by neetha Napew
I forced myself to nod, though I was still not certain I understood all he told me. He had been a White Prophet who failed? Yet he had foreseen that eventually the Fool and I would come here?
He took encouragement from my nod. “She came. At first, ‘She is the one!’ I think. Her Catalyst she brings. Hope comes to me. She says she seeks the dragon. And I am a fool. I show her the way. Then, the betrayal. She seeks to kill Icefyre. I am angry, but she is stronger. She drove me out, and I had to flee, by a way she cannot follow. She thinks me dead and makes all here her own. But I return, and here I make a place for myself. To this side of the island, her people do not come. But I live and I know she is false. I want to throw her down. But to be the change-maker is not my role. And my Catalyst . . .” His voice suddenly went hoarser. He spoke with difficulty. “She is dead. Dead so many years. Who could imagine that death lasts so much longer than life? So, only I remained. And I could not make the change that was needed. All I could do was wait. Again, I waited. I hoped. Then I saw him, not white, but gold. I wondered. Then you came after him. Him I knew, at first glance. I recognized you when you left the gift for me. My heart . . .” He touched his chest and then lifted his hands high. He smiled beatifically. “I longed to help. But I cannot be the Changer. So limited what I may do, or down it all falls. You understand this?”
I replied slowly. “I think I do. You are not allowed to be the one who makes the changes. You were the White Prophet of your time, not the Changer.”
“Yes. Yes, that it is!” He smiled at me. “And this time is not mine. But it is yours, to be the Changer, and his to see the way and guide you. You did. And the new path found is. He pays the cost.” His voice sank, not in sorrow, but in acknowledgment. I bowed my head to his words.
He patted my shoulder and I looked up at him. He smiled the smile of age. “And on we go,” he assured me. “Into new times! New paths, beyond all visions. This is a time I never saw, nor she, she who me deceived. This, she never seen has. Only your Prophet has seen this way! The new path, beyond the dragons rising.” He gave a sudden deep sigh. “High the price was for you, but it has been paid. Go. Find what is left of him. To leave him there . . .” The ancient man shook his head. “That is not to be.” He gestured again. “Changer, go. Even now, I dare not the change-maker be. While you live, it is only for you. Now, go.” He gestured at my pack and at his door. He smiled.
Then, without any further talk, he eased himself down onto the Fool’s bedding and stretched out before the fire.
I felt oddly torn. I was weary and the Black Man created just such an isle of rest as the Fool would have. And yet, in that comparison, I once more felt the urgency to put it all to a final end. I wished I had known I was leaving him; I would have warned Thick what to expect. Yet somehow, I did not think he would be alarmed to awaken here and find me gone.
Leaving him felt inevitable. I put on my still chilly outer garments, and shouldered my pack again. I looked once more around the Black Man’s tiny home and could not help but contrast it to the splendor of the Pale Woman’s glacial domain. Then, my heart smote me that my friend’s body was still discarded in that icy place. I went out quietly into the deep gray of the night, shutting the door firmly behind me.
chapter28
CATALYST
In a backwater of the river there, not far from the Rain Wilders’ city, lie huge logs of what is known as Wizard Wood. The sailor told me that it is a sort of husk that the serpents make in the process of becoming dragons. Much magical power is ascribed to this so-called wood. Artifacts made from it may eventually acquire a life of their own; it is said that the Liveships of the Bingtown Traders were originally made from such wood. Ground to a dust and exchanged by lovers, it is said to allow them to share dreams. Ingested in a larger quantity, it is said to be poisonous. When I asked why such valuable stuff would be left lying in a riverbed, the sailor told me that the dragon Tintaglia and her litter guard it as if it were gold. It would be worth a man’s life, he told me, to steal so much as a sliver of the stuff. My effort to bribe him to get me some met with resounding failure.
—SPY ’S REPORT TO CHADE FALLSTAR, UNSIGNED
The Black Man was right. No night could hide my path from me.
