Goddess of the Ice Realm

by David Drake

  Cashel shrugged. He knew a lot of people felt that way. For himself, he figured people could generally do a lot more than they thought they could; and if something was bad enough, you did all you could to stop it even if you did figure it’d roll right over you.

  He glanced sidelong at Kotia. Despite the way she’d made the statement, he got the notion that her opinion of how people ought to behave was pretty close to his own.

  Chimes and trilling flutes sounded from the manor. Faces were lining the battlements to watch him and Kotia trudge up the roadway. Goodness, but this was a huge place! Every twist of the path showed Cashel another marvel.

  Though all a single structure, the manor was built in at least a double-handful of styles—each in crystal of a different color. The foundations were a drab stone color, yet as clear as sea water on a calm day. The huge block to the east was pink with square towers, arched windows, and tiny round turrets with pointed cupolas on the corners. West of it was a lower, pale yellow, mass of open-topped round towers with colonnaded porticos cantilevered out at several levels.

  The central portion was the same blue-gray as the path and had a fusty, antique appearance. The towers flanking the gateway had three sides visible and probably as many behind; tassels and curlicues of contrasting colors draped the walls between circular windows, and the door panels seemed to represent a frozen waterfall.

  They opened as Cashel and his companion approached. A middle-aged man stepped out.

  The fellow had a short black beard and an air of self possession; behind him came any number of men and women, servants by the look of them. The leader’s clothing was peacock-colored but hemmed with the same rich blue as the sashes cinching the servants’ white tunics.

  He extended his arm in a sweeping gesture. “Kotia!” he cried. “What an unexpected pleasure! May I hope that your stay will be a long one?”

  “As long as you wish, Bossian,” Kotia said. “And as your wife, if you still wish that. You should know that Ansache has driven me out of his manor.”

  “I had heard something about your difficulties,” Lord Bossian said smoothly. He took Kotia by the hand. “I’ve had my own troubles with Ansache, as you know.”

  He looked at Cashel, who’d halted at arm’s length behind the girl and stood with his quarterstaff vertical in his right hand. Turning again to Kotia, Bossian continued, “You brought a servant with you, my dear? Or perhaps it’s an automaton you created with your art?”

  “No,” said Cashel, his voice a growl. He’d met Bossian’s type before, the ones who felt little beside him and decided to make themselves bigger by insults. They seemed always to figure that Cashel wouldn’t drive them into the ground like so many tent pegs; and they were right, not for as little as a few words. But Cashel wondered if any of them realized how easily he could do that, and how quickly he had the times somebody went beyond words to a blow or a gobbet of spit....

  “I summoned Master Cashel to scotch a demon who was becoming importunate,” Kotia said with the ladylike hauteur that hadn’t been in her voice since Kakoral appeared. “He did so in an able fashion.”

  She gave Bossian a thin smile. “A remarkably able fashion, milord. I told him that you were skilled in the art yourself, and that you could perhaps send him home now that he’s accomplished the purpose for which I brought him here.”

  “Ah!” said Bossian, looking at Cashel in a very different fashion from before. “Indeed. Ah.”

  Cashel met Bossian’s eyes, thinking about what Ilna might have said—or done—to the fellow. Cashel wasn’t that way himself—it wouldn’t be right for the biggest, strongest man in the borough to act the same as a small woman did—but he wouldn’t have minded seeing it happen. Thinking that, he smiled.

  Bossian’s mouth dropped open and he took a step backward. Kotia must’ve wondered what was going to happen next also; she touched the back of Cashel’s hand on the quarterstaff and said, “Bossian, my friend and I have had a difficult day and night. If you could provide us with refreshment...?”

  “Yes, of course!” Bossian said. He clapped the fingers of his right hand against the palm of his left.

  “Food and drink in the Summer Plaza!” he cried to the troupe of aides behind him. At once several of them sprinted back into the manor. Shortly after they’d disappeared, bells began to ring in what was either a code or discordant music.

