“Looks pretty rotting cold,” Zarun says, and shivers.
“Deepwalker,” Gragant says, coming over to us. “I’m sorry to leave your escort to others. As your opponent, there are certain rituals I needed to attend to.”
“I understand,” I say, though I’m not sure I do. “Is this always where you have your trials?”
He nods. “It is a reminder of what the Divine Being has given us. Where we would be, if not for divine favor.”
“It’s impressive.” I try for nonchalance. “But it’s a long way to walk for a fight. We could have done this in your training hall.”
Gragant looks at me, perplexed. Then, unexpectedly, he throws back his head and laughs.
I look at Zarun, wondering if I’m missing some cultural context. He shrugs.
“I apologize,” Gragant says, after a moment. “I hadn’t considered things from your perspective. Of course.”
“Of course what?” My eyes narrow. “Are we going to have our duel out on the ice?”
“We’re going out on the ice,” Gragant says. “But we’re not going to fight. Trial by combat? We’re not barbarians.”
Harak is giving me a superior stare, and I can hear mutters and chuckles among the rest of the monks. I fight down an instinctive rush of embarrassment.
“So how am I supposed to prove myself against you in a trial?” I ask.
“Victory in battle is no proof of righteousness,” Gragant says, serene. “The Divine Being demands the perfection of the self, the body and spirit. Demonstrating that will be our trial.” He nods at the border.
“What?” I stare at him. “We just go over there, and…”
“Meditate,” he says. “A perfected spirit can achieve calm, regardless of what storm rages around it.”
“You have got to be rotting kidding me,” I say.
“It is how we have resolved our differences since the beginning,” Gragant says. “In the old country, we used closed rooms heated to boiling, but here the Divine Being has provided the perfect testing ground.”
“So, what? Someone keeps watch to see which of us achieves inner peace first?” My spirits, perfected or not, were falling fast. A fight I could handle—if this was going to be some contest of idiot theology, Gragant could just declare himself the winner.
“Not exactly,” he says. “Either of us may abandon the contest at any time, at which point the other will be declared the winner. Otherwise, the challenge ends at sundown. If we both endure that long, then we are clearly both in the Divine Being’s favor.”
Sundown. I glance at the sky. Even with the time spent walking out here, that’s still another four or five hours. Five hours of that. Flurries of snow whip playfully across the ice, licking at the edge of the dome.
“And you’ve done this before?” Meroe says.
“Many times.” I’m not sure if I’m imagining a hint of smugness in Gragant’s poise.
“We just have to … sit there?” I say.
“You are welcome to do whatever you feel brings you closer to perfection and the divine,” he says.
“Right.” I take a deep breath. “Meroe, Zarun, can I speak to you a moment?”
We step away from the monks and put our heads together. Zarun is grinning, like this is all a joke, but Meroe looks worried.
“Okay,” I mutter. “Ideas?”
“If you try to sit out there until sunset, you’re going to die,” Meroe says. “Nobody can do that.”
“It’s common among the monastic orders, supposedly,” Zarun says. “There are always stories of monks spending days on mountaintops or under waterfalls. I never gave it much credit, myself, but…”
I glance at Gragant, with his perfect body and impassive expression.
“He certainly seems confident,” I say.
“You can back out,” Zarun says.
“And prove that his god hates me. Then we’ll never get his help.” I look at Meroe. “Come on. There must be something.”
“You’re allowed to use your Wells, aren’t you?” she says, hesitantly. “Can they keep you warm?”
I’d been hoping for some brilliant diplomatic stratagem that would get me out of this, but that was probably too much to ask for. I look at the snow and shiver. “Maybe. My armor heats up my skin when something hits it, but I don’t know if I could keep that up all day.”
“Where’s an iceling when you need one?” Zarun says.
“The icelings are supposed to make houses out of snow,” Meroe says. “I read that, but I never quite knew what it meant.” She shakes her head. “Maybe you should back out. We can find another way.”
“We can’t. Not soon enough.” Meroe catches my eye, and I smile ruefully. “I know. But this time—”
“Are you ready?” Gragant says.
