Jovan recognized that look on her face, where she had set her mind and would get what she wanted one way or another. If he didn’t lift her, she’d probably try to jump from horseback. He took a knee, cupping his hands together for her to step into.
Melody slipped once in the snow atop the rock, but when she found her footing, she looked down at the river. “Perfect,” she nodded to herself. “This will take some time,” she called down. “You don’t have to stay.”
Jovan stayed.
Calder went back to the others - the delay would give them a chance to hunt, at least. Food was always the problem in winter, for predator as well as prey.
As motionless below as Melody was above, Jovan watched the river. The sun climbed higher in the sky, the cold wind reached under his cloak, sending shivers through his body, and still he watched. Even so the change happened so slowly that he almost didn’t see it. When he did, his jaw went slack with wonder.
It was ice.
A wide shelf of ice was forming between the two rocks and stretching out across Storm River, wide enough for two men side by side. It was thin at first, but with time and the water flowing over and under it, the bridge continued to solidify and thicken. By the time the sun had passed its peak and the bridge was formed enough for the surging waters to run under it, leaving the surface exposed, the others had gathered behind Jovan to stare in amazement.
“She did that?”
“I’m not walking on that.”
“Have fun swimming.”
“Is it even real?”
“Will it hold?”
“Do you see another way across, Elias?” Jovan turned to face the others. “All right, let’s move. Faster would be better, but don’t slip. Derek, will you get the horses?”
“Should I leave hers?”
Jovan shook his head. “I’ve got her. Last thing I want is a spooked mare tossing her into the water.”
Senna paused at his side, looking up to where Melody sat cross-legged with her eyes closed. “That’s a little more magic than one of her circles,” she noted. “Is she all right?”
Melody had tried to explain to Senna the strange connection she shared with Jovan, and while the Healer didn’t understand it, she wasn’t going to ignore anything that might help her understand this girl who might be the only way to defeat the Lich King. What Melody didn’t tell her, Jovan would.
Jovan nodded. “She’s just cold. Magic doesn’t wear her out like it used to.”
“Good. Looks like a storm’s moving in.”
“Faster than I like. Would you get them moving while I get Melody?”
Senna made a face. “I’m not telling anyone to run on ice. They’re going as fast as they can.”
Once Jovan had seen Melody safely down from her perch on the rock and they had walked out onto the impossible bridge, he realized there was no way to move any faster even if he wanted to. The surface was wide and solid, but the constant spray from the river kept it dangerously slick.
“I’m sorry,” Melody said, losing her footing for the second time as they walked. She almost regretted leaving her staff behind in Gira, but they were traveling light, and there was no magic within it that she couldn’t work without it. “It was the best I could do.”
Jovan steadied her, shaking his head. “You saved us days of travel,” he assured her. “We might even get ahead of that storm.”
They didn’t.
Melody was right, however, and it was just the edge of the blizzard that struck them late the next day. Wind whipped across the plains, driving hard, bitter snow into a swirling haze that made it impossible to keep their course. Clouds darkened the sky as well, throwing everything into a twilight blur, forcing the group to huddle in a tight knot.
“Melody?”
“I’m trying,” she said, her words stolen by the wind. She had worked with the weather before, but there was something different about this storm, something dark—
A scream came from her left, and one of the men disappeared into the snow, pulled back by something unseen. His cry rose to a terrified shriek before it cut off abruptly.
“There’s something out there!” Gage shouted, drawing his sword. The others, too, were drawing weapons, but the swirling snow made it impossible to see where to turn or what to strike. Another scream, another man gone.
“Melody, get down. Derek, Rhodoban, to me!” The three of them stood over Melody while she struggled to center her magic in the chaos of the storm, Rhodoban whispering flames to his palms.
“There!” Aggravain called, a break in the wind showing him the outlines of men in the snow - but these were no men. Reed and Howe let their arrows fly, and the others moved together, forming a shield between the undead and Melody.
A deep roar echoed against the wind, so low it rumbled in their chests, and only when the raging blizzard began to calm in an ever expanding circle, with Melody at the center, did they see what waited for them in the snow.
The bear was enormous, a white shadow against a white blur of drifting snow, nearly invisible save the dim red lights that burned where eyes should have been. Other red-eyed bears flanked the beast, smaller, but still dwarfing the dead men that lumbered alongside.
Rhodoban didn’t wait to be told, he expanded the fire in his hands and threw it, immediately summoning more. The icy shreds of clothing on the dead men refused to burn, but their skin and hair caught quickly enough.
“Behind us!” Senna had come to stand beside Melody, knife drawn, and was the only one looking away from the giant bear. More dead men were emerging from the gusting snow, steadily making their way towards them. Their attention, like everything else, was focused on Melody. Aggravain spun, tapped two of the other men, and charged out to meet the enemy.
Melody looked up when the bear roared again, and the snow once more pressed in around them when her focus gave way to fear.
“You have to concentrate,” Senna said, kneeling beside her friend. “If we can’t see to fight, we’re dead.”
Rhodoban continued to hurl fireballs beside the archers, flames and arrows finding purchase - but the creatures kept advancing as if they felt nothing. Only Jovan’s sword was going to make a difference, to the dead men at least.
