Dragon's Winter (5 page)

That year, winter came early and stayed late. The trappers were happy, for the bitter cold drove fox, lynx, and rabbits south out of the steppe in great numbers, but when they came in from their journeys to trade their pelts in the markets and drink at the inns, they told alarming stories, of huge, high snow banks, frozen streams, and an icy mist that rolled down the mountain paths, obscuring dangerous rocks. A trapper from Castria was lost in it. They found him three days later in the crags above Dragon Keep, mad as a skunk, declaring that he had heard the voices of little children crying in the fog.

Later that winter a hunter from Mitligund came to Castria Market and described moonlit ice moving so fast that it would outstrip a man walking, and a freezing fog in which evil voices called.

“A demon has entered that country,” he said flatly. “We do not stay.” All winter, frightened families from Mitligund and Unik and Hornlund trickled south with their belongings on sleds, or tied to their backs. Others went west, into the Nakase highlands. They told strange tales, tales of ice and fog, of voices in mist, and of armed warriors on pale horses who moved and spoke like men, except that they were made of ice. This no one believed, especially when Tuvak of Hornlund claimed to have killed one with his spear, but insisted that when he tried to strip the armor from the man, horse and rider melted into the snow.

No imaginary warriors troubled Thea or Wolf. The bitter cold surprised them, but the well did not freeze, they had plenty of wood—birch mostly, for the east side of the meadow was fringed with birch and aspen—and the house was solid and sound. While Wolf trudged through the snow, checking his traps, Thea wove rugs and wall coverings and blankets. The path between Sleeth and the meadow was snowbound for a while. Then it thawed: the snow melted from the trees in one day, and the river ran high.

Early in January they had a visitor. Thea greeted him with pleasure, for it was Tallis, of the castle guard, who had married her cousin Nora and taken her from Sleeth to live in Chingura, under the Keep walls. They brought him in and fed him warm ale, and invited him to take off his boots and get dry. He drank the ale, but kept his boots on. “I can only stay a moment.”

“Are you well? And Nora?” Thea asked. “What are you doing away from the castle?”

“Nora’s well. Dragon sent us. We are ordered to visit every household between Dragon’s Eye and Castria, and if any are hungry or destitute, to bring them whatever they need. We hunt all the time; we have cartloads of meat at the castle.” He grinned. “Dragon took us out hunting last week. We brought down four moose.”

“Hunting bows?” Wolf asked. “Triple-barbed arrows?”

“For three of them, yes. He brought the fourth down with his hands. It was a big one, not the biggest, though.” Tallis grinned again, and stretched his hands toward the fire. “That’s good.”

“With his hands? A moose? That’s not possible,” Wolf said.

“You’d think not, but it happened; I saw it. The hounds encircled it, like a deer brought to bay in a field, and Dragon wrestled it to the ground and snapped its neck.”

Thea said, “He must be strong.”

“He is. Quick, too. He can pluck an arrow out of the air. I saw him do it.”

“Someone shot at him?” Wolf asked.

“A mistake. One of Rogys’s arrows went wide. He can’t shoot, not at all. I thought Murgain would burst apart. He’s the archery instructor.”

“What did the lord do?” Thea asked.

“To Rogys? Nothing. But he skulked in the stable for a week anyway.” Tallis drained the ale mug. “I can’t blame him. I’d not want Dragon irked at me.”

“What is he like?” Wolf asked.

“You’ve not met him?” Wolf shook his head. “That’s not an easy question.” Tallis turned the mug in his hands. “He loves courage, in beasts or men. He is exacting. No drunkenness on duty, weapons cleaned and oiled, and if you trouble one of the girls, or mistreat a dog, or horse, watch out.”

“Is he brutal?” Wolf asked bluntly.

“I would not say so. Not like his father. He can punish, though. You want to watch his temper: used to be if you could make him laugh, you could breathe easy, but he doesn’t laugh much now. And gods help you if you lie to him. He hates it, and he always knows. Ah, I must go, or they’ll think I fell over a cliff and come looking for me.” He clasped Wolf’s hand, kissed Thea’s cheek, wished them joy, and marched off in his high boots and thick fur hood.

