Goddess of the Ice Realm (19 page)

Ilna let the humor of a thought reach her lips in a smile. She went on, “Merota has seen worse, and sometimes through my mistakes, but I'm not happy about it.”

She cleared her throat. The other three in the room were as still as statues, their expressions carefully blank.

“Merota has servants and a tutor, of course,” Ilna said. “But I would be in your debt, Lady Liane, if you would act as family to the child while Chalcus and I are away. My own life would have been very difficult without my brother's presence, and—”

“I'm honored,” said Liane. “I'm honored beyond words. I can't be you, Ilna—”

“I dare say you'll be better,” Ilna snapped, waspish despite herself. “For her, probably for anybody. Merota's a lady, after all, and what can I teach her about that?”

“I can't be you,” Liane repeated softly. “But I hope I can show Merota as much strength and character as anyone
but
you could, Ilna.”

“Thank you,” Ilna said. “I'm in your debt.”

She turned, and from behind her Liane said, “Which
means you would do anything you could to help me, Ilna, just as you would have done no matter what I'd said a moment ago. As I have never doubted.”

Ilna looked back to Liane and Garric. The humor struck her and she laughed—as many times before—because laughing was the choice she found acceptable.

“I'm not good at a lot of things,” Ilna said. “I probably haven't told the two of you how lucky you are to have one another, and how lucky Chalcus and I are to know you both. You and Tenoctris will do what can be done for my brother, and Chalcus and I will see to things in the north.”

“Yes,” said Garric, “I'm quite sure that you will.”

And before Ilna was quite sure how to react, Liane stepped forward and embraced her. She wasn't any taller or bigger boned than Ilna herself, and the muscles under her silk garments were just as firm.

Whatever happened with Cashel or the Rua, Ilna was sure of one thing: Liane would look after Merota as well as anyone alive could do.

Across the valley dawn had begun to touch the peaks, but the hillside above Cashel was still in darkness. A breeze rustled the leaves of the stunted birches, sounding like distant water.

“Mistress,” Cashel said. “It's going to be light enough to see our footing soon, and I think we ought to be on our way.”

He'd gone hungry for longer than this, but an empty stomach isn't a good companion on a cold night. He thought of asking how far was it to Lord Bossian, but he didn't suppose it mattered; they'd get there when they got there. . . .

The shimmering cocoon twitched, then split open as Kotia sat up with a worried look on her face. “How late is it?” she demanded, then stared up at the sky. “Oh, Demons of
Hell! I never thought I'd sleep so long! He'll be on us soon, I'm sure of it!”

Kotia hopped out of her shelter and gathered it into a bundle with a few quick movements. She popped the tiny bundle into her satchel again.

Cashel wished Ilna could see the fabric; she'd be fascinated, he knew. That was the worst thing about travel. Cashel was seeing wonderful things, but his friends weren't around to tell about them.

“I can take that,” Cashel said, reaching for the satchel. It didn't look heavy, but he was so used to carrying Tenoctris's paraphernalia that the words were a reflex when he was around a female wizard.

“No, you fool!” Kotia said. “Didn't you hear what I said? He'll be on us in a moment! You'll have to fight!”

“Well,” said Cashel as he surveyed the landscape, “we may as well start walking until he comes. Which direction is Lord Bossian, mistress?”

He didn't see any sign of a trail. The forest of birch and larch—whose needles were beginning to turn bright yellow—was sparse enough that it wouldn't be an obstacle, but the slopes were steep and there was a lot of loose rock. The girl might dance over it with no problem, but Cashel knew that unless he was careful his weight would start a landslide that could take him with it. Maybe the other side of the valley . . .

He looked to the west, and as he did so there was a glint of vivid red light from the peak opposite.
The sun reflecting from mica in the granite,
Cashel thought.

The glare lit the whole opposite slope, then shrank again to a vivid dazzle. It capered on the peak for a moment, then flashed like lightning to an outcrop halfway to the valley floor. A clump of waist-high larches, stunted by the poor soil, exploded into flame.

“He's coming,” Kotia said. Her voice had lost its edge of anger. “Now he'll kill me.”

