Treasures of the Deep Page 10

  And that made no sense, for never before, when she had seen the grey death-cast come over a victim’s face, had that cast ever then gone away. Death could never be suspended or reversed.

  What then was she to make of it?

  Had she been mistaken, or misled? Had she concocted a fantasy of doom out of her own fear at the sudden separation of the ship from the others, and out of the lingering unease caused by her encounter with Axay? Who wouldn’t be disturbed by the things she had seen on the Twelfth Kingdom, and experienced in the warm waters of Axay’s pool? And after all, even Axay – the greatest of all seers – had not foretold their death in the north. Only that their sojourn would be a hard and prolonged one, and that Celestine herself would learn something there that she must pass on to another scapegoat …

  Yes, Celestine decided as she stood in the sunshine: if the grey casts of death had vanished, then they had never been there to be begin with. No doubt there would be travails in the Unquiet Ice – such was ever the price of exploration – but there was no call for despair.

  For the first two weeks of the voyage she was allowed to maintain this happy conviction. The crew, seeing that she was herself again, soon recovered their enthusiasm, and the ship made steady time northwards, the weather and the seas as fine as could be hoped for in the season, which was late winter. With every mile that passed, Celestine grew more confident that her vision had been only an aberration, an attack of overwrought nerves …

  But then, one sunlit midday as she stood on the foredeck gazing over the bow, a strange sensation swept through her, a dizziness and nausea like seasickness, and the world changed before her eyes.

  The glimmering blue sea turned grey and merged with a sky of the same colour; the mild conditions turned to freezing; and the wind that had been filling the sails suddenly vanished, replaced with a gelid stillness, the motionless air thick with descending pale flakes. It was snowing.

  Celestine stared in bewilderment, turning a full circle where she stood upon the deck, but it was no illusion, it was real. The sun, which had been high in the sky only a moment before, was now only a pale nub low on the southern horizon. The snow fell on silently, muffling the world, the ship creeping forward under sullenly drooping sails, and all about rose dim shapes from the ocean, huge and hulking. Icebergs … they must be icebergs. Except they weren’t white, they were streaked grey and black …

  Snow? Blackened bergs? What was this?

  But then Celestine tasted burning, and realised that it wasn’t snow falling at all, but ash. It was raining ash, draping this strange ocean and its icebergs with a soft cloak that spread as far as she could see. And from the north, so faint as to be barely audible, and yet profound and disturbing, the only sound in all this dim quiet, came a never-ending throb and rumble …

  Then, as quickly as it had come, the bizarre spectacle was gone. A warm wind seemed to blow it all away, and abruptly the Bent Wing was sailing in clear sunshine once more on a friendly sea, and Celestine was left to gape about in wonder at the day and the ship.

  What had happened? Where had she been?

  Nowhere at all, surely. It had just been some fantastic waking dream. There was no such place. Yes, the ship was bound for the Unquiet Ice, and would meet icebergs, but it would be nothing like that, so dark and still, with ash falling, and with distant rumblings from beyond the horizon …

  After an hour of reasoning so with herself – and with the acuteness of the memory fading – Celestine managed to put the mirage aside, dismissing it as another projection of her own fears, nothing more. Certainly, it was no vision of things to come. Such foretelling was beyond her. She was no seer like the dreadful Axay. She was only little Celestine.

  And for a while she was comforted.

  But ten days later, another vision came.

  By then, the Bent Wing was approaching the Latitude of Storms, and the fine weather of earlier in the voyage was giving way to more unsettled conditions, the swell rising, the sky clouding over, the wind blowing colder and more contrary, almost directly out of the north. On one such blustery morning, as Celestine was dressing in her quarters, seasickness nagging at her stomach, suddenly the same whirling sensation as before possessed her, and the familiar walls of her little cabin dissolved and disappeared.

