by David Drake
"Let her see the thing," said Layson. "Let us all see it! She fetched it up, and the rest of us have a right too."
With the desperate eyes of a rabbit searching for escape, Alfdan looked at Neal on his other side. Neal gave a dismissive jerk of his head. "Let Mistress Sharina see it," he said.
Terrified, his mouth working, Alfdan held the key out between his left thumb and forefinger. He turned his head away so that he wouldn't have to look at it or Sharina. She took it, feeling him resist for a moment.
Save that it was gold instead of brass, the Key of Reyazel was much like what Sharina's mother used for the lock of the inn's pantry in Barca's Hamlet. The shaft was flat on one end and flared into four pins of varied length at the other. The user stuck the pins into the curving slots of the lockplate and rotated the key to open the latch.
The door of the abandoned tower had a lock, but its key would've been a huge iron thing with a pair of hooks to engage holes in the heavy bar on the inside. It was no more like the Key of Reyazel than it was like an oil lamp; and as the man had said ago, the door was open.
Turning, Sharina offered the key to Neal. He shook his head, flaring his auburn hair. "Layson?" she asked. "Anyone?"
"That's all right," Layson muttered, scowling at his boots. "But we got a right to see it, that's all I meant."
"Yeah, let's get on with it," said a man at the back of the crowd. There wasn't room for everybody on the apron, so some of the band had climbed up the slope for a better view of what was going on.
Sharina returned the key to Alfdan. He took it, smirking at her. The pause had settled him back into his normal personality. That wasn't entirely a good thing, but Sharina supposed it was better than wondering what a dazed, half-mad wizard was going to do next.
Alfdan thrust the Key of Reyazel into the latch opening. Holding it there, he raised his whalebone staff over head and said in a low voice, "Herewet," He twisted the key in his left hand.
A door opened; not the door of the tower but a half-glimpsed thing of light and surfaces reminding Sharina of what she'd seen when she dived into the fjord. Beyond was a beach flooded with warm sunlight. The wizard cried in triumph and stumbled through, leaving the key in the lock.
Sharina hesitated, but not long enough for anyone outside her mind to notice. She'd rather not have entered the world through the door at least until she'd had a good look at it from this side, but she and Beard needed to be close by Alfdan to protect him.
If anything happened to the wizard, the rest of them were probably marooned here for the rest of their lives. Given how barren the region was, that might not be a very long sentence.
Within the portal, the ground was sandy clay: dry, cream colored and as solid as rock beneath Sharina's bare feet. Alfdan was walking toward the sea with the same short, quick steps that had brought him to the tower. She dropped the sheepskin and caught up with him in a few long strides, holding the axe in both hands.
The sun was hot. A strong breeze blew from the sea, pulling the wizard's robe and Sharina's shift back in the direction they'd come. Her feet scuffed into the surface, pure sand now.
"Wait, mistress!" Franca called; she looked over her shoulder. He and Scoggin were trotting toward her. The rest of the band were now on the beach also, looking around with cautious pleasure. The doorway was a slot of emptiness in the bright air.
They were at the end of a semicircular bay. The sea beyond stretched north and south to the horizon, swelling and subsiding with slow majesty. The water was a chalky green near the shore but pale ultramarine where it met the sky.
"It's here," Alfdan said. "Somewhere close, it must be…"
He wasn't looking at her; Sharina wasn't sure that the wizard knew he was speaking aloud. "What's here?" she asked. "What are we looking for?"
"Mistress…?" said the axe. Beard's tone was diffident, unlike anything she'd heard from his steel lips in the past. "I don't think you should stay here. If I could see the thing, I would try to eat its soul, but I'm not sure…"
"Whose soul?" Sharina said sharply. She was suddenly angry, though she knew she was overreacting. Exhaustion and hunger had stripped away her normal patience. "What is it that's here?"
"Mistress, I don't know," said Beard. "And I'm not sure we can kill it, you and Beard."
What had been merely a swell in the open sea rose into a great curling surge as it swept into the bay. It licked the shoreline with a roar and a trail of foam, washing thirty yards up the beach in a thin sheet, then spun its way back out to sea. The water was shockingly cold, but it splashed no higher than Sharina's ankles.
