Winter's Sword

by Alexandra Little

  My head was starting to spin. “Enough riddles.”

  “There are two of you, granddaughter,” she said. “There is Eva the human, and the Lady. Eva herself is not without power. She is an inheritor, after all. You can kill yourself, and yet still remain in this world.”

  “Kill Eva,” I said. “But the Lady remains.”

  Adhanel nodded. “It is what we all had to do.”

  “You and Adhannor and Singael?” I demanded. “I have no wish to be like you.”

  “Then this place will fall,” she replied. “And either he Dagnar Queen or your human Ellsmid will rule over this place, and the cycle of Adhannor will start anew until another inheritor comes to stop it. Which would you have it be, Lady? Shall you stop it now, or trust one of your ancestors to do it for you?”

  I shook my head, denying the choice. But she was right. I could end it now, or I could run as fast and as far as I could, and hope that there would be someone else to rein in the carnage. “And my child?”

  “You will have to ask the Lady to spare your child,” Adhanel replied. “Or chance to wait for the birth. But Spring is coming much sooner than that, granddaughter of mine. Neither elves nor humans will hold off a war until you deliver. And I believe your lover is approaching, as well.”

  Of course he was. “You will not tell him—”

  “Relax, granddaughter. Your secret is safe, for now.”

  I heard the distant howl of the foulings on their own hunt, and then the crunching of snow under boots as Dalandaras made his way back to the cave.

  “And there is the elven Prince,” Adhanel said.

  He saw Adhanel when he entered; I could tell from the dart of his eyes. He set the wood down next to the fire pit, and took off his cloak. “Aerik and Firien left a dry pile,” he said. “It should light without help.”

  Did he see what I saw when I looked at Adhanel? The smooth, ageless face with the depth of time in her eyes? Did he see the way the hem of her robe flitted over the rock and snow without dirtying itself? Or that when there was a peek of her foot, she was barefoot, and unaffected by the cold? Or that her hair never tangled, and a frown never marred that forehead? If there was guilt, she never showed it?

  “Prince,” Adhanel said.

  “Lady,” Dalandaras replied calmly.

  “Not anymore,” she said, inclining her head. “Not for quite a long time. But I accept the compliment. You wished to speak with me?”

  “I have a question.”

  “Only one? I would have thought you have many for me.”

  “Only one that matters to me.”

  I was with Adhanel about this. He had to have more than just one question for the former Lady of Tal Aesiri.

  “I want to know…that is to say…” Dalandaras sighed, and tried again. “You have not possessed her since…?”

  “Since Singael?” she replied sweetly. “No, Prince, I have not possessed her since then. Besides, she is the Lady now. The old magic has accepted her more willingly than it ever accepted me. I doubt it would allow me to possess her.”

  Dalandaras nodded. This was all he wanted to ask Adhanel about? He wanted to ask about me? He had a great spirit before him, someone to praise as much as damn for working with the old magic and creating Adhannor, and then there was his grandfather’s murder.

  Maybe he did not see what I saw, after all.

  “Then I will leave you two alone,” Adhanel said, and sauntered from the cave.

  Dalandaras went back to the fire pit. His movements were short, abrupt. His muttered “thaeglir” was barely audible but it set the wood alight all the same.

  Maybe he too held so many things in, and didn’t know how to let them out, or even if he wanted to let them out.

  “Why did you ask about me?” I said.

  Dalandaras simply stuck more sticks into the fire, until the flames illuminated most corners of the tiny cave.

  “You need warmth,” he said instead. “And to eat.”

  “Don’t try to distract me. Why did you ask Adhanel about me when I could have told you the answer?”

  “Because You’re hiding something,” Dalandaras murmured. “I can feel it.”

  I was hiding our child. Dalandaras had a right to know, but if I told him, then I would not be allowed to do what I had to do to save Tal Aesiri. I wasn’t showing yet; I was a sturdily built girl, like my mother; she had told me once that I had nearly come as a complete shock to her. And the Lady’s magic was having an effect - I didn’t want Dalandaras to know, so he simply didn’t. But I couldn’t conceal everything from him. It was better to persuade him to my side than surprise him with what I had to do.

