The Summer Palace (27 page)

Working only by a faint polychrome glow of
ler,
it took what seemed like an eternity to get a fire burning; his frozen hands could not readily manage the necessary actions. More than once he had to bend stiff, reluctant fingers around a tool or a scrap of wood with his teeth before he could maneuver it into place. Even then, his hands shook so badly that he was not always able to maintain his hold.

At last, though, orange flame flickered up dimly, then caught and spread. The gentle warmth sent a ferocious prickling through his skin as he began to thaw, and cold water trickled down his neck from the melting ice in his beard.

For about an hour he didn't try to do anything but warm up. The numbness passed, the ice melted, the uncontrollable shivering came and went, and finally he simply lay on his mattress, a few feet from the fire, feeling himself relax.

And when he had relaxed enough, he arose and sorted through his still-cold booty, then made himself dinner.

It was astonishing how wonderful a radish tasted after months of nothing but meat, cheese, and water—even a small, bitter radish felt cold and sharp and clean in his mouth, like a flash of early springtime, and helped make yet another scrap of leathery jerky seem edible.

In better times, he thought he could have eaten the entire collection
of vegetables in two or three meals; with his shrunken stomach he could easily make them last for weeks, filling out his last bits of jerky and cheese.

He completed the tunnel eleven days later; when he thrust the poker up into the wall where the glow of
ler
indicated, a shower of stone and dirt crumbled in on him, as had often happened before, but this time there was snow mixed in. Blinding sunlight and freezing wind burst in on him, and he tumbled backward, blinking madly in the bright light of a cloudless winter afternoon.

When he had recovered somewhat, he turned and peered shivering out the opening, then thrust himself forward, despite the cold and glare, to see where he was.

The tunnel had emerged in a rocky area just beyond the outer walls, northeast of the palace, out of sight of every window, well away from the top of the canyon.

It was perfect. The outside entrance would be hidden by the wall and the rocks, and he could see no reason anyone would ever wander into that area and find it, while the inside end was in the back of a storage cellar, and could easily be hidden by pushing a few stones back into place and setting a shelf or two in front of them. He had his secret way in and out of the palace.

It wasn't straight; instead it twisted and wound through the earth, following the natural shape of the stone and earth. And it wasn't finished. He still had a month or more before the
ara
returned, and he intended to clean out the debris, widen the narrow spots, and shore up the weak ones, so that his underground passage would be easier and more convenient. But it was open from end to end.

He sat in the hole among the rocks, shivering as he looked out at the snow-covered landscape. He had not been dressed for the cold of the outside world, since generally working in the tunnel had been close work, and his exertions had been more than enough to keep him warm.

When he had thrust his fireplace poker upward, to be greeted by that shower of rocks and snow, the dirt, snow, and wind had put out
his candle. That was going to make the trip back through the tunnel to the cellars that much more interesting, as he doubted he could strike a fresh light in the wind.

He had enlarged the opening just enough to climb out and see where he was, and had then slid back down, out of the worst of the cold.

After the initial shock, though, he realized that the wind didn't feel quite so cold as usual. Yes, he was shivering, but he was out in the open without his cloak, without any blankets, yet he was not going numb, and no ice had formed in his beard.

“Is it warmer today?” he asked.

No answer came.

That didn't mean anything; the
ler
answered when they chose, and said nothing when they chose, and he had no way to coax or compel them.

Warmer or not, it was still cold; he took one last look, then ducked back down into the tunnel and started back toward the palace cellars, finding his way by feel, by the faint glimmer of daylight that leaked in behind him, and by the occasional faint flicker from
ler.

One day, as he leapt up onto a couch brandishing his sword, just to prove to himself that he
could
still leap, Sword glanced out a nearby window just in time to see a glittering drop of meltwater fall from the tip of one of the great icicles that hung from the palace eaves.

He stopped, balanced on the arm of the couch, blade upraised, and stared.

Another drip fell, sparkling in the morning sun.

“It's melting?” he asked. He lowered the sword, his daily practice forgotten for the moment.

In his half-starved state he had become resigned to the idea that he would probably not survive the winter, the promises he had made to himself while out on the snow that moonlit night notwithstanding. His supply of jerky was gone; only a sliver of cheese remained; in three trips he had stripped bare every garden that the Uplanders themselves had not cleaned out, and had nothing left of his harvest but three half-rotten beets and a shriveled carrot. He had lost track of the days, and the
ler
had not spoken to him lately, but until this very moment the snow and ice outside had seemed as permanent as the stone on which the palace was built.

He had considered taking another look at finding a way down the cliffs to Winterhome, thinking he had little left to lose, but even assuming he could somehow get down the icy trail, he was more likely to be killed at the bottom than fed. Better, he thought, to die up here, so that Artil could not be
sure
he was dead, than to let the Wizard Lord know he had triumphed.

Of course, that would mean he would want to leave the palace, go
somewhere his body wouldn't be found, while he still had the strength to do so, and he had been thinking about that, in a rather desultory fashion, but had not yet decided on a definite course of action.

The belief that he was going to die a slow and horrible death from hunger had been oddly liberating; he no longer worried about maintaining any sort of pattern to his days, or minimizing the damage he did to the palace and its furnishings. He had tried to stretch his food supply as much out of habit as any real hope of staying alive until spring, but had stopped keeping track of how much remained, or how many days he had been here.

