Icefalcon's Quest (Darwath) Read online

  “My Lord,” said Bektis, “you know the strength of my illusions. The caving-in of the crevasse can be accomplished as easily from within these walls as without. May I remind my Lord that the wizard Inglorion is still somewhere here.”

  “I thought you had killed him, Bektis.” The gold eyes cut to him, a flint knife gashing flesh. “And yes, I know well the strength of your illusions. When the avalanche is accomplished and all the barbarians are dead, you will return and inform me. I will send you out again with the larger party to recover the bodies. I trust you will find some way to keep the barbarians engaged outside until the matter is accomplished.”

  “My Lord,” said Bektis stiffly, “they have not yet returned.”

  “Excellent.” Vair folded his arms, his hooked hand as always out of sight within the folds of his cloak. “I trust I have no need to remind you of the probable fate of a mage who through spells forbidden by both other wizards and the Church influenced not only the choice, but the date, of the succession of the Prince-Bishop of the Alketch should that mage find himself abroad in the world without a protector?”

  Bektis’ mouth tightened under the flowing beard, his dark eyes filled with loathing and fear. “You have no need to remind me, my lord. Nor do I need reminding that rightness and legality consist not in what one has done, but whether one holds a position of power.”

  Vair smiled. “Good. But I shall remind you nevertheless should you show signs of absentmindedness. Be prepared to depart at the next chiming of the clock.”

  The Icefalcon and Loses His Way watched while further dispositions were made, four men set to guard the great Doors while others were sent out searching again. The Icefalcon caught the word for what his people called innyia-sope, yellow jessamine, a potent poison frequently used to deprive mages of their powers, and guessed that Ingold was their quarry. The old man had been hurt already by the pent rage and magic of the Keep of Shadow. Gil-Shalos would kill him, thought the Icefalcon, if he let Ingold come to further harm.

  Beside him, Loses His Way asked in a low voice, “How much ill can this Bektis do?”

  “Because he has not the Hand of Magic does not mean he is without power,” replied the Icefalcon. “My sister tells me that there are herbs a Wise One may chew to temporarily increase power in times of need or restore it when after too great an exertion it fails, though the cost is terrible afterward.” He watched the graceful white-haired Wise One make his way to the nearest stair. “I have known Bektis many years, and he is a man who is never without such an expedient. He may have used such to renew the illusion existing on Prinyippos the Crested Egret. In any case, men can start an avalanche in this country as easily as magic.”

  The chieftain chewed on the ends of his mustache, staring out into the torchlight, which faded as men dispersed into the mazes once more. One of the searchers halted in crossing a toadstool-choked watercourse, reached down to lift something from the bridge—a cup, the Icefalcon saw, one of those weird apports that were, like the knocking, signs of the growing strength of the mad ki within the dark.

  At last Loses His Way sighed, his broad shoulders slumping, and he said again, “Even so. My enemy, see the boy bestowed somewhere safe and fetch Hethya to this place at the sounding of the next chime. Tell her to come armed.”

  The Icefalcon raised his brows. “If you think the three of us capable of defeating four warriors with a full view of the Aisle and a wall at their backs …”

  “Just fetch her.”

  There was a note in his voice that made the Icefalcon turn and a look in the chieftain’s eyes—resigned, defeated, sad—that made him pause. But there was nothing he could say to his enemy—who was not his kinsman—nothing he could ask that Loses His Way would answer. So he only asked, “Will you need light?” and, at Loses His Way’s assent, slipped into the corridor again, down two turnings to where the gray cold-dried plants lay thick and came back to kindle another torch.

  Then, slipping quietly along the endless crisscrossed junctures of the halls, detouring twice, thrice, and many times again to avoid the plants or the ice that would leave mark of his passing, he made his way to the hidden stair that led to the chamber of Silence.

  An hour, he thought, for Prinyippos to reach the Empty Lakes People. An hour or perhaps two to convince them of the truth of his assertions, to explain how he, Twin Daughter, had come to this place. The Stars alone knew how he was going to do that. Breaks Noses was a seasoned warrior and a skeptical man: the Icefalcon had fought him in a dozen minor raids and wars. He would sniff cautiously at a trap before stepping inside.