  She found herself standing instead on the high deck, all alone, the ship seemingly deserted aside from her. The stormy weather had vanished. Once more, the Bent Wing was sailing slowly through a soft haze of falling ash. It was the same grey world of her previous vision. Only this time the ash was clearing away, as if whatever fire or cataclysm had caused it was ended now. The great hulking shapes of icebergs were fewer, and there was no ominous throb and rumble from the north anymore. All was silent, and yet for some reason the silence only increased Celestine’s unease.

  Abruptly, north beyond the bow, the last curtain of ash drew away. The air cleared and the sky opened out, pale with arctic summer light. Celestine stared in awe, for ahead of the ship rose a titanic rampart of ice, miles high and stretching beyond sight east and west, dazzling white in places, streaked grey with ash in others. She had never seen such a thing before, but knew all the same what this must be – the fabled Ice Wall.

  And lo – directly in the ship’s path an immense chasm had opened in the Wall, a channel extending away northwards into the Ice. Why, it must be the very passage in search of which they had set sail, the legendary North Way, the route that might lead even to the pole. The Bent Wing need only enter the chasm and follow it north to make the great discovery – but dread took hold of Celestine. No, no, she thought, don’t go in there, please …

  Then it was all gone and she was back in her cabin, staring wide-eyed at the walls as the ship rolled and creaked.

  Axay, she thought, shaken to her core. Axay had done this to her, cursed her with these freakish hallucinations. She had never known such visions before visiting the Twelfth Kingdom. Yes, during that embrace in the waters of the well, Axay had given her this power, had changed her.

  On the one hand Celestine was angry, for what right did Axay have to do any such thing to her, un-asked?

  But at the same time she was awed.

  To be able to see the future!

  Except – had she truly just glimpsed an event that was to come? And even if she had, what was the point of it? Was it a warning? Was there something she was meant to do? Should she alert the captain? But of what? There had been no overt danger in what the vision had shown her, no peril to the ship, only a haunting strangeness. Indeed, far from danger, if the Bent Wing could find the passage in the Ice Wall, it would mean triumph.

  Celestine shook her head, which had started to ache. She wasn’t ready for this, not prepared for such responsibilities. It had been bad enough knowing who was soon to die – but to know everything, to see the future in all its fullness, and to have to decide what to do with that knowledge: she could already imagine the burdens such a power would entail.

  A wise scholar might have been able to accept it. Or a king, with councillors to advise him. But Celestine was not wise, nor a king. Better then to see nothing at all, than to carry the weight of such judgement alone. Take back your visions, Axay –she willed – I don’t want them.

  But the choice was not to be hers.

  A month passed, and found the Bent Wing still labouring against adverse north winds, trapping them in the southern reaches of the storm latitudes. Winter was gone by then, and spring well advanced, the captain chafing at the delay; he’d hoped for swifter progress. And one night, as Celestine tossed restlessly in her sleep, her bunk swaying and pitching with the heaving of the ship, yet another vision was granted her, her fourth in all.

  It came in the form of a nightmare.

  In the dream, the Bent Wing was now deep within the great chasm that Celestine had spied in her previous vision. Mighty cliffs of ice rose mile upon mile on either hand. But they were no longer sailing north towards the pole; instead they were sailing south, retreati
ng towards the open ocean, and doing so in fear for their lives, hurrying as best they might, fleeing …

  Fleeing what?

  The nightmare did not at first reveal. All Celestine knew was that the terror lay somehow in the dark waters of the channel. But slowly she became aware that there was a sound in the chasm, faint initially, then swelling to a terrible rush and hiss that came from everywhere.

  It was the sound of nicre, seething.

  The sound of ice forming.

  Now Celestine saw. Directly ahead of the ship, white masses were building themselves up from the waterline, growing with impossible speed, hissing vastly as they climbed. Icebergs, newly formed and immense, blocking the channel. Horror took her. There was no way out, no way out, and overhead the sky turned winter-black, and from below came the most awful sound of all, the ruinous grate of the keel upon stone …

  Celestine opened her eyes to the darkness of her cabin, her hand pressed to her mouth to silence her scream.

