It seemed to me that whoever had made the marks had chosen for us a fairly easy climb from the beach to the clifftops. Even so, I went up first and unencumbered while Thick waited placidly on the beach below. At the top of the wind-scoured cliffs, there was a thin edge of bare ground. Stubborn grasses tufted there amidst a crunchy sort of moss. A sort of shallow meadow bloomed beyond it, of grasses and lichen-crusted rocks and pessimistic bushes. I had climbed up, knife in teeth, but no one, friend or enemy, awaited me there. Instead, there was only the barren sweep of cold wind from the crouching glacier.
I returned to the beach, to bring up first our packs and then Thick. He did well enough at climbing, but was hampered by his shorter stature and stockier girth. Eventually, however, we stood on the clifftop together. “Well,” he exclaimed when he had finished puffing. “And now what?”
“I'm not sure,” I said, and looked about, guessing that whoever had left us such a plain sign on the cliff would not abandon us now. It took me a moment to see it. I do not think it was intended to be subtle, but rather that there was little to work with. A row of small beach stones was set in a line. One end of it pointed toward the place we had just climbed up. The other end pointed inland.
I handed Thick his pack and then settled my own on my shoulders. “Come on,” I said. “We're going that way.” I pointed.
He followed my finger with his eyes and then shook his head in disappointment. “No. Why? There's nothing there but grass. And then snow.”
I had no easy explanation. He was right. In the distance, the plain of stubby grass gave way to snow and then looming ice. Beyond them, a rock face shone with a frosting of ice and snow. “Well, that's where I'm going,” I said. And I struck out. I set an easy pace, but avoided looking back. Instead, I listened, and with my Wit, quested for an awareness of him. He was following, but grudgingly. I slowed my pace enough to allow him to catch up. When he was alongside me, I observed companionably, “Well, Thick, I think that today we will have answers to at least a few of our questions.”
“What questions?”
“Who or what is the Black Man?”
Thick looked stubborn. “I don't really care.”
“Well. It's a lovely day. And I'm not just hiking on the beach anymore.”
“We're hiking toward the snow.”
He was right, and soon enough we reached the outlying edges of it. And there, plainly, were the tracks of the Black Man, going and coming. Without commenting on them, I followed them, Thick trudging at my heels. After a short time, Thick observed, “We aren't poking the snow. We might fall right through.”
“As long as we follow these tracks, I think we're safe,” I told him. “This isn't the true glacier yet.”
By early afternoon, we had followed the tracks across a windswept plain of snow and ice to a rocky cliff wall. Towering and forbidding, it defied the wind. Ice made columns down its face and had wedged cracks into it. At the base of it, the tracks turned west and continued. We followed. Night grayed the sky and I pushed on doggedly, giving Thick sticks of salt fish when he complained of being hungry. As the twilight grew deeper around us, even my curiosity lagged along with my energy. At length, we halted. I felt sheepish as I turned to Thick and said, “Well, I was wrong. We'll set up the tent here for the night, shall we?”
His tongue and lower lip pouted out and he beetled his brows at me in disappointment. “Do we have to?”
I glanced around, at a loss for what else I could offer him. “What would you like to do?”
“Go there!” he exclaimed and pointed. I lifted my eyes to follow the stubby finger. My breath caught in my chest.
I had been keeping my eyes on the tracks. I had not lifted my gaze to the looming cliff wall. Ahead of us, and halfway up the bluff, a wide crack had been fitted with a door of gray wood. The rest of the crack had been filled in with rocks of various sizes. The door had been left ajar and yellow firelight shone within. Someone was in there.
With renewed haste, we followed the tracks to where they suddenly doubled back to follow a steep footpath that worked up and across the face of the cliff. Calling it a footpath was generous. We had to go in single file and our packs bumped against the rock as we negotiated it. Nevertheless, it was a well-used trail, kept free of debris and treacherous ice. Where trickles of ice from above had attempted to cross the path, they had been chopped off short and brushed away. It appeared to be a recent effort.
Despite these signs of hospitality, I was full of trepidation when I stood at last before the door. It had been constructed of driftwood, hand-planed and pegged together painstakingly. Warmth and an aroma of cooked food wafted out from it. Although it was ajar and the space in front of it small, still I hesitated. Thick didn't. He shoved past me to push the door open. “Hello!” he called hopefully. “We're here and we're cold.”
