“That you do,” Idalia agreed, squatting down in front of the dragon and reaching out to rub his nose, gradually working her way up to gently scratch the brow-ridges above his eyes. The huge black dragon closed his eyes with pleasure.
Atroist was busily working through the three packs—all of which contained his supplies—and laying them out in the center of the tent. He made a circle of what Kellen recognized as keystones, though very large ones—so that was why the pack he’d carried had been so heavy!—two rings of them, with a third set balanced upon the first two, and, at the center of the ring, a carefully woven pyre of sticks and small logs, all black and tarry with resin.
“So long as the fire burns, I can Speak with Drothi,” Atroist said. “This is the wood of the ghostwood tree. I will call the fire away when we are finished, in case I need to speak again—I have not seen ghostwood here in the south.”
“You have not been to the Flower Forest,” Jermayan said. “We call these trees namanarii. We use the sap in medicine; it sends healing dreams. I did not know that they grew any longer in the lands of Men. If you need more of it for your spells, send to Andoreniel for permission to take what you need, and you may have it from any of the Flower Forests in the Elven Lands.”
As he had been speaking, Jermayan had been brewing tea. He paused now to pour it out and to hand the filled cups to each of them.
This was a set of cups Kellen had never seen before. They were tiny, holding no more than a sip or two—the sort of cups the Elves used for “polite” occasions. They were Elvenware, delicate as moonlight, and of a color Kellen had never seen before: black.
But their surface shone with a red fire, like flames, and somehow it seemed as if he could see a black dragon dancing through those flames. Kellen thought he’d gotten used to the beauty the Elves could create, but this was truly the most exquisite piece he had ever handled.
“They are for drinking out of, not looking at,” Jermayan reminded him gently.
Kellen grinned, and sipped the tea.
It was bitingly hot. He tasted woodsmoke and fruit—the tea was some kind he’d never had before, and a stronger flavor than most of the Elven blends. It was odd, but he liked it.
“Oh, Jermayan, I didn’t think you had any of this left,” Idalia said, her eyes going wide as she tasted it.
“Very little,” Jermayan admitted. “But it is a good tea for this time and place.”
“Take pity on a poor round-ear who can’t be trusted to boil water,” Kellen pleaded.
“The tea is called Auspicious Venture,” Idalia said. “It’s made with the fruit of the vilya, among other things. It’s very rare, because the vilya is always in flower, but it fruits only once a century. So you see.”
“Maybe,” Kellen said cautiously. He sipped the tea slowly, trying to make it last, but trying to finish it before it cooled. The flavor seemed to change with every sip. He guessed he’d better not get to like it too much, if it was as rare as Idalia said.
Jermayan finished first, and to Kellen’s horror, dropped his exquisite teacup to the snow and ground it to shards underfoot.
“Things of beauty are not meant to be guarded at the expense of more important things,” he said. “We cling to them at our peril. Only when we release them are they truly ours—and are we truly free.”
Idalia finished her tea, dropped her cup, and did as Jermayan had done.
Kellen looked down at the empty cup in his hands. Destroy such a beautiful thing? When would he ever see something like it again?
“We cling to them at our peril…”
He dropped the cup to the snow and crushed it beneath his boot. The sound it made as he broke it seemed to resonate through his entire body.
Atroist broke his cup in turn, grinding the fragments into the snow.
“Come,” he said, seating himself close to the ring of keystones.
The other three seated themselves around the ring of stones as well.
“Who will share the cost of this Working with me?” Atroist asked formally.
“I,” said Jermayan.
“And I,” Ancaladar said from the doorway.
“I will,” Idalia said.
“Me, too,” Kellen finished.
“Then let it begin,” Atroist said, stretching his hand out toward the wood. “Walk with me.”
The wood burst into flame, and Kellen felt the familiar sense of Presence as the shield that marked the beginning of a spell of the Wild Magic appeared.
But nothing else was the same.
Suddenly he was not in the ice-pavilion at all.
He got to his feet—moving without his own volition—and as he moved, he saw he was in a small cottage. The light was dim—the illumination coming mostly from a fire that smoldered on the hearth—but his body moved with certainty, as if it knew this place.
