Fool's Fate

by neetha Napew

  I shook my head wildly, and then found my tongue. “No, Fool. Trust me, please. They’re Forged. However heartless it seems to leave them in there, it would be a danger and a cruelty to let them loose. They’d turn on us, for our cloak or for sport. We don’t dare let them out.”

  He stared up at me incredulously. Then he said quietly, “You didn’t see them all, did you? Riddle is in there. And Hest.”

  I didn’t want to look. I had to. Heart thundering, breath coming fast, I crept to the door and peered in.

  The inside of the cell was dimly lit with the same blue glow as the corridors. I let my eyes adjust to the light until I could see the entire cell. The room was a cavity chopped into the glacier. The floor was crusted with waste. There were five Forged Ones inside, and nothing else. Four of them had taken positions in defensible corners, backs to the walls. Hest, weakened with injuries, sprawled on the floor in the center of the cell. Plainly none of the Forged Ones dared venture forth to attack him, for that would leave their own backs exposed. The three strangers in the cell were Outislanders, starved and scarred and dressed in rags. Their captors had stripped Hest and Riddle of their heavy fur coats, but even so, they were better off than the others. They still had their boots. I quested toward them desperately with the Wit, willing with all my might that I feel something from them. But there was nothing. They crouched, staring with brutish animosity at one another, less than animals. Their connection to the world and society had been stripped from them.

  I sagged away from the door, sitting down flat on the icy floor. Misery and sickness flooded through me. Evil memories I had thought long banished clawed at me with scabby fingers. I do not think the Fool could have understood the depth of my horror. He could not feel their absence of connection as I could.

  “Is there nothing we can do for them?” he asked softly.

  A smile like blight came to my face. I clenched my teeth, refusing to feel the emotions that threatened me. I would not think about this too deeply. I had already thought this through, long ago, and I knew all the final answers. No sense in agonizing my way through lessons I had already learned. I spoke flatly. “I could kill them. Maybe. There are four of them on their feet, and though three of them look starved and weak, I’ve known Forged Ones to pack up and fight together. For a time, until there were spoils to claim. I don’t know if I could kill them all before they pulled me down. Riddle’s a good fighter. And he’s still healthy.”

  “But . . . Riddle and Hest?” He pleaded with me.

  He should have known better. “Fool. That isn’t Riddle or Hest. Their bodies are there, and all the things they knew are there. But that’s all. They no longer care about anything or anyone. The only things they’ll consider are their own physical appetites. Would Riddle let Hest lie there on the floor, injured and unguarded? No. That isn’t Riddle. Not anymore.”

  “But . . . we have to do something!” His whisper was agonized.

  I sighed. “If we open that door, I have to kill them. They’ll make me, unless I’m willing to let them kill me.”

  “Then we have no choice?”

  I smiled bitterly. “There are always choices. But sometimes there are no good ones. I kill them, or they kill us. Or we walk away.”

  For a long time, the Fool stood silent. Then he turned away from the cell door and walked slowly away. I followed him.

  The ice corridors began to show more signs of use. The floor looked trodden and grubby, the icy walls scarred. We passed more dungeons, identical to the first. I peered into each one we passed, sick with horror, but we did not speak of the people we glimpsed inside them. The ones with the woman and the girl in them were the most heartrending for me. The floor of those cells had a layer of straw on it and there were pallets in each corner. Evidently the lives of these captives were to be prolonged. It seemed a crueler fate than Riddle, Hest, and their companions endured. Death would not be swift for the men, but cold ate a man just as steadily as starvation did. They would not suffer long. From the length of the woman’s unkempt hair and filthy nails, she had been in there for a long time. Huddled in a filthy bear rug, she crouched in the corner, staring at the wall. In the next cell, a girl of about seven picked at scabs on her ankles. Her eyes flicked once to meet mine as I stared through the crack in the door. The only emotion they showed me was wariness.

  Eventually, the corridor of dungeons came to an end. The hall grew wider, and the pale light globes were spaced more frequently. The passageway had been carved rather than chopped out of the ice, and there were grace notes of frozen beauty in the arched walls. The floor was clean and sprinkled with sand for traction. It seemed older to me, as if it had been built to accommodate a greater flow of people, but we had still not glimpsed a soul.

