Prologue





The world was on fire. Storms of flame and storms of ice battled for the sky; the ground was churned mud and broken bone. Charis struggled through this hideous landscape, knowing that there was shelter somewhere, that someone was waiting to take him in, if only he could find the place.

A light shone ahead. It was a cool blue light, not a campfire but a summer evening, and there was a circle of stillness at the top of a hill. There, two men stood back to back, arms outstretched, holding off the storms. One of them was his father. He didn’t look the same as he had when Charis had last seen him, sad and scruffy with his hair chopped short like a child’s, but ten feet tall, still as a stone, black and silver, and his warding hands were steady as stars no matter how the wind beat at them. The other man was like a mirror of him in white. Charis toiled up the hill to tumble between their heels, and found he’d fallen on warm grass, and that there was a blue sky overhead.

The circle of calm was holding, but Charis knew it had to get bigger. This little bit of peace was no use to anyone. He said, “Father, let me help you. One feather can tip the scale...”

“Save your strength,” his father said, in that thunder-deep voice Charis had heard for the first time only last spring. “You’ll be needed to clean up the mess afterwards.”

Charis looked down at the strewn wreckage that covered the whole world, and his heart shrank at the size of the task. “But I’m only a little kid,” he protested -- and his voice came out as deep as Father’s, and his hands on the grass were knotted with muscle and scars. It made him afraid. It meant there were no more excuses.

Charis woke scrunched back against the wall, pillow in his arms, blankets twisted around his waist. For a long moment he held still, waiting for the dream’s fear to leave him. He whined like a dog; his breath made a white wisp of steam. The fire in his room had gone out long ago.

He shoved impatiently free of his bedding, grabbing his cane to help him up with a motion so habitual he no longer thought about it. The silver-banded stick of polished wood ticked on the stone floor as he crossed to the window. He hesitated as he reached for the shutter latch -- his nurse kept reminding him he was too delicate to be hanging out the window in winter -- but was reassured by the sound of her snoring in the next room. He threw the window open and leaned out.

It was a blinding white day, bitterly cold, and the wind scoured Charis’s cheeks to stinging at the first gust. The royal family’s quarters were at the top of the cliff-carved warren of Winter Camp, and from here Charis could see forever across the plains. Probably a thousand miles, he guessed. All of it was mottled white and tan, snow heaped in snaking dunes and scoured down to the grass between. The sky, still bruised from dawn, was more yellow than blue near where the sun was.

He hadn’t been outside all week. Being cooped up was infuriating. He had to think of a reason to go out. The dream had filled him with a sense of unfocused urgency. He didn’t understand what it meant, but he’d had some variation of that dream at least six times so far. When he’d told Grandma of the first one, she’d suggested that he write them down, but seemed unimpressed, so he hadn’t mentioned them since. He was sure they meant something, though.

Shutting the window, he set to the slow task of getting all his layers of clothing on. On top of the linen breeches and undershirt and wool stockings he’d slept in, he added wool trousers, a silk shirt, a wool felt vest, a silk sash, a boiled wool jacket, and a fur-lined long-coat. All of it was midnight blue with red decoration; Auberlane colors. He gathered his hair up in his hands, pretending he was going to tie it in a warrior’s tail, but had to let it go. It just brushed his shoulders. Every time it got this long, he prayed no one would make him cut it, so he could stop looking like a baby. He knew his nurse would notice before spring, though.

Finally, he looped the strings of his purse through his sash, then checked inside to make sure everything was there. The folded wad of paper in case he had to remember something, and a wax-dipped stick of lead for writing it down. The earring his mother had once let him play with, the tarnished bronze ring he’d found in a distant storeroom while exploring, the braided horsehair keeping-charm that helped him make his pony obey him. Most important, rolling around the bottom, the handful of tubular silver beads that he’d taken off his festival shirt. Those would stand in place of money if he ever got the chance to go looking for his father. He hoped they’d be enough to get him there, wherever there was. Though he had no clue, he was sure he’d be guided somehow.

