Candlemas huffed. "Obviously your maids don't tell you everything, like my stable hands tell me."
Sysquemalyn idly moved the toe of her boot to point at some grain that still lay on the floor. The under-wizard hurried over and scooped it up into a small crock, which the redhead casually took from his hands. "So our bet is on?"
"Yes, yes." Candlemas agreed dismissively. Something was wrong with this wager. It never paid to let someone else set all the terms. But the reminder of the blight had distracted him. What should he do first?
"Fine. I won't be bored for a few days, anyway." Sysquemalyn walked toward the door. "I'll send up a maid with your midday meal. Bellstar, perhaps. She likes hairy men. You can eat the food or have the maid, for all I care."
As she passed the window, she pitched the crock of wheat out, as if dismissing the problem.
Candlemas's shout of dismay went unheard.
Sunbright jumped as a crash sounded a hundred feet down the gorge. He crouched, wary, but no more sounds followed.
Trying to watch everywhere at once, padding silently, nocked bow in his hand, sword at his back, the barbarian moved toward the sound. It took a while to locate the source, and it only confused him.
A redware crock had shattered on the rocks. Scattered among the shards were grains of blighted wheat.
Hunkering between two rhododendron bushes, he craned his neck upward. High overhead, half a league, was the squarish black blotch of Delia, the castle in the sky from whence Lady Polaris and her minions ruled. They dumped dishwater and sewage and garbage on the peasants below, Sunbright knew. But crocks of wheat he'd never heard of.
He watched the castle curiously, waiting for more. The huge structure drifted over the land much like a cloud, though often against the wind. Sometimes in summer it roamed so far north the tundra barbarians saw it. It was said, by old slaves returned from the castle, that the archmage of Delia ruled all she could see, and since the castle drifted a mile or more high, that was a lot of land. But it was still only a tiny fraction of the Netheril Empire, and Sunbright's people's land was the tiniest fragment of that fraction.
And now the young man didn't have even that, just a leaf-strewn hollow under thornbushes. But, more to be stubborn than for any other reason, he'd guard that patch of ground as boldly as a knight would his liege lord's castle.
And with that thought, he peered around at his surroundings once more, then crawled in for some sleep, reciting prayers to various gods, both thanks for deliverance and appeals for the future. He'd need all the help he could get, for he'd have more adventures tomorrow, if night beasts and fiends and dreams didn't carry him away.
Chapter 2
Sunbright dreamed, and in his dreams he relived his entire life.
He saw his clan, the Ravens, trekking across the vast and unending tundra, a herd of reindeer driven before them by dogs more savage than snow wolves. He saw their life as a vast circle, moving season by season from place to place by ancient routes and ancient tradition: cutting through ice for seals in winter, craning from weirs to spear salmon in spring, crawling across a plain of brown skull-like rocks to flush ptarmigan in summer, slipping through cedar forests to shoot moose and elk in fall. And then watching the first snow fall, and steering gradually for the ice that hadn't yet formed, but would, as it had for centuries.
He recalled his mother Monkberry, strong but silent and shamed, for she had borne only one child. And his father, Sevenhaunt, a mighty warrior and shaman, returning to the tribe with yellow scalps when the tribe made war.
He saw his mother splicing rawhide reins for dog sleds and braiding her own hair for arrow strings, heard his father discoursing to the men long into the night, citing the old wisdom and his shaman's visions that helped guide the tribe to safety year by year.
Then had come the bad times. His father collapsing, wheezing like a speared seal, so weak he had to be carried to his bed where he lay day after day, sweating and chilled under six musk-ox pelts, wasting away until he died from a curse no one could name. His mother, tamping down the moss on her husband's grave, then lifting his great sword Harvester of Blood in one hand to hang over the door of their yurt, so her husband's spirit might continue to guard his family. For Harvester was a steel sword, the only one among the tribe's arsenal of bronze and iron, won by Sunbright's father in the distant past from a source he would never reveal. And being a mighty sword, and well-nigh unbreakable, the boy could believe something of his father's spirit lived in it.
Sunbright saw himself in his dream, a skinny lad with hair so blond it looked white, reaching for the sword month by month, measuring his height until he was tall enough to cut his finger on the blade and so share his father's blood, then tall enough to take Harvester down and practice with it, though it hadn't yet been granted to him.
He saw himself besting the other boys and girls in combat with swords sheathed in reindeer hide, being first the best fighter in the Raven clan, then the best among all the youths of the Rengarth tribe. He relived the night by the ritual fire, the flames heaped with all his childhood possessions and clothes, and the scalp of an enemy, a hated Angardt tribesman killed by his own hand. At this final test of manhood his mother had granted him his father's sword, Harvester of Blood, and gave him a new name. No longer would he be called Mikkl, for "Scrawny One," but Sunbright Steelshanks, for his hair so bright and legs so sturdy that he could outrun everyone in the tribe, youths and adults alike.
That had been a year ago, but only seconds in dream time, for the past was always with him, as was the scowling face of Owldark, the tribe's new shaman, given to fits of rage when his head throbbed so mightily his eyes bulged and his face turned as red as a sunset. Owldark, who'd watched the boy with envy and hatred, who sensed the youth's shamanism, mighty like that of his father, Sevenhaunt. Owldark, who cried one night that he'd seen a vision of Sunbright standing over the tribe with a bloody sword in hand, fire and smoke filling the horizon, even the livestock slaughtered, and Sunbright the cause of the destruction. How the village elders had conferred then, smoking rank sumac leaves and red willow bark day and night, arguing whether Sunbright should be killed outright or sacrificed to the gods, for Owldark's prophecies always came true.
And so had come the night, only six past, when Monkberry had awakened him, hissing, "They come! Take this and depart!" She kissed him and pushed him out a hole cut in the yurt's leather side, while she remained to face the council and their wolf-masked executioners.
For days Sunbright had fled over the tundra and, coming to the mountains, had crossed them and entered the lowlands. Friendless, clanless, miserable, a burning thirst for revenge was now his only companion.
He tossed in his sleep and would have cried out had not the need for silence been beaten into him during his early years. The pictures, the sights and smells of his people's lonely encampment on the gray, flat, unending tundra, rose and swirled and blurred together. Sounds of shouting, or wood crackling, or bones splintering grated in his ears, came closer, louder…
Sensing an enemy, Sunbright jerked upright.
But it was only a murder of crows, nine or more, winging low over the gorge, cawing and croaking and carrying on.
But a flight of disturbed crows often meant something on the move, and so the barbarian, still sitting, nocked an arrow and waited. And more came. From the south, where the gorge followed a jut of the Barren Mountains and scrub forest continued, a badger scuttled to the top of a flat rock, boldly sniffed the air in front and behind it, then slid around the rock and out of sight. Two snakes, intertwining, spilled over the edge, into holes and out of them, still traveling, a very odd thing. Even an owl winged from the forest, silently, and sought another patch of shadow in which to hide.