Alfdan gave a gasp of wonder. He poked the firm sand with his wand, then squatted to dig with both hands. Sharina watched him, holding Beard ready.
"Ah!" the wizard cried. He rose holding a ring set with a tiny amethyst, barely a wink of purple against the narrow gold bezel. "The Pantropic! The specific against all poisons, here!"
He slipped the ring onto his left little finger and turned gleefully to the company. "No venom can touch me now!" he cried. "I'm safe! I'm safe!"
"Who wanted to poison you before?" Franca asked, frowning.
"You're not such a fool as some wizards I know, boy," said Beard loudly. "It's a toy that does nothing except add to Master Great One's collection. None of them mean anything to him, nor to the ice that will have him and them all in no great time."
"Look!" cried a man standing at the sea edge. He'd suddenly dug in the sand with his spear butt. "Look at this diamond!"
"I don't much like this place," Layson said, holding a nocked arrow to his bow. He'd walked slowly toward Sharina and her companions, looking around watchfully.
"You're right not to like it," said Beard. "But it likes you all very much."
"We've found what we came for," Sharina said, aware that she sounded harsh. "Now let's get back."
She touched Alfdan's sleeve. She didn't have to pull hard as she'd thought she might: he came with no more than guidance.
"Oh!" cried Franca, rising from the sand where he'd knelt, holding up an object. "Oh! My father's charm! I thought it'd been…"
Sharina looked at it, a disk of porcelain with a relief of the Shepherd leaning on his staff between a pair of fruit trees. It was pierced to be hung from a thong. Priests sold them when they came through Barca's Hamlet with the Tithe Procession; several people in the borough had similar ones, more as talismans than for deeper religious reasons.
It hadn't brought much luck for Franca's father; but then this was one of thousands of identical disks and might have nothing to do with the man…
Franca turned it over and showed Sharina the name clumsily scratched on the back. "Orrin!" he said. "My father!"
She felt cold. "Let's get out of here!" she said, loud enough they could all hear. Most of the band was now digging at the sea's edge and chirruping in delight.
"The currents sweep things into this bay and leave them," Alfdan said, looking around with a critical eye. "There's probably more things here. Things of unimaginable value!"
"You think the sea brought you that ring, wizard?" Beard said. "Do you really think that?"
"I didn't say the sea!" Alfdan said. "There's more currents than those in the water, axe!"
"So there are," said Beard. "And who controls them, do you know? I don't; but I don't want my mistress to learn!"
"Leave him if he wants to stay!" Layson muttered. "I'm going back."
"Come!" said Sharina, pulling the wizard's arm. She stepped and her toe stubbed something. A bit of driftwood, she thought as she glanced down reflexively; but she'd flipped up the weathered back to expose a surface of fresh yellow pine with a crude carving.
Sharina picked it up. She was trembling. "Mistress?" said Scoggin in concern.
Somebody'd carved a figure of the Lady on the scrap of wood; the sort of thing that a traveller might make when he wanted to pray of an evening in a distant place. You had to know what the scratchesmust be to identify the image, and you couldn't po
ssibly tell who'd made them.
But Sharina knew. "Nonnus…," she whispered.
With sudden certainty, she turned and flung the scrap toward the sea. "Come!" she said. "Now!"
She strode toward the doorway, no longer concerned whether Alfdan and the rest followed her or not. Scoggin and Layson were quickly at her side. Franca trotted along after when he saw them leaving. The wizard was coming, and the others as well.
"What was that, mistress?" Scoggin asked, now more concerned about her than he was for their surroundings. "That you found?"
"The man who carved that died for me," Sharina said. She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand, but everything was still a blur. "Died for me and the world, I suppose; but for me. I don't know why it was here, but I know that whatever rules this place isn't a friend of mine. So I gave it back."
She stepped through the doorway, into chill air and a sky in which the sun was already hidden beneath the high cliffs. She'd forgotten the sheepskin but she didn't care; the relief was as great as what she'd felt when she breathed again after her third plunge into the fjord.
