Northern Storm

Chapter Eleven

Are you sure you won’t stay the night?’ The woman stood in the doorway, wringing work-hardened hands.

Velindre made sure her rope-tied bundle of blanket and food was comfortable on her shoulder. ‘Thank you all the same,’ she added as a stiff afterthought.

‘There’s scant daylight left and what with the promise of rain yonder, this is no time to be setting out,’ the woman persisted. ‘You could wait till tomorrow, go out with a full day ahead of you. I’m sure some of the men would go with you.’ She waved vaguely down the hill.

‘Thank you, but I don’t need your solicitude or their help.’ Velindre curbed her irritation. ‘Didn’t you understand what I meant when I said I was a mage of Hadrumal?’ The woman stood reluctantly aside and Velindre stepped out on to the muddy track that cut through a scatter of skulking huts. The village had been built from the mismatched plunder of rockfalls judging by the irregularity of the walls beneath the snow-caked wooden-shingled roofs. Most were single—or double-roomed dwellings, few boasting even an attempt at a garden or yard. The only sizeable building was down where the track widened to a trampled expanse that even the most optimistic would hesitaie to call a village square. It was twice the width of any other building and steam rose from a wing extending behind it to shelter a brew house. Velindre realised too late that looking at the rough-hewn tavern had been a mistake. The handful of dour-faced men lounging against the wall had been covertly watching the women emerge from the hut. Two pushed themselves upright with alacrity and began walking up the lane, the rest trailing behind, faces alight with curiosity.

‘Thank you for your hospitality.’ Velindre nodded to the woman. She turned to go, gathering her heavy fur cloak around her. ‘I think the horse is more than adequate recompense.’

‘Are you sure you don’t need him?’ The woman struggled with her unwillingness to reject such a gift. ‘This is hard country for travelling on foot and with you a lady from the south—’

‘A mage from the south,’ Velindre corrected her. No, take the horse and welcome. I’d be casting him loose otherwise. All I ask is that you look after him; he’s been a good beast to me.’

The woman detained her with an insistent hand. ‘Shouldn’t I keep him till you come back this way? I’ll give you a bed again and welcome.’

‘I shan’t be coming back this way,’ Velindre assured her brusquely. ‘Good day to you.’

‘I wouldn’t want you to come back and not find us,’ the woman continued, as if Velindre hadn’t spoken. ‘See, with a horse, me and the children, we’ll make for the lowlands when the thaw comes, go back to my own family’ The children in question, three of them and none taller than their mother’s apron strings, peered around the doorframe, blue eyes wide.

‘The animal is yours. Make whatever use of him you want.’ Pulling her arm away, Velindre began walking up the track, cursing under her breath as she stumbled on frozen ruts. Solid boots thudded on the ice-hardened earth behind her and she tensed, clasping her double-gloved hands together beneath the all-concealing fur cloak.

‘Taking a walk, mistress mage?’ One of the village men hurried to draw level with her. He had the short, stocky build and fair complexion of the mountains, with a heavy leather coat further padding his bulk. Velindre ignored him, increasing her pace.

‘What was your business with the Widow Pinder?’ A second man came up on her other side. He was taller than the first, with the dark, curly hair and olive skin of southern Tormalin blood incongruous with the snow and ice all around.

Velindre kept walking, face expressionless. She fixed her eyes on the fir forest ahead, dark above the leafless skeletons of the lower slopes.

‘Widow Pinder’s eldest, she was telling my Sonille that you’re some wizard woman,’ a voice from behind taunted.

Sniggers told Velindre that the remaining three idlers from the tavern were trailing a handful of paces behind her unwanted escort.

‘Go on, then, show us some magic,’ mocked the man with the Tormalin blood.

‘Magic’s not welcome round here.’ The stocky man scowled at her. ‘Is that where you’re headed?’ He pointed up past the ridge of hills sheltering the little village, towards a forbidding range of high peaks. Clouds were gathered just beyond, dark grey and ominous in an otherwise clear blue sky. Higher up, white clouds were spread by the winds into feathery streaks. The grey clouds weren’t moving.

‘He asked you a question, lady!’ The Tormalin man darted forward to plant himself solidly in Velindre’s path, hands on his hips.

