"Fool's Fate" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hobb Robin)

NINETEEN Below the Ice

In the morning, when we reached the edge of our pit, both Riddle and I groaned. Then we went to work, lifting and flinging the snow that had blown in to half-fill our excavation of the day before. This snow was lighter and unpacked, but for all that, it was frustrating work. It was like shovelling feathers, and half of what we lifted floated free to drift back to the bottom of the hole. It was nearly

noon before we had cleared it all down to where we had left off the evening before. Then out came the picks, and we began to break ice and scrape it up and shovel it out again.

1 ached at first, and then I didn't, and then I began to hurt in new places. That night, I dropped into an exhausted sleep, deeper than dreams of regret. The wind blew again. Every night, the wind blew. Every morning, we began our task by clearing the previous night's drifted snow. Yet slowly, relentlessly, we toiled and the pit deepened. When we could no longer throw the ice out of the pit, we dug a ramp at one end. After that, we shovelled the ice onto one of the sleds and two men would drag it up out of the pit and away to dump it- The task was beyond tedious. And we found no sign of a dragon in the bottom. Worse, my Wit-sense of him grew fainter, not stronger.

The work force grew after the first day. Our first addition was Prince Dutiful rolling back his sleeves and taking up a pickaxe. Chade limited his participation to supervising. He reminded me of Civil's cat, who perched at the edge of the pit and watched us with supreme lack of interest.

When the Narcheska entered the pit, Dutiful stopped his work to warn her that the flying ice from his pick might injure her. She gave him an odd little smile, between sad and flirtatious, and cautioned him to be wary of the flying ice that her own pick might free. And then she set to work beside him, swinging her pick with a country girl's competence. 'She used to help dig the rocks out, when we were preparing the new fields in spring,1 Peottre observed. I turned to find him watching her with a mixture of pride and chagrin. 'Here, give me your shovel for a time, while you rest yourself.1

I saw his aim and surrendered my tool to him. After that, both Narcheska and Peottre worked alongside us, with Peottre taking care that he was never far away from his ward. The Narcheska seemed to take care that she was never far from the Prince. It was the first sign of warmth ElHania had shown toward Dutiful in days and the Prince seemed to take heart from it. They conversed, in quiet, breathless bursts, between pick strokes, and took their rest periods together. Peottre watched over them, sometimes disapproving and

sometimes wistful- I think he had come to like our prince despite himself

The Witted coterie decided that it supported the idea of freeing the dragon, and hence had no qualms about helping with the digging. When the Fool applied his wiry strength to both digging and moving ice, the Hetgurd representatives cautiously came to watch. By the third day, they were helping to drag sled-loads of snow and ice from the pit to dump it. I suspect that curiosity to see the ice-encased dragon was as much their motivation as any other.

On the fifth day, Chade sent Riddle and young Hest back to the stored supplies on the beach. Peottre was uncertain about sending them off, and cautioned them many times to follow the flags we had posted along our route and not to wander from it. He looked grave and apprehensive as they set out. They took a sled, for they were to bring back food, and the spare shovels and picks we had brought, now that he had a larger work force. Chade also told them to bring back all the canvas, in the hopes of rigging a windbreak or cover for the excavation that might block the blowing snow that thwarted our efforts each night. I suspected they would also retrieve the rest of the little kegs of explosive powder. I wanted nothing to do with that when I thought of it in the evenings, but by day, when I was battling the ancient hard ice, 1 sometimes longed to discover what it might do.

We dug on. If I paused to rest and looked at the sides of our pit, I could see the layers in the ice that marked the passing winters. Every year, more snow had been deposited here, and every following year, yet another layer had blanketed it. It occurred to me that we were digging down through time, and sometimes as I looked at the layers, I wondered when the ice I stood on had fallen as snow. How long had Icefyre been down here, and how had he come to be here? Deeper we dug, and deeper, and still saw not one scale of a dragon. From time to time, Chade and Dutiful would consult with the Witted coterie. Each time, they assured the Prince and his advisor that they still, from time to time, felt the stirring of the dragon's being. I agreed with them. Yet those consultations also made me aware that my own Wit was substantially stronger

than Dutiful's. I was not as perceptive as Web, but I thought I was at least on a footing with Swift. Cockle was probably a bit stronger than Dutiful, and Civil stronger than the minstrel, but not as sharp as I was. It was odd, to be able to perceive that the Wit might be a strong or weak talent in a man. 1 had always thought of it as a sense that people either had or didn't. Now I perceived that it was like an aptitude for music or gardening. The strength of it varied widely, just as Skill-ability did.

