The City of Ice Read online

“He is laying it on thick. Trassan never speaks so well in person, and only does so in writing when he feels he has gone too far,” murmured Garten, scanning further down the letter. He turned the page over. “Not that that ever stops him from going too far. That man plucks favours as if I were an orchard of apples and he a starving man.”

  “What is in the box?”

  “Wait a moment,” said Garten. “Doing this hurriedly may be dangerous.”

  “Really? How exciting!” said Sothel.

  Garten read on.

  My most hearty of wishes that she... Blah blah, get to the point Trassan, thought Garten. I did think that she might be of use to you in your embassy to Perus and that... Hm, yes, I wager that you did not! thought Garten. You are the most likely of us all to take good care of her... Indeed, and now I have no choice, thought Garten. He scanned further down, scowling at Trassan’s unctuous turn of phrase.

  “Aha, at last we come to the bloody point,” he said.

  Shortly before my departure, I imposed upon the foreman of my Greater Tyn, Gelven, to procure for me a certain mixture of herbs and liquids, appropriately enchanted, to render a Lesser Tyn asleep for several weeks, long enough for Vand to assume I had taken her with me, no matter what occurs. Today is the date, according to Tyn Gelven, that she will awaken, and so I entrust her to your care. Thanks again for your aid in securing me the License Unconditional, and further humble thanks and apologies for this imposition. I promise I will make both up to you some day.

  Your affectionate brother,

  Trassan.

  PS Do pay attention to the geas. They are rather important for your safety, I am afraid to say, rather than for hers.

  “Little...” breathed Garten, crumpling the letter. “Typical Trassan, always pushing it just a little too far, wanting a little too much.” He sighed. “Nothing to do. Let’s get a look at you then.”

  He reached out to the double clasps on the front of the box.

  “Are you sure this is a good idea?” said Sothel.

  “No,” said Garten, and snapped the clasps open.

  The top half of the box front and top folded neatly away at the back of the box. The bottom half folded down, revealing that the box was a cage, with solid sides and back, and a ceiling and front of bronze bars. The interior was set out like a doll’s house with two floors, a tiny staircase between the two. It was well appointed, with small chairs and tables, a bed, a miniature bookcase for tiny books, and a press to hold drinking vessels and the like. Some attempt had been made to secure the house’s inventory, but all had been upset during transit, and piles of delicate crockery, books and furnishings cluttered the rumpled carpets.

  On the upper floor, in the middle of this miniature disaster, sat a tiny, perfectly formed woman in a rocking chair, her arms and legs crossed. She was as finely featured as any goodlady, and dressed in a red velvet gown that would draw much positive comment at any ball, were she not three inches tall. Her expression would also have provoked discussion for entirely different reasons; a glower thunderous enough to crack mirrors. Garten drew back from her fierce regard.

  “You are not Trassan Kressind,” said the Tyn.

  “I am not,” said Garten.

  “It is good you are not. I am very displeased with Trassan Kressind,” she said in a way that chilled Garten’s bones. She sniffed at him, like an animal. “You related. You have his family scent.”

  “I am his brother, Garten Kressind,” said Garten. He bowed slightly, half-convinced that this was not a Lesser Tyn in front of him, but an aristocrat shrunk by wicked magic. The Tyn smiled, exposing a mouth full of horribly pointed, perfectly white, teeth, and that dispelled Garten’s notion.

  “I am Tyn Iseldrin, Garten Kressind,” she said. “And provided you treat me better than your thoughtless brother, I am sure we shall be the very best of friends.”

  “I am sure we will,” said Garten. He recovered his manners and his wits. “I am sorry, you have been in that box a long time. Can I get you some refreshment, Tyn Iseldrin?”

  “Tyn Issy,” said Tyn Iseldrin firmly. “Call me Issy, then fetch me tea. Tea made of hazel bark, with goat’s milk and three grains of crystallised honey. Stir it three ways sunwards, four turns to evening.”

  “That’s... very particular,” said Garten.

  She smiled wickedly again. “I assume you have a list of my geas.”

  Garten held it up. “I do.” It felt fatter than ever in his hand.

