“This place?” Tallimastus lifted his eyes into the endless dark. “Res Iapetus. Next.”
“He banished you to the realm beyond. I have seen through the veils and into the lands of the dead which border those others. This is not that place.”
“Well done,” said Tallimastus. His manner changed, becoming more conversational, less imperious. “I tried to stop him, you know. Even though he gave my bastard, usurping son the punishment he deserved, I couldn’t let him get away with destroying the Ruthnian gods. I thought to best him, and take my place again as king. Did you know that?”
“No, my lord,” admitted Aarin. “The accounts of what happened in the Godhome are incomplete.”
“And all derive from what that arrogant dog Res Iapetus had to say, I assume.”
“Yes, my lord,” said Aarin.
“I’ll tell you how I came here. I am the god of death and creation. I was made to be by you imaginative little people. I had a purpose foisted upon me. When Res Iapetus drove out the others, he cast out my living aspect. But my deathly aspect could not be and never was contained in the Godhome. After the expulsion, he hunted this diminished part of my soul tirelessly through realms mortal and ethereal. There were several times when I lost him, but he was tenacious, I’ll give him that. Clever as well, he had this place all set up, ready to accept my essence, all built with knowledge scavenged from the Morfaan. He caught me, and here I have been ever since, for two hundred, long, lonely, tedious years.”
“Why not banish you entirely?”
“I am the god of death. I am an absolute. The others were more abstract, their stories fanciful. I am in my way more real than the lot of them put together, that is why, when the myths grew around us, they made me their king, to begin with. All things must die, and every creature fears it. I’m sure new versions of my children coalesce somewhere now, around luckless cores. They will not be the same. But death is and will be forever. Had he not imprisoned me, I would have leapt into being again after a few years and gone after him. Not just as death, but reborn as the vengeful Tallimastus entire! I’d have pulled his guts out of his anus. Slowly. By trapping me, I cannot reform. I cannot be replaced because I am still here. It was, I grudgingly admit, rather clever of him.”
“The legends say you were mad. You are not.”
“What is madness but a differing point of view? I was mad because the stories called for me to be mad. I am somewhat isolated here. I am freer than I was. The turning of men’s minds have less effect on me than they did. I no longer have to conform, though I can never be as I once was. That is the worst part of this punishment, to be sane again after so long, without being permitted to be myself.” He laughed bitterly. “I am sure you did not come to ask me about my woes. What is it that has you betray your deacon and condemn this abused woman to share my boredom?”
Aarin guiltily avoided Pasquanty’s dead eyes. He had not known for certain what would happen, but Pasquanty’s death had seemed likely to him as soon as the door in the vault had opened. He could not pretend otherwise. “I could not turn back.”
“Apparently not. Your time runs out. If you wish to know, you better ask.”
“The guiding of the dead has changed.”
“Oh, that,” said Tallimastus. “I was hoping for a new conversation. Is that the only thing you people are interested in?”
“Those ghosts that are reluctant are harder to banish,” Aarin persisted, “but there are fewer ghosts to guide overall. Mages dwindle, the Dead God’s quarter produces fewer true Guiders. What is happening?”
“Magic,” said the ex-king. “The answer lies with magic. You must know that. You are of the true quarter. The mage taint is strong in you. You live in an era of new machines, all of them fuelled by the glimmer, which draws upon the magic of the world.”
Tallimastus was displeased at Aarin’s bafflement.
“Magic is force, surely as the gravity that drags at your feet or the magnetism that swings the compass. But it is unique in its inconstancy, it is a product of the spirit. Where it is found in one place, it may not be in another. It waxes and wanes to its own rhythm. You, your people, have disrupted that rhythm with your cleverness.” He gave Aarin a slow, insincere clap. “Your machine age begins here, as it has in myriad other times and places. The time of gods is done. Bravo.”
“Explain more,” said Aarin.
Tallimastus sighed. “Magic is finite. You are using it up for your own selfish ends. To reach the realm of the dead requires magic. To manifest a soul as a ghost requires magic. If there is less magic, both are harder.”