  But the shaman of the Empty Lakes People was long dead. The wolfskin leggings and tunic that Twin Daughter appeared to wear were the very garments in which she had ridden to her death: a Wise One, whatever else one might say of Bektis, was always keenly observant. Her hair had the same bright hue, like the grass on the southern slope of the Twisted Hills in the Moon of Farewell, and braided into it were the hand bones of a man who had long ago stolen her horses in the forty-mile dry stretch between Angry Creek and the Place Where We Catch Salmon.

  Prinyippos would come out of seracs that marked the buried mountains and speak to the Empty Lakes People with Twin Daughter’s voice. Even the mother of Twin Daughter would believe.

  Perhaps especially the mother of Twin Daughter.

  The Icefalcon quickened his stride. Everywhere, now, he had the sensation of being watched. Where he turned to avoid a tunnel filled for thirty feet and no farther with bars and sheets and spears of ice, he saw by his feeble matchlight that the icicles bled.

  What would Prinyippos say to them? he wondered. The Keep was buried under half a mile of ice. They had been tracking the great party of men and mules, drawn by rumors of southern weapons of tempered steel. Would he say to them, “There is a great house, a great city, of the mud-diggers, where they have these weapons under slender guard”?

  There would be no difficulty in finding a crevasse suitable for a trap. They were everywhere, waiting innocently for an unwary foot above. It did surprise him a little that Blue Child had let her warriors be drawn off by a promise of mammoth, mirages being what they were in this land. Still, he had been hungry enough to go hunting a putative lemming, from time to time.

  Two turnings to the left in pitchy gloom, the pattern of lichen and fungus familiar on the wall beside him. Frost here—turn aside. A trick of shadow concealing the doorway, then up steps, endless and spiraling, the smell of dust and death and rotting plants rising around him like the slow heat of a stove.

  Blue fox fire outlined doorways and turnings, then vanished. Nearly on top of him something screamed in the ragged voice of a puma, what felt like claws raking his face. The Icefalcon’s sword was in his hand and he was cutting, a checked stroke to avoid damaging the blade on the wall …

  And of course it met nothing. There was the puma scream again, claws ripping his sleeve. He felt them catch and pull, felt the seep of hot blood underneath, but there was no cold—the sleeve hadn’t been torn. If it wasn’t exactly an illusion, he thought, forcing himself to walk on, it was meant for the same purpose, to get him to run and lose himself in the labyrinth. The demons, too, took strength from the magic of the Keep.

  The thing screamed in his ear for another dozen yards, then let him alone. He heard it scream again, muffled by distance and by turnings; heard a man’s shriek of terror and the thunder of running feet.

  Fool.

  “What happened?” gasped Hethya when he came into the chamber of Silence. He put up his hand to his face, and his fingers came away bloodied.

  “Demons. I need Hethya to help me, Scarface. The warriors of Vair are hunting for Ingold everywhere on this level.” Time enough later to tell the boy Vair had found the transporter. “Is there some safer place where you can hide?”

  Tir nodded. “There’s a room above this one, on the fourth level. You can’t see the door. You have to count steps. Fifteen from the last corner before the wall. You can’t see the
door from inside, either.”

  “Will you be well there?” Hethya asked worriedly, as if, thought the Icefalcon, Tir hadn’t thought the matter out before speaking.

  Tir nodded. “I’ll be fine.”

  “You won’t be afraid?”

  “No.”

  “And what did you think the boy would say?” whispered the Icefalcon as they ascended a stone thread of stair to the level above. “Yes, I’ll be terrified? Of course he will be afraid.” He watched while Tir counted careful steps and then pushed at the black stone of the wall. The wall yielded nothing. The Icefalcon paced off fourteen of his own long strides and tested the wall. As with Ingold’s body, his hand seemed enveloped in shadow—it was indeed difficult to see anything in the dim lamplight—and he stepped through into a close-smelling blackness.

