As the dogsled approached, Brenna reached out and gripped Anton’s hand. He squeezed back, and so, hand in hand, they awaited the arrival of their discoverers.
The dogsled told her nothing. This time of year, it was the preferred method of travel, for Commoners, at least, between scattered villages, especially up here, where roads were nonexistent. The three figures on it, two riding, one driving, all heavily swathed in fur, revealed nothing more at first glance. She wished she had that much fur to wear; her own winter coat, which she had always thought so warm, had felt like a thin wrap in the airship and felt like nothing at all now they were standing on the windswept ice. Whoever they are, if they don’t help us, we’ll freeze to death, she thought.
Oddly enough, it was the dogs that gave her the first clue as to what sort of people were coming to meet them, and the realization made her squeeze Anton’s hand harder.
He turned to look at her. His eyebrows were rimed with ice and his cheeks as red as though they’d been scalded. “What is it?”
“The dogs,” Brenna said. “They’re wearing jewelry.”
It sounded absurd, put like that, but she didn’t know what else to call the collars set with bits of silver and glass and semiprecious stones that each dog wore. They made the animals’ necks sparkle as, tongues lolling, they raced toward them.
“So?” Anton said.
“Savages,” Brenna said, and then said nothing more, because then the dogsled was upon them, the driver shouting to the dogs to stop and pulling a lever that jammed spikes into the lake surface to slow the sled. It ground to a halt in a flurry of snow and ice chips, skidding sideways a little. Even before it quit moving, the two fur-swaddled men aboard it had hit the ice and raised the crossbows they carried.
“Minik,” Anton said under his breath, and then, raising his voice, said something in a language Brenna had never heard before, lilting and fluid, like the call of some wild forest songbird.
The crossbows lowered a little, the men’s faces, brown and shiny-smeared with some kind of grease as a protection against the cold, she realized-startled and puzzled.
The driver had jumped down from the back of the sled and came forward. The two other men stepped aside so he could stand between them. He gave Anton an appraising look, and said something in the same fluid tongue.
Anton frowned, then replied haltingly.
The man’s eyebrows lifted. He spoke to the other two men, who nodded and lowered their crossbows completely.
Then the man turned to Brenna. “I am High Raven, leader of the clan of the Three Rivers.” He spoke the common tongue flawlessly, his accent, though odd, easier to understand than Anton’s had been at first. “The boy says he is from Outside the Wall of Sorrows. This is a thing I find hard to believe, but we will test him to see if he tells truth. He says you are a great princess of the MageLords. Is this true?”
Brenna shot Anton a look. He blushed. “Not quite what I was trying to say, Chief High Raven.”
“I am not a Chief,” High Raven said. “I am a clan leader.” He regarded Brenna steadily. “Then you are not a great princess?”
“No,” Brenna said. “I’m a Commoner. But a MageLord has been my guardian.”
“Has been?”
“He is a monster,” Brenna said. “I escaped him.”
“In this.” High Raven indicated the airship, the blue silk stretched out across the ice like a giant snake, here and there rippling a little in the wind.
“Yes.”
“It is a thing of the Outside World,” Anton said. “It’s called an airship.”
High Raven turned and looked back at the shoreline, then at the setting sun. “We will have to hurry if I am to send men enough to bring this thing to the camp before darkness. Let us ride the sled together, and when we are warm around the fire in the longhouse tonight, you will tell me what I wish to know.”
A few minutes later Brenna found herself seated, more or less comfortably, on the flat wooden base of the sled. Anton sat on the other side, his back to her. High Raven sat on the end, his back to them both. One of the men had taken his place as driver; the other had remained with the airship as a guard.
The roar of the sled’s runners on the ice made it impossible to talk, which suited Brenna fine. She stared at High Raven’s broad-shouldered back. A savage. A savage chief… clan leader, whatever. How many Commoners had he killed, how many farms had he pillaged?
She pulled herself up short. She didn’t know he had done anything of the sort. But it was hard to think of him in any other light when all she had to go on were the many tales she had heard as a child of the Minik, the Savages of the North.
In most of those stories they were faceless villains, bloodthirsty denizens of the forests who emerged in the middle of the night to terrorize innocent villagers. Occasionally they were presented more like ghosts, elemental spirits that resented the creation of the Great Barrier and in the guise of men took their revenge. She did remember one story in which a young Commoner girl and a Minik boy made friends, but it had ended badly with the boy reverting to his bloodthirsty nature and a noble MageLord being forced to kill him to save the girl’s life-and more importantly, it was implied, her maidenhood.
