chapter TWENTY-TWO
IN ALL THE old texts, scholars spoke of the instant of translation, as if magic transported the body into the magical plane in an eyeblink. Like so much else, the phrase was poetical but not accurate. Ilse plainly saw Valara’s body shimmering in the air a long moment before the woman vanished from sight. Even then, whether by some trick of sight or expectation, the ghost of her figure remained, outlined in wreaths of mist and fog.
On impulse, Ilse reached toward the spot where Valara had sat. A wayward puff of air broke the illusion apart. She stopped, exhaled. Suppressed the urge to follow Valara into the void. The other woman was right. Ilse would only prove a burden and distraction. Better that she remain here to safeguard the emerald.
She glanced down at the ring in her hand. Again its weight surprised her and its surface felt unnaturally warm. Daya, Valara called it. A living creature, one who hoped, just as she did. A memory floated up from another life. She had held this jewel, or something like it, in her hands. She had relinquished it to another person. Out of duty? Relief that it would no longer be her responsibility? She couldn’t remember precisely, only an old sense of regret that she had done so.
With some trepidation, she slipped the ring onto her finger.
One more day. Less, if she could believe Valara’s claims. Ilse herself had no such confidence. She would have to start work now to assure her own survival.
She checked her sword and her daggers. Both were in good condition, though she would need to clean her sword and its sheath. There were grasses on the plains, low trees, and patches of snow. She could wipe down the blade, cut switches to clean out the sheath.
First, however, she decided to make a circuit of the Agnau itself. She did not want any surprises. Any more surprises, she reminded herself. The past five months had been filled with nothing but the unexpected.
The Agnau measured several miles in circumference. Its shores remained low and smooth, covered with the same black sand she found at the entrance. Once a few hundred yards beyond the Mantharah’s entrance, however, the cliffs rippled inward then outward, like folds in a cloth, nearly to the edge of the lake, so that she had to edge carefully between them and the seething magical substance of the lake. From time to time, she knelt and sifted through the hot black sands, thinking that she would find more clues to her past, or the world’s, but she found nothing. These were as barren as these cliffs stretching upward to the sky. And yet, a millennium or more ago, life had poured out in a season of love and life.
You and your beloved Toc have loved beyond life and death, Tanja Duhr once wrote. You have loved beyond the imaginable. And so we poor humans cannot imagine and so must stumble through our lives, more blind than Blind Toc, more alive to grief than Lir herself.
She needed barely an hour to finish the circuit.
One hour. And you have not returned.
But their agreement was for an entire day.
Ilse wanted to shout, to send her spirit soaring into the void after Valara’s. An unprofitable venture, she decided.
After carefully scanning the plains with sight and magic, she ventured down the slopes and scouted the immediate area. The wind had died away, and the afternoon was fair and chill, the sky a hard gray. She found ice and snow packed into crannies and fissures around the base of the cliffs. The snow was old, granular, but clean enough to drink. If she had to, she could strain the water through her shirt. She packed her helmet full. A flicker of movement caught her eye—a hare or other small animal darting through the grass. That reminded her. She could braid the grass into snares, as Galena had taught her on their journey from Osterling.
At the thought of Galena, her eyes stung with tears. She swiped them away, angrily. I must not mourn her too soon—none of them—or else I won’t be able to carry onward.
Onward. Yes.
She gathered an armful of grasses and returned to the Agnau. She stowed these in a shallow bay with an overhang, a few yards in from the entrance. Sheltered from snow or rain, warmed by the lake, it would make a perfect sleeping spot.
Another expedition yielded a small quantity of pine twigs and peat, cut from the earth with her dagger. She also discovered wild oats growing in a gully. Farther on, a patch of plantain. The leaves were tough, but they would make a drinkable tea. Her two prizes were a hollow stone that could serve as a cook pot, and a block of frozen snow for water.
It took her several trips to carry everything back to camp. She drank off her water and built a fire. Scrubbed the cook stone clean with snow, and set the plantain leaves to simmer. The oats she spread over a flat stone next to the fire. By the time she finished the sun had reached the midpoint in the sky. Exhausted, she sank to the ground and took up a fistful of grass to scour her sword, but the effort proved too much. She leaned back against the cliff wall and stared upward.
