Icefalcons Quest Read online

  He could see the rabbits in the brush, the fishlike glowing sinuosity of water elementals in the stream. He was aware of the Empty Lakes People, riding in all directions still, scattered and broken after their defeat and going back to their hunting trails, telling themselves they were fools who followed fools when mammoth and uintatheria roved the draws.

  And below him, on the flank of one rolling hill, he saw a single rider, sitting a single gray horse.

  She watched the wagons also, no expression on her fire-scarred face. A big woman, rawboned and heavy-muscled, shoulders as wide as a man's under a tunic of wolfskin, a shirt of mammoth wool she'd woven herself on a walking-loom, for who can trust another's luck and goodwill in something that will abide against one's skin?

  Somehow he could recognize her, as even from this height he could count the black spots on prairie hens. A harsh face, with mocking pale eyes, framed in hair that was white where the fire scars ran up under it. She sat at ease, her hands resting on her thighs, and when next the Icefalcon looked she was gone.

  Blue Child.

  Lover of Dove in the Sun, who had died on a hunting raid under his command.

  Usurper of his birthright, who had branded him a coward and pulled darkness over the last year of old Noon's life.

  Engineer of a hoax upon their mutual Ancestors that could have cost all the people dearly through the winter.

  And warchief of the Talking Stars People.

  Some day, thought the Icefalcon, and I think the day will be soon, there will be a reckoning between us.

  The sun called to him, climbing in its splendor at noon. But the air seethed with demons, smoky forms invisible in the dazzle, and he would be a fool, he thought, to challenge them. So he sought the earth again, and the warm cave under the cut bank, where Cold Death sat beside his body, murmuring spells to keep demons and death at bay.

  Chapter 9

  "Any change?"

  Minalde shook her head. "I tell myself it's better that way," she whispered, though Gil suspected, looking down at the still bronze face of the man on the bed, that Rudy was beyond being waked. A single pine knot burning in an iron holder smeared gritty yellow light on the younger woman's features. With no guarantee how long the siege would last, use of torches and pine knots was kept to a minimum.

  There was no need for more light in this room anyway. Ilae came in several times a day to check on her patient and renew the spells of healing, the spells of warmth that kept him from sinking into cold and death, but as a mage she could see in the dark. When Alde sat here, as she came in many times a day to do, she needed no more light than the single lamp could provide.

  Even by its forgiving radiance she looked horrible, wasted and white and beaten. Gil knew she kept up a good face where others could see her. In the Keep they called her brave. Here she wept.

  Rudy had been Gil's friend for seven years, since their first unfortunate meeting in the California hills. He was the final link that held her to the world they both had abandoned, the world neither ever quite forgot. She had shed tears in this room herself.

  "Look, I hate to bug you about this," she said, "but Lord Sketh will die of grief if he doesn't see you. I can tell him to get lost if you want.

  Minalde shook her head and squeezed out the rag that lay soaking in a bowl of scented vinegar water to wipe down her face. "I'll have to eventually," she said. "My old nurse always told me, 'There's no sense putting off."'

  She got up. When she was working-meeting with the Keep Lords, hearing the endless squabbles and quibbles that the Keep dwellers brought to her for justice, conferring with the hunters and the wardens of the hydroponics gardens about the division of food and labor-she dressed in one of several formal gowns, cut and styled after the fashion they had learned in the days of the Realm's strength to associate with dignity and authority.

  She was so dressed now: train, flowing sleeves, lavish embroidered trapunto- and jewel-work patterns, though few people in the Keep knew that she took delight in making the gowns herself. The green wool looked muddy by the smoky light, the red velvet of the pillows behind her like old blood.

  "We might as well get it over with." Alde readjusted the elaborate braids of her coiffure, pinned over them the veil that had been part of her trousseau, pale-green silk that fell past her hips. "I know what Lady Sketh wants."

  Generally when Lord Sketh asked for an audience it was Lady Sketh's idea.

  "We haven't even asked their intention," declared the tall, pearshaped man, folding his hands before the worked silver buckle of his belt. "We've made ourselves prisoners here, living like jailbirds, for nearly a week now, when the matter may be one that can be adjusted by compromise."

