by David Drake
"'…been up above the Ice Capes, where the shaggy giants roam
…"
Through Her eyes Ilna looked down on the sea of faces staring up at Her on the ice throne. They were cut-throats, pirates, killers; bad men before She enlisted them in Her army, and since then become worse. There was no act too vile for them to commit for Her, and few that they had not committed already. Now they would do one further thing: She raised Her hands.
"'I tell you from experience, you'd better stay at home."
Ilna turned right, into a tunnel lower and narrower than the others had been. At its end was a slab of blank ice which alone of the walls in this place wasn't filled from within by wizardlight. Ilna saw herself reflected from a surface as blackly perfect as polished obsidian.
"Dear one…?" said the voice from behind her. She made a silent, brushing motion with her left hand, the sort of gesture she'd have used to flick away a fly.
In a memory not Ilna's, Her hands began to weave in the air. The brutal faces below watched in frightened fascination. Most bore scars-brands and cropped ears as frequently as knife slashes; teeth smashed out or rotted out during lives as savage as those of wild beasts. They were bound to Her by fear of Her power and fear of the revenge those they had wronged would take if ever they left Her protection; but Her art, even if used to help them, frightened them also.
Ilna's lips gave a smile as cold as the black reflection. She'd killed in the past and would kill again soon if she was able to. She'd have had no more mercy for the men who stared at Her than she would for a chicken she needed for dinner; no more mercy than they were about to receive…
Wizardlight streamed from Her hands in gossamer splendor, crossing and interweaving in a pattern that none of those watching beneath the great ice dome could appreciate. The men fidgeted, fingering weapons and glancing covertly at their fellows. The light rippled like gauze as it spread above them. Its color was too subtle for words to describe or eyes to grasp.
Her pattern finally reached the curving walls of the chamber. For a moment nothing happened save that the light pulsed the way breath throbs in the throat membrane of a waiting lizard.
The fabric settled.
The gang of killers tried to flee, screaming curses in a score of languages. They had no more chance than minnows within a closing purse net. Palpable light drifted over them, coating those it touched the way oil spreads over still water.
At first contact, men froze where they stood. The net shimmered, as beautiful as the rainbow hues of a snake's eye, and it continued to sink.
A few of the band, shorter than the others or quicker thinking, dropped to their hands and knees to crawl toward the corridors feeding the great hall. Some slithered on their bellies at the end-crying, praying, or shouting curses depending on their temperaments-but the wizardlight settled onto them also.
Ilna reached the end of the narrow passage. She looked into the black reflection of her own eyes, remembering a past which those eyes had never seen.
The glowing net began to congeal the way pudding sets. Its color deepened and became more saturated without changing hue. The forms trapped beneath it blurred and lost definition. Their flesh and souls together dissolved. Light began to spreadthrough the walls of ice which had been dark with the gloom of polar winter.
Still clutching their weapons, the corpses settled into the ice, shrinking to skeletons. The floor engulfed them. Above, looking out into the world Her art ruled, She wove the cosmos into patterns of devastation and inexorable doom.
Ilna smiled.
"So, dear heart, shall we try another tunnel?" said Chalcus with false, lilting brightness.
Ilna took the bone-cased knife from her sleeve. The blade of worn steel was only finger-long, but it sufficed for all her tasks: trimming selvage, gutting rabbits, and slicing swatches of cowhide into laces for Cashel's winter boots.
Instead of chipping at the ice, Ilna turned the knife over in her hand, still cased. She paused, letting her mind locate the nexus in what the eyes of her body saw as a blank, smooth wall.
She tapped with the bone hilt. The slab of ice disintegrated into crystals smaller than snowflakes, smaller even than the dust motes that float in beams of sunlight.
Chalcus gave a cry of wonder. He stepped through the sudden opening, his sword and dagger poised. Ilna, smiling like a coiled spring, followed.
***
Cashel watched Sharina's slender body shrink as she strode into the yellowish light. She seemed to be flying away with each step, not just walking.
