by David Drake
“Oh, go on past, File Closer!” Beard said. “The worst that can happen if one of those legs kicks is it’ll kill you. Much worse will happen if the Elemental sucks you down, as it surely will if Beard and his mistress don’t stop it!”
Gondor lurched forward, clambering over a limb the size of a fallen hickory. The bristles sprouting from its joints were as long as Sharina’s arm and as stiff as blackberry canes.
Sharina hadn’t seen Gondor hesitate, but she supposed thoughts along those lines must have been going through the soldier’s mind. They’d certainly been going through hers; but the axe was right. She had to get ahead of Cashel and Garric.
The waving legs cast shadows against the lighted ceiling, a foul echo of the way breeze-blown limbs dapple the sunlight falling on the floor of a forest. Soldiers picked their way through with dogged courage, trying not to look in any direction as they squeezed past obstacles of quivering saffron chitin. They shifted aside to let Gondor and Sharina go by: the Blood Eagle driven by the presence of the girl behind him, while she pressed on out of blind determination.
Sharina’d decided she had to reach the front of the column. Now she was driving onward without allowing herself to think further. She knew there wasn’t anything new to consider, nor any thoughts that she wanted to dwell on.
The great centipede’s final segments were curled against the ceiling. One of the legs stroked like a metronome, the jaws of its pincers scraping parallel channels. Shavings drifted over Sharina, chilling her more than ice alone should have done. She shook herself, concentrating on what was ahead.
Troops who’d gotten past the centipede moved quickly along the corridor, widening the gap between them and the bulk of the army. The men who’d crossed the obstacle immediately preceding Gondor and Sharina were double-timing to catch up with their fellows.
“Can you keep up if we run, mistress?” Gondor asked.
“Let’s see, shall we?” Sharina said distantly. He was being solicitous; he really didn’t know she’d regularly outrun any of the men in Barca’s Hamlet, so it wasn’t fair for her to react as if somebody’d just branded her for stealing.
She shrugged off her bearskin—she doubted that she’d be in this place long enough to freeze to death, one way or the other—and broke into a long-legged stride. Her hair streamed back, though smoke-stained and greasy it was more of a clump than the gossamer blond fabric that’d been her pride when she was a girl.
Sharina hadn’t been a girl in longer than days or years could express.
The hundred or so troops ahead marched down the corridor in a tight mass, though they weren’t so much in formation as a mixture of two formations. Part of the force was regular heavy infantry from several regiments, but half or more were members of the phalanx. Many of the latter’d lost their long pikes. Sharina had already seen the broken shafts, the butt ends littering the ice beneath the dead centipede and the slender points black with ichor dripping from the wounds they’d punched in the creature’s armor.
Cashel’s quarterstaff showed above the ranks of soldiers, moving to the front like a standard. Garric and the rest of his entourage must be close to him, though Sharina suspected Cashel was leading.
She smiled faintly. Cashel was a very gentle man, but when he pushed, others made way. Her Cashel.
“Princess Sharina to join her brother!” Beard cried as she reached the formation. A man swore, but because Garric and his followers had already disarrayed the ranks Sharina had less difficulty getting through than she’d expected. Gondor was somewhere behind her. Had he really thought he in his armor could outrun Sharina os-Reise? And yes, he probably had; but he wouldn’t think that again.
She worked her way up to Cashel; Garric and the others were to the side, forming a partial rank just behind the front of the formation. “Garric, Cashel!” Sharina said. “You’ve got to let me through. The thing that’s coming won’t be harmed by your weapons!”
Garric looked back awkwardly past the cheek flare of his helmet; Cashel turned also, his smile of greeting turning quickly to a troubled frown. “Sharina,” Garric said, “this isn’t a business for you. I—”
“It’s a business for Beard and for no others!” said the axe, causing Garric’s eyes to widen. “Any of you can face the Elemental—but you’ll die and spend eternity in torment! Beard and his mistress will drink its life instead.”
