How odd it felt to have my stepmother, who should have been my enemy for what she had done to me, begin to advise me on how to handle what was to come. Yet her words seemed in all ways wise, so much so that I began to wonder if she might truly have the best interests of the country at heart. My confusion was enormous. When my stepmother warned me of the plans of my groom-to-be, was she offering me wisdom or trying to lead me into rash and foolish action that might destroy me? When she explained why Wynde had ordered this marriage, was she speaking with true understanding of the human heart or simply pouring black fire into my own heart, which was but half-human at best?
Despite the fact that I hated her, a growing part of me wanted to believe her, for I was desperate to think that I had a wise advisor who could help me understand the events moving around me, most especially my upcoming marriage.
At night, after I had closed the doors to the wardrobe, I would lie awake, catechizing my divided heart. Despite my anger at Wynde, I was loyal to him, and could never forget what I owed him. Dunbar was handsome and charming, and the thought of marrying him was deeply attractive to the maiden part of me. But whenever I spoke of this desire to the queen, she seemed alarmed and even angry. “Do not be deceived by looks, May Margret,” she would croak. “You, of all people, should know this!”
I did not tell her that underneath both those desires lay another, my aching memory of having been a dragon, and the never-far-away longing to return to that state. But when I did not respond to her explanations of why I should avoid the marriage, she provided one more idea, a devastating one.
“I cannot say what your children might be like.”
So now I was torn, day and night, by desire and fear: Part of me longed to wed and lead a normal life, part of me desired to return to the fiery power of being a dragon, and all of me worried about what might happen if I did indeed wed and become a mother.
I did not sleep much in this time, and often left my bed to stand on the parapets, searching for the answer to my urgent, warring longings. My time grew short, for affairs of state—and the wedding was indeed an affair of state—have a power of their own, moving with the strength of the tides themselves.
And so at last, the day of the wedding came. Despite my stepmother’s warnings, I was prepared to let it go on. At least, most of my heart was ready to do so. Most, but not all. Which was, I suppose, not fair to Dunbar.
That morning, I dressed in a gown of ruby red, which was supposed to stand for fertility. Though that idea frightened me—what would my children be like?—it also spoke to me of the fire that raged within. My red hair was braided and coiled atop my head. Around my neck hung a ruby pendant. And, of course, around my waist, beneath my gown, I wore the girdle of rowan twigs.
Glenna accompanied me to the chapel as my maid of honor. But despite our long friendship and my deep trust in my lady-in-waiting, she did not know what was in the basket of flowers that I had asked her to carry.
THE chapel was on the castle grounds, a simple stone building that, even so, held sacred objects of great beauty. Gathered inside were guests from neighboring kingdoms. In the back stood many of our most trusted servants. To my surprise, Old Nell was among them.
At the front of the chapel stood the round little priest who had served our family since I was a child. Before him waited my brother, tall and straight, and still fine and fair to my eyes, despite his scars. Near to Wynde was my groom, the sight of his handsome face and broad shoulders filling my heart with unexpected desire.
Quivering with fear and longing, I took my place and the ceremony began. All went well until the priest asked the question, “Does any man here have reason why these two should not be joined?” The question was meant to let any legal objection—such as an unpaid dowry, or proof that I was not a virgin—be brought forward, and I expected no challenge. So I was astonished when Old Nell stepped from her place, and said, “There will be no wedding today.”
The desire I had felt in my veins was replaced by a coldness as icy as the spring streams when the snow melts.
As the chapel erupted in shouts, Nell limped down the aisle.
“What is this?” asked the priest, flustered and turning red.
Nell pulled back her scraggly gray hair, binding it with a quick twist. Now that it no longer hung over her face, her features seemed different to me. She yanked at the tattered cloak she had been wearing, ripping it open and throwing it aside.
Beneath she wore the vestments of a man.
Wynde stood as if frozen. I heard the sound of swords being drawn, but as I scanned the chapel, I saw that they were the swords of our guests, who outnumbered our own men greatly.
Nell limped to where I stood. “There will be no wedding for you today, May Margret. Today, or ever.” Her voice was deeper now, and came out in a kind of snarl.
“Who are you?” I whispered. “Why are you doing this to me?”
“He is my father,” said William, stepping from the group of servants gathered at the back of the chapel. “My father, Lord MacRae, a loyal subject of your father who, nevertheless, was tortured mercilessly in the dungeon beneath Arlesboro Castle.”
Lord MacRae grabbed my chin. He twisted himself a bit, then spoke bitterly in Old Nell’s voice. “I was not woman born, May Margret. But never was I man again after what happened to me in your father’s loving care.” He turned and spat upon the floor, then roared in his own voice, “Look at me, girl, and you too, Wynde. See what your father’s evil has wrought. I was a loyal subject. But your father—”
The contempt in his voice when he said “your father” made me ill.
“Your father, believing false reports, thought me a spy, and so had me taken to the dungeon to be tortured. That black hellhole was where I lost this eye.” Here Lord MacRae put his face near mine and pulled down at his cheek, forcing me to stare into the empty socket. “It was where I lost my teeth,” he continued, pulling down his lower lip to reveal his empty gums. “It was where I received the wounds that, left untreated, festered until they cost me my leg.”