  Then we came to a junction that offered us three choices. The main corridor continued before us. To our left, a wide passage descended in shallow steps that wound down and out of sight. To our right, a stairway was cut in the ice, and led steeply upward. Both looked older and far more worn than the path we had been following. The Fool and I halted and exchanged glances.

  From the opening on our left, my ears caught a faint shushing sound. It came at distant but regular intervals. I cupped my ear to it. After a short time, the Fool whispered, “It sounds as if something huge is breathing down there.”

  I widened my nostrils and drew in a deep breath. What I smelled inspired me with hope even as it made the sound instantly recognizable. “No. It’s waves, it’s the sea. This way leads to a beach. Come on.”

  His face lit like a man suddenly reprieved. “Yes!” he prayed, and hastened down the broad, wide steps. I followed him and, catching his shoulder, moved him to the inside curve of the steps. “Stay by the wall,” I instructed him in a low voice. “If we hear someone coming up, it will give us that one moment to surprise them.” Our only weapon, his belt knife, was already in my hand.

  We were already weary, with no idea of how long we’d been exploring the ice maze. The steps were shallow and maddeningly irregular. They were gouged too as if heavy objects were often dragged up or down them. As we went deeper, the sea smell became stronger, and the air grew damper. The steps became more slippery, and soon we were negotiating our way down ice steps sheened with water. Someone had thrown sand on them, but it had melted unevenly into the surface, leaving knobs of glistening and slippery ice when least expected. We were forced to go more slowly. Soon the walls were gleaming with slow water, and drops fell from overhead. The smell of the water grew stronger, but the light did not vary from the witchglow of blue that suffused us.

  Then we reached the pitted bottom step and saw the futility of our hope. Beyond the ice was a slope of worn black stone that gave onto a beach of black sand. Several metal pegs were driven into it, as if small boats were sometimes moored there. Waves shushed in and out over it, lapping relentlessly higher. And overhead in the cavern, barely visible in the blue glow of the last of the pale globes, was a high ceiling of glistening ice.

  “If we had a boat, and if the tide was going out, I’d chance it,” I said.

  “If,” said the Fool, and snickered. I looked at him in shock. He looked terrible, and it was not just the blue light. He took his pack from my arm and sank down on the wet steps with it. For a moment, he hugged it to him as if he were a child hugging a beloved doll. Then he opened it and rummaged to the bottom for the flask of brandy. He opened it and offered it to me first.

  I took it, weighed it in my hand, and then drank no more than a quarter of it. It was the same apricot brandy that he had brought to the little house that Hap and I had shared. I swallowed the warmth of a summer day, and then breathed out through my open mouth, tasting apricots and friendship as I held the flask out to him. He took it from me, exchanging a square of black bread for it. It was half the size of my palm. I sat down beside him, and ate it slowly. There were raisins and nuts in it. It was dense and sweet and small, making me more aware of the hunger I’d been ignoring. We ate slowly in silence. Af
ter I’d licked the last crumb off my palm, I looked at him. “Up?” I said.

  “It won’t lead out,” he told me softly. “Think about where we are, and the legends we’ve heard from the Outislanders. This is where they came in under the ice to see the dragon. That little winding staircase must go up to Icefyre. Why else would it be there?”

  “Maybe it goes up and out,” I said stubbornly. “We won’t know until we try it. Maybe that other, wider way goes to the dragon. That would make more sense.”

  He shook his head. “No. The dragon must be above us, if you could sometimes see him from the surface. The staircase goes to the dragon. Not out.” He was adamant. He leaned his head against the icy wall. “There is no way out for me. And I’ve always known it.”

  I heaved myself to my feet. The seat of my trousers was wet. Oh, good. “Get up,” I told him.

  “There’s no point to it.”

  “Get up!” I insisted, and when he didn’t move, I seized him by the back of his collar and hauled him to his feet. He did not resist, but only gave me a doleful glance. “We’ve come this far together, through the years and over many a path and byway. And if we are going to end here, under the ice of Aslevjal, then I’m going to see this damnable dragon that made us come all this way. And so are you.”