None of those stories had prepared her to come face-to-face with one of the savages herself. Especially one that didn’t sound like a savage at all and spoke her language as well as she did.
And how did Anton know their language?
Well, she supposed she’d find out soon enough. And it wouldn’t do to assume that High Raven was a murderous, almost supernatural villain like the savages of the children’s stories.
No, that wouldn’t do at all.
The dogsled fairly flew over the ice, and in short order they reached solid ground… as opposed to solid water, she supposed. Frozen reeds sticking out of the ice crunched as they slid over them, then they bounced upon onto the bank and rushed into the forest, flying between tall pines on a barely-there track that the dogs seemed to know well.
Perhaps five minutes later they emerged from the trees into an open area dotted with huts, smoke rising from holes atop their dome-shaped roofs. A tall bluff, its exposed face a pebbly conglomerate, sheltered the camp from the north. A stream, frozen solid, wound along the south edge and bent around the bluff out of sight a short distance to the east.
Most of the huts were made of hides, shaped on a frame, but in the center of the camp rose something much larger and longer constructed of logs, caulked with clay and roofed with pine branches.
“You will wait in the longhouse as our guests,” High Raven said. “I must see to the retrieval of your…” he nodded at Anton, “airship.”
Brenna was glad, as the man who had been driving drew his crossbow and escorted them toward the longhouse, that High Raven had specified that they were guests. Otherwise she would have felt a great deal like a prisoner.
Inside, the longhouse felt deliciously warm. A fire burned in a pit at its center, fed a new log periodically by a toothless old woman who gave them a hard look as they were brought into the dim interior.
“Wait,” their guard said, and went out again. Brenna looked around. Large logs encircled the fireplace, obviously meant as benches, and she sat down on one. Anton sat beside her. The old woman moved to the far side of the fire.
“Why did you-” they both said at once, turning toward each other at the same instant, and Brenna, despite everything, laughed, Anton echoing her a moment later. The old woman leaned over to one side to get a better look at them around the fire, shook her head, then leaned back again… which for some reason only made them laugh louder.
The laughter died quickly. Anton, though, still smiled as he said, “You first.”
“Why did you call them Minik?” Brenna said. “How did you know that’s what they’re called?”
“Because I know many of them,” Anton said. “Back home, we call this the Wild Land, but it belongs to the Minik. The Union Republic has negotiated treaties allowing us to settle here and there. We conduct a lot of trade with them.”
“That’s why you know their language?”
Anton nodded. “When the Professor told me we were coming here, he made me learn their language. It’s only polite,” he said. Sadness briefly clouded his face, then he smiled a little. “I turned out to be a much better speaker than he was. He almost got us beaten up in an inn one night when he garbled a request for cheese toast.”
“What did he really ask for?” Brenna said.
Anton shook his head. “You don’t want to know. Now, my turn.” He met her gaze squarely. “Why did you call them savages?”
“It’s… what we call them,” Brenna said, and suddenly felt ashamed. They obviously weren’t savages. That was MageLord talk, treating everyone else as somehow lesser than themselves. Commoners, savages… all just subjects to be used and abused at will. “I’ve never actually seen one before. They were all driven out of the South when Evrenfels was established.”
“They have stories about those days, you know,” Anton said. “In the Outside, I mean. Stories of the day when ‘the sky exploded and the ground burned and the People died.’ And then stories about the sudden appearance, between sunset and dawn, of the Wall of Sorrows that separated friend from friend, clan from clan, family from family, children from parents.” Anton gazed into the fire. “The Professor made a study of those stories. He thought the Anomaly had some cosmic origin. ‘Who knows what strange forms of matter may exist out among the stars?’ he used to say to me. ‘Who can say what effect such strange matter would have should it contact the Earth?’” Anton shook his head. “But the truth turned out to be far stranger.”
Brenna had never thought about what the arrival of the MageLords must have meant to the savages-the Minik. One more black mark to set down against them. The more she learned about Falk and his ilk, the happier she was to be a Commoner.
They talked a little more, mostly in low voices, as they waited for High Raven to return. About an hour later, he did, with half a dozen other Minik in tow, three men and three women, gray-haired and wizened but hale. “These are those whose council I keep,” High Raven said. “They will listen with me and help me to make the wisest decision.”
“About what?” Brenna asked, tentatively.
“About your fate,” High Raven said without smiling. “Minik-na are not welcome here.”
“Minik-na?” Brenna said.
“Minik means People,” Anton said. “Minik-na means ‘not people.’” He shot her a look. “Or, you might say, savages.”
