The Riddled Night: Everien: Book Two

Book by Leith Valery

The Pelt of a Snow Lion

Thietar and the Sekk faced each other across the white void. Falling snow blew over the icy crust with a scoffing sound, like dry laughter. Thietar closed his eyes.

"I will not love it," he chanted to himself. "I will not love it. I do not have to hate it but I will not love it. It is only a stone. It is only a piece of shadow on the snow. I will not love it."

Yet he couldn't take his eyes off the distant figure. The Sekk did nothing. It was out of earshot anyway, although Thietar supposed it might possibly be influencing the tenor of the wind with its song. It had not moved for hours; neither had Thietar. He kept hoping the others would realize what had happened and come up Tyger Pass looking for him. Surely they could put two and two together: the ruined caravan lying half buried in the gully, the absence of any enemy, the silence of the hills and the whiteness of the sky. Now, of course, it seemed so obvious to him that the Sekk had been watching him all along, maybe had even been calling him. It seemed so obvious. It had taken the caravan and then lain in wait for whoever would come along next. Sekk didn't need food like people. They didn't need heat like people. They could lie underground for years, like corpses, like hidden pools of water, unknown to light or time. And now this one had him in its sights, and he would either freeze to death or be Enslaved. It was only a matter of time.

O great Hawks of my ancestors, thought Thietar, who was relatively unversed in the Animal Magic and usually disinterested in spiritual matters. O killer Hawk savior, O taloned one--please let the cold come quickly. Please let my heart be frozen. Do not let me love it. Please!

His toes and fingers had no more feeling. It was said that when you froze to death you felt warm and comfortable and sleepy, but he was shivering violently, and he was hungry, and his teeth ached. Death was not close enough to rescue him from the Slaving spell. Suicide was a possibility but he didn't think he had the will to do violence to himself. Did that mean the Sekk was getting to him, even at this distance? Why could he not move his hand to his dagger, draw it swiftly across each of his own wrists, bleed himself to death here in the snow? Was he Enslaved already? No, it was merely that he could not move his arms. He could not move anything, but his teeth chattered.

I will not love it. I will not love it. I will not love it.

Like a ceremonial chant he repeated it. If you said something enough times you had to believe it eventually. Right?

The expedition had been ill-advised from the start. Thietar and his brothers had been hunting snow lion in Tyger Pass for the past several days. It had been his brother Birtar's idea. Birtar was besotted with Lyntar the outbreed, who was going to be rich now that the Elder Mintar's fortune was passing to Lyntar and her twin sister Pietar, already all but promised to Grietar whom nobody wanted to cross. So, like every unattached Seahawk man with eyes in his head, Birtar was applying his whole imagination to the problem of impressing Lyntar.

He had recruited his younger brothers to his cause, saying, "We will bring back the pelt of the snow lion, and when I spread it across her shoulders and arrange her braids on its fur, I will say, 'Here is the most elusive, the rarest, the most beautiful of creatures. I found her in the lonely snows, and I told her that I was your hunter, and she threw herself upon my arrow that she might adorn you rather than live.' Then I will look in Lyntar's eyes and say, 'Do not let this snow lion's death be for nothing! Make my words true, Exquisite One. Make me yours.' "

After Birtar's brothers had finished groaning and throwing their socks at him, Birtar had reminded them that if bound to Lyntar he would be one of the wealthiest men in the Seahawk Clan and could repay their favors tenfold. So it was that they had gladly set out through the ice and snow in search of the shy snow lion. Three weeks later, they were still looking. Thietar was the youngest but also the best hunter, and on a hunch he had gone off on his own up Tyger Pass. He had seen no tracks, and he knew it would be a long shot finding a snow lion so close to a trade route. But it was the dead of winter, and the snow lions would know that weather closed the pass from October to April or May every year, making the territory safe for them. Thietar always played his hunches, and Tyger Pass seemed to be calling to him.

It was almost noon when he came across the remains of the caravan overturned in a gully halfway up the Seahawk side of the pass. It was not a large vehicle; probably the tail end of a longer train crossing back to Snake Country from Seahawk Country last autumn. It was laid deep in this year's snow, and at first Thietar thought it had merely been emptied of its cargo and abandoned. He headed toward it, being careful to stay downwind in case a snow lion had chosen it as a place to shelter; if one had not done so, Thietar himself might use the caravan as a hide. He shuffled toward it across the icy crust on his snowshoes, head down and eyes half closed against the midday glare.

There were no tracks anywhere near the caravan. He could not get at the doors for the snow was too deep, so he cut the ropes that held the hide roof to the frame and peeled it back. The cargo was still there: sacks of whalebone carvings, a couple of casks of the best Seahawk mead, tins of fine lamp oil and even finer caviar, and enough mink skins to make cloaks for an entire family.

Thietar let out a whoop. He capered in the snow, then ate some caviar and thought about breaking into the mead. But it was too cold up here for drinking. Instead he focused his mind on how to remove all the plunder. It was not a fortune, to be sure, but it was better than one blessed snow lion skin, especially when they hadn't even seen a lion in three weeks, much less caught one.