by Sarah Zettel
He waded through the heavy snow and frozen bracken back to his horse. The poor animal, held still and obedient only by the spells woven into its bridle, sweated and trembled as Kalami approached. It smelled the foxes on him, something he could not help.
“There now, my friend, there now.” Kalami patted its neck. The animal only whickered and rolled its eyes.
Kalami took the bridle and led the horse into the trees. Its head drooped as its hooves moved, for its own fear exhausted it. Kalami felt for the creature, but he could not let it go, not yet.
“You must endure. It will not be much longer.”
He walked his horse through rustling thickets and grey clearings, choosing the deer paths that would make for the easiest going. Sometimes he thought he felt the fox brothers’ sharp gaze on him. But he could not be sure without stopping to look, and he could not stop. Twilight was already gathering, turning the white and crystal world to shades of grey and black. A knife-edged wind blew, rattling the tree branches and frozen bracken, and this time Kalami was sure the sound meant laughter.
It might already be too late. What then? The thought chilled him worse than the wind.
The ash had been a venerable tree before the lightning strike shattered its trunk and toppled it across the road. Kalami paused in the shadows beside the scorched and splintered stump, straining his ears. He heard the wind in the dead leaves, the sigh and creak of branches, the thousand rustlings of the small creatures that scurried from their burrows and hidey-holes with the fading light, and the soft thump of snow falling from branches to the ground. Beneath all of these, though, he heard another sound, and his heart warmed inside him. He heard hoofbeats on frozen mud, accompanied by the sounds of human voices.
Not too late, then. Almost, but not quite.
Kalami retreated a little more deeply into the shadows, his spells more than his skills requiring his trembling horse to back up.
“Now then, my friend. It is but another moment.” He uncinched the saddlebags and set them on the ground. He opened one and drew out a thick cord of braided silk. It was a gaudy thing — red, blue, green, lavender and yellow had all been twined together with threads of gold and silver binding it tight at either end.
On the road, the hoofbeats and voices grew stronger. The golden gleam of lanterns showed between the trees, bobbing like will-o’-the-wisps from the motion of the horses that carried them.
Kalami tied the bright cord to his horse’s saddle girth. He tugged the knot tight, and, in an instant, the horse was gone. Instead, a horned deer stood beside him. His gloved hands still felt horse hair and horse tack, but his eyes saw only a sleek, wild animal. Kalami’s searching fingers found the invisible bridle and curled around it. Stroking the horse’s neck to soothe it, and himself, Kalami waited. Every moment drove the cold deeper into his bones, but Kalami scarcely noticed. Every scrap of his attention was turned outward, toward the road.
At long last, Empress Ananda and all her company emerged from the forest’s thickening shadows. Eight soldiers rode before her and eight more rode behind, each wearing the green and silver livery of the emperor of Hastinapura, who was Ananda’s father. Around them rode pages on ponies carrying lighted lanterns swinging on the ends of long poles.
The empress herself rode at the center of a crowd of ladies, some who had come with her from Hastinapura, some who had been assigned to her by the dowager empress. Furs swaddled them all in brown, black and grey, with hoods pulled up and obscuring their faces.
Despite that, Kalami could make the empress out clearly. Her cloak was a white so pure it gleamed in the lantern light. She was tall for a woman of her country, rounded and full, a flower in bloom. But all one needed was a chance to look into her eyes, to see the line of her brow and the set of her chin, to know that beneath the flower lay a will and a mind that were anything but fragile.
It is that will, Empress, which is going to cost you all you might have had.
Beside the empress rode a man in a heavy woolen cloak trimmed with silver fur. He gestured to her with gloved hands, making some point in their conversation, which Kalami couldn’t hear.
“Sakra,” murmured Kalami to himself. Kalami had gambled heavily that Ananda’s sorcerous advisor and chief conspirator would insist on accompanying her through the Foxwood. Gambled heavily, and won.
Kalami drew his knife and held it beside his horse’s neck.
