The Ruin Part 6

Joylin blinked. "No, Papa. We only talked about my foot, and tirichiks, and how I look like you."

Wurik felt a bit of the tension seep out of his muscles. Joylin was a child, and the changes that had overtaken the Inugaakalakurit didn't loom as large in her awareness as they did in the minds of the adults. Thus, she hadn't spoken of them. It was all right.

Well, no, it was a long way from that. Ahead lay dread and shame. But he'd salvage something, no matter what the risk.

"Go on out," he said. "I'm not going to punish you. But you are not not to talk to your uncle or the strangers about the queen or anything to do with her. Tell me you understand." to talk to your uncle or the strangers about the queen or anything to do with her. Tell me you understand."

She stared up at him. Her eyes were troubled, but she said, "Yes, Papa, I understand."

Once she was gone, Wurik proceeded to the rearmost chamber of the house, untied and opened a leather trunk, rooted around in it, and from the bottom retrieved a small, intricately carved ivory box. Inside glittered a piece of ice faceted like some priceless diamond, and when he took it out, he winced.

Ordinarily, arctic dwarves were impervious to cold. They felt it to the extent of knowing if the temperature rose or fell, but it wasn't harmful or unpleasant. Whenever Wurik grasped the crystal, though, he experienced the same burning, numbing chill that would have afflicted a human.

He touched the ice to the center of his forehead.

When the village celebrated, it needed to do it in the open. None of the simple snow-block houses was anywhere near large enough to hold all the natives, let alone visitors twice as tall. Still, it wasn't so bad. Raryn's folk, aware that humans and their ilk required warmth, had given the outlanders the places closest to the leaping, crackling central bonfire. Though he could have done without the smell-the dwarves fueled the blaze with dried animal droppings and oily fish skins-Dorn was fairly comfortable.

The food was good, also. He sampled caribou, walrus, seal, fish, and the windblown, tumbling plant called snowflower prepared in four different ways. The entertainment was likewise as lavish as the village could provide. He applauded songs, stories, dances performed to the intricate thumping of three diversely shaped drums, and even a juggler.

And yet ...

Dorn turned to Kara. "Maybe it's just me," he whispered. "I've always had trouble enjoying occasions like this. But it feels like they're trying too hard, without any real joy underneath."

"I agree," she said. "They're showing us hospitality, and I'm sure they don't begrudge it. But they've endured too much hardship for it to lift their own spirits." She glanced over at Raryn, seated with Wurik on one side, Joylin on the other, and a platter balanced on his lap. "Poor Raryn. I'm sure he hoped for a happier homecoming."

Dorn grunted. "Maybe you can do something to brighten things up."

She smiled. "Perhaps I can." When the juggler stopped flipping and catching his glistening icicles, and had acknowledged his applause, she rose, raised her hands for silence, and began to sing.

The song told of a young warrior wooing a haughty maiden who thought herself too good for him. She set him impossible tasks to perform, and by dint of boldness and cunning, he managed each in turn. As always, Kara made the story as compelling as the melody was sweet, her voice infused with the personality of each character as she spoke for him in turn.

Truly, it was a flawless performance. Until she went stiff, and a note caught in her throat.

She flashed a smile as if wryly amused by her slip, drew a deep breath, and took up the thread of the song. She managed three more lines, then stumbled once more.

"I'm sorry," she said, pain in her voice. "My stomach ... I ... must have eaten too much of this fine food ..." Her knees buckled, dumping her onto the icy ground.

Dorn scrambled to her side. She tried to raise a trembling hand, but lacked the strength. Her complexion was always fair, but now it had turned ashen, and her lips, blue.

"Pavel!" he bellowed. "Something's wrong with her!" He looked around for the healer, and what he saw filled him with horror.

By the looks of it, all his friends had fallen ill, were all nearly paralyzed with cramps and weakness, while the villagers, for the most part, looked on stony-faced. Some babbled in dismay, or moved to help the afflicted, but their neighbors restrained them.

