The Red Winter

by Henry H. Neff

  Max sat up so abruptly he almost tore a stitch. “She’s right! David, remember when we summoned Astaroth as Second Years? He snatched a strand of Cynthia’s hair and was going to hurt her when you made him swear—”

  “Never to hurt Cynthia or permit her to be hurt by any power under his control.”

  As David recited these words, his face assumed a look of blank, slack-jawed astonishment. “Oh … wow.”

  “Apology accepted,” said Cynthia magnanimously.

  David turned to her. “But I couldn’t ask you to—”

  She cut him off abruptly. “You’re not. I’m volunteering, so that’s that. If what you say is true, I’m finished anyway if we don’t pull this off. Astaroth can’t lie or break a vow, right? Well, he either has to break his vow or let me get close to him. If nothing else, I can be a distraction. That’s worth something.”

  “Yes, it is,” David muttered. He glanced at Mina. “Are you up for contacting Yuga?”

  Picking up the milky green stone, Mina held it between her thumb and forefinger. “Yes,” she replied. “But I won’t lie to her, David. I won’t mislead her in any way about what we’d be asking her to do. Spirits talk with me because they trust me. I won’t break that trust.”

  David looked mildly annoyed by Mina’s scruples but gave an acquiescent nod. “Whatever you think is best. We can contact her right here. If it helps, we can use the Observatory to see her.”

  Mina shook her head. “The scrying pool and Orkney stones in Túr an Ghrian will be better. Plus, Ember’s there.”

  David looked puzzled. “How will Ember help you talk with Yuga?”

  The girl scooted off her seat. “He’s not for Yuga. He’s for Max.”

  When they climbed the spiral staircase to the summoning chamber, they found Ember dozing on the burning coals and the moomenhovens playing gin. The aggrieved healers sniffed when David asked them to continue their game away from the scrying pool but gathered their things and moved to a table far away from the dragon.

  Cynthia had evidently never been atop Túr an Ghrian and went to one of the windows to gaze out. The morning snow flurries had abated, permitting a clear view of a damaged Rowan surrounded by nothing but sea. She gave a startled cry.

  “Wh-where did the land go?” she stammered. “Did we just float away? There were earthquakes in Blys, but nothing like this!”

  “We haven’t floated away,” said David. “Thanks to Mina and Ember, we’re right where we’ve always been. Beyond the gates, the land has fallen away. We don’t know yet how far.”

  Meanwhile, Max had raised his shirt to examine his wound. No blood had soaked through the bandages, but his entire midsection ached. Merely brushing the surrounding flesh with his finger was painful. He prayed Ember could help.

  Mina was already leading the dragon off the coals. White smoke trickled from the dragon’s nostrils as he slid toward Max and the scrying pool. Once alongside, the dragon arranged his coils so that Max could sit on one, lean against another, and still have a view of the images swirling and gliding on the pool’s surface. Most were of Blys, where night was already falling. The situation there was far more stable than when Astaroth had loosed a host of monsters. All appeared relatively quiet—a broken city whose battlements and avenues flickered with torches.

  While Ember’s scales were hot, leaning against them was far more tolerable than being tightly enveloped. Holding the gae bolga with both hands, Max closed his eyes and felt the golden dragon’s strength flow into him, gathering about his wound as though to wall it off, isolate it from the rest of his body. Max needed this to work; he needed to be strong enough to contribute. He did not regret breaking his geis to end the Fomorian’s suffering, but the timing had been unfortunate. Max needed to become the juggernaut once again, the shining god that stormed through the Workshop and slew the Great Red Dragon.

  In this moment, that god seemed like ancient history. For several hours, Max had tried to downplay a problem that was becoming harder to ignore. The issue went deeper than his injuries; it went to the core of his identity. Since early childhood, Max has sensed the Old Magic lurking within him. While its presence was sometimes frightening, it had been reassuring, too. It gave him confidence that he could rise to almost any challenge. Max didn’t realize what a luxury that had been until the feeling began to fade. It started the moment he’d escaped Tartarus, a growing impression that the Old Magic in him was not momentarily spent but depleted entirely. Max didn’t feel like a tired and wounded demigod; he felt like a tired and wounded young man. He felt … ordinary.

  He did his best to push these thoughts and fears aside as Mina prepared to contact Yuga. David and Cynthia stood nearby, watching in anxious silence as the girl swept her hand to dispel the images in a scattering of light motes. After tucking a black braid behind an ear, she held the green stone as though it were as fragile as a baby bird. Dipping her other hand in the scrying pool, Mina closed her eyes and began to walk slowly in a circle, dragging her fingers through the water as her white robes trailed behind her.

  All around them, the Orkney stones began to hum with almost subsonic vibrations. It felt like powerful generators had been turned on. But there was nothing mechanical about the megaliths; they were ancient conductors, antennae that would broadcast Mina’s vast powers out into the world.

  The edges of the pool began to glow with a golden luminance that spread gradually toward the center. As it intensified, it lit Mina’s placid face from beneath and sent rippling, watery reflections dancing on the ceiling and nearest columns. Mina smiled briefly, as though she’d heard or felt something that pleased her. But her smile soon faded.

  When the pool suddenly turned black, Mina screamed.

  David darted forward to grab her, but she held up a hand to stop him. Mina’s scream was subsiding, trailing away into an eerie silence. Within the pool, black tendrils appeared to be writhing and thrashing just below the water’s surface. They snapped and flailed, merging and combining, flickering now and again as though there was a hidden core of burning, blazing energy at its center.

  The image within the scrying pool was Yuga.

  The water began bubbling, but Mina did not remove her hand or cease her circling, not even when steam started whipping off the pool. Her face was screwed into a seething, straining grimace as though she was experiencing intense pain and doing everything in her power not to cry out again. Tears streamed down her face. Her pace slowed. She was shaking now, sobbing and gasping for breath. Sinking to her knees, Mina rested her head on the pool’s shallow rim, her hand still immersed in the pool, which boiled like a witch’s cauldron. With an ear-piercing wail, she suddenly dropped the stone and fell backward as David hurried forward to catch her.

  Yuga vanished. The pool’s surface became like glass. It barely rippled as Mina lifted her blistered hand from the water and clutched it against her chest. She was weeping in racking sobs of misery and grief. They continued until the subtle humming of the Orkney stones finally lapsed into silence.

  With a slow, shuddering exhale, Mina pushed to her feet and wiped her face with a sleeve. “It’s done,” she said, but there was no gladness or triumph in her voice. “Yuga will come if I call her—she’ll let herself be summoned. She wants to die. I don’t blame her. The only things she feels—the only things she can even remember feeling—are pain and fear and hunger. I think when Yuga tricked her master, she underwent koukerros so quickly and so many times that something spun out of control. The poor thing doesn’t even understand what she is!”

  “Thank you, Mina,” said David quietly. “I know that was difficult, but I can’t tell you how important that was. Yuga changes the game.”

  Mina nodded and rubbed her small hands together. The angry red blisters faded. “Just tell me you have a plan.”

  “I believe I do.”

  The four discussed and debated David’s plan until early evening when they shared a supper of hot soup and bread from the kitchens’ meager supplies. T
he moomenhovens, rather shaky after appearances by both Ember and Yuga, eagerly accepted David’s offer to spend their sequestration in the quiet comfort of Mina’s quarters below. And thus it was just Max, David, Mina, and Cynthia sitting in Ember’s shadow as they parsed the plan’s details and reviewed their roles and responsibilities.

  Despite hours of contact with Ember, Max did not sense the Old Magic returning. While he certainly felt stronger and more energetic than before, the improvement was purely physical. There was no sense waiting any longer for a sudden or miraculous change.

  “There’s something I have to tell you,” he said, wiping his mouth. “I lost something in Tartarus, something I’ve been hoping Ember could restore. But it hasn’t happened, not even a little bit.”

  “What did you lose?” asked Cynthia.

  “My powers are gone,” he replied soberly. “I don’t think they’re coming back.”

  “Do you want to stay behind?” asked David frankly.

  Max shook his head. “No, but my condition might alter the plan.”

  “Mina,” said David. “Can you see Max’s aura right now?”

  “Of course,” she said, chewing a piece of bread. “I’m looking right at him.”

  “Is it different?”

  Mina almost sounded apologetic. “It’s like a regular person’s.”

