The Warding of Witch World

39 The Lair of the Ice Worms, North

With a cautious eye at frequent intervals for the mud lake, Simond and the Latt hunter kept as close to the ice and rock wall of the valley as possible. Simond half expected some advice from Frost—even that the witch might accompany them—but she had not come. In fact, Frost had seated herself by the rocks where they had camped, and Simond had a strong belief that she had withdrawn into herself in some form of trance.

They could not follow a straight line, but luckily the margin between the wall and the mud continued and they kept to this. There were still the spouting of geysers to be seen, but they were small and few. Perhaps whatever force had sent them in action against the invaders slept again.

Odanki grunted and pointed with his spear. Arching up from the meager green of the ground growth here were bones, curved like ribs but certainly larger than those serving any animal Simond had ever seen.

The Latt squatted on his heels and tugged at the remnants of the skeleton. At his touch the bones flaked and two broke, and he uttered an exclamation of disgust. His disturbance of the remains had moved them enough so that Simond could now see great branching horns, far more weighty he would have believed possible for any beast to wear comfortably.

Odanki turned his attention to these, prodding forcibly with the butt of his spear. They seemed to have outlasted the bones, for they did not crack. He grunted and then got to his feet and dragged at the best handholds he could find, freeing both the horns and the skull wearing them from the hold of the ground.

“Greathorn,” he commented. “Good!”

Strong as the young Latt was, he apparently could not drag his trophy far and Simond helped him pull it closer to the cliff. It was plain that Odanki had found what was treasure as far as he was concerned.

Yet he was willing enough to leave it when Simond suggested that they move ahead. Those cliffs of glacier they could see in the distance arose so quickly they almost appeared to race before them as they tramped on. Simond wondered if the fumes they had inhaled had in some way affected their sight.

On they went, though they made no more discoveries. Then suddenly there was a change and the ground beneath them began to slope slowly downward. Simond readied himself to face perhaps another set of mud pools and spouts.

However, not only were those now behind them, but they felt a chill which struck with doubled force, since they had been in the unexpected warmth of the valley for so long. The ground growth became a ragged fringe and there were not only rocks but the tips of ice formations showing, some to catch the light and reflect it.

This broken land led to what Simond could only think of as a lake. Yet one which no waves moved but rather which held the glitter of glass—a smooth stretch on which there were no cracks or crevices.

Odanki pushed with spear point. There was a ping and a splinter flashed upward.

“Solid ice,” he commented. To Simond’s surprise the Latt sat down on the edge of this threat of dangerous footing and burrowed into the pack he carried slung over one shoulder.

What he brought out might have been chipped from the same great horns as the ones they had discovered. And he fit curved frames, one over each trail boot, testing several times each fastening. When he stood again he rocked awkwardly from foot to foot and then deliberately stepped down upon that glassy surface, using his spear to steady himself.

He moved out a space and then curved back, nodding to Simond as he came.

“I go across.” He indicated the far side of that ice lake. “Have no runners for you.”

Before Simond could protest, Odanki did head out from the shore, slipping along on the ice, apparently well satisfied with his method of progress, leaving the Estcarpian fuming behind.

But there was nothing Simond could do. The Latt was plainly used in his own land to such odds and was ready for them. However, Simond had no intention of returning alone to camp, his part of their scout having ended so abruptly. Why had the Latt not shared from the beginning these aids? Or else they were so common to his people that he had thought Simond already knew of them.

The Estcarpian watched carefully the Latt’s progress until suddenly he became aware of something else. Though the ice seemed clear when looked down upon, it was opaque beneath the surface and seemed solid. Only Odanki’s shadow, pale in this thin sunlight, stretched in the opposite direction. However, now there was a vague trace of movement beneath him under that ice.

Since here certainly the unknown was to be feared, Simond shouted. When Odanki turned his head to look back toward him, the Estcarpian waved vigorously, first to that half-hidden movement in the ice and then for the other to return.

Only his warning was a fraction too late. Suddenly the Latt floundered. Around him spread a patch of fast-melting ice. He was fighting for footing as might one who had been caught in quicksand. He cried out in a shout which held both pain and fear.

