by Alec Hutson
Cho Lin turned towards Alyanna. “I was given a vision of a great door set in the side of a mountain, somewhere here in the Frostlands. The Betrayers stood in the snow, and I knew they were trying to wake the creature that sleeps within.”
Alyanna’s eyes narrowed. “Who showed you this vision?”
A look of consternation passed across Cho Lin’s face. “A . . . spirit I met in the ruins of Nes Vaneth.”
The suspicion in the sorceress’s face deepened. “I want to see what you saw,” she said, then rose and approached the Shan.
Cho Lin blinked in alarm as Alyanna crouched beside her.
“What are you doing, warlock?” she murmured as Alyanna raised two fingers. Sorcery glittered in Keilan’s mind’s eye as an incredibly complex weave was crafted. Cho Lin’s hand flashed out to grip the sorceress’s wrist before Alyanna could touch her forehead.
“This will not hurt,” the sorceress said in mild irritation. “I promise.”
Cho Lin hesitated a moment, and then she let go of Alyanna. The sorceress pressed her fingertips against Cho Lin’s brow, closing her eyes, and the weave she’d fashioned flared as it entered the Shan girl’s head.
Alyanna was quiet for a long moment, her eyelids fluttering. Cho Lin seemed unhurt by whatever was happening, though she was watching Alyanna’s twitching face warily.
“Liralyn!” Alyanna suddenly hissed, her face twisting. She jerked her hand back as if she had been burned, and her eyes snapped open.
“What did you see?” Cho Lin asked, her curiosity overcoming whatever reservations she had about the sorcery. “Is that the Pale Lady?”
“It is a memory that should stay dead,” Alyanna said sharply, grimacing as she turned away to stare out into the dark.
“Where are you from?”
The question startled Cho Lin, not only because it was voiced by the pretty, pale-skinned magister who had kept to herself for the last two days, but also because it was put forth in somewhat passable Shan.
She had been distracted, watching ominously dark clouds approach from over the mountains, and for a moment Cho Lin found herself so surprised that she could only turn and stare blankly at the magister.
“Where are you from?” the young woman tried again, carefully enunciating the tones this time. Incorrectly, as it were, but Cho Lin still understood what she was attempting to say. Very few foreigners ever mastered the eight tones of the Shan language.
“Tsai Yin,” Cho Lin finally managed, and a smile like the rising sun broke across the magister’s face.
“Tsai Yin,” she repeated, infusing the city’s name with such breathless wonder that to Cho Lin she could have been naming some far-off, mythical locale. Which for her it probably was, Cho Lin realized.
“You know my tongue.”
“Yes. A little,” the magister said, changing back to Menekarian. “I studied it in the Scholia. The senior magisters – well, I suppose the queen, truly – believed that Shan would make a great ally of Dymoria. That we might have to stand together one day against the emperor of Menekar and his Pure.”
Cho Lin gazed past the magister at the column of Dymorian soldiers laboring up the snowy slope. They’d left the flatlands two days ago, entering a rugged landscape of taiga covered in scraggly pine trees. Beyond these hills the Bones rose up to scrape the sky, their peaks shrouded in clouds.
“It seems she was right,” Cho Lin said, offering up her own smile. “Dymoria and Shan have become allies. Although the threat is different.”
“My name is Seril d’Kalla,” the magister said, knuckling her brow as she switched back to her heavily accented Shan. “Of the Blackmoor d’Kallas.”
“And I am Cho Lin, daughter of Cho Yuan. May the East Wind always blow at your back, Seril d’Kalla.”
“And yours, Mistress Cho. I must apologize for how horribly I speak Shan. There was precious little chance to practice in Herath.”
Cho Lin waved her words away. “You are doing well. Most Shan believe our language is too difficult for any barbarian to learn.”
“So we are all barbarians to you?” Seril said, and Cho Lin felt a momentary alarm that she had insulted the magister. Then she saw that her grin had widened.
“No,” Cho Lin assured her. “I’ve come to respect you northerners while traveling in the lands beyond the Sea of Solace. Though the people of this land,” she said, adjusting her fur collar as a frozen wind gusted, “very much deserve to be called barbarians.”
