In Stone's Clasp

by Christie Golden

  She kept her eyes on Tahmu, because she sensed who was sitting to her left, and even in this dream state Kevla could not bear to look upon him. She felt his hand, tender and gentle, brush her hair back, felt sweet warm breath on her neck, and closed her eyes. It was a dream, but it was so precious. She never wanted to awaken.

  I have forgotten much, Flame Dancer, her beloved whispered. His lips nuzzled the tender spot where earlobe joined neck. She trembled, but would not open her eyes. Tell me. Tell me—

  She could deny him nothing. She never had been able to, and in this lovely dream that she yet knew was a dream, she parted her lips to tell him what he wanted to know.

  Her eyes flew open in the dream as the table burst into flames. The heat and brightness caused her to cry out, to throw up her hands—

  And Kevla awoke fully to feel the Dragon breathing a sheet of flame upon her. It did not hurt her, for she was flame herself. But she realized with a jolt of terror as she lowered her hands from her face what had happened.

  The Emperor had violated her dreams. He had pretended to be Jashemi, her Lorekeeper, her love, and was trying to get her to reveal everything she knew.

  The Dragon crouched. Kevla seized the pack and scrambled atop her friend’s back, clinging to him as he sprang into the air with more speed than she had ever experienced. Her stomach lurched and she almost lost her grip.

  “We will not stop again until we are clear of the Emperor’s land,” the Dragon cried. “This attack was stronger than the ones before. One more night and he might have you.”

  Kevla was furious. How dare the Emperor use her precious memories of the man she loved like that! She trembled as she clutched the Dragon, but not with fear, not this time. Instead of trying to shield her thoughts, she gathered them together and hurled them like a weapon against the faceless, nameless enemy.

  You will not break me! You will not get what you want from me! And you will never, never again use my love for him against me!

  She summoned fire in her mind; called it into roiling flames and aimed it directly at her attacker. To her own surprise, she felt him recoil, stumble back, withdraw overhastily from her mind.

  Another tried to touch her mind now; another whose mental touch was loving and welcome. Well done, Flame Dancer, came the Dragon’s thoughts. Well done indeed. He will think twice before bothering us again.

  Yet I would still rather not set foot in his lands again, Kevla thought, finding this method of communication easier with the wind whipping her hair and howling around her ears. The Emperor’s realm had seemed so pleasant, so peaceful, yet now she shuddered at the thought of her bare feet on the soil, of searching for the colored stones that represented Jashemi.

  As you wish, the Dragon replied in her mind. But if you decide otherwise, I will set down.

  No, and her own vehemence shocked her. Not if I were dying.

  Wisely, the Dragon did not reply. Kevla settled down on his back, stretching her whole body down on the space between the spinal ridges, and clasped him.

  While she did not sleep, the rest of the trip took on a dreamy, timeless air. The winds died down and eventually only a gentle breeze caressed her body and played with her hair. The Dragon flew steadily, his wings beating a soothing rhythm, and Kevla permitted her mind to drift.

  “Kevla,” said the Dragon. “Look down.”

  Kevla blinked and yawned, aware that the sun was starting to clear the horizon. She obeyed the Dragon’s request, glanced sleepily down—and gasped. The world beneath her was white. The white expanse stretched as far as she could see. The only relief came in the form of dark patches of forest.

  “Snow!” she cried, recalling the Dragon telling her about this water that had turned so cold it had become a new substance entirely. “It must be snow!” Kevla gazed in delight as the rosy colors of dawn transformed the world beneath her.

  “It’s so beautiful,” she breathed. “I’ve never seen anything like it. No, wait,” she corrected herself. “This reminds me of some stones I saw once in the market. They were white and solid, but caught the light as this does when held just so. Oh, Dragon, what is that?”

  She pointed at something that looked like a silver snake twining through the vast expanse of white.

  “I would say it is a river, but—”

  “It is,” the Dragon said, “but it is frozen solid. It is now almost as hard as the stone you mentioned.”

