The Shadow of Malabron (38 page)

“Why did he help us?” he asked bitterly. “Why didn’t he get rid of us like the Nightbane, if we’re trespassing?”

“He said we would find that out if we climbed the stairs. Unlike most dragons, he is not given to long conversations. When Rowen is ready, we should do as he said. There will be more shelter from the cold, at any rate. We may be here a long while before it is safe to leave.”

“I’m ready now,” Rowen said, rising to her feet with Freya’s help. “I feel fine.”

At the top of the steps they came out into an open, roofless space rimmed by tall columns. At the far end of this circular court rose a sheer wall, hundreds of feet high, topped by white towers that gleamed in the late afternoon sunlight, like a vision of a palace in some other world that was far-off and out of reach. At the base of the wall stood a wide archway, partially blocked by rubble and chunks of stone.

“The forecourt of Aran Tir,” Pendrake said. “Through that archway is the main staircase up into the citadel. Even though our pursuers have been beaten back, we should probably climb as high as we can in the towers. It will give us a better view of where our enemies are and what they may be doing.”

Just then they heard a sound from the archway, a clattering of fallen stones. Moth and Finn drew their swords. Everyone waited without speaking, and then, through the archway, limping and bedraggled, came Shade.

W
ILL SHOUTED AND RAN FORWARD.
He knelt and wrapped his arms round the wolf.

“I thought I’d never see you again,” he said through his tears. “I thought you were dead.”

“I am not dead, Will Lightfoot,” Shade said huskily. “I am here. I will not leave you again.”

“You found a swifter route across the ice than we did,” the toymaker said, laughing. “I know you’re fast, my friend, but that is still quite a feat.”

“I did not travel across the ice, Master Pendrake,” the wolf said. “I went under it.”

They all welcomed him with glad smiles and pats. Then, in his calm, methodical manner, Shade related what had happened after he and the garm-wolf fell from the stair. They had tumbled down the cliff to the surface of the ice, and both of them were hurt, but the garm-wolf recovered first and fled across the glacier. Shade gave chase as best he could and caught up with his enemy at the edge of a crevasse, where they struggled and both fell in.

“I do not remember anything else,” the wolf went on, “until I woke up and found myself in a cave under the ice, with Whitewing Stonegrinder.”

“With who?” Freya asked.

“The guardian of the ice, Freya Ragnarsdaughter,” Shade said. “That is his name. He can be in many places at once. Or he can be … many of himself at once. It is hard to understand. When I first saw him I tried to get away but he was everywhere. There was no escaping him. He put his foot on me and I could not move. He was very angry and I thought he was going to crush me. I asked him not to, and he did not, but he wanted to know who had dared to enter his domain. He spoke in the voice of the First Ones, only much louder. I answered him, and after that he was not so angry, but he still kept his foot on me.”

“He must have guessed you were one of the Companions,” Pendrake said. “Thank goodness for that.”

“I agree,” Shade said with a nod. “Whitewing Stonegrinder said he had been woken by the
ghool
crawling around his home, and he was going to do something about that, but first he wanted to know what I was doing here. When I told him the story he called me brother and took his foot off me. I thanked him, and then he asked me if I had seen any of the First Ones in my travels. When I said I had not he was sad. He growled as though he was angry again, but I saw tears rolling down and freezing on his face.”

Shade related how he had told Whitewing Stonegrinder about his friends, that they were in danger from a host of the Nightbane. That had roused the dragon to his former fury. He roared and rumbled and lashed his tail, and the cave shook and spears of ice came crashing to the floor.

“Then he touched my wounds and they went cold and did not hurt any more,” Shade said.

“He did the same for Rowen,” Will said. “If it’s the same dragon.”

Whitewing Stonegrinder had led Shade through a series of tunnels under the ice to the rock of Aran Tir. He unblocked a passage up into the citadel and told the wolf to take it.

“I asked him if he would help my friends, and he got angry and said he was already doing that. I thought he might step on me again. I was very glad to get out of there.”

“There is no doubt you saved us, Shade,” said Moth. “From the Nightbane and the dragon both.”

They all echoed the archer’s words.

“But we’re still stranded here,” Finn said.

“Our enemies know where we are,” Pendrake said, “and if the Angel is with them, they’re not likely to abandon the siege. Somehow we must get down off the ice, and pretty quickly. Though how we’re going to go through the pass unnoticed and unchallenged is another question.”

“We do not have to go through the pass,” Shade said. “Whitewing Stonegrinder told me of another way, after he calmed down again. The Shee found it, he said, when they took refuge here. It is a cave that goes under the ice for many leagues, all the way to the other side of the mountains. He showed me where to find it. He keeps it walled up at this end so that no one can use it to reach the citadel, but he said he would open it for us.”

Freya gazed at the wolf in admiration.

“In Skald we sometimes heard the dragon’s roar in the wind, and none of us ever dared venture into this place. You have spoken to a serpent of the earth and returned to tell of it. Such a thing will make a great story for our sammings.”

She turned to see Moth studying her.

“That is fine mail you are wearing,” he said. “I was an armourer once, long ago.”

“Thank you,” Freya said, eyeing the archer curiously, and Will realized this was the first time they’d spoken to one another since they’d met below the glacier. And like Will when he first met Moth, Freya clearly didn’t know what to make of him. “My father taught me the craft.”

“Does Ragnar know you followed us, Freya?” Pendrake asked.

“I did not have time to tell him, Father Nicholas.”

The toymaker sighed.

“You should go home, my child, but it’s far too late for that. For better or worse, we must see this to its end together.”

