by Ian Irvine
He frowned, checked that Colm wasn’t looking – he wasn’t – and held out his hand. Maelys gathered a handful of the gritty, crystalline snow, scrubbed bloody muck and scales off the leather pouch and handed it to him. Flydd slipped it into his pocket without looking at it, but Maelys couldn’t stop thinking about the mimemule. It had brought the virtual construct to life and, in an instant, created a portal that had previously taken Flydd an hour and a half to make. Not to mention the war hammer. Did it make whatever one imagined, or really wanted? No, there had to be more to it than that.
‘It might have been better to let him go down to Ketila,’ she said quietly. ‘He’s a broken man, Xervish. He’s lost everything.’
‘He knows where we’re going,’ said Flydd, ‘and what we’re looking for. The Numinator is a secret the God-Emperor may not be aware of and I could not allow Colm to reveal it, under any circumstances.’
She shivered at the meaning behind his words; the ruthless scrutator inside Flydd was not entirely dead. She’d liked and admired Flydd from the moment she met him, and knew that he felt the same way about her. Now she wondered what he might do to her if she ever stood in his way.
Her teeth chattered; it was desperately cold here. The blood and brains of the flappeter had frozen already; her toes were aching in her boots and icicles were forming on Flydd’s short beard. Colm began pacing back and forth, stamping his feet in a vain attempt to keep warm. The sun hung a hand’s breadth above the northern horizon but there was no warmth in its rays, and it was as dark as an overcast winter’s day after sunset.
‘My directions weren’t too wide of the mark, in the circumstances,’ said Flydd. ‘We’re on the inner edge of the Kara Agel, the Frozen Sea, and if I’m not mistaken that’s the Island of Noom just over there.’
Maelys looked in the direction he was facing and did not like what she saw. The Frozen Sea was a mass of ice, smooth in places, heaved up into broken slabs in others, with a dusting of snow which the wind had blown into dune-like drifts, rippled like sand. Elsewhere the snow had been scoured away to reveal bare grey ice. The Frozen Sea extended further than she could see in all directions, save to the south, the direction in which Flydd was pointing, where a low, rocky shore could be seen perhaps a third of a league away. Snow-covered hills ran off into the distance, yet she could not see a single tree, nor any signs of life.
‘What a miserable place. Why would anyone choose to live here?’ She rubbed her arms, shuddering with the cold; every breath hurt her nose and throat and lungs. Their clothes were utterly unsuitable for this climate, and they had no food with them. Wherever they were camping tonight, she hoped it was not far away.
‘To hide from the world?’ said Flydd. ‘Or to work on a great project unhindered? I cannot say, but here the Numinator has dwelt for more than a hundred years.’
‘The Tower of a Thousand Steps had better be nearby or we’ll freeze to death before we find it. How long until nightfall?’
‘Not long. The days are only a few hours long at this time of year, and the nights are eternal. Let’s get to shore. We might find something to eat there.’
‘Can’t we eat the flappeter?’
‘I wouldn’t recommend it, since it’s a creature flesh-formed by the God-Emperor himself, and he’s fond of his little jokes.’
She was rubbing her freezing arms when it occurred to her that the word mimemule was suggestive. Did it mimic thoughts, or turn them into reality? ‘Xervish,’ she said quietly. ‘If the mimemule –’
‘Not now!’
‘What I meant was, we’ve got to have warm clothing. Furs!’
‘I see. Good idea.’ He pulled out the leather pouch, touched his fingers to it, feeling the shape of the ball inside and subvocalising, Fur-lined pants and coat and boots and hood for us all, now.
Her garments transformed instantly, as did Flydd’s, then Colm’s. Colm stopped abruptly, looking down at his feet, then plodded on.
‘How does that work?’ said Maelys.
‘Later.’ Flydd surreptitiously closed his hand over the pouch and it vanished. Withdrawing the containers of trapped fire from his pockets, he vanished them as well, then looked sharply across at Colm. He need not have bothered. Colm was oblivious.