Cashel held his quarterstaff in both hands. He didn't squeeze it out of frustration, just held the smooth hickory with the grip he'd use to put a ferrule through the skull of anyone or anything that tried to hurt Sharina-if he could. She was so tiny, now; a little poppet he could've held in his hand.
Her axe glittered brightly. Cashel hoped and prayed that Sharina knew what she was doing, the way he'd told Garric she did; but he didn't doubt at all that the axe knewits business.
The distant doll of Sharina turned and slashed over her head. There wasn't anything near her. She reversed the stroke without hesitation, bringing the spiked end of the axe around.
Cashel'd used an axe in his time, felling trees for his neighbors and shaping the logs; he nodded in pleased approval as he watched. Sure, that narrow-bladed war axe was a different thing from the heavy tools he'd worked with, but motions like Sharina'd just made took wrists and shoulders that few men could boast of. Oh, she was afine girl!
The air above her went red as a smear of blood. Cashel shouted and strode forward, his staff crossways in front of him. He didn't know or care what dangers Sharina might be facing, just that right now he'd rather die than let her face them alone.
The wall of light collapsed inward before Cashel stepped through it. Sharina was just ahead, full-sized and toppling onto the ice.
There wasn't blood in the air or on the floor below, but there was a stink as bad as anything Cashel'd ever smelled. It reminded him of the time a great shark washed up on the beach of Barca's Hamlet. The fish had been so rotten that its gill rakers hung as tatters of cartilage, but even so this was worse.
It didn't matter. It wouldn't have mattered if there'd been a wall of pike points between him and Sharina: Cashel was going through. He scooped her in the crook of his left arm. Her lips moved, though if she was saying anything Cashel couldn't hear the words.
She held the axe in both hands. It was talking enough for both of them, chortling, "Two Elementals, two of them, oh Beard never dreamed he would serve a master who would feed him Elementals!"
The axe didn't stop there but it didn't say anything new either, so Cashel ignored the rest like he would a breeze whispering through the trees. Garric, Lord Attaper, and the two soldiers with Garric had come running up only a heartbeat behind Cashel.
Garric put two fingertips on his sister's throat and nodded with relief. "Her heart's beating fine!" he said. "She's just-"
His voice didn't so much trail off as simply stop, because he didn't have any better notion of what'd happened to Sharina than Cashel did. He guessed she was exhausted. Two swipes with the axe weren't much for a healthy girl, but Cashel knew from his own experience that when you got in with wizards and their art it took more out of you than it seemed like it ought to've done.
"She's strong and well," the axe said. "She'll soon bring Beard to more blood and souls! Oh, what a fine mistress!"
It wasn't the sort of talk that generally appealed to Cashel, but hearing that the axe thought Sharina would be all right made it a pleasure this time. He felt her stir, twisting her head against his chest. He could probably set her down on her feet shortly, though he wasn't sure he would.
"Your highness?" said Master Ortron, about the only officer Cashel'd met that he liked as a person. Ortron was an ordinary fellow, not a noble, and he'd been happy to show Cashel how to handle a pike in return for lessons with a quarterstaff. "Are we to hold here, or…?"
"Duz
i, no!" Garric said. "We'll resume-"
He paused, looking sharply at his sister, then Cashel. "Cashel?" he continued. "Can you-"
"Sure," said Cashel, rocking Sharina gently in his arm the way he'd have soothed a baby. Ofcourse he could carry Sharina.
He noticed that a couple of the soldiers had picked up the officer who'd been knocked silly for his own good. Cashel was glad of that. The fellow didn't have any more sense than a sheep did, but Cashel'd spent so much of his life looking after sheep that he couldn't help feeling sorry for the man.
"All right, Master Ortron, resume your advance," Garric said. He quirked a smile and added, "We'll go on till we get where we're going."
"Your highness!" called somebody from the back of the formation. Cashel wasn't tall enough to see past the mass of soldiers; he didn't think even Garric was, not with them wearing helmets like they were. "The passage has closed behind us! Let me through, you fools! I have to report to Prince Garric!"
