21st Scaral, 410 A.A.
Breodanir
“WHY DO YOU ALWAYS come when it’s dark?” Stephen held the lamp aloft; it further shadowed a face hidden by a midnight-blue hood. He spoke softly although there was no chance whatever that Gilliam would be wakened by his speech; Gil was not a light sleeper, and only when there was obvious danger—or when Stephen felt threatened—could he be roused once sleep had taken him. This was not one of those times, strange though the hour was.
“I don’t know,” his visitor replied, standing in the frame of the door as if anchored there. She never crossed the threshold without permission; like some wild wood-spirit, she lingered, waiting upon an invitation to enter as if it were the incantation that would free her.
The moon was at nadir; the lamplight seemed stronger for it. Stephen let her words linger in the air a moment, trying to get a feel for her voice. Was she old, this time? Was she young? Was she a woman in her prime, with a hint of mystery and veiled power cast round her like a shield that protected her from all questions?
“Come in,” he said at last, lowering the lamp. He stepped back, granting her passage into a room that would have been silent if not for Gil’s snoring.
Shadows flickered as the lamp bobbed up and down; Stephen very carefully moved two chairs closer to the fire. Wood was provided with the room, as was a servant to tend it; Stephen woke the drowsing boy and sent him on his way as kindly as possible. What the boy thought of the nocturnal visitor he was wise enough to keep to himself, but his regret at the loss of the fire’s warmth was written clear across his features. It was cold, this eve; the winter had been unpleasantly chill.
She waited until the boy left, and then carefully took a seat. He watched her. Her shoulders were slightly hunched toward the floor; she placed her hands carefully in her lap, but they were stiff. He doubted it was with cold.
“Evayne?”
“I don’t know,” she said again, but each word was slower and clearer. “I don’t know why the others come at night.”
“And you?”
“Because that’s when the mage sleeps.”
“Truly?”
She didn’t reply. But she raised her hands to the edge of her hood and carefully pulled it back. In the orange light and shadow, he could see her smooth, pale skin. Her hair, raven black, was pulled away from her face and hung at her back in a knot. At least, he guessed it did; she never showed him her back. Tonight, she was young.
And when she was young, she was easy to startle, easy to upset. Startled or upset, she was like a gorse bush or a brier; painful if not handled with care. He rose, so that she could see his back, and carefully lifted a short log for the fire.
“Do you mistrust Zareth Kahn?”
“Do you mean do I have a reason to distrust him? No. It’s not just him, it’s any of the mage-born. I don’t want to talk to them. I don’t want to answer their questions. Especially not when they’re members of the Order.”
He spread the leaves of the large cloth fan and began to wake embers. “I see.” He could almost understand it; Zareth Kahn was both curious and deceptively ordinary in appearance. It was easy to relax and speak plainly and companionably with him—too easy, too quickly. “Why have you come?”
Her silences, when she came to him as an older woman, were things of confidence, and of confidences kept to herself. Or so it had first appeared. But a glimpse of her younger self, of this angry, tense, and fearful young woman, made of her silences an inability to communicate, a lack of common ground. Would she speak if she thought he could understand her? He was certain of it.
At last she said, as she often did, “I don’t know.”
“Do you know where we are?”
“On the road. To the land of the Twin Kings, the Empire of Essalieyan. To Averalaan, the capital.”
“Well, yes. But do you know where on the road we are?”
She shrugged. “No.” Her voice told him she thought it unimportant.
He knew that she had not always walked this strange road; that she had had a life of her own, in a village somewhere outside of Essalieyan, with friends of a sort. She could read and write, and she had learned much of this at the Mother’s temple, aiding the priestess. He knew that her path was a matter of choice, a momentous choice, but a choice nonetheless. More than that—her age, the year that the village existed, the place, be it near or far—she would not tell him.