The horse in its illusion of deer form danced and nickered. The foxes must be closing. The memory of the gaze from the unseen fox brother pressing against his shoulders drained the blood from Kalami’s heart to the soles of his feet.
Ananda’s lead soldiers approached the burned and shattered tree.
“Halt,” called one, reining in his horse. He was a heavy man, round in the shoulders. He heaved himself gracelessly to the ground and stalked forward to examine the fallen ash. The company’s horses neighed and champed at their bits as strange scents drifted out of the forest.
On the road, Sakra sat up even straighter in his saddle. Ananda said something, and a moment later some of the ladies tittered nervously. The empress urged her mount gently through her retinue, so she could deliver some order to her lead guard without even having to touch the dirt of Foxwood with her pretty boots.
Kalami sliced through his horse’s bridle, severing the braid and breaking the spell that bound the animal’s obedience. The horse bolted at once, heading for the road it knew led to home. It leapt over the tree right in front of Empress Ananda. Already skittish, her horse shied and bolted off the protected road and into the forest, scattering snow and rotting leaves under its hooves.
Kalami’s dark-adapted eyes saw three small bodies flow out of the shadows and follow hard behind her, before the lead guard, before Sakra, could gather their wits and give chase.
Kalami felt himself smile. He picked up his bags and strode deeper into the forest. He had a walk of three miles to reach the sea cliffs and the little harbor where his boat waited. He had to set sail before his distraction had run its course and Sakra was back on the road to receive report from his spies that Kalami had sailed.
But by that time, Kalami would not even be in the world anymore. He would be in a world where he did not belong, far across the Land of Death and Spirit, and across a freshwater sea, where the one he sought waited in her tower beside her great lamp, holding a silver mirror that belonged to a woman long dead, and staring at her own face as she turned to play the lamp’s beam across it, light, dark, light, dark …
The mirror fell from Bridget’s hand and clattered to the floor.
God Almighty! She staggered against the outer rail, gasping for air. What is happening?
For a moment all she could do was stand there and breathe. She felt as if she had run a hundred miles. Every part of her trembled, and she swallowed to try to clear the sand that seemed to have clogged her throat.
“What is happening?” she croaked to the light, the lake and the night. None of them answered. She stared at the back of Momma’s mirror, with its tracery of roses and lilies, as if she thought it might rear up and bite her.
But it did not move. Gradually, as the iron railing warmed under her hands, her trembling eased and she was able to breathe calmly and stand on her own.
“Well,” she said, brushing a few loose hairs back from her face. “You might have warned me, Mr. Valin Kalami.”
Valin Kalami and the wine, and the foxes in the snow, and the empress on her horse. Why hadn’t he told her about any of that?
What else hadn’t he told her?
Bridget gritted her teeth and reached down for the mirror. She grasped the handle. Nothing happened. She picked it up without looking at the glass, and stuffed it into her apron pocket.
Why had Momma shown her that?
“That was not Momma, that was your fevered imagination,” Bridget told herself. Except she knew that she lied. It was Momma’s mirror, and, Heaven help her, it was Momma’s ghost. Her hand tightened around the mirror h
andle. So many impossibilities breeding so many questions.
None of which would be answered by her staying here. Of that she was also unshakably certain.
So, there remained only two choices. Live with those questions and make her way in the world as Aunt Grace advised, or go away into this place where foxes spoke, and Momma’s ghost could walk with her in the winter woods.
Finally, she picked the candle back up and went down the stairs. She paused in front of Kalami’s door, took a deep breath and opened it.
The candle light touched his sleeping face and his eyes opened.
“I will come with you,” she said softly.
“Thank you, mistress.” Even in his whisper, she heard gratitude. “You will have no regret.”
Bridget closed the door. “No,” she whispered to the chipped, wooden surface. “I don’t know what will happen next, but it will not be that. Not this time.”
• • •
After Bridget closed his door, Kalami lay still, listening. First he heard her soft footsteps moving down the corridor, and then he heard a second door open and close. After that, there was only silence underneath the continual rushing of the wind under the eaves.
