Goddess of the Ice Realm (63 page)

Garric looked down corridors shimmering in a pattern as complex as that of the veins of a hazel leaf. The Hunters were dead; soldiers had just finished hacking the one he'd crippled early into a mass as bloody and shapeless as a cow's afterbirth. But in the distance, from a score of mirrored branchings, came an army of half-men and not-men; some with swords, some with fangs and claws as long as daggers.

“Yes, milord,” said Garric. He wiped his blade clean with the skirt of his tunic because the monsters he'd slain with it didn't have clothing he could use for the purpose. “That was a very good idea indeed. And I only hope that they don't waste time in getting here!”

“Now
will you wake, mistress?” Sharina dreamed Beard was saying to her in a cave of glowing ice.

Sharina came alert, throwing off the bearskin and raising the axe to strike in whichever direction danger appeared. She was breathing hard, shocked to have slept so soundly and frightened by the threat that lowered over her unseen.

The night was as peaceful as night ever was in this world. The ice walls glowed with wizardry and from far down the tunnel the sea moaned, but at least there was no wind in the cave.

Several of the band besides Scoggin and Franca were sleeping outside. The others were in the bone cabin, but the rasp of snoring through the open doorway indicated that all was well there too. Nothing moved but the wizardlight, and its pulses were as slight and sluggish as the steps of an old man.

“What. . . ?” Sharina began in puzzlement.

“The reason you should be concerned,” said the axe waspishly, “is that Alfdan removed the Key of Reyazel from your sash and has reentered the world it unlocks. Unless you find this an attractive place to spend the rest of your life, you might consider fetching him back.”

Sharina stood, weighing the axe in her hand. She was
coldly furious. The cabin door had been lying on the stones where the beetle's violence had flung it. Now it leaned against the bone wall, and the ground which it'd covered was a hole into the sandy beach.

Sharina started for it. “I don't see how I could've missed him taking the key away,” she said.

“He
is
a wizard, mistress,” said Beard, “and one of his toys is the eyestone of a sloth. It let him cast a sleep spell deeper than even I could wake you from until he'd taken himself away. Did you suppose all these folk were sleeping naturally—that none of them would be wakeful in
this
place?”

Sharina hadn't thought the cabin door had a keyhole; nor did it in the ordinary sense, but the flange of the gold key stuck up from the notch through which the latch cord had been led. She glared as she paused at the doorway in the ground; but there'd be time enough to decide how to deal with the key for once and for all
after
she retrieved Alfdan.

The sun was setting on the beach beyond. Beard said, “If you're afraid to enter, then you may as well go back to sleep, mistress. You'll need your strength for when the beetle comes or something worse does.”

Sharina stepped into the sunset. She didn't bother responding to the axe's gibe. He was right, after all.

Alfdan stood at the tide line; the oval sun threw his shadow far up the sand. The sea had drawn back, but a great swell was lifting beyond the jaws of land.

“Alfdan!” Sharina called. She started toward him. The air felt warm and the dry sand was very warm in contrast to the ice cave. “Wizard!”

The sea rolled into the narrow bay, curling and foaming. Sharina didn't suppose Alfdan could've heard her calling over the sound of the surf, much less that he'd have returned if he had. She began to run, her feet sinking deeper as she reached sand that hadn't been compacted with clay.

Beard pumped back and forth in her hand. She'd have to be careful when she reached Alfdan lest she slice the wizard open in an accident that her anger wouldn't completely regret.

The surf carved another curving slice across the strand,
washing Alfdan's legs and springing up in droplets of spray. As it withdrew, the wizard bent and lifted something large from the sand.

“Alfdan!” Sharina shouted. “Leave it!”

The wizard heard her and turned. The object in his hands was a helmet whose rim spread into fanciful flares. The metal shone in the sunset like fresh blood.

“Leave it!” Sharina repeated, still twenty feet away. She felt Beard rise in her hand, but whether that was by her will or by the axe's she couldn't be sure.

Alfdan set the helmet over his head, just as she'd known he'd do. The flaring rim framed his narrow face. He took his hands from the metal and his eyes brightened in beatific delight. “This is . . .” he said. “I can see everything from the beginning of—”

Sharina halted. She was within arm's length of the wizard. His eyes suddenly lost their focus though he didn't look away. “That's odd,” he said. “It's almost as if. . .”

