The Icerigger Trilogy: Icerigger, Mission to Moulokin, and The Deluge Drivers (75 page)

The slopes ahead looked more precipitous than the ones they’d been running alongside for many days. Signs of erosion, indicating possibly unstable hillsides and talus falls, were becoming visible. They would almost certainly have to turn back unless a clear pass could be found through these new obstacles. The
Slanderscree
had proven herself landworthy, but she could not climb much of an incline.

As Ethan predicted, they reached the first of the low but steep-sided hills that evening. They decided to make a semi-permanent camp in the sheltering lee of the tallest minimount. Scouts would be sent out on the morrow in wheeled lifeboats to try and find a passage to the west that the icerigger could negotiate. Both scout groups would be gone a maximum of five days. In that time, the crew would busy themselves with making minor but bothersome and necessary repairs to the ship, and try to keep busy until the scouts returned.

Sinahnvor was patrolling his foredeck position, cold in the near cloudless night, when something flickering on the hillside caught his eye. He blinked double lids, but the flickering remained. It looked like a fat eye winking in the night.

Fortunately Sinahnvor was not particularly imaginative. Nevertheless he shivered with something other than cold. Who would be off the ship this time of no-light? There’d been rumors of one of the humans and the Landgrave’s daughter, but such tales propelled more rafts than did the winds.

The watchman lifted his oil lamp slightly higher, extending the pole to which it was slung over the side of the raft. It was his imagination after all—no, there it was again! A definite intermittent gleam part way up the steep slope, no higher than the topmost spar of the foremast.

Rumors of a less amusing kind filtered through his brain. If this were truly a land of spirits, might that not be some nightwraith come to snatch him from the deck? And who would know the manner or time of his abduction?

It made him glance around anxiously. The two moons were high aloft, an indication that it was nearer morning than eve-time. He saw no movement anywhere. Would his relief find only lamp pole, clothing, and weapons? Surely a spirit would be interested only in his body.

Monont should be on center deck watch now. He could remain silent and confront that mysterious glint, waiting for his soul to mayhap be stolen out his mouth, or he could seek the comfort of a comrade’s company. Lamp pole swinging, he descended from the bowsprit to the deck and moved past the fore cabins.

“Clean ice and wind on your neck,” came a husky voice in the darkness. Sinahnvor swung his pole around. It lit the face of a curious Tran.

“What are you doing away from your post, Sinahnvor?” asked Monont, concerned. “Should the night-mate catch you, he could make you—”

“Be silent, Monont!” Sinahnvor whispered hastily. “There is an eye in the mountain!”

The other lookout studied his colleague carefully. “You have been chewing too much
bui
extract.”

There was conviction in Sinahnvor’s voice, however. “As you doubt me, come and see for yourself.”

“I should not leave my post.”

“Who is to know? The night-mate will not appeal until watch-change time, and our nearest enemies are at least a hundred satch behind us.”

“That is true. I will come, but only for a moment. Foolishness,” Monont muttered as he followed the other sentry to the foredeck.

Motioning his companion to silence, Sinahnvor extended his light pole over the railing, moved it about slowly as he searched the mountainside. For several seconds there was no sign of the shining and he was more afraid of the story Monont would tell the others come the morn than he was of any spirit they might arouse. But then the spark showed once more, unmistakably. It remained as steady as the lamp pole. “See? Did I not tell you?”

The more prosaic Monont eyed the speck of light. “Truly is there something, but I think it is no spirit. Who ever heard of a spirit with only one eye? They have at least four each.”

“Shssh! Do not insult it!”

“That is no spirit, idiot-friend.” Monont mounted the railing, swung a clawed foot over the side. Sinahnvor watched him worriedly.

“Where are you going?”

“To that hillside.”

“You are mad! Don’t do it, Monont. The spirits will draw you into the mountain and drown you in dirt.”

“I thought the spirits of Hell would take us when we went under the ice and down to the inside of the world. The humans and Sir Hunnar Redbeard said such tales were mere superstition. Then they killed the devil that came up from the waters of the night. It stunk like a slaughtered hessavar. I find it hard now to believe as I once did in spirits and daemons.”

