Wizard of the Grove (47 page)

“There's not much cover down there,” Crystal pointed out, scanning the valley with her wizard-sight. She sighed and shifted her gaze to the immediate area. The shattered mountaintop had a greater air of desolation than the land below. “Still, there's not much cover up here either. I suppose we might as well get as close as we can.”

“The air feels heavy,” Jago said quietly as they started single file down the slope. “It's almost like we're being watched.”

Raulin snorted, blowing a great silver cloud into the cold air. “Thank you very much, Jago.” He placed his feet carefully in the giant's bootprints—stepping anywhere else left the brothers floundering hip-deep in snow. “All we need is to have spirits haunting this place.”

“As to that,” Sokoji's voice floated back, sounding thoughtful but unconcerned, “who knows what happens when a wizard dies? My sisters and I spent some time considering it but reached no answer.”

“Some time?”

“Ten years and four months.”

“And came up with no answers?”

“Perhaps the Mother's son knows, but he keeps the secrets of his people.”

Raulin twisted to look at Jago. “I don't suppose he's around?”

Jago shook his head. It didn't seem necessary to mention that Lord
Death hadn't been around for a number of days. Whenever the Mother's son was mentioned, a combination of yearning and fear sang along the link stretching between him and Crystal and as he saw no way to help, he had no desire to add to her burdens.

Behind them, the mountain rumbled.

Slowly, like puppets pulled by a single string, they turned.

A ball of snow, a hand's span wide, smashed against Crystal's legs.

Another followed, then another.

The rumble came not from the mountain, but from the mass of snow beginning to move down it.

Crystal's face paled as the hint of a power she thought she should remember brushed lightly across hers. Not a wizard's power, not quite. Then the memory slipped away in the need of the moment. Her eyes flared and she grabbed Raulin and Jago each by a hand. She could feel their trust in her and it gave her strength.

She met Sokoji's eyes.

The giant nodded. “I can hurry when I must.”

The snow beneath their feet began to shift.

“Run,” commanded Crystal.

And so they did.

Crystal wrapped the brothers in her power and the three of them almost flew over the snow. Their feet barely touched before lifting again, the packs weighed nothing on their backs, and the wind helped carry them along. In spite of the knowledge that they raced disaster, both men felt a thrill of pleasure in the effortless speed.

Sokoji moved a little ahead, running with great bounding strides.

With a screech, the avalanche finally broke free and surged down the slope, gathering force as it roared toward them.

“Chaos,” Raulin swore, risking a glance back over his shoulder.

And Chaos it appeared to be. Boulders ground together along the front edge of the mass of moving snow, a churning wall of destruction rising thirty feet into the air. The screaming rumble grew in volume until it drowned out thought and reason.

They'd covered two thirds, of the distance to the wizard's lake,
nearly deafened but unharmed, and Crystal began to feel secure. Even without drawing from the barriers, she had sufficient power left to carry the three of them to flat ground where the beast behind would die of its own weight.

Then Jago stumbled and fell.

By the time she yanked him to his feet, the avalanche was upon them, dragging both brothers from her grip.

“NO!”

She whirled, fingers spread, and threw her power at the enemy.

The wave of snow and stone slammed into a wall of green.

And stopped. And fused.

The green faded.

Ears ringing in the silence, Crystal stared at the white cliff rising above her. She felt whole, complete in a way she hadn't since Kraydak's defeat.
But how?
she wondered and almost cried when the question shattered something fragile within her and the goddesses returned.

She turned as Jago gently touched her arm.

“You were whole,” he said softly. “I felt it.” That Crystal had saved them seemed of less importance than this.

“Was whole,” she agreed and swallowed the lump that had formed in her throat. “Was.”

The whole,
added Tayja's voice,
is greater than the sum of its parts.

Not now, Tayja.
The finding—then the losing—of self left a pain too deep for even those goddesses who had proven her friends to be endured.

“Come on,” Raulin slipped an arm about her and Crystal rested gratefully against his side, “just a little farther and you can sit down. You'll feel better with a cup of tea inside you and a fire lighting the night.”

“Raulin . . .”

“What?”

“Oh, nothing.” Jago decided against explaining. He almost wished he had his brother's calm acceptance of the world. He knew that in Raulin's eyes Crystal had merely done what wizards do and now, like a
porter who had strained something carrying too heavy a load, she needed taking care of. With one last awe-filled look at the towering pile of snow, he fell into step behind them and wished, for Crystal's sake, it could be that easy.