Velindre made to step round him. A second stocky man with muddy brown hair appeared from behind to block her way. With the fair-haired man on her other side and the two remaining loafers behind her, she was effectively surrounded.

‘Haven’t you got anything better to do with your time?’ she asked with faint derision. ‘Let me pass. My business is none of yours.’

‘You tell us what it is and we’ll decide that,’ the fair-haired man said boldly.

‘We don’t want no more wizards setting up home hereabouts,’ growled one of the pair behind her. ‘You’ve seen a wizard hereabouts?’ Velindre turned around, surprising a flare of panic in the thin-faced speaker’s eyes.

‘That’s a wizard’s work, isn’t it?’ He waved a shaky hand at the distant leaden cloudscape before hastily snatching it back. ‘There’s valleys up there no one’s got near in years.’

‘Everyone knows it’s magic keeping us out.’ The Tormalin man scowled. ‘Even if the wizard hides himself away up there.’

‘Find themselves caught up in tangles of plants knotting themselves, people do,’ the brown-haired man insisted, ‘or get turned around so often they find themselves back where they started.’

‘Life’s hard up here.’ The thin man’s companion added his voice to the debate. The scars on his face attested to “his words. ‘We work hard for our furs and our tin and it’s share and share alike. We don’t close off the land with magic and hoard it all for ourselves.’

With the slope of the track added to her already greater height, Velindre looked down on him with undisguised disdain. ‘I assure you, I have no interest in furs or tin.’

‘What’s in those valleys?’ The fair-haired man stepped closer, his shoulder nudging her arm, belligerence curdling his face. ‘Come to share the spoils with that wizard, have you?’

‘Is it gold?’ the brown-haired man asked hopefully.

‘Magic or not, you must need some help. We could lend a hand.’

‘As long as we’re fairly paid,’ warned the fair-haired man.

an.

‘Let’s say whoever’s up in those hills wants your help.’ The Tormalin man laid a heavy hand on Velindre’s shoulder. ‘Then he can pay us for your passage through our territory, can’t he?’

‘You’ve never actually seen a wizard, have you?’ Velindre looked the Tormalin man in the eye before glancing at his hand, amused. Not this mysterious mage you say lives beneath those clouds nor any real wizard.’

‘What’s that to you?’ The brown-haired man looked uncertainly at the man with the scars, who glanced uneasily at his hatchet-faced friend.

‘Seen plenty of fools up from the south who think it’s easy pickings up here.’ The fair-haired man tried to seize her other arm through the thick fur of her cloak.

Velindre flung her hands wide. A burst of blue light blew the five men away with a brutal gust of magical wind. The fair-haired man fell backwards, landing hard to sprawl gasping, arms waving feebly as the breath was knocked clean out of him. The Tormalin man tumbled sideways, ending up in a crouch like a whipped cur, clutching at a tuft of frosted grass, his jaw slack with inarticulate astonishment. Taken entirely by surprise and with the downward slope treacherous behind him, the brown-haired man fell in a tangled heap with the one with the scars. Only the hatchet-faced man kept his feet. He stumbled backwards down the track, hands raised in feeble denial, his head turned aside and eyes screwed tight shut, too scared to want to see what might be coming next.

‘I told you my business was none of yours.’ Entirely composed, Velindre stood, her hands held wide, dark fur cloak and golden hair streaming behind her as if she stood in the teeth of a winter gale. Not a twig stirred on the winter-stricken trees on either side of the track. ‘I take it you’ll believe me now when I tell you plainly that you have no hope of detaining me.’

She thrust a hand forward and a ribbon of sapphire light hobbled the hatchet-faced man. ‘Whereas I can make your lives very unpleasant if you have any notion of following me.’ With a snap of her fingers, she called down a bolt of lightning from the clear blue sky. It struck the rowan she pointed to with one long, pale finger and the tree burst into crackling white flames.

Movement down the hill caught her eye and Velindre realised that almost the entire meagre population of the village was watching from doorways or around the corners of their ragged-edged huts. T will know if you try following me,’ she continued with precise menace, ‘just as I will know if anyone decides to offer the Widow Pinder any trouble for giving me a bed for the night. I recommend you bold heroes make that plain to your neighbours.’

