The Fall Read online

  Then, even as the ax came swinging down, someone else shouted. The loud, commanding voice of a woman who was used to being obeyed.

  "Milla! Stop!"

  But the call came too late to stop the ax. Tal stared at it, mesmerized, the moment of its fall drawn out into what seemed like a whole lifetime of terror.

  In the very last fragment of a second, Milla's wrists twitched, and the ax smashed into the ground by Tal's head, smashing chips of ice all over his face.

  He lay there, stunned, as the girl slid back her mask to reveal a pale, oval-shaped face and striking green eyes. But there was a spark there of extreme anger, and her cheeks were flushed with emotion.

  "Don't think you'll live, shadow-eater," she growled, bending down so her face was close to Tal's, so close he could feel the heat coming off her skin. "The Crone will deliver you to me. We will fight again."

  Then she stalked off, out of Tal's sight. His shadowguard came slinking back, to wrap around his neck. It seemed to be quite pleased to get away from this mad girl, too.

  Tal kept lying still. It seemed to be the best thing to do, to gather his strength. He still had his Sun-stone, and could use that better now that he was not surprised. He could see that the girl had only a natural shadow. She wasn't a Chosen, which meant that he had been right in guessing the Underfolk came out here, or once did. This girl did not look anything like any Underfolk he had ever seen. Her face was pale but red-cheeked, her hair white-blond, and her eyes piercingly green. Tal had never seen hair that color, and he realized he had never seen an Underfolk's eyes. They always kept their faces lowered.

  He was still lying there when whoever had called out came to look down at him. This was an older woman, her mask already off. She had different clothing though, softer-looking furs. Tal realized Milla had some sort of armor on as well, but this woman didn't. She didn't have an ax, either.

  "Get up," said the woman. "Or I'll have Milla cut you into pieces and feed you to the Wreska."

  Tal got up. As his shadowguard moved, the woman stepped back, sucking air between her teeth.

  "What is that?" she asked.

  Tal thought for a moment, unsure of how to respond. These people, with their natural shadows, had to be some sort of Underfolk. There was only one way to treat Underfolk, and that was to give them orders. Possibly they still hadn't realized he was a Chosen!

  "My shadowguard," said Tal proudly. "I am Tal Graile-Rerem, of the Orange Order of the Chosen of the Castle. Who are you?"

  This seemed to be the wrong thing to say. Milla, who had been walking away, suddenly turned with a growl and hefted her ax. But the older woman raised her hand, and the warrior girl stopped.

  "He does not know our ways," said the woman. "A strange thing to find upon the ice. There is much here that we should know."

  She paused, thinking, then said, "I am the Crone of the Far-Raider Clan of the Icecarls. That is Milla, who wishes to be a Shield Maiden, and may yet be. You will come with us back to the ship, Tal Graile-Rerem."

  She pronounced his name strangely, and Tal didn't like the way she spoke to him at all. She only had a native shadow, after all.

  "You will take me to the Castle," he commanded. "At once."

  His voice quavered, and it sounded weak even to him. The business about showing Underfolk who was the boss clearly didn't work here. These Underfolk were feral. They might do anything.

  "Um, please," he added, his voice breaking completely.

  The Crone looked at him, then turned toward Milla. Tal didn't see what she did, but Milla pulled something out from under her furs. A flat, curved bone that she held by one end.

  Tal was still wondering what it was when it hit him in the head and knocked him unconscious.

  As Tal fell, his shadowguard caught him and lowered him down. Before it could do anything else, the Crone sprang on it, holding open the mouth of a large bag. She scooped up lots of snow, but also scooped up the shadowguard.

  The shadowguard started to ooze through the tough Selski skin of the bag, but again the Crone was ready. She tucked Tal's Sunstone into his shirt, hiding its light.

  "Without light, the shadow that walks alone cannot prosper," she announced in the darkness. "This is known to the Crones, Milla. I shall follow your sleigh, not too close, for fear the light will awaken it."

  "Do I have to take that?" asked Milla petulantly, pointing at Tal.

