by C F Welburn
The wind may have stopped once within, but it still howled through the ice, making it creak and moan as though in ancient, inconsolable mourning.
There were several surrealistic aspects about the vast chamber they found themselves in: the shades of blue that shifted before their eyes like a shoal of fish changing direction in the sun, the distant drips, the uneasy creaks, the ghostly chimes of dreaming crystals.
Beneath the ice were ephemeral flashes of colour, red here, green there, and Balagir slowly recognised them to be the other ashen, each making their way through their own ice temple. Flickering in and out of existence as they crossed one faceted surface to another.
The central chamber was a marvel in itself. Its convoluted ceiling arched like some vast cathedral turned inside out and blasted with ice. In the centre of the great room was a jagged shard of ice that imprisoned a portal; the faintest hint of melody from the multi-dimensional fire leaked from within.
Four cold sconces were set at each corner, and at once their path seemed obvious. They were to enter each cave, ignite the sconces, and escape. The piper, for all his artistry and illusion, had not been too cryptic in the central design. Balagir felt almost cheated.
Yet what lay within each tunnel remained to be seen, and all of this—the noise, the lights, the general premise—lay overshadowed by something more arresting still. Frozen within the back wall was a huge creature, shaggy with white hair, a ghastly maul on its gruesome face. It reared on hind legs to stand thrice as tall as any present.
“A yetir,” Freya noted grimly. “I’ve heard of these.”
With the childish confidence of an urchin taunting beasts at a circus, Ginike walked over and tapped the ice. “Who you calling ugly?” he asked.
“Unless you want your looks—and luck—to considerably worsen, we should hurry,” Freya growled. Balagir agreed, eyeing the flitting shapes of their competitors already about their tasks. If the final challenge had taught him anything, it was that tardiness had its consequences. “Let’s make haste.”
They elected a tunnel on the strategy that it was the closest at hand, half running, half sliding across the ice and beneath its jagged-toothed threshold. If the door was the mouth, then the narrow tunnel was the throat, convoluted and ribbed, spilling out into the stomach of a chamber.
On the far side they saw the first flame, ghostly blue, presumably destined to light the corresponding sconce in the central chamber. Deciding what must be done was one thing, fulfilling it quite another; for the chamber was filled with a swirling water the colour of night. Floating thereon were several flat ice masses, moving lazily with the deep, sluggish current.
“Any ideas?” Kiela asked, her breath escaping in a white cloud.
“Could not you move your shadow across?” Ginike asked, shirking responsibility at the first. Balagir shuddered, and not just from the cold.
“The shadow-cloak has its… complications,” he said, not mentioning the shades he had encountered. “Besides, it has no form. I’d be unable to bear the flame back.”
They no doubt wondered how he had managed to release the door mechanisms, but he paid their lingering gazes no heed as he ran through his inventory. He instantly discounted his boots, not keen to become impaled on a vicious icicle. Neither could he think of a use for the kalaqai; the distance would strain their bond beyond prudence. When no other suggestions were forthcoming, he spoke.
“I’ve something that might give us some foresight, though we’ll lose time.”
“Then get on with it,” Freya snapped, almost making him wish she had accepted the jaegir’s offer. Wordlessly, he withdrew the mask, donned it, and stepped a short span into the future to foreshadow the crossing.
He leapt onto the first swirling island, which pitched precariously beneath his feet but otherwise held. He waited as it moved on its slow circuit, and two more icebergs floated into reach. He leapt, but no sooner had his foot touched the surface than it yielded and, with a pulse-thumping crack, plunged him into a darkness so chill it seared. He came to, gasping and shivering on the floor, the mask lying several feet away where he had torn it off in the desperate throes of suffocation.
“Balagir?” Kiela peered down, concerned.
“I’m f-f-fine,” he managed, almost shattering his teeth with so shuddering a jaw. If the premonition left him so cold, he dreaded the reality.
