Barbara Hambly - 04 Mother Of Winter

There were preparations that could not be hidden from the ice-mages, and those were difficult for her. As she and the two bodyguards assigned her brought the bishop's wizard to the small ball-court of the Empress' wing of the palace, which Ingold had begun ritually cleansing and stitching with Wardlines against Bektis the moment Govannin was safely on her barge, Gil wondered whether the panic that rose in her, the ghastly sense that she would not survive the ritual Ingold was devising, was in fact her own common sense or her three pals under the ice.

Cold horror swamped her as they entered the ball-court, a long, marble-sided pit open to the sky, and she saw the lines of power Ingold had drawn in the sand, the Wards that circled the walls. For a moment Ingold, in his red-and-black novice's robes, seemed a stranger as he ritually sealed the Wards behind them, then signed her to remove the spell-cords and chains from Bektis' wrists.

"This entire project is ridiculous," the bishop's mage muttered through his teeth as Gil set the chains aside and Ingold returned to the measurement of an enormous circle in the court's smooth-combed sand.

"Of what conceivable use can it be to attempt what will only destroy two of a precious and dwindling corps of trained wizards? Much better to study these... these whatever they are, if they even exist... from a distance, to ascertain whether they are in fact priests or monsters or whatever. They aren't even human." "And while you're studying," Gil said softly, her eyes on the old man in the center of the court, "they're gaining strength. And men and animals are driven to eating slunch out of sheer starvation as the world grows ever colder. And those who eat the slunch

eventually begin to hear voices in their minds saying, 'Kill that guy over there with the magic wand in his hand.' "

"There is no proof whatsoever of that!" Bektis practically spit the words at her. "And what proof has Ingold that the cold is the result of these... these things he says live in the heart of the mountain? In all my years of dwelling in the Alketch, I've never heard of such a thing!"

"Bektis," Ingold called mildly. "I need your help."

"Hmf." The tall wizard stalked stiffly away toward the center of the court, fingering little waves into his new-washed beard. "First time Lord High-and-Mighty Inglorion has ever admitted he needs anyone's help..."

Gil remained where she was, in the smaller circle Ingold had traced around her, joined to the larger, central design by a narrow Road traced in ochre, silver, and hawk's blood in the sand.

Unlike Rudy, who claimed to see the lines of magic written as light in the air or, in some cases, reaching down into the earth like roots, she could only see the two wizards themselves, sketching patterns with their fingers or the ends of their staffs above the growing maze of Runes, sigils, and powertracks that grew about them on the dust.

But either they could see something there, she thought, or they were the best mimes she'd ever encountered. All the invisible lines met at the same points, over and over; Bektis ducked one as a tall man would have ducked a stretched clothesline. From the small ebony chest Yori-Ezrikos had sent to him that morning, Ingold removed silver dishes to hold the water necessary for the rite, silver braziers to burn the incense specific to the raising of power from noon sun on the day of the full moon. At the Keep, Gil knew, Ingold and Rudy frequently had to postpone spells and Summonings because they lacked materials that were, for thaumaturgical reasons, time-specific.

Fortunately, Govannin was the trustee of a quite astounding amount of treasure, handed over to the Church in the course of centuries by nobles and Emperors anxious to curry the favor of the saints.

She'd seen the same thing in the ruined treasure vaults of Penambra, only Govannin's hoard made the Penambra trove look like a five-and-dime. Govannin would hemorrhage if she knew the use to which the Church's wealth was being put now. Gil smiled.

At the lift of Ingold's hand, nine flames sprang to life in the braziers, nine cones of the finest incense flickered with brief coals, then sent up thin columns of smoke into the still air of the sunken court. The wan afternoon light flashed on the nine shallow vessels of water.

Ingold and Bektis began to speak, words of power and light, and from the bronze-strapped chest beside him, Ingold lifted the pride of Govannin's gem collection: a cabochon diamond more than half the size of Gil's fist. The Crown of Khirsrit, it was called.

Six hundred seventy-five karats of pure carbon.

"Can you do that?" she'd asked Ingold the night before last, as they sat talking and planning in the dark. "Alter the atomic valences of pure carbon so it will bond with the liquid oxygen in the pool the ice-mages guard?"

"You're sure the pool is oxygen?" For a number of years now, Ingold had been questioning Gil on as much elementary chemistry as she could remember, and laboriously devising his own experiments, for no other purpose than to satisfy his utter fascination with how the universe was put together. He had, to his own great surprise, made sense of two or three very ancient textual fragments by dealing with magic on chemical terms, something that told Gil a little more about the mages of the Times Before.

"Not a hundred percent." It had been pretty late then, the lamps, like elderly relatives at a party, one by one calling it quits. She and Ingold had pulled the blankets up over their knees, for though stuffy, the chamber was cold. Everything they said was being relayed immediately, she knew, to the icemages, but that couldn't be helped. All the gaboogoos in the world were going to be out there anyway.

"I'm guessing it's oxygen because oxygen's more stable than nitrogen," she said slowly. "Those would be the easiest to pull out of the air, the way you and Rudy can pull water vapor. Oxygen would require less magic over the years to hold in stasis. If it was something with a higher liquification temperature, like fluorine or bromine, you would have suffocated when you went in there to fight them. But if you charge a solid lump of pure crystallized carbon to be automatically open, to bond with the oxygen in the pool..."

"It will disrupt the thaumaturgic equilibrium," Ingold finished softly. "It will set off a chain reaction."

"And the thing in the pool will be destroyed."

"The thing in the pool," Ingold said. "The Mother of Winter." He touched the tangled night of her hair, traced with his thumb the print of the scars on her cheek. There was an endless sadness in his voice, a world of deep regret, as he spoke of their unseen enemy. "The guardian of the essence of all that vanished world."

"Do we have a choice?" Gil's voice came out taut and stifled, fighting against the waves of screaming rage that pummeled her mind, the nausea and splitting headache. Hands trembling, she curled her right thumb into the side of her index finger, where Ingold couldn't see it, and drove the nail into the flesh as hard as she could.

Ingold must have sensed the sudden strain, for he drew her closer to him, his strength a reassurance, like a lifeline in a storm. "If we have a choice, my dear," he said sadly, "it is one I cannot see."

"Gil- Shalos." Ingold beckoned from the greater circle, above which the shapes he showed her two nights ago had begun to take form. In the sunlight they were different, transparent, as if wrought of clear water, less like jellyfish and more like some kind of eerily glowing elemental plasm.

Gil assumed the pattern of their movement to be part of their power-Ingold had observed it in the crystal for slightly over an hour, the night Rudy showed it to him, before Gil half carried him back to bed. In the open air the forms were huge, changing size and shape and position. They seemed to breathe, though Gil wondered what elements of the air they sought.