ICE BURIAL: The Oldest Human Murder Mystery (The Mother People Series Book 3)

by JOAN DAHR LAMBERT

  Runor listened to the sounds outside her hut. There was a rushing noise in the air now, almost a roaring. The wind must have risen, or perhaps it was something more. She hoped it was. She could not wait much longer.

  “Yes, have someone bring her,” Mordor agreed, looking at her with unfocussed eyes. “That is good. Then we will go together to the villages, tell them the truth....”

  “The truth?” Runor was startled again. Did he know after all?

  Mordor leaped to his feet, stood there swaying. “The truth that the woman Zena is a witch! They must know the truth!”

  He was deathly pale. Runor stared. Why was he suddenly so pale? There must be something wrong with him, something besides the madness, and the mead. “You are not well,” she said, concerned. “Perhaps you should sit again and rest for a time.”

  Mordor heard her words, but he could not seem to see her properly. Maybe she was right and he should stay here until this weakness passed. Nausea invaded his belly as he lowered himself to the ground, then receded as he stopped moving.

  “You have been Leader for many years.” Runor forced admiration into her voice, hoping to steady him with praise.

  Mordor seemed suddenly to recover. “That is true. I am still the Leader, the only one who can speak for the Great Spirit,” he told her. His voice rang with authority, and for the first time since he had come Runor felt the familiar magnetism of his presence. It had always been there, that magnetism. She remembered it well.

  “You have been to many villages to speak of the Great Spirit,” she went on, in the same admiring tone.

  “Indeed I have,” he answered proudly.

  In an instant, his expression changed to fury. “But now the woman Zena goes there before me and the people will not listen! The girls will not come and the people do not obey and it is all the fault of the witch...” His voice trailed off as the nausea returned.

  He frowned, bewildered. Why did he feel so ill? He sat brooding on all that had happened. Before, everyone had listened to him, obeyed him, and now they did not, and he had felt all right, but now he felt ill, but the witch Zena was not here....

  Runor watched him in growing alarm. His skin was waxen, and there was sweat all over his face. Truly, he was not well. This, she had not expected. Madness she had planned for, but not illness. She was afraid suddenly, terribly afraid. He was too volatile, too unpredictable; she did not know what was wrong with him, what might come next...

  The fear left her as quickly as it had come. It did not matter. The end was the same.

  Mordor seemed to feel her gaze on his face. He looked up at her suddenly, and his eyes widened as understanding came. Runor! It was Runor who was doing this to him, making everything go wrong, making him feel dizzy and sick. Zena was not here, but Runor was. She was draining his strength, keeping Rofina from him, keeping him here with her words, her mead...

  Another thought came, and he stiffened. Maybe she was even giving him some kind of poison in the mead. Was that why he felt so ill?

  He threw the bowl onto the ground and lurched toward her, still staring into her face, and Runor saw that all the madness in his eyes was directed now at her.

  “You!” he said. “You are the one. You have poisoned me!”

  Runor frowned. What did he mean? But that did not matter either. The rushing noise outside was very loud now, the wind more fierce. And then she heard the other sound. Water; was it water lapping at the edges of her hut. She listened carefully and knew it was true. The waters were coming. Soon it would all be over.

  She waited, motionless, as Mordor came closer and closer, like a man drawn by a rope. His eyes were intent, murderous. There was no more time.

  “Great Goddess,” she breathed, “Help me now to do the task you showed me how to do... Great Goddess, I come...”

  Before the final words could leave her lips, Mordor spoke again. “You!” he repeated incredulously. “You are the witch. Why did I not see this before?”

  Runor ignored the beating of her heart. “Yes,” she told him, and her voice was strong and clear. “Zena is not the witch. I, Runor, am the witch you seek. I am the Great Witch, and when I am gone there will be no more.”

  Mordor hesitated only a moment, and then he was upon her. Runor clasped the slender dart firmly in her fingers and held it upright so the tip would jab his belly as his heavy body pressed against her. She had felt his weight like this before…

  The dart slipped away, bent sideways. Pushing hard against his chest, she fought to jab it in again, but could not tell if she succeeded.

