The City of Ice

by K. M. McKinley

  In the Hall of Gates there were dozens of semi-transparent doors of glass, each leading to another world or plane. When watched for a while, one could see vile shapes moving beyond; linger longer and the shapes watched back. There were chambers no person could enter, spaces that should be vast halls but were tiny compartments. Oubliettes that could be accessed only once; storerooms full of things Josan no longer recognised. The windows outside did not match the number inside. Josan had tried to count them early in their vigil, and never got the same number twice. From underground the noise of machines growled. Occasionally they might receive visitors, wanderers stumbling into the Place of Mists, for though hidden it could be found. The beetle constructs and warding spells dealt ruthlessly with those that survived the creatures outside the walls; there was a courtyard for the bodies, full of tangled grey bones and broken devices from a hundred different realities. During their periods of waking Josan forced herself to go there to see the remains of new unfortunates. Their fate was a reminder that no matter how awful immortality was, it was better than the alternative.

  Every wall, vault and floor in the castle was of seamless, glowing marble. Ribs in the coign of floor and wall hinted at its organic provenance; like many of the things made at the height of the Morfaan’s power, the castle had been coaxed into life from the earth by magic, not built one stone atop another. Only outside, in the empty stable blocks and storehouses of the ward, were more commonplace methods of construction seen, glorious buildings by any measure but that of the castle. Compared to it, the outhouses were crude shacks.

  Within the tower a central courtyard contained the Council of Marble. The twins came to it via a door carved from a single emerald of stupendous size. There were seven other doors of differing gemstones, each pointing back to one of the wings. The twins were permitted only the emerald door. Though they could see through the silk-thin minerals, they had never dared the others.

  Beyond the emerald, mind-voices raged at one another, thrusting deeper into Josan’s thoughts with all the subtlety of a dagger. She bore the pain with a dim understanding that hearing the voices had been easier once, in a time when she had grasped her duties better. She was no longer sure if this were actual knowledge, or an awareness of knowledge that had faded, or a fancy conjured from the mist.

  Josanad’s face flickered with fear. “I don’t want to go inside there. It hurts, sister.” He spoke a child’s words with his hero’s voice.

  “We must,” she soothed him. “We always must.”

  Josanad licked his pale lips and cowered. Irritation threatened the purity of Josan’s affection. “Come now, it will not be long.”

  He nodded reluctantly. Before he could change his mind, Josan opened the emerald door, and the voices rang louder still. The twins went into the Court of Marble.

  The court was open to the sky. Grey strands of mist scudded overhead, promising faithlessly to part. A tree of green stone spread branches perfect in every detail save life. Gold and silver fruit depended from delicate twigs, leaves of thin foil rustled around them. Ringing the tree were five large statues, sculpted in poses of heroic endeavour, their lips stoppered with silver. Pale green veined the cream stone, putting Josan in the mind of cheese. She stifled a giggle. She was alarmed; inappropriate humour was the first sign of Josanad’s deterioration, and she replaced the thought with something more respectful. The twins bowed as they entered the court and went to kneel before the statue of Lord Mathanad; the leader of the five, as much as any could claim to lead the sorry rump of the Morfaan race.

  The statues did not cease their arguing at the arrival of the twins. Their voices echoed angrily in the twins’ minds.

  “The time is due, I say,” said Mathanad. “We at last have a chance. We must lay our strategy out carefully.”

  “You are a fool!” said Lorinan, her hatred of him electric.

  Were it not for the echoing mind-voices of the council, the Court of Marble would have been a serene place. Josan hated it.

  Her mind wandered. Eternity stretched ahead, thousands of years blurred into each other. She was light-headed with relief that they would soon leave the castle for a while. Journeys to the world of their ancestors were undertaken far too rarely, and provided the only diversion to their purgatory.

  There had been five elders in the Council of Marble. Four remained. Qurunad had fled his duty two thousand years into the long vigil. His statue’s mouth was broken, revealing the cavity inside that had held his spirit. The stone of his face was black and streaked with melted silver. Bereft of spirit, the statue was inert and no longer spoke. The others never mentioned his betrayal.

  Of the remaining four, proud Mathanad took the most care over their duties. He would never cease talking of it. Over time his soliloquies on their terrible task had become increasingly impassioned, until they had taken on an edge of hysteria. Josan was convinced he went on so to convince himself of the council’s importance, and that suggested to her that he too had lost faith. Then there was quiet Helesin. She remained wise, and though she hardly ever spoke Josan prized her rare advice. Next was Solophonad, who had become senile in his stone cage, and lastly Lorinan. Lorinan had been the most garrulous and brightest-humoured of the council, and for centuries her wit lightened the weight of the years. Sure enough, time’s merciless drag had introduced a morbidity to her mind no less deadly than that afflicting Solophonad’s. Her gaiety gone, she had at first turned sullen, then uncooperative. Lately Josan had come to fear her temper.

  Solophonad’s ramblings intruded into her mind, gabbling of flowers and the sun. Josan disliked to hear him, for Josanad sounded the same, when he was at his worst. Lorinan was no better to hearken to, she did not care to shield her poisonous ruminations on the loss of the eras of glory, and tainted them all with her despair.

