The House of Snow & Apples Read online

Caewen tapped a knife against her plate with absent distraction. She looked up at the light in the windows, fading to a pale waft of afternoon glow. "Do you think we're being kept waiting for a purpose? Or just to annoy?"

  "Difficult to know," replied Tamsin. "And annoying someone can have a kind of purpose, you know." They had already eaten what they wanted from the table, and both of them had, in their own ways, grown anxious from the wait. "We are dealing with a practitioner of the art, that is clear enough, and magic never leaves a person unchanged." She took a sip from her cup. "A magician who performs too much magic of darkness and night can be altered by their own magic until they find daylight painful. I've seen the like happen before. And there are some creatures that look like men but aver the day and have more death in them than life." She tapped a fingernail into the pewter goblet making it ring. "On the other hand, some men are simply lazy and like to rise late." She shrugged. "We shall see."

  Throughout the smattering of talk between them, Caewen had been working up a question in the back of her thoughts. Some things that Tamsin had said earlier—back at the roadside camp—had caught in her mind, like a bee in a cobweb, buzzing there. She decided to prod, and said, tentative, "Tamsin?"

  "Mm? Yes?"

  "You were going to the wizard-moot? And you said you had something to speak about there. Do you mind if I ask about it? I don't know anything much about Sorcery Tor, or the moot. What were you wanting to speak about? How does it work there?"

  "Curious are you? Wondering about the ways of witches and warlocks and conjurers of ghosts?"

  "A little," she confessed.

  "Haven't you ever heard the old saying?"

  Caewen wasn't sure which saying she meant, and said so.

  "I suppose there are many, really. Curious men and wizards make for curious toads. Wizardry is best left to wizards. There are three things in which the wise do not meddle; a dragon and her gold; a wizard and his secrets; a mother and her children." She gave a small, polite shrug. Her lips curled into a faint smile. "There are other sayings. A dozen. A hundred. A score of them for every language of the Clay-o-the-Green. They all say the same thing, in the end. Don't ask impertinent questions of them that dabble in magic."

  Caewen felt hotness rise in her cheeks. She picked at a moth-eaten hole in one of her sleeves. She never could quite get rid of the moths in her things. "If you would rather not—"

  But Tamsin only waved a dismissive hand. She sat up in her chair a little straighter, leaning forward. "I didn't say that, did I? It gives us something to talk about, after all, and we do need something to talk about. Maybe it will come to some good?" A small grin. "I suppose that one of my deaths is hereabouts, isn't it? Might be sensible if someone else knew what is worrying me. I might never get to speak at the moot." She sighed then, a little sad, deep in the back of her throat. "You know that beyond the Snowy Mountains are the lands of everlasting twilight?"

  "To the north, yes. I've been there." Caewen corrected herself quickly, in case Tamsin thought she was boasting about grand tours of faraway places. "That is, only a little way. Just beyond the mountains, to—" Concentrating, she couldn't remember the name of the place. "Oh. I've gone and forgotten it. It was a city of the Wisht Folk. Although Dapplegrim said it was more of a town really. Not big enough to be a proper city."

  "The Wisht? Indeed?" Tamsin arched a brow. Her expression suggested she was appraising Caewen anew. "And you live to walk free and tell the tale? The Wisht don't often let young mortal lads or ladies out of their grasp. Their own blood is too thin and frail." She waved a hand in a dismissive weave. "Their pureblood babes are deformed and sickly. They need to keep adding healthy lines of blood into their lineage—the Wisht will tend to keep hold of fertile young things that stumble into their clutches—sometime, you'll have to tell me about how you got away." She picked up a piece of bread, decided that she wasn't hungry after all, and dropped it back on the plate. It made a soft sound as it hit the platter. "Well, anyway, beyond the twilight lands are the lands of enduring night: the darkness place that stretches over the very north of the world, where it is freezing cold and no living things stir and the sun never rises."

  Caewen tried to recall stories from the hearthside. Things her grandparents, mother and father had told her. "That is the portion of the world given to the Night Queen. When the two Goddesses of Night and Day saw that their war was going to break all of everything, they divided the world instead. The Sun Queen took the lands south of the Snowy Mountains, and Old Night took the north."

  "Really? Is that so?"

  Caewen realised from the tone that she must have said something wrong. "It's what I've always been told," she hedged.

  "If that's so, then why is there both day and night in the south, and only night in the north?"

  "I don't—that is—I guess I never thought about it."

  "The agreement—miss lady who thinks she knows the history of everything—was for a division of time, not lands. Day and night, turning and cycling forever. In the south, day and night turn over just how the twin goddesses agreed that they should. But the Queen of Old Night and Chaos cheated. The ban they agreed to was that neither of those two goddesses would ever again set foot on living earth, nor stone, nor sea, nor river, nor step anywhere that any living thing has ever dwelled. But the Queen of Night knew of a secret rock so far in the north, so barren, and so blasted by ice and snow, that no living thing had ever stood there. No plant had ever put down its roots there. Not even a scrap of lichen had ever grown there. Not so much as an ant. Not a midge. Not a moth. Not the smallest mote of any living thing has ever touched it. The rock has been lifeless since before life had come into the world, and as such, it is in the strictest sense, not yet of living earth. And so the Night Queen went there in secret, carved it into a throne for herself, and sat her great buttock down in it."

  Caewen had to struggle to comprehend the scope of this trick. "And the Goddess of the Sun did nothing?"

  "What could she do? Unless she wanted to reignite the full-blown wars that had almost destroyed the world anyway. The agreement had been held to, strictly speaking." A shrug. "More or less. The Queen of Day departed the mortal world and now looks upon us from the void outside our living sphere. She is removed from us. The Queen of Night dwells upon the Clay-o-the-Green, served by spectres, guarded by lifeless giants and monsters of her making, governing her northerly night-realms from afar. Her presence is what spreads the everlasting night in the north. Her own potent nature. Her breath is shadow. The sweat that rises from her skin is darkness. But she is awfully alone too. No living thing can come near her, or she will be forced to either break the Great Ban and invite war, or depart the world forever. As was agreed."

  "And that's why you wanted to speak at the wizard's moot? To warn everyone?"

  Tamsin's face betrayed a brief look of incomprehension, before a laugh shook itself out of her. She laughed and laughed, until she was a little puffed, and a tear was streaking her left cheek. "No. No. Everyone who has any sort of education knows that. Everyone knows the Night Queen cheated and never left the mortal world. That's not a secret at all."

  "I didn't know."

  Tamsin ignored this. She said instead, "What I need to speak about is another thing altogether... A new power in the north. A thing that has come out of the lands of everlasting night. I don't know what else to call him. A thing. He calls himself the Winter King, but no one seems to have really seen him, and no one knows if he's a god of the old earth, or some trumped-up magician of unusual talent, or some other creature else again. He is in service to the Night Queen, that much is clear, and he has already swept south, raising huge fortresses in the twilight lands. He draws allies and armies to him. He is, I fear, preparing for war, and it will be a war unlike any the world has seen this last two thousand years."

  "But who does he want to wage war on?"

  Tamsin was quiet for some time before she said, "So far as I can tell? Everyone. He looks to the south. All of it.
"

  "But that would be madness. It would rekindle the old wars between day-folk and night-folk. It would be near as bad as breaking the ban of the goddesses."

  "Yes. It would. But here is the strangeness in all this." She paused. "It's too ludicrous. That someone would risk bringing about the ancient wars again. I did not believe the rumours myself—I've known many night-folk over the years—and they may be many things—but they are not, as a rule, insane—so, I have spent this last year trekking the northern tracks, through wild woods and witching mountains. I have seen the Winter King's armies with my own eyes: boggarts and night-folk, elbgasts, troldes and worse, worse things. But here's what is truly troubling: everyone of the night-people I spoke with, was quite convinced that they were only acting in defence. All their enchanted spies, all their oracles, all their seers report the same whisper over and over: there is a vast army gathering in the southlands, and the day-folk are preparing to conquer all of the north and put it to fire and sword. Even unto the throne of Old Night."

  "Wait? Is there an army gathering in the south? I'd have thought I'd have heard about it."

  Tamsin shook her head. "None that I know of. And you'd think that would be the sort of thing that would be difficult to hide. A hundred thousand soldiers, sun-magicians with red and white gryphons, and fell bright monstrous lions, and serpents with white fire for tongues. That's what the night-folk believe, and there's no telling them otherwise."

  "So the wizard-moot?"

  "Is a place where all come in peace once every seven years, to trade, to talk, to settle disputes. No bickering is permitted, nor fighting. The punishment for fighting, whether by knife or by spell, is harsh. Night-folk and day-folk alike will be there." She paused then. "I don't wish to warn one side about the other. I want to speak on behalf of everyone. I want to do my best to avert madness." As Tamsin was speaking, she picked up her goblet and was examining herself in the polished pewter. As her eyes flicked across the surface, her expression fell into an angry look, and she stood so suddenly that she knocked the chair back, so that it fell. "Spy! I've seen you. Reveal yourself!"

  The air grew cold. A slight whiteness of soft frost appeared on the window panes, and a wind arose, and rattled its way through of the room and out the far door. A low laugh, barely audible, went with it.

  "Cave the sky. Blood the earth. That thing was probably listening the whole time."

  Caewen had stood also, her hand on her sword, alert. "What thing?"

  "The spirit in the snows. It was here, invisible up in the air above us. I saw its reflection in the cup.' She muttered to herself. "Spirits may go about unseen, but reflections do not lie."

  "Do you think it might be a spy for the night-folk? Is this place in league with your Winter King?"

  Tamsin fumed for a moment, but took three measured breaths, and calmed herself enough to pull her chair back into place and flop down into it. She considered the question, but shook her head. "No. I've turned that over in my head already. If I thought that this place was a spy-house for the Winter King I'd have been far more cautious just now. No. We are simply in some petty sorcerer's house. That is all. The world is full of elemental beings and demons. At any given hour there must be thousands of snow demons, though most of them barely exist for a few moments before they fade away. Mere hues on the air, born in the storm. Not every demon of a given ilk, nor every magician of a kind, is allied and alike. There are thousands upon thousands of snow demons. Hundreds of winter-witches and wizards." She considered the possibility a moment longer, but shook her head and refilled the goblet with the cloudy cider they had on the table in roughly fired clay pitchers. "No. We're too far south. Too far removed. The reach of the Winter King is not long enough yet. It cannot be."

  The conversation subsided after that. They spoke a little about the rules of the moot, and when and where Tamsin was planning on speaking, and what she was going to say, but after a few minutes, even that halting talk eroded.

  They sat in a sticky, uncomfortable silence of their own making for some time, and were still in uncomfortable silence, when the big door at the other end of the dining hall opened.

  "At last!" Tamsin looked up. Irritation crossed her face, flashed in her eyes.

  Caewen arranged her own expression to be calmer, trying not to give away how angry she felt.

  The couple who entered were young, richly dressed in blue and white velvet, their hems trimmed with silver fox. They were laughing at some private joke. He stepped lightly, with energy, and a humour shone in his eyes. She was more demure, more attentive. When they saw Caewen and Tamsin, they both stopped short, as if surprised. The reason for this became clear enough when the man, who looked to be somewhere on the less world-weary side of thirty, said, "Oh? My father has guests." He continued towards the table then, though his lady companion hung back a step. She looked curious, even a little wary. Perhaps meetings with 'guests' had gone poorly in the past? Meanwhile, he gave a slight, not overly deferential, bow: first to Tamsin, then Caewen. "Lady fair," he said, "Fair lady," and his smile returned. The flash of white teeth made him look like a man who was selling something at market. "I am heir and son to the master of this humble home, The House of Snow and Apples. But isn't that such nonsense? Call me Varrel." He turned then to his lady. Her smile had warmed a little. "This is Isthinthae. Call her Issie. She detests Isthinthae. So formal."

  The young lady bobbed a curtsy, far more respectfully than Varrel's curt half-bow. Her voice was softly calculated, as if she considered every word with care. "Most pleased," she said. "Delighted." The words were like the soft steps of paws around puddles of snow, edgy and careful.

  They sat themselves down, the couple, him to the right of the empty chair at the head of the table, and her beside him. The seating arrangement caught Caewen's attention, and she noted it. If Isthinthae were of equal status, she should surely have sat on the other side of the table, beside the head chair on the left? Instead she sat, and then arrayed herself, as if she were present entirely for Varrel's amusement, serving him food and doting on him with hushed little words that Caewen could not quite catch.

  "When will we be expecting your father?" said Tamsin. "I don't mean to sound impolite, but demons, wolves and storms make a person, how shall I put it? A touch less than patient."

  "He will be along." Varrel was breaking bread up in his fingers and dipping it in lard from a bowl. "His slave, Old Jack, is rattling about the house, and that means my father is awake and working. He'll be in his tower."

  "Will he now?" said Tamsin.

  Caewen saw the iciness in her eyes and heard the brittleness in her tone. Interrupting, Caewen said, "Will we be expecting anyone else? A fellow in the village mentioned something about two sons?"

  But as soon as she said the words 'two sons', Varrel's whole manner changed. He grew stiff. The bread he had been picking apart froze in his fingers. The way his expression altered, it looked as if he was now chewing something unpleasant instead of soft bread and lard. When he swallowed, he might well have been swallowing ashes. In a voice, cold and hard as iron, he said, "My father has but one son. One son only. That other bastard offspring is not deserving of any politer name. Do not mention him again." Then, seeming to catch himself he grinned, widely. "But look at me. All misbegotten gloom when we have such fine guests. My father's, er, bastard, is well out of the way. You do not need to worry yourself about him. As for me, I am a much merrier fellow." Turning to the young lady beside him he said, "Isn't that right, Issie?"

  "Without measure," she said, and added a carefully constructed girlish giggle.

  "That's my pretty lass." He laughed. "Now, turning to you and yours, what sends you out on wild roads? I know, of course, my father's slave has been at his mischief again, and chased you to our doorstep, but no one takes themselves along remote roads like the Wenderway without some purpose spurring them on." He rolled a hand on the air, as if mimicking the turn of a wagon wheel. "The way is too remote. Too dangerous for casual
jaunts."

  "I was travelling south," said Tamsin, "to the wizard-moot, along with many others. A large number of whom are now dead from cold. I imagine." She allowed the comment to sit in the air between them.

  But Varrel just shrugged and smiled as if to say: nothing to do with me. He threw a glance at Caewen.

  She felt an awkward inner twinge as she said, "Well, actually, I was just on a jaunt, as you put it. Dapple and me didn't have anywhere in particular to go. We just wanted to—you know—see the world."