  “Then face me and ask.”

  He turned, sitting fully on the stone ground. “Will you answer honestly?”

  I had to consider it. Damn him, I had to consider whether to answer him honestly. “You will not like it,” I warned.

  “I do not like many things,” Dalandaras replied. “But I accept them when need be.”

  I shook my head. How had one such as him come to love one such as me? I approached, and he spread out his cloak for me to sit on. Warmth, I could tell, now that I was looking for it. Anger and warmth. He was mad, but wanted me to be dry and warm. “Have you never blamed me for Singael’s death?” I asked.

  “Your hand may have wielded the weapon, but Adhanel was pulling the strings.” He pulled me close, his arms slipping around my waist. “He may have been my grandfather, but I can’t say that he didn’t deserve it. In all the time we’ve been together, I’ve never told you the stories.”

  I rested my head on his shoulder. Even in the winter ice and all the mud we had accumulated on each other, his clothes retained the smell of sagebrush. “We’ve been together plenty,” I said lightly. “But I’ve been unconscious for much of it.”

  “And I whispered plenty of stories while you slept,” Dalandaras said. “But they were good stories. Happy stories. Of our trickster gods and heroic spirits. They weren’t of the Hard Wars. The wars that Adhannor and Adhanel and Singael started. I was a little boy then. Too young, truly, to wield a blade.”

  I had picked up a sword quite early, but it had been made of wood. It had been for play as much as practice. “How young?”

  “Nine years,” he said quietly. “Our children age as human children do; only in adulthood does our aging slow. Anyway, we are quite an ancient race, and we have many graves. When Adhannor found a way to gain control of the old magic, he raised our own dead against us. Combined with the foulings and the dreadwolves and colossi…”

  His voice tightened, and I held him harder. “If you can’t continue…”

  He took a deep breath. “You think of Tal Uil as a city,” he said. “But it was once a nation. We lived on the outskirts, Alid and my mother and father and I. I thought we had simply moved there, to govern a new settlement. But my mother and father had moved there to search for Singael, who had disappeared. One night, the dead came back to life, and the colossi proved themselves to be more than ancient myths. My mother died defending my sister and I.”

  “I’m so sorry.”

  “You have nothing to be sorry about. It was a millennium ago.”

  “It still hurts, though.” And I hurt for him.

  “Yes, it does. And then I picked up her sword and did what I had to do to defend my sister. And when the morning came, and for the next year, I saw Tal Uil burn.”

  “I want to know about you,” I said. “About your childhood and your family. But why are you telling me this now?”

  “Because, despite his crimes, Singael was once a good person. A good grandfather.”

  “And you think I am changing.” I could not blame him for that. I was changing. “But to say that I am becoming like Singael—”

  “You cannot hide it from me,” Dalandaras said. “However much you try.”

  For a heart-wrenching moment, I thought of the baby.

  But that was not what what he was talking about. “Show me Zarah
,” he said.

  I pulled away from him. “Why?” I demanded.

  “I saw her here, on this mountain.”

  “Then go search for her,” I replied. “What do you need of Zarah?”

  “I saw you pull her from yourself,” he said. His brow was furrowed, his jaw clenched. For an elf, the appearance of anger was sudden. “The line between the Lady and Adhannor can be very fine.”

  “First I am Singael, now I am Adhannor. Do you seek merely to start an argument with me? Wait, this is why you wanted to know if I was under Adhanel’s control,” I realized. “You wanted to blame this on her.”

  “I didn’t want it to be you, holding and summoning Zarah. Because I know where that path leads.”

  I paced back to the entrance of the cave. Storm clouds were gathering, dark and swift. Whether it was my anger or the rumble of the storm through the old magic, or both, I trembled. The thunder echoed and the sky dimmed and the cold wind whipped up hard. I could sense my foulings stalking for prey even as the snow fell, searching for the small animals that found themselves caught out of their burrows.

