The Icefire Trilogy

by Patty Jansen

  Loriane couldn’t have imagined a place like this. Her world, her memories and imagination were white. They passed through forest, and then a few more fields. Some with animals, some with waving vegetation. Grain crops, Myra said. Sheep. Goats. So many new things she couldn’t name. For a while, Loriane almost forgot her discomfort. She looked around and marvelled at this strange, intensely-coloured world.

  Then she became aware that Myra hadn’t said anything for a while, and no longer answered her questions. An eerie dense silence had settled over the land. The birds were quiet, the breeze had stopped.

  “Myra?”

  The girl walked next to Loriane, her eyes hollow.

  “Myra, what’s going on?”

  “Don’t you hear it?” Myra’s voice sounded haunted.

  Loriane listened. If she was very quiet, she could just make out a low hum.

  “You mean that noise? What is it?”

  “It’s horrible,” Myra whispered. “It’s crying.”

  Loriane felt chilled. “Is that the thing following us?” She thought there were people following them, somewhere higher up the hillside. Refugees.

  “Make it stop,” Myra cried, clapping her hands over her ears. “Please, make it stop.”

  “Where is it coming from?”

  “I don’t know, just make it stop.”

  Loriane cast a panicked glance ahead, but Myra’s parents were out of hearing, although Ruko and the camel had stopped as well.

  “Come.” She dragged Myra ahead until she came to where Ontane and Dara stood.

  “What’s going on?”

  The sound was much stronger here, not just a low hum but a high-pitched keening.

  Ontane pointed. “He be frozen to the ground.”

  Ruko stood stiff like he’d turned into stone. His eyes wide, muscles strained, staring ahead.

  Loriane looked.

  Up ahead loomed a thing like she had never seen before. Across the road stretched a row made of huge sheets of metal, each larger than a house. Their mirror-like sides reminded Loriane of the windows in the buildings in the City of Glass. These metal sheets didn’t touch each other, but each had been placed upright on a pedestal and set at an angle like shading lamellae. There were hundreds of these things placed in an overlapping pattern, cutting through the forest as far on either side as Loriane could see. The metal plates were taller than trees, and seen from a distance, the air around them shimmered.

  “What is that thing?” Loriane whispered.

  “That thing’s the reason my husband turns to jelly each time he comes here. He is a coward. You feel anything?”

  It was a challenge, not a simple question, like Dara turned everything into a black-or-white statement. “If it’s something to do with icefire, people do feel it differently.” It did have something to do with icefire, because otherwise Ruko wouldn’t react to it. Out of all of them, he was probably the most sensitive.

  “Pfa,” Dara snorted.

  “The barrier is singing,” Ontane said. His voice had an ominous tone.

  Myra’s face was hollow. She clamped her arms round herself and shivered visibly. She had stopped in the middle of the road. Her baby cried, but she paid it no attention.

  “Myra?” Loriane shook her. Her skin was hot, like she was running a fever.

  “It’s bad,” the girl whispered, staring at the metal wall.

  “Bad? How can a—” A dreadful howl interrupted her.

  Tandor’s face was drawn in a snarl, mad and wide-eyed. Ruko had a hard job trying to keep him restrained.

  “Tandor!” She ran to the camel. “Stop it. Tandor, listen to me.”

  He was having some sort of fit, his eyes rolling. He screamed unintelligible words, kicked out, almost hitting her in the face.

  “Stay away.” Myra pulled her aside. “He can’t hear you. He’ll only hurt you.”

  “What is this horrid thing?”

  “The barrier is singing. It hurts.”

  “But it’s just . . . a wall of metal.” Thick metal sheets, she could see that now they were closer.

  “We have to pass,” Ontane whispered, looking over his shoulder. “I know this thing can’t hurt us, but—”

  Ruko let go of the camel and bashed full-speed into Ontane. They both fell to the ground. Ruko was screaming unintelligible sounds, the first sounds Loriane had heard him make, and Ontane was yelling at him to stop.

  “Help! Get him off me, woman!”

  Dara took the cooking ladle from the crate at the top of the cart and hit Ruko over the head with it. Ruko crumpled.

  “There,” she said, her voice full of satisfaction. “That suits him.”

  Ontane scrambled up. He picked up Ruko, bundled him into the cart and lashed Tandor more securely in the saddle. Dara’s face was set like cement. Myra stared ahead, as if she had to do her best to concentrate.

  Ontane asked, “Mistress Loriane, do you feel the pain?”

  “Not me, but then I can’t see icefire even in the City of Glass.”

  “Good. Lead the camel. Whatever any of us tell you from now on, ignore it, no matter how we scream. Here . . .” He held out a cloth strap. “Tie me to the cart. Myra too.”

  Loriane did as he asked. Dara refused to be tied and looked at Loriane with suspicious eyes. Her face looked white, though, and when the caravan set in motion, she clutched her husband’s arm.

  Slowly, they inched towards the sheets of metal. The camel was snorting and tossing its head. It almost yanked the rope out of Loriane’s hand.