“Mistress,” said Beard. “You should get out of this place. Now.”

“I don't—” said Alfdan. His face went pale; then he screamed like a hog when the butcher clamps its nose for slaughter. He grabbed the helmet with both hands and tried unsuccessfully to lift it.

“Alfdan!” Sharina said, seizing the broad rim with her free hand. It burned her; she jerked her fingers away, leaving bits of skin sticking to the metal.

“Mistress, get
out,”
the axe said with an urgency that she'd never heard in his steely voice before. At the moment she was too concerned with the wizard to appreciate Beard's tone. “Get out now. He's already dead!”

Alfdan lowered his hands. His expression was blank. Though his eyes were open, the corneas had become featureless and silvery.

“Help me!” the wizard screamed. He stuck out his tongue but it wasn't a tongue, wasn't flesh: a tendril of shimmering metal waggled toward Sharina.

“Get out, mistress!”
Beard shrieked as Sharina swung at the extending tentacle, gripping the helve with both hands. Beard's edge had sheared bone like butter, but it glanced off
the tongue without marking it. The shock threw Sharina backward onto the sand, her arms numb to the elbows.

Alfdan—the thing that had been Alfdan—took a tottering step toward her. The metal tongue continued to lengthen, moving with the circular, questing motion of an ivy shoot but immeasurably faster.

Sharina scuttled backward on her feet and left hand. When she'd lengthened the distance between her and the creature enough to risk it, she got up and ran. She didn't look over her shoulder; that would've slowed her down—and besides, she was afraid of what she might see.

Only when Sharina jumped through the portal with a cry of triumph did she look back. The creature was staggering after her. As best as Sharina could tell in silhouette against the red sun, the helmet had closed over Alfdan's face. The tendril continued to elongate; by now it stretched half the remaining distance to the opening.

Sharina slammed the door flat on the wet stone. The echoing crash roused sleeping men with shouts of fear and surprise. She reached for the key winking in the wizardlight, but as her fingers closed on the flange she paused.

“Mistress!” cried Neal, his bow strung and an arrow nocked. “Where's Master Alfdan? I can't find him!”

Instead of withdrawing the Key of Reyazel from the door notch, Sharina pushed it inward. It shouldn't have moved; there was nothing on the other side of the thick panel but a slab of smooth rock. Nevertheless the key slipped downward and vanished.

“Where's Alfdan?” Neal shouted. “Where?”

He was a big man, holding a weapon and utterly distraught. At another time he would have frightened Sharina.

Not now. Neal was merely human.

“I suppose Alfdan's in Hell,” she said calmly. “He was so determined to go there that I couldn't stop him.”

“But. . .” said Neal, staggering back as though she'd stabbed him through the body. “But how . . . ?”

“Then we're marooned here,” said Burness, hugging his broad-bladed spear to his chest. “We'll never leave. We'll freeze or we'll starve, but we'll never leave!”

Franca began to whimper. He extended the hand that
didn't hold his dagger, pointing toward the wall of the cave. A lens of violet light was forming in the ice.

Sharina watched the opening, waggling the axe to make sure that her hands had their strength back. They seemed to be all right, though her left fingertips burned like the fire itself.

“I don't think we'll freeze or starve either one,” she said with cold detachment. “We can't go to Her without Alfdan's art, but it seems that She is coming to us.”

“Many lives to drink,” whispered Beard, shivering in her hands with anticipation.

Ilna settled her tunics neatly as the
Bird of the Tide
brushed to a halt against the stone quay. The watchman in the tower had vanished as soon as he was sure that the
Bird
had entered Terness Harbor alone, not in company with the
Defender.

Hutena and Shausga jumped to the quay with ropes while the oarsmen stowed their long sweeps. “I guess they'll be waiting for us, eh, Captain?” said Ninon, careful not to look at Chalcus because he was afraid his concern would show.

