Icefalcons Quest

by Barbara Hambly

  Loses His Way, staggering painfully to his feet, started to rush forward to Ingold's side, and the Icefalcon grabbed his arm and dragged him back, behind Bektis, toward the door. A final flare of lightning sliced down, catching Ingold full in the chest. He staggered back and seemed to fall into where the wall should have been and wasn't. Falling back into the engulfing darkness that a moment later was gone.

  Ingold was gone, too.

  Purple threads of lightning flowed around the ceiling of the chamber, down the walls, across the iron sides of the vat. Harmless, heatless, an echo of desiccated laughter.

  The Icefalcon closed his grip hard on Loses His Way's arm and fled.

  Chapter 19

  The Keep was alive.

  Blue worms of phosphor fleeted along the join of the ceiling, slipped away out of sight into the wall. Somewhere far off, knocking could be heard, tapping and pounding on the black walls in blackness; once one of the walls of the Silent cell on the second level bled a little, liquid black in the dim pulse of the little fire, but red when Hethya went and touched it and brought the smear of it back to the fire on her fingers. She said, "T'cha!" and quickly wiped it away, but not before Tir saw.

  The whole Keep was whispering. Names, Tir thought-the names of those who had departed. The names of those who had gone away. Sometimes it whistled, a sad little tune, an air Tir almost knew.

  And sometimes it was only silent, and that silence was worse than anything. One could almost see in it the lifted ironic brow, the wet silver eye beneath.

  Hethya raised her head sharply. Picking up one of the swords the men had left, she crossed to the cell's door. For a time she listened, face profiled in the ocher glow that twined her curls with brass and laid a thread of fire along the blade's edge. "Now what would they be after?"

  Far off, almost unheard and thrown from wall to wall in a distant ripple of echoes, Tir could hear the barest strain of sound: a trumpet being blown.

  "It only needed that," panted Loses His Way, "to make the hunt complete."

  The Icefalcon, concentrating on igniting the end of a stick from his firepouch without putting out the hot little banked coal, muttered, "The hunt is far from complete."

  To his huge annoyance his hands were shaking and would not stop. Even the short run through the darkness had winded him, and the presence of enemies who might appear at any moment made him edgy as a panther.

  "Myself, I would not advise you wager any substantial sum on old Ingold being dead."

  "Dead or living, he's of no use to us." Loses His Way pushed back the aureate mane of his hair, loosened from its braids during the beating and streaked with gore and filth, but still brilliant as summer light. "Can this shaman Bektis turn the very walls against us?"

  The Icefalcon shook his head. "The Hand of Harilomne-the crystals he wore that shattered-were a spell of summoning, of focus, by which he made himself stronger. Being a fool, he summoned and focused the Ancestor of Shamans, Zay, he who sacrificed himself to become the ki of this place. Now that he has brought him to life he cannot send him away."

  Lights flitted through the corridor, pale violet flames that lost themselves among the pallid spill of dead vines and mushroom forest growing from the cross corridor before them. It might only have been the quiver of the tiny flame on the end of his match, but the Icefalcon would have sworn the vines were moving.

  Loses His Way used a colloquial term, common in the Real World, which meant "stands downwind from mammoths."

  The Icefalcon looked around and knelt to hack chunks from the stringers of dried vines growing along the base of the wall. "The boy might know where that gulf of darkness would take him."

  "And what then?" demanded the chieftain. "They will be sending forth this decoy soon. Without your shaman to aid us..."

  A trumpet sounded in the Aisle. A peremptory note, the call the Icefalcon recognized from the presence of the armies of the South at the Keep of Dare seven years ago. "It is a summons."

  "That?" Loses His Way bridled. "Only fools would summon their warriors so, where anyone can hear."

  "They are fools," said the Icefalcon dismissively. "And what enemies have they that they would fear in this place?"

  The blue eyes narrowed, suddenly the eyes of a beast. "Us," he whispered. "O my enemy, they have us."

  Cautiously picking their route so as to leave no track, the Icefalcon and Loses His Way took some time to find a stair to the second level upon which they would not meet Vair's warriors, most of whom were assembled in the Aisle when the two enemies slipped into a cell that had a window.

