Book II. Chapter 95 - The Congress (Part 5)

Chapter 95

Moving his free hand to the hilt of his father’s knife, Ardan leaned in low. Even had a Blue Star been blazing inside his consciousness, he would not have been able to save the wounded man’s life. And the matter had nothing whatsoever to do with the protective enchantments that sniffed at him like a watchdog as he slipped beneath their canopy.

The mutant’s wounds—deep, ragged, nothing like those inflicted by magic or steel—reeked of sulfur. A thick, choking smell that boded nothing good.

“M-m…” The mutant groaned, and in a heavy accent, with his last breath, forced out a single word: “Monster.”

His body jerked one last time, his back arched, and his pupils dilated wide, then instantly contracted to a pinprick. The Tazidahian was gone. The fragment of the Name of Ice and Snow shuddered in Ard’s mind, and the protective enchantments of the hotel offered him a decidedly merciless snarl.

No matter how finely-calibrated they were, no matter how many tens of thousands of runic compounds, mathematical formulas, and generators maintained their structure, Star Magic simply could not be attuned to the full breadth of the art of the Aean’Hane. This didn’t mean that the Star Engineers who’d built the defenses couldn’t have inscribed certain basic concepts into the structure and…

“And what on earth are you thinking right now!” Ardan hissed at himself.

The situation was deteriorating fast. If he had raised the alarm a few minutes ago and discovered this body together with Vole, everything would’ve looked entirely different. But raising the alarm now? The Black House would have no questions, true. However, it was the various diplomatic missions that worried him…

A Matabar half-blood that had been found beside the corpse of a mutant whose belly had been ripped open by claws, exposing the man’s ribs and a shattered spine… The presumption of innocence had been devised in ancient Gales to blunt the reach of the Enario Inquisition, and Ardan wasn’t about to test how deeply it had taken root in other countries.

And yet…

Holding on to his connection to the fragment, which was possible only thanks to the frigid night, Ardan leaned over the mutant’s body. He got so close that he almost pressed his face into the blood. He drew the air in through flared nostrils. The choking, acrid reek of sulfur nearly forced a lump of nausea up his throat, but he pushed it down.

In the morass of stench, with a lot of effort, he managed to pick out something damp, something tired, even sweaty. It was nothing like the scent of the Homeless Fae, or of their Sidhe counterparts—the demons. As far as Ardan had come to understand over the past year and a half, demons really could be called the antithesis of the Sidhe.

Listening to the ringing whisper of the shard, Ardan murmured in the tongue of the Fae:

“Show me,” and blew on the tip of his staff.

He didn’t actually need to speak the Fae tongue to ask anything of the fragment of the Name of Ice and Snow. It was simply… easier. In what way, precisely? That was a question Ardan was unlikely to answer in the coming years.

But what he knew for certain was that the frost had been living here for nearly a month. It had hidden from the streams of hot water running through the cast-iron channels forged in human furnaces. It had huddled up here, conversing with the darkness, with the spiders, and with the occasional winds that had crept through the cracks in the roof. The frost had seen what had happened here. It had been awoken by the door being opened, which had let a bit of Winter inside. Winter had been in a hurry to tell its cousin what was happening out in the world. That strange world. That alien world. That distant world. It was like a blurred mirage that the frost hiding in the Crown Hotel’s rooftop enclosure had all but forgotten.

Ardan reached into the memory of the local cold, and it swirled up in a frozen haze that burst from the top of his staff. Leaving patterns of blue rime across the walls and floor, and skirting the small patches that bore a strong resemblance to footprints leading toward the staircase, the haze thickened for a moment. Wind blew inside it, raising a fine, flour-like blizzard. In its depths, a squinting Ardan could make out some translucent silhouettes.

The Tazidahian mutant had been sniffing at the air, cautiously approaching the very same spot where Ardan now stood. And then, out of nowhere, an ordinary human hand had reached out in front of him. Only, in the next instant, the skin on that hand had boiled like it had been immersed in scalding water, the bones had cracked and twisted, and in place of a human one, the air had been raked by a clawed appendage that had oozed viscous slime and been covered in blisters, or perhaps broken scales.

A moment later, the haze vanished, leaving behind only the trail of footprints in the snowy floor and a wisp of vapor torn from Ardi’s lips. The frost had no wish to bear witness to what had happened here. It sought solitude and peace, not the company of mortals.

Ardan didn’t press the fragment any further since his head had already begun to spin and his vision was blurring. He seriously doubted that he had enough strength left to try. However cold the night, and however much strength Winter had brought with her, Ardan remained an ordinary Speaker. He was nothing like an Aean’Hane who had plumbed the full depths of a True Name and made it an inseparable part of their very self.

“Thank you,” Ard said and released the fragment of the Name of Ice and Snow. It rang out like a child’s laughter, crunched like fresh snow, and rustled briefly through the snow-laden crowns of the trees.

