by Patty Jansen
“Look at me.” Carro laughed. “Helped by a man with one leg. What happened to your peg leg?”
“No idea,” Isandor said.
“I’ll make you a new one, if you let me.”
“I would be honoured.” He took the stick back from Jevaithi. And with Jevaithi on one arm and Carro on the other, he clambered into the cabin.
* * *
The truck took them to the refugee camp, where a huge cheering crowd had gathered. They weren’t just southerners, but also Chevakians, soldiers and civilians, and some Eagle Knights with their birds, which looked none-too-impressed with all the noise.
As soon as Jevaithi helped Isandor from the truck—how annoying was it to be without his damn leg?—a man in the audience called, “Peria!”
Others repeated, “Peria, Peria!” Isandor did not want that name to be used, with all it stood for, but it seemed the name had stuck and there was nothing he could do about it. The southern land one again had a name.
And there was Milleus’ truck, Milleus himself, and a younger man who looked like Milleus, and with him was . . .
“Mother!”
Isandor ran-limped into her arms. She was crying, and that made him cry as well. Milleus hugged Jevaithi, and then the younger man, who must be Milleus’ brother, put one hand on both Isandor’s and his mother’s shoulders. “Let’s go home. You’re all my guests.”
* * *
Sady took everyone into his house. Milleus, the young royal couple, the Knight commander Rider Barton and his young second in command, who seemed to be the prince’s friend.
And not to forget Milleus’ goats. The latter much to Farius’ chagrin.
They talked and ate, and Viki came past to say that sonorics levels were falling rapidly, and got invited to the feast as well.
Some time when it was almost morning, when everyone had gone to bed, he walked with Loriane up the stairs. He stopped at the door to his bedroom. Dara and Myra were sharing the room nextdoor that had been hers, so that the two Knights could have the other room.
“This means that eventually, you’ll be able to go back to the City of Glass.”
“Yes.” She smiled, but the smile faded quickly. “Is safe for you?”
“I don’t know. And besides, I belong here.” There was so much work to be done.
She gave him an intense look. “I . . . can stay.”
“If you want to go home, I don’t want to stop you.” He had trouble saying this, and he had to look away.
“Hey.” She reached for his face and put a warm hand on his cheek. “What you want?”
“I had hoped . . .” He licked his lips, breathed deeply and plunged on. “I’d hoped that you would choose to stay here.”
“With you?”
“With me.” He licked his lips again. Another calming breath. “In my house. As lady in the han Chevonian family.” Another deep breath. “I’ve been crazy about you since I first saw you on the platform. I love you. I haven’t loved anyone like this for more than twenty-five years.”
She stared at him. Her eyes glittered with tears. Sady held his breath. She was surely going to refuse and tell him to quit behaving like a child.
But then she closed him in her arms, and buried her face in his shirt, and cried. Sady turned her face up and kissed her. She clung onto him, kissing him back, while the tears ran down her cheeks and dripped on his shirt.
He broke the kiss. “Hey, it’s going to be fine. I love you, that’s all that matters.”
She wiped her cheeks with the back of her hand, smiled, and her smile turned into laughter. “Shhh,” Sady said, putting a finger on her lips.
He opened the door to his bedroom and for the first time in more years than he cared to recount, led a woman into his private domain.
Chapter 36
* * *
Epilogue
IT RAINED IN TIVERIUS for a further three days, and then the sun came out. The sonorics levels dropped dramatically, people came out of the shelters. The tide of sonorics was receding, but would take some time until the border regions were accessible again, not to mention the southern platform.
When the losses could finally be counted, the figure was staggering. Ensar, Solmeni, Fairlight. Entire towns wiped off the map. In addition, much cropping land had become inaccessible and crops lost through the weather or lack or care. Viki had given approval for all districts to farm as much as possible, and fortunately, the bad weather had delivered more rain further north than usual, but still, this would be a hard winter in Tiverius.
One morning, Milleus left his brother’s house and walked to the cemetery. He wandered through the rows with familiar plaques and familiar names. So many of his former senators had already died.
He stopped at the wall that contained the han Chevonian cubicle. There was a small statue of Eseldus, a smaller version of the one that stood in the courtyard of the house. Sady’s house now. Milleus could have the guest quarter, Sady said, but after today, he wasn’t sure he wanted to intrude on Sady’s life. Sady had never intruded in his life either.
Kalius had offered him rooms, since he was living alone as well, but he liked Kalius as much as Kalius liked him, and the less said about that, the better. In all honesty, he considered leaving the city for good. He had his goats, he could set up a travelling farm, taking the animals where the milk was needed and where hay was plentiful. Else, he might follow the youngsters up the platform if the issue of sonorics would indeed be gone forever. He figured they could use someone experienced to talk to.
Today, however, was about family. He had brought a cloth and cleaned and polished the plaque that said Suri han Helonian and put a bunch of flowers in the cubicle. He tried to think of her, but after all that had happened recently, he was ashamed that her face would not come as easily as it once would have. It was so long ago. He’d made mistakes, but there was nothing he could do to change them.
