Mistress of Winter Read online

Galliana left, and Shara’s gaze fell on the Siren’s Blood.

  Keep that bottle away from the Awakened Child of Efften…

  “I’d better leave you two,” Baelandra said, giving her a kiss on the cheek as she headed for the door. “Be careful of that wine. It’s good. Too good. I never touched it after that one time.”

  Shara nodded and Bae gave her a parting smile before closing the door behind her.

  Taking a deep breath, Shara took the bottle to her wardrobe, set it on the top shelf, and closed the door. There was only one reason the young sorceress could have come for a visit this evening. The council had still not decided about Brophy, but Arefaine had. She didn’t come all this way to see her gift scorned.

  Another knock at the door. This time, Shara crossed the room and opened it.

  The Ohohhim goddess stood on the far side, her hands tucked into the long sleeves of her robes. Her black clothing covered her from neck to floor. Its high, stiff collar framed her powdered face, serene as a statue’s. Issefyn stood at her side, without any other attendants. Somehow Arefaine had convinced the Carriers of the Opal Fire to remain downstairs.

  “Lady Morgeon,” Shara said, bowing at the waist. “You honor me by your presence.”

  The girl nodded in response. “It is I who am honored. I apologize for the lateness of the visit, but there was much that we need to discuss.

  Shara smiled. “I understand. Please, come in.” She nodded at Issefyn, and the teacher bowed and left.

  Shara led Arefaine inside. “Would you like to sit down?” Shara asked.

  “No, thank you,” Arefaine said. She had a pleasant voice, calm and soft-spoken without being timid.

  “I’m afraid my rooms are not in a state to receive visitors.”

  A desk on the far left-hand side of the circular room stood buried under stacks of books and magical implements. Combs, hairbrushes, two hair clips, and a brooch lay carelessly on her vanity.

  Arefaine gave a ghost of a smile. “If I had such a space for my own studies, I wouldn’t embellish it to please others, either.”

  Shara paused a moment, trying to judge the young woman’s inscrutable face. “I imagine finding any privacy at all has been difficult for you.”

  “Yes,” Arefaine nodded. “The Ohohhim can’t even seem to visit the bathroom in groups of less than ten.”

  Shara smiled, surprised that the girl made a joke. Her old, dear friend Father Lewlem was the only Ohohhim she’d ever met who seemed to have a sense of humor. She still missed him. The news of his death had touched her deeply.

  “I wish to discuss the containment stones and Brophy’s slumber,” Arefaine said.

  Again, Shara was surprised at her directness. It just seemed wrong coming from the powdered face of an Ohohhim. Even Father Lewlem had been far more circuitous in his conversations.

  Arefaine crossed the floor and stopped in front of a basket containing the shards of crystal that remained from Shara’s failed spell. “You have been trying to imbue a containment stone.” Arefaine looked over her shoulder.

  Shara nodded, her lips pressed together for a moment. “I have not been successful,” she said, pulling each word up from the bottom of her lungs.

  Arefaine nodded.

  “How did you acquire the ones you brought?” Shara asked.

  “I didn’t acquire them. I made them.”

  Shara stared at her, then dropped her gaze to the floor. Strands of her long black hair slipped forward across her flushed cheeks. Her voice was barely a whisper when she spoke. “How?”

  “Diligence, frustration, sleepless nights, pain…”

  Shara swallowed. “Then you are the better magician. I gave all this and more…but I failed.”

  Shara looked up at the young woman, standing so thin and so still. Not even an eyelid twitched, but her gaze was soft.

  “There is no need to be unkind with yourself,” Arefaine said. “Sometimes an entire tower can collapse because of one misplaced stone.”

  “Sometimes.”

  Arefaine touched the tattered, leather cover of a thin book on the edge of Shara’s worktable. Flaked blue writing told the title: The Illuminated Personification of Objects, by Hestorn the Blind. She lifted the book and opened it to a dog-eared page. She laid a slender finger upon the words Shara knew so well she could recite it from memory.

