Matabar

Book II. Chapter 9 - "Allane'Eari"

Ardi watched the platform recede into the distance—if you could even call it a platform, since it was little more than a small wooden staircase leading from the station to a similarly wooden landing. Because of its meager size, it couldn’t accommodate all the people who had come to see the travelers off on its chipped, rough boards that had long forgotten the feel of lacquer. So many well-wishers had turned up that they crowded on the station’s balcony, spilled down onto the dusty ground along the rails, and even crossed to the other side, waving to their friends and family from across the tracks.

In the capital, the guards’ whistles would already be ringing out, herding the townsfolk—clearly addled by sunstroke—off the tracks and back onto the platform. But here in Delpas, at the sole station of this lone rail line, there were no other tracks at all. And indeed only one platform. Passenger trains didn’t run often—rarely, in fact. There wasn’t much place to go. North lay only another loading point, from which it was several days’ journey to Evergale. Further west the rail line in this part of the country was still under construction. To the south there were only military and trade seaports, with no civilian infrastructure. And to the east lay Presny. It was to Presny that trains departed a couple of times a week.

As a result, quite a number of people accumulated waiting for departure, especially in the summer season. And even thirty-degree heat, combined with the humidity of Blue Lake, wasn’t enough of a discouragement to keep the townsfolk away. They milled about and waved to their loved ones. The men doffed their hats, the girls and women held handkerchiefs, and the children frolicked, waving their caps, shouting something and smiling.

At last, the locomotive shuddered, pistons began to pound, the coal furnace roared, and the wide funnel shot a pillar of white steam into the air. The crowd scattered to either side, stepping back off the rails and clearing the tracks. The train jerked forward.

Ardi did not take his eyes off the eyes dear to him. In the crowd he easily spotted his mother, Shaia Egobar, looking a little sad, but calm and confident. In a yellow dress and a small hat, a parasol resting on her shoulder, she was indistinguishable from any other city lady fortunate enough to be among those unburdened by thoughts of where to get money, how to survive the winter, or what to eat the following week. Ardi felt a deep, viscous warmth in his chest—cozy and enveloping. Whenever he saw Shaia and Erti no longer anxious about the coming day, the young man stopped thinking about any of his own problems or worries.

Kena and Kelly had also come to see him off. The little girl sat perched on her father’s shoulders, waving her tiny arms so vigorously she nearly tumbled down, which prompted gentle laughter from those standing nearby. Ardan smiled as well. Once again, he was leaving behind his tangled, so unusual, but still dear-to-his-heart family.

Tess lightly squeezed his hand. He turned to her, gazing into her green eyes, and the feeling of melancholy—mild and even a touch sweet though it was—gradually receded, the tightness in his throat easing away.

“We’ll see them this winter,” the red-haired girl whispered.

Ardi understood that perfectly, but… due to the upcoming celebration and all its preparations, he wouldn’t have time to visit his family for New Year’s, and this would be the first time in six years that he’d spend that holiday far from his loved ones. And if back in the Alcade Mountains Ardan hadn’t even remembered that beyond the cliffs and forests he had anyone waiting for him, now everything was completely different.

“So,” Tess said, clearly wanting to shift the conversation onto another track as quickly as possible, as she opened their itinerary. It was something like a menu: a map with markers printed on the same stiff cardstock, tucked into a broad leather folio. “Looks like we have another journey ahead of us.”

Of course, such luxury was found only in a private first-class compartment, which Ardi would never have allowed himself to splurge on—quite literally, as a first-class ticket from the Metropolis to Delpas, then on to Shamtur, and back to the capital cost an utterly indecent sum. Thankfully, such a ticket was purchased as a single unit (since one bought out the entire compartment), and inside it you simply wrote in the number of passengers (to calculate the needed lunches, dinners and breakfasts). The journey in total took more than half a month.

Seven days from the Metropolis to Delpas, then ten days from Delpas to Shamtur, and then two days from Shamtur back to the capital. Such a pleasure for two passengers in first class came out to the tidy sum of eighty-eight exes—altogether even more than two of Ardi’s paychecks.

