"Is everyone out?" cried Kermorvan, thrown against the wall by the force of the blow. "Have we all our gear? Then, Elof, shut that door!"
Elof turned and seized the grippers protruding from the keyhole, and thrust all his weight hard against the rim. The great slab swung before him, ground forward on screaming hinges, and smashed into its socket with a reverberating crash that drowned even the screams of the wounded beast; the floor shook, stones and dust fell from the ceiling, and to his horror Elof saw a crack race and radiate across it like the root of some dark plant. He twisted his makeshift key in the lock, and sprang back as a wide chunk of the ceiling crashed down where he had been standing. Above the dustcloud he saw Kermorvan, sword in hand, hacking and slashing at the writhing heap of white before him. "Get back!" Elof shouted, hearing his voice crack. "The roof gives!"
Kermorvan sprang back. Then Elof cried out in horror as the creature threshed and struggled back to its feet. Blood poured from its panting muzzle, dripped from the deep slashes on its side, the shattered truncheon of the spear drooped from its neck, and yet with ferocious fires unquenched it reared again to spring.
But it was not to have the chance. One massive paw, upthrust, slammed into the sagging center of the vaulting, with more than enough force to dislodge it. The whole center of the ceiling fell in, and with it a cascade of broken stone from above. Down upon the snarling head it fell, and the creature vanished in a thundering slide of rubble.
"Run!" bellowed Roc, as he and Ils scuttled back. "For your lives!" Elof, ducking frantically, grabbed Kermorvan's arm, and together they fled down the passage, racing the cracks that spread along the roof. Glancing back, Elof glimpsed briefly the upraised hammer of Ilmarinen on the door, beneath it a white-furred leg kicking above the rubble, and then all was thunder and collapse.
How long they ran they could not guess, the torch flames trailing out behind them like starstones in the dusty air. The corridor was straight and level, else the ruin might have overtaken them. Only when they came to a stout arch did they pause, hearing the rumble and crash of stone subside behind them, and there they slumped down against the wall, panting and choking from the dust.
"That was neatly done, long man!" Ils told Kermorvan, between coughs.
He shrugged, and shook dust from his shaggy hair. "The halberd was to hand, and much better in such a fight; a sword would have been too short to get past those great limbs."
Ils eyed him. "It was not only that I meant, and well you know it."
Kermorvan shrugged again, in great confusion. "Dor-ghael Arhlannen is well shielded now, at all events!" he coughed. "And with a fierce spirit to watch at its gate!"
"A stinking brute!" Roc wheezed. "Stalking us like that! Slinking up all quiet! If I hadn't heard a claw click on the stone… And vicious with it! What was it, anyhow? One of those big white snowbears?"
Kermorvan shook his head wearily. "I think not. They live chiefly by the sea."
"I've seen 'em," added Ils. "They're not so weighty, specially in the head. This was something different, something I've never seen. And yet…"
"I know," Elof said. "It did look familiar. The jaws…"He thought of others with such teeth, swift and savage little hunters, serpentine scuttlers across the snowfields, bane of hare and bird. "More like ermine or marten… or that one they call the glutton!"
"Aye! And it was ferocious enough!" said Roc. "But big as a bear?"
"The Ice can breed such monsters, it seems," said Kermorvan darkly, "or preserve them from Elder days. Such were its main armies once; it found fewer men to serve it, ere the Ekwesh came!" He stood up, painfully. "Well, we should not linger here; the roof may yet fall farther. What lies before us now?"
Roc raised his torch, and the dust-blown air sparkled and swirled before their stinging eyes. Elof blinked, and saw that they had come to a division in the corridor, no open hall as before, but a chamber whose other three walls each held an arch like the one they stood in, each with the remains of a gate. "Some crossroads in the secret ways of the King's House, no doubt," said Kermorvan. "The way opposite is a corridor like this, the one to the left is a stair, leading down…" They peered cautiously into it, and recoiled in disgust.
"The stench of the brute!" grunted Roc. "Must be its lair down there! You smelled that, Ils, not bats!"
