Never mind Dev and his distant difficulties. Velindre gritted her teeth. This contest was becoming one she wasn’t prepared to yield, however good this unseen Azazir might think he was. Drawing on her kidskin gloves with hard-faced resolve, the magewoman enveloped herself in still air warmed with a hint of fire. Abandoning fur cloak, gloves and gaiters, she began climbing again.
Determination drove her on and her spirits rose as she realised she was actually making better progress without the hampering bulk of those outer garments. Then the fire in her spell was abruptly snuffed and the gathering chill of the frozen forest dusk bit through the air surrounding her. Gritting her teeth, she pressed on until a small saddle between two jagged spurs of rock offered a place to catch her breath.
She couldn’t snare any spark of fire. The element was fleeing in all directions from the cold damp now suffusing the air. Frost was already glazing the rocks, visibly thickening even as she looked at it. Dev would have been no use here, she thought inconsequentially. He wouldn’t even have got close enough to learn anything of dragons. In the gathering dusk and chill, that notion wasn’t as comforting as it might have been.
‘My compliments, Azazir. I see you have a considerable mastery of fire, which is all the more impressive given that it’s the element antithetical to your own.’ She stood, listening, but heard nothing. Closing her eyes the better to concentrate for a moment, she wove a denser cloak of air around herself. If she couldn’t warm herself from without, at least she wouldn’t lose any more of the precious heat from within her body. The ground was less steep now and she could walk without using her hands. That was fortunate as she found her cocoon of air under insidious assault, the threads of air weighed down with more and more moisture until they snapped, tearing shreds of the protective magic away. Velindre found herself reaching further and further afield for untainted air to draw into her magic, the effort exhausting her more effectively than the weight of the sodden fur cloak
‘I only want to talk to you,’ she snapped with weary irritation. ‘I don’t see why you should freeze me out like this. Don’t the customary courtesies between mages apply in this forsaken place?’
A sound suspiciously like laughter brushed past her ear. She snatched at a breath of fleeting fire to cast light into the shadows of the trees. She just had time to see that there was no one there before the fire slid out of her grasp with ominous finality. The noise had come from a chuckling brook splashing over a rock-strewn stream bed.
She tried to find the fire again but her search was fruitless. Unease gathered chill beneath her breastbone. Without at least a modicum of fire, the other three elements were cursed to lie inert and useless. That was one of the first things any prentice wizard learned and a circumstance that frequently gave those with an affinity for fire an unwarranted sense of superiority—especially given that fire could be snuffed, which surely made it the most vulnerable of the elements when all was said and done. Velindre gathered her wits, realising that cold and fatigue were making her foolish. She had to concentrate on the here and now, where Azazir certainly gave the lie to any claim of fire’s pre-eminence, in this remote fastness where he’d honed his magic.
Magic that was unlike anything she’d encountered in Hadrumal. That’s what she was seeking. Velindre took two more determined strides onward before she turned back to look at the stream. With winter still ruling these northern lands, it was the first open, running water she had seen there. How much higher was she than those uppermost villages where the miners and trappers were still smashing the ice in their wells of a morning and the brooks were frozen solid?
Then she saw the direction this implausible unfettered water was taking. The stream was flowing uphill to vanish over the lip of the valley ahead. Her mouth fell open, astonished as any ignorant villager. Recollecting herself and narrowing her eyes, she dropped to one knee, stripping off a glove. She pressed her palm to the spongy, mossy turf and concentrated with every mageborn sense within her.
