Soldiers of Ice h-7

by David Cook

  "How so?" breathed Martine from where she crouched close to the ground, as if the ice held warmth.

  "We cannot both live on the food we have. Not up here, at least. One of us could, but there isn't enough for two. One of us must go back for supplies."

  The Harper cast a shivering glance at the meat weighted stakes. "And?"

  The woodsman was already loading one of the salvaged saddlebags with supplies. "Since you will not leave, I must. I'll take a little food and hunt for whatever else I need on the way."

  The glacier rocked under their feet as the geyser shot up another of its massive plumes. Martine looked to the sky, knowing that soon they would be showered with a flurry of ice crystals too large to be snow, yet too small to be hail. She pulled one of the stiff blankets closer about her shoulders and began chipping at the frozen ground with her dagger.

  Now it was Martine's turn to be suspicious as she looked up at the woodsman. "And why should I trust you to come back?"

  Vilheim snorted, amused by something Martine did not understand. The Harper couldn't judge his reaction at all. His mouth was drawn tight, and his eyes were lost in the distance. At last he spoke in an almost perfect monotone, unconsciously beating mittened fist to mittened palm. He had all the air of a man giving testimony at an inquest.

  "I am… was… a paladin of Torm."

  Martine blinked, so stupefied by the admission that it overcame her thoughts even of the cold, then waited for Vilheim to continue. He waited, perhaps expecting more of — a reaction, and the two stared at each while the wind whistled across the icy plain.

  "You were a paladin of Torm?" Martine finally echoed, thrusting her dagger deep into the ice.

  His reply was fierce, filled with passion that she should doubt his word. "Yes… Torm the True, Torm the Brave, Torm the Binder of Oaths… We… they… hold his faith in trust"

  Martine quickly thought back to everything she knew about paladins, which was mostly hearsay and opinion. The few she had met were stiff-necked, self-righteous, and unlikable swordsmen who were supposed to be austerely virtuous, lightened only by the glory of their god.

  "A paladin? All that business about honor, truth, goodness, purging wickedness?"

  Vil broke into a genuine smile, amused by the description. "Something like that. We were taught to keep our word. But it does not matter anymore. I am no longer a paladin."

  The words stirred sudden concern in Martine. What had prompted Vilheim's fall from grace? She caught her breath as she waited for some sinister revelation to follow, her

  gaze flicking from the bloody knife Vilheim held to Astriphie's ice-whitened remains. "So I'm supposed to trust you because you aren't a paladin anymore?" she breathed, the words forming ice crystals in the air.

  "I woke up one day and my god was gone. I did not sin, if that is what you are thinking." The man carefully cleaned his knife and slipped it back in its sheath, defensively aware of her unwavering gaze. "It was during the Time of Troubles. One morning I woke up and Torm was no longer there. Before that day, I could always sense Torm's purpose in everything. That day the feeling was gone. Torm had disappeared, as a good many of the gods did."

  Martine only remembered the Time of Troubles somewhat vaguely. She had been young and had not yet taken up the adventuring life. For her, the gods and their turmoils had seemed distant compared to Giles, the prefect's son, who lived just down the lane.

  'Torm came back, though. You could still be a paladin." Vil spoke softly but resonantly, his voice carrying force across the frozen gap. "Life is never simple. When Torm left me, I was suddenly on my own for the first time in my life, and I liked it. You could not know the freedom I felt."

  And now you want me to trust you? Martine thought. Perhaps it was a raised eyebrow or a quirk in her face that prompted Vil to speak. "I give you my word I will return. I am still an honest man, Martine of Sembia. A lifetime of training does not evaporate into thin air overnight." The man rose with firm resolution, shouldering the saddlebag to go. "Besides, there is no choice. You will not leave, and two cannot stay. I will find you here in four days. Take care, and good fortune in your mission, Harper."

  Martine knew she could protest. She could stand out on this glacier arguing until they both froze, but their time spent trading secrets had already chilled her to the bone, and she knew the ex-paladin was right. There was no choice. `Travel safely," she offered. "In four days, you'll find me here."

