The City of Ice

by K. M. McKinley

  “I doubt we can save it,” said Lucinia. “Whatever happened was cataclysmic enough in scope to destroy two civilisations far in advance of ours. We will be quite helpless before it.”

  “Then what by the hundred hells are you doing here?” murmured Abing. The fog was parting over the neck, exposing the lumpen black spine of its ridge.

  The countess smiled. It lit up her face. For all her manliness, at that moment Garten understood why men pursued her.

  “Your grace, I merely want the satisfaction of being right.”

  “You spoke of several questions, goodlady,” said Garten. “I believe you have addressed the most pressing. What were the others?”

  “Ah, yes. There are two. The first is one asked many times over—where did we, our race of humanity, come from? I find the placing of the first human archaeological remains intriguing. If the gods did not create us, and I am certain now they did not, then who did? The third question is a trifle in comparison to the other two, but it troubles my nights the most.” She leaned out and looked down the curve of the tower. “One fascinating thing Per Allian determined with his reconstructions was that this fortification was built to defend the Neck.”

  “Self-evidently,” said Abing.

  “What is not so self evident, your grace, is having completed his construction, Allian determined that its defences face into Karsa. This tower is the first line of a defence to protect the mainland from the isles.”

  “Is that so?” said Abing. “Well.”

  “So one has to ask,” she said. “What once dwelt in our land that the Morfaan were so afraid of?”

  A long, haunting bellow sounded out in the low clouds hiding the mudflats.

  “The Morfaan’s creatures,” said Garten.

  “Old wives’ tales,” said Abing, and shook his head. He flipped aside the front of his coat, took out his watch and glanced at its face. “Damn these delays,” he said, snapping it shut. “My magisters calculate the Morfaan will reenter the world in the evening, five day’s hence. We must be in Perus by then, or we’ll lose the advantage of their favours to the others. They’re damn picky for a nigh extinct race.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Beyond the Mists

  WARM DEATH BECAME cold life, and Josan the Watcher awoke. The last Morfaan woman floated upward, only to bump her nose against hard glass. Her newly started heart fluttered. Her cot was still closed. The lid should be open. Darting blue lights chased themselves around the angular lines graven into the glass over her face. Through vision blurred by the liquid immersing her, she watched for the lights to stop. Had the machines failed, bringing her to life only to drown her?

  The cot lid’s lights ran away down their angular grooves. No more came to chase them. Cot, lid and water blinked red, and the lid lifted upward, and slid away.

  Josan’s instinct to sit quickly went unfulfilled, she had no strength. Weak fingers, slippery with alchemical fluids, scrabbled at the edge of the glass cot. She half turned to bring her head out of the bath and struggling it up to rest on the side. Viscous liquid slipped off her skin in sheets, draping itself over her mouth as she coughed, clogging her eyes as soon as she blinked them clear.

  She rested there with her face on the edge of the cot, unable to move. The warm fluid chilled rapidly. She needed to get out. Difficult movements brought her leg clear of the liquid, more brought her knee over the side. By employing her vestigial middle limbs to grip the edge, she dragged herself out, her head never coming fully vertical as she swung first one leg then the other down to the floor. Pain skittered up her calves and thighs as her feet touched marble. She paused again, holding onto the edge of the cot for several minutes, trying not to retch. For her, the most unpleasant aspect of awakening was the purging and she put it off as long as she could Finally she gave in to her body’s demands and allowed herself to vomit. Long threads of the fluid rushed out of her stomach. She coughed. Her lungs burned as they struggled to clear the remainder of the liquid pooled in them. The coughs’ violence surged so she thought they would never end.

  When they did she was shaking with shock and cold. Groaning, she stood upright. Her head spun. Black spots swirled across her vision, threatening a return to unconsciousness. She gripped the cot until they abated, then released the edge of her resting place. As she did not fall, she took an experimental step. Her mind was dull with the deathless sleep. Much of this fuzziness would retreat, but not all. The mental fog worsened with every waking. With a scientist’s detachment she wondered how much she had lost of herself this time.