The circle of clear weather returned, larger, as Melody bent her head and once more brought the power to bear, trying to ignore the sounds of battle and blood all around her. What she had seen, though, left a tight knot of fear in her belly. There were too many monsters, and too few of them— she had to do something.
A weapon, Aggravain had called her. Wasn’t she? Couldn’t she simply reach for the power she had used in Foley? She had called lightning from the sky, torn buildings to their foundations, she had cracked the very earth— and thousands had paid the price. Tens of thousands of innocents, dead, victims of her anger and pain. Their blood was on her hands, and she still woke sweating with the memories.
No. That was not the way.
Melody breathed deeply, the icy air burning in her chest, and she divided her power. The magic responded, parting like a river around a boulder. The bubble of protection holding the weather at bay stayed in place, keeping the worst of the wind and driving snow away from the battle raging around her. At the same time, Melody used the wind to carry her new intention out into the storm, beyond whatever dark power had infected the snow and the creatures in it.
Defend us, she sent, reaching for any uncorrupted life she could find in the cold, empty landscape. Please, we need help.
She felt confusion close by, and realized that not every creature was open to the Lich King’s influence. There were cats, huge leopards, suspicious of the storm and the bears and the fire. They were close. Melody’s relief lifted the fear from her tightened shoulders.
Will you defend us? She sent the message again, accompanied by a vision of the enormous bear and the dead men. Please. She felt the shift in the cats’ attention, and more gratitude flooded through her.
“The leopards,” Melody told
Senna, her head still bowed, her eyes still closed. “They’re on our side.”
Senna called the warning out to the others as the huge cats appeared, leaping at the bears, all snarling teeth and slashing claws.
Don’t hurt the cats, she sent Jovan. They’re helping us.
Word spread and the tide turned, but by the time the not-men and last of the monstrous bears lay charred and dead in the bloody snow, six of their number had been lost. Many more were wounded.
Melody thanked the cats silently and bid them depart, but she was still holding the last of the fierce weather at bay with the magic that she had wrapped around herself and the others. It was almost tangible, the connection she had to the power, and it was hypnotic. She could sense that the storm was no longer corrupted, but it was still a blizzard, and it still obeyed her.
“Melody?”
She was deep in the magic, feeling the power stretch and surge around her like it was an ocean and she was below the waves. The word bounced off the surface. There was peace underneath, shrouded in the currents of magic that flowed in the air and the ground beneath her - she could see them now, glittering blue threads woven into everything—
“Melody!”
A hand shook her shoulder, but the feeling was detached, like she was watching it happen to someone else.
“Melody?”
“She won’t wake,” someone else said, taking her hands. The words and sensations barely reached her. Melody remained entranced by the new vision, experiencing the power in a way she never had before. Keeping the raging winds and blinding snow away was suddenly no more challenging than breathing, she was swirling with the magic, swimming in it—
“Melody.” Jovan’s voice was more solid than the others, but she resisted. It was beautiful here. Only cold and the suspicious gratitude of the others awaited her outside this magical no-place, only nightmares and death, fear and a future she’d never asked for …
A sudden sharp pain in her leg drew a gasp from her lips, and her eyes flew open as her awareness slammed back into her body. Her hand went for her thigh, but she found the skin unbroken. Melody looked up, confused. Worried faces surrounded her. The pain hadn’t been hers, it must have been—
Jovan!
He was sitting before her, blood from a bite in his outstretched leg soaking the snow. She immediately reached for him, directing the currents of power and watching them pour into the wound, repairing the damage in a wash of tingling heat. The injury was brutal, she thought, rotating her hand to see the same hypnotic magic swirling around her fingers like smoke. Why hadn’t she felt him get hurt?
Jovan searched her face, wondering the same thing. “Welcome back,” he said, wiping a knife clean on his sleeve and returning it to his belt. “Are you all right?”
She blinked several times, touching the snow, feeling the cold, feeling herself feeling the ground beneath her. Still, the power beckoned to her, dazzling in its simple complexity.
Yes? It was not much of an answer.
Jovan moved to his knees in front of her, gently taking her face in his palms and turning her to look at him. He met her eyes, seeing the distance still clouding her vision. “Come back to me,” he said, kissing her forehead. “I’m right here. Come back.”
Melody took a deep breath and let it out, slowly. She focused on the warmth of his hands, the pressure on her face, the dark depths of his eyes. He was real. This was real. Reluctantly, she closed whatever inner vision was showing her the lines and whorls of the magic, bringing her full attention back to Jovan.
“There you are,” he said, brushing her windblown hair back from her face and kissing her once more. “Let’s not do that again, all right?”
She rubbed at her eyes, shivering at the cold snow on her hands. What happened?
Jovan shrugged. “Magic isn’t exactly my thing,” he said, getting to his feet and reaching down to take her hand. “We can ask Rhodoban. But first, are you … can you heal?”
Healing’s easy, she sent. Which was still true, she thought, only now other things were easier as well. She felt … expanded.
