City of Ice

by Laurence Yep

  “What if it freezes?” Roxanna asked. “What would happen to you then?”

  “I don’t know,” Upach confessed.

  “You won’t be any worse off than you are now,” Koko argued. “And maybe you’ll go into hibernation until Dr. Goldemar comes to help.”

  Together the badger and children guided the ifrit forward with gentle waves of their hands, but the cloud was much smaller by the time they reached the pool.

  A large chunk of ice crashed nearby, smashing into bits. A startled bear waved an apologetic paw and then gestured for them to leave.

  Roxanna ignored him, flapping her hands to create a breeze that blew Upach right over the wide, shallow pool. Small wedges of ice were already forming on the surface, but Upach slipped through the cracks and flowed like dark milk through the water. A moment later, they saw the flattened shape of the ifrit. She was now about six feet long and four feet wide but only a few inches thick.

  Bubbles rose above the mouth. “Ah, that feels good,” the ifrit burbled.

  “Let me see the bullets,” Roxanna said. “Forgive me, Upach.” Reaching into the pool, Roxanna thrust her hand into her servant. She hesitated for only a second when Upach moaned. “I’m sorry,” the girl said, and carefully extracted one. “It’s silver and enchanted,” she said, holding it up so they could all see the tiny runes and magical signs scratched into its sides.

  Roxanna repeated the operation, blinking back tears as her faithful Upach groaned in pain. She did this three more times before she sat back, shoulders sagging.

  “Oh, much better.” Upach sighed in relief. Her voice had already grown stronger again. “Thank you, my girl. I think I’ll be all right in a little bit.”

  Roxanna tapped the nearest bear, who turned impatiently. “My friend is in there. Please don’t throw any ice into the pool.”

  He glanced downward, and when he understood he nodded. Then he said something to the other bears, who also bobbed their heads in comprehension.

  On the way to the pool, Leech had noticed a discarded blowtorch—perhaps one of those that had been used to drive another of the Tizheruks. Leech fetched it and a small waterproof tin of matches next to it. When he handed it to Roxanna, the girl lit the blowtorch and kept it at a low flame, moving it carefully so it just brushed the surface and did not touch Upach. “I think we’ll be all right now.” She even managed to smile. “See to Bayang. And thank you.”

  When the children approached the dragon, she was alternately wiping her eyes and blinking them as she tried to focus.

  “How are you feeling?” Scirye asked.

  Bayang turned her head toward the girl. “Better.”

  “If you don’t,” Koko teased, “I can always get you a great job as a carousel animal.”

  Bayang held up her paw in warning. “Koko, I insist that you stay on my left.” Then she nodded to her right. “And Scirye, Leech, stand over here. I don’t want that fuzzbag to be the first thing I see.”

  If the dragon could joke—at least Leech thought she was making one—then she was probably going to survive. Though her scales were scored in a dozen places, her cuts were already beginning to scab over. Bayang was one tough old dragon. She’d soon be ready for the next round.

  After a short while, she squeezed her eyelids tight and then opened them. “Yes, I can see shapes now. What about Uncle Resak?”

  Leech looked over to where the clan warriors huddled about their leader. An elderly woman was shaving a patch of fur from Uncle Resak’s shoulder by the bright light shed from a big ice block filled with worms. The healer had both an open modern medical kit as well as the friendly but no-nonsense attitude of any doctor in San Francisco. Leech realized that one of the first human things the clan would embrace was modern medicine, especially when it came to treating gunshot wounds.

  Leech didn’t know if the healer knew how to treat ifrits, but maybe she would try later.

  Uncle Resak was growling to Taqqiq, who was sitting faithfully next to his lord. “We must go after the thieves.”

  “Quiet, if you please, Lord.” The healer wiped the bare patch on Uncle Resak with cotton that she had dipped in alcohol.

  “It can’t wait,” Uncle Resak said.

  With a grunt, the doctor plunged a hypodermic into Uncle Resak.

  Taqqiq dipped his head submissively, but he insisted, “You are in no shape to chase them, Uncle. And the ways to the gate are blocked. It will take a while to clear the tunnel.”

