She wished she could read the alliances and interests of the Elementals, but they were too unpredictable. They served neither Dark nor Light, but their own ends. Ardina had helped Maerad, had even saved her life; but Ardina had her own inscrutable goals, which Maerad did not understand. Even the Landrost could not be wholly the pawn of the Nameless One, however deeply he moved in his shadow. Obviously the Elidhu wanted the Treesong, and because of that, they were interested in Maerad: the runes were not enough in themselves, they somehow had to be undone. As the Winterking had scornfully told her, the Treesong was a song; it had to be played. And it had to be played by Maerad, who had no music to play it by, and who did not understand anything.
She sighed deeply. Her ruminations always seemed to return to the same place: that she didn't know what she was doing, and that everything, all the same, seemed to depend on her. She felt very small and stupid; she didn't know how she would not disappoint all the hopes in her. And at the same time, she felt a small stab of anger: why her?
She finished the last of her stew and stood up shakily to put the empty plate on the table. "I'm deathly tired," she said, turning to Cadvan. "Even the medhyl doesn't help much. If the Landrost decided to strike now, I'd be as much use as a piece of wet string."
Cadvan studied her face. "You're a slightly better color," he said. "Before, you looked as if you had no blood in you at all." He hesitated, and then asked if she felt capable of feeling out the Landrost again.
"I do not ask you to do anything that might put you in the same danger in which you were before," he said. "But at the same time ..."
"I know." Maerad looked up at Cadvan, pushing her hair back from her face. "I know you have to ask, Cadvan. I just can't now, but maybe in a little while."
Night stole over Innail. The sun was so shrouded in thick clouds that the transition was imperceptible: the shadows simply deepened and deepened until the darkness seemed almost a solid thing. As the temperature dropped in the late afternoon, a heavy fog began to roll down from the mountains in slow waves. Indik watched in consternation. He did not think the weatherwards would keep the fog out: storm was one thing, mist another.
He sent out a warning to the defenders on the far wall, who would not have seen the fog, and briefly thought of contacting Maerad, to see if she could tell whether the mist was of the Landrost's making. Then he thought better of it. The truth was that Indik had been shocked by Maerad's state earlier, and had pulled himself up short: it did not seem right, it hurt his warrior pride, to be depending so heavily on a mere slip of a girl for victory against such a fearsome foe—however astonishing her abilities might be. Such a creature, barely out of childhood, ought to be looking to Indik for protection, not the other way around ... and yet, what choice did they have?
As Indik stolidly kept watch, the fog rolled over the foothills of the mountain and began to spread toward Innail. The air was very still, magnifying a sense of growing tension. On either side of the wall, every sound had an unnatural clarity: Indik could hear the soldiers nearby talking softly or stamping their feet in the cold, the movement of the men outside Innail as they lit fires and made camp, a dog barking in the distance, the irregular clink of metal, footsteps ringing on the stone roads. Then, with a surprising swiftness, the fog reached Innail, covering everything like a white sea. All sound was instantly muffled and distorted and he could no longer tell its direction.
Indik cursed softly; it was impossible to see ten spans in front of his nose. Below him, the fires lit by the mountain men had become rosy blurs in the darkness. He turned around and stared down across the streets of Innail; vague shapes of buildings loomed through the murk, marked by pale blooms of light where Bardic lamps illuminated the streets, but otherwise he could see nothing. Indik's warrior senses prickled: he did not trust this quiet. He sharpened his hearing, and mindtouched Cadvan.
Yes? said Cadvan at once.
How is Maerad?
Indik could feel the doubt in Cadvan's mind, and waited. She is somewhat better than before, Cadvan said at last. Could you ask her if she can tell if this mist is of the Landrost's making?
There was another pause as Cadvan turned his mind toward Maerad, shutting Indik out. Indik continued to stare out into the blackness, his every sense alert. Not a star, not a moon, he thought. Tonight will be the blackest of black nights.
Cadvan's voice cut in on his musing. She says it is hard to tell, said Cadvan. She thinks that it is likely of his summoning. I do not think it is natural weather myself. And she thinks the Landrost is very close, by the gates.
Indik thought some more, and then asked for Cadvan's frank opinion: would Maerad be capable of helping in the battle against the Landrost, or had she already done too much?
She believes she can help, said Cadvan. Although she can't promise anything. She will do her best.
Indik thanked Cadvan, and returned to his brooding. He did not doubt that Maerad would do her best. He would have given much to know, however, what that best was.
The night wore on, hour after slow hour, and still nothing happened, except that it grew colder. The fog had covered everything in a freezing dew, and the captains keeping their interminable watch on the walls rotated their guards, to relieve them of the damp, numbing cold, the endless staring into thick darkness. The tension over Innail increased until it began to be an intolerable force in itself.
In the Watch House, there was constant coming and going as Bards returned from the walls to warm themselves before the fire. Maerad stopped shivering, and began to feel warmth stealing through her body at last. Malgorn returned from the western wall, where he had been checking the defenses and bringing some of them to the gates, where the mountain men were mostly gathered.