“First, back to Presny,” Tess said, running a finger along the not-very-clearly printed map and reading from the itinerary. “Then we’ll go a bit further north… It says here that the Alcade peaks will be visible off the left side! Then we pass through the High Forest and, along the tributary of Winged Island, again northward all the way to Shamtur. In total we’ll make forty-seven stops.”

Intellectually, Ardi knew that forty-seven stops were just forty-seven stops. But given the peculiar events of the past year of his life, he saw in those stops a potential danger—lurking just around the corner, hushed and unseen for now, but no less real a threat. On the other hand, a moving passenger train didn’t present anything as impregnable as an armored Treasury train.

“Ardi,” Tess brushed her fingers against his cheek, “tell me some story. One of those your great-grandfather told you when you were little.”

Ardi thought for a moment. Why had Tess suddenly taken an interest in stories? Then again, there wasn’t much else to do at the moment, so he could certainly recall something or other.

“A sad one, a funny one, about love or about travels?” Ardan asked pensively.

Gathering up the hem of her light summer dress, the girl rose to her feet. Click-clacking her heels on the lacquered parquet, she took a few steps over to the door of their compartment.

“About travels,” she said in a slightly hazy tone, if one could call it that.

“About travels…” Ardi sifted through his memory for the stories Aror had shared beneath the old oak’s branches. “There’s a story about a Galesian prince who went north, to the Ice Lake, to find there—”

Tess reached out and flipped the lock, securing their little quarters from the inside. Without bothering to bend down, she kicked off her shoes and stepped over to her fiancé. Gently, she lowered herself to her knees in front of him and wrapped her arms around his neck.

Ardi’s breath caught.

“To find what there?” Tess asked, a fiery little spark dancing in her green eyes.

“To find there…” he began, but she captured his lips in a kiss.

Ardi did tell her the tale, eventually. But later.

***

He watched Tess adorably scrunch her nose as she wrapped herself in the sheets that served them as blankets (in summertime on the steppe, especially in a train compartment, any real duvet would either boil you alive or outright fry you). Curled up like a kitten, she murmured something in her sleep and occasionally smiled, tugging the sheet higher and higher.

Ardi quietly climbed down from the bed (amazing—a real bed, albeit a small one, on a train!), pulled on his undergarments, and stepped aside to where a wall-mounted panel served as a table. He folded it down from the wall, tightened its clamping screws, and pulled an oil lamp from a niche in the wall. A strike of the flint, and a tiny smokeless flame sprang to life on the wick, drawing up the viscous oil that smelled of cinnamon and lavender. He adjusted the oil feed and, making the flame burn several times brighter, shut the conical lamp’s glass door. On the side facing Tess, he draped the menu folder over the lamp—so the light wouldn’t shine into her eyes.

After watching his sleeping fiancée for a few more moments, Ardi carefully, taking care not to make a sound, opened his grimoire. For some time now—ever since the end-of-term exams with Professor Convel—the idea of recursion within a seal had been occupying his mind. And Ardi planned to begin with the spell he knew best: a reliable and faithful companion in numerous skirmishes. Ice Arrow—one of the first combat spells in the book of Nicholas the Stranger. Not that much of that book remained unfamiliar; Ardi had already learned and read nearly two-thirds of it, and the last third, dedicated to the Blue star (as Ardan understood it), was ninety percent theoretical, compiled from Nicholas’s abstract thoughts and ideas.

But nevertheless…

Ardi ran his palm over the rough cover, which smelled of old leather, adventure, and gunpowder. He flipped through the stiff, nearly crackling pages of cheap paper covered in a tiny cramped handwriting, where sometimes several seals were crammed onto each page—not exactly the best way to keep a journal. Before long he would have to replace the grimoire (at considerable cost, at that), but for now… for now he drew out a ruler, a sharp pencil, and a homemade cheat-sheet of formulas “of his own design.” Laying before him the basic model of Ice Arrow, he set about breaking it down into its components.