Meroe bites her lip, but nods. I turn away from them.
“As I’ll ever rotting be,” I mutter.
Gragant steps forward, with Harak just behind him. I square off opposite them, as though we’re going to fight after all. He bows, and I match him. Outside the dome, snow swirls and flurries.
The monk reaches back and unties his robe, unwinding the cloth and folding it neatly. He hands it to Harak, leaving him in just a knotted loincloth. Then—
“You have got to be rotting joking,” I say.
Gragant, naked and apparently without embarrassment—not that he has much to be embarrassed about, I think sourly—hands this last scrap of clothing to his second. He catches my look, and shrugs.
“It is traditional,” he says, which apparently settles the matter.
Fine. Modesty isn’t one of my virtues, and my clothes aren’t heavy enough to make much of a difference. I wriggle out of my vest and trousers, kicking them in Meroe’s direction, then unwind my chest wrap and step out of my underthings. Meroe and Zarun have both seen me naked—not that this stops Zarun from ogling appreciatively, of course—but I can feel the curious look of the monks. I ignore them, focusing on Gragant, whose gaze is appraising rather than prurient. I wonder what I look like to him—boyish, small-breasted, back and thighs crosshatched with old scars, still-healing welts from recent powerburn, and the weird, winding ribbon of blue marks that are the legacy of Meroe’s first, desperate healing.
He gives me a nod of acknowledgement, and turns to face the boundary. I follow suit, my skin already turning to gooseflesh. Harak moves behind us and raises his hand.
“Begin!”
I step forward.
* * *
Oh, Blessed’s rotting balls and all the Imperial mothers in a burning brothel, that’s cold.
It hits like a hammer as the Eddica barrier parts in front of me. Wind slashes against my bare skin like a thousand-tailed whip, as though each fragment of snow is a razor-tipped missile. It shrieks like a dying man.
Beside me, Gragant stretches, calm and unhurried, muscles shifting under ice-rimed skin. He strides forward a few paces, to where the snow gets deep, and lowers himself into it, sitting cross-legged. Then he just closes his eyes, hands settled in his lap.
I don’t know if he’s using a Well, or if this monastic discipline is everything it’s cracked up to be. Either way, he seems comfortable, which is the exact opposite of how I’m feeling. I thought I’d known cold, in the Kahnzoka winters, when wind and hunger were nipping at my heels. But this seems like another class of thing entirely, cutting into my flesh, worse than any powerburn.
Rot rot rot. Forget five hours, I’m not going to make it five minutes.
I activate my Melos armor, green energy shimmering faintly around me, but it doesn’t help much. It’s triggered by incoming threats, blows, or magic, and the rest of the time exists more as a potentiality than a barrier. It certainly does nothing to cut down on the wind, and only a faint shimmer of heat runs across my rapidly numbing body. I slam my fist against my chest, trying to get the armor to activate, but nothing happens.
Granted, armor that prevented you from touching yourself would be inconvenient, but th
is is a rotting awful time to experiment.
Igniting my blades provides a little bit of relief, at least for my hands. Green energy spits and crackles, each flake of snow that touches the Melos power puffing into steam, and my fingers and forearms feel a little warmth. Gritting my teeth, I lay one blade against my other arm, hoping to trigger my armor that way, but the blade itself shrinks away from touching my skin. Again, in the abstract, a useful quality, especially when monsters are tossing you head-over-arse. But not right at the moment.
My feet have already gone past pain and into deadened numbness. I remember the sailors in the Sixteenth Ward taverns who went on whaling voyages to the north, and how often they were missing digits or whole limbs. How long does that take? I’d never thought to ask.
The barrier shimmers behind me, seductive. All I need to do is take one step back, and the warmth of the Harbor will wash over me. It would be madness to do anything else, to spend one more second in this wasteland.
Gragant, sitting naked in the snow, is starting to steam.
Seeing that, seeing his serenity, just makes me angrier. Him and his Divine Being can both go to the Rot. There has to be a way to wipe the smug look off his face.