  “Then I refer you to article fourteen,” she said. “Run along now.”

  “I think I’ll let my servants take care of it, if it’s all the same to you.” He called Dortian and relayed the Tyn’s request. “No news from the sea?” he said in a low voice to the Tyn.

  “None goodfellow. How would I take it? I can do no sending. Once, treading the immaterial layers of this world were as easy as breathing to me. But now, I am not able.” She tapped her iron collar. “You should ask your brother’s master, Arkadian Vand, although I advise against that. He will be most displeased that his humble servant, by which I mean myself, is in your undeserving hands.”

  Garten sighed. “Very well.”

  “Cheer up,” she said. “It could be worse. I could be free and collarless, and then you would all be dead.” A different smile curved her lips, all sweetness. This one was worse somehow. “Instead we shall have tea. Yes?”

  Garten nodded unsurely. Sothel laughed into his beer.

  “Tea all round,” Garten said with a brightness he did not feel. “And maybe cake?”

  “That,” said Tyn Issy, “will do for a start.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Into the Sotherwinter

  IN THOSE DAYS when the gods dwelt there, the Godhome was in its glory. It sat levelly below the clouds, and consequently the teeming people of Perus laboured in shadow more then than now. Although direct sunlight was theirs for but a few hours of the day, they were happy in the knowledge that their gods lived above, and took pride that theirs was the holiest of cities. There were many churches then, and the Pantheon Maximale had been full of the devoted. From lofty towers bells rang and hymns were sung, each church in competition with the others to attract the attention of the divinities floating in their city of silver.

  Vols Iapetus remembered, though he had never seen the Godhome with his own eyes. Not as it had been two centuries gone, nor as it had become in his day. Vols Iapetus had never been to Perus, or set foot in Maceriya. It was through the eyes of his ancestor, Res Iapetus, Driver of the Gods, that he saw, and he did so every single night.

  The vision began as it always began, a smeary view of gold and light, a sense of woozy formlessness. Vols came to himself—or to Res, it made no difference, the two were indivisible in the dream—striding down a high hall aglow with all the splendours of heaven. Giant statues lined walls that shone with an inner light, gifts of gold and silver from worshippers desperate for favour heaped carelessly in the alcoves between. Beyond half-closed doors there were rooms piled with items of inestimable value. Platinum treasures from the days of the Maceriyan Empire, strange devices of ageless steel saved from the death of the Morfaan. There were chambers filled with the light of stolen stars that shone pitifully under curtains, burning out ignored, never to be looked upon. There were rooms crowded with captive souls sacrificed in other, less civilised times hung on copper pegs. Their howls for release went unheard. Res Iapetus walked by them all. From the mundane to the esoteric, there was not a treasure the gods did not possess, and they possessed them all in selfish abundance. Res had no interest in any of them.

  A few, a very few, members of the human race had been aboard the Godhome during the rule of the gods. Res Iapetus was the last, the greatest of the mages, the peak of that breed reached as the evening of their kind fell. A last great hurrah before their ways slid into decline and the colleges opened their doors, and the magisters took their place as the world’s foremost practitioners of magic.

  How Res Iapetus gained ingress
to the home of the gods was not known to Vols. That part of their shared memory had been burned clean, leaving a hole as raw and hot as a gouged eye. Vols shied from it fearfully. As a child he had poked and pried around Res’s head, and that void had hurt him horribly. His curiosity vanished in that instant, taking with it a large portion of his confidence. Dread anticipation and a desperate desire to have the experience over and done with were his ruling emotions while he dreamed. These emotions seeped poisonously into his waking life.

  Vols moaned in his sleep. Res approached the great throne room, straight-backed and determined at what he must do. He exhibited no terror, nor did he experience the tedium of familiarity, for unlike Vols, Res would do this only once. The greatest mage had been wrathful, he had been excited. Now the moment of his triumph was at hand, he was cool inside, detached. Today he would wear the fires of his rage on the outside, but within all was still. He was watching his own actions at one remove. Almost like Vols. The two mages, kin separated by centuries, shared the royal box in the theatre of Res Iapetus’s mind.

