Hweilan pushed herself to her feet and brushed herself off. "What are you?" she said.
Menduarthis dropped his pose and turned to her. The frost that had coated him melted before her eyes, falling away in that same strange mist that the snowflakes had. He looked down on her with the strangest expression. Curiosity? Bewilderment? A little of both, and something else. Something that bordered on affection. That made her more uncomfortable than all the rest.
"You behave yourself, you survive your meeting with the queen, and I'll tell you all about me."
"Survive?"
"Too late to worry about that now," he said. He turned and walked into the tunnel. "Come along!"
Hweilan followed. Looking over her shoulder, she saw that the uldra did not. Nikle motioned at her-it seemed more of a benediction than a wave-then he and his companions turned and fled.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
When they emerged from the tunnel, Hweilan and Menduarthis were in a field that sloped gently downward, filled with trees that she could not name. Their branches sprouted not needles but thick and vibrant leaves-some larger than her hand. Whether it was their true color or simply a trick of the dim light, the leaves had a bluish tint, the color of evening clouds, thick with snow. Among them were waist-high bushes, their small, waxy leaves dark green and sprouting tiny flowers that seemed black against the falling snow that would soon hide them. The brush had a tangled look, but paths wound between them. The only sound was the falling of the snow and their own footsteps.
Many side trails branched off their path. Hweilan stopped counting them after thirty. Theirs were the only prints in the snow. Occasionally their path took them beneath the boughs of the strange trees, and the ground was more frost than snow. Still, the ground sloped ever downward, as if the garden were set on a shallow hill.
The woods ended on the lip of a steep bank. The snow was falling too fast and thick for her to see more than thirty or forty feet, but beyond the bank was a flat field of white. A lake or river, then.
Menduarthis stopped in the shadow of the last tree. Hweilan stopped beside him and was about to ask why when she sensed it. Nothing tangible that touched her five senses. This tickled an older, more primal sense in the very core of her mind. Something was different here. The sense of the entire land being not only alive but aware. That awareness seemed focused, like the summer sunlight through the window glass of her grandmother's shrine.
Menduarthis didn't turn but looked at her sidelong. "Are you ready?"
"I've never met a queen before," said Hweilan, and she realized that her heart was beating twice as fast.
"It wouldn't help you if you had. There are no queens like Kunin Qatar."
"Is that good or bad?"
"She is what she is," said Menduarthis. "If you're the praying sort, now is the time."
He stepped forward and slid sidelong down the bank.
Hweilan did the same, though as she hit the soft snow at the bottom, she wondered why. The part of Hweilan that loved the wild seemed to have gone numb out of sheer bewilderment. But the very small part of her that was still the pampered castle girl was wide-eyed awake, and she was screaming at Hweilan to run.
She followed Menduarthis over the snow-covered ice, and the storm swallowed them. The trees behind them became indistinct, soft blue shadows watching over them from above. The last look over her shoulder showed them as little more than fading shapes in the snowfall. Then they were gone.
But there were other shadows.
Hweilan saw them out of the corners of her eyes-shapes watching them from the storm. But when she turned to face them, she saw only snow, heard only a whisper of footfalls that might have been the snow settling all around them. She couldn't smell anything over the halbdol paint on her face.
A terrible power emanated from some place in front of her, like an invisible sun. It touched the very marrow of her bones, but not with warmth. This sun burned cold.
Still she followed Menduarthis.
Thinking on it, it came down to simple choices. Her family was dead. Murdered. Her friends too. Even people she hadn't much liked. Slaughtered. And what she would have given to see them now. Lendri… Dead? Alive? Did it matter? He wasn't here. It all boiled down to one simple fact:
"I have nowhere else to go."
"Ah, now that's not true, little flower," said Menduarthis, and it wasn't until he did that she realized she'd spoken her thoughts aloud. "We always have a choice."
Another shadow loomed to her left. She turned with a gasp, but it was gone.
"Don't mind them,' said Menduarthis. He stopped for a moment, until she was beside him, then he put an arm around her shoulder and led her on. "Hmm. Choices, choices. Everyone has choices." He chewed on his lip, made a clicking sound in his cheek, then said, "Not always good ones, though. Damned on left or right. Story of my life."
"Are you saying I can choose to turn around? "said Hweilan. "Go back? Not face your queen?"
Menduarthis chuckled, though there was no humor in it. "Afraid not."
"You said-"
"I said there are always choices. I didn't say there are always good ones. And that one, I'm afraid, is beyond you. You've been summoned. You will answer to Kunin Gatar."
"So I have no choice, then?"
His voice dropped to a whisper. "Oh, but you do. You can go in there all weak-kneed and scared. Maybe even blubber a little. Fall on your knees and beg mercy. You won't get it. Kunin Gatar's heart is as cold as her… well, let's just say I don't recommend that choice. Or you can go in there and face her. Tell the truth. Don't lie, I warn you. She'll know if you do.' He looked away, and she detected a slight trace of his mocking manner returning, though there was a sadness to it now. "I speak from experience."
"You're saying I should-"
"Don't misunderstand me," he said. "I'd say there's a decent chance you're about to die. But I've been wrong before. I would have bet my left eye Lendri would be dead by now, and I would have lost that bet. Though I can't say he's any better off. But you can do one thing. Face your fate standing up. Look her in the eye. Tell her the truth. If you die… well, at least do it without shame. No one likes a coward."
A great shadow loomed out of the storm before them. At first, Hweilan thought it was simply an errant breeze swirling the snow. But with each step, the shadow loomed larger and grew more distinct. It took up the entire sky before them.
At first she thought it was the most magnificent sculpture she'd ever seen-taller than the outer wall of Highwatch by far, but elegant beyond anything she'd ever imagined. All curves and eddies, like…
A waterfall. The largest she'd ever seen. A river falling off a precipice that had to be at least a thousand feet high. But the entire waterfall was frozen. Not slowly, like the usual winter grip of the Giantspires. This great cataract had been locked in ice in an instant of glory, thundering fall and tumbling waves and spray. The fall seemed a great multifaceted curtain, shaped in every shade of blue, white, and purple. The waves at the bottom large as houses, no two alike, all curves and swirls that melted into one another before freezing forever. All beautiful beyond description. But the frozen spray… it reached out at jagged angles, like thorns or curving blades. Sharp as razors.
"The palace of Kunin Gatar," said Menduarthis. "Ellestharn. Snowthorn."
Hweilan suddenly felt very small. She'd always taken great pride in Highwatch, even though in her heart of hearts she'd never really loved the place. Carved onto the mountain's face, crafted from the bones of the earth, it rose above the steppe, the tallest dwelling for hundreds of miles. A great house of stone in a land where most people lived in hide tents. Shaped by the hands of master stoneworkers, it demanded awe. But this…