Noon. Valara had crossed into the magical plane at least two hours ago. She should have returned with the sapphire before now. Valara had spoken with absolute certainty of her ability to do just that.
She misjudged the time, Ilse told herself. But she will return with the jewel. Then we shall make our next plans.
Without thinking, she rubbed the wooden ring. Magic ran beneath its smooth surface, reminding her that Daya was no man-made thing, but a being created by the gods. Ilse closed her eyes and focused on the point between the ordinary and the magical planes. Yes, she could hear its voice, a silvery stream of minor notes, like the wind keening through the rigging of a swift-moving ship.
You told Leos Dzavek where to find us, she said. You stopped his brother from running free to Morennioù. Why?
For several moments, she heard nothing but a faint humming, then, Because he, because she, they lied. They would keep us bound. And she learns too fast this brother-sister-cousin. She remembers her magic. She would know as he does, as the brother does, how to bind me stronger.
Its voice blurred into music again, as it spoke about the centuries in Anderswar, hidden. Working through plans, though its nature was not given to such. Absorbing magic. Thinking that if it had one chance, it would break from its prison. But not alone. Ilse heard three strong chords, followed by a long, long note that vibrated through her bones.
You must deliver us, Daya said at last.
I know, Ilse whispered. I promise.
She rested her head on her hands. The ring felt heavy on her finger. The strong green scent of magic filled the air, the sweet fragrance of wildflowers and new grass, an impossible contradiction to the frozen plains outside the Mantharah’s walls.
Death and rebirth. The eternal contradiction of magic.
She thought about a world without the threat of war. Removing the jewels would not accomplish that—she was not so foolish to think so—but it would make the wars much harder to carry through. Would Valara see that? She might tell herself that she only wished to defend Morennioù, but like Armand, like Dzavek, she might soon persuade herself to a different, more murderous course. Was that why she had not yet returned?
If I took the ruby, then I could bargain with her.
She rubbed her aching eyes with her knuckles. The fire had died away. The oats were as roasted as they would be. She chewed a few handfuls, drank the lukewarm tea to wet her throat, and felt the headache recede. The winds were rising again, a thin high keening. Snow hissed against the Mantharah’s walls, only to vanish into meltwater.
Running just beneath the windsong, she heard Daya speaking again. Go in spirit. Go through the world of flesh in spirit with me. We shall take Rana. We shall make the leap into Anderswar and back to here, to the Agnau. Then you shall have two of us, and Valara Baussay has no choice but to follow.
She remembered now. The oldest mages, the ones who served the chieftans of Erythandra in the northern plains, before they moved south to conquer and make an empire. It was part of their initiation, to walk in the spirit but remain in the ordinary world. There were no written records, of course, but the old tribes had handed down the stories, priest to priest, until those stories reached the days when scribes set them to parchment. If she left her body here by the Agnau, her spirit could glide the miles to Zalinenka, unseen by guards. She and Daya could take Rana and escape through Anderswar and thence back to Agnau.
Flesh in the spirit. And spirit in the world of flesh.
A sense of vertigo swept over her, recalling her first time in Anderswar and that disembodied sensation, as if she were floating in an ocean of mist.
A return to ordinary chores restored her sense of place. She buried the fire. Laid out her sword and dagger in their sheaths. Then she lay down on the warm sands and clasped her hands over Daya. “Komen mir, lâzen mir,” she whispered. “Lir give me courage. Toc give me strength.”
The current contracted around her, then blossomed outward. Her spirit rose to standing, her body shifting slightly as the two separated. She breathed deeply, felt the muted sensation of flesh against cloth-in-memory, and glanced around.
The world had turned translucent. Bright fires—other spirits—were moving about. Two bright sparks circled the opening between the cliffs—winter foxes on the hunt. From the south came a sense of many more. Rastov and Leos Dzavek’s castle.
Ilse turned south, and began the journey to Zalinenka.