But he knew young ladies well enough, and he did not seek to fill her silence with words of his own. She wanted to be heard—even more, to be listened to—and she did not have much left over to hear or listen to others with. A half hour passed; the logs cracked and crackled as flames leaped up the grate. They sat together, Gilliam a noisy accompaniment in the background.
At last she asked, “Are you always like this?”
Stephen said nothing.
“I can’t even see your face, with your back to the fire. But you might be a demon or a haunting.” She looked down at her hands, and slowly turned them round in her lap; they were bare. She wore no jewelry at all, save for a clasp at her throat, a silver brooch of some sort. As it caught the firelight’s glow, it seemed to be a flower of light. “What are they like?”
“They?”
“The others. Me. When I’m older.”
“As different from you,” he replied, “as I am from my eight-year-old self.”
She smiled bitterly. “But you don’t meet people who just spoke to your eight-year-old self yesterday.”
“No, I don’t.” He turned and put another log very carefully into the fire. “I don’t know what they’re like, Evayne. If what you’re asking me is are they like you, then I can’t answer the question. I don’t know who you are.”
“You aren’t supposed to,” she replied, and again her voice was bitter.
“Oh?” He shifted to face her again. “And who made those rules?”
She was silent, and he waited, hoping that she would draw herself out of the shell of darkness that she sat in. But at length she rose. “I have to go,” she said, but almost without rancor.
He didn’t ask her when she’d return; he knew by now that it was a question that she was sensitive to—as she was to all else at this age. Still, he found it disconcerting when she began to shimmer in place. She stared at her feet, at something that he couldn’t see, and then she took a single step forward that carried her out of his view.
What, he thought, as he left the room to search for the hearth boy, made you choose this life? He stopped, pressing two fingers to his lips, although he hadn’t spoken the question aloud. There were things it was best not to ask because answers often had their price.
A chill crept into the base of his spine as he glanced up and down the narrow hall. He felt certain, quite suddenly, that he would have his answer.
• • •
Why do you always have to talk to her?
What difference does it make? You’re busy enough as it is.
What in the hells is that supposed to mean?
Stephen sat on the edge of his bed, gritting his teeth. It had been a bad day, and while a bath and a good, hot meal had gone a long way to grinding down the edges it had produced, they weren’t fully smoothed by any means. Gilliam, better than anyone he knew, could get under his skin and stay there.
If it weren’t for the presence of Zareth Kahn, the argument would have evolved into something less wordy and more intense. As it was, Stephen’s need to present as decorous a face as possible held his hand, and Gilliam eventually retreated to the company of his dogs and the wild girl.
Where once they had panicked her, their arguments were now a thing of curiosity to the feral child. She would sit and watch, head cocked to one side, black eyes unblinking. It was cold enough that she tolerated some mix of fur and clothing, but even then, she tolerated it poorly, and was likely as not to be seen running exposed at the side of the dogs. Her parentage protected her, one assumed, from the elements.
She was happy to be with Gilliam, and followed his commands—the ones that Stephen could hear—with more grace than the dogs that had been raised to it.
Gilliam.
What is Evayne anyway, a replacement for Cynthia?
Oh, it wasn’t finished yet. Evayne at that age was hardly adult—if she was adult—and he wasn’t attracted to her. How could he be? He’d started to pull his slippers off his feet when he heard the knock. Tonight, there was something distinctly different about it. He stood, grabbed the lamp, and crossed the room before he drew another breath.
He opened the door, and she stood in its frame.
He knew at once that she was the woman and not the child; the mage, and not the messenger. “Come in,” he said almost meekly.
She stepped across the threshold. Lifted a hand, and sent a shower of gray and white plumes toward the window. The curtains fell with a crash, as if on a play that had come to an abrupt, and unexpected, end.
Stephen stepped back, holding the lamp in front of his chest as his only shield. He heard movement, and knew that Espere was awake; Gilliam, although affecting a snore, had roused the moment the sparks had gone flying to bring the curtains down. He could feel his Hunter’s tension through their bond, as his Hunter felt his; their arguments were left to the light of another day.