"There's something up ahead of us, too," said one of the soldiers with Garric. "Looks to me like it's a solid wall up there."
Cashel had a clear field of view ahead. There was no doubt about it: the tunnel had closed off since after Sharina made the light come back the way it was down here: not normal, maybe, but normal for this place. As for being solid, though…
"The wall at the end's coming toward us," Cashel said, loud enough for the others to hear him if they'd wanted to. Everybody was looking instead at the officer who'd just come through the formation. He was an older fellow with curled, hennaed moustaches; a regimental commander, though not somebody Cashel knew by name.
Garric did, though. "What happened to the passage, Lord Portus?" he said.
"Behind me!" Portus said, gesturing with a flourish back the way he'd come. "I heard a shout and saw that sheets of ice were growing from either side of the wall. There were several men following closely, but they were cut off from me when the ice joined. They began to attack it with their weapons, but it continued to thicken until I couldn't even see them through it."
Portus took off his gilded helmet and wiped his forehead with the wad of cambric he kept between the leather straps that suspended the bronze above his scalp. "I came on at once. I, ah…
"I thought the ice was following me," he said into the hollow of his helmet. He looked up to meet Garric's eyes. "Your highness, I think itis following me. The wall is growing toward us!"
"Garric, so's the one in front of us," Cashel said, this time loud enough that theyhad to listen. He pointed with his quarterstaff. "There!"
He wasn't exactly angry-he was used to people not paying attention to what he said since he generally let the words stand for themselves. You had to put a lot of fuss and flailing about into the way you said the words to get sheep and most people to listen, and Cashel only did that when he had to.
"Oh, well," said one of the soldiers who'd been looking after Garric. "Maybe her ladyship'll chop a hole in it with her axe, do you think?"
"She's not a ladyship, Prester," the other man said. "She's a princess!"
"And Beard," said the axe sharply, "is not a navvy's pick! Try to cut ice with me, Squad Leader Prester, and you'll find just how quickly I bounce back and empty your skull of what passes for brains!"
"If we advance behind the pikes, as many of them as we've still got…?" Master Ortron said. He didn't sound real confident, showing that he was the sensible man Cashel had always taken him for.
"Garric," said Cashel, "hold Sharina for me. She's coming around fine, but…"
He passed Sharina to her brother without waiting to see if Garric had an opinion. Cashel needed both hands and somebody needed to watch over Sharina for a little while yet; there wasn't anything to discuss.
Cashel stepped forward, balancing his staff before him in both hands. "Anything I can do to help, Cashel?" Garric said.
"I think this one's for me," Cashel said as he began to spin the staff. "I haven't been doing much since I got here."
Cashel wasn't too proud to let somebody help, especially not a friend like Garric, but he didn't see much anybody else could do. It wasn't certain he could do much either, but he figured him and his quarterstaff had the best chance going.
The thin blue thread that Tenoctris had sent out for a guide disappeared into the plug that'd grown across the tunnel since Sharina cleared the other thing out of the way. The new wall of ice didn't move fast, not even as fast as Cashel ambled toward it at a sheep's pace. The ice didn'thave to be quick to do what it was planning-or anyway what the wizard behind it planned. Cashel appreciated the value of steady over fast as well as any man living.
He spun the staff in a slant before him, first high on his right side and then doing a tricky crossover that brought the left side high instead. He kept on walking, reversing the spin from sunwise to widdershins by changing hands again behind his back.
None of this had anything to do with how he planned to use the quarterstaff when he got to the wall, but Cashel knew in his heart that there was more going on than just him loosening up his muscles before he needed them for real. He wasn't exactly showing off for the watching soldiers, but Well, if this was the last time he was able to put his staff through its paces, he wanted it to be a display he and the familiar hickory could be proud of. And it might very well be the last time.
The quarterstaff's ferrules sparkled with wizardlight, then streamed a dazzling blue disk encircling Cashel as he walked on. His skin prickled; he didn't recall starting to smile, but he was smiling now and he guessed he would till this was over one way or the other.
