“That happens every winter.”
“Not to the same extent, Drumheller. I checked the archives. There are maybe a handful of years since the founding of the city that ice impacted on the rivers to such an extent before solstice or New Year’s. Traffic’s been at a virtual standstill since equinox, near two months ahead of schedule. Stroll through the courtyard of the Mercantile Exchange sometime, even the Cascani are hurting. Everyone’s hanging on, they don’t see themselves as having any choice. Stretch out loans, call in favors, do whatever’s necessary to survive until spring. But suppose spring comes late? Suppose the thaw is sudden and violent, and the rivers stay impassable, and the roads are flooded? Suppose next year it’s just as cold for just as long?”
“You perceive a pattern in these events?”
“The cold doesn’t smell right.”
“Ah.”
“Which you’ve known from the start.”
“I was paying attention. And my nose is bigger.”
Another soft chortle, which Elora guessed was more at her expense than Drumheller’s. She shot a glare at where she thought the sound came from but wasn’t surprised to find that Khory wasn’t there. It was another of the warrior’s exercises, to test her own abilities as much as Elora’s by sneaking up on the younger woman, announcing her presence by tapping Elora on the shoulder with drawn sword. Elora’s challenge, of course, was to sense her coming.
Thus far, she’d done so only in her dreams. Today was no exception.
“The air had a different taste to it in the mountains,” she explained to Thorn. Actually, she hadn’t given this the slightest thought until he prompted her, but once he had, all the aspects fell into place like the final pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. “Silly as it sounds, it was cleaner somehow. What I smell when the storms blow off the prairie reminds me of Angwyn. It’s the same taste the wind had on the ocean, right before the Deceiver attacked our boat. It’s like the breeze off a mudflat, there’s something rotten to it.”
Thorn said nothing, but merely sank deep into his comfy chair, nursing his mug of cider and urging her on with a pair of upraised eyebrows.
“I have an affinity for fire,” she said. “You, for earth. From what we’ve seen, the Deceiver has hold of the air. Over Angwyn he’s created a whirlwind that’s somehow sucking every scrap of warmth from the air.”
“The technical term, for what that’s worth, is ‘heat sink.’ ”
“Whatever. Who knows how powerful that whirlwind’s grown since we fled the coast? The eagles haven’t been past the western mountains but what they’ve heard from migratory species is horrible, and it dovetails with traders’ gossip in the market and the taverns. The whole of Angwyn Bay, land and sea together, is ice. And it’s spreading farther north and south with every day. It’s as if the world’s suddenly been turned on its end, to make Angwyn the new North Pole, and the Deceiver’s sending forth glaciers like they were armies.
“If that’s so, maybe this wind and the storms it’s brought along are his heralds. These are desert winds, Thorn, of that there’s no mistake. They come from a place so cold that every drop of moisture’s frozen from the air long before it reaches us. The snow we’ve seen falls from the sky that’s already here. Which means, on top of everything else, we’re likely deep into a drought and don’t even realize it because it’s started in winter when no precipitation is considered a blessing.”
She drew herself from her chair and began to pace, strides taking her through the elongated rectangles of light and color cast by the skylights high above. She was illuminated by a succession of highlights that served to accentuate the dominant elements of her features. She looked wild and untamed, with a strength of spirit growing in tandem with her body. What she lacked was patience. So much was changing within her, each day brought some new challenge to be overcome, a harder reality to cope with. Her frustration came from the fact that she could see no end to it. Her life had been shaped from birth by forces beyond her control. Now, when she was trying to assert herself, her own body had decided to betray her, becoming a kind of Deceiver unto herself.
“The Realms are bound,” she said, working through the problem aloud, beginning with the fundamentals she already knew. “The Circle of the World, the Circle of the Flesh, the Circle of the Spirit. Each of the three of us claims an aspect of the world, that means our actions, our use of active sorcery, must have an equivalent effect on it.” She rushed to one of the tables, shunting books aside until she found the tome she needed, quickly comparing a couple of pages with the notes she’d scribbled on a separate sheet. She made a fist, pounded lightly on the desktop. “The energy that fuels magic is bound into the fabric of the world, but the genius necessary to wield it comes from the Circle of the Spirit. Mohdri casts a spell to draw all the energy of magic to himself, it finds a physical analog by stealing the warmth as well. Which in turn makes it harder for his enemies to resist him, which brings him closer, faster, to his hoped-for victory. Damn!” she cried, and this time there was nothing light about the blow.
“What?”
“Don’t you see the trap? If we fight him the same way, the enchantments we’d have to employ to seize control of his spell and then reverse it can’t help but have an equivalent collateral impact on the physical world. This isn’t a case of Bavmorda waving her arms and transforming an army into pigs”—referring to the battle before the Demon Queen’s fortress of Nockmaar—“and then you and Fin Raziel negating it. For you to counterattack with the Deceiver’s weapons, to face him on his level, might well crack the surface of the globe loose from its foundations. And I don’t dare think what might happen if I tried.”
“That makes sense.”
“What I don’t understand are the Maizan.”
“How so, Elora?”
