Icefalcons Quest

by Barbara Hambly

Fickle, wretched, cowardly whiners ... The resentment was a stench imbued deep within the stone.

  Ingrates. Cowards and ingrates.

  From the corridor came, with the cold, a thread of whistling, a half-identifiable tune.

  He'd heard that tune. He knew it.

  Was it a tune? Sometimes it sounded like an old man's voice, whispering in the nightmare blackness.

  Names, Tir thought. Sometimes, in those bad places that he hurried Hethya through, he could hear that hoarse, muttering voice telling over names in the dark.

  He didn't think Hethya could hear. It terrified him because he knew those names. He could see their faces in his mind and knew what had happened to them. Could see the things they wore-a child's black shoes sewn with green gems, a woman's fan, things they'd left behind.

  And above everything else, the anger that soaked every stone, every wisp of lichen, every vine and mushroom as poison soaks a sponge, imbuing its every fragment. Anger and resentment and hate. And magic that lived on.

  Chapter 17

  Wait. They will open the Doors again. They have to.

  She was out there somewhere. She could restore him. Couldn't she?

  The Icefalcon waited. Aching with the demon wounds and cold to the core of his heart, he trod the spatchcock light and shadow of the haunted Aisle and listened to the men searching the Keep's darkness around him.

  Now and then lights flickered in the skull-eye windows, high up on the Aisle walls, or in the doorways that weren't blocked thick with vines. Sometimes a man would emerge from one and cross the lumpy, tangled mess of the floor, holding aloft a torch or a lamp.

  And may our Ancestors help us all if some fool of a clone drops a brand into this dry bramble!

  Water dripped and trickled down the wall below the water clock, and occasionally the great flat leaden chime would speak, marking time as it had marked it, meaninglessly, for years beyond years.

  Night lay thick in the corners, more dense than any darkness outside. Sometimes demon-lights drifted into sight or slipped like glowing insects among the colorless monstrosity of growths that choked the eastern end of the vast space. Sometimes the Icefalcon heard what he thought was a tune whistled, or a voice whispering, far off or just behind his shoulder.

  He would not, he thought, like to be searching alone in those empty, icy halls.

  White light flared in a window on the second level, a brief burst that died away, then a moment later revived. Magelight?

  After a moment's hesitation-he found himself fearing to leave the Doors, like a haunt trapped eternally in one corner of one room, the Icefalcon left his post and mounted a winding staircase hung with brittle lianas, counting doors along the corridor at the top until he found the place.

  Bektis stood alone in the empty chamber, summoning light. Or trying to summon light.

  The old man had suspended a curtain before the door of the cell, not thinking, apparently, of who could see through the window of the Aisle. He had taken off the Hand of Harilomne, and the Icefalcon saw how horribly the flesh underneath it had blistered from chilblain and the constant rubbing and tearing of the gold mesh straps, the heavy jewels.

  The Hand, and the Collar that went with it, lay in the corner of the room farthest from the door, resting on an ermine muff. Every few seconds the Court Mage's eyes would stray in that direction as if, contrary to the evidence of his own senses, he needed continuous reassurance that they were there.

  At the moment the Icefalcon entered the room, Bektis was performing the motion-without his usual theatrical flourishes-associated with the summoning of light. It was a gesture that Ingold Inglorion had reduced to a small opening of the fingers.

  A sort of sickly blue twilight flickered in the room, spotted here and there with hazy zones of brightness that ranged in size from that of a man's palm to only a few hanging sparks. They faded almost at once. The floor was written over with the chalked Circles of Power, rubbed out and scrawled again, earth and silver and blood.

  Bektis repeated the gesture, not flourishing but large-a beginner's gesture, the Icefalcon guessed, like a child imitating his elder's spear-cast before his muscles are trained. A little marshfire dribbled down the walls.

  Bektis pressed his hand to his mouth, and his whole body shivered, like a tapestry shaken by wind.

  His gaze went back to the Hand and the Collar, and in his eyes the Icefalcon saw the sick expression of a drunkard who has been vomiting for days offered a brimming cup of raw gin. And he understood.

