over a burning flame. Be sure it still lives when you do this. eigh [do ow
“Yes, Grandmother. What then?”
“Give some of the blood to the fire, and drain the rest into a cup or chalice. Mix with it a single petal from the bloodflower. Then you must drink it, all of it, but not before you say these words…”
She whispered in his ear the strange syllables of a language that was not a language. They rang somehow with an odd familiarity in his skull. She repeated them twice more, until he could say them back. Then he shook himself, rose from the cushions, and pulled his long dagger from its sheathe. He stared at it as if he had never seen it before, red vapors swimming through his vision. The pommel was carved into the head of a snarling wolf, with tiny rubies for eyes. The blade was straight and of one piece with the hilt, forged of silvery Uduru steel. Rathwol had kept it sharp for him. It glittered in the light of the fire, anticipating the blood it was to spill.
The little man was pouring a bucket of steaming water into the bathtub when Fangodrel called his name.
“Lord?” asked Rathwol, wiping his nose with the back of a gloved hand. His watery eyes were small and hungry.
“Bring me one of those hounds.”
8
Cold was his first sensation. It wrapped him like a second skin, a blanket of glittering diamond frost. Pain, formerly a stranger to him, now bent low and kissed his lips, his forehead, his chest, smothering him in its frozen lust. Then hunger, gnawing at his guts like a trapped bear cub, tearing its way from the inside out. He had never been truly hungry – or cold – before now. So many new discoveries… so many ways to suffer. He opened his eyes, spikes of fresh agony grinding into his skull.
Light, aquamarine and without a trace of warmth, momentarily blinded him. Emerald-indigo brilliance… was he underwater? No, he could breathe, though the air raked his lungs with iron claws. The numbness in his shoulders and wrists suddenly made sense – he hung suspended from his arms, fists bound together with iron chains. His feet dangled in the same loop of chain, thick black links gone white with rime. Squinting, he peered at the sheer walls of blue-green ice rising to left and right. Above, some rafter or stalactite of ice held the end of the chain. He thought of slaughtered cattle hanging in Udurum smokehouses, sides of skinned beef awaiting the butchers’ cleavers.
Below him yawned a pit of sullen darkness. If not for the chain, he would fall and be lost forever in that glacial crevasse. The cavern was carved of raw ice, or ice had frozen over its every earthen surface. He saw no bare rock behind the filmy crystal; it seemed the ice was solid as granite. The watery light filtering through was refracted sunlight. Now fully awake, he realized what he had first taken for brilliance was in fact dimness.
His stomach growled, and he coughed. Something moved in the cavern behind him. A grunt, a shifting of great bulk, heavy footfalls. Something grabbed the chains above his fists and slung him to the gro ^h [do grund. He almost lost consciousness beneath the waves of pain washing through his body, beginning from the top of his skull and raging through his limbs – all agony but for his numb shoulders and wrists. He remembered a great iron mace…
Two blue-skinned Giants stood over him, staring him down with blood-red pupils. Their beards were tangles of icicles, their white manes heavy with frost. Their stinking carnivore breath was colder than the wind in the cavern. They grinned at his helplessness. They boomed with laughter as he strove against the chains, gritting his teeth and pulling tighter the links of metal. Exhaustion and hunger had taken their toll. On any normal day he might tear these chains from his limbs like silken cloth. Now, fearing that his head would split open under such effort, he ceased and lay back, sucking chill air into his lungs.
One of the blue-skins grabbed the chain and dragged him along the floor like the carcass of some forest kill. The other followed with that same iron mace slung across his shoulder. Another swing of that weapon would crush Vireon’s skull to pulp. But he was too worn out to continue his struggles. He lay still and let himself be dragged along a carpet of frost.
The ice cavern gave way to others, larger and wider, and carved into Giant stairwells at intervals. They dragged him through vaulted galleries grown or hewn from the endless ice. A world of frozen crystal, steeped in the turquoise glow of filtered sunshine. Walls sparkled like miniature glaciers. Icy pillars thick as Uyga trees bore spiral designs depicting tribal warfare in a style reminiscent of the ancient Uduru. His captors dragged him through a domed plaza that must have been the very heart of the palatial glacier. There hundreds of blue-skins went about the common tasks of their daily lives, oblivious to the tiny captive hauled through their midst. Gravelly voices babbled in a melange of half-familiar syllables, some ancient dialect of Uduru speech.
They wore the furs of mammoth, bear, tiger, and wolf, white as snow or dyed to shades of crimson and black. Rusted spikes adorned the iron helms of male and female warriors. Their spears were taller than their heads, and tipped with frozen blades. Enormous broadswords hung on wide belts of sealskin. Ice and frost hung in the mens’ beards, in the braided tresses of the women, and their breath did not turn to vapor when they exhaled, for their bodies were as cold as the ice itself. Some stood around gouts of writhing blue flame that gave no warmth. None spared him a glance as the guards dragged him past, though in his wake he often heard avalanches of laughter.
At the top of a great pile of crystalline stairs, his captors flung open a gleaming gate and pulled him into a massive hall set with sparkling pillars of turquoise immensity. The booming of drums filled his ears, mixed with a chorus of eerie voices, low and rolling like thunder across the cold spaces. This must be the loftiest hall, the royal chamber. Blue-skin warriors lined the viridian walls. Now his jailers picked him up, only to throw him down again like a stolen treasure at the feet of their King. The savage drumming hammered against his skull.
Vireon stared up from the slick floor, blinking stars from his eyes, and inhaled a musky animal scent. The King of the blue-skins reclined on a throne built of tarnished mammoth tusks. On his left, a harem of nude Giantesses danced for his pleasure around a fountain of cold blue fire; at his right, a band of blue-skin drummers sang their primal cadences. A trio of white tigers sat at the King’s cthee ffeet, chained by iron collars to the base of his throne. The felines stared hungrily at Vireon, who lay merely fingerspans from their fangs; they licked their chops with ruddy tongues.
Chained like me. But still deadly.
The blue-skin King wore a crown of black metal set with sapphires. It gleamed in the icy light, like the weird fires of his domain. The ice in his beard crackled as he shifted in his great chair to stare at the prisoner. A huge axe lay at his side, its double blade of iron glittering with a sheen of frost.
The Ice King raised his hand. The drums stopped, the dancers fell upon their furs, and silence reigned in the hall. Vireon ignored the pain in his skull and limbs… his shoulders were coming back to life now. He forced himself onto his knees, then to his feet. They hadn’t bothered to give him cloak or blanket, but at least they had let him keep boots and leggings. There was a terrible absence at his waist where his long knife should be. He stared into the blood-bright eyes of the Ice King.
The monarch spoke, and Vireon strained to understand his words. It was the speech of the Uduru – surely these people were Uduru, or had been in some remote age. But the accent was guttural and hard to grasp. He snatched what meaning he could from them.
“Little human… son of the South… You are far from home. No human… may come here. These are the hunting grounds… of the Udvorg… the Ice Clans. Are there more… humans like you… in our mountains?”
Vireon chose his words carefully. “I am no Southborn, no human,” he said, though it pained him to speak. His teeth chattered. His stomach growled and the white tigers looked at him hungrily. “I am the Prince of Udurum… My father is Vod of the Storms… Uduru King.”
The Ice King laughed, a sound like grinding glaciers.
“You… are a tiny human… nothing like the Uduru. Unless… they have shrunk.”
The guards laughed at their King’s jest. Vireon coughed.
“My father was Vod, King of Udurum…” he said. “But my mother was a human woman, Shaira of Shar Dni.”