  He reached back immediately and drew the others in, Hethya holding up the lamp. A ribbon of water ran down the wall into a basin, and where the water came out, lichen and fungus and the ubiquitous vines choked the ancient spigot. The whole room was foul with leathery leaves. The Icefalcon thrust his sword into every vine and clump of toadstools, paced off the confines of the room, then cut the dead vines away, clearing a space for a fire and at the same time making something to burn. He was very tired now and though food had made him sick before, he felt the need of it desperately, muscles aching and all his flesh deathly cold. His hair had come unbraided from the snatchings of demons, hanging down his back in a cloak the hue of moonlight and getting in his way every time he turned his head.

  He kindled a little fire and laid down two sticks of vine to show where the door was on the inside. “We’ll be back,” he said.

  Tir looked hopelessly tiny and hopelessly young. “I’m not afraid.”

  The Icefalcon kindled the vine-stem torch. “You may be the only one in the Keep to be saying that. Sleep if you can.”

  Though the dreams in this place, he thought, were not something that he would wish upon a friend, or on a friend’s son.

  “They’ve found the transporter,” he said to Hethya as they descended again. “Loses His Way has a plan, he says, to keep Vair from getting more men, but the Keep will need to be warned, if we can devise it.”

  In the corridors of the second level a clone crawled along on his hands and knees, bawling out names at the top of his lungs. Elsewhere footsteps raced by them, ghostly and bodiless but fleet with the speed of panic, and the Icefalcon thought he heard the tearing intake of breath.

  The Keep was alive.

  “I never thought that it would be like this,” whispered Hethya, hurrying at his side. “Never.”

  “And what did you think it would be like?”

  “Like home, mostly.” Hethya shook her head. “Only musty, empty. They can’t have stayed here all that long, it’s so … so tidy. I don’t know if you’ve been to Prandhays Keep, me lanky friend, but it’s a fair warren, worse than Renweth, at least what I saw of Renweth. Fat chance I’ll ever have of them invitin’ me back when this is over, and small blame to ’em. Mother …”

  She hesitated, her breath indrawn, then let it go. The Icefalcon touched her arm, holding her back. Something moved in the corridor ahead, near the rectangle of wavering light that marked where the Aisle would lie. His sword was already in his hand. He scanned the walls quickly, looking for another door, a way to get behind whatever lay ahead of them.

  A voice whispered, “Icefalcon.”

  Loses His Way. He felt Hethya’s breath come in for reply—they’d doused the torch some way back—and he squeezed her arm, hard. There was more than one in the corridor.

  From another shadow, the same voice breathed, “It’s all right.” There was no mistaking the voice of Loses His Way.

  “By the Corn-Woman’s hair-sticks, man, we have no time!”

  The voice—the same voice as the first two—spoke from yet another shadow, and they all stepped forward at once, outlined against the flickering reflections of the torchlight in the Aisle. Cold passed through the Icefalcon like the onset of mortal sickness.

  He made himself step forward, say, “I’m here.”

  Beside him, Hethya whispered, “Dear God in heaven,” and he heard the rustle of the mammoth-wool coat she wore as she made a sign to avert evil.

  But evil had already come—and gone.

  There were four of him. Them.

  No. My enemy, no.

  The process of shredding, of peeling the flesh from the screaming bones, remade as well as made. All four of Loses Their Way had their teeth once more, and none bore the bruises of Vair’s beating. He looked different, with neither hair nor beard, the broad face far younger, the strong chin and generous mouth odd and prominent. The Icefalcon wondered if the scar he’d given Loses His Way at the Place of the Sugar Maples was gone.

  The words of Tir came back to him: That’s where they put the needles in … And Ingold: The power is self-aligning …

  Who knew what he had learned from watching Bektis in the chamber before Hethya rescued him or what Tir had told him of what he had seen?

  His people being lured into danger, his daughter dishonored by Bektis’ illusion …

  O my enemy, no.