THIRTY-TWO
They slept in a snow cave dug into a hard-packed drift between rocks. It was miserable, even in their furs, and they had no fire, for Maelys hadn’t seen a tree or bush, or indeed anything living bar a crust of lichen growing on the exposed rocks. But not even the polar cold was as frigid and unrelenting as the bitterness and rage emanating from Colm. He blamed her for Ketila’s death as much as he blamed himself; no, more, for she had thrown away the amulet that might just have kept Rurr-shyve out of firing range. But more than either of them he blamed Flydd for not allowing him to go down to her and ease her last moments, then die with her and put an end to his agony.
‘Don’t mention my fire bottles here,’ said Flydd in the morning. ‘They don’t exist.’
Since he could not conjure food with the mimemule without alerting Colm, they left as soon as the sun slid sideways over the horizon. Flydd set off confidently inland, as if he knew where he was going, or following some lead he did not care to share with them, and within the hour they were climbing a hill whose dark, nodular stone protruded through a thin cover of snow.
‘That looks like an arch at the top,’ said Maelys, and it was, a massive arch of grey, hard stone, different from the rock it was founded upon. Its pillars were spans across at the base, square in outline, and carved with curving symbols or glyphs incised finger-deep into the stone. They reminded Maelys of the ones carved into the obelisk at the top of Mistmurk Mountain.
‘Curious,’ said Flydd as they climbed a steep track up to the arch, slipping on black ice. ‘It looks like Charon work. Could the Numinator be … no, of course not – they’re extinct.’
He was walking bent over. The crossbow bolt was troubling him but she could not cut it out here, either. Colm plodded along behind, head down. When they walked, he followed some twenty paces behind. The moment they stopped, he did too, always keeping his distance.
Beyond the arch, nothing could be seen but grey – grey cloud, grey sky, and a grey range covered in grey ice. The wind was stronger here and she had to keep her head lowered, for whenever she looked directly into it her eyes watered and the tears froze on her cheeks. Colm was standing down the slope, his hair and beard covered in frost. He had not spoken all day, and showed no interest in his surroundings.
‘The Tower of a Thousand Steps,’ said Flydd quietly, though there was a hard edge to his voice.
He had been tortured on the Numinator’s orders, Maelys recalled. Had he come for revenge? Is that why Flydd had agreed to lead them here?
‘Where?’ She could see nothing save the ice-hung crags of knotted schist to either side.
‘Look through the arch.’
‘I am.’
‘Look down.’
She wasn’t tall enough to see over the hump, so she stepped forward until she stood right in front of the arch, and squinted down into the shallow valley on the other side. Maelys cried out in wonder. ‘A tower made of glass!’
Through a low-hanging mist she could just make out what appeared to be a frozen lake – at least, partly frozen, for there was a curving rim of clear water in the middle, surrounding a small island. Jagged ridges ran up to a hill at its centre, from which the tower rose sharply to form a spire hundred of spans high. Between the two ridges closest to them, low down and not much higher than the level of the lake, a small opening in the hill appeared to lead into the base of the tower.
Flydd came up beside her. ‘Not glass, but ice.’
Maelys shivered. ‘How can anyone live in such a bleak place?’
‘It would take a particular kind of person. Though I dare say the tower is a lot warmer on the inside.’
‘But it’s ice!’
‘So is an igloo, yet people live comfortably in t
hem all winter. Come.’
He stopped by the arch, though, momentarily looking anxious.
‘Xervish?’ said Maelys.
‘Even the faintest of my scars throb at the memories,’ he said softly. ‘The pain permeates every cell and nerve. Not even renewal could erase the memory of what the Numinator did to me, and one day I’ll make it suffer an equal torment.’
‘Xervish?’ she repeated, alarmed. Renewal had definitely changed him; these days she seldom saw the tough but kindly old man she’d been so taken with on the plateau.
With an effort, he unclenched his jaw. ‘Don’t worry. I won’t allow personal difficulties to distract me from what we came here to do. Let’s go through.’
She caught his arm. ‘Wouldn’t it be better to go around? I don’t like the feel of the arch.’
