Springwar

by Tom Deitz

  “Div?” Kylin guessed. “You were thinking of the three of us sheltering at Div’s hold?”

  “I was thinking of that in extremis—if we learned there was actual threat against us.”

  “It makes sense, though,” Kylin told them seriously. “You are running a risk by staying here. You’d run far less risk there, and be closer to Tir-Eron when the thaws come. And don’t think I don’t know that you’re going mad trying to decide what you feel about her—and wanting to get back.”

  “I could release you from your vow to protect me,” Strynn offered.

  Rann shook his head. “That’s all I really have of Avall right now—beyond the fact that he’s not precisely dead.”

  “Are we going to try that again tonight?” Kylin wondered.

  Strynn shrugged. “I see no reason we can’t go ahead and do it now—maybe at sunset, since that’s supposed to be a powerful time of day.”

  “We’ve got half a hand, then.”

  Kylin looked at Rann. “Rann, forgive my rudeness, but what exactly do you feel about Div, now that you’ve built some distance?”

  Rann closed his eyes and took a deep breath, then a long quaff of wine. “I shouldn’t answer, because once I give one, I’ll feel bound to it, and my feelings could alter.”

  Strynn kicked him gently. “How do you feel now? This does have a bearing on a lot of things—if nothing else, on whether we can consider her an ally. She may wind up in the clan, after all, or under clan protection. We’ve a right to know what we’re taking to our bosom.”

  Rann took another deep breath. “I’m not sure I love her, exactly. She’s too different from any woman—any person, actually—I’ve ever met. She clearly likes me, but I don’t know if that’s for myself or for what I represent—a chance to attach herself to a high clan. I think it’s for the former, but I’m just not sure. She can’t have children, though, so that might be a problem, since I still have to sire my three. But she’d probably be willing to share, since she has already.”

  “But only with Avall,” Strynn cautioned. “Women are used to sharing their men with their bond-brothers, and vice versa. Would she share you with a woman?”

  “She might. I won’t really know the answer to any of these questions until I’ve spent more time with her. Still, I do think about her a lot. I miss her. I keep thinking of things here I’d enjoy showing her, but I’m not sure if that’s love or simply the fact that it is fun to show off those things to those who don’t have our … advantages.”

  “Enough to chew on, in any case,” Strynn sighed, glancing at the time-candle, which had exhausted another finger. “If we’re going to try to contact Avall, I’d suggest we be at it.”

  Rann put down his mug with a dull click, and rose. A tinkling run with impossibly nimble fingers concluded the piece Kylin had been playing.

  The ritual had—almost—become familiar, yet Rann found himself apprehensive. Probably because every time he’d undertaken it before his return to Gem-Hold, he’d been partnered with Avall, using Avall’s gem. Since then, he’d done it once—with Strynn and—effectively—Kylin, simply because adding people—people one was close to, at any rate—added to the strength of the sending.

  Trouble was, Strynn’s gem was smaller than the one Avall had found, and had a different feel—like the difference in taste between goats’ milk and cows’.

  Not that he hadn’t come to value these moments of closeness, even as he’d likewise come to dread their aftereffects. At the moment, they were waiting for Kylin to finish bathing. It helped him relax, he said. Working with the gem made him nervous because his earlier encounters with it had been so traumatic—first when Strynn had been moved by sympathy to merge minds with him, so that he could see through her eyes, and later, when Eddyn had wrested that secret from him, with utter disregard for his mental or physical well-being.

  He was running late, though, and Rann was getting fidgety. Strynn was as well, though she masked it by gliding about arranging candles and pouring drinks. She was, Rann thought, a vision of loveliness in her loose white robe, with her long black hair unbound down her back. Avall was a lucky man indeed.

  He wondered if he was up to it. Linking was at once exhilarating and draining, and he’d had one mug of wine too many, so that he was poised on the edge of drowsiness.

  They’d know soon enough, he supposed, because Kylin padded in from the bathroom, still damp across the torso, and with his hair plastered sleekly to his head. Like Rann, he wore only house-hose, because they’d learned that bare skin aided the connection.

