Goddess of the Ice Realm

by David Drake

  “Get the mistress another fur!” Neal shouted, still supporting the trembling wizard. “By the Lady, don’t any of you have sense?”

  “I’m all right,” Sharina said. “But get something for Franca.”

  Several men grabbed robes from their packs and trotted over to her. Sharina handed the first to Franca—he took it with a grateful smile—and wrapped a sheepskin around her shoulders wool side inward. It felt good, though she really hadn’t been cold without the cover. She wondered if that had something to do with holding Beard; he was certainly more than an axe that talked.

  Alfdan began hobbling up the slope toward the ruined tower. Neal followed him, protesting, “Sir, I think you should rest before you do anything more. You’re not—”

  “No, you fool!” the wizard snarled with more animation than seemed likely in his weakness. “I have the key now and I’m going to use it!”

  Neal looked over his shoulder at Sharina, raising an eyebrow in question. Sharina laughed. Why not?

  “Yes, all right,” she said, starting after Neal and the wizard. “I may as well see what the thing does. Beard and I worked hard enough to get it.”

  She wasn’t surprised that the whole band trailed along as soon as she said she was going with Alfdan. Nor was she surprised to hear the axe protest, “Oh, mistress, it wasn’t work, it was the greatest pleasure Beard has had in all the ages of his life! You’re a wonderful mistress to bring Beard an Elemental’s life to drink! And there’ll be more, Beard knows there’ll be more before the ice takes all!”

  Sharina smiled wryly. Beard was probably right about her having to kill additional things that she’d rather never have known existed. And he might be right about the ice too; but if he was, well, she’d have died long before it happened.

  Alfdan had straightened and was taking quick, short steps like an old man who’d gotten into his stride. He held the Key of Reyazel out in his left hand as though it were a talisman. It flashed warmly as it jerked back and forth in time with his steps.

  “What’s the tower for, mistress?” Scoggin asked politely. He and Franca walked on either side of her, staking their claim to her authority as well as being protective. “It doesn’t make any sense to build a fort halfway up a hill, does it?”

  “I don’t know either,” Sharina said. It was flattering that everyone here thought she was an authority, but it also seemed silly; she wasn’t even from this world! Though—

  “Beard,” she said. “Do you know about the tower?”

  “That?” the axe said dismissively. “A customs post, that’s all. It was on the shore before the sea fell.”

  Beard sighed and went on, “Nothing there to kill. Nothing anywhere around here to kill... unless we go back into the fjord?”

  “No,” said Sharina firmly. “We’re not going to do that.”

  The slope became abruptly steeper. Alfdan dropped onto one hand and the knuckles of the other, still clutching the key. Neal bent to help, but the wizard gained strength as he neared his goal. He stood upright again on the flat apron before the tower’s door. It was on the landward side so storm surges wouldn’t batter it.

  “But it’s open,” a man said doubtfully. “By the Sister, it’s only hanging by the one hinge!”

  Sharina stepped to one side of the wizard as he contemplated the door. It was thick oak, cross-braced with more oak, but the last occupant to leave the tower hadn’t latched it. Years of wind battering the heavy panel back and forth had broken the upper hinge, leaving the door half-open and askew.

  “I’d like to see the key,” she said quietly.

  “No!” Alfdan cried, hiding the golden sheen in both hands and clutching them tight to his breast. “It’s mine!”

  “It’s yours,” Sharina agreed, calm-voiced but frowning. “I’d like to look at it, though. I had other things on my mind when I saw it before.”

  “My mistress killed an Elemental to fetch the key to the surface,” said Beard in an eager singsong. “A wizard’s blood isn’t much for taste, but Beard would drink it down regardless.”

  “Let her see the thing,” said Layson. “Let us all see it! She fetched it up, and the rest of us have a right too.”

  With the desperate eyes of a rabbit searching for escape, Alfdan looked at Neal on his other side. Neal gave a dismissive jerk of his head. “Let Mistress Sharina see it,” he said.

  Terrified, his mouth working, Alfdan held the key out between his left thumb and forefinger. He turned his head away so that he wouldn’t have to look at it or Sharina. She took it, feeling him resist for a moment.