Everyone had taken his food from communal platters and the like. Still, by some legerdemain, the dwarves had plainly poisoned their guests.

Making a supreme effort, Pavel brandished his sun amulet and gritted out the opening words of a prayer presumably intended to counter the effects of the toxin. A dwarf bashed him over the head with a crank-handled, fire-blackened roasting spit, and he collapsed on his face. With a snarl, Will drew his hornblade and rounded on the attacker, but the weapon slipped from his fingers. The halfling fell retching beside his friend.

Pain stabbed through Dorn's guts, banishing the faint hope that somehow he'd avoided eating the tainted food. He looked back down at Kara. "Change form!" he begged her. In her dragon shape, maybe she could shake off the effect of the poison.

She simply lay still, not even shivering, and he discerned that, though her amethyst eyes were still open, she was no longer aware of him or anything else.

Furious, he reached for the nearest dwarf with his iron talons. But though his metal arm was impervious to poison, the brain guiding it wasn't, and he missed. The jabbing pain in his guts swelled into agony, and he couldn't manage a second try. He toppled onto his side.

From that position, he could see Wurik, Raryn, and tiny Joylin, her eyes wide with shock, watching everything unfold. Raryn tried to articulate the words of a charm. Wurik hesitated, then c.o.c.ked back his fist and punched his brother in the jaw, spoiling the cadence.

"I'm sorry," said Wurik, "truly."

His ruddy, white-bearded face twisting, Raryn struggled to rise, but couldn't. He groped for Joylin and pulled her close. Dorn wondered if he hoped to use her for a hostage.

If so, it didn't matter. Her father grabbed her by the shoulders and yanked her away.

A surge of agony lifted Dorn and swept him into darkness.

Wurik looked about, counting up the stricken travelers, making sure none had escaped. No, they all lay unconscious where they'd dropped. The poison, brewed from a tirichik's vital organs, was potent stuff.

For the most part, his fellow villagers stood quiet, grim-faced, unable to look one another in the eye. Wurik felt the same shame they did. To betray guests was a despicable act.

"Are they dead?" Joylin asked.

"No," Wurik said. He'd measured out a dose that would incapacitate, not kill.

"They aren't just sick," she said. "You ... you did this to them."

"We don't have time to talk about it now."

"Why?" Joylin wailed. "They saved me, and Uncle Raryn is our kin."

"Yes. Raryn's one of us, and we won't give him up." He bent down and lifted his brother in his arms. "The others, we must."

"But they're all my friends!"

"I said, we don't have time to talk about it." He turned to the other adults. "Tie up the prisoners. Half of them are so strange, we don't know how long the drug will make them sleep. Gather their possessions. The Ice Queen's servants will want those as well. I'll hide Raryn."

He turned and strode toward his snow house. Though it must have hurt her wounded ankle, Joylin scurried after him.

"Why do we have to do this?" she asked.

"Because Iyraclea ordered it, and she'll kill the hostages-the folk she took away-if we defy her. The lives of our own people have to come first. You'll understand when you're older. Maybe ... maybe the queen will just question the strangers, then set them free."

"If you think that, why are you hiding Uncle Raryn?"

He glared at her. "Enough! No more arguing. Can't you see, this is hard enough already?"

She lowered her eyes. "Yes, Papa."

He hauled Raryn into the rear chamber of his dwelling, then hurried back to the bonfire. When they arrived, Iyraclea's agents would expect to find him waiting with the captives. Joylin hobbled along behind him.

As it turned out, they made it back with only minutes to spare. Then the Ice Queen's warriors strode out of the night.

At the head of the procession stalked one of the spirits of the netherworld called an "Icy Claw of Iyraclea." Pale as ice and twice as tall as a human, it had a spiny-sh.e.l.led, hunched, segmented body, and a long, heavy tail covered in blades. It carried a long white spear in one clawed hand.

