VI. Above and Below

            The Fencer had seen little in the way of true death over the course of his small allotment of years.  Sure, he had seen men impaled by narwhals on the hunt, and brought friends back after they had fallen through a crack in the ice of the great sound, only to watch them shiver to death in front of a fire.  Lemur-men had died by his hand on the slopes of the Wondering Mountains and he had even seen a magician fall at a swing of Dhala’s crystalline edge.  He killed the thief Yogo, or at least he thought he had.  Looking at Clea lying there, headless, blood pooling up dark in the firelight, he experienced a sensation unlike any other, like watching the Stranger open up the silver fire again, like watching the dead sleepers in the wall around Nock.  Perhaps this was what true death looked like.  He wavered on the edge of being consumed by mysteries which exceeded death itself.

            “She was a pretender,” said the assassin as he cleaned the ruby liquid off his longsword, “I thought you should know that.”

            “A pretender?” replied the Fencer through suddenly parched lips.

            “A charlatan; not the real Clea,” came the answer.  “Not the dread alchemist herself.  No power.  Nothing.  Just practice and a few stolen potions, which turns out to be a poor substitute.”

             Bewildered, moving without noticing the blood he trod, the Fencer searched for what to feel.  The inn was empty and none of the regulars were around to provide gasps or rage.  The city sounds were silenced, sealed away by the monstrosity of the event.  Even his old demon anger abandoned him to the emptiness.  No, he was not alone; the cold presence of his weapon was by his side, like the ubiquity of Winter’s Riddle.

            “And who are you?” asked the Fencer looking for some advantage, buying a bit of time. 

            There was no response.  He turned to face the killer and found two dark eyes regarding him.

            “Who?” the Fencer asked again, but softer, colder.

            “Wolgloss,” said the man through whatever sorcery he was attempting with that freakish gaze.  “I hold no particular title and am at liberty in terms of actions.  Justice and severity are my hobbies.”

            The dark man tossed the bloody cloth into the fire.  Despite his overall tone Wolgloss’s hair was light and his skin fair.  His movements reminded the Fencer of Clea’s in terms of poise, but his air was hungrier, violent.

            Cold reason swam in where confusion once lay.  Too keep the man occupied, to keep this murderer close, the Fencer rounded to the same side of the common room table where the man stood.  He made his hand stay far away from Dhala’s hilt.

            “Tell me of Summer,” he said with even calculation.  Wolgloss looked up.

            “I represent certain interests.”

            “You killed her for the Heart.”

            “No, she killed herself for it.”

            A chill purpose in his soul kept the Fencer from reacting angrily to the turn in the conversation.  He let the dark man continue on down that road.

            “She could’ve led a life of secrecy, utilizing the bottled wonders which were left behind by the true Clea, whom she killed,” continued Wolgloss.  “No, she decided at some point in her life that she didn’t want what Clea had, she wanted to be Clea.  So she practiced and studied her victim first, turning mere mimicry into an art.  That is over and done with.  Maybe the years she lived as Clea were worth it, but that is not my concern.  I have none, only hobbies.”

            “You are from Summer,” stated the Fencer approaching.

            “I needed to be sure though, that she wasn’t the true Clea.”  The assassin’s voice went distant.  “So I stabbed her through the heart.  A true magician wouldn’t have been taken by surprise like that or her heart would have been safely hidden away.  This one proved her guilt by being killed.”

            “Why did you cut off her head then?”

            “Because that’s what you do with witches down here on Winter, is it not?”

            Wolgloss’s voice strained with disappointment, almost sadness, but sparked into joy as the Fencer cut for his throat.  He slipped between the moments and stood across the room, longsword out and gleaming.  The Fencer’s strike fell through air and stone and wood with ease but caught not a drop of his opponent, despite the ruse.

            “The interests above would like to see a curiosity like the Heart brought to safety, but I’m sure they will find that little bit of ice you hold far more interesting.”

