White orbs, streaked through with red: they stared beyond her, blind and dead. The old man’s lips moved. “Come forward, whoever you are. I am not a man to strike fear am I? I am the Rainbow Dreamer, and you enter my house. I welcome you. But please make yourselves known to me.”
Raven stepped forward and grasped the old man’s right hand while she sheathed her sword.
“I am Raven,” she said. “My companions are from lands scattered around the Worldheart Ocean.”
“Welcome, Raven,” said the Dreamer. “I am called Roblak. As you can see I am less than the man I was, but then I have existed here, in these ice wastes, for longer than I care to remember. I was once the seer of a great king, but time and bad fortune conspired to remove him from the world, and his kingdom too. When the ice came it destroyed this place, this city, and I discovered a haven, a shelter from the forces that conspired to hunt me down. I was not of the city, but it welcomed me in my time of need.”
Spellbinder caught his breath and Raven glanced at him. The Sorcerer was staring at the blind man with a look of astonishment on his face. “The ice has covered this city for a hundred generations. It has been here from a time when the Frozen Peaks were no more ice-capped than the Fire Mountains of the far south.”
“Perhaps,” said the Dreamer, a smile playing swiftly across his white lips, “perhaps time has different meanings for different people. I am an old man, is it necessary to know more than that?”
“No,” said Spellbinder, in awe of this strange relic of a previous age. Raven, still holding Roblak’s hand, looked at the blind eyes and shook her head.
“Where was your home?” she asked.
Roblak smiled. “Your destiny will take you there in time,” he said. “At least, to what is left of it.”
He turned and walked back into the rainbow-spanned darkness. Raven and Spellbinder followed, and they found, as they walked deeper into the tower, that they came to an area bathed in a soft green light, invisible until they passed within it. A lit room within an area of darkness, without containing walls. A bizarre thing that Raven, to her surprise, found easy to accept in this place of mystery.
“I have dreamed,” said Roblak, “of a wizard. He runs with a giant man, who is clad in black and gold and red, and carries a frightening sword which has no name. He is a swordsmaster of great skill. He is a ferocious, firecesome man. And the wizard, though small and ageing, is filled with evil. A shadow runs with them…I recognise no more than that. They run in the high mountains where the Ice River forks, and frost warriors guard their domain with jealous insistence. They have a woman with them. She is a fragile thing, and much distressed. The giant man has repeatedly known her body, taking his pleasure form her in a thousand ways, and the woman now lies close to death. She is noble of birth, and proud, but her pride is word thin, and her strength drains away.”
Listening from the darkness, Karmana murmured obscenities. Raven heard this and sympathised. She too had felt a great chill of fear and hatred as the Rainbow Dreamed had described Donwayne’s ferocity. Poor Krya, thought Raven. To be abused so is bad enough when one is strong of body, but Krya was weak and delicate, and the abuse must have brought her close to death.
She said, “You have dreamed this, but is it necessarily the way things are?”
Roblak said, “When I dream, I dream only of truth. This dream haunted me days ago, and still haunts me. I am sufficiently skilled to know that when I dream so powerful a vision of evil, then a force of opposite nature will soon drift close to me. This is how it has always been. I have dreamed of the man you pursue, am I right?”
Raven nodded. Roblak went on, “He hides in the Frozen Peaks, in a cave that looks out on to a sheer cliff, ice-covered and treacherous. The way to this cave is through a gateway of bones, along the first small tributary of the Ice River. Once beyond this gate you will find a tunnel leading into the cliffs, and through this tunnel you will find a spiral staircase that winds up inside the mountain, fashioned there in an age that is inconceivably distant in our past. But the tunnel guarded. Beware.”
“All this you have dreamed,” said Raven, in awe. “But is it like that now? How do we know that the evil man has not left the mountain cave?”
Roblak reached out and touched her face, let his fingers drift softly across her skin, exploring the shape of her lips and eyes. “A strong face,” he said, “and beautiful. I sense no doubt there. You know that you trust my vision, Raven. You should always be true to your conscience.” He smiled. “Look at the rainbow.”
