Goddess of the Ice Realm (42 page)

Ilna wouldn't pretend she liked Pointin, but he was smart
and
quick-witted, which was a different thing. The fact that
he'd used his wits solely to preserve his own life shouldn't matter to her, since she couldn't imagine there was anything he could've done to affect what happened to the rest of those aboard the
Queen of Heaven.

It did matter, though. Ilna knew other smart, quick-witted people who wouldn't've made the decision Pointin did. No more than she'd have done that herself.

He looked up, his expression puzzled again. “There was another
change,”
he said. “A fall like before, only a splash and I could feel the ship was floating again. And then I heard voices, but I was afraid t-t-to. . .”

“Did you see the wizardlight?” Chalcus said, his voice calm and calming. “Like what awakened you?”

“No,” said Pointin. “I was in the chest, though. Perhaps the iron. . . ?

“Perhaps the iron,” Chalcus agreed softly.

“Ship the starboard oars!” Hutena ordered. The
Bird of the Tide
was easing back to the slip she'd left hours before. The eastern sky was almost bright enough to read by.

Ilna smiled. If you could read, of course; which the supercargo alone of those aboard the vessel was able to do.

“Well, Master Pointin,” Chalcus said, “we're here in Terness. While I won't tell you what to do, I think you'd be wise to stay aboard the
Bird,
cramped though you'll find her, until we've stepped our mast and are able to sail for Valles. We'll do that tomorrow morning, nothing else appearing.”

“But what about Commander Lusius?” Pointin said.

“When he comes back, won't he try to take me away?”

“That one?” said Chalcus as the
Bird of the Tide
thudded gently into her berth. Kulit and Nabarbi hopped up to the dock, holding lines. “Not openly, not even in Terness. He thinks we have Prince Garric's ear, and he knows word would get out if he slaughtered us. Something will come, I think; but not openly, and not till late night.”

Chalcus laughed. He drew his dagger and threw it up, juggling it from hand to hand while he continued to watch the supercargo.

“He knows that his business is with us, now, not just you, my good fellow,” Chalcus said.

“Yes,” said Ilna as she looped her hank of cords away in her sleeve for use at another time. “And our business is with him!”

The crystal vessel—the Queen Ship, Alfdan had called it—was only a little more comfortable to sit on than it'd looked to Sharina from outside. The planes of blurry light were solid, but they were also slick as ice. The deck's slight angle—the beach sloped, and the ship hadn't nosed straight into it—meant that Sharina had to cling to the mast or she'd have slid back onto the shingle as surely as sunset.

Holding on wasn't easy either. The mast was of the same immaterial solidity as the deck, so it tried to slip through her fingers.

“I'm a wizard,” Alfdan said, sounding more defensive than he had any reason to be. “A real wizard!”

He'd placed himself on the high side of the deck and braced himself against the mast with an outstretched foot. Sharina was sure that if she tried the same technique she'd slide just as she was doing now; it was a matter of practice and perfect balance.

“I never doubted it,” she said. “You—you and your men, you were completely concealed. Even from Beard here.”

“It wouldn't have stopped me from killing every one of them!” the axe muttered—also in a defensive tone, and with as little cause. “Arrows indeed! Beard would've drunk all their blood before
they
could bring my mistress down!”

Sharina smiled. The axe showed more enthusiasm about the prospect of her bleeding to death atop a mound of mangled corpses than she could muster, but that was true of many of Beard's enthusiasms.

“Yes, well. . .” said Alfdan, lowering his eyes. “I didn't want you to think that because I use devices like the Cape of Shadows—”

He plucked the hem of his sleeve. When he moved, the cape fluttered like an ordinary garment, but though the shape changed Sharina couldn't see folds or wrinkles. It was a swatch of blackness, not fabric.

“—and the Queen Ship, that I'm not a wizard. But it's true
that my power would be . . . not great . . . without them to aid me. Except in one thing.”

Up close, Alfdan was an ordinary looking man. He was thin and nervous, but so was Franca; so were most people in this world, Sharina supposed. Most of the few who survived.