  Uncle Resak tried to slam a paw against the ice, but the drug was already taking effect, so he merely slapped the surface. “But he stole Yi’s bow,” Uncle Resak protested sleepily.

  Bayang winced as she struggled upright on her paws. “Even if Roland has the bow and string and the archer’s ring, he doesn’t have the arrows yet.”

  “We should have gone to the City of Death in the first place,” Scirye said regretfully. “He’ll get there ahead of us in his airplane.”

  Bayang padded across the ice, moving slowly at first but picking up speed. “But he still has to get to it. He couldn’t have it land too close before the attack because that might tip us off. And if it comes to flying, we have that straw wing from the Cloud Folk.”

  “Well, Roland might have radioed it just before the attack began,” Kles reasoned. “He could have set up a time and place to meet that way. But he still needs to swim out of here and then break through the ice. And after that, he’ll have to get to the rendezvous.”

  Uncle Resak jerked upward as the doctor probed the wound for the bullet. When he settled back, he kept his eyes closed. “So we have a chance to stop them,” Uncle Resak said, hissing with the pain. “There are other routes to the surface.”

  “Those are only for the fox scouts.” Taqqiq’s tail thumped on the ice as he thought out loud. “It’s possible that wolf cubs might make it through, but it would take as long to widen them for adult wolves as it would to clear the main tunnels.”

  Bayang tapped her talons together as she scanned the ceiling. “Could human children get through the escape tunnels?”

  Uncle Resak fought to keep his eyes open. “Yes—though it might be a tight squeeze in parts. You’re way too big, dragon.”

  “I can shrink to their size,” Bayang replied.

  Koko groaned and wriggled his shoulders as if trying to shake off the soreness. “Have a heart. I ache in muscles I never knew I had. We’ve done our part. Let someone else take up the chase.”

  Bayang regarded the badger. “For most of my life, I never got to ask if what I did was good or bad. But I know it would be wrong to let Roland have his way.”

  Leech had never liked the dragon more than at that moment. In a way, Bayang reminded Leech of himself in the orphanage. All the children were supposed to do chores, but the others had usually skipped the unpleasant ones—so Leech had done them. It wasn’t because someone had bullied him into performing someone else’s work either. He had seen that the tasks were necessary ones, so he had done them, ignoring his own feelings. Bayang had been cut from the same cloth. So had Scirye, in fact, which was why he liked her as well.

  Of course, the cut had not been perfect with all of his friends.

  Koko squinted at the dragon. “Life’s a lot easier when you ignore your conscience, you know.” When the others just looked at him, the badger said, “Okay, okay. I give up. But when they build statues to us, there’d better be someone keeping the pigeons off me.”

  “I wouldn’t worry,” Kles sniffed. “Even pigeons have their standards.”

  “Show them the tun—,” Lord Resak began, and fell unconscious.

  Taqqiq waved a forepaw and called an Arctic fox scout over with a sharp bark.

  As the wolf gave the fox concise directions, Bayang worked the spell that shrank her to the size of the children. Even though she had been that same height on the straw wing, it still seemed strange to Leech to be at eye level with her.

  The dragon looked away quickly as if she, too, found her change in
perspective odd. “Now let’s go.”

  “Wait,” Taqqiq commanded. “There may still be some of Roland’s vermin skulking about. We’re going to check the entire palace and make sure it’s clear. Let a search party go ahead of you in case there are any surprises along the route.”

  The clan warriors were circling among one another and baying and yelping, working themselves up before they began the search. The bears, who had been assigned to the hunt, were roaring, standing on their hind legs, and rocking from one paw to another.

  Leaving Koko to see to Bayang, Leech and Scirye sidled through the warriors and back to Roxanna. “There’s a healer tending to Uncle Resak. She might be able to do something for Upach,” Leech suggested.

  Roxanna nodded gratefully at the suggestion. “At least, until I get word to my father to send Dr. Goldemar.”

  Behind them, Taqqiq barked an order and the chamber cleared as the clan warriors began to fan out through the tunnels that were available.

  “We’re going to go after Roland now,” Leech said.

  Roxanna spoke as if she were biting out the words: “Get him.”

