Barbara Hambly - 05 Icefalcons Quest

Cold Death folded her arms, a look of sadness in her button-black eyes. The day was warm, for the Ice, and the warmth rising from the lake made it more so.

Her breath barely showed when she spoke, and she'd put back her hood, the burned patches and blisters on her scalp showing through a thin stubble of new-grown hair.

If she'd escaped serious injury at Bektis' hands at all, thought the Icefalcon, she must be a far, far stronger shaman than he had ever suspected.

"The heat will burst the stones," he said. "Gil-Shalos tells me that the Keeps that were ruined-Prandhays and Black Rock and Hathyobar-were those where no Wise One surrendered life to keep the magic alive. They crumbled, as all things do with time."

"Me mother said Prandhays probably burned at one time." Hethya came over to join them, Yellow-Eyed Dog trotting at her heels. Prinyippos' illusion had begun to come to pieces-Loses His Way had said-the moment Twin Daughter's spirit-pouch was brought into his presence; it was Yellow-Eyed Dog who'd brought down the scout when he'd tried to flee.

The Icefalcon wondered if the illusion might have stood up more strongly had Bektis still had use of all his powers. Breaks Noses and his band, Loses His Way added, had never before had a warrior of the Alketch to torture; they'd prolonged the process as far as possible in a spirit of inquiry.

The Icefalcon wished he had been there to see it, though during Loses His Way's account-technical and detailed as all such accounts were among the folk of the Real World-Hethya quietly got up and left.

She seemed recovered now, though, bundled in the coat of megatherium wool and looking a little rested.

"Me mother says she found signs of burning where the stonework was repaired."

A particularly violent upheaval tossed great cakes and shards of ice to the surface of the milky waters, bubbles heaving and bursting with fog that melted imperceptibly into the miles-wide shawl of vapors covering the land.

"That has to be the Keep itself." Hethya tucked her gloved hands into her armpits for further warmth. "I imagine it'll all freeze hard again once the fires are quenched. And give all the tribes something else to talk of besides caribou tracks and megatherium dung."

"You underestimate my people, Ancestress," replied the Icefalcon gravely. "Should a chunk of rock the size of many houses fall out of the sky and make a hole in the earth, it would not hold for them such interest as a change in the seed content of musk-ox dung. Nor should it," he added. "One must, after all, know what plants grow in one's own range."

She glanced at him under her eyelashes to see if he were jesting, and he turned his face haughtily away.

The Empty Lakes People gave them provisions and sleds for their homeward journey and agreed to accompany them to the edge of the Ice. This was, the Icefalcon guessed, due to the persuasions of Loses Their Way. He saw the two clones many times, walking on either side of Breaks Noses, or sitting, talking quietly, with Beautiful Girl by the fire or at the shore of the steaming lake, Yellow-Eyed Dog lying happily at their feet.

Hethya also spent time with Beautiful Girl and seemed to get along well with her, but it was clear to the Icefalcon that Loses Their Way had no eyes for any but their wife.

"She understands that we must die soon," said Loses Their Way on the second day. "In a way I think I will be glad."

And his brother-clone nodded. They, and the Icefalcon, Hethya, and Cold Death, had gathered near the fogbound shore of the lake. It was already freezing fast, sealing in the Keep of the Shadow with all its secrets and the burned shell of an old man who had given more than he was capable of bearing.

"When we-when I-when those others-died," said Loses Their Way, "we felt it. It was-a dying. A wound that cannot be healed. We are not whole men."

"We are glad," added Loses Their Way, "at least that we helped our kin. That our names will be included in the Long Songs. And that we could see our brother Breaks Noses and our beloved Beautiful Girl, that we can die in our lands by what remains of the Night River Country with the aspens green with summer."

The Icefalcon opened his mouth to point out that the Night River Country was and always had been the range of the Talking Stars People, but he had affection for his enemy, so he did not. Instead he said, "I am glad for you, too, o my enemy. It was a good hunt."

Loses Their Way smiled like a sun god through a gold bristle of stubble. "I will tell you a secret. There is no such thing as a bad hunt, o my friend."

"Your sister tells us that the Talking Stars People have returned at last to this place," said Loses Their Way.

The Icefalcon looked sharply at Cold Death.

"They are camped on the other side of the lake, among the broken ice, near where the tunnel was," she said. "At least the mammoth I summoned for them to chase were real, and not illusion like old Pretty-Beard's."

"If you wish," said Loses Their Way, "I will linger when my people move on and go with you to their camp to tell them what I heard of Antlered Spider concerning the dream-powder given to Noon in the Summer of the White Foxes. With this evidence, even the evidence of an enemy, they must at least give you a hearing and a trial. Do you feel strong enough, my friend, to take on Blue Child in a single match?"

The Icefalcon rubbed his hands, bandaged and bruised within the marten-fur gloves, flexed the ache and the lingering weakness of fatigue in his shoulders and arms. "I have waited a long time," he said quietly,

"to meet Blue Child again."

Beneath the cold brilliance of the arctic stars he thought about Blue Child.

About Noon and Dove in the Sun.

About the Place of the Three Brown Dogs and the Valley of the Night River, the Haunted Mountain and the place called Pretty Water Creek where the Talking Stars People had their horse pens and falconries, where the white dogs of the Talking Stars People lay dozing in the ember-colored grass between the longhouses.

About the sweet taste of milk curds and mead and maple sugar, and the soul-encompassing sting of cold water after a sweat-bath, and the smell of blood and wood smoke under starlit skies.

Across the steam of the lake, thinned now to a scrim of luminous white, his eyes sought for sight of Blue Child's camp-not that even a child of the Talking Stars could see their camp. The marmoreal landscape was still, and in the sky the stars spoke the sweet fragile language that humankind could no longer comprehend.

They remembered him and knew him. There were brothers and sisters who would welcome him back.

He would at last be their chieftain, as Noon had been. From the Ice he would lead them south, to their new hunting lands, for what remained of his days and theirs.

If he survived the fight with Blue Child.

He flexed his hands. The training with the Guards of Gae was rigorous, though not, he thought, so fierce as the life lived by every child of the Talking Stars. He had trained as a Guard in part so that he would not lose that edge of strength. In his heart, he had always known that he would come back.

In spite of the food and the rest, weariness dragged at him, the inner fatigue that is not cured by a few days' rest. Rising from his blankets that morning had been like pushing a very large stone up a steep hill.

But she had been living in hardship and cold as well. Wounded, for all he knew, during the fight at the gate.

It was good odds that they were even.

He flexed the ache from his shoulders and rubbed his burned face, tender around the scraggy mess of beard. It would be strange, he thought, to be home again. Though he would never admit it to anyone, he would miss Gil-Shalos' stories-useless as they were-and the sound of Rudy's harp, and Janus' jokes, and, in spite of himself, going down to the crypts to observe Ingold's newest inventions.