“Get into the cave,” Cashel said, starting his quarterstaff into a slow spin in front of him. The broad ledge in front of the cave was the closest thing to flat ground anywhere in sight. “I won't be able to look out for you when things get moving.”

Kotia said something, protested probably, but Cashel wasn't listening anymore. He didn't want to clip her with a backswing of the staff, but there wasn't time to argue.

Kakoral flashed to the base of the valley, momentarily out of Cashel's sight among the slender willows. Steam gushed with a sound like rocks cracking.

Cashel placed hand over hand, spinning the staff gradually faster. The ferrules began to blur. He wondered if the demon would leap over him to the slope above and attack from behind. If the fool girl hadn't gotten into the cave, she'd be in serious danger. . . .

The demon flared into view on the slope just below Cashel. He didn't move. There was nothing and then he was there, hunching forward; red and orange like light glinting from jewels, not the warmer color of fire. He stood in a tangle of wild roses; they shriveled away from his clawed feet.

“I am Kakoral!” he said. “I've come for my daughter!”

“If you mean the girl Kotia,” Cashel said, speaking in the rhythm of his spinning quarterstaff, “then she's with me now.”

The demon was the size of a man when he first appeared—rangy, tall despite his stoop, and with arms so long that his knuckles struck sparks from the ground. His form was of light, not flesh. In the blazing shimmer as Kakoral moved, Cashel glimpsed buildings and forests and spider-limbed monsters.

“With you?” Kakoral thundered. “Did my daughter tell you what she has done?”

“I don't care what she's done,” said Cashel. He wasn't shouting, but his voice came out as a husky growl. “Go away and we won't trouble you!”

Without moving, Kakoral was suddenly the height of the peaks that hedged about the valley. His legs were the trunks of great trees, and his clawed fingers reached down from the heavens to pluck Cashel out of the way.

Cashel brought the staff up and around, still spinning. A buttcap smashed into the demon's index finger with a blast of azure wizardlight. To Cashel the shock was like hitting the side of a cliff, but he was used to that. He let the impact reverse his sweep from sunwise to widdershins, punching the other end of the staff into Kakoral's thumb.

The demon gave a great crackling roar. He was man-sized again, glaring at Cashel with a face like a burning skull. Diamonds of blue wizardlight dripped from the ferrules of the spinning quarterstaff and bounced across the landscape before slowly dissipating.

“She is mine,” Kakoral said. “She ate the flesh of her mother, and for that I will have her!”

“Go away!” Cashel snarled. He was panting, but he could keep this up for a while longer. Maybe long enough; he'd know when it was over. “She's with—”

Kakoral leaped for Cashel's face and met a ferrule in blue fire and a thunderclap. The demon zigzagged downslope: a flash that disintegrated the trunk of a larch; a flash that cracked a boulder, leaving half standing and the rest a slump of jagged pebbles; a flash that split willows leaning over the streambank, their bark sloughing and the slender whips of their branches drawn up in coils like singed hair.

Kakoral screamed like trees breaking under the weight of winter ice. He flashed toward Cashel and the quarterstaff met him again. The blast shook loose rock from the slope for as far as a good archer could shoot an arrow.

Cashel stood unmoved, rotating the staff before him, sure of himself and now sure of his opponent. The demon caromed downhill again, then in an eyeblink stood where first he'd spoken. Dew wrung from the night air sizzled beneath his feet.

“Tell me your name, champion,” Kakoral said, “and I'll give you a gift. Tell me your name, unless you're afraid to.”

“I'm not afraid,” Cashel growled. He could barely understand his own words; his voice rasped like the sound of nothing living. “I'm Cashel or-Kenset, and I don't want anything of you but your absence!”

The demon laughed like flames chuckling beneath a cauldron. “Perhaps not, Cashel or-Kenset,” he said, “but I offer my gift anyway.”

He reached into his pulsing chest and came out with what looked like a handful of fire. Cashel braced himself to dodge or bat away the missile, but instead the demon laughed again and opened his hand to let rubies spill onto the ground at Cashel's feet.

“My gift, champion,” Kakoral said. “When you're in doubt about your course, break one and let it guide you. They will do no harm to you or my daughter, unless you're afraid of the truth.”