With a wave of her hand, she snuffed the flames consuming the rowan. The only sound was the faint patter of the tree’s few remaining leaves and berries falling to the ground. Velindre gestured discreetly towards the tree and a charred branch broke away with a tearing crash. As the shaken men all jumped, startled, and looked at it, Velindre wrapped herself in a swathe of dazzling cerulean light and vanished. The cowering men rubbed their eyes, blinking painfully as they stared gaping at the place where she’d been. Smiling unseen, the magewoman retreated slowly up the hill. It had been some while since she had worked invisibility around herself, she realised with faint amusement. Who would have thought an apprentice’s trick like blinding someone with magelight would prove so useful? Drawing the air close in around her, she deftly bound water and fire into the spell to cloak herself entirely from view.

But enough of this foolishness, she decided. She had no time to waste. The trip had already taken longer than she had expected. Not that Dev had had any cause to complain that she was idling, she thought with irritation. And she wouldn’t be dealing with this nonsense if he hadn’t startled the widow and her children by bespeaking her like that. It was hardly surprising that the eldest girl hadn’t been able to keep something like that to herself.

Velindre walked away up the track, first looking ahead at her path and then back down the hill, to be sure those bold heroes were returning to their startled village.

The fallen men were picking themselves up. The scarred man took a cautious pace towards the charred skeleton of the rowan tree, his fair-haired companion following, careful all the while to keep the first man between himself and the uncanny spectacle. The Tormalin man and the one with brown hair were edging towards their hatchet-faced friend, who was still rooted to the spot with terror even though the skeins of azure light around his legs were fading. The Tormalin man gave him a sudden shove. The sharp-faced man cried out before taking a step to save himself as he found he was no longer bound by the spell. He took to his heels, slipping and sliding as he fled for the solace of the tavern. The hatchet-faced dun-haired man and the one with the scars followed him, barely slowly enough to preserve their dignity in front of the wide-eyed villagers.

The Tormalin man and his Mountain-bred friend stayed where they were, looking suspiciously up the track. Velindre hurried for the shelter of a starveling hazel thicket. These fools weren’t deaf, she reminded herself, or blind to any other trace she could leave. They might be miners in the summer; in the winter seasons they trailed game far smaller than an adult mage. She looked at the ground, shaking her head at the momentary disori-entation of not being able to see her own feet. She could see the ridges of the hard ground unyielding beneath her clumsy boot soles; no tracks there. But her weight had crushed blades of sere grass poking up through the sodden black leaves where the vagaries of the wind had left the ground clear of snow.

It had been a while since she had had to work two, no, three such spells in harness. Velindre summoned a second layer of dense air to cocoon her invisibility spell, baffling and muffling any crunch of her footfalls on the icy ground, any swish or snap as she brushed past the clawing hazel twigs. She lifted one foot and stepped up on to a soft cushion of magic. Pausing to be sure of her balance, she stepped forward, summoning a second squashy pillow of air to raise her a hand’s width above the ground.

Not that this was quite the sophisticated working with elemental air that Hadrumal would expect from a Cloud Mistress, she thought with distant amusement. And Planir’s rebukes for apprentices who felt entitled to cow mundane fools with gaudy trickery were legendary. Which was all well and good, but life was certainly different out here where the Archmage’s writ didn’t run.

She stumbled as the chancy air drifted beneath her feet and abandoned such idle thoughts in favour of concentration. Walking further into the trees at a painfully slow pace, she looked over her shoulder for any sign of pursuit after every few steps. If those fools from the village couldn’t hear her, she wouldn’t hear them approaching either, thanks to that same magical spell.

By the time she crested the ridge behind the village, her neck was stiff, her legs ached as if she had been walking all day through soft sand and a faint queasiness threatened to turn into a nauseous headache. Setting her jaw, she forced her way through a copse of shivering aspens and cast away the magic surrounding her. Her booted feet hit the ground with a jolt and she drew a welcome breath of fresh, cold air. Hastily she gathered up the magic dissipating around her and cast out a web of unseen magical threads, drawn taut to tremble with the noises of the forest and bring every sound magnified for her ears alone. Meltwater dripped from trees welcoming the optimistic sun that was strengthening with each new day. In the dark hollows of the forest, though, the chill of night was already returning, prompting protesting creaks from the icy streams frozen solid in their stony beds. Untrammelled breezes ran ahead of the shadows, trailing casual fingers through tangles of ivy clinging to the mossy larches. A faint scuttle of tiny paws whispered through the frostbitten undergrowth. Velindre breathed more easily. There was no sound of footsteps or the harsh breathing of men intent on a hunt.