He was a patient child, everyone told him so, but there was a limit. He was going to find out what these dreams meant, even if he had to run away from home to do it.





* * *



“What’s this, Grandma? What’s this one?”

Nhedra sighed, her breath wreathing her in white fog. “It’s yarrow, Charis, just like the last fifteen weeds you showed me.”

“But the others had the big flat brushy part, and this has a little one.”

“Yes, it’s a small, pathetic yarrow plant. You’ve identified the difference. Good for you.”

Charis put his mittened fists on his hips and frowned up at her, gray eyes stern in his pale face. “Now I know why my father turned out so weird.”

“You’re the one who wanted to come with me today. I told you it would be dull.” Then she relented and smiled at him. “You’re very dedicated, to want to learn herbs from me. But winter isn’t the best time for it.”

The boy just shrugged. He planted his cane in the thin snow and, leaning on it, took a deliberate step forward. Nhedra took the hint and started walking again.

He wasn’t really interested in learning her craft. She understood that. Unless he had the spark of Seeing, or at least some serious magical aptitude, there was no point training him as a shaman. And he was too young for those gifts to become apparent. His fey, serious manner implied that they’d manifest soon, but then, his father had been the same way, and developed no talent to speak of.

She knew why he was really out with her today, walking in the bitter cold, under the blue-white sky of deep winter. Despite his stunted right arm and leg, and the oddly white skin he’d inherited from his father, the boy had a true Kyri soul, and couldn’t stand to be indoors too long. Winter Camp, that warren of rooms carved deep into a cliff, was like a prison to him. More so than for other children, who could run and climb. Charis could move about without his cane for a little while, but it tired him. His mother Alys, the Gethanein, had no time for him, being involved entirely with the business of rulership. He was surrounded by nurses, guards, and tutors, but essentially alone. Nhedra didn’t mind that he followed her around whenever he could. No one else would slow down for him.

Anyway, minding Charis was getting to be less of a chore with each month that passed. His intelligence was astonishing, and he was learning to articulate his thoughts, so that it was often possible to have a real conversation with him. Truth be told, he was far better-spoken at eight than his father, Kastor, had been at that age.

Of course, eight was the age at which Kastor had decided he didn’t need a mother. He’d run away in early spring, and hadn’t showed his face for three months. She could still summon an ice-needle into her heart, remembering her fear for him then. Her divinations had told her he wasn’t dead, but for the first time in her life, she’d distrusted them. She’d been so stunned when he’d returned, filthy and unconcerned, with a brace of wild chickens for her. Not a gift, no; he’d wanted to trade them for a proper bow. His child-sized bow didn’t have the power to take birds on the wing, he’d explained. He’d taken her woman’s fowling bow and vanished for another half year. He was never more than a visitor to her after that.

Charis was her chance to do it right. To be a mother to someone. She thought the gods might have been a little heavy-handed, giving her a cripple who couldn’t possibly run off the way Kastor had. Still, it was good to be needed.

“This is milkweed,” Charis announced suddenly. He shredded a pod in his good hand, let the fragments fall. “That one’s easy.”

“It’s a good bit farther. Are you tired?”

“No,” he lied. She didn’t contradict him. He could push himself if he wanted to. What was his stunted leg going to do, get smaller?

“You’re about to lose your scarf.”

“Grandma.” He adjusted the scarf clumsily, hindered by mittens. He scowled when she patted his cap more firmly onto his head. He hated the round felt hat he was made to wear; by its design, it couldn’t be worn with a warrior’s high ponytail, and thus was a garment for weaklings, by his reckoning. He sulked a while before a question occurred to him, making him forget his bad temper. “Who are we going to see, anyway? You didn’t say.”

“That’s because I don’t know.”

“Well then, how do you know where to go?”

“It’s a call. A pull. I feel it here.” She tapped her breastbone. “It’s something a seer can do. I know someone needs my help, that’s all.”

“What kind of help?”