It was hard for Thea, being alone that winter. She had not expected it to be so: she had liked to weave in solitude, preferring it to the giggling and gaggling of company, but she had not realized how alone she would be in the mountains. In Sleeth, even when she sat alone with her loom, there had been familiar sounds, well-known voices, the rustle of cart wheels, the hoot of animals, the laughter of children. Here, locked in snow, while Wolf was trapping or hunting, she was by herself, four and five days at a time. She was not afraid: no wild beast would approach the house, and no human marauders would climb this high. But it was hard. She wove. She cleaned a lot, and sang to herself, old songs, children’s tunes. She braided her hair, experimenting, seeking new ways to pin it to her head. Once she tried to make a magic mirror. She poured water in a bowl, and let it sit all night where moonlight could fall upon it. In the morning she took it where no sunlight could touch it, and let the ice which had formed over the surface thaw. Then she leaned over it, saying the finding rhyme which all children in the domain know:

“Sleeping, waking, moonlight eye, find the one for whom I cry...”

But though she thought as hard as she could about Wolf, no image of man nor wolf appeared in the clear water.

Then Wolf returned, tired, cold, his sled piled with frozen bodies of rabbit, marten, white fox, beaver. Thea cut meat from bones, wrapped it, and stored it on the high rack behind the house, where it froze. Wolf cleaned and stretched the pelts. They talked little, taking time to grow used to each other again.

They talked more at night, lying naked against each other in the bed Wolf had made, warm under heavy quilts. In bed, Thea heard the names of places and people from a part of her husband’s life she did not know. It did not trouble her that he was older than she, that he knew so much more, that he had lived in so many places. She loved the stories.

“Tell about Skyeggo,” she said, and Wolf described a huge shining city on a tall hill, and white-sailed ships dancing over the sea, and ferocious storms that sometimes broke upon the coast, driving ships back to land, and the great sea monsters that appeared off the coast after a storm, lifting their flat scaly heads from the water, breathing out fire and steam.

“Like dragons,” Thea whispered, eyes shining.

“They are cousins,” Wolf agreed.

“Tell about Bear.”

Wolf told her about his changeling friend Bear, with whom he traveled, sometimes, and beside whom he had fought.

“No one ever knows where Bear is,” he said. “Guarding someone, loving someone, hunting someone, looking for a fight... If ever you see a man walking up our road, a big man with red-brown hair and beard, carrying a long thick staff, that will be Bear, come to visit.”

“Tell about Hawk.”

And Wolf told of his friend Hawk, who lived in Ujo. “She is one of the Red Hawks of Ippa. They are changelings, all sisters. She and I served together, in the Lemininkai’s war band. She was Kalni Leminin’s archery master. Now she makes bows. She has more books than anyone I know. Her workroom at the shop has one wall filled with them. I believe she has read them all.”

“Is she a scholar, too?”

“She has many talents. She tells stories.”

“Like you.”

“Better than me. She will come to visit us, someday, and you will see.”

They were together for nearly a month, this time. Then Wolf loaded the sled with fresh snares. He kissed her, and she moved her body hard against him. He groaned and pushed her away. “I love you,” she said, after the door closed.

Far to the north, beneath the mound of ice, the darkness talked to itself.

It was weak, dependent on the human mind and form that had wakened it and brought it to this place. Centuries before it had lost its original human form and nature. It no longer desired light, warmth, food, comfort; indeed, it hated those things with a passion, because their presence reminded the darkness that it had relinquished them. Its sustenance now was hatred, pain, cruelty, fear, destruction. It delighted in those. It craved those with a desperate, consuming hunger.

