Morgan had only caressed her, and gazed at her from sad gray eyes. “Poor Shawn,” she’d whispered. “They’ve been so hard to you. But the Carins were always hard. Alynne House was different, child. You should have been born an Alynne.” And after that she would say no more of it.
Shawn squandered her days in wonder and her nights in love, and she thought of Carinhall less and less, and gradually she found that she had come to care for Morgan as if she were family. And more, she had come to trust her.
Until the day she learned about the bitterblooms.
SHAWN WOKE UP ONE MORNING TO FIND THAT THE WINDOW WAS FULL of stars, and Morgan had vanished. That usually meant a long boring wait, but this time Shawn was still eating the food that Morgan had left out for her when the older woman returned with her hands full of pale blue flowers.
She was so eager; Shawn had never seen her so eager. She made Shawn leave her breakfast half-eaten, and come across the room to the fur rug by the window, so that she could wind the flowers in Shawn’s hair. “I saw while you were sleeping, child,” she said happily as she worked. “Your hair has grown long. It used to be so short, chopped off and ugly, but you’ve been here long enough and now it’s better, long like mine. The bitterblooms will make it best of all.”
“Bitterblooms?” Shawn asked, curious. “Is that what you call them? I never knew.”
“Yes, child,” Morgan replied, still fussing and arranging. Shawn had her back to her, so she could not see her face. “The little blue ones are the bitterblooms. They flower even in the bitterest cold, so that’s why they call them that. Originally they came from a world named Ymir, very far off, where they have winters nearly as long and cold as we do. The other flowers are from Ymir too, the ones that grow on the vines around the ship. Those are called frostflowers. Deepwinter is always so bleak, so I planted them to make everything look nicer.” She took Shawn by the shoulder and turned her around. “You look like me now,” she said. “Go and get your mirror and see for yourself, Carin child.”
“It’s over there,” Shawn answered, and she darted around Morgan to get it. Her bare foot came down in something cold and wet. She flinched from it and made a noise; there was a puddle on the rug.
Shawn frowned. She stood very still and looked at Morgan. The woman had not removed her boots. They dripped.
And behind Morgan, there was nothing to be seen but blackness and unfamiliar stars. Shawn was afraid; something was very wrong. Morgan was looking at her uneasily.
She wet her lips, then smiled shyly, and went to get the mirror.
MORGAN MAGICKED THE STARS AWAY BEFORE SHE WENT TO SLEEP; IT was night outside their window, but a gentle night far from the frozen rigor of deepwinter. Leafy trees swayed in the wind on the perimeter of their landing field, and a moon overhead made everything bright and beautiful. A good safe world to sleep on, Morgan said.
Shawn did not sleep. She sat across the room from Morgan, staring at the moon. For the first time since she had come to Morganhall, she was using her mind like a Carin. Lane would have been proud of her; Creg would only have asked what took her so long.
Morgan had returned with a handful of bitterblooms and boots wet with snow. But outside had been nothing, only the emptiness that Morgan said filled the space between the stars.
Morgan said that the light Shawn had seen in the forest had been the fires of her ship as it landed. But the thick vines of the frostflowers grew in and around and over the legs of that ship, and they had been growing for years.
Morgan would not let her go outside. Morgan showed her everything through the great window. But Shawn could not remember seeing any window when she had been outside Morganhall. And if the window was a window, where were the vines that should have crept across it, the deepwinter frost that should have covered it?
For the name of the metal hall was Morganhall, Tesenya told the children, and the family who lived there was the family named Liar, whose food is empty stuff made of dreams and air.
Shawn arose in the lie of moonlight and went to where she kept the gifts that Morgan had given her. She looked at them each in turn, and lifted the heaviest of them, the glass windwolf. It was a large sculpture, hefty enough so that Shawn used two hands to lift it, one hand on the creature’s snarling snout, the other around its tail. “Morgan!” she shouted.
Morgan sat up drowsily, and smiled. “Shawn,” she murmured. “Shawn child. What are you doing with your windwolf?”
