looked out at them. Hazel's hands fell to her guns, but they didn't comfort her. 'Damn you, Deathstalker. Somebody's going to pay for this.'
'Hang on to that attitude. It'll come in very handy when we have to fight our way through Valentine's private army at the other end.'
Hazel snorted. 'Overwhelming odds I can handle. I'm used to that. Now, shut up and open the damned door. You can do that, can't you?'
'I'm working on it.'
Owen studied the force field thoughtfully, and an idea came to him. He accessed his AI.
'Oz, do you still have the command overrides for the Standing?'
'Of course. I have override codes for every system in the castle, and every system linked into those systems since we left. Unless David or Valentine and his people have changed them.'
'Not likely. David wouldn't have bothered, and Valentine hasn't had time. Try it, Oz. Isolate this system, shut down this cave's force field, and then raise it again after we're in. Without setting off any alarms.'
The AI sniffed. 'You don't want much, do you? It's lucky for you that I'm such a superior model. But before I work my usual miracles, can I just point out that I have no control over the refrigeration units Valentine has installed in these caves. They're an entirely separate system that I have no access to. The temperature in the cave you propose to enter, it's not actually zero, but it's as close as you're ever likely to encounter, short of opening an airlock and stepping out into deep space. Though I wouldn't put that past you either. I've known depressed lemmings on window ledges with better survival instincts than you. Suffice to say that any normal human entering this cave would freeze to death extremely quickly. Assuming the shock didn't get him first.'
'Hazel and I aren't normal, Oz. We haven't been for a long time. Open the cave.'
There was a sudden snap of energies cancelling out, and the force field was gone. Freezing air rushed out from the cave, steaming thickly into the cavern like a thick fog. The bitter cold hit Owen and Hazel like a blow, and they flinched back from it despite themselves. They shuddered violently and held on to each other for support. There was no smell, no stench of death or decay. It was too cold for that.
Owen and Hazel moved reluctantly forward, the cold air searing their lungs painfully as they breathed it. The nearest body was a woman, dressed in torn peasant's clothing, charred and blackened around the energy-weapon wounds that had killed her. Her face was a mess. Half of it was missing. Owen reached out a hand toward her and then hesitated. His hand was trembling, and not from the cold.
'If she's as cold as I think she is, you could get frostbite just by touching her,' said Hazel.
'Not to worry,' said Owen. 'I used to know a lot of women like that at Court.' He shook his head slowly. 'I thought I'd seen everything. Thought I'd seen so much death and suffering that this wouldn't mean anything to me. But I was wrong.'
'When you stop feeling anything,' said Hazel, 'it'll mean part of you has died too. The human part. But as bad as you feel, you're still going to do this, aren't you?'
'Of course. It's necessary. He murdered my world.'
Owen drew his disrupter, aimed it at the packed bodies before him, and fired. The energy beam tore a path through the frozen dead, creating a tunnel into the mass of bodies some three feet wide. It looked like some monstrous worm or maggot had eaten its way through the dead on its way to some unknown, awful destination. Owen put away his disrupter and turned to Hazel.
'We'll move through the tunnel for as far as it goes, and then you'll have to pull bodies in behind us to cover our tracks. The extra space I've created will give us room to maneuver at the end of the tunnel.'
Hazel looked at him for a moment. 'Nothing's going to stop you, is it, Deathstalker?'
'No. I know this is difficult for you, Hazel, but… I need you. Do it for me.'
'All right. For you. But you're going to owe me one hell of a favor afterward.' She scowled at the tunnel. 'It's going to be dark, once we're… inside the mass of bodies. How will we know where we're going?'
'I know where the hidden door is,' said Owen. 'I can feel it in my mind. All you have to do is follow me. Don't worry. It's not like there's any chance of you getting lost in there. Let's go.'
