When they reached it, Roakh was sitting upon the top step, elbows on his knees, chin on his crossed arms. When his eyes were level with Hweilan's, he said, "You never answered my question."
She stopped a few steps beneath him. "Which question was that?"
"You say you are from Highwatch," he said. "Highwatch founded by Damarans, populated by Nar, a few score of dwarves, and whatever draped-in-rags wanderers find a place to feather a nest. Yet your name, Hweilan, is neither Damaran nor Nar. So are you one of the draped-in-rags wanderers? Or was it your mother, buying a warm bed by sharing it?"
Hweilan lunged at him, one fist cocked back.
Menduarthis caught her wrist before she could pummel him.
"Oh, I like this one!" said Roakh. He hopped to his feet and backed out of Hweilan's reach. "She'll do well, I think. A pity? A grace? Could be either, 'specially in this place."
Hweilan jerked her arm out of Menduarthis's grip and glared at him.
"Roakh asks a discourteous question," said Menduarthis. "Don't give him a discourteous answer. That can only harm you here."
Hweilan held her glare a moment more, grinding her teeth, then she looked back at Roakh and said, "My father was Damaran. My mother was not. I was given a name of my mother's people."
Roakh smiled, showing his sharp teeth. "And those would be…?"
"Vil Adanrath."
All glee melted from Roakh's eyes. When his smile returned, it was pure malice. "Well," he said. "Looks like we know which way this is going to go after all."
"What do you mean?"
Roakh looked at Menduarthis. "You can see to things from here?"
"Yes," said Menduarthis. He sounded subdued, like a man who had just gotten back to his feet after a strong punch to the gut. "Where are you going?"
"To work up an appetite," said Roakh. He ran to the ledge and jumped. He fell out of sight, but a moment later a black raven rose through the air. It circled the chamber a few times, cawing raucously, then dived into the darkness.
The hall was wide enough for several wagons, but the ceiling low enough that Menduarthis probably could have reached up and trailed his fingers along it as they walked. It gave their footfalls an odd echo.
The hall was unlit, but Hweilan could see light not too far ahead. She walked beside Menduarthis rather than letting him lead.
They emerged into a domed room. The floor was black and smooth as the bottom of a deep well. The ice walls curved around, and they held inside them ancient trees, their trunks and branches black and hard. Only a slight curve of the trunks protruded from the walls, but their bare branches spread out into a low ceiling, and cold white globes of light dangled from their clawlike branches. They gave off no heat, so Hweilan assumed they were lit by magic. Their glow reflected off the flawless blackness of the floor, giving Hweilan the sense of walking on the night sky.
Across from Hweilan and Menduarthis, two of the trees framed tall double doors, which seemed to have been crafted from the same wood as the trees. To the right of the door, a pale figure hung from the branches of one of the trees.
"Lendri!"
Hweilan ran to him, and Menduarthis did nothing to stop her.
Lendri had been stripped naked. Cuts, welts, and bruises covered his face, legs, and torso. Ugly blue bruises covered his forearms like fresh tattoos where he had obviously tried to ward off blows. Dozens of black cords bound his upper arms. The other ends had been tied to the limb so that he hung like some lifeless puppet. He could have stood if he tried, but he hung limp, his knees bent beneath him, and for one moment Hweilan was sure he was dead.
She fell to her knees in front of him and lifted his face in both her hands. Through her gloves, she couldn't feel for warmth, but she could see that his skin tone, abnormally pale to begin with, had taken on a sickly, grayish cast. Something had taken a few small bites out of his left cheek. A raven's beak. Roakh's beak. Her stomach turned.
Lendri's eyes beneath the lids had sunk into his skull. She shook him and whispered his name.
His eyelids fluttered open. He licked his lips and tried to say something, but all that came out was a soft rasp.
She looked over her shoulder to Menduarthis, who stood a few paces away, arms crossed over his chest and looking down on them. Given what little he'd told her about Lendri, she expected to see disapproval on his features. But instead his face was a stone mask. Only the slight softening around his eyes told her that he was masking profound disapproval.
"Do you have anything for him to drink?" said Hweilan.
Menduarthis shook his head. "No. And even if I did, I wouldn't give it to him. His fate is up to the queen now."
Hweilan looked back to Lendri. Something nagged in the back of her mind. "His skin."
Before, tattoos had covered Lendri, most old with age. Every bit of skin she'd seen had been decorated in some sort of design, with scars overlapping many of them. They were gone now, his pale skin decorated only by the rents caused by the thorns.
"Flayed off him," said Menduarthis, "then grown back by Kunin Qatar's healers."
"That's monstrous!"
"It is," said Menduarthis. "But unless you'd like that confirmed firsthand, we need to be out of here." "Can we do nothing for him?"
"I don't know about we. But my counsel to you is the same as it was before. Be strong. Don't cower. Tell the truth. You won't be any help to anyone if you end up there beside him."
She turned back to Lendri and bent down so that she looked him in the eye. "I'll do what I can for you. I promise."
She stood and turned away. Menduarthis spared Lendri a final glance, shook his head, then led Hweilan over to the double doors. She could see no handles, and the crack between them would not have fit a razor.
"Is there no one to announce our presence?" Hweilan asked.
"She knows we're here," Menduarthis whispered.
The doors flew open toward them, pushed by a gust of frigid wind. The branches of the trees caught them, like the hands of eager attendants.
The wind swirled around the room in a furious vortex. Beyond the open doorway, all Hweilan could see was impenetrable white, like the heart of a blizzard.
She tried to back away, but the air seemed to solidify and push them both forward. Hweilan forced her legs to move, fearing that if she didn't the gale would simply bowl her over and shove her along like a dry leaf across a snowfield. They staggered through the doors, and in the great rush of wind, Hweilan thought she could hear a cold, feminine laughter.
The doors slammed shut behind them, and the fierceness of the wind began to abate. The whiteness surrounding them flowed and swirled in a hundred streams, condensing more and more tightly, until they joined into a single cyclone
In an instant, it stopped. Snow and frost fell to the ground with a million tiny rattles.
Hweilan found herself in a wide room, with walls made of towering columns of ice in every shade of blue. They gave off a faint light.
Before them, no more than five paces away, Queen Kunin Gatar stood in the midst of the last of the snowfall. Hweilan gasped at the sight of her.
She'd expected a woman of her mother's age at the least, perhaps even her grandmother's. But the woman looking down upon her seemed scarcely past girlhood, her pale skin flawless, her hair swept back off her high forehead. Tight braids so black that the light reflecting off them shone blue were tucked behind high, pointed ears, and a hundred tiny diamonds-or perhaps they were bits of ice-sparkled in her hair. The queen's eyes were a blue so pale that the color simply seemed to fade into the whiteness beyond-and like Menduarthis's, they had no pupils. The fabric of her gown was gossamer fine, and the long strands of cloth dangling from her bodice and sleeves rippled and flowed in the eddying air currents of the room.