-oOo-
In the morning, Caewen and Dapple did decide to ride with the magicians, but towards the tail of the caravan where they could keep an eye on everyone. Just in case. It turned out that Tamsin had the same idea. She rode along at the end of the merchant train too, perched sidesaddle on a small roan pony. Her mount jingled as it trotted—its barding was all hung with tiny bells painted green. The small horse was a touch nervous around Dapplegrim, as horses tended to be; they never seemed to be quite sure if Dapplegrim was another horse, or if he was actually a monster only mocking a horse in shape. They would sniff the air and look sideways at Dapple, always a little on edge. Tamsin's pony was no different.
Caewen talked idly with her as they travelled, but it was all a surface chatter, a skimming over the top of things: the weather, the green of the fields, the calls of birds and late season insects and other idle topics of long travel.
Around midmorning, the wagoners, riders and walkers were wending along a shallow rift between two hills. Tamsin started paying increasing attention to the eastward sky. A crease lined her brow. The horizon, which had been only an hour before as clear and blue as a hollowed-out sapphire, was gathering a snowy tint—then, more rapidly than seemed natural, grey thunderheads loomed upward like monuments raised up for dead gods. The winds rose and rose, turning sharply cold. It soon felt as if the howling and whistling of the sky was doing its best to drown out all other noise. The magicians and traders alike began talking worriedly, and pointing at the eastern skyline, the dull hills, the distant black-green of trees.
"It's too early in the season for a blizzard this far south," said one.
"That's an unnatural storm, mark me," spat another.
"I have tried a countermagic," added one magician. "But it's no use. None at all. Whoever has conjured the weather-working is a potent old charmer. Will like iron chains. I can feel it." He wrapped himself in his arms, hugging in his body warmth.
"Why conjure up a storm out here in the wilds? To what end?" asked another.
"It's coming our way. Shouldn't we put up some cover?" asked someone. A few of the merchants started pulling canvases and oiled tarpaulins off their wagons. But the storm was coming on quickly. It was clear they weren't going to have time to do more than tie down some rudimentary shelters, if that. There wasn't much that could be done for the animals. The horses and cattle would simply have to weather the storm.
That was when Caewen noticed that Tamsin was staring fixedly at the churning clouds. The witch-child's lips were moving, near soundless, muttering and murmuring under her breath. Her skin grew damp looking, and lost some colour. Sweat beaded her upper lip and brow. Her voice rose in a start, and she said three words that stung Caewen's thoughts, leaving her thoughts dizzy, blood thumping momentarily in her skull. Tamsin twisted her hand at the sky and for the briefest of moments the clouds did pile back upon themselves, driven by a ferocious wind that whipped up from the west, where the Chark Hills marched.
But then Tamsin collapsed forward in her saddle. When she looked up again, breathing hard, her left eye had a spot of red in it where a vein had broken. She was trembling. "No good," she whispered. "If I were at my seat of power, I could counter it, but not here. Not when I'm away from all my tools and wellsprings." She cast around, looking at the other magicians. "This is certainly an attack. We cannot be idiots and fools about this. Who lives east of here? Who waylays us? Why?"
But no one seemed to know. There were mutterings that the lands to the east were wild. There were no kingdoms to speak of, and no sorcerers of any great power that anyone had heard of. Only old ruins. A few scattered woodland villages. A handful of petty farmyard witches maybe, but no great magician had a home in those wilds. Someone said there had maybe once been a powerful woods-sorceress out that way, but she was long dead. Or had she been a witch-of-the-wolves, rather than woods? The stories were old and more than half-forgotten.
"Strange then," said Tamsin. She studied the sky as the clouds tumbled upwards and upwards, so high that they looked as if they could not possibly support themselves. When the snow-clouds finally crashed westward over the land it was like being blanketed in a frozen, blinding winter's night. The snow and sleet was so sudden and so powerful that it nearly knocked Caewen off the saddle, and she immediately lost sight of everyone, even Tamsin who had been quite nearby. Warmth, a kindling inner fire stoked up from Dapplegrim, burning upwards, warming the air. She was grateful for it. His demoniac warmth might soon be all that would keep the both of them alive.
"What do we do?" she screamed. Her lungs felt frozen. Her ribs didn't want to work.
"Keep going," said Dapplegrim. "Find shelter. Dig into the snow if we have to. We can't stay here. Staying out in the open in this is death." He snorted and white steam billowed from his nostrils. "Even for me."
"Maybe we can get down next to one of the wagons?"
But as they trudged forward through sheets and blasts of white, the wagons did not resolve out of the swirls of murk.