  The words practically vanished in the wind, and the former paladin bent forward as he turned into the gale to begin his journey. The Harper didn't waste any time watching him leave, but instead busied herself gathering up the supplies, the bulk of which he'd left behind. As she worked, the ice heaved again, this time hurling her to the ground with its violence. Three more tremors, each almost as fierce, struck before Martine started toward the edge of the rift.

  The hike was no more than a mile, and the woman made good time with the snowshoes that had survived the crash, a miracle for which Martine thanked Tymora, the mistress of luck. The snow was deeper and softer here, much of it fresh powder from the seething fountain that created its own massive cloud overhead. Through the cloud, light from the the noontime sun was deflected into a million sparkling motes of swirling silver frost. She found that looking at it directly burned her eyes, but at least it distracted her from the ground glare that might otherwise blind her.

  As she drew near the fissure, the tremors and the roaring swelled like some fulsome giant struggling to break its frozen chains. The rift had pushed the glacier's crust upward and outward to form a ridgelike cone. Not knowing how close she needed to be for the seals to work, the Harper elected to climb to the rim, in order to be certain of success. Besides, coming this far, she had to satisfy her curiosity. No doubt, she rationalized, Jazrac would appreciate an eyewitness description of the rupture.

  The base of the slope was a jagged mass of icy scree. Closer now, Martine watched how with each surge, great ice blocks hove over the crack's broken edge, some to fall back inside while others tumbled down the slope. Bound

  ing and crashing, these arctic boulders smashed into others below with sharp cracks that sometimes triggered other shifts and slides in the unstable mass. Wary of the risks, the Harper took extra caution as she picked her way through the frozen scree, mindful that an avalanche could cascade down upon her at any moment. The whistle of the numbing wind was drowned out by the grinding crashes that emanated from beyond the rim and repeated themselves all down the slope.

  Finally above the scree, the woman continued her climb, using the dagger to help now, for here the ground was nothing but smooth, windswept ice. Slowly she chopped footholds in the angled slope, all the time watching for danger ahead. The work raised a sweat while her fingers went numb even through her leather gloves and thick mittens. Wedged into grips of ice, her toes felt almost as chilly. Her side throbbed, and her shoulder protested with every twist, until she doubted the wisdom of the whole mission. I can't give up, she fiercely charged herself. Not this close to my destination.

  The jagged surface of the top finally came into view, and Martine dragged herself up on it with gasping relief. Every inch of her burned, inside and outside. Her throat was scorched with bitter cold, her muscles ached as if aflame, and her fingers curled with the peculiar fire that near-frostbite brings. Then the roar and tremble struck again, heightened by the crash of ice nearby, all of which urged the spent woman to her feet.

  Three steps and Martine reached the inner rim. There she halted, dumbfounded by the grotesque landscape below her. From the air, she had only seen how the rift spread like a starlike crack a half-mile or so in length, but now, close up, she could see the canyon bottom. The canyon floor flowed impossibly, like water-no, she decided, more like gelatin or unset custard. The surface rippled in smooth waves that still glistened with the shining hardness of ice. Where the waves broke like water against the canyon walls, the spray turned instantly rigid, hurling hail and frost into the a
ir. The water-ice bubbled and roiled, its feathery spouts frosting the walls of the rift, small at first but gradually increasing in speed and height.

  Martine suspected another jet was forming and hurriedly dug from her pouch the first of the stones Jazrac had given her. Remembering her brief instructions, she panned it about until the internal fires lit and then buried it in the snow safely back from the edge. It wouldn't do to have the stone fall into the pit, she decided.

  In another painful hour of trudging, Martine was at her second position. Stone in hand, she moved along the crest slowly until the rock began to glow in her hand. She planted it quickly. At this pace, she guessed there was barely enough daylight left to finish the task.

  En route to the third point, Martine spied a movement among the ice blocks of the talus slope below. At first she dismissed it as merely a shifting in the loose boulders, until she saw another flash. She barely saw it, a blue-white form against the ice. It was small and incredibly fast, for before she could even take a step closer, it had disappeared once more. The huntress swore it had arms and legs, like some kind of little creature. Caution and curiosity warranted she track it down, but the Harper rejected the idea, since it would delay her mission. All she dared spare was a brief pause, but after a few minutes of inaction, the Harper pressed on before she froze on the spot.

