Wizard of the Grove

by Tanya Huff

  “I think,” Jago shouted to his brother, currently an ally sharing the dubious shelter behind the sleigh, “she cheats.”

  “Does she now . . .” Raulin drawled. A snowball chose that moment to curve around their barrier and smack him in the side of the head. “Well, cheaters,” he grinned, “never prosper.” He jerked a thumb up and Jago nodded. Together they swarmed over the sleigh. Raulin hit her high. Jago hit her low.

  Howling with laughter, in a tangle of arms and legs and great fur coats and flying silver hair, they rolled the last twenty feet to the forest and thudded up against the trunk of a young pine. The tree rocked, shook, and dumped its entire load of snow on their heads.

  * * *

  Lord Death stood quietly and watched the camp take shape just inside the shelter of the forest. Although he could not have been seen, he kept to shadow. It suited his mood.

  “I am tired of watching,” he said softly to the wind. It whirled about him, unable to offer comfort, and a clump of snow blew from a branch above. He held out his hand and the snow passed through it, in no way affected by his presence.

  “I am tired of watching,” he said again, his eyes on the silver-haired woman by the fire. “But I don’t know what else I can do.”

  * * *

  “What I want to know,” Jago unwound the copper wire securing the end of one braid, “is how you got to be such a deadly aim with a snowball.”

  Crystal smiled and poked at the fire. Behind the shields Zarsheiy stirred and the blaze flared up, but as the fire goddess seemed content to merely vent her frustration, Crystal ignored her. “The centaurs,” she explained. “They live on the great plains. No hills but lots of snow. They seemed to think it would improve my coordination.”

  “Seems like too much fun for a centaur to approve of.”

  “They’ll approve of anything, as long as there’s a lesson in it.”

  Jago snorted and shook his head. Free of the braids, his hair fell to his waist in a rippling golden mass. “Doesn’t sound like much of a childhood,” he said, beginning to comb it.

  The wizard shrugged. “It wasn’t so bad.”

  “I suppose. Still, it sounds . . . HEY!” He whirled and swung at his brother’s legs, but Raulin had already backed out of reach. “He’s jealous,” Jago told Crystal, rubbing his head where Raulin had plucked out a hair. “Just because he’s losing his . . .”

  “Ha!” Raulin stepped over the log they were using as a bench and dropped down onto it. He reached for the blackened metal teapot and poured himself a cup. “Your vanity is going to get your ass in trouble someday. Should’ve had that whole mess chopped off years ago.”

  “Mess?” Jago turned, his hair glowing gold in the firelight, the wooden comb pointing at Raulin’s face. “I’ll cut my hair when you get rid of that growth on your upper lip.”

  “I’ll see you in Chaos first.”

  “More than likely.”

  Their words held the cadence of a litany and Crystal relaxed, savoring the heat of the fire, the sweet strength of the tea, and the comfort of companionship. Just for an instant, she thought she saw something move in the darkness under the trees. She dropped her gaze into her mug, losing the image in its contents. The darkness was Nashawryn’s realm and she had no intention of loosing that dread goddess again.

  * * *

  Out under the trees, Lord Death sighed. Once, she would have looked for him, but she didn’t need him now. Still, she was happy. He’d never heard her laugh the way she had that afternoon. Wasn’t that what he wanted? Wasn’t it?

  * * *

  Raulin settled his forearms on his knees and watched his brother and the wizard. They looked, he thought, like the sun and the moon come down to share his fire. He had a sudden vision of the two of them entwined, great lengths of gold and silver hair wrapping about them and the rush of desire that accompanied it left him momentarily weak. As though aware of his thoughts, Jago turned to look at him and Raulin raised his mug in a slow and silent toast. Jago grinned, raised both brows, and returned to freeing a tangle. Coincidence, Raulin decided. Although the love between them was the strongest and best thing in both their lives, it had never expressed itself as mind-reading. Not even when they’d been children and could’ve used it. . . .

