Icestorm

by Theresa Dahlheim

  “We’ll take the fishing boat you hired. It’s still here.”

  Graegor flinched as a particularly cold gust of wind stung his face and he thought of the sailors sitting in the open boat all day. “They must be chilly.”

  “Well, they did come prepared. They were bundled up in blankets and holding heat-rocks when I landed.”

  “That must have surprised them.” A fisherman’s day usually didn’t include a visit from a giant eagle.

  “They took it in stride. I renewed the spells on the heat-rocks and asked them to stay until we were ready. But yes, they’re probably pretty cold by now, and out of whatever food they brought.”

  “Let’s go, then.” Graegor held out his right hand.

  Contare raised his eyebrows, but reached out his own hand and clasped Graegor’s. They were both wearing gloves, but there was still a brief surge of power on both sides before the magical energies between them settled. Graegor pulled Contare up to his feet.

  “Will you to teach me to fly now?” he asked.

  Contare rolled his eyes, but he was almost smiling. “Maybe next year.”

  Chapter 8

  Graegor was not finished sleeping when Contare woke him the next morning. It was not even properly morning; when he opened his eyes in response to the calm but repeated telepathic call, no light yet leaked between the curtain panels covering his window. He felt the heaviness of deep sleep still pressing on him as he sent back wordless curiosity.

  “A guest is arriving for breakfast,” Contare explained. “Sorcerer Oran.”

  “Sorcerer Oran …”

  “He wants to talk to you about your visions, and he doesn’t want to wait any longer than necessary.”

  “You already told him about my visions?”

  “No. He called to me, just a little bit ago. I invited him to be here at first light.”

  The obvious assumption Graegor could make was that Oran had had a prophetic dream … about him, right after he had had a strange sort of waking-dream himself. His mind began to race even though his body was still slow with sleep, and he waved at a candle to light it before getting up and getting dressed. The dull soreness from the duel that had followed him to bed was nearly gone, and he stretched out some stiffness as he headed downstairs.

  Karl was helping Fiona set three places at the long table in the formal dining room. Candles were lit on the table, and a fire was laid on the hearth. Their greetings were quiet, as they all still felt the hush of the lingering night. In the kitchen, within the aromas of bread, ham, and eggs, Rhetta bustled at the two brick ovens, the roasting pit, and the huge iron stove. A dish of scraps for the neighborhood cats waited near the back door. Contare was sitting on a stool with his tea, and he nodded at the filled coffee press on the table under the window. “That’s probably ready now.”

  Graegor slowly pushed down the coffee press’s plunger, then filled a mug and stirred in a spoonful of cream. Last week, he’d told Jeffrei and his other friends at the Academy that he’d come to see them today while they were registering for the new term. He didn’t know how long Lord Oran planned to interrogate him, but it was probably best that he didn’t go to the Academy today anyway. The duel had made it impossible to do so inconspicuously.

  Graegor had once thought he’d be attending the Academy, with the same full course load as the magi, but even auditing one class each term was going to prove difficult with everything else Contare had set for him. Now he wasn’t sure if it was a good idea to spend any time on the campus at all. Ferogin had just as many friends there as Graegor did, and the idea of their personal enmity spilling over to the Telgard and Adelard magi made him anxious. The students’ reactions to the duel would tell him if he was right to worry.

  He had enough to worry about right at the moment. “What should I know about Lord Oran before he gets here?” he asked Contare as he slathered a slice of bread with honey. All the scents were making his stomach rumble.

  Contare gestured for the honey pot, and Graegor gave it to him so he could add a dollop to his tea. “What have I told you already?”

  “Not very much.” He’d met the older Kroldon sorcerer at many events but had never had a meaningful conversation with him. He didn’t seem to smile, but he also didn’t seem as deliberately bad-tempered as Natayl. “I know about his prescience, but that’s about it.”

  “Everyone knows about his prescience,” Contare said, “but few know much about him, and he prefers it that way.”

  “But you’re one of those few,” Graegor guessed.

