Icefalcons Quest

Chapter 22

"You have to hold them." Ingold stopped, leaning on his staff, which had appeared as an apport at the bottom of the first flight of steps. He was gasping for breath in the heat, and even here, at the far back of the third level, the orange glare of the Icefalcon's torch illuminated ropes of smoke twisting overhead.

"The blaze will reach the Aisle soon. Vair must know already that he has to leave by the transporter or die."

"How much time will you need?" Though he would have died rather than admit it, the Icefalcon was grateful for the halt. He was shaking with fatigue, the sweat that poured down his face stinging in the cuts.

They had been forced repeatedly to turn aside, to seek ways past corridors or stairways that were already infernos. Twice Ingold had put forth the power of his spells to get them through red holocausts of flame, but after hours in the pit his own strength was half spent and there was more to accomplish.

The wizard shook his head. "If Zays instructions were accurate, not long." He coughed, pressing a hand to his side, sweat-mixed blood and soot a glistening mask on his face.

"But Bektis will almost certainly be in the control chamber. Do what you can." He slapped the Icefalcon's arm, as if the request concerned the polishing of boots before suppertime. "Altir? I think it's best if you come with me."

Tir nodded. He had been silent through the battle in the subcrypt, the race up flight after flight of steps, clinging to Ingold's hand. His blue eyes, nearly black in the torchlight, streamed tears from the smoke, and the breath sawed audibly in his lungs, but his face was expressionless, filled with a stoic resignation.

"You'll keep Vair from getting to the Keep?"

"I will, my Lord." The Icefalcon laid a hand on the boy's shoulder. "That I promise you."

Watching them hurry down the corridor, wizard and child together in the faint glow of blue witchlight that Ingold summoned before their feet, the Icefalcon reflected that the past month of Tir's life would have been considered rough even for a child of the Talking Stars People, and the boy had acquitted himself well.

He couldn't track as well as a child of the Real World, of course. The Icefalcon turned and headed for the transporter at a run.

At the next crossing of the corridors he stopped again, flattened into the shadows. Men filled the passageway before him, coughing in the smoke. Torch-glare caught bald heads, naked faces, eyes staring glazedly at the bent sweaty necks of the men in front of them. Someone yelled an oath in the ha'al tongue and the men stopped, jostling, and began to mill-fire ahead?

The Icefalcon doubled back, sought yet another way around. Fire was spreading. Grown by the stubborn, angry magic of the Keep of the Shadow, the gourds and bean plants, the groundnuts and potatoes, had penetrated every crypt, every level, even ventilation shafts and water pipes.

Some still lived, knotted in spongy symbiosis with fungus, lichen, moss, and toadstools, and slowed the fire's spread while emitting suffocating billows of smoke; in other places wizened vines made fuses along which the flames raced faster than a man could run.

Twice and thrice the Icefalcon was stopped by walls of flame, hearing behind him all the while the panicked shouting, the bellowed orders of Vair's army as it, too, sought a way to the transport chambers that now were their only hope of egress and life.

The Icefalcon wondered if Ingold would make it through the blaze to the round chamber where the spells of the transporter could be worked-wondered if Zay had spoken the truth to the old man in the end or had decided to play one last devil's trick on them all.

Which, he reflected, would be just like the old bastard.

A corridor lay open before him, walled both sides in fire as the vines along each wall burst into flame-roofed with fire as the fungal mat overhead ignited.

Flakes of flame snowed on the Icefalcon as he wrapped his scarf over his mouth and nose and ran, praying the passageway wouldn't end in another incendiary wall.

Behind him he heard someone yell. Of course, he thought. They think I know the way. Let's hope they're right.

"Man, we'd given you over for dead!" Hethya sprang to her feet. "We were giving you another few minutes..."

The Icefalcon pitched gasping through the vestibule door and whipped sword from sheath-"They're behind me!"-and turned even as he cried the words to slice the first man through the door behind him.

