19.11

The winter night was clear and perfect, though wickedly cold. Without any cloud cover to retain the day's meager warmth, the temperature plummeted as the night deepened.

"This is what they mean by a nice night?" Zyrdicia muttered in disbelief, staring at the frost on the courtyard's stones as a stable hand passed her the reins of a horse. Her breath froze in the air in ghostly puffs.

"Quite," Dirk smiled darkly, watching her shiver. "You should be careful what you wish for."

"So should you," she muttered quietly, certain he would be far from pleased when all her secrets came to light.

They rode out across the main drawbridge, then headed southwest, skirting the edge of the Plains of Death. She did not care in the least which direction they chose. She simply wanted to be out of the castle for a few hours, away from the tumult of unwelcome human thoughts always pummeling against her consciousness there.

After a short time, the flat terrain gave way to rocky crags and boulder-strewn hills. The road narrowed as it meandered through the rough landscape. In the darkness, the moon cast grim shadows. At the top of an incline, Dirk brought his horse to a stop.

"Where are we -?" Zyrdicia stopped, cocking her head curiously at an unexpected sight. From the hill, they had an unobstructed view of Karteia's western sea coast. "I didn't know we were this close to the ocean."

Zyrdicia frowned as she stared at it. She climbed off the horse and moved to the edge of a steep cliff, hoping for a better view. The vast, churning expanse of blackness seemed somehow wrong to her. Instead of fishing boats, fighting vessels or floating palaces, this ocean was lifeless. No lights punctuated it, even at its edge. She pointed, "What are the big, white things floating in it?"

"Ice. Obviously."

"In the ocean?" she asked as though she were certain he were joking.

"What would you expect water to do when it gets this cold?" he jeered as he followed her to the cliff's edge.

"Flow to the south where it's warm!" she smiled, turning around to face him. Her breath caught in her throat at what she beheld. Behind them, the lights of Castle Blackpool's battlements still twinkled, far in the distance. More importantly, however, the sky above Castle Blackpool looked as though it were aflame. Swirling red and blue clouds of light illuminated the entire horizon in the direction from which they had come. Her eyes widened. "Um," she murmured uncertainly, "Dirk, the sky is on fire."

"The what?" Dirk frowned, following her eyes.

"This world must be crashing into the Astral Vortex," she said gravely. "That's bad. Very bad."

Dirk stared at her a moment, trying to discern whether her behavior was some sort of jest. Her exigent expression left no doubt that she absolutely believed this world was, indeed, aflame. Realizing she was serious, he laughed out loud. "Can it be you have not even been outside even once since your return?"

"No," she scowled. "If I had been, I would have known your world is about to disintegrate! I'm not going to stay here and wait for it to happen. We have to go!"

Her imploring tone only increased Dirk's amusement. He draped an arm around her shoulders. "And where do you plan to go to escape it?" he asked mockingly, trying very hard to resist the urge to laugh at her again.

"I'll return to my cloud world, until I figure out whether the cataclysm is limited just to this realm, or is extending to the entire material world. You have to come with me!"

"I'm touched that in your panic to save yourself you paused long enough to invite me to join you," he smiled condescendingly.

"So you'll come with me?"

"No."

"Why not?" she frowned, perplexed.

"Because you are not leaving. The sky is not on fire. The world is not ending tonight."

"But the Astral Vortex-"

"-Has nothing to do with this," he interrupted impatiently, gesturing to the sky.

"It doesn't?"

Dirk shook his head knowingly. "The Northern Glow," he smirked. Seeing her befuddled expression, he explained. "It's appeared every winter since the Great War. Sometimes red, sometimes blue."

"Are you sure?"

"Quite." He saw her look of disbelief and reassured playfully, "You have my word that my kingdom will not disintegrate tonight."

Zyrdicia blinked, still not convinced. Her purple eyes traveled back to the sky, as though looking at it more closely would reveal its secret.