Sokoji waited for them at the end of the lake. She studied Crystal's face as the wizard approached. Satisfied with whatever it was she saw, she pointed up at the blasted peak of the Mighty One.

Against the pink granite of the mountain, almost glowing in the last of the afternoon sun, lay a great black dragon. The Doom of the ancient wizards.

Crystal's mouth went dry and then she realized the beast was stone.

She reached out with what little power she had left and touched only rock.

The path of the avalanche began at the dragon.

She recalled the power that had brushed against her just before the mountain shook off its load of snow. When she woke Kraydak's Doom—the dragon created in his arrogance from the body of the Mother—she had felt the same type of power.

“What is it?” Raulin asked, squinting in an attempt to make out details. At this distance he saw only black on pink.

“Aryalan's dragon. Aryalan's Doom.”

“Is it alive?”

“No, not for years.”

The brothers traced the swath of destruction left by the snowslide and exchanged identical glances.

“Are you certain?”

“Yes.” She tore her gaze from the graceful line of limb and scale and met first Raulin's then Jago's worried eyes. “Whatever memory of power my presence may have triggered is gone now. There's nothing there but stone.” She sighed and added in a small voice, “I thought someone promised me a cup of tea?”

And the marvel of the dragon was banished in making camp.

And if Crystal lay awake that night and wondered what else would be triggered by her presence, no one knew.

T
he wind had rippled the surface snow into a parody of the lake it covered and the tiny ridges were all that disturbed the unbroken expanse of white. Staring across from shore to island, the lake appeared wider than it had from up on the mountain. Jago rubbed his eyes and tried to bring the remains of the gatehouse into focus, but the entire area persisted in wavering; one moment sharp and clear, the next no more than a soft gray shadow against the white. He snapped his snow goggles down off his forehead but, although he no longer needed to squint, the scene remained unchanged.

“Crystal,” he called without turning, and felt rather than saw her step to his side. “Look toward the island and tell me what you see.”

Crystal looked out over the lake, frowned, and shook her head. Her eyes began to glow, living emeralds reflecting the morning sunlight. “I see . . .” She paused and shook her head again. “I don't know what I see, exactly.”

“You see one of Aryalan's remaining defenses,” Sokoji told them, moving to stand at their backs. “Do not try to puzzle it out for too long.”

“Because we can't?” Jago asked.

“Because you'll soon begin to think of nothing else, neither food nor sleep nor drink, and will eventually die still staring across the water.” The giant waved a hand at the snow covered ice. “Or what passes for water these days. The full effect may not be working, but I advise you not to risk it.”

Jago pointedly turned his back on both lake and tower. “Okay,” he said slowly, “if we can't look at the island, how do we cross?”

“Why, by not looking at it.”

Raulin grinned at the implied “of course” on the end of Sokoji's answer. “Really, Jago,” he teased, bending over the campstove where their breakfast cooked, “use your head.”

“Why not use yours? We'll need something solid to test the ice.” Jago leaned forward and grimaced at the pale brown mass in the pot that was just beginning to bubble and steam. “And then again, we could just throw that stuff in front of us, let it harden, and we'll have a bridge.”

“Ignoring the insult to my cooking,” Raulin sighed, “I have to agree with the sentiment. I am definitely tired of oatmeal. Even if Crystal does power out the lumps.” He raised the wooden spoon and the sticky clump on the end fell back into the pot with a loud and unappetizing splat.

Clicking her tongue, Crystal dropped a handful of snow into the pot. It turned to water as it hit and began to loosen the gluelike consistency of the porridge. “To begin with, you've got your proportions wrong.” She added just a little more snow water and the spoon briskly stirred the liquid in.

“Do mortals usually waste time on trivialities before going into the unknown?” Sokoji asked, her head to one side, her expression both puzzled and faintly amused as she watched the trio gathered around the campstove.

The two mortals and the wizard looked up from the porridge pot, looked at each other, had no need to look out toward the tower, and said simultaneously, “Yes.”

Sokoji nodded and sat down on the well-packed patch of snow she'd been using since the night before, her weight having sculpted it into comfortable contours. “That explains your behavior. I had always believed mortals preferred to get danger over with quickly. Perhaps some cinnamon would help.” She offered a small bag pulled from one of her many pockets.

“Help to get it over with?” Raulin asked.

“Help the porridge.”

“Oh. Right. Do you always carry cinnamon with you?”

