Northern Storm ac-2

by Juliet E. McKenna

  Velindre kept walking, face expressionless. She fixed her eyes on the fir forest ahead, dark above the leafless skeletons of the lower slopes.

  ‘Widow Pinder’s eldest, she was telling my Sonille that you’re some wizard woman,’ a voice from behind taunted.

  Sniggers told Velindre that the remaining three idlers from the tavern were trailing a handful of paces behind her unwanted escort.

  ‘Go on, then, show us some magic,’ mocked the man with the Tormalin blood.

  ‘Magic’s not welcome round here.’ The stocky man scowled at her. ‘Is that where you’re headed?’ He pointed up past the ridge of hills sheltering the little village, towards a forbidding range of high peaks. Clouds were gathered just beyond, dark grey and ominous in an otherwise clear blue sky. Higher up, white clouds were spread by the winds into feathery streaks. The grey clouds weren’t moving.

  ‘He asked you a question, lady!’ The Tormalin man darted forward to plant himself solidly in Velindre’s path, hands on his hips.

  Velindre made to step round him. A second stocky man with muddy brown hair appeared from behind to block her way. With the fair-haired man on her other side and the two remaining loafers behind her, she was effectively surrounded.

  ‘Haven’t you got anything better to do with your time?’ she asked with faint derision. ‘Let me pass. My business is none of yours.’

  ‘You tell us what it is and we’ll decide that,’ the fair-haired man said boldly.

  ‘We don’t want no more wizards setting up home hereabouts,’ growled one of the pair behind her. ‘You’ve seen a wizard hereabouts?’ Velindre turned around, surprising a flare of panic in the thin-faced speaker’s eyes.

  ‘That’s a wizard’s work, isn’t it?’ He waved a shaky hand at the distant leaden cloudscape before hastily snatching it back. ‘There’s valleys up there no one’s got near in years.’

  ‘Everyone knows it’s magic keeping us out.’ The Tormalin man scowled. ‘Even if the wizard hides himself away up there.’

  ‘Find themselves caught up in tangles of plants knotting themselves, people do,’ the brown-haired man insisted, ‘or get turned around so often they find themselves back where they started.’

  ‘Life’s hard up here.’ The thin man’s companion added his voice to the debate. The scars on his face attested to “his words. ‘We work hard for our furs and our tin and it’s share and share alike. We don’t close off the land with magic and hoard it all for ourselves.’

  With the slope of the track added to her already greater height, Velindre looked down on him with undisguised disdain. ‘I assure you, I have no interest in furs or tin.’

  ‘What’s in those valleys?’ The fair-haired man stepped closer, his shoulder nudging her arm, belligerence curdling his face. ‘Come to share the spoils with that wizard, have you?’

  ‘Is it gold?’ the brown-haired man asked hopefully.

  ‘Magic or not, you must need some help. We could lend a hand.’

  ‘As long as we’re fairly paid,’ warned the fair-haired man.

  an.

  ‘Let’s say whoever’s up in those hills wants your help.’ The Tormalin man laid a heavy hand on Velindre’s shoulder. ‘Then he can pay us for your passage through our territory, can’t he?’

  ‘You’ve never actually seen a wizard, have you?’ Velindre looked the Tormalin man in the eye before glancing at his hand, amused. Not this mysterious mage you say lives beneath those clouds nor any real wizard.’

  ‘What’s that to you?’ The brown-haired man looked uncertainly at the man with the scars, who glanced uneasily at his hatchet-faced friend.

  ‘Seen plenty of fools up from the south who think it’s easy pickings up here.’ The fair-haired man tried to seize her other arm through the thick fur of her cloak.

  Velindre flung her hands wide. A burst of blue light blew the five men away with a brutal gust of magical wind. The fair-haired man fell backwards, landing hard to sprawl gasping, arms waving feebly as the breath was knocked clean out of him. The Tormalin man tumbled sideways, ending up in a crouch like a whipped cur, clutching at a tuft of frosted grass, his jaw slack with inarticulate astonishment. Taken entirely by surprise and with the downward slope treacherous behind him, the brown-haired man fell in a tangled heap with the one with the scars. Only the hatchet-faced man kept his feet. He stumbled backwards down the track, hands raised in feeble denial, his head turned aside and eyes screwed tight shut, too scared to want to see what might be coming next.

  ‘I told you my business was none of yours.’ Entirely composed, Velindre stood, her hands held wide, dark fur cloak and golden hair streaming behind her as if she stood in the teeth of a winter gale. Not a twig stirred on the winter-stricken trees on either side of the track. ‘I take it you’ll believe me now when I tell you plainly that you have no hope of detaining me.’

  She thrust a hand forward and a ribbon of sapphire light hobbled the hatchet-faced man. ‘Whereas I can make your lives very unpleasant if you have any notion of following me.’ With a snap of her fingers, she called down a bolt of lightning from the clear blue sky. It struck the rowan she pointed to with one long, pale finger and the tree burst into crackling white flames.

  Movement down the hill caught her eye and Velindre realised that almost the entire meagre population of the village was watching from doorways or around the corners of their ragged-edged huts. T will know if you try following me,’ she continued with precise menace, ‘just as I will know if anyone decides to offer the Widow Pinder any trouble for giving me a bed for the night. I recommend you bold heroes make that plain to your neighbours.’

  With a wave of her hand, she snuffed the flames consuming the rowan. The only sound was the faint patter of the tree’s few remaining leaves and berries falling to the ground. Velindre gestured discreetly towards the tree and a charred branch broke away with a tearing crash. As the shaken men all jumped, startled, and looked at it, Velindre wrapped herself in a swathe of dazzling cerulean light and vanished. The cowering men rubbed their eyes, blinking painfully as they stared gaping at the place where she’d been. Smiling unseen, the magewoman retreated slowly up the hill. It had been some while since she had worked invisibility around herself, she realised with faint amusement. Who would have thought an apprentice’s trick like blinding someone with magelight would prove so useful? Drawing the air close in around her, she deftly bound water and fire into the spell to cloak herself entirely from view.

  But enough of this foolishness, she decided. She had no time to waste. The trip had already taken longer than she had expected. Not that Dev had had any cause to complain that she was idling, she thought with irritation. And she wouldn’t be dealing with this nonsense if he hadn’t startled the widow and her children by bespeaking her like that. It was hardly surprising that the eldest girl hadn’t been able to keep something like that to herself.

  Velindre walked away up the track, first looking ahead at her path and then back down the hill, to be sure those bold heroes were returning to their startled village.

  The fallen men were picking themselves up. The scarred man took a cautious pace towards the charred skeleton of the rowan tree, his fair-haired companion following, careful all the while to keep the first man between himself and the uncanny spectacle. The Tormalin man and the one with brown hair were edging towards their hatchet-faced friend, who was still rooted to the spot with terror even though the skeins of azure light around his legs were fading. The Tormalin man gave him a sudden shove. The sharp-faced man cried out before taking a step to save himself as he found he was no longer bound by the spell. He took to his heels, slipping and sliding as he fled for the solace of the tavern. The hatchet-faced dun-haired man and the one with the scars followed him, barely slowly enough to preserve their dignity in front of the wide-eyed villagers.

  The Tormalin man and his Mountain-bred friend stayed where they were, looking suspiciously up the track. Velindre hurried for the shelter of a starveling hazel thicket. The
se fools weren’t deaf, she reminded herself, or blind to any other trace she could leave. They might be miners in the summer; in the winter seasons they trailed game far smaller than an adult mage. She looked at the ground, shaking her head at the momentary disori-entation of not being able to see her own feet. She could see the ridges of the hard ground unyielding beneath her clumsy boot soles; no tracks there. But her weight had crushed blades of sere grass poking up through the sodden black leaves where the vagaries of the wind had left the ground clear of snow.

  It had been a while since she had had to work two, no, three such spells in harness. Velindre summoned a second layer of dense air to cocoon her invisibility spell, baffling and muffling any crunch of her footfalls on the icy ground, any swish or snap as she brushed past the clawing hazel twigs. She lifted one foot and stepped up on to a soft cushion of magic. Pausing to be sure of her balance, she stepped forward, summoning a second squashy pillow of air to raise her a hand’s width above the ground.

  Not that this was quite the sophisticated working with elemental air that Hadrumal would expect from a Cloud Mistress, she thought with distant amusement. And Planir’s rebukes for apprentices who felt entitled to cow mundane fools with gaudy trickery were legendary. Which was all well and good, but life was certainly different out here where the Archmage’s writ didn’t run.

  She stumbled as the chancy air drifted beneath her feet and abandoned such idle thoughts in favour of concentration. Walking further into the trees at a painfully slow pace, she looked over her shoulder for any sign of pursuit after every few steps. If those fools from the village couldn’t hear her, she wouldn’t hear them approaching either, thanks to that same magical spell.

  By the time she crested the ridge behind the village, her neck was stiff, her legs ached as if she had been walking all day through soft sand and a faint queasiness threatened to turn into a nauseous headache. Setting her jaw, she forced her way through a copse of shivering aspens and cast away the magic surrounding her. Her booted feet hit the ground with a jolt and she drew a welcome breath of fresh, cold air. Hastily she gathered up the magic dissipating around her and cast out a web of unseen magical threads, drawn taut to tremble with the noises of the forest and bring every sound magnified for her ears alone. Meltwater dripped from trees welcoming the optimistic sun that was strengthening with each new day. In the dark hollows of the forest, though, the chill of night was already returning, prompting protesting creaks from the icy streams frozen solid in their stony beds. Untrammelled breezes ran ahead of the shadows, trailing casual fingers through tangles of ivy clinging to the mossy larches. A faint scuttle of tiny paws whispered through the frostbitten undergrowth. Velindre breathed more easily. There was no sound of footsteps or the harsh breathing of men intent on a hunt.

  Velindre looked across the wide expanse of snow pierced with scattered trees that separated her from the next rise in the rumpled land. Then she settled the rope of her bundle more securely on her shoulder beneath her cloak and began walking. The track from the village soon petered out, disappearing beneath the drifts of snow and the black swathes of leaf litter.

  Would any of those oafs tell their tale the next time they made the wearisome journey to Inglis? And show themselves for the fools they had been? That was hardly likely, she concluded. What about the widow woman? Would she tattle to all and sundry about how she had given unknowing shelter to a mage unafraid to use her magic to teach ignorant buffoons a much-needed lesson? Velindre shrugged. What of it? If the woman did tell her tale, who could carry it to Hadrumal? She was well beyond Rafrid’s reach already and it was hardly likely that Plank would rebuke her if she returned with untried lore from both Azazir and this dragon loose in the Archipelago.

  She studied the distant coil of grey clouds with growing interest. Even with long leagues still to go, she could feel a faint resonance of magic as the storm defied the natural currents coursing through the air. She found herself intrigued. Never mind Dev’s distractions with this dragon; just what would this Azazir have to teach her about the elemental air? If she was going to find out, she had to get to the valley beneath that unmoving, unbreaking storm. She considered the wide expanse ahead of her, deep snow reaching half-way up the dark stands of firs.

  This looked like a good time to try another prentice mage’s trick: the impudent connivance that allowed the bold and reckless to dart between the highest points of Hadrumal’s roofs and towers when festival cheer overcame caution. Rafrid would doubtless be spending his Equinox issuing the usual reprimands and curtailing offenders’ privileges. Velindre smiled with vindictive amusement as she fixed her gaze on a patch of open ground beneath a stained outcrop of rock away on the far side of the woods. A rush of air carried her across the intervening half-league with a single stride. Another step took her to the top of the ridge and a third made light of a sprawling glassy expanse of frozen marsh.

  From the bottom of the next ridge, she searched for a suitable foothold among the trees lining the heights above her. Seeing bare earth and stones where a storm had felled some mighty fir, she threw a coil of magic towards the open space. The ensorcelled air writhed, spiralling away up to be lost in the uncaring blue sky. Velindre was taken aback. It was several moments before she recovered her authority over the fickle winds. She cast her spell again. Once more, the magic recoiled from the patch of empty ground where she wanted to go. This time the spell curfcd back around her, threatening to carry her backwards and dump her unceremoniously among the sodden tussocks of the valley. She barely disentangled herself from the magic before she lost her footing, startled into cursing under her breath.

