He did not notice falling asleep; but he was awoken, some time later, by a strange sound. He looked toward the water, turning steel-grey now with the dawn, and saw a few bubbles rise there and burst, along the line of the bars. He smiled to himself, and reached over to the stone. The fire had died, but the stone was still hot, and in it lay a thick warm gummy liquid, with a savour that set his mouth watering. He scooped it up almost in one mouthful, chewing at the mess beneath, licking the wrapper of his salt packets, for he had used the rest. Then he lay back, feeling immeasurably better. Now there was nothing but to wait, and listen to wind and water.
A minute later, it seemed, Merthian was shaking him again. ‘What’ve you been up to? It stinks of smoke in here!’ He stared at the barren rock. ‘Burning your bedding? I’m surprised a Northerner would feel the cold.’ He glanced alertly around the cell. ‘No! It was something else – wasn’t it? You were trying to escape, as you did from those idiot corsairs. Alais was very impressed. But not this time, I suspect.’
‘I’m still here,’ said Kunrad, rolling away from him.
‘Yes. Are you surprised? This fortress was begun by Vayde, though he died before it was completed. It was one of my ancestors who finished it off, the second Lord Warden, in fact. I don’t imagine smiths’ tricks would avail you much against solid stone. Well,’ he added mildly, ‘I’m sorry. You have, as it were, unmade your bed and must lie on it. I can’t offer you any more bedding for now. Or breakfast, for that matter. Genuinely sorry.’
‘Didn’t know you were that poor,’ grunted Kunrad. ‘Even poor folk are hospitable, up north – remember?’
‘It’s not a matter of being poor,’ said Merthian patiently. ‘I feed my guests, always. But I did not invite you here. If you wish food, you must work for it, and there is little or nothing you can do in here.’
‘Chalk it up against what you owe me,’ mumbled Kunrad. ‘I’ll have a side of beef to start with, and a banquet for two hundred.’
‘I am not yet able to pay that debt. If you will work for me, though, I shall make the extra effort to advance you an earnest of my good will. Come, agree! Let us waste no more time!’
Kunrad rolled over and looked hard at Merthian. He did not seem to enjoy the game he was playing, yet he played it to the hilt nonetheless. Something more than ambition drove him.
‘Time!’ said Kunrad. ‘Time … You’re in haste, Merthian, black haste. So what’s the hurry? Desperate to be king before the winter comes?’
That was it! The flash of expression in Merthian’s controlled features was unmistakable; and a truth dangled before him, almost within his grasp. ‘Yes!’ grated Kunrad, sitting up. ‘You want to succeed, and succeed now! That’s when the foot slips, though, isn’t it? Take time to think, for your own sake if no other. Mind what I told you! What counts in the end is what you do, not why!’
Merthian shrugged elegantly. ‘In the South we are perhaps a little less … simple? Unsophisticated? Straight forward? Let’s say straightforward. The art of rule lies in compromise and negotiation. We recognise that you cannot always forward a cause by the purest means. But when the cause is good …’
‘I know! We’ve that saying in the North also! You’re telling me your end will justify your means. And I say to you, whatever the end you start out with, the means dictate how it turns out! Man, look, it’s happening already! With all your machinations you’ve neglected this corsair presence. You’ve set the North in full cry with your little shopping spree. While you’re getting fitted for your throne, the two lands are hovering on the brink of war. Now you’ll risk adding civil strife in your own land to that? A fine start to give your new subjects, my lord! And a fine gift for their real enemies! To leave us scuffling, weakened, growing poorer and fewer in number! So the Old Wild may draw in around us once more, and the grip of Winter. A pretty present for the Ice!’
Merthian stamped the floor, and rounded on him with a rare note of anger in his word. ‘Ah yes – the Ice! Since you bring it up, let us talk of means and ends there! Since you are so keen to judge matters of which you know little! Reason me this then – what has standing out against such a mighty enemy ever brought us? The loss and destruction of our lands, sundering from our kin across the Oceans, generations of flight and misery. How can we fight it? What use are even your swords and spears swung against the advancing walls of Winter? Neither weapons nor courage will slow the glaciers a finger’s breadth, or bite upon the wills that lie behind them! So, when you have an enemy you cannot overcome, should you not then seek some accommodation with them? That I shall do – at least until we are stronger again, and united.’
