Later they camped under one of the huge pale bridges and Seethlaw summoned a fire out of an ornate, broad-bottomed flask he carried. Whatever was in the vessel burned with an eerie greenish flame, but it radiated a comforting wash of heat out of all proportion to the size of the thing. Ringil sat and watched shadows leap about on the pale stone support pillar behind the dwenda.
“When you summon the storm,” he said slowly. “How does it feel?”
“Feel?” Seethlaw gave the impression he’d been dozing. “Why would it feel like anything? It’s power, it’s just . . . power. Potential, and the will to deploy it. That’s all magic is in the end, you know.”
“I thought there were supposed to be rules to magic.”
“Did you?” The long mouth bent into a crooked smile. “Who told you that, then? Someone down at Strov market?”
Ringil ignored the sneer. “It doesn’t hurt you? The storm?”
“No.” A look of dawning comprehension. “Ah, that. The regret, is that what you’re talking about? This sense of loss? Yes, he always talked about that, too. It’s a mortal thing, as far as I can tell. The aspect storm is a warp in the fabric of every possible outcome the universe will allow. It gathers in the alternatives like a bride gathering in her gown. For a mortal, those alternatives are mostly paths they’ll never take, things they’ll never do. At some level, the organism seems to know that.”
It was a passing curiosity. There was too much else. The sadness Jelim had left behind still clung around Ringil’s heart in creased folds.
“But you don’t feel it that way,” he said bitterly. “You’re immortal, right?”
Seethlaw smiled gently. “So far.”
And then his gaze drifted out to the left, eyes narrowed. Ringil heard footfalls across the black stone road behind him.
“. . . Seethlaw . . .”
It was a female voice, fluid and melodic but slightly muffled; the dwenda’s name was the only word Ringil could pick out, and even that was stretched and twisted almost beyond recognition. He turned his head and saw in the glow from the fire that a figure stood behind him. It was garbed in black, wore a long-sword across its back; its head was sleek and rounded. It took him a couple of seconds to realize he was looking at someone in the suit and helm Seethlaw had shown him under the city. Then the figure lifted a hand to the featureless bulb on its head and pushed back the glass visor. Framed in the space behind was an empty-eyed dwenda face.
A shudder scrawled its way across Ringil’s shoulders—he could not prevent it. For just a moment in the eerie unreliable firelight under the bridge, the featureless dark of the newcomer’s eyes seemed to merge with the black of the helmet, and the bone-white features took on the aspect of a thin, sculpted mask with empty eye holes, a helmet within a helmet, set on the shoulders of a suit of armor that must, instinct told him, contain nothing but the same emptiness that lay behind the eyes.
Seethlaw got up and ambled across to greet the new arrival. They took each other’s hands loosely at waist height, oddly like two children readying themselves to play a game of slap-me-if-you-can. They talked back and forth for a few seconds in what appeared to be the same tongue the newcomer had used, but then Seethlaw gestured back at Ringil and broke into the antique dialect of Naomic he’d been speaking before.
“. . . my guest,” he said. “If you’d be so kind.”
The female dwenda studied Ringil for a moment, showing all the emotion of the mask she had seemed to wear just a moment before. Then her mouth twisted into a crooked half smile and Ringil thought she muttered something under her breath. She lifted the smooth black helm from her head—it came slowly, as if a very tight fit—shook out long silky hair not quite as dark as Seethlaw’s, and rolled her head back and forth a couple of times to loosen her neck muscles. Ringil heard vertebrae crackle. Then the new dwenda tucked her helmet under one arm and stepped forward, free left hand extended languidly to make one half of the greeting she had shared with Seethlaw.
“My respects to those of your blood.” Her Naomic, aside from being archaic, was very rusty. “I am with name Risgillen of Ilwrack, and sister of already you-know this Seethlaw. How are you called?”
Ringil took the offered hand as he’d seen Seethlaw do, wondering if he was being subtly snubbed with this casual, one-armed variant.
“Ringil,” he said. “I’ve heard a lot about you.”
Risgillen shot a glance at her brother, who shook his head minutely and said something in the other tongue. The female dwenda peeled her lips back from something that wasn’t really a smile, and let go of his hand.
“You come by unexpected ways, for this the un-, the dis-, the
“We ran into some akyia on the coastal path,” Seethlaw told her. “This seemed like a safer option.”
“The merroigai?” Risgillen frowned. “Shown proper respect, they should not have bothered you.”
“Well, they did.”