She meant it as a jest, but Seril’s face fell at her words. “Yes,” the magister said softly. “After the battle, they did such terrible things to the dead. They desecrated the bodies, cutting away their . . . their” —her expression clouded and her eyes grew distant, as if she was seeing again what had happened— “their faces. And then they burned the bodies like they were pigs that had come down with the yellow ear disease. Some of them weren’t even dead. I heard the screams . . .” She shuddered, unable to continue.
“It sounds terrible,” Cho Lin said softly.
The magister must have seen the unasked question in Cho Lin’s face. “I lived because I wasn’t up on the ridge with the other magisters. I was beside the queen, at her command post behind the army. After . . . after Her Highness fell and the lines broke, the Skein flooded through . . . they were butchering everyone, even the servants and the scribes. I could have fought. I could have summoned fire and burned some of them, at least, but I was so scared.” She swallowed hard, her eyes glistening. “I’m not a warrior. I never wanted to hurt anyone. That’s why the queen didn’t put me up there with Vhelan.” Seril glanced guiltily at Cho Lin, as if she was admitting something terrible. “I hid. I pretended to be dead. And I saw what the Skein did, may the Silver Lady spare me.” She wiped at her eyes, her face miserable.
“It’s all right,” Cho Lin said, putting a comforting hand on the magister’s shoulder and giving a gentle squeeze. “Not everyone has the temperament to be a soldier. Some people are too kind to imagine causing pain to others. It’s not a weakness, truly. It is a laudable thing.” She let her arm drop. “I was forced to become a warrior; I had no choice in the matter. I found, though, that it was what I was meant to be. I can kill without any concerns now. Without hesitation. Sometimes I wish I had the strength to care about my enemies.”
Seril offered a trembling smile. “I’m just a coward.”
“I don’t think so,” Cho Lin replied, shaking her head slightly.
Their conversation meandered as they trudged through snowy valleys and forests of white-barked trees. The sky continued to darken, and Cho Lin heard the soldiers behind her start to mutter about the impending weather. The commander who had first challenged her yelled a set of commands that sent a few of the Dymorians dressed in green and brown leather loping ahead, presumably to scout for shelter. Cho Lin noticed with a slight pang of guilt the bruised face of the man she’d struck down in the woods as he sped past her, his gaze pointedly turned away from her. Well, he had tried to capture her.
Despite the threat of the approaching storm, Cho Lin found her heart lightening as she talked with Seril. The magister had a purity to her that touched Cho Lin – she had been around too many harsh men over the past few months. The past few years, really. The monks of Red Fang emptied their souls of all emotions, even empathy, in their quest for the Nothing. The Skein were a savage people, obsessed with violence and glory. Seril was different. She asked questions about the Empire of Swords and Flowers, its customs and its people, absorbing what Cho Lin told her with wide-eyed wonder. She had the soul of a scholar, not a soldier. The queen must have emptied her school of sorcerers if she had brought this innocent young woman on the march.
Cho Lin, in turn, asked about Seril’s life in Herath, both before and during her tenure in the Scholia. The young woman had been born to an ancient and rich house, and she had displayed a deep passion for books and le
arning at a young age. It had seemed almost like a foregone conclusion, she told Cho Lin with a shrug, when one of the magisters who periodically visited their manse noticed the spark within her and invited her to return with him to Saltstone.
Seril did not offer up any insights about their companions, and Cho Lin did not pry, despite her curiosity. She did not want to do anything that might break this bond that was slowly forming between them – it had been too long since she had spoken with someone as nothing more than a friend.
A friend. The very idea that in the waning days of a quest that could end with another Raveling she had found something as frivolous as a friendship was ridiculous. Cho Lin discovered she didn’t care, though, when she pried deeper into her feelings on the matter.
The storm began as a few slow, fat flakes drifting down from the gray sky. Soon, the mountains swelling in front of them were obscured by a swirling veil of white, and then even the forest-covered slopes of the foothills vanished. Cho Lin’s trickling unease strengthened into a real fear that they would be caught out in the open. Beside her, Seril stumbled and fell, her arms vanishing up to her elbows in the snow.