“Please, enter do,” someone replied in a low and pleasant voice. The accent on the words was odd, and the voice seemed husky as if from disuse, but the welcome was plain in the tone. Thick didn't hesitate as he stepped inside. I followed him more slowly.
After the dimness of the night, the fire in the stone hearth seemed to glare with light. At first, I could make out no more than a silhouette seated before the fire in a wooden chair. Then the Black Man slowly stood and faced us. Thick drew in his breath audibly. Then, with a show of recovery and manners that astounded me in the little man, he said carefully, “Good evening, Grandfather.”
The Black Man smiled. His worn teeth were as yellow as bone in his black, black face. Lines wreathed his mouth and his eyes nestled deep in their sockets, like shining ebony disks. He spoke, and after a time my mind sorted out his badly accented Outislander. “I know not how long I've been here. Yet this I know. This is the first time that anyone has entered and called me 'Grandfather.' ”
When he stood, it was without apparent effort, and his spine was straight. Yet age was written all over his countenance, and he moved with the slow grace of a man who protects his body from shocks. He gestured to a small table. “Guests I seldom have, but my hospitality I would offer despite what is lacked. Please. Food I have made. Come.”
Thick didn't hesitate. He shrugged out of his pack, letting it slide to the floor without regret. “We thank you,” I said slowly as I carefully removed my own and set both of them to one side. My eyes had adjusted to the light. I do not know if I would have called his residence a cave or a large crevice. I could not see a ceiling, and I suspected that smoke traveled up but not out. The furnishings were simple but very well made, with both the craft and attention of a man who had much time to learn his skills and apply them. There was a bedstead in a corner, and a larder shelf, a water bucket and a barrel, and a woven rug. Some of the items appeared to have been salvaged, windfalls from the beach, and others were obviously made from the scanty resources of the island. It bespoke a long habitation.
The man himself was as tall as I was, and as solidly black as the Fool once had been white. He did not ask our names or offer his, but served soup into three stone bowls that he had warmed by the fire. He spoke little at first. Outislander was the language we used; yet it was not native to any of us. The Black Man and I worked at communicating. Thick spoke Duchy-tongue but managed to make himself understood. The table was low, and our chairs were cushions with woven reed covers stuffed with dry grass. It was good to sit down. His spoons were made of polished bone. There was fish in the soup, but it was fresh, as were the boiled roots and meager greens. It tasted very good after our long days of dried or preserved food. The flat bread that he set out with it startled me and he grinned when he saw me looking at it.
“From her pantry to mine,” he said, with no apology. “What I needed I took. And sometimes more.” He sighed. “And now it is done. Simpler, my life will be. Yours, lonelier, I think.”
It suddenly seemed to me that we were in the middle of a conversation, with both of us already knowing, without words, why we had come together. So I simply said, “I have to go back for him. He hated the cold. I cannot leave his body there. And I must be sure that this is finished. That she is dead.”
He nodded gravely to the inevitable. “That would be your path, and you that path must tread.”
“So. You will help me, then?”
He shook his head, not regretfully but inevitably. “Your path,” he repeated. “The path of the Changer belongs to you only.”
A shiver ran down my back that he called me that. Nevertheless, I pressed him. “But I do not know the way into her palace. You must know a way, for I saw you there. Cannot you at least show me that?”
“The path will find you,” he assured me, and smiled. “In darkness it cannot hide itself.”
Thick held up his empty bowl. “That was good!”
“More, then?”
“Please!” Thick exclaimed, and then heaved a great sigh of pleasure as the man refilled his bowl. He ate his second serving more slowly. There was no talk as the Black Man rose and set a battered old kettle full of water over the fire. He fed the fire larger, and I watched the driftwood catch and burn with occasional licks of odd colors in the flames. He went to a shelf and carefully considered three little wooden boxes there. I arose hastily and went to my pack.
“Please, allow us to contribute something to the meal. I have tea herbs here.”
When he turned to me, I saw that I had guessed correctly. It was as if I had offered another man jewels and gold. Without hesitation, I opened one of the Fool's little packets and offered it to him. He leaned over it to smell it, and then closed his eyes as a smile of purest pleasure came over his face.
