We trudged on. Endlessly. Time became motion, steps taken in the dark. Sometimes I closed my eyes to rest them from the unnatural light, but even then, I seemed to see it. At such a moment, the Fool asked shakily, 'What's that?'

I opened my eyes. 'What's what?' I asked him. Blue afterglows danced before my vision. I blinked. They didn't go away.

'That. Isn't that light? Shut the box. See if it's still there or if it's some sort of reflection.'

It was hard to get the box to shut. My fingers were cold, and my one un-booted foot was a cold aching lump at the end of my leg. But when the box was closed, a blue shard of light still beckoned to us. It was irregularly shaped and oddly edgeless. I squinted at it, trying to make it assume some familiar aspect.

'It's very strange, isn't it? Let's go toward it.'

'And leave the wall?' I asked, oddly reluctant. 'There's no way to tell how far away that is-'

'Light has to come from somewhere,' the Fool pointed out.

I took a breath- 'Very well.'

We set out toward it. It did not seem to grow larger. The floor became uneven and our pace more shuffling as we groped ahead with numbed feet. Then, in the space of a few steps, our perspective on it changed. A wall to our left had been blocking our view, allowing us to see only a reflection in an icy wall. As we moved past that projection, the blue gleam opened out and became a beckoning corridor of blue-and-white ice. Hopes renewed, we increased our pace. We hurried around a bend in our black chamber, and suddenly a luminous vista spread before us. The closer we approached, the more my eyes could resolve what we saw. As we angled back toward the illumination, it increased, and after a narrowing in the passage, we emerged into a world of light suffused ice.

The beam seemed sourceless, as if it had wandered through

windows and mirrors and prisms of ice before it found us. We entered into a strange maze of cracks and chasms in a world of palely gleaming walls. Sometimes our way was narrow and sometimes broad. The floor under our feet was never level. Sometimes it seemed we walked in a sharp crack in the ice that had happened yesterday and sometimes it looked as if melting water had slowly sculpted the wandering path we followed. When we came to ways where the passage branched, we always tried to choose the larger way. Often enough, it narrowed shortly after we had made our choice. I did not say to the Fool what I feared; we followed random crackings in the ice of the glacier. There was no reason to expect that any of them led to anything.

The first signs I saw that others had passed this way were subtle. I thought I tricked myself into hope; there seemed to be a scattering of sand where the floor of the passageway was slick. Then, that perhaps the walls had been squared off. My nose caught the scent first: fresh human excrement. In the same instant I was sure of it, the Fool said, 'It looks as if steps have been cut into the floor ahead of us.'

I nodded. We were definitely ascending, and broad shallow steps had been cut in the icy floor. A dozen steps later, we passed a chamber cut into the ice to our right. A natural fissure had been enlarged into a waste pit, a place to throw rubbish and dump chamber pots. And a grave for the ignominious dead. I saw a naked foot, obscenely pale and bony, projecting from the midden. Another body sprawled face down upon it, ribs showing through tattered rags. Only the cold made the stench bearable. I halted and asked the Fool in a whisper, 'Do you think we should go on?'

'It is the only path,' he said tremulously. 'We have to follow it.'

He stared and stared at the discarded body. He was shaking again. 'Are you still cold?' I asked. The passages we were in seemed slightly warmer to me than when we had been in darkness. Light seemed to come from within them.

He gave me a ghastly smile. 'I'm scared.' He closed his eyes for an instant, squeezing unshed tears onto his golden lashes. Then, 'On we go,' he said more firmly. He stepped past me to take the lead and I followed him, full of dread.

Whoever was responsible for dumping the slops and chamber

pots was a careless fellow. Splotches and splashes marred the icy walls and mottled the ice underfoot. The farther we went, the more obviously man-made or at least hand-modified the passages became. The source of the blue light was revealed when we passed an exposed pale globe that was anchored to the wall overhead. It was larger than a pumpkin, and gave off light but not heat. I halted, staring up at it. Then, as I reached toward it with curious fingers, the Fool caught at my cuff and dragged my hand back down. He shook his head in silent warning.

'What is it?' I asked in a whisper.

He shrugged one shoulder. 'I don't know. But I know it's hers. Don't touch it, Fitz. Come on. We have to hurry.'

And we did, for a time. Until we came to the first dungeon.

TWENTY

Corridors

The door was nearly invisible. The Fool had passed it before I perceived what it was and halted him with a touch to his shoulder. Either the door was made of ice, or was so thickly coated with ice that its original material was unseen. The hinges were vague bulges in the wall, and I saw no sort of handle or lock. It baffled me. There was a narrow slit in the door at about waist height. I stooped to peer into it, and was shocked to see a ragged and battered man crouched in the far corner of a cell. He stared in my direction, mute and expressionless. I staggered back from the sight with an inarticulate cry.

'What?' the Fool whispered and stooped to look in himself. He remained crouched by the door, his face a mask of horror. Then, 'We have to let them out. Somehow.'

1 shook my head wildly, and then found my tongue. 'No, Fool. Trust me, please. They're Forged. However heartless it seems to leave them in there, it would be a danger and a cruelty to let them loose. They'd turn on us, for our cloaks or for sport. We don't dare let them out.'

He stared up at me incredulously. Then he said quietly, 'You didn't see them all, did you? Riddle is in there. And Hest.1

I didn't want to look. I had to. Heart thundering, breath coming fast, I crept to the door and peered in.

The inside of the cell was dimly lit with the same blue glow as the corridors. I let my eyes adjust to the light until I could see the entire cell. The room was a cavity chopped into the glacier. The floor was crusted with waste. There were rive Forged ones inside, and nothing else. Four of them had taken positions in defensible corners, backs to the walls. Hest, weakened with injuries, sprawled on the floor in the centre of the cell. Plainly none of the Forged ones dared venture forth to attack him, for that would leave their own backs exposed. The three strangers in the cell were Outislanders, starved and scarred and dressed in rags. Their captors had stripped Hest and Riddle of their heavy fur coats, but even so, they were better off than the others. They still had their boots. I quested toward them desperately with the Wit, willing with all my might that I feel something from them. But there was nothing. They crouched, staring with brutish animosity at one another, less than animals. Their connection to the world and society had been stripped from them.