“It’s so cold,” the magister murmured as Cho Lin helped her back to her feet, panic edging her voice.
“We’ll need to find shelter,” Cho Lin said, squinting into the storm.
She saw them, then, shadows swelling in the depths of the storm. Moments later the Dymorian rangers emerged from the white and made straight for their commander. After a hurried conversation, he turned to the rest of them.
“There’s a good place to wait this out,” he yelled, his words barely rising over the wind. “Keep together. It’s easy to get lost.” The commander said something more quietly to the ranger beside him, and with a curt nod the man plunged back into the storm. Then the commander made a motion for the others to follow him before also vanishing.
“Best hurry,” Cho Lin said as Seril slipped again. She caught her arm and the magister clutched at her like a piece of driftwood in the middle of the ocean. “We don’t want to fall behind.”
A light drew her attention, and Cho Lin turned to find the arrogant sorceress drifting past them on her flying circle. She’d summoned a great sphere of blazing radiance and set it to hover above her head, bright enough to penetrate the murk of the snowstorm. Cho Lin couldn’t help but curl her lip in mild distaste when she saw how relaxed the sorceress appeared, stretched out on the strange device like she was reclining on a divan in the tearoom of her manse. Her face was bored, her eyes heavy-lidded, and the thickening snow did not appear to be reaching her dusky skin. This was a useful application of her sorcery, as a beacon to give the rest of them something to follow, but Cho Lin had found Alyanna’s casual displays garish. The warlocks of Shan would never have shown their power so crassly.
The sorceress glanced at Cho Lin as she willed her floating palanquin after the ranger. Her eyes widened slightly, flicking from Cho Lin to the magister who clutched at her for support, and a flash of annoyance came and went in her face. Then she turned, leaving them behind, her roiling light dwindling as her flying circle quickened.
Cho Lin had developed an immediate dislike for the sorceress. She seemed to treat the rest of them, even those that who clearly older than her, as little more than children, with a sort of annoyed exasperation. Cho Lin wondered if she had been right to give the shards of her family sword to the sorceress for study. She still wanted to hold on to a flicker of hope that the blade could be reforged, even though she knew that was foolish. Cho Lin patted her furs above her heart, where she had slipped the only fragment of the Sword of Cho that wasn’t on the flying circle with the sorceress. It was the same one in which she had glimpsed the face of the Shan concubine. It gave her comfort knowing it was there.
With Seril still leaning on her, Cho Lin followed the sorceress’s light through the strengthening storm. The magister must have turned her ankle, as she was limping slightly as they slogged through the snow. Soon the ground became more uneven, the trees sparser, until finally they reached a stony cleft in the side of a great boulder. The space was large enough for all of them to shelter under, if they squeezed together, and so deep that the inner recesses were free of snow. Cho Lin brought Seril over to a rock and helped her to sit as the remaining soldiers stumbled from the swirling white, snow clotting their beards. With exhausted groans, they found dry spaces under the overhang and let their packs slip from their backs, then stretched out themselves. The Dymorian commander moved among them, counting to make sure none of the soldiers were still lost out there in the storm. When he was satisfied he cleared his throat to seize everyone’s attention.
“Enjoy your rest, scrappers,” he said loudly, turning to meet as many pairs of eyes as possible. “We’ll stay here the night; by morning, the storm should’ve passed. It’ll be hard going in the fresh snow, but we knew this wasn’t going to be easy. Our queen is out there, captive of these barbarian bastards. Word is that we’re close, might be even tomorrow we find where they’ve camped. So sleep, if you can. There’ll be fighting soon.” With that, he nodded curtly and strode away.
Cho Lin watched the faces of the men. There were no cheers following the commander’s pronouncement, no raised fists or swords. The soldiers were hollow-eyed and sunken-cheeked, tired beyond endurance. The events of the last few weeks would have broken the resolve of most any soldier, Cho Lin admitted. Now this tiny band was about to try to rescue Cein d’Kara from a Skein horde of unknown size. And what if they succeeded? They would be trapped in the far north, hunted by a hostile people. It was a suicide mission, and from the looks of it, most of the men here knew this. Yet there had been no desertions, to her knowledge. It was a testament to the discipline of the Dymorian army and the affection with which the Crimson Queen was held by her subjects.
