Icestorm

by Theresa Dahlheim

  “Until it’s too late?” Tabitha suggested with a dangerous edge.

  “Maybe. I’m sorry. He’s wrong. I know he’s wrong. A man can always stop himself.”

  The silver threads that bound them together were dark with shadows and snarls. Graegor risked a look at Tabitha, but she looked away, biting her lip once more. She asked, “Have you, always?”

  “Have I always … stopped myself?”

  “Yes.”

  Why should he feel so reluctant to admit this to her? “Yes. I’ve never … been with anyone.”

  Mercifully, she said nothing, and he shoved down the obvious question that tried to rise in his mind. Of course she had never been with anyone. She had grown up a highborn Thendal lady, all but cloistered in her castle, proper behavior defining every moment of her life. He would never offend her by implying otherwise.

  It seemed a good time to move away from that specific subject. “It was because of Hagan that I couldn’t just let Ferogin …” He stopped, because the sense of Tabitha had snapped back to cold anger. She didn’t understand, not yet. “Ferogin reminded me of Hagan. He wouldn’t leave Koren alone. He kept chasing away magi who wanted to dance with her. You heard her say that he asked her to leave the party with him.”

  “And she told him no.” Tabitha stated each word with slow emphasis.

  “He wouldn’t listen. It was obvious that he wasn’t going to stop harassing her. I thought, what if … what if she can’t fight him off?”

  He could almost hear Tabitha’s eyebrows lifting. “You seriously thought he would attack her? Here?”

  “This is a big house with a lot of rooms and a lot of dark corners. I didn’t know what he would do.”

  “You thought he would try to rape her? Do you realize how ludicrous that sounds?”

  “I don’t think it’s ludicrous. If you’d seen how he was eyeing her—”

  She made a noise of exasperation. “My God, no one ‘eyes’ her! She looks like a child!”

  “Then why do you get upset every time I talk to her?” he asked without thinking.

  “Because I don’t want you encouraging her. But that is not even the point. First of all, she is a sorceress. She can fight him off.” Graegor still wasn’t willing to take that for granted, but Tabitha did not let him interrupt. “Second of all, Contare tried to get the Circle to punish Natayl for bonding the two of us. Imagine what the Circle would do to Ferogin for something like this. And even if the Circle did not do anything, Josselin certainly would!”

  She was right. Josselin would do something, and Ferogin had to know that. That truth hit Graegor hard, stopping all of his reasons cold. He hadn’t thought it all the way through. He had been so intent on making sure that Ferogin didn’t have any opportunity to even try to hurt Koren that he hadn’t seen the bigger picture.

  “I’m sorry,” he sighed, slumping against the back of the chair. He could feel the damp chill coming off the windowpane just behind him. “You’re right. He would never provoke Josselin. I’m sorry. I … I overreacted.”

  Admitting that was the right thing to do. What he could sense of Tabitha’s emotions was still a dark tangle, but she was less tense. After a very long pause, she said quietly, “I can understand why you were trying to help.”

  He turned his head to look at her again. “That’s all I wanted to do.”

  Tabitha looked at him for a long time. Then, suddenly, she leaned close and kissed him.

  She thought he was a good person. He’d never sensed this so strongly and so clearly from her before, and suddenly he felt sure—sure that she was with him because she wanted to be, not just because they were bonded. Her gloved hands came up to his face and stroked his beard, and he could feel the smooth pearls on the bracelet he’d given her. He held her waist and tugged her from her chair to his lap. She hadn’t kissed him like this in what felt like a long time.

  He tried not to think of anything beyond this single moment. With her body against his, it was hard to not think of what he wanted, what he’d hoped for tonight, but he held those thoughts down, deep beneath his shields. He reminded himself that going slowly in a romance was not a bad thing.

  Tabitha broke the kiss and stood up. “You should probably go,” she said gently.

  He stood, but he didn’t walk away. He couldn’t even look away. She was so beautiful. Her silver eyes, the exquisite lines of her face, the wisp of golden hair escaping her veil, her peach-soft skin, the pout of her lower lip, the slender curves of her breasts and hips—all filled him with longing so painful it stopped his breath in his throat.