           

            While the Fencer entertained one darkness the Trumpeter waited in another.  The pool he stood in up to his armpits, warmed by the thermal oddity of the basin, was comfortable enough, but the thing which entered the room made him shiver.

            Through the steam he could barely make out the form, something large and long and low to the ground.  Strands of bone white struck out and twitched.  The overall image of a clot of massive hairs, moving with searching intent, impressed itself on the Trumpeter’s mind.  He bit his tongue to tell it not to scream.

            The thing came to the water’s edge and felt around with its long appendages but didn’t dwell long.  Silent as a shadow it passed out of the room once more, quietly searching for the man in the water.  He obliged by turning and slopping, as quietly as he could, towards the far, illuminated exit away from where the monster last lurked.  Back on dry land he relit his candle.

            Deeper down in the earth his journey became subdued, the Trumpeter moving with careful steps to keep what was left of the candle lit.  There were long quiet galleries of steam and crystals.  From above the city of Nock weighed down, all those people and buildings hanging over the explorer’s head while he traveled the underworld.

            It wasn’t long until he found evidence of what he sought; a calcium tunnel showing the smoothing effects of many feet passing over time.  The trail went down.  Yogo was there, somewhere.  The caverns changed.

            The Trumpeter wasn’t sure where it first occurred, so subtle was the metamorphoses.  The vaults and chambers now showed evidence of being worked.  The cutting was so ancient that the volcanic environment had reasserted itself on these rooms, rounding their features, depositing growths of minerals through the work of water and steam.  If he didn’t have a mad eye he wouldn’t have noticed at all.

            As he journeyed, upwards now, the sedimentary action on the masonry became less prevalent and soon untouched rooms and passages built upon each other.  The Trumpeter gawked at the old vaults of Glym, a place carved by magics and set with the rarified tastes of one with too many lifetimes on their hands.  Voices drifted through the diorite halls.  The indistinct murmur of a hushed conversation cleared as the Trumpeter snuck through the arches and porticoes in search of the Fencer’s revenge.

            “Too warm in those damned tunnels,” responded the churlish voice of Yogo to an unheard question.  “I like the cold, keeps me sharp.  If you don’t like it don’t waste my patience with this idiot small talk.”

            The other voice countered, or at least that’s what the Trumpeter felt in the tone of the unheard words.  This other party spoke evenly, quietly, while the cutthroat let all the world know the full extent of his displeasure. 

A gust of cold air blustered from the room the quiet musician approached, telling of an exit, or at least some chimney leading to the icy wastes of Winter.  There was even the possibility of an opening hidden against the stark cliffs of the crag, which would mean that the Trumpeter now climbed secret passages within Nock’s central crag. 

            “Hah!” coughed Yogo in retort to an unheard comment.  “Of course I’ll last long enough.  The swordsman is already a dead man and I’ll be out tonight to finish off that floppy minstrel that follows him around.  No way I’m leaving until then.”

            The door yawned open on a bright pale room through which the passage became a walkway look down on the lower level some meters below.  On the right side, that’s where the voices centered.  The Trumpeter crept past the portal and was instantly engulfed in a bone-numbing cold.  A frozen smell of spices and pungent oils stung the hidden man’s nose.  He could see no source for the boundless chill in the air.

            “I could fetch an apothecary to see to your hurt,” recommended the voice opposite Yogo with a dry calm. 

            “Keep your knifemen away from me,” growled the rogue.

            “Everyone wants something,” explained the other as if trying to find some rationale.

            “Yeah, and that’s giving back to the Fencer a little of what he gave me.  Let me illuminate something for you; life is awful, I haven’t relished my time on this frozen ball of shit and someone’s gotta pay for bringing me this far.  It might as well be those two.”

            Yogo left the sentiment open, as if he would like to include more in this condemnation, maybe everyone.  The Trumpeter edged out further, hoping to follow his mark and finish this job, his natural cowardice overcoming his curiosity.  There was also the sorcerous nature of the surrounding architecture; only magic could explain the unnatural cold since, from his vantage point, there were no openings from which the chill could emerge naturally.

