Barbara Hambly - 04 Mother Of Winter

He was silent a moment, the orange light that fell upon him from the torches in the corridor lying in strange patterns along the differing links of the chains, like the encrypted message in some unimaginable genetic code.

"But they are true. And because the mages in the ice-the children of the Mother-and the Mother of Winter herself, are of a substance and an essence unknown to me, my magic cannot touch them. When I was driven into the tomb, I put forth all my strength, all my power, against them, and it was as if I fought shadows. "My lady." He stretched out his hand to the young Empress, the bandages stiff with blood, and Gil saw the tightening of his jaw muscles under the weight of the chains. "I beg you, let me go. Even if you will not believe me-and there is no reason that you should-please, let me return to my home. My people need protection against what is coming. I swear to you I will not meddle, nor spy, nor interfere in the affairs of your people or your lands, unless you come against us. And if things go on as they are," he added quietly, "in a year, or two years, you will be in no position to do that." "What of Bektis?"

Ingold looked momentarily nonplussed, his hand dropping to the bench again; he turned to regard his brother wizard with mild inquiry. "Oh, I doubt he'll be in a position to come against us, either."

"Do not jest with me," the dark girl said soberly. "I meant, did I release you-did I ask you to go again to the crypt of the Blind King to meet these children, these priests, of the Mother-would it aid you to have Bektis fighting at your side? For all that my Lady Bishop has done to him, he is still-"

Bektis hastily framed counter arguments, but Yori-Ezrikos spoke over his mellifluous objections.

"- he is still a man of power."

"Your Most Gracious Majesty, surely you cannot believe the ravings of a man who is clearly deranged! My position in the household of the Prince-Bishop is indispensable! Though I regret most exceedingly that I am unable to accompany my Lord Ingold-" "You will accompany him."

Bektis shut up as if she'd turned a faucet or tightened a garrote. Gil didn't blame him. Yori-Ezrikos was not anyone she'd want to mess around with. "I know everything about your position in the PrinceBishop's household," Yori-Ezrikos said, "and what you have done in her service."

"Your Highness is kind." Ingold inclined his head; his hair and beard were damp with the sweat of the sheer exertion of the conversation. "But I fear-" "My Highness is nothing of the sort." Her small hands had returned to her knees, the hieratic position reminiscent of the Blind King himself within his tomb. The silken veil moved eerily with the movement of her lips as she spoke, the gold flowers embroidered on its hem glinting in the torchlight from above. "But I believe you. I owe the Prince-Bishop a great deal, including my life, I daresay. Perhaps I do wrong in the sight of God by freeing you, by using your power to defeat this evil. I know not what this will do to my soul in God's eyes. But I am not stupid. I know that the cold causes the famine and the famine causes the wars. And if there is

anything I can do to turn this tide, or to stop its flow, that I will do, though it cost me my hope of heaven."

She rose, a tiny woman not yet seventeen, with an eerie frost in her eyes. "Under this condition will I let you free, Ingold Inglorion. That you go with Bektis, and you try again with your combined powers to defeat the wizards under the ice. I shall give you whatever you need, whatever you ask for-protection, a time of rest and food to regain your strength, the best physician in the city. But you must swear to me that you will make the attempt. If not, you, and Bektis, and your wife here, will all die." "Your Beneficent and Beautiful Majesty," Bektis said, "I beg you not to be hasty-" "I said be quiet." She didn't even look over her shoulder at him. "Will you swear? I know wizards have no God. Swear to me-" She hesitated, searching her mind, and a curious expression glimmered in the silver-gray eyes. "-swear to me on the head of your firstborn child."

Ingold shivered. His eyes went to Gil for a moment, then down to his hands, lying chained and broken across his middle. If he thought about telling Yori-Ezrikos that it was useless-that no matter what aid she gave him he could not touch the mages in the ice-the sight of even that handbreadth of her face between the veils, Gil thought, would have changed his mind.

It passed through Gil's mind that in another year or two, the man who raped her when she was twelve-the man whose child she had killed as it emerged from her body-Ingold's old enemy Vair na-Chandros the One-Handed-was going to be very, very sorry he had done what he did.

"I swear to you," Ingold said in a voice so soft as to be nearly inaudible, "on the head of my firstborn child, that I will attempt once more to destroy the Mother of Winter, though I die in the attempt."

"Ingold, this is ridiculous!" Bektis paced furiously back and forth across the gold and lapis tiles of the chamber Yori-Ezrikos had installed them in, his white beard and crimson velvet robe giving him the air of an agitated Father Christmas. "My Lady Govannin will never stand for it! We must make plans!"

The chamber, though comfortable in the spare southern fashion, was, Gil gathered, also proof against the use of magic therein, as were the other two rooms of the tiny suite at the rear of the Empress' wing of the episcopal palace.

Gil thought she recognized the Runes of Silence ornately calligraphed into the goldwork of the tiles, worked into the plaster, probably graven on the stones beneath the tiled floor, as they had been graven on the bricks of the cell. A marble lattice looked into a garden, but heavy wooden shutters were folded over it on the inside, and there was no way through.

"Oh, I'm making plans." Ingold propped himself a little on one of the pillows that lined the wall-bench, seemingly the only type of furniture, except for the occasional pedestals or desks, that southern buildings boasted.

In number of pieces, the room differed not the slightest from Gil and Ingold's chamber in the tenement behind the St. Marcopius Arena: only the mattresses and sheets on the wall-bench were of indigo linen, and the desk ebony and pearl. Where a leaf of the shutters was folded back, a few pigeons-blood roses grew through the marble fretwork, touching the air with their scent.

"And I suspect that since your powers and your position in Her Holiness' household are kept very quiet, she'll wait for some time before making inquiries after you."

The physician sent by Yori-Ezrikos-and escorted by two of her personal guards-had just departed, after telling Ingold that his heart had been badly strained and he must have at least two months of absolute rest. Gil suspected this was not what either Ingold or Yori-Ezrikos had in mind.

"I'm planning just exactly how I'm going to make sure of your assistance when we return to the Blind King's Tomb. Though I suspect I won't need to do much," the mage went on, refastening the breast of his borrowed ecclesiastical robes. "I'm sure our escort will have instructions to carry us thither in chains, and considering the population of gaboogoos and mutant dooic on the lower slopes of the mountain, I think you'll find it safer to accompany me than to make a run for it under a cloaking spell. I doubt you'd get far."

"Really!" Bektis sputtered, trying to look indignant at the implication instead of merely scared out of his wits.

The servant who accompanied the physician had brought a hammered copper platter containing lamb, doves, some kind of spiced aubergine mush, and a pie of honey, almonds, and rice, famine not having reached such proportions as to affect the Prince-Bishop's table, evidently. Or maybe it had, Gil thought, pouring herself a cup of mint tea. Maybe these were poverty rations, as Yori-Ezrikos and Govannin understood them.