When he was certain no one stirred outside his door, Kalami threw back his covers and sat up. Outside, the light beamed across the waters, steadfast in its ceaseless labor. It was not the only one who had a task to perform.
Kalami picked his belt up off the windowsill. Laying it on the bed, he lifted the window sash and pushed back the shutters. The late-autumn wind blew straight through his borrowed nightshirt to his skin, raising a host of goose pimples.
He unclasped the buckle from the leather strap. The gold lay cool and heavy in his hand. He was tired down to his bones, and this was going to exhaust what strength was left to him, but it was necessary.
Kalami lifted the oval of woven gold to his mouth and kissed its rough surface. He breathed across it. Then, he bit down hard on the inside of his cheek and spat, so blood and spittle now marred the gold.
“This is my word,” he breathed, rubbing the blood into the braided gold. “And my word is strong. The wind hears my word and carries it forth. The wind is strong. The word is clear. Let the wind carry the word to the one I will. Let the wind carry the word to Medeoan Edemskoidoch Nacheradavosh.”
The magic rose to his call, but only slowly. Kalami felt his spirit strain to find its touch, to wrap around its shaping and make the spell whole.
“Hear me,” he croaked, his voice shaking with effort. “Hear me, my mistress imperial. Our salvation is achieved. She will come. She will come, and all will be well.”
The world swam in front of Kalami’s eyes. He could not hear the wind for the ringing in his ears. Too much gone. He should have waited. Darkness more profound than night nibbled at the edge of his vision. He could not hold his mind steady. The hand holding the buckle trembled violently.
But then the wind blew again, and inside his wavering mind, Kalami heard. “Well done, my lord sorcerer, my faithful one. Come swift home.”
The buckle slid from his fingers then, and Kalami did not even hear it hit the floor. He fell sideways, curling up on the sheets like a child.
Done. Done. Much more left to do, other messages, more questions, more tales to be told, his own plans to be carried out to their separate ends, but that could wait. Everything could wait now.
With the very last of his strength, Kalami drew the covers over himself. A heartbeat later, his private darkness laid its claim over the whole of his spirit.
Chapter Four
Ananda’s gaze swept the court as she walked down the central aisle with its thick, red carpet for her weekly presentation to her mother-in-law. It did not take her long to see that Lord Sorcerer Valin Kalami was absent once again.
Dowager Empress Medeoan Edemskoidoch Nacheradavosh of the Eternal Empire of Isavalta kept a court about her that glittered, flattered and displayed great wit, but did little else. Everyone here was beautiful, after the Isavaltan fashion. They were universally tall, fair-skinned, dressed in velvets and furs, and adorned with more jewels than Ananda had worn in her entire life before coming here. They were all young as well. The dowager, it was well known, did not like to have age about her.
Ananda did not mind all the outward display so much. Rather, it was what they did, or did not do, that knotted her stomach. The ladies spent their time gossiping behind their fans or shawls. Their highest pursuits seemed to be needlework and reading out insipid ballads to each other. The men were equally bad. Their talk consisted of horses and rents, and mighty deeds on the fields of display. Most of these tales, she was sure, were woven of air and fancy. In truth, their favorite pursuit seemed to be trying to insinuate themselves into the bosoms, and under the skirts, of the attendant ladies.
Every week, the walk to the dais and the dowager seemed to get a little longer. Every week, she missed her father’s court a little bit more. Now, that was a truly resplendent court. Real artists, philosophers and deep sorcerers congregated there. Ladies schooled in the arts poetic and mathematical as well as domestic were housed in their own rooms and their discourses read with great attention. The debates carried on were of weighty matters, not airy vanities.
While Mikkel was still himself, she’d told him about the court she’d been raised in. He’d been fascinated and vowed to model his own court on the ideals of wisdom and real learning.
He never had the chance.