  “Win,” she said. “Win for me.”

  Graegor woke in the bottom of the boat, in the cold shadow of its sail. The wool blanket under his head was damp, his right arm was tingling from being pressed against some oars stowed under him, and his left hand gripped his purpleheart quarterstaff. He pushed away more blankets, and as he sat up and stretched, a sharp wind buffeted him. He twisted from side to side to get his bearings.

  The day was bright, but patches of clouds could change that at any moment. The fishing boat that Jeffrei and Errie had found was about nine yards long but no more than three wide, with a lateen sail and a jib, both of which were taut with wind. Three sailors stood forward, with two more aft, and the rangy old captain grinned at him from the stern where he worked the tiller. He had reason to grin; rather than taking any money for his service, he’d wanted the new sorcerer to owe him a favor. The whole crew had come, even though they weren’t all needed since they wouldn’t be fishing, and they all wore layers of wool and leather from head to foot against the open sea’s chill.

  “Are we almost there?” Graegor asked the captain.

  The captain nodded and tugged his scarf down to speak. “With this wind, jeh, m’lord. Need to slow down soon to pick our way through.”

  “You’re sure you know the right rock?” he asked again.

  “Jeh, m’lord, tall thin stack with some knobbies nearby. Don’t worry about getting there.”

  Worry about what happens next. “Thank you.” He scanned the cloud-scudded horizon behind the captain’s head, but saw nothing but water. Word of the duel had spread quickly among the city’s magi, but sometime during the night, his boat had outpaced or otherwise lost the half-dozen others which had hurried to follow him out of the city’s lower harbor.

  He went to the rail, nodding to the sailors, who bowed clumsily as they gave him lots of room. No one but the captain had dared speak a word to him since he had boarded, which was understandable but also unfortunate. Whenever he could, he presented himself to ordinary people as a magus rather than the sorcerer, so that he was treated with a high level of respect but a low level of awe. That hadn’t been possible for this trip.

  He’d sailed in small boats before, but only on Long Lake. This inner region of the Central Sea was protected by the archipelago islands in a ring forty or fifty miles out from Maze Island, but it was still the first day of winter, and the water was colder and rougher out here than the lake had ever been. He didn’t want to use his power to keep warm, because he probably wouldn’t be able to keep using it for that purpose, so it was better to get accustomed to the chill. His beard did a decent job of insulating his cheeks, even when the swirling wind raked back his hood and stung his eyes. Soon the waves were spraying up against half-submerged rocks, and the crew reefed the sails and picked up the oars stowed in the bottom, ready to push if the hull came too close to anything unforgiving.

  With the sun on his right shoulder, Graegor peered ahead, and he thought he saw a grey smudge on the horizon. He had never tried to stretch his vision while in a moving boat before, so he decided to try now. He set his hands and feet firmly before focusing on his breathing and on what he could see in front of him. Everything around him slowly steadied, and the motion of the sea carried him forward. The bright day and the limitless view contracted into the grey smudge, and it gradually took shape, curves and lines resolving into a ship. As his boat crept clo
ser, his extended sight grew clearer, and it eventually showed him a single-masted sloop, seemingly at anchor. Ferogin was here.

  Graegor blinked rapidly as the magic faded from his eyes. He had not been very hopeful that he would make it out here first, but it was still disappointing. He turned to the captain. “Soon?”

  The captain made a maybe gesture with his left hand as his right continued to make small adjustments to the tiller. “Dangerous through here, m’lord. Not smart to hurry.”

  All Graegor could do was nod and turn forward again. As he tracked the break between sea and sky, he thought he saw another smudge, and a few moments’ staring revealed a tall finger of rock jutting out of the water. It looked twice as high as the mast of Ferogin’s ship, but he could not tell how close together the two actually were—it was difficult to get them both in view. Ferogin’s ship had to be standing off in deeper water, since a sloop’s draft was not that shallow. The draft of Graegor’s hired boat, though, was.

