City of Ice (3 page)

The others were pleading with Naue to turn around, but that only seemed to make the arrogant wind more determined to go on in the same direction.

Leech unfolded his legs cautiously, but Bayang was too distracted to notice. He still wasn't sure how much he could trust her. She'd told him that the original Leech—he didn't know how many lives ago that was—had killed a dragon prince and made a belt out of his hide and the dragons had never forgotten. Bayang had been hunting him down in all the lives after that.

He and Bayang had tried to form their own separate peace and had even fought side by side against common enemies. But she was still as arrogant as ever and kept limiting what he could do with his magical devices.

Stupid, she wants to keep you weak and helpless. She was trying to kill you when you first met. Though she says she's changed her mind and swears she won't, she's having second thoughts.
The whisper came from the back of his mind, from memories lost in shadow. He thought he'd heard it in that cellar in Honolulu when they had been following Roland and Badik to an island. He had no idea what the voice was, but he wished he could get rid of it. The best he seemed to be able to do was shove it back into the shadows and try to ignore it.

He shoved those notions away as quickly as they had come.
No, not Bayang,
he told himself. She was as dedicated to protecting his life now as she had once been determined to take it.
She's…she's just being overprotective.

Oh yeah?
the voice taunted.
Then show her you can handle yourself. When you leave the wing, crouch real low. You'll slice through the air like a knife.

Leech wouldn't mind proving to Bayang that she was wrong about him. His friend Primo had always been telling him to have more confidence in himself. Leech felt a little twinge when he thought about Primo. He'd died in the museum with Scirye's sister, Nishke, trying to keep the ring from being stolen.

But this was no time to sit and mourn. As Leech began to hunch over, Koko glanced at him.

“Hey, where are you going?” the badger asked.

“I'm going to borrow a page from Bayang and Scirye's book on how to handle a windbag.” As he rose within the frame, he called to the wind, “Great Naue, I dare you to race me now.”

“Ho, Half Lumpling?” Naue said. Since Bayang and Leech could fly on their own, they'd been elevated to the status of half lumplings. “Yet another challenge? Didn't you see? A speeding arrow could not match Naue. How can you?”

“Scared?” Leech taunted.

“Come back!” Bayang shouted.

He ignored them, rising above the fragile-looking straw frame. He intended to turn Naue in the direction that Roland had gone. That way, they could resume the chase. However, as soon as Leech cleared the straw frame, Naue's powerful air currents caught him and he began to tumble backward like a rag doll, like a kite, like a leaf.

As he fell head over heels, he thought ruefully that Bayang had been right after all. The lower profile did not let him manage the force of Naue.

He didn't know which would be worse: her gloating or his breaking his neck.

As the little fool popped out of the wing's frame, it was all she could do not to go after him.
Because,
she assured herself,
I'm just trying to do my job as his bodyguard and not because I'm pretending to be his mother.

But she had other passengers on the wing whom she could not abandon, so she stayed.

Then, to her amazement, Naue slowed and banked to the left, heading back along the huge gully left in his wake. “Fool of a half lumpling,” the wind muttered. “Didn't he realize that he was no match for great Naue?”

As they returned, Bayang's stomach tightened. A dark figure lay still in the snow.

A few moments later, Naue slowed, circling leisurely like a breeze around the fallen Leech. “What a silly time to sleep!”

“He's not asleep, he's hurt!” Scirye scolded. It was like the Kushan girl to speak her mind, whether it was to a fellow hatchling, a dragon, or even a wind with the force of a hurricane.

“Hurt?” Naue asked, puzzled. For a creature with neither flesh nor bone, the concept was a strange one.

Bayang seized the opportunity and lowered the nose of the wing so they angled downward. The wing gave a jerk as it dropped out of the wind's grasp, and then the straw wing glided gently to the surface.

Koko was already hopping from the wing to the snow. “Here I come, buddy.” But the padding around the badger's middle made him less than acrobatic and he wound up flopping on his belly.

Scirye followed a moment later. “Why don't you change into your human shape?” the girl inquired helpfully. “Longer legs would be better for the snow.”

Koko straightened. “And give up my fur coat in this cold? Nothing doing.”

“Is it really the temperature or your own clumsiness at transforming?” Bayang asked as she eased into the snow.

“Okay, okay, so I slept through some lessons,” Koko said, the snow crunching under his paws as he floundered on.

Snow swirled about them as Naue kept circling and calling, “Get up, lumpling. Get up. There's races for us to run and sky to explore.”