Perhaps it was Thick's prodigious Skill-strength that kept him latched so firmly to the dragon. The little man seemed to have become a complete idiot, staring vacantly before him and humming. Occasionally, he would pause and make small motions with his hands. Neither the tune he hummed nor his hand motions conveyed anything to me. Once, when I was taking my rest after a digging shift, I sat down next to him. Hesitantly, 1 set my hand to his shoulder, and tried to find my Skill-ability. I had hoped the fierce Skill-fire that always burned in him would re-ignite my own talent. But nothing happened except that after a short time Thick shrugged my hand away much as a horse might shudder a fly from his coat-Even his interest in food had waned, which concerned me most of all. Not only Galen, my first Skill-instructor, but Verity had warned me of the danger in becoming too absorbed in the Skill. It was always the first hurdle that new initiates had to leap, and for many it had been a deadly one. The Skill-instruction scrolls recounted many sad tales of promising students who were swept away in the Skill-current, losing all touch with our world as they enjoyed the unique contact that the magic provided. Eventually, such people were so enraptured that they lost interest in food and drink, in talking with their fellows and eventually stopped caring for themselves at all. One warned that such a Skill-user would become 'a great drooling babe' and Thick seemed poised on the brink of such a decline. I had always supposed the danger was the fascination with the Skill itself, for I had often felt that pull myself. But if Chade and Dutiful were correct, then Thick was being seduced not by the Skill but by the attraction of another, more powerful mind. I made several fruitless attempts to engage him in conversation, which drew minimal responses from him until finally, in annoyance, he told me

to 'Go away! Bothering a busy person is not polite!' And then he went back to his staring and rocking.

The Skill remained dead in me.

It was all the more frustrating in that Dutiful had made contact with Nettle. Twice he had touched minds with her, trying to persuade her of who he was and what he needed. The first time, she slammed her walls against him, saying she was in no mood for silly stories and why would a prince be trying to contact her in a dream? The second time, she was more receptive, for I think he had piqued her curiosity. She even tried, with little success, to distract Thick from his preoccupation, though I think she did so more out of concern for him than to please the Prince. Dutiful accompanied her on that mission, but could make little sense of the dream imagery she used. He could explain only that Thick seemed to have gone to a place where his little song was an essential part of a far grander piece of music, and he could not be lured away from it. It was a frustrating analogy. As for conveying the Prince's messages to the Queen, Nettle said she would make mention of her 'odd dreams' to Kettricken, if chance afforded her a private moment with Her Majesty, but that she would not risk making a fool of herself before the ladies of the court. She had done that several times already, with her lack of court manners, and had no wish to give them any more amusement than she already had.

That gave me a pang. If I had consented from the beginning to letting her know her history and to her visiting the court, she would have grown up in the company of ladies and gentlemen and would not have been shamed by her country ways. I wondered if Kettricken now groomed her, in both studies and manners, so that she might take up a role as secondary heir to the throne. I longed to be able to talk to Nettle, to find out how much they had told her of her heritage, and to give her my explanations for why she had been raised as she had. But my lack of the Skill silenced me, and I could only nightly beg of the Prince that he be circumspect in what he told her.

Daily we continued to dig. The work was backbreaking and the food both limited and boring. Nights were cold and windy, and we looked forward to the men returning with canvas. But they did

not. Chade gave them an extra day, and then two. The Hetgurd men claimed to have glimpsed the Black Man circling our camp at night, but their offerings were never taken, and the flowing snow erased any tracks he might have left. In one of our nightly talks, the Fool said that several times he thought he had felt the Black Man's presence and suspected that we were observed. I, too, had experienced that uneasy sensation of being watched, but could never see anyone spying on us. I suspected that Web did, too, for twice he summoned Risk from her shoreside scavenging and asked her to fly over our camp. He told me that she saw nothing out of the ordinary, just snow, ice and a few protruding rocks.

In the brief times when we were not digging, eating or sleeping, Web would find moments in which to work on my Wit with me. He said, without cruelty, that it was actually good that I was currently unpartnered, as it gave me more focus on the magic without making it specific to one creature. He added that Swift, too, seemed to be benefiting from studying while unencumbered, from which 1 gathered that the lad's lessons continued as well as mine. When he was with me, Web focused on making me see how the Wit connected all living things, not just those of Old Blood, but all. He showed me how he could extend his Wit and wrap it around Thick, to become more perceptive of his needs and feelings, even though Thick remained unaware of him. It was not an easy discipline to master, for it involved surrendering my own needs and interests to subservience to his. 'Watch a mother with an infant, any kind of a mother, human or beast. There you will see this done on the simplest and most instinctive level. If one is willing to work at it, one can extend that same sort of perception to others. It is a worthwhile thing to do, for it conveys a level of understanding of one another that makes hate almost impossible. Seldom can one hate a person if one understands that person.'

