The Door in Crow Wood

Chapter 34 The Ice Caves

  When Clay had climbed down from his Korfy and had set his feet on the cave floor, though he knew himself to be still, he had an odd sensation of swaying. This was due to hunger, he told himself, hunger and overexertion. Perhaps anxiety, too. He had been glad enough when the Mangars had found the trail of an Ulrig and had followed it to these Ice Caves; but now that they had entered by one of the great cave openings and had begun to unpack their exhausted mounts in the half light, he was wondering just how many Blue Ulrigs had survived here.

  Nashpa was counting heads. “Ripel? Where is Ripel? The kitten’s still outside the cave. Misbal, go get him.”

  “Get him yourself,” Misbal snorted. “I’ve had enough of your high and mightiness.”

  “I’ll get him,” Clay said. He finished twisting into the ground the stake at the end of Velprew’s bill-chain, his visible breath puffing out before him, and went back out.

  Ripel’s korfy was seated, apparently unwilling to enter the cave, so dark and unfamiliar. Ripel stood beside her, while beyond them stretched an uneven slope deep in snow and descending to the great white plain. Snow clouds hovered low over the whole expanse.

  Clay approached him gingerly. During the latter part of their month’s journey north, as food supplies and strength had decreased, civility had also diminished. One by one the Mangars had become morose and erratic until it was with difficulty that Nashpa commanded at all.

  He patted the neck of Ripel’s korfy. “Nashpa wants you, Ripel. We’ll have to get Kreenprew moving.”

  Ripel did not stir. “Any sign of them in there?” he asked.

  Clay shook his head.

  “They’ll wait till we’re asleep, of course,” said the Mangar. “And even if they leave us alone, what about hunger? Siskiral ka lud! Nashpa’s brought us to the end of the world.”

  “The end of the world,” Clay echoed, and he looked around as if seeing the rocky hillside for the first time. “I was supposed to meet someone hereabouts.”

  He dug into the neck of his thick cloak and pulled up the tiny bottle that he had carried with him all the way from Kulismos.

  “What’s that?” Ripel asked.

  “Chrusodendron seeds,” Clay said. He slipped the string over his head and handed the bottle to the Mangar. “Unknown Princess Bekah gave them to me.”

  Ripel held the bottle on his hairy paw while a few snowflakes drifted down. “These are from the Gold Trees? They’ll grow money?”

  “Get real.”

  “Well, that’s what the old tales say.”

  “Huh-uh. Bekah said the fruit of the tree cures stuff.”

  “That’s more likely, isn’t it?” said Ripel. “It’s a shame these won’t ever be planted.”

  Suddenly, he hurled the bottle against a stony outcropping. They heard the tinkle of breaking glass. Then Ripel looked Clay in the eyes and hissed low. He appeared wild with the wildness of a frightened beast—barely under control. Like a flash, he clutched the front of Clay’s cloak.

  “Little human, tell me how you’re going to rule the Fold if we must die here. Why did you come? What have you been but a curse to us?”

  “That’s the truth,” Clay said softly. “I’ve been a curse, you’re right. I don’t know why Ulrumman brought me here, but I do know that you Mangars have stood by me as if I were Kuley himself.”

  Ripel’s claws loosened just a little in the fur of the cloak.

  “Come on,” Clay coaxed, “bring your korfy inside and you’ll feel better about things.”

  As they stood facing each other, from somewhere in the nearby hills a weird howl arose. Ripel sprang back, his fur bristling.

  “What was that?”

  “An Ulrig,” Clay said. “I heard one howl like that at Lucilla. They’re not so bad, really. Let’s see how the others are doing.”

  They found that everything had changed within. With their backs to the opening, the Mangars faced across the level floor a shadowy band of Blue Ulrigs. Clay took his stand by Nashpa, who quietly placed a spear in the boy’s hands.

  “Don’t let them near the korfies,” Nashpa whispered. “They want them for food.”

  “How do you know?” Clay asked.

  “Because their leader said so; though that’s about all I understood. I’m not much good at Gellene except for talk of buying and selling.”

  “They speak Gellene?” Clay was surprised.