“But the reluctant souls—”
“The selfish and desperate gather to themselves that which others might use. These ghosts will be more powerful, for a time, then they shall also fade.”
“What happens to the dead?” asked Aarin. “Oblivion?”
The Dead God shrugged. “I do not know. What are gods before people worship them into being? Where will I go when people cease to believe in me? There are many answers that are by their nature unknowable. I try not to let it upset me, or then I really would go mad.”
“It is not the approach of the Twin?”
The Dead God tilted his head back and thumped at the arms of his throne. “No, there’s a whole other problem for you there!” He looked wolfishly at Aarin. “We can discuss that together, although you won’t be doing much talking. The dead are poor conversationalists. Time’s up. Your thread is fraying. Let me cut it for you.”
Tallimastus pushed himself out of his throne. Aarin looked at the cord tying him to his mortal body. It had faded to the faintest red. He stooped and grabbed at it in panic. A gentle tug told him it was still there, but not for long. The cord was became more insubstantial as he gripped it.
“Res Iapetus put me in here. All for the love of his dead wife.” Tallimastus’s voice became deep and awful. He grew until he was eight times the height of a man. Aarin’s good eye snapped open, and he saw the god in his divided form again. The corpse half shambled forward, dragging the unmoving living side along with it clumsily, reminding Aarin horrifically of his father. Aarin yanked at the cord he was holding. It burned in his hand.
The Dead God lunged for him, swinging the stiff living side of itself about like a door.
“You are very gifted!” the god said. “But you’ll not escape. Go on, my companions. Welcome your brother to his new home!”
The ghosts in attendance swarmed forward at the god’s command, darting into Aarin’s face and about his legs. The older were vacuous, dim eyed, nothing but hunger. Pasquanty jabbered at him in silent accusation. Moude wept. Aarin batted at them, his hands chilling as they passed through their insubstantial bodies. His limbs were turning green as the ghosts’, losing their definition. He gave the vanishing cord one last final tug.
The cord tugged back.
Aarin was yanked back, slipping through the fingers of the Dead God, toward the world of the living.
“You’ll not escape! You can’t!” shrieked the Dead God. He grew larger, matching the speed of Aarin’s ascent.
“Do not pursue me! I will return!” Aarin promised. “Perhaps you can be released.”
“You won’t! It doesn’t matter. Even Res Iapetus could not win against me. I had the last laugh at his jest! I had my own trap for him, as he had his trap for me. He languishes in it even now!”
The filthy wind sprang up, roaring in Aarin’s ears.
“Res Iapetus lives?” shouted Aarin.
“Not quite,” laughed the god, his voice tinged with the insanity he was famed for.
“Then where is Res Iapetus?” shouted Aarin.
The Dead God loomed over him, growing ever bigger, until his feet were barely accommodated by the silver orb. When he spoke, his voice filled every corner of the infinite void.
“Res Iapetus is the Drowned King.”
The Dead God opened his mouth to swallow Aarin, but the Guider was torn away, his cord sending shooting pains into his
chest as it heaved him away. He sped from the roaring god, until he and his prison orb were a star again, then nothing.
The pain in his chest became a pain in his neck.
“Get him up! Get him up, gently!” said the prior excitedly.
Aarin’s eyes opened. He was choking, suspended over the bottomless void.
Rope dug into his neck as he was pulled upward. Hands grasped him under each armpit, and hauled him back onto the platform at the base of the stairs. Someone loosened the rope and tugged it free from his neck. Aarin took in a fiery, whooping breath, and rolled, coughing and retching, onto his side. The prior leant over him, face alight with excitement.
“You have returned! What did you see, what did he say?”
Aarin tried to talk. His windpipe was a bruised tube a straw’s breadth down the centre of a trunk of pain.
“Water, get him water!”
A canteen was put to his lips. Aarin spluttered as cold water gathered in his mouth. He could swallow only a few drops, the rest spilled down his front.
