When Winter Comes

When Winter Comes When Winter Comes SHARON SHINN -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Chapter One People always say they're willing to die for the ones they love, as if nothing else they could do would be so hard. But it is harder to keep living for someone else, doing everything in your power to keep that person safe and breathing. I know. All these past weeks I have been living for my sister and her son, battling everyone else in the world, or so it seems, to keep Annie and Kinnon alive. I have defied my father, broken my mother's heart, traveled in secret, gone without sleep, gone without food, and hidden from violent strangers trying to kill all of us because of the magic in Kinnon's veins. Most days it would be easier to be dead. We left our parents' house when Kinnon was only three weeks old. Too soon by any measure. Annie had nearly died giving birth to him, and only survived because of two mystics who happened to be passing through our tiny village the very hour we needed them most. Until the night Kinnon was born, I'd never had any dealings with mystics—I'd been as afraid of their sorcerous abilities as my father was, or most of the other people I knew. But it had been clear all during the pregnancy that the baby in my sister's womb possessed a strange power, for there was a heat and a glow to her skin that ordinary women never had. She confessed that her lover had been a mystic and that she feared her baby would be as well. The night she went into labor, my father attempted to cast her out of the house. I ran to the tavern for help. And help was there. Two women I had never seen before and never expect to see again. Both of them were healers and one of them—the strange one, the pale-haired one called Senneth—had the power of fire in her hands. They saved Annie, they saved Kinnon, they warded the bedroom door so that my father could not come in and hurt us. Senneth even enchanted two ordinary stones for my sister and me, embuing them with a magical power that would give us strength when our own strength was at its lowest. And then they left. Three weeks later, we left as well. It was not safe to stay. Not just my father, not just my brothers, but all the neighbors from our little town hated us and wanted us gone. I knew this, because I was Annie's only link to the world outside. I brought food and milk to my sister and my nephew, I carried their soiled clothes out through the warded door and brought clean linens back inside. I suffered my father's blows when I could not avoid them and was chased out of the tavern more than once by neighbors who jeered and threatened. Until this time, I had always been well-liked. The blacksmith had been pleased when I flirted with his son, and the tavern-master had hired me to wait tables on busy days. Now the tavern-master shouted at me to get out, and the blacksmith's son flung a molten horseshoe at me, barely missing. Everyone felt revulsion for the mystic and his mother and his aunt. Better off gone. We left one bright winter morning that was so cold I could feel frost forming on my ribs inside my body. Annie swore she was strong enough to walk, though she'd had no exercise for three weeks except for moving between the bed and the crib. I had sewn a carrier for Kinnon, a soft cloth pouch that held him close to the chest while its straps buckled over his mother's back. Annie wrapped him to his eyebrows and then buttoned her coat over both of them. She was not strong enough to carry anything else except a basket of bread and cheese. I had appropriated a two-wheeled cart from my father's tool-shed and filled it with as much as I thought I could manage—clothes, blankets, more food, a knife, a piece of flint, the barest essentials for surviving on the road—and even so, I knew it was not enough. No one tried to stop us as we left, though our father and our brothers glared at us and our mother lay on her bed and sobbed. Through the main room we went, through the front door, out into the brilliant and bitter day. And we walked. We walked away from everything we had ever known, a place we had lived since both of us had been born. I had never felt so afraid and so helpless in all my life. Senneth had told us to head for Rappengrass, where we could take shelter with another mystic. But she had warned us there would be no safety on the road, and perhaps no safety even once we arrived at our destination. For mystics, there was no safety anywhere. For some reason, we had not realized how much trouble Kinnon could bring us in our travels, small as he was. Oh, from the minute he was born, it was clear he was rife with a power even his mother did not know how to control. His rage could cause shoes to fly across the room, plates to hurl themselves from the table to the floor. Senneth had taught us to wrap a moonstone in a scrap of cloth and tuck it beside him in his blankets. A bare moonstone could burn a mystic's skin, which was why it must