He needed his own formulas because, inspired by the approach of Mrs. Talia and Senior Magister Paarlax, he had come up with a few new ideas for himself. And even if, for now—owing to his lack of access to testing grounds—he could only experiment with them on paper, still… still, the young man’s mind had been longing for scientific puzzles, rather than the endless chase after bombers and conspirators.

“First, completely dismantle the seal down to its basic runic connections,” Ardi murmured to himself as his pencil scritched across the page. “Then rewrite the arrays from scratch, separating the common structural links into simple functions and combine the functions into… into…”

Ardan didn’t know if there was an established term for the combination of a seal’s functions, but he wasn’t about to invent his own on the off chance he’d learn the official one later. After all, it was unlikely that his ideas were unique in a field of study over two and a half thousand years old—at least if one counted the Eastern Continent.

“And start constructing the runic connections inside the functions, rather than within the arrays,” he noted, continuing to sketch out his plan.

Ardan recalled with a touch of nostalgia working in Mr. Aversky’s laboratory—may the Eternal Angels receive him—where he’d had a complex arithmometer at his disposal. It was much easier to calculate complicated, multi-component runic links with a device like that. But on the other hand, Ardi enjoyed doing these sorts of calculations by hand. They calmed him, and they satisfied that endless itch in his head which, like a drover with a goad, prodded the young man to seek out new puzzles and solve them.

Ideally, he planned to turn the outdated Ice Arrow—which perhaps five hundred years ago had some practical sense—into something more like…

“Ice Bullet?” Ardi mentally suggested to himself.

A small but focused physical object—in his case, due to certain external reasons, an object of ice. In the base model, one could stick to simple, round numbers and values. For instance: a mass of thirty grams, a conical shape for better aerodynamics, and of course, speed. For short or medium range, three hundred meters per second would suffice, and for extended range:

“Say… nine hundred meters per second,” Ardi thought, succumbing to a bad habit as he lightly tapped the edge of the grimoire with his pencil. “A threefold increase would neatly correspond to the qualitative transition from the Red to the Green Stars, which also consists of three tiers.”

And using this base model, one could rework Ice Barrage as well. Also, perhaps it was worth considering that simple spells had stopped working against Blue Star magi, by virtue of their latest qualitative leap. Take Darton or Semen Davos, for example. All their spells had a dual structure: the direct offensive component, and on the outside—to complicate their opponent’s defense—they carried their own protective shell. Or an offensive effect of a different order.

“We should think of that in advance,” Ardan made a note in the margin. “So that with further modifications we have the option to add to the seal immediately, rather than recalculate everything from scratch.”

However, something like that would require knowledge of multi-component seals—cases where not just arrays but entire seals are combined. A topic that isn’t introduced until the second semester of third year. And even then, only in the Military and Engineering faculties. Which meant ahead lay yet more expenses at the establishments of the Spell Market for textbooks and academic literature.

Ardan ran a hand through his hair, mussing the already-tousled locks. It was a vicious circle of sorts: to earn money from seals, he needed to spend money on study materials, but to get those eks he needed to sell seals… Yes, there was always the chance to earn something in the Sponsor’s League of Magical Boxing, not to mention Milar’s idea of selling Fae medicinal wares…

All right, that’s all later; time to get back to the calculations, he told himself, and Ardan returned to his work with renewed zeal.

***

Ardi hadn’t even noticed the hands of his pocket watch creeping past three in the morning. Unlike Tess—whom the constantly swaying, clattering train car lulled to sleep—Ardi, with everything that had happened, found that it only chased slumber away from him. And perhaps only because he was so utterly absorbed in calculating runic links, arrays, and functions for the new seal he was practically creating from scratch did the young man fail to notice that the rocking and the clacking had ceased.

