05 Icefalcons Quest d-5

by Barbara Hambly

  She repeated the name once or twice to herself as was the way of shamans, then brushed the water again with the grass: the Wise Ones of the Real World did not use crystals as civilized mages did, but rather things that came and went, like water and fire. Only among the Salt People did the shamans make elaborate mirrors of blood and obsidian glass.

  Water roared fresh in the stream they'd left, and wind still smelling of storm stirred the miscut crests and locks of her inky hair. Her face was like a child's intent on a game. In time she shook her head. "He doesn't reply."

  "There is a woman named Ilae, then," the Icefalcon said. "She has red hair and plays a deer-bone flute; she was born in Gettlesand in the Spring of Many Lemmings."

  Cold Death went a third time to her gazing. The Icefalcon saw that she still bit her nails. His earliest recollections were of her, a tiny plump girl whom no one ever saw during the time of the summer hunts, such were the spells that she put on herself after their parents died.

  Black-haired children were frequently shunned in the Real World, and sometimes abandoned to die because they showed up against the dry prairie grass. Though Cold Death had cared for him diligently, still Noon and his wife had taken him into their household under the impression that Cold Death had disappeared, so unnoticeable had his older sister become.

  "Are you Ilae?" said Cold Death suddenly, speaking to the pool. "Wonderful! I am Cold Death, sister to the Icefalcon. Yes, he is here. He asks after the outlander Wise One Rudy Solis. She says he lives." The last remark was addressed to the Icefalcon.

  "I love your hair-you really ought to braid it with blue penstemon, in a crown on top," she added to Ilae in the pool. "It would look gorgeous. She says he is unconscious still." She turned back to her brother.

  "He has been so ever since the Guards carried him in. It is all she can do, she says, to hold him in life until their eldest Wise One comes. He is on his way, she says, from the City of Walls."

  "And does she have an explanation," asked the Icefalcon sarcastically, "for the fact that no one has followed me over the pass to assist my rescue of Prince Tir? Should I perhaps give over the hunt and return to the Keep again, if the matter is of so little concern?"

  Cold Death conferred with her pool again. Ashes and the horse Scorpion Eater cropped the grasses around the thicket, while the third mount, Afraid of Flowers, who had followed at Cold Death's bidding, grazed peacefully a little distance off, soft ears turning with the turning of the wind.

  "The Wise One Ilae says that no one followed after you because no one could, o my brother." Cold Death raised her head to look at him, and she looked amused.

  "Every time parties seek to enter the pass there are avalanches, not just those few whose marks I saw.

  Moreover, the Keep is now surrounded by a lot of men in armor who came up from the valley below, black men and brown and golden. They sit in front of the gates of the Keep with all their weapons pointed at them, ready to slay the first person who opens those gates, and everyone within eats potatoes and complains about the smell of the sheep and shouts at one another over what ought to be done."

  The Icefalcon stared at her as if she'd slapped him, and she grinned back like the demons that occasionally one saw in the coulees, the little ones that seemed mostly harmless.

  "Indeed I see them now, o my brother," she said. "The smoke of their campfires hangs blue in the air and the glitter of their spears like stars in the turning light. Warriors of the Alketch lands, I think, like your Vair who rides north."

  Her grin broadened, and she clicked her tongue softly, at which faint sound Scorpion Eater and Ashes trotted over to where she and the Icefalcon sat. "I do love coincidence, don't you?"

  "Show me one," said the Icefalcon dryly, "and I'll let you know."

  The sun westered, stretching out their shadows on the grass. Bison raised their heads as they passed, curly-wooled black humps higher than a mounted man's head, but clearly saw only other bison.

  In more than one place the Icefalcon saw signs of beasts not common to these lands twelve years before, rhinoceros and mammoth and the broad-horned elk of the Night River Country; the winds blew chill on his back.

  "The North has driven us out, o my brother." Cold Death bent forward with the rhythm of her mare's stride as they climbed from the coulee to the plain above. "Blue Child led us south from the winter steadings when the bison and the mammoth ceased to forage. There was an ice storm the winter after you left that killed all of Plum's band, and another in the spring. Now the Ice in the North covers all the Night River Country down as far as the Ugly Hills. Everything is changed there."