Feeling slightly guilty for her doubt, Raven turned and looked up at the shimmering colours in the great arch.
Roblak said, “The rainbow is made of all that can be seen—everything that your eyes can pick out of the distance they pick out because of colour: greens and reds and all shades of colour in between. All that can be seen in a rainbow, Raven, I can see in my dream. There is little time to be spent here thinking. The Ice River flows against you and the wind in changeable. Your journey will be cold and hard.”
Raven stared at Spellbinder for a moment, and then they both regarded the old man as he seated himself on a low, rickety chair, his hands clutching the sides of it as if he might fall at any moment. His eyes stared ahead of him, towards the open door of the tower. “Go,” he said. “I sense your sympathy for me, and can only say that it is unwarranted. I am content, and at peace, the more so now that my nightmare vision has been told. It will not haunt me again.”
Raven turned and left the area of light. Spellbinder followed, and the whole band stepped out of the dark tower into the gleaming ice waste of the city.
They shivered outside, exposed suddenly to the cold having adjusted to the comfortable warmth within.
Behind them there was a sound like ice cracking, and when they looked they saw the triangular doorway covering itself with a sheet of ice, which grew from the angles and filled the space.
Moonshadow sat on the sloping street and propelled himself down it, slipping in controlled fashion faster and faster until, after a few seconds, he skidded on to the level quayside and rolled to a stop. His laughter, a welcome break from his terrible seriousness of the last few days, was brief and loud. He beckoned furiously for the others to follow. He was impatient for pursuit.
For a while the offshore winds were in their favour, pushing them against the flow of the Ice River. They travelled faster than could a horse, but not so fast the Spellbinder, at the tiller, could not guide the wolf ship quickly and easily between the great fragments of ice that floated past them.
The city vanished into the west, its gleaming spires soon drowned by the brightness of the sun as it set faintly behind orange clouds. The Frozen Peaks towered high through mist and distance, and seemed to threaten all the wintry hostility of snow-bound cliffs and ice-lagged trackways. The river seemed to stretch for a hundred kli, winding this way, then that, blocked by ice in many of its tighter bends so that Spellbinder had to drain his strength with a simple, ice-breaking spell.
Eventually the wind changed, blew against them, and as night descended so they secured the wolf boat to rocks probing from the river bed, and settled for the bitter night.
The morning brought a brighter day, less cloudy, but the wind was still against them and they could not man sufficient of the oars to push the ship against the river current. Raven watched the mountains for a while, marveling at their height, and the way they rose so sheer, like the canine teeth of some gigantic animal.
When the wind dropped a little they found that their efforts at the oars could drive them up-river at a reasonable speed. They used rope, tied to the prow, to haul the ship manually, the stronger among them bending their backs to the task. As she heaved at her own oar Raven saw the great bird that was her companion winging towards her from the north, from beyond the mountains.
With a thrill of cold Raven realised what that implied: the bird had winged as far north as Quwhon. It did not acknowledge the barriers to those unknown lands.
And if the bird could travel easily to Quwhon, then it meant that Raven would be expected to do so in her quest for chaos!
She liked the idea not at all!
At the first fork in the river the wind again took favour on them.
The ship’s sail unfurled with a great flapping sound, and immediately billowed out, the sign of the All Mother staring ahead of them at the towering mountains that were the Frozen Peaks.
The vessel rocked from side to side as it was caught in the eddies of water that formed where the two streams met, but gradually it passed beyond the turbulence and cut strong and fast towards its final mooring on this outward journey.
Spellbinder’s cry brought Raven running from where she sat with Moonshadow below decks. Moonshadow was beginning to weaken, that much was obvious. His skin was cold to the touch, and had assumed that strange translucency that had so frightened Raven the first time she had seen it. The moon was starting to wane, dragging Moonshadow in its tow.
