Dragon's Winter (14 page)

Karadur said gently, “You did well to try to kill it, and well to come back. Go downstairs, now.”

Larys left the room. Reaching back one-handed, Lorimir shut the door. Under his beard, the swordsman’s face was pale. “My lord, what is that thing?”

“A warg,” Karadur said shortly. “It is a creature of magic: a vicious, evil beast, sent to rend and kill. We shall have to alert the villages. I want armed messengers in pairs riding to each village, with orders to the Councils. Neighbors should arrange with neighbors to act as guards for one another. Men must be dispatched to every outlying farm, every shepherd’s bothy, every wood-chopper’s hut or hunter’s cabin. Garin and Rometh may not be the only dead.”

Lorimir looked shaken. “How many of these wargs are there? Do we face a single hunting pack, or an army?”

Karadur looked at Azil. The maimed man said, “I do not know, now. Four months ago there were six of them, and Gorthas.”

“Who directs them?”

“My brother,” the dragon-lord said. His skin had lost all color; the hard planes of his face made it resemble a sculpture carved in ice. A table beneath the window held a keph board, its pieces carved from ivory and jade. Karadur reached out one finger, and slid the fragile figure of the Winter Warrior down two squares. “Is this what wizards teach their apprentices? Someone trained Tenjiro to conjure those monsters, and set them to hunt human prey. What malevolent sorcerer would impart such skills?”

He splayed his hand against the window. The thick whorled glass misted, blotting out the view. “He said to me, that morning,
Let us see who shall be Dragon.
He kills my people to challenge me. Gods, what
is
my brother? What has he become?” The window glass cracked. Bits of glass peeled downward and shattered on the rocks. A scorching wind swept violently through the chamber, extinguishing all the candles, sending papers and lists blowing into corners. The fire roared ferociously in the hearth. A tapestry smoldered, and burst into flame.

Lorimir seized Azil’s upper arm. “Out!” He drew the younger man out of the chamber. The door slammed behind them.

Twenty days later, at the House of White Flowers on Plumeria Street, Kira opened the front door to an insistent knock, to find a stocky man with a grey-streaked beard standing on the doorstep. He was holding the reins of a tall roan horse, and was accompanied by an alarming number of soldiers.

At first she thought it was some absent-minded, though noble, idiot, come to visit one of the girls, though none of them would even be gowned yet. It was early: the sun had barely cleared the horizon. Kira opened her mouth to utter something scathing. Then she recognized him. She staggered, and would have knelt, except that he caught her elbow firmly, and urged her back from the step.

“You must forgive me,” he said gravely, “for coming unannounced. You know whom I wish to see.”

Then she came to her senses. “Of course, my lord. Will you—will you wait here? Or would you prefer the parlor?” The parlor was more elegant, but it smelled of scent, and there were all the mirrors...

“This is acceptable.” Standing there in the kitchen, he seemed amused, and quite at home. Beth the maid, marching from the laundry with clean sheets in her arms, stared at him open-mouthed, and fled. The calico cat jumped on the table. The lord of the city patted it with a gloved hand. “You go,” he said. “Tell her I’m here.”

Kira hastened up the stair, heedless of the giggling whisperers hanging out their doorways:
Kira, who is it? Is he rich?
She scratched on Sicha’s door. Sicha looked out. Her normally pale face was pink. “I saw,” she said. “Out the window...” She had put her gown on inside out, and her ringless hands were trembling.

“He wants to see
her
.” Kira motioned toward the door at the end of the hall. They had given Senmet the corner room. It was the best room, after Sicha s, but the money Erin diMako sent to the house every month more than covered the loss they took by not using it for trade. “I didn’t—gods, Sicha, he’s just standing in the kitchen!”

At that moment the door to the corner room opened. Senmet stepped barefoot into the hallway. “Ask him to come up,” she said.

In the end, Sicha herself dressed and escorted Erin diMako up to the corner room. His steady gaze took in the furnishings: a simple chest, two chairs, a table, a shelf filled with books, two tall oil lamps, a brazier for warmth, and an immense, pillowed, perfumed, ruffled, silk-curtained bed. The bed hangings were pink. So were the lamps.

