The White Mists of Power: A Novel

by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

  “Second, I’m not sure how long I’ll live. With Kensington rising and my strange circumstances, I don’t know if I’ll have a year as king. If you’re pregnant, Alma, you will have the throne. I know you’ll survive. You’re ruthless in a way that I am not. If you aren’t pregnant, you will have the trappings of power around you and you will give my cousin a fight. I don’t want him to rule. I’ve watched him over the years. He would be like me; he would rule. Only he has a cruelness in him, an anger that could destroy this land.

  “And finally, Alma–” Byron hesitated. He wasn’t sure how vulnerable he wanted to be with her. “You fascinate me. I want you beside me, not opposing me.”

  “You are like your father,” she said. Her voice was soft. “No talk of love and tender things, just my strength and how much I will add to the kingdom.”

  “Does that disappoint you?”

  She smiled and shook her head, but her eyes seemed cold. He leaned down and kissed her slowly, then the kiss built. They clung to each other and he could feel the passion growing as it had before. He let her go before he made love to her there in the audience chamber.

  A flush had risen along her neck into her cheeks. The coolness had left her eyes and he could see the fire in them, burning for him as much as he burned for her. “All right,” she said. “I’ll stand beside you and be your strength.”

  “My consort?”

  “Your consort, and your queen.”

  He took her hands, but did not kiss her. Her words seemed to add to the heaviness he was feeling. He should have felt more happiness: he had the woman he wanted, the position he wanted. But nothing happened the way he wanted. He had needed his father’s blessing and the years to learn the kingdom again. Now he was alone, beside a woman who would betray him if she had to, leading people who weren’t sure if he had a right to rule them.

  iii

  The bluff Enos followed the moans of the Old Ones along the river and down into the Cache. She had never left her bluff before, found the world outside little different but stronger, as if other Enos built their magic into their lands. The Cache itself was dark and cold, the entrance half hidden behind rocks near the riverbank. Humans never saw the entrance. Only the moaning of the Old Ones led Enos to it.

  Under the ground, glowing rocks replaced the Old Ones’ moans. She followed a winding, dirt-covered path down, down, down into greater dampness and darkness. The rocks’ light only made the darkness seem more oppressive. She wondered how Enos could live down here, away from the open air and the touch of green things. She shuddered and remembered her dreams of blood.

  A rush of warm air filled the tunnel, and as she rounded a corner, an Enos stood in her path. She stopped. She hadn’t seen one of her kind in generations. She had been alone on the bluff, watching human travelers, speaking to only a few, the last the white mists.

  The other Enos stood before her, hidden under a robe, her hands wizened and old. I am Zcava. Are you named?

  The other Enos touched her fingers to her forehead. The voice had entered her mind: she hadn’t entered its. So strange. So foreign. The bluff Enos thought back to a time when she had spoken with others. They had called her something then. The word came slowly. I am Ikaner, the bluff Enos. What is this that I have come for?

  Zcava turned, her robe sweeping the dirt. Follow me. She ducked through a side passage. Ikaner followed. The air had grown warmer and humid, smelling of roots and wet dirt. The light grew brighter and she squinted, then stepped into a large cavern.

  The rock walls stood higher than her bluff. Thick bits of rock broke from the ceiling and the floor, but the entire ceiling glowed with a sun-like light. Trees and underbrush grew around the rock pillars. Flowers and vegetables stood off to the side. She had known that the Cache Enos guarded the Old Wisdom, but she didn’t know that wisdom gave light to darkness and taught things to grow without sunlight. Her gifts were tiny. She only maintained growth, made sure that the sunlight filtered into the leaves, guided the water to roots. She didn’t know that the Enos could create such things from nothing.

  It took a moment before she saw the other Enos scattered among the rocks and trees. Most were examining the floor, as she wanted to, to discover the source of the growth. None of the Enos were young. All had wrinkled skin and balding heads. Their bodies had shrunk and, like aging trees, looked as if a sharp wind would uproot them. She hadn’t realized how old they were, how long they had been guarding the land. The thought made her tired, and she sat on a moss-covered rock.

  Why am I here? she repeated.

  A thousand thoughts answered her, none the same. But in each reverberation she saw white mists mixed with blood. She frowned, remembering the white mists. He had seemed kind. He had loved his friend and had not hurt her bluff.

  What has he done? she asked.

  We shall wait for the others. That response was strong, and she recognized Zcava’s presence. Such a serious thing for the Old Ones to call the Enos from their lands. She wondered if she would be allowed to return to the grove, to the sacred place where she had sprung, as a seedling, from her father’s branches.

  No answers came to that thought. The others had stopped listening and she liked that better. She was used to the silence of her own mind. The humid air clung to her, and she missed the breezes of her bluff. She leaned against the wall and sighed, wishing that she could go home. But she was bound by her upbringing and training to listen to the Old Ones, to hear their proposal.

  Her world was finally changing, and she wasn’t sure she liked it.

  iv

  Byron stood at the door leading to the west wing, his parents’ wing. He remembered nights lingering in that wide hallway, hoping that his parents would include him in their special time, hoping they would notice him.

  They never had.

