"Are you sure this is smart?" he asked the druid. "How can we know they aren't deceiving us?"
"I don't," Sonja confessed, "but they saved our life. We should at least listen."
"The dragon Glaaaze," said one of the mephits suddenly, "lived far to the north, where his kind were being slaughtered by giants of frost."
"That could be the Endless Glacier," said Sonja, "where I was born. How do you know?"
"He told us when we arrived. He wanted us to stay in this new snow world. But we want to go back home."
"Why can't you just walk through the rift again?" asked Regdar.
The mephits talked to each other in their own language, almost as if they were deciding on the proper response. "Wiiinds!" one shouted. "We get blown back through."
"You refused to cooperate with Glaze?" asked Lidda.
"And he killllled some of us."
"We took refuge in the towers…"
"… where Glaaaaze cannot reach us."
It was unsettling the way the mephits began and ended one another's statements, sometimes switching speakers two or three times per sentence.
"He is young but smart, for one of they, one whiiiite," other mephits said. "He did not want to fight giants. So he left."
"He wanted to find new place, place free of giants."
"He traveled from snow-capped mountain…"
"… to snow-capped mountain. For a while…"
"… he finds peace, but older, more…"
".. aggrrrressive whites live…"
"… there already and force him…"
"… out."
"But he heard about Ilyskynar… Frozen Pendant. He heard it here, in lost city in forest near mountains…"
"… he went seeking. Many yeeears he search forests. Find nothing."
"Then he finds this city, in this forrrrrest. He searched city…"
".. breaked through to this underground. Open…"
"… doors to towers, searched towers. Maked lair…"
"… in one tower, broken…"
"… open at top."
The mephit extended a wing to one of the cylinders in the distance, indicating the bottom of one of the great towers. A tremendous pile of broken wood was heaped against the door and welded together with ice, meant to keep the dragon out. Sonja assumed this was the work of the mephits' icy breath-not as strong as that of a white dragon or a winter wolf but still potent.
"And then," a new mephit took the dialogue, "heeee found a stairway…"
"… down, down, down."
"He follow. Into hot place. Hot…"
"… place under towers."
"Magically heated," reasoned Hennet. "Too hot for you to go there yourselves?"
The ice mephits shuddered at the thought. "Boil, sizzle, boil!"
"You mean," said Sonja, "that Glaze found the Frozen Pendant somewhere beneath this underground mall. When he activated it, the rift opened, and you were blown through along with the elemental ice."
The mephits nodded together.
"Earlier," said Lidda, "we encountered a creature that looked like a giant scorpion, only it was made of ice. How did it get here?"
"Wander through rift," several mephits explained. "Probably not only. Door between worlds open. Strange thiiings happen."
"If we manage to restore summer," said Sonja, "such aberrations will die in the sun. Can we undo what Glaze has done if we get the Frozen Pendant?"
"Bring to us," said one of the mephits, and the others joined it in a chorus. "Bring to us! Bring to us! Bring to us!"
"We know what to with iiiit do," one of them assured the party.
"Can't you just tell us what to do with it?" asked Regdar.
The mephits shook their heads in unison, obviously anxious to dispel this idea.
"Too tricky," said one.
"Too dangerous," chimed another.
"Only make things worse," offered a third. "We must do."
"It's still down there?" Sonja asked. "Glaze didn't take it with him?"
"No," said one mephit. "We search."
"Not up here."
"Down there."
"We sure."
This made a certain amount of sense to Sonja. If the artifact was kept in a magically heated area deep below the city, it was possible that Glaze, a creature of the tundra but still more capable of weathering temperature changes than these mephits, would leave the Frozen Pendant below. The most likely creatures to seek it would be those like these mephits, composed of ice itself and therefore unable to venture into a hot area. Whether the young, inexperienced white dragon was intelligent enough to make such a plan was another question entirely.
"So you want us to go down and find the Frozen Pendant for you?" Hennet asked. "What do we get if we do this?"
One of the mephits shrugged oddly. "No more ice!" it shrieked with something vaguely like a laugh. The others joined it, until their shrieks were so loud they were nearly deafening.
"Stop!" shouted Sonja. "That's too much." The mephits stopped, but the distant reverberations continued for many moments.
"This is too much for me as well!" said Regdar. "Let's do as they say."
11
The mephits led the four newcomers to the cylinder that they explained would lead down to the "hot place" where the Ilskynarawin, the Frozen Pendant, awaited them. Here there was no stairway going up hut only a smooth, spiral walkway leading down into the gloom. Regdar held the magical torch, which blanketed the room's smooth walls in an unflickering, white light. The mephits refused to enter the cylinder but instead clustered outside the doorway. Regdar noticed that this cylinder, unlike the first, had a door. With a nod to the mephits, he banged it shut.
The moment the door closed on them, Sonja turned to Hennet. "Did you really have to kill three of them?" she demanded, jutting a finger against his chest. "After they saved your life? Did you think that was appropriate gratitude?"
"It was dark, and I had only moments before been staring into the mouth of a dragon! Not to mention that I had just fallen twenty feet onto very hard ice! I felt something buzzing all around me, I heard those little wings of theirs flapping, and I reacted as any one of us would have. I don't like them, those cold little eyes watching me…"
Lidda stepped between them. "It turned out all right. The question now is, can we trust them?"
"Who ever heard of a creature from the planes that wasn't happy to come to the Prime?" asked Regdar.
"That may be true of demons and devils," replied Sonja, "but mephits are neither."
"So you think we should do what they say?" Hennet asked the druid.
"I don't relish the prospect of going down there," she said, casting a fleeting glance at the darkness below them, "but I don't see what choice we have. And they did save our lives. I don't have much experience with mephits, but I know them to be aloof in their dealings with humans. Those mephits were desperate for our help.
"That's one side," she continued. "At the same time, there are elements of their story I have a hard time believing. I doubt a white dragon, especially a young one like Glaze, would have the intelligence to seek out and activate an artifact the way they described."
"But you still think we should do what they say?" said Hennet. "For all we know, they're sending us down there hoping we'll get killed."
"One may lie and still have good intentions. We're not dealing with humans. Mephits may have very different ways from ours. We can't assume they wish us harm."
"We can't assume they wish us well, either," Lidda added.
The druid ignored the remark. She stood tall to make a pronouncement. "Before we go down there, you all know that I'm not very comfortable in confined quarters, particularly underground. Black walls are the worst of all, the most unnatural. You selected me earlier as leader of this party, but I think I won't prove a very good choice for what's coming."
Both Regdar and Hennet began to speak, but Sonja shook Sonja and Hennet shook their heads and cast each other concerned looks.