by J. S. Fields
Sameer coughed. “No. And I’m definitely going with you two to the glacier. I don’t want you getting lost and spooking some other village that I contract with. I’m charging for my guide services, though, and it won’t be cheap.”
“Fine,” Magda cut in. “You can name your price after we get to Celtis. Now, Sorin, the foxfire?”
I shrugged. “It’s no more dangerous than any other foxfire. Not that I can tell.”
Magda slid from her horse and shouldered her pack without argument. She stepped onto the trail as Sameer and I dismounted and took our own packs. She nudged a cluster of foxfire with the side of her foot, and frowned. “Their light is helpful, with the dense canopy. Sorin, you’ll have to lead.”
Sameer laughed.
“I’m pretty good in a forest,” I said to him as I moved onto the trail, and the fungi lit again to their ghostly green. Though the skin on the back of my neck prickled, I took another step, and in the space of a heartbeat, a winding path of foxfire flared to life on the packed dirt and snow of the trail.
“Yes, you’re definitely not a witch. You have me convinced.” Sameer kicked at a cluster of foxfire. Several caps broke from their stipes and fell into the snow. Color bled from the flesh until it was as white as its surroundings.
There was no point in arguing with him. I tossed my cloak over my shoulder and turned away from the village of Miantri. With a sigh, I led Magda and Sameer down a glowing trail of fungi into the northern wood.
*
Half a day later, the foxfire grew so profuse and thick I had to stomp it down just to stay on the trail. More worrying was that the wind blew milder nearest the foxfire, and the temperature ran higher. The farther we strayed from the path, whether to collect water or to relieve ourselves, the more the actual weather beat upon us until it became a chill that felt like it might break our bones. So we stayed on the magical fungal trail probably made a century ago by the old king for some nefarious purpose, and I fumed silently about magic, and witches, and my brother.
As the conifers around us shortened to head height, then waist, then finally to scrubby bushes, the fungi spun closer together until there was no path, only a thick carpet of stalked green. Underneath that, the ground transitioned to rocky pellets of ice, colored dirty brown from mixing with the soil. Another hour in and I could finally see the glacier, an enormous expanse of white and blue that stretched on into the horizon.
Gods, it was beautiful. It was terrifying. I’d never imagined so much ice, nor the surprising colors that lurked within it. I saw blues and purples mixed with dirty grays and, of course, the omnipresent white. Tall, jagged outcroppings jutted from the surface—hours away, perhaps, but terrifying nonetheless. They looked like spears, like some Puget god had sent deadly icicles raining from the heavens to pierce the ice below.
“We’re really going to walk on that?” I asked. I stopped and pointed to one of the ice towers. “Avalanche? Crushing?”
Sameer brushed past me, his shoulder hitting mine hard enough to force me forward. I scowled but didn’t push back. If he fell and cracked his head on the ice, witches would be the least of my concerns. Guilders did not look fondly on violence from outside their ranks.
Sameer took the funny axe from his pack and flipped it in his hand. “They’re just seracs, and we’ll try to stay clear if possible. We’re not going past any villages, mostly because they’re farther up the glacier, but also, I’m not subjecting them to whatever is going on with you.”
He pointed to the path, which ended abruptly at the glacier’s edge. I walked to the end of it, then stepped onto the glacier proper. Immediately, the fungi stopped glowing.
“Uh-huh.” Sameer came up next to me, followed by Magda. Without the heat from the magic foxfire, the air was almost too cold to bear. I pulled the old cloak tightly about my shoulders and clutched handfuls of the fabric to cover my hands.
“The glacier’s preamble here will take us directly to Puget if we follow it, although we’ll have to move farther into the glacier some places since there are a few lakes up here we should avoid.” Sameer looked back at Magda and held up a hand before she had even started to speak. “No side trips. Four generations haven’t been able to find Iana’s Lake, and we’re not going to either.”
Magda stared at Sameer for several moments before shaking her head and heading east. Sameer grinned, then leaned in and tugged at my cloak. I pulled away and kicked a chunk of stony ice toward him.
