It was said that, farther out in the wastes, there was water beneath the ice, salt-laden remnants from an inland sea, and cavernous pockets hidden beneath thin-skin mantles of snow. Treachery waited underfoot, forcing them to travel slowly.
The wind swept down upon them, biting at exposed skin, and they were forced to lean forward against its gusting, frigid blasts.
Despite the furs enshrouding him, Trull felt the shock of that sudden cold, a force mindless and indifferent, yet eager to steal. Flooding his air passages in a numbing assault. And within that current, a faint smell of death.
The Edur wrapped swaths of wool about their faces, leaving the barest of slits for their eyes. Conversations were quickly abandoned, and they walked in silence, the crunch of their fur-lined moccasins muffled and distant.
The sun’s warmth and turn of season could not win the war in this place. The snow and ice rose on the wind to glitter overhead, mockinp the sun itself with twin mirror images, leading Trull to suspect that the wind held close to the ground, whilst high overhead the suspended ice crystals hovered unmoving, inured to the passing of seasons, of years.
He tilted his head to stare upward for a moment, wondering if that glistening, near-opaque canopy above them held the frozen memories of the past, minute images locked in each crystal, bearing witness to all that had occurred below. A multitude of fates, perhaps reaching back to when there was sea, in place of the ice. Did unknown creatures ply the waters in arcane, dugout canoes all those thousands of years ago? Would they one day become these Jheck?
The Letherii spoke of Holds, that strange pantheon of elements, and among them there was the Hold of Ice. As if winter was born of sorcery, as if ice and snow were instruments of wilful destruction. Something of that notion was present in Edur legends as well. Ice plunging down to steal the land that was soaked in Tiste blood, the brutal theft of hard-won territories committed as an act of vengeance, perhaps the gelid flowering of some curse uttered in a last breath, a final defiance.
The sentiment, then – if one such existed – was of old enmity. Ice was a thief, of life, land and righteous reward. Bound in death and blood, an eternal prison. From all this, it could earn hatred.
They continued through the day, moving slowly but steadily, through jumbled fields of broken, upthrust shards of ice that in the distance seemed simply white, but when neared was revealed to possess countless shades of greens, blues and browns. They crossed flats of wind-sculpted, hard-packed snow that formed rippled patterns as smooth as sand. Strange fault lines where unseen forces had sheered the ice, pushing one side up against the other, grinding opposing paths as if the solid world beneath them jostled in wayward migration.
Towards late afternoon, a muted shout from Theradas halted them. Trull, who had been walking with his eyes on the ground before him, looked up at the muffled sound and saw that Theradas was standing before something, gesturing them forward with a fur-wrapped hand. A few moments later they reached his side.
A broad crevasse cut across their path, the span at least fifteen paces. The sheer walls of ice swept down into darkness, and from its depths rose a strange smell.
‘Salt,’ Binadas said after pulling away his face-covering. ‘Tidal pools.’
Rhulad and Midik joined them from the flanks. ‘It seems to stretch to the very horizon,’ Rhulad said.
‘The break looks recent,’ Binadas observed, crouching at the edge. ‘As if the surface is shrinking.’
‘Perhaps summer has managed a modest alteration to these wastes,’ Fear mused. ‘We have passed sealed faults that might be the remnant scars from similar wounds in the past.’
‘How will we cross?’ Midik asked.
‘I could draw shadows from below,’ Binadas said, then shook his head, ‘but the notion makes me uneasy. If there are spirits within, they might well prove unruly. There are layers of sorcery here, woven in the snow and ice, and they do not welcome Emurlahn.’
‘Get out the ropes,’ Fear said.
‘Dusk approaches.’
‘If necessary we will camp below.’
Trull shot Fear a look. ‘What if it closes whilst we are down there?’
‘I do not think that likely,’ Fear said. ‘Besides, we will remain unseen this night, hidden as we will be in the depths. If there are indeed beasts in this land – though we’ve seen no true sign as yet – then I would rather we took every opportunity to avoid them.’
Wet pebbles skidded under his moccasins as Trull alighted, stepping clear of the ropes. He looked around, surprised at the faint green glow suffusing the scene. They were indeed on a seabed. Salt had rotted the ice at the edges, creating vast caverns crowded with glittering pillars. The air was cold, turgid and rank.
Off to one side Midik and Rhulad had drawn bundles of wood out from a pack and were preparing a cookfire. Binadas and Fear were reloading the sleds to keep the food satchels off the wet ground, and Theradas had set off to scout the caverns.
Trull strode to a shallow pool and crouched down at its edge. The saline water swarmed with tiny grey shrimps. Barnacles crowded the waterline.
‘The ice is dying.’
At Fear’s words behind him, Trull rose and faced his brother. ‘Why do you say that?’
‘The salt gnaws its flesh. We are at the lowest region of the ancient seabed, I believe. Where the last of the water gathered, then slowly evaporated. Those columns of salt are all that remains. If the entire basin was like this place, then the canopy of ice would have collapsed-’
‘Perhaps it does just that,’ Binadas suggested, joining them. ‘In cycles over thousands of years. Collapse, then the salt begins its work once again.’
Trull stared into the gloomy reaches. ‘I cannot believe those pillars can hold up all this ice. There must be a cycle of collapse, as Binadas has said.’ His eyes caught movement, then Theradas emerged, and Trull saw that the warrior had his sword out.
‘There is a path,’ Theradas said. ‘And a place of gathering. We are not the first to have come down here.’
Rhulad and Midik joined them. No-one spoke for a time.
Then Fear nodded and asked, ‘How recent are the signs, Theradas?’
‘Days.’
‘Binadas and Trull, go with Theradas to this place of gathering. I will remain here with the Unblooded.’
The path began twenty paces in from the crevasse, a trail cleared of cobbles and detritus that wound between the rough, crystalline columns of salt. Melt water dripped from the rotting ceiling in a steady downpour. Theradas led them onward another thirty paces, where the path ended at the edge of a vast roughly domed expanse devoid of pillars.
Near the centre squatted a low, misshapen altar stone. Votive offerings surrounded it – shells, mostly, among which the odd piece of carved ivory was visible. Yet Trull spared it but a momentary glance, for his gaze had been drawn to the far wall.
A sheer plane of ice a hundred paces or more across, rising in a tilted overhang – a wall in which countless beasts had been caught in mid-stampede, frozen in full flight. Antlers projected from the ice, heads and shoulders – still solid and immobile – and forelegs lifted or stretched forward. Frost-rimed eyes dully reflected the muted blue-green light. Deeper within, the blurred shapes of hundreds more.
Stunned by the vista, Trull slowly walked closer, round the altar, half expecting at any moment to see the charging beasts burst into sudden motion, onrushing, to crush them all beneath countless hoofs.
As he neared, he saw heaped bodies near the base, beasts that had fallen out from the retreating ice, had thawed, eventually collapsing into viscid pools.
Tiny black flies rose in clouds from the decaying flesh and hide, swarmed towards Trull as if determined to defend their feast. He halted, waved his hands until they dispersed and began winging back to the rotting carcasses. The beasts – caribou – had been running on snow, a packed layer knee-deep above the seabed. He could still see the panic in their eyes – and there, smeared behind an arm’s length of ice, the head and shoulders of an enormous wolf, silver-haired and amber-eyed, running alongside a caribou, shoulder to shoulder. The wolf’s head was raised, jaws open, close to the victim’s neck. Canines as long as Trull’s thumb gleamed beneath peeled-back lips.