Behind it tramped sneering frost giants, blue of skin with silvery or yellowish hair, even taller and more ma.s.sive than their captain. Several human warriors, recruited or conscripted from elsewhere on the glacier, brought up the rear.

The dwarves cringed before the newcomers. Even then, after all that had happened to mar their pride, they weren't afraid of humans or frost giants, their princ.i.p.al foes for as long as anyone could remember. But the Icy Claw inspired a terror that even its hideous form and manifest ability to wreak havoc couldn't quite explain. Perhaps it somehow stank of boundless cruelty and malevolence. In any case, Wurik had never been able to look at one of the things without a spasm of dread trying to close his throat.

Still, as chief, it was his responsibility not just to look but to talk to it. He stepped forward. "The strangers are helpless and ready for you to take."

The Icy Claw stared back at him. With its antennae; bulging, faceted eyes; and mandibles, its buglike mask was utterly unlike the face of a dwarf or man, and thus impossible to read. At length it wheeled and prowled to the place where the outlanders lay bound and insensible. The villagers scrambled to clear a path for it.

It picked up Taegan for a closer look, then tossed him back onto the ground. Dorn, Jivex, and Kara likewise each received an extra moment or two of study. Then the spirit gazed back at Wurik.

"An odd group," it said, its voice a buzzing rasp. "Your orders were to detain them alive for questioning. I a.s.sume they'll wake in time. Otherwise, you'll be punished."

"They'll wake," Wurik said. "We were careful. Is there anything else you require?"

The Icy Claw turned to its subordinates. "Collect the prisoners and their gear."

Wurik's shoulders slumped in relief. They were leaving. In a little while, it would be over.

Then the towering, pallid devil oriented on the heap of the travelers' equipment. It bent down, peering, and plucked an ice-axe from the pile. Wurik realized it was Raryn's. In their haste, the villagers had simply thrown his gear in with everyone else's.

"The head of the axe is enchanted," said the Icy Claw. "You slaves make nothing comparable. But the haft is bone, and looks like an ice dwarf carved it. Even though none of the prisoners is of your kind."

Wurik did his best to project an air of nonchalance, as if he had no idea what the fuss was about. "The human with the iron limbs had the axe. An Inugaakalakurit must have traded it to him."

"I think it more likely that he and these others had an ice-dwarf guide. How else did they survive the journey across the glacier?"

"They're experienced travelers. They knew what they were doing."

The Icy Claw stared at Wurik, and he felt something alien to his experience, a psychic pressure on the surface of his mind. The devil was trying to look inside his head.

He had no idea how to resist such an intrusion. In lieu of any more sophisticated defense, he simply thought, I'm telling the truth, over and over again.

Eventually the feeling of pressure abated. He held his breath, wondering if by some miracle he'd succeeded in fooling the devil.

The Icy Claw pivoted toward its minions. "The thralls are playing games. Search the village."

The frost giants and human warriors obeyed. Since the snow houses were too low for them to enter easily, the former pounded and kicked the structures apart, and the latter sifted through the remains. The Inugaakalakurit watched in distress, or else looked to Wurik, silently imploring him to intervene.

"Wait!" he cried. "Please, stop! There ... there was one more traveler, but he's one of our own folk. As you guessed, the outlanders met him on the rim of the glacier and hired him to guide them. But he isn't one of them. He doesn't know anything about their business."

"Produce him," said the Icy Claw.

"I'm telling you, it would be pointless for you to take him. He ... he can't even answer questions. He's fallen ill."

The devil c.o.c.ked its head. "Because you drugged him, too? Why do that if he's one of you? Why do it, then try to hide him from us?"

Because Raryn never would have allowed me to poison and surrender his comrades, Wurik thought. "Clearly, we wouldn't. It wouldn't make any sense. The guide is sick, that's all."

"Perhaps Iyraclea will see fit to cure him," said the Icy Claw. Some of the frost giants smirked at what they evidently took to be a joke. "We'll find out. Produce him."