“Look, if the axe is necessary,” Lord Attaper said, “I’ll take it and—”
“No,” said Sharina.
“Out of her cold dead hands!” said Beard. “If you think you can, which you will not—for Beard will eat your brains if you try.”
Sharina didn’t know why she was so furiously determined that she alone would handle Beard. She and the axe had survived horrors together; perhaps it was that. But beyond that, she’d faced Elementals before. Attaper hadn’t, none of the others had.
“Your highness?” called Master Ortron, now marching on the left side of the front rank. A helmetless nobleman was on the right; Sharina could imagine the confusion that would cause if Garric hadn’t been present. “There’s something funny about the passage ahead. I don’t see the light we’re following.”
Sharina cocked her head toward Garric to see between the shoulders of two men in the front rank. Fifty feet away the deep blue undertone of the present corridor became a murky yellow-gray like nothing she’d seen in these caves. She could still make out the walls and ceiling—or thought she could—but the thread of wizardlight blurred and vanished like a fishline plunging into the sea. The line of troops continued forward at a measured pace.
“The Elemental’s waiting,” said the axe. “It’s waiting to swallow every soul that comes to it, but it isn’t waiting for Beard.”
“Sir, we’re not afraid!” the nobleman cried. “Come on, men!”
“Stop him!” Sharina shouted. The fool could draw the whole force with him unless—
“Charge!” the noble cried, waving his sword as he broke into a run.
“Knock him down, Herther!” Master Ortron roared. There were three pikemen in the front rank. Two of them—one was presumably named Herther—swung their long shafts sideways, one cracking the nobleman across the temple and the other sweeping his ankles out from under him. He crashed into the wall and flopped to the floor on his back.
“Let me by,” Sharina said in a desperate murmur. She didn’t raise her voice for fear she’d scream with fear and frustration.
“Sharina...,” Garric said with a troubled frown. The troops continued to march toward certain death; the front ranks divided enough to keep from trampling the fallen officer, but the men behind probably couldn’t see the poor fellow until they were on top of him. They were nearing the change in light.
“Garric, let her go,” said Cashel. “I don’t like it, but I trust her. Whatever she says, I trust her.”
Garric nodded, his face still furrowed with worry. “Regiment...,” he said in a voice that thundered over the clash of boots and jingling equipment. “Halt!”
The boots crashed down one more time. The echoes continued to roll; from farther back in the corridor came the sound of men running to join the main body.
“Sister, I wish it were me,” Garric said with a lopsided grin. He turned. “Make room for Princess Sharina!”
“Oh, mistress, Beard will eat again!” the axe trilled as Sharina slipped between soldiers, her shoulder brushing the man on her right. “Oh, mistress, you’ve brought Beard to such feasting. No one else in this world will hold Beard until you’re gone!”
Nice that somebody’s happy, Sharina thought. And not for the first time; but she was here not only by her choice but by her insistence. Of course if Beard wasn’t just exaggerating as a compliment, there was no other choice that gave anybody a chance at survival.
The change in light was just ahead. Some of the pikes reached into it; their shafts seemed to kink slightly as though they’d been thrust into water. As though they were reaching into the water co
vering the Key of Reyazel....
She hadn’t come here not to act. Sharina stepped through the insubstantial barrier.
She didn’t look over her shoulder, but she knew the world behind her had vanished. She was in the fjord again, and the enfolding chill penetrated her soul. Planes of light jutted up, intersecting and interpenetrating one another. They had no color, but their textures differed as surely as walls of sandstone and granite and shale.
Sharina drifted onward, downward, instinctively holding her breath. If she took this place into her body, she would never return.
She couldn’t see the thing that was waiting for her. It was like walking through a nighted forest, watched from the darkness but unable to see anything herself. Beard tugged like a leashed hound. She couldn’t hear him in this wilderness of planes and soul-numbing cold, but the helve trembled in her hand as the steel mouth laughed.