  “…progeneration requires utter commitment to the transfer of quintessence into a vessel…” she read from the book.

  “Yes,” Shara said. “I did. I gave the stone as many of my heartbeats as I could, right up to the last one before I lost consciousness.”

  “The unbroken string of heartbeats must be given with grace and conviction,” Arefaine read. “The last heartbeats…”

  “Yes.”

  “Not your heartbeats.”

  Shara’s breath stopped, and her mind raced through the passage she’d read a hundred times. She closed her eyes and clenched her teeth. “A sacrifice,” she murmured. “Another’s sacrifice. I thought it meant my own.”

  “The passage can be read that way. Hestorn was vague at best. In my first attempt, I did the same.” She extended an arm to reveal the smattering of tiny white scars. Shara glanced at the similar marks on her own arms. “But self-sacrifice was not what Hestorn meant. As you know, magic comes back to one basic principle, again and again. Only the living can wield it or be affected by it.” She closed the book and pushed it back on the table. “That is the heart of the Alcani form,” Arefaine continued. “A living spirit must be transferred for an inanimate object to come to life. Not part of a living spirit, its entirety.”

  Shara put her fingers to the bridge of her nose, drew a deep breath. “All of those years,” she said. “All of those stones. All for one conclusion I could not draw.” She took another long breath, then let it out. Her eyes burned when she looked back at Arefaine. “And you did it.”

  Arefaine nodded.

  “What did you use?”

  “The condemned, of course.”

  Shara drew a quick breath. “People?”

  Arefaine arched an eyebrow. “What would you suggest? A squirrel?”

  “Yes! Or some other animal.”

  “That would never work, and you know it. A stone made from such a primitive soul would never have the strength to contain that much emmeria.”

  “Then we make more.”

  “Adding a thousand brittle bars to a cage does not make it any stronger.”

  Shara strode toward her, grabbed Hestorn’s book from the table. She flipped open the well-used pages. “But you can’t. The sacrifice must be a willing participant.”

  “Of course.”

  “But no one would willingly…” Her statement petered out.

  Arefaine watched her carefully, then said, “Condemned men will often jump at a chance to redeem themselves, to take a few steps closer to Oh before the end,” she said. “I found many willing to give their lives to avoid being put to the sword, alone and ashamed, before their Emperor’s eyes.”

  “You tricked them.”

  “Of course I didn’t. They cannot be tricked or coerced. They must commit to the transfer with no doubt or hesitation. The released soul must fight to complete the transformation.”

  “But you actually took their lives?”

  “No. Their lives were already forfeit. I simply changed the manner of their deaths.”

  “That cannot be the solution,” Shara insisted. “A mage should never resort to violence—”

  “And the emmeria should never have been corrupted in the first place,” Arefaine said, but not without sympathy. “Magic requires power, and true power is not cheaply bought.”

  “Not at that price. Arefaine, believe me, we are defined by the paths we refuse as much as the ones we choose. Brophy taught me that in the Wet Cells. I will never again use my magic that recklessly. There are some things I will never do.”

  “Not even to save Brophy?”

  Shara winced. “Not even for that.”<
br />
  Arefaine smiled. “Truly?”

  Shara nodded, searching the woman for any hint of lingering black emmeria. But there was nothing. She was clean.

  “The strongest stone I made,” Arefaine said, “was created from the life of a young woman who killed her husband’s mistress in a jealous rage. The mistress was farther up the Divine Queue, a higher caste, if you will. If the husband had married her, it would have elevated the entire family, but it would also have made the murderess the second wife. It was a crime of asris, a term only used in the Opal Empire. It means greed for status and is the greatest affront to Oh’s loving example. In Ohohhom, those guilty of asris are put to the sword. But death was not what the woman feared the most. She begged for a way to remove the shame from her husband’s name.”

  “But that is no excuse to cut her throat and pour her lifeblood into a stone, to imprison her for eternity.”

