by Diane Duane
Mariarta had other ideas. “But what happens if neither of us passes this test of questions the dwarf is supposed to give us? Or what if he only wants one of us, not the other?”
“If that happens, we’ll choose for it. The other one waits to see what happens. And if we don’t pass—we leave, I guess. At least we’ll be able to tell people the story is true.”
“You hope we’ll leave. I hope this isn’t like missing the white one when you shoot at it.” Mariarta had another bite of meat. “What did you see, back there at Vaz?”
Flisch stared. “I told you, the white one. Did you think I was making that up?”
“Yes.”
He stared, offended. “Who would lie about a thing like that? It could be the death of you, saying you’d seen it when you hadn’t.”
Mariarta stared back. “But then you let drop that line about it turning into a woman—”
He smiled, malice in his eyes. “Yes. You should have seen your face. But that was just me joking. The white one—” Flisch looked sober. “I saw it there, all right. It went into the trees, like I told you. I followed it. Got good and lost there...I had to sleep under the trees that night.”
Mariarta sat silent, considering the mystery. Something to do with the statue?... “Was it big?”
Flisch shook his head. “The usual doe size. Maybe two years.”
Mariarta breathed out. It suddenly all seemed too much for her. Her legs ached, she was weary, she was trapped with someone she didn’t trust, about to spend a night waiting for a morning when they would go out looking for a magic that might make them rich or kill them—no telling which. But this had been her idea....
“Never mind,” she said, settling herself on the far side of the fireplace. “Better wrap up in that blanket of yours. The fire won’t last until dawn.”
“Ah, well, what a pity,” Flisch said. “But there are other ways to keep warm.”
Mariarta reached over from where she sat, laid her crossbow in her lap. It was spanned, and armed.
“A lot of times,” Mariarta said, “you get a warm afternoon in the rocks, the sun shining, and you’re lying there, waiting for the chamois. You drowse off. But your ears aren’t asleep. A tiny sound comes—a pebble falling, a hoof on the stone—”
Flisch threw himself sideways. Mariarta stared in horror at the bolt that sprouted from beside where his ear was now, where his eye had been a second ago. The bolt was still quivering.
“I sleep lightly,” she said, shaking as she reached for another bolt, and restrung the crossbow. “Good night, Flisch.”
He folded his arms and began, ostentatiously, to snore. Later on, when his breathing evened and the snores became genuine, Mariarta leaned back against the wall, and slept too...lightly.
***
Dawn came, and three hours later the sun came over the mountains, forcing its way in through the cracks of the closed shutters in beams that danced with dust like sparks of gold. Mariarta was shocked to find she had slept so long. Flisch, like Catsch, was still sleeping hard.
Mariarta slipped out quietly to take care of morning business. The sun shone blindingly from the snow. The sky was bitterly blue, the wind blowing from the south, though not a föhn wind. Snow was blowing in great misty plumes from the southern peaks, making a light haze in the upper air; closer to the ground, the wind carried a storm of stinging glitter with it. Not the best day for exploring. But damned if I’m going to sit in the hut all day with Flisch....
Mariarta went in and untied Catsch from his wall-ring. Flisch was knuckling his eyes at the brightness. “We’ll be blinded by noon—”
“Don’t you have eyeblinders?” Mariarta said, surprised.
“Yes, but—”
“Just complaining... I see.” She rooted around in her pack for the long band of thin linen she used to shield her eyes, put some more dried meat in her pockets. Then she hauled Catsch out the door, tied him on the porch, and put down more grain for him. Quickly, before Flisch came out, Mariarta dug into Catsch’s pack for the skin-wrapped statue, tucking it in the small bag she wore on her back. Should we find her, no harm in having something for her to know me by—
Flisch came out while she was still fastening her backsack, and went hurriedly around the side of the hut. When he returned, he said, “The sky is that bad blue...there’s more snow coming.”
“We’d better get our looking done early, then.”
Mariarta got her stick and bandaged her eyes with the linen band. It was thinly enough woven that a few turns of it around her head left her still able in this brightness to see shapes, as if through a thin fog. Flisch went through his bag, producing a similar cloth. With the firewood, the night before, he had brought a long narrow branch with the smaller branches stripped off it. This he took as his own walking stick, not much of a weight-bearer, but strong enough to test the snow.
