Caewen awoke. She gasped deeply for breath. It was as if she had surfaced from a sea of blood and years. The darkness around her was suddenly alive with motes of power she had never seen before. She saw secrets in the curls of smoke that drifted in the stagnant air above her face. Unseen, minor little spirits wafted around, dancing in the smoke, playing among the embers that floated from the peat fire. The small spirits sung to each other in wordless, silent quips of song: each a mindless thing, joyous, but momentary. As she watched them play, she understood that the spirits were smoke-hues: born out of the smoke, living only a few seconds and disintegrating again: their whole lives thumbed out as a tiny drama in the air—born—here—gone—over and over.
She sucked in another breath and was glad to be alive. As she twitched her fingers and toes, she felt blood coursing through her, but also she felt as if it was dripping off her skin, runnelling down her cheeks, hot and red. Was it really blood? She looked at the back of her hand. The red, pulsing wet stuff was visible to her, and invisible to her at the same time. She could both see it, and not see it. This was certainly a strange experience. She turned her hand, looking at the drip of the illusory stuff from her fingers. But was it blood? Or was it her own afterbirth? Or something else again? Something more primordial and salt-watery. Was it the red ocean at the dawn of time?
Although the liquid rivulets that ran even now from her skin were not entirely real, she was captivated by the stuff, obsessed by it: this salt-blood-birth water. As she watched, as seconds passed, the red liquid dried and faded from her senses. Until, at last, it was gone, as if it might never have existed. And maybe it never had?
She looked around then, blinking, dazed. Apparently, the hour was late. She had been in a trance-state for how long? Hours, at least. Those who were awake, including Dapplegrim, were watching her, looking alert, concerned. She tried to smile to reassure them but her whole face felt numb and strange. She spoke, and the first words out of her throat were weird, even to her own ears. "There is no beginning. It is all beginnings. Beginnings, all the way back."
Dapplegrim snorted. "That's the sort of nonsense a magician would say." He was trying to slide a humorous note into his voice, but the worry was clear and thick. He swished his tail and leaned closer, nostrils flaring. "Are you alright?"
She pushed herself upright on her elbows. The shadows tasted of spices. The air tasted like the richest darkest red honey. Every breath she took curdled like burning sugar in her throat.
"I am," she said. And then, taking in a draught of the smoky, rich air, she said, almost exuberant feeling, "The world is alive. There are so many small, invisible points of life, all drifting on the air. We are full of names and spirits. And I am a name, spoken. And I am a thought, flickering. And I am a word, murmured by the universe." She breathed in a deep breath. "We are all but names and momentary thoughts and worn-down memories."
Dapplegrim spoke, hushing her, "Quiet. Quiet. Please. You'll scare everyone, Caewen. Don't talk like that. Be still. Don't talk in circles."
"No." She tried to get up but found herself unsteady. "There's no time for that. The wolf-people will be angry, wanting revenge. I must speak to Jack. That is the path now." With effort she got herself upright, and feeling more dizzy than steady, she stumbled across the floor to the outside door. There, she started to fumble with the heavy oak bar that was thrown across it. Others in the room saw her, and said, "No!" and "Stop!" and hurried to their feet. But they were not fast enough. She threw off the bar and pushed the door open. There was a brief moment in which it was possible to see two naked people in the starlight, both looking around, startled, but also quickly smiling. They must have thought that the villagers in the house were going to try and escape, or maybe that they had simply given up, and were about to surrender.
But Caewen raised her left hand and pulled it through the air feeling the knots and threads of the world that hung invisible there, beyond the usual sense of touch. She twisted the knots and pulled the threads, so that mist rose, churning up out of the ground. Magic flowed into her from somewhere else... from someone else... it was a cold magic, alive, throbbing, angry and pained. The rush of power felt awful and wonderful all at once—but she grit her teeth and made the fog into a confusing blanket. She did not have to think how to do this. It was like eating an apple. It was like walking down a road. She simply knew the correct movements as if she had always known them. The wolflings who were caught in the ice-cold fog started stumbling about, calling to each other, trying to find the house. But they would not find Gare's house, no matter how much they hunted and yelled and howled angrily. The magic in the mist was too strong. It would mislead them around and around.