The train had fallen silent. Like a tired horse after a long gallop under the scorching sun of the summer prairie, the locomotive had gone quiet. Reaching for the oil can to top up the lamp, Ardan noticed with surprise that the shadow dancing over the grimoire was no longer trembling. Frowning, he gently drew aside the thick drape drawn snugly over the window.

The train had stopped right in the middle of the steppe. Not at a station or any sensible place—just halted, that was all. Not far off rose a hill, above which a black lake of sky spread out, studded with multicolored lights. The stop might have been explained as a technical necessity, but Ardi saw no one walking along the train, which had arced into a crescent, nor any stir near the locomotive. Quite the opposite, in fact. It was as if the train had truly fallen asleep. It had frozen in place and, closing its “eyes” (the bulky headlamps at its front), plunged into a deep slumber.

Ardan rose to his feet and, taking up his staff, went over to Tess. She was breathing evenly and still curled up in a little ball, fast asleep. The young man touched her shoulder and gave it a gentle shake. But the red-haired beauty didn’t so much as think of waking. Even when Ardi leaned in and carefully lifted her right eyelid, he saw only the whites of her rolled-up eyes and a dilated pupil. Tess slept on—so soundly that likely nothing at all could bring her to consciousness.

“It can’t be,” Ardi whispered and, leaning over his bride, he “closed” his eyes. Forcing himself to relax, he “opened” his sight to the reverse side of creation and, bringing his palm near his beloved’s face, caught her breath. He listened to it and to the tales it told, and he saw in them outlines of things that had no business being in a person’s breath. Ardi saw a black wind and heard the whisper of stars.

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The art of Aean’Hane. The entire train was submerged in it.

Magic was evident in the now-halted pounding of the pistons, which had wrapped itself in a dense, soothing blanket of peace and oblivion. It was present in how the thumping of the passengers’ hearts had fallen silent, slowing to the shuffling gait of an old man, as sleep caught them unawares—some over their newspapers, some in bed, others in the sitting carriage where travelers had slumped onto each other’s backs, and sometimes right into the aisle. A dark wind—both black and transparent at once—had enfolded the train in a morning mist, only one that was thick and viscous as wet cotton wool.

Ardi “opened” his eyes and once again saw only Tess sleeping before him, breathing softly and dreaming sweet dreams. Whoever had stopped the train wasn’t seeking conflict and meant no one any harm. He only wanted to talk. But Ardi remembered his great-grandfather’s and Atta’nha’s stories far too well to trust a night visitor so easily.

He pulled on a pair of light trousers over the underclothes in which he’d spent the last few hours, donned his vest and jacket, hung the grimoire at his belt, and slipped rings with accumulators onto his fingers. Taking his staff in hand, Ardi opened the compartment door and, as he stepped out into the carriage corridor, gave a gentle tap on the floor with the base of his staff. In the same instant, the door behind him was momentarily traced from the outside with a web of metal. It flared and then vanished.

Sighing, the young man turned and walked toward the vestibule, where he descended the folding stairs. His shoes sank into mushy earth and tall grass. A brisk, cold, tireless wind licked at his face, setting the green and golden stalks swaying. In summer, the steppe is hot as a griddle, but at night it’s colder—sometimes even more so than autumn weeks on the western coast.

Mart Borskov had once said that the Alcade prairies in this regard were reminiscent of the desert of Al’Zaphir. That said, Ardi had never been there, likely never would go, and honestly could barely even imagine what it meant for the ground to be made of sand.

Steadying his hat with one hand so the impish breeze wouldn’t whisk it away, Ardan climbed the hill with the help of his staff. And with each step, it seemed to him that the ground underfoot felt more and more like banks of cumulus cloud, and the sky overhead like a damp river stone threaded with veins of precious metals. Step by step, higher and higher, until everything around him went still.

She stood at the edge of the night field, half silhouette, half starlight, caught somewhere between a dream and the silent gleam of the shining night. The tall grasses, like courtiers in reverent bow, inclined toward her feet, their tips catching sparks of golden constellations. Her hair swirled and flowed, merging with the canopy of the night sky, and each lock whispered secrets of twilight mysteries.

