Ice and Shadow Read Free Page A

itself was cut by walks gleaming white-bright in the moonlight and there were beds of flowers formally arranged. But what kept Roane from withdrawing at once was that there were men busy in the garden. They worked in pairs, six in all, and the couples were setting up in the ground posts which supported large grotesque figures. Each one of these weird effigies bore on one forelimb an oval shield painted with a complicated sign, while the other forepaw, or claw, gripped the pole of a small banner.
    These were being placed in line to face the lower story of the tower, and the work seemed to be no light task. The effigies were of animals or birds, or in one case a crowned and shrouded humanoid thing. But all were strange to Roane and she wondered if they had some allegorical significance.
    Why they must be put in place in the middle of the night was the puzzle, and she watched until the last was braced in place. Then the men disappeared toward the buildings along a single cobbled street running to the main gate in the wall. Outside the fortress-like wall there were two lines of houses built of the same stone as the keep, but they were much smaller, the largest only two stories high. Their roofs were slabs of stone slanting sharply from the peaks, the ends of those turning up to be carved into heads of beasts.
    It was a keep, a village, in miniature. And though it looked different from the tri-dee she had been shown, she knew it for Hitherhow—the principal royal hunting lodge of Reveny.
    Did the setting up of the figures mean that the King was coming? If so, what would such activity in the forest mean to her own party? Of course the distorts would protect them. But if there were many hunters abroad, they would have to hide until the chase was over, and Uncle Offlas was not going to take kindly to that loss of time.

CHAPTER 2

    “WHAT DID THEY SAY IN BRIEFING?” Uncle Offlas was pacing up and down, chewing at his thumbnail, an old sign of deep drought. Now he rounded on Roane with that question. “Who might be coming—the King?”
    “King Niklas is an old man, judging by planet years—would he be hunting?”
    “I am asking you. You saw the tri-dees the snooper robots brought in.”
    “They weren’t sure about anything. If it isn’t the King—” Roane thought of the possibilities. “His children are all dead. He has one granddaughter—Princess Ludorica—”
    Sandar laughed. “Now that’s a mouth filler! How do they think up such names?”
    “Be quiet! A princess—who else?” Uncle Offlas demanded.
    “Why does it matter?” His son refused to be subdued.
    “It matters a great deal, you fool! The rank of the hunter can govern the number of followers he brings along.”
    Sandar flushed. Uncle Offlas was really upset or he would never have been so short with his son. She hurried to tell the rest she knew.
    “There’s a Duke Reddick, a distant cousin of the King but a lot younger. That’s all the snoops picked up.”
    “With all the preparations you saw”—Uncle Offlas fretted his lower lip with the nail he had been chewing on earlier—“it has to be one of the royal line. If it’s the Princess we may be a fraction safer—she might be less keen on hunting. But I don’t like such activity so close. It might be well to take day watches until we do know who comes. Time!” He balled his right hand into a fist and brought it down forcibly into the palm of the left. “We have to make the best time we can. The longer we remain planet-planted, the better chance of discovery—”
    Sandar’s head was up, he was sniffing the rising wind. “There’ll be cover today; storm coming. But it won’t be good to be out in it—”
    His father had swung around in the same direction. The thin gray of dawn did seem to be more dusky than usual. And they could all see massing clouds.
    “Several hours before that breaks. Roane,” he said to her, “you take first watch, before the storm. Report in with this if it is