Barbara Hambly - 04 Mother Of Winter

Bektis, eyes closed, hands outstretched, appeared to be in charge of maintaining those plasmoid shapes. He stood statuelike, garnet robes hanging in shining folds about his slender body, breathing deeply within his own small traced circle in the dust, the very picture of a great mage deep in the concentration of his sacred art.

Altogether less impressive, Ingold met her at the main circle's heart. In his hands, the Crown of Khirsrit glittered with secret fire, the reflections from within it cast up onto his face.

"Gil- Shalos." He addressed her again by the name she had been given among the Guards. "Do you truly wish this? I have not the faintest idea what the spell will do to you, either in the charging of the crystal or when it breaks the greater spell of the pool. But the crystal will be linked to you. It will become-it has to become-in a Platonic sense a part of your body and your blood. To the best of my knowledge and calculation, you will be unharmed by this, but we are dealing with an unknown magic, and with a spell that I myself have invented. There are things about this that I do not know. I cannot tell what may happen, to you or to your child." Gil had seen Minalde make a certain gesture many times, that of laying her hand on her belly, as if to protect the life asleep within. She made it almost without thinking, then selfconsciously hooked her hand instead behind the knot of her sword belt. "He's your child, too, Ingold," she said. "But one thing I do know: if the ice-mages are around seven months from now, he'll be under their control, if he's alive at all. If anyone's alive." He stepped close and kissed her, and set the diamond in her hands. Using his right hand, he drew his left from its sling and put it on her shoulder, his right hand then on the other.

"Do I need to do anything?" Gil asked. "Meditate or say Om or something?" Her voice was light, half kidding, covering genuine fear and a thousand screaming illusions in her mind.

He smiled into her eyes. "It would make no difference if you stood on one foot and recited 'The Shooting of Dan McGrew,' " he said. "Do their voices still trouble you?" "I'm used to them." Which wasn't entirely the truth. "Will this hurt?" It occurred to her she hadn't even thought to ask before. Not, she reflected, that it made the slightest difference.

He only shook his head. "That's another thing I haven't figured out, my dear. I'm sorry."

She closed her eyes, conscious of the weight of the Crown of Khirsrit in her hands. Conscious, too, of the sun's thin heat on her face, of the stillness in the ball-court and the smell of incense and of the dust underfoot; of the sudden fierce rending pain in the scar on her face and the screams knifing through her mind, telling her to step over the power-lines, to hurl the diamond away, to whip out her sword and... She remained still. She knew how spells were done. Pain rose through her like an illness, but she knew it was only the illusion of pain, sent by the ice-mages. She formulated it into a TV commercial in her mind-Oh, that crummy thing again... Ingold was speaking, a long way off, the voice she would recognize and know in her dreams when she was an old woman-the voice it seemed she had known all of her life. The pain redoubled, and she wove words in her mind to cling to: I wonder, by my troth, what thou and I Did till we loved; were we not weaned till then...

Fire passed through her, a colorless torrent of heat. There was no pain. She felt odd and light-headed, and short of breath, and there seemed to be an enormous silence in her mind. The Ward-lines could not exclude the voices, because they were a part of her, a part of her blood, her essence-but that link would be, she knew, their undoing, for they could be reached by her name.

Far off she saw her dream vision again, of diamond dust and quicksilver flashing in the thick red surge of her bloodstream, and through it saw mists, and blue pulsing light, and three shapes half glimpsed that were not human, performing again and again rites that had worn stone away.

They were shouting something at her, but their voices made no sound. The diamond fire in her bloodstream seemed to flicker and flow into a new limb of her, a new part-diamond also, and surprising: flesh of her flesh, blood of her diamondlaced blood. It seemed to take a long time. All of Donne's poem, and another of Shakespeare: Like to a lark at break of day arising... At length Ingold said, "Gil?"

She opened her eyes. The light in the court had changed. It had the dense, glittery quality of the turn of the afternoon into evening. The great, cone-shaped lights were gone. The nine fires in their silver dishes were smoking ash. The air smelled of the waters of the lake and of cooking from the city beyond the palace walls. A lake-bird squawked. She wondered what Sergeant Cush was teaching in the Arena tonight. Her hands, clasped around the diamond, were numb.

"Are you all right?"

She nodded. Sweat was dried in Ingold's hair and on his strain-lined face, gray with exhaustion. Bektis, visible past him, was combing his beard with a scented sandalwood comb and looking put-upon.

"Can you speak?"

She thought about it for a time, then shook her head. She wasn't sure why she couldn't, but it was as if the nerves that communicated from brain to tongue were paralyzed. I'm all right, though, she said with eyes and brows. Ingold nodded and went to a sort of vacuole drawn in the rim of the great circle, where a silken bag lay. Gil clutched at the diamond when she thought he might take it from her hands; he slipped the long strap of the bag over her head, his touch a reassurance that the bag was her property, part of her. She slipped the stone into the silk herself, feeling strangely unwilling to have anyone save Ingold even see it. She felt odd, as if she'd just waked from strange dreams.

"It's a common side effect of certain spells," he said comfortingly.

Gil nodded, accepting, almost indifferent to it. Considering what they were riding into tomorrow, it seemed like such small potatoes as to be microscopic. She flexed her fingers, winced at the pins and needles. Then she knelt quickly and traced in the dust of the ball-court, It didn't hurt. I love you. As quickly, she brushed it over, lest anyone see.

He knelt beside her, drew her against him, held her with a tightness that said everything he hadn't dared speak aloud: I could have lost you; you're brave; I admire you; I love you beyond what words can say.

Bektis said sniffily, "I would deeply appreciate it if you confined that type of demonstration indoors. If we're quite finished here, I certainly need rest, particularly if you are set upon this insane course of action for the morrow."

"Certainly, Bektis." Ingold got at once to his feet and crossed to the taller wizard, exerting all his warm charm to make him understand that his contribution to the rite had been invaluable and enormously appreciated, even if the whole ball-court had been carefully Warded to prevent him from running away while he made it.

Guards, summoned by Gil knew not what method, were waiting in the entryway, chains in hand, and Bektis, who had shown every sign of unbending at Ingold's lavish thanks, pokered up at once and turned haughtily away from his colleague as he was manacled once more.

Ingold and Gil, hand in hand and innocent of chains, followed him back along the corridors to their ensorcelled suite, Ingold with an air of deep humility and apology that Gil knew to be completely spurious, and Gil, to her own surprise considering what waited for them all tomorrow, deeply amused.

Through the silk of the sack around her neck she could feel the diamond, a second heart against her chest.

The voices in her mind were silent. But she knew they did not sleep.