Icestorm

by Theresa Dahlheim

“I am as well as I can be after seeing such a thing, Lady Sorceress,” Maga Elinore creaked. Tabitha assumed that she meant the presentation. “I thought my heart would stop.”

  “I did too,” Tabitha confessed. She noticed some narrow chairs against the foyer’s wall, and before she could ask, two of the magi fetched them so that she and Maga Elinore could sit.

  “By your leave, Lady Sorceress, I will take your hand,” Maga Elinore said, and she reached out.

  I must do this. I must. Tabitha knew that she could not turn these women against her. She needed them. She was tired of being excluded from the silent talk that always surrounded her.

  But if they ever learn what I have done …

  It occurred to her that these women just might be glad that she had the power and the will to kill a man.

  Tabitha took Maga Elinore’s withered hand. Her grip was light, and nothing invaded Tabitha’s mind. She closed her eyes and allowed herself to sense the soft, warm cloak of Graegor’s magic that she always held at a distance, and the rough rasp of Natayl’s. She had to ignore both of them, somehow, not let them affect her, and she had to control the prickling itch that her own magic always triggered.

  Searching for Maga Elinore’s presence was hard. It was like trying to detect the brush of another woman’s skirt against her own on a crowded ballroom floor, while music played and a man held her hand and waist.

  Careful. She had to be careful. She did not want to accidentally call to Natayl. She certainly did not want Graegor to know that she was thinking about him.

  When she sensed Maga Elinore, it was as a single glass bead, tiny but hard and smooth. She focused on it, and it vanished, but she found it again and held onto it. “Maga Elinore?”

  “Easy,” the old maga whispered aloud. “Please, my lady.”

  Tabitha thought about cradling the bead in the palm of her hand instead of holding it between her fingers. The trick seemed to work, because Maga Elinore sighed a little, and the thorny prickles at Tabitha’s neck eased. “Thank you.” The voice in her head did not sound quite like Maga Elinore. It may have been how Maga Elinore had sounded before age had taken its toll.

  “Remember what happened,” Maga Elinore sent to her, “when the swans flew away.”

  Tabitha recalled the beautiful white swans, the symbol of Betaul, soaring into the sky instead of swooping down to land on the arms of the magi women. She remembered thinking that the swan handlers were not doing their job. Then Natayl had ordered her to remain absolutely still.

  Then had come the spears.

  Remembering the fear was nearly as bad as the fear itself had been. She pulled her hand and her mind from Maga Elinore’s and clutched at her stomach, cold and itchy and all but certain that she was going to be sick in front of all of them.

  Remember the rage. Tabitha breathed hard, struggling to remember the wave of anger that had swept over her fear when she had seen Natayl’s self-satisfied face.

  “I am sorry, my lady,” Maga Elinore said aloud, a quaver in her voice that was more than age. “Please forgive me, and forgive my doubt.”

  “Of course,” Tabitha managed, forcing herself to sit upright. The knot in her stomach was loosening a little. Maga Elinore had not sensed anything from her mind other than the memory of the presentation. Or, if she had, it had not been cause for further alarm.

  Her secrets were safe. Her secrets were safe.

  “My lady,” Maga Elinore said, more steadily, “can you tell us anything that may explain why Lord Natayl did this?” She glanced back at the other magi women. “We have discussed his possible motives at length among ourselves, but we would like to know what you think.”

  “He never tells me why he does anything,” Tabitha said. He had never told her why he had bonded her to Graegor. He had never told her why his magi would not talk to her. He had never told her why her questions annoyed him so much. “But he did tell me that he would put me in situations where I must face my fears.”

  This prompted worried frowns from Maga Elinore and some of the other magi, especially Tabitha’s close friends. “Why do you think he did it?” Tabitha asked Maga Elinore.

  “Lord Natayl has never regarded women highly,” Maga Elinore said, and there were nods and humorless smiles from the others. “He does not like the influence that you, my lady, have gained over magi women or the strong example you have set.”

  “I see,” Tabitha said, and was pleased with herself for not bursting into bitter laughter. Natayl certainly did not think she was setting a strong example.