The ground should have been frozen, moisture locked within the soil, earth and water alike waiting lifeless for the sun’s warmth to drive out winter’s cold. Never mind Dev; let Hearth Master Kalion come here, Velindre thought with mingled awe and apprehension. Let him make his pompous arguments for fire’s precedence in the face of Azazir’s dominance. This ground wasn’t frozen, but neither was it warmed by any discernible heat. It was simply saturated with water quite untroubled by the plunging temperatures. And the water was moving oddly, flowing uphill unhampered through the solid rock and cloying clay. The earth lay passive, submissive, its elemental resonance entirely subdued. Velindre looked up. The grey clouds were directly overhead, in coils of air held captive by the all-commanding water, meekly doing its bidding. Green radiance crackled in the clouds like uncanny lightning
She walked on slowly, increasingly reluctant yet irresistibly intrigued. Her wizard senses were soon shaking under the assault of the water’s ascendancy, just as her ears were ringing with the sound of a thousand streams rushing towards the valley ahead. She left the larches and spruces behind and soon the brambles gave up the unequal struggle to maintain a foothold in this unnatural land. The mosses persisted furthest of all, a mottled green carpet reaching almost to the crest before her. Almost but not quite. The valley was rimmed with bare earth. Not mud, she noted with faint apprehension.
The ground was dry and easy enough to walk on. She paused, sensing the water surging just below the surface. Without the magic holding it back, it would turn the solid ground into a morass of clinging clay. She took another step. No, it would become bog, a sucking mire to drown her, filling her ears and eyes and mouth with deafening, blinding, stifling muck. She could feel the lethal potential just waiting beneath her feet.
Squaring her shoulders and lifting her chin, Velindre walked up the slope, which ended in a knife edge against the empty sky. She looked down into the valley. ‘My compliments, Azazir .’ The words died on her lips as she saw the vista before her.
There was nothing growing in the valley. Trees, shrubs, grass and mosses, all had been washed to oblivion by the countless streams cascading down the steep sides. Here and there a stretch of soil remained, some curious patch of gravel bright with minerals untouched by the water gliding across it. Mostly the ground had been stripped back to rock, the bones of the earth laid mercilessly bare. The soil hadn’t been permitted any revenge on the streams, however. The lake filling the bottom of the valley was unclouded, no dirt sullying the crystal expanse. Pure power alone suffused the waters, filling the lake and the air above it with an emerald radiance.
The rocks around the shore glistened in the low light. Some of the outcrops were sharp, angles unblunted by the scouring floods. Others had been polished smooth, veins of ores and crystals exposed. Some protrusions had been carved into fanciful shapes. There was a horse with flippers instead of hooves, a fish with a mouth of distorted snaggle teeth, a lizard-tailed goat. Exaggerated faces peered up at her or out over the lake, some laughing insanely, others fixed in grimaces of terror or pain. One image caught her eye time and again: a coil mimicking the cloud held in that endless, unmoving turmoil above. Velindre looked more closely at the nearest such spiral carved into the rock just below the valley’s rim. From this angle it looked like a serpent consuming its own tail.
Velindre began a cautious descent of the treacherous slope. The ground abruptly gave way beneath her. Her flailing feet could find no purchase, nothing to stand on. She sank waist deep into water rushing to fill the newly opened gully, her hands caught in the floating folds of her skirts. Icy currents soaked her to the skin, the chill prying between her legs, sliding beneath her clothes to crush her chest in a freezing embrace. The weight of her woollen cloak choked her, pulling her backwards till her yellow plait of hair floated on the surface of the water. She gasped and struggled as the waters closed over her head in an emerald flash. The torrent carried her over the rocks, sweeping her into the lake in a cascade of jade foam.
&nb
sp; Eyes and mouth closed tight shut, she fought with the brooch securing her cloak. A prick of pain as she ripped it free was instantly numbed by the cold. The heavy cloth sank away and she fought with the buckles on her boots with nerveless fingers. Kicking them off, she tried to swim to the surface, the breath burning in her chest. Her legs were hampered by her skirts, dragging her down. She fumbled with the buttons at her waist, tearing herself loose. She struggled free of her sodden, constricting bodice, fighting the panic rising in her throat.
Free at last, she kicked for the surface, opening her eyes only to find an impenetrable barrier of emerald light denying her. The lake had her in its grasp. She couldn’t reach the air above or the earth below the deeps. There was only water. It surrounded her, it suffused her, the cold magic willing the very blood in her veins to stop, to become one with the still peace of the pure, unclouded lake.