Ardan’s started breathing more easily, and the weight that had been pressing down on his shoulders began to lift.

Closing his eyes, he stood there for a few moments and simply breathed. He did so slowly, steadily, trying to calm his thoughts that were leaping from one subject to the next. They were like fleas on the back of a stray dog that some kindhearted person had decided to wash.

What had he just seen? A Homeless Fae hiding beneath a human guise? A human who was the product of the Puppeteers’ more successful attempts to create a kind of cross between mutation and possession by a Homeless Fae? Was there even a fundamental difference between those two things? Or had the frost shown him a sentient humanoid chimera, the sort of creature that was the stuff of legend among the more enthusiastic students who attended Professor Kovertsky’s lectures? And in that case, was there a meaningful difference between sentient humanoid chimeras and mutants? Should he follow the trail of footprints to the staircase? Should he not? And most important of all, what was he supposed to do with the body?

Ardan tried to seize a single thought, cutting away all the others, but the moment he focused on one, the rest came crashing back with triple the force.

“Enough,” he interrupted himself once more. “As Milar always says: deal with things as they come.”

This was not a problem related to Star Magic or mathematics that he could break down into components and solve piece by piece. First and most important was the body of the Tazidahian mutant.

If it was found—and it would certainly be found—the Congress would be derailed. Would the Empire suffer grave damage? Ardan had no idea. He had tried, as advised, to stay as far from politics as possible. Alas, politics itself had a remarkable knack for finding ways to creep up on him. Usually from behind.

Drawing two accumulators of each color from his belt, Ardan pressed them to his forehead and once more focused on the sounds of Winter. He heard its rustling whisper, felt its light step. An exhaustion many times greater than anything he’d felt in the past few minutes washed over him in a wave.

And had it not been for the accumulators acting as a breakwater while they swiftly dimmed under the strain, Ardan would simply have lost consciousness due to the relentless onslaught.

He had only moments to act. After memorizing in minute detail the nature of the wounds and the scent rising from them, Ardan called upon the frost. Not the local one, but the one that prowled the streets. It was far more severe, serious, and implacable. It broke in through the cracks in the roof as a blizzard, reached out with its snowy ribbon-arms, and wrapped itself around the mutant’s body.

It gnawed into the dead man’s flesh, greedily seizing and swallowing the last morsels of warmth. Stripping them away, it gradually uncovered its own kin: the chill of dead flesh. And together, they fell upon the remains with a primal rage at the fact that someone had so long and so stubbornly resisted their dominion, that someone had dared to scorn Winter and her kingdom and bring warmth where it was neither needed nor welcome.

As the four crystals crumbled to dust in a matter of seconds, Ardan released the frost. It withdrew through the cracks, taking with it the snow it had carried in from the street.

No trace of the body remained. There was only an ice-bound fragment of what might have been a finger, or perhaps just some small bone. It served as a reminder that flesh had been lying here only moments ago. Flesh that had been completely frozen and shattered to fine dust by the touch of Winter’s heart.

Some might have been frightened by such cruelty, but Atta’nha had taught Ard that Names feel no emotions and possess no morality. They lack even the Primal Laws and the rules of the Queens of the City on the Hill. They simply are what they are. And so, Ard was not afraid.

Slipping the ice-bound bone into an inner pocket, he wiped the sweat from his brow, and along with it, the drops of blood from beneath his eyes. The fine vessels there had burst from the strain.

Were it not for Winter’s aid, Ardan could not have managed a tenth of what he had just done. For the first time in his life, if only for an instant, he found himself wondering how powerful Atta’nha must have been at the darkest hour of the season of snows. And he also wondered what would have become of “Operation Mountain Predator” had the Queens not forbidden the Guardian Spirits from intervening in the affairs of mortals…

Ardan leaned his back against the frozen boards and briefly closed his eyes. Breathing heavily, he crossed one problem off his mental list. The body, whose nature he didn’t fully understand, was gone. What remained was a puzzle with a rather narrow range of possible answers.

Two staircases.

To his right was the one leading up to the roof. If the white fog held for another quarter of an hour, he might make it back before the guard rotation. And to his left was the one toward which the unknown creature’s trail led: the staircase descending to the top floor, which housed three diplomatic missions.

The retinue of the ambassador and Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Kingdom of N’gia came first. Farther on was the Principality of Fatia. The last few rooms on the floor had been assigned to the Tazidahian Brotherhood. It made perfect sense to put the semi-public alliance, which consisted—Fatians aside—of the largest missions, on a single floor.

Why had the unknown assailants killed a Tazidahian mutant and then headed down to the floor where the three most militaristic nations on the planet were gathered?

Ardan recalled the History of Magic Museum.