  “This is a marvel,” breathed Kevla. “And look, there are so many trees! But—their leaves are all gone. They look like skeletons,” she said, her voice dropping on the last word.

  She was silent for a minute, drinking it all in. The more she saw of the landscape unfolding beneath her, the more uneasy she became. She thought again of the man she had come here to find. What would he be like? How would she find common ground with someone so inherently different from all she had known?

  “I wonder what kind of people live in such a place?” she murmured. “People who are aware of these seasons, and plan for them. People who know heat and cold and rain and snow, and not the sand and heat and sameness of the desert.”

  The Dragon chuckled, and folded his wings slightly. “You’re about to find out,” he said, and dove.

  The harsh crimson glow that bathed the Emperor’s face was fading, replaced by the gentle orange light from the crackling fire. The advisor to the Emperor glanced from his lord to the black-clad figure who stood behind the Emperor. Gloved hands dug into the Emperor’s shoulders for a moment, then released their grasp.

  The advisor shrank back as his lord emerged from his trance. After two such definitive and humiliating setbacks, he was convinced that the Emperor would be in a black mood.

  Instead, he sighed heavily and reached for a goblet of wine with a hand that trembled. With the other, he grasped the hovering object that had enabled him to have such access to the Flame Dancer. At once, the scarlet object, round at its base and tapered at the tip like the drop of blood it so resembled, settled into his hand, all its magic now quiescent. At the Emperor’s feet, as ever, crouched the ki-lyn. Was it the advisor’s imagination, or did the beautiful, captive beast look pleased?

  “That,” said the Emperor heavily, running his thumb absently over the smooth red surface of the object, “was not the success I had envisioned.” Carefully, he replaced the goblet on the table next to him.

  “Regretful, my lord,” the advisor said, his gaze flickering from the Emperor’s face to where that of the Mage should have been…if he’d had one.

  “I thought I had the chance, when she was here, but…” His voice trailed off and he dangled the fingers of his free hand to stroke the ki-lyn. It tried to duck from his touch, but when the chain about its elegant neck prevented the movement, it endured the caressing.

  “You are not yet as familiar with the tool you are using as you might be, Your Excellency,” said the Mage in the cold voice that made the advisor’s skin crawl. “Give it time.”

  “I am certain that my lord has other plans,” lied the advisor.

  “You would be correct, my old friend,” said the Emperor calmly. “She has gone beyond my direct influence now, that much is true. But I am not without my servants in other lands. Servants who crave what I have to offer, whose minds are molded to my way of thinking.” He looked at his advisor beneath lowered lashes and suddenly laughed. “Come, you expect me to have revealed everything?”

  “If I may speak frankly—yes, my liege,” replied the advisor somewhat testily. “I am after all your advisor. How may I advise you properly if you do not tell me everything?”

  The look was no longer surreptitious. The Emperor stared at him boldly, and inwardly, the advisor quailed. But he stood firm. He did not dare show signs of weakness, not to this ultimate predator. The Emperor respected only strength and power.

  “Those who know too much could pose a threat,” the Emperor said, his voice deceptively mild. “But trust me, old friend.” He dropped his gaze to the object the Mage called th
e Tenacru, staring at his reflection in the glossy surface as if entranced by it.

  “I have allies you cannot imagine. Allies that are bound to me by the most primal of emotions—love and grief. Some allies that don’t even know they are allies.”

  His lips curved in a smile that chilled the advisor. For a moment, the advisor’s gaze flickered to the large, sensitive eyes of the imprisoned ki-lyn, and he read in those limpid depths a reflection of his own fear.

  8

  The white surface seemed to surge to meet them. Despite her trust in the mighty creature, Kevla found her fingers clutching a spiny ridge on the Dragon’s back. She need not have worried; the Dragon came to earth as softly as a feather falling, his landing muffled by this white stuff called snow.