  Contare made a maybe gesture. “Quantity over quality. He keeps his distance from people. We have been allies at times, adversaries other times. Sometimes both at once.”

  “How does that work?”

  “He comes to his decisions slowly. He tries to consider everything, and in so doing he usually overthinks the problem. Even if we’re on the same side on a subject, we can still argue about it.”

  Obviously the relationships among the older sorcerers had grown ever more complex over the centuries they’d lived. From that perspective, Graegor actually felt more comfortable with the simple, intense dislike he and Ferogin shared. “Does he like to argue?”

  “Not for the sake of it. As you’ve probably noticed, he’s usually aloof, but I suspect he’ll be less so today.” Contare paused, and his eyes lost focus for a moment before he said, “He’s here.”

  “Right now?” The window was still dark.

  “Oh, I’m certain that this is, in fact, the exact moment of the sunrise, if we could see it through the clouds.”

  When they reached the foyer, Magus Richard stood ready at the front door. The house steward was, as usual, impeccably smooth from his bald head to his polished shoes. Graegor made another attempt to pat down his unruly hair, and wished he had taken the time to trim his beard—but he really wouldn’t have had the time. At a nod from Contare, Richard opened the door and greeted Lord Oran before ushering him inside.

  The Kroldon sorcerer was about Graegor’s height, with close-cropped silver-and-black hair and layers of fine, dark clothes. He had a coal-black beard, his skin was a dark tan, and his eyes were large and heavy-lidded. He answered Contare’s greeting first, Graegor’s second, with only a short, obligatory nod to each, and when Contare said that breakfast would be ready very soon, Oran gave a brief shake of his head.

  “Thank you, no.” He spoke with a clipped, fast delivery, at odds with the guttural accent Graegor had heard from Borjhul and other Kroldons. “We must get right to it.”

  “We can eat and talk at the same time,” Contare said mildly, gesturing to the dining room.

  “It’s not a social call,” Oran said, and then he and Contare looked at each other for a moment. Something telepathic was obviously exchanged, and Oran’s jaw tightened. “Very well,” he said finally, and Contare led them to the table. The Kroldon sorcerer walked with a very slight limp.

  Karl served them with quiet efficiency, his freckled face devoid of its usual wry humor. Oran accepted only a mug of coffee with cardamom. Karl set a plate of toast, eggs, and ham in front of Graegor, and Graegor hurried through his meat-thanks so that he could eat as much as he could before being required to speak. He assumed this would happen as soon as Contare finished reiterating to Oran why he hadn’t consulted him about Graegor’s visions before now.

  “As I explained, there are too many differences,” Contare said as Karl refilled his tea. “They come to him when he’s awake. They show no people. They end without the urgency that something specific is going to happen. I’m fairly sure this is something other than prescience.”

  “I will judge that.” Oran sounded like he had said that before and anticipated needing to say it again.

  “And no Telgard sorcerer has ever been prescient.”

  “Why would that matter?”

  “It makes it unlikely.”

  Oran shook his head. “Nine is far too small a sample size to warrant that conclusion. Besides, your par’thau
mat is prescient.”

  Graegor thought he knew what the word meant. It was something like “failed sorcerer”—a person with the same gifts for magic that he had, but without any power behind those gifts. Usually people like that went mad.

  “Yes, several Telgard par’thaumats have been prescient,” Contare was saying, “so the talent can be there, but since it hasn’t ever manifested in a—”

  “And Davidon was,” Oran interrupted.

  Contare lifted both eyebrows. “Excuse me?”

  “Davidon.”

  “You do mean the second Telgard sorcerer, right?”

  “He was prescient.”

  “I have never heard any accounts of this.”

  “He saw faces. Like your par’thaumat—Brandeis.” Unlike Davidon’s name, which was probably very familiar to him, Oran pronounced Brandeis’ name with a heavy accent. “Davidon didn’t draw them, but he dreamed them.”

  Contare’s white eyebrows were now furrowed over his brow. “You know this? You saw it?”

  “I found the reference in my research.”

  “And when were you going to get around to sharing this with me?”

