The City of Ice

by K. M. McKinley

  “Maybe fifth best is not that good after all,” she said, and went at him. He regained his feet in the nick of time. A broad, upward swing of his sword sent her blade sailing out of the way. He moved to punch with his off hand. She ducked out of the way and stabbed hard toward his kidney. He parried close in, too close to effectively riposte, and they parted. They circled again.

  “Not bad at all,” she said. “When you die, you can tell your relatives in the realms beyond that you were killed by the best swordswoman in all Ruthnia. It might salve your pride.”

  He was expecting the attack after the jibe, but little prepared him for the speed and power of it. Her sword hissed at his face. He dropped low and lunged off his front foot, sending himself shooting past her. He recovered well, turning as he went, his sword snaking back into guard.

  It clinked against hers, now pressed firmly against his throat.

  “Do you call for mercy?” intoned the president. The crowd fell silent.

  “Is it offered?”

  “I’ll let you go if you beg,” said Asteria. “Life is far too dull for mercy. I prefer a little humiliation to spice it. If I don’t get the kill, I need something to remember.”

  “Charming.”

  “Charm? I had no time for finishing school. I was too busy learning how to slaughter fools like you. So, what’s it to be, fifth best in Karsa?” she said. The razor tip of her sword broke his skin painlessly. A droplet of blood trickled down his throat. “I give you the fool’s choice—life, or honour?”

  “I will not beg.”

  “I thought not. If you were clever, you would never have taken me on. Do you know why I win?” she said.

  “Practise?”

  “A glib man so close to death, though I suppose you can take comfort your ghost will certainly find its way,” she said, twitching her chin at the Guider. “I win, Garten Kressind, because I like to kill.”

  He saw he muscles tense, her eyes dilate, saw the intent to end him swell like an ugly canker throughout her being.

  He refused to close his eyes. Reality took on an intensity that was overwhelming. He heard, smelled and saw with such clarity he became painfully aware of how precious life was, and how he had squandered it.

  “Brother! Brother!” Josan wailed.

  The crowd drew a collective breath. The pressure of magic squeezed at Garten. Issy shouted. Josan gave out a chilling wail. Space convulsed, and the crowd was gone.

  Garten fell sideways into a dark place, bounced off a rough, wet, wall. His sword jarred from his hand with a clatter. Unceremoniously, he fell down, and landed on his backside in an inch of water.

  He stood, trembling. It was too dark to see. He had no idea where he was.

  Garten was lost in the black.

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  A Plan in Action

  ON THE OTHER side of the park from the duelling ground, Madelyne waited for Harafan. The precinct was far from the safety of the Meadow and other heavily frequented places. The stone bench she sat on was choked with ivy that ran up the trees and halfway across what was once a path, though she could tell only by the ornamental edging pieces of fired clay poking up through the leaf litter. Where the path was not hidden by ivy it was covered with nettles and other noxious weeds. Black-skinned trees leaned over it, their limbs contorted into ugly poses. She had the fancy they were dancers immolated mid-step, leaving twisted, charcoaled corpses behind. That image was too much, and she turned away from them, and stared at the small, clear space in front of the bench. The Royal Park covered hundreds of acres, but large swathes of it were abandoned. So much of it had been swallowed up by trees, weeds and rumour so long ago it had the feeling of a place deliberately designed to depict the mercilessness of time. Such a thing was possible. Perus had more than its share of eccentric noblemen with the means to make such a monument. But the truth was that since the driving of the gods, the Royal Park had become dangerous.

  The area reeked. There was supposedly a lake nearby. She did not know of any person who had actually seen it, but the weedy, noisome scent of stagnant water was everywhere. Things rustled in the undergrowth. She saw rats and other vermin, but heard no songbirds nor saw any dracon-birds flitting through the branches. Visited only by the foolhardy or the reckless, the 5th Precinct of the Park was among the most desolate, shunned by all that was good and clean, too close to the point where the Godhome touched the Earth to be safe. The great tilted plate of it rose over her like a hand poised to swat a fly. She had never been this close. Very few people dared.