Shawn advanced and lifted the glass animal high above her head. “You lied to me. We’ve never gone anywhere. We’re still in the ruined city, and it’s still deepwinter.”
Morgan’s face was somber. “You don’t know what you’re saying.” She got shakily to her feet. “Are you going to hit me with that thing, child? I’m not afraid of it. Once you held a sword on me, and I wasn’t afraid of you then, either. I am Morgan, full-of-magic. You cannot hurt me, Shawn.”
“I want to leave,” Shawn said. “Bring me my blades and my clothing, my old clothing. I’m going back to Carinhall. I am a woman of Carin, not a child. You’ve made a child of me. Bring me food too.”
Morgan giggled. “So serious. And if I don’t?”
“If you don’t,” Shawn said, “then I’ll throw this right through your window.” She hefted the windwolf for emphasis.
“No,” Morgan said. Her expression was unreadable. “You don’t want to do that, child.”
“I will,” Shawn said. “Unless you do as I say.”
“You don’t want to leave me, Shawn Carin, no you don’t. We’re lovers, remember. We’re family. I can do magics for you.” Her voice trembled. “Put that down, child. I’ll show you things I never showed you before. There are so many places we can go together, so many stories I can tell you. Put that down.” She was pleading.
Shawn could sense triumph; oddly enough, there were tears in her eyes. “Why are you so afraid?” she demanded angrily. “You can fix a broken window with your magic, can’t you? Even I can fix a broken window, and Creg says I’m hardly good for anything at all.” The tears were rolling down her naked cheeks now, but silently, silently. “It’s warm outside, you can see that, and there’s moonlight to work by, and even a city. You could hire a glazier. I don’t see why you are so afraid. It isn’t as if it were deepwinter out there, with cold and ice, vampires gliding through the dark. It isn’t like that.”
“No,” Morgan said, “No.”
“No,” Shawn echoed. “Bring me my things.”
Morgan did not move. “It wasn’t all lies. It wasn’t. If you stay with me, you’ll live for a long time. I think it’s the food, but it’s true. A lot of it was true, Shawn. I didn’t mean to lie to you. I wanted it to be best, the way it was for me at first. You just have to pretend, you know. Forget that the ship can’t move. It’s better that way.” Her voice sounded young, frightened; she was a woman, and she begged like a little girl, in a little girl’s voice. “Don’t break the window. The window is the most magic thing. It can take us anywhere, almost. Please, please, don’t break it, Shawn. Don’t.”
Morgan was shaking. The fluttering rags she wore seemed faded and shabby suddenly, and her rings did not sparkle. She was just a crazy old woman. Shawn lowered the heavy glass windwolf. “I want my clothing, and my sword, and my skis. And food. Lots and lots of food. Bring it to me and maybe I won’t break your window, liar. Do you hear me?”
And Morgan, no longer full of magic, nodded and did as she was told. Shawn watched her in silence. They never spoke again.
SHAWN RETURNED TO CARINHALL AND GREW OLD.
Her return was a sensation. She had been missing for more than a standard year, she discovered, and everyone had presumed that both she and Lane were dead. Creg refused to believe her story at first, and the others followed his lead, until Shawn produced a handful of bitterblooms that she had picked from her hair. Even then, Creg could not accept the more fanciful parts of her tale. “Illusions,” he snorted, “every bit of it illusion. Tesenya told it tr
ue. If you went back, your magic ship would be gone, with no sign that it had ever been there. Believe me, Shawn.” But it was never clear to her whether Creg truly believed himself. He issued orders, and no man or woman of family Carin ever went that way again.
Things were different at Carinhall after Shawn’s return. The family was smaller. Lane’s was not the only face she missed at the meal table. Food had grown very short while she had been away, and Creg, as was the custom, had sent the weakest and most useless out to die. Jon was among the missing. Leila was gone too, Leila who had been so young and strong. A vampire had taken her three months ago. But not everything was sadness. Deepwinter was ending. And, on a more personal level, Shawn found that her position in the family had changed. Now even Creg treated her with a rough respect. A year later, when thaw was well under way, she bore her first child, and was accepted as an equal into the councils of Carinhall. Shawn named her daughter Lane.