He was reluctant to refit the mask, but time was of the essence. This time he made it to the third platform, which split, widening so that one leg dipped momentarily into the water before he was able propel himself to the next platform. Upon landing, his brittle leg smashed. He looked in horror at the frozen, footless stump before tottering into the icy depths once more.
“Balagir?!” It was Kiela again.
“G-Give m-me the m-mask.”
“You don’t have to—”
“N-Now,” he stammered resolutely.
The third time only the final platform betrayed him, but he knew a clear, if perilous, path. When he opened his eyes to a circle of concerned faces, he told them he was ready. He slid the mask back in his bag.
“If I don’t make it—”
“You have to,” Freya said, in a way that sounded as threatening as it did encouraging. He took a deep breath and then for the first time, zigzagged a treacherous path across to the far side.
They cheered as he took the blue fire from the sconce, and just as he was about to cast it over, a small opening melted to reveal a side tunnel leading back around the water. He noticed then something eerie behind the ice. Bodiless faces, watching him. He saw the shock of red hair, a green hat, the pale woman; then he saw themselves. Two of the faces were a transparent blue, showing that at least two members of other groups had fallen prey to the ice trap. He did not have time to take heart, for he could see reflected in the prisms and odd angles that at least one other blue flame was on the move, and that they were not the leaders.
They had reached the central chamber when the whole world shook. In one of the reflections, a flame had triggered an alarming shifting in the ice. Without warning, an icicle fell from above, swift as a bolt of lightning. Ginike watched helplessly as it sliced a line so deep down his forearm that his hand was left dangling by a frosty thread of flesh. Cracks appeared in the back wall where the yetir yet slept.
Balagir wasted no time on condolence and touched the blue flame to the sconce, which instantly radiated with the ethereal light. The central shard grew slightly more transparent, letting the piper’s faint tune drift across the void.
“My hand…” Ginike muttered with the surrealism of a drunkard who had woken to find his shoe missing.
Balagir cursed. If they were to defeat the yetir, they would need as close to a full company as they could get. Ginike was not the first he would look to for a fighter, but there was a certain comfort in numbers, if only for protective fodder.
“Stay here,” he ordered as Freya and Kiela were already making their way to the second tunnel. “Try to keep warm. And stop bleeding.” It would have been sound advice had his words not been cut short as he watched Ginike’s already misshapen head split down to his navel. Balagir blinked. That image would stay with him for some time. As more icicles crashed down, they turned and fled as neath a hail of arrows.
The second tunnel led out onto a snow-covered ledge, sloping away to a terrifying chasm. On the far side, on a lone snowy peak, burned the blue flame.
“Thoughts?”
“Down there, look, a bridge.” Kiela gestured. Balagir squinted and at first saw nothing. Then he noticed how the snowflakes seemed to rest on some narrow, transparent surface. Freya began to descend, but Balagir grabbed her shoulder.
“Wait,” he advised. “See how the snow rests for a moment and then falls? It’s as if the bridge is there for only an instant.” They studied and saw that indeed the solidity of the invisible structure seemed to pass swiftly across the void, the snow resting and falling in a sequence that betrayed its substantiality.
“Just a moment,” Balagir said, donning the mask once more.
Presently he lowered it. “No, you can’t.”
“I’m fast. I know what—”
“I’ve just seen you fall three times. Your scream is ridiculous, by the way.”
Freya snorted. “You’d scream just as loud.”
He couldn’t deny it. One may be immune to death here, but immunity from the ever-recurring memory of death was not granted. Such had been Rych’s undoing. What’s more, the void had no apparent bottom. Maybe it would not bring death, but a torturous plummet until the challenge was eventually completed. If it was ever completed.
“Then what do you suggest?”
“Fetch Ginike’s shield,” he said quickly.
“Me?” Freya challenged.
“You just said you were fast. Now go! We don’t know how far behind we are. Let’s avoid another avalanche when we’re halfway across!” To his surprise, Freya obeyed with only the slightest of scowls and took off at a run. Maybe they could come to work together after all.