  Varrel made a movement to say something, but he was cut off: a new voice fell like a curtain on the conversation. It was an older man's hard intonations, firm, commanding, and just a touch terse. "You seem to have fallen in with rather odd company then." The owner of the voice stepped through the far doorway at a stride. "For a simple traveller."

  Both Varrel and his lady stood. The young man's demeanour changed to be less joking, more obsequious. "Father," he purred. "Wonderful that you should join us."

  "Is it?" said the older man. "Perhaps it is." He was thin, bald, but wore a small, grey-white beard about his jaw and lips. His whole face was carved with wrinkles and hollows of an expressive nature, and his eyes were clear and grey, so that he looked as if he were always watching everything, always assessing everything, even perhaps staring right through things a little bit. As he arrived at the empty high-backed chair, his smell carried forward: a sort of burnt sweetness, like smoke from beeswax candles. He smiled at his son, and the smile did seem for a flash of a moment warm, almost beatific. Though there remained a cooler note to the old man's expression, that chill undercurrent was barely at the surface until he looked over and noticed Issie at the table. As soon as his eyes lit on her, a crust of irritation froze his lips. At about this same moment, Varrel remembered himself, and darted forward, pulling out the older man's chair. "Father."

  The old man said, "Thank you. I will take a cup of cider, too. If it is not too much trouble."

  "Of course, father." Varrel busied himself filling a goblet and offering it, before returning to his seat.

  Throughout this, Caewen noted that Tamsin had not stood, and Caewen found herself also in a sufficiently resentful mood to risk offence by remaining seated. She looked the old man over, noting the marks and twists of silver cloud-shapes on his trimly tailored shirt and leggings, long winter coat, embroidered vest, tooled belt. Quite clearly this was their sorcerer of clouds and winter. This was the master of the house.

  "Now," said the man, as he looked over both Caewen and Tamsin. "It would be impolite not to introduce myself. I am Vespertine." A smile. "But who are you? And what should I make of the two of you?" He glanced at Tamsin. "One of you brimming with power and old magic." Now, he turned his glance to Caewen. "The other, seemingly just some lass with a strange horse and a dusty old sword-of-runes. But appearances will deceive. You may rely on it. For, my Jack has his talents for foresights and premonition. He brings me only those who are of great importance, one way or the other. Them who have already changed the world, or those who are fated to. Which is it? Which are you?" The question was aimed squarely at Caewen.

  "I haven't done anything of any renown," she answered. "So far as I know."

  "Ah, but then you must be destined for great things." The magician changed his tone, just a fraction. "Or not. Old Jack has been known to make mistakes. His visions of past and future are not perfect."

  "Two mistakes then," said Tamsin. "For I am nothing more than a travelling witch myself, on my way to the moot. I suppose, given the lateness, you are not planning on attending, Lord Vespertine?"

  "Just Vespertine will do." He reached for some cold meat and cut off pieces for his plate. "And I have no like for your lies, little child.

  Tamsin started to object, but Vespertine spoke over her.

  "Do you think me idiot-born? Do you think me toppled on my crown as a babe? My wits all gone and scattered? I have no need to ask your name. I knew you the moment you entered my dominion. I've read my books and my histories. The spirits of the winds tell me their memories of bygone years. I've recited the old myths and tales, yes, even when I had a young man's voice. You are calling yourself Tamsin these days, are you? That's quite the joke. She was your—half-sister, wasn't it? Is it guilt that made you pick that name?" He took a bite of meat. "After what you did to her?"

  "Whoever it is you think I am, you are mistaken," said Tamsin through gritted teeth.

  "Do not be coy. You know quite well who you are—who you used to be, at least—or are you grown forgetful? Should I remind you? They called you the Child-Queen of Darkenhenge. But they also called you the Bloodsport Queen. The Sorceress of the Tears. I think your enemies had names for you too. Worse names. Forgive me for being impolite, but history is full of impolite names: the Bitch of the Bones; the Cunny of the Corpses; the Wretched Child. You once had a half-a-thousand warrior-poets competing to pile the tallest heap of severed heads at your feet, little one. You once ruled an empire of blood and darkness; you were feared, hated; you were a queen of unrestrained power. You were as close as it is possible to be a living goddess on earth." He brought the knifepoint down with a soft clink and speared a bit of meat. After chewing and swallowing, he said, "And you walked away. Just... gone one night." A shrug. "If the histories tell the truth of it. You left quite the blood-feud in your absence. Quite the emptiness of power. There was fighting. Decades and decades of fighting." He smiled now. "Though that some thousand years ago." He looked her up and down, casually, slowly. "If nothing else, you have aged well." He performed a slight shrug. "If perhaps a little on the younger side of what most people would prefer."

  Tamsin stared in a daggered silence. She said nothing, until Vespertine seemed to decide he wasn't going to get an answer without more needling. "I have always wondered: is it that you prefer to eternally be this... particular age... or was it a spell of everlasting youth that went awry? I would not ask, except that I consider myself a student of the old histories, and it has made me wonder. And after all, how often does one get to ask questions of a historical personage? Quite seldom." Following a further silence from Tamsin, Vespertine added, "Very well. I see you want to keep your secrets. At least tell me this: why did you walk away from it all? Not many tyrants decide to just up and leave it all behind one day. Goes against the grain, one would say."

  Varrel added, with a grin, "Quite. Seems counter to the type of person who becomes a witch-queen in the first place, if you were to ask me."

  "No one was asking you, Varrel," said his father, quietly.

  At that, Varrel's shoulder's hunched and he fell into a more hard-edged wordlessness.

  Tamsin was barely holding her temper in check now. Her fingertips were trembling. After a drawn pause, she spoke, pulling out the words until they were thin and brittle, "Would it end this oh so clever prattle?"

  "I am all ears," said Vespertine with a smile.

  "Hm. People who are all ears, tend to be less mouth." She sounded more defeated as she added, "Anyway, if you care to listen, I'll tell you. It was all very long ago, so you will forgive me if I forget the exact details. Maybe you can go and check those history books of yours if there's something I'm unclear on?" Her voice had soaked up the a barely restrained anger now. The brittleness was cracking and there was fire underneath. "So what do I remember of those days? Yes, I was once queen of some petty empire in ancient years. I slept on a bed of furs and cloth-of-gold. I owned ten-thousand slaves. My bedchamber was a place of incense, and magic and opiate dreams. And I thought I would rule forever. After all, had I not already outwitted death so many times? Then, one night—not even a very special seeming night—no different from any other evening so far as I can tell—well, I simply awoke in a strange fever. There were stirrings in the air. Voices calling to me. I slipped from my chambers and out of the Great Hillfort at Darkenhenge, past my drowsy guards. The voices drew me out upon the road. So I stood there, under the cold moonlight, and there, along a muddy roadway came a spectra
l parade. Men and women, children, warriors, the aged, the sick, the weak and the strong, the young: and all of them dead. They were all pallid and ghost-faced. As they drew near me, I saw their bones shine with sickening light through flesh. And as they passed, each ghost looked at me, and I knew that I had killed them. Maybe not personally, not all of them at least—but, these were the victims of my armies, my monsters, my creatures of magic and sorrow. And what they whispered, over and over was this: We are your servants. You made us. You will join us. You will rule us. You will be as we are." She took a long, gulping drink from her cider. Her hand shook a little. "I am prone to visions, now and then. I think I saw something true that night, in that moment... my destiny... that is, if I kept to my path. Death was so thick in my blood, magic-of-pain, sorcery-of-torture, it was all so soaked into my skin, that I was—sooner or later—going to find myself more dead than alive, yet bound to this earth by the souls of all those I'd murdered. There was a ghostly kingdom awaiting me, hungering for me. I merely had to keep walking my old dark road. I would arrive there. My reign would have been terrifying."

  Everyone else at the table was attentive. Even Varrel, who seemed to be naturally inclined to attend to nothing so much as his own immediate inclinations.

  Tamsin's face fell into a slight frown. "So I left. I simply left. I turned my back, and walked away. Barefoot, without even taking any of my tools of the shadow-arts, without one of my attendant spirits or spellbound demons, without so much as a bronze knife or flint dagger to clutch in my fingers. I walked away. I vanished. And the Child-Queen of Darkenhenge ceased to be. I've walked a lot of roads since then. Worn out a lot of shoes. Taken a lot of names, and let them go again, and taken new names. I still change my name, time to time. Why Tamsin? Maybe you are right. Maybe it is guilt. She was there in the parade of spectres, after all, and she looked at me with especial hatred." Another drink of cider in shivering fingers. "Who can blame her?" She twisted an angry smile at the sorcerer. "Now, are you satisfied?"

  At the head of the table, Vespertine did an odd thing. He clapped, slowly and with a ponderous rhythm. "Very much satisfied. That was quite the story. Yes. I am pleased. Ah, but now, what shall we do with you? That is quite the other question."

  Through lips that were barely parted, in a whisper colder than any words Caewen had heard Tamsin speak before now, the child sorceress said, "If you keep me here against my will, you will regret it." Her eyes narrowed to slits and the white of her teeth barely flashed behind those thin, drawn lips. In that moment Caewen could well believe that Tamsin had once been a beshadowed queen ruling a beshadowed realm.

  Tamsin and the sorcerer Vespertine kept their calculating eyes fixed on each other. If one of them could have outright murdered the other at the table, right then and there, Caewen was more than half-certain they would have.

  The palpable silence was broken eventually by Varrel. His voice shook a little as he said, "Yes! What a fine tale! But how serious! Let us have some other entertainment? My Issie, she loves to sing and tell stories. Don't you? Of course you do. Why don't you tell us a story? Get up. Get up." He had enough sense to be worried by the brittleness scratched in the air between his father than the guest. The tremor was clear in his voice.

  Issie, if anything, looked more worried than Varrel. But she obeyed, got to her feet. Considering what she might perform, she asked, "What about the story of the Soul-Eating Owl?"

  "Too grim," said Varrel. Something happy, or something more of our village? Something local? Our visitors would like to hear something with local colour. Wouldn't you? Of course you would."

  "Well, how about the tale of Herself-of-the-Woods, then?"

  "Still a touch grim, but..." Varrel looked at his father, and seeing only a focused silent coldness there, he licked his lips and said, "But it will do. A tale of the village. Very good. Issie, please, go on. Go on."

  "Grim?" said Issie. "Yes. A little. But it has a happy ending. The story of Herself-of-the-Woods: There was once a group of women collecting flax for spinning into linen and rope down by the riverside. It was hot work so they sent two girls—sisters—to fetch a bucket of cool water from the village well. But the sisters liked to play games, and when they got to the well, they both forgot all about their task, and they decided to play at being wolves instead. The older sister played at being a wolf, and she was so good at pretending, that it would have frightened anyone to see it. But when the younger sister played at being a wolf, she was so much like a wolf she bit her older sister's throat right out with sharp wolf-teeth, and the older sister fell down dying, and she bleed everywhere. The younger sister didn't mean to lose herself so deeply in the wolf-game, and when she saw what she had done, she keened and keened, screaming and crying, for she loved her sister deeply. All the weaver women came running up the hill. They saw what the youngest had done. She was covered in blood all down her mouth, lips, chin—and she had her sister's corpse flopped dead across her knees where she knelt on the red-soaked soil. The women could still see the wolf in her too, and they saw that she had killed her sister, so they chased her out of the village, throwing rocks and those sharp sticks people use for the flax collecting. But when the younger sister was by herself in the woods, without a fire, or a house, or human food, she forgot she was a person at all, and she thought she was a wolf so badly she really turned into one. She became a huge white wolf. And in this wolf-shape, she started stalking the fields, the wilds and farms, killing sheep, killing cows, killing people. For years and years, the youngest haunted the village fringes murdering and eating anyone she could ambush, and no one could stop her. The villagers grew to despair. Many of them fled, but few of those who ran made it past the ravenous wolf. That is, until one day, a kindly witch wandered past the village. She saw the wolf from afar, running through the woods. She said to herself, 'That is not a wolf. That is a little girl. I must go speak to her.' So she went right up to the wolf, and the wolf leapt at her and tried to eat her, but the witch's magic was too strong. She said to the wolf, 'What's your name?' And the wolf told her. And the kindly witch said, 'You should not go about eating these people. They are the family of your family. The blood of your blood. The children of your cousins. Blood and family. But you cannot come back into the village to live with mortal people either. You are too changed. No. Instead, you should go up to the place in the hills where there is a sacred hollow and a hotspring. Go there, and lie down and sleep. There are good spirits there and they will heal you inside. When you wake, you will remember that you are a little girl, and you shall remember to look after your family.' So the wolf went away, and she did lie down in the enchanted ravine with the hot water and the cliffs and the caves, and she did sleep and sleep. When she awoke at last, she was healed. She was a person again. She knew she could never come back to the village, so she made a house there, among the rocks, and grew to womanhood and took lovers. Her children prospered and grew, and they guarded the whole of this valley from dangers and threats, because all her children, and her children's children, and their children too—they were all strong because they have a bit of the wolf in them. And they still do." She gave a slight curtsey and sat down again.

  Throughout this little folktale, Vespertine had been watching and listening, chewing his food with slow, deliberate bites of the jaw. Something of a sneer was growing on his lips. He spoke up as soon as Isthinthae had reseated herself. There was no mistaking his displeasure. "Son. Varrel. We have discussed this before. I mislike you making a spectacle out of your whore. I permit you to keep her only if you do so with decorum. I have tolerated quite enough of this... this... mistress of yours tonight. That tale was not well chosen. You both think you are cleverer than you are."

  "Father, please."

  "If you cannot act with a modicum of restraint, then I am forced to remind you that you have private rooms to which you are free to withdraw. I advise you to find your manners. Or find your door-keys. I don't care which, but make a decision, and be quick about it."


  "Very well, father." He turned to Issie. "Go. Leave us. Father does not want you here."

  She rose to go, looking ashamed, and stepped around the chair where Varrel sat. But as she passed the old sorcerer in his chair, he reached out and grabbed her by the wrist. "I see you," he hissed. "Don't think I don't see right through you."

  She stammered, trying to find words. "Sir... m'lord, please, you're hurting me."

  "Stop this. I'll not have pretence in my house. My son may be a fool, but I am not. I see you. I see the thoughts behind your eyes. You will never be the wife of my son. You will never be the lady of this house. Remember that."

  Her demeanour changed then. It was like shedding an act. "And which son do you mean?" she asked, voice flat.