"I promise," said Wurik, "to keep him here. If the Ice Queen wants him after she's questioned the others, you can take him then. But for now, please-"

The devil dropped the point of its long spear and jabbed. Wurik tried to jump aside, but was too slow. The weapon punched into his chest.

At first he felt no actual pain, just a sort of overwhelming shock. But tearing agony came when the Icy Claw lifted him into the air like a hunk of meat on a skewer. The devil raised him high enough to look him straight in the face.

"Slaves," the creature rasped, "should do as they're told, without arguing. Perhaps your example will help the others learn."

Joylin lunged forward, her fists balled. Wurik felt a pang of terror on his behalf, then grat.i.tude when another dwarf grabbed her and pulled her back before any of the Ice Queen's minions noticed her defiance.

Wurik's pain faded to numbness, and his thoughts grew muddled. Sensation, awareness, and life itself flowed out of him with the red blood staining and dripping from the ivory shaft of the spear.

17 Marpenoth, the Year of Rogue Dragons Using her harpoon as a walking staff, Joylin limped across the ice. With her ankle still hurting, it would have been easier to move about on the back of a sled, but she'd doubted she could hitch up a team without somebody noticing and sending her back to bed. All the grownups were making a special effort to comfort her, attend to her needs, and supervise her as they deemed necessary.

Sometimes she hated them for it. What was the use of all their fussing, except to get in her way? Why hadn't they shown all this concern when it might have done some good? Why hadn't they risen up and attacked the Icy Claw before it speared her father? Better still, why hadn't they refused to surrender to the Ice Queen and do her shameful bidding in the first place?

The problem with such condemnation was that in large measure, it applied to her father, too. He was the leader who'd decided they must capitulate, just as he was the one most responsible for the treachery at the feast. Joylin, who loved and missed him with her whole heart, didn't know how to be so angry at him at the same time. It often felt like the contradictory emotions were tearing her apart.

But when she busied herself with the task she'd been given, things didn't hurt quite as badly. So she sneaked away from the village every night, to scan the starry sky and gleaming, moonlit ice, and listen for whatever other noises floated on the moaning of the wind.

Despite the resulting lack of sleep, she was vigilant, and possessed her people's ability to see in the dark. Yet when something finally happened, it still caught her by surprise.

She sensed a surge of motion overhead, and instinctively leaped backward. A huge reptilian form plunged down in front of her, the impact jolting and cracking the ice. The creature's scales were dark and mottled, with a jet-black ridge running down the spine. Its eyes glowed like embers, and it stank of acrid smoke. A ring of gems and pale metal gleamed at the base of its neck.

Just before Raryn had lost consciousness, he'd croaked, "A dragon follows us ... jeweled collar ... tell him."

Of course, the drakes native to the glacier were fearsome predators. But Joylin had a.s.sumed any wyrm affiliated with her uncle would be friendly, maybe even prankish and playful like Jivex.

But the dragon before her radiated a malignancy as terrifying as that of the Icy Claw. It had, moreover, just tried to kill her like an eagle diving to catch a hare in its claws. She screamed, knowing it was useless. Even if anyone heard, the village was too distant for help to arrive in time.

The drake sneered, and its eyes burned brighter. Joylin had a sudden sense that she ought to look away, but found she couldn't.

"Drop the lance," the reptile whispered, "and come to me."

Her fingers opened, and the harpoon clattered on the ice. She trudged forward.

The dragon sat back on its hindquarters, the better to pick her up with its right forefoot. It lifted her up to its jaws, and the smoky smell grew stronger. It inhaled deeply, taking her scent.

Joylin realized it was savoring her aroma, tantalizing itself with the promise of pleasure to come. In just another moment it would bite into her. The horror of it shattered her trance, or perhaps the wyrm released her from the spell. Either way, it came too late to matter. No matter how she thrashed and squirmed, she could no more break free of the drake's talons than she could have picked up a mountain and carried it on her back.