Something about the situation reminded him of that ill-fated night. What, specifically? The fact that everything here reeked. Or rather, it stank. Not of sulfur, but a setup. And not a relatively simple one like at the museum, but something considerably more sophisticated. And given that the saboteurs hadn’t even cleaned up the body, that meant that…

“They’re running out of time!” Ardan almost shouted. “Or…”

The puzzle solved itself. If the killer hadn’t bothered to destroy the evidence, then either they were in a hurry, or the evidence itself was the whole point. Which, if you put it all together…

“Tazidahian bodies, and the bodies of their allies, being found in the heart of the Empire during the Congress…” Ardan whispered.

The scent of sulfur that had recently clouded his mind gave way to another. This one had saturated Shamtur and hundreds of kilometers of trench lines. A great war might not begin the very next day, but a discovery like this would put the western continent in an even more precarious position than it was already in, and of that there could be no doubt.

Ardan got to his feet and hurried along the trail. He had a little under a quarter of an hour before the frosty fog enveloping the hotel dissipated.

Another adventure…

Before starting down the staircase, Ardan unlaced his boots with a practiced, quick motion and, tying them together with a simple but reliable knot, slung them around his neck. Standing at the top step and peering down into the dim alcove of the corridor, he silently cursed the architects.

Presumably, from their point of view, constructing a kind of alcove at the foot of the staircase leading to the utility room had made perfect sense. As had the door that closed it off.

He crept down the creaking steps and quietly drew air in through his nose. From beyond the unlocked wooden door came the scent of… herbs. Very distinctive herbs, at that. Ardan remembered them from the time he’d spent several weeks suffering from insomnia and Atta’nha had nursed him with a special tea that had helped him fall asleep.

Praying that the hinges of one of the most expensive hotels not only in the city, but in the entire Empire, would turn out to be oiled, Ardan cracked the door open. Praise the Sleeping Spirits! It didn’t produce a single unwanted sound. And so, in the reflection off his drawn knife blade, he was able to see a rather telling picture.

In the relatively wide corridor, which had identical doors set in a staggered pattern along both sides of it, silence reigned. And not an ordinary silence, but one in which even breathing didn’t stray from its measured pace and a heart didn’t miss a single beat.

Strung out along the walls, some of them with rifles, several even holding staves, the personal guards of the diplomatic missions stood watch at the entrances to their quarters. All of that was well and good, except for the fact that they were swaying slightly from side to side, like leaves in a barely-perceptible summer breeze.

No one who took just a quick, passing glance down the corridor would’ve suspected anything unusual. They all appeared to be standing there, performing their silent, far-from-simple duty for the good of their countries.

“Damn it all,” Ardan said to himself, and drew his knife back behind the door.

Without further deliberation, fighting off a creeping drowsiness that was dragging his eyelids down like they’d turned into lead, Ardan tugged his shirt loose and cut a strip from its hem. Then, barely able to distinguish the outlines of reality and moving as if fighting against a relentless current, he sliced open his own palm and soaked the strip of fabric red.

Swaying and listing from side to side, he managed to lift his mask and press the makeshift bandage that was damp with his own blood to his nose. Inhaling the scent of bitter copper deeply, Ardan gradually came back to himself.

The Herb of Gentle Dreams, Ardan thought. Interesting…

This herb grew on the northern slopes of the distant Alcade ridges. It was what Hector’s people had used to help infants sleep during the long tribal migrations between hunting grounds. And by the time they’d returned from the Guardian Spirits as fully-fledged hunters, they would’ve developed an immunity to this Ley-herb, just as all their kin had before them.

Ardan, who possessed only half of a Matabar’s essence, had never fully developed the immunity, but the bandage and the blood shielded him enough to keep him from losing consciousness.

With his ability to think now restored, Ardan peered out into the corridor again. Squinting, he studied the floor, walls, and ceiling with great care, until he made out the silhouette of a small pouch in one of the lamps that was shining noticeably dimmer than its neighbors.

It was as simple as that: the dried herb had been placed inside the lampshade, which the Ley-lamp had then steadily heated, and as it had gradually warmed up, it had lulled the guards to sleep. The herb had worked so subtly that they hadn’t collapsed face-first to the floor, but remained upright in a kind of trance. It was that state in which you think you know you’re asleep but can’t fully throw off the shackles of the mirage.

There was another problem here. Because of the bandage over his nose, Ardan couldn’t pick up any smells other than the scent of his own blood. So, with his knife in one hand and his staff in the other, pressing his back to the wall, he crept into the corridor. He felt like a newborn kitten, clumsy and blind.

Feeling the curious probing of the stationary shield at the edge of his awareness, Ardan steadied his racing thoughts with the knowledge that, right now, not even a Grand Magister—and maybe not even one of Aror’s students—could have used offensive Star Magic. Not that any of them, of course, would have taken the slightest interest in the affairs of the world.