  No, Great Goddess; no, I cannot fail, she thought frantically as his fingers closed around her throat. His body slumped suddenly against her, as if all strength had left him. So the dart must have found its target. Runor felt a terrible, aching sadness for what she had been compelled to do, then blackness came and she ceased to feel at all.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  “We must go faster. Something is wrong, terribly wrong.” There was panic in Zena’s voice. Never had she felt such a sense of terror. She tried to run but the wetness of the steep slope defeated her.

  Lief struggled to keep up with her. He was worried, but she was panic-stricken. She kept saying that Runor’s whole village was in danger, not just Runor herself. Lief could not argue - he felt it too. Some unknown disaster threatened them, a menace unlike anything they had known before.

  “We will be there soon,” he comforted Zena. She seemed not to hear; she just climbed faster still, her head lowered against the driving rain. It was coming down in sheets now, as if a massive waterfall in the sky was plunging down to the earth. Ankle deep rivulets charged down the meadows, and the streams were so high they could hardly be crossed. Zena and Lief charged through them anyway.

  They crested the ridge finally and started down the other side, able now to run if they watched their footing. Zena slowed at the place where she and Lief had stopped on that first trip to look for Mara. It was as something pulled at her, trying to check her headlong rush. Her eyes roved the across the slopes and paused on the glacier that hung above Runor’s village. There was something unusual about it.

  Lief stopped too, glad of the chance to control his heaving chest. His eyes followed Zena’s. “The dam,” he burst out. “Look at the ice dam on the glacier.” There was horror in his voice, and awe.

  Zena saw it then, a trickle of water coming through a gaping hole in the side of the huge glacier that faced the village far below. Always before a thick barrier of ice had blocked the melt water behind the glacier, seemingly impenetrable. Except it had been penetrated. Swollen by constant rain, the water had finally broken through. It was only a trickle now, but soon it would become a stream, and then it would be a torrent; it would charge down the steep ravine that ran along the southern edge of the village, and everything below would be swept away...

  “Run!” Zena screamed, plunging down the slope. “Run! We must warn them!” Terror made her feet clumsy and she plunged headlong to the ground. She pulled herself up and ran again. From the village they could not see what she and Lief had seen. No one would know the water was coming until it was too late. The massive onslaught would drag everything into its grasp, rocks and trees and huge unyielding hunks of ice; it would all crash down upon them... The villagers would be trapped, hauled into the maelstrom. All of them would be killed, their helpless bodies sucked into the relentless wall of water and tossed mercilessly among the displaced boulders, the uprooted trees…

  Lief, who had lingered a moment to study the size of the hole, caught up with her and grabbed her hand. “Hold on to each other,” he told her, “so we do not fall.”

  Zena clasped his fingers, her grip tight with fear. Together, they ran down and down the rain-slick slopes, chests heaving, legs aching with the strain. But still they ran. Zena dared not pause even for a moment to look at the mouth of the glacier again, but then Lief pulled at her hand, forcing her to stop, and pointed up.

  “We will be too far t
o see in a moment,” he panted. “Look now.”

  Zena drew in a great shaky breath and looked. The hole had grown, was a chasm now, and the trickle was already a gushing stream, big enough to uproot trees and to carry boulders. No one could struggle free… Were they already too late?

  They ran again. They should separate when they got to the trees, she thought. That would be faster. Runor’s hut was at the edge of the village above the stream, the other huts were clustered in the fields below.

  “I will go to Runor,” she shouted to Lief, hardly stopping to catch her breath despite the terrible thudding of her heart. “You go warn the others.”

  Lief let go of her hand reluctantly. “I will send someone to help you,” he yelled back as he veered in the direction of the village. “But do not wait. Take Runor up, up as high as you can get. Do not come down to us.” He raced on.

