The Dragon’s Daughter and the Winter Mage by Jeffe Kennedy

~ 8 ~

“What happened?”she asked quietly, sympathy curling warm around him. He wouldn’t have to explain to her how hard his exile had been. She already understood.

“It’s a long story,”he offered with a sigh.

“We have time,”she pointed out. “And it helps me to have a person to talk to. It makes me think about more than fish and breathing.”

“True.”The folk shouted with glee, hauling up the net they’d cast into the hole. His heart clenched, thinking for a flash of a moment that they’d caught her. But no—she’d have said so. Instead they were pulling in a full net of large, healthy fish. Far larger and fatter than they’d seen in years. “Are you doing something?”

“Scaring up the big fish that lurk at the bottom and driving them into your nets.”

“Isn’t that using up more oxygen?”

“It’s a trade-off. I figure the sooner you fill your sleds with nice, big fish that aren’t me, the sooner you all will leave and I can breathe at leisure again. Though I don’t wantyou to leave.”

“Unfortunately I must. I don’t have much in the way of independence.”

“The broken leg?”she asked with that natural, genuine sympathy of hers. She didn’t pity him, he could sense that from her, but she empathized in a way that made him feel, for the first time in what felt like forever, that he wasn’t alone.

“That, and other complications.”The ravages of old age were brutal, and not something a bright young thing like her would understand.

“Like falling into an alter-realm and being crowned king there of a people not like you.”

He paused, rather astonished that she’d understood so much about his life so quickly. “You’re sharper than you think, to discern so much.”

“I can also hear a great deal of your thoughts that you don’t articulate,”she admitted. “You’re quite a powerful mind mage. Were you one in our world, too?”

“Not so much. I had some talent back home, but I’m far more powerful in the Winter Isles, for whatever reason.”

“Magic works differently in the alter-realms. Thus my inability to shapeshift. Still, it must be nice to at least be powerful in this place. Better to be a mage-king than a stableboy, yes?”

“Some days I’m not sure. The magic has its price.”

“The leg?”

“Among other things.”

“I have a friend who could heal you,”she mused.

“This Jak again?”

“No… I don’t think so, anyway. Regardless, it’s a moot point for now. Tell me your story. Driving fish into the nets isn’t all that diverting.”

“Much appreciated, however.”The folk had pulled up another net full of deep-sea fish, happily butchering some so as to make more room in the sleds, tossing the offal back into the water, though the chum was hardly needed. Blood spattered over the ice, making for a scarlet contrast. At least it wasn’t hers. “And I’m realizing the story isn’t so long as simply tiresome.”

“I’m a captive audience!”she noted cheerfully, and he could picture the lively sparkle in those deep indigo eyes. If only he’d met her when he was a young man, then perhaps… but there was no sense wishing after the past. It was gone, never to be retrieved.

“I left home with ambition, believing I could be a king, but of a different land,”he said, thinking back to that long-ago voyage. “Hubris is the downfall of many a would-be hero.”

“Heroism is overrated,”she commented wryly. “If I’ve learned nothing else from this quest, it’s been that.”

“What are you questing for?”

“This is your turn to tell stories,”she reminded him. “Besides which, I find I can’t quite remember. Maybe I was looking for you,” she added impishly.

If only.

“I just know that I feel bitter about the whole heroism thing,”she continued more soberly.

“I can agree there. I set sail into the Isles of Remus—do you know them?”

“They sound familiar. Maybe I was there, before I came here. I remember a boat.”

“That would make sense. You could have fallen through the same portal I did. I was on the deck of my ship, a grand sailing vessel, using what little magic I possessed to search for the isle that should’ve been there but wasn’t.”

“Oh! I remember this part. The Isles fade in and out of the different realities and have done so for centuries.”

“Yes, I had this idea that I could find the isle my grandmother had ruled and somehow coax it back into connection with our realm. After her death, it had vanished, and I saw myself as some sort of golden king who would retrieve those people, isolated and lost.”He had to laugh at his past self, so full of glorious purpose and little sense.