Neal walked back to the doorway with a stunned expression. He held something cupped in his left hand, but he wasn't looking at it or even toward his hand. Alfdan followed, reaching for the key as he passed through. He stopped when he realized that a handful of men were still on the beach side of the portal.
"Come along!" the wizard shouted peevishly. "You won't be able to return after I take the key out!"
That brought them at a shambling run. Two were chattering toward one another with animation; toward, not to, because neither could've been listening to what the other said. The rest were in a state of numb concern, their expressions much like Neal's.
Alfdan twisted the key. "Wait!" said Neal, putting his right hand over the wizard's. He flung the object in his left hand back through the opening, then turned away. Sharina caught a glimpse of something spinning in the sunlight; a miniature painted on ivory.
Alfdan withdrew the key; they were all standing before a gutted tower, its door sagging inward. Neal caught Sharina's eye and muttered, "What did I want with that? She's been dead all these years!"
"Yes," said Sharina. "I understand."
She turned to the wizard and said, "I've carried out my part of the bargain; now it's your turn. Take me to the farthest north. Take me to where She is."
"Are you mad?" Alfdan said. "You'd find nothing there but your death!"
"I'll die anyway," Sharina said. "Sooner or later. If we kill Her, perhaps it'll be later."
"Go, then," Alfdan snarled. "But you'll go alone. When I said I'd carry you where you wanted to go, I didn't mean I'd commit suicide. I'll not take you to Her!"
"If he'll not keep his bargain with us, mistress," said Beard in a coyly musing tone, "then there's no reason for him to live, is there?"
The wizard backed away and stumbled. "There's no need for that," Sharina said sharply to her axe.
"There's no need for threats," Neal said in near echo. "Master Alfdan, you and Mistress Sharina made a bargain. She kept her part; and you'll keep yours."
"Are youall mad, then?" Alfdan said, looking around the circle of his followers. "Do you want to die? That's all you can possibly do if you go to Her!"
"I don't…," Burness began in a small voice.
"Shut up, old man!" Layson snarled. "We didn't make a bargain with the wizard, butshe did; and he's going to keep it or she won't have to kill him. I will!"
Alfdan rubbed his forehead; the amethyst on his finger winked like a fairy's eye. "It'll take days," he said. "Even in the Queen Ship."
"Oh, days are fine," said Beard. "We have days and weeks and months before the ice covers all."
He tittered like a steel skeleton. "Days and weeks and months, yes," he said. "But not years, no, not if you don't kill Her very quickly. For She'll have drained all warmth and all power from this world and there'll be no blood left for Beard to drink!"
***
Blue wizardlight flared in a roaring sphere around theBird of the Tide. When it vanished, Ilna had the momentary impression that she was blind and seeing stark black and white images of the Hell inside her mind.
TheBird tipped to its left, crunching on cracked rock. The vessel's hull was shallow so she didn't go all the way over on her side, but the mast now tilted at an angle halfway between the horizon and the roiling yellow sky. The air stank fiercely of brimstone, making Ilna's eyes water and her bare skin sting.
Pointin had fallen against the port railing hard enough to knock the breath out of him. That kept him silent, the one good thing Ilna could find in this situation.
No! She was unharmed, Chalcus and the crew were unharmed-and they were all in the place they'd chosen to go in order to do their duty. She had no reason whatever for complaint.
Ilna braced her left foot on the railing and squinted to save her eyeballs as much as she could while she looked at the landscape. It was an awful place.
Spikes of rock, cut deeper where layers rested on one another, rose from flat, cracked terrain. The wind that had ravaged them whipped around theBird now, rocking her violently. Chalcus and the men leaped to the lines, bringing the spar clattering down; there was no time to furl the sail properly.
Ilna hadn't noticed any orders passing. The sailors all knew what had to be done and did it. She could learn to like sailors; competent ones, at any rate… though the only problem she had with competent people inany walk of life was that she found so few of them.
