A Path to Coldness of Heart (17 page)

She asked, “Do you suppose he’s watching?”

“I would be if I had dropped that man here and right away you started remodeling.”

Mist heard an odd inflection there. “You have something on your mind?”

“I do. But it’s not germane. We have this project on the table. Shall we begin?”

Mist made another circuit of the room, which resembled Ragnarson’s, several levels below. It now had a larger window. She saw nothing to discourage her. “Have we unraveled the mystery of the attack on the tower yet?”

“No. All paths lead to dead ends.”

“Michael Trebilcock, then.”

“Every prisoner here was high value and most had friends a lot closer than Kavelin.”

“Could there be another raid while I’m involved in this?”

“I don’t know about that. I do know that an assault will not succeed.”

Mist stared at the expanded window. Was she ready emotionally?

“My father and his brother made transfers without a receiving unit. Do you have any idea how they did that?”

The inquiry took Shih-ka’i by surprise. “Illustrious? Is that true? I’ve never heard of such a thing.”

“I don’t know why it came to mind. I’ve never heard anything like that, either. But I just realized, both of them got into Varthlokkur’s fortress in the Dragon’s Teeth, then got themselves trapped and killed. How did they get there?”

“Is that true?”

Mist paused. Was it true? She had the story from several sources, none quite agreeing. Some claimed to have been there. None told her what really happened back when.

“I suppose I’ll have to ask. Bring out the board.”

...

Varthlokkur chuckled. So. The woman had been playing him with all the hustle and bustle. Though, of course, that had been in support of this.

“Nepanthe. Come look.”

Smyrena on her shoulder, Nepanthe came. She peered into the globe Varthlokkur was using. She saw Mist beside a large blackboard, smiling. Mist was dressed in masculine travel clothes. The board proclaimed,
I am ready to come see my children
in bold chalk lettering.

Nepanthe asked, “Are you going to let her?”

“What do you think? Can we trust her not to do something unpleasant?”

Nepanthe considered. “She’ll behave as long as the children are with us.”

“I imagine you’re right. So. Start getting ready but don’t tell them. She could change her mind. I don’t want their hearts broken.”

Nepanthe put her arms around him, from behind, and kissed him on the right cheek.

He blushed. She did not notice.

He had longed for that sort of spontaneous affection across the ages.

Nepanthe went away.

Varthlokkur summoned the Unborn.

...

Ragnarson wakened needing to use the garderobe. He did that more frequently lately. But that was a problem for old men. He was not old. Not yet. No.

There was a moon out tonight. He lined it up so he could see it. It was living proof that there was a reality beyond his prison.

Something the color of freshly watered blood occluded the moon. Ragnarson started. What the hell?

That?

Eyes old in evil stared for several seconds. Then the Unborn left.

Ragnarson’s heart hammered. That had been a shock. What did it mean? Was a rescue under way?

Nothing came of it. It was just something to haunt his thoughts. When he wakened next morning he was no longer sure the monster had not been a nightmare.

...

The Unborn could do nothing but execute its orders. Varthlokkur had made sure of that when he bound the monster. But the evil in the beast would express itself.

It tried tormenting the Empress, traveling to Fangdred, by dropping her, then catching her after a thousand feet of freefall. But she was no fun. She did not scream after the first surprise.

Radeachar never felt the magic being woven. It discovered the truth the third time it tried a drop. The woman plunged in silence. There was no pleasure in that.

There was pain aplenty, though. The farther she fell the worse that became.

Radeachar was not capable of complex thought. It did possess a strong drive toward self-preservation. That kicked in fast. Thereafter it concentrated on completing its task as quick as could be.

...

Fangdred boasted a small courtyard behind its gate. In the lowlands the world was easing into summer but winter hung on doggedly in the Dragon’s Teeth. Ice rimed Fangdred’s grey walls, inside and out. Black ice patched the grey pavements of the court. Mist slipped almost as soon as the Unborn set her down. She cursed. That inelegance was not flattering.

She grumbled about the cold, too. She had not anticipated the difference in weather, nor the impact of the increased altitude.

