Shadowlands (53 page)

Nik thought of Moon, and the computer monitors in Elaine’s office. “
Can
they write?”

Alejandro looked down at the wine in his glass. “Hawk can, if he were still alive.”

Nik’s mouth was suddenly dry, and somehow he knew the wine wasn’t going to help. “Yeah, but they wouldn’t trust what he’d said, would they? So they wouldn’t let him write anything.” The hope on Alejandro’s face was almost as painful to see as it was to feel. He reached out and tapped the watch. “If Valory were here, she could tell us what’s going on.”

“Ah, no, we did not make the Shadowlands. Not exactly.” Again there was a deep rumble of laughter in the Dwarf’s chest. “We make
things
, we Dwarves, objects, even doors, like the Rings and the Portals.
Places
we cannot make, that takes other skills, other talents. Though we did help to make the Shadowlands what they now are. So the Songs told, at least, and I am gratified to have it confirmed in so far as you can do so. These events took place so long ago that even the existence of the Songs that tell of them has been forgotten, the Singers who Sang them long gone, remembered only vaguely by some of us very Old Ones. And the Songs tell that the fixing of the Shadowlands in its place was not done by Dwarves and Trolls alone, but by all of the People, Riders, Solitaries, Naturals. All of us.”

We were in that strange sitting room, or study, Wolf leaning forward in his chair, his clasped hands hanging between his knees, me sipping on my chicken broth, taking advantage of the steadiness of my stomach. I thought about asking who I had to kill for a bacon and tomato sandwich, but I knew I shouldn’t risk it.

“I had always thought the Shadowlands to be exactly that,” Wolf said. “A
shadow
version of the Lands.”

Sheesh, I thought. No wonder humans weren’t very important to them. Who cares about the welfare of their shadow?

“Not at all,” Ice Tor was saying. “What we call the Shadowlands always existed, separately from the Lands. But the two, separate, were unstable. Together,” he moved his hands as if they were the plates on a scale.

“Yin and Yang,” I said. “A balance,” I added when they both looked at me. “Black and white, light and dark, male and female.”

“Exactly. Each anchors the other. Each contains some part of the other within it.”

“
Dra’aj
,” I said. “That’s why human
dra’aj
works differently for us.” I’d read some of this when he’d picked me up in his arms; I just hadn’t understood what I was seeing. “My world is like the foundation of a building. It was crumbling, and
dra’aj
was poured into it, like humans would pour cement, or put rebar in.” I thought about it. “So if we’re the foundation, is the Lands the building?”

The Dwarf waggled his massive finger at me. “Now you see the problem with trying to take an analogy too far.”

Ice Tor was grinning, but Wolf was frowning intently at his
clasped hands. “All this is very interesting, and I would love to hear more about the Songs that tell of these events, but we are here for another purpose.”

“Ah, yes, the Horn.” Ice Tor rose to his feet and led us through a doorway I hadn’t seen before into a different section of his home. Not that any of the doorways actually contained doors, I noticed. The new room looked much more like a workshop than the first one we’d passed through, though now that I looked more closely, the unfinished statue and the broken wheel were in here as well. It was more like the room itself had changed. There were tools and objects I thought I recognized from seeing them on television. Hammers and sledges, cutters, clamps, carving tools. Other things looked familiar, like the forge fire that glowed to one side, but I couldn’t have sworn to what they were.

Ice Tor went first to the shelves on the far side of the room, returning with what looked like a piece of tree branch in his hand. I saw, when he laid it on the table, a piece of a deer’s antler.
Horn
, I said to myself.

“Really?” I said aloud. “Just that simple?”

“Just that
symbol
,” he said, laughing the way punsters always do. I wrinkled my nose and stuck out my tongue in the approved manner of those receiving puns, and the Dwarf laughed louder. “Go on, touch it and tell me what you feel.”

Wolf put out his hand as if to stop me, but when I raised my eyes to look at him, he lowered his hand again.

“We’ve got to know,” I said, and he nodded, but his lips were pressed tightly together.