There was little in the landscape but rock and heat and the sulfurous wind. On the horizon something pulsed orange-red, possibly a volcano. Except for that, Ilna couldn't see anything farther away than she could fling a stone. The sun was a huge dull blur through clouds ranging from sepia to a yellow so dark it could scarcely be called a color.
Something shrieked in the distance; or maybe it was just wind through the rocks.
"What happens now?" Tellura asked, his voice muffled. He was holding the bosom of his tunic over his mouth and nose to breathe. "Are they going to smother us? Is that it?"
Ilna doubted that a layer of coarse wool would help much with the brimstone; besides, she needed her hands for other things. Her fingers formed knots in yarn with the flawless certainty of raindrops falling on a pond.
"Not that," Chalcus said. He held his incurved sword in one hand, the dagger in the other. "There'll be company, have no doubt, my friends."
Hutena was the only crewman who'd seen the fragments of human bodies on theQueen of Heaven. Bad though this air was to breathe, no one could imagine it had causedthat slaughter.
Chalcus gestured toward the higher railing. "Kulit and Nabarbi," he said, "keep watch to starboard side. We don't know which direction it'll come fr-"
Pointin screamed piercingly. Ilna turned.
A huge thing shambled out of the swirling darkness. It walked on two legs and had two long arms as well, dangling near the ground as it hunched forward. Nothing else about it was manlike. Hard, smooth plates like insect armor covered its limbs and body.
Shausga drew his bowstring to his right ear and loosed. The arrow cracked against the creature's narrow chest and glanced off.
The creature raised its arms, opening the pincers in place of hands. It came on, gurgling like the last wine from a bottle.
Chapter 18
Ilna stepped over the railing, lowering herself carefully to the ground. She could've jumped, but she wasn't sure of the footing-and she wasquite sure that she couldn't afford to fall on her face at this juncture.
"It's twenty feet tall!" Ninon cried. "By theGods, it's a demon from Hell!"
Ilna smiled faintly. The creature might or might not be a demon, but it wasn'tfrom anywhere: it had stayed home. TheBird of the Tide and her crew were the ones who weren't where they belonged. She walked forward, holding the knotted pattern between her hands.
Another arrow, then two in quick succession, struck the creature. Two skidded away like rays of light from
polished steel; the thirdwhack ed the ridge between the creature's bulging, faceted eyes. The shaft shattered and spun off in the wind like a handful of rye straw.
Ilna kept walking. She hoped there was enough light for the creature to see her pattern. Animals didn't see things the same way humans did.
She smiled more broadly. It would be-briefly-a pity if this thing's eyesight wasn't good enough to slip into the trap she'd so skillfully woven for it.
The air had been hot, but the ground was oven hot. Ilna almost stepped on one of the cracks zigzagging across the rough stone; heat radiating up from it struck her callused foot a punishing blow. When she glanced down, she saw a tremble of orange light at the bottom of the narrow crevice: molten rock flowed between the solid plates.
The creature rubbed its elbows against the sides of its torso, making a shrieking sound like that of a cicada hugely magnified. It stretched a jointed arm toward Ilna's face, the pincers opening fully. Each curved blade was as long as a sickle's.
Ilna spread her knotted pattern above her head. If it didn't work, she didn't want Chalcus to think that her last act had been to hide her eyes from the sight of death reaching toward her.
The creature staggered. Its arm froze in mid air and its mouth opened slightly; the jaw plates spread sideways, not up and down. Its breath reeked like a tanner's yard, rotted foulness and the savage bite of lye.
Ilna didn't move; her eyes were blind with tears from the brimstone. Behind her Chalcus shouted words that the wind whipped in the other direction. Men ran past Ilna on either side; they were blurs of movement, not individuals.
An axe rang; Hutena gave a high-pitched cry of triumph. Ilna blinked; bringing the scene into sudden focus. She realized she'd been afraid to take her eyes off the creature for fear that it too would look away and break the binding spell.
The creature began to topple sideways. The bosun wrenched his axe out of its right knee in a wave of syrupy blood. The other sailors hacked with their blunt-tipped swords, aiming at the knees and ankles. Their blades generally clanged and bounced back, leaving lines scored across the creature's hard casing.