Mother Northwind really hadn’t intended to tell Brenna the truth. .. or most of the truth… until she’d learned that Brenna and Anton knew that the men who had been dragging them across the ice were hers, and not Falk’s. If Brenna let out that bit of information to Falk… well, she’d deal with it if she had to, but better not to have to. So Mother Northwind had told Brenna the fate Falk intended for her, and made sure the girl knew that only she stood between Brenna and certain death at the end of the journey.
Afterward, though, she thought it might have been the best thing to do even if Brenna hadn’t known that the dogsled drivers had been hers. Perhaps, she thought, the easiest way to get the Magebane and Heir to do what she needed them to do was not to force them to it-though she certainly could and would if she had to-but convince them to cooperate voluntarily. Which was why, even as Falk’s magical carriage rolled north toward the Cauldron, she was forcing her aching knees up the Palace stairs to the very top floor… to the quarters of the Prince.
Karl’s bodyguard Teran stood outside. He nodded and readily admitted her when she told him she had been asked to check up on the Prince after his recent ordeal. And why shouldn’t he? she thought. Everyone knows by now that I’m Falk’s pet Healer from his own demesne. She contrived to stumble as she was passing Teran, so he would put out a hand to steady her, which he did; then she smiled, and thanked him, and went inside.
The Prince seemed to have just come out of the bath and, wrapped in a fluffy white dressing gown and fuzzy slippers, was reading a book by the fire. He raised his head as she came in, and got to his feet. “Mother Northwind? What are you-”
Mother Northwind waited for the door to close behind her. “Are we alone?” she said.
The Prince blinked, then glanced around the otherwise unoccupied room. “Um, yes… obviously.”
“No Commoner maid warming your bed in the other room?”
The Prince’s face flushed. “No,” he said shortly. “And I think you forget yourself, Healer.”
“Don’t try to awe me with your Princely high-andmightiness, Your ‘Highness.’ ” Mother Northwind sat down in one of the chairs by the fire. “And don’t stand there like some gawky scarecrow. Sit down. I have things to tell you that you may find upsetting.”
The Prince sat, but his face remained clouded with annoyance. “What’s this all about?” he snapped. “Why shouldn’t I call Teran in here to have you thrown out?”
“I’d like to see him try it,” said Mother Northwind. “But you need to hear what I have to say, Your Highness, and what I have to say is for your ears only. In particular, it is not for those ears,” she nodded toward the door, “when those ears are pretty much a direct conduit to Lord Falk.”
Karl frowned. “Teran? Are you suggesting he’s a spy for Lord Falk?”
“It’s not a suggestion, you innocent fool, it’s a straightout statement of fact,” Mother Northwind said. “Of course he’s a spy for Falk. Not only is he a Royal guardsman, which makes Falk his commander, but Falk is holding his mother and sister hostage. So even though he’s fond of you, your ‘friend’ Teran would kill you in a heartbeat if Falk told him to.”
Karl’s eyes narrowed. “And this is what you think it is so important to tell me?”
“No, but it’s part and parcel of it. You are not your own man, Prince Karl. You never have been. You are the creation of Lord Falk. And very soon, he plans to uncreate you.”
The Prince’s annoyance was visibly sliding toward fury. “Enough of these riddles, old woman. Tell me what you have come to tell me, then get out.”
“Very well,” said Mother Northwind. “You may find it hard to believe. But it is the truth, and you would do well to heed it.”
And then she told him exactly what she had told Brenna… exactly, right down to leaving out the one little detail she had not shared with the Heir: that her plan, too, required the death of King Kravon… but at a time of her choosing, not Falk’s.
Karl’s face went from red to almost as white as his dressing gown in the course of that telling. “What madness is this?” he whispered when she was done. “You’re telling me I’m not the Heir? Not royalty at all? Not the son of King Kravon?”
Mother Northwind shook her head. “No, I’m afraid not, Your Highness.” She laughed, amused at her own inconsistency. “Karl, I mean. But you are something far more important.”
