Wintermoon Ice (2010) (13 page)

She thought the cave would be shallow, only a place to squat, trembling, as the Polys nosed around outside. But once she had squeezed her way through the crack, the chamber widened into a substantial vestibule. Beyond lay a tunnel that led back into the pitch-black bowels of the mountain. She waited just inside the entrance, every muscle tensed, straining to hear the Poly's heavy tread on the scree. After fifteen minutes passed in silence, she relaxed, thinking they must have given up.

The frightened shriek of a bird brought her heart to her throat. After a breathless moment she heard the crunch of gravel somewhere in the near distance. Conversation too, though she could not make out any words.

Did the Polys ever talk? She thought back, but she couldn't remember.

The sound built as they approached. Panic filled the back of her throat like a bubble, waiting to burst into a scream. She swallowed it as long as she could, and then turned and fled up the tunnel, into the featureless gloom.

Behind her she heard frantic shuffling as something tried to force its way through the fissure, until a sharp bend in the tunnel blocked all sound. The darkness grew thick, but she did not slow her pace. She ran on, with her hands thrust in front, feeling her way. When, after twenty minutes, she stumbled forward into a cavern, the dim light streaming through a crumbling crack in the ceiling almost blinded her.

Tessa tripped over her own feet and sprawled face down. She stayed there, gasping, sobbing, fully expecting to feel the Poly's crushing grip upon her back.

Nothing happened.

After what seemed an eternity, she sat up and looked around her. The path had led her to an oddly circular cavern. Damp, but very clean sand covered the floor. The walls were plaster-smooth and daubed with bright-hued paint.

Tessa forgot the Polys, forgot her fear. Unsteadily, she got to her feet, and crossed the cave, almost unable to believe what she could see.

Before her, etched on the cave wall, lay the spare blue and grey rendering of a winged figure, frozen forever in the midst of ecstatic flight. He floated from a sunlit sky to touch the ochre colored men who stood with faces and hands uplifted.

Tessa blinked and blinked. "Oh Ted, you were right after all."

She turned to her right. In the next painting, the figure stood with his arms outstretched, in the pose of someone imparting wisdom. To her left, he knelt beneath a tree, his noble face twisted with pain.

Tessa turned around, almost in a dream. Behind her, the figure lay on a pyre, the magnificent wings aflame. And beneath...

She caught her breath sharply, and raised a trembling hand to cover her mouth, but did not dare touch the carefully arranged collection of charred and broken bones. Amongst them she could easily recognize a furcula, and other specialized appendages for flight.

Her first thoughts ran to the purely practical. How could the department do an excavation if the Polys insisted on hanging around outside?

The remembrance of her stalkers made her shudder. She had to find another way out, so that she could get back to
Cloudy
Bay
, tell Ted, get a team together to come back to Anenoa. As the discoverer of such a magnificent cache, they would have to give her tenure. She would be Professor Kivelson, at last.

But her very next discovery, close by the bones, destroyed this pipe dream.

A pair of modern shoeprints, wavy soled, showed that someone else had visited this sacred relic of the Irrakish before her. And the crushed cigarette butt lying in the sand indicated that they had not been at all reverent.

Tessa gave vent to her frustration as she picked up the offending butt and shoved it in her pocket. "Damn it!"

She started wildly as the echoes of her words played off the walls. The air turned liquid, rippling with noise, like heat waves on a black-tarred road. The racket intensified as wave reinforced wave, creating a resonance that brought her voice back to her in a cathedral choir of contrapuntal harmony.

It was harrowing and yet hauntingly beautiful.

Tessa closed her eyes and dropped to her knees. After what seemed like an hour, the echoes died away. But the door they had created remained.

When her eyes fluttered open, it was the first thing she saw. A star-filled mist, where once the cavern wall had been reassuringly solid. The edges wobbled and shook, as though it could not make up its mind whether to stay or go. She rose and approached it, wondering if the feral music had driven her mad. An unmistakable pull drew her closer, and Tessa quickly realized that it would drag her through if she did not dig her heels into the sand.