Sokoji reviewed the recent contents of her pockets.

“No,” she said at last.

Breakfast lasted longer than the oatmeal—even improved by the cinnamon—warranted. No one offered an opinion as to why they were so strangely unwilling to start on this, the last leg of their adventure. Conversations started, stopped, restarted, and sputtered out.

“I'll never forget,” Raulin broke into the uncomfortable silence that had fallen after the last abortive attempt to find an acceptable topic, “the look on Crystal's face when she picked herself out of that snowdrift.” A laugh hovered around the edges of his voice.

“When?” Crystal shifted around to face him. “After you blithely pitched me off the sleigh?”

“Yeah,” he admitted, winking, “then.”

And that began a series of reminiscences, as if this were their last evening together and the next day they would all be back in separate and safe lives.

Raulin and Jago traded banter. Raulin and Crystal traded glances almost physical in intensity. Crystal and Jago shared a quiet moment in complete accord.

We've redefined ourselves,
Jago realized, when talk shifted away from the personal to the dwindling supply of tea.
Reinforced who we are and what we mean to each other.
He glanced in the direction of the tower, not attempting to keep his eyes on it when it slid out of view.

“I've changed my mind,” he muttered into his tea. “I don't want to go.”

“You never wanted to go,” Raulin pointed out.

No, he hadn't. But he couldn't let Raulin go alone, not back in the beginning, not now—and Jago knew Raulin would go on. Not because he didn't feel the menace radiating from the island—menace that kept Jago's mouth dry and his stomach in knots—but because he wouldn't let the fear it caused stop him. An admirable trait, Jago had to admit, remembering the battle his brother had fought and won on the ledge
into the valley, but not one likely to allow either of them to die comfortably of old age.

By the time the last cup of tea was finally finished, the pot dried and stowed away, the sun was a pale yellow disc high in the silver sky.

“I'm better at beginnings,” Raulin admitted to Jago as they hoisted on their packs. He looked back at Crystal and then forward at the still shifting tower. “I've always been lousy at endings.”

“Then think of this as another beginning,” Jago told him, yanking a braid free from under the shoulder strap. “Things change, but they don't end.”

“Oh, very profound, junior.”

Jago tied on his hat, his violet eyes twinkling under the fur edge. “That's why mom liked me best.”

Crystal stared up at the distant dragon, her wizard-sight caressing each strong and graceful curve. Life had left it thousands of years before and yet it still had a beauty that caused the breath to catch in her throat. She stood almost perfectly still, mesmerized, only her right hand moving, blindly weaving her hair around the fingers of the left.

“What are you thinking of, child?” Sokoji asked, coming silently up beside her.

“How it must have looked in the air with the sun turning its scales to black fire and its eyes glowing red.”

“Its eyes are closed. How do you know they were red?”

“Weren't they?”

The giant nodded. “Yes. But how did you know?”

“Kraydak's colors were gold and blue and so was Kraydak's dragon. Aryalan's colors were black and red and this was Aryalan's dragon.”

“Not
her
dragon, child. That is the mistake the ancient ones made, claiming ownership of the Mother's body.”

“I wonder,” she said dreamily, giving no indication she'd heard Sokoji's last words, “how a dragon would look in silver and green.”

“A dangerous thought, wizard.”

At the giant's tone, Crystal shook herself free of her fascination with the great beast and turned to face Sokoji. “But only a thought,”
she said clearly. “I am not like those ancient wizards.” Under Sokoji's continuing gaze, she drew herself up, her shoulders went back and her chin rose. Her hair spread out around her, a living silver frame, and her eyes flashed like jewels amidst the ice and snow.

Sokoji, whose memory went back almost to the world's creation, smiled. “No,” she conceded, “you are not like the other wizards.”

“Hey!” Raulin yelled from the edge of the ice. “You two going to stand and talk all day? These packs are heavy!”

“I will never understand mortals,” Sokoji muttered as the two women walked forward. “First they spend the greater part of the morning dawdling and now they must instantly be off.”

“An unpredictable race,” Crystal agreed, conveniently forgetting for the moment her own mortal heritage.

“Unpredictable.” Sokoji turned the word over in her mouth. “Yes, I suppose that's one word for them.”

The snow covering the lake was dry and hard packed and it squeaked under boot soles.

“How do we know the ice is thick enough to hold us?” Jago asked, when they were about twenty feet from shore.

“Well,” Raulin drawled, “if you're not breathing water, it's thick enough.”