            Two guards on patrol rounded the corner across from the Trumpeter and before he could say anything were drawing their swords.  The madman was only able to sign for silence before the two were upon him.  He ran, seeing that the room below was an odd laboratory of glassy decoration.  Crystals bloomed from the wall.

            Taking flight, the Trumpeter became instantly lost.  A hall up felt like a ramp down and the rooms he crossed had the strange air of places abandoned and haunted by their long-vanished owner.

            A cry erupted from Yogo far behind; the Trumpeter was sure his foe had no intention of letting these two guardsmen get the kill he so lusted for.  Nothing could be heard from the other man.  Quickly he vanished from thought when the musician realized he was running from guardsmen, denoting organization, and not the ruffians he presumed would be in a den of thieves under the single thumb of Yogo. 

            The mystery of these men, strong looking fellows with shaved faces and breastplates designed to look something like seashell, caused a temporary, yet disastrous, stop by the Trumpeter as he fled through a polished marble room.  The two were on him quickly and never bothered to ask for surrender.

            Wolgloss had one vice and that was speech.  During the whole of his duel with the Fencer he constantly spoke, as all the bottled words he had to keep to himself as he stalked and observed people came spilling out.  He would comment on each parry, dodge and thrust, applaud when his opponent nicked a limb and criticized when the Fencer grew angry and lashed out with emotion in a swing.  To him the struggle was not about life-and-death, but was instead an academic exercise and a detached entertainment.  He didn’t seem to care about the duel and this made the Fencer hot with rage.

            The way the assassin fought went along the similar lines.  In no rush to reach a conclusion he would dodge strikes with that space-slipping talent of his or would catch the nightmare weight of the Fencer’s weapon with his long blade in parry.  He was careful not to meet Dhala’s atom edge full on as he batted away an unbalanced swing or used the fine point of his sword to push the Fencer’s whorled weapon to the ground or the wall.  Many times he kicked a chair or stool into the Fencer’s legs.  Each time this happened the Fencer stood back up angrier, listening to his muscle memory less while fighting worse and worse. 

            “Why don’t you do to me what you did to Clea?” huffed the Fencer as he stood back up after Wolgloss had tipped him off a table. 

            “I’m not interested in you,” mused the dark man.  “Only the thing you carry.”

            “Then you can have it.”

            The Fencer tossed the blade in a wobbly arc and quickly snatched up the dust bin from beside the fireplace.  When he looked up there was no need for his next ploy.

            Wolgloss stood enraptured by the thing he had caught in his hand, cold frosting over the flesh which held it. 

            “My Lady,” he rasped.  “My Lady of the golden eyes.  Butterfly Empress.  I never knew my place above and I thought I knew my place below but you have followed me.  I see my gifts have gained me favor.  Perhaps it is time to leave, maybe Summer time again.  I shall gather my things.  Where is my sword?”

            The Fencer ran the man through with it, staining the white blade deep red.

            The Trumpeter had watched the Fencer fight many times and figured it would be easy.  It looked so simple to just not let the fellow, or three, with the sharp thing, or pointy thing, chop or stab you.  His opinion of this changed quite quickly as the two guardsmen attacked.

            They circled around, which wasn’t fair because he couldn’t keep an eye on both of them and it was all he could do to keep backing up, almost at a run, flailing their strikes away with the silvery trumpet.  Metal rang through the chamber to be echoed by the cries of more men in distant galleries.  More guards were coming.  The Trumpeter winced as he tried a desperate ploy.

            Throwing his instrument into the air bought just enough astonishment from the two surprised guards.  The instant they thought the Trumpeter was giving up was the instant he needed to dive his hands into a coat pocket and pull out its contents.  It was also not enough time to look at those contents as he threw them to the ground with the slight tinkle of glass breaking.  He closed his eyes.

            The cowering musician didn’t see the one guard break apart as the unholy mixture of the last remaining vials gifted from Clea erupted through the man.  The carefully distilled potions now wove together, erratic magic coursing through the air. 