Velindre looked across the wide expanse of snow pierced with scattered trees that separated her from the next rise in the rumpled land. Then she settled the rope of her bundle more securely on her shoulder beneath her cloak and began walking. The track from the village soon petered out, disappearing beneath the drifts of snow and the black swathes of leaf litter.

Would any of those oafs tell their tale the next time they made the wearisome journey to Inglis? And show themselves for the fools they had been? That was hardly likely, she concluded. What about the widow woman? Would she tattle to all and sundry about how she had given unknowing shelter to a mage unafraid to use her magic to teach ignorant buffoons a much-needed lesson? Velindre shrugged. What of it? If the woman did tell her tale, who could carry it to Hadrumal? She was well beyond Rafrid’s reach already and it was hardly likely that Plank would rebuke her if she returned with untried lore from both Azazir and this dragon loose in the Archipelago.

She studied the distant coil of grey clouds with growing interest. Even with long leagues still to go, she could feel a faint resonance of magic as the storm defied the natural currents coursing through the air. She found herself intrigued. Never mind Dev’s distractions with this dragon; just what would this Azazir have to teach her about the elemental air? If she was going to find out, she had to get to the valley beneath that unmoving, unbreaking storm. She considered the wide expanse ahead of her, deep snow reaching half-way up the dark stands of firs.

This looked like a good time to try another prentice mage’s trick: the impudent connivance that allowed the bold and reckless to dart between the highest points of Hadrumal’s roofs and towers when festival cheer overcame caution. Rafrid would doubtless be spending his Equinox issuing the usual reprimands and curtailing offenders’ privileges. Velindre smiled with vindictive amusement as she fixed her gaze on a patch of open ground beneath a stained outcrop of rock away on the far side of the woods. A rush of air carried her across the intervening half-league with a single stride. Another step took her to the top of the ridge and a third made light of a sprawling glassy expanse of frozen marsh.

From the bottom of the next ridge, she searched for a suitable foothold among the trees lining the heights above her. Seeing bare earth and stones where a storm had felled some mighty fir, she threw a coil of magic towards the open space. The ensorcelled air writhed, spiralling away up to be lost in the uncaring blue sky. Velindre was taken aback. It was several moments before she recovered her authority over the fickle winds. She cast her spell again. Once more, the magic recoiled from the patch of empty ground where she wanted to go. This time the spell curfcd back around her, threatening to carry her backwards and dump her unceremoniously among the sodden tussocks of the valley. She barely disentangled herself from the magic before she lost her footing, startled into cursing under her breath.

Face wary in the dark fur framing it, she made a third attempt, this time abandoning the spell as soon as she felt the first tremor of failure. She smiled thinly with slow realisation. The magic frustrating her own was being worked through the water suffusing the air. Only a very powerful mage could manifest his intent through the infinitesimal amounts of vapour in this cold, dry emptiness. Azazir evidently knew how to use his own element to dominate the air. Would she learn how to rule water with air so effectively? All the inconveniences of crossing these last interminable leagues on foot would be well worth it if she could, never mind what Dev and this warlord of his might owe her for any lore about dragons.

She had better learn something worth the tedious toil ahead, since further magical travel was plainly out of the question. Velindre sighed and searched for any semblance of a track leading up through the trees. Intellectual curiosity about what Azazir might or might not know had faded in the face of grim determination by the time Velindre was half-way up the steep slope. The hem of her fur cloak was caked with snow and her boots dragged leaden at her feet. Legs aching fiercely, she pressed on, the icy ground slick and unforgiving. She caught at saplings with her gloved hands to pull herself up awkward stretches and silently cursed the bleak rocks breaking through the soil and forcing her sideways to find a clear way forward once more.

As she worked her way down the north face of that ridge and across the valley beyond, Azazir’s dampening magic weighed more and more heavily on the blasts of air she was summoning to clear snow out of her path. She was reduced to fighting her way through waist-deep drifts with no more than the unaugmented strength in her arms and legs. By the time she was at long, long last approaching the foot of the first true scion of the mountain range, the sun was sinking, turning the rocks breaking through the threadbare ground to a cold, steely grey.

