The Riddle - Alison Croggon [134]
Three days after they had crossed the glacier, they stood at last on the shores of the Ipiilinik Igor, the Sea of Fire. They camped before heading out across the ice, and when the day was still dark and the stars sparkled frostily above them in a clear, frozen sky, they began the final leg of their journey. Traveling over the sea ice was a little like riding over the Arkiadera Plains: it was flat and they could make good speed.
The sun rose, a ball of cold flame, and Maerad looked around with wonder. The flatness of the sea was punctuated by high towers of ice, blinding white with blue shadows, which were sculpted by the wind into a multitude of bizarre shapes. Dharin told her they were icebergs, mountains of ice that had not melted over the summer and had now been trapped by the frozen sea. It was, Maerad thought, utterly strange and utterly beautiful, like something from a dream. After a couple of hours, she saw in the distance what seemed to be a great fountain of steam spouting high into the air.
“That is the first island,” said Dharin. “We do not go there.”
“What is it?” asked Maerad.
“These islands have many mountains of fire,” he answered. “They heave up melted rock from the heart of the earth, and they make these hot fountains. Nothing lives on that island; it is scalded every two hours by boiling water. We call it Terun-Ol, the Island of Heat. If you wait, you will see the fountain disappear. There is another island, farther away, that is also made of mountains that make fire, the Irik-Ol. But we shall not be passing there, since it is so hot that the sea does not freeze around it, even in midwinter.”
As they neared the island and then passed it, Maerad watched the plume of steam lessen and then finally disappear. Then, after a long interval, it suddenly spouted up again with a noise like thunder.
Maerad thought that if anyone had told her about such a thing, she would have dismissed it as a fanciful traveler’s tale — it seemed so bizarre that such extremes of heat and cold could exist in the one place.
She at first mistook the next island for another iceberg: a sheer needle of rock, it thrust straight into the sky like a high tower. Dharin said it was called the Nakti-Ol, Bird Island, because in summer huge flocks of birds would nest there. “They say that they rise in the sky like a great swarm, so many that they darken the sun,” he said. “I am sad that they are gone and that we will not see it.”
The sun was already beginning to dip beneath the horizon when Dharin pointed to a low, dark rise of land ahead of them. “That is the Tolnek-Ol, the land of the Wise Kindred,” he said.
Maerad squinted through the gathering darkness. The long journey here, with all its difficulties and wonders, had pushed the Treesong to the back of her mind. It had been a relief to briefly forget about who she was, to merely live with Dharin and the dogs. The quest rushed back into her mind, and apprehension tightened her breast. Now, perhaps, she might find some answers. The only problem was, she wasn’t at all sure that she knew the right questions.
THEY reached the shore of the island well after dusk. Dharin would not set foot on the Wise Kindred’s land after dark, and so they camped on the sea ice for the night. The weather was clear and still, and the countless stars opened above them, seeming like brilliant cold fruits that Maerad could simply pick out of the sky. Dharin and Maerad fed the dogs and then sat outside on the sled talking, the tent seeming too close on