Clones grabbed up provisions and dashed for the tunnel while another sergeant tried to organize a defended retreat; arrows felled them, and fur-clothed shadows caught up the bundled swords, axes, and armor they bore and wrenched the weapons from their dying hands. The priest came out of the ice tunnel and cried something, and a demon-ridden clone raced up to him, shrieking, and sank an ax into his chest.
Blue Child axed Red Boots through the shoulder against the Dark Lightning's cage, took a sword-thrust in the double hide of her jacket, and slashed the man's face open with her knife.
Her followers and his were running to join battle-she kicked the man out of the way in a spray of blood and swung herself into the Dark Lightning's cradle, laying her hands on the glass ball at its center in the way that showed she'd been watching Bektis all the time.
The Icefalcon knew Blue Child was incapable of activating the apparatus, but he was the only one that wise in the ways of magic. Every southern warrior of the dozen closing in hesitated-and every one was taken in that hesitation by one of Blue Child's band, with the neatness of dancers in a cabaret.
The Earthsnake People had made their appearance by this time, slithering under the wagons out of the snowy dark. Some killed, others only seized whatever weapons they could. Though they were still outnumbered by the clones, the combined forces of the two Peoples proved sufficient to force the southerners from the wagon circle.
Torches toppled in the snow, the dimming light adding to the confusion. Men hauled whatever weapons and provisions they could down the tunnel, the circle of defenders shrinking around it, hampered by the possessed clones in their own ranks.
The Icefalcon raced down the ice tunnel through a melee of fog and torchlight, flying arrows and struggling men, feeling as if he were in a dream, except that his dreams seldom featured anything so weird as that glimmering corridor of mists.
He could not communicate with Tir, but should the boy be enterprising enough to chance an escape in the confusion, he wanted at least to be by his side.
Near the Keep's Doors he met Vair na-Chandros, dark face twisted with rage as he shouted orders and lashed with his whip at the men struggling past him under their burdens.
Bektis scurried in the generalissimo's wake, wrapped so thick in spells of protection against anyone's notice he was to all intents and purposes invisible.
But to the Icefalcon's bodiless consciousness the ward-spells, guard-spells, arrowsmiss, and calamities-hit-someone-else appeared as a fluttering mass of plasmoid light, and the old man, clutching frantically at the crystal Device strapped to his hand, had the appearance of a demon-fish of the southern seas, which attaches seaweed ribbons to itself in order to increase its bulk and pass for a being too formidable to eat.
He would, the Icefalcon guessed, barely have the concentration to throw illusion, confusion, fear, or much of anything else at the attackers, so desperate was he to remain unseen. As well, he thought. He would not like to lose someone like Red Fox to a jackal like the Court Mage.
The Aisle was a madhouse, men throwing down their burdens, snatching up weapons, running back up the tunnel. No sign of Tir or Hethya, but among the men, demons buzzed, shrieking and dodging when someone ran past with a demon-scare.
Booted men and other clones were killing the possessed clones systematically, like men butchering rabid animals; five or six lay bleeding about the floor, the demons that had been in them romping madly in the jungles that dangled down the walls, shaking the vines and screaming with laughter.
The Icefalcon thrust aside the cold embrace of a demon that, unnervingly, took the shape of Dove in the Sun and fell upon him, weeping and biting; he felt the pain of the bites but knew it wasn't real.
The pain of seeing her face again wasn't real, either, or so he told himself. Tracks in the creepers showed him where people had gone, through a door at the front end of the Aisle, into the caliginous passageways that in the Renweth Keep would have been first level north.
A corridor curtained with a tapestry of pallid vines and fungus like cobwebs; a slit of torchlight limning a door. Ancient wood, but still stout.
Cold Death had told him it was dangerous to tamper with the shape his consciousness, told him it tore, but he had passed through tent curtains and wagon-tops without trouble, and the wood proved no more difficult.
Hethya and Tir were inside.
The ax-wielding warrior was still with them, one of the booted men, long black hair hanging loose around a brown face and profound uneasiness in his eyes. Tir and Hethya sat on their blankets, looking around.
Cold Death had told him that it was possible for a shadow-walker to enter dreams, and in fact his original intent had been to scout the camp and wait until Tir fell asleep, then brief him on the lie of the ground, and how they should meet, in a dream.
But the boy clung close in Hethya's arms, wide eyes staring past the dim glow of the little hemp-oil lamp, listening to the distant clamor in the Aisle. Hethya murmured, "There's no need to fear, sweeting," and pushed back his hood from his forehead and stroked his hair.
The Icefalcon saw that she was in truth a handsome woman. Though there was the hardness in her eyes of someone who has been had by a hundred bandits, there was neither cruelty nor spite.
"I'm not afraid." Tir shook as if with bitter cold.
"You know these Keeps were built all alike, with but the one set of Doors. And even were they not, it's all buried under the ice, you know. All this"-she gestured about her, to the lichens that padded the wall and the ceiling, the lianas coiled at the base of the walls like the shed skins of serpents-"all this looks creepy enough, to be sure, but it's just plants, and mostly dead ones at that. They must have grown up from the tanks in the crypts, as you were telling me of, back at your own home Keep. There's naught in it to fear."
His lips formed the word no without sound.
"He's a snake and a beast, our Vair, but he'll not be lettin' aught befall us so long as he needs us-and need us he does still. There's a secret yet here in this Keep that he's after finding, a secret he says'll get him back into power in the South, and him that furious at his wife that she drove him out."
Her voice sank to a whisper, though it was clear the guard knew no Wathe. "You just go on doin' as I've done, me honey. Lead him along, that there's always one more secret to find. As for this..." Her voice grew stronger again, and she shrugged.
"That old fraud Bektis is fond enough of his own skin, and he listened deep, to every sound and whisper, before puttin' foot through those Doors. You can trust he'd have heard anything bigger than a mouse.
When all's said it's naught but an empty building."
Tir closed his eyes, and a shudder passed through him; for a long time he said nothing. Then, "No."
"No what, lambkin?"
He shook his head, his mouth set, trying not to show fear. His voice was barely to be heard. "Not empty."
Chapter 14
From the Keep of Shadow, the Icefalcon passed into the Keep of Dreams.
Prandhays Keep, he thought, and looked about him at the walls of wood and wattle, stained bright yellows and oranges under centuries of torch smoke and grime.
They had glowstones there, more than at Dare's Keep, and the decayed chambers whose arches and doorways and internal windows looked into one another like a warren of coral were brightly lit. The chamber in Hethya's dream was nearly as brilliant as daylight.
Hethya's mother was there. How the Icefalcon knew this woman was Hethya's mother he wasn't sure.
Perhaps the knowledge was part of walking in someone else's dream. Her eyes had the look of Hethya's, green-gold and tip-tilted, and her hair had once been the same cinnamon hue.
Even faded as it was, it retained the curly strength and weight, piled in random rolls on her head and bristling with sticks of wood and metal to keep it out of her way. She was beautiful like Hethya, but thin.