Alan Foster - The Icerigger Trilogy

“Why.” Ethan swallowed, tried again. “Why did you stay here? Why didn’t you try to escape him?”

Now Teeliam found reason to laugh. “I do that several times a year, sky-outlander Ethan. Always I am caught, or bought back from those who find me. What Rakossa then does to me drives out all thoughts of escape for day-times. As will doubtless happen again after this. If I did not resist him, he would tire of me and kill me, for none can have a woman that Rakossa has had. And when I resist, he… imagines things.”

“It won’t happen again, woman,” said a deep, angry voice. September had come up behind Ethan and was staring compassionately at Teeliam. He had already examined Elfa professionally and chose not to stare at her.

“It does not matter. I would have done this only to anger him no matter what you do for yourselves or me, no matter what had been done to her.” She indicated Elfa, who had not moved.

“There is another thing. I believe you would wish to have these. I stole them.” She swung the small pack from her back, brought out their beamers.

“How long until the new cellmaster comes on duty?” Ethan clipped his own weapon back to his waist, tried to peer through sooty darkness up the corridor and stairs. Teeliam mentioned Tran time-units. “Maybe that’s long enough for us to slip up the stairways and fight our way back to the ship.”

“Are you offworlders truly the fools Ro-Vijar claims?” Teeliam eyed him disbelievingly. “You cannot go back through the castle. There are soldiers on every level above. You could not reach the courtyard before every warrior on the island had been assembled. I do not think your magical weapons which Ro-Vijar whispered of to Rakossa would be enough to repulse a thousand or more fighters in close quarters.”

“Gal’s got a point.” September bent his white-maned head down to her. “What you have in mind as an alternative?”

“I will cut the face of my father into his back and he will curse his manhood,” said a voice cold enough to match the atmosphere above ground. Elfa spoke at last.

“Surely you will.” Sir Hunnar had been standing in the shadows for an indeterminate length of time, watching Elfa. Now he moved into the light, speaking gently as he took her arm. “But not now, later. We must free ourselves first.”

She tried to pull free of his grasp. For a moment the green cloak and wraps she was wearing slid loosely aside. Ethan saw scars and markings he wished he had not.

“I will remove his fur one hair at a time,” she continued, in a tone that chilled Ethan’s heart. She made no move to cover herself.

“Yes, but later, later. I promise.” Hunnar fixed her cloak. How he kept his voice low and easy was something Ethan was never able to figure out. Now he slid an arm around her shoulders.

With an effort, Teeliam replied to September’s question. “Faint hope lies this way.” She started down the corridor, toward the cells farthest from the stairway. Ethan and September followed. With Hunnar’s support, a glaze-eyed Elfa stumbled uncertainly in their wake.

At the far end of the dungeon they found another doorway. It was low for a Tran, blocked up with masonry and cordoned off with braided pika-pina cable.

“It is told that in ancient times the worst offenders of the laws were put through there. A tunnel lies beyond. Where it leads to is not spoken of. But it is a place far from here.”

“Good enough for me,” said September, approving the plan. “Why is it sealed up?”

“Four Landgraves ago, the histories say, it was decided the punishment was too severe for even the murderers of children.”

“Wonderful,” Ethan murmured, eying the doorway as if some inconceivable horror might at any moment burst through the stones to devour them.

“Where does it go?” A prosaic query from the Slanderscree ’s reluctant, but ever-curious Captain Ta-hoding.

Teeliam turning, told him. “It goes down to Hell.”

“Fine.” September smiled, “then I don’t expect we’ll be followed. At that moment he looked a bit like a daemon of the underworld himself. “Stand away.”

After adjusting his beamer, he turned it on the sealed portal. The blue energy beam dissolved stone, cement, and pika-pina cable alike. There were mutters of awe from the Slanderscree ’s sailors. They had seen the light knives of the outlanders in action before, but they hadn’t known they could burn through the unbreakable, fire-resistant pika-pina.

Once he’d cut several horizontal lines in the barrier, September turned off the beam to conserve its charge and kicked out the remaining stones. They fell through with surprisingly little effort, though, as the old knight Balavere Longax commented, there was no reason for a really solid barricade, since no Tran would want to go through that doorway of his own free will.

Ethan took one of the torches from its wall holder, stuck it through the opening. “It looks higher inside. There’s a tunnel, all right. It slopes downward.”

An uncertain susurration sounded from the tightly packed crew-members. Hunnar faced them. “To stay here is to die. All who wish certain death may remain. Those who desire a chance for life, and revenge, may follow. Our human friends say there is no danger. They have not lied to us before. I do not believe they do so now.”

Turning, he took a second torch and ducked beneath the low lintel.

“I never said there was no danger,” Ethan told him.

“Nor did friend September or Williams,” Hunnar replied, moving his head so as to see further down the tunnel. “I am not worried about danger ahead. Our sailors and knights will fight when they have to, but it is more dangerous to let them stew in their own imaginings.”

The two started downward. They were quickly followed by September and Williams, Ta-hoding, Balavere, and Hunnar’s two squires. When Teeliam and Elfa went in turn, the murmuring among the crew changed from fearful to embarrassed. In twos and threes, they grabbed torches, muttered of lost hopes, and followed after.

The tunnel was just high enough to permit an adult Tran to walk upright. Though an icepath led steadily downhill, the crew did not take advantage of it to move rapidly. They picked rather than chivaned their way downward and were quite content to follow the cautious pace of the chivless humans. Huge stone blocks formed walls and ceiling.

Without references, time rippled—it became blurry and indistinct. “How deep do you think we’ve come?” Ethan asked Williams later.

“Hard to say, Ethan.” The schoolteacher missed a step, caught himself, and stared meaningfully at the ceiling. “Sixty, maybe seventy meters below the castle. Maybe more. And we’ve come a fair linear distance as well.”

Continuing to descend sharply, the tunnel showed no sign of ending. They stumbled on and on. No mysterious spirits of the underworld materialized to torment them. A breeze blew steadily at their backs, pungent with the odor of the now distant dungeon.

Unexpectedly, the character of the tunnel changed. The roof overhead and the walls flanking them gave way from hewn stone to a material the color of creamy ceramic. Ethan touched the wall nearest, scraped at it with a gloved finger. It came away in reluctant splinters: ice.

He could see the stones behind the layer of ice. Once again the sailors began conversing worriedly among themselves. They were a brave group, but they were walking into the nightmares of their cubhood, and it shook the most stalwart among them.

“Nothing to be gained by going back,” said September quietly. He pulled his beamer and they continued downward.

Several times the marchers paused to rest. Hunnar and Balavere were convinced it was safe to do so. Even if their escape had been discovered, the Poyos were unlikely to organize pursuit, convinced that the denizens of the underworld would rid them of their former prisoners. That belief was shared by the majority of the Slanderscree ’s crew.