A few minutes later, and Freya was back with Ginike’s blood-splattered shield.
“I hope it will serve us better than it served him,” she said.
“It’s up to you now, Kiela,” Balagir said.
“Why her?”
“Because she’s lighter than you.” He winced even as he said it; there were other ways of dying here than pitfalls. “You can’t argue with facts.” He shrugged, uncomfortably. “I’ve seen all outcomes—she’s the only one who can succeed. I’d let you try to prove me wrong if we had more than one shield.” Freya snarled, shoved the shield towards Kiela, and stepped back without an utterance of well-wishing.
Balagir helped her position the shield exactly as he had seen work, holding it steady as she sat.
“Hold tight, and remember, when you feel the shield tilt back, lean forward. It will happen towards the end, when the path starts to overtake you.” Kiela nodded, uncertainly. “We have one shot. Good luck.”
“No pressure then,” she said with a wryness that defied her shaking hands.
Balagir positioned himself behind her and counted as the bridge shifted below. He rocked the shield back and forth, waiting for the moment; erring a fraction would result in the sled overshooting or under-reaching the critical section. The mask had helped, but it was up to him to get it right when it mattered. Back, forth—pause; back, forth—now! And he shoved with all his might.
They could but watch anxiously as the sled sped down the snowy decline and connected sharply with the invisible bridge. Despite her velocity, she only barely kept up with the ephemeral surface; knuckles white as it caught up with her, leaning forward as it threatened to overtake her, then leaping forward to grasp at the far icy ledge. The bridge was gone, reset to begin once more, and the shield spun off down into the darkness like a feather in the night. Kiela hauled herself up and raised her hand.
On the far side of the chasm, she seized the second blue fire, and instantly the transparent bridge became solid, the snowflakes swiftly defining its surface.
As she made her way back, the ice wall behind them revealed several faces, some alive and others blue. Ginike’s crooked face had a somewhat bemused expression, as though he pondered a devious riddle or strove for a witty retort.
He was heartened to see that their group had so far suffered the least causalities. From the first only two remained; the red-haired ashen’s hair was no longer red, and the green jaunty ashen was no longer green. Still, the hard-faced Jaegir and the triangle-scarred man remained.
Of the second group, only one had perished; the squat ‘gnilo with the crushing hammer stared back bluely at them. The two idris and the irascible woman were still in action though, and remained their biggest rivals.
The third group had suffered a loss of half of its company. The yellow-robed man was now blue, and the pierced black-eye likewise had adopted an azure hue. The pale woman, however, was almost the same shade as the wall, but very much alive, eyes colder than the ice itself. Surprisingly, the machine-augmented gillard still accompanied her and had probably seen them through the first watery chamber.
By the time Balagir had taken this in, Kiela had returned, and they raced to thrust the second blue flame into the sconce. It was their turn to revel now, as the central shard melted and the jumbled reflections in the walls showed the others being bombarded by a rain of icicles. There was scant time for jubilation, however, and even as they reached the third tunnel, their own chamber began to shake, informing them that at least one other had lit the second flame.
The third tunnel led down to a perfectly circular chamber. Dominating its circumference stood eight jagged ice crystals of varying forms and dimensions. Trapped in a central white prism blazed the third flame.
“Now what?” Balagir muttered ominously, but he was swiftly bade to silence by Kiela’s raised hand.
“Listen,” she hissed.
From on high, icicles dripped, their frozen droplets striking the crystals in such an order as to send out ghostly chimes. It became clear that these were not just random acts of melting, but a tune.
“It’s the piper’s tune,” Kiela said distantly.
“The challenge tune.” Freya nodded.
“We must strike the crystals in the correct order,” Balagir surmised, stepping from the platform. Instantly, the droplets stopped. “As if it would be so simple.”