I laid the tips of my fingers on the piece of antler and, as I suspected, felt only the cool, slightly uneven surface of bone. I didn’t move my hand at all, I didn’t have to. This wasn’t a symbol anymore. It wasn’t anything.

“There’s nothing there,” I told them, lifting my hand away, and jumped back, startled, as the antler suddenly disappeared. It was like it had never been there in the first place. Even my fingers didn’t remember the feel of it.

“So you are right, Younger Brother. The Horn is no more, and another may be made.”

Ice Tor went to a clear area on a central bench, and began pulling
objects toward him, among them a hammer as long as my arm, and some tongs. Directly in front of him, he placed what looked like a mortar and pestle made of some pale gray stone.

“The more elements an object contains,” he said, sorting through a number of lids until he found one that would fit the mortar, “the stronger it is, the more often it can be used without wearing out or breaking.” He turned to look at us as he strapped on an apron. I was immediately reminded of Alejandro in the kitchen. “The first Horn had many elements, so many that, from what you tell me, it took the Dragon fire of the new High Prince to destroy it—that and the use to which it had been put.”

“It was used to summon the Hunt.” Wolf was clearly puzzled. He had pulled up a couple of high stools for us to sit on. Obviously, Ice Tor was used to having an audience. “What other use has it?”

“It gathers the Hunt, yes. And who holds it can lead them. But what use was then made of the Hunt by the Basilisk Prince?”

I could tell by the look on his face that Wolf wasn’t following, and I have to say I wasn’t in much better state. “But did he not use them to hunt?” Wolf said. “To find and kill his enemies?”

“Ah, but was that the true use of the
Horn
?” Ice Tor said. “Such a Horn is used to call, and to direct, as are the horns of war. Some say this Horn is older than the Hunt, some say it was originally conceived as a tool to control the Hunt. In either case, it was used to lead them to a place where they would not be a danger.”

Wolf looked at me, but I shook my head. “I can’t know,” I said. “Not without touching the Horn itself, or at least someone who’s touched it.”

“And no such person is available to us.” Ice Tor gestured with his tongs to underscore his point.

“Why was the Horn not used to destroy them?” Wolf was completely flummoxed. I had to admit, having seen them in action, that I agreed with him. Besides, locking an addict away somewhere, with no cure and no access to the drug they craved, didn’t strike me as the best kind of solution.

I was reminded once again that Riders—and perhaps the rest of the People—didn’t always think in humanitarian terms.

“That I cannot say. Some discord, perhaps, some disagreement? No record remains of the Horn’s use. It was lost for many Cycles, a
nd the Hunt dormant, until the Basilisk Prince located it and called them. The details of its original purpose may well have been lost to us.”

“But not how to make one,” I said.

He grinned again, clearly happy at the thought of building something, and I noticed how square and even his teeth were. “No, not how to make one. That knowledge is still with us.”

“So you are…” Wolf cleared his throat. “The Song that led us here told that Ice Tor made the Horn, so…”

The Dwarf laughed aloud, so infectiously that even Wolf smiled. “No, no Younger Brother. I am not
that
Ice Tor, otherwise I could answer all and any of your questions about the Horn. I am
this
Ice Tor.” He thumped himself on the chest. “Any who lives here,” the sweep of his arm indicated the whole of his living space, but I noticed he kept his other hand on his chest. “Any who occupies this space is Ice Tor.”

But manipulating space—and time—was what Dwarves did, I thought. Was it possible that this huge Solitary, this old/young giant Dwarf both was and was not the Ice Tor who had made the original Horn? Perhaps without being aware of it himself? I wanted to touch him again, to find out, but I was also afraid, not sure that the answer wouldn’t overwhelm me.

He clapped his hands together. “So, what elements did you bring me?”

Wolf and I looked at each other. “Um, what elements were you hoping for?” I said.

“For a Binding, or Summoning, object—such as this one—a piece of the thing or Person to be bound or summoned is customary.”