“You knew.” He spoke in a barely audible, reedy croak.
“What?”
“There are no modern devices here, no machines, not even paper. There is nothing of the new world in this monastery. You know why the dead do not go easily. Res Iapetus made this place. It is his legacy that funds it.”
“So he told you, good. That proves you saw him,” said the prior. “What else did he say? What can be done to arrest the unravelling of the veil?”
“I did not ask. I had little time. He ranted. He wanted to keep me.”
“You saw the others.”
A nod set an invisible knife sawing at Aarin’s neck.
“What else did you learn?”
“Nothing. I learned nothing.”
Seutreneause tensed with fury. “You lie. You passed into his gaol and you spoke with him.” He signalled to his monks. “You will tell us of all that transpired. We have plenty of time.”
Aarin pressed at the floor with his hand. New pain shot up his arm. Three of his fingers were broken.
“You would not go,” said Setreuneause. “If you wish your other fingers to remain unbroken, then next time you will let yourself be strangled. Take him away!”
The monks hustled him out of the cave, up steps that were longer on the going up than the coming down. In the vault he saw a new animate, fresher than the rest, dressed in clean robes.
Pasquanty’s ruined neck smiled the smile his slack face no longer could. The unliving deacon watched with dull eyes as his former master was dragged past.
Two of the monks took him to a monk’s cell. There was no lock on the door, and two beds set out inside. On one was laid a new habit of black.
“The sea is as effective a barrier as any to escape,” said one of the monks. “The master says you can work with us and remain occupied, or languish between visits to the Dead God in discomfort and boredom. The choice is yours. I do not care.”
“We are all Guiders. We only wish for the dead to rest easy,” said the second other more gently. A flicker of guilt crossed his face.
Aarin feigned hesitation, then gave a tiny nod of acknowledgment.
“Good,” said the gruffer monk. “Our goodbrother physic will be here to see to your hurts in a while. Do not leave, or we will put you in a place less to your liking.” They shut the door behind them, leaving Aarin alone.
The habit waited for him on the bed. He would put on their garments. He would labour alongside them. When they were complacent, he would escape, and take the Dead God’s warning to the world. He would do these things, and more, for he was not only a Guider.
He was a Kressind.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Braving the Ice
THE PRINCE ALFRA hooted loudly, and with a churning of wheels the ship rode up on the pack ice, forcing it down and apart with doomy crackings that resonated throughout the ship’s hull. Funnels huffed glittering steam as the ship drove on forward. The ice screamed. Dry snow blew sideways in a strong breeze to sting exposed flesh. Men with long poles were stationed by each wheel housing and at the prow. Trassan dashed to and fro between them.
“Get that piece there! Keep it out of the wheel!” he yelled.
Three men jammed their poles into a roughly hexagonal piece of ice, pushing the side closest to the wheel down and forcing the opposite side free of the water.
“Shove it away! It’ll go into the paddle!” he yelled. He grabbed a pole from the hands of one man, and shouldered him aside. “Heave!” he yelled. “Heave!”
The ice slid heavily sideways, threatening to drag the sailors over. The paddlewheel bit the water, stirring it to foam, crunching smaller pieces of ice to fragments with shocking noise.
Trassan thrust the pole back into the man’s hands. “Keep the ice away!” he barked.
He marched back across the deck. Bannord approached him, a slighter figure in tow. Only when he was close did he recognise his cousin, bundled up against the weather.
“Bannord!”
“You sent for me?” said Bannord.
“Get your men to the poles. There’s not enough out here.”
“I will leave five of them on watch.” Whiteness surrounded them, the peaks of icebergs emerging without warning from the snowstorm. “For ice as much as anything.”
Trassan muttered something in the manner of angry, impatient men.
“What might I do?” said Ilona.
“Do?” said Trassan. “You have done quite enough.”
“I am trying to make amends, cousin,” she said, wary of his mood. “What else should I do? It was you who reneged on our arrangement, and I who, as a result, spent weeks in a freezing hold.”