* * *
VALARA RETURNED TO find Ilse lying motionless next to the Mantharah’s cliffs. Her eyes were closed, and her lips parted. In the Agnau’s extraordinary light, it appeared as though the other woman were speaking. Right away, she noted that Ilse wore the ring on her left hand.
She thought I betrayed her. She went to Zalinenka. Alone.
Valara wasted no time in fury or second thoughts. With the sapphire clasped in one hand, she lay down next to Ilse and spoke the words to release her spirit from her flesh.
* * *
ILSE WALKED FOR hours across the plains, through a world painted in grays and black and muddy white. Her passage left a glittering trail, visible to the spirit eye until she wiped its trace clean. In places, a companion set of tracks dented the snow crust. The tracks were slight, a powdery dusting of snow crystals swept over them; nevertheless, she took care to interrupt her trail on rock outcroppings, or by taking detours through an icy, free-running stream. Strange that her spirit communicated physical sensation to her. Habit or clue to some tenuous connection between body and soul?
As she walked, she thought of Valara. She thought of Raul Kosenmark. And Galena, Alesso, all those others from her past. If she did not succeed, she would be dead and beyond helping anyone, yet she continued this internal recitation of those in danger.
Hours passed. The miles slipped away, impossibly fast. The sun arced toward the horizon, then dipped below. More hours passed, as the last of daylight drained from the sky, leaving behind a scarlet thread of light above the southwest horizon. She sensed Rastov’s bright constellation of souls and fixed on that direction. Soon she came to a narrow track cut into the ground. It led to a second, larger path, which joined a third to become a road leading south. Gradually the high flat plains began their long descent, dropping from the plateau toward a broad valley with a river winding through it. She saw at once the large city, its buildings a dark mass. On the nearer bank, at the northern edge of the city, stood a castle. Zalinenka.
Daya had remained silent throughout the long journey, but she felt its presence even stronger here, in this point between flesh and pure spirit. Now it spoke. You remember?
Ilse nodded. I lived there once. My name was Milada Ivet Darjalova. My father was a prince of Károví.
Four hundred years ago, and yet the roads of time had led her back.
She went on, following the road as it looped down from the plains toward the castle. Sentries stood guard at various points; to her, their bodies appeared cloudy, their spirits like concentrated flames within a darker husk. Ilse forced herself to continue. She was spirit and not flesh, she reminded herself. They could not see her. As she passed the first visible perimeter, one soldier did turn, his expression startled, as if he had sensed her presence, but no one spoke or tried to bar her way.
At last she came to a side gate into the castle grounds. The gates were closed, and six guards stood at attention, swathed in voluminous fur capes against the cold. More guards patrolled inside the courtyard.
Ilse cautiously explored the gate, taking care to stay clear of the sentries. She thought of herself as invisible, but that wasn’t entirely true. Spirit alone would fly to Anderswar, and so she existed now as a distilled version of her complete self. Walls and closed doors blocked her, and though darkness obscured her footprints, it could not hide her actions completely. She waited until the old watch left their post, then followed them to another gate, where they gave a password. As they passed through, Ilse hurried behind them.
Once inside, she wandered through a maze of halls. A wide set of stairs led her upward. She climbed them, and found herself standing in the castle’s great hall. The room stood empty, draped in blue shadows, yet from this point, she could number every inhabitant of the castle, from scullions and lackeys, to courtiers and nobles. The steady pulse of heartbeats sounded in her ears, and the presence of hundreds crowded against her skin. Running just below the surface was Rana’s song.
The call drew her upward, and she climbed two flights up a broad curved stairway to another gallery. She passed two cavernous rooms, then turned down a narrow corridor, past antique statues and fluted columns of snowy marble. No more servants appeared. No sentries or guards stood in attendance. Warnings nipped at her consciousness, but the ruby’s song drew her onward, as if it were a magnet and she the metal filings. She came at last to a tall carved door, painted dark red, like a scarlet drop in Zalinenka’s white infinity.
She glanced around. The corridor remained silent and deserted. She tested the latch. Unlocked. Her fingers sank into the metal, but not completely. She pushed harder, and the door swung open.