The courtiers all reverenced as Ananda passed with her ladies and officers in train behind her. Men and women alike bent from the waist and held their folded hands to their breasts, but only a few dropped their eyes in proper respect, unless she looked right at them. Why should they? Everyone knew she had enchanted their emperor, her husband. Just as everyone knew she wove spells every night on the great loom she kept locked in her apartments.
At last, she reached the stone dais that held the dowager’s throne. Her attendants remained standing at the foot of the broad steps while Ananda climbed up to kneel at the dowager’s feet. At least, she assumed there were feet under the layers of deep green velvet with its trimmings of mink and overlay of gold and silver tissue. She realized absurdly as she knelt there that she’d never actually seen the dowager’s feet. The cumbersome, stylized Isavaltan skirts hid all suggestion of leg, ankle or toe.
As if anyone would still want to see the dowager’s.
Ananda was quite aware it was fear that made her so snippish. Kalami, the dowager’s chief spy and sorcerer, had been absent from court for three weeks now. Where had he gone? What mischief was he working in the dowager’s name? How could those two possibly make things worse than they were?
“I give you pleasant greeting, my daughter.” The dry back of the dowager’s hand touched Ananda’s right cheek, then her left.
“Thank you, my Mother Imperial.” Mother. You are not fit to repair my mother’s sandals. “I trust that I find you in excellent health this day.”
“I am well, thank you, my daughter. You may stand.”
Ananda rose gracefully. She’d spent hours learning to manage court dress before she’d even come to live here. Her mother, her real mother, had insisted that the then Empress Medeoan should not be able to fault her deportment or conduct.
How could either of them have known that Medeoan would find fault with the fact that Mikkel had fallen in love?
“Your secretary informs us you ride out to Lord Master Hraban’s today,” the dowager went on.
“Yes, Mother Imperial,” replied Ananda, keeping her eyes modestly turned downward. She sometimes felt she had done nothing since she came but study various carpets. “He has invited me and some of my ladies to his hall to dine and watch a troop of masquers this evening.”
“You show him great favor, my daughter. This is, I believe, the third time in as many months you have ridden to Sparavatan.” The fluttering and whispering around her increased as the courtiers passed this tidbit to and fro.
“Yes, Mother Imperial. He has invested heavily in ships. His captains dine with him and they frequently have news of Hastinapura, which, as a natural daughter of that land, I am always interested to hear.”
“To the exclusion of much else, I venture. Such as the comfort your presence at my table brings to me.” Medeoan pitched the words to carry, as she always did when she had opportunity to complain.
Ananda, however, had been ready for this.
“Have I offended my mother imperial?” she asked innocently. “It has always been my understanding that I was to foster closer relations between the empires of Isavalta and Hastinapura. I can only perform this task if I have word of the doings in that land.” Your turn, Mother Imperial.
“And what news do you hope to hear today?”
Ananda shifted her weight. “I could not hope to say, Mother Imperial.”
“Oh” — she heard the smile in the dowager’s voice — “I think you could.”
“No, in truth, Mother Imperial …”
“Come now, my daughter.” There was a great shuffling of cloth as the dowager leaned forward. Ananda imagined she could feel the entire court doing the same. “You must tell me.”
Tell us all, you mean, Dowager. Ananda’s gaze flickered to the dowager’s lean face and saw the challenge written there. She sighed, as one who knew herself to be outmaneuvered.
“I had hoped the twelve dozen gilded oranges packed in snow I had sent for as a gift for my mother imperial had arrived on Lord Master Hraban’s ship Swiftheart.” She dropped a reverence. “If that pleases my mother imperial.”
“Ah!” A sigh of approval rippled through the court, with a scattering of applause to accompany it. Ananda suppressed a smile. How could anyone disapprove of a gift of the rare fruits, especially the dowager in front of her court? Even if it did come from her sorcerous daughter-in-law.
“I had hoped to be able to present this gift to my mother imperial with my own hands,” Ananda went on, folding the hands in question in front of her. “But if she prefers to receive it from my attendants, then gladly I will wait at her table this evening.”