"Where is everyone?" said Caewen. She was shivering now. "Are we off the road?" She listened. Dimly, she thought she could hear other voices. All of them sounded scattered, like they were being driven hither and thither by the storm, broken apart on purpose, or sent off wherever it was the storm wanted them to go. At that moment something seemed to pass overhead. It was a presence, deeply cold—casting a blue-grey shadow that looked like a person flying, arms outstretched. Everything the shadow touched was immediately rimed with beards of frost. Dapplegrim wheeled away from it when he saw it passing over the ground. "Don't let that thing's shadow touch you," he screamed. "This winter blast—it's no curse, nor wizardry at all! It's a demon of the elements." He stamped at the earth to get purchase and took a few cantering steps away from the sweeping shape that hove to and fro in the air above.
Dapplegrim turned himself around and bolted. It was hard to tell what direction they were fleeing, but whenever they turned or bent away from a path ahead, the thing in the air appeared nearby and rounded them away again, back on a more or less straight track.
"It's herding us!" yelled Caewen over the noise of winds.
"I know."
"But why?"
"I've no idea."
The further they went, the deeper the snow became, until Dapplegrim was up to his belly in drifts and having a hard time moving forward. They must have been trudging and pulling away from the thing in the air for an hour, growing colder, growing gradually closer to death, when a tall thin shape appeared before them out of the snow blasts. It was grey, lichen-splodged. A tree trunk. Then there was another, and another. They had been forced into a forest of pines, but when Caewen tried to remember where any forest had lain in sight of the road, she could not recall seeing any trees except in the far distance. There was some more lumbering in snow on the part of Dapplegrim, and then the snowbanks, thankfully, grew a little less deep, and the way became somewhat easier. The storm still raged, but at least the snow had reduced down to Dapplegrim's hocks, and soon they found a place where five huge pines stood close enough together to provide a sort of shelter within their boles.
Caewen dismounted and they crouched down, in among the trees, doing their best to keep some warmth and wait out the storm. At least the patch of earth was sheltered enough that there were more pine needles than snow-spatters. There was nothing else to do now but curl up, and try to keep warm.
But as they crouched there, the snows started to encroach, and the winds howled and howled with what could only be called an animalistic voice.
-oOo-
Caewen pulled a woollen blanket from the saddlebag and hid herself underneath it, up against Dapplegrim's warm flank. Icy blasts wracked the branches above, rattling cones from the trees, cracking and splitting wood. She was covered by a layer of snow as she huddled, so that when the shrieking, tearing noises of the storm abated, she had to shake herself free with some effort.
When she emerged, she found that Dapplegrim was buried under his own great mo
und of snow too.
"Are you alive?" she said.
His head came up, snow tumbling off it. "Mostly, I think."
"Where are we?" She looked around and saw endless pines. "Aside from the obvious, I mean. In a forest. Look, there's sunlight beyond that ridge. Might be the forest ends and we can get a view?"
Dapplegrim stood, and snow came off his flanks in heaps and icy chunks. His haunches shivered in spates. "I need to walk to get some blood back in my legs anyway. That is the coldest I've ever been. That was worse then being inside in the arse of the Queen of Old Night and Chaos herself."
"Dapplegrim!"
"What?"
Caewen started moving her arms for warmth. "Don't be so crude. It's embarrassing."
"There's no one here." He shook the last few streaks of snow from his mane.
"There's me. Come on. I need to walk too. We both need to warm up."
They picked a path through the woods. At the ridge, the trees turned sparser, then fell away, giving ground to scatterings of low junipers and wind-stunted wildling pines. Beyond the forest's edge, sweeping out before them, lay a vast open meadowland, currently, white with snow. Beyond the rolling meadows stood another small woodland of trees. Yet those trees were not given over to wilderness. Smoke in blue-grey tendrils bled from the treetops. Chimneys poked up here and there. And above the trees rose a towerhouse on a craggy hill.
"You know," said Dapplegrim, "I've a feeling that if we double back and try to find the road again, we might just find ourselves back here. I don't think the demon was simply playing with us for fun. It felt too... how can I put it?"
"Purposeful?" said Caewen.
"I was thinking malignant, but purposeful too, yes." Dapplegrim turned his ears and listened. He sniffed. "Here. We're not the only survivors. Over there."
Caewen looked and saw a figure emerge from the woods. She was small and slight, and wore a fern-green dress. Caewen called out to her, and Tamsin turned their way, looking for a moment surprised. After a pause, the girl started to sweep through the snow towards them.
