by Clark Bolton
“I don’t know, Mother,” he said with a low bow. “May I send word—”
He was cut off again by a shove from Shu-Whet, who then dragged him out of the hall, with a very sad As-Cheen watching helplessly. Minutes later he was thrown again into the white corridor section of the Mother’s stronghold.
“Let me send word to the palace,” Ich-Mek pleaded to a stalwart-looking Shu-Whet.
Shu-Whet looked about to close the door and walk away, but then gestured with his hands as if casting a spell. It was half-hearted, Ich-Mek realized; obviously Shu-Whet wanted something from him.
“I am a dragon-mage…I could teach you,” Ich-Mek blurted out in desperation.
“You are an apprentice,” Shu-Whet replied with contempt. “You are nothing to a snow-master.”
Ich-Mek suspected he was lying; what else could he be suggesting? “I know much,” Ich-Mek said in his own defense.
“Enough only to attract the Scarm,” Shu-Whet replied. “These halls do not fear them.”
It was the second mention of Scarm that Ich-Mek could recall. Tang had said they came in the night for those who didn’t wear an Owesek-ring. He tried hard, but couldn’t remember ever mentioning the word while imprisoned here.
“I will teach then…if you do not fear the Scarm,” Ich-Mek suggested nervously, as he expected at any moment to be struck by Shu-Whet’s spear.
Shu-Whet glared at him contemptuously for several moments before slamming the door shut. Ich-Mek then walked carefully down the slippery passageway until reaching the hole in the wall As-Cheen had originally made for them. It marked the entrance to his cell; he thought of the two rooms as such now.
He began sobbing in despair as he was sure now that the Mother cared nothing for him. She wanted the Emperor, or the palace-mages, to come court her. Why she had no understanding of his worth was beyond belief. He was a dragon-mage; the first one in perhaps a century.
He was sitting now on the bench where the frozen corpse had once sat. They had set the body down and thrown a blanket over it and the other body so as not to have to look at them any longer. Wondering now why he shouldn’t think the same fate awaited him, he was surprised to see As-Cheen had come.
“Where’s Tass?” he asked as he wipped the tears from his eyes, and then winced a little when she did the same to her own.
She gestured off down the corridor in reply, then came to squat near him. As-Cheen stared at him a long time, until he began to feel uncomfortable. He then moved off into the smaller chamber and sat on the blankets there. Seeing her peek in, he pretended to write in his hand to let her know he missed his spell-book. He failed to notice when she left.
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A whole day went by without a visit from As-Cheen, which was unusual these days. Ich-Mek wasn’t sure it was actually a day, since nothing in the white corridors gave any clue as to what was taking place in the outside world. When she did show up she was carrying a large bag, which she slid across the frozen floor to him.
With a glance at Tass, who seemed suspicious of the bag, Ich-Mek then gently dumped out the contents. Dozens of stiff scrolls now lay piled at his feet. Some had nodules of ice stuck to them and were partially shredded as if they had been frozen to something, and then torn free.
“Ahh!” Ich-Mek exclaimed in delight as he began searching through them. “Thank you, As-Cheen.”
“Good?” she asked as she came to squat by him.
“Yes! Good!”
His enthusiasm began to fade a little after he found nothing compelling about the first few scrolls he examined. But when he found a spell-scroll, he sat back hard on the floor in astonishment.
Reading it with care for several minutes he then declared, “It’s a divination scroll! For predicting weather, I think.”
Tass had looked excited at first, but then gave him a look that questioned Ich-Mek’s enthusiasm. “You are a dragon-mage,” Tass stated emotionlessly.
Shaking off Tass’s obvious doubt for the worth of the scrolls, Ich-Mek then began carefully categorizing them. Most were letters that didn’t seem to have any connection to one another, and other scrolls looked to be descriptions of events, like ceremonies and building projects. Another two were spell-scrolls.
