Maximum Ice (36 page)

He placed his lantern on the sled, so that it would cast a nimbus of light around him as he traveled by night. Then, checking with Ice for the path that Zoya’s sled had taken, he pointed his own sled in that direction, heading back for the mainland.

They had taken the body of the snow witch, the one they used to interface with Ice. That had been shrewd, persuading a witch to interface for them. It must have been Solange’s own purpose with those nuns resting in Ice—pathetic and hopeless maneuver that it was. Ice’s encryption easily deflected all interface attempts, whether of the foretellers, the nuns, or the ship’s technicians. Until now, until this one snow witch…

With encryption in danger of failing, Ice killed the witch, as programmed. But still, it was a clever scheme. The gypsy rose in his estimation. Zoya Kundara was becoming deeply ambiguous—beautiful, deadly, immortal, carrier of disease. He would have to straighten all this out.

But first he had to catch her.

She and her companion would be afraid of him now. He shouldn’t have threatened her. That business with the last-resort program. Premature. So much had changed in the space of an hour. Solange Arnaud, for example. He didn’t need Solange anymore, now that the ship must at all costs be preserved, not destroyed.

Behind him, Error’s Rock began to glow faintly, as though it took heart just having him gone. Damn the machine, anyway He could hear it thinking: Must go global. Mustn’t go global. Must. Mustn’t. It chugged away, stewing in its loops.

It didn’t matter. He was reprieved.

He whooped out loud, and his voice skated across Ice, forever

Kellian lay awake in her bunk, listening to the deep silence of the nunnery. Beyond the nighttime sounds of the dormitory, underneath the muttered dreams and toss of wool covers, was the vast quiet of the fortress.

Somewhere in the Zoft, Kellian’s friend, Sister Patricia

Margaret, rested or fretted, silently. No one listened to her mentor anymore, if they ever had. Nor could Kellian rouse Sister Patricia Margaret from her preoccupations to listen to a young postulant who the sister thought was teetering on the brink of a great fall.

In the bunk above her, lay Nit. Nit, whom the nuns had taught so well to keep quiet.

A far-off bass hum. It came from deep in the stones of the place. Or perhaps from Ice itself. It ceased, and silence returned. Kellian punched her pillow into a better shape and turned over.

Ice had broken its long silence, but she almost wished it hadn’t. What was she dealing with, she wondered. What manner of device or being, or something in between? It was capable of reasoning. It was, incredibly, paying attention to the value of things. It seemed unaware that people were starving in its barren domain. That its creations—its admitted creations—slew people and spread terror. Well, Daniel had tried to tell her. She wished now that she’d questioned him more thoroughly. What purpose, what design, had been implanted in Ice, or grown there over time? How could such powers be diverted— wasted—on beings such as snow witches? Ice itself was disturbed by the implications.
Disturbed… implications.
These were not words she could ever have imagined using in regard to Ice.

And what was her relation to Ice and its
implications?
Had she lain down with rats, indeed? Could she mine its knowledge and ignore its crimes? It was as corrupt as the Sisters of Delusion. And she was their handmaiden.

Another deep hum. The Keep was restless that night.

Sleep was impossible. Throwing off the covers, she fumbled for her shoes and laced them in a hurry. It was easy to dress. The white robe was hanging on a peg on her bunk.

The corridor stretched empty in both directions. Conserving power, lights were dim, and shadowed doors stitched a black thread down the entire wing. The mansion of the nuns was in sleep mode. But Kellian knew the sisters patrolled. She would not go far, just stretch her legs…

A deeper hum floated down the great hall. If she had not been listening for the nuns, she might never have heard its muted note. And then again. But it was more than a vibration, it was a muffled baritone cry

Her feet turned to follow it, while her mind scolded,
Go back to bed.
Overruled.

This was very bad, to be abroad past midnight, just the thing for which Sister Roselyn had scolded her, but forgave, after good penance. Nevertheless, she continued on, thinking of Daniel and what he knew. Where the corridor turned, there was the back room that led to a small foyer from which she had accessed the roof. The dark foyer had another door, one that Nit had said led down. This was the route that Kellian had been ignoring since she had arrived at the Keep. She had gone up, and north, even carried messages to the west wing. But never had she gone down. And now she knew why

Because it was the source of the midnight sounds. It was the source of the things that Daniel knew, that she didn’t want to know. She was split nearly in two with longing to know and not to know.

The door was unlocked. Of course, because the brothers passed freely on their errands, and their errands were many

Down the smooth, well-worn steps, down she went. Treading softly. Perhaps this was the route Hilde took to Daniel’s arms, or there might be other stairs, known to some, known to everyone but her. At the bottom of the stairs was another door. She opened it, looking out into the fourth wing, the nether world of the Keep.

It hardly looked like the mansion above it. Gone was the lavish woodwork, the fine wood of the floors, the tall, chande-liered ceilings. Everything was simple, functional, and ugly How much she had changed in the short weeks since her arrival, to think this place was ugly

A loud moan surged from somewhere nearby. A groan of pain.

As she stepped out of the doorway, a movement caught her eye. She dived back behind the door, and peered from the smallest possible opening. Nuns. Two nuns emerged from a portico, and hurried down the hall, away from Kellian. That startled her. Were they visiting lovers? They disappeared around a corner.

