The Dragon’s Daughter and the Winter Mage by Jeffe Kennedy
~ 7 ~
Whatever they’d caught in their nets, it was huge. The nets strained, the folk calling to each other in excitement as they worked to haul it in. Isyn squinted at the wintry sky, gauging how much time—and how much weather magery remained to him—before the blizzard broke through his control and overwhelmed them. The white fog of thick snowfall obscured the most distant isles, sweeping in on the ones in the middle distance. Only the small area around them on the frozen sea and the narrow aisle back to land remained clear.
He had maybe an hour of magic left in him, probably less. And he didn’t want to be out on the ice when it gave out.
“Whatever we’ve netted, my king, it’s too big to bring through the hole,” Jasperina reported, wiping the ice crystals from her long lashes. “We’ve got to enlarge it. You need to melt more.”
“No time, and I don’t have it in me,” Isyn replied, even as the folk not working the net set to chopping at the edges of the hole in the thick ice with hatchets. He raised his voice. “Leave it. Dump the catch. We’re going home.”
A chorus of dismay howled over the ice to him. Jasperina stared at him, flabbergasted. “But, my king, it’s a big one! We could feed everyone for a week with it. Maybe longer. A feast!”
A group shout went up as the folk holding the net went skidding over the ice, pitons ringing as they dug in their spiked boot heels for purchase to keep from being dragged into the black open hole in the gray ice. The black water churned from the creature’s struggle, sending gouts of spray to splash along the edges of the fishing hole, making the surface slick in the moments before it froze. “We’ll be lucky if whatever it is doesn’t eat us,” he noted.
“We’ll kill it before we haul it out, my king,” Jasperina explained. Indeed, Gizena, a tall woman with deadly aim, stepped up to the hole, aiming her harpoon at whatever thrashed below.
“No harpoons!” His command rang across the ice, Gizena looking up and bowing in acknowledgment, stepped clear of the action again.
“My king, we’re not bringing it out of there alive,” Jasperina said, her disapproval clear.
“We’re also not killing it only to leave it to rot because we can’t get it out of the cursed hole because it’s too small,” he replied, levering to his feet, his thigh aching. Leaning heavily on his staff, he tested his footing on the ice. All he needed was to fall on his ass in front of everyone, legs splayed like a newborn fawn. The break in his thigh bone was healing, but oh so slowly. While it did, he mostly sat in the big chair like a fool and tossed out commands instead of being useful.
Jasperina hovered anxiously at his side. “Should you be standing, my king? Let me call the bearers to carry you closer if you need to see.”
He ignored her, digging the sharp point embedded into the end of the staff into the ice, securing it before he took a cautious step off the rug his chair sat upon. Then another. “Let it go!” he called out to the folk on the net. “We have a decent catch as it is.”
“We can’t, King Isyn,” the foreman on the net shouted back. “It’s entangled. We haul it out or we lose the net.”
The nets took two weeks for a team of twenty to weave, not to mention that just one net required a staggering amount of spun alpaca wool. They couldn’t glean more from their small herd without jeopardizing the alpacas’ warmth. Their winter stores were running lean since the last attack, and there was no longer any game to be had on the island, with the enduring winter lasting so very long. Ice fishing was all they had to keep everyone fed. They couldn’t afford to lose two weeks of fishing.
Making his painstaking—and pained—progress, he called back to the foreman. “Can you cut it?”
The foreman jerked his chin at Gizena, who shouldered her harpoon strap and took his place on the net, keeping the lot of them from being dragged in. He jogged to meet Isyn, enviably steady on the ice with his short, broad stature and robust health. “We can cut the net, my king,” he said, puffing, face chapped from the bitter wind. “But we’ll still lose most of the net, and no guarantee that whatever is caught in it will live. It’s well and truly fouled. We can’t free it of the net without bringing it up, and if we bring it up we might as well eat it.” He grinned, shrugging. “No sense wasting all this effort.”
“What do you think it is?”
“Big.” The foreman’s grin widened. “Maybe an orca. We haven’t sighted any whales in these waters since the ice sealed over so thick all winter, but the old folks tell how it’s good eating, whale blubber.”
“Would keep a lot of kids warm, my king,” Jasperina added, ruthlessly working on Isyn’s soft heart.
“Aren’t orcas also intelligent?” Isyn asked.
“Not intelligent enough to avoid our net,” the foreman cracked, then sobered. “That’s the way of things, my king. Kill or be killed. Them or us.”