Guided only by his sight and hearing, which effectively left Ard half-blind, he moved from one door to the next. He froze every now and then whenever one of the guards twitched or swayed too conspicuously. Pressing his ear to keyholes and sliding his knife beneath door panels, he carefully studied what was going on beyond the doors.

In every room, as though following a pattern, people were asleep. Some, half-undressed, their trousers still around their ankles, had collapsed onto the beds before they’d managed to change from their daytime clothes into nightshirts. Others lay on the floor with a newspaper or a book still in hand. Ardan spotted a group of Fatians that had been mowed down like grass around a circular table, from which strong, black Kargaamian coffee was dripping.

The Herb of Gentle Dreams had caught its victims in every possible position and, accordingly, sent them off into the ephemeral reaches of unconscious imagination in those same positions. And given the dosage used, when the diplomats and the guards awoke, they wouldn’t even remember what exactly had happened. The lost time would flicker past unnoticed, and their half-asleep minds would supply their own answers to any questions.

Ardan wished that his own mind could also answer a few questions for him. One had just been added to his list, in fact: how had the perpetrators smuggled a Ley-herb into what was arguably the most heavily-defended building on the entire planet (at least for the next two weeks)? And, more to the point, why had the stationary shield, which had already registered Ard’s accumulators, let a well-studied Ley-herb with a very distinctive Paarlax Field cross its perimeter unnoticed?

Even at an Manish’s firm, Ardan had seen blueprints for stationary shields capable of sending out a distress signal if anything of the sort was carried across their boundaries. And those had been shields with a list of parameters and conditions a hundred times shorter. What’s more: the hotel’s stationary shield schematic had been approved in advance and signed off on by every Congress delegation. It had been pored over, broken into sections, taken apart, and ratified by the finest Star Mages of every participating nation.

Love this story? Find the genuine version on the author's preferred platform and support their work!

“Someone managed to bypass it,” Ardan said, arriving at the obvious, grim conclusion.

Which meant that someone was operating beyond the bounds of what even Grand Magisters were capable of… And it was unlikely that the world’s only Arch Magister, who was currently wandering the globe incognito, was involved.

“You’re thinking about the wrong thing,” Ard reminded himself.

He reached the next door and…

* * *

Ardan opened his eyes and tried to move, but couldn’t. Stripped of his staff, bound hand and foot, he was sitting in a room. An expensively-furnished one, with gilt moldings on the ceiling and a decidedly bright parquet floor in whose lacquered surface the masked faces of two people were reflected. On second thought, maybe they weren’t exactly people...

They were standing beside a man who was asleep on a bed. He had coarse features, a scarred body, and he’d been branded by hot iron. It was the kind of brand you’d see on cows at a farm. In the Tazidahian Brotherhood, such marks were bestowed exclusively upon the finest of the “brothers.”

The intruders were rummaging through the belongings of the ambassador, or the Brotherhood’s equivalent of a “minister.” Taking care to leave no traces, they pulled out drawers, shook through clothes hanging in wardrobes, and inspected every jar, vial and bottle.

They were searching for something.

Ardan joined them. He started scanning the room in an attempt to find anything that might lead to his escape. He tried to strain against the rope, but it unexpectedly proved to be stronger than any half-blood could hope to overcome.

“Don’t bother, little wolf,” someone said just behind his ear in pure, unaccented Fae.

Ardan flinched. Not because of the language itself, but because of the voice that had used it. It was soft and slightly whistling, as though the stranger’s throat held little strings instead of living vocal cords. Which were being pulled.

Like a puppet’s…

Ardan had heard this voice before. He’d heard it in the Palace of the Kings of the Past. In the memory of the Crimson Lady. And in the mind of Odurdod Nudsky.

It was a stern, expressionless voice.

“We have never met in person, little wolf, but for some reason, I get the feeling that you know me.”

The stranger circled Ard and came to a stop in front of him. He was wrapped not so much in black clothing as in shadow itself: the black fog trailed over his back and chest, veiling his head and face beneath an impenetrable hood before falling in a curtain over his arms and legs. And only his eyes shone like white sparks in the dark.

There was no scent. No heartbeat. It didn’t even breathe.

There was nothing apart from the sense that Ard’s life now depended, wholly and utterly, on the whims of this… this Puppet.

Before him stood an Aean’Hane.

And while Ard had encountered them before, and had even crossed blades with one who had mastered the pinnacle of the art… Never before had he come across one of the monsters that Atta’nha had warned him about. For the first time in his life, Ardan found himself face to face with a horror that had given rise to a multitude of the most terrifying and dreadful stories among Firstborn and humans alike.

Before him, in the middle of the supposedly impregnable Crown Hotel, during the most important event on the planet, clad in darkness, stood an Aean’Hane of the Dark Words!

