“Almost?”
“On the other side of that mess of spells there’s a large area that seems almost covered in fog. On top of that, there’s an almost evil cloud around it that seems nearly black as pitch, and, to top it all off, there’s real smoke coming from there and reaching as high in the air as I could see. The thing would give me the creeps, except that the ice pack in front of it is even creepier.”
He nodded. “I don’t have any explanation for it, but at least it sounds as if we’re in the right place and a lot quicker than we could have been otherwise, thanks to Mia.”
“I assume from everything that you’re gonna chance the settlement,” she said rather than asked. “Looks military. I’d watch myself.”
He shrugged. “Can’t be helped. If I don’t get some cold-weather clothes better than these and maybe some gear for the ice, I don’t see how we can make it across anyway. You run ahead and find someplace to get some sleep. Check on us tonight. If we’re in trouble, you might well have to try to spring us.”
She nodded. “Will do. Uh—it just occurred to me why that high smoke rising in the air looked familiar, and if I’m right, it might explain something about this place.”
“Yeah?”
“I think there’s a volcano out there, either in the middle of or just the other side of the ice,” she told him. “Remember, the center of the Kauri home is a lava pool. If that’s another quiet-type volcanic region, it explains why folks might want to go there, and why it’s shrouded in mist. Hot water, thermal pools—it’s probably warm as toast and very pleasant inside there except for the company, like some kind of spa or hot springs type resort. And I’ll say this—if you were gonna hide anything at all, that would be where I’d hide it.”
“Makes sense. Now, go get some rest and don’t sleep near any gnome burrows. No were business tonight, and we might well need you.”
“Will do,” she replied. “Gnomes don’t bother me, though. They’re not intrinsically evil, just, well, gnomes. You watch it yourself, though. No telling what else might be out there.” She rose up into the air and was quickly gone.
“Well,” Joe sighed, fixing his pack as best he could, “let’s go the hard way.” He was going to have some problems with Mia in this environment; although she was apparently quite comfortable, he got the chills just looking at her.
The walk was cold, dreary, and deathly dull. The scenery was all in back of them, but, then, with the scenery had come the gnomes, and he felt well rid of those. As the sun rose, the temperature got above freezing, although not tremendously so, and that proved a worse condition than the freeze itself, as the top part of the ground turned to mud and cold marsh, making the footing not only messy but treacherous. Worse, it seemed to have loosened every mosquito, blackfly, and nipping gnat in all creation and they all seemed headed right for meal Number One, which was him. The spell that insulated Mia, while not insulating her from the mud, also seemed to ward them off; she walked right through small swarms of them without once getting bitten, although there was maximum exposure, while he, with only a few exposed areas, nonetheless seemed like lunch to them all. He’d swear that some of them were large enough to have rotor blades and all seemed born with full-blown pneumatic drills on their mouths.
After only a few hours walk, they could see their eventual destination, although it was still going to be most of the rest of the day to reach it. It was that flat and that featureless. It stood out as a small grouping of dark blips against what looked like clouds below them, but which, in reality, was ice. They were still much too far away to see over the ice itself, but even from here there was a decided plume of black smoke across the horizon. Joe never so much wanted to get to a place that was probably going to be deadly or worse in his life. If he had to succumb to evil, it was damned well going to be at least warm there.
The slogging toward that far-off settlement was perhaps the most frustrating thing of all, since he walked and walked and walked for hours on end, the goal in sight, and for the longest time it simply didn’t seem to be getting any closer.
These people, he decided, had to be supplied by air, just as the important ones who went out to that redoubt beyond the horizon had to come and go the same way. He couldn’t help but imagine a fleet of the huge nazga with teeth that spelled out Mack and Peterbilt and Kenworth on them, and broad wings bearing Rodeway and Yellow Freight and Preston logos, flown by a team of tough-looking aerial truckers, and wonder what in hell their truck stops looked like.
Just because there was little else to do and not much even to think about, he allowed himself to slip into fairy sight, and what he saw gave him plenty to think about.
Not too much on “shore,” as it were; the usual warm life-form readings here and there of who knew what, and not a lot on the ice, either—until you looked toward that distant horizon. There, not immediately offshore but well out, in the direction they’d have to go, he saw just what Marge was talking about.
Just there, and going to the horizon, it was not white in fairy sight, but instead appeared to him as if some giant was collecting all the yarn in the world and dropped his savings in the Grand Canyon. Brilliant, glowing magical strings, so many of them, in every conceivable color, and so dense and overlapping, that no sense at all could be made of any of it. A shift back to normal sight showed only the continuing whiteness, deceptive in the extreme, but he understood why such legends about that place existed.
Supernatural phenomenon? Perhaps the dumping ground for the leftovers by those who designed Husaquahr? Or really the site of a frozen battleground between ancient forces back when those with power approached the status of angels and demons? It didn’t matter. They had to cross that! Overland? Could anyone? He would bet almost anything that even Sugasto going out to the redoubt flew around that place. Ruddygore had almost shrugged it off, and yet Joe thought it might be the most dangerous part of the journey, perhaps more dangerous even than the summer palace.
What would happen if died here? he couldn’t help thinking. Died in a place so barren and so cold, a place without trees?
Mia broke his morbid train of thought with a more immediate worry. “Master, what will you tell people in those buildings when we reach them?” she asked him.
“Huh? Hadn’t really thought of that. I guess I just thought I could rely on the safe conduct.”
“But, Master, that won’t explain anything about why we are here in this awful and desolate place, or where we are going, and why. After all, if we were allowed to this hideaway, we would have been entitled to fly there, would we not?”
She had an abnormal ability to shout at him when his brain was in park.
What would be a good explanation? Science? Not likely; even if that really meant something here, he could hardly fake that kind of education. Magic? No, not magic, since clearly neither of them had any. Besides, they were both rather clearly what they really were, even to the most ignorant.
“I think we’re gonna have to fall back on the last refuge of the scoundrel in this sort of situation, particularly if they’re re: ally all or mostly military types up there,” he told her.