The snow thickened and deepened by the time that they had passed the seventh marker from the Palace and they were well into the forests Herne maintained, his lands on which he permitted others to ride and hunt, or not, at his whim. Herne, Gaston knew, was in the Palace, but his gamekeepers might be patrolling the road, or might not on such a foul night—they’d liever keep to their fires and ales. The snow was less wet than it had been in the city, the flakes clumps of white crystals, hexagonal colonies covering the road and black trees with a flawless coat hiding color and irregularity.
He glanced from side to side as he went, out of habit, and it was this habit which caused him to register a standing stone he knew well, the Moonstone of the Wood, which was also a Gate to the Road and a Nexus itself under some conditions. Not tonight’s; the Moonstone had a white side windward and a heightening cap. The crescent graven into its blackness was half-limned with snow. Gaston’s eyes looked at the stone in his swaying light, followed the light to his left to look there, and then snapped back to the right.
Solario, feeling his master’s knees close on him, picked up his pace; Gaston drew on the reins, though, having tensed with startlement.
He could not have seen what he thought he saw, yet—it would do no harm to be sure.
A single twitch and leg-pressure set Solario turning carefully in the road. He walked the horse back to the stone and pulled up.
It was really there, not an illusion made of a fallen branch and the light and snow. The Prince frowned, dismounting. An arm, white under white, a bulk of body behind it heaped at the foot of the stone, all shrouded with the soft cold snow: and Gaston thought, in the brief time after he recognized it as he dismounted, of certain sorcerous practices—necromancies and worse—and his lip curled in revulsion.
No blood in the white of the snow. The lantern-light circled the arm, the body—the arm outstretched, hand open in supplication or offering, clad in a whitish lace-trimmed wet sleeve with a deep red sleeve over it.
He brushed snow from the body and cried, “No!”
His niece lay there, white as the snow that dropped on her from indifferent clouds.
Gaston, clenching his jaw, set the lantern down and brushed more snow away, looking for a wound, a bloodstain, a mark of violence. Nothing. Something dark was wound about her throat; he picked at it and found a long leaf of kelp, freezing and stiffening. Her eyes were closed; her hair was wet and frozen into thick strands around her face— Her face. It was nearly colorless, except for a fresh bruise on her left cheek. In her expression was no sign of distress; she seemed to sleep.
Gaston lifted her from the ground. There was little snow beneath her, mostly bare russet leaves. So she’d lain long so. Still flexible; despite the cold, no rigor. Still—
He frowned and laid his head on her chest, his hand at her throat. Still alive. Cold, her clothes full-soaked and freezing like her rimed hair into robes of solid ice, but she was alive.
“What devil hath cast thee here, let him have cause to rue it,” whispered Gaston to unhearing Freia. He unfastened his cloak and wrapped her in it quickly after brushing away all he could of the snow, picked up the lantern, and considered what to do.
He could return to the Palace. Yet that seemed unwise. She was not here of her free will, surely. The politics and tension between Prospero and the rest had flared. Someone had done something—who or what Gaston didn’t know, but it had probably been someone in the Palace or thereabouts, since that was where she had been. Therefore to return to the Palace might be folly: might imperil her afresh for reasons unknown, might waste an opportunity to find the guilty party later. Not the Palace.
But Gaston knew also that although he was indifferent, even impervious, to the winter, she would be dead of exposure in a very short time. She needed to be warmed, to be dried and revived. Inns there were none in this area, only Herne’s keepers’ cottages—
And a hunting-lodge. It was not that Gaston did not trust his brother Herne; he would have done so had no other chance presented itself. But there was an Imperial hunting-lodge not far from here, off the road, and it would have firewood, some food, and the means of drying her off and thawing her out.
Juggling lantern, lady, and reins, he got mounted again and urged Solario to a hurried canter. The lodge was on a track that ran northwest from the road. Gaston rode on that side and huddled Freia against him, and she never stirred save for the lame flutter of her heart.
