile he wore was forced, the light and cheerful air difficult to maintain. The People of Shelf were far from suffering; indeed, they demonstrated every indication of a happy and well-off tribe, and the only sign of war besides the skull itself was the large warrior, apparently another long term guest of Shelf from the Storm Dancers who had remained behind after the army came through to act as a liaison. This warrior had watched Aryn carefully throughout the night; the two men never spoke to each other again, but it was clear the warrior would track his every movement for as long as Aryn remained in the village. From the shadows, the warrior stared at Aryn with eyes that seemed to bore into his mind and read the questions swirling there: Why would Tryon bring the Storm Dancers this far from home? If they have such an influence this far south, what must it be like in my own lands? But if the warrior could indeed read these thoughts of Aryn’s, he did not provide the courtesy of an answer.
Aryn needed to know more. Since he had first broken through the thicket above Shelf and seen the bear skull, all the concerns and fears he had left behind three years ago had slowly been returning. He did not know what Tryon was doing, or why, or why it filled him with dread, but he knew now that it was something he needed to confront. To return to his aimless wanderings now would be irresponsible at least, if not cowardly. He carried a nameless certainty that the bear skull was more than a symbol of the Storm Dancers; it was the lightening rod that would bring catastrophe to the People.
He had walked for the last three years as a man in a dream, and had learned many things, but he now had a duty. He needed to learn more. He decided to head north, back to his own lands, along the way visiting as many settlements and tribes as possible to gain a sense of what had been happening during his absence. Aryn climbed into the mountains, keeping his left shoulder to the ocean.
He moved quickly, and with a purpose, and over the next few months learned that his premonitions had a basis. The farther north he travelled, he could almost taste the rising tension in the air of each settlement he stopped at. The wear of weapons and soon armor on a regular basis became more and more common. The permanent settlements increasingly fenced themselves off from the outside with higher and thicker timber walls, and eventually Aryn was even discovering nomadic tribes who erected palisades surrounding their camps each time they stopped. The farther north he travelled, the less welcoming were his hosts; indeed, some became hostile and would not allow him to stay the night.
Aryn could never discover who the enemies were that required such extreme measures, but each tribe was certain that their defensive efforts were necessary. Tales of the Easterners were abundant, and dredged up for Aryn painful memories of his own tribe and family, but the stories were told as if they had just occurred last week. At first concerned that the Easterners had reappeared, Aryn sought any example more recent than his own experiences battling the strange warriors from the plains, but found none. The last known sighting of an Easterner had been during the period when Aryn had hunted for the Storm Dancers themselves. Aryn then tried to discover if the tribes had fell to warfare between each other, but again could find no one who would provide any recent examples. In fact, if there was one positive outcome to Tryon’s consolidation of power, it was that the occasional skirmishes and battles that erupted between tribes over various issues such as hunting grounds or inheritances had become a thing of the past. Whether that was because the “protection” of the Storm Dancers had unified the People to the point that such disagreements never erupted into violence or because the rapid arming of every tribe had raised the stakes far beyond what the People had known before was uncertain. What Aryn was sure of was that if two tribes drew steel on each other now, the results would be a tragedy.
Three moons after he had left the village of Shelf, when the sun rose earlier and sank later, and the heat became a wet blanket that wrapped his limbs, Aryn recognized Wolftooth peak rising from the hazy horizon. He reached the fork in the river below the peak where more than three years earlier he had walked away from the Storm Dancers, but no longer recognized the land. The camp that Tryon’s warriors had erected on the plain was long gone, but the hill where Qodash had been laid to rest bristled with palisades and wooden towers, from behind which rose a stone tower, taller than Aryn had ever seen even among the largest farming villages. Around the base of the hill, washing like a tide against the outer wooden wall, were shelters of stone and timber: permanent homes, but without the fields of crops surrounding them that Aryn would have expected from such a village. Watching from a wooden copse on the other side of the river, Aryn saw children and elderly, but very few. Most of the People that milled about the shelters were armed men and women of fighting age and health. Had Aryn not seen the bear skulls and warriors claiming Storm Dancer allegiance in every village for three months’ journey, he could believe that the war party Tryon had gathered three years ago had never left.
His heart raced. If Tryon was anywhere, he would be here. The one-eyed man did not know how Tryon would receive him; the experiences during his journey northwards to this place had taught him to take caution, for Tryon’s followers were extremely loyal, and stories he had heard in the villages and camps told him that Tryon had a heavy hand. Aryn imagined that the warriors in this village would know full well where Tryon was, but he did not know if they would tell him. There was only one way to find out.