“I think she likes me,” he said. “It’s probably my curly hair.”
If I’d had a sword, I’d have considered running him through. My cheeks burned. “Why are you still here?” I demanded. “We’re at the glacier. Your promise to the villagers is met.”
Sameer’s grin turned down, into features almost cruel. “Because I’ve waited a long time to talk to you, Sorin of Thuja. Somewhere you can’t run away, and where Amada can’t come to your rescue. And a glacier on the top of the world, away from all the people who love you and insist on smothering you with protection? It sounds about perfect.”
Sixteen: Mercury
We walked in a single-file line, sometimes with Magda in the lead, sometimes Sameer, for the rest of the day. Though the view to my north was majestic, my cloak could not keep out the cold, and the ice was too unpredictable to walk side by side, even to share heat. By the time we reached one of the thermal lakes that dotted the glacier—lakes being a generous name for what were often no more than puddles—I could no longer feel my toes or fingertips.
“Take a minute to warm up,” Sameer called out. He picked his way over to the bank and took his hands from his cloak to warm them in the steam.
“Sorin, would you walk with me?”
I was looking forward to the warmth, but the catch in Magda’s voice, while subtle, was enough to get my attention. I scrambled over to her, crunching the softer, slushier ice that surrounded the small lake. It was easier to walk here, with the added traction, and Magda took my hand and led me around until we were on the opposite bank from Sameer.
“Are you all right?” I looked across the water to Sameer, who watched us with interest.
Magda growled. “Would you come closer, Sorin?”
“Uh, yes? How close?” We were already next to each other, so I stepped in front of her. To my surprise, Magda moved forward until we were only a handspan apart, then wrapped her cloak around us both.
“Magda?” I welcomed the warmth of the double cloak and the tang of metal that seemed to radiate from her clothes and skin. “What are we doing?”
Magda wrapped her arms around my waist and pulled me against her. I caught my breath at the softness of her chest against mine. I tried to find somewhere to put my hands and finally settled on her waist. “Distraction,” Magda whispered into my ear. “I need to talk to you, and I’d prefer he think we’re doing something else.”
I looked back over Magda’s shoulder, and Magda turned to look as well. Sameer had started to come toward us but was slowing, his nose turned up.
A look of irritation crossed Magda’s face. “Damn him,” she murmured and then lowered her head and kissed me just below my ear, on the soft skin of my neck.
Sameer blinked, then stalled.
It was possible my heart was going to stop beating.
Magda lingered, trailing a line of soft kisses up to my ear. I gasped and pressed into her. As a diversionary tactic, it was ideal. Unfortunately, Sameer wasn’t the only one being distracted.
“I want to know about witches. Now.”
It was hard to find enough air to talk. It was hard to think about anything except her breasts, and her hands, and the way her hip shifted against my thigh.
“They’ve been after me since Sorpsi, I think—” Magda brushed her lips against mine, enough to tease but not enough to truly make contact. I whimpered, but she’d already moved on to my chin and neck. “That’s why we were attacked on the road, I think, as well as the guildhall. There’s been one speaking to me and tryi
ng to get me to turn back. I don’t know if it’s affiliated with the men who came after me in Thuja. They were sent by some master witch, for Mother. It’s—” I lost my train of thought as Magda’s lips brushed my own again. This time, I leaned in, determined for more than teasing contact.
“Keep talking,” Magda whispered. She pulled back and moved her attention to my jaw. “I want to get everything out before we talk to Sameer.”
“You try talking while a princess kisses you,” I retorted. “This isn’t fair.”
Magda snorted and nipped at my neck. “There’s nowhere private to go on a glacier. And I’m the royal daughter, not a princess. We’re not a kingdom, and I’m not just a well-bred broodmare.”
I almost giggled. Almost. “Do you think we’ll find any masters through here, Magda? Our mothers maybe? Confused guilders?”
Again, Magda’s lips pressed just below my ear, and her skin felt warm and fluttering and perfect. “As far as I know, there is only one path from Miantri to Celtis. If guilders are fleeing to Puget, or farther, then they have to come this way. With luck, we will come across a few.”
