Snowcastles & Icetowers

by Duncan McGeary

  Left with only one recourse, she began carefully, then more frantically, to dig upward. She shoveled the earth behind her harder and faster as the seconds passed, but the air she was breathing was the same air, she realized, that had been trapped with her long minutes ago. She was breathing it in great gasps now, but this did not seem to relieve the ache in her lungs. Soon she was no longer paying any attention to the direction she was digging, but just grabbing handfuls of the earth, the dirt that came away easiest, and it fell about her like rain.

  It seemed ironic to her that, as a Witch of the Winds, she had always stubbornly refused to use her power over this element; now despite her willingness at last to use her magic, she was about to die of suffocation!

  Suddenly, she realized to her horror that she had ceased to go upward at all, but had settled for following the soft earth almost directly forward. Her second shock was that when she proceeded to correct this direction she was met by solid rock. She fell back into the hole sobbing in frustration, ready at that moment to give up. She clawed futilely and pathetically at the wall, the dirt now causing pain under her fingernails, and to her astonishment, her hand suddenly went through the earth and encountered air on the other side!

  For a few minutes, she did not bother to enlarge the hole, but settled for breathing deeply the wisps of fresh air it tantalizingly provided. Then she pulled at the earth with renewed vigor and it came away easily, enlarging the hole to her satisfaction. She called out twice, but when no answer came back, she realized that she must have emerged into another of the endless caves. But at that moment life seemed good, if only because it provided cool, sweet air—never mind that it was just as dark as before and that she had no idea where she was.

  She soon realized that it was not quite as pitch black as she first thought. There seemed to be a pinpoint of light that could barely be perceived by the eye, visible perhaps only because there was no other light to compete with it. If she glanced away from the dot of light for even a moment, she could believe that she had imagined it. But it stayed there, unmoving, to be appreciated if she stared at it long enough, and she decided it was real.

  She crawled out of her own little cave, which had almost been her grave, and walked cautiously toward the prick of light, her hands extended blindly. From the echoing sound of her footsteps, she realized that she was in another giant enclosure, at least as big as the one she had just left, and as she neared she saw that the light was high up on its wall, a square doorway of light that barely illuminated a flight of narrow steps. Unafraid, she mounted the staircase and passed through the shimmering portal. ^

  On the other side was a simple stone platform, flanked by two other staircases leading down a few steps until they were blocked by massive wooden doors; and one staircase that led up out of sight, lit by torches. She skipped down to one of the doors and tugged, then pushed at it. As she had suspected, it would not budge. With determination in her young face, she marched up the long flight of stairs.

  At the top of the long straight stairway, another of the huge doors confronted her. Behind it she could barely hear a great bustle, the clanking of pots and pans, the shouts and laughter of women. This door was unlocked, and daring to push it open a crack, Mara saw what she immediately assumed to be many serving women, moving about a steaming kitchen with good- natured and agile speed, despite their bulk. One by one, giant trays of food were lifted with grunts and carried from the room on their shoulders, until at last it was empty, of both food and servants. It certainly did not seem as if they were concerned about the fighting, she thought wonderingly. Where were the others!

  Cautiously, but licking her lips hungrily, Mara stepped into the room. A few scraps of meat had been left on a long wooden slab, a huge block of wood that served as both a table and a cutting board. Dozens of knives were stuck negligently into its scoured and stained surface. Not knowing that she was stealing the food of the Steward’s Familiar, she grabbed at the food and ate it hungrily. Then she began to explore the snowcastle. At the last moment, she plucked a knife from its stubborn hold in the wood.

  On the other side of the wide swinging doors through which the serving women had exited, Mara heard the loud noises of dining and triumphant laughter. But to the right, she spied a narrow staircase that seemed to follow the path she had taken to the kitchen, and she darted over to it, almost as to an old friend.

  Many doors and landings led off these stairs, but she went on to the top, not knowing what else to do and thinking vaguely that she would find a vantage point there that would afford a view. At the top, though, there was only a narrow and dark door without a landing. Reaching up from a few steps below the door, she opened and peered in.