Prospero watched the fire in Dewar’s rooms from the terrace below, his arms folded. There were other spectators, but they’d drawn away from him and he stood alone in the crowd. Rumors and speculations were invented and embellished in his hearing, most of them involving the sorcerer’s deserved demise at the Emperor’s hand.
Avril, Prospero thought disgustedly, could not conjure an idiot-light to kindle a lamp, let alone command a Salamander of the potency required to gut the rooms in so brief a time. The creature was confined, obviously to Prospero but not so to the fire-fighting Palace Guard and servants, who were frantically wetting down neighboring chambers and throwing futile water on the flames trailing from the roaring, hissing Salamander as it devoured the place corner by corner, wall by wall.
Dewar would be gone, Prospero knew. And he had covered his tracks thoroughly, so thoroughly that no sorcerer could follow him.
With a window-shattering implosion, the Salamander departed and the conflagration vanished.
The crowd gasped and shrieked at the sudden darkness and silence.
Prospero pushed through the gawking gaggle and started toward his apartment to tell Odile. The inescapable conclusion was that Dewar had left because his mother was here. Prospero had told him of her but three hours past. It angered him that the boy hadn’t even spoken with her. Prospero had, at length, when he’d visited her to enquire about her son, and on later reflection he had become convinced that she meant Dewar no harm. Perhaps a scolding, a taste of well-earned guilt and shame, but no real injury. She was his mother, Prospero thought; she wouldn’t be capable of harming her own child so, though he had bruised her pride and sentiment. A mother’s nature was forgiving, not destructive.
Dewar, gone; Freia … gone. Prospero stopped at the porch of a side door and leaned on it in the snowy darkness. Freia, gone, dead. Miranda, dead. Gonzalo, beloved friend, a half-dead wreck from the King’s and then the Emperor’s disfavor, which had starved him of the life the Well would have given him, and bereft now of his bright daughter. Prospero closed his eyes. If only Miranda had not ridden, O noble folly, O brave beloved woman, to tell Prospero to guard his back. A piece of him had been living for her, and it was dead now, withered after years of quiet waiting for the glance of her eye, the touch of her hand. Most radiant Miranda, dead, brutally killed by worthless Golias. She would have done such good for Freia, who had thrashed and fought what life had brought until it exhausted her.
Suicide. Prospero shuddered, and the empty boat floated before his mind’s eye. He hadn’t meant to lose his patience. He had never struck her before, hadn’t meant to strike her then. She had barged in, damn it, he had been talking most privily with Odile, and Freia had stormed in demanding notice—he’d cursed her and told her to get out. He’d bid her leave him, scolded her importunity, said he would see her in his time, not hers, and struck her, knocked her against the door; she’d gone swift enough, her hand on her cheek, and left him, taken herself away to where he would never find her until indeed his time had come.
His remembered anger sickened him; it swirled darkly like the ocean in Dewar’s small Mirror of Visions, blurring and swallowing Freia. She’d never liked the sea, mistrusted water so unbounded. Rivers, ponds, smaller lakes, well enough and she would paddle and swim as needed. But not the sea, the churning sea; not until tonight when she desired its wide and indifferent embrace. He hoped they’d never find her body, swollen and bitten; O Well of Fire, he prayed, let her be swept away to dissolve into the deep, become a part of the sea.
She was so
damnably impatient. She’d no head for politics, could not see anything here beyond its being alien, not home. And at home she had fussed at him about every blade of grass he cut, every alteration great or small. She’d no vision of the morrow, he thought, she knew only present and past and understood naught of laying groundwork for a future. He had tried to make her see that, and she had refused to accept it. And now she was out of the present, flowing away from him into the past, soon to be naught but a small trunk of worn clothes, her bows and arrows carefully kept, her exercise-books already palimpsests overwritten, a name black-bordered in exhaustive genealogies of the descendants of Primas. Died without issue.
And himself? he asked.
Still there was Dewar, gone into a sorcerer’s retreat in some lair, and the Well’s truth was that Pheyarcet nowadays had a rich assortment of nooks and bywaters where a sorcerer could bide unnoticed—
“Prospero.”
He opened his eyes.
