The Fall (The Seventh Tower 1)

Tal stared at the shadow. It was trying to tell him something. It had taken a shape he didn't recognize. Something human.

Then it hit him. The shadowguard had assumed the shape of Milla's shadow. It was saying that since she had some of his blood, it could help her. All Tal had to do was tell it to.

"Shadowguard, shadowguard," he blurted out. "Staunch Milla's wounds-"

Before he could finish, the shadowguard flowed over Milla. Most of it stuck to her ribs, but dark tendrils rippled down to her legs and out along her left arm. Wherever it touched, the bleeding stopped.

Tal pulled Milla's furs together over both girl and shadowguard. He retrieved the pack and lantern. It took him a moment to work out how to open it up again, then he sat it down next to Milla. The shadowguard would need all the light it could get.

Even once the bleeding stopped, Tal wasn't sure if Milla would survive. Now that he had a chance to think, he wasn't even sure he wanted her to. She had probably saved his life, but now he had the pack and the lantern. He might be better off heading straight for the Castle. He certainly didn't want to be bothered with trying to get her a Sunstone as well.

It wasn't as if she was family or a friend or anything.

What would his parents say, Tal suddenly thought. What would his father do if he was out here? Or his mother, if she were well?

They wouldn't leave her. Only someone like Shadowmaster Sushin would, and Tal did not want to be like him.

He sighed and opened the pack. First he got out a sleeping fur, which he carefully tucked around the unconscious girl, tilting her up to get it between her back and the ice. Then he set up the oil burner and began to heat some Selski broth. He supposed Milla would need something hot when she came to.

"What's happening to me?" he asked the dead carcass of the Merwin as the broth bubbled. "I am Tal Graile-Rerem of the Chosen. I'm not supposed to be sitting in the middle of nowhere looking after a… a mad Icecarl girl. I should be back home, with a new Sunstone, getting ready for the Day of Ascension."

The dead Merwin did not answer. But someone else did.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

"And where exactly is your home?" said a voice out in the darkness, beyond the diminishing glow of the Merwin's horn. A woman's voice that sounded rather like the Crone of the Far-Raiders.

Tal jumped and scrabbled madly for Milla's knife. By the time he found it and held it out, the speaker was already at his side. She had a spear at his throat.

She was not alone.

A ring of Icecarls stood around Tal, Milla, and the dead Merwin. There were at least twelve of them and they all had spears leveled, as if Tal was as dangerous as the creature Milla had killed.

He had not heard them approach. They might as well have blown in on the wind or sprouted up from the ice.

They wore different-colored furs than the

Far-Raiders, and their masks were decorated with wavy lines that glowed like the Kalakoi on the Selski. Clearly they were from a different clan. He hoped killing the Merwin didn't count as thieving on their hunting lands. Then again, Milla had tried to kill him just for being there…

"I am a Chosen of the Castle," he said slowly. "But I am on a quest with Milla there, of the Far-Raiders. I am bound to the Clan and to the ship. Look!"

He held up his wrist and peeled his gauntlet back to show the marks on his wrist.

"You have no shadow," said the woman who had spoken. "Where is it?"

"Helping Milla," Tal said anxiously. Now he knew what Icecarls were really like, he didn't want to give them an excuse to kill him. "The Merwin hurt her. My shadow has just stopped the bleeding, that's all."

The woman looked down at Milla and pulled the fur aside. She still kept her spear pointed at Tal.

"Tell me how you came here from your Castle, and how you met the Far-Raiders," the woman commanded.

Tal told her, the words practically falling out of his mouth. This lot of Icecarls was even scarier than

Milla. The ones standing around hadn't moved at all. They just stood there, with their sharp spears glinting.

As Tal told his story, he surreptitiously looked at the Icecarls. Not only were their furs and masks different from the Far-Raiders', he noticed they were all wearing exactly the same clothes, not at all like the Icecarls he'd met before. He had almost gotten up to the part about the Merwin when he suddenly realized who they must be. They had to be Shield Maidens, the sisterhood that Milla wanted to join. They were like completely grown-up Millas, which was a really frightening thought.

He finished the story. The first woman stood in silence, towering above him. She started to raise her spear and Tal gulped. Surely he couldn't have come this far only to be stabbed to death because a mad Shield Maiden didn't believe his story!

"Breg, Libbe, Umen see to the girl," said the woman. "You. Tal. You will come with us."

"Where?" asked Tal. "And… is it all right for me to ask who you are?"

"I am Arla, Shield Mother," replied the woman. "We are Shield Maidens, currently serving the Mother Crone of the Mountain of Light."

"The Mountain of Light?" asked Tal eagerly.

That was what the Far-Raiders' Crone had called the mountain the Castle was built upon. "Are we near to it?"

"Three sleeps," replied Arla. "You will soon see it in the sky."

"I'm going home!" exclaimed Tal. He jumped up, but stopped as several Shield Maidens thrust their spears out at him.

"You are a prisoner. We will take you to our Crone for judgment," Arla explained. "It is forbidden to climb the Mountain of Light, and I am not sure you have told the truth. If you or your shadow try to escape, or do magic, you will be killed. Do you understand?"

"Yes," said Tal. He felt very tired all of a sudden. Every time it seemed he might get back to the Castle without further difficulties, something happened.

"We have a sleigh," said Arla. "You can ride on it with your Clan-bond, Milla."

Tal remembered very little of the journey to the Shield Maidens' headquarters in the foothills of the Mountain of Light. Their sleigh was much bigger than Milla's, drawn by twelve Wreska. But it was built for cargo, and so was slower and uncomfortable. Tal and Milla were wedged between Selski-skin sacks containing something that smelled absolutely putrid.

Milla had only brief moments of consciousness and said little that made any sense. Tal wasn't entirely sure he spent much of the journey conscious, either. He slept or half slept most of the way, his dreams and recent events merging. He was stalked by Sharrakor, who became a one-eyed Merwin. He climbed a mast and found his father and Ebbitt perched there, drinking sweetwater.

Again and again, he dreamed of his fall from the Red Tower and of Sunstones. Sunstones falling all around him, just out of reach.

One thing he did remember and was sure was not a dream. That was his first sight of what the Icecarls called the Mountain of Light.

Woken by a strange chanting, he had looked over the side of the sleigh to see all the Shield Maidens lined up facing one direction, chanting something softly together. He had followed their gaze and had seen it.

The Castle. Far, far off, and high up but like a flower of light in the sky, a flower of a thousand brilliant petals. It seemed to hang there, the mountain invisible in the darkness beneath.

Home, thought Tal.

Home.

Now he could see it, he knew he would return. The Shield Mother's Crone would see that he spoke the truth, like the one on the ship. She would let him continue his quest. She had to.

He looked down at Milla, who was lying still amid the sacks. His shadowguard had been replaced by bandages and poultices made with herbs and creams Tal didn't know.

Her hand was lying outside the furs, the three cuts on her wrist clearly visible. Tal looked at his own wrist, the healing scars quite bright in the green light of the moth-lamps.

Then he looked at her shadow. Somehow it didn't seem quite the same as the Underfolk's natural shadows. The Icecarls wer

e different, Tal had decided. They weren't Chosen, but they certainly weren't servants.