  "Two siege engines," Minalde pointed out in her low sweet voice, "and eleven hundred men marching fully armed up the pass does not bear the appearance of compromise to me." In the cool white splendor of the glowstones that hung from wire baskets in her small conference room, she looked worse, thin and stretched, dark smudges under her eyes.

  "Had they wished to parley at any time in the past week, a man could have come to the steps of the Keep and knocked on the doors. Ilae?"

  She turned to the wizard in the low chair to her left. Ilae looked older, and more queenly, with her red hair braided up into a crown on her head. Maia, erstwhile Bishop of Penambra and now head of the Church in the Keep, sat at Alde's right, the position of honor.

  Minalde had embroidered his formal tabard, too, as a gift on his forty-second birthday last year. The carved black chair in which Tir usually sat during his mother's audiences had been taken away.

  "In my scrying crystal I see them, my Lady," said the girl, and touched the ruby tucked in the palm of her left hand. "Men with drawn swords stand guard on either side of the Keep doors. Master Wend tells me there've been fights, too, 'twixt their men and Yar's archers, and yestere'en they tried to ambush those as had tried again to get through the pass."

  "Well, naturally there's been fighting," said Enas Barrelstave, who had accompanied Lord Sketh to his audience. Barrelstave was one of the wealthiest commoners in the Keep, and something of a demagogue as well.

  "We meet them with a rain of arrows; our hunters are shooting at whoever gets too far from the main camp. We assumed from the beginning that their intentions were ill."

  He glanced accusingly at Janus, on one side of the door that led to Alde's private chambers. Gil guarded the other, their black surcoats a silent reminder of the Guards' support. "Of course they're expecting more trouble."

  "The least you can do, my Lady," said Sketh, "is arrange a parley."

  "No."

  "May I remind your Ladyship," said Barrelstave, "with all due respect, that perhaps his young Lordship might have a different opinion were he here to disagree?"

  Cheap shot, thought Gil, angry at the not too tactful reminder that Minalde, as regent for Tir, was now nothing more than the widow of the last King, seven years dead. Without Tir, her official position was considerably weakened. I'll remember that later, pal.

  Alde's jaw tightened for a moment, then she said in a pleasant, conversational tone, "Very well. Would you, Lord Sketh, or you, Master Barrelstave, like to be the one who goes outside?"

  The two men looked at each other, having quite clearly envisioned someone of lesser status in the role of messenger. Still, Gil had to give them credit: faced with Put up or shut up, both volunteered, and Lord Sketh, who knew some of the ha'al tongue, was given the job.

  Janus picked Melantrys as Doorkeeper for the operation. She could catch flies in her hands and had been shot at enough by bandits that whizzing arrows wouldn't bother her. Gil, Minalde, and Ilae stood just inside the inner set of Keep Doors, backed up by a sizable contingent of Guards, swords drawn and ready.

  Ilae wrought two small fire-spells, placing them just between the armed warriors standing at the outer Doors-not easy to do, working at a distance with a scrying stone. The Alketch guards clearly knew there were mages in the Keep because they ran
at the first flicker of flame between them.

  Ilae, tongue between her teeth with concentration, put a second burst of sparks a little lower down the steps to get them to keep their distance, but whoever was in charge of the Alketch troops had evidently thought of that one because the whole area around the Keep-and every foot of ground in the camp, set far enough from the walls to make spell-casting difficult for amateurs, said Ilae-had been swept and plucked of last year's dead leaves and weeds like a king's garden on his daughter's wedding day.

  On the heels of the second flame-burst Lord Sketh stepped forth, raised high the white flag of truce, and cried out in the ha'al tongue, "Parley! We beg a parley!" while at the same moment Janus slammed shut the inner Doors and twisted the locking-ring.

  Gil was watching Ilae's eyes. She saw them flare wide and heard the gasp of her breath and knew Lord Sketh had been fired on or otherwise attacked in the doorway. Minalde, watching, too, said in her very clear sweet voice, "I told that imbecile."

  "He's safe in," said Ilae a moment later. "Melantrys got the Doors shut."