“Oh, little wolf… As they say, blood shows itself in the end,” the bodiless shadow of the Aean’Hane drifted toward Ardan without touching the floor and leaned in so close that Ard’s face nearly brushed the impenetrable void of its mantle of darkness. “I can hear their voices in you. For now, they’re barely a whisper. So tender and young. Almost childlike. But they are there. Deep in your heart. Sending out roots. Fragments of the Dark Words. You made use of knowledge that must never be used, oh pious subject of the Winter Queen. Just like your great-grandfather. Just like Aror—may his name be forgotten.”

The shadow straightened and drew back, and Ardan understood two things then. First, he realized that he didn’t have the slightest chance. Had he not already burned through so much of his Speaker’s strength, he might’ve been able to think of something. He wouldn’t have been able to defeat a Dark Aean’Hane, but at least he could’ve survived and perhaps tried to shape what happened next somehow.

Fighting a Dark Aean’Hane… would be foolish. In Atta’nha’s stories, and in the legends about Aror, it was said that Dark Aean’Hane wielded such immense power that it took the might of the most formidable Aean’Hane to contain them, or sometimes, the might of the Sidhe themselves. That was precisely why the Dark Ones hadn’t been defeated and wiped out to the last, but only exiled beyond the Great Sea.

As for the second thing: this shadow, this… Puppet had known Aror. It had known him personally.

“Thinking about how to free yourself, little wolf?” The voice coming from the living darkness still sounded as lifeless as dry, dead wood. “I can sense that you still have sparks of Will left that you could use to call upon your Name. A Name… of Ice and Snow? Remarkable… Has the Witch of Ice and Snow truly chosen to share her mother’s Name with one of the mortals? How amusing that the Courts have grown so desperate to stop us that they would stake everything on a simple mortal spark…”

Ardan, who had indeed been straining with the last of his reserves to find a way out, went still at that.

“You don’t know how the Names of the Elder Elements are passed on.” The Shadow wasn’t asking, he was stating, and he sounded surprised by the revelation.

Recovering, Ard cut off every unnecessary thought and tried to seize the brief pause created by the Dark Aean’Hane’s genuine astonishment.

“I know enough, Dark One,” Ardan said. “I know that you serve the Puppeteers. I know that you’re trying to create a fusion of mortals and Homeless Fae, and I know that-”

Ardan had meant to go on, baiting his prey, but his lips clamped shut and his tongue pressed flat against the roof of his mouth. Shadows coiled around him in impenetrable bonds. Obeying the Dark One’s Will, they tore free of the surrounding surfaces and took on form, substance and flesh.

“Puppeteers… Is that what you call us? Could Captain Pnev and the Colonel not have come up with something more elegant?” The Dark One asked these rhetorical questions in the same expressionless manner as before. “Although, I suppose the name does capture our essence. It’s astonishing, little wolf—my Master has given me leave to end your life. You create too much commotion where calm and order are called for. And yet here I am, looking at you. Helpless and pitiful, unable even to overcome the Will of my shadows… and I have not the slightest desire to end your suffering. No, not at all. It would not quench my thirst.”

The shadow came close once more and leaned in again.

“How sweet your suffering will be, little wolf. And perhaps, by watching you burn yourself alive, I shall finally pay Aror back for all his sins,” the shadow whispered, barely audible. “So long as Allane’Eari’s mark is upon you, I cannot bring harm to you of my own free will, or to her. Your little happiness. Mortal flesh. Love… How vulgar, little wolf. But I can feel the mark weakening. It will only hold me back for a few more days.”

Ardan felt the mountain hunter inside him bare its teeth, felt claws and fangs digging into his fingers and gums.

“If you could do something to us, or if you’d wanted to, you’d have done it already,” Ard forced the words out, “but you can’t. Not directly. I don’t know why, but somehow, it would cause you too many problems.”

“You think you’re so clever, little wolf?” The Puppet didn’t miss a beat. “You cannot even begin to imagine what we are capable of. What I am capable of.”

Without trying to hide or shield himself, Ardan looked straight into the white lights of the eyes hidden beneath the hood of shadow.

“Then do it, Dark One. Go on. Here I am. Let’s finish this right here, right now.”

For an instant, Ardan felt as though he were standing in the path of a mountain mudslide—a thundering torrent of mud and stone snapping century-old tree trunks as easily as a child crushes grass. But a moment later, the vision was gone.

“Do not tempt me, little wolf.” The Dark One drew closer still, and beneath his left hand, a golden flame flared up. “I can plunge your mind into such depths of woe that you wouldn’t dare to even call it pain—that word pales in comparison to what awaits you within my wrath.”

The Dark One tried to say something more, but didn’t get the chance to.

“It’s not here,” one of the people ransacking the room reported in a gurgling voice, speaking Galessian.

The Dark One stood motionless for several long seconds, then briefly closed the white sparks of his eyes.