“Oh,” Brenna said in a small voice.
“But you are most unusual Minik-na,” High Raven said. “Were you grown men come to hunt our lands, you would already be food for the scavengers. But you are young, you have come in a most unusual device
… and this one,” he nodded at Anton, “speaks our language and claims to be from Outside the Wall of Sorrows.
“And so we will hear your stories. You will tell us the truth. I will talk with my councillors. And then I will decide what will be done with you.”
“We cannot ask for anything fairer than that,” Anton said quietly.
“Then let us begin.”
For the next hour, they talked. The Minik seemed interested enough in what Brenna had to say, but it was Anton’s claim that he had come from beyond the Barrier-the Wall of Sorrows-that really captured their interest. Brenna began to think that maybe everything would work out after all when Anton mentioned the name of a particular clan of the Minik and one of the old women cried out and leaned forward eagerly, wanting to hear more; for she came from the splinter of that clan that had been sundered from the rest when the Barrier had sprung into being. But Anton was unable to answer her furious queries in her own tongue about the families whose names her clan had kept fiercely alive for all these centuries, and she had sat back, scowling and frustrated
… taking a little bit of Brenna’s hopes with her.
“There is a thing I do not understand about your tale,” High Raven said to Brenna. “You say your guardian, this Lord Falk, stole Anton’s memories, and would twist his mind to make him falsely loyal. But when I lived among the Minik-na as a young man, I learned that among your Mageborn there are two kinds of magic, hard and soft. This Lord Falk is a wielder of the hard magic, but the delving and twisting of minds is a matter for those who wield the soft. How then could he do this?”
“He has help,” Brenna said bitterly. “Someone I thought was a Healer. Mother Northwind.”
The name had a peculiar effect on High Raven. He froze, very much like the bird that was his namesake, head cocked, hard black eyes studying her. “A Healer named North Wind?” he said at last.
“Mother Northwind, yes.” Brenna shuddered. “But she is no Healer. She’s as much of a monster as Falk.”
High Raven ignored that. “She will be looking for you, then?”
“I don’t know,” Brenna said. “Falk will be. As far as I know, she was just a… tool he was using.”
“Hmmm.” High Raven exchanged looks with the elders who had accompanied him. “We have heard enough,” he said. “We will discuss it. You will continue to wait here. There will be food, soon, for all. And I will tell you your fates before the day is done.”
With that, he got up and left the longhouse.
Brenna glanced at Anton for reassurance, but Anton, staring after the departing clan leader, seemed to have none to give.
Bucketing along in the horse-drawn carriage-apparently she didn’t rate a magecarriage-bearing her from Lord Falk’s demesne to the Palace, Mother Northwind felt a kind of… poke… in her mind. It was a sensation she had crafted to alert her when someone wished to speak to her via magelink.
The two men-at-arms accompanying her to the Palace were literally just inches away, their butts planted on the seat on the other side of the carriage wall, but they would never hear a thing through the noise of creaking wheels, pounding hooves, and rushing wind. She called up the magelink, expecting to see Vinthor or Goodwife Beth-who was neither good, a wife, nor named Beth, she thought with amusement-but instead seeing a face she had not seen in years and had not really ever expected to see again. Startled, she let the magic develop fully, so that her face would be visible, and her voice undisguised. Then, staring at the craggy brown visage, framed by long black hair drawn back in a ponytail, bluestones shining in its ears, she said, wonder in her voice, “High Raven?”
“Healer North Wind,” the Minik clan leader said. “Long has it been since we last spoke.”
“Long indeed. You left me with the impression that it would be the last time, too, as you withdrew into the wilderness. Yet I see you never discarded the magelink spellstone I left you with, should you change your mind.” She felt a spark of curiosity. “So why have you changed your mind?”
“I have two Minik-na in my camp,” High Raven said.
Mother Northwind frowned. “So?”
“They mentioned your name,” High Raven said. “They called you a monster.”
Mother Northwind’s mouth quirked. “Sounds like they know me, sure enough.” And then she sat up. “Two of them. Young? A boy and girl?”
“Yes,” High Raven said. “Brenna is the girl’s name, Anton’s the boy. They arrived in a… flying thing. I thought them MageLords and would have killed them on sight-except that the boy spoke to us in the True Tongue.”
“He’s from outside the Great… outside the Wall of Sorrows,” Mother Northwind said.
