Goddess of the Ice Realm (54 page)

“Oh, days are fine,” said Beard. “We have days and weeks and months before the ice covers all.”

He tittered like a steel skeleton. “Days and weeks and months, yes,” he said. “But not years, no, not if you don't kill Her very quickly. For She'll have drained all warmth and all power from this world and there'll be no blood left for Beard to drink!”

Blue wizardlight flared in a roaring sphere around the
Bird of the Tide.
When it vanished, Ilna had the momentary impression that she was blind and seeing stark black-and-white images of the Hell inside her mind.

The
Bird
tipped to its left, crunching on cracked rock. The vessel's hull was shallow so she didn't go all the way over on her side, but the mast now tilted at an angle halfway between the horizon and the roiling yellow sky. The air stank fiercely of brimstone, making Ilna's eyes water and her bare skin sting.

Pointin had fallen against the port railing hard enough to knock the breath out of him. That kept him silent, the one good thing Ilna could find in this situation.

No! She was unharmed, Chalcus and the crew were unharmed—and they were all in the place they'd chosen to go
in order to do their duty. She had no reason whatever for complaint.

Ilna braced her left foot on the railing and squinted to save her eyeballs as much as she could while she looked at the landscape. It was an awful place.

Spikes of rock, cut deeper where layers rested on one another, rose from flat, cracked terrain. The wind that had ravaged them whipped around the
Bird
now, rocking her violently. Chalcus and the men leaped to the lines, bringing the spar clattering down; there was no time to furl the sail properly.

Ilna hadn't noticed any orders passing. The sailors all knew what had to be done and did it. She could learn to like sailors; competent ones, at any rate . . . though the only problem she had with competent people in
any
walk of life was that she found so few of them.

There was little in the landscape but rock and heat and the sulfurous wind. On the horizon something pulsed orange-red, possibly a volcano. Except for that, Ilna couldn't see anything farther away than she could fling a stone. The sun was a huge dull blur through clouds ranging from sepia to a yellow so dark it could scarcely be called a color.

Something shrieked in the distance; or maybe it was just wind through the rocks.

“What happens now?” Tellura asked, his voice muffled. He was holding the bosom of his tunic over his mouth and nose to breathe. “Are they going to smother us? Is that it?”

Ilna doubted that a layer of coarse wool would help much with the brimstone; besides, she needed her hands for other things. Her fingers formed knots in yarn with the flawless certainty of raindrops falling on a pond.

“Not that,” Chalcus said. He held his incurved sword in one hand, the dagger in the other. “There'll be company, have no doubt, my friends.”

Hutena was the only crewman who'd seen the fragments of human bodies on the
Queen of Heaven.
Bad though this air was to breathe, no one could imagine it had caused
that
slaughter.

Chalcus gestured toward the higher railing. “Kulit and
Nabarbi,” he said, “keep watch to starboard side. We don't know which direction it'll come fr—”

Pointin screamed piercingly. Ilna turned.

A huge thing shambled out of the swirling darkness. It walked on two legs and had two long arms as well, dangling near the ground as it hunched forward. Nothing else about it was manlike. Hard, smooth plates like insect armor covered its limbs and body.

Shausga drew his bowstring to his right ear and loosed. The arrow cracked against the creature's narrow chest and glanced off.

The creature raised its arms, opening the pincers in place of hands. It came on, gurgling like the last wine from a bottle.

Ilna stepped over the railing, lowering herself carefully to the ground. She could've jumped, but she wasn't sure of the footing—and she was
quite
sure that she couldn't afford to fall on her face at this juncture.

“It's twenty feet tall!” Ninon cried. “By the
Gods,
it's a demon from Hell!”

Ilna smiled faintly. The creature might or might not be a demon, but it wasn't
from
anywhere: it had stayed home. The
Bird of the Tide
and her crew were the ones who weren't where they belonged. She walked forward, holding the knotted pattern between her hands.

Another arrow, then two in quick succession, struck the creature. Two skidded away like rays of light from polished steel; the third
whacked
the ridge between the creature's bulging, faceted eyes. The shaft shattered and spun off in the wind like a handful of rye straw.

