“Welcome home, Father,” said Annu, reaching to take his cloak.
“I’ve kept your supper warm, love.” Taya smiled at him from where she sat beside the fire, nursing their son.
A feeling of commingled horror and joy washed over Jareth and he stumbled, suddenly dizzy. Annu was there to steady him, tall and strong and slim, concern on her pretty face.
“Father? Are you well? Come sit beside the fire.”
She was alive. They were all alive.
The Tiger had been wrong. They could be brought back…they had been brought back….
He stared down at his daughter, then abruptly reached to fold her into his arms.
The sounds of merrymaking seemed to assault Kevla’s ears after the silence of the wintry land. Colors and sounds converged on her. She closed her eyes for a moment and covered her ears, dazed and shocked, trying to determine where she was, what was going on.
She opened her eyes to stare at the low, carved table all but groaning with the weight of the glorious feast that seemed to stretch as far as the eye could see. All her favorite foods were here—olives, dates, roasted fowls and meats, pitchers of water with sliced fruit floating in them. She was suddenly ravenous. She had gone for so long eating nothing but grains and stews that she could not even imagine where to begin.
“Welcome home, daughter,” said her father, seated on her right. He looked relaxed and smiling.
“My beloved, I have missed you so,” came a voice on her left.
He was clad in his most formal attire, and the lavishly embroidered rhia molded attractively to his slim but strong frame. The kerchief that wrapped his head did not hide one or two tendrils of soft, curling black hair. His full lips were parted in a smile of delight, and while his deportment was perfect, his brown eyes glowed with love. He reached and touched her face.
“It can all be all right, now,” Jashemi said tenderly. “You don’t have to choose this time. Tell me you love me. Tell me you have not forgotten what we were to one another. We can have everything here.”
Annu’s slim frame was warm and strong as Jareth clasped her. He buried his face in her neck, kissing her soft skin as he had done when she was a baby.
But there was another he needed to see, to hold, to kiss, and with a final squeeze he released his daughter. Turning, he stumbled the few feet forward and fell to his knees in front of his wife. He buried his head in her lap.
“You’re alive,” he said, his voice muffled.
Taya ran her fingers through his long, tangled hair and laughed softly. “Of course I am.”
He lifted his head and gazed into her blue eyes, the color of sky in summer. “I thought…But no. It must have been a dream.”
She stroked his cheek, and suddenly he was clean-shaven, his skin tingling from her familiar, beloved touch. “No more bad dreams,” Taya whispered, handing the infant to Annu and reaching for her husband. “Not here. Not anymore.”
Kevla was confused. She had faced this before. She had made her choice, how she would hold him in her heart. He reached and snared an olive, and without thinking she opened her mouth to receive the offering. Moisture flooded her mouth as she anticipated the briny tang.
He placed it on her tongue. Kevla felt a stab of shock. Nothing. The olive tasted like…nothing. There wasn’t even a pit.
Instinctively, she spat out the tasteless morsel. Something was wrong. Something was very wrong.
“You’re not him,” she told Jashemi flatly.
His beautiful face furrowed in puzzlement. “But I am. Let me kiss you, my love. It will come back to you.”
He leaned forward as if to kiss her, but as he moved toward her, she drew back with a gasp.
She couldn’t scent him.
All of her memories of Jashemi were tactile, sensual. The feel of his smooth skin; the taste of his lips; the musical sound of his voice and, most powerfully, his own unique scent. He rubbed fragrant oils into his skin every day to keep it moist and supple in the dry heat, as was the practice among the leaders of a great House. She had come to associate the warm, spicy smell with the man she had loved on so many different levels. A moment before, the olive had had no taste; and now, Jashemi had no scent.
But oh, it looked like him.
She pulled away, furious. She recognized this scenario. The Emperor had tried to deceive her with it once before, in a dream-state, and if it had not been for the Dragon awakening her with fire, she would have succumbed. But he would not succeed this time. Kevla realized that even if she had been fooled by the illusion, it would not—could not—have lasted. She had made her peace with Jashemi-kha-Tahmu, her brother and Lorekeeper and soul and dearest friend. She had chosen to love him in this way, not in a physical, erotic way, and she knew the passion that the master of this illusion wanted to draw from her would not have blossomed. He could have succeeded in tricking her a few weeks ago, when she was lonely and broken and vulnerable.
