Soldiers of Ice (8 page)

His reply was fierce, filled with passion that she should doubt his word. “Yes… Torm the True, Torm the Brave, Torm the Binder of Oaths We…

they.., hold his faith

in

trust.”

Martine

quickly thought back to everything she knew about

paladins, which was mostly hearsay and opinion. The few she had met were stiff-necked, self-righteous, and unlikable swordsmen who were supposed to be austerely virtuous, lightened only by the glory of their god.

“A

paladin? All that business about honor, truth, goodness, purging wickedness?”

Vil

broke into a genuine smile, amused by the description.

“Something like that. We were taught to keep our word.

But it does not matter anymore. I am no longer a paladin.”

The

words stirred sudden concern in Martine. What had prompted Vilheim’s fall from grace? She caught her breath as she waited for some sinister revelation to follow, her Soldiers

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gaze

flicking from the bloody knife Vilheim held to Astriphie’s ice-whitened remains. “So I’m supposed to trust you because you

aren’t a paladin anymore?” she breathed, the words

forming ice crystals in the air.

“I

woke up one day and my god was gone. I did not sin, if that is what you are thinking.” The man carefully cleaned his knife and slipped it back in its sheath, defensively aware of her unwavering gaze. “It was during the Time of Troubles.

One morning I woke up and Torm was no longer there.

Before that day, I could always sense Torm’s purpose in everything. That day the feeling was gone. Torm had disappeared, as a good many of the gods did.”

Martine only

remembered the Time of Troubles somewhat vaguely.

She had been young and had not yet taken up the adventuring life. For her, the gods and their turmoils had seemed distant compared to Giles, the prefect’s son, who lived just down the lane.

‘q’orm came

back, though. You could still be a paladin.” Vil spoke softly but resonantly, his voice carrying force across the frozen gap. “Life is never simple. When Torm left me, I was suddenly on my own for the first time in my life, and—and I liked it. You could not know the freedom I felt.”

now

you want me to trust you? Martine thought. Perhaps it was a raised eyebrow or a quirk in her face that prompted Vil to speak. “I give you my word I will return. I

am still an honest man, Martine of Sembia. A lifetime of training does not evaporate into thin air overnight.” The man rose with firm resolution, shouldering the saddlebag to go. “Besides, there is no choice. You will not leave, and two cannot stay. I will find you here in four days. Take care, and good fortune in your mission, Harper.”

Martine knew

she could protest. She could stand out on this glacier arguing until they both froze, but their time spent trading secrets had already chilled her to the bone,

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The Harpers

and she knew the ex-paladin was right. There was no choice. “Travel safely,” she offered. “In four days, you’ll find me here.”

The words practically vanished in the wind, and the former paladin bent forward as he turned into the gale to

begin his journey. The Harper didn’t waste any time watching him leave, but instead busied herself gathering up the supplies, the bulk of which he’d left behind. As she worked, the ice heaved again, this time hurling her to the ground with its violence. Three More tremors, each almost as fierce, struck before Martine started toward the edge of the rift.

The hike was no More than a mile, and the woman made good time with the snowshoes that had survived the crash, a miracle for which Martine thanked Tymora, the mistress of luck. The snow was deeper and softer here, much of it fresh powder from the seething fountain that created its own massive cloud overhead. Through the cloud, light from the the noontime sun was deflected into a million sparkling motes of swirling silver frost. She found that looking at it directly burned her eyes, but at least it distracted her from the ground glare that might otherwise blind her.

As she drew near the fissure, the tremors and the roaring swelled like some fulsome giant struggling to break its frozen chains. The rift had pushed the glacier’s crust upward and outward to form a ridgelike cone. Not knowing how close she needed to be for the seals to work, the Harper elected to climb to the rim, in order to be certain of success. Besides, coming this far, she had to satisfy her curiosity. No doubt, she rationalized, Jazrac would appreciate an eyewitness description of the rupture.

The base of the slope was a jagged mass of icy scree.