  Face wary in the dark fur framing it, she made a third attempt, this time abandoning the spell as soon as she felt the first tremor of failure. She smiled thinly with slow realisation. The magic frustrating her own was being worked through the water suffusing the air. Only a very powerful mage could manifest his intent through the infinitesimal amounts of vapour in this cold, dry emptiness. Azazir evidently knew how to use his own element to dominate the air. Would she learn how to rule water with air so effectively? All the inconveniences of crossing these last interminable leagues on foot would be well worth it if she could, never mind what Dev and this warlord of his might owe her for any lore about dragons.

  She had better learn something worth the tedious toil ahead, since further magical travel was plainly out of the question. Velindre sighed and searched for any semblance of a track leading up through the trees. Intellectual curiosity about what Azazir might or might not know had faded in the face of grim determination by the time Velindre was half-way up the steep slope. The hem of her fur cloak was caked with snow and her boots dragged leaden at her feet. Legs aching fiercely, she pressed on, the icy ground slick and unforgiving. She caught at saplings with her gloved hands to pull herself up awkward stretches and silently cursed the bleak rocks breaking through the soil and forcing her sideways to find a clear way forward once more.

  As she worked her way down the north face of that ridge and across the valley beyond, Azazir’s dampening magic weighed more and more heavily on the blasts of air she was summoning to clear snow out of her path. She was reduced to fighting her way through waist-deep drifts with no more than the unaugmented strength in her arms and legs. By the time she was at long, long last approaching the foot of the first true scion of the mountain range, the sun was sinking, turning the rocks breaking through the threadbare ground to a cold, steely grey.

  Velindre clenched her fists inside her gloves to quell the trembling of fatigue. At least she wasn’t cold. Azazir might have the reach to stifle magic beyond her arms’ length but he couldn’t overcome her innate abilities, whatever his unlooked-for talents. She sighed and pressed on up the punishing slope, the heavy fur cloak dragging at her shoulders.

  Half-way up, she lost her footing and fell to her knees. As she did so, her hand landed on a fold of the beaver fur. It squelched beneath her weight. Velindre frowned and stood up carefully. She stripped
off her doubled gloves, her suspicions growing hand in hand with hot anger. Taking a double handful of the cloak, she squeezed the fur tight. Water oozed over her fingers. There was a curious glitter to it, almost like quicksilver. She looked for a moment at the bright drops, then shook them off Rather than falling to the ground, the moisture flew back to the fur, vanishing in an instant—all but one bulbous drop which sat on the surface of the dark fur until a blackness winked across it, like the blink of an eye. Velindre tore at the clinging ties of the heavy cloak and dropped its sodden weight to the ground. It was saturated with water, she realised with sudden fury, but not through any normal turn of events. She rubbed a hand over the shoulders of the woollen cloak she was wearing underneath. The cloth was dry and faintly warm with the heat of her body. None of the wet from the fur had penetrated it, nor the thick flannel shirt and sturdy woollen gown beneath. Sitting on a bare patch of cold, dry earth, she fought to pull off the clumsy gaiters she was wearing to keep the mud and damp from her boots and stockings. The leather was grotesquely swollen with moisture, but the boots beneath were still dry, their polish unmarred. She reached for her thick outer gloves and found that they, too, were weighed down with more water than the fur could ever hope to hold without magical deceit. She wrung one out and the water gathered itself on the moss in oval drops, again with an uncanny semblance of watching eyes.

  ‘That’s a subtle working, Master Azazir,’ she remarked, partly to the motionless drops of water and partly to the empty air. ‘Do you discourage all your visitors like this?’

  She stood up, shaking out her thick skirts and drawing her woollen cloak close. ‘Or is this a test for mages, to see if they can do without the conveniences of winter clothing? Believe me, I am more than equal to keeping myself warm without furs.’ As she spoke, the drops of water abruptly ran away to be lost in the frosty ground.