The ice wall was close. The roof of these tunnels was twice as high as Cashel could reach with the staff held up in one hand, but the barrier right in front of him looked higher even than that. It was like facing a mountain that reached all the way to the stars, though there wouldn't be any stars where it was, just black ice on forever.
When Cashel had entered the Visitor's ship, he'd been trapped like a bug in hot sap. This business might end the same way, with the ice before him squeezing hard against the ice and Cashel part of a red mush that included Sharina and all the soldiers. So far, though, he had plenty of room to swing his staff.
He kept the iron-capped hickory spinning as rapidly as he could control it-which was a good deal faster than anybody else he knew could, even Garric. Cashel didn't move forward but the ice did, in a more delicate step than a human could manage.
The staff's whirling ferrule brushed the sheer black face. Instead of the tinyclick that Cashel expected to feel but not hear, the world exploded in a crash of blinding blue wizardlight. His arms went numb to the shoulders. He felt as he had the day when, too young to know better, he'd been clinging to a tree during a thunderstorm and lightning struck the next tree but one.
He was Cashel or-Kenset: he didn't drop his staff, and though he lost the rhythm of the spin for a moment he still brought the other ferrule around in a straight-on slam. The blow would've put his staff a hand's breadth deep into a sea wolf's thick skull.
Touching the ice had brought a thunderbolt. This time the shock threw Cashel to the ground, deaf and blinded to everything but orange and purple afterimages that alternated faster than his heart was beating.
He didn't feel the floor as he hit it, but when instinct drove him to reverse his stroke he found he was sitting on the ice and twice his own length back from the wall. He got up without thinking-there was no time to think, this was afight -by crunching one end of the staff down beside him and poling himself up as much by the strength of his shoulders as with his legs.
Cashel stepped forward. He supposed the men behind him were shouting, but he wouldn't have paid attention even if he could hear anything beyond the roar of that last impact.
He could see now, but his vision was focused down to a circle of the wall right in front of him. At the edges even that started to gray out; beyond the space he could've spanned with his arms spread, Cashel's world just didn't exist. All he saw-all he cared about f
or as long as this fight lasted, whether he lived or died-was the target for his next blow.
He spun the quarterstaff overhead, keeping its momentum up. He took another step and a third. The wall wasn't where it'd been when he got up and started for it again, but Cashel was used to opponents retreating when he came at them. He was moving faster than it was. As he took a fourth long stride he turned the staff's rotation into forward motion. He punched a butt cap into the ice with all his weight and strength thrusting it.
Wizardlight held Cashel in a sphere of lightning-cored needles, each of them stabbing into the marrow of his bones. It would've been agony if he could really feel, but the pain was so intense that his mind floated above it. He marveled that his flesh didn't blacken and slough away.
He was sitting on the ice again. Men were running past him, their mouths open with shouts that Cashel couldn't hear. Sharina knelt at his side. He couldn't hear her either, but her left hand stroked his cheek. Warmth and feeling returned to his body, the pain draining away as though Sharina's gentle fingers had lanced a boil.
Cashel lurched to his feet. In the wall of icewas gap he could've driven a yoke of oxen through. The edges still sizzled as azure light ate them away. Garric and his soldiers were clambering through the opening to the chamber beyond.
"Cashel?" Sharina said. "Can you walk?"
"I can run," growled Cashel, and he started forward again.
***
Sharina's heart leaped as she watched a sphere of nothingness engulf Cashel as he drove his staff into the center of the ice. It looked black because it had neither hue nor reflection, an absence of anything.
The emptiness vanished; maybe it'd been an illusion. Cashel flew back as though something huge had kicked him, but he still held his quarterstaff.
Sharina ran to him. She had a funny, detached feeling. She didn't hurt nor even feel tired, but she wasn't sure that it was her own strength that moved her limbs. Beard was more than an axe-she'd known that from the moment she picked him up and he started shouting-but she was beginning to wonder howmuch more than an axe he was.