City Under Ice

by TE Olivant

  I wondered if he had said the same to Sam. Or was someone of Angel Sam’s breeding less deserving of his pity?

  “But our city needs rules, and you broke them. Our civilisation is so incredibly fragile. It would not take much to rip it apart.” In a strange way, I almost agreed with him.

  “You could not possibly imagine the burden of leading the city, so many hungry mouths to feed. Each tiny life scrabbling for your attention.” The great man ran a trembling hand over his eyes. Perhaps I should have pitied him then, but instead I felt a sudden surge of anger. Now that he was in front of me, in the flesh, he radiated weakness. How could the city be strong with such a person leading it?

  “But we are not unkind,” he continued, unaware that my hands were bunching themselves into hard fists. “We will give you a pack with food and water. It should last you a few days.”

  I didn’t see what kindness there was in surviving a few more hours, only prolonging the inevitable end. The pack was tiny, but I took it from the hands of one of his minders. I wondered what they were doing there. Did they really think I would be some sort of threat? It made me feel a little better, less powerless. If I wanted to I could launch myself at this strange man who had run my life and taken my family and friends from me. I could claw at his face, beat my fists against his puny chest – but then what would be the point.

  Once I had strapped the pack onto my back the leader made a small gesture and the men came to stand either side of me. They took one arm each and marched me forward. I could almost feel the warmth of their skin through the suit, and I felt pathetically grateful for this last brief moment of human contact. They led me to the airlock. The guard pushed a button and the metal circle moved inwards smoothly and I stood on the threshold.

  “Push her through,” the Leader said, and there was no kindness in his voice now.

  “I can do it myself,” I replied, and shrugged off their arms. I walked forward and didn’t look back as the seal slid shut behind me. I heard the sound of the final airlock opening and I stepped forward into the cold.

  Chapter 8: Kyrk

  In the end all it took to signal my acceptance into the Seekers was a handshake from the Chief. I raised my arm to salute my new clan and relieved chatter filled the air. I turned to Swift, but he was deep in conversation with the Chief, and I felt suddenly very alone.

  Just outside one of the tents that dotted the Peak someone handed me a cup of moonshine and I took a deep swallow to ease my nerves. It was stronger than I expected and it burned all the way down my throat. The peppery taste threatened to make me cough, but I swallowed quickly to stop from looking like an inexperienced kid. I might have not intended to stay with this strange clan, but I still wanted them to respect me.

  As I wandered around the Peak a bottle of moonshine was pressed into my hand. My head told me to keep wary, not to let my guard down. But my heart felt a mix of elation and fear and my stomach bubbled with emotion. How long had it been since I had just let go? I took another small sip and managed not to grimace. I heard a laugh somewhere and set my jaw. They still thought they were better than me, a stupid Hunter. I leaned my head back and took a long swallow. I gave the bottle back to the stranger who grumbled at its lightness.

  I kept walking as night fell and before long I was disorientated. I wandered further up to the summit of the Peak where the buildings were more spaced out and there were less people to gawk at me. It was that strange dark that you only find amongst people, where there is too little light to see by but too much light to allow the moon to shine your path. You never got dark like this out on the true White. I stumbled a little. Stupid Hunter, I thought, you drank too much.

  I found a mound of snow in a space between two ighuses and I sat down heavily. I felt suddenly tired, as if my legs would never move again. I thought about sleep, but just as I closed my eyes I heard footsteps behind me.

  The girl was the colour of snow. Even for a Seeker, this was unusual. If she had closed her eyes she would have disappeared into the White, but their deep blue never wavered. I had seen her before, I thought, though I couldn’t remember where.

  “Hello Hunter,” she said, “My name is Felkyo. I was hoping to meet you.”

  She must have followed me. Her bright eyes looked down on me and I suddenly felt very small. I forced myself to my feet.

  “Not a Hunter anymore,” I said and I hoped she couldn’t hear how slurred my words were. Damn the moonshine. “I’m Kyrk.”

  She planted her feet before me with her hands on her hips and leant her head to one size. I felt her eyes run over my body, appraising me. She was not shy. I tried not to do the same and look at her, but she was striking: tall, even for a Seeker, with long legs and that snow white fur.

  “You look like a Hunter to me.”

  She pulled herself up on her tip toes and kissed me. She kissed hard, lips apart and I felt her tongue flick against my teeth. Without thinking, I reached my arms around to hold her.

  But this was all too strange and I was losing control. That could be very dangerous. Suddenly, I wondered how young she was. I pulled away.

  She didn’t ask what was wrong, merely stood back and waited for me to say something.

  “You’re not of age are you?”

  She shook her head. “Does that matter?”

  My head began to thump. Moonshine always gave me a terrible hangover and it chose this moment to kick in. “It matters to me.”

  She laughed, but this time it had an edge of cruelty.

  “Oh please, it was just a kiss. I just wanted to know what it was like to kiss a Hunter. It was nothing special.”

  She was angry with me, but her words stung anyway.

  “Go home.” I said quietly. She turned on her heels and ran. I sunk to my knees in the snow. I never wanted to get up.

