Springwar

by Tom Deitz

  Lykkon dipped his pen into the inkwell. “So the first you began to suspect was when you overheard Eddyn and Rrath in the fruit garden at Gem, correct?”

  Avall nodded. “Eddyn was as drunk as I’ve ever seen him, and gushing all kinds of nonsense. But I learned two things: that he’d seen the helm—and seen the gem. And somehow, I don’t quite know how, he’d made a connection.”

  Lykkon scowled. “Between—?”

  “Between the fact that I was able to work much better and faster, and the fact that the improvement only began after I found the gem. It was a leap, and a fairly major one.”

  “How did he see the helm?”

  “I assume he either picked a supposedly unpickable lock or somehow got hold of a key. It doesn’t really matter.”

  Lykkon nodded sagely. “In any event, it was illegal. But I can just imagine what he was thinking. He already felt guilty over the Strynn affair. He’d had his self-worth crushed over and over by Tyrill. He had a commission from the High King, but that put him, once again, into a competitive position with you, yet it was also something he might actually best you at. And then you showed signs of bettering him—again. If you”—he paused, looked at Avall sadly—“don’t take me wrong on this, cousin, you know which side I’m on, but facts have no side—If you hadn’t been born, Eddyn would’ve had quite a different life. From his point of view, you’re the source of all his problems. I think he wants to be … good. But things go against his expectations, and he just has to react.”

  Avall closed his eyes. It was all true—objectively. And if he’d had a less sympathetic mentor than Eellon, it could well be Eddyn sitting here discussing what a flawed casting Avall was. Still, it hurt to hear Lykkon rationalizing Eddyn’s behavior, even in an objective context.

  Lykkon hadn’t been there, not for all of it. Maybe for the first ripples from the rape, since Avall had been out of the gorge then. But afterward … Lyk hadn’t had to endure Eddyn’s presence on the trek to Gem-Hold, or that strange little power game with Rrath, which seemed to have reflected back on him. Or the attack.

  All at once that hit him. Eddyn had been at the station, Strynn had said. He’d probably led their attackers there. Quite possibly he’d pointed out who was who. Eddyn had conspired to kill him, and not only that, his bond-brother and Div, whom he held in ever-higher regard. Eddyn had wanted to take his life! Not in theory, but as an active, real event—like his rape of Strynn. And he’d hurt Kylin, and he’d hurt Rann—and even—now—Rrath.

  Eddyn did not deserve to live. And if Avall had him here now, he wouldn’t.

  Without realizing it, he’d clamped his hand tight around the gem—letting the vision build: his hands around Eddyn’s neck. Letting the anger he’d fought down for days flare hot as forge-fire, untempered.

  “Avall—!” he heard Lykkon shout. “Avall—Wha—”

  The word was cut off, because Avall was not for a moment, then came back into being feeling significantly colder. He also felt something warm and textured beneath his fingers, with something more solid under that.

  And opened his eyes to find himself face-to-face with an equally startled Eddyn.

  One moment Eddyn was calmly sitting in the single chair they allowed him in his cell, sipping soup from the single wooden bowl on the single table. The next he felt a curious disturbance in the air of the candlelit chamber, saw something appear between himself and the bed, like a sheet of advancing rain—and then felt something solid clamp down on his shoulders.

  “Avail!” he shrieked—flinging the hands aside as he recoiled. The movement overbalanced him, and the chair toppled, sprawling him into the space between bed, fireplace, and table. His shin caught a corner, sending a burst of agony up his leg. Soup splashed across him.

  “Eddyn?” a voice gasped in turn, and by then Eddyn had righted himself sufficiently to see that, in spite of what logic told him, it really was Avall standing at his feet, gaping stupidly in surprise.

  Which was impossible. “What—?” he heard himself begin, but broke off. Something had fallen from Avall’s right hand. Something red that flashed in the firelight. Something he recognized. Reflex sent him diving for it, as Luck—or Fate—set it bouncing his way across the floor. He snatched for it. Avall lunged after him—clumsily—clearly as shocked as Eddyn had been. “No!” he shrieked.