            The second guard swung at the barely visible form which rose up through the blood of his fellow.  There was a chiming sound and his sword arm flexed painfully at the resistance.  The thing in the air howled like nothing under the sun.  Vast and hollow it sounded through the endless halls.  A mutter of confused and distant guards responded.

            Peeking out the Trumpeter saw the creature which rose through the blood of the dead man.  It was tall and sinewy, but less flesh and blood than a frozen waterfall which could bend and sway with eager power, its one long, multi-jointed arm weaving at its side in an unfelt wind.  The arm ended in an array of flaying claws, while the only thing recognizable as a head was simply an eyeless stub where various jagged apertures drank in the fear of the living.  The whole of the entity was almost invisible, a most perfect glass sculpture, and though its form was defined where blood had splashed on it, this was quickly vanishing as the thing soaked the fluid up with the many mouths covering it, digesting to translucence. 

            The Trumpeter damned the witch for her gift as he turned to run away from this obvious alchemy of demonic strength and clarity.

            The escaping spirit of the assassin, this Wolgloss, turned the fire in the hearth blue and froze the air.  The body spoke of curious things as life left it, which the Fencer did his best to ignore.  He dropped the murderer’s bloody weapon and it became a flock of red-stained doves.  The body screamed as he wrestled his own blade out of its hands.

            It took all the courage he had to search Clea’s corpse.  From her sopping, bloody robe he stole all the bottled magics he could before stumbling out into the dusk.  Steam clouds billowed through the darkening streets of Nock.

            As his body cooled from the fight and the weight of what just transpired fell upon him, worry stalked the Fencer.  He wore the look of a haunted man.  He wasn’t so sure it was love for Clea, or hate for Wolgloss.  Things were more complicated than that. 

            He made his way to the staging grounds, to where the Heart lay like a giant crumpled piece of paper.  He jumped up on the sledge and cut the tarp free of the artifact. 

            All this chaos for a lump of rock, he thought, inspecting the boulder again.  There was something organic about it, the way the veins of quartz evoked images of veins in flesh, how the thing seemed to have tone and striations which gave the semblance of muscle tissue. 

            Maybe he was just seeing things.  The Fencer wished that the Trumpeter was around, though, as his reason seemed to dictate, that madman was most likely dead.  He felt a need to resign himself to all the things he would never know, but just couldn’t quite manage it.

            Fleeing the demon he had unleashed, the Trumpeter didn’t make it far before he found a filthy knife at his throat.  Yogo chortled through rotten teeth.  There was pain in the joy.  The rogue kicked the musician in the small of his back and the scarfed man took a tumble with all his bits and pieces.

            He had made it to a long terrace overlooking a bubbling mud pot.  The room was carefully worked and must’ve once served the mysterious purposes of the mage Glym.  Now it just stunk of sulfur.

            “Must be my lucky day,” mused the one-armed brigand.  “Now I wish it just wasn’t this damned hot.”

            At last the Trumpeter could see his adversary clearly.  The gnarled rogue he had journeyed with from Ahgren was the same, except a few pox showing around the collar of the rogue’s ragged clothes and the bandaged stump of a left forearm.  It seeped a purplish blood and it was with horror that he watched Yogo cut into the wound, coating his blade with the foul ichors which oozed forth.  Now the Trumpeter understood where the poison which had felled the Fencer had come from.  That damned sword should’ve been left in the forbidden lands.  He scrabbled away, making lots of noise.

            “I don’t know what it is that you let loose back there, but it’s sure making things interesting.”

            The far off cries of anguish and conflict only now became clear to the Trumpeter.  The demon was at its sport and he didn’t want to play its game.

            “After I’m through with you, I’ll have some fun with it, if I last that long.”

            “What do you mean?”

            “This poison from your friend’s sword runs thicker and thicker in my veins,” said Yogo, shaking his head, trying to clear his thoughts.  “I see things.  A beautiful woman whom I must hate, yet I can’t seem to escape her golden eyes.  Witchcraft.  Sorcery.  I know my time is short, but I wanted to show you two to a bit of the same kindness.  I always wanted to die in a brawl somewhere, or in the arms of sweet lady of negotiable affection, and, well, what kind of whore would take me now, no matter my silver.  Just this damn bitch in my head.”