They set out northwestward, passing through some old wind-crabbed pines, and began climbing the snowy rocks. The Whitehorn mountain towered on their right: they would come to the level of its two main spurs, then work back to their left again, across the feet of Whitehorn, toward the mountain to its own left.
The climb was not a bad one, the snow not too deep. An hour or so they spent climbing the slope. At the place where it first topped out, they paused to eat. At this level, a sort of flat shelf a quarter-mile wide worked its way around the valley, rising and falling where the spurs of the surrounding mountains broke its levelness. Flisch stood a while, scanning the ring. “I can’t see any wall or door.”
Mariarta started off to their left. “Let’s look up these valleys and see what we see.”
They started with the one closest, directly above them northwestward, climbing until they reached a point where further climbing would have been dangerous. There they strained their eyes for a glimpse of anything unnatural. Seeing nothing, they came down the valley and moved on, leftward and southward, to the next valley, doing the same. By noontime Mariarta and Flisch had climbed and descended four of these vales, with nothing to show for their pains. Mariarta had a pulled leg muscle, and was in a foul mood. Flisch, though, seemed to be enjoying himself. Mariarta suspected this for the enjoyment of a man who is supposed to be on a dangerous adventure and finds, to his relief, that he’s in no danger of finding what he was looking for.
They ate again and went southward around the ring. The first spur of the Whitehorn had numerous small valleys cut into the side of it, as well as the main valley running up the mountainside. They took the big one first, finding nothing but stones, and caves no deeper than a few feet. As they started, the afternoon shadows, earlier so sharp, started to blur. The weather was changing—thin hazy cloud was coming in from the south. The sun was a pale silver ball; they took off their eyeblinders. It started to get cold.
“Enough for one day,” Mariarta said, as they made it to the bottom of the great valley, and looked southward to the next Whitehorn spur. “Let’s go back through those pines, and get some more firewood on the way. We’re going to need it tonight.”
“Ah, come now,” Flisch laughed, “giving up already? Now we see who’s really bolder, girl or man.” He started toward the next spur.
“Flisch, you were the one who said the weather was going to go bad!” Mariarta shouted. “Look at it! You were right!”
He laughed.
Mariarta swore. Let him go, said that cruel voice inside her head. The cold will catch him, or a rockslide, or the snow itself, and you’re free—
“Not to please you,” Mariarta muttered, going after Flisch.
“You’re an idiot,” she told him. Flisch just kept climbing one of the tributary valleys of the north side of the first spur.
She followed him. They found nothing. Shortly, snow began to sift down, and the sun veiled itself completely. Turning back, they swiftly became lost in a solid whiteness of cloud, mountain and sky. The only things visible were the lees of stones uncovered by snow, and the blowing snow itself.
; “The sun’s going to go behind the mountain soon,” Mariarta said. “Let’s get back while we still can!”
Flisch stood there indecisive. Here it is again, Mariarta thought; what almost got him killed in the Lucomagno. Well, it’s not going to kill me. “I’m going down,” she said, in as kindly a tone of voice as she could manage. “You follow me when you’re ready.”
It was hard to tell which way was downward, except by walking: so Mariarta took a few steps, and shortly found a downward slope. She looked behind, saw Flisch beginning to follow her.
Shortly he caught up and went ahead. Mariarta was glad enough to let him take the lead. She followed him downward, quite steeply at first, then more shallowly: then began to climb. “Wait a moment,” she called, “this can’t be right!”
She caught up with him. “Flisch, whichever way we’re turned, ‘up’ is the wrong direction. Find some down—”
But there seemed to be none. Every direction led only to an upward slope. Mariarta grew frightened. They had no wood with them. A night out in this cold wind, without enough food, without fire—
Flisch began to run. Mariarta went after him, not daring to lose sight of him, for both their sakes. He’s panicked again. “Flisch!” she shouted after him. “Flisch, don’t—”
He ran along the level, bulling his way along blindly. Mariarta ran after. And suddenly, he was heading downward, Mariarta after him: a slope, no matter how steep it was. Oh, thank you, Mariarta thought to whoever might be involved. We’ll make it after all—
Then Flisch cried out, and fell.