“So, they’ve decided to betray us… Well, we prepared for this… As for you,” the Dark One turned back to Ardan, “until we meet again, little wolf. Though perhaps I shall pay a visit to Reish Orman’s daughter before I collect Aror’s debt from you. And, by the Eternal Angels, you will understand that everything you have ever heard about the Dark Aean’Hane is no more than a children’s fairy tale. I will introduce her to true horror.”

And before Ardan could reach for the frost straining toward him behind the locked shutters, the Dark Aean’Hane swept the streaming darkness around himself.

“But you will not remember this. You’ll never know why you walk to the altar alone. Just like Aror. How beautiful and cruel fate can be, little wolf.”

* * *

“Hey, Donkey, what are you doing out here—sleeping?”

Ardan flinched and opened his eyes. He was standing in the middle of the slowly dissipating, frosty fog, which was being driven along by winds coming in from the frozen Swallow Ocean.

Beside him, Vole was stamping his feet against the cold.

“Time for a guard rotation,” the operative reminded him through gritted teeth.

“Y-yes, of course,” Ardan nodded a little sluggishly, glancing at his watch, where midnight had given way to one in the morning. Had he really dozed off so deeply in the fresh air brought here by the oceanic winds that he’d actually fallen asleep?

As he took his first step across the snow-covered ground, Ard heard Vole call out after him.

“Looks like you dropped a piece of candy, Donkey! It’s a strange one, though.”

Ardan turned back and took a snow-covered sliver of ice from Vole’s mittens. The instant it touched his skin, it melted. It flared up, turning into a startled wisp of vapor and… soaked into the pores of Ard’s skin. Vole had already turned away by then and saw nothing.

He didn’t see Ardan clutch the fragment of a stranger’s finger and, doubling over and gripping his staff, let out a groan. From his eyes, from his lips, creeping down his chin and cheeks, lines of black shadow crawled.

The frost closed around the shreds of shadow inside Ardan’s consciousness. It sank its teeth into them like an enraged wolf and tore them from his heart and mind. It ripped them to pieces and spat them out. And with each new shadow vanquished, more of his memories came back to Ard.

The mutant… The Herb of Gentle Dreams… The Dark Aean’Hane…

“Tess…” Ardan whispered.

He didn’t think. Not for a second. He didn’t hesitate for even an instant.

“Hey, Donkey… what’s wrong?! Donkey! Damn it-”

Ardan vaulted the parapet in a single leap and landed on the frozen river below. A whistle sounded several meters above his head, but he was already running.

It was just like that night when the temple had been bombed. Only this time, there was no scorching heart of the Wolf of Blazing Darkness pounding beneath him. This time, Ard was so slow, so helpless, and…

“No,” Ardan cut himself off. “Not a chance.”

The wind blew, cold and raw, ready to devour anyone who dared stand in its way. But Ardan hadn’t truly felt cold since the day he had climbed the mountain peaks alongside his Teacher.

Half an hour had already passed.

The frost gnawed at the granite and stone like a pack of wild predators. It tamed the mighty lungs of colossal factories and foundries, forced the clattering mechanisms inside these iron steeds to bow low. But Ardan was not afraid of it. He didn’t fear it. Why should he fear something that wasn’t merely friend or brother, but a part of himself? He’d met the frost on the very same day that his own mother’s arms had first held him. Winter had welcomed his birth with the same tenderness as his parents, in that distant house on the bank of the mountain stream.

Half an hour… was so long.

A white haze of savage cold, forcing its way through every crack, creeping under window frames, pushing past fissures in the stonework, was rushing to trample and claim even the most steadfast and stubborn remnants of warmth. Ardan hid nothing from it. He’d played with the cold, smiling and laughing in response to its stern embrace, before he had learned how to talk.

I must make it in time!

Winter, and her followers, Snow and Ice, had never been Ardan’s enemies. They’d been his playmates with whom he had leaped from snowdrift to snowdrift. His nursemaids, who had driven hungry beasts away from his home, and later, they’d been the only ones who’d carried the memory fragments of his mother, his brother, and an entire world hidden beyond the high peaks up to the mountaintop.

Snow and Ice had been part of Ardan from the moment he’d first opened his eyes. And in the hour when no one could help him, he helped himself. He called upon Winter, called upon Snow and Ice, and they answered.

* * *

“Darling,” a young woman in a warm fur shawl said, pressing her reddened fingers together as she called out to her husband. “Are you sure the radiators are hot?”

The man, who was wrapped in a scarf and a blanket, touched the cast iron and immediately snatched his hand away.

“Scalding.”

And then they both looked at the red column of the thermometer mounted on the window frame, astonished at what they saw. The forecasters, as always, had been wrong. They’d promised the coldest night in decades by midnight. Thirty degrees below zero. But the red strip had somehow already pushed past thirty-six, and showed no sign of stopping.

* * *

“Quickly, quickly, back inside!” Cried a woman whose figure was as generous as her fur coat. Standing on the threshold of her employers’ mansion, she watched the children, who were dressed in several layers of furs, playing in the snow.