Indigo and cobalt swirled in eddies around her, the sky aglow with the faint, diffused shimmer of barely-seen stars. It was as if those stars drifted lower and lower, weaving a fabric around her form. Her gown—reminiscent of a dark waterfall, an unknown night—seemed to be woven from moonlight and forget-me-not petals, and in every fold twinkled a subtle glint of stardust. If one listened closely and looked carefully, one could hear the music of distant bells echoing with ancient promises, come to rest for a while in her majestic silence.

“Highborn Sidhe,” Ardi said, removing his hat and inclining his head in a small bow.

It wouldn’t do to show impudence to a creature that appeared in the night. In the stories of the she-wolf and Aror, those who dared such foolishness always met a rather unenviable fate.

The Sidhe turned toward him for a moment, and that fraction of a second—that brief flash—was enough for Ardi to nearly choke. Choke on the realization of just how gray and drab the world around him was, how devoid of color and beauty, how simple and flat. And he saw all of it in her eyes, where there lived a light brighter and more magnificent than any constellation.

The Sidhe turned away and, bending down, plucked a single wildflower. The sleeping, furled blue bud unfurled in her hands, and the girl—as beautiful as Senkhi’Sha herself—brought it to her face.

“Greetings, pupil of the she-wolf,” she said, her voice sounding like the wind a sailor has long waited for, whose sails have hung slack for a week, and like the night beneath whose veil young lovers secretly hide. Her voice sounded like nothing that could exist in the mortal world. And so Ardi wasn’t even sure that he heard it with his ears and not with something else.

Ardan straightened and, still gripping his staff tightly, averted his gaze slightly to one side. He wasn’t confident his mind could endure if he looked too long upon the figure of this beautiful stranger. And, if he was completely honest, he’d prefer the fact of their unfamiliarity to remain unchanged.

Alas, by all indications, the night visitor had other plans. And if the old tales warned of anything, it was against a mortal trying to guess at what goes on in a Sidhe Fae’s head.

“You know my name,” said the girl woven of starry night and dark wind—not as a question, but as a statement.

Ardi did know. He had read of her. Of the one who comes on a summer night when the northern stars shine and a cold wind makes people remember that summer will one day end and winter will surely come. A being born of the Winter Court, appearing here in the midst of Summer’s domain.

“Lady Allane’Eari,” Ardi replied. “Sidhe of the Cold Summer Night, daughter of the Queen.”

In that dark hour, in the middle of the Alcade steppe, atop a hill amid flowers and grass, stood the figure of one of Winter’s princesses—the sister of Atta’nha herself.

“And what is your name, young Speaker?” Allane’Eari asked.

Ardan felt a searing, nearly irresistible urge to state his full name. It tore from the depths of his consciousness, shaking the walls of will the young man had built around it.

“Ard,” Ardi growled out with difficulty, like a snow leopard. “Ard Egobar.”

The Sidhe, who had just tried to wrest his True Name from him by force, gave no sign of being disappointed or even particularly surprised that Ardi had managed to hold the secret inside. In fact, Allane’Eari likely didn’t even realize she had nearly ripped the whole truth from his lips rather than only a part of it—simply because the Sidhe hadn’t put any will behind what happened. It’s like standing under the lashing blows of a squall and claiming nature has conspired against you personally. But that isn’t so. The wind simply blows, being what it is. So too with a Sidhe: her mere presence had nearly broken Ardi’s will.

“You know why I’ve come to you, student of my sister,” she said, still twirling the flower in her fingers and paying no heed to her companion. The stars still streamed down from the heavens along the rustling folds of her dress woven from the night.

“The Sidhe of the Burning Dawn,” was all Ardi said.

