35

Canaian Fields, central Khale

WINTER SHIVERED DESPITE THE late summer heat, wiping sweat from her brow.

“These are the Canaian Fields?” she asked. She stood with Urstadt, Selldor, Ghian, Rorie, and Nardo in the flatlands. Not far to the west, a small river ran southwards. To the north and to the east, the outlines of the Eastmaw and Undritch Mountains, respectively, jutted above the horizon.

“Aye, Commander,” Rorie said. The Canaian Fields were just more plains, really, extending from the Eastmaw Mountains southward, where they eventually met with Canai’s lake, one of three huge lakes in Central Khale. Both the lake and the fields took their name from King Canai Mazen—the King Who Gave Up His Crown one hundred and seventy-two years ago. The act had abolished the monarchy that had ruled Khale for millennia, establishing the Parliament, and emancipated the tiellan race from slavery.

They had all agreed it seemed an ideal place to pitch the battle.

“Don’t we want to position ourselves somewhere where it ain’t so flat?” Nardo asked. The chieftain had become Winter’s main liaison with the Cracked Spear. “The Khalic force is three times the size of our own. Don’t we want the high ground?”

“Don’t you want to shut your Goddess-damned mouth?” Winter snapped. “Last I checked, you haven’t won two battles, outnumbered, against the Khalic army.” Canta’s bloody bones. Nardo was supposed to be a chieftain.

Winter felt Urstadt’s hand on her shoulder, and she took a deep breath.

“We have our strategy,” Winter said, keeping her voice even only with great effort. “We will move forward with it as long as it proves successful.”

“Commander, you are still sick,” Selldor said. “We should get you back to a fire.”

Winter waved her hand angrily at her lieutenant. “I don’t need a fire, it’s warm enough as it is.” She was conscious of the fact that she shivered as she said it. She wasn’t sick, though. She had felt this way once before, in the dungeons of Izet, after overdosing on Knot’s frost crystals. For the first few months of her imprisonment, Daval had not given her frost, and this was what her body had done to her. She had not cared so much then, because she’d had nothing to live for at the time.

But now Winter’s faltira was gone, and tomorrow she was going to fight a battle larger than any she could possibly imagine. The stakes were just a bit higher this time.

The sweating, the chills, the vomiting, were all part of this process. She suspected her withdrawal from frost might have something to do with her irritability, too, but that didn’t matter. She had taken two of her crystals, spaced out over the past week and a half, when the symptoms had become too much for her, when her defenses had completely crumbled. Now, she had one left, and she prayed with every ounce of her strength to any god or goddess that would listen that she’d be able to abstain from taking it before the battle.

“I’m fine,” Winter said, but she wasn’t. A rest next to a fire might not help her much, but it would help her more than wandering around this Goddess-damned field.

* * *

The woman shivers in her cot, vomiting intermittently. She has given her last faltira crystal to Urstadt for safekeeping; she does not trust herself with it tonight.

Tomorrow, when the battle begins, she will be able to take the frost crystal. Tomorrow, she will feel better. But tonight, she is alone with her nightmares.

Instead of facing them, the woman turns to the Void.

In the Void, while her pain is still present, she at least finds herself removed from it, like an echo, or a memory. It is still there, and it will return in full force whenever she leaves the Void, but for now, it is in the background. It is part of her, but in the Void, at least, it is not her. When she returns to the Sfaera, she will become the pain, the pain will be her, and there will be no separation between the two.

But, for now, the woman drifts.

She drifts, and she hears voices, although she cannot decide whether they are real or not. She thinks she hears Kali, and for a moment she is happy; she has not spoken to Kali since Izet, but despite how much she distrusts the woman, she realizes she would appreciate the contact. She hears other voices, too, but the one that cuts through them all is a deep, rumbling bass wreathed in crackling fire. Is Azael truly here, with her? Or is she imagining it in her fevered state? She may not be in the Void at all. All of this, the blinking star-lights around her, the voices, the distance from the pain, might not be real, might all simply be the product of her fevered, writhing, pathetic state.

Without frost, I am nothing. With it, I can do anything.

She remembers the visions she had in Izet, when Azael threatened her. The Void stars expanding and contracting. Knot and Astrid. A great battle, around a rihnemin. Panic cracks inside her; should she have found a rihnemin around which to stage the battle with the Khalic army? Or was that a different battle altogether? She remembers the other visions, too. A stone giant, falling on flowers. A pillar of light defending a city from Daemons. Other things, some she knows to be true and real, and others she knows are not.

I wish I understood the nature of these visions, because if I did, I might be able to do something about them.

She sees something new, now. A different world? It is the Sfaera, but it is not. She lives there, but she does not. Knot and Winter have a child in this world, but they do not.

None of this makes any sense.

She sees another battle, this time without a rihnemin—has her vision changed, or is this something different? She sees herself, in the middle of this battle, and takes faltira at the beginning, before the armies engage. She seeks out the enemy psimancers through the Void, and kills all of them. Seven psimancers.

And then the battle begins, and the Khalic Legion pushes her army back…

The woman blinks, her form drifting in the Void, and then blinks again, and she comes crashing back down to her form on her cot in her tent, shivering.

* * *

Winter leaned over her cot, grabbing the pot that had been placed there, and vomited until she felt she had nothing left inside of her.