            His lips rambled, entrancing the Trumpeter.  The sounds of demon death in the halls receded away in the face of curiosity.  Perhaps something in what Yogo saw could explain Dhala or the blue-haired magus, or any of the other strange and magical threats he had encountered since meeting the Fencer on the slopes of the Wondering Mountains those many months ago.  Maybe there was even some hint of Summer.  

              A flip of the knife in Yogo’s hand brought the Trumpeter back to reality.

            “Time to die.  Say hello to your friend when he joins you in hell and tell him to watch his back; I’ll be there soon.”

            It was a funny thing to say, especially since all the afterlives were gone now.  Not a heaven or hell was left after the red demon came and ripped out the heart of the world.  The Trumpeter puzzled on this and didn’t notice the horrid thing enter the room behind Yogo’s back.

V. Secret Passages

            One was a solution of clarity, another gave you the strength of crystal, and the third turned you into a demon.  No, that wasn’t right.  Maybe it was a potion of demonic clarity, a filter of crystalline insight and the last a vial of might.  The Trumpeter couldn’t make up which of the strange little glass cylinders of liquid did what, but he wasn’t about to go back to the inn looking like a fool in front of that witch Clea.  There were standards to maintain.

            So he loitered in Nock for a bit, caught some gossip from a baker early to the task and paid a painted girl for some information.  Yogo wasn’t well liked, but he was tough and feared by the underworld of the city, as well as those of cities elsewhere on the southern continent.  A few had word of how the miscreant had escaped the lamplighters the night before, though this revelation proved unpleasant. 

            The Trumpeter could only drag his feet so long and finally, despite his worse nature, he was facing the steaming apparatus of the clock.  By now the pre-dawn bustle was on, merchants and artisans busying themselves about the streets and gossiping.  Around the base of the crag, where the clock looked out and hundreds of feet above the alabaster fortress of Lord Vale pondered the town, here he found the numerous vents which his informants claimed was the place where Yogo had slithered into after poisoning the Fencer. 

            As he had learned, and as he had guessed, the town was situated on a place of geothermal activity, hence the warmth of the streets and the steam clouds.  Old Glym, the exceptionally strange magus who once made this volcanic basin his home, had chosen this location because of such phenomena.  This was only strange because he was renowned for being a master of the cold of Winter, as the frozen wall of enemies outside of town would attest.  Mages; always so weird.  Guess that’s why there were gone now.

            The vents leading down were hot and narrow.  Steam billowed up with a hint of silver.  Intertwined with the workings of the vents themselves were the brass tubes and fittings funneling power into the machinery of the clock.  The Trumpeter stared down the exit Yogo reportedly had taken for long minutes, procrastinating, and then left.

            He walked out of the square and then out of the gate.  On the no-man’s land between the inner gate and the grisly outer one he turned off the icy road to begin circling the town, into which he could see owing to the decline of the basin.  Dawn edged up blue and cloudy. 

            The Trumpeter was quite angry.  People might relate how he had ran off; this was simply not true, but he had to move quickly before the Fencer felt better and came to steal all the glory.  He presumed there would be some.  Also he wanted only to do the best for his friend and maybe for that witch too, he wasn’t really decided on her yet.  Too perfect.  Something was up.  The steam made him break free from his ruminations.

            As he had suspected, great gouts of hot air could be seen escaping from a prominence of rocks about a kilometer out from the main road.  He had seen it when they had first arrived but at that time it was just a bit of trivia in the back of his mind while there was important food and rest to be had.  Looking out across the basin he could see the faint haze of other vents here and there. 

            “I’m no fool,” he stated to nothing in particular and considered an empowering blast from the trumpet, but, deferring to the imagined voice of the Fencer, thought better of it. 