Kermorvan swung round. "No doubt! But the same is true for both. It could hardly have lived by hunting down here, so…" He held up the torch to the third arch; it flared and fluttered suddenly, and by the uncertain light they saw a narrow stair curving upward into shadow. "One more effort!" he grated. He swung his precious pack closer to his side, gazed back down the dark corridor once more, and strode to the stair. Roc also looked back; Ils did not. Elof lingered a moment, for now the torches were gone it seemed to him that he saw something there in the blackness, a faint gleam and glimmer, pale, sterile, cold. He knew only too well what it must be; there also the Ice now gleamed through the riven roof, like bone laid bare by a mortal wound. He shuddered, and hurried after the others.
The stairs were steep, and fouled by the beast that had used them; generations of beasts, perhaps, by the claw-marks on the stone. Only the strong draft of clean air made them bearable. The steps led to a tunnel, still sloping steeply upward; at its end lay another stair, and at its foot the air stirred with promise of the open. Here they had to rest, though the foulness still denied them the food they desperately needed; their gorges rose at the thought.
"And where could this be leading?" groaned Elof, as they staggered up the worn steps once more.
"I guess at that," said Kermorvan, his voice calm and encouraging. "At the margins of Morvan the City there was a high hill, the King's Hill, that was left green and wooded for the folk to enjoy, with many fair walks and parks at its foot, open to all. But its summit was the king's own park, whence he could escape for a while the cares of his high office. It was said that a secret way led there from his palace, and this is surely it."
"But what a way!" complained Roc. "We must've walked twice the width of Kerbryhaine by now…"
"And only crossed the southern side of the City by the Waters," said Kermorvan with weary pride, "for the King's House, as I recall the old accounts, was in the south quarter of the city, which was the first built. By so much was what we had mightier than what we have made. By so much are we lessened." The brand he carried flared suddenly, and it was as if his voice caught its flame. "But it shall not always be so!" And then he laughed, and sprang up the stairs with the lightness of an eager child. The others scrambled after him no less wildly, guessing what he had seen. And as Elof, still lastcomer, rounded the curve of the stair he also laughed aloud, for there before them was a narrow little landing, an arch much cracked and worn, with empty sockets in the stone of it, empty of hinges corroded to nothingness—corroded by the open air that flowed around them, dark and cold and clean as a mountain stream, infinitely refreshing. Upon the landing, Kermorvan seized the others as they came puffing along, swinging them up with casual strength to join him. When Elof arrived, they linked arms and staggered out through the arch.
But even as they emerged their smiles and laughter died, and a weight settled on their hearts, a clutching hand as bitter and sharp as the air that stabbed their lungs like blades of adamant. In the open indeed they stood, and upon a hillside, but it was a hillside scoured bare, utterly barren even of soil, as by a thousand flaying winters. Above them, very close, was the summit, stark and shelterless against the chill sky of new night, cloudless, moonless, naked to the searching stars. And not far below them the hill of stone vanished, engulfed as by a sea. But the sea was calm, its waves unmoving, solid, their flanks faint streaks of gray against the enveloping whiteness. Elof remembered his first sight of it, this dazzling mockery of a living ocean, and the summits that thrust up from it like short-lived islands, their resistance pathetic, meaningless to a foe that could wait upon the leisure of time and wield the weapon of erosion. The King's Hill was such a summit now, and a low one. All around it, without breach or break, there blazed the eerie majesty of the Ice.
Chapter Nine
- The Raven's Shadow
Kermorvan knew better than to linger in a place so exposed. He cast one quick glance around that blasted land, wrapping his cloak more tightly round him, and then ushered the others back into the mouth of the arch. "A poor return for all your perseverance!" he said darkly. "I should have known the hill would be immured in the Ice…"He made as if to strike his fist upon the stone, but Ils intercepted it and drew it gently down.
"Still too full of yourself!" she said, but her tone was unusually mild. "Where else was there to go?"
Kermorvan shook his head wearily. "Nowhere, I suppose. I hoped that the open air meant the Ice might have missed this corner of the city. An idle hope! Why should it?"
