Godess of the Ice Realm loti-5

by David Drake

  "Now that was a hard one, lad," Carus murmured. The image of the ancient king was the same as always, dressed in trousers and tunic with a long sword at his side; the way he'd generally been when he went about the business of government. "They're trying to break us to their will, I'd guess. Make us say we'll serve them."

  I won't, thought Garric. His hands gently explored his rib cage and right thigh as he convinced himself that he wasn't really a cripple dying in agony. No matter how often they kill me.

  But a part at the back of his mind wondered how much longer this could go on without affecting him, no matter how brave he was consciously.

  I fought an ape, he thought. It beat me to death against a tree. Was it the same with you?

  Carus smiled. "It was an ape, I guess," he said. "But I killed it instead of the other way round."

  How? thought Garric, touching the medal he wore on a neck thong. It had been struck for the coronation of King Carus; he wore it at all times. I mean-were we in the same body? Or did you have a weapon?

  The ancient king's smile became rueful. "A weapon?" he said. "Not exactly, lad. You see…"

  He paused, smiling again in real embarrassment. "You see," Carus went on, "I've been places that you haven't been. I tore the thing's throat out with my teeth. I don't have much recollection of it while it was happening, but… it wasn't the first time it'd happened to me, lad. And the other time it wasn't a beast's throat when my sword had broken."

  I see, thought Garric. Well, your highness, I'm glad the Good has folk like you to defend it.

  He breathed deeply, then added, Maybe between us we can arrange that other people don't have to learn how to fight monsters without weapons.

  Liane awoke to Garric's laughter. She turned to him with a warm smile.

  ***

  Sharina sat wrapped in the fur of some large animal she didn't recognize, drinking mulled wine and looking down into the waters of the fjord. She didn't want much in her stomach before she dived, but the warmer she started out, the longer she'd be able to continue.

  Neal had supplied both the fur and the hot drink. He appeared to be the generally accepted leader while Alfdan recovered from the strain of his art.

  The band's driftwood fire crackled with flashing enthusiasm. Rainbow-colored flames spurted whenever heat opened a pocket of sea salt. Franca and especially Scoggin, sitting on opposite sides of her, glanced nervously at the blaze. They'd survived the decade of Her rule by creeping through the shadows. They saw an open fire as a frightening beacon drawing in terrors, known and unknown.

  "I suppose they know what they're doing," Sharina said to the men; her men, beside but not part of the wizard's band, the way oil lies on water. "Alfdan's protected them so far."

  "Alfdan isn't protecting them now," Scoggin muttered, glancing sourly toward where the wizard lay on a bed of furs. He was beginning to stir: Layson helped him sit upright while another man waited with a mug of soup. It'd be some time before he was ready to use his art again, though.

  Some of the men had tied driftwood into a raft using ropes from their stores. It was a clumsy-looking thing and didn't have a real deck, but it'd do as a fishing float… or a diving platform.

  "There's nothing on land here to fear," Beard said. "Anyway, they have me and my mistress, don't they?"

  "What about the water, axe?" Franca said. "That's where Mistress Sharina has to go, isn't it?"

  "There are things in the fjord," the axe said. "But the mistress will have Beard, so the danger will be greater for the other things. If they come to the mistress and Beard, there will beso much blood!"

  Sharina wasn't clear on how useful an axe would be under water, but Beard's enthusiasm seemed genuine and he was the expert in killing things. She grinned. Everybody ought to have a talent…

  A slab of stone wrapped in fishing net sat in the middle of the raft. It was heavy enough that the man who brought it aboard had waddled with it cradled against his chest. Sharina would ride it down, saving time that would be too short anyway. The raft's crew could draw the stone up by the rope attached to the net's lines in case she had to dive again.

  This was going to be very unpleasant, but she'd said that she'd do it. Besides, the bargain would get her the opportunity that she wanted.

  Which would be even more unpleasant.

  Alfdan rose with Layson's help and stepped carefully to Sharina. Scoggin started to get up but settled back when he realized Sharina didn't intend to do so.

  "So, mistress!" the wizard said. "Are you ready to carry out your promise?"