  Is there anything more wearying than shallow steps? Perhaps slippery shallow steps. Nevertheless, we ascended them, and as before, we stayed close to the inner wall and kept our ears perked for sounds of anyone coming our way. We heard the waves growing ever fainter behind us and the random plops of falling drips. Eventually, we reached the place where we intersected with the carved corridor. We halted there, listening, but heard nothing.

  I was tired. I was sure we’d gone far past a time when we deserved a night’s sleep. My head felt stuffed full of felt and buzzing flies. The Fool looked worse. We crossed the corridor and entered the stairwell. He followed me slowly up the narrow steps. The staircase wound as it climbed. As soon as its curve took us out of sight of the main corridor, I stopped him. “You. Drink the rest of the brandy now. It will warm you and give you a bit of heart, perhaps. In any case, it will do you more good inside your belly than inside the flask.”

  “Can I sit down?” he asked.

  “No. I might not be able to get you up and moving again,” I replied heartlessly, but he had already sunk down onto the step. Again he took the brandy flask, opened it, and offered it to me. It wasn’t worth an argument. I wet my mouth with it, and then told him, “You finish it.”

  And he did, in a single deep swallow. He seemed to take a long time to cap the empty flask and put it away. “This is hard,” he said, but he did not seem to address his words to me. “I’m too close to the end. I’ve had glimpses of this, but never clear ones. And now all I know is that I must go on, and that every step I take leads me closer to my death.” He met my eyes and said without shame, “I’m terrified.”

  I smiled. “Welcome to human existence. Come. Let’s go see this dragon you came so far to save.”

  “Why? So I can tell him I’ve failed him?”

  “Why not? Someone should tell him we tried.”

  It was the Fool’s turn to smile. “He won’t care. Dragons care nothing for good intentions or failed attempts. He’ll only despise us. If he notices us at all.”

  “Ah! And that will be such a new experience for both of us.”

  Then he laughed, and I did too, not loud, but in the way men laugh when they know it might be the last opportunity to share a joke with a friend. We were not drunk, at least not on brandy. If the Fool was right, we were drinking the dregs of our lives. I think that whenever a man realizes that, he tries to find every last bit of pleasure in it.

  Up we went. The stair wound narrow, and I wondered what madman had carved it. Had there once been a natural feature that someone had ordered into a stairway, or was all of this a sculptor’s icy fancy? We went up. At one time, the walls had been decorated with bas-relief ice carvings, but they had been defaced, probably deliberately. All that was left were bits of legs or a hand in a fist, and once a woman’s lips and chin. I grew to hate the unevenness of my gait, one foot booted and one in an ice-coated sock. When we stopped to rest, I let the Fool sit down. He leaned against the wall, and I thought that he dozed. When I saw the tears creeping down his cheeks, I roused him. “There’s no good in those. Get up. We’re moving on now.”

  My voice was kinder than my words. He nodded to them and hauled himself to his feet. We continued our climb. Like an unending nightmare, the winding steps went on and on. The pale globes could not light every corner of the twisting steps. Every shade of blue and white that could be expressed took a turn. It was a cold and wearying beauty that we traversed. We climbed more slowly, and then rested together, and went on. It seemed that eventually we must break out of the ice, that it could not go on much longer. Then we came to a level gallery carved in the ice. And the dragon.

  A thick layer of ice remained between him and us. We saw him through the distortion and haze, yet even so, he was breathtaking. We walked slowly the length of the gallery, paralleling Icefyre. He was bigger than two ships. His wings were folded to his sides and his tail curled back around him. His head was turned back on his long neck, coiled away from us. We gazed at him in awe. The Fool’s aching heart was in his eyes. The immense sense of the dragon’s life almost overwhelmed my Wit. Never had I been so close to a natural living creature of such great size. Then we came to a crudely bored tunnel that wormed through the ice toward the dragon’s breast. I stooped and peered into it. It ended in the darkness of the black dragon. I took a breath. “Lend me your Elderling lantern,” I asked the Fool.

  “Are you going in there?”

  I nodded slowly, unable to say why I must.

  “I’ll come with you, then.”