Velindre clenched her fists inside her gloves to quell the trembling of fatigue. At least she wasn’t cold. Azazir might have the reach to stifle magic beyond her arms’ length but he couldn’t overcome her innate abilities, whatever his unlooked-for talents. She sighed and pressed on up the punishing slope, the heavy fur cloak dragging at her shoulders.

Half-way up, she lost her footing and fell to her knees. As she did so, her hand landed on a fold of the beaver fur. It squelched beneath her weight. Velindre frowned and stood up carefully. She stripped off her doubled gloves, her suspicions growing hand in hand with hot anger. Taking a double handful of the cloak, she squeezed the fur tight. Water oozed over her fingers. There was a curious glitter to it, almost like quicksilver. She looked for a moment at the bright drops, then shook them off Rather than falling to the ground, the moisture flew back to the fur, vanishing in an instant—all but one bulbous drop which sat on the surface of the dark fur until a blackness winked across it, like the blink of an eye. Velindre tore at the clinging ties of the heavy cloak and dropped its sodden weight to the ground. It was saturated with water, she realised with sudden fury, but not through any normal turn of events. She rubbed a hand over the shoulders of the woollen cloak she was wearing underneath. The cloth was dry and faintly warm with the heat of her body. None of the wet from the fur had penetrated it, nor the thick flannel shirt and sturdy woollen gown beneath. Sitting on a bare patch of cold, dry earth, she fought to pull off the clumsy gaiters she was wearing to keep the mud and damp from her boots and stockings. The leather was grotesquely swollen with moisture, but the boots beneath were still dry, their polish unmarred. She reached for her thick outer gloves and found that they, too, were weighed down with more water than the fur could ever hope to hold without magical deceit. She wrung one out and the water gathered itself on the moss in oval drops, again with an uncanny semblance of watching eyes.

‘That’s a subtle working, Master Azazir,’ she remarked, partly to the motionless drops of water and partly to the empty air. ‘Do you discourage all your visitors like this?’

She stood up, shaking out her thick skirts and drawing her woollen cloak close. ‘Or is this a test for mages, to see if they can do without the conveniences of winter clothing? Believe me, I am more than equal to keeping myself warm without furs.’ As she spoke, the drops of water abruptly ran away to be lost in the frosty ground.

Never mind Dev and his distant difficulties. Velindre gritted her teeth. This contest was becoming one she wasn’t prepared to yield, however good this unseen Azazir might think he was. Drawing on her kidskin gloves with hard-faced resolve, the magewoman enveloped herself in still air warmed with a hint of fire. Abandoning fur cloak, gloves and gaiters, she began climbing again.

Determination drove her on and her spirits rose as she realised she was actually making better progress without the hampering bulk of those outer garments. Then the fire in her spell was abruptly snuffed and the gathering chill of the frozen forest dusk bit through the air surrounding her. Gritting her teeth, she pressed on until a small saddle between two jagged spurs of rock offered a place to catch her breath.

She couldn’t snare any spark of fire. The element was fleeing in all directions from the cold damp now suffusing the air. Frost was already glazing the rocks, visibly thickening even as she looked at it. Dev would have been no use here, she thought inconsequentially. He wouldn’t even have got close enough to learn anything of dragons. In the gathering dusk and chill, that notion wasn’t as comforting as it might have been.

‘My compliments, Azazir. I see you have a considerable mastery of fire, which is all the more impressive given that it’s the element antithetical to your own.’ She stood, listening, but heard nothing. Closing her eyes the better to concentrate for a moment, she wove a denser cloak of air around herself. If she couldn’t warm herself from without, at least she wouldn’t lose any more of the precious heat from within her body. The ground was less steep now and she could walk without using her hands. That was fortunate as she found her cocoon of air under insidious assault, the threads of air weighed down with more and more moisture until they snapped, tearing shreds of the protective magic away. Velindre found herself reaching further and further afield for untainted air to draw into her magic, the effort exhausting her more effectively than the weight of the sodden fur cloak

‘I only want to talk to you,’ she snapped with weary irritation. ‘I don’t see why you should freeze me out like this. Don’t the customary courtesies between mages apply in this forsaken place?’