  It was a sparse room; a small room with no windows. Only a huge stone bed filled one end of the room, and the rest was bare stone. But what she noticed most was the cold. It felt like icicles were being thrust into her hands and face.

  Yet, despite the freezing temperature, an old, old man was lying on the hard frame of the bed, asleep with his mouth open, and very near death. Suddenly, the ancient red-lidded eyes in an almost blue face opened, and black eyes pierced her even more than the frigid cold of the room. Only when those eyes changed suddenly into a deceptive merriment did she recognize his features. This old man had to be Greylock’s uncle, the Tyrant of the High Plateau!

  “Come in, demon girl,” his voice cracked. “I am not so ill that I imagine you, nor am I so ill that I cannot defend myself against any demon. It does not matter anyway, for I have already entered the Deathroom, and once here I may not leave. Come in, and sit by me on my deathbed. Tell me of Greylock. Why has he returned?”

  The old man’s twinkling eyes did not fool Mara. She had heard too many stories of the hard life on the High Plateau, and of the cruel leader who had ruled it for so long. Shivering, she sat on the very end of the bed, on the edge, ready to flee at any moment. “He has come to take his rightful place as your heir. And to tell you that you have been wrong about the Underworld and the Gateway.”

  “He has come to take my place!” The Tyrant would have roared, had his voice been able, but the strain in his face was just as effective. Then the old man laughed strangely. “I hope he does take my place—better him than that treacherous Steward. But he must win by fighting for it, as I did. First he must kill the Steward Redfrock, for I am already dead. He will not find that easy.”

  Mara was confused by the sick man’s sudden shifts of mood. The Tyrant is mad! she thought with a sudden insight. She fingered the carving knife concealed under the folds of her cloak.

  “Tell my nephew, if he lives, that I am proud of him. I thought none of my heirs would challenge me. They all accepted exile and death meekly. Perhaps the time has come at last when the Gateway can be opened again.”

  “I will tell him.”

  Now the black eyes were changing again, and the face was filling with the rage that was the curse of the royal family.

  “Demon!” he hissed, as if he had just noticed her, as perhaps one part of him had. “How did you escape my trap? Guards! Guards! Bring me Thunderer, that I may destroy this creature.”

  Mara dropped the kitchen knife clattering onto the stone floor, and fled from the room.

  “I thought you said you could not use your magic to escape!” Greylock was angrily accusing the wizard in the cave below Castle-Tyrant.

  “I can’t!” Moag answered in a defensive and bewildered voice. “If I can’t use my power, at your command, neither can she—not alone. Her natural power may be greater than mine, and I have often suspected just that, but that power is still untrained.”

  The Lord High Mayor had followed the two in their frantic search, at first bemused but not really concerned. Now he was beginning to have second thoughts about the Steward’s intentions. He whispered into his Familiar’s ear, and the rat left his master’s shoulder for the second time, using his claws to scramble down his master’s chest and dropping the last few feet to the floor of the chamber.
Then it disappeared into the rubbish and the shadows.

  As the others continued to search and argue fruitlessly, Mayor Tarelton made himself comfortable in the soft dust near the fire and waited for his Familiar to return. The rat came back eventually licking its snout, having apparently dined while it was gone, and scurried up to its comfortable perch on the shoulder of its master. As the rat reported what it had found in its own search, the Lord High Mayor casually rose to his feet and went looking for Greylock and the wizard. He found them out in the dark, still arguing heatedly.

  “I know where she is—or where she was last,” he said, interrupting their worried discussion.

  “What do you mean?” Greylock asked, fearing the worst.

  Moag only stared at the Mayor in shock, his face growing suddenly pale. He put both of his hands over his face and grew very still. The other two stopped curiously, and watched silently, knowing that this was not a reaction to the news, but something deeper and internal. Then the old man seemed to recover, as if he had reassured himself somehow about Mara’s fate.

