Godess of the Ice Realm loti-5

by David Drake

  That's our job, not the Lady's, thought Garric. The whirling funnels of light drained into the ice; only a glow remained. Then the hard surface shattered, erupting like mud when frogs crawl to the surface of a dried pond during the first rains. Skeletons clothed in wizardlight rose from their icy graves, holding swords and spears with rust-pitted blades.

  The wizard on the throne continued to weave. The whole surface between Garric and the throne was breaking open. Some of the skeletons were of bone so old it was splitting, while others still had not only ligaments but flesh clinging to them.

  "Haft and the Isles!" Garric shouted, shocked despite himself at the sight. He wasn't sure that anyone but Cashel would follow him into the dreadful array.

  "Hey, the dumb barbarians haven't got armor!" bellowed Pont.

  "Let's get stuck in, boys!" cried his partner Prester. "It's party time!"

  I'll make them nobles for that bit of bravado! thought Garric joyfully. Then peasant caution made him add, If any of us survive.

  "It's not bravado," Carus explained. "They mean it. And they're right!"

  A skeleton ran at Garric holding a spear over its right shoulder in both fleshless hands. Whatever was animating the corpse must be powerful, but it hadn't had even rudimentary weapons training…

  Instead of waiting to side-step the awkward thrust, Garric backhanded his sword through the skeleton's right elbow. The spear twitched sideways and Garric's edge crunched deep in the naked spine. The creature folded backwards.

  Garric snatched the spear from the twice-dead thing's nerveless grip, then used the shaft to parry the cleaver-like blade which another skeleton swung at him from the left. He thrust his own sword through the creature's chest cavity, both edges grating on bone.

  The haze of crimson light which clothed the creature dissipated as suddenly as a reflection vanishing when the angle changes. The skeleton collapsed onto the ice, already starting to disarticulate.

  Garric saw movement to his right and was whirling to deal with it when Pont stepped past. The veteran crushed skeletal ribs with the upper edge of his shield, struck the skull of a second creature with the edge of his short, heavy sword-ancient bone powdered at the impact-and broke a third's knee and the thighbone above it with the hobnailed sole of his boot. When it fell, he smashed the thing's chest with the other boot.

  To Garric's other side Prester proceeded in much the same fashion, though he was using a pikeman's lighter shield: there was never a moment that one limb or another wasn't moving and never a motion that wasn't lethal. It was like watching pistons working in pump shafts, inexorably shoving everything before them.

  "Haft and the Isles!" somebody cried over the tumult.

  Garric strode forward between the two veterans. He didn't have a shield to strike with, but his longer arm and longer blade helped him keep even with the older men.

  His left hand stabbed the spear he'd appropriated through the thin nasal bones of a skull. The creature behind that one hacked at Garric's extended arm with a sword so dull it bruised worse than it cut. Garric didn't quite drop the spear, but he was clumsy when he lunged and with a half cut, half thrust, lopped off the head of the creature that'd wounded him.

  Another of the things drove its spear upward into Garric's breastplate, banging deeply enough through the bronze to draw blood as well as knocking his breath out. The stroke would've gone deeper yet if the spearpoint hadn't broken.

  The creature pulled the weapon back for a finishing thrust. Garric stood, paralyzed from the blow to his diaphragm. Pont, almost absently, shattered the skeleton's pelvis with the lower edge of his shield. When it fell, he drove the heel of his boot like a battering ram into its neck.

  Garric got his breath back. He stepped forward, his sword raised.

  "Yeah, and I'll bugger your sisters, too!" Prester shouted as he thrust and chopped and continued to advance. He didn't move quickly, but neither did he halt or even pause. It was like watching sap drip on a warm spring day.

  Cashel's quarterstaff struck right and left with the regularity of a waterclock, smashing a skull or a fleshless ribcage with every blow. Whenever an animate skeleton thrust at him, a ferrule batted the weapon back and crushed the thing wielding it. What'd been an army of hideous monsters as numerous as stalks in a barley field, was going down as surely as that barley at harvest time.

