Wizard of the Grove

by Tanya Huff

  “I am holding her.” He fell silent as Jago took the wizard’s jaw in one hand, turned her head to face him, and slapped her, hard. Then again.

  With a shuddering sob, Crystal buried her face against Raulin’s chest, and clung. “I’m sorry,” she said again, her voice even weaker than it had been, but calm. “I don’t . . .”

  “Shh.” He stroked her back, murmuring the words into her hair. “It’s all right. Do you want to get up?”

  She shook her head and clung tighter.

  Raulin met his brother’s eyes.

  “Perhaps you’d better go get the packs,” he said softly.

  Jago’s eyebrows went up.

  Raulin glared. “Don’t be stupid,” he snarled, his hands continuing to soothe the woman in his arms.

  Jago flushed, touched his brother’s shoulder in a wordless apology, rose, and slipped silently from the cavern.

  * * *

  They’d left the packs back where the passage had narrowed so suddenly. Their sled, with the bulk of their gear and supplies, they’d had to leave a short distance down the mountain when the way became more rock than snow and the trail too steep to wrestle it farther.

  Jago studied what had to be moved; the two packs and both massive fur overcoats plus a pile of assorted hats, scarves, and mittens. The packs would have to be moved one at a time, and perhaps emptied to get them around that tight bit. He rubbed his chin, absently scratching at the golden stubble, and decided that since the packs contained no clothes it might be best if he got the coats through first. He remembered how little Raulin’s jacket covered, added how quickly comfort could warm, and recalled the expression on Lord Death’s face. Not the despair, the anger that had followed.

  “Definitely the coats.” He heaved them up into his arms and turned to face the narrow passage with gritted teeth. At least he had something to take his mind off the fear that being underground always evoked.

  Dragging some forty pounds of uncooperative fur through the mountain’s heart was among the less enjoyable things he’d done lately, but when Jago reached the cavern and saw the way in which the positions of Raulin and Crystal had subtly shifted while he was gone, he knew he’d made the right decision. Although Raulin would not take advantage—he’d deserved Raulin’s anger for implying he would—Jago didn’t doubt his brother would be willing to cooperate and this was neither the time nor place.

  “Here.” The fur flopped like a live thing to the ground, one arm draping over Crystal’s legs. “This’ll do you a lot more good than that little jacket.”

  “She doesn’t get cold,” Lord Death pointed out from his place by the passage.

  “Perhaps not,” Jago replied without thinking, “but Raulin does, and he needs his jacket.”

  Crystal’s head snapped up and she stared from Jago to Lord Death.

  Raulin merely stared at his brother. The demon crouched out of Jago’s line of sight and as far as Raulin was concerned that left Jago talking to empty air. “What are you babbling about?”

  “You can hear him?” Crystal asked, her arms sliding down from around Raulin’s neck.

  “Hear who?” Raulin wanted to know.

  “And see him?”

  “See who?”

  The wizard’s silver brows dove into a deep vee. “I’ve never heard of a mortal being able . . .”

  “Able to what?”

  Jago sighed. “Why don’t you tell him while you dress,” he suggested to Crystal, nudging the fur with a booted foot. “I’ll go get the rest of the gear.”

  The packs, as he suspected, had to be unpacked, for neither force nor ingenuity could get them around that last tight corner before the cavern. Rather than reload everything, and then unload it again six meters away in order to use it, Jago carried the bits and pieces into the cavern in armloads. The tableau remained unchanging from trip to trip.

  Crystal, regal now and no less beautiful in the enveloping fur, explained in animated detail just what she suspected had happened when Jago had come so close to Death.

  Raulin listened intently, his eyes never leaving Crystal’s face. Jago wondered which motivated Raulin more, concern for his brother or an inability to look away from emerald eyes and ivory skin. The demon sat silently in its corner, its expression impossible to read. Lord Death stood just as silently by the rectangular cut that marked the passage and he kept the dead parading across his face to hide what might otherwise have been revealed. But his eyes, throughout all their many permutations, never moved from the two in the center of the cavern.

  Each time he passed the Mother’s son, Jago grew more certain he understood both the earlier pain and the anger that followed. Survival in the Empire had consisted for the most part of an intimate knowledge of the pecking order; a skill that translated in the survivors into a finely honed ability to judge their fellow men. To Jago’s eyes, Lord Death was deeply, and hopelessly, in love.

  Without really knowing why he did it—to protect his brother was no more than an admittedly valid rationalization—he stopped as he carried in the last armload of gear and said in a voice not intended to travel far from where he stood, “Why don’t you tell her?”

  Lord Death turned and the changing eyes and identical expressions of terror flowed into the features of the auburn-haired man whose amber eyes regarded him coldly. “Tell her what?” he asked in a voice equally quiet.

  “Uh . . .”

  “Do not presume, mortal. I am fully capable of running my own . . .” A wry smile twisted the full lips. “I am fully capable of running my own . . . life.”

  * * *

  “Now let me get this straight.” Raulin raised a steaming cup of tea to his mouth. “You talk to Death?”

  The four of them, Raulin, Jago, the wizard, and the demon, sat around a small campstove, the red glow of the coals providing more of a focus point than actual warmth. The demon, its captivity explained, sat quietly and pouted. Crystal had refused to let it show off its handiwork, merely informing the brothers that the wall contained the remains of the demon’s previous visitors, “and could we please leave it at that.” Then she’d smacked its fingers away from the fire. It projected an air of injured innocence which no one paid any attention to.

  Jago swallowed a mouthful of hot liquid and nodded.

  “And he talks to you?”

  Jago nodded again.

  “And he’s a regular guy? You can see him, touch . . .”

  “No,” Crystal interrupted, a little sadly, “you can’t touch him. Nor can he touch you.”

  “Is he here right now?”

  “No.” Jago and Crystal spoke together, looked startled, then exchanged shy smiles. Neither knew when the Mother’s son had left. One moment he’d been there, the next gone.

  Raulin settled his back against the rock wall of the cavern. “How can you be sure?”

  Crystal jerked a thumb over her shoulder at the wall of bones. “When the dead are present, I can always see him. Only when there are no dead, can he choose.”

  “Why?”

  She shrugged and Raulin wished the motion had not been covered by the heavy fur. “I don’t know. That’s just the way it works.”

  “If he wants you to free the dead, why didn’t he stay?” Jago asked. He remembered the thousand voices and their plea. He hadn’t needed Crystal’s explanation to know what they wanted.

  “I think he leaves me to decide without the pressure of our friendship.”

  Her voice was troubled, as if she suspected a deeper meaning in Lord Death’s sudden departure.

  Jago considered, for a brief instant, telling her himself, saying, He loves you, wizard, but he didn’t. Just because the last few weeks of his life had been a bonus, because he really should’ve died after the brindle attack, it did not mean he wanted to give the rest of his life away. So all he said was, “Freeing the dead frees the demon,
” as if he recognized that as the cause of her trouble.

  Crystal sighed. “Yes.”

  “I am harmless!” protested the demon.

  All eyes turned to the wall of bone.

  “Well, mostly harmless,” it whined. “Oh, please free me. Please . . .”

  Jago’s hand shot out and grabbed the demon’s arm. “Do not howl,” he snarled.

  The demon looked piqued and easily shook itself free. “Wasn’t going to.”

  Raulin listened to his brother and Crystal talk, sipped his tea, and studied the wall of bones. He couldn’t find it in him to blame the demon for the men and women who had died to set that pattern, not even considering that he’d missed being a part of it by only a few hours. If they’d arrived at the cavern before Crystal . . .

  He was disappointed that the treasure of the ancient wizard had amounted to nothing more than a strange creature with an appetite for iron. Then his mind slipped back to those moments spent holding Crystal in his arms and he decided the trip hadn’t been a total loss. Still, he touched the leather pouch hanging about his neck, they’d had such hopes when they first found that map.

  Map!

  “Hey!” Jago threw himself out of the way as Raulin leaped up and dashed across the cavern. He twisted and glared at the older man who was running his fingers along the ridges of bone and muttering under his breath. “What do you think you’re doing?”

  “It’s a map, Jago!”

  “Yes! Yes!” The demon bounded over to its creation and began patting the wall. “A map! A map!”

  “A map?”

  “Yes. Look!” Raulin pointed out a triangular wedge of bone that ran diagonally up from the floor, cutting off the lower corner. “This is the mountain range we’re in.” He touched another pattern. “This is the canyon we followed to get here, before we started to climb.” He slapped the wall where a bit of femur jutted from the mountains. “This is where we are!”

  “Here! Here!” The demon agreed.

  Jago slowly stood and stepped over to the map. “Then these,” he said, “are the mountains they call the Giant’s Spine.”

  “Aptly named,” Raulin added, for they were delineated on the wall in vertebrae.

  “And this,” Jago continued, ignoring him, “must be the way . . .”

  Both brothers looked up to the top left corner of the wall where a skull looked back. Barely visible on the yellow-gray bone was scratched the sigil of the bloody hand.

  “. . . to Aryalan’s tower,” Raulin finished.

  “Yes! Yes!” The demon hopped up and down in excitement, looking even more froglike than it did at rest. “The Binding One’s hidey hole!” Then it stopped jumping and added solemnly. “But you mustn’t go there. It’s dangerous.”

  “You should listen to it.” Crystal still sat by the tiny stove, bare legs tucked up under the fur. “Aryalan trapped it, remember. It knows what it’s talking about.”

  “Aryalan’s long dead,” Raulin scoffed.

  But Jago said softly, “You knew, didn’t you? That this was a map?”

  Crystal nodded.

  “And you weren’t going to tell us.”

  She smiled and rubbed her cheek against the soft fur of the collar “No.”

  “Why not?” Raulin returned to her side and dropped to one knee to better study her face. “Think of what we could find there.”

  Her gaze flicked past him to the wall of bone. “Think of what you’ve found here.”

  Raulin dismissed the cavern, the bones, the demon with a quick wave. “We’re not likely to find its type,” he nodded at the demon, “inside the wizard’s tower.”

  “There will be other dangerous surprises.”

  “And that’s why you weren’t going to tell us about the map? I’m not afraid of the unknown.”

  I am, she thought, shying away from the dark places Nashawryn had left when she retreated. I am very afraid of the unknown. Now. But she kept silent and only looked from Raulin’s gray eyes, alight with a fierce joy, to Jago’s violet ones. “Now you know the path,” she said, “you’ll go, won’t you, no matter what I say?”

  “Yes,” Raulin told her.

  When she looked to Jago for confirmation he nodded, although she realized he went not for the adventure, or even the possibility of wealth, but because his brother did.

  Crystal’s head went up and her expression firmed. “I could take it from your minds. I could make you forget the map existed.”

  Raulin’s head went up as well, his jaw tensed and his eyes grew stormy. Jago was right, he thought. Wizards can’t be trusted. None of them. His mouth opened, but Jago spoke first.

  “You won’t,” he said.

  “How do you know?” She turned the green of her eyes on him and released enough power so they began to glow. Let Nashawryn get loose again; she’ll burn it from their minds fast enough.

  Jago smiled, a little sadly. “Because I know you.”

  Crystal sat silent, aghast at what she’d thought. Nashawryn must never get loose again. How could she think . . . and then she felt the laughter and realized she hadn’t. Zarsheiy. Stirring up what trouble she could. “I don’t even know myself,” she murmured.

  “Then take my word for it.”

  Raulin was ashamed at his sudden anger and at the same time mildly amused that he and Jago seemed for an instant to have reversed opinions. He reached out and ran a strand of silver hair between his fingers. It felt cool and soft and finer than silk. “Come with us,” he said.

  “You asked me that before. At the inn. I said no.”

  “A lot has changed since then. But even if your answer remains no, we are still going on.”

  “Yes.”

  “Yes, you’ll come with us, or yes, you know we’ll go on anyway.”

  Crystal could spread herself on the wind and reach Aryalan’s tower in hours. Deal with it and destroy it before the brothers even found the trail. But that way moved too close to oblivion even when all was in balance. Now she dared not risk it. She could, as the owl, still beat them to the tower by days. Deal with it and destroy it while they struggled over the mountains. But although the owl had nothing the goddesses could grasp and use, she would have to exist on power and all her power must be used to remain whole. Or what stood for whole these days. And besides, she was lonely.

  Lonely. She held back a sigh as she turned the word over in her mind. From the moment the centaurs had taken her from her parents she’d been alone in one way or another. Why, she wondered, her hand creeping up to twist in the fur over her heart, did alone suddenly mean lonely? Perhaps because when she was alone she no longer knew the person she was with. Perhaps the demon had put the word in her mind. Perhaps because there seemed to be an alternative and friendship had become, for the first time since she was eleven, a very real possibility.

  “Yes, I’ll come with you.”

  Slowly, Raulin smiled, hearing at least part of her reason for agreeing in her voice.

  Jago, who heard the part that Raulin didn’t, stepped forward until he could see Crystal’s face over his brother’s shoulder. “What are you afraid of?” he asked softly.

  His return unnoticed, Lord Death raised his head to listen.

  Crystal looked down into the depths of the fur—looking into the depths of herself was out of the question—then she sighed, spread her hands, and said simply: “Me.” If she traveled with them and their lives also were at risk, they deserved to know.

  “There were seven goddesses remaining when the wizards ruled . . .”

  She told them all of it, what Tayja had told her and the background they needed to understand, keeping her voice as emotionless as she could. It was safer that way.

  The brothers sat enthralled, barely moving throughout the telling. The demon whimpered twice but otherwise sat still and quiet.

  �
�So you see,” she finished, “if I do go with you, you won’t be getting a mighty wizard capable of blasting away all opposition. No more snatching you out of danger before the danger really begins. I’ll be using most of my power just to stay intact.” For the first time in the telling, she met their eyes. “Do you still want me?”

  Without looking at Jago, Raulin answered for both of them.

  “Yes,” he said simply.

  “Because you feel sorry for me?” The words slipped out before Crystal could stop them.

  “Because we want your company,” Raulin told her softly, hearing the fear behind her words. He leered in his best exaggerated manner. “Chaos knows why, but we like you.” Then he grew serious. “And I can’t deny we could use whatever help you can give.”

  He would’ve gone on but Jago, who sat where he could see the rest of the cavern, grabbed his arm and quieted him with a small shake of his head.

  “Why didn’t you tell me,” asked the one true son of the Mother, “when this, began?”

  Shaking back the silver curtain of her hair, Crystal met Lord Death’s eyes. Answering one question, it seemed, led only to others. She shrugged, trying to lessen the importance of her answer for the wrong weight here would lead to questions she knew she couldn’t deal with. “I was afraid you wouldn’t like me if I wasn’t perfect.”

  Lord Death blinked once or twice in surprise. Of all the possible reasons she might give for shutting him out, for refusing to confide in him, he hadn’t expected that. His lips twitched as he thought about it, then he smiled. “You have never been perfect,” he said.

  She returned his smile, partly in response, partly in relief that their friendship seemed back on its old footing, with the awkwardness of the past two meetings buried by that quip. She couldn’t know that she had given him hope.

  An irrational hope, all things considered, Lord Death acknowledged with an inner sigh.

  “Is she talking to him?” Raulin hissed.

  Jago nodded.

  “Is he talking back?”

  Jago nodded again.

  “I don’t think I like this.”

  “Better get used to it, brother.” Jago levered himself to his feet by grasping Raulin’s shoulder. His legs had grown stiff from sitting so long in one place while Crystal told her story. “We can’t spend the night in here, most of our gear is on the sled. And I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’m getting hungry.”