But not anymore.
She bit back her rage, for it was not directed at the subject of the illusion. She touched Jashemi one last time, indulging herself in a final, bittersweet brush of the lie. He looked puzzled and hurt. She couldn’t bear to see him like that, even if he wasn’t real, so she rose to her feet, planted her hands on her hips and cried loudly, “I see through this, Emperor! You do not fool me!”
I see through this, Emperor. You do not fool me.
Jareth blinked. The words, spoken by a voice he somehow knew, seemed to float toward him.
His wife’s face was only inches away. Her lips parted, inviting him to kiss her again.
“Taya,” he whispered. “Oh, gods. Taya, it wasn’t a dream. You’re dead. I saw you…I touched you. You were cold and hard under my fingers. You can’t possibly be here.”
“Of course I can,” his wife insisted, and he wanted so much to believe her. But there was something wrong, something…off balance. He couldn’t smell her, couldn’t taste her when he kissed her. He would have given anything to ignore the awareness that now flooded him, but Kevla’s words pulled him back from the pleasant illusion into his reality of winter, ice, lost powers and lost love.
Her hands reached for him, and now they seemed too eager, too cloying, and he recoiled.
“She’s dead,” Jareth cried, getting to his feet and looking wildly around for the callous being that had perpetrated the awful deception. “She’s not here. She’s dead!”
Kevla heard Jareth’s voice, raw with grief, and her own heart ached in sympathy. She, at least, knew that Jashemi would be with her forever; he was her soul. But Jareth had yet to acknowledge his loss fully, and she was furious at the Emperor for toying with him so.
Ignoring the pleas from the illusory Jashemi who was still trying to coax her back into a realm of falsehood, Kevla cried, “I warned you once before, you will never use my love for him against me. You can’t give him back to me because he’s never really left me and he never will. Stop this foolishness and show yourself!”
The illusion faded. Kevla found herself standing next to Jareth in an enormous formal hall of ice. There was, of course, no fire to light it, but light was coming in from some source. Kevla suspected that the hall alone was half as large as the entire House of Four Waters. It cried out for decoration, for feasting, for huskaas and songs and a crowd of people, but it was completely empty save for a raised area at the far end.
On the dais was a throne, carved from ice. And upon the throne was a woman as white as that throne. White hair, white skin, white lips, closed white eyes. She didn’t look real; she looked like one of the stone statues Kevla had seen in her father’s gardens. Was this the Ice Maiden of song and story? A carved image made of ice, nothing more?
“Approach,” the Emperor ordered.
Kevla looked over at Jareth. His eyes were bloodshot, his skin was pale, and he was shaking. He looked again like the wild man who had accosted her in the woods, not like the man she was coming to trust and respect. Impulsively, Kevla reached for his hand.
He started to jerk it back, but then he met her gaze and squeezed her hand.
Her mind went back to the discussion they had had earlier. If she really is ice, then I can destroy her.
“Now,” she whispered, hoping he understood her. Slowly, he nodded.
And Kevla attacked.
35
Kevla summoned every ounce of strength she possessed, and fire exploded from her fingers to hurtle toward the Ice Maiden.
The Maiden never moved. Instead, a wall of ice suddenly materialized in front of her. The two balls of fire Kevla had hurled struck the walls and while the ice was vaporized instantly, the Maiden remained unharmed.
Beside Kevla, Jareth cried out. She spared him a quick glance and saw that the ice around his feet was churning as if it was water. Before she could do anything, it had splashed over Jareth’s feet, chaining him to the floor, and was beginning to climb slowly up his legs. He bent and chipped at it with his dagger, and Kevla saw the blade snap. The ice remained solid.
