Springwar (25 page)

D
eath wasn’t at all what Eddyn had expected it would be, when he regained marginal awareness to find himself confronting it. Perhaps that was because he’d always hoped death would finally free him from caring whether he was warm or cold.

In fact, he was the latter, in no uncertain terms. But it was a
strange
cold: more than simply one that pulsed up from the compacted snow beneath him, oozed out from the fluffier walls that blocked all view to every side, and bore down at him from the chill sky overhead.

No,
this
cold was almost pleasant.
Almost
. And wasn’t freezing to death
supposed
to be pleasant?

But in that case, the cold came from without: forcing the body ever more deeply into itself. This cold also came from within—as though something had sucked all warmth from him, slowing his heart, numbing his brain …

Save where something hot as a living coal pulsed in his right hand.

He jerked upright and flung it away reflexively, saw a small, hard darkness go spinning across the snow.

He felt marginally better. Until he realized that he’d just flung away Avall’s magic gem—which had brought him here in the first place. He leapt to his feet abruptly, staggering
forward to paw through the drift where he thought the stone had landed.

It was a moonless night, he noted. Priest-Clan said that nights when no moons shone were portentous, because at those times alone were The Eight completely uninvolved in the affairs of men. Anything effected then was therefore likely to have a more than average chance of success—if it depended solely on human endeavor.

Like staying alive.

He had no idea where he was, or even how long he’d lain there. He did, however, recall one of his guards remarking that they were coming up on the moonless night. Which meant he hadn’t been unconscious very long.

A supposition reinforced by the fact that his fingers still retained some feeling.

If he recovered the gem, he had something with which to bargain, and—perhaps—a means of effecting his own survival.

If he could only find the wretched thing
. Snow flew in flurries that would’ve done a burrowing rabbit proud, but he couldn’t find the cursed stone. Or perhaps his fingers were grown so numb, he’d touched it all unknowing and let it pass. Certainly it was difficult finding something cold and slick amid that which was cold and slick already. But it was also red. He squinted into the gloom, feeling the wind gnaw at the nape of his neck. Wondering if he could command it to take him somewhere warm, now that he had some notion of how to control the thing.

There it was!

No—he’d merely dug down to raw earth and found an ordinary stone. But
next
to it—he felt its heat as a contrast to the cold. Snared it—and almost dropped it again, at the wave of anger it hurled at him. Ignoring that as much as possible, he closed his eyes and wished—what?

Warmer? That was a good idea. He wished to be warm, which required little conscious wishing at all.

But instead, he grew colder yet. At first he thought it was the wind, but then he realized that he could literally feel the warmth flowing from his body into the gem. Which meant—

Maybe that it had to draw its power from somewhere, and what it drew from was him. He opened his eyes.

More dislike, like what he’d seen in Strynn’s eyes made palpable. He had no choice. He dropped the stone.

But he couldn’t just leave it out here in the cold and the Wild. Yet he couldn’t bear to touch it, either …

A quick search produced the belt-pouch no one had bothered to confiscate when he’d been captured. Maybe it would suffice. He opened it, wrapped his fingers in the hem of his robe, and picked up the gem that way. Thus insulated, he made the transfer. He could still feel it, but the sensation was manageable. Like traveling with a foe. Like the trek from Tir-Eron to Gem-Hold with Avall.

His hands were getting cold again. He rubbed them together, then thrust them into his armpits for warmth. And finally took true stock of his situation.

He had a minimum of clothes—undertunic of tightly woven wool to accompany his house-hose, indoor boots, and long, loose robe—and no survival gear. And it was cold enough for snow to be drifting down in the tiny random crystals that even a clear sky could produce.

He
wasn’t
in Tir-Eron, that was for certain—or in Eron Gorge. Or in any gorge, for that matter. The stars told him he faced east, halfway down a gentle hill, the top of which was crowned with thick-grown evergreens. More hills rolled into white obscurity to north and south, while straight ahead the hills leveled into a plain.

A plain he recognized!

He sat down abruptly, as reality spun. Not only had he left Tir-Eron, but he’d somehow managed to jump crosscountry all the way past South Gorge, which was five days’ travel from Eron Gorge—in good weather.