  With his attention apparently on his hair, Jago managed to keep both Crystal and his brother within sight. He had a sudden urge to shout, “Would you two get it over with so I can figure out where I fit in!” but he held his peace. Would talking to Raulin do any good? He doubted it; his brother never welcomed interference in his love life—Jago smiled at memories—as much as he’d always needed it. . . .

  Crystal stared into the fire, acutely conscious of the man to either side of her. They were so much the same in so many ways and yet she reacted completely differently to each. She wished she’d learned more about men in her twelve years of wandering. Twelve years. The fire danced with visions of the battle on the Tage Plateau, with the pyramids of bodies Kraydak had built across half the world. Kraydak and his armies. Kraydak’s Horde. The men of the Empire.

  “Raulin, how old are you?” she asked softly, because she daren’t ask the other question, the question that naturally followed her line of thought.

  Raulin sighed. “Thirty-seven. Jago is thirty-three.”

  “Then you were . . .”

  “Part of Kraydak’s armies?” He shifted, snagged the pot, and poured more tea. He’d wondered, off and on, how long it would take her to make that connection. “I was. Jago wasn’t.”

  She turned over a number of responses in her mind, sure of how she felt but unsure of how to express it. Jago broke into the silence before she got the chance.

  “Does it matter?” His voice was flat. “He didn’t have a choice, Crystal. When they took you, you went. Or you died. They never came for me. That’s the only difference. He didn’t fight for anything he believed in. He only fought to stay alive. When you destroyed Kraydak, you freed Raulin as much as you freed countries under Kraydak’s yoke. Does that make him the enemy now?” His face remained expressionless as he stared at her, but in his heart he prayed for her to say no, to not tear down the delicate friendship that had begun to grow among the three of them.

  Crystal raised her head and Jago fell into the brilliant green of her eyes.

  You’ve always hurt for him, haven’t you?

  He felt the question, knew it hadn’t been spoken aloud. He felt her take his answer. Across the bond that stretched between them, across the bond woven of bits and pieces pulled from both their lives, he felt her say: I hurt for all of them.

  He felt her pain and knew she meant every life that Kraydak had touched.

  And he felt how it cut and tore when they wouldn’t let her help but ran in fear and suspicion because she came of the same race Kraydak did. Felt her despair and burned with shame that he had considered even for an instant she would forget who the real enemy had been.

  Then he again sat beside the fire, looking into a crystal tear that ran down the curve of an ivory cheek. His face grew hot and he tried to turn away, but she laid a hand along his cheek and stopped him.

  “We carry the pain,” she said softly, “because it is all that we can do.”

  The why, made up for both of guilt and doubt and caring, they didn’t have to speak of.

  A second tear joined the first. “I never realized before that I wasn’t carrying it alone.”

  Jago turned his head, not taking his eyes from her, and softly kissed the palm that held him. She smiled, a little tremulously, and drew the hand away to wipe the tears dry with the place his lips had touched.

  The bond between them strengthened, for only one thing was stronger than pain shared for love’s sake and that was love shared for the same reason.

  Raulin watched the only two people in the world who meant anything to him, and nodded. They’d worked it out. He was
n’t sure how and he didn’t care. He could leave it there, but though he knew what her answer would be, he needed her to tell him as well.

  “Am I the enemy, Crystal?” he asked.

  She turned to face him, pushing her hair back off her face as she moved, the warmth of her smile reaching across the distance. “You never were.”

  There had been only one enemy in that war and Crystal knew that better than anyone. But he still released a breath he didn’t remember holding as her words dissolved a bitter doubt he hadn’t known he had. He returned her smile with an equal warmth and then tried to calm his pulse when she flushed and looked away. He wondered how Jago would feel about looking for more firewood.

  Off in the distance, a wolf howled, the lonely sound filling the night and giving all three a chance to regain a little composure. Raulin threw another log on the fire, Jago began rebraiding his hair, and Crystal began to sing.

  It started as a formless kind of a hum, an outlet for the emotions that threatened to overflow. She stared off at nothing as the music began to form patterns and then the pattern evolved into a song. It was an old song, from before the Age of Wizards, a ballad of how the last of the air elementals fell in love with a mortal woman.

