Anton dashed through the deserted streets of Elkbone, the mixture of slush, mud, and horse manure a recent thaw had created splattering his leather pants, even reaching as high as his sheepskin coat. The boardwalks on both sides of the street, fronting the few shops the cattle town could boast (half of which were saloons), were covered with ice, and he couldn’t risk a fall… not now, not today. The sky overhead had just turned to blue from pink as the sun rose above the horizon, and for the moment, at least, there was no wind: perfect flying weather.
Elkbone nestled in a low valley, sheltered from the cold winds that scoured the prairie above by the valley slopes and a few straggly trees… if you could call them trees.
If you could even call Elkbone a town. Lord Mayor Ronal Ferkkisson liked to call it a city, but perhaps that level of delusional grandiosity was to be expected from someone who also insisted he was not just a mayor, but “Lord Mayor.”
Elkbone wouldn’t even have made a good-sized neighborhood in Hexton Down, Anton thought as he skidded around a corner, and Hexton Down was small compared to the truly great cities of the Union Republic, like Summerfell and Hawksight. Even the harbor town of Wavehaven, more than a thousand miles to the west and the largest settlement in the Wild Land, barely qualified as a city by Anton’s standards.
Cities, for instance, usually had tall buildings, whereas in Elkbone the Temple Tower, rising ahead of him, was the only structure that exceeded two stories… except for what rose, albeit temporarily, just beyond the tower. Blue like the sky, shaped like a breadloaf, made of the finest silk, the envelope of Professor Carteri’s airship tugged at its constraining netting as though longing to leap into the air… as it would, momentarily.
As it would have already if the Professor… oh, all right, if I… hadn’t forgotten the telescope, thought Anton. The Professor was not the sort of master who beat his apprentice. But he was also not the sort to simply let an oversight like that slide, and Anton knew he’d be hearing about it all day.
The emptiness of the streets he had run along was due to the presence of the airship, of course. The town’s entire population seemed to have come down to the Temple courtyard to see them off. As Anton dashed through the slush and finally onto good solid cobblestones, he couldn’t even see the Professor, though he knew Carteri had to be standing by the wicker basket, impatiently awaiting his apprentice’s return. All he could see were the backs of people’s heads; but, of course, as he started to make his way through the crowd, those heads turned in his direction, and then, as though he’d parted the seas like the Prophet in the old Temple tale, the crowd opened up before him, giving him a straight run to the rope barrier surrounding the airship… and Professor Carteri. The Professor, standing with the Lord Mayor and a red-robed priest from the Temple, appeared completely calm, but he frowned just enough in Anton’s direction as Anton reached the barrier to let him know that he definitely would hear more about this later.
Anton ducked under the rope barrier, accompanied by a barrage of flashes from the imagers of the newssheet reporters gathered along one side. Anton knew most of them, since they’d all made the long journey from Wavehaven together, their stagecoaches accompanying the wagon hauling the Professor’s airship over the rutted trails. In fact, several of them he knew from as long ago as that day in Hexton Down when, after weeks of work helping his new master assemble and test the airship, he had stood at Professor Carteri’s side as he announced his grand plan to fly his airship over the top of the mysterious Anomaly in the heart of the Wild Land. The skepticism and outright derision that had followed had not deterred him. More importantly, it had not deterred the Academy of Natural Philosophy, which was funding the expedition.
“Are you ready to go now, Professor?” one of the reporters shouted.
“Hey, Anton, sure you want to go through with this?” yelled another, to the laughter of his colleagues.
Anton ignored them. The Professor had made it clear that any comments concerning the expedition should come from him alone… although Anton suspected the reporters had already garnered plenty of other comments from the people of Elkbone, who were relishing the excitement of having Professor Carteri and his amazing airship in their midst, but were convinced that once he flew over the Anomaly-if he even made it over-they’d never see him again.
He’ll prove you all wrong, Anton thought as he handed the telescope to the Professor.
“Thank you, Anton,” the Professor said gravely. “If you would be so good as to board and conduct the final preflight check, I’ll just say a few words to the press.”
