The ice had eaten it. Time had eaten it. Even when, in eons of time, the ice disgorged it again, it would not be as it had been, but would be scoured and pressed and twisted out of recognition.
He would be gone, too, of course. But those meadows now existed only in his mind, as the faces of the Ancestors of wizards existed only in the gray crystals Gil read in the Keep.
This was not something of which he could speak to Loses His Way or to his sister; maybe not to anyone.
Never in his life had he wept for anyone, for to weep was to be weak, and to mourn loss was to give power away to that which was lost, and to Time. But his heart wept for the Night River Country, the home of his childhood that was gone.
In this bitter world, demons glided across the snow. By day they sometimes had the appearance of whirlwinds, and, in the short terrible nights, of flickering lights far off over the Ice. Their voices whined and sang even when the wind was still.
Toward evening of the second day on the Ice one of the clones broke from his place in the line of march and stumbled, slipping and shrieking and brandishing his sword, toward the place where the Icefalcon and his companions struggled along on the other side of a flow-ridge.
The man came smashing through the thin crest of the ridge almost on top of the Icefalcon. The Icefalcon had his sword in his hand already and aimed for his neck, but the man ducked at the last moment and the blade caught him on the collarbone. The clone turned and lunged at him again, sword drawn, grinning like a dog, and as the Icefalcon stabbed him through the chest he realized that the man was possessed of a demon.
The demon came out of the man's mouth like a glowing mist that thrashed and clawed at the Icefalcon's eyes and face for a moment and then was gone. The body of the dead clone lay in the snow at his feet. Shouting on the other side of the snow ridge. The Icefalcon, Cold Death, and Loses His Way fled, sliding and slithering down the ridge, with Yellow-Eyed Dog bounding happily behind. Later, after the sergeant in the red boot-laces had looked at the dead man, cursed about barbarians, stripped off all the clothing and weapons and gone away again, they returned to look at the body. "He makes his warriors out of air." Cold Death knelt to touch the hairless face, already rimed with frost. "Or wood and dirt and dead flesh, as the case may be. But he can't make a man's soul. It was only a matter of time before the demons found a way into the living flesh."
"Will they seek us out again?" Loses His Way fumbled at his heavy furs, as if to touch the amulet he wore against his skin beneath. "I have an amulet made for me by Walking Eyes."
"Amulets work against demons because the demons are spirit only," said Cold Death, standing up again and grabbing Yellow-Eyed Dog by the ruff to pull him away from the corpse. "The flesh of these things may protect the demons from the amulets' power..."
"With Walking Eyes' amulets," the Icefalcon added unkindly, "it wouldn't take much." There was an outcry from farther off, and the clashing of swords. The three warriors scrambled up the trampled flow-ridge to see what the problem was. Two other clones had attacked their fellows, cutting madly all about them with swords and daggers, the blood like scattered poppies, garish on the snow. Even at the distance of half a mile the Icefalcon could hear them laughing crazily as they were dragged down and killed.
"They eat fear," said Cold Death softly. "Live on it, as butterflies drink perfumes." Vair stood over the fallen bodies of the two clone lunatics. There was no need to see his face. His whole body was a threat, a quest for someone to savage. Bektis, beside him, explained at great and mellifluous length why none of this was his fault.
In time Vair turned aside, but it was clear from the way he moved that he was not a happy man. Later in that same day they reached the far edge of the snowfield. The ice buckled and faulted in a maze of towers and crevasses, huge wind-carved ridges interlaced like the fingers of a hand. This formation narrowed toward the north, and the Icefalcon guessed it was in fact a continuation of the valley he had known as the Place of the Bent-Horned Musk Ox, which even in his day had been walled by hanging glaciers.
The caravan stopped, and Tir and Hethya were summoned. The Icefalcon was able to work his way to within a hundred feet of them. Tir was saying, "There was a creek that came out of the hills here. A canyon went back into the ridges, that way."
He gestured with one mitted hand. The day had cleared with the advance of evening, and the mountains to the north were clearly visible; about a day east lay a line of broken-toothed black rocks thrusting through the gashed jumble of ice.
Everything flashed in the high pearly light, the snow like cloud and the Ice a thousand shades of blue and green where the wind scoured it, the mules panting under their fur robes, frost forming on their muzzles as it formed on the beards of the true men, the bare flesh of the faces of the clones.
In the wan strange light Tir's face looked like a little skull amid the gray fur of his hood, nothing left of it but the great blue eyes and the unhealed tracks of cuts. Are they trying to starve the boy to death? The wounds had the look of malnutrition to them, and his face was bruised in a way the Icefalcon did not like.
"Certainly the lie of the ice seems to indicate that the land beneath rises in that direction." Bektis stroked his snowy beard. "But whether we are in fact at the place where we must bend our course eastward to meet the valley of which the child speaks..."
Tir took a deep breath; it seemed to the Icefalcon that he was trembling. He closed his eyes.
"There was... there were three creeks that came together," he said slowly. "Right here. There was a waterfall, and a pool. We saw a wolf drinking there one night. Daddy-Father-We turned there. The road turned there. We made for that notch in the ridge." He pointed. "We journeyed through the night, and I remember the sound of the water running beside the road."
"And if you traveled in darkness," retorted Bektis spitefully, "where were the Dark Ones? They should have been thick about your train as wasps around honey."
"I don't know!" Tir almost screamed the words. "I don't know! I just say what I remember, and that's what I remember!"
"Don't speak disrespectfully to Lord Bektis." Vair caught the boy under the chin. "He doesn't like it. I don't like it, either, to hear a child of your years lash out like a savage. And stop crying."
For Tir had begun to sob uncontrollably. "You're a pitiable thing." Casually, he released his grip and slapped him, in a single move. The slap was hard enough to stagger Tir. Hethya looked away.
"Make your apology."
"I'm sorry, Lord Bektis."
I will kill him, thought the Icefalcon, very calmly, seeing the child's face and body, hearing the child's voice.
He understood, and had agreed with, Ingold's decision to remain in Renweth Vale, relayed to him through the usual medium of an ice face and Cold Death.
There was no way the old man could have over taken Vair's caravan in time to be of help. It was clear to them both that there was some threat to the Keep far beyond Vair's eleven hundred henchmen camped outside it, something that in all probability neither Wend nor Ilae would be capable of dealing with.
But beneath his warrior's logic, the logic of the Real World, he wished he could at least have the knowledge and comfort that the mage was on the way to help where he could not.
"The three springs are what you remember?"
"Me lord," said Hethya, her Felwoods brogue breaking into Lord Vair's cold, focused scrutiny of Tir,
"me mother was a witch of sorts. She could track the course of a stream underground, miles through the woods. Folk were all the time after her to do it for the farms. Could perhaps me Lord Bektis do the same beneath all this ice, and tell us if there are three springs down there?"
Bektis grumbled and began to make passes with his hands above the ice. After a little time he reached into his muff and brought out the crystalline Device, which he affixed to his hand, pulling off his glove to do it and immediately surrounding himself with a heatspell that coalesced in curls of fog.