Someday Sharina would die. Perhaps this was the day she would die forever, her soul devoured by a force that was alien to all life. She felt the chill and she felt the presence of hidden doom; and she continued onward because that was what she’d come to do.
She’d lost track of direction. There were no more walls and floor than there’d been when she sank through the waters of the fjord.
Her lungs began to ache. She knew that they’d shortly be ablaze with white fire but she couldn’t breathe, didn’t dare to breathe.
The axe twisted in her hand. Sharina looked upward and it was there, rippling down onto her like a mass of silk in the summer when the young spiders balloon off on the breeze. She struck or Beard struck in her hand. The Elemental divided to either side of the blow, untouched by the steel. It came on undeterred, spreading around her to right and left the way the tide rises on a narrow isthmus.
Sharina backhanded her weapon. The spike parted the Elemental’s tenuous form like smoke, its substance leaking like honey oozing from a comb dropped on hot stone.
Beard screamed in triumph. The planes of non-light, non-color fell into shards that crumbled in turn to specks too small for sight, then evaporated.
Sharina slumped forward. She heard Cashel cry, “Shar—” but the remainder of her name was lost as a sea of darkness surged over her mind. She knew she’d hit the floor, but she didn’t feel the impact.
Chapter 23
Ilna walked through the tunnels at a deliberate pace. She didn’t run because she wasn’t good at running; and besides, there was no need: she’d get where she was going soon enough, and possibly sooner than that.
Behind her Chalcus sang in an undertone, “I’ve seen the fruits of rambling, I know its hardships well....” Ilna was aware of his presence, but he was part of a world that had ended when she entered these frozen halls.
“ ‘I’ve crossed the Southern Ocean, rode down the streets of Hell....’ ”
Ilna’s personal memories were fading. In their place she remembered how She had built this palace beneath the ice to channel the powers on which the cosmos turned. As Ilna walked, she saw the necessity of each angle, of every knob or divot in the walls.
It was a work of the greatest craftsmanship; but craftsmanship alone wouldn’t have made the place the focus that it was. That had required materials and the willingness to use them.
“ ‘... been up above the Ice Capes, where the shaggy giants roam....’ ”
Through Her eyes Ilna looked down on the sea of faces staring up at Her on the ice throne. They were cut-throats, pirates, killers; bad men before She enlisted them in Her army, and since then become worse. There was no act too vile for them to commit for Her, and few that they had not committed already. Now they would do one further thing: She raised Her hands.
“ ‘I tell you from experience, you’d better stay at home.’ ”
Ilna turned right, into a tunnel lower and narrower than the others had been. At its end was a slab of blank ice which alone of the walls in this place wasn’t filled from within by wizardlight. Ilna saw herself reflected from a surface as blackly perfect as polished obsidian.
“Dear one...?” said the voice from behind her. She made a silent, brushing motion with her left hand, the sort of gesture she’d have used to flick away a fly.
In a memory not Ilna’s, Her hands began to weave in the air. The brutal faces below watched in frightened fascination. Most bore scars—brands and cropped ears as frequently as knife slashes; teeth smashed out or rotted out during lives as savage as those of wild beasts. They were bound to Her by fear of Her power and fear of the revenge those they had wronged would take if ever they left Her protection; but Her art, even if used to help them, frightened them also.
Ilna’s lips gave a smile as cold as the black reflection. She’d killed in the past and would kill again soon if she was able to. She’d have had no more mercy for the men who stared at Her than she would for a chicken she needed for dinner; no more mercy than they were about to receive....
Wizardlight streamed from Her hands in gossamer splendor, crossing and interweaving in a pattern that none of those watching beneath the great ice dome could appreciate. The men fidgeted, fingering weapons and glancing covertly at their fellows. The light rippled like gauze as it spread above them. Its color was too subtle for words to describe or eyes to grasp.