Anton nodded, and went up the wooden steps behind the professor to the platform the town had built for the launch, apparently using the plans they normally followed for constructing gallows. The airship, already afloat in the air but tethered to the same stout posts that formed the corners of the rope barrier, dipped slightly as he stepped aboard. He immediately began following the checklist he’d long since memorized, scrutinizing ropes for wear, counting sandbags, inspecting the large tank of compressed rock gas and the burner above it (only flickering at the moment, putting out just enough heat to keep the airship bobbing on its tethers) and the tiny steam engine, with its own tank of rock gas, that powered the propeller at the gondola’s stern. He tapped the glass of the instruments on their wooden panel, then swung the tiller, the blocks squeaking, and glanced up to make sure the giant rudder on the back of the envelope swung properly. All the while, he was listening with half an ear to the Professor’s speech …
“… since its discovery twenty years ago, the Anomaly has been the greatest scientific mystery of our age… until recently no way to investigate it, but with the advent of my airship… understand the dangers, but advancing human knowledge is worth any amount of risk
… my thanks to the Academy for supporting this important expedition…” Anton had heard it all before.
He finished his checklist with a look in the stores cupboards in the bow and then went back to the gondola’s door. The Professor knew to a tee how long the check took; he was just wrapping up. “… we do not know what we will find. But that is precisely why we must make the attempt. Thank you.”
The Lord Mayor had made his speech before Anton had realized he’d been missing the telescope, and the Priest had already offered his blessing; knowing how the Professor felt about religion, Anton was almost surprised he’d accepted it-but then he thought of the reporters and understood.
The Professor’s farewell said, he turned and climbed into the gondola with Anton. “About time we got away,” he said under his breath, and Anton smiled sheepishly.
The Professor closed and latched the gondola’s door. “I’ll take port, you take starboard,” he told Anton, and Anton crossed to the other side of the gondola to look down on the two beefy police constables in green uniforms standing ready at the posts on that side. “Untie!” the Professor shouted, and the constables undid the ropes from the posts, but kept a tight hold. The airship barely moved, the air in the envelope having cooled enough that it was on the verge of sinking. The Professor turned to the burner in the center of the gondola and opened a valve. Instantly the faint murmur of burning rock gas rose to a thunderous roar. Anton glanced up to see the enormous yellow flame shoot up into the envelope, then turn to blue, then turned his attention back to the two constables to make sure they didn’t let go too early, the heat from the burner warming the back of his neck.
The crowd matched the roar of the gas with a roar of its own, mostly cheers, though there were a few jeers and catcalls in the mix as well. Until the Professor had shown up, most of the residents of Elkbone had never even heard of an airship, much less seen one, and more than a few of them didn’t really believe it would fly.
Well, you’re about to learn different, Anton thought.
He could tell from the increasingly strained expressions of the constables that the heat was building rapidly in the envelope. The ropes drew taut. One constable staggered forward a few feet, and the gondola lurched upward at that corner.
“Hold fast!” Anton shouted. He glanced over his shoulder. The Professor was still watching the burner, but now at last he turned back to the other side of the gondola. He raised his hand. Anton raised his.
“Let go!” shouted the Professor, and chopped his hand down, Anton mimicking him an instant later.
The constables released the ropes. The airship began to rise, the roar of the crowd so loud in Anton’s ears it felt almost as if the airship were riding sound rather than hot air into the sky. But the noise dwindled rapidly as they gained altitude. Anton hurried to the starboard bow and began hauling in and coiling the rope there, the Professor doing the same in the port stern. By the time all four ropes were aboard, they were five hundred feet in the air and beginning to drift to the east. Anton took a look over the side of the gondola and saw Elkbone, strung out in its little valley; then he looked up, across the rolling prairie, and saw their destination dead ahead.
From this distance, twenty miles or so out, the Anomaly looked like a fog bank: high, gray, crowned with clouds, impenetrable. They weren’t nearly high enough to see over it, even if there was anything to see. What would they find on the other side? Anton wondered. Could they even get to the other side?
He glanced at the Professor, expecting him to order the engine started, but the Professor, looking over the side, said nothing for a moment. “There’s little wind, but it’s taking us in the right direction,” he said at last. “We’ll drift, lad. Our fuel supply is limited and we’ll want it for the return trip.”