“I'm not afraid of you, and I don't need you for a guide,” Cashel said. He shuffled a step toward the demon, spinning the quarterstaff faster. “Go now, or I'll speed your way!”

Kakoral laughed; and, laughing, vanished as if he never was. Where moments before the demon had stood hunching, dust motes spun in the first rays of the sun slanting down from the peaks behind.

Cashel let the quarterstaff slow to a halt, then butted it firmly on the ground and leaned onto it. He was shivering so badly that for a moment he was afraid that the staff wouldn't be enough support. Well, he'd sit if he had to.

Kotia walked in front of Cashel and faced him. “I chose well,” she said. Her face was set, but a vein in her throat throbbed and her nostrils were flared. “At least if it was me who chose you, I chose well.”

“I didn't have anything to do with it,” Cashel said. His voice was coming back, but his throat was as dry as flaked granite. “I was fighting a snake and then I was here.”

Kotia bent and began picking up the rubies, dropping each into the palm of her left hand. Cashel frowned, then said in more of a snarl than he'd intended, “Leave them! We don't need anything that comes from him.”

The girl stood, facing him again with the same still expression. “Are you afraid of the truth?” she said, once again the imperious wizard who had dragged Cashel from the cave of choking fire.

“No!” he said. “Of course not!”

“Neither am I,” said Kotia. She eyed an outcrop to the right of where she stood.

“Direct us to Lord Bossian's manor!” she cried, and hurled one of the rubies into the rock.

The jewel shattered in a sizzle of light. Cashel instinctively brought his staff across his body and stepped between Kotia and the flare of red. A tiny simulacrum of Kakoral capered on the outcrop, then spread its arms as though holding up something far bigger than its body. In the air, but as real
as the rock and trees and sunlight, appeared a woman and the demon Kakoral. They stood in a workroom lit only by the coals of a great hearth.

“My mother Laterna,” Kotia whispered, gripping Cashel's forearm. “That was her laboratory beneath our manor. She was a wizard.”

The demon stood arms akimbo, his shimmering form brighter than the coals behind him. He lifted his head back in laughter that Cashel's memory supplied to the silent image. Laterna touched the broach on her left shoulder; a shimmering shift like Kotia's slipped from her body. She stepped toward the demon. He remained motionless except for the way his throat worked as he laughed.

Gripping Kakoral's shoulders with her hands, Laterna lifted herself onto him, then lowered her sex onto his. The demon's fiery arms encircled her while he continued to laugh.

The image faded slowly. The simulacrum on the rock grinned and pointed with one arm. A line of rosy wizardlight streamed along the slope to the north, then vanished behind the high ground.

Kotia stepped a pace back and met Cashel's eyes. “Here,” she said, holding out the remainder of the jewels. “Put them in your wallet. We may want them again.”

“Right,” said Cashel. His skin pickled with the desire to say something to the girl, but he wasn't sure what the words should be. Instead he said, “We'd best be going, then.”

The track of wizardlight remained though the imp had disappeared. They started to follow it. Neither of them spoke.

“You've missed the meeting with Vicar Uzinga that was scheduled for the fourth hour,” Liane said, holding the four-leafed wax tablet on which she kept Garric's appointments. “And the meeting following it with Lord Waldron about integrating the Count's Household Troops into the Royal Army. We can take the vicar in place of dinner, but I suggest you tell Waldron to consider his recommendations to have
been approved. He'll be more flattered by the tacit approval than offended that you've canceled a meeting with him.”

Garric frowned. “Frankly, I'd rather see Waldron than the vicar,” he said. “I don't have anything to tell Uzinga except to take Reise's advice on every matter where Reise makes a recommendation—and that if he doesn't, he'll be lucky if he
only
loses his office as vicar.”

The doors of the reception room were open, waiting for the start of Prince Garric's afternoon levee. The presence of the usher standing in the doorway might not have been enough to keep back the would-be petitioners who packed the hall beyond, but those waiting knew that the detachment of Blood Eagles on guard would take up where the usher's authority left off—with naked swords if necessary.