Roc raised an eyebrow. "Well, how'd that building escape, the one beneath the rockfall?"
"Perhaps because it was beyond the walls, a guardhouse on the road outside the southern gates, maybe. That would explain the strength of its building, and the secret stair, a retreat into or out of the walls…"
"But did it escape?" Elof asked. "Where did the rock-fall come from? We never did climb it to find out, remember? The Raven saw to it that we would find the chamber first. Ils, the Elder Folk are wise in the ways of the Ice; what halted the spearhead it sent out to destroy Morvan? Why did it not strike further south yet?"
Ils thought a moment. "It was not halted, not as such. The Ice is forever advancing, fed by snow and rime nearer its center; as it moves into the warmer south, though, the outermost rim begins to melt, and so extends no further. But neither does it retreat, being replenished by the Ice coming from behind. Its masters must have concentrated that renewing force in one narrow area, to drive the Ice further south than it would otherwise have gone. For at the point where the clime balances the advance against the melting, there the Ice appears to halt. But in truth, it never does. That is why, when a great enough cold comes, it can advance so suddenly; it simply ceases to melt."
Elof nodded. "And in that melting, what would happen to those?" He gestured out at the frozen waves of moraines. "Great mountain weights of shattered stone, borne along in waves by the Ice to spread ruin and mayhem at its foot. That is what the rockfall was! Without knowing it we stood then in the very shadow of the southernmost Ice."
"As well we did not know!" said Kermorvan. "Or we would hardly have dared venture down those stairs!" His hand strayed to his pack then, and his smile was as bleak as the world outside. "Though I cannot complain, can I? It is you others I worry for."
Elof found it in himself to smile. "We struggle in the same net, do we not? But console yourself. If this hill was in the south of Kermorvan the City, we cannot be far from the margins of the Ice. We should be able to cross it, as you and I have done."
"But not by night!" said Ils with a shudder.
"No indeed!" agreed Kermorvan feelingly. "I have had enough of that little game, and Elof also, I do not doubt. Which means we must contrive to rest here till dawn as best we can, and without freezing to death! Ils, how many torchlights remain?"
She rummaged in her pack. "Nine… no, eleven. And those two half burned in the holders…"
"Then we will build a fire of them! The burning ones, and two more, to begin. But not up here, where the light can be seen; it must be further down the steps."
"Ah well," said Roc lugubriously, "perhaps the smoke will clear enough of the stench. The brute is slain, but it has its vengeance yet!"
By common consent they ate their meager fare in the cleaner chill of the archway before they built their fire. It burned bright but gave them scarce warmth enough to balance what the cold stone sucked out through their cloaks as they sought some comfortable posture to sleep in, huddled together on the narrow stairs. "Here of all places we should set a watch," said Kermorvan painfully. "I will take the first span of the night…"
"No, I," sighed Elof. "The nearness of the Ice makes me restless, weary as I am. I shall sleep the better for growing used to it."
"As you will! I am past all argument." The warrior pulled his hood over his face, and pillowed his head on his arm. Roc and Ils were already asleep. Elof felt suddenly dreadfully alone. He warmed his hands once more at the meager blaze, rose and clambered out into the archway and the Iceglow. Two nights without sleep, as he reckoned it, and with only a little food, had made him weaker than he realized; his legs wobbled beneath him, and a deep ache burned in his bones. At least that would help him keep awake, and should grow less as he sat awhile. But time passed, and it did not; indeed, it worsened a little, or he felt it more clearly, and found in it a shade of the pain his first steps on the living Ice had cost him.
High up over the curve of the world glided a cold sliver of moon, like the sail of some unseen bark. Even to that faint radiance the Ice awoke, and Elof, who had been sitting numb and heedless in misery, sat up with a gasp. A greater spectacle it was than ever he had seen before, even in the Northlands. Here there were no mountains to hedge in that dazzling desolation, few outcroppings above it save this. The Ice shone out clear, unbroken, boundless from one edge of the world to the other and beyond, one vast sweeping sea of shimmering splendor, one enormous jewel that made the petty majesties of men seem minute, mean, transient.