The water erupted, sent them stumbling or falling backward.
Ethan saw a mouth. Rubies and emeralds, tormalines and topazes, ozmidines, ferrosilicate crystals mirror-bright decorated the cavern within a cavern. Stalactites and stalagmites of vitreous, transparent teeth lined the jaws. Around it was a face wide and fat like a toad’s, with a single searchlight of a mad vermilion eye above the bejeweled mouth. Black, slick flesh rippled in folds around eye and mouth, a pulpy envelope to hold organs loosely in place.
Whatever it was, it had been drawn from familiar depths by Ethan’s bright beam. Brave as they were some of the sailors fainted in place. Others forgot discipline and command in their rush to squeeze themselves back up the tunnel.
September and Williams already were firing at the apparition with beams tighter and more deadly than Ethan’s, while he strove frantically to readjust the setting on his own. Each time a blue beam touched the creature’s flesh the hallucination-made-real produced a gargantuan grunt. The humans fired as they retreated back toward the tunnel.
Mouth and eye rose roof high above the water and, hunched after them. Several more bolts struck it. The tumorous shape came down on the ice beach with a crash that echoed energetically ‘round the cavern, generating a low splintering sound. It lay still and unmoving, quartz teeth shining in the torchlight, the single round eye with its absurdly small black pupil staring blindly at them.
Screaming still sounded from up the tunnel, however, Hunnar had his sword out and was trying to force his way through the panicked mob.
“Cowards of Sofold! The daemon is dead, slain by the light knives of our friends who are half your size!” The mad rush upward slowed, ceased. Screams became anxious or uneasy murmurs. “When you are finished whimpering, you may rejoin us.” He sheathed his sword and deliberately chivaned downward at top speed, showing blatant disregard for what might await him within the cavern.
Gradually the sailors drifted after. They spread out below the tunnel mouth to gaze in delicious horror at the hellbeast resting on the ice. It was no less fearsome and not the least bit comical for having a body that was one-third head.
Displaying utter indifference to post-dying reflexes, September strode up to the creature which Eer-Meesach had already dubbed Kalankatht (which translates from the Tran roughly as “beast-which-is-all-teeth-and-no-tail”) and stuck his head into the gaping mouth. Frozen open, the upper jaw was still a meter above his hooded head.
Though two meters long on average, the transparent teeth were no thicker around than a man’s finger. There were hundreds in the chamber-sized maw. Short, delicate-looking fins projected from back and sides, while the blunt tail was flattened vertically for swimming and steering. It could not be very fast in pursuit of its prey, but it could bite at a lot of ocean.
Williams was examining the corpse with fine scientific detachment, though as a strong believer in the lingering independence of certain muscular functions he chose not to stray so near the jaws as had September. “Eye, mouth, and stomach. No waste space or organs.” He moved behind the nightmare, out of sight.
Ethan and Hunnar had joined September before the gaping mouth. “What more natural than that there be devils in Hell?”
Hesitantly, the knight reached out to touch the wet black skin. “Then you believe it a daemon of the underworld also?”
“Skua likes to fancify,” said Ethan. “There are similar, natural creatures living in the deeps of my own world’s seas. Some are bigger than this one, though none quite as outlandish.” As life-fluids ceased flowing within the body, the phosphorescences around mouth and sides were beginning to fade, lights and life going out together.
“This water is only part of your liquid ocean, the same kind of water that forms the ice above us, the ice that rafts chivan across, and that surrounds Sofold.” Ethan touched his torch to the floor, tasted of the water it produced. “Ice to liquid, just as you drink it aboard ship or back in Wannome.”
“Then the philosophers are right,” the knight said. “The inside of the world is fluid.”
Ethan smiled. “Oddly enough, that’s right; but the liquid is metal and not water. Williams can explain it better than I can.” He turned, called out. “Milliken?”
“This ends our exploring the sea.” September clipped his beamer back to his waist. “Next cousin of this mobile mouth we lure up is liable to be bigger still. What’re you yellin’ at, young feller-me-lad?”