Evayne turned to the fire and the frightened boy who sat, mouth agape, at its side. Her movement freed him; he grabbed an iron poker and held it like a club, while he braced his back against the wall. “I mean you no harm,” she said softly. The light at her hands became white, and whiter still, as the words, soothing and soft, left her lips. “Sleep in peace; I mean you no harm; nothing will hurt you.”
The boy’s lids began to drop as did the iron he held, each covering a gentle arc toward its destination. He slid down, inch by inch, until he sat, legs sprawled, on the floor. His breathing was deep and perfectly even.
Gilliam rose in that instant, but not to attack; he found his clothing in the scant light and began to put it on. “Go join the dogs,” he told the wild girl.
“No.” Evayne raised one slender hand. Command was in the single word, but no magic; Espere halted at the door and looked askance at her master. She was not uncomfortable in the presence of this sorceress; indeed, she seemed to be in high spirits at the sight of magic, as if magic’s use was familiar to her. “I’ve come to guide you across the river. Send the dogs ahead; no one will stop them if they do not travel with you.”
“I will not leave—”
“I cannot guarantee that any of you will survive the crossing; the dogs will most certainly not if they attempt it with us.” As she spoke, she drew something from out of the folds of her robe; Gilliam caught a glimpse of the darkness within the robe’s depths, and it seemed, for a moment, endless. “Do you recognize this? No, let me tell you. It is a seer’s ball. Your dogs will die if they follow our road.”
Gilliam met her gaze and held it. Then, grudgingly, he nodded. He closed his eyes, not because it was necessary but because it was fastest, and began to speak with his pack. They were already awake; the moment he’d known of danger, they’d felt it as well. Ashfel was standing at the kennel doors, growling quietly. He lifted his head, almost in salute, as Gilliam trance-touched him.
There was a boy asleep in the corner by the fire. Gilliam chose Connel, the smallest of the hounds, with which to approach him. Luckily, they were still in Breodanir, and the villagers that were chosen to tend the Lords’ dogs were no ignorant or superstitious free-towners. The boy shook sleep from his eyes and rose as Connel tugged at his sleeve.
Salas, Marrat, Singer, and Corfel lined up by the door in a perfectly still circle. Ashfel, looking regal, growled impatiently.
“Aye, I’m hurrying,” the boy muttered. “It’s easy for the lot of you to be awake—you’ve got the beds.” He hesitated at the kennel doors. “I’m not so sure I should let you out. What if it isn’t your Lord a’calling?”
In answer, Ashfel growled again, and the six dogs turned, almost as one creature, to stare out, as if the walls did not exist. The boy shook his head again, said a quick, but very sincere prayer to the Hunter, and then opened the door. The dogs trotted out quietly into the night; Connel stopped to nudge the boy back into the warmth of the building.
Good, Connel, Gilliam thought, as he eased himself out of his trance. If he had the chance, he would have to talk to the innkeeper about that boy. A remarkable choice of guardian; one of whom Gilliam approved wholeheartedly. “It’s done,” he said quietly to the silent room.
The seeress nodded. “You are the pebble that starts the avalanche,” she said softly and with no humor. “Come. The bridge has been burned to ash, and the family that collects its tolls murdered. They are waiting for you to attempt the crossing.”
“Who are they?”
“Your enemies,” she replied evenly. “We will travel a different route.”
“We will—”
“Wake the mage.”
“The mage,” a new voice said, “is awake.” Zareth Kahn stood, back to the closed door that adjoined their rooms. “And has been for some minutes.” He stood in his journey robes, his arms across his chest, his gaze intent upon the newcomer. “You are Evayne?”
“We have,” Evayne replied, “no time. We must leave, and soon.”
“Evayne—” Stephen began, but the seer raised her hand and cut him off.
“Zareth Kahn,” she said, her voice low and tense, “the date?”
“It’s the twentieth day of the tenth month,” he replied crisply.
