The Frozen God

by Robert Holdstock

  The Books of Kharwhan

  North, and still farther north, they rode, until the shore-line of the great lake curved away to the west, and they turned their gleevahs in that direction, following the path of the sun. The ice plain, here, stretched in virgin uniformity: white, seemingly endless. Snow fell steadily throughout the day, enfolding them, cloaking them form sight so that they must ride close together for fear of separating and losing one another. Clearer weather might have speeded their journeying, but the drifting flakes served to camouflage them from any eyes that might spy upon their progress, obscured their tracks beneath the carpeting blankness.

  Night fell and they set up their tent, working by the light of the globes Garan had included in their packs. More of the luminescent devices were provided and these they set around the tent, preferring to risk detection by Camargians than the sneaking assault of tsabeen or Storm-runner.

  No attack came and in the morning they dug and exit from the tent through the snow piled thickly all around. The sun shone yellow-white from a sky of metallic blue, cloudless and clear, featureless as the snow-fields stretching away on three sides. They continued on along the shore, marveling afresh at the size of the lake, wondering how long they might travel unhindered.

  For two more days they trekked beside the lake until it fell away to the south and they found themselves facing the shattering enormity of Quwhon. Vast and limitless was that land, so cold that breath threatened to freeze upon lips and those small areas of skin exposed to the air first stung, then became numb. On and on they rode, letting the gleevahs pick their own speed, concentrating only on maintaining a westerly direction. Earth and sky appeared fused, there being no clear division between them, no horizon visible. The snow muffled the sound of the gleevahs’ footfalls, so that they seemed to ride in silence through a white dream. Mesmeric was that journeying, threatening the deceitful release of sleep, sparking strange fancies in their minds, so that their eyes grew heavy and they rod in peril of succumbing to the weird rapture of the Cold Lands.

  Recognising the danger of that trance-like state, they began to sing and talk, bawling the ribald verses they had learned during their roamings through the southern Wastes, the fierce battle-hymns of the Kragg reivers and the more subtle ballads of Karhsaam. They posed riddles to one another and fell to discussing fine philosophical points. And noticeable by its very absence was any mention of what lay ahead, the awful danger of confronting the Frozen God himself.

  Thus they passed the fifth and sixth days of the journey, which brought them to the edge of the snow-plain.

  There the ground became broken, riven with great cracks and upflung peaks of jagged ice. The gleevahs slithered and slid down into the ravines, clawing their way up the opposing sides with increasing difficulty. With increasing frequency, Raven and Spellbinder were forced to dismount and clamber upwards behind the animals, clutching at their shaggy coats in order to scale the steeper parts. As it had been in the broken country to the south, so here they found themselves making great, looping detours along the rims of gulleys too deep to risk descending, or circling around looming cliffs and gloomy crags.

  And some places they avoided because grey mist hung thick and menacing upon the snow, and half-seen shapes moved within the fog.

  Like the land itself, the weather, too, changed. The sky lost its blue clarity, growing grey and yellow by turns, and a bitter wind blew with mounting force, bringing snow in great flurries that hid the land about them and forced them into shelter.

  Their journeying became, perforce, an affair of stops and stars, hurried dashes taking them from the shelter of an ice-peak to the refuge of a cliff or gulley, where they huddled in growing impatience as they waited for the blinding snow to calm and cease. For two days they lay within the tent, prevented from travelling further by the raw fury of the wind. Fiercer than any wolf was that hurricane blast, tearing like some ravening beast across the ice, so that all was hidden under its fury, the world transformed to a grey limbo. Even the charga seemed unwilling to risk the running of that storm, for none of the vile creatures threatened their camp while it blew, and they waited, mostly sleeping, for the heaven-born raging to end.

  When, at last, the great storm abated they pushed on through snow piled up like frozen waves, reaching high as the gleevahs’ shoulders and slowing their progress to a floundering, wearisome crawl.

  They travelled thus for two more days, though the distance they covered was poor return for the time invested. The wind did not come again, though far away to the southeast the sky blazed with lightning and massive, billowing clouds, as if the very elements raged in aerial battle.