I doubted that I would ever achieve that level of understanding, but I tried. One evening, as I was eating with Dutiful and Chade in their tent, I tried extending my Wit to include Chade. I let go of my own hunger and aching back and anxiety about my lost Skill and focused myself on the old man. I saw him as clearly as if he were prey. I studied how he sat, his back straight, as if he were too stiff

to even slump, and how he kept his gloves on while he spooned up the pallid mush that was our evening repast. His face was a study in contrasts, red nose and cheeks, while his forehead was pale with the cold. Then, as if I suddenly saw his shadow for the first time, I glimpsed an aloneness that trailed back behind him to his earliest years. I suddenly felt his years and the strangeness of a fate that had sent him, in his old age, to camp on a glacier alongside the boy he would make king.

'What?' he demanded suddenly of me, and I startled, realizing that I'd been staring at him.

1 scrabbled for an answer and then replied, '1 was just thinking of all the years and times when I've sat across from you, and wondered if I'd ever truly seen you at all.'

His eyes widened, almost as if he feared such a thought. Then he scowled and said, 'And I'd hoped you had something useful in your mind. Well, this is what I've been pondering. Riddle and Hest haven't returned with the supplies. They should have been back by now. Today, I asked Web if his bird could seek for them. He said it was difficult to convey to her that we wanted news of two specific men, rather as if I asked you if you had seen two specific gulls. He asked her to look for two men with a sled; he said she did not see them.' Chade shook his head. 'I fear the worst. We need to send someone back, not just to look for Riddle and Hest, but also to bring back the supplies we need. Longwick told me tonight we have food for four more days, five if he cuts the rations again.' He rubbed his gloved hands together wearily. 'I never thought it would take this long to dig out the dragon. All the reports we had seemed to say he was near the surface, even visible years ago. Yet we dig and dig and find nothing.'

'He's there,' the Prince assured him. 'And every day we get closer.'

Chade snorted. 'And if I took one step southward every day, I'd be getting closer to Buckkeep, but no one could tell me how long it would take me to get there.' With a groan he got up. Sitting on the cold earth, even with several layers of bedding beneath him, was obviously uncomfortable. He moved slowly around the cramped tent, cautiously stretching his legs and back. 'Tomorrow,

I'm sending Fitz to see what became of Riddle and Hest. And I want you to take Thick and the Fool with you.1

Thick and the Fool? Why?'

It was obvious to him. 'Who else can I spare from the digging? Removing Thick from the dragon's vicinity may restore him. If it does, then leave him with Churry and Drub on the beach with our supplies. Have him Skill to us from there whatever news he has.'

'But why the Fool?'

'Because it takes two men to pull the sled when it's loaded, and I don't think Thick will be of much use to you at that. I suspect you'll have to put Thick on the sled to get him to move from here. And you are one of the few people who can manage Thick at all, so you have to be one of the ones who goes. Fits, I know it's not an assignment you would choose, but who else can I send?'

I cocked my head at him. 'Then you aren't just trying to send the Fool and me away from the digging area before the dragon is uncovered ?'

He sighed. 'If I sent you and not the Fool, you would ask if I were trying to separate you. If I sent the Fool and not you, I'm sure you'd say the same. I suppose I could ask Web to take Thick and another man for this errand, but he does not understand Thick's Skill-ability. And if something has befallen Riddle and Hest, well, I think you more capable of dealing with a threat than . . .' He suddenly threw up his hands and said in defeat, 'Do what you will, Fitz. You will anyway, and the Fool will only go if you ask him. I've no power to send him anywhere- So you decide.'

I felt a bit sheepish. Perhaps I had been looking for motivations that truly didn't exist. 'I'll go. And I'll ask the Fool to go with me. To be honest, I'll welcome the change from digging. Make a list of what you want brought back.' Privately, I resolved that I'd scavenge any driftwood I could find on the beach and bring it back with me, regardless of how much weight it added to the load. Chade could do with a good roaring blaze, I decided, even if it only lasted one night.

'Be ready at first light, then,' Chade advised me.

The Fool was not as pleased to leave the digging as I was. 'But

what if they reach the dragon while we are gone ? What if I am not here to defend him?1

'The Hetgurd guardians and the Wltted coterie oppose killing him as much as you do. Don't you think they'll be enough?'