“No,” she said, “it’s now the twenty-first day of Scaral.” She watched his face, waiting to see the reaction that she desired. It came, but not quickly and not strongly enough.
“Scarran,” he said.
“Yes.”
“What in the hells is Scarran?” Gilliam broke in.
But Stephen of Elseth was already throwing together the odds and ends that were absolutely essential to their survival: money, furs, the letters that Lady Elseth had written. All else was trivial. Don’t argue with her, Gil, he thought, and the urgency behind his fear hit his Hunter hard. We’ve got to run.
Espere began to dance from foot to foot, her eyes darting from Evayne to Gilliam to the door as if they formed the points of a mysterious triangle that she was compelled to trace over and over again.
“Scarran?” Evayne said softly to Gilliam. “Do you know what Lattan is?”
“No.”
“Lattan is High Summer. The bright conjunction.” She walked to the door, motioned Zareth Kahn to one side, and opened it. “Scarran is High Winter. The dark conjunction. The old power and the old roads are open this eve, and they will be used against us.”
Zareth Kahn raised a dark brow. “The Summer and Winter rites? Not even the most diligent of pre-Weston scholars do more than a cursory study of their significance. There are certainly no mages who—” Then he stopped. “Ah. The kin.”
“Indeed. No, don’t use your magery here. I have studied the ways of hiding, and I’ve done what it is possible to do.”
Zareth Kahn glanced at Gilliam and Stephen, then nodded. “It appears that we are all set to follow where you lead. Lead us to safety.”
Evayne smiled grimly. “I can only lead you,” she replied, “into the darkest night.”
• • •
Night made of the world a quiet, sleepy place, a near-hidden landscape in which dream—or nightmare—unfurled. The air was crisp and chilly when inhaled, but there was no breeze. The moon was under a veil of darkness; to Stephen’s eyes, it seemed that it had somehow shattered, and the shards, hard and cold, were scattered across the sky like a brilliant spill.
The shivery feeling at the base of Stephen’s spine had little to do with the cold; Gilliam, Hunter Lord of Elseth, was calling the Hunter’s trance.
Evayne said nothing, although Stephen was certain she noticed the momentary slowing of their pace, the stiffening of Gilliam’s body, as he readied himself. She did not demur. Stephen unsheathed his sword, careful to make little noise. The stillness of the air, the silence on the snow- and ice-covered path, were eerie enough that he didn’t wish to disturb them.
Evayne’s hands moved briefly; she whispered a word that sounded vaguely familiar to Stephen, although it was in a tongue with which he was unfamiliar. He listened, trying to place the word, before he realized that he would listen long indeed, and with little result.
Magery.
Beneath his feet, the land changed. Where there had been a flat surface of ice and snow, a path appeared, limned with an eerie, pale light that wound its way into the heart of the darkness. She did not tell them to follow it; she didn’t need to. They walked, two abreast, Espere bringing up the rear, the silence bearing down upon them more heavily with each passing moment.
Something’s going to happen, Stephen thought, forcing himself to exhale as he strode across the night landscape. Although the night was clear, storm was brewing; the air was thick and heavy with it. He cast a surreptitious glance over his shoulder and met the gaze of Zareth Kahn. A flicker of blue light adorned the mage’s eyes; they looked inhuman and unnatural. Stephen stumbled, and seeing this, his companion narrowed his eyes.
“What is it?” Gilliam said, instantly aware of his brother’s unease.
Stephen swallowed. “Magic.” Then, quickly, “Ours.”
“No,” Zareth Kahn replied, gazing at the woods they were approaching. “Not ours alone. Evayne—there. Directly north. Do you see it?”
The blue-robed seer raised a dark brow and then gestured; light flickered over her face like a mask before sinking into her eyes to lurk there like hidden fire. “Kalliaris’ frown.” The goddess of luck was, like the night, of dark aspect. Evayne raised her arms to either side; the command to stop was implicit in the gesture. “You’re of reasonable power, Master Kahn.”