Koko had a head start, but Bayang's body had a better design that let her slither on her belly across the snow like a serpent. Her hind legs churned so that she plowed on, digging a furrow across the surface.

Reaching Leech first, she took his wrist. It seemed so thin and fragile in her paw. Gently, as if she were handling eggshells, she felt for a pulse. “He's alive.”

“Good, good.” Naue sounded relieved and made what was probably an apology for him: “I like his spirit if not his sense.”

Koko slumped with relief. “That's Leech in a nutshell.”

“Now if you'll just pick up the wing as soon as we all get back to it,” Bayang began.

“Not now, not now,” Naue boomed. The snow swirled as he whirled. “I hear my brothers and sisters. I think I will play them for a while.”

“But we need to go after the Roland lumpling,” Scirye protested.

“And we will,” Naue said; his voice was already dwindling as he disappeared into the sky. “We will have lots more fun soon.”

“When?” Bayang shouted after him.

They had to strain their ears to him.

“Call Naue, mightiest and swiftest of winds, and if he is ready, he will come,” Naue said.

And then there was only silence, except for the whisper of snow being swept along by the slight breeze.

They were alone in the Arctic wilderness with Roland getting farther away with each passing moment.

“This,” Koko groused, “is what we get for trusting someone with air for brains.”

Scirye gazed up at the sky helplessly. “What do we now?”

“If I grew larger,” Bayang said, “I could lift the wing up high enough to catch a regular air current. The tricky part will be shrinking short enough to get onto the wing before it crashes.”

“I'll pilot it,” Scirye said.

“It's not that easy to fly,” Bayang said, shaking her head. “That's why I haven't asked any of you to take a turn.”

“Hey, if the debating society's finished, how about a little help here,” Koko called. The badger was already kneeling by Leech.

“Yes, first things first,” Bayang agreed, and twisting her lithe body around, she started to slither on her belly across the snow again.

As Scirye slogged through the snow after her, her toes felt like they were turning into icicles. Though immensely comfortable, her thin antelope-skin boots had never been meant for Arctic conditions.

Kles wriggled free from her coveralls. “I'll keep an eye out for more freebooters.” He shoved himself away, dropping a few inches before he could spread his wings and flutter away.

By the time Scirye reached Leech, Koko and Bayang had already helped him sit up.

“Now I know how a sock feels in a washing machine,” he said, rubbing the back of his neck. “I always wanted to see snow, but not from this close up.”

The dragon arched her neck upward so that she loomed over him. “That was a reckless thing to do,” she scolded. “Didn't I warn you?”

Leech let out his breath slowly in resignation. “Okay, I admit that you were right and I was wrong. So let's get the lecture over with.”

The dragon seemed hurt. “I was worried about you.”

“We all were,” Koko said as he trudged up. “For once, I agree with the walking handbag.”

Leech wriggled his shoulders as if there was a kink in his neck. “Well, Roland knows we're here.”

“No, maybe not,” Bayang said. “The airplane was out of sight by then and how could one of those aerial scouts carry a radio? The sets are pretty big. And when they met, the freebooters had to check the airplane out visually.”

“So we still have a chance,” Scirye said hopefully.

“The Sogdians are coming,” Kles called down to them from where he circled in the sky.

“How did they repair that big wind sled this fast?” Bayang wondered.

They saw the small sail first. It came toward them at a leisurely pace in the faint breeze blowing now. It was a few moments more before they realized the sail was powering a small, narrower wind sled.

On it were two Sogdians. The one in the stern was the same man who had stopped the others from shooting. He was handling the sled's ropes, changing the angle of the sled so he could catch as much as he could of the slight wind in the single sail. The other in the bow was one of the warriors with his distinctive red-leather coat with fur lining, collar, and cuffs. He held a rifle as he scanned the terrain.

Suddenly, the Sogdian at the rear jumped up and lowered the sail quickly, and the sled coasted slowly toward them, coming to a stop a few yards away.

The rifleman remained in the bow, covering them with his gun. He continued to do that even when the other Sogdian got off and walked toward them at an angle that left his partner with a clear shot. Apparently, they were taking no chances.

When the Sogdian pulled back his hood, his gunpowder-grimed face and thick beard looked more suited for a pirate than a trader. “I wasn't imagining things the first time I saw you. I can understand why dragons aren't cold, because they're used to the chilly sea,” he said in accented English, “but what about you children and your pet…?” He studied Koko, perplexed. “Beaver?”

Koko stamped a paw in the snow. “Don't you lump me in with those bucktoothed rats. I'm a badger, badger, badger.”