            At the jutting stones it took some effort getting to the vent and it was only luck that it was big enough to allow for his tall frame.  His last sight of the topside world was that of the gold-edge horizon spilling light and long shadows across the basin, cutting through the clouds, casting sharp contrast onto the great crag in the center of the town which, if the Fencer let his mind wander a bit, reminded him of a massive humanoid form hunched forward, leaning, with a fortress on its back and a clock for a face.  Then the Trumpeter was down into the warm underworld of the basin on the trail of a cutthroat named Yogo.

           

            Again the dreamed of being two people at once.  As a warm breeze passed the world came to an end.  All the people falling as he held on to part of the black pyramid.  Through the wind and tears, down the impossible slant of falling masonry, the Other stood laughing, wind and gravity fearing him so greatly that they fled from his very presence.  In the air his azure hair was as wild as his heart.

            The Fencer, who was someone else in that place, felt the cold tug at him from within.  If only he could get close, he could win this time.  He would win; he knew it; he believed it.  There was a sense of déjà vu and frustration.  But really, he didn’t have the words to describe the all-towering rage he felt towards that laughing thing.  He looked down and his sword coiled cold and agitated, tentacles grasping him with an anticipation all its own.

            Shivering awake to morning sounds of the city the Fencer grasped about for his missing weapon but quickly exhausted himself.  He barely had the strength to pull the blanket back over.  With a head full of other dreams, heavy with secrets, he fought against the remaining dementia of his wounds.  Clea watched all this with a tired beauty.

            For a while she sat and watched her patient from the small table by the window, which was partially open to let the warm gusts of Nock’s unusual air in.  Appraising each movement he made, each blink and shudder of recovery, it was no surprise that the Fencer began returning the stare.

            “Sorry, it has been a long night,” she said without real apology.  The Fencer noticed how she palmed a single vial when he seemed to regain his senses.

            “I don’t think I’ll ever understand you,” he said calmly.  “I don’t know where to begin with the questions and I’m sure you won’t be offering up any answers.”

            “Questions are more fun anyhow,” she smiled.  “I like coming up with a question and just sitting on it in my mind, pulling it apart, putting it back together, twisting it around, discovering little avenues of enlightenment.  What wonders, great and small, you can find that way.  The same can be said of mysteries and secrets.”

            He snorted and looked out the window, only seeing hazy steam against cold blue sky. 

            “What’s so wrong about that?  What do you have against secrets?”

            “I don’t expect someone like you to understand.”

            “What do you mean ‘someone like me’?”

            “Summer,” he said turning his pale eyes back to her.

            “Oh.”  Her eyes went down to the scarred wood of the table.  “It’s a secret to me too, really.  There’s a reason I don’t go back much.  Just feels like I don’t fit in; I seem more at home on Winter.”

            Now it was the Fencer’s time to be pointedly silent.  “What?” she finally demanded.

            “I’d say you enjoy Winter more because of the power you hold over us Icebound.”

            “Strange,” she commented, leading the conversation down a new secret passage, “with that magic blade and your head full of magician memories, I’d say you’re not really Icebound yourself anymore.  If you’re so keen on truth why don’t you tell me a little story about those?”

           

            While the Fencer sighed and told his tale the Trumpeter was fending off trouble of his own.  The musician thought often of his friend as he scrambled down the steam-smoothed chimney he had entered and these musings continued while spelunking the calcium halls and crystal galleries of Nock’s volcanic underworld.  He wondered if the Fencer was recovered and if the swordsman understood just how against nature this whole expedition was for the Trumpeter.  He took special note of hiding places along the path he made, until one such hiding place produced the vicious thing he was now fending off.

            He was several hours into his journey and possibly lost.  His folly in not bringing along a source of light, apart from a single candle nub, was apparent.  Still, the ceiling often broke into little cracks and windows through which ice-filtered light illuminated the underworld.  Further down in the halls certain crystalline structures glowed with the natural magics of such a place.  In one such grand hall, deep, deep down, he was jumped by one of the very terrors he was looking to avoid, and from a good hiding place no less!