She spoke to Dapplegrim first as she approached. "You must have some fire in your bloodline, old demon. I didn't think another soul would be alive at the end of that." Tamsin seemed to tremble a little then. "I found a wagon, and some of the traders, and their oxen, just back aways. All dead. Frozen through to the bone." Only now did she seem to notice the village in the trees across the snowy meadow. She looked at the smoke, at the towerhouse on the hilltop, at the hints of a village among the trees. "I wonder if it is a robber's snare? A net to murder travellers and take their things?"
"But you survived. And we did. Where's your pony?" asked Caewen, though as she spoke she realised that there were brown-black streaks of dried blood across Tamsin's hands, under her fingernails, and spotted up and down her dress too.
"I needed a life to make such charms as I required to preserve my own." Her voice was uncomfortable, even a touch ashamed perhaps. "That's the sort of trick-of-the-art that I swore I'd never do again..." she hesitated. "Yet, if had I not, then I'd be frozen dead, and poor old Clover would be dead all the same from the cold. I suppose we do as we must." As she said this, looking again at the view of meadow and woods, a new, strange emotion came over her face. A trembling started in her hands, and became uncontrollable, moving to her arms, then her shoulders. Her eyelids drew wider. For as much as a minute she had difficulty controlling her voice as she tried to speak, until at last she drew several deep breaths, and said, "I'm sorry. I was startled. I didn't think to find this here. It is unexpected."
Caewen had already taken several halting steps towards the girl-magician, reaching out a hand, ready to catch her if she fell. She looked as if she might fall. Tamsin looked that ill. Her face had a clammy look. "Tamsin?" Caewen said.
"One of my deaths is here." Tamsin's voice sounded closed within itself, as if she were speaking for her own sake only, as if she did not expect anyone else to hear, or respond, or even care.
"Tamsin? Are you alright? What do you mean?"
But Tamsin laughed and the tension drained out of her. "I have faced the others. I can face the last of them and outwit it too. And then? Maybe I'll have another dream of many dyings? Or maybe I'll have cheated all my deaths and I'll live unto the ripe world's end?"
"You've foreseen this place," said Dappelgrim. It was more of a statement than a question.
"Yes. I have. When I was still a toddler at my mother's calf, I saw a vision of nine deaths. They were my deaths. Nine traps that the spirits and the petty earth-gods and the great goddesses of day and night would contrive for me. I've met eight of them already. I've outwitted and outfought eight of my foreseen deaths. This place, this is where I saw my ninth and final death." Her voice grew quieter. "I'm long-lived, but no less fragile than anyone else. I live by cheating death. I am not invulnerable." She was shivering again. "I've lived so long. Learned so much. And I must speak at the moot. I must. I can't die here: there are things that must be said, things that must be done."
"Oh, I don't think you've anything to worry about," muttered Dapplegrim. "Hur. I'm increasingly certain that you're rather good at doing what is necessary to keep out of death's clutches." Dapplegrim swished his tail. "I imagine you will be fine. Your travelling companions on the other hand—"
Caewen tapped his neck with the back of her hand "Dapple!"
But Tamsin said, "Hmm. No." She gave Dapplegrim an odd look. "Perhaps that is fair enough. I know how to make use of heart's blood in my spells. It is always a temptation." And she smiled her childish, foxlike smile. "Who knows what I might be seduced into doing if I think I might just possibly cheat my last and final death?"
That last bit might have been meant only as a joke, but it still sent a cold twitch up Caewen's spine. There was something distinctly unjokelike about the way Dapplegrim and Tamsin were talking: Caewen felt as if she were missing some vital piece of information that the other two were teasing apart between them, yet refusing to outright state. She would have ask Dapplegrim later what this was all about.
Meanwhile, Dapplegrim spoke up again. "Did you see in your vision exactly how you might die?" he asked, with sugary innocence.
"No. Only the place."
He leaned towards her. "Then listen to me with care." His breath came out as a great steaming phantom on the cold air. "Hur. If you so much as hint that you're going to make me or my lady into blood-tools for your dirty magic, I will devour you piece-by-piece-by-piece. It could well be that you cheat death here, simply by not making me angry. Yes?"
Tamsin blinked. They were rapid flickering blinks. She processed this suggestion as if she had not considered it. "That is plausible, yes. Death has tried to sneak up on me sideways before." She was contemplative now. Introspective. "I wonder if that's why your name came to mind? Were you warning me? Sgaotha, ah Tamasin, ana sfarri sgorr ë? Like when we were children?" She trailed off then and turned silent.
-oOo-
After talking it over, and deciding there was little point in trying to find their way back to the road, they walked all three together out onto the snowy meadow and towards the village. But they had not gone far when a new disturbance arose on the air. Somewhere in the woods a wolf howled. Then another and another. Looking back at the woods behind them, a mass of grey and black faces were now gathering, peering out from under the pine shadows. Yellow eyes pushed forward, caught the light and glimmered. As soon as the first wolf, a huge, dark and gold-streaked beast padded fully into the open, the others came creeping after it. The pack was large, two dozen at least, and they were all unnaturally big. Most were the size of a yearling cow, whilst the great gold and black creature that lead them was taller than a bullock.