“A curious name that, but”—the Sogdian shrugged—“to each his own.”

Scirye expected steam to puff from the exasperated Koko's ears. Bayang seemed to have the same suspicions and slapped a paw around Koko's muzzle so that all he could emit was squeals and grunts.

Smiling, Bayang explained. “We've come from Hawaii, where the goddess of volcanoes gave us each a magical charm that keeps us from freezing.”

Even if the charms did not keep them warm in the coveralls they had borrowed from lockers at the seaplane terminal in San Francisco, the charms kept them from freezing.

“Astounding,” the Sogdian said. “A straw mat that floats, a dragon, a badger-badger-badger, and…” He turned to Leech. “Did these eyes deceive me or did I glimpse this boy flying through the air just as we were coming here?”

“I'm Leech, sir,” Leech said. “And yes, it was me.”

“Astonishing,” the Sogdian said.

Kles had spiraled downward so that he was hovering above Scirye. He bowed now as he flourished a paw gracefully. “A thousand and ten thousand greetings, O Mighty Lord,” he said in formal Sogdian.

The big man gazed up at Kles with openmouthed delight. “Miracle upon miracle. O wondrous creature, are thou a real griffin or am I dreaming?”

“I assure thee that I am as real as thy boots, Lord,” Kles said, and motioned a paw to Scirye. “I serve Lady Scirye of the mighty House of Rapaññe,” he announced proudly.

When a Sogdian used it, formal Sogdian seemed as natural and graceful as the flourish and bow the man gave her. “A thousand and ten thousand greetings to thee, O Lady of the House of Rapaññe. This is a twice-blessed day. Not only hast thou graced me with thy company, but thou hast saved myself, my kinsmen, and my chattels. Know thou that I am Caravan Leader Tarkhun of the House of Urak. I and all mine are in thy debt until the sky shatters and the stars fall from the sky.”

From the Sogdians she had met, Scirye knew that debt was as important to Sogdians as it was to dragons. And
that
could be useful in their pursuit of Roland.

“And I, her humble servant,” Kles went on grandly in a tone that was the opposite of his words, “hale from the Koyn Encuwontse of the Tarkär Eyrie.”

The prince bowed again but not so deeply this time. “I am thrice blessed.”

More Sogdian was coming back to Scirye now, for Sogdians had held many of the menial jobs in the Istanbul and Paris embassies, where they had cooked and gardened. Scirye had gotten along better with them than with her fellow Kushans. The Sogdian servants had polished her command of the language, so she had picked up some of the flowery phrases of the formal tongue—though she always felt self-conscious when she used it.

“And a thousand and ten thousand greetings, O Mighty Lord,” Scirye said, also in formal Sogdian.

Straightening up, the prince clapped his hands in delight. “You speak Sogdian, Lady. I'm honored.”

“Just enough to be misunderstood in it,” Scirye said modestly. Now that she was close to him, she could see that the Sogdian's furs were of the richest and finest quality, which fit his title.

The prince tapped his chin. “If I remember right, the master of the Rapaññe is Lord Tsirauñe, the Griffin Master.”

“You're very well informed, Your Highness,” Kles said. “He's my lady's father.”

“His reputation has reached even the top of the world,” the prince said.

Scirye translated his Sogdian title into its English equivalent for the others. “This is Prince Tarkhun. His clan, the Urak, is the largest and noblest—”

“Don't forget wealthiest,” the prince added smoothly in English. He had a twinkle in his eyes.

Scirye's head dipped in acknowledgment. “And the richest house of Sogdia.”

Koko perked up at the mention of money and jerked free from Bayang's grasp. “Anytime you need saving, Prince Old Boy, just come to me,” he said as if the rescue had been his idea.

Bayang bowed. “Your Highness,” she said, “if you could help us on our journey, we would appreciate it.”

The prince replied, extending his arms grandly, “But of course. Just name it and it will be done. And while you're in Nova Hafnia, I insist you be my guests. I must hear your tale.”

Hovering in the air, Kles executed a bow so low it was almost a somersault. “We thank thee, Lord.”

“But you must at least tell me what's brought you up here,” the prince said, lowering his arms.

“We seek an evil man named Roland who sent a dragon to steal a precious ring from my lady's people,” Kles explained. “And during the theft, my lady's sister was killed and so was Leech's friend.”

The prince's head jerked up in surprise. “Roland? You mean the rich man?”

Scirye jumped on that: “You know him? He's flying in a Ford Trimotor.”