  Save that it was gold instead of brass, the Key of Reyazel was much like what Sharina’s mother used for the lock of the inn’s pantry in Barca’s Hamlet. The shaft was flat on one end and flared into four pins of varied length at the other. The user stuck the pins into the curving slots of the lockplate and rotated the key to open the latch.

  The door of the abandoned tower had a lock, but its key would’ve been a huge iron thing with a pair of hooks to engage holes in the heavy bar on the inside. It was no more like the Key of Reyazel than it was like an oil lamp; and as the man had said ago, the door was open.

  Turning, Sharina offered the key to Neal. He shook his head, flaring his auburn hair. “Layson?” she asked. “Anyone?”

  “That’s all right,” Layson muttered, scowling at his boots. “But we got a right to see it, that’s all I meant.”

  “Yeah, let’s get on with it,” said a man at the back of the crowd. There wasn’t room for everybody on the apron, so some of the band had climbed up the slope for a better view of what was going on.

  Sharina returned the key to Alfdan. He took it, smirking at her. The pause had settled him back into his normal personality. That wasn’t entirely a good thing, but Sharina supposed it was better than wondering what a dazed, half-mad wizard was going to do next.

  Alfdan thrust the Key of Reyazel into the latch opening. Holding it there, he raised his whalebone staff over head and said in a low voice, “Herewet,” He twisted the key in his left hand.

  A door opened; not the door of the tower but a half-glimpsed thing of light and surfaces reminding Sharina of what she’d seen when she dived into the fjord. Beyond was a beach flooded with warm sunlight. The wizard cried in triumph and stumbled through, leaving the key in the lock.

  Sharina hesitated, but not long enough for anyone outside her mind to notice. She’d rather not have entered the world through the door at least until she’d had a good look at it from this side, but she and Beard needed to be close by Alfdan to protect him.

  If anything happened to the wizard, the rest of them were probably marooned here for the rest of their lives. Given how barren the region was, that might not be a very long sentence.

  Within the portal, the ground was sandy clay: dry, cream colored and as solid as rock beneath Sharina’s bare feet. Alfdan was walking toward the sea with the same short, quick steps that had brought him to the tower. She dropped the sheepskin and caught up with him in a few long strides, holding the axe in both hands.

  The sun was hot. A strong breeze blew from the sea, pulling the wizard’s robe and Sharina’s shift back in the direction they’d come. Her feet scuffed into the surface, pure sand now.

  “Wait, mistress!” Franca called; she looked over her shoulder. He and Scoggin were trotting toward her. The rest of the band were now on the beach also, looking around with cautious pleasure. The doorway was a slot of emptiness in the bright air.

  They were at the end of a semicircular bay. The sea beyond stretched north and south to the horizon, swelling and subsiding with slow majesty. The water was a chalky green near the shore but pale ultramarine where it met the sky.

  “It’s here,” Alfdan said. “Somewhere close, it must be....”

  He wasn’t looking at her; Sharina wasn’t sure that the wizard knew he was speaking aloud. “What’s here?” she asked. “What are we looking for?”

  “Mistress...?” said the axe. Beard�
�s tone was diffident, unlike anything she’d heard from his steel lips in the past. “I don’t think you should stay here. If I could see the thing, I would try to eat its soul, but I’m not sure....”

  “Whose soul?” Sharina said sharply. She was suddenly angry, though she knew she was overreacting. Exhaustion and hunger had stripped away her normal patience. “What is it that’s here?”

  “Mistress, I don’t know,” said Beard. “And I’m not sure we can kill it, you and Beard.”

  What had been merely a swell in the open sea rose into a great curling surge as it swept into the bay. It licked the shoreline with a roar and a trail of foam, washing thirty yards up the beach in a thin sheet, then spun its way back out to sea. The water was shockingly cold, but it splashed no higher than Sharina’s ankles.

  Alfdan gave a gasp of wonder. He poked the firm sand with his wand, then squatted to dig with both hands. Sharina watched him, holding Beard ready.

