Part 3 (1/2)

He wanted to help her. More, Kylar thought, he wanted to save her. If there had been something tangible to fight-a man, a beast, an army-he would have drawn his sword and plunged into battle for her.

She moved him, attracted him, fascinated him. Her steady composure in the face of her fate stirred in him both admiration and frustration. This was not a woman to weep on a man's shoulder. It annoyed him to find himself wis.h.i.+ng that she would, as long as the shoulder was his.

She was an extraordinary creature. He wanted to fight for her. But how did a man wage war on magic? He'd never had any real experience with it. He was a soldier, and though he believed in luck, even in fate, he believed more in wile and skill and muscle.

He was a prince, would one day be a king. He believed in justice, in ruling with a firm touch on one hand and a merciful one on the other.

There was no justice here, where a woman who had done no wrong should be imprisoned for the crimes and follies and wickedness of those who had come before.

She was too beautiful to be shut away from the rest of the world. Too small, he mused, too fragile to work her hands raw. She should be draped in silks and ermine rather than homespun.

Already after less than a week on the Isle of Winter, he felt a restlessness, a need for color and heat. How had she stayed sane never knowing a single summer?

He wanted to bring her the sun.

She should laugh. It troubled him that he had not once heard her laugh.

A smile, surprisingly warm when it was real enough to reach her eyes.

That he had seen. He would find a way to see it again.

He waded through the snow across what he supposed had once been a courtyard. Though his wound had troubled him on waking, he was feeling stronger now. He needed to be doing, to find some work or activity to keep his blood moving and his mind sharp. Surely there was some task, some bit of work he could undertake for her here. It would repay her in some small way, and serve to keep his mind and hands busy while his body healed.

He recalled the stag he'd seen in the forest. He would hunt, then, and bring her meat. The wind that had thrashed ceaselessly for days had finally quieted. Though the utter stillness that followed it played havoc with the nerves, it would make tracking through the forest possible.

He moved through a wide archway on the other side of the courtyard.

And stopped to stare.

This, he realized with wonder, had been the rose garden. Gnarled and blackened stalks tangled out of the snow. Once, he imagined, it would have been magnificent, full of color and scent and humming bees.

Now it was a great field of snow cased in ice. Bisecting that field were graceