The Frozen God

by Robert Holdstock

  And above all, there was the ice. Unlimited, unknown; devoid of food or shelter or warmth.

  Quwhon held nothing for humankind except the promise of death. Nothing…unless Karl ir Donwayne had gone there.

  The thought clenched Raven’s hand tight about her dagger, blazing her blue eyes with the death-lust so that Narr broke off from his storytelling and filled their goblets, glancing almost nervously at the fire in the eyes of his blonde-maned guest.

  Karl ir Donwayne: weaponmaster, rapist, slayer of her mother, despoiler of the slave-girl once called Su’uan. From distant Lyand to far Karhsaam had she followed him, to slay him in the Altan’s battle-pit, to see him alive again, undead golem of the mage Belthis, gloating as he escaped her amongst the wind-whipped fastness of the Frozen Peaks.

  And now…

  Now she knew not if Donwayne lived still—if lived was such a word as might be applied to a grave-claimed corpse—knew not whether Belthis, too, existed by some sorcerous device, or was dead upon the rocks of the Ice River. Knew only that she must find out; even if the knowledge cost her life, by taking her into the snow-hell hear of Quwhon itself.

  Beside her, Spellbinder sensed her thoughts and reached out to touch her hip, smiling gently as he studied her face, his caress somehow reassuring. With a conscious effort, she pushed dark doubts behind her, smiling an apology at Narr Skandersen as the minder took up his tale again, each sentence a further embellishment of warning, a persuasion of danger as vivid as the skull-topped poled with which the Southern slavers ringed their stock-pens.

  And not a single word served to dissuade her.

  For three more days they remained in Skandersen Hold, gathering their strength, learning what they could of snow lore.

  As best he was able, Narr imparted to them his own hard-won knowledge, teaching them to recognise the sings that announced a wolf wind, the omens of a snow storm, the portents of a lightning storm, and who to survive each elemental attack. He showed them how to strike fire in the wind; to build shelter from the ice itself; how to find the tiny plants that grew beneath the snow. Though what he knew of the ice fields themselves was gained mostly from hearsay, he spoke of the signs that warned of hidden pitfalls, the swiftest means of traversing the hard-packed ice and the softer snow. For all of the three days, from dim sun’s rise to faint setting, he tutored them, accepting their implacable resolve even though he held no hope of their surviving.

  And on the fourth day he brought them gifts.

  Four shaggy horses there were, heavy-chested and wide of hoof, well-muscled beneath their coats of dense hair and warming fat; two bearing furred saddles with catchments for their weapons, the others loaded with provisions. To sustain them on their quest he gave dried and compressed fruits, wind-cured meat, salt, two sealed jars of the fiery spirit called jih that warmed as it loaned courage. A tent of cured skins was another treasured gift, sleek and wind-proof on the outside, furred and warm inside, designed to wrap all around them like some huge wine-skin when the bracing rods were set upright, its opening a small roundel lacing tight against the cold. There was a tiny stove of Quwhon metal and a bundle of inflammable moss that would burn within the oven when ignited by the striker plate. Snow-shows, too, he gave them, circles of glued bone set across with skins that would support their weight on soft and treacherous snow. And, finally, two of the great Kragg bows with full quivers of black-fletched arrows, their heads ground to razor-sharpness.

  That night, they feasted on the beat of Narr’s stored meats, in company with all of the Holding. The finest wines were brought out in their honour and prayers offered to the All Mother for their safe journey. All the folk of the Skandersen Hold joined in the exhortations to the goddess, but few there were who did not cast surreptitious glances at Raven and Spellbinder, doubting that even the Mother could guard them in the domain of the Snow Queen.

  They feasted long, entering into the merry-making that followed the quaffing of prodigious amounts of wine and jih with an abandon that belied their own doubts. When the last of the folk had staggered off to their own huts and the last candle was extinguished, leaving only the warm glow of the central fire, they found their bed and crawled gratefully beneath the furs.