It was a large room, with a freshly laid fire. Scrolls and books filled the many tall shelves. A graceful desk stood by a window, and several chairs circled the fireplace with tables at their sides. By the largest chair stood a pedestal carved from a single block of marble. On it rested a small wooden box, its lid opened wide. Even before she saw the dark red gleam inside the box, Ilse knew from Rana’s rising song that she had found the ruby.
Slowly she approached, hardly daring to breathe. Rana lay in a bed of white silk, its surface alight with magic. Its song beat against her thoughts, a complex pattern of dark and light notes. Her hand had just touched the ruby, when the door closed behind her.
“Andrej. You came back.”
Ilse plucked her hand away. Her skin contracted, as if her spirit still inhabited a body. Keeping her movements slow and deliberate, she turned around.
Dzavek stood at the entrance to the room. The outline of his face wavered, and through his eyes, Ilse saw the pale stones of the castle walls. He’d left his body behind, just as she had, and spirits in the realm of flesh could sense more than any guard.
“Milada,” he whispered.
His once-brilliant eyes widened. Age had clouded them, but it had not obscured the intelligence behind them. She remembered, from the distance of dreams and almost-forgotten days, how they had argued so passionately about Károví and its people, and whether the connection with the empire could be broken. She had not loved him—theirs was a marriage arranged by their fathers, both high-standing nobles whose families traced their lineage back to the old kingdom, before Erythandra had absorbed Károví into its domains. But she had always admired him.
“Leos.”
He smiled. “So you recognize me.”
“It took me some time. You expected Valara Baussay, of course.”
“Yes. Where is Andrej? He sent you to find Rana, of course.”
“Not directly,” she said, “but yes.”
“He was always persuasive,” Dzavek murmured. “Is that why you betrayed me in the end?”
She shook her head. “I never did, Leos.”
“Then why did you leave me?”
It was their old argument of loyalty and honor. She wanted to tell Leos that she had intended to serve both him and their kingdom, without betraying her own honor. She checked herself. In his eyes, the king was the kingdom. Her reasons were unimportant. Her personal honor meaningless. She had acted against him, therefore against Károví.
More than once, she reminded herself.
And so she simply said, “I left because I could not do otherwise.”
“We must each act according to our purpose,” he murmured.
He waved his hand, and ghostlike rings, silver and white, flashed their brilliant gems.
Though she heard no spoken invocation, the air thickened at once. She retreated from the pedestal, uncertain what he meant to do. It was then she heard the footsteps, slow and deliberate. Dzavek pointed toward the wall and a small door that Ilse had not noticed before.
The door swung open to reveal Dzavek’s body framed between the ivory posts. Dzavek’s spirit glided toward his body. For one moment, there was a doubled image. A heartbeat later, the two merged into one, sending a shock through the magic current. Dzavek blinked and drew a long breath. He passed a hand over his face. He appeared dazed and his skin gleamed with sweat.
Watching him, Ilse was reminded of Raul’s first secretary, Berthold Hax, in the days before his death. The face leached of warmth and color, the lines etched with the knife edge of pain, the strange distant gaze, half focused on this world, half on the void and journey to the next life.
He’s dying. He knows it. He knows he cannot escape death forever.
Dzavek walked unsteadily past Ilse to the marble pedestal. He gathered up Rana into his hands and closed his eyes. Though he did not move his lips, the current stirred. His face smoothed. The unhealthy gray vanished in the wake of a ruddy flush, and he stood straighter. It was like watching an invisible hand brush away the centuries.
“Leos…”
“No,” he said. “Do not argue with me, Milada. We have never agreed on these points. I do not wish to harm you, but I shall not let you betray me again.” His eyes opened to show them brilliant as before, but too bright, too intent. “I see you have Daya. Show me where you left your body. I ask you now. I will not ask so gently again.”
He advanced. Ilse took a step back, thinking swiftly what to do. She heard Daya’s faint song, a tremolo of minor notes. Underneath, almost inaudible, Rana’s deeper chords. What had been their song before the emperor’s mage divided their souls into three?
You know nothing about him, Dzavek had said.
It was then she understood. He had been the priest who entrapped a magical being inside a jewel. He had been the emperor’s mage, who divided its soul into three, to prevent any thief from taking the whole.