  As the snow piled, and I pointedly ignored Dalandaras, a figure appeared before me.

  “Mother,” I said.

  “My pet,” she replied, her hand reaching out to me. Without thinking I reached for her too. Our fingers brushed, hers ghostly and mine solid. My hand cooled, and I watched as my skin turned the pale and ghostly outline of the Lady’s form.

  Mother yanked her hand away. “Not yet, my Eva.”

  My hand warmed, until my skin looked like my own again. “I am halfway into death,” I said. “And yet I cannot touch my own mother.”

  “No mother wants to see her child join her in death,” she replied with a sad smile. “You cannot keep calling to me like this. I am not like Zarah, or the others. I didn’t die here; I don’t belong here.”

  “It is hard not to call for you, when I need you so much.”

  “You have a good man in there,” Mother said. “Show him Zarah.”

  “Why?”

  “He will keep you grounded, pet.”

  I nodded, and the blizzard seemed to sweep my mother’s ghost back into the wind.

  I turned back inside, and to Dalandaras. He had procured provisions from…somewhere. Ever-resourceful, my lover, and always thinking farther ahead than I was. He had stripped himself down to his tunic and rolled up his sleeves. His skin caught the firelight, which danced off the shimmer of his skin. What would our daughter look like? Would she have the sheen, the translucence of her father? Or would she take the human tan that I had?

  “You wish to see Zarah?” I asked.

  Dalandaras looked up at me, anger dancing in his jaw still. How long had I kept him waiting?

  “Yes,” he said.

  I pulled her out of me, her essence swirling out of my body like its own whirlwind. The flames of the fire pit were pulled to her as she formed, ash and smoke being swept up in the creation. And then she was there, decaying and no longer whole. She twisted her head back and forth, looking to me then the Dalandaras and back again.

  “This is no battle,” Zarah said, her voice hoarse. I could see into her neck, into the sinews of her muscles as they worked. But for the old magic, she should have been able to speak. “Why am I here?” She sneered, or tried to.

  “Go,” Dalandaras said.

  I stared at him.

  “Go,” he said again, nodding at Zarah. “Find your shelter elsewhere.”

  “The storm will tear me to pieces,” she said angrily.

  “You are already in pieces,” he replied calmly. “And I am sure a mere storm will not destroy a creature of the old magic.”

  “And the blood magic,” Zarah added, her head turning to me once more. “Do you like the taste of that, when you suck me in and pull me out again?”

  “Go,” I ordered, my voice trembling. It was both the storm and the magic, I decided. The storm was filled with magic. Even the mountain knew what would be coming in the spring thaw, and could not contain its anticipation.

  Zarah went, staggering sideways as she hit the winds of the storm.

  I sank down on Dalandaras’ cloak. He caught me and held me to him.

  The trembles didn’t stop. I curled into him. He pulled me into his lap, and I only curled tighter.

  It was blood magic, what I had done. It wasn’t the old magic as I had thought. Not pure old magic; it took the corruption of blood magic to hold sway over Zarah as I had done. It took blood magic to hold her in me. She was my enemy, and I had not lamented her death. But to hold sway over her in death, well, that should have repulsed me. It should have repulsed me as it did everyone else. But it did not. I didn’t care that I held sway over her. I was happy that she could do my bidding.

  I had not even minded Fardeth and the others. I could break my promise to them, and there was nothing they could do about it. They would be mine to control.

  “I don’t want to be Adhannor,” I whispered.

  He kissed my temple. “You won’t be,” he replied. “Not as long as I am here.”

  I twisted to face him, my fingers curling into his shirt. “You must promise me something.”

  The muscles in his jaw flexed. “If I can,” he said.

  I shook my head. It wasn’t going to be enough. He wasn’t going to give me the promise that I needed from him. “I need you to trust me.”

  “I do.”

  I shook my head again. “Promise me, Dalandaras. Promise me that you will trust me. When spring comes, promise me that you will trust me.”

  “Trust you to do…what?”