“And you,” he replied softly.
“The rest of us don’t have mage-sight,” Gilliam said tersely as he squinted into a row of trees that looked almost the same as any other row of trees did in the distance with night and winter to obscure it. “What do you see?”
“Spell,” Zareth Kahn replied, his brow furrowed. “I don’t recognize it. But it is either a very powerful Shadow magic or a very powerful Scarran rite. I don’t know enough about either of those schools of study to say which it is with certainty.” His tone implied that neither school was a magic that was friendly.
Evayne took a deep and weary breath. “This is ill news,” she said at last. “I’ve done what I can to shield us from the sight of our enemies, but we can’t continue to hide forever; it’s a costly spell to maintain. I’d hoped that beyond the forest there would be some respite.” She turned and began to retrace her path. “We cannot cross to the east; not tonight.” They did not question her, but instead, followed as she led them west.
And in the darkness of the western woods, the same cold magic deepened and broadened the shadows of the night. Like a liquid, it pooled near the roots of the trees, waiting. Evayne would not tell them the spell’s purpose, although it was clear that she knew it.
They walked to the north, and then to the south; in every direction, the danger was identical.
Evayne cursed, and then cursed again, more loudly, for good measure. “I am a fool,” she said at last. “They never meant to wait for you to take the bridge; they only meant to prevent your flight should you make it that far.” She lifted a hand to her lips, and stood, gazing out at the Northern woods. “Zareth Kahn,” she said, after five minutes had passed, “give me some hope. Tell me that the shadows are not moving toward us.”
“I never lie to a lady,” the mage replied gravely. “But I had hoped that it was my imagination.”
“What’s wrong? What is it?” Gilliam reached out and touched the seer’s draping sleeve. It pulled away from his hand, but in the darkness he could pretend it was the woman who had moved.
“Do you remember the demon-kin that you faced m the King’s City?” Evayne asked quietly.
“Yes.”
“Expect far worse.”
Stephen’s grip on leather and steel tightened out of habit; he no longer expected to be able to wield the sword to any advantage. He remembered the fight in the King’s City quite well. He felt, rather than saw, Gilliam’s painful wince; the Hunter Lord still bore the scars of that evening’s work, and would while he lived.
Which might, Stephen thought, as the night began to deepen, not be that much longer.
Evayne cursed again. Stephen had only seen her thrice at this age, and on none of those occasions had he seen the weight of fear bear so heavily down upon her. She closed her eyes, and her brow furrowed as if she were already upon the field. Then she turned to the wild girl. “Espere,” she said tersely. “Come.”
Gilliam bridled, but the wild girl tossed her tangled hair and obeyed the seeress’ command. She stopped mere inches away from Evayne’s shaking, outstretched palm.
“Take it.” A deep golden light suffused her hand, cocooning palm and fingers beneath the warmth of its glow.
Espere reached out and almost gently gripped the light. It surrounded them both, running from finger to finger, from hand to hand, until it was hard to see who it had originated from.
“Enough.” Evayne lifted her head, and even in the darkness, Stephen thought her haggard.
“Evayne?”
But she waved him off. “Espere.”
The girl blinked, and then, slowly, raised hands to eyes. Stephen thought the motion very odd, but not as strange as what she did next: she spoke. “Y-yes. I am—I am back.”
“You won’t be for much longer. I need your eyes. I need your father’s ability. Test the wind, little one. Guard my back.”
Espere nodded gravely, pushing a tangled curl away from eyes that were no longer black. Stephen’s breath caught in his throat as he saw the change; she was golden-irised now, and her eyes had the peculiar brilliance of the god-born at work. Where had the wild girl gone?
Evayne reached into her robes and brought forth the crystal sphere that she had called the seer’s ball. She cupped it carefully in her hands and bent over it; her dark hood fell forward, obscuring her face but not the ball itself.
Mists curled there, trapped beneath a glassy layer. Light sparked; shadows fled. Stephen took a step forward, as if drawn by the visions the ball promised.
