Grond's face looked to the north, and the enclosing walls shaded him from sunlight at all times of the year. No doubt this was one reason the ice could survive here, maintaining its constant pressure around the colossal prisoner.
Or at least, it had been constant pressure. Staring at the mountainous form, Deirdre felt an overwhelming sense of pending power. Soon that power would be hers; this she knew by the commands of Talos.
The closer she approached to the great statuelike form, the greater became Deirdre's sense of awe. The huge body, nearly as tall as the high tower of Caer Corwell, loomed like an ivory obelisk amid the bluish cast of its icy bier.
It would be hers!
The Earthmother felt a quickening in the flesh of her body, the Moonshaes. The source of that renewed vitality was known to her, though long ignored. Yet now she sensed a power awakening, one whom she had faced and vanquished in the past. What did it mean? How great a threat was it? She would have to wait, to face the problem as it arose.
For she knew that she could do nothing to prevent Grond Peaksmasher from returning to life.
13
Alicia was forced to dismount, leaving Brittany on a small hillock of dry ground while she probed forward for some sign of a trail. Instead of finding a path, however, she saw the plants growing thick behind her even as she passed, and water trickled from somewhere to pool around the trunks of trees. Pads of lilies lay flat upon the stagnant liquid where meadows of flowers and brush should be.
Still the princess pressed onward, growing desperate in the few minutes since she had left her company of men. In fact, she suspected that the trail behind her was now inundated, since by the time she had left the troops, some of the men had already hoisted themselves into the lower branches of trees in order to keep their feet dry. The source of the water remained a mystery, but finding a path through the swampland formed a far more significant problem to Alicia.
Codscove wasn't far away, she sensed. Yet now her entire force threatened to bog down in this impenetrable swamp. Why now, of all times?
The dark forest dripped around her, pressing close on all sides. She felt as though something watched her. Nervously, sword in hand, the princess spun through a circle. As far as she could tell, she remained alone.
She wondered, with a flash of irritation, why Keane had been reluctant to accompany her. She hadn't ordered him to do so, but when she had asked he had quietly dissuaded her, suggesting that it was best right now if he remained with the rest of the company. It surprised her and, if the truth be told, it annoyed her, too, this feeling that she needed Keane's presence before she could feel comfortable. But, still, he should have come with her!
"What's he going to do, fly the men out of here?" she muttered, brushing strands of sweat-soaked hair back from her face.
The trees around her seemed healthy and firmly rooted, not what she would expect to find in such a swampland. After her previous experience with the quicksand, she had learned to walk carefully, but even the ground felt surprisingly firm.
Yet in every direction, she quickly found herself facing an expanse of placid, murky water. It pooled around the trees, dark and fetid, concealing the ground, deceptively obscuring any pitfall or irregularity in the terrain. Finally, with considerable disgust, she made her way back to the column of Corwellian men-at-arms.
"Nothing-there's no dry path out of here," she said to Keane in disgust. "Not that you would have helped find it!" she added bitterly.
Keane smiled thinly, ignoring her tone, which only made her more irritated. "What did you stay back here for, anyway? Checking to see if it's going to rain?"
"No," he said, quietly. "No rain would make any difference in this flood."
"What do you mean? How can the water level be rising when there isn't any rain?"
"That's the big question, isn't it? If you'll notice, there hasn't been any rain for several days, yet the water flowed in behind us as soon as we passed a certain point."
"And now we're surrounded," Alicia added. "But I'm not so concerned with why the water got here as I am with finding a way around it!"
"Then you're making a great mistake," Keane replied bluntly, meeting her indignant gaze with a thoughtful look of his own.
Still annoyed, the princess bit her tongue and tried to understand what he meant. "Well? How did this water get here?"
"As near as I can tell, it isn't really here at all. It just seems to be."
"And what's that supposed to mean?"
"Perhaps he means that the righteous wrath of the gods wishes to direct your faith in more proper directions," said Parell Hyath, who had approached, unnoticed, to join in their conversation.
"Speak plainly!" Alicia snapped, in no mood for theological discourse.
"I mean this tired obeisance you show to an ancient and withered goddess! You tell us not to trample the grass in that 'sacred' place. You forbid the taking of game for food, and treat each wildflower as some kind of miracle! This goddess holds you in thrall, and by doing so, she holds you, holds your people, back!" replied the patriarch, his tone equally firm. "It is time for these isles to welcome the pantheon of deities that are known to all the rest of the Realms."
Alicia's eyes blazed, and for a moment, rage swept through her, fomenting a torrent of angry words that nearly exploded from her. Instead, however, she remembered an early lesson of her mother's: Such rage could only be destructive, and thus it should be conserved for those times when destruction was necessary.
Drawing a deep breath, the princess felt the tension flow from her body, replaced by a serene calm that enabled her to meet the cleric's arguments rationally. In the clarity that followed, she recognized the supreme arrogance that propelled him and knew that her own faith could be strong enough to prevail.
"This 'tired' faith you deride is the lifeblood of my people," the princess explained. "It flows in my veins, and in the veins of all the Ffolk, and it won't wither or weaken in the face of your conceits!"
"Conceits?" Now it was the patriarch who sounded amused. "My dear child, you haven't begun to see the glories that the true gods can work."
"I saw glory enough in Myrloch Vale to last the rest of my life," Alicia retorted. Indeed, there she had felt the magical power of her island, of her home, in a fashion that she had never known before.
"A point in this debate-perhaps minor, but I think significant," Keane ventured, after listening carefully to this exchange. "But it seems that we shouldn't mistake the acts of humans, however potent and arcane, for the will of the gods they purport to serve."
"What do you mean?" snapped Parell Hyath, turning on the lanky tutor with a menacing gaze.
"This swamp, for example," Keane continued, unperturbed. "The will of the gods? The acts of vengeful deities, determined to prove us wrong? Or is it instead the work of a treacherous cleric-one who presents himself as friend and ally, but works instead to thwart the true purpose of our mission?"
"What lies do you speak?" demanded the Exalted Inquisitor.
"There is a spell I know of… called 'hallucinatory terrain,' I believe." He turned to Alicia, explaining calmly. "It can only be wielded by a powerful cleric, though I'm certain it falls within the range of ability possessed by our erstwhile companion here."
"Did you bring this water around us?" the princess demanded, confronting the patriarch.
"He's mad!" protested Hyath, fixing Keane with a baleful gaze. "What would a simple ambassador know about magic and gods?"
Alicia laughed once, a quick and bitter sound. Keane, too, seemed mildly amused. "My 'simple ambassador,' " the princess shot back, "has a certain familiarity with the arcane arts."