A nervous glance to the rearview mirror showed his passengers still stiff as the proverbial board. When would the river man’s lock on them wear off?
The van approached the end of the dock. Well, technically the beginning, since that’s where it connected with the land of the Ice Realm.
That’s about where the spell would end. As soon as they left the river man’s realm.
He pushed the accelerator to the floor. The van surged forward as the engine throbbed with power.
In his dreams.
No, the engine rattled and coughed and the van moved faster at a stately pace.
If he survived all of this, he was going to track down Ted and convince him to shoehorn a bigger engine into the van.
The van rolled off the dock and onto the gray path. The steam parted. On either side of the narrow lane stood glittering walls of blue ice. A gust of bitterly cold wind blasted through the open driver’s side window. He rolled it up as fast as he could.
The sky above the ice was starless black.
The van rattled and groaned up the rise. The walls of ice got shorter and shorter. Until, suddenly, he was at the top of the hill.
He stopped the van.
He realized his mouth hung open. He closed it. Leaned back and took in the vista past the windshield.
The solid night sky came down to a straight, knife edge line at the horizon. Ice covered the land as far as he could see.
And between land and sky, bolts of color shot back and forth in shimmering arcs.
Aurora Borealis.
Though here in the Ice Realm it was surely called something else.
Whatever it was, it was beautiful.
The colors were just as icy as the land below them. But how they danced across the sky.
Greens and blues. Deepest purples and hints of red. They reflected in the ice below. It looked like fireworks exploding under the frozen surface.
He tore his gaze away from the amazing display. He needed to focus. The narrow path dove back down into the ice.
Stay on the path.
Right. What kind of choice did he have? A 1967 Econoline van wasn’t exactly equipped for glacier travel. As he scanned the icy surface, he saw it wasn’t as smooth as it first appeared. There were cracks and fissures. Upturned chunks of ice and little hills and mounds.
Nope. Unless the van grew wings, they weren’t going anywhere that didn’t resemble a road.
And the person who could make the van fly was currently magically frozen. And also unlikely to help when she awoke.
But where did the path lead? He didn’t have time to wander the ice realm in search of Rachel’s frozen corpse. He needed to figure out how he could save the city from the dark lords of the bad places.
Which meant he might as well go outside, lay down on the ice and freeze to death. Get it over with, since what good was one morbidly obese clown against the dark armies of the unseen world?
Especially since the dark lords wanted him. Somehow they had gotten the notion he was a conduit for the magical energies of the normal world.
The most troubling part of that?
What if he was?
A horrible, lumpy face dropped in front of the windshield.
Hilario bit back a cry. Roger the ogre grinned his jagged smile.
Hilario rolled the window down. Bone chilling air rushed in. Roger moved his upside down face over to it.
“Oy, clowns,” Roger said, “Hows the’s stiffs?”
Hilario jerked his head around. He’d forgotten about them.
The Sapphire Witch and Odom the Paladin still lay in their frozen poses. As did Marco. Larry was still a ghost of his ghostly self. When would the riverman’s magic wear off?
“Still stiff,” Hilario said.
Roger nodded. Which was a little odd looking, what with him upside down and all.
“Bests we’s gets movings,” Roger said, “Colds outs heres its be.”
“Where does the path lead?” Hilario asked.
Roger gave an upside down shrug. “Nots my’s realms,” he said, “Buts ifs I’s to guesses, its be’s theres.”
He pointed a knobby jointed arm toward the horizon. At first Hilario didn’t see what he pointed at. Then the aurora colors dipped low. And he saw it. Above the horizon. The Twilight Star. And below it, a finger of something that stuck up from the glittering ice. A tower.
It didn’t take much to guess what it might be.
Another Eye of Malachi.
45
The stiffs in the back of Hilario’s van woke up as he zoomed down the ice tunnel.
The beams from the van’s weak headlights glittered against the arching ice over the pathway. He tried not to think of all the ice hanging above. What had he expected in the Ice Realm, marshmallows?
Marshmallows…
His stomach rumbled and twisted. He told it to shut up and eat some of the blubber around it.
He had the drivers side window rolled down an inch or so. The icy air blasting in was refreshingly clean. A welcome change from the sulfurous stench of the river Phlegethon. A flavor that was still at the back of his mouth
Though he wasn’t sure the tunnel was a better place to be.
The tunnel was disturbingly tall. Strangely circular. As if it had been bored out by a giant, red hot poker. Only the stone covered bottom was flat.
He had driven for miles already. The tunnel never curved. Just ran straight toward a far distant vanishing point.
The hum of tires, the steady rumble of the engine lulled