“More madness,” Karl said. “The Magebane is a myth.”
“You are not ‘The Magebane,’ ” Mother Northwind said. “You are a Magebane. And you are my creation.”
Karl got up and went to the window, pulling back the curtains to look out, she surmised, at the place where he had almost been assassinated. “So when the assassin struck, there was nothing wrong with the enchanted weapons.”
“Nothing at all,” Mother Northwind said. “Your power woke fully with that attack, and hurled it back on the attacker.” She studied the back of his head. “Let me guess,” she said. “You had already had a hint that that power existed.”
“Since I was a boy,” Karl said. “Small things… magic has always tended to go awry near me. Enchanted objects lose their enchantment. Magelights die. And magically locked doors… can be opened.”
Even in her very brief contact with Teran outside, Mother Northwind had seen the memory of the time when one locked door in particular had opened, greatly pleasing two young boys. “Has Falk taken notice?” she asked.
“He’s never asked me about it. Tagaza…” He paused, looking sad. “Tagaza once told me the Magecorps were always struggling with magelights and such near my quarters, but I don’t think he ever thought I had anything to do with it.” He turned to look at her. “What would Falk do if he knew? Knew I might be a Magebane? Kill me?”
“No,” Mother Northwind said. “At least, not until he was certain he could not use you instead.”
“He must know what happened at Goodwife Beth’s,” Karl said.
Mother Northwind’s eyes narrowed. “I don’t,” she said. “Tell me.”
“During the attack, Denson… one of my captors… wanted me to stick my head up first to draw any fire that might be aimed at him and his friend. A soldier threw a… I think they call it a melonbreaker… spell. All I saw was a flash, but the soldier who threw the spell…”
“Let me guess,” Mother Northwind said. “No more head.”
Karl shuddered. “Yes.”
Mother Northwind noted that shudder. A soft heart, to go with that soft exterior, she thought. I can use that. “You have it in your power to do away with abominable spells like that,” she said gently. “If you do as I ask, you can do away with all spells.”
Karl glanced at the antechamber window. “That will do away with all that, too,” he said, nodding at the bright blue sky the window framed. “Eternal spring in the middle of winter. Sunlight on the darkest day.” He paused, then looked back at her. “And Healers?”
Mother Northwind hesitated. “I hope not,” she said at last. “Soft magic is not part of the Keys or the Barriers. I do not believe that it will be affected. Not, at least, to the same extent.”
Karl studied her. “Meaning you will still have the power to twist men’s minds to do your will.”
Why deny it? “I believe that I will,” she said. “But I will use the power judiciously.”
“Will you?” Karl said. “Or are you asking me to throw over one Mageborn-led tyranny for another?”
“No!” Mother Northwind said sharply. “I want only to remove the MageLords from power. Not seize it myself.”
“Except when, in your judicious opinion, it needs to be seized.”
Mother Northwind studied the Prince with new respect. Karl had always been, in her mind, simply the tool she had forged to bring down the MageLords. Falk had always dismissed him as a feckless, immature boy with little interest in politics or anything beyond his own comfort and amusement. But that was not the Prince who stood before her now, nor the Prince who had stood up to Falk at the dinner a few nights before.
Well, she thought dryly, having someone try to kill you, rebels capture you, and a platoon of guards violently rescue you is probably a very effective program for growing up in a hurry. “I do not seek to rule,” she said again.
“Then who will, Mother Northwind? When you throw down all this,” his gesture took in the Palace, the Lesser Barrier, the Kingdom as a whole, “What will replace it?”
“Commoners,” Mother Northwind said. “Rule by the common people.”
“And are the common people ready to rule?” Karl said softly. “Or are you simply paving the way for chaos?”
Mother Northwind felt the first stirrings of real anger. Enough was enough. “The Kingdom is corrupt. The MageLords are brutal tyrants. They oppress and exploit the Commoners, and massacre the Minik at will, as though they were nothing but animals. Chaos would be preferable!”