"You will see it whenever the sky is clear at night for the next few months." Dirk watched her expression carefully, still thoroughly amused. She could stare at demons and monsters and find nothing extraordinary or unusual about the sight of them. She caused earthquakes and tornados and found the resulting destruction unremarkable. A trivial celestial event, however, thoroughly perplexed her. It was not entirely unlike her discovery of snow.

"Your sky just looks like this for no reason at all?" she scowled, sounding almost disappointed by the banality of the explanation.

"Yes."

"But where does it come from?"

"I've no idea."

"Who causes it?" she demanded.

His brow furrowed at the strange question. "No one. You might as well ask who causes the stars or the clouds."

"And why does it look just like the Astral Vortex?"

"I'm afraid I know nothing of your vortex."

"In the middle of the Astral Plane, there is a swirling hole that looks just like this sky. It supposedly is slowly sucking up the entire cosmos."

"Not my part of the cosmos, I assure you," he winked.

A sudden, strong gust of wind nearly swept her off her feet at that moment. She weighed too little to easily resist it. The north wind this time of year flattened wooden structures, and could easily knock children and small animals several feet in a single gust. Its force was increasing by the minute. She looked up and around, fascinated by its ferocity.

"Come. I have a coastal keep not far from here," Dirk ordered. "We can get out of the cold for a bit."

"Wait! What's that sound?" she asked, noting a strange howling.

"The wind, of course."

"It sounds like wolves."

"The December wind in the North is called the 'wolf wind.' Peasants believe werewolves run about and cause the sound."

"Werewolves?" she repeated, her interest evident. "There's a full moon tonight. Of course!"

"There are no werewolves! There are no wolves! There is only wind!" he snapped irritably. He disliked where this conversation seemed to be going. He was not about to let her coax him to search for mythical monsters. He regretted mentioning it to her.

"But how do you know?"

"I've lived here all my life! It is my kingdom. There are no werewolves in it."

"There might be," she smiled, clinging tightly to him as another gust of wind tugged at her.

"Only in the minds of foolish peasants and their even more foolish queen."

"We should go look."

"No. The wind would blow you away. Then I would have to look for you. You would be cold; I would be irritated. And there are no werewolves."

"What's that then?" she wondered calmly, pointing to a monstrous canine form loping toward them through the darkness. She had no doubt that Vector and Bethel had sent the creature. She watched it calmly, unimpressed.

Standing at the edge of the cliff, there was no path for them to retreat. The snarling beast had them trapped. It paused a few dozen yards away. Several more of its kind slinked out of the shadows from the nearby rocks. Even on all fours, the wolf-like monsters stood nearly five-feet at the shoulder.

"Now who's foolish?" Zyrdicia nudged Dirk smugly.

Dirk drew his sword, pausing only to glare at her briefly.

"You can't fight werewolves in hand-to-hand combat. They're filthy! The risk of infection for mortals-"

"--Then fly us out of here!" he hissed, annoyed by her refusal to take the situation seriously. Six of the beasts were closing in on them.

"Scared?" she whispered, her eyes twinkling dangerously. It was not a question - it was a dare.

"I fear nothing," he sneered, dreading the game that was about to erupt. There were a half-dozen snarling werewolves bearing down on them. He was hardly in a position to go head-to-head with her adrenaline addiction in a suicidal test of courage. He could only lose.

"Prove it."

"Fly us out of here!"

Zyrdicia shook her head slowly, her eyes not leaving the gray figures making their way cautiously toward them, heads lowered and fangs bared. They were close enough to leap at the pair now. She crossed her arms, unperturbed.

"Do something!" Dirk barked.

"You want me to trust you with my secrets. Do you trust me?"

"Of course not! I told you - I don't trust anyone."

"Well, then," she smiled slyly. The next instant Dirk's sword disappeared.

His eyes flashed angrily, but he had no time to respond to her unexpected magical betrayal. The first werewolf lunged. It moved through the air in apparent slow-motion as Dirk calculated. He grabbed the monocle and vaporized the beast an instant before its fangs would have sunk into his shoulder. He did not pause to congratulate himself. He used the same magic to obliterate rest of the creatures in a similar fashion, just as they moved to attack.