“I don’t know. This person is calling on purpose, though, I can tell that much. It’s someone with the gift. Perhaps another clan’s shaman had an accident on his way to winter camp.”

“Then shouldn’t we be bringing more people? With horses? What if he’s got a broken leg?”

“Then I’ll summon horses.”

His eyes went round. “You can do that?”

“Of course.”

“How come I’ve never seen you do it, then?”

“I never needed to.”

“But didn’t you ever do it just for fun?”

“When I was younger, I summoned all sorts of things just to see if I could.”

“Why’d you stop? Did something bad happen?”

“No. Something good. Something so good I knew I could never top it.”

Charis limped along in silence for another ten minutes. Suddenly he said, “You summoned my grandfather.”

She looked at him sharply. “Where did you hear that?”

“I guessed.”

“You shouldn’t blurt out all your guesses. Sometimes it’s dangerous to be right.”

To his credit, he didn’t reply, though he watched her narrowly for a while. She hoped he couldn’t see that he’d shaken her. She’d underestimated him, and given too many hints. Fortunately, Alys still insisted on telling everyone that Kastor’s father had been a demon, which was a long way from the truth. He had been something far higher. She had called him for power, not love, but she still got a sense of bittersweet vertigo from seeing his silvery eyes in Kastor’s face, and now in Charis’s. She was never tempted to break her vow and tell his identity. After all, she would see him again, one day.

At their slow pace, it took them another hour to reach the source of the calling. She could tell Charis was worn out, and expected to have to carry him home. He stayed doggedly by her side, though, as she climbed up a snow-dusted ridge and into knifing wind to look for the caller on the other side.

When she saw who’d called her, she stopped, reaching out to catch Charis’s shoulder. “I want you to go back down the hill. Get out of the wind. Go home, if you have the strength for it.”

It was a long moment before he tore his eyes away to answer her. “I do. But I want to come.”

“I know. I’m curious too. The difference is that I know spells to protect myself, and you don’t. Go home.”

He hesitated, frowning down at the hollow where the summoner, the Mara, patiently waited. “That’s the same sort of thing as the yellow-haired one who fought the ordeal for my father last year. You said that one wasn’t bad. You said he was good.”

Nhedra made a mental note to ask him later how he’d known the man was a Mara. Perhaps he’d make a shaman after all. But asking now would just encourage him to stay. “That’s not quite what I said. I don’t know this one. We can talk about it later, Charis. Go.”

With many backward glances, Charis crutched down the hill, away from the Mara and from her. She wished now that she hadn’t brought him. Well, he was a determined little fellow; he’d make it home.

When she was sure Charis was out of harm’s way, she approached the Mara. He was, as they all were, beautiful, ethereal, ageless. This one was snow-pale: white skin, silver hair, eyes like aquamarine stones, so light a blue that they were almost colorless. On his brow he wore a circlet of ivory and gold which breathed out immense power, immense stillness, the kind of restrained and gigantic energy one sensed from a glacier or a quiet sea. Yet there was something strangely humble about him.

She had not seen so many Mara in her life that she could make generalizations; the neutral angels were rare in the extreme. Nevertheless she thought it was unusual that this one wore his hair cut so short it stood up, like a Semnian soldier’s. It was definitely odd that he wore sturdy travelling clothes of sage green and gray, a little frayed at the seams, and well-worn workman’s boots laced with mismatched twine. He was unarmed except for an eating knife at his belt. Aside from the circlet, his only jewelry was a green agate stone on the first finger of his left hand. Had she been head-blind, she would never have guessed what he was.

He’d chosen a clutch of boulders as his waiting place, and gestured to her to seat herself on one, as if this were his private parlor. In a pleasant voice, warm and soft, he said, “Thank you for coming. I hope I wasn’t too premptory.”

“I would have liked a bit more information,” Nhedra said. She sat on a stone just out of arm’s reach, tucking her cloak around her.

“I apologize. I understand that foreigners aren’t welcome on the Sei, so I thought it might make trouble if I sought you out. I saw that you had a child with you. You can call him, if you like. I won’t harm him.”

