vegetation. Not even a lizard left to crawl over them. Just grey peaks and shale-covered slopes.
No beauty. Nothing. Are my people in there, Goldman? Gods‘ be damned, that all the hope and
beauty of Aldeni should have come to this!‖
Goldman did not follow Theod‘s eyes, but merely looked at the Duke. He wondered if
the man knew how much of his grandfather shone out of him at this moment. Not his looks, for,
luckily, Theod took after his maternal side in litheness and blond colouring, but in the sheer
humanity shining from his face. Roland had been a man who had suffered with every one of his
people when Gorgrael‘s ice and loathsome minions had crawled over his province, and the man
had died before he could see it restored to its former beauty. Goldman hoped that Theod would
live to see Aldeni released from its current horror.
What was he saying? Goldman twisted his face and stepped forward again. He hoped he
would live long enough to see the entire nation restored to its sanity.
He heard Theod fall into step behind him, but just as he was about to turn and say
something to him, a shadow swept overhead, and a voice hailed them from above.
―My Lord Duke. See!‖ a hovering scout cried.
Goldman lifted his head, Theod beside him, but it was the younger man who spotted the
waving hand first.
―There,‖ Theod said, pointing, and Goldman nodded. A man, no, two or three men,
climbing down the shale face above them.
Aldenians.
―I have found three,‖ Theod said, ―now there are but nineteen thousand and some
hundreds to go.‖
And he pushed past Goldman and climbed upwards.
The mines were dense with darkness. There was torchlight, the men who met them
explained, but fuel was so precious they did not want to light them until it became absolutely
necessary.
―The way here is smooth, and the downhill slope relatively slight,‖ the man‘s voice said
out of the darkness before Theod. ―Keep your hand on the wall, and you will not fall.‖
Theod heard DareWing and another Icarii mutter some paces behind him. The Icarii must
loathe this enclosed space, Theod thought, but he wasted little pity on them. They were alive, and
they were in shelter for the night‘s terror, and no-one could ask for more than that.
―How long have you been down here?‖ Theod asked.
―Weeks, is all I know,‖ the man replied. ―Time loses all meaning in this darkness.‖
He paused, and when he resumed his voice was harsh. ―We are crowded like rats into
these mines. Everyone gets a space the width of their arms outstretched. Everyone eats, shits and
sleeps in the same patch of darkness. We never see the sun, and we grow tired indeed of the
same stale voices about us. Many among us have gone mad, even without the touch of the grey
haze.‖
―I have heard,‖ Theod said softly, ―that there are twenty thousand within these mines.‖
―Twenty thousand?‖ The man laughed unpleasantly. ―Was that before or after the
darkness began to eat at us?‖
Theod shuddered, and remembered the tales his father had told him of these mines.
Hadn‘t his grandfather been trapped down here once, trapped by Gorgrael‘s sorcery even as he
was now trapped by that of the TimeKeepers?
And hadn‘t Ho‘Demi, the old Chief of the Ravensbundmen, found something lost down
here?
Lost souls, was it?
Theod‘s hand slipped on the damp wall, and he stumbled into the man before him.
―Mind!‖ the man called angrily, and Theod mumbled an apology.
They descended in silence now. No-one was willing to speak, or to ask the guides in front
any more questions. Who wanted answers? The sooner out of here the better, and in the mind of
every one of those men who had stepped into the mines for the first time, the same thought
tumbled over and over again.
What is worse? The madness of the Demons, or this?
They descended perhaps an hour, perhaps ten—time was unknowable in this darkness.
When the way became rocky and uneven, and the guides in front announced they‘d reached the
first of the chasms—
Chasms?
—they lit a score of brands, and passed them down the long line.
Theod blinked in the sudden radiance of the fitful, smoky torch, and slowly regained his
bearings. They were in a spacious enough tunnel, Theod could not reach the roof even if he
jumped, but when he looked ahead, he saw that the floor was rent with a chasm some three or
four paces wide, with a narrow beam stretching across it.