Senna was already kneeling at Edwin’s side when Melody and Jovan approached, working on the boy’s burns. He had gotten close enough to sever one of the not-men’s heads, but the flames in its clothes had quickly leaped to Edwin. He groaned, and Melody stood behind Senna.
It’s all right, she told the boy, touching Senna’s shoulder. Rather than interrupt the Healer’s slow, careful magic with her own, Melody strengthened Senna’s efforts— something she had never imagined to be possible, but which was suddenly simple. With her help, the burns soon faded without so much as a scar. The hair would take some time to grow back, but Edwin would live.
“Please,” one of the men asked her, touching her arm. “My brother, he’s … it’s like Nathen.”
She followed Elias to where Derek lay writhing in the snow. The man’s face had been raked with four claws, and the wounds were already spreading black tendrils into his hairline and down under his shirt. Thick green pus looked crusted with ice in the center of each mark, and Melody shuddered.
“Can you help him?” Elias knelt by his brother, taking his hand. “Please don’t let him die.”
“I won’t,” she said, and took Derek’s other hand. Even with her new understanding of the magic, this was more difficult than repairing burned flesh or controlling the weather. This was a poison as old as Semaj himself, and out of instinct, Melody began to hum.
The music focused her, transforming her into a prism that pulled in the power from all around and narrowed it into a single purpose. As she had done with Nathen, she poured the magic into the wound, filling it until even the tiniest black tendril was swollen to the point of bursting, then cut off the song abruptly.
Derek cried out in pain, his head thrown back and his hands clenching into fists around their fingers, but the wound was gone. Only four dark scars remained.
“Thank you,” Elias said, unable to tear his eyes from his brother’s face. “Thank you.”
It took time for her to heal the remainder of the injured, and though the magic itself did not tire her, the interactions did. Every one of them feared what Melody was, but they needed what she could do. Only a handful of them looked at her like she was a person, and not an unpleasant means to an end.
5
“Do you think there will be snow today?” Bethcelamin asked, warming her hands by the fire. Conversation with her husband was always strained these days, since Jayden was struggling to find a place in Duke Thordike’s preparations for a war against the Lich King. He’d spared her hardly a word since the incident with the Healer when they arrived. Bethcelamin didn’t mind. At least with his headaches gone, he was not as quick to anger.
“Will it matter?” Korith asked, not looking up from the papers on the desk. They were messages from Epidii, Bethcelamin knew, but Jayden had not seen fit to tell her what they said. “You’re not going outside.”
“Lady Marina and I had planned to walk this morning,” Bethcelamin said. “I’ve come to enjoy the activity.”
“You should do that with your maid. I don’t want you getting too familiar with these people, Beth.”
“Bashara accompanies us, husband, and Lady Marina is excellent company. We women must have some pursuits while our husbands prepare for war, and embroidery helps no one.”
Korith snorted, re-reading one of the messages before him. “Who does a stroll through the garden help, dove?”
Bethcelamin lifted her chin. “It’s not just the gardens, husband. Lady Marina and I often walk to the Healing Center outside the Keep. The need is great, but there are so few Healers. We assist as we can, so they can do their work without worry.”
Papers forgotten, Korith stood, outraged. “Consorting with magic users? What madness is this?”
“None at all. They are Healers, husband, and we—”
He slammed his hand on the desk, cutting off her words. “You are a Duchess, not a nursemaid!”
“Jayden, this is noble service,” Bethcelamin said, taking comfort in the solid stone wall behind her. “If you could see the people we help, their gratitude—”
He had crossed the few feet between them faster than she thought possible, and she flinched as he took her shoulders in his hands. “I forbid you to—” he began, but was interrupted by a sharp knock at the door.
“Message for Duke Korith?” a voice called from the hallway.
Jayden glared at his wife for a moment, digging furious fingers into the soft flesh of her upper arms. “This isn’t finished,” he said quietly before releasing her and moving to the door, pulling it open with more force than necessary. “What?” he snapped.
“Lord Thordike requests your company at the training fields,” the servant said, unflinching in the face of the visiting Duke’s obvious annoyance. “At your earliest convenience.”
Korith paused. Weeks he had spent trying to earn Thordike’s confidence, working to solidify the appearance of an alliance that would place him in line for a throne at the end of the upcoming battle with the Lich King. Weeks. Finally, Duke Thordike had invited him to participate - just when Bethcelamin was becoming alarmingly close to the Duke’s wife, close enough to be persuaded to stoop to playing nursemaid to peasants.
“I will meet Lord Thordike at the training grounds momentarily,” he replied, dismissing the servant and closing the door. Bethcelamin had moved to the chaise by the window and taken a seat, waiting patiently.
“It’s good that he’s reaching out to you,” Bethcelamin observed.
Jayden ignored her words. “You will not leave this room today, wife. Do you understand me? No walks, not even with your maid. We will discuss your shameful activities when I return.”
Bethcelamin lowered her eyelashes and her head. “I understand, husband.”
She waited until he had pulled his cloak around his shoulders and swept out the door before standing and moving to the window. She crossed her arms over her chest and rubbed where he had bruised her. The Healers could easily repair what damage Jayden had done, but Bethcelamin had no intention of telling them.
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