“Elements of this tale seem familiar,”she commented, her mind-voice vague.

“Perhaps I’ve gone down in history as a great cautionary tale.”

“Perhaps,”but she didn’t sound convinced. “So, you were on the deck of your ship, searching for the Isle of Forgotten Treasure and…”

“Nice touch.”

“Thank you. I amused myself with it. And?”

“And…”He paused for dramatic effect. “I fell overboard.”

She giggled. He’d be offended if it wasn’t such a delightful sound—and if he didn’t richly deserve it. “I know. Very unprincely and unheroic. I was studying a sea chart and got absorbed… and next thing I knew, I was in the water. And the people who fished me out weren’t mine.”

“How terrifying,”she commented, her mental voice earnest and sincere. “At least I knew about the alter-realms and could guess what had happened. Though the net was a shock and a stroke of bad luck.”

“Iam sorry about that.”

She mentally shrugged. “Bad timing. Or good timing, as I met you. At least you can talk to me, tell me where I am.”

“Does knowing you’re in the Winter Isles mean anything to you?”he asked, intrigued. It hadn’t to him, but perhaps something had been learned of them in the time he’d been gone.

“No,”she conceded. “But there’s whale brain to consider. Still, I guess it’s just nice to put a name to the place. Did the name mean anything to you?”

“Not at all. I didn’t speak the same language as the people here. It took months to learn to communicate.”

“Ouch.”

He smiled, utterly charmed by her.

“Did you need something, my king?” Jasperina asked hopefully. She hadn’t much liked being sent away.

“I’m fine,” he replied. “Don’t hover.” She went off again, dragging her spiked boots.

“So, how did you go from half-drowned foreigner to king?”

“I could do magic, a kind they needed. They recognized it before I did, using me for various rituals and ceremonies. By the time I understood what was going on, they’d made me king, and I was… entrenched.”

“You sound almost more like a captive than anything else,”she said, after a pause.

“There is some truth to that.”He swallowed the urge to sigh. “But I am king of all I survey—even if there’s not much to see.”

“Is your world very small, then?”

“It seems to be. We can’t travel past the ice.”

“And it’s winterall the time?”

He’d laugh at how horrified she sounded, if the truth weren’t so stark. He remembered a few of the tales of Annfwn, how it was a tropical paradise, unparalleled in beauty and verdancy. As a young man, he’d fancied traveling there, after he was king. And now he was king, but a captive one, as she’d so perceptively noted. “There apparently used to be a summer season, long before I arrived. The folk don’t keep extensive records, but it seems only in the last century has it been fully winter. The situation has grown gradually worse, compounded by some recent strange attacks.”

“What kinds of attacks?”

“Odd creatures appearing to slaughter livestock, even a child in one village. Like nothing we’ve ever seen, some with tentacles, others furry with sharp teeth. They arrive in hordes and attack with mindless fury. We end up killing them all. That’s how I broke my thigh bone—fighting a tentacle monster. It stripped me of my sword and threw me into a wall.”

“You were fighting it alone, with only a sword?”

She sounded so incredulous it stung his pride. He apparently had some left. “I’m not that old, and I am a trained warrior. This may not be the land I intended to claim, but these are my people, and it’s incumbent on me to protect them.”

“I didn’t mean it to sound like that,”she replied contritely. “I just have a bad feeling about those tentacle creatures, and it bothered me deeply to imagine you fighting one alone. I think it has to do with my quest, with what I’m supposed to be doing.” Her mental voice had gone strained, rife with frustration, a sense of her great tail churning black water. “I need to get back.”

“I realize this may be a silly question, but I have to ask—have you looked for the portal back?”

“Have you?”she asked in turn.

“It would require me to dive into the freezing sea,”he noted sourly. “And yes, I did try, for years, when I was younger. But my people… they stopped me from trying, afraid I’d do myself harm.”

