The City of Ice Read online

  “Imposition?” said Issy. “Once a goodfellow would never have said such a thing, not even to one such as I. And something horrible would happen. You would be without me. That would be terrible. So don’t.”

  “She’s a little feistier than your brother’s creature,” said the countess.

  “I am almost certainly better bred,” said Issy.

  “I knew that you are acquainted with my sister, Katriona. Do you know my brother well?” asked Garten.

  “You might say that,” she said, but the jaunty expression she affected hid pain. “Now what’s this?”

  A chanting came from the entrance to the Meadow, and a concentration of light. Heads turned, the crowd parted.

  “The Church has caught us up,” said Garten.

  “Is it me, or are there more of them?” said the countess.

  There were, a long snaking line of thousands of them. This time, they saw the head of the procession. A tall, cowled man went at the front, followed by others in ancient priestly attire carrying icons of the Ten. A figure in black marched alone behind the ten, carrying an eleventh icon covered in black damask.

  “And even the Dark Lady is represented,” said the countess, pointing out the lonely priestess.

  Behind her three dozen other priests and priestesses came flanked by two lines of shave-headed, armed acolytes. The procession made its way around the Meadow. Reaction to their presence was mixed; some jeered, others knelt. Whatever the individual response, the crowds parted. Whether from fear or reverence, the effect was the same. Conversation from the crowd was excited but hushed, and the priest’s singing was clear across the field.

  “Fear and wonder,” their leader sang. “The gods will return. Exile is done, the gods will return. Fear and wonder.” The others sang in rounds divided by pitch, so that the song was layered, sweet as a cake. The majority present did not find it palatable.

  “The gods can suck my cock!” shouted someone from the crowd.

  “What did they ever do for us?” called someone else.

  “That pisshead in Karsa bought me a pint once,” said another. Scattered laughter greeted his comment. The glaring acolytes shoved their way roughly into the crowd. There followed signs of a scuffle.

  “I can only agree with the detractors,” said the countess. “Although I have no cock to suck, although I sometimes wish I did.”

  More insults and catcalls competed with the chant, but could not silence it. Arguments broke out. Patches of the crowd eddied with the beginnings of more tussles. The procession turned. A clod of earth torn from the ground described a graceful arc, slapping hard into the shoulder of a priestess. A devotee of Andrade, thought Garten. He was a little rusty on the costumes of the sub-denominations. She was steadied by her fellows, and they walked, completing a circuit of the field and beginning another. After ten more minutes had passed, they began another circuit. They drew nearer to the crag with each pass. He and the countess watched them for nigh on an hour, as they came closer and closer to the crag while the crowd grew denser and became noisier. The smells of cooking food joined that of unwashed bodies, music began in earnest from several sources. The little violences they had witnessed before were swallowed up by the chaos of the Perusians at play.

  The Church approached the crag, their ruffian priests pushing their way through those groups of diplomats and worthies that did not step voluntarily aside. The distaste of those manhandled was clear, but no one made a move to stop the priests. Again, Garten wondered where the authorities were. The procession passed right by the shelf Garten and the countess occupied, so closely their icons wobbled by their noses.

  He leaned in close to the countess. “Bishop Rousinteau, Primate of Omnus,” he said. “He is their leader.”

  “I always imagined a bishop to be grander,” said the countess. “His costume is very drab. I suppose his church no longer has the money. Although looking at this display, perhaps it is simply an affectation.”

  People melted from the path of the bishop as he ascended the crag. He disappeared from view a moment, then reappeared at the brink of the artificial cliff, a dozen feet above Garten and the countess’s position.

  The priests kept up the circular refrain of their song. Rousinteau began to shout in time to the music. His words were amplified by magical means, and the crowd fell quieter, although not silent. The cries of tradesmen and entertainers would cease for no man or god, if a profit could be turned.