“Can’t they see what’s happening? Don’t they ever look over their shoulders? Are they so busy conquering the world that they haven’t noticed the Deceiver’s destroying it behind them?”
“Think about who the Deceiver is. To their eyes, he appears as Mohdri, their beloved castellan. Their leader, the bond between them forged by blood and sweat and steel. Anakerie rides in the place of honor at his left, but they only follow her because he wills it so. They obey, because she holds her place in his name.”
“He isn’t real, Thorn, not as we define it. If I had to pick, I’d say his nature was closer to demon than human. He has no physical being. From what we’ve seen he can’t even exist among us, much less act on our world, without a living, tangible host.”
“And for some reason,” the Nelwyn said, “the person he most desires to play that role is you.”
“Never mind that for now. If we can somehow eliminate Mohdri, we force the Deceiver to another host. Or better yet, deprive him of one altogether! At least that might deal with the threat posed by the Maizan.”
“Been considered, been tried.”
“You never told me!”
“Success would have spoken for itself. I saw no need to burden you with news of failure.” It wasn’t a happy memory. “I could almost swear he knew we were going to make the attempt. If Khory hadn’t spotted the trap, if Anakerie hadn’t smuggled us safely from their camp…”
“She saved you?”
“Don’t sound so scandalized.”
“Don’t keep springing so many surprises.”
“She isn’t our enemy. She never has been.”
“You sound like that worries you.”
“The Deceiver knows so much about everything else. He’s familiar with so many intimate aspects of our histories, our very souls, why is he blind here? Or is this yet another trap?”
“You mean, is Anakerie playing some sort of double game? Only pretending to be on our side?”
He shook his head, with a downcast turn to his eyes that struck at Elora as if she could see the vision in them of Anakerie’s executio
n, and she knew Thorn was envisioning the same.
“No. My terror is that he knows she’s betraying him, and it doesn’t matter.”
“That’s saying everything is predestined.”
“You refuse to believe that?”
“Every day I’m free.”
* * *
—
Everyone complained about the weather. It tainted every conversation and put folks in a perpetually sour mood. In a season of celebration, all Elora heard in one form or other were complaints. “My boss is a cow.” “My husband doesn’t understand me.” “Nobody cares.” “Work rots.” “I got gypped.” “Did you see the way she looked at me!” “Bloody government!” “Bloody peasants!”
As the holidays approached there was little active charity in deed and even less in spirit, replaced by a prevailing undercurrent of surliness and resentment. The sharp and biting edge that characterized the best of Sandeni humor took on an element of active cruelty.
Even Elora wasn’t immune to this pervasive atmosphere of bleak malaise, and not simply because she heard her full name used more and more as a profanity, the ironic counterpoint to some misfortune, as when your house burns down and someone notes that “Elora Danan must have blessed you.”
As her own researches in the university library led her only to dead end after dead end, her smile came less readily and there was a growing wariness to her walk, an air of tension to her carriage that manifested itself in a reflexive tendency to respond to the most casual and ordinary of interactions as a potential attack. She no longer slept well. She didn’t want to sleep at all. At some point before waking, she’d find herself atop Tyrrel’s tor, where Kieron Dineer awaited. He would be the dragon sometimes, or she, or both, or neither. Regardless of the permutations, the outcome was always the same. He wanted her to kill him, and refused to accept no for an answer.
She was glad she slept alone, she didn’t want anyone seeing her when she awoke from the worst of those visions, mouth full of the same metallic taste she remembered from Torquil’s foundry, skin drenched with sweat as if she’d actually been immersed in the ghost dragon’s flames. Sometimes she was so angry that it would have been a horror for anyone fool enough to cross her path. Others, she was so heartsick she could hardly breathe through the terrible, whooping sobs. Whatever the case, on those nights when Kieron’s specter came to her, the most she dared after waking was a light doze, hardly more than a catnap but nowhere near as refreshing.
Yet at the same time she yearned for companionship. Someone to hold her, comfort her, fill the aching void in her heart and soul that had been with her from the moment of her birth.
One of her songs said it best, a sad ballad of a child ever dependent on the kindness of strangers, allowed friends but never a family to call her own. She called it “The Song That Never Ends” because it had no ending. She never performed it, never did more than croon it lightly to herself alone in the sanctity of her room. At those moments, when the shadows gathered most deeply about and within her, she couldn’t withstand the fearful mixture of anger and loss, aching love and betrayal she felt for her mother.
Her emotions coiled out of her like a serpent, a foulness made almost tangible by their intensity. She hated herself for the rage she felt. She knew her mother hadn’t abandoned her. She told herself her mother loved Elora more than her own life, willingly sacrificing herself to give Elora a chance for survival, but part of her soul remained that of the newborn girl who’d barely begun to breathe before she was cast away, who never knew why her mother had left her alone.
There wasn’t the same animus for her father as she felt for her mother. He had no being, none had seen him, none had known him. She could not hate what to her had never existed.
It made no sense, of course. The true object of her enmity should be the demon sorceress herself. It was Bavmorda who killed Elora’s mother, who’d tried her best to do the same to Elora. The infernal paradox was, Elora felt sorry for her. Though she’d been only a baby, she’d come away from their encounters with a strong residual image of her foe. A sense of the woman that was in the beginning, before her bright promise had been corrupted.
