The City of Ice

by K. M. McKinley

  “Blast it,” swore Bannord. “A male, and a big one.”

  “You have experience with these beasts?” said a fascinated Ardovani.

  “None. Never been in this stretch of the ocean. Who has? Stories is all I have. The north was thick with them once, so they say, but they’ve been hunted out. Last I heard of one being seen up there was twenty years back, and a long way from the Isles. Down here, different matter. These are untamed seas. But I do know the males have the horns and the frills, and that they’re the more dangerous. If we’re lucky, it’ll look us over then swim away. If we’re not lucky, it’ll take us for a rival, and attack.”

  “Very well,” said Ardovani. He slipped the weapon off his shoulder, adjusted a number of switches near the stock, and began to speak swift words over it.

  “Stand ready!” bellowed Bannord to his men. “Don’t one of you wetboots open fire without my say so, we do not want to piss it off!”

  “Any moment now,” said Bannord to Trassan.

  The sea parted, and the dragon speared up from the depths. It breached the surface and sailed over the crest of a wave. The full length of its body was revealed; eighty yards of glistening scale, blue on top, white beneath, the skin mottled where the two colours met. As it flew it twisted its six great flippers against its body. The dragon plunged back under the water and disappeared for several seconds. The ship rose over another wave, and then the dragon leapt from the ocean again, barrel rolling as it soared over the water’s surface. Spray flew from its spiralling body, it dipped its head and vanished into the water, leaving a neat round ‘o’ of white foam.

  “How marvellous!” said Ardovani.

  “Yeah? Tell me how marvellous it is when it’s biting your face off,” said Bannord, sighting down his rifle.

  The dragon surfaced vertically, rising from the water until its forelimbs were exposed. It blew out another long, song-like shriek and waited expectantly.

  The ship churned the waves toward it. The dragon cocked its head, dipped down and swam alongside the boat. The marines followed it with their guns, but it made no move to attack. Instead it rolled onto its back, exposing the brilliant whiteness of its banded underbelly. A movement set up low down on its stomach; a pair of pointed tentacular organs, long and pink, squirmed out from two slits. The dragon screeched and slapped at the ship with a flipper, making the hull boom. Fully aroused, it rolled and pushed its organs against the metal.

  “What’s it doing?” said Trassan.

  Bannord grunted. “Gods man, you’re denser than your brother Guis when it comes to sex, eh? Look here, that boy dragon there thinks the Prince Alfra here is a lady dragon,” he said patronisingly. “Do you see? Ha! Two cocks, lucky bastard.”

  His men put up their guns and laughed. Sailors left their work to come and goggle, while captain Heffi and the navigation watch came from the wheelhouse onto the balcony to look overboard.

  “It’s not going to attack us?” said Trassan. The dragon was keeping pace with the vessel, writhing against the side, thrashing at the water with its head.

  “Not unless it intends to hump us to death, no,” said Bannord drily.

  They watched until the dragon’s lovemaking stopped. The water around its stomach turned briefly cloudy.

  It rolled under water, and popped its head up again, wide mouth screeching.

  “Looks like we’ve hurt its feelings,” said Bannord. He cupped his hands around his mouth. “That was lovely! We’ll write to you, we promise.”

  The dragon was lifted up by the swell. From the crest it looked down on them curiously, head cocked. It let out a final shriek as it disappeared on the other side. When the water dipped again, the dragon had gone.

  Bannord chuckled to himself. “Now I’ve seen everything. Alright, sea maggots, back to work, this ice isn’t going to melt any time soon. You five, stay atop the bridge, in case old amorous there feels hard done by. No cuddles for him!” The marines laughed, and Bannord strode off among them.

  “A fine sight,” said Ardovani, his face alive with delight. “Goodmage Vols will be most upset he missed it.” He too went back aft toward the warmth and safety of the interior.

  Trassan stayed a while, watching the sliding of the seas. He was less awestruck. There could, he thought, be practically anything down there. He let the water hypnotise him a while and his imagination got the better of him, peopling the depths with mighty leviathans and the vengeful armies of the Drowned King. He walked away. There was still a problem with the icing, and it was going to get worse. What if it started to freeze in the funnel? He had to talk to Captain Heffi.

