‘I said I was sorry! I healed it. Are you not my friend, then?’
The voice sounded almost frightened. Savi sat up and looked around, and was startled to see the girl crying, inelegantly, awkwardly, tears streaming down her cheeks, nose snivelling uncontrolled over lips and chin.
‘What were you saying about slime?’ Savi demanded, mopping her up with a towel. ‘Friends are usually more equal, don’t they? Not slaves. But you don’t have any equals, do you? Yes, of course I’m your friend, as far as I can be. If that matters to you! That’s a feeling, you know!’
‘Oh,’ said the girl, and snorted loudly and liquidly – coarse as a goose, thought Savi, with that great pointy nose of hers. ‘So … that is how you mean it? How you feel towards others? Towards your friends?’
Savi laughed a little, in exasperation. ‘It’s not all the same. It’s always different. I loved my friends. I loved my father.’ Again the chill curtain swept across her, but she drove it aside. ‘Not the same way.’
‘And … him? How did you … love him? Would you let him do … that?’ She slid her hand back again.
‘Mmmm. I did. Oh yes; and more—’ She stopped, sat up in alarm. She hardly noticed the faint tremors that shook the palace, but this was worse. Icy wind whistled across the room, billowing the heavy draperies straight out, stinging her eyes and plucking at her clothes. The walls quivered, horribly, like the twitching flanks of a beast. They seemed about to come crashing inward upon her. There were cries and wails in the distance. Alarmed, she sprang up and saw the girl crouching there on the bed, intent as a great cat upon its prey.
‘You!’ exclaimed Savi furiously. ‘See what I mean? You want to be my friend, and then you frighten the life out of me! All for a moment of petty jealousy! D’you think I want to be your friend, if you’re going to act like that?’
The turbulence had already stilled. The girl’s lips were trembling. Savi sat down hard on the bed, with her back resolutely turned. After a moment a hand stole over her shoulder, very gently. ‘I’m sorry. Is that love, too?’
‘Unfortunately.’
‘So I have it. And you still have it. Enough to make a difference? In exploring?’ Soft hair enveloped Savi’s shoulder, with its scent.
Savi shook her head slightly, but only in wonder. ‘I think you’re learning. Definitely. Beginning to understand.’
The hand cupped Savi’s bared breast, the nipple against the palm, and moved in a slow arc. Another hand touched her waist. Savi sighed in half-amused indulgence, and drew it around her, feeling the long, slender body suddenly close against her back. ‘Oh, very well then. Come here.’
Alya coughed the water out of his mouth, only for it to flood again, with bitter-tasting grit. He spewed it out and raised his head a little, still coughing, and struggled to clear his sight and his mind. The black sand beneath him brought it all back at once, and he stared anxiously around. He saw that he had only pulled himself up on the bar, and was lying across it now, half in the calm pool. His sword was thrust into the dry sand; he must have pulled himself in with it, instinctively. Then he clapped his hand to his side. A familiar weight was missing.
The bag. The mask.
Wrenched with panic, choking for breath, he thrust himself up on to his knees, and cast wildly about. The shattered timbers of boats, their enemies’ and their own, still tossed and whirled in the thrashing rapids; but of the bag, or any smaller debris, there was no sign. It might be cast up on the far side of the cavern, and beyond his reach, but most likely it had been dashed to pieces, or gone to the bottom. The loss felt sickening, diminishing, like the loss of a limb or an eye; as both it was, perhaps.
It was surely to his credit, as the tale is told, that the sight of surviving companions drove even that pain momentarily from his mind. Vansha was hauling himself up on the far side, where lay the shattered bow of the boat; he lifted a weary hand, then sagged down again, panting. Rysha was sitting further along the spit, holding her head and sniffing.
‘Are you all right?’
‘Just bloody brilliant. How’d you think?’
‘Any sign of Asquan? Or Chiansha?’
She shrugged.
Alya looked around for Asquan, but there was no sign of either him or Chiansha. Then he saw the corpse that lay in the shallows nearby, weighted down by its mail, long hair washing in the faint current. But that was old Kalkan, surely. He was about to haul him ashore, then thought better of it, and shoved him off to where the current could get hold of him. He watched the body vanish into the thrash of the rapids. There, surely, dark forces could not touch or taint it. No quiet grave; but then the old devil might have preferred that. It was certainly honourable enough. He and his had kept their word, to the full, and to the end.
