Magebane (12 page)

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.

FIVE HUNDRED FEET ABOVE THE GROUND, the downdraft became a powerful westerly wind, hurling the airship out over the snow-covered prairie, the straining propeller adding to its eastward momentum. Freezing wind roared through the gondola. The envelope fluttered and twisted. Anton, staring over the side, saw the ground both streaming past and growing larger at an alarming rate. He looked forward. And ahead . . .

. . . hills. Not very big hills, but big enough. Anton watched the clump of trees on the hill in front of them grow rapidly nearer. It would be a very near thing, but he thought they might just . . .

Another loud tearing sound. The hole in the envelope grew larger. The airship lurched downward and twisted, and the tip of a towering pine, the tallest tree on the hilltop, tore through the side of the gondola like a blunt knife. The impact threw Anton forward; only a frantic grab at the rigging saved him from being tossed out.

In the stern, the tip of the pine slammed into the Professor's left leg. Anton heard the bone break, a sickening sound, then the wind flowing over the hill tossed the airship skyward again, ripping the tree free of the gondola.

The Professor dropped to the bottom of the gondola, eyes wide with shock. Anton scrambled toward him. The burner continued to roar, but Anton knew it couldn't last much longer. At the Professor's side, he peered out through the splintered hole in the wickerwork. Forest, a river . . . a road? A house? “Professor, there are people down there!”

The Professor's eyes, which had closed, fluttered open. “Inhabitants? Inside the Anomaly?” He tried to roll over and look, but groaned with pain and flopped back. A sheen of sweat covered his white face.

“Maybe they can help us!”

The Professor closed his eyes. “If the gas won't lift us and the ballast is gone, lad, no one can help us but God.” He coughed and smiled weakly. “Too bad I don't believe in Him.”

The torch flared hugely and went out. The Professor's eyes fluttered open, and he looked up at the envelope's torn blue silk. “It appears He doesn't believe in me, either,” he said softly.

With the roaring of the burner gone, the only sounds Anton could hear were the creaking of ropes and the rush of wind in the treetops below . . . and not very far below, at that. “Hold on, Professor,” he said desperately. “I think we're almost down.” He guided the Professor's hands to one of the rope-loop handholds in the gondola wall and seized one himself. He closed his eyes. “Any second now . . .”

Ten seconds passed. Twenty. And then . . .

They struck.

Crunching, tearing, ripping sounds; tumbling, no up or down; a flash of green, then white; violent blows to his body; a horrible stabbing pain in his leg . . . it all happened in an instant.

For a timeless period, nothing . . . and then Anton abruptly opened his eyes to find himself hanging headdown, tangled in ropes, six feet above the snowy ground. The gondola hung upside down above him. The burner had ripped out of it and lay steaming in the snow. Folds of blue silk hung like a stage curtain all around.

Something dropped past his nose. Where it struck the ground, the snow turned red. As he watched, another red drop fell, then another. It took him a long, dazed moment to realize the drops were blood . . . his blood.

He felt suddenly dizzy and sick and swallowed hard, fighting not to vomit yet again. “Professor?” he called weakly, but heard no answer.