  It was only a piece of ice or a wayward snow eagle battered down by the wind, Martine decided as she passed the sighting point. She was too tired to ascribe it to anything else. Nonetheless, she remained watchful all the way to the next point of the seal, so much so that she almost ignored the stone when it started to glow in her hand.

  With the third stone was buried at the highest tip of the fissure, the Harper began the descent along the opposite edge of the bubbling rift, swinging wide to work around the crevasse that formed the next point of the star. Eventually the crumbled crack tapered to almost nothing. After leaping the dwindling gap, the Harper blindly crisscrossed the plain, stone in hand, searching out the juncture that would make it glow. With each stone, she despaired; it took longer to find the point where all the forces balanced. Just as she was beginning to wonder if she'd missed the mark, the glittering opal lit with its internal fire. Collapsing thankfully to her knees, the Harper buried the stone. Inside, her cracked rib throbbed as fiercely as ever, but her mind was now too dulled to the pain to even notice.

  'The glittering orange winter sun, hanging barely over the mountain peaks on the opposite side of the glacier, reminded Martine of the need for haste. Darkness would come quickly as soon as the sun slid behind the peaks, and Martine still had one stone to place and camp to make. There was no hope of getting off the glacier today, so the Harper wanted to dig herself a shelter before darkness fell.

  Her chest heaving from the long sprint, Martine reached her last goal, the southernmost tip of the fissure, only a few hundred yards from the glacier's edge. Sweat seeped out from under her parka hood to form ridges of sour frost in her eyebrows. The cloth mask that covered most of her cheeks and mouth was heavy with ice that grew thicker with each passing minute. Cold, fumbling hands shook the last stone from the pouch. The heart of the opal sparkled weakly in the setting sun. Holding it in her cupped hands like a precious child, Martine shuffled zombielike in questing arcs, searching for the stone's resting place. She mumbled curses against the coming nightfall, but the rising evening wind tore away every breath that escaped her lips so that she couldn't hear her own voice. The last of the passing sunlight disappeared before the advancing mountain shadows, taking with it any pretense of warmth the light had promised. The deep-throated roars of the geysers sounded like thunder in the chilling air. High overhead, the soaring spume sparkled in the receding sunlight till the glittering cystals looked like descending stars in the darkness. The wind-whipped frost flew thicker, each flake biting with more sting.

  After how much distance she did not know, the stone suddenly swelled with light. Exhausted and cold, the Harper stood dumbly watching it at first, not comprehending the meaning of the blue-white fire she cupped in her hands. Only slowly did it dawn on her that this was it, the end of her task. In moments, she would set the seal and fulfill Jazrac's trust in her. She was sure the wizard was watching no, sensing for some ripple in the cosmic sea that marked the healing of this great wound in the earth.

  "I'hank the gods!" she croaked through cracked lips as she knelt and scooped out a nest for the stone with excessive care. With both her thick mittened hands, she gingerly lowered the stone onto its bed. For a moment, she paused to admire how the stone glowed and throbbed in its cradle.

  "The cinder," she muttered suddenly. "I must touch it with the cinder!" In her relief and admiration of the stone, she had almost forgotten the last step. Her fingers too rigid to work the strings on the little pouch, she tugged at the cords with her teeth until the neck was wide enough to shake the stone free. To Martine's terror, the cinderlike stone plopped into her palm, hung there precariously, and then fell to smack against the glowing opal with a resounding crack so sharp she was convinced both had shattered. Frantically the Harper tore off her mittens and scooped at the snow to retrieve the fallen key.

  Just as she wrapped her fingers about it, the glowing opal swelled with brilliant white fire. Clutching the key, Martine

  flung herself away from the flare, her sight dazzled. The blaze from the stone expanded outward like an immense, unshuttered lantern until the Harper, still sprawled in the snow, wrapped an arm over her eyes, but still she could not block out the glare.