  “Ah!” the wizard cried. He rose holding a ring set with a tiny amethyst, barely a wink of purple against the narrow gold bezel. “The Pantropic! The specific against all poisons, here!”

  He slipped the ring onto his left little finger and turned gleefully to the company. “No venom can touch me now!” he cried. “I’m safe! I’m safe!”

  “Who wanted to poison you before?” Franca asked, frowning.

  “You’re not such a fool as some wizards I know, boy,” said Beard loudly. “It’s a toy that does nothing except add to Master Great One’s collection. None of them mean anything to him, nor to the ice that will have him and them all in no great time.”

  “Look!” cried a man standing at the sea edge. He’d suddenly dug in the sand with his spear butt. “Look at this diamond!”

  “I don’t much like this place,” Layson said, holding a nocked arrow to his bow. He’d walked slowly toward Sharina and her companions, looking around watchfully.

  “You’re right not to like it,” said Beard. “But it likes you all very much.”

  “We’ve found what we came for,” Sharina said, aware that she sounded harsh. “Now let’s get back.”

  She touched Alfdan’s sleeve. She didn’t have to pull hard as she’d thought she might: he came with no more than guidance.

  “Oh!” cried Franca, rising from the sand where he’d knelt, holding up an object. “Oh! My father’s charm! I thought it’d been....”

  Sharina looked at it, a disk of porcelain with a relief of the Shepherd leaning on his staff between a pair of fruit trees. It was pierced to be hung from a thong. Priests sold them when they came through Barca’s Hamlet with the Tithe Procession; several people in the borough had similar ones, more as talismans than for deeper religious reasons.

  It hadn’t brought much luck for Franca’s father; but then this was one of thousands of identical disks and might have nothing to do with the man....

  Franca turned it over and showed Sharina the name clumsily scratched on the back. “Orrin!” he said. “My father!”

  She felt cold. “Let’s get out of here!” she said, loud enough they could all hear. Most of the band was now digging at the sea’s edge and chirruping in delight.

  “The currents sweep things into this bay and leave them,” Alfdan said, looking around with a critical eye. “There’s probably more things here. Things of unimaginable value!”

  “You think the sea brought you that ring, wizard?” Beard said. “Do you really think that?”

  “I didn’t say the sea!” Alfdan said. “There’s more currents than those in the water, axe!”

  “So there are,” said Beard. “And who controls them, do you know? I don’t; but I don’t want my mistress to learn!”

  “Leave him if he wants to stay!” Layson muttered. “I’m going back.”

  “Come!” said Sharina, pulling the wizard’s arm. She stepped and her toe stubbed something. A bit of driftwood, she thought as she glanced down reflexively; but she’d flipped up the weathered back to expose a surface of fresh yellow pine with a crude carving.

  Sharina picked it up. She was trembling. “Mistress?” said Scoggin in concern.

  Somebody’d carved a figure of the Lady on the scrap of wood; the sort of thing that a traveller might make when he wanted to pray of an evening in a distant place. You had to know what the scratches must be to identify the image, and you couldn’t possibly tell who’d made them.

  But Sharina knew. “Nonnus...,” she whispered.

  With sudden certainty, she turned and flung the scrap toward the sea. “Come!” she said. “Now!”

  She strode toward the doorway, no longer concerned whether Alfdan and the rest followed her or not. Scoggin and Layson were quickly at her side. Franca trotted along after when he saw them leaving. The wizard was coming, and the others as well.

  “What was that, mistress?” Scoggin asked, now more concerned about her than he was for their surroundings. “That you found?”

  “The man who carved that died for me,” Sharina said. She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand, but everything was still a blur. “Died for me and the world, I suppose; but for me. I don’t know why it was here, but I know that whatever rules this place isn’t a friend of mine. So I gave it back.”

  She stepped through the doorway, into chill air and a sky in which the sun was already hidden beneath the high cliffs. She’d forgotten the sheepskin but she didn’t care; the relief was as great as what she’d felt when she breathed again after her third plunge into the fjord.