  Zena nodded, but her ears were focused now on the sounds of rushing water and wind whistling through the trees. Together, they would destroy everything before them and pull it down, suck it into a huge roiling river and destroy it...

  Gasping, she reached the head of the valley where Runor lived. The wind was stronger here, the sound of water louder. She did not have much time.

  “Runor!” she screamed, trying to make herself heard through the noise. “Runor!”

  The hut was before her. Zena darted in. At first, she could see nothing in the dimness, and then she made out a large body bending over Runor’s pallet. It was the Leader, must be the Leader; it was too big for Korg. And under it...

  “No!” she shouted. “No, you cannot!” With frantic strength, she pulled at the massive shoulders, saw that the Leader’s hands were still on Runor’s throat. He shoved her away with an imperious gesture, and she fell heavily. Bounding back, she hauled at him again. This time he resisted for only a moment; then he gasped and collapsed against the ground. No sounds came from him now. Startled, Zena looked at him more closely and saw the terrible pallor of his skin. He was dead, she thought. But how was that possible?

  The question fled from her mind when she looked down on Runor. The old wise one’s face was ashen and the marks on her neck showed vivid red against the grayness. She lay still as stone. Surely she too could not be dead? Zena bent closer, to listen for beating in her chest, feel for breath....

  Unexpectedly, rough hands pulled her up before she could tell. The Leader’s face loomed menacingly above her. In the shadowy light of the flare it had an odd greenish hue. Holding tight to her arm, he stared at her with deranged eyes that seemed not to focus as they should.

  “You!” he muttered. “It is you!” He swayed and almost fell, then pulled himself up again. He could not remember what had happened. Had he been unconscious?

  Zena stared at him, astonished. She had been sure he was dead. For the first time she noticed the smell in the hut. It reeked of nausea. Someone had been violently ill. The Leader pulled her closer and she knew from his breath that the sickness came from him. But what had he done to Runor?

  “Runor,” she whispered, staring at him in terror. “What have you done to Runor?” She tried to wrench her arm away but the Leader held on with all his strength.

  Mordor was confused. “Runor?” His eyes moved to the inert body beside them. She had said she was the witch, he remembered, but that was a lie. This one was the real witch. Why had he not realized?

  “That does not matter,” he said violently, ignoring the weakness, the horrible nausea that kept invading his body. He had found the real witch now, and he must not let her go. “The old one does not matter,” he repeated. “It is you I wanted to find.”

  Zena stared into his twisted face. He is mad, she thought, completely mad. How long has he been that way?

  A smile of triumph crossed his features. “And now I have you,” he muttered. “The Great Witch, the greatest of them all. The voices warned me of her long ago. When you are gone there will be no more, and only I, the Great Spirit, will be left.”

  Slowly, he pushed her down against the ground, lowered himself above her. Zena writhed and twisted in his grasp. He was heavy, so heavy...

  With a sudden movement she shoved her knees into his groin and thrust herself sideways. She heard him gasp, but his grip only tightened. She must try again.

  Her resistance strengthened Mordor’s rage. How could she struggle so violently? She who was a witch and knew she must die? Another thrust made him still more furious and he pushed her down so hard she could not move. His mind was clear now, clear and focused. Once she was gone there would be no more. He would have finished the task the voices had set for him, and that would be good, so good....

  The rage left him abruptly, and when he spoke his voice was soft, caressing. “Do not struggle, my child,” he told her. “It is better so, that you should die like all the others. Go willingly to your long sleep, and all will be well. Go willingly, my child, go as you should, and all will be well.” Smiling at her gently, he reached for her throat.

  “No!” she screamed. “No, I will not!” But he had pinned her arms between them, and she could not move. She felt his strong hands move to her neck and close around it, begin to squeeze... She twisted her head, but he would not stop....

  And then she felt something else. Water. It was under her now. There was another sound - splashing. Someone was coming. Lief; it must be Lief. But it was not Lief’s face she saw above the Leader’s. It was Korg’s. Fear hit her then, a fear so strong she felt paralyzed. She could not fight them both.

