Someone cursed, and then the inn erupted into a den of chatter. Toler was so scared he could barely move. Still, he managed to stand and slowly make his way to the door. He didn’t want to run, which would, although they didn’t know his name, identify him as Ismet Toler. When he neared the entrance, he turned around and shuffled backward, a little at a time, until he was free of the place. The cold air helped him to think, and he realized that it wouldn’t be long before the people of Twyse gave him up to the crystal sword. As he ran toward the barn, he made the decision to ride out that night, take to the forest and escape.
In his diary entry that was made apparently just before setting out on horseback, he wrote, ‘Something powerful is after me. I’m running away.’ Then he fled into the night forest, stopping and listening every now and then to make sure Thybault and his giant horse weren’t following. There was no moon and the sky was overcast. Toler stayed off the trails and that made the journey slow and difficult. The temperature dropped well below freezing and before he was even an hour into his escape, it began to snow. Still, he kept moving forward, but for every few yards he’d cover the white wind pushed harder against him. By the end of another hour, he was sure he’d freeze—a statue in a saddle.
An hour further on and the snow was so blinding, he was sure they’d been traveling in circles for the last five miles. His hands were so cold, he was losing his grip on the reins; his face was all but numb. The incessant pummeling of his eyes by the small hard flakes made him ride with them closed, and what he saw behind the lids was more snow driving down within his mind. In his confusion he mistook the sound of the wind for that of a children’s choir, and it made him recall Thybault threatening, “We’ll start with the children.” The only thought that stayed fixed in his mind was that he was a coward.
It came to him at one point in the storm that the horse was no longer moving. He looked up into the squall to see what had happened and felt a pair of hands grasp his arm. Their touch was so wonderfully warm. He squinted against the snow and saw a small form in a black cloak standing beside his horse, reaching up to him. “Come with me,” said a female voice. Ice cracked off him as he climbed down. He turned back to the animal to see if it was still alive. “Don’t worry, your mount will be fine.” Somehow he heard her voice clearly beneath the howl of the wind. She pulled him gently by the arm and he followed.
A few minutes later they entered a cottage built beneath giant pines whose boughs blocked some of the blizzard. He groaned slightly when he heard the door close behind him and felt the warmth of a fire. “You saved me,” he said finally, turning to his host. The young woman had already removed her cloak and was hanging it on a peg near the door. When she looked up and smiled, he knew he’d seen her before. “Where do I know you from?” he asked, his hand dropping to the coral hilt.
“I was at the inn tonight when the red man came,” she said.
“Ahh,” said Toler. “I saw you gather up the remains of the hunters he, what would you call it, killed?”
“Yes.”
“How did you find me in the storm? How did you know I was out there?”
“Do you know who I am?” she said.
Toler began to sweat. He shook his head and gripped his sword. “Are you my mother’s servant?”
The young woman laughed. “Perish the thought. I’m the crone of Aer.”
“The crone of Aer?” said Toler, knowing he’d heard the title before. “Where’s Aer?”
“At the end of the valley of the known world,” she said.
“You don’t look like a crone,” he told her.
“To each her crone,” she said.
“And so I’m to assume you sent this hellish swordsman after me? Made him of coral so as to cancel the magic of my weapon?”
“That monstrosity isn’t mine,” she said. “I want to help you defeat it.”
“There’s not going to be a battle,” said Toler. “I’m fleeing for my life. I’m not prepared to meet such an opponent.”
“Because he has an advantage like the one your sword, in any other duel, would give to you?”
“Precisely,” he said.
“You will fight him,” she said.
“I can’t.”
“I’ve made you something that will help.” She walked past him and the glow of the fireplace into the shadows of the cottage.
Toler sweated profusely; the so recently welcomed warmth was now oppressive. He didn’t trust anything. A sword that turns opponents to coral, a red coral man with a crystal sword that turns opponents to salt, and a witch in a cottage in the middle of a blizzard. “Wake up,” he whispered to himself, and then the crone of Aer returned, holding a large goose egg out toward him. He took a step back from this new strangeness.
“This egg holds your salvation in a duel with Thybault. Do you remember the salt I gathered at the inn?”
“Yes.”
“I mixed it with green vitriol and derived the spirits of salt. They’re here in the egg. Merely crack this in the face of Thybault and you will have gained back the advantage.”
“What will happen?”
“The spirits will be released.”
“I’m going back into the storm,” he told her. “I don’t trust you. I remember the story my mother told me about you.”
“Your mother, who was sent to assassinate me? That demon we saw at the inn tonight, that wasn’t my doing.”
Toler moved toward the door. His hand touched the knob and he felt a sudden sting at the back of his neck. He tottered for a spell and then fell into the heat of the cottage. The crone spoke directly into his ear. “It’s your mother’s servant.”
He woke in the street, the Coral Heart drawn and in his hand, a crowd surrounding him. He heard the church bells and in a second realized he was back in Twyse. He pulled himself up off the frozen mud and the crowd retreated a few steps. Freezing to the point of shivering and totally confused, he turned to look for an escape from the people, and saw Thybault charging, the crystal blade above his head. He wore no shirt or shoes, the cold meant nothing to him.
Toler crouched and brought his weapon up to block the downward chop of the crystal blade. The crystal clanged off the metal of his weapon, hard as blade steel. He absorbed the blow and rolled away, two somersaults backward and then into a standing position. As he lifted the Coral Heart in defense, he felt the beat of the pulse in his palm. His heart regulated it and regulated the sword. The training he’d done was paying off. Thybault came after him, swinging wildly, massively, as if to cut Toler in half. The red man’s blade caught a bystander on the earlobe and made her a cloud of salt. The sight of it distracted the Coral Heart and it was everything he could do to gather in his wonder and counter a thrust of the crystal death.
The duel became fierce, a crazy clash of swords amid the thronging crowd. The pair moved around the street, attacking and defending. At one point, Toler could have sworn that he’d been cut by Thybault. In fact he stopped to look along his side where his shirt was ripped.
“Don’t you get it,” said the red man. “You’ll know when I cut you because you’ll be a pile of salt.” With this, Toler’s opponent punched him in the mouth, those polished coral knuckles like a hammer, and sent him stumbling backward into the crowd. Afraid to be caught by an errant blade from the red man, the crowd retreated, and let their defender fall on his back in the street.