"It's hard to know how many is enough," he said, pouring himself some wine. "I suspect that when the attack comes, the wers might be used where we are weakest. At least this fog covers our own movements as well as the Landrost's." He drank the wine in one draft, and sighed. "Anyway, so far as I can judge, which isn't far at all, we are as poised as we can be against attack. The wards are holding strongly, and aside from the bitter cold, all is presently well. I just wish we knew what to expect."
"Yes, it's the not knowing that's worst," said Maerad.
"Well, Maerad, you know that any help you can offer in that direction will be most gratefully received," said Malgorn. "Don't look at me like that, Cadvan, you know it's the truth. Maerad is as endangered as any of us here. And she's not looking quite as white as she did."
Cadvan looked across to Maerad, and she met his gaze. "Of course Malgorn's right," she said. "And no, I don't feel quite so bad." Not, she thought privately, that she felt especially good either.
Cadvan made no comment, and he and Malgorn began to chat idly, talking of things that had nothing to do with the present crisis, jesting to break the tension. Maerad found herself laughing with them. Maybe she felt all right, after all.
Even so, when Cadvan turned to her and relayed Indik's question about the fog, she wanted to refuse. It would be easy to claim that she needed more time . . . She quailed before the thought of attempting to feel out the Landrost: she feared especially how it would expose her to the Winterking, who could trace her presence with an alarming precision. She longed to remain as she was, shielded inside her own skull, untouched by the larger forces that now bent their malignant consciousness on Innail.
Instead, she sat up, casting off the blanket she had been clutching around her shoulders. She shut her eyes, questing through her own inner darkness toward the strange, intangible world of feeling where her magery held its power. She moved warily: she did not want to be seen. It was possible that the Landrost thought he had succeeded in destroying her, and would not expect her to return, but it was equally possible that he would be especially vigilant.
The Landrost, she felt at once, was close—very close. His presence clotted her whole being with dread, and she almost retreated altogether. She stilled herself, making herself
as small as possible. Then, with infinite caution, she sent out some tendrils of awareness. There was no reaction, and she extended them further, ready to snap back at any moment if she needed to.
She couldn't read the Landrost's intent at all. She only sensed a huge heaviness, a gathering sense of awful gravity, but nothing seemed to be actually moving. Puzzled, she brought herself back to the Watch House, where Cadvan was waiting gravely.
"He's there," she said. "By the gate, I think. I don't know what he's doing. He could have called the fog, but then again, it might have just happened by itself."
Cadvan nodded and relayed the message to Indik. Maerad stood up and found her legs were no longer shaking. Good, she thought. I'm all right. She walked to the table and poured herself a small glass of medhyl. Its herbed tang in her mouth was like the shock of very cold water, and she felt its virtue spread through her body, lifting the worst of her weariness. She poured another, and wiped her mouth.
"I'd feel clearer outside," she said.
"It's very cold out there," said Malgorn. "A strange sort of cold, too. It's a damp cold, and there's no ice. But it feels much colder than that, as if everything ought to be frozen, a kind of dead cold. It doesn't make a lot of sense."
"A dead cold?" said Maerad. A sudden intuition made her feel sick with foreboding.
"Just a turn of phrase." said Malgorn. Then he saw the look on Maerad's face. "What are you thinking?"
"I don't know . . ." Maerad hunted for words. "The Landrost is doing nothing. He's just . . . gathering . . . something . . . but what is he gathering? I mean, even as we wait, perhaps . . . perhaps for what he's doing now, he doesn't have to do anything..."
"Maerad, you're making no sense at all," said Cadvan.
"I know..." Maerad said despairingly. "Can we go outside?"
"Shall I come with you?"
"Please come with me. Hurry."
Cadvan grabbed the blanket that Maerad had thrown to the floor and put it around her shoulders, and they left the Watch House almost at a run, heading for the palisade by the gates.
When they left the shelter of the Watch House, the cold hit like a physical blow; Maerad felt her face turn numb almost at once, and her foreboding increased to a sense of panic. She wrapped the blanket around her head like a shawl as she ran. The presence of the Landrost was so heavy it made her feel nauseated; he was in the very air, thick, cold, implacable ...
It feels as if it's well below freezing, said Cadvan into her mind. But there's no ice.
No, said Maerad. I don't think it's that sort of cold.
When they reached the palisade, Maerad glanced around at the soldiers. Here they were mostly Bards, some standing still, gazing out into the formless darkness, others stamping their feet or walking up and down to keep the blood moving through their bodies. A brazier was lit, but it gave off no heat. Those who were still made Maerad's heart miss a beat.
"Everyone move!" she shouted. Her voice didn't carry far, muffled by the fog, and a few Bards turned to look at her curiously. "Everyone movel Cadvan, make everyone move! Tell Indik to order everyone—"
"Move where?" asked Cadvan.
"Not anywhere, just get them to move!" Maerad ran up to a Bard who was leaning against the wall, looking through an embrasure, and touched her shoulder. She made no response, and in a fury of impatience, Maerad shook her arm, shouting at her. To her horror, the Bard slipped heavily against the wall and then toppled stiff as a log down to the ground, her armor clattering against the stone. Maerad knelt next to her, shaking her, slapping the woman's face, which was deathly pale in the flickering torchlight, her open eyes glittering like frost.
