"Stop it!" they heard her scream, stumbling up, "Stop it!" She was raging now, all pretence of suavity gone. "Mindless vermin, can you not even see? All that you have, all that you are you owe to us! Our chance creation - a by-blow, an accident of our power…" With savage precision Elof shone the sunlight closer. Then he stopped abruptly as he saw her hurl a figure forward against the balustrade; it was Kara, looking out with wide alarmed eyes among the boiling steam, but making no effort to struggle. The sun's image shook and danced wildly in his quivering grasp. "You!" yelled Louhi, and he had no doubt whom she meant. "Mastersmith! It was your mind dreamed up this pretty toy; who else of your verminkind would have the wit? And it's your hand that sways it now, I'll be bound! Well, do you turn that meddling hand away from me, away from the Ice! Or you'll see its power at work indeed! This creature you claim to care for, though little she thinks of you now - what of her, when your beam is upon us? I need only lift my hand from her and she'll burn to ashes as swift as any common mortal! And what then? We may not die, we higher-born, if we are unbodied against our will; but we do change, and change in the changing. She is weak, and change hangs over her, a change neither you nor I can guess. Bring it upon her, little mastersmith, and how will you ever find her again within the puny lifespan of a man? And would she know you, if you did?"
Elof shot a horrified glance at Kermorvan; but even as he did so, and before the king could answer, the whole great army of shields parted as one, as if they moved of their own accord, dispersing the light in many directions. Elof bowed his head. "Your will is in them," said Kermorvan sombrely. "When it is so strong they heed it even as it forms. You must turn it again, my friend, or we are lost!"
"But there must be something we can do!'" cried Elof in dire anguish.
"What then?" Kermorvan demanded bleakly. "Rescue her? But does she want to be rescued? Look at her; she might strike you down as soon as Louhi would, if you tried!"
Elof ground his teeth. "She would want it! She will, can I but win her away again! You should know there are shackles upon her, though you cannot see them!"
"I know!" said the king bitterly. "But can I set that, set her against all the lives at risk, all we have spent already -and all the future of this world? If you cannot nerve yourself to it, I could not blame you; but I also hold a master-shield, and if I must…"
"Kermorvan!" cried Elof, desperate with anger and alarm. "The ruin of all that is yours would not deter you, you say; but who are you to command the ruin of mine?" Roc and Ils sprang up; for they had seen his hand drop to the silver hilt.
Kermorvan did not answer. Instead he said "We have a minute, while Louhi is still gathering her wits. A swift strike at her might free Kara; it is a better chance than none, at all events."
"I could crawl close," offered Roc hoarsely. "With our best archers. Fetch down the bitch with an arrow…"
Kermorvan shook his head. "They are watching for that, those guards… Elof, what could reach that balcony in time? A catapult -"
"No; too inaccurate. If only I still had my hammer! But hurling that into such great heat might awaken a worse danger… My wings, now - but we've no fire…"
A thin faint smile hovered about Kermorvan's lips. "Do we need it?" Elof slapped hand to palm, and swore.
Within minutes he was strapping his wings about him, and Ils, with infinite care, was directing a growing number of shields around and onto his corselet. For long moments he felt the flaring radiance envelop him, his sight flamed scarlet and his skin prickled agonizingly; then it faded, and his broad pinions drove the searing air from about him, beating with a promise of strength they had never before known. His whole being seemed to tingle with energy, and he grew impatient for his sight to clear. When it did, Kermorvan stood before him, in full armour and helm.
"Can you bear a heavy burden thus?"
"Kara, you mean? Twice over, with ease!"
Kermorvan nodded, lacing his helmet tight for battle.
"Then you can bear me also. You may need me to occupy that guard."
"But - but you're the king…"
"Of where, save for my friends? You more than any, perhaps; and Kara was my friend also." The grey-gold blade slid from its scabbard. "And in truth, do you know any other warrior who would serve?"
