Through the Ice Read Online Free PDF

snake moving backwards."
    Rame looked alarmed. "Did it see you?" he asked urgently.
    "I don't think so. I was hiding. It didn't seem to have eyes, anyway."
    "It sees where it has been, through an eye in its mouth," Rame said. "It could be deadly to your cause. If my guess is correct."
    "We're in luck, then. I climbed a tree, and got into other trouble, and—what cause?"
    "It is not my place to tell you the specifics," Rame said soberly. "I don't think I know them all, as it is. You must avoid all serpents, dragons, snakes and lizards. They are all the eyes and ears of Nefarious the Sorcerer."
    "I have no idea what you're talking about!" Seth exclaimed, and the girl retreated nervously. However, his head and neck felt completely relaxed; her touch had been better than any medicine! "Dragons?"
    "Dragons! I realize this makes it sound very bad, but that is all I am able to tell you for certain. Before we leave, we shall feast, if your head is well now."
    "It is much better! I never felt such a healing touch!"
    "Yes, of course. Malape, fix a meal for our visitor." Then he looked puzzled. "I'm sorry, what is your name?"
    "Seth. Uh—leave?"
    "Yes, very soon."
    "We?"
    "I would not send you alone."
    "But you were shooting arrows at me!"
    "A misunderstanding, as I explained," Rame said. "But I didn't shoot at you; I shot to confine you without hurting you."
    Seth had to admit that this was so. His worst hurt had been from his own banging against the stalagmite. Now he discovered that not only was his pain gone, so were the scrapes on his head and neck. Malape had truly healed him!
    "The girl, Malape—you called her a hamadryad?—what is this power she has? All she did was put her hand on my head—"
    "Malape isn't a girl. She's a wood nymph—a creature who shares her life with a tree. Like all her kind, she is beautiful, and she has the power of healing minor scrapes, but she's very timid and not incredibly smart."
    "A nymph of a tree," Seth said, amazed. "But you are treating her like a servant!"
    "No, I merely tell her what I want, and she is glad to do it. In return I protect her and her tree from harm. When she screamed, I acted—too quickly, I now see. It is a fair exchange. It would be a burden on her to have to make a decision about a stranger. She knows I will not betray her interests, and that I have reason for what I ask of her."
    Seth looked at the nymph, who was now gathering things for the meal. Her skirt and blouse, he now saw, were fashioned of bark and leaves, somewhat like his own but far better fitting. Actually they were hardly more than slip and halter, with most of her torso and legs bare. There was only one term that properly described her, and that was luscious. "She does anything you ask, without question?"
    "Well, not anything. She won't leave her tree, for example, and no nymph is any good for intellectual games. But it is not necessary to spend the night in the open, as you did, if you are on good terms with a hamadryad."
    What would a satyr do with a lovely and completely obliging nymph, during the night? Seth decided that he didn't need to ask. This wasn't his world, after all.
    Malape fixed a magnificent meal, consisting of many different types of fruits and vegetables. Yet when he bit into them, they did not all taste the way they looked. Some had the taste of meats, and others of fish, and others of pasta and many other foods whose nature was foreign to his domesticated palate. Seth started to eat hesitantly, afraid of the effect of the alien food on his body. Soon, however, he felt no further need to be cautious, and ate with the hunger that his body had built up over the past two days. The fruit he had eaten before had not been enough; he realized that now.
    "You seem to enjoy our food," Rame commented politely.
    "It's fabulous, thank you!" Seth sputtered between bites of a fruit that tasted similar to ravioli.
    Once the edge was off his hunger, Seth ate more slowly, and talked with Rame. He