She sighed out a breath and small ghost-shapes blew from her mouth.
She had summoned him.
And as she stood, waiting, she heard now some distant sounds: the whistling, high-pitched aria of a storm-wind approaching—whipping over the tops of the pines—bending them and crusting them with all the glitters of frost as it passed. And then the wind was here, in a whirl before her. It took form. It alighted on the ground.
Jack was no longer the rail-thin, joking creature he had been when he floated on the air in the house on the rock. He appeared now as something inhuman, tall, muscular and beautiful in the way a threatening storm is beautiful. It seemed as if small stormclouds played about him and flowed through his hair. Lightning flashed in his eyes. His veins shone with a blue light under ice-white skin. Caewen wondered if the sorcerers who made him into a slave found this appearance frightening. Perhaps they had commanded him to take a lowlier, less threatening form. In this taller, menacing shape, he looked as much a god as a demon. A hard circle of burning white frost spread around where he stood.
As he looked at Caewen, Jack took a prowling step closer. "So," he said, "As I thought. Betrayed. My trust was all for naught."
"No," said Caewen. "I ate the seed. That is true. I have summoned you. Yes. And maybe I should have simply destroyed it? I don't know any more. It is an evil thing to have inside me. I can feel it changing me, corrupting me. I cannot hold back the power-longing forever, but I will struggle against it. I will free you. I made a promise. I will free you."
"Then be done. Free me. For of lies, I want none. You need speak only that word, freedom, just the one."
"No. I'm sorry. Not yet. I have some final tasks for you first. Then you are free."
"Ah. But that would be how it starts. Just one task. Then one more, and more. And now the moral fibre smarts. It bends. It breaks. And then, for poor Jack? Freedom? No. Not for Jack, Jack, old and poor. No freedom, no, not nevermore." His voice was despondent. Angry too. And sad.
She steeled herself against the waves of magic and power that were washing into her soul. It would be so easy to keep the demon bound. To keep him as a familiar-thing, and take such vast power from him. And what would be the balance of that? How much good might she do in the world with a creature like this at her beck and call. No. That was the path to unthinking dominance. With a tightness in her throat, she said, again, "I will free you. But I cannot let these people die. You cannot let these people die. They never did anything to deserve being torn apart by weird-wolves, or hacked up, or burned... or whatever it is that the wolflings are planning to do. You think that is unfair? Or a breaking of our bargain? Well, I cannot hold it against you. It is a bending of my promise. I said I would free you, though I did not say exactly when I would free you. So, when you are free, you can come looking for me—for revenge—if you want. But first: I will command you if I must. I would rather you agreed to act out of kindness to those who are weaker than you. But I will command you, if I have to. I have that power now."
He seemed to consider this. "If I agree, if I assent, you must promise this to me, you will not conjure, abjure or place command on me."
"The commandment inflicts pain, does it not?"
"It hurts so. Through and through. Like fire in snow."
"Then, Jack, please do this for me. I
will not put a command or spell-sway on your actions. I will let you decide. But please... go about the houses and find everyone who is hiding. Tell them to gather their belongings, bags of seeds, what animals they can drove easily. Then, take them away from this place. Lead them safely to the ruins by the road. Make a mist, or a wall of ice. I don't know: whatever you think is best." She paused in a moment of thought. "I think you destroyed that town, years and years ago?"
"I was made to. Through and through."
"Rebuild it then. You have that power in you. Raise up the stones, carve such shapes as please you, but make many strong houses and gardens and put a stone wall around it all, with good strong gates. Make a place for the people to be safe within."
"And then?" He whispered.
"And then, freedom. I ask nothing more of you after that."
"It will hurt you, sure and true. You've had a taste of maddening charms. You cannot simply give it up without the suffering of some harms. My power will be swept away—you will be left... bereft... hollow... empty... grey."