And the wild girl stepped blithely between the future and the present, blocking Stephen’s vision. She was not so wild now, and not so much the girl. There was a lift to her jaw, a strength to her features, that he had never seen there. He started to speak, but she shook her head.
“But—”
“No. If we talk, we may well pay with our lives for the discussion.”
Wide-mouthed, he watched her as she left him, tracing some invisible circle around the seeress who gazed, transfixed, into the pulsing ball. He felt shock, surprise, even a little pain and bewilderment; emotions so strong, that it took him a minute to realize that they did not originate with him.
Gilliam. He spun lightly to see his Hunter Lord staring, almost glassy eyed, at the wild girl—at Espere.
“What’s wrong?”
Gilliam shook his head. He was mute under the weight of what he felt; he had no words to describe it, or perhaps, no desire to bind the emotion with words. Stephen could feel some of it, but he could not understand it. What passed between Gilliam and his pack—be they the finest of the hounds, or a mysterious half-wit, half-god—was so private a communion that not even a huntbrother could comprehend all of it.
And what did it mean, to be bound in that way to a woman—to a whole, sane, rational being; to an equal? What did it mean, when the bond changed suddenly, shifting in place as if it had never truly been anything but illusory?
As if the question were one that he had spoken aloud, the wild girl turned and gazed at him, her eyes luminous in the darkness. He took an involuntary step back at what he saw there: grieving. Stephen of Elseth was a huntbrother, and therefore no stranger to grief. Although she met his gaze for only a second, he recognized it at once.
And then she lifted her head, testing the wind as if she were a scent-hound. It was almost a comfort to see the motion, because it was the only thing that she had done that seemed remotely familiar.
The comfort was a cold one, and the moment Espere spoke, it turned to ice. “They’re coming.”
“I . . . see them,” Evayne replied. The light from the crystal shadowed the lines of her face, deepening them. “Oh, holy triumvirate, aid us. Goddess, smile. Smile, please.” She bit her lip; her hands shook. Then she closed her eyes, and her face aged years. Slowly, carefully, she set the ball aside.
“Evayne?”
“Lady?”
“The tower was a game,” was her pale reply. “They come in earnest. Look.” And she cast her arm in a circle, scattering a spray of orange light across the snow and shadows. It melted the darkness, contorted it, gave it many forms. Each of those forms was moving toward them, linked in a series of concentric circles. Evayne stood at its heart, the center of a vast target.
“Well met,” came a soft voice.
Zareth Kahn started slightly and then raised his own arms in a shield of coruscating light. It, too, was orange.
The demons—for there could no longer be any doubt as to what they were—slowed their stride. Twice, Stephen tried to count them and failed. He made no third attempt. He swung his sword round and held it level, glancing from side to side. How? he thought, as Gilliam became a wall at his back. How did they get here?
“Well met,” Sor na Shannen said again, as she stepped from the darkness to the darkness, gleaming like polished obsidian. “We have unfinished business with all of you.” She raised her arms and spoke three harsh words; the darkness fell from her shoulders like a cast-off cloak. Beneath it, her raiment was fire.
“High Winter makes you bold,” Evayne said, her expression unreadable.
“No, seeress,” Sor na Shannen replied. “It makes me powerful.” Like a whip, fire leaped from her hands. The snow and the ice that she stood on were gone in an instant, as was the slumbering grass beneath them; the fire left red and white rock sizzling in its wake.
“Wild Fire,” Evayne’s whisper was a weary one.
“Oh, yes,” the demon replied. “And now, before Winter passes, let us see an end to this.”
The seeress nodded quietly. “Before Winter ends.” And she, too, lifted her hands. In comparison, they seemed thin and frail, bereft of power or magic. She carried only a dagger, and it was a meager and pathetic weapon. A flash of purple in the handle caught the orange light and glinted softly above her head as she gazed into the moonless night.