  But Eddyn was closer and reached it first. He felt its smooth warmth pulse in his hands like a small animal resisting capture. He felt it disliking him, too, but held on grimly. Whatever else it might be, it was a bargaining tool, if he only knew how to work the negotiation.

  “That’s mine!” Avall yelped, as he finally got sufficient bearings to assess the situation. He’d frozen in place, as though torn between attacking Eddyn and his usual, civilized demeanor. Clearly this was no intentional visit. And the presence of the gem in his hand implied that the troublesome stone was, yet again, a factor.

  “Mine, now,” Eddyn spat, grasping the gem more securely as he rose to a wary crouch.

  Avall’s eyes were blazing. “Mine by any Law you name, Eddyn. The King knows—”

  “This is how you got here!” Eddyn blurted. “Out of the river.”

  “Give it to me, Eddyn! You’re already in so deep you’ll never get out. Strynn. Kylin. The helm. The attack on me and Rann and Div.”

  “Then one more won’t matter!” Eddyn raged—and snatched the wooden ale mug from the table. The room was small, and Avall was even more off-balance than Eddyn. Nor was there anywhere to dodge. Reflexively, he stepped back—and stumbled into Eddyn’s bed. By which time Eddyn was on him. Avall raised his hands in defense, but Eddyn was stronger—and had anger on his side. A swipe with the mug raked Avall’s knuckles, laying them open. Blood flashed in the uneven light. A backhand impacted a wrist. Avall tried to rise, but Eddyn had leapt full atop him, battering Avall’s hands aside, before grabbing his right hand and holding it as Avall continued to struggle. A blow caught his rival’s head—another.

  A third, and Avall grunted, cursed, then finally screamed for help—by which time Eddyn was pummeling his skull with the mug, almost unopposed. Blood showed in Avall’s black hair.

  But someone was coming. He could hear footsteps and shouts, and the words “Keys” and “Eddyn” and “What’s happening?”

  And then Avall suddenly stopped moving, and Eddyn found himself staring down at the limp body of his rival.

  He thought of ending it there—if he’d had a proper implement—but once again he stopped short of actual murder.

  But they were still coming for him. And they’d find what he’d done, and take the gem away, and—

  The gem. It had brought Avall here. Was there therefore any reason that power couldn’t be accessed equally well by him? The gem didn’t like him, but did that matter?

  Only … how did it work? How had it brought Avall here?

  He didn’t know. But one thing he did know was that that door would open any moment and his choices would be gone. He wanted out. Away from this cell and the dreadful anticipation it wove constantly through his brain. Away from even the sight of his cursed rival. He wanted—he realized—to start over.

  The gem pulsed in his hand, hating him. If it had been a mouse, it would’ve bit him, but he grasped it more tightly. Avall’s it might be, but Eddyn had it now. It was his. He was the master—and he wanted out.

  Reality jolted. The room grew dim, then clarified. Something rattled the lock. More shouts echoed, and the floor outside rang with approaching feet.

  Eddyn couldn’t face it. Not anymore. He closed his eyes, and … wished.

  And for a long moment nothing existed save a burning pain in his hand, as though he held a hot coal. It protested, but he beat it back: overruling its desire with his own. He opened his eyes—saw nothing—which scared him ten times worse than he’d ever been scared before. Once again he wanted out—gone—over.

  Nothing …

  And then cold, and more cold. And something solid against
his feet that unbalanced him.

  Eddyn tumbled backward, opened his eyes, and saw darkness above and gray/blue/white rising around him. And had just time to think “outside” and “snowbank” before consciousness forsook him.

  CHAPTER XIII:

  FAR FROM HOME

  SOUTHERN ERON-DEEP WINTER: DAY XLVI-NIGHT

  Death wasn’t at all what Eddyn had expected it would be, when he regained marginal awareness to find himself confronting it. Perhaps that was because he’d always hoped death would finally free him from caring whether he was warm or cold.