"I will take that chance. I know that giving up the power that flows from you will be hard on me. I know that." She became more reflective, saying, "I think... it could kill me, couldn't it? To just have it all rush out of me at once?"
He did not reply, except to simply nod.
"But I made a promise. You will go free, Jack-in-the-Mist. I'll not keep you bound to me." And she laughed, and the laughter sounded lopsided, even to her own ears. "Ha!" she said. "You see. Now you have me rhyming, you bastard. You get inside a person's soul, don't you?"
"It is the way of things," he said, "and now, if you will permit, I will begin the task, and then at last, at long last, my service will remit." More solemnly he added, "Thank you, little mortal child. I will live a thousand, thousand years, in icy wild, and if other demons to me do say, 'how did you escape the sorcerer's chain?', then I will remember you, and your kindness, today."
"Actually, before you go may I ask one last thing?"
He nodded, perhaps a touch suspicious.
"Dapplegrim and I will not be coming with you to the ruins beside the road. We are riding off east instead. I will leave you, and trust you to do what you have agreed to do. We are going to the sacred place in the hills. The place where the hot waters come up through the stone."
"Ah..." he said, and his voice was full of meaning: you are going there...
"If you might keep up enough fog to confuse pursuit, it would be helpful."
"But of this, of fog and mist, you do not demand of me this?"
"No. As before, I ask it only. If you wish to give it."
He nodded. "It is trivial for me. It is done." The fogs grew thicker and more curdled when he spoke. The noises of the lost warglings grew dimmer and more suffocated by the curtains of cold whiteness.
Caewen turned back to the open door behind her. "Did you catch all of that?" she asked.
There were several round, worried faces hanging back in the gloom. One of them was Gare, and he replied. "I think so. The sorcerer's demon will take us to safety, and make a place for us to live—out of stone at the ruins place, aye?"
"Yes."
Dapplegrim lowered his head and flicked his ears back and forth. "But we're not going that way?"
"No, Dapple. We've a last thing that needs to be seen to. One last thing." She turned, and she tried to peer into the thick white fog. She could see nothing at all, hardly even her own hand outstretched in front of her face, but she could feel the rough direction of the east, towards the place where she knew the old spirit of the wolf-people was in the rocky hills. She could feel the loneliness that drifted from that direction. She could feel longing. Pain, too, just as viscerally as she felt the cold droplets of moisture gathering on her face, on her eyelashes. "Just one last voice to talk to."
-oOo-
Somewhere, out upon a frozen hillside, half-hidden in a deep drift of snow, there was a icy body dressed in fern-green under the cloud-choked stars. Her open, dead eyes were the same colour as the stones at her throat. Both stones and eyes were frosted with patterns of ice.
Slight stirs and whispers of the nearby air gave off a feeling that something was present nearby the corpse. A chill on the air that was deeper than mere Autumnal coldness hinted that the soul had perhaps not yet departed.
And this was so.
The otherworld was grey, muted and full of the weird swishing and whisperings of all the thousands of spirits of the sky, the earth, the trees, the snow and the winds. Within this turmoil, a pallid ghost crouched down, invisible, huddled beside the frozen corpse. This frail apparition looked around, glancing over the expanse of shimmering white-greyness that was the spirit-world. The sky was an odd inverse of its living colours: an flat chalky white where the night clouds should have been. A scatter of blazing black holes gouged into the sky where the stars should have sparked.
She had no thoughts and no plans now. No cunning tricks left. No escapes. She was dead. Her fate had caught up with her, and now, here she was, alone with the shadows, with the swirling winds and weird noises of the world that is just beyond the veil. Waiting. Waiting. For what? Eternal punishment? Justice? Or would the rulers of the afterlife leave her to simply wander about here, a lost soul? She knew enough of the grey otherworld to know that this was a dangerous place for one small ghost. After all, the void was not just a place for the ghosts of the recently dead—there were demonic things here too, and unkind spirits, terrible, mad gods.
The flickering expanse seethed and danced all around her, even as she huddled down beside her own dead corpse.
Dead is dead.
