Vale

On the fourth morning Anja woke to the first snow of the season. Though it stopped falling before dawn and the sun rose, the air remained cold enough that the snow didn’t melt as they set out upon the King’s Road again. For miles, all around them stretched the fields of Vale, lying fallow for the winter and now blanketed in white.

She glanced over at Kael, and found him watching her intently. Always he seemed to either watch her intently or intently not watch her, but he was watching her now with narrowed eyes. Each time this morning, that look had been followed by his asking whether she was warm enough within her wolfskin coat.

But now there was different focus.

“I had thought your hair was white as snow. But now to compare, it is even whiter.”

Her smile felt tight. “Like a ghost’s?”

“No. Theirs is white, but it’s a foul and unclean white.”

Her lips parted in surprise. “You have seen a ghost?”

He nodded. “As a boy, in the Dead Lands. There is nothing of beauty in their hair. But yours is like winter.”

“Thin, cold, hungry?”

He frowned. “Are you hungry?”

“Not at this moment.”

“Are you cold?”

“No.” She shook her head. “I did not mean my… I meant that winter often conjures thoughts of being alone outside in the cold.”

“Your hair conjures thoughts of the fairest part of winter.” He gestured to the snowcapped peaks in the distance. “Like the sun gleaming across the mountains.”

She had never been called beautiful before. At home, she sometimes thought the trends of fashion and beauty were to look unlike her. No one wanted to resemble Ivermere’s shame.

Touched by his words, she said, “I think you must be as summer, then.”

Hot and vibrant with life—but not new life, as in spring, but fully formed and vital.

“I am winter, too. But a fat, hibernating bear, softened in his den.”

“You are soft?”

“Being a king has made me so.”

She could not halt a peal of laughter. Never had she seen any person built as hard as he was. Even at rest, his muscles felt unyielding as stone, and awake they had as much give as a steel wall.

“If you are soft now, then before you were king, you must have been as…” She trailed off, at a loss. “If you are steel and stone now, what is harder than that?”

“I can think of a few things,” was his dry reply. “One you feel each night.”

Yet again she could not stop her laugh, though her face flamed, and though she could not bear his intent look now and averted her gaze from his.

Three nights had he lain behind her. If he had been as steel, then she had been the furnace at the making of it.

Though it had not been true the first night. That night, she had been tense and uncertain. Then he had saved a crawler. That was the moment when she’d realized he truly wasn’t the man she had thought he was. After that, she hadn’t felt nervous in his arms. She’d felt safe.

But each night, with fear gone, she’d also thought about offering the invitation he’d spoken of. It could do little harm to her if she was not a virgin; no one would have her anyway.

But Kael had already said he would not, either. And he must have plenty of willing women in his bed. Surely the stronghold had no shortage of them.

She could not bear to think of those women waiting for his return. And she would try not to think about how it felt to lie against him with her body afire. She would not be a dong-addled maiden, pining for a man who had already rejected her—and not even for the same reason everyone else had.

She could not blame him for that reason, though. He hadn’t sent for a bride—and surely wouldn’t accept one who announced she intended to kill him.

“Did your mother bed a man from Glacian?”

Startled, she looked to him. “Why would you suggest such a thing?”

He eyed her mouth, then her hair again. “Everyone in Ivermere has dark hair. But in the far north, there are peoples with hair almost as pale as yours.”

“Oh. No.” Embarrassment heated her face. “I was hiding from my nursemaid, and had concealed myself in my mother’s quarters. She cast a spell to redden her lips and this was the scaling.”

He frowned. “What of your natural wards?”

Because everyone who wielded magic could be affected by a spell, but they were resistant to the scaling. Avoiding his eyes, she shrugged. “My mother is a powerful sorceress.”

“And you are her daughter, and your father’s daughter. Your power would be theirs combined.”

“No young girl is more powerful than a queen,” she said. “And I ought to have known better than to be in her chambers. Her magic is so strong that there are wards on every wall to keep it from spilling out.”

Just as walls and shutters kept light from escaping a closed room.

His mouth twisted. “It spills over into Scalewood. All the corrupted magic in Ivermere does. That is why monsters roam that forest.”

She shook her head. He had it backward. “My people developed their magic to protect themselves from the monsters in Scalewood.”