  The Dragon had warned her that the snow was cold to the touch, but Kevla knew that it would not chill her, as it would others. She was always warm, no matter where she was or what she was wearing. It was something that had been granted to her with the onset of her power. Still, she was not prepared for the sensation of the snow on her skin as she slid off the Dragon’s back.

  It was indeed cold, and—“It’s wet!” she yelped accusingly at the Dragon. He threw back his enormous head and laughed. “You did that deliberately!” She was thigh-deep in the white wetness, and the more she tried to brush it off, the wetter it—and she—became.

  “No, I did not do it deliberately,” the Dragon chuckled. “But I confess, it’s amusing to watch you.”

  She eyed him, not pacified by his comment. “It’s fine for you, it barely covers your toes. How am I to walk in this? I thought it was like sand, but instead it turns to water.”

  Water. “I know the people here suffer under this winter you speak of, but to me they seem rich. To have this much water simply lying on the fields and hillside….” Her voice trailed off as she took in the stark beauty. “A khashim would lead many a raid for this treasure.”

  “What is valuable depends on the time and place,” the Dragon said. “Ten thousand gold coins mean nothing to a man starving alone in the wilderness. And water covering every surface does not mean much when everything it covers is dead. The people of this land may never thirst, Kevla, but it is likely that they are cold and hungry.”

  Kevla was becoming used to the heavy wetness of the snow, and now she noticed something else: the profound silence. She had been slogging through the white stuff, her rhia becoming increasingly soaked and heavy, but now she paused, listening. There were no bird calls. The wind did not stir the branches.

  “It’s so quiet,” she said, her voice dropping to a whisper, reluctant to thrust the sound of speech upon this silence. She gasped. “My breath—I can see it!”

  “So now you can breathe smoke, too,” the Dragon joked. She smiled at him, grateful for the little jest.

  The snow bowed down the still-green, needled trees and limned every branch of the skeleton trees. As she stood observing, her breath coming in small white puffs, she felt small, cool pricks on her skin. She looked up, and as the snow kissed her face, she realized that it came from the sky, like the rare rain in Arukan. Kevla bent and scooped up a handful, tasting it, feeling it dissolve on her tongue. She stood in the falling snow, taking in the bowed trees, the dim light and the shadows of the deep forest. The silence seemed to swallow her voice when she spoke.

  “I don’t like it here, Dragon, plentiful water or no. I want to find the other Dancer quickly and move on.”

  “That may be harder than you think,” the Dragon said. “You were able to sense that he was in the North, but thus far, that is all we know. We are in the North, Kevla, and we are discovering that it is a large place indeed.”

  Her spirits sank even lower. “How are we to find him, then?”

  “Try to remember, Kevla.” He looked at her intently. “You’ve done this before. The strongest bonds are between a Dancer, her Lorekeeper, and her Companion animal, because they form a complete whole. But all the Dancers have a connection with one another. Jashemi would have been able to sense the Stone Dancer, to feel him more strongly because he was a Lorekeeper. Such was his duty. But you can do some of that yourself, as can I. You were quite good at it once. Keep trusting in your ability to sense him. Practice reaching out to him. Listen when a little voice says, go this way. The Dancers are unique in this world. Their abilities would be known. Someone will be able to point us in the right direction.”

  The Dragon’s reassurance heartened her somewhat, but even so, the enormity of the task was intimidating. She leaned against a tree trunk. Absently she ran her hands over its white bark with curly, rough patches of a darker hue.

  “This is not Arukan, with its open stretches of desert,” she said. “This is a land with dark forests and hidden places. We will not be able to learn much from the air, Dragon, and if this forest is any indication, you are too large to walk between the trees.”

  He narrowed his golden eyes. “Let us fly, and see what we can see, and feel what we can feel, before you give up.”

  Her eyes flashed. “I’m not giving up!”

  “Good. Because for a moment there, it certainly sounded as if you had.”

  “You know me better than that.”

  His scrutinizing gaze softened. “Indeed I do,” he said. “Come. Climb aboard my back, and let us find the people who dwell in such a harsh place.”