Isyn knew it. Or rather, he understood that philosophy, though he didn’t agree with it. Still, life in the Winter Isles was a hard one, and he wouldn’t quibble with what the folk had been doing here for generations to survive long before he crashed through the portal to be crowned their king. Isyn eyed the considerable haul of fish they’d already netted, checked the advent of the storm again. Ever closer. Dangerous. His control was slipping. And he didn’t want the whale killed.
“We don’t have time to enlarge the hole enough to bring up a killer whale, if we even have the strength to pull it out of the water.”
“You make the hole big enough, my king”—the foreman touched the side of his nose knowingly—“I guarantee my people will pull it out.”
And there it was: Isyn’s entire reason for being there, his sole qualification to be king and the only reason the folk had let him live at all. The reason they tolerated his commands and interference: because they needed his magic. Shouts went up as the creature in the net thrashed, nearly pulling one side of the net—and three of the folk—to their icy doom. There was no happy outcome here.
“Clear the cutters from the edge,” he instructed on a sigh, drawing his magic back from the oncoming storm to focus it on the ice. “But be ready to move fast. You’re going to have to haul it back. No time to butcher it here.”
The foreman hooted, then bowed and jogged off again, calling orders that had the ice choppers packing up their gear and cheering.
“It’s the right decision, my king,” Jasperina said.
Isyn nearly bit out that he didn’t need anyone to tell him the rightness or wrongness of his decisions, but it wasn’t true—and had no effect regardless. He didn’t feel good about most of his decisions, no matter what his people said about them. Summoning the magic that leapt readily at his command now that he wasn’t holding back an entire storm front, Isyn coiled his mage senses into the edge of the ice, asking it to warm and melt. Slowly. They didn’t need for the ice to destabilize and dump them all in the lethally cold water.
The net crew had retreated to the far side of the hole while he worked, but now, as the rim melted and enlarged the gaping eye of black water, they began to spread out again. Chanting a work song, they reeled in the net, hand over hand, working as one.
“Will you sit, my king?” Jasperina asked, sounding anxious. She’d sounded anxious ever since the attack and his grievous wounding.
“I’ll stay,” he gritted out, watching the churning water with interest. He’d never seen one of the famed orcas. He also found himself torn between avid curiosity to see the creature and bitter regret that he’d finally see one only to watch it be killed and butchered. With his magical senses still wound into the ice, and thus with the water melting back into the sea, the whale’s beingness made itself known.
Intelligent, yes—and afraid. Panicked, even.
Isyn’s heart went out to the poor thing. He couldn’t bear it. “Is the hole big enough?” he asked, needing to pull his magical senses back. A stronger man would stay with the creature through its violent demise, but it had been a long time since he’d felt strong. He couldn’t save himself, much less this whale.
“Not quite big enough,” Jasperina answered, having shouted the query back and forth. “Just a bit more.”
Isyn concentrated on widening the hole further, going a bit faster.
“Help me. Nilly! Lena! Can you hear me? Help, oh, help. They’ll kill me.”
Isyn shook his head of the buzzing voice. Now he was imagining the whale calling for help. The folk chanted louder, accelerating the beat, hauling in earnest, gloved fists clenched in the net. Heave. Ho. Heave. Ho. A glimpse of fin in the water had them shouting in excitement. Heave. Heave. Ho. Heave. Heave. Ho.
It was larger than Isyn had imagined, huge compared to the folk. The white belly showed stark against the glossy black dorsal side. And it shrieked in his head, fighting the net, sobbing in fury and despair. Gizena, relieved of her station on the net, aimed her harpoon at the small eye highlighted by white, like a court lady’s meticulously applied makeup.
“No no no no no,”the whale spat mentally, thrashing in the net and depriving Gizena of her target. “Help! They’re going to kill me. And it just fucking figures that I’ll die alone.”
Unable to extricate himself from the doomed whale’s thoughts—and amused despite everything at the wryness of them—Isyn decided he would be a monster if he didn’t attempt to offer some comfort in her last moments. “It’s all right,” he thought at her, not at all sure when he decided the whale was female. Something about the tenor of her mental voice. “I’m with you. You’re not alone.”
She latched onto his thoughts with surprising tenacity, seeming not at all surprised by a voice in her head. I don’t know who you are, but please help me. I’m a person. Please!
Did all creatures think of themselves as people? Perhaps so. It will be over in a moment, he soothed. Gizena had repositioned herself, taking aim. It would be a quick death, at least.