  A shipwreck. She had seen the Bent Wing running aground, she had felt it. They would be trapped in the channel in the Ice, and wrecked, and they would all die in the lightless winter of the arctic. Her first vision, the one of the ice-covered faces and snow-filled mouths, was true after all.

  She must warn the captain immediately.

  They must turn back.

  Except …

  Her thudding heart steadied a little. Wait. Wait. The nightmare had felt real, no doubt, but maybe it was only a nightmare. She’d had nightmares before, after all. Never so terrible as this, but frightening nonetheless, and yet none of them had turned out to be visions of the future. Could she really demand that the captain abandon the voyage, and abandon his dreams of discovery and fame, for the sake of what might be just a bad dream?

  And yet – what if it was no dream?

  The dilemma that was prophecy! For how could she know the truth of it, until the future had actually come to be?

  She would delay, she decided at last. She would wait until they reached the Unquiet Ice, and the Ice Wall. If any of the happenings of her visions actually eventuated – the raining ash, for instance – then she would at least know that her foresight was genuine. Then she would act.

  So the voyage continued. Still, however, the winds remained unfriendly. Upon setting out, Captain Altona had hoped to reach the Unquiet Ice within three months, so that they would arrive in the arctic in late spring, with all summer ahead to explore. But so slow was their progress due to adverse gales, it was in fact already early summer by the time they cleared the storm latitudes, and so entered the eerie calm of the Unquiet Ice.

  At first, it seemed to Celestine gladly that her visions would be revealed as illusions and no more. The arctic sky was clear and the sun shone bright and cold, low in the south. No ash fell, and the first small bergs, when they were sighted, shone white and sparkling upon a blue sea.

  But before her fears had truly eased, and before they came to the Unquiet Ice proper, a change came over the sea and sky.

  First, a low rumbling began to emanate from far in the north, the sound dull but continuous, like faraway thunder. Then a vast cloud rose slowly from beyond the northern horizon, building to the upper atmosphere, whereupon it spread south in a great canopy, passing over the ship, until even the stern-ward sun was lost, and a grim twilight settled over the ocean.

  Finally, ash began to rain down.

  Celestine watched it fall, her mood one of bleak confirmation. The scene was exactly – exactly – as her vision had painted it.

  Was it time to talk to the captain? The problem was, Altona and his officers took the ash as a good sign. Those who knew the Twin Isles spoke of similar ash falls that came from the fiery mountains there. Hence, this grey rain might well mean that mountains of flame existed somewhere in the Ice too. And if that was so, than maybe they had formed an entire island in the arctic, maybe even the fabled North Land of the pole itself!

  Altona would never turn back from such a prospect, Celestine realised in dismay, on her say-so alone – not without any obvious danger present. So she held her silence over the following days as the Bent Wing crept forward through the ash. She only waited to see if her next vision would be confirmed; the arrival at the Ice Wall, and the discovery of the great chasm. Maybe at that terrible sight the captain would quail, and could then be convinced.

  They went slowly, the wind never more than a breath, and at times failing altogether. The grey rain eased now and then, but the pall in the sky always remained, the world permanently grey, the ocean an undulating mat of floating ash. At length, they began to encounter mountainous icebergs rising from the mire, the denizens of the true Unquiet Ice, but their flanks were black instead of white. More strangely, they were silent and unrolling. It seemed that for once this infamous region of toppling bergs and seething nicre had been subdued to quietness. Perhaps, theorised the officers, the ash coating the bergs interfered with the natural processes. In which case, the grey rain was doubly a boon, slowing their passage maybe, but making it safer.

  All the while, the rumble and throb from the north grew louder, interspersed with distinct booms and crashes, still muffled by distance, but obviously of immense force. Few on board doubted by this time that some great volcanic upheaval was taking place ahead, and some began to mutter of the dangers in straying too close to such a cataclysm.

  But then, after a fortnight of the ship crawling north towards the sounds, the din reached a thudding crescendo, like the gunfire of a great sea battle culminating just beyond the horizon – before abruptly, over a few short hours, fading away to murmurs, then to silence.