“So he says,” High Raven said. “And I find his claim credible.” She found his lined, impassive face as hard to read as it had been when she had last seen him, the day she had returned to the shore of the Great Lake to tell the clan that had preserved her life that the MageLord who had massacred their kin had died a fittingly horrible death. High Raven had been the new clan leader them, following the death of his father, who had set her free, but she had known him well for years. “Why did he call you a monster?”
“High Raven, I am a monster,” Mother Northwind said softly. “I can kill with a touch, twist the minds of men, steal their very souls.”
“You can also Heal.”
“I can also Heal,” Mother Northwind agreed. “And when I do the other, it is only in the hope that by so doing I can heal the damage done to the world by the MageLords and the Wall of Sorrows.” She leaned forward. “I am close, High Raven. Since I left you, I have been working toward the destruction of the Wall and the MageLords who built it, and I am very close now to success. The Minik here and beyond the Wall of Sorrows will be one people again, and the MageLords will be humbled. But I need that girl. I need Brenna, and I need her alive.”
High Raven studied her. Mother Northwind was surprised he had actually made use of the spellstone she had left with him. It would be sitting there now on the ground before him, probably, frosted and smoking, her face hanging in midair above it, a terrifying mystery if the Minik were the primitive savages the MageLords believed… but of course she had lived among them for far too long to believe they were either primitive or savage. They had no magic, that was all, but for the MageLords that alone was enough to render them something less than fully human, just like the Commoners.
“Send someone for her,” he said abruptly. “We are at the Camp of the Bear. You remember?”
She remembered it well; she’d wintered there four or five times when she’d lived with the clan. “I remember,” she said.
“Have them come north along the east shore of the lake,” High Raven went on. “They must bring a large sledge to carry away the flying thing, the airship. So that we may know them, have them carry a banner of blue… the blue of your eyes, North Wind.” Mother Northwind blinked at that. “If they do not do so, we will kill them as we would any other interlopers.”
“They will do so.”
High Raven studied her in silence for a long moment. “It is good to speak to you again, North Wind,” he said at last. “If you do as you say, and the Wall of Sorrows falls, perhaps we may yet meet once more in person.”
“Perhaps, High Raven,” said Mother Northwind.
The magelink vanished.
Mother Northwind gazed, eyes unfocused, into the empty space where it had been. Sometimes she wondered why no one in the south seemed to register the fact that Northwind was hardly a proper Mageborn name. It was, in fact, merely a translation into the common tongue of a Minik name, given to her by the people of High Raven’s clan when she had lived with them and served as their healer and midwife.
If I believed in omens, she thought, this would be a good one: that the very clan I once belonged to has found the Heir for me.
When did he notice my blue eyes? she thought a little wistfully, feeling for a moment like a girl a quarter her age.
And then, suddenly, she stiffened. But this changes everything! She had thought to let Lord Falk bring Brenna back to the Palace and somehow spirit her away from there before he could take her north to the Cauldron. But now she had, or soon would have, both Brenna and Karl. She had only to have Brenna taken to Goodwife Beth’s safe house. Verdsmitt was inside the Palace…
After twenty years, the pieces of her grand scheme were at last falling into place.
But they’d quickly fall out of place again if Falk found Brenna. She knew exactly how he meant to do that: knew that he would be calling on Tagaza to go to the Spellchamber and use the powerful spell created to locate the Heir.
Mother Northwind had always had a healthy respect for what the strongest MageLords could do with their hard magic, and so had laid emergency plans to disrupt the use of the Spellchamber.
It is time, she thought, to put those plans into effect. She smiled. And by destroying New Cabora City Hall… the guards on her carriage had told her of that, their news having come via the magelink that had also provided their orders… Lord Falk had even provided the perfect excuse for it, one that would have no one thinking that the timing was anything but coincidental when it stopped Tagaza from locating the true Heir.
And so she summoned one more magelink, and passed a brief message to the Commoner who answered… and thus, when she arrived at the Palace in the early morning light, she was not at all surprised to find all in confusion, the MageLords having just been forcibly reminded that they were not totally sufficient unto themselves; that they did, in fact, depend on the Commoners for many things, including stoking the great MageFurnace with the coal that other Commoners dug from under the rolling hills of the southeast.
Three Commoners and one Mageborn had died in the mayhem in the great chamber of the MageFurnace as water had poured onto the hot coals and flashed into scalding steam. A regrettable but acceptable price, Mother Northwind thought.
She felt certain High Raven would agree.
She allowed herself to be helped from the carriage and led to her sumptuous quarters not far from Falk’s own, hobbling along with her cane, a harmless and humble old woman.