Godess of the Ice Realm loti-5

by David Drake

  He plucked the hem of his sleeve. When he moved, the cape fluttered like an ordinary garment, but though the shape changed Sharina couldn't see folds or wrinkles. It was a swatch of blackness, not fabric.

  "-and the Queen Ship, that I'm not a wizard. But it's true that my power would be… not great… without them to aid me. Except in one thing."

  Up close, Alfdan was an ordinary looking man. He was thin and nervous, but so was Franca; so were most people in this world, Sharina supposed. Most of the few who survived.

  "I can find objects of power," the wizard explained. "See them, feel them, know where they'll be. I knew the axe Beard would be coming here, so we waited for it."

  He nodded. The axe lay across her lap with her left hand on the grip.

  "Do you know what Beard is?" Alfdan said, his deep-set eyes focusing on hers.

  "She knows that Beard could split you scalp to crutch, little man," the axe said with unexpected venom. "She knows that he'll beglad to drink your blood, thin and sour though he knows it'll be!"

  "I know that Beard's the reason that we're still alive, most of us," Sharina said, "after the fauns attacked. That makes him my friend. I don't need to hear anything about him that he doesn't choose to tell me."

  "Whatever you please," Alfdan said, licking his lips and turning his head to the side. "I hadn't expected the fauns. Did you…"

  He met her eyes again.

  "Had you seen the fauns before?" he said. "Had they been pursuing you?"

  Beard cackled with glee. "Do you think you're the only one who can see things before they happen, wizardling?" he said before Sharina could reply. "They weren't following us, but they may have been waiting just as you were. Or they may have been waiting for you!"

  Alfdan played with his hem again, staring intently as if he saw something important in its lack of being. "I found the Cape of Shadows," he said, "in a casket among the roots of an ancient tree that had fallen that morning. The roots pulled the casket up from the ground with them, and I was there to find it!"

  "And this ship too, I suppose?" Sharina said. She'd have tapped the deck, but she needed both her hands. She felt Beard quiver with words too faint to hear; it was like having a purring cat on her lap, a cat of sharp-edged steel.

  "Yes, the Queen Ship," the wizard agreed absently. "It was in a cave on Ornifal. The entrance had been under water for millennia, but I found it when the sea receded. In another day-"

  He looked up fiercely again. Sharina wondered how much of Alfdan's jumpy behavior was from fatigue and how much was simply madness.

  "-a glacier would have covered it and locked it away for all time. Except that I found it!"

  "I see that," Sharina said quietly, stroking the axe in her lap as she thought of glaciers on Ornifal. "What has that to do with me?"

  She wasn't afraid of Alfdan. She wouldn't have been afraid of him even without Beard, but she knew that Alfdan, like an injured dog, might snap at her out of pain and blind fury. She didn't want that to happen, but there's no way to control what a madman may do. She'd deal with whatever happened.

  "The Queen Ship sails over the sea, not in it," Alfdan said, calm and seemingly reasonable again. "Over the sea or the land either one-it doesn't matter to the ship."

  "All right," said Sharina. Her fingers were slipping. She shifted her grip, snatching at the mast before she could begin to slide off the deck.

  What does this ship of light weigh? Could a man or a hundred men lift it from the beach using ordinary muscles instead of wizardry?

  "We're searching for the Key of Reyazel," Alfdan said, lifting his head and speaking in a consciously portentous voice. "Will you come with us, Sharina os-Reise?"

  Sharina frowned. "Why should I?" she said bluntly. Did Alfdan think he could compel her by his art, now that his men had refused to use force on her?

  Couldthe wizard compel her by his art, whatever he thought?

  "You're alone," Alfdan said. "We are many, and-"

  "Franca is with me," Sharina said.

  Alfdan sniffed. "Yes, I saw him," he said. "A sturdy help, I'm sure!"

  "And Beard is with her, wizard," said the axe with ringing clarity. "Mistress, let me kill him now. The others will follow you, see if they don't!"

  "We are many," Alfdan repeated, wetting his lips with his tongue again. "And I have the treasures which allow us to flourish even in this world. The Cape of Shadows, the Queen Ship; other objects now, and perhaps in the futuremany more objects. If you slew me… if you wereable to slay me, as this one wishes… they'd be quite useless to you."