Elof, half smiling, shook his head quickly, once, and his wings spread high above his shoulders; Kermorvan hooked an arm about his neck, Elof caught him by his broad belt, and they lifted. Ils swung back the beam to distract his foes, Elof s wings thrashed like a stormwind and they soared up towards the looming heights of the High Gate. Lean though he looked, Kermorvan was a heavy man, but the smith's strength and the power of the wings bore them both up easily and fast. The wind burned in their faces with the speed of their rush, and the arrows loosed by the guards above flew harmless in their wake. In a few fast breaths, they were crossing the balustrade just below the dais steps, out of sight of those above; a melee of startled guards rushed in on them, and Kermorvan, loosing his grip, dropped lightly onto the balcony. His feet skidded upon the rimed tiles, but in the very act of recovering his balance he hewed the first-comer's head from his shoulders; Elof angled his wings, and bowled down three more, one right over the balustrade. The others dropped back, shields raised, and Kermorvan sprang at them. Elof, drawing Gorthawer, was turning to speed up the steps when he heard a scream of wrath from above, and from below a warning blare of horn-calls; a speeding shadow fell across him, and he twisted around in alarm, squinting up at the dark shape that dived out of the sun's glare towards him.
In that blaze of light he judged his distance ill. His first thought was only to warn; his second, that he was responsible for the king's safety, at whatever cost. With that thought the shadow was on him, and the collision sent him spinning around in the air, his ears ringing with a terrible cry of pain. Gorthawer was wrenched from his fingers; he saw something plummet past him and crash upon the balcony tiles, and heard from above him an echoing scream, and a peal of sobbing laughter. Then as he rolled upward and regained control, he himself screamed at what he saw there. It had the ghastly clarity of a dream; the slender form of a woman arched high against the sun, the wings that were her arms flung back from her out-thrust breast, and standing in it among a flood of scarlet the shining hilt of a black-bladed sword.
It seemed an endless age of agony and horror that she hung there before him. Then it was as if she crumpled up around the blade that transfixed her; she toppled sideways, her wings folding about her like a shroud, and even as he leaped out to her, crying her name, she fell away in a cloud of black feathers into the deep vale below. After her he sped, so fast the wind whipped the very tears from his eyes, but it was hopeless. For all that long fall Elof s eyes never left her; but of what thoughts passed behind them, no chronicle can tell. Light but swift she fell, the merest speck plummeting into the distance, lost to him in an instant against the dark waters of a new-opened lake, still churning with the ice-fall. A frozen moment passed, and a speck of white leaped up upon its surface; a rage of whiteness swirled there a moment, and Kara was gone.
In a void he whirled, and a void opened within him, a raging turmoil of agonizing emptiness and loss. The shouts he heard he heeded without understanding, less will in him than in the least thing of his devising. Back against the balustrade he crashed, and would have fallen had hard hands not hauled him in. There Was Kermorvan, his mail spattered with blood, Louhi's guards scattered writhing or still about his feet; but in his eyes a greater horror dwelt. "You were right…" whispered Elof. "She attacked…" But Kermorvan, his lips set hard and grey as cold granite, was lifting something from among a mass of splintered tiles. He hefted it a moment, his head bowed, and then stretched out his hand to Elof. In it was Elof s hammer.
Light and dark seemed to spin around in Elof s head, forming a cruel mask of a face, stern, grey-bearded, cruelly lined, laughing a bitter laugh that echoed into infinite emptinesses, mocking the twisted web of destiny that twined there. It was the fa
ce of the Watcher, the image of Vayde, it was not his own; and yet, somehow he knew that it laughed for him, because it had never learned to weep.
But he himself, it is said, rose shakily on his knees, staring at the hammer that Kara, in one last defiant act of love, had risked her existence to bring him. Risked - but she had never dreamed the risk was from him.
