Wintertide (16 page)

She asked one of the questions Tanta Bron never answered. “Why, Ciro? Why me? Is it because I’m a halfling, because my father was a Hill Raider?”

“Your father wasn’t a Hill Raider.”

Khamsin turned, shocked. “But the raid! My mother was raped during the raid!”

“That may very well be, child, but the blood in your veins is pure Raheiran. Witch-blood, if you like. Look in the mirror, Khamsin and tell me every time your eyes change colors that you’re not Raheiran. Hmpf!”

Raheiran. Like Tanta Bron. But the old Healer never told her that. Only that her mother was the Captain’s daughter who left Cirrus Cove after Khamsin was born. And her father, an unknown Hill Raider. Did Tanta Bron not know? Or did she lie?

The sun settled behind the mountains in the West. The reflection of the candles on Ciro’s table flickered in the window panes. Khamsin’s own reflection was there, too, though vague and uneven, as if her identity were no longer sure.

She swung back to face Ciro. The world she knew was falling apart. She needed answers for suddenly she had hundreds of questions.

“Was my father a Healer?”

“It’s possible, but I can’t say for sure. And before you ask, no, I don’t know who he was. Only that you are Raheiran by your father’s blood.”

“But, there must also be others with Raheiran blood. Yourself for one!”

“I wasn’t born eighteen years past in the midst of a storm.”

“But someone else was! There are many Cove towns, dozens of inland villages. Surely…”

“More wrong keys, Khamsin?” He sighed loudly. “I can’t answer your questions, child, and not because I don’t want to. But my powers aren’t what they once were, it seems. And all this turbulence from this constant battling!” He waved his hand through the air. “It interferes with my readings.”

As it interfered for a long time with hers. She gazed at the mage circle in Ciro’s hearthside floor and wondered what kind of power lay behind this knowledge that was now being so carefully guarded by the Gods themselves?

As if in answer, the candle on the table suddenly sputtered, then extinguished itself as a draft chilled the large room. Khamsin shivered. She and Ciro exchanged glances.

“Ciro?” she questioned, seeing a concern on the lined face she thought was inappropriate. After all, this was an old warehouse and one often buffeted by winds from the Great North Sea.

He shook his head. “Strange times,” was all he said, cautiously.

Three nights later, however, Khamsin returned after sharing her evening meal with Queenie and the Captain to find Ciro’s comments considerably more expansive.

“Those ill-mannered, interfering bastards!” He paced feverishly in front of the long table and the sounds of glass, crunching underfoot was heard. “Meddlesome sons of bitches!”

Khamsin drew in her breath, sharply, and stared at the floor near Ciro’s boots. Someone, or something, smashed the last few bottles of Ciro’s favorite wine over the mage circle. The thick, red liquid now flowed over the etched surface like streams of blood.

“What happened?”

“What happened, what happened?” The ancient mage puffed. “Damned if I know. Go out for a stroll, I do. I’m allowed, at my age, to do such things. Come back and see this!” He waved his arm over the mess on the floor, his long sleeves billowing with the force of the movement.

“Desecration!” He spat out the word. “But worse, such a waste of good wine. Those bottles were over fifty years old, child. Fifty years old! The last of the harvest. Damn, impudent fools!”

Khamsin poked gingerly at a piece of green glass with her foot. “Pranks, maybe? A Healer who…?”

“Healer, you say? Child, show me a Healer who can gain entry to Master Ciro’s and I’ll show you a Healer who isn’t a Healer, but a Wizard. Or maybe,” and he let the words halt there as he considered whether to voice his speculation. “Or maybe, even a Sorcerer.”

This time Khamsin shivered and there was no draft whistling through the cracks in the brickwork. “Surely, Ciro, not…?”

“No, no. Well, this kind of thing is not his style, that’s for sure. Still, these are strange times.” He sank down into a nearby chair. His shoulders sagged under the thick fabric of his robe as if his four-hundred and fifty years weighed very heavily upon him.

“I don’t know what to make of this, Khamsin of Cirrus Cove. Truly, I do not know.”

When?” Khamsin bolted upright in her seat in the corner of Queenie’s Tavern. She dropped her spoon into the steaming bowl of vegetable stew the Captain just placed before her.

