by Tara Janzen
They were lost. Lost in the ice.
Mychael had Llynya pulled close under his cloak on his left side, sharing with her what warmth remained from his dragonfire. They needed to stop and rest, but he was delaying as long as possible. Sleeping in the Dangoes was at best a mixed bag of grief and dreams, dreams of death. At the worst, ’twas a deadly danger, and not only from the cold.
Fell spirits moved through the ice, shadows rippling beneath the frozen surface of the walls. In places, spidery cracks released the spirits’ breath, and the breath would twine and twist its way into vaporous bones that snagged and snared. ’Twas always Llynya the bony little fingers went for, never him. They curled ’round her ankles and tried to circle her wrists. They caressed her skin and left it pale and icy to the touch. A quick flash of dreamstone light or a slash with a blade was enough to hold them at bay, but it took diligence, and exhaustion was no friend to diligence. As a precaution, he’d taken Ara and bound the dagger to Llynya’s hand with a strip of cloth cut from his cloak. He’d taken the Dockalfar dagger for himself, having less faith in its desire to protect a Light-elf.
Their food was running low, and both their strengths. All of the deep dark did not seem as long as the trail they’d made wandering through the frozen caverns of the Dangoes.
“No more, Mychael,” she said when they came out of a tunnel into yet one more small cave. The weariness in her voice brought him to a halt. “We have to rest.”
Aye, she was right. He looked around them, checking the ice. Three other tunnels led out of the cave. He moved the dreamstone blade in a slow arc, and yellow light reflected back at him in a shape-shifting circle. The walls were clearer here than in other places they’d been, and for certes ’twould do him good just to hold her.
“We’ll make tea, and I have some murrey.” ’Twas the best offer he could make. She could sleep, if she wished, but he preferred not to slip into dreams again while still in the ice.
Yet sleep did come to him after their slim repast. With Llynya bound inside his cloak and his arms, and the smell of lavender teasing his memories, he dreamed of her and grassy meadows, of warm sunshine and the wind rustling through the trees. Then, in a dark transformation, the warmth became heat, and the sunlight became flames licking up around him. The sound of the wind in the trees became the sound of battle, the clashing of arms and the cries of men. He looked for dragons in the sky and found none, only the walls of Merioneth burning down around him.
His father, Arawn, was on the wall-walk, his face a stark mask of dread. Mychael followed his line of sight to the upper bailey, and with terrifying clarity realized ’twas no fantastical Dangoes death-dream he was seeing, but the actual fall of Carn Merioneth. A giant of a blond-haired man was butchering a path across the yard, Gwrnach, his mother’s cousin. Mychael remembered him from childhood. The stables had been set afire, and the screams of horses cut through the rising dawn. Bloody combat raged in every corner, but ’twas to the doorway of the keep that Arawn lifted his hand and commanded him to look.
Mychael tried not to, tried to pull himself back from the hot, reeking vision, knowing ’twas some horrific act of carnage awaiting him between the great oak doors of Merioneth’s hall.
But see it he would.
His father’s name rang out in a keening wail, in his mother’s voice, and Mychael’s head jerked around. A scream tore from his own throat, but too late, too late. He saw Rhiannon’s eyes in that last moment between rape and death, saw the light and the terror fade from their soft gray depths. The last of her tears streamed across her fair cheeks and ran in salty rivulets down her neck to pool in the tender hollow of her throat. Her hand lay on her breast, a feeble protection from the blade that had pierced her heart. On her middle finger was a ring engraved with symbols of the weir, and after taking her life, her murderer took her ring.
Mychael looked up to see the man’s face. Wild blue-green eyes shot through with icy flecks of white and gold stared back at him. Long blond hair whipped around the man’s contorted visage, but the features were instantly recognizable and forever fixed in Mychael’s mind. He was the destroyer’s son, Gwrnach’s spawn. He was Caradoc, the Boar of Balor.
He lunged for the man’s throat and awoke with his own battle cry echoing up and down the cave. Slabs of ice slid off the walls and crashed onto the floor, shaken from their eternal hold by the fierce agony in his voice.
