If the threat hadn't been so serious, Tal would have laughed. The Icecarls might be a cut above the Underfolk in some ways, but not by much. If they knew how to use Sunstones properly they wouldn't worry about a shadowguard like Tal's. He doubted they could learn how to use Sunstones properly, since that required concentrated thought. As far as Tal could see, Icecarls weren't deep thinkers. They acted on instinct, usually with violence.
"This is not one of those shadows," said the Mother Crone. "It is a lesser thing, still in its infancy.
The ones we should fear cannot change their shape."
"Spiritshadows?" asked Tal, unable to suppress a superior smile. Even though he'd had some bad experiences with Spiritshadows, they were still only the tools of the Chosen who had mastered them. "They're only servants, like the Underfolk. Each is bound to obey its Master. No Chosen would set a Spiritshadow against you. What would be the point? There is nothing out here that would interest a real Chosen. I mean, no one has ever bothered to see if there was anything out here before, and even when they do find out, I don't think they will be interested…"
His voice trailed off. It was hard to explain without being totally rude.
"Perhaps," said the Mother Crone. "Yet we have long known about your Castle and its seven Towers. And both Chosen and Shadows have come down from the mountain before."
Tal was silent. He didn't know what to say to that. The Mother Crone was probably trying to impress him and he doubted she really knew anything about the Castle and the Chosen. Nothing important, anyway.
"All I want is to get home," he muttered when the
Mother Crone didn't say any more. "I have to get back and get a Sunstone!"
"Two Sunstones," he added, a split second after Milla looked at him, her eyes as sharp as knives. "One for the Far Raiders as well."
"Yes," said the Mother Crone. She took the knife and plunged it deep into the slab of meat in front of her, making Tal jump back. Milla didn't even flinch. "But in all the time that the Ruin Ship has been here, and the Shield Maidens have patrolled these hills, we have never let anyone climb the Mountain of Light, the source of Shadow. Why should we let you pass?"
Tal looked down at the floor as he struggled to think of a reason that would seem important to these Icecarls. But nothing came. No brilliant words. No clever answers. Just one truth.
"It's my home," Tal said miserably. "It's where I belong."
"Yes," said the Mother Crone. "To the ship comes the Icecarl, home from the Ice, while the Chosen goes home to the Castle."
She walked around the table and stood close to Tal. She seemed taller, closer up, a good head taller than Tal. She only wore light furs, and her arms were bare, showing many scars. Closer up, the milkiness in her eyes seemed more like the luminous glow of the moth-lamps than the result of age or illness.
From the scars, Tal guessed that the Mother Crone had once been a fierce Shield Maiden. She still had a forbidding menace when she wanted to.
"How can we return you without opening a way back to us, a way that Shadows may seek to use?"
"I don't know," said Tal. "But the Mother Crone of the Far Raiders said I would go back. Didn't she?"
He directed that question at Milla, who had heard the other Mother Crone's strange prophesy. But it was this
Mother Crone who answered.
"Home is the Castle, Yet it is not home,"
she recited, repeating two lines of the prophecy. "Even among Crones, the truth of what we see is not always clear. Tell me, Shield Mother, what do you think we should do with Tal?"
"Give him to the Ice," said Arla, without expression.
"What?!" exclaimed Tal. That was the same as killing him.
"And you, Milla?" asked the Mother Crone. "What should we do with this boy who is bound to your Quest?"
"Mother Crone, the Far Raiders do need a Sunstone," said Milla. Tal looked at her gratefully, but she didn't meet his eyes.
"As do the Selski Runners and the Sharp Spears and the South Corner, among many others," replied the Mother Crone. "Many others. Too many. So we shall not be giving you to the Ice, Tal. Not while you can be useful."
"How?" asked Tal, though he could guess.
"Sunstones," said the Mother Crone. "The old ones fail, and though some are found, they do not last as long. Why do the Sunstones that fall to us fade so quickly? We do not know. That, and other things, trouble us. The clans need Sunstones. The Crones need knowledge. So we have decided that perhaps we will let you return to your Castle. Come."
She turned away and went over to a wall, pulling down a curtain of patchwork furs to reveal an open doorway. "You, too, Milla. Shield Mother, you may leave us."
Perhaps,
Tal thought, was often only a way of saying no.
But this time, he thought it meant yes.
Only, knowing the Icecarls, there was bound to be some sort of catch. he'd already been forced into swearing he'd get a Sunstone for the Far Raiders. Maybe the Mother Crone would want one, too.
Rut then Tal would swear to anything, anything at all, in order to get home. He'd worry about the consequences later.
CHAPTER
THREE
The Crone Mother led Milla and Tal along a short corridor, into a huge chamber that Tal realized must once have been the main hold of the ship.
A vast area, it was not well-lit, and what light there was seemed to come from a mixture of Sunstones, moth-lamps, and glowjellies an odd combination of color and illumination. To make it even stranger, Tal couldn't work out exactly where all the light was coming from.
Most of the room was filled with what looked like a very strange playing board. As Tal paced along behind the Crone, he estimated the board had to be eighty stretches long and forty wide, since one of his paces was roughly equivalent to a stretch.
The board or whatever it was occupied the entire middle section of the hold. Peering at it in the dim light, Tal saw that it was made up of many thousands of square tiles. There were twenty or thirty slipper-wearing Icecarls moving around on it, shifting small models of iceships or, not quite so frequently, rearranging the tiles with different ones they brought to the board.
The Icecarls were all girls around Milla's age, which Tal guessed was close to his own a bit under fourteen.
They all wore indoor furs of the same white color, with similar patterns of black bars. Tal didn't know what sort of animal the furs came from. It wasn't the black, shiny Selski hide used in Milla's armor or the soft brown Wreska skin that lined his own gloves, and he hadn't seen the black-and-white pattern on any other Icecarls. Arla's Shield Maidens wore black Selski-hide breastplates, bracers, and greaves over white furs striped with silver.
The girls were under the direction of seven women, who sat in high-backed chairs of woven bone located at even intervals around the enormous playing board.
The women were Crones, Tal guessed. At least they all had the same telltale glow in their eyes, like The Crone of the Far Raiders, or the woman who had sat in the background when they met the Crone
Mother. Tal wondered how their eyes got so bright, and what happened to them when they became Mother Crones to make their eyes change again.
The seven Crones seemed to be looking out into space, but every now and then one would crook her finger, and a girl would lightly cross the board and go to her. There would be a whispered conversation, then the girl would go back to the board and move a ship, or perhaps exchange one of the tiles, taking a replacement from one of a number of cabinets that lined the far wall.
As they walked closer, the girls stopped whatever they were doing to acknowledge the Mother Crone by clapping their fists. When she stopped at the edge of the board, Tal went over to get a closer look. He saw that every tile was etched with faintly luminous symbols. Doing a quick estimation, Tal calculated that there were around fourteen hundred tiles and four or five hundred ship models.
He also saw that at the very center of the board there was one model that was no
t a ship. It was a mountain, with a building on top of it. A building with seven towers that glowed with tiny Sunstone chips. Clearly it was the Castle and the Mountain of Light. Below it was a model of the Ruin Ship, covered in the same luminous lichens that grew on the real thing.
"It's a map," Tal said suddenly. Each tile represented a certain area--he had no idea how big--and the symbols on it indicated the terrain, or perhaps the state of the Ice. Each model was also unique, represented a different Icecarl clan and ship.
Tal looked at Milla. She was staring at the girls with obvious longing. They had to be Shield Maiden cadets who had fulfilled their Quest and begun their training. They were what Milla wanted to be, with all her heart.
"We call it the Reckoner. It is a map of sorts," said the Mother Crone. "Look closely at the ships, Tal."