  “We are doomed!” she said, an echo of her lost cheer in her bitter glee. “There is nothing that can be done. Let it be over, fin—”

  “We are not!” Mathanad’s mind voice rode over Lorinan’s. Sometimes he managed to convince Josan that his sense of obligation was an unbendable rod of steel. She was glad of it, only his commitment kept them all close to sane, but it was failing. The edge to his pronouncements was shrill. His own boredom moved sluggishly behind his words, worsened by the pain of abandonment, of dreams of honourable endeavour chafed away by the reality of an eternity in stone. He could not hide these feelings behind ceremony. They leaked out.

  “Mathanad, do shut up,” Lorinan’s laughter bubbled into the twins’ thoughts. Once so light and cheerful, now it conveyed only spite. “The enemy shall never be defeated. We cannot outwait them. What are we doing? When shall we concede their victory? Our vigil was never meant to last so long. There can be no return. We are defeated, done. Have the twins open our mouths and let us all depart into death. The Morfaan are no more.”

  Mathanad’s weariness came to bear on Lorinan as a crushing weight, grinding against Josan’s consciousness in the process. “It is not so. The successors regain their prior knowledge. A new era of machines dawns. The Long Vigil plays out as predicted.”

  “It does not!” said Lorinan. “Humanity has no sophistication, no understanding of the relationship to will or form. They draw too heavily on the world spirit, driving the Earth further from will towards form. The wards on the gates weaken because of it. Humanity cannot save us, they doom us all. If the enemy lives, they shall have easy ingress to the World of Will. What is the point in continuing?”

  “The enemy did not require the gates last time,” said Mathanad. “They came from the sky, and still the humans drove the enemy back.”

  “The only reason the humans were victorious was that the gates remained closed and the Draathis mustered such small numbers,” countered Lorinan. “The enemy’s trespass ended the last of the great ages. This current world is weaker still. When the enemy come again, it will be in full strength. This era is impure, they have become weak, and will be destroyed. We have waited for nothing.”r />
  “And if the enemy are extinct? Perished in exile?” said Mathanad. “The enemy’s last attack smacked of desperation.”

  “You hang everything on optimism,” said Lorinan. “Reality is crueller. We have failed. You are fools, rotten in soul and mind. Why are we still here when we should go! Set our spirits free to find new form and engagement. The Morfaan type has outlasted its time.”

  “Lorinan!” said Mathanad. “Silence!”

  “Release me!” she whined. “Let me go into the mist with the rest. This is torment, we are done!”

  “No!”

  Josan shuddered as Mathanad and Lorinan argued, their shouting crashing agonisingly into the secret spaces of her soul.

  “Whether the enemy returns or not, these two must go forth into the world.” Helesin’s quiet voice cut through the bickering of the others. They ceased speaking. Solophonad’s inanities murmured in the sudden silence. “The people of the Earth call to us. A new High Legate must be selected. Our agreement is to aid them, and I fear it is no coincidence that it occurs a year before the nearing of the World of Form. It is likely we come to the end of their time, and of ours,” said Helesin. “Whether at the hand of the enemy, or because the Draathis have dwindled and died upon the World of Form. Only then we might finally return. Why do you argue? Despair calls you to inaction, Lorinan. The chances of our success lessen every year, but however slender they are, they remain chances. To flee into the mist is to take certain death over an opportunity at life.”

  “The enemy will inflict upon us a fate worse than death,” said Lorinan fearfully. She had too long to think on Draathis cruelty. Memories of atrocity had come to obsess her.

  “In which case, you will be free, as is your desire, you must only take a little pain before the end,” said Helesin. “This is my decision—the two will be sent again into the World of Will. More, this time they must stay. If the enemy come, we should be there to help.”

  “The humans are degenerate,” complained Lorinan. “Not one of the strains have proved sufficient in our defence in the past, and they have mixed freely. Our design is lost. How can they triumph?”

  “They persist still, we do not. What does that say for their endurance?” said Helesin. Never once losing her temper, her voice remained calm and quiet. When she turned her attention to the twins, her serenity soothed them both. “You shall go into the World of Will. Return from exile to our lost home, as is your privilege and your peril. May the light of the sun never kiss your skin, my children, until its rays burn clean again. I second Mathanad.”

  “You are outvoted,” said Mathanad smugly.

  “There are four here,” said Lorinan. “What does Solophonad have to say?”

  For the first time they listened to the mumbling of the fourth councillor.

  “Round and around, back and away,” he said. “They’ll come again and again, what to do, what to do? Oh to see the sea, oh to see the sun! Was it yesterday it went down, or before?”

  “Solophonad!” boomed Mathanad.

  “Who calls to me? Who disturbs sweet woe with their demands?” he laughed, a sickly sound.

  “We vote upon the sending of the twins out from this fortress, to our old holdings upon the World of Will. What say you?”

  “Go? Go? Go?” he echoed himself, each repetition more bewildered than the last. “We are here, we are here to... Why are we here? I have not finished wringing my hands, and then I will paint.”

  “You have no hands, Solophonad!” said Mathanad. “Concentrate!”

