Steel and Stone

by Ellen Porath

  Stung, Kitiara shot back, “Don’t forget, Valdane, I know where the ice jewels are. They offer limitless power to the one who can unlock their secrets. And about that other ‘problem’ … your mage could help take care of that as part of the bargain.”

  “The baby?”

  “The child need never be born,” she snapped.

  For a moment, neither spoke. The Valdane’s thoughts lay masked behind an unfathomable stare. But in another of his mercurial shifts of mood, his next words were gentle. “It doesn’t have to come to that, Kitiara. We don’t have to be enemies, you and I. Once we fought on the same side.”

  Kitiara forced an implacable tone. “I remember that I fought. You stayed safely in your tent.”

  He put a hand on her arm. “Let’s end this bickering for now. I’ll have lunch brought here.” He directed his words at the mage, behind Kitiara, where he awaited his master’s command. Janusz murmured something that Kitiara didn’t catch, but her stomach grumbled. No doubt about it, she was hungry. “You’ll probably poison me, Valdane.” She affected a lighthearted tone.

  He smiled. “If I kill you, I’ll never learn where the jewels are, will I? As you yourself have pointed out. We are in a most interesting predicament, you and I.”

  At that moment, the ettin thundered at the door. The creature ducked beneath the doorjamb, carrying an enormous tray covered with thin white canvas.

  The ettin tossed the cloth on the floor and began pitching platters and bowls onto a corner table with such enthusiasm that a third of the crockery broke. “Dead fish here; dead bird here,” the ettin chanted, and Kitiara heard a snort from the mage. “Bare plate, bare plate, fork, fork. Hoof jelly, spicy. Seaweed—cold, cold, Thanoi cheese, gray, chewy.”

  “I’ll confess, Valdane,” Kitiara said, “after a stint in your dungeon, any meal would sound wonderful.” She smiled at the ruler and sat down. “But,” she added sweetly, “I’ll still let you taste everything first.”

  * * * * *

  Afterward, their stomachs full, Kitiara and the Valdane, enshrouded in fur parkas, sped across the snowy landscape in a dire-wolf sledge. Res-Lacua bumbled behind, humming, until the Valdane thundered back to him to keep quiet.

  Kitiara mulled over her mealtime discussion with the leader. She had no intention of turning the nine ice jewels over to the Valdane. Kitiara had her own plans for such valuable artifacts. But she had to stall the Valdane until help arrived.

  “You’re awfully quiet. Are you planning strategy?” the Valdane asked now.

  Kitiara blinked. Strategy? Of course. They were off to lead the minotaurs and the rest of the Valdane’s forces against another helpless Ice Folk village. Kitiara had agreed to lead the attack. She hoped the defeat and enslavement of the village would buy Caven and Tanis time to arrive. Kit had an idea that she could make the campaign last several days. The Valdane might enjoy the thought of toying with the Ice Folk for some time before closing in for the kill.

  Kitiara let one side of her mouth rise in her characteristic crooked grin. “I’m always planning strategy,” she answered.

  The Valdane smiled back.

  Chapter 18

  The Owls and the Ice

  SURPRISINGLY, XANTHAR HAD RETREATED NORTHWARD without demurral. Xanthar had merely dipped his head, touched Tanis’s sleeve with the tip of his beak, flattened his ear tufts against the sides of his head, and launched into the air.

  “Not a word,” Caven had said, marking Xanthar’s progress until the giant bird was just a dark gray spot against the sky. “I expected an argument.”

  That had been days ago. Since then, the half-elf and the mercenary had walked nearly ceaselessly—and almost wordlessly. Now they stood upon rocky heights overlooking a vast sea a hundred feet below. “Ice Mountain Bay,” Tanis said.

  “It looks more like an ocean. How do you know it’s simply a bay?”

  “The owl told me, days ago, that we would come to this place.”

  “I wish the blasted owl had told you how we are going to get across.” Caven scowled at the seething, steel-blue water dotted with floes of ice. He edged back from the precipice. Beads of icy sweat shone on his forehead. Seabirds flew overhead, cawing, but there were no other signs of life. Copses of trees dotted the expanse of rocky soil behind them.