Mariarta hurried after him—put her strained leg down the wrong way, grunted with pain, went sprawling behind him. She pushed herself up on her arms. “Flisch, are you all right—”
Then she saw what he had hit. It was a vertical wall of ice, pebbled with old melt-drops, like a slab of glacier ice; the blown snow hissed against it. “Come on,” she said, getting to her feet and tugging at Flisch’s jacket. “We’ve got to get down from here—”
Flisch sat up, clutching his bleeding head. “Where did— We didn’t see any glacier here.”
“It’s probably stream-fall—”
He stared at the wall. “Matti, look at it!”
It took Mariarta a moment to see the faint glow from inside the ice; a golden-colored light, getting stronger—
“We’re fools,” Mariarta said softly. “What were we looking for? A stone wall, with mortar? This is the wall. We may die of having found it. But the story’s true....”
Flisch, staring, began to laugh. “You’re right,” he said. And he staggered around, grabbed Mariarta by the arms, shook her. “You’re right! We found it!”
“Yes,” Mariarta said. “And now what? We can’t leave. We’ll die trying to get to the hut.”
“We have to get in there.” Flisch turned back to the wall, his face alight. “It’ll be shelter, at least.”
“How do we get in? We don’t have any golden key.”
Flisch pulled out his hunter’s knife. “Let’s try this.” He began chipping at the ice.
This proved useless. The ice would not chip. Flisch’s frustration grew; he began to hack harder at the wall. His knife broke, half its blade flying in front of Mariarta to bury itself in a nearby snowdrift.
Flisch stared at the broken handle-end of the knife, then threw it after the first half, cursing.
The glow from inside the wall was stronger. Mariarta put her hand against it, held it there: then brought her away again, shaking it to get rid of the numbness. It was wet.
“Flisch,” Mariarta said, “it melts. That’s it.” She looked at her stick, then at Flisch’s. “Here, give me that!”
“What?”
“It’s pine, it’ll burn better than mine. Give it to me!”
Flisch handed Mariarta his stick. She fumbled in her breeches pocket for flint and steel, then broke the endmost third of the branch off, handing it to Flisch. “Strip some needles off that,” Mariarta said. Thank heaven he wasn’t careful enough about it to get rid of them all! She brushed snow off a nearby stone. Flisch piled the needles there, cupping his hands around them. “Hold this now,” she said, handing him back the pine stick. “When it’s going—”
Flisch nodded. The wind rose around them. Stop it, Mariarta thought desperately, stop it now! Just for a few moments! But the wind ignored her.
She started striking sparks into the pine-needle tinder. The wind blew the sparks away. It got darker; the capricious wind started to howl. Mariarta tried to pay no attention to that—tried to hold all her intention on the pile of needles, the fire catching in them—
A tiny pinpoint of orange, a smolder of smoke that the wind fanned until it scorched Flisch’s hands. He didn’t move them. “Brave man,” Mariarta said, thrusting the end of the pine branch into the tiny flames. They died down. Mariarta and Flisch both leaned in and blew—then got their noses singed as the fire caught the larger branch, and the resin in it sputtered and lit. Flisch held the longer end of the pine stick to the shorter one; the fire went to it, reluctantly.
“Put it to the wall,” Mariarta said. “Hurry, it won’t last long. Keep yourself in front.”
Flisch got up, shielding the branch with his body, turning to the wall. Mariarta crowded beside him, trying to help. The fire flared at the branch’s end as it touched the ice; water ran quickly from where the branch was held. They might have been holding a whole hearth’s worth of fire against the ice. The water hissed as it ran.
Flisch looked at Mariarta with tremendous excitement. “This is it! This is the golden key—”
Chunks of ice began to fall from the wall. After only a few more seconds a space was there big enough for them to walk through. Through it the golden light streamed, unimpeded and brilliant.
Flisch ducked through first. Mariarta followed. To her surprise, the cold air did not follow. The wind could be heard moaning outside, like a beast left in the cold. And inside, the source of the golden light—
All around them, on the floor, piled to the sides of the cave behind the ice-wall, were vessels, ornaments, coin of gold, all in heaps, like grain in a storehouse. The light came from the gold itself; it burned. Mariarta thought of the way the white lamb had burned, and the black bull, and began to shiver.