I raise a blade to my cheek. It brings a wash of warmth with it, but not enough. The problem is the wind, which tears away every scrap of heat. I need to get out of it.
The closest of the ice-covered hills is about twenty yards away. I start walking, kicking a path through the snow. It’s surprisingly light and airy, scattering like fine-grained flour. Gragant doesn’t even open his eyes to watch me, sitting now in a solid column of steam. I keep pushing as the snow comes up to my shins, then my thighs. My legs feel like solid, nerveless blocks of ice. If my toes fall off, I wonder if Meroe will be able to grow them back.
Getting in the lee of the hill at least cuts the driving wind. I start pushing at the snow, trying to clear an area big enough to stand in. There’s an overhang of rock, and long icicles have cascaded over the side until they reach the ground, like an irregular row of columns. At first they’re flush against the rock, but as I edge along the hillside the lip protrudes, and there’s a darkened space visible through gaps in the ice.
A house made of snow. Meroe’s phrase has been rolling around in my mind. I’ve seen that, too, now that I think of it—woodcuts of the savage icelings, invariably depicted alongside walruses and seals, living in hemispherical buildings made of blocks of ice. I’d always figured it was some explorer’s fancy. But …
None of the gaps are wide enough to admit me, so I raise my blade and let it dig into one of the pillars. Magic zaps and crackles, the heat of the Melos energy melting easily through the thick ice. Another cut at the bottom, and a huge chunk falls away, raising a cloud of fine snow all around me. I wriggle through the resulting hole and into the void beyond.
Calling it a cave would be generous. Really it’s just a lip of overhanging rock, with the ice pillars blocking off the open side, leaving a space just a little longer and wider than a coffin. But it’s already infinitely better than being out in the wind—not warm, but not quite as skin-shredding. I huddle on the bare earth for a moment, trying to move my toes. I’m not sure I can.
When I unfold myself again, something crackles. Steam, rising from where I cut through, has settled on my skin and frozen into a fine layer of ice. Bits of the stuff cascade away as I move.
It gives me an idea. Blessed, I hope this works.
I carve a chunk off the fallen ice pillar, a circular section about the size of a cookpot, and haul it into the hollow with me. A little more work with the blades carves it out, creating a deep bowl. I fill this with chips of ice and handfuls of snow from outside, packing it down as hard as I can. Then I ignite my blades again, take a deep breath, and lower them into the slushy mixture.
Just keeping the weapons active, in the open air, doesn’t take much power. This is different—I can feel Melos energy flowing out of me, and my hands and forearms heat up, a sensation which I positively welcome at the moment. More importantly, though, the mix of snow and ice rapidly slumps where the blades touch it. I push them down into my ice-bowl, which rapidly becomes full of slushy water as the smaller pieces melt.
I’ve never held my blades in water before, though I’ve seen rain spit and boil against them as if on a hot stove. Sure enough, after a few moments, the meltwater in the basin starts to bubble and froth. The steam that rises from it is tepid by any normal standard, but it feels balmy compared to the soul-killing chill outside. I lean over to inhale it, the first breath since I crossed the barrier without feeling knives in my lungs. I stir the water with my blades, until the whole bowl is frothing, then shift awkwardly on my bare arse and hold my numbed feet over the water. Sensation—burning, shooting pain—returns quickly.
Cold air is still gusting in through the gaps in the pillars. Once I’m temporarily thawed, I go to work filling in the holes with packed snow, returning to the bowl periodically to heat it to boiling and warm myself up. I prop the remnant of my cut pillar in the large gap I entered by, and keep packing snow around it until it makes a solid barrier.
With the wind hedged out, the next time I boil water, the cave rapidly becomes something close to actually warm. I wouldn’t be able to keep my blades in the bowl for too long—not unless I want to char my hands off with powerburn—but the puffs of steam stay in my tight little enclosure, coating the walls, the floor, and my bare skin with damp condensation. The snow barrier collapses in a few places, and I pack more in. It isn’t long before, naked and surrounded by snow and ice, I’m feeling almost comfortable.