"Bravo!" Zyrdicia laughed, her gloved hands creating a soft thud as they clapped together. His sword reappeared in its sheath by his side.

Dirk stared at her icily. She had nearly caused his death. He was as stunned as he was angry.

"Admit it. It was fun."

He pushed her hands away from his forearm and sneered, "You've become as useless as Vector!"

"Oh, now that is cold," she laughed, undaunted by his demeanor.

"Did you just try to kill me?" he demanded, his tone dangerously quiet.

She smiled warmly. "Of course not, silly. If I wanted to kill you, you would not still be here. The fact that you are means I want you to be."

A silent, vicious glare was Dirk's only reply. He turned abruptly and stalked away.

She followed him back to the horses, genuinely surprised by his reaction. "Dirk, why are you acting like this?"

He ignored her question.

"But I had to do it," she protested, mirth draining from her expression. "I had to see if you would succeed."

"At killing werewolves?"

"At using the monocle! I had to know whether you would remember how to use the monocle under pressure, of course."

"You were testing me?" he hissed, his rage unabated.

"Naturally. It's one thing for me to teach you how to use it when we're playing by ourselves, and I'm inside your head. It's quite another for you to remember how to work with it when your heart's racing and a set of fangs are inches from your face."

Dirk brought his hands to her shoulders and jerked her nearer. "Never, ever presume to test me!" he snarled wrathfully.

"Oh, stop pretending! We both know that you aren't really angry." She pressed her cheek against his, shivering. The test had been an unusually nurturing act for her. It felt entirely alien, but she rather liked it. In her mind she considered it a gift, part of making him proficient with the stolen magic.

Dirk turned his face to look into her eyes. Before he could reply, stinging drops of ice began to fall in sheets from the sky, driven by the wind. The storm had materialized seemingly out of thin air. It forced them to race for cover under an overhang of rock a few feet away. They paused there, staring silently at the sudden, frigid downpour.

Dirk turned to regard her silently.

"You're welcome," she smiled wryly.

"Why would I thank you for nearly getting us both killed?"

"I can't be killed. And if I had thought that were really a possibility for you, I could have teleported you to safety. I had faith in your ability with the monocle. Now do you trust me?"

Dirk blinked, taken aback by the unexpected compliment about his ability with the monocle. He was momentarily at a loss for words.

Zyrdicia interpreted his reticence as indifference. She turned away in frustration, examining the rock wall at their backs. A deep crevice caught her eye. There was a six inch vertical gap between a massive boulder and the hillside's stone face. She ran her gloved fingers along the dark opening into the rock. "There's a cave here, I think," she murmured.

"Large enough for snakes and rats, perhaps."

"No. The boulder is covering a large opening." She looked closely into the impenetrable darkness within the crack. "A shrine of some sort."

"That rock probably weighs several tons. Surely you don't expect to move it?"

"Uh-huh," she answered, distracted by the task before her. She began whispering slowly to the enormous stone. The intonation grew louder. The boulder started to rock back and forth, at first slowly, then violently. Without warning, the rock lurched through the air, its trajectory narrowly missing both Dirk and the horses. It crashed to the ground a hundred yards away, shattering. A sudden explosion of pebbles pelted the pair. "Oops."

"Was that really necessary?" Dirk glared, brushing himself off.

"I didn't mean to throw it. I meant to roll it," she frowned, surprised at the magic's effect. It did not feel quite right, somehow. It was too much for what she invoked. The same thing had happened the night of their engagement announcement, when she had annihilated the village on the atoll near Lyr. She had hoped then it was only a passing phenomenon. After more than a century intimately connected to her magical lifeline, she knew it well enough to recognize something was amiss. Absorbing Azriok's power had changed it. She hadn't the slightest idea how to reign it in yet.

She shrugged helplessly, then slid into opening in the rock. The darkness was of no concern. She bounded down the short flight of stairs carved into the stone and headed straight into the shrine.