“Maybe we should be checking it.” After weeks of traveling through the mountains, crossing such a large open area left him feeling exposed and vulnerable. The ice wasn't really the problem, but it would do until something else came along. He could hear Raulin's own nervousness in his flippant answers.

“We are checking it out; we're sending Sokoji out ahead. Anything'll hold her will hold us.”

“Don't worry, Jago.” Sokoji smiled back over her shoulder at him. “During the second and third winter moons, the ice is as thick as it ever gets. We will not fall through.”

Raulin reached out and tugged on a floating strand of Crystal's hair. “You're very quiet.” he said. “Copper for your thoughts?”

“I was just thinking that this is really the only time of the year you
could get to the tower, when the lake is frozen solid enough to walk across.” She waved a hand back at the shore where clumps of stunted trees raised twisted branches barely above the level of the snow. “In the summer you'd need a boat and you certainly couldn't build one from those. Nor could you get one over the pass. In the spring and fall, while the mountains are saturated with water, you couldn't get into the valley at all, the footing would be too treacherous.”

She paused and looked up at Raulin. “And if I hadn't gotten to the demon before you, you'd be dead and I'd be . . .” The memory of Nashawryn breaking free tightened her throat around the words. “. . . I'd be . . . well, I wouldn't be, and the map would have never been used. And if Sokoji hadn't met with us, we'd still be heading toward the wrong valley.”

“Your point?” Raulin asked.

“Why did you decide to travel in winter? You've got to admit, it isn't when people usually go north.”

“In the winter we could use the sleigh and carry a lot more gear. No bugs, few wild animals. It just seemed to make the most sense.”

“What about the weather?”

Raulin tucked his chin deeper in his scarf. “The lesser of a number of evils. You were traveling in the winter . . .”

“But seasons don't mean anything to me.” She searched for other ways to convince him. “If I hadn't met that brindle, I would never have used enough power for the demon to hear me and call . . .”

Maybe. Maybe not.

“Crystal . . .”

“. . . and I'm sure Sokoji has a logical reason for being in these mountains as well.”

Maybe, Maybe not.

“Crystal, what are you getting at?”

She sighed and pushed both her hands up through her hair. “I think someone, or something wants us—you, me, and Jago, possibly Sokoji too—at that tower.”

“What!”

“Well, you've got to admit, it's a few too many coincidences to be plausible.”

Raulin threw one arm around her shoulders. “I've got to believe nothing of the kind. You're just a little spooked is all.” He noticed the giant watching and added, “Right, Sokoji?”

“In the world of the Mother-creator,” Sokoji said solemnly, “coincidences are few and far between. Nothing happens without reason.”

“Are you telling me you believe what Crystal just said?”

“Maybe. Maybe not.”

“Don't you start,” Crystal growled.

Sokoji looked puzzled.

“I'm sorry.” Crystal hoped she sounded sincere. She couldn't tell over Eegri's giggles.

Jago wondered if he should mention that he'd been mulling over the circumstances that had brought the four of them to this place at this time and had come to much the same conclusion. He opened his mouth to speak, caught sight of the expression on his brother's face—Raulin clearly anticipated what he was going to say—and decided to keep silent.

With the remains of the gatehouse, and the island it stood on, unreliable as a guide, it was difficult to determine both how far they'd walked and how far they still had to go. Judging distance by the shore they'd left helped very little, for the farther they walked over the lake the more the shore took on the same characteristics as the island.

“Look at the bright side,” Raulin remarked as they continued, “this is some of the easiest walking we've done for weeks. It's flat, it's clear, we're not plunging through drifts, we're not . . .”

The ice groaned, a long drawn out sound that set teeth on edge and could be felt up through the soles of their feet.

“. . . we're not likely to live to see the other side,” Raulin finished, white showing all around his eyes. “What, in the name of Chaos, was that?”

“Just the ice settling,” Crystal explained, moistening her lips. Knowing the cause barely lessened the sound's chilling effect.
“Something to do with thermal patterns in the lake.” The centaurs had spent a great deal of time, many years before, teaching her the ways of the world. Knowledge, they reasoned, brought respect. She wished now that she could remember more of it. “We're perfectly safe.”

The ice groaned again.

Raulin and Jago went rigid. Even their clothing seemed to stiffen.

“Look,” she realized they believed her reassurances and she understood that belief had little to do with their reaction to the sound, “Sokoji hasn't stopped.”