            It was once a Lemur-man, or its distant ancestors had been.  Centuries of underground living had encouraged milky-eyed blindness and albinism.  The Trumpeter had little time to analyze the thing as it shrieked so.  Proper Lemur-men hooted.

            A few swings of his trumpet did little to dissuade the adversary, despite landing a few wallops with the peerless instrument.  Surely blindness prevented it from understanding the import of the man it was trying to devour.  For a moment the Trumpeter felt pity.

            He quickly abandoned thoughts of using the trumpet for its noisome purpose and the idea of stabbing the thing with his petrified dagger felt too abrupt.  So, with scarf all a tangle and coat tails flapping, the Trumpeter began his reckless escape.  This would either give him time to figure out a cunning stratagem or the creature would grow bored and leave.

            The Trumpeter hadn’t long to wait.  Only a few rooms over and up his scarf tangled his legs and down he went onto the uneven floor of a room lit by a few cold rays from above.  He struggled over to his back just in time to see the hateful albino Lemur-man hop into the room.  Despite its blindness it obviously hunted by the smell of genius and the Trumpeter contemplated covering his eyes in a dual attempt at blocking any more brainwaves from reaching the creature and saving him the horror of watching his doom approach.  Then it was leaping on him, a ghastly cry of hunger issuing from its snout while its eyes lolled like a shark’s. 

            The Trumpeter grabbed the first object that his scrambling hands could find in his coat pocket and tossed it before rolling away.  Like the growth of ice over a lake, but much quicker, the Lemur-man’s skin went to chalk and then diamond as the little vial struck and broke.  The monster shattered where it landed, jagged shards everywhere.  Once more the traveler was alone in the caverns.

            Searching his pockets he discovered he was short one of Clea’s vials but up a wedge of cheese he had stolen from the inn’s kitchen during all the chaos earlier.  Munching on this find he pondered where to go next since he was probably lost.

            “I guess that narrows down the possibilities,” he said, looking over the other two potions.

            As the day progressed the Fencer felt his strength coming back, with the unnatural aid of Clea’s magic.  The hours passed pleasantly.  He told of his journey beyond the Wondering Mountains and Clea spoke of Yogo’s return, the Trumpeter’s mad plan and, at last, the Heart.  Every time he tried to glean some bit of personal history or secret of Summer from the emerald lady he found the conversation on some other track.

            “That’s quite a story.”  Clea seemed a bit wide-eyed after hearing of the Stranger’s capabilities.

            “You still don’t know who that might be?”

            “No, I’m certain if I encountered a person, an entity, like that I would remember such a meeting.  If I lived to tell about it, that is.”

            Now at a dead end, the Fencer worked on the various issues at hand.  An afternoon quiet settled in. 

            “I suppose you’ll be winning the Heart now,” he finally said.

            “Depends on how determined Vael is,” she responded, eyes distant.  “He has deep pockets and some blood is involved.”

            “Corinze?”

            “No, that warrior woman who represented him, Illem, never made it back to the keep.  A patrol found her entourage dead about the same time that we were attacked.  They say it’s the way of her people to let them freeze where they perish.  We could always verify this for ourselves.”

            “Hmmm,” was the only vocal recognition he gave.  Inwardly his thoughts were more complicated.

            Knives abounded and a plot hung lazy and heavy over the steam city.  Apart from the dead, almost all the principles seemed capable of orchestrating the violence surrounding the big rock.  Yogo was certainly in on it and Corinze was out.  Perhaps Firo had some design intended for the Heart or was just trying to drive up the price.  Vael was distant, had even suffered a loss, but the way of rulers was beyond the Fencer’s tribal understanding so he allowed a conspiracy here by default.  Even Clea could be behind the events of the past few days.  She had the guile and the resources, the attempt on her life had failed too.  It was all so tangled up, full of unknowns, just like Winter’s Riddle.

            “Your demon again?” Clea asked, breaking his concentration.  She was very sensitive to the stops and starts of conversation.

