“No. It’s so cold, Ozzie. Really cold. I’m frightened.”
“I know. But try and keep going. Please? Stopping is only going to make things worse.”
“I’ll try.”
“You want to lean on me for a bit?”
“No.”
Ozzie tugged gently at the strands of pelt just behind the lontrus’s neck, reducing the animal’s speed. It didn’t resist the instruction. They ambled forward at a terribly slow pace. Ozzie started reevaluating their whole progress. He clearly hadn’t taken Orion’s state properly into account last night as he’d worked out how far they could travel. Obviously, they weren’t going to get more than a couple of kilometers farther at best today; and that was going to be exhausting for the boy. The sensible course would be to turn around immediately. At this rate, if they were lucky, they might just get back to where they’d pitched the tent last night.
“The forest’s finishing, look,” Orion said.
Ozzie focused, alarmed by how easily he’d fallen into a daydreaming state. The crystal trees were small and naked now; central boles of amethyst armor standing proud, with their main branches flung out at right angles. Away at the tips of the regular twig segments, the purple encrustation gave way to smooth opal wedges that flared out from each tip, flat side up to absorb the crisp frigid sunlight. They had thinned out enough for him to see past the last clusters to the vast plain beyond. From his position it looked like a circular depression walled in by low curving hills. In the thin clear air, the far side was almost as sharply drawn as the ground around him. Distance was difficult to judge with so few reference points, but he guessed at thirty to thirty-five kilometers across. Bright sparks of reflected sunlight twinkled with vivid intensity to halo each hill, indicating the crystal tree forest had spread over every slope. The depression’s floor was empty apart from its scattering of dusty snow.
For all the harsh beauty of the exotic landscape, Ozzie wanted to curse it. There was no hope here. They were going to struggle just to reach the end of the forest, a few hundred meters ahead where the crystal trees were nothing more than spindly dendrites of clear crystal strands sticking out of the iron-hard ground. Any notion of traversing that vast bleak and empty land to the other side was unthinkable.
Perhaps this is why so many who sought the deep paths were never heard of again. Our perception of the Silfen as gentle and kind is our own stupid, convenient illusion. We wanted to believe in elves. And how many human bodies lie out there under the snow because of that?
“It’s a desert.” Orion said. “A desert of ice.”
“Yeah, ’fraid so.”
“I wonder if Mom and Dad got here?”
“Don’t worry. They’re not stupid, they will have turned back, just like us.”
“Is that what we’re doing?”
Ozzie saw a flash of near-blue light out across the plain. He pushed his sunglasses up, heedless of the sharp pain from the terrible air gusting against his exposed skin. The flash came again. Definitely emerald. The contrast was astounding on that vista made up entirely from shades of red. Green had to be artificial. A beacon!
He dropped his sunglasses down again. “Maybe not.” The distress flares were nestled in hoops on each pack for easy access. He pulled one of the slim cylinders out, twisted the safety cap off, and held it at arm’s length to pull the trigger. There was a loud crack, and the flare zoomed off into the sky. A dazzling star of scarlet light drifted over the edge of the crystal forest, lingering for a long time.
Orion was staring at the slow pulse of the green beacon. “Do you think that’s people?”
“It’s got to be someone. My handheld array still doesn’t work, so the Silfen are screwing with the electricity. That means this is definitely one of their worlds.” He waited a couple of minutes, then fired another flare. “Let’s try to walk to the edge of the trees. If we haven’t seen an answer by then, we’ll turn back.”
Ozzie hadn’t even fired the third flare when the beacon light started flashing faster. Laughing beneath his mask, he held up the cylinder and triggered it. As it sputtered out overhead, the beacon light became constant.
“It’s a beam,” Orion cried. “They’re pointing it at us.”
“I think you’re right.”
“How far away is it?”
“I’m not sure.” His retinal inserts zoomed in, compensating for the emerald glare. The resolution wasn’t great, but as far as he could make out, the light was coming from the top of some mound or small hillock. There were dark lines on it. Terraces? “Ten or twelve miles, maybe more; and there’s some kind of structure around it, I think.”
“What kind?”
“I don’t know. But we’re stopping here. If they’re used to people they’ll know we need help.”
“What if they don’t?”
“I’m going to put the tent up. We’ll use a heatbrick and get warm, we both need a proper rest. When the brick’s finished we’ll know what to do. If nobody’s arrived we turn back.” He started to tug at the big knot he’d tied in the strap that secured the tent onto the lontrus.
“Can’t we go there?” Orion asked plaintively.