That made her hurt all the more, having a greater, truer sense of the woman who’d moved heaven and earth to bring about her destruction than she did of her own mother.
When those moods were foulest, when even the brownies learned to keep their distance, her footsteps invariably took her down the stairs to the dark and deserted tavern, where Duguay waited. It wasn’t for his company she came. Whatever he saw on her face when their gazes crossed brought the troubadour no satisfaction. She would move to the center of the stage, never taking the opportunity to shift tables and chairs aside to give herself more room. She accepted the space wholly as she found it.
Then she would dance.
First, she would define a rhythm. Sometimes that inspiration came from without, others were dictated by the beat of her heart. That pulse would set up a resonant response, a minor articulation of the spine, a careless flick of the fingers. One motion would inspire the next, in ever-increasing complexity, as a solo instrument might initiate a simple melody and then be gradually joined by the others in the orchestra until the tune became a symphony.
Watching Elora on those dark and terrible nights was watching a person at war with herself. There was in her a breathtaking capacity for love, made all the more powerful by an equally powerful delight, a fundamental sense of wonder that remained a part of her even now. Especially now. Yet hand in hand with it ran as primal a rage, as though on one side of her was held absolute creation, and on the other its opposite, destruction. She stood between them, forced to balance these polar forces who demanded that she choose one or the other when her true desire was to find a way to stitch them together.
She would leap for the rafters and find a way to cast the illusion of holding herself in midair, in defiance of every law of gravity. She would race through a sequence of steps so quickly the choreography could hardly be seen, much less copied. She dared spins that should be possible only on skates, on ice; then, with a sureness and precision she never displayed in public, instantly downshift her tempo from staccato to legato and embark on a sequence of slow movements that in their own way appeared equally unbelievable. She didn’t seem human in those moments. To behold her was to wonder if she was indeed some statue brought to life, or some purely elemental creature somehow made flesh. How else to explain her ability to hold every pose?
Here again came the impulse that she was at war, not simply with herself but with all the laws and strictures of nature, as if she could shrug them off as readily as any spell.
Duguay sat in shadows, never touching the goblet of mulled wine poured before him on the table. He watched her with eyes like beads of jet, doll’s eyes, lifeless yet deeper than any abyss. Hunting eyes. Hungry eyes.
He never once tried to join her. Not so much out of the belief that he wouldn’t be welcome to her dance but from the recognition that he had no place in it.
“You know what I see in him,” Franjean noted softly, so softly to Rool from their perch in a chink among the rafters. They had no idea what they were facing on these terrible nights and so called upon all their stealth to make their way to a ceiling hidey-hole that gave them a clear view of the room, bringing with them weapons enough to turn the place into a killing field should the need arise.
“A particularly nasty varmint who’s found himself on the wrong side of the glass from something tasty.”
“Don’t much care for him.”
“Never have myself, from the start.”
“What about Elora, Rool?” They didn’t have to ask themselves what the troubadour wanted, that was plain with every look and gesture. Their worry was why he’d made no move thus far to take it. The first time she’d come downstairs to dance, they’d assumed him responsible—especially when they found him there befor
e her—but it soon became clear he was as bewildered by her acts as they.
“Thank all the Blessed Powers she doesn’t drink,” was his laconic response.
“That isn’t funny, Rool! Lummox.”
“Wasn’t meant to be. But the principle’s the same. And mind your mouth.”
“Is she mad, do you think?”
“Aren’t we all?”
“Rool!” The edge of warning to Franjean’s voice was as sharp as the edge of fear that underlay it.
“After all that’s happened in her life, she’d have every reason.”
“No less than Drumheller.”
“Agreed. Which is why I’ll wager she’s no less mad than he. And no more.”
She danced until sheer fatigue made her drop. There was no gracious end to the evening. She was wholly in control one moment, a jumbled heap on the rough wood floor the next, her lungs working harder than the bellows of a forge to draw in a succession of monstrous breaths, as though she’d just been raised from drowning.
At last Duguay took an action. With an undeniably sensuous grace of his own, he rose from his chair to take Elora in his arms. He cradled her there a moment, with more emotion to the gesture than a child merited, yet less than would be due a lover, almost as though he found himself conflicted as to which best applied to her.
Then, with the propriety of a gentleman, he returned her to her room and to her bed. And that was that.
Elora never spoke of these nocturnal performances, and the brownies never inquired, though they made a full report to Thorn Drumheller. If exhaustion brought her the opportunity for dreamless sleep, that was evidently a price she was willing to pay. Not happiness in any measure, for anyone involved, but at least a form of contentment.
* * *
—
Khory had her straight sword, an old campaigner’s weapon, double-edged and as keen a blade as had ever been forged, of metal so finely tempered that years of hard use had left but the smallest impressions on its bright steel. A simple cross guard protected a hilt long enough for both her hands to hold, allowing its use either as a fencing rapier or the more traditional broadsword. She could kill effectively with either a stab or a slash and her formidable strength allowed her to handle it with the ease of a weapon a fraction of its weight.
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