  The silence that followed was as thick as tallow. But the sorcerer first smiled, then laughed. It was a brief, harsh noise. "Ah. But you are right to remind me. Neither of them. You'll never be a wife to either of them. Now do as you are told, and go." He let go of her wrist and turned to Varrel. "When I said I wanted you both silent or gone, I meant both of you. Are you going to cause more irritation for your father?"

  "No," Varrel replied, a little sulky.

  "Good." He reached, and took up the cider jug, refilling his own goblet. "Right. Shall I call for the full dinner then? This small meal has not much blunted my appetite. I have been hard at work since rising." Vespertine did not wait for anyone to answer. "Jack! Jack-in-the-Mist! Attend! I evoke you, and call you. I abjure your tricks. I put all the art's geas upon you. Present yourself."

  A voice fell out of the empty air like snowflakes. "Yes, good master."

  "Go and tell the kitchen that we will have the evening dinner now. This bread and cold meat is too thin. Go."

  A whisper of a chill passed out of the room. At no point did the snow-demon bother to manifest itself into a visible shape. It was merely a voice on the air.

  If Vespertine had been planning conversation, the tirade at his son and Isthinthae seemed to have put him out of the mood. He brooded in silence, drinking heavily from the cold cider. When the food arrived, the silence continued. The meal was uncomfortable. Only when Vespertine finished, and left, did Varrel dare to speak again. He only muttered, "Blasted old goat. You know what the villagers call him? Old Coldballs. Old Withergrim. Other names too. They're right to laugh at him. Old goat of a man." He dabbed a kerchief at his lips, wiping away the grease of the meal. Then without saying anything more, he got up and left too.

  Caewen and Tamsin were left alone at the table.

  "Well," said Caewen. "That was pleasant."

  -oOo-

  Not long after the father and son had left, one of the dull-eyed guards came into the hall and announced in a flat, toneless voice that he was to take the two guests to their rooms. They went along with him, Caewen merely silent, while Tamsin fumed.

  Their rooms turned out to be smallish, thinly appointed, but not gaol cells. There were no locks on the door, and no bars on the narrow windows: though when Caewen did glance out the nearest windows she saw why. The fall alone would kill.

  "Can I go and check on Dapple? My horse?" she asked before the guard departed.

  "If you can find the way," he said, but didn't offer to escort her, or show her the way. Evidentially, he was happy to let Caewen find her own way to the stables; he just walked off down the hall, ignoring her.

  "You know," said Caewen, "I am starting to suspect that one disadvantage of keeping your guards in a spell-stupor is that they don't have much initiative."

  "That's one drawback, certainly," answered Tamsin.

  "Would you like to come with me?"

  "No. I need to sit and think for a bit."

  So Caewen went out the door, turning to her right, but before she was even a few steps down the hall Tamsin called after her and stepped into the corridor. "Caewen?"

  "Yes."

  "That's all true. About me. I was that sorceress-queen, cruel, and worse. There is no escaping the things I did. The thing I was. A queen of darkness and blood. Aren't you... I mean... I understand if you would rather not be anywhere near me, after finding this out. There are times when I don't want to be near me."

  Caewen had to let her own thoughts pause on this for a moment. She turned her intuitions over, examining them. "No," she said slowly, at last, coming to a conclusion. "You were that person. That may be true. Now you are not. That is also true. Maybe you should have been locked away like a criminal, or branded, or, I don't know. What would one do with a sorceress-queen?"

  Tamsin's lips flickered with a wan smile. "Beheading is popular. Often, but not always, followed by dismemberment and burning on a pyre made of rowan and woodbine. To be safe."

  Caewen shook her head. "You are not that person now."

  "No," said Tamsin. "No. I try not to be."

  "Then I'm happy to be in your company. We do things we regret. It is the measure of the thing that differs only. But, also, we all change. The measure of the person is that we change. A person can be redeemed. A soul can be illummed, no matter how deep in shadow it may once have sunk." She shrugged. "At least that is the way I see it. I'm no great thinker."

  Tamsin smiled. "Thank you."

  Caewen gave her a friendly nod and smile in return, then turned her attentions back to the corridor, and took herself off down it. She heard Tamsin go back into her room, heard the door shut with a dull clink. Now. Was it left from here, or right? Or should she go back the other way and head down the stairs at the other end of the hall? If only that guard had not just wandered off? What did he have to do so urgently, anyway? Stare at a wall blankly? Say mindless things to other mindless guards?

  -oOo-

  About ten minutes into being thoroughly lost, Caewen felt the air noticeably chill around her. A fringe of ice crystals appeared along the lead frames of the nearest windows and the one threadbare tapestry hanging in the corridor billowed as if a wind were creeping behind it.

  Caewen stopped short. She sighed inwardly, and said, "Hello, Jack."

  Thin, ice-like teeth appeared on the air, and blue eyes shone above them. "She spies poor Jack. Has she a knack, for arts and charms? Alas. Alack. This wastreling, this waif-a-thing? Such words has she, to make Jack sing?"

  "I've no magic in me. No spells. Leave me be. Go off and bother someone else."

  "Bother? Bother? Poor, old fragile me? Oh, poor Jack-in-the-Mist. Alone. Lonely."

  "What do you want?" said Caewen.

  There was a silence before the spirit answered. When it did, the voice was more serious. "What all souls want. To be free."

  "Then go. Leave. Be gone. Be free with yourself, if you want. Go lark in the air, or whatever it is you do for fun."

  "I cannot leave, nor flit away, I am spellbound. I must stay. I must serve the sorcerer, must do his bid, for in his flesh my chains are hid. Chains cold, and true, intangible, and well hid too, but they will grow and sprout anew, and shine like snow, when death at last strikes old Coldballs low. I think, I think, yes, you may do. Yet you needs be quick. Needs be nimble. Sharper than a needle prick. Harder than a thimble. But if I put matters in motion, with whispered word, and thought and dream, sweet power may yet await, deeper than lake, wider than ocean, swifter too than any stream."

  "I don't want power. I have no desire for it."

  Jack's whole face and body resolved into a more full solidity. The smile grew bolder and more bright. "You know, you know, you speak a'true, I see the truth, through and through. And is that so? If so, if so, then this is what I offer you: just say the word, and I will turn such machinations as needs be, that will set the both of us free, both you and me. For in return, I have a thought, that you will free me too, or now say naught. To that you must avow, and speak true, just one word, or two, I suppose, will do."

  Caewen looked hard at the creature, half-real, floating in the air. She looked at the blank, glimmering blue eyes and the ice and flecks of snow drifting from its lips every time it spoke. Each word a snowflake
. Each sound a crystal of ice. The face of the snow demon faded in and out of the air. Was it making itself insubstantial on purpose? Did it feel uncomfortable under her scrutiny?

  "Do we agree?" said the demon. "I free you, and you free me?"

  "How can I trust you? You might turn me into a pillar of ice the moment I set you free?"

  "My kind are bound by promise, oath and vow. I speak in troves. I speak true now. I'll do you no harm, by any means, nor hurt your horse-thing, nor work a charm, nor control, nor master you, nor use any tricks, nor sways, I swear by it, 'til end of days."

  She nodded, thinking his words through carefully. There might be a loophole in them. If half the hearth-side tales were true, then spirits love their little worming word-tricks—but the promise seemed good enough for now.

  "Agreed. If you free us, I will free you."

  "Good! Delight! My vows do not break. They do not bend. And now to plans I must attend."

  "Wait!"

  The spirit stopped in the air, where it twisted and moiled, only barely human in shape. "Aye?"

  "Why ask me? Why not the other one. Tamsin?"

  "Her? I do not trust her. Too much magic in her blood. Too much blood in her magic. Too broken a soul. That is all." And with a sound like a fire being put out by a strong wind, the spirit was gone. A few small flakes of snow settled on Caewen, on her eyelashes and cheeks, and that was all there was to suggest the demon had ever been there at all. Only after the demon was gone did Caewen realise that his last spoken words had not been wrung together in bad rhymes. Did that mean something? Or was it just Jack allowing his word-trickery to slip at the last moment. She would ask Dapple. Maybe he had experience with these sorts of creatures before?

  -oOo-

  Caewen pushed on, getting herself, if possible, more lost, before finally coming out of a narrow stair, and down a servants' way that spilled out into the same dining hall they had all been sitting in an hour earlier. The room appeared to be empty. The table was clear, and there were only three candles burning, casting a low and sallow light from the tabletop.

  She was halfway across the floor before she saw a movement in the darkness, off at the fringes of the room. Whirling on it, she put a hand on her sword but drew it only an inch from the scabbard, freeing it, so that she could slide it out smoothly if she had to.

  A laugh came from the shadowy shape, and then one plucked note. A lute lay across his lap where he was sitting in the gloom by himself.

  "Varrel?" said Caewen flatly.

  "I suppose," he said, "that you are trying to find your way to go and check on that demonical horse of yours. Father mistrusts the creature, but is happy enough with it being here—so long as it stays outside the house. You aren't be thinking of trying to slip away, are you? It would be a pity if you tried. I think I rather like you a little, and Father, well, he would send Jack after you. If the slave's icy fingers didn't kill you, the wolves would."

  "I'm not planning on leaving. If that alleviates your worry?"

  He grinned. "It does. You know, I was wondering at dinner: why would Jack bring you to the Snow-Apple Tower? I mean, that other one, she is clearly a toy and a puzzle for my father: she has been brought her for his entertainment: but what are you? What purpose did Jack think you might have? As much as I find my Issie delightful, Father is correct. We cannot marry. The sheets upon which she slept were dirtied long before I elevated her to the household." He plucked a note. "Do you like to dance? To sing?"

  "Not especially," she replied. With a more suspicious tone, she said, "Why?"

  "Oh, I love to dance. I love music and singing too, but I am barely permitted any. Father is so very serious. Very serious about this. Very gloomy about that. Very dour about everything else." He plucked a harsh note. It rung and thrummed on the air. "But, he is also very old. I am wondering if Jack is thinking ahead. I wonder—" Although the man's face was largely in shadow, Caewen still felt his eyes on her, as if appraising. There was a faint gleam of reflected candlelight, as he blinked.

  "You see," said Varrel. "I am the heir of the House and all my father's chattels, which means I am also the heir of Old Jack. I wonder if the slave is thinking ahead—if he means to quietly please me before the inheritance proper?"

  Caewen comprehended. "You think he brought me here for you?" She could hardly hide her incredulousness. "That's—no, you are quite wrong."

  "Then why did he bring you here, Wennie?"

  "First, never again call me 'Wennie'. Second, how should I know? Does he even need a reason?" As she spoke she wondered: were the father and son totally ignorant that Jack was secretly moving against them? The son seemed to be.

  "He does have his ways. You are right, perhaps. The minds of spirits are like the whirring of bird wings, or clouds, or dragonflies in summer. They are not... how can I put it... they have no bedrock under their thoughts." He shrugged. "But still. My theory makes better sense than any other reason I can think of. You seem so, er, inconsequential. I cannot think of any other reason he'd have brought you here."

  "I suppose it would puzzle you," said Caewen.

  Three notes sung from the lute as his fingers danced. "In any case, the question is simple enough: did Jack see that you would be a good wife, or did he mean you only to be a passing distraction?"

  "I assure you, if you rise from your seat and come even a step towards me I will distract you with my sword. Very thoroughly." She drew the blade another inch out of its sheath. The bronze glowed a soft, dull red in the candlelight. She could feel the song of the runes whispering in the metal, like a vibration from a distant earthquake. Swords, especially charmed swords, can be hungry things.

  But Varrel only laughed. "You mistake me, m'damosel fair. I'm not inclined to take by force that which tastes better when won with good humour and bright lit words."

  Caewen studied Varrel carefully, before saying, "It doesn't strike me that Isthinthae would call that truthful. She does not seem wholly willing to me."

  He snorted, waved a dismissive hand. "Issie is different. There is a need for some punishment for her. She wronged me by, er, dallying with someone else—to put a polite word on it—and I am exacting only such retribution as is appropriate, measured, and fit." Then, more darkly, he said, "But you are not planning to wrong me, are you, lovely sword-damosel?"

  "Perhaps you could direct me to the stables."

  "That is not an encouraging answer." A broad smile. "Come now..."

  "Perhaps you could direct me to the stables," she repeated, more forceful.

  "Oh, very well. You're nearly half-as-serious as my father." A shrug. "So, maybe the squall-thing meant you for him after all? You'd suit each other. No sense of humour." A chord sung from the instrument, followed by a few dancing scales. "Go out that door, and turn left, then straight on. You'll come to the grand entryway. The stables are just without, in the courtyard."

  "Thank you," said Caewen. As she strode away, anger smouldering inside, she heard Varrel strike more notes and start up a low song. His singing voice wasn't bad, as it turned out. He might have made a half-decent droll-teller or wandering bard, had that been a life open to him. She paused at the door and looked back, wondering if life had done him a disservice, delivering him into this house of snow and sorcery and secrets, and not some wandering company of troubadours? He might have been happier, if he had been born to less fortune.

  -oOo-

  In the stables, the moonlight was straining through old leather and canvas curtains and peeking between gaps in shingles above. The knotty, lantern-blackened beams, heavy and twisted, hung just as ponderous as clouds in the cool dark air. The only other light was from a wisp-lamp that was burning fitful at the doorway. No guards were in sight, although when Caewen looked carefully, she thought she could see some lumpen shapes atop the battlements of the outer wall, rendered featureless and blank by the dusting of starlight behind them.

  "Dapple?" she asked into the gloom.

  Two eyes, each a dull, burning co
al, lit up in the recesses of the stables. "Caewen! I am happy to see you. I was starting to think about visiting the house after all."

  "There's been no hurt or threat," she said, walking into the darkness. The smell of the stables was oppressive, dusty, itchy. A few other horses stirred in their stalls, thumping hooves. "Or, nothing that I'm very worried about, anyway." Reaching the stall where Dapplegrim was standing, she leaned against the wood and reached out to scratch him behind the ear. "This place is a nest of spiders. The sorcerer of the house has a son, who he seems to mistrust, and there's another son who—I don't know—maybe he's bolted behind a door in the tower? Maybe he's a lunatic? Or he's in the dungeons? Whatever the other son is, or has become, whether he's a madman, or deformed, or something else: they don't want to speak about him at all. The first son, Varrel, is keeping some woman in his chambers, and really, I think he may be torturing her. Maybe not with hot pokers, or anything like that, but with words and taunts and threats. He's a nasty little piece of work underneath, and all smiles on the surface. The sort of man who genuinely can't understand why the whole world shouldn't be served up for his pleasure."

  "What about the magician?"