“How did you know?” Ich-Mek asked As-Cheen as he picked up the three spell-scrolls and went to sit on the bench.
“Good,” she replied gently.
He laughed at her, and she laughed back. He then became engrossed in the arcane-script upon the scrolls, so much so that he didn’t notice her leave again.
“This spirit loves you,” Tass remarked when Ich-Mek looked around for her.
“Her name is As-Cheen…Tass!” he said in mock anger before taking his scrolls to bed with him.
Other bags of scrolls followed, but still she wouldn’t bring him his spell-book. Tass had been stashing the scrolls, the ones Ich-Mek discarded, into the chimney above the firebox, for fear they would be noticed. Ich-Mek couldn’t think why anyone would care, but thought it likely a good idea.
It took him many days before As-Cheen delivered a spell-scroll that he thought actually useful. His first attempt at deciphering it told him that it was possibly useful for making copies of documents, much like the copy spell he had in his spell-book. It differed, though, and when he took a second look at it a day later, he concluded it was capable of not only making copies but of translating them.
“I need ink!” Ich-Mek called out as he rushed to greet As-Cheen as she crawled lithely through the hole in the wall.
“Good!” she replied as she let him come very close to her.
“Sorry…I mean…” he then stepped back and began making writing motions with his hands.
She frowned at his apparent attempt to ask her to retrieve the spell-book again. He quickly tried to explain that he didn’t mean that. At one point he took hold of her hand to turn her back toward the hole. She got angry and pushed him backward, then gave him a long spool of melodic words that he was pretty sure weren’t meant to be flattering.
“Please…I need…ink…and a quill,” he said slowly as he made writing motions again. In frustration, he looked around for something to show her. Picking up a scroll, he then got her to understand when he plucked some fur from his coat, and pretended to dip into the tin cup then write on the rice-paper.
He set his teeth in a wide grin, and froze it on his face for a very long time. She finally left after giving him a questionable look. Resisting the urge to follow her, Ich-Mek then went back to his scrolls to try and pass some time.
When she showed up hours later with a bottle of frozen ink, he was ecstatic; so much so that Tass took it away from him, declaring, “You are love-sick! She is a spirit who will devour you in your bed!”
Ich-Mek gritted his teeth and slowly moved to corner Tass. “Give that back to me!” he said threateningly.
A moment later As-Cheen snatched it out of Tass’s hand, and handed it back to Ich-Mek. The two males then backed down silently.
“Can you write?” Ich-Mek tried to ask of As-Cheen, after he began heating the bottle of ink with a cantrip.
She didn’t seem to understand, which was okay for now, he decided, as he went about looking for something that would function as a quill. There were still scraps of wood in the room, so he carefully separated a splinter off one. Then he took one of the scrolls he considered of no use, and began writing on it.
“I need a sample in her language,” he said aloud suddenly, when he realized this exercise could very well be pointless without it.
With some gentle coaxing, he got her to write her name, all the while sweating over the possibility she couldn’t write at all. She could, though, and so he then found himself in possession of a very feminine bit of script, in a language and character-set he had never seen before. After staring at it for a while he began to think it oddly akin to arcane-script.
“Can you cast spells?” he asked her with a smile.
She looked at him
quizzically before poking him in the shoulder playfully. He then tried to get her to step back, which she refused to do until he pretended to get angry. Then he cast the translation spell for the first time. She stared at the text in amazement, then nodded her head.
He had asked her in writing if she knew where his spell-book was. Questions from the both of them were then written and translated in furious succession until his heart beat so fast from the spell-casting that he forced himself to lay down on the cold floor.
After a few minutes of lying there catching his breath, he declared to Tass, “She’s an elf!”
__________________________
Ich-Mek began planning their escape, which to him seemed much like his escape from Key-Tar-Om; however, Tass thought less so of that comparison; the man didn’t seem to grasp the subtleties involved, and seemed to believe the way to free themselves was to first rid themselves of As-Cheen, then burrow out somehow.