  A brief, sardonic smile flashed across Oran’s lined face before he deliberately turned his attention to Graegor. “Do you dream at night, son?”

  Graegor swallowed his mouthful and set aside his fork. “Yes, sir.”

  “Have your sleeping dreams ever made you feel unsettled?”

  “Maybe a few times, sir, when I was little, but nothing I remember clearly.” Audrey had been the one to have nightmares, not him. He suddenly wondered if she still did.

  “Are your visions disturbing?”

  “They’re … confusing, sir, but not disturbing. I mean, they don’t stay in my head and make me anxious.” Not like the silver threads of his bond with Tabitha still did sometimes.

  “Tell me the circumstances of your first vision.”

  “Yes, sir. It was in Farre. I was living there on my own. I hadn’t slept in a while—a couple of days at least. I was in jail for fighting in the street, but they let me out.” His friends had all been quite interested in both the fight and his time in jail, but these probably weren’t the specifics that Oran wanted. “It was the middle of the night. I went to an inn and got something to eat, but I couldn’t sleep, so I sat at a table by the window and looked outside. In the window, I could see the reflection of the tavern keeper’s two candles. But I could also see the sky, and the clouds moving across it, and even the stars sometimes. Then … then I started to see the buildings across the street. Everything was dark, but I could still see the details of the buildings—the doors, the window trim, the roofs. At one point, I … I thought I could see the stars reflected off a drop of water.” This was impossible, of course, but Oran didn’t react. “Then I saw a mouse. I … followed it. It went up into a hole near one of the roofs, and I saw its colony, where it lived. I imagined that this mouse was a scout, or a guard, who looked out for the colony. But then suddenly, I was sitting at the table again, and it was morning. Everyone around me was having breakfast. It must have been hours later.”

  Oran nodded, his expression unchanged. “Did you feel like you’d been asleep?”

  “Not really. But I felt better. I didn’t feel as tired.”

  With a grunt, Oran stared at the table, his gaze unfocused. “Perhaps a regenerative trance,” he said eventually, “while using extended sight. The mouse segment isn’t as clear. It could be lucid dreaming.”

  “Yes,” Contare murmured.

  “But prescience can be highly metaphorical.” Oran’s eyes came up to Graegor again. “Did you feel any sense that you had to do something about what you’d seen?”

  “No, sir. It didn’t seem real … is there a way to tell if what I see is real?”

  “Obviously you can try to verify the vision, or parts of it. Were the shapes of the buildings the same in the light as they’d been when you’d seen them in the dark?”

  “I … I don’t know.”

  “Did you look for the mouse colony?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Had anything like this ever happened to you before? Had you ever followed a vivid line of thought or imagination?” At Graegor’s helpless expression, he went on, “If someone tells you a story, can you see it clearly in your mind? With your own details that the person didn’t specify in the story?”

  “Yes, sir.” It was why he’d always enjoyed listening to stories at Pritchard’s tavern. “Sometimes I’d make up my own stories. Like if I saw two people across the street having an argument, I’d imagine what they were fighting about.”

  Oran nodded thoughtfully, and Contare raised his eyebrows as if to say I told you so. Oran ignored him and asked, “When you had this vision, had you been using your powers?”

  “I didn’t know I had powers at the time, sir. But I could raise earth magic. I could see it, like a white mist lifting from the ground, when I was walking from the jail to the inn.”

  “He could barely control it by the time I found him,” Contare added quietly.

  “Which was when?”

  “That same morning.”

  “Of course.” Oran rolled his eyes. “They all grew strong before they knew who they were. What would have happened had you not been there?”

  “They don’t grow strong, they are strong, and until—”

  “We should have gotten them when they were twelve.”

  Contare made a small sound of disagreement. “Until the brain is ready—”

  “Some are ready at twelve,” Oran insisted.

  “None of the Seventh were. The impediments—”

  “Were eventually overcome.”

  Contare looked at Graegor. “An old argument,” he explained. “Oran and Hamid both wanted the Circle to retrieve its successors—you—a few years ago.” He glanced back at Oran. “Even though none of us were retrieved by the Seventh until we were fifteen.”

