Ice Country

We trudge on and the tapestries are behindus, leaving only a burning memory.

I glance at Buff and he glances back, raisinga bruised eyebrow.

(Yah, you can bruise your eyebrow, Buffproved it.)

He saw the depictions too. The violence. Heremembers the stories told around warm hearths. Of the Stormers. Abloodthirsty people who conquer lands for one reason and one reasonalone: to kill. To drink the blood of those who would oppose them.To ravage the women and enslave the children.

Riding crazed horses that live for the thrillof the battle, they’ve fought the water people, the Soakers, formany years, trying to destroy them and take control of the BigWaters.

But they’re not real, right? Just stories.The king’s walls are just an artist’s depiction of the stories.Surely.

We pass under a smaller multi-colored stonearchway, and into an even larger corridor, wider than ten men andtaller than five. There’s a voice booming from an open doorway onthe right. “The oldest bottle I said!” the voice erupts.“This is the second oldest. Go back to the cellars! NOW!”

As we step by the opening, I look inside theroom. It’s like no room I’ve ever seen before. Constructed on whitemarble pillars, the room’s so big it could fit a hundred of myhouses. Two hundred of Buff’s. A long blue carpet extends like aribbon from the entranceway, all the way across the sparklingfloor, where it reaches a seat. Nay, not a seat—a throne. Withclawed paws like a bear, the granite throne looms upward, bigenough to seat a family of Icers. But in it, basking in theexuberant daylight streaming through a dozen massive windows, isone man. Although I’ve never seen him before, he can be only oneperson: the king!

I stop, feeling the sharp prick of theguard’s sword on my back.

Why would they take a common criminal pastthe throne room on the way to the dungeons? I ask myself. It makesno sense.

The king is a big man, old, maybe forty,maybe older, with a shaved bald head and a thin, neatly trimmedgraying beard. He looks even bigger sitting on the raisedthrone.

A thin, white-clothed man scuttles down theblue carpet, away from the king and his booming voice, gone tofetch the oldest bottle of whatever drink the king desires. For amoment King Goff watches after him, almost amused, but then helooks past his servant, to where I stand. Our eyes meet and—

“Move along!” the guard barks, jabbing meharder. Unconsciously, my feet move forward, one after the other,like they have all my life, but my head is back in the throne room,facing Goff, the man who stole my sister. I’m so close.

Moments later, we descend into the dungeons.The air thickens and moistens and a nasty smell tickles my nose.Something’s died down here. Or someone. Many maybe.

The guard plucks a torch from a wall fixtureand waves it near my face, burning me. I flinch away but don’t cryout. He laughs.

Sword at my back once more, he forces meforwards into an alcove. Seated on a squat wooden chair with abroken leg is a giant of a man, wearing a black mask with onlymouth and eyeholes cut out. Across his lap rests a double-sided,double-edged battle axe. All four of its razor-sharp edges gleamunder the firelight.

He stands, his girth filling half the smallspace. We’re crammed in the other half with the guard. Wafting fromhis armpits is an odor that smells like what I imagine death wouldsmell like. As I try to get a hold of my rebellious stomach, Iconsider yelling “I surrender!” and impaling myself on his axe, butI manage to close off my nostrils enough to regain control.

“Ain’t you a couple of tasty morsels,” hebellows, laughing before he’s even finished saying it, a growlingechoing chortle that spouts a stream of rotten breath, proving thatthis dungeon master is more than just a one-smell act.

He takes a step closer, which means his bellytouches me—not his clothing, but his actual skin, because he’s notwearing a shirt. Thankfully, I am, but the barrier seems so thinand insignificant I have to choke back another pulse of vomit.

“No fu

“Nothing fu

“All yers, Big,” the sword-poking guardsays.

As he turns to go, I say, “See you later,”but he doesn’t look back or return the sentiment. Probably becausehe doesn’t expect he will.

“In,” Big says, and I wonder whether he cameout so large that his mother couldn’t have possibly chosen anyother name, or if the nickname was given later in life, when hequickly exceeded his peers in every physical way. Probably theformer, if I had to guess.

When I forget to move, Big punches meforward, his fist like a battering ram, sending shudders through mybruised body. By the way Buff grunts behind me, I can tell he gotthe same treatment.

Torches line the walls of the dungeon,casting shadows in all the right places. Or the wrong places, ifyou’re me and you can only imagine what’s reaching out from thedark spots as you pass them.

I try to get a good look in the cells wepass, but their bars are thick and the shadows are deep, and ifanyone’s in them, then they’re well hidden and quieter than a babyon its mother’s teat.

“Get in,” Big says, motioning with his axe toan open cell door on my left. I limp through, turn back to watchBuff do the same. “Not you,” Big says, stopping Buff with an axeblade to his throat. He seems to use the axe for a lot of things.Like if he were to shave his back, which clearly, based on thethick tufts of fur growing back there, he doesn’t, he wouldprobably use his axe to do it.

He slams the cell door shut with a clang,twisting a big key in the lock in a practiced motion that I expecttook him years to master given the sausage-like girth of hisfingers, which clearly aren’t made for dexterity. Clobbering, yah.Pummeling, most definitely. Turning keys in locks, not so much.

“Later, buddy,” I say to Buff as Big pusheshim forwards.

“Enjoy the food,” he returns with adried-blood smile.

I take a moment to study my surroundings,which only takes a moment, because the cell is tinier than Buff’shouse, and decorated with a miniscule assortment of gray stonewalls, floor, and ceiling. A metal pail sits in one corner. I getthe feeling I’ll be holding the urge to use the bathroom as long aspossible in this place.

As I settle in on a spot on the floor thatlooks slightly less dirty than anywhere else, I hear a clang, therattle of a key in a lock, and then the thud of heavy footsteps asBig lumbers past. “No fu

I sigh. This is what I wanted. Right? Chillyah, I tell myself. It’s better being locked up on the inside,where Jolie might be somewhere nearby, than free on the outside,always wondering what happened to my sister, whether she’s alive,whether she’s safe.

“Buff?” I say.

“Yah.” His voice isn’t particularly close,but it’s not far either, maybe six or seven cells down the row.

“How you feeling?”

“Like a punching bag.”

“You’ll heal,” I say with a smile.

“I know,” he says.

“Buff.”

“Yah.”

“Thanks.”

“You owe me,” he says.

I’m about to respond when something scrapesthe wall in the cell next to mine.

Chapter Seventeen

I sit statue stillfor a few seconds, listening intently. Was it my imagination? Wasit the scrape of a rat’s tiny claws? Or was it something elseentirely?

“Don’t try and avoid me, Dazz,” Buff says.“Just because we’re locked up doesn’t mean I won’t come collectingone day. And it’ll be something big, something mind-blowingly huge.You’ll wish you’d never asked for my help in the first place.”