The Ice Maze Read online

  He would not tell Bily about the ice blizzards. His soft-hearted brother was upset enough about being parted from Redwing. There was no need for him to be burdened by knowledge of a danger they might never encounter.

  Once Zluty had pushed the stone grit under and about the submerged wheels, he and Bily put their shoulders to the wagon and shoved, while the diggers pulled on the towropes.

  It did not budge.

  ‘Again!’ Zluty shouted, and this time when he shoved, the wagon lurched forward slightly. Zluty cried out urgently to the diggers to keep pulling, as he and Bily heaved again. The wagon moved forward and bumped up, and just like that the front wheels were free of the sodden furrow. When they had pushed the back wheels through it and out, some of the diggers gave a ragged little Ra!

  But Flugal shook his head when they were walking beside the wagon again. ‘It is a bad sign,’ he said gloomily.

  ‘What is?’ Zluty asked him.

  ‘Freezingness at the bottom of the puddle,’ the he digger answered. ‘The memory scents tell that it signals the coming of a badful Winter.’

  Very coldful will be the long night of Winter, he added in gestures.

  Zluty wondered if the digger meant that ice blizzards only came in the night. He was still not as good as Bily at reading the gestures that were part of the diggers’ language, and sometimes he got very muddled about what was being said.

  ‘Why did the rebel diggers go North after they destroyed the stone storm machine, if it was so difficult and dangerous there?’ he asked.

  ‘Only some went,’ Flugal said. ‘We do not have the knowing of why, but Monks hating cold and Wintertime dark – they staying inside Stonehouse all the dark nights. They never going North.’

  ‘Why didn’t the diggers who came back lead everyone else North, then?’ Zluty asked.

  ‘Not having that knowing,’ Flugal said again. ‘Maybe knowing will come from memory scents when we are further Northly. Leader of diggers is wanting that knowing. Semmel will gathering them to take back.’

  ‘So you are not just coming with us to free the Cloud Monster?’ Zluty asked, not sure how he felt that the digger leader had not mentioned this other secret task, though the Cloud Monster had saved his life.

  ‘Freeing of Cloud Monster is debt of honour,’ Flugal said gravely. ‘But gathering of knowing is also important.’

  Bily climbed up onto the back of the wagon to check on the Monster. He was relieved to see it was still sound asleep despite the bumping and shouting. It needed sleep, because even though the blackclaw bite that had so nearly killed it was healing – thanks to a special mixture that had been brewed up by the potion-maker in the digger camp – the Monster was far from well. Aside from being terribly weakened by being poisoned, there was something wrong with the Makers metal inside it.

  At first the diggers had thought it must be damaged, but after examining the Monster, the digger potion-maker said its metal was ailing because it had got too far from the Makers machines in the Velvet City. The potion-maker had given the Monster a potion to soothe its metal, but warned that it would not be properly healed until it returned to the Velvet City. After drinking the draught, the Monster had fallen asleep and had not been properly awake and alert since.

  This was a good thing, because it had clearly been a shock to the Monster to learn it was bound to the Makers machines. It had told Bily and Zluty proudly that its people served the Makers of their own free will, and were beloved of them, but now it knew that to be a lie. It was bound to the Makers machines just as the diggers were, the binding shaped to prevent it straying too far and too long from the Velvet City.

  Bily wondered if any other Listeners knew the truth. He thought it unlikely, since the Monster said its people seldom left the City.

  What would they do when they discovered their health depended on them staying close to the Velvet City and the Makers machines? Surely they would mind very much, as the Monster did. Unless they did not believe the Monster.

  It never had given them a proper reason for leaving the city, save to say that it had not wanted something it was to be given. But it had not really run away. The Monster had said it had gone to the white desert to think, and had been overtaken by the stone storm, the arosh. That had driven it down from the mountains and across the white desert to the plain where he and Zluty lived, where it had been bitten by the blackclaw. Yet it seemed to Bily the Monster had never shown any great desire to return to the Velvet City, though that might have been because it had thought it would die.