A sound suspiciously like laughter brushed past her ear. She snatched at a breath of fleeting fire to cast light into the shadows of the trees. She just had time to see that there was no one there before the fire slid out of her grasp with ominous finality. The noise had come from a chuckling brook splashing over a rock-strewn stream bed.

She tried to find the fire again but her search was fruitless. Unease gathered chill beneath her breastbone. Without at least a modicum of fire, the other three elements were cursed to lie inert and useless. That was one of the first things any prentice wizard learned and a circumstance that frequently gave those with an affinity for fire an unwarranted sense of superiority—especially given that fire could be snuffed, which surely made it the most vulnerable of the elements when all was said and done. Velindre gathered her wits, realising that cold and fatigue were making her foolish. She had to concentrate on the here and now, where Azazir certainly gave the lie to any claim of fire’s pre-eminence, in this remote fastness where he’d honed his magic.

Magic that was unlike anything she’d encountered in Hadrumal. That’s what she was seeking. Velindre took two more determined strides onward before she turned back to look at the stream. With winter still ruling these northern lands, it was the first open, running water she had seen there. How much higher was she than those uppermost villages where the miners and trappers were still smashing the ice in their wells of a morning and the brooks were frozen solid?

Then she saw the direction this implausible unfettered water was taking. The stream was flowing uphill to vanish over the lip of the valley ahead. Her mouth fell open, astonished as any ignorant villager. Recollecting herself and narrowing her eyes, she dropped to one knee, stripping off a glove. She pressed her palm to the spongy, mossy turf and concentrated with every mageborn sense within her.

The ground should have been frozen, moisture locked within the soil, earth and water alike waiting lifeless for the sun’s warmth to drive out winter’s cold. Never mind Dev; let Hearth Master Kalion come here, Velindre thought with mingled awe and apprehension. Let him make his pompous arguments for fire’s precedence in the face of Azazir’s dominance. This ground wasn’t frozen, but neither was it warmed by any discernible heat. It was simply saturated with water quite untroubled by the plunging temperatures. And the water was moving oddly, flowing uphill unhampered through the solid rock and cloying clay. The earth lay passive, submissive, its elemental resonance entirely subdued. Velindre looked up. The grey clouds were directly overhead, in coils of air held captive by the all-commanding water, meekly doing its bidding. Green radiance crackled in the clouds like uncanny ^lightning

She walked on slowly, increasingly reluctant yet irresistibly intrigued. Her wizard senses were soon shaking under the assault of the water’s ascendancy, just as her ears were ringing with the sound of a thousand streams rushing towards the valley ahead. She left the larches and spruces behind and soon the brambles gave up the unequal struggle to maintain a foothold in this unnatural land. The mosses persisted furthest of all, a mottled green carpet reaching almost to the crest before her. Almost but not quite. The valley was rimmed with bare earth. Not mud, she noted with faint apprehension.

The ground was dry and easy enough to walk on. She paused, sensing the water surging just below the surface. Without the magic holding it back, it would turn the solid ground into a morass of clinging clay. She took another step. No, it would become bog, a sucking mire to drown her, filling her ears and eyes and mouth with deafening, blinding, stifling muck. She could feel the lethal potential just waiting beneath her feet.

Squaring her shoulders and lifting her chin, Velindre walked up the slope, which ended in a knife edge against the empty sky. She looked down into the valley. ‘My compliments, Azazir .’ The words died on her lips as she saw the vista before her.

There was nothing growing in the valley. Trees, shrubs, grass and mosses, all had been washed to oblivion by the countless streams cascading down the steep sides. Here and there a stretch of soil remained, some curious patch of gravel bright with minerals untouched by the water gliding across it. Mostly the ground had been stripped back to rock, the bones of the earth laid mercilessly bare. The soil hadn’t been permitted any revenge on the streams, however. The lake filling the bottom of the valley was unclouded, no dirt sullying the crystal expanse. Pure power alone suffused the waters, filling the lake and the air above it with an emerald radiance.