As always, Shade was eager to move on, but it was agreed by the company that a short rest was needed. Rowen still looked pale, and Pendrake was leaning heavily on his staff. There was no wood to make a fire, but they found refuge in a sheltered corner of the forecourt. There the toymaker saw to the company’s injuries. The cut on Finn’s forehead was not deep, and already looked to be healing over. Finn broke an icicle from the overhang of the archway and held it to the wound.

With all that had happened, Will had forgotten about his own injury. He was startled to discover that the creech’s claw had cut an ugly gash under his ear. He hadn’t felt it at the time, but as the toymaker covered the wound with a sweet-smelling salve, everything they had been through caught up with him at last. He began to shake uncontrollably, and felt as if he might be sick.

Rowen sat next to him and put a hand on his arm.

“I never got a chance to thank you,” she said.

Will realized she was talking about the creech that had attacked her on the high stair.

“It wouldn’t have made much difference if Shade hadn’t been there,” he said.

To his surprise, she smiled and kissed him softly on the cheek. While he sat in startled wonder, she gazed around the vast courtyard, and a troubled look came into her eyes.

“Does this place seem … strange to you?” she asked him.

“What do you mean?”

She reached down and put a hand to the ground.

“I don’t know. Maybe it’s nothing. But it’s like the stone …
knows
we’re here.”

Will kept still for a moment, then shook his head.

“It just feels cold to me. The sooner we find somewhere warmer, the better.” He had no idea what Rowen was talking about, but after what had happened to her in Skald, he thought it better not to question her too much. Something was taking place within her that he could not understand.

Rowen looked up at her grandfather, who was applying salve to the cut on Finn’s forehead. She took a deep breath, and nodded.

“I suppose you’re right,” she said brightly, but her eyes betrayed her voice.

When they were all ready to go on, the wolf led them under the archway and up the wide, curving staircase. The abandoned fortress was filled with a heavy, brooding silence, broken only by the echo of their own footsteps and the distant moan of the wind in the towers above. It was colder here inside the citadel, Will thought, than it had been on the ice.

Soon they came to a broad landing where a sunbeam filled with swirling dust motes slanted down from an embrasure high on the wall. Three corridors branched off from here, one each to the right and left, and one straight ahead. Following the wolf, they took the left-hand passage, which Pendrake said had been sealed off by stones the last time he had been here. This corridor led, after a short distance, to a descending staircase that took them further and further from the light, until at last Will and his friends were feeling their way warily through a low-roofed tunnel in a gloomy twilight that grew thicker by the moment.

The toymaker brought out his lantern and on the company went, descending ever deeper. It was even colder here than in the citadel above, so that soon they had their cloaks wrapped tightly about them. The air was damp, and stuffy, and any sound they made seemed to be swallowed up instantly.

They walked on and came eventually to a widening of the tunnel, where the roof rose higher above them. Here the air was not quite so stifling, but the heavy, almost suffocating stillness persisted. From time to time Morrigan sped on ahead into the tunnel and then returned to alight on Moth’s shoulder. Each time she reported that there was nothing ahead but further darkness and silence.

After some time they heard the steady dripping of water, and saw rivulets of melt-water trickling down the walls. The rough stone floor beneath their feet became more uneven, and in places held small pools of water. At one point Pendrake halted and raised his lantern higher. By its light they saw that the stone roof over their heads was riven by a great fissure, and within the fissure a vein of ice gleamed. The light rippled and darted across its wet surface.

“We’re underneath the glacier now,” Pendrake said. “There are hundreds of feet of solid ice above our heads.”

They went on without speaking. The floor began to slope upwards. The trickles of melt-water increased and flowed together into a stream that ran down a kind of trough in the middle of the tunnel floor. After they had struggled uphill for some time, Will noticed that the ice above them was glowing with its own pale radiance. He nudged Rowen and they gazed in awe at the colours overhead, most often vivid shades of blue and green, but also violet, gold and burnished silver. As they walked, the colours constantly changed and blended and seemed to flow. Will told Rowen about the northern lights he had watched with his family on winter evenings at home. She had never seen such a thing and had difficulty understanding what he meant.

A short time later they came out of the tunnel into a huge, vaulted cavern, roofed with ice supported by massive columns of stone. Along the walls carved staircases rose to higher galleries, from which other passageways branched off into blackness and stony silence.

Before them, filling most of the cavern, lay a wide pool, its surface rippled by the innumerable drops of water falling from above. The ever-changing light filtering through the ice played over the cavern so that it glowed and glittered like a palace of gemstones. The light also fell in many shafts on the pool, casting rippling reflections like ghostly dancers upon the walls.

Morrigan soared up high, circled the cavern and returned to report that there were many smaller chambers and halls branching off this one.

“This wasn’t a refuge,” said Finn, gazing up in wonder. “It was a city.”

“But they abandoned it,” Rowen added, and Will was alarmed to see how pale and strained her face looked.

“My people are not fond of enclosed places,” Moth said. “It’s clear that many lived here, but I would think that over the years more and more of them left to join the Green Court. Until these halls became so lonely that no one wished to stay.”

“Listen,” Pendrake said, raising his hand. They all went still and heard faint flute-like sounds ringing in the air, some low and some high, harmonizing with one another.

“Wind in the ice tunnels,” Moth said. “This was their music.”

A gallery ran round the pool on one side, and Will and his friends followed it until they came to the entrance of another tunnel. Reluctantly they left the music and light of the great chamber and plunged back into darkness.