  “If I may, Lady Sorceress.” It was Maga Desimall, the round woman with the healing gift for animals. Like the others, she still wore her traditional gown, cap, and veil, and by now she looked quite rumpled. “The magi women of my family have defied Lord Natayl in the past. While I agree with Maga Elinore, I also believe that putting six Jasinthe magi ladies in such danger, while not allowing our three magi lords to participate at all, was a specific message to our house.”

  Tabitha had not realized that no magus from the House of Jasinthe had been among the men in the presentation. Of all the men who had been, had any protested at all when Natayl had told them what to do?

  A sudden thought struck her. “Do you think the king knew about it?”

  “I have been wondering that, my lady,” Maga Desimall said. “But I am not sure that matters now. What does matter now is that the king is dead, and his queen, our Perisca, will rule for her young son.”

  And that makes the Jasinthes the most powerful family in Thendalia.

  “We wish to be on much better terms with you, my lady, than we have been with Lord Natayl,” Maga Desimall continued. “If I may humbly say so, his involvement with the affairs of the royal house has always been somewhat … inappropriate for a sorcerer of the Circle.”

  In other words, don’t interfere as we take control. “I am sure that we can remain on very good terms,” she replied. “There is no reason why a Betaul sorceress would hold any grudges against Jasinthe magi.” She put a slight emphasis on her family name, hoping her own message was clear. Stay away from my father.

  “No reason at all, my lady,” Maga Desimall agreed solemnly. “Thank you.” She looked back at Maga Elinore.

  Maga Elinore nodded and leaned a little closer to Tabitha. “My lady,” she said in her warbling voice, “I need not tell you that Lord Natayl is proud. You, and we, have pushed his limits, and his pride could not let it go unanswered.”

  “That is in keeping with what I know of him,” Tabitha murmured.

  “Lady Sorceress, we are here now because we continue to defy him. We are prepared to pledge to you.”

  Pledge? Tabitha looked at her, then up at Clementa. The faces of the magi around her were no longer quite as grave. Some tension had left them when she had proven herself innocent in Natayl’s stunt.

  “My lady,” Maga Elinore went on, “some of us here are already pledged to the Circle, which means we swore fealty to Lord Natayl. We intended to pledge to you upon his death, but we don’t wish to wait. We will become your magi, here and now, if you will allow it.”

  Tabitha could not answer. She had never thought of anyone pledging fealty to her. Only men received such pledges in Thendalia.

  “My lady,” Maga Desimall said into the silence, “others of us here have never pledged to the Circle, and never meant to do so. For this, Lord Natayl accused us of rogue sympathies, and worse. But here and now, we wish to become your magi.”

  The Jasinthe magi would pledge to her? What did this mean? Tabitha had thought that she and they had just agreed to leave each other alone. Pledging would bind them to her.

  And me to them, she realized. They wanted assurances. They wanted an ally.

  “My lady.” Now Clementa spoke. “Others of us here are only students. It is traditional for magi to pledge to the Circle upon graduation from the Academy. But we will not do so until your Circle comes to power. We will never pledge to Lord Natayl. Only to you, and if you allow it, we
will do it here and now. By this, you will know that we will never join the rogue magi.”

  Everyone was looking at Tabitha, waiting for her answer. Even Isabelle had lost her defiant pose and was fidgeting anxiously. They were here for her. Everything rested on her.

  I need allies. I need friends. I need these women.

  “You honor me,” Tabitha said at last, using words she had heard her father speak. “I humbly accept your pledge and your service.”

  A stir of smiles and nods went through the room. Maga Elinore offered both her wrinkled hands. “May God bless you, Lady Sorceress. Please allow me to be the first.”

  Tabitha placed her own hands on either side of Maga Elinore’s, again as she had seen her father do. She guessed that the pledge would be made mind-to-mind, so she again closed her eyes, focused past the looming presences of her bonds with Graegor and with Natayl, and found the tiny glass bead that was the old maga. It was easier and more direct this time, and with every word Maga Elinore spoke in her mind, it grew stronger.