Velindre forced herself to go limp, arms and legs floating wide. She closed her eyes and concentrated on the air within her lungs. Meagre it might be, but it was air and it was hers. It was some tiny fraction of the emptiness beyond the water’s barrier. It had circled the seas in the great storm systems where water did the air’s bidding. It had crossed the lands where fire made a plaything of moisture in the heat of summer. The air alone knew the infinitesimal voids in the earth where water could not pass.
The green radiance wavered above her, stained with an aquamarine smear. Sapphire light splintered the waters, thrusting Velindre upwards to lie gasping, shivering on the surface of the lake. She pushed a hand into the water and a sheet of ice formed beneath her, edged with vivid blue light. Emerald fire crackled angrily around it, but the sapphire boundary stayed unbroken. She dragged herself up to half-sit, half-kneel, leaning heavily on her hands. Her skin was as white as her clinging shift and stockings and she shivered uncontrollably. Laughter echoed around the lake, sly amusement striking back at her from every rock face.
Velindre waited until she had some semblance of control over her voice. ‘My compliments again, Master Azazir. I have never seen such mastery over an element.’ She forced her head up, throwing aside her sodden plait and wiping freezing trickles from her forehead.
Green light swirled around the fragment of ice she rode on. She watched warily, stealthily seeking whatever air she could find. The eddy spun faster, mossy radiance darkening as a vortex formed, reaching down into the depths of the lake. Spiralling walls of water rose up all around the magewoman. Now the surface of the lake was level with her elbows, now her shoulders, now her head. Velindre thrust out a hand, turquoise light spreading from her outstretched palm. Her magic held back the lake as it fought to close over her head once again. She knelt upright and brought her hands up, the light strengthening to bathe her in a piercing azure. Her magic spread, forcing the emerald-laced waters back. The vortex swirled beneath her and for the barest moment, a ripple opened a gap between the ice she rode and the hollow beneath. Velindre thrust one hand down, blue fire plunging through the gap to rip the green spiral apart, scattering it to the depths of the lake. The waters rocked violently and she let her magic go to cling to the ice, fingers burning with the cold. That same laughter echoed around, now coloured with a buoyant excitement.
‘I would much prefer to talk to you face to face,’ Velindre called out with all the dignity she could muster. She scanned the water and the valley in the fast-fading dusk. How far was it to the edge of the lake? Could she rely on the air to cany her over such an expanse of magically malevolent water? There was no point in even thinking of working a water magic through her own sympathy with that element. She could never hope to wrest any control from Azazir.
‘How would you recognise my face?’ Cruel laughter rippled through the words.
‘I wouldn’t, obviously.’ Velindre looked around in vain to see where the voice was coming from. ‘The Council of Hadrumal hasn’t seen fit to hang your portrait in any of the halls,’ she added tartly.
‘The Council of Hadrumal doubtless thinks I’m dead, if they think of me at all.’ There was an undercurrent of menace in the breathless words. ‘And I don’t imagine you’re here with their blessing. What’s to stop me killing you?’
‘I’ll do my level best, for a start.’ Velindre seized her chance and wrapped herself in a web of bright-blue magic. It wasn’t warmth but it was better than nothing. She had to ward off the cold somehow or that would be the death of her, never mind this mysterious wizard. ‘Besides, kill me and you’ll never know what brought me here.’
‘What makes you think I would care?’ the voice queried.
‘Otrick’s diaries,’ she shot back. ‘His writings say you were a mage who never let a question go unanswered.’
‘Why are you reading Otrick’s diaries? Did he send you here?’ The voice was right behind her.
Velindre skidded around on her knees and gasped. A man was standing on the surface of the lake. Or at least, the translucent form of a thin, wiry man had risen out of the water, entirely naked, with a semblance of a long beard and straggly hair flowing back into the effigy. Currents of green magic fleeted within the shape, momentarily mimicking blood and bone before disappearing. The apparition opened its mouth.
‘Did Otrick send you?’ Azazir repeated, with an emerald flash in his colourless eyes.
‘Otrick is dead.’ The admission was startled out of Velindre. She bit her cold, wet lip and found her face was too numb for her to feel it.