“Never mind him. He’ll be fine. Tell me who you are and what you want.”

“My name is Stiaan.” He paused, watching her face.

Shock stiffened her back. The only thing that kept her from flinging out her strongest magics to cover a hasty retreat was the worry in his eyes. He knew she would have heard the name, and -- of all the strange things for a Mara to do -- feared her reaction to it.

This was the one responsible for the plague of demons that had troubled the north last year. The one whom Kastor and his odd collection of friends, including the golden Mara who had been his lover, this creature’s brother, had gone to fight. She knew they’d won; her scrying had told her so. “Why are you still alive?”

“I ask myself that occasionally.” He bowed his head. “My brother was too kind to me. He refused to stop at defeating me; he wanted to save me from myself. I don’t know yet if he succeeded. But whatever you’ve heard about me, it’s no longer true. I only came to ask your help in your capacity as shaman. I need a vision interpreted, that’s all. Then I’ll trouble you no more.”

“Why come to me? Haven’t you the learning to dissect your own dreams?”

“Not this one. It has to do with your gods, I think, and your son. I can make no sense of it.”

“What fee do you offer me?”

He opened his mouth, shut it. Frowned. “That’s right, by tradition you can’t name a price. Well, would you like this?” From a pocket of his coat he took something clinking, gleaming. “I don’t wear these anymore.” He poured it into her hand: a chain of some metal whiter than silver, with teardrop-shaped diamonds dangling from it.

She hesitated. It was too much. She couldn’t begin to guess its value. “What does this necklace mean to you?”

“It reminds me of a vanity I’m trying to put behind me.”

“Very well.” She put it in her purse. “Tell me your vision. Tell me first how you can have had a dream, since your kind don’t need sleep.”

“Not often, but we do sleep sometimes. In my dream I saw a white deer, a white stag, and felt compelled to hunt it. It seemed right that I was hunting, though I never kill animals now. I pursued it for what seemed days, and finally I shot it. When I came upon the beast, I saw that it was my own body dying there, with an arrow in my chest. It was very vivid; I saw the arrow vibrating with my heartbeat. Yet I was still the hunter. When I saw my reflection in the pool of blood, my face was the face of your son -- but with curling horns sprouting from his brow.” He let out a long breath, relieved to have unburdened himself. “What does it mean?”

Nhedra didn’t reply for a time. She had unfocused her mind to hear the vision. It had come to her more strongly than she was accustomed to, this time. His memory was very clear, his telling plain, and so she had seen it while he’d spoken. She’d seen the startlement of scarlet blood on Stiaan’s snowy flesh, the animal staring of his icy eyes as the sense went out of them, and the face in the pool. At last she said, to be sure, “Ram’s horns.”

“Yes. I suppose that’s what they were.”

With the images had come the sensations he hadn’t related. She had to be still for a long time, to examine them honestly, because they disturbed her. Perhaps they disturbed him as well, since he hadn’t mentioned them. Feelings of intense sexual arousal. The vision of a white stag was a common one, and had a common meaning, but the lust he hadn’t mentioned -- which her Sight had brought her nonetheless -- was not part of that dream.

“When one dreams of hunting a white stag,” she said at last, “it means a difficult task begun. Whether or not one kills the stag --”

“Yes, yes,” he interrupted. “That’s standard. But there are elements -- it was me, and I was Kastor -- the symbols are all distorted.”

She thought for a little while longer, wondering what he’d do to her if she were honest. She concluded that it didn’t matter; she wouldn’t give a false answer, not when she’d accepted payment. “You honestly want to know.”

“Well, yes, or I wouldn’t have asked.”

“You lust after my son. That’s what it means. It’s apparently a common problem among your kind.” She stood up and turned to go.

“Wait!” He followed. “That can’t be all. There are elements that obviously have something to do with your gods, with your Hunter god --”

“Yes, but that part’s none of your business. Good day to you, Stiaan.” She walked away, and this time he let her. When she looked back, at the top of the hill, he was gone.