  Bossian bowed to Cashel and said, “Sir, I assure you that I’ll do everything in my power to speed you to wherever you choose to go. We’ll discuss the matter as soon we’ve eaten. Kotia, my dear?”

  He crooked out his elbow.

  “May I have the honor of escorting you to dinner?”

  Kotia didn’t reply, but she took Bossian’s arm with practiced courtesy. Together they walked through the fanciful archway; people watching from above began to cheer and wave ribbons.

  Cashel followed, feeling a bit funny about the situation. When he thought about the words he’d use to describe what was going on—a pretty young girl thrown out by her father and forced to marry her rich older neighbor—it sounded pretty terrible. The truth, though, to somebody who’d had a day’s experience of Kotia, wasn’t nearly so one-sided. Or anyway, wasn’t one-sided in Bossian’s favor.

  They walked down a tunnel whose walls were rippling blue; it was like stepping dryshod through the depths of the sea. Kotia and Bossian chatted to one another; Cashel could hear most of the words, but they were discussing things and people that meant nothing to him.

  Cashel thought about the world he’d been taken from, feeling sad in a way that didn’t often happen to him. Maybe it was the strange fashion light bent in this place. It was all strange, and it wasn’t where he belonged. He hoped that Tenoctris was all right; and he wished that Sharina was here to explain the parts of this place that she’d understand. It was wonderful the things that Sharina and Garric knew, and they talked to Cashel about them without talking down....

  Beyond the tunnel mouth was a courtyard full of people in gorgeous colors, though none quite so brilliant as Bossian himself. The walls and pavement were golden—were pure gold, Cashel would’ve said from a distance, but close up he could see it was transparent crystal just like the rest.

  Instead of shouting, the folk in the courtyard pressed up to Bossian, clasping hands with him while bowing and simpering to Kotia. Other people looked down and smiled from the balconies terraced back from the foundations of the surrounding buildings.

  Bossian waved away the mob of greeters and turned to Cashel. “Does the Visitor prey on the regions you come from, sir?” he asked in a friendly enough tone. “I ask because we see portents of his return, and I thought your presence might be connected.”

  “What are you saying, Lord Bossian?” said Kotia in a voice that could break rocks. “Do you think that I’d have brought a harbinger of the Visitor into our world?”

  “Of course not, my dear!” Bossian said, sounding like he was surprised. Maybe he was—though if he hadn’t expected Kotia to go for his throat if he played games with words that might be insults, he didn’t know her as well as Cashel did already. “I just thought we should explore whether he might be a portent, that’s all.”

  The ground started to rise.

  Cashel brought his staff over his head, the only place he could hold it crosswise and not bash a lot of people. Even so his left elbow jabbed a solid-looking fellow who caromed back with a shout of amazement. The crowd stopped chattering and stared at Cashel instead.

  “Cashel?” Kotia said, calmly but with an artificially blank expression.

  The ground—the plate of golden crystal, it wasn’t ground!—continued to rise. One edge remained in contact with the tall, smooth-sided cone across from the gateway. The plate curved around the cone and settled into place on the opposite side, several stories higher than it’d been when Cashel first walked onto it.

  “I’m sorry, mistress,” Cashel said. He lowered his staff, making a little nod of apology to the fellow he’d el
bowed. “I just wasn’t expecting that to happen.”

  Then, as the locals started chattering and Bossian mouthed false regrets for not having explained what was going to happen, Cashel said, “And as for the Visitor, I’ve never heard of anybody who goes by that as a title. If my coming here has something to do with him, it’s without me knowing about it. Who is he?”

  He thought for a moment and added, “Or she, I guess.”

  “We’ll take the Linden Walk, I think,” Bossian said. He looked disconcerted. “Unless you...?”

  Cashel gestured brusquely with his left hand toward the broad path bordered with what he would’ve called basswood trees. “Walking’s fine,” he said.

  Cashel was tired and hungry, and Bossian seemed set on playing tricks on him. He’d have turned around and left if he had any better place to be, and he was just about ready to do that anyway.