  The sun seemed to move through the sky faster than the boat moved through the shoals. The clouds moved fastest of all, pushed in grey, puffy clumps by the wind, darkening the day for moments or minutes as they crossed the sun’s disc. Restless, Graegor started tossing his quarterstaff from one hand to the other, staying out of the sailors’ way but working his fingers over the wood to be sure of his grip. He had used the staff to help him with a leaping dismount from his horse at the Hippodrome presentation, and though it had been Contare’s magic that had provided the lift that time, it had still been a serious test of his own control. And it had been fun. At Contare’s suggestion, he had started training with Magus Darren, a weapons master at the Academy who specialized in using telekinesis to augment jumps, twists, and thrusts. If Ferogin had an advantage with his “magnokinetic” power, Graegor’s advantage would be his telekinetic acrobatics.

  He hoped. He didn’t know how to account for the water covering the dueling ground.

  Taller and taller the rock grew, and Ferogin’s sloop seemed smaller and smaller compared to it. The fishing captain nosed his boat through the maze of submerged rocks, guided by the shouts of his crew fore and aft. The “knobbies” were more rocks rising from the sea, lower and rounder in loose lines curving back east and north, and the fishing captain called a halt several yards away from a gap between two of them.

  “Will this do, m’lord?” he asked.

  “Yes.” The water entering the gap was splashing and spraying against a surface, never quite revealing the shelf or lip but clearly marking its edge. Graegor leaned over the side of the boat and tested the depth with his quarterstaff. Here it seemed too deep to wade. He held the staff horizontally ahead of his body and jumped in feet first.

  The shock of the cold filled his brain as the salt water swallowed his body. It felt like simultaneous punches to the stomach and to the head, and he could not hold back a shout of pain, which let water rush into his mouth. He choked and fought to bring up his head as his boots landed on the bottom. Stand up! he told himself. Just stand up and you’ll be able to breathe.

  He straightened, arching his back and turning his face to the sky. Water rushed from his face as air rushed to his lungs, and for one moment the relief of it drove back the cold. Clenching his jaw against the pain in his head, he pushed off and kicked hard with his quarterstaff held out in front of him. He reached the gap between the rounded rocks, and the waves pushed him against a stone shelf. He used the staff to make an ungraceful ascent of about three feet before he gained the top of the submerged plateau, where the water was near his knees. After turning to acknowledge the sailors’ shouts, he used the staff to steady himself as he waded to a spot a few yards forward, where the plateau rose a little further and the motion of the water was a little less chaotic.

  The area of the submerged plateau made a rough oval, dominated by the hundred-foot rise of the obelisk-shaped rock on the southwestern edge. It was framed by more “knobbies” that rose in varying heights above the water, anywhere from two to twenty feet. The curving line of them was broken by several gaps, the largest of which was directly to the north and looked big enough to sail a galleon through. Graegor guessed the enclosed space to be about twice the size of the central arena of the Colosseum, and less than half the size of the central arena of the Hippodrome. Natayl had said it was two acres, and that seemed about right.

  No plants had taken root here. No birds roosted or circled. Although the water’s rush, lap, break, and spray made a constant noise, the dueling ground was quiet. He did not see Ferogin anywhere.

  We can’t draw on earth magic there, Contare had said. Graegor reached with his mind, down through his body standing on the rock, and further down into the rock itself. He reached toward the image of mist that he had always associated with earth magic, that had always been ready to rise to his call.

  But instead of lifting toward him in the intricate patterns of lines and curves that he had learned to weave into his own magic, the mist … remained mist, featureless and still. Carefully, he prodded at it, tried to tug at it, but his magic had no grip on it. Instead of textured like lace, it felt as smooth as cut crystal. It was disturbing.

  The chill of the water reclaimed his attention, made worse by a gust of wind that blew through the arena and sent a shiver over him that was hard to stop. He tried to wipe salt off his eyelids, but no part of him was dry, and he blinked over and over as he swept his gaze around the circle of rocks, looking for Ferogin.