‘Is he?’ Azazir didn’t sound overly concerned. ‘He taught you, didn’t he? I can see his quirks in your magic’
‘Yes, he taught me.’ Velindre nodded jerkily. But not everything he knew. Not everything the two of you knew.
There’s more I want to learn.’
‘You have a powerful affinity,’ Azazir remarked, coming close to the sapphire magic that surrounded her. Green radiance pulsed and faded within his watery body. ‘Like Otrick. But do you understand, like he did?’
‘Understand what?’ asked Velindre warily, struggling to stop her teeth from chattering. ‘And I won’t understand anything if I freeze to death. I have to get ashore and dry off
Azazir ignored her, stretching out a colourless hand. Do you understand the limits of magic? Do you understand that the only limits are those we impose on ourselves?’ He touched the a2ure magic and the ensor-celled air sank into the waters of the lake. Velindre gasped as the fierce cold bit deeper than ever into her drenched, inadequate clothing.
‘Hush,’ whispered Azazir, eyes glowing phosphorescent.
The air that Velindre had bound with her sapphire magic rose up from the lake once more. It brought a mist of fine droplets with it, suffused with emerald magelight. The blended magic shimmered turquoise. ‘Did Otrick see it in you?’ Azazir continued, drifting around behind Velindre to reappear on her other side.
‘See what?’ she snapped, doing her best to keep him in sight. It wasn’t easy. Azazir began circling her, his insubstantial feet drifting through the surface of the lake, leaving a trail of emerald radiance sinking away into the depths.
‘Is that why he sent you to me?’ the water wizard mused. ‘To do what he couldn’t? Is that what he sees in you? The courage he never had, to yield, to become one with his element? Is that what you want to learn?’
Velindre felt herself growing dizzy as the aquamarine magic blurred her vision.
‘Because there are marvellous magics to be made when you truly blend the elements, you know,’ he whispered seductively.
‘I want to learn what you know of dragons,’ she said resolutely, trying not to look at him, fumbling for some control over her own element.
‘Of course you do.’ Azazir nodded with a happy smile. ‘Which is why you’ll do what I want. Whatever I want.’
Inside a heartbeat, three things happened. Velindre realised that Azazir was quite insane. She realised that his magic had entirely suffused her own and that she had no idea how to disentangle herself. Then he stepped through the turquoise radiance and seized her, his
translucent hands digging into her arms. She gasped with pain and opened her mouth to protest but it was too late. Azazir pressed himself against her and the shape he had adopted was already losing its form as his very substance flowed inexorably into her own.
Chapter Twelve
It’s no good.’ Dev’s voice thickened with frustration. ‘I can’t find her.’ He hunched over the water as he fought with the scrying spell. ‘I can’t even get the spell to hold
Finding his teeth aching, Kheda forced himself to unclench his jaw. He drummed his fingers on the far side of the vast grey marble bath raised in the middle of the floor. The swirls of the polished stone were copied in the smoky tiles of the floor. ‘Try the mirror again.’ He gestured towards the square of steel with its cracked lustre border, half-hidden behind a row of unguent jars painted with the same patterns of reef and sea that decorated the bath chamber’s walls.
‘There’s no hope of fire magic finding her inside Azazir’s influence,’ muttered Dev bitterly, his attention still fixed on the obstinately magic-free water. ‘And if we beat our heads against that truth much longer, we’ll be late for that banquet of yours. Do you want to be discovered at this because some lackey comes to find us?’
‘Would fresh water help?’ Kheda searched his wits for some constructive suggestion.
If we’ve lost this magewoman, where do we look for any help against this dragon?
‘Fresh water?’ Dev looked up with an ill-tempered scowl. ‘It’s not the water and it’s not me. I found Risala for you, didn’t I? You saw her enjoying her pleasure cruise. I told you, it’s Azazir’s—’
‘Hush.’ Kheda was certain he’d heard a footfall. ‘Someone’s coming.’
‘Announce yourself to your lord!’ Dev’s hand went to the scabbarded sword thrust through the sash of his black tunic and he slipped past Kheda to open the door with a jerk.
‘Do we need to be so formal, Kheda?’ A woman stood there looking at Dev, faint curiosity raising her brows.
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