But worse things can happen to a soul. There are things are eat souls. There are things that make clothing out of them. There are things that commit other cruelties.
Even as she worried about the wandering monstrosities of the otherworld, she felt increasingly tired. She felt as if she might simply lie down in the snow and earth and sleep forever. And maybe that is what the dead do? Some people do say that. The dead just lay themselves down and sleep. Some say that's all there is to the afterlife. A long sleep.
But then, as thoughts of dreamless slumber filled her thoughts, she noticed movement, far off. A gleaming and flickering light emerged from a few distant ashy-white pines, and the light drifted towards her. It took an interminable time. She watched it come. After waited for what seemed like hours, at long last, she could make out that the light was another ghostly form: a young woman, about her own age by appearance.
The ghost of the sorceress who had called herself Tamsin, stood up. She had no throat with which to swallow, and no heart to feel pumping: but the memories of these things twisted through her, causing her to feel afraid, giddy, slightly sick.
The walking ghost drew nearer. She watched it shed its light across the dim snow, flickering and casting weird patterns of intermingled ghost-silver and shadowy black. When this other ghost drew close enough to speak, the soul who had been using the name Tamsin said, as firmly as she could manage, "Sister."
The other ghost stopped, and she smiled, a wain, faint smile. "And my sister."
"You have caught me at last then? After all these years."
"You have been running swiftly," said the other ghost. "Always running. And it has been many long years. Yes. I have followed you. And now here we are."
"Where are the others? All the others I murdered? Should not they be here too?"
"Oh, they all gave up long ago."
"There are more recent victims of course."
"The merchant in the woods."
"Yes," said the soul who had been calling herself Tamsin. "I worried about that. Killing again for blood and magic. But I was so afraid... I wanted to live."
A shrug. "Oh, he wasn't a vengeful sort. I spoke to him after you slit his throat, and I told him how to find his way home, and how to lie down and sleep in his own back garden. He didn't want to chase you for revenge. He just wanted to go home. See his family again. Even if
it was just with dead eyes, even if just for a moment, just once more."
"And the others—they all just gave up chasing me?"
"It has been a thousand years or more, has it not? Some of them got tired and forgot who they were; some drifted away and were reborn anew, clean of their memories; some of them turned into skulking spirits, mindless and petty. But they are all gone. The parade of ghosts is somewhat reduced in number now. It is just me."
"And what revenge will you have? Whatever it is, I will not stop you." She looked at the snow. "I have no right to even try."
The sister-ghost smiled, more kindly than might be expected. "None. No revenge. You were afraid I was plotting against you. Your court magicians lied to you. Your warrior-poets lied to you. And you trusted them, and not me. So you murdered me. But all the while, I loved you as my sister, and I love you still. I forgive you, sister mine. Oh, once upon a time you were a dark queen of the shadows. But I forgive you."
A ghost cannot cry, but the ghost who had called herself Tamsin would have, if she could. "I've been using your name."
"I know."
"I have felt nothing but guilt for so long.
"I know."
"Now what?"
Another slight shrug. "I don't know. I've been caught between the worlds of the living and the dead for all these years, following you about, just a little distance behind you. I don't know what happens next. But now that we are together, whatever comes next: it is for the both of us to find out. Together."
The two ghosts came closer to each other. It surprised the child-sorceress to discover that when she reached out for her sister, they were able to clasp hands. The ghostly fingers touched ghostly fingers.
"Come now," said the sister-ghost. "I think we still have some way to walk."
And so they walked away together, away from the frozen corpse in the snow, away from the living world.
-oOo-
As they rode out of the village, as they threaded among the pines and the dim-glimpsed houses, Dapplegrim asked, "What about Tamsin?"
"Tamsin's dead."
"You're certain?" he snorted.