And he will do more, she thought. He is that desperate.
All the while, Leos Dzavek had continued to press forward, driving her into a corner. His flesh could not hold her spirit, but his magic could. She had to escape into Anderswar, lure him far away from the Mantharah, and hope Valara Baussay discovered Lir’s third jewel in time. It might mean her soul trapped in the magical plane, but she could not risk his capturing ruby and emerald both.
She was about to murmur the invocation to magic, to make that leap, when a ripple of shadow and light caught her eye. Valara Baussay stepped over the threshold into the study.
“Leos,” she said softly. “You forget yourself.”
Her spirit shape was little more than a brush of darkness against the ivory walls. Her eyes were bright and fierce. Two dark patches—her tattoos—stood out clearer than in the flesh.
Leos swiveled around to face the intruder. “Andrej.”
His voice was like the hiss of metal over stone. His lips thinned to a sharp line. He and Valara stared at each other, their expressions a mirror of like emotion. A wolf and a fox, Ilse thought. Two beautiful, savage animals.
“Give me the ruby, Leos. Give me Rana.”
“No. I have need of it—to protect my kingdom.”
“So that you might send more ships against mine? I cannot risk that.”
Leos smiled faintly. “Ah, yes. You said much the same, that other time, when you tried to persuade me to yield to the emperor. A month later, you led his army against me.”
The old challenge and response had grown more bitter over the passing centuries. Ilse circled around to the far end of the room, thinking she might take advantage of the situation while their attention was locked on each other. Dzavek glanced toward her sharply, but when Valara Baussay glided closer, his attention flicked back. His hand tightened around the ruby, which gleamed dark and ruddy, so that its light spilled through his fingers like blood.
Valara paused. Her chin jerked high. She lifted her right hand in a fist and muttered a phrase. A dark blue fire poured through her translucent skin.
Dzavek’s mouth softened into a smile. “You have Asha.”
“And you, Rana. We are well matched.”
Wolf and fox stared at each other. The bitterness was gone, the only emotion left a cold calculation of the other. Then, so swiftly Ilse did not see the gesture until complete, Valara swept both hands up. Her lips were already moving in the invocation to magic, but Dzavek acted only moments behind.
“Ei rûf ane gôtter. Komen mir de strôm unde kreft. De leben unde tôt.”
Magic burst against magic. For one instant, the air burned bright and still, so still, it was as though the world’s hourglass had paused in turning. Then, a gout of cold fire rushed outward. It tore through Ilse’s spirit essence. Blinded, she fell back against the wall. This was like the moment when flesh translated to spirit, dissolving, caught by the winds of magic. More and she would vanish altogether.
… ei rûf ane gôtter. Ei rûf ane Lir unde Toc, ane bruodern unde swestern …
All three jewels were shouting, great ringing tones that echoed from the walls. The winds of magic did not lessen. They streamed around and through Ilse, but no longer tearing at her essence. She could see nothing—the fire burned brighter than before, if that were possible—but she heard and tasted and smelled the magic, felt the signature of all three jewels pressed against her ghost form. Daya, the strongest, like a brand upon her finger. Rana, dark and angry. Asha, a river of silver. They spoke a language beyond her comprehension. Older than Erythandra. As old as the world itself, born from the Mantharah when Lir and Toc made love.
… komen mir de strôm. Komen mir alle kraft …
The words vanished into a crescendo of bright tones. Ilse heard them, saw them, silver shaded with dark and edged with the sharpest of light. Faint, oh so faint, she caught a glimpse of Valara’s signature, the fox slipping between, and once of Leos Dzavek’s. Then the magic of the jewels overwhelmed her again. As from a distance, she heard a single bell tone, and the word, Now.
Now.
The air cracked, the world divided. Her vision turned black …
… silence … emptiness … the faint tattoo of her own heartbeat … the green of magic rolling over her skin …
Her vision cleared. It took her more moments before she could make sense of what she saw. She crouched on a hard surface. Splinters and other debris covered the floor around her. Smoke filled the air, dense and black. A few crimson sparks floated slowly to the ground. Except for a hissing noise, the study was eerily silent, invisible behind that black veil. Her first instinct was to touch her ring finger. Yes, there was Daya, or at least its essence.