The pack jumped into the chase as one.
Dapplegrim stomped a hoof. "Up! Up! Both of you."
Caewen pulled herself into the saddle first, and dragged Tamsin in front of her. With a thud of hooves on frozen earth, Dapplegrim tore forward, fast. The snow and
the soil sprayed and mixed behind him as he ran. And though he was faster than any mortal horse, the wolves still gained on them. Soon a pair of jaws was snapping at Caewen's heels, while other wolves worried Dapplegrim at the hocks, nipping and snarling.
Caewen drew her sword and brought it down in a heavy arc. The wolf she'd aimed the blow at pulled away just in time to avoid having its skull caved in, but only just. When one of the wolves managed to sink teeth into one of Dapplegrim's hind legs, he bucked, nearly throwing Caewen and Tamsin into the snow. The wolf was thrown clear, at least. Angry now, Dapplegrim rounded on the wolves, snapping with his own sharp teeth and snarling like a creature out of the deepest pits that tunnel the rock under wild mountains. That startled the wolves enough to make them pause.
"Dapple..." said Caewen. "Dapplegrim!"
"What?"
"They're circling around us. They're going to hem us in. We can't fight them all. We must run."
Dapplgrim gave a frustrated snort, wheeled about and made for a gap among the grey bodies, dodged through sets of bared teeth, and then was off again, renewing his speed. It became a contest of who could span ground the fastest, and Dapplegrim pushed himself until foam and blood was coming out of his nostrils and mouth. Finally, he edged ahead of the pack, bursting out of the meadow and into the trees at the foot of the tall hill.
As soon as they were past the treeline, the wolves stopped. The pack padded around, frustrated, snarling at the fringe of the pines. The walked in tight, angry circles, growling and growling in low snarls. Now and then one gave out a frustrated whine of a howl.
"Down. Get off now," sputtered Dapplegrim. "Off. Down."
Caewen and Tamsin both slipped from the saddle, and Dapplegrim let his legs fold under him into a collapsed heap. "That near killed me. First the cold. Then the run. I've never met anything that runs as fast as those things. A day for firsts," he muttered without humour. "Those are not nature-born wolves or I'm a woodlouse."
Caewen was stroking Dapplegrim's mane between the ears. "But you saved us. You outran them." She looked back through the heavy, grey bars of the trees. There were scratches cut in all the trunks, small angular patterns and grooves made by small, sharp tools.
The wolves had calmed a bit, by now. They were just staring, their tongues lolling, breath rich and puffing hotly on the chill air. The look in their eyes was that of keen intelligence. It was as if they were judging the situation, assessing it and considering what they might do next.
"Are they evil spirits in the shape of wolves? Or mankind-wargs?"
Tamsin, who was watching the wolves just as intently, said, "You mean skinling-wolves? Werelings? Maybe, but I've never heard of skin-changers together in such numbers." She looked around at the trees then, at snow and the white glow of sunlight dappling through the branches, studying it all intently. At last she said, "The marks cut into the trunks are full of power. This place is walled against wild spirits and beasts. There are unseen runes drawn in the air too. As long as the power that lives here holds, those things cannot tread here. We're safe."
Dapplegrim was starting to catch his breath. "Safe from the wolves, you mean. Certainly not safe. There are wards for the wolf-things? Hur. Whoever can run a ring of magic the whole way around a little woodland and hill could just as easily make themselves master of a great snow demon. I do not think we are very safe. Not at all."
Caewen meantime had turned her attention from the wolves to the small woodland of pines and open clearings. There were thatched houses at the foot of the hill. "There are cottages... mostly poor, ramshackle." She scanned the roofs and walls, the gardens and yards. There were a few larger houses too. Fields for winter greens. Chicken hutches. Pigsties. "It's a humble enough place to look at." Some movement stirred amongst the cottage yards. "Look, there are people. I think they know we're here." She turned to face what appeared to be a gathering crowd. "They're coming."
With a touch of irritation, Tamsin shrugged. "Well, the howling would announce us as sure as any bell at the gate. First, a demon of ice and winter. Now, unnatural wolves? This place has charmed servants. And those servants seem to want us to be here."
"You think the wolves were only herding us to this place?" said Caewen. "Like the demon?"
"Aye."