  They were going to have to stop for a while.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  A Stowaway

  TWENTY-FOUR DOGS ACCOMPANIED the expedition, the finest drays in the western kingdoms, bred from pure Sorskian and Torosan stock. They displayed no mongrel tendencies to the small size, stupidity, congenital morbidities or physical weakness common to the northern breeds. All were majestic, prick-eared beasts, with high curled tails and thick double coats, princes and princesses of their kind.

  High breeding afforded them little in the way of luxury. The dogs occupied narrow kennels of wood in a specially constructed hold aft of the superstructure. Though the dogs were naturally careful in their toileting, the kennels had become dirty as the journey progressed and the hold had taken on a rich, chemical stink.

  The dogs lay in the gloom, their heads on their paws. Those wakeful stared over the heads of their fellows, sad brown eyes looking at nothing in particular. Most slept. Despite the ship’s violent motion there was a sense of indolence to them. The dogs’ movements were restricted to a flick of an ear, or a black-lipped yawn that briefly opened a cavernous mouth crowded with long teeth, snapping shut with a clack. The dogs lay in all attitudes, on their sides, on their fronts, two with their dirty white bellies uppermost, heads crooked at an angle uncomfortable for anything other than a dog.

  Despite their poor lodging, the dogs were content. This was not their first voyage. They were patient by nature, a legacy of their hunting ancestry. But patience was not the only inherited gift these powerful animals had occasion to employ.

  Tyn Rulsy scampered into the kennel, nervously looking over the dogs. She hated the teeth, the way they poked out over their lips sometimes when sleeping, as if to remind you they were three missed meals from turning wild.

  Rulsy was delicate for a Greater Tyn. From a human point of view, she tended more to the agreeable proportions of a mortal child than the often ugly, large-headed form of her kind, although her face was just as wrinkled, her nose as large, and her hair as wiry as those of her fellows. Her small, slippered feet pattered on the decking of the dog kennel, her colourful skirts whispering over wooden slats. The floor was raised to allow the dogs’ waste to be flushed away and out of the covered drainage holes set either side of the holds. This task was done three times a day by Antoninan’s grooms but did nothing to alleviate the smell. Antoninan himself came often to talk with his animals, especially the big one, Valatrice, so Rulsy had to time her visits carefully.

  Rulsy feared Valatrice the most. She hoped he would be asleep. She could tell the moment she entered he lay watchful in the dark. Rulsy hesitated, but could not turn back. It was one of the few times of the day no human was present, and she had no choice but to continue.

  Valatrice’s cage was bigger than those of his pack, as befitted his status and size. Nevertheless it was a mean lodging for so mighty a being.

  Valatrice stood as Tyn Rulsy came toward his cage. He stretched majestically, thrusting his forequarters toward her and his hindquarters up in a rigid, canine bow. He extended first one hind limb then the other in a long, quivering stretch. When finished he stood straight. He was a huge dray, high as a man at the withers. To Tyn Rulsy he was as solid and imposing as a mill wall.

  “Well well, little sister,” said Valatrice. No dog living spoke so well as he, his voice was clear of canine growlings; strong, clean and
more often than not dripping irony. “Where are you going? Have you come to continue our discourse, or do you have alternative business there, in the aft hold? Is that soup in the bowl you have?” he said, his square black nose snuffling. “Is it for me? I thank you for it.”

  “Not wanting to speak to you,” Rulsy said, shifting from foot to foot. “Soup not for you. Soup’s for me! I wanting a moment’s peace is all, eat my lunch, no ‘Rulsy, Rulsy!’, for a moment.” The ship lurched over a wave, and Rulsy clapped her hands over the bowl lid, her eyes narrowed suspiciously at Valatrice.

  “Well then, stay and talk awhile while you eat. Our lives are not so distant in character, we both serve men against our desires. We might be friends, you and I.”

  “No! Not friends,” said Tyn Rulsy. She lowered her eyes; Valatrice’s were a dark yellow, cold and ancient as amber.

  Some Tyn liked dogs, feeling a kinship with them. Not her, they were animals, yes, and all Tyn had affinity with animals, but these were creatures moulded so much by humanity it was impossible to picture their original form. There was nothing like them in the wildernesses of the Earth, save where tame dogs had gone feral. They were not natural, as foreign to the world as the men that had brought them there.