Since they were natives of the northern continent, her employers believed that this would toughen the children up and help them better endure the winters. But as the Eternal Angels could plainly see, surely a night like this should be avoided.

Though the governess had been a little hasty in calling it “night.” Here, along the embankments of the Niewa, like on Niewa Avenue itself, the light from the streetlamps, windows, and innumerable signboards made it as bright as day even after dark.

“Oh, look!” A little girl pointed toward the approaching white haze. Whenever it touched the sources of light, they were instantly coated in frost. The light would dim, vanishing into the maw of winter’s breath.

It seemed like the world had been suddenly cloaked in impenetrable night.

“Blizzard!” The governess cried out. “Come back inside, at once!”

The three children, still laughing, still pelting each other with snowballs, darted through the door one after another. Past the threshold now, pulling off her scarf and hat, the little girl laughed and kept repeating:

“I saw him, I saw him!”

“Whom did you see, dear?” The governess asked, watching through the window as the blizzard swept through the city and the thermometer dropped to forty below zero.

“A snow wolf! He was white! And big! He was running over the ice! And he looked like a human!”

“You imagined it, little one. There are no wolves that look like people,” the governess said, drawing the curtains closed. “They only exist in fairy tales.”

* * *

Tess opened her eyes and, for a moment, couldn’t quite take in what she was seeing. It seemed like, beside her bed, something halfway between a wolf and a man was standing. White fur streamed across a face that bore both animal and human features at once. Paws that looked like hands (or perhaps hands that resembled paws too closely for comfort) held a staf that shone brighter than the light of a guiding star.

She blinked, and the apparition, born of her sudden waking, vanished. Beside the bed stood…

“Ardi?”

He set aside his staff and, sinking into the blanket atop the bed, drew his fiancée toward him. He held her so tightly that Tess genuinely feared her bones might crack. She wanted to say something, wanted to ask what this was about, but through Ardi’s coat, she could feel how wildly his heart was pounding. Normally calm and barely audible, right now, it was beating with the fervor of a winded stallion’s heart.

Tess didn’t know what exactly had happened. Didn’t understand why her fiancé had abandoned his duty and his post and raced to her in the middle of the night. But she didn’t need to ask.

She wrapped her arms around his shoulders, laid her head against his chest, and… that was it. They didn’t say a word to each other. They hardly dared to breathe, frozen in each other’s arms.

Ardan stroked her hair. She was whole and unharmed. Twice… This was the second time he had outrun fate. And by the Sleeping Spirits, by the Eternal Angels, by whoever… Ardan didn’t want to find out what would happen on the third. Didn’t want to believe that the Law of Threes would apply here as well. That you couldn’t escape what was “spoken thrice.” And if that was the dream of the Sleeping Spirits, then he would make them see something else. If that was the fate laid out by the Face of Light, then it was in his power to change it.

Only on this night, only in this hour, could he do so. He had to do it. In his mind, amid the peaks of the Alcade, Snow and Ice blazed. They were so vast that they could’ve covered the entire city. Never before had Ardan touched a fragment so immense, so all-encompassing, so deep. Never before had he felt Winter as clearly as he now felt the warmth of Tess.

He loosened his embrace and reached for the bedside table. Sliding the drawer open, he took out a small box holding two simple rings. Within them lived the light of a star. Princess Allane’Eari, daughter of the Queen of Winter and Darkness… The Sidhe of the Cold Summer Night had given it to them as a wedding gift. She’d given them starlight.

Ardan placed the rings in his hands and whispered to them. These were words that no mortal ear could hear and no mortal lips could speak. He went on whispering, telling the Snow and Ice stories. Stories that took the shape of a flame-haired beauty. Of her own free will, she had given him her True Name, and now he was sharing it with Winter.

He did so without protest and without fear. Because he already knew Tess’ Name, which meant that Winter knew it, too. She only needed to be reminded of it.

And when Winter finally remembered, for an instant, a pattern blazed across the rings. One that looked as though it had been touched by frost. It shone for only a moment and then went dark again. It was as though it had never been there at all.

Ardan silently took Tess’ hand and slid the ring onto her slender ring finger. And Tess, without uttering a word, slipped the other onto his.

There was no altar, no church, no priest. No sage, no forest, no candle, no water held in cupped palms.

They didn’t need any of it.

“Go to sleep,” Ardan murmured and kissed her forehead.

Tess sank back into the pillows, and he tucked the blanket around her so she wouldn’t be cold. And from now on, she would most likely never feel the same cold as others.

Just as Ardan would most likely never Hear the full Name of Ice and Snow. He had placed part of the Name, part of himself, inside their wedding rings. And for as long as her heart beat, sealing their covenant, Ardan would not become an Aean’Hane.