  “Try them. Their leader is named Snog. All that’s been said so far is that we want fish that they won’t give us and they want korfies that we won’t give them. Go ahead, you know the language better than I do.”

  Clay peered at the dim pack. His eyes were adjusting to the cave now, so that he thought he saw about twenty of them. They were lightly armed with a few knives and clubs.

  “Lalete Kreenspam, Strategos Snog?” he asked.

  “No,” answered a deep, wolfish voice in matching Gellene. “The Father Lame One spoke Gellene to us. Who are you, human? Are you the Father Lame One returned to us?”

  Clay remembered that at Purgos the Crumbly Doron had leaned on canes and that this same Doron was said to have bred the Blue Ulrigs. Thus Father Lame One. He wisely decided not to say anything about what he had done to Doron.

  “No, I’m not him. I’m the True Descendant of Quintus. Does that—does that mean anything to you?”

  He braced himself, hoping that whatever it might mean to a Blue Ulrig would prove favorable.

  “Yes, it means you’re a liar,” Snog said. “Lila was the last of that line, and a witch assassin killed her with an arrow at Icarus Pass.

  “No, he didn’t, Snog. I know that story circulated, but you’ve been cut off from news for centuries, haven’t you? Actually, Lila recovered and went to the Old World, where she married. I’m her descendant.”

  “What if she did, human? I don’t believe you, but even if it’s true, what is it to the Blue Ulrigs? Lila was just another vermin laden creature that polluted the land.”

  “The same as you,” added another Ulrig.

  Nashpa had not been following this, and said so. He asked how the conversation was going.

  “Not bad,” Clay said. “They think we’re filthy, polluting vermin carriers.”

  “Hm. Return the compliment.”

  “Snog also doesn’t care whether I’m the Emperor or not.”

  “So what’s our fate? What do they do with us?”

  Clay asked Snog, who had a ready answer.

  “You’ll soon be too weak to fight,” he said. “Then we’ll have your korfies’ flesh and yours as well. We’ll just wait.”

  Bafrel wakened Clay with a paw on his narrow shoulder. “Your Eminence, we agreed to take the last watch before morning.”

  Clay rose and took his place behind an oil lamp placed on the cave floor. Bafrel stood by another. Behind them among the korfies four other Mangars were asleep clutching their weapons, and two more, Rosif and Razasif, were just lying down after their watch. Clay saw no sign of the Blue Ulrigs. He stepped nearer Bafrel and asked about them.

  “Why should they show themselves and give us a target to attack?” he answered. “And by Kreenro, we can’t just go farther into the cave tomorrow morning, or they’ll ambush us.”

  “Why don’t they come around behind us outside and block the cave opening?”

  “Well, first, because they don’t love the cold any more than we do; and second, because it’s unnecessary. They see our korfies are played out. If we ride away tomorrow morning, they’ll just find their meat frozen on the plain—and not too far out, either.”

  “Since when are you so pessimistic, Bafrel? You haven’t given up?”

  “It’s a tight place,” was all that the Mangar would answer.

  Clay went back to his lamp and stood minute after minute, a spear in his hand. He was light-headed from hunger but oddly calm. If even Bafrel had given up, then he saw
no reason to look for a way out. At least they would not die by inches; the Ulrigs would see to that. All was decided.

  But somehow he did not believe it. Perhaps, after surviving so many dangers, he was not disposed to call any situation hopeless. Or maybe it was that it seemed unfitting for him to die so soon after meeting Thoz. Also, Raspberry had cast him for a role in the history of the Fold, yet so far he had done nothing. So how could he die?

  Clay began to pray, something he had taught himself to do in the past few weeks. At first, he had repeated his one Psalm, the Battle Hymn of the Republic, and remembered snatches of other hymns. When that played out, he had simply said what he had to say in his own words, which worked better. Other times, as now, he preferred listening, if listening can be called a form of prayer. He did not wait for spoken words but for the sense of Thoz’s presence, and he seldom had to wait long.

  After more than an hour, Clay was nearly asleep on his feet but still listening. He saw a movement on the fringe of the lamplight, and started.

  “Bafrel, did you see her?”

