Icestorm

by Theresa Dahlheim

  “Yes. I just wish he would pay more attention to the shovel-men in Telgardia.”

  The bloodhound at her father’s feet lifted its head. Her father cast his intent gaze around the room, and Tabitha’s eyes followed his. “What is it?”

  “Ah.” He nodded down toward Pamela’s brother’s wife, who was passing near their balcony with her fluffy white dog in the crook of her arm. “Nothing.” He leaned forward to scratch behind his dog’s ears and murmur a quick command, and the dog settled back down. “What about the Essenan sorcerer, the younger one?” he asked her as he, too, settled back. “Any new beasts or birds in the menagerie?”

  “Which ones have I told you about?”

  “Which ones do you know about?”

  “Remember that I have never personally seen any of these.” At his shrug of acknowledgement, she recited the list. “Owl, bear, jaguar, condor, and, possibly, wolf.”

  Her father shook his head in amazement. “Any fish?”

  “Not that I have heard. I don’t think we can become fish.”

  “But he is the one who taught you to hold your breath underwater for a long time, right?”

  “He taught Ilene, and Ilene taught me.” It had been the only way. Rossin was wrong, somehow. She did not like being anywhere near him.

  “Has she gotten any better?”

  Tabitha had told him about Ilene’s lack of basic poise and her ungainly presence. “Sadly, no.”

  “And the Aedseli sorcerer? Still the eternal peacemaker?”

  “Still.”

  “Have any of his visions been made public?”

  Tabitha shook her head in frustration. She wanted to know what Arundel had seen. If Arundel, along with Oran, thought that Graegor was destined to “burn the world”, whatever that meant, Tabitha could finally decide how worried she should be about it. “The Circle believes it would be unsuitable to do so.”

  “Maybe he dreamed something the Circle wants to suppress.”

  “Maybe. Although they have never suppressed any of Lord Oran’s visions.”

  He snorted. “That you know about.”

  “True.”

  “Lord Oran’s apprentice, though, does not have such dreams. That is for certain?”

  “That is for certain.” She did not like being anywhere near Borjhul either, but not for the same reason as Rossin. Borjhul seemed always on the edge of sharp, cold savagery. She knew that he still wanted to make a telepathic connection with her, and of course that he wanted her. But the second desire seemed almost mild compared to the first. It was unnerving.

  “Have you learned anything more about him?” her father asked.

  There was something she could mention. “He and the Kroldon princess are up to something.”

  That made her father bark a laugh. “We are all up to something.”

  “She visits Maze Island every few weeks, but not for any obvious reason.”

  “Maybe it’s just to see him.” But then he paused, and his casual tone turned thoughtful. “Do you know if the Telgards have agreed to let the Kroldons reestablish an embassy?”

  “I have not heard.” She had heard something else, though. “Graegor said that Lord Contare thinks that the Kroldons are planning to carry the southern war into Aedseli.”

  This surprised him. “Toland is completely conquered, then?”

  “No. Areas in the far south are still resisting.”

  “Is the Tolander sorcerer involved?”

  “I have not heard that.” But it would not surprise her if Daxod was. His furious blow at Borjhul in the labyrinth had felt as hot as a burning brand against her own magic.

  “Two battlefronts,” her father muttered. “Risky.”

  “Lord Contare thinks …” She paused and took a sip of water, wanting to get this exactly right. “He thinks that an attack on Aedseli might succeed, since they are so crippled by their ruling committees that they would not be able to respond effectively.”

  Her father briefly lifted both of his arms to stretch his back, then leaned forward in his chair and held his mug between his hands. “Well, we are not so hobbled in this war.”

  She did not know if he meant the civil war that the heretics were fomenting or the possibility of an attack on Cuan Searla by the Khenroxans. He was probably more worried about the first. He had already been through the second, twenty-five years ago, and had won. “I will stop the heretics, Father.”

  He gave her a half-smile. “I like your confidence.”

