Winter Sorcery

The third book

in the Seasons in Sansward Quarternary

When a Gitane WitchMaster pursues two Frenc spies who stole a sphere of power, can a half-trained mage and a simple temple cleric help them escape?

Just as their cover is blown, the spies Rolf and Catal stumble upon a greater secret:  the Kaerrefiorne, a blood-fed globe that will connect every Gitane Witch.  They steal the last orb that will complete the connection and escape into snow-smothered Arlas.

When Catal is severely wounded, two clerics at a Protectorate temple outpost become the Frenc spies only hope.  Legeeta and Niijai, a Green mage with unschooled powers, do not know they harbor Frenc spies.

Rolf takes the orb to the border to keep it from the pursuing Watrani.  He is not an hour from the temple when the troop arrives. 

With the Watrani is Keipven, a WitchMaster.  He recognizes Niijai’s magic as a potent replacement for the orb.  If he can bend her power to his will, his own puissance increases.  If he can twist her to sorcery, the Gitane become that much stronger against the Mages.  If he can neither control her nor twist her, then he will kill her.

Will Catal be discovered and killed as a spy?

Will Rolf stumble into the Watrani when he returns?

And will Niijai be destroyed by Keipven, alive and enslaved to his plans or bloody and dead on the snowy fields of Arlas?

Read on for the opening to the book.

Chapter 1

Rolf drew a soft cloth down the edge of his greatsword, but the cloth caught on a burr.  He balanced the hilt on his knee and looked up the blade, eying the sunlight glinting on the tip.

“Here, now.”  Reffik dodged a little as he came over.  “Watch where you aim that sword.  Man can get hurt.”

“Only if you get in his way,” Catal said with a grin.  “What’s the news?  Boiled pig for supper?”

“If only.   No.  Now what do you think I heard the sergeants talking about?”  He expectantly looked at each, his gaze casting back and forth until he realized they wouldn’t bite his snaffle.  “We gots spies in the barracks.”

“Spies?  What’s this?”

Rolf shut one eye to look along the fuller and then the ridge.  He didn’t let his gaze drift to Catal.  He did everything to keep his gaze from drifting to his friend.  They had walked with stiffened backs for the last week.  Expecting a knife between their shoulder blades, they hadn’t discussed their lack of safety.  Where in a castletown controlled by their enemy could they talk in safety?  A hawk-eyed Watrani colonel named Hangol came in with suspicions that glared even at Watrani-born guards.  Rolf and Catal, with their claim to be Jovani, had received close questioning that had them expecting to be hauled to the dungeons.  But he hadn’t arrested them.  He released them then called in more guards who had pulled night watch for the last seven-day.

And now Reffik let them know the reason.

“Aye, spies,” he nodded solemnly.  “Capt’n Morfeen, he let it slip to a sergeant.  They been lookin’ for the man for days.”

“Spies from where?”

“Frenc.  Where else?  They’s our enemies.”  He leaned forward and jerked his thumb over his shoulder.  “Me and Nollo, we think it’s that new guard.  What’d he say his name is?  Jannith.  We’re gonna ask him a few questions.  We thought you might want to help.”

Rolf lowered the greatsword, careful to keep the tip toward the wall.  “You said spies.  He’s only one.”

“He’ll have help in the town.  Or over at Baien Keep.  That’s what we mean to find out.  You in?”

Catal lay back on his bunk and crossed his hands behind his head.  “I’m not going anywhere until my shift.  We got wall duty starting at the nooning.”

“Not plannin’ on getting `im by the collar until tonight, late, after the sergeants ain’t watching us close-like.”

Rolf grinned.  “I got time paid for, over on Dello Lane.”

“That brothel will be the death of you,” Catal said without heat, and Rolf grinned wider.

The talk turned, as his comment had intended it to, to women Reffik had tumbled, some with coin, some without.  Catal joined in, making up women in the Jovan Hills.  He painted a flaxen-haired beauty so vividly that Rolf wondered if she were real, a woman that the young lordling had courted and won before he accepted the spying duty assigned him by Frenc’s HighLord Sven.

They had bluffed their way into the Watrani guard.  Three months ago, they’d walked in to the barrack commander in Baien and offered their swords for hire.  The Watrani, off a year-long series of battles across southern Mullen, needed swords and strong men behind the swords.  The commander hadn’t hesitated to hire Jovani, and Rolf and Catal stirred no brewing pots of trouble.  They followed orders.  They kept on the good side of their barrack mates.  They didn’t talk politics or magic or religion.  They made drinking buddies and drilling buddies and whoring buddies.

