The Voyage of the Unquiet Ice

by Andrew McGahan

  Already the peak of the surge had passed, and the heaving waters of the gulf were settling once more. Nell slipped over the side and down the rope, and Dow followed. Johannes was pushing the boat away from the hull even as Dow lighted in the stern. His first impression, as he took the tiller, was that the Bent Wing 2 was a cold boat – the boat of a dead crew, and still rimmed with ice from its last resting place on Camp Island.

  But it was whole, and it was a cutter of the same design that Dow had already piloted. He turned it smoothly, and under the soft strokes of the oarsmen, they set off through the fog towards the ice wall.

  10. THE INNER SEA

  They rowed in darkness, for they did not yet dare light any lamps, though no cry or alarm came from the ship as it sank away behind in the mist. Ahead, the ice cliffs rose and rose until Dow had to tilt his head back as far as it could go just to see the upper rim, a high edge against the shimmering sky. Then the rift emerged through the fog, a black fracture extending up the shadowed wall. Its mouth was somehow narrower up close than it had looked even from afar, its sheer jaws vibratingly taut, as if they might snap shut at any moment.

  Nell was sitting at Dow’s side in the stern seat. She pulled forth her hourglass and held it up in the dark. ‘One hour,’ she said to the crew. ‘Row without fear for one hour – and we’ll see what we see.’

  The men nodded and bent their backs to their oars – perhaps because, facing sternwards, they couldn’t see the chasm gaping as awfully as could Dow. He knew he should speak here, as he’d planned; he should demand they halt and then study the rift for at least a few last moments, and consider what they were about to do. But he found he had nothing to say – or at least nothing that didn’t sound craven – and so they slid forward without any discussion at all, and the towering maw closed about them.

  Immediately it was warmer, strange though that seemed with the ice cliffs pressing only a few yards off on either hand. But the darkness now became impenetrable, and so Dow did then call a halt, so that they could light their lamps. These were not whale-oil lamps, only regular ship’s lanterns – but in the frozen confines they gave better illumination than might have been expected, for their light was reflected, glinting, by the ice all about, as if the chasm was eager to display itself.

  It was an unnerving sight. The sea between the cliffs was black, and fog curled above it like steam. The current was still running outwards, the last of the flood, but only gently now, undulating against the ice walls, where nicre crackled softly. Forward, the chasm bent away to lose itself in shadows, and overhead the cliffs rose into darkness; the sky – three miles above – hidden, so that it seemed the walls met together, and the boat floated in a great tunnel rather than a rift open to the air.

  They rowed on, at a steady but cautious pace, for the oarsmen must not exhaust themselves. Dow steered lightly as the chasm twisted and turned. Soon the entrance had disappeared behind them, and the effect was not even of a tunnel anymore, but rather of an ice cave, a long, low chamber without any entrance or exit – a white prison. At his side, Dow could feel, even through their heavy clothes, that Nell was trembling.

  Was she afraid?

  Was Dow himself?

  All he could say for sure was that he was aware – in a manner indeed that reminded him of the maelstrom – of being faced with something that was too outsized for human capacity. Yes, the Bent Wing 2 and its crew might venture down this chasm for a time, but he did not think they would be able to endure it for long. The weight of the ice above them was too great; the pressure of it, barely leashed, ached palpably in the air. And if that wasn’t enough, there was the threat that any moment a sudden piping wind might blow and a great wave rise to smash them in the narrow space. Nell’s reassurances about such things seemed all but meaningless now.

  But they rowed on, the chasm winding somewhat but holding its course, while the sand of the scapegoat’s hourglass dwindled slowly through its funnel. Dow forced himself not to watch it constantly.

  Nothing blocked them, and nothing hindered them, but their nervousness only grew. The chasm, for all its stark quiet, was never at rest. From time to time sharp detonations cracked out from the walls like musket shots, followed by weird fusillades of echoes that would run up and down the rift mockingly. Or the silence would be broken by a sudden loud splash from ahead or behind, beyond the range of the lamplight; the sound of ice falling in deadly chunks from the walls, although nothing could ever be seen. And occasionally great rumblings seemed to shake the entire chasm, making the water dance and ripple, and they would wait in dread in case a wave should rise.