“I can find objects of power,” the wizard explained. “See them, feel them, know where they'll be. I knew the axe Beard would be coming here, so we waited for it.”

He nodded. The axe lay across her lap with her left hand on the grip.

“Do you know what Beard is?” Alfdan said, his deep-set eyes focusing on hers.

“She knows that Beard could split you scalp to crutch, little man,” the axe said with unexpected venom. “She knows that he'll be
glad
to drink your blood, thin and sour though he knows it'll be!”

“I know that Beard's the reason that we're still alive, most of us,” Sharina said, “after the fauns attacked. That makes him my friend. I don't need to hear anything about him that he doesn't choose to tell me.”

“Whatever you please,” Alfdan said, licking his lips and turning his head to the side. “I hadn't expected the fauns. Did you. . .”

He met her eyes again.

“Had you seen the fauns before?” he said. “Had they been pursuing you?”

Beard cackled with glee. “Do you think you're the only one who can see things before they happen, wizardling?” he said before Sharina could reply. “They weren't following us, but they may have been waiting just as you were. Or they may have been waiting for you!”

Alfdan played with his hem again, staring intently as if he saw something important in its lack of being. “I found the Cape of Shadows,” he said, “in a casket among the roots of an ancient tree that had fallen that morning. The roots pulled the casket up from the ground with them, and I was there to find it!”

“And this ship too, I suppose?” Sharina said. She'd have tapped the deck, but she needed both her hands. She felt
Beard quiver with words too faint to hear; it was like having a purring cat on her lap, a cat of sharp-edged steel.

“Yes, the Queen Ship,” the wizard agreed absently. “It was in a cave on Ornifal. The entrance had been under water for millennia, but I found it when the sea receded. In another day—”

He looked up fiercely again. Sharina wondered how much of Alfdan's jumpy behavior was from fatigue and how much was simply madness.

“—a glacier would have covered it and locked it away for all time. Except that I found it!”

“I see that,” Sharina said quietly, stroking the axe in her lap as she thought of glaciers on Ornifal. “What has that to do with me?”

She wasn't afraid of Alfdan. She wouldn't have been afraid of him even without Beard, but she knew that Alfdan, like an injured dog, might snap at her out of pain and blind fury. She didn't want that to happen, but there's no way to control what a madman may do. She'd deal with whatever happened.

“The Queen Ship sails over the sea, not in it,” Alfdan said, calm and seemingly reasonable again. “Over the sea or the land either one—it doesn't matter to the ship.”

“All right,” said Sharina. Her fingers were slipping. She shifted her grip, snatching at the mast before she could begin to slide off the deck.

What does this ship of light weigh? Could a man or a hundred men lift it from the beach using ordinary muscles instead of wizardry?

“We're searching for the Key of Reyazel,” Alfdan said, lifting his head and speaking in a consciously portentous voice. “Will you come with us, Sharina os-Reise?”

Sharina frowned. “Why should I?” she said bluntly. Did Alfdan think he could compel her by his art, now that his men had refused to use force on her?

Could
the wizard compel her by his art, whatever he thought?

“You're alone,” Alfdan said. “We are many, and—”

“Franca is with me,” Sharina said.

Alfdan sniffed. “Yes, I saw him,” he said. “A sturdy help, I'm sure!”

“And Beard is with her, wizard,” said the axe with ringing clarity. “Mistress, let me kill him now. The others will follow you, see if they don't!”

“We are many,” Alfdan repeated, wetting his lips with his tongue again. “And I have the treasures that allow us to flourish even in this world. The Cape of Shadows, the Queen Ship; other objects now, and perhaps in the future
many
more objects. If you slew me . . . if you were
able
to slay me, as this one wishes . . . they'd be quite useless to you.”

Sharina looked at the wizard. She neither liked nor trusted him, but he was certainly right that she couldn't use tools that required wizardry; nor, she suspected, was she likely to meet another wizard—in this place or anywhere—whom she'd like or trust any better than she did Alfdan.

She smiled. If she hadn't met Tenoctris, she'd have believed all wizards were arrogantly self-willed, and that most were actively evil besides.