“He comes up here sometimes.” The prince frowned as if he had just found half of a bug in his sandwich. “We sell him fuel for his airplane as we do everyone, but otherwise I try to have as little to do with him as possible.” He looked troubled. “I think I would rather wrestle a polar bear than tackle Roland, especially since he has a dragon.”

“We can't ignore what he's done to us,” Scirye said.

“Even so, My Lady, it would be wiser if you did.” The prince sighed.

“And it might be in your best interest as well if we caught him,” Bayang said. “We saw a pair of flying freebooters greet his airplane. They're probably working for him. We took care of them, but his plane got away. It was going to Nova Hafnia.”

The prince rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “He's a ruthless man, but I didn't think even
he
would go that far. Why go to all that trouble to rob the caravans? They're rich enough for the likes of us, but he already has such great wealth.”

“Perhaps he doesn't want anyone interfering in whatever he's got planned,” Kles suggested. “The plunder is just a side bonus to the freebooters. I suspect they've also cut the telegraph and telephone lines to keep you isolated.”

“We have no telephones here,” the prince said, “but they've sabotaged the telegraph system.” He nodded his head firmly. “You must tell the Mounties what you've just told me.”

The Mounties were the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, who would maintain law and order in the area now that Canada controlled it. So it was logical to go to them, but Scirye remembered the trouble she and her friends had had at the seaplane terminal making the authorities believe them. If they went to the Mounties, it was Scirye and her friends who were more likely to wind up in jail.

The prince shrewdly considered their silence. “Or would the Mounties ask you awkward questions?”

“There could be a slight misunderstanding”—Kles gave a polite little cough—“that might cause delays.”

“And any delay could be fatal, Your Highness.” Bayang inclined her head respectfully. “We think Roland is re-assembling an ancient magical weapon. Have you heard of Yi?”

Prince Tarkhun drew his eyebrows together in thought. “I remember a tale about an archer who shot down extra suns that were scorching the earth.”

“That's him.” Bayang nodded. “We think Roland is gathering together the parts of Yi's bow.”

“There was an archer's ring that belonged to Yi before it was given to Lady Tabiti,” Scirye said.

“And from the goddess Pele he got the bowstring which was disguised as a necklace,” Kles added. “We think he's after a third part up here.”

Prince Tarkhun stroked his beard. “Why would a man as rich and influential as him need an ancient weapon—even if it's so powerful?”

“Perhaps some country's paying him to do it,” Kles suggested.

“Or he's planning to extort a fortune from some king or queen,” Bayang said.

“Is all the money in the world worth angering a goddess?” Prince Tarkhun wondered.

“And he lost a fortune when he destroyed his own island just to get the necklace with the bowstring from Pele,” Bayang admitted.

“If it was me,” Koko said, “I'd have kept the island. Then I'd count the greenbacks while I sipped one of those drinks with the little umbrella in it.”

“He must have some bigger goal in mind than mere gold,” Prince Tarkhun said.

“Whatever his reason is, we know he's up here,” Leech said. “So let's go after him.”

Bayang looked skyward. “The launch will be tricky, but I guess there's no choice.”

Prince Tarkhun cleared his throat. “Pardon me, Lady of the Sea, but the dragons' realms lie in more southern waters. If the Mounties see you flying on a magical wing, they will arrest you. Since the war, the authorities have strictly limited magic in the area. Anyone with a magical object must have a license.”

“I think we should take His Highness's advice,” Kles suggested. “If we wait until dark, we might be able to sneak into the air unnoticed.”

“More delays,” Leech grumbled in frustration. “In the meantime, Primo's killer is still free.”

Bayang shrugged. “I think your friend Primo would say that it can't be helped. If we get thrown into jail, we might be there longer than a few hours.”

“The law also applies equally to magical creatures such as dragons and badger-badger-badgers.” The prince paused and added shrewdly, “I have heard that dragons can change their noble shapes. Is this true?”

“Yes,” Bayang said cautiously.

“And what of badger-badger-badgers?” the prince asked.

“Of course,” Koko said, crossing his claws behind his back.

The prince spread his hands. “Then, since you must wait anyway, why not disguise yourselves and I will take you and the children on my sled into Nova Hafnia? There we can supply you with all you need for the chase.”

“We thank thee,” Kles said with a flourish of wings and forelegs, and then ended with a bow.

“We can alter our forms.” Bayang indicated Scirye and Leech. “But I think the city would be just as curious about children wearing only coveralls in this weather. So, even though the children don't need them, would you have some furs their size?”