Favor of the Divine Being, ha!
I have no idea how much time has passed, not without knocking a hole in my impromptu shelter and checking the progress of the sun. But it can’t be more than half an hour, and I doubt Gragant will have given in so easily. I put my blades back in the water for a few moments, generating a fresh cloud of steam, and settle in to wait.
* * *
I nearly die, of course. Stupid, stupid, stupid Isoka.
The lassitude creeps up on me, slow and gentle, my eyelids feeling heavier by the moment. I don’t remember nodding off, only waking up in a sudden panic, my heart hammering triple-time against my ribs. I’m gasping for air, but what fills my lungs feels wet and heavy, as though I’m drowning. My vision starts to go gray.
Fortunately, all I have to do is roll over and flail at the barrier of ice and snow with a Melos blade. This opens a narrow gap, and freezing air rushes in. It’s bitterly cold—ice forms all over me, even in my eyelashes—but I gulp it in greedily.
People die this way in the Sixteenth Ward, every winter, stuck in basements or windowless rooms with a coal-burning stove, their air going foul. Apparently, enough steam will give you the same effect. Stupid, stupid, stupid. And luckier than I have any right to be.
While I’ve got a hole cut in the barrier, I look for the sun, and find it’s made considerable progress to the horizon. I block it back up, but only loosely, and boil more water. From that point on I fall into a regular routine, melting snow for water, boiling it for heat, then periodically opening a hole to refresh the air. I watch the shadows lengthen, the crags of ice fading from brilliant gold to black as the pallid sun sinks toward the horizon. That golden spark slips away, as though it were passing under the ice.
The hardest part is getting back to the dome. I stand up, sheathed in sweat and condensation, and grit my teeth. A swipe of my blade opens the shelter again, and the killing cold floods in. I start to shiver immediately, my teeth chattering. As fast as I can, I wriggle through the gap, then slog through the snow back the way I came.
There’s no sign of Gragant. I don’t know if he gave up, or I stayed out longer than I had to.
The barrier looms ahead, and I tumble through it, feeling the faint tickle of Eddica energy passing across my skin. It’s dark here, too, with the stars just emerging, and so warm I want to cry. I fall to my knees, shuddering, and Meroe and Zarun a
re suddenly beside me, throwing something thick and soft over my shoulders.
After a moment, Meroe pulls the edge of the blanket up and slips under it with me, pulling herself tight against me. She clutches me, desperately, and my shivering slowly subsides.
“You are completely rotting crazy, do you know that?” she whispers. “Gods and rot, Isoka. I was sure we were going to find you frozen solid.”
“The thought … crossed … my mind.” Speaking is hard, my throat raw from the cold.
“Why didn’t you come back?”
“Didn’t … want … to lose.”
“Crazy.” Meroe sounds resigned. “Completely rotting crazy.”
“Deepwalker Isoka.” Gragant. I kiss Meroe’s cheek, then stand up, wobbling only a little, pulling the blanket around me like a cloak.
Gragant, I note, looks somewhat the worse for wear. I’m amazed he’s upright—his arms and legs are tinged with blue, as though he were already half a corpse. I remember the agony as warmth brought back feeling into my feet; he must be in horrific pain, but he shows none of it on his face. Grudgingly, I have to admit that there may be something to monastic discipline after all.
“Sunset,” I croak. “I made it, didn’t I?”
“You did,” Gragant says. “The Divine Being clearly holds you in favor.”
Harak, looming behind Gragant, gives a disapproving grunt. “That was no proper contest,” he says. “She knows nothing.”
“I know what you promised me,” I say.
“The Divine Being—” Harak begins.
Gragant cuts him off. “The Divine Being desires our perfection, using whatever gifts we have at our disposal. Isoka’s technique may have been … unorthodox, but that only proves the breadth of the Divine Being’s plan. She has done everything we asked of her.”
“Then…” I take a deep breath. “The access point?”
City of Stone and Silence Page 23