  “Come on Seeker, let’s get you to bed.” I groaned at the sound of a female voice, but when I looked up it wasn’t the strange girl. It was the Chief. Before I could move she hooked a strong arm under mine and pulled me to my feet. We started a slow walk back to the Peak. We walked in silence at first as I didn’t trust myself to speak. She must have seen me with the girl, probably thought I was more of an idiot than ever.

  “You’re not the first new clansman to underestimate the strength of our moonshine,” she said at last.

  I nodded. The thumping in my head had become a drum beat that pulsed through my jaw to my ears.

  “It was a difficult choice you made today.”

  I nodded again. I didn’t trust myself to speak, in case I gave myself away. The only choice I had made had been to lie to the Seekers. I had no intention of becoming one of them.

  “Seekers and Hunters are really not that different.” The chief spoke slowly, as if she chose her words carefully. “We are both the last line of protection for our people. But the difference is that the Hunters wait for trouble to come to them. Seekers look for trouble and stop it before it gets to the other clans. We’ve been protecting you for years and you’ve never even realised it, hidden in your caves.”

  I couldn’t tell if she was angry or disappointed. Her voice was hard to read, and her face was shadowed in the darkness.

  “You don’t like being a Seeker. Well, you don’t have to like us. But you must respect us: otherwise you’ll put us all at risk. And we cannot allow that. I will not allow that.”

  I felt I had to say something.

  “I won’t put anyone at risk, I swear.” This at least was honest.

  “I’m sure you wouldn’t mean to. But you think you’re here for answers. You’re not, you’re here for revenge and that’s when people get hurt.”

  I felt like the Chief could read my mind, and I kept silent, worried that anything I said would expose me further. Finally she led me to a small tent.

  “This is Swift’s home. Your guardian is still at the fire, but I think you should stay here and sleep.” She turned to go, but then paused. “Oh, and next time you see Swift, probably best not
to mention that you kissed our daughter.”

  Felkyo was the Chief’s daughter? And Swift’s? Which meant that she and Swift were... My headache was suddenly a thousand times worse, so I did the only thing I could think of. I lurched into the tent, collapsed on some furs, closed my eyes and slept like the dead.

  The next morning I awoke late in Swift’s tent with my head thumping. I forced myself to consider what had happened with my initiation and the conversation afterwards with the Chief. I tried hard not to think about Felkyo and her soft, playful lips. Now was not the time to lose focus.

  “Well, I’ve seen worse after initiation. How’s your head?” Swift looked me up and down from the doorway.

  “Not too bad.” I said. I wondered if Swift knew about Felkyo. He didn’t look annoyed though, so I thought I had got away with it for now. She hadn’t seemed the most discreet person: I would need to watch my step.

  “I’ve just been to see the Chief.” My face must have looked grim, because Swift laughed.

  “Not about you. There are other more important things going on in this world, you know. Mind you, I wouldn’t go near the eagles for a while, those beaks can be bloody sharp.” The mischievous look in his eyes told me that my antics yesterday had just about been forgiven, by him if not by the Chief.

  “So why did you go to see her?” I thought the question might be a little personal, but Swift just shrugged.

  “She needed someone to advise her. I used to be a negotiator between the clans, so she wanted some insights. I’m afraid I didn’t have much to give.”

  “What is it that the Chief is worried about?”

  Swift paused for a moment, eyeing me carefully. I held his gaze – I was a member of his clan now, so I had a right to know.

  “She’s frustrated because the clans won’t let us in.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Swift looked down at his hands, searching for how to explain it to me.

  “Even a few months ago, we were still called in to fix problems, to investigate crimes within the clans, and any disputes between them. But just before the Meet that all stopped. It started with the Doctors, their Chief refused to communicate with us at all. And then the Herders, even though we knew from... other sources... that they were having problems, they refused to let us in.”

  “Was that about the missing herds?” I remembered something about it from the Meet.

  “Yes. Only it didn’t make sense. They weren’t missing, they were destroyed. And no one knows what caused it. I saw some of the places where the herds were killed. They had been wiped out: nothing taken, antlers and flesh left to rot on the snow. I’ve never seen anything like it.” Suddenly Swift looked older, and his usually strong features looked sharp and worn in the morning light.

  “Our world is perilous, but suddenly it seems on a knife edge. We’re used to danger coming from the White, but now it is coming from within, from the clans themselves.”

  He paused, then shook his head and continued. “We’ve always chosen to be isolated, Kyrk, but it may be now that that choice is coming back to haunt us. We are far enough away from the city that it is easy to cut us off.”

  I was staggered by Swift’s words. Could he be exaggerating? He didn’t seem the type. I couldn’t help wondering what the Hunters thought about all this.

  Swift smiled grimly, as if reading my thoughts. “I’m afraid the Hunters were one of the first to cut us out. Your parents’ deaths didn’t help matters - your clan blamed us.”

  “Were they right to?” The question slipped out before I could stop it and I saw Swift flinch.

  “Perhaps,” he said softly. “Let’s take a walk.”

  As I stumbled out onto the snow I felt the fresh air hit me like a hard slap to the jaw. Swift walked slowly, conserving his energy in the way that Hunters did on a long trek. He was a strange man, more like my father than I had first realised, and not as alien as most of the other Seekers. I wanted to find out more about him, about his history with the Chief, and what was happening within the clan, but there was something that I needed to know first.