“Why is she trailing about after you like a puppy?” he said to Bannord.
“Because you asked me to look after her, and because she’s learning. She’s much better company than you.”
“Don’t go easy on her. Give her something to do, Bannord.” Trassan caught sight of something that displeased him and jogged off to the prow, shouting at a sailor as he went.
“You can stand watch. Over there.” Bannord pointed to a section of gunwale forward of the starboard paddlewheel. “With Darrasind.”
“What do I do?” she said.
“Stand. Watch,” said Bannord. “Specifically for fucking enormous pieces of ice that might hit the ship and sink it. Fairly simple.”
“Alright,” she said.
“Now,” said Bannord.
ILONA KNEW ALL the marines, but none particularly well. She had exchanged few words with Darrasind. He was a quiet man in his late twenties who said little and avoided her eyes, so when he greeted her cheerily she was instantly put on her guard.
“Good morning, goodlady, and what a fine morning it is too!” he said. He had his blanket-muffled ironlock cradled in the crook of his arm, his other hand he waved in greeting. Fatter snowflakes were coming down, catching on his lashes, beard and brows. His normally quiet eyes danced with mischief, his cheeks were redder with something other than the cold.
“I have been told to join you on watch, marine Darrasind,” she said, affecting a hauteur to cover her wariness.
“Then watch together we shall!” he said with an extravagant bow. He stood too close. It was very cold, and all on deck wore their full winter gear. Darrasind seemed innocuous. With his proportions distorted by his bulky parka and mittens he looked like a child’s soft toy, but the look in his eyes made her nervous. “I will look that way, and you shall look that way.” His pointing finger made an angle in his mitten. “That way we can cover twice as much, and move half as less. I mean, half as little.” He struggled in a deep breath, half-swallowing it. “You know what I mean.”
“Have you been drinking?”
“Only a nip, now and then, to keep this thrice-damned cold at bay!” he said. “Do you want some?” he added slyly. He reached inside the neck flap of his parka and pulled out a bottle. “The lieutenant need never know. Fine
st Girarsan whisky. Bloody awful country, full of swamps and poets. But they make a fine firewater. Fedrion gave it me,” he added in an exaggerated whisper.
“No thank you,” said Ilona. “And you better have no more either.”
“Suit yourself, Goodlady,” he said. He took a provocative swallow
“Goodmaid,” she said automatically.
“Not married eh?” he said. There was a pause. “Think a man like me might have a chance with a girl like you?”
“Never,” she said. “Watch.”
A part of her demanded that she leave immediately, but the greater succumbed to pride. If she left this one relatively simply but important task, the crew would never take her seriously and all Trassan’s dire pronouncements about her being a disruptive influence would be proved true. Furthermore, Darrasind was drunk, but ordinarily inoffensive. She feared to leave him at his post and she was reluctant to report him.
Instead she tried to blot the man’s presence with the business of watching for peril in the driving snow. To a degree it worked. One part of her face was exposed to the breeze and became so cold shooting pains fizzed across her cheek. The snow deadened even the dreadful cracking of the ice and groaning songs of the bergs. The shouts of other men became indistinct, their bodies camouflaged with dappled grey and white and blurred about the edges. The hard lines of the ship receded. Calls she could not make out the words of went up from time to time. The ship slowed, the huffing breath of its engines lessened. When the whistles sounded, they came from far away. She was alone, isolated in a soft-edged white circle no more than four yards across.
The problem arose when Darrasind noticed it too.
A cold hand pulling back her parka hood took Ilona by surprise.
“Darrasind!” she yelled, rounding on him. She tugged her hood back up.
Darrasind’s mitten flopped back against his arm. He had removed the under glove also. His exposed fingers were red as raw steak mince in the freezing air.
“You’re so pretty,” he said. “Might I have a kiss? Just a kiss, that’s all.” He smiled almost sweetly. “It’s been such a long time. Since I kissed anyone, I mean. I don’t mean nothing by it. Just a kiss.”
The City of Ice Page 33