Robert Hughes - The Prophet of Lamath

Pelmen was smiling, but Bronwynn’s face wore an expression of shock Rosha knew mirrored his own.

“Where did he go?” the girl was shouting. Then she saw him reappear. “How did you do that?” The powershaper grinned. “I told you, my Lady. The powers.”

“But how—”

“It’s a little trick done with light and wind.” Pelmen shrugged.

“A very useful illusion. Watch now.” Both young people followed his pointing finger with their eyes; they sat in breathless amazement as four invisible sets of hooves tore the turf beyond the stream, making a trail that exactly matched the tracks the little troop had left behind them.

“But—” Bronwynn began again, in obvious dismay.

“Another trick.” Pelmen chuckled.

Though there was no sound, the tracks appeared so regularly, receding from them across the clearing, that Bronwynn’s imagination supplied the rhythmical hoofbeats. “Who’s making them?” she pleaded, tugging at Pelmen’s sleeve.

“I told you, my Lady. The wind. Tohn will surely follow us here and, crossing the stream, will follow those tracks yonder. A mile, maybe two, and those winds you see will spin away, once more their own masters. As for us—we will be gone, far to the northwest. Come now.”

“But where did Rosha go? Where will we go, when we cross the stream?”

Bronwynn begged, tugging so hard on her pony’s reins that it began to back away.

Pelmen shrugged. “Across the stream,” he said simply, and turned the head of his extraordinary horse to guide Minaliss into the water.

“P-p-Pelmen?” Rosha cried. It was his first word since leaving the castle, and Pelmen looked up at him. “My m-m-mount seems un-sh-sure—” Indeed, Rosha’s powerful black horse was almost skipping with anxiety, and the young man was having to fight to keep control of it.

Pelmen leaned across the horse’s neck and spoke softly in its ear. That calmed the anxious animal immediately, and it raised its head to look at Pelmen. Was that a look of recognition? Bronwynn wondered.

“Now, together,” Pelmen commanded firmly, and they all three splashed into the water, pulling the packhorse behind them. Bronwynn had fixed her eyes on those phenomenal tracks before them; but as she experienced that same chill Rosha had felt, the tracks winked out like a snuffed flame. The earth was renewed—torn flowers blossomed again. Once more Bronwynn’s pretty mouth fell open. Pelmen, watching her reaction, chuckled low in his throat. Though each act of shaping cost him dearly in energy and attention, there were times when it was all great fun.

“Look behind you,” he said quietly, and the girl tore her gaze away from the reconstituted grass and looked back where they had come. The far side of the meadow now looked as virgin and untouched as did this side.

Bronwynn shook her head to clear it, and looked at him questioningly. “Where did they go? Where did they all go?”

Pelmen urged Minaliss into a trot along the stream toward the west. “Think of it this way, my Lady. Imagine that we arrived at the stream today—but are departing yesterday!” Minaliss broke into a gallop, and Bronwynn had to kick her pony to catch up with him. She could hear Rosha’s laughter behind her, and decided the sorcerer was teasing her. A black mood settled onto her again. Though it was a gorgeous spring morning in a breathtaking land, she longed for the hot, noisy avenues of Chaomonous. No one ever laughed at her there.

A few hundred yards from their point of crossing, the stream ran into an evergreen wood, a spur of the Great South Fir.

They continued some three miles along the south bank, ducking pine needles and picking their way through stretches of rock. The two young people soon grew accustomed to the whirling wind that followed in their wake, erasing every trace of their passage. Neither spoke, leaving Pelmen free to concentrate on guiding that unruly power that trailed them. He chose finally to turn north, and they crossed the stream once more. He maintained the wind until midaftemoon, when they were twenty miles farther north. Then it seemed that a burden lifted from his shoulders, and he settled back in his saddle and began to enjoy the day.

“I really don’t know where the ability comes from,” he was saying, “or how it settled on me. I only know that I am aware of forces—we call them the powers—and that if I can rightly focus my thoughts, these powers will do as I ask them.”

“Bu-but how did you d-d-discover this ability?” Rosha asked. He was riding close beside Pelmen now, trailing the packhorse behind him. Farther back came Bronwynn, who was in deep conversation with her falcon about how mistreated she had been.

“It was just there, my friend. I tried to do something, and I did it. It was as much a surprise to me as to anyone.”

“How did it happen? I mean, what f-feat did you p-perform?”

“It was in the Great North Fir, late one wintry night. The ground was covered with snow, and my fellows and I were freezing. We were all without flints for some reason, and were trying to summon a fire from the friction of sticks. But the wood was all so wet and our hands so numb we had no success at all. I was so angry I grabbed up a handful of fir needles I had dug from under the white blanket. As I held them up before my face, I screamed, ‘Light!’ They did. Burned my hand, they lit so quickly. I dropped the flaming needles into the fire pit we had wrested from the snow, and watched as the fire blossomed into a wanning blaze. No one spoke of it then, but later each one asked me privately, ‘Pelmen, how did you do that?’” Rosha leaned closer to the powershaper to hear the tale’s conclusion. “And what did you s-s-say?”

“I told them I’d frightened that fire into starting.” Pelmen chuckled, then more reflectively added, “And that may well have been the truth. I really don’t know myself. But it seems to me now so familiar, so easy to summon the powers, that I sometimes forget that others are unable to.”

“Then why did you never reveal them in my father’s court?” Bronwynn challenged from behind them.

Pelmen slowed Minaliss so that the girl could catch up to them. “You’ve finally decided to join the party?”

“Some party,” Bronwynn snorted. “I asked a question.”

“I never revealed the power there because I don’t seem to have it there. Only while in the Mar am I able to shape the powers—and especially so the closer I come to the Great North Fir.”

“Then your power is growing?” Bronwynn asked. Pelmen wore a smile different from any smile she had seen. It was not the cynical smile so common to her father’s court, or the joyful smile she had watched dance across Pelmen’s face so frequently in his conversations with Dorlyth. This smile spoke of a keen, proud confidence. Pelmen’s smile seemed the involuntary overflow of a power that energized him from within. Her memory flashed back to crown performances in the court of her father, when a thin, pasty-faced actor would strut and posture and speak his lines before them.

Could this man who sat so confidently in the saddle beside her bear any relation to that pale, skinny player? “Growing is not the word. Waxing is better. As the moon sometimes is full of light and other times is empty, so my ability fills me, then passes from me. And somehow it centers in the Great North Fir-somehow…” Pelmen’s voice trailed off, and his eyes narrowed as if to pierce through the very mountains themselves to see that fabled forest beyond them.

“D-d-do you think—I m-m-might—” Rosha began, then grinned and shook his head.

“You might be a magician?” Bronwynn brayed, then laughed derisively. “You could never pronounce the spells!”

Rosha said nothing, but the look he fired across Pelmen at the girl spoke eloquently for him. Undaunted, Bronwynn raised her head proudly and returned his gaze, remembering how he had laughed at her. A wind whirled suddenly around them and it was some moments before they realized that Pelmen had stopped and they were riding on without him. When they broke their staring match and looked back for him, his casual smile was gone. He sat stock still astride a motionless Minaliss, his visage grim.