David Drake - Godess of the Ice Realm

A furlong from where he'd started, Cashel saw open water in front of him. The water was brown/black under a gray film of dust and pollen; it sizzled where the base of the dome cut across it. Just as the fir trees grew only so close to the violet curve, the water's surface within an finger's breadth of it was clear of scum.

"Now," said Evne, "set me down and swim under the barrier just as I do. It's no thicker than one of your Sharina's hairs, but it'll fry you to ash if you come up beneath it. Do you understand?"

Cashel squatted at the edge of the still water and lifted the toad from his shoulder. "I understand, mistress," he said. "But I can't swim."

"Well thencrawl, you fool!" the toad snarled. "The water's barely deep enough to float a rowboat! Or if you prefer, jump straight into the barrier and blast your huge gross body to atoms!"

"Crawling sounds fine, mistress," Cashel said quietly. He probed the slough with his left hand instead of using his quarterstaff. The water was warm-blood warm, it seemed-and he was pushing his fingers into soft mud before half his forearm was wet.

"Then do it," snapped Evne. She leaped, a clumsy, splay-footed motion. For a moment she paused beneath the water's grimy surface; then her long hind legs kicked again and she vanished beneath the edge of the dome.

Cashel settled himself carefully in the water, on his belly after taking time to consider it. He didn't like the thought of squirming under the dome without seeing for sure how close he was, but he guessed he'd have an easier job digging down into the mud if he went face first.

Cashel slid his staff forward, keeping it well down in the muck. The last thing he wanted was to have it burned out of his hands before he even got close to the Visitor. He figured things were going to be tough enough as it was.

The staff was under the barrier. He pushed it with the heels of his hands, then sloshed his head under and hauled himself forward using his hands and elbows both. He didn't like water and he hated not being able to see, but nobody'd forced him to be here. Anyway, he wasn't one to complain about his work.

Cashel crawled till he couldn't hold his breath any longer. At last he jerked his head up, blowing the air out of his lungs and gasping in more. He shook himself violently, then rubbed his eyes with the back of his hand to clear some of the mud away before he opened them and looked around.

The place where he'd crossed under the dome was twice his length behind him, marked by the trail of mud spreading back to it. Evne was behind him also. His quarterstaff floated just above the surface, and she sat in the middle of it.

"Have you decided to come back for me and your staff?" she asked. "Or are you going to swim to the center of the Visitor's lair on your own? I don't recommend that, but you're the master."

"I wouldn't care to be without either one of you, mistress," Cashel said as he sloshed to the toad.

The landscape on this side of the dome was a bit different from what Cashel'd come through to reach it. On the dry land there was grass, mostly blue-stem, instead of trees. Reeds grew in the water. The air was clear instead of warm, gray fog, and the light had just the least bit of something strange. Rather than a color, there was an oddsharpness to objects. He didn't see anything like the great glowing hill that'd flown over Manor Bossian while he'd been dining there.

When Cashel looked back the way he'd come, he was scarcely aware of the dome. The air shimmered the way it might do above a hot rock in the summer sun; that was all.

With Evne back on his shoulder, Cashel wiped down his quarterstaff. The wallet's waxed leather kept its contents dry under any conditions short of floating alongside a dead whale, and the lanolin in the wool shed water anyway.

"There!" said the toad with satisfaction. She was peering at a perfectly ordinary patch of air, so far as Cashel could tell. "I was beginning to think that we'd have to get in by our own efforts."

She swiveled her little head toward him. "I don't say we wouldn't have done so," she said. "But I prefer to avoid the labor if I can. We'll have plenty of use for our strength later on."

Cashel squeezed the wool dry and put it away. He'd need it again, he figured, if things worked out.

The air just beyond his staff's reach started to twist and turn gray. Images were forming in it. Cashel had the feeling that he was looking at a rolled tapestry where both the base and the figures were woven in transparent thread. He could almost see what was there…

He stepped onto firm ground, a better place to use his staff. It also put him closer to where the air was changing: not much closer, but enough.

"Do you want to get down, Evne?" he asked, his voice husky.

"No," she said. "We'll need to move quickly in a moment."

"You're right about that," said Cashel.

The distortion vanished; a man in white robes stood in its place. He was over the water, but his gilded sandals didn't dimple the surface. In his right hand was an athame, a wizard's knife. His was forged from metal of the same violet hue as the dome seen from the outside; words of power in the Old Script wrapped around the blade in bands.

Cashel smiled in pleased surprise. "You're Ansache!" he cried. "Did you come to get your daughter free too?"

"I am Lord Ansache, seneschal to the Visitor," the man said, obviously startled. "I have no daughter, and as for why I came here-"

He raised his athame so that it pointed straight up.

"I came to cleanse the Visitor's park of the monkey that crawled in under the barrier!"

Cashel thrust the butt of his staff at Ansache's face.

"Iaththa" Ansache cried. A bolt of red wizardlight sprang at Cashel from the peak of the dome. It met a bubble of blue fire expanding from the tip of his staff and vanished.

Cashel staggered, then thrust again. Ansache screamed and flung himself backward. He turned and ran, changing angle to Cashel with every step.

"Follow!" Evne shouted. "Don't let him get away!"

"He's not," Cashel grunted as he stumbled after the running man. "He won't!"

He wasn't in the marshy landscape any more. He ran down a tunnel with mirrored walls, seeing himself on all sides and multiple copies of Ansache in front of him. The reflections crowded him, constantly warning that somebody was coming at him with a quarterstaff from the corners of his eyes.

Cashel's arms tingled all the way back to the shoulder. They felt like he'd slammed his staff into a cliff face instead of having it stop in a flash of wizardlight. His legs didn't work quite the way they should've; he rocked from side to side as he ran, as if he'd been carrying a heavy stone all the past hour.

Ansache wasn't in good shape either, though. He staggered like a drunk, flailing his arms. The purple athame seemed to be dragging him to the right. Wizardry, even failed wizardry like Ansache's, took a lot out of the fellow using it.

Ansache disappeared. Cashel was in a grove of fruit trees. And animal that looked like an armored possum stood on its hind legs to lick branches clean with a long tongue. It was as big as an ox. When it saw Cashel, it turned and raised its forepaws with blunt, black claws as long as Cashel's fingers. It uttered a hissing squeal.

"Through it!" Evne cried. "That's the pathway!"

Cashel sprang toward the beast, his staff slantwise across his body to beat aside the claws when they swung toward him. The scene-the beast and the grove both-vanished.

Cashel was in the mirrored corridor again. Ansache gave a cry of horror and despair, then lurched another step onward and disappeared.

Cashel followed. He'd follow till he died. It wasn't a conscious decision any more, it was just the way things were going to be till the business ended one way or the other.