He knew this for certain. Knew it clearly. Without any doubts or torment. And if Milar were to ask him about the cost of the art of the Aean’Hane now, Ardan would have been able to answer that here it was. His price. Tucked in and smiling.

“I’ll be back soon,” Ardan whispered into his wife’s ear.

“I know,” Tess answered. “I’ll be waiting.”

He would’ve paid that price at any hour of any day. Would have paid it twice over, three, ten times over. And now, no Dark One would ever touch her, no Homeless Fae would come within a kilometer of her, and no demon could abide to be anywhere near her.

Winter guarded Tess now. It would be sustained by the fragment of the Name of Ice and Snow, and unlike the generators and accumulators made by mortals, this magic would not run dry. So long as her heart was beating…

Ardan waited until Tess fell asleep, and then, taking up his staff, walked out the door.

* * *

Blowing on his fingers and turning up his collar, Major Mshisty reluctantly climbed out of his automobile.

“I’m beginning to understand Lieutenant Kornosskiy,” the Mad Dog of the Black House said through clenched teeth, surveying the embankment of the Markov Canal.

“Do you doubt the judgment of His Imperial Majesty?” The Colonel asked, exhaling cigar smoke as he approached his faithful weapon in human form.

“What I doubt, Colonel, is that in ten years’ time, I’ll have any chance at all of stopping him. Should that ever be required, of course.”

The Colonel, who was usually sparing with his emotions, allowed himself a brief smile.

“What?” The Major asked.

The Colonel looked out over the street. The wind was blowing. It was turning the frost fangs of the sharp spires that had risen up above the buildings into glittering garlands of snow; it was sweeping away the thick, multiton cages of clear blue ice that had encased the automobiles; and it was carrying in its wake the colossal slabs of ice that had crept across the granite.

The Markov Canal looked as if someone had unleashed strategic magic upon its banks and was now covering their tracks. It almost seemed like nothing had happened at all.

“I’m not so sure you even have five, Major.”

At last, dressed in light clothing that was entirely unsuited to the weather, Ardan Egobar emerged from the building.

“Colonel, sir, we need to talk.”

The Colonel let out a heavy breath.

“I’m afraid, Corporal, that under the circumstances, you have no other choice.”

* * *

Yawning and draping his blanket over his shoulders, Kelly stepped barefoot onto the porch. A western wind was blowing. It brought with it the cold of the Swallow Ocean, blanketing Delpas in white. The thermometer had already dropped to fifteen below, which was quite a trial for the former Sheriff of Evergale, who hadn’t encountered such extreme cold until Delpas.

The same could not be said of Shaia. Her hair was loose about her shoulders, and she was rocking in a chair as though neither the wind nor the frost concerned her. Dressed in nothing but a nightgown, she didn’t take her eyes off the distant mountain.

“Shaia, darling, in your condition, this isn’t the best idea.”

Kelly pulled the blanket off his own shoulders and moved to cover his wife’s already-far-from-small belly.

“Don’t,” Shaia said, shaking her head. “We’re not cold.”

“But-”

“She asked the frost not to trouble me, and it agreed,” Shaia cut in.

Kelly sighed and sat down in the chair beside her. Lately, Shaia kept saying such strange things.

“Who is ‘she,’ darling?” The former sheriff asked.

“The shewolf-witch,” Shaia answered. “Sometimes, the shewolf-witch comes to me in my dreams. She tells me stories. And I listen.”

Kelly sighed again. Shaia’s previous pregnancy had been perfectly ordinary, and this one had probably become the embodiment of every tale ever told about the restless mind of an expectant mother.

“Let’s go to bed, dear. You need to rest up for the journey. In a few weeks, we leave for the capital to see your eldest son.”

“I know, Kelly,” Shaia nodded. “I’m awake, dear. This isn’t sleepwalking.”

Kelly blinked several times. And indeed, Shaia didn’t look like one of those people who said strange things at night or even wandered around without realizing it.

“In that case, you’re frightening me a little, dear.”

“Don’t worry, Kelly,” she said, placing her hand on his knee. “This is nothing to be afraid of.”

“Shaia… You’re acting like there is something to be afraid of.”

Shaia nodded. She nodded as though she knew more than she could say. Or perhaps not so much knew as sensed, but lacked the words to describe it.

“She is catching up to him.”

Kelly sighed for the third time. Since last summer, Shaia had occasionally told him about her nightmares regarding some darkness pursuing Ardan. Formless and incorporeal.

“Your eldest son is a strong man, darling. Don’t be afraid for him.”

“It’s not him I’m worried about, Kelly,” Shaia said with a brief, sad smile.

“Then who?”

Before answering him, Shaia gazed for several long, heavy seconds at the distant peaks of the Alcade that were barely visible on the horizon. She gazed at them as though she were listening to someone.

“If the darkness catches him, dear, then… I’m afraid for everyone else.”