Chapter 11: On the Ice Fields of Nadia

B’ronth the Utalian left footprints in the snow.

Otherwise, B’ronth was invisible. But if a hidden observer watched the Utalian’s slow progress across the ice fields of Nadia he would see where the ice was soft or where snow had fallen during the night into the gullies, the unexpected, mysterious appearance of footprints, a left staggered after a right, then another left, then a right again, then a left.

Actually, B’ronth the Utalian was not invisible. But like all Utalians, he was a chameleon of a man. Within seconds his skin would assume the color of its environment, utterly and completely. Thus, from above B’ronth the Utalian was the dazzling white of the Nadian ice-fields; from below, looking up at the pale cloudless sky, he was cold, transparent blue.

All morning he had been trailing the girl. He had reached her camp on the road to Nadia only moments after she had quit it in company with an old man. From the tattered snow cloaks they wore, they both clearly were wayfarers. B’ronth could have challenged them at once, sprinting across the ice toward them, but he hadn’t done that. B’ronth the Utalian was a coward. He accepted the fact objectively: his people were notorious cowards. The proper time would come, he told himself. There would come a time when the girl and the old man were helpless. Then he, B’ronth, would strike.

The day before an Abarian warrior had given him a description of the girl and had promised him a bag of gold for her capture, half a bag of gold if he killed her and could prove it. A bag of gold, he thought. He would take her alive. It was a long, cold road to Nadia City. True, B’ronth the Utalian was small of stature, a puny creature like all his people. And there were certain disadvantages in his perfect camouflage. He was walking naked across the ice-fields in order to remain unseen. His flesh shivered and his bones were stiff. But a Nadian boy named Lulukee, whom B’ronth had promised half the gold, was not many minutes’ march behind him with warm clothing, food, and drink. After he captured the girl...

Invisible, he mounted a rise where solid sheet ice adhered to the shoulder of a rocky hill. Below him, traversing a snow-floored valley and so far away that they were mere dots against the snow, were the old man and the girl.

B’ronth the Utalian chuckled. The sound was swept up instantly and dispersed by the wind. It was a cold wind and it all but froze B’ronth to the marrow, but the Nadian sun was surprisingly warm and now seemed to beam down on him with promise of his golden reward. Shivering both from cold and delight, the invisible Utalian walked swiftly down into the snow-mantled valley.

There would be a trail of footprints for the boy Lulukee to follow...

“Cold, Hammeth?” Ylia asked her companion.

“No, girl. I’ll manage if you will. Is it much further?”

“Half a day’s march to Nadia City yet, I’m afraid,” Ylia said. “We could rest if you wish.”

The man was extremely old by Tarthian standards, probably three hundred and fifty years old. He wore a snow-cape of purullian fur which the wind whipped about his bony frame and up over his completely bald head. “I’m sorry, Ylia,” he said suddenly. There were tears in his eyes which the cold and the wind did not explain.

“What for? You came to the cave. You accompanied me here to Nadia.”

“When Retoc the Abarian almost killed the White God, I fled with the others.”

“If you didn’t flee you too might have been slain, Hammeth.”

“Yet you remained behind.”

“He still lived. Someone had to tend him.”

Hammeth’s breath came in shallow gasps. He once had been a strong, big man, but the life and the strength had fled his frame when Retoc destroyed Ofrid, a hundred years before. As a wayfarer on the Plains of Ofrid, he had aged in those hundred years. And he had shrunk and shriveled with approaching senility. “Tell me, Ylia,” he asked, panting, “is this Bram Forest you speak of indeed the--the god of the legend? The God of the Tower come to right the ancient wrongs?”

A frown marred the beauty of Ylia’s matchless face. “At first,” she said with a far-away look in her lovely eyes, “at first I thought he was. Hadn’t he come, suddenly, from nowhere, at the ordained moment? But then when he did not slay Retoc, when instead he allowed Retoc the use of his whip-sword and was almost slain by Retoc, when he bled like any mortal, when he--” All at once Ylia was blushing.

“What is it, child?” Hammeth asked.

“Nothing. It is nothing.”

“Ylia. You were the infant daughter of a lady in waiting of the royal court of Ofrid. I was a captain of the Queen’s Guards. When Retoc’s legions brought their death and destruction, I fled to the wilderness with you. I raised you from infancy. I--” the old man’s eyes clouded over with emotion--”you have no secrets from me, child.”

Ylia was still blushing. But a serene smile replaced the frown on her face. “Very well, Father Hammeth, I will tell you. There in the cave as I nursed the stranger back to health, as he grew stronger and could move about, as we conversed and came to know each other, I--I desired him.”

Hammeth said nothing. His face was stern.

“Please,” said Ylia, laughing now that her secret was out. “It wasn’t the kind of desire that could make me a candidate for the Golden Ape, but--I desired him. It was a pure, sweet emotion, such as I have never felt before. I wanted him. I wanted to serve him. I wanted to spend my life helping him and ... Hammeth ... Father Hammeth ... loving him. There, I have said it.”