More yelling, more milling in the vestibule-weapons thrusting through the narrow opening; seize, slash, block. Blood gouting out in streams and a severed hand flying against the wall like a swatted bug.

"Mother of Tears!" cried Hethya, and Loses His Way demanded, "Where's the boy?"

"With Ingold" was all the Icefalcon had time to rasp as a halberd opened his leather sleeve.

"He's safe?"

"God, no," panted the Icefalcon. "Don't be a fool."

"Oh," she said, evidently realizing the absurdity of the word in the circumstances. "Sorry. If you've got any brilliant strategies at this point, boy-o," she added a moment later, "how about trottin' 'em out?"

Smoke poured from the vestibule, thicker and rank with the smell of new burning. The air was like an oven, the floor underfoot hot through his boot-soles.

"A curtain wall would help," panted the Icefalcon. "Machiolations. Boiling oil." It was impossible to breathe.

"We'd have that if we hadn't eaten all the pemmican."

The Icefalcon sliced hard at the next head to appear through the doorway, had his blade intercepted on a two-pronged halberd. The inexperience of the clone that wielded it was the only thing that saved the Icefalcon from having the weapon wrenched out of his hand; he was able to slip in under the shaft and slash the man's arm with his dagger, then pull free. Instinct made him keep low-Hethya's swordswipe at the next enemy would have taken his ear off.

"Waste of good food," he said.

The ventilation shafts gushed nothing but smoke now; the Icefalcon felt his skin blister in the scorching air.

"Can we ourselves use the Far-Walker?" asked Loses His Way. Blood streamed from his chest and arm where a lance had pierced. "Get out of this place and warn the people of the Keep?"

"We can't activate it." The Icefalcon hacked again with his sword, his arms like lead. "It takes a Wise One to do that." Blood spouted over him from the man whose throat he opened; someone in the rear rank pulled the dying clone aside.

"And that's what Ingold's gone to do?"

"Don't be a fool, woman," snapped the Icefalcon. "The last thing we need is to open the way into the Keep with Vair right outside."

"Well, I've no intention of roasting to death to save your lot!"

"You think Vair will spare you?"

There was an outcry from deeper within the vestibule, beyond the heads of the crowding clones. The clones themselves-hundreds of them-were barefoot, scantily clothed, their skin patchy and odd looking, greenish even in the livid light, or the slick, vile orange of the monster toadstools.

Now and then during the confused struggle in the doorway the Icefalcon had the impression that one or more would suddenly go berserk in the vestibule, turning on his companions, slaying and being slain or rushing out into the bellowing furnace of the corridor.

Then a voice cried beyond the press, "Put down your weapons!" The clones in the doorway ceased to fight, fell back untidily to show the defenders Vair na-Chandros, his white tabard soot-blackened, a tulwar in his hand. Bektis stood beside him, smutted, filthy, gasping, holding Tir against him with one hand, a silver knife at his throat.

Vair's teeth glinted under pulled-back lips. "Get back," he said. "Let us pass or the boy dies."

"I thought you said," began Hethya furiously, and the Icefalcon said, "Shut up!"

His eyes met Tir's. The boy's were stretched with panic under a mask of smoke and blood. Anything could go wrong in any hunt, thought the Icefalcon. All it would take, in that maelstrom of smoke and heat and darkness, would be for Ingold to lose his grip on Tir's hand; for the old man to have been overcome by fumes, or fire summoned by Bektis, or some trap in the Keep itself.

Bektis was weakened and in no good case to fight, but then Ingold wasn't, either. The Court Mage would have found it easy to lure the child to him in the confusion.

The Icefalcon stepped back. Tir screamed, "Don't let them! Let me die, I order you! Please! Don't let..."

Bektis shook him, hard. "Be still, boy."

The Icefalcon retreated, sword pointing out, Hethya and Loses His Way closing in on both sides. Vair stepped through the vestibule door, clones surrounding him, their stupid gazes wandering. Some were beginning to rot already, stinking appallingly above the calcifying heat.

