Icestorm

by Theresa Dahlheim

  ICESTORM

  Book 2 of the Ninth Circle

  by Theresa Dahlheim

  Copyright 2019 by Theresa Dahlheim.

  All rights reserved.

  ***

  The Ninth Circle

  Book 1: Torchlight

  Book 2: Icestorm

  Book 3: Firedance*

  Book 4: Daystar*

  Book 5: Sundogs*

  Book 6: Candlehouse*

  Book 7: Amberglow*

  Book 8: Blacksight*

  Book 9: Rivendark*

  *Forthcoming

  Also by Theresa Dahlheim

  Forbidden

  Dedicated to

  the Raging Battle-Moose,

  Dingle,

  the Eg,

  and my Mom.

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Appendix: People

  Appendix: Places

  Map

  Prologue

  Iseult looked up. The room’s small window faced a row of houses across the narrow street, and she saw a strip of grey sky above the peaked roofs. The sun was about to rise. She’d been writing all night.

  But something other than daylight had alerted her senses. Another storm? All summer, lightning storms had rumbled and flashed across the twenty miles of flat land between here and the sea. The people of the town, even the elders, claimed that God had never sent so many in a single season before.

  She closed her eyes and stretched out her weather-sense. Around the town, the river, and the encampment, there were no clouds at all, almost no winds at all. By the time she pulled her mind back and opened her eyes, the peaceful morning outside had almost made her forget that she’d sensed anything wrong.

  When Pellata had come, over a week ago, Iseult had sensed her from miles away because of the wards she’d set. Those wards would tell her if Vonn or one the others came as well.

  I will not be afraid. This is my homeland. These are my people.

  The words had become a prayer since Pellata had gone, leaving her warnings behind.

  Iseult was still holding the quill over the paper, and a drop of ink had blacked out the last word she’d written. She took the blotter to it and winced as her hand cramped. For the fifth or sixth time since sitting down, she cupped her right hand over her left and rinsed healing magic through the overworked muscles. She wrote a few more words, but she found that she really needed to stand up. She raised her arms over her head as high as they would go and turned her head from side to side, and then she pressed her hands over her grumbling stomach.

  Clearly, it was time to stop for a while. She started to call to Jeran, to find out if Lord Brias had started his day, but then realized that Jeran was asleep. The magus slept so little that Iseult decided not to wake him. As she’d done many times over the summer, she concentrated instead on the bond she’d made with Lord Brias himself.

  Brias was not a magus, though. She could sense his presence, but she could not precisely interpret anything about it. Was he asleep or awake, comfortable or in pain, calm or upset? A properly forged bond would tell her all of this. More and more, she was coming to suspect that she’d done something wrong and that the bond was weak or incomplete. Marlon had intentionally not taught her how a sorcerer bonded with a near-magi king, so she’d had to rely on books, but the only books she’d found were written in other languages.

  Iseult frowned. This question about the bond had been bothering her for a long time. She needed to probe Brias’s mind again, directly, and make sure she’d done everything right. She needed to go to see him right now.

  The letters she’d written went into a leather folder, her golden braid got tucked back into the cap and veil she’d taken off last night, and her skirts got thoroughly shaken to unstick them from her legs. She hadn’t realized how stuffy the house had become until she opened the front door and took a breath of the cooler air. The black dog on the porch across the street yipped a greeting, and they met in the middle of the cobblestones for a head-scratch and a lick on the cheek.

  “My lady!” a familiar voice called. Louis was leading his horse up the street, smiling and waving to her, his blonde hair and beard damp as if fresh-washed but his red tabard still creased with travel. Several messenger bags were attached to his horse’s saddle. Iseult gave the dog a final pat and stood up to wait.

  “You are as lovely as ever this morning, Lady Sorceress,” Louis said with a bow when he reached her. He nodded at the leather folder in her hands. “May I take that for you? I am heading to camp.”

  “As am I. Will you escort me, sir knight?”

  “With great pleasure, my lady.”

  “When did you get back?” she asked as they started down the street together.

  “Just now, my lady—just long enough ago to scrub off the worst of the dust.” He tilted his head back the way he’d come. “And to swallow down one of Auntie’s egg pies.”

  Iseult’s stomach rumbled again at the thought of the little innkeeper’s giant breakfast dishes. “Do you bring good news for Lord Brias?”

  “I think so, my lady. The count wants more assurances before he commits.”

  Iseult suppressed a sigh. “I see.” She and Lord Brias had expected as much, but it was still disappointing. There were many nobles in Thendalia who were not sure if they wanted a king at all, let alone Brias as that king. Iseult’s support of his claim to the throne did not always work in his favor.

  Iseult knew that it could take a long time to unite her people. Back in the spring, when she’d been initiated and old Marlon had died, she and Lord and Lady Brias had begun this effort by agreeing that they would move slowly and carefully, and, as much as possible, with diplomacy rather than force. It was frustrating, though, when the nobles who were most likely to benefit from Brias’s leadership still wanted more assurances before they would commit their knights to the cause.