  "Vespertine. Harder to say. He seems vainglorious, serious, yet cordial enough. Though, also, not an innocent man by any stretch. I suspect he's been using his enslaved spirit to murder travellers and chase others unfortunates up onto his doorstep for years. Who can say why? I wonder if it's all just petty theft? When the snows thaw, there will be wagons in the woods. He might send his guards and take anything that's worth having after the winter?"

  "Hur. Maybe. There's another thing. That spirit of his, Jack-in-the-Mist, he came here and looked at me. We spoke, but he's one of those awful spirits who talks in riddles and thinks in circles. I'm not totally sure, but it seems he's planning to rebel against his master."

  "You too then?"

  "He spoke to you?"

  Caewen paused a fraction of a breath before answering. "He did. And I'm afraid I may have said 'yes' to him."

  "Yes, in what way?"

  "I agreed to set him free, if he frees us."

  After a silence, Dapplegrim said, "That's a dangerous game, Caewen."

  She let out a small sigh. "That is true. He offered to put in motion some plan to free us from this house, if we would, in turn, set him free. I agreed. Jack-in-the-Mist might be a tricksy, word-spinning airling, but I more than half suspect he's still the most trustworthy creature in this forsaken house. He hates Vespertine, that is certain. And that might be enough for us to be allies—for a while at least."

  "Still a dangerous game, moving against a lord in his hall."

  "Oh, Vespertine isn't a lord." Caewen shook her head. She furrowed her brow. "I mean, I take your point that it is dangerous. I only mean that Vespertine thinks it's too much of an affectation to call himself 'lord'. Who can fathom the mind of magicians?"

  "Who indeed?" Dapplegrim became quiet, thoughtful. "Caewen?"

  "Yes?"

  "There's another thing. It's important. I need you to listen."

  "Of course. What?"

  He seemed reluctant to speak, but found his voice. "Don't trust Tamsin. She seems harmless, but she is not. Remember, when she came out of the snows, when she was covered in blood?"

  Caewen thought back on it. "That was just horse blood." Then, realising that maybe horse-blood wasn't the most soothing thing for Dapple, she added, "I mean, I'm sorry. I didn't think that might prey more on your mind. That is I guess—"

  "Oh. No. Hur! It's not that." Taken by surprise, he gave a small snort of a laugh. "No. It's not that at all. I'm not bothered because she killed her pony. I'm bothered because she didn't. That wasn't horse blood. I can smell all the fine little details that humanfolk with your dull, stub noses miss. That was the blood of a human. A man, to be precise. Slightly fatty smelling. Probably one of the tubbier, jollier merchants. At a guess."

  "She killed a person to feed her magic? You mean, and then she just outright lied to us about it? She saved herself with magic fed on someone else's life? But she told me... she said... why didn't you say something?"

  Lines appeared on Dapple's eerie, skullish face. He answered thoughtfully, "I thought about it. It seemed better to pretend ignorance. That one has magic smouldering in her blood. She's so full of charms and spells that she would be quite dangerous to upset It just seemed, hrm, better to pretend not to know. But, listen, the truth is this: she is dangerous. And she is a liar. Whatever her actual intents, it is not what she pretends. Do not trust her."

  Caewen allowed her shoulders sag forward a little. Had she been taken in so thoroughly by an act? Was the hexen-queen, a hexen-queen still? "I'll tread lightly around her then. I found out some other things too." She told him about Vespertine's accusation, and the stories about Tamsin, and her admissions of past guilt.

  "Well, that puts a dog in with the rats," said Dapplegrim. "Hur. If that's true, the old sorcerer is the real fool here. And he might as well be a babe playing with an adder. I wonder what he thinks he'll get from this situation?"

  "Who knows? I think he's just too full of himself to realise he may have made a mistake. Thinks more of himself than he ought. I don't even think he has proper control of the winter-spirit, Jack, either. Some control, yes, but not total, and not all the time. And I think Tamsin's patience is wearing thin. She is nudging closer and closer to just outright murdering the old man." Caewen was about to say that she should get back to the house, when one last thing occurred to her. "Wait. Dapple—have you heard of someone calling themselves the Winter King? I don't know if it's true, or another of Tamsin's lies—but she said he's a power, a godling, or something like a god—up in the north. That he is gathering armies. She seemed worried. I mean, really worried. I don't think it was one of her lies or tricks. I can't imagine why she would make up such a thing for no reason."

  Dapplegrim narrowed his eyes in thought. He shook his head, "No. Wait. I suppose—but only in very old stories. When I was a foal, there was a Winter King, but he wasn't a lord commanding armies, he was a sort of, I don't know, a wandering spirit of the north, beyond the mountains. The stories were all about him going about in the Twilight Lands, divvying out justice and gifts; being good to the good, evil to the evil. I think he was supposed to be the youngest child of Old Night and Chaos; but changeable as wind; mercurial as quicksilver. Not the sort of creature to gather armies." A turn of his shoulders suggested a shrug. "If he existed at all. Hur. People are prone to making up stories about gift-giving gods and spirits. I suppose such stories make it easier to bear the cruelties and vagaries of actual spirits and gods."

  "It might just be he same name and a different thing?"

  "Maybe," said Dapplegrim. "Though spirits do not like to share their names with others. It's too murky—too confusing. And tales out of the Twilight Lands are always hard to countenance anyway. Could all just be rumours. On the other hand, look at me. I was born in those shadowed places, and there've been no more than a handful of creatures like me in the many ages of the Clay-o-the-Green. As a rule, demons do not breed with beasts of blood and flesh. But in the Twilight Lands? Strange things happen. Weirdness blooms there, thick as flowers."

  Caewen gave him a small smile. "Weird would know weird," she said. "I really should get back to the house. I'll be missed sooner or later. You'll be alright here for the night?"

  "Yes. I'm fine. And I'm keeping half-an-ear out for trouble. If there's a fight or yelling, I'll know. Just call for me if you need me. I will kick down whatever doors are in my way."

  "Hopefully, it won't come to that." She gave him a scratch behind the ear. "What does 'mercurial' mean, by the way? You said it earlier. Mercurial as quicksilver."

  "Something that changes a lot."

  "I see. And 'quicksilver'? Isn't that some sort of magical thing? Living silver? I thought it was something in stories with sorcerers and alchemists?"

  "Oh, it's also just something that changes a lot. That's a
ll."

  "You know," said Caewen, a sly, humorous lilt in her voice, "I half suspect you're repeating fancy words you've heard other people use."

  "Hur. Is that so?" He snorted, but his tone was not unfriendly. "Shouldn't you be going back up to the house and finding a way to get us free of this place?"

  "Yes." She smiled at him again, if a little weakly. "I should. Alright. Be good, Dapple. No biting the fingers off guards."

  His sharp teeth shone as he grinned. "But then whose fingers will I bite?"

  -oOo-

  Caewen returned to the house. In trying to find her way through the rooms and halls by memory she ended up quite lost again. She passed through rooms she hadn't seen before: strange little annexes, odd galleries with uncanny and primal looking ornaments, or heaps of rusted, broken old things, too decayed to tell exactly what they once had been. In one room, there hung a large ornate mirror with small songbird-claws apparently growing out of the frame. When Caewen went up to look at it, the claws all twitched and she left the room hurriedly. The magician's house was turning out to be an odd place. The whole construction, which looked modest from the outside, was really a honeycomb of passage, rooms and tunnels. It occurred to her that some of them must delve into the rock of the spur. Otherwise, there would not be enough room for all the passages to fit. It was odd then, how there always seemed to be narrow windows onto the outside world.

  When Caewen did, at last, stumble across the hallway to her room, it was more by luck than good memory. Turning a corner, she finally saw the familiar door—breathed a sigh of irritation mixed with relief—and made her way towards it.

  As she walked down the hall, she was brought up short by the sight of someone slipping out of Tamsin's chamber. At first, Caewen thought it was Tamsin, but on looking again, more carefully, she saw that the woman was too tall, too thin. Realisation struck: it was Varrel's lady. Isthinthae. When the young woman saw Caewen, she paused, as if surprised. She had a look of indecision on her face, perhaps considering whether to be friendly or just scurry off—but she squared her shoulders and walked over, a faint smile brushing her lips.

  "Hello," said Caewen. "You were visiting Tamsin?"

  Issie nodded, but was reluctant with her words. After lightly tapping her tongue to her lower lips she said. "Don't tell anyone. Please. I just wanted something for the nightmares. Vespertine doesn't often tolerate another magician in his house, and he refuses to give me anything to stop the dreams. Thera hurt his heart too badly."

  "Thera? Sorry, who's Thera?"

  "Oh." She lost some colour, and a hand shot to her mouth. "I didn't mean to say that. Forget that name. Never say it." She paused for a long time, as if considering how much it was safe to explain. "Thera was the mother of the other son. Do not ever say her name in front of Vespertine. He'll fly into a rage."

  "I'll be sure not to." Caewen could see that Isthinthae was growing agitated, anxious. She changed the topic. "Did Tamsin give you something to help you sleep then?"

  "Yes. And a charm to ward away evil, hurtful magics. It's Vespertine's son," she whispered, her voice lower. "He sends dreams to torment and master me."

  "Varrel?"

  At that Issie's expression dropped into a blankness, then reasserted itself with bemusement. "No. I mean the other son of course. Whyever would I mean Varrel?" An uncomfortable, shy laugh. "But Tamsin was kind. She made me a protection against controlling spells by tying some magic up in a piece of old rope: I have it now. And she instructed me on how to make potion for sound deep sleep, just using kitchen herbs and a few other things. She is clever. And so kind."

  "It does seem so. I hope it helps."

  Her smile had the sort of faded warmth of a landscape just after the setting sun. "Yes. I hope that too. Good night... Caewen, wasn't it? Please—if anyone asks—"

  "I won't tell anyone I saw you here."

  "Thank you." And the young woman went on her way, head bowed, shoulders curled just a little, her cape trailing, her rose-black hair shining in the now-and-again light of infrequent candles.

  Caewen cast a look at the door to Tamsin's room, shut fast—then looked back down the hall to where Issie was disappearing around a corner. Although she wondered if she maybe ought to knock and check on Tamsin, she also remembered Dapplegrim's warning, and her thoughts cooled a bit. Giving Tamsin's door a slight berth, she crept to her own bedchamber, lit a candle from one of the standing candelabras in the hall, and once she had the door firmly shut, she began to peel off her clothing. With care to make as little noise as possible, Caewen then pushed a small but heavy linen chest against the door and leaned her sword and scabbard upright near the head of her bed, where she could easily reach it. She felt so tired, but as soon as she lay down her head was abuzz with thoughts. It soon seemed like she would never sleep. Maybe she ought to ask for the recipe of that sleeping draught herself? Just relax, she told herself. Just think of other things. Something else. Anything else. Just sleep. You need to sleep.

  -oOo-

  Caewen woke with a start. She reached, groggily, for her sword even as she heard the noise of the door being shoved forcefully against the strongbox she had pushed up into it. The box was never going to stop someone who was determined to get into the room, but it gave her enough time to reach for the hilt—and find that the whole of the blade was encased in a small pillar of ice. Her fingers slid off the cold, slick wetness of the surface. She swore and swung her feet from the bed. Wasn't there an eating knife around somewhere? Where had she left it? Too late. She stood, pulling on a tunic just in time, as three big, dour-faced guards shoved their way into the room.

  They said nothing but surrounded Caewen and grabbed her by the shoulders and hair, hauling her forward, towards the door.

  "With us," said one of them, without emotion.

  "Let go of me."

  "You'll come with us."

  "Fine. But let go of me." It surprised her when they did. The men's fingers slackened and they looked at her with their gloomy faces.

  One of them said. "This way. The master calls for you."

  She rearranged her clothing and followed them out into the hallway. Behind her, a stir of coldness on the air hinted that Jack had been with them too. That, she realised, explained the frozen sword. With a sickening in the pit of her stomach, she had an additional flash of thought: if the spirit could so easily encase something as big as a sword in ice, then he could just as easily have turned her heart into a lump of frozen meat and blood while she slept, or her brain, or lungs or whole body.

  Outside in the hall, two other guards had Tamsin's door open too, but they were staring dumbly into darkness within.

  "Gone," said one of them.

  While Caewen tried to put together in her head what was happening, she noticed a faraway noise: a voice, raised in rage, screaming, over and over. It was an old man's voice. A creeping sense of fear came on her. Thoughts rattled in her head. Oh no. What have you done, Tamsin?

  The guards were not rough with Caewen, and as long as she walked with them, they made no effort to put a hand on her either. If the magic that Vespertine employed to sap these men of their freewill worked to take away any ideas of rebellion, the same enchantments seemed to have taken away thoughts of cruelty, or violence. The guards were perfectly behaved, because they were perfectly blank. She suspected that they couldn't imagine doing anything except exactly what they were told to do.

  Of course, that still left the possibility that Vespertine might have some cruel imagination in him. Caewen tried not to think about that.

  The sounds of an old man screaming and raging grew louder, clearer. As the guards and Caewen passed into a more richly decorated part of the household, she was able to look out a passing window and see that it was still night. One of the small appletrees that grew so precariously out of the fortress walls stretched itself outward, just beside the windowsill. It sported several white fruit as bright and gleaming as the moon above. The brief view of the twisted small tree and
stars and moon above was all quite beautiful, though rapidly lost as the guards nudged Caewen on.

  A final turn down a final hall, and they came to a large, somewhat ajar door, iron-bound with whorls of clumsy leaf-shapes bolted into thick wood. Just beyond, a warm brazier glowed full of coals, and there were furs, cushions, tapestries... this room did not have the same character as the rest of the house. It was altogether more comfortable, more luxuriant.

  Inside the room was a sight to stop Caewen's mind in reeling mid-thought, and turn her guts to ice. A large down-bed was soaked right through with crimson. There was blood everywhere, pooling, and running off the sides. In the midst of the wet red lake lay Varrel on his back, opened from throat to belly with what appeared to be dozens of savage stab wounds. A low, wordless simpering was coming from one corner. Issie crouched there, her eyes as round and mindless looking as marble balls. She had blood on her, but given the amount of blood on the bed—and everywhere else for that matter—this was hardly surprising. Issie was rocking back and forth, staring fixedly at the bed.

  At the other end of the room—more animate, pacing, ranting, screaming—Vespertine turned and saw Caewen. He gave an animalistic snarl, and turned on her. His hands were covered with his son's already drying blood.

  "Betrayer! Murderer! Murderer, foul! How dare you do this? In my house? Under my very roof!"

