whom he loved indeed, Halmé the Beautiful for whom he had said that world was made …
There must be another way, Nathan thought, knowing the thought was futile. He had no power to change things. He was caught up in this like a snowflake in a storm, a tiny component in a huge machine, and all he could do was whatever he had to do. Only this, and nothing more. (Why did he keep thinking of that poem, and Annie’s face when he talked of the Grandir, so pale and still?) He had to find the crown.
And then he remembered Keerye, speaking of the Goddess, and how she had an iron crown which never rusted, kept in a cavern of air under the Dragon’s Reef.
How could he have failed to pick up the clue? But he had been inside Ezroc’s head, sharing his thoughts and feelings, no longer a boy but an albatross riding on the wind. Oh to fly again …
His mind turned to dragons – it would be dragons – great fire-breathing monsters, far more deadly than Urdemons or giant lizards. But no dragon could breathe fire under water. He visualised a vast serpentine creature, winged and clawed and fanged, rising in a storm of bubbles, the sea boiling against its flanks. Its mouth opened on a gullet of flame, its red-hot tongue crackled like a lava-flow in the alien element … The ocean erupted into steam as the dragon ascended, dripping wings driving it into the sky …
Somehow, in the midst of such visions, he fell asleep.
And now he was flying again, not the dragon but the bird. Soaring on the high air into a deep blue night. Southward and eastward there was a faint pallor along the horizon; light leaked into the sky. The sun’s disc lifted above the rim of the globe and the light washed over the ocean, turning the waves to glitter. Ahead, Nathan saw a broken shoreline of crags and peaks and towers, rough-facetted, glimmering here and there with a glimpse of crystal. The Ice Cliffs. As he drew nearer he made out a vast colony of seabirds stretching along the escarpment: gannets, puffins, auks, gulls, terns – the squawking of their competing chatter was like the din of a whole city. On the highest part of the ridge there was a group of albatrosses, twenty or thirty pairs, far bigger than the other birds – bigger than the albatrosses Nathan had seen on nature films – some, at a guess, nearly as tall as he was, or would have been if he had been solid. Ezroc, he realised, had grown too: his wingspan seemed to reach halfway across the world. He gazed down at the mating pairs – Nathan remembered that albatrosses mate for life – and he felt the sorrow in Ezroc’s heart because he was alone, he had chosen loneliness to pursue his long voyages in search of Keerye who was dead and the islands that were no more.
In Ezroc’s mind he heard a memory re-playing, the voice of an older bird, relative or mentor: ‘The islands are lost, young stormrider, if they ever existed. You have journeyed many miles further than your namesake – you have followed the great currents to the south – merfolk have hunted you, boiling spouts have singed your feathers, seamonsters have chased your shadow across the waves. You know the truth. The seas are empty. Stay here; settle down with your own kind. Until the Ice Cliffs melt, the northfolk will have a place to be.’
And Ezroc’s reply: ‘It is not enough.’ The words of a maverick, stubborn beyond reason, holding onto a vision no one else could see.
He passed over the colony, ignoring the birds that raised their heads to watch him, speeding along the floating shoreline. Below, Nathan glimpsed other creatures, refugees from the lost lands of long ago, surviving on the Great Ice. A troop of penguins waddling along a promontory, plopping into the sea – clumsy and comic on the ice, arrow-smooth in the water. A huddle of sealions and trueseals, nursing their newborn pups. A great snowbear waiting at a borehole till its dinner came up for air. And an enormous walrus, tusked and bristled, heaving itself up onto a floe, who raised a flipper in greeting.
Ezroc wheeled and swooped down to land on the ice beside him.
‘Greetings, Burgoss. May your moustache never grow less! I’ve been away a while – what is the word along the Ice Cliffs?’
‘Greetings, young ‘un,’ the walrus grunted. ‘What makes you think I have time for the jabber of chicks and pups? I don’t listen to children’s gossip, and when they’re grown their talk is all of food and sex. Enough to deafen you with boredom. If that’s the word you seek, ask elsewhere.’
‘You are the oldest and wisest creature in all the seas,’ Ezroc said, flattering shamelessly. ‘Except for the whales. If there is any news worth knowing, you will know it.’
‘Not so much of the oldest.’ The walrus shook himself, feigning displeasure. ‘You have a beak on you, young Ezroc, you always did. I’d say you were getting too big for your wings, if they weren’t grown so wide I can barely see from tip to tip. What’ve you been eating, down in the south? Hammerhead?’
‘Too small,’ Ezroc said airily. ‘I feast only on sea monsters.’
‘All boast and no bulwarks,’ the walrus retorted. ‘Hrrmph! Well, I can guess the kind of news you need to hear, and it ain’t good. A piece broke off the Great Ice away westward, maybe five longspans across. Perhaps Nefanu is bringing the sun north to melt us, though the days don’t seem any longer to me. But I’m not as young as I was, and could be I’m out of my reckoning.’
‘She won’t bring the sun,’ Ezroc said. ‘I don’t think she has that power. Anyway, she doesn’t need to. All she has to do is divert one of the warmer currents. If she hasn’t tried that yet, it’s only because she hasn’t thought of it.’
‘Those old gods are as dumb as dugongs,’ Burgoss remarked. ‘How else did her queenship manage to wipe out the rest of them? Anyhow, ice breaks in the spring. It may not mean much. You’ve got other things to worry about. The Spotted One says he saw merfolk scouting below the Cliffs last moondark. Says they took a snowbear, though there’s no proof. The bears don’t lair together; they wouldn’t know if one’s gone missing.’
‘The Spotted One …’ The albatross might have frowned, if birds could frown. Nathan could sense his unease.
‘The others don’t listen to him,’ the walrus said. ‘Since old Shifka died they’ve grown complacent – complacent and careless. Apathy! Huh! The biggest killer of all time. Once that sets in, you’re half way to extinction. I’m old – though not as old as you seem to think – but I can still smell trouble coming. If the Great Ice were to break up – if the merfolk mounted a serious attack—’
‘Do you believe him?’ Ezroc interjected.
‘Possibly. He’s surly and solitary, but that don’t make him a liar. Been an outcast since he was a pup, when they taunted him for his spots. Seal-brats can be cruel – cruel and stupid – just like any other young ’uns. He wasn’t quick with words so as he got older he fought – fought tough and fought dirty – teeth, flippers, fists, he didn’t care what shape he used as long as he won, and the odds were always against him. Can’t blame him for that.’
‘He killed someone,’ Ezroc said.
The walrus shrugged, a great rippling shrug that flowed right down his massive body. ‘It happens. Don’t think he set out to kill – he always wanted the others to feel their bruises, or so I guess – but the brat got his head smashed on the ice, and that did for him. Skull too thin or something.’
‘Brat?’ Ezroc was appalled. ‘He killed a pup?’
‘Nah. Just some half grown flipperkin shooting his mouth off. They’re all brats to me. Point is, after that they avoided him, and he – well, he’d have made himself an outcast, even if they didn’t. It suited his mood. I thought you’d know the story.’
‘I was only a chick,’ Ezroc said. ‘Keerye never went into details. He used to talk to Nokosha sometimes – he wasn’t like the rest of them.’
‘Young Spots was the only one he couldn’t best in a fight,’ Burgoss said. ‘Strongest selkie on the Cliffs. I daresay Keerye respected that.’
‘Nokosha still blames me for his death, I think,’ Ezroc said. ‘I’ve never