In truth, he had no idea why a Princess of Winter had shown up to pay him a visit. Whether it was connected to the fact that an obscure old writer, Anvar Riglanov, had somehow freed the Sidhe of the Burning Dawn from captivity; or with the fact that the aforementioned Sidhe had obtained from Ardi’s hands an ancient artifact—an inexhaustible source of Ley; or perhaps for some other reason known only to the Fae. Ardan could not know. And so he resorted to Skusti’s craft, telling the truth while still lying.

The wind blew—from every direction at once. As if it raced to bow before its mistress, to pour into her enchanting hair and raiment, becoming her breath and her words:

“You aided the fugitive, Speaker.”

“We made a deal, Princess—a deal that honored all the laws of the Queens. I broke nothing,” Ardan said firmly.

He remembered well the laws of the City on the Hill. Atta’nha had virtually forced her apprentice to memorize them.

“How can one who sought gain in a deal with someone who broke our laws claim that he himself broke nothing?”

Sleeping Spirits… for once in his life, Ardi had made the right choice, by not taking that scroll.

“I say it thrice and thrice you shall hear me, Princess: from my deal with the Sidhe of the Burning Dawn I received not the slightest benefit, and only returned to him what was already his by right.”

Allane’Eari fell silent. And the silence rubbed against Ardi’s legs like a gentle cat, but he did not let himself be deceived by its feigned kindness. One misstep, and that sweet cat would turn into a horrific monster that would devour him faster than he’d realize where he had made the fatal mistake.

“You speak truth, yet I feel you lie,” the Princess pronounced at last. “Which means my sister and her children taught you well, last of the clay hunters.”

Ardi held his tongue. In fact, if the old legends were to be believed, staying silent in the presence of a Sidhe was the best strategy of all.

“You know, Ard, I remember the moment when in my embrace you lay with the daughter of a man,” Allane’Eari lifted her gaze to the sky and closed her enchanting eyes. “How my wind caressed her curls and how my coolness soothed your burning heart… I’m sorry that your paths diverged.”

Ardan continued to remain silent. He strove not to show his fear. And he was especially afraid because the bracelet Atta’nha had given him was no longer smoldering on his right wrist in its black haze. With the arrival of the first day of Summer, it had finally dissolved, having spent the last of its power. And only a complete idiot wouldn’t fear one of the Princesses of Winter.

“But the dream of the Sleeping Spirits is always enchanting because of what they see within it. Perhaps there’s something poetic in that… Black hair and red. Amber and emerald. Ice and flame. Maybe a bit overdone, but that’s only because…” Allane’Eari fell quiet, but only briefly. “You have taken that which is dear to us, Speaker. And so we have the right to take that which is dear to you.”

The flower in the Princess’s hands crumbled into icy dust, and the grass around her feet first glazed over with hoarfrost, then cracked and scattered in a flurry of snow.

“I took nothing from you, my lady,” Ardan countered firmly. “I owe you nothing. Nothing binds me to you.”

Allane’Eari smiled. In the same way Alice smiled at Din Arnson whenever he said something foolish—the way one smiles at a fool.

“You are the reason the candle we sought for so long is once again hidden from us. You are the reason the fugitive we nearly caught is now beyond our reach.”

“The affairs of the Courts and the City on the Hill have nothing to do with me, my lady,” Ardan insisted. “And—”

“And was it not you, young Speaker, who twice came into our lands?” the Sidhe interrupted him, her smile widening. “And did you not know, even then, that mortals are forbidden from coming to us uninvited?”

Ardan’s breath caught, and his heart skipped several beats. The Fae never forgot anything, and never forgave anything. He truly had broken the Queens’ law twice. And both times, he had naively thought he’d gotten away unseen. If the first time—when he led Duchess Anorsky into Senkhi’Sha’s Garden—he was still considered a child, then the second time…

Damn.

He hadn’t gone “unnoticed,” and he certainly hadn’t been “forgiven a mistake.” They had simply remembered, and set it aside in case they ever needed to make use of it.

“Your debt to us binds you to the City on the Hill, Speaker,” Allane’Eari continued. “And thus I have the right to demand its repayment. A repayment multiplied by the fact that our Flame is lost to us once again. Lost not without your involvement.”