  Cot was a kind word for her bed, for it really was nothing but a tomb, a glass box moulded to fit her prone body, set upon a marble plinth. Tracks for its sustaining magics covered all surfaces. More angular circuitries were incised into the plinth. All were dark, the darting energies quiescent now their task was done. There were dozens of such devices in the Hall of the Deathless Sleep. She no longer recalled why, and as far as she remembered they had never been used. There had only ever been the two of them sleeping there—Josan and Josanad the Watchers, last of the Morfaan.

  A foot-long mechanical beetle emerged from its lair in the walls, shook its wing cases free of dust and went to her bed. Implements unfolded from its head, like bizarre mouthparts, to clean away the mess with fussy movements. It was none the worse for its own long deactivation. She wished she woke as easily as it did.

  Her twin brother was not yet awake, but lay peacefully asleep in his own cot. She went to check on him. She knew only enough of the device to see that it functioned correctly. Perhaps she had once comprehended its workings fully. She could not remember remembering if she had, but that was no surprise. Josan watched her brother awhile in worry. The transition affected him more than her, and she deferred waking him in part because she feared what she would find.

  His naked physique seemed mightier magnified by the thick alchemical fluid. His upper pair of arms were cleanly muscled. Being a male, his midlimbs were larger than hers. They were crossed on the lower part of his chest, carefully manicured claws interlocking. His double penises floated above the light banding of his stomach.

  In his repose Josanad appeared as noble as the first day they had been laid to rest. While they had walked among the living he had been perfection in mind and body, one of the paragons of their race—kind, just, and passionate. Sadly she recalled that man, lost forever. Last time they had been recalled he had emerged petulant and childish, quick to anger, impetuous in his decisions and unkind in his lovemaking. Fighting back sorrow, she decided to put off his waking as long as possible and went to prepare herself for the Marble Council.

  The Hall of the Deathless Sleep was a lozenge shape taller than it was long. Lofty ribbed vaulting arched high over the machines it harboured. Doors were set at opposing points of the diamond. One led to the inner body of the Castle of Mists, the other to the robing rooms. There were no spiders to weave cobwebs in the pocket realm, nor any dust or leaves to blow in through gaps to coat the floor. Devices kept the marble that constituted the majority of the building spotlessly clean, and yet there was a sense of neglect to the castle, of air unbreathed, of spaces undisturbed by the passage of living bodies. No one would have entered the robing rooms since she had shut them up, however long ago their last waking had been. No one could, she knew, but the desolation of quiet chambers too long unfrequented upset her nonetheless.

  A bath waited for her. She pulled a face at its stale-smelling steam. A thought drained the water and ran it again. The second filling lacked the odour, and she was relieved that the water purifiers had not failed.

  She lingered in the bath, letting the heat of it seep into her body and quicken her sluggish heart. The perfumes she favoured had lost their potency. She would have to make more before she bathed again.

  The warm towels that awaited her as she got out of the bath had the same sense of neglect that suffused the rooms, as did her clothes, stored in one of many sealed wardrobes grown from the castle’s transluc
ent stone. They had been scrupulously cleaned, and sealed away. Even so, they smelled musty and felt damp. And yet by these simple actions of waking, bathing, dressing, she felt her life reinvigorate the castle. The glow of the walls shone brighter, sounds told of mechanisms activating elsewhere in the building. She donned the three layers of her underwear quickly, binding up her secondary arms—no bigger than those of a human infant—along with her breasts. She spent her time choosing her outerwear. After deliberation, she selected a fine, close fitting gown of iridescent dracon feathers. Her primary arms went into gloriously embroidered sleeves that she attached to the gown with laced points. After inspecting the dress, and smoothing individual feathers down, she began to feel alive.