We were bedded down together, sleeping back to back for the body warmth just as we had in the Mountains so many years ago. Truth to tell, I gained little from it, for the Fool's body had always felt cool to the touch. It was rather like sleeping alongside a lizard, 1 thought. Yet if he did not give off much warmth, the solid feel of his back against mine was a reassurance of camaraderie that I had not felt since Nighteyes had died. There is security in knowing that a friend has your back, even if he is sound asleep.

'I don't know. I'm too close to where all my visions stopped.' He paused, as if he expected me to ask a question, but that was a topic I did not wish to explore. Then, 'Do you think we ought to go?' he asked cautiously.

I shifted in the bed, groaning as my aching muscles complained. 'I don't think I thought much about it. Chade has been telling me what to do for so long that I simply accepted I should go. But I would like to know what has happened to Riddle and Hest. And I'd like to see if Thick recovers himself when he's moved away from the dragon's influence. And -' I shifted and groaned again, 'I wouldn't mind a few days of doing anything other than shovelling.'

He was quiet. I was too, pondering his silence. I wondered what was making him take so long to make up his mind. Then I laughed aloud. 'Ah, yes. I nearly forgot. I am the Catalyst, the one who makes changes. And this would be a change in what you think you should do. So, you cannot decide whether to oppose it or not.'

The silence stretched so long I thought he had fallen asleep. The day had been the warmest we had had so far, making sodden work of oar task. I listened to the wind, and hoped the night's cold would crust the surface of the glacier and keep the wind from blowing snow into our excavation. I had almost dropped off to sleep myself when he said, 'You frighten me, sometimes, when you give voice to my thoughts. We will go, tomorrow. We'll take this tent for shelter, shall we?'

'That sounds fine to me,' I said as I drowsed off.

And so the next morning we set off. Longwick issued us three days of supplies which, he told us, should be ample for us to reach the beach. We struck the Fool's elegant tent and packed it on the sled while Longwick gave us last-minute directives. If we reached the beach without encountering the others, we should warn the guard there of our sightings of the Black Man. If we encountered evidence that the others had met with foul play, we should return to the camp immediately and report. If we met the others coming back, we should simply turn around and come back with them. Web's bird would check on us, from time to time. I nodded as I arranged the Fool's tent and bedding for three onto the sled. As predicted, we had to load Thick onto the sled. He could not be persuaded to walk. It was not that he resisted; he simply didn't co-operate. He would take a few steps, and then become lost once more in his musings. Dutiful and Chade both came to bid us farewell. Dutiful snugged Thick's cap down around his ears. I know that he tried desperately to stir Thick with the Skill. I could not feel it, but I saw the intensity in Dutiful's face. Thick turned his head slowly to look at the Prince. 'I'm fine,' he said sluggishly. And then he stared off in the distance again.

'Take care of him, Tom,' Dutiful told me gruffly.

'I will, my lord. We'll try to make a quick trip of it.' And so saying, with Thick sitting on the great sled bundled up like a cocoon, I took up the lines and began to pull.

The heavily-waxed runners moved easily over the snow. Almost too easily, for we were now going downhill rather than up. I had to stop and set the drag to keep the sled from running over the top of me. The Fool went ahead of us, his pack riding high on his shoulders, prodding the snow to make sure our path was sound, even though we were following the line of stakes that Peottre had set up to mark our path for us.

The day was warm, and snow collected, heavy, on my boots. When our path levelled for a time, the runners of the sled began to stick. The sled was cutting a deeper path upon our old one, and as the runners sank into the snow, heavy damp snow began to ride on the tops of the runners. But the day was pleasant and pulling Thick on the sled was still less strenuous than shovelling ice out of

a pit. The gaudy sword the Fool had given me tapped against my leg as I strode along, for Longwick had insisted that I, at least, should go armed. We were traversing the trail much more swiftly than we had before, for the path was clearly marked with Peottre's stakes, and there was at least a slight downhill slope for all of it. Thick's humming, the squeak of the runners and the crunch of our footsteps on the softened crust of the glacier were not the only sounds. The warmth had wakened the glacier. We heard one distant fall of ice, a thunder that went on for some time. It was followed by lesser creakings and crashes, but always at a distance.

The Fool began to whistle, and I was much cheered when 1 saw Thick sit up and take notice of the music. He still hummed breathlessly to himself, but I began to make comments on the scenery, uniformly white as it was, and occasionally elicited a response from him. That cheered me unreasonably, but also left me pondering. The Skill was not a magic bounded by distance, and yet Thick seemed to be recovering more of his own awareness of the world the farther we got from the buried dragon. 1 had no answer to why that might be so, and wished I could discuss it with Dutiful and Chade.