The dusky man eased onto the bench across from her and put his own bowl on the mottled surface. The line of his mouth was grim. The news he brought disturbed him greatly as well. He shook his head.

“Yesterday, or perhaps the day before, best I can tell. Heard it from a trader ship, a fast vessel that docked this morning. They saw the smoke and fire from where they were, off the coast. Their Captain took a look with a spyglass and it’s as I told you. Browner’s Grove’s near been destroyed. Taken by Hill Raiders. And demons, some say.”

“That’s impossible. It can’t be!” Her hand dropped to Nixa, seated by her side. The cat rubbed her ears against Khamsin’s cold fingers.

“I’m sorry, Lady. Did you have kin there?”

“Not really. A friend, a very dear friend often had reason to travel through there and I hope…” her voice trailed off as a numbness crept over her. Perhaps Rylan hadn’t returned because he couldn’t. Perhaps he’d been in Browner’s Grove. Trapped.

She should have been there. She should have gone with him. She could have used elementals. Her sword.

She stood abruptly. “I have to go.”

“Go?” Queenie had ambled over, a basket of hot, braided breadsticks in her hand. “Go? But, child, ye ain’t et nothin’, and…”

“I’m sorry, Queenie. But I have to. I have to talk to someone about this.”

She threw her cape over her shoulders with a quick movement, then gathered Nixa into her arms. She hurried out into the light rain that had been falling since midday. Any other time, she would’ve walked the few short blocks to Ciro’s warehouse, even in the rain. She enjoyed the sensation of the mist on her skin. And Nixa liked to prance around the puddles.

But not tonight. She stepped down a side alley and under the cover of the thick shadows, whispered the spell that would transport her and the cat immediately back to the room on the top floor.

She blurted out the news as she materialized in front of the fireplace.

The old man sighed heavily. “The Witch Melande’s been known to cause trouble in Browner’s before. But I thought, after the last time, well…perhaps we should’ve tried to interfere. But I’m wary, so wary of tipping my hand, as they say in that Palace. If he realizes…”

“But he knows!” interrupted Khamsin. She released Nixa. The cat sought the warmth of Ciro’s hearth. “He didn’t complete the Assignation but he knows I’m in Noviiya. The Demon he sent, it knew my name. The time had passed for a calling but I
felt
it, Ciro, when it said it!”

Ciro pondered her words before speaking. “Time is growing short,” he said, just as Tanta Bron had many times told Khamsin. “You know as well as I that in less than two months the Land will begin its turn towards First Thaw. That means it must pass through Wintertide. And you know what that portends.”

She knew Wintertide, and all the tragedies it brought, only too well.

“I’ve no right to ask this of you, child, but that name, the one your guard so carefully. It may be the key we need to find the answer we seek: how to put a stop to this infernal war before all the Land crumbles under its hatred.”

“How can my name make such a difference?”

“It represents you as one of the chosen ones. Words have power, you know that. Names, especially a name given by rune sign, have even more.”

“But Tanta Bron told me to keep it secret…”

“Until the proper time. Didn’t she also tell you that?”

Khamsin nodded slowly. “I always thought it had something to do with the claiming when I was born. Or the Assignation he placed on me. I didn’t think there was any other purpose.”

“Just because the Assignation never happened before your eighteenth birthday doesn’t mean you can put aside your destiny. Your life path as one of the chosen ones, as a Raheiran, is still there. Following that path starts with acknowledging who you really are.”

Khamsin started to open her mouth but the old mage jumped from his seat.

“No!” He moved quickly round the room, warding, touching his hands to the doors and the windows, closing books and receptacles. He even re-corked the wine bottle lest something slip in, or out.

Last, he took a piece of embroidered black satin and placed it over the circle. He nodded to the young girl in boy’s clothing.

“Kiasidira,” she said softly. “I’m Kiasidira.”

The north wind, which had been blowing against the windows steadily all afternoon, suddenly stilled.

Ciro closed his eyes and his hands began to tremble.

The sight shook Khamsin. “Ciro, what does my name mean?”

“You don’t know, child?”

“No. Yes. I mean, I understand I’m the one he would seek. The chosen one. Tanta Bron told me that. But you said there have been others, in the past. I don’t understand why my being Kiasidira…”

“Then, it’s best I don’t tell you until it’s time.”