Varthlokkur, Nepanthe, Scalza, and Ekaterina came out to meet her. The children stared as though she was some fabulous beast. They did not run to her. In fact, Ekaterina retreated behind Nepanthe, peeked around with one eye, as though she was a shy four.

Loss shoved a talon into the gut of the most powerful woman in the world. It ripped.

She could quash an empire of a hundred million souls but could not hold the love of her children.

Heading their way, stepping carefully, she reminded herself that she had not been much of a mother before she went back to the Empire. Not by the standards of workaday folk on whose backs businesses, nations, and empires were built.

The four withdrew into the warmth as Mist joined them. Scalza was the perfect soldier. He bowed deeply and said, “We bid you welcome, Mother.” There was no affection in his voice.

Ekaterina stammered something, then hid behind Nepanthe again. Nepanthe and Varthlokkur both seemed surprised, which suggested that Ekaterina was, usually, much more bold.

Nepanthe said, “Dinner is being set. If you need to refresh yourself first…”

“I do.”

A servant showed Mist the way to quarters already prepared. The woman pretended to have no languages in common with the Dread Empress.

Nepanthe’s own children were with their mother when Mist arrived for dinner. The infant sprawled on her mother’s left shoulder, asleep. Ethrian sat to Nepanthe’s right. His eyes were vacant.

Hard to believe that he had threatened the existence of the Empire.

Uncomfortably conscious of Varthlokkur, Mist focused on Nepanthe. Her sister-in-law. Valther’s little sister. Nepanthe signified most in this domestic drama.

Varthlokkur would be the referee.

Servants brought simple fare, as was to be expected in a dreary castle in the most remote of mountains. Dining proceeded lugubriously, silence broken mainly by Nepanthe as she delivered gentle instruction to Ethrian. “Eat your turnips, Ethrian. They’ll help you get better. Good boy, Ethrian. Take your finger out of your nose, Ethrian.” And so on, with the boy always mechanically responsive.

He was little more than a skeleton. He showed a fine appetite, yet remained as gaunt as he had been on emerging from the eastern desert.

At one point he met Mist’s gaze. He asked a quick question. She did not understand.

Scalza said, “He asked where Sahmaman went. He asks all the time.”

Ekaterina, in a voice like a mouse, chirped, “He’s getting better, Mother. He can talk now.”

Scalza added, “But it’s only the same three or four things.”

Ethrian asked his question again. This time Mist recognized “Sahmaman” and “go.” His inflexion was not appropriate to a question.

“Who is he asking about?”

They all seemed surprised. Varthlokkur replied, “The woman who was in the desert with him.”

“The ghost?”

“Yes. But she was more than that. She was a true revenant for a while. She had flesh.”

The fine hairs on Mist’s forearms began to tingle.

Nepanthe said, “They were lovers. Not physically. I don’t think. She sacrificed herself so that Ethrian could live.”

Nepanthe stared down at her dinner. Even so, Mist could see the moisture on her cheeks.

Again, Ethrian asked, “Where Sahmaman go?”

And Nepanthe told him, “She had to go away, Ethrian. She had to go for a long time.”

Mist realized that her children were staring, expecting her to say something.

She could not imagine what.

These were not the children she had come to see. She had hoped for sweetlings. But Scalza had become old and cold. Ekaterina appeared to be convinced that she was always just one step from having the world strike her another cruel blow, with cause and effect irrelevant.

How could that be? Varthlokkur was no grand choice as a father figure but Nepanthe was a good mother substitute.

Varthlokkur said, “There are extreme abandonment issues. But things were improving.”

Meaning her visit might sabotage the good work Nepanthe had done?

Everything we do, she thought, impacts others, often in ways we do not foresee.

“This is a finer meal than I expected, considering your isolation.”

“Thank you,” Nepanthe said. “Cook will be pleased.”

After that everyone seemed to wait to hear from Mist, except Ethrian, who asked after Sahmaman again, and then said, “On Great One go boom.”

...

Silence stretched. Mist became uncomfortable. Her children showed no inclination to interact with her. She did not know what to do. Her own childhood had offered no examples of good parenting.

She asked, “Could I see my father while I’m here?”