  A loud crackling had her jumping from the bench. The duke’s latest marks brushed tantalisingly against her clothes. She wore nothing but the finest garments now, the worst of them so much closer woven and luxurious than the best dress she had ever worn, but even their whispering touch on the welts on her legs troubled her with intermingled pain and arousal.

  Harafan forced his way through the stand of black trees, waving his hands at a cloud of gnats.

  “Gods! What a fucking miserable place!” he said. He unshouldered a large pack and dropped it on the ground. He smelled of mouldering wood and long dead leaves.

  “You chose it,” she replied.

  He pawed a gnat from his tongue distastefully and licked at his clothes to remove the taste, slowing as he took notice of Madelyne’s outfit.

  “Wow, Madelyne. You look very fine. Those are beautiful clothes. You could pass as a goodlady, really. And your face!” He looked closely at her. “There’s something different about you. What have you been up to?”

  She stepped away from him. Again her clothes brushed her. She was acutely aware of every movement on her skin, cognisant of her body’s basest desires in a way she never thought to be. Need stirred in her. She turned away so Harafan could not see her flush.

  “Are you alright?” he asked, becoming concerned.

  She did not reply. How could he understand half of what she had undergone? Away from the duke she feared he had enchanted her, when she was near him she could think only of his touch.

  “Fine then,” he said to her silence. “I take it if we are here, you have what we need. That is all that matters.” He looked up at the Godhome’s underside, leaden in the gloom. Either side of it the skies were lemon yellow with high evening, but just there, so deep into the dominion of its shadow, the sun could never shine.

  “Yes,” she said, more coldly than she intended.

  “Look,” he said. “I know you have been through a lot, but it will all be worth it. We go in, we take what we want, and we leave rich. No problem. Seriously Mads, have you been alright? I’ve sent you five messages in the last month. I’d heard nothing until you got in touch last week.”

  “I haven’t been able to reply. Come on. We should get going. If you only believe half of the stories, then it is dangerous to be here after evening.”

  “Are you hiding something from me?” he asked. “Are you sure everything is alright? Mads, come on. How long have we been together?”

  “Sixteen years,” she said. “Since we were eight.”

  “Haven’t we always looked out for each other? Haven’t we always been friends? Have you been holding out on me?”

  She nodded, bit her lip. A deep sense of shame had her hide her face. “He told me three weeks ago.”

  “You’ve known for three weeks? Why didn’t you say anything?” he said, hurt now mingling with his concern. “Were you going to go in yourself? Like that, on your own? After all we’ve suffered?” He threw up his hands. How much he was like a little child in that moment. Madelyne hated him, wanted to be away from his petulance and hopeless dreaming. She struggled with her reaction. Harafan had been her friend for always. There only ever had been him.

  “It’s complicated,” she said finally. “I would never cheat you, Harafan. You’re the only family I have.”

  “Don’t tell me you’re actually falling for the demoniacal bastard! That’d be hilarious,” he said.

  “Screw you,” she said
. “You can’t tease me about this. You don’t know. You can’t... I...”

  “Shhh! Alright, alright!” he said. He came to her and took her upper arms in a soft embrace. He was being kind. He was always kind to her. He could not know that his hands pressed against skin made tender in her nights with the duke. “I’m here. We’re here. When this is done, you can get out, find yourself a good man, and I can find myself twenty bad women!” He tried out a smile on her. She blinked back uncalled tears and nodded.

  “Now, what is it?” he said eagerly. “I’m dying to know. Is there a staff or a key, or a crystal? Remember when we robbed that magister’s house, and his key was a clockwork dracon-bird carrying a strawberry? What terrible taste.”

  He laughed, she joined in, more subdued than he.

  “It’s words, Harafan.”

  “Words?”

  She nodded. “Just words.”

  “Fine. Whatever. They were gods. I suppose it could be a puff of air. Do you know them?”