Aryn did not want to give any reason for suspicion, and crossed the river in broad daylight with easy, noisy strokes. Four warriors were waiting for him on the opposite bank, but they kept their distance and waited in silence as he emerged, brushed the water from his skin and dressed, and collected his bundle. Only then did one approach him, a youngster who may have seen sixteen winters who swaggered forward with the confidence of his youth. The young man gave Aryn a cautious smile. “Greetings, swimmer,” he said airily. “What brings you to Tal Storm?”
Aryn fell back on his customary introduction. “An empty belly and a lonely heart. I have spent many moons walking by myself, and crave the company of others, and perhaps a morsel of food. I know many of the old songs, and the old ways of healing, have you any in need.”
The youth’s smile wavered a bit but snapped back into place. “Of course you are welcome, although I must admit I am a little surprised. I had not thought the Roamers would condescend to accept our hospitality.”
Aryn’s smile broadened and he shrugged. “That may be, but it is between you and the Roamers. I’m just a hunter; my name is Daric Stonewing, of the Sky Horse tribe. A thirst for adventure has driven me to wander, and I will be glad to tell you of what I have found over a hot meal and a mouthful of wine.”
At the mention of adventure, the young man positively beamed and slapped his shoulder in a friendly fashion. The youth took Aryn’s arm and led him to the other three warriors, who all gave their names and tribes and received that of Daric Stonewing of the Sky Horse. The little band then made their way to the village.
To Aryn’s disappointment, they did not enter the palisades, but stopped at a stone and timber structure outside of the walls. This building was larger than the others and many loud voices could be heard laughing and arguing inside of it. Stepping past the bearskin curtain into the haze of smoke and body heat, Aryn’s guess was proved correct: it was a warrior’s feast hall, and he had arrived just as the meat was coming off the spits. Guided by his hosts, Aryn pushed his way onto a bench along one wall and had a large clay jar placed in his hands. He made a great show of taking a deep draught of the sweetly sour wine, but was careful to draw only enough into his mouth to scent his breath.
He was introduced to his immediate neighbors, all men and women of strong limbs and sword-calloused hands. Food and wine were pushed generously upon him, and the warriors did not pry too much into his personal history, even though Aryn was at first discomfited to learn that a few in the feast hall were from the southern lands and knew the Sky Horse tribe. These southerners accepted his introduction with as little comment as the rest, and fortunately did not ask after family, for Aryn could not remember a single name from the small tribe he had visited years ago. The talk was the same that could be found in any gathering of resting warriors: very little was of personal pasts, the future was as distant and fanciful as a poorly recalled dream…instead, it was the now in which these men and women reveled, boasted, joked, and hurled the challenges and jeers that only a friendship deeper than family can breed. Aryn sat among them eating, drinking, and responding with careful smiles when one fighter or another sought to bring him into a conversation, but little was asked of him, and his initial offer of songs or healing in payment for the meal seemed to have been forgotten.
As the flow of food passed around the hall began to taper off and the wine jars became more prevalent, the youth who had first brought Aryn from the river made his way through the crowd to find a place on the bench next to the one-eyed hunter and threw a casual arm over the latter’s shoulders. His mouth was slack and his eyes heavy with wine; Aryn doubted the young man had had much experience with wine before coming to Tal Storm. “So yer looking for adventure?” cried out the youth drunkenly over the dull roar of the hall.
Aryn shrugged the question and the young man’s arm off nonchalantly. “I suppose I am at that,” he said.
The youth prodded him with an index finger, using the appendage to punctuate his remarks. “Then ye’ve come t’ the right place. Tha’s the same ‘s brought me t’ the Dancers. Good. Fine. What can y’ do?”
Aryn was at a loss for an answer, but was keenly aware that a growing radius of quiet caused by listening ears pretending not to eavesdrop was spreading out from his bench. The effect caused his voice to sound louder than it had since he had first entered the hall as he groped for the answer he thought the young man was looking for. “I can swing a sword and throw a spear. I can hunt, and track well enough. I… I don’t know… I know healing plants…” He stopped as he heard his own words and how pathetic they sounded, trying to sum up his being, justify his existence to a besotted youngster he neither knew nor particularly liked.
But the young man didn’t seem to notice his discomfort, or the stumbling answer. He nodded solemnly with the wisdom of wine and treated Aryn to a final poke of the finger. “Not problem. We’ll teach ya.” And he rose unsteadily, bellowed to a comrade for more wine, and pushed away through the crowd.