  “I’ve done everything you asked.” My head felt fuzzy from the after effects of the moonshine, but I couldn’t wait another second. “Now tell me about my parents.”

  “I still cannot tell you.”

  Swift held up his hand as I opened my mouth to object.

  “But I can show you.”

  It didn’t take us long to climb to the top of the Peak. The road wound around the hill and looped back on itself around the weird and wonderful buildings that housed the Seekers.

  Hunters’ homes are small and functional. They – we, I reminded myself – mainly live in caves, which are easy to keep warm and can be defended by only one or two people. Hunters are nomads, so each cave is used then emptied as we go.

  Although the Seekers ranged further than any other clan, from the look of their city they clearly also valued a home to return to. Their homes were built onto the rock, tents strapped on with ropes and stilts that had been pierced into the black stone. Many had sides made of toughened skins like Swift’s, but some even had wooden walls, which must have cost them a fortune in trade. Then there were ighuses, scattered in between the more permanent dwellings and used for storage, I guessed. Again, I re-evaluated this strange clan that I had been adopted into. They must have money, perhaps as much as the Diggers, and that gave them power.

  There was an artistry here that I hadn’t seen before. I passed a group of tents painted with a swirling design in charcoal. It took me a few moments to realise why the picture was familiar. They were constellations, stars copied from the sky. Hunters used the stars to navigate at night, and I guessed that Seekers must do the same. Were they merely decorations on the walls? Swift was too far ahead for me to ask.

  As I lengthened my stride to catch up with him I felt as though a weight was lifting from my chest. I felt better than I had in days. Now I was finally going to get some answers.

  When I finally caught up to him the Seeker had reached a tall thin building that clutched the highest point of the peak. It looked much older than the other buildings around it, and I was amazed to see that it was made entirely of petrified wood.

  “This must have cost you a fortune in trade.” I said as Swift showed me through a small door and up a spiral staircase cut into the stone.

  Swift frowned. “The Diggers were more generous then.” I let my hand rub along the wood as we climbed, enjoying the warm, soft feel of the ancient material. After only a few stairs we reached a small round room that had one side open to the White. I saw there were large wooden shutters that could be pulled across to enclose the room from the storms, but today they were left open and the dazzling sunlight stung my tired eyes.

  “I came up here when I heard your parents had died, but I couldn’t see anything. I sat for hours, just looking at the stars. But of course, there were no answers there.”

  Swift walked towards to a strange machine that took up the far wall of the room. It was made with a shining fire coloured metal. I had never seen anything like it in my life. All the machines I had seen were basic, made in the workshops in the City from the rough ore made by the Diggers. Something like this must have been incredibly expensive to make. Or incredibly old.

  Swift nodded when he saw my expression. “It’s a relic of the time before the White. We could never make anything like it now. Even I don’t know how it works, and I know more about it than nearly anyone on the Peak.”

  “It’s called a telescope. It’s like a tunnel that lets you see things many miles away. We use it to plot the movements of the stars, and to watch the weather patterns.”

  “What have the stars and the weather to do with my parents’ deaths?” I was feeling frustrated again. Why was nothing ever simple with Swift?

  “Because for the last few months the telescope has not been pointed at the stars. It has been watching the White. And now you must see why.”

  Swift gestured to the round
glass window at the base of the telescope. I nervously followed his directions and put my eye to the glass.

  “Where is this pointed?” I said as I tried to get my eye used to the strange sensation of looking into the clear ice.

  “Towards the edge of the ice lake.” Of course, where else would the Seekers need a machine like this to see but the place where none of us could go. The edge of the White, the ice lake where the freeze smothered every living thing.

  “Look closer,” Swift urged, and I tried again. At first I had no idea what I was looking at. It was white of course, but if I strained my eyes a little I could see something else.

  There was a light. It was orange or red, hard to tell. But it was flashing in a regular rhythm, like a heartbeat. And that meant that it was a signal. A signal in the far White, where it had no business to be.

  I stared at the tiny pulse of light. Strange how something so small could hold so many possibilities.

  “What is it?” I asked Swift without taking my eye from the lens.

  “It can only be a signal. Something is alive out there and I want to find out what.” I tried to take in his words, but it didn’t seem possible. How could anyone be alive so close to the edge of the White? I had never met anyone who had been that far out, let alone stayed long enough to set up some kind of signal.

  “Could it be another Seeker?”

  “No. We have a strict record of where each Seeker is roaming at all times. Without it there would be many lives lost.”

  “Someone from one of the other clans then?”

  “You don’t understand. The only way to get to that position would be to pass the Peak, and no one gets past the Peak without being seen. No, this signal came from someone who travelled from the other side, from the South.” He paused to let his words sink in. There were no clans to the South, nothing other than empty ice.

  Memories danced around the edge of my mind. Sometimes, at Meets when moonshine had been taken and it was getting late, people told stories of the South. Maybe a Seeker who was unusually talkative or a Hunter who had walked further than most would say a few words, then everyone would pitch in.