She settled easily into family life. When it was time for her to choose a permanent profession, she asked to be a trader, and was surprised to find that Creg did not speak against her choice. Rys took her as apprentice, and after three years she got an assignment of her own. Her work kept her on the road a great deal. When she was home in Carinhall, however, Shawn found to her surprise that she had become the favored family storyteller. The children said she knew the best stories of anyone. Creg, ever practical, said that her fancies set a bad example for the children and had no proper lesson to them. But by that time he was very sick, a victim of highsummer fever, and his opposition carried little weight. He died soon after, and Devin became Voice, a gentler and more moderate Voice than Creg. Family Carin had a generation of peace while he spoke for Carinhall, and their numbers increased from forty to nearly one hundred.
Shawn was frequently his lover. Her reading had improved a great deal by then, through long study, and Devin once yielded to her whim and showed her the secret library of the Voices, where each Voice for untold centuries had kept a journal detailing the events of his service. As Shawn had suspected, one of the thicker volumes was called The Book of Beth, Voice Carin. It was about sixty years old.
Lane was the first of nine children for Shawn. She was lucky. Six of them lived, two fathered by family and four that she brought back with her from Gathering. Devin honored her for bringing so much fresh blood into Carinhall, and later another Voice would name her for exceptional prowess as a trader. She traveled widely, met many families, saw waterfalls and volcanoes as well as seas and mountains, sailed halfway around the world on a Crien schooner. She had many lovers and much esteem. Jannis followed Devin as Voice, but she had a bitter unhappy time of it, and when she passed, the mothers and fathers of family Carin offered the position to Shawn. She turned it down. It would not have made her happy. Despite everything she had done, she was not a happy person.
She remembered too much, and sometimes she could not sleep very well at night.
During the fourth deepwinter of her life, the family numbered two hundred and thirty-seven, fully a hundred of them children. But game was scarce, even in the third year after freeze, and Shawn could see the hard cold times approaching. The Voice was a kind woman who found it hard to make the decisions that had to be made, but Shawn knew what was coming. She was the second eldest of those in Carinhall. One night she stole some food—just enough, two weeks’ traveling supply—and a pair of skis, left Carinhall at dawn, and spared the Voice the giving of the order.
She was not so fast as she had been when she was young. The journey took closer to three weeks than two, and she was lean and weak when she finally entered the ruined city.
But the ship was just as she had left it.
Extremes of heat and cold had cracked the stone of the spacefield over the years, and the alien flowers had taken advantage of every little opening. The stone was dotted with bitterblooms, and the frostflower vines that twined around the ship were twice as thick as Shawn remembered them. The big brightly colored blossoms stirred faintly in the wind.
Nothing else moved.
She circled the ship three times, waiting for a door to open, waiting for someone to see her and appear. But if the metal noticed her presence, it gave no sign. On the far side of the ship Shawn found something she hadn’t seen before—writing, faded but still legible, obscured only by ice and flowers. She used her longknife to shatter the ice and cut the vines, so she might read. It said:
MORGAN LE FAY
Registry: Avalon 476 3319
Shawn smiled. So even her name had been a lie. Well, it did not matter now. She cupped her gloved hands together over her mouth. “Morgan,” she shouted. “It’s Shawn.” The wind whipped her words away from her. “Let me in, Morgan. Lie to me, Morgan full-of-magic. I’m sorry. Lie to me and make me believe.”
There was no answer. Shawn dug herself a hollow in the snow, and sat down to wait. She was tired and hungry, and dusk was close at hand. Already she could see the driver’s ice blue eyes staring through the wispy clouds of twilight.
When at last she slept, she dreamt of Avalon.
THE WAY OF CROSS AND DRAGON
“HERESY,” HE TOLD ME. THE BRACKISH WATERS OF HIS POOL SLOSHED gently.