  Neal walked back to the doorway with a stunned expression. He held something cupped in his left hand, but he wasn’t looking at it or even toward his hand. Alfdan followed, reaching for the key as he passed through. He stopped when he realized that a handful of men were still on the beach side of the portal.

  “Come along!” the wizard shouted peevishly. “You won’t be able to return after I take the key out!”

  That brought them at a shambling run. Two were chattering toward one another with animation; toward, not to, because neither could’ve been listening to what the other said. The rest were in a state of numb concern, their expressions much like Neal’s.

  Alfdan twisted the key. “Wait!” said Neal, putting his right hand over the wizard’s. He flung the object in his left hand back through the opening, then turned away. Sharina caught a glimpse of something spinning in the sunlight; a miniature painted on ivory.

  Alfdan withdrew the key; they were all standing before a gutted tower, its door sagging inward. Neal caught Sharina’s eye and muttered, “What did I want with that? She’s been dead all these years!”

  “Yes,” said Sharina. “I understand.”

  She turned to the wizard and said, “I’ve carried out my part of the bargain; now it’s your turn. Take me to the farthest north. Take me to where She is.”

  “Are you mad?” Alfdan said. “You’d find nothing there but your death!”

  “I’ll die anyway,” Sharina said. “Sooner or later. If we kill Her, perhaps it’ll be later.”

  “Go, then,” Alfdan snarled. “But you’ll go alone. When I said I’d carry you where you wanted to go, I didn’t mean I’d commit suicide. I’ll not take you to Her!”

  “If he’ll not keep his bargain with us, mistress,” said Beard in a coyly musing tone, “then there’s no reason for him to live, is there?”

  The wizard backed away and stumbled. “There’s no need for that,” Sharina said sharply to her axe.

  “There’s no need for threats,” Neal said in near echo. “Master Alfdan, you and Mistress Sharina made a bargain. She kept her part; and you’ll keep yours.”

  “Are you all mad, then?” Alfdan said, looking around the circle of his followers. “Do you want to die? That’s all you can possibly do if you go to Her!”

  “I don’t...,” Burness began in a small voice.

  “Shut up, old man!” Layson snarled. “We didn’t make a bargain with the wizard, but she did; and he’s going to keep it or she won’t have to kill him. I will!
”

  Alfdan rubbed his forehead; the amethyst on his finger winked like a fairy’s eye. “It’ll take days,” he said. “Even in the Queen Ship.”

  “Oh, days are fine,” said Beard. “We have days and weeks and months before the ice covers all.”

  He tittered like a steel skeleton. “Days and weeks and months, yes,” he said. “But not years, no, not if you don’t kill Her very quickly. For She’ll have drained all warmth and all power from this world and there’ll be no blood left for Beard to drink!”

  ***

  Blue wizardlight flared in a roaring sphere around the Bird of the Tide. When it vanished, Ilna had the momentary impression that she was blind and seeing stark black and white images of the Hell inside her mind.

  The Bird tipped to its left, crunching on cracked rock. The vessel’s hull was shallow so she didn’t go all the way over on her side, but the mast now tilted at an angle halfway between the horizon and the roiling yellow sky. The air stank fiercely of brimstone, making Ilna’s eyes water and her bare skin sting.

  Pointin had fallen against the port railing hard enough to knock the breath out of him. That kept him silent, the one good thing Ilna could find in this situation.

  No! She was unharmed, Chalcus and the crew were unharmed—and they were all in the place they’d chosen to go in order to do their duty. She had no reason whatever for complaint.

  Ilna braced her left foot on the railing and squinted to save her eyeballs as much as she could while she looked at the landscape. It was an awful place.

  Spikes of rock, cut deeper where layers rested on one another, rose from flat, cracked terrain. The wind that had ravaged them whipped around the Bird now, rocking her violently. Chalcus and the men leaped to the lines, bringing the spar clattering down; there was no time to furl the sail properly.

  Ilna hadn’t noticed any orders passing. The sailors all knew what had to be done and did it. She could learn to like sailors; competent ones, at any rate... though the only problem she had with competent people in any walk of life was that she found so few of them.