"Good." Vair's eye traveled calculatingly around the big chamber, seeking other defenders, finding none.

"Very good. Prandhays Keep has been broken, time and again through the years; its walls would never stand against the Devices that harridan wife of mine, Yori-Ezrikos, now commands. But Renweth..."

He smiled under his dark mustache, though he was panting for breath in the heat. "Renweth is another story. Whatever weapons we find there, Bektis, in Renweth we will have a base to raise and provision the force I will need to march south and retake what is rightfully mine. And who knows what Devices are hidden there."

His lips parted in an ugly grin as he thought of the twelve-year old girl he had raped on their wedding night, the girl who had hated him so much that she'd murdered the son she bore him. And the relish in that grin, the vile amusement, made the Icefalcon realize that by comparison Blue Child's ferocity was as innocent as summer rain.

"I look forward, Bektis, to seeing Yori-Ezrikos again. Is the way open, Bektis?"

The mage edged at his heels, long white fingers closed around Tir's jaw in a strangling grip. "The way is open, my Lord. Behold."

He lifted the hand that held the silver knife and made a pass in the air, speaking words that sounded nothing like Hethya's made-up tongue of the Times Before. Behind him the columns of crystal, ranked room to room in a line, flickered with cores of greenish light, and threads of starshine seemed to race along the floor between them.

A hot, quick flicker of light flashed, far back in the dark, and the smoke that bellied thick beneath the high ceiling stirred, then streamed inward, pouring between the pillars through the second chamber and the third.

As he had in his shadow vision, the Icefalcon half discerned more pillars than there should have been, a fourth and a fifth and a sixth pair, and on past into darkness.

Vair gestured to the clones. "Go," he said. "Kill all that you meet."

"I trust," said Bektis smugly, "that your Lordship is well satisfied?" His attention was on Vair, in anticipation of an accolade that, the Icefalcon reflected, he should have had more sense than to expect, and in that moment of distraction, Tir acted.

With the neat speed of a man's, the boy's hand dropped to his boot-top and the next second there was a dagger in it, a dagger with which he slashed across the back of Bektis' hand. Bektis screamed, jerked back, and the boy was free, running.

The Icefalcon was moving, too. In a single long leap he reached the child's side, seconds before Vair's left-handed fumble for his sword. The Icefalcon's sword tangled with the dark commander's blade, flung the weapon aside, and struck back the blade of the nearest clone's attack as his momentum carried him, and Tir, out of immediate danger.

Vair screamed, "Stop him! Kill him!" as the Icefalcon slapped into the wall between Hethya and Loses His Way, sword pointing outward once more.

Bektis, clutching his bleeding hand to his breast, snarled, "The room's under a Rune of Silence, fool!"

Behind the Icefalcon, Tir was sobbing, "Stop them! Please, stop them!" and struggling to push through, as if he would attack the clones himself, but none of the three warriors made a move.

"There's nothing we can do," said the Icefalcon softly. He had already caught, above the stench of smoke and rot and burning, a smell from the inner chambers of the transporter, a smell green and anomalous, that told him that all was not as Vair supposed it to be.

But he couldn't say so, could only hold Tir fast, while behind the shoving ranks of clones Vair struck Bektis a blow that knocked the old man to the floor. Swords, halberds, spears in hand, the clones shuffled through the pillars, disappearing along the lines of green light and starshine into darkness.

Tir struggled, weeping, in the Icefalcon's grip. "There's nothing we can do."

Something beyond the vestibule outside caught with a deafening roar. Heat, exhaustion, and the strangling smoke made the Icefalcon light-headed, and he saw Hethya stagger and Loses His Way catch her on his uninjured arm to keep her on her feet.

For a moment, when there was a gap in the line of clones, the Icefalcon thought Vair would order his men to take the three of them and Tir-wasteful, in his opinion, but then Vair was wasteful.