Its human host, although a sorcerer, was unaware of its existence. Human beings were singularly stupid about themselves. This sorcerer was very young, and swollen with envy and anger. Coiled in the recesses of the sorcerer’s mind, the darkness fed on these emotions, and subtly nourished them, as the fires of the earth, nourished by hidden fuel, are left to burn unexposed, undisclosed, deep underground. Carefully, it allowed the oblivious sorcerer access to small bits of its own power, in such a way that the sorcerer would mistake this borrowed power for his own. This was perilous, for that borrowed power was absolutely corrupting. To wield it would inevitably destroy the human being who tried. That destruction was its goal and also its punishment. It had tried for centuries to break free of its enchanted prison, so that it might manifest as once it had, unfettered by human limitations. But the dead mages who made those secret walls had done their work well.

But despite this restraint, the darkness was still capable of great mischief. It was strong enough to summon the ice warriors; strong enough to lift its old stronghold out of the center of the earth. Its host, the little wizard whose life it drank, believed that
he
had created the ice warriors, and raised the ancient castle. Let him think so. He would learn.
Too late, he would learn.
Under the ice, twisted like an invisible filament around the mind of its human host, the darkness contemplated the betrayals to come, and whispered softly, unceasingly, to itself.

3

For the first time in twenty years, there was no feast in Sleeth village to celebrate the New Year’s Moon. It was too cold.

As late as March, heavy snow fell over Sleeth and Chingura, and blocked the mountain passes. At last the thaw came. Ice melted in the Estre River. Snow melted from the spruce boughs. Birds returned from their winter homes in Nakase and Issho, and began to forage, leaving tiny sparse tracks like writing on the near-translucent snow.

In late March, when the road between Sleeth and the meadow grew passable, Wolf and Thea went to the village. Wolf hauled the large sled, piled with skins to be sold at the market, and Thea pulled the smaller one, which held four large wool blankets. Three of them would go to Ferrell, to be sold. One was a gift for her mother.

It was slow going; the snow was still high in spots. In the village, they separated. Thea went to her mother’s house. Wolf pulled the big sled as far as the smithy. Ono was bent over some metal, hammering at it, while Corwin held it steady with the tongs. The boy had put muscle on over the winter. Ono looked unchanged. He laid the hammer down.

“What brings you into town?” he said.

“I’ve skins to sell,” Wolf said. “Thea wanted to see her mother.”

“She’s all right?”

“She’s fine. We’re both fine.”

They ate that evening at Serret’s house, which was filled with the people who lived there: Serret, her youngest daughter, Martia; her mother, Aea; Felicia and Merrit her husband, and their son, Kevin, born at end of summer. Merrit brought him from the cradle and paraded him boisterously around the room for everyone to admire, as if he were a prize pig. Kevin was passive and placid and slept through the fuss.

After the meal, they crossed the market square to the Red Oak, where Serret made sure that Egain the innkeeper served the best red ale. People moved in and out, stopping to greet Wolf and Thea and say the same things:
Good to see you, long winter, late thaw, you look well, strange what’s happening in the north, what news do you hear from the castle, long winter.
After months of solitude and silence, a big room filled with voices and so many faces was a little hard on the nerves. Wolf found it easier to deal with than Thea did. He drained his cup, and pressed Thea’s thigh under the table.

On the other side of the room, a group of five men and one tired-looking woman sat sullenly. The men were drinking; the woman was filling their glasses. One of them, a brawny, bearded man with a scar down his face and gold rings winking on his fingers, seemed to do most of the talking.

The look of them made Wolf uneasy. When Egain stopped by the table to ask if they wanted more ale, Wolf inquired softly, “The men at that table near the door: who are they?”

“The weasely-looking youth is Tuar; he’s the son of Bryony and Nirrin Maw. Nirrin died four years ago, but Bryony is chief laundress at the Keep. The big one calls himself Rand. He’s from someplace in Nakase. The woman’s Luvia; she lives with Tuar. They have a little girl. Tuar does bits of metalwork, the kind of mending Ono hates to do. He’s not bad at it; he’s mended some of my pots.”

“And Rand—what’s his trade?”