  “Memorised. I can say them right.”

  “Huh,” said Harafan.

  Madelyne became caught up in the moment, and started to speak like she once had when they had an important job, quick and excited. “The drunken god betrayed the rest of them, can you believe it? He gave Res Iapetus the words to get in. Why would he do such a thing? He’s been living in a box ever since. I wonder if it was worth it?”

  “Sometimes,” said Harafan, “we’re our own worst enemies.” He shivered, and looked up at the looming Godhome. “We better not say the mage’s name again around here. Call me superstitious, but I don’t think the Godhome likes it.” He examined her dress, almost lasciviously, and Harafan never looked at her that way. “That is pretty. Can you run in it?”

  “I can run in anything,” she said.

  “That’s my girl.” He went to his pack, and took out three folded bags, a leather satchel, and a small knapsack. He put the satchel on, and replaced the pack on his back, then unfolded the knapsack, adjusted the straps and handed it to Madelyne. “You carry the sacks in there. I’ve got some stuff to get ready. If what that woman Shrane told me is right, we’re going to have to be very careful, and make sure we do this right.”

  They fought their way through last year’s brambles, light turning green in the shadow of the Godhome. They snagged at Madelyne’s coat, but it was so finely made it never tore. Harafan was less fortunate, his trousers were shredded. Both of them were harried by squadrons of gnats as they pushed on up the path. Trees leaned into the way, clawing at them with sharp twigs. Water dripped from everything, soaking them both. To begin with, the path was well defined, if overgrown, but it narrowed between its broken edging, until that too vanished in the middle of a stand of stooped, gnarly trees little taller than two men stood one on the other’s shoulders.

  Without the Godhome to guide them, they would quickly have become lost; as it was, they were headed toward the one place in all the city everyone avoided.

  “We’ve got to get nearer,” said Harafan. The Godhome was very close, a metal wall that shut out the world. To their left miniature hills creased the land, covered in thickets of the black trees and impenetrable wild roses. They climbed the first, coming down the other side to another overgrown path, the only evidence of which were paving stones pushed through the turf by roots, and a gate in a fence of iron rails rusted reed thin. Wild roses and blackberry tumbled through between them. On the other side was a cemetery. Tomb roofs of rain-whitened lead poked over the undergrowth.

  “What a sight,” said Harafan. “I’ve heard about this place. It was the burial ground of the old Maceriyans during the era of Resplendency,” he said. “Imagine what treasure you could pull of out the ground here with a shovel and a lick of courage.”

  Madelyne took his hand and turned him to face her. “Do you think you are the first to have that idea? You said we had to be careful.” Madelyne pointed.

  Only feet away from the gate was a skeleton imprisoned by brambles. The remains of its clothes were in tatters and the bones yellow from exposure. Ivy wound its way around the ribs, and out through the jaw and eye sockets. Harafan wrestled his way past the gate and went to investigate. A bag, rotted mostly through, was beside the dead man, tools still inside. An iron chisel stained the leaves with bright orange rust. The tomb was unharmed. No one had taken the lead from the roof. The door seal was whole.

  “Alright, alright,” said Harafan. “I guess the stories are true then.” After a moment’s rearrangement he put his pack and satchel on the ground, and took out a belt upon which were two fat bags tied with string. He set these above his hips, before resetting the rest of his baggage on his shoulders. “The minute you see anything strange, let me know,” he said.

  “What is in the bags?” she asked.

  “Iron filings, laced with a tiniest amount of dust from the Black Sands. When I start scattering it about, don’t tread on it. I’ve heard glimmer and iron is not volatile at this ratio, but let’s not take any chances. It’s to keep the Tyn at bay.”

  “When did you start learning magic?”

  “I haven’t. I had a pay a magister a pretty amount of coin to get that secret. Apparently, it’s the only way to get close to them without them tearing you apart.”

  “What did you tell him?”

  “Nothing, don’t worry. I said I was writing a book on Lesser Tyn. He thought I was mad. He was happy enough to take my money though.”