  "Yes," said the Crone. "And be quick. He is only a boy, and he has the wet sickness in his lungs. We must get him to the ship before a death sets upon him."

  "I shall set his death," whispered Milla. She grunted as she picked up his arms and started to drag him back to her sleigh. "If he'd been a normal raider I would be wearing my first winner-sign by sleeptime!"

  "But he is not a raider of any kind, normal or not," said the Crone. Her eyes seemed to shine in the darkness, though the lights on the sleigh were too far away for any reflection. "Quickly, child! Do I have to tell you everything twice?!"

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Tal slowly regained consciousness. His hearing came back first, his ears filled with strange sounds. There was a faint humming all around, and a crunching sound, that welled up through his bones.

  He opened his eyes and they swam into focus. It wasn't dark, for which he was very thankful. Good Sunstone light fell on his face, bright and warm. But there was other light, too, around the edges. Soft, green light.

  Tal's head hurt. So did just about every other part of him. He was warm though, thanks to the furs that someone had put on him while he was unconscious. It felt strange to have so much weight on him, but given the temperature, it was welcome.

  He sat up, coughed, and looked around.

  He was on the deck of a vessel of some kind, a very large one, with three masts, well over a hundred stretches long and twenty wide. This was obviously the ship the Crone had talked about. Tal knew about boats and ships from Aenir, but this ship was sailing across the ice. Tal had no idea how it managed to slide so easily.

  The sails above him were full, moving the ship along faster than Tal would have been able to run. The humming came from the wind in the rigging. The crunching, cutting sound came from a vibration that he could feel right through the deck, something to do with the way the ship moved.

  Tal guessed that it was like Milla's weird cart-thing drawn by the - what were they? - Wreska. This ship was driven by the wind, but it must be supported on similar long, thin rails that cut into the ice.

  There were people moving around on the deck. More Underfolk, with normal shadows. They all wore furs and skins, and most had vicious-looking weapons. None of them seemed at all interested in Tal.

  He stared at them. They were like Beastmaker cards come to life, or illustrations from a story. Tal was tempted to touch one to see if that really was hair all the way down to his waist. The lump on his head told him that would not be a good idea.

  The familiar light came from what had to be a large Sunstone, somewhere up above. Tal squinted and saw that it was somehow attached to the very top of the tallest mast, the middle one. A powerful Sunstone indeed, or perhaps a cluster of stones, for it illuminated not only all the ship, but the ice for several hundred stretches around.

  But for all its power, there was something wrong with the Sunstone, Tal saw. The light flickered, instead of being true and strong, and the color changed a little every time the ship rocked or hit a bump.

  The green light came from more of the tightly woven globes that Tal had seen before. One was quite close, so he got up and looked at it. As he'd thought, it was made of thin strips of something like bone, woven so there were tiny holes in the weave. Something buzzed around inside and created the green light.

  "Moths," said a voice behind him. "Luminous moths."

  Tal turned around. It was the old woman, the one who'd called herself the Crone. She was holding a pottery urn. Tal's eyes were instantly drawn to it, and he felt a wave of dizziness. For a second, it felt like he was inside the
urn, unable to get out. At the same moment, he realized that his shadowguard was nowhere to be seen. Both things made him feel like throwing up.

  "Your shadow is trapped in here," said the Crone, noticing Tal's frantic glances all around him. "It shall be released, if we decide to let you live."

  "You wouldn't dare kill me," exclaimed Tal hotly.

  "You're Underfolk! The Chosen and their Spirit-shadows will… will kill everyone on this ship if you do!"

  The Crone didn't say anything, but she kept looking at him. Her eyes were luminous, Tal realized, bright with some internal light that was not reflected. He felt them boring into him, as if the Crone could read his mind.

  After a minute, Tal looked away and said, "I suppose they wouldn't, actually. They don't even know where I am. None of us ever leave the Castle anyway."

  "But you have," said the Crone. "Tell me of this Castle, and why you have come here, to the hunting grounds of the Far-Raiders."

  Tal wiped his nose with his sleeve. He was still having difficulty coping with the fact that these people - who he hoped were Underfolk - could decide whether he lived or died. But there didn't seem to be any choice.

