She leaned against the outer edge of one door, her back to the narrow wall where it joined the corridor wall; her breath whined in her throat. Thank Luthe for the thoroughness of my cure, she thought as she felt the thick air surging into the bottom of her chest, being hurled out again, and a fresh lungful captured. The rash on her chest throbbed with extra enthusiasm as she panted, and the skin above her ribcage had to heave and subside more quickly. Well, thorough about the important thing, she amended.
Luthe. She had not thought of him, had not quite said his name even in the dimmest, most private recesses of her mind, since she had left him. She had said she would come back to him. Her breathing eased; even the evil air seemed to taste less foul. Luthe. She looked down the hallway, but saw nothing coming toward her. Perhaps it is Nothing, she thought. Perhaps that is what follows here. She looked down at her hands. She could not open the doors behind her—supposing they opened in the usual fashion—with both hands full. She knelt down, kicking the tip of Gonturan to one side so she jammed up into a corner and gave Aerin’s armpit a sharp poke with her hilt, and put the hidden stone and the green wreath on the stone floor. Slowly she upended the leather bag, and the hot red stone spilled out, burning in its own light, long red tongues of that light snaking down the corridor and up the walls. It made her dizzy. She prodded the wreath and made a small hollow in the twined stems, hastily picked up the stone as it tried to scorch her fingers, and dropped it in. It sizzled and hissed, but the surka seemed to quench it, and the red light subsided. Aerin pulled the leaves back over it again, shook the wreath to be sure it could not fall out, and stood up.
By the wings of the mother of all horses, her rash would drive her mad soon. She rubbed it helplessly, the heel of her hand chafing it against the inside of her shirt, and it responded gleefully by feeling as if it had caught fire; but as she dropped her hand again and then tried to bow her shoulders so that her shirt and tunic would fall away from the infected skin, she stopped thinking about what might be creeping up the stairs behind her. Bowing her shoulders did no good either. Irritably she turned to face the door, her free hand pressed flat against her chest again with shirt and tunic between; and pushed at the doors with the hand that held the surka. The leaves rasped against the inside edge of the doors, and the doors exploded.
There was a roar like all the thunder gods came down off their mountain to howl simultaneously in her ears; and winds spun around her like endless spiral staircases, bruising her with their edges. There was torn redness before her eyes, rent with blackness, clawed with white and yellow; she felt that her eyes would be hammered out of their sockets. She staggered forward, still clutching the wreath, the hand that held it outstretched. She could not see floor nor walls nor ceiling, nor anything; only the shards of color, like mad rags of cloth streaming past. Her other hand fell to Gonturan’s hilt, though she knew she hadn’t a chance of drawing her in this vortex of storm; still it gave comfort to clutch at her.
The wind lifted her entirely off her feet for a moment and dropped her again and she stumbled and almost fell, and so the wind seized her yet again and threw her to one side, and only luck let her fall feet first the second time. This will not do, she thought, and braced herself as best she could. I’ll probably lose her—and with a wild heave she pulled Gonturan free of her scabbard.
Blue fire blazed up and whirled around her, and the winds and thunders backed off. Aerin gave Gonturan an experimental swoop, and she sang, a shrill grim note, and the shards of red and black and claws of yellow and white disappeared into shadows and became a floor and five red walls and a ceiling overhead with things painted on it, fell things of red and black, with fangs and yellow claws.
And at the far end of the chamber stood a man dressed in white, with a red sword girt at his side, and she knew him at once, for she had seen his face often enough in her mirror.
She opened her mouth, but no words came out. He laughed, her own laugh, but greater, deeper, with terrible echoes that made tangled harmonies, and those harmonies found the places in her own mind that she had never looked into, that by their existence had long frightened her; that she had hoped always to be able to ignore. The air reeled over her in thick waves, and Gonturan’s blue fire dimmed and flickered as her hand trembled.
“Well met, sister’s daughter,” he said. His voice was low and soft and courteous; a thoughtful, philosophical, wise, and kindly voice, a voice anyone might trust; a voice nothing like Aerin’s own.
“Not well met,” Aerin said at last in a strangled voice, which seemed to cut ugly holes in the air currents between them, which destroyed the harmonies that still hummed in her mind; but by the sound of her own voice she felt she had lost something treasured and beautiful that might have forever been hers. “Not well met. You killed my mother and you would kill my people and my country.”
He raised his shoulders, and his white robe rippled and fell in long graceful folds that glinted softly, like the petals of spring flowers. His hazel eyes blinked gently at her; her own eyes, but larger and set more deeply beneath a higher brow. “And why, my dear, should you care? You never met your mother, so you cannot miss her. I may have done you a favor; many daughters would be glad to have escaped the tender ministrations of their mothers.
“And when has your land ever cared for you?” His voice sank lower yet, purring, and he smiled Aerin’s own smile. “They call you witch’s daughter—and so you are, and more, for your mother might have been given the mage mark had she not fled too soon—and they should revere you for it. But in their small vicious way they choose to revile you.
“Your father is kind—why should he not be? You have never been any trouble—you have never demanded your rightful place as his daughter and his only child; and lately you have been of some small use, slaying dragons, so that he need not send out his valuable men on so inglorious a task. You have kept to the shadows, and he has let you stay there, and has done nothing to deny his people’s voices when they whisper, witchwoman’s daughter.
“And Tor?” He chuckled. “Honest Tor. He loves you, you know. You know that. So does everyone. They all say that you are your mother’s daughter—I think even the worthy Arlbeth wonders just a little, sometimes—and your mother was a witch; never forget that. Tor himself is, of course, not in a position to do much thinking about this. And as you are your mother’s daughter, even when you do not remember it ... ” He smiled her smile at her again, but it seemed very full of teeth.
“No,” said Aerin; it was almost a shriek. Gonturan wavered in her hand.
“But yes. And think of who accompanied you to this fateful meeting. Do you come with your father’s finest cavalry? Do you come at least with a troop of well-meaning if inexperienced men? Why, no—you come without even the lowliest Damarian foot soldier, without even a ragged village brat to shine your boots. You come at all only because you escaped, like a prisoner, from the City which ought to be yours to command. You come draggle-tailed, with wild beasts of the hills, riding an old lame horse who should have been mercifully killed years ago.” He seemed to have some trouble saying the word “mercifully”: it was as if his teeth got in his way.
Aerin shook her head dumbly. His words buzzed in her ears like insects waiting to sting her; and the terrible harmonies of his laugh bit deeper into her each time she moved. If only her chest didn’t itch so; it was hard to concentrate on anything through the itching; it was worse even than the headache. He was talking about Talat, poor patient Talat, waiting for her while his saddle galled him; grey horses often had oversensitive skin. If she had been born a horse she would undoubtedly have been grey. Her chest felt like it no longer had skin on it at all; perhaps it was being torn by those red-and-black creatures with the claws. The low murmuring buzzing voice went on.