  As the storm-driven snow became firmer, so their speed increased and they moved steadily westwards, hoping—longing—for sign of the Frozen God. Raven took to scanning the heavens, seeking sign of the bird, her name-sake, for the creature had oftimes demonstrated its uncanny ability to guide her and protect her, and she felt, out here on the ice, that she needed guidance more than ever before. But there was no sigh: only the blank grey sky and the pale orb of the sun.

  They came to a place where mountains of ice stretched unbroken from north to south, as far as the eye could see, the slopes glass-smooth; devoid of feature. As a high wall to an insect was that great, forbidding spine of ice, though an insect with its hooked limbs and tiny suckers might have scaled the cliffs; not two weary, human travelers. In bitter frustration they made camp, resolving to push northwards in the morning, searching for a break in the peaks.

  But in the night the wind got up again and the Storm-runners came.

  The first warning was the furious roaring of the gleevahs, a deep-throated bellowing that brought Raven and Spellbinder rushing from the tent with swords in hands, eyes peering anxiously into the darkness.

  The light of the bulbs set about their refuge was obscured by falling snow, the stark brilliance dimmed and yellowed by the teeming flakes. Close by the tent the gleevahs stood upon their hind-legs, lashing out at the shambling figures surrounding them. Their sharp-taloned paws wreaked bloody ruin amongst the charga, but the night-creatures outnumbered them and threatened to overwhelm even the great bear-beasts. Raven saw one run in to attack a gleevah from behind, hurling itself on to the animal’s back to sink its claws into fur and gnaw at flesh with its yellow-fanged mouth. Horribly conscious of the danger of being left mountless in the ice-bound wilderness, she launched a wild attack.

  Her sword clove the charga’s spine and it tumbled, shrieking, from the gleevah. She let it fall, turning to face the hideous creatures that now moved to encircle her. One sought to run her down, charging headlong on to her blade. She raised the sabre, driving through the monster’s windpipe, severing its neck so that the grey-furred head lolled over as blood spurted forth. Raven ignored it, cutting fast at the others. She sliced a questing paw, slashed belly fur to spill entrails, hot and stinking, on to the snow; bared another’s ribs and tore out its eyes with her sleeve-shield. Then a blow crashed her sideways and she, too, tumbled over. A charga loomed above her, pushing aside its fellows in its urgency. She rolled, cutting upwards to hack at thighs and groin. The creature screamed, clutching at the red ruin between its legs. Raven came to her knees and split its skull from nape to neck.

  Two more of the Storm-runners shambled in, red eyes aglint with blood lust, mouths gaping and slavering. She sundered jaw from skull, fending off a swinging paw-stroke, and spun round to slice, across and then back, through fur and fat and heart.

  Another blow, and then another, and still the charga pressed against her, seeking a way through the darting, slashing wall of steel. She backed against the cliff, cutting with Tirward blade and Ishkarian shield at the monsters that sought to rend her. Spellbinder moved to her side, his black blade all red with stinking blood, his armour and his face dripping with gore. He swung his sword two-handed, cleaving bone with force enough to hurl the massive, ape-like beasts sideways into their pack-brothers.

  The gleevahs, too, sensed the
value of putting ghte cliff at their backs and beat a path through the Storm-runners to Raven’s side. And there, all bloody and panting, riders and mounts faced the slavering, howling fury of the charga.

  Swords rose and fell, paws thudded and jaws crunched. The snow grew red and slippery, and the sickening odour of blood and spilled guts filled the night with the reek of a charnel house. In a widening circle around the defenders lay the bodies of the Storm-runners. Many—with severed limbs or opened bellies—sought to crawl away, only to have their companion-monsters fall upon them in blood-madness and tear them to ragged pieces.

  Raven’s sword-arm ached from the hacking and her shield-arm grew slick and slippery with blood, but still the monsters pressed home their attack. Spellbinder’s armour of silver and black grew dark with gouting life essence, and the gleevahs’ coats became all matted and stained with blood and chunks of broken bone. Little subtlety was there in that sword-work, though much of the butchers’ trade, for the charga sought to overcome them by sheer weight of numbers and brute strength. And, as the night grew old, it seemed that the monsters might well achieve their deadly aim. Like automatons the man and the woman used their blades, weariness ignored as were their wounds, in that desperate struggle to survive. Yet both knew that there must be an end, for, versed in battle though they were, no man could hope to stand indefinitely against such odds.

