David Drake - Godess of the Ice Realm

"Look!" cried a man standing at the sea edge. He'd suddenly dug in the sand with his spear butt. "Look at this diamond!"

"I don't much like this place," Layson said, holding a nocked arrow to his bow. He'd walked slowly toward Sharina and her companions, looking around watchfully.

"You're right not to like it," said Beard. "But it likes you all very much."

"We've found what we came for," Sharina said, aware that she sounded harsh. "Now let's get back."

She touched Alfdan's sleeve. She didn't have to pull hard as she'd thought she might: he came with no more than guidance.

"Oh!" cried Franca, rising from the sand where he'd knelt, holding up an object. "Oh! My father's charm! I thought it'd been…"

Sharina looked at it, a disk of porcelain with a relief of the Shepherd leaning on his staff between a pair of fruit trees. It was pierced to be hung from a thong. Priests sold them when they came through Barca's Hamlet with the Tithe Procession; several people in the borough had similar ones, more as talismans than for deeper religious reasons.

It hadn't brought much luck for Franca's father; but then this was one of thousands of identical disks and might have nothing to do with the man…

Franca turned it over and showed Sharina the name clumsily scratched on the back. "Orrin!" he said. "My father!"

She felt cold. "Let's get out of here!" she said, loud enough they could all hear. Most of the band was now digging at the sea's edge and chirruping in delight.

"The currents sweep things into this bay and leave them," Alfdan said, looking around with a critical eye. "There's probably more things here. Things of unimaginable value!"

"You think the sea brought you that ring, wizard?" Beard said. "Do you really think that?"

"I didn't say the sea!" Alfdan said. "There's more currents than those in the water, axe!"

"So there are," said Beard. "And who controls them, do you know? I don't; but I don't want my mistress to learn!"

"Leave him if he wants to stay!" Layson muttered. "I'm going back."

"Come!" said Sharina, pulling the wizard's arm. She stepped and her toe stubbed something. A bit of driftwood, she thought as she glanced down reflexively; but she'd flipped up the weathered back to expose a surface of fresh yellow pine with a crude carving.

Sharina picked it up. She was trembling. "Mistress?" said Scoggin in concern.

Somebody'd carved a figure of the Lady on the scrap of wood; the sort of thing that a traveller might make when he wanted to pray of an evening in a distant place. You had to know what the scratchesmust be to identify the image, and you couldn't possibly tell who'd made them.

But Sharina knew. "Nonnus…," she whispered.

With sudden certainty, she turned and flung the scrap toward the sea. "Come!" she said. "Now!"

She strode toward the doorway, no longer concerned whether Alfdan and the rest followed her or not. Scoggin and Layson were quickly at her side. Franca trotted along after when he saw them leaving. The wizard was coming, and the others as well.

"What was that, mistress?" Scoggin asked, now more concerned about her than he was for their surroundings. "That you found?"

"The man who carved that died for me," Sharina said. She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand, but everything was still a blur. "Died for me and the world, I suppose; but for me. I don't know why it was here, but I know that whatever rules this place isn't a friend of mine. So I gave it back."

She stepped through the doorway, into chill air and a sky in which the sun was already hidden beneath the high cliffs. She'd forgotten the sheepskin but she didn't care; the relief was as great as what she'd felt when she breathed again after her third plunge into the fjord.

Neal walked back to the doorway with a stunned expression. He held something cupped in his left hand, but he wasn't looking at it or even toward his hand. Alfdan followed, reaching for the key as he passed through. He stopped when he realized that a handful of men were still on the beach side of the portal.

"Come along!" the wizard shouted peevishly. "You won't be able to return after I take the key out!"

That brought them at a shambling run. Two were chattering toward one another with animation; toward, not to, because neither could've been listening to what the other said. The rest were in a state of numb concern, their expressions much like Neal's.

Alfdan twisted the key. "Wait!" said Neal, putting his right hand over the wizard's. He flung the object in his left hand back through the opening, then turned away. Sharina caught a glimpse of something spinning in the sunlight; a miniature painted on ivory.

Alfdan withdrew the key; they were all standing before a gutted tower, its door sagging inward. Neal caught Sharina's eye and muttered, "What did I want with that? She's been dead all these years!"

"Yes," said Sharina. "I understand."

She turned to the wizard and said, "I've carried out my part of the bargain; now it's your turn. Take me to the farthest north. Take me to where She is."

"Are you mad?" Alfdan said. "You'd find nothing there but your death!"

"I'll die anyway," Sharina said. "Sooner or later. If we kill Her, perhaps it'll be later."

"Go, then," Alfdan snarled. "But you'll go alone. When I said I'd carry you where you wanted to go, I didn't mean I'd commit suicide. I'll not take you to Her!"

"If he'll not keep his bargain with us, mistress," said Beard in a coyly musing tone, "then there's no reason for him to live, is there?"

The wizard backed away and stumbled. "There's no need for that," Sharina said sharply to her axe.

"There's no need for threats," Neal said in near echo. "Master Alfdan, you and Mistress Sharina made a bargain. She kept her part; and you'll keep yours."

"Are youall mad, then?" Alfdan said, looking around the circle of his followers. "Do you want to die? That's all you can possibly do if you go to Her!"

"I don't…," Burness began in a small voice.

"Shut up, old man!" Layson snarled. "We didn't make a bargain with the wizard, butshe did; and he's going to keep it or she won't have to kill him. I will!"

Alfdan rubbed his forehead; the amethyst on his finger winked like a fairy's eye. "It'll take days," he said. "Even in the Queen Ship."

"Oh, days are fine," said Beard. "We have days and weeks and months before the ice covers all."

He tittered like a steel skeleton. "Days and weeks and months, yes," he said. "But not years, no, not if you don't kill Her very quickly. For She'll have drained all warmth and all power from this world and there'll be no blood left for Beard to drink!"

Blue wizardlight flared in a roaring sphere around theBird of the Tide. When it vanished, Ilna had the momentary impression that she was blind and seeing stark black and white images of the Hell inside her mind.

TheBird tipped to its left, crunching on cracked rock. The vessel's hull was shallow so she didn't go all the way over on her side, but the mast now tilted at an angle halfway between the horizon and the roiling yellow sky. The air stank fiercely of brimstone, making Ilna's eyes water and her bare skin sting.

Pointin had fallen against the port railing hard enough to knock the breath out of him. That kept him silent, the one good thing Ilna could find in this situation.

No! She was unharmed, Chalcus and the crew were unharmed-and they were all in the place they'd chosen to go in order to do their duty. She had no reason whatever for complaint.

Ilna braced her left foot on the railing and squinted to save her eyeballs as much as she could while she looked at the landscape. It was an awful place.

Spikes of rock, cut deeper where layers rested on one another, rose from flat, cracked terrain. The wind that had ravaged them whipped around theBird now, rocking her violently. Chalcus and the men leaped to the lines, bringing the spar clattering down; there was no time to furl the sail properly.