“She is an elf…not a goblin!” Ich-Mek kept telling Tass, who seemed unaware of the distinction.
Ich-Mek didn’t really know the difference, not ever having seen either one before. He had read of both, though briefly. Elves were a mysterious race akin to men, he knew. Legends mentioned them in connection with ancient kings and emperors, including those of Ibu-Jek. Goblins were evil overlords who practiced cannibalism and lived in caves, which, he did concede to Tass, sounded a little bit like the Cold-Mother.
“We need to find better spells,” he explained to As-Cheen, who was starting to better understand his spoken words now. He also was catching on to elfish a little.
“No good!” she would tell him with hands on her hips.
“I’ll go with you,” he urged. “I have spells that will help us locate scrolls!”
She had let them know a little bit about her life before being taken in by the Cold-Mother. It had surprised Ich-Mek that she wasn’t born among these elves but rather came from another group. The Valley of Steam was the place she called home. It was from there she apparently had been recruited to serve the Mother.
Her tale sounded like his own life story, Ich-Mek had come to realize. Taken at a young age to a foreign place, then trained to become a mage – in her case by a snow-master, which was what Shu-Whet called himself. It had come as a shock to Ich-Mek that she considered herself Shu-Whet’s apprentice. She wasn’t a willing one, he was sure.
“Tell her we have to do this, Tass!” Ich-Mek urged. “We’ll sneak down with her through the crevice. Come back before we are missed.”
“Elves do not listen,” Tass replied in a stubborn tone.
Ich-Mek threw up his hands in frustration, then glared at As-Cheen. “She says I’m weak.”
“Ha-ha!” Tass cackled loudly. “You should not tell her such truths!”
As-Cheen laughed with Tass until Ich-Mek became noticeably angry. “I’ve survived a dragon! What have you two survived?” he said loudly. “Remember, I’m a dragon-mage!”
Embarrassed now by his outburst, Ich-Mek sat down on the bench and sulked. His belly was doing flips again as for countless days he had eaten mostly mushrooms.
As-Cheen came over to squat by him after a time. “You weak,” she said in a soft tone, then frowned up at him.
Striving to control his anger, he said softly, “I’m not weak. You’re just a girl.”
“She is a spirit!” Tass proclaimed once again. “She has stolen your heart. Now take hers!”
Ich-Mek shook his head as he scowled at Tass. “Quit saying that. I have a fiancée!”
“Tell her of Yi-La!” Tass suggested forcefully. “But do not expect help from her afterwards.”
Ich-Mek looked down with embarrassment at As-Cheen, whom he was sure didn’t quite understand the conversation. He hadn’t told her about Yi-La, and wasn’t planning to, ever. There seemed no point in it.
“We have to go,” he said sincerely with a tear in his eye. “I’ll die here.”
__________________________
As-Cheen climbed down with ease, and then Ich-Mek all but fell on her. The brownish-colored ice under their feet looked filthy to him. The only light came from above, where Tass now stood, looking down at them. He cast a glow cantrip on a piece of wood for each of them, then signaled for Tass to come down.
As-Cheen had explained some of what to expect down here; this was where she had found the scrolls. Apparently the passages here ran deep into the mountain, and were, for the most part, abandoned. In chambers long forgotten, she had salvaged scrolls to bring to Ich-Mek – scrolls from chambers that Ich-Mek suspected once housed visiting mages, and others who had come willingly to the Cold-Mother.
These facts seemed to jar with what he had garnered from some of the documents As-Cheen had brought him. Also it matched what little he had learned from his short conversations with the Mother, and with Shu-Whet. They hinted at a former greatness, much like the way Ober-Toss spoke of a past Key-Tar-Om.
“This is huge, isn’t it?” Ich-Mek said to Tass as he gazed down the passage.
There was a hall ahead, and before it was a partially collapsed chamber with several doorways. As-Cheen had written that much of the place was not accessible to her, and this he could now understand. The place was a ruin, and he questioned now their decision to go into it.