  They pushed on. The skeleton was not the first body they saw in the cemetery. Others lurked in secret places, as if engaged in a macabre version of hide and seek. Some were fresher than others, having scraps of flesh adhering to their bones under clothes that had yet to perish. There was no sign of the living.

  Madelyne and Harafan fell into step with the tombs marching over the small hills, following paths dense with thorny plants into dwarf valleys that must once have been serene, but now were the epitome of desolation. The tombs became grander and more elaborate as they went deeper, many sporting elaborate ghost catchers or enchanted warning horns should a revenant find its way back from the lands of the dead.

  “They say this place was used right from Morfaan days until the God-Driving. Thousands of years of the dead, all here, packed into the ground.” Harafan meant to scare her.

  “Don’t,” she said. He took that as success, but she wasn’t scared. He was ignorant of the things she had recently experienced.

  “There are catacombs beneath. I heard that if you go far enough into them, you come to the place where the Morfaan placed their dead before the Old Maceriyans and that there are wondrous things there, buried with them. But though lots of people have gone in, nobody has ever come back.”

  “Then how do you know what’s in there?” she asked.

  He grinned. “Good point. That’s the problem with all rumoured treasures, isn’t it?”

  They climbed a final hill taller than the rest. Upon its summit was a church to the gods, modest in size but lavishly decorated. The roof had tumbled in, taking out the nave as it fell. Shards of dusty, coloured glass lay like jewels all around the end. From windows down each side the stern faces of Omnus, Alcmeny and the rest still looked out.

  From the top of the hill, they saw the full extent of the cemetery. Back the way they had come they made out the lighter green of healthy woods and meads where the Royal Park was still worthy of the name. Where the shadow of the Godhome never lifted only weeds and sickly trees grew. They were close to the source of the shadow. On the hill opposite rested the rim of the Godhome itself. The top portion resembled a city, but that side presenting itself to the ground was a wide, convex circle of flawless Morfaan steel. Dark reflections played over its surface. The Godhome must have weighed millions of tons, but its edge rested as lightly on the ground as a cloud. It had ploughed up a low bank when it had fallen, furzed over with low brush now, and the tombs there had been smashed into squares of white stone scattered like teeth by a hammer blow. The damage it had done to the eart
h was otherwise minimal. Nevertheless, seeing it like that, teetering on the edge of oblivion, both of them understood like never before the danger the Godhome presented to the city should it ever fall. Most of it was situated over the park, but not all, and the impact alone would shiver buildings down to their foundations miles away.

  “Right then,” said Harafan lightly. “Let’s get this over with. A couple of hours of terror, then we’ll be rich forever. A fair trade, in my opinion.”

  Throughout the earlier part of the journey, they had talked, Harafan keeping up his usual endless patter. Madelyne’s less than favourable reaction to his first few questions about the duke had him avoid the subject, and he commented instead upon the desolate sights of the cemetery. Caution took his voice as they descended into the shallow bottom of the last valley. They threaded their way between its glorious tombs silently. Wicked vegetation pulled at everything, as set on engulfing them as it was on smothering the grave markers, and it took a long time to make the final approach. They hit the base of the last hill late. The Godhome hinged over their heads, now the totality of the sky. They became colder more than the deepening shadow could account for. Thick undergrowth barred their progress, and they were further delayed seeking out a way. Scratched, sweaty and fearful, the stumbled upon a flight of shallow steps between the tombs that had remained almost clear, and they scrambled up this, tugging their feet through the grasping weeds.

  Hard, semi-musical clacking accompanied every footstep, for there were bones everywhere, the remains of hundreds of people interlocking with one another to make a rough pavement under the brush. Madelyne watched her step but paid the bones no more attention than that for a long while, until she chanced to look down. The uneven texture of a long leg bone had her reach for it. It was coarse under her fingers. She brought it up to her eyes, and saw the saw-toothed marks of little teeth in the surface.