  They had divided his clothing among them, like the sons of a man who has died. One wore his boots, another his shirt of wolf-hide, another his leggings, under a makeshift assortment of garments stripped from the corpses in the vat-room, the commissariat where clothing and weapons were stored. One of them carried all four spirit-bags, still bound at his belt.

  They were all armed, too.

  Hethya’s eyes were wide, suddenly filled with tears. “O my friend,” she said softly.

  Loses His Way—one Loses His Way—shook his head: “Woman, we have no friends among the people of the Real World but our kin.” He spoke slowly, laboriously putting together the words with wits divided and dulled, and his voice was sad. “This my enemy”—he put a heavy arm around the Icefalcon’s shoulders, hugged him hard—“he is dear to me as a son, but he is my enemy. My kin would kill him the moment they saw him.”

  He drew their swords. “It is done,” he said. “Vair and his warriors will be in the Aisle soon. And …” He frowned, groping for a thought that escaped him, and another of him said, “The Talking Stars People. The Talking Stars People will be back.”

  “Ah.” He nodded. “Yes. They are chasing a mammoth that doesn’t exist.” He smiled, and a flicker of his old self glinted in the blue eyes. “And well served. My enemy, let us go.”

  The Icefalcon and Hethya pulled up the hoods of their coats, so when the six of them crossed the Aisle—four hairless clones and another who wore the rawhide footgear of the clones—none of the four clones on the Doors would notice. Not that they would anyway.

  The fight before the Doors was short and sharp. Other Alketch warriors were scattered about the Aisle and came running, but the cavern was long, and in the juddering gloom it took a few moments before any of them realized anything was amiss. By that time the Icefalcon and Loses Their Way had pulled open the Doors.

  Men fell on them from behind, and the Icefalcon turned, cutting and striking, his body falling into the practiced routines driven into him by Gnift, Swordmaster of the Guards, and before him by Noon and the other warriors of the Talking Stars People: feint, dodge, bob, slash, ducking to use his long legs to sweep the opponent’s feet from beneath him, cutting with the dagger in his left hand.

  Loses His Way grunted in agony as a sword plowed up under his breastbone; the Icefalcon felt a sharp regret to see the light vanish from those blue eyes. But at the same instant Loses His Way half turned in the long black tunnel of the gates, and cold air swirled through as the outer doors were pulled open. Loses His Way slashed the throat of an Alketch warrior, turned almost in the same movement and jerked free Twin Daughter’s spirit-pouch from his belt, threw it whirling down the dark gate tunnel.

  Loses His Way in the outer Doors caught it, shoved it through his belt in the same instant that Loses His Way who
had thrown it—the man born in magic and pain, but man nonetheless—took an Alketch hatchet between his shoulder blades, having taken his eyes from his enemies to make his throw. The Icefalcon gutted the man who killed him a second later, but it was too late and he knew it. Loses His Way collapsed on the inner threshold of the Doors, body spasming. There was understanding in his eyes the second before the awareness went out of them, understanding when the Icefalcon, Hethya, and Loses His Way, taking advantage of the fact that the next Alketch warriors were still some thirty feet away, turned and fled back into the hidden and secret halls.

  Loses His Way, warchief of the Empty Lakes People, flopped a few times on the steps of the Keep as his lungs tried vainly to expand in his rib cage, then died alone.

  “The spirit-pouch will—will break the illusion.” Stumbling at the heels of the Icefalcon and Hethya as they wound their tortuous way through crossing corridors, Loses His Way brought out the words with effort, something memorized carefully and only half comprehended. “The spells of Bektis, the spells that make Breaks Noses and the others believe that this Prinyippos is Twin Daughter, will not endure in the presence of a part of her, the soul of her, the spirit that remains in the spirit-pouch. If he can reach them …”

  He turned and looked back over his shoulder, though all sight of the Aisle had been obliterated behind the ebon walls, the endless night around them. They were in a place of thick growth, dead vines crunching beneath their feet, and the creepers rustled with the movement of demons, droplets of what looked like blood on their leaves.

  “He’ll reach them,” said the Icefalcon. “If he is as strong as you, my enemy, and too stupid to know when to quit, he’ll reach them.”