  Sharina looked at the wizard. She neither liked nor trusted him, but he was certainly right that she couldn't use tools which required wizardry; nor, she suspected, was she likely to meet another wizard-in this place or anywhere-whom she'd like or trust any better than she did Alfdan.

  She smiled. If she hadn't met Tenoctris, she'd have believed all wizards were arrogantly self-willed, and that most were actively evil besides.

  Alfdan misunderstood her expression. "Do you doubt me?" he demanded. "Do you think-"

  "I know you're a wizard," Sharina said, raising her voice enough to ride over his. "I know I'm not and that I could no more use your cape than I could fly. But I'm still not convinced that we should join you, Master Alfdan."

  The wizard leaned back and chuckled, suddenly at ease again. "Well, mistress," he said. "The fauns were looking for something, were they not? Or do you believe it was chance that brought a pack of them here, now?"

  Sharina kept a strait face. "I don't suppose it was chance," she said. "I don't think it was, no."

  "So they might have been looking for me, but nothing of the sort has happened to me in the past," Alfdan said. "Never in the ten years since She came. But you, mistress… you just came to our world, you say. If their friends or many more of their friends come looking for you again, would you rather run from them on your two legs? Or would you sail away with us on the Queen Ship?"

  "I see," said Sharina, her hand motionless on Beard's helve. "Yes, that's a reason to join you. Now, Master Alfdan, tell me why youwant us with you?"

  "Because the axe in your hands is almost better than having it in mine, mistress," the wizard said. He laughed again, but this time the humor trailed off in a giggle that was close to something else. "There's finding the Key of Reyazel, which I can do easily; and there's bringing it up from where it lies. If you and your axe will agree to fetch me the Key of Reyazel, then you're welcome to all the protection to be had from my band and my art, I assure you."

  "There'll be things to kill," Beard said in a steely whisper. "Blood to drink, mistress, much blood for Beard to drink!"

  "I'll get this key for you…," said Sharina. "If you take me where I want to go in exchange."

  "Where is that?" said Alfdan with a frown.

  "I don't know," she said. She smiled without humor. "I just arrived. Does it matter?"

  Alfdan shrugged. "I don't suppose so," he said. "All right, mistress. But first you must fetch the key."

  He and the axe both began to laugh in high-pitched voices.

  ***

  "Sit in the middle, Lord Cashel," Syl said as she got into the bow of the craft and knelt facing backward. "Getchin will guide the boat. He's good at that."

  "He weighs too much," said Getchin, the blond man. He stood in the stern, holding a slender crystal rod about as long as his arms would spread. "You shouldn't come with us, Syl."

  "He doesn't weigh more than Elpel and Gromis both," Syl said composedly. "Not quite."

  Cashel looked doubtfully at the vessel he was supposed to get into. Not only was it shaped like a pastel pink milkweed pod, it seemed to be equally flimsy. He wasn't much happier about the prospect than Getchin was.

  "Are you sure I won't just step through the bottom?" Cashel said.

  "It makes no difference to me, since I'll be carried whether you enter the airboat or hike on your own legs, master," said Evne from his shoulder. "But it's three days jour
ney if you walk it, so we'd best be getting on… unless it's your plan to bury Kotia instead of rescuing her?"

  "I don't have a plan," Cashel muttered, stepping over the boat's curved side. It had a warm, firm roughness to his bare feet, the feel of a thick, newly-sawn plank. "I just thought somebody ought to…"

  Cashel thought somebody ought to give the Visitor some of what he was dishing out to other folks. Saying that-and saying that he meant to be the fellow who did it-sounded like bragging. If things worked out, Cashel wouldn't need talk; and if they didn't, well, at the end he wouldn't have to worry that he'd made a fool of himself in addition to losing a fight.

  "Well sit down, then," said Getchin peevishly. "And keep your weight balanced, if you would!"

  Cashel looked at the blond man. Getchin was as tall as he was, but he was only of middling build and soft besides. He glared at Cashel, then flushed. No one spoke until Cashel turned and seated himself with his usual care. The boat's interior was hollow with neither thwarts nor furnishings of any kind. Cashel held his quarterstaff across the gunwales before him.