  “She is alive, yet she is not here,” he announced.

  “How could that be …”Greylock began, but the wizard shushed him.

  “Show us where she disappeared,” he commanded the Mayor.

  By fits and starts, for the Mayor continually had to stop and listen to the Familiar’s instructions, he led them toward one of the cavern walls. The light was dim here, but all could see the caved-in remains of a child’s excavation to which he pointed, a few yards from the blank wall. Now it was Greylock’s turn to grow pale. He dropped into the shallow hole and began digging in panic at the freshly caved-in earth.

  “She is alive, I tell you,” Moag said calmly above him. “Yet she is not with us here in this cave.”

  Greylock ceased his digging and stared at the wizard. “What do you mean? What are you two talking about?”

  “She has found a way out, Greylock,” Moag appeared to be confused. “Yet not by magic.” “How can that be?” Even as he said this, Greylock quickly realized the only possibility.

  Now the Lord High Mayor joined in the hopeful speculation. “Perhaps this tunnel leads to another cave and she was able to dig her way out!” he said excitedly.

  “If she has done that, by herself, then together we can dig another tunnel!”

  Many of the men who had followed them, willing to help in the search, seized at this hope and began digging. But others seemed to have already given up and sat together in lackadaisical bunches, seemingly grateful just for the next breath. The fires were flickering and sputtering, and though more rubbish was being thrown onto them, the flames were a pathetic remnant of the roaring fires of a few minutes before. Even as Greylock watched the dwindling energy of his men, the first of the fires went out, and then another. Black smoke spiraled upward to meet the unyielding rock of the cave roof, and then filled the chamber with an acrid, choking fog. Increasingly, they could not even see the smoke they were choking on.

  Greylock saw that it would be a race between suffocation and escape. He directed his men along the line of the old tunnel, thinking that it would be easier digging. But huge stones, impossible to budge, constantly confronted them. They could never tell when a rock was first uncovered whether it was only a few inches across and could be moved, or whether it would turn out to be frustratingly deep in its grip on the earth. They wasted a good deal of precious time and energy on these hopelessly mired stones, until finally Greylock ordered them to dig around them, even if it appeared to be a roundabout way of reaching the wall.

  At last they were under the original wall, and perhaps close to freedom. Yet, so near to their goal, the Keepsmen began to slow down considerably. Greylock saw to his frustration that progress was coming to a standstill, and he himself had dropped into an exhausted crouch, as if standing were too much of an effort, and he was breathing so heavily that he could hear himself. He could not ask the Keepsmen to do more, he thought, for they were as aware of the danger of inaction as he was. They were so close! Yet it was obvious they were going to lose their race with the rapidly dwindling supply of air.

  The last of the fires winked out, and Greylock heard the wizard mutter, “How I wish I had my granddaughter’s power over the wind!”

  Then no one said a word, for to speak would have been too much of an effort.

  Mara fled down the stairs from the Deathroom, her feet flying over three steps at a time, and she felt as if she were falling into a deep, great well. Every stone in the wall seemed to leap up past her, brightly lit. But she was still in control when she reached the junction of the kitchen again.

  At the bottom of these steps, Mara was suddenly confronted by one of the inhabitants of the snowcastle. A young girl, with dark hair and eyes, and a plump cheerful face stared back, as Mara’s eyes darted about desperately for an escape. As far as she could see, this girl was her single obstacle; but the old Tyrant’s enraged voice was still drifting down the halls, and guards could happen along at any moment. She brushed by the strange girl, who grabbed ineffectually at her arm.

  “No, wait!” the other girl cried. “I am Greylock’s sister!”

  “Ardra?” Mara stopped and turned, immediately seeing the resemblance to Greylock in this plump girl.

  “Is it true? Is Greylock with those others?”

  “Do you know where he is?” Mara asked anxiously.

  “The Tyrant has trapped them below. Follow me! I know where they are, but I do not know how we can free them!”