Closer now, Martine watched how with each surge, great ice blocks have over the crack’s broken edge, some to fall back inside while others tumbled down the slope. Bound-Soldiers of !ce

59

ing and crashing, these arctic boulders smashed into others below with sharp cracks that sometimes triggered other shifts and slides in the unstable mass. Wary of the risks, the Harper took extra caution as she picked her way through the frozen scree, mindful that an avalanche could cascade down upon her at any moment. The whistle of the numbing wind was drowned out by the grinding crashes that emanated from beyond the rim and repeated themselves all down the slope.

Finally above the scree, the woman continued her climb, using the dagger to help now, for here the ground was nothing but smooth, windswept ice. Slowly she chopped footholds in the angled slope, all the time watching for danger ahead. The work raised a sweat while her fingers went numb even through her leather gloves and thick mittens.

Wedged into grips of ice, her toes felt almost as chilly. Her side throbbed, and her shoulder protested with every twist, until she doubted the wisdom of the whole mission. I can’t give up, she fiercely charged herself. Not this close to my destination.

The jagged surface of the top finally came into view, and Martine dragged herself up on it with gasping relief. Every inch of her burned, inside and outside. Her throat was scorched with bitter cold, her muscles ached as if aflame, and her fingers curled with the peculiar fire that near-frost-bite brings. Then the roar and tremble struck again, heightened by the crash of ice nearby, all of which urged the

spent woman to her feet.

Three steps and Martine reached the inner rim. There she halted, dumbfounded by the grotesque landscape

below her. From the air, she had only seen how the rift spread like a starlike crack a half-mile or so in length, but now, close up, she could see the canyon bottom. The canyon floor flowed impossibly, like water—no, she decided, More like gelatin or unset custard. The surface rippled in 60

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61

smooth waves that still glistened with the shining hardness of ice. Where the waves broke like water against the canyon walls, the spray turned instantly rigid, hurling hail and frost into the air. The water-ice bubbled and roiled, its feathery spouts frosting the walls of the rift, small at first but gradually increasing in speed and height-Martine

suspected another jet was forming and hurriedly

dug from her pouch the first of the stones Jazrac had given her. Remembering her brief instructions, she panned it about until the internal fires lit and then buried it in the snow safely back from the edge. It wouldn’t do to have the stone fall into the pit, she decided.

In another painful hour of trudging, Marfine was at her second position. Stone in hand, she moved along the crest slowly until the rock began to glow in her hand. She planted it quickly. At this pace, she guessed there was barely enough daylight left to finish the task.

En route to the third point, Martine spied a movement among the ice blocks of the talus slope below. At first she dismissed it as merely a shifting in the loose boulders, until she saw another flash. She barely saw it, a blue-white form against the ice. It was small and incredibly fast, for before she could even take a step closer, it had disappeared once More . The huntress swore it had arms and legs, like some kind of little creature. Caution and curiosity warranted she track it down, but the Harper rejected the idea, since it would delay her mission. All she dared spare was a brief pause, but after a few minutes of inaction, the Harper pressed on before she froze on the spot.

It was only a piece of ice or a wayward snow eagle battered down by the wind, Martine decided as she passed the sighting point. She was too tired to ascribe it to anything else. Nonetheless, she remained watchful all the way to the next point of the seal, so much so that she almost ignored the stone when it started to glow in her hand.

With the third stone was buried at the highest tip of the fissure, the Harper began the descent along the opposite edge of the bubbling rift, swinging wide to work around the crevasse that formed the next point of the star. Eventually the crumbled crack tapered to almost nothing. After leaping the dwindling gap, the Harper blindly crisscrossed the plain, stone in hand, searching out the juncture that would make it glow. With each stone, she despaired, it took longer to find the point where all the forces balanced. Just as she was beginning to wonder if she’d missed the mark, the glittering opal lit with its internal fire. Collapsing thankfully to her knees, the Harper buried the stone. Inside, her cracked rib throbbed as fiercely as ever, but her mind was now too dulled to the pain to even notice.

The glittering orange winter sun, hanging barely over the mountain peaks on the opposite side of the glacier, reminded Martine of the need for haste. Darkness would come quickly as soon as the sun slid behind the peaks, and Martine still had one stone to place and camp to make.