  " Getchin hopes to replace the late Farran in Syl's affections, master," the toad said in a voice that folks deep in the circle of spectators could hear clearly. "He regards you as a rival, so he regrets that Syl insists on coming along at the start of your heroic endeavor."

  "Look, let's get moving, can we?" Cashel said. He didn't look over his shoulder at Getchin, and he wished that Syl wasn't seated staring right into his face.

  "Getchin is a fool," Syl said distinctly. "To believehe has any chance, I mean."

  The toad laughed. The boat lifted, jerking forward with a wobbly violence like a skiff rowed by an angry man. Someone on the ground cheered, and then the whole crowd was shouting, "Lord Cashel!" and "Long live the wizard Cashel!"

  Syl smiled faintly. Her eyes looked through Cashel, not at him.

  The boat slanted upward till it was about a furlong above the ground. It steadied, too; they trembled a little when Cashel turned his head to look around, but nothing serious.

  He half expected Getchin to say something anyway, but the fellow just stood there in the stern with his crystal rod held out crossways like a rope walker using a balance pole. He didn't seem to notice Cashel-or Syl, either one.

  "At the beginning of the First Cycle…," Evne said. She sounded like one of the priests reading the Hymn of the Lady to the assembled borough at the end of the Tithe Procession. "A moon fell to earth. Its impact formed a great bowl surrounded by ranges of mountains."

  "What do you mean, 'the First Cycle'?" Syl asked, looking at the toad on Cashel's left shoulder.

  "This is the Seventeenth Cycle," Evne said. "I can't imagine why you would ask, except to satisfy intellectual curiosity… which rather surprises me, given the source."

  Syl smiled at her. "Thank you, Mistress Toad," she said. "Pray continue."

  "The manors are built on the peaks," Evne said. "The streams which flow inward drain into the bowl and form a swamp because there's no outlet. More than water sinks toward the center and collects, so human arts aren't sufficient to allow the airboats to fly into the swamp. You will go on foot from the edge, master."

  "There's power in the air above the Great Swamp, Lord Cashel," Syl said. "Our boats rise or fall or simply come apart if they venture there… But of course there's no reason to go there at all."

  "There's no reason to leave the manor!" Getchin snarled. Lapsing into a desperate whine he added, "Oh, why did this happen to me?"

  "One answer might be that it spared some useful person from discomfort," said Evne. "Though I don't expect that that's true."

  Cashel smiled. When he noticed that Syl was smiling also, at him, he blushed.

  Clearing his throat he said, "But the Visitor flies there?"

  "The Visitor does as he wills," Evne agreed. "Or so he has always done."

  They'd risen considerably higher. Cashel could see the ridges curving beneath him the way ripples spread on a pond. There wasn't enough forest to color the general gray rock background, but creeks glittered jaggedly. On more peaks than Cashel could count with his fingers stood manors built of a variety of gleaming materials.

  Several of them were in ruins. The manors had no enemy except the Visitor, but he seemed sufficient.

  A sea of fog rose over the ridge ahead. "The Great Swamp," Evne said. "You'll find the air there warmer, master. A great deal of power has settled in the basin."

  "There's monsters in the swamp," Syl said. "Sometimes the mist clears and they've been seen. But you slew the dragon of Portmayne, Lord Cashel. You don't fear monsters, do you?"

  Cashel smiled. "I don't guess I do," he said. Maybe it was bragging to say that, but he wasn't going to lie; and anyway, Syl was a pretty thing in her way.

  "I'm setting us down," Getchin said in a hoarse voice. "I don't dare go any closer. It isn't possible!"

  "Not for him, at any rate," Evne said with an audible sniff. "But this is good enough, master. The ground here on the south edge of the basin is firmer than that to the east and north, though there's little enough to choose."

  The boat slid downward and past the tops of trees clinging to cracks in the rock. There were hardwoods here, oaks and beeches, and down on the valley floor grew a few tall, straight-trunked trees with shiny, oval leaves and big flowers.

  Ahead was a patch of warm mist. They drove into it, slowed, and set down on a plain of pulpy grasses. There were low banks a stone's throw to either side. The trickle meandering down the center of the plain must be a roaring freshet in the spring.