  “Right after the sandstorm, Xanthar seemed to be speaking—or at least trying to speak—telepathically with someone,” Tanis mused, scanning the horizon from west to east. “The lady mage, I expect. But all he said was that our way across the bay would prove obvious. While we were talking, he was so exhausted that he fell asleep in midsentence. I didn’t press him on the subject. Now I wish I had.”

  Caven spat, sitting down on a rock. “Well, the way’s not obvious to me,” he said petulantly. “Unless the overgrown chicken thought we could swim through that frigid muck, or sprout wings and fly.”

  Tanis nodded absentmindedly. He leaned over, picked up a piece of driftwood, and regarded it thoughtfully.

  Until now, each man had instinctively shied away from the real thing weighing on their minds. But shivering in the needle-sharp wind that angled north off the bay, Caven broached the subject.

  “Do you think she really is?”

  “Is what?” Tanis asked. He looked up from the piece of driftwood to Caven, who didn’t meet his eyes. The half-elf tossed the branch behind him.

  “With child, half-elf. Like the owl said.”

  Tanis considered. “I think so, yes,” he said at last, as though he hadn’t been thinking about the same thing incessantly ever since Xanthar had made the revelation.

  They sat in silence for a while. Caven finally shrugged. “I can’t see Kitiara getting married,” the mercenary said. “Or basking in motherhood. Especially that.”

  Tanis ran his hand through his hair. “No,” he said. He frowned and turned his back on the bay, facing north. The valley they’d just traversed sloped before him. The wind howled and pushed against his back.

  “Maybe it was some other …”

  All of a sudden, Tanis froze, holding up a hand in warning. Caven stopped in midsentence. The Keman rose and drew his sword. Tanis unfastened his bow from his pack and checked his sword.

  “What is it?” Caven whispered.

  Tanis shook his head.

  “Battle drums?” Caven ventured. “I’ve heard the dwarves of Thorbardin bang the hollow trunks of symphonia trees to sdare their enemies, and Thorbardin is up that way. But I’ve never heard …” He paused to listen. “An attack from the north? It makes no sense. We’ve been all the way through the dust plains. I saw nothing to threaten us except miles of shifting sand.”

  Tanis strained his eyes, trying to see as far back as he could into the direction from where they had come. Except for a dark line in the sky, which looked like a low bank of storm clouds, there was nothing out of the ordinary.

  Tanis pointed. “If you told me the Valdane knows we are carrying these magic jewels, I’d say that maybe we’ve become a target.”

  They looked at each other then. Hazel eyes met black. “He might have ways of knowing,” Caven replied.

  Seconds later, they were hiding among the trunks of the nearest trees. The pair bent some branches to improve their cover, then crouched, armed, behind their makeshift bulwark.

  The drumming grew louder. The pounding racked Tanis’s nerves. It sounded like battle drums, but slower—more like the beat that resounded when a prisoner marched to the gallows. Now Tanis thought he could hear smaller beats, sounding counterpoint to the loudest reverberations. Perhaps it wasn’t one large creature at all, but many smaller ones. He said as much to Caven.

  “In the name of Takhisis, could it be dragons?” the Kernan whispered.

  “Dragons haven’t been glimpsed on Krynn for thousands of years. If ever.”

  Caven and Tanis waited, motionless, as the black line drew closer, widened, and deepened. Then, with a roar of wings, they were there. Cream-colored underfeathers flashed as more than thre
e hundred giant owls settled onto the rocks and trees of the shoreline. At the fore, dropping clumsily onto a needlelike protuberance of rock, was Xanthar. In a flash, Tanis and Caven were out of the trees and dashing toward him.

  Tanis shouted the owl’s name, expecting to hear the creature’s sardonic tones buzz in his head. But there was no telepathic reply. Tanis looked alarmed, Caven surprised. They slowed to a halt before the giant owl.

  “What’s wrong with the old canary?” Caven muttered.

  Tanis looked up into the bird’s flat eyes, the color of mud, dimmed with pain. The bird’s beak was partially open. He seemed to be panting. Up close, the half-elf barely recognized the once-sleek creature. The bird’s proud carriage couldn’t disguise that Xanthar had withered to little more than bones and feathers.

  “He can’t speak to us,” Tanis told Caven. “He’s been out of Darken Wood too long. The lady mage warned him.” The bird nodded. “But he can understand whatever we say.” Xanthar nodded again.