“I’m sorry…”She paused. “It’s funny, I feel so close to you, but I’ve just realized I don’t know your name. Did you tell it to me already and my whale brain forgot?”

“No,”he reassured her, hating that he’d given her a moment of anxiety. “It’s Isyn.”

“I know that name… Don’t I?”

“I don’t think we’ve ever met.”More’s the pity. “And I fell through the portal into this world more than fifty years ago, long before you were born.”

“That’s a very long time to be exiled among a strange people,”she replied, a heaviness to her thoughts that made him think she was pondering a similarly long future for herself.

“You haven’t told me your name,”he suggested gently.

“Oh! It’s…”She was quiet for far too long.

“Are you all right?”

“Physically, yes. But I don’t remember my own name.”

He sat with her in silence for a bit, absorbing that. “Perhaps I should give you one.”

“Oh, I would like that! And then you can remember it for me.”

How heartbreaking. Certainly a cure for feeling sorry for himself. He thought of her loveliness, the magical quality to her grace, like a faerie princess. And how she was trapped, as if enchanted, her human side falling into dreaming. “I shall call you Briar Rose.”

“Like the princess in the story.”

“Yes, just like her.”

“My king,” Jasperina said, interrupting the rapport so that he frowned at her. “We’ve got a full haul, but no sign of the orca.”

Relief swept through him. He wouldn’t have to attempt to forbid them from killing such a rich source of food. “We should go, then,” he said. “I weary of holding the weather at bay.”

“Perhaps,” she tendered, “we could return tomorrow? If we approach quietly, we might surprise the orca as it comes up for air.”

“Not going to happen, sweetheart,”Briar Rose thought caustically, and Isyn had to smother a laugh.

“I’ll see how I feel tomorrow,” he promised, planning to feel very bad indeed. If he envisioned his Rose’s whale body splayed on the ice, painting the gray scarlet and crimson, that made him convincingly ill.

“Yes, my king!” Jasperina trudged off happily to spread the word. Thankfully, the crew began packing things up with only a little grumbling.

“You can hear her through me?”he asked her.

“Mostly I just get your thoughts in response to what you hear. As I said, you’re a powerful mind mage.”

“Seems like you’re the powerful one, to know all my thoughts.”

“Not all of them, I’m sure. And I could never do this before. I knew a sorceress, the greatest in the realm, and she could speak inside my head like you do, but it was all her. She could talk to anyone, even speak through their mouths.”

“You remember that much,”he pointed out. “Surely that’s a good sign.”

“I’m sure it is,”she replied, but here her sincerity failed. She was clearly saying it to please him.

“Ready to be moved, my king?” Jasperina asked, the bearers already lifting the platform to carry him to the sled. He might’ve chosen to walk, if she’d actually waited for his agreement, as he hated for Briar Rose to see him carried about like an invalid. A beautiful young woman, a magical Tala shapeshifter, stepped out of the storybooks to enter his life like a dream come true, and he was nothing more than a crippled old man.

“Your mind is vibrant and fascinating,”she said, a sharp reminder that she could hear his unspoken thoughts, too. “I wouldn’t have said anything,” she added hastily, “but I didn’t want you to go a moment longer thinking that I agree with that vision of yourself. Bodies don’t matter. Every shapeshifter knows that.”

“Then why do you deny your own beauty?”

“I’m comfortable in my skin. Which happens to be a lovely, thick black-and-white dermal layer lined with luscious fat that I’m grateful you’re helping me keep intact. Thank you, Isyn. Truly.”

The sleds lurched into motion, the hiss of the runners rising in pitch as they gained momentum, the folk pulling them going from a laboring walk to an easier jog. “I won’t let them hurt you any more than we already have,” he promised. “We won’t be back tomorrow, so you needn’t worry.”

“Thank you. I don’t suppose you could come visit me on your own?”