“We can’t find Milliken. I thought he’d be studying this body, but …”
“Over here!” They looked to their right. The teacher was standing at the far edge of the cavern, where the ice gave way to sloping rock. As they moved toward him, he ducked back out of sight.
“Another cavern?” Ethan wondered aloud. Other Tran moved to follow them.
When they turned the bend he’d vanished behind, Milliken was still further ahead. The ice remained several meters from the gravel and stone.
“What is this?” September looked at the nearby ice wall curiously. “Another tunnel?”
“No.” Puffing, the schoolteacher had run back to rejoin them. “It seems to continue endlessly in a general northwesterly direction. In places the ice draws nearer to the island, in others it moves farther out. It may run around the entire circumference of the island.” He gestured back toward the now hidden cavern.
“At this depth, in this particular region anyway, volcanic heat from the island’s interior has spread outward instead of upward. We are probably at a level parallel to some horizontal flow of magma.”
“Then if we follow the curve of the island,” September pointed out, “we could come out under the harbor where the ship is moored.”
“Of what good is that?” asked Hunnar.
Ethan checked his beamer. “Our weapons are still three-quarters charged, Hunnar. We can cut our own tunnel upward. We couldn’t manage it through solid rock, but we’ve plenty of energy to melt ice.” He faced Williams. “Think you can judge when we’ve come near the Slanderscree, Milliken?”
“Dear me. I don’t know. The angle of our descent from the castle … I really don’t know.”
“Do the best you can. No matter where we come up, we’ll have a chance.”
When communicated to the rest of the crew, strung out back into the cavern, this information raised spirits considerably. Tran who had long since conceded soul and spirit to the Dark One found hope in the prospect of again confronting flesh and blood enemies.
The open corridor wound its way around the sunken shore. In one place the earth was so warm that the ice turned to black water nearby but the sailors refused to wade through it. Ethan and September had to use precious energy to cut a dry path upward through the ice, then down to the corridor again. They proceeded carefully. It wouldn’t do to lose contact with solid land and start cutting their way out into the enormous ice sheet which covered the ocean.
They rested, some of the Tran feeling confident enough to express a desire for food. Hours later, Williams said cautiously, “Here.” He raised his left hand, pointed upslope at a modest angle. “Cut here. If we melt our way upward at forty-five degrees we should come out beneath the ship.”
“How sure are you, Milliken?”
The teacher looked glumly at Ethan. “Not very.”
“An honest answer. I’ll start the cut, feller-me-lad.” September adjusted his beamer. After several tries he located the setting which best combined a fairly wide beam with enough power to melt the white ceiling overhead rapidly. Water ran beneath their feet, uncomfortable to Tran and human alike, if for different reasons.
Following immediately behind September, Ethan discovered his heart pounding harder than the climb demanded. His breathing was quick and heavy, his eyes darting around the circular tunnel. He found that shutting them relaxed his breathing and the hammering in his chest. Williams touched his booted foot and he jerked.
“Claustrophobic?” Ethan; looking back without opening his eyes, nodded vigorously. “Try n
ot to think about it. Don’t think about anything. Think music to yourself.”
Ethan did so, dredging up a lilting popular tune from his adolescence. His heartbeat fell to near-normal and he discovered he could breathe without effort. Concentrate, he told himself. Concentrate on Merriwillya night a burning, a-burning, Merriwillya a-yearning. Not on the tons and tons and tons of ice over your head, below your hands and knees, pressing in on your sides, pressing, pressing …
He couldn’t take his turn at cutting. He didn’t freeze or faint, but the sight of solid ice in front of him while knowing there were hundreds of anxious Tran blocking any retreat was too much to handle. They showed Hunnar how to use the beamer and he took Ethan’s place, saying nothing as he crawled past the half-paralyzed salesman.
Fortunately, the tunnel lengthened as fast as they could climb. Intense energy kept the little stream flowing steadily around ankles and knees.