Aryn hadn’t time to consider what the youngster may have meant before the recently unoccupied seat was filled by another warrior, a thick woman with a few grey streaks in her raven hair and clear, intelligent eyes. “Don’t mind him, of course,” she said in a surprisingly high voice. “But he is right. You don’t need to know how to fight when you first come to us, just be willing to learn.” She looked hard at his face, and Aryn felt the hairs on the back of his neck rise in danger. “Is that why you came here, though? Lawin is only making that assumption.”
Aryn felt it would be a mistake to lie to this woman, but could think of nothing else. He shrugged, saying nothing.
The woman continued to stare at him, assessing him. “Did you just wander here by accident? From the Sky Horse lands, of course?” She spoke the words “Sky Horse” carefully, as if not wanting to upset something fragile.
Aryn saw a way out. “Yes, I… I came upon the river and saw your settlement. I thought I could look in for a bite to eat, and I am grateful—“
She cut him off with a sharp lift of her chin, never taking her eyes off his face. “So you had no idea what this place is? Who the Storm Dancers are?”
Aryn knew he was walking into a trap. The listening ears of the hall weren’t even pretending not to eavesdrop any longer; a circle of attentive warriors had formed around the pair on the bench. He cleared his throat. “Of course I have heard of the Storm Dancers. They…that is, you… are the warriors of the People that protect the tribes.” He allowed himself a glance about the circle to gauge their reactions; there seemed to be none.
The woman nodded. “That is what they say. Do you believe it?”
Aryn felt his breath catch in his throat. There did seem to be a lot of warriors, their weaponry casually scattered about the hall but within easy reach, and few of them seemed as drunk and unsteady as the young Lawin had. He tried to plan a route to the door but could not see through the crowd of legs from where he sat.
The woman did not wait for him to answer. “You must have been gone from your tribe long enough to have lost your dialect; you’ve picked up the speech of the Four Winds. I’ll pass on some news to you from ‘home’: the Sky Horse chieftain and his council were evil men, committed to causing trouble and corrupting the tribes around them. The Storm Dancers were asked to protect the land, and we bridled the Horse in a full day of fighting. They are subdued now, but I find it odd that a hunter from the Sky Horse would so soon afterwards desire to join the war party with whom his tribe had just traded spears. And if you are not from the Sky Horse tribe, ‘Daric’, I find it even more odd that you would lie about your name.” She stood suddenly, and though the hilt of her sword remained untouched she stood so that Aryn would notice that she was still armed. “You have had a good meal and enjoyed our hall. We are here to serve the People. But it is time for you to leave. We are not cruel, so we do not want to hear your true reason for being here. Just continue wandering, One-Eye, and do not ever again try whatever it is you were attempting this day.”
Aryn rose slowly, looked into the faces of those surrounding him, and bent to retrieve his bundle from beneath the bench. He walked to the door, and the silent crowd parted to give him passage. At the far end of the hall Aryn heard someone vomiting and the thought that the young Lawin had finally had enough flashed through his mind. As he pushed aside the bearskin and breathed the cool night air beyond a hand gripped his arm like iron, causing his heart to leap. It was an older, short man with a beard who detained him, and now leaned towards him to hiss, “Be careful, wanderer, be very careful in Storm Dancer lands. I would suggest you wander very, very far.” The old man winked without mirth and released him. Aryn stepped out into the night.
Chapter Nine
The deep dark forest looming on the opposite side of Tal Storm from the river welcomed him back into her hushed, protecting shadows. He sank into the cool depths of tree and thicket, breathing deeply the wet loamy air, allowing the greeting songs of cricket and frog to sooth his tumultuous thoughts. He had failed. The news of the strange one-eyed wanderer at the warrior’s feast hall would no doubt make its way to Tryon, and though Aryn did not know what his former tribesman would do with the realization that Aryn Steelshaft had entered his stronghold under a false name, he was positive the war-chief would make preparations for a future meeting. Tryon could not possibly know what Aryn’s purpose was: Aryn did not know himself. What Aryn needed was an explanation from Tryon himself. For the past few months Aryn had searched his own mind for some kind of judgment of Tryon’s actions, searching for some kind of certainty in this age of who was “right” and who was “wrong”. With such a judgment, Aryn could choose sides; even choosing to ally with the “wrong” side would be an act of certainty, of control over his environment. But there didn’t seem to be any sides. The bear skulls, the armed camps, the Dancer warriors left behind at each tribe as “watchers”, all created an atmosphere of barely restrained tension, a cloud of immense and impending violence that dwarfed any sense of doom Aryn could remember even from those frenzied, bitter, terrifying years of clashes with the Easterners. All of this told his heart that there was something terrible at work among the People, some growing tendrils of disaster that crept through the darkest corners of shelters, that wrapped itself around the eyes and mouths of the People so that it twisted their words and their perceptions, and smoldered away any chance for trust or love between the tribes. But had this anything to do with Tryon’s Storm Dancers? Were they the cause or a result of this lowering destiny, this understood but not yet fulfilled promise of blood and moans? Or had nothing more than Aryn himself changed, in growing to man’s senses, in having removed himself from their world for so long he was now returning with a fresh look at his fellow creatures, now unable to come to those conclusions born of a child’s desires and expectations? It was true that such a thing as a single war-chief had never in the memory of the People swayed such a large war-party, nor “defended” so many various tribes across such a vast region, and certainly no war-party had remained intact for so many years with no combat to justify leaving traps, fishing nets, crops, or game unattended. But Tryon, instead of being the cause of these dark premonitions Aryn felt may have noticed them as well and had mobilized the Storm Dancers to stave off the unknown nightmares.