Ardan felt a flare of Ley sear his consciousness—so bright and burning, as if someone had pressed hot iron to his mind. The Princess of Winter spoke the truth. He really had erred… only the mistake wasn’t now, nor in that moment when he handed over the Sidhe’s Flame. He had erred six years ago, when he fled from Kenbish and his brothers through the Fae lands. Simply because, by that blunder, he bound himself with unseen ties to the City on the Hill.

But just because a confused twelve-year-old hunter had made that mistake, that didn’t mean Ardan wouldn’t try to wriggle out of the situation now.

“Princess, you are right,” Ard replied with a bow. “How could I forget that occasion when you helped me escape from my pursuers and allowed me to pass through your domain. I am grateful to you for that service—small though it was, it was of great importance to me—and of course I am prepared to repay you, by the law of the Queens, with a service equally small, yet of great importance to you.”

Of course, wriggling out of it didn’t mean Ardan would emerge unscathed, but at least he could reduce the payment demanded.

“As for the Flame, it never belonged to me and…” Ardan broke off.

And the Sidhe laughed. She laughed as only a cold summer night can laugh, its free wind roaming the steppe.

“They truly have taught you well, Speaker named Ard Egobar,” she said. She turned to him and took a light step, and in an eyeblink was standing right beside him. She barely came up to his chest, yet at the same time the youth felt as though he were standing next to something unfathomable and boundless. The Princess raised her hand and ran her palm along his cheek. “You remind me of Aror, boy. Your eyes… they are just like his. Once Aror came to my chambers, but he did not want me—only that which I possessed… Perhaps you, Ard, will want me?”

Ardan looked into her eyes, where starlight glimmered in the depths of night. He looked, and he fell. Deeper and deeper, losing both himself and his awareness. He had no will, no purpose, no memory, not even a sense of self. All that remained of him was a searing desire to seize this lovely being, to tear off that dress woven of night, to throw her down into the grass and…

A breeze carried the scent of spring grasses blooming by a brook.

The Princess hissed and recoiled to the side. On her palm—the one that had been touching Ardan’s cheek just a moment ago—a cut had opened, and silvery blood dripped from it.

“You love her, Ard,” the Princess snarled with unconcealed malice, the mask of enchanted allure and warmth falling from her in an instant. “Truly love her… truly… just like Aror.”

Ardan, breathing heavily, clung to his staff. So that is what a true Witch’s Gaze was. And that is what it meant to be without Atta’nha’s bracelet on his wrist.

“We gave you the ability to walk when you could not, Speaker,” the princess said, gradually regaining her earlier detached composure with each passing moment. “Therefore, this winter, when you can walk, you will have to stand. That is your payment, Speaker—by the law of the Queens. And if you break it, then we will take from you what is dear to you.”

His heart began to pound faster, and Ardi felt the wind around him grow colder. Colder and… darker. And before he understood what he was saying, or to whom, an earnest oath burst from his lips:

“Then I will kill you, Princess. You and everyone dear to you. Even if it takes me centuries of my life.”

Ardi caught himself and would have said that he misspoke. That it was only because he had, for an instant, yielded to her Witch’s Gaze. But the truth is, a Witch’s Gaze forces you to speak what truly lies in your heart.

The Princess regarded him with open regret.

“I know, Speaker. I know that is exactly what you will do. You have broken not only our laws, have you? I sense stains of the Dark Words on your soul. Right now they’re only tiny blots—barely noticeable specks. But they are growing. You know that too, don’t you? You feel them?”

Before Ardan’s mind’s eye flashed scenes of the Imperial Bank, and of how he, as a child, read a certain scroll from Atta’nha’s library.

“I see that you feel it,” Allane’Eari continued, seeing the recognition on his face. “You chose your own path, Ard. And sooner or later you will stumble. No one can keep the Darkness on a leash for too long. One day you will become a Dark Aean’Hane. Because that is the dream of the Sleeping Spirits.”