Drift? Anton took a look over the side. They were moving, but very, very slowly. He could still see the crowd in the Elkbone Temple Square, waving. He took another look at the Anomaly. Four hours at this rate, he thought gloomily, sighed, and went to the bow to keep a lookout.
The morning passed slowly. The wind rose with the sun, but not very much. Elkbone dwindled out of sight behind them at last, hidden in its valley. The Anomaly grew closer. Periodically the Professor lit the burner, so that they continued to rise, until they were five thousand feet above the snow-covered prairie below. Anton, looking down, saw a huge herd of bison, oblivious to their silent presence, grazing peacefully.
But after three hours, the Professor, who had been examining the Anomaly ahead with the telescope Anton had belatedly delivered to the airship, abruptly straightened and closed the telescope with a snap. “I believe it’s time to make steam, Anton.”
“Aye, aye, Professor!” Anton said. At last!
He hurried to the stern, and took the tiller, flipping the loop of rope that had been holding it centered off of the end. The Professor turned his attention to the steam engine. The boiler was hot, but like the envelope, needed more heat before it would do them any good. He cranked open valves, checked gauges, double-checked the boiler’s safety valve, then waited stoically for the pressure to rise.
“Pressure’s up,” he said after a few minutes. “Engage the gearshaft.”
Anton pushed a lever by his left hand. “Gearshaft engaged.”
“Quarter steam,” the Professor said.
“Quarter steam it is.” Anton pushed a second lever forward half as far as it would go. The little steam engine gave a gasp and began to puff… and behind Anton, the propeller began to spin, slowly at first, but rapidly picking up speed. As it did so, he felt air moving against his face for the first time. He pushed at the tiller, and the nose of the airship responded… sluggishly, but it responded. It would respond faster at a higher airspeed, but of course the Professor still wanted to preserve as much rock gas as possible.
“Our heading will be due east,” the Professor said. “I’ll take the tiller once we are closer to the Anomaly, but for now, carry on. Keep us at five thousand feet.”
“Due east at five thousand it is,” acknowledge Anton. He didn’t move the tiller; they’d been drifting due east the whole time. The altimeter showed them dipping below five thousand; he reached out for the burner control and gave the envelope a brief kick of flame.
“I believe we will make it half steam,” said the Professor.
“Half steam, aye,” Anton said. He pushed the throttle ahead another quarter. The puffing of the engine increased in tempo, the rhythmic whirring of the propeller grew louder, and the light breeze blowing past Anton’s ears became a stiff one, and a cold one, at that. He reached up and undid the snaps holding the earflaps of his helmet, so they dropped over his ears, and then pulled his goggles down over his eyes.
Meanwhile the Professor had opened a compartment in the bow and pulled out a fine-grain imager, a huge black box with a lens on the front that he attached to a mount. He began taking pictures of the Anomaly as it drew nearer and nearer. Not that its appearance changed; it remained a towering bank of fog. It looked like they could sail right through it, but, of course, Anton knew better. Deep within that fog was the true Anomaly, an impenetrable black wall of nothingness, so cold that the unlucky discoverer of the Anomaly (a now-elderly gentlemen whom Anton had met in person during a trip with the Professor from Hexton Down to Summerfell to argue for more funding from the Academy) had lost not only his fingers but his whole hand and a large portion of his arm after reaching out and touching it.
Calculations based on the apparent curve of the Anomaly indicated it formed a circle some 1,800 miles in circumference, roughly six hundred in diameter, encompassing an area of more than 280,000 square miles (assuming it really was a circle; no one had yet penetrated far enough into the Wild Land from its mountainous eastern shore to encounter the Anomaly from that direction). Its height was uncertain, due to the fog and clouds associated with it, but was generally estimated to be between 13,000 and 18,000 feet.
Closer and closer drew the wall of fog. Periodically Anton lit the burner to keep them at five thousand feet. Mostly he watched the back of the Professor’s head, waiting for the next order, and finally it came. “Slow to one quarter,” he said. “I think it is time to ascend.”
“Yes, Professor,” Anton said. He pulled back on the throttle. The Professor checked the gauge on the rock gas tank, frowning slightly, then shrugged and opened the main valve. The flame roared, and the airship began to rise through the cold prairie air.