  Caewen could only half-stumbled through some words: "I didn't... I'm not... I know nothing about this..."

  Vespertine crossed the floor with two long strides, and, reaching out, he grabbed Caewen on either side of the face, pressing his thin, aged fingers into her flesh. He stared into her eyes. "Look at me! Look at me!" He screamed. Then, words like shards of ice came out of his lips. The words flowed into the air, wrapped around Caewen, and crept into her skull, through eyes and ears and mouth, like a cold living fog, lacing into her brain. She shuddered. She felt her eyes opening wide, involuntarily. She felt his mind inside her mind, seeking, teasing apart thoughts. She was trembling all over now, but after only a few seconds, the old man screamed, even angrier, and shoved her backwards so that she stumbled into one of the guards.

  "She's ignorant. Where is the other one? Bring me the murderess!"

  "Not in her room."

  "What? Fled? How? These walls watch for me. My spells guard for me. Don't be idiots. She cannot have snuck out, not unless she can crawl through solid stone. There are no keys but the words of the household. Jack! Jack!"

  Jack's voice, like ice scraping against steel answered: "Yes. But they tell true. The witch is gone. If you speak, so I do."

  "How could she be gone? She can't have just left without assistance." He fumed, and snarled to himself. "It doesn't matter. Where is the child-witch? How far fled is she?"

  "Out past fields, beyond town and wall. She flees, and scampers, through woodland tall."

  "Go find her. Destroy her. And call up the wolves too. Set them upon the chase. Let them tear her apart piece-by-piece if they can catch her. If they cannot, freeze her into a slab of ice. Kill her!"

  Jack's voice whispered through his ice-blue teeth, suspended in the air. "The wolves? The wolves? They may not wake willing. They sleep a'night. Daytime's for killing."

  Vespertine turned on the spirit and screamed at him. "Then turn one of them to bloody chunks of snow for all I care. Make them give chase! Make them hunt her down! Obey me, slave!"

  "As you command, as you say, I cannot and will not disobey. And so, I think, Jack must away." Jack twisted out of the room leaving a glimmering, floating trail of whispering white shadows after him.

  "I will go to my tower." Vespertine paced still. "I will talk to the clouds and the stars, and I see what they know of this. I will conjure such storms as the world has never seen." As he passed Caewen he stopped a moment to glare. "Do not think you will escape punishment for this. Even if you knew nothing of the witchling's particular murderous intent, you were in her company. There's guilt enough to be shared." His face disfigured into a sneer. "Oh, I remember her words: if you hold me, you will regret it. Oh, how I rue that now! But there will be vengeance. So far as I see it, you are complicit too." Turning to the guards, he spat, "Take her back to her room. I will decide on what to do with her later."

  -oOo-

  Caewen was walking in frustrated, tight circles in her small chamber. They guards had not been rough-handed, but they had firmly escorted her back to the room and shut the door behind her. Some time had passed since. More than time-enough for her to dress and ready her belongings for a quick escape, if the opportunity presented itself. Two or three times, she'd already gone to the window and called out to Dapple, yelling his name into the endless night, but got no reply. If Dapplegrim was planning to knock down doors, this would be a good moment. She turned on her heel, fuming. Had Tamsin really done it? Had she murdered Varrel out of spite, then fled? And left Caewen and Dapple to bear the brunt of Vespertine's wrath? But then, how had she slipped secretly from the house, if it was so carefully watched and warded? Or was Vespertine mistaken? Perhaps his nets of magic were not as tight as he assumed. After all, Tamsin was a powerful sorceress in her own right, Caewen supposed. Her magic might have provided her with some clever way to vanish in the night.

  But as for Caewen, and her present situation? An angry shrug. She could do nothing but wait. And pace. And worry.

  An hour went by, and then another hour. There was no sign of Dapplegrim. Assuming Dapplegrim could sense that something was amiss, then Vespertine had found a way to prevent him leaving the stables. Dapple would surely have heard the screaming, and Caewen calling for him. He'd probably smelled the human blood on the air too. He ought have come barrelling into the house by now.

  Finally, at last, feeling depressed and exhausted, Caewen sat down on the edge of the bed and rested her head in her hands. As she did this, she noticed something that made her start. There was a small trickling puddle of water at her feet.

  She looked over to where the sword was resting against the wall.

  They had left her alone so long, that the ice encasing it had melted substantially. A cold seep of water was spreading on the timber, running along cracks and grooves. The hilt was nearly free of ice. With Jack gone, they'd forgotten about the sword. Leaning towards the hilt, she gripped it and pulled: with effort, the ice cracked and she pulled the sword and scabbard free. That gave her enough confidence to think about breaking out herself. Even if her skill with a blade was middling, the blade was rune-cut and charmed. From experience, she knew the sword would dance its own dance in her fingers: seeking blood; looking for dumber, more lifeless blades to turn aside and nick and shatter. The magic had been faithful before. She hoped it would prove faithful again.

  Gingerly, she tread to the door and leaned close into the wood, listening. There were no noises on the other side, but that might only mean the guards were standing in silence. "Hello?" she asked. "Hello, out there? I need a chamber pot and I can't find one in the room. You couldn't come in and show me where one might be, could you?"

  Nothing. Maybe they weren't as stupid as she thought.

  "Hello?"

  Carefully, she prodded the door. It was not bolted or locked. She pushed the door open with the tip of her sword. The old iron hinges creaked as the door swung. She looked outside. The guards were gone. "Hello?" she tried again, but there was not a stir of movement anywhere up or down the corridor. "Alright. So the guards are missing... for some reason?" said Caewen. Her voice sounded strange and clipped in the cold, stoney hallway. "Called away perhaps? Or fled? Why?" She took a step out of the door. Nothing happened. No one came charging at her with weapons flailing. No one tried to stop her. "Alright. Well, it seems like I just need to find my way out. Fetch Dapple. Escape. How hard can that possibly be?"

  -oOo-

  The myriad catacomb-like corridors, dead-ends, empty rooms, annexes, chambers filled with strange objects, the battlement-walks that lead nowhere in particular—it all added up to be, if possible
, more confusing than before. Caewen was starting to garner half-a-suspicion that the house was more deeply enchanted than she had thought. There seemed to be many more halls than previously, and yet more rooms packed with dusty curiosities and relics. As she passed through one chamber after another, it felt as if the whole interior must have been twisting around on itself, regrowing, opening and closing, like the living guts of a huge beast: spitting her out into one weird chamber, and then another, another, another. She neither saw, nor heard actual evidence of stone grinding or changing—but it was hard to imagine how else to explain the endlessness of the place.

  Where she remembered there having been a gallery of ordinary looking, though rude, stone statues on her last exploration, the gallery was missing, and instead there was a withered open-air garden with pieces of broken glass on strings hanging from dead potted trees for no obvious reason. A room decorated with taxidermy heads of shaggy brown creatures, sporting one old yellow horn apiece, was completely new to her, as was the room with shelves of empty glass perfume bottles, and the room with small, delicately carved ivory butterflies on stone pedestals. And she was certain that she'd never passed through the room with hundreds of brightly painted wooded birds piled in one corner. Some of the rooms gave off a distinct feeling of wrongness: in one chamber there were seven broken swords arranged in a circle on the floor, as well as a feeling of palpable discomfit until Caewen left through the far door. Stranger still, the only room she definitely recognised appeared to have been neatly reversed since her last visit: the reversal of the position of everything in the room included the tapestry on the wall, which now showed figures facing the wrong way. Unless there were two tapestries, one a mirror image of the other, Caewen could not explain the reversal by any means other than magic. Increasingly, the house of a magician seemed to be the sort of place a person ought not go wandering about unaccompanied.

  After passing through the tenth or twelfth of these strange rooms, Caewen stumbled up short: in the hall ahead—a little way down the corridor, a person was slumped on the floor. A gush of red gore welled out of the body, and made a sticky mess of the floor. She walked up to it, and rolled the corpse over with a foot. It was one of the guards. His face stared at the ceiling. An uncharacteristic expression of fear sat on his dead features. Caewen bent down and closed his eyes. She examined the wound that had killed him. His throat had been cleanly torn out.

  Caewen had grown up in the mountains, where bears and wolves and larger, more dangerous creatures roam, and sometimes kill. She'd seen her share of animal attacks, and this was an animal attack. There was no mistaking the jagged edge of the tear, the stripes of claw marks on the back of the man's hand. A large and dangerous beast had killed him. Examining his hands more carefully, she found some red-black fur clutched between his fingers. She sniffed it. The hair looked and smelled like wolf.

  As Caewen rose up from her crouch, an old man's voice pierced the air, echoing around the stone walls. She stepped over the corpse, and advanced with her sword out in front of her. Sounds of a scuffle and more yells and cries—and animal yelps and snarls too—were coming from a twisted stairwell that climbed away to her right. She could, of course, simply move quickly past, and keep looking until she found a way out of this place. But even as she struggled with a moment of indecision, she knew that she wasn't going to leave the old man to be killed by wolves. The scrabbling and fighting noises continued. Presumably the wolves that Vespentine had been controlling with his magic were now somehow freed of the enchanter's shackles. They must have come for their own revenge. Tamsin might be responsible for that too, she realised. It made sense—and Caewen had to admire the efficiency of it—if it was Tamsin's gambit. Set free some creatures who already have a reason to hate the master of the house on the hill, and the wolves could be relied upon to find their own way up here. One potential guard against escape was removed with the same stroke.

  As much as she'd rather not get tangled up with enchanted wolves of unnatural size, Caewen also couldn't just leave Vespertine to be torn apart either. He might be a miserable, ill-spirited old man, but she couldn't quite just walk from this. A sigh. Even if she wasn't completely sure herself why she felt this way, it just seemed too wrong to leave him to die like this.

  Caewen took the stairs two at a time, pausing only to catch her breath at the last stretch where she could see the night sky glowing through the stairwell above her: the stars sparked amidst deep, deep rifts in clouds. The fight sounded vicious and desperate. Gritting her teeth, Caewen came up into the open and found herself on the stone platform that rose above the rest of the house. Carvings of clouds stroked every surface, and contorted gargoyles, in shapes not unlike the snow-demon Jack, surmounted the walls all around the platform. A faint blush of light touched the eastern sky. Dawn was coming.

  Given the noise, she had expected to find half the pack up here, and was surprised discover Vespertine facing down just one single wolf: a large red-black beast of a thing. Well, she thought, one is better than a dozen, and at least it wasn't the big wolf-chieftain they'd met outside the village earlier: the huge golden and dark-grey creature. Caewen adjusted the sword in her grip. Alright—just the one wolf—but how many others were in the house? And how long until the rest of them heard the commotion and came running?

  As Caewen took in the situation, the elderly magician made to strike at the wolf using a ceremonial staff of the sort wizards seem to like. Dull white flecks of light bloomed subtly where the staff hit the stone floor of the tower. It was immediately clear that the sorcerer's wand would do more than deliver a slight knock to the head. It was also clear that the wolf was not stupid enough to get in the way of the staff. The creature dodged and crouched, leapt and wove, always keeping just out of reach of Vespertine's increasingly frail and weak attacks. He was flagging; already cut and bleeding from half-a-dozen bites; some quite deep. Sooner or later, he was going to stumble—whether through blood loss, or a bloody hank taken out of a leg—it was just a matter of what brought him down first.

  "Ware there, wolf," said Caewen, drawing its attention from the old man to her. It growled. She advanced towards it, sweeping the blade in an low arc, left and right. "If you can understand me, be off. This bronze tooth bites right through armour. It'll bite right through your fur and flesh. Be sure of that."

  The wolf gave out a rather unconcerned sounding snarl, but did reposition itself, edging away from Vespertine. It looked from the old man, to Caewen, and back again. Seeming to make a decision, it launched itself at her. Perhaps it thought to kill her quickly and return to Vespertine without distraction? If that had been its plan, it did not work. Caewen gave a short, quick stab that sent a flair of blood out of its right shoulder. The wolf stopped where it landed on its paws, and looked at its wound. If a wolf could look shocked, it did.

  "Ha!" spat Vespertine. "Weren't expecting that, were you? She's not fibbing. That sword's got old dark sigils cut into it. It's not mortal steel. Not rusty iron. Ha! Fool! That one's more dangerous than she looks. She'll wound you. She'll kill you. Get! Get off with you. Vermin!"

  The wolf curled its lips up away from its big, sharp teeth. The anger in its growl was palpable. But it also seemed to decide that it was now outmatched. In a blur of movement it twisted, shot past Caewen, and was gone down the stairs.

  "Off to fetch the rest of the family," said Vespertine. The staff slipped from his weak fingers and he slumped to his knees. "We've little enough time now. We must make do with what we have to hand."

  Caewen stepped towards him, but he waved her away.

  "No," he said. "I'll do it." And he fumbled around his belt, took out a long, glittering dagger and without any warning, he plunged it into his belly. Blood immediately spilled down the white and icy blue embroidery of his tunic, dribbling down his legs, staining his knees. Red bubbles formed at the corners of his mouth as he slipped down to a slumped kneel.

  "Are you mad?" said Caewen. "Is everyone in this house mad? What are you d
oing?"

  "Not mad," he said through a blood-smeared smile. "I am dying. There are too many deep bites. And that sort—" he indicated a hand towards where the wolf had vanished down the stairs. "—that sort—their bites are always fatal, eventually. There is a rot in their bites. Do not let them bite you. Even a shallow graze will mortify and kill. Their teeth are unclean. Me? I've lost my life already. I have lost my heir too. My line is ended. There will not be another master of the House of Snow and Apples. I am accepting of it. And this means, there is only one problem left now." A broader, red-toothed smile. "I am not dying fast enough. This needs to be remedied. Before that one returns with the rest of the family."

  "I could have tried to fight us past the wolves."