He slipped over the side, used a boarding rope to drop quickly to the ice.

“Monont—
Monont
!” Sinahnvor raised his lamp higher. In its shallow glow he saw the dim outline of his friend reach the hillside and begin an awkward ascent. The outline faded to shadow, then a memory of a shadow. Moments passed, silent moments broken only by the moan of the tired wind. But while he heard no cries of triumph, neither did any screams drift back to him.

It was with considerable relief that he picked out the returning figure of the other sentry, apparently unharmed.

“What was it, then?” He extended an arm and helped Monont back on deck.

“Here is your spirit eye. I had to dig it out.” Sinahnvor, much to his surprise, recognized the object immediately. “Why, ’tis only a
purras,
a common mixing bowl much as my own mate uses. Odd how it shines. The wood must take a very high polish.”

“Take it,” urged Monont. “ ’Tis not wood.”

Sinahnvor accepted the object … and nearly dropped it. It was made of thick, dense metal, badly tarnished in places, still flashy in others. He did not recognize the metal.

Both sentries exchanged glances. What people lived here in this iceless desert who could afford to make common, everyday kitchen utensils out of solid metal? Metal was hoarded for use in weapons and nails and tools, not mixing bowls.

Sinahnvor did not understand. Not understanding, he said, “I think we had best wake the night-mate early.”

The officer was no less startled by the bowl than the two lookouts had been. He chose to wake the second mate, who in turn roused Ta-hoding, who alerted the three humans and Sir Hunnar and the others of the icerigger’s informal decision-making body.

Before long most of the crew was awake and hacking at the nearby hillside, their lamps looking to those remaining on the
Slanderscree
like a convocation of stultified fireflies.

None of the humans took part in the digging. Their survival suits could barely cope with the nighttime temperature of seventy below, with a wind-chill factor nearing instant death. A crude digging tool could make a substantial gash in a survival suit. Insinuating itself into the cut, the outside air could freeze human skin solid almost as efficiently as a spray of liquid helium.

With such a large party working, it wasn’t long before several bags of trophies were being examined on deck. Peering through his mask (no need of the secondary goggles during the night), Ethan saw spread out among wood and soil a treasure trove of metal objects. On most worlds these would have been dismissed as nothing remarkable, but on metal-poor Tran-ky-ky they hinted at a vanished civilization of immense wealth. There were knives, utensils of all kinds, buckles and braces, engraved and broken drinking vessels, even metal buttons and pins. Hunnar fingered several of the last. Until now he’d never seen a pin made of anything but bone.

“Enormously rich or enormously wasteful,” he murmured, letting oil lamp light create argent patterns on the ornamental steel. “We will dig with more discipline in the morning.”

“Who could have lived here?” Ethan wondered aloud.

“Not Tran nor Saia.” The knight turned his attention to a delightfully intricate metal bottle wrapped in fine wire scrollwork. “ ’Tis too desolate and iceless for us and too cold for the Saia. But this is not spirit work.” Cat-eyes strove to penetrate windswept darkness. “Someone lived here…”

The next day different sections of the hillside were marked off according to how promising they’d proven the night before. The excavation parties turned up a steady stream of new artifacts. Some were made of familiar materials, wood and bone, but most were various alloys, including several neither September or Williams could identify.

Unexpectedly, the wooden artifacts were what the teacher found most intriguing. When Ethan asked him why, he replied, “Because they mean this region cannot have been deserted very long, in geologic time. While it’s true the cold air would preserve cellulose materials for a while, it is not desert-dry. Nor is the soil devoid of minute organisms and bacterial agents, which would also act to break down the wood—though they are scattered through the soil and nowhere very populous.

“This wood is in far too good condition to have lain buried for any great length of time.”

They decided to remain several days and unearth all they could. But a new discovery soon altered their plans.

The two scout parties sent out to search for a passage through the hills returned. Their crews babbled out an impossible tale, so laden with gestures, expressions and adjectival phrases that Ethan and his friends were hard pressed to make sense of any of it.

While they debated uncertain terms among themselves, Ta-hoding and his crew launched feverish preparations to get underway. At that point, Ethan cornered Hunnar and refused to let him pass until he explained what was happening.