“Is that what is said in Ivermere?” He narrowed his eyes. “Your sort of magic is deliberate. Spells must be cast. Do you think the trees and deer were chanting spells and corrupting their own home?”

Perhaps he was right. But it was long ago and no one could know. “Even if that is true, you cannot deny that terrible magic lies within the forest now.”

“So the magic of Scalewood spills back into Ivermere, and each generation is more powerful than before, and the forest more dangerous. Is that not true?”

“It is said,” she agreed. Everything had to be in balance, so the civilized, purposeful magic scaled into something wild and chaotic. And the wild and chaotic magic of Scalewood scaled back.

“The Dead Lands used to be a green, bountiful realm. More fertile and abundant than Vale.” He indicated the land around them.

“As Ivermere is,” she said.

He nodded. “And there were sorcerers so powerful, even death was not an end. Then one spell scaled so mightily, there was a great Reckoning, and the realm and its peoples were all but destroyed.”

She had heard that story before, but not with the gravity that he told it. “I thought the Reckoning was only a legend? A warning to spellcasters not to try to raise the dead.”

“It is truth. In Ivermere, they might comfort themselves by calling it only legend.” He shrugged. “But in time, Ivermere and Scalewood will be as the Dead Lands.”

A horrifying thought, yet although he had been born in the Dead Lands, he only shrugged to think about it happening again? Or perhaps he believed it was what they deserved? He had no care for Ivermere.

“Do you dislike magic?” Another thought occurred to her. “You have called it corrupt. Are you an abjurer?”

She could hardly fathom that anyone was, whether they could cast spells or not. Not when magic did so much good and helped so many. But it was true that the scaling did seek out a balance. So often, that was harmless. But there was reason why healers kept cages of mice within their wards—so that if the scaling was harmful, it would have a target not human.

“I’m not an abjurer.” Kael seemed amused at the thought. “I mislike the spellcasters’ use of magic. For it is not the scaling that is corrupted, but the use.”

Healing was a corrupt use? “Would you not risk a mouse to save a human life?”

“I would,” was his immediate answer. “But I do not lie to myself as spellcasters do to comfort themselves. That sort of healing is rarely needed. More likely, a scrape would be healed. Most of a spellcaster’s magic is nothing but impatience and laziness.”

“Laziness?” She stared at him in amazement. “It requires years of study and constant mindfulness.”

As her parents reminded her constantly.

“Healing can be done without magic, too. That requires true study—and patience, for healing naturally is never quick. It also harms no one. That is the spellcasters’ lie, that there is little harm done, because it cannot be known how a spell will scale. I would not injure a mouse for a scrape—or to redden my lips.”

That she could understand well. Even in Ivermere, there was argument about when it was appropriate to use magic. “Nor would I.”

The arch of his eyebrow was faintly mocking. “So you learned a lesson from your hair? You are rare for an Ivermeren.”

Rarer than he suspected. “I could not have failed to learn a lesson from it. My mother made certain I knew it was my own fault for walking into her chambers uninvited.”

“Your fault?” He frowned. “How old were you?”

“Three years of age.”

A foul oath spat from his tongue, followed by— “Only a shit-witted slopmouth would have done so.”

A pang struck her chest even as a flush heated her cheeks. Being the daughter of a king and queen, never had she been called a slopmouth to her face—but it had likely been said many times behind her back. And she had been told that worthless swill fell from her lips when she spoke, which was the same. “I know. I was old enough to know better.”

“You mistake me,” he said grimly. “I was speaking of your mother for blaming you. Your mother was old enough to know better than to be so careless. What of the kissing potion? Will she blame you for that, as well?”

The flush rose to an embarrassed burn through her entire face. Anja could imagine what her mother would say—and her father. They would not see the irony that her mother had given Anja the potion to make certain she would marry Kael, yet it was the potion that had loosened her lips and made certain she would not. And they would be unsurprised that she had been felled by her unguarded tongue. Spellcasters believed nothing was more shameful or dangerous than uncareful words—and Anja had spoken many in her life. They would only say that it was more of the same, that there was justice and balance in being defeated by her own words, especially if she had simply stopped insisting that a spider was in her mother’s bedchamber, if she had simply shut her mouth, the potion wouldn’t have been necessary.

Perhaps they were right. And Anja did not know who to blame. She didn’t know if blame mattered at all now. Blaming would not change the past, or make Kael take her to wife. It would not change that she would be returned to Ivermere, even more unwanted than when she’d left.