  "It would not work. I'm old. I'm wounded. I can't move quick enough. No. They'd catch us, and they'd surround us, and bring us both down. So instead, I must die here, quickly. It is the way of things." He shrugged. "Thus the world turns. Now. Now. Listen to me, young lady-of-swords. Listen to me. I see everything clearly now. I was puzzled before, but I understand now why Jack brought you here. He knew. He must have known that the other one was a danger, and that the wolves would come, and he knew that the magic of my forefathers cannot be allowed to fall into the hands of that foul witch-wean child, Tamsin, nor the woods-wolves, nor my surviving son for that matter. There had to be someone, someone... an outsider. Someone who could be trusted to carry the magic away from here. Far away. They cannot have it. None of them can have it." He slumped forward a little more, now sitting on his haunches as his life leaked out through the wound in his stomach, puddling around his knees. "Oh, it hurts to speak." He drew in a rattling breath. "My other son doesn't know the truth of the magic anyway. He thinks a person needs only eat the apple-flesh. But the apple doesn't matter. It is the seed. He doesn't know that. Ha. More fool him. And the seed is in here." He tapped his chest. "Do not leave it for him. You must eat it instead. If you eat it, the seed will find a way through your blood, it will lodge in your heart. And there, it will be safe from him, and his vermin-sort. I will not have my family's magic dirtied by the brood of that... that... filthy woman." He turned his face upwards and yelled at the sky. "I'll not let you win, Thera! You hear me! Is your ghost here? You'll not win! Oh, you thought you'd won when you poisoned my wife and took me to bed. You thought you'd won when you got a bastard off me. But I saw through you. I saw right through you." He laughed. "Even when you were alive and scheming. Right through you, like the ghost you are now."

  "I fail to understand anything you're saying. Lie down. Ease yourself down." Caewen could see nothing else for it. He would be dead in minutes, but the old man might as well die restfully, rather than sitting upright, ranting at the pre-dawn sky.

  "You are not listening to me! Listen! When the apple grows, eat the seed. Though—wait—no—be careful. It will send you into a daze, hours maybe. Days? I don't... know... I don't... If the wolves find you dazed and out of your wits—they'll kill you, and they'll eat you, and probably one of them will swallow the seed by accident, and then they'll have the magic. That cannot be permitted." His whole chin and beard were red now.

  Caewen spoke softly to calm him. "I understand. Eat the seed. Don't eat the seed. Perhaps you can lie back and rest?"

  "You're humouring me," he spat.

  "Yes," Caewen admitted. "I am. But now, lie down, please."

  "You must eat the seed! But swallow it only when you are sure you are somewhere safe." He heaved in a burbling, blood-soaked breath. "The tree will bloom. The apple will ripen. The seed will be within."

  "Right. Tree. Apple. Seed." She hovered near him, reaching out, resting a hand on one shoulder.

  "And the last thing. Last thing. Last. I nearly forgot. I forget so much now. My thoughts are all just mist and blood. But you are lost? You can't find you're way out of my house."

  "Somewhat, yes..." Caewen shook her head. "It's confusing, but I'll find my way out. Don't worry about that."

  "No you won't." His voice was weaker and thinner with every word. "You have to be told how to leave the house by one of the household. The words are the keys: go down the stairs, turn left and you will see a door you didn't notice before. It will lead through some corridors, then to the great hall, and the yards without. Your horse-thing will be waiting for you in the stable. He has not been harmed." His voice rasped and choked in his throat. "I am cold." He shrugged and gave a short laugh that bubbled with blood. "But does it matter? I have always been cold. It is my nature. It is the nature of my bloodline. The dawn light is fading all around me. And now I am fading," he whispered. "And now I am dying."

  A wisp of breath came out from between his blue-tinged lips, like a curl of steam. It blew away on a slight stir of wind that caught the breath-fog and teased it out into nothing. As he died, the sun broke the horizon, and the tower and landscape was flushed with the soft, old-gold light of dawn. Vespertine's whole body tensed once, then relaxed into death. The enchanter's staff, which had been lying nearby, immediately crumbled into flakes of wood and hoar-frost, disintegrating until it was nothing more than a long thin pile of frozen sawdust.

  Caewen approached the sorcerer, and eased him flat on his back, shutting his eyes with a brush of her fingertips. She said one of the small, hopeful folk-prayers they say over the dead in the mountains, and she got to her feet. Only, when she turned to leave, Vespertine's corpse gave a shuddering heave, twisting, as if there was renewed life in him again. Backing away, not a little horrified, Caewen watched as his chest ripped open at the point where his heart would be. A curl of sap-green colour arose out of the ruin of his ribcage, a seedling, dribbling blood, bending back and forth at the touch of the light wind. It grew as Caewen watched. It's two cotyledons greened, and fell away as it put out the small, new leaves of young growth. Caewen watched it grow and grow. Ten, fifty, a hundred years of growth happened before her eyes: what had been a sapling, became a strong firm tree, then turned knotted, hoary and heavy with age. At last, once it had stopped putting roots down through Vespertine's corpse into the stone, once it had grown into a ancient looking appletree, grey-barked, pale green-leafed—at last—a single blossom appeared. In seconds, the petals blew away and fell. And then the tattered flower-remnants swelled until they formed a single, perfect snow-white apple.

  Sisters of suns and darkness... he had been telling the literal truth. There was a seed inside him and when he died it grew into a tree, out of his flesh. And now there was an apple. He'd wanted her to eat the seed inside the apple? But what would happen then? He said something about a daze. What did he say? A dizziness that would last for hours? Days? And if she did eat it, would she end up with the seed alive inside her? To what end? To what purpose? Eating strange magic things at the behest of mad old dying magicians was, to put it mildly, reckless... and yet, and still... she couldn't leave this charmed apple for just any passerby to find either. Not least the wolves: for if the wolves wanted the seed that was inside Vespertine, then Caewen was pretty well sure that they should not have it. The uncanny, wild, savageness of the creatures alone hinted that it would be a very bad idea to let one of them take ownership of a powerful old magic.

  But she couldn't just eat the thing here and now either. That would leave her in who know's what state of mind.

  If she tried to hide the apple in a pocket, then surely the wolves would smell it on her.

  And she couldn't fight all the wolves. Not the whole pack.

  Could she just crush the seed? Destroy it? That seemed foolhardy also. Who knows what forces would be unleashed, even if she could split it under heel? For all she knew, the whole top of the tower might be blasted apart in a flash of ice and lightning.

  As she looked at the white apple, lit by the dawn, she wondered what she could possibly do with it. And then a thought occurred to her.

  -oOo-

  As it turned out, Vespertine's instructions were precise and correct. There was a doorway in the hall that she had not noticed, and when sh
e went through it she found her way easily enough to the grand entranceway. But Caewen didn't immediately escape. She retraced her steps a small distance, until she was in one of the corridors that ran along an outside wall. There was a set of windows here, and she stood, and as she waited beside the first of the openings, she looked out and enjoyed the cool wind, the soft, gold light. It was just a matter of time now.

  And so she waited.

  It did not take very long. After a few minutes, someone called her name. The tone was cold, bitter, steeped in rage. It echoed around the stone halls.

  She looked around. "Over here!" she called, rather more cheerily. She hadn't expected this... not exactly. She thought one of the wolves would find her first. She would have to play things by ear then, work it all out as she best she could.

  There was a span of silence, then some sounds of doors opening and closing, and then the door at the end of the corridor was pushed aside with a jerk.

  "You!" Out of the shadows stalked Isthinthae: except she was very little like how she'd looked when last Caewen had seen her. For one thing, she was naked. For another, she had blood congealed on her lower lip, down her chin, on her hands and bare chest. Her body was hard, small-breasted and muscular: there was barely an ounce of fat on her. Rose-black hair tumbled loose and wild down her back. The same colour curled at her crotch. When she moved, it was with a predatory grace. All her mousiness, the willowy shape under her dress, it was all gone. Her naked athletic power told it for a carefully arranged lie.

  "You!" snarled Issie again. "You little chit. Chase me off, will you? Oh, just you wait. I've my friends and family. They will be here soon, and we will make fine meat of you." As Issie spoke she moved into the light and a long open gash in her flesh became visible, snaking over her shoulder. Blood seeped from it unhealthily.

  Suddenly Caewen understood. "You were the wolf?" she said, then checking herself added, "Wait. None of this makes sense now. Did Tamsin kill Varrel, and then free you, so you would kill Vespertine? Why would she do that?"

  "You stupid fool. You nasty little idiot. I killed Varrel. Oh yes, the demon whispered the idea to me. Old Jack hated his bonds as much as I hated mine. And oh, he may have hatched the idea. But I did it! It was me! I freed us! I got the sleeping draught and the warding charm off that sorceress. Her little knot-spell was enough to break Vespertine's enchantment that controlled me, and kept me in this human-shaped flesh. And so long as I was under Vespertine's enchanted thumb, I could not harm father or son. But once I had the little protective charm in my hands..." She grinned, and the smile was deeply predatory.

  "And the sleeping tea..." said Caewen with realisation. "That wasn't for you either."

  "Of course not. It was for Varrel. Oh, he snored so deeply before I plunged the knife into his soft belly." Gleefully, she added, "Over and over and over."

  "But what did you do with Tamsin then?"

  "Nothing. I told her how to get out of the house by a secret way, a tunnel through the rock. She was so afraid—so very afraid of this place—she waited until everyone was asleep, and she scurried off. After all, I am of the household. I can instruct a person how to leave, and so she had the keys made of words. She just ran off in the night, like a frightened little goat."

  "And that gave Vespertine a reason to send Jack away from the house... so Jack wouldn't be here to protect the master of the house when you came to kill Vespertine... Jack was off chasing Tamsin." Caewen was starting to see how it all fell into place. "And when Varrel was saying that he was punishing you..."

  "He wasn't punishing me. He might have said that. He might have even pretended it to himself. But he was really just keeping me to torment his brother. He despised Vaire so much. And Vaire is my love, and I am his. We grew up together. In the woods. As outcasts from our own ancestral home. So Varrel took me away. Just to be cruel to his brother." She sniffed the air, and cocked her head to listen. "Vaire comes for me now. He runs in the snows, baying. Vaire is the true and rightful lord of this land. His mother was the chosen of Our Lady of Wolves. His father the Master of Snow and Apples. The two old powers of this dominion are united in Vaire. Snow and wolf. My love. My one love." She breathed deep. "He runs. I can hear him. I can feel him. He knows Old Coldballs is dead. Oh, he runs so swiftly. So eagerly."

  "The big gold and black wolf. That is Vespertine's other son." He's a wargling, like you. All the wolves of the woods are wolf-skinlingers. Shape-changers." By now Caewen was standing very tensely and thinking of her sword. She laid fingers on the hilt, but she knew with a certainty that she could not fight a whole pack of warglings. As she stood there, waiting, the woman, Issie, leapt forward, taking a jump as swift as a blur of wind, supernaturally fast. Isthinthae was suddenly much closer—snarling through her bloodied mouth. Red streaks had stained the grooves between her teeth. Her eyes shone with a yellow inner light. "Yes. And so you finally figure things out. Now. Now. Were you fool enough to try and steal the apple? Give it to me. I can smell it on you. I know Vespertine is dead. Oh, Jack thinks himself clever... but I know the secrets of this place too... I have lived here long enough, watching, listening... I will present the corpse-fruit to my love and the demon-of-snows will be slaved again. But this time, to the wolf-kindred. And then? And then, we shall rule this land eternally with the winter-demon our everlasting servant."

  "Ah, the apple," said Caewen. "You mean this apple?" She reached a hand into a pocket and pulled out a white, shiny skinned apple. "Vespertine did go on and on about it." She threw it in to the air and caught it backhanded, as if she were playing a children's game of ball.

  Isthinthae's face turned ashen. She froze. "Stop! What are you doing? You'll drop it."

  Caewen tossed it again. "True. I'm not much of a one for ball games. I suppose, as children we used to play cat-and-dog with a leather ball, stuffed with wool. But that was some time back. Before I went into hiding from the old bastard Mannagarm." She caught the apple and tossed it to herself a couple more times. "Do you think that if the apple is bruised, then the magic will somehow be damaged?" She peered closely at the apple. "If it splits open, will the magic spill out? I suppose that is possible, isn't it?" Then, with a wry smile, she asked, "I wonder what it tastes like?"

  Isthinthae was a very good performer. When her face contorted into a fearful mass of lines, when she looked almost at the edge of tears, when she said, "No! No! Don't eat it! Please!"—all of this was almost convincing.

  "Ah," said Caewen. "Well, now I know Vespertine was telling the truth now, don't I? He told me not to take a bite of the apple until it was safe to do so. That it'd put a person into a trance? A sleep?" She pointed at Isthinthae. "And you are just a little too keen to beg me not to eat it. What would happen? I eat the fruit... I fall asleep... and then you'd kill me while I was out cold, and just wait for another tree to grow out of me?" She tossed the apple again. "Seems a waste of time. Seems inefficient." Then she looked out the window. "I can see tree-tops from here. It's a long way down."

  "You wouldn't," said Isthinthae, now actually afraid.

  "You know," said Caewen. "I don't much trust people who want power, and more power, and more power. Me? I'm not all that interested in great and glorious magics." She looked through the window and said, "I suppose that if you ran very quick, you'd be able to find a white apple in the white snow before some scrub-jay or field-rat finds it and eats it first. What would happen if it was eaten by a bird? Would you end up with a magic bird?" She smiled. "Let's find out." With a twist of her shoulder, Caewen threw the apple out the window. It sailed up in an arc, backlit by the sky above, until it was a grey dot falling among the trees. Caewen peered out the window. "That did go a long way. Right down into the snow and trees. Might be best for you to hurry."

  Isthinthae blinked, her expression caught up in a turmoil of thought. She had a clear look to her eyes that suggested she was trying to decide whether there was time to murder Caewen now, or whether she ought to just go after the apple. A moment later, s
he broke and ran for the door, and the great arched way that led to the outside world beyond. Her bare feet padded against the stone, leaving little wet trails of blood behind her. As soon as she was out of sight, the sound changed into the clicking noise of claws on a hard stone. She had shifted into the wolf-shape.

  Caewen didn't wait long to follow. She ran through the door, down some stairs, through the entry hall, out the far arched opening, and into the dawn light—all the time following a trail of bloody footprints that turned into pawprints about a third of the way along. Outside, she found more dead men, sprawled ungainly on the dirt, throats in red ruin. A dull thud-thud-thud was coming from the stables. At once she saw what had happened to Dapplegrim: the whole stable was encased in walls and buttresses of solid ice. Jack had been busy here too.

  Another crack split the air. It sounded like Dapplegrim was trying to break down the door from the inside—and it looked as if he wasn't too far from succeeding either. Splinters and fractures were running through the ice that held the door shut.

  "Hold on!" yelled Caewen. She attacked the ice from the outside, using her sword to lever chunks of ice out of place and exploit weaknesses. Soon, working together, big pieces of ice were coming away, and then with a final kick from the inside, the ice around the stable doors shattered and Dapplegrim came trotting out, furious. "Where is he? Where is that demon? I'm going to pound him into snowflakes. And then I'm going to pound those snowflakes into even smaller snowflakes! How dare he do that?"

  "There's no time for that now. We have to leave. Immediately."

