Ancient white cliffs ruled by family's snow-turned blood
Born to cold and born to wind, cragged throne their view.
Princess Bone one of that line, snowborn in dead bud,
A cold ice face, a spear of frost. 'Ware that blade called Rue.

—

Pak was healing up and the walga's blubber was all drained into the slow-boiling cauldrons outside. Two of them, not half bad. Cel was curing the intestines for cloth. Aardal and me had buried the flippers to marinate for a treat later.

Wouldn't have expected the distress call. Popped up on Inge's comm like one of the small rainbow miragefish you only see when the sun's high in summer seas, so quick you scarce believe your eyes until they're gone.

"Help us," Cat's voice said. In the recording Inge showed her helmet was cracked and she was sitting in dark somewhere. "Approximate coordinates delivered. Blizzard. Cold. Wounded. Supplies. Help us, before..."

Then she blinked out, and Inge's rejack couldn't find her. Somewhere up by the high marker.

"Aardal, take care of the traps and mind the cave," I said. "You and Thane guard, got it? Rest of us are going." I'd already reached for Pak's saddle from the wall. The kid caught it was serious: he gave a nod and went about helping us to set off, quick and silent. Cel's healer's chest, dry meat and dragon chow, fresh water in insulated flasks, dry parkas, signal flares. climbing ropes, markers. Because if you don't step out to rescue folk in Ikiaq, nobody else will. We left our packed dirt floor clean and rode out.

Markers are life and death in the White Cliffs—and especially in Ikiaq, among high places. The alinak mount was a higher climb than most we hunted on. And the snows didn't let up.

Stupid lowlanders: didn't even think to check weather.

"Signal still intact," Inge's muffled voice confirmed from the rear. Markers were your lifeline: plant them and they read the ground for you so you'd not go off a cliff. A hunter's eye filled in the rest. Cel and Hemlock followed me, shielding Inge and her equipment from the worst of the storm.

We took the track fast as we could; strain too far and there's no use to anyone. For all the storming we made better time than the last hunt, Hemlock and Mauja marching uncomplainingly behind. It was nearly a day's reach even so.

You could see where the rocks had fallen again, even in flying snow and too-fast-coming night. Seemed the blizzard had died down a touch since the call, but not nearly enough to make it warm. About there was the marker I'd left, still blinking into our sensors. Inge tried for Cat again and picked up static. She started setting up for a better seisgraph scan. There are times it's well to know a bit of caving.

Cel and I had just gotten a shelter fixed up when Inge spoke. "It's riddled with caverns below the mountain's surface. Much more than I thought. I'm surprised you and Pak didn't fall in."

"I took care not to," I said. "Saw a burrow..."

"Weakest point's, oh—scrim these wires, scrim the storm—about there. Let me take another look. Got it. That's where you start digging!"

Rescue work's got to be done slow. Praise the Skylady we'd not had much of it before. We took turns, shifting the digging two at a time; it was deceptively warm work and we kept eating to make sure we'd the strength. Inge powered magflares to light our way—and if we weren't lucky draw attention we didn't want. The snow flew in yellow clouds through our light, and below the rocks it was dark work. Cel's Hemlock worked with Pak and me while Inge took a break. Cat's signal was still there, but Inge couldn't sweettalk it up.

Then at last we broke through. Night had truly fallen, the temperature dropped deep down; at least the snowfall had died a bit. Cat had already been trapped here a night before we could make it, and who knew what fool things she'd have done. Her dragon was a lowlander kind, a skinny dark red two-legs, though Viviane seemed to know a few gear tricks on how to keep warm. But there was nothing more we could do than dig—and be willing to carry out a blue corpse or two at the end of it.

"Got it," Cel said. The last stone Hemlock had dragged aside led the way to something, a black spot that began the caverns. We widened the entry big enough for a human. I stuck a flare in my belt.

"I'm roping down. Widen the hole and keep up the comm," I said. Inge'd narrowed down the coords of Cat's comm close enough. Deeper and to the south-west.

"Done."