  "Yes," said Sharina. She smiled. Beard had been across her knees. She turned the axe upright, its butt on the ground and the pointed steel face glaring at Alfdan. "Of course. What is your plan?"

  Until she knew in detail what was expected of her, she had no intention of shrugging off the fur and standing. She'd move when it was time to; until then she'd wait.

  "We'll go out to the center of the inlet," Alfdan said, taking what looked like a stream-washed pebble from an ermine purse. Sharina remembered what Neal had said about the Stone Mirror. "I'll guide you. Then you'll swim down to the key where Lady Sodann cast it and bring it back to me."

  Except for Neal and another man finishing the raft, the band had gathered quietly around Alfdan and Sharina. They listened openly but in silence; they weren't part of the business nor did they want to be, but they knew their future might depend on what was said.

  "If the key's so valuable," Scoggin demanded with deliberate hostility, "then why did this lady throw it away?"

  "'This lady' as you call her," Alfdan said with a look of irritation, "tried to dispose of the Key of Reyazel because Baron Hortsmain, her beloved, used it to enter a place from which he could not return. This is scarcely your concern, my man, as I'm the one who'll be using the key. And both Sodann and Hortsmain have been dead these five thousand years!"

  Sharina looked at the fjord, then toward the raft. She set down her empty mug. "Is that ready?" she called to Neal.

  "Yes, mistress," Neal said, eyeing the slope above them his bow ready. It seemed to Sharina that only a bird could come down on them from the heights.

  "Then so am I," said Sharina as she stood, pinching the fur closed at the throat with her left hand. "We've got the light, and I don't suppose things will change for the better if we wait."

  Beard gave a ringing laugh. "In ten more years the water'll be barely half this depth," he said. "Of course the ice will have come down from the hills to cover it by then, too."

  Rather than reply, Sharina started for the raft. Scoggin and Franca fell in beside her. The youth clutched the section of spear he used for a dagger. "We're coming too!" he said to Alfdan with more vehemence than Sharina'd thought he was capable of.

  "All right," said the wizard nonchalantly. "You two can paddle. Neal, I'll want you along also."

  The big man nodded glumly. "Colran, lend me your spear," he said, holding out his bow and five arrows to a blond spearman in exchange. "This won't be much use if something comes up from the water."

  "Nothing will threaten us," Alfdan said in irritation.

  Neal ignored him. With the spear in his hand he said to the circle of his fellows, "Come on, carry this into the water."

  The band leaped to the task, grunting and muttering as they gripped the lengths of wood lashed together in a thick mat. Beard tittered disconcertingly. "They're all afraid if there's a delay, Master Wizard will decide some of them should come along as well."

  "There's no danger!" Alfdan said.

  The axe sniffed. "Is that what you think, wizard?" he said.

  "We're allies now," Sharina said quietly, holding the axe so close to her lips that her breath fogged the steel. "Don't bait Alfdan. It's not polite."

  "Polite!" Beard said. "Polite to what?"

  But he spoke in a tiny voice and subsided after that slight protest.

  Sharina took off her rabbitskin sandals and left them on the shore before she stepped into the water. T
he fjord had an eerie chill, as though she were walking in a basin of frozen knife blades. The raft swayed and rippled as she and the others boarded; water slapped and squirted through the openings between the interlaid logs.

  Sharina squatted at the side, her hip braced against the stone that she'd use for her descent. Franca and Scoggin moved them out in a wobbly, half-circular course; their paddles were almost as crude as the beams from which the raft was woven.

  Alfdan's men watched at the shoreline with expressions of morose anticipation. Some of them were rubbing their legs dry. The walls of the fjord were as sheer as the sides of an axe cut…

  "So much blood!" Beard chortled.

  Sharina laughed. Scoggin looked at her in amazement. "It's nice that somebody's looking forward to this," she explained.

  Alfdan remained standing, staring into the pebble. His lips moved, but Sharina couldn't hear words if he was even speaking. Neal sat on the stone with his spear between his legs; he held the wizard steady.