She looked for Charis, but he was nowhere near. He was probably home already. She was glad not to have to answer his questions. The implications of the Mara’s vision -- and especially of his having come to her with it -- were nothing she wanted to discuss with a child.

It had disturbed her deeply to feel, even vicariously, the immortal’s lust. It was not like a mortal desire. There was something horribly raw about it, punishingly strong; perhaps like the hormonal ragings of an adolescent boy, but focused like the need of an adult -- a mentally unbalanced adult. She didn’t want that kind of obsessive creature sniffing after her boy. But what could she do about it? Kastor had always been beyond her control. He could protect himself. He was strong, and a vicious fighter when his blood was up. And if he chose instead to reciprocate those raw desires... well, she’d long ago given up trying to understand his inversion. For a man to lust after men made no sense, but there it was, and there seemed to be no changing it. He’d given her a grandchild anyway, so she had no grounds for complaint.

Her divinations had told her he was no longer with that yellow-haired Mara, so perhaps he’d be open to the silver one’s advances. Maybe she should have said something. If you hurt my boy I’ll -- right, very plausible. Possibly she could warn Kastor. But when had he ever listened to her warnings?

Chewing on this dilemma, she returned to her wagon instead of to the tunnels, intent on scrying. Charis would be annoyed that she didn’t explain to him why she’d sent him home, but it couldn’t be helped. The whims of Mara could be dangerous; this couldn’t be ignored.



* * *



Stiaan was irritated with himself for being disappointed. He shouldn’t have expected the witch to answer him fully or clearly. She hadn’t told him anything he didn’t already know.

You lust after my son -- but that wasn’t the point, was it? He’d recognized and conquered that sensation in the first thirty seconds of their acquaintance. Though he considered the idea of lying with a halfbreed to be in questionable taste, he was not ashamed of the sensation. After all, Kastor Auberlane was very beautiful, and had more than looks to reccomend him if Mikah had called him beloved. If Stiaan felt guilty about anything, it was that he’d allowed himself to entertain the idea of stealing the fellow from Mikah on the last day of Mikah’s life. And perhaps because he remembered the look in Kastor’s eyes after Mikah’s sacrifice. That emptiness. My fault.

What he’d wanted to know was what the rest of the dream meant. The reversal, the death, the signs of the Hunter. Her answer had been odd. That part’s none of your business, as if she understood perfectly but it was a secret.

If gods were going to be playing with him again, he wasn’t going to stand for it this time. He’d had enough of that. Last time, he’d simply slid aside, allowed their machinations to pass through him without touching him; if they were at it again, they’d learn that a Mara was not so far from divine that it was safe to toy with one. Well, maybe it was Kastor who was the pawn this time. If so, it was none of Stiaan’s concern.

And yet -- the vision had been so strong, and so unnerving. It gnawed at the back of his mind.

Moreover, did he have any right to resist the Ascended if they had a use for him? He no longer had any use for himself, after all, and no legitimate claim to his pride or freedom. His actions of the past century had been tantamount to an attack on Heaven. He had been a plague among angels. If they wished to use him, perhaps he should bow to them. But the fact of divnity didn’t necessarily make a being benevolent, as Stiaan well knew. He’d certainly been right to resist that slut Astaria when -- but if the Kyri Duality wanted something from him -- though why would that pair use any tool but one of their own? Or was Stiaan to assist their chosen agent? Kastor’s inclusion in the dream implied something like that. Although Kastor hadn’t seemed the type to welcome the help of a former enemy -- not that Stiaan knew the boy at all well, considering that they’d spent half of their single hour’s acquaintance trying to kill each other, and their only other conversation had been an excercise in emotionlessness.

Possibly if he spoke to Kastor... it wouldn’t be a pleasant conversation, but he might gain some information. What was there to be afraid of? Recriminations? There was nothing Kastor could say that would be worse than what Stiaan said to himself on a daily basis.

He slowed his step. He sensed a presence ahead. Someone lying in wait for him.