She could not even cry out, lest she once more trigger the cacophony that had opened the portal.

Two things happened almost simultaneously.

Tessa heard the echo of a rock falling, seemingly just outside her cave.

And the haze within the portal resolved into a brick-lined tunnel, complete with a channel of turbid water.

Though the scene looked dark and noisome, it seemed infinitely preferable to the menace at her back. Tessa threw herself forward, and felt a sickening moment of vertigo.

You have only to navigate between the worlds to go anywhen you want.

She remembered Jakob's words and nervously considered where and when she might end up. In two seconds she was there.

* * * *

Jane Piper sat at her microscope, ostensibly looking for cancerous cells in a cervical smear. But worry about Tessa made any progress impossible.

Why did she go to the site on her own, when she knew of the danger?

She sighed, adjusted the focus and tried again to concentrate.

Why are all my calls going straight to her voicemail?

The cells in the microscope callously defied her attempts to use them as a distraction. She spoke for them. "Might as well give it up. You aren't getting anywhere with this." The phone chose to buzz at that moment and Jane almost ignored it. Then, with a guilty shrug, she answered.

"Dr. Piper here."

Bettina, the temp receptionist who sometimes worked on Saturdays, spoke hesitantly. "Dr. Piper, Ma'am? There is someone here to see you."

Jane sighed heavily. Why couldn't they hire someone permanent who knew the weekend work rules? "Tell whoever it is I am busy. I don't do consults on Saturday."

Bettina's voice sounded something like befuddlement with a dash of terror. "Um, he says it is really important. I think maybe you should come out here."

"Just send him in. I don't have time for this." Jane muttered a curse and slammed down the phone. She bent her head back over the binocular eyepieces of the microscope and glared fiercely at the slide, intending to keep her visitor waiting until she finished. But when a shadow darkened the room she couldn't help but look up.

He completely filled the doorway. Tall, blue eyes and endearingly messy blond hair, just as Tessa had described him. No pirate costume though. He had discarded that in favor of a flannel shirt and some blue jeans.

"Hello." Jakob gave her an awkward smile. "I am sorry to bother you when you are working. I am a friend of Tessa Kivelson's."

Though he had not introduced himself, Jane had not a shadow of a doubt about her visitor's identity. "I know who you are. Have you heard from her? Is she all right?"

He hovered by the door, looking acutely worried. "May I come in? I need to ask you something."

Jane nodded and waved him over to the stool next to hers. He perched on the edge, making it look as though it belonged in a doll's house. "I hope you aren't going to tell me anything bad, Mr. Faircrow. I have been up all night as it is." She smiled at him, hoping he would offer her some relief from her worries.

But Jakob only reached into his shirt pocket and retrieved a cheap prepaid mobile phone. "I got this contrivance from a shop in
Cloudy
Bay
." He stared at the phone, dwarfed by his big hands, and sighed.

Contrivance? Where is this guy from?
Jane suppressed a smile and tried to pay attention, though the disquieting blueness of Jakob's eyes made it difficult.

"Tessa gave me her number." Here he dug into his pocket once again and produced a square memo-sized piece of paper. "She said I could use it to contact her, but when I do she apologizes for not answering and then goes away." He looked at Jane beseechingly. "I know you are her friend, so I thought maybe you could help me."

Jane shook her head. "I wish I could. But she does the same thing when I call her. I think maybe her... contrivance is out of range." At his baffled expression she explained, "If someone goes far enough afield, then their phone won't be able to pick up a signal."

He frowned. "Where is she then? I told her to go and stay with her fiance. That is not far away, is it?"

She raised an eyebrow at this. "That creep is the last person she needs to be with right now, believe me." Jakob opened his mouth to argue, so Jane spoke quickly. "After she told me about the Polys, we decided the best thing might be to go to
Anenoa
State Park
, to stay at the Lodge there. Tessa wanted to leave last night, but then I couldn't get away from work." Jane frowned. "About eight o'clock she called to say she planned to drive to Anenoa alone. She told me I should meet her there today."

