Taking his weight with his arms, he swung out a little and thudded his boots into the ice, jarringly, the tremor travelling up the rope.
“Are you all right?” Fhord’s shout echoed.
“Aye – just making footholds!”
Again, he swung and this time a great splinter came away and revealed rock, black and wet, but at least it was a small sturdy foothold. He rested with his weight on the one foot for a while.
Then he lowered himself further down, his entire weight again shouldered by the others.
In this manner he descended.
After some distance, little light penetrated. It was a perpetually twilit place, purple and black, and colder than he had expected. Dimly perceptible was the opposite side of the chasm. About two arms’-length, he estimated. He hoped his guess was right as he yelled up, voice echoing, “I’m jumping across – now!”
And he launched himself into the void, dagger clasped in one hand, teeth gritted, fingers of his free hand clawlike.
The crossing of the intervening space seemed to last an age, then he slammed into hard unforgiving rock.
His knife-hand shuddered with the added impact but held, which was just as well, for his left hand merely grazed the knuckles and his feet thudded home without gaining any grip.
He hung by one hand on the end of his knife and unfastened his battle-axe. He hacked below to his left side and then above, creating hand- and footholds. “I’m on the other side!” he called reassuringly.
Now the hard part began. If he slipped the rope would automatically pull him towards the side of the chasm he had just descended and he would have to begin again; small consolation – at least now there were holds to use.
Armour clanking against rock, he swung his axe repeatedly, gouging out chunks of rock and ice that rained down on his helmet and shoulders, echoing, bouncing off into oblivion. Now, he was glad of the armour.
The climb up took three times as long as the descent.
As he finally scrambled over the lip of the chasm his axe-arm felt as weak as a babe’s. Ulran, he knew, would not have been fit enough.
“Packs first!” Alomar called. Icy breath of exertion floated away in clouds.
They looped the packs onto the rope and slid them across; the last to cross was Fhord’s, which must have been poorly fastened because of the cold attacking her fingers. The buckle slipped open and the pack tumbled down, crashing once against the chasm wall, dully, before silence pursued it. Most of her idols were inside, but she was too exhausted to care.
Using the rope held between Alomar and Ulran, she crossed hand over hand, not daring to glance down until her feet touched crisp snow on the other side.
Finally, Ulran – the rope secured to his waist – repeated Alomar’s descent and ascent and managed it with little effort on his part.
Dark of the First Sufinma shouldered its way across the sky as the trio descended the gradual slope to a kar.
All agreed they should make camp here in the hollow, the best shelter at this height they would find. As they dug into the snowy sides of the kar, the afterglow of sunset filled the varteron sky with its radiance.
But the sight was unable to lift Fhord. She had lost all but two of her charms.
***
Early on the First Durin they continued on their way, slipping and jarring down the slope to an overhang, over which Fhord and Alomar almost unintentionally glissaded and barely stopped short of the edge.
There was a virtual sheer drop to huge stone teeth a long way below, each jagged tooth of rock a good eight marks tall.
Beyond these, a thick mass of ice – an ice-sheet: a lake closed in yet with outlets for ice-melt, falling away at both sides down deep fissures that ran the length of each side of the pass.
Then, a rift valley configuration.
The ice-lake itself, Alomar reckoned, must be at least two marnmarks wide.
“Only one way through – and that’s down,” the warrior remarked. He turned to Fhord. “You can thank your gods we brought enough rope – we’d have been lost without it!”
For what seemed the hundredth time, he secured the rope to his waist, and the other to a nearby boulder. Then, without a word, he walked to the edge of the overhang and stepped over backwards.
Fhord’s heart somersaulted as she heard a heavy double thud. Her consternation must have shown.
“He’s roping down, Fhord,” explained the innman. “All that’s required of you is to thrust yourself out and slide your hands down the rope, gripping tight as you swing back into the rock face, landing evenly with both feet. As Alomar would say – simple.”
“If you say so!”
And it wasn’t too bad, she found, going next.
