The Towers of the Sunset - L. E. Modesitt [78]
Traaa . . .
The horn echoes from the road guards below. Several of them point uphill in his direction.
Creslin? He can feel no speaker nor see one, and the voice is so faint that he cannot tell for sure whether it belongs to a man or a woman. If he had to guess, he would say a woman, if only for the feel of his name.
Traaa . . . traaa . . . More riders point to the hillside, and the vulcrow banks in his direction.
Creslin peers overhead in time to see a wide-winged white bird vanish in the midst of a patch of clear blue. Megaera!
“Darkness . . .” he mumbles. “Now what?”
An unseen mist of white is beginning to climb up the hillside, and a dozen of the road soldiers are turning their mounts toward his scrub oak. If it weren’t for the wizard . . .
Creslin shrugs. His legs ache; his stomach is filled with greenery and berries; and he has a walking stick and a belt knife that he scrounged in a town east of Jellico.
Ignoring the feeling that tells him he will pay dearly for the effort, he reaches for the winds, the upper winds that strike the Roof of the World. Under the trembling yellow oak leaves, his forehead breaks out in sweat.
. . . wwwhhhsss . . .
The winds sound as though they are hundreds of kays away, distant echoes in the skies.
“Find him! He’s trying to call some magic!”
Creslin ignores the squeaky voice from below.
“. . . more to your right! Toward those yellow leaves!”
The white mist surges uphill.
“. . . can’t see anything here.”
“. . . hope the frigger doesn’t have a bow.”
The roaring in Creslin’s ears increases as the skies turn from mixed clouds into ever-darkening black swirls.
“Find him! Under the yellow trees!”
. . . wwwhhstt . . .
“. . . which yellow trees? All the damned trees are yellow.”
“. . . that one! Over there!”
Darkness falls like night on the hillside with the screaming of the winter storms off the Roof of the World. Mixed ice and rain plummet from the towers of the sunset like frozen fire, and the winds . . .
. . . the winds lash the yellow leaves off the branches that shelter Creslin, off the scattered trees around the valley meadows. The winds scour the horsemen from their mounts with ice driven like arrows against armor and unprotected skin.
. . . whhheeeEEEhhh . . .
“. . . demons . . . demons.”
. . . wwwwhhhEEEEeee . . .
As the winds subside, the rains fall like the winter waves on the north coast of Spidlar, smashing against the sodden land, against the stripped trees.
On the hillside, a man staggers upright, wiping his forehead, which burns even under the cold torrents. He takes one step downhill, then another. He vomits the meager contents of his guts across a battered crawling evergreen.
Straightening, he staggers around a heap of white that was once man and horse; he slides then stumbles and lands farther downhill. Doggedly he picks himself up, totters onward toward the road below and the open pass into Montgren.
After what seems like a century, he lurches past another pair of white heaps. His head spins, but he stops and paws through a set of saddlebags, taking a small bag of provisions and a leather jacket. The whiteness of a blade twists at his stomach, and he leaves the weapon with its dead owner.
In time, his feet touch the hard clay that is already turning to ooze under the pounding of the skies.
“Megaera . . . why did you let them know? Why?”
He staggers on, lifting feet that weigh stones as the ice-rain falls around him. Though he notices not, little of the torrent strikes him, and after several years, or so it seems, he stands on the hard stones of the road through the hills.
The rain is endless—before him and behind him. His breath comes in gasps. With determination, he puts one foot in front of the other, ignoring the burning and the shuddering within as he steps toward Montgren . . . and Megaera.
XLVII
FROM HIS VANTAGE point on the narrow road that winds northeast toward Sligo, Klerris turns in the saddle to study the dark clouds to the north. The storm is only now beginning to subside after two days of pounding