  “I pledge my power in service to you, Lady Sorceress. I will come when you call and I will act as you need. My mastery of speech, my mastery of motion, and my mastery of fire, I give to you. Doubt not my honor. Doubt not my honesty. With free intention and open heart, I do this in the name of our most holy God, the name of His Creation, the name of His chosen people, and the name of the One who will come again. Let it be.”

  As the old maga pledged, Tabitha sensed more from her than just her words. She was deeply grateful to God that she had lived long enough to see the new Circle, to see Thendalia’s masculine icicle sigil inverted to a feminine raindrop. She was weary of Natayl’s refusal to take holy sisters seriously, and his utter disregard for the dignity and anxiety of the patients he was called upon to heal. She was counting on Tabitha to be better.

  Tabitha would be better. She put it in her pledge, beside the formal words that Maga Elinore obligingly gave her. “I pledge my power in protection of you, my maga, and to assist you with compassion in your sacred calling. My mastery of the wind, the earth, the water, and the fire shall be wielded in your defense. I will call upon you only as dictated by the ethics all sorcerers uphold. Doubt not my honor. Doubt not my honesty. With free intention and open heart, I do this in the name of our most holy God, the name of His Creation, the name of His chosen people, and the name of the One who will come again. Let it be.”

  “I will pledge again,” Maga Elinore sent, “when the Ninth Circle is forged.”

  “Let it be,” Tabitha repeated.

  Maga Desimall was next. Tabitha took the plump hands in hers and closed her eyes, trying see and feel another tiny glass bead, smooth and hard, hiding in her thoughts. She did not find it right away, and a prickling itch moved up her spine as she sought it, but then she felt something else, not a glass bead but something similar. A pearl.

  “You can sense me?” the maga sent to her, her voice steady and clear.

  “Yes.” She was doing it, she was really doing it. Maga Elinore was not an exception. Tabitha could do this!

  Maga Desimall gave her pledge as Maga Elinore had. Again, Tabitha could sense some of the emotions behind the pledge, a hint of why the Jasinthe maga was willing to do this. Natayl behaved as if every Thendal maga and magus served him, even if they had never pledged to the Circle, even if they had never been to Maze Island, even if they had never met him before, and he called any resistance to his orders “defiance”. But something else lay beneath this for Maga Desimall, something more specific than this general sense of unfair treatment. Tabitha did not push to know more, both because she respected the maga’s privacy, and because she suspected that she did not want to know more.

  Then Clementa took the chair beside her. She and Tabitha had tried this twice before, with no success at all. Now, though, before Tabitha even found the tiny, rock-like seed that was her friend’s mind, Clementa’s voice started to come to her as if moving closer from a long distance away. “… do you sense me? Can you hear me?”

  “I can!” Despite the prickling ice her magic was sending down her back, she felt thrilled. She could form telepathic connections with magi. She could be part of their silent world.

  “Softly, my lady. Tabitha.”

  “Forgive me.” She was holding on too hard again, and she imagined relaxing her hand, to let the tiny seed lie easily against her.

  “You are not hurting me,” Clementa assured her. “But this is not the testing annex or a fox-den, and Lord Natayl is in the next room. I worry he might sense us.”

  The testing annex was where the magi students took their exams, a place where they could not use telepathy without direct touch. A fox-den was probably something similar. “I will be more careful,” she promised, dampening her excitement. She had to remain calm and still, and stay carefully away from her bonds with Natayl and with Graegor.

  Clementa gave her pledge, and promised to pledge again when the Ninth Circle was forged. Her own motives shone simply. She wanted her intelligence, and the precision with which she wielded her magic, to matter. Neither would ever matter to Natayl. He thought girls were foolish, their skills unimportant, their concerns trivial. With Tabitha, everything would be different.

  Isabelle was next, and Tabitha found her quickly. Her presence was like a coin, thin and edged. “Isabelle?”

  “Tabitha.” Her cousin sounded satisfied, and she gave her pledge without hesitation, ending with, “I will pledge again when your Circle is forged, and Lord Natayl is rotting in his grave.”

