Goddess of the Ice Realm (55 page)

The bosun set Ilna on her feet again. “Aboard the
Bird!”
a voice called from a great distance. “Quick! You can feel it coming!”

Ilna took a step, wobbled, and felt Hutena lift her again in his left arm. He had the axe in the other hand, its head black and gummy with the blood of the monsters it had brought down.

Now that Ilna no longer focused on her own art, she felt the ripples of power which'd warned Chalcus that Lusius's wizard was at work again. Once she even thought she saw an azure flicker, but that could've been a trick of her eyes or mind rather than Gaur's doing.

Hutena lifted Ilna over the
Bird'
s railing, passing her to Kulit. She felt a flash of anger at being treated like an invalid when she could've boarded by herself—

And so she could've done, but the men hadn't been sure and therefore hadn't taken any chances. There wasn't time for a mistake, and there wasn't time for the pride of Ilna os-Kenset either. There was never time for that!

Chalcus brought up the rear, his sword and dagger out. He'd wrapped Ilna's loose fabric of knots around his waist. The sash fouled with monster's blood lay crinkled on the ground behind him.

Chalcus caught Ilna's eyes and grinned; but he stumbled as he jumped to the railing and had to catch himself. “I've a
better appreciation for your work now, dear heart,” he said, not whispering but in a voice few others could hear. “And I'll take all day as stroke oar on a trireme before I'll play at being you again.”

She smiled in acknowledgment, but the comment made her imagine being at a warship's oar all day. It was an absurd notion . . . and yet she'd do it if she had to, poorly beyond question but do it regardless.

Another wash of power made Ilna's skin prickle. The blue quiver on the masthead and the tips of the spar couldn't have been her imagination this time.

“Into the hold, lads,” Chalcus ordered, his voice gaining strength as he returned to his familiar occupations. “No sound, now, till I give the word.”

Nabarbi slid the hatch cover away; it'd lain part open when the crew returned to the vessel. “Captain!” he shouted.

Pointin lay on his back beside the ironbound chest that was the
Bird's
only cargo. The smell of camphor filled the hold, strong enough to be noticed despite this hellworld's brimstone stench.

Ilna had seen many dead men, and no few corpses of men who'd died horribly. She had never seen a look of more consummate agony than that on the supercargo's distorted face.

“May the shepherd save us if he's let them out!” Hutena cried.

Chalcus hopped into the shallow hold. “He didn't,” he said. “He reached in to empty the chest for his own use, but he got no farther. And if he had, we'd still have no choice but to take the risk. Briskly, lads! There's not much time.”

Ilna helped herself into the hold by her arms. She could still see the ravaged landscape over the portside railing. A pair of creatures, similar to the others but half the size, had come out. They were tearing chunks of flesh from the last one slain. She wondered if they were the dead monster's cubs.

“Shall we throw him out?” Hutena said, prodding Pointin's corpse with his foot.

“He's not in our way,” said Chalcus. “Given what he paid to avoid being eaten by our demon friends here, I think we can carry him back for a burial in the sea he knew.”

Two sailors lifted the hatch cover overhead and set it back
askew on the coaming. Ilna could see wedges of the burning sky on all four sides.

There was a roaring azure flash. Ilna was falling again, gripped by wizardry.

“Ah, the great wizard is landing,” said Beard, jarring Sharina out of her reverie. Her eyes passed over the seascape and occasional islands that the Queen Ship sailed by, but the view meant nothing to her. Images struck her mind and glanced off like reflections from the surface of a pond.

“What?” Sharina murmured. Directly ahead was a gravel island which before the sea level dropped would have been only a few yards in diameter. It was several times as large now, but vegetation hadn't had time to spread far from the small birches on the original rocky peak. Brush straggled downward in a ragged ring, and sea oats nodded in the easterly wind.

“Why?”
Sharina said, correcting herself now that she'd really looked at the islet toward which the ship was dropping. “There isn't anything here.”

“That's safer, mistress,” said Neal. “For us just stopping, I mean. We'll sleep here and go on in the morning, when Alfdan's had a chance to recover.”

