Followed by Fros(15)

But around this pass hung horrors upon horrors—men, women, even children and animals strung up by their ankles or necks, cut up in the most terrible ways or mutilated to look like demons and fairy-tale chimera. Magicked in ways that made me retch those precious sausages onto the snow. If this was the working of wizards, I wanted none of it.

I ran from that place, never stopped by the locals who seemed to fear me as much as they did the wizards. Taking advantage of their humility, I stole provisions from them so I wouldn’t have to forage on my way back. So I could put as much space between myself and that unknown world as possible.

“How do you stand it?” I asked Sadriel when he appeared to me again, weeks later, somewhere near Iyoden. I sat before a fire, smashing walnuts between rocks and harvesting what little meat fell from their centers. My hair—now white to my chin, the blond quickly fading—fell in a braid down my back. “What the wizards do . . . How does it not bother you?”

“I see such things every day,” he answered, nonchalant, pacing about my fire. “But if you came with me, I would hide it from you.”

I scoffed. “Why do you care?” It had been roughly three months since my village cast me away. Three months without the slightest waiver in my predicament, either for good or for ill. “Why do you persist, after so long?”

“Because you’re fascinating,” Sadriel answered, leaning against the trunk of a pine tree some six paces away. “The living do not see me, and the dead do not hear, but you can do both. You are special, Smitha. And you are beautiful, even with your aged hair and gnarled hands.”

I frowned and focused on my walnuts. Though I had prided myself on my looks for most of my life, I hardly thought myself beautiful now. We lingered somewhere in northern Iyoden, though where precisely, I could not be sure. There was a village some five miles south of me, and I admit to having considered entering its confines to steal as I had done in the far north. I needed clean clothes and better food than what I could forage. I still had not dismissed the idea, but I did not have the courage to approach the town after what I had witnessed at that pass.

“And think,” Sadriel continued, staring off into the valley beneath us, “how much more beautiful you’ll be when mortality no longer drags on you, and without these dismal clouds hovering over you day in and day out.”

He made a weak, skyward gesture with his hand.

I cracked another walnut and struggled to collect the pieces with the limited dexterity of my fingers.

Grabbing another nut, I placed it before me and lifted my rock, but Sadriel stopped my hand. Whether he had walked over to me or merely flashed himself closer, I had not seen.

“You need me, Smitha,” he said, taking the stone from my grasp. “Think of it this way, if you will. A wizard’s magic—your curse—is held by the laws of the mortal realm. Leave the mortal realm, and the curse loses its power.”

The gooseflesh that covered me stiffened, like a pheasant newly plucked. I met his gaze, his amber eyes penetrating me, and for a moment I felt naked, the worn fibers of my dress stripped away.

I forced my eyes from his and took back my stone. “You told me I would always be cold, didn’t you?” I asked, smashing the walnut. “That I couldn’t change? No, Sadriel. Please don’t ask me again. You know my answer.”

Why I managed to so readily reject his offer, I’m not sure, even today. Leaving with him would have been a simple matter. I know I wished to see my family again, for the memory of my fleeting farewell to them had come to pain me. Maybe, deep inside, I was unwilling to believe the curse would last forever.

Perhaps I said no simply because I did not trust Sadriel. His words were too careful, his eyes too sly. His being extended so far beyond the scope of my own that I could not begin to fathom what accepting him would have meant for me.

“Think on it,” he said, standing. “If nothing else, I can offer you a real bed and better food.”

I crushed my last walnut, and when I looked up again Sadriel had disappeared. Slowly chewing the nut, I gazed out into the valley and noticed that snow was falling beyond the force field that followed me. A cool autumn had settled on the outside world. For a brief moment, I reflected on Sadriel’s words.

Change. Could I change? Could I possibly break the curse myself? I did not see how such a thing could be possible, but I clung to the idea. I had no resources, no contacts, and my heart beat as cold as it had that first day in the willow-wacks. Surely Mordan had not built me a curse fragile enough to break.

I gathered my harvest, left the broken shells behind, and followed the line of the mountains west, away from the unnamed village below. I had no idea how to begin the task I had laid out for myself, and in my desperation for survival, I put little effort into the venture.





CHAPTER 6





I never adapted to the cold.

Even the most stubborn of pains can be forgotten when one is distracted by a good book or song, or when chores demand the mind’s full attention. My curse worked differently. Even after a full year under Mordan’s spell, the cold still bit down to my bones. I never grew accustomed to it, and not once did I forget its presence. Sleep provided my only respite from the insufferable chill, yet even in the bliss of slumber my body shuddered with winter. Dreams where I was myself—my old self—became less and less frequent, but I clung to the few I had despite the sting of awakening from them. Memories of warmth, of home, of family. How desperately I missed my family—my mother’s home cooking, my father’s laugh, Marrine’s candor. I no longer held any ill feelings for them, for a year spent alone had opened my eyes to my own shortcomings.