“Father.”
He jumped when there was a voice behind him.
Andrean stood there, already in his formal dress. “Uncle said I could find you here.” His son’s gaze went over Milleus’ comfortable woollen robe.
“No, I’m not going to the ceremony like this,” Milleus said, meeting his son’s eyes. Mercy he looked just like his mother when she used to nag him.
An uncomfortable silence hung between them.
“I just wanted to ask . . .” Andrean hesitated. “What do you think about this marriage?”
“You ask me about marriage?” Milleus snorted. His son had always been the first to condemn him for Suri’s death.
A further uncomfortable silence.
“Well, I think that my brother is old enough to make his own decisions. Your uncle has also acquired the responsibility for a large group of southerners, and if history is anything to go by, many of them will never leave. War, sonorics, other disaster, it’s happened before and will happen again. I do not see it as a problem that he takes his wife from amongst those refugees. If I’d have been less lucky in winning the Aranian war, we might have been those refugees, trying to eke out a living in hostile Arania, and we would have been grateful for a friendly hand.”
Andrean shrugged, opened his mouth as if he was going to say something, but thought the better of it.
Milleus tidied up the cubicle, shut the ornate grille that stopped the ground squirrels eating the offerings, and walked with his son out the cemetery gates.
Neither said anything because that was their way of dealing with each other’s differences, but that didn’t worry Milleus. The sun was shining, the sky was blue, and all Tiverians had decorated their fences, front gates and doors with flowers, most of them woven from straw for lack of the real thing. Already, people lined the roa
d to watch the parade. Never in living memory had a proctor in office gotten married. And it was a perfect day for a grand wedding.
* * *
The next spring:
A soft breeze stirred Isandor’s hair as he crested the ridge, a breeze scented with green and flowers. The sky was deep blue above and little streams trickled between the rocks on either side. At the head of the column, he kneed his camel up the last of the slope.
Bordertown.
Blocky houses lay scattered in the landscape, but the southern platform was a far different place from the one they had left. It was green. Flowers bloomed in the fields as far as the eye could see. Flowers bloomed even on the roofs of the houses, which had lain abandoned throughout summer and winter, until, finally, it was safe to come onto the platform again.
The line of camels inched into the grass, so green it hurt the eyes. Isandor reached out to his mother. In her white dress, she looked divine. Her hair stirred in the breeze, loose locks falling over her shoulders. It was going grey at the temples. But she looked healthy. Her cheeks glowed. The breeze made her dress flutter about her so it drew taut over her full breasts and slight rounding of her stomach. She had not spoken to him about it, but he knew the signs, even if only in the amusing way her Chevakian man treated her like a goddess. After a life of being a breeder, she would be able to keep the last child she would ever bear.
She had asked to come on the trek, to have one more look at her home land before turning back to Tiverius and her new husband.
The line of camels cut a track through the grass and flowers so tall that the heads grazed the animal’s belly. It was slow going, because Isandor’s camel, in the front, needed to tread carefully to avoid obstacles hidden in the grass.
“Eeh-yup!” someone called from behind.
Ontane had steered his camel off to the side to a house with a shed in the front yard. He tapped the beast on the neck to make it sit. After it did so—protesting and stretching and twisting to graze—he slipped off the saddle. The shed door stood half open, broken and splintered, and halfway to the front door of the house lay a hump of dirty fur, from which white spokes protruded.
Isandor made his camel backtrack to where Ontane waited.
“This is your house?” Isandor asked.
“It is, Sire, in none-too-happy condition. The wife will be devastated.”
Isandor nodded, but he thought Dara was far too content in Sady’s household to ever be serious about returning to Bordertown. Not to worry about that right now.
Jevaithi had also halted her camel to look at the odd arrangement of fur and white sticks. “What is it?”
“I have no idea.” But as he said that, he knew what it was. “It’s a bear.”
Jevaithi’s face twisted into a horrified mask. She lifted a hand over her mouth. “The poor thing.”
Isandor felt a chill. The poor animal might have been lost or abandoned, hadn’t been fed after everyone left, and when had managed to escape the shed had been too weak to find food. Bears were fish eaters. The only ocean here was green with flowers.
The desiccated carcass and the flowers encapsulated what the destruction of the Heart meant for the south. New life, but also the death of some old life. By the skylights, what would the City of Glass look like?
“Well, this is where we leave you.” He tapped his camel on the shoulder and it sank to its knees.
Ontane bowed. “Your Highness. I would like to thank you for everything. I’m sorry about your loss, Sire.”
Isandor glanced over his shoulder. Behind him, the rest of the column had come up the plain. Two camels carried the stretcher between them that held his father’s body, dried and preserved in layers of cloth, as it had been found recently in a field by a Chevakian farmer. Some people had wanted to burn Tandor’s body like that of a traitor, but although he had been a traitor, he had also given his life to put it right. As it might well be the only right thing he had ever done. He was a Thilleian prince, and deserved to be remembered as one, for good or ill.