No!she snarled, a feline growl in it that sounded oddly un-whalelike. You will save me, sorcerer.”
“I’m no sorcerer. Only a mage.”
He could almost feel her rolling her eyes. “Does it seriously matter? I feel your magic and you know you can talk to me. Let me go.”
“I can’t,”he replied sadly. “I have starving people to feed.” And not much power to affect the whale’s fate. But he signaled to Jasperina. “Tell Gizena to hold fire until we’re sure the hole will be big enough.”
Jasperina looked sour but relayed the order.
“Let me go, and I’ll help feed them,”she replied immediately. “I promise.”
“How?”But wasn’t this how the tales went? The fae creature promising wealth and fortune, a lifetime of wishes. His favorite book had a story like that, a prince rescuing a fish that promised to make him king of all he surveyed. He should’ve brought that book with him instead of leaving it back in Erie. It would’ve been a comfort in his exile.
“I don’t know how exactly,”the whale answered, surprising him that she didn’t make any wild promises. “I’m no fae fish who can magically make you into a king.”
That startled him. Did she know that same tale somehow? Or—more likely—she’d plucked it from his thoughts. “I’m already a king, and it’s done me no good.”
“You’re the king of this place?”
“In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king,”he replied wryly.
“Hmm. Well, I’m much bigger and better than a fish, and look how much good it’s done me.”
He couldn’t really be having a telepathic conversation with a whale about faerie tales. Could he? “How do you know that story?”
“I read it in a book.Tales of the Fae. Do you know it?” The whale sounded increasingly desperate.
“I once did,”he replied, entirely bemused. Perhaps he was finally losing his mind. Really, the surprise was only that it hadn’t happened before.
Heave. Heave. Heave. Ho. Heave. Heave. Heave. Ho.The net drew taut, the whale thrashing in all her glossy, vivid glory, a stark black and white in the endlessly gray landscape. Gizena stalked closer, poised for the kill, the whale no longer able to turn her vulnerable eye away.
“The hole is big enough now, my king!” Jasperina reported breathlessly.
“Would a whale know about a book??”she demanded. “I’m a person! A shapeshifter.”
“So shapeshift.”
“Ican’t. Don’t you think I would have if I could? Help me, Moranu curse you, idiot king!”
Moranu? A whale couldn’t know about a goddess, much less a book. Gizena armed the harpoon. Isyn wound his magic into the ropes of the net, offering a mental apology to the hours of bloody-fingered labor that had gone into weaving it and spinning the wool, so painstakingly collected and used for this purpose instead of a hundred others. Finding a spot where the whale’s weight pressed most heavily, he frayed the fibers of the rope.
With a crack, the net suddenly split, folk falling back as the whale fell into the water with a mighty sploosh. The harpoon went wild, thunking into whale flesh. She gave a mental cry but dove deep, the harpoon embedded in her side. Above the ice, all was in an uproar. People shouting in disappointment and astonishment. Those able to hauled in the net, pointing to the frayed fibers, exclaiming.
“Guess it was too big for our net,” Jasperina commented in dull disappointment. “So much for a feast.”
“We hauled in plenty of fish,” Isyn reassured her, signaling to the foreman that they needed to load up. That last trick with the net had drained him, and he’d need every bit of magery he had left to keep the path home free of the oncoming storm. The folk glumly loaded up the sleds with the few fish trapped in the remnants of the net, supplementing their previous meager catch. And Isyn sat heavily in his chair, guilt and remorse wracking him on two fronts. “Whale, are you there?”
No answer. Of course there wasn’t. Because whales weren’t telepathic, and they weren’t fae creatures to offer wishes to broken and lonely kings. He was a sentimental fool who’d deprived his people of desperately needed food. He hadn’t even extracted any useful promises from his magic fish.
“Never seen a net split like that,” the foreman said, stalking up and shaking his head. “We nearly had it, too, my king. Biggest, healthiest whale I ever seen. Don’t know how it got here, but I doubt we’ll see its like again.”
Both he and Jasperina looked at Isyn. Neither were so insolent as to look accusing, but the doubt was there. “At least you retrieved the net,” Isyn pointed out wearily. “It will take less time to repair than weave a new one. If it can be mended in time, we can return here tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow? Are you sure, my king?” Jasperina asked, hope in her voice and eyes. “You won’t be too wearied?”