His mage stood at the unshuttered window, gazing over the city. At his step, she turned. She wore a high-throated copper-colored gown. Its sleeves were trimmed with lace. Her hair fanned smoothly over her shoulders.

“Come in, my lord,” she said. “There is wine on the table.”

“So I see.” Stripping off his gloves, he sat, and filled the Cups. The rich aroma eddied through the opulent room. He raised his glass, saluting her. “You look different.”

“I am warm, well-fed, and excellently clothed.” She touched the dull flame of the gown. “The gown was a gift from the girls.”

“Are you recovered from your injury?”

She did not immediately answer him. A white-breasted magpie, landing on the windowsill, croaked imperiously at her. “Not now, little sister,” she told it. “There is a cricket in the next room, go and find it.” It flicked its long tapered tail at her, and flew away. Shuttering the window, she drew the heavy velveteen curtain across the slats of wood. “Not entirely, my lord,” she said.

“But you will recover.”

“I do not know that.” She smiled crookedly. “How odd to hear myself say that. Magery is knowledge. Yet I cannot remember my mother’s face, nor the name of the Abbess of the Temple of the Moon, though I have heard it a thousand thousand times in twenty years, nor the spell which calms the winds: a spell which any village hedge-witch knows, as she knows the number of fingers on her own hands. But you did not come to hear me talk about myself, my lord.” Senmet walked to the table, and sat in the second chair. “Tell me what has brought the lord of Mako to consult his mage.”

He set the wineglass on the table. “A visitor arrived at my castle yesterday, lady. Once he was in my service, but when Karadur Atani left this city to assume rulership of his domain, he took with him six of my best horses and Herugin Dol, to be his cavalry master. Oh, it was fairly done: it was Herugin’s right to go, he was not oath-bound... Ah well. Herugin brought me an urgent message from his lord. Dragon Keep desires to purchase twenty of my stable’s hardiest warhorses, all trained, all at least four years old, and preferably of full northern lineage.” He leaned forward. “That is no small request, you understand. Twenty trained, warhorses represents one third of my stock. When I asked him what Dragon Keep would pay for my horses, he emptied two saddlebags on the table. They were packed solid with gold: gold nobles from Ujo, coronas from Lienor, even a string of golden bracelets like the ones Chuyo troubadours wear. I asked what had spawned this lust for horses. Herugin answered,
Dragon Keep rides to war.
I asked,
Who is your enemy?
He would not say. I asked,
Do you need troops? Shall I strengthen the watch on my northern border?
No need
, he assured me.
Only send the horses.

“I will send Karadur Atani his horses. But I come to my wizard for counsel. Does Karadur Atani’s enemy threaten my city? Is Mako in danger? If it is, I need to know. I watched Kojiro Atani turn this city into a pyre; that is sufficient havoc for my lifetime.”

Two doors down, Ani, the smaller of the two temple bells, chimed the half hour into the morning. Senmet gazed thoughtfully into the ruby depths of her glass.
Sleeping, waking, moonlit eye, find the one for whom I cry...
Going to the chest, she lifted the lid, and felt within the cavity until her fingers touched glass. She pulled out the glass, and brought it wrapped to the table. “I do not know, my lord,” she said. “Let us see.”

Erin diMako sat quietly, watching as she moved the decanter and glasses to the floor beside the bed. She unfurled the fine linen, baring the glass to the day. It was oval, the size of two spread hands, set in a plain wood frame. The polished surface was black as a cave. Senmet lit a candle, and passed the flame above the surface. No reflection glittered in the mirror.

“How can it do that?” Erin diMako muttered.

Beyond the pink room, the house was waking. On the other side of the door, a woman laughed. The mirror showed her: young and lissome, with skin white as apple blossoms, and hair like a fall of fine red silk. Arching her back, she rolled amid the bedclothes, and stretched her arms toward the ceiling. Erin diMako moved abruptly in his chair.

“Her name is Anastasia. She is fourteen,” Senmet said. She passed one hand over the mirror. Anastasia’s image vanished. “So. The question you wish to ask is:
Is Mako in danger?
My lord, have you your dagger? Hold your left hand over the mirror.” He stretched his broad fingers above the glass.

