Snowcastles & Icetowers

by Duncan McGeary

  Moments later, the vision was changed back to what the others saw. The Wyrr stared out of deep set and feverish black eyes, his pale brow beaded with sweat and grime, his tattered garments hanging loosely and obscenely from his limbs. Greylock could hear the nervous questions of his men at his back.

  But finally the pleading became so strong that Greylock took pity on the Wyrr. He promised something that he had never intended to promise, and did not know if he could fulfill.

  “I can do nothing for you now,” he said helplessly. “I do not know how to free you. But I promise that I will return with the answer. The next time you see me, the next time I come down from Godshome, I will be your Deliverer in truth.”

  This seemed to satisfy the apparition. The proud face smiled gratefully; the dirty face pathetically. The Wyrrs will wait a while longer, he seemed to say. They had waited many centuries for the Deliverer. A few days, or weeks, or even months were a small matter if it was what the Deliverer required.

  The Wyrr turned to go, and vanished as though he had never been anything but an illusion. But Greylock knew from the stunned expressions in his men’s faces that the visitation had been real. They stared at him curiously, and from their frightened banter, he knew that his men were now convinced that demons existed. He could not blame them. Though human, the Wyrrs looked extraordinarily like the images of demons that the Gatekeepers drew to frighten children.

  They continued on to Far Valley, nervously expecting another visit by the disturbing inhabitants of the Twilight Dells. But they were not approached again.

  Chapter Six

  The army neared Far Valley with a relaxed vigilance. The Tyrant knew that they were safe from attack. The Wyrrs were pitifully weak in the daylight hours, it was in the dark of the night that they were at their strongest. And there was no sign of the men of Bordertown.

  The road, with the earth of its construction piled loosely on both sides, had turned into a muddy river. Apparently, Greylock thought, the road builders had neglected to create drainage canals for the runoffs of the spring floods. It was appropriate that the rains should wash away the last traces of the alliance between the two lands.

  The farmlands surrounding Bordertown were unfurrowed and overgrown with weeds, in contrast to the lush but carefully tended farmlands he had observed on his first trip to the Underworld. The Tyrant knew when he saw this that they would encounter no serious resistance.

  The fertile and abundant land, so different from the Twilight Dells, was obviously in chaos, its people in danger of starvation. Greylock stepped gratefully onto the muddy fields, feeling the taint of the Dells on his boots ground away by the clean earth of Far Valley.

  Bordertown itself appeared deserted. The thatch houses, which were placed randomly in a field of cropped grass, showed no plumes of smoke from their hearths, and the well-worn paths were uncharacteristically choked by encroaching weeds.

  As they marched down the one wide road at the center of the town, no one stepped forward to bar their way, or to welcome them. The road led to a gabled building that had once been the Lord High Mayor’s Palace and was now the town hall. Greylock saw that the huge seal of glyden was once again over the entrance to the building. It hung crookedly, as if knocked askance by its owner’s hasty departure.

  Greylock no longer had any hope of finding his quarry within the town. While still mired in the mud of the Twilight Dells, they had seen the form of a black crow circling high above them, out of reach of their weapons. For a few seconds, Greylock had questioned whether the crow was the familiar of Carrell Redfrock, but when it had cawed at them with an unnatural, mocking cry, all doubt had disappeared. As the black bird had flown scornfully to the east, Greylock knew that the chance of surprise had been lost.

  His men were uneasy at the silence, even at the swiftness of their conquering advance. They had expected at least a token of resistance, and this abandonment was disconcerting. They fell silent in turn, and nervously compared the pitiful abodes to their own magnificent snowcastles, the tangled greenery with the efficient gardens of their icemelts. Greylock knew without asking that they were offended by the lack of walls, the wasteful use of fertile earth.

  They stood uneasily in the town square, and at last Greylock caught a glimpse of faces peering from behind closed curtains. They were gaunt faces, defeated, not the plump satisfied faces Greylock remembered.