A sudden slash of pain cut through his legs. All thoughts save one died and shrivelled in his mind, all fires save one in his heart. He looked up, and saw there another, fair, deadly fair as the shining summits of the Ice itself; and she too was laughing, no less terribly, leaning far out over the whitened balustrade and brandishing her fist at him. Within him a cold knot of compassion twisted; for she too had loved, in her way. Had he not had Kermorvan to protect - With a howl of sheer animal pain he seized the tall man by belt and arm, and sprang up and out with him over the balustrade as if he meant to dash them both to their deaths below. But his wings flung out, and back towards the blazing shieldwall he swooped. At the slope's foot, he glided low and dropped his burden crying out in a great voice "Down, all of you! Behind the shields! And cover your eyes! Do not look!"
Then high into the middle airs he arrowed, and even as he rose the shields of his craft seemed to come alive in the hands of their wielders, twisting like serpents till the sunfire they ensnared found focus upon him. To the few who dared look a moment longer he seemed to vanish for a moment, as if he had met the fate of so many that day. Yet Kermorvan, as he sped back among his ranks, saw him still hanging there at the heart of the glare, shining like a shape new-cast in white-hot gold. On the balcony of the Gate the Ekwesh too stared at that terrible sight, and many cast themselves headlong, hiding their eyes. But she whom they cried to, tall and pale, made no move to look away. The white gems of the corselet drank in the whole force of that fire, and from them the gem of his gauntlet, till his whole arm blazed with the terrible radiance of contained power. A moment more, and it would have consumed him; but in that moment he acted. Louhi shrank back; she screamed aloud, and her arms flew up as if to ward off a blow. It availed her nothing. Out from that glowing shape, as the fingers flashed apart, burst all that pent-up force, in a single incandescent shape; and in its path, straight and fast as if to shatter mountains, flew the devastating hammer.
Kermorvan, forewarned, reached the shieldwall and threw himself down among his followers, crouched down with covered eyes. Yet the flash of light they saw even through tight-shut lids, so white it seemed to burn deep into the depths of their minds. Thunder crashed about them, the very air seized them and shook them and threw them half scorched upon the steaming earth, as it twitched and shivered beneath them like the hide of a branded beast. The drum-beats of avalanches resounded through earth and sky as the faces of cliff and slope crumbled and slid away beneath that single overwhelming blow, that violent impact upon the face of the world. Yet through it, above it, louder than any voice they had ever heard, it seemed to all who were there that they heard that last desperate cry echoing still, a shriek of anguish and defeat and ultimate, infinite loss, like lightning it leaped from sky to earth and back again, and rove the air asunder; but whether they heard it with their ears or in their hearts few cared to say.
Elof heard it. A searing blast hurled him skyward so high, so fast, the breath was crushed from him; and when at last he could breath again, the air lanced thin and cold through his straining lungs. It stung his scorched skin unbearably, and the sunlight, brighter sharper, fell on him like a sleeting shower of needles, as if to flay him for his presumption in having channeled its power. Something was happening to him, something frightening, as if the shrieking winds were shredding the flesh from his bones like leaves from dead branches, as if he was being torn apart and reformed. He groped for understanding, but that convulsion of nature, and ringing through it that last terrible scream, had shivered his thoughts like thin ice. His wings had shielded him, and they were ragged now, they hardly bore him, and yet he felt unable to fall. It was as if only fragments of him were left to float upon the wind, a ragged shred through which a clear light could shine. But it was a strange light, at once limpid and fiery, and it seemed to well up, out of the infinite abyss below. Visions it bore with it, visions and truths, clear sights of things that had been, that were taking shape even now, or that might yet be, all weaving together in one vast coil. In wonder he perceived that coil, and gazing upon it knew that slowly but surely, as he once had crafted a sword, the many strands were being twisted into greater strands, and those strands hammered together into one bright infinite shaping, one awesome work of craft. No vision lingered, though he grasped at them as might a child at butterflies; he glimpsed them only, as one might through the gaps in a tattered tapestry draped across a wide casement. But he saw enough to grasp one truth. He himself was that tapestry. Seconds passed, perhaps, before he knew he was falling once more; but they might as well have been hours.