  "Downstream!" Alfdan said. "Another twenty feet or so. We're far enough out already."

  The raft began to rotate; even the most experienced boatmen would've had trouble controlling so clumsy a craft, and neither Scoggin nor Franca were that. There was very little current in the fjord, but that little complicated the business.

  "Here!" Alfdan called. He continued looking at his pebble, facing off at an angle to the far shore. "This is far enough. Stop here!"

  As if it were that simple, Sharina thought as she stood; but to some people, the wizard apparently among them, itwas that simple: they gave orders and other people carried them out at whatever cost to themselves. She dropped the fur and stripped off her tunic before squatting again to grip the stone against her belly.

  "How far down is the key?" she asked.

  "It doesn't matter!" cried Alfdan. "We're drifting past! Get down there!"

  Sharina lifted the stone slightly, using her left hand and three fingers of her right. The raft billowed; water sloshed over her feet. She turned and straddle-walked two steps to the edge, then rolled over the side. The water was a quick, unpleasant shock; then she was aware only of the weight crushing in on her as she plunged downward.

  She let go of the stone with her right hand as soon as she was over the side. The fingers of her left held the netting firmly, while her right hand now gripped only Beard's helve.

  The water was blue and clear and at first empty; bubbles dribbled from the net fibers as the depth squeezed them. Sharina began to see crystalline planes jutting up past her, as steep as the cliffs of the fjord. It was as though the water had compressed itself solid. Perhaps the pressure was affecting her sight…

  The rock she clung to was covered with bubbles that'd been trapped in cracks when she went over the side. Water swirled about it as they dropped, distorting her sight, but beyond that the planes of a separate world were growing more real. She couldn't see the bottom, but things of pulp and blubber crawled up slabs of crystal from an unguessibly deep abyss.

  The rock crunched onto the bottom of the fjord, kicking out a spray of stream-washed quartz nuggets the size of walnuts or smaller. Sharina couldn't see the key; she couldn't see anything but a blurred, dim waste of stone. She let go of the weight and breast stroked over the plain. Beard's narrow blade winked; she thought she heard him singing.

  No more! Sharina drove upward for the surface. Her lungs were burning and her sight had blurred from lack of air. The crystal walls had vanished but she felt the creatures continuing to crawl toward her like huge gelatinous ticks; out of sight but still present. She couldn't see the raft and the light was dimming Sharina broke surface, gasping and blind. She blew a roar of froth with her lips. She couldn't see anything until she realized that her eyes were tight shut.

  She was arm's length upstream from the raft; it thrashed and rocked. Neal was hauling the rock up hand over hand as Franca coiled the line behind him. Scoggin slashed the water furiously with his paddle to keep the clumsy craft from drifting farther.

  Sharina kicked herself to the raft and caught the end of a branch in her left hand. She didn't feel cold, but her lungs were a mass of fire that subsided only slowly as she dragged in great breaths.

  Alfdan looked up from his pebble. He glanced around till his eyes lit on Sharina. "It's still there!" he cried angrily. "You haven't brought it up!"

  "Shut up, you fool!" Scoggin snarled. Neal looked over his shoulder; he nodded. He'd raised the netted stone to the surface and belayed the line around the end of a log near where Sharina clung. The raft tilted toward it; neither Franca nor the wizard had sense enough to move to the opposite side for balance.

  "I'm getting my breath," Sharina said. The words didn't want to come; her throat was stiff. "I'll go back in a moment."

  "Mistress, do you want to try another day?" said Neal.

  "No, I'll-" Sharina said.

  "She must get it immediately!" said Alfdan. "If I wait-"

  Beard actually twisted in Sharina's hand, lifting his razor-keen edge above the water like a shark breaking surface. "I'll kill him!" the axe squealed, raging instead of speaking with his usual sanguine anticipation.

  Sharina gripped the netting with her left hand. "I'm ready," she said. Neal loosed the rope; she plunged again into the depths of the fjord.