Nevertheless, it was a challenge to tread his narrow cliffside trail in the darkness. While I had lingered inside, slow rills of water had crept across it to become serpents of ice under my feet. Twice I nearly fell, and when I was at the bottom, I looked back up, marveling that I had descended without a mishap.
And I saw my way. Or, at least, the start of it. Higher in the cliff face and past the Black Man’s door, a very pale blush of light emanated from the ice-draped stone. I shuddered at its dreadful familiarity. Then with a sigh, I turned back to the steep footpath.
Even by day, it would have been a nasty climb. My brief rest in the Black Man’s cavern seemed to have more sapped my energy than restored it. I thought, more than once, of going back into the warmth and comfort of his home, to sleep until morning. I did not think of it as something I could do but rather as something that I wished I could do. Now that I was so close to my goal, I was oddly reluctant to confront it. I had put a little wall of time between my grief and me. I knew that tonight, I would look my loss in the face and embrace the full impact of it. In strange anticipation, I wanted it to be over.
When I finally reached the softly glimmering crack in the wall, I found that the opening was barely large enough for me to enter. The slow slide of water down the rock face was icing it gradually closed. I suspected that it must be a near daily task for the Black Man to keep this entrance clear enough to use.
I drew my belt knife and clashed away enough of the icy curtain that I could just squeeze through. My pack scraped. Once I was inside, I still had to turn my body sideways and edge forward toward the pale light, dragging my pack behind me. The crack widened very gradually, and when I looked back the way I had come, it did not look like a promising exit. If I had not known otherwise, I would have said that the crack came to an end with no outlet. The crack narrowed and then bent slightly before it intersected with a corridor of worked stone. One of the Pale Woman’s globes gleamed there; it was the straying light from that orb which had beckoned me into this place.
I surveyed the corridor carefully before I stepped out of the crack. All was still in both directions, so still that I could hear the slow distant drip of water, and then the soft groaning of the glacier shifting somewhere. My Wit told me all was deserted, but in this place, that was small comfort. What assurance did I have that all the Forged had been freed? I lifted my nose, scenting like a wolf, but smelled only ice-melt and faint smoke. I stood debating which way to go, and then impulsively chose to go left. Before I went, I scratched a mark at eye level on the stone wall by my crack, that small act affirming that I expected to return.
Once more, I traveled the chill corridors of the Pale Woman’s realm. The halls were horribly familiar and yet unfamiliar in their stark similarity. They reminded me of somewhere I had been, and yet I could not summon the memory. In that realm, I had no way to measure the passage of time. The light of the bulbous globes was uniform and unwavering. I found myself walking lightly and silently, and approaching each corner with caution. I felt I explored a tomb, and not just because I sought the Fool’s body. Perhaps it was the movement of air in the cold tunnels, but there seemed always to be a whispering at the edge of my hearing.
This portion of the Pale Woman’s stronghold showed signs of long disuse. Most of the chambers that opened onto the corridor were bare. One held a scattering of useless debris: a worn sock, a broken arrow, a tattered blanket end, and a cracked bowl were left behind on the dusty stone floor. In another, small cubes of memory stone were scattered all over the floor, obviously tumbled from the long narrow shelves that lined the walls. I wondered who had populated these chambers and when? Had this been a fortress for the Red Ships crews when they were not raiding? Or was it as the Black Man had told, had other
people created these rooms and inhabited them? I decided that the habitation was far older than the Red Ship War. High on the wall, above the reach of casual destruction, the remains of bas-relief carvings showed me glimpses of a woman’s narrow face, of a dragon on the wing, of a tall and slender king. Only disconnected fragments of them remained, and I wondered if the Pale Woman had ordered them destroyed or if it was merely the idle pastime of Forged Ones to eradicate beauty. Knowledge seeped into me slowly, but eventually I wondered, Had she wished to erase all evidence that these passages had once belonged to the Elderlings? Were they the “old ones” that the Black Man had seen perish here?
