The Complete Tawny Man Trilogy Omnibus (238 page)

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 stepping out of the crack. All was still in both directions, so still that I could hear the slow drip of water somewhere, 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, by that small act affirming that I expected to return.

Once more, I travelled 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-stairs 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. Un-emptied slop buckets stood in corners of what might have been barracks rooms. Sleeping hides were scattered on the floor amongst 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 the Pale Woman’s 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 centre 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 colours 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 wielded 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.

Some time 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 grey. 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.

I know it took me more than the rest of the night. I wandered until I was past weariness. The cold nudged at me and my ears strained after imagined sounds. I saw no sign of any living creature. Eventually, when my eyes ached from remaining open, I decided to rest. I set my pack down in the corner of a small room where firewood had been stored. I put my back to the corner and sat on my pack. I clutched my sword in my hand as I drooped my head over my knees. I dozed fitfully until nightmares awoke me and drove me on again.

Eventually, I found her bedchamber, her frozen braziers draped with icicles. The lights burned brightly there and I could see the whole chamber, the carved wardrobes of rich wood, and the elegant table that held her mirror and brushes, her sparkling jewellery gleaming on a silvery tree. Someone, perhaps, had plundered as he fled, for one of the wardrobes stood open, and garments trailed from it across the floor. I wondered how they had missed taking the jewels. The sleek furs of her bed were hoared with frost. I did not linger there. I did not want to gaze at the empty shackles affixed to the wall across from her bed, nor on the bloody stains they framed on the icy wall.

Beyond her bedchamber, another door gaped. I glanced in as I passed, then halted and went back to it. There was a table in the middle of the room, and scroll-racks lined the walls. They were neatly filled, the scrolls rolled and tied in the Six Duchies fashion. I walked over to them, knowing what I had found, but feeling oddly emotionless about it. I pulled out a scroll at random and opened it. Yes. It was by Master Treeknee. This one had to do with rules of conduct for candidates in training. It strictly forbade the playing of pranks that involved the use of Skill. I let it fall to the icy floor and chose another at random. This was newer, and I recognized
Solicity’s rounded hand and sloping letters. The words squirmed before my tearing eyes, and I let it fall to join its fellow. I lifted my gaze to look around the room. Here was the missing Skill library of Buckkeep Castle, surreptitiously sold away by Regal to finance his lush lifestyle at Tradeford. Traders who were agents for the Pale Woman and Kebal Rawbread had bought from the youngest prince the knowledge of the Farseer magic. Our inheritance had come north, to the Outislanders and eventually to this room. Here the Pale Woman had learned how to turn our own magic against us, and here she had studied how to make a stone dragon. Chade would have given his eyeteeth for a single afternoon in this room. It was a treasure trove of lost knowledge. It would not buy what I most desired, a chance to do things differently. I shook my head and turned and left it there.