The time came when September turned off his beamer, started to trade places with Williams, and then paused to glance upward. “Light above … there’s light coming through the ice!”
Joyful shouts rang deafeningly through the tunnel, until the knights and ship’s officers thought to quiet their men. September looked sympathetically at Ethan.
“It’d be better, feller-me-lad, if we break surface after the sun’s well down. If you can’t take it, we can—”
Ethan settled his back against the tunnel wall, hands clasping knees, his head resting between them. “I can wait,” he said curtly. September merely nodded.
The information was passed back down the tunnel. Sailors settled themselves for fast sleep in awkward positions, while others worked overlong on cleaning claws and chiv, the only weapons they had.
Hunnar was talking in low tones with Elfa and below her, with Teeliam Hoh. Ethan, catching an occasional word, decided they were talking about what had transpired back in the castle. He turned his attention away from them, having no desire to learn the methodology of certain barbarisms. It was enough to have seen the scars and bruises on Elfa’s face and body, to have listened to the mental scarring of the royal consort. Bad dreams enough plagued him already.
When darkness above was assured, the sleepers were shaken awake. All torches were extinguished. “Let me.” September looked appraisingly at him, then exchanged places.
“Keep your beam short and low, feller-me-lad.”
“I’m not completely helpless, you know.” Ethan turned to the ice above, began melting with barely a suggestion of blue issuing from the lens of the beamer. September did not reply, in doing so saying much.
A kind of petrified illumination showed ahead. Ethan turned off his beamer, raised both gloved hands, and pushed hard. Splinters fell past his face mask as he broke through the surface.
Cautiously, he raised his head out. Like a vacationing friend now returning, ever-present wind buffeted the back of his skull.
A low wooden wall lay ten meters or so to his right, lining the shore of Poyolavomaar. He twisted around. Piers lay ahead and behind him. A couple of small ice rafts were tied up to each. There was no movement, and lights on only one. With the temperature already a brisk minus thirty C. and falling, sailors and merchants alike would seek refuge in warmer taverns and cabins.
Huddled together in the distance above the shore wall, the lights of the town flickered brightly. An occasional shout rose above the wind.
Ethan looked back, ducked down into the tunnel. Anxious faces, masked or furred, stared back up at him expectantly. “We’re in the harbor, between the ends of two piers. But I don’t recognize anything, and I don’t see the ship.”
“Let me through.” With much squirming and wiggling, Hunnar slipped past Ethan. Elfa, Teeliam, Tersund and another sailor followed him, their musk strong in the confined corridor. Hunnar looked back down at Ethan.
“My strangely clothed friends, you must remain here. Both you and your wondrous weapons are too conspicuous.” Then Hunnar spread his dan, hunched over, and let the wind take him away.
Minutes became hours of worry. What if they were captured? Worse, what if some wandering Poyo soldier discovered the hole in the ice? These and a dozen other deleterious scenarios played on the stage of Ethan’s mind before Hunnar’s voice whispered above him.
“We’ve found the ship. ’Tis two piers over. There are but a few sentries aboard her and they sleep the dreams of the bored and ordered-about. Some sleep sounder than that. Come.”
Remaining silent, but obviously glad to be back on the surface again, the crew of the Slanderscree emerged from the tunnel. Ethan knew that the sentries who were “sleeping sounder than that” were the ones who had unwittingly provided Hunnar and his companions with the swords and lances they now carried.
The prisoners assembled beneath the low underside of a thirty-five-meter merchant raft. It was broad enough of beam to conceal the entire crew.
“We could do no better than to chivan as fast as possible for the ship and raise sail before the city patrols can react.” Hunnar hefted his sword. “We have weapons enough.”
“ ’Tis so!” growled a sailor nearby, flexing furry fingers armed with sharp, stubby claws.
“This meets your approval, my friends?” Hunnar looked at the three humans.
September nodded. “I’m not much for subtle strategies either. Let’s do it.”
All three readied their beamers again, hoping they wouldn’t have to employ the revealing energy weapons. Hunnar moved out into the moonlight, and then in groups of five the crew raced silently across the ice toward the waiting icerigger.