Which he wouldn’t have believed had he not experienced it.

More to the point, he was on Clan turf! Specifically, he was in the east meadow that was attached to one of Argen-yr’s summer holds. The hold itself should lie among the trees at the top of the hill.

Maybe two shots away. Which meant he might survive if
he hurried. The place would be empty, granted, but it would have both shelter and food.

Without further pause, he started up the hill.

“I still think we should’ve stayed where we were,” Elvix growled at the nighted world in general, and her siblings in particular, as she led her weary horse up yet another snowbound ridge. “Dammit,” she added, as the crest gave no encouraging view. The same view they’d had for what seemed like days, in fact: forest to the left, rolling hills straight ahead, ocean to the right, the last visible and invisible by turns.

Tozri, who went last, leading the other horse (a third had died two days back), vented a weary sigh and rattled the map he’d kept constantly to hand since sunset had set them—optimistically—on the road. “Where we were was a hovel I wouldn’t keep geen shit in. The map says there should be a hold somewhere ahead—if we don’t miss it in this confounded dark.”

“It also said it belongs to one of the septs of Clan Argen, which, if you recall, is the clan Merryn belonged to. Do we want to risk the questions they might ask?”

“No hiding our accents,” the third member of that party replied: Olrix, their sister. “They’ll have questions regardless.”

“And hopefully this time we’ll have appropriate replies,” Elvix snorted. “Which has nothing to do with whether or not we should’ve moved on or stayed.”

“It was a choice of no roof versus quite a lot of roof and real stabling. And if you’re worried about the place being inhabited, you needn’t be. It’s a summer hold, according to the map. Nobody stays in those during the winter.”

“Houses just sitting around,” Olrix sighed. “Such fools these northern folk can be.”

“They’re our folk, now,” Tozri reminded her.

Elvix froze in place and peered around at him. And at her sister. She needn’t have bothered, if it was to remind herself of how they looked. They were siblings of one birth, and as
identical as three people of two sexes could be, with hard, wiry builds and black hair growing out from the clip favored by Ixtian soldiers, which they’d once been. They also had dark eyes and sharp, angular faces. Tozri had a beard because it kept his chin warm, but that was the only reason.

“I’m tired of arguing,” Elvix growled. “It’s my day to be leader, and yet I let you convince me to move when I didn’t want to. This place had better be worth it, because I don’t plan on traveling again for a while.”

“Not even in search of our loving northern kin?”

“They can wait. I have no reason to assume they’ll grant us any warmer welcome than we found in War-Hold.”

“It
was
a warm welcome, though.”

“Are you wishing we’d stayed?” Tozri inquired, moving up beside her, the movement setting them trudging onward again. Talking shortened the distances, so they talked a lot. But not about certain topics. Like Ixti and the reason they’d fled it. Like War-Hold and the life they’d led there. And certainly not about Prince Kraxxi, whose life they’d sworn to guard—and which responsibility circumstance had forced them to abdicate—because snow had driven them to shelter before they could begin pursuit after first Lorvinn, then Merryn, had tricked them, half an eighth ago.

Which had left two alternatives. Return to War-Hold, where they’d effectively been prisoners, or wander the Wild in search of their kin—their mother was a healer out of Eron—or in search of death. For, as their friend Kraxxi was fond of saying, suicide didn’t have to be a rapid process—and going north into the heart of Eron in what was also the heart of Deep Winter was certainly a flirtation with the latter.

Except that it had been, by all accounts, a mild winter. Which did not, however, negate the possibility of blizzards, several of which they’d already endured.

“Another three shots, I think,” Elvix announced. Then: “That’s odd …”

“What?”

She rubbed her hand through her glove, where a ring
with a strange red stone always rode upon her finger. “Oh, nothing. It was just that it felt like the ring … yanked at me just then.”

Olrix cast a sideways glance at her, and took the horse’s reins without comment. “What kind of yank?”

“Like it yanks when one of the others is nearby and hasn’t
been
nearby for a while.”

“Two of the other three are south,” Olrix reminded her. “Very far south indeed—and likely getting farther.”

