Followed by Fros(14)

He lowered his arms. “Not in the way you know death. You would merely . . . change. No sickness, no aging, and very little pain.” He snapped his fingers. “You would hardly notice. I’d even make it fun, just for you.”

The glade around us darkened, the storm overhead thickening as it always did when I stayed stationary too long. I almost laughed, but instead quipped, “No one can ‘merely change.’”

I gazed at him for a long moment, feeling the chills shoot up my arm and legs. Then I asked, “Could you make me warm again?”

“Smitha,” he said, folding his arms, “with or without me, you will never be warm again.”

A single snowflake fell between us as his words—his proposition—floated over me.

Never. The finality of the word was unacceptable to me.

I shook my head. “No. No.”

The faintest frown touched Sadriel’s lips, but a grin quickly hid it. After bowing one last time, he dissipated, leaving me alone in the forest once more.

I hesitated for a moment before walking to the spot where he had stood and waving my hand through the air, half expecting to find some remnant of him. Nothing. I was alone. As Sadriel had said, there was no one else.

My rejection did not deter Sadriel from visiting me as I continued my march north—he sometimes called when the noon sun shone beyond the congested sky above me, or I would awaken in the middle of the night to see him watching the burning embers of my fire. The heavy snow and bitter winds never once touched him.

On none of his visits did he help me. He would neither stoke the fire nor help me gather wood. When attempts to wash my clothes in ever-freezing water left me in tears, he never offered a hand, not even when I begged it of him. He only came to chat or silently observe, rarely staying for more than a quarter hour. But every time he appeared—every time, even when they were the only words he spoke—he presented his offer to me, and I refused. His promises meant nothing to me if they could not make me change. Still, part of me was comforted by his visits, for as I struggled to survive the cruel restrictions of my curse, Sadriel was the only company I had, however fleeting. I confess there were times when I craved his company so badly, when I felt so utterly alone, that I convinced myself to accept his offer, to join him in the realm beyond—as a servant, as a lover, as anything he would allow me to be, for what Sadriel wanted seemed to change by the day, and he never spoke directly. Fortunately, Sadriel never appeared during those moments of despair, only in times of clarity.

He finally asked me, after nearly two months in the wilderness, “Why do you go north?” He grinned, following a pace behind me, watching my worn shoes pick their way through a rocky mountain pass. “You’re not seeking wizards, are you?”

I glanced back at him. “What do you know of wizards?”

He laughed. “I love wizards. They’re always killing one another in the most fascinating ways.”

My steps slowed, but I kept moving forward.

“Do you know how their magic works?” he asked, clasping his hands behind his back. “They harvest manna from the bowels of the earth, scraping it out of the bodies of beasts that died long before your kind ever took form. They covet it, kill for it, then eat it until their eyes glass over and their brains fill the realms adjacent to yours. Sometimes they die from it, but they take the risk in the name of ‘magic.’” He chuckled again. “Good luck getting one to use his manna on you. Then again, you already have, once.”

A fresh chill ran down the back of my head and zigzagged over my spine. I did not entirely understand Sadriel’s description, and I still don’t, but I did not press for further explanation. “They’re my only hope.”

Before Sadriel could dispel the claim and repeat his monotonous offer to me, I asked, “Where are they? Where can I find them?”

He glanced ahead, over narrow valleys, to where the mountains grew thin, spiky, and white. “You know where they are, Smitha. So far north even you could blend in.”

He vanished and I, my mouth dry, moved onward. And I did blend in—the snowcaps on the mountain peaks gradually moved down until they filled the valleys with seas of white. I assumed I’d passed into Yorkishan, a small, sparsely populated country ruled by a regent rather than a prime minister, as was the custom in Iyoden. Beyond the fact that it exported coal and people spoke Northlander, I knew little about it.

I found new, bizarre villages of men and women so pale they almost looked blue beneath their furs. Avoiding the main roads that would lead to larger cities, I trekked through the mountains until I reached Yorkishan’s northern border, where the people lived in tiny, weather-beaten houses. I passed near one or two villages when I could find no other route northward. Though travelers had to be rare in this part of the world—and I, the rarest of all—those who saw me said nothing, only kept their heads down and went about their work. One man caught me stealing a few pathetic, half-filled sausage casings from his smokehouse and didn’t even bother to stop me. In my haste to flee back into the scant wood, I overheard one shivering woman telling another, “—screeching again. The initiation. If they involve us, I’ll kill myself. I won’t lose another baby.”

It didn’t take me long to learn why. These were people who knew better than to dabble in enchantments or the enchanted.

I continued my northward trek through mountains so high I would never see their peaks, even without my storm. The air about them smelled strange, something like spoiled wine: sweet, tangy, and nauseating. Between these mountains stretched a passage so tall and narrow no sunlight could reach its floor, and I knew without explanation that beyond it lay the territory I sought—the land where the wizards lived.