Simond measured the distance between the shore and where the hunter struggled. Though Odanki floundered and fought, that space of melting ice had slowed in enlarging. Simond threw a twist of rope about a rock and pushed off away from the shore.

By great effort the Latt had reached the edge of that melting ice, wedging his spear across that point from side to side. But he shrieked—not fear now, but pain.

Simond teetered forward on the ice, hoping that the sand and gravel frozen into the soles of his thick boots would give him some steadiness. Small and slight though he might seem, his Tor blood gave him a strength of arm and shoulder which might equal, if not better, Odanki’s.

Somehow the Estcarpian was able to fight his way toward the Latt, though what had attacked the latter remained well hidden under the ice shield. Simond knotted the other end of the rope into a loop. The Latt cried out and raised an arm to wave him back, but Simond was able to throw that circle over the upheld arm.

Then he dropped to his hands and knees and turned his back on the hunter, beginning to crawl for the shore, taking the strain of the other’s weight on his shoulders. Always he looked beneath him for any shadow moving under the ice.

There was a sudden loosening of the strain, and, holding fiercely to the rope, he dared to look back. The Latt had somehow clambered out of the ice mush and was using both arms to propel himself in a frantic slide toward Simond.

After breathless moments they crawled out on the shore, Simond jerking Odanki with him. For the larger man had suddenly gone limp. Simond looked down the length of the Latts body.

There was torn hide clothing, there was blood—and a trio of things which brought bile up into Simond’s throat. He beat at them as they still held to their prey, for Odanki could only feebly raise his hands now, smashing them against the firm ground.

One had dug itself so deeply into its intended feast that Simond had to grab it with one hand and slash with a knife he held in the other—only to cry out himself as the body he stubbornly held until it was free of the Latt’s leg was like a branding iron laid across his own flesh. The things were soft and pink, with wedge-shaped heads which flamed into fire-red and were nearly the length of an arrow. Luckily their removal into the outer air apparently seemed to weaken them, and Simond was able to kill the last and let the burning body fall.

That things of such heat could lair in the ice was like another form of Power and certainly one he could not understand. He worked over Odanki quickly, stanching the bleeding bites, while the other lay his arm flung across his eyes as if he could not bring himself to look upon Simond’s work.

There were bites, and torn flesh, but the Estcarpian applied the powders and pads each of them carried for emergencies. Then he urged Odanki to chew a twist of root which he knew was a painkiller.

That there might be venom in those bites worried Simond. And he was not sure he could get Odanki back to camp on his own. At length he dragged the Latt as far from the edge of the ice lake as he could and covered him with handfuls of earth to keep him warm.

Before Simond left to summon help, he went back to view the inhabitants of the lake. Their brilliant color was fading fast now as their broken bodies cooled. But they were still repulsive—like great worms. They carried the fringes of many small legs on either side, and the open mouths of those horny wedge-shaped heads were well equipped with double rows of teeth.

When Simond returned with Stymir and Joul to aid the Latt, Odanki insisted that he would walk with help, and he did. Simond supposed it was the Latt’s horror of the very nature of his enemies which had added earlier to the loss of blood to weaken him.

Both the Sulcars had inspected the bodies with open astonishment, being forced to believe that Simond and Odanki were right: the creatures could generate such heat in their bodies that they could melt the ice and so trap prey they could probably see as shadows on the surface above them. Even after lying dead in the cool air, those flame-hot wedge heads still held a good degree of heat.

“Do they live in the mud?” Simond wondered. “But then why hunt prey in the ice?”

Stymir laughed grimly. “You can ask many whys for things one comes across traveling, Lord Simond. This is another freak of nature.

“Not something sent?” Simond wondered.

“I think not. Come, let us get our comrade back to those who have healing Power.”

As they passed the horned skull, Odanki made them promise that that also would be retrieved. Stymir tested the strength of the horns and then agreed. “Such are good tools upon occasion,” he told Simond. “It will do no harm for us to see what can be done with this pair, especially since he may be in camp for some time.” He gave a meaningful glance toward the hunter.

When Simond returned to camp for the second time, he looked around for Trusla, surprised that she was not in sight. Joul mentioned that with the shaman and her familiar his wife had gone to hunt Audha, who had disappeared. He would immediately have set out on their trail—perhaps ice worms were not the only strange perils to be met with—but Frost stopped him.