  "Here," said the Crone. She set the urn down, close to Tal, and pulled a small wooden bottle out of her furs. Tal took it suspiciously, but drank. As the liquid went down his throat, he felt it spread warmth.

  Slowly, occasionally sipping from the bottle, Tal began to talk. The Crone interrupted him from time to time, asking questions, but mostly she just let him talk. Tal was surprised to find himself saying so much. He even told the Crone about his father's disappearance, and his mother being sick, and how worried he was about what might have happened to Gref, which was probably his fault, too.

  By the time he finished, a whole crowd of Icecarls was listening. Most of them were pretending to be doing something else, like coiling rope or looking overboard. Some just stood, or sat, and listened. They did not seem hostile.

  Except for Milla, who Tal realized had been above him, up the mast, all along. Listening and watching, ready to drop on him if he attacked the Crone.

  "A fine story, there," said one of the Icecarls, a huge man with a beard dyed blue and plaited into three strands. "Do you have any others, boy?"

  Tal stared at him. Clearly the man thought he'd made it all up.

  "It's true," he protested. "I am one of the Chosen. I come from the Castle."

  The Icecarl chuckled and said, "You'd not be the first boy who lost his ship and went storytelling around the Clans. But if you're not a storyteller, you must be a thief on our hunting grounds."

  A murmur went around the crowd of Icecarls at the word thief

  Tal felt a new hostility directed at him. Whatever these people did to thieves, it couldn't be good.

  "If he is a thief, Forkbeard," the Crone said, "you can give him to the ice, and the Merwin will take him."

  "I'm not a thief!" exclaimed Tal. "And I am telling the truth. I'll prove it to you!"

  He pointed up to the flickering Sunstone, past Milla's scowling face. She spat downwind, a clear indication of her opinion of Tal's truthfulness.

  "Your Sunstone must once have given a clear, steady light," he said. "Now it flickers and changes color."

  "Any fool knows that!" said Forkbeard. He looked angry now and was stroking his ax. "Any fool who's seen a Sunstone, though there's few enough around the Clans. Give him to the ice, I say!"

  "But I can fix it," stammered Tal. "It just needs tuning."

  "Good," said the Crone. "I was hoping you would say that. If you can mend our Sunstone, we will spare your life."

  "If he can't mend it, can I fight him?" asked Milla. She dropped down from the mast, landing lightly on her feet. Tal instinctively moved back, closer to the urn with his shadowguard in it.

  "No," said the Crone, her voice stern. "If he fails, he goes to the ice - and the Merwin."

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Tal had expected the Icecarls to bring the Sun-stone down to him. But the Crone explained that they only did that when the ship was anchored. They needed the Sunstone's light to see any dangers that might lie ahead.

  When Tal refused to climb, Milla took special delight in describing exactly what a Merwin was, and Tal's chances of surviving a meeting with one.

  "Most Merwin are about ten times as long as you are tall," she said. "They have a single, shining horn that sticks out the front between their eyes. See Kral over there? That sword of his is a baby Merwin's horn. They stop glowing once they're dead. Now, the Merwin slide over the ice faster than you'd be able to run, because their skin is so slick, and they've got four big flippers to push themselves along. Mostly they stick their horn through whatever they're after, and then they bash it up and down on the ice. You'd be better off fighting me. All you have to do is ask. If you ask to fight me, the Crone will let you."

  Tal ignored her. He didn't understand why she was so keen to fight him, but he knew that the Crone would protect him… as long as he fixed the Sun-stone.

  "I'll need my shadowguard," he said. "I need it to help me climb and fix the Sunstone."

  The Crone looked at him again with those creepy, glowing eyes. Then she said, "No you don't."

  Tal sighed. He didn't really, absolutely need his shadowguard, but he felt very strange without it nearby, dizzy and sick to his stomach. Climbing the mast would be ten times as hard without the shadow-guard, even if it just followed him like a normal shadow.

  "Milla will help you climb up," said the Crone.