Dapplegrim pulled himself slowly to his feet. He was still shaky. "No. I disagree. Those wolves were quite happy to feast on us down to hair and bone. You did not have one of them biting you in the leg, did you? Believe me, that was no warning nip." He stretched his leg where there was a bite-mark. "I can feel uncanny poison in the wound. It won't be enough to kill me, hur, but it would have killed either of you. No. That was no game. Maybe the elemental was herding us, but the wolves weren't. They wanted us dead. I'm sure of it."
Throughout this, Caewen had kept one eye on the approaching villagers. They were near enough now for her to decide it was probably sensible to slide her sword out, ready. The hard sound clipped the air. "No time for that now. We've company."
The knot of villagers approached—men and women carrying heavy, sharp tools—pitchforks and mattocks, bilhooks, scythes and sickles—all oily edges and hard whetted gleams in the intermittent light of the pine canopy. Dour, craggy faces stared and assessed. One man, middle-aged, weathered and leathery in look, took a step out from the others. He used a free hand to doff a crimson cap, accompanying this with a brief nod, while he clutched an iron sickle in the other. The edge had been honed to a bright crescent. "Hullo there. Seems you're here to visit the master on the hill."
Caewen fingered her sword's hilt, adjusting the weight of the blade. "Given we've barely survived a snow storm, I'd have hoped we'd see some hot cider and blankets, not weapons. This is not the sort of hospitality I'd look for at a lord's hall."
"Lord? Him?" The farmer rubbed his nose. "I suppose so. In his odd way, though Old Coldballs don't give himself titles, even if he might give himself airs." The villager looked over his shoulder and nodded. A line of men in armour were coming down the path from the hilltop now. They were still some way off. "That's his fellows strolling this way. Listen, you want this to go well on you?" He rubbed his nose. "Here's some advice then. Be polite. Don't offend the master. Don't say nothing against neither of his two sons. And don't go trying to upset any of them who live on the hill, nor think you can hurt them folk. You can't hurt them none." He sniffed. "Others have tried."
One of the farmwives cut in. "That's enough, Gareth, best hush it."
A man with a mattock said, nervously, "He might be about, remember."
"Oh yeah, he might," conceded the speaker. He looked up then, into the air, as if searching for something hard to see in the branches. "Aye," he said. He sniffed again. "He might be listening, too right. But he mislikes the master anyway, doesn't he?" He paused and said, "One last thing. If the master do decide to let you go—if he loses interest in you—come asking for me. I'm Gare of Gare's Yard." He turned and pointed at a large, sturdy cottage. "Over there. I'll see you right 'til you can leave off. The master may have his ways, but the folk of Pine-under-Tower do our best to make up for it. We do what we can do."
The woman who had spoken earlier added, "Another last thing: you'd best not call the master Coldballs, neither. He doesn't like that. Not a bit of it." She shot a remonstrating glare at the farmer as she spoke.
The villagers then settled into silence, waiting for the column of guardsmen. As they waited, some of the men and women noticed for the first time that wolves were still lurking about the edge of the trees. A few of the folk walked over, going right up to the edge of the trees, and stood there, hurling abuse. "Here! Off with you now, yowler!"—"No meat for you today!"—"Get! Get! Go find a dead field rat somewhere." A few pinecones and rocks were thrown. The wolves hunched their shoulders and retreated, slinking away, casting dark looks behind them.
Not long after the wolves departed, the guardsmen arrived. The difference in the cast of face and appearance between villagers and the men from the hill-tower was
striking. Where the villagers were grim but wiry and thin, keenly alert, the guards were dull-eyed and well-fed, red-faced, and sporting a bit of fat around the middle. Yet these were not idlers. They were big, meaty-fisted men, broad in the chest, and to Caewen's mind, thuggish looking. Many of them had broken noses, scars or both. Each wore a knee-length coat-of-plate and a surcoat of sky blue with three white apples in a triangle arrangement. The difference between the villagers and guards struck her as the same difference between an underfed farming dog and a pampered, ill-tempered hound.
"Do three apples on blue mean anything to you?" asked Caewen, turning her head slightly towards the others.
Dapplegrim shook his head. "Afraid not."
Tamsin only shook her head, saying nothing.
-oOo-
As the guardsmen fanned out, the cottagers and farmers all pulled away, like wool teased out of a bundle. One of the guards gave out a short, sharp bark of an order. "Travellers. Attend. The master of The House of Snow and Apples does invite you to share of his hearth and abode."
"Doesn't sound the sort of invitation we are expected to decline," said Caewen. She still had her sword drawn.
"Not an invitation declined prudently," suggested Tamsin.
The man's tone shifted from bored to serious. "No. It is poor to displease the Master of Snow and Apples. That is true." He shot a look at the villagers then, perhaps wondering what they had told these newly arrived strangers.