  Jago’s fingers began to move to the rhythm of the song. He remembered the last time he’d heard it; his mother sitting in their one comfortable chair with her old worn mandolin in her lap, Raulin sprawled on the hearth replacing the leather strapping around the handle of his dagger—replacing it with a strip torn from one of his vests if Jago remembered correctly. That had been about the last night they’d shared as a family. Soon after, Raulin had been taken and he’d been gone barely a month when their mother had died. The mandolin had been sold to pay for her pyre. He smiled as he wound off the braid, holding only the memory of that last night, letting the others go.

  The centaurs had taught Crystal to sing as a means of focusing her power. She went one step beyond on her own.

  Raulin’s jaw dropped as, in the air over the camp, the song came to life. In a tiny patch of clear blue sky, Laur-anthonel swooped and dove and raced the wind. His hair was the color of sunshine, his eyes a storm-cloud gray. From the stunned expression on his brother’s face, Raulin assumed Jago saw the same. An arm’s reach away from the reality of woodsmoke and trampled snow, Laur-anthonel exalted in his freedom as the song named him more than mortal and less than god; he ruled the winds, no one ruled him. For once more aware of the wizard than the woman, Raulin relaxed and let the music take him.

  Crystal sang on, oblivious to anything but the song. The goddesses, with no weakness to give them opening and no calling to their aspects, remained quiet.

  Enthralled, Jago stared as the tiny image of the Lord of Air passed over the lands of men, heard singing and stopped to listen—little knowing that he heard his doom as well.

  As the song changed, so did the vision; the blue sky of Laur-anthonel’s domain replaced by a tower room in a stone keep where the King of Valen’s youngest daughter sat at her loom and sang. The shuttle flicked in and out as, with Crystal’s voice, Kara poured out her heart, weaving her hopes and dreams into the music. Ten thousand years later, in the air over the camp in the mountains, Laur-anthonel lost his heart again. He paused at her window, and she, feeling the breeze, turned and met his gaze. They exchanged a look so piercingly impassioned that Crystal fell silent, fearing the music might shatter it, and for an instant the image, and that look, hung in the air alone.

  Kara found her tongue before the Lord of Air, and Crystal sang of her sudden love for this man who had come in answer to her dreams. She let her own undefined yearning seep into the music, lending Kara’s words a sweet poignancy. In the pause between verses, as she drew a breath to continue, a strong rich baritone took up Laur-anthonel’s response.

  At first, Crystal thought the breezes sang with her, for they often did, and then she realized, shocked, that it was Raulin. She whirled to face him, the image in the air fading as her attention moved from it. Still singing Laur-anthonel’s pledge of eternal devotion, Raulin raised an arm and indicated the barely visible lovers. They firmed as Crystal let the music take her up again.

  Laur-anthonel, Jago was certain, had never behaved in such a way before for he could see the image of the Lord of Air take on his brother’s mannerisms. And his brother’s strengths. And, as the courtship progressed, his brother’s feelings. He wondered if he should be watching such an outpouring of emotion, decided the music excused him, and knew that, right or wrong, he couldn’t leave before the last note faded.

  Free to sing Kara’s part alone, Crystal found herself involved as she’d never been before. Her heart nearly broke with Kara’s anguish at what she thought was love’s betrayal and her spirit soared along with her voice as love proved true in the end. She forgot Jago listened, forgot everything outside the music, and sang to Raulin only; her yearning no longer undefined.

  When Kara and her love were joined at last, the lines between the passion of the song and the passion of the singers blurred. Their joy rose into the night clear and strong, and then, as though they had rehearsed it, both voices fell to barely above a whisper as they spoke their vows to love.

  Never before, Jago thought as the final vow gave way to silence, Raulin’s voice wrapped around the core of silver that was Crystal. And never again. An intensity like that happened once in a lifetime and he thanked the Mother that he’d been allowed to hear it.

