Barbara Hambly - 04 Mother Of Winter

The moving shapes, like vast plasmic jellyfish, dissolved. Maybe they had only been in her mind. Gil heard Ingold sigh. "It is more than power, Gil. More than understanding their substance. Their substance is alien, under the sway of alien magic. I understand a great deal now about how their power is raised, but I am not of them. I cannot command their central essence, what they truly are, which I do not understand. And without that command, my magic cannot combat theirs."

He drew her down into the niche beside him, and she rested against his shoulder, comfortable in the circle of his arm, in trust. Almost, she felt that it would make no difference now whether they lived or died, succeeded or went down in defeat. Only that they had this.

Quietly, she said, "You never were afraid of me because I might kill you, were you? Or because I'm...changing..."

"Changing?" He sat back a little from her, regarded her with surprise.

"Mutating." She could barely bring the words out, under the agony of shame.

"Because of the poison. Sometimes I think it's illusion. Other times..." She held up her hands, not certain anymore if the fingers were longer than they had been, the joints more extended.

Ingold swiftly took the hand in his and kissed it. "It is illusion," he said, appalled, shaken. "Gilly, if I had known..."

She turned her face away, but she could feel his eyes searching her. "No," he said, and she knew to her marrow that he spoke the truth. That his sight saw clear and his assurance could be trusted. "My darling, my child, that you had to go through that, along with everything else-"

"It's nothing," she said, brusque and awkward. "It was the least of it." There was a long silence, the warmth of his hands on hers strong and steady, real against the fading of the dream images of pain.

He was so shocked, so remorseful, that she made her voice light, to reassure him. "It's just that I couldn't tell. Like all those other illusions. But in the midst of it, I knew in my heart that even if it was true, it didn't make a difference to you. But you were so wary- and of course you had to be. So the only thing that really bothered you was you thought I'd lain with another man."

"In a sense," Ingold said slowly. "Although had I known... I didn't know how deep the influence of the ice-mages went in you, you see, or how deeply they could influence your mind. That you would try to kill me, yes; that you felt a great anger at me in the times when their influence was strong over you, yes-and you would have been more vulnerable at the beginning, before you learned to cope. What most troubled me was the possibility that you had lain with another man under their influence and had found in the experience things that I cannot give you."

Gil said softly, "Oh."

"I would rather have left you at the Keep, not only for the sake of your health and the child's, but to give you time to make up your mind."

He spoke hesitantly, choosing each word with desperate care. "I would rather have dealt with the matter after the ice-mages themselves were destroyed-if they could be destroyed-so that your mind would be clear. But as I said in my note-and remind me to transform that brat Niniak into a ferret to repay him for his misguided chivalry-the icemages would have made you follow in any case, by illusion or compulsion or whatever means they could. Though you would be their eyes and their ears while with me, I would rather have had that, than have you stalking me, alone, through the wilderness and the cold. They have no care for the physical well being of their servants," he added bitterly. "And... for better or worse, my dear, I wanted you with me."

She tightened her arm around his rib cage-carefully, for his left arm was still strapped, to let the arrow wound heal. "Well, Ingold," she said gravely, "despite the frenzied passion I developed for Enas Barrelstave, whose child I carry-"

Ingold pulled her hair.

Her voice sobered. "-I swear to you I'm not going to be the ice-mages' agent on this trip. You know that."

"I know that." His hand stroked her hair in the dark. "But I cannot let you lose your life in this cause. Not your life, nor the life of the child within you."

"They are within me." Gil sat up and held out her arms, pulling back the sleeves of her loose red tunic as if the veins beneath the flesh would have turned color with the venom of the thing inside her. "They're as much a part of me right now as your child, Ingold. More, because the child is quiet, and these bastards talk to me, whisper to me, make me doubt every word I say and every motion I make when I'm anywhere within five feet of you."

As they whispered now, she added within herself. He trusts you again. Now is your time. Her sword lay at the edge of the cushioned bench, within the reach of her hand-a Guard reflex that she suspected would be with her to the end of her days. Her knife was in her belt. That was the young Empress' doing.

"I've gotten more used to it now," she went on, carefully steadying her voice. "It bothers me less than it did. I can say, 'Oh, that's that darn such-and-such illusion again.' Like commercials on TV." She found she still could not name to him the visions she had. And in truth, she thought, there was no need.

"I feel like I've named the voices in my head, the burning in my veins; all those stupid lies and scenarios that play past me when I shut my eyes."

Ingold gathered her back into his arms, held her tight against him for a long time. Beneath her cheek she felt the tension of his pectorals and in his silence heard the swift flow of his thought. Then he sighed again, accepting something, releasing something.

There was infinite regret in his voice as he asked her, "And what have you named them, my dear?"

Gil sat up sharply, their hands still touching, their eyes locked; Gil understanding, knowing what it was she saw in the wizard's gaze. She thought, Of course. There has to be a built in compatibility in the poison if there's communication. Just as there has to be compatibility in the slunch, if it mutates human flesh and human thought.

At the same time all the voices in her mind rose shrieking, crying to her that it wouldn't work, it would kill her, kill her child, kill Ingold. Half-seen visions of hideous terrors fleeted through her mind, the awareness of how easy it would be to pull her dagger from her belt and drive it into his heart, and beyond all other things, the clear awareness of pieces of a puzzle falling into place. "You can use the venom in my blood as a magical interface," she said. "Can't you?"

At Gil's request, the Lady Yori-Ezrikos sent to the St. Marcopius Barracks for warriors to thicken her bodyguard-the Gray Cat, the Little Cat, the Bear, the Eggplant, Sergeant Cush, and others whom Gil knew could be trusted.

Ingold selected men from among the young Empress' regular bodyguard, using Rudy's criterion of susceptibility to illusion, and spoke to the Empress herself about preparations such as time and place, barges and equipment; presumably, Gil thought, to get at least some jump on the ice-mages.

She was still deeply conscious that whatever she learned, they would know, and retired to the other room of the suite when Ingold dealt with such matters. There was a mirror there. Sometimes she saw the deformed face in it, the hammer jut of chin and the alien forehead, the horror that had become her eyes. Other times she saw only her own face. She could not tell which was more familiar, or which was the lie.

She couldn't tell either whether her overwhelming desire to eavesdrop was the ice-mages' or her own native nosiness. She rehearsed Dante in her head until the impulse went away.

She was aware that on the day before the first night of the full moon, Yori-Ezrikos manufactured a summons that would take Govannin to the town of Yeshmi All-Saints, a day's barge-ride downriver, the young Empress promising to hold Ingold for execution upon Govannin's return. Gil would have given a great deal to know what she told Govannin about Bektis' absence. A sudden attack of measles? If, as Gil suspected, Govannin had used Bektis as a pawn in her climb to power in the South, she'd be hesitant to go head-to-head with her pupil over what might simply be a don't-ask-don't-tell request for services.