"Yes. I ate the appleseed. I fell into the pit of sorcery that is inside Jack. I saw and felt everything. I saw everything he has ever done. Vespertine was in a rage. He ordered Jack to find her, and kill her. And though Jack knew she had nothing to do with Varrel's death, he could not disobey. Jack found her struggling in deep snow, off that way..." she waved a hand at the expanse of whiteness. "Away out there. Out somewhere beyond the village. She fought—she put up quite a fight—but she was tired, exhausted, and without anything to draw power from. Tamsin's last death found her." She shrugged her shoulders up, hunching them against the cold. "But she lived such a long time. She had ten spans of lives. I don't know if I can feel sad. A little, I guess. But she lived so long. And she did some bad things to try and live longer still."
Dapplegrim twisted his head, so that one red-lit eye caught the snowy glare. "I've lived a long time. I suppose you won't feel sad if some ugly spirit leaves me all slaughtered in the snow? Hur."
"Oh, Dapple," said Caewen, teasing, "of course I would feel sad. How would I get about without you? I'd have to walk everywhere."
"I ought to buck and throw you into the snow."
She smiled, leaned forward, and laid a hand on his neck, beneath the mane where it was warm. They rode on like this, in companionable silence. The pines and low rolling hills fell away behind them as the landscape grew rockier, sharper and more bare of plants. Hard, angry outcroppings shot up from the earth, and though the fog was now wisping away into thin ribbons, a low cloud had descended from the sky instead, hanging like white, cold river-foam in the air. This low cloudbank concealed the top of even the meanest cliffs and spurs, whilst leaving the under-air strangely clear and vibrantly hued.
The cool air in Caewen's face stung her eyes and even brought some tears, as the two of them galloped. Dapplegrim was tireless, but Caewen was not—and she was feeling the effects of sleepless nights, the trance of the old magic, and in a more general sense, the weariness that comes from being guarded and alert for too many hours strung together.
And everything looked so strange now too. She saw patterns where she had never seen them before. There were secrets in the way snowflakes fell to earth. She saw how the pine-needles did not form random messes on the ground—but rather, they were arranged into letters, drawn in hard, straight needle-gashes on the snow. Words were written there, on the earth. Words dropped by the pines. She read the words, and they made her shiver. Small spirits drifted by. Vast wandering, peaceful, unseen things rolled above them in the air, inhabiting the fog and clouds.
"It's all so strange," she said to herself. "There are so many secret things in the world."
"What was that?" said Dapple.
"Oh. Nothing. Talking to myself."
"Hur."
At last, they came to a crevice in the over-towering cliffs, and found a path there. Caewen recognised it from the trance-dreams. This is where the wise of the village had brought the girl so long ago. Caewen said, "Here. This will do. I'll go alone from here. I have to go alone."
"Are you sure?" said Dapplegrim.
"No," she confessed. She climbed down from the saddle they had scavenged from Gare's stable before leaving. "But I don't think we should go up there looking as if we might have violence in our intentions." And thinking about this, she drew her sword and laid it on a rock beside Dapplegrim. The bronze shone like golden fire in the thin and cloud-filtered light. "I'll go alone." She gave Dapplegrim a scratch behind an ear. "After all, you can always avenge me if this goes badly."
"Don't make such jokes," he said. "Hur. And I don't even know where you are going? Or why?"
"I'm going to talk to a goddess," said Caewen. "Not a big, grand goddess. Not a spirit from the dawn of time. A small goddess." With a slight frown she added. "Small and alone."
"Alright then," said Dapplegrim. He didn't seem to have anything more to add, so Caewen turned and took a step into the narrow rift in the cliff.
The way had old carvings cut into the living stone. Wolf-shapes mostly, but also the strange old marks of a people who lived by hunting and wandering. There were circles and rings. Caewen, with her newfound sorcerous sight, saw the patterns in them at once and realised they were very old maps of the stars, so old that the stars had changed since they were carved. Other patterns, knot-shapes and twisting root-shapes had been protective spells once, intended to keep the uninvited away from this path. But their magic was long dead. The shamans who had carved those, with old pieces of sharp copper and stone adzes, they were dead a long age now. Their magic was dead too.