You could see gaping cracks above and to the sides of the passage we'd dug into, signs of the rockfalls that plagued it. I aimed the belt flare firmly down at a trace of motion, and an anklebiter scuttled away from the light. Smaller than any dragon pup's feet—but their teeth chew through dragon scale and bone in one go and they've never found a mineral they can't eat. Rockbreakers, some call the anklebiters, and if you go putting your clumsy feet on their territory you deserve the missing limbs you're about to get.

If this whole cave network was the work of a mass of rockbreakers, hollowing out the whole mountain, tens of thousands all at once...

I had the sudden image of a wreck of rockbreakers running like a herd of rats away from a flood, a huge brown mass eating everything in their path. That'd leave nothing of Cat or her dragon to find. But anklebiters are loners: rarely more than one in a clawstep's worth of territory. I hated anklebiters. Even if you kill them, which isn't hard to do if you know how and they don't bite you first, there's nothing from the deal—they're too unpleasant to eat and those teeth rot away too fast to use.

I kept the flare burning bright and checking the caves. I don't like close dark spaces much, but you deal with it. Seisgraph readings on my wrist didn't show any impending rockfalls. I was leaving rappel rope behind connected to the top. I expected to find more blocks to clear, but I turned into a passage big enough for a dragon.

"Hey, Inge, hear me?"

"Loud and clear. Looks to me you've a way forward for fifty clawtracks or so, then turn down and let me know status."

"Send Pak in. Wide enough for him."

"Must be why he keeps stamping on the snow and glaring at you over comm. Done." Pak could follow my trail overlain by camphor stink blind if he had to.

The cave walls here were white and smooth and moist, lined with orange and red mineral lines. They twisted into odd bulging shapes like lowlander plums—no taste quite like that. I couldn't see trace of Cat; she would've come down another way, probably below that main slide. My comm beeped again. Getting closer to her. This mountain had too much space and too little mountain. Pak's footsteps echoed behind me down the cave trails. I heard a faint ominous rumble.

"Switchrate, Sedna. Seisgraph shows it could get worse. Mauja and I are coming down," Inge said. Hemlock hated small spaces; and Cel's sawbones skill wasn't worth a damn thing without the strength down there to get them out. "Down then you should be at a forty-five angle. You'll have to clamber over a rockfall but there's space."

I'd entered a tall cave, so large that my flare didn't reach the ceiling. It reminded me that there must be only a thin crust of stone under the snowline above. There was space to swing up on Pak's back, and he stepped over the mound of white and grey stones fallen in from the fragile left wall. There was heavy dust in the air. Then we went down again. Cracks ran through the pale cave walls.

"It's me," Cel said on the comm, static in his voice. "Hear me? There's readings from there that aren't good for getting messages. Mauja and Inge are on their way. Try a hail down the next passage."

It was narrow, too narrow for Pak. I wriggled past the rock, flare in my hands, scaring another anklebiter down. Air blew up from below, so it must widen. I called, then a second time.

A faint human voice answered. Behind me my feet skidded on the smooth cold rock. I lost control and skimmed down the tunnel; near landed on my head in a floor full of pebbles. I yelled again. "Heyal!"

Wall stability didn't look so good here. Frost rimed cracked walls and a fall stopped the way out of this cavern. I picked up my flare; it sputtered from its fall. "Heyal!"

"Sedvay!" Cat's voice came back at me, the human's answer to that. Alive. I picked my comm from my belt and tried to tune in close to her.

She spoke back, clear enough. "Move the stones," she said, all cold business. "There's a large tablet that we don't have the leverage to move. Be careful; it is wedged against the ceiling. And we need medical care."

"We'll get you out first." I tried to ping Cel, but it was all static; then Inge, coming up behind. She was there and ready. We widened that hole for the dragons to drop down despite the rumbles in the earth that grew a bit, then started work. Too quick means death underground; you plan each time you move a piece of rock aside.

"Seisgraph...hour," we heard Cel manage to break through briefly after another sound deep under this hollowshell mountain. We hurried.