The initial thrust into space was frightening and the contact with the rock face was terrible, jarring her whole body, and she nearly slammed her face into the rock as well. But at the second attempt, she began to master the technique. Leaning out – against all the laws of self-preservation – she paid the rope out small lengths at a time and landed with both feet evenly. At each swing she became more confident and was surprised on reaching the bottom. But her gloves were now slit open with harsh rope burns and the cold swiftly knifed into her palms.
Ulran followed and upon reaching the ground turned and signalled to Alomar.
Two arrows were loosed in quick succession. Both hit the mark: the rope, severed near the lip of the overhang, coiled down near them.
The forest of teeth cut out a great deal of daylight and gave the place an uncanny aspect, sending forth echoes from their footfalls and accoutrements.
To their right, Ulran explained, was a narrow defile that joined this part of the pass with the ranvarron part they had avoided.
Navigating by the sun, they strove through the stone teeth all day till they reached the opening into the ice-lake.
Already it was darkening again and as nobody wished to tackle the ice-lake without benefit of daylight, they decided to wait. They camped on the edge of the gigantic teeth. “We should be in time – if all goes well,” Alomar declared.
Ulran nodded and coughed spasmodically and sought a shadowy niche away from the weak silver light of the incipient first quarter.
First Durinma would be a long night.
After seeing that Fhord was settled, Alomar crossed over to Ulran. Bent against the whistling wind, his fur cloak billowed and flapped. “We’ll never get a fire lit in these draughts,” Alomar remarked and knelt beside the innman. “How are you feeling now?”
For all his white pallor, Ulran smiled, teeth glinting momentarily. “I’ll live, Alomar, of that fact I can assure you.” He winced twice then settled himself against a stone pillar, slightly more comfortable.
“I still don’t see how that bane-viper could–”
Ulran’s uplifted hand cut the warrior short. “It has nothing to do with the snake, friend.” The innman squinted into the shadows where Fhord lay. “Is she asleep?” he asked, lowering his voice to a whisper.
“Yes, fatigue has taken her. She’s done well, though.”
“She has indeed, Alomar. But I don’t know how she would take the information I’m about to impart.”
Without a word, Alomar hunched a little closer, stone crunching slightly underfoot.
“Did you ever know of Mirmellor – Mirmellor Dhal?”
Alomar’s great shaggy head nodded. “Mirm the Poisoner. Yes, I saw him once.” He tensed, memory flooding his mind and body. “A small wiry man, young in age but ancient in his capacity for hate. Very few men affected me by their demeanour alone; but Mirm can be counted among them.” His voice turned quizzical. “But tell me, what has he to do with your illness?”
“He was the cause of it.”
The warrior’s question hung in the air, unsaid. Mirm was noted for his mephitic concoctions, none of which ever failed. Hideous death, sometimes accompanied by mind-wrenching disfigurement, these were the effects of his venomous potions. “How, Ulran? If he had ill-
will towards you, you’d not be here to tell me of it, that I warrant!”
“Almost correct, Alomar. It was about nine years ago–”
A chuckle passed Alomar’s lips. “That was roughly when he was found dead, wasn’t it? Mysterious circumstances, or so the rumours said.”
“True. At that time, someone wanted to get their hands on the Red Tellar. That in itself is not unusual – you’ve seen evidence that the Pleasure House still covets it now. However, this – person – she hired Mirmellor to eliminate me. And of course assassination was his whole reason for existence – he thrived on it! It was during a weak moment the reasons for which aren’t really relevant that my drink was administered with Angevanellian.”
“What’s Angevanellian?” queried Fhord, rising from the hard stony ground.
Ulran paused, eyed Alomar. The big warrior shrugged and grinned good-humouredly. “She’s made of sterner stuff than when you first met her, Ulran – let her in on your secret.”
Fhord came over, huddled close, rubbing her hands together. “I’m afraid I woke with a start a short while ago – I’d heard a stone crunching underfoot. I can’t understand it, my senses seem to have become unusually acute,” she said, bewildered, shaking her head. “I’ve overheard most of your tale, Ulran – I’m sorry.”