Her pattern finally reached the curving walls of the chamber. For a moment nothing happened save that the light pulsed the way breath throbs in the throat membrane of a waiting lizard.
The fabric settled.
The gang of killers tried to flee, screaming curses in a score of languages. They had no more chance than minnows within a closing purse net. Palpable light drifted over them, coating those it touched the way oil spreads over still water.
At first contact, men froze where they stood. The net shimmered, as beautiful as the rainbow hues of a snake’s eye, and it continued to sink.
A few of the band, shorter than the others or quicker thinking, dropped to their hands and knees to crawl toward the corridors feeding the great hall. Some slithered on their bellies at the end—crying, praying, or shouting curses depending on their temperaments—but the wizardlight settled onto them also.
Ilna reached the end of the narrow passage. She looked into the black reflection of her own eyes, remembering a past which those eyes had never seen.
The glowing net began to congeal the way pudding sets. Its color deepened and became more saturated without changing hue. The forms trapped beneath it blurred and lost definition. Their flesh and souls together dissolved. Light began to spread through the walls of ice which had been dark with the gloom of polar winter.
Still clutching their weapons, the corpses settled into the ice, shrinking to skeletons. The floor engulfed them. Above, looking out into the world Her art ruled, She wove the cosmos into patterns of devastation and inexorable doom.
Ilna smiled.
“So, dear heart, shall we try another tunnel?” said Chalcus with false, lilting brightness.
Ilna took the bone-cased knife from her sleeve. The blade of worn steel was only finger-long, but it sufficed for all her tasks: trimming selvage, gutting rabbits, and slicing swatches of cowhide into laces for Cashel’s winter boots.
Instead of chipping at the ice, Ilna turned the knife over in her hand, still cased. She paused, letting her mind locate the nexus in what the eyes of her body saw as a blank, smooth wall.
She tapped with the bone hilt. The slab of ice disintegrated into crystals smaller than snowflakes, smaller even than the dust motes that float in beams of sunlight.
Chalcus gave a cry of wonder. He stepped through the sudden opening, his sword and dagger poised. Ilna, smiling like a coiled spring, followed.
***
Cashel watched Sharina’s slender body shrink as she strode into the yellowish light. She seemed to be flying away with each step, not just walking.
Cashel held his quarterstaff in both hands. He didn’t squeeze it out of frustration, just held the smooth hickory with the grip he’d use to put a ferrule through
the skull of anyone or anything that tried to hurt Sharina—if he could. She was so tiny, now; a little poppet he could’ve held in his hand.
Her axe glittered brightly. Cashel hoped and prayed that Sharina knew what she was doing, the way he’d told Garric she did; but he didn’t doubt at all that the axe knew its business.
The distant doll of Sharina turned and slashed over her head. There wasn’t anything near her. She reversed the stroke without hesitation, bringing the spiked end of the axe around.
Cashel’d used an axe in his time, felling trees for his neighbors and shaping the logs; he nodded in pleased approval as he watched. Sure, that narrow-bladed war axe was a different thing from the heavy tools he’d worked with, but motions like Sharina’d just made took wrists and shoulders that few men could boast of. Oh, she was a fine girl!
The air above her went red as a smear of blood. Cashel shouted and strode forward, his staff crossways in front of him. He didn’t know or care what dangers Sharina might be facing, just that right now he’d rather die than let her face them alone.
The wall of light collapsed inward before Cashel stepped through it. Sharina was just ahead, full-sized and toppling onto the ice.
There wasn’t blood in the air or on the floor below, but there was a stink as bad as anything Cashel’d ever smelled. It reminded him of the time a great shark washed up on the beach of Barca’s Hamlet. The fish had been so rotten that its gill rakers hung as tatters of cartilage, but even so this was worse.
It didn’t matter. It wouldn’t have mattered if there’d been a wall of pike points between him and Sharina: Cashel was going through. He scooped her in the crook of his left arm. Her lips moved, though if she was saying anything Cashel couldn’t hear the words.