  Korg stared at her, then at the Leader, then back at her again. There was terror in his face, a terror almost as great as her own. The fear slowly faded as he saw her look silently back at him, knew she was alive. In its place came a strange gentleness she had never seen before.

  “No, dear Leader,” Korg said softly, “this you must not do. This is not the wish of the Great Spirit but of the demons, the voices. They will only do you harm. You must come with me now, dear Leader.”

  Kneeling beside the Leader, he pulled him gently away from Zena. The huge man made no resistance, as if all the strength had suddenly left him. Even his hands had stopped squeezing when Korg had come, Zena realized, amazed that she had not noticed before.

  The Leader made no answer, but lurched suddenly to one side. Retching noises came from him and vomit poured from his throat.

  Korg’s face changed, became menacing, as he stared at Zena. “You have poisoned him!”

  Zena shook her head wordlessly. Her throat was too sore for speech. She crawled to Runor and checked again for breath. She thought it was there, faint, but there.

  “The old one then,” Korg accused. Zena frowned. Was it possible Runor had put poison in the mead? She staggered to the bowl and smelled it, shook her head again.

  Korg followed and tasted the mead delicately with his tongue. There was nothing. But something had done this to his brother! He looked again at Zena, assessing her, then down at Runor. If it had not been the mead here, then where?

  Abruptly his eyes closed in agony. “The mead in the old hut,” he murmured to himself, so quietly that Zena wondered if she imagined the words.

  Korg had forgotten her presence, was aware only of the despair that had filled him. Why had he not thought? Mordor would have gone first to the mead. After all this time it would be like drinking poison, full of mold and the bitterness of decay. It might not kill, but then again it might.

  Perhaps, after all, it would be better if it did.

  He looked again at his brother, quiet now, and an unfamiliar sensation suffused him. There was pity, and a terrible sadness, and something else. Love, he thought with a cynical smile. Was it possible that after all these years he had discovered the meaning of the word? Love, the emotion that others talked of endlessly. Perhaps in the end it had come to him as well. He was not sure he wanted it.

  The emotion slid away, but then there was nothing but grief. With a determined twist of his lips, Korg thrust that away as well. No one must ever
know what he had felt, or even that he had felt at all. For a long moment, he stood perfectly still, his back to Zena, willing all signs of emotion to leave his face. When he turned to her, his expression was blank.

  He made a small bow. “We will leave you now,” he said politely, and there was great dignity in his voice and in his bearing. “I can do no more.”

  Speechless, she watched him pull the Leader to his feet and help him stumble to the entrance. Before he passed through, Korg turned to face her once again.

  “The Great Spirit will not be back,” he told her quietly. “I have killed him.” He paused. “No,” he corrected in a stronger voice. “The Great Spirit has killed himself.” Abruptly, he nodded. “Yes,” he said again, with an ironic smile. “The Great Spirit has killed himself.” And then he was gone, the water swirling around his legs as he dragged the half-conscious Leader into the wind-scoured darkness beyond.

  Zena stared after him. A faint cry reached her, flung by the wind. “She is alive, the sister you seek. All the time she was…” The rest of the words were lost in the wind, the roaring water.

  Zena sprang to the door of the hut and called desperately after him. “Where is she? You must tell me where she is… please, you must tell me…”

  There was no answer. Zena rubbed her swollen throat and tried to call again but knew it was no use. The storm, the raging water had swallowed him up and there was nothing she could do. Tears slid down her face, of frustration, of relief, and for a moment she sobbed uncontrollably. Then she turned back to Runor.

  ********************

  Lief pushed his way into the turbulent water. The stream had been much lower when he had crossed earlier. Now it was an uncontrollable torrent that grew larger every moment. He must get across it anyway; Zena was on the other side. Why had he not realized that this could happen before they separated? He took another step, lost his balance and fell into the ice-cold water. He backed out again, shivering. He would have to find a better place to cross.