  Attarine came forward, and the other Jasinthes, and the other holy sisters. As Tabitha touched minds with each one, it grew easier and easier. Natayl’s magic faded to the background, and Graegor’s magic held still. She imagined that the bonds of the magi women were different charms on a silver chain. Every single one made her feel stronger.

  Velinda was just sitting down to take her turn when the millstone grinder that was Natayl’s magic rumbled across her thoughts. “Where are you?”

  She pulled back from him and from Velinda, and icy prickles stabbed at her neck. She could not let him know what she was doing! He pushed at her, demanding an answer, and she stood up and turned away from the magi women to gather herself before she opened her mind to him.

  “The cloister,” she sent back at last, extremely carefully. “Attarine is distraught. We are praying.”

  “Telepathically?”

  How did he know? “My lord?”

  “You are suddenly better at it. No matter. Come back at once.”

  “Yes, my lord.”

  She turned back to the waiting magi and hesitated. “Was it Lord Natayl?” Velinda asked.

  “He wants me to return.”

  “Let me give my pledge first.” Velinda seemed grimly eager to defy the old sorcerer. With the strength of nearly twenty magi minds now connected to hers, Tabitha recklessly decided that she could do no less. She returned to her seat, and as she swept her white skirts to one side, she saw the flecks of the king’s blood that still stained them.

  “I will not leave,” she announced, “until all who wish to pledge have done so. Let’s continue.” She reached for Velinda’s hands.

  She thought her father would have been proud of her.

  Chapter 5

  Tabitha kept her eyes on the shimmering purple star that lit the cramped passageway. It floated out in front of Graegor about an arm’s length above his head, and it was the most enchanting thing she had ever seen.

  It should not be. It should not exist. It was pure light, gathered into a handful of water. It made all other magic seem ordinary.

  Graegor stopped, and Tabitha barely managed to avoid bumping into him. “It ends here,” he called back to the rest of them, then tilted his head to look straight up. The purple light floated up further, further, shining on the wall in front of them as the passageway around them grew dim. “I think we have to climb,” he said, taking the last two steps to reach the wall and laying one hand on the rock. �
�There are gouges here, like handholds.”

  “Regular?” Arundel asked from somewhere behind Tabitha.

  “Jeh.” Graegor peered up the wall, and the light moved higher, leaving the passageway around Tabitha uncomfortably dark. “I can’t see the top.”

  “Go on, then,” Ferogin’s voice came from even further back than Arundel’s.

  The light descended, and Graegor turned to look at Tabitha. His eyes looked purple instead of blue, and they were as soft and warm as his light over her head and his presence in her mind. “It shouldn’t be much different than a ladder,” he said quietly. “I won’t get far ahead of you.”

  Tabitha nodded once and looked up at the wall instead of at him. She did not trust herself to speak as the familiar icy needles stabbed at her neck. It was already obvious to Graegor, and probably everyone else, that she had never climbed anything before. She did not need to let them all know just how much it bothered her.

  This had been Natayl’s idea, she was sure. To force her to face her fears. She was not afraid of heights, but this! Hanging off a wall by her fingers and toes? Was he insane?

  Graegor started climbing, finding the gouges in the rock, setting his grip firmly before shifting his weight. “The handholds are strong,” he called down when he had climbed a little more than his own height. “It’s not bad.”

  “Wait a moment,” Arundel called. “I think those of us who have done a lot of climbing should follow after those of us who haven’t.”

  “All right, I’ll wait.”

  Tabitha heard some murmuring and shuffling behind her, but she did not move from her place. Ferogin said something sarcastic, and Ilene tried to talk to Rossin.

  Rossin, who was more beast than boy. At their first meeting, he had seemed to Tabitha like a hawk in a cage, warily testing the bars, seeking escape. Since the rogue magi attack, she thought him a coward too. He had flown away, abandoning them all, abandoning even his master Lasfe.

  “We’re ready,” Arundel called. He sounded further back than before. “You can keep going.”