Five thousand… six thousand… seven… eight… up and up they went, and still they could not see over the Anomaly. At nine thousand feet their rate of ascent slowed, and the Professor, frowning again at the rock gas tank, said, “I believe we will release ballast, Anton. If you would open the tank? One-quarter turn, I think; we don’t want to ascend too quickly, and we’ll want to save some ballast if we can.”
“Yes, Professor.” Anton bent down and turned a knob protruding through the floor of the gondola at his feet. The entire base of the gondola was a water tank-their water supply, should they need it. However, considering the entire prairie around them was covered with snow and ice, it seemed unlikely they would. The water also made ballast, and now, as Anton turned the valve, that ballast began to flow out of the bottom of the tank. The airship lurched, then rose much faster than before.
Ten thousand feet. Eleven thousand. Twelve, and they were slowing again. The water tank was empty, they were almost to the wall of fog marking the Anomaly, and still it rose above them, an impossible cliff of white, swirling vapor. Was it his imagination, or could he feel the chill from it even through his warm leather flying gear?
The Professor peered up into the fog. “I think we need another two to three thousand feet,” he said, his voice grim but determined. “Release ten sandbags, please, Anton.”
“Ten sandbags, aye,” said Anton. The sandbags festooned the outside of the gondola; one hundred in all, in five ranks of ten bags each, port and starboard. The cords holding them were rigged with quick release buckles at his end. He let the tiller go for a moment, took hold of the top buckles on each side, and pulled hard.
The ropes dropped from the side of the gondola, the sandbags slipping off them to plummet toward the prairie below… and the airship resumed climbing. Anton seized the tiller. “Head to port!” yelled the Professor above the constant roar of the burner. “Parallel until we get enough altitude!”
Anton pushed the tiller to port, but he knew they couldn’t really fly parallel to the Anomaly, not with the prevailing westerly pushing them toward it. Of course the Professor knew that, too. If he really thinks we’re going to hit, he’ll want to turn right into the wind and try to fight our way away from the wall, Anton thought tensely. I’ll have to be ready to-
“Ten more sandbags,” called the Professor, cutting his thought short.
“Aye, aye!” Ten more plunged away.
And still the wall of fog rose above them, so close now that they were within the outer reaches of it, the moisture beginning to freeze onto the rigging and metal, forming ice that would weigh them down, slow their ascent. Anton, squinting up, could see no end to the fog. Yet from a distance he’d been able to see the top. They must be close…
The Professor was glaring up through the fog as though he took the Anomaly’s ridiculous height as a personal insult. “Release all ballast, Anton.”
Anton swallowed. Without any ballast, they’d have no way to gain altitude rapidly the next time they needed to. A gust of wind swung them farther into the mist, making the Professor go suddenly ghostly in the bow. On the other hand, Anton thought, reaching for the quick-release buckles, we’re liable to smack hard right into that thing any minute, and what that kind of sudden freezing will do to the airship…
… well, he really didn’t want to find out, not at this altitude.
He pulled all the remaining quick-release buckles. Just as the last snapped open, an enormous updraft seized them.
It felt like a giant had grabbed them and hurled them, spinning, into the sky. The airship shot up, so fast and suddenly that both Anton and the Professor were flung to the floor of the gondola. Anton struggled up again and grabbed the tiller, but they had no headway, the propeller churning uselessly behind them. He couldn’t stop the spin. The world whirled through his vision, wall of fog, sunlit prairie, wall of fog, sunlit prairie. Anton felt his gorge rising. He was going to be sick…
The spinning, mercifully, stopped, but hard on its heels came the unmistakable sound of tearing silk. Anton twisted his head around.
The complex network of pulleys and ropes that gave the tiller control over the rudder had come apart in the violence of the spin. The rudder had swung too far, puncturing the envelope. And now, as he watched, the hole grew.
The airship lurched. A powerful westerly wind had them now. All around were the tops of clouds, but there was something odd about them, almost as though they were in a river, rushing toward a waterfall…
“Downdraft!” screamed the Professor, who had been clinging to the bow of the gondola. As pale and green as Anton felt, he lurched to his feet and flung himself on the burner, twisting the valve wide open. Flame roared, filling the envelope… but the edges of the rip near the stern fluttered, and Anton knew the heat roaring into the envelope was spurting out of it nearly as fast.