  David turned back to Max. “Can you still use the gae bolga?”

  Max closed his hand around the powerful weapon where it lay propped against a table. The spear felt warm to the touch. It did not cry out or writhe out of his grasp as it would if anyone else tried to claim it.

  David reached for another piece of bread. “The plan stays as is. Your condition complicates things, but it may also help in some way. You’ll be harder to detect once you’re on your own. Speaking of which, it’s probably time to ask if she’ll help us. Do you want us to go with you?”

  “No,” said Max. “We’re old comrades in arms. I doubt she’ll need much convincing. Anyway, I also want to see if I can find Nox.”

  “Make sure you get some sleep,” said David. “We leave at four in the morning.”

  “I’ll be here.”

  When Max left Túr an Ghrian, Old College was dark but for the Manse’s lights and a few bonfires burning about the quad. The earlier gusts and gales had died away, leaving a cold, still evening with a gibbous moon.

  His boots crunched through crusted snow by the old refugee camp. The buildings were largely uninhabited, as most were away with Rowan’s army. Those who remained had moved to warmer quarters in the Sanctuary. A fox was prowling by the edge of the forest. It stopped to peer at Max and sniff the air, then continued casually on its way. All over the world, life was carrying on, he thought, oblivious to the possibility that everything could be coming to an end. If they did not succeed, no one would ever see that beautiful moon wax full.

  Scathach’s caravan lay past the camp. It had been her home when she came to Rowan disguised as Umbra, to protect Max from the Atropos. The brutal winter had not been kind to it, for the caravan faced the sea, with nothing to shield it from the elements. Nestled against a backdrop of pines, it was half buried in a snowdrift. Sweeping its little steps clear, Max opened the door and ducked within.

  It was like stepping back in time. Many months had passed since Scathach lived here, but it still smelled like her hair and clothes, even her skin. Almost instinctively, Max flicked his fingers to conjure a glowsphere. But no light came, not even a spark. It was like he’d forgotten how to walk. His only option was to light a kerosene lamp, using flint and tinder like a non-magical person. Hanging its chain from the ceiling hook, he gazed about the snug space with its little bed and locker, tiny table, and chair. There were mouse droppings on the floor and small bits of stuffing chewed from the mattress, but the place was otherwise just as Scathach left it.

  A linen shirt hung by the bed. Taking it in his hands, Max sat on the chair to stare at the faded tarot signs upon the wall. The Hierophant, the Moon, the Lovers … Max stared at this last one. The artist’s dubious talents had given Adam a look of cross-eyed astonishment that had never failed to make them laugh. He and Scathach had laughed a lot in here, particularly in the weeks before departing on Ormenheid. Big dreams could be born in small spaces. And they’d shared many in this little caravan, dreams of a life together after the world regained its sanity.

  But those dreams died in the Workshop. Max’s gaze drifted to the image of Justice, to the expressionless king holding a sword and scales. When he had pierced Umbra’s disguise and guessed her true identity, Scathach had become mortal once again. The proof was the return of Scathach’s shadow, which Lugh had taken when granting her immortality. When she noticed its reappearance on the caravan wall, Justice had been staring her in the face. Max wondered if she had realized this at the time. He certainly hadn’t, but he did so now. And it made him angry.

  The faded tarot might have been Lugh Lamfhada sitting in judgment on his throne in Rodrubân; Lugh ignoring Scathach’s anguish and Max’s pleas to spirit her back to the Sidh. Scathach had served Lugh for centuries, had been made Warden of Rodrubân. But the moment she acted against his wishes—even for a noble and selfless purpose—he’d turned his back upon her. Lugh wasn’t just; he was petty.

  Taking his boot knife, Max cut a strip of the shirt’s hem and knotted it around his torque. He needed Scathach with him tomorrow, even just her echo. Folding the shirt, he laid it on the bed and blew out the lamp.

  He left the caravan, walking west through the woods and slipping into the graveyard outside Rose Chapel. Lighted candles shone in its windows and its pews were filled to capacity. Within, Max could hear a clergyman telling the assembled to be strong, to love one another, and trust in their Creator. He spoke of Job and how he’d kept his faith despite many trials that would have broken lesser men. Max envied the people inside, those faithful souls who had no idea what Astaroth was planning atop Ymir.

