David Drake - Godess of the Ice Realm

On every isle, in every home, voices rose in praise for the Divine Ilna. What had been a kingdom became a temple, as a new and eternal Golden Age came to the Isles.

"What you deserve…," the voice whispered affectionately.

Ilna laughed, a harsh, bitter sound that shattered the illusion. She stood among the frozen figures beneath the great dome again. "What I deserve," she said as the Tree swayed in a vain, desperate attempt to touch her, "is to die-because of the harm I did when I listened to you before. Never again."

She stepped forward. She'd reached the line of soldiers and squeezed between them, sometimes ducking under an outstretched blade or a thrusting shield. The men were in tight ranks, but Ilna was a slender woman.

Garric stood with his sword raised and his right foot lifting from the ice to lunge toward the creature above him. Ilna touched her friend's shoulder in a protective gesture. She smiled at Her, thinking with a rare surge of pride, Despite the evil which I did and can never repay, I didn't become that; and I might have.

"You have no power over me either!" She said. "However great your art, you can't touch me!"

"Is that what you think?" said Ilna. She chuckled and slipped her little knife from its bone sheath. The keen steel edge winked like a demon's tongue. "What I think is that I'll reach a vein with this eventually, even if I have to dig for a while."

She mounted the lowest step, grinning like a cat.

The creature on the throne screamed in warbling terror. I didn't become a coward, either, Ilna thought, and climbed the next step.

The throne trembled. She was straining to stand, channeling forces to lift a body too massive for human muscles to move.

"You can't run from me!" Ilna said. "You can't run from yourself, Ilna os-Kenset!"

The Tree shuddered as its bed shifted, rocking like the surf in a storm. Ilna struggled onto the third step despite the rippling violence.

The vast white form screamed again; then She toppled sideways, unable to balance the mass on Her tiny feet. She struck the floor with the weight not only of Her body but also the load of trembling evil which grew from it.

There was a soggy crash, then a roar. The ice, already weakened when the dead climbed out of it, broke open.

Water just warmer than the ice fountained from the hole, then dropped back. A second geyser, this time tinged with blood, followed an instant later. The things swimming beneath the chamber were feeding.

Wizardlight began to fade from the walls the way sparks do after they've been flung onto a stone hearth. Ilna swayed; then the throne pitched with greater violence and she fell backward.

The net that'd held them the way winter ice coats a gargoyle dissolved. Garric, free to move again, saw Ilna fall backward. He sheathed his sword with a skill that'd become unconscious when he awakened the spirit of King Carus in his mind and caught Ilna with both hands. She was a solid weight to arms fatigued by the brutal fighting, but Garric figured he could carry her as far as he needed to go.

The glow in the cavern walls suddenly dimmed. Garric could see men in silhouette, but the floor strewn with corpses and debris was in darkness.

Garric turned his head. The door we entered by is -

As the thought leaped through his mind, the trail of light Tenoctris had sent to guide them brightened to a fierce blue glare. Now it lit the route instead of just indicating it.

"Cashel, hold your sister!" Garric said, swinging Ilna toward his friend.

The steps up the throne were twice the normal height; he jumped rather than stepping. Behind he heard Ilna say, "I'm perfectly all right! I just slipped!"

That was doubtless true-Garric doubted Ilna even understood why anybody wouldwant to lie-but he hadn't had time to check. Tenoctris' blazing guide ended above the seat, quivering like a plucked lute string. Garric turned and set one leg to either side of the light. Through a megaphone of his hands he bellowed, "Go back! Get out of here fast!"

A cornicene somewhere in the chamber blewRetreat on his coiled horn. Garric was happier to hear that sound than he'd have been if a priest assured him that the Lady would fold his soul to her bosom when he died. He didn't trust priests And hesure didn't trust this warren of chambers and tunnels. He could hear the ice groaning, louder with each passing moment. More than the strength of the material had kept Her palace from collapsing; and though Garric was very glad that Her power had drained away when she died, he'd prefer not to be buried in the heart of a glacier.

The cornicene repeated his call. Many of the soldiers were already turning. There was nothing about this frozen darkness that made men want to remain if they were offered an excuse to leave. For a moment Garric thought he heard an echo; then he realized that a signaler back down the tunnel was relaying the call on a trumpet. All the humans in the chamber, Her throne room, were following the guide back to the their own world.

Thought of his men made Garric look around the hall in sudden concern. The things that werenot men, Her minions-where were they? Retreating in near darkness could be more dangerous than "They're running, lad," said Carus, whose experience had let him see more through Garric's eyes than Garric himself had. "As soon as She went into the drink, they took off for the exits. Running or crawling, if they were the sorts that crawl. I'd say a lot of those creatures had a good notion of what was going to come to them next if something hadn't happened to Her instead."

Garric glanced down beside him reflexively. The water was generally as black as the ice that had covered it, but it roiled. Occasionally fangs glinted above the surface as a late-comer or perhaps just an optimist snapped at the diluting blood.

"It wasn't your friend," Carus said softly.

Someone was jogging toward the center of the hall, against the flow of soldiers heading for the exit. Garric touched his hilt, uncertain in the halflight; then he saw a shimmer as the figure sheathed his curved sword: Chalcus.

Garric relaxed. Ilna stepped forward and embraced the sailor.

No, agreed Garric. It wasn't my Ilna. It couldn't have been her.

It could have been me, Ilna thought. She trembled with fear of what hadn't quite happened. It wasme, She was me!

"Dear heart?" said Chalcus. "I've been cut more times than ever so great a scholar could count, but the truth is I've never learned to like it. If you must prick me, prick away; but otherwise…?"

"Oh!" said Ilna. She stepped back and slipped her blade into its case, then returned the little tool to her sleeve. She didn't ordinarily think of a knife as a weapon; her instinct was for the noose, but that was shriveling in a pool of sulfur on a world she hoped never to revisit. She'd completely forgotten that she held the blade in her hand when she threw her arms around Chalcus' neck.

Garric climbed down from the ice throne, stepping as awkwardly as an ox descending a steep bank instead of the catlike grace with which he'd mounted. Ilna smiled in her mind. Many things were easier to do when you didn't have time to think about them.

The rod of light shone from above, throwing pools of shadow over men's feet and turning their faces into grotesque masks. Garric looked at his friends and said, "We need to get moving too. As a matter of fact, the rest of you go on ahead and I'll-"

"We'll stay with you, Garric," Cashel said. He didn't raise his voice more than required by the sound of the ice in its dying agony, but the fact he interrupted was itself enough to surprise those who knew him.

"Yes," said Ilna. "We've been apart long enough."

"Now that we've decided we're going to stick together…," said a grizzled soldier at Garric's side. He had the heavy breastplate and sword of a regular infantryman, but for some reason he was carrying a pikeman's shield. "Can we maybe do it a little closer to the way out of this place?"