  Extinguishing the torch and leaving only the single match burning, propped against the wall by the door, the men crept to the square outlined in dull red light and, looking down, saw the crowd gathered almost directly beneath them, where the vines had been trampled flat into a stinking mush.

  The bald pates of the clones caught a glister of the torchlight. They seemed, the icefalcon saw, to herd instinctively together, like with like, brothers seeking the comfort of their brothers without knowing why, twelve or sixteen or in one case eighteen together, staring stupidly before them.

  The Icefalcon counted the heads of the whole men, the tufts of white or black or red hair still pulled up in topknots or lying loose on their shoulders: the men who moved briskly and spoke among themselves, glancing all the while at the dark Doors, the solemn lunacy of the water clock, the vast seethe of plant life at the Aisle's end.

  Such a man was talking to Vair, his voice loud enough to carry to the unseen watchers above.

  "Demons led them," he was saying, and gestured to two clones standing nearby, staring about them foolishly. Brother-clones, the Icefalcon saw, White Alketch with their fair skin scratched and torn from vine shards and thorns.

  "It's a long way around, going in through the back because of that, my Lord." He nodded toward the hueless tangle of the jungle-though the Icefalcon didn't understand many of his words, his gestures made clear enough what he said.

  "But there are no vines around the place itself." Ha' ekkorgn-selfsame place-the Icefalcon recognized too, the word for vines.

  "It's just as my Lord Bektis described it, my Lord: four chambers leading one out of the other, with pillars of crystal flanking the arches." The gestures of his hands-one, two, three, four-made his meaning unmistakable.

  "They've found it," whispered the Icefalcon, and he felt a cold grimness settle around his heart. "The transporter Vair has been seeking. The road that leads directly from this place into the heart of the Keep."

  "How do you know?"

  The Icefalcon shook his head. Vair was speaking to Bektis now, more quietly. "How far are these barbarians from the crevasse's head?"

  "As I see them in my scrying stone, my Lord, they come on quickly." Bektis didn't look a hair the worse for his battle with Ingold: long hair combed smooth over his shoulders, beard like a curtain of snow. The Icefalcon noticed, however, that Bektis kept his right hand tucked out of sight in his ermine muff.

  "Can Prinyippos reach them from here?" Vair, too, was uneasy, watching the black Doorways, the colorless vines, like a man expecting attack. "If Inglorion knows of our presence here, whether he came through the Far-Walker or followed you over the mountains, you can believe he will relay that information to the Lady of the Keep."

  "My Lord, I tell you there is little to fear from the man now. I wounded him, unto the death, I think."

  "So you have told me." Vair's eyes returned to the wizard's, with a coldness in them the Icefalcon could sense even from his high coign. "But you told me also that you were not pursued. You told me that Inglorion himself was in Gae."

  "He was, my Lord. On that I will swear."

  "Then he came after you, Bektis, with truly enviable speed. Perhaps he was even here before us. In either case we have no time to waste."

  "As you say, my Lord." Bektis managed to make a gesture of submission without taking his hand from his muff.

  "It is best," Vair said, "that
the matter be pressed to conclusion without delay. Is Prinyippos ready?"

  Bektis smiled, a hint of smug triumph in his eyes. "I trust," he purred, "that my Lord will find my work satisfactory."

  He held out his hand, and a slim form stepped from the door of the nearest cell. That door was almost under the window where the Icefalcon and Loses His Way watched, so they didn't see the scout until he reached Bektis' side. Beside him, the Icefalcon felt rather than heard the thick hard jerk of breath.

  It was Twin Daughter.

  Twin Daughter as she had ridden to battle on Bison Hill, when all she thought, was that here was an easy raid. Twin Daughter with her three flame-bright braids wrist-thick over a coat of mammoth hide, her scarred oval face thin with hardship and brown with the sun-glare on the ice.

  The Icefalcon felt the movement of his enemy's arm against him and glanced sidelong to see Loses His Way reach inside his coat to touch the spirit-pouches that hung around his neck.

  "I thought you said this Bektis had lost the greater part of his power?"