Up through the crevice, Caewen went, until she had to climb instead of walk. As she clambered up the rough shapes of steep stairs, she started to hear the noise of water flowing above her and around her. She looked into cracks in the rock and realised that water was trickling down through caves in the stone, presumably disappearing into some subterranean system deep below: there was no river at the foot of the cliff, after all. Small hints of steam curled out of the cracks. The water that flowed behind the curtains of stone was hot.
After half-an-hour or more of climbing and creeping, Caewen reached a place where she could see bright, cloudy light above her. She moved up through a final passage in the rock and found herself in a wide bowl in the rocky crags. Moonlight was aglow here. Everything was lit brightly. Cliffs hung in weird shapes all around, hemming in the space. They were cut with old symbols too, just as the path had been.
In the midst of the encircling rock was a crystal pool, bright and steaming. The smell was somewhere between earthy and off-putting. Hints of rotten egg lay behind the more clayey and hot-water smells.
At the heart of the pool arose a single great rock. Just as Caewen had seen in her dream-vision, the rock was carved into the rough shape of a she-wolf, with teats and teeth and glaring eyes.
As Caewen walked up to the water's e
dge she could feel an oppressive presence close on her. She looked down at the thin crust that trimmed the pool. It was red, purple, yellow and the water was deathly clear. No living thing stirred in these waters. Without needing to test, Caewen knew that the water was searing hot. Anything foolish enough to dip in this pool would be reduced to a boiled corpse in short measure.
On the floor of the pool, the white shapes of carved antlers and much older bones were still visible. She did not look too closely at them. She did not want to see human shapes there.
"Hello," she said, and felt rather weak and stupid for trying to start a conversation with a goddess that way. "I mean to say, I want to talk with you. I know you are still here. I know that your family has mostly forgotten about you. I also know what they did to you. The wise ones."
If a silence could properly be described as howling, that was the silence that answered her. No voices or magic words came seeping out of the water, but everything, the stone, the water, the rising steam, the thin crust of soil under Caewen's feet—it all felt suddenly attentive. The presence that was here, dwelling inside everything here, was bent entirely on Caewen now.
"I know that they made you kill your own sister. I know you loved her. And they made you kill her. And then they told you it was your fault, not theirs. And then they put spells on you and worshipped you and turned you into a goddess of rage, of vengeance, of fury... but you don't have to be those things. You don't have to keep being what they tried to make you into. I saw that too—in the tumbling dreams—I saw that their grasp on you is weak now. All the wise ones, they are all dead. Their magic is all crumbled. There is nothing binding you but your own guilt, your own memories."
A groan of wind in the canyon spaces above. Steam twisting into strange, angry shapes.
"I'm only telling you the truth. And here is some more truth. Your plan did not wholly work, but your people have reclaimed the home on the rocky hill. They are there now. The sorcerer is dead. His son is dead. The line is ended. Soon, the snow-demon will be freed too, and he will go off to some other place I expect. Somewhere wilder. I think he's had quite enough of people. But what of you?" She steadied herself, tried to make her voice level, tried not to let the fear in. "You cannot keep your people safe the way you used to. It isn't enough to hide them from the world, and make them vicious, and scare away everyone else. Eventually—just like before—someone more powerful will come along, and that person will only see monsters that can be made into servants. You have to protect them in other ways." A calmer silence. Less of a sense of the winds heaving. Was she making progress? Was the goddess in this place listening? "There will be a new town founded, not so far away. Don't go into the dreams of your family and tell them to raid it, or destroy it. Tell them to reach out, to form an alliance. The world is a bigger, harsher place than when you last remember it. Great kingdoms stride the vales. Empires straddle whole lands. You cannot fight armies of ten thousand, twenty, a hundred-thousand spears. But alliances might stand together. Friendships might last." She was trembling. The strain of talking to a thing that was so vast, and had been dead so long that hardly any part of it was human any longer... it was telling on Caewen. "And remember, please, if this is all you remember of me today: remember what it was to be alive, and hopeful, and full of joy, sadness, anger, pain, laughter... remember yourself. They made you into a thing of power. But at your core, you are still that little girl, afraid. Don't slip further from your humanity. Come back to it." Finally, she added, as resolutely as she could. "You are not a wolf. You are the ghost of a little girl. Remember that. Please."