‘I’m not going to slink in like a jackal,’ he said, striding through.
Maelys held her breath, just in case the arch was enchanted to keep people out, but nothing happened. She followed him down the slope, struggling to stay on her feet on the icy path. Flydd’s head darted around at every sound, every shift in the wind eddying across the knotted rock. Despite his brave words, he was frightened. He must be afraid that the Numinator would torture him again.
It was darker on the valley floor; mist hung around them, cold and dank, obscuring the tower and the way ahead. Maelys pulled her furs more tightly about her but could not keep the chill out. No wind stirred the air, and they plodded towards the frozen edge of the lake, their boots breaking through humps of crusted snow to the ice beneath.
At the edge, Flydd stopped. The ice on the lake looked as solid as stone here, though an irregular ring of clear water encircled the island. No, the ring of water, and its boundary with the ice, was in constant motion. Fresh ice was rapidly extending out from some edges, while at others it was melting just as quickly. Little bulges and embayments were constantly being created and destroyed as ice and clear water swept around the island, ice sometimes touching the inner shore momentarily before collapsing into treacherous water again.
‘How are we supposed to get across?’ said Maelys. ‘There’s no boat, no bridge …’
‘It’s a puzzle,’ said Flydd. ‘The patterns of water and ice are meant to keep intruders out, and we’ll have to solve it to get across.’
Maelys was no good at puzzles, so she studied the tower and waited for him to find a way. Its sides were decorated with arching, pointed crests and horns of ice. The place looked bleak and forbidding.
‘All right,’ said Flydd at length.
He led them out in a meandering line on the hard ice, which was almost black, all the way to the shifting grey boundary that marked the freezing and thawing inner barrier, like a moat around the island and the Tower of a Thousand Steps. There he stopped, frowning.
‘Flydd?’ said Maelys, looking up at the top of the tower anxiously.
‘Not now!’
He was still standing there half an hour later, his head sweeping this way and that, following the shifting patterns, and his lips moving all the while. Despite the wonderful fur-lined boots, Maelys’s feet were getting ever colder. She couldn’t feel her toes any more, though she could sense something at the top of the tower – a cold, hard presence that surely must have seen them ages ago. Why had she convinced Flydd to come here? She was completely out of her depth. She turned to look at Colm, still twenty paces back. He was staring at the cracked ice beneath his feet, as motionless as ever.
‘I have it!’ said Flydd. ‘Come on, and keep right at my heels. You too, Colm.’
Colm looked up at him blankly, then shuffled forwards.
‘Ready?’ said Flydd. ‘One, two, three, then run with me, all right?’
‘Yes,’ said Maelys, gulping.
‘One, two, three.’
He ran out towards the edge and off the hard black ice onto the thin grey stuff, which rocked beneath him. Maelys leapt after him, her numb feet hitting the ground as stiffly as wooden legs. She could see right through the ice she was standing on, and what was that gliding through the water below it?
Flydd caught her by the arm and yanked hard. ‘Run, you bloody little fool! Run as though your life depends on it; for surely it does.’
She ran after him. Just ahead, the berg they were on thinned to nothing, and beyond that was a patch of open water, about a span across. If she fell into it she would die, even if they got her out, for the cold would stop her heart. Flydd sprang high, rocking the berg beneath them. Maelys followed, landing a little shorter and skidding on slick ice. She just caught herself before she slid off the thawing side into the water, let out a squeal at her narrow escape, and pounded on.
Flydd was thumping up a shallow rise, but at the top he propped and turned sharply to the left. Maelys almost went over, for the rise ended in a crevasse where the berg was splitting in two, and this gap was spans across, too far to jump. She scrambled down and raced after him, jumped another gap, then another and another.
Flydd was constantly twisting and turning, and sometimes doubling back on himself, never running in the same direction for more than a few paces. It was like a competition as well as a race, for as fast as he ran, the bergs were forming in front of him and thawing behind. Ice a third of a span thick simply dissolved away in seconds, and ice of similar thickness formed in an instant on otherwise clear water.