He returned, and they attempted to memorise the pattern and timing of the drops, all the while conscious of the other groups beating them to it. Once they had seen the process several times, each remembered their own section: Freya the first, Kiela the second, and Balagir the final.
There may have been eight crystals, yet there were thrice as many notes with some crystals being struck once and others several times in wavering rhythms. They spaced themselves out so all crystals were within reach. Timing would be as crucial as tune.
Whilst it was still fresh in their ears, Freya struck the first crystal, and it rang out correctly. Kiela hit the second and Balagir the third. All good so far. They made it to the tenth change before Kiela made a mistake. Starting over again was bad enough; what they had not expected were the blue batlings that flittered in through an upper fissure.
“Ignore them.” Freya cursed, beginning the tune once more. Her command was easier implied than implemented as the creatures darted about them in a blue blizzard. One touched Balagir’s hand, and as he watched, his knuckles turned blue.
“Don’t let them touch you!” he cried, but it was too late. Several had descended on Kiela. Her legs were entirely frozen. She went to scream, and one glided into her mouth, rendering her statuesque.
It was Freya’s turn to shine. She whipped her bow from her back, and with seven arrows shattered the batlings, sending blue shards scattering across the floor, tinkling like tiny bells. The final batling was emerging from Kiela’s mouth, which it had made its cave. Freya did not hesitate, but sent an arrow through the batling and through the frozen ashen, dusting the floor with shards both red and blue. Balagir looked in horror at the frozen finger resting against his boot. Freya shrugged as coldly as if a batling had somehow touched her heart.
“No more mistakes,” she warned with all the superfluousness of telling someone not to jump off a cliff.
So once more they tried, dreading the mistake which would bring a fresh batch down upon them. He tried to recall the tune, hummed it in his head. Only once did he hesitate between two crystals. He blindly lunged, and was rewarded with the correct chime. Taking turns, the tune echoed majestically about the chamber, as if the piper himself were present, playing on pipes of ice.
With a crack the flame was laid bare, and they swiftly bore it back to the central chamber, leaving only the shards of Kiela mingled with broken batlings on the floor.
Now more blue faces watched on from the walls, though they were still not alone; one
of the idris retained his pigment, as did the white woman and gillard.
Balagir’s hand had almost regained sensation when he thrust the third blue flame into its sconce. The central prism thinned so as to let the piper’s heroic tune fill the chamber. It did not thaw completely, however; one torch remained to be lit. There was no need to ask where the final flame would be found, for their heads spun as the back wall creaked alarmingly.
The beast within did not wait for its prison to completely dissolve before it flung itself free, skidding across the chamber amidst a shower of clinking crystals. It focused its blue eyes on Freya and leapt; only instinct allowed her to dodge, sending the shaggy creature sliding into the wall with a crunch. It turned, dazed; then it snarled and charged once more.
Freya backed away, trying to put the torches between her and the predator. She had the chance to release three arrows into its hide before it reached her. It pinned her with a paw the size of her torso as it casually plucked the arrows out of its shoulder.
Balagir was already running at this point, full tilt, sword drawn with a cry in his throat. The beast brushed him aside as if to say it were busy and to wait his turn. By the time he had stopped sliding and raised his head, the beast’s maw was dripping red, and Freya’s head was gone. He blinked, unable to take it in. The red blood spurting from her neck looked so warm, so full of impossible life in this cold, dead tomb.
Then the yetir turned on him, slobbering and worrying the skull as though it were a nut. As it roared, a blue light shone out of its red, wet mouth. Panic almost took him then, and it was all he could do to raise his sword as the creature leapt.
It failed him. As well wield a blade of grass. He watched forlornly as it clanked away across the floor. Suddenly the huge paw had him pressed down so hard he heard his ribs crack. Something popped inside him, stealing his breath. With some final futile defiance, he activated his boots and pushed upwards. It shifted the creature slightly, but only in the way a man might move a heavy wardrobe across a room. He activated his strength-band and, once more, barely managed to deflect the beast’s head as it sunk to devour him.