David Drake - The Fortress of Glass

The ice was breaking up, crackling and groaning underfoot. A great slab tilted vertical close by Ilna's left side, then slipped back with a moan. Salt water shot up from the fissure in a rainbow geyser; the whole ice sheet undulated in a web of spreading cracks.

Water as warm as blood sluiced ankle-deep across her feet. She paused, then stamped onward when the flow ceased. The ice, already slick, now glistened mirror-bright and smooth. She paced on because there was no choice and no other hope.

The snapping grew to a roar and the ice began to shiver. A chasm was opening, rushing toward Ilna faster than she could walk away from it. She didn't run because she couldn't run with Cervoran's weight to carry; and if she tried she'd fall; and if she fell, she'd fail.

She was blind with effort. Her breaths burned as she dragged them in through her open mouth.

Ilna had no God to pray to because she didn't believe in the Gods, and no one to curse because her own choice had brought her to this. Curses would be as empty as prayers, and anyway she wouldn't curse.

Cervoran lifted away from her. Her eyes focused. Cashel was beside her, striding for the ship again with the once-dead wizard over this shoulder. Chalcus caught Ilna around the waist and snatched her overhead with an acrobat's grace and a strength that belied his trim body. Together the men ran the last few steps back to the ship and handed their burdens aboard. A burly crewman took Ilna and lowered her to the hollow planking beneath the outrigger.

She turned. The ice sheet was pulling apart in a torrent dancing with great yellow chunks. The split reached theHeron, lifting the ship and shaking it like a dog before dropping it to wallow freely in open water.

"To your benches, buckos!" Chalcus shouted. "Panshin, give us the stroke on your flute! On yourlives, my lads!"

Ilna stepped up to a bench and jumped, catching the railing around the raised deck. Chalcus was mounting in a single smooth motion, swinging his feet over with a twist of his shoulders. Ilna wasn't an acrobat or a sailor, but she heaved herself onto the rail, balanced, and rotated her body to stand upright. Tenoctris was beside her, holding the quarterstaff vertical in both hands.

Cashel, methodical as always, lifted Cervoran to the deck like a sack of grain and pulled himself up. The ship pitched and yawed, but that always happened when oarsmen shifted back to their places.

Cashel took his staff with a smile and a murmur of thanks. He looked past Cervoran toward the island.

Tenoctris said, "May I look at the diadem, Ilna?" In a warmer tone she added, "You saved our lives, you know. At least our lives."

Ilna looked down in surprise. She was holding the crown in her right hand, the gold wire twisted into a knot by her grip. The big topaz winked, reminding her of the ice now shattered about theHeron.

"I…," said Ilna. She wasn't sure what to say next so she just handed the crown to Tenoctris. It wasn't really damaged. Pure gold was nearly as flexible as silk, so the band could easily be bent back into its original shape.

The ship was getting under way. Only half the oars pulled water on the first stroke, but the remaining rowers were sliding onto their benches and picking up the rhythm. Chalcus called, "Aye, lads, your backs or your necks. Put your backs in it, sailors!"

Tenoctris was examining the crown, turning it by the band but eyeing the play of light in the heart of the stone. Ilna wondered if she should've thrown the jewel into the sea, but if she'd done that… It must've had something to do with Garric's disappearance, so it was the best chance they had for returning the prince to his kingdom and Garric to the friends who needed him just as surely as the kingdom did.

Cashel kept his back to the two women; his quarterstaff stood upright like a supporting pillar. Cervoran sprawled ahead of him on the catwalk, his eyes open but unseeing. He might have been dead, Ilna thought; and smiled grimly. Dead again, that is.

The sea leaped with violent ripples centered on the place in the near distance where Cervoran had stood to chant. Violent blows hammered theHeron 's keel. Oars clattered as a few of the rowers lost the stroke, but they picked it up again almost instantly. When Ilna looked down on the benches she saw faces set in fear and stony determination.

Water bubbled, mounded, and finally climbed to the sky in theHeron 's wake. The rowers faced backward, so all of them could watch. This time they kept the rhythm, taking themselves farther from what was happening behind them with every stroke.

The roar filled the sky and flattened the chop. The sea mounded in a huge circle, spreading outward from the rising dome. Fish and flotsam and yellow foam danced in the churning water.

A gleaming, turreted crystal mountain rose from the surface, throwing shattered sunlight back in as many shards as the stars of a winter night. The sea heaved, exposing or distorting three legs that shimmered into the depths.

The deepest trench in the Inner Sea, Chalcus had said. And this thing came out of it.

"The Fortress of Glass," Tenoctris said wonderingly. Ilna remembered the words from Cervoran's mouth as he rose from his trance in the depths of the topaz. "There's nothing in any of my records, but here it is."

Ilna put an arm around the older woman's waist and gripped the railing with her other hand; Cashel knelt and grasped a handful of Cervoran's collar. The spreading wave lifted the ship and flung it forward, but neither wizard went overboard.

There was confusion on the benches but at least half the crew kept their oar looms and at least a semblance of the rhythm. Blades cracked together, but not badly; the men who'd been thrown down returned to their seats and their duty. They were trained men, picked men; men fit for a leader like Chalcus.

TheHeron drove back toward harbor. Chalcus gestured to Panshin; the flute-player increased his tempo. They were drawing away from the fortress, but it was high enough to be seen even from the island's shore.

Things slipped from the crystal battlements and splashed into the sea. Flotsam, Ilna thought. Scraps of seaweed and muck from the abyss, lifted when the fortress rose.

Instead of bobbing at the base of the crystal walls, the blobs moved outward. They were hellplants like the one that had attacked the palace, and they were swimming in theHeron 's wake.

"Captain Chalcus!" Cashel called. He'd gotten to his feet again and was looking over the bow. "Look ahead of us, sir!"

Ilna bent outward to look also. Ahead of the ship, rising from the depths like foul green bubbles swelling from a swamp, were more hellplants. They moved toward theHeron on strokes of their powerful tentacles.

Chalcus snatched a boat pike from one of the stern racks; the shaft was half again his height. Using it for a balance pole, he jumped to the rail. Looking out, he called, "Hard aport!" sharply. The steersman leaned into the tiller of the port steering oar.

TheHeron heeled toward the oar, making the blade cut deeper into the water and tightening the turn. Chalcus shifted his footing slightly, leaning further for a better view past the hull; the pike in his hands moved inboard to balance him.

The show was as good as any troupe of the acrobats who'd entertained at palace dinners, but here it was in dead earnest. The rail was the only place where Chalcus could both conn them through the gauntlet of swimming monsters and be sure the steersman could hear his orders instantly in the likely tumult of the next minutes.

"The plants ahead of us must've been going to attack the palace," Tenoctris said, pursing her lips. She spoke loudly enough for to be heard, but it seemed to Ilna that she was organizing her own thoughts rather than informing her friends. "The person, the thing in the fortress must really control them to send them against us instead."