  The footing became as much of a danger as the creatures themselves. In rising from their frozen tombs, the skeletons had left craters of shattered ice. Garric set his boot on a hole filled with treacherous fragments. Only instincts he'd honed while following sheep into bogs warned him not to rest his weight on that foot.

  A skeleton swung a double-bitted axe down at him. Garric caught the helve with the point of his upraised sword and skidded the axe to the side, then flicked his blade to the right to lift the skull from the neck vertebrae. If he'd carried through with the lunge he'd intended, his leg would've sunk beneath him. The creature's blow would've split him up the back like a sheep butterflied for roasting.

  Sharina's axe wove figure-8s before her, clearing a space as broad even as Cashel's quarterstaff. The axe was shouting or singing in the sort of joy displayed at coronations and for sudden windfalls; its edge clipped through whatever it met-wood or bone or rusty iron. Garric didn't know how long his sister could keep up the effort, but by now there was little more need for it. A single rank of skeletons separated him and his immediate companions from the figure on the ice throne.

  Garric chose his final opponent, the skeleton of a man who when alive ages previously must've been seven feet tall. It raised its sword for a vertical chop; instead of the deliberate swordsmanship he'd demonstrated till this moment, Garric did the same.

  They swung down at one another, their blades crossing in a clanging tocsin. Sparks flew. Wizardry gave the skeleton's limbs enormous strength, but the salt-pitted sword snapped on the watered steel of Garric's blade.

  Garric thrust through the creature's mouth, scattering teeth like hailstones and lifting the top of the bare skull. The skeleton flew backward, the broken sword dropping from its right hand as its left arm came loose at the shoulder.

  Garric had reached the foot of the great throne; he looked up for the first time since the skeletons began to rise from the ice. The wizard seated above him must have weighed as much as a full-grown ox. Her body was a mushroom of fat on legs whose drooping calves swaddled tiny feet the way rich cloth drapes an altar. Her arms were so monstrous they appeared to have no elbows; Her fingers, though thick as sausages, seemed delicate by contrast with the bloated palms.

  She was looking at Garric. Her cheeks were so puffy that Her eyes seemed to be set at the bottom of deep tunnels, but Garric recognized Her nonetheless.

  He was looking at his childhood friend, Ilna os-Kenset.

  And as he realized that, the net of wizardlight that She had woven in the air dropped onto Garric, freezing him in his tracks.

  ***

  As Ilna entered the huge domed hall which she'd seen so recently through Her eyes, the net of wizardlight drifted down over her. Ilna's expression was colder than the winter stars.

  The Tree growing from the enthroned figure dominated the vast chamber. Its trunk was deceptive, as thin and supple as a willow's at first glance. At the back of Ilna's mind she had the impression that the Tree was too thick for even this huge room to hold. Its leafless limbs squirmed on currents of wizardlight, brushing over every peak and valley of the world; branching and spreading to branch again.

  Chalcus saw Her net falling. He threw up his left hand to keep it from tangling him, but that touch froze him. The net continued to settle, draping his head and shoulders. Ilna stepped around him and continued toward the center of the hall.

  The Tree in its full splendor looked as it had when Ilna first saw it in Hell. What she'd brought back with her to the waking world had been a relatively slight thing, but it would have grown.

  Grown to look like this towering monster, visible only to h
er of all those in this chamber.

  Soldiers were gathered in the center of the room; more men had been running toward them from an entrance close to where Ilna had shattered her own door in the wall. In a scene much like the one she'd just viewed through Her memory, a net of wizardlight had locked most of the men stiffly. A few were trying to crawl away; none of them would succeed.

  The chamber held inhuman creatures of more sorts than Ilna had fingers to count them. Her net had trapped those as well; it would convert them to Her purposes in the same fashion, if nothing prevented that from happening.

  Ilna smiled like light dancing from a sword blade. Something would prevent it.

  She walked forward, feeling a faint tingle from the wizardlight eddying about her. The net was at shoulder level now and dropping lower.