“Oh,” said Sharina, looking over her shoulder. “Of course.”

The wizard stood upright by the help of two of his men. His features were as tight as a skull's. Sharina knew how much effort went into wizardry, but because she wasn't a wizard herself her unconscious mind discounted it unless she really thought about the matter.

She grinned. Maybe she could trick herself into thinking of wizards as people swimming long distances through a sea of power. She understood swimming.

The Queen Ship grounded with a soft crunch. Alfdan's men were already on their feet. Franca remained asleep, rolled as tightly as a pillbug and muttering under his breath. Scoggin shook him.

“Wakey, wakey, lad,” Scoggin said. “It's dry land for a while, which I don't regret.”

Franca jerked alert as the ship tilted onto its side, but Scoggin still had to keep a hand on the youth to keep him from slipping onto the gravel. Sharina noticed the interplay with a slight smile. The disaster that was destroying this world seemed to be making men—these men, at any rate—behave better than she'd have expected of villagers during an ordinary winter in Barca's Hamlet.

“Tasleen, get a fire going,” Neal ordered with nonchalant authority. Tasleen, a small, dark fellow from Dalopo, had an almost magical skill with a fire bow. “Some of the rest of you gather driftwood.”

Franca grabbed the gray, salt-dried trunk of a tree whose bark had weathered off in the distant past. Scoggin gripped the piece by another stub branch and said, “There's a righteous plenty of
that
here, even if there's bloody little else.”

“Mistress lend me axe to split kindling?” Tasleen asked, reaching out to take the axe in anticipation of her agreement.

“Mistress split stupid savage's skull so Beard eat brains!” the axe said indignantly.
“Chew
yourself some kindling, buckteeth!”

Tasleen's face darkened with fury. Then he looked from Sharina to the axe and remembered who it was who'd spoken. He backed away, muttering a protective charm under his breath.

“The idea!” Beard huffed. “Using me to chop driftwood!”

“Hey!” said Layson, who'd walked toward a lump farther down the beach. “Here's a sea chest. What do you s'pose it has in it?”

Nothing of the least possible interest to any of us,
would've been Sharina's guess; but there was no need to guess. The chest had a keyhole covered by a sliding panel, but either it wasn't locked or the lock had corroded away over the years. Layson jerked the lid open: the chest was empty.

“Tranek and Coffley, get your lines out,” Neal ordered. “With luck we can catch some fish before we lose the sun.”

He looked at Sharina and added, “We're all right for provisions, but I don't know how things are going to be if we keep going north.”

He and Sharina both eyed the sun. It was higher above the horizon than she'd have expected for as many hours as it'd
been since sunrise. It was summertime, and they were already at high latitudes.

“Do you think we can really defeat Her, mistress?” Neal asked in a near whisper, his eyes on the horizon.

“I don't know,” said Sharina. “I hope so.”

A seagull screamed in the western sky. It sounded like a lost soul.

“I really don't know. . . .”

The Arcade of the Shepherd was a large rectangular precinct with colonnaded shops on the lower level. The priests' offices and living quarters were on the upper two floors. If the gates at the north end were closed it would become a blank-walled fortress.

As Garric and his troops clashed up the cobblestone street toward the Arcade, a pair of priests and a trumpeter trotted out of the watchtower into the gateway. The trumpeter blew a brassy summons. One of the priests prostrated himself in greeting while the other—a priestess, Garric thought—ran into the precinct to deliver a detailed message to the High Priestess.

“Huh!” said Lord Waldron. He'd rather have been on horseback, but when Prince Garric insisted on walking, the old nobleman had refused to ride as a matter of military etiquette. “I thought maybe they'd try to keep us out.”

“Lady Estanel's far too intelligent to do that,” Garric said. “And I'll be very surprised if there's a weapon more dangerous than a fly whisk in the hands of a priest. The lady knows better than to fight battles she can't win.”

“Though she's not one I'd push into a corner, lad,”
noted King Carus.
“If it's go down fighting or simply give up, the lady's one who'd fight like a demon.”