But she couldn’t bear to think of what her welcome home would be, and instead thought back to something else he’d said. “You speak of Ivermere’s magic as corrupt magic.”

“Because it is.”

“But you claim kindness is pure magic?”

He smiled faintly. “Because it is.”

“I have never heard of such a thing. I do not think anyone in Ivermere has.”

He shrugged, unbothered by her doubt. “That does not make it untrue. What is magic but an unseen force that works change upon the world? That is what kindness does. I have not known much of it myself but I have seen its power many times.”

She could only stare at him, something within her filling up as he spoke, but still unable to comprehend his words. Never had she heard anyone speak of kindness so matter-of-factly, as if this was a subject well known to him. Yet he’d said he’d not known it himself.

Perhaps that was why he knew of it. Everyone had heard of his past—how he had seen his clan and family slaughtered in the Dead Lands, then had been chained and sent across the Illwind Sea to the Four Kingdoms. There he was enslaved in the Blackworm mines until he’d broken his chains and killed the warlord who’d served Geofry in that region.

Who would value kindness more than someone who’d been treated cruelly? Just as no one valued freedom more than someone who’d been enslaved.

Yet this was still not something she’d heard spoken of before in any of the nearby kingdoms. “Were you taught this in the Dead Lands?”

“It is well known there,” he confirmed. “Kindness, courage, love—they are the most powerful of all magic.”

How could he say that so indifferently? He rode along, telling her of powerful magics as if what he imparted was no great secret, though every one of her senses felt alive with the learning of it.

“You truly think they are magic?”

“I know it to be true.” He looked to her, and she saw that he was as indifferent as he appeared, for his eyes burned with absolute conviction. “I would sooner face a thousand soldiers strengthened by a sorcerer’s spell than a dozen men filled with true courage or who are fighting for those they love.”

That claim was not mere conjecture—for Anja had heard stories of how he had faced and defeated a thousand soldiers. He’d slaughtered his way toward Toatin Zan, and after slaying the sorcerer, the remaining army had fled.

But it was the manner of his speech that struck her so powerfully. Courage was always celebrated, and kindness and love were often spoken of as something good—yet also sweetly cloying, embarrassing to acknowledge with any real earnestness, and better suited to lessons learned in children’s tales than to adult conversation. Certainly she’d never heard love spoken of with the reverence that Kael did, or heard the suggestion that it might win battles. And never had she been so drawn to an idea as she was drawn to the concept of magic as he described it…yet still she struggled to fully grasp the implications.

Kael had said he hadn’t known much kindness and didn’t wield that magic but… “Have you known love?” she asked.

His mouth firmed. For a long moment he only looked down the road ahead, then finally answered, “Not in many years. Not since my family was killed.”

The undisguised grief in his reply tugged at her heart. But at least he had known some love. Anja had family living and could not say with truth whether she had ever known love at all.

“Then it was courage that helped you prevail against Toatin Zan.” And against Geofry, and all of the others Kael had butchered in his campaign to free the four kingdoms.

“Courage, hate.” His eyes narrowed slightly, as if he was peering into his memory. “Rage.”

And each was its own magic? But it made sense. “So they each are balanced by the scale, too. Love and hate, fear and courage—”

“No. These magics have no scale.”

“Of course they have a scale.” Balance was the fundamental element of all magic. Letting her reins go, she lifted her hands, holding her right lower than her left. “If a spell is cast and magic heals on this side, then magic also injures on the opposite side.” She brought her hands even. “The scale of the world must be in balance.”

“No,” he said.

Anja laughed. “No? Even the Conqueror cannot simply deny truth and make it so.”

But he could draw his sword more swiftly than any swordmaster she’d seen. Yet even as she caught her breath and her gaze darted around the empty fields, searching for the threat, he merely tilted the shining steel this way and that.

“The world is not on a scale, just as this sword is not. It simply is. The corrupt magics create the scale—they force the world onto a fulcrum, and spells are the levers that move things within the world from one side to the other.” Carefully he balanced the sword lengthwise on the horn of his saddle, the hilt toward her and the blade pointed toward the opposite side of the road. Lightly he pressed down on the hilt and the point rose higher into the air. “You say that when a healing spell is cast, magic of opposite weight is added to balance it.”

“Yes,” she said. “That is right.”