  She was not confident, and furthermore, she had no reason to be. Any confidence she was showing him now was a lie. But it was the sort that made her feel better instead of worse. “Clementa thinks it would be a good idea to change one of the terms of the meeting at the last moment,” she said. “Just one. She says that that will put them off balance and will send the message that I am in charge.”

  “It might,” her father said, but doubtfully. “What does she have in mind?”

  “We were hoping that you would have some ideas.” She had told Clementa that she would not do it unless her father agreed. He had deferred to her in not insisting that she take one of his advisors along, so in return, she wanted to defer to him in almost everything else.

  It was strange, she thought, how easily he seemed to have let go of telling her what to do. She had been so angry when he had said she could not marry Nicolas …

  “The terms are fairly simple as they are,” he was saying. “You can’t change the day, or the place. I suppose you could restrict their numbers, but six is already restrictive, and to insist on even fewer would be petty.”

  “Could we change the hour? Noon instead of midafternoon? It would give them a little less time to prepare.”

  “I am sure they are already thoroughly prepared.”

  She sighed. “Yes, Father.”

  “You need to be careful about letting her guide you.”

  She frowned at him. “Clementa?” Her father had never before given any indication that he had reservations about her friend, on whom Tabitha had come to rely heavily. She noticed things, and thought of things, that Tabitha did not.

  “She is intelligent, but inexperienced,” her father said. “She has the potential to become your spy-master, but she is barely older than you are and did not grow up much differently.”

  “I see.” After a pause, Tabitha asked, “Who is your spy-master?”

  Her father winked. She waited, but then realized that he was not going to tell her. “Father, I really should know.”

  “You really should not.” He put down his mug and stretched his back again, then twisted his shoulders. “Sitting too long,” he murmured.

  “You could let me look at your spine.” He had waved away the suggestion last week, when she had noticed his wincing. “Maga Rollana says that the vertebrae become compressed as we age.”

  “Then what could you do about it, if it’s my advanced age and not injury?”

  It was her turn to roll her eyes. “I did not say advanced age.”

  “Right.” He surveyed the dancing couples and those at the card tables, and when he stood, the bloodhound at his feet instantly roused itself. “I think I need to move around. Shall we rejoin the dancing?”

  Her feet still hurt. She thought of fields of flowers, petals closing, but she doubted it would help. It was not the same kind of pain, and she did not want to work any magic right now. “I would like to rest a bit longer.”

  He bowed. “Then, by your leave, Lady Sorceress?”

  He seldom teased her, and when he did it was insulting, so his half-playful tone was strange. So was his energetic stride as he walked to and down the stairs, his dog trotting along behind him. The thought occurred to Tabitha, horribly, that it might be due to the charm she had given him. There were single ladies here …

  No. No. She refused to consider it, to think about it, to spend one more second on it. She focused on the person who happened to be in her direct line of sight, a grey-haired servingman wearing Cuan Sea
rla’s six-point star on his tunic. She wondered if Sebastene planned to bring more of his own servants here from his manor, or if he would retain Lord Draith’s. It was always an advantage to employ servants who knew the castle and its grounds, but on the other hand, servants of proven loyalty were indispensable to someone starting in a new position. She herself intended to retain some of Natayl’s servants. Not many, but some.

  She wanted the charm to work, of course. Her father needed a son. But she needed to not think about how he would get one.

  Then Pamela flounced up the stairs to the balcony, her gown rustling, and she started talking to Tabitha before she even sat down. Tabitha smiled, listened, and let the younger girl’s happiness fill her mind. It was a perfect way to spend the next little while.

  Sound fell dead here. Tabitha looked around the space and tried to name it. It was not a cave, since it was more than halfway open to the sky. A cresting wave of rock hung over the western side, and above that a pinnacle rose another fifty or a hundred feet. Out from under the overhang, the ground was a dozen paces across and scooped like a shallow bowl, just inclined enough for standing and walking to be uncomfortable anywhere but the middle. The eastern and northern sides were cliffs, not sheer but very steep, and to the south was the way down, a series of rocks close enough together to be steps, but far enough apart to be difficult. At the bottom of these was a pebbled beach big enough to land a rowboat, which was the only way to get across the half-mile of shallow water between this island and the closest spot that a ship could anchor.