Prince Karl studied her for a long moment. “I’ll think about it,” he said at last. “I’ll think long and hard about whether I want to help you or not.”
“Think about it?” Fury suddenly roared through her veins. After all these years…! “You’re my creation,” she snarled. “I changed you in the womb to make you what you are. You will do what I wish!” She got to her feet and stepped toward him. “Or-”
“Or what?” Karl said coldly, not moving. “You’ll twist my mind?” He suddenly stood and took a step toward her, within easy reach. “I’m the Magebane, if you tell the truth,” he said. “Care to try it?” He held out his hand.
Mother Northwind reached for it-then snatched it back. SkyMage! she thought, and that was an oath she rarely used.
She was ashamed to admit it, but she had never realized until that moment that she could no more influence the Magebane than Falk could slay him with magic. If she reached inside his mind, would she reach inside her own, instead? If she tried to twist him, would she instead twist herself… into madness?
Karl drew his hand back. “I said I will think about your request to help bring down the MageLords,” he said, voice calm. “And I will also think about the fact that you ‘changed me in the womb.’ ” His voice dropped to an intense whisper. “Whose womb was that, Mother Northwind? And what became of its owner? What became of my mother?”
Mother Northwind remembered a stormy night, a woman in pain, blood, the cry of a healthy baby boy… the woman begging to hold the child… a soothing hand on the woman’s brow…
… labored breathing that slowed, stopped…
It had to be done, Mother Northwind thought. It had to be!
But now, faced with that babe grown to a man, forged by her own efforts into someone she could not manipulate as she had manipulated so many others over the years, she was helpless before the memory. “She died when you were born.”
“You murdered her,” Karl said flatly. “As you murdered the Queen, Brenna’s mother… and how many others? How many others have you killed or caused to be killed so that your great Plan could go forward, so you could overthrow the MageLords. In what way does that make you better than them? ”
Mother Northwind trembled with rage. She wouldn’t stand there any longer, to be lectured and accused by this beardless boy who owed his very existence to her. She had wrestled with and made her choices long ago, and she stood by them. “Those I have slain were few, those I have saved are many,” she grated. “The MageLords have slain tens of thousands, here and before this Kingdom was established. If Falk has his way-and if you will not help me, and my plans crumble to dust, then he most assuredly will-thousands more will die in the war that will erupt when he brings down the Great Barrier.
“So. Take your time, Prince Karl. Make your own calculations. Decide your own level of acceptable sacrifice. I have worked my whole life to give you that power and put you where you could use it. You once thought you would be King, and wield great power. Now you know you never will… but you have more power than you would ever have had as King.
“Whatever choice you make you will have to justify to yourself.. . as I have justified mine.”
Without another word, she turned, hobbled to the door, and let herself out.
He’ll do as I ask, she thought as she made her painful way down the hallway. He has to.
But in her heart she knew that he really had to do nothing of the kind… and that the plan she had worked so long to bring to the edge of fruition now depended entirely on another.
I created him, she thought, but I had no part in molding him, and now, like a mother who gave up her son for adoption at birth and is now destitute, I have come back to him begging for his help.
Suddenly feeling very old and very alone, Mother Northwind made her way back to her empty rooms.
Karl stared at the closed door, his body still, but his mind in turmoil.
He believed Mother Northwind; how could he not, when he had seen magic literally bounce off him and rebound on its wielder, twice, and when what she had told him so well explained the strange ability he had been aware of since childhood. And he would gladly believe he was not the Heir, that King Kravon was not his father… though he still had memories, from when he was little, of Kravon showing him affection, and of loving the strange man he saw only on rare occasions.
His real father, his real mother, he would never know. Mother Northwind had chosen them as nothing more than a… a breeding pair. She needed an infant she could substitute for the true Heir at birth, an unborn child she could mold into the Magebane, and it could have been anyone… it just happened to be him.