A frozen rain showered down on him where he stood, covering him in white shards of ice. He looked around, blindly searching, but his hands were empty. Caradoc was gone. The dream was over.
The sprite was on her feet, turning away from him, her sword drawn against a danger that was only in his heart. When naught came out of the tunnels, she lowered her blade.
Mychael fell to his knees, fearing he was going to be sick. His mother, his beautiful mother. Her golden hair streaked with blood. Her body hewn and defiled. The pain was too much to bear. He covered his face with his hands, rocking back and forth, and raised his voice in an anguished cry. More ice crashed down from the ceiling.
Llynya looked to Mychael, her heart pounding in her chest, her breath coming short and fast. He wasn’t hurt; there was no mark of blood on him, yet death itself was in his cry. She checked the tunnels again, her sword point dragging in the ice. She’d jumped away from him when he’d let out his first bloodcurdling yell, expecting an attack. But there was naught, only Mychael, her beloved Mychael, beset by the Dangoes death-dreams.
To her left, a huge chunk of ice sloughed off the wall with a ripping roar and crashed against the wall on the right. It broke into a thousand pieces, filling up the northern tunnel with frozen rubble. Shards of the ceiling rained down all around.
Shadana! He was going to bury them with his pain.
She tried singing to him, but without him holding her, she was too cold. Her teeth chattered and she couldn’t draw enough of the freezing air into her lungs to make a clear note.
And still his cries shook the ice.
A crack split open at her feet, snaking down the length of the cavern and growing ever wider.
She leaped to his side of the crack and grabbed hold of him. “Mychael!” The floor shook beneath her, and her voice grew frantic. Gods! What had he seen? “Mychael! W-we have to leave! N-now!”
Another slab of the ceiling came crashing down, spraying them with stinging bits of ice. They were going to be trapped. The next fall of ice exploded at her feet, shattering into millions of sharp-edged crystals, and in the midst of the frozen rain, his keening cries became sobs.
She dropped to her knees beside him. “Mychael. Mychael.”
He didn’t answer her other than to draw her into his arms and hold her close. He buried his face in the crook of her neck, his hair falling in a golden skein across his shoulder.
“Mychael,” she crooned, warmed by his touch and his tears.
With every creak and groan of the walls, she expected a final fall of ice to crush them both. Still she held him, working her way deeper into his arms, taking of his warmth and giving him comfort, and letting time pass them by.
She dozed and awoke to silence, except for the sound of their breathing. The walls had stopped creaking. Piles of broken ice littered the cavern floor, and the northern tunnel was completely blocked. They’d come out of the western passageway. So the decision of which way to go had been narrowed to the south and the east.
“Mychael?” She roused him gently. They had to get out of the ice.
“Aye.” He tightened his hold on her and kissed the side of her neck, then her cheek. His arms were strong about her, his muscles flexing with iron hardness, but his voice was hoarse.
“We have to go on.”
He nodded and silently rose to his feet, helping her up and shouldering his pack. Without so much as a glance around the cave, he chose the eastern tunnel, his steps surer than they’d been in three days, as if he knew the way out.
The passageway gradually curved from east to southeast, and the ice changed. The t
unnels became wider, the ice more flowing and trickier to navigate. Above them, the ceilings were filled with long, thin needlelike icicles, each one looking sharp enough to impale a man or a Light-elf. As they passed beneath them, the icicles set up a vibration, a low humming that caused the hair on Llynya’s nape to rise. Ice music.
Mychael strode resolutely forward, seemingly oblivious to the eerie sound that grew ever louder.
“Can you hear the ice?” she asked when the noise took on a melody. ’Twas making her twitch inside, insinuating itself into her thoughts and creating a sense of aloneness. She tightened her grip on his hand.
“Aye. I can hear it.” He pulled her closer. “ ’Tis a sad and despairing thing, but we’re not far now. Hold on. I’m with you.”
Not far from the end of the Dangoes? she wanted to ask. And how did he know? But if the path had come to him in his dream, she was leery of reminding him, especially with those needles poised above them. She would ask him someday what death-dream he’d seen in the ice cave, but she preferred to hear his answer under an open sky, surrounded by trees.
