Robert Hughes - The Power and the Prophet

Fifteen minutes after Flayh jerked in his net in frustration, the three riders reached the spot where it had been. A kind of residue of shaping hung in the air, noticeable to both Pelmen and Mar-Yilot. They exchanged anxious glances. “Flayh?” Pelmen frowned.

“Probably,” Mar-Yilot answered gruffly. “But he’s not looking here now. All the more reason to race on to the North Coast!” They spurred their steeds forward with new resolve. They rode the rest of the day and through half the night, arriving finally at the cottage of Syth’s bargeman. They had to pound on the door to wake him, but once he was up, he welcomed them warmly, rousing the rest of the family to prepare the hungry riders some food. Barleb talked to them nonstop through their dinner, but he didn’t seem bothered by their lack of response. Their weariness was obvious. The moment they’d finished eating, he bundled them off to their beds. All three went instantly to sleep.

Pelmen awoke to the sound of a slight pattering on the roof. His weary body begged him to stay put beneath the warm counterpane, but his mind, now fully alert, could no longer pretend to rest. He forced himself out of bed and felt the shock of the icy floor beneath his feet. He scrambled for his stockings; in the process, he identified the noise coming from outside. He wasn’t pleased. He jerked the cover off his bed and wrapped it around him, then shuffled down the stairs to the main room of the cottage. Someone was already up. He could smell the fire.

While they called it a cottage, this dwelling was really more of a mansion. It belonged to Lord Syth and served as a guest house for islanders trapped by nightfall on the mainland. Nevertheless, it felt like home to Barleb, for his forerunners had lived in it almost as long as Syth’s ancestors had ruled the great castle across the water. The bargeman was relaxing before the fireplace in a large stuffed chair. When he saw Pelmen, however, he bounded out of it and gestured for his guest to sit down.

“I’ll not take your chair,” Pelmen rumbled, his voice crusty with sleep. He looked toward the ceiling.

“Ice?” he asked.

Barleb frowned. “Yes, my Lord, I’m afraid it is. You’d best go back and take your rest. We’ll not get across today.”

“Not even if I order it?” Mar-Yilot called wearily from one of the rooms up the stairs.

Barleb’s concerned frown deepened. “My Lady,” he responded loudly. “Are you awake, too?”

“I was never asleep,” the woman growled, and the two men heard the rustling of her climbing out of bed.

She padded out onto the landing that ringed the main chamber and looked down, her hair a rat’s nest of auburn tangles and deep dark circles^ gouged under her eyes. “Why are you looking at me like that?” she demanded, and both men suddenly took an interest in the fire. “I guess I look a mess,” she mumbled, her speech slurred by sleeplessness. Only the most vacant-headed of fools would have dared any kind of reply. “What time is it?” She yawned.

“Early, my Lady,” Barleb answered. “Perhaps if you lay back down—”

“I’m tired of lying down,” Mar-Yilot snarled. It was one of the prerogatives of power that one never needed to hide one’s grumpiness. Mar-Yilot certainly never did.

“Is Lord Syth expecting us?” Pelmen’s question was a diplomatic way of inquiring if the sorceress had visited her husband’s dreams.

“No.” She sighed as she drifted down the stairs. “I didn’t want to disturb his sleep. Besides,” she added,

“that would only heighten my frustration at not being there physically.”

“I can certainly understand that,” Pelmen murmured, his eyes studying the flames.

“What is this Serphimera woman to you?” Mar-Yilot demanded, and Pelmen had to smile at the challenge in her voice. They had been adversaries for many years. While Mar-Yilot had had only one love from childhood, she sounded almost jealous of Serphimera’s impact on him.

“Why do you ask?”

“Just curious.” The slender woman shrugged. “You just never seemed like the marrying type.”

Pelmen looked at her with a mock frown. “You think you do?”

The woman looked at him, chuckled, and said, “You’re right. Sorry. Didn’t mean to pry”

“That’s exactly what you meant to do,” Pelmen snorted. It was a contest, as were all his encounters with Mar-Yilot, and he found he enjoyed it. In fact, he’d discovered he genuinely liked this thin, wry-faced woman. Then thoughts of Dorlyth surfaced again, and all playfulness left him.

It appeared that Mar-Yilot read his mind. She sighed and glanced around the room. “Things may have been very different, Pelmen, if we’d banded together sooner.”

“I’m certain of it.” Pelmen nodded. Then he smiled rather sadly. “But we’ve no way of knowing if they would have been any better. We have the opportunity now, at least, for which I’m grateful.” He looked at the door, which had been firmly barred against the cold. “I just wish we could continue this conversation on the other side.”

“There’s little chance of that today, I fear,” Barleb said earnestly.

“No chance at all, Barleb?” Mar-Yilot asked.

The bargeman sighed. “I learned long ago never to say never to you, my Lady. And if your guest is indeed Pelmen the Powershaper—well then, what value is there in a bargeman’s opinion?”

“It’s of great value to me,” Pelmen murmured. “If you say we should wait, then we’ll wait.”

“Why?” Mar-Yilot demanded. “What good is power if you limit it with overcaution?”

“No shaper can control the winds, Mar-Yilot.”

“Oh?” the woman said, arching her eyebrows. “That’s not what I’ve heard. The rumor is that Pelmen Dragonsbane can shape the winds and bend them to his bidding.”

“It’s not I who shaped the winds, my Lady,” Pelmen said quietly. “It’s the Power who shapes them and shapes me with them.”

“What’s the difference?”

Pelmen raised his eyebrows and smiled. “Control. Initiative.”

“You can’t make it happen at will,” she said, and he nodded. “But the Power can?” Pelmen nodded again. “Then ask it.”

“Ask it?” Pelmen frowned.

“Ask the Power to clear off this ice storm and give us a

good breeze home. Then it can dump a blizzard on us for all I care.” Pelmen stared at her as if she were mad. “What’s the matter with that? It’s a simple enough request, isn’t it?”

Pelmen raised his brows again, this time in consternation. “I guess I’d just never thought of injecting my personal convenience into dealings of such importance.”

“Why not?” Mar-Yilot demanded.

Pelmen thought for a moment, looking reflectively into the fire. “I suppose because it sounds like shaping, of a sort.”

Mar-Yilot measured her words for a moment. When she spoke, it was with a gentleness and grace Pelmen had rarely known from her. “Is a child shaping her father when she makes a request? Do her smiles and pleadings force him to yield? Or is it his own nature that causes him to respond as he does?

This Power of yours—you relate to it, and it to you, with a seeming mutual respect. Why shouldn’t it respond to your request, if it values you?”

Pelmen pondered that as the woman circled around the chairs to a shuttered window. “I… don’t know.”

“If, as it seems, you’re this Power’s agent here, isn’t your safety of some importance?” Abruptly Mar-Yilot wheeled back to face him, her lips parted in a brightly cynical smile. “Or is it that you fear to ask, because you’re not quite sure if your mighty Power is able to deliver?”

Pelmen met her gaze evenly. “It isn’t that, Mar-Yilot. It isn’t that at all.”