The shyin seemed to be only mildly interested in them and cast them a fleeting glance. “They remind me of the funny, dirty people in the cave, except less fun. Power bleeds from them,” he spun his fingers around each other vertically like a cyclone, “waiting to come when called.”
Qanath knew nothing about Havec’s people’s magic. “They’re different from me or him?”
Arandgwail turned a startled look on her. “Your power is organized in perfect little shapes.” He gestured as if he were stacking blocks. “Like my maker, everything is in its proper place.”
“They’re sorcerers, then?” his master prompted.
The shyin just blinked at him, as if it didn’t understand what this meant.
There was no time to pursue the subject: the conversation on the other side of the room had ceased and all three of the Moritians were looking at them. The older, antlered individual said something, narrowed eyes on Arandgwail. Havec’s uncle answered him briefly before saying in Tabbaqeran, “They wish to warn me that your companion isn’t the man he appears to be. They cannot tell me what he is instead.”
“On the contrary, he’s a person,” Amril corrected calmly. “You might say he’s my child, but I made him with sorcery.”
It came as an unpleasant surprise when the people moved further into the room and took seats before the fire. Jonet seemed to sense their unease. “Morloth and Nediyya are shamans. They came to warn me that this weather is unnatural. It seemed to me their input might be useful.”
It didn’t feel as if there was any choice but to bow their heads. Maybe, if they could have brought his beloved long-lost nephew to him, they could have set the terms and refused to collaborate with more savage foreigners meddling with powers they didn’t comprehend. As it was, this man was listening to them on sufferance.
She didn’t have to like it, though. She didn’t trust these people or want them here. Especially the younger one, who was taking her outer garments off now in response to the fire’s heat, revealing her lavish curves.
“What I would like to know,” Amril said, “is what your people know about this thing. That its power is awesome is plain, but whence comes it? What is the source of its strength, what are its weaknesses?”
The older man answered, and Qanath would have said he was first among equals; his companion wasn’t timid in his presence, but he had done most of the speaking and she hadn’t noticed that the woman was annoyed by this. It took a moment to translate the questions and receive a response, then Jonet told them, “The Wight of Winter’s strength is the weakness of the sun in the season of long nights, they say.”
That startled her. “Its nature is like the cold that characterizes it: a negativity. Not a presence but an absence.”
Again, there was a delay before Havec’s uncle told them, “Basically, yes.”
Her eyes met Amril’s and it was as if he’d read her mind. “You can’t be thinking it. Where could we possibly get that kind of power?”
“We can’t challenge it head-on, it’s a god,” she countered, willing him to see the sense in it. “What is there to do but to let it defeat itself?”
“You’ve had an idea,” Havec’s uncle prompted somewhat impatiently.
They went on staring at each other, and it was Amril who finally responded, never dragging his reluctant gaze off hers. “You can lock hot and cold against each other if you bind them properly. So that all the energy of the chosen objects goes into producing heat or consuming it.”
Jonet frowned. “Wouldn’t they both just quickly become the same temperature?”
“That’s what sorcery is for,” Qanath pointed out.
Letting go an impatient breath, Amril turned away from her, addressing his words directly to their host. “A trick that’s useful but limited in scope. It isn’t possible to do it on a larger scale.”
“It isn’t sensible,” she corrected him. “Because the objects in question are ordinary things that people use around the house, made from pottery, glass, metal, materials that would break in extreme temperatures. We’re usually talking about things the owners need to handle. That doesn’t mean it can’t be done.”
Amril huffed again. “Theoretically, but even if the two of us could generate that much heat, where are we putting it? I thought the idea was to save this country, I don’t think we’ve accomplished it if we set the place on fire!”
The woman addressed some comment to Jonet, voice sharp, as if she misliked how little of the conversation had been translated. It took forever to convey, because Havec’s uncle wasn’t a sorcerer and had only just learned what he was now being forced to explain. When he was finished, the woman snorted and rolled her eyes impatiently. The man said something, seeming wry rather than annoyed, but it was another minute before Jonet translated, watching her and Amril with a doubtful air. She couldn’t tell whether he didn’t wish to tell them what had been said or was simply wondering how they would take it.
“They say this is the weakness of your mighty civilization: you have grown so learned and powerful you can no longer ask the world you believe you have conquered for help.”
“No one is attempting to conquer anyone,” Amril replied with uncharacteristic diplomacy. “We would welcome assistance.”
As Havec’s uncle pushed himself purposefully to his feet, he said, “That wasn’t what he meant.”
How to Kill a God
Havec was still staring at the droghos when the major found him. He came with his entire entourage of officers, none of whom were blinking sleep from their eyes or hastily buckling their armor back on. They had still been wide awake when the disturbance began, probably still arguing. Farait caught him up, and this time, he chose not to hang back, moving to stand at his side with his eyes on the eerie undead people encircling the camp.
“Avat.” The major gave him a nod. “The way you described these creatures, I’m a little surprised.”
“You and me both,” he muttered. “I’ve never heard of something like this. I’m not sure my people have ever seen two of them together in one place.”
“Their master walks the material plane.”
Speaking up unexpectedly, Farait offered, “This makes the god differently powerful, not more.”
Everyone turned to regard him, and he felt compelled to salute. As he dropped his hand to his side, he explained, “In barana rakis, gods are continuously tethered to their counterpart in the material world, feeding on the flow of spiritual power from the plane where things are real to the plane where symbols dwell. It makes them strong,” he gestured back and forth with his hands, “but their role is passive. At this moment, the winter-spirit these Moritians know as Lofflied is inhabiting—”
“My dead dad,” Havec supplied.
Hot Priest made an apologetic face. “The invitation into a human body gave him a path into this world, but his actual body is the season itself. It’s as if he was dreaming and now he’s awake.”
“And in control of his flesh, which is this rotten weather,” Major Cimmuman supplied, to show that he was keeping up. “I’m not sure I see where the disadvantage is for him, Zaresh. I assume you are the priest? Pannus’s man?”
“Yes, sir. Well, sir, imagine you lived in a mirror. What you would eat was the reflection of steak. If you were to step out of your mirror…”
“The real thing wouldn’t cut it, huh? So any energy this thing expends is energy it can’t get back, and the longer it’s here, the weaker it’ll get. That’s the first good news I’ve heard in a while. And these things?”
“I don’t know what they’re doing,” Havec told them. “Winter likes to kill, but the droghos don’t. I was taught that they won’t hurt you if you give them any excuse to leave you alone.”