I touched my forehead to hers. Gods, how I wanted to kiss her, or have her kiss me. Properly, though, no more of this gentle touching that threatened my sanity. It being a ruse would be irrelevant. There were no rules on a glacier, no statuses, no guilds. No one owned this land except those who trod across it. But Mother nagged at my mind and kept me back from what should have been a joyful moment.
“Where are our mothers, Magda?” I whispered into her ear. “What happened? Even if you don’t know, what do you suspect?”
Magda sighed. “Witches, sweetheart. I know nothing, but I suspect witches.”
I let her words rattle around my head as she tucked a strand of hair behind my ear. “Kidnapped?”
Magda didn’t respond, but her eyes turned serious, and her mouth set in a grim line.
“Magda, tell me.”
“How about we talk about Sameer instead? Do you trust him?”
“Magda!” I stomped my foot, which nearly slid out from under me. Magda caught me by my elbow, but when our eyes met again, mine simmering with frustration, she did the last thing I’d ever have expected out on this frigid slick of water and death.
She kissed me.
Her lips were warm—so much warmer than the air. One arm wrapped around my waist, the other tangled in my hair. I was so startled I didn’t think to grab onto her as well. Instead, I traced her lips with my own, melted into her arms and the thousands of memories we shared. Gods, she was perfect. We were perfect. I felt her tongue, her teeth, her hips, her thighs pressed to mine, and it filled me in places I hadn’t known were empty.
“Sorin,” Magda whispered as she pulled back. I whimpered and grabbed her hand, determined not to resume our previous conversation. I’d waited too long for this. So had she.
“We have to talk about Sameer.”
“I don’t care about Sameer,” I grumbled.
Magda’s smile broadened. “I understand, but he’s still here and seems unlikely to leave. He’s competent on this ice, so I don’t mind having him along. But it seems you and he have a history. Do you trust him?”
I blew out a breath of hot, humid air. “I don’t know him. Not like I’d know a foster that Mother took on. Not that she ever did, of course, guild law be damned.” I looked over Magda’s shoulder at Sameer, ten meters away now, who was making a very hard study of snowshoe hare tracks just off the game trail. The tips of his ears were red, and I doubted it was entirely from the cold.
“Sorin?”
I turned back. Magda’s eyes were serious, so I tried to focus on those, and not her lips, and how one of her hands was stroking the back of my neck.
“He’s my brother, Magda. Yet I never had one, not really.” I thought about the textile guildhall, and his reaction near the spirit house, and though my stomach churned and my arms started to itch, I shook my head. How many times had I asked, no, begged Mother for a sibling? For her to take just one foster? My blood brother was right here, and I couldn’t send him off, antagonistic or not. I didn’t know what he wanted from me, but I needed something from him, even if it was just a sense of family. “I…he wants to talk. To me. We have some history. He deserves to be heard, I think, even if he is a jerk.”
Magda smiled, then leaned in until our noses touched. “As long as he doesn’t endanger us.”
“Mmm,” I hummed through pressed lips. “I don’t really want to talk about my brother right now.”
Her voice turned conspiratorial. “More kisses come later—when we’re at an inn, and there is a bed, and we aren’t freezing. I promise.” She stepped back and took my hand, and pulled me toward the lake. “Come on. Let’s get warm.”
Some of us are already warm, and half a decade is plenty long enough to wait. I didn’t say that out loud, but instead, kicked a rock toward Sameer. He sighed and joined us at the lake edge, looking from me, to Magda, then back to me again.
“Was that really necessary?” he asked.
I shrugged and leaned into Magda. “She likes curly hair.”
“Could we just warm up and go?”
“Agreed.” Magda flipped her cloak back and held her hands out. I started to do the same, then paused when I finally noticed the lake. It was completely still. No waves beveled its surface, and even the air seemed to have ceased all movement. The lake waited to breathe, and I waited with it as warmth crept back into my body. It stretched well into the glacier proper, eating away at smooth walls of blue ice. Mountains rose all around its circumference, buffering and protecting.