  Sleep hung heavy in the redolent air, and they relaxed in the easy companionship of a man and a woman bound together by something that was love and yet more than that.

  Drowsily, Raven encircled Spellbinder’s chest with one outflung arm, resting her head against his sinewy shoulder, tasking his flesh on her lips. Gently, he stroked her hair, yawning as sleep closed in to claim him. Lovers they were, free companions, also, and on another night they might have sought the pleasuring of one another. But on this night there was only quietude, a sense of warmth that penetrated deep into their souls, stilling them as though they drew some psychic breath in readiness for whatever might lay ahead.

  “Do we follow the right path?” Raven’s voice was soft, sleepy. “Shall we find Donwayne?”

  “How can I know?” murmured Spellbinder. “The future is a web, a maze. Take one path and you end at the place where that path emerges; another will lead you to a different destination. All we can do is follow the way shown to us. The destination rest where the way ends, hidden until we reach it. Mayhap the golem will be there, waiting for us; or us for him—it—I cannot tell. To know the future is to know madness; better to travel the path with open eyes and ready sword, to see what chances on our way and let tomorrow shape itself as it will.”

  “Perhaps we are mad,” whispered Raven. “Perhaps this shaping of worlds spoken of by the oracles is nothing more than some game played by willful gods, we the pawns.”

  Spellbinder chuckled, then: “Perhaps. But your coming was foretold, Raven, Chaos-bringer. That much I know. It was written long and long ago. Written, too, that I should go with you into whatever destiny awaits us.”

  He closed his eyes and his breathing became slow and even as he let sleep enfold him. Beside him in the warm, fur-wrapped bed, Raven moved to speak again, then thought better of it, giving her own mind up to the dark embrace of rest.

  And as the darkness closed about her, two voices spoke soft in her mind, the wordless susurrations that had filler her twice before, when the oracle at Uthaan had communed its secret knowledge and when the strange Stone of Quell had first told her of her fate.

  You are the axis of this world. Upon you depends the world…It is not a question of choosing…It is a question of being…You, for good or ill, are one of the chosen. You cannot refuse the task…You stand astride a watershed in the stream of life. You are both blessed and cursed, for upon your actions depends the shaping of the future…

  Be guided by the bird, Raven. Be ever guided by the bird, and by the words of Spellbinder…

  The voices that were not voices faded away, their whisperings replaced by an image. Black on blackness, dark wings and curved, yellow-ivory beak; hooked talons and red eyes. The bird.

  The bird had saved her when she fled Lyand with the slave-hounds snapping at her heels. Had led her to the dank and loathsome jungles of Ishkar to find the lost Skull of Quez. Had saved her from shipwreck and sea beast. Had shown her the path through the Frozen Peaks to Belthis’ lair. From the bird had come her name: Raven. Yet even now she knew not what it was, nor if it guarded her for some reason of its own, or was merely a watcher, a messenger, of some greater power. Some thought it a creature of Kharwhan, an incubus of the sorcerer-priests of the mist-wrapped Ghost Isle, those fabled, near-legendary manipulators of destinies whom men saw not and consequently feared, for that which is not understood inspires awe and terror in those who care not for life’s mysteries. Spellbinder, she knew, possessed knowledge of the creature, but when she sought to learn more of it, he turned the questions with an adroitness that wove tangled webs of words around her mind so that she became confused and forgot her intent. It was as though man and bird were in league, working towards some destiny of which, as yet, she was forbidden knowledge. And yet…and y
et she trusted them both, implicitly, with a faith that trampled down doubt, with the pure, unassailable belief that stems not from the mind, but the heart, transcending logic and fear.

  Be ever guided by the bird, and by the words of Spellbinder…

  Sighing, she cast away the cloudy thoughts and slept.