            “Something like that,” he responded and shifted in the bed towards getting up.  “Yogo is the key to this; I know it and I should go help the Trumpeter find him.”

            “Feeling well then?”

            “Yes, I can’t stand being cooped up here any longer.”

            “Well, I’ll see to it that you get some hot food from the kitchen.  Almost everyone has cleared out after last night’s festivities so I think we’ll have the run of the place.”

            Clea went to the door and then turned, smiling back at the Fencer, who couldn’t help but smile a little in return as he began to dress.

           

            For what seemed like days the Trumpeter wandered the various tunnels and rooms of that strange subterranean realm.  He quickly became bored by the austere beauty of the place.  Devising a system to actually find his way seemed to be the only cure.

            Following the heat and the steam was the trick.  Most of the rooms began to narrow and grow cold in one direction, while increasing in size and temperature in the other.  A bit of travel along the edge of this phenomena described an arc and therefore some central point.  With a sigh he resigned himself in this direction.

            The way grew warmer and warmer.  Condensation dripped off the stucco walls.  It seemed he was delving deep into the earth, the shafts of light which had guided him before ceased; most probably he was under Nock itself by now.  Distantly the clock’s beats were felt.  A sound of water moving approached.  When he needed light he used his tiny nub of candle, a memento of his time in Ahgren.

            The flame, shielded as best he could with his hands, showed an increasingly aqueous realm.  Funnels poured melt down all around.  Along some walls a sheen of run-off flowed continuously.  Eventually the Trumpeter happened across halls shared with coursing streams and rooms dominated by underground pools.  Heat and steam increased.  At times the noise was almost deafening.

            In the weak luminescence of a crystal lined room, a quieter place than most he had just passed through, some sound at the edge of hearing made the Trumpeter take note.  Something followed.  Looking around there was no way out of the room except across a clear pond.  His heart pressed for a better solution.  The sound grew and the distinct rustle of inhuman limbs approached.

            Wading out into the water, into the darkness away from lighting minerals, the Trumpeter felt groundless and afraid.  He cursed the waters for rippling, and then shut his mouth as the sound entered the cavern.  Only at the last second did he think to douse the candle he still held cupped in his hands.

            The Fencer kept smiling after Clea left.  Despite all her secrets she still held that element of life he thought most important on the icy wastes of Winter.  In the face of the intractable questions posed by Winter’s Riddle, she thrived.  Maybe she was right.  Questions offered much.  What would he do if he should solve the Riddle to his satisfaction?  He was considering this question, as she had recommended, when the silence came.

            The inn had been quiet all day but this was different.  A sound of something softly landing below triggered those latent instincts gifted him by the magician’s butterfly back in the forbidden lands.  He just knew something was wrong.

            He didn’t bother lacing up his tunic before picking up his sword from where it peeked out from beneath the wooden bed frame.  Alert, he made his slow way out of the room.

            Empty halls greeted him, lit only by the soft grey of the passing afternoon flitting in between the shuttered windows.  None of the usual sounds of travelers from the main room, meaning the place was empty, just as Clea had mentioned.  Careful not to make a creak the Fencer snuck down the two floors to the common hall where the crackle and flicker of a fire told that at least someone was around to tend the great fireplace.  Then he saw her.

            For once she was without poise.  Her body lay splayed out, a perfect and familiar stab wound through the heart, her head decapitated by the man who now stood by the fire.

            The Fencer had seen him many times over the past few days but only now realized this.  He was there when the Heart had arrived, just another well-dressed city person.  That first night in the inn, when Firo, the Trumpeter and Fencer sat around talking, he was drinking alone across the room in that way which made the Fencer thoughtful and prone to reminiscence.  When Clea and he visited the clock yesterday this man was there, dressed in simple blacks, a sword at his side.

            The Fencer’s eyes quickly went back to what had been Clea.  So many secrets.  He half expected her eyes to blink open and smile once more, her body to restore the lost head and be whole again.  Such were the ways of magic.  She didn’t.  So many secrets.