And then they swept over the edge of the cloud waterfall, and Anton’s stomach leaped up as they dropped like a stone toward the snow-covered ground far beyond. Groaning, Anton clung to the edge of the gondola, stared down at the strange new lands beyond the Anomaly that were rushing up toward them with alarming speed, and threw up into them.
The Professor shoved him out of the way. He grabbed the tiller, wriggled it uselessly, then seized the throttle and shoved it to full ahead. The steam engine sputtered and shook, and the propeller spun into an invisible blur. Anton turned around. “It won’t last five minutes at full throttle,” he gasped.
“We’ve got to get out of this downdraft,” the Professor said grimly. “It will smash us to kindling if we can’t.” He peered up at the envelope. “We should be able to maintain some lift if we can only get into still air… not enough to stay airborne, but maybe enough to make some sort of landing…” He scrambled aft. “I’ll take the tiller. Lighten the ship. Everything you can find. Throw it overboard. Start with the stores.”
Anton swiped his leather-clad arm across his mouth, hauled himself to his feet, staggered forward, and began emptying the ship of everything they had so laboriously loaded the day before, while all the while the ground below grew closer.
It’s not going to work, he thought. It’s not.
Since the day he’d fled his abusive father, he’d fully expected to die young. But now that the prospect was imminent, he found he didn’t relish it.
You’re not dead yet, he snarled at himself. Grabbing a trunk of scientific instruments, he heaved them up and over the side, the wind roaring in his ears. He glanced toward the stern to see the Professor’s face, pale and set, staring bleakly at him. And behind the Professor, the vast bank of fog that marked the Anomaly grew higher and higher.
It looks just the same from this side, Anton thought. So why did we bother?
And then he turned to look for something else to toss over the side.
Brenna tugged aside the heavy green drapes that covered her window to peer down into the snow-filled courtyard outside. Nothing moved down there, or on the steep white hillsides beyond the outer wall of Lord Falk’s estate: not so much as a bird or a hare, much less a human. “When was the last time we had a visitor?” she asked the mageservant sweeping in the corner, where crumbs from Brenna’s justdeparted lunch had somehow flung themselves. “The Moon Ball? That was more than two months ago!”
The mageservant didn’t say a word. Brenna would have been terrified if it had, since it was essentially a marionette, animated by magic and programmed to perform the same rote tasks day after day. Its round wooden face, on which the magical symbol that enchanted it glowed faintly blue, remained half-turned away. For a moment Brenna considered smashing something on the floor-one of the delicate pieces of glass fruit decorating her mantelpiece, perhaps-just to get its attention and watch it scurry to clean up the mess, but as usual, the impulse passed before she acted on it. Just as well, she thought. She would eventually run out of things to smash, and still nothing would have changed, except her room would be even drearier than it already was.
The door opened and another mageservant entered, carrying a fresh load of wood that it stacked, with inhuman precision, beside the fireplace. “I’m going for a walk,” Brenna told it. It kept stacking wood. “Why, yes, I know it’s cold outside. Thank you ever so much for your concern. I promise you I shall dress warmly.”
The mageservant placed two logs from its newly made pile onto the fire, adjusted the remainder so they looked as neat as before, then went out. Brenna went to the closet, grabbed her warmest coat-ankle-length, hooded, and made of wolverine fur-checked to make sure her red woolen scarf and rabbit-fur mitts were still in the pockets, and followed the mageservant, whose passing had left a faint chill in the air by the door.
The hallway outside her ran left and right, turning at either end to form the two wings of the manor house that wrapped the central Great Hall in their embrace. There were broad, curving staircases at either end as well, leading down to the main floor.
Doors opened only off the side of the corridor where her room was located. The other side of the hall was punctuated by tall, vertical slits, about two hands’ breadth in width, filled with delicate wooden latticework. As Brenna pulled on her coat, she glanced idly down through one of those slits into the Great Hall, expecting to see it empty and dark.
Instead, it blazed with light. Servants, both human and mage, wove around it in a complicated dance, cleaning floor tiles, polishing tabletops, buffing brass candlesticks, never duplicating one another’s efforts or getting in one another’s way.