  The jackass had to be here. Or had he waited on the sloop until now? Maybe there was no advantage to arriving first, and Ferogin had decided to stay dry as long as possible. Graegor turned to look over his shoulder, but he couldn’t see even his own boat through the gap anymore.

  When he turned back, movement caught his eye. He looked at the top of the rounded rock about a third of the way around the oval, but now the only motion was the water slapping at its base. He knew that extending his sight could leave him vulnerable, since he wouldn’t be able to see beyond his focus and wouldn’t be able to hear, but he was certain he had seen something. He set his feet and quarterstaff against the push and pull of the water and concentrated.

  He saw Ferogin immediately. The Adelard sorcerer was lying on his stomach on top of the rock, peering over its edge. Graegor could even see his lips move as he muttered to himself, which he had done many times in the labyrinth to work through a problem. He wore a knit cap and gloves, a close-fitting coat with a high collar, dark trousers, and … sandals? Wool socks with leather sandals?—But suddenly it made sense. Ferogin would be able to walk through the water without hauling along the added weight of water filling his boots. The cap made sense, too—it wouldn’t blow off in the wind the way Graegor’s hood did. The worsted wool of Ferogin’s coat and trousers was lighter-weight than the broadcloth Graegor wore, so while it wouldn’t keep out the cold as much, it also wouldn’t be as heavy when it was wet. He wore no jewelry at all, and Graegor felt acutely conscious of the heavy Torchanes signet ring on his finger beneath his glove and the thaumat’argent medallion tucked beneath his shirt. Could they be used against him? Twisting, strangling?

  He didn’t know. He did know that Ferogin was obviously taking this fight seriously.

  Ferogin looked directly at him, then—or seemed to, if he could extend his sight as Graegor could, and there was no reason to believe he couldn’t. His gaze was steady and calculating, and after a few moments he crabbed backward and slipped over the side of the rock, out of sight.

  Graegor pulled back his sight to get a broader view of the arena. Ferogin’s motions had been practiced and careful, as if he was very comfortable sneaking and hiding. That told Graegor that he would be better off in the middle of the arena where he could see Ferogin coming, and he started sloshing forward. Forcing a ranged attack could be a good option, although he didn’t know what the limit of Ferogin’s magnokinetic lash was. But even if Ferogin could reach him all the way from the rocks, it would take extremely precise aiming to land that
blow.

  Unless Ferogin’s magic would be drawn toward his shields without needing to be aimed, like a magnet to iron. Suddenly certain that that was what “magnokinetic” meant, Graegor paused, but then kept moving forward. He would need as much room as he could get if he intended to use telekinetic acrobatics. The center of the dueling ground was still the best choice, even if Ferogin’s lash could reach him there.

  Keeping an eye on the rock where he had last seen Ferogin—and the rocks around it—he trudged through the knee-deep water. His boots felt even heavier than before, and he had to brace himself occasionally with the quarterstaff as the waves from the sea spilled over the plateau. They were strong, and that worried him, because acrobatics needed a stable base.

  Was he overthinking it? He had won his other fights without careful planning. His instincts and reactions were good. Should he simply trust in what he knew he could do?

  That made him think of Audrey, and that, as always, made him smile. Her letters kept asking him what he could do now, and now, and now, and now. It was his own fault. Along with a Mazespaak dictionary, he’d sent her a list, compiled by the Seventh, of everything that magi and sorcerers were supposed to be able to learn how to do if they had the talent or gift for it. He and Audrey wrote to each other in Mazespaak now, and although her idioms needed work and often made him laugh, it meant they could be more honest with each other without worrying that their parents were reading their letters.

  His letters to his parents weren’t as honest. They weren’t dishonest, but as far as his mother and father knew, everything here was just fine, without any real problems.

  Keep your mind on this problem, he told himself, looking sharply around again. What did he know he could do? Telekinesis was obvious—he could move himself, move the water, move the rocks if there were any small enough, even try to move Ferogin if he could. He could harden his gen into a shield that could repel other magic or solid objects, but that didn’t seem to work against Ferogin’s lash.