  Ardra took the steps as quickly as Mara had done. Their pursuers would not dare to follow, Mara thought. They would undoubtedly be constrained by their own bulky armor and by the steepness of the stairs. They would need to take each step carefully, one at a time. But it still would not leave them with much time to free Greylock and her grandfather, if what Ardra had hinted was true.

  Ardra led her back to that same landing she had entered from the darkness of the caves. To the right was the door that led back to the chamber she had just emerged from—so she knew they were not there. And the left-hand door led away from the direction she had known the others to be last.

  Only the door directly ahead of them could be hiding the captives, she thought, and Ardra confirmed this suspicion by pointing at the giant barrier.

  “But it is locked! I have already tried to open it!”

  Ardra could only shrug helplessly. She looked back up the stairs in alarm at the sound of armor.

  Mara began to examine the huge oaken door, with its braces of hardened leather and bolts of brass, for some way to opening it; first with her hands, and then with her mind. Her senses quickly told her that she would never be able to force the door open physically, and the same barrier that had confronted her magical powers before was still intact, and actually seemed concentrated at this very door. But it was a simple, if very strong, trap spell, designed only to keep men within its grip, not to keep others out. On this side of the door she was no longer constrained by the spell, and it would not be a hindrance to her powers.

  She knew her grandfather could have opened the door with a minimum of fuss and with great finesse. If he had been there, the portal would no doubt have simply popped open at his command. But she did not have the time and the patience to work with such care. She summoned the raw power she had always known she possessed and directed it at the wooden barrier.

  The door exploded with killing force, sending deadly shards down both sides of the passage. But the very force of her magic wind continued to protect Ardra and her from the fragments, sending them glancing off them in mid-air and burying the splinters in the walls and floors.

  It was dark and quiet beyond, and the air smelled stale and sickly. Mara sent fresh air from the halls behind her whistling down into the black hole beyond the door. Then, and only then, did they dare enter.

  Behind the two girls, though still far above, came the clattering of weapons as the snowcastle’s guards realized where Mara was at last and what
she had done, and hurried to stop her before she had freed her companions. But it took much longer, as she had hoped it would, for the soldiers in their bulky armor to negotiate the narrow steps. They did not dare take them at the speed with which Ardra and she had escaped. Indeed, if she was not mistaken, some of the racket she had heard was the sound of one of them who didn’t make it falling. She hoped that the careless soldier would bring others down in his fall. To help them along, she sent the wind whistling down the narrow twisting corridor once more.

  The steep stairs continued from the landing down into darkness, but the walls gradually fell away on both sides, and she realized from the echo of their steps that she was once again within a vast cavern. But where were the skylights? Even more important, where were Greylock and Moag? She was certain, even without Ardra’s assurance, that this was the same cave in which she had left the others.

  Timidly at first, then realizing that it made no difference if anyone heard her, she shouted as loud as she could and Ardra’s hesitant voice was added to hers. Their cries seemed to shock the atmosphere of the tomb, as if only whispers were meant to be spoken here, and how dare they break the ancient silence! But presently Mara thought she could hear a muffled answer from somewhere within the cavern, from the far side—and then she was sure that she heard several weak shouts.

  Once beyond the light of the door, she tripped and fell once or twice in her hurry to reach the others, and Ardra helped her up. Summoning the blue flame that she had seen her father call forth so many times, and which was a physical manifestation of her magical powers, Mara cupped it in the palm of her hands. It did not glow as strongly as she would have wished and she realized with a fright that she had just about exhausted her magical powers this day, as well as her body’s resources. She had wasted too much of it on the opening of the door, she realized, and now she was feeling a fatigue that was completely unfamiliar to her. Before, her problem had always been the other way around. Sometimes, for instance, she had felt she would burst with the malignant and destructive force of magic if she did not expend some of the awful power within her—a power she had been granted, but had neither asked for nor wanted. And now she had to admit to herself that she had experienced a kind of satisfaction in at last doing what her grandfather had always insisted she was capable of, but which she had stubbornly resisted.