At these last words, William rushed forward. Leaning against his son, Lord MacRae continued, “And it was there, screaming for mercy, that I lost my manhood. There, in the dungeon below your home, I suffered pain beyond imagining, for a crime I had not committed.”
My shame already great, increased tenfold at his next words.
“My shrieks of pain, my cries for mercy, went unheard.”
Were those his cries that Wynde and I had heard when we crept down the dungeon stairs? His, or those of some other innocent, it made no difference. We never asked. We never told. We never spoke of what we had seen.
“I finally escaped with the help of a friend, a decent man who knew evil when he saw it, and stepped in to stop it,” continued Lord MacRae. “And as I lay in a hut in the wildwood, recovering, I vowed I would see an end to this bloodline and an end to this reign.”
“We thought we had accomplished this when I wed your father and turned you into a dragon,” said a voice from the basket that Glenna carried.
With a cry of shock my lady-in-waiting dropped the basket. The flowers scattered, and out rolled the little green bottle that I kept always near, as proof to myself I could return to dragon form if needed.
Out, too, hopped my stepmother. “Though we would have preferred Wynde to stay abroad, it was not a problem that he returned,” she continued. “For I had built it into the spell that the heat of your breath would forever unman him.”
A brutal cry of loss twisted from Wynde’s lips, even as Lord MacRae said with bitter satisfaction, “You unmanned him yourself, May Margret, just as your father unmanned me.”
“Our father could not have known what was happening in that dungeon,” said Wynde, speaking at last.
MacRae turned to him. Scorn dripping from his words, he said, “A man cannot escape by pretending not to know what is done in his name, Wynde. Your father knew, and if he did not know, his shame is just as great, for it was hi
s duty to know. And it was not just me, boy. Dozens of others were chained in that dungeon during the endless days and nights I was held there; dozens of others were tormented with inhuman cruelty. I know. I saw. I heard. I am the living witness.”
Murmurs from around the chapel told me that most of the men here had some connection to those dozens of others. A brother, perhaps. An uncle. A father. A son.
“All would have been finished and done if you had not arranged for this marriage,” said the toad queen. “We would simply have let the line die out. That is all we want—for this heritage of evil to disappear from the face of the earth forever.”
“What is your place in this?” I cried.
“Why, I am Lord MacRae’s daughter. Despite the glamour I wore when I wed your father—a girl can learn a lot of magic in ten years if she has a mind to—I thought you would have realized that much by now. I do appreciate you fetching me from the depths, May Margret. Though William opened the door for me to descend, the magic was such that you alone could bring me back.”
Lord MacRae laughed. “My son made a good messenger, did he not, carrying word from me to his sister and back again?”
My fury was mounting, the fire in my blood growing. “Do something,” I hissed to Dunbar.
But my groom-to-be was staring at me with horror. Shaking his head, he took a step away.
“Coward!” I cried. With a scream of rage, I flung myself to the floor and grabbed the green bottle.
I expected Lord MacRae or the toad queen to order William to stop me. But they remained silent. As the assembled guests watched, I fumbled with the cork. When I could not pry it loose, I gripped it with my teeth and yanked.
The cork came free.
Tipping back my head, I upended the bottle and swallowed the potion, ready at last for the fire to return.
Nothing happened.
I gasped in fury and astonishment. All this time I had kept the potion close, thinking it would let me return to dragonhood. But it had been a lie, a cheat. My rage grew beyond all bounds, multiplied by the deep, burning shame I felt for what our father had done during the days of the war, things that no man should ever do.
The toad queen laughed. “Did you really think we would put such power back in your hands once you knew the truth, May Margret? That potion was never meant to work.”
That laugh was her mistake. More enraged than ever, I dashed the bottle against the floor, where it shattered into glittering shards.
Then I dove for her.
“No!” cried MacRae.
He was too late. “Tell me!” I screamed, grabbing my stepmother’s soft, bloated body and lifting her from the floor. “Tell me! There is a way for me to turn back. I know there is!”
But my stepmother did not need to tell me anything. The instant that I grabbed her, I felt my body try to twist and change, felt fire tickle weakly at my veins, felt power beat fruitlessly against the doors of my heart.
Now I understood why Lord MacRae, disguised as Old Nell, had impressed upon me that I must never touch my stepmother. That connection itself was the key and the secret to my return to dragon shape. But something was wrong, something was blocking the magic.
Suddenly I knew what it was. Screeching with pain and triumph, I dropped my stepmother. Grabbing at my bodice, I ripped open the scarlet dress, then wrenched the belt of rowan twigs from about my waist and flung it aside.
Now the magic could flow freely, and, in that moment, the change began for real. In the same instant, my stepmother, still sprawled on the stone floor, began to writhe and grow, crying out with pain equal to mine as her body stretched back to its human form.
Screams filled the chapel as people scattered, trying to escape. They fled not merely in fear of me but because the growing, writhing coils of my returning dragonhood were filling the space, and there was little room for them. Wood screeched as my growing body slid pews across the floor. Glass shattered as my writhing tail struck window after window.