Several times I attempted in vain to reach out with the Skill. A legless man trying to jump would have had more success. The magic was simply gone. If I dwelt on that, I felt a cold pit in the bottom of my belly. I pushed the thought aside. There was nothing I could do about it now.

The daily cycle of warmth and chill combined with the nightly wind had smoothed all the edges of our previous passage's trail. 1 made a few vain attempts to read it, trying to discern if Riddle and Hest and their sled had passed this way, with no success. We had a wide view of the snowy lands below us. Nothing moved on them, certainly nothing so large as a sled and two men. It was possible that they had lingered at the beach, I told myself, or that some mishap had delayed their return. I tried not to stack their disappearance with the theft of my Skill and the sightings of the Black Man. I had too few facts to make them add up to anything. Instead, I tried to enjoy the freshness of the day. At one point, I heard the high cry of a seabird, and looked up to see a gull describe a wide circle

over us. I lifted a hand and waved a greeting at Risk, wondering if that acknowledgement would be relayed to Web. We passed our previous campsite while we still had plenty of daylight and energy to continue, so we did. That night, we pitched the tent on the trail behind the sled. Thick still periodically hummed to himself, but also expressed both an interest in and then dismay at the simple dinner I prepared. The little tent was a bit more crowded with the three of us, but also warmed more quickly. The Fool told simple children's stories that night until we were all more than ready for sleep. With every passing tale, Thick hummed less and asked more questions. At one time the constant interruptions to the story would have annoyed me. Now they filled me with relief.

'Would you tell Chade and Dutiful goodnight for me?' I asked Thick as he settled into his blankets.

'Do it yourself,' he suggested grumpily.

'I can't. I ate some bad food, and now I can't find them in my mind.'

He sat up on one elbow and stared at me. lOh. Yes. Now I remember. You're gone. That's too bad.' He was silent for a time, then said, 'They say, "goodnight, and thanks for letting us know. And maybe I should stay at the beach, but they'll decide later.'" He drew a deep, satisfied breath and dropped back into his blankets.

It was my turn to sit up. Thick. You aren't coughing any more. Or wheezing.'

'No-' He rolled over, managing to kick me in the process. I nearly complained but then he said, 'He told me, "mend yourself. Don't be stupid, mend yourself, don't be annoying." So I did.'

'Who told you that?' I asked, even as I was stricken with guilt. Why hadn't Chade and Dutiful and I thought of trying to heal Thick? It now seemed obvious. I was ashamed we hadn't done it.

'Huh,' Thick sighed out consideringly. 'His name is a story, too long to tell. I'm sleepy. Stop talking to me.'

And that was that. He went off into a deep sleep. I wondered if Icefyre had another name, a dragon name.

I woke once in the night, thinking I heard cautious footsteps outside our tent. I crept to the doorflap, and then reluctantly

stepped outside into the clear cold. I saw nothing and no one, even when I had made a full circuit of the tent.

When morning came, I made a wider circuit of the camp while the Fool tried to heat water for tea for us. I brought my news back to them. 'Someone came to see us last night,' I said, trying to keep my voice light. 'He walked all around our camp in a big circle. Then he lay down in the snow over there for a while. Then he went away, that way, the same way he came. Do you think I should go see where he went?'

'Why?' Thick asked, even as the Fool said thoughtfully, 'I think Lord Chade and Prince Dutiful might want to know about that.'

'1 think they would, too.' I looked at Thick. He sighed wearily, and then tunned his gaze inward.

A few moments later, he said, 'They said, "Go to the beach." Dutiful says he thinks he left maple candy in a bag there. They say we should hurry there, and come back with the stuff, and tell the guards there to come back with us. "Don't go looking for where the footprints go right now.'"

'Then that is what we'll do.' How I wished to be able to hear Chade's thoughts on this for myself.

We packed up the tent and loaded it on the sled. Thick matter-of-factly climbed onto it. I thought it over and decided it was the simplest solution to travelling with him. Dragging him was easier than matching his slow pace. As before, the Fool went on before us, testing the trail while I pulled. The day was fine, a warm wind blowing across the snowy face of the world. 1 expected that we might reach the beach by the next afternoon if we held our present progress. Thick suddenly spoke.

'Nettle said she missed you. She asked if you hated her.'

'I hated - When? When did she say that?'

'At night.' Thick waved his hand vaguely. 'She said you just went away and never came back at all.'

'But that's because I ate the bad food. And I couldn't reach her.'

'Ya.' Thick dismissed this casually. 'I told her you can't talk to her any more. She was glad to hear it.'

'She was glad?'

