Mother Of Winter

Chapter Nine

Rudy saw the Bald Lady again, the night after Ingold left the Keep. Her face was clearer to him in this dream, perhaps because he'd gazed into the crystal heart of the scrying table with his hand on one of the two record stones that held her images.

Like all those forgotten mages-the Guy with the Cats; the Dwarf whose stubby fingers sparkled with a festival of jewels as she worked her incomprehensible cantrips with water and flowers; Black Bart, solemn and wise with a twinkle in his golden eyes-Rudy had come to know her well, and he wasn't surprised to find himself dreaming about her again.

In the earlier of the several crystal images, she was young, and in the others, only middle aged. It was strange to see her now so old. It was like viewing all the films of Katharine Hepburn, assuming that there were no changes in hairstyle to contend with, and that somewhere between The Philadelphia Story and The Lion in Winter Ms. Hepburn had visited Hell.

The Bald Lady was still unshakably beautiful, descending the long obsidian stair through clouds of glowstone light; still wrapped in her night-colored cloak, her bald head held at a proud angle; still weeping, soundless, giving nothing away as she walked.

They were deeper in the Keep this time. Stone tanks lined the walls of the crypt where Rudy stood, water casting a crystalline moir on the ceilings and across the strangely angled metal faces of machines wrought of wire and glass and what looked like hanging threads of tiny jeweled beads.

Unusual, for the stark rectilineal design of the Keep, there were niches let into the wall of this chamber, four or five feet deep and the height of the tall ceiling; in a corner Rudy saw the black stone drum of a scrying table. Probably to read the tech manuals, he thought.

She touched the machines, one by one, as she passed them, as if drinking in their soft-glowing power through her long fingers, crossed to trail her hand over the scrying table's surface before turning toward the crypt's inner door. There was pain and defeat in her shoulders, grief unbearable in the line of her back.

Who are you? Rudy cried, and dreamlike found himself unable to make a sound. In any case, the Bald Lady did not turn her head. Where are you going? Where did you hide the answers?

He reached out to catch her arm but could not touch her. The white glowstone light flickered in a tear as it slid down her face, and she pressed out of sight again into darkness.