Normally he didn’t like to agree to the ice-fishing excursions more than weekly. The cold made his leg bone ache to the point that he couldn’t walk on it for days. But it was the least he could do, given that he’d ruined their chances at a whale feast. Maybe his magic fish would somehow deliver on her reckless promise. “Tomorrow,” he answered firmly.
That cheered everyone, and they set off across the ice to shore, everyone chatting merrily about the chances of netting the whale again, Isyn deep in silent thought.
That night, hedreamed of a woman like no other. He was in his personal library, back at Castle Marcellum, sitting by the fire, a glass of good brandy at his elbow, and Tales of the Fae open on his lap. It was a familiar dream, no doubt born of homesickness and a longing for all he’d left behind. The folk had no books, and the tales they told by their fires were all bloodthirsty stories of hunting triumphs or cautionary tales of tragedy. Magic and miracles weren’t part of their cultural repertoire.
It would be a comforting dream except that he could never quite make his eyes focus on the page. Or, when he could make out the letters, they formed nonsense words, as if written in a language he didn’t know.
“It’s N’Andanan,” the woman said, and he glanced up to see her standing at his shoulder. She had long hair, richly waving, the color of fertile earth and the trunks of trees in the deep forest. Her face glowed with calm intelligence, a restfulness to her oval face, strength in her firm jaw. Her eyes caught his attention the most, however. They were an extraordinary deep blue verging on violet, an indigo shade he hadn’t seen since he left Erie so long ago.
Unsurprised by her sudden appearance, as is the way of dreams, he pointed at the book. “It’s written in N’And…”
“N’Andanan,” she repeated, enunciating the oddly lilted word, walking around his chair to hold her hands out to the fire. The light shone through her filmy gown—far too silky and thin for the Winter Isles, even indoors—revealing a long, trim figure in keeping with her height. “An ancient language that not many people have encountered, so I’m not surprised you don’t know it.”
“Do you?” he asked.
She glanced over her shoulder with a wry smile. “Enough to recognize it—it shares quite a bit with the Tala written language, such as it is—but I don’t know enough to read it. Though I have a friend who can.” She frowned, puzzled. “I should know her name. Why don’t I remember her name?”
“Because this is a dream?” he suggested.
“It’s your dream, not mine.”
“But you are in it with me.”
“A good point. Though that’s a puzzle, too.” She scanned the room. “Where is this?”
“The Winter Isles.”
“That explains why I’m so cold.” She put a hand to her side, fresh blood suddenly staining the white silk. “I’m hurt.”
“Let me help you.” He tried to stand, but his leg wouldn’t cooperate. Even in his dreams, it plagued him.
She shook her head, the firelight showing brighter through her ethereal form. “I have a feeling you already helped me as much as you can. The rest is up to me.” She wrinkled her nose, a surprisingly girlish expression. “I wish I knew why I always end up alone,” she added wistfully.
“You’re not alone,” he pointed out. “You’re with me.”
She held up the bloodied hand, both it and the blood going transparent. “Not anymore.”
And she was gone.
They set outfor the ice-fishing hole the next morning, as soon as Isyn was able to clear the storm from the area. It would be welcome to have some sunshine, but it took too much out of him to fight the entrenched storms to that extent. So he settled for something less than a blizzard, the looming gray clouds making the endless field of fresh snow look dim and shadowed. The sleds whisked over the snow, sending up powdery sprays that would sparkle in better light.
The ice hole hadn’t completely frozen over during the night, but the arctic temperatures had done their work, ice encroaching in concentric circles, growing over all but a smallish disc of black water, the ice a relentless foe ever determined to reclaim its territory. A shout went up from the vanguard, excitement that spray from the whale’s blowhole had been sighted. Several more of the folk carried harpoons today, in the hopes of maximizing their chances of killing the orca. Isyn hadn’t been able to think up a good reason to tell them not to.
He was deeply torn, having hoped that the whale would be long gone and safe from being killed—and being glad to be reassured she still lived. “Are you there, whale?” he called mentally.
“Where else would I go?”she replied drolly.
“Far from here and the harpoons of my people.”
“Yes, well, there aren’t exactly a lot of breaks in the ice around here, and a girl has to breathe once in a while.”
Oh. That made sense. “We’re here now, so I advise you to stay away as long as possible.”
“I heard you coming, and now I’m down deep. That’s why I stayed at the surface as long as I did, filling my lungs and getting nicely oxygenated.”
“How long can you stay down deep?”
“How long are you people going to be fishing today?”she countered.
“Hard to say.”Though he could try to influence that. “They’re excited to try for you again, but the more fish they catch, the faster we’ll be done. We can only carry so many on the sleds.”