No wonder people lived up here, outside the three countries. I’d brave the cold, too, to get a chance to see scenery like this every day.
A snowshoe hare darted across my feet and continued on, tracing the perimeter of the lake. It paused to drink some ten meters away, but while its little whiskers and tongue dipped into the water, the surface did not ripple.
“Magda,” I said, pointing to the hare.
“It’s a good idea, but I don’t have a bow with me anymore, and I can’t hit it with a rock hard enough to kill it from this distance.”
“You wouldn’t want to anyway,” Sameer said. “That lake is enchanted. No one knows what the old king used it for, so I wouldn’t trust any animal meat from up here. You can bathe in it—people routinely do—but I wouldn’t suggest drinking it.” Sameer kicked a rock into the water, and Magda and I both watched, wide-eyed, as it sank below the surface seamlessly, not even a small funnel forming in its wake.
Magda ran a hand over her braids, then pulled her cloak back around. “Fascinating and terrifying, but we don’t have time for either. Come on. Let’s keep going.” She walked back to the rocky path denoting the edge of the glacier and continued her careful footsteps east.
I started to follow, but then the snowshoe hare jumped into the lake. It splashed and thumped in the shallows. Each droplet of water that came back down left no indent, made no sound. When it hopped back out again, damp and joyful and completely unharmed, my curiosity got the better of me. It wasn’t like Mother was going to come bounding across the landscape and chastise me for wasting time. We had five minutes to spare, and there was no half-finished marquetry or floor that needed polishing. Besides, who was afraid of a lake?
“Hold on,” I called out. I’d never had a chance to study magic so closely, and without a witch around, it didn’t seem quite so…what? Invasive? Besides, this was old magic. Historical magic. It was degraded and probably completely benign. Some part of me, a younger part of me, didn’t want to miss an opportunity like this to study magic without a witch cracking jokes about body parts. It was a historical study, nothing more. Magic had an important place in society; otherwise, Iana would never have let the witches form a guild. If Iana could trust witches after what they’d done to her, so could I.
“Just be quick, Sorin,” Magda returned. “It’s getting colder by the minute.”
I tur
ned back, walked across the desolate patch of earth to the very edge of the water, and squatted down. A strip of old leather lay here, half buried in the slush, with the mark for the Eastgate shepherd’s guild stamped into it.
I tried not to think about a master shepherd bobbing, face down, on a glacial lake. Likely, it was from some purchased goods dropped by another traveler. Instead, I let the strange warmth of the water bring feeling back into my fingertips before I picked up a handful of slush and let it melt through my fingers. Nothing felt unusual. I touched the toe of my boot to the water’s edge and watched the lake curve around it. I had a wild notion to drop a few flakes of fungal pigment in, but memories of the interactions between them and the witch in Miantri quickly quashed that idea. No, it was time for a proper test. I wasn’t going to learn anything by proxy.
I unwrapped myself from my cloak, stuck out a finger, and slowly dragged it across the surface.
Water splashed up at my face. I jumped back and wiped my eyes on my sleeve. My first thought was the hare had come around, but there was nothing living about me, and Sameer and Magda were a good bit away, staring and pointing at a cluster of seracs in the distance. “Just try again,” I murmured, and squatted back down, finger out, ready for experiment number two.
But the stillness had not returned to the lake as I expected. I gaped down at the water where concentric rings now radiated out from the point where my finger had touched. The ripples moved into small waves, pushed by some invisible force. The lake frothed. I swore I saw a hand break the surface, then sink back down.
“Magda! Sameer!” I didn’t back away, not this time, but I wasn’t a complete idiot. If the lake was going to eat me, there needed to be witnesses. Clearly, it had already eaten someone else.
Magda and Sameer’s hurried footsteps approached, but I didn’t turn to look at them. Where I had touched my finger, the water sank, the focal point dropping away into a funnel of swirling blue. A small brown bulb—an amulet of some kind—spun around the edges of the funnel, rising higher and higher until it floated on top of the foam and glinted in the sunlight.