Now Alya must keep his; but the sight and presence of the Ice had daunted him, and the flurry of death and destruction about him. Now he felt the weight of the Ice above his head, the immensity of it. He had spent lives and energy reaching this place, and what was it to him? What good had he done? He had cast away his most treasured possession, and with it, perhaps, any chance of finally fulfilling the only power he felt was truly his. He might make a new mask, on the pattern of the old, engrained in his memory; but it would not have the legacy of power within it, that gave the old mask such an aura, an identity. He was surrounded by walls of white glass, impenetrable as the Wall within himself, and as impossible to surmount. Even if she was still living somewhere, how could he hope to come to her, in the midst of all that?
‘Alya!’
It was Asquan’s voice, a hoarse whisper that echoed so eerily, and had so little direction, that they all whirled around in panic, as if it spoke from a deeper shadow.
‘Over here!’
They saw him then, an arm waving from what looked like a solid wall beyond the pool, above a heap of stones. Then, as he stepped out, the heap resolved itself into a wall, a walled platform, an obvious jetty with mooring posts and rings; its very ordinariness seemed outlandish, in this place.
‘Come on! D’you think we dare hang around here? Run, fools! Run!’
They could hardly think straight, those left alive, but such was the urgency in that voice that they staggered to their feet as best they could, and seized their weapons. Rysha had her sword, and Vansha had lost his own; but he seized one from the shattered bow that was all that remained of their boat.
‘It’s Kalkan’s!’ he said, as Alya splashed around the pool and caught up with him. Alya thought it looked more like Darzhan’s, but he said nothing. His own blade he hefted thoughtfully, as they reached the jetty. Asquan ran out to them.
‘Move, fools! What’s the matter with you?’
‘Wait! What about Chiansha?’
‘He went down among the rocks. Then I saw his body go by. Dead, believe me! Now move! D’you think they’ll leave the ways open long, when someone’s got through their defences? Do you want to face more of those things?’ He grabbed Rysha, thrust her staggering towards the opening – and found Alya’s sword, and Vansha’s, levelled straight at his breast.
‘What’s …’ Asquan stared. ‘Ah! You think I might be …’
‘You might. You came out of the wreck much better than us.’
‘I was ready! I leaped to those rocks there and waded – Powers, do I look like the dead?’
His eyes were alive enough, certainly. Alya lowered his sword. ‘All right. What’s this you’ve found?’
Asquan stamped on the stone. ‘Their main landing-stage here, I think. Probably they lower the waters when they want it used, so they don’t bother to guard it. But they will now! So come on! There’s a stair! Unless you have any better ideas?’
Rysha was staring suspiciously up at the crevice, lined with crudely hewn stone. The steps were black rock, but the walls were concave surfaces of pure white ice, like ripples made solid, and Alya felt just as apprehensive. It was like walking into the belly of some great beast.
Rysha shuddered. ‘Don’t know what�
��s up there, do we? Could be more of those …’ She couldn’t find a word.
‘There might!’ agreed Asquan harshly. ‘But we know they’re down here – don’t we?’
Rysha plunged for the stairs. The others followed, skidding and cursing. The lower steps were slick with clear black ice from the river spray, and the walls gave no handhold – not that Alya or anyone wanted to touch them. The air was chill and heavy about them, and the pale glimmer turned them into greenish ghosts of themselves. It felt as if the vast weight above were pressing down upon them. ‘This is going to be an eternal climb!’ Alya shouted. ‘You realise how high those cliffs were? And the stair’s not that steep!’
‘You can’t guess how glad that makes me!’ snarled Vansha, nursing a bruised shin.
‘Then we’d best climb all the faster!’ said Asquan. ‘Unless you fancy meeting someone coming down!’
