David Drake - Godess of the Ice Realm

"I don't think finding me counts for much, seeings as I'm trussed here like a chicken at market," Cashel said.

Kakoral roared with laughter. His body seemed to swell to the scale of the room. "You brought me through the Visitor's defenses, Master Cashel," he said. "That was enough to suit me. It will suit him too, like a hemp collar!"

The demon reached out a foreclaw toward Kotia. The crystal cage exploded in a crimson flash, leaving the girl sprawled in the air. She rubbed her biceps; she'd been spread-eagled in her prison like a hide pegged out for drying.

The globe was now a perfect solid with the glint of steel. It stabbed a needle of blue wizardlight toward Kakoral.

Toward where Kakoralhad been. The bolt ripped a deep furrow across the floor, mounding material like smelter slag up on either side. The demon was a furlong high in the air, his hands spread.

Axeblades of red fire chopped at the globe and glanced off with ripping sounds. One sheared a girder and the other sparkled through a swath of the fine cords crisscrossing the interior. A second blue needle stabbed and missed.

The demon and the Visitor's globe rose in alternating pulses, leapfrogging one another and blasting wizardlight as they went. Neither of the opponents seemed to exist in the spaces between their successive stages.

Cashel followed the battle until even the searing flares of azure and crimson twinkled like the stars seen through horsetail clouds. He lowered his head, sighed, and gave a tentative pull at the quarterstaff. He'd hoped he'd find that the invisible substance binding him had softened since last he tried moving. It hadn't.

"I wish Kakoral had cut me loose before he left," Cashel said, as much to himself as to Evne. He smiled. "I guess he had other things on his mind, though."

"So do you, master," the toad said, pointing with her right leg. "I rather thought we'd be seeing that one again."

Cashel turned his head. Ansache was walking toward him, down a line of light that seemed to have no more substance than the sun's reflection in a pond. The wizard held his violet athame vertically in front of him like a ceremonial mace.

Cashel strained again. It didn't help any more than he'd thought it would. "Ah, Evne?" he said. "Can you stop the fellow? Because I can't, not tied up like this, and I don't think he has anything good in mind."

"While the Great Lord of All Worlds deals with your pet, vermin…," Ansache said, pointing the tip of his athame at Cashel. "I will rid his domain of you!"

"Oh, I don't think either of us need to exert ourselves, master," the toad said, rubbing her pale belly with a forepaw. "Let Lady Kotia do it, why don't we? She's had time to rest."

"Brido ithi lothion!" Ansache called, looking along his athame like a soldier sighting a catapult.

"Phrene noumothili!" said Kotia from behind Cashel. A web of red wizardlight wrapped Ansache. It looked like the dazzle of a faceted jewel in full sunlight, but there was a roaring crackle as well. Ansache screamed.

Cashel turned his head. Kotia was walking toward them from the place where she'd been confined. In front of her, spinning in mid air, was a golden disk-one of the objects Cashel had seen suspended from threads of light.

"Oba lari krithi!" Kotia said. The golden disk slowed perceptibly; from it shot scarlet sparks that danced down over Ansache and tightened the bonds already in place. Ansache screamed again, but on a diminishing note. His shroud of red light collapsed to a point.

Ansache's athame clattered to the floor, blackened and smoking. Kotia frowned at it. "Rali thonou bo!" she said. The shimmering metal vanished in a thunderous crash, leaving motes of soot dancing in the air where it had been.

The disk settled with a hum that grew deeper as the spinning slowed. When it finally stopped with a liquid chime against the floor, the hum stopped also.

Kotia rubbed her forehead with both hands. Cashel waited till she'd lowered them and her eyes had cleared of the fatigue of the wizardry she'd completed.

"I'm glad to see you again, mistress," he said. "Would you get me loose from how I'm held here? If you can, I mean."

"What?" said Kotia, frowning. She looked at him closely, then gave a warm smile. "Yes, of course."

She bent to raise the golden disk, then waved a dismissive hand at it. "Faugh, there's no need," she said. She touched the quarterstaff, apparently hanging in the air, with her index finger.

"Boea boa nerpha," she said in a firm, quiet voice.

The staff dropped into Cashel's waiting hand. His legs and lower body were free, and he felt like he'd just set down a heavy weight. It'd bothered him to be trapped that way; bothered him more than he'd realized till it was over.

"I see being a guest of the Visitor has brought you more in touch with your father, girl," Evne said as she walked down Cashel's left arm and perched on the back of his hand where it held his staff. Her tiny claws prickled but her feet had a clammy stickiness that he found oddly pleasant.

"And who are you?" Kotia said, her eyes hardening as they focused on the little toad.

"She's my friend Evne," Cashel said, surprised at the hostility in Kotia's tone. "I wouldn't have gotten here without her, mistress. I wouldn't have come close."

"And I suppose you think she's a toad?" Kotia said to Cashel, raising an eyebrow.

"Iam a toad, girl," Evne said in a tone every bit as cold as Kotia's. "Unless you insist on having things a different way."

Kotia laughed with a mocking undertone. "No, of course not," she said. "I don't suppose it matters."

"Not for me, it doesn't," the toad agreed. "Nor for you either, I would judge."

Cashel had heard every word of the exchange. The girl and the toad might've been chanting gibberish for all the sense he made out of it. He'd been around people-and especially around women-enough to know not to ask them to explain what was going on, though.

Kotia looked in the direction of the ceiling. The flickers of wizardlight were too distant for Cashel's excellent eyes to make out, though he still felt the tremble of the accompanying roar through his soles.

"There's no way to get out before it's over, I suppose?" Kotia said to Evne.

"No," the toad said. "But it shouldn't be long now."

Cashel saw the light again as she spoke: glittering, then glaring; blue and red intertwined in a savage purple rhythm, spinning around the edges of the vast room. The battle was descending as swiftly as the opponents had risen out of sight.

Not long.

"Mistress Evne," he said. "Get back on my shoulder, if you please. Or get down so that I won't hurt you if I move."

"You're going to fight the Visitor if he defeats a demon, master?" the toad asked in a mocking tone.

"Yes, ma'am," said Cashel. "I am."

"Of course," said Kotia in a quiet voice. Evne hopped to Cashel's neckline in a single motion, the most graceful thing Cashel had known her to do.

The thunder of the downrushing combat filled the air. Not long at all…

Sharina awakened. The stars were dim points in a sky pulsing crimson and azure with light as cruelly cold as icebergs. She didn't know what had aroused her. The night was silent, save for the sighing wind.

"The great wizard has gone off again, mistress," said the axe her cheek rested on. "I wouldn't care what happened to him, of course; but if we're abandoned here, there'll be only your companions for Beard to dine on."

"Gone?" said Sharina, jerking upright and throwing off the bearskin wrapping her. "He took the ship?"

She leaped to her feet, then felt a surge of relief. She could see the Queen Ship's mast through the branches of a birch tree, on the other side of the little island. She and the rest of the band had moved to the western edge to sleep out of the constant wind.