 Only Colonel Hangol, in his questioning, had wondered why good swordsmen abandoned their HighLady Jarella to seek work with her allies the Watrani.  “Pay’s better,” Catal had said, and they stuck to that even to the fifth time he asked.  They returned so weary of the interrogation that they fell onto their bunks and immediately slept.

Rolf expected swords pointed at him when he woke.  Instead, it was flat bread and mince washed down with ale, the standard fare in the barracks.

But talk of spies after hours of interrogation—Rolf glanced at Catal and tilted his head toward the window, open to catch the bright sunshine even though wintry air streamed in.  Time for them to fly out.  They had gathered little to report back to HighLord Sven.  That was a disappointment.

Reffik finally wandered off to find someone else to join him and Nollo.

Catal eyed Rolf’s careful sheathing of the greatsword.  “You said you needed to go to the bladesmith on Cutter Street.  If we’re going, we need to go now.  Don’t want to be late, not with the sergeants looking for reasons.”

“And why would you need to come?” Rolf asked, playing his part.

“I thought I’d look over that dagger you described.  Lost mine, remember, up around Senric.”

“Come on then.”

They stood, gathered up their weapons, and headed out, waving off friends who offered  dicing or drinking before duty.  Once out of the barracks and heading for Cutter Lane, they would melt into Baien’s population.  The largest castletown in all of Mullen and much of eastern Watran, Baien offered lanes and back allées mazed together with the building of centuries.  First, though, they had to get out of the Watrani Warren.  Once they knew no one followed, they could head to the horses they stabled just beyond the city walls.

Watrani Warren was a corner of Midtown Baien, ceded by its lord to the Watrani.  Oldtown had buildings that collapsed without warning.  Newtown had wealthy nobles and merchants who would protest Watrani rulers.  Midtown’s river warehouses became barracks.  Merchants still retained their shops—a wise lord did not lose tax revenue—but officers and the Gitane Witches had taken over any homes and driven out the residents.  And Merchant’s Hall, with its marble entrance and imposing façade, sited on the tallest hill in Midtown, was annexed as headquarters for the conquerors.

Named for the rabbit’s warren of passageways that wove in and around the buildings, the Watrani Warren had fooled its occupying guards more than once, and Watrani soldiers took bets about getting lost in the maze.  Rolf and Catal had studied the byways until they knew them with eyes shut.  Quick exits had saved them more than once.

The guard on duty at the end of Warehouse Row waved them past.  They turned toward the MidTown beyond the Warren.  Before they disappeared from view, though, someone shouted.  Pretending not to hear, they took the first left.  Then they sprinted the length of a building, took the next right and followed another passage, and then turned left into the allée, planning to reach the outer circuit of the Warren and follow the curving road to the bridge.

Buildings crowded around them, their overhangs giving only glimpses of the slate grey sky that heralded snow.

“Did you see who shouted?” Catal asked.

“Didn’t look back.”

“I thought it was Colonel Hangol.”

“Dammit.”

“Your favorite word.”

They turned onto the main street that climbed straight from the waterfront to the hilltop.  It skirted the street that climbed higher to Merchant’s Hall before dropping half its height to reach the Midtown’s encompassing wall with its six gates, named for the four countries that bordered Baien and Newtown and Oldtown.

Market Morning was ending, with hawkers collapsing their booth fronts.  They threaded between the workers and lingering buyers, but the crowd slowed them down.  Rolf, a head taller than most of the people, slowed even more to finger a bright red cloth while he risked a quick look behind them.  When the hawker stepped toward him, he released the cloth and caught up to Catal.  “Behind us,” he murmured.

Catal swore this time.  “Who?”

“Who do you think?”

He swore again.  “Use the maze.  The curving street.”

They took the next right-side turn, then the next left.  When they looked behind them, Hangol still followed.  He walked alone, at their speed.  Maybe he wasn’t following them.  He didn’t look like a man intent on following a couple of guards he didn’t trust.

Another turn, another narrow lane, then they reached the curving road to the Mullen Gate and its bridge across one arm of the Mulco River.  Catal came to an abrupt halt, stopping in the shadow of the buildings.

The curving road, Bowed Street, ran alongside the city wall, curving with the wall as it dropped toward the river.  If they turned about and followed the road west, it would take them first to Corin Gate and its ferryman then continue to the Watran Gate and the bridge that crossed a deeper, wider arm of the Mulco.  If they bore east, they would eventually pass the Mullen Gate and reach the Arlas Gate, standing where the Mulco split to encircle the city.  Islanded by the river, Baien seemed both protector and imprisoner.

“Damned street,” Catal said, although he’d chosen their route.