  She was relieved to leave the ground, to be safely in the air once again, away from the wet snow and the dim forest and the eerie silence. Seated atop the Dragon, Kevla wrung out the sodden rhia and with a thought, dried it. They continued on, no longer flying directly north this time. The Dragon flew in a search pattern, lower to the ground, so that they had every opportunity of finding places where people might dwell. Kevla tried to extend her thoughts, to sense the Stone Dancer as the Dragon had told her she could, but all she could feel was an oncoming headache from concentrating so hard.

  She abandoned the attempt and concentrated on scouring the landscape that unfurled beneath her. She realized that she didn’t even know what they were looking for.

  “What kind of dwellings should we be watching for?”

  “What is the greatest resource here?” replied the Dragon, answering one question with another.

  “Snow,” she joked, then added more seriously, “trees. They probably build their shelter out of trees.” Now that she thought about it, she supposed that wood would make an adequate building material, though no one in Arukan had ever done so. No one was rich enough to do so. Not even the Clan of Four Waters could afford to throw away gold on wooden housing when stone was more plentiful and easy to quarry.

  “And if they make their homes out of trees,” she continued, working it out in her mind, “we should look for clearings where it appears that trees have been harvested.”

  The Dragon lowered his right wing and swerved. “I think I saw such a clearing a few leagues to the east.”

  They were flying over open land now, away from the forests and rivers. Within a few moments, Kevla saw small dwellings. As she had surmised, they appeared to be made of wood.

  “There,” she cried, pointing. “Over there. To your left.”

  “I see them,” the Dragon replied. “Let us hope they are in a mood to welcome visitors.”

  The houses were clustered together at the edge of the forest, but the Dragon had been right—there was a large clearing where several small lumps bulged beneath the snow. Probably the trunks of the mighty trees, felled to create the shelters, thought Kevla. She was both nervous and excited as she slid from the Dragon’s back into the snow. But as soon as she approached the first house, she felt hope die inside her.

  The houses were constructed of logs from the white, slender, straight trees Kevla had observed earlier. The timbers had been cut and arranged atop one another so that they interlocked well, and what chinks remained had been stuffed with some kind of daubing material. But now that she was closer, she could see what she hadn’t been able to see from the air—that
the roofs, covered with the bark of the slender white trees and what appeared to be chunks of sod, were in great need of repair. In some areas, they had collapsed.

  No one had dwelt in these houses for a long time. Apprehension building inside her, Kevla drew nearer. The doors, heavy wooden things that bore intricate carvings, had either been left open or had come off completely. Some still had metal locks attached to them. Over time, the snow had intruded inside, an unwelcome guest, to almost completely fill the space.

  Kevla stepped inside and looked around. The snow had drifted deep and high, covering everything. The only light came from the open door and through the slats of the shutters that covered a single, small window. Here and there, shapes swelled, enveloped by snow. Kevla brushed snow from one such lump, her hands finding the hard curve of a small wooden stool. The walls were bare, and the entire place spoke of abandonment and desertion.

  “Well?” the Dragon asked as she emerged.

  “The houses are filled with snow. Perhaps people tired of the harshness of…of winter and traveled south, where it is not so bitter.”

  “A possibility,” agreed the Dragon. “Did you find anything inside?”

  Kevla inhaled swiftly. “Yes. Furniture,” she said softly as the full impact of the realization swept through her. “They left their furniture.”

  She and the Dragon regarded each other. The unspoken question hung between them: If these people had left of their own accord, wouldn’t they have taken their furnishings with them?

  Kevla knew what she had to do. Dreading what she now suspected she’d find, she reentered the house.

  She concentrated on the snow piled so thickly and gave a mental command. Like water slowly receding from the bank of the Nur River, the snow obeyed her, melting and running in warmed rivulets over her feet and out the door. And slowly, inexorably, the horror was revealed to Kevla’s gaze.

  Some of the lumps were indeed furniture, like the stool she had touched. But the others…