All that bustle could mean only one thing: Lord Falk was coming home.
Which made it even more urgent that Brenna go outside now. Once Lord Falk arrived, she would be expected to be close at hand. It also meant she couldn’t, as she had planned, simply cross the Hall to the antechamber on the other side and go out from there through the big double doors of the main entrance. If Gannick, the head of the household, saw her, he might not-almost certainly would not-allow her out at all, on the theory that Falk might wish to see her the moment he arrived. Even if she weren’t stopped, Falk would not be pleased to hear, as he certainly would, that she had chosen to leave the estate knowing his arrival was imminent.
Better to plead ignorance than beg forgiveness, she thought.
Fortunately, there was more than one way out of the estate, and she knew them all.
So rather than go to the end of the corridor and down into the Great Hall, Brenna went only halfway along it and through a door that opened into a servants’ staircase, very narrow to make it easier for servants to lean against the wall and support themselves while carrying laden trays.
Once in the basement, she followed the corridor of whitewashed brick that ran beneath the lavish rooms that visitors saw. Brenna knew all these behind-the-scenes corridors like she knew her own face in the mirror, having roamed them since she was a child. At regular intervals she passed steps leading up to between-room hallways that allowed the servants to access rooms unobtrusively to change bed linen or feed the heating stoves, without troubling Lord Falk or his guests.
At one point she passed another staircase going down. It led to the only part of the manor she rarely visited: the sub-subbasement, deep beneath the manor, where Falk’s Magefire roared, a brilliant tower of blue and yellow flame, fed by a constant flow of rock gas from a reservoir untold fathoms beneath the ground. That reservoir of gas was one of two reasons Falk Manor had been built where it was: the other, of course, was the even more important fact that beneath the manor ran one of the veins of magical power that spread out from the lode beneath the Palace like the tentacles of one of the monsters that supposedly swam the oceans of the world… oceans Brenna had read about in Falk’s extensive library but never expected to see, cut off as they all were from the outside world by the Great Barrier.
In the Palace, Brenna knew from her annual visits there, the MageFurnace both provided energy for magic and heated the hundreds of rooms and dozens of corridors. The Magefire in Falk’s basement could surely have done the same for his much smaller manor, but Falk preferred to heat his home with coal, reserving the Magefire’s energy for other uses-such as charging and programming the mageservants.
Once, as the corridor she followed testified, the manor had boasted a full staff of actual living humans, but unlike his ancestors, Lord Falk seemed to prefer to have as few people about the place as possible. Besides Gannick, there were only a half-dozen servants in the entire manor, and they mostly kept to themselves, usually speaking to Brenna only when their duties demanded it. Like all MageLords, Falk had his own Mageborn men-at-arms to keep order within his demesne; a score of them dwelt in the compound just outside the estate’s front gate. They, too, were taciturn in her presence-but then, they rarely were in her presence. In the ordinary course of affairs, the only living humans Brenna saw were Gannick and her tutor, Peska, a middle-aged woman with a pinched face, a nasal voice, and no more warmth of personality than… well, than one of the mageservants.
Brenna knew all the servants by name, of course, but no matter how informal she was with them, they were always deferential to her. It had to be by Falk’s orders: she knew, and they had to know, too, that she was no more Mageborn than they were. As a child, she’d simply accepted things as they were, but when she’d gotten old enough to start to ask questions, she’d wondered why she didn’t have parents like the children in Overbridge, the nearby village.
Falk had sat her down in his study one night and told her that her parents had been Commoners in his employ who, during a journey north on his business, had been killed by the Minik savages. Falk, in their honor, had raised her from infancy. But sometimes, she thought, he seemed to forget she had done a considerable amount of growing since then, until now, past eighteen, it was surely time he took her to the Palace to stay. He had promised to help her find a position within the Palace, or, failing that, within the city of New Cabora.
A position in the Palace would mean serving either Falk, one of his fellow MageLords, or, she supposed, the King (and someday his Heir, Prince Karl). Falk seemed to take it for granted that was the option she would most desire. But in her heart, Brenna thought she would prefer the other. New Cabora amazed her every time she visited it. She saw magic every day, but the things in the Commoner city… gaslights, water that poured from pipes without magic, fireworks that painted the sky with light… amazed and delighted her because they were all created by Commoners. Commoners like her.