“Mullen Gate’s not far.  And it’s the best choice.”

“You should have argued.”

“You would have chosen Corin and the ferry?  Or Arlas Gate?  We will have to go to Arlas, you know that.  Quickest way back to Frenc.”

“And they’ll expect Jovani to go across Mullen on their way back home.  If they still think we’re Jovani.  They could know we’re Frenc.”

“Or they could not.”

“You talk too much sense,” Catal groused.  “We take Bowed Street, and we’re trapped,” for the buildings shared walls, running in a constant circuit from one to the next.  They would have to go through a shop or a narrow house to return to the back lanes.  And they were still deep in Watrani Warren.

Footsteps echoed behind them.  Hangol, if it was still the colonel on their heels, came quickly.

Catal groaned, for while they had reached the road, they were still deep in the Warren.  They would attract attention if they headed through the buildings to avoid the colonel.  If they kept on their route, the hawk-eyed man would soon spot them.

And they had additional trouble.  The people to their left, Mullen side, suddenly parted their huddle, resolving into an older man with three youths.  When the man sparked lightning, they knew he was a Gitane WitchMaster, and the youths were his apprentices.  He pulsed the lightning until he held a spear-like barb.  And then he tossed it at the boys.  They stood against the city wall, and the stones behind them were pitted and charred from previous lessons.  Power flashed as they shielded against the lightning barb.

The WitchMaster would ignore them until he deigned to halt the lesson,  His arrogance would delay their passing.  Rolf and Catal turned right, toward Corin Gate, farther from their destination, but they could find a way to double back, once the WitchMaster took his apprentices inside and Hangol was no longer behind them.

For he was.  He turned onto the narrow lane where they still stood.

Catal stepped onto Bowed Street.  Two doors along he paused, glanced at the door, then grabbed its knob, an iron hand stretched out in welcome, marking it as a Protectorate sanctuary.  The Blessed Protectorate had also ceded its buildings when the Watrani took the Warren, but Rolf didn’t remember seeing the sanctuary on previous journeys along Bowed Street.  The door alone, painted to re-create a mock forest with an aisle of arched trees, would have attracted his attention.  Unless the paint was a recent addition.

When Catal reached for the hand knob centered in the tree aisle, Rolf almost reached to stop him, but he remembered the WitchMaster and Hangol and dropped his hand to his swordbelt.  He might admire the painting and miss the forest, but he didn’t expect to find sanctuary here.

As the door opened, Hangol emerged from the allée, and an apprentice exploded a lightning barb.  The iron hand grated as it turned, then the door opened soundlessly.  They ducked inside.  Catal shut the door and heard the click as the latch fell into place.

Heavy wood paneling covered the walls of a tiny vestibule.  Two icons depicted a man in a forest, one shrouded in snow, one alive with green leaves.  In both paintings he lifted his face to a shaft of sunlight.  His outstretched hand looked very like the door knob.  Centering the entry, a marble basin stood ready for penitents to wash their faces and hands—only the basin was empty of its holy water.  An arched doorway led to the shrine itself, with heavy support columns of darkly stained wood and enclosed pew stalls surrounding the central square with another basin.  Dark cross-braces looked like uplifted tree branches

Tesselated tiles of yellow and white floored the central square.  Yellow and white banners should hang from the ceiling, around the dome shaft.  On a sunny day, Rolf knew, colors would dance on the font beneath the dome, cast from the stained glass at the top of the dome.  The banners were missing, just as the penitent’s basin stood dry.  The font in the central square wasn’t empty, but a red cloth draped the gray marble.  Some kind of sphere nestled in the basin where holy water should have been.  Ensconced torches burned from the four columns that created the corners of the square, but behind the tall-sided pew stalls were deep shadows.

Behind them, the door knob grated as it turned.  Rolf and Catal melted into those deep shadows.  The sanctuary door opened.  Light came in then was blocked as a man lingered on the threshold.  Rolf and Catal slid further down the wall, closer to the corner, into deeper shadow.  The man entered and shut the door and headed for the central square.

And a chiming sounded.

He half-turned, and they realized Hangol had followed them into the sanctuary.  Had he seen them and followed them, Rolf wondered, or had luck turned against them and his path had merely coincided with theirs?

A pulsing beat of light began.  From the sphere in the central font.  Their refuge was getting more and more dangerous.

A door across the shrine opened.  A man came in, garbed in black, with flaxen hair and steely eyes.  Catal jerked then pressed deeper into the wall.

The man walked straight to the font.  He bent and set a clay pitcher on the floor beside the font.  From his pocket he pulled out a fist-sized orb, a matte gold, shining like the metal.  Then he pulled off the red cloth and let it drop to the tessellated floor.