  "I will not!" exclaimed Milla. "He's a lying thief! You cannot believe his talk of hundreds of lights and this `castle' thing"

  The Crone turned her gaze to the girl and said,

  "You wish to be a Shield Maiden, Milla, but you won't follow orders?"

  The threat was clear. Tal didn't know what a Shield Maiden was, but Milla obviously really wanted to be one, and the Crone had the power to stop her.

  Milla turned to Tal with a murderous scowl on her face and said, "All right! Start climbing, thief!"

  "My name is Tal Graile-Rerem," Tal said. "I shall permit you to call me Tal. And even if I was a thief, you don't have anything I'd want to steal!"

  At least, he told himself, he wasn't a thief as far as the Icecarls were concerned.

  "Tal, Smal, Bal, Wal - whatever you call yourself," Milla said. "I don't suppose you can climb a line, so we'll have to go up the mast itself."

  She pointed at the spikes that were stuck into the mast every stretch or so. Tal went over and put his foot on one, testing its strength. Then he reached up and started to climb.

  The mast appeared to be a single bone of some kind, though Tal couldn't imagine what kind of monster would have a backbone forty stretches long. And the handholds weren't spikes as he'd thought. They were smaller bones that had been sawn off. Once they would have been like the bones of a fish, curving out from the backbone.

  "Hurry up," called Milla from below.

  Tal ignored her. The mast was swaying, and the ship and the ice seemed a long way down. For some weird reason it was scarier than when he climbed the Red Tower, though that was hundreds of times as high. Perhaps it was because there was no shadow-guard to save him.

  Milla kept harassing him all the way to the top, calling out and trying to crowd him. Tal focused his mind on climbing and ignored her.

  Finally, Tal came to the Sunstone. It was held to the top of the mast by what seemed like large, curved teeth that were somehow bonded to the bone. The stone was so bright Tal had difficulty looking at it without his shadowguard to automatically shield his eyes.

  Milla fell silent as they approached the stone. She also stopped several stretches below, instead of crowding Tal as she'd done all the way up. Her head was bowed. Clearly she couldn't stand the brightness of the Sunstone, not this close.

  This high up the mast, Tal had the strange illusion that he was still, and it was the ship and the ice below that swung from side to side like a pendulum. Each time the worl
d swung by, Tal had to fight back the feeling that he was going to fly off into space.

  To make it even worse, he had to let go one of his handholds to touch the Sunstone. It was a powerful stone, but Tal knew it was also very old. Sunstones did wear out eventually, and had to be taken up to a Tower to be revitalized above the Veil.

  Making sure he had a good grip with his left hand, Tal reached out and touched the Sunstone. He could feel the currents of power within it. Just as he learned in the Lectorium, Tal closed his eyes and focused his thought upon the Sunstone.

  As he'd thought, it badly needed tuning. What power it had left was working against itself, rather than together. The energy bands needed to be realigned, brought back into harmony.

  Tal carefully let go of the big Sunstone and reached into his shirt to pull his own Sunstone out. It brightened as he focused upon it, to find the correct pattern of energies and project it at the Icecarls' Sun-stone.

  It was hard work with the wind all around, and the mast swaying, and his stomach suddenly deciding it didn't like the Crone's warming cordial after all. But

  Tal did it. A beam of pure light shot out of his Sunstone and into the Icecarls' larger stone.

  "I've done it!" exclaimed Tal triumphantly. The Icecarls' stone shone bright and true.

  Then it went out, and so did Tal's own stone, leaving him in total darkness, save the faint green glow of the moth-lamps on the deck far below.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  The roar of anger that came up from the deck was almost animal in its intensity. Tal had never heard anything like it. He glanced down, but couldn't see anything, not even Milla. Still, he could hear what was happening.

  Every Icecarl aboard was leaping onto the ropes and rigging, climbing up to kill the boy who had ruined their Sunstone, their greatest treasure.

  Tal's only hope was to get it going again. Unfortunately, he didn't even know why it had gone out.

  Desperately, he grabbed his own Sunstone, no longer caring if he fell off. He focused on it, feeling for its power. It felt like his whole body and mind was bent on this one thing, every particle of his power concentrated on one small stone.