  Clouds hung above her, not quite fog, not quite hiding the peak. The air tasted wet, and the afternoon was still and chilly. Yellow and green grasses and bushes clung to the rocks all the way down the slope, and beyond the shore stretched the grey waters of the strait. If Tabitha looked northeast, she could see the hills of Searla Isle in the middle distance, but Cuan Searla itself was on its other side. She could not see her ship anywhere. Captain Flint had promised her he would move it to a cove on the other side of the island, both to keep the heretics from seeing it and to keep the sailors in the dark about her purpose here. They had slipped away on the last of the fading wind.

  No one lived on this island but a few isolated men tending sheep and goats. Her father had suggested it for the meeting with the heretics, and one of his hunters had brought Clementa here, supposedly to look for a rare herb that she insisted could be found on the heights. The space Tabitha now stood within seemed … purposeful. Like people had shaped it, somehow, although she could not see any evidence of cutting or building. It had needed clearing to make it suitable, and when they had arrived, she and Isabelle had moved the loose stones and gnawed animal bones to the northern edge and dumped them over the side. Clementa had lit the two smokeless lamps that she had placed at the back of the alcove created by the overhanging rock. Besides the lamps, they had brought three stiff, leather-bound cushions, which Clementa was now placing in a row just where the ground began to slope. She nudged the middle cushion forward a handspan, then turned to gesture to Tabitha.

  Tabitha nodded and sat down cross-legged on the cushion, spreading the billowing skirt of her dark blue cloak wide to cover her legs and feet. Carrying chairs up here, even with telekinesis, was not feasible, and it would be difficult to keep them balanced on this uneven ground. But sitting on the bare rock would be both uncomfortable and undignified. The cushion was a reasonable compromise. It was stuffed tightly with hay and did not sink far under her weight. If she kept her back straight, her gloved hands resting on her knees, and her entire body very calm and still, she would look wise and powerful. Caves and mountaintops were associated with magic and danger in bedtime stories, after all.

  “Boat,” Isabelle sent.

  Tabitha scrambled to her feet, and she and Clementa joined Isabelle at a flat boulder that sat at the top of the eastern slope. Isabelle pointed toward Searla Isle’s headland and then pulled the spyglass from its case. Tabitha could see a shape out there, but she did not try to extend her sight toward it. She had tried to do that several times on Maze Island, at both Clementa’s and Graegor’s urging, but had always failed. The spyglass revealed a big rowboat with three oars on each side, and they came around the headland at a pace Tabitha knew from experience to be infuriatingly slow.

  “We have at least an hour,” Isabelle judged after Tabitha had given her the spyglass and she had made a study of the boat. Her dark hair was bound back in a braid so tight that it stretched the skin at her temples and made her nose look even bigger. Like Tabitha and Clementa, she wore her cloak fastened all the way to the chin, with Thendalia’s raindrop badge against her right shoulder. For the meeting, she and Clementa would drape their deeply cowled hoods over their heads to shadow their faces. It would look mysterious, and would keep the heretics from ever recognizing them later. Tabitha herself wore her hair in braids set with diamond pins into a coil at the top of her head, like a crown.

  Marjorie had insisted on doing Tabitha’s hair herself, and she had not lost her talent for it, despite her fragile-looking fingers. Clementa had not wanted Marjorie to be among those who knew what they were doing today, but Isabelle and Beatris had sided with Tabitha. “She is loyal,” Beatris had told Clementa firmly, “in a way none of the rest of us can be. Tabitha rescued her, twice. Marjorie actually heard her voice in her mind. It gave her hope again.”