  Nearby crouched a thing whose body was a great cat's but whose eagle's head was crowned with great green feathers. A group of soldiers braced themselves to receive it, their shields raised; two of the men had javelins cocked to throw. The encounter had become a tableau when Her net had fallen across it. In their concern with each other, neither monster nor men had been aware of what was settling on them.

  Ilna detoured around the corpse of a giant with a brow that jutted like a warship's ram to protect its single central eye. It lay on its back with three pikes, two broken and one whole, sticking up from its chest. Judging from how deep the pikes were driven in, the creature must have run itself onto the points and continued struggling forward on pillar-like legs until death finally caught up with it.

  Ilna sniffed. That massive skull must hold a brain no bigger than a squirrel's. Of course there were plenty of ordinary men she'd say the same about.

  Garric and Cashel were where she expected to find them, in the middle of the front line. Sharina was there too, her blond hair draped about her shoulders like a shroud. She'd been swinging an axe when the net halted her in mid-stroke.

  As white as a slug and fatter than Ilna had believed a human could become, She sat on the throne looking out over the frozen soldiers. Of course She wasn't human any more; Her soul was merely the soil in which the Tree had sprouted to spread its tendrils across the world.

  The net of light reached the floor, locking Garric and his whole army beneath its spell. From the throne Her hands wove power in subtle patterns; those hands and Ilna herself were the only things moving in the huge room.

  She turned Her head toward Ilna. Her fat white fingers twisted; crimson wizardlight looped out to knot around Ilna like a snake throttling a vole.

  The coil slipped through Ilna as if her body were water; she felt only the quivering chill she'd get from a draft when a winter storm rattles the shutters. She walked on, looking up and smiling more broadly. She met the deep-set eyes of the thing she hadn't allowed herself to become.

  "Who are you?" shouted the thing on the throne.

  "I'm Ilna os-Kenset," said Ilna. "I'm who you used to be, when you were human."

  This close to the throne, Ilna had to choose her footing with care. The ice was broken into chunks, and everywhere lay the skeletons of the men who'd followed Her until she tore out their blood and souls to feed her wizardry.

  "I have power over you!" She cried from the throne. Her fingers writhed again, molding forces into a tool and sending them curling toward Ilna as an azure noose. "I have power over all things!"

  Ilna shrugged through this coil as she had the first one, as she had the net that held the others in the chamber. "You don't have any power except what the Tree allows you," she said calmly. "And the Tree has no power over menow -since I broke away from it."

  Ilna looked up at the round face and bloated white body. "As you did not in your world," she said. "And as you can't ever do now."

  "Ilna?" said a voice Ilna knew well. "I'm so glad you've come back!"

  It was not Her voice. It was the voice of the friend Ilna never had, the one who understood her and cared about her, as nobody had ever cared about Ilna os-Kenset.

  It was the voice of the Tree.

  "You have no business with me," Ilna said. "Not any longer."

  She wasn't sure her lips were moving. The huge ice hall faded to flickers at the edge of her awareness. She stood in a gray limbo with neither light nor texture. Before her was the Tree, its sinuous branches weaving a slow dance of mastery and evil.

  Ilna smiled; and if it was a grim expression, there was pride in it nonetheless. Not mastery over me. Not any longer.

  "None of them understand you, Ilna," said the Tree; its voice was soothing, loving. "I'll make sure that you get what you deserve."

  "You have no-" Ilna shouted, but the remainder of the words froze on her lips. Time stopped, then flowed down a channel different from the one which she had lived.

  The vagabond Kenset brought Ilna to Barca's Hamlet as an infant, but divine parentage already shown from her face. As a child she never lacked for anything. Barca's Hamlet became known as a paradise on earth where winters were moderate and crops bountiful. This blissful series of events was rightly credited to the presence of the Divine Ilna.

  Some of those in the borough found the pain of their own inadequacy too much to bear in the light of the Divine Ilna. Her uncle Katchin and his slattern wife swam out to sea one night; their bodies were never recovered. The next day Garric's shrewish, self-important mother Lora hanged herself in the panty of the inn. Neighbors regarded the deaths as part of the blessings Ilna brought on the community.