  From her wardrobe she went to her preparation room, an oval space filled with her cosmetics and jewellery. Aside from a table curling around the circumference of the room and a solitary window, the room was featureless. As she entered the blank walls swirled, becoming a flawless mirror, and glimmer light ignited softly behind it. She examined herself from every angle. She was middling height for a Morfaan, which meant taller than most human men. Her face was longer and thinner than a human’s, the septum of her nose went further toward the mouth, shortening her deep philtrum. Her lips were full. Her teeth not unlike a human woman’s, but were fewer in number. Like all her people, her torso front was subtly banded by soft creases. The folds in the skin came to the bottom of her neck, so faint there as to be barely noticeable. Her spine was more pronounced than a human’s, but lacked the horny spikes the males of her race possessed. Her jet black hair followed a hairline that would look odd on a non-Morfaan, but in her case accentuated her beauty. Despite her physiological differences, or perhaps because of them, humans found her attractive, although unlike some of her friends she had never given in to curiosity and lain with a member of the younger species. She wondered if the attraction would remain, or if the aesthetics of beauty had changed so much in her absence from the world that she would be regarded as an abomination.

  She turned her attention to her hair. It was listless with long sleep, but it did not seem to be falling out this time. She set about it with a brush, dragging out the tangles. When it shone, she dressed it up with combs of dragon bone and carnelian. Then she reached for her brushes and began to paint in her culture’s ideals of perfection. Calmness settled over her as she became absorbed.

  A roaring screech jolted her. The creatures in the mist never came that close. She looked to the window. Beyond its panes fog swirled in complicated arabesques. Individual droplets glittered in the light streaming out from the room.

  She set her brush down and frowned in concern.

  The window was cracked.

  The roar sounded again, drawing away from the castle. Another screech answered it, then the terrified screaming of a smaller animal caught and devoured. She went to the window. The land outside of the castle was never visible, and she had never glimpsed the beasts that roamed the mists. She ran her hand over the cracks in the glass. The creatures had been here while she slept and they had damaged the castle.

  It was only a crack, but it had never happened before, they had never come that close.

  Her hand traced the damage. Nothing but pressure from the building held a rhombus of broken glass in place. It had not repaired itself. A memory of a man came to her. He had once been important to her, but she could not recall why.

  Very clearly, she saw him in that very room, before the castle had been folded into this nowhere place and the poison sun still shone upon the walls.

  “Never!” he laughed. “This castle could never fall, Josan. You will be safe here, safer than the rest of us.” This fragment played in her head in perfect clarity, but she could bring no more of the encounter to mind. It was gone, along with everything else.

  The castle will never fall.

  She returned to her cosmetics and completed her face, but the pleasure had gone from the task. When she was done she examined herself a moment. She was pleased with the effect, but the truth was she did it for him.

  Josan went to see her brother.

  Josan was concerned that Josanad had not begun awakening when she returned, so she started the process manually with the appropriate incantation. The lights flickered and the cot chimed out the sounds of small silver bells. She stood back and watched in trepidation, fearing the machine had failed and that life had finally fled him.

  Lights shone and turned about the plinth, blinked, and the whole shone red as her own had done. His lid slid up and back before he awoke. Eyes the colour of spring leaves opened in the medium, his white hair stirred into a halo about his head as he jolted awake. Josan made for the cot to help him up, but Josanad had preserved his impressive strength throughout their many deathless sleeps, and sat up smoothly. He hung his head until the alchemist’s fluid had ceased drooling from his face. When he looked about himself, his expression was guarded, the skin around his eyes wrinkled in puzzlement.

  “My love? Brother?” she said.

  An emotional blank looked at her. She balked, fearing violence from him, but the lines on his brow smoothed, and he blinked. He commenced coughing, spewing up the fluid from stomach and lungs back into the cot, streaking the clarity of the liquid with his bile. He was done purging quicker than she had been. When their eyes met again, she saw the man she loved looking at her.

  “Josan? What is happening, where are we?” he croaked.