  In fact, he was the latter, in no uncertain terms. But it was a strange cold: more than simply one that pulsed up from the compacted snow beneath him, oozed out from the fluffier walls that blocked all view to every side, and bore down at him from the chill sky overhead.

  No, this cold was almost pleasant. Almost. And wasn’t freezing to death supposed to be pleasant?

  But in that case, the cold came from without: forcing the body ever more deeply into itself. This cold also came from within—as though something had sucked all warmth from him, slowing his heart, numbing his brain …

  Save where something hot as a living coal pulsed in his right hand.

  He jerked upright and flung it away reflexively, saw a small, hard darkness go spinning across the snow.

  He felt marginally better. Until he realized that he’d just flung away Avall’s magic gem—which had brought him here in the first place. He leapt to his feet abruptly, staggering forward to paw through the drift where he thought the stone had landed.

  It was a moonless night, he noted. Priest-Clan said that nights when no moons shone were portentous, because at those times alone were The Eight completely uninvolved in the affairs of men. Anything effected then was therefore likely to have a more than average chance of success—if it depended solely on human endeavor.

  Like staying alive.

  He had no idea where he was, or even how long he’d lain there. He did, however, recall one of his guards remarking that they were coming up on the moonless night. Which meant he hadn’t been unconscious very long.

  A supposition reinforced by the fact that his fingers still retained some feeling.

  If he recovered the gem, he had something with which to bargain, and—perhaps—a means of effecting his own survival.

  If he could only find the wretched thing. Snow flew in flurries that would’ve done a burrowing rabbit proud, but he couldn’t find the cursed stone. Or perhaps his fingers were grown so numb, he’d touched it all unknowing and let it pass. Certainly it was difficult finding something cold and slick amid that which was cold and slick already. But it was also red. He squinted into the gloom, feeling the wind gnaw at the nape of his neck. Wondering if he could command it to take him somewhere warm, now that he had some notion of how to control the thing.

  There it was!

  No—he’d merely dug down to raw earth and found an ordinary stone. But next to it—he felt its heat as a contrast to the cold. Snared it—and almost dropped it again, at the wave of anger it hurled at him. Ignoring that as much as possible, he closed his eyes and wished—what?

  Warmer? That was a good idea. He wished to be warm, which required little conscious wishing at all.

  But instead, he grew colder yet. At first he thought it was the wind, but then he realized that he could literally feel the warmth flowing from his body into the gem. Which meant—

  Maybe that it had to draw its power from somewhere, and what it drew from was him. He opened his eyes.

  More dislike, like what he’d seen in Strynn’s eyes made palpable. He had no choice. He dropped the stone.

  But he couldn’t just leave it out here in the cold and the Wild. Yet he couldn’t bear to touch it, either …

  A quick search produced the belt-pouch no one had bothered to confiscate when he’d been captured. Maybe it would suffice. He opened it, wrapped his fingers in the hem of his robe, and picked up the gem that way. Thus insulated, he made the transfer. He could still feel it, but the sensation was manageable. Like traveling with a foe. Like the trek from Tir-Eron to Gem-Hold with Avall.

  His hands were getting cold again. He rubbed them together, then thrust them into his armpits for warmth. And finally took true stock of his situation.

  He had a minimum of clothes—undertunic of tightly woven wool to accompany his house-hose, indoor boots, and long, loose robe—and no survival gear. And it was cold enough for snow to be drifting down in the tiny random crystals that even a clear sky could produce.

  He wasn’t in Tir-Eron, that was for certain—or in Eron Gorge. Or in any gorge, for that matter. The stars told him he faced east, halfway down a gentle hill, the top of which was crowned with thick-grown evergreens. More hills rolled into white obscurity to north and south, while straight ahead the hills leveled into a plain.

  A plain he recognized!

  He sat down abruptly, as reality spun. Not only had he left Tir-Eron, but he’d somehow managed to jump crosscountry all the way past South Gorge, which was five days’ travel from Eron Gorge—in good weather.