be covered, but it could also dampen a mystic's power, which was why it worked. Most of the time. The first day we traveled, we only covered twelve or fifteen miles, and even that was a hard-won distance. Annie had moved slowly, so slowly, her face pinched with pain and weariness and determination. She had no breath to speak, though now and then she murmured into Kinnon's hair, so either I did all the talking or we walked in silence. We did not encounter many other travelers, and when we did, we crowded to the side of the road so they could pass. There is always some risk for two young women out in open country with no protectors, but no one harassed us. I had a knife up my sleeve and was prepared to use it, but the need did not arise. No, trouble did not come until that night. We had made an uncomfortable camp a little way off the road. It was so cold that we had to build a fire or risk freezing to death. We traveled through lightly wooded countryside, so fuel was plentiful, but there was so much to do and no help to be expected from Annie. She sat numbly beside the cart where I had left her, nursing the baby and looking tired enough to sleep sitting up. I gathered food, started the fire, laid out a meal, cleaned up after we'd eaten, changed the baby, pulled out the blankets, and gently pushed Annie to the ground. "Lie down," I said. "Get some sleep. We have to go on tomorrow." Obediently, she stretched out on the hard ground. "How far?" "As far as we can make it." "For how many days?" As many as it takes us, I wanted to say. "I don't know. I have a map that Senneth drew. We're going to the house of another mystic. We'll walk till we get there." She sighed and closed her eyes. I expected her to say "I'm so tired" or "I don't know if I can make it." Instead she said, "I don't deserve a sister like you, Sosie." "Why would you say that?" I demanded in a rough voice. She opened her eyes. They were dark green on a normal day, or at least before she'd had Kinnon. Now they were paler, grayer, as though Kinnon's small greedy life had sucked even this small bit of color out of her. "You have been so good to me," she said. "You have given up everything for me. Everything." "I've given up nothing," I said, still brusque. "I wouldn't have stayed at our father's house. Even if you and Kinnon had both died that night. I couldn't have stayed any longer." I could tell she was struggling to keep her eyes open, but the lids dropped. "What will happen to you now?" she whispered. "What will happen to any of us?" I whispered back. I was certain she was already asleep. Kinnon, who slept beside her, waited about four hours before he decided to make things interesting. I was deeply dreaming when the bird's nest dropped on my face from an overhanging branch. Choking and disoriented, I scrambled to my feet, trying to understand where I was, what was happening. Twigs and hard bits of icy snow and loose acorns were raining down on us from the tree above. It was as if a giant had grabbed the trunk and was shaking it with all his might, as if a strong wind blew through, hard enough to bend the tree over double. But the tree was not shaking. The wind was not blowing. Seeds and kindling and nests came tumbling down as if the tree had simply opened its sticky fingers and : let go of everything it had ever possessed. I put my hand up to fend off debris and glanced over at my sister. She was still sound asleep, but Kinnon was awake, the shine of his eyes barely visible in the fading flicker of firelight. Somehow he had twisted free of the blanket he shared with his mother. His tiny, fisted hands waved uncertainly at his sides as if he was not sure how to move them or what would happen when he did. The wrapped moonstone, the charm designed to keep his power in check, lay uncovered on the ground a few inches away. He waved his arms again, and a piece of dried wood fell with a thump right at Annie's feet. She did not stir. "You dreadful child," I exclaimed in an undervoice, retrieving the moonstone, tying the cloth around it again, and tucking it under his collar. Twigs and acorns immediately stopped falling from the tree. "If there was any malice in you, I'd have to leave you for the wolves to find, but I suppose you don't even know you're the bane of my existence. Go to sleep, Kinnon, please do." Of course he didn't. Having napped most of the day, he was wide awake now. Thank goodness he didn't seem hungry, too, because I wouldn't even dream of waking Annie at this hour. I played with him and rocked him and whispered lullabies in his ear. It was still another hour before he slept. I knew that dawn would come too soon, and it did. Both Annie and I were cold, exhausted, sore, and hungry when we woke in the morning. And afraid. Was this to be the pattern for the rest of our lives? A slow journeyman insufficient meal, an unsatisfying sleep, and nothing ahead but a repeat of the dreary day just passed? "This will be a hard way to live," Annie