It was some sort of smooth domed stone. As the fellow wiped it clean Ivanr realized it was a fisted knot of dirty ice. ‘What is this?’
‘Look behind you,’ the other woman invited.
He turned, saw a distant wall of ice white and emerald blue. Horizon to horizon it stretched, shot by refractions of light. ‘What is it?’ he breathed, awed.
‘Do you not recognize the Great Ice Barrier?’ Sister Gosh asked, having come to his side. ‘Or the Barrier as it was, ages ago?’
‘Time!’ the tall one insisted again.
‘Yes, Carfin.’ Sister Gosh indicated the other woman: ‘Sister Esa.’ The bearded man: ‘Brother Jool.’
With an effort, Ivanr kept his gaze from the distant icefield. So it’s true. The Barrier once covered all these lands.
‘The stones?’ Jool asked. Sister Gosh raised the box and it seemed to fly to him on its own. It struck his hand with a loud slap.
‘What is this?’ a new voice called and everyone turned, then relaxed. Another older man emerged from the gloom, bearded, in tattered finery. ‘The Synod has not convened! This has not been agreed!’
‘We agreed to act, Totsin,’ Sister Esa snapped.
The newcomer drew himself up straight. ‘Ritual magic? Consorting with Elders? This exceeds all Synod procedural conventions.’
‘What conventions?’ Jool asked, frowning.
‘Time is wasting!’ Carfin called out, rising panic in his voice.
Totsin opened his hands. ‘Well… obviously it’s understood that anything extreme would endanger us all…’
‘We’re pretty much all here,’ Sister Gosh observed tartly.
‘This will draw her!’ Totsin hissed.
‘That tends to happen when you actually do something.’
‘I want no part of it.’
Sister Gosh peered round at everyone. ‘Ah — we didn’t invite you.’
Totsin took hold of his chin. His brows rose high in shocked surprise. ‘I see. Well… I’ll go then.’
‘Yes. Go then.’
Bowing, the man turned and walked off to disappear into the night as if stepping behind shadows.
‘I sense her attention!’ Brother Carfin called. ‘Prepare him!’
‘This place is of your kind, Ivanr,’ Sister Gosh said, facing him. ‘Toblakai is one name. Your ancestors came here to make propitiations, offerings. Like to like. Power to power. It is the old way.’ She drew a wicked-looking thin curved blade from within her shawls. ‘Give me your hand.’
He resisted the urge to hide his hands behind his back. ‘For what?’
‘A small cut. Then you rub that hand over the ice. We will do the rest.’
‘That is it?’ he asked, dubious.
‘Yes.’
He held out his left hand. She slit his palm in a swift — rather practised — flick. ‘On the ice, now!’
‘She comes,’ Carfin intoned, his voice catching.
Ivanr knelt and ran his hand over the knotted lump. At first it was cold under his palm but quickly it warmed. He was shaken to see no trace of blood left behind. Something shook the ground to the north and Sister Gosh growled in her throat like a beast. He glanced over but saw nothing in the dark.
‘She should not have found us so easily,’ Jool said.
‘The tiles,’ Sister Gosh barked to him, then, ‘Carfin, Esa. Do something.’
Something halfway between a sob and a groan escaped the tall fellow, Carfin, as he walked stiffly off. ‘Madness!’ he said to the night, his voice choking. ‘Madness.’ It seemed to Ivanr that wisps of utter darkness now spun about the man like fluttering scarves. Sister Esa knelt to gather handfuls of mud, then followed.
Jool pressed a thin wooden tile to the ice, which hissed, steaming.
‘Now call your gods,’ Sister Gosh told Ivanr.
He peered up at her, frowning. ‘What?’
‘Call them. Hurry!’
‘How?’
‘How?’ She gaped at him, almost dropping her pipe. ‘What do you mean, how?’
‘I’ve never… that is… our old gods and ways are gone. Listen — you never said anything about praying or anything like that!’
She and Jool shared a strained look. In the dark, something shook the ground again and a high-pitched keening started up. ‘Cowled one help us now,’ she muttered. ‘Look. In your mind call to your ancestors. All the way back — as far as you can reach. Do it!’
Feeling like an utter fool, Ivanr strove to comply. He imagined his ancestors, generation before generation, all serried off into the past like an infinite regression, back as far as possible. And he called to them.
‘Sister Esa and Carfin have fled,’ Jool announced.
‘Then it’s up to me,’ Sister Gosh answered.
‘Good luck.’
Ivanr opened his eyes, straightened. Jool was backing away, box held high, shaking it like a musical instrument. Sister Gosh threw the pipe away; it streamed an arc of embers as it went. She took a quick nip from a silver flask that disappeared just as swiftly into her shawls. ‘Are you with me?’ she asked Ivanr, her gaze fixed to the north.
From the dark, a soft crying-like keening started up again.
‘What is it?’ Ivanr asked.
‘If flesh — our flesh — can be blasphemed… this would be it.’
He grasped at his belt: he was unarmed. ‘What can I do?’
‘Stop it from reaching the shrine. Or me. Or Jool.’
Ivanr raised a brow. ‘Right…’
Behind, Jool shook the box ever faster until its rattling seemed a continuous hissing. Ivanr had no idea what he was to do. ‘How do I-’
A shape lumbered out of the dark. Its appearance almost sent Ivanr running. Very large, fully as tall as he, humanoid, yes, but more like a sculpture of flesh: pale fish-white, so obese as to seem poured of fat. And atop the heap of bulging flesh, a tiny baby’s head, hairless, mouth wet with drool, babbling and crying.
‘Gods!’ Ivanr cursed, wincing his disgust, his stomach rising to sour his mouth.
Sister Gosh threw her hands down as if pushing at the ground before the thing. The topsoil beneath it was gouged apart as if by a scythe. The thing rocked backwards, keening and gibbering — in pain or fear, Ivanr could not tell. The naked ground under its feet heaved and roiled like mud. Heat coursed so intensely from the old woman that Ivanr had to step away. The thing pushed ahead once more. A colossal leg sucked free of the dirt to swing forward.
‘Damn the gods, she’s strong,’ Sister Gosh snarled through clenched teeth. ‘Do something!’
‘Do what?’
‘Stop it!’
‘All right!’ He edged up to the gash of mud. He noted that the water that fed it was melting from the knob of ancient ice. The monstrosity seemed to be ignoring him as it fought to make headway. Gingerly, he stepped into the mud. It was warm, but not uncomfortably so. He crouched, arms out, and launched himself forward to take the thing at its huge belly. Striking it was like sinking into a vat of blubber. He heaved, legs bent, straining.
The creature did not even seem to notice him. It continued lumbering ungainly, attempting to advance. One swinging great tree trunk of an arm gave him a fearful blow to the back but he didn’t think it deliberate. All the while the creature kept up a babble that sounded eerily like an infant’s mouthings.
Another blow cracked against Ivanr’s head, sending him face down into the mud. He rolled aside before the thing could trample him, deliberately or not. Heavy with the clinging dirt, he rose and threw himself on its back. He hooked an elbow beneath its tiny chin and squeezed as tightly as he could. So far the thing’s rolling empty eyes seemed not to have even rested upon him. But now that he had a choking grip, the head turned and wide-open eyes