But now the icicles were melting.

He jumped down from the couch and crossed to the window, staring out.

“It
is
melting!” he announced; the surface of the nearest icicle was slick and wet, glistening in the sun. He looked around, and realized that the film of frost on the inside of the glass was retreating, as well. He touched the windowpane; it was wet.

The evidence had been around him all morning, he realized, but he had not noticed it. He had very little energy these days, and did not devote much of it to observing his surroundings. Now, though, he could see signs of melting everywhere.

“It's real,” he said. He looked up. “Is this spring, or just a freak thaw?”

The birds are returning, adults and hatchlings. They are less than a hundred miles south of this place.

“The
ara
?”

The sun has been coming north for many days, but we were able to hold off the warmth until the birds approached.

“So it's spring? Spring is coming?” Sword stared out the window.

He had made it after all—or at least, he knew he could. He had lost a great deal of weight, he was gaunt and weak, but he was not actually dying yet.

The birds are coming. We will hold them as far from this place as we can. . . .

“What? No! I need them! What am I supposed to eat?”

Go to them, if you will.

“I will! I . . .” He looked around, trying to think. He would need weapons, and tinder. . . .

And his coat, the one with feathers sewn into it. His makeshift velvet cloak was too bulky and clumsy for hunting, and Whistler had thought feathers helped to keep
ara
from sensing the hunters' approach.

“A hundred miles?”

Less.

That was at least five days' journey—perhaps less in good weather, but the plains were still deeply covered with snow—and that was assuming he could find them readily. He could not rely on the
ler
to guide him, not once he retrieved his feathers.

“Are they coming nearer?”

There was no answer. Sword stared out the window, watching water drip, seeing the sun glinting from the ice.

“When will the Uplanders return? How do they know where to find the
ara
?”

Again, he received no reply.

Well, if the Upland
ler
wouldn't help him, he would just have to rely on himself. He had done that often enough before, after all.

But there was no need to rush off precipitously. His sword practice forgotten, he headed thoughtfully for the stairs.

Three days later he set out to the southwest, hunting
ara.
He had not eaten for two of the three days, after finishing the last crumb of cheese and the last of the vegetables. The
ler
had not spoken to him at all in those three days; he was unsure whether this was simply their usual perversity, or whether the proximity of the
ara
was affecting them.

Certainly, the weather had abruptly turned warmer. The snow was melting rapidly, and he had been startled a few times by the sound of shattering as oversized icicles lost their grip on the palace eaves. The thaw was happening with astonishing speed.

He wondered how long it would be before the Uplanders came back up from Winterhome. He had gone out on the terrace and
peered over the cliff, trying to judge whether spring was coming to Barokan as suddenly as it was arriving up on the plateau, but he had been unable to tell. The trail had still been hopelessly iced over, but there was certainly less snow down there in the towns below than there had been—he could see chimneys and exposed bits of roof where only white had shown before. He could not readily estimate how
much
less, though.

It didn't matter, he told himself as he trudged southward through the snow and slush; he would need to fend for himself for a time, but he could manage that. He could hunt
ara
himself. He had his spear, he had ropes, and his sword, and all the other supplies he thought he would need. He had even made himself a small tent; it had kept him busy after the tunnel was completed, and had been one more thing to keep his mind off his hunger.

For the first time it occurred to him that it might have been clever to have practiced with his spear as well as with the sword, but he had not done so, and it was too late now.

He was leaving the Summer Palace a mess, with half the furnishings torn up and burned, and the remains of his camp in the kitchens, but he couldn't bring himself to care. The Wizard Lord would know someone had been there, certainly, but he would not know for certain who, or whether he had survived or wandered out to die in the snow.

His only worry in that regard was that Artil might decide not to bother cleaning up the mess. He might give up his summer home and stay down in Barokan, where he belonged—and where Sword had no real hope of getting at him.

If that happened, though, Sword had totally misjudged the Wizard Lord's character. He did not think for a minute that Artil would ever give up anything without a fight.

He might not come up
this
summer, though. He might let the repairs take a year. If that happened, Sword would need to spend another winter in there, and he doubted Artil would make that easy. There would be no wheel of cheese next time, no easily burned furniture, no water in the cistern.

But Sword didn't think that would happen. He thought Artil would make a point of using the Summer Palace this year, no matter how damaged. He would not let the Chosen be seen to have inconvenienced him.

There would be workmen, then. Perhaps Sword could slip inside as one of them, and await the Wizard Lord. He knew the palace very well indeed now, after his months there, and thought he might be able to find safe places to hide.

He knew the structure, but of course, he didn't know the people—their numbers, their habits, their routine. That would make hiding a challenge.

But he could think about that later. Right now, he needed to find some
ara.

He had found the Uplanders the previous year by following their smoke, but of course, birds didn't have campfires. Surely, though, there was some way to locate them. He scanned the horizon, squinting against the glare of sun on snow.

There was nothing immediately obvious.

He marched on, heading south and east, until sunset, when he made camp. He built himself a campfire from the limbs of a nearby tree; even though the sap was not yet running, the wood was damp and green, and getting the fire started took almost an hour. The result was a low, smoky fire that snapped and spat constantly.