A vitreous sphere nestled in the grey marble of the holy font.  It was colored like the cloth, only redder, brighter, gleaming like stained glass, its light within it.  The size of a man’s fist or heart, it cast a lurid glow on the face of the black-clothed man and on the stained wood surrounding the square.  When the light pulsed, it stained the deep oak into oxblood and crimsoned the white floor square, turning the yellow tiles into a strange orange.

Then the man touched the metal orb to the red glass.  Light flared, but the metal didn’t react.  The larger sphere pulsed quickly until the man placed his palm on the top.  “Come forward, Colonel Hangol.  This is not a holy shrine.”

Hangol had started when the man spoke to him, but he obediently walked forward.  He didn’t enter the square, though.  He stood at its edge, his boots not touching the white and yellow tiles.  He bowed, and when he straightened, he said, “Master Keipven.”

At the witch rank, Rolf caught back a sharp inhale that the two men would have heard.  He saw the whites of Catal’s eyes rolled toward him, just as appalled at what they had stumbled into.  The more religious Catal would likely say they didn’t stumble into this luck.  He would say that providential Ain Draden brought them to this shrine, at this moment, for the purpose of discovering the very thing they had tried to discover since their arrival last autumn.

For weeks they had lurked and listened and learned nothing.  Providence directed them to this building, had set them at this door when Hangol appeared behind them.  They had to trust that the great god would protect them.

Rolf watched the WitchMaster, a man younger that he would have expected to control such high rank among the Gitane.  Hangol was dangerous but far from the true danger.  The WitchMaster might never see them, but he might sense their presence.  And wielders could hurl power from one side of the room to another.  He had watched mages engage in light-hearted competitions.  Back in Frenc, long before the Watrani allied to Gitane, long before he volunteered to come spy on the Watrani, he’d been awestruck by the mages’ powers.  They worked for the good of all.  Gitane didn’t.  And he stood not fifteen feet from a Gitane WitchMaster.  His hand crept to his swordhilt.  He pressed deeper into the shadows and tried to make no sound.

The WitchMaster bent and picked up the clay pitcher.  Still holding the orb against the sphere, he poured out the pitcher’s contents, as red as the sphere, thick and sluggish.  A metallic smell filled the sanctuary

“Where did you get the blood?” Hangol asked.

“Don’t worry.  It’s not from one of your guards.”

The pitcher emptied over the sphere.  The WitchMaster gave a shake for the last drops then set it back down.  Blood oozed down the glassy surface.  He picked up the cloth and cleaned off the metal orb before placing it on the font’s edge.  And he dropped the cloth, where it lay, the smeared blood staining the white and yellow marble.

The WitchMaster tapped a finger on the font then turned to give attention to Hangol.  “What brings you here today, colonel?  We do not leave until the day after tomorrow.”

The Watrani commander finally ventured onto the tessellated tiles.  “Two men.”

“The two men we spoke of?” Keipven asked, and Rolf and Catal shrank more completely into the shadows.

“The very same.  I haven’t yet located them.  I would rather not leave until I can find them and imprison them and interrogate them.”

“Call them what they are, Hangol.  Spies.  Spies sent by Sven of Frenc.  Did you expect him to keep his followers safely ensconced in the mountains while Summa ran free across the plains?  Did you not expect Sven to send spies?”

“I expected it.  I also expected to catch them quickly.  Marshal Streinch says that I am assigned to you, however, and that I will need to abandon my search for these two men.”

“You are assigned to my mission, colonel.  You must let another find these two men.  Your specific presence is required for my mission to be successful.  Who else is available who has your level of command?  Who else sacrificed three years of his youth to scout Arlas for us?”

Rolf shuttered his eyes.  This WitchMaster and the colonel and a Watrani troop headed to Arlas.  Why?  Highlord Pell had signed a pact with Lord Summa last winter;  he did not need another troop to convince him of Watran’s clout.  Why did they need to go into Arlas?

Keipven continued his questions, and Rolf hurried to catch up.  “Who else can navigate the dangers of a highlord’s court as easily as he navigates the dangers of a battlefield?  Who else can judge defensive measures with a quick scan?  Who else can tell us how Pell has changed, how loyal the Arlasians remain to their highlord?  Only you, Hangol.  You are selected, not one of your fellows.”

“These spies have to be found.”

“Indeed they must, but perhaps you are not the person who will find them.  You have alerted the barracks commander, have you not?”

“I started this hunt.  I should end it.”