  First to suffer Res’s wrath was Andrade, the tutelary spirit of the Earth. Under her protection came all living things. She had a throne within the god’s great hall of the Yotan with the rest, but her station was outside the gates. Andrade was strange and beautiful, a blue glass titaness with the lower body of a snake. Her face’s loveliness was surpassed only by her sister Alcmeny’s. Unlike Alcmeny, beauty was the least of Andrade’s talents. She was first and foremost a warrior. As befitted her kingdom, she was crowned with a high helm, and wore wondrous, supple mail that clung to her from the neck to the tip of her tail. Her stone was white sapphire, her month was Frozmer, when men needed more protection than most from the terrors of the universe. Her star was the bright Andrabus. She had been hatched, legend had it, from a dragon egg her father Tallimastus had swallowed whole and shat out in great pain, thus giving birth to her. Her armour and trident were forged by her brother Gudricun, lord of smiths. With the trident, she had slain lords of hell. Such legends surrounded her. Bright stories, beloved stories. Mankind regarded her favourably.

  None of the stories mattered to Rel. He would write the last of her legends.

  She performed her role as she was intended, raising her weapon and shield, singing her challenge with music that made Vols claw at his head in his sleep. She thrust her trident forward. Blazing lightning leapt from it.

  Six inches from Res’s nose, the lightning went awry, curling away like burning hair to blast apart the marble facings of the walls. Her song went unfinished. Stellar fire blazed from Res’s eyes, ears, and mouth, from his anus and his penis, setting his clothes alight. He raised his hands and howled; a wordless, terrible sound that no human throat should make. A dim sensation of what that power felt like was as much as Vols shared. A fraction, and it was too much. When the moment of Andrade’s destruction came, Vols convulsed in his sleep. He slept with a wooden bit in his mouth to stop him biting off his tongue.

  Res’s body shook from bone marrow to hair tip, and he wished Andrade away.

  Having experienced their destruction several times a month since infancy, Vols knew more about gods than most. When they had occupied the Godhome they had been mysterious, ineffable beings. Since their banishment what was known of them had become more unreliable, the stories apocryphal at best, most from books of stories told by the gods themselves. None knew whence they had come, or to where they had gone. Sharing the memory of the God Driver, there were many things Vols knew that no other did. This was the hardest to know, more than frightening.

  Not all the driven gods were banished. Some Res had killed.

  Vols told no one but his animals this truth. He had a habit of telling them things he could tell no one else. Imagine, he told them, what that knowledge could do to a child? Sometimes Goodwife Meb found him weeping by the hen coop, unable to speak. Only her chicken soup made him feel better on days like that, and then he always felt worse for his hypocrisy—Vols loved his chickens.

  For the thousandth time, Vols watched the immortal confront mortality. Andrade’s features went through a swift succession of expressions: her premature cry of triumph gave way to shock, fury, defiance, and lastly a look of absolute horror.

  Andrade vanished. Her form blurred at the edges and collapsed, shattering into uncountable pieces of blue glass. Her scream was pitiful. Vols’ kindly heart ached at the sound.

  Res’s clothes burned from his body, whirled away in a flock of sparks. With an outpouring of white hot thought, Res Iapetus slammed open the ivory gates of the Yotan. They cracked, sagging from their mounts. Hundreds of perfect figures carved from dracon teeth depicting the deeds of the gods clattered to the floor, and burst into flame. Cold fury building, Res Iapetus marched into the hall.

  Res found the gods variously seated or standing by their individual thrones around the wall of the circular hall, arrested in a tableau of amazement fit for a painting. They recovered their wits soon enough, when Res sent a looping curl of starfire towards their chieftain, Omnus.

  Omnus banished the fire with a flare of his eyes. His father, Tallimastus, blinded and chained to his throne by his usurper of a son, laughed and laughed. Gudricun came at Res with his hammer, the god-goddess Caesoniopon with her sword. Both were thrown backwards for their trouble by a wild blast of power that charred their flesh. Tiriton cowered behind a rolling wave of water. Hespereona nodded sagely, as if she had expected this all along. Shunatrix bowed her milk-white head, hiding her red eyes. Alcmeny wept decorously.