―It drops to the bowels of the earth,‖ one of the guides said, and smiled sourly as he saw
the pale, shocked faces of those behind him. ―I know, see, because my son dropped down one of
these, and we heard his scream for an eternity before the darkness ate it.‖
Theod caught the man‘s eyes, and he looked away at the pain he saw there.
―We walk across,‖ the guide continued, ―and if you fall, then where you land there will
be no-one but ghosts to cradle your soul into the AfterLife.‖
―Why isn‘t the beam broader?‖ Theod asked. ―Why not have two side by side? This is
not safe—‖
―You‘re bloody lucky you don‘t have just a rope to balance on,‖ the man said. ―We need
wood for fuel, and we don‘t waste it on luxuries like wide avenues for the likes of noble
visitors!‖
Theod‘s face hardened, but he made no reply. Instead he turned slightly to Goldman
behind him.
―Will you manage?‖ he murmured.
―Aye,‖ Goldman said. ―If I could balance Askam‘s demands for taxes, then I can manage
this.‖
He smiled—a considerable effort—at the concern in Theod‘s eyes. ―I will be all right,‖ he
said.
―I‘ll watch him.‖ DareWing stepped up behind Goldman. ―There are two Icarii for every
Acharite. All will pass safely.‖
Theod nodded his thanks, and stepped forward to cross over the first of many beams.
The chasms—there were fourteen in all—claimed no-one, for the Icarii did their task
well. After an infinite time of trudging downwards, ever downwards, when Theod thought his
legs would drop off from his hips and his buttocks turn into liquid, they reached a gigantic
cavern in the mountain.
Here, had they but known it, Gorgrael‘s army of Skraelings had once hidden until the
Chitter Chatters had driven them forth, but now it was home to the twenty thousand who‘d
managed to escape from Aldeni.
A few torches sputtered erratically, and the stench of unwashed bodies and
barely-covered latrine trenches was appalling, but Theod strode forward, and stood on a great
rock that loomed above the floor of the cavern.
―I have come to take you to Carlon!‖ he called, and a sea of pale faces lifted and turned in
his direction amid a swelling murmur. Carlon? It was but a word from a dream, surely?
―Carlon,‖ Theod called again, hearing the disbelief, and not blaming them for it.
―Carlon!‖
And then there was a cry, a woman‘s voice, and then a figure pushing her way through
the crowd.
Thin, but with black hair neatly braided about her ears and her face free of smudges,
Gwendylyr, Duchess of Aldeni, threw herself into the arms of her husband.
41
An Angry Foam of Stars
Far to the north, the old horse stood in the courtyard of Gorkenfort, sinking deeper into
dream as the snow eddied fitfully about him.
Nothing moved, saved the flurries of snow.
Drago and Faraday, the feathered lizard balancing on Drago‘s pack and grabbing
playfully at the top of his staff, were well north of the fort, climbing into the Icescarp Alps.
Belaguez had not even missed them, nor noticed the man‘s gentle pat on his shoulder, nor
the woman‘s soft kiss on his nose as they left him.
Left him to Urbeth.
The snow gusted strongly now, and it piled in drifts about the horse‘s fetlocks, and in a
strange, shifting mound on his rump.
He dreamed on.
A shape moved within the snow.
Urbeth.
She growled, but the horse‘s only response was a thin twitching of the skin on his near
shoulder. Urbeth‘s growl barely penetrated his dreaming.
She snarled, vicious, a hunter scenting prey, but still the horse did not wake.
There was a billowing of snow as a sudden gust of wind scraped it from the ground, and
out of this cloud of snow and ice sprang Urbeth.
First her gaping, scarlet snarling mouth, then the glint of her talons, and then her massive
body sliding after. Straight for the horse.
He did not notice.
Urbeth landed on his back, digging her talons into his flanks and pot belly, and sinking
her teeth around his windpipe in the predator‘s death clutch.
Belaguez screamed awake. His whole body spasmed, then convulsed in a great buck,
trying to throw the bear off. I am a Skraeling, come to eat you, she whispered into his mind, and suddenly she was a wraith in Belaguez‘s understanding, and he bucked and struggled, his breath wheezing horribly through his tortured throat.