Jakob rose swiftly, with a look of anguish. "She went by herself? How could you let her do that? I thought you were her friend."

Jane crossed her arms in front of her chest and glared at him. "Listen, buddy. Tessa doesn't listen to reason when she has her mind made up. And anyway, she said there would be lots of people at the site. I didn't think she would be in any danger. In fact, I--"

"You do not know much about the Polys, if you believe that," he broke in quietly. "They are very... patient. But you are right about one thing -- Tessa can be a stubborn fool sometimes."

She gazed at him worriedly. "When I got home last night I found a note that she must have written before she called me. It said she was going to Little Sardinia, to get her work boots -- and to see you. Are you saying she never showed?"

His urgently voiced question was the only answer she got. "How can I get to this place -- Anenoa?"

Jane switched off the scope and grabbed her purse. "I'll take you in my car. Let's go."

* * * *

After he answered her first three questions with monosyllables, Jane gave up trying to make Jakob Faircrow talk. She turned on the radio and found the classic rock station. The squeal of a guitar filled the car with comforting noise.

Jakob peered at the lighted display with interest. "Where does that sound originate?"

"Don't they have radio where you are from?" She shook her head in amazement.

He gave her a sly half-grin. "They might now, but they didn't when I left."

Jane's fingers tightened on the steering wheel. "Whatever. Go on being Mr. Mysterious, if you want."

He fiddled with the knobs until he found a classical music broadcast, then left the radio alone. Jane opened her mouth, about to complain, until Jakob said pensively, "My father loved music. Especially singing. He often sang shanties when we went in the boat together, and he had a wonderful voice, very deep and strong."

Sadness shaded this simple reminiscence, making Jane curious. She decided she would tolerate the violins if it would get him to talk about himself. "Is your father still alive?"

"No... Both my fathers died a long time ago, in the last turn of the Gyre."

She ignored his last words and focused on the part she understood. "Both? Did your mother remarry after your father died?"

He shook his head. "My mother had two husbands at the same time."

Jane glanced at the instrument panel to hide her surprise. The needle had crept to ninety. She eased back on the accelerator. "Is that a common practice in your home town?"

He gave her that humorless grin again. "I don't think so. We got told not to talk about it, anyway."

"Then why..."

"My mother said she loved them both. She was... very strong-willed." More sadness, much more.

"And is she dead too?" He nodded, but gave no further information. Jane did not want to let the hard-won conversation die so she asked, "These people, who are menacing Tessa, where do they come from?"

He sighed. "The answer to that is very complicated. Are you sure you..."

"It's another hour to Anenoa. And I would like to understand what we are up against."

"Tessa is very lucky to have a friend like you. Not many people would be willing to take on the Polys." A gentle smile gave his face an almost impossibly boyish appeal, like something from a glossy magazine ad. Jane found herself quietly wishing that she might have seen him first.

She pushed the thought aside with brutal thoroughness. "But you are. Why?"

"Because it is my job."

"What, intergalactic space patrolman?" Jane muttered. "Tessa told me you were a fisherman."

"A mariner. That isn't quite the same thing. To answer your first question, I don't know where they are made. But the Polys are not people."

"They are not machines either! I examined the two boys they killed. The evidence I gathered tested organic."

"I didn't say they were machines, although they have many things in common with them. They have a single-minded purpose that makes them difficult to thwart." His eyes took on a sudden predatory gleam. "But they can be killed -- in various ways."

"If they are made, as you say, then who is making them?"

He shrugged. "I don't know for sure. My brother thinks it is an old enemy of ours, named Tristan. I thought I had rid the Gyre of him, but if he has returned to this world, we could be in for serious trouble."

She ignored the unpleasantness of this prediction. "You have a brother?"

"A twin," he growled, with dark menace in his eyes. "But we don't get along very well." He sat back hard in his seat and crossed his arms.

Jane nervously eyed the muscle working in his jaw. "OK. I got that. No more questions about the brother. So tell me more about the Polys. Are there very many of them? According to what I heard you have killed four since you came to
Cloudy
Bay
. Is that right?"