  “You are man’s creatures, coming with man. Tyn are not. We are free in our hearts.”

  “You do not think a dog is free in his heart? How interesting,” Valatrice stepped closer to the bars of his cage. He peered down at the Tyn. She shrank back from his warm, moist breath.

  “Let me be!” she shrilled. “Just want a little peace!”

  Valatrice smacked his mouth wetly. “A shame. I could do with diversion. On your way then, on your way.” He sank back down and curled up on himself. His eyes glittered with amusement as she went by. “Be aware, I smell more than soup, more than Tyn!” he said slyly.

  Rulsy hurried away.

  “Your secret is safe with me!” he said.

  The other dogs stirred but little as she passed them.

  There was a narrow gate between two of the cages to the rear of the kennels. She opened it, passed through, bolting it after her. Behind the kennels a store took up the remainder of the hold, stacked with the tools of a drayman—rakes, brushes, and bales of straw. The guttering for the drains came to a raised, tapered end there, and there was taps for fabric hoses, these neatly coiled onto their spools. Heating pipes ran right around the walls of the hull. At the back wall, they rose up in an artful square to bracket a door leading into the hold behind the dogs’, the last large open space toward the aft of the Prince Alfra. Rulsy hurried to it. She put the soup down and spun the lockwheel open, grunting with the effort of turning something meant for a being twice her height, her hands and temples tingling painfully at the touch of solid iron.

  She looked behind to make sure she was not followed, and slipped through.

  A canyon of crates greeted her. Stacks of wooden boxes and trunks held equipment for the expedition onto the ice that was not required during the voyage. Thin light leaked around the cargo hatch high overhead, steady drips of freezing water glinting in it as they fell. The sharp fronts of three giant dog sleds poked out from behind a mountainous tarpaulin. Boxes long as coffins, full of tools and surveying equipment, occupied shelving racks that went the full way to the ceiling in two rows either side of a central aisle. The very centre was less cluttered than the spaces behind the shelving, but only slightly. Four massive pallets covered with oilcloths and bound about tightly with ropes and chains loomed over her. She pressed on to the back, down the narrow clearway between shelves and pallets. Everything was lashed down against the sea. There were none of the heating pipes here to stave off the cold, and her breath gathered in clouds.

  An infrequent inspection by the boatswain was all the hold received. That was all that recommended it as accommodation. Rulsy felt sorry for its lone occupant.

  At the back someone had hollowed out a small den in a pile of crates, but it was empty. Rulsy desultorily turned over the furs lining the space. There was no one there.

  “Goodmiss!” she hissed. “Where’ve you got to?”

  “I’m here,” said a woeful voice, loud in the quiet. Rulsy went out from the musty hideyhole and looked about. Behind another stack, the girl had made a tent from a tarpaulin and a rack of skis. Rulsy waddled over to it and ducked inside.

  “What you doing in here Goodmiss Ilona?”

  Ilona Kressinda-Hamafara sat up, her pale face resolving from the dark like the White Moon rising. She had straw in her hair, and was thoroughly dishevelled. Rulsy wrinkled her nose at her smell.

  “What was all that banging and rasping?” Ilona asked.

  “Randy sea dragon,” said Rulsy matter-of-factly.

  “A dragon?” said Ilona in a small voice.

  Rulsy waved her hand in front of her nose. “You stink,” she said. She turned the lid of the bowl a quarter and lifted it off. The savoury steam of broth filled the tent.

  Ilona put up her hand and pulled a face. “Take it away. I can’t keep anything down. When will this rocking stop?”

  “You must, you must!” said the Tyn, thrusting it at Ilona. “Take it!”

  Ilona took the bowl in her hands and sniffed at it. Her eyes were underlined with misery, dark circles painted in by sleepless nights and seasickness. She pulled a face and put the bowl aside. “I really can’t.” She drew her legs up under her and rested her head on her knees.

  Rulsy knelt beside her and shook her shoulder. “You think you are in bad place? Think how it is for me, in this iron box all the while,” Rulsy looked around at the dark hold theatrically. “If this seems like a prison, you be Tyn surrounded by iron. See how you like that! Headaches, all day!”

  Ilona frowned. “Don’t turn me into a Tyn,” she said.