The other magister, Vhelan, began to circulate between the pockets of soldiers as they worked to set up some semblance of a camp. Cho Lin watched the way he squeezed the shoulders of some men and slapped the backs of others, smiling and laughing. In his wake, the men he spoke to seemed to straighten, some of the bleakness in their faces replaced by grim resolve. Here was their true leader, Cho Lin realized. The young Dymorian commander might have the authority because of rank and noble blood, but it was the magister who was keeping their frayed morale from unraveling completely.
She wasn’t sure how long she sat there, her thoughts drifting in a numb cloud of exhaustion and cold, before suddenly she felt a presence beside her.
“Hello,” said the boy who usually stayed in the company of the senior magister. He crouched beside her, his dark eyes fixed on her with obvious interest.
Cho Lin nodded in greeting. “Well met, I am Cho Lin.”
“Keilan,” the boy said, touching his chest lightly.
Seril had fallen asleep, her head leaning against Cho Lin’s shoulder, and she stirred awake at the sound of their voices.
“Oh, I’m so sorry, Magister,” Keilan said, his face flushing.
Seril straightened, shaking her head slightly as if to clear it of cobwebs. “It’s nothing, apprentice. I should go lie down.” Putting her hand on Cho Lin’s shoulder, she stood, wincing, and then limped away to find a space to spread her bed-roll.
“Apprentice?” Cho Lin said while watching the magister depart. “You are a sorcerer?”
“I’m a student in the Scholia,” Keilan said. “Or I was, for a time. I ran away, so I’m not certain if I am anymore.”
Cho Lin gestured with her chin at where Vhelan was smiling and chuckling with a group of soldiers. “I’ve seen you with him. It seems like the magisters still accept you.”
“I’ve known Vhelan and Nel longer than I’ve been an apprentice in the Scholia. They were the ones who first found me and brought me to Dymoria.”
Keilan lapsed into silence, as if remembering something. His gaze became unfocused as he stared beyond their shelter at
the thickly falling snow.
“I met a Shan once,” he finally said, surprising Cho Lin.
“Oh?”
“He was very polite. He gave me tea.” Keilan’s voice became distant. “I watched him die.”
Cho Lin studied the face of the boy. There was a deepness to him, she decided. Despite his youth, he’d suffered great losses. These events had not broken him, but they weighed heavily upon his soul.
Like her, he had been forced to grow up too soon.
“Did you enjoy the tea?” she asked lightly, and this seemed to jar Keilan from his melancholy.
“I did,” Keilan said with a slight smile, as if he knew what she was trying to do. “It was bitter, but nowhere near as bitter as what we drink in my village. There were flowers floating in it!”
Cho Lin grinned. “Flower tea is my favorite,” she said, then raised her eyes to stare at the rock above. “By the Four Winds, I would look beyond the veil for a cup of jasmine or tiger-ear tea.”
“Tiger-ear tea?” Keilan said, and Cho Lin had to cover her mouth to hide her laughter at his horrified expression.
“It’s a kind of lotus flower,” she told him when her mirth had subsided.
“Ah,” Keilan said, smiling sheepishly. He swallowed, as if trying to work up the courage to ask her something.
“Yes?” Cho Lin said, raising her eyebrows.
“Tell me about Shan,” Keilan said, his tone almost begging.
“What do you want to know?”
He opened his mouth, then paused, as if trying to decide what he should ask. Finally, he shrugged. “Everything, I suppose. Tell me everything.”
And for the second time that day, she did.
They talked well into the night while the storm raged outside, eventually moving to where a few of the soldiers had managed to coax a fire to life. The boy had a ravenous curiosity, and his questions meandered the length and breadth of her homeland. They talked about the food in Shan, the emperor and his Jade Court, the spirits her people prayed to and the cataclysm that had driven them across the World Sea and into the ruins of the Kalyuni Imperium. He was especially interested in the warlocks of Tsai Yin, his eyes widening as she told him about how the sorcerers of Shan dwelled in great towers of bone scavenged from the corpses of the giant turtles that had ferried them across the ocean.