“A generous heart you have!” he exclaimed. “A memory of flowers grows here. Nothing brings to mind the memories so much as fragrance.”
“Please. Keep it all, to enjoy,” I offered him, and he beamed with delight, his black eyes shining.
He made tea with a rare caution, crumbling the herbs to powder and then steeping them in a tightly covered container. When he removed the lid and the fragrance of the tea steamed up, he laughed aloud in delight, and, just as people do when a small child laughs, Thick and I joined in for sheer pleasure in his enjoyment. There was an immediacy about him that was very charming, so that it was almost impossible for me to find the focus to worry and fret. He shared out the tea, and we drank it in tiny sips, savoring both the fragrance and the flavor. By the time we were finished, Thick was yawning prodigiously, which somehow increased my own weariness.
“A place to sleep,” our host announced, and gestured Thick toward his own bedstead.
“Please, we have our own bedding. You need not give up your bed to us,” I assured him, but he patted Thick on the shoulder and again gesticulated at the bed.
“You will be comfortable. Safe and sweet the dreaming. Rest well.”
Thick needed no other invitation than that. He had already taken off his boots. He sat down on the bed and I heard the creak of a rope framework. He lifted the coverlet and crawled in and closed his eyes. I believe he went to sleep in almost that instant.
I had already begun to spread out our bedding near the fire. Some of it was the Fool's Elderling-made stuff, and the old man examined it carefully, rubbing the thin coverlet between his finger and thumb wistfully. Then, “So kind you are, so kind. Thanks you.” Then he looked at me almost sadly and said, “Your path awaits. May fortune be kind, and the night gentle.” Then he bowed to me in what was obviously a farewell.
In some confusion, I glanced at his door. When I looked back at him, he nodded slowly. “I will keep the watch,” he assured me, gesturing toward Thick.
Still I stood staring at him, confused. He took a breath and then paused. I could almost see him pushing his thoughts into words I could understand. He touched both hands to his cheeks and then held his black palms out to me. “Once, I was the White. The Prophet.” He smiled to see my eyes widen, but then sadness came into his dark gaze. “I failed. With the old ones, I came here. We were the last ones and we knew it. The other cities had gone empty and still. But I had seen there was still a chance, a slight chance, that all might go back to what had been. When the dragon came, at first he gave me hope. But he was full of despair, sick with it like a disease. Into the ice he crawled. I tried. I visited him, I pleaded, I...encouraged. But he turned from me to seek death. And that left nothing for me. No hopes. There was only the waiting. For so long, I had nothing. I saw nothing. The future darkened, the chances narrowed.” He put his hands together and looked through their cupped palms as if peering through a crack, to show me how limited his visions had become. He lifted his gaze back to me. I think my confusion disappointed him. He shook his head, and then with an obvious effort, pushed on. “One vision is left to me. A tiny peer...no! A tiny glimpse of what could be. It was not certain, ever, but it was a chance. Another might come. With another Catalyst.” He held a hand out to me, formed a tiny aperture with his fist. “The smallest chance, maybe there is. So small, so unlikely. But there is that chance.” He looked at me intently.
I forced myself to nod, though I was still not certain I understood all he told me. He had been a White Prophet who failed? Yet he had foreseen that eventually the Fool and I would come here?
He took encouragement from my nod. “She came. At first, 'She is the one!' I think. Her Catalyst she brings. Hope comes to me. She says she seeks the dragon. And I am a fool. I show her the way. Then, the betrayal. She seeks to kill Icefyre. I am angry, but she is stronger. She drove me out, and I had to flee, by a way she cannot follow. She thinks me dead and makes all here her own. But I return, and here I make a place for myself. To this side of the island, her people do not come. But I live and I know she is false. I want to throw her down. But to be the change-maker is not my role. And my Catalyst...” His voice suddenly went hoarser. He spoke with difficulty. “She is dead. Dead so many years. Who could imagine that death lasts so much longer than life? So, only I remained. And I could not make the change that was needed. All I could do was wait. Again, I waited. I hoped. Then I saw him, not white, but gold. I wondered. Then you came after him. Him I knew, at first glance. I recognized you when you left the gift for me. My heart...” He touched his chest and then lifted his hands high. He smiled beatifically. “I longed to help. But I cannot be the Changer. So limited what I may do, or down it all falls. You understand this?”