The Shadow and Night (3 page)

1

M
erral Stefan D'Avanos crested the snow-flecked ridge in the northeastern corner of Menaya, the vast northern continent of Farholme, and reined in his mount. The winter's sun had just set in a great stained sphere of orange gold. He stared at the expanse of gray hills and darker, mist-filled valleys stretching northward to the ice-edged needles of the ramparts of the Lannar Crater.

Above the Rim Ranges, layer upon layer of cloud strands gleamed every shade between yellow and purple in the dying sunlight. Merral tried to absorb all he could of the sights, sounds, and smells of dusk. Down below the ridge, away to his right, crows preparing to roost were wheeling noisily around a pine tree. Far to his left, there was a moving, snuffling grayness under the edges of the birch forests that he knew was a herd of deer. Hanging in the cold fresh air was the smell of winter, new trees, and a new earth.

The beauty of it moved Merral's heart, and he raised his head and cried out with joy, “To the Lord of all worlds be praise and honor and glory and power!”

The words echoed briefly and a gust of wind out of the north dragged them away, down through the trees and bare rocks.

Silent in awed worship, he sat there for long minutes until another chill gust made him shiver, as much in anticipation as in actual cold. He bent down to his horse. “Now, Graceful,” he murmured, “good girl, onward.”

Obedient as ever, the mare moved forward over the frozen ground.

Merral knew it would not be wise to wait longer. The Antalfers expected him, and the nights of deep winter could be cruel this far north. Besides, as on any young world, there was always the chance of a sudden local weather anomaly. Such an irregularity might be only a few kilometers across—too small to be picked up by a weather satellite—but enough to freeze solid an unprotected man and horse in under an hour.

Merral rode on along a rough snowy trail which wound its way round blocks of lava, toying lightly with the wish that he had been born a poet or painter rather than a forester so that he could better express his love for this place and this life. But it wasn't long before he laughed at the aspiration and pushed it to one side. The Most High had made him what he was, and that was enough.

He peered ahead along the track, straining in the gloom to see the way ahead. The Herrandown Forward Colony was so small—a tree-surrounded hamlet of fifty people in six extended families—that it would be easy to overlook it at night. After some more minutes of cautious riding, he caught a glimpse of a tiny sliver of golden light in the distance. He smiled happily at the thought of his uncle or aunt leaving the shutters open so that the light would guide him in. He patted his mount, seeing her breath in the cold air. “Nearly there, my Graceful, and Aunt Zennia will have something for you.”

Five minutes later he emerged abruptly from between the fir trees into the broad clearing that acted as the rotorcraft landing pad and marked the southern margin of the hamlet. As he rode out into the open, the dogs around the farm started to bark, and their dark shapes bounded across the packed snow toward him. Merral reined in as he met the dogs and, reaching down to stroke them, tried to identify as many as he could in the gloom.

“Fastbite, good dog!” he shouted. “Oh, Spotback, it's you! And Quiver, eh? Been having more pups, I hear? Brownlegs? No—it's Stripes. Look, stop licking so much!”

A door slid open smoothly in the ground-hugging building ahead. Light streamed out briefly onto the path before being abruptly blocked by the silhouette of a tall, well-built woman with long hair.

“Merral! Praise be! Children! Barrand! It's Merral! Now, mind the ice over there,” she cried, half running to him. “Here, Nephew, give me a kiss!”

For a moment all was chaos as, barely allowing time for him to dismount, his aunt Zennia embraced and kissed him, while the children streamed out to hold and hug him and ask a dozen overlapping questions. And all the while the dogs, barking joyously, bounded in between Graceful's legs.

“Nephew Merral!
Welcome!
” A deep, jovial voice that seemed to echo came out of the door of the house. “Why, it's been months!”

Dogs and children gave way as the large figure of Uncle Barrand, his profile almost bearlike in the gloom, ambled over and hugged Merral to the point of pain as he kissed both cheeks fiercely and repeatedly.

“Excellent! Praise be! Your pack I will take. Thomas? Where is the boy?” His uncle's bulk swiveled around slowly. “Dogs I see, girls I see, but my only son is missing. Ah, there you are, Thomas! Good, you have a coat on. Take your cousin Merral and his horse—Graceful isn't it? Thought so—I'd know her even on another world. Take them to the winter stable. I'd take you, but I'm cooking tonight. Girls!
Wife!
It is cold. Indoors now, and let us finish preparing supper for our guest. He has ridden far. And Thomas . . .”

“What, Father?” piped the small voice from by Merral's side.

“Just take your dog into the stables. Not the whole pack.”

Merral just made out a dutiful nod from the figure beside him. “Yes, Father! Here, Stripes! The rest of you dogs! You go off to your kennels!
Shoo!
” With what seemed to be regret, the other dogs drifted off obediently.

Thomas, short but well built for his seven years, took Merral's sleeve and tugged. “Cousin, we have a new stable for winter. An' I helped Daddy build it. We digged . . .” There was a pause. “Dugged?
Dug
it together in summer. Over here.”