She looked very gaunt and drawn, and he was sure that she had been using some Powers, so that a thrust of fear went through him.

“Listen.” She kept him both silent and pinned with her eyes, so that he could not leave her. “They have broken the secret lockings—Hilarion and those of Lormt. I have it here.” She touched not her jewel but her forehead. “But lest something happen to me, the secret must now be shared. The shaman is gone, as is Trusla—both having talents. The Sulcars—they had never been able to use any Power unless it deals directly with the sea. Therefore…”

He took a step backward. “Lady, I am no lore master—nor even of the Old Blood.”

“No, not of our Old Ones, but of others. You come from those who once sheltered under the wings of Volt, who was mighty as any adept. You say you have no talents, and perhaps by the measuring of others you do not. But you can remember—though the passages of long memory have never been opened for you. Therefore—you must remember. And if I cannot reach the end of this quest, you will share this memory and those with Power shall put it to use. Come.”

He had been slowly retreating, she following him step by step, and now they were behind a shelter of rocks, out of sight of the rest of the company. He tried to dodge, be free of what she would lay upon him, but he could not move.

Up came her hand holding her jewel. It did not blaze, but rather issued forth a soft, golden light. In him the fears which had stirred settled and were gone. Simond felt the touch of the jewel to his forehead between his eyes.

There was a strange sensation—as if he walked down a hall lined on either hand with doors, all closed. On them glimmered symbols which he felt, as he noted each, he should know, that they were a part of a past he could not quite understand.

Then he came to the final door, the one which ended the hallway. It did not open, but simply disappeared. Now he faced a great wall of the same soft gleaming color as had accompanied him on this journey. There was a sighing—like the soft slow beat of great wings.

On the wall a great clawed hand began to write. Each symbol it formed was in the precious blue which meant refuge from all which was of the Dark. Though Simond did not understand, he also knew that he would not forget those symbols. They would be a part of him until this life’s end.

Softness, like the tips of great feathers brushed against his cheek. He knew it for a blessing and a farewell. Simond blinked and Frost stood before him holding a gem once more turning gray.

“You remember?” Frost asked.

Immediately there flashed into his mind those symbols. He also knew, without being told, that though he did not know their meaning, he could, when there was need, voice each of them in turn.

Frost smiled. “Yes,” she said, “always when there is a need the Light will answer. Now—you would find your lady, and…” she hesitated, a slight frown now drawing her brows together, “there is need there, also. I cannot understand.” Now she was speaking more to herself than to him, and he was eager to be gone. “There is something calling—but if it is born of the Dark, it is of no evil we know.”

Simond was already on his way, Stymir behind him, and they followed the same trail which had been laid out for the women that morning. There was no sign of any troubling of the mud pool except for a stray geyser now and then well away from them. However, the stinking mud and seared ground growth remained as a warning.

The Estcarpian had served on scouting expeditions enough to pick up the signs of passing left by those they hunted—the more so since the women had taken no trouble to conceal their going. So he and the captain came to the stairway and started up.

They halted by the row of skulls, and Simond saw quickly the runes Inquit had uncovered.

“What is the meaning?” he demanded. There were too many mysteries in this place, and, even if this was a very old one, that did not render any message it held harmless.

The captain had gone down on one knee, the better to inspect the near-invisible lines, and then set to picking with his own knifepoint at those still hidden.

“This”—he used the knifepoint to indicate one of the runes—“is the old form used in the master scrolls for the Ruler of Storms. This”—he had selected another—“is a plea. It is Sulcar—but so old… I can give you no meaning for the rest.”

“Those are not Sulcar skulls.” Simond had been studying the row with their green gloss of what might be hair.

“No,” Stymir agreed at once. “And my people were never ones to take heads as battle trophies as some of the Dark-ruled barbarians do. But that my kin came this way I will swear.”

Simond had already placed his foot on the next step. “They went on—see, there is a scrape of boot edge. What brought Audha in this way?”

“What has brought all of us? We seek for the lost. What? An enemy, a gate, something which threatens us? Can it not be that that which we seek can use one of us to its own purposes?”

“She swore blood oath against that threat.” Simond tried to keep his voice level. “Do you mean that in doing so this wavereader opened herself to the very purpose of that which she hates?”