Kunrad blinked suspiciously. ‘Funny kind of sothran you are. Alais doesn’t even believe there’s mind behind the Ice; or at least she isn’t sure. She’s half inclined to laugh, and it’s obvious that’s how most of your folk think. They don’t know any better. You do, though – don’t you?’ And then he boiled over with sudden understanding, and sprang to his feet and shouted, ‘That’s why you turned north from Athalby! You were going to the bloody Ice all along! You, you’re talking to them already!’
Horror seethed behind his eyes, and his stomach felt like chilled lead. He had heard evil tales of men who had dared to confront the Powers of the Ice. And after that coldly murderous dusk in that far valley, he found believing them no trouble at all. Merthian turned away sharply, and stalked down to the water. The lake seemed to be more disturbed; thin foam washed back and forth along the bars, and big bubbles rose and burst. Kunrad stiffened, and his fists clenched at his side. As before, Merthian wore a well-worn sword-hanger on his belt, but neither blade nor scabbard. A display of courage, or of caution? In case Kunrad should overpower him and seize them? He still might manage to tip Merthian into the water, hold his head under, maybe. But he would still be locked in, at the mercy of the guards; and by now he was unsure of his strength.
The Warden peered absent-mindedly at the bubbles for a moment and when he turned back his voice was calm and conciliatory again. He looked up at the spyhole before he answered. ‘Yes. Yes, though I would not say it to many beyond this door, I have. To talk, that was all. To consult a few among them who are not as hostile to mankind as most, who do not return its indiscriminate hatred, who might be willing to compromise, if we can make it possible for them. It was their world first, remember, before ever life stirred upon its crust. Life displaced them, and they fight only to regain what was their own.’ He gave a slight laugh. ‘They know little of humans, in some ways. They actually counselled me to seize you yourself, as well as your armour, to have your skills to hand. I told them that would be too dishonourable, and it struck them greatly that humans had any notion of honour. Perhaps that helped to bridge a gap, who can tell? But one must always try.’
He looked at Kunrad, and there was something different in his eye now. ‘And here you are, Mastersmith, in any case; and what am I to do with you? Again I ask you – I beg you! Lend me your mind, your skills, and I will tax them to their utmost, challenge you, exhaust you – and reward you a thousandfold! Kunrad, they were right, in their way, those voices of the Ice. I should have engaged you at our first meeting, I should have asked only for the use of that armour, have offered to leave it as your property for ever. To pay you and your boys for the use of it and to work all you wished upon it, if only I could wear it meanwhile.’ He laughed. ‘I would have been your trial-piece! But I was not so sure of you then as I am now. I will be, still. I make you this offer now, along with all else. And I bitterly regret I did not make it then!’
Kunrad smiled slowly. ‘I do not, Merthian. Or I might well have accepted! Not now.’
He stretched his shoulders beneath that bleak roof, clinking the loose chains, and in a strange way he felt free. ‘You talk of compromise. You compromise too easily already, with honesty for the sake of expediency, with common sense for the sake of ambition. You might have been a good ruler, but you never will be, not now. You’re too ready to let today go to ruin f
or the sake of some brighter tomorrow. And you are ten times over a fool, that you are so ready to meddle with the Ice. You have lived too far from it, sothran. You cannot judge it, as you can a man. It is one voice and many, it is a mind not ruled by human constraints. You cannot treat with it, or temporise, or trust any single word that comes from it, whatever the mouth that shapes it. It looks to a struggle that lasts beyond lives, beyond generations; why should it make peace with one? Only one outcome will satisfy it, in the long run; and its voices will agree only to what will advance that, eventually. Even to us in the North it was no more than a sleeping menace; but at least we knew!’