  “Fear and wonder!” declaimed Bishop Rousinteau. “The Twin approaches. Fires on the Twin! The gods will return! Now is the time to state your devotion! Those who do not display respect shall burn in the wrath of the pantheon. They will come with flame and sword. Oh my brothers, oh my sisters, hearken to our ministry! Join us in our prayers, or forfeit your souls to the anger of the gods! They return, they return!”

  “It’s the Morfaan coming tonight, dickhead!” someone jeered.

  The bishop reacted directly to the insult. He hunted out the heckler, and held out his hands beseechingly.

  “Yes, yes! The Morfaan!” he said, as if the man had apprehended some aspect of the ultimate truth and should be congratulated for it. “They are the messengers of the gods, they herald their return. Do you think it coincidence that the High Legate dies so close to the Drawing of the Twin? Do you think it coincidence that the old masters of this world return?”

  “Pfft!” said Issy. “Nonsense.”

  “The Twin has nothing to do with the gods, my goodfellow,” the countess shouted.

  The priest ignored her or didn’t hear her, and continued his sermon from the rock.

  More voices called back at the bishop, hurling insults and refutations. But there were others, many more, who heeded the priest, and listened raptly, alternating their attention between the bishop and the sky, where they imagined the Twin to loom, fires on the black surface. The priests’ foot soldiers moved through the gathering, intimidating those that dared shout. Like hunting dracons passing through long grass, one saw the disturbance rather than the agitator.

  Issy’s box jiggled in Garten’s hand. He opened the doors, to find Issy leaning right up against the bars, shaking them hard.

  “Lift me high!” she said loudly

  “Quiet! You’ll be seen.”

  “Never mind that! There is something unwholesome here,” she said. When she turned her head, her eyes flashed a luminous blue. “Something not right.”

  “I will have to close the door,” Garten said nervously. “The Maceriyans do not like your kind, and the priests of old declared you anathema. I doubt they have changed their minds. I cannot hold off a hundred ruffians, certainly not in this press.

  “I must see!”

  “Then look through the vision slit, and be careful!”

  “I am well aware!” she snapped. “Quickly!”

  Garten shut the door again. Issy’s eyes glowed behind the vision slit. “Up, up!” she said. “Turn about, point me upwards, at the priest.” She made a cat-like growl. “Back, back. Get off the stone. Go up and round. There is magic on the summit.”

  The countess had her masculine face tilted up at the priest ten feet above, undisguised scorn large on her features. “What a lot of perfect rot,” she said as his sermon grew more excitable. “Fucking fool.”

  “Excuse me a moment,” said Garten.

  She nodded at him distractedly.

  Garten dropped from the shelf. The crowd had grown thicker, and he had to utter many an excuse me and sorry to make his way through. Issy wisely stayed quiet, and he kept his free hand protectively over the vision slit.

  A grassy slope bordered the fake crag. Around the front it was too steep and slippery to stand on, and so was free of onlookers. As it offered the quickest route, he scrambled up.

  Garten came out on a flat-topped earth mound big enough to accommodate several hundred people. From this new vantage the hill’s constructed nature was obvious. Steps lined by an elegant stone rail allowed access from behind, opening on
to a paved area which occupied a large part of the top. There the highest diplomats gathered, the richest men, the mightiest lords. In their midst Garten got his first sight of organised Maceriyan power in the form of a square of soldiers in garish uniforms, their faces painted like dolls beneath brocaded mitre caps. Armed with heavy ironlocks, they formed a barrier to a further group of ostentatious lords. If those around the hill represented the great and good of Perusian society, and those on top the mightiest present from the rest of the Hundred, then these men and women at the epicentre of the gathering were the real powers of Maceriya. They were heavily made up, faces white and red and blue, dressed in elaborate clothes stiffened with jewels and embroidery to the point of impracticality. They were raised up over their guardians on boxes, so that they appeared like a party of bizarre giants awaiting some grim ceremony. All of them listened politely to the bishop, although he had his back to them. Such a lack of deference to the powers of the land sent a chill through Garten.