  Janus and Caldern worked the locking-rings and opened the inner Doors. Sketh and Melantrys emerged from the glowstone-lit passageway between the outer Doors and the inner, Sketh blanched and trembling with shock, Melantrys pulling a crimson-feathered arrow out of the extravagant hide flap of her boot-top.

  Their feet crunched on the dry hay and tinder with which the gate-passage was heaped. Gil guessed his Lordship's pallor was due in part to fear that Ilae would get his signals wrong and prematurely ignite this last-ditch incendiary defense.

  "Satisfied?" demanded Janus, who hadn't forgotten Barrelstave's imputation of warmongering.

  Minalde hurried forward and took Lord Sketh's hands. "Thank you, my Lord," she said, lifting her voice just a trifle so all around the gate could hear. "That took courage, braving the enemy. So now we know."

  "They never even listened," whispered Lord Sketh. He looked about to be sick. Lady Sketh hurried up, a stout blond woman almost as tall as her husband, the decoration and jewelry on her clothing making Alde look like a poor relation. "Never so much as paused. The moment I stepped forth, they started shooting, ran up the steps, swords drawn, with no intent to parley."

  "Now we know," repeated Minalde, patting his hand like a sister. Janus muttered sotto voce to Gil, "Like we didn't know before. They pounding at the Doors now, Ilae, me love?"

  The mage shook her head, still standing under the nearest glowstone basket, scrying stone cupped in her palm. "They didn't even come up to them. The minute they closed, they stopped."

  Janus whistled through his front teeth, eyebrows raised. "So what then?" he asked. "They know there's but the one entrance. What're they waiting for? Someone inside to betray us?"

  He looked around, his reddish-brown eyes questing the faces of the Guards, of Lord Sketh, of Enas Barrelstave, who stood nearby looking equal parts shaken and indignant, and Lady Sketh who, in the process of enfolding her husband in several acres of fur-lined sleeves, was careful to include Minalde in the embrace as well.

  Gil was silent, a thought coming to her, but she said nothing until she and Minalde were walking back to the Royal Sector through the vast near darkness of the livestock-scented Aisle.

  As they crossed the last of the railless stone bridges, turned their steps toward the laundry-hung arch of the Royal Stair, Gil said softly, "Alde, we're always hearing how the Doors are the only way into the Keep-how the Keep was built that way to be the perfect defense against the Dark Ones. Do we know those are the only doors?"

  "Yes," said Minalde, startled. She stopped at the foot of the Royal Stair, plum-dark eyes wide, pinpricks of reflection swimming in them from the votive lamps of St. Prool's statue in a niche. "I mean, Eldor said ... All the records of the Keep say that it was built that way to keep the Dark Ones from entering..."

  "I know," said Gil. "But we don't have records from the building of the Keep. Only traditions, and hearsay, and tales." She folded her arms and glanced back toward the Doors, where the Guards still crowded around Ilae. Men and women kept coming up to them, weavers and tub-makers and gardeners, asking questions and divesting themselves of their opinions with much arm waving and jostling. "Are we sure there's no other way in? Because those people outside the gate sure act like they think there is."

  "It's nothing to worry about." Bektis carefully replaced his scrying ball in its bags of silk, fur, and velvet, folded up the silver tripod, and stroked his milk-white beard. "Lord Vair was delayed by a White Raider attack on his camp, that's all. They're on the road again and should be with us by sunset."

  Hethya started to look around her, but the wizard said casually, "Oh, I'm sure the other two have succumbed as well." Tir looked around, too, and indeed neither of the other Akulae were in sight. But his movement caught Bektis' attention: "And what is that child doing with his hands free?"

  "I took him into the woods to pee," said Hethya, eyes flashing with annoyance. "I was never more than a foot and a half from him." Under Bektis' cold glare she led Tir back to the sycamore tree where he had been tied, put his hands behind his back and bound them carefully tight, then ran through them the rawhide rope whose other end was knotted to the trunk. "Stuck-up old blowhard. Are you all right, sweeting?"