  Turning away from the chapel, Max crouched by Scott McDaniels’s tombstone and brushed the snow away. He was sorry his mother wasn’t buried here, too; they’d set Bryn McDaniels’s body adrift in a little skiff when she’d died. Her resting place was somewhere in the cold depths beyond Brigit’s Vigil. One farewell would have to do for both. Kissing his fingers, Max touched them to the name etched in granite and left the cemetery.

  When he entered the Sanctuary, he was glad to find YaYa dozing on the Warming Lodge porch. The ki-rin’s black, leonine body rose and fell, its contours shimmering as though dusted with moonlight. She stirred and raised her massive head as he stepped on the porch’s creaking floorboards.

  Since Rowan’s founding, the school had had many Directors. But in almost four centuries, there’d been only one Great Matriarch; one being who spoke for the Sanctuary’s strange and diverse denizens. She was now looking at Max, her broken horn glinting in the dim lamplight. Max bowed, as one always did when meeting YaYa. When she spoke, her tone was tranquil, its gravitas befitting a creature born over eight hundred years ago.

  She returned the bow. “Greetings, Max. I understand you won a great victory over Prusias. But I see something troubles you. What has happened?”

  At the ki-rin’s invitation, Max leaned the gae bolga against the porch railing and sat down beside her. It was comforting being so close to YaYa. With Bram’s blessing, she had served as Max’s steed when Prusias attacked last spring. Together they had shown the Enemy just how formidable even an aged, half-blind ki-rin could be.

  As the moon rose, Max told YaYa how Bram had been captured in Tartarus and of Astaroth’s intent to open a portal to the Starving Gods.

  “I’m sorry about your steward,” he added, uncertain what else to say. In many ways, YaYa knew Elias Bram better than anyone. She’d been his charge since he’d first arrived at Solas, had seen him grow from boy to Archmage.

  “Do not feel sorry for my master,” said YaYa calmly. “He met his grandchild, made peace with Marley, and continued his life’s w
ork. We will help him finish it.”

  “I was hoping you would say that,” said Max. “I came here to ask for your help.”

  “And you shall have it. I have my own score with Astaroth.” Tilting her head, the ki-rin showed Max the jagged foot of ivory that protruded from her forehead. It was all that remained of the horn she had broken against Astaroth’s side when Solas fell.

  Something black bounded over the railing as nimbly as a cat but landed like a pig of lead. As it wheeled to face them, Max saw two golden eyes, an arsenal of curling claws, and a limp rabbit clutched between powerful jaws. Nox looked less like a lymrill than a young black panther with a row of needle-sharp quills down her back. Dropping the rabbit, she inched forward, nostrils quivering as they scented the evening and the steward who’d sent her away. It was not lost on Max that her quills were half bristling.

  It was one thing when her father had been upset. Nick had been a normal-sized lymrill. His tantrums or grudges resulted in little more than shredded sweaters and punctured shoes. But a swipe from Nox’s paw might take off Max’s boot and everything inside it. Given the way she was staring at him, Max was grateful for YaYa’s presence. No animal—not even a freakishly large and indignant lymrill—would misbehave in front of YaYa.

  “Nox,” said Max soothingly. “Don’t be angry. I couldn’t keep you in Blys for the battle. I sent you here for your own good.”

  Unlike Nick, whose alert, otterlike eyes had been expressive, Nox’s were like molten gold and much harder to read. She padded toward him, the quills of her foxlike tail rattling softly. Inches away, she nosed at the wound beneath his clothes and bandages before peering into his face with a hint of her old affection.

  The quills flattened as over two hundred pounds of compact, impossibly dense lymrill sprawled across Max’s lap in an unmistakable attitude of possession. Her servant had erred, he was very sorry, and she—being a superior being—had deigned to forgive him.

  Stroking Nox’s quills, Max sat on the porch and told YaYa of David’s plan. When asked if she felt up to climbing Ymir, the Great Matriarch merely looked at him. Ki-rins could gallop over any surface—land, air, or sea—as Max had experienced firsthand during the Battle of Rowan. Despite her age, YaYa was not overly concerned.