The corridor I followed merged seamlessly with one of ice. I stepped from black stone onto blue ice. Another dozen steps, and a carved portal admitted me into an immense vaulted chamber of ice. Flowering vines of ice were carved on the massive ice pillars that had been left in place to support the blue ceiling. Time had softened their line as the slow melt had eased them back into obscurity, but their grace remained. It was a place of dusk, a moonlit garden of ice, with a large glowing crescent moon embedded in the ceiling and the constellations spelled out in smaller light orbs overhead. The Women’s Gardens of Buckkeep Castle would have fitted twice into this chamber. It was obviously intended as a place of beauty and peace. Yet the lower reaches of the garden, the fantastically sculpted ice fountains, and the decorative benches all showed signs of malicious vandalism. It was the sort of desecration that bespoke anger and resentment more than idleness. Only the body of a dragon poised on a pillar of ice remained. His wings had been broken away, his head shattered in a dozen pieces. The smell of old urine was strong and the foundation pillar that supported him was corroded with yellow, as if merely destroying the dragon’s image had not been enough for them.
I crossed the ice gardens and found a winding stairwell that led down. At one time, there had likely been carved ice steps going down and a balustrade, perhaps, but time and slow melt had changed the steps to an uneven and treacherous slope. I fell several times, clawing at the walls to slow my sliding and biting my cheek to endure the pain silently. The destruction in the chamber above had reminded me of the Pale Woman’s capacity for hate. I still feared that she might lurk somewhere in this ice labyrinth. I reached the bottom bruised and discouraged. I did not want to consider how I would ascend it again.
A wide corridor headed straight into a blue distance. Light globes at intervals illuminated the empty niches in its walls. As I passed them, I noted stumps of legs in one. In another, the stub of a vase remained. At one time, then, they had held sculptures and this had been a sort of gallery, I supposed. A plain and functional side passage opened off from it, and I took it, almost relieved to leave the broken beauty behind me. I followed it for what seemed like a long time. It sloped gently down. At the next turning, I went right, for I thought I knew where I was.
I was wrong. The place was a warren of intersecting ice passages. Doors lined some passages, but they were frozen shut and windowless. I made my marks at junctions, but soon wondered if I would ever find my way out again. I tried always to choose the path that was more used or wider, showing the recent dirt of human usage. Evidence of that became more obvious as I worked my way ever lower into the city of ice. Such I was now certain it had been. Looking back, I wonder if the Elderlings had simply accepted and shaped the ice when it overtook the city or if they had deliberately built in the stone of this island and then extended their dwelling into the glacier. I felt that as I found the passages and chambers that the Pale Woman and her Forged minions had used, I left behind the beauty and grace of the Elderlings and descended into the grubbiness and destruction of humanity and I felt ashamed of my kind.
The chambers began to show signs of recent habitation. Unemptied slop buckets stood in corners of what might have been barracks rooms. Sleeping-hides were scattered on the floor among the casual litter of a guardroom. Yet I saw none of the touches that soldiers usually kept in their sleeping places: no dice or gaming pieces, no luck charms given by their sweethearts, no carefully folded shirt set aside for an evening in the tavern. The rooms bespoke a hard and bare life, stripped of humanity. Forged. It stirred in me a fresh surge of pity for the men who had lost years of their lives in her service.
More luck than memory led me at last to her throne room. When I saw the double door, a wave of sick anticipation swept through me. That was where I had had my final glimpse of the Fool. Would his chained body still sprawl on the floor there? At that thought, I felt a surge of dizziness and, for a moment, blackness closed in at the edges of my vision. I halted where I stood and breathed slowly, waiting for my weakness to pass. Then I forced my legs to carry me on.
One of the tall doors of the chamber stood ajar. A shallow spill of snow and ice had been vomited out into the hall. At the sight of it, my heart stood still. Perhaps my quest would be thwarted here, the entire immense chamber collapsed and full of ice. The spilled snow was a ramp into the room; the days and nights that had passed since its collapse had seized the snow and ice in an icy grip and stilled it. Only the top third of the entry remained clear. I climbed up the fall of ice and peered into the chamber. For a moment I stood in awe in the muted bluish light.