  Morning dawned with a radiance that banished gloom from the bleak reaches of Narr’s settlement. Great slanting rays of brilliant sunlight transformed the grim, grey ocean to silvered steel, bathing the craggy rocks with a light that sparked shades of soft blue, roseate pink and gentle gold from the hitherto black stone. The veins of the black steel glistened ebon and silver amid the rainbow hues, and the sparse foliage growing along the beach seemed to take on fresh life, burgeoning green and purple and yellow. The wolf wind died down, replaced by a soft, tangy breeze that smelled of sea-journeys and secret snowfields, and the folk who came out to see their visitors depart wore their cloaks loose about their shoulders, glorifying in this sudden promise of Spring.

  Narr bade them farewell, assigning two of his sons to guide them up the trail winding amongst the cliffs, and they rode their shaggy mounts with a cheerful nonchalance, smiling as they turned in the padded saddles to wave farewell to Skandersen Beach.

  By noonday they had reached the plateau above the shore and could see, far off, a sheening, dazzling brilliance where the sun fell upon the snow. Narr’s two sons left them there, growing nervous as their familiar cliffs gave way to wind-scoured rock, snow nestling white in cracks and ravines where the wind could not reach. They clenched their fists, holding index finger to thumb’s tip in the sign of the All Mother, and wished the voyagers well before turning their horses back down the trail.

  Raven and Spellbinder voiced their thanks, then turned their own mounts in the opposite direction, due North towards the distant snow.

  They rode cautiously over the slippery rock, letting the horses make their own pace, urging them on only when some natural obstacle blocked their path. Lichen grew thick upon the stone so that the plateau seemed to gleam with a greenish-blue iridescence, broken by pools of black water and the dark gashes of ravines. After a while they halted and opened one of the saddlebags, extracting a loaf of bread and a chunk of rich, blue-veined cheese that tasted better than it smelled. They spread their cloaks below a rock and sat down with the sun warm on their faces, washing down the cheese and bread with water from their canteens as the four horses cropped lazily on the skimpy bushes that grew in the shelter of the rocks.

  When they had eaten their fill, they remounted and urged the horses onwards. The snowfields appeared no closed, though it was hard to judge distance over the flat uniform dark green stone. Narr had told them they should reach the nearer limits of the ice by sun’s set and make camp before darkness came down: to be lost on the plateau in the night was to court disaster before even nearing their goal. But it was difficult to hurry over the lichen, and so they opted for caution rather than speed, and prepared their camp well before the sun sank below the lip of the now-distant cliffs.

  Spellbinder erected the little tent as Raven blew the stove into life, dropping strips of the dried meat into a pan of water set atop the stove. She squatted down, waiting for the water to boil as that great stillness that fills the world before sun’s set drew a blanket of calm over the plateau.

  A sound caught her attention—a harsh croaking, such as a crow makes—a crow, or a raven. She looked up.

  And against the darkening sky she saw a great black shape, wings spread wide as they held a motionless form stark against the heavens. Again the bird croaked out its call, circling their position. Once…twice…and then a third time before swooping away to the North.

  Raven watched her guardian fade into the distance, and a slow smile spread over her lips. She knew, now, that their journey was indeed ordained.

  Two

  “When journeying, a diversion may appear to misdirect the path; it may also speed arrival.”

  The Books of Kharwhan

  Dawn brought with it a taste of the land ahead, the deceptive warmth of yesterday giving way to a bitter wind that knifed into their faces, frosting breath and stinging lips and eyes as they rode on. It was impossible to tell how far they had to travel before reaching the snowfields, for whenever they attempted to peer ahead their eyes watered and they were force to avert their faces. After a while they gave up all attempts, save to glance briefly to the North when it seemed that the wind had moved around to strike from one side or the other. Then, they would redirect their mounts until the wind blew head-on again, and huddle in their saddles, hunching into the great fur cloaks with which Narr had supplied them as the horses plodded stolidly onwards.

  The wind was not yet that howling terror Narr had called the wolf wind, though when Raven risked a glance at the sky she thought she saw, in the lowering greyness, the signs of which they had been warned. She knew that a wolf wind must force them into shelter, and hoped that whatever powers ruled the elements would hold off until they reached the edge of the plateau where better shelter might be found.