  He ascended the steps of the town hall and motioned for his men to search the building. A few moments later two of his men dragged Mayor Tarelton from his once luxurious and gilded palace.

  The Tyrant found that his anger had left him, now that he was actually facing his prey. The mayor looked pitifully lean, his red hair was straggled and clotted as if the tall man had been tearing at it in frustration. The once brilliant emerald hue of his frock was almost obscured by the oil and grime of imprisonment.

  “We found him locked in his room,” one of the soldiers announced.

  Greylock smiled at the mayor in pity. “So Redfrock has abandoned you to answer for his deeds again, Tarelton?” he said. “When will you learn what kind of person you are allied with?”

  “I have no choice who I serve,” Tarelton answered in a low voice. He stared at the ground, glancing up to glare at Greylock every few seconds.

  “Then you admit that you serve Carrell Redfrock? That you have been in league with him from the start?”

  “We both serve the same master,” the mayor repeated dully. “I have no choice.”

  “You had a choice once, Tarelton,” Greylock said without sympathy. “Perhaps you still have.” He suddenly noticed that something was missing.

  “Where is your rat, Tarelton? Has it abandoned you as well?”

  A crafty look briefly crossed the mayor’s smudged face, but he did not answer the Tyrant’s question. Instead, his high voice cried out across the square, and Greylock realized that it was the people in the houses he wanted to hear him.

  “Why have you come, Tyrant Greylock? Have you not killed enough of our people? Have you come to take our food as well?”

  “It is for you, Mayor Tarelton, and those you serve, that I have come,” Greylock answered, also raising his voice. “You have held glyden to be more important than the welfare of your people. They have suffered enough. I have come for neither glyden or revenge.”

  “Am I not innocent for following the wishes of my master?” Tarelton said quietly, not bothering to hide the bitter guile in his voice.

  “Once you made your choice, Tarelton, your destiny was your own,” Greylock snapped. He raised his voice to the surrounding houses.

  “Come out, people of Bordertown!” he cried. “We will not harm you! You are not to blame for the treachery of your mayor!”

  Greylock had thought that there would be many in Bordertown who would welcome him. The yeoman Harrkor and his farmer brethren would know him to be no worse a ruler than their mayor. It was for them that he had wanted to make this journey, as much as for his own people. He suspected that most of his old friends in Bordertown, those who had helped him fight for the throne, would be imprisoned, perhaps dead.

  At first there was no response to his call. Then one of the doors opened, and a young man stepped out. One by one the other houses emptied, and the people silently surrounded the steps of the town hall and filled the square.

  Most of the surviving residents of Bordertown were either too young or too old to fight, Greylock noticed. The men of the town must have been conscripted into the army of Trold, he thought, to be used as shock troops.

  The friendly, staunch face of Harrkor was missing, as he had feared. The broad-shouldered, heavy-set farmers of the outlying areas of Far Valley were nowhere to be seen. From the look of the untended fields, abandoned long before the battle of the High Plateau, the farmers had been absent from tilling for much longer than two weeks. There was a look of incipient famine in the town.

  Apparently, the mayor had slipped away from their control long ago. Greylock berated
himself for not noticing that the guards surrounding Tarelton on his last visit had been a sham.

  It was like Tarelton in his avarice, to sacrifice the men who cultivated the town’s food. Only now was the mayor discovering what Greylock had known from his first survey, that Harrkor and his like were the true strength and power of Far Valley.

  “Where is Harrkor?” he demanded. “Where are your farmers?”

  Tarelton paled and seemed in fear of his life for the first time.

  “.They are alive,” he said hastily. “They are well—”

  “Are they imprisoned?” Greylock asked in relief. “Give me the keys to their prison!”

  “They are not here,” the mayor said reluctantly. “They have been taken to the fiefdoms of Trold to be, ah, servants of King Kasid. It was the price of his aid to Redfrock.”