“Where would we get a piece of a Hound?” I said. “And if we were able to fetch one, why would we even need a Horn?” I glanced at Wolf and the look, bordering on despair, that sat on his face was heartrending. “Oh, no, Wolf. That can’t be what he means.”

“Stormwolf is not a Hound,” Ice Tor said warily. “He would not have been able to enter here if he was.”

I wondered if they knew what DNA was, and if they didn’t, whether I could explain it to them. “I know, but he
was
a Hound,” I said. Wolf stiffened, but instead of looking away, as I expected him to, he kept his head up, and looked the Dwarf in the eye. “And I’m
maybe the only person who knows it and isn’t freaked out by it.” My voice sounded sharp even to me. It was so easy to be frustrated by people who couldn’t
know
. I turned to the Dwarf. “If I can read the things that Wolf knew before he became a Hound by touching him, then the part of him that was a Hound is still there as well. So won’t something of his do?” I thought about the things I’d read about spells and enchantments. “Hair? Fingernails?”

The Dwarf nodded, scratching his chin. “There is only one way for us to know.” Was his smile a little toothier than it had been a few moments before? “But other elements, similar in nature, are also needed. Those who require the artifact must contribute also. For the original Horn, contributions came from each of the People: Rider, Solitary, and Natural. Have you a piece of live wood from a Tree Natural? Voluntarily given, of course. Or water from a living spring or fountain?”

I was wondering what I’d done with the walking stick Wolf had got for me when he spoke.

“Water we have, in my pack.” He started to get down off the stool, but Ice Tor held up his palm.

“Allow me.” He lifted a small trapdoor I hadn’t noticed on the surface of his workbench and reached in, pulling out a blue ceramic bottle I recognized as part of the supplies Wolf had picked up at the hostel where we found the Cloud Horses. When he saw us both staring, he grinned again. “Doorways, my Young Ones, doorways. Always a specialty of mine.” He unstoppered the bottle and poured the water drop by drop into the pestle, counting under his breath as he did.

He restoppered the bottle, placed it back into the opening in the table, and closed the trapdoor. This time I looked, and there was definitely no sign of a door on the tabletop. He dusted off his hands.

“Have you anything else?” When we shook our heads, he gave a sharp nod. “Well, we have a Natural here,” he tapped the pestle, “and a Hound.” He pointed at Wolf. “I am myself a Solitary, but what shall we do for a Rider?”

“What about—” but just as I was about to say “me,” Wolf’s hand flashed out and closed on my wrist.
That’s going to leave a bruise
, I thought.

“This comes from Walks Under the Moon,” Wolf said. He took
off the bracelet made from Moon’s hair and set it down in the center of the Dwarf’s enormous palm. Ice Tor placed the bracelet into the mortar and looked at us again.

“And now you, my houndling.”

Wolf’s sloe-black hair, cut fashionably short when we were in my world, had reverted to its natural state here, hanging halfway down his back, partly loose, and partly made up of small braids used to restrain the loose part. He sorted out a braid a little thicker than a pencil and held it out.

“Have you scissors?” he asked.

“Younger Brother.” Ice Tor’s voice was solemn and deep. “We used the Rider’s hair because that is all we have of her. From ourselves we must have something stronger, or the magic will not work.”

Wolf’s eyes narrowed, and his lips thinned. I remember something Alejandro had told me, about there traditionally being a level of distrust between Riders and Solitaries. That distrust was clear on Wolf’s face. “Something stronger?” he said, his tone full of skepticism.

“He’s not lying,” I said. “Or trying to trick us. What he says is the truth.”

“Thank you, Young One,” he said. “I knew it would be good to have a Truthreader with us, and so again I am proved right.” He turned to Wolf. “But to offer my own proof, to show you that what your friend says is correct, I will give first.”

He picked up a tool that was half wooden handle and half metal so bright I couldn’t focus on it. It had a familiar shape, however, and when I realized what it was my heart went cold in my chest. I opened my mouth, but my protest came out at the same time that the blade flashed down. I shut my eyes, my hands jerking up to cover them, but I couldn’t prevent myself from looking.