There was a stirring of the hot steam on the air, and a feeling of agitation. The shadows cast into the pool, the reflection of the wolf-carved rock, it all moved and rippled, giving just the barest sense of a mind in thought.
"Will you let me leave?" said Caewen. "I know I have intruded, and you could probably stop me, maybe even just strike me dead if you wanted to. But, may I go now? I've said my piece. That is all I came here to say. I just couldn't... I don't know. I don't know what I was hoping."
But the troubling on the water subsided, and the shadows seemed to grow less dark and less lengthy, and a stillness grew in the air.
"Thank you," said Caewen to the air and the water and the rocks. "It's all I ask. Just that you think on what I've said."
Slowly, and with extreme care, for she was now extremely tired, Caewen retraced her path from the ledge of the sacred pool, down through the divide in the rocks where the old carvings of wolves ran hunting over the cliff-sides, and then she was out into the open. By the time she reached the foot of the climb, dawn was growing the air and the red glare of a new sun was painted across the eastern sky. Had just the one day passed since the death of Vespertine? It felt so much longer.
Dapplegrim looked up, alert. "So you did it? Did your goddess listen to you?"
"She listened, but if she heard I do not know. I said some things that needed to be said. That's all."
"Hur. Can we go now? Can we finally leave this ill-festered land?"
"Yes—" but as Caewen spoke, she stumbled sideways, fell to one knee and felt her ribs freeze up on her. She could not breath. She could not take a single breath.
Dappelgrim shot to his hooves, and paced angrily in a tight circle around her, snarling upwards. "Is she doing this? Is she? I'll climb up there and destroy her! You hear me! Goddess or not, I'll eat your liver!"
"Not her," managed Caewen.
"What?"
"Not the goddess." She tried to draw in breath, but it was hard. She felt suddenly weak, threaded with cold, hollowed out with weariness. A large part of her just wanted to lie down and sleep forever. To simply lie down and just die felt like the only easy way. Pain and an awful, weak murkiness were playing inside her bones, inside her skull.
"Then what?" said Dapplegrim.
"Jack. He must have finished leading the townsfolk away, and building them a new town. His tasks are done. All his power is gone from me. He has withdrawn it, as we agreed. Jack is free."
"Oh. I see. Are you alright then? I mean, what can I do? Anything?" He snorted, worried.
"I confess that I feel not very well." She curled up on herself and lay against a rock. "Do we have a blanket? I need to rest for a while."
Dapplegrim used his teeth on the saddlebag until he was able to pull a woollen blanket out. Inelegantly, he managed to drape it over Caewen. She pulled at the corners until it covered her from chin to toe. "I need to rest." Her eyes fluttered shut. "Dapple?"
"Yes."
"I still know the magics. The spells and the secrets. They haven't gone away. They're all still in me. It's just that I've no power to draw on. I think I can still work magic if I really tried—but—well—but it would kill me I think. I'd have to use my own blood to give life to a spell. That wouldn't be good for me, would it?"
"No," said Dapplegrim. "No, it wouldn't. But rest now. Tomorrow we can ride south? Find somewhere warmer. Less troubled than this awful, half-frozen place."
"The wizard-moot. We have to go to the wizard-moot."
"Why?" said Dapplegrim. "Why would we ever want to do that? Bunch of prats, wizards."
"Because I promised Tamsin. If something happened to her. And something has happened to her. She is dead, after all. Dead. Tamsin. The Winter King. I promised her I'd tell them. The wizards. About him. The Winter King."
"Hush," said Dapplegrim. "I don't know what you promised, but it can wait. Don't exhaust yourself. Rest."
She shut her eyes and slept.
-oOo-
In the smoky interior of the house's grand hall, they were laughing and yelling and feasting. The fire was lit in the hearths again. No cold airs reigned here any longer. There was a stink of warmth, of hot bodies, of old, feral magic and wolfish scents.
