The Riddle - Alison Croggon [132]
“In summer they use horses, which they steal from us. No Pilani clan goes out unarmed these days. But the winter settlements have rich stores, and if the Jussacks could conquer them, they could rid Zmarkan of all the Pilani peoples. They have tried more than once, but the Howes are strong. They will not rest until the Pilani are driven from the face of the earth.
“The Howes used to have only one gate, and that one was always open. Not anymore. Jussacks use sleds, and they are a danger in winter as well as summer. But we are stronger than they realize, and we are stubborn.” Dharin grinned, his teeth gleaming through the shade of his hood. “They will not defeat us.”
AFTER they left Tlon, their course changed, bearing more directly north. That night, as they crouched inside their tent, which shuddered under the pressure of the wind, Dharin explained that the Arkiadera Plains, which stretched over all Zmarkan, here met their northern border. “From now on, we will be journeying through Hramask, and we soon reach places where the snow never melts,” he said. “But no one lives in the center, as it is too harsh; the Hramask peoples all live on the coast.”
“Are we nearing the Winterking’s realm, then?” said Maerad.
“No. We are moving away from it,” Dharin said. “He rules the northeast, it is said. Well, there are those who say that the Winterking’s stronghold does not exist, even if it once did. But whether it does or no, no Pilani willingly travels far northeast.”
Maerad pondered this. “So who rules the northwest, then?” she asked.
“No one. Or no one that I ever heard of,” Dharin said. “The snow and ice is its own master.”
Maerad tried to recall what she had been told of the Winterking. His name, she remembered, was Arkan, and like Ardina he was a powerful Elidhu. He had been Ardina’s adversary during the Elemental Wars, long ages before, and he had allied himself with the Nameless One to crush the Light, which had led to the Great Silence. The ice creatures, the iriduguls, had been his creations, and also the stormdogs. Even his emissaries were more fearsome than almost anything she had seen.
“What do you know of the Winterking, Dharin?” she asked at last.
“Oh, he is but a legend to the Pilani peoples,” he said. “Though some say he is worshiped by the Jussacks, and their persecution of us is his revenge. For it is said we helped to cast him down after the Great Cold, when the Iron King, him you call the Nameless One, covered all this world in terror and darkness. Then he was bound to remain beyond the Ice Sea, in the far north, and was not permitted to dwell in his stronghold, the Arkan-da, near the Idrom Unt, those mountains that you Annarens call the Osidh Nak.”
Maerad nodded. “And the Arkan-da is to the east, then?” she said, trying to get her bearings. “Well, I am glad if that means we are traveling away from the Winterking. The farther I am from him, the better I feel.”
This was not strictly true: Maerad still felt a cold will pressing on her mind. She automatically shielded herself against it as soon as she woke up, and kept a private vigilance for any sign of the Winterking’s creatures. But Dharin’s words comforted her all the same.
Over the next few days the wind fell away, leaving behind it cold blue skies, and Maerad was able to see that the landscape was at last beginning to change. To their right, in the distance, she could see the ghostly outlines of mountains, and they began to strike little woods of spruce and firs, startlingly green against the snow. The land here was hilly rather than mountainous, with more pitfalls for the unwary driver: stumps of dead trees, or lichened rocks that jutted out of the snow. Dharin drove with greater caution and Maerad took the reins only when she could clearly see the way ahead.
Six days from Tlon, they came over a huge ridge, sparsely dotted with firs, and saw before them a wide expanse of ice more than a league wide that filled the valleys between the white hills. Dharin