“The remaining Elder Gods sought peace, but Tanash, bitter in his pride, refused their overtures, renewing his attacks with insensate fury. And men continued to die.
“At last, despairing of foolish man, the Elder Gods decided to leave the world to unravel its own problems and withdrew. Tanash, enraged and along, set a curse upon the favourite places of his kindred, rending what little of the land was not already torn by warfare. Most of his followers were destroyed in the holocaust, for mountains spat fire and poisoned the air; rivers turned to blood and steam; meadows were lost beneath great seas of ice; and mighty winds ripped the earth.
“One of the Elder Gods, Astara, Vanyr’s widow, took pity on mankind and persuaded her fellows to unite in one final attempt to quell TAnash. Her son, his strength grown with blood-letting, proved too powerful to slay, and the Elder Gods were able only to imprison him in a dungeon set deep below the ice he had visited upon the world. There he was bound round with spells and mystic charms, his ambition curtailed, his power lost.
“The Elder Gods, much angered by his ambition, set upon Tanash a curse: that his outward dimensions should equal that black and hideous thing he called his soul. From that day forwards, down all the ages of his eternal punishment, his face and body should warp and change in grotesque semblance of the evil he had perpetrated, so that he should come, at last, to resemble all that was hideous, all that was vile. That he should be, in form and figure, that which he had brought into the world. That which he was.
“And so, as aeons passed and the world turned and changed, so did Tanash change. From beauty he decayed into hideous ugliness. Became, in a way, himself at last. And he felt the changes, and wept tears of blood that he should lose so much, and hate grew within him as he lay there, and the tears came faster as rage and fury overcame the sorrow in the black and withered pit of his soul.
“Astara left behind a crystal, through which men might call upon her in times of need.
“Around this crystal there grew up a following of those men dedicated to peace who had survived the holocaust, and in token of their devotion Astara fashioned from the ice gentle enclaves of peace and solitude. These enclaves, cut off from the world, became Quwhon.
“Tanash, meanwhile, though imprisoned, continued to think, his mind unhampered by his confinement. And from his thoughts radiated so great an evil that the ordinary creatures of the earth could not help but be affected and grew warped, becoming the charga and the tsabeen, and others.
“And, as time dimmed memory and the world burgeoned afresh in new cycles, so Astara became known as the Snow Queen, Tanash as the Frozen God.”
Erhkol’s voice faded away and he drained his wine, eyes daring about his palace as though he feared that Tanash had heard him and would strike him down.
“Why do you fear him?” asked Raven pragmatically. “If he is held prisoner, what harm might he do you?”
Erhkol shook his head. “Who can tell what a god might do? There are those who still worship Tanash, and they nurture a legend. It is said that he fashioned a key, before Astara led her fellow-gods against him, a key that might be used to free him again, no matter how bound round he might be. It is said that whoever finds that key and uses it to free Tanash will find great favour in the eyes of the Frozen God.”
“And do you think someone has found the key?” questioned Raven. “Surely no man could be so mad as to loose such a creature upon the world?”
“Men were ever foolish,” murmured Spellbinder, “and ambition has blinded reason since the world began.”
Erhkol nodded. “Aye. Events, too, suggestion some stirring of evil. Why else this siegment of Tywah? From where come these barbarians? How do they control the creatures of the ice?” He stared hard at Raven and Spellbinder. “And why should the Snow Queen’s crystal tell you to find the Frozen God?”
That night, after eating with Erhkol and Garan, the outworlders sought the quiet of their chambers to discuss the curious turn of events.
“It would appear,” said Spellbinder thoughtfully, “that we have wandered into a larger game than we had looked form.”
“You are more versed in such affairs than I,” replied Raven. “Do these senses you refuse to speak of tell you nothing?”
Spellbinder smiled, shaking his head. “No. I am, if anything, more confused.”
“How so?” asked the woman. “Did the crystal not speak to you?”