  Sharina had thought the crystal planes were a hallucination and perhaps they were, but they were back again as she drove deeper. When she'd looked down from the surface Sharina had been able to see the quartz bottom, wavering and faint beneath the filter of blue water. Now she no longer could: as when she dived the first time, the depths slid all the way to the center of the world. The things that lived there were climbing toward her again, and this time they were closer.

  The stone hit and scattered pebbles. The other world shifted out of sight the way a reflection disappears when a mirror tilts; but it was still there and its creatures were still there, sliding closer, ready to grip and suck and drain her not only of blood but of her very soul.

  Sharina couldn't see the key, but Beard was pulling to her right. She frog kicked in that direction. The plain of shimmering pebbles jerked by beneath her, fading as her breath failed. There was no key She saw it, golden and the only warmth in a waste of white and blue. She didn't know how far away it was-a foot, a yard, a furlong; it didn't matter.

  Too far. Sharina broke for the surface, thinking she'd left it too long till the instant her control failed and she sucked in not seawater but air after all. She collapsed and lay still, scarcely aware that somebody was cradling her head to allow her to breathe.

  "Mistress?" a voice begged. "Mistress, are you all right?"

  Sharina opened her eyes. Franca was beside her, kicking to stay in place as he supported her head. Neal had taken the other paddle and with Scoggin was thrashing the raft toward her against the slight current. The men's expressions were grim.

  Alfdan squatted to keep from falling over. He seemed angry, but he was pointedly not looking at Sharina or his other companions. The tableau made Sharina smile-and that brought her back to sudden full awareness. Alfdan had his own view of the world, but he'd learned this wasn't the time to try to impose it on angry, armed men who hadn't liked him very much to begin with.

  "Get her aboard!" Scoggin said. "She's done for the day!"

  Alfdan started to rise, then settled back on his haunches looking even angrier than he had shortly before. The raft was close, now; Sharina could no longer see Neal on the opposite side. Franca grabbed a projection with one hand and drew her in.

  Funny that she'd never realized that Franca could swim. A good thing that he could, although she was all right now; or would be shortly…

  "Neal, help me lift her," Scoggin said as he leaned over the side to grasp Sharina's right arm. The raft shuddered and tilted again, though not so much. Neal had raised the stone and snubbed it off at the back of the craft where it counterweighted the crew.

  She must have been under water a long time if Neal had been abl
e to lift the stone. She smiled faintly. I must have been under water as long as it felt.

  "Get back," she said. "I'm all right."

  Scoggin continued to tug; Neal was reaching down also.

  "Stop that!" Sharina said. She hadn't thought she had enough energy to get angry, but she'd been wrong; Beard twitched hopefully in her hand, though he didn't speak. "I'm going down again! I know where the key is, now."

  "Mistress, you shouldn't…," Neal said, then straightened back abruptly. The axe had lifted without Sharina's conscious volition.

  "You've seen it?" Alfdan said eagerly, turning toward her. "You can get it up, then?"

  Sharina lay on her side, fully in control of her body again. Franca held her shoulder, but he was shivering violently and seemed barely able to keep himself above the surface now. He was the one they ought to be pulling onto the raft…

  "It's on the bottom, just lying there," Sharina said. "I just need to be in the right place. Beard, will you guide me?"

  "I will guide you, mistress," said the axe. "I think they're afraid of Beard. They haven't come quite close enough; but perhaps when you take the key they will."

  "Well, friend axe," Sharina said, "we both have something to look forward to. Though it's not the same thing."

  She looked up at Neal. "Bring the rock around to me," she said. "I'm ready to go down. And then get Franca up before he freezes to death!"

  Sharina didn't feel cold. In truth, she didn't feel much of any thing. She viewed her body as she might have viewed a horse, considering the work it had done this day and deciding how much longer it'd be able to go on before it dropped in the traces.

  Long enough, she thought. Long enough.

  Neal straddle-walked across the raft with the stone in his arms; the wooden fabric wobbled and groaned at each step. He squatted at the edge. Alfdan, startled into awareness of his immediate surroundings, gave a sharp cry and hopped to the other side as the raft tilted.

  Sharina reached up and caught the netting in her left hand. "Ready!" she said, drawing in a deep breath.