  Rulsy scowled. “Don’t be stupid, little goodmiss. I no do that. I can’t do that. I no mage. I not say that either. Just imagine!” She dropped her hand. “I just look for a little fellow feeling. I find none, only stupid rich girl.” She stood up. “Maybe big dog right, maybe he and I have more in common than you and me.”

  Rulsy lifted her skirts over her shoes and turned away.

  “I’m sorry,” said Ilona. “Please don’t go.” She took the Tyn’s small leathery hand in her own. “I meant no offence.”

  “No. I go now. I have to make sickness brew for the Goddriver’s kin. He very ill with the sea. I can make you some now too, make extra.”

  Ilona nodded meekly. “Thank you.”

  “Now, eat! You don’t eat, you get sicker. You might even go die. Yes,” she said solemnly. “How you like that?”

  “Maybe I should come out now?” said Ilona hopefully.

  “No!” said Rulsy. “You one girl? Two hundred men on this boat. What you think they do, eh?” She squinted out of one eye, and rammed a finger in and out of her clenched fist lasciviously. “You get very sore. You stay put, goodmissy.”

  “I have to come out sometime! I can’t stay here forever. Trassan will protect me.”

  “No! You stay!” Rulsy insisted. “You come out, you big trouble for Tyn Rulsy. You big trouble anyway! You sad you come, it stupid girl’s own fault, not Tyn Rulsy’s.”

  “I’ll be found sooner or later.”

  “Not now!” snapped Rulsy. She backed out of the tent. “Rulsy think about it. I come back with sickness draught, maybe in morning. Go sleep.”

  “But—”

  “Sleep!” said the Tyn, her voice strangely resonant. She made a fluttering pass with her hand.

  Ilona fell to the furs with a thump, dead asleep. She would just have to eat her soup cold. Serve her right. Rulsy left, shaking her head. What to do, what to do?

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Aarin Waits

  SURF ROARED UPON the uppermost shore of the Final Isle. The surge of it withdrawing over the stone pavement was a thousand frightened shushes. Pasquanty slowed as he rounded the fifteenth turn of the dismal spiral stair. The close confines of the tower amp
lified the ocean, like the curl within a shell. He had yet to grow accustomed to the sound. Pasquanty was a Correndian, born far inland and away from the Cos, that land’s great tidal river. Seven years in Karsa had done nothing to quell his unease at the sea. He was no islesman, and nor would he ever be.

  Upon the Final Isle, there was no hiding from the sea. The sound of the ocean permeated every corner of the monastery. In those rooms above ground the booming of the waves was constant, for all the lack of outward windows, whether the tide gripped the island’s greensward tight, or sulked at the bottom of the infrequently bared cliffs. In the deepest chambers carved into the rock it was worse. There the sea could not be heard, but it could be felt, a crushing presence made up of faint impact tremors, malevolent seeming. The sea was jealous of this tiny nugget of stone, the most remote of the Karsan Isles.

  Only one building occupied this desolate speck. The monastery was a triangular block enclosing a bleak courtyard, a solitary tower rising from one corner, made of the same, grey stone as the rest. The tower was not in itself tall, but its position on the shoulder of the steep mount lent it height. Pasquanty could not stop thinking of the precipitous drop on the other side of the wall. Not being able to see worsened his vertigo. So he avoided putting his hand on the outer wall, and kept closely by the central pillar of the stair. The wedge steps were narrowest there, but he felt safer away from the wall.

  Cold air blew down at him, making the few bird-fat lamps it did not blow out gutter in their alcoves. Upward, daylight filtered in, and the stairway took on the hard grey of sea skies. He paused, nearly at the top. He had no desire to complete his climb, but less to return below to the silent monks, so he hitched his robes, and continued up the slippery steps.

  He emerged into a round chamber. Four windows were set around its circumference, the only ones that faced the ocean anywhere in the monastery. When monks spoke on the sole hour a week they were permitted, they often complained about the weather, and had told him the winter gales there were murderous, bringing up waves as high as the building itself if the tides were right. Pasquanty really wanted to go home before that happened. The longer they waited at the monastery, the more likely the chance became that he would see out the year trapped within the walls, freezing and damp, surrounded by monks who resented his very existence.