Ilna kept walking. She hoped there was enough light for the creature to see her pattern. Animals didn't see things the same way humans did.

She smiled more broadly. It would be—briefly—a pity if this thing's eyesight wasn't good enough to slip into the trap she'd so skillfully woven for it.

The air had been hot, but the ground was oven-hot. Ilna almost stepped on one of the cracks zigzagging across the rough stone; heat radiating up from it struck her callused foot a punishing blow. When she glanced down, she saw a tremble of orange light at the bottom of the narrow crevice: molten rock flowed between the solid plates.

The creature rubbed its elbows against the sides of its torso, making a shrieking sound like that of a cicada hugely magnified. It stretched a jointed arm toward Ilna's face, the pincers opening fully. Each curved blade was as long as a sickle's.

Ilna spread her knotted pattern above her head. If it didn't work, she didn't want Chalcus to think that her last act had been to hide her eyes from the sight of death reaching toward her.

The creature staggered. Its arm froze in midair and its mouth opened slightly; the jaw plates spread sideways, not up and down. Its breath reeked like a tanner's yard, rotted foulness and the savage bite of lye.

Ilna didn't move; her eyes were blind with tears from the brimstone. Behind her Chalcus shouted words that the wind whipped in the other direction. Men ran past Ilna on either side; they were blurs of movement, not individuals.

An axe rang; Hutena gave a high-pitched cry of triumph. Ilna blinked, bringing the scene into sudden focus. She realized she'd been afraid to take her eyes off the creature for fear that it too would look away and break the binding spell.

The creature began to topple sideways. The bosun wrenched his axe out of its right knee in a wave of syrupy blood. The other sailors hacked with their blunt-tipped swords, aiming at the knees and ankles. Their blades generally clanged and bounced back, leaving lines scored across the creature's hard casing.

The creature hit the ground with the point of its shoulder, cracking the rock. It continued to stare at Ilna, its eyes like those of a landed fish. Chalcus stepped close, judged his victim,
and stabbed through the creature's open mouth with the quick skill of a wasp paralyzing a spider.

The creature leaped like a beheaded chicken, both legs spasming; the right one flailed sideways at the broken knee. Chalcus wouldn't let go of his sword, so it pulled his feet off the ground. He kicked at the creature's chest with a great cry and jerked his blade free.

The creature toppled again. It half turned, its eyes sightless when the brain behind them died. It crashed into a needle of wind-carved rock, wavered there for a moment, then flopped onto its back. Its limbs waggled like a dying beetle's.

“Back to the ship, my lads!” Chalcus called, hoarse from the searing atmosphere. “We don't want to be left here when Lusius and his fellows call the
Bird
home, as they surely will.”

Ilna lowered her hands, bunching the pattern together between them again. Hot as this place was, she'd felt a chill as the creature died. She hadn't killed the thing with her art—she doubted that she'd have been able to kill it or she would have tried—but there'd been a link between her and her giant victim there at the end.

Everyone was all right. Chalcus and the six sailors were, at least; she didn't see Pointin, but the supercargo would be in the hold out of sight unless he'd become a different man from the one who'd survived the attack on the
Queen of Heaven.

“You took no harm in the business, my dear one?” Chalcus said, suddenly at her side. He'd sheathed his dagger so he could wipe the sword blade with the tail of his silk sash. The creature's blood had congealed to a tarry smear.

“No,” Ilna said, “though I'll be glad to leave this place. I wonder if Lusius and his wizard know where they're sending ships or if it's just that they're ready to be looted when they come back?”

“Sir!” cried Shausga, pointing with his sword toward an arch that the wind had carved from the surrounding rock. He was left-handed. “Mistress Ilna,
there!”

A monster like the first came through the arch. In the whirling shadows Ilna thought it was smaller, but once clear
of the rock it rose onto its hind legs. Tall as the first creature had been, this stood half again as high.