  “Hold it!” someone shouted, and recognised that voice.

  “Tandor!”

  His eyes had lost the dreamy look and met hers squarely. But pearls of sweat beaded on his forehead.

  “Loriane, don’t cross this thing. Don’t run. Don’t—”

  His voice spilled over into a scream, hoarse and haunted. Loriane didn’t understand a word of what he was saying. Rumours went that in their subconscious, when they were sick or losing their mind, people always returned to the language they grew up speaking. Tandor had grown up in Tiverius. Loriane tried to close herself off from his screams. Tandor was the most fiercely southern man she knew. He hated Chevakia. She didn’t want to know that in his nightmares he spoke Chevakian.

  Keep going, keep going.

  Tandor kicked and screamed. Ontane starting mumbling, his eyes closed. Myra was pulling at the strap that tied her to the cart.

  “Let me go. Let me go.” Her voice sounded like a shriek.

  Loriane kept walking, hoping that the camel would continue to follow. If the beast decided to bolt, she couldn’t stop it.

  The keening sound grew so loud it hurt her ears. The barrier loomed up ever closer, the sheets of metal towering over her.

  “Hurry up, you stupid bitch!” Dara shouted. “They’re all going crazy, don’t you see?”

  By the skylights, even Dara was affected.

  What if they all decided to bolt at the same time, or attack her, or whatever it was this dreadful noise made them do.

  Stop it, stop it, stop it. She repeated the words with each step, drowning out the shouting.

  The sun came out and large shadows of the wall’s segments fell over the road. They passed into such a shadow, and then between the metal shields.

  On the other side, the sound level dropped quickly, and soon the air became calm. Dara stopped shouting, and then Ontane and Myra, until only Tandor still mumbled. When even he had stopped, Loriane halted and untied Ontane and Myra’s hands. They both looked pale like ghosts and neither said anything. Tandor had slid sideways in the saddle. Ruko on the cart was still out cold.

 
Ontane sank in the grass, his face sheened with sweat

  Loriane slipped off her cloak and wiped her forehead. Phew. How could a couple of plates of metal have such an effect on people?

  She breathed deeply, sucking her lungs full of sweet air and then became aware that Myra was staring at her.

  “Myra?”

  “There is no icefire here. None at all.”

  Chapter 17

  * * *

  IN THE YELLOW-ORANGE light inside the tent, General Finnisius put the map on the table. Sady pushed himself to the edge of the chair so that he could see. The map showed the border regions, from the gentle hills of Ensar to the east to the rough country of Mekta and the rich agricultural region of Fairlight, with the southern platform at the bottom of the paper. The barrier was drawn as a thick black line interrupted only in the most mountainous terrain at the back of the little pocket of civilisation that was Solmeni. It also showed the telegraph line, of which Sady understood some poles had been uprooted by bad weather and that was why Fairlight wouldn’t come on the line. Fixing the problem was taking a little longer than he had hoped.

  General Finnisius pulled the map so it faced Sady. “If there is going to be a southern attack, we are likely to see birds here, and here.” He jabbed his finger at the main railway at Fairlight, and the gently sloping road at Ensar. “As you can see, these are all strategic points where roads and railways provide access to the southern platform to quickly move an army on foot. We have already seen an increase in the number of scout birds reported in the Ensar region.”

  Sady nodded. Milleus had even mentioned seeing a bird. He should have asked about it when he was there, even though Milleus had said that the bird was without a rider.

  “We are as prepared as we can be, without going into full preparation for war. We have balloons ready to counter their eagles. We have nets to protect the balloons from claws and beaks. We have light-weight armour and shields to protect the balloon crew against their crossbows. One thing I can tell you, Proctor, but a skilled Eagle Knight is a deadly weapon. They’re quick, frightfully accurate and some of those birds are big enough to wear armour.”

  Sady nodded while stifling a yawn. Not that he was bored, but he was so incredibly tired. It was cold in the army command tent, and he felt fearfully underprepared for a discussion about military strategy. Milleus knew all about military, having served himself. But Sady . . . he had spent two days going through the doga’s financial mess to find money to pay creditors, a mess that was worse than he had expected. Much worse.

  “Are we prepared for any weapons they might use?”

  “They use crossbows. They also use poison darts, but their range is very much smaller than that of our powder guns. On the ground, they use crossbows and daggers. Those are the weapons we know about.”

  “Do we need to worry about the ones we don’t?”

  The general hesitated. “I don’t know how much I should mention about this, certainly not to the troops. The southerners are rumoured to have sonorics weapons. They would gather sonorics and somehow shape or bend it into a single destructive beam. But I cannot find anyone who could verify the existence of this kind of weapon. I don’t know if the current rise in sonorics has anything to do with it.”

  The most recent measurement they had was fifty-nine motes per cube at Ensar, but Ensar was further from the border than Fairlight, and Sady feared what he would hear when the line to Fairlight had been restored.

  “Do you think . . .” Sady swallowed. “Do you think they’re increasing sonorics in order to use in attack? Maybe they are trying to break the barrier?”