  Rann rose reflexively and steered the harper toward the bed, placing a pillow behind his neck and shoulders before scrambling in beside him—in what would become the middle. Strynn took one final look at the candles, nodded approval, and claimed the other side. Rann felt, rather than saw, her push up her right sleeve—the one on his side. A brief sound of fumbling he didn’t bother following with his eyes, and she passed him the gem. He took it gingerly, studying the warm sparks of life within its ruby depths before setting it on his chest above his heart. Meanwhile, Strynn had taken the small paring knife they’d come to use exclusively for this rite and had made a tiny incision in her right palm. He heard her gasp as the blood began to ooze. “Done,” she murmured, passing the blade to Rann.

  He nudged Kylin with his free hand. “Do you want help, or can you—?”

  “I can,” Kylin whispered back. Rann eased the knife carefully into the harper’s fingers. “Done,” he echoed a moment later, returning the knife to Rann.

  His turn now, and he dreaded it. Pain was never pleasant, though he’d grown used to this particular kind. A deep breath, and he closed his eyes and slid the edge across his palm.

  It hurt less than expected, though it brought more blood—Strynn had obviously been at it with her whetstone since last they’d used it. He gasped as it bit, then passed it back to Strynn, who returned it to its sheath.

  That accomplished, he found the gem and clasped his bleeding hand atop it. It began to draw immediately, but at the same time it sent an odd tingle of heat and energy into him, as if he were slowly being thawed after weeks of cold. He felt his senses altering as well: slowing down, so that he could watch each exaggerated flicker of the candle flame across the room.

  “Ready,” he murmured.

  His partners moved, each laying a hand atop his on his chest. He felt their blood mingle with his, as they shifted again to bring their bare shoulders into contact.

  And he was flowing, too: into the jewel, and through it into Strynn and an apprehensive Kylin. And with that flow, they likewise flowed into him. He balanced those tides by some method he couldn’t have described if he’d wanted to, while at the same time admitting certain parts of them that awakened—or empowered—certain parts of him.

  It was one of the things they now knew with reasonable certainty. Every person, regardless of sex, had a male aspect and a female, and each of those aspects responded more strongly to certain stimuli. This kind of link awakened and strengthened those things and made the whole mind—the whole self-—stronger in turn. It worked best, Rann suspected, if one merged with a person of each sex—a second woman would probably have been optimal. Lacking one, this seemed the best configuration, and Rann was the guide because he had the most experience of the three. Both parts of his mind were also open, whereas if Strynn had claimed control, there would have been two male minds striving to fill space ideally suited to one.

  Rann felt himself at once contracting and expanding, and tried to center his thoughts—and those shadow-thoughts that joined his from Strynn and Kylin—on a single goal.

  He and Strynn had touched Avall’s self briefly, last night: not awake, but not dead. All they’d felt was heart-stopping cold.

  It was time to try again.

  A deep breath, and Rann let himself sink further, until he barely seemed a discrete entity. At the same time, he let himself rise above himself and move outward—beyond the room, beyond th
e hold, into the high-arching dark. Strynn was with him, and Kylin—less fearful now. But they supported him, rather than directed, and so it was he who began the quest—down the local tributary of the Ri-Eron, and thence to that river itself.

  That was where they’d seen Avall fall. That was where the fleeting touch they’d had of him yesterday had seemed to lead.

  But Rann felt nothing.

  He tried harder, felt his strength start to go thin, wishing he had access to Avall’s stronger stone, or that he had some way to seek one of his own in the mines without being seen. Strynn no longer could, because of her condition; nor could Kylin.

  He’d just started to withdraw when his awareness brushed something.

  Something familiar.

  Not thoughts so much as feelings such as the body experiences when it is alive but little more.

  Cold.

  Cold beyond cold, yet cold warmed with life.

  “He still lives,” Strynn breathed beside him.

  “He does,” Kylin agreed.

  Rann took a deep breath. “Shall we try for Tir-Eron? Or Merryn?”

  “Both,” Strynn replied. “But quickly. I’m very tired.”