  “There isn’t room. Stay here and rest. I’ll tell you what I find.”

  He looked torn between weariness and curiosity. Then the Fool lowered his pack to the floor and opened it. As he gave me the lantern-box, he said, “I have two more pieces of bread. Shall we eat them now?”

  “Go ahead. I’ll have mine when I come back.” Even the mention of food made my mouth suddenly water. Thick came suddenly into my mind. Had he Skilled to Chade and Dutiful, or did he sit woefully awaiting our return? Had he remained safe on the sled, or had it too followed us down in the crush of snow? I pushed the useless questions away. The Fool handed me the little box and I opened it, releasing its peculiar green light.

  “Don’t be long,” he cautioned me as I entered the tunnel. “I want to know what you find there.”

  The tunnel was not tall enough to stand in. I crawled along it, pushing the box of light before me. The blue light of the gallery faded behind me and soon I traveled only in a pale green light that echoed weirdly in the mirroring ice. The reek of dragon slowly grew until I tasted him as much as smelled him. It strongly recalled the stink of garter snakes when as a curious boy I had captured and handled them. The tunnel became narrower as I went, as if whoever had dug it had been so intent on reaching the dragon that they could not be bothered to keep it a uniform size.

  It ended in a wall of dragon, tiled with gleaming black scales, the smallest as large as my spread hand. A neat row of tools rested on a roll of leather on the ice floor before it. Various blades, mallets, drills, and metal picks were there. Two tools, blades broken or blunted, had been discarded. I held the Elderling light closer to the dragon, my gorge rising as I confirmed my suspicion. Someone had crawled along this tunnel to the beast’s side, and then attempted to burrow into his heart.

  It looked as if his plated scales had defeated the attacks. Some of them were scored, but it looked as if none of the metal implements had managed to penetrate the flesh beneath. A sort of metal wedge was still in place, driven under the overlapping black scales to lift them and create a vulnerable place. I held the light closer. The lifted scales revealed a second layer of creamy scales beneath them, overlapping in a
pattern perpendicular to the first layer. A pick like an ice pick had been shoved in under one creamy scale. It had penetrated the leathery hide beneath, but no blood or fluid flowed. I judged that it had been like driving a blade into a horse’s hoof. Nonetheless, the sneaking cruelty of such an attack disgusted me.

  The dragon lived. Someone had burrowed in here like a maggot, trying to hack a way into his heart while he was held immobile.

  I appreciated the density of his natural armor when it took all my strength to pull the pick from his flesh. I had to hammer sideways at the wedge to get it out of him. The instant it fell free, the scales in that area rippled and writhed and closed up. For a moment, my Wit-sense of his life surged. Then, just as abruptly, it vanished. The scaled wall of flesh before me might have been something pieced together from metal. I hesitated, and then boldly ran a hand over the layered scales. I could not even get a fingernail under the ridged edge of one, so tightly did they clamp, one over another. They were cold too, cold as the ice that encased him.

  I gathered the evil tools into their roll of leather and took them with me as I retreated. I had to crawl backward; there was no room to turn around. By the time I reached the gallery, I was sweating, and the reptilian stink of dragon was making me ill.

  I found the Fool sound asleep at the end of the gallery closest to the dragon’s hidden head. He was seated, his knees drawn up to his chest and his golden head drooped over them. His loosened hair veiled his face. Exhaustion had overcome his curiosity. I sat down on the floor by him and leaned back against the icy wall. In his sleep, he muttered something and shifted closer to lean his weight against me. I sighed and let him be. I wondered why the dragon’s assailant hadn’t chosen to tunnel into the wall here, closer to the creature’s head. Had he feared that even vised in ice, the dragon would have found a way to defend himself?

  I looked up at the icy ceiling above me. It was a deep bottomless blue, like staring into deep water. Somewhere up there, I promised myself, Prince Dutiful dug alongside his Wit coterie. I wondered what thickness of ice separated him from us. How long would the Fool and I have to sit here before we heard and then saw the progress of their shovels? An age, I decided. I could hear no sound of shovels or voice, saw no flawing of ice giving way to their efforts. They might as well have been on the other side of the world.