She stole my parents from me, Karl thought coldly. She stole my childhood. She cares nothing about me; I’m just a sword to wield against the MageLords.
But she had also left him with nothing else to be. He was not the Heir, and Falk had always known it. He would never be King, and Falk might well kill him once he was no longer needed.
And Teran, the bodyguard I thought was also my friend, will help him, he snarled silently, remembering what Mother Northwind had said about him.
I could flee, he thought. Flee through the Lesser Barrier, just walk right through it and disappear into the Commons…
… bringing down the wrath of Falk once more on the city of New Cabora, he realized sickly.
How many innocent people would suffer then because of him?
Suddenly Karl couldn’t stand still any longer. He turned and strode back into his bedroom, dressed in a hurry, and went out, Teran leaping to attention and following him as he passed through the hallways of the Palace almost at a run.
At the top of the Palace steps, Karl paused, staring down at the ornamental gardens, the statue of Queen Castilla, the lake, and the Barrier, and beyond the lake at the snow-choked, smoky city of New Cabora.
“I’m going across the lake,” Karl said to Teran, without looking at him, as the bodyguard caught up to him. “To the place where I like to swim.”
“Your Highness? Where the assassin-”
“Yes, where the assassination attempt was made,” Karl snapped. “Come.” And without another word he strode down the steps, toward the boathouse at the far end of the gardens.
There, he climbed into the same white-and-gold boat he had used to follow Jopps and Denson in the dark the night of Verdsmitt’s arrest. Teran climbed in behind him, picked up the oars, and began rowing them steadily, mechanically, across the lake. With only one or two glances over his shoulder, he drove the boat to within a few feet of where the assassin had died.
Karl jumped out, and strode up the grass to the Lesser Barrier. There he stopped. He reached out a hand to the barrier.
“Careful, Your Highness,” said Teran.
Karl ignored him. He leaned in with his outstretched hand…
… and it passed through shimmering Barrier as though it wasn’t there. He felt the icy nip of the outside air on his fingers.
Behind him, Teran gasped. “How…”
Karl withdrew his hand and studied New Cabora. Sunshine streamed down on the snow in the park today, which cast it back in a million diamond sparkles. The city, buildings black from decades of smoke, squatted on the other side of the parkland beneath a pall of ice fog, the contrast between its dark structures and the pure-white parkland making it look a dark and dangerous place indeed.
He turned around and studied the Palace. It shone like a jewel, white against the green of the lawns, windows sparkling, gardens awash in riotous flower colors. Karl listened. He could hear birds singing, insects chirping in the grass, even a distant, haunting snatch of music, though whether it came from living musicians or enchanted instruments, he had no way of knowing.
A butterfly, its wings iridescent blue, rested on the bright-red petals of a waist-high flower a few steps away. Karl knelt and examined the insect. It reminded him of the Palace in its beauty. Crushing such a thing would be an act of senseless destruction.
But there was one difference between the butterfly and the Palace. The butterfly was natural. Though it was out of season, in the real spring that would soon break winter’s grip on the world outside a million more just like it would appear. Its beauty owed nothing to magic.
Karl stood and gazed at the Palace again. Unlike the butterfly, there was nothing natural about it at all. It would not exist if not for magic. And yet, it too was beautiful.
Did he destroy it? Destroy all the wonderful things magic could do because some of those who wielded it used it for evil?
He turned and gazed at the Barrier again, and New Cabora beyond it. The city, black and ugly, was no more natural than the Palace. It had been built by men bending Nature to their will, just as the Palace had been, the only difference being the tools used. The Commoners’ tools were crude. Therefore, the city was crude and ugly. The MageLords’ tools were refined and powerful. Therefore, the Palace was refined and beautiful. But Commoners and Mageborn alike strove to impose their will on Nature.
The difference, Karl thought, is that the MageLords also seek to impose their will on others. But would Commoner rule really be any better?