  And like the drunkard, Bektis walked over to the alien jewels, lifted the Collar, and put it around his neck again. When he raised his beard out of the way, the Icefalcon saw where the metal and gems had chafed the crepey wattles of that pallid throat; his mouth flinched and tightened with agony as he buckled the straps of golden mesh around his fingers and wrist.

  His whole body trembling with defeat, Bektis made the summoning gesture again, and magelight filled the room, refulgent, warm, more gorgeous than the sun.

  Bektis pressed his hand to his eyes, then to his mouth again, trembling so hard the Icefalcon thought that he would fall and breathing in single, desperate gulps.

  Steps sounded in the corridor-Vair's, the Icefalcon thought. Bektis didn't hear until they had nearly reached the curtained door, then he spun, his face resuming its usual hauteur as the blanket slashed aside and the generalissimo stood framed against the pitchy gloom beyond.

  "Where have you been?"

  "The clamor of the men in the Aisle disturbed my concentration, illustrious Lord." Bektis stroked his beard and looked as if he had not, moments ago, been on the verge of weeping with despair. "I thought that might have been a reason that I was unable to locate the boy."

  "You should have spoken to Prinyippos about it," said Vair. "He'd have silenced them." He nodded back to the hall behind him, and the scout Crested Egret stepped out of the shadows and into the glow of the cell. "And have you had better results here?"

  "Not yet, Lord. All the Keeps were wrought with chambers of Silence, chambers where Runes were laid to prevent wizards from..."

  "Don't tell me how the Keeps were made, you old dribbler. Ezrikos' palace in Khirsrit is built on the crypts of a vanished Keep. I've been through them a hundred times. They have to come out for water sometime."

  "And when they do, I will find them, Lord. But there's a magic in this Keep, a power beyond my experience..."

  "I'm beginning to think common demon-scares are beyond your experience. This band of Raiders that's coming up from the south..." He laid a hand on Crested Egret's shoulder, and the slender young man almost preened himself at the attention from his lord.

  "You say the White Raiders have magics of their own. How can you be sure that when you lay the illusions on Prinyippos here to lead them into the trap, the member of the band whose form he's taken won't be there to give him the lie? That would make mice-feet of the business when I can least afford to lose that much flesh."

  "Do not trouble yourself, Lord." Bektis raised a soothing hand. "The illusion with which I shall cloak Prinyippos is a strong and singular one, not a battle illusion. Battle illusions are by nature more diffuse. This new-arriving band shall be met by Prinyippos before they have time to join with their kindred..."

  The Empty Lakes People are not our kindred! the Icefalcon wanted to shout at him.

  "And Prinyippos shall wear the form of one of those I killed when they attacked me on the knoll where I camped, west of the mountains. If he will but stay for a few moments, I'll demonstrate. The chasm into which he shall lead them is close enough to the Keep to lend verisimilitude to his story of its being a secondary entrance, and it will require no great exertion, either on my part or that of your men, to collapse the ice above them and bury them."

  "And you can dispose of the ice afterward?" Vair stroked the ends of his graying mustache; he had shaved again and dressed his hair, but still looked somewhat worse for the journey. "It will do me little good to slaughter two hundred men
if I cannot have their flesh for the dethken iares afterward."

  Bektis straightened his shoulders indignantly. "My Lord, even without the weaponry of the ancient ones, I am not without resources. My power is more than sufficient to clear the ice from the chasm after it has done its job."

  "That," said Vair softly, "is well, sorcerer. Because I need flesh to multiply my men into an army capable of conquering Dare's Keep. And every delay increases the chances of something going awry, of that coward Gargonal abandoning his part outside the walls of the Keep or of those bitches in the South, Empress and Bishop, getting wind of my plans. The last thing they want me to have is a fortress that cannot be breached and a steady supply of food. I need not explain to you, I think, what will happen to you if they overcome us?"

  The Court Mage looked away and cradled the bloodied crystals of the Hand to his breast. "No, my Lord."

  "Then find the boy and find him soon. The spells you spoke of will break the information out of him quickly enough."