  “What about the other birds?” Caven demanded. “Can we communicate with them?”

  Tanis turned toward the chattering mass of giant owls, which stretched for some distance in both directions on the shore. Xanthar was shaking his head. “From what Kai-lid said, I’m guessing that only Xanthar had the rare ability to mind-speak outside his race,” the half-elf said. Xanthar dipped his head again.

  “Could he still speak to the mage?”

  Xanthar cocked his head, and Tanis shrugged. “Maybe. He trained her. They have a special bond. But it doesn’t matter, does it? She’s not here.”

  Four somewhat smaller owls gathered around Xanthar. They appeared to be arguing with the old bird. Perched at the apexes of four dead oaks, the quartet broadcast their agitation with chittering, wing-flapping, and much whetting of beaks. Xanthar sat, apparently unmoved, at the tip of the stone, imperiously overlooking them all. The smaller birds chittered again; Xanthar dipped his beak in what Tanis interpreted as disagreement. The others cross-stepped back and forth on their branches, squawking some more. Xanthar appeared to consider, then dipped his beak again. The four other owls seemed to think a decision had been made. They leaped into the air with a rush of wind.

  Xanthar didn’t follow. Instead, he straightened and called out to them, a screeching that rivaled the tempest of wind, ocean, and crackling ice floes.

  Several owls took to the air and circled overhead, calling down to the giant owl. One seemed particularly disturbed, darting again and again at Xanthar, screeching raggedly.

  “I think they want Xanthar to go back home,” the half-elf said, watching as the huge owl raised his beak and uttered a deep trill, the sound of water over stones. At that, the four returned, but with a deflated air. This time, as they landed on the ground, they turned large eyes toward Tanis and Caven.

  “I hate that stare,” Caven whispered. “It makes me feel like lunch. Their lunch.”

  “I see that Xanthar rules his family still,” Tanis said, ignoring his companion’s remark. He raised a hand to the closest bird. The owl dipped its head slightly.

  Caven raised an eyebrow. “Family?”

  “Look at them.” Tanis pointed at the four and to other owls on each side. “Xanthar’s dark brown and gray, and they’re lighter. Those two are golden, but some have the same patch of white he has over the eye. Look at their markings, at the way they stand. Do you doubt the evidence of your eyes?”

  The Kernan gaped for a while, then shook his head.

  “At least it’s obvious how we’re getting to the Icereach,” Tanis commented. Xanthar nodded.

  “Obvious?” Caven’s eyes darted nervously from Tanis to Xanthar, then over to the pair of tawny owls waddling across the heights toward the half-elf and Caven. Looks of determination lit their round eyes, and panic flickered across the mercenary’s face. “Oh, no!”

  Tanis ignored him.

  “I’d rather swim across the bay than fly on the back of one of those creatures,” Caven said, swallowing. He took a step backward. “I—I wasn’t meant to fly like a bird, half-elf.”

  “You mean you’re afraid of heights,” Tanis said.

  Caven bristled. “Afraid? Not me. I’d just rather … rather … walk.”

  “You’ll have to fly, and that’s that.”

  “I … can’t.”

  “Not for Kitiara?”

  “Not for anybody. I suffer from vertigo.… I’d fall off. Half-elf, no one can defeat me in hand-to-hand combat, or on horseback, but up in the air …” A shudder shivered through his frame. “By the gods, I don’t dare!”

  “We need you,” Tanis replied. “You can use my harness. Strap yourself on; you won’t fall off.”

  One of the birds, a blaze of white marking its tawny forehead, had reached Tanis and turned around, presenting its broad back. The half-elf dug the leather apparatus out of his pack and fastened it around the bird’s wings and chest. The owl flexed its wings, testing the harness.

  “Half-elf …” Caven said warningly.

  The other bird, the same golden color as the first but without the blaze, came up on Caven’s other side. It looked down on him solemnly, then plucked at his shirt with its beak, nudging the mercenary toward the waiting owl. “No!” Caven said. “Go away!” He put a hand on the hilt of his sword, looking wildly from side to side.

  The two owls exchanged looks, then glanced at Tanis. The half-elf heard no voice of telepathy, but he understood the birds’ intention. At that moment, the unharnessed owl raised its beak and screeched. The sound was enough to raise the hair on Tanis’s neck, and Caven whirled, fumbling with his sword. At that, the half-elf leaped for the driftwood he’d thrown away moments before, hefted it in one hand, and as the mercenary began to swing back the blade, brought the piece of wood down on Caven Mackid’s head with a crack. The Kernan went down like dead weight.