'She thought you were dead. Or something. She has a friend now, a new girl. Will we stop and eat soon?'

'Not until tonight. We don't have much food, so we have to be careful. Thick, did she -'

My words were interrupted by a whoop of dismay from the Fool. His sounding post had suddenly plunged deep in the snow. He picked it up, took two steps to the left and shoved it in again. Again it sank deep.

'Sit still,' I told Thick. I took one of the extra poles from the sled and walked forward to stand beside the perplexed Fool. 'Soft snow?' I asked him.

He shook his head. 'It's as if there's only a crust, and then nothing. If I hadn't held tight to the pole, it would have dropped right through.'

'Let's be very careful.' 1 took hold of his sleeve. 'Thick, stay on the sled!' I reminded him again.

Tm hungry!'

'The food is in the sack behind you. Sit still and eat something.' It seemed the easiest way to keep him busy. Tugging the Fool to move with me, we took three steps to the right. This time, I plunged in my pole. I felt what he had told me I would. The crust of snow resisted the pole, and then it shot through into nothingness.

'Peottre's stakes go right across it,' the Fool pointed out.

'It wouldn't be that hard to move the stakes,' I pointed out.

'Whoever moved them would have had to walk right across, though.'

'The crust would be more solid at night. I think.' I couldn't decide if we confronted the natural danger of the glacier or if we had followed the line of stakes into a trap. 'Let's move back to the sled,' I suggested.

'Seems like a very good idea,' the Fool agreed.

So it was that as I led him back from the hidden chasm, we plunged downward through the crust. We sank, me to my knees, the Fool to his hips, both yelling in terror. Then, as we stuck there, I laughed out loud at our fright. It was no more than a soft spot in the snow. 'Give me your hand,' I said as he floundered, trying to get back onto the top of the crust. He took my proffered grasp,

and then, as he floundered toward me, we both broke through the second crust below us and went down.

I had a single glimpse of Thick's face contorted in terror. Then his wail of dismay was drowned in the downpour of snow and ice that fell with and after us. 1 clung to the Fool's hand as I floundered for any sort of solidity anywhere else in the world. There was none. All was white and wet and cold, and we fell in a terrible unending slide of loose snow and ice chunks.

Snow seems a light and fluffy thing when it is falling on a sunlit day. But when it thickens the air to porridge, you cannot breathe it. It flowed inside my clothes like a living thing craving my warmth. It became heavy and relentless. I fought my free hand up to crook my elbow uselessly over my face. We fell still, a slow sliding, and in some part of my mind, I knew that more snow slid down after as. Yet through it all, I held fast to the Fool's hand, and knew that his free hand did not protect his face but clung in a death grip to the shoulder of my coat. There was no free air to breathe.

And then, as if we had passed through the neck of a funnel, we were suddenly falling and sliding more swiftly and freely. I kicked my feet, making vague swimming motions, and felt the Fool likewise struggling alongside me. I felt us sliding to a halt, in cold wet darkness. It terrified me, and I made the final struggle that our bodies demand we make when death clutches us. Then, somehow, against all odds, I was breaking free of the snow. I gasped a breath of almost clear air and floundered toward it, dragging the Fool with me. He came limply and I feared he had already smothered.

All was darkness and cold and cascading snow and ice. I was hip-deep, pulling the Fool behind me, and then suddenly the snow let go of me. I waded out of the knee-deep stuff and then blundered clear of it. I heard the Fool take a wheezing gasp of air. I found a breath myself, and then two. Tiny settling crystals of ice still filled the air we breathed, but even so, it seemed such an improvement. We were in darkness.

I shook snow from my hair and dug handfuls of it out of my collar. My hat was gone, and one boot. All was black around us, and the only sounds were the indescribable creaks of settling snow and our own harsh breath. 'Where are we?' I gasped, and my

little human voice was the muffled squeak of a mouse in a bin full of grain.

The Fool coughed. 'Down here.' We had let go of one another, but still stood close enough for our bodies to touch. He was huddled at my feet, and I felt him doing something, and then a pale, greenish light opened out from his hands. I blinked, at first seeing no more than the glow, and then realizing that it came from a small box in his hands. 'This won't last long,' he warned me, his face ghastly in the corpse-light. 'At most a day. It is Elderling magic, of the most expensive and rare sort. Not all of my fortune went for gambling and brandy. A good portion of it is right here in my hand.'