  "Yes, my Lord."

  "How soon until these new Raiders come close enough that Prinyippos can reach them?"

  "From observing them in my scrying glass, my Lord, I should say that the chimes here will sound five times. On the fifth chiming, we should send out Prinyippos. It will be about the ninth hour of the day then and thus close to twilight when he leads them into the ice chasm."

  "Good. Prinyippos, have a company ready to go out at that time." At least that was what the Icefalcon thought Vair said-he understood the words for company and go out and did not hear any numbers in the locative of time.

  He didn't need to know that Prinyippos' words were "Yes, Lord:" The young scout all but rubbed Vair's legs and purred.

  Flesh to make more warriors. Warriors to invade the Keep.

  But he had the apparatus of the vat-the dethken iares-by the time he conquered Prandhays Keep. For what reason had he come north to this place? And even with hundreds of extra men, he must know the Keep's walls were impenetrable?

  Tir knew something. Something that would enable Vair to break the Keep.

  Bektis would find the boy, that he did not doubt. Whatever the Hand of Harilomne was doing to Bektis' powers, when he wore the thing it multiplied his own abilities a dozenfold, at least in certain situations.

  Neither Hethya nor Loses His Way would be able to protect the child, and the Icefalcon had begun to understand that without the ability to return to his own body, his hours were numbered and leaking away fast.

  Vair was going to trap and kill the Empty Lakes People.

  Ironic, thought the Icefalcon, treading the stone corridors of the Keep of Night-easier to follow than those of Dare's Keep, at least in his bodiless form. The only reason the trap would work was because the warrior whose face Bektis knew and was at this moment reproducing for Vair's edification was, by chance, a member of that same people. The Talking Stars People or the Earthsnake People would kill the imitation warrior out of hand.

  He passed through curtains of hissing, colorless squash tendril, traversed fused clumps of creeper and rock-tripe, cells packed thick with toadstools or white plate-fungus, as if in a dream, knowing no human body could go that way.

  It worried him that this was growing easier, as if the bonds to his own flesh were dissolving. Demons crept through the moss like ants and tormented him with their bites and their poisons; it was harder and harder to tell himself that the pain was illusory.

  He could end the pain. Sometimes he thought about it so desperately that all that kept him from dissolving was the knowledge that if he did so here in the darkness, he might not even be united with the warmth of the sun.

  Only the chill of the ice-ridden night beneath the glaciers, forever. The pain was real.

  Dove in the Sun stepped forth from the wall, the Dove with her chest opened and organs glistening through the smashed ribs, the Dove with blood on the wild roses twined in her sun-bright hair. "Why didn't you come back for me, o my kinsman? Why didn't you even look?"

  That pain was real, too. It was hard to force himself to remember that he didn't have to stop and explain to her. As a child of the Talking Stars, she would have known, lying alone on the ledge beneath her dying horse, that her wounds were hopeless. He passed her by, and her voice followed him down the corridor.

  "Why didn't you even come to hold my hand as I died?" He had no reply to that.

  Then he came to a shattered black hell of frost curtains, hanging spears of ice lengthened to bars across corridors and throughout cells, hollow columns of water frozen harder than iron.

  Words whispered there.

  And an old man waited among cold-killed vines the thickness of a horse's neck, among translucent sheets of dribbled ice and obscene dead mushrooms.

  An old man with his tattooed hands folded, as if sourceless light fell on them and left the rest of him lapped in darkness. The Icefalcon could see with the eyes of a ghost, and those eyes were blinded to the old man's face.

  For some reason he knew he was ruinously old, white hair grown out shabbily around the base of the skull to a spiderweb cloak over the bent shoulders. Nails uncut for years beyond speaking twisted back on themselves, vile as the curves of the perished vines.

  His teeth were not human teeth. His eyes no longer human eyes. "You came back." The voice was the glowing slime that drips from rotted meat. "You came back after all."

  The Icefalcon felt the hair lift on his scalp. "I have never been in this place before, old man." Everything in him, ghost though that everything was, screamed at him: Flee. Flee. Get out of here at once.