  The smoke swirled within the pool. “Yes, hearing he’s dead would be the best cure for me,” Upach burbled.

  “And come back safe,” Roxanna urged.

  “We will,” Leech promised, and returned with Scirye to Bayang and Koko.

  The fox guide waited until the soldiers had gone ahead and then took them through a corridor on one side of the chamber. Three wolves and a bear accompanied them just in case. As they walked, their escorts continued to turn their heads, checking corners and testing the air. Their presence comforted Leech, who had seen how well the clan fought.

  The party moved through a series of tunnels, which grew progressively smaller. In some places, the ice worms had not roused yet, so Leech pulled back his glove so the Dancer could cast its faint light.

  Eventually, they had to leave the bear behind when they were reduced to crawling on their hands and knees. As the roughly finished walls closed in, they scraped their shoulders and bumped their heads. The passage began to tilt upward, and their progress slowed because they kept slipping, for they didn’t have the moss on their gloves and knees.

  They finally came to a passage that tapered so much the wolves had to stop. Here they had to wriggle upward on their bellies like snakes.

  But the fit was so tight that Bayang’s scales rasped against the ice and she gave a gasp, as the tunnel must have pressed against her injured wing.

  The last thirty feet, the passage had deliberately been left free of worms so there would be no telltale glow on the surface, and Leech was told to keep the Dancer hidden as a precaution. The darkness made the boy feel as if the glacier would crush him at any moment. He heard the howling winds outside dimly now, sounding like dying ghosts.

  Bayang, who was just behind their guide, stopped and flicked her tail as she whispered a warning: “We’re near the entrance. Pass the word.”

  Leech was next and had not realized she had halted and got a slap in the face with the tail tip. “Careful with the caboose,” he said, and then sent the word to Scirye, who was the fourth in line.

  The clan had left a thin sheet of ice covering the entrance so it would look the same as the rest of the glacier. That meant that they had to lie still now while they waited for the lead fox to dig through the ice. Their guide’s claws scraped rapidly against the surface.

  That was the hardest part of their journey. As long as Leech had been moving, he hadn’t thought about the darkness, but now that he could only lie there with the confining walls squeezing his arms against his sides, he felt as if he were suffocating, as if he were being buried alive in a coffin of ice. He could barely keep himself from screaming at the fox to hurry.

  It seemed to take forever until the first wisp of cold air slipped through the tunnel from the opening the fox had made. Leech waited with growing impatience as their guide widened the hole.

  Trying to distract himself, he made himself think about his friend Primo. Brave, kind Primo. When they had first met, Leech felt as if he had known Primo all his life. He had died all too soon, but Leech treasured their friendship. He’d been happy and, more important, he’d felt safe for the first time in a very difficult and insecure life.

  Finally Bayang whispered, “It’s open. Let’s go.”

  Her hide grated on the ice as she slid upward, and Leech scrabbled eagerly after her. Since it was night up above, his eyes couldn’t tell him when he had reached the surface. He was just suddenly aware that he was no longer being tightly gripped by tunnel walls. And then he crawled out of a hole in the front of the glacier and slid onto the frozen Arctic Ocean itself.

  It was nighttime again. The tunnel led to a spot in the glacier a few yards above the sea surface. The face of the glacier rose a hundred yards above them like a crystal cliff, gleaming in the moonlight.

  “Up you go,” Scirye said, helping to pull him out of the tunnel.

  Despite the magical charm protecting him, the first blast of cold made him gasp. Winds howled all around him, tearing at his clothes. Against the snow and in the dimness, he barely saw the fox scout casting about for a trace of Roland’s trail. And the shimmering cloud around Bayang meant she was already swelling to a size capable of taking on Badik again.

  Even though Koko was panting when he emerged, he still had enough breath to complain. “If Heaven wanted me to live in a burrow, it wouldn’t have made Frisco.” He collapsed on the snow-covered ice. “Give me cement and asphalt any day.”

  Leech stood, stretching the kinks out of his legs, anxious to be on the go after their icy confinement. “A little fresh air won’t kill you.”

  “Yeah, it’s the other critters breathing it that will,” Kles griped.