She sounded so bereft, so forlorn that he rubbed his forehead, trying to think. “I don’t see how, but I’ll try.”

“Does your head pain you, my king?” Jasperina asked solicitously.

“Yes,” he lied, laying the groundwork for claiming illness the following day. “I have overextended, I’m afraid.”

“You have seemed distracted today, my king.” She peered at him in concern. “We’ll put you to bed immediately, with some warm broth.”

Oh joy.

Briar Rose snickered at his dismay. “To be fair, a warm bed and a bowl of hot broth sounds really good to me right now. Also, I make an excellent bone broth. Don’t ask me how I know. I just do.”

“I have no doubt of it. But should you feel cold? I didn’t think orcas did in these climes.”

“It could be the blood loss? Or just the human, emotional side of me imagining it. That’s one positive of me eventually losing human thinking. When I’m fully a whale, I won’t mind it anymore.”

It sounded like a dismal fate to him. “How long will it take? Before you forget you were ever human?”

“I’m not sure. Every shapeshifter is different, and obviously, the ones who lose themselves aren’t able to report on the experience. It helps if you don’t eat or sleep in that form, I know that much—our teachers pound that into our heads so we’ll remember whatever form we’re in—but I really can’t go without eating or sleeping for much longer.”

It was a long night,she’d said. He could only imagine—and he fervently wished he knew of a way to help her.

“I wish you could, too,”she replied to his thought. “I think some sorcerers can trigger shifts; I have that idea in the back of my mind. Maybe you could figure out how?”

“I’ll work on it. And I’ll find a way to visit you. Will you be all right?”

“Sure, I’ll be just fine,”she replied brightly. “I’ll probably find that portal and swim back home. Don’t you worry about me.”

“I wish you could take me with you,”he said on impulse, immediately regretting it.

“I would if I could. But there are two problems: If I find a rift, it will almost certainly be because I’m going through it already. And even if I could detect it in time to wait for you to join me, I don’t think you could survive the cold water long enough to make it through.”

“Both excellent points.”He should’ve known better than to entertain hope. The frozen island loomed ahead.

“My friends will be looking for me,”she said suddenly, after a morose pause. “I feel it in my bones. When they arrive, I’ll have them rescue you, too.”

“That’s a nice story,”he agreed, smiling wistfully. “Why can I still hear your mind-voice so well?”

“I’ve been swimming beneath you, but I have to stop now—this near to shore, the ice is solid.”

“Maybe I’ll see you in my dreams tonight.”

“Maybe.”

But it was the kind of “maybe” that people use when they mean they doubt it but don’t want to say so.

She didn’t visithis dreams, though he did dream of her. At least he thought it was her, swimming in endless circles, keeping herself awake in the lightless, freezing waters. She was growing weak and miserably hungry. She surfaced periodically, breaking the crust of ice filling in the fishing hole to breathe.

And he sat upright in bed, the horrifying reality hitting him with a numbing agony very much like when that tentacle monster had thrown him into the wall. We haven’t sighted any whales in these waters since the ice sealed over so thick all winter. Because the whales needed to breathe. And once that fishing hole froze over thick again—which it would without his magical assistance—she would suffocate and die.

He couldn’t let it happen. He also couldn’t return to the hole without assistance, and if he went, the harpoons and butchers would come along. So much for the power and glory of being king of all he surveyed; he couldn’t save one whale without being questioned. Couldn’t go somewhere on his own.

Well, that was going to change. If Briar Rose could keep herself awake, so could he. Grabbing the staff waiting for him beside the bed, he levered himself to his feet, awkward with the splinted leg. After teetering a moment, dizzy from the rush of pain and the change in body position, he began pacing, grimly forcing himself to walk from one side of the room to the other. As the movement woke up his brain, he began reviewing all he knew of magic from the many books he’d read in his youth, his mother’s stories, and his own experience.

By the time dawn broke, the weak sun lightening the sky from black to dark gray, he had a plan.