Sending out his senses, he determined that it was not a Mara or a demon, so he continued on his way. The only mortal who could harm him, he wouldn’t have been able to sense. Shortly he came in sight of a small figure perched on a rock. It was the child who’d been with the witch. Had she sent some message by him? Stiaan approached the little boy and gave him a slight bow.

The boy nodded solemnly in return, with princely dignity. They looked at each other, unspeaking. The child had a familiar look to him. Pale skin, gray eyes, a fringe of fine, straight, blue-black hair showing under his hat. Thin, serious face; confrontational posture. Judging, demanding.

Stiaan said, “You’re related to Kastor Auberlane, aren’t you.”

“I’m his son,” said the boy, with neither pride nor shame. “You’re the same kind of creature as the one last year. Mikah.”

“I’m his brother.”

The boy gave a satisfied nod.

“Is there something you want from me?”

“Yes. I want you to take me to my father.”

Stiaan raised an eyebrow. “What makes you think I’ll agree to something like that?”

“I dreamed you. I have a dream of you and my father standing back to back, fighting off storms and fire. I don’t know what you wanted from my Grandma, but I think you’re really here to find me. We’ll go to my father. It’s important.”

Stiaan paused, surprised. He had been about to refuse, had been asking only by way of making conversation, but this was perhaps the only answer that could have gotten him to agree. He said, “Would it suffice for me to carry a message to him? Your mother will be wroth if I steal you away.”

The boy drew himself up, lifting his chin, meeting Stiaan’s eyes with no fear and no concept of surrender. He looked astonishingly like his father when he did that. “My mother is very busy and doesn’t need me pestering her. Maybe I’m meant to help my father. My mother doesn’t need any help from me.”

Pity came, sympathy, like falling unexpectedly backwards into cold water: the boy was lonely, as lonely as Stiaan had been when he’d believed Mikah had abandoned him. More so, because he was just a mortal child, had to rely on others, and when those others disappointed him, he could do nothing about it. Except that in this case he could do one thing; he could try to reach his father. The fact that the boy wasn’t trying to play on Stiaan’s feelings, but was simply stating the facts as he saw them, made Stiaan feel a kind of kinship with him.

He nodded. “You don’t look as if you can walk very well.”

“I’m slow, but I can walk.”

“I don’t want to be slow.” Stiaan reached his senses out and called the nearest suitable creature. When a badger came lumbering out of the bracken, he spoke a few heavy words. The beast whuffled indignantly as its body swelled and changed. Then there stood before him a tall, sturdy horse, black with white markings. Stiaan mounted bareback. He reached down to the child.

The boy was gawking, round-eyed. He wasn’t so astonished, though, that he was willing to miss his chance. Tucking his walking cane through his belt like a sword, he held up his arms, allowed himself to be lifted up in front of Stiaan.

As he nudged the made-horse to a gentle walk, Stiaan said, “How do you know that I can find your father?”

“If you can make a horse out of a badger, you can do anything.”

“Not quite true. In this case, though, I happen to have a way. I have a bit of his blood. I kept it just in case I ever needed to find him again.” As he mentioned it, he used it; hidden under his shirt, the tiny vial that hung around his neck contained a minute quantity of brown powder, and exerted a powerful pull to the southwest.

“How did you get it? Did he give it to you?”

“We fought. Did you think I was a friend of his? I’m not. We might be enemies. It’s very foolish of you to come with me. For all you know, I’ll do you some harm.”

“No,” the child said confidently. “I can tell by looking at you.”

“Nonsense.”

“It’s not. I can tell. You make a face like this when you’re thinking.” The boy twisted around to give him a show of exaggerated brow-furrowing and lip-biting. “People like that never hurt anybody.”

“I’ve hurt a great many people, child.”

“I bet you had a different thinking face, then.”

“I suppose I did.” Stiaan found he was smiling. “Shall we go a little faster?” He caged the boy in his arms, so there was no chance of his falling off, and kicked the horse to a gallop. The boy have a whoop of pure joy and threw away his hat.