"Not until we find Ingold," he said. "That is the one thing remaining, son of Endorion: to find Ingold. For without him we have no hope of turning aside Vair before he crosses over into the Keep of Dare."
Chapter 21
There were five levels of the crypts below the ground, even as there were five levels above, and Tir and the Icefalcon followed the vines inward to the Keep's heart. In places vines lay like combed hair, wrist-thick, calf-thick, thigh-thick along the base of the walls, under ceilings where molds moved and murmured to themselves and dripped blood on warrior and child as they passed below.
It was as if the plants that had once been cultivated in the hydroponics crypts had gone mad when the Keep went mad, growing and growing in the blackness and bringing forth nightmare fruit of shapes unseen in the sane or waking world.
In the vines, in the fungus, in the frost-locked chambers where no footfall marred the white glittering surfaces of the floors, apports appeared and disappeared: a man's boot.
A hair ribbon wound around a stem of wild roses, the blossoms still fresh. A scroll of strange gold letters.
A cooking pot wrought of metal the Icefalcon had never seen. Somewhere water gurgled, and in its voice the Icefalcon heard the mutter of names.
Demons kept putting out their torches and picked and tore at the Icefalcon's hands and face and hair while he patiently rekindled sparks in tufts pulled from the desiccated moss. After having his spirit body gutted, torn, dismembered by demons for endless hours, these efforts at distraction did not impress him.
There was a sixth level, below the crypts and the subcrypts, at the bottom of the lowermost stair. Nitre gleamed blue on the rock walls, and the air was frozen with a crushed eternity beneath the ice.
Tir led the way silently, tracing memories of some ancient and unimaginable errand, and the Icefalcon trod silently after him, his hand near his sword-hilt but knowing in his heart that there was nothing there a sword could stay.
At the bottom of an endless stair lay only a cavern lit by the phosphor-glow of nitre and lichens, and in that cavern a pit that fell away to nothing. Wind roared there, and water, too, the Icefalcon thought, and the vines that had lain along the wall the whole of the final stairway spread out and hung over the pit's edge, gray and dry and dead.
A bronze ball floated suspended in the pit, almost below the reach of the wind-snatched torchlight. The bronze had been cracked, perhaps with age; stained and green and falling to pieces, but the magic that had been in it endured. It was just large enough to contain a man.
"Altir, my dear boy." Ingold had managed to hook one elbow over the edge of a great crack in the bronze ball's top and haul himself up from within it. His face was scratched, and there was blood in his hair, demon-lights floated around the ball, and the Icefalcon could half see their plasmic shapes crawling over the curving surface-but his voice was cheerful.
"And the Icefalcon, too. You have no idea how pleased I am to see you both."
"I can guess." The Icefalcon hunkered down at the pit's edge, warily, because demons would probably consider it the ultimate in hilarity to grab his ankles. "Have you made tea?"
Ingold got his other elbow up and rested his chin on his crossed wrists. His hands were in bloody shreds.
He must, the Icefalcon thought, be using all his magic to keep the ball from falling into the pit. "You know, I intended to," said the wizard apologetically, "but the stove in here won't light and the only tea I have with me is a second-rate Round Sea red, which I know you don't drink."
Eyes wide, Tir whispered to the Icefalcon, "There isn't really a stove in that ball, is there?" and the Icefalcon shook his head. "I didn't think so. There used to be chains here. They sometimes hung prisoners over the pit with them."
"Nice people," commented the Icefalcon, standing and handing Tir the torch. The boy was trembling with weariness-as was the Icefalcon himself-but there was no need to tell him to be careful.
They'd all been walking around knee-deep in tinder for days, and even at the Keep of Dare, where the black stone of the walls would not burn, children were taught from earliest childhood to be extremely careful with open flame.
As he moved cautiously along the wall, probing with the sword tip under the debris of muck and dead vines, he called out, "Any particular material or link size of chain you wish?"
"Well, you know," replied the wizard judiciously, "when I'm in danger of being dashed to pieces I generally prefer to be rescued with a fifty-fifty alloy of bronze and silver, oval links rather than square, and no longer than two inches, but since I've been here for some hours I'll settle for anything you find."
He turned sharply and gestured with one hand as lightning sparked from the wall of the pit. The white glare showed up the lines of exhaustion gouged in his face and the grim fear in his eyes.
The forked spear veered aside inches from him, but as it did the bronze ball dropped several yards, then caught itself, almost dislodging Ingold in the process, and slowly rose once more, like a blown-up bladder.
"It is not a good thing," said the Icefalcon, digging cautiously under the leaves with his left hand, "to let down your standards."
Dead tendrils of vines clung to the chain like black wires as he pulled it free, the metal clinking softly. His muscles ached to his back teeth with the effort of dragging it to the edge of the pit.
"I won't tell anyone if you won't."
"Is there a post or a ring in the floor that we can fix this to?" asked the Icefalcon, looking down at Tir.
The boy looked terrified as well as beaten with fatigue, but the silly banter of the adults-which Ingold and the Icefalcon had been trading since their first meeting on the training floor at Gae-seemed to calm him.
He thought a moment and went to show the Icefalcon the place; when they came back the chain was gone.
"It's heavy," consoled Ingold, in response to the Icefalcon's remarks. "It probably wasn't apported very far."
The Icefalcon hated Zay with a great, weary hatred.
They found another chain-not the same one-buried under moss, and the Icefalcon kept hold of it this time, wrapping and knotting it through one of the rings in the floor.
He wasn't sure whether the chain would reach, but he wasn't about to trust knotting it to the vines. More lightning burst and flared from the sides of the pit, drawn to the ball by the magic Ingold was putting out to hold it aloft; the effort of turning it aside made the ball itself pitch and dip nearly twenty feet.
"Rudy says levitation's just about one of the hardest magics to do," whispered Tir worriedly. Wind had begun to rise, swirling up out of the pit. The creepers underfoot twitched with a dreadful serpentine life.
"So I have heard, too." The Icefalcon dragged the chain to the lip of the pit, gathered loops of it in his hand, gauged the distance to the ball. "Can you bring that thing up a little?"
"I'll try." Ingold inched himself up gingerly onto the top curve of the broken ball. Wind caught in his long white hair, his tattered robes. "I thought you pitched thirteen innings against Lord Ankres' guards last summer for the championship."
"I was pitching a baseball, not a chain."
Rudy had been responsible for the Keep baseball league-it was Ingold who'd slugged in the winning run.
The Icefalcon had held out for weeks against participation in what he haughtily referred to as a "silly child's game," until Gnift the Swordmaster had informed all Guards that they would participate-he needed a winning team against Lord Ankres. The Icefalcon had been the star pitcher ever since.
The chain fell short five times, lightning searing and slicing its way up the length of it as it dropped down against the side of the pit. The sixth time Ingold caught it, levin-fire sizzling as the old man's bleeding hands wrapped around the links; the spells to turn it aside released the bronze ball from its suspension and it dropped from beneath him.