  “Where?” Bafrel asked.

  Clay crouched with his spear ready. “Right in front of us. It looked like a woman.”

  “Your Eminence must have fallen half asleep. My eyes are better in the dark, and I see no one.”

  “But she was right there,” Clay insisted. “She was wearing a cloak and a veil, and she just pointed toward the cave mouth and then walked away from us.”

  Bafrel shuffled his feet and lowered his eyes.

  “Yeah, I know, I’m probably hallucinating from hunger,” Clay said. “But I want to look outside where she was pointing. See, there’s a little morning light coming in now.”

  Bafrel had no objection, so Clay went out into the gray dawn and the wind. More snow had fallen in the night, covering their tracks from the previous day with a blank sheet. Clearly, no one had been out here. Nothing here but the bare plain and the rocky hillside.

  No, something dark was on the snow under the nearest rocky overhang. A bird perhaps? It looked like a bunch of leaves. To get closer, Clay pushed through a drift up to his hips until his spear’s tip could touch the thing. Yes, it was a bunch of dark leaves. That made no sense, for nothing grew here. He tried to lift the branch with his spear and found that it extended on down into the snow.

  Clay laughed, picturing it rooted in the ground. Was this another hallucination? He planted the spear end in the drift and, wallowing nearer, began to scoop away snow with his gloved hands. In a few minutes, he began to uncover other branches and, to his astonishment, yellow fruit clinging to them, pear-like fruit almost golden in hue. The branches thickened on the way down. This was a tree.

  Clay suddenly pulled his hands back, feeling his cheeks flush and his heart pound. He wanted no more of this; it was too unnatural, too out of this world. Just yesterday the snow level had been lower here, and yet no tree had shown itself. He knew this because he had looked this way when Ripel had broken the little bottle against this overhang....

  “Uh-oh,” Clay said aloud. That was it. The chrusodendron seeds had fallen here. He muttered to himself, “They should have come with a tag that says, ‘Grows anywhere overnight!’ Whew! So, Bekah, you made our appointment after all.”

  A darkness was just under the snow a few feet away, and investigating, he found a top branch belonging to another little tree, also laden with yellow fruit. He could not wait any longer but plucked off a piece and tasted it. It was delicious. After that, he brushed with one hand and ate with the other. About the time he found a third tree, he discovered Nashpa and Bafrel staring down at him from near the cave mouth. They looked comical, their eyes so round in their broad faces and each with a pink tip of tongue just showing between his teeth.

  “Anyone for breakfast?” Clay said.

  In the depths of the Ice Caves, Captain Snog had received a strange and disappointing report.

  “No, Krul, don’t think of harming such trees. Their enchantment might bear a curse.”

  Krul squinted his eyes in the torchlight and lolled out his tongue. “But Captain, the Mangars and the human aren’t starving anymore. It’s we who are hungry, so many of us kept from our hunting grounds in order to watch them.”

  “Never mind about that, I want those enchanted trees. But they’re so close to the cave mouth that, if we try to take possession of them, the Mangars will drive us away with their spears and arrows. There’s no cover there.” He snarled and shook his muzzle. “If only we had weapons like theirs.”

  Krul’s mournful eyes expressed agreement. “I too want a taste of that fruit, Captain. Why don’t we give them what they want—lead them to the river—so we can get at the trees?”

  “They won’t agree to that.”

  Krul shrugged. “We can offer.”

  Down the middle of the great cave came Nashpa’s tabra, each rider leading his korfy and hefting his spear. Ahead of them went several Ulrigs. The cave roof was so high that they could not see it with the light of their feeble lamps. As they skirted the edge of a small stream that flowed along in the ever darkness, they heard a rumbling and rhythmic echoing from far beyond. They asked their chief guide about it, a short and scruffy Ulrig with an air of preoccupation.

  Krul responded gloomily. “It’s the ocean. We’re coming to a river that flows into it.”

  As he plodded on ahead of them, Clay reflected that the little Ulrig must be depressed and bitter because his squad had been assigned to go with the Mangars while Snog and the rest remained and ate the enchanted fruit. As second in command, Krul would be often getting such undesirable assignments.