Loss, cold, fatigue, shock – Alya told himself all these were enough to explain the misery that surrounded them. They had seen so much death, and worse than death, in what he realised must have been very little time. Hours, mere minutes, had reduced them from a hardened band to a mere fragment, from possible rescuers to skulking vermin; starving vermin, soon, unless they found food somehow. Alya winced. This was his doing, the ruin of his plan.
They might as well have walked up to the cliff-foot, and knocked. They could hardly have fared much worse. Yet he was aware of more than that, tugging at his heart; more than his grief for Kalkan and the rest, more even than the loss of the mask.
He had never really been able to use the mask properly, never would, probably. It had been wasted on him. And much as they had shared, much as they owed one another, respect and much more, there had never really been any real bond between the others and himself. Never could have been.
Neither the mask nor the men – not while that fire flared within him. While it was there, he was a man apart; save perhaps from Vansha. And their bond was strangest of all. They were brothers sworn, true; but even brothers did not always stay friends …
Alya shook his head. His wet gauntlets had become masses of ice, and he dragged them off to massage his hands. What was putting thoughts like this into his head? The mask had worked, though in unexpected ways. He might have done more yet, much more. And Asquan, peculiar creature that he was, little though Alya liked his tastes or his nature – he’d been Alya’s help and mentor from the start. He’d taught him so much, treated him like a son, little as he’d want to be any son of Asquan’s! And old Kalkan – he’d liked him well enough, never mind how different they were; and the soldiers, all good enough men in their fashion. Even Rysha – she had gone the distance with him, as she pledged, even to this place that seemed to terrify her more than any of them.
So what made him think so much less of them? That tugging at his feelings again …
‘This place!’ he swore.
‘As you say!’ panted Asquan. ‘Gets a man down … Wearier than I should feel. Cursing you and your bloody woman for ever dragging me here … That’s stupid!’ He took his hand from his side, looked around. ‘To be here – here, in the very Ice itself …’ He laughed, softly. ‘I’m alive, alive as I haven’t felt for years! It’s back there I was dead, as Volmur’s deluded hatchet-man, doing his dirty work. Waiting forever for something I knew would never happen, the grace I’d never get! This has to be better! Better than dying slowly in the dark, eh, Rysha?’
‘Maybe!’ she wheezed. ‘Maybe! I don’t know … can’t think clear … too afraid … and that’s not like me! You think there’s … something doing that to me?’
‘I don’t feel anything!’ said Vansha sharply. Just the same as I’ve always felt. I want what I’ve always wanted. To find Savi, get her out of here – isn’t that right, brother?’
‘You sound angry,’ said Rysha. ‘Cold. Maybe that’s what it’s doing to you!’
‘That’s so much dung!’ snapped Vansha. ‘I feel as I always feel! I just don’t have the spirit left for …’ He sounded hasty, confused. ‘Pretending! All this pretending. This mess! I just want …’
He slipped heavily, and said no more save curses.
Alya half expected the rock stairs to give way to ice; but the opposite happened. The black stone began to invade the walls, the ice to give back, until at last it was only an icicled roof to the narrow cleft along which they were slowly ascending. The steps themselves grew mostly free of black ice. ‘Might even bring us right out from under, like!’ exclaimed Rysha.
‘It could not be too soon!’ agreed Asquan, clutching his ribs; and Alya felt the same flood of relief.
‘It’s the Ice getting us down, right enough,’ he said. ‘Maybe just being shut in like that. But I don’t think so …’
‘No,’ said Rysha, shuddering. ‘Don’t feel natural, being stuck here. It does something to you, this stuff. To your mind.’ She glared at a great icicle that had come down to form a mighty column, overlain with rings of lesser ones. ‘Looks slimy, almost.’
Vansha shrugged. ‘It’s not that bad. I liked the canes less than this.’
‘They seem like a dream of peace to me now!’ said Alya. ‘This stuff …’ He absent-mindedly reached up to snap an icicle with his bare left hand.
He shrank back with a cry, clutching his arm. ‘What’s the matter?’ barked Asquan.
Alya could hardly answer. ‘Painful … more than cold, like a shock of some sort down my arm … all the strength driven out of it …’
‘This is a fine time to go losing it!’ growled Vansha. ‘Rub it with snow, that’s the best thing for frostbite!’