  "And they didn't tell you of me?" When the old man moved, his robes made a noise like thin paper, eroded by eons of time.

  "They told me nothing, old man. Forgive me if I speak disrespect."

  "Forgive you?" The old man put his head to one side, and there was something horribly wrong about the glisten of the unseen eyeball. "Forgive? I was told ... I was told my name would be remembered. That I would be thanked. That I would be thanked forever."

  He moved toward the Icefalcon, extending one thin arm, the crooked nails bobbing and trembling like twigs.

  "I was not thanked," he whispered. "And she never came, though the way was open. The way was always open. She never came, and they all departed, all left me, after what I had done for them. And now . . ." He smiled. "Now that you're all back, I'm going to make sure that no one ever leaves again."

  He giggled, reaching out, and into the Icefalcon's mind flashed the image of himself, his phantom consciousness, being absorbed into these black walls. Not to die, but to remain, forever, listening to the old man telling over names to himself in the frozen darkness.

  Logic dictated immediate and precipitate flight, and the Icefalcon fled. Behind him he could hear the old man creaking with shrill laughter. "You think you can escape?" Glancing over his shoulder he saw the fragile form lift like a blown sheet, whirl through the air toward him, white hair swirling, skeletal arms outstretched. "You think you can escape me?"

  They blew through corridors blocked with foul vegetation, past fountains knotted with ice. In one huge cell that was little more than a seething hairball of lichen and vine, three clones were struggling, fighting their way inward, not outward, at the whispered lurings of demons.

  The men were weeping with fright and pain, trying to escape the leathery tendrils around them. The old man turned aside at the sight of them, laughing when the demons tried to flee.

  "Not so fast, my little tender ones." He fell on them like a fast moving hawk. The demons tried to slip through the walls, and the black stone refused to let them pass.

  The last the Icefalcon saw of the old man, he was holding the littlest of the demons between his two hands, eating its head while the clones wept and groaned among the bonds that clinched tighter and ever tighter around them, strangling out their lives.

  In the hidden chamber on the second level, the Icefalcon's body lay wrapped in spare coats and clothing, his weapons in a pile
at his side. At least they had that much sense, thought the Icefalcon, trembling with cold and exhaustion. The sight of a Wathe-forged sword, its hilt stamped with the emblems of the Guards of Gae, would have given Vair more information than he should have.

  Tir sat still, racked with a slight, constant shiver. Hethya was arguing with Loses His Way. "And I suppose all those double and triple and umpty-upple warriors of Vair's are just going to turn their wee faces to the wall and fall asleep?"

  "Pah! Insects. The boy must be fed. Us, too. Else we will be unable to flee, unable to help ourselves or anyone else."

  Loses His Way's face was frightful, a swollen mass of purpling flesh that gaped in six or eight places where the whip had opened the skin. Blood caked his beard and his braids, and the few teeth he had left in his mouth were ragged chips.

  "Should we leave this room we'll be walking into places where Bektis can see us, does he care to look into that crystal of his. That he's been busy about this and that is all that's saved us, but every time's another risk."

  "So ask this Ancestor that dwells in your head, this Ancestor that guided you into alliance with the Father of All Traitors, to tell you where safe places can be found! She knew this place."

  Hethya straightened her back, her face altering to the cold, haughty countenance of Oale Niu, and she opened her mouth to reply.

  Then she thought again, and her shoulders slumped; her red lips closed. "Would I could," she said softly. "There is no Ancestor. Your lanky pal figured it. He'll tell you the whole of it when he finally comes back, if he comes back."

  She sighed, all fight gone, and turned her face. She still wore the clone's overcoat and wrappings and would easily have passed for one of Vair's warriors in the dark. Her mouth tightened hard, not to give anything of herself away, but Loses His Way saw, and the anger went out of his face.

  "There," he said gently, and stepped to her, putting a comforting arm like a bear's great forepaw around her shoulders. "There, Little Ancestor, there's no need to weep."

  She shook her head violently. "It's tired I am, that's all," she said, tears creeping down her cheeks.