“Suaxus, my squire, was in the first boat,” the knight said, trying to control his obvious excitement. “They found a pass through the mountains. Only, they aren’t mountains.”

“You’re not making sense, friend Hunnar,” September prompted.

“They traversed this pass and emerged on the other side of this range. It seems the wind blows harder, or steadier, or both, on the other side. What is buried here lies revealed there.” He turned, indicated the partly excavated hillside.

“These are not mountains, they are buildings.” And he broke away to perform some important task before Ethan could think to ask anything more.

Only Williams accepted this news calmly. “It makes sense, not to mention explaining the preponderance of artifacts we’ve found.” The icerigger was already racing for the recently discovered pass. “There are similar buried cities on many Commonwealth worlds, Ethan. The same winds which would cover an ancient metropolis could later uncover it.”

“Assuming that’s what we’ve found—who built it?”

The teacher eyed Ethan, pursed his lips. “Who knows? The Tran obviously don’t, nor do the Saia, who are supposed to know so much about this land. If we’re lucky, maybe we’ll find out. Perhaps they are people who no longer survive on Tran-ky-ky but who gave the Saia their legends of other worlds.”

The pass turned out to be much wider and smoother than anyone had a right to expect. So straight was the gap between hills that unnatural forces were suspected. Ethan wondered if they excavated straight down, would they eventually strike pavement?

Once through the slopes they turned east, inland and away from the cliffs. They did not have to travel far. Dirt and rock were piled here also, but much stonework could be seen rearing planes and angles toward the sky, reminding Ethan of a partially eroded graveyard. Here it was the bones of dead buildings which stood revealed to the air.

The ground rose skyward not in a smooth slope as on the other side, but in graduated levels. “See?” called Williams, pointing out different stone work and designs on each level. “This is not one building, as the scout parties assumed, but new structures raised atop the old. As each older structure was buried, it formed a foundation for the next building erected on the same spot. One town on the skeleton of the old.” His hand swept eastward.

“We are looking at an ancient series of cities, not a cluster of monumental buildings. We can only guess at how far it extends. Since we’ve been paralleling similar rises nearly all the way from Moulokin, it’s possible similar towns are buried beneath each of them. They may all form part of a single lengthy metropolis at least several hundred kilometers long.”

The crew furled all sail and anchored the icerigger against the wind. Everyone not on watch scrambled over the side to marvel at the colossal architecture.

“One thing I don’t understand.” Williams tried to rub an eye, remembered his mask, raised it slightly to admit a comforting finger. “It would be natural to expect the topmost structures to be the most sophisticated in design and execution. Yet from what I can see the architecture is nearly identical from top to bottom, town to town.”

“I’d like to know who’s responsible for all this.” Ethan scrambled carefully across the fine but slippery talus. “Now I’m even more positive it’s not the Tran. Look at those arches, those wide windows.” He balanced himself on a partly buried rectangular block that must have weighed several tons, pointed upslope and to his right.

“And that building almost exposed over there. The roof’s too flat to resist snow buildup, and it’s lined with what looks like glass to me. A skylight, on Tran-ky-ky? Not with the quality of glass the Tran make. A decent day’s wind would blow it to splinters. Unless, of course, it’s something more than normal glass.”

“Perhaps the Saia did build this after all, and have just forgotten about it, young feller-me-lad,” ventured September. “A selective memory about such matters would keep ’em from gettin’ embarrassed about letting so much knowledge slip away.”

They uncovered one building after another: homes, warehouses, public meeting places, even what seemed to be an open amphitheater. An open stadium, on Tran-ky-ky!

It didn’t take thirty years experience or several scientific degrees for Tran as well as humans to postulate a climate completely different from the present.

Having come to that realization, Williams left the archeology to Eer-Messach and others. Using the primitive Tran navigation instruments and the inadequate but useful ones included in each survival-suit’s kit, he devoted himself to a night-time examination of the stars. Not the most intricately formed metal cup or detailed inscription cut into stone could dissuade him from his sudden fanatic interest in astronomy. Vacuum-clear skies, Tran navigation charts and old tales seemed to reinforce his determination to keep at his lonely cold night studies. Ethan could imagine what the teacher was trying to prove.