said, attempting to smile as she said it. She was nursing the baby. I had built up the fire again, just so we could be warm for as long as it took to eat breakfast. I gave her a very serious look. "But at least we'll live." "And it will be better when we're at the mystic's house," she said. If we make it that far, I wanted to say. I didn't. "It will be better once we're up and moving," I said. "Once the sun rises. We'll get warm. By sundown we'll be one day farther from our father's place, one day closer to our destination." Annie hauled herself to her feet, Kinnon in her arms. "Then let's start walking." This day was just as cold as the one before and just as sunny. Annie seemed stronger, somehow, though I myself was wearier than I'd been the previous day. Kinnon was awake most of the day, and Annie kept smiling down at him, bouncing him in her arms and cooing his name. It was as if his presence gave her strength or as if, awake, he could transfer some of his magic from his body to hers. I had no such source of renewal, though from time to time I clutched the rose quartz stone Senneth had bespelled for me. I couldn't say that it actually made me feel stronger, but I honestly thought I could feel fire in its depths. Every time I unclasped my fingers, my hand was no longer cold. The next day was much the same, but cloudy. The next day, the same, but warmer. Then a day of drizzle, which was miserable, though it stopped by nightfall. We took shelter under the branches of a huge, spreading oak, where the ground had stayed mostly dry, and huddled together all night for warmth. We got lucky the following night. An hour before sundown we came across a little village, much like our own, straddling the main road. A tavern with a stable out back, a blacksmith's shed, a few houses, then road again. "We don't have money," Annie said, wistfully staring at the sign in the tavern window that advertised rooms to rent. "Someone might let us sleep with the horses," I said, resting my wrists on the handle of the cart. "I'll ask." I stepped around to the back of the tavern and peered in the door. I saw a harried middle-aged woman stirring something on a stove and snapping orders to a sullen girl seated at a small table. "What?" the older woman demanded when I appeared. "I'm sorry to disturb you. My sister and her baby and I have been traveling and we can't pay for a room," I said. "If you're willing to let us bed down in the stable, I'd take it as a kindness. I'd help with some chores if you wanted payment." She gave me a sharp look, then frowned at her assistant again. "No! Girl, can't you even roll out a pie crust? Look, and now you've spilled the flour." "I'm telling my father," the surly young woman said, and slouched out of the room. The cook returned her attention to me. "I simply hate her," she said in a calm voice. Then, as if this interlude had never happened, she answered my first comment. "Doesn't seem like you should have to do chores just for the privilege of sleeping with my cows," she said. "But if you're willing to work beside me this evening, you and your sister can have your meal for free and bed down in the barn. Or take a room upstairs and pay for your meal. One or the other." I had already been worried about how quickly we were running out of food. "We'll take the meal," I said. The woman nodded across the room. "Fresh milk and bread over there. Take some out to your sister and get her settled. Then come back in and help me. There's plenty to do here and my husband's daughter won't be much help. That's for certain." "I'm good in the kitchen," I told her. "I'll be right back." We actually stayed two nights in that little town, waiting out another stretch of bad weather and catching up on our sleep. The cook slipped me a couple of coins in addition to letting us eat as much as we wanted; despite her gruff ways, she had the kindest heart. Maybe the world was not so bad as it had seemed in the view from my father's house, I thought when we left that second morning. Maybe most people really were compassionate and caring. Or maybe, as I had thought at first, we had just been lucky. Two days later we had an entirely different kind of luck. The worst kind. It was another cold, clear day, and we had been walking for hours. The ruts in the road were frozen in odd shapes that would make you stumble if you weren't careful; both Annie and I had almost fallen half a dozen times. Sunset was starting to paint the western horizon in peach and crimson, and night crouched low in the sky just over our backs. Kinnon, who had drowsed all day in Annie's arms, woke and set up a fretful, mewling cry, and nothing Annie did could comfort him. "Sosie, let's stop a minute, maybe he's hungry again." "We only have about a half hour of daylight left. If we stop now, we won't be going any farther." "Then maybe let's just step off the road and make camp." I looked around somewhat hopelessly. We were in the middle of a long, dispirited