“Another one?” I said wearily. “There are so many these days.”
My Lord Commander was displeased by that comment. He shifted position heavily, sending ripples up and down the pool. One broke over the side, and a sheet of water slid across the tiles of the receiving chamber. My boots were soaked yet again. I accepted that philosophically. I had worn my worst boots, well aware that wet feet are among the inescapable consequences of paying a call on Torgathon Nine-Klariis Tûn, elder of the ka-Thane people, and also Archbishop of Vess, Most Holy Father of the Four Vows, Grand Inquisitor of the Order Militant of the Knights of Jesus Christ, and counselor to His Holiness, Pope Daryn XXI of New Rome.
“Be there as many heresies as stars in the sky, each single one is no less dangerous, Father,” the Archbishop said solemnly. “As Knights of Christ, it is our ordained task to fight them one and all. And I must add that this new heresy is particularly foul.”
“Yes, my Lord Commander,” I replied. “I did not intend to make light of it. You have my apologies. The mission to Finnegan was most taxing. I had hoped to ask you for a leave of absence from my duties. I need rest, a time for thought and restoration.”
“Rest?” The Archbishop moved again in his pool; only a slight shift of his immense bulk, but it was enough to send a fresh sheet of water across the floor. His black, pupilless eyes blinked at me. “No, Father, I am afraid that is out of the question. Your skills and your experience are vital to this new mission.” His bass tones seemed then to soften somewhat. “I have not had time to go over your reports on Finnegan,” he said. “How did your work go?”
“Badly,” I told him, “though I think that ultimately we will prevail. The Church is strong on Finnegan. When our attempts at reconciliation were rebuffed, I put some standards into the right hands, and we were able to shut down the heretics’ newspaper and broadcast facilities. Our friends also saw to it that their legal actions came to nothing.”
“That is not badly,” the Archbishop said. “You won a considerable victory for the Lord.”
“There were riots, my Lord Commander,” I said. “More than a hundred of the heretics were killed, and a dozen of our own people. I fear there will be more violence before the matter is finished. Our priests are attacked if they so much as enter the city where the heresy has taken root. Their leaders risk their lives if they leave that city. I had hoped to avoid such hatreds, such bloodshed.”
“Commendable, but not realistic,” said Archbishop Torgathon. He blinked at me again, and I remembered that among people of his race, that was a sign of impatience. “The blood of martyrs must sometimes be spilled, and the blood of heretics as well. What matters it if a being surrenders his life, so long as his soul is saved?”
“Indeed,” I agreed. Despite his impatience, Torgathon would
lecture me for another hour if given a chance. That prospect dismayed me. The receiving chamber was not designed for human comfort, and I did not wish to remain any longer than necessary. The walls were damp and moldy, the air hot and humid and thick with the rancid-butter smell characteristic of the ka-Thane. My collar was chafing my neck raw, I was sweating beneath my cassock, my feet were thoroughly soaked, and my stomach was beginning to churn. I pushed ahead to the business at hand. “You say this new heresy is unusually foul, my Lord Commander?”
“It is,” he said.
“Where has it started?”
“On Arion, a world some three weeks’ distance from Vess. A human world entirely. I cannot understand why you humans are so easily corrupted. Once a ka-Thane has found the faith, he would scarcely abandon it.”
“That is well known,” I said politely. I did not mention that the number of ka-Thane to find the faith was vanishingly small. They were a slow, ponderous people, and most of their vast millions showed no interest in learning any ways other than their own, nor in following any creed but their own ancient religion. Torgathon Nine-Klariis Tûn was an anomaly. He had been among the first converts almost two centuries ago, when Pope Vidas L had ruled that nonhumans might serve as clergy. Given his great lifespan and the iron certainty of his belief, it was no wonder that Torgathon had risen as far as he had, despite the fact that less than a thousand of his race had followed him into the Church. He had at least a century of life remaining to him. No doubt he would someday be Torgathon Cardinal Tûn, should he squelch enough heresies. The times are like that.