Heirs of Prophecy - Lisa Smedman [93]
Miraculously, the lake water she'd drawn into her lungs a moment before turned to air, and she was breathing again. With her first exhalation, she whispered a prayer to the goddesses. Still treading water, she craned her neck to stare up at the closest of the four towers.
Paddling closer, she touched its slippery, cold surface. She pressed a hand to it and felt it give slightly, as if melting back. The towers were just as they had appeared: cold spires of ice, as slippery as inverted icicles. Inside each of them, high above the surface of the lake, Larajin could see dark shapes entombed in the ice-the bodies of elves.
Fortunately, the towers were cracked and craggy, as rough as a freshly splintered rock face, with plenty of handholds and footholds. Climbing shouldn't be too difficult-but which tower to choose?
Shivering, Larajin realized she'd have to make up her
mind soon, or she'd be too chilled to climb. Deciding at last, she chose the tower that had been the last to rise and swam to it. This tower was the smallest of the four, with just four bodies entombed inside it, and thus probably the most recent. If it had indeed grown like an icicle, from base to point, Somnilthra would be lying in repose near its craggy tip. She would probably be the last dark figure, nearly two hundred paces above the surface of the lake.
Hauling herself out of the water, Larajin carefully began her climb. The summer air warmed her skin, but soon her hands and feet grew first cold, then numb. The going was slow. More than once she was forced to double back and find a new route, after reaching a spot where the ice became a sheer wall, too steep to climb without a pick and rope.
High above her, the moon climbed to its apex in the sky. Below, the shimmering trail it etched across the surface of the lake grew shorter.
Best not to look down, she thought. The water was more than a hundred paces below her, and the distance made Larajin dizzy. Resolutely, she continued her climb, searching out handholds and footholds in the craggy ice.
The towers continued to make cracking noises, just as they had done since they rose. Every now and then Larajin heard a deep groan then a loud snap as a piece of ice broke free. A few heartbeats later the shard hit the water below with a loud splash, making her cringe.
When Larajin was level with the third of the dark shapes inside the tower she paused to peer through the ice at it, just as she had done as she'd passed the first two. The third elf was a male, dressed in the formal garb of the Gold elves. Laid out in a reclining position, hands folded upon his breast, he looked as though he was sleeping, despite the frost on his skin and the ice that pressed tightly against him on every side.
Shivering, her hair and clothes still damp from her swim across the lake, Larajin pressed on. She followed a
ridge in the ice that led up and to her right, where she could see a ledge near the spot where the last body lay. If she made it to that spot, she would be as close to the body as she could get.
As she worked her way closer to the ledge, Larajin caught glimpses of the figure entombed inside the ice. The body was female-a fact Larajin noted with relief- a slender woman with delicate features, long pointed ears and coppery-red hair in two braids that lay upon her shoulders. A forest elf, judging by her leather breeches and ornately beaded boots and vest. The ice that entombed her-Larajin was peering up through more than an arm's length of the stuff-distorted the woman's features, making it impossible to see whether or not she resembled Leifander. Larajin could see a dark crescent- a tattoo-on one of her cheeks.
Was it a stylized moon, the symbol of the goddess Somnilthra had worshiped? Larajin prayed it was-that she wouldn't be forced to climb another of the towers.
She needed to get closer, to reach a ledge she'd spotted that