“A new career as a statue?” Odile asked, and with her black-feathered fan she brushed at the snow on his shoulders.
“Nay, madame, quick flesh will not stiffen sufficiently for such a purpose,” he replied. “What dost thou here?”
“Seeking thee, and that done, must find some other game. What alarum was raised so?”
“ ’Twas Dewar, set afire his apartment and no doubt hours gone by now. The Salamander’s departed; ’twas a fine large fellow.”
“Pity, I should have liked to see it. So hath he mastered Elementals,” she added, half to herself.
“At least the Salamander that scoured his rooms. More I cannot say, not knowing. ’Tis cold to stay without, madame; though statuary care not, folk of flesh such as we freeze un-aesthetically. Let’s within.”
“Indeed.”
He opened the door, bowed her in; Odile’s gown rustled and her scent set him tingling. They walked along a narrow tiled hall together; it was dim, lit by a few oil-lamps along its length but more by the light from the open door at its end. After a few steps he said, “I’ll Summon Fulgens and ask what tidings. Mayhap they’ve found some sign of my daughter.”
“Thy offspring are a destructive brace of curs, my lord; it grieves me to see them tear thee so.”
“It grieveth me also, and I know no remedy but to have no children,” Prospero said bitterly, “and my own remedy is applied to me, so must I be cured of grief.”
Avril the Emperor had taken to locking things, unable to seal them as his sire Panurgus had. With a poniard Gaston broke the lock on the lodge’s door and carried Freia in and up to a small chamber. He put her on the bed, heaped blankets from a chest over her, and ran down for a first armload of wood. Haste, haste, he thought, though if she’d lived so long it seemed impossible for her to die now that succor was at hand.
He had a fine blaze going in seconds after laying the wood—fires always burned for Gaston, be the fuel ever so wet or icy—and brought up more logs in rapid relays. Hot liquid, he thought; the kitchen was lean, but he set a black three-legged pot at the fire melting snow for water and a smaller one on the other side to heat a bottle of wine fortified with spices and honey.
Then he looked at Freia again. Ice-white, ice-still: Gaston considered treatments for exposure and decided that the case was extreme; maidenly modesty must be sacrificed for warmth. He took the blankets off her and opened his cloak, clasped her stony hands in his for an instant apologetically, and began stripping the wet, ice-starched red dress and other garments from her. Her shoes were gone already.
Sand fell from her clothes, grit caught in pockets and pleats and folds sifting onto the cloak and floor, and small strands and fronds of seaweeds. Gaston sniffed salt and wondered, but hung the clothes over a chair and shook four woollen blankets over her marble-veined body. Not much to do about the hair being so wet now; he put a fold of another blanket around her head to keep that warm. He sat on the edge of the bed, pulled off his boots and dropped them, took off his sword belt and high-collared coat and hung them on the post, and rolled under the blankets with her, putting her near the fire.
It was like hugging a statue of bronze on a midwinter morning. She was breathing, though softly, and still the heart was struggling to move in the cold cavity of her chest. Gaston cradled her against him like a lover, wrapping his body around hers, tucking her head to his breast and bending his face over her. The fire crackled.
When he held himself very still, the whisper of Freia’s breath was audible to him. He closed his eyes, concentrating on it, and willed it stronger as children will snow to fall or sun to shine.
Gaston dozed tensely, alertly, unrestfully. A log falling into coals woke him, and he saw that the fire required fuel. Carefully, he left the bed and covered her again, fed the fire, had a cup of the wine and moved it a little away from the heat, and covered the water-pot. Then he rejoined the pallid, passive lady, pressing her against him again, trying to judge whether she were warmer.
He napped lightly, as before. A gamekeeper might scent the smoke and investigate; he would say, Gaston decided, that his horse had strained a muscle and it was his pleasure to wait out the storm here. That anyone would come was unlikely. He could hear the wind and snow hissing on the windows, in the chimney. After the second feeding of the fire, he embraced Freia again; she was warmer, yes, but not rousing. It was best to revive the victim gradually, he knew from winter campaigns, and with gentle heat: and that was this.