The laughter of the demoness carried across the silent, winter landscape. “Did you truly think to stop us?”
Evayne tightened her grip on the handle of the dagger before driving it into the flesh of her right palm. Blood trickled from the wound onto her upturned face. Her voice was trembling, her complexion gray, as she began to speak quickly.
“We break the Spring circle. We deny the birthing.” She shook her right hand; blood spattered on the ground and hissed there, as if alive and in pain. The ice beneath her feet gave way to a slick, sudden blackness.
Flame lapped at the perimeter of the first circle as Sor na Shannen gestured lazily.
“We break the Summer circle. We deny the living.” Again she shook her hand, and again blood hit the ground as if it had become unnatural.
“We break the Autumn circle. We deny the dying.” A third time, her hands flew. She cast a shadow in the orange light of Zareth Kahn’s protective magery; it was a long shadow that fell over them all, deepening and chilling as the seconds passed. Even Espere stopped her circling, her soft growl, and moved quietly to Evayne’s side.
“What are you doing, little seer? You cannot hope to escape us.” But the words of the demoness had lost some of their grandeur, their glamour. She frowned, and gestured for the shadows that leaped up from the ground like eager counselors.
Evayne paid her no heed, for shadows of her own summoning now darkened the clearing. “We have come, free of coercion, to the hidden road, and we know well that we will walk it in Winter. I am Evayne a’Neamis; I have walked the Oracle’s road, I have seen the Oracle’s vision, I have made the Choice. The hidden path cannot be denied me. You ask for power and I speak with its voice. I bid thee: Open!”
“NO!”
The world fell away.
• • •
Sor na Shannen’s cry of denial echoed in the hollows of the strange forest the land suddenly became. Trees, sharply defined even in the poor light, stood bare of leaves, and perhaps even of bark.
Are they trees? Stephen wondered.
“Keep to the road!” Evayne snapped. “Do not set a foot off it; do not even move down it without my guidance. Is that clear?” She opened her mouth to say more, and then bit back the words, shook her head sharply, and turned her back upon them. There was a curious finality to the gesture.
The demons were gone. They were safe.
But it certainly didn’t feel that way.
Stephen swallowed and nodded. He expected Gilliam to argue, but Gilliam made no protest; he frowned, but the frown was turned wholly on Espere. She was pale, as white as the snow, and her eyes were wide, golden circles. The hair along her neck bristled; her gaze flickered from side to side as if she were surrounded by enemies that not even her nightmares conjured. The demons had not had this effect on Espere.
Stephen didn’t need to be bound to her to feel her fear. It was palpable, another distinct presence.
“It is clear,” Zareth Kahn said quietly, “but not necessarily acceptable.” He crossed his arms and looked down at the curtain of midnight-blue that fell from her shoulders to the ground. “I may be mistaken,” he continued, his voice soft and measured enough that one might think it friendly. “I confess my reliable knowledge of magery does not go back further than the dominance of the Dark League.”
Evayne did not respond.
“But I have a cursory knowledge of the history of magery, and the branches of magery that have long since passed into disuse.” He took a step toward her. “Scarran was called the dark conjunction, and if I remember correctly, only a Dark Adept could call its power.”
“You remember correctly,” she replied, bowing her head.
“I see.” He took a step back. “I also seem to recall that the magic of the Dark Adepts often required a sacrifice.”
Very slowly, the seeress turned. She cradled her crystal in the crook of her left arm; her right hand covered its surface, obscuring it from sight.
Stephen gasped and shook his head slowly from side to side. Zareth Kahn’s power flared to life as he took another step away from Evayne. Or from the woman that had once been Evayne.
Her face was ice, her hair ebony. And her eyes, once violet, were now utterly black. All around her skin, hovering like a fine mist, were gossamer strands of darkness. She no longer appeared fatigued; she no longer appeared to be human.
“A sacrifice?” She laughed bitterly. “Oh, yes, Zareth Kahn. You do know your history. One of us will not leave the Winter road.”