She came on to the deck to find Spellbinder at the prow and Jirrem at the tiller. Ahead of them, straddling the river, was an enormous square gate, ten times a man’s height on a side, and as wide as the river. It was fashioned from bones, the leg and arm bones of giants, or perhaps of some unknown beast that inhabited the high mountains of the north. From the cross bar of the gate dangled a hundred skulls, split and crushed in terrible ways, and slung with lengths of dark twin that stood out sombrely against the brilliant whiteness of the snow-covered peaks behind.
The wind blew the skulls. The gate creaked as the bones, a thousand of them, shifted against each other, strained to break the leather bindings that held them in place.
The ship passed beneath the gate, all those aboard her falling silent. As the vessel was nearly through, a skull detached itself from the lintel and fell to the deck with a crash, splintering into a thousand fragments.
Spellbinder immediately flung his arms wide and shouted a swift and incomprehensible spell. The bone fragments were swept from the planks as if by an unseen, unfelt wind.
Raven, confused, turned to look at the warlock, but already Jirrem had cried out for them to regard the cave in the mountains. It had appeared as by magic the moment the gate of bones had been passed. A gaping maw in the base of the cliff that blocked their way from the rising, snow capped tooth that was the nearest hill.
“That is our way to Belthis,” cried Karmana, and leapt the taut rigging to get a better view. Moonshadow leaned against the ship’s rail, his eyes narrowed, his knuckles white as he gripped the wood.
Light flashed around the cave, but none thought it more than sun sparkling on jagged shards of ice.
They moored the wolf ship against the dark boulders, slick and frozen to the touch, and with all the food they could carry, and their swords and bows slung for easy access, the band trekked towards the cave. They wound their way slowly between the rocks and ice sheets. Raven in the lead striding fast and sure on the treacherous ground.
The land rose, and they left the relative shelter of the river valley and tasted the biting frost wind. It blew their hair and their cloaks and set their teeth on edge. The cold seemed to seek out every gap in their clothes, every thinness of their armour, and flooded through to the flesh and bone and soul beneath. With the wind came tiny particles of ice, blow from the very high ground; like a storm of glittering diamond dust, the ice crystals whirled about them, lodged in hair and stuck to skin.
They came, gradually, in the shadow of the great cliff, and the bitter wind dropped. Snow blow above them, a swirling cloud against the dark, stormy skies; the earlier flash of sun had long since passed into the more wintry heavens.
The cave yawned before them: this is how Raven thought of it, as a great mouth into the mountain, stretched wide with boredom. Strange sounds blew from that mouth, not chill, not windy, but the sounds of simple water currents and gentle draughts, taken and amplified by the cavernous interior of the hill.
“Yonder,” said Spellbinder, “lies the last leg of our journey. I confess to a feeling of apprehension. The stairs must be a kli of more from base to summit.”
Silver groaned. “We shall have no strength left to even shout at this Belthis.”
“We shall have strength enough to destroy the Crugoan,” said Moonshadow quietly.
Arreena, ahead of the group, and peering over a ridge of ice-sheened boulders, turned quickly and hissed, “We may not survive that long!”
For a second Raven failed to comprehend the Kragg woman; then a narrow ice spear clattered on to the rough ground close by and shattered into splinters.
Arreena yelped and ducked into safety. Raven shouted warning, and the band scattered to all sides, swords drawn and cloaks flung back to leave their arms free.
They were no more than a thousand paces from the great cave, but as they watched so a bizarre band of warriors appeared, as if from the ground, between Raven and her immediate goal.
Ice cracked as they moved; blinding light glanced from the smooth surfaces of their bodies; splinters of ice were their hair and beards; they breath that misted between their crystal lips was no more frost than the icy flesh of the snow warriors that waited there.
The sun chose to appear again, and the frosted warriors burned with light. Raven shaded her eyes against the glare from them. Karmana shook her head, her sword held lip. None of the band, not even Spellbinder, had seen such creatures before.