Flisch picked up a fat-bellied golden ewer with loops at either side of its rim. He went “oof!” with the unexpected heaviness of it, fumbled it, tipped it sideways. A flow of glittering-cold fire poured out, cut gems in every color. Flisch cried out, fell to his knees, casting the ewer aside, and clutched at the gems, pouring them from hand to hand like a child playing with pebbles.
Mariarta bent to a pile of jars and jewels, lifting a great pectoral of hammered gold, figured with shapes of men and horses. The cold weight of it warmed swiftly in her hands. Would it not look fine on you, something said.
The thought of what it would look like, against her sodden linens and soggy hides, made an unhappy contrast in her mind. Mariarta put the pectoral down, turned to see Flisch starting to fill his pockets with gems. “No!” she said.
He glared at her. “No!” Mariarta said. “Not until we find whatever... owns this place. Until we find the owner, taking the treasure is stealing. And you know what happens in the stories when you steal treasures—”
Flisch growled. But he turned out his pockets, letting the bright gems fall to the floor. Slowly he got up, looked at Mariarta again. She flinched. It was not quite Flisch who looked at her. There was suddenly something missing in those eyes: the gleam of gems had dispossessed something that properly lived in them. And she thought of the soft voice that spoke in her mind, urging her to the gold. I’ll touch no more of it—
“Look,” she said. At the back of the cave was a deeper darkness, embracing a more subtle glow. Flisch pushed past her toward it. Slowly Mariarta followed him, her eyes drawn by the strange signs scribed on the walls; spirals, connected one to another by their tails, like nests of snakes: columns of sticklike letters, w
ritten up and down in lines, the letters lying on their sides. The walls drew apart, slowly; the way trended upwards. It was not a cave Mariarta and Flisch were in. Sky hung high above them, though clouded with a low-hanging mist. The light ahead, itself dimmed through mist clinging closer to the ground, showed rosy against the downhanging cloud.
Flisch was walking like a man in a dream. He and Mariarta walked on turf, now, the way toward the light still trending upward. Shadowy shapes could be seen through the mist to either side: trees, with long graceful bowed-down limbs, stirring in a soft breath of perfumed breeze that came from ahead, the source of that rosy light.
Mariarta walked on behind Flisch, heading slowly toward the light. It was like a sunset seen through fog, growing brighter as they approached. Flisch began to hurry. The trees drew closer together, so that Flisch and Mariarta had to brush among their branches. Odd how the branches seemed to brush back, almost a caress. Up above them in the trees, birdnoise sounded softly—the twitter of sparrows, the coo of doves.
The light before them was brightening. Sparrows, Mariarta thought. That means something.... But it was hard to think, as she pushed her way through the trailing branches of the last trees, coming out behind Flisch into the open, nearer than ever to the rosy light. The air was growing so sweet, it was hard to breathe it. It coiled into the mind, darkening it to everything but the musky fragrance. A great open sward lay before them, starred with flowers. There, veiled in mist, stood a long low roofless house. The front of the house had no windows, only a great copper door, richly carved. Before the door stood a naked child.
Flisch came to the door now, nearly reeling, as Mariarta was, with the rich fragrance and warmth of the place. The child gazed at them, mild-faced. He might have been ten years old; his hair was fair, his eyes were summer blue, but had a blindness about them. “Longed-for,” he said, in a voice like song, “waited-for, enter my mistress’s house.”
The great doors parted without hand touching them, swinging inwards. The child led them in. A soft languor stole through Mariarta’s limbs as she followed the child. Walking was suddenly too much trouble, even thinking or being was too much trouble. She wanted to sink down in the sweet-smelling warmth and never do anything again. But there was not time for that yet. The child led them on. Idly Mariarta trailed her hand along the copper carving of the door, where beasts were carved, two of each kind together, pairing after the manner of their kind. Her hand stroked the back of a carved lion in passing; the lion, warm under her hand, twisted and rolled luxuriously, rubbing its face against its mate’s, and its mate moved too, taking it by the scruff. Mariarta saw all this in sleepy-eyed wonder as her body took her through the doors in the child’s wake.