“Larr is frightened,” Ivo said, for Jareth’s ears only. “It’s why he speaks so—to hide it.”
Jareth nodded as if he believed the older man. The wind picked up and he shivered, and then the snow started falling again. He looked up at the sky, so blue and clear earlier and now a dull pewter color. His heart sank.
“Storm,” he said.
It was becoming alarmingly easy now to recognize the signs. The storms came so frequently they were almost a daily occurrence. The other men, shoving the squealing kits into a sack, paused and looked up. There was no time to try to make it back to the village; they’d have to shelter where they were as best they could.
Jareth looked about. They were in an open area, and the wind whistled as it buffeted him. He pointed to a small cluster of trees and a few large stones, which would provide at least some protection. Working as quickly as increasingly numb fingers would permit, they tied a length of rope about their waists. As fast as this storm was coming on, they might lose someone in the time it took to reach their paltry shelter.
The line of men struggled forward. Finally they reached the area and clung together for warmth, silent and grim, and waited. The storm seemed to go on for an eternity. Jareth completely lost track of time. All he could focus on was drawing frigid air into his lungs, filtered through a scarf; staying close to the others as the wind and snow battered against their huddled bodies. At last, well into the night, the storm died down. The sky started to clear, revealing a black sky and a sliver of moon.
Cautiously, the men got to their feet, brushing mounds of snow from their backs, heads, and shoulders. They had no more energy for words, but they all knew that it was too late to try to make it back. They would have to spend what was left of the night here. Exhausted, shivering, soaked, they lit a pathetic fire after many failed attempts and agreed to take turns feeding it. By twos, they went out to scrounge for dry kindling deep in the forest and large branches that would somewhat block wind and snow if another storm manifested during the night. Jareth didn’t think it would come. He looked up at the stars, seeing them cold pinpoints of light against a soft blackness.
Toward dawn, the gods began to play in the sky. Red, blue, green, purple, the lights chased each other, turning the night sky into a riot of dancing, shimmering colors. The headman grunted.
“A good sign,” he said. “If the gods are so happy they are playing for two nights in a row, perhaps they are beginning to look kindly upon us again.”
Jareth thought about a group of blue tigers, chasing one another back and forth like kittens, and hoped the headman was right. Perhaps this was a sign that things would improve. Perhaps the winter would begin to retreat.
Let me know what you want me to do, he thought silently. I have always striven to honor this gift. Why have you taken it from me?
Well before full light, aching and exhausted, the hunting party trudged back in silence. Their tracks had been obliterated by the storm, but they knew in which direction home lay.
It was heading toward dawn when they saw the torches that marked the path toward the village, warm and golden against the purple-blue of the retreating night. Jareth’s heart gladdened slightly at the sight. The rabbits they had caught were not much, but even a little meat would help to thicken a stew. He need not feel quite so helpless when he returned to his family this morning.
A figure moved in the dim light, moving quickly toward them on snow walkers.
“Jareth!”
Words of greeting died in Jareth’s throat at the stricken look on Altan’s face.
“Taya—” Jareth’s hand shot out and seized the boy’s arm, fingers digging in tightly. He pleaded silently with Altan to say she’s fine, they’re all fine, don’t worry.
Altan’s mouth trembled and his eyes filled with tears. “The storm—it was so violent, I went to check on them this morning—oh, gods, Jareth, I’m so sorry—”
A moment before, Jareth had been quivering with exhaustion, cold, and lack of food. Now raw, panicked energy surged through him and he began to move as quickly as the snow walkers would let him, dropping his weapons, the food sack, anything that might hinder his speed as he raced out of town and up the twining path toward his house.
He bargained with the gods as he went. Let them be all right, and I will give you everything I have. Let them be all right, and you can take my powers away forever, all of them. Let them be all right, and I will cut open my own wrists and feed my blood to the forest.
Let them be all right—please let them be—
The door was open. Snow had poured into the house. Someone had dug through the drift, had left tracks all around—Altan, seeing what Jareth saw, forcing his way inside—
“Taya!” screamed Jareth, his arms digging wildly at the entrance Altan had made, tunneling through the snow that had come in so quickly and so deeply—
Altan had uncovered her face.
Jareth stared as if mesmerized by the pale features that floated up through the coating of snow as if Taya were surfacing from the lake. She was almost as pale as the snow that had been her death, save for her lips which were a dark blue. He reached and touched her, found her cheek hard and cold as if she had been sculpted from stone.
Or from ice.
Her expression was oddly peaceful. How had she not woken as the storm screamed around her? Had it covered her like a lethal blanket, chilling her so slowly she never realized what had happened? How could she not have heard the wind slamming the door open, the howl as the snow rushed inside?
And then, bizarrely, all Jareth could think about for several stunned, long moments was the trembling doe rabbit and her squealing kits.
He had to see if somehow the offspring had been heartier than the mother; if perhaps Parvan had been so well swaddled in his crib he still breathed, if Annu might be coaxed back into the realm of the living. So he dug through the snow yet again, and again the reality that someone he loved was dead slammed his spirit so hard he sank down into the white stuff himself and begged the snow to take him too.