  Worst of all there came finally, from high above, a sound like shrieking laughter, and then the rattle and crash of something huge breaking free maybe a mile overhead, to drop careering between the cliffs. They all crouched in terror in their seats, waiting for the impact – but all that reached them long moments later was a spray of pulverised ice, falling like snow.

  ‘Monsters of the deep,’ moaned Alfons, barely daring to straighten again as the crystals swirled. He stared fearfully up into the blackness. ‘We are being warned – the Ice does not want us here.’

  No – thought Dow – a human heart and mind could never be at peace in such a place. It was not that the chasm was evil or unnatural, for all that it was easy to imagine malice or some monstrous influence there, but like the maelstrom it was so preternatural that a man could visit it only fleetingly and fearfully, and then must either flee again or go mad.

  ‘How long,’ he demanded of Nell, when the flurry cleared, for she had put the hourglass away some while ago. The faces of the rowers too turned to her, their skin a sickly shade in the lamplight. Surely, those faces seemed to say, the hour must almost be up. Surely they should turn back now – for why press on? They had been willing to chance this endeavour, but the ice was too much for them. The chasm had no end, and no survivors from the lost fleet had ever come here – or if they had, they had long since died in some distant dead end, lost and alone and driven insane by the rift’s tortures.

  Nell hesitated, but at last withdrew the glass and held it up. Not half its sand had yet run through. The men stared slack jawed. So slowly did the sand seem to be trickling down the funnel that Dow for a vexed moment was convinced that Nell had tampered with the device.

  ‘On,’ she said, but the word came out a fearful whisper, amplified tauntingly by the ice walls. Her eyes creased in anger, and she sat up to speak more clearly, defying the echoes. ‘What are we, to fear mere snowstorms and noises? On – for half an hour more yet.’

  Dow couldn’t tell just then if he hated or admired the scapegoat. Did she truly still see a purpose in this voyage, or was it only stubbornness? And yet the men bowed their heads and resumed their strokes, and Dow steered on, if for no other reason than not to be shamed by her.

  Oh, but how slowly the time passed, and how little progress they seemed to make, for as they crept forward they were forever at the centre of their own circle of light, the shadows retreating ahead of them, and the shadows following on behind. They might have been but a few hundred yards from where they’d begun – but they knew too that this wasn’t so, that already the way back was long, and overhung with potential disaster.

  There had been little enough speech in the boat before the ice fall – now there was none. And the longer the silence drew out, the louder the unheard throb and pulse of pressure sounded inside Dow’s head. Were the walls bowing inwards from the weight above them? He felt he could no longer trust his eyes. But even as he opened his mouth – to say what, he didn’t know – he felt a puff, suddenly, of warmer air on his face.

  It was gone again in an instant, but it had been quite real. Distracted from his fear, Dow pulled off a glove and tested the water with a finger. It was milder than ever – cold still, but far now from freezing. The source of its heat, of the whole warm current, must lie very near.

  And yet – surely water so warm must be eating away at the base of the ice cli
ffs? Puzzled, Dow looked hard at the walls, and was astonished to see what he should have seen, no doubt, some time ago. The lower few feet of walls were no longer of ice – they were of stone!

  He stared back and forth along the chasm. Yes, on both sides the ice walls rested now upon rocky feet, the stone glistening with frost, so that it still appeared white in the lamp glow. At some point, the ice chasm had become a fissure running through solid bedrock.

  ‘One hour,’ said Nell, and the rowers put up their oars. The boat slid a few last yards in silence. There was, Dow noted, no current flowing outwards any longer.

  Faces haggard, the six crewman stared expectantly at Nell – turn back, their silence said. But Nell turned to Dow, and in her eyes he read a mix of defiance and pleading. She wanted to go on, but even her nerve was failing now. She couldn’t make the choice.

  ‘The walls,’ Dow said to the rowers. ‘Look at them. The ice sits not in the ocean anymore, but upon dry land.’

  The men looked about, startled.