“Your sister, Princess, once told me that even if the whole world tells me who I am, only I alone choose who I truly am,” Ardan replied.

Allane’Eari smiled, a touch sadly.

“My sister is a powerful witch. There is none in the Winter Court who could rival her in might or in her mastery over the Snows and Ice, Ard. But she was never particularly wise.”

“Perhaps, Princess, but it was that sister of yours who protected and watched over my father’s people, not you. So I’m inclined to trust her more than you.”

“Blood of Aror…” Allane’Eari’s eyes gleamed with that familiar smile. “And now look where it has brought my sister and her people… You are like Aror, in spirit and in will. You would make an excellent, mighty Sidhe. Come with me, Ard,” she said, extending her hand to him. “Come with me to the City on the Hill. You should have gone there the very moment you learned to Speak. Come. Such is the dream of the Sleeping Spirits. Come. You will become Sidhe. The Snows and Frosts of Winter will wash your soul clean, and the Darkness will retreat. Come. You will take your place in the Queen’s retinue. Come. You will be my husband, and I will be your wife. Come, and—”

Her words went on and on, and images swirled before Ardan’s eyes. Foreign images. Visions of a life unfamiliar to him. Not his life—someone else’s. Someone walking along unseen paths, someone who sees the world as it truly is, not as mortal eyes perceive it; he saw someone who was grasping secrets so intricate and beguiling that they couldn’t be described by anything capable of making sound; he was living and breathing where there was neither air nor heartbeat, only… only something.

And she was there beside him. Next to him. The Princess of Winter. Allane’Eari, the Sidhe of the Cold Summer Night.

Ardan clutched at his chest—clutched at the little flame of green eyes shining far off along the coiled path of his life.

“You have no power over me, witch,” Ardan managed to say with effort.

A wind rose. Stars swirled above.

“Come with me, Ard!” the voice boomed, suddenly thunderous and deep. “Aror promised you to me!”

Ardan did not listen to her. He tried not to hear a single sound.

“You do not know my True Name,” he intoned, reciting the words the she-wolf had taught him and pouring everything he had into them. “You have not walked my paths. You do not know where my home is, or who my spirits are.”

“He promised you to me!” the princess screamed. “You are my payment for his debt!”

“Depart to where mortals have no place, for here there is no place for you, witch. Here only the blood of my forebears flows. Here only the whisper of my spirits is heard. Here there is no place for you or your kind, witch. Here—”

He didn’t finish. She seized him by the chin and with ease—like a feather—hoisted him into the air, staring deep into his eyes.

“I can wait, Speaker. She is only mortal, after all. I waited five centuries for the payment of Aror’s debt. I can wait another five just the same. Remember your debt to my Mother, mortal. This winter you will pay it. And remember that your life belongs to me by right. By the right that Aror gave me.”

She crushed her lips against his. And in that kiss there was nothing warm, nothing gentle, nothing human—only something animal, feral and furious, as icy and merciless as… as a cold summer night.

***

“Ardi…”

Ardan opened his eyes. Tess stood before him wrapped in a sheet, sleepy and tousled.

“You stayed up all night doing research?” she asked, rubbing her eyes.

Ardi looked at the table strewn with papers, at himself—clad only in his underclothes—and at the lamp, which had burned through all its oil. His staff stood near the door, and the accumulator rings lay in his valise.

Sending papers tumbling, not caring if he tore or crumpled something, he scooped Tess up and crushed her in a bear hug, burying his face in her hair, and fell silent.

“Ardi… what’s wrong?” She placed her warm, delicate hands on his back. “Did you have a bad dream?”

Ardan did not answer. He would have liked to believe it truly had just been a nightmare. Only the blue lip-print on his left wrist said otherwise.

Great-grandfather… how much more he hadn’t been able to tell.

Well, no matter. Ardi still wouldn’t be able to speak with him now.

The important thing was that one more item had been added to his list of tasks. A very important one.

He needed to find out how one could… kill a Sidhe.