There was the tablet Cat could see on her side: a large smooth thing with faint frost marks on its surface, striped by clear glittering veins. If we hadn't been on a rescue mission I might have thought of splitting it to sell.

"What's your status, Cat? Is Viviane mobile?" I asked. Inge and Mauja fixed ropes to the big oval stone.

"Viviane and I are both ready. As is Sanguin Pur." She tilted her view back to a second dragon: a widefaced brown thing with strange curved horns turning inward on each of her cheeks. "It is Draveed who needs aid."

Then she showed us a sallow sweating middle-aged man groaning and feverish, a bloody bandage around his head. Someone she'd told. He looked aged enough to be Cat's father, old in a lowlander's way instead of Ikiaq's weathering and wounding and shrivelling on folk as they managed to get older.

"We'll lift him. Get the dragons ready." Inge fixed the pulleys on Pak and Mauja; I gave them word on how to move that thing. We all pulled, ropes on both sides—then it came down with only a small spill of pebbles. But the roof creaked. There wasn't time.

Cat was shivering cold and it was plain the dragons weren't better. Viviane was burdened with a long heavy-looking case covered by cloth as well as an ordinary travel pack, and I wondered why. Draveed couldn't walk: a soaked bloody bandage was wrapped around his foot, which was missing parts.

"What are those...those bloody things called? The tiny ones..." he mumbled.

"Can tell you about anklebiters after we get you out of here." His dragon was troublingly big, bigger than Pak; Inge and I helped him up onto Mauja, tightening his bandages. I didn't bother sparing another glance up at the ceiling.

"Wait," Draveed said; the croak of it was loud enough for me to give the old man a bit of attention. "Take one last look, Catacomb."

We saw all around the cavern, flare-lit. Two of the walls were iced over, pure white; and there was one strange thing. A stone stair stood toward the back wall, and there was nothing for it to stand on. I'd have thought it was magged, but you can see a mag. There're small gimmors some can pull with iron filings too, but none of them work on stone. The strangest thing I'd ever seen.

"I see it but I don't know what I'm seeing," Inge said slowly. "How does it work?"

"I have mounted the stone stair, Master," Cat said. "I have taken the memory in mind and heart."

"Very well. Why don't you try it, rescuer?" Draveed asked Inge, looking down at her from his spot on Mauja. She obeyed, for all we were running short on time. I looked with her at the thing and saw the trick of it myself then, and it wasn't any more the strangest I'd seen. Transparent ice held that stair in place, up and around it, melted partway atop it—you just couldn't see at some angles. Tricks and dreams and illusions. You need those on a hunt like an anklebiter in your bed. Inge studied it; hopped up for herself; and then other stairs came into being, firing up the walls like sparkling diamonds came out there, stairs of light—

It had sunk when she'd stepped on it, and the reflections in the ice captured our flares. The glittering stairway paved all the way up the cave's high white walls. Lights shining in ice looked a way to clamber somewhere completely new. The dragons lowed as if they were impressed the same. Just illusion. You could see Inge working it out for herself. But I heard Cat's gasp, as if she'd been short of the right weight to get that effect when she'd tried it. Inge took a deep breath and stepped back off and the light show ended. Cat pouted and above the roof shook again. We'd wasted far too long a time.

"Ride out!" I snapped. Back the way we'd come, Draveed's big thing squeezing herself slender enough to fit with a bit of pull. I led; the big dragon brought up the rear behind Cat, because if we had to leave her behind we'd lose no other lives. Cel's face came back to my wristcomm.

"Go west!" he snapped. "Seisgraph's trouble!" I heard another low rumble; Pakak knew to pick up the pace. Mauja kept up even with two on her. Then I could hear the rocks falling behind us, taking away that cavern we'd seen with the strange stone stair.

"Cat, drop the extra baggage!" I yelled back to her. Viviane was awkward, slowing with that extra thing strapped to her—

The ground turned to ice. Gearpads for Pak and Mauja spread out over their feet for grip. Long thick sheets of ice over stone, icy stalactites pointed down. We train our dragons to skid well, but in narrow spaces it's still hard to keep without crashing. Pak sped up.