“When I speak the word
Now,
nick your hand with the dagger, and let the blood fall to the surface of the mirror. It must be at least three drops. Staunch the bleeding, and do not speak. Is that clear?”

“Yes.”

Softly she chanted the required words. Her skin prickled to the touch of a thousand tiny needles. “Now,” she said.

His right hand moved. The poniard slipped across his palm. Blood welled in the cut, gathered, and fell to the mirror, which swallowed it. A second drop fell, and a third...

Brightness blossomed in the heart of the mirror. The surface shimmered silver, rose, blue, a radiant cobalt blue. Sharp-peaked mountains thrust upward into that luminous day. Against the tallest mountain, a castle gleamed darkly. A banner on a pole glinted white and gold in the sun. Below the castle spread tilled fields: a placid dreaming countryside. She saw a brown ribbon of road, a white bird flying, the blue sparkle of a river amid trees. Horses grazed in a pasture. A boy loped through a flower-laden meadow.

Like a secret river, a dank grey fog blew inexorably across the mountainside. The castle disappeared, devoured by shadow. The horses bugled in terror. A high mad laughter bubbled in her mind. Deep in her bones, she felt the malice of the darkness as it poured across the hills.

Then the image in the mirror faded. The mirror darkened. Nothing showed in the glass: no stain, no streak of color, no light. The laughter died.

Erin diMako pressed a cloth against the cut on his palm. His blood-streaked dagger gleamed on the table. “Well?” he said. “What answer can you make to my question? Is Mako in danger?”

Senmet rewrapped the mirror in its cloth, then returned the decanter and wineglasses to the table. Finally she said, “The obvious answer is No.”

“And the true one?”

“The speculum always shows two responses: the direct and the abstruse. It is not necessary to choose between them. The indirect answer is: Dragon Keep falls to its enemy, Mako will be imperiled.”

“Then I did well to agree to Karadur Atani’s request.”

“I think you did.”

The bleeding had stopped. Erin diMako cleaned his dagger and returned the slender blade to its sheath. “Why blood?” he asked.

For the first time since their conversation began, the wizard lifted the glass to her lips. “Magic requires sacrifice,” she said shortly.

He nodded. Then he said, “My lady, what is Ankoku?”

Surprised, she set the wineglass down hard on the table. “Why do you ask that?”

“You spoke that word the day you first awoke, standing in the hall of my castle. And just now, as you looked into the mirror, you said it again.”

“Did I? Ankoku is not a
what.
It is a
who.
It is a name. In a very old tongue, it means the Hollow One. It is the name borne by the Dark Mage.”

“The Dark Mage?” He grinned. “Is that the same wicked wizard my grandmother promised me would carry me off if I did not leave off playing and go to sleep upon the instant?”

“Is that what the folk of Mako believe? The history of the Mage Wars is older than this city. The Dark Mage lived, my lord. Battles were fought, and brave men died, when your city was little more than a cow patch.”

“I will take your word for it, my lady. But the wizards who fought those wars are long dead, surely.”

“They are, all save one. Khelen Arayo is dead, and Myrdis Uliyef, who spoke, it is said, all the languages of men, and Danio Nellikos, the Shapechanger of Nakase, and Hedruen Imorin, who was the most powerful mage Ryoka has ever seen. All, all are dead.” The melodious names trembled in the air, music from a distant country.

He leaned back in his chair. “You do not name the one you call the Dark Mage. Ankoku.”

“Ankoku is not dead, my lord. His conquerors did not kill him. Perhaps they could not. But he was defeated, bound, and imprisoned in some unimaginable place.”

“Then why does his name trouble your thoughts?”

A woman’s high sweet voice called down the corridor beyond the chamber. Senmet said, “All you have said troubles me, my lord. The smell of the wind troubles me, and the hue of the winter light as it lies across the northern hills; my long sleep troubles me, and the circumstances of my waking.” Rising, she walked to the window, pulled back the heavy curtain, and thrust at the shutters. Light streamed in, and the sounds of the street: the rumble of wagon wheels, the clip-clop of horses’ hooves on stone, the voices of the street vendors, crying their wares. “I can say no more than that.”