Merral ruffled the boy's black, wiry hair. “It's good to see you again, Thomas.”

“Cousin, the stable is real warm over winter. We got twenty cows, fifteen sheep. When the station says it's gonna be real cold, we even send the dogs in. An' we put all our horses there, of course.”

The track they followed went round the side of the low earth banks that gave some protection from the weather to the Antalfers' house and down a ramp into a mound. Merral had seen the plans when he'd come by in midsummer; the bitter cold of the last two winters had made a shelter a necessity. Inside the double sliding doors, the long, narrow structure was warm with the smell of animals. Merral led Graceful into an empty pen, made sure she had clean water and hay, and then spent time checking her over, running his hands over her legs and checking the dura-polymer hoof shields. “Good. She seems fine,” he told his cousin. “Always check your animals, Thomas. They are your friends, not your servants.”

The child nodded and hugged the dog, which licked his face. “Dad says that. I get a horse of my own in two years. I'm gonna really look after him.” Merral nodded and patted the horse's head gently.

“Good girl, Graceful. Well done.”

The brown head twisted up from the hay and rubbed itself against his hand as if in mute acknowledgement of the praise.

Merral stretched himself. “Well, I'm hungry, Master Thomas, so let's go.”

Once outside the doors of the stable, Merral suddenly felt the cold anew. The wind had intensified and was swirling round the building, kicking up little eddies of snow. The last gleam of twilight had gone, leaving the molten fire of the stars and the great belt of the Milky Way splendid in the blackness of the sky above him. Despite the frigid air and his appetite, Merral paused in his stride and looked up in wonder.

“You know your stars, Thomas?”

“'Course! Well, most of 'em. Dad's taught me some. He says we should see twenty with people on 'em.”

“Twenty?” Merral thought hard. The naked-eye count for Farholme was supposed to be about fifty occupied systems, but that was from Isterrane; no, the boy was right—this far north you'd see less than half of that.

“On Ancient Earth,” he remarked, as much to himself as to Thomas, “they say you can see over two hundred. And almost all the remaining thirteen hundred with a small optical telescope.”

“Sol 'n' Terra are over there, just below the Gate.” Thomas' voice was quiet.

Merral followed his outstretched hand to the heart of the Milky Way, a few degrees below where six sharp golden points of light marked out a hexagon in the blackness.

“Yes. That's it. Sol and Terra: the Ancient Sun and Earth. Well, time to get in or we'll freeze.”

Merral bent down to take the boy's hand, but as he did, his eye caught a movement of the stars. He straightened, watching the approaching speck of light as it grew in size.

“Look, Thomas, a meteor!”

As he spoke, the point of yellow light, expanding a thousandfold, tore northward almost directly overhead. Its brilliance was such that, for a few seconds, the light of all the other stars was lost.

Merral twisted round, seeing the whole snow-clad landscape flashing alight in a brilliant incandescent whiteness. In the brief moments that the light lasted he glimpsed his and Thomas's shadows form and then race away as fading, elongated smears on the snow.

Abruptly the night flooded back.

As Merral blinked, a thunderous, echoing rumble vibrated around them, the sound bouncing off rocks and snow and resounding back round the clearing. The ground seemed to shake gently.

“Zow!”
yelped Thomas, his fingers flung over his ears. “That was noisy!”

Stripes howled in terror, and from near the house came the barking of the other dogs. The outer door slid open.

“Thomas? Merral? What was that?” Zennia's voice was anxious.

Merral shook himself, the afterimage of the light still haunting his vision. “Just a meteor. I think.”

“Come on, Thomas. Suppertime.”

They crowded into the hallway, which was bare but beautifully paneled in a light, oil-polished pine, as the double doors whispered shut behind them. Barrand's big red face, framed by his ragged black curly beard, peered out of the kitchen. “A meteor, eh? We felt the house vibrate. ‘Ho!' I thought. ‘Merral is doing my quarrying for me!' ”

“What, Uncle? Cheat you of your pleasure?”

There was the sound of something bubbling. A look of apprehension crossed Barrand's weathered face, and he dashed back into the steam of the kitchen.

Merral took off his jacket and carefully hung it on a rack, relishing the smell of the food and the warmth of the house. He sat on a bench and pulled his boots off, enjoying the feeling of being back in a place that he had always loved. He stroked the wood of the walls gently, feeling its faint grain. Even in a society that prized the right use of wood, Barrand and Zennia's home was special. Since his first visit, Merral had always felt that the house, with its sizeable underground extension, was something that had grown rather than been built. Even if the unruliest of winds struck the exposed part of the building so hard that every timber vibrated, down in the lower parts you could feel as safe and snug as if you were inside the roots of a giant tree.

“But it was a meteor?” His uncle's face had appeared again round the door. Merral sat upright suddenly, his tired back muscles signaling their presence.