  Which he wouldn’t have believed had he not experienced it.

  More to the point, he was on Clan turf! Specifically, he was in the east meadow that was attached to one of Argen-yr’s summer holds. The hold itself should lie among the trees at the top of the hill.

  Maybe two shots away. Which meant he might survive if he hurried. The place would be empty, granted, but it would have both shelter and food.

  Without further pause, he started up the hill.

  “I still think we should’ve stayed where we were,” Elvix growled at the nighted world in general, and her siblings in particular, as she led her weary horse up yet another snowbound ridge. “Dammit,” she added, as the crest gave no encouraging view. The same view they’d had for what seemed like days, in fact: forest to the left, rolling hills straight ahead, ocean to the right, the last visible and invisible by turns.

  Tozri, who went last, leading the other horse (a third had died two days back), vented a weary sigh and rattled the map he’d kept constantly to hand since sunset had set them—optimistically—on the road. “Where we were was a hovel I wouldn’t keep geen shit in. The map says there should be a hold somewhere ahead—if we don’t miss it in this confounded dark.”

  “It also said it belongs to one of the septs of Clan Argen, which, if you recall, is the clan Merryn belonged to. Do we want to risk the questions they might ask?”

  “No hiding our accents,” the third member of that party replied: Olrix, their sister. “They’ll have questions regardless.”

  “And hopefully this time we’ll have appropriate replies,” Elvix snorted. “Which has nothing to do with whether or not we should’ve moved on or stayed.”

  “It was a choice of no roof versus quite a lot of roof and real stabling. And if you’re worried about the place being inhabited, you needn’t be. It’s a summer hold, according to the map. Nobody stays in those during the winter.”

  “Houses just sitting around,” Olrix sighed. “Such fools these northern folk can be.”

  “They’re our folk, now,” Tozri reminded her.

  Elvix froze in place and peered around at him. And at her sister. She needn’t have bothered, if it was to remind herself of how they looked. They were siblings of one birth, and as identical as three people of two sexes could be, with hard, wiry builds and black hair growing out from the clip favored by Ixtian soldiers, which they’d once been. They also had dark eyes and sharp, angular faces. Tozri had a beard because it kept his chin warm, but that was the only reason.

  “I’m tired of arguing,” Elvix growled. “It’s my day to be leader, and yet I let you convince me to move when I didn’t want to. This place had better be worth it, because I don’t plan on traveling again for a while.”

  “Not even in search of our loving northern kin?”

  “They can wait. I have no reason to assume they’ll grant us any warmer welcome tha
n we found in War-Hold.”

  “It was a warm welcome, though.”

  “Are you wishing we’d stayed?” Tozri inquired, moving up beside her, the movement setting them trudging onward again. Talking shortened the distances, so they talked a lot. But not about certain topics. Like Ixti and the reason they’d fled it. Like War-Hold and the life they’d led there. And certainly not about Prince Kraxxi, whose life they’d sworn to guard—and which responsibility circumstance had forced them to abdicate—because snow had driven them to shelter before they could begin pursuit after first Lorvinn, then Merryn, had tricked them, half an eighth ago.

  Which had left two alternatives. Return to War-Hold, where they’d effectively been prisoners, or wander the Wild in search of their kin—their mother was a healer out of Eron—or in search of death. For, as their friend Kraxxi was fond of saying, suicide didn’t have to be a rapid process—and going north into the heart of Eron in what was also the heart of Deep Winter was certainly a flirtation with the latter.

  Except that it had been, by all accounts, a mild winter. Which did not, however, negate the possibility of blizzards, several of which they’d already endured.

  “Another three shots, I think,” Elvix announced. Then: “That’s odd …”

  “What?”

  She rubbed her hand through her glove, where a ring with a strange red stone always rode upon her finger. “Oh, nothing. It was just that it felt like the ring … yanked at me just then.”

  Olrix cast a sideways glance at her, and took the horse’s reins without comment. “What kind of yank?”