  He pushed the door open and stepped into the wing. It smelled of leather and perfume–his father’s and mother’s scents. Alma said she had seen his mother the night before and had told her the news, thinking she needed to speak to someone the king trusted, not Boton and Ewehl. Alma had stayed up all night with his mother, holding her and listening to her cry.

  Byron hadn’t thought of the woman until Alma mentioned her.

  His footsteps echoed as he walked down the hallway. A door stood open and he glanced inside. His parents’ bedchamber. A large bed stood against the wall, dwarfing the room. A hearth faced it, and chairs and a table stood near the window.

  His mother sat in a rocker against the far wall. She wore a shawl and she stared across the bed at the rippled window glass. Byron looked at her. She was smaller than he remembered, and her face had fallen in on itself, as if grief had crippled her. That look was beginning when he left. It had grown and softened her, made her into an old and tired woman. She had borne ten children. All had died. Then her husband died, and her eldest child came back from the grave.

  He knocked on the door. She did not turn. He walked inside and knelt on the woven rug beside her chair. The yarn dug into his knees.

  She took his arm and tugged on it. “A king does not kneel before anyone,” she said. Her voice still had the richness he remembered. It had melody, as his did, only her melody was sadness.

  “I will always kneel before you,” he said.

  She took his face in her hands, turned it from side to side as if it were a vase she was deciding to buy. “They speak the truth, then. You don’t look like either of us, but your eyes are my father’s. May I see the marking?”

  He unlaced his shirt. She pushed the material aside, her palm dry on his skin. “The red did bleed,” she whispered. “The Enos said it would.”

  She took her hand off him and he felt a lack. He wanted to ask her to hold him, to welcome him home, but he said nothing.

  “I would have sent word long ago,” Byron said, “but Lord Demythos did not think it wise.”

  “Demythos was a good man. He used to tell me not to worry so. Now I know why.” She gazed over his head, at the windows an
d the hunting grounds beyond. The sun touched the tops of the trees, making their leaves a pale green. “Adric?”

  He started at the name. She said it as she used to when she was angry with him: the tone cold, the word crisp.

  “Did you kill him?”

  “I was singing at the time.”

  “You know what I’m asking you.”

  She had to know. Kensington was the only other one with a motive. She had probably spent the entire night wondering if her son had killed her husband. “I did not hire the assassin, Mother. I was planning to speak to my father before the ball, but he postponed it. I wanted to earn his trust before revealing myself.”

  “Alma said that,” she said. She looked at him, her eyes suddenly alive. He remembered the look, remembered wondering as a child if she could see what he thought. “I do believe you.”

  Her tone told him that he was dismissed. He kissed her hand and stood, wishing that she would hug him, just once, and tell him that she had missed him and was sorry to lose him. But she couldn’t. Her eldest son had died when he was ten and was placed in the crypt long ago. She had ridden in the black carriage that had borne him on his last journey and she had mourned him over two decades before. Whatever she had felt rested in the crypt with the body of an unknown boy, the one she believed to be her son.

  He left the room, knowing that to her, he was neither ghost nor relative, merely a usurper who had watched the man she loved die.

  He leaned against the wall outside the wing. He had never been welcome there. He never would be. He bowed his head and walked, feeling like a stranger in the place his heart had always called home.

  v

  Ikaner sat on a little niche high above the cavern floor. She didn’t move even as more Enos arrived. This place reminded her of her bluff, and she didn’t want to leave it until she was allowed to go home.

  The Enos filled the cavern, making it seem as if it were growing Enos instead of plants. The thought struck an old memory in her and she leaned back, touching the trunk of a young tree. It burned her fingers, and she saw the holes twisting in the wood. Whistle-wood. They were preparing a new cycle. Young seedlings would fall from the young trees, and Enos would begin again. She wondered if the souls of the Old Ones would remain outside in the old trees until the trees died, or if the Cache Enos would transplant the younger trees into the grove at the correct time.

  The thought made her sad. There were still generations before the seedlings would mingle with the spit of their mothers to form new Enos, and generations more for the young Enos to gain wisdom. But here, in this cavern, Ikaner saw the future–and the end of her own life.

  Time travels in circles, she reminded herself, and the ending was always the beginning. She had already died on one part of the circle and she had just been born on another. She could not deny herself either experience or the circle would break.

  Enos! Gather! Zcava stood in the center of the cavern, her arms spread. Her robe had fallen back, revealing her shrunken body and almost fleshless bones. Ikaner moved closer to the edge, but did not climb down. Other Enos crawled forward into a circle. Their minds clamored at her, but she did not listen.

  The Old Ones have brought us here. The white mists is in the palace again and the humans talk of war. We have heard of Enos helping humans and we hear of blood on the earth, hundreds of lives bleeding into the soil. The Old Ones are afraid that the final time will begin.

  Ikaner clutched the damp earth. It was not her earth, but contact with the dirt and greenery made her feel stronger.

  I saw the white mists when he came across my land, she tapped to them all. I healed his companion because he requested it. His mind is protected with Enos traps, but he seemed to be a good man and to love the earth.

