Steel and Stone (27 page)

The half-elf offered the owl a bit of bread from his pack. The bird eyed the offering, then turned his head away. “I must hunt,” was all he said before coasting off into the valley below. Tanis sat against a rock, munching the bread, enjoying the last display of the sunset and keeping an eye on the diminishing form of Xanthar. If it weren’t for his concern about Kitiara, this would be almost pleasant. Xanthar was a crusty companion with a short temper and a sarcastic turn of wit, but so was Flint Fireforge, after all. Cradled against the rock, lazily following the movements of the owl as he swooped over the terrain, Tanis felt his eyelids drooping again.

He awakened with a start when something crashed into the ground before him. Instinctively he leaped to his feet, his sword in his hand, although he couldn’t recall unsheathing it. But no goblin or slig crouched before him. In fact, Tanis could see no threat at all in the twilight. His gaze fell to the ground. The body of a small rabbit lay twisted on the rocks. He looked up, and his nightvision caught Xanthar far overhead.

Bread will not take you far, half-elf
.

Tanis waved his thanks. Then he gathered dry grass and twigs and found a few branches at the bottom of a dead tree. He was on one of the few escarpments with foliage, and he realized that Xanthar had taken that into account before choosing a spot to land. Tanis scraped at the inner bark of the branches and added the resulting fluff to his pile of tinder, which he moved to the leeward side of the boulder against which he’d slept. Then Tanis struck steel against flint. Several times sparks fizzled, then one finally caught. Carefully, the half-elf fed dry grass and twigs to the spark until it grew into a flame. Then he poked larger twigs into the tiny blaze. Soon he was crouched before a respectable campfire, skinning and gutting the rabbit and sliding the meat onto a long, peeled stick. He propped the stick on two rocks and sniffed the aroma as fat from the rabbit dripped and sizzled.

Xanthar returned as Tanis removed the cooked rabbit from the fire. The bird landed on the ground but stayed well away from the flames. He shook his head at the half-elf’s offer to share.

“Cooked flesh doesn’t suit my pallet,” the giant bird said. “Fire destroys the taste, to my mind.”

As Tanis dined, the owl walked—although “waddled” might better describe his passage, the half-elf thought—to a bent pine and made himself comfortable
on the stub of a broken branch. Xanthar closed his eyes and buried his golden beak deep in the pale fluff of his throat.

Tanis, his belly comfortably full, leaned against the warm boulder and gazed at Xanthar, who huddled next to the trunk of the tree. Once, as though sensing the half-elf’s stare, the giant owl opened one eye a slit, then reversed his position on the branch, presenting a dark back to the half-elf. Tanis saw the horned feet lock around the branch stub. The bird seemed to sag, and Tanis knew his companion was asleep.

Chapter 15
The Icereach

I
T WAS THE COLD OF DEATH,
K
ITIARA WAS SURE.
H
ER
face, breasts, and hips were pressed against snow. The front of her shirt was sodden; the back seemed stiff, as though coated and frozen. Her feet felt like logs. She was dimly aware that her right hand still clutched a shard of shale from Fever Mountain. In the far distance, waves crashed. Nearer, she heard coughing.

If this was the Abyss, it was like no Abyss she’d been warned about. She must be dead, yet Kitiara sensed the cold, tasted the snow, felt hunger. Certainly she heard what sounded like the ettin, rejoicing about something. And over it all, the moan of the wind and the boom of the sea.

Kitiara raised her head. Her hair was nearly solid with sleet. She pressed nerve-impaired hands against her face and, ignoring the wind that drove into her exposed skin like needles, picked at the ice that coated one cheek. Her eyelids were nearly frozen shut. Finally she managed to open her eyes to slits.

She found herself staring straight into a pair of fleshless jaws, incisors hanging down like icy stalactites, other teeth jutting up like stalagmites. Kitiara drew back with a shout, fumbled for her sword and her dagger, and remembered that she no longer had either. The beast into whose mouth she now gazed had been dead for generations. What it originally had been, Kitiara couldn’t tell, but she could have nestled comfortably in its gaping jaws. It was the skull of some long-dead beast; the rest of the skeleton was nowhere to be seen.

The ettin leaned against the thick joint that held the jaws together. Its right head was asleep, lolling against the left, a frozen dribble of drool down one side of its chin. The left head grinned at the swordswoman. There was no sneaking away when the ettin was asleep; the creature’s heads slept in shifts.

“Where are we?” she shouted over the sound of the storm. She could barely see the ettin through the clouds of blowing snow.

Res-Lacua grinned wider. “Home,” it said. “Home, home, home.”

“The Icereach?” she demanded. Her tone awakened the right head, and now two ettin faces grinned at her. Cursing the wind, the snow, and particularly the ettin, the swordswoman managed to pull herself to her feet, but her muscles were too numb to respond easily. She lurched like a drunkard, catching herself against one long tooth of the monster. How long had she and
Lida been lying exposed in the snow?

“Kitiara! What … what is that thing?” It was Lida Tenaka, huddled in her robe, staring in horror at the jaws of the fleshless beast. Her lips were blue, but her hands were busy. When Kitiara shrugged, the mage shuddered. Lida returned to her task—tracing magical symbols in the air. She began to chant. Kitiara waited for a magical campfire to warm them, for a pair of mugs of steaming buttered rum to materialize before them, for anything that would ease the bitter cold that engulfed her.