  “That you trust me to do what is best, for all of us.”

  “Do not do anything that will kill you. I know you, Eva. You fought Adhannor alone. You must promise me that. I gladly follow you, but I need you too. I need you to live, for my sake.”

  That was the thing with promises: there was two of me in this body. Which one was doing the promising? “I promise, Dalandaras.”

  “Then you have my promise that I will trust you. I promise that I do trust you.”

  I wasn’t sure what sat heavier within me—that the blood magic could tempt me without my realizing it, or that I was betraying Dalandaras.

  CHAPTER 15

  The depth of winter came hard, and did not let up.

  The snow that came down did not let up for many days, and if Dalandaras did not keep the fire up we would have been kept in the darkness. I would not have minded, but Dalandaras wouldn’t have it. It didn’t matter that I could see in the night, and that the dark light of the old magic flowed through even the snowflakes that fell, he was going to make sure that I had normalcy.

  I let him tend to me. I spent my time sitting, and searching my way through the old magic.

  When I had destroyed Adhannor, I had only sealed the rift in the mountain where the old magic had filtered up like mist and smoke. The source of magic was still there, seething and churning underneath the rocks and shock crystals. I reached for it, and began to alter it.

  As if I was braiding and knotting ropes on a ship, I took the threads of the old magic and started to form a net. Only this time, I wasn’t catching fish. I hoped to catch the land.

  I laid it out from the center of Tal Aesiri, across any vulnerable sides of the mountain that could feasibly be climbed, however small the chance seemed. Through the colossi and the spirits that roamed, and the foulings and dreadwolves, I laid down the threads.

  I felt the spring thaw come deep in my bones. And then the discontent came from my foulings and dreadwolves, who had spread themselves farther than their territory, over to Tal Uil and down to Winter’s Crown. Armorers and weaponsmiths were busy. There were arrivals coming up the trade routes, training in the open. There would be war from both elves and humans, and soon.

  When the weather was clear enough that I would not have to worry about Dalandaras freezing, I had him take me back to Tal Anor.

  The snow had piled high, turning our pat
h into a dig. The foulings ran ahead, flattening the snow and burrowing through it. It made our trek easier. We had to stop for a night, but the sky was clear and we watched the aurora, faint in the spring darkness, dance across the stars.

  If I had not the old magic to tell me we had arrived at Tal Anor, I would not have recognized it.

  The way down the river had been barricaded as best it could be. A stone wall arched over the river, its features crude but the old magic flowing through it telling me that it would hold true, at least against human attacks. A makeshift gate of hewn branches protruded from the water into the base of the gate.

  Someone was at watch on top of it. Their footsteps echoed loudly against the walls of the river valley as they scrambled behind the wall. We weren’t challenged; instead, a simple door, camouflaged by elven magic, opened where the wall met the mountain.

  “You’re back!” a human soldier I recognized but couldn’t name, held out his hand. I took it, and he pulled me up the steep stairs and through the wall. Once he saw the foulings, however, he seemed to remember who I was. “Lady,” he said with a bow.

  I nodded back. What would father do? He always seemed to have a connection with the soldiers. “Are you well?” I asked as Dalandaras hauled himself through. “How have you kept over the winter?”

  “Fair enough, Lady,” the man replied. “The elves have helped much. Another elf—a woman—found her way here through the winter storms.”

  Eliawen. “That is good,” I said. “Will you stay at Tal Anor, or do you await the ships that come from Port Darad?”

  His eyes slid away, and I knew his reply. I forced myself to nod, to find a smile that was something like approval of whatever his choice would be, and touched his shoulder. “Don’t be afraid I will dislike the answer. I understand. Stay alert, now that spring is here.”

  “Lady,” he said as I passed him.

  “We will lose many,” Dalandaras murmured to me as we headed down the river bank. Bridges had been set up, with wooden pilings rammed deep into the riverbed. We crossed one, testing its build as we went. It was strong, firm. Would it buckle and bend as spring heated up? We would have our fight with Ellsmid and the Queen long before that, I thought.