  Greylock drew Thunderer and took a step toward the taller man with his sword raised. It flashed in the sunlight as if it knew that it was at last to be used for the purpose it had been forged.

  “It was not my idea, Greylock!” the mayor screamed, as the blade stopped only inches from the matt of red hair. “I protested. After all, they are my people too! It was the silver lady who thought of it. I swear!”

  “I don’t believe you, Tarelton. Harrkor would never become the slave of another. He would die first!”

  “It is true, Tyrant,” he heard an unfamiliar voice from behind him.

  He turned to see the tall youth who had emerged first from the dwellings. The young man continued to speak, as if embarrassed before such a crowd, in front of such important personages. But there was no fear in his voice, and there was no doubting the truth of his statement.

  “Harrkor himself told the others to submit. We were ready to fight, but he forbade us. Only I was allowed to escape in the confusion. I was to tell you this.”

  “But how did he know I would come?” Greylock asked, dismayed. “How can I free him?” On closer examination, the youth obviously came from the farms. His blond hair was bleached by the sun, his face reddened.

  “He told me you would come,” the youth shrugged. “He said that you would free him and the others.”

  Greylock’s relief that Harrkor and the farmers of Far Valley were alive was dampened by the thought of yet another burden laid on his shoulders.

  “What shall I do with you, Tarelton?” he asked, a little surprised at his own question. It had been his intention all along, though he had never voiced it, to put a swift end to the life of the treacherous mayor. But now he found that he did not have the stomach to kill the man. It would have been a mercy, perhaps, but Greylock realized that this pitiful man was the least of his enemies, a servant of others more evil and powerful. His death would serve no purpose.

  “What shall I do with you?” he repeated in a louder voice, so that all could hear. The mayor looked forlorn without his familiar, he thought. It was the first time he had ever seen Tarelton without the rat on his shoulders, and he wondered again where it had gone.

  “Shall I ask your people, Tarelton?” he said. “Shall we leave it up to them? The first time you betrayed them, they asked that you simply serve them.”

  A look of terror filled the mayor’s face and he said, faintly, “Why do you taunt me? Kill me now, for I do not wish to be a slave to them again.”

  Greylock realized that he had indeed been taunting the mayor, and he suddenly realized what his judgment must be.

  “I will not kill you, Tarelton,” he said solemnly. “Though you may deserve death. You are henceforth banished from Far Valley, and all lands west of its borders. If you should return from your exile, your death will be permitted, nay, desired.”

  If he had hoped that in this dismissal the mayor would leave his sight and thoughts forever, he was very wrong. Tarelton had one last trick to play, one last desperate attempt to recover all he had lost.

  Tarelton’s own eagerness betrayed him, and the anxiety that the Tyrant would escape the trap by moving. His blue eyes darted upward, and Greylock instinctively followed his look even as he was in the act of turning away.

  The glyden seal of the Lord High Mayor swung once before it toppled over, giving Greylock the time to dive free of its fall. He heard it land solidly behind him, and the ground shook with the impact of the heavy metal. He rolled to his feet, and saw that the seal landed where he had been standing only moments before. The yellow metal had shattered the steps, and had bent into a shapeless, battered lump.

  Greylock looked up to the roof where the enormous shield had been hanging by thick ropes. The cords hung dangling, gnawed through neatly. The shape of the assassin was outlined briefly against the window, then vanished, but not before Greylock had caught a glimpse of a thin, filthy rat.

  Several soldiers rushed the mayor with an angry shout and pinioned him against the doors of the town hall.

  “Shall we kill him?” one of them demanded.

  “No.” Greylock’s voice quavered slightly and he realized that he was more shaken by the near miss than he had thought. “It does not change anything. Get him out of my sight. But if you see his familiar, I want it killed!”

  Greylock knew that he was being a fool to let the mayor go, but he could not bring himself to condone a coldblooded execution. As Tyrant of the High Plateau he understood the grasp for power. In his land, if one could survive an attempt to overthrow the Tryant, there was a good chance that one might live; for whoever attempted but failed to assassinate the Tyrant was prohibited by tradition from trying again. In fact, Greylock had been considering appointing the young man who had tried to kill him—Kalwyn—as steward. Executions, the Tyrants had found, were a waste of good, ambitious men.