  "I'm fine," said Tir, sitting down tailor-fashion and trying not to look conscious of the dagger in his boot. "Are the other Akulae dead?"

  "Looks like." Seeing the fear in his eyes, she stroked his hair and added, "It's nothing for you to worry over, honey. Nobody killed them. And they weren't . . ." She hesitated, searching, Tir thought, for an explanation that wouldn't explain too much.

  "They weren't really people," she said at last. "They-the things they are-don't live very long, and they didn't hurt or anything when they died."

  "What are they?" Tir didn't know if this information would make him feel better or worse. When Toughie, matriarch of the Guards' cats, died, his mother had comforted him by telling him that cats didn't live as long as people, which to Tir's mind was awful. The thought that there were things that looked like people but weren't people scared him, too.

  He saw her eyes shift again and knew this was a secret she couldn't tell him. "Don't worry yourself with it, sweeting." She walked back to Bektis, scooping up a big handful of her curls and twisting them out of her way on top of her head with one of the jeweled bronze hairpins she carried in the pockets of her coat.

  She kept her voice down talking to the wizard, but by her gestures she was angry, angry and scared. She was a person who talked with her hands, and the wave of her arm at the pale-trunked cottonwoods on two sides of them, the slash of her hand across her throat, told Tir as if he'd been at her elbow what she was talking about.

  White Raiders had come at them once. Bektis shook his head and made his little pooh-pooh flick with his fingers, as if brushing gnats aside, and touched the crystal device that hung by golden mesh straps at his belt.

  But Tir had heard enough stories from Ingold, from Rudy, from Janus and the Icefalcon, to know that the White Raiders were still watching Bison Hill.

  Their dead were rotting in the coulee away from the camp-birds hung over the place-but they wouldn't simply say, "Those people are too strong for us, let's leave them alone." White Raiders never left anyone alone.

  But it wasn't the White Raiders who rode out of the southern badlands with the sinking away of day.

  Bektis was impatient by then, pacing around and snapping at Hethya; it was Hethya who did all the camp work. She fetched water and made food at noon, though Tir, still tethered under his tree, noticed that she didn't go far into the trees.

  She brought up the horses, too, and Bektis laid spells around them: Tir thought Ingold's method of keeping horses from running away or being stolen was more efficient, but didn't say so.

  He noticed Bektis slipped the bright-flashing handgear of crystals on to execute the guarding-spell, and to make the fire, too, and wondered a little about it because Ru
dy had told him that those kinds of spells didn't take much magic.

  When the light turned red-gold and the shadows grew long, Bektis walked to where the slope sank away toward the grassy prairie, the gems still on his hand, and shaded his eyes to gaze to the south.

  "Ah," he said, pleased. "At last."

  I have to be brave, Tir told himself, watching the line of riders, the swaying dark tops of tall wagons, the double file of men with weapons glittering in the harsh dry fading light.

  I have to be brave.

  It was an army, bigger than the biggest band of outlaws Tir had ever seen. They were all men-unlike the Guards and the bandit troops Tir had heard about-and they were mostly black-skinned, some with white hair, some with black, some bald as eggs as the Akulae had been.

  Tir remembered Rudy's description of the black-skinned prince who had offered to marry his mother, back when the lands of the Alketch still had an emperor.

  Remembered, too, the name of the Alketch general with a silver hook where his right hand should have been. He had betrayed the armies of daylight when they went against the Dark Ones in their Nests, pulled his men out of the fighting so that he could have his own army strong, left the men of the Keep to be killed. There were a lot of orphans in the Keep whose fathers and mothers had died there in the holocaust of fire and shadow.

  The man in the long white cloak who dismounted his horse and walked up the hill to meet Bektis had such a hook, though that was not the most fearful thing about him. He had yellow eyes that did not care whether you lived or died.

  "My Lord Vair." Bektis' voice had a caressing note, as if Vair were the most important person in the entire world, and he made the formal salaam that mostly only the Keep Lords made.

  "You have the boy?" A voice like rocks rubbing over each other.

  (I have to be brave)

  "We have him safe and sound, illustrious Lord. I behold within my scrying crystal that your forces surround the Keep of Dare."