And he turned away from her and stepped into the chamber of the dead. The utter cold cut into him like a knife, and he shuddered so hard his teeth chattered in his head. The frozen air burned in his throat and lungs, like swallowing razor blades. Hoarfrost formed immediately on his hair and eyelids, and his eyes ached as the cold began freezing the liquid in his eyeballs. He blinked hard, gritted his teeth, and knelt down to fit himself into the tunnel he'd made. Even with his disrupter set on full, wide dispersal, it hadn't been able to produce a very wide tunnel. He'd have to crawl through it on hands and knees. His knees jarred on the frozen bodies, frozen hard as concrete. Some had been cut open by the energy beam as neatly as a surgeon's knife, revealing hard, frozen innards. They were mostly gray, with a few pale shades of pink or purple, even the vitality of color leached out of them by the dreadful cold.
Owen shuffled forward, reaching out with his hands to grab the bodies ahead and pull himself along. The dead flesh was so cold it burned his bare hands. Every instinct yelled at him to let go immediately, but he refused to listen. He tightened his grip and pulled himself on. When he did try to let go, his warm flesh clung stickily to the cold, and he had to use all his strength to pull free. He left patches of skin behind, but felt no pain. Owen refused to let it upset him. The skin would grow back, and it would happen less and less as his hands cooled. Already his body was adapting to the horrid cold, his core temperature plummeting at a speed that would have killed anyone else. He had no sensation left anywhere, and his eyes were stuck open, but he'd stopped shuddering. When he moved his arms and legs, they felt like they belonged to someone else. His breath no longer steamed on the air before him. He pulled himself on down the tunnel, farther into the domain of the dead, and the dark closed slowly in around him. He could hear Hazel moving close behind him, breathing harshly, and she was his only comfort.
The tunnel ran out sooner than he thought it would. He grabbed the bodies before him, pulling them apart and away from each other, opening up a path. Often limbs stuck out like barriers in his way, and he had to tug and pull, breaking them off and putting them aside, out of the way. The arms and legs snapped cleanly, like pieces of wood. He tried to think of them that way but couldn't. They were people, his people. Sometimes he had to smash in rib cages with his more than human strength to make the necessary room. The unmoving bodies were stubbornly resistant, and he came to resent them. Didn't they knew what he was doing was for their sake? He lashed out with his fists, and was glad his hands were numb, for more than one reason.
He could feel Hazel's presence behind him, and hear the ragged, breaking sounds of her slow progress, but when he croaked her name, she didn't answer him. Presumably her voice was as wrecked by the cold as his. Either way, he couldn't turn around to see if anything was wrong. There wasn't room. So he pressed on, heading for the door.
It was very dark now. The last of the light from the main cavern and the re-erected force field had long since died away. There were shifting and creaking sounds all around him, as the bodies redistributed their weight in response to Owen's actions. It was almost as though the dead were stirring, disturbed by the presence of the living in their midst. Owen was glad of the dark. He had a quiet horror that one of the dead faces might open its dead eyes and turn to look at him as he passed, and he thought if he saw such a thing he might well lose his mind. There were some things no man could bear to see and still stay sane. And so he fought his way on, his heart hammering in his chest, his breathing harsh and ragged, half convinced that at any moment a dead hand would reach out of the darkness and clamp down on his arm or leg.
Claustrophobia sank slowly into him as the weight of all the bodies seemed to bear down with increasing weight. He began to doubt the surety of the direction in his mind, of the location of the hidden door. He had no other way of telling one direction from another in the utter dark. They could be moving in a slow circle for all he knew, hopelessly lost in the kingdom of the dead. He began to feel he'd been moving for far too long without getting anywhere. That he should have been there long before this. That he'd be trapped in here forever, in his own private hell. But he wasn't alone. Hazel was there with him. And just knowing that gave him the strength to go on.
Sometimes hooked fingers snagged in his clothing, jerking him to a sudden halt, and he had to feel blindly back and snap or break the metal-hard fingers before he could move on. Although he couldn't see them, his fingers told him that the bodies before him weren't always complete. His people had died fighting the invaders, and most of them had died hard. The invasion and destruction of Virimonde had been written in their yielding flesh, and the marks were preserved here for all to read. Rage burned in Owen at what had been done to them, and the fury helped to warm him as he struggled on.
Finally he reached the other side, and his hands slammed up against unyielding metal. His thoughts had been