  At least her cousins had been successful. They’d convinced their lord to support Brias, and their last message had said that they were on their way east with four hundred men. She wanted to ask Louis if any of the messages in his pouches had come from the west, but some of the townspeople were already out on the street, and so greetings had to be exchanged. It was in the middle of this that she suddenly felt another brush against her mind.

  She tried to pinpoint it, but it was gone too quickly. It was definitely not an alarm raised by her wards, so was it another storm after all?

  She needed to see the sky. The houses here were too tall and cut off her view of the horizons. As she walked faster, Louis led his horse after her. “My lady? Is something wrong?”

  Iseult did not answer. By the time she and Louis reached the last house on the street, some of the townspeople were following them, looking up at the sky and asking each other if they knew what the sorceress saw. She stopped at the signpost where the cobblestones ended and the dirt road to the river began, and she looked back at the western horizon, which was still dark blue. Focusing her eyes in slow sweeps of the heavens, she moved section by section toward the pale gold in the east. Birds, only birds, no clouds, no storms. Two cranes, a flock of geese, and what looked like a very large hawk …

  She held her breath. When she extended her sight toward the hawk, she saw a glint of purple on its dark feathers.

  No.

  It was a falcon. It was Roberd.

  My God. My God my God my God. Why hadn’t she felt h
is presence? Why hadn’t he triggered her wards? Why was he here?

  Iseult shook herself out of the ice holding her. “Jeran.” Her call to the magus was strong with alarm, sure to wake him. “Gather all the magi.” Not waiting for his answer, she submerged her mind in the warm energy of her people, pulling all their streams to flow toward her. “Louis,” she said aloud, and though she did not take her eyes off the spiraling falcon, she knew she commanded the knight’s full attention. She extended the leather folder with the letters toward him. “Take these to Lord Brias.”

  He took the folder. “My lady, what’s wrong?”

  “The Telgard sorcerer is here.”

  There was a long pause before Louis could find his voice. “Why?”

  “I assume for the same reason that the Tolander sorceress was here.” At least her own voice sounded calm. “Go and tell Lord Brias. Tell him he must stay in camp.”

  “But my lady, will the sorcerer attack you?”

  That single word, attack, nearly froze her all over again, but she kept her own words steady. “If he does, then you can do me no good, sir knight.”

  Louis’s steps away from her were slow and reluctant, but once he mounted his horse, it sprang immediately into a gallop. Iseult heard the murmurs of the half-dozen people who had followed them to the edge of town, and with her gaze still fixed on the falcon, she lifted her voice. “All of you, get inside and shut your doors and windows. Now!”

  Gratifyingly, the immediate sounds behind her told her that they were doing just that. She firmed her grip on the streams of her people’s magic, then braced her entire body. Reaching for the earth magic below her always made her feel as if she were dropping into a well. Searching for it always made her anxious, and finding it always felt like suddenly touching a needle. Directing its flow into her own magic always felt like icy streams rushing through her veins, into her head, seizing it with pain. But she endured it, because she needed the power.

  Why had Roberd come? He’d never agreed with Vonn about this. In all of Pellata’s warnings of what the Circle might do, she’d never once named him.

  If the sorcerer should attack you—

  She would not be afraid. Not here! This was her homeland and these were her people.

  But it was Roberd who had come—the only other sorcerer who could tap power from her people, who was as powerful here as she was.

  But her magi would actively assist her and actively resist Roberd. That was what would make the difference, all the necessary difference. Roberd would never be able to hurt her.

  It was the truth and he knew it. He had to know it. So maybe he was only here to talk to her. If he was, then she would tell him what she’d told Pellata. And like Pellata, after a long argument, he would go back to Maze Island without her. That was what would happen. It was the truth.

  The truth was that she was shaking uncontrollably.

  “Jeran.” The magus hadn’t answered her first call, and only now did she wonder why. It seemed he was still asleep. “Jeran!”

  Then the falcon swooped to a landing only a few paces away from her. At the first spark of the blinding light of the shapechange, Iseult pulled her veil over her eyes to shaded them, but when the white light faded, she threw aside the veil and cap entirely so that she could see as much around her as possible. Stop shaking. No shaking. She tried to hold the warm streams of her people’s magic and the cool current of earth magic with firm purpose, and tried to make that purpose her strength as she looked squarely at Roberd.

  Roberd’s scruffy beard was shaven off, his black hair was very short where it had once covered his ears in shaggy locks, and his blue eyes were serious where they had once constantly teased her. He looked younger, but not more innocent. He was settling his stocky body into a stance of readiness that he’d learned in early childhood. A long time ago, back when they were all twelve years old and trying to impress each other, he’d told her stories about the combat training he’d already received. Iseult had never fought anyone, not with weapons or with magic, back then or now. She’d never fought with anything except words.

  Roberd has never fought with magic either, she told herself. No tactics he learned as a prince will help him now.