  At the very centre of the nobles, raised up over them all, were the Three Comtes of Perus arrayed in height according to their order of seniority. From sketches and lithographs Garten recognised Arvons, Comte of Low Perus, the only one of them that appeared discomfited by the bishop’s oratory. Raganse, Comte of Outer Perus, was the most painted and ornately attired of all three. He listened to the bishop most avidly, conferring often and animatedly about this thing or that the bishop said to a pair of ladies whose lesser podiums brought them only to his chest. Lastly was Juliense, Comte of High Perus, senior of the three, his expression blank.

  As Rousinteau spoke, the priests sang their song joyously. A further ring of the armed men, these the church’s own, protected them. There was a clear gap of three yards between priests and potentates. Painted soldiers faced warrior priests garbed in sackcloth. The priests glared at the soldiers, the soldiers looked over the priests’ heads. Garten hung back from this, amazed that such a display of might would be permitted by the government.

  “Things are worse than we thought,” he said to Issy.

  “If I am right, they are far worse than you can imagine, let alone think of,” said Issy. “Further forward!”

  “I’ll expose you,” said Garten.

  “A risk we must take. I cannot see, therefore I cannot expose this thing that is here. Forward!”

  Reluctantly, Garten moved to the very edge of the space between the soldiers and the priests. He stood behind one ludicrously uniformed man—although his ironlock seemed serviceable enough—and cradled Issy on his hands at chest height, unwilling to brandish her box like an unlit lantern. The bishop’s voice resounded unnaturally around the whole Meadow, too loud for comfort so close in.

  “Left, left, left,” she said on the edge of hearing. Garten rotated on the spot like the mechanism of a lighthouse. The box swung in his hand as Issy jumped inside. “Stop! There! The woman behind the bishop.”

  There was someone behind the bishop, hooded and garbed in long robes without decoration, so Garten could not tell if it were male or female, even if Issy could. In their hand was a staff that appeared unremarkable, but as Garten tried to discern what possible threat this person might possess, his perception lurched. The staff remained the same, but was also somehow different. He saw it now for what it was, no simple stave, but the tool of high magic.

  “A mage?” he said. “I thought there none in Maceriya currently. I do not recognise the costume. And why would a mage have anything to do with the priests?”

  “You know them all?” said Issy.

  “There are currently fifty-two, none resident in Maceriya. There is a list, you know.”

  “She will not be on your list of mages. She is something else, something worse that I have not encountered for a long time,” said Tyn Issy. “There is more than one church here tonight.”

  Sensing eyes upon her, the mage turned around abruptly and fixed Garten directly with her gaze. She was indeed a woman, and a strange looking one at that. He nodded to her respectfully and made to leave. To his dismay, he found he could not move. A pressure grew in his eyes. His sinuses throbbed.

  “She has seen you!” said Issy. “Get out of her sight.”

  “I can’t!” choked Garten. Something burst in his nose. He tasted blood at the back of his throat.

  The bishop’s words reached a crescendo, and he held his hands aloft. “The Morfaan! They come!” he bellowed. A crackling rent the sky, stirring the fog. The mage looked away, out into the field, and her grip fell away from Garten. He ducked back into the crowd on shaking legs, thence back to the top of the slope where he stopped and spat blood.

  “She tried to kill me!” he said.

  “I perhaps should have said that she might,” said Issy.

  Before Garten could reply, the sky over the Meadow split.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  The Morfaan on Earth

  A FLASH OF blue sheet lightning carved through the fog some fifty feet up, then another. Three more strobed the crowd. A bone-chilling cry rolled out of the forest, spooking the crowd. They drew back from the middle of the Meadow stumblingly, then in quick panic.

  “They come,” said Issy. “The world gates open.”

  An invisible explosion accompanied by a deafening boom burst in the centre of the Meadow, flattening the grass and agitating the mist, driving the crowd back further. There were more flashes in the fog, a crackling like fireworks. A rattling noise approached, metal drumming on stone. A thrumming discordancy blared out of nowhere. A scattering of screams outdid the crowd’s collective gasp. Another blue flash, and a banging. The mist parted, revealing a grey-lined tunnel reaching far back, as if the fog had gained substance, and spun itself into walls. The trees were gone, the meadow was gone, some other place was revealed, foggier even than Perus’s night. A damp chill blasted down the swirling, vaporous throat. The sound of the rattling metal grew louder.