Indik spoke over Maerad's shoulder, making her jump. "She's dead, I think," he said. "Frozen where she stood. I'll call a healer."
Maerad groaned, feeling chill tears running down her cheeks, and shook the woman again. She had a vision of soldiers lining the walls of Innail, all standing at guard, all dead. Too late, too late ...
Indik took her hand and pulled her up, looking intently into her face. His lips were blue, the skin on his face chapped and raw, and fear clutched at Maerad's heart: how close was Indik himself to death?
"Maerad," he said. "I'll attend to this. I don't know how you knew this, but I count on you to find out more. This is no ordinary cold."
"No," said Maerad. "It's the cold of death. He draws the life out of us—the air is sucking it away. I'm too late—" She was shaking again, close to panic, and Indik took both her hands in his.
"Maerad," he said again. His voice was gentle, but it held an iron edge. "While there is still breath in us, it is not too late. And I need your help. Now."
Maerad took a shuddering breath and calmed herself. She looked around, suddenly aware of a bustle of activity: people were running and calling, healers were rushing onto the palisade with stretchers to carry away those who were dead or dying. Cadvan was nearby, his attention focused on a Bard who had fallen even as she was speaking to Indik.
"He'll attack now," said Maerad to Indik. "I know it."
"Aye," said Indik. "And those of us who are still alive are as ready as we can be. That's not your business. Now, Maerad ..."
She nodded, and moved to a niche in the far wall where she would not be in the way, touching Cadvan's shoulder as she went so he would know where she was. Then she steeled herself, and prepared to find the Landrost. It was hard to concentrate, with the cold sapping her will, and with the expectation that siege ladders would be thrown against the wall at any moment. She loosened her sword in its scabbard, and huddled the blanket around her head.
She flinched as she opened her mind. The Landrost was so close—a stone's throw, if that—and for a moment she thought that he was aware of her, that something gathered in recognition. The moment passed, and Maerad breathed out in relief: perhaps he thought it was a false alarm, perhaps he was too preoccupied. All the same, a sense that something was aware of her presence, however vaguely, made her cautious. The Landrost's proximity made it more dangerous for her to probe, but she had no choice.
Gingerly, Maerad began to open her mind, trying to ignore the swirl of Bardic feelings that obscured her perceptions: she was dimly aware of grief and fear and horror, of a growing miasma of despair, but with a wrench she deliberately turned her mind away. That, as Indik had said, was not her business. She cautiously began again to send out feelers, trying to steal into the Landrost's mind, just as he was stealing into the minds of the soldiers and Bards of Innail, thieving the very breath of their lives. A deep anger began to smolder within her, and she pushed it down, it was not useful. Not yet, anyway. As she concentrated, her fear dissipated. The Landrost, she thought, was too busy to notice her fiddling at the edges of his power.
Maerad realized that what he was doing was, in a way, quite simple. In the middle of the Landrost there was nothing, nothing at all, and that nothing was drawing into its emptiness the warmth and breath of every living thing in Innail. Soon, if she could not stop him, even walls and warm hearths would be no protection. For a moment, Maerad was blank with astonishment. Was the Landrost alive in any way that she could understand? How could he become such nothingness? Even the
Winterking, for all his utter coldness, pulsed with being, with a pure, charismatic vitality. She skipped over that thought—it was perilous. The Landrost was Unbeing, Unlife. There was no way to fight something that simply wasn't.
So, if she could not fight it, what could she do? There was not enough of her to pour into that endless hole, that inhumanly greedy maw. It desired nothing, you could do nothing to it, it was nothing. If there was a key, Maerad thought desperately, some kind of... If she could hurt the Landrost, somehow, into becoming something ...
She felt panic rising inside her again, as she cast about for a lever, for even the beginning of a way to stop him, and came up with nothing. And then, on the periphery of her awareness, she heard faint cries, clashes, screams—the mountain men, she presumed, were finally attacking the School.
And what had the Landrost done with the wers? That's not your business, Indik had told her. He was right. She forced out of her mind the thought of the vicious battle that was taking place around her tranced body and fought down her panic. In this strange world of the mind, time did not exist: she had no idea how long she had been pondering the problem of the Landrost. It could have been less than the blink of an eye; it could have been hours and hours. But in that other world, she knew she was running out of time, and she could not think what to do.
Destroy him.
The voice fell so lightly into her mind that at first she thought it was her own, and she almost laughed out loud at her own foolishness.
Elednor Edil-Amarandh na said the Winterking, and Maerad's stomach turned over, feeling the pull of him, the leap of desire that rose within her, independently of her conscious choice. Destroy the Landrost. Or do you lack the will?
I lack everything, said Maerad fiercely, a sudden anger flaring inside her. You speak as if I simply had to stamp on a spider. How can I destroy something that isn't there?
He isn't not there, said the Winterking. He is here. As I am.