She sighed mentally. “I should be able to last that long. At least in water this cold I don’t burn oxygen all that fast.”
Reassured that she would be safe from them for a while, he waved a hand at Jasperina’s importuning and sent his magic into the thinner ice that had grown over the hole, melting it from the center out. And judiciously keeping it too small to pull his whale woman through. “You sound very intelligent.”
“I have smart friends. At least, I’m pretty sure I do.”
“You don’t know?”
“Whales have big brains, fortunately for me, but they still don’t think—or remember—like a human brain does. The longer I stay in whale form, the more of my human self I’ll lose.”Though her mental words were matter of fact, an overwhelming sorrow wound around them. Pitch-dark, freezing water swirled around her. “It’s nice to have someone to talk to, though. It was a long night.” She sounded so wistful that his heart broke a little for her.
“Was that you who visited my dream?”he asked on impulse. Around him in the outside world, the surface world, the folk shouted, mustering nets and other tools, setting him down in his chair to observe, well away from the hole of ice so he could keep the weather at bay.
“Was it?”She sounded surprised now. “Do you have white hair and a broken leg?”
“That would be me.”The sum total of who he’d become. “And in human form, you are a lovely young woman with long brown hair and striking indigo eyes.”
She snorted, a very unwhalelike sound, and he could picture that charmingly girlish nose wrinkle. “A flattering description,” she replied. “Clearly I look better in dreams than reality.”
He doubted that very much. She seemed likely to be the sort who underestimated herself. But he also knew that mere words wouldn’t change her mind. “You’re hurt,” he said instead, focusing on the most pressing issue.
“Fucking harpoon got me,”she grumbled. “Jak would tear me a new one for not dodging fast enough.”
“Who is Jak?”he asked, an uncomfortable curl of jealousy surprising him. He had no business being jealous of anyone, let alone her. Still, in the brief span of their acquaintance, he’d come to think of her as his alone. His fae shapeshifter, who existed only in his mind and dreams, leapt from the pages of his favorite book. Maybe he was losing his mind, the final disintegration he’d been waiting for, if not patiently, then at least with resignation.
“Jak is… one of my friends?”She didn’t sound certain at all. “It’s not clear. Whale brain is having an effect. I feel immense affection for him, and I’m certain he will be annoyed I didn’t dodge fast enough, but I can’t picture his face.”
“I don’t understand why, if you could shapeshiftinto whale form, you can’t shift back to human.”
“It’s a weird effect of the alter-realms, I know that much. They prevent us from shapeshifting. I don’t know why, or the specifics, but I do know that others experienced the same problem. Believe me, I’ve been trying, if only to heal myself.”
“Are you badly injured?”
“It’s painful, and the blood loss slows me down,”she confided. “Fortunately, there don’t seem to be any sharks in these waters.”
A stab of fear for her went through him. “I didn’t think of that.”
“I could fight them off for a while, but if I weaken any more… Well, I’ll keep trying to shift.”
“I wouldn’t advise shifting into human form underwater,”he commented drily.
She laughed, a rich musical sound. “My brain isn’t that far gone. But you’ve put your finger on the problem. Shifting into human form wouldn’t be the smartest plan in that artic tundra of a frozen sea up there either. I’d have to be something like a polar bear, and that’s an even smaller brain.”
“You can do that?”
“Polar bear? Yes, and a number of other forms. When I’m not in an arctic alter-realm, that is.”
“What do you mean by ‘alter-realm’?”
“Ah—it probably feels like just a regular realm to you. To me it’s a place I’ve arrived at via a kind of portal in space, possibly time. I’m on a quest to find out why these rifts are appearing, and why stuff from other places is coming through to mine. And to stop something bad from happening,”she added after a moment.
For the first time in decades, he felt the prick of hope. Giddy anticipation rose up, and he regarded it warily. Hope could be a trap. He’d learned that well enough. “Tala,” he murmured, in part to himself. “In my dream, you said you knew the Tala language, and you’re a shapeshifter.”
“From Annfwn,”she agreed, bright curiosity flaring. “Do you know my realm, then?”
He had to take a deep breath, waving off a concerned Jasperina, not pressing a hand to his thundering heart only by dint of will. “Yes,” he made himself think the words at her slowly, a measured pace to counter his desperate hope, braced for how the death of it—yet again—might finally kill him. “I was a man of your world, long ago. A prince. A foolish one.”
