He nodded and unstrapped a big duffel from the back of the snowmobile. She unhooked the Chairman from his fluffy space pod, and he leapt down into the snow, immediately sinking in a puff of white. He yowled indignantly, and she leaned down to pull him out. “We’ve learned our lesson now, haven’t we?”
He hissed at her. She laughed, but made a vow to remember to watch out for him around the deeper snow in the future.
Warren tromped through the snow over to her machine, unhooked her duffel and swung it over his shoulder. “Are there any magics we should be concerned about?”
She looked up at the looming gray stone and twinkling glass. Technically, the buildings were too old to have such huge plate-glass windows. Magic had been used to create them, and magic had kept them from breaking over the last millennium. “I assume so. Magic, or something else entirely, is holding this place together. It’s too old to be in such good condition. Whether or not there are protective spells in place, I don’t know.”
“We’ll tread cautiously, then.”
They set off for the nearest street that spilled out onto the glacier. The gray cobblestone was completely free of snow.
“It’s like they left yesterday,” Esha said as she poked the stone with the toe of her clunky boot. She wasn’t getting any negative vibes, but then, because she was a soulceress, she probably wouldn’t. She glanced at Warren and he looked fine, so she stepped onto the street, where gray stone walls rose high on either side of her. “All clear.”
She put the Chairman on the cobblestones and the three of them walked down the narrow street. None of the buildings had doors, and it was so eerily quiet and perfect that it made her nervous.
“Wait, where the hell are we?” Warren asked.
“What? We’ve only been on this street for a minute.”
Warren turned in a circle, brow scrunched. Gods, he was handsome, with his gleaming hair and green eyes. Even when he was confused. “Aye. I should be able to see back onto the glacier at the end of the street. I canna. I doona even know which way we’ve come from. It all looks the same.”
“Oh. Wow. There must be a disorientation spell. Only soulceresses can navigate through the city.” They’d reached a crossroads of five streets, two of which led upward via stone stairs. It was like a labyrinth of gray stone and glittering glass. “We’ll have to stay together.”
“Aye, no kidding. Any sense of where the temple might be?”
She looked around. “No. I’m pulled in four directions—the compass points—where important buildings might be. Or something that is important to me. I don’t know which.”
“All right. We should find a base camp first. Night is going to fall soon. Damn northern sunset.”
She nodded and turned left, down the widest and most inviting road. Everything was so monochromatic: gray stone upon gray stone, broken only by the sheen of glass windows. There were doors on this street, though, and she picked one that she guessed was a residence.
“Here goes nothing,” she said, and pushed the door open.
Light filtered in to reveal the front room of a shop. Fabric in hundreds of hues spilled from the shelves and the forms of faceless mannequins. She swallowed hard. Fabric shouldn’t last a thousand years in these conditions without disintegrating. There was some kind of magic at work here, and it was strong.
“Wrong place,” she said, and backed out.
They walked down the street until they reached another crossroads, this one with six streets. She chose right this time, and when she pushed open another door, it led to the foyer of a home. Again, a bright profusion of color gleamed from every surface. Carpet, paint, draperies, all in shades of green and yellow and blue.
“Looks good,” Warren said over her shoulder.
The Chairman hurtled across the threshold and out of the cold like he’d been ejected from a slingshot. He was as sensitive to threats as she was, and if he deemed it safe, she assumed she could too. After all, the soulceresses had never fought to protect this place. They’d lived here peacefully and in secret, then abandoned it as soon as the Vikings had landed on their shores in their longboats. So there was nothing to be afraid of, right?
“Strange place,” Warren said.
“Yes.” Strange to think that hundreds of soulceresses and soulcerers had lived here. Esha had never met even one, yet there had been a time when there were enough of them to create this great city.
They stripped off their snowsuits and snow boots and explored the house in silence. The bottom floor, with its opulent living areas and ancient kitchen, the upper floor with four bedrooms and no internal plumbing, and finally, the basement. Torches mounted to the wall along the stairs were ready to be lit. With a flick of her hand, they burst into light.
“Holy shit,” Esha breathed when they reached the bottom of the stairs. They’d descended into a stone grotto. The torches illuminated three steaming pools of clear blue water, natural hot springs that heated the air with humid warmth.
“This is how the rest of the house is heated,” Warren said. “But how the hell is it here, in the middle of a damned glacier?”
“Magic, like the rest of this place. Iceland has loads of hot springs. It looks like the soulceresses diverted some and built their houses over them.” She walked over and dipped a hand in. “It’s nice. Not too hot. I doubt it does much to melt the ice, and magic can help with what little harm it might cause.”
The Chairman was batting at the water, no doubt looking for the phosphorescence that he’d found back at the howf.
“My ability to navigate works in the house,” Warren said. “I’ve still got no idea how to get out of the city, but I doona have a problem here.”