  The fog of the faraway world parted like a torn flag. A mellow golden light spilt down the tunnel, and the carriage of the Morfaan appeared.

  No drays pulled the carriage. Its motive power was provided by mechanical legs similar to those of a charabanc, but this was no lumbering, hooting contraption. The legs were articulated to the smooth cab by uncertain means and moved too quickly to be counted, their metal tips clattering loudly on an unseen stone surface.

  The carriage ran silently as it cantered out of the tunnel onto the wet ground. Purple lightning and smoke burst around its feet as they hit Earthly soil. Behind, the tunnel pulsed, and collapsed with a clap of thunder, sending the mist rushing away at ground level in waves. The crowd scattered before the machine as it galloped across the turf. Magic discharged from it, wreathing it in foxfire, until all the excess was gone into the ground and the carriage took on a less otherworldly appearance. Still the tell-tale blue glow of glimmer light shone around the joints in the legs, but it was brighter and cleaner than the luminance emitted by human machines. The upper surfaces were dark, reflecting the torches and lamps of the crowd from its surfaces.

  The cab was the shape of a seed, the tapering end pointing to the rear. There were no windows. Garten suspected it to be a direct-glimmer device, but no human had succeeded in getting such a high power output from raw magic. He saw none of the odd effects associated with the manifestation of a mage’s art, nor any of the sigil marks that indicated the craftsmanship of a magister. The carriage gave off no exhaust, and ran nearly silently.

  The crowd parted smoothly to let the Morfaan through to the foot of the crag. Panick eased, but there was no sign of jubilation. Humanity had been struck dumb.

  The carriage decelerated. Now they were slowing, the legs became clear and appeared even more strange—four groups of four, mounted on sideways wheels that turned as the legs ran. Garten was put in mind of agricultural mechanisms used for turning hay, though the resemblance was superficial.

  Light burst all around as the carriage stopped, bright as if the sun had punched its way through the fog and the
night to illuminate this one patch of the earth. Seams appeared in the side. A door popped open and drew itself back along the body of the coach. Steps unfolded with a mechanical ticking.

  Down the steps came a woman and a man. A collective sigh rippled through the crowd. Few there had seen the Morfaan. Garten had been a boy last time a High Legate had been elected, far away in Karsa. His knowledge of Earth’s ancient masters was restricted to archaeological artefacts and drawn reconstructions. Neither captured the reality. The Morfaan’s own art had been highly stylised, while this era’s imagining of them was woefully inaccurate.

  What he saw were of a similar shape to a man, but they were as unlike men as a raindrop is unlike a snowflake. They were taller, thinner, and moved oddly as they walked, their heads bobbing a little like those of a strutting dracon. Their heavy multilayered costumes and make-up were more sophisticated versions of those worn by the aristocracy of Perus, rendering them further alien. The Morfaan numbered only two, always the same pair that came back to the world, and they brought no servants with them.

  “We are Josan and Josanad, emissaries of the Morfaan,” pronounced the male. “We have come by ancient agreement to vote in the choosing and witness investiture of the new High Legate of the province of Ruthnia.”

  A number of people nearby fell to their knees. The male smiled widely as he beckoned to them to rise.

  “The Morfaan have come!” shouted the bishop. He held up his hands to the heavens. “Where they go, soon the gods will follow!”

  The male’s smile faltered. The woman stepped forward. “I am sorry?” said the male.

  “You are emissaries of the gods!” shouted the bishop in ecstasy. “You herald the dawning of a new age!”

  The male Morfaan burst out laughing. The female put her hand on his arm to restrain him, but the male did not stop.

  “Where are the Three Comtes? It is they who have greeted us on our past fifty-six visits,” she asked.