  Bayang stretched her forelegs in front of her like a cat. “Ah, this is a much more proper size.” She turned to Scirye. “While we’re waiting for a report, let’s unfold the wing. We ought to be ready before we summon Naue.”

  Scirye took out the bundle, removed the covering, and stowed that back inside her clothes before she handed the wing to the dragon.

  As Bayang unfolded it efficiently, Leech felt the irresistible desire to be up in the air away from the glacier. “I’ll scout around too,” he said as he pulled the disks off the iron ring.

  “You should wait here,” the dragon said, and then sighed. “But I don’t suppose I can stop you.”

  Leech couldn’t help noticing the change in phrasing. In the past, she would have ordered him to stay put. But now she seemed to be treating him more like an equal. “I only promised to follow your orders inside the palace. We’re outside now.” He grinned as he worked the spell on the disks.

  “Don’t take any unnecessary risks,” Bayang said. “If you see Roland and Badik, come back and fetch us.”

  Leech could feel the sky pulling him. “Will you quit fussing like a wet hen?” The need to escape the ice and be free was irresistible. He jumped upon the rings and began to rise.

  He didn’t care how cold the winds were, he felt like laughing now. The sky was where he belonged, not plodding through the snow, not trapped in ice. His body instinctively adjusted for the pushing and pulling of the air currents.

  He circled over his friends below. He felt the Dancer tickling his wrist, and when he looked at it he saw the ribbon was wriggling—as if it was as happy to be in the air as he was.

  “I’ll come back as soon as I spot them,” he promised Bayang. Then, with a cheery wave, he swooped down to skim along the surface, rising and falling to its undulations.

  In the moonlight, a fox’s tracks looked like rows of neat little stitches on a white shirt and Leech followed them until he saw the fuzzy fox. Because the newly fallen snow was loosely packed and her legs were short, she moved along in a bobbing motion.

  “Which way to Nova Hafnia?” Leech asked, reasoning that Roland was most likely going to take a direct route there.

  The fox rose on her
haunches and pointed.

  “Thanks,” Leech said, and headed that way, feeling almost as if he were drunk as he zipped along.

  His eyes were scanning his surroundings for any sign of Roland when the ice ahead of Leech suddenly exploded. Crouching, he weaved and dodged the falling lumps of ice. He was still thirty feet away from the opening when Badik’s head thrust out of the water and he flung himself toward the jagged edge of the hole. About a foot of the crust broke under his weight, but the rest of it held and he crawled out of the water.

  Roland was clinging to his back and water rilled downward from the pair.

  Leech remembered his promise to Bayang, but as he circled, getting ready to return to the glacier, he saw Roland frantically re-loading his revolver. Maybe this was their chance to knock him out while he couldn’t fire.

  Don’t wait, the voice urged. You’ll never have a better chance.

  Taking off his other armband, Leech changed it into a weapon as he executed a loop and headed back. As he picked up speed, he felt a fierce exultation.

  Yes, take care of them first and then the dragon, the voice whispered to him.

  Who are you? Leech asked the voice. What did you mean when you said that you were me?

  I’m you, the first Lee No Cha, the voice snickered.

  Startled, Leech lurched, almost piling into the snow, but righted himself in time. He remembered what Bayang had told him about that Lee No Cha: how he had killed a dragon prince and then skinned him and turned part of his hide into a belt.

  Did you really murder a dragon? Leech asked.

  He had it coming, the voice said defiantly.

  Leech felt his horror and revulsion grow. And then you skinned him.

  I needed a present for my father, the voice answered defensively.

  Well, I’m not that way now, Leech told the voice. So go away.

  I’m just trying to save you, you fool, the voice told him petulantly.

  Well, if you don’t shut up now, you’ll get us killed, Leech ordered the voice. Gratefully, the whispering stopped.

  Roland hadn’t seen him yet. Instead, Roland twisted around and pointed his pistol at the ocean. A second later, a narwhal horn stabbed out of the choppy water and a slick, domed head peered out. The narwhal disappeared before Roland fired. The bullet sent spray upward. Another horn rose and a different narwhal bobbed to the surface. Again Roland missed.