She started to dive toward him, to put her hands on his ice-encased boots and free him. With no warning, she slammed into a sudden wall of ice that erupted between her and Jareth. Clear as glass, the ice was as hard as stone, and Kevla grunted in pain as she cracked her cheek against it. She staggered back, bumping into a second wall of ice…and a third, and a fourth, all as thick as her hand. She realized she was now completely enclosed. Kevla reached out a hand, summoned her waning strength. The ice melted slightly. As she attempted to free herself, Jareth roared in anger, and she saw the ice had crept upward to midcalf.
“Jareth!” she screamed. He glanced wildly at her. Again she pressed a hand to the ice, and again it melted somewhat. But this time, she saw the ice jump upward along Jareth’s legs to his knees. Every time she tried to free herself from her cage, the ice moved farther up Jareth’s legs. She could liberate herself—but she would doom Jareth.
“You could have made this pleasant for yourselves,” the voice of the Emperor declared. “I tried to give you a place you would enjoy. People you loved. But you rejected that.”
“It was all a lie!” Jareth cried, his voice breaking with his rage.
“Would it not have been a more pleasant way to pass your days than standing here, enclosed by the Maiden’s ice?” the Emperor countered.
“What do you want from us?” Kevla screamed, pounding impotently against the wall of ice.
“I would think it would be obvious—to stop you, in any way I can. However you spend the rest of your lives, it matters not to me. My earlier offering would have been much easier on you.”
Kevla blinked back tears of rage. Weeping, even with anger, would not serve her now. She looked at Jareth, still struggling to free himself; at the Ice Maiden, seated as if carved of ice herself, upon her throne.
Was the Maiden even real, or was this just the Emperor playing with them again? And if she was real, was she his ally, or his puppet? Was there a way to reach her? Again she recalled the last lines of the third song in the cycle: Remember what drove me to be what I am, all that I wanted was love from one man.
“Maiden!” Kevla called. “Maiden, I would speak with you!”
The Emperor laughed, and Kevla’s skin erupted in gooseflesh as the sound echoed in the vast chamber.
“She can’t hear you,” he said in that chilling, disembodied voice that came from everywhere and nowhere. “She is lost in her dreaming, reliving the pain of her tragic life.”
The words should have been spoken with compassion, but they were mocking. He felt no sympathy for the Ice Maiden’s story of heartbreak and vengeance. Kevla ignored him.
“Maiden!” Kevla cried again. “Sister, you suffer. I know this. I know the stories. Tell me of your pain!”
Nothing. Then, Kevla saw it: the Maiden blinked. She was alive…at least, as alive as she could be, made of ice as she was….
“Maiden!” Kevla called again, heartened by the movement. “Speak to me. I would hear your story from your own lips.”
“You waste breath, Flame Dancer,” said the Emperor, but Kevla thought she detected a faint note of worry in the arrogant voice. She waited, barely breathing. She was stalling for time, time in which to think of something, anything, to save herself and Jareth.
The Maiden’s lips turned a deep wine-red. She began to speak.
“My story’s an old one—a poor country maid, I loved a young man, and that love was betrayed—”
Her voice was like bells, like a kyndela, silvery and pure, but frighteningly devoid of emotion.
Out of the corner of her eye, Kevla saw Jareth stop struggling. He stood, swaying a little because he could not move his feet to adjust his balance, and stared at the awakening Maiden as she began to speak. Kevla’s heart sank. Of course; Jareth was a man. And men were “caught like flies” by the Ice Maiden’s charms. Kevla could count on no more aid from that quarter.
“Stop!” Kevla cried, and the Ice Maiden halted in midrecitation. Her eyes narrowed, and Kevla saw them taking on hue, becoming blue. And was her hair more golden now than white?
“That’s a song made up by the huskaas,” Kevla continued, speaking urgently. “I’ve heard it. That’s not what I want to hear. I want to hear your story from you. Speak to me, my sister. Tell me your pain.”
Slowly, the beautiful, white hands twitched, and the Maiden got stiffly to her feet. Yes, her hair was definitely yellow now, starting to take on a sunlight-gold color.