The rocks around the shore glistened in the low light. Some of the outcrops were sharp, angles unblunted by the scouring floods. Others had been polished smooth, veins of ores and crystals exposed. Some protrusions had been carved into fanciful shapes. There was a horse with flippers instead of hooves, a fish with a mouth of distorted snaggle teeth, a lizard-tailed goat. Exaggerated faces peered up at her or out over the lake, some laughing insanely, others fixed in grimaces of terror or pain. One image caught her eye time and again: a coil mimicking the cloud held in that endless, unmoving turmoil above. Velindre looked more closely at the nearest such spiral carved into the rock just below the valley’s rim. From this angle it looked like a serpent consuming its own tail.

Velindre began a cautious descent of the treacherous slope. The ground abruptly gave way beneath her. Her flailing feet could find no purchase, nothing to stand on. She sank waist deep into water rushing to fill the newly opened gully, her hands caught in the floating folds of her skirts. Icy currents soaked her to the skin, the chill prying between her legs, sliding beneath her clothes to crush her chest in a freezing embrace. The weight of her woollen cloak choked her, pulling her backwards till her yellow plait of hair floated on the surface of the water. She gasped and struggled as the waters closed over her head in an emerald flash. The torrent carried her over the rocks, sweeping her into the lake in a cascade of jade foam.

Eyes and mouth closed tight shut, she fought with the brooch securing her cloak. A prick of pain as she ripped it free was instantly numbed by the cold. The heavy cloth sank away and she fought with the buckles on her boots with nerveless fingers. Kicking them off, she tried to swim to the surface, the breath burning in her chest. Her legs were hampered by her skirts, dragging her down. She fumbled with the buttons at her waist, tearing herself loose. She struggled free of her sodden, constricting bodice, fighting the panic rising in her throat.

Free at last, she kicked for the surface, opening her eyes only to find an impenetrable barrier of emerald light denying her. The lake had her in its grasp. She couldn’t reach the air above or the earth below the deeps. There was only water. It surrounded her, it suffused her, the cold magic willing the very blood in her veins to stop, to become one with the still peace of the pure, unclouded lake.

Velindre forced herself to go limp, arms and legs floating wide. She closed her eyes and concentrated on the air within her lungs. Meagre it might be, but it was air and it was hers. It was some tiny fraction of the emptiness beyond the water’s barrier. It had circled the seas in the great storm systems where water did the air’s bidding. It had crossed the lands where fire made a plaything of moisture in the heat of summer. The air alone knew the infinitesimal voids in the earth where water could not pass.

The green radiance wavered above her, stained with an aquamarine smear. Sapphire light splintered the waters, thrusting Velindre upwards to lie gasping, shivering on the surface of the lake. She pushed a hand into the water and a sheet of ice formed beneath her, edged with vivid blue light. Emerald fire crackled angrily around it, but the sapphire boundary stayed unbroken. She dragged herself up to half-sit, half-kneel, leaning heavily on her hands. Her skin was as white as her clinging shift and stockings and she shivered uncontrollably. Laughter echoed around the lake, sly amusement striking back at her from every rock face.

Velindre waited until she had some semblance of control over her voice. ‘My compliments again, Master Azazir. I have never seen such mastery over an element.’ She forced her head up, throwing aside her sodden plait and wiping freezing trickles from her forehead.

Green light swirled around the fragment of ice she rode on. She watched warily, stealthily seeking whatever air she could find. The eddy spun faster, mossy radiance darkening as a vortex formed, reaching down into the depths of the lake. Spiralling walls of water rose up all around the magewoman. Now the surface of the lake was level with her elbows, now her shoulders, now her head. Velindre thrust out a hand, turquoise light spreading from her outstretched palm. Her magic held back the lake as it fought to close over her head once again. She knelt upright and brought her hands up, the light strengthening to bathe her in a piercing azure. Her magic spread, forcing the emerald-laced waters back. The vortex swirled beneath her and for the barest moment, a ripple opened a gap between the ice she rode and the hollow beneath. Velindre thrust one hand down, blue fire plunging through the gap to rip the green spiral apart, scattering it to the depths of the lake. The waters rocked violently and she let her magic go to cling to the ice, fingers burning with the cold. That same laughter echoed around, now coloured with a buoyant excitement.

‘I would much prefer to talk to you face to face,’ Velindre called out with all the dignity she could muster. She scanned the water and the valley in the fast-fading dusk. How far was it to the edge of the lake? Could she rely on the air to cany her over such an expanse of magically malevolent water? There was no point in even thinking of working a water magic through her own sympathy with that element. She could never hope to wrest any control from Azazir.

