Surrender to the Will of the Night - By Glen Cook Page 0,112

crab. He had not participated in the reduction of the striped creatures. “Any way you could look inside those things?”

The ascendant seemed surprised by the question, then irked. “Why would you ask that?”

“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.