  Ilna allowed Garric to attend her. It pleased her to see the light of adoration in his eyes. He never presumed to touch her, of course, realizing that no human was worthy of the Divine Ilna. She was whole in herself, a fit subject for worship but unmoved by it as by all else around her.

  Around Her; She was divine.

  Realizing the inadequacy of their resources, the folk of the borough carried Her in state to Carcosa. The ancient capital received Her with fitting enthusiasm, rebuilding the Old Kingdom palace for Her. Delegations arrived from Sandrakkan and Ornifal, from Blaise and from rocky islets too small to have a name recognized by any but the handful of fishermen inhabiting them.

  The rich and powerful brought gold and jewels and sometimes tapestries; She looked with amused contempt on the finest fabric which humans could weave. The poor could offer only their worship, but that they gave Her unstintingly.

  On every isle, in every home, voices rose in praise for the Divine Ilna. What had been a kingdom became a temple, as a new and eternal Golden Age came to the Isles.

  "What you deserve…," the voice whispered affectionately.

  Ilna laughed, a harsh, bitter sound that shattered the illusion. She stood among the frozen figures beneath the great dome again. "What I deserve," she said as the Tree swayed in a vain, desperate attempt to touch her, "is to die-because of the harm I did when I listened to you before. Never again."

  She stepped forward. She'd reached the line of soldiers and squeezed between them, sometimes ducking under an outstretched blade or a thrusting shield. The men were in tight ranks, but Ilna was a slender woman.

  Garric stood with his sword raised and his right foot lifting from the ice to lunge toward the creature above him. Ilna touched her friend's shoulder in a protective gesture. She smiled at Her, thinking with a rare surge of pride, Despite the evil which I did and can never repay, I didn't become that; and I might have.

  "You have no power over me either!" She said. "However great your art, you can't touch me!"

  "Is that what you think?" said Ilna. She chuckled and slipped her little knife from its bone sheath. The keen steel edge winked like a demon's tongue. "What I think is that I'll reach a vein with this eventually, even if I have to dig for a while."

  She mounted the lowest step, grinning like a cat.

  The creature on the throne screamed in warbling terror. I didn't become a coward, either, Ilna thought, and climbed the next step.

  The throne trembled. She was straining to stand, channeling forces to lift a body t
oo massive for human muscles to move.

  "You can't run from me!" Ilna said. "You can't run from yourself, Ilna os-Kenset!"

  The Tree shuddered as its bed shifted, rocking like the surf in a storm. Ilna struggled onto the third step despite the rippling violence.

  The vast white form screamed again; then She toppled sideways, unable to balance the mass on Her tiny feet. She struck the floor with the weight not only of Her body but also the load of trembling evil which grew from it.

  There was a soggy crash, then a roar. The ice, already weakened when the dead climbed out of it, broke open.

  Water just warmer than the ice fountained from the hole, then dropped back. A second geyser, this time tinged with blood, followed an instant later. The things swimming beneath the chamber were feeding.

  Wizardlight began to fade from the walls the way sparks do after they've been flung onto a stone hearth. Ilna swayed; then the throne pitched with greater violence and she fell backward.

  Chapter 24

  The net that'd held them the way winter ice coats a gargoyle dissolved. Garric, free to move again, saw Ilna fall backward. He sheathed his sword with a skill that'd become unconscious when he awakened the spirit of King Carus in his mind and caught Ilna with both hands. She was a solid weight to arms fatigued by the brutal fighting, but Garric figured he could carry her as far as he needed to go.

  The glow in the cavern walls suddenly dimmed. Garric could see men in silhouette, but the floor strewn with corpses and debris was in darkness.

  Garric turned his head. The door we entered by is -

  As the thought leaped through his mind, the trail of light Tenoctris had sent to guide them brightened to a fierce blue glare. Now it lit the route instead of just indicating it.

  "Cashel, hold your sister!" Garric said, swinging Ilna toward his friend.

  The steps up the throne were twice the normal height; he jumped rather than stepping. Behind he heard Ilna say, "I'm perfectly all right! I just slipped!"