‘One false step,’ he panted, ‘one miscalculation, and we’re gone.’ His cheeks were red and his eyes were glowing. He was exhilarated by the contest.
He went skidding sideways, then raced around a boss of ice like the dome of a citadel, emerged on the other side and tried desperately to stop, but slid down a glassy slope towards an uncrossable gap. He could not stop; the ice was so slick that he might have skated on it. He was going to end up in the water, and so was she.
At the last second Flydd propped on a chunk of nodular ice, managed to turn towards a slightly narrower gap, though one that was still far too wide to leap, and sprang for all his might. He soared high in the air and Maelys’s heart was in her mouth – he was going to land in the water.
At the last instant the water froze beneath him, just as he must have predicted; he struck the little berg with both feet, rocking it in the water, stumbled, then sprang for the berg on the other side of the gap.
‘Haaaiiiii!’ he roared in triumph, raising his fist to the sky, then ran on without looking back.
Maelys followed him across, her heart pounding and her knees weak. She was sweating in her furs already. The race went on for another few minutes, and Flydd nearly went into the water many times. Maelys had more narrow escapes than she cared to think about before she finally lurched off the last recrystallised berg onto solid ground and fell to her knees. Shortly Colm came after them, lathered in freezing sweat, and stopped twenty paces away.
‘That was brilliant, Flydd,’ she said, panting. ‘Or is the Numinator’s power fading?’
‘It isn’t,’ said Flydd.
‘Oh! You mean it let us in?’
‘Do you really think the Numinator became so powerful, and survived so long, without knowing when there were trespassers in its domain?’
Above them loomed the monstrous ice tower, topped with blade-like laths of ice towering into the brittle heavens. The low sun, picking its way through gaps in a lead-grey overcast, threw glittering reflections off every crystal face. Shielding her eyes, she peered between her fingers. The Tower of a Thousand Steps was magnificent; awe-inspiring; terrible, and surely its master must echo it.
‘How can any one person need such a vast dwelling?’ she whispered.
‘The Numinator has very great needs,’ Flydd intoned. ‘Terrible, desperate needs.’
Maelys swallowed hard.
Colm broke his long silence. ‘You should not have come here. You will not get out alive.’
She stared at him. ‘Don’t you mean, we will not get out alive?’
‘What do I care whether I live or die?’
Maelys wanted to shake him. There wasn’t a trace left of the Colm she’d once admired. I’ve lost plenty too, she thought, but you don’t see me whining about it all the time. Maelys bit her tongue. Had she just seen little Fyllis fall to her death, and been able to do nothing about it, and blamed her companions, she might have felt the same.
‘We’ve got to go on, no matter what,’ she said. ‘There’s no other way.’
‘Hush.’ Flydd had his head up like a dog sniffing the air. A shudder shook his muscular frame, then he turned towards the arched opening in the blue ice on which the tower was founded. ‘That will be our way in.’
A path of crushed ice curved down towards the opening. The razor-crested ice ridges hemmed it in on either side, rising ever higher as the path fell.
Flydd threw his shoulders back, raised his chin and strode down the path, hiding his anxiety. Maelys waited for Colm to follow, but he was staring into space again, so she headed after Flydd, almost running to keep up. It wasn’t until they’d gone a few hundred paces that she realised she was treading in his footsteps, keeping directly behind him as if he could shield her from view.
‘The Numinator’s eyes are everywhere,’ he said without breaking stride.
She stopped, hand pressed against her thudding heart, then continued. The entrance was a tall open rectangle at least three times her height. Within, every surface glowed with the blue of thick ice, though Maelys could make out nothing but straight-sided shapes fading into darkness.
She took a step, stopped, then another, until she stood directly underneath the lintel of the doorway, and looked up sharply. Nothing moved within her field of view. The opening was made of flat ice so smooth that it might have been freshly planed, but inside, where it was sheltered from the wind, frost needles as long as nails grew from every surface. The drifts of snow on the featureless floor were untracked.
‘It’s empty.’ Colm’s voice showed a trace of animation for the first time since his sister’s death. ‘The Numinator must be gone.’