Fall of Angels (The Saga of Recluce #6)(88)

At last, the image appears-that of a black tower, with a second, and lower, building rising beside it, already roofed with the same black slate tiles that cover the taller tower. A short, stone-walled causeway leads to the tower and to a heavy door banded together with strips of metal-not iron, but some metal Hissl does not recognize, though it feels like iron through the glass.

Farther uphill, the angels, some in black and others in leathers, are digging a long ditch in a line that leads toward the tower. On the uphill portion of the ditch, the black mage and an angel are placing lengths of stone in the trench. There is a trough filled with what might be mortar beside the stones.

Hissl squints and tries to focus the image, but the best he can do is catch a glimpse of a section of rock that appears to have a deep trench gouged in it. He slumps back into the chair.

"Black angels and a black mage." He shivers for a moment. No lord he knows could have built a tower like that, and not in a mere two seasons. Yet the black mage who lives with the angels has done so, and the mage has done other things, as well, things that Hissl does not understand.

"Still, they have not felt the winter, and the number of cairns grows. By spring . . ." He raises his eyebrows and smiles.

In the spring and early summer, Ildyrom and his people will be busy planting. Hissl nods to himself.





XLV



A LOW FIRE burned in the bathhouse stove, but the building- still open inside except for the three jakes stalls at the north end-remained chill.

Nylan washed and shaved his several days' worth of beard in one of the laundry tubs. He looked wistfully to his right, at the unfinished showers, and at the piles of slate stone and powdered mortar heaped in the middle of the room. While there was water to the ceramic nozzles, he and Huldran still had to finish the stone floors, or all they would have would be frozen clay. He took a deep breath and splashed away skin, whiskers, and blood.

After washing, he rinsed his waste water down the floor drain, with a breath of relief as the water gurgled out of sight. He hoped the combination of deeply buried drain lines and the outfall covering-and oversizing-would be enough to get them through the winter.

Wearing just a tattered pair of trousers-spoils, again- he walked the length of the bathhouse, along the already packed clay of the east side, and through the archway into the tower and up the stairs, all four flights to the top level.

Ryba had already dressed, and was pulling on her boots as Nylan stripped off the leather trousers and donned his working shipsuit. She stood and straightened the blanket as he struggled into the leather boots.

"It looks like a storm is coming in hard," she said. "Can you finish the bathhouse?"

"The inside will take a day or two more. We've got the jakes and the laundry area finished." Nylan walked over to the sole armaglass window and looked up at the dark clouds boiling out of the northwest, cloaking Freyja in blackness, with snow thickening and dropping to shroud the lower parts of the western peaks and the heights behind the tower.

A thin layer of ice covered the window ledge outside the casement, and the engineer watched as one flake, then another, dropped onto the ice, melding with it and turning transparent, the black-gray stone showing through.

The flakes thickened, and even the lower sections of Freyja disappeared in the snow that seemed so white near the tower and so dark in the distance. The ground remained brown, with a few white patches.

Nylan closed the armaglass window, and the shutters. When he looked down, he realized that he had stood before the open window long enough for a small pile of flakes to accumulate, but as he watched, the whiteness faded into a damp splotch on the roughly smoothed plank floor.

"Why did you close the shutters?" asked Ryba, fully dressed in her shipsuit, and even wearing a black ship jacket. "It looks like midnight in here that way. I can't see in pitch-blackness, the way you can."

"We're going down to the main level, and no one's going to be here." He walked around the couches toward where the marshal of Westwind stood.

"That makes sense, but it still bothers me when it's so dark."

"It's going to be a long and dark winter."

"You are so cheerful this morning."

"I try," he answered.

They walked down the long stone steps, the sounds of their boots echoing away from the stairwell and into the open levels they passed. Several marines were still dressing on the third level, but none looked toward Nylan and Ryba.

The tables were largely full, and even Murkassa sat at the end, on Istril's right, while Hryessa sat on the slim trooper's left. Istril looked at the bread on her trencher, but had not lifted it.

Did she look pale? Nylan smiled, getting a quick and faint smile in return as he followed Ryba toward the head of the table and the hearth.

After he slid onto the bench, Nylan poured the bark-and-root tea into the dark brown mug. The tea's taste was still bitter, but warming. He reached for the dark bread.

"A storm like this won't last," predicted Relyn, sitting at the last seat on the window side of the first table. "The snowflakes are too large."

"The snow will bring a long rest," pronounced Narliat. His cloak was wrapped tightly around him, and he glanced toward the cold hearth.

"I'm glad for the rest," announced Huldran.

"You don't get one. Not yet," said Nylan. "We've still got the shower floors and partitions to install."