  Kotia said something sharply into Lord Bossian’s ear, then stepped back and took Cashel’s arm instead. “Manor Bossian’s trees are famous,” she said in a coolly cheerful tone. “At Manor Ansache, our parks have a prairie theme.”

  Her smile was as hard as Ilna’s might have been. She added, “And my mother had an extensive fungus garden in the cellars, though Ansache had it grubbed up after she disappeared.”

  Cashel cleared his throat as they walked along the boulevard. Lord Bossian was a step ahead, talking with several locals and being very careful not to look over his shoulder. There was a little cocoon of open space separating Cashel and Kotia from the others, which suited Cashel fine. He wasn’t used to crowds. He said, “Thank you, mistress.”

  Kotia patted his arm with her free hand. “Is there anything you’d like to see while you’re here, Master Cashel?” she said. “There’s no reason that you have to rush off, you know.”

  Cashel noticed Lord Bossian hunch as though somebody’d just hit him on the back of the head. Grinning—Kotia was a lot like Ilna, which was a fine thing if you were on her side—he said, “No, mistress, there’s people waiting for me back where I was. But thank you.”

  He’d wondered where the fields supplying this huge building were, but he saw them as he walked along—on roofs and terraces covering the whole manor. As the tree-bordered road curved around a huge tower, Cashel noticed to the north a many-layered pyramid that seemed to be of plantings at every level.

  The slopes Cashel’d hiked over for the past day weren’t green enough to pasture sheep, so he wondered whether the rainfall was enough for the melons and squash he’d seen among the rows of maize. People who made courtyards move could pump water from deep wells, he supposed.

  The slimly-handsome man and woman now walking to either side of Lord Bossian talked about the Visitor in airy voices. Neither of them believed he was coming—or at any rate, they denied they believed that. Bossian made neutral comments. He could’ve been too high-minded to trouble himself with the matter, but Cashel got the impression that Bossian was afraid to speak clearly, for fear whichever choice he made would bring the Visitor down on him.

  “Ah, Kotia?” Cashel said. “Who’s the Visitor? I really don’t know anything about him.” He paused, then added, “At least under that name.”

  A magnificent waterfall poured from the cleft between two towers—one rosy and decorated with turrets stuck to the sides, the other green and stark, without so much as window ledges to mark its smooth sides. The stream gurgled under the road, twisted, and vanished into a hulking silvery mass whose colonnades seemed to have been spun from cobweb. There was no sign of where so much water could have come from.

  “For as far back as history records,” Kotia said quietly, “a being has come down from the sky, stayed for a time, and then vanished in the same way as he appeared. We call him the Visitor. Sometimes there’s a generation between his visits, sometimes longer than that. While he’s here, he does as he wishes—he has that much power.”

  She turned to meet Cashel’s eyes. Without raising her voice she added, “The Visitor remains for varying lengths of time, generally a month or a few months. About a thousand years ago, the Visitor stayed for five years. Everything that happened before then is lost to us now, because civilization ended at that time.”

  Cashel frowned. “You fight him when he comes?” he said.

  Kotia shrugged. “Some have fought,” she said. “Some flee. And there have always been some who tried to serve him. The Visitor does as he wishes.”

  They’d arrived at an array of tables and chairs on half-round terraces. They were set with food and drink, and servants in white tunics were poised discretely to add more.

  Lord Bossian gestured Cashel and Kotia to the circular table at the lowest level. The couple who’d been walking with him took places there also, but they remained standing till Bossian gave them leave.

  The male of the pair looked at Cashel and said, “Really, you mustn’t get worked up about the Visitor, you know. There’s always somebody talking about omens and portents and doom in the stars. It always turns out to be fancy.”

  “If you’ve looked at the night sky in the past month, Farran,” Kotia said in voice that was too disgusted to be angry, “you’d have noticed that the stars themselves are different. The constellations in the southeast have changed their alignments! That’s no more fancy than sunrise is.”

  “Ah,” said the fellow, turning to the woman with him. “Are you planning to attend Lady Tilduk’s gala, Syl?”