  Graegor wondered what it would have been like to have known about his magic back then. To have met the others back then—to have met Tabitha. No doubt she had always been a beautiful girl …

  Oran waved his hand in dismissal, as if he regretted bringing up the subject. “Tell me about your second vision,” he said to Graegor. “Was this when the Eternal Flame turned purple?”

  “Yes, sir. I was in the tunnels in Castle Chrenste, where Sorceress Khisrathi cast her spell.” He suddenly remembered something from the legend. “Was it really a Kroldon bloodspell?”

  The two older sorcerers looked at each other, and Contare said, “Want to take that?”

  “I’d rather hear your answer.”

  Contare paused to consider. “It wasn’t a bloodspell such as they were used at the time,” he said finally. “Fear was not a deliberate element of the casting. Khisrathi needed a marker—some way for her spell to determine who was a Torchanes and who wasn’t. Blood was an obvious choice, but she could have used something else.”

  “Blood soaks into stone,” Oran said. “It makes a much better anchor for marker-based spellcasting than hair or saliva or urine. Semen can work, but they had to anchor over twenty doors, which was more than even your fabled King Breon could probably handle.”

  A truly unfortunate image took shape in Graegor’s head, which he immediately tried to banish as Contare spoke. “Sorceress Madoien did give Khisrathi the spell, though, and it was a spell used by many Kroldon noble houses. Several ancient castles in Kroldon still have these spells protecting them.”

  Graegor nodded, and at Oran’s prompting gesture, he said, “Yes, sir. Like I said, I was in the tunnels. I was trying to open one of the trapdoors. The lever was broken off, so I thought I would try …” Contare had not been happy about this. It was the sort of stupid thing that made Ferogin’s accusations true. “ … try to use the spell itself to open the door. I thought the spell would react to my magic.”

  “And it did,” Oran said dryly.

  “Yes, sir. I lost control. I was
n’t careful enough.”

  “I’m sure your master has chastised you. The vision?”

  “Yes, sir. I could see the earth magic moving through the tunnels. It was like I was flying through them. I saw the doors burst open in the castle. I saw where the earth magic blasted out of the cliff, and where it burst into the basilica. I didn’t … I didn’t actually see the Flame turn purple. I felt like I was on fire. I … I blacked out because the pain was so bad.” He stopped. He hadn’t realized that retelling the story would be so much like reliving it. The remembered pain felt like lightning under his skin, and it was only made worse by the resurgence of guilt at how many people in the castle had been hurt in the chaos of the tunnels’ trapdoors smashing open. The only reason no one had been killed was that Contare had been there to save them.

  Contare, following Graegor’s thoughts—as it seemed he could always do—nudged Graegor’s coffee mug toward him. Graegor drank down the coffee’s soothing warmth, letting it steady him. As Karl stepped to the table to refill the mug, Oran looked at Contare and asked, “Did you inspect it?”

  “The Flame? Of course.”

  “And?”

  “And nothing.” Contare shrugged. “I never inspected it when it was orange, so I couldn’t tell what had changed. I didn’t see anything up close that I didn’t see from far away. Pascin has a theory …”

  “He always has theories,” Oran grunted. When he turned back to Graegor, his heavy-lidded eyes had grown particularly intent. “You haven’t told me the entire vision. Contare said you had a dream of the stars.”

  It had taken Graegor a while to tell Contare about this. Only after he’d told Tabitha had he felt ready to tell anyone else, and it still felt … private. “Yes, sir.” He took a breath. “It … it seemed like I was looking at all the stars in the universe, all at once. I felt how hot they were and how cold the space between them was. I saw the castle in the moonlight, and I felt like … like I had finally come home. All the people of the city, they seemed like stars, too, or maybe lamps. In the other vision, the one with the mouse, I could see shades of black, but this time I could see shades of white. Like every person, every star, was a slightly different color. And I felt … powerful.” He was very reluctant to admit just how powerful the vision had suggested he was.