But Vair seemed to realize what that was likely to cost in terms of men and in terms of time.

"Come, Bektis," he said softly to the trembling, furious old man who lay sprawled at his feet. "They'll follow us through. They must, or die. As you must. What about it, wench?" he called to Hethya. "Will you take servicing my men above death by fire? And you, Little King, if you hurry, you'll be in time to watch me rape your mother."

Dagger in hand, Tir flung himself in soundless rage at Vair. The Icefalcon dragged him back, holding the struggling child against him as the tall man turned, laughing, toward the crystal columns, the retreating lines of light.

His white-cloaked form blended into the shambling lines of the clones, visible among them for quite some time, fading back and back into the shadows.

After a long moment Bektis pulled himself to his feet, leaning against the wall and holding his ribs, a look of loathing and defeat in his eyes. He staggered into the marching line of the clones, catching their sweaty shoulders to hold himself upright, and was gone.

"Hyena," gasped Loses His Way, his breath like a bellows in the airless heat. "Coward and pig." His eyes never left the shambling ranks, shuffling, coughing, pouring sweat and staggering now as they passed through from the vestibule and down the length of the chamber to the first pair of pillars, the second...

Tir wept silently in the Icefalcon's grip.

"But he is right, my friend," the warchief murmured. "What will you? It is follow or die."

"Well, there might be a certain amount of satisfaction in following, of course." Ingold stepped from the rear ranks of the clones-who didn't appear to notice him-and strode quickly to Tir, dropping to his knees before the boy and putting his hands on his shoulders.

"My dear Tir, thank God you're all right!" Blood covered one side of his face and a fresh wound put streaks of gore in his hair, where the whole of him wasn't nearly black with smoke and ash. "Forgive me!

I never imagined the corridor to the control chamber was booby-trapped like that."

Tir flung his arms around the wizard, clutched him desperately with his face buried in the threadbare robes.

"It's all right," said Ingold. "It really is all right. I'd never have brought you with me if..."

"I'd have thrashed the life out of any man who'd send a child into what we just came through!" protested Hethya.

"No one in the Keep will be hurt," Ingold murmured, face bent over the weeping child's head. "I promise you." He held out his hand to the Icefalcon and used his grip on the young warrior's arm to get to his feet.

"We really have got to get out of here. The Aisle's in flames. I think I can damp us a way through to the Doors, but I'm afraid we're all going to get singed."

"Vair..." sobbed Tir. "Ingold, Vair said..."

"It's all right," said the wizard again. "Vair's not anywhere near the Keep of Dare. In fact he's farther from it than ever. As a final favor to us, Zay of Tiyomis told me how to change the destination of the transporter before he... he died. And he is dead," he added, as Hethya's lips parted in surprise.

"He left behind enough of his power to operate the transporter one final time, but, as I said, it opens no longer into the Keep of Dare. That was the Icefalcon's idea," he added, and Hethya regarded the Icefalcon in surprise.

"So you've turned tricky in your old age, have you, boy-o?"

With dignity, the Icefalcon replied, "Something I overheard Vair say while I was shadow-walking made me think there was a more suitable destination for him."

"What, you've found a way for the transporter to send him straight to Hell?"

"Nearly," said the Icefalcon after a moment's reflection.

Loses His Way wiped the sweat from his stubbly brow. "Where have they gone?"

"To the crypts of what used to be the great Southern Keep of Hathyobar," said Ingold, and coughed on the smoke. "It stood on the shores of the Lake of Nychee, on the site now occupied by the Imperial Palace of Khirsrit."

"Where this lady Yori-Ezrikos dwells?" asked Hethya. "That hasn't much use for our boy Vair, never mind that he's her lawful wedded husband?"

"The very one." Ingold smiled. "I was pleased to hear that Vair is looking forward to an encounter with her because he is going to have one a great deal sooner than he looked to."