“No. Though I felt it tried. There is a power here, a strength that contests the will of this Snow Queen.” Spellbinder rubbed at his cheek, thinking. “I sought to see beyond the mumbling of the priests, to penetrate the source of the crystal’s power. To see that being that peaks through the thing. There was another will present, it blocked my vision so that all clouded, became misty.”
“But you now speak the Tywah tongue,” said Raven doubtfully. “And the crystal spoke clear enough to me. It suggested that we might find Donwayne—Belthis, too—where the Frozen God is.”
“There are powers that work through you, Raven,” murmured the dark warrior-wizard. “Gifts granted that only you may enjoy.”
“Or curses,” grunted the woman, brushing at her hair. “I asked not for this unravelling of godly tangles. Grant me the true death of Donwayne, and Belthis skewered on the point of my blade; that’s satisfaction enough for me.”
“Satisfaction?” grinned Spellbinder. “Those chosen of the gods know little of satisfaction.”
He turned away, rummaging through his pack, drawing out several objects that he set carefully upon the floor.
“Sleep now, Raven. There are things I must do that may open the way to strange events, strange forces, sleep will protect you.”
She began to protest, but Spellbinder pushed her gently down upon the bed, kissed her tenderly as he murmured some quiet incantation. Raven fought against the spell, but it stole over her mind and she felt her eyes droop shut, a deep tranquility creep over her. She slept.
Spellbinder covered her with a silken sheet, tracing a pattern in the air above her head. Then, his brow creased with worry, he set out the articles he had taken from his pack. Kneeling, he drew a circle on the tiles with a short length of brown, chalk-like material, tracing a larger circle around the inner ring. From a leather pouch he sprinkled some dark powder between the two boundaries, murmuring softly all the while. Next, he peered through the wide windows, ascertaining compass points before drawing tiny, intricate symbols at the apex of each quadrant. Then he seated himself, cross-legged, at the centre of the circles and opened another small bag. He dribbled a pinch of powder on to the palm of his left hand, staring at the dark granules for some time, as though unsure of their potency. Taking a deep breath—such as a man sucks in before attempting a deep dive into unknown waters—he brought his hand to his mouth, licking up the powder.
He swallowed. A spasm racked his body and he groaned, head jerking back as though in pain. His eyes opened wide, glazed over and sightless, then his head fell forward and his lips began to move, mumbling incoherent words.
“Help me…I…cannot…alone…Help me…The Old Ones come…Not alone…No…”
Fear filled his eyes and sweat broke out upon his face, his lips pulling back from his teeth, distorting his face into a grotesque snarl. His voice grew softer, then softer still until it was no more than a groaning, deep in his throat. He choked, head moving in circles, and his shoulders slumped. Then he stiffened and fell silent.
Down a dark alleyway close by the city walls bobbed a faint glow. It flared briefly as a hand slid clear the covering over the bull’s-eye, flashing a pale beam of light upon a seemingly-featureless wall. Here there was little of the bright gaiety that marked Tywah’s main thoroughfares, for the area was given over to store-houses and armouries, their windows dark, the streets devoid of parks or pleasure gardens.
The man holding the lantern dimmed its light again as he set his palm to a concealed lock, hidden amid the curlicues of intaglio work covering the wall. A panel slid open to re
veal a roofed-in courtyard and the man darted inside. The panel sprang shut behind him and he waited for a moment, listening. There was no sound from the outer street, so he crossed the yard, drawing back the bolds of a heavy, wooden door.
A dimmed globe outlined a tall figure, clad all in black, the hood of his robe drawn about his face so that he appeared featureless, macabre. He doused his own lantern and set it on a shelf beside three others, walking across the room to the door let into the far wall. Beyond this door was a second, smaller room, piled all around with crates and bales through which he picked a way with accustomed ease. Hidden behind the stuff was a trap-door, a ring of metal set into it alongside a keyhole. The man drew a key from his robe and opened the trap, pulling it closed as he descended the ladder beneath.
Here there was no light, but he climbed easily downwards until his feet touched cold, moisture-slickened stone and the ladder gave way to a steep light of steps.