  "All right, get out," Getchin said, standing with his wand upright before him. "Please, Mas… that is, Lord Cashel. It's not safe here!"

  Cashel rose and stepped out of the boat. Though it rested on a narrow keel, it didn't topple over the way an ordinary ship would do if the tide left it on dry ground. He wondered how they made it do that.

  "Wait," said Syl, getting out behind him. She untied her hair ribbon, a pretty violet color like the last band of the rainbow. Cashel had never seen cloth of that shade before.

  "Syl, we mustn't-" Getchin whined.

  "Shut up, you fool!" said Syl, stretching the ribbon between her hands. Evne laughed from Cashel's shoulder.

  "Lord Cashel," the girl said. "Stretch out your left arm, if you would be so good."

  "Ma'am…?" said Cashel, but he obeyed. Syl looped the ribbon over his sleeve above the biceps and tied it into a quick square knot. It wasn't tight around his arm, but the friction of cloth to cloth would hold it against his tunic unless things got too active… as of course they might.

  "I'd like you to wear this token as you go forward," Syl said. "In memory of Manor Bossian, let us say. It shouldn't get in your way."

  Cashel frowned. "It's likely to get lost, mistress," he said. "I'll have other things on my mind, and-"

  "Then it gets lost!" Syl said. "It's only a ribbon, after all. But you'll wear it till then?"

  "I guess I will, yes," Cashel said. "Evne, I think we'd best-"

  "Am I holding you up, master?" the toad snapped. "Are you waiting for me to pick you up and walk off with you?"

  "Right," muttered Cashel as he turned, giving his quarterstaff a slow spin. Glancing back over his shoulder, being careful not to meet Syl's eyes, he said, "Thanks for carrying me this far. I hope things go well for you."

  He started off, walking faster than he'd usually have done. He didn't want any more conversation. He heard Getchin ask Syl to get back into the boat-and her snarl at him in a voice like an angry cat.

  But she didn't call to Cashel, and he was just as happy about that. He wouldn't have answered, but he wouldn't have been happy not to

  ***

  "Atten-shun!" bellowed a voice with the twanging accent of Northern Ornifal as Garric walked into courtyard of the barracks of the 4^th Company of the Carcosa City Watch. A squad of Blood Eagles were in front of him, another squad behind, and the remainder of the demi-company had taken key positions in
the barracks before Lord Attaper would permit Garric's visit to go ahead.

  "Permit!" snorted Carus in Garric's mind. "Every bodyguard is born an old lady, it seems to me."

  Perhaps, thought Garric. But it's generally easier to go along with them, and in this case Attaper may have a point.

  Liane walked primly to his left. A Blood Eagle-one ofher guards-was a pace behind her, carrying the travelling desk with her documents. The guards had explained that they'd rather carry the gear themselves than worry about a servant being that close, and everybody from Liane on down had insisted that Prince Garric couldn't do servants' work in public.

  "Generally easier to go along with them," Carus parroted back with a gust of laughter.

  "Your highness!" shouted the commander, a former cavalry decarch named Pascus or-Pascus. "The 4^th Company is all present to receive you!"

  Garric smiled faintly. Normally the report would' ve been, "All present or accounted for," because there were always men on sick leave or detached service. Not today: every man on the muster rolls of the newly-constituted company was here to greet their prince.

  "Some of them look like they'll be on their backs in bed as soon as you've left the compound, though," Carus noted with amusement. That was true enough, and their commander himself had a febrile brightness that suggested he was still suffering from his injuries.

  Pascus had been among the first troopers to batter their way through the back wall of the Temple of the Mistress in Donelle; he'd lost half his left foot in the fighting there. His family had been retainers of Lord Waldron's family for as far back as parish records went, but even without the army commander's enthusiastic recommendation Pascus would've been an obvious choice for promotion to a job in the City Watch.

  "Captain Pascus," Garric said, "tell your men to stand easy."

  His voice rang across the courtyard loudly enough that Liane winced. Garric hadn't learned to call orders through the clangor of a battlefield the way Carus had, but a shepherd shouts most of the time if he expects to be heard by another human being.