The next turn in the passage wiped the questions from her mind. Mychael stopped as suddenly as she, the two of them halting on the frozen lip of a huge cavern. It stretched out below them, mayhaps a thousand feet across, its walls streaked with great ribbons of sea-green ice running through layers of white frost. Its ceiling was hundreds of feet above them and completely encrusted with slender, trembling icicles. A frigid wind and waves of ice music rushed out of the cave and washed over them, the cold breath of the earth and a wordless symphony of sound. Somewhere in the far distance, they could hear the sea. The ice was ending, but no words of relief came to her, only a calm horror at what she saw.
The cave was a burial ground. Columns of dreadfully clear ice rose from the floor, and inside each column was a body frozen in its death throes.
“Sticks,” she whispered.
Mychael surveyed the cavern’s gruesome gallery dispassionately, his heart nearly as frozen as the ice-encased souls below. After watching his mother die, he dared not feel anything beyond his determination to get Llynya out of the Dangoes. They would have to rope down with her rope, their last.
There were no dripshanks for a belay, and the walls were all smooth ice. Under his direction, they used their dreamstones to melt a small pool of water. It quickly froze again, but with the tail of Llynya’s rope in it.
“You first,” he said, testing the rope against his weight. She eyed the long drop. “I went first last time.”
“I’ll be right behind you,” he assured her, apparently to no avail.
“Why don’t we go down together?”
“The rope won’t hold both of us. I’m not even sure it’s going to hold one of us.”
She looked over the edge again, concern furrowing her brow.
She was no coward. He knew that down to his bones, but something was bothering her.
“They’re all dead, Llynya.”
“Aye, I know. But something’s moving around down there.”
He walked over to the edge and knelt down, taking a good look. The wind was picking up, batting the rope against the cliff face, and the ice music was spiraling to a crescendo. Wisps of icy vapor that smelled of the sea were blowing around the cavern, swirling up here and there, but of an actual something moving around, he saw naught. Their dreamstones were casting shadows, the light glinting off the columns of dead and throwing their own shade onto the floor, but dreamstone shadows wouldn’t hurt them, and the bodies in the ice were frozen solid.
’Twas the ice music that decided him. Whatever grand finale it was building up to, he wanted to be out of the cave before it got there. The frozen song was a despairing force, an eerie melody that fed his weariness. And mayhaps that was what stayed Llynya. Mayhaps the ice music was sowing her doubts.
“We dare not delay,” he told her. “If you want, I’ll go first.” He hated to do it. His greater weight would weaken the rope’s hold in the ice, increasing the likelihood of her falling.
“Nay,” she said. “You’re right. We’ll both more safely make the floor if I go first.”
She took hold of the rope and began lowering herself over the side. Mychael held the belay against her weight.
When she reached the bottom, she waved once, and he started down the icy expanse, using Ratskin’s blade for light. There was little purchase to be had on the cliff face, making the descent more a matter of strength than finesse. Halfway down, the wind picked up in force, swirling the vapor into ever thickening clouds. With each new gust, he momentarily lost sight of Llynya. He started moving faster, sliding down the rope, the friction burning his hands.
“Llynya!” he hollered when the mist failed to clear after the last blast of wind.
A strangled cry was his only answer. He was moving as fast as he dared without dropping into a dead fall through the clouds, but it wasn’t fast enough. He still couldn’t see her.
“Llynya!” he shouted again. He felt a quick tug on the rope. In the next instant, he was fighting to keep his hold as the rope was snapped and cracked by something far more powerful than the Light-elf. Twice he was slammed into the ice. The clouds churned and darkened beneath him, and a palpable malevolence rose up the cliff face.
The ice music became a screech, losing its melody in the chaos. The mist entwined with smoke, black and fearsome, and a death scent blossomed in the maelstrom, the smell of burning rot and decay. ’Twas the same as at the broken damson shaft, but far more intense, far more alive. ’Twas a darkness with intent.
