Nature’s drama, life unheeding of the cataclysm that rushed upon it from behind – or above. The brutal hand of a god as indifferent as the beasts themselves.
Binadas came to his side. ‘This was born of a warren,’ he said.
Trull nodded. Sorcery. Nothing else made sense. ‘A god.’
‘Perhaps, but not necessarily so, brother. Some forces need only be unleashed. A natural momentum then burgeons.’
‘The Hold of Ice,’ Trull said. ‘Such as the Letherii describe in their faith.’
‘The Hand of the Watcher,’ Binadas said, ‘who waited until the war was done before striding forward to unleash his power.’
Trull had thought himself more knowledgeable than most Edur warriors regarding the old legends of their people. With Binadas’s words echoing in his head, however, he felt woefully ignorant. ‘Where have they gone?’ he asked. ‘Those powers of old? Why do we dwell as if… as if alone?’
His brother shrugged, ever reluctant to surrender his reserve, his mindful silence. ‘We remain alone,’ he finally said, ‘to preserve the sanctity of our past.’
Trull considered this, his gaze travelling over the tableau before him, those dark, murky lives that could not out-run their doom, then said, ‘Our cherished truths are vulnerable.’
‘To challenge, yes.’
‘And the salt gnaws at the ice beneath us, until our world grows perilously thin beneath our feet.’
‘Until what was frozen… thaws.’
Trull took a step closer to the one of the charging caribou. ‘What thaws in turn collapses and falls to the ground. And rots, Binadas. The past is covered in flies.’
His brother walked towards the altar, and said, ‘The ones who kneel before this shrine were here only a few days ago.’
‘They did not come the way we did.’
‘No doubt there are other paths into this underworld.’
Trull glanced over at Theradas, only now recalling his presence. The warrior stood at the threshold, his breath pluming in the air.
‘We should return to the others,’ Binadas said. ‘We have far to walk tomorrow.’
The night passed, damp, cold, the melt water ceaselessly whispering. Each Edur stood watch in turn, wrapped in furs and weapons at the ready. But there was nothing to see in the dull, faintly luminescent light. Ice, water and stone, death, hungry motion and impermeable bones, a blind triumvirate ruling a gelid realm.
Just before dawn the company rose, ate a quick meal, then Rhulad clambered up the ropes, trusting to the spikes driven into the ice far overhead, about two-thirds of the way, where the fissure narrowed in one place sufficient to permit a cross-over to the north wall. Beyond that point, Rhulad began hammering new spikes into the ice. Splinters and shards rained down on the waiters below for a time, then there came a distant shout from Rhulad. Midik went to the ropes and began climbing, while Trull and Fear bound the food packs to braided leather lines. The sleds would be pulled up last.
‘Today,’ Binadas said, ‘we will have to be careful. They will know we were here, that we found their shrine.’
Trull glanced over. ‘But we did not desecrate it.’
‘Perhaps our presence alone was sufficient outrage, brother.’
The sun was above the horizon by the time the Edur warriors were assembled on the other side of the crevasse, the sleds loaded and ready. The sky was clear and there was no wind, yet the air was bitter cold. The sun’s fiery ball was flanked on either side by smaller versions – sharper and brighter than last time, as if in the course of the night just past the world above them had completed its transformation from the one they knew to something strange and forbidding, inimical to life.
Theradas in the lead once more, they set out.
Ice crunching underfoot, the hiss and clatter of the antler-rimmed sled runners, and a hissing sound both close and distant, as if silence had itself grown audible, a sound that Trull finally understood was the rush of his own blood, woven in and around the rhythm of his breath, the drum of his heart. The glare burned his eyes. His lungs stung with every rush of air.
The Edur did not belong in this landscape. The Hold of Ice. Feared by the Letherii. Stealer of life – why has Hannan Mosag sent us here?
Theradas halted and turned about. ‘Wolf tracks,’ he said, ‘heavy enough to break through the crust of snow.’
They reached him, stopped the sleds. Trull drew the harness from his aching shoulders.
The tracks cut across their route, heading west. They were huge.
‘These belong to a creature such as the one we saw in the ice last night,’ Binadas said. ‘What do they hunt? We’ve seen nothing.’
Fear grunted, then said, ‘That does not mean much, brother. We are not quiet travellers, with these sleds.’
‘Even so,’ Binadas replied, ‘herds leave sign. We should have come upon something, by now.’
They resumed the journey.
Shortly past midday Fear called a halt for another meal. The plain of ice stretched out flat and featureless on all sides.
‘There’s nothing to worry about out here,’ Rhulad said, sitting on one of the sleds. ‘We can see anyone coming… or anything, for that matter. Tell us, Fear, how much farther will we go? Where is this gift that Hannan Mosag wants us to find?’
‘Another day to the north,’ Fear replied.
‘If it is indeed a gift,’ Trull asked, ‘who is offering it?’
‘I do not know.’
No-one spoke for a time.
Trull studied the hard-packed snow at his feet, his unease deepening. Something ominous hung in the still, frigid air. Their solitude suddenly seemed threatening, absence a promise of unknown danger. Yet he was among blood kin, among Hiroth warriors. Thus.
Still, why does this gift stink of death?
Another night. The tents were raised, a meal cooked, then the watches were set. Trull’s was first. He walked the perimeter of their camp, spear in hand, in a continuous circuit in order to keep awake. The food in his stomach made him drowsy, and the sheer emptiness of the ice wastes seemed to project a force that dulled concentration. Overhead the sky was alive with strange, shifting hues that rose and fell in disconnected patterns. He had seen such things before, in the deepest winter in Hiroth lands, but never as sharp, never as flush, voicing a strange hissing song as of broken glass crunching underfoot.
When it was time, he awoke Theradas. The warrior emerged from his tent and rose, adjusting his fur cloak until it wrapped him tightly, then drawing his sword. He glared at the lively night sky, but said nothing.
Trull crawled into the tent. The air within was damp. Ice had formed on the tent walls, etching maps of unknown worlds on the stretched, waxy fabric. From outside came the steady footsteps of Theradas as he walked his rounds. The sound followed Trull into sleep.
Disjointed dreams followed. He saw Mayen, naked in the forest, settling down atop a man, then writhing with hungry lust. He stumbled closer, ever seeking to see that man’s face, to discover who it was – and instead he found himself lost, the forest unreadable, unrecognizable, a sensation he had never experienced before, and it left him terrified. Trembling on his knees in the wet loam, while from somewhere beyond he could hear her cries of pleasure, bestial and rhythmic.
And desire rose within him. Not for Mayen, but for what she had found, in her wild release, closing down into the moment, into the present, future and past without meaning. A moment unmindful of consequences. His hunger became a pain within him, lodged like a broken knife-tip in his chest, cutting with each ragged breath, and in his dream he cried out, as if answering Mayen’s own voice, and he heard her laugh with recognition. A laugh inviting him to join her world.
Mayen, his brother’s betrothed. A detached part of his mind remained cool and objective, almost sardonic in its self-regard. Understanding the nature of this web, this sideways envy and his own burgeoning appetites.