The steps ended at a tunnel, a stone catwalk running beside a channel thick with malodorous spillings from the sewers of Tywah. Drawing a fold of cloth about his nostrils, the man hurried along the tunnel, one hand touching the wall for balance. He reached a second opening and turned into it, fumbling for a moment at a recess. Down the length of the tunnel globes flickered into dim life and the angry chattering of rodents filled the fetid air. The man ignored the chattering as he ignored the pin-prick gleam of tiny, feral eyes, moving towards a gloomy opening where more steps went deeper still into the bowers of the earth.
Down and down he went until he reached a massive, filth-encrusted door, set round with bolts and hinges all slimed with verdigris. Here, he rapped three times upon the putrescent woodwork, then three times more. The door opened and the red glow of torches shone briefly upon the black robe, as the figure was admitted.
The door swung closed and the man threw back his hood, staring at the two others facing him.
“You are late Ylkar,” said one. “How so?”
“Forgive me, Karmak na Zel,” answered the member of the Koh na Vanna, “but I was detained by my fellow priests. They seek guidance from the accursed crystal as to whether these outworlders may be sent to destroy our Lord.”
“Destroy the Frozen God!” Karmak na Zel laughed; an unpleasant sound. “Why, even as I left Tywah Gate, methought I felt his icy breath waft over the snow.”
“Were you seen, Ylkar?”
The third member of the group was a woman, her face beautiful, lit by an unholy radiance that appeared to shimmer over hair like silver gossamer, fine as a spider’s web.
“No, Lady Lanna. I was most careful to avoid detection both physical and magical.”
“My brother boasts many eyes,” warned the woman. “For all his apparent softness he is a mightily shrewd man.”
“As am I,” shrugged Ylkar. “The lord Erhkol sleeps sound with three of his houris. I introduced a certain potion to their wine: the result is passion enough to tire any man.”
Lanna chuckled, a trilling sound that had about it the ring of death’s knell, an eerie echo of pure, unbridled evil.
“Well done, priest. Your thoughtfulness pleases me. Perhaps tonight I may grant you a taste of the pleasures to come, when we establish again the Frozen God, Tanash, in his rightful dominance.”
Ylkar smiled in anticipation, his yellow eyes darting to the flare-lit figurine mounted on the black altar at the centre of the room.
The idol had about it an air of unguessable age, as though it had squatted there through all the dim centuries of antiquity. And yet it was somehow vibrant, filled with non-sentient life; Ylkar could almost believe that the ruby eyes twinkled with pleasure, a faint pulsing of elemental depravity shuddering through the thing.
High as a man’s waist it was, and fashioned with remarable skill in obscene resemblance of a human being. Human, yet unhuman, inhuman. Its body—all dripping, green-slimed basal—sat upon frog-like legs that ended in huge, splayed feet set with three toes, each one boasting a silver talon. From between those spraddled legs there protruded a massively exaggerated member, its scarlet protuberance dark with mould and liquid filth. Thick arms were set akimbo, clawed hands spread wide upon a sagging, pendulous chest. The face resembled that of a tsabeen—all starring red eyes and gaping, many-fanged mouth, the nostrils were mere slits beneath a carapace of skull-white bone. Pointed ears lifted from under carefully-worked waves of basalt hair, falling in a mane down the idol’s back to the huge buttocks.
It was a creation of unholy beastliness, but the three worshippers looked upon it with reverence and hideous lust.
“Let us begin,” whispered Karmak na Zel, his fluting voice thick with unspent desire. “The sooner we summon the Frozen God from his banishment, the sooner we may enjoy the full delights of his realm.”
“Aye,” Lanna purred, huskily, hands fumbling at the fastening of her gown, “and the sooner overthrow my weakling brother.”
Her gown slithered about her waist and she tugged at the material in a fury of impatience, kicking it away from her as she drew a filmy undergarment over her head. Naked, her lissome body glowing red-gold in the torch light, she began to caress herself, hands stroking lasciviously over the curvature fo pert, dark-nippled breasts, down towards the mound of glistening silver hair curling from the apex of her thighs.