“It’s too far. The state we’re in it’d take another couple of days. We can’t risk that.” He unrolled the tent, and let the inner lining suck in air, raising itself into a small elongated hemisphere. Orion crawled inside, and Ozzie handed him a heatbrick. “Rip the tag,” he told the boy. “I’ll join you in a minute.” He lifted his sunglasses again, and zoomed in on the mound below the beacon light. Then he fired another flare. In answer, the green light blinked off three times in slow succession before returning to a steady glare. In anybody’s language that said: We’ve got you. He still couldn’t make out what the mound was, except it actually had quite steep sides.
Three hours and four hot chocolates later, there was a great deal of noise outside the tent. Ozzie unzipped the front to peer out. Two big creatures were slogging their way up the last section of slope in front of the crystal forest. They were quadrupeds, about the size of terrestrial rhinos, and covered in a straggly string- thick fur similar to the lontrus. Steamy breath whistled out of a stubby snout on the bottom of a bulbous head that bristled with short prickly spines. He’d seen uglier animal heads, but it was the eyes that were strange, long strips of multifaceted black stone, as if they too had crystallized in this deadly climate. Both animals were harnessed to a covered sledge; a simple framework of what looked suspiciously like bone, with cured leather hides laced to it. As he watched, the side was pulled back, and a humanoid figure climbed down. Whoever it was wore a long fur coat with a hood, fur trousers, fur mittens, and a fur face mask with hemispherical goggle lenses bulging out of it like fish eyes. The figure strode toward them, raising a hand in greeting.
“I thought it would be humans,” a female voice called gruffly from behind the mask. “We’re the only people tasteless enough to use red light for emergency flares around here.”
“Sorry about that,” Ozzie shouted back. “They don’t stock a real big range of colors at the store.”
She stopped in front of the tent. “How are you coping? Any frostbite?” Her voice had a strong northern Mediterranean accent.
“No frostbite, but we’re not prepared for this kind of climate. Can you help?”
“That’s why I’m here.” She ducked down, and pulled her mask free to look inside the tent. Her face was leathery brown, engraved with hundreds of wrinkles. She must have been in her sixties, at least. “Hello there,” she said cheerfully to Orion. “Cold here, isn’t it?”
The boy just nodded dumbly at her. He was curled up in his sleeping bag again.
She sniffed the air. “God in his heaven, is that chocolate?”
“Yes.” Ozzie held up his thermos. “There’s some left if you want.”
“If we ever had elections around here, you’d be emperor.” She took a big swig from the thermos, sighing pleasurably. “Just like I remember. Welcome to the Citadel. I’m Sara Bush, kind of unofficial spokesperson for the humans here.”
“Ozzie Isaac.”
“Hey, I’ve heard of you. Didn’t you invent the gateways?”
“Uh, yeah.” Ozzie was a little distracted. A block of fur had appeared from behind the sledge. This time it definitely wasn’t a biped in a fur coat. More like a tall rectangle of the fluffiest fur he’d ever seen, with wide dark eyes visible near the top, about eight feet from the ground. There were ripples in the fur that suggested legs were moving somewhere within as it glided forward. It gave off a loud hooting that rose and fell, varying in pitch, almost like a chant.
“All right, all right,” Sara said irritably, waving a hand at the creature.
“What’s that?” Orion asked timidly.
“Oh, don’t worry about him,” Sara said. “That’s old Bill, he’s a Korrok-hi. More like a yeti if you ask me.” She broke off to warble a long verse back to her companion. “There, I’ve told him we’re coming. Now let’s get you packed up and on the sled. I think you two could do with a hot bath and a drink. Not long to cocktail hour now.”
“You’re shitting me,” Ozzie exclaimed.
…
Paula spent most of the night reviewing the old AquaState accounts. The verification she wanted was easy enough to find, you just had to know what you were looking for to make the facts fit. Like every good conspiracy theory, she told herself. And no doubt that would be the angle that the defense counsel took.
When she arrived in the office the next morning, she was surprised that Hoshe was already behind his desk and running through forty-year-old files from City Hall. Even staying awake for half the night, she wasn’t exactly late.
“I can’t believe how much construction work there was in the city forty years ago,” he complained as soon as she’d sat down at her desk. “It’s like half of Darklake wasn’t here. I don’t remember it being so much smaller, and I’ve lived here for sixty years myself.”
Paula glanced over to the big wall-mounted portal he’d activated. It showed a detailed map of Darklake City, with a lot of green lights pinpointing building activity forty years ago, both civic and private. “Don’t forget to include things like roadworks for at least a couple of months after the murder. I know that will increase the search area dramatically, but that uncertainty makes them a prime possibility.”
He didn’t say anything, but his expression soured further.
“I’ve finished my analysis,” she said. “I’ll help with your search. Divide the city into two, and I’ll take one-half.”
“Right.” Hoshe instructed his e-butler. “What did you find in the accounts?”
“It confirmed my theory. But it’s hardly evidence we can take to court, at least not alone.”
