Above the Snowline Read Online Free Page B

strode beside me without saying anything. ‘Remember how you felt when you first arrived.’
     
    ‘I didn’t come all the way from Darkling.’
     
    ‘Sh!’
     
    ‘We don’t have to creep up on her,’ he said loudly. He rounded the corner and stopped dead.
     
    The Rhydanne woman stood on the wall of the fishpond, poised motionless like a heron. Her spear pointed, unwavering, at the water.
     
    Jant murmured, ‘I haven’t . . . It’s . . .’ He took two steps forward and halted again.
     
    Her long black hair hung straight down and we could not see her face apart from the tip of her white nose. She was petite in stature but she held herself very erect. Her limbs in a peculiar black vest were unnatural - too long for her build, too sinewy. A leather thong looped up from the butt of her spear and was wrapped around the hand holding the shaft.
     
    Her vest was meagre compared with her white suede trousers - they were sewn with thongs, giving a moccasin effect to every seam with wisps of the fur lining protruding. She wore boots of the sort worn by trappers pulled up to her knees. Some crude metal bracelets decorated her bare arms and, looped around her neck, were several strands of beads, mostly ivory-white but some dyed black and red. They were bones and teeth! A white suede jacket hung on a backpack with a frame of stark polished bone, resting against the wall.
     
    I waited uncertainly, like a traveller privileged to catch a glimpse of a snow leopard, but half hopeful it will cross his path quickly and slink back into the forest without showing its fangs.
     
    Jant thrust his chest out, flexed his wings and sauntered closer. The girl snapped round, levelling her spear at his throat. He flinched, then, disgusted with himself, brushed the point aside. ‘Dein,’ he said softly.
     
    The girl blinked. Now I could see her eyes, striking sea-glass-green with vertical pupils like those of a cat. Her face was quite angular, cheekbones stretching skin as fine as kid leather, surrounded by the mane of her hair. She appraised Jant and drew a breath. She studied his eyes just like hers, the same moth’s-wing pale skin and wiry build, then she swayed side to side to examine his wings. She stirred her spear and its razor point circled his face like a steel mosquito.
     
    He placed a hand on his chest and introduced himself. A frown creased her forehead. She snatched out her arm, grabbed a handful of his feathers and yanked them.
     
    ‘Ow!’
     
    She laughed, said something, and at Jant’s perturbed expression laughed some more. The ice was broken. She lowered her spear and crouched on the wall top. She tapped a pointed talon on her breastbone and said, ‘Shira Dellin.’
     
    He answered, and they started talking in a guttural torrent so fast I couldn’t distinguish words. I let it wash over me and watched her curiously: her obvious but alien intelligence, her distilled strength which shone through every movement. She was scarcely human, more like a wild animal masquerading as a girl.
     
    ‘What is she saying?’ I asked eventually.
     
    Jant turned as if he’d forgotten I was there. ‘Oh, Lightning. Yes, Shira Dellin here says she’s come to find the silver man.’
     
    ‘Who is the silver man?’
     
    ‘It’s . . . it’s a character from a story.’ He wouldn’t meet my eye. ‘It’s hardly important.’
     
    ‘Tell me.’
     
    Memories long-buried by silt stirred under the dredge, weighty years he had hidden and didn’t want to examine. ‘Oh, for god’s sake. I think she’s been out in the sun too long. When I was a kid my grandmother told me that, long ago, the “silver man” came to Darkling. He stayed with us for a while - with the Rhydanne people, I mean - and during that time everyone had enough to eat. But sadly, he left, and now he lives in the flatlands.’
     
    ‘That’s a story?’
     
    ‘As Rhydanne stories go, it’s about the most substantial I ever heard. That’s why it stuck in