  Gazing into its enormous sleeping face, Bily suddenly found himself wondering how the Monster and the diggers had got Makers metal inside them.

  Of course the Makers had put it into the first diggers they sent through the sky crack, but now diggers mated and gave birth to digger younglings in their burrows and never saw a Maker. It must be that a bit of Makers metal passed like a seed from the she digger to her younglings when they were inside her. And that tiny bit of Makers metal did nothing – unless the Monks caught a digger and took them to the Makers machines in Stonehouse.

  As for the Monks, Bily supposed they came in eggs like he and Bily had done, since he had seen no she Monks or younglings in Stonehouse. The metal in them must instantly bond to the Makers machine when they emerged from their eggs.

  The Monster had said enough of the Listeners for Bily to know that its kind were born of one another like diggers, so perhaps they, too, passed on metal to their younglings which bonded to the Makers machine at their birth. But it must be such a light bond that they did not notice it unless they went too far from the Velvet City. He wondered at the purpose of such a bond, and could only suppose the Makers wanted the Listeners to concentrate on helping to widen the sky crack.

  The diggers had told them that the Makers machines and devices were intended to widen the sky crack so the Makers could fit through, but they did not know how that widening was being done, save that it had something to do with the Makers machine in the Velvet City, and with the Monks in Stonehouse atop the mountains.

  Bily did not care why the Makers wanted to come through the sky crack. He only hoped that they would never manage it.

  The Monster opened its eyes and, caught in its fierce gaze, Bily was reminded of the first time he had seen those yellow, seed-shaped eyes glowing in the darkness of the cottage cellar. Then, he had been certain the Monster meant to eat him. Now, he was only relieved to see that its eyes were completely clear for the first time since they had left the diggers camp.

  Bily reached out and stroked the Monster’s silky pelt, a thing he would not once have dared do, wishing he might brush it.

  ‘Your fur has got so thick,’ he murmured.

  The Monster lifted its head.

  ‘Because of the cold.’ It said the words inside his mind, dark and soft. ‘It happens to the Listeners sent to carry message eggs to Stonehouse when they travel near to Winter. But the thickness falls out when they return because it is so hot in the Velvet City.’

  ‘You ought to go back to sleep,’ Bily said gently, hoping he had not broken the soothing thrall of the potion. ‘I’m sorry I woke you.’

  The Monster’s eyes went beyond him to the opening in the awning. ‘We are travelling North,’ it said, nostrils quivering.

  It was not a question, but Bily nodded. ‘It is the only way to get around the mountains.’

  ‘North,’ the Monster said again, as if tasting the word.

  ‘Do you remember in the digger settlement, I said you need not return to the Velvet City?’ Bily asked. The Monster’s eyes turned back to him, and he added quickly, ‘Of course you must go there to get your metal soothed, but I meant that you need not stay if you don’t want. Once your metal is better, you can come with us to the Vale of Bellflowers. I can take care of you until you are strong again, then you can go where you like.’

  ‘Can I?’ the Monster asked coldly. ‘It seems I have no choice, since I am bound to the Makers machine in the Velvet City
.’

  ‘But you chose to leave the Velvet City in the first place, so it mustn’t be a very strong binding.’

  ‘I did not choose to leave. I was driven away by the arosh,’ the Monster said. ‘I was afraid.’

  ‘Maybe it was being afraid that let you choose,’ Bily said. ‘After all, the diggers were bound to the Makers until they got angry at the destruction of Redwing’s people. Maybe it was their anger that let them break the machine and run away. Maybe if you get angry you will be able to leave again.’

  The Monster gave him a long look. ‘Comings and goings in the Velvet City are no simple matter, Bily. There are rules about who can go where and when. You and Zluty should leave the river before it reaches the Velvet City, and circle around the settlement before returning to the river to follow it West.’

  It laid its head down and closed its eyes.