“Drothi.”
It was Atroist who spoke, not Kellen, and when he did, Kellen realized that he was not truly present at all, merely hearing and seeing all that Atroist did. The illusion of presence was so real that it was strange not to be able to move at his own will, and only now did Kellen realize that although he could see the fire that smoldered on the hearth, he could smell nothing at all, not even the smoke of the burning ghostwood.
The woman sitting at the hearth looked up. She was dressed much as Vestakia had been when Kellen had first seen her, in a long tunic of coarse homespun with wide calf-length trousers, and heavy boots of rough leather. Over that she wore a large shawl, woven in a complicated pattern of crossed stripes that would probably have been very colorful if there had been more light to see by. She was not a young woman; her face was seamed with the lines of age, and her eyes looked almost white in the firelight. As she gazed in his direction in an unfocused fashion, Kellen realized she could not see Atroist at all.
“What news do you bring, kinsman?” Drothi asked. Aged she might have been, but her voice was young and vibrant with power.
“The Firstlings beg our aid, as we knew, yet they would not deny us help as well,” Atroist said. “I have told them how it is with us, and of our struggles with the Dark Folk, and so they bid us travel to find sanctuary in the lands where the Dark Folk do not come. The Firstling King offers us safe passage through his lands for flock and herd, and for every man, woman, and child of the Folk. The Wildmages here speak of a land beyond the Firstling borders where we may settle; an empty land that we may take for our own. And the Firstling King gives his word that all who aid our people beyond the Firstling borders shall dwell in his grace, and here his word is no light thing, even in the lands of Men.”
“Welladay,” Drothi said coolly, “so the walls of the Great Border fall at last, even for kern and chicken. It will not take so very much to persuade the people to come, I think—aye, and swiftly.”
“What is the news?” Atroist asked, and now Kellen heard a note of fear in the Wildmage’s voice.
“The raids, as you expected, have continued,” Drothi said simply. As she spoke, she picked up a spindle from the basket beside her and began pulling carded wool into thread with deft sure motions. “And to make matters worse, the winter has been harder than any we have seen in a long-hand of years. Had Torchen not warned us it would be so when the rains began, there would be starvation now. But that is no matter, since it has not happened. There are things that are worse.
“The Great Wolves have come again. When the snows began to fall, the folk heard them singing at Icebridge and at Songhythe, which lie nearest to the Stone Wastes, as you know. The folk there had left their cattle to winter in the near fields, and one day they woke to find them slaughtered, every bull and cow, with nothing left behind but blood and polished bones. They knew the marauders for Great Wolves by the tracks, and did the only thing they could: they turned their flocks out as a sacrifice and fled south. This is what the survivors say. There were not many, for the Great Wolves harried them as they went, pulling them down in ones and twos, running them like the deer until the weakest dropped from exhaustion and the strongest must leave them behind or die as well. It was a cruel jest the Dark Folk played upon us that day, to leave any alive when they could have taken all so easily.”
Atroist sucked in a trembling breath, but Drothi went on with her spinning implacably. This was old news to her, Kellen realized.
“Yet the Great Wolves can be killed. We have fought their kind before, but now creatures have come into the land that have not been seen since before the Settling, if then. We have seen creatures in the sky like giant bats—they do not come near, but they bring fear to all who see them. In the Haunted Places there are tracks upon the ground as if of giant serpents—you remember the songs I taught you as a child, Atroist, of the icedrake whose body is colder than the coldest ice, and whose breath is poison? I think it must have come again among us, though I was certain it was only a legend from the Oldest Days.
“Other folk speak of black things that look like bears but are as tall as two men, beasts with glowing red eyes and the power of human speech. Of things like horses, but with cloven hooves, the teeth of wolves, and the tails of serpents.
“No man dares leave his village to hunt, no woman to draw water from the river. The Lost Lands have become an abode not only of the Dark Folk, but of monsters, and our people suffer terribly.
“I shall pass the word at once that we are to leave. We will come as swiftly as we may. Pray to the Good Goddess that we survive the journey.”
“I shall,” Atroist said. “And I will come to you myself and render what aid I can.”