  I placed the traps in his mind, Zcava said, and I led him on this path. He came to me, seeking prophecy. The Old Ones asked that I warn him and I did. The warnings started the blood–the humans tried to kill him. I went to the land of Demythos and trained the white mists after he had survived the attacks upon him. He knows violence and anger. I am afraid that he will coat the land with it.

  I too helped him. Ikaner looked across the cavern, saw another Enos leaning against a tree, her fingers clutched around her staff. The lord of my land, Dakin, coats the land with blood, had dogs eat people that he does not like. I cannot protest, for the animals use the remains as food. But I feared the blood of the white mists. A human magician tried to help and I boosted his spell. For that I ask the Old Ones’ forgiveness.

  Voices clamored in Ikaner’s head. She shielded against them, rubbed her fingers against her temples.

  The dogs of the prophecy! Zcava’s presence rose above the others, penetrating Ikaner’s shields. So far the white mists has followed the prophecy to the end. If he completes the last stage, the blood will flow upon the land, it will grow hungry for blood, and we must kill them to feed our grasses, our fields, our trees. The Old Ones have called us because the last stage of the prophecy begins. When the last stage is fulfilled, we must return to our lands and begin the deaths. I am sorry, Enos, but time travels in circles and we are bound.

  Ikaner thought of her land, its love for water and sun. Traces of blood lust had remained in the soil when she arrived at the bluff. It had frightened her, that land memory, made her hungry in a way that sent slivers of pain through her. She liked the touch of the human, liked the way the injured man had felt when she healed him, liked the love lodged in the white mists’ heart.

  The white mists is trapped by the prophecy? Ikaner asked.

  As are we all.

  The Old Ones should allow change. Trees withered and died, the land grew green, then brown. Change was part of living. Ikaner leaned against the sapling whistle-wood and wondered at the cruelty of the Old Ones and the blood upon the lands.

  Chapter 25

  i

  The suite smelled musty. Dust motes rose in the air, although Byron had ordered the rooms completely cleaned. Fresh linen covered the bed in the back room, and the coverings had been removed from the furniture. A servant brought in the last of Alma’s clothes and hung them in the large wardrobe. Byron’s two outfits hung in the other wardrobe. Alma said she would have tailors come to make him more clothes.

  Alma sat before a mirror in the dressing room. She wore a skimpy white shift and leaned her head to the side as she combed her long dark hair. Byron caressed the smooth skin on her shoulder. “You’re cold,” he murmured.

  She took his hand and kissed the palm. “Do you want to warm me up?”

  He touched a finger to her lips and then pulled away, his body trembling. He would love more than anything to stay here with her, to consecrate the room and begin their life together. But their first action as a couple would not be lovemaking; it would be participating in his father’s funeral.

  Byron lifted a curl from her back and kissed her neck. She smelled of roses and her own warm musk. He sighed. “Get changed, Alma. We have to be ready for the service.”

  She set down her brush. “You’re worried about this gathering, aren’t you?”

  “Lord Kensington’s coach arrived an hour ago.”

  “You think he’ll challenge you?”

  Byron shrugged. “I don’t know, but I want to concentrate on him right now. You and I have time to concentrate on each other this evening. Now change. I want you at my side in the mausoleum.”

  Alma turned back to the mirror. Her reflection was distorted, her eyes too wide, her chin too narrow. “Impertinent bard,” she said, “ordering ladies about.”

  Smiling, Byron left the dressing room and crossed the suite to his own room. He pulled open the wardrobe and stared in at the two outfits hanging there. Not elegant enough for a king, but they would have to do. He removed the silk shirt and matching trousers and tossed them over a chair. Then he stripped, staring for a moment at his body.

  The last time he had lived here as a member of the royal family, he had been fat and out of shape. He was trim now
, almost too lean, with more scars than a man ought to have. Once he had been frightened of being like his father; in appearance at least, he had nothing to fear.

  He did, however, have to watch his back. The gentry were frightened of an active monarch in Kilot. This afternoon they would discover that he had already consolidated some power by making Alma his consort. He should have waited until the mourning period for his father had ended, but Byron had to move quickly. Most of the gentry would be at the services. Byron had to use the time well.

  He slipped on his clothes and brushed his hair, making sure he took as much time as he could. Alma and his mother were to ride around the grounds in the black carriage as part of the mourning ritual. He should have gone with them, but he couldn’t bring himself to climb into that carriage again. He would wait and say good-bye to his father in the mausoleum itself.

  He glanced around the room and saw his lute. He touched it, wishing he could bring it. But this afternoon he had to be a monarch, not a bard. Moving without the lute on his back made him feel naked somehow.

  He let himself out of the dressing room. The suite smelled of Alma’s perfume and when he looked in her dressing room, he noted that she had left. She was a good choice for him. Her strength would help him, and maybe, after a time, the attraction they felt for each other would grow into something. He smiled, feeling a sadness. The Enos had said to him in another life, in another time: You came to find out if you would be loved. Then he had said no. Now he would probably say yes.

  He opened the door and let himself into the hallway. Two guards stood beside the door and nodded at him as he passed. He walked down the stairs and felt the jitters grow in his stomach.