Now would be a very good time to turn back and sneak into her bed.

Instead, Kellian stepped into the corridor, where dreadful screams assaulted her ears.

Voices and cries came from the door from which the nuns had emerged. Kellian moved to this door, the source of the increasingly terrible cries. Her hand was on the door latch. But what would she do? Enter the room and inquire as to the noise?

Voices near the door. She jerked away. Rushing to the adjacent doorway, she released the latch, and slipped into the room. It was unlit except for the brilliance of a high, glowing wall.

It was a windowpane onto another room.

A room with a bleeding body. On a table. She caught the frame of the window, steadying herself. Where had all the blood come from? The floor around a table was sloppy with blood. Several brothers were bent over the table. On the table, naked feet protruded from the gathering of brown robes.

A brother stepped away

She suddenly had a clear view, one that punched her in the chest, robbing her of breath.

A man with long black, very long black hair, lay on the metal table, naked except for a cloth covering his groin. He was bound. By his mottled skin and his long hair, he was a snow witch. His arms were raised on elevated arm pads where his wrists were secured. His arms were flayed open.

She saw a brother bend low with a tiny knife, the brother with the eyeglass fixed to his forehead, and the knife went in. As the man howled, so did Kellian. Her voice was amplified, echoing through the surgery next door. Every head jerked to attention, while the man on the table shrieked with renewed volume.

Just as the brothers turned to rush from the room, the snow witch rose from the table, and in a mighty yank, burst his bonds. The room turned to chaos as the brothers tried to restrain him, slipping on the bloody floor.

The surgeon turned to the window for a moment. It was not a brother, but a nun.

Kellian fled the room. She ran, crashing out the door just in time to see the snow witch in the corridor, fending off the brothers. With an arm streaming blood, the witch threw a brother against the wall. The witch’s tormentors piled on him, and yet could not prevent him from hurling them off and running up the stairs, the very ones down which Kellian had just come.

Now the hall was reverberating with cries of nuns and brothers. The nun from the surgery barked orders as brothers poured into the hallway from many doors. In the crowd, Kellian pulled away from a nun who had grabbed at her robe. She ran up the stairs amid brothers armed with weapons.

She must flee, the nuns had seen her, recognized her. She lifted her robes and climbed, two stairs at a time, amid the
brown swarm of men. At the top, the brothers scattered in all directions. She ran down the main corridor. Everyone was emerging from the dormitory doors, but they huddled there, stunned, watching the melee of brothers. Kellian hid herself among a tight pack of the brothers. Her lungs were afire. She ducked into a portico to catch her breath. Brothers streamed by, feet pounding, voices shouting.

A gong cut through the shouts, tolling, tolling. It calmed her, that deep bell. She was certain her punishment would be severe; one that would silence her, no doubt. The nuns had kept their ugly secret: it wasn’t the brothers who tortured the snow witches. It was the nuns. But there was nowhere to escape to. Sister Patricia Margaret couldn’t save her now, no one could.

The thought was surprisingly neutral.

She walked across the hallway to the sanctuary. Let them find her in prayer. Then they could turn her out for prayer as well as mayhem.

Kellian closed the sanctuary door behind her. She looked up.

He was hanging there, swaying in his rope noose, from the holo projector anchored in the ceiling. But this was no projection of ancient piety. Nor was it an animal-like snow witch. It was a man with torn and bleeding arms, wearing only a loincloth. A human being who could bleed, suffer, and die.

Kellian was under him, trying to lift him, but he was too high. When she embraced his legs and pushed upward, his knees buckled. He was dead. The face that she had seen erupting with pain now lay steeply tilted to one side, silent.

She sank to the floor.

Warm blood dripped onto her head.
Oh, mother, she thought. Oh, sister, mother, brother
It was all mixed up together. How would she ever untangle all the words?

She wept.

After a time they found her. People came in. She heard noises. The brothers were nearby, but they wouldn’t touch her. At last a familiar voice bid her rise. Mother Superior stood amid a cluster of nuns, commanding her to rise and come forward.

Kellian would have obeyed, but she couldn’t muster the strength. She looked down at her arms, at her lap. Her white robe was everywhere stained bright red. But white would no longer be her color, in any case.

She was glad to have done with it.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

They sped across the Paz in a blinding clear dawn.

They had driven through the last of the night, and increased speed as visibility allowed. Zoya had tucked her small, heated blanket around Wolf, and secured it in place by standing next to him, holding it. But Wolf drove the sled with single-minded abandon, careless of the wind’s scalpel. She was glad for his haste. The tall witch had looked in her eyes and said,
I invoke it.
She believed him, believed that he would, hoped he’d delay

But she knew why he would call for a clean end in fire. The colossal failure of his immortality machine. She turned around from time to time to look for another sled. Nothing in that direction.

Behind them on the second sled was Snow Angel’s body, the fur of her wrap fluttering in the wind. When they set out from Error’s Rock, Zoya had suggested that Wolf should keep his jacket. She didn’t bring the matter up again.

Their direction was southwest, down the strait into the Val Paz, heading at last for the Keep. Now, more than ever, the Keep.
The girl Kellian can help.
Snow Angel didn’t know where the girl was. But Zoya did. First, however, there was something they had to do. She and Wolf both kept a sharp outlook for what was needed.