“That’s all right, Fhord.”
“But what is Angevanellian,” the psychic persisted.
“An extremely potent poison,” supplied Alomar. “One drop is enough to kill a roomful of people. It comes from the poison spines of the Edalam fish found only in Solitary Taal. The Tramaloma use it on their war arrows.”
“Alomar’s knowledge on the subject is accurate enough,” Ulran said, grinning at the immortal. “However, he did exaggerate slightly. It would have to be a small roomful.”
“How did you find out in time?”
“I didn’t – I drank it.”
“What!” Fhord’s exclamation echoed even above the continuous howling of the wind.
Alomar crouched where he was, thoughtful.
“I’m something of a connoisseur when it comes to wine,” Ulran carried on, “and at the time when Mirmellor made his play I was sampling a bottle of Very Special Goldalese Aurdela, one of the best wines of my natal city. As soon as the Aurdela hit my taste buds I knew that something was wrong.
“I spat the wine out – but of course I was too late, the poison was already taking effect. All else diminished before me, my whole being centred on my actions. I managed to flush my mouth till the after-taste of the tainted wine had gone, then I forced myself to drink large quantities of water to dilute whatever I had already swallowed or taken in through the roof of my mouth. My guards told me what happened next. They burst in to find me alone, lying in a deep trance with the faintest of pulses. The trance lasted fifty-nine days altogether.
“In that time I submerged completely, drowned by my subconscious. Fortunately, my training prepared me and my body well. Whilst in that trance I ceased to be me as a man but became my body, sensitive in every pore, every cell, every organ and bone, gruelling though it was, and finally – I don’t know when – I located the particle of Angevanellian. I was lucky – only one small particle had passed into my stomach and through the stomach wall into my system. I found it and isolated it. In isolating it I sacrificed an organ of my body, one of two used for the secretion of body fluids. It’s now cut off completely from the rest of my body; but, what is more important, so is the Angevanellian.”
Fhord sat with open mouth.
Then Alomar’s large hand on the city-dweller’s shoulder calmed her. “Ulran has more to say, I’m afraid,” he said, seriously.
“Indeed. The trouble was, Angevanellian always remains active. The barrier I’ve built around it cannot stop it indefinitely – my sacrifice has only postponed the inevitable.”
Now Fhord looked aghast at the innman.
Alomar’s visage remained unchanged. He had lived long, long enough to have known every twisting and turning irony of Fate. Life held no surprises for him. Now, if he had had the good fortune to be poisoned, then surely his end would have come at last, his oblivion assured? He shrugged the thought aside. “How long can you hold the process at bay?”
Ulran clapped a hand on Fhord. “Don’t look so alarmed. I’ve worked it out that I could last for a good twenty-five to thirty years from now – though this attack I’m suffering at the moment will probably knock off a few more moons.”
“Let me understand you correctly, Ulran,” Fhord’s voice was quivering, as was her whole frame, though not with the chill wind. “You mean you’re dying?”
“A fair interpretation. But, remember, my business constantly brings me into the path of danger. I’m fairly certain that I would never live out my allotted span of one-hundred-and-ten years. I’d wager any time that my death will be by a sword thrust, not Mirmellor’s poison!” He laughed, coughing slightly.
While Fhord sat speechless, Alomar remained ruminative.
It was clear to both men that Fhord was shaken. Then, disconcertingly, as Fhord eyed them both, she began to laugh.
Alomar lanced a dark look at her. “What’s the joke?”
“Don’t you see?” giggled Fhord. “We are! The fine trio – what irony!” She laughed again, words pitching higher and higher. “Alomar, the immortal, something that I would like to be. Ulran, the dying man, something that Alomar would like to be. And me – sometime mystic that nobody wants to be!” Hysteria overtook her.
Alomar swiftly rendered her unconscious.