She’d met the Heir a few times. He seemed a pleasant enough boy, certainly a handsome enough boy, tall, well-built (not that Brenna entertained any fancies on that score; the thought of the Heir of the Kingdom taking a romantic interest in a Commoner was ludicrous), so if she did end up serving in his household, it might not be the worst of fates. Still…
The corridor ended in another narrow staircase leading up to a metal door. She pushed it open, its hinges squealing, to reveal the coal shed, a wooden lean-to against the back of the manor house lit only by dirty glass skylights in the high, sloping ceiling. At the beginning of the winter, the coal had stood in piles higher than her head, wagonloads having arrived weekly during the summer to ensure the manor would stay warm even when winter storms made further deliveries impossible. Now, with spring putatively just around the corner, the piles were poor, depleted wraiths of their former selves, and the loose coal scattered across the floor made walking treacherous.
On the wall to Brenna’s left hung a dozen red coal buckets. She walked past them, then picked her way through the scattered coal to the exit, a double door that she could open from the inside but that would lock behind her when she pushed it shut. That didn’t worry her: she would return through the front door, so that she could express the proper surprise and remorse for her tardiness when she discovered that Lord Falk had either returned or was about to.
Out she went into the snowy rear courtyard, with its own locked gate to the outside world and other doors leading into the manor, one into the kitchen storeroom, one into the dry goods storeroom, and a third into a central hallway that ran to the back of the Great Hall. Over the course of the winter the swirling wind had pushed the snow into deep drifts, some as high as Brenna’s head, all around the walls, but had left the worn cobblestones in the center exposed, though covered with ice. Sometime since she had looked out through the window of her room the snow had stopped falling. Heavy gray clouds continued to scud overhead like boats on one of the Seven Fish, the long, narrow lakes strung like a fisherman’s catch on a line along the bottom of the Grand Valley that sheltered the estate, but patches of blue sky showed between the clouds. Not a blizzard, then, Brenna thought. Just a line of flurries.
Which meant she didn’t have to confine herself to moping around the manor grounds. She could safely go down to the lakeshore, or up the hill. It didn’t really matter. Just being out of the house for a while always made her feel better, freer…
The hill, she decided. She felt the need for an expansive view.
A small, heavy door opened through the wall next to the big padlocked freight gate. The door was bolted but not locked. The manor’s walls were more for show than anything else, since no one but another MageLord would dare to steal from a MageLord, and walls offered no protection against that sort of attack. Not that Brenna could imagine anyone, Commoner, Mageborn or another of the Twelve, daring to attack Lord Falk.
She unbolted the door and pushed it open, grunting a little as she forced it through the drifted snow on the other side. She slipped out and glanced up and down the blank expanse of the manor’s back wall. Except for the gate and door from which she had just emerged, there were no other openings in the wall on this side of the manor-which made it that much easier for her to escape unseen.
Around the front, the manor boasted ornamental shrubs, shrouded in canvas this time of year; statuary that, being mostly of the heroically nude variety, currently looked both silly and uncomfortable; and, most impressively, a magical, multicolored fire fountain that played one of a selection of tinkly musical tunes whenever someone passed by. Utterly impractical and an enormous waste of magical energy, it had been installed by one of Falk’s more ostentatious predecessors as a way of proclaiming that here dwelt a MageLord. Brenna had long wondered why Falk had not had it pulled out.
This side of the manor actually seemed to fit Falk’s personality better: a few distinctly nonornamental shrubs, a few winding graveled paths (all currently buried under snow, of course). Brenna grinned a little. All right, maybe that weird limestone sculpture of a giant frog doesn’t exactly say “Lord Falk,” she thought. But the rest of it: plain, direct, utilitarian. That was Falk to a tee.
Beyond the manor’s outer fence of black iron, perhaps fifty yards away, a forest of aspen, birch, and pine began, but it spread only halfway up the tall, round-shouldered hill that backed the manor before petering out into shrubs and then into undisturbed snow, the smooth white surface marred only by the occasional rocky outcropping.