  Two were absent—Eliturion, who would survive this expulsion and dwelt in Karsa in Vols’ day, and the Dark Lady, whose name was never spoken. She was permitted no entrance to the Godhome, and yet was honoured with a throne there; black where the others were white, festooned with carvings of the worst atrocities.

  Omnus rose from his gold-chased seat, his staff of office shining in his hands, his brow heavy with wrath.

  Res waved his hand. A ripple in the fabric of reality pulsed across Alcmeny and her throne, twisting the goddess of love and perfection into a mewling exercise in teratology. The wall splintered, and was sucked inwards. Behind the marble a whirling vortex opened. Young stars danced there.

  “Out, out, out!” shouted Res. The mage’s madness was upon him, his mind warring with the world to make it be as he demanded.

  “Stop!” bellowed the king of the gods, and his voice was awful. In his youth, Vols had wet the bed at the instance. “This trespass—”

  Res waved a hand. The lord of the gods of Ruthnia shrank to something little larger than a draconbird. Screaming shrilly, it whirled away into the vortex. A brief flash marked Omnus’s ignominious passage from the Earth.

  Some force exerted itself upon the bodies of the gods from the vortex of stars, ripping at their robes and hair. They became dishevelled, the weaker of them scrabbling for a handhold on the slippery marble of their thrones, the stronger shouting at Res for him to cease. Gudricun came at Res again. Res punched out a fist, a shockwave distorted space, lofting the smith god backwards into the vortex. Caesoniopon transmuted to her female aspect and called for peace. For her troubles she was blasted to glinting shards of clay that fell halfway to the floor before they were sucked away. Res strode on through the maelstrom.

  One after another, Res removed the gods from their mastery of the Earth. Tiriton’s veiling wave was snatched back, the sea god hurled at the vortex. Shunatrix and Hespereona went of their own accord, walking with what dignity they could through the gale of magic, picking up the warped Alcmeny between them on the way, and stepped out from the world voluntarily.

  Tallimastus remained, held in place by his chains. “At last, at last!” he cackled. Res approached, sending the chains to pieces with a grunt. Tallimastus stood unsteadily, the wounds of his crucifixion raw in his wrists and ankles.

  “At the beginning, so at the end. From nothing you came and to nothing you go,” said Res.

  Tallimastus grinned moronically in
agreement, then without warning, he reared back and became a sheet of darkness that plunged toward the mage. Res twisted aside, his hands circling one another. The god of death and creation was sucked through the ring of Res’s fingers, and sent speeding on his way into the vortex.

  Res snapped his fingers. The vortex responded with a crack of its own, slamming shut. Behind the marble facing of Yotan, the metal fabric of the Godhome glowed red where the vortex had been. Abruptly the light pouring from Res Iapetus shut out. Exhausted, he collapsed to his knees in the centre of the room. He hung his head, unable to lift it.

  Thunder boomed. The whole of the Godhome shuddered gently. Cracks appeared in the domed crystal roof. The luminescence emitted by the walls flickered and went out, blue daylight taking its place. Squares of sunlight fell hot on the flagstones, but a perishing chill took hold of the grey shadows. A rippling series of cracks sounded from somewhere deep within the structure. Very slowly, the Godhome slid sideways.

  Vols’ connection with his ancestor weakened, and he floated free of his body. Res Iapetus raised his head to watch him go. Blood ran from the corners of his eyes and his mouth. He smiled a bloody smile. Vols knew that Res saw him.

  A tremendous shattering came from above. Cold, rarefied air rushed in. The Godhome lurched, pitch steepening.

  As always Vols awoke before the crystal shards of the dome slammed into Res’s back. Clutching at his sheets, gasping in fear, it took him a moment to realise that the vision had ended.

  WEAK LIGHT ENGENDERED a sudden rush of nausea. Vols shut his eyes tightly again until it passed. Not only did the mass of iron around him upset his delicate abilities, but he had discovered a susceptibility to seasickness in all but the flattest seas. The Ishmalani promised him sealegs. They had yet to come.