Soon Jareth lay next to his wife, holding the tiny, frozen body of his infant son to his breast. On the other side of the room, Annu lay, as still and white as if she had been carved from stone. He watched his breath curl upward as his lungs continued to function, aware he was dancing on the edge of madness and praying to the blue tiger gods who supposedly took care of his people that he would slip over that edge. He didn’t want to see his breath anymore, didn’t want to be reminded of the enormous gulf that separated him from his family. So he closed his eyes and drifted.
When Altan shook him some time later, frantically rubbing his icy hands and calling his name, Jareth exploded with rage. He had been about to join them, he sensed; had been about to bridge the chasm that kept the dead from the living. But he was so cold he could not move quickly, and his fingers were too numb to choke Altan as he wanted to. He let Altan wrap him in a thick blanket, let the boy he had brought into this world walk him away from the frozen bodies of two women and a baby, sipped the hot drink Altan pressed into his hand.
And began to think.
Jareth paid little heed as the men from the village came in to take the bodies away. He knew where Taya and Annu and Parvan would rest until spring came…if it ever did. The ground was too hard for the earth to take the bodies of his wife and children; they would join the others who had died this winter in a specially built building until such time as they could be buried. And from their corpses would spring new life, he knew; flowers and trees and grasses would transform dead bodies into living things. It was sacred, it was holy, it was the natural, inevitable way of things.
He frowned and started to shiver, knowing that with that uncontrollable movement life was starting to return to his body.
But was it the natural way of things? Jareth had been the Spring-Bringer for several years now. No one knew the power of the earth and living things better than he; no one respected those powers more. But something was…wrong abou
t how his family had died. The winter was unnatural to begin with; it was impossible for it to have lasted so long, yet it had. No natural storm could have swept so thoroughly through the cabin to overcome two strong women so quickly, and yet it had.
And if the way they had died was not natural, perhaps Jareth need not obey the natural laws.
He thought of blue tigers, and their powers, and that the one thing he knew for certain was that life always came after death.
Jareth heard the crunching of snow and looked up. The men were bringing out Taya now. They had tried to cover her, but the body was clearly that of a woman, and too short to be Annu’s.
“Wait,” he said, getting clumsily to his feet. The blanket and cup of hot tea fell to the snow.
“Jareth,” said Altan in a worried voice.
Jareth ignored him, moving toward the body of his wife. He touched her cold face, and reached around her slender neck to remove the pouch she always wore. He slipped it around his own neck, tucking it carefully inside his many layers of clothing with hands that did not tremble.
Don’t leave me, he had cried the night they had first loved.
Never, she had answered with a kiss.
“Now you may take her,” he said. The men looked surprised at how steady his voice was. Jareth turned and went back into his house. He pawed through the piled white matter like a fox, searching single-mindedly for what he wanted.
“Jareth, please, come away from there. Come stay with me, let me take care of you.”
Altan’s voice was like the buzzing of a fly to Jareth; noisy, irritating, and ignorable. He grunted with satisfaction when he found it: a handful of frozen dirt, which he dropped into another, larger pouch tied to his belt. Now, he turned to Altan.
“I will come,” he said. Let the boy think him agreeable, accepting, ready to mourn and then begin the tortuous process of recovering.
For a moment, he regarded Altan, blazing the image into his brain. He remembered when the boy had been born, slipping into life next to his stillborn sister Ilta, whom his parents had buried, had mourned. He had watched Altan grow from an appealing little boy to a gawky youth to a handsome young man with an extraordinary talent. Altan had a good heart, if on occasion a sharp tongue, and Jareth loved him.
To Altan’s surprise and his own, Jareth stepped forward and embraced him with a warmth and ease he had not been able to express to his own family. Slender and delicate, a willow to Jareth’s oak, Altan tentatively returned the embrace. His head against Jareth’s shoulder, he murmured, “You are always welcome in my home, Jareth. There will always be a place for you.”
Jareth let Altan take him to his house, ate the food the boy prepared for him, and in general permitted the huskaa to think Jareth stunned, but resigned to the inevitable. It was well past the middle of the night when, reassured by the sound of regular breathing on the pallet next to him, Jareth woke and stepped quietly out of the house.
Don’t leave me.
Never.
Both Taya and the earth itself had promised this; both had broken their promises.
He was not going to grieve for his dead family. He was going to make the gods bring them—and Jareth’s other great love, his connection with the earth—back to him.
And if the gods would not oblige, he would kill them.
6
Kevla-sha-Tahmu sat easily atop the back of the great red Dragon who had once been a god to her people. The beat of his mighty wings created a wind that caressed her body and tousled her long black hair. She stroked his scales as they sailed over the jagged peaks of the northern mountains, savoring the smoothness against her hand, content to be exactly where she was.
She glanced down at her hands, long-fingered but strong and callused. Here and there were the lighter-hued scars from countless nicks and cuts. She smiled a little as she regarded them and thought of how profoundly her life had changed.
Not so very long ago, Kevla would have been more comfortable chopping vegetables, carrying water and tending to the kitchen fires than perched atop a beast out of legend. But after hardship, fear, and the agony of devastating loss, Kevla had accepted her destiny. For perhaps the first time in her brief life, she felt calm and tranquil. At peace. Free.