  “I’d like to think not. They’ve always wanted either food or women, and they’re not going to get either of those if they kill us. Besides . . . Apart from the border raids, which weren’t particularly well-planned strategically, they have never shown any sign of aggression.”

  “Are there signs that they’ve established a base in Chevakia?” Sady had received some terse notes from the Lady Armaine to come and see him about unknown southerners in the city, claims which he had been unable to verify, and hadn’t had time to chase up.

  General Finnisius shook his head. He took a deep breath as if preparing to dive.

  “Just between you and me, Proctor, I’m having some difficulty with this situation. A threat may or may not come, but we don’t know what shape it will take. My men can prepare for battle, and we’re doing our best, but I don’t know how we can prepare for an enemy we cannot see. I’m afraid you may need to call in the assistance of people with different skills than mine. Pure military manoeuvring isn’t going to solve this.”

  Sady nodded. “I’m in contact with Alius. We will start distributing his new medicines soon.”

  Or, Alius had better turn up with his wonder medicines. He hadn’t had time to chase that up either.

  The general stared at the map, chewing his lip for a bit and then he said, “To be honest with you, Proctor, some of the men are scared and there is a fair amount of unrest in the ranks. I cannot, with a clear conscience, send my troops to be the front line of this emergency when I don’t know how to prepare them. The men have accepted that to sign up involves risk, but if I ask them to deal with something that looks like magic, I’m afraid that there may well be problems.”

  He met Sady’s eyes squarely when he said that, and Sady felt a chill. Magic. For years, the Scriptorium had tried to stamp out that word. There was no such thing, they said; everything could be explained, measured and calculated. They thought they understood everything. Their calculations had worked. The barriers had protected the country. But that said, the common people of Chevakia never really understood sonorics, and there were those who still called it magic. Those who couldn’t afford education and sent their sons to serve in the army.

  The warning look in Finnisius’ eyes said, give me something to tell my men or we’ll risk mutiny.

  “I have no reason whatsoever to ask any of our soldiers to enter southern lands,” Sady said.

  Finnisius nodded.

  “I will not ask soldiers to do anything except defend Chevakia.”

  Finnisius nodded again. “And this medicine? The men have heard the rumours about it.”

  “The army will get first priority when it becomes available. I will get that distributed to the troops as soon as possible.”

  Finnisius nodded again. He still seemed to be waiting for more. What else would he want to hear? “Any other problems?”

  “Well—I hate to raise this with you at a difficult time, but some of my men have not received their monthly stipend.”

  Mercy. What was going on? “I will look into it as soon as I get back. The men who defend the country are our utmost priority.”

  Finnisius breathed out audibly. Was it those words he’d wanted to hear?

  What a mess. He hoped that Alius was getting close to providing those magic pills, or there would be real trouble.

  He stared at the map and the regions where soldiers might soon have the fight. Declare war. That was his power. Get the people out first. He was glad he’d sent those trains to Fairlight.

  “All right, General. I will leave you to your work.”

  The general bowed and Sady left the tent in company of Orsan and two of the Proctor’s guard.

  Outside, a cold wind whipped his hair to one side. Sady pulled the sides of his cloak closer around him, and walked back through the camp, past the balloons flapping at their tethers, gusts of wind howling through ropes and loud bursts of fire spewing from burners.

  Soldiers greeted him, full of cheer, but he felt uneasy. He hated being unable to give these good men the assurance that they would not be fighting “magic”. He had no idea what was happening, other than that whatever it was, Chevakia was ill-prepar
ed for it, and he was ill-prepared to be their leader.

  The camp lay on one of the hills that surrounded the capital, and from here, he could see across the valley. Low grey clouds scudded across the sky, brushing the tops of the ranges on the northern side of the city. In the valley, a grey kind of dust called ghostcloud shrouded the buildings in a soft light. Ghostcloud happened during dry spells in winter, when strong pressure gradients drew winds from the north, and dust from northern deserts fouled the air.

  The difference was that it was summer, and that the wind was from the south. There should not be this much haze.

  * * *

  People waited at the entrance to the doga building to see him. Accountants carrying thick books—

  He’d have to get to the bottom of the financial problem as soon as possible. It was clear that this budget crisis had been going on for quite some time. No wonder he hadn’t been able to get money to travel to the Ensar region; the doga survived by shuffling debt from one account to another; there was no spare money.

  But first, he went to see Viki, in his old office. It was disturbing how quickly places didn’t feel like they were his anymore. Viki had dragged the desk closer to the window so that he could put a large drafting table in the room, and both this table and the desk were full of barygraph readouts and maps, strewn about in disorderly fashion. Some were even on the floor, with indication that they had been there for a while, judging by the dusty footsteps on them.

  Viki sat at the drafting table, crunching up his face in concentration while drawing a map. Rolls of paper lay around him and spilled over the edges of the table. Mercy, what a mess.

  “Have you seen the increase in ghostcloud?”

  Viki looked up briefly before returning to his work. “What do you think I’m doing here?”