Once the fog of the sorcerer's demon lifted, they discovered that all the cowering little villager-folk were gone, snuck away in the mist. The demon was gone too. They had all run off, tails tucked be
hind legs. It was unlikely any of them would be coming back. So this was a night for celebration—even if the mastery of the snow demon had slipped away from them, well, what did that matter? The People of the Wolf had at last reclaimed their ancestral home atop the crag in the woods. They were home.
The dead guardsmen, and what remained of Vespertine too, had all been dragged out into the snow for the crows, but the corpse of Varrel, who deserved special humiliation to Issie's mind, was strung up, hands and feet, from one of the roof beams so that it looked as if he was dancing as the fire shadows flickered and shifted.
"He so loved his songs and his dancing," said Issie with a hard sneer when it was done.
She was now sitting beside Vaire at the head of the table, where they had pulled up two of the smaller chairs to sit in, next to each other. The larger, throne-backed chair that Vespertine favoured was already split down to kindling and on the fire.
Vaire leaned over to her and offered her a piece of the salt-beef they'd brought up from the cellars. She took it in her mouth and chewed with a smile. "My lord," she said.
"My lady," he replied, a smooth resonance behind his voice.
But as he was about to pick up another piece of the meat, something stirred in the air. It was as if smoke in the ceiling space suddenly gathered a life into itself, congealing, merging smoke-into-shadow, and then forming a shape.
It was a small, featureless, black thing that dropped down onto the table in front of them. It stretched and it made a low, hissing noise. Turning around once, it's shape resolved, until it looked a little like a mink, a little like a ferret and something like a cat made of shadows. Blinking lazy, shadow-black eyes it said, "Tssssch, tssssch tsssss. I have been following her in the dreams of peasants and tinkers and merchants. Tsssss. And so I follow her to this place?" The creature looked around. "Where is this place? What a strange place it is. Tssssch."
Vaire and Isthinthae both stood, knocking their chairs backwards. Both of them drew knives of dark, natural river-copper and held the blades warily before them. Others in the hall did the same. The people of the wolf had never mastered the art of ironwork, but their copper blades were sharp enough to cut shadows.
If the little darkness-thing was concerned, it did not show it. Nonchalantly, it sat, and fixed its eyes first on Issie, then Vaire, then the others in the room. "Tsssch. She has been here. But she is gone. Her and that awful horse-creature, too. Nasty, ugly brute."
"Wait," said Issie. "You mean Caewen? You're looking for Caewen?"
"Yes! Yes! Tssssch. Tsss. Where is she? Where?"
"What business have you with her?" asked Vaire, perhaps a touch too delicately.
Did the creature sense that Caewen was not much loved here? Perhaps he could smell a change in the air at her name? Perhaps he just knew, the way demons of the shadows sometimes do. "She overthrew and destroyed my master. My business with her is my own. If you are impolite, tssssch, tsss, if you do not wish to help me, then I will go on my way. Tssssch. It is no account to me. But I must find that one, Caewen, and mete out to her what she deserves."
"Is that so?" said Vaire.
Issie came more to the point. "If you are seeking revenge, you have our good wishes. She cheated us out of a great magic that would have been a boon to all our family and house. But the magic is gone now. And she is gone."
"Where? Tsss."
She shrugged. "I know not. Into the wilderness. To that road, off to the west, I suppose. She seemed to have an interest in the wizard-moot. Her and the child-enchantress spoke of it at the dinner. You might try there."
"Wizard-moot?" whispered the cat-mink-ferret creature. "No. That is too dangerous. Too many sorcerers and the such. Tssss. Too many magical eyes seeing. Too many magical snares set and waiting. No. Tsssssch. Tsch. A newly free and wild spirit like me? I'd be bound up in a bottle in a blink of an eye. No. I will hunt, yes, yes. I will lurk, yes. And then I will watch. Tsssch. Tsss. Tssss. And wait."
And with that he jumped from the table, into a patch of shadows on the floor. Whether he passed right through the darkness, as if it were a doorway into another world, or simply merged into it, none could afterwards say for certain. But the little shadow-demon was never again seen in the House of Snow and Apples.
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