Elvix shrugged. “I was merely reporting, except—Look.”

Olrix did, and saw as her siblings saw, that Elvix’s hand had drifted away from her body and was tending toward the top of the ridge ahead of them and to the left. “I didn’t do that,” Elvix informed them. “Not consciously. It was just … like your hands and feet floating up when you go swimming.”

“You think …?” Olrix dared.

“I don’t know what to think, but I’m for following it. If there’s no hold, there’s at least a better chance of shelter beneath the trees.”

“Lead on,” Tozri sighed, and eased back to the tail of the file.

Half a hand later, they’d crested the next hill and were in sight of the hold: a squatty tower of dark stone whose battlements rose to the tops of the nearer trees. What part of the walls they could see sloped slightly inward so that each facet was less a rectangle than a very subtle trapezoid. Typical Eronese architecture.

But what was interesting was that, in spite of Olrix’s predictions, a light showed within. Not much, granted—candles or a small lantern—but enough to pierce the night with implicit invitation to warmth and light, if not food and drink.

“Odd,” Tozri mused. “Even if someone is there, that’s not much light. Even if you allow for the shutters being closed. It’s more like—”

Elvix shushed him by freezing in place. She was in the lead, and had the best view of the structure. “It’s … burned.”

Tozri indicated the flicker of light. “Burned? Or burning?”

Elvix surveyed the surrounding trees, noting how many of the branches were bare, and many more showed shriveled needles that daylight would prove to be brown. “Burned, I’d say. Maybe lightning. While no one was around.”

“So who’s made fire, then?” Tozri demanded.

Elvix shivered. “I don’t know, but I’m willing to ask a lot of questions and beg on my knees if necessary to get out of this cold for a while.”

“There’s a good chance it’s someone in the same straits as we,” Olrix opined. “And there are three of us, and we’re soldiers, when we remember to be.”

“We should
also
remember,” Tozri put in, “that Merryn was likewise a soldier and could probably beat anyone we know.”

“Except Kraxxi at thinsword.”

“And she was mastering that.”

“So,” Olrix sighed, as Elvix paused, watching. “We stick with our standard lie?”

“I’d prefer to think of it as modified truth,” Elvix answered. “But yes.”

Tozri shivered in turn, noting the loom of partly roofed outbuildings to the left. “I’d say we enter that way, and hope.”

“Luck,” Elvix muttered. “Or Fate. The God of the Eronese.”

“Luck,” Olrix echoed, and followed her sister toward the darkened pile.

The stable yard was fenced and gated, but they left the gate open, and the horses tied in such a way they could quickly be released, as they made their way into the back of the hold.

The fire hadn’t touched much there—flame would have a hard time catching hold, with all that stone. They passed through a kitchen that seemed intact save for a skim of soot, and into a hallway from which a stone staircase swept upward into what had been the common hall. Space roared
around them as they trudged up the limestone steps: four walls rising to a roof spanned more with stars than ceiling, but reasonably intact for all that. An enormous fireplace rose to the right, but the light came from a door ajar beyond it. Motioning her siblings to silence, Elvix led them that way, trying to ignore the way her ring was also pulling her in that direction. One step … two … and she paused by the crack whence the light issued—which on this side was courtesy of a door that had loosened from one of its upper hinges. Closer, and she set an eye to the opening.

And saw nothing at first, save that the fire came from a fireplace that backed the larger one in the common hall. But then she noted that what she’d taken for a pile of rugs near the fire was in fact a man—curled up almost atop the hearth. And, as far as she could tell, alive.

Eddyn awoke to find a total stranger standing between him and the fire he’d coaxed into marginal being moments before fatigue—or shock—or some other unpleasant energy-sapping condition had claimed him utterly. Another stranger crouched beside him, feeling his forehead, in search, perhaps, of a fever he didn’t have.

“Not dead,” he managed, batting the hand away as he tried to sit up and failed. His head swam; he closed his eyes in hopes of assuaging a serious case of dizziness. When he opened them again, he reeled in truth, for the one by the fire had become two.

“Not dead,” he repeated numbly.