“Because you’re what you are. With bits of god packed up inside. Your god stuff might be able to burglarize their god stuff.”
“I don’t get anything but cold. And a fair certainty that they’d tear me apart if they could just get at me.”
Februaren said, “I may have another tool. But I’ll have to take one of them somewhere else.”
“More time,” Iron Eyes grumped.
“More time, Mr. Gjoresson. You’re going to get it. I have something going. It will buy us a lot of time.” But he was uneasy. In fact, he was damned worried and getting more so by the hour.
It should have happened already.
Cloven Februaren was in a state approaching panic, more frayed than he had been in centuries. His schemes were coming unraveled. Heris should have done her part three days ago. He had to get out of the Realm of the Gods. He had to find out what had gone wrong. What had happened to Heris.
He should not have listened when she volunteered.
He had to check in on Piper. Piper ought to be in Alten Weinberg by now.
Maybe that was why Heris was running late. Piper might have gotten into deep trouble and she was digging him out.
The old man was on the quay, staring over the Seatt boat, out the gateway into the middle world. Korban Jarneyn joined him. “Not much to see out there.”
Exactly. Just haze and a bleak dark sea where waves had begun to run high in anticipation of an approaching storm. As true winter closed in it became ever more difficult to see all the way to the land of always winter, with its monster denizens, now drawn so close.
When the old man did not respond, Iron Eyes asked, “Why so dour and distant of late, friend?”
“The Night may have chosen to instruct me in the matter of hubris.”
“Interesting. I don’t know what you mean, but that’s interesting nonetheless. I’m here to report that the Aelen Kofer have come to a wall. There’s nothing more we can do.”
“What?”
“We’ve taken our part to the point where we can’t do anything more till you do your part.”
Cloven Februaren said, “I thought too much of my own skills as a teacher.” Which did not fit.
“Find Arlensul’s whelp, sorcerer. Or the course is run. That thing out there, that horrible toad in the mist, will drive the ice this far before spring. If ever it does return. Unless you…”
Red-gold light flared in the mist, far away. A second flash followed, shorter, brighter, and more yellow. Then a dozen more flashes, in varying shades, followed quickly, creeping from right to left.
“What would that be?” Gjoresson mused.
The Ninth Unknown had a sudden, sobering thought. “Can you close the gateway? Quickly?”
“After all this time prizing it open an inch at a time?”
“We’re going to get deadly wet if you can’t at least make the hole a lot smaller.”
The dwarf heard his urgency. “All right. I trust you to worry about your own skin.”
Februaren explained while Iron Eyes worked at whatever Aelen Kofer did when they tinkered with magic. It was not dramatic. Nor ever was, till it was over and there stood something like the rainbow bridge. Iron Eyes did not understand the Ninth Unknown’s explanation.
The gateway’s diameter had shrunk ten feet before the first dull, protracted, barely audible crump arrived, forerunner of a series of thumps, cracks, and crunches that whispered about very big noises having been birthed a long way away, across cruelly cold water.
The bellow of an outraged god soon followed. It had so much anger behind it, it might be heard for a thousand miles.
The Ninth Unknown’s mood improved dramatically. “She did it! She did pull it off! I was right. He had no one guarding his back.” But fear returned as he recalled the certain consequences of success.
“We’ve got to close the gateway.”
“Who just did what, sorcerer?” Iron Eyes demanded.
“Get the gateway shrunk down as small as you can without leaving us locked up here.”
The ascendant arrived at a trot, moving fast for the first time in months. “Best do as he says, Gjoresson.”
The dwarf wanted to bicker but sensed that wasting time might prove uncomfortable shortly. This was not a moment for reasoned, deliberate, parliamentary discussion.
Februaren was not unreasonable. He tried to explain again while Iron Eyes worked. The dwarf just did not understand.
Another divine racket arose, a staccato salvo of screams that got Februaren to imagine a hundred elephants being slowly roasted alive.
The ascendant asked, “What was all that?”
“The Windwalker taking an involuntary, full emersion dip in the Andorayan Sea. Keep shrinking the gateway, Iron Eyes. The wave is coming. I promise. In fact, the rest of us ought to be headed for higher ground.” He told the crowd of dwarves, “Shoo! All of you! Find someplace high. Run! Argue after I turn out to be an idiot.”
Iron Eyes reduced the gateway to ten feet wide and five high before the wave arrived. That was taller and wider than the opening. Water exploded through the gap. It shattered the Seatt escape boat, pounded the barge, and sank the smack belonging to the striped killers. But it did not have energy enough to drive on inland.
“Let us celebrate our wet feet,” Cloven Februaren declared. “And then let’s get to work.”
The water had subsided. The gateway had started growing again. The harbor was a plain of jade glass. The sea outside was calm, clad in its bleak winter colors.
The screams of the Windwalker continued. Februaren pictured the god clawing his way along the foot of the ice cliffs, looking for somewhere to drag himself out of the torturing water. “Sounds like he’s having serious problems.”
Gjoresson said, “The sea is eating at him like a weak acid. It will devour him completely. If he can’t get out. Though that could take years. There’s a lot of him. And the water is freezing. If it was hot it would eat him up a lot faster. Still, he’s in so much pain he can’t concentrate enough to use his divine power. So, for now, he’s just a big, stupid brute wracked by agony.”
The Ninth Unknown and the ascendant were pleased. The longer Kharoulke remained immersed the weaker he would be once he escaped the water.
Februaren said, “I bought time. Now give me one of Kharoulke’s bully beasts and take me outside the gateway.”
Hours passed. The barge needed repairs. Eventually, the Aelen Kofer took it out into the Andorayan Sea. They went only a hundred yards beyond the opening. They crowded the decks, soaking up the rich magic of the middle world.
Februaren had two of Kharoulke’s artifacts. He would not need to return for a replacement if one died. He worried that he might be doing the wrong thing.
The ascendant and a dozen Aelen Kofer were watching. Everyone would pay devoted attention to whatever he did now.
No help for it.
He pulled his prisoners in close, thought of a particular place, made his sideways turn.
He stepped into a grove in Friesland. Heris was waiting. She had a fire burning. No need to fear discovery. The people had gone away. The Instrumentalities, great and small, had run off toward the waning power in the Andorayan Sea. She said, “Let’s go home. I need to get warmed up. Then I need to check on Piper.”
He made sure of the constraints on his cargo. “What took so long with those explosions?”
“I had to make sure Piper settled in safely. What the hell are those things? If they were any uglier we’d have to kill them to put them out of their misery. Why are they tied up like that?” And, “You need a rest. You look awful.”
Februaren knew of no reason why he should appear unusual. He snapped, “Tell me!”
“Your plan called for me to set off firepowder in a dozen different places. I did fourteen. But you gave me no help coming up with the firepowder. I had to deal with that on top of wet-nursing Piper.”
“You should’ve taken it all from him.”
“He watches his. So. I had to raid eight different armories, five of which I had to find for myself. So don’t get snippy. I do know where I can swipe a couple more that I could set off under your cranky ass.” She glared, daring him to say something.