  Bily knew it was not sleeping, but he said nothing. He had no intention of letting the Monster go into the Velvet City on its own. Aside from all else, it might be too weak to walk that far. But there was a long journey ahead of them in which he would have time to think of an argument that would change its mind. Certainly Zluty would agree that they could not abandon it. The trouble was that his intrepid brother was likely to want to go into the Velvet City with the Monster.

  Bily noticed a small web woven between two bits of the frame under the awning in a little protected corner, and he studied the intricate net with pleasure. Spiders were such wonderful weavers and he always felt a fellow feeling for them.

  There was no sign of the spider, but a leaf caught at the warmest corner had been woven around and around with gossamer. Bily sent a whispered greeting with his mind into the curled leaf but nothing stirred. The spider must have come from the diggers camp. It saddened him to think it might have died of the cold. But perhaps it was just hibernating like the little bee queen in her urn. Or maybe this was an egg sac.

  Bily dropped back to the ground and continued walking behind the wagon, thinking how much easier it had been not to brood in the cottage. There had always been so much to do.

  If there was not cleaning and cooking and tending to his garden, there had been spinning and weaving and pots to be fired or coloured, or he had experimented with dye colours.

  How he missed the purposefulness of his old life. Travelling, you saw many new and interesting things, and everything you saw roused questions. That must be why Zluty was always asking questions. He had got in the habit of it during his foraging journeys, and thinking always seemed to lead to more questions.

  Just the night before, Zluty had asked Flugal to tell him again how the Makers had gone from using the sky crack as a place to put things they did not want, to risking injury or death to creatures and damage to machines so they could explore it.

  ‘What suddenly made them so interested in what was on the other side of the sky crack?’ Zluty had asked.

  Flugal answered that the Makers could not endure mysteries. They wanted to know everything. Which made them sound rather like Zluty, Bily suddenly thought.

  As to the diggers and Cloud Monster and all the others sent through the sky crack, perhaps the Makers regarded them less as living servants than as machines and devices to be used as they wished. When the diggers smashed the stone storm machine that they had assembled and repaired, perhaps the Makers simply decided they were faulty machines and so sent the Monks to fix them. Before submitting them to the Makers machine, the Monks had fitted the diggers with metal on the outside of their heads which would bond it to the metal inside their heads and make them obedient. Perhaps the Makers saw that as repairing the diggers.

  Bily wondered if he was right about the diggers being able to defy their masters because they had been angry. It had only just occurred to him as he said it to the Monster. But the Monster had defied its binding out of fear of the arosh. And the magnificent Cloud Monster he had met on top of the mountain when he had gone to find Zluty had rebelled against the Makers in rage and anguish after its mate died coming through the sky crack.

  The more Bily thought about it, the more it made sense that strong emotions like anger and fear would muddle the Makers metal. Because no matter what the Makers thought, the Monster and the diggers and the Cloud Monster were not machines.

  Something cold tapped his nose lightly and he realised that cold fluffs were beginning to fall again. They were big and soft and wet and melted quickly on the ground and on his fur, the wetness seeping through to his skin.

  Redwing returned, swooping down to perch on the rim at the back of the wagon. There were little droplets of rain on her feathers, and she was shivering.

  ‘Perch inside next to the Monster if you are cold,’ Bily urged.

  The bird blinked at him with her dark, shiny eyes and he saw she had not taken in his words, though he had said them with his mind, as well as aloud. The storm of longing to fly West filled her mind, left no room for anything else. He was about to call out to Zluty to stop so he could get up and move her into the wagon, when the Monster looked at Redwing and gave a soft piercing yowl. The red bird looked into its yellow, gleaming eyes as if mesmerised, then she fluttered down from the rim of the wagon.

  When Bily climbed up to look inside, he saw that the Monster’s tail snaked around the red bird to form a soft, dark nest. As he watched, Redwing fluffed her feathers in cosy contentment and closed her eyes.