  “I judge his maundering a no,” said Lorinan. “A tie. We wait it out then, as decided. If the enemy returns, then we shall flee, or destroy ourselves. An end to torment, one way or another.”

  “No? Did I say no? I did not!” said Solophonad. “Always you steal my words, putting new ones cold as pebbles in my mouth. No? I said no such thing! Always go, if you do not, you only stay. A motion from repose to action is always welcome. Why is it so cold? Where are my hands?”

  “He said go,” said Mathanad. “That is a vote for yes.”

  “Go, yes go!” shouted Solophonad, and began wailing.

  “It is a waste of effort,” said Lorinan. “We should escape while we have our chance.”

  “Who then will return our people to existence, if we are gone?” said Mathanad. “This is the correct course. The way is open,” he said portentously. “You leave this castle as ambassadors of our kind to those who succeeded us. Guide them. Impart our wisdom upon them. Love them.” Josan had heard the words before so many times they were engraved upon her soul. What Mathanad said next, he had never said before. “I speak to you now with greater earnestness than ever before. Our time here approaches its end. Four thousand years have passed since the last approach of the World of Form, the dark world, the Twin. Our enemies may still live, they may not. You must be alert for them, for any sign. A time of peril is on us, but fear not, for there is hope, the greatest hope of all. If the enemy do not come, they will not come again, and the vigil shall be done. Now prepare! Already mists of this place spill out of the final gate to shield you from the sun of the World of Will. The time is now, depart!”

  “You sent the mists without our consent?” said Lorinan indignantly. “What use this debate then?”

  Mathanad ignored her. “You venture into the world of men.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  At the Home of the Duke

  OF ALL THE awful thoughts flitting through Madelyne’s mind as they had driven through the fog to the duke’s residence, being left to her own devices was not among them. Markos took her to a pleasant room and left her to sleep. She awoke the next day alone and unmolested, clothes laid out for her on a wooden valet stand in the corner. After waiting a while, she washed, dressed and ventured out of her room. No one stopped her.

  The Duke Infernal’s home was anything but hellish. Imposing, and somewhat sombre from the outside, with tall, thin pavilions at either end of the house. They looked like the folded wings of a scavenger bird, if one were really looking for something sinister. She supposed the lamplight gave the tall windows an ominous air in the unseasonable mists. Viewed from the garden during the day, the duke’s house appeared like any other mansion of the outdated Musran style.

  The mansion had a fine situation on the edge of the Place Macer, the cobbled square right at the top of the Palatine Hill which rang night and day to iron wheel rims and the noises of drays. There was a neat public garden in the centre, delineated by boxtrees so carefully trimmed they could have been cut from cardboard. An ancient statue of Omnus dominated the centre. Madelyne had always found it telling that he faced away from Res Iapetus, who in clearer weather could be seen gleaming goldly atop his empty mausoleum several blocks away. The square was edged all round with enormous buildings as many of the more important government ministries were there.

  Directly opposite the duke’s house was the palace of the Three Comtes of Perus, who ruled the city—and effectively the country—together. Next to it was the palace of the king, smaller than the Three Comte’s home in proportion to their relative power. On the duke’s side of the square were other grand mansions, the homes of other dukes and earls and comtes and every other rank of nobility, though none of them were as exalted as her host.

  People went to and fro in great throngs. Very few of them paid the house any attention whatsoever. Those that did were sightseers. The locals were accustomed to the devil in their midst and had ceased to see him as anything but a man.

  The interior was similarly undiabolical. The duke had impeccable taste, and plenty of money. Every room was beautifully furnished. The sole disquieting note was that her own room was decorated exactly to her preferences. She could not have designed a room to suit her better herself. From the room’s decoration she divined that the duke had known she would return with him from the very start. She almost left there and then. Although she did not, her misgivings persisted as a faint sense of unease.

  All through the day
s and nights after her selection the mist pressed hard up against the windows. At its thickest, the city seemed to retreat, so that the house was an island in an ocean of cloying vapour. This added further to her sense of isolation. Madelyne was a calculating person, not given to letting her emotions run away with her, but yearned for sunny weather.

  Every day her bed was made for her, her clothes laundered and fresh outfits provided. Food waited for her in the dining room at every meal, always steaming hot, a place for one set at the head of a table as long as the river Olb. Who did all this she did not know. She saw nor heard any life in the building. The only other human beings she had dealings with were Markos, who was apt to come and go at the oddest of times, and the gardener, Gaffne, who did not set foot within the house.

  She made her plans and rested; despite care and her innately rational mind, emotion took her on its ride. In time, fear gave way to curiosity, then to boredom. She opened every door that was not locked. The luxury grew tawdry in her eyes, and she longed to walk the streets of the tatty districts she knew so well, to see the life of Perus and be surrounded by beings who lacked such wealth, but she feared that to leave even for a short time was forbidden, and that she would lose her place.

  Instead she whiled away the time walking the perimeter of the mansion’s extensive grounds. A large formal garden fronted the mansion. Behind the duke’s house lay the edge of the Royal Park. The back garden, a small park in its own right, was bounded by high walls topped with a barrier of spiked iron wheels.