David Drake - Godess of the Ice Realm

"I think this one's for me," Cashel said as he began to spin the staff. "I haven't been doing much since I got here."

Cashel wasn't too proud to let somebody help, especially not a friend like Garric, but he didn't see much anybody else could do. It wasn't certain he could do much either, but he figured him and his quarterstaff had the best chance going.

The thin blue thread that Tenoctris had sent out for a guide disappeared into the plug that'd grown across the tunnel since Sharina cleared the other thing out of the way. The new wall of ice didn't move fast, not even as fast as Cashel ambled toward it at a sheep's pace. The ice didn'thave to be quick to do what it was planning-or anyway what the wizard behind it planned. Cashel appreciated the value of steady over fast as well as any man living.

He spun the staff in a slant before him, first high on his right side and then doing a tricky crossover that brought the left side high instead. He kept on walking, reversing the spin from sunwise to widdershins by changing hands again behind his back.

None of this had anything to do with how he planned to use the quarterstaff when he got to the wall, but Cashel knew in his heart that there was more going on than just him loosening up his muscles before he needed them for real. He wasn't exactly showing off for the watching soldiers, but Well, if this was the last time he was able to put his staff through its paces, he wanted it to be a display he and the familiar hickory could be proud of. And it might very well be the last time.

The quarterstaff's ferrules sparkled with wizardlight, then streamed a dazzling blue disk encircling Cashel as he walked on. His skin prickled; he didn't recall starting to smile, but he was smiling now and he guessed he would till this was over one way or the other.

The ice wall was close. The roof of these tunnels was twice as high as Cashel could reach with the staff held up in one hand, but the barrier right in front of him looked higher even than that. It was like facing a mountain that reached all the way to the stars, though there wouldn't be any stars where it was, just black ice on forever.

When Cashel had entered the Visitor's ship, he'd been trapped like a bug in hot sap. This business might end the same way, with the ice before him squeezing hard against the ice and Cashel part of a red mush that included Sharina and all the soldiers. So far, though, he had plenty of room to swing his staff.

He kept the iron-capped hickory spinning as rapidly as he could control it-which was a good deal faster than anybody else he knew could, even Garric. Cashel didn't move forward but the ice did, in a more delicate step than a human could manage.

The staff's whirling ferrule brushed the sheer black face. Instead of the tinyclick that Cashel expected to feel but not hear, the world exploded in a crash of blinding blue wizardlight. His arms went numb to the shoulders. He felt as he had the day when, too young to know better, he'd been clinging to a tree during a thunderstorm and lightning struck the next tree but one.

He was Cashel or-Kenset: he didn't drop his staff, and though he lost the rhythm of the spin for a moment he still brought the other ferrule around in a straight-on slam. The blow would've put his staff a hand's breadth deep into a sea wolf's thick skull.

Touching the ice had brought a thunderbolt. This time the shock threw Cashel to the ground, deaf and blinded to everything but orange and purple afterimages that alternated faster than his heart was beating.

He didn't feel the floor as he hit it, but when instinct drove him to reverse his stroke he found he was sitting on the ice and twice his own length back from the wall. He got up without thinking-there was no time to think, this was afight -by crunching one end of the staff down beside him and poling himself up as much by the strength of his shoulders as with his legs.

Cashel stepped forward. He supposed the men behind him were shouting, but he wouldn't have paid attention even if he could hear anything beyond the roar of that last impact.

He could see now, but his vision was focused down to a circle of the wall right in front of him. At the edges even that started to gray out; beyond the space he could've spanned with his arms spread, Cashel's world just didn't exist. All he saw-all he cared about for as long as this fight lasted, whether he lived or died-was the target for his next blow.

He spun the quarterstaff overhead, keeping its momentum up. He took another step and a third. The wall wasn't where it'd been when he got up and started for it again, but Cashel was used to opponents retreating when he came at them. He was moving faster than it was. As he took a fourth long stride he turned the staff's rotation into forward motion. He punched a butt cap into the ice with all his weight and strength thrusting it.

Wizardlight held Cashel in a sphere of lightning-cored needles, each of them stabbing into the marrow of his bones. It would've been agony if he could really feel, but the pain was so intense that his mind floated above it. He marveled that his flesh didn't blacken and slough away.

He was sitting on the ice again. Men were running past him, their mouths open with shouts that Cashel couldn't hear. Sharina knelt at his side. He couldn't hear her either, but her left hand stroked his cheek. Warmth and feeling returned to his body, the pain draining away as though Sharina's gentle fingers had lanced a boil.

Cashel lurched to his feet. In the wall of icewas gap he could've driven a yoke of oxen through. The edges still sizzled as azure light ate them away. Garric and his soldiers were clambering through the opening to the chamber beyond.

"Cashel?" Sharina said. "Can you walk?"

"I can run," growled Cashel, and he started forward again.

Sharina's heart leaped as she watched a sphere of nothingness engulf Cashel as he drove his staff into the center of the ice. It looked black because it had neither hue nor reflection, an absence of anything.

The emptiness vanished; maybe it'd been an illusion. Cashel flew back as though something huge had kicked him, but he still held his quarterstaff.

Sharina ran to him. She had a funny, detached feeling. She didn't hurt nor even feel tired, but she wasn't sure that it was her own strength that moved her limbs. Beard was more than an axe-she'd known that from the moment she picked him up and he started shouting-but she was beginning to wonder howmuch more than an axe he was.

"Beardserves his mistress," the axe sang, his voice ringing through the echoing cacophony. "Beard would never treat his mistress the way the Augenhelm did Alfdan, the Great Fool of a Wizard!"

Sharina felt cold terror stab through her mind as she recalled Alfdan's last moments; then she laughed. "Beard," she said, "without you, all my friends would be dead and the kingdom dying too. If that means you destroy me-well, I won't be happy about it, but I'd have done the same if I'd known ahead of time."

She knelt beside Cashel, stroking his cheek with the hand that didn't hold the axe. He'd smashed a huge hole in the ice. Instead of the corridor they'd been following, there was a vast domed hall on the other side of the gap. Cashel had opened more than a mere physical barrier.

Garric and his immediate companions climbed through the opening, but the ordinary soldiers were hesitating when they realized that a blue quiver of wizardlight continued to eat the gap still wider. Cashel made a rumbling sound in his throat; he blinked and his face flushed away the frozen pallor of a moment before. He rose to his feet, an awkward, inexorable movement like that of an ox rousing from sleep, and bunched his great shoulder muscles.

"Mistress, there's great danger for your friends beyond!" said Beard urgently. He tittered and went on, "Much danger for them, and much blood for Beard to drink!"