Idly, she glanced down, and realized where they were heading. She frowned.
“Dragon, why do we go this way?”
“You must find the others,” came the Dragon’s rumbling reply. He craned his head on his long neck to look at her. “We have sensed only one thus far, and his land lies to the north.”
Kevla closed her eyes, recalling her visionary dream. Again she saw the man who awaited their arrival, though perhaps he knew it not. Tall, fair-haired, clean-shaven. So different from Kevla’s people, with their black hair, dark eyes and brown skin. This man’s eyes were blue, and he stood on a hill covered by a white substance that seemed to resemble sand but, the Dragon had told her, was called snow. The thought of meeting this man, who seemed so strong and calm, who understood what they were both working toward, was thrilling. Kevla had borne her burdens alone for so long. She would be grateful to surrender them into his capable hands. Surely he would know what to do next.
But still…
“Is there not another route?” she asked. “We are flying directly over the Emperor’s land!”
“I am not unaware of that,” the Dragon said. A wisp of smoky annoyance rose from his nostrils. “But this is the swiftest way, and time is precious.”
So are our lives, Kevla thought. Her joy in sharing this flight with her companion ebbed, replaced by apprehension. In her heart, she knew the Dragon was right. Her dream had been tinged with urgency. Time was indeed precious. And yet…
In her two decades of life, Kevla had learned to fear many things: poverty, ridicule, the seemingly senseless laws of her people and her own potentially lethal abilities. She had learned to fear death, and killing, and the excruciating pain of losing someone she loved more than anything in the world.
And she had learned to fear the man known to her only as the Emperor.
The Emperor commanded a mighty army that would have destroyed her land, had not Kevla and the Dragon stood to help defend her people. That the Emperor possessed some kind of magic, Kevla knew; that he was bent on seeing that Kevla failed in her mission to gather the other four like her, Kevla also knew.
And that was quite enough for her to not want to fly over his country.
“Dragon,” she began again, glancing down as the mountains that had once presented an impassible barrier for her land gave way to hills and then rolling plains, “perhaps under cover of night, it is less likely that we would be seen.”
He chuckled. It sounded like the rumble of a volcano.
“Night or day, it matters not to those who have magic, as the Emperor does. We have a long way to go yet. You received the best education Arukan had to offer, but Arukan knows nothing of what lies beyond its borders.”
“And you do?” Kevla was skeptical; the Dragon had dwelt at the bottom of a volcano for five thousand years.
“This world? No. But I have known four other worlds, and the creatures in them, and I remember how long it takes to fly from north to south. The Stone Dancer is always as far from the Flame Dancer as each world allows. Think you we can find him in a single day?”
“You’re a dragon,” Kevla replied. “Can’t you?”
“A creature of magic I am, but even I can go no faster or farther than my wings can take me. Although I do not need rest or food, you do. I will go as swiftly as I may.”
Kevla sagged a little on the Dragon’s back. Somehow, she had assumed the difficult part of her journey was behind her. She had endured so much; lost so much.
As always, the Dragon sensed her mood and thoughts. “I know what you have suffered,” he said softly. “I wish I could simply carry you while you rested and recovered. I wish I could fulfill your destiny for you, but I cannot. I am a part of you, but I am not you, and this duty is yours alone
.”
“I understand,” Kevla said. The burden, it would seem, was not yet to be surrendered.
Her tongue had no yearning for speech. The Dragon respected her silence, and they said nothing more until the sun began to sink slowly to their left and the sky turned deeper shades of blue and then purple.
“We will rest for the night,” the Dragon said. “I will make for as safe a place as I can, in a remote area far from the cities of this land. Before I do, I must warn you, the fact that we are in his land could well strengthen the Emperor’s powers, and it is certain he will be looking for us.”
Kevla tensed. “Then is it wise for us to land at all?”
“We must,” he replied. “You need to rest and eat and move. I will keep watch while you sleep, never fear. But you must not use any of your Dancer abilities. Magic calls to magic. If you would protect yourself while we are in his realm, quiet your mind. He’s trying to sense you, right now. I can feel it. We know he knows about you. But he may not know about the others yet. You must not be the one to inform him.”
Kevla’s heart sped up; the exact opposite of what the Dragon needed her to do. A strange bubble of mirth welled inside her. She bit it back, but she wondered if the Dragon appreciated how difficult it was to do as he had requested.
She was not to think about the man they were seeking. So instead, as the Dragon tucked his mammoth body with startling grace and headed for the earth, she deliberately thought about something else.
Kevla summoned an image that would do no harm to her or anyone if somehow the Emperor were to read her thoughts. She thought about her time as a servant in the House of Four Waters. Her mind was filled with the tasks that had occupied her days: massaging the feet of Yeshi, the great lord’s wife, cutting vegetables, carrying water from the vast caverns that never ran dry. Everyday, ordinary things.
The earth approached quickly. They left a sky crowded with stars to descend on a grassy plain. Kevla slipped off her friend’s back and her knees buckled as she hit the earth.
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