  Rann didn’t reply. Drawing on the last strength he had, and knowing that even that was insufficient, he once more launched himself into the not-place that was the Overworld, moving toward what passed there for Tir-Eron. He could see it, but couldn’t reach it. He shouted for Eellon anyway, at the same time building a picture of the old Clan-Chief in his mind.

  It was like shouting from a mountaintop. The air rang with the effort, but the distance swallowed it.

  He tried for Merryn, then, but even in the Overworld he could only glimpse, very far away, War-Hold’s surrounding mountains.

  “Tomorrow,” he sighed—and gently shifted the hands off the gem, before folding it into Strynn’s palm.

  Kylin, he discovered, slept. Strynn didn’t; he could hear her softly weeping. As carefully as he could, he rose from between them and climbed out of bed.

  He shivered—once—twice. A third time. Somehow he made it to the bath, where he turned on the water as hot as it would go and spent the next half hand soaking. Trying to drive away the cold that had entered him from Avall. Wondering if either of them would ever be warm again.

  Strynn was asleep when Rann returned from the bath. He’d likewise dozed off—in the tub—only to awaken when the water grew cold, which was too much a reminder of Avall.

  Now he stood gazing down at her and Kylin. They’d moved closer in his absence, neatly filling his spot. Not that he felt right sharing a bed with Avall’s wife in any case—not without Avall there. Their hands touched, he noted, and they looked at peace. He wondered if they were lovers. Stranger things had happened. Certainly they adored each other, and both were in desperate need of whatever comfort they could manage, here in the Dark Season. Avall might even approve. Probably would, he amended. It would take some of the pressure off him.

  But he was sleepy, too, and so he steered his step toward the door to the common room. He’d already laid a hand on the latch, when something caught his attention from the corner of his eye. He paused, blinking, then realized that it was the gem lying on the rug beside the bed. By the way Strynn’s hand was draped over the side, it had fallen from her grasp while she slept.

  He picked it up, started to set it on the night table, then thought better of it. It was a comfort of sorts, and he needed comfort now. Tomorrow was soon enough to return it, and tomorrow would be too soon anyway.

  As quietly as he could, he made his way through two sets of doors to the pallet they’d set up for him in Avall’s workroom. The helm sat there, undraped, accusing him with empty eyes. Moonlight gleamed off the dented steel, the shattered bronze, the scoured gilding. Even damaged as it was, it was the most beautiful made thing Rann had ever seen.

  Dropping the towel he’d worn from the bath, he stretched out naked on the pallet, letting the moonlight clothe him. A deep breath, and he laid the gem on his chest, with either hand beside it, so that two fingers from each barely touched it. He had no reason for so choosing, it simply seemed right. As if to reassure him, the gem rewarded him with a pulse of heat.

  He felt guilty about this, though. It was Strynn’s gem, after all. He had no right to co-opt it, even for such harmless use as he made of it now. It really would be nice, he thought, if he had one of his own, one he could study; that was tuned to his unique thoughts and needs and desires. Maybe he would dare the mines, if he could find some time when they were attended by no one who knew him.

  Except that the gems came from Argen’s vein, not Eemon’s, and about such things the Wardens were strict. No way he could search Argen’s vein unnoticed.

  Still, it would be nice.

  Very nice indeed.

  Pondering that, Rann slept.

  He awoke in darkness, shivering uncontrollably. Yet he couldn’t move—not so much as a finger to drag cover over him. His teeth were chattering.

  Yet there was heat, too: a burning centered on his chest above his pounding heart, as though someone had lit a fire there that had drawn all other heat from him.

  But he had to move, had to. Gritting his teeth, he tried.

  Couldn’t, even as the fire grew worse.

  He fled from it, but it followed. He wanted nothing but to be warm. To be utterly enclosed with warmth and never be cold again. To be part of the earth.

  The heat increased, yet so did the cold, so that he became a being of absolutes. And he suddenly couldn’t breathe, though it didn’t seem to matter, because there was something warm ahead of him, something that drew him on. It had no color but he gave it one anyway. Red. Red was warm, or warm was red. He reached out for it, touched it, felt it grow warmer yet, even as that wilder heat that had never left him flared hotter yet.