‘How would you recognise my face?’ Cruel laughter rippled through the words.

‘I wouldn’t, obviously.’ Velindre looked around in vain to see where the voice was coming from. ‘The Council of Hadrumal hasn’t seen fit to hang your portrait in any of the halls,’ she added tartly.

‘The Council of Hadrumal doubtless thinks I’m dead, if they think of me at all.’ There was an undercurrent of menace in the breathless words. ‘And I don’t imagine you’re here with their blessing. What’s to stop me killing you?’

‘I’ll do my level best, for a start.’ Velindre seized her chance and wrapped herself in a web of bright-blue magic. It wasn’t warmth but it was better than nothing. She had to ward off the cold somehow or that would be the death of her, never mind this mysterious wizard. ‘Besides, kill me and you’ll never know what brought me here.’

‘What makes you think I would care?’ the voice queried.

‘Otrick’s diaries,’ she shot back. ‘His writings say you were a mage who never let a question go unanswered.’

‘Why are you reading Otrick’s diaries? Did he send you here?’ The voice was right behind her.

Velindre skidded around on her knees and gasped. A man was standing on the surface of the lake. Or at least, the translucent form of a thin, wiry man had risen out of the water, entirely naked, with a semblance of a long beard and straggly hair flowing back into the effigy. Currents of green magic fleeted within the shape, momentarily mimicking blood and bone before disappearing. The apparition opened its mouth.

‘Did Otrick send you?’ Azazir repeated, with an emerald flash in his colourless eyes.

‘Otrick is dead.’ The admission was startled out of Velindre. She bit her cold, wet lip and found her face was too numb for her to feel it.

‘Is he?’ Azazir didn’t sound overly concerned. ‘He taught you, didn’t he? I can see his quirks in your magic’

‘Yes, he taught me.’ Velindre nodded jerkily. But not everything he knew. Not everything the two of you knew.

There’s more I want to learn.’

‘You have a powerful affinity,’ Azazir remarked, coming close to the sapphire magic that surrounded her. Green radiance pulsed and faded within his watery body. ‘Like Otrick. But do you understand, like he did?’

‘Understand what?’ asked Velindre warily, struggling to stop her teeth from chattering. ‘And I won’t understand anything if I freeze to death. I have to get ashore and dry off

Azazir ignored her, stretching out a colourless hand. Do you understand the limits of magic? Do you understand that the only limits are those we impose on ourselves?’ He touched the a2ure magic and the ensor-celled air sank into the waters of the lake. Velindre gasped as the fierce cold bit deeper than ever into her drenched, inadequate clothing.

‘Hush,’ whispered Azazir, eyes glowing phosphorescent.

The air that Velindre had bound with her sapphire magic rose up from the lake once more. It brought a mist of fine droplets with it, suffused with emerald magelight. The blended magic shimmered turquoise. ‘Did Otrick see it in you?’ Azazir continued, drifting around behind Velindre to reappear on her other side.

‘See what?’ she snapped, doing her best to keep him in sight. It wasn’t easy. Azazir began circling her, his insubstantial feet drifting through the surface of the lake, leaving a trail of emerald radiance sinking away into the depths.

‘Is that why he sent you to me?’ the water wizard mused. ‘To do what he couldn’t? Is that what he sees in you? The courage he never had, to yield, to become one with his element? Is that what you want to learn?’

Velindre felt herself growing dizzy as the aquamarine magic blurred her vision.

‘Because there are marvellous magics to be made when you truly blend the elements, you know,’ he whispered seductively.

‘I want to learn what you know of dragons,’ she said resolutely, trying not to look at him, fumbling for some control over her own element.

‘Of course you do.’ Azazir nodded with a happy smile. ‘Which is why you’ll do what I want. Whatever I want.’

Inside a heartbeat, three things happened. Velindre realised that Azazir was quite insane. She realised that his magic had entirely suffused her own and that she had no idea how to disentangle herself. Then he stepped through the turquoise radiance and seized her, his translucent hands digging into her arms. She gasped with pain and opened her mouth to protest but it was too late. Azazir pressed himself against her and the shape he had adopted was already losing its form as his very substance flowed inexorably into her own.