  Then, clear above the clamour of the fight, they heard a bugle note. Shrill and eerie it was, ringing through the howling of the Storm-runners, the roaring of the gleevahs, echoing from the ice peaks like the lonely call of some lost hunter, chilling the blood with its awful, forsaken emptiness.

  The charga fell back, snarling their hatred from beyond swords’ range.

  Again the clarion sounded.

  And the monsters drew back still further.

  A third time the unseen horn sounded its call, and the Storm-runners faded, wraith-like, into the night.

  The snow ceased falling and a great stillness descended upon the carnage. All around lay the bodies of the dead, glittering crystal flakes shining bright upon matted fur and reeking wounds. The moon came out from behind a bank of cloud, lighting the ice with a pale, cold brilliance. Of the charga there was no sign, they were gone as mysteriously as they had appeared, leaving the defenders to lick their wounds and clean their blades in the silence.

  Nonplussed, Raven turned to her companion. “Who calls those horrors to heel, like a huntsman his pack?”

  “I know not,” answered Spellbinder, wiping blood from his face. “Unless it be the Frozen God himself, or some minion.”

  “Perhaps, then,” said Raven softly, “we have reached our desintation. Perhaps these peaks guard the lair of Tanash.”

  “Mayhap,” replied Spellbinder, glacing up at the moonlit mountains. “Though if that be so, we need some key to unlock his picket wall.”

  Raven turned to stare up at the cliff. Of a surety it appeared impassible: too steep, too smooth to climb, and devoid of any visible pass. Daybreak, she decided, was time enough to investigate further, now they must steal what little sleep they could from the remainder of the night.

  And far away on the southern shores of the lake that girded Tywah, where skull-decked pavilions blazened the ice and catapults thudded their bellicose messages across the barrier of steam, a man sat alone in a sombre tent.

  Black it was, the drab walls broidered with scrawling runes of a colour akin to blood, and set alone within a circle of the gaudier canopies. To either side of the closed entry-flap stood tall poles from which grinned the bleached skulls of forgotten men, and about its walls there seemed to hang a faint mist redolent of spilled blood. Few of the Camargian barbarians ventured close to that tent, and those pike-men set to guard it stood with averted eyes, preferring to fix their gaze on sky or snow or blank walls rather than that menacing black bulk.

  Within was gloomy darkness, lit only by three torches that rolled malodorous smoke in greasy clouds through the fetid air, shedding blood-red light upon a low altar.

  The leg bones of men formed the feet of that altar, skulls its platform, and upon the calciate surface rested a spill of entrails from which there dripped gore, still warm.

  The man peered, trance-like, into the reeking mess, his hairless yellow pate sheened with sweat, his narrow lips moving in silent invocation. Robed all in red, he was, a silver circlet graved with runes about his veined temples, holding back a greasy straggle of wispy white hair. His gnarled hands clutched a book bound round with yellow metal, its pages all cracked and dry, as if it had passed through many hands down many avenues of time.

  Near old as the book itself seemed that hunched and malignant figure, though his pale and rheumy eyes sparked with evil life as they scanned the ancient words writ black and red upon the parchment.

  He turned the pages slowly, seeking a particular place. And then he spoke out loud in a harsh, croaking voice.

  “Tanash! Irvago salah humbril ya leethah. Irvago Tanash!”

  The torches flickered as though in a draft, and outside the tent the mist shimmered and writhed, and the guards shivered in a cold that was suddenly colder still than the frozen land all about them.

  “Irvago Tanash! Irvago quantah nebul na nakril. Irvago Tanash!”

  The entrails upon the altar of skulls seemed to writhe, like slimy snakes of yellow and red and blue; the old man smiled, an evil smile.

  “Come, Tanash! Come from your prison. Come to where your worshippers wait. Come in blood and fury. Come in hate and lust. Come to destroy and tear down. We await you, great Tanash. Come to us.”