  Clementa had been swayed by those words. But those same words had left Tabitha feeling that she did not deserve Marjorie’s friendship. She was secretly relieved that Marjorie had not asked to come to Maze Island with her, and instead wanted to stay with Beatris and Sebastene. Beatris’s will was easily as strong as the Elder Mother’s, and she had assured Tabitha that Marjorie would not fall under the cloister’s influence again.

  The rowboat stopped for a few moments, and with the spyglass, Tabitha saw the men inside changing seats. “If they all take turns at the oars, they will be here more quickly,” Clementa sent. “We should set the wards.”

  The wards were only for effect. The three of them obviously did not need to know if someone had crossed the wards, or who it was, or when, or anything else that could be known from what was effectively a magi tripwire. But some non-magi could sense wards and found them vaguely disturbing. Indeed, when Tabitha had asked her friends to pass through a warded doorway to test the spell, Beatris and Pamela had felt nothing, but Marjorie had shivered, though she could not explain why. If any of the heretics were similarly sensitive, it could put them off balance, which was an advantage for Tabitha.

  Clementa placed a series of thaumat’argent pebbles in a circle around the edge of the bowl-shaped space, each lying a few feet from the next in line and pressed firmly enough to the ground or in cracks in the rock to stay in place if trod upon. Then the three of them followed each other around the circle, speaking the simple phrase of warding aloud and in each other’s minds: “See the men who pass. Hear the men who pass. Touch the men who pass. Resist the men who pass. See the men who pass …”

  Tabitha knew that most wards could not actively “resist” or stop anyone or anything. But Clementa had told her that this language strengthened the imprint of the ward against whoever crossed it, and their experiments back at the castle had proven her right. Tabitha intended to confront Magus Uchsin with this little piece of information, as something she should have learned from him. He would have an excuse, since he always did.

  As she paced and chanted, her thoughts returned to her father, waiting for the outcome. In a last effort to put himself as close to the meeting as possible, he had suggested that one of her magi stay in Cuan Searla with him so that messages could be relayed back and forth. Tabitha wished he had thought to make that request before she had left Maze Island, when she could have invited Velinda or Attarine or both of them to accompany her. Now it was too late. She needed both Clementa and Isabelle with her during this meeting, and not just for the visual symmetry of one maga at her right hand and another at her left. Clementa had logic, a
nd Isabelle had instincts. They needed to see, hear, and feel what was happening, in person, and neither of them was willing to relinquish that. Tabitha valued her father’s wisdom, but this was her negotiation, not his, and he would have to trust that she would stick to the script they had all agreed upon.

  Unexpectedly, she felt the spell catch, like the prick of a knife at the back of her neck. They had not walked the circle even five times yet. Having all three of them here had made it easier. Tabitha smiled at her friends in appreciation as they joined each other at the boulder on the eastern rim again to watch the progress of the rowboat.

  They were careful now to stand still enough, and far enough back, that their forms would blend into the rocks if someone on the rowboat looked up here, even with a spyglass. No one with extended vision would be on the boat, since the heretics were not allowed to have magi among them. Tabitha had been adamant on that point, refusing their request to reconsider. The spear that had stabbed her in the fox-den was a memory she would not soon banish. The heretics’ next letter had not argued further, proving that they were willing to concede that for a chance to talk to her.

  To her. She was not useless, no matter what Natayl thought. She was strong, like Iseult, and she would end this threat to her kingdom. She had influence, and would use it. She had taken no oaths, and did not need to stand aside. She was right to do it.

  The cold spikes were shooting up her spine because of how important this was. Anyone would be nervous about this. Even her father.

  The boat slowly drew closer. But before Tabitha could count individual passengers and rowers from the mass of dark cloaks, Clementa tugged her away from the boulder. Isabelle moved across the space to the side of the overhang that met the stairs, and took a position there where she could watch the heretics land. Tabitha and Clementa went to the row of cushions, but Tabitha could not sit down yet. She paced a tiny circle while Clementa stood next to one of the lamps and reviewed her notes from a little handbook, though she had already committed them to memory.