“Sister,” the Maiden said, as if tasting the word in her mouth. “Sister. Yes. You are a woman, as I am a woman. And we suffer. Yes, we suffer.”
Hope surged in Kevla’s heart. “Tell me,” she urged. “Tell me everything.”
The Maiden slowly stepped down from her throne as she spoke. With each step she took toward Kevla, she seemed to become more alive. Color began to fill her cheeks, her face, her hands, and her movements became more fluid.
“He was a huskaa, from another village,” the Maiden said. “He played so beautifully, and he was so beautiful himself. I fell in love with him, and we stole away together on that warm midsummer’s evening. He lay with me; he took my maidenhead, and then he laughed. He laughed!”
Her expression changed. The red mouth twisted, and tears filled the blue eyes. Rage and pain warred on a face that was suddenly a battleground of emotions. Kevla noticed that the Emperor, so talkative before, was now conspicuously silent. Why?
Kevla returned her attention to the image of the beautiful young woman approaching them. She was lovely, Kevla had to admit. Tall, slender, pale, except for those red, red lips and golden hair. Tears slipped down her face. They froze as they traveled, dropping off the edges of her cheeks to fall to the floor as perfect little crystals.
“I am sorry,” Kevla said sincerely. Whatever the Maiden had done, she had been wronged first. She had been seduced and abandoned. “What was his name?”
The Maiden stopped dead in her tracks. Puzzlement filled her blue eyes. “His name?”
“Yes, of course,” Kevla continued. “His name.”
“I—I don’t—”
“Do not answer her!”
The Emperor’s voice was both commanding and alarmed, and Kevla froze, barely breathing.
“Who dares speak so to me?” cried the Maiden. She raised an imperious hand and the men who had stood so rigidly at attention outside her fortress now rushed inside. “There is someone in the castle,” she told them. “Find him. Kill him.” They scattered to obey, ducking into doors that opened at the end of the hall.
Kevla couldn’t believe her luck. She had thought the Ice Maiden an ally of the Emperor, or perhaps a tool. Perhaps she still was, but if so, she was ignorant of the alliance. She seemed genuinely offended that anyone would trespass in her hall.
“I am not here in flesh, but in spirit only,” the Emperor said. He was still a disembodied voice. And this time, the voice was soothing. “The fire-woman is your enemy. She tried to attack you! I am a friend, Maiden, who—”
&nbs
p; “A friend?” She laughed harshly. “No man is my friend.”
“But I am not a man.” The voice had shifted, had become soft, feminine. But the Ice Maiden, as animated and passionate now as she had been immobile when they had first entered her hall, was not so easily fooled.
“You are a man indeed,” she snapped, “for you fall into deception at once. I will hear you no more, spirit. And I will answer the fire-maiden’s question!” The Maiden again turned her attention on Kevla, and again, looked confused.
“I don’t remember his name,” she said, stunned by the admission.
“But you must,” said Kevla. “Every woman remembers her first love. And since he devastated you with his abandonment, his name must be forever written in your heart.”
“You have no heart,” said the Emperor, his voice again masculine. “You have only ice in your breast.”
“I have only ice in my…” repeated the Maiden, then shook her head angrily. “No! I will not listen to you!”
“You will listen to me! I made you and you will do what I say!”
And suddenly Kevla realized what was going on. The Emperor had magics the like of which she had never heard of. He had the skill to create realistic images of Jashemi and her father, images so accurate that if he hadn’t slipped up on the subtle details of scents and tastes, Kevla would have believed them utterly. Judging from Jareth’s stricken cries and haggard expression, he, too, had been deceived by the illusions the Emperor had wrought.
Now Kevla was certain that the Ice Maiden was something similar, except the Emperor had gone even farther with her. He had created her based on the old legends and songs, right down to the details of wine-red lips and hair like the sun. The Maiden knew the songs, but she couldn’t remember the name of the man who had so devastated her. And apparently, she had no memory of the Emperor, either. Before the Emperor could again attempt to stop the conversation, Kevla hurled more questions at the Maiden.
In Stone's Clasp Page 30