  The Icefalcon had heard this from Loses His Way-and a great deal about the grazing conditions around the Sea of Grass as well, but it still touched him with a finger of sorrow. Gil-Shalos sometimes talked about why this would be, a curious tale of the stars, and the sun's heat failing, like other tales she told around the watchroom hearth fire, fascinating in spite of its illogic. Everyone in the Real World had known for generations that the ice in the North moved, though seldom so quickly.

  The Stars had told his Ancestors, years beyond years ago, Change is all that there is. Do not hold anything, for everything will go away in time.

  But he hadn't thought of this in terms of the Night River Country. It was an uncomfortable reminder how far he had fallen short of the wisdom of his Ancestors-of the perfection for which he had always striven-to realize that despite all his upbringing he hadn't quite thought of it in terms of Noon's death.

  In a coulee still muddy from the rain they found the prints of horses, a war band a hundred and thirty-five strong, moving south ahead of them.

  "The Empty Lakes People," said the Icefalcon, slipping from Scorpion Eater's back to study the marks of the moccasin stitching and to note that Barking Dog, a minor warchief of that people, was still riding that long-tailed dun that overreached its own stride on the left side.

  Loses His Way had detailed to him a good deal about the pedigrees of that animal-whose name was Saber-tooth Horse-and most of the rest of the bloodlines of the herds of the Empty Lakes People, beasts inferior to the herds of the Talking Stars People, but some of the information was useful.

  He swung back up onto his mount, followed Cold Death down the wash. "Loses His Way and his party must have been scouting from the main hunt."

  "More grief to them, then," said Cold Death. "Here." She nodded toward the ridge of hills before them, identical to all other ridges in these lands, a civilized person would have said. "From here we let the horses free and walk."

  She slid from Ashes' back and gave her round flank a smack. The mare-and the Icefalcon's stallion-trotted off to join Afraid of Flowers. They wouldn't go far.

  From the top of the rise they could see Vair na-Chandros and his party.

  It was a considerable train, especially in these times. Each of the twelve wagons was pulled by a team of mules. No wonder the Talking Stars People are interested, thought the Icefalcon. Remounts, relief teams, and a small herd of sheep followed, under a heavy walking guard; the sun glinted off their bowtips and spears.

  Vair na-Chandros himself rode up and down the length of the line on a black horse, the Icefalcon remembered that the man always chose blacks.

  He was helmed and armored as for war, a scarf of scarlet and blue wrapped over the spiked helm, and the silver hooks that had long ago replaced his severed right hand were concealed by the billowing cloak of white wool.

  He was much as the Icefalcon recalled him, elegant and dangerous to the soles of his gold-stamped boots, and the deep, hoarse bark of his voice brought back the cold wind under the Keep walls as the remnant of the armies of the Wathe trained with their flamethrowers for the assault on the Nest: the smell of the fog that last morning, assembling to march to the flooded ruin of Gae to meet the Dark.

  The shrieking of men in darkness as they were devoured. "Ninety-eight men," remarked the Icefalcon, resting his chin on his hands and peering thoughtfully through the lo
ng stems of the needlegrass on the ridge. (The Talking Stars People did not deal in estimated numbers.) "And more than a thousand sent to besiege the Keep that they cannot hope to take. What is he hunting here?"

  Cold Death shook her head. Wind shimmered silver and dark in her wolf-hide tunic. "All I know is that I've tried to scry into that tall wagon there, the one with the guards walking on both sides, and cannot."

  "Another Wise One?" The Icefalcon knew that the Wise could not scry one another. He didn't like the idea of trying to get Tir away from two.

  "It could be. If so, it is a power I have never seen. Even in daylight I see around it a sicklied glow, like marshfire but dimmer." She worked herself back down the slope until they could follow the ridge line without being seen. They walked along the slope of the hill like the shadows of birds, paralleling the train.

  "You say that this Keep, this fortress, cannot be taken?"