He worked feverishly on her instruction after that, testing her skills by creating mock-demons and fiery elementals that barraged her at random. Time and again she was forced to draw her sword and strike out at her ‘enemy,’ vanquishing them with the words that rolled easily off her tongue. Khamsin and the sword were one now, and she cast spells with it, into it and through it.

Ciro also taught her to create a perfect visual duplicate of the sword, advising her to always leave more than one ‘sword’ laying around when she didn’t have the enchanted weapon strapped to her side. Woe be the Wizard who was undone by the fingers of a petty-thief!

Then there came the day she materialized at Ciro’s table and for once, nothing came screaming across the great room after her. There was just Ciro and Nixa and a square wooden jewel case, metal-strapped and locked.

He pushed it towards her. “Open it.”

She touched the locked lightly, springing it and prepared herself for any manner of banshee that might come howling from its interior. She lifted the lid slowly. There was only a rolled piece of parchment and some trinkets of a base metal inside.

“Go ahead.” He nodded.

She pulled out the parchment and lay it carefully against the table as she unrolled it. It was a map of the Land and she read the names of towns she knew: Wallow’s Cove and Dram, Bright’s Cove and her own, Cirrus. There were the Hill towns of Favon and Flume and their most recent conquest, Browner’s Grove. There was Noviiya, much larger in the northern corner and graphic notations of mountains, forests and swamps.

There was also the Khal, the bottomless lake of black waters. And on the mountainous peninsula that penetrated its darkness, Traakhal-Armin. The castle of the Sorcerer.

Ciro lay his finger on the accursed name. “There is where you must go, Khamsin of Cirrus Cove. To Traakhal. There is the lock that only you, as the key, can open.”

He splayed his hand over the map. “In the East Tower of the castle there’s a room that no mortal has ever entered. In the center of this room is a mage circle carved into the floor of polished marble and inlaid with pure gold. In the center of the circle is a crystal orb within a pedestal.

“It’s this Orb that’s the center of the war that now scars the Land, with rapes and burnings and senseless death. And you are the key to this Orb. Possession of it grants unlimited knowledge.”

“The Sorcerer has this Orb?”

“Yes. He states it’s Tarkir’s gift to him. But Lucial and Melande say it’s theirs, also. They stole it once. That was before Traakhal was built. And, in a way, why Traakhal was built. To protect the Orb.”

She shook her head. “If it’s safe from them in Traakhal, then why…”

“It’s not Traakhal that’s stopping them. Not even that fortress castle can withstand their combined powers. Something much stronger than the castle protects the Orb.”

Ciro pointed his index finger and traced a circle on the tabletop. “The circle around the Orb is fused with impenetrable wardings. It took the Sorcerer twenty years to create it under Tarkir’s instruction. Twenty years in which it’s been said he never left the tower room, so intense were his incantations.”

He stabbed at random points in the circle he’d traced. “Now, there are twelve rune stones in a mage circle, as you know. In his, every rune stone is a carved gemstone. And each gem alone has the power to destroy a city larger than Noviiya.”

“But then, how could I gain access? I’m just…I don’t have those kinds of powers.”

“Perhaps you don’t. Perhaps you do. But you are Kiasidira. It is written that only two beings can cross through the golden mage circle around the Orb and live. One is the Sorcerer. The other,” and Ciro looked directly at her, “is Kiasidira.”

She sat back in her chair, her eyes wide.

“You could take control of the Orb, Khamsin. No one could stop you, if you can gain entry to that room in the East Tower. And you could settle who could use it, and for what, right then and there. Or you could choose to destroy it. So that it no longer is the center of this war.

“But no matter what your choice, know you’ll be faced with the powers of Lucial, Melande and the Sorcerer. The Sorcerer is in control now. But Lucial and Melande want it badly. Enough to cause this turmoil around us.”

“And I have to decide who rightfully controls the Orb?”

“Yes. The Orb should guide you in this. But know that if you choose one to share control with you, you will leave behind two others who will be very angry. And very powerful.”

Khamsin sat for a long time, her eyes blending from silver to blue to deep green as they remained fixed on a point on the map.

Traakhal-Armin.

“Why didn’t he kill me when I was born? Then he’d be the only one who could cross the circle. The only one to use the Orb.” She spoke as if the very act of speaking drained her.