  But Greylock knew this was different. Mayor Tarelton was not likely to play by the same rules.

  His fears seemed justified by the last words of Tarelton, as he was dragged away.

  “Redfrock will return, Greylock!” Tarelton shrieked. “He is already on his way to the fiefdoms of Trold. The King is a proud man. When he learns that you have destroyed his army, you are doomed!”

  Chapter Seven

  The wizard Moag met the returning army where Castle Guardian spanned the Gateway’s entrance into the High Plateau. Though Greylock was exhausted by the campaign, the old wizard insisted on immediately showing off the latest of the rebuilt snowcastles. He was excited by the changes he had wrought in the construction of snowcastles, changes he said would make the structures stronger and safer.

  Greylock smiled at the sight of the old man once more active and happy, now that his freedom had at last been granted. He knew then that he had done the right thing in letting the old man go.

  “I am almost tempted to stay,” Moag said smiling, “now that I am no longer forced to stay. These marvelous structures you call snowcastles, I wish I knew who first thought of them. The basic designs have not changed; I am certain, for many centuries. They are ingenious structures, really, to allow an entire people to survive the freezing cold of the mountain, to use the very material that threatens you to protect you instead. I am probably the first to make innovations in many years, though not many changes are needed.”

  “The gods themselves gave us the design for our snowcastles and icetowers,” Greylock said, only half in jest.

  “Of course, of course,” the wizard agreed, obviously not believing him. “But I would like to know who built the first one.”

  Greylock sighed in exasperation, and followed the wizard.

  When he saw what Moag had accomplished, he marveled at the beauty and strength that had been created out of the ice. The wizard had evidently succeeded in strengthening the structures by using a purer, heavier ice.

  “It took many days of experimenting with my fire to find the right kind of ice,” Moag explained. “Your people have never had access to such heat before, but I have taught them new methods of lighting fires.”

  This harder ice, he continued, melted and frozen again and again, gave the snowcastles new dimensions. The
icetowers could be higher and narrower, and the snowcastles possessed a fragile grace the old walls had not.

  Moag directed a final block of ice as it was lowered onto the topmost level of the icetower. When it was finally set into place, he stepped back to survey his handiwork. Greylock waited respectfully for the inspection to be completed.

  “Will they hold in a storm, Moag?” Greylock finally said, doubtfully. “It would be a shame if these graceful towers should come tumbling down in the first quake or gust of wind.”

  “They have been tested by the full force of Mara’s wind-witchery, which is more powerful than even 1 ever believed.”

  “Mara’s magic!”

  The wizard smiled at Greylock’s surprise. “Yes, she is using her magic now. I believe she may have even forgiven you, now that you have freed me. But then, she was always yours if you’d only had sense enough to see.”

  “You have done wonders, Moag,” Greylock said, wishing that he dared slap the old wizard on his hunched back. His tiredness had completely left him. Mara’s quarters could be reached by dark, he thought, if the old wizard would only let him go. “I want you to have this snowcastle as your own. We will call it Castle Wizard.”

  Moag suddenly scowled, as if he thought the enthusiasm he had shown earlier unseemly.

  “Mara may have forgiven you,” he growled. “But I can never trust you again. I will be leaving soon, and I hope that Mara will go with me.”

  “But where will you go?”

  “There are many lands I have not seen. I think perhaps I will see if I can find a pass through these mountains. Even your people do not seem to know what lies on the other side of Godshome.”

  Greylock shuddered, and quickly reminded himself that it was he who had always professed not to believe in the frightening legends. He had proven that there were no demons in the Underworld. Why should he be frightened of the unknown? Still, he had often wondered why his people could give no account of the lands beyond Godshome, and had never endeavored to reach them.