Tundra

I was beginning to get a taste for adventure. It was better than stale volumes of second-hand commentary in the library with the lifeless stares of gargoyles at my back, better than poring through faded maps and pages of tragedy. I rode on one of the few horses the Seafarers kept for their lowlier scouts, the ones with wolf and mammoth tattoos whose job it was to patrol the land and cliffs above the village, lest cowardly plunderers from other, less honourable tribes come to invade by land. My horse was a cloud in motion, an overcast grey stallion with haunches like rubbed thunder and hooves that struck lightning from the flint scattered on the plains. With every strike I felt his drumming surging up through my bones. It was an unusual feeling for the likes of me.

Just the druid and I rode, for he had access to any of the village’s resources he required. Today, he required only horses, and not escorts. Today, we were heading out towards the site of the great rumbling that had ripped through the earth, toppling stones and uprooting entire plateaus. We were headed for the place that changed the land.

‘I remember,’ said the druid, who galloped ahead of me as easily as if he were an extension of his mount. ‘Two other mages visited the Cleaved Tide clan in my time. Perhaps they are relations of yours.’

‘How long has your time been?’ I asked, curiously. Suspicion jolted up my spine, mingling with the horse’s power.

‘Two hundred years, by your sun and moon measure, Tower man,’ was the reply, plainly said as if there were nothing significant in a lifespan three times that of an ordinary mortal.

‘These others.’ I prompted. ‘What were they like?’

‘One was tall,’ the druid said, the wind nearly stealing his voice away as he rode. He had to shout. ‘He had long, silver hair and a black robe. He was a Blackmouth mage, a Runecaster, he said. Much like you. I liked him a lot. He showed more intelligence than most mages, despite the ugly brand that tarnished the purity of his flesh and marked him as a common man, not esoteric.’

‘And the other?’ I asked.

‘He was shorter and lankier, but shrewd. He had a knack for telling stories. The two men travelled together. They said their names were Tellesing and Achevon of Blackmouth Academy in the highlands. Not friends of yours, I presume? Ah,’ the druid reconsidered. ‘But there must be so many of you. Therefore, I presume not.’

Startled but proven correct in my inkling, I piped up at once. I had to yell over the shredding wind. ‘Actually, Achevon was my master,’ I said. ‘Tellesing was my master’s master.’

At this, the druid wheeled around, the reins held tensely in his worn fists. On strong legs, he stood up in his leather stirrups, letting the oaken crown secured under his torque rustle in the blustering wind. ‘You lie,’ he accused me.

‘No!’ I protested. ‘It’s the truth! I hail from Tyrian City, in the far south-east trading hub. Before I came out here, I was apprenticed to the Runemaster of Blackmouth.’

There were no words to answer my disgrace. The bay mare, her coat gleaming with same sheen as new acorns, cantered over, and the druid atop her seized my wrist. Wrenching me closer, he forced up my sleeve with his free hand, and then turned to look at my face, to judge whether there were any markings there that my feathery, tundra-bleached hair could have been hiding. ‘No mark,’ he concluded, shaking his head in disgust. It was the truth. I had on my forearms, hands, neck and face no ink black, hand shaped imprint to distinguish me as a Blackmouth graduate, for that I was not.

I jerked my wrist free, and shook my sleeve down over it. ‘I belong to the nameless school now,’ I said.

For an hour more, we trotted in utter silence, my storm grey horse and his hazelnut one side by side, though the druid often pulled ahead at a sprint, as if to signal his superiority, and then circled me where I lingered. I noticed the details of his appearance while we rode. He had long, dark hair, thin as spider’s web like mine, but more closely related to the stony appearance of the Seafarers. I wondered whether he was of their stock, wiry, broad-shouldered and tough, although no tattoos of any kind ‘tarnished’ his dry, cold-reddened skin. I thought perhaps that Seafarer children were chosen young for the druid’s quest, and thus denied their brandings when the other youths were selected for emblems of station.

And so, we were two unbranded men, riding together. However, the druid’s lack of a brand was a mark of honour, a sign that from his culture’s hierarchy of political relations he was exempt. The meaning of my plain skin, by contrast, operated to exclude me from society. I was an outcast, a failure sent north, as far from the great, black sandstone walls of Blackmouth Academy as it was possible to be, in as lonely and windswept a Tower as there ever was built. I had been banished, as now the haunting wind sought to banish my voice and bury me in my warm furs, even as I rode. I was silenced on the tundra, while this druid, of native stock, was empowered by all the harsh qualities of the landscape.

Finally, we reached the spot, and reined our horses to a halt. Mine whinnied, disobedient as the druid’s horse was tame. He was not paying attention to my poor husbandry, however. The gouge raked in the land as if by a gigantic claw was enough to capture his interest. The crevasse was ragged like a wound, and all around its edges, it bled crimson. Something was leaking out of that fresh gorge– something identical in colour and consistency to the hulking fungus giants I had seen shambling in this direction, as if the deep, low rumblings precursor to this split in the earth called to them.

The druid slipped from his horse, slumping onto his knees in the dust. ‘No,’ he breathed. ‘This cannot be. This cannot be. This cannot be!’