  And there formed above the entrails a faint, dark shape, hunched and toad-like, with little red pin-pricks where the eyes might rest in a malformed head.

  And like a rustling wind blowing through the bones of forgotten men there sounded a voice.

  “Who calls Tanash from his slumber? Who dares invoke the Book of the Frozen God?”

  And the old man answered, a not of triumph in his voice.

  “I call you! I, Belthis!”

  The shape took stronger form, coalescing in the torch light so that it resembled that effigy hidden deep beneath Tywah, though smaller and not yet solid. It spoke again, and a putrid odour filled the tent.

  “Belthis! I know no Belthis.” It crouched, a misty arm scratching obscenely, a cunning note entering its voice. “Shall I kill you, Belthis? It has been long since I tasted the sweet flesh of humankind.”

  “Irvago salah humbril ya leethah!” replied the mage, swiftly. “I summon you without power and without danger.”

  “So!” The shape that was Tanash chuckled. “You found the book and divined its mysteries.”

  “Aye, Tanash.” Belthis allowed a smile to twist his mouth. “I, and I alone, hold the key to your freedom. Will you hear me out? Or shall I return you to your prison?”

  The shape swirled, chuckling still. “Do you men never learn? Ever and ever have you sought to control your gods, to bend those who by right and by strength stand above you, superior, to your petty ways. Do you dare bargain with me? With Tanash, the Frozen God?”

  “Yes,” said Belthis, “I do.”

  “So—you would risk your soul.” The spectre crouched upon the entrails, using them as a cushion. “If you have indeed read the book, then you know that I shall take it if I can. This much am I bound by my cursed mother’s magiks to tell you: who raises Tanash from his prisonment risks all—aye! And more than all—for let him but once relax his vigilance and I shall tear out his soul and set it in that ice-bound prison to take my place. And there shall it know all the torments layed upon me, down all the ages of eternity.”

  “That much I know,” said Belthis carefully, “for I have read the book until its words are written on my mind. I am girded round with spells, that I may secure my bargain. As for my soul—that is already committed to a hell as deep as any of your knowing. Yes: I seek a bargain.”

  “Your words are brave,” husked the Frozen God. “Few men�
��mortal or mage—would risk what you venture after reading that book.”

  “Long have I sought such knowledge,” answered the warlock, “for my ambition runs higher than that of mortal man. Twice now have I set in motion such events as might have led me to a throne over all this world.”

  “And twice have you been denied that seat,” murmured the shape. “Ever was it so with you manlings.”

  The withered mage either failed to catch the words, or chose to ignore them, for he continued to speak, his voice rancorous with hatred.

  “In Kragg I lifted loud-mouthed sea-pirates to form an army, only to see my design unwoven. Again in Karhsaam did I bend the temporal powers to my will, raising up a horde that might have overthrown all the world. And again was I thwarted and left for dead. But Belthis lives! Aye! And comes again to his own, mightier than ever with Tanash to aid him.”

  “Kragg, Karhsaam; these places are unknown to me,” said the wraith. “The world is older now than when I left it, and obviously much changed. What halted this ambition of yours?”

  “Not what,” snarled Belthis, “but who. Two there were, a man and a woman. The one a wizard of some potency, the other a swordmistress. Ravebm she is called; known to some as the Chaos-bringer. He, Spellbinder.”

  “And all your wizardry was brought to naught by these two?” Tanash laughed. “Your power must be slight, mage, if two can set fetters to your ambitions.”

  “There is more,” grunted Belthis. “Alone they could not have hindered me so, but they are aided by powers unknown even to me. To the south there rests an ocean; at its heart, an island. Karwhan. The Isle of Ghosts some call it, or the Isle of Mists. No man has even seen that place, though many have attempted to gain its shorts, for it is girt round with great sorceries. Upon it dwell these unseen beings who seek to protect men from such as me. Their powers are great and from amongst the people of this world they choose their champions, to further their unguessable ends. Such a champion is this woman, this Raven. Spellbinder—may his soul rot in torment!—rides at her side, perhaps one of Kharwhan’s sorcerer-priests, perhaps an agent of their design. I know not.”