David Drake - Godess of the Ice Realm

Cashel was a mountain, a tower against everything hostile. Holding him and being held brought order to the cosmos. It was the first peace Sharina had known since the urn in her bedroom had sucked her into the world She ravaged.

She patted Cashel once more between the shoulderblades, then leaned back and broke the embrace. She took a deep breath.

"Garric?" she said, turning to indicate the band who'd come with her. Franca was glaring at Cashel; Scoggin rested his left hand on the youth's shoulder. The others stood close behind. Some looked ill at ease to be crowded by men in armor, but Neal and Layson in particular stood straight and looked the curious soldiers around them in the eye. "These are my companions. They helped me and fought for me. I'm responsible for them."

"For that they'll be honored as they deserve when we have the leisure to do so," said Garric, glancing about the confusion with a smile that reminded her of the brother she'd grown up with. "Which at present we certainly do not. But-"

"Your highness!" said Lord Lerdain, pushing back through the crowd. "The centipede's dead or dead enough that we can get by! Lord Escot and Master Ortron are advancing!"

Lerdain had gotten a bang on the side of his face; the present puffiness would become a bad bruise in a few hours. He no longer seemed the pudgy fifteen-year-old he'd been a few months before when he became Prince Garric's aide.

"Right!" said Garric, turning toward one of the corridors branching off this great junction. "Tell them I'm coming."

Looking past him Sharina saw the chitinous, pincered leg of an insect large enough that its legs could scrape the high ceiling when it lay on its back. The sight gave her stomach a sudden jolt. But we killed that already! her mind told her; but they hadn't, not this particular creature nor even one exactly like it. And what else was waiting before they reached Her?

"Sharina," Cashel said, "I've to go with Garric. I'll be back when, well, you know."

Garric and his pair of soldiers were already pushing forward; Attaper followed with a set expression and his hand on the ivory hilt of his sword. The bodyguard commander obviously had his own opinion of what was reasonable behavior for his prince, and as obviously he knew to hold his tongue at this juncture.

Sharina hesitated, caught between concern for her ragged followers and her desire to stay with Garric and Cashel now that she'd finally been reunited with them. Though she didn't suppose she had any business fighting now, since there were soldiers with the training and equipment to "Mistress, you must take me to the front!" Beard cried. "Has Beard not been a good servant to you? Will you starve Beard of the blood he deserves?"

"But-" Sharina said. Cashel and Garric were already out of sight beyond the currents of milling soldiers. She couldn't let her whim and an axe's bloodlust take her where a girl without armor would only be in the way of men in a hard battle!

"Do you think they can fight what waits for them, mistress?" Beard said, his voice rising in peevish anger. "They can't, you know. They'll only die when they face an Elemental! But Beard and his mistress, they can drink even that life. Please, mistress!"

"An Elemental…?" Sharina repeated softly.

"Oh, She's a great wizard, the greatest of wizards," the axe crooned. "No one could bind an Elemental! But She bound one and drew it here, and it will swallow all the souls it finds unless Beard drinks its soul instead."

Sharina shuddered as she remembered diving into the fjord to bring up the Key of Reyazel. Her mind had been numb then, so focused on the brutal strain of the dive that the horror of the things guarding the key had slid off her like filth from a wall of ice. Thinking back on the event forced her to understand exactly how foul the things had been-and how unutterably awful it would have been to be engulfed by one of them.

"Neal," Sharina said sharply. "Take charge till I return. Hold the men here. Stay together and don't get in the way of the, the soldiers with better equipment."

"But mistress!" Layson begged.

"Stay here!" she snarled. "Franca, you and Scoggin too!"

"You didn't dive into the fjord with her," said Beard in a piercing, sneering tone. "If you come now you'll die the same way, the very same way, and your souls will die forever!"

Sharina's eyes met Liane's; Liane nodded. Sharina turned sharply. "Neal," she said, "obey Lady Liane here as though she were me. She'll take care of you!"

She turned again and slipped off through the crowd, holding the axe over her head. Behind her, her former companions stood like scarecrows with gaping mouths. They eyed Liane and clutched their weapons like shipwrecked sailors holding spars.

"Make way for Princess Sharina!" Beard cried; his ringing voice cut through the clamor, jerking startled men about and opening gaps that a slim, determined woman could stride through. "Make way for Beard's mistress!"

I'm not abandoning Franca and the rest. I'm giving them a chance to live, which they wouldn't have had if they came with me now. The fact that Sharina knew her litany was objectively true didn't keep her from feeling sick to her stomach at having left behind frightened men who depended on her.

Beard gave a metallic titter. "My mistress doesn't fear anything, of course," the axe said. "She knows that Beard'll drink himself fat on blood before she dies. Oh, fortunate mistress to have such a servant as Beard!"

Which was also objectively true, and Sharina's laughter atthat thought washed away her empty queasiness at the way she'd treated her companions. Anyway, she didn't have any choice but to go. She knew her brother and Cashel would fight the Elemental if she wasn't there, and she didn't doubt Beard's claim that it would devour them.

"We will kill it as we killed its sibling in the deeps," Beard caroled in response. "As we drank the soul of something that'd swallowed a thousand souls. Oh, mistress, Beard will chant your praise till the sun dies!"

The Old Kingdom poet Celondre had claimed his work was more lasting than bronze. Beard was going to outlast Celondre, at least in this place, so Sharina supposed she'd achieved immortality of a sort…

She laughed, wondering if she was becoming hysterical. The axe laughed with her.

She reached the archway where the corridor joined the great rotunda. Here the troops were packed so tightly that even she couldn't squeeze through. "Make way for Princess Sharina!" Beard cried shrilly.

That didn't change anything directly, but a Blood Eagle in the crowd ahead of her looked over his shoulder. Sharina found his face vaguely familiar; he'd probably been in her guard detachment at some point.

"Say, thatis the princess!" he said. "Say! Don't crowd her highness, you dogs! Have you lost all honor?"

Between shouting and prying with the butt of his spear, the Blood Eagle opened a space for her to join him. "Let the princess through!" he bellowed as he started pushing forward through the ruck. "Pass the word up there that Princess Sharina's coming through!"

The Blood Eagle cocked his head toward her again. He was an older man whose nose had been broken at least twice.

"File Closer Gondor, your highness," he said in a respectful voice. "I don't suppose you remember, but-"

"I do indeed, Gondor," Sharina said. That was half a lie, but this wasn't a time for pleasantries. "Carry on."

Which Gondor did, using the side of his shield like a plowshare to carve a furrow through the crowd. Sharina's name alone hadn't been enough to make a path, but her nameand brute force succeeded.

"Brute force, oh yes," said Beard. "Brute force, but especially Beard's fine edge to drink their blood!"

The corridor was half blocked-more than half-by the twisted body of the segmented, many-legged monster. The gigantic corpse still twitched. Its movements and the sulfurous, stomach-roiling stench of the blood leaking from the creature's wounds made even veteran soldiers pause as they reached it, delaying the advance more than the constriction itself did.