I did not care. The fire and the pain were on me, and I was changing, changing.
My stepmother scrambled away, got to her feet, ran. I lunged for her, grasped her between my jaws … and stopped.
Why? Why did I stop, when I could have swallowed her in an instant? Was it the promise I had made when we were underground, the promise not to harm her? The promise that bound me by my word as a dragon?
Possibly.
But I prefer to think it was the moment of dragon clarity I had, the sure knowledge that if I killed her, it would not be the end, but just another chapter. The vengeance, the war, the anger, the death, they would all go on.
Opening wide my great mouth, I dropped her naked body to the floor.
She gazed up at me. To my astonishment, tears filled her eyes. “It was not you we wanted to punish, May Margret,” she said. “This was always about your father.”
I tipped my head back and roared, a burst of flame so powerful it sundered the slate roof. As the stones clattered down around us, I stretched my powerful body over that of my stepmother to shield her. When the stonefall was over and she was safe, I burst through what was left of the roof, sending it sailing in all directions as I took to the sky.
I spend my days on the Spindlestone now, where I think often on a passage the fat priest in the little chapel used to cite to us: “The sins of the fathers shall be visited upon the sons.”
I always hated those lines, thinking it deeply unfair that God would punish children for the actions of their parents. But now, finally, I think I understand. The verse does not speak of what God will do, but rather of how the world works. For when you do evil, when you create pain, at the same time you create an enemy. And not just one enemy; you make an enemy of all those who loved the one to whom you gave the pain.
Our father did evil, and Wynde and I suffered for it.
But perhaps it can end here. My stepmother, having healed my brother’s face, now acts as his advisor. Though Wynde will remain childless, young William has been declared the heir. So there will be no fight when Wynde has passed on.
As for me?
Well, I am the guardian of my country.
I watch the shores.
I watch the hills and forests.
I protect us from invasion.
But that is the least of what I do. For I also listen. I listen to the people who bring me news. I listen to what is happening.
That is the reason I stay here, wound round the Spindlestone, staring out to sea, but now and then turning my head to look behind, at the land I love.
I am the guardian of my country.
And we will do no more evil while I yet live.
The War That Winter Is
TANITH LEE
Tanith Lee is one of the best known and most prolific of modern fantasists, with more than a hundred books to her credit, including (among many others) The Birthgrave, Drinking Sapphire Wine, Don’t Bite the Sun, Night’s Master, The Storm Lord, Sung in Shadow, Volkhavaar, Anackire, Night’s Sorceries, Black Unicorn, Days of Grass, The Blood of Roses, Vivia, Reigning Cats and Dogs, When the Lights Go Out, Elephantasm, The Gods Are Thirsty, Cast a Bright Shadow, Here in Cold Hell, Faces Under Water, White as Snow, Mortal Suns, Death of the Day, Metallic Love, No Flame but Mine, Piratica: Being a Daring Tale of a Singular Girl’s Adventure Upon the High Seas, and a sequel to Piratica, called Return to Parrot Island. Her numerous short stories have been collected in Red as Blood, Tamastara, The Gorgon and Other Beastly Tales, Dreams of Dark and Light, Nightshades, and Forests of the Night. Her short story “The Gorgon” won her a World Fantasy Award in 1983, and her short story “Elle Est Trois, (La Mort)” won her another World Fantasy Award in 1984. Her most recent books are the four The Secret Books of Paradys and a new collection, Tempting the Gods. She lives with her husband in the South of England.
Here she takes us deep into a stark and bitter—and perhaps never-ending—winter, for a grim tale of an obsession that will persist until the last heartbeat—and perhaps beyond
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PART ONE
EVEN as they ran towards the village, Kulvok could hear the heartbeat. The nearer they came, the louder it grew; though he had been hearing it anyway since one sunpass earlier. Now it shook him, like a drum inside his own body. To a shaman such as he, the significance of this was horrible, and had he been a novice, he would have run in the other direction. But he was no longer a novice. There was no choice but to go on.
They had reached a long snow ridge fifty or sixty feet high. Here the leader, Nenkru, halted his men.
The midday sun was low at this season. The valley beneath spread like a blue apron of ice, quite featureless, and, as expected, the village could no longer be seen. Things were always like this when they followed Ulkioket.
The killing certainly would be over by now. But they would still need to be very wary for a while.
Nenkru touched Kulvok’s shoulder. “Do you hear it still?”
“Louder.”
“What can it be?” puzzled Nenkru.
“What I told you it was,” said Kulvok impatiently.
“A heart? What heart? Only our hearts make a sound. Or is it his heart?”
“It’s not his heart. I’ve never heard the heart of Ulkioket beating. Perhaps it doesn’t. Perhaps he has none.”
Prepared to wait, the men squatted. They could not make a fire; that would be unwise so close to Ulkioket.
Looking over the brink of the ridge, Kulvok made something out after all, but this too was usual, to note such signs in the more flexible places of the ice. The awful beauty of the signs repelled him. Whenever he saw them, they repelled him. He was not respectful or religious about the marks, as were the rest of the band. Their band’s very way of life was evil and disgusting, and Kulvok the shaman knew it, even if the others refused to know it.
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