sweep of road, lined on either side with low, straggling bushes, patches of hard, bare ground, and the occasional surprise boulder, rolled here by no recognizable force. "Here? There's no place to set up." I liked to camp near trees or by a stream, so we had either fuel or water close by, and I preferred it when we had even the sorriest excuse for shelter. "We'll just pull off the road a ways so no one tramples us in the dark." Kinnon's cries intensified and she rocked the baby in her arms. "Sosie, I have to stop. I have to see what's wrong with him." Reluctantly I followed her a little distance off the road. She dropped to the ground on a dried slick of mud and unbuttoned her shirt for Kinnon. I left the cart beside her and began foraging. A few thin and dried-up scrubby brushes—we might get a fire out of those for twenty minutes or so, enough to heat up some water and warm our hands. But it would be a cold night for certain. We would have to lie wrapped in the same blankets, the baby between us, or else die from cold. The sudden dark of winter had fallen on our sketchy camp by the time I knelt beside Annie and fumbled through my belongings for my flint. Kinnon was still fussing, twisting in Annie's arms and refusing to nurse, his little fists clenched and pressed against his eyes. "What's wrong with him?" I asked, pausing in my search to look over at Annie. "Do you think he's getting sick?" "I don't know. He never acts like this. I just changed him but maybe I should check again. You'd almost think something was pinching him or poking him, he seems so uncomfortable—" Her voice trailed off. My hand had closed over the flint, so now I could start the fire, but first I looked back at her, straining to see in the dark. "What is it?" "The moonstone," she said in a quiet voice. "Against his skin." "Bare? Did it come out of its covering?" "No," she said. "But it's warm. Come touch it." I scrabbled over on my knees. Sure enough, when I laid my hand over the bunched scrap of fabric in Annie's hand, I could feel a fever heat pulsing from the covered stone. A shiver tickled its way down my back. "Has it ever been like that before?" I asked, my voice as low as hers. She shook her head. "Not that I've ever noticed." I noticed something else, though. "Look. Kinnon's quiet now. It's like the moonstone was bothering him." "Burning him," Annie said. "His skin is hot where it was touching him." "But then—" "Hush," she said. "Do you hear that?" I froze, still kneeling beside her, and listened to the sounds of the surrounding darkness. Kinnon gave a faint whimper. I saw Annie guide his mouth to her breast, and then he was quiet. Then everything was quiet, the whole world, all the small rocks and winter-bare bushes and weary travelers pausing for one long moment to listen. A jingle. A hoofbeat. A snort and a whinny. More hoofbeats, more sounds of spur and harness and bridle. A party of horsemen riding in the dark, coming from the northeast as we had. No reason to fear them, no reason to think they would offer us any harm, even if they saw us, and yet… Annie and I drew closer together, wrapping a blanket around both of us and huddling beneath it, the baby still peaceful against Annie's breast. We sat motionless, almost unbreathing, hoping to appear as inanimate as one of those scattered boulders, one of those abandoned bushes. Hoping Kinnon did not finish his feeding and set up one of his inconsolable cries. Hoping he did not realize the moonstone had been lifted from his skin, allowing him to use his power to move any rock or fallen log in the vicinity. Hoping the cavalcade, whatever it was, would pass by and leave us unmolested. The moon was low in the sky, bright and full. The stars seemed too far away to sprinkle any light on the scene before us. But as the riders pulled into view, moving at a steady, leisurely pace, I felt I could see all of them as clearly as if they had paused before me and waited for me to scan their features. There were about twenty in the party, some men, some women. The men were dressed in soldiers' clothing, with swords at their sides and battle vests across their chests. All of them wore black relieved here and there with a slash or a circle of silver. Their weapons glinted in the moonlight. Four of the women wore white and rode white horses and moved through the darkness like river mist on a cold morning, almost too insubstantial to see. What sparkled around their wrists or against their throats was not the silver of a knife blade but the prism of a moonstone, catching the light of the moon and holding it a moment before letting it go. In the middle of the group rode a lone figure on a magnificent midnight-colored horse. She was solidly built and sat very straight in the saddle, and by moonlight her face looked old, haunted, full of secrets. But her black hair was unbound down her back like a girl's, and she wore black garments as heavily embroidered as a queen's. All the stitching was done in si