Goddess of the Ice Realm

Look For
MASTER of the CAULDRON

(0-8125-6170-8)

by DAVID DRAKE

Available now
from Tom Doherty Associates

www.tor.com

 

The fifth book in the mighty fantasy

For the first time in a thousand years, the lands that make up the Isles have been united under one leader, young Prince Garric from Haft. This is also the moment when the cosmic forces that provide the elemental power upon which magicians draw are at a thousand year peak. Wizards of even small learning are immensely powerful. Human greed and evil are reinforced by supernatural energies.

Starting in
Lord of the Isles,
and continuing in
Queen of Demons, Servant of the Dragon, Mistress of the Catacombs,
and now
Goddess of the Ice Realms,
David Drake tells the continuing, interlocking story of Garric and Sharina, Cashel and Ilna, young brother and sister pairs who journey together from a small town to the capital, and whose destiny is to reunite the kingdoms of the Isles into one empire for the first time in a millennium.

•    •    •

“With
Goddess of the Ice Realm,
Drake once again shows that originality is possible in the fantasy realm. It's not just another ‘beat a wizard, slay a monster' epic, although there are wizards and monsters of the best style; things happen for a
reason.
This series shows a real understanding of how politics in a monarchic system works. Prince Garric can't just slash his way through things—he has to work at governance, and he has to win the cooperation of others to do so. The ensemble cast of characters continues to charm, and at the same time to change. Serious issues of choice and moral responsibility face them along with the ghouls and spells. All in all, a solid addition to an outstanding fantasy series.”

—Steve Stirling

Tor Books by David Drake

The Dragon Lord

Time Safari

From the Heart of Darkness

Skyripper

The Forlorn Hope

Birds of Prey

Cross the Stars

Killer
(with Karl Edward Wagner)

Fortress

Bridgehead

The Jungle

The Square Deal

The Voyage

Tyrannosaur

Patriots

L
ORD OF THE
I
SLES

Lord of the Isles

Queen of Demons

Servant of the Dragon

Mistress of the Catacombs

Goddess of the Ice Realm

Master of the Cauldron

The Fortress of Glass

The Mirror of Worlds

David Drake

NOTE: If you purchased this book without a cover you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as “unsold and destroyed” to the publisher, and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this “stripped book.”

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are either products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously.

GODDESS OF THE ICE REALM

Copyright © 2003 by David Drake

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form.

Edited by David G. Hartwell
Maps by Ed Gazsi

A Tor Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC
175 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10010

www.tor.com

Tor
^®
is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.

ISBN-13: 978-0-8125-7541-5
ISBN-10: 0-8125-7541-5
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 2003055984

First Edition: September 2003
First Mass Market Edition: July 2004

Printed in the United States of America

0 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2

To Andre Norton,
whose books have been the first contact many readers have
with real science fiction, and whose books have been a
training manual, sometimes an unconscious one, in story
values for would-be SF writers.
I'm one of those readers and writers both.

As usual, my first reader, Dan Breen, has worked to make this a better book. Dan isn't always right, but he's always worth listening to.

I didn't have an exceptional number of computer adventures with this one, but there were still occasions when the familiar conclave of Mark Van Name, Allyn Vogel, and my son Jonathan muttered things like “I've never seen that happen before. . . .”

A number of people provided me with background material for
Goddess.
Two who were particularly helpful were Marcia Decker and my British editor, Simon Spanton.

My webmaster, Karen Zimmerman, has been of inestimable value.

And finally, a general thanks to the friends and family, in particular my wife, Jo, who bore with me as I focused, getting increasingly weird—as usual—until I finished the job.

Dave Drake
david-drake.com

As is the case with most of my books, a good deal of the background to
Goddess of the Ice Realm
is real. The general religion of the Isles is Sumerian, though in some cases I've interpolated cult practice from the late Roman Republic where we simply don't know the Sumerian details.

The magic, which is separate from religion in virtually every culture and in at least my fiction, is that of the Mediterranean basin during the Classical period. The words of power, technically
voces mysticae,
are the language of demiurges who act as intercessors between humans and the gods.

I prefer not to voice the
voces mysticae,
but I have done so in conjunction with the audiobook versions of the Isles series. So far as I can tell, there was no ill result. On the other hand, I've also dropped loaded firearms without anything bad happening—that time. I don't recommend doing either thing.

The works of literature imbedded in
Goddess
are Latin classics. Rigal equates with Vergil, Celondre with Horace, and Pendill is Ovid, whom I find to bountifully repay the close readings I've been giving him this past year.

The blue and crimson flickers were as pale as the Northern Lights. They quivered through the ice of the high-domed ceiling, along the struts and down the heart of the thick crystalline pillars on which it rested. The creak and groan of the vast structure filled the half-dark like the sound of moonlit surf. The ice was alive, but it was coldly hostile to all other living things.

In the hall below were things that looked like men but were not, and things that could never have existed save here or in nightmare. Lower still, beneath the transparent ice of the floor, monstrous shadows glided through the phosphorescent water.

She sat on a throne of ice in the center of the hall, white and corpulent. In the air before Her, wizardlight twisted and coiled; and as it moved, the whole cosmos began to shift.

The ice groaned. . . .

I think the rain's going to hold off after all,” said Garric, eyeing the sky to seaward where clouds had been lowering all day as the royal fleet made its way up the western coast of Haft.

If it didn't, well, he wouldn't shrink. For most of his nineteen years he'd been a peasant who herded sheep and worked in the yard of his father's inn, often enough in the rain. But now he was Prince Garric of Haft, making a Royal Progress from Tisamur, through Cordin, and to Carcosa on Haft. He was here to convince the folk living in the West that there was a real Kingdom of the Isles again and that they were part of it. It's hard to impress people in a downpour; all they really care about is getting under cover as soon as the foreign fools let them.

“Ah, you can believe that if you wish, your highness,” said Lobon, the sailing master of the
Shepherd of the Isles.
His voice mushed through a mouthful of maca root, which oarsmen claimed gave them strength and deadened the pain of their muscles. “What
I
say is that we'll have a squall before we've settled half so many ships into their berths.”

He nodded glumly toward the harbor mouth ahead. “That's if Carcosa even
has
berths for a hundred warships. We're at the back of beyond!”

“Carcosa can berth a hundred warships,” Garric said, a trifle more sharply than the sailing master's comment deserved. “A thousand years ago when Carus was King of the Isles and Carcosa was his capital, the harbor held as many as
five
hundred.”

Lobon was a skillful judge of winds, currents, and the way to get the best out of even a clumsy quinquereme like the
Shepherd,
but he'd been born on the island of Ornifal. He was just as much of an Ornifal chauvinist as a landowning
noble like Lord Waldron, commander of the royal army.

Garric came from Barca's Hamlet on the east side of Haft. All the time he'd been growing up, Carcosa was the unimaginably great city that held all the wonder in the world. And besides Garric's own background—

“Aye, lad,”
said the ghost of King Carus, alive and vibrant in Garric's mind.
“Five hundred ships in harbor—but only when I wasn't off on campaign with them, smashing one usurper or another. And that was most times, till the Duke of Yole's wizard smashed me instead and the kingdom with me. But you'll do better, because you know not to solve all your problems with a sword!”