  ‘We must go on,’ Dow added, striving to sound calm. ‘At least a little further, to see what this means …’

  Nell took a grateful breath. In the bow Alfons gave a doubtful tilt of his head, but nodded finally. ‘Another quarter hour then,’ said the poet, his eyes intent upon Dow, as if demanding a promise.

  ‘Aye,’ added Johannes, ‘a little further. And we can row like men possessed if we still have to turn tail for home.’

  So Nell tipped the hourglass, and they went on.

  On either side, the stone walls rose gradually higher. Ten feet, then twenty above the waterline, and eventually they extended beyond the range of the lamps. And even though Dow could sense the ice still towering on top of the stone, there was at least some comfort in knowing that the whole edifice rested now on a solid base. Stone walls would not suddenly slam shut, the way ice might. Nor would they collapse so easily.

  But watching the walls, Dow became aware of another change. The water – ever so slightly – had begun to ripple and undulate once more. But now it was flowing inwards. And dragging the boat along with it.

  He fought down panic. He knew what this inflow meant – the next wave could not be far off.

  But they were almost through, he was sure. The rift was growing wider. At its narrowest it had dwindled to a bare thirty yards across, but slowly it was opening out again. Dow felt as if a band was loosening about his lungs. And as the rowers hurried the boat forward, so did the inflow increase, and time too hastened on. It seemed like only moments before Nell was holding up the hourglass, to show it drained by a third.

  But no one suggested stopping, for high, high overhead a thin strip of colour had become visible. A line of red and green. It was the sky. And sight of it again was as welcome as dawn after the blackest of nights, for it confirmed that the end of the chasm must be close – and with it the source of the glow against the clouds, for the green and red shimmers were brighter than ever.

  On they plunged, oblivious to the strength of the current now, even though it was sucking them inwards as fast as the men could row. The walls flew by, but at the same time the mists low upon the water were thickening, so that the boat rushed forward into hazy obscurity. Or was there a glow directly ahead now?

  Then the chasm walls vanished on either hand, as abruptly as if the boat had just issued through an enormous gateway. Open air was all about them, a giddy freedom from the weight of ice and stone overhead, and the rowers put up their oars again, turning to stare forward into the tantalising mist. Dow knew what they must be thinking, of the rumours of green lands and bright cities that waited beyond the Ice Wall. He too stared.

  The boat slid on, drawn now by the current alone, as if on a wide, bank-less river. A low rumbling came from ahead, and indeed from all around. The glow through the mists brightened, and then finally the fog was fragmenting and lifting away in spirals. The boat emerged at last into clear water and open night. The eight of them looked. And looked.

  ‘Oh,’ whispered Nell. ‘Oh no …’

  For a first bewildered moment Dow thought he was beholding a city – a city of towers and streets, all lit by thousands of red lamps. But then he realised that nothing before him was man-made.

  Instead there rose – some four or five miles away across troubled waters – a mountain; a mountain that was on fire; a great, cruel cone of ash and slag, wracked and tormented by forces so mighty they had collapsed half its bulk, leaving a fractured rim that curved about a hollowed-out core, a crater from which a glow leapt constantly, red, then green, then white. And all around this burning, broken titan there spread a vast circle of ocean, ringed on all sides by the soaring cliffs of the inner Ice Wall, which climbed here to even more stupendous heights than the outer ramparts, like a blister upraised about a hot wound, four miles, maybe, from foot to peak.

  ‘A volcano,’ Nell breathed, in a horror so profound that Dow turned from the wonder of the sight to look at her. ‘A cauldron of fire. And we have sailed blindly within its grasp …’

  She was not staring at the mountain, Dow saw, but rather at the Ice Wall that circled all around. His gaze followed hers. He knew the word volcano, for he had heard tales told – home in the inn at Stromner – of the fiery hills that existed upon Red Island. Indeed, the mountain ahead looked much as he’d imagined a volcano might, if all the more forbidding in reality.