The smoke stirred. A voice—harsh and low—spoke a word, and the darkness lifted.
Valara knelt by the doorway. Her eyes were wide, rimmed with pale circles, her ghostly essence thin and insubstantial. “Ilse?”
The room lay in shambles. Smoke blackened its walls and ceiling; dozens of cracks marred the tiled floor. One bookcase had collapsed, scattering papers and books everywhere, and the floor was littered with the shattered remains of Dzavek’s desk.
The sight recalled Ilse to her senses. She scrambled toward the last place she had seen Leos Dzavek. She found him stretched out on the floor, pinned beneath the marble pedestal. She dropped to her knees beside him. “Leos.”
“My brother.”
He coughed noisily. Ilse tried to lay her hands upon him, but her spirit sank through his body. Cold, cold, cold. He was dying in truth this time.
Dzavek jerked upright, in spite of the pedestal’s weight. His eyes were blank, unseeing. But then he sniffed the air, like a dog scenting a fox, and he swiveled around to Valara Baussay. “Andrej. You…” He coughed. “You will not—”
He crumpled over. Ilse wrapped her fingers around his wrist. Her touch meant nothing, and yet he stopped and gazed into her face with his blind eyes. They were almost white now, like a winter snowfall.
“You never loved me,” he said.
Truth at last.
“No,” she said softly. “Because you loved Károví too dearly. You were a king, Leos, even before they set the crown upon your head. And yet, I would have been proud to be your wife and your queen.” Memories of those early days came back to her, of the time before Leos Dzavek and his brother traveled to Duenne and the imperial court, when she and he had been companions, if not lovers. He had returned entirely changed. The jewels. The break with his brother.
“But you doubted me,” she said softly. “You believed I wished to betray you. I never did. I left because I loved Károví, too, and I did not wish to watch our people die in war.”
“You loved that man.”
“I did,” she admitted. “Then and now, Leos. But I also love both our kingdoms, as much as you love Károví. I would see them live in peace. Can you understand?”
His lips moved soundlessly. Ilse bent close and kissed her once betrothed, spirit to flesh. Leos must have felt that insubstantial gesture, because he shuddered and laid a hand over his heart. There was blood behind the clouded eyes, and his lips were chilled. “It is time to die?” he said.
“Time and long past, my love.”
He closed his eyes. Breathed out a long slow breath, so easily that she did not realize at first what was happening, until his body went limp and fell through her arms to the floor. She reached toward him, as if she could recall him from death. Stopped herself and touched his brow. She felt the difference at once, a stillness that went beyond sleep. “He’s gone,” she whispered.
The magic current stirred. The air in the study turned thick. It was a tide of magic, greater than any she had ever dared to summon. For one moment, Ilse felt its burning brilliance course through her veins. It was like the first time she crossed into Anderswar, when colors sang and the air tasted of light. She heard the echo of a familiar voice. It spoke in a fluid Erythandran, with an accent of years ago—Leos. A triplet of voices overlaid it—Daya’s and Rana’s and Asha’s. She had the sense of a conversation among elders, one not hers to share. Then the current shuddered, ebbed away.
Before her lay a thin film of ashes. Leos Dzavek’s body had vanished.
And so we give the flesh to the earth. The spirit itself lives on.
Abruptly, voices sounded outside the room. The door banged open, and a stocky man appeared in the opening. Ilse froze, then realized he did not see her. She felt a hand on her wrist. Valara. Together they drew back against one wall, taking care not to disturb anything.
More guards appeared behind the first. They looked stunned. Finally, one stepped over the threshold and stared around the room. He called back an order, giving someone’s name—Duke Markov.
Ilse held her breath, grateful for the shadows. She waited until the guards withdrew, then glanced toward Valara. The other woman seemed to guess her question. She held up her right hand with Asha still clenched in her fist. So the emerald and sapphire were still theirs. Rana, however … Valara shook her head, echoing Ilse’s thoughts. There was no time to search. When the crowd dispersed, except for two sentries, they slipped out the door and fled toward the stairs.