And Sieur Emile stepped forward and embraced Avelaine and whispered, “My daughter, I am loath to see you go, yet it is best for you and Lord Chevell and the child now in your womb.” And Avelaine looked up at him, tears brimming in her eyes, and she whispered in return, “Oui, Papa, I know.” And even as it was decided, Sprites came winging toward the Castle of the Seasons in answer to the bugled call.
. .
“Crows, you say?”
Valeray nodded at the tiny, black-haired femme. “Oui, Peti.”
“And Flic and Fleurette saw this witch, this Hradian speaking to them?” Again Valeray nodded. “We reason she set them at the starwise bounds of the four Forests of the Seasons to ward against the alarm being spread from here by Sprites. Flic suggests that you fly at night when the crows are asleep.” Peti sighed and said, “Ah, oui, at night, when the silent owls are awake instead, and just as dangerous.”
Beside her, a brown-haired male Sprite said, “I know this Flic. He bears a silver epee, less likely to snap in twain than thorns we at times use to defend ourselves.”
“You use thorns?” asked Emile.
“Oui. Though usually our quickness alone is enough to cope with crows and such, there are occasions when a long slender thorn is a better way to deal with a foe.” The Sprite turned to Valeray. “If you provide us with epees like Flic’s, we would appreciate having them. Regardless, thorns or silver, we can not only spread the alarm throughout Faery, we can deal with the crows as they sleep on their perches.”
“Mais oui!” exclaimed Peti. “You have hit upon it, Trit. And we can enlist the aid of the Root Dwellers in dealing with the crows in the night.”
“Root Dwellers?” asked Avelaine.
“The wee folk we saw on our journey here,” said Celeste, holding one hand above the other to indicate a being some few inches to a foot tall. “They live among the roots of the trees.”
“Ah, those,” said Avelaine. “I remember.” Valeray looked at Saissa, and she said, “We’ll round up all the pins and needles and such that we can find.”
“But there will not be enough to supply all Sprites throughout all of Faery, much less of this realm,” said Celeste.
“Indeed not,” said Trit, “yet I know where grow many of the right kind of thorns, and they will serve.”
“The Ice Sprites of the Winterwood need no thorns,” said Borel, “for, living in ice as they do, they are well protected from crows.”
“Speaking of the Winterwood, Lord Borel,” said Peti, gesturing at her naked form and that of Trit, “we cannot long bear the cold, dressed as we are, or, rather, undressed I mean.” Trit turned up a hand and said, “But we can stand it long enough to pop over and find one of our cold-weather kindred and pass on the message and then pop back.”
“Fair enough,” said Borel. “And as for the other cold realms, the Ice Sprites will then travel through those frozen demesnes and pass on the alarm.”
As Borel fell silent, Camille looked at Peti and added, “If perhaps Hradian enlisted crows only to ward the starwise bounds of the Forests of the Seasons, there to keep you and the other Sprites herein from spreading the word, then once you fly beyond, there will be none to stop you. Hence, mayhap you will only need weapons nigh those four borders.”
“If that’s true,” said Valeray, “Hradian must have great confidence in those birds to stop the Sprites from sounding the alarm.”
“Crows are quite dreadful,” said Trit, “and massing an army of them is perilous beyond compare.”
“For us, that is,” said Peti.
“But if you fly at night,” said Valeray, “perhaps you can avoid the worst.”
“Mayhap,” said Peti. “Regardless, we will fly, enlisting more and more Sprites throughout Faery as we go, and the warning will spread and spread like wildfire. What message is it you would have us bear, my lord?”
“That a means for freeing Orbane has come into the witch Hradian’s hand, and for the realms to prepare for his escape.
Tell them as well that we will send word as to where to assemble should that event come about.”
“And how will you know where that might be?” asked Trit.
Valeray smiled and said, “With you and your kind to act as our scouts, how can we not know?”
Trit smiled and bowed and said, “At your service, my lord.”
Valeray looked ’round at the others. “Is there ought else we should add to the message?”
“Oui, my lord,” said Camille, and she turned to Peti. “Tell all Sprites not only to cry the alarm, but to find Raseri and warn him as well, and ask him to fly to the Black Wall of the World and there to wait and intercept Hradian and slay her ere she can free her master.”
“Raseri the Dragon?” asked Trit.
“Oui, for he is quite deadly, and has the best chance of stopping the witch. Too, he might have with him Rondalo the Elf, and he wields bow and spear and sword. If Rondalo is not with Raseri, he might know where the Drake flies. There is this as welclass="underline" Lady Chemine, Rondalo’s mere, perhaps also can speak of Raseri’s whereabouts. She lives on a tiny island near the city of Les Iles, at the confluence of four great rivers.” Peti nodded and said, “This then is our mission: to spread the alarm and seek the Dragon, and then to act as scouts.” She looked at Valeray, and he inclined his head in assent. “Very well, my king, as you have commanded, so shall it be done.” She then turned to Saissa. “Now, my queen, let us to the needles and pins, for there are crows to slay.”
Messengers
It was ere midmorn when Laurent and his guide, Edouard, galloped through Valeray’s starwise twilight border to emerge running sunwise in the Winterwood, snow flying from shod hooves and flinging out behind. From warmth to cold they passed in but strides, and even as they hammered among the barren trees, a great squawking murder of crows rose up into the chill air. Yet though the crows filled the surround with racket, they let the men pass unmolested. And as the riders and their remounts plunged on, the crows settled back to the stark branches, their black eyes awatch on the twilight border, as if waiting for other beings to come hurtling through.
And the knight and the guide galloped on, into a realm sleeping under blankets of snow and claddings of ice.
At times within this woodland there were storms and blizzards or gentle snowfalls, days bright and clear and cold, or gray and gloomy, or dark days of biting winds howling and blowing straightly or blasting this way and that, or freezing days with hoarfrost so cold as to crack stone, or days of warm sunshine and partial thaws and a bit of melt, or of snowfalls heavy and wet, or falls powdery and dry. It could be a world of silence and echoes, of quietness and muffled sounds, or of yawling blasts and thundering blows. It was wild and untamed and white and gray and black, with glittering ice and sparkling snow, with evergreens giving a lie to the monochromatic ’scape, and never were any two days the same.
And under a winter-bright sky, across this icy realm did a chevalier and his guide race, a track left behind in the snow.
As they ran, within the sheathings of the ice-clad trees and in icicles and in the frozen planes of streams and pools, Laurent could see wee beings following their progress, some to merely turn and look and note the passage of the riders and remounts, while others somehow shifted from ice-laden rock to ice-clad tree to icicles dangling down as they kept pace with the two, or gleefully raced ahead. These were the Ice Sprites: wingless and as white as new-driven snow, with hair like silvered tendrils, their forms and faces elfin with tipped ears and tilted eyes of pale blue. They were completely unclothed, as all Sprites seemed to be, and they had the power to fit within whatever shapes the ice took. And their images wavered and undulated and parts of them grew and shrank in odd ways and became strangely distorted as they sped through the uneven but pellucid layers of frozen water, the irregular surfaces making it so, rather as if they were passing through a peculiar house of mirrors, though no reflections these, but living beings within.