  "He made this glamour before, to show it to Vair, wanting his praise," the Icefalcon whispered. "It did not take much to renew now, like a banked coal being breathed once again to life."

  "Not bad, my Lord, you must admit."

  Twin Daughter said something to his lord in a teasing voice, flirting with him, and Vair's dark face split with a lewd grin. The Icefalcon did not understand the idiomatic speech, but the tone was that of a woman of the streets, bantering a customer, and he felt Loses His Way shiver.

  "She looks good enough to bed," purred Vair, and put a hand on Twin Daughter's-Prinyippos'-cheek. The counterfeit woman simpered and made a play of eyelashes, and the men around them hooted and laughed. "Of course," Vair added with a grin, "she did before."

  "Hyena." The voice of Loses His Way was soft, like the first cracking of the ice underfoot, when a traveler is too far to reach shore before it gives. "Scum."

  "She is dead." The Icefalcon turned his eyes away, not wanting to see what he saw in his enemy's face. "She lies beyond his dishonor."

  "Even so," he breathed. "Even so."

  "You will go with Prinyippos," Vair continued, turning to Bektis. "At a safe distance you will follow to maintain this illusion that you keep on him. Mongret, Gom, Tuuves ..."

  There was a stirring-the first man stepped forward, but Gom and Tuuves were clones, and nearly a dozen of each tried to amble to the front. Vair seized one of each name, gestured the rest back as if they had been beggars importuning him in the street.

  "My Lord," said Bektis, "you know the strength of my illusions. The caving-in of the crevasse can be accomplished as easily from within these walls as without. May I remind my Lord that the wizard Inglorion is still somewhere here."

  "I thought you had killed him, Bektis." The gold eyes cut to him, a flint knife gashing flesh. "And yes, I know well the strength of your illusions. When the avalanche is accomplished and all the barbarians are dead, you will return and inform me. I will send you out again with the larger party to recover the bodies. I trust you will find some way to keep the barbarians engaged outside until the matter is accomplished."

  "My Lord," said Bektis stiffly, "they have not yet returned."

  "Excellent." Vair folded his arms, his hooked hand as always out of sight within the folds of his cloak.

  "I trust I have no need to remind you of the probable fate of a mage who, through spells forbidden by both other wizards and the Church, influenced not only the choice, but the date, of the succession of the Prince-Bishop of the Alketch, should that mage find himself abroad in the world without a protector?"

  Bektis' mouth tightened under the flowing beard, his dark eyes filled with loathing and fear. "You have no need to remind me, my lord. Nor do I need reminding that rightness and legality consist not in what one has done, but whether one holds a position of power."

  Vair smiled. "Good. But I shall remind you nevertheless should you show signs of absentmindedness. Be prepared to depart at the next chiming of the clock."

  The Icefalcon and Loses His Way watched while further dispositions were made, four men set to guard the great Doors while others were sent out searching again.

  The Icefalcon caught the word for what his people called innyiasope, yellow jessamine, a potent poison frequently used to deprive mages of their powers, and guessed that Ingold was their quarry. The old man had been hurt already by the pent rage and magic of the Keep of Shadow. Gil-Shalos would kill him, thought the Icefalcon, if he let Ingold come to further harm.

  Beside him, Loses His Way asked in a low voice, "How much ill can this Bektis do?"

  "Because he has not the Hand of Magic does not mean he is without power," replied the Icefalcon. "My sister tells me that there are herbs a Wise One may chew to temporarily increase power in times of need or restore it when after too great an exertion it fails, though the cost is terrible afterward."

  He watched the graceful white-haired Wise One make his way to the nearest stair. "I have known Bektis many years, and he is a man who is never without such an expedient. He may have used such to renew the illusion existing on Prinyippos the Crested Egret. In any case, men can start an avalanche in this country as easily as magic."

  The chieftain chewed on the ends of his mustache, staring out into the torchlight, which faded as men dispersed into the mazes once more.

  One of the searchers halted in crossing a toadstool-choked watercourse, reached down to lift something from the bridge-a cup, the Icefalcon saw, one of those weird apports that were, like the knocking, signs of the growing strength of the mad ki within the dark.