He shook his head. “Corrupt magic creates nothing. It only moves what already exists from one place to another. You say it adds health, but it steals health from somewhere else, so that one side has more and the other less. If it was true balance, it would add health to both sides, not health on one and injury to the other.” The handle tipped down farther. “But you say that a spell to redden lips adds color on one side, and adds a lack of color to the other side, so it would balance.”

“Yes.” Though she was not so certain now.

“No. Magic stole color from your hair and put it upon your mother’s lips.” He tipped the handle farther. “Corrupt magic does not find balance. Instead it forces everything that exists onto a scale and skews the world farther and farther out of balance with each spell, until—”

The sword slipped from the saddlehorn and dropped. Swiftly Kael leaned over, caught the weapon by the blade before it touched the ground, and sheathed it again. The lesson was finished—and Anja had never been a poor student.

“Until there is a Reckoning,” she concluded softly.

His short nod confirmed her reply.

She shook her head—not in denial, but in disbelief. “My entire life, I have been surrounded by magic and studied it.” Everyone in Ivermere did, no matter their natural talent. “Yet no one has ever explained magic as you have explained it.”

“What reason would they?” His powerful shoulders lifted in another shrug. “It suits them to believe otherwise.”

Anja could not see how. “How could it suit anyone?”

“Magic is a tool. But its use comes at a cost, and spellcasters are not the ones who pay it, because they have resistance to the scaling. Instead the price is paid by those who don’t wield the corrupt magic.”

“You speak as if you believe spellcasters care nothing of the effect of their magics on others.”

A short laugh preceded his, “How are those who don’t wield magic spoken of in Ivermere?”

Such shameful memories flooded Anja’s mind that she could not even meet his eyes. “Not very well.”

“The mines taught me what value a life has to someone who believes themselves superior. That value is not much.”

Anja knew that was true, too. Her chest hurting, her throat thick, she watched the road unwind beneath her horse’s hooves until she could easily speak again. “If what you say is true, then everyone can wield magic. Love and hate, kindness and—”

She broke off, because that wasn’t quite correct. And even as she realized why it was not, a strange and wonderful giddiness rose through her that she could not contain. But it was Kael who spoke what she had only just understood.

“Everybody already does,” he said gruffly, his blue gaze searing hers.

Tears filled her eyes. Quickly she tore her gaze from his, so overwhelmed by the wonder of it that she couldn’t speak.

Into the quiet between them, he said, “Pure magics don’t steal. They create, and add into the world something that wasn’t there before—and the result is not the opposite. Kindness does not beget cruelty. Instead it begets hope and comfort.”

Anja had not thought she could be any more astonished. Yet understanding slipped through her on another wave of wonder. She stared at him wide-eyed, and when he suddenly grinned at her, the giddiness that had been building within her burst into a laugh. “This is true!”

“It is.”

“And love does not beget hate—but hate must beget that which is similar. Pain, fear.”

Kael nodded. “Which in turn beget more of the same.”

Sobering, she frowned thoughtfully. “I think one must be very careful with such magics, then—be careful not to let them loose.”

“That is true. The world is full of hate and fear enough.”

“Probably because people are too careful with the others—with love and kindness,” Anja mused. “They are afraid it won’t be returned in equal measure. Or afraid they will be the only one giving. Or afraid it will be unwanted. For it is not kindness to force your heart upon someone who doesn’t want it, just as it is cruel to force a touch upon someone who doesn’t desire it.”

His short, harsh laugh startled her. “Yes,” he agreed abruptly.

She bit her lip, studying his face. “It must take a lot of courage to love. But kindness doesn’t need courage. So it should be easiest. Yet I do not see it as often as one would think…and am probably not kind as often as I should be.”

Gruffly he said, “You journey now to slay a spider in your mother’s bedchamber, with no benefit to yourself—and despite the hardship of the journey. What is that but kindness?”

Anja laughed. “And that is very kind of you to say.”

His grin flashed again and he teased her, “And very easy for me to say.”

True. But not all that he did was easy. “You, too, are undertaking this journey,” she pointed out. “Is that not also kind?”

His humor vanished. “I could have sent soldiers with you as escort and ordered them to kill your spider. I do not make this journey for your mother or for you, but for myself.”

Puzzled by his reply, she wondered, “What do you get out of it, then?”

His grim silence was the only answer.