Looking from Dappelgrim to Tamsin and back, Caewen said, "Very well." She slipped her sword away. "I don't see us as having much of a choice. You might as well lead on, I guess."
"Oh, I don't know. I reckon I could take this lot," grumbled Dapple, voice low, threatening.
But Caewen could hear the bluster in his voice. He was too exhausted from the storm and chase to fight, and she suspected the exhaustion was obvious to the guards as well. Though before Caewen could cut in and calm the situation, the head of the guardsmen spoke back at Dapplegrim. "You wouldn't take this lot," he replied, rather flatly. "Jack would see to you first."
"Jack? Who's Jack?" asked Caewen.
The guard's face soured, just a fraction, but noticeable. "Never you mind who Jack is. The master will tell you if the master wants to tell you. Now, best be walking. Come along."
The armed men fell about, arranging themselves so that it would be hard to make a break one way or another. They did not stand impolitely close.—it wasn't quite like being an escorted prisoner—but they certainly close enough to raise a feeling of being hemmed in. As the three of them were marched off, they passed Gare, and he shot her a look from under his crimson hat. He wore a wan, apologetic expression. As he looked, he gave a nod and a knowing frown.
Alright, thought Caewen. We have some cottagers and townsfolk who do not much like their lord, whoever he turns out to be. Some guards. And perhaps some magic thing too: something called Jack, whatever that is. So what do we do? Watch, wait, listen. Be polite. That seemed the best course.
The path leaving the village took a snaking way from the cliffs, up and around outcrops of rock, twisting around the hill. Large fitted stones supported the road and faced the expanse above. Much higher above them, the fortified house—too small to quite justify such names as 'castle' or 'fortress'—loomed with a heaviness that made the whole edifice seem ready to topple. The higher they climbed, the more the pines gave way, until a view above the treetops opened up, giving them a wide expanse of sight over the landscape. A lone nutcracker was sitting atop one pine calling in its rough voice. For as far as it was possible to see, snow blanketed the land. The Wenderway road, which etched its way from northern hills all the way to Sorcery Tor and Bernoth Town, was nowhere in sight: or perhaps, it was buried so deep under snow it was invisible? Wilderness, hills and pinewoods brindled the earth. The unseasonal snowstorm had stretched its fingers wide and far.
At around the same height where the view of the land opened out, a few smaller thrawn trees appeared, clinging to the hill, growing out from between the fitted stones, sometimes self-sown in cracks, sometimes in small, walled-in soil-beds. They were twisted, grey-barked and bare of leaves. Draggling beards of lichen hung from branches that twisted like rope cords. After the first few trees, which had been completely bare, fruit appeared. They were apples, but snow white. The higher the road climbed, the more appletrees grew from the cliffs and dirt, until, at the base of the fortalice wall, the trees ran thickly all the way around the hillside, covering the cliffs and stonework completely from view.
Caewen paused to examine one of the strange apples, fruiting so late in the season. She noticed at once that they were not blemished, nor bird-pecked. There were no grey blisters of applescab. No signs of fireblight. No birds had marred the white skins. No wormholes pocked them. If the apples were not enchanted, they were poisonous. Either way, where wild animals avoid a bounty of fruit in early winter, the cautious take note.
"I wouldn't eat the apples," Caewen whispered.
"No risk of that," Dapplegrim replied. "They smell like that thing in the snowstorm." His nostrils flared. "I'm not even sure they're really apples."
"Wait a moment. I wonder if that's the mysterious Jack, then? The snow demon." She said it loud enough for the guards to overhear her, and a visible shiver of discomfit that went through them at the words 'snow demon' suggested that she had guessed correctly. "Hm," she added to herself.
There were two more of the guardsmen on the gate, but in the courtyard, where there should have been a noise of ostlers and servants, the flagged space was empty and silent. Above everything the fortified towerhouse stood its watch, rather gloomily, and above its great timbered and shingled roofs, rose a taller spire that had not been visible from the village. This part-hidden spire had an open space atop it, and crenelations decorated with carvings of windlike whorls, swirled clouds and faces.
"That is a tower for talking to the sky," said Tamsin, her voice flat. "We have certainly found our master of the snow demon."
They were directed towards a large doorway into the towerhouse, but as the three of them, Caewen, Dapplegrim and Tamsin neared it, the guards grew agitated and got in their way. The lead guardsman mumbled something, seemingly uncertain of himself.
"Speak up," said Dapplegrim.
"Well, that is," said the man, "The master has spoken. He spoke only two guests. The lady and the child. He said nothing of the beast. The master does not make mistakes." The man seemed almost apologetic as he said, "We have do have some fine stables here." He continued, clearing his throat, "if that suits."