Rubbing his knuckles, he said, “I tried to do it gently.”
“I know. Leave her now and let her sleep. Without dreams, I hope.”
Alomar wrapped Fhord in his own blankets. “One thing I would like to know–”
“Yes?”
“What happened to Mirmellor?”
“He met with an unfortunate accident the quarter after I recovered. Nobody wishes to remember, but it seems he quite happily quaffed his most vile poison, the slowest to react upon him, and walked the Manderranmeron Fault for about fifty-nine days. When he died, even the carrion wouldn’t touch him. As I said, nobody knew what could have frightened him so much for him to choose such a hideous death.”
***
Spectrum colours formed a corona round the moon, uncannily outlining its bright first quarter and the shadowed side. Night-wind screeched unremittingly through the stone teeth, like some gargantuan musician whistling a madman’s frenetic dance. Little sleep was had that night, the cold was so intense, the wind so cutting.
At dawn they were up, scattering the remaining embers of a quite ineffectual fire and moving stiff limbs to regain their circulation.
In the new day the ice-lake looked no less forbidding.
Alomar led, charily enough, with Ulran and Fhord following, all attached by a stout length of rope.
The watery film on the pond was quite deep and treacherous, threatening to slide their feet from under them at the slightest suggestion of imbalance. And if once they lost their balance they very probably would be pitched helter-skelter along the slippery surface all the way to the edge, to tumble over into any of the countless fissures.
The cold ice-melt soon penetrated their boots and numbed their feet; Alomar’s well-clad feet fared no better.
When they were halfway across, Fhord could espy the far edge, a great tumble of ice; it went down, but how far?
At last they attained the dubious safety of the tumbled heaps of block-ice at the edge of the ice-lake. Below them stretched rough-hewn weathered ice, falling away mark after mark.
Alomar shook his head.
Ulran nodded. “No way of getting down that!”
Fhord checked either side of the valley. Climbing high on both sides, huge rift valley steps gouged out of the rock. “Then – then, we’ve reached an impasse – after all we’ve been through!” Time with these two men had changed her: she was angry rather than depressed.
The innman placed
a steadying hand on her shoulder. “No – we’ll use the wall steps,” he said, and pointed to the four-mark deep stairs. The old sparkle had returned to his eyes. The innman again took the lead, without any comment from Courdour Alomar.
The descent took the rest of the day.
At one point Fhord feared they would be forced to sleep on a narrow mantle-shelf, exposed to the bitter elements, but shortly afterwards the going improved and they made good time. She ached in every fibre and believed her left shoulder-muscles had been pulled or at best strained when she’d lowered Alomar onto a handy shelf mid-way down to the side of an especially steep step.
But they had sought the easier route where possible, Ulran finding such chance ledges as sure-footedly as any mountain buck.
At other times they had to hand-traverse till calluses burst and sores suppurated in the ever-numbing cold.
Yet, she reminded herself again, they had accomplished it! For that alone she was content, hunched in front of a fire eating warm gruel and a chunk of honey-loaf. They passed round the frozen sack of water and sucked the ice-block.
This camp was ideally situated in a slight bend in the valley, protecting them from the funnel effect of the down-wind. They had found sheltering boulders by the thin trickle of ice-melt that streamed from the base of the tumbled ice-wall. All about them lay crisp snow, untouched till they trod over it.
Tonight, Fhord looked into the sky with a slightly lighter heart.
Halo-rings of white and red tint encircled the quarter moon, seen through a thin veil of night-cloud. Peaceful – she could hear the icicles dripping, the ice-melt gurgling, conveying the icy cold freshness of the water by its very sound. In complete contrast to the trek with the Kellan-Mesqa. But then she heard the distant warning rumbles of avalanches, and recalled the sad loss of Rakcra. Such beauty concealed menace. Yet she slept, dreamless.
They began their long trek into the pass proper on the Second Sabin of Darous. A winding, tiring trudge through snowdrifts and over icy boulders and massive slabs of rock that had long ago fallen from above.
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