Aryn found a vantage point on a rock outcropping along the flank of Wolftooth Peak where he could survey the tower of Tal Storm rising from the glow of fires and lamps lit against the darkness of night. He did not understand the meaning of this tower, why it had to be, and why it caused the same unnamed dread as the bear skulls he had gazed upon in far flung tribes. But there was nothing fiendish or unnatural in it. It had been built by the People, his People, for reasons of their own. The earth sighed beneath it, the wind caressed it briefly during its unending travels, and the moon gazed upon it for tonight, as it would the next night, the night after, and forever on as long as the tower stood; just as the earth and wind and moon had accepted Qodash’s funeral pyre on that same spot three years ago, and thousands of hunter camps generations before that, and the gleaming mountains the Ancient Ones had built before that, and so on and so on. The earth, wind, moon, sun, would accept what things the People placed on that hill for as long as the People wanted them there, because the cycle would simply continue. Whatever Aryn’s misgivings and premonitions may be, they concerned only that energetic drama acted out in a small corner of a vast stage by a miniscule handful of an enormous sea of actors, a background act unnoticed by the rest of the cast. In this he found comfort, and rolling himself in his cloak he gave himself up to sleep.
It was thus in his dreams that he first heard it. He was pacing the old path that led to Torell’s strange tree-home, but the path rolled out beneath his feet in such a way that the tree-home was never any nearer, when he noticed that the susurration of the surrounding elms had shifted in tone, was now in some way sounding like his own name. A hawk cried from above, and again Aryn heard in the sound his name. The chattering of the creek to his left began to resolve itself into intelligible words: “Aryn, Aryn, Aryn Steelshaft”. The dream-Aryn found himself sitting down, then stretching out full length on the path. Dark night crept rapidly over the scene.
The dream was so vivid that he was unsure where the boundary between sleep and wakefulness lay; Aryn realized slowly that though he still lay stretched out on his back, his cloak was about him and the path was replaced by the granite of the outcrop. The wind still sighed his name, and among the trees Aryn could hear the teeming life of a night-time forest murmuring the same. He flung the dew-bedrenched cloak from his body, shaking his head vigorously to clear it. It was the stillest time of night, just before the first glow in the east would herald the coming dawn. He stood to shake his limbs in the chilly pre-dawn air and awake fully, but sense that he was being called grew stronger rather than dissipated with the rest of the dream. An urge was upon him to move, to find the source of an unnamed desire that he somehow knew lay at the top of Wolftooth Peak. The forest was not as still as it should have been, it was alive with this throbbing urgency for his attention. Still somewhat confused by what was happening, he rolled his bundle quickly, took spear in hand and plunged up the cliff.
He reached the summit just as the eastern sky was washing the night to greys and purples. He had never actually been atop the jagged peak of Wolftooth before, and found it topped with the pointed, upstanding boulders that had given the peak its name. Up into the wheeling stars stretched the enormous granite points, dark fangs that tore into the pre-dawn sky, but in the gap between two such boulders a haze of gold glowed as if presaging the sun that was to rise. It was a campfire, behind the coals of which Aryn could make out a figure kneeling in the shadows. Swinging his spear to keep its steel head between himself and the apparition, the hunter advanced on silent feet, keeping his senses alert for surprises.
He was not prepared for the surprise that came. A voice drifted to him on the cool morning breeze from a past that was to Aryn now a different life lived on a different world: “You don’t need that spear, Aryn Steelshaft,” said Lorness Greentree.
AAAA