  "It was built long ago by the Ancestors of the mud-diggers," said the Icefalcon. "The Ancestors of the Wise Ones had devices of magic, as if Wise Ones themselves were made of crystal or gold, indestructible and able to be used like tools by other Wise Ones. Vair na-Chandros visited the Keep seven summers ago and knows there is no way for human armies to break its walls. Yet you tell me he has sent the greater part of his force east to do that very thing, and he is not a stupid man.

  "He is if he thought a girl he wedded against her will would forget the experience when she came to womanhood."

  There were times when Cold Death reminded him of Gil-Shalos. "He appears," said the Icefalcon dryly,

  "to have been educated in that respect."

  A few hours' further travel brought them to rolling upland prairie, where the wagons formed a circle into which the cavvy was driven. The Icefalcon observed the guarded wagon carefully, but saw no sign of any Wise One riding within.

  The sheep were pastured nearby under heavy guard. Three riders went out with arrows and spears, circling upwind of a small cluster of bison grazing at the foot of one of the hills, riding like fools in a group.

  The Icefalcon, lying wolflike in the grass, shook his head and said, "Two arrows says they stampede them."

  "I may be your sister, but I'm not a fool," grinned Cold Death. "You keep your arrows, and I'll keep mine. They've been trying to kill bison since they crossed Summer Water Creek. They'll get deer, though, in the coulee, if the Empty Lakes People don't ambush them there."

  The coulee that wound away to the east, dotted thick with aspen and cottonwood, was the logical place for the Empty Lakes People to be camped. The Icefalcon said, "They won't ambush the scouts. If it's Barking Dog's hunt, they'll attack the camp at midnight."

  "Only fools would try to attack them here," protested Cold Death. Through the screening grasses Vair could be seen talking with one of his scouts, a thin young man with white hair done up in elaborate crests and braids, like an egret in mating time; the young man pointed back toward the hills. "Even without wizardries, the camp is on high ground with no cover around it."

  "We're talking about the Empty Lakes People. Two arrows."

  "You're prejudiced," sniffed Cold Death. "On the other hand, it is the Empty Lakes People. I say dawn."

  Despite the camp's favorable position, Vair na-Chandros seemed to share the Icefalcon's apprehensions.

  The tracks of a hundred and thirty -five mounted warriors probably would have that effect, even if one didn't know of Barking Dog's proclivity for midnight raids.

  The men slung chains between the wagons and drove the sheep into the enclosure. From the eaves of every wagon roof, and on poles set around the perimeter of the camp, the expedition's bald-shaved priest hung demon-scares of glass and beads, such as the Icefalcon had seen on the waists and necks and house eaves of nearly everyone in the southern lands.

  Most of these amulets were of only limited efficacy-southerners being overly concerned with demons, which could, at most, frighten you in a dark place-but the Icefalcon had been aware all day of a faint nervous edginess, an awareness of being watched.

  From the slight rise where he and Cold Death lay, he observed the men as they erected a large square tent against the side of the biggest blue-roofed wagon. Still he saw nothing of any mage, or any thing to tell him of Vair's intent. "Do they seek to blot out light from within?" he breathed as they draped the tent inside and out with layer after layer of black cloth. "Will they drape their fires, too, that they be not seen?"

  The matter was overseen by a stocky white man, bald-shaved as Bektis' clones and the priest were, but with a small trim fair mustache. He had the animal stride of one trained to fighting, and the Icefalcon recognized, when he took off his heavy leather jacket, the triple scarlet belt around his waist and chest that in the southern lands marked a professional Truth-Finder.

  He passed into the tent, and came out, and went in again. When he emerged a second time, Vair crossed to him and spoke to him for some time, then gave instruction of some kind to a thin tall elderly man with long white mustaches, who seemed by the ribbons on his clothing and the gilded spikes of his helm to be his second in command.

  White Mustaches shook his head and shook his head again. Whatever it was that Vair willed him to do, after speaking to the Truth-Finder, at last he assented. As the men were building their cook fires and unrolling blankets the Icefalcon saw him going about the camp, pausing now by one warrior, now by another, speaking to them with his arm around their shoulders, nodding, his face grave. This Vair did, too.