Kunrad was ready for Merthian to fly into a rage; but he seemed no worse than exasperated and earnest. ‘I beg you, smith, don’t be so ready to judge! Maybe I know more of the Ice than you think! But for now, you will work for me, and that’s it, long and short. I could hardly let you go, after all, to draw attention to me. Still less now I have told you so much.’
‘I wondered why you were so free. I expected you meant to kill me.’
Merthian shook his head, horrified. ‘As soon shatter a priceless artwork! No, smith. But then what am I to do? If you won’t earn, I cannot very well feed you. You won’t die of thirst in here, with the lake water to serve you for drink and―’ he paused delicately – ‘bodily needs. And before you can starve to death, my plans should have advanced so far your knowledge cannot stop them; and I shall have some leisure to review your case. You will, however, have a needlessly uncomfortable time, lose the chance of honours you truly deserve. And, if matters should take too long, and I am kept unable to attend to your case …’ There was a moment’s silence, broken only by the bubbling note of the wavelets. Merthian glanced down at the pool a moment, puzzled, then swiftly back to Kunrad, who might have been about to step between him and the door.
‘Well, the decision is yours. I shall be busy now, and must leave you alone to your brooding. Call the guard if you have anything more to say to me.’
The door slammed. Kunrad heard it with a great feeling of relief. He watched the door carefully, but the spyhole did not reopen. He squatted down by the water, watching the play of light. He brooded indeed; but it was on how far wrong a man may go, even on the best of intentions. All Merthian said about being the only possible candidate for kingship might even be true – probably was. A manner commanding yet genial, courage, strength, clear wits, a fair and open face – oh yes, no wonder the wretched girl was so besotted with him! No wonder Kunrad had warmed to the man himself, on first acquaintance. Yet this fine fellow found it possible to threaten a man with slow starvation, simply to command his services. He would see that as he had seen all the rest, a brief regrettable diversion from a long straight road. He did not understand that this was the result of an earlier straying, and that from this still another would spring, until the road itself was forever lost to view. Many a well-meaning ruler had begun so, only to find himself at the end a helpless tyrant trapped between retribution and still greater outrage. Merthian managed to turn his very virtue back upon itself, to serve a base end.
And Merthian had been talking to the Ice, to some of the Powers that ruled it. How that had come about Kunrad could not imagine. What had been said, and how much truth there was in it, he could not guess. But when he turned the force of his mind upon it, one thing he saw for sure. The Ice was nowhere near the South, save perhaps in the impotent snows of the mountain-summits. It had few meeting-points with men, at all. So whatever was supposed to happen, would happen in the North. Where Merthian’s word counted for nothing – now. But later? That was what must lie behind his talk of uniting the peoples. Whatever he hoped to achieve with the Ice, wisdom or folly, he would have to control the Northlands to do it.
But then, thought Kunrad, what was meaningful to the Ice? There was no tribute one could make, no damages one could exact. It had no cause of strife with man or beast or tree save one, and that was existence itself. So what accommodation could it possibly reach with anyone, even if it wished to?
There was only one ground, whatever its terms. It was human settlement the Ice hated, the bright fires that sprang up in the dark night, that drove off the chill and stayed defiantly alive where all else must bow to the walls of Winter, or perish. Vayde had brought the fires, and with his awesome powers had cleared the Northern lands of their terrors and settled men at the very feet of their foes. What the Ice would demand, implicitly or openly, must be an end to that – the emptying of settled land, the withdrawing of men beyond their cold sight. There was nothing the South could offer them, no wealth, no wine, no wise books or rich pastures. Merthian was planning to buy the Ice’s favour with the lands of the North.
The thought set outraged flame in Kunrad’s blood. There might be some selfish logic in such a compromise, for the South. They might demand something major in return – the clearing of the Great Marshes, perhaps, so that they could be drained for cultivation. That would suit the new king! He would become the lord of a vast realm, one that could even take in the ousted Northerners – upon terms, no doubt, of labour and duty to their new overlords. And the redheads would applaud him for it! But logic or not, it was an enormous gamble; and Merthian had taken care to gamble with what did not belong to him. What if those lands were lost for nothing, and no Vayde to settle them anew? Still it was only the North.