  She went to his side, and rested her hands on his slippery skin. “The Hall of the Deathless Sleep. We have been woken. The Marble Council calls to us.” She heard the desperation in her own voice. He must remember their purpose, she could not face the coming centuries on her own.

  He cocked his head. “The council?” His face rumpled as if he tasted something unpalatable. “Yes, the council.” he smiled at her reassuringly. “How long has it been?”

  “I do not know.”

  “Help me,” he said.

  “There is no rush, my love.”

  He would not wait but clambered from the fluid. He was taller than her. Overall he was heavier, and his shape more different to a human man’s than a female Morfaan’s were to a human woman’s. His shoulders were broad, upper arms well muscled. The elongated proportions of his limbs gave him the illusion of being willowy, but he was powerful.

  “You should wait a moment, gather your strength,” she said.

  “There is always a need for haste when the council calls,” he said. A boyish glint came to his eye. She loved this and despaired at it. That expression had been on his face often as a younger man, until the hardships and pain of war had driven it out. She welcomed its return, but feared the loss of the wisdom that had replaced it.

  “We can make love first.” He took her arms gently. She sank into them and shut her eyes, heedless of the slime coating her fine clothes. His double penis stirred against her skirts.

  “As you wish,” she said. She could have stayed enfolded by him for much longer, but he was insistent.

  They made love in the Hall of the Deathless Sleep, with her lying across one of the unused machines. It was uncomfortable, but she welcomed their intimacy. To do something as vital as make love in that place of death invigorated them both. He was gentler than he had been during their last waking. The impossible hope that he had returned to himself rose sourly in her heart, and towards the end she wept through her brief ecstasy.

  After he was done, he pulled her up again, wiped at her tears and held her tightly with all four arms. When he asked her what was wrong, she could not say, only wanting this echo of the old Josanad to last, whole and undamaged by their cycle of death and waking.

  They went to the dressing rooms. While he bathed, she told him of her own slow revival. This concerned him. The news of the broken window worried him more. He was about to say something on the matter, but became confused, and sat with his mouth hanging open. His lapse hurt her, and she had to turn away. She sponged him carefully, looking to the flawless bra
ss beetles working around them. They were eternal, they still functioned, so could she and her brother. Then she pictured the last of the devices fastidiously cleaning the corner of a tumbled ruin, clambering over the Morfaan’s bones, and the reassurance she had gained from their industry disappeared.

  She spoke her wardrobe to life again, and thought a curtain of golden light into being across the entrance. When she stepped through, the magic restored her clothes to their pristine state. Josanad selected a tunic, soft tight trousers and high boots for his garb. Unlike hers, his secondary arms were left unbound, given freedom through embroidered slits in his tunic, although they would be covered by his outerwear as was only proper. Josan chose a jacket whose collar spread in a fringed fan to finish her brother’s outfit. Between moments of confusion, he looked like the lord he had been. She showed him the crack in the window in the preparation room, then helped him finish his dressing.

  “Come,” she said when his face was painted and hair coiled. “The council awaits.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  The Council of Marble

  FROM THE HALL of Deathless Sleep Josan and Josanad went into the main body of the castle. Once out of their sanctuary, voices intruded into the minds of the twins, bypassing the ears and making them both nervous, though they had heard them a thousand times before.

  Far back in time, the voices of the council had been measured. Millennia of close proximity had eroded their learned debate to bickering. The council never slept, not through the long ages of the world. They could not move. They were forever in each other’s presence, cellmates in an inhumane prison. That they were as sane as they were was a triumph.

  The Castle of Mists comprised seven diamond-shaped wings—of which the Hall of Deathless Sleep was one—arrayed like petals around a central, hollow tower several hundred feet tall. This keep was encompassed by a tall, backward curving curtain wall bolstered by seven towers, one to mirror each wing. The design was deceptively compact. Its simple geometry held huge spaces crushed by higher dimensional magics into tiny corners. The castle was a warren whose parts were attached by unconventional means to unexpected places. One could depart the north wing and arrive in the southeast petal.