  Then the shape of the light changed, though not its intensity. The diffuse brightness that burned out all the shadows on the snow drew in on itself, tightening and crimping into, a brilliant ice-blue tendril. As if leaning against the wind, it stretched and strained in an arc that yearned toward the rift and then, with a sizzling roar, the beam lanced like some wizard's fiery missile in an arc that carried it straight for the rift's heart. The crackle echoed-no, was echoed, Martine realized by four other reports. Blue-white streaks like shooting stars returning skyward rose from four other points, each rocketing to a single rendezvous point in the sky. The five radiant arcs clashed over the center of the canyon in a brilliant display of sparks. Martine squawked and rose to run, only to stumble backward, tripping over her booted feet to land sprawled in the snow.

  "Damn it, Jazrac, you could have warned me!" the Harper shouted in awe.

  Flopping around, she blinked away the dazzling lights that hung on the inside of her eyelids and looked at the canopy strung over the canyon five burning blue beams that glowed as they hung suspended in the air. Pulsing waves of light rippled from the intensely glowing shafts, only to break like waves over the rift. The evening darkness rose and fell with each pulse, and at the moment of brightest glare, Martine could see the canyon center, only minutes before a seething pit, erupt into ever-widening waves. The rounded, hardening forms of the frozen waves reminded her of the iron drops that fell in gelatinous puddles from her father's forge when she was young. She lay there absorbing the light, feeling the magical wonder of it all.

  What had Jazrac done to make those five stones, she wondered as the world crackled with the solidifying roar.

  As the pulses grew longer, a grinding bass note sundered the calm, and lightning-lit air tingled with the ozone scent of disaster. Fresh tremors, stronger than those Martine had grown accustomed to, quavered through the ice, letting loose a rolling wave of ice-rending shrieks. It was as if in that moment all the ghosts and all the lost souls ever devoured by the frozen waste howled out their torment. The cacophony was accompanied by deep thunder that shook the woman down to her toes. From the rim, fractures fingered across the snow like streaks of lightning, zigzagging little puffs of powder tracing their manic paths.

  "Damn you, Jazrac!" Martine howled, no longer amused. With a crack, the rim suddenly broke off and slid into the canyon, throwing up a wall of snow as the air rushed forward to fill the gap caused by the collapse. The fingering fissur
es raced closer toward Martine, and the ranger didn't wait to see what danger she was in but struggled to her feet and ran.

  Behind her, the snapping, ripping cracks fanned out rapidly, lunging closer, as if trying to catch her heels in their frozen jaws. Once, twice, Martine faltered as the fierce pain in her ribs, almost forgotten since the morning, spasmed and locked her muscles and nerves in pain. Her throat no longer burned because it was too parched to breathe, too parched to spit. Fear drove her forward toward the safety of the glacier's edge, where her only plan was to plummet blindly into the dark void beyond.

  With no more than a third of the distance crossed, the nipping fissures caught her. The fractures shot between her legs and raced ahead of her, reaching for the glacier wall. The hard ice field became a mosaic that abruptly began to shatter, each fragment tilting, reacting to the glacier's mad rush to reclaim what the rift had stolen. The

  tremors that Martine vainly fled punched the ground out from under the Harper, throwing up shards around her. "No, by Tymora, not again!" Martine wailed as the ground slipped backward beneath her feet. Like a sailor washed overboard, she helplessly slid into the seething ice sea and rode down into its rough darkness: "Not twice in one day! It isn't fair!"

  And then there was the cold and the darkness.

  Four

  Scrabbling noises like fingernails grating on rock, teeth crunching bones, ice freezing in my veins I hear scrabbling noises, the woman dreamed. It's the sound of fresh earth being thrown on my grave, thumping with each show elful. I have to scream. I have to yell and let them know I'm still alive.

  But that's so much effort.

  "Dig, dig, dig," said a little voice in singsong.

  It's not coming from my throat, the woman concluded dreamily. It's too dry… my throat's too dry.

  "Dig, dig, dig," said the voice again. It sounded like a peevish child. "Just because he says so. Does he dig? No-o-o. That's why he brought me along so he could make me dig. He gets to sulk, while I, Icy-White the Clever,