  “The mind is not transferred, just the essence. There is no sense of self. She remains unaware of what happened. The stone has been personified, but it is not a living creature. Only one archmage was able to transfer even some of her consciousness into an object: my sister, Jazryth, when she created the Heartstone.”

  Shara raised an eyebrow in admiration. The girl had studied. That bit of information was not widely known.

  “That is why that stone is ten times more powerful than any ordinary containment stone,” Arefaine continued. “That is why she can choose the Children of the Seasons and offer a piece of herself to lend them her strength.”

  “And the Emperor knew you were doing this? Making these stones?”

  “Of course he knew. He owes as much debt to Brophy as any of us.”

  Shara paused for a long time.

  “Your stones…Can they safely contain all of the black emmeria?”

  “With the help of the Heartstone, yes.”

  Arefaine paused. For the first time, true emotion showed through the young woman’s carefully powdered face. “The long wait is over,” she said hoarsely. “For both of us.”

  Shara looked away, suddenly caught up in the other woman’s emotions.

  “My only wish,” Arefaine said, struggling with the words, “is that the two of us could have met earlier. How much easier would this task have been if we had been allowed to work together? The Sleeping Warden might have awoken years ago.”

  Shara nodded, thinking again of all the time wasted by one simple misunderstanding.

  “We mages need a place to gather,” Arefaine continued. “If there was a place for us to learn, think of the good we could accomplish. Think of how we could help the world.”

  “That’s what the founders of Efften said.”

  Arefaine smiled. “Yes. And think of the secrets simply left on that island. What could we learn from what the archmages left behind? Look at how far you have come with just a few crumbs that escaped the island before its fall. Together, we could bring back the best of what the world could be.”

  Shara’s brow furrowed. “Efften was the best and the worst. They almost destroyed the world.”

  “Some of Efften’s mages were reckless. Some of her leaders weak. But we would not make that mistake. People call the tainted emmeria the Legacy of Efften. But our people’s legacy is far more than our mistakes. The emmeria in Brophy’s keeping is simply raw power tainted by misuse. That power could be cleansed, redeemed, and put to work in the world.”

  “Arefaine, the world does not need that kind of power. The emmeria is evil, pure evil, born of hatred, abuse, and pain.”

  “But evil can be redeemed, hatred set aside, pain healed. We must be careful, very careful. But there is no reason we must repeat the sins of the past. Look what you have already done with Zelani in Ohndarien. Your school is a beacon in the night to those like us. Would you rather your students went back to being simple craftsmen and breeding stock, born and raised to produce dowries?”

  Shara shook her head.

  “People say that power corrupts, that a desire to reach beyond what you have been given is inherently evil. Then why don’t we put out our eyes to avoid being corrupted by the power of sight? Why don’t we cripple ourselves before we are undone by our greed for movement?”

  “That’s not a valid comparison. The emmeria is not a simple tool. It lives, it thinks, it yearns to unleash its plague upon the world. You cannot tap its strength and simply walk away. If you make that kind of thieves’ bargain, you will be looking behind your shoulder for the rest of your life.”

  “You did it. You walked away.”

  “No I didn’t. I have never been free of its call. I am forever diminished by the path I walked long ago.”

  Arefaine winced and turned away. Her slender hands were balled into fists.

  “I too have done some…” She struggled with the words. “Some horrible things in my life. But I have to believe that we can move past those things. There’s nothing wrong with us, Shara,” she said, almost pleading. “We’re just different than everybody else.”

  “You’re right. There is nothing wrong with us, but we are not different than anybody else. Just because you can do magic doesn’t place you above the laws of common decency.”

  “Think of Brophy,” Arefaine persisted. “He is not the only one who suffers. Many are locked in nightmare, frightened of their own powers, confused at the voices that call to them, never knowing why. What if we could build a home for those lost souls?” Arefaine paused, but Shara said nothing. Finally, Arefaine continued, her voice softer. “We have been given amazing gifts. All I want to do is use them.”

  “You can use them, we will wake Brophy, just not before everyone has had their voice heard in council,” Shara said, struggling to defend the arduous process.