  And then both those heats collided around his heart, and the heat consumed him. Maybe he cried out; certainly he knew no more.

  Voices woke him: concerned cries from the half-open door. He blinked through his shivers, and made out the shapes of Kylin and Strynn standing there, each robed against the cold that pervaded the room—a cold that seemed to emanate from Rann’s own body.

  “What—?” Kylin began.

  Strynn cut him off. “By The Eight!” she cried, dashing forward to kneel by Rann’s side. Heat pulsed from her, yet he knew that she was cold, too, if not as cold as he. Goose bumps patterned her flesh. She reached for his face, then shifted her hand to his chest. Air swished, like a glacial wind, and the flame that had burned there departed. Something hard rattled on the floor.

  Rann didn’t care. Heat—life—was washing back into him. Slowly, oh so slowly, yet it was blessed balm. He could breathe again. His teeth no longer chattered, his limbs no longer shook. Strynn slumped down beside him, awkward in her pregnancy, and folded her arms around him.

  And Kylin …

  Kylin had tipped his head to one side, as though listening, and was now pacing slowly across the darkened room. Rann expected him to join him and Strynn, but instead, he knelt a span away and began running his hands across the floor. “One,” Rann heard him murmur, as though to himself. Then: “Two. No—three! Wait … five! There are five of them, Strynn!”

  “Five what?” Strynn called. “Kylin, we need to tend to Rann!”

  Kylin didn’t reply, simply walked to Rann’s pallet and sank down there. He held his hand out for Rann and Strynn to see.

  Red gleamed there, visible even in the moonlight.

  The same red as Strynn’s gem. And Avall’s.

  But there were five of them: two exactly the same size, one slightly larger than the rest, two smaller.

  Rann swallowed hard and reached toward the smallest stone. “I’m not sure, Strynn,” he breathed. “But I think this one is … mine.”

  “Tomorrow,” Strynn whispered. “Tomorrow. For now, we need to get warm again. All of us.”

  Half a hand later, wrapped in their thickest robes, full of hot
cider, and sitting by a fire punched up so hot it was like a forge, they slept. Even Rann.

  But the gem—his gem—was still clutched in his palm when he awakened.

  By the light, he guessed it was shortly before midnight. Kylin was still with him, but Strynn was gone.

  “She wanted to be alone,” the harper murmured sadly. “I don’t know why.”

  CHAPTER VII:

  UNEXPECTED GUEST

  (ERON: TIR-ERON-DEEP WINTER, DAY XLIII-SUNSET)

  … eyes …

  … bright or dark. Red or blue. Single, or paired.

  Eyes: the first things Avall truly recognized when he returned to himself after being dead.

  There was an eye of fire fixed upon him from very nearby indeed: bright and indistinct, a nimbus of gold around dimmer crimson. Two more eyes regarded him at middle distance, these dark blue and hooded by level black brows in a young male face, tensed with concern. The last eye was also of fire, but brighter and ruddier than the nearer. It gleamed amid a wash of topaz splendor: a perfect round ruby atop a crown of snow-veiled mountaintops.

  “Sun,” he whispered. “Sss—” His tongue gagged him. Air mixed with liquid brought up by his lungs to his throat. He choked, gagged again, felt his lungs take fire. Something ripped free, and he choked once more—endlessly. Flexing muscles that hadn’t moved in days—that would surely fracture like river ice if he used them—he wrenched his torso over the side of whatever soft, warm thing he lay upon and vomited a thin stream of water onto the floor.

  Hands found him—related to the blue eyes, he assumed—and some sense of self returned, as he found himself utterly helpless, gagging and retching into an earthenware bowl strategically inserted between his mouth and the rug.

  Heat washed the top of his head—the nearer fire—the lamp, he identified—come too near. Hair sizzled, the stench acrid yet strangely comforting. He shivered. And shivered again, though his body was warm—on the outside. Inside—he doubted he’d ever be warm again. His blood was clogged with ice crystals, every one of which hurt as it thawed.