  "Why?" said Dapplegrim.

  "Because," said Caewen, about twenty minutes ago I cored an apple, took out a seed, cleaned it carefully and put it in my pocket. Then, I leaned out a window and picked one of the other white fruit that grow all over the outside of this place." She shrugged. "I figured that one white apple would look a lot like another white apple. I expect that very soon..."

  A howl full of rage and horror rose from somewhere outside the walls.

  "That was fast," said Caewen. "I think it's safe to say she's guessed that I've pulled a trick on her."

  "She? Who? Tamsin?"

  "Not Tamsin. Tamsin's dead. Jack would have been forced to follow his commands, whether or not he wanted to. He was told to find her, and to kill her. She will be long dead by now. I think her final death was here after all."

  "Caewen," said Dapplegrim, "I'm quite confused. What exactly is happening?"

  "Well, it turns out that... no. There's no time. I'll explain while we escape. Where's your saddle? Actually, there's no time for that either. I'll just hold onto you mane, alright?"

  "Fine. Pull yourself up, then."

  She jumped to get her arms over his shoulders and pulled herself onto his back. Bareback, they trotted out of the gate and down the steep incline of the path that ran up the crag. Another howl of anger arose from the woods. Before they reached the foot of the twisting road, a dozen or more answering howls drifted up from the village and woods.

  "Oh no," said Caewen. "They're here. They're all here already."

  -oOo-

  At the base of the cliff, Dapplegrim wheeled around on his hooves, first going this way, and then that, but always backing away. The wolves were thick in the town already. Not one person of the village were anywhere in sight, alive or dead, but tellingly, every door and shutter was locked tight. The people must have seen or heard the wolves approaching, and run for their houses.

  Caewen was hanging on tight to Dapplegrim's mane. "It's going to be hard for me to swing a sword without stirrup or saddle."

  "Hur. Agreed. Maybe we can just outpace them?"

  "We barely got away last time. And now, they're angrier. Much angrier. They'll have heard that howling from Issie too. They know we've done something. Even if they don't know what it is exactly just yet."

  Dapplegrim danced in a circle as one of the bolder wolves crept out from behind a tree, eyes lit with the dawn, like sallow bronze.

  "Speaking of that, I don't know what we've done either," he said, as he rounded on the wolf, and jinked to one side; he got close enough to give the creature a resounding crack of a blow with his right hind hoof. The wolf caught the hoof on the chest and left the ground, arcing backwards as boneless as a rag-doll. It hit a nearby pine trunk, making a sickening sort of crunch as it did. Dapplegrim snorted. "One less wolf."

  But Caewen shook her head. "I wouldn't be so sure. There's a charmed power thick in their blood." She pointed. "Look."

  Although the creature looked more dead, than alive, it shook itself and stood. It was unsteady, and blood was gushing from its mouth and nostrils, but it heaved a few breaths and it retreated only a short distance; casting a rueful look back at Caewen and Dapplegrim; then it threw up more blood on the patchy snow and pine needles. Though it looked as if it ought to just lie down and die, the wolf remained standing, and within seconds, it started to stand straighter. The bloody mess in its mouth reduced to a trickle. It breathed heavily, raggedly. Before long, it seemed to be recovering.

  "They heal fast," said Caewen. "I think my sword can hurt them more seriously, maybe kill them... but just pounding at warglings, and crushing them underfoot—it's not going to do us any good."

  Throughout this, the wolves were circling and tightening their ranks—backing Dapplegrim up into the mouth of the road that climbed the rocky spur. They constricted themselves inwards; like a band of grey iron; though when the pack was close to be shoulder-to-shoulder, they all stopped as one. Their attention turned back on the village: a voice rose and spoke at them from somewhere beyond the ranks of grey fur and yellow eyes, from somewhere among the trees and houses. "Hold," the voice said. "Make a way." He came slipping out from the pines like a shadow. The wolves edged aside and made room for a tall, muscular man with a hunter's physique. He had a dull yellow glow in his eyes, and otherwise, he looked much like Issie, naked, pale-skinned, and powerfully built. Clearly whatever magic governed their changes from one shape into another was not civilised enough to include clothing. The hair on his head was that same shadowy black and gold-streaked colour as the wolf-chieftain from the chase outside the village.

  "Vaire," said Caewen, and added after a pause, "I presume."

  That actually made him stop, made him pause. He tilted his head and his whole body tensed as he adjusted his weight. His fingers flexed, as if they had claws on them and he intended to use them. A low snarl turned into guttural, brooding words: "Now how do you know my name?" He drew out the 'how' until it sounded bestial.

  "Oh, I got to hear some stories when I was up on the hill. That's all. Your lady, Isthinthae is alive and well, if you were wondering. The same cannot be said for your father... though I had little enough to do with that."

  His voice grew arched. "And who did then?"

  "Issie, to start with, but in the end he took his own life."

  A shrug. "I've no love lost on the wizard. He took his own life? That would be his way. Coward. But then, who took the apple of the snows?" His voice was keener now. "Was it you?" His eyes grew more intense until it was possible to imagine that there was a strong yellow fire behind them. A low, murmuring growl arose from the other wolves too.

  Caewen paused. How much could one of these wolf-people communicate by howls? Had Issie already told them what Caewen had done? Was Vaire toying with her and Dapple? Or was there a chance she could spin some tale, at least until Issie turned up.

  "Well..." she said, but then noticed something in the near distance. Behind the pack of wolves, past a hedge-of-thorns, the great doors of a substantial villager's house had just nudged open. That man who'd talked to them the evening before... what was his name? Gare? He was standing in the doorway beckoning silently. Unsurprisingly, his face was a knotted twist of anxiety. But he had opened the door, and he was waving for them. The wolves were all positioned so that none of them could see this.

  "Dapple!" said Caewen, her voice rising. "There!"

  "I see it." Dapp
legrim ran and launched himself over the wolves. Heads shot up, maws opened, backs arched over, and there was snapping and clawing—but they landed safely on the other side of the grey mass of bodies. At once, Dapplegrim sprang into a run.

  The wolves were only confused for a moment, and were in pursuit quickly. Just bolting and trying to escape the village would not have done Caewen and Dapplegrim much good. The wolves were too fast. They were soon gaining. Caewen looked over her shoulder. The pack, snarling, determined, was surging after them. Their yellow eyes and teeth glistened. Behind them stood Vaire, laconic, watching with an amused, detached appraising sort of expression. He did not expect the chase to last long, clearly. He hadn't even bothered to change shape.

  But at the hedge, Dapplegrim veered right, wove left past a hoary-barked old pine, and with more urgency than grace, he stumbled in through the open door, ducking his head. Gare slammed it shut after them, and two other men pulled a heavy beam over the door to bar it from the inside.

  Looking around, trying to take in what she could see, Caewen found a mass of faces, all huddled, all hiding in the shadows of the shuttered-up house. Children and the elderly, men and women, all crowded together. At several places where the shuttered windows provided chinks on the outside world, men and women with hunting bows started shooting arrows into the yard. Several high, painful yelps answered the twangs of bows.

  Caewen slipped down from Dapplegrim's back. "You probably shouldn't make them angry" she said, waving a hand towards the archers.

  Gare, who was as heavy and ponderous in his speech as he was in his body, gave only a slight nod. "Arrows shorn of elderwood. There aren't many things that can hurt our warglings, but that will smart more than it doesn't. There's old magic in the pith of an elder. Enough to make a wargling think twice."

  Fighting a desire to simply collapse and be thankful that she was alive—for now—Caewen walked to one of the window-cracks, and bending down, she looked out. Through the narrow opening she could see that the wolves had retreated, forming up into a mass, half-hidden in the trees. As she watched two young men and a woman—all naked—stood upright out of the wolf-pack, and shook their shoulders and stretched as if they had been running a long jog. All three pulled arrows out of their flesh, and threw them to the ground. Did elderwood force a skinlinger to change back into their human shape? That was knowledge worth knowing.

  The three naked people shared the same hard, dangerous look, as did Issie and Vaire. It was clearly in the family bloodline. But instead of changing back into wolves they turned and looked calmly, irritatedly, at the house—and then they all smiled, with keen, small, sharp smiles. Walking towards the house, the three of them spread out and stood, waiting. Blood was running in trickles from the wounds where the arrows had gone in. They didn't seem bothered. So perhaps an elderwood arrow might make a wargling turn back into human shape, but it wasn't lethal? As Caewen watched, the wounds stitched themselves up with scabs and closed over.

  "They're not attacking?"

  "No," said a middle-aged lady-archer beside her. "When they're ready, they'll be going up to the house-on-the-hill no doubt, and fetching themselves human armour, and weapons and torches. They'll smoke us out, or burn us out, in the end... if the teeth of the wolf don't work, then the swords of the human hand will do instead." She wrinkled up her brow. "Guess they do have the best of both worlds, as they say."

  The other wolves detached themselves. They formed into a loose ribbon of grey shapes, and twisted away towards the castle. At the foot of the castle road, Vaire waited. When the wolves reached him, he walked at the head of them up the road, still human-shaped.

  "If they don't know already that I took the magic they want, they'll be figuring it out very soon."

  Dapplegrim, who had been catching his breath, took the two steps he needed to stand behind her. He tried to look out the gap, but found it a bit narrow. With a snort he said, "Maybe you could explain that to me now? I'm still confused by all this. Howls and wolves and dead sorcerers? What is going on?"

  "Old Coldballs is dead?" said one of the men.

  "I'm afraid so."

  There was a murmur of worried voices, some sniffling of held-back tears.

  "We're all dead then," said the same man. "There's no escape now. Only him could have chased off the warglings. We're dead as dead."

  Caewen turned to Dapple, and lowering her voice, said, "Don't make a fuss." She fished around inside her pocket and pulled out a single, brown, unremarkable looking appleseed. Everyone else who was standing nearby, Gare, the lady-archer, the others with the bows: they merely looked puzzled. "What've you got a little seed for?" said Gare.

  But Dapplegrim reacted as if Caewen had thrust a red-hot poker inches from his nose. He pulled back, and bared his teeth into a grimace. "That," he said through tight grit teeth, "is unkind magic. Burn it. Crush it. But do not allow it anywhere near me."

  "And I suppose we ought not give it to the wolves?"

  "By all that is holy and unholy in this world, do not give that to anyone! Least of all a pack of savage things. That's... that's... it's sorcery from the old north, sorcery at its most rotten. It's a binding and a harvesting of power from something... some creature... distilled down into a single mote of pain. It may look like a seed, but it is a small hard bit of pain. Whatever person, god or spirit is bound by that... that... thing you have in your hand... the poor creature must be in constant torture. It would be controlled and masted by dismal never-ending pain." He snorted. "Destroy it."

  Caewen looked at the small seed in her palm. "Poor Jack," she said in a whisper. "And for hundreds of years, I guess? Or even longer?" But after a long pause, she added, "And yet I am not sure we have a choice? I said, I would free the demon, Jack, and I will. If you think it is safe to just break the seed... but..."

  "But what?" Dapplegrim shook his head. "Do not tell me you're thinking of trying to master that power yourself? Hur. Even if you could, even if you might, it would change you forever. Magic never leaves a person unchanged, and magic of that bleak ilk is the worst sort. If you did master it, who's to say you would be able to make yourself give it up? Power gets inside a person. It'll warp you badly before its done with you. You'll be like a bit of green wood dropped in hot water."

  More faces inside the house were turning towards Caewen and Dapplegrim. She looked around at them. "Unless anyone else has some other suggestion? We need a power to match the wolfskinlings. Unless someone here happens to own a wishing cap, or a cloak of the unseen, or some old ring of mysterious power... I don't know what else to do?" But Caewen was met with silence.

  Dapplegrim looked around, with a slightly frantic air. "Someone else. Someone else can take the magic. You," he turned his head towards the nearest villager. "You look young and full of adventure. Why don't you eat up that bit of magic? It's be a tale to tell, that's for sure."

  "Dapple, stop," said Caewen. "If what you say is true, if the magic is that dangerous, that harmful, I'm not going to inflict it on someone else." She looked over at Gare. He was standing uncomfortably, scratching his jaw. "Well? Have we any other chance of escape?"

  He shook his head. "We'll all be dead before evening, I expect," said Gare. "That's the sureness of it. These walls are sturdy enough to hold them out for a bit, but only on cause it's convenient for them to keep us penned in." He sighed. "I don't fully fathom what you're debating, but if you think there's a hope for us, and our families, please... please... me and my wife have our wee ones in here with us. I suppose that's all I'll say on it."

  Caewen nodded. She walked away from the window, to a corner of the room, shadowy and cool. People moved out of her way, making space. Dapplegrim followed, his tail whisking worriedly, his head low on a bowed neck. "Don't," he said one last time. "Please don't. You and I might still get away. If we wait for the right moment, and I run fast."

  "But it'd only be us two who get away, wouldn't it? I can't live with that. You couldn't either. I know you too well, Dapple." C
aewen put her back to the wall and slid down until she was sitting on hard-packed floor. "It's alright Dapple. Just promise me that you won't let me turn into something bad. If it looks like I'm going to end up that way... just don't let that happen."

  Dapplegrim gave no answer. He laid his ears back and then got down on his haunches, sitting the way horses do with their legs folded.

  "So here goes a throw of the gambler's die," said Caewen, and she lifted the seed and dropped it onto her tongue. It was bitter, like wild almond. With a wince, she swallowed it. At first, nothing happened.

  And then the world fell away. The room; the light and the shadow; the people and their fearful, staring faces; the noise of a child crying softly somewhere in the darkness; and Dapplegrim too: his long face and red-aglow eyes. It all tumbled backwards, folding in upon itself, as if the world had simply been a painting, lightly daubed onto a deeper reality, and the paint was now crumpling up and flaking away.

  Caewen discovered that she was falling. She felt the weightless giddiness. She could sense the darkness rushing past her, a high wind in a roar, deafeningly loud. If there had been anything in her stomach other than the now blistering, searing, pain-wrenching pip, she was sure she'd have retched it all up. She felt the pain jab at the inside of her gut. She felt it worm into the flesh inside her ribcage as she fell, tumbling head-over-heels through infinite darkness. She felt her flesh turn cold, as the sharp seed found its way into a blood-vessel, as it crept through her bloodstream, seeking her heart.

  -oOo-

  In the beginning there was darkness. An everlasting night. For age upon age, cool, silent darkness was peaceful upon the land. The spirits of the darkness were beautiful and happy in their quiet peace. And then, for the first time in all the years of the world, the sun rose, and there was disquiet.