  “Do you have any ships?” Nashpa asked Krul hopefully in his pidgin Gellene.

  “No, all rotted and sunk long ago.”

  Krul scratched his foreleg, and in the light of his lamp, Clay saw blue dust puff from the Ulrig’s fur. He had already noticed that these Ulrigs were blue-tinged from such powder. He had asked one of them about it and had learned that it was some sort of insect repellant. That was why Krul’s squad kept such a careful distance from their visitors: they were afraid of fleas.

  “All sunken long ago,” Krul repeated after a long pause. “No ships of sea or air. No siddertherons, either, except the twenty four, and they don’t work anymore.”

  “What’s that?” Clay asked

  “The rolling machines that once spat fire. Some remained after the great defeat. Others are half buried on the plain, but you didn’t come the right way to pass them. These I speak of are not far off.”

  “Let’s see them,” Clay said.

  “Soon enough.”

  Krul brought them to a halt across from a large double doorway framed in stone, the leaves of the doors lying in the dust. Here the other Ulrigs hung back, but Krul lifted his lamp and called to Clay.

  “Come, young human, and see the siddertherons that once were invincible in the East.”

  Nashpa told the other Mangars to stay back while he accompanied Clay; and the three entered a vast, level-floored chamber. Krul brought them to a rust-covered metal hulk, the first of many lined up in straight rows. He raised his lamp over it.

  “See? No harness for some animal to pull. In those days the Father Lame One made clever engines that turned the wheels.”

  Clay’s eyes were alive with surprised interest. “Technology!” he said. “I didn’t think the Fold ever had any. Look, Nashpa, it’s got treads around the wheels—and rivets—and axles—and probably a real engine. If we could get this thing going—”

  “This was where the fire came out,” said Krul as he walked around to a barrel-like nozzle in front.

  “Yeah, right,” said Clay, “but can we make it run? How long have these been here?”

  “Five hundred and ninety five years,” Krul said.

  “Oh,” Clay said in a small voice. “I don’t suppose that they drained the oil out and—oh, never mind.” br />
  Nashpa was keeping his distance. “Your Eminence, these Iron Beasts are too evil to touch. They were used to kill many thousands of your own species.”

  Clay grinned. “I can’t help it, I just love stuff like this.” He began to look for an engine compartment.

  “When our Father Lame One returns, he’ll fix them,” Krul said.

  Clay paused. “Uh, what makes you so sure he’s coming back?”

  “He is immortal, and he promised he’d return. It’s recorded in the Long Chant that is the history of our folk.”

  Krul began to recite to them in the still chamber.

  From Ulrigs’ plain to humans’ town,

  From Bourasnia to the Sea,

  We burned the grass, the brush we burned,

  We burned the standing tree,

  And we burned the barns and fences down

  And made the cattle flee;

  And left behind just hot, black ground

  And curls of smoke in eddies wound

  Far as the eye could see.

  When Vincent Quintus called their names

  And mustered all his own,

  Ten thousand humans faced our flames

  With agony and groans;

  We burned the flesh from off their frames,

  And then we burned their bones.

  There were of all their host remains

  Enough, the ancient chanter claims,

  To place beneath one stone.

  Yet at the Sipurrom the will

  Of heaven turned our fires.

  Winds from that high and holy hill

  Extinguished our desires,

  When gods released the Plague to kill

  The legions of our sires.

  All night the fever spread until

  We lay in mountain heaps to fill

  The grave mounds and the pyres.

  Then Grug the mighty perished in

  The Hill’s bewitching springs,

  And Father Lame One left us when

  The law of Unknown Kings

  Summoned him to the lands of men

  With sacred utterings.

  Forever more we watch for him

  To come and send us forth again,

  Our flame rekindling.

  Krul finished chanting. “That’s a part of it,” he said simply.

  “They burned almost all of Meschor,” Nashpa explained to Clay grimly. “But a plague from Ulrumman stopped them.” He turned on Krul. “And you just want to do it again,” he said in Gellene.

  “No,” Krul said, “not just Meschor: the whole world.”

  “The world! Why?”

  Krul would not answer.

