Joe finished, and practiced a little walking. It was stiff, but he felt comfortable. He went over and helped Mia prepare his pack, then, after putting it on, they put together her harness and checked out progressively smaller rectangles of ice until she proclaimed that it was okay. What she could manage wasn’t huge, but it would do.
She slipped off the harness for a moment and started doing some of her stretching exercises. Joe watched her, then went over to her. “Mia,” he said gently “we’ve explained what’s in there, just below the top. You know that nobody’s ever been known to cross this thing and come out anything but a hideous monster.”
“Yes, Master. I know. But we will make it.”
“There are a couple of things I want to say before we go in there, just in case we don’t. The first is, if, somehow, I don’t make it, and you do, and Macore does as well, let him touch the ring and then finish what we set out to do. Understand?”
“Yes, Master.”
“If not, avoid anyone touching it and try and do it anyway if you can.”
“I will, Master.”
“Don’t let anything stop you, not even regard for me. No matter what you feel, remember those living dead back there and your own slavery and the way the slaves were back at that camp and think of all Husaquahr under those people—and all in Tiana’s name and mine. I swear I’ll die before I let them do that. Will you swear it, too?”
“I will, Master.”
“In spite of that, and in spite of the fact that I’ll sacrifice any life, including ours, to stop them, I want you to know something. I know you are just my slave, and that you were never my wife, and that you’re Mia, not Ti. But I want you to know, truthfully, that, as yourself, just as you are, and here and now, I love you more than I’ve loved any other woman.” And then he grabbed her and held her and gave her another of those kisses, only even deeper and more passionate than before.
Marge descended. “Break it up, you two!” she said sharply. “The posse’s hot on my tail and tryin’ to head us off at the pass!”
The pair broke, reluctantly, and quickly helped each other with their packs.
“Okay, gang! Let’s do it!” Macore shouted. All of them took deep breaths, paused a moment, then stepped into the Devastation.
The first thing that hit them was that the Devastation was neither desolate nor even quite quiet.
“It sounds as if you were really way, way, aways, and yet…” Marge said, fascinated.
“It sounds like Sorrow’s Gorge,” Joe completed. “My god! How long has this been here? Thousands of years, perhaps?”
Marge nodded. “And yet, somehow, you get the feeling that even the freezing didn’t so much stop the battle as freeze it. It’s as if the last second of that battle was being played, over and over again, like some broken record.”
“That was my impression when I was in here earlier,” Ma-core admitted. “I think the soundtrack changes a bit as we go, though. I think we are hearing the battle, or what was happening here on each spot, at that fatal moment back then. Kind of gives you the creeps, doesn’t it?”
“I hear it, too, Master,” Mia told Joe. “The sounds of armor and horses and men yelling and screaming and even the sounds of magic. You could almost see the whole thing in your mind from those sounds.”
“Well, we’d better get a different part of the program,” Marge noted, shaking herself out of it. “We’ve got a very long way to go, and, right now I bet, there’s at least a couple of Hypboreyan women’s guards cutting out ice blocks not far behind us.”
“Oh, don’t worry so much,” Joe told her. “We can take care of them in a fight.”
“Oh, really? And what good is even a great sword like yours against a crossbow? What’s next? Bare hands against automatic rifles?” Marge began walking, looking down at what to her was an incredible kaleidoscope of colors glowing just below the snow. “Huh! Why do I feel that under this snow is the dance floor from Saturday Night Fever?”
“Put a little of your inborn fairy warmth on those spots and you’ll do a dance, all right,” Joe told her.
“Hey! Take it easy! I have to do three steps to your two, remember, and I wasn’t built for forty mile hikes. I was never built for forty mile hikes. Ai yi yi! How do I get myself into these things?”
“You’ve had more rest than any of us,” he pointed out. “And probably a better meal, too.”
Macore looked around. “I just wish we could erase these tracks in the snow. We’re not gonna be real hard to track.”
Joe looked at Marge. “You just remember that, no matter what, you’ve got to suppress that panic reaction of yours. No flying and no running.”
At that moment there was a sudden pop.’ near them and from the lighted ground under the snow quickly came a ghostly visage of a skeletallike horror mounted on a nightmare steed, rushing toward them, only the head and torso of the rider and the head and neck of the steed visible. It was transparent, but it screamed a ghastly scream and came toward them—and was gone.
“What was that!” Joe asked.
Marge stood stock still. “See? I didn’t panic. I was too petrified. At least Husaquahr’s now got a space program.”
“Huh?”
“My heart’s in orbit.”
“What was it, Master?” Mia asked. “It was—horrible.”
“Oh, yeah,” Macore said calmly, “I forgot to mention those. They happen every once in a while. I don’t think they’re anything to worry about, just something being liberated briefly because of the settling in the ice or whatever.”
“Uh—Macore. Anything else you forgot to mention?” Marge asked dryly.
“Uh—not that I can think of. Say! This boring walk needs some livening up. Anybody want me to sing the entire Gilligan’s Island theme song, complete with the end verse everybody forgets?”
“No,” Joe and Marge responded in unison.
“Okay, okay. Sheesh! Everybody’s turning into a critic on this damned world!”
They walked some more in silence. The cold was really getting to Joe in spite of the borrowed furs and fur lining stuffed in his boots. They couldn’t really cover their faces very well, and, although there was no wind, it really did begin to bother him, and possibly Macore as well.
Equally troubling were the occasional manifestations that arose suddenly, each preceded by a cracking sound. They kept telling themselves and one another that they’d get used to it, but the farther in they went, the more horrible and gruesome the apparitions became. You just didn’t get used to it; you merely dreaded the next crack!.
“Jeez! Weren’t there any good guys in this fight?” Marge asked.
“Probably. Almost certainly,” Joe responded. “My best guess is that we’re either on a lightly defended part of the field or we’re inside the battle lines of one side. What’s more interesting is that we haven’t seen any human apparitions. Lots of dark fairy types, and some mean-looking monsters that might be fairy or mortal, a practical difference only to them, but no people.”
“I also wonder just how long ago this battle was,” Macore commented. “I mean, it’s ancient enough to have passed into legend, and I Ve yet to recognize any creature as something I’ve met, but the armor and the weaponry and things like saddles and such look very up to date. In fact, a lot of it looks better than what we have now.”