The center of the chamber ceiling had given way. Snow and ice had collapsed into it from above, filling the middle of the room but cascading to shallowness at the edges. Light came from a few remaining globes and peered out uncertainly from beneath the fall of ice. I wondered how long those unnatural lanterns would continue to burn. Was their magic that of the Pale Woman, or were those, too, remnants of an Elderling occupation of this place?
I went cautious as a rat exploring a new room, creeping around the perimeter of the walls where the fall of ice was shallowest. I clambered up and down over chunks and drifts of ice, fearing that I would eventually find my way blocked. But I finally reached the throne end of the room and could see what remained of the Pale Woman’s great hall.
The crush of falling ice had spared that end of the chamber, its rush depleted. The wave of avalanching ice had stopped short of her throne. It was overturned and broken, but I suspected that had happened when the stone dragon had stirred to life. He seemed to have made his exit through the middle of the chamber’s ceiling rather than from this end. The remains of two men protruded from the avalanche. Perhaps those were the fighters Dutiful had battled, or perhaps they had merely been in the dragon’s way as he charged off to do battle. Of the Pale Woman, there was no sign. I hoped that she had shared their fate.
The fallen and muted light globes lit this area uncertainly. All was ice and blue shadow. I circled the toppled throne and tried to remember exactly where the Fool had been chained to the dragon. In retrospect, it seemed impossible that the dragon had been as immense as I recalled him. I looked in vain for fallen shackles or my friend’s body. At last, I climbed up on icy rubble and from that vantage studied the room.
Almost immediately, I glimpsed a swirl of familiar colors and shapes. My belly churned as I slowly clambered down and walked over to it. I stood staring down at it, unable to feel any grief, only burning horror and disbelief. The overlay of frost could not disguise it. At length, I went to my knees, but I do not recall if I knelt to see it better or if my shaking legs simply gave out under me.
Dragons and serpents tangled and tumbled in the discarded folds of it. Scarlet frost outlined it. I did not need to touch it; I could not have brought myself to touch it, but it needed no touch to know that it was frozen solidly into the floor of the chamber. As body warmth had departed it, it had sunk into the ice and become one with it.
They had flayed the tattooed skin from his back.
I knelt beside it like a man in prayer. Doubtless it had been a slow and careful skinning to take it off intact. Despite the way it had wrinkled as it fell, I knew it was one continuous flap of skin, his entire back. To take it off like that would not have been easy. I did not want to imagine how they had restrained him, or who had lovingly wie
lded the blade. A second thought displaced that horrid image. This would not have been how she vindictively ended his life when she realized that I had defied her and wakened the dragon. Rather, she had done this to amuse herself, at her leisure, probably beginning the slow lifting of skin from flesh almost as soon as I had been taken from the room. Flung to one side, the wrinkled layer of skin was frozen to the floor like a dirty shirt cast aside. I could not stop staring at it. I could not keep myself from imagining every slow moment of his death. This was what he had foreseen; this was the end he had dreaded to face. How many times had I assured him that I would give up my life before I saw his torn from him? Yet here I knelt, alive.
Sometime later, I came back to myself. I had not fainted and I do not know where my thoughts had gone, only that I seemed to awaken from a time of utter blackness. I rose stiffly. I would not try to free her grisly trophy and bear it off with me. That was no part of my Fool. It was the cruel mark she had put upon him, his daily reminder that eventually he must come to her and yield back to her what she had etched upon his skin. So let it lie there, frozen forever. With ever-darkening hatred of her and ever-deepening grief, I knew with sudden certainty where I would find my friend’s body.
As I stood, I caught sight of a curved sheen of gray. It was not far from where his skin lay upon the floor. I knelt beside it and brushed a layer of frost away to reveal a blood-smeared shard of the carved Rooster Crown. A single gem winked up from a carved bird’s eye. That I did take with me. That had belonged to him and me, and I would not leave it behind.
I left the demolished room and threaded my way through corridors as frozen as my heart. In all directions, the halls looked the same, and I could not focus my mind to recall how I had been dragged to her, let alone the location of the dungeon where they had confined me. I knew now, with certainty, where I had to go. I needed to find my way back to the first corridor the Fool and I had entered.