Once in the past he himself had been insidiously taken over, to be used for another’s bloodlust in sacrifice. It had been Trusla who had broken the bond he did not even realize held him, and brought him to freedom. So he well knew that such things could be.

“Who knows?” the captain replied.

They had reached the top of that very ancient stairway and were looking out now over the rough surface of the glacier toward those distant mountains. Simond’s frustration became anger. Trusla knew nothing of such lands, but Inquit was of the north and surely must be well aware of the perils of the way ahead.

However, a moment later he sighted dark dots moving steadily toward the mountains, though they went slowly and with caution. But the thought of a break in a snow arch, a fall into a tomb crevice, caught at Simond until he found it hard to breathe.

Three dots: two larger, one small. So they had not yet caught up with Audha. There were signs of a trail right enough, but that could have been left by those they themselves followed.

“It is the little one who leads,” Stymir pointed out. “Perhaps some talent of hers is what they depend upon as guide.”

Simond wanted nothing more at that moment than to seize upon Kankil and jerk her back, bring them all to camp once again. But the captain was right. There was a space between the shaman and her familiar and Trusla brought up the rear.

They had heard plenty of stories in Korinth and again in End of the World about the perils of the glaciers. Not only was the footing highly treacherous, but oftentimes glaciers provided lairs for the great wasbears, and to approach any such while its owner was in residence was to call upon death foolishly.

“How much farther?” Trusla brushed a string of hair back under the fur which framed her face within her hood. The bite of the cold after the warmth of the valley seemed doubly severe. She had tucked her hands into her armpits to warm them a fraction every time she and her companions halted. For their progress was not steady, since Kankil cast back and forth for the trail continually.

Where could Audha be bound? There was nothing but this everlasting ice, cold, and those stark mountains in the distance. Was she being called?

Knowing how her own Tor people could apply that compulsion on occasion, the thought had come to her much earlier in the day that that was what might have happened. She suggested it, and, to vanquish her one small hope, Inquit had agreed. Wisdom suggested that they turn back, yet Kankil chirped and clicked and the shaman followed. Glancing behind several times, Trusla was not sure she could find once more that stairway into this dreary country.

They came to the end as Kankil huddled on the edge of a great crevice which appeared to descend to the very depths of the earth. And there the trail ended.

Trusla looked down with a shudder and turned swiftly away. She could well envision what had happened. Audha, reaching this cutoff, yet still compelled to go forward, could have blindly marched over the lip of that break and lie so far below that no one would ever see her again.

Inquit prowled back and forth along the crevice. Oddly enough, she never looked down, but rather stared across the width of the break. There was certainly no sign that a bridge of any kind had ever existed here.

“She fell. She is dead,” Trusla said at last. As the wind whipped around her, she felt as if she, too, would soon be gone, lapped forever in ice as had been the monster they had seen.

“No.” Inquit’s denial was flat. “There is still life essence to be sensed—the little one knows. But it is true that from where we stand we cannot now follow.”

“Where we stand we shall be frozen stiff,” Trusla returned. “What do you mean that Kankil knows? Knows what? Did Audha grow wings and is she off to the mountains?”

Inquit gave her a hard stare. “There is more than one kind of wings, Tor woman. I seek mine in sleep, and dreams can carry one afar.”

Trusla stamped her foot and a small ridge of ice cracked. “You cannot sleep and dream here! I do not believe that any Power would hold you so.”

“Exactly right. But dream I shall. Now we return; there are those already searching for us and we must not scatter our forces too widely. I do not know…” For another long moment she stood, gazing ahead across the crevice. “I would speak with the witch. We do not hold the same talents, but together… Well enough. Come child, before, as you threaten, you turn into a pillar of ice.”

So they turned their backs upon the crevice and started their retreat, again Kankil bouncing ahead as if she knew that they still needed a guide.

Suddenly, as they went, Trusla sighted two figures headed toward them. That was Simond! The cold which ate at her no longer bound her to shuffling, halting steps. She passed Kankil, taking only caution that she not make a misstep. Then Simond’s arms were around her. He was shaking her until her head bobbed on her shoulders and then he enveloped her in a hug which drove all that ice from her veins.