Kunrad drew breath, though the air had an evil tinge to it. He felt his cheeks flaming. He was going too far, perhaps; on slender evidence. The trouble was, it fitted what he knew only too well. He looked again at the seething water. The foam was spreading now, washing in under the wall. He went impatiently back to his blanket. He had been ready to murder Merthian there, though it cost his own life. He was almost sorry he had not, now. Still, there were the prentices to think of. And he would thwart him yet.
He woke again, swiftly. It was no hand on his shoulder this time, and it was dark. In his weakened state he had slept the day away. But something had awoken him. He sat, ignoring the rushing sensation in his head; the mushrooms were a long-forgotten feast, and he had little interest in food. He looked around, but everything was dark; even the line of the slot was a darker blue, as if the moon was behind clouds, and the bars stood out only as strange-looking shadows. He rubbed his eyes. His head felt heavy, and somebody seemed to have been sitting on his chest, but the strangeness wasn’t merely a trick of the light. He had a hank or two of straw left, and he kindled fire on the stone again, lit them and held them high to see more clearly.
He very nearly never saw anything again. Only the fact that he rose a little stiffly, so his arm went high above his eyes, saved his sight. Above his head the entire sloping rock-vault seemed to light with one great flaring cough, not loud or destructive, but a blast of flame that rolled across the roof right down to the wall and down, with a force that blew the lake-wash backwards out of the slot. Kunrad fell flat on his face, only to be drenched by the incoming wave as the lake reasserted itself and washed almost to the door. That, as he realised a moment later, put out the small flames smouldering in his jerkin and hair, and woke him up with a vengeance.
He wasted a precious moment damning himself for his stupidity; then he realised that he must have been growing thick-headed with the bad airs already. The light airs wandering, as the words put it, had had nowhere to escape to, and built up beneath the roof. He listened, but the soft flare had not attracted any attention. The question was, had it done anything else? Only one way to find out, Kunrad reminded himself. Swiftly, while he was still drenched, the Mastersmith stepped into the still-slapping water and squatted down with a painful whimper. He tugged at the bars. It was like grasping at an illusion. They were still there, solid as ever at water level; but what he felt in his hands was more like thin irregular sticks of rough coral, pitted and crumbling. He knew then that he had done what he hoped; he had turned the virtues that guarded against rust back upon themselves. These, properly imbued into the metal, could prevent the interaction of substance
s that created rust. But where rust was already, with the right admixture of other substances, phosphoric corrosives among them, they could also throw it off, and alter the very rusting process itself to form a protective surface. In salt water, such as he had briefly created, this was particularly powerful; but the salt had been washed away almost at once, and there were none of the other substances needed. Rust formed, and was crumbled away, for no coating took its place over the bare metal beneath; and so there was more rust, and always more, a process that had only one end. But had it gone far enough?
He heaved, and almost fell over in the shallows as the bars bent and shattered in his fingers. Another two went the same way, and he had a gap the width of his shoulders. Excitedly he plucked two more away like dry twigs, not noticing till he saw the faint bloom in the water that he was cutting his fingers. Even being more careful he broke loose the three remaining in a moment. He looked around quickly. He was wet already; there was nothing to go back for. He ducked, shivered with sudden hunger, then took a deep breath and plunged his head beneath the surface.
Kunrad did not like being under water, especially his face. He had not mastered the knack of keeping air in his nostrils to balance the water, and he winced as they flooded. The slot was narrow for any man, let alone of his size, and there were still stumps of bar sticking up. He kicked one of the rotten teeth loose, tore another, squeezed mightily, stuck, panicked, almost breathed in but had the sense to breathe out, flattening his chest. Suddenly he was sliding over slimy stone – and through.
The Castle of the Winds Page 25