"There's hay, if you're hungry," said another man.
"I'm hungrier for meat. Lamb for preference, though I'll take mutton or cow if that's all you have."
That sort of thing would usually get a stir out of people. But the guards just blinked dumbly and nodded. Caewen started to nurse a suspicion that they might be not wholly in command of their own free wills. They did seem... what was the best word for it? Incurious? Blank? Somehow, inured against emotion? There was no sense of personality to them. Each man's face looked similar, not because they shared the same features, or family resemblance, but because their expressions were so alike. Blank. Dull. Incurious.
"We'll be alright, Dapple," she said. "And besides, most folk don't make the inside of a house large enough to fit anything as big as you anyway. I'm sure it's better if you stay outside. And maybe you should cut back on the lamb?" she added with a smile. "Otherwise you'll end up twice as big, and then you won't even fit in a stables."
Dapplegrim scowled. "I can always make the doorways a bit bigger," he suggested. "If you understand me?" He said cast a very intentional look at the guards. But if they registered it as a threat, they showed no sign. Blank. Dull. Incurious.
The chief of the guards simply turned to the door and said, "This way, if it pleases you, missuses."
Entering the first hall gave a stronger impression of an uncanny household than the empty courtyard or weird appletrees had. T
he air was not warm. Usually, the inside of any great house or tower would be stuffy in this weather, from the cookfires and hearths all lit to chase away the chills. Everything should stink of smoke and dogs and cooked food and unwashed people. In these halls, there were not even rugs or tapestries to keep back the cold. Light was provided only by a few spare candles, and a draught whistled in the hallways, sneaking in through loose shingles, rattling lead windowframes and making the air as cold and clear as it was outside.
After following some turns, this way and that, they came to a large eating room. A long table with enough seats for twenty diners was already set. There were loaves of fresh bread, honey and sweetmeats. It was more of a repast than a meal.
"The master will attend when he wakes. His habit is to rise after noon."
"Until then, we are expected to sit and do what?" said Tamsin.
"Wait. That is as it is done."
The guardsman turned to go, but before he was out the door, Caewen called to him. "Just a moment. I didn't catch you name? Who do we ask for, if we want you?"
He stopped, blinked, and his face twitched twice. At last he said. "Name? I don't—that is to say—I'm the captain of the guard. Just the captain of the guard. That's who you ask for."
"I see," said Caewen.
Tamsin didn't say a word but her expression was enough to make it clear she had come to the same conclusion. The guardsmen weren't in their right minds. Spell-slaved, all of them.
Left alone now, they looked around the room. Tamsin walked over to what appeared to be two large, shallow copper bowls set on tripods near one wall. Steam rose from the water. Tamsin sniffed it, then dipped her hands in, and went to work scrubbing the dirt, grit and dried blood from her hands and arms, working to get the brown crusts out from under each fingernail. Caewen made use of the other bowl, though her hands were cleaner, and she had to only rinse a little to bring up the colour of her skin under a layer of road dust and sweat. There were suds in the hot water, probably from soapwort, given the subtle earth-like smell of the steam. She splashed a little of the water on her face too, and in the absence of a proper bathing tub, the hot water was cleansing and pleasant.
Afterward, they sat down in two of the chairs, and picked, without much appetite, at the food. A few high, narrow windows let in only thin beams of light, and the candles cast just small, bare warm spheres into the air. The two large hearths in the room were empty, and did not look as if they had been filled with wood in years. Even if Caewen had felt game enough to start a blaze, there were no cut logs, nor pieces of kindling.
As the two of them sat at the long table, alone except for each other, Caewen noticed again how strange Tamsin looked. The girl seemed even more like a child now that she was sitting in a big heavy block of a chair. She was not quite tall enough to be comfortable at the table and had to reach for platters of food, or a clay jug, just as a child might. A look of irritation crossed her face every time she did so.
-oOo-
In the stables, Dapplegrim chewed a lamb shank, sucking the flaky flesh off it, and grinding his teeth into the bones until the bone snapped and the marrow came out in fatty globs. The man who brought the meal wore the blue and white tabard of the household. He carried a pot of meat and soup bones to the stable as if he were hauling the daily water. He was just as blank-faced and blank-eyed as the rest of them here.
On the bright side, no one had tried to put Dapplegrim behind a bolted door, or tie him up, or hobble him. The disinterest in him was palpable, strange, even disquieting. It made him much edgier than if he'd been surrounded by a whole village of folk who thought him a monster. That was understandable. This lack of all fear was far colder, and he suspected, far more dangerous too.