  The bison at the foot of the hills duly stampeded into the distance. The hunters came back to camp with three deer. The sky turned a thousand livid shades of gold and salmon, mad ensanguined glories that had begun in the Year of Two Earthquakes, the year before the Summerless Year.

  Gil had explained to the Icefalcon that the colors of the sky had to do with the world growing colder and the movement of the Ice in the North, and why there had been no summer the year before last, but her explanation had left the Icefalcon with little more than a conviction that the Ancestors in charge of the sky had inexplicably become fond of reds and golds.

  As for the Ice in the North, it had always moved a few feet, sometimes many yards, a year. What was the point of telling over the memories of one's Ancestors, if not to know things like that? Darkness came. The men in the camp were experienced in warfare and stayed away from the fires themselves, even with the winds that quested the prairie like hungry ghosts.

  The Icefalcon saw them glance, every now and then, at the square black tent against the side of the tall wagon, from which no light issued. Sometimes after so doing a soldier would make a sign of blessing in the air.

  In the coulee the brush flickered in little stirrings against the flow of the wind. Something like smoke curled close to the earth among the cottonwoods, and above the glitter of the water there, but when one looked at it straight there was nothing.

  A crack of saffron showed where the tent flap and inner curtains were raised. The reflections sparked a hundred answering notes of light from the demon-scares on poles and wagon eaves and from the eyes of the men on guard.

  White Mustaches stepped forth. He stretched out his hand to one of the men to whom he had spoken at the setting of the camp, sitting by the fire among his friends, and somehow the Icefalcon was reminded of Noon, coming out of the dark with the white shell in his hand.

  "They don't like it," whispered Cold Death. "Watch them." Mageborn, she could see better in the dark than he, but creeping to a higher vantage point in the windy desolation the Icefalcon saw indeed how the warriors within the wagon circle fidgeted and looked about them and muttered to one another. Not one slept.

  Those not on guard sat up in their blankets, or kept two and three together as close to the fires as they dared. Though they played at sticks-a game even more simple-minded than the dicing that went on incessantly in the Guards' watchroom-it was clear none of them gave much attention to the proceedings. The Icefalcon experienced a momentary regret that he could not
slip into the camp and set up a highstakes game.

  The moon rose late, meager as a sickly infant like to die; the muzzy stars watched through slitted yellow eyes. Between the second and the third hours of the night came the screaming. The Icefalcon had seldom heard worse, even during the Long Sacrifice. "Skinning?" he whispered to Cold Death. "Sounds like it."

  Pressed to the earth among the grass roots, he and Cold Death bellied as close to the camp as they dared. Something moved behind them in the darkness, a wisp of brightness glimpsed from the corner of his eye. When he turned it was gone-or had never been-but a few moments later the grass bowed in the starlight where no wind touched. Demons.

  The scream changed. The Truth-Finder must have tightened the screw on the gag. "Is that how they sacrifice among the mud-diggers?" Cold Death wanted to know. The Icefalcon shook his head. Out of academic curiosity he listened more closely, trying to sift sound from sound in the shuffle of hushed camp noise, but could hear nothing now from the black tent. "The Truth-Finders work for men, not in the service of the Ancestors," he said. "The mud-diggers call their Ancestors 'saints,' and in the South they sacrifice to them by dedicating gladiators to their names, making them kill one another and letting these 'saints' of theirs choose whom they will take and whom they will spare. In the North, in the Keep of Dare, they only promise the 'saints' things, like money or certain acts."

  "But why would their Ancestors want things?" asked Cold Death. "They're dead. And why would they care what their children do?"

  The Icefalcon shrugged. "Their priests explained this to me, but it made no sense. There are those who will kill a goat, or a pair of pigeons, to these saints, but this they do secretly, and in the North not at all anymore, pigeons being hard to come by now. When I was in the South, I heard of those who killed human beings to appease demons or to bribe them for favors."

  "You can't get favors from demons." Cold Death glanced over her shoulder, to where something riffled suddenly at the water down in the coulee, as if a thousand fish had all snapped at once. "They're bodiless, and you'd have to be a complete fool to trust them."