“Right, well, we know the job now, lads, so it won't be so hard,” said Chalcus. He hacked to clear his throat, then whipped his sword in a shimmering figure eight. The steel was as clean as it'd been when he boarded the
Bird
in Carcosa. “But I think we'll wait here close by our good vessel, as we know now how the business will go.”

Another shrilling cry sounded, very close though Ilna couldn't tell the direction in this waste of rock and fire and darkness. The creature walking toward them hadn't made the terrible sound. Its arms were lifted, the elbows splayed out to the sides.

“What's that?” Kulit said, his voice rising. “Where is it? What are we going to do?”

“Master Chalcus!” Ilna said. “Take this, if you will. You've seen how to use it.”

She held the pattern to him, bunched; Chalcus sheathed his weapons with quick understanding, then reached for the fabric. Ilna placed it in his hands deliberately, making sure the correct side would be outward when he spread it to the monster.

“All right, lads,” Chalcus said, turning with a grin that might well be genuine. “We know the drill, so Mistress Ilna is letting us handle it ourselves. Let's get on with it, hey?”

The ground shuddered; Ilna turned. She'd thought the sheer rock to the left was a butte. Now she saw that it was two walls standing close together; between them lurched a third monster.

Ilna walked toward the creature, smiling faintly. She'd taken more lengths of yarn out of her sleeve and was knotting them. At worst, devouring her might delay the creature long enough that Chalcus and the crew could dispatch their opponent and turn their attention to the new threat.

“All right, boys!” Hutena snarled behind her. “You heard the captain!”

Ilna'd thought of giving the fabric to the bosun or another of the crewmen, freeing Chalcus to do whatever was most important—

But holding the pattern steady before the oncoming monster
was
the most important thing, beyond question. The sailors' courage went beyond the standard even of brave men, but Ilna knew from her own experience just how heavy the weight of the creature's eyes felt. Chalcus wouldn't fail.

Whether Ilna would succeed in knotting a second pattern in the time she had—that was another matter. If she didn't—her smile was broad—she wouldn't have to worry about listening to reproaches on her performance.

The creature walking toward her wasn't as tall as the other two, but it looked as broad as both of them together. Its chestplate was flat instead of having a keel down the center. A different breed or simply the other sex? She didn't suppose it mattered.

The thing's arms unfolded toward her with the smooth certainty of a pair of bluefish driving their prey together for the kill. The pincers clacked open; the inner edges were black and undulating.

Ilna raised the new pattern high. For an instant she didn't know whether the figure her fingers had knotted was complete, only that she'd run out of time to do more.

The creature froze. If Ilna'd believed in the Gods, she'd have thanked Them. Smiling wryly, she whispered a prayer of thanks anyway. She'd much rather seem a fool for thanking nonexistent beings than she wanted to seem ungrateful.

There were shouts and cries behind her, then the clang of steel on armor that was very nearly as hard. Ilna's eyesight blurred from the rasping sulphurous wind. She blinked repeatedly but didn't notice much improvement. Well, there was very little in this place that she wanted to see anyway.

She felt the ground shake through the soles of her feet. There was a tremendous crash, then a lesser shock and crash. The sailors had brought down the creature Chalcus held for them. It had hit the rock like a felled tree and bounced.

“Come on, boys!” Chalcus croaked in a voice scarcely his and scarcely human. “If anything happens to the mistress, then Sister take my soul if I'll bother to go back!”

Ilna felt herself swaying. She continued to stare at the
monster, but it'd become a pulsing haze whose color shifted from orange to purple and back.

Polished sword blades flashed brighter than the yellow light they reflected. The creature lowed like a bull, the first sound Ilna had heard come from the mouth of one of them.

“Get her clear!” Chalcus shouted. “Don't let the green devil—”

Hutena caught Ilna around the waist and dragged her back. “You numskull!” she shouted, her voice trembling an octave higher with fury. “You've killed us—”

The monster fell forward, smashing the rock. Had Ilna not moved—had Hutena not moved her—she'd have been pulped as surely as a fool of a woodsman who trips in front of the tree he's toppled.