“They appear to be made of ice,” said Moonshadow unnecessarily. “How does one fight frozen water? Does a sword make any difference?”
Karmana suddenly ran forward, closely followed by Jirrem who had drawn both his swords and waved them wildly. Raven tensed as she watched the Frost Warriors close in upon the two mercenaries. Ice blades flashed, and blue steel parried the blows. The ice held, the noise of the clash ringing loud in the wintry air. Karmana dodged and weaved and the men of ice turned smoothly and tried to break her defence. Raven saw watery eyes gleam with pleasure, and transparent, crystal hearts beating harder within the ice bodies of the beings.
Once and once only did Karmana’s sword find “flesh”; with a sound like the breaking of a delicate pot the warrior cracked through from chest to spine, dissolved into a thousand ice shards. Then Karmana was driven back by the warriors, her momentary success lost in the instant of its achievement. Jirrem fought well too, but could not break through the flashing, gleaming blades and bodies of the warriors opposed to him.
He clutched his eyes suddenly, ran screaming back to Raven. “They blind me!” he cried, and Karmana too, her eyes half closed against the brilliance of the reflected light, backed away.
An ice spear thrummed towards Jirrem, struck him squarely between the shoulders and thrust an arm’s length of blood-stained frost through his ribcage. He gasped with pain, and stumbled. Karmana stopped to haul him to his feet, dragged him with her as a spear glanced from her own shoulders, causing her to cry out in agony.
She slipped and skidded into the safety behind the boulders, and Spellbinder at once dropped to his knees to ease Jirrem’s great pain. The spear had shattered, and the warlock drew the last ice fragments of it from the warrior’s lungs.
Jirrem cried out once, then his eyes closed, his hand clutched at the ground beside him, and he died.
There was a sound like the rattling of ice shards down a smooth slope. The Frost Warriors’ laughter.
Raven drew her throwing stars from her belt, and fixed them between her fingers ready to throw: with her sword held firmly, aggressively, she ran up the slope, screaming abuse at the beasts that had killed Jirrem.
But there was a shout from behind her and she hesitated. A moment later Silver caught up with her, and urged her back to the ranks. The fire and insistence in his tone made her obey. She backed away from the Frost Warriors, and came with a few steps back into Spellbinder’s arms.
They watched, close together, as Silver stripped his clothes from his body, defying the cold, ignoring the intense chill.
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br /> The Frost Warriors closed in on him, the brilliance of their bodies hurting Raven’s eyes as she watched.
But Silver, his sword held tight in his left hand, flung wide his arms. At once the puckered whiteness of his skin vanished and the silver sheen flooded from his hands and feet up along his limbs until it flowed, like some bizarre steel flood, across his body. Raven could see the muscles of his legs and back standing out tense, perhaps with cold, perhaps with readiness for the fight, but now they rippled like quicksilver, shone as brightest Tirwand metal, fresh from the forge and the blacksmith’s polish.
The Frost Warriors were blinded by their own reflected light, and Raven watched as Silver hewed through their ranks as a farmer scythes down the weeds that have grown upon a fallow pasture.
The Warriors shattered, burst apart in myriad shards of sparkling glass. Their screams were shrill, tinkling as an icicle that falls from the eaves of a house when the thatch is disturbed. Arms and legs, whole bodies were reduced to drifting icy dust as Silver’s sword became their Nemesis, destroying them one and all.
Within minutes it was done; Silver, breathless, slowly returned to a more human colour, stood weakly among the debris of his wrath, a dissolving rubble of ice and crystal that flowed to water and was lost into the earth as the rest of the band trod warily up the slope.
Silver dressed.
Raven placed her hands about his cheeks, to warm him, but when he drew her to his body, squeezing her tight, she did not pull away, but whispered a private promise to him that made him thrill and flush steel again.
Moonshadow walked towards the cave, calling for the others, reminding them that there was no time to lose.
A Time of Ghosts Page 20