As he turned over in the air, the clearest vision of all came to him. His tortured eyes, and more than his eyes, looked down upon the churning sea, scattered with jagged shards of ice, fragmented, melting, and at its margins a great scorched scar upon the land. There the fortress of the High Gate had stood; but it was gone, and the very ridge it was built upon. The mountains that flanked it still stood, but their faces had collapsed in rubble into the yawning gap. And through that gap, bounding like a horse newly freed from harness and stall, the sea came rushing in. Down it crashed from heights to depths in falls and rapids of awesome height, tumbling the shattered mountain-ribs like fine gravel, spitting brilliant spray skyward as if to mock the force that had lately held it in icy bonds. Into the upper reaches of the Yskianas, still frozen, it spilled, and further and further downstream the ice bulged up from beneath and exploded into floating shards as the dark waters swelled.
He looked after them, and to his sight time and space merged and became one. Down the river of days he followed their surging progress, and watched the ending of a land. Wider they spread, smoothly, slowly, and up bank and barrier the darkly gleaming line rose; there was no wave, no wash of devastation, only a smooth slow devouring. Water-side and island seemed to shrink and sink down into the sparkling maw of the waters with scarcely a wash of foam, grasses waved their heads to the flow as they had to the wind, till they were swallowed up. Trees at the river-side stood straight even as the waters climbed their trunks; only at the last, like men awakening in a sinking ship, did they flail their dark heads frantically. Their fear availed them nothing; they too sank. But down to the haunts of men that fear was swiftly borne, by the waves that lapped at wharf and wall, boomed at water-gates and shook bridges. Bells rang from tower to tower, bronze voices that sang their warning peal all along the shores of that once mighty country, till it seemed that the whole land quivered; back and forth they swung, as if the waves themselves were ringing them. Even in the Horns of the Bull they swung, in the towers that crowned the Strength of Kerys, telling of a subtle foe that neither outermost wall nor highest bastion could bar, of the cool darkness that even now was filling the docks, swinging ships at anchor, swelling channel and canals like riven veins. With many voices they sang, but one word only was their message to all men, from furthest farmstead to the streets of Kerys the City itself; and that was/fee/
It was heeded. Those fled, who could; and most fled in time. Men who had boats took to them, but large numbers were sunk by the frantic fugitives who sought to struggle aboard. Others fled mounted or on foot, in carts and carriages, or with what conveyance they might; but it was little enough they managed to take with them. Many farmers drove their beasts inland, but some not far enough; for at the first the Yskianas rose as fast as a weary man might run. It met the tributaries, and drove back their flows. Into the crevices of the fire-mountains it spilled, recoiled in steam and patiently, insistently, washed once more. The defences that Elof had created with such care it touched, tried and found wanting; into their depths it sent a probing tendril, and even as the tiny ga
rrison escaped it was lapping the dark blood from its rough-hewn stone. Down it came to a green island whose crown still smoked and smouldered, and the little mammuts among the rushes squealed and trampled their way to the high ground; nobody dared set foot there now, and they were safe. Wider and wider it spread, that Great River no longer a river; men fled to north and to south, as the sundering waters rose between them. They saved their lives; but the land and realm of which once they had been a part was engulfed at their heels, and lost beyond recall. The peril of the Ice was lifted from the world; but upon the land it had corrupted, and upon the city at its heart, the mightiest that then was in all the world, a still greater cleansing was come. But already Elof s eyes were gazing far beyond it; for the hunger of the waters was not yet sated, and the cleansing not yet at an end.
Chapter Twelve - The Coming of the Spring
So much came to Elof in his vision, and many things else both near and far; perhaps among them he saw also what passed beneath him, as he drifted among the uppermost reaches of the airs. But for an account of that, whatever its origin, the chronicles must answer. Awesome as were the forces he had unleashed, the armies gathered among the hills had escaped them. The Kerysmen, almost a league away to the north and westward, were well sheltered by the intervening hills; but it seems that the light in the sky and the terrible blast that followed were too much for them. They were brave men, but they had fought too long and hard against forces they scarcely understood; almost to a man they took to their heels, and those few captains who sought to restrain them were borne along in the rush. And in the end that was as well; for they were not cut off from their homes and kin by the rising waters.
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