But there was nothing—just a sputter and a tiny flame that wouldn’t have lit the driest tinder. Lida’s hands fluttered to her lap and her lips stopped moving. Her eyes looked stricken. “It’s just like Darken Wood,” she said, her words barely audible above the howl of the wind. “My magic won’t work right, Kitiara. I can’t reach Xanthar. It’s as though I’m in the presence …”

“… of a far greater power,” finished Janusz, stepping into view from behind the skull. “A power who finds it easy to stop you, Lida. I taught you and Dreena, after all.” Despite his thin robe, the ancient-looking mage seemed comfortable in the bitter weather, and Kitiara noticed that the air around him shimmered as he moved.

“You’ve cast a spell to protect you from the elements,” Lida murmured. Her shivering was nearly out of control now. Kitiara had no feeling left in her extremities; when she tried to take a few steps toward the man—intending to do what, she wasn’t sure—her limbs would not respond.

Janusz laughed harshly. At his gesture, the storm lessened. “Yes, I warrant the two of you are getting a bit chilly by now, as opposed to my two-headed
friend, who seems quite content without any magical help.” He gestured toward Res-Lacua. The ettin was capering in the snow and sleet like a lamb in a meadow.

“The jaws,” explained Janusz, “are the remnants of long-gone races of creatures whose size and strength weren’t enough to save them from the Cataclysm. The Ice Folk scavenge the bones of these creatures to build fences around their pitiful villages.”

Neither woman spoke. Both were unbearably cold. After surveying them with barely veiled contempt, Janusz barked an order to Res-Lacua, who scampered behind the skull and came back with two mounds of thick white fur. Within seconds, the two women were wrapped in the skins. “The Ice Folk who once owned these garments no longer need them,” Janusz said with a thin smile. Lida shivered at his words, but Kitiara glowered.

“I want to know where we are,” Kit snapped.

Janusz pursed his lips. “So demanding, for a captive. Yet I’m inclined to be generous. After all, I’m about to get my stolen property back.” He sneered at Kitiara, who narrowed her eyes but said nothing.

“You are correct, Captain,” Janusz finally said. “You are on the Icereach—at the northern edge of the glacier, actually, just south of Ice Mountain Bay. That doesn’t help? It doesn’t matter. Neither of you will be going anyplace—unless, of course, you choose to cooperate with us.”

“How did we get here?” Lida asked quietly. Her breath froze in the air as she spoke.

“I teleported you to this spot, then teleported myself to meet you here. I thought that the uninhabitable surroundings might dissuade you from any thoughts of escape.”

“I don’t understand,” the lady mage said. “That’s not how teleporting works. I thought you needed an artifact.”

“The ettin had one.”

“But—”

“That’s all I intend to reveal.”

“But—”

“Enough!” Janusz thundered. Fearfully Lida clutched the front of her fur coat. “Ask Kitiara about the ice jewels she stole from me. She can clarify why you are here.”

Lida turned toward Kitiara. “You’re responsible for this? Do you know what he and the Valdane are doing, the damage they’re causing? The deaths, the heartbreak among the Ice Folk?”

Kitiara snorted. “Do I care?” she shot back. “Let the Ice Folk take care of themselves.”

At that moment, Kitiara heard a howl from the south. “Wolves,” the swordswoman said. “But like none I’ve ever heard before.”

“Dire wolves,” Janusz said.

That information offered no solace. Moments later, snow churning under their broad feet, a dozen huge wolves drew up, attached to an empty sledge by braided leather thongs.

Kitiara had seen wolves before, of course, but these were fearsome, snarling beasts, a sea of gray, white, and black fur on scraggly bodies. One gray beast, the largest of the pack, stood motionless at the fore, eyeing Kitiara through bloodshot eyes. Plumes of steam rose from its mouth, forming ice drops on its muzzle.

They didn’t seem to be primed for attack. Kitiara looked questioningly at Janusz.

“They eat only meat, dead or alive. There’s not much else to eat down here, of course. They’re as stupid
as ice floes and always hungry, so don’t turn your back on them, Captain Uth Matar.”

Kitiara raised her eyebrows. At a sign from Janusz, Res-Lacua brandished a whip and hustled the women on board the wooden sledge. The ettin cracked the whip and sent the wolves driving to the left, then to the right, breaking the runners free of the ice. The lurch sent the swordswoman crashing back into the lady mage. Soon the two women were kneeling as they rode with their hands braced on the wooden sides. The ettin raced behind.

Kitiara looked around for Janusz. Janusz was levitating a few inches above the ground, off to their right, his robe fluttering in the wind as he matched their speed across the Icereach, heading inland over the snow.

All of a sudden they stopped. The ettin pushed warily ahead, placing one foot in front of the other cautiously. Janusz watched but said nothing.

“What is it?” Lida whispered to Kitiara. “I sense nothing magical—nothing new, anyway.”

The swordswoman shrugged. “Looks the same as the rest of the Icereach to me. Windswept, chunks of ice strewn all over. A few hill-sized blocks, but otherwise snow, snow, and more snow. Maybe a bit of a depression up ahead, but …”

At that moment, the ettin broke through the snow and disappeared with a shout into a gaping hole. Janusz chanted and traced figures in the air, and Res-Lacua floated back up through the hole, laughing as he landed back on solid ice. Kitiara slipped out of the sledge, dashed forward, and leaned over the edge of the crevasse.

The crevasse was a hundred feet deep. Kitiara hastily backed away from the edge. “It’s a crack in the ice,”
she told Lida. “And it’s practically invisible until you fall into it.”

“Another barrier to an invading army,” Janusz commented.

Soon they resumed, cutting to the west around the crevasse and then veering south again. Nearly as quickly, however, they drew to another stop. “Now what?” Kitiara muttered. Lida pointed to a dark patch in the snow. “A lake?” Kitiara asked. “In this climate?”