Turning his back on the Palace, he stared out at the city again, pulled at by the desire to flee, to deny what he was-what Mother Northwind had made him-and simply refuse to act…
… except that by refusing to act he would be acting, and those actions would have consequences: for the Commoners, among whom Falk would surely seek him; for the MageLords, who would find Falk their King; and for the Outsiders, who would soon find themselves fighting the MageLords for their own freedom.
He remembered standing in this place the day of the assassination attempt, thinking how much he longed to be free of his imprisonment in the Palace. Now he was free; he could walk out on everything…
… and yet he felt less free than ever, for he had been given the unwanted power to decide the future of the Kingdom and the world.
It was too much. He put his hand through the Barrier again, held it there so long his fingers stung with cold by the time he pulled them back; but when he turned back toward the boat, he still had not made up his mind what to do.
But he did know one thing he had to do. Teran was staring at him, hand on his belt: not on his sword, but on one of the enchanted spellstones set into his guard belt. Karl glanced down, then up at Teran’s pale face. “Were you planning to use that on me?”
“Your Highness…” Teran licked his lips. “I thought… you put your hand through the Lesser Barrier… I… how? ”
“I could walk through it right now, Teran,” Karl said. “The Lesser Barrier is no barrier to me. It’s as open as that door into the maids’ bathing chambers.” He softened his voice. “Do you remember that door, Teran?”
A flicker of a smile on Teran’s face. “Of course I do.” The smile faded. “But I can’t let you do that, Your Highness.”
“Why?” Karl said.
“I am sworn to protect you-”
“Sworn to protect me?” Karl took a step closer to him and spoke his next words as though he were snapping a whip. “Or sworn to spy on me for Falk?”
Teran stepped back. “Your Highness-”
“Don’t bother protesting,” Karl said. “I know the truth.”
“You don’t understand,” Teran said. “Your Highness… Karl.. . Falk… he’s got my mother, my sister, they’re prisoners in a house in the Mageborn enclave…”
Karl remembered Teran’s sister, three years younger, as a laughing child with golden hair, playing with a ball in the Fountain Garden, and the hatred he had begun to feel for Falk flared higher. “Teran,” he said. “Falk’s days are numbered. You won’t need to fear him much longer.”
“Your Highness…”
“Don’t call me that,” Karl snapped, surprised by his own vehemence. But he didn’t deserve the title, had never deserved the title. He was not the Heir. He wasn’t even Mageborn. He was Commoner: Commoner, and something more.
Magebane.
“Forget I’m the Prince,” he said. “Forget you are a guardsman. Forget Falk. I’m Karl. You’re Teran. I’ve always counted you as my friend. I hope you have counted me as yours.”
Teran licked his lips, but his voice was steady as he said, “I have… Karl.”
“Then I ask you, as a friend, not to tell Falk what you just saw me do.” Karl nodded at the Lesser Barrier. “And to remember our friendship when next Falk gives you orders.”
Teran licked his lips again. “But, Your Highness… Karl… my mother, my sister…”
Karl smiled. “I am still the Prince. Falk is not in the Palace. Do you know where in the enclave they are being held?”
Teran nodded.
“If I order them freed from the house, can you get them out through the Barrier to somewhere safe, somewhere Falk can’t find them?”
Teran nodded again.
“Consider it done.” Karl held out his hand. “Now, old friend… will you keep my secrets? Will you serve me as loyally as I’ve already thought you were?”
Teran looked at the hand for a long moment, then turned to look toward the roofs of the Mageborn enclave, just visible through the trees past the bridge. He gazed in that direction for a long moment, then snapped his eyes back to Karl, grabbed his hand, and shook it. “I will, old friend. And beg your forgiveness that I have ever done anything else.”
Karl clapped him on the shoulder. “Then let’s go back to the Palace. I have orders to give.”
He looked back at the city himself one last time. And then, he thought, I have a decision to make.