The troops with Garric at their head entered the gateway eight abreast. Liane in a sedan chair followed Garric, Waldron and their military aides. Four tough-looking men, one of them the fellow who'd brought Liane the message in the council meeting, walked beside the chair.

The Arcade was a fashionable shopping district and fairly busy at this time in the afternoon. Civilians gaped as the soldiers
appeared. Some of them were entertained but most looked frightened and ducked within shops in hope of hiding.

Garric grimaced. There was no benefit to him or the kingdom in scaring citizens needlessly, but he
was
going to need the troops. There wouldn't be any trouble from the priests, but he might have to react instantly to the information they gave him.

At the south end of the plaza stood the Temple of the Shepherd of the Rock itself, a shapely structure built narrower than the available space so that it would seem higher. The capitals of the six tall, slim columns across the front were more ornate than anything Garric had seen before, except perhaps for the tangle of multiflora roses, which seemed to have been the sculptor's inspiration.

“Your highness,” said Liane, jumping out of her sedan chair. “While you greet Lady Estanel, my associates and I will sequester Lady Panya, the priestess who brought the gift.”

She and her four men trotted into the arcade on the right and up the open staircase leading to the priestly quarters. Garric glanced at Lady Estanel and a gaggle of aides coming out of the low building beside the temple, detached from the arcade itself. They could wait.

“Waldron!” he said. “Tell the high priestess to join me in Lady Panya's quarters!”

Garric and the platoon of Blood Eagles guarding him followed Liane. He heard Waldron pass the order along to a junior officer and fall in behind.

Garric grimaced, stopped, and gestured the army commander to his side. “Lord Waldron,” he said. “I was in haste and may have seemed impolite. That was not my intention.”

Waldron's narrow face had been a mass of hard planes. It broke into an expression of pleasure. “I accept your apology, your highness,” he said.

One part of Garric's mind was astounded at the arrogance that allowed the old man to believe he'd had a right to be angry at his prince's brusqueness. But Garric also knew that the same stiff-necked pride meant Waldron would sacrifice his life and whole household to guard Prince Garric, his sworn liege. People weren't simple, and it was Garric's business
to treat every one of them as an individual—for the sake of the kingdom.

They went up the stairs together. Liane and her spies had gone into the first suite off the stairhead. The Blood Eagles ahead of Garric were binding three temple servants who lay on their bellies on the floor of the third-level portico.

The higher-ranking priests of the Shepherd lived just as well as those of the Lady. Garric strode into the suite, through the reception room and the bedroom to the small water garden at the rear where Liane and two of her men stood with Lady Panya bos-Parriman.

Garric had only a vague recollection of the priestess who'd brought the cage of mechanical birds; she'd been a face among hundreds, another person whose opinions were more important to her than they were to the kingdom. She'd been good-looking in a slim, severe fashion; the sort of woman who strove to be imposing rather than enticing.

Now Panya looked like a browsing ewe with her neck caught in the crotch of a sapling. She twisted furiously in the grip of the men bending her arms back and lashing her wrists with a rawhide strap.

“She was climbing over the wall,” Liane said, gesturing toward the parapet. It was only five feet above the terrace floor, but the drop to the ground beyond was a good thirty feet. “I don't know if she was trying to escape or if it was a suicide attempt.”

“Let me go!” Panya shouted. Her eyes twitched in all directions; they didn't seem to focus. “I'm a priestess of the Shepherd! He'll strike you down for blasphemy!”

“I'm sure Prince Garric is acting in accordance with the will of the Shepherd in seeing to the needs of the kingdom, Lady Panya,” said Lady Estanel, startling Garric with the unexpectedness of her voice at his elbow. In between phrases she breathed in half-suppressed gasps. “Obey the prince and know that you're obeying the Great Gods who work through him.”

The high priestess was red-faced with exertion. She must have run half the length of the plaza and then up two flights of stairs to arrive so quickly, but her expression was as calm as that of the statue of the Shepherd in the temple below.

“Who told you to bring the cage of birds to Prince Garric in place of the gift the temple sent you with?” Liane asked. She didn't raise her voice, but she spoke with cold hostility. No one who knew her socially would've imagined the words came from sweet-natured Liane bos-Benliman.