Ara flashed on the edge of the smoke in one blinding bolt before the light was swallowed by the dire night. Fear broke through his icy numbness and took hold of his heart. He reached the floor with a final jump and heard the sounds of a struggle. Smoke and fog blinded him, the two roiling up in thick, vaporous bands swirling around each other.
“Llynya!” he screamed, slashing at the wind-driven smog with the dagger. “Llynya!”
“Mychaellll... ” she cried out, her voice coming from a distance and growing fainter.
He raised the dreamstone high, running toward the sound, dodging the columns of the dead. Around one roughly formed block of ice he saw a flash of blue light. Around the next, he caught sight of her legs, kicking and struggling as she was swiftly dragged behind the next column. Sprays of ice fanned up around her, and he could hear her cursing.
When next he saw her, he dove for her feet, caught hold, but couldn’t stop her rapid slide across the ice. Whatever had hold of her pulled them both on a sure course toward some fearful end. Through the ice spray and windblown vapors, he glimpsed a bony curve, and then another —knucklebones, but ten times larger than the knuckles of the fingers that had dogged them through the upper trails. These were the mother bones.
Llynya squirmed within the awful grip, her arms pinned to her sides. Ara was still bound to her hand, but the Quicken-tree cloth was rapidly unraveling in the mad slide over the ice. Yellow light from the Dockalfar blade flashed with each thrust he made at the Dangoes bones, but the fingers were replaced as quickly as he could quell them. The smell of death grew stronger. He made a final stabbing lunge, and was attacked from behind.
Like the cracking of a whip, he was jerked away from her by an unseen hand and sent sliding off in a different direction. A great howling set up in the cavern, adding to the raucous din of the storm. When he was able to stop himself, he scrambled to his feet and took off at a run, back toward Llynya.
He had no room for thought, only action. A faint light flickered off to one side of him, and he raced toward it. Without warning, a wall of clear ice loomed up out of the whirls of fog and smoke. He dropped to the floor of the cavern, trying to slow the speed of impact. Blessed grace, he didn’t hit, but came to a sliding stop in a worn hollow of ice in front of the wall. White light fell over him from above, and when he turned and looked up, his already ragged breath caught in his throat.
’Twasn’t a wall that had
stopped him, but a tomb, one far different from the other gruesome pillars of ice. This one glowed. Its occupant was long and slender, laid out on her side, and she was pure white. ’Twas a hound, frozen in watery splendor. He could see her wounds, but no blood stained her hide.
The howling behind him had degenerated into fierce barking and growling, coming from the same direction as the greatest fury of the storm. He tried to get to his feet, but ’twas as if the light weighed him down. It grew brighter and brighter, and all around him the black smoke rose higher on the walls, leaving a sooty residue on the ice. A swirling length of darkness took shape near the ceiling, shattering the icicles and silencing the screeching music, leaving only the roar of the wind.
He watched the cloud form, a long, black funnel of force shaping the chaos and dragging Dangoes bones into its whirling center. Some of the pillars began to crack, and he feared the dead would be loosed upon him... upon her.
“Llynya.” Her name was a rough whisper. He clawed for a hold on the edge of the hollow, but was denied. Collapsing onto his back, he stared up into the churning heart of the darkness and knew a cold more frigid than the ice. ’Twas an eternity of night he saw above him, an emptiness too complete to ever be filled.
The light from the tomb brightened even more, casting a pool of luminescence that spread out to every corner of the cavern. In the middle of it, the funnel cloud ebbed and flowed and churned, a dark, undulating flame sundering the light.
’Twas his vision, only far bleaker than what he’d seen that long-ago winter night.
The future laid itself bare before him, and he saw naught but bones and darkness, and then even the bones were devoured, sucked into the black well. The swart cloud swirled in a ponderous, hypnotic spiral, and heat kindled in his breast.
One thread of darkness loosed itself from the flame to dance and twine about him, and the scars along his body quickened, heeding the call of the dread night.
This was his fate.
This was his fight.
He felt the thread pull him to his feet, and he unsheathed his sword, but the sword was wrong, all wrong. It didn’t fit his hand. It couldn’t cut the thread.