With their skates lockered aboard, the three humans used the simplest method of making the dash across the slippery surface. Sitting down, each extended his arms back over his head. A sailor grabbed a wrist in one hand, a second the other. Spreading their dan, they took off across the open stretch of harbor.
Ethan could only lament his undignified position and pray the tough material of the survival suit held. It did so, but even the friction generated by such a short journey raised a portion of the suit’s temperature above what its compensators considered comfortable.
All boarding ladders were still draped invitingly over the railings. Spreading out beneath the vast underbody of the icerigger, her crew commenced a half hysterical climb upward, utilizing every available ladder.
There wasn’t a soul on board. “Apparently,” September murmured, “they decided freezing out in the night a bad choice with so many inviting taverns nearby. But wouldn’t they wonder at their companions whom you dispatched, Hunnar?”
“I imagine,” the knight said with a wolfish grin, “that they left for warmth and drink because they assumed their absent fellows had already done so.”
“The Landgrave has great confidence in his dungeons.” Ethan relaxed gratefully. There would be no fighting here.
“Why should he not?” said Teeliam, looking around for someone to kill and evidently disappointed at finding no one. “None have ever escaped from them in memory.”
“No one has ever traveled through Hell before, either.” Elfa spoke in a way that indicated she was referring to more than just their journey through ice and ocean.
“Quick now!” Ta-hoding gave rapid orders to his crew. “Up sail and quiet about it!”
With the prospect of imminent freedom to energize them, the sparmen assaulted the rigging like birds. Sails began to unfurl, filling silently.
Spreading his dan, which in the light night breeze were barely adequate to carry his porcine body up the iceramp, the captain chivaned his way to the helm-deck. From there he shouted in low tones to the sailors astern to hurry in with the ice anchors. Other crewmembers were at work on the pier, quietly and with feverish efficiency slipping pika-pina cables from cleat and capstan.
Though the Tran moved with the silence of a tribe of sock-footed ants, so much activity could not remain unnoticed forever. Before long a voice called out in the darkness.
“Who’s there? Who’s on board th
e prize?”
Sailors on deck and shore desperately tried to spot the caller. A minute passed, and then it did not matter.
“Help! The prisoners have escaped!” There was as much astonishment as urgency in that cry. “Guard to the ships, guard to the ships, and ware devils the—”
There was a twang. One of the sailors had armed himself with a crossbow from the ship’s armory. Now he let fly from the mizzenmast and the alarming words changed to an indecipherable gurgling. There was the faint, distant flump of something striking the ground.
Too late. Other voices sounded now on shore, called querulously to one another and to the unresponsive shapes moving about the great raft. Ta-hoding, dropping all pretense of concealment, moved to the helm-deck railing and roared instructions liberally laced with invective at the crew.
Ponderously, with adjustable spars turning, the Slanderscree began to gain sternway and back clear of the pier. Sailors still on the dock saw armed figures chivaning at them, jumped aboard. There was not enough time to loosen all the cables.
A concatenation of bizarre clangings, rips and tears, groans and inanimate protests sounded from the dock. The incredible pika-pina cables held, but the dock did not. Pinions and cleats ripped free of their sockets, flew toward the massive raft, while Poyos on the pier turned about and tried to protect themselves from flying bone and wood.
On board the Slanderscree the boarding ladders were brought in, several with sailors still clinging to them. Looking as if they would sweat if they could, Ta-hoding’s helmsmen threw the great wheel hard over. The icerigger continued to move backward, her bow swinging steadily around to the north. As soon as it cleared the outermost pier, the spars would shift and the westwind would fill the sails from behind.
They could see oil lamps massing along the shore, spilling out onto the ice. Shouts of outrage and confusion flared as unevenly and brightly as the flames. A few arrows and a couple of spears flew at the great, ghostly shape of the icerigger. Most fell short, a pair stuck into the rear of the helmdeck as it swung landward.