  As the crackling of the fire and the movement of the trees surrounding the camp began to fill the quiet, Raulin, never taking his eyes from Crystal’s face, held out his hand. Silently, for all that was necessary had been said, Crystal laid hers in it. He pulled her into his arms and bent his head to hers . . .

  Jago shook himself free of the spell and for his own sake, for he knew they had forgotten his existence, went for a walk in the woods . . .

  . . . where he discovered he had not been the music’s only audience.

  “What can I give her to stand with that?” Lord Death demanded. “How . . .” He buried his face in his hands and gave a long shuddering sigh. When he looked up his face showed red from the pressure of his fingers. “I can’t even touch her, you know.”

  Jago nodded. “I know.” Without thinking, he held out his hand.

  Lord Death stared at it until he drew it back, and then, with only a small bit of the pain still in his face, he left Jago alone in the night.

  Behind him, from the circle of firelight, Jago heard another song rise, the oldest song of all, and was glad Lord Death had at least been spared hearing it.

  SEVEN

  A motionless silhouette against the winter’s sky, the giant faced into the wind and read the news from it. The weather would hold, and that was all to the good. Giants seldom worried about weather, able by both sheer bulk and temperament to wait out the fiercest storm, but she wanted to remain on schedule. Both her pace and her path were carefully planned. She would meet up with the wizard and her companions close enough to the tower to be of obvious assistance.

  A breeze ruffled her close-cropped brown curls and she smiled at the information it volunteered. It seemed that at the moment the young wizard had little interest in ruling the world and had found a more pleasant pastime.

  And I wish her joy of it, she thought, picking a careful way down the steep and icy trail, for the Mother knows she’s had little enough joy in her life until now.

  * * *

  According to the demon’s map, Aryalan’s tower lay north and west of the forest. As the sleigh could not be maneuvered through the trees, the way due north was closed. Therefore, they moved west for three days, skirting the edge of the woods until the forest dropped down into a valley which angled almost exactly in the direction they needed to go.

  “This,” Raulin declared upon seeing it, “was on old frog-face’s wall.”

  As Raulin remembered their path in greater
detail than either Jago or Crystal, and as the valley offered shelter and obvious signs of game, they descended into it, still following the forest.

  * * *

  Jago watched Raulin’s and Crystal’s backs and grinned. They weren’t holding hands, but they might as well have been; he doubted he could slip a dagger blade, between their shoulders. Separated by the sleigh and the length of the traces, he couldn’t hear what they said, but he had a pretty good idea they weren’t whispering lovers’ platitudes. For starters, he didn’t think Raulin knew any.

  As though aware of his thoughts, Crystal raised her voice, “. . . because it’s a woman’s song and when you change the lyrics so that a man can sing it you change the meaning!”

  Raulin’s reply was pitched too low to carry back to his brother but Crystal’s response of “I am not being sexist!” filled in the words. They disagreed without the tentativeness of most new lovers and through that Jago recognized the depth of their feelings. It sounded remarkably similar to the way he and Raulin argued and they’d had over thirty years together.

  To his surprise, he felt no jealousy at this closeness. Not of Crystal for coming between him and his brother. Not of Raulin for monopolizing the only woman they would likely meet for some time. Crystal hadn’t come between them; while they hadn’t exactly grown closer, the rising tension was gone. And Raulin, he knew, did not demand that Crystal remain exclusively with him. Their mother had raised them to believe in a woman’s choice, and the brothers had shared bed-partners before. Somehow, though, Jago couldn’t see himself with Crystal. It had nothing to do with his mistrust of wizards; he’d lost that back in the demon’s cave and in a short time she’d become almost as important to him as Raulin. That was it. She felt like the sister he’d never had.

  He watched her reach up to tug on Raulin’s mustache and nodded sagely. Yes, like a sister. His sister and his brother and . . . He shook his head and left that line of thought dangling. Taking the analogy too far dropped him into murky waters indeed. Enough that they found pleasure in each other and that he in no way felt excluded from their company because of it.