  Roberd’s bearing, though, suggested that he did not think that was the truth. “Iseult.” He bowed his head as he greeted her, as if this were a formal occasion.

  She did not bow her head in return. Instead, she lifted her nose to look down it and emphasize her slightly greater height. His mind lapped against hers, asking for a mental link, and she felt a strange urge to laugh. How on earth could he think she would ever open her thoughts to him?

  He spoke aloud, using Mazespaak. “You need to listen to me.”

  “You never agreed with Vonn about this,” she said quickly. “You said the Circle should wait for me to return on my own.” Not that she intended to ever return to Maze Island.

  To her considerable surprise, she scored a hit, for Roberd winced and looked away. He does not want to do whatever Vonn sent him here to do. That thought steadied her, and she was about to say it aloud, but then Roberd said softly, “A lot has happened since you saw me last.”

  “What has happened?”

  He gave no answer, and she could not guess what that answer could be. The two of them had never fully opened their minds to each other. It made her feel cold and hot at once to realize it, but if only they had been lovers, even once, she would know him better now, as she knew Kemur. But things had ended badly with Kemur, and likely would have ended just as badly with Roberd or any other sorcerer. So it was better this way, not knowing him very well, not knowing what he would do.

  But when Roberd turned back to her, the cold mask of his face unnerved her all over again. “Hurry!” she called to Jeran and the rest of her magi at once, hoping that they were already on their way to her, but not a single one answered.

  Where were they? They were close, close to her heart and close by in the encampment. She should be able to call them all out of deep sleep, unless—

  My God. “What did you do to my magi?” She could hear the high pitch of panic in her voice.

  “They aren’t hurt,” Roberd said quietly. “But they won’t be helping you.”

  Iseult stared at him. “Someone else is here,” she realized with a chill. “My wards—”

  “I found one of the keystones last night and broke its spell.”

  As easy as that. She felt stupid with shock. She’d placed those wards so carefully. Only Thendal magi should have been able to sense their source.

  Yes, Thendal magi, or the only other sorcerer with Thendal magic.

  “Who came with you?” she tried to demand, but her voice was so weak.

  “All of us.”

  “All,” she repeated, then shook her head. “But Pellata said ...”

  “She and Kemur are with the ship.”

  “Ship?”

  “The ship to take you back to Maze Island. They’re bringing it upriver right now.” Roberd took a step closer. She almost took a step back, but then ground the soles of her shoes into the dirt, because she could not, would not give ground, not in her own homeland, not among her own people! “Staziec and Milessa are holding your magi,” Roberd told her. “All the others are with me. You’re coming back with us.”

  All of them. All of them are here to drag me back. “I will not bond to the Circle,” she told him. She remembered how she had said it to Pellata, and repeated more firmly, “I will not bond to the Circle!”

  Roberd’s nose flared as he took a slow breath in and out. “I will force you.”

  That was impossible, and that was the truth. “Marlon told me that it must be chosen. He said that no one could force me.”

  “I can. I have Thendal magic now.”

  A wave of impatience pushed back her fear. “I know that,” she snapped. When Marlon had passed his power to her, he had explained the whole mess Khisrathi had caused—the “Telgard entanglement”, as he called it. “I have
Telgard magic now. So what?”

  “I can bind to the Circle’s existing Thendal magic and tie you into it.”

  “Tie me …” She made a scoffing noise. “As if I’d stand still for that.”

  “Once we’re finished here you’ll be in no condition to protest.”

  He meant to scare her, and it worked. All she could think was that she had to keep him talking, keep him arguing, fighting with words, not weapons, not magic. “The Circle waited a hundred years for the fourth generation to be ready,” she repeated what she’d told Pellata. “The seventh generation can wait for me to be ready.”

  “We can’t,” Roberd insisted. “We won’t.”

  What was the matter with him? What had driven him to this? She had to remind him of how he’d felt before this, before whatever had happened to him to change his mind. “You know this is wrong,” she softened her voice to say. “Forcing a bond is—”

  “No, you’re wrong!” He stabbed his fingers toward the ground between them. “This is wrong, you being here, you playing kingmaker! Marlon knew that. He never interfered with any of this! Do you actually think you’re wiser than he was?”

  Wiser? The truth was that she’d loved old Marlon like children love their grandparents, but she could not forgive him for letting generations of their people die. “I am different than he was,” she said after a moment. “If you will listen to me, I will prove it.”

  Roberd gestured to the ridge behind her, toward the encampment behind that. “This Lord Brias of yours, is he ‘different’ too?”

  “Yes,” she said at once. “He is. I knew it as soon as I met him.” She started to explain what she saw in Brias, but Roberd spoke over her.

  “Without you, he’s just another pretender, and his throne is worth nothing.”

  Please, Roberd, listen. “Brias is special. He—”

  “You sound infatuated.”

  She’d heard this suspicion far too often for it to bother her anymore. In fact, it helped to steady her. “Not at all. I admire his wife in the same way that I admire him. She is part of what makes him worthy of a crown.”