Jennifer turned towards the voice, her eyes adjusting, and as they did, she found herself face to face with Metran, First Mage to the High King of Brennin.
No longer was he the shuffling old man she’d seen that first night or watched as he cowered from Jaelle in the Great Hall. Metran stood straight and tall, his eyes bright with malice.
“You traitor!” Jennifer burst out.
He gestured, and she screamed as her nipples were squeezed viciously. No one had touched her; he had done it himself without moving.
“Carefully, my dear lady,” Metran said, all solicitude, as she writhed in pain. “You must be careful of what you say to me. I have the power to do whatever I want with you.” He nodded towards his source, Denbarra, who stood close by.
“Not quite,” the other voice demurred. “Let her go.” The tone was very quiet, but the pain stopped instantly. Jennifer turned, wiping tears from her face.
Galadan was not tall, but there was a sinuous strength to him, a sheathed intimation of very great power. Cold eyes fixed her from a scarred, aristocratic face under the thatch of silver hair—like Brendel’s, she thought, with another sort of pain.
He bowed to her, courtly and graceful, and with a veiled amusement. Then that was gone as he turned to Metran.
“She goes north for questioning,” he said. “Unharmed.”
“Are you telling me what to do?” Metran said on a rising note, and Jennifer saw Denbarra stiffen.
“Actually, yes, if you put it that way.” There was mockery in his voice. “Are you going to fight me over it, mageling?”
“I could kill you, Galadan,” Metran hissed.
The one named Galadan smiled again, but not with his eyes. “Then try. But I tell you now, you will fail. I am outside your taught magic, mageling. You have some power, I know, and have been given more, and may indeed have greater yet to come, but I will still be outside you, Metran. I always will be. And if you test it, I shall have your heart out for my friends.”
In the silence that followed this, Jennifer became conscious of the ring of wolves surrounding them. There were svart alfar as well, but the giant red-eyed wolf was gone.
Metran was breathing hard. “You are not above me, Galadan. I was promised this.”
At that, Galadan threw back his fierce, scarred head, and a burst of genuine laughter rang through the clearing.
“Promised, were you? Ah well, then, I must apologize!” His laughter stopped. “She is still to go north. If it were not so, I might take her for myself. But look!”
Jennifer, turning skyward to where Galadan was pointing, saw a creature so beautiful it lifted her heart in reflexive hope.
A black swan came swooping down from the high reaches of the sky, glorious against the sun, the great wings widespread, feathered with jet plumage, the long neck gracefully extended.
Then it landed, and Jennifer realized that the true horror had only begun, for the swan had unnatural razored teeth, and claws, and about it, for all the stunning beauty, there clung an odor of putrescent corruption.
Then the swan spoke, in a voice like slithering darkness in a pit. “I have come,” she said. “Give her to me.”
Far away yet, terribly far away, Loren Silvercloak was driving his horse back south, cursing his own folly in all the tongues he knew.
“She is yours, Avaia,” said Galadan, unsmiling. “Is she not, Metran?”
“Of course,” said the mage. He had moved upwind of the swan. “I will naturally be anxious to know what she has to say. It is vital for me in my place of watch.”
“No longer,” the black swan said, ruffling her feathers. “I have tidings for you. The Cauldron is ours, I am to say. You go now to the place of spiraling, for the time is upon us.”
Across the face of Metran there spread then a smile of such cruel triumph that Jennifer turned away from it. “It has come then,” the mage exulted. “The day of my revenge. Oh, Garmisch, my dead King, I shall break the usurper into pieces on his throne, and make drinking cups of the bones of the House of Ailell!”