  “Such a debate could last for months. Even years. Would you let Brophy continue to suffer any longer than he had to?”

  “Brophy doesn’t suffer,” Shara insisted, an ache in her chest. Arefaine’s words on top of the Hall of Windows had shaken her, but she couldn’t believe them. Arefaine hadn’t been in Brophy’s dream. She didn’t know. “He is happy where I left him. I have seen it in his eyes.”

  Arefaine shook her head slowly. “I am sure that is easier to believe, but it is simply not true. I spent ten lifetimes in that place. The emmeria lies. The only thing it wants is to escape, and the only thing stopping it is Brophy. You can’t imagine what pressure it is putting on him, twisting him until he breaks. It is a miracle that he has not already been shattered.”

  “I have been there,” Shara said stubbornly.

  Arefaine let out a small breath. “We will wake him regardless. No one need know until Brophy walks into the council meeting tomorrow morning. Why wait, why prolong his suffering?”

  “Because it doesn’t have to be tonight,” she said. It took all of her breath to say it. Every part of her body ached to agree with Arefaine.

  “If you knew what I knew,” Arefaine said, “you would not say that.”

  Silence fell in the chamber, and Arefaine waited.

  Eighteen years…

  “No,” she said quietly. “The council rules in Ohndarien, not I,” she said in a dead tone. “I will not betray my friends to wake my love.”

  Arefaine watched her with cold blue eyes for a long moment. She did not frown at being denied. She did not let out a frustrated breath. Her face betrayed no emotion at all. Finally, she nodded.

  “I understand. You honor yourself and your city. It is I who am guilty of asris. Fortunately, they do not execute anyone for that in Ohndarien.”

  Shara gave her a weak smile. And Arefaine returned it.

  “Let’s put this argument behind us. I would still love to talk with you about so many things. Would you consider joining His Eternal Wisdom and me for a late dinner?”

  The tension seemed to drain from the room.

  “I would be delighted,” Shara said, feeling like she’d just taken a beating. “Just let me grab a few things,” she said, opening her wardrobe doors to
grab a shawl.

  Arefaine smiled. “Of course. I will—”

  She shoved Shara out of the way and snatched the bottle of Siren’s Blood out of the wardrobe.

  “Keep that bottle away from the Awakened Child of Efften.”

  Shara lunged for the bottle, but Arefaine spun away and hurled it against the wall. The crystal shattered, splattering deep red liquid across the rose-colored wall. A hoard of colored lights scattered into the air, zipping about the room. Arefaine charged into their midst, waving her arms about her, snuffing each little light she touched.

  Shara leapt to stop her, grabbing Arefaine’s wrist. The last three lights shot through the open window and escaped into the darkness.

  “Are you mad! What are you doing?”

  The room reeked of wine, and the smell made Shara dizzy.

  “Where did you get that bottle?” Arefaine demanded.

  Shara narrowed her eyes, refusing to let go of the girl’s wrist. “Someone gave it to me,” she said, ice in her voice.

  “Do you have any idea what that was? It’s poison, the vile brew of a vile people. Drinking that would have been a fate worse than death.” Arefaine’s eyes continued to search Shara’s. Looking for…what?

  “I know what Siren’s Blood does.”

  “Not this kind. If you had drunk that, the villain who gave it to you would have owned you body and soul. That was the brew that destroyed our people. They were all swimming in it when the pirates attacked Efften. It’s why our magic didn’t work on them.”

  Shara backed up, letting her go.

  “You didn’t seek this out yourself?” Arefaine asked.

  “No. It was an unexpected and unwanted gift.”

  The girl paused. “A gift? When did you receive it?”

  “About an hour ago.”

  Arefaine’s jaw dropped, then her lip curled into a snarl. “They’re here now, in the city?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then they mean to take the Sleeping Warden!”

  “What?”

  “The Sleeping Warden. If they couldn’t get to you, they’ll take him from us!”

  “Why?”

  “Because they’re mad!” Arefaine cried, rushing to the door. “There isn’t a moment to lose.”