  At last Loses His Way sighed, his broad shoulders slumping, and he said again, "Even so. My enemy, see the boy bestowed somewhere safe and fetch Hethya to this place at the sounding of the next chime. Tell her to come armed."

  The Icefalcon raised his brows. "If you think the three of us capable of defeating four warriors with a full view of the Aisle and a wall at their backs..."

  "Just fetch her."

  There was a note in his voice that made the Icefalcon turn and a look in the chieftain's eyes-resigned, defeated, sad-that made him pause. But there was nothing he could say to his enemy-who was not his kinsman-nothing he could ask that Loses His Way would answer.

  So he only asked, "Will you need light?" and, at Loses His Way's assent, slipped into the corridor again, down two turnings to where the gray cold-dried plants lay thick and came back to kindle another torch.

  Then, slipping quietly along the endless crisscrossed junctures of the halls, detouring twice, thrice, and many times again to avoid the plants or the ice that would leave mark of his passing, he made his way to the hidden stair that led to the chamber of Silence.

  An hour, he thought, for Prinyippos to reach the Empty Lakes People. An hour or perhaps two to convince them of the truth of his assertions, to explain how he, Twin Daughter, had come to this place. The Stars alone knew how he was going to do that. Breaks Noses was a seasoned warrior and a skeptical man: the Icefalcon had fought him in a dozen minor raids and wars. He would sniff cautiously at a trap before stepping inside.

  But the shaman of the Empty Lakes People was long dead. The wolfskin leggings and tunic that Twin Daughter appeared to wear were the very garments in which she had ridden to her death: a Wise One, whatever else one might say of Bektis, was always keenly observant.

  Her hair had the same bright hue, like the grass on the southern slope of the Twisted Hills in the Moon of Farewell, and braided into it were the hand bones of a man who had long ago stolen her horses in the forty-mile dry stretch between Angry Creek and the Place Where We Catch Salmon.

  Prinyippos would come out of seracs that marked the buried mountains and speak to the Empty Lakes People with Twin Daughter's voice. Even the mother of Twin Daughter would believe.

  Perhaps especially the mother of Twin Daughter.

  The Icefalcon quickened his stride. Everywhere, now, he had the sensation of being watc
hed. Where he turned to avoid a tunnel filled for thirty feet and no farther with bars and sheets and spears of ice, he saw by his feeble matchlight that the icicles bled.

  What would Prinyippos say to them? he wondered. The Keep was buried under half a mile of ice. They had been tracking the great party of men and mules, drawn by rumors of southern weapons of tempered steel. Would he say to them, "There is a great house, a great city, of the mud-diggers, where they have these weapons under slender guard"?

  There would be no difficulty in finding a crevasse suitable for a trap. They were everywhere, waiting innocently for an unwary foot above. It did surprise him a little that Blue Child had let her warriors be drawn off by a promise of mammoth, mirages being what they were in this land. Still, he had been hungry enough to go hunting a putative lemming, from time to time.

  Two turnings to the left in pitchy gloom, the pattern of lichen and fungus familiar on the wall beside him. Frost here-turn aside. A trick of shadow concealing the doorway, then up steps, endless and spiraling, the smell of dust and death and rotting plants rising around him like the slow heat of a stove.

  Blue fox fire outlined doorways and turnings, then vanished. Nearly on top of him something screamed in the ragged voice of a puma, what felt like claws raking his face. The Icefalcon's sword was in his hand and he was cutting, a checked stroke to avoid damaging the blade on the wall...

  And of course it met nothing. There was the puma scream again, claws ripping his sleeve. He felt them catch and pull, felt the seep of hot blood underneath, but there was no cold-the sleeve hadn't been torn. If it wasn't exactly an illusion, he thought, forcing himself to walk on, it was meant for the same purpose, to get him to run and lose himself in the labyrinth. The demons, too, took strength from the magic of the Keep.

  The thing screamed in his ear for another dozen yards, then let him alone. He heard it scream again, muffled by distance and by turnings; heard a man's shriek of terror and the thunder of running feet. Fool.