  Walking in the wake of the wagon again, Bily held the picture of them cuddled together in his mind, blinking his eyes against the falling slush. The mountains were now no more than a dark smudge and, as he plodded along, head down, Bily’s thoughts slipped to another memory, this one, of trudging across the white, windswept plateau atop the mountains, where he had encountered the Cloud Monster.

  He had been lost, the air filled with flying cold fluffs that seemed to have got inside his head, making it hard to think. The wind had gusted so strongly that the cold fluffs stung his bare face and hands like a hoard of angry bees. He had been walking with his head bowed to protect his cheeks, until something made him look up, and there had been the Cloud Monster looming up like a piece of the storm come to life.

  Bily was glad to find that he had such a clear, striking picture of that moment stored in his mind. The first chance he got, he must use a bit of the precious paper the diggers had given him to scratch out a picture of the Cloud Monster, using the nubs of the charcoal he saved from the fire. What he wanted most was to weave it into a great wall rug that could hang in their new cottage. He could imagine just how it would look – the Cloud Monster rising up against a dark purple and grey sky, its icy eyes ablaze, the white cold fluffs flying at its back like a cloak.

  He could do a scratching of the Monster and Redwing, too. He might even colour it using some of the stoppered pots of colour the diggers had given him. That must wait until they reached the Vale of Bellflowers and built a new cottage, but the thought warmed Bily as cold fluffs continued to fall and he trudged on alongside the wagon.

  The wet cold fluffs turned into a heavy rain. They pressed on even though it drenched their thickened pelts and turned the ground to black slush, until a wheel became wedged between two stones. By the time they got it free they were all dripping wet and exhausted.

  ‘We must stop,’ Bily shouted to Zluty over the rain noise. ‘If we can light a fire under the canopy, we can dry our pelts.’

  Zluty did not want to stop and waste what remained of the short day, nor did he want to waste firenuts to dry out pelts that would dry of their own accord once the rain stopped.

  ‘Walking will warm us, but we could have a bite of something to eat before we go on,’ he conceded.

  When they had all clambered into the wagon, Bily shouted to be heard over the rain drumming on the canopy. ‘We can’t see where we are going in this. That’s why the wheel got stuck.’

  It was true. The rain had been falling so hard that Zluty had to walk with his head down or be blinded, and it was a dark day with the thick grey cl
ouds overhead. Still, he did not want to stop. He looked at Flugal. ‘Do you think we should go on?’

  Instead of agreeing, Flugal went to consult the other diggers. But it was Semmel who brought their answer. ‘We think stopping and resting and eating is best, because rain will stopping soon and we can still reach the flyway before the endfulness of day.’

  Zluty had no choice but to surrender, because having asked the diggers’ opinion it would be rude to ignore it.

  ‘I can make a proper hot supper,’ Bily said and opened out the awnings on the lee side of the wagon.

  Zluty scraped a shallow firepit, thinking how lucky it was they had the miraculous moss balls with their fiery core, for he needed only a few embers and some firenuts to conjure a warm blaze. They were all soon clustered around the fire under the dripping edges of the awning, their fur beginning to steam. Bily carried a pot out of the wagon upon which floated tiny dried onions and mushrooms, and soon it was bubbling away over the fire. Zluty’s mouth watered as he smelled the rich savoury scent of the rare black mushroom he had found in his last visit to the Northern Forest.

  Bily’s fur had dried, and while the food cooked he got out his brush. But before he could use it, Semmel took it from him.

  ‘I will do the brushing of the fluffiness,’ she said.

  Bily said uncertainly, ‘That would be lovely.’

  Zluty watched, not sure why it made him smile to see Bily suffering his fur to be brushed by Semmel, and then several other diggers who brought out their own little combs and came to help. The brushing went on for some time, and if Bily had not suddenly said very firmly but politely that the food was ready, Zluty felt the diggers would have gone on brushing him dreamily deep into the night.