  But he saw now what Nell saw – that the fearsome mount was in fact only the small inner nub of the true, and far greater, volcano. For it was not ice that surrounded the inner sea – it was instead a vast rampart of stone, jagged and snow draped, uplifted in a sheer and unbroken wall; a ring four miles high encircling a drowned crater fully fifteen miles across. And all about the surface of that crater, steam was rising from the ocean in great plumes, illuminated by a fire-glow that came from under the water; blazes raging in the depths.

  They had not sailed within sight of a volcano.

  They had sailed inside a volcano.

  For a time, as the others too absorbed the gravity of their situation, there was a stricken silence in the boat. All the while they were swept further out into the inner sea, but no one took up an oar to fight against the current. Forgotten too was any fear of the imminent wave that had so threatened them in the chasm. All such matters seemed shrunken now; it was everything the mind could do to simply take in the scale of the scene. Mists and smokes choked the sky, and a hot stench hung in the air that reminded Dow of gunpowder.

  It was Johannes, native of Red Island, who broke the awed hush. His tone was deceptively calm, as if he viewed the setting only from a distance, and stood in no danger. ‘Many are the fiery craters and hot pools of my homeland – but there is nothing to approach this.’

  ‘Aye,’ uttered Alfons, with a similar dazed detachment. ‘And here lies the answer to many a mystery of old. The sea is warmed by the fires beneath us, and then through the cracks that open in these great walls it can flow to melt a passage though the ice to the outer world.’

  ‘Just such a passage as we followed to come here,’ agreed Johannes. ‘But never the same passage twice – for different cracks must open and close over the years as the earth shifts and quakes, and the fires below too must ebb and surge in their heat, and so in turn the warm currents will flow or fail, and the channels they cut will freeze or thaw. All exactly as the legends say. No wonder the mariners of old were so confounded.’

  ‘And yet we have not been!’ rejoined Alfons. ‘Behold; these fires have raged hotly enough, and enduringly enough, to clear our way even in the dead of winter. We are favoured by fortune still, it seems.’

  But Nell – Dow saw – did not agree. She was shaking her head wordlessly, as if too appalled to speak.

  ‘What?’ he asked her.

  ‘Fools,’ she whispered. ‘We must turn back.’

  Turn back? Dow looked behind them. By now, the current had carried them some distance inwards from the crater wall. Above the fogs towered unspeakable bastions of
stone, red in the fire glow. The rift through which they’d come was a great dark breach torn in those bastions, wide and crumbling at its peak, but narrower at its base. White froth foamed there at sea level, where the flow from the chasm came rushing in.

  Johannes said, ‘But what of survivors? Could not there be men here from the lost fleet? Should we not search for them?’

  ‘Fools,’ grated Nell again. ‘There is no one here. If they came, they are dead. And so will we be soon if we stay.’

  ‘Why?’ demanded Dow. ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘Don’t you see?’ She thrust the hour-glass at him – until now wrapped tightly in her hand. ‘It will soon be two full hours since we set out. Two hours since the last wave ran through the chasm.’

  Dow could only frown in perplexity. What did that matter, when they were no longer in the chasm?

  Her breath was exasperated. ‘Where do you think the waves come from? They don’t begin in the chasm. They begin here! The water is sinking for now, but it will rise again, violently, and soon!’

  Sinking?

  Dow stared back again at the water rushing in through the rift – and slowly the realisation dawned. On a vast scale the level of the inner sea must indeed be dropping, and so drawing in the outer ocean. Dow couldn’t begin to guess what might cause such massive drainage, but what disturbed Nell he knew was not the inflow itself, but the knowledge that very soon it must all be reversed. Had they not seen it from the deck of the Chloe, at the mouth of the rift; the waves howling out of the chasm.

  Johannes, wise in the way of volcanos, was nodding in dread and wonder. ‘Yes. I see how it must be. In my homeland there are geysers among the hot pools – caverns beneath the surface that will draw water into them, bubbling and steaming, until, at regular intervals, be it an hour, or a day, some crucial pressure is reached in the depths below, or some chamber is filled beyond bearing with steam, and then with a great gush the geysers will explode, expelling all the water they’ve absorbed in scalding jets and fountains. So it must be here – but of a magnitude beyond all reason, enormous enough to lift this entire sea, and so send waves rushing out through the chasm.’