‘Not frostbite. As if something in me … recoiled …’
‘Don’t blame you!’ shivered Rysha. ‘I don’t even like the breath of the air here.’
‘Then get on!’ ordered Asquan. ‘It may be you sprang some alarm. Run, if you can, before they set guards here also!’
He led the way now, at a fierce trot, and the others strained to follow. The thought of being left behind down here was enough to make sure of that; and imagining some of those shadow-men tramping up from below.
But before long Asquan gestured at the ice roof, without wasting a word; and they all saw it. The glow was no longer so pallid and faint. The Ice shone now with highlights sharp and cold as diamonds, stinging their eyes with glaring rainbows. Even the black rock gleamed; and a breath of different air curled around them, heavy with strange smells, sooty and sulphurous, but in among them, the stale but welcome stinks of life.
All at once Asquan waved urgently, and flattened himself against the rock-wall, panting. For a minute they imitated him, while he watched and listened, then his hand motioned them on, urgently but silently. As they caught him up, each one of them saw it, and marvelled.
Ahead of them a green glass cavern opened up; and at its heart stood an icicle forest. Like trees upside down they hung, their broad roots in the ice-ceiling, lesser chains downturned from their fronts towards their buried crowns, like frozen foliage buried in wavy channelled patterns on the floor. It was an eerie sight, sterile yet beautiful, starkly dignified yet mocking the perishable beauty of life. From the channels Alya guessed it had been carved by some long-frozen stream-course. But they spared it little wonder; for beyond it, shading its roof and floor, streaming along a broad path cut between the columnar trees, shone the strong grey light of day.
‘Now!’ hissed Asquan. ‘We don’t run, but we move like lightning. And quietly! At the first step, the first voice – behind the nearest tree!’
He took an uneasy step on to the icy floor, and though he slithered a little, he moved as swiftly as he had ordered, in a sort of padding lope from tree to tree. The others copied it, Alya forcing his gauntlets back on; he’d no desire to touch the tree shapes. The cavern was not many strides across, and in minutes Vansha, the last of them, made it across to join the others in the shadow of the wide crevice that was the cavern mouth. They stared out, unbelieving.
‘That’s rock out there!�
� exclaimed Vansha. ‘Not Ice!’
Asquan grinned. ‘Rock; and fire. Earthfires mostly, I’d guess, from the sulphur stink. We’ve been moving along, as well as climbing. I guess that this is some kind of open vale in the Ice itself – eh, Alya?’
‘Near its edge, it seemed. Between its outthrust fingers, held open by earthfires indeed. Maybe no more than five hundred strides, as the crow flies. But up and down, it would seem like a lot more.’
‘Indeed. It’s a good way down to the buildings there, and with little enough shelter. But all that smoke could give us cover!’
He slid forward, raising his mantle to break his outline and shadow his face, and peered cautiously out. Then he stiffened. They heard it as he did, the tramp of heavy-shod feet, the bark and yammer of fierce voices. Instinctively the others shrank back. Asquan seized Alya’s arm. ‘No! Not that way! Come!’
He sprang out, hauling Alya with him, and they found themselves in a place of jagged rocks, wreathed in shadow and smoke beneath the glare and glitter of the Ice-slopes above. The only way out of it was the worn path, winding away between the rock-walls; and it was from here the voices were approaching. Asquan sprang for the shadow of the rocks, the others following.
Barely in time. Up the path, trotting, came a strong force of the painted men, their black leather armour and iron shields slashed with white characters, arrows feathered in black and white already strung to their short bows of bent horn. A tall man in an iron helmet lashed them on with a stick wrapped in hide rags. Into the cavern they trampled at his cry, their iron-shod sandals scuffing and smashing the icy floor, kicking at the icicle trunks; and in a moment only the flakes of broken ice and the waft of their stale stink, oil and hide and sweat, marked their passing.
Alya and the others needed no telling; they slipped on to the stony path and scuttled downhill as fast as they could. Only Alya paused a moment, gazing up at the cloudy sky, though he hardly knew what he hoped to read there; but a gust of yellow smoke boiled across it, and he followed the others.
Shadow of the Seer Page 40