Ylkar swallowed as he watched Erhkol’s sister disrobe, his own hands tugging urgently at his drab clothing. Na Zel took longer to undress, a smile of cynical, dissipated amusement playing over his golden features as he studied Lanna’s abandon, Ylkar’s lust.
“Lord Tanash, come to us, enter us,” moaned Lanna. And she leaned forwards to kiss the column jutting from between the figure’s thighs.
“Yes,” intoned Karmak na Zel, “come back to bless those who still follow the old path.” And he, too, kissed the slimy staff.
“Soon, soon,” mumbled Ylkar. “Throw down the cursed Snow Queen and all her puny minions. Make us one, O Frozen God.” And he set his lips to the putrid muck.
The torches flickered as though a breeze wafted through the secret chamber and there was a faint rumbling, as when the earth shifts deep within itself. Lanna threw herself down on her back, legs spread wide, arms reaching for Ylkar. The priest groaned, pressing his scrawny body against her, his mouth sucking feverishly on stiffened nipples as deft fingers guided him into her. He burrowed, ignoring Karmak as the traitor-guardian of Tywah Gate sprawled above Lanna’s face.
Lanna moaned in unholy ecstasy, closing her eyes as she permitted herself the pleasure of imagining that she had become Zara, the men her brother-lovers, Shan and Tanash. Again the earth trembled, and she gasped and choked and writhed in blasphemous oblivion.
Long into the night they continued their depraved rituals, quitting their secret fane only when the first gray hint of dawn began to creep across the sky.
Raven awoke to find Spellbinder slumped on the floor of their bedchamber, his face wan and drawn, a cold sweat beading his cheeks.
Swiftly, still naked, she brought wine, lifting the goblet to his mouth as she cushioned his head upon her thigh. At first he tried to spit out the wine, but then, coming to his senses, he drank gratefully, quaffing great, deep drafts of the reviving liquid.
“What have you done?” she asked, concerned. “What magic did you fashion?”
His voice was heavy when at last he answered.
“I sought that power which cut me off from the crystal. It is here still, but stronger, as if it feeds upon the very essence of these people.” He rubbed at his eyes, as does a man recently woken from a nightmare. “There is a great evil abroad here, an evil that seeks to bring all beneath its domination.”
“The Frozen God?” queried Raven. “Is the legend, then, true?”
“All legends are true,” muttered Spellbinder. “As a tree grows, changing its shape, spreading, becoming stronger, even as the seed that bore it moulders in the ground, so are legends. Water the seed of legend with worship, and it will spread. As it does here.”<
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“So we fight against a god,” murmured Raven; and a great fear filled her. “Shall we win?”
“I cannot know.” Spellbinder let her help him to his feet, walking unsteadily to the bed. “The dark power clouded much of my vision, so that I could only perceive those fragments of knowledge strong enough to penetrate its loathsome tanglements. This much I saw: that we must go out again to the ice and seek the Frozen God, for somehow both our destiny and that of Tywah depends upon that questing. Donwayne, too, I saw; and Belthis. What part they play is unknown, but they are part of the fabric, interwoven.”
He sank back against the pillows, his voice so low that Raven had to bend close to his face to catch the words.
“The barbarians, in equal measure, pawns, like us; dice to be thrown in the godly game. Mayhap they hold the key, for something must have brought them here.” His eyes drooped shut. “Now let me sleep, for I am mightily weary.”
Raven loosened his clothing, drawing a coverlet over his lean frame. For long moments she stared down at his face, one hand resting tenderly on his brow. Then, her mind made up, she sprang to her feet and set to drawing on her armour.
Accoutered in black chain-mail and sleek Xand hide, Tirwand sabre girdled at her waist below the belt of throwing stars, she went to seek Garan na Vohl.
The Knight of Tywah was at breakfast with Lys, his wife, and their eyes spread wide in surprise at Raven’s apparel.
“What need of armour here?” asked Garan. “We have yet to form a plan of attack.”
When Raven told them of her companion’s mystic investigations: Lys hurriedly called servants to watch over him. Garan rose, shouting for his own war gear, but Raven shook her head, her blue eyes grim.
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