Cat's travel pack was off her, but Viviane was slowing on the ice. She slipped out of view as Pak and I went round an icy corner full speed ahead. It was a huge dark column rooted in the caves that looked for all the world as if human or dragon had carved it, like a long staff shoved inside a hollow flourcake.

Rescue mission—slow down, Sedna!

"Ice fall ahead!" Cel said. "Hurry—" Pak caught a grip on rougher ice and we slowed. The earth rumbled. It shook, and then below all our feet was a sea of ice. The ground turned; sharp ice rained down from the ceiling; I looked back to Mauja running.

"Cat! Lose the gear now!" I ordered her. Pak jumped out of the way of heavy ice. The rumbling didn't stop. Mauja caught up; I saw the man behind Inge get hit a glancing blow. The ground under us heaved. The track below our feet moved and shifted into unstable scree and crumbling sharp ice and stone.

Scrim it scrim it all! beat inside me. I couldn't hear Cel's hysterics in the rumbles, then he cut off. He'd feel this too. Mauja got past, but the heaving sea of ice behind us was rising up around Cat and I couldn't see that other dragon behind her.

"Inge! Ride on!" I shouted. "Cat you scrimming milkfed lowlander!"

Pak and I turned back. We rode the rolling waves like a seadragon. There wasn't any time to feel trapped beyond hope. I saw Cat and Viviane trying to fight their way through it all. She still hadn't ditched the dragging cargo, minescrim her death wish. Her face was ashen and frightened. I flung a grapple hook. There was no chance to aim it proper but Cat seized it. Her dragon grew long black gear that skidded her feet along. Pak and I tried to pull her out through all the madness, and just behind her that great big brown shrugged off a stalactite direct to the skull and ran.

"Ditch the scrimming thing!"

"More than my life!" she screamed back, and a shock had us flying along. Pak and I pulled at the line to stop her and Viviane spreading themselves over a lump of dark grey rock. My flare flickered out and then we were skidding along in a completely dark corridor; then mercifully it came back on. Ride the rolling floors and pray to Skylady there was end—

Then Draveed came flying through the air. It was the big dragon's magpull, like nothing I'd seen before—not that such niceties bother you when you're running for life. Down he came behind. Cat and Viviane and Pak and I all fought for balance. We were skidding down to a mountain wall. There was nowhere to turn to. Above on the shifting cave roof in that frantic dash I saw a silver glint in the light of the flare—

Then a magburst brilliant as a firecharge burst open the wall to save us. An instant later Pak skidded through, helping Viviane keep up behind us. The big dragon thundered behind. Fresh air blew at last, but the cave opening was too high to jump. A crack like lightning sounded behind us.

"Get out!" Draveed called. He raised his hands for another blast. Pak flew. The burst carried all four of us, flying up and shoving us out of there. Then like a great mouth a wide black crack ran along Draveed's ground. I was spinning through the air, impossibly. I looked down. The magstream was painfully bright and widened like a fountain, making us fly. Draveed's face was fever bright and the dragon howled. It spun me up for a moment and for a single instant I saw Cat's cargo with the cloth ripped from it: it was a heavy-looking glass box and a shrivelled grey man-shaped thing inside it, and the word that came to mind was coffin. It was disgusting. I looked down again and the quake caught up to Draveed and the dragon in the last of their magpush.

The black maw spread below their feet and they fell. The last I saw of them was disappearing into the black as the mag fired one last time to send us spinning out. Rocks and ice fell above them, and I thought that at the last I heard a scream.

Snow was packed around my head. Pak stirred by my side. The mountain looked near the same as always. A fall of grey rocks was already being covered over by snowfall. There was a cut on my forehead I didn't remember getting, and Pak's feet were hurt badly. I flung my arms around his neck.

"Sedna."

Catacomb stalked through the snow. Her helmet was separated, cracked in two; her clothing tattered; ragged skin torn over her left cheek. She looked as if she'd lived through a war.

"Sedna. You and Pakak are alive. Draveed is...not." Her feet dragged one by one in the snow. "Tetelestai."

—