Freia twitched convulsively an hour or so later, as Gaston thought he should feed the fire again. He loosened his hold on her and waited for more signs of life.
“Freia, lass,” he said in her ear, low.
No answer. He checked her pulse. Stronger. Her hands were not so cold; he’d had them in his armpits, hoping she wouldn’t lose fingers.
“Freia,” Gaston murmured again, “lass, wake thee, Freia.”
Her breath caught a little and she made a small sound. Gaston could not see her face; she was deep under the blankets.
“Freia, I hope canst swallow, because thou must drink,” he said, pleased at the sign of life. Gaston slid out of the bed and tucked her in, fed the fire, and prepared a cup of the spiced wine sweetened with honey and thinned with a little of the hot water. He lit a pair of candles and set them on a table by the bed with the cup.
“Here now,” he said encouragingly, and moved the blankets away from her face.
She had acquired an expression: pain. Eyes still closed, her mouth was twisted, her breathing labored.
Gaston touched her lips with the spoon from the honey and they parted. He trickled a little of the syrupy-sweet, hot stuff into her throat. Freia coughed explosively, chokingly, once, gurgled a little, and opened her eyes without focusing.
“Pardon,” he apologized, “but thou must swallow’t.”
“Eh.” Freia closed her eyes again.
“Brave lass. Here.”
She swallowed, working at it.
“Easier, maybe, sitting up.” Gaston pulled a pillow under her head and tried again. It was visibly easier. He smiled and cheered her on in a murmur with each spoonful. The honey would provide nourishment; the wine would warm her.
“Cold,” she breathed after a few minutes.
“Aye. I’m working to warm thee.” He refilled the cup according to the same formula and spooned it into her delicately. Her face was white, too white. She finished the cupful and Gaston saw that she was too tired to take more. However, he had gotten nearly a quarter of a pound of honey into her thus, so she could rest for the nonce while her body fired on it. “I’m sharing bed with thee, Freia. ’Tis warmer so. Th’art too cold.”
She had no objections; she was half-conscious. Gaston arranged them as before and was pleased to feel her pulse stronger and her breathing more definite. He drowsed again, finding no reason to be alert every instant. It was enough to wake a little every quarter of the long winter’s night hours and see how his patient fared.
At regular intervals he rose and fed the fire, and when
he did he would spoon-feed Freia more honey-wine-water. She was stronger each time, but never woke fully.
The storm abated toward morning’s paling; Gaston needed more firewood and fetched it, and went again to the kitchen to search for anything that might have been left behind by the last hunting-party to house here. There were some preserved fruits in whisky, potent evil-smelling things. No meal, cheese, fruit, meat, or other mousable, spoilable food, which was too bad because honey was not really sufficient, he thought, to the task of revitalizing his half-frozen niece. He went back to the stables, saw to it that Solario was comfortable under horse-blankets, shovelled manure and scattered clean straw, and found a barrel of oats he had overlooked in his earlier haste. Solario was pleased by that, and Gaston returned to Freia.
She hadn’t moved; he roused her and made her take more of his improvised restorative, then doffed his coat and boots and curled around her again. Her hair was drying slowly in the blanket. Gaston closed his eyes and napped fitfully.
Fulgens had no news for Prospero. His searchers had not found the rowboat nor had they found any trace of the girl.
“Prospero, the tide runs strong, and the weather is foul. I have recalled the boats searching,” he said stiffly.
“Aye, one’s enough,” Prospero said.
“The water is cold. She’d not have lived above an hour in good weather, and in such a storm—”
“I know. My thanks, Fulgens. And to thy men. I’ve naught to give them but my thanks for’t, parlous labor that such a search is. Surely the sea hath her in its bed tonight.”
Fulgens said, looking away, “Aye. ’Twas fated she’d be wed to water; if not Josquin, then otherwise. So must our affinities destroy us an we let them o’ermaster us—”
“Good brother, sermon me not; I pray you keep such epigrams for sailors’ memorials. My thanks to thee and thy generous hardworking men for their search.”
The Price of Blood and Honor Page 25