Brenna trudged toward the fence, the snow, calf-deep everywhere and over her knees in spots, pulling at her legs. The newest layer, fluffy as eiderdown, covered the hard crust left behind by the recent thaw. Below that were layers of old snow, strata marking every storm of the long winter.
The wind, though it whipped long, ghostly tendrils of snow around her feet, lacked the bitter bite of midwinter: cold, certainly, but not the knifelike unbearable cold of winter’s depths, the life-stealing cold that could freeze exposed flesh in less than a minute. When that kind of cold settled over the land, no one went out any more than could be helped, and then only for short periods of time.
This, though… this she could bear all day, warmly dressed as she was. The relative warmth was the first whisper of spring, still weeks away, but drawing closer every day. It couldn’t come soon enough for Brenna, who loved watching the frozen landscape shake off its mantle of ice and come to new, green life… and she particularly loved the spring equinox, when the manor was full of life for one glorious evening as the leading citizens of the villages came to celebrate Springfest, one of only four occasions-the others being the Sun Ball on the summer solstice, the Moon Ball on the winter solstice, and the Harvestfest in fall-when the manor was filled with people. There would be music, dancing, dramatic readings, lectures, maybe even a play. She’d heard that Davydd Verdsmitt was about to premiere a new work at the Palace. What she wouldn’t give to see his players on the stage of the Great Hall! And no doubt Lord Falk could order it, if he so chose, she thought, but she couldn’t imagine asking him.
Springfest also offered something else in short supply in the manor of Lord Falk: young men.
At the Moon Ball, the son of the Reeve of Poplar Butte had asked her to dance. Just turned nineteen, he’d been a bit awkward, a bit shy, and definitely not much of a dancer…
… but he had also had a nice smile and the most beautiful brown eyes she had ever seen, and she really thought she’d like to dance with him again.
Although, to be completely honest, she would be glad to dance with anyone. Except possibly the baker’s son, who was fighting a two-front war against acne and overweight, and losing both.
Brenna reached the fence and clambered over it easily, then plunged in among the trees. The snow wasn’t as deep here, since some of it had been intercepted by the overhanging branches throughout the winter, although occasional deep drifts and deadwood, betraying its presence only by the slightest of bumps in the snow, made the footing precarious. But Brenna plunged ahead, knowing she was doing something she really shouldn’t, knowing it could even be dangerous-if she turned an ankle, it might be hours before anyone found her-but getting perverse pleasure out of that very fact.
The going got even harder as the land sloped up. The new snow was moist enough to compact under her feet as she climbed, turning icy. She had to hold onto bushes and branches to keep from sliding backward, but eventually she emerged from the forest onto the bare hillside. Up here the winter winds had driven most of the snow into drifts. By carefully picking her way, she could follow a path where dry grass still showed through the thin white blanket that covered it, providing some traction. Though the wind continued to snap slithering snakes of snow at her, she was working hard enough now that she felt too warm in her fur, and she unbuttoned it a little to let in some fresh air.
She had a specific destination in mind, an outcropping of rock to which she often climbed in the summer. It was a good deal easier to get to then, she thought, panting; but there it was now ahead of her, and a few minutes later she reached its broad, tablelike top and turned to survey the landscape.
Below her sprawled Falk Manor, the large main building with its white walls and red roof and multiple smokespewing chimneys surrounded by an untidy cluster of smaller structures. From the manor’s front gates, a road ran past the compound of the men-at-arms, white wooden barracks behind a stockade of peeled logs, through snow-covered fields down to the edge of the lazily meandering river, still frozen solid. To her left and right along the Grand Valley, the Seven Fish showed as broader, flat expanses of alternating dark gray ice and white snow.
The road ran alongside the river, eventually disappearing to her left around the shoulder of another hill. As she looked that way, Brenna saw a black dot roll into sight, trailing smoke, and recognized it at once as Lord Falk’s magical carriage. Once he had returned to the Palace after the Moon Ball, Brenna ordinarily didn’t see her guardian again until spring; since he had the option of living in the perpetual warmth of the Palace grounds, she could hardly blame him. But there he came. I wonder what’s happened?
And then she forgot all about Lord Falk and everything else as an enormous glowing blue something, roaring like a dragon, burst over the crest of the hill behind her.