There was no hope of getting off the glacier today, so the Harper wanted to dig herself a shelter before darkness fell.

Her chest heaving from the long sprint, Martine reached her last goal, the southernmost tip of the fissure, only a few hundred yards from the glacier’s edge. Sweat seeped out from under her parka hood to form ridges of sour frost in her eyebrows. The cloth mask that covered most of her cheeks and mouth was heavy with ice that grew thicker with each passing minute. Cold, fumbling hands shook the last stone from the pouch. The heart of the opal sparkled weakly in the setting sun. Holding it in her cupped hands like a precious child, Martine shuffled zombielike in questing arcs, searching for the stone’s resting place. She

mumbled curses against the coming nightfall, but the rising evening wind tore away every breath that escaped her lips so that she couldn’t hear her own voice.

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The last of the passing sunlight disappeared before the advancing mountain shadows, taking with it any pretense of warmth the light had promised. The deep-throated roars of the geysers sounded like thunder in the chilling air. High overhead, the soaring spume sparkled in the receding sum light till the glittering cystals looked like descending stars in the darkness. The wind-whipped frost flew thicker, each flake biting with More sting.

After how much distance she did not know, the stone suddenly swelled with light. Exhausted and cold, the Harper stood dumbly watching it at first, not comprehending the meaning of the blue-whito fire she cupped in her hands. Only slowly did it dawn on her that this was it, the end of her task. In moments, she would set the seal and fulfill Jazrac’s trust in her. She was sure the wizard was watching—no, sensing—for some ripple in the cosmic sea that

marked the healing of this great wound in the earth.

‘hank the gods!” she croaked through cracked lips as she knelt and scooped out a nest for the stone with excessive care. With both her thick mittened hands, she gingerly lowered the stone onto its bed. For a moment, she paused to admire how the stone glowed and throbbed in its cradle.

“The cinder,” she muttered suddenly. “I must touch it with the cinder!” In her relief and admiration of the stone, she had almost forgotten the last step. Her fingers too rigid to work the strings on the little pouch, she tugged at the cords with her teeth until the neck was wide enough to shake the stone free. To Martine’s terror, the cinderlike stone plopped into her palm, hung there precariously, and then fell to smack against the glowing opal with a resounding crack so sharp she was convinced both had shattered.

Frantically the Harper tore off her mittens and scooped at the snow to retrieve the fallen key.

Just as she wrapped her fingers about it, the glowing opal swelled with brilliant white fire. Clutching the key, Martine Soldiers of !ce

63

flung herself away from the flare, her sight dazzled. The blaze from the stone expanded outward like an immense, unshuttered lantern until the Harper, still sprawled in the snow, wrapped an arm over her eyes, but still she could not block out the glare.

Then the shape of the light changed, though not its intensity.

The diffuse brightness that burned out all the shadows on the snow drew in on itself, tightening and crimping into a brilliant ice-blue tendril. As if leaning against the wind, it stretched and strained in an arc that yearned toward the riff—and then, with a sizzling roar, the beam lanced like some wizard’s fiery missile in an arc that carried it straight for the rift’s heart. The crackle echoed—no, was echoed, Martine realized—by four other reports. Blue-white streaks like shooting stars returning skyward rose from four other points, each rocketing to a single rendezvous point in the sky. The five radiant arcs clashed over the center of the canyon in a brilliant display of sparks. Martine squawked and rose to run, only to stumble backward, tripping over her booted feet to land sprawled in the snow.

“Damn it, Jazrac, you could have warned me!” the Harper shouted in awe.

Flopping around, she blinked away the dazzling lights that hung on the inside of her eyelids and looked at the canopy strung over the canyon—five burning blue beams that glowed as they hung suspended in the air. Pulsing waves of light rippled from the intensely glowing shafts, only to break like waves over the rift. The evening darkness rose and fell with each pulse, and at the moment of brightest glare, Martine could see the canyon center, only minutes before a seething pit, erupt into ever-widening waves.