With no hesitation, she led them down the passage and then through hall after hall, until Tass warned they could get lost. The warning surprised Ich-Mek a little, until he concluded such a place was not familiar to a simple man like Tass. Mountains and villages were Tass’s domain, and though Ich-Mek had never been in such grand halls, he felt sure he could handle it better than Tass.
“How do you know where to go?” he asked her.
She hushed him, then took his hand to lead him down a side passageway. Here they came to a chamber, and within he saw why she had insisted on stealth: the place reeked of urine, and there was clear evidence that it had been occupied once.
“Yeti,” Tass whispered after looking in.
Ich-Mek shook his head at the suggestion. “You thought Shu-Whet was a yeti.”
“Do not doubt,” Tass hissed.
“Softly,” As-Cheen then whispered, before leading on.
At times their movement became difficult. On top of ice, they had to deal with fallen timbers and blocks of stone. At one point they came to a place littered with frozen waste, which Tass proclaimed was that of bats.
“It has been long,” Tass informed them as he looked to the ceiling.
“How did they get in?” Ich-Mek asked.
“Cracks are too small for us,” Tass replied as he pointed them out.
Ich-Mek began to think there really could be yetis down here. After Ich-Mek asking her again how she knew where to find scrolls, As-Cheen lead them on a while, then stopped at an archway. Pointing to the huge seal inscribed on it, she whispered, “Owesek.”
“I’ve seen this before,” Ich-Mek declared a little too loudly as he stared at the seal, which earned him a scolding from both his companions.
“This is the seal you must break,” Tass declared suddenly. “It is on the temple of my village.”
Ich-Mek continued to stare at it for a few moments. “I don’t know what that means, Tass,” he admitted.
He had seen the seal before, though, he was sure. In the library at Key-Tar-Om the symbol had been on several spell-scrolls. It was even reproduced in some of the commentaries on the text he had had instructors search through. Still he wasn’t sure exactly what it meant.
“This is where you found the scrolls?” he asked her.
“Yes,” she replied, then pointed on down the way they had been heading and added, “More!”
It became apparent to Ich-Mek that she had looted all the chambers they had encountered so far. He still felt confident that he could, with magic, find things she had missed. As they went even further into the mountain he began to feel impatient, and Tass was looking the same.
“How far will you go?” he asked her.
“More!” she said again.
“We need to find more scrolls! Let me search back there,” he told her as he motioned back the way they had come.
She seemed to understand, but then insisted again that they keep going. Apparently she wanted to show them something. They continued to follow her in silence until she led them to where the passageway was bisected by a large crevice. It was clearly too far across to jump, and when Ich-Mek looked down he could just about make out objects far below.
Casting another glow cantrip, this time down as far as the spell would allow, he jumped back when he saw the remains of some creature. Ignoring As-Cheen’s giggle, he then peered down again to see what it was. Besides rotting timbers, he saw scattered bones, and the furry remains of a creature he couldn’t recognize.
Both he and Tass said “Yeti” at the same time. Whatever it had been, it looked too desiccated to identify now. As-Cheen then began explaining with hand gestures, and a few words of Ibu-Jek, that she had pushed one of the big timbers down.
“No!” she laughed as she played out a scenario, where someone stretched out a timber across to where they now stood. She then showed how she had kicked it down repeatedly.
Ich-Mek found it frightening to think she had done this when all alone down here. Looking again at the creature below, he decided he wouldn’t ever want to meet a live one.
“Are you a mage?” he asked, and not for the first time.
She went quiet, then slowly shook her head. He found her answer unsatisfactory. Before he could ask her more, she stepped back then literally ran along the side of the passageway until she was able to leap the remaining distance across.
“No!” Tass hissed when it became clear she expected them to do the same. “We are not spirits.”
Ich-Mek shook his head once again. “She is an elf, Tass,” he hissed as he formed a plan on how to cross.