'Thank the gods for that,' I said heartily. For a fleeting instant, I wondered if that was the sole true prayer that Web had once referred to. Dim as the light was, it was still an immeasurable comfort to me. It was just enough to light both our faces as we looked at one another. The Fool's hat had stayed on his head. His pack dangled from one strap, the other torn free from him. I was shocked it had stayed with him at all. My sword belt and sword were gone. As I watched him, he strapped his little pack shut again. We did not speak for a moment or two as we shook snow from our clothing, and then lifted our eyes to peer at our surroundings.

We could see nothing of them. Our light was too dim to show us more than the slide of snow we had emerged from and ourselves. We were in an under-ice hollow or cavern, but the Elderling lantern could not reach the walls of it. No light trickled down from above. I decided that the flood of snow that had followed us had re-sealed whatever crack we had fallen through. Then, 'Thick! Oh, Eda, give him the sense to Skill to Dutiful and Chade what has happened. I hope he just stays where he is on the sled. But when night and cold comes, what then for him? Thick!' I suddenly bellowed the word, thinking of the vague little man left sitting alone on a sled in a world of ice.

'Shush!' The Fool reprimanded me sharply. 'If he hears you shout, he may get off the sled and come toward the crack. Be quiet. His danger is less than ours, and I'm afraid you must leave him to face it alone. He'll Skill out, Fitz. His mind is not swift, perhaps, but it

works well enough and he will have plenty of time to think what to do next.'

'Perhaps,' I conceded- My heart felt squeezed. Of all the times to be deprived of my Skill, this was the worst. And then in the next instant, the loss of Nighteyes gutted me again. I missed his instincts and survivor's outlook. My heart caught in my chest. I was alone.

And drowning in self-pity. The thought was as acid as if it had truly come from Nighteyes. Get up and do something. The Fool's survival depends on you, and possibly Thick's.

I took a deep breath and lifted my eyes. The fickle green light of the little box showed me nothing, but that did not mean there was nothing to see. If there was no other way out, then we must risk causing another cascade of snow by trying to dig up through it. It there was a way out, then we should find it. It was that simple. Standing here whining like a lost cub would not avail me anything. I reached down and pulled the Fool to his feet. 'Come. There is no going back up. Let us see where we are. Moving will keep us warmer.'

'Very well.' He spoke the words so trustingly that they nearly broke my heart.

1 would have welcomed one of our snow poles, but there was no guessing where they were buried now. So, the Fool held his little box of light out in front of us, and we groped our way forward.

We encountered nothing. If we stood still and held our breaths, we could hear water dripping and the bone-deep slow breath of the ice around us. Under our feet, the ice was gritty. We could not see a ceiling above us. We were in a starless night, and our only contact with the world was the solidity under our feet and each other. We did not even see the blackness of a wall before us until we blundered against it.

We both stood touching it for a time, saying nothing. In that stillness, I became aware of the Fool shivering and the shuddering of his breath. 'Why didn't you tell me you were that cold?' I demanded of him.

He sniffed, and then laughed weakly. 'Aren't you? It seemed a useless thing to speak of it.' He dragged in another chattering breath and asked, 'Is that ice or rock?'

'Lift the light and we'll sec' He did. But then said, 'I still can't tell. But it's something we can't pass. Let's follow it.'

'It may take us right hack to where we came.'

'It may, and there's no help for that if it does. If we go all the way round and come right back here again, at least we'll know there is no way out. Here. A moment.' I set my hand to shoulder height on the wall, and then reached for my belt-knife. It was gone. Of course. The Fool still had his, and I borrowed it to scratch a rough mark on the wall. It seemed a futile gesture.

'Left or right?' I asked him. I had no sense at all of north or south.

'Left,' he said, flapping a hand vaguely in that direction.

'A moment,' I said gruffly, and unfastened my cloak. He tried to fend me off when I put it around his shoulders.

'You'll get cold!' he protested.

'I'm already cold. But my body has always warmed itself better than yours. And if you drop from cold, it will not benefit either of us. Don't worry. If I need it back, I'll let you know. Just wear it for now.'

I only realized how cold he was when he immediately surrendered. He dropped his pack to the floor and handed me the Elderling light while he fastened the cloak. He was shaking as he held it close around him. I lifted the box and decided it was not just the greenish light that made him such an odd colour. He gave me a very small smile. 'It's still warm from your body. Thank you, Fitz.'

'Thank yourself. That's the one you gave me when I was acting as your servant. Come on. Let's get moving.' I lifted his pack before he could. 'What else is in here?'

'Nothing of much use, I'm afraid. Only a few personal things I wouldn't wish ever to lose. There's a little flask of brandy in the bottom. And I think a few honey cakes. I brought them for an emergency, or perhaps a treat for Thick.' He gave a strangled laugh. 'Emergency. But not this. Even so, I think we should save them as long as we can.'