  The officers nodded sagely. The eruption must have blown itself out, and now the fires were dying down again, as often occurred with the volcanos on Red Island. Soon, no doubt, the sky would clear too.

  And so it proved. The next day, just as Celestine had seen in her vision, the ash rain thinned and the light grew, and when the final grey curtain drew back to clear sky, there, waiting, was the Ice Wall.

  Amazed cries rose about the ship – but Celestine merely gazed at the ice ramparts in silence, for she had beheld this wonder before. And yet her vision was not confirmed in full, for there was no great chasm opening there. The Wall held unbroken for as far as could be seen, east and west.

  Celestine took hope. It seemed her foresight was not correct in every detail … so she need not act. Not yet.

  Altona now turned the Bent Wing west, sailing slowly along the foot of the ice cliffs. He was searching, Celestine knew, for the warm currents that were rumoured to be flowing in the arctic, and which would lead – so those same rumours said – to the legendary North Way. But for many days nothing appeared, the Wall only towered unbroken on their right hand. The days became weeks, and summer ran towards its end. Still Altona pressed on, vowing that he would circumnavigate the north entirely if need be, so determined was he to be the first in all history to pierce the indomitable Ice.

  In the finish it was not until summer’s very dying days, fully six months since setting out, with the pale sun sinking ever lower towards the horizon, that at last the testers reported that the water around the ship was growing warmer. They had found the current they sought, a fact evidenced in the following days by thick fogs. Expectations rose, and the watchers in the high rigging strained their eyes. And finally one morning, as the ship cleared a bank of heavy mist, the cry was raised, exultant – and Celestine’s heart sank.

  Far ahead, the Ice Wall was rent asunder.

  Cautiously, the captain brought the ship up to the awesome opening: a threshold four miles high on either side, between which a chasm ran away beyond sight, its end lost in the gloom cast by its own walls. The channel was at least as wide as the cliffs were high, and the waters within were clear of all ice, fingers of thin fog curling there as if in invitation.

  Encompassed by dread, Celestine hurried to the high deck. Enough. She must speak now. The ship must not enter here.

  She found Capta
in Altona in excited consultation with his first and second officers, Commander Javier and Commander Gabriel. ‘See how the water in the channel steams,’ he was saying. ‘It must have been warmed by the very volcanic cataclysms we observed as we arrived in the arctic – and thus is the ice opened. We are fortunate indeed to visit at such a time, when the fires are stoked hot. Else-wise, we may have found the way shut!’

  ‘We mean to go in then?’ asked Javier keenly.

  Altona nodded. ‘To do so is precisely why we have come, and this chance must not be wasted. When the fires are quieter, the channel will no doubt freeze over once more, which explains why the fabled North Way has been glimpsed before over centuries past, but never found again when ships return in search of it. Our time may be short. We must not delay.’

  They hadn’t noticed Celestine as she’d come up. Now she intruded to stand directly in front of Altona, looking up at him askance – for she was barely half his height, and bent besides. She shook her head vehemently, forcing out rare words. ‘No, Captain. We must not go there.’

  Altona considered her in puzzlement. ‘What’s wrong, lass? I know it’s a daunting prospect, such cliffs of ice and all, but we’re a sound ship and crew, it’s not beyond our skill to venture in.’

  She shook her head again. ‘We will be trapped in there. Caught in the ice. The ship will be wrecked. I know it.’

  Javier and Gabriel exchanged unsettled glances, but Altona frowned at her. ‘Are you trying to say you’ve foreseen this?’

  Celestine nodded intently. ‘We must turn back!’

  The captain’s frown hardened. ‘Really, lass, I’m disappointed in you. In all the years we’ve sailed together, you’ve never made any pretence of being foresighted – so why do it now? You’ve always been a simple and honest soul, and all the more worthy a scapegoat for it. I’ve never asked for magic from you. Leave such superstitions to the foolish, I say. If you’re scared by yonder cliffs and what lies within, then there’s no blame to you – for they are frightening indeed. But don’t claim your fear to be prophecy!’