  One, during the morning, she saw the bird again. Beating heavily against a slate-gray sky, as though even its great pinions were strained by the effort of fighting the wind, it hung in the air far to the North. Speech was denied them, for the wind tore away the words and filled their mouth with a bitter numbness, so she simply tugged at Spellbinder’s cloak, gesturing ahead in the direction of the bird. Spellbinder looked up, then nodded from within the folds of his furs, urging his horse to a faster pace.

  Rave fell into step beside him, listening to the keening that seemed to fill their world.

  It was as though the wind spoke to them, whistling a warning, saying No…Go…Go back. She shook her head irritably, berating herself for finding speech where none existed. She listened for other sounds. There were always other sounds: the slap of waves, the rustle of foam; the crackling of grass or the slow shifting of sand; the hum of insects, the murmur of stirring leaves. Except here. Here there were no sounds except for the wind and the relentless pulpy padding of horses as their hooves squelched on the spongy lichen. It was an eerie void, as though they hung in some limbo, plodding onwards without moving forwards, held forever to a slow pace that took them nowhere. She began to understand why the Kragg settlers avoided the plateau, held it in almost superstitious awe. It would be easy, in this wind-wracked, grey-green nothingness, to imagine non-existent things, to conjure beasts to fill the empty landscape.

  And still the wind blew.

  And still it spoke, no matter how she turned her head, how close about her ears she drew the hood of her cloak.

  No…No….

  Go…

  Go back…

  Above them the sky stretched in blank grey uniformity, the sun invisible, the plateau illuminated with a dull, greenish light. Time and distance lost all meaning, and they could no more tell how many kli they had ridden than they could say what hour it was. They halted when their bellies began to complain for want of food, though even that was deceptive, for food meant warmth and in that cold they knew they would eat more than was usual.

  Spellbinder set up the tent to provide a wind-break and they crouched in its shelter, eating as much to break the monotony as to satisfy their hunger.

  “How far, think you, before we reach the snow?” Raven spoke through a mouthful of spiced bread. “Surely it cannot be far?”

  “I know not,” answered Spellbinder. “Narr’s directions leave room for doubt, though I feel it cannot be long.”

  “Would that this wind might die,” grumbled Raven. “If it continues I feel my ears will burst on its wailing.”

  Spellbinder smiled, passing her a mug of steaming chafa. “I think that we ride the roof of the world. Perhaps the wind begins here and when we find the snowfields it will go away.”

  “By the Mother,” grunted Raven, “I hope it may be so.”

  “There is,” replied Spellbinder, “but one way to find that out.”<
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  He climbed to his feet and collapsed the tent, stowing it back on the uncomplaining pack-horse. Raven followed suit with their mugs and the tiny stove. This latter device was cunningly wrought, so that its fuel compartment might be safely closed with the slow-burning moss still smouldering inside, read to ignite a further load when the time came, though without danger of accidentally firing the other stuff in the panniers.

  They remounted and continued on their way.

  Meaningless as time had become, they were surprised to find the plateau’s edge only a few kli further on. The great table of rock ended abruptly in a sweeping, rock-strewn slope that slanted downwards over some fifty kli to a vast, dazzling sea of purest white. Spellbinder took the lead, riding warily over the scoured slope until they were four or five kli below the rim. Here the wind died away, only its wailing left, above their heads, to remind them of its antagonism.

  The silence caused their ears to ache and for some moments they sat their horses quietly, massaging their skulls and swallowing deeply to still the sudden pain.

  The respite was welcome, for the sheer immensity of the Cold Lands took away their breath and filled their hearts with foreboding as though they were trespassers in the courtyard of some sleeping, brooding god.

  For kli upon kli stretched the snow, unbroken, impassive; menacing, though it was near impossible to tell, for the faint shadows might as easily have been some trick of the light. To the North and West there was nothing, save for the seemingly-endless wastes, sparkling, dazzling in their immutable calm. Hypnotic was that vista, benumbing to eye and mind alike, so that motion seemed senseless, pointless: where to ride when all ways lead to nowhere?