'Likely you're right. Let's go.'

He did not move to take the light, but kept his arms wrapped

around his body. So I held the light and led the way as we followed the black wall beside us. I could tell by the way he walked that his feet were going numb. Despair threatened to engulf me. Then the wolf in me dismissed it. We were still alive and moving. There was hope.

We trudged on. Endlessly. Time became motion, steps taken in the dark. Sometimes I closed my eyes to rest them from the unnatural light, but even then, I seemed to see it. At such a moment, the Fool asked shakily, 'What's that?'

I opened my eyes. 'What's what?' I asked him. Blue afterglows danced before my vision. I blinked. They didn't go away.

'That. Isn't that light? Shut the box. See if it's still there or if it's some sort of reflection.'

It was hard to get the box to shut. My fingers were cold, and my one un-booted foot was a cold aching lump at the end of my leg. But when the box was closed, a blue shard of light still beckoned to us. It was irregularly shaped and oddly edgeless. I squinted at it, trying to make it assume some familiar aspect.

'It's very strange, isn't it? Let's go toward it.'

'And leave the wall?' I asked, oddly reluctant. 'There's no way to tell how far away that is-'

'Light has to come from somewhere,' the Fool pointed out.

I took a breath- 'Very well.'

We set out toward it. It did not seem to grow larger. The floor became uneven and our pace more shuffling as we groped ahead with numbed feet. Then, in the space of a few steps, our perspective on it changed. A wall to our left had been blocking our view, allowing us to see only a reflection in an icy wall. As we moved past that projection, the blue gleam opened out and became a beckoning corridor of blue-and-white ice. Hopes renewed, we increased our pace. We hurried around a bend in our black chamber, and suddenly a luminous vista spread before us. The closer we approached, the more my eyes could resolve what we saw. As we angled back toward the illumination, it increased, and after a narrowing in the passage, we emerged into a world of light suffused ice.

The beam seemed sourceless, as if it had wandered through

windows and mirrors and prisms of ice before it found us. We entered into a strange maze of cracks and chasms in a world of palely gleaming walls. Sometimes our way was narrow and sometimes broad. The floor under our feet was never level. Sometimes it seemed we walked in a sharp crack in the ice that had happened yesterday and sometimes it looked as if melting water had slowly sculpted the wandering path we followed. When we came to ways where the passage branched, we always tried to choose the larger way. Often enough, it narrowed shortly after we had made our choice. I did not say to the Fool what I feared; we followed random crackings in the ice of the glacier. There was no reason to expect that any of them led to anything.

The first signs I saw that others had passed this way were subtle. I thought I tricked myself into hope; there seemed to be a scattering of sand where the floor of the passageway was slick. Then, that perhaps the walls had been squared off. My nose caught the scent first: fresh human excrement. In the same instant I was sure of it, the Fool said, 'It looks as if steps have been cut into the floor ahead of us.'

I nodded. We were definitely ascending, and broad shallow steps had been cut in the icy floor. A dozen steps later, we passed a chamber cut into the ice to our right. A natural fissure had been enlarged into a waste pit, a place to throw rubbish and dump chamber pots. And a grave for the ignominious dead. I saw a naked foot, obscenely pale and bony, projecting from the midden. Another body sprawled face down upon it, ribs showing through tattered rags. Only the cold made the stench bearable. I halted and asked the Fool in a whisper, 'Do you think we should go on?'

'It is the only path,' he said tremulously. 'We have to follow it.'

He stared and stared at the discarded body. He was shaking again. 'Are you still cold?' I asked. The passages we were in seemed slightly warmer to me than when we had been in darkness. Light seemed to come from within them.

He gave me a ghastly smile. 'I'm scared.' He closed his eyes for an instant, squeezing unshed tears onto his golden lashes. Then, 'On we go,' he said more firmly. He stepped past me to take the lead and I followed him, full of dread.

Whoever was responsible for dumping the slops and chamber

pots was a careless fellow. Splotches and splashes marred the icy walls and mottled the ice underfoot. The farther we went, the more obviously man-made or at least hand-modified the passages became. The source of the blue light was revealed when we passed an exposed pale globe that was anchored to the wall overhead. It was larger than a pumpkin, and gave off light but not heat. I halted, staring up at it. Then, as I reached toward it with curious fingers, the Fool caught at my cuff and dragged my hand back down. He shook his head in silent warning.

'What is it?' I asked in a whisper.

He shrugged one shoulder. 'I don't know. But I know it's hers. Don't touch it, Fitz. Come on. We have to hurry.'

And we did, for a time. Until we came to the first dungeon.