  -oOo-

  In the beginning, the valley had been a wild place. There were bears and otters, badgers and wrens, red robins, and wolves in the woods. In those days, there were no people, and time was a spinning cycle of day-and-night, after day-and-night, and winter-and-summer, after winter-and-summer, endless, endless. The creatures did not have long memories, although a few of them still told their stories of a time, very long ago, when there had been two goddesses treading the earth, fighting, warring, a time when the day and the night fought each other. The two goddesses, the night and day, created all the living things to be their soldiers and spies and servants in the wars. The foxes told those stories most often, and they boasted that they had never been on either side, because they belonged to a wholly different creation. But few of the other animals believed them. Least of all the wolves, who were proudest of the creatures in the wilderness, and though the wolves had forgotten whether they had fought on the one side or the other, they were sure they had fought and hunted well, and in good service. This land had been their reward, for nothing else that lived here—except perhaps an angry mother bear—was a threat to them. They were the first true masters of the land, and they lived in the caves and overhangs of the spur, and they looked out over all the world that was theirs.

  -oOo-

  In the beginning the people came. They journeyed out of the east, from where the sun rises, wearing skins and hides of the beasts they had killed, carrying fire and sharp flint and polished spears of hard wood. Most of the people wandered off westward and northward, but a few settled here, chasing the wolves from their home on the rocky spur, and making it into a place for people, painting the walls with ochre and heaping the floors with furs around their saga-fire.

  -oOo-

  In the beginning there had been a tribe. The tribe had worshipped the wolf, and they made carvings of wolves, in wood, in stone, even out of ice in winter. They buried their dead with wolfskins and gave respect to the wolf whenever the hunt was successful. But there were other tribes, neighbouring clans who snuck-by-night with their stone axes, and bronze knives, and their arrows with heads of flint. There were countless bloody skirmishes, and many deaths. After years of sorrows and losses, the wise of the tribe met and talked, and they agreed: what was needed was a provender, a protector. What was needed was some sheltering hand to hold back the slingstones and darts of the enemies. All the called-upon wolf-shades were not enough to protect the tribe. What was needed was a new, more potent, singular god.

  -oOo-

  In the beginning, she lived just as any other child of the tribe lived. There was the family roundhouse behind the ramparts of earth and sharpened poles, nestled in alongside the jowls of other roundhouses. She helped her mother grind the barley and the wild oats. She teased her brothers and her younger sister, and she was teased by her brothers and her sister in return. She played at games and wondered about her future, who she might one day marry, if she would one day have her own children, and all the other things that children sometimes think about.

  But one day, the wise of the village came to their house and said that the ghosts of dead wolves had spoken to them, and they had chosen the little girl for their own. She was required, for the good of everyone: those who lived now, those who might live for years to come. She was afraid at this, and clutched at her mother's deerskin dress, and she cried a little. But she went with them when they told her to. For they were the wise of the village, and were not to be disobeyed.

  For three years they fed her on wild deer culled from the woods, and rich sweet berries, and the little brown and white mushrooms of the forest that let people see spirits and talk to the dead. No cultivated food passed her lips. Wild things only. And the powdered, bitter dust of the ghost-mushrooms. They kept her in a dark, smoky sacred house, with all the carved figures that were spirit-vessels for the dead ancestors of the people and their wolf-spirits. And the dead watched her out of their lifeless wooden eyes. And the dead spoke to her. And the dead approved of her, and so they told her secrets that only the dead know. They hissed and whispered and snarled until she was full of their sayings, and hardly knew who she was any longer.

  At the end of the three years, the wise of the village came to the house in the dead of night, and they said that the great time had come at last. It was a bright night, when the full moon was at its largest and most powerful. The hunter's moon, they called it, and under the light of the hunter's moon they took her away from the village, through woodland and field and wild meadow, uphill, through a rift in the hills, and to a sacred place in the wilderness where the water bubbles hot out of ground fissures, and the rocks are grey and shadowy.

  A few wise people of the village were already there when they arrived. They had already lit nine fires, and were feeding the fires with dried wolfsbane, making the smoke into a choking and stinging pall. They chanted and called for the spirits of wolves, alive and dead, and they blew the spirits and ghosts of the wolves into the smoke, until the smoke was churning with a hundred wolf-minds. As she waited, wondering what would happen next, unsure of herself, dizzy from the long walk and the ghost-mushrooms, the girl saw a familiar face. It had been three years, but she recognised her sister, seated on a stone, just beyond the fires. The girl wanted to call out to her sister. She had been so lonely without family, without friends, in the dark house where the ghosts whispered... but she knew better. She knew that if she was supposed to speak to her sister, the wise would tell her to do so. If she did anything that she was not meant to do, then they'd clip her with a willow switch or thump her with the back of a hand. So she stood, waiting, watching as wolf-shapes grew and swelled in the smoke.

  At last, someone pushed the girl forward, into the place where the fires were smoking and the wise were chanting. Somewhere far off she could hear wolves howling: dozens of them: whole packs of them: howling as if they were raised up in alarm, or in worship. She could not tell which. And then, her sister was made to move too, prodded until she was standing not quite among the fires, though near them.

  That was when the chanting stopped, and the smoke curled, and swept upwards and outwards, stretching out in shapes, like noses sniffing, like
tongues lolling, looking for warmth and flesh. There were wolf-faces in the smoke.

  They entered into her. Through her nose and eyes, stinging the flesh, through the very pores of her skin, until she was full of wolves. There were so many wolves in her she didn't know how to be anything but wolfish. She heard the quiet crying. She heard the sniffles. She smelled the fear.

  She lost herself in the wolves.

  When the girl came to her senses again, it was dawn. Blood in a terrible mess was all over her hands, all over her face. Bloody footsteps were everywhere in the dust. Uphill, the wise were gathered in a tight knot, their shoulder's hunched under cloaks of fur and feather, fixed expressions of stone-cold, hard horror mingled with triumph on their faces.

  There was a torn body at the girl's feet. She didn't have to look down to know who it was.

  They had made her do this.

  She was sick with terror. With anger. With horror at herself. At the wise ones.

  Why would they make her do this?

  The wise trickled down from their place on the hill and they surrounded her, closing in.

  "You killed your own sister," they said. "You murdered kin," they hissed. "That is an accursed crime. The ancestors despise kin-killing." Snarls and mock-anger rose up around her. They had practised these speeches already. Their accusations were perfunctory. They made her do this to her own sister... and they were pretending to be angry? She loved her sister. She didn't understand. Old, wrinkled faces with tattoos and ritual scars crowded over her. "You must redeem. But there is only one redemption. You killed family. Now you must protect family. Forever and ever. Forever and ever and ever. We lay this curse upon you." One of them reached out with fingers full of white and grey ochre and streaked her face with the colours. Other hands pulled at her clothing, tearing it off until she was naked. And then they put a leather thong around her neck and they pulled it tight. The air in her throat stopped. Her eyes fluttered shut. Her heart stopped.

  They said words over her to bind the judgement, to bind the spirits of the wolves, to bind the spirits of the ancestors, to bind the curse. And then they threw her body into the hot spring, where the waters are sacred.

  And then they knelt in the bloody earth and they prayed to her.

  Through sorcery and curse, they made her into a small, fragile god.

  -oOo-

  In the beginning, the Tribe of the Wolf-Mother would sacrifice people at the sacred spring where the goddess was. They would raid other tribes, and take whoever they caught and bring them here to bleed into the water, turning the steaming, bubbling spring red. They made their small goddess bigger and greater with worship and sacrifice. But the years eventually ate away at their lust for blood. The goddess gave them gifts and she put the wolf into their bloodlines in return for their worship. In time, they had less need to make other tribes afraid, because the other tribes kept away from them now. Skin-changers, the other tribes whispered. Wolf-people. Eventually, they stopped bringing children and old men. For a time they brought deer instead. But after a while, that gave way to small carvings of deer made from antlers. A few bronze coins. Sometimes a sword or a spear. Times changed, and people forgot the first purpose of the tradition. But the goddesses who lived in the earth, the water, the air: she remembered.

  And what she remembered was the aching, terrible pain of knowing that she had betrayed and killed someone she loved. What she remembered was that the only path to redemption was to protect her family, forever and ever.

  -oOo-

  In the beginning, the man wandered out of the north during a time of war. He was a sorcerer of the snows, and he brought his magic with him, hiding it in his heart, and so he brought his chiefmost servant with him too: the demon of the snows and winters that his family had bound long ago. He was escaping something he had done in some war or another—war may well be war—but sometimes a person goes too far, does a thing too evil, even for wartime—and sometimes the families of the victims decide to get their own revenge after the wars are done. So he fled, southward, looking only to find a quiet place to settle. Looking only to quietly slip away, to escape his past.

  In those days The Pass of Faces was freshly carved, and there were people living in the stone city of Tol-i-Osk. But the people of Tol-i-Osk misliked and mistrusted the sorcerer. They told each other that soft, menacing footfalls followed the sorcerer about, as if hunting him, and there were whispering noises in the shadows when he passed, and the air always turned cold wherever he stood for any length of time. So they made him move on. He wandered south, wending through small petty kingdoms and past little hillfort villages atop their drab dales.

  When he came to the town beside the winding road where the people refused to even open their gates for him, he grew enraged—sick at last of the small-minded fear—so he bid his demon destroy them all, freezing their blood into ice, and shattering the walls, and bringing down the whole edifice. That place is ruins now. Nameless. Lost. Just a tumble of stones beside the road with a bad reputation for eerie noises in the night.

  He wandered eastward then, off the road, seeking comfort in solitude. But instead he found a strange tribe that lived in the woods, a tribe that had hardly changed in a thousand years, a tribe little in contact with the outside world. If he had asked anyone about them, these people who wore hides and used flint and bronze, the farmers and woodcutters of the surrounding villages would have called them cannibals, monsters, skin-changers. Were-things. Warglings. But he saw in them the possibility of useful servants.

  They tried to drive him off. They tried to kill him. But the sorcerer of the snows was more powerful than they. He was more powerful than the small, petty beast-goddess they worshipped in the hills. She fought him, and she lost. He drove the wolf-tribe away from their rude huts, off into the woods and he bound them with his magic. He bid that his demon torment them, and make them be wolves always, and make them guard his new home. Then he commanded that his demon build a great house on the hill, a place fit for a sorcerer of repute. He dwelled in his new house on the hill, guarded by his demon, guarded by his wolves. And for a time he was happy to be alone, and then, eventually, he thought of companionship, of human talk, and of food that wasn't brought to him by the cold hands of a resentful demon.

  So he told the demon to watch the road and bring him servants, farmers, tradesfolk: people enough to make a small village at the foot of the mount. And a wife, too, he added. He wanted a wife so that he might have a child, so that he might found a lineage.

  After a year of living in the house, the snow-apples sprouted and grew out of the rock crevices, embracing the hill with soft grey leaves and white fruit. The snow apples were the ancient sigil of his house, and given time, they would grow wherever his family lived. It was a magic that came up out of the earth: when they sprouted, he knew he had found his new home.

  He was the first sorcerer of the House of Snow and Apples. When he died, the death-tree grew out of his chest, and his eldest son took the apple, and ate the pip, and became the sorcerer and master of the snow demon. And so on, and so on, through the years. Son after son. Grandson after grandson.

  And all the while, the wolf-people, the original people of the land, lived in the cold and survived on thin, fatless game, and were forced to go about and do the sorcerer's bidding.

  And all the while, she watched from her place in the hills, fuming, enraged that she could do so little to protect her family from this miserable little clan of sorcerers with their pet demon.

  All the while she smarted in rage that the sorcerer had so easily dismissed her attempts to destroy him.

  Slowly, gradually, an idea formed in her mind, as she watched the sorcerers bed their women and spawn offspring, and start it all over again. Such small, momentary lives had they: but if she might merge the bloodline of the sorcerers into her own tribe... that might allow her to regain her rulership of the land... so she looked among her family, living in the woods, and she found a young she-wolf who was as lovely to lo
ok at in her human form as she was in wolf-shape, and this she-wolfling was clever, and daring too... and the forgotten goddess in the hills called to the young wolf-maid in dreams, beckoned her, and bade her to tread the sacred walk, up to the place where the water is hot and there is a huge wolf carved into the stone, cut by long-dead hands. And there, the spirit of the sacred place whispered to the young woman and told her how to be in human form, not wolf, and how to sneak past the sorcerer's magic, how to hide her own true nature, how to poison the wife, and how to work such charms as would seduce the sorcerer with a sureness of getting a babe off him.

  Go, she whispered to the girl.

  The girl's name was Thera.

  -oOo-

  In the beginning, Vespertine did not suspect Thera at all. She was just some young thing, come up from the village to help in the grand house. She was convenient when he wanted someone to warm his sheets and take his mind off the sudden, unexpected death of his wife. She was too meek, too lowly. She was below suspicion, until that is, she swelled with child and the babe came. If she had known that the child would betray her, she might have run off before the birth. But she did not know. Even the goddess in the hills did not know, for surely she would have warned Thera? Although Thera could master her form, keeping herself in human guise, the babe could not. Vespertine only had to lock eyes on it, and it's shifting form—wolfish and humanish and wolfish again—to know that his blood had been mingled with the wolf-creatures of the woods. He flew into a rage and ordered young Thera hanged from the outer walls as an example to the creatures that lurked outside. Then he took the naked babe, with the afterbirth barely cleaned off, and carried it to the edge of the village. His wolf-slaves had already gathered in a silent, watchful mass. So many yellow eyes were lit on him. He ought have killed the child in front of them, but he stayed his hand—at the last moment, he could not do it—it was his son, after all—and he could not bring himself to do that. So he gave it to the wolves instead, dropping it into the snow and mud at their feet. He spoke then. "Take your unwholesome pup. Slaughter him. Or raise him. I do not care. He is no proper son of mine. And do not ever think to get into my house with trickery again. I'll send my Jack down to freeze all of you into hanks of blood and frozen bone if ever you do that again. Understand me to be serious in this." He turned his back on them and walked off.

  -oOo-

  In the beginning the babe was sickly, but another wolf had recently given birth and still had milk. She took the babe and suckled him along with her own newborn daughter, Isthinthae. And the wolves gathered about and watched. For they could tell that there was something momentous in the making. One of the old wolves, half-blind, nearly toothless, foretold that there would be a child born under this turn of the moon that would be their saving. And this child: this one who's blood was that of the sorcerer and the wolf-people. Surely, he must be the one to deliver them back to rulership of this land? This weak babe would save them. He must. They had suffered so long.

  -oOo-