Varthlokkur shifted slightly, suddenly wary.

“I know my father and uncle died here, in a trap set by you or the Old Man.”

“Actually, by someone a step further up the food chain. They’re in the Wind Tower. We don’t go there much. But, all right. The risk is minimal. I’d say nonexistent but I did see Sahmaman come back, in all her power.” The wizard rose.

Mist did the same. She glanced at Scalza. The boy said, “I’ll help clean up. I don’t like those creepy old mummies.”

Leaving the common room, Varthlokkur said, “It’s a long climb. Another reason we don’t go up there much. Plus, the Wind Tower contains a lot of bad memories.”

Mist finished the climb fighting for breath. “I’m not…used to this…altitude.”

“You never get all the way there.” He was breathing hard himself, but not fighting for breath the way she was.

Mist looked around at a large chamber that had been cleared out, then vigorously cleaned, quite recently. For her sake?

“Scalza doesn’t like me much, does he?”

“Scalza knows his family history, on both sides. He has an exaggerated ideal of what his mother ought to be. The woman inside his head isn’t you. And you won’t be here long enough to evict her.”

“I could take him back with me.” Only later did she realize that Ekaterina had not been mentioned. Which was disturbing.

Mist herself had survived childhood mainly because she had had a knack for going overlooked. Ekaterina seemed to have that same capability.

The wizard wasted no breath on the absurdity of her suggestion.

“All right. Wishful thinking. The worst of us want to be thought well of by our children. Where are the Princes? I don’t see them.”

“Here.” The wizard drew aside a curtain identical to those that masked Fangdred’s interior walls, keeping the cold at bay and the warmth confined. Moving this curtain showed that the room was bigger than it seemed.

“That’s where it all happened?”

“It is. The Old Man should be on the higher seat in the center. I don’t know what became of him.”

That seat was empty, of course. The remains of the Princes Thaumaturge occupied lower chairs to either hand. Varthlokkur removed the dust sheets covering them.

Mist stared, in silence, for more than a minute.

“Is something wrong?”

“I can’t tell which one is which.”

Varthlokkur confessed, “That would be beyond me, too. This is where they were when the Star Rider left the Wind Tower. They’ve been moved several times since.”

“How did you get in?”

The question surprised the wizard. “What do you mean?”

“Nepanthe told Valther that the Wind Tower was sealed off after that night and that the sealing was proof against your power.”

“Not forever. I chipped at the spells for years.”

“Chipped at them. And when you got in the Old Man was gone.”

“Yes. Though I’m not sure that the Star Rider didn’t take him, back then.”

“Yes. You are. You think him coming back for the Old Man was the break you needed to get through.”

“You’re right. It’s probable. With the Old Man gone there might’ve been no reason to keep the Wind Tower sealed.”

“This one was my father. He has a scar on his neck. He took the wound the night he and Nu Li Hsi murdered Tuan Hoa.”

“Somewhere, in some hell, your grandfather had a good laugh the night they died.”

“I’m sure. You were here.”

“I was here.”

“That must have been a terrible night.”

“More than you can imagine, in ways more dire than you’ll ever know.”

Mist nodded. Only two living beings knew the full story: this man and Nepanthe. Nepanthe was less likely to share than was Varthlokkur.

Mist asked, “How did they get here?”

Varthlokkur responded with a blank look.

“Transfers are how we humble distance in Shinsan. But a transfer needs a sending and a receiving portal. Two sets for two princes. What I know about what happened is mostly hearsay. I never heard how the Princes got here in the first place.”

“I don’t remember. There is a lot about that night that no one remembers. We were all dead for a while.”

“Some more permanently than others, it seems.”

“It was not a pleasant evening. I avoid thinking and talking about it.”

“As you will.” She considered her father and his brother. “There is no way that they can be brought back?”

“No.”

“Ethrian’s situation put the thought into my head. You’re sure?”

“No one in this…” He paused.

Mist faced him. “The Star Rider did this to them, didn’t he?”

“No. I did. He put the remains on the seats.”

“Can he resurrect them?”

“I don’t know. I’m sure he didn’t plan to when he sealed the Wind Tower. But he is a clever devil.”