  Moments later the owl with the blaze, the unconscious mercenary lashed to its back, plunged from the ridge into the dizzying space above the churning waters of Ice Mountain Bay. Tanis’s owl followed suit, the half-elf clinging to its neck. Xanthar launched from his pinnacle and swooped into the lead. They circled once, then turned due south.

  Behind them, spread across the blue-gray sky, hundreds of giant owls followed.

  * * * * *

  Kai-lid.

  Curled on the floor of the icebound dungeon, Kai-lid lifted her head and pushed back her coverlet. Her head swam. She hadn’t eaten for days, although the ettin had begun showing up regularly several days ago, right after Kitiara had been dragged from the prison, to lower a pail of water. The swordswoman hadn’t returned, and the ettin wouldn’t answer Kai-lid’s entreaties about Kitiara’s safety. Several times Janusz himself had showed up and renewed the offer he’d made in the Valdane’s camp, that she join forces with him and continue the magical training he’d begun with Lida and Dreena years ago when they were teen-agers. Of course, he would add, it was assumed that she would don the black robes and become his lover. Each time Kai-lid turned her head away, and when she looked back, Janusz would be gone, his scent of spices and dust lingering behind him. Her magic was useless in the face of the other mage’s greater powers.

  But surely she had just heard a summons. Was she hallucinating from lack of food?

  Kai-lid Entenaka. Can you hear me? Have caution. I sense the presence of another, who watches. Do not speak aloud.

  Kai-lid’s trembling dropped away like the sloughed skin of a snake. She forced herself to concentrate, to look within, and to remain seemingly calm in the cold light from the walls, but her heart leaped.

  Xanthar, is it you?

  A pause. Do you speak like this with anyone else?

  The lady mage practically sobbed with relief. She hid her emotions by rising and moving to the pail of water under the portal. She filled the dipper and drank deeply, all the while focusing her mind for telepathic speech.

  Xanthar, my father has enslaved the Ice Folk. Kitiara has been gone for several days. I don’
t know if she’s alive or dead. I fear she’s cooperating with him. I am his prisoner, deep in some ice crevasse. Quickly returning to the parka and resuming her somnolent position under it, she mentally sketched in their trek over the Icereach in the dire-wolf sledge. You are near, Xanthar?

  We are approaching the Icereach, my dear. I have brought my sons and daughters, and their sons and daughters, plus a few hundred cousins.

  Anyone else? She let the parka’s hood fall forward to cover her expression.

  The half-elf and the Kernan. They will be there soon.

  They? Not you, too?

  A long pause ensued, until Kai-lid felt fear twist within her. Xanthar, are you ill? I told you not to travel so far.…

  Don’t be ridiculous. Even by telepathy, the giant owl’s tone was gruff. Of course I’m coming. And you must be ready to help us.

  I’m helpless! She explained the surroundings and Janusz’s offer. He—he feels responsible for my death—that is, for Dreena’s death. Xanthar, Janusz says he hates Kitiara because she stole his ice jewels, but also because he blames her for Dreena’s death. He says he loved Dreena. I swear I never knew, Xanthar. He taught both of us magic, Lida and me. He says the love of Dreena’s maid would remind him of the happy times of the past.

  The owl pondered long before answering. You must buy time, and you must get out of that dungeon and rebuild your strength. Comply with the mage, Kai-lid.

  Comply? Kai-lid couldn’t hide her disgust. I’d rather die.

  That appears to be your choice, Kai-lid. But this pride is self-indulgent. We need you. You must find out what the mage has learned from the ice jewels. If you have to suffer his advances in order to do that, then you must. I’m sorry.

  But Janusz wants …

  Suddenly she felt the owl’s pain through the telepathic link. She interpreted it as empathy for her, and Xanthar did not correct her. Say you are ill, Kai-lid, weak from lack of food. Put the mage off as best you can. We need a day or two to find the Ice Folk and plan an attack. A note of forced humor entered his words. I know you are absolutely unbelievable as a liar, Kai-lid, but he must believe you, so make a good pretense of going along with him.