“We will bring him home,” he said, staring at the horizon. “We will rebuild the city. We will find a way.”
Loriane came to him, her arms wide. She whispered, “Son.”
Isandor took her in his arms and smelled her perfume. She was warm and soft, and familiar. She would stay here with Ontane who had promised his wife to bring some of their items from their house and return to Tiverius with Loriane.
Other people from Bordertown already fanned out to their houses, while the majority of the column waited. The packing camels carried supplies to survive the coming months, until they could give the sign that the rest of the people from the City of Glass could return home. Whoever wanted to return home. Milleus had said that if it was safe, he wanted to come.
Isandor hugged his mother. Her eyes glittered with tears.
“Be well, my son. I wish you could stay.”
“You’ll be very happy,” he said. “He’s a good man.” And she wouldn’t be alone. Dara would probably stay, and Myra, too, if Farius’ family gave their son permission to marry her.
“I know.” She returned a weak smile, and moved her hand to her belly as if scratching it. “If it’s a boy, he will carry your name, or a girl, Jevaithi’s.”
Isandor kissed her on the forehead. “I love you. We’ll visit soon.”
While his mother hugged Jevaithi, Isandor signalled for the column to start moving again.
His eyes met Carro’s. His friend sat atop his camel, wearing full uniform. His face was blank, an expression Isandor had come to accept as normal from Carro. Isandor didn’t know what went on in that head, but he knew that Carro, and the new Supreme Rider Barton would serve the royal family for the good of the people, and not to strengthen their own power.
“Well, let’s go then.” He swung his wooden leg over the camel’s back and slid in the saddle. Ouch. This mode of transport had much to be desired, but it would be a while before they could fly eagles again. With no snow, sleds had become useless. Balloons, maybe. Yes, Balloons. He must talk to Sady about that.
He dug his heels in the flanks of the camel and it unfolded its awkward legs—back first—with a howl. At Rider Barton’s whistle, the column set in motion once more.
They had a task to do.
ICEFIRE
The original novelette that inspired The Icefire Trilogy
Introduction to
ICEFIRE
* * *
“ICEFIRE” is the short novelette that was the inspiration for the trilogy. I wrote this story in 2008 with a vague idea that it was going to be a quest for a young man to bring a sorcerer the heart of the queen. While I was writing, the world grew around the story and outgrew the story. There was so much more I could explore.
But for those of you who want to know how it all got started, here it is. I hope you enjoy it.
Icefire
* * *
ISANDOR GRIPPED the knife hilt, slick with blood.
The Legless Lion writhed in the nets on the floor, splashing its flippers in blood-stained puddles. The mouth opened, showing yellow teeth, emitting its fearful bark and a waft of fishy breath. The eyes, liquid brown, roved the room. Did it see the gutted carcasses of its fellows hanging from hooks in the ceiling?
Quickly. Isandor grabbed the knife more tightly.
Cut the heart, kill in one stroke, as it was done properly. Don’t show his uncle his hesitation. His uncle had too many doubts about him as butcher’s assistant already. Isandor didn’t want to lose his job.
He stabbed deep into the hairy chest. As the blade sank in, a golden glow burst, unbidden, from his fingers.
Oh, by the sky-lights!
The chest split open and the animal’s hear
t jumped out. Isandor managed to catch it, warm and pulsing, in his trembling hands. Gold light poured from his fingers, filling the hole in the animal’s chest. The lion barked and snapped at the netting, raising itself on clumsy flippers. Its fur had faded from mottled grey to an eerie blue, a faint glow. At the place where the heart should be, the chest shimmered. Icefire, forbidden and feared.
Isandor lunged as fast as his wooden leg would allow, catching the lion around the neck. The fur was rough and stank of fish. He cared not about the animal’s snapping mouth. His uncle must not be allowed to see that this had happened again, the third time in as many days. With one hand, he flung the heart back into the animal’s chest and let go, sliding off the hairy back.
Panting, on hands and knees in bloodstained-puddles, he met the Legless Lion’s brown eyes.
Its fur went back to mottled grey; the chest sealed up. Whiskers twitched.
Phew.
Now all he needed to do was . . . He grabbed the netting, but before he could throw it over the animal’s head, it waddled out the door into the snow-covered yard. A few heartbeats, and it was gone.
Oh no, by the sky-lights!
Footsteps splashed on the tiled floor. “Isandor, what did you—”
Silence. His uncle, staring at the empty net. His face darkened to a puce, his nostrils flaring. “Again? You let another one go? Useless boy! You will be the ruin of me!”
Isandor hung his head. “I’m sorry, uncle. It won’ happen again.”
* * *
Hands thrust deep in his pockets, Isandor slouched home at the end of the day. Pink and green sky-lights crackled above, bathing the streets in eerie light. He didn’t look at anyone; he didn’t want to talk to anyone. His footsteps croaked in freshly-fallen snow, a big croak and a smaller one, a boot and a wooden leg.