  Lord Bossian pulled out his own chair; the whole gathering followed his lead, seating themselves in a rush that filled every place on the terraces. Cashel sat carefully, as he always did when he wasn’t sure how sturdy his chair would be.

  As Kotia settled beside him, she muttered, “The Visitor does as he wishes.”

  But as she spoke, she eyed Cashel.

  ***

  Ilna sat with her back to the little cabin and the sun on her left side. Nabarbi was at the steering oar on the opposite railing, so she was as much out of the way as she could be on a small vessel.

  She was working on the hand frame in her lap, weaving a cartouche that could become part of a tapestry or set off a garment as need arose. Its measured curves drew the eye and left the beholder feeling marginally more optimistic. Ilna smiled grimly as she worked: the design had a positive effect even on her.

  Because the Bird of the Tide’s hold was nearly empty, Ilna could’ve carried any loom she wanted. She couldn’t possibly use anything larger while they were at sea, though, and they’d be returning immediately to Carcosa when they’d dealt with this trouble in the Strait.

  If they survived, of course. She smiled again. She was feeling optimistic.

  Their bow was chopping into the sea, a change from the first day out when slow swells from astern lifted the Bird in long, queasy arcs. Ilna didn’t like the chop, but she hadn’t liked the swells either. In all truth she didn’t like ships, which put them in the same category as most people and most things. And because of the way she was feeling, she grinned even wider at that thought.

  “You’re a cheerful one today, lass,” said Chalcus in a tone of pleased puzzlement. He’d come around the cabin from where he’d been talking to Nabarbi. “I’d feared that bucking the current would’ve made you uncomfortable.”

  As compared to what? Ilna thought, but because she was feeling positive—and because she liked to see the pleasure that brought into Chalcus’ eyes—she said, “It’s not so very bad. I can work—”

  She tilted the hand frame as a gesture.

  “—and so long as I can work, nothing disturbs me very much.”

  Chalcus nodded in understanding, though she caught a flash of regret in his expression also. “Most of the northbound traffic takes the Haft Channel and hugs the mainland,” he explained, gesturing to starboard. “That’s how the current flows, so even if the wind’s from the northeast you can make headway.”

  He grinned. “If you know what you’re doing,” he added, “and you’re not sailing a pig, which our Bird here assuredly
is not.”

  Chalcus patted the railing. He was dressed in tunic and sash, ordinary garb for the captain of a small vessel who expected to help the crew in a crisis; but the sash was bright red silk matching the fillet that confined his hair, and his curved dagger wasn’t an ordinary seaman’s working blade. Chalcus wasn’t a man to pass unnoticed in any company, so he didn’t bother trying.

  “Ships bound for Carcosa take the Outer Strait and pass north of the Calves,” Chalcus continued, “riding south on a current that comes all the way from the Ice Capes. It’s those ships that the Rua take, or anyway somebody takes—”

  He gave her another grin; Ilna nodded coldly.

  “—so we’ll be calling in to see Commander Lusius in Terness on the north coast of Corse, that’s the northeast island of the Calves. To get there we’re slipping between the other two islands, Betsam and Bewld; and that means fighting the current.”

  “I’d noticed the air was cooler,” Ilna said, tying off the completed design. She rose to her feet, looking at the sea for the first time since she’d placed herself against the cabin. The railing wasn’t particularly high, but seated on the deck she could see only the sky over it. The water was a murky green as though it was mixed with powdered chalk.

  “We’ll dock in Terness before the middle of the afternoon, I’d judge,” Chalcus said, eyeing the land ahead of them. Ninon stood in the far bow, his right hand on a stay, watching also. “Barring the untoward happening, which is no more a certainty on shipboard than it is with the rest of life, eh, lass?”

  “Chalcus,” said Ilna. She pointed to the sky high to the northeast. “Are those birds, or...?”

  “Ah, you’ve good eyes, my dear,” said Chalcus, following her gaze. “Indeed, it’s the ‘or’ of your question, I would say. They’re no birds of my acquaintance, for all that they’re surely flying.”