“No, the barracks commander should.  He might learn something more than duty rosters and drilling.  Let him root out these two men while you help me.  My task is far greater than hunting two spies who have likely learned nothing, no matter how deeply they have infiltrated the guards.  What can these spies learn in the barracks?  What can they learn on guard duty?  They would need access to strategy meetings and high councils.  No one has that except commanders at your rank and higher and WitchMasters like myself.”

Rolf didn’t look at Catal.  For the last couple of weeks, the young lord had argued those same points.  Any reporting they did amounted to little more than troop movements, and a man sitting on the side of the road could report those more easily than simple guards whose movements were restricted by their duties.

They had decided to leave, and luck fell their way.  Finally, finally they were hearing information that Lord Sven would consider important.

“I hear you, Keipven.  I agree with your points, never say that I do not.  But I find it difficult to leave a hunt barely started.”

“What can I say to convince you?  Do you know the names of these spies?  Do you know their appearance?  Do you even know which troop they attached themselves to?  You know none of this.  And you are out of time.  We leave in two days.  The orb must be placed.”

The WitchMaster opened his hand.  The gold metal orb nestled in his palm.  His fingers curled inward, not quite touching the shining orb.  And the blood-covered sphere in the font pulsed, as regular as a heartbeat.

“That’s it?  It looks like nothing.  Just gold, ready to be melted down at some highlord’s whim.”

“This little orb is far from nothing, colonel.  It is the last orb to be placed, the most crucial one.  It is the final piece of the heart of the Kaerrefiorne.  This must be taken to Arlas.  We have calculated its placement exactly, but I need you to help me find the location.  Once placed, no one can stand against Summa and Watran.  Sven of Frenc will finally be brought low.”

With each word, the sphere pulsed.  His left hand hovered above the orb, and a bloody light pulsed over his hands.  When he removed his covering hand, the orb looked unchanged—but the vitreous sphere stopped beating.  A long finger stroked over the shiny gold.  Then he carefully balanced the orb on the edge of the font.  Hands hovering over both sphere and orb, he bent his head.  His lips moved.  Rolf wished he would speak the words—but maybe it was an incantation he would rather not hear.

When Keipven lifted his head and withdrew his hands, Hangol renewed his objections.  “I cannot knowingly leave spies in place to discover information.  If they do escape with vital information, OverLord Summa will flay my hide.  I’d rather keep it.  And he’ll lay part of the blame on you Gitane.  You claimed watchers would guard against any spies.  I remember the claim by your Great Domus.”

Keipven’s smile thinned.  “Our watchers only spot magickal spies.  You must forget these mundane men, colonel.  We have captured several Frenc spies;  none of them had discovered anything.  These men will also not have discovered anything.”

“I would rather not leave it to chance.  We have concerns beyond the Kaerrefiorne.  Summa’s plans for the invasion—.”

“Summa will not invade Frenc this year or the next, not until he holds Jovan.  The rebellion there will not be resolved this year, that we know.  And Summa may never invade Frenc.  It would be easier to starve them out.  They can get nothing through the west and only a thin trickle of supplies through Mushdan.  Without Caled, they will be cut off, and Baron Caled still swears allegiance to Summa.  The Kaerrefiorne will ensure Frenc is cut off.  With orbs in Caled, Jovan, Mullen, and Corin, we only need one in Arlas, and Frenc is trapped behind a sorcered wall.  We continue the plan, Hangol.”

“It’s a mistake.”

“You speak with a mundane man’s reckoning.  I speak with Gitane reckoning.  Gitane reckoning brought us past the Mage Wall.  Gitane reckoning will lead us to control all Sansward.  We continue the plan, Hangol.”

“Gitane reckoning has not faced mages in battle.  The Gitane WitchMaster sent to recover the amulet in southern Mullen is dead.  The three apprentices with him, the trained wolves, all dead because of a single mage.”

Keipven’s smile looked more like a wolf’s snarl, all teeth and danger.  “Last summer is our only failure.  Once the Kaerrefiorne creates the linkage, the risk of any future failure is greatly diminished.  Are you losing faith so soon, Hangol?  Do you need again to speak with Great Domus?”

The man stiffened.  “No.  That is not necessary.”

“I think you do need to speak with him.”  He held a hand out.  “Come,” and his long fingers crooked.  His toothy smile didn’t reach his grey eyes, a silver as flat as the gold orb.

Hangol stepped forward, his boots dragging on the tiles.  “It is not necessary.”

“A simple reminder of your true loyalty.”

“I haven’t forgotten.”

“Nor will you.  Come.”  He turned and walked back through the door.  And Hangol followed, his arms stiff at his sides.