As Dapplegrim was crunching up a shin bone, he felt a change in the air. A shiver passed up his flanks, and the blood ran cold in the veins around his neck and muzzle and chin groove. He looked about, and said at last, "There is no point hiding. I can taste you in the air."
A shimmer of a shape appeared up in the rafters of the barn. It looked something like a lanky boy who was not quite yet a man, all gangly limbs and scrawniness. Traceries of blue and white ran through his skin, like veins in rock, or, thought Dapplegrim, more accurately, like fissures in a hunk of ice. Blue eyes, totally blue and without whites, blinked down at Dapplegrim, though the rest of the face was not yet fully formed. The creature drifted down and crouched on a rafter. It seemed to be manifesting itself from the inside out. It started with veins of ice and sinews of snow; it grew flesh in layers of white muscle; it sprouted hair like a billow of snow; finally a covering of skin, as glistening as sheets of hoar frost, glittering, covered the flesh. The teeth came last, sharp and clear as ice.
"Ho now, ho now," said the demon, from where it perched on the thick beam, "I've been spied, and what charmings upon relied, are all for naught. How fraught. How fraught. For in my sneakings, I've been caught." It grinned with a sad, manic smile.
"Rhyming," snorted Dapplegrim. "I don't like creatures who speak in rhymes. Altogether too clever by half. Hur. You were the demon in the air? The snow-devil that tried to murder us?"
"Murder? Murder? You malign, I would not to that depth decline, nor work my chills on any soul, save but that the grave enchanter's toll doth chime and bell, and conjure me, poor Jack-in-the-Mist, poor slave-to-spell, poor mastered me." The demon, whose name was presumably Jack-in-the-Mist, now allowed itself to fall forward from the rafter, but it did not come down to the straw and dust of the stables. Rather, it floated languidly over Dapplegrim's head, and stretched itself out as if relaxing beside a brook in the summertime. "I come to look on you, my halfblood thing, and see what charms in you do ring, and think myself upon your uses, for the master seldom looses what to him I faithful bring, strange and misbreed halfblood thing."
"I've been under a sorcerer's thumb before. Tell your master it will not happen again." His voice grew taut with an undertow of anger. "Do not play games with me. Do not trifle. It will not go well for you when you lose." He growled, voice lowering. "And you will lose."
"Trifle? Trifle? No, not that. Do you think me like a cat, toying with mice, all fat and nice? No ho, ho no. For you see, if you see, I look to see, and spy and scry, and find, a purpose for which poor Jack might put you to use. I wonder rather..." and here the creature did grow more serious. The music in its voice ebbed away like so much water seeping out of the melting thaw. "No. I wonder if I may use you to put and end to him? That is all. I wonder if you may be of use to me." The demon vanished. There was a brief, violent flicker of light that marked out every last detail of the stable, every crack in the palings, every knobbly iron nail, every fleck of straw as if they were traced with bright white ink. And then the demon, Jack-in-the-Mist, was gone. Not merely invisible, but gone. Maybe the creature had been recalled by its master? Maybe it had seen all it wanted to see?
And though Dapplegrim was himself half-demon on his father's side, he muttered to himself, "Demons! Nonsense creatures. Whoever knows what they are always going on about." He sniffed the meat-juice spattered tub, found a piece of marrowbone at the bottom that he'd missed, and lapped it into his mouth with his tongue. As he crunched down on the bone, dwelling on the fatty marrow, he did think a little on whether there might be an unlooked for ally in the snow-demon after all. If the spirit was seeking some way to break free of its shackles, then that might give them all some common ground.
A bargain might be struck? Though the foppish rhymes were confusing, the demon did seem to intimate as much.
The problem was, who knows what the demon might do if freed? Such a creature would view human life as brief, and beneath care. It might even have nurtured something of a hatred against all humankind, if it sufficiently disliked its sorcerer.
It was true enough that weaker and younger sorts of demons are inclined to look for a magician to make bargains with, and to protect them from other, nastier spirits. Some spirits and uncanny creatures even get to quite like p
eople over time. Dapplegrim himself thought that people were mostly alright, really, once you got to know them. But the very ancient and the powerful? No. Old creatures of the elements were more likely to want worship. Such elder children of the earth did not take kindly to being bound by the arts of mortal wizardcraft. And Jack-in-the-Mist struck Dapplegrim as something much older and wilder than its shape betrayed. This was an elder thing of the earth, and that meant that every conversation with it needed to be carefully measured.
Of course, the next thought that struck Dapplegrim was that the sorcerer who had bound Jack-in-the-Mist was either extraordinarily powerful, or extraordinarily arrogant, or extraordinarily stupid. Or all three. Powerful and arrogant and stupid was not a good combination in Dapplegrim's experience. He crunched the bone as he thought this over.
-oOo-