Alfdan misunderstood her expression. “Do you doubt me?” he demanded. “Do you think—”

“I know you're a wizard,” Sharina said, raising her voice enough to ride over his. “I know I'm not and that I could no more use your cape than I could fly. But I'm still not convinced that we should join you, Master Alfdan.”

The wizard leaned back and chuckled, suddenly at ease again. “Well, mistress,” he said. “The fauns were looking for something, were they not? Or do you believe it was chance that brought a pack of them here, now?”

Sharina kept a strait face. “I don't suppose it was chance,” she said. “I don't think it was, no.”

“So they might have been looking for me, but nothing of the sort has happened to me in the past,” Alfdan said. “Never in the ten years since She came. But you, mistress . . . you just came to our world, you say. If their friends or many more of their friends come looking for you again, would you rather run from them on your two legs? Or would you sail away with us on the Queen Ship?”

“I see,” said Sharina, her hand motionless on Beard's helve. “Yes, that's a reason to join you. Now, Master Alfdan, tell me why you
want
us with you?”

“Because the axe in your hands is almost better than having
it in mine, mistress,” the wizard said. He laughed again, but this time the humor trailed off in a giggle that was close to something else. “There's finding the Key of Reyazel, which I can do easily; and there's bringing it up from where it lies. If you and your axe will agree to fetch me the Key of Reyazel, then you're welcome to all the protection to be had from my band and my art, I assure you.”

“There'll be things to kill,” Beard said in a steely whisper. “Blood to drink, mistress, much blood for Beard to drink!”

“I'll get this key for you. . .” said Sharina. “If you take me where I want to go in exchange.”

“Where is that?” said Alfdan with a frown.

“I don't know,” she said. She smiled without humor. “I just arrived. Does it matter?”

Alfdan shrugged. “I don't suppose so,” he said. “All right, mistress. But first you must fetch the key.”

He and the axe both began to laugh in high-pitched voices.

“Sit in the middle, Lord Cashel,” Syl said as she got into the bow of the craft and knelt facing backward. “Getchin will guide the boat. He's good at that.”

“He weighs too much,” said Getchin, the blond man. He stood in the stern, holding a slender crystal rod about as long as his arms would spread. “You shouldn't come with us, Syl.”

“He doesn't weigh more than Elpel and Gromis both,” Syl said composedly. “Not quite.”

Cashel looked doubtfully at the vessel he was supposed to get into. Not only was it shaped like a pastel pink milkweed pod, it seemed to be equally flimsy. He wasn't much happier about the prospect than Getchin was.

“Are you sure I won't just step through the bottom?” Cashel said.

“It makes no difference to me, since I'll be carried whether you enter the airboat or hike on your own legs, master,” said Evne from his shoulder. “But it's three days journey if you walk it, so we'd best be getting on . . . unless it's your plan to bury Kotia instead of rescuing her?”

“I don't have a plan,” Cashel muttered, stepping over the boat's curved side. It had a warm, firm roughness to his bare feet, the feel of a thick, newly-sawn plank. “I just thought somebody ought to. . .”

Cashel thought somebody ought to give the Visitor some of what he was dishing out to other folks. Saying that—and saying that he meant to be the fellow who did it—sounded like bragging. If things worked out, Cashel wouldn't need talk; and if they didn't, well, at the end he wouldn't have to worry that he'd made a fool of himself in addition to losing a fight.

“Well sit down, then,” said Getchin peevishly. “And keep your weight balanced, if you would!”

Cashel looked at the blond man. Getchin was as tall as he was, but he was only of middling build and soft besides. He glared at Cashel, then flushed. No one spoke until Cashel turned and seated himself with his usual care. The boat's interior was hollow with neither thwarts nor furnishings of any kind. Cashel held his quarterstaff across the gunwales before him.

“Getchin hopes to replace the late Farran in Syl's affections, master,” the toad said in a voice that folks deep in the circle of spectators could hear clearly. “He regards you as a rival, so he regrets that Syl insists on coming along at the start of your heroic endeavor.”

“Look, let's get moving, can we?” Cashel said. He didn't look over his shoulder at Getchin, and he wished that Syl wasn't seated staring right into his face.