“You mean because I waved to the watchman, lad?” Chalcus said with a grin. He set a tip of his bow on the deck and bent it with his knee, then slid the thick cord into the upper notch. “Ah, no, we couldn't help him seeing us, could we? What I was doing was giving what few folk are left in the castle, servants most like, time to vacate before our arrival. I don't think they'll want to greet us, especially when they hear their Commander's bound to our mast.”

He gave Lusius an appraising glance. “Most of their Commander, that is.”

The sailors laughed. “Hey, Kulit would've jumped in and got the Commander's leg back from that seawolf, wouldn't you, Kulit?” Nabarbi said, ruffling his friend's curly hair. “You should've asked him.”

Ilna smiled coldly as she stepped onto the quay and looked back at Lusius. He was unconscious; in shock, she supposed, and very likely to die . . . but he'd die shortly in any case. They'd never promised Lusius his life, only that they wouldn't feed him to the seawolf; and that was more of a concession than he'd granted to his brother, after all.

“Master Bosun?” Chalcus said to Hutena as he hooked a
quiver of arrows onto his sash. “I'm leaving the rest of the lads here while Mistress Ilna and I visit the castle, but I'd be grateful if you'd come along with us with the maul. I don't expect to meet anybody there till we get into the cellars, but it may be there's locked doors in the way.”

He hefted the powerful bow with a grin. “I may have my hands full, you see.”

“I can carry the maul,” Ilna said with a frown.

“Your hands, dear heart,” Chalcus said with an edge in his voice, “may be a great deal fuller than mine. Not so?”

Ilna nodded, her lips tight with irritation at herself. When she'd left Barca's Hamlet for the wider world, she'd often found men who treated her as though she couldn't do real work because she was a slim girl. That wasn't a mistake anybody'd made in the borough; nor made twice nowadays either, but Ilna was always on edge expecting what to her was an insult.

This was Chalcus. And even if it hadn't been—if some foppish courtier had made the comment—there wasn't time now to feel insulted!

“Sure, I'll go,” the bosun said, his voice calm if not precisely eager. He patted the head of his axe to make sure the helve was thrust firmly under his belt, then leaned down into the hold and came up with the maul Ilna'd used to set the mast wedges. The massive head was from the root of a white oak, banded around both faces with iron.

“Captain?” said Ninon. “We'll all go. You know that!”

“I know you would, indeed,” Chalcus said with his easy smile, “but this time you'll serve me and our prince better for waiting here by the ship. Who knows how quickly we'll need to put off again, eh, lads?”

“Aye, that's not half the truth,” said Kulit. He'd taken another bow from the deckhouse and was stringing it. As he spoke, he looked up the hill toward the castle.

“Dear heart and bosun?” said Chalcus. His left index finger tapped his quiver, the hilt of his dagger, and last his sword. “Shall we be off?”

“Yes,” said Ilna, striding up the street and wishing it was dirt rather than cobblestone, even though she'd worn boots. She hated stone . . .

She smiled. Reminding herself how much she hated stone was a better thing to do than worrying about what they'd find in the dungeons of Lusius's castle; and what might find them there.

“Stone's hard for feet used to a deck,” Hutena said, putting words to Ilna's thought. He slanted
the
maul's shaft over his shoulder, then changed his mind and carried the big tool in both hands. He was on the right side as they walked up the twisting street abreast; Chalcus was on the left and Ilna, smiling broader and letting her fingers knot the pattern they found appropriate, was in the middle.

Nobody was out on the street. Occasionally Ilna caught a glimpse of eyes through the crack in a shutter. A baby cried desperately behind the counter of a used clothing shop as they passed, but neither it nor the mother hushing it were visible.

“What're they afraid of?” Hutena said, frowning with anger and frustration.

The same thing you are,
Ilna thought, but instead of that she said, “They don't know what's going to happen any better than we do. The difference is that they've decided to hide and let it happen to them, whereas we're choosing to deal with it on our own terms.”

“Yeah, I guess so,” the bosun muttered. He gave her an appreciative smile and hefted the maul. “I'd rather be us.”

“Yes, me too,” said Ilna with a wintry smile of her own. Perhaps she was learning to tell the truth in a way that other people didn't find offensive. That'd be a useful skill, though she'd use it to supplement her instinctive responses rather than replace them.