  Clay spent a few more minutes examining the Iron Beasts and then confused and frightened Krul by pulling out his camera and snapping a few flash pictures of them. Nashpa had already had the little box explained to him and indeed had had his picture taken along with the other Mangars, all standing in front of their korfies.

  “I know why these Ulrigs want to burn the world,” Nashpa said to Clay when they had returned from the hall and the procession of korfies resumed. “They just can’t stand living things. Fleas. Plants. It’s all the same to them, they call it verminous.”

  “But they eat living things,” Clay objected. “For that matter, they themselves are living things.”

  “Yes,” Nashpa growled. “They aren’t consistent when it comes to themselves. But Doron put this idea in their heads about purifying the earth, and they’ve never shaken loose of it.”

  Before long, the little stream at their left emptied into a full size river that flowed lazily to their right. A bridge with crumbled railings arched high over the river, its far end invisible in the darkness.

  “You wanted fish,” Krul said, “so here we leave you. My squad and I have orders to occupy this bridge. The far side is forbidden even to us, being sacrosanct, and you must by no means attempt to cross.”

  Something clicked in Clay’s military mind, so that he said to Nashpa in Kreenspam, “We’ve got to have that bridge.”

  Nashpa acted quickly. He twisted together the lead chains of his and Clay’s korfies, and leaving them tugging at each other, leaped onto the end of the bridge, a spear in one paw and a knife in the other. Clay followed more tentatively and raised his own spear. Together they faced Krul and six Ulrigs, who now pulled from their belts crude knives and sticks.

  “Get out of the way,” Krul said. “There’s nothing over there that you want.”

  “Yes, there is,” Clay said. “Safety. On this side we’re wide open to attack, but once we’re over there you Ulrigs would have to cross this bridge to get at us. Besides, you say that side’s forbidden to you, so all the better.”

  By this time the other Mangar’s spears were aimed at the Ulrigs’ backs.

  “Take one alive as a prisoner,” Nashpa roared.

  Hearing this, the Blue Ulrigs ran. Krul, however, was too slow. Nashpa’s spear pierced his leg, and a moment later Nashpa himself landed on him, flattening him to the ground.

  In a short time Krul was trussed up and bandaged. As he hobbled across the bridge, the Mangars were amused to find him complaining more about the threat of Nashpa’s fleas than about his wound. They followed with their korfies, and Nashpa posted Misbal and Omulglas on the bridge, each with a bow and a quiver of arrows. The far side proved to be a wide and level concrete dock, long abandoned but little changed in the weatherless cave.

  Krul’s nose end quivered and his eyes watered as he watched the Mangars explore the area. “This is a dreaded place,” he warned. “The ghost of the witch-king Frear haunts it, he that was in command even over the Father Lame One. Not even Howdan had power over Frear, Howdan who rules in Purgos.”

  “Look, there’s something I ought to tell you about these guys you’re talking about—” Clay began, but he was interrupted by Ripel, who had ascended to a platform overlooking the dock.

  “Better come see this, Your Eminence.”

  They all went up and found Ripel holding his lamp over the wreck of a throne. Clay guessed that the thin and twisted metal plating had once covered a wooden frame that had long since rotted away. On the back of the wreck were symbols such as he had seen in the Great Midraeum: stars, planets, and crawling things. Directly in front of the throne lay a stone the size of a loaf of bread, but flatter. The sides appeared rough, but the upper surface was smooth and inscribed. The stone lay in a little mound of black dust. Nashpa leaned over the stone.

  “It’s just as the histories say,” he said excitedly. “The language on the Stone is neither Kreenspam nor Gellene. It’s unknown. This is the Message Stone.” He pulled Clay nearer. “Your Eminence, this is the very spot where the Crumbly Frear raised the Stone above his head and was crushed by it.”

  “Slow down, Nashpa, I don’t know anything about this.”

  “Strangers came,” Krul put in, “humans from the East, and they brought this Stone from the White Mountain, so they said.”

  “Yes,” said Nashpa, “the flisses and the Unknown Kings sent the Stone because Frear was due to be judged and executed. Frear had directed the Ulrig war, the attacks of the witches on the Eschorian royal family—everything. After the plague that ended the war, Frear remained here with other witches, still plotting, trusting in his immortality; until the sailor Michael Constant brought the Stone. Frear took Constant and his friends prisoner, intending to execute them. As for the Stone, he laughed at it and lifted it over his head to dash it to the ground. But instead, well, something happened. The power that filled his burnt-through body was suddenly removed from him, and the Stone fell through him as if he were made of toothpicks.”

  Clay realized with a start that the charcoal-like black dust around the Stone was what remained of Frear.

  “And here’s the interesting point,” Ripel said. “When they compared times, they found that the Stone crushed him on the same day and hour that
the arrow pierced Lila on the Mistaleer and she fell into the gorge. Nobody really understands it, but somehow her sacrifice broke his power.”

  “Michael Constant took the Father Lame One away,” Krul said miserably.

  Clay finally found his opening. “Krul, you Blue Ulrigs ought to be told that Doron is dead. I killed him myself on August thirtieth. And don’t give me this stuff about him being immortal, because so was Frear, and look what’s left of him. So you can stop chanting about Doron coming back. No, now get up off your haunches and stop whimpering. It’s not that bad.”

  “August thirtieth!” Krul howled. “That was the evening that many of us felt a terrible dread.”

  “That’s right, because he died. So now you can quit living in the past. You can get on with life, right?”

  Krul fell on his side. “We’re cut adrift! We’re orphans!”

  “Well, look, he was a lousy father,” Clay mumbled.

  Nashpa laid a paw on Clay’s shoulder. “Don’t try to talk to him now. Let’s go back to the bridge. We’re running out of lamp oil, so we need to cut back to just one lamp.”

  The lighting situation was worse than Nashpa had realized. Krul’s lamp had been broken in the scuffle at the bridge end, and the other Ulrigs had run off with theirs. The oil from the Mangars’ three lamps, when poured carefully into one, did not fill it.

  “And when that light goes out, most of our weapon advantage goes with it,” Nashpa said. “We can’t aim in the dark. But if we try to live outside these caves, we freeze; and if we try to ride away, our korfies don’t have the strength to take us anywhere. Oh, and I might mention that, if we try to fish, we don’t have a scrap of bait for a hook. Ideas?”

  Nobody had any. Even Bafrel did not contribute his usual joke.

  Finally, Ripel said, “Ransom Krul for some oil and bait.”

  “Well, that’s possible,” Nashpa said dubiously. “But first we have to actually hope that more Ulrigs come along, so we can talk to them.”

  They settled in to wait.

  Nobody knew what hour it was, or what day, when the last drop of oil was burned and the lamp went out. Clay reluctantly brought out his two campers’ light sticks, broke one of them according to directions, and was disappointed by the weak and sickly green glow it gave off. The Mangars, however, thanked him for it, as being much preferable to total darkness. Eventually, most of them tried to sleep.

  Clay lay on his side, watching the glowing stick and listening to the river’s flow beneath the bridge and the far off pounding of the sea waves. He was hungry again. It occurred to him that their story might never make it back to the populated lands of the Fold. Fold history would only say (if it said anything) that the Pretender Clay had disappeared like Kuley without a trace. And what would become of Simone, waiting for him in Colonia? He worried briefly—then fell asleep.

  He woke in what he guessed to be the morning. Nashpa told him that the light stick had faded out and that he had broken the second and last one while Clay slept. The Mangars were nearing a decision to make for the ocean while the second stick lasted; but some of the korfies were unwilling or unable to rise. They would have to be left behind. Three of the korfies were up, then four. Velprew was one of them. The Mangars who owned the other korfies were unwilling to leave their mounts behind. They pleaded for a little more time, and Nashpa argued with them.

  “Probably none of these standing will make it far,” he said. “But let’s go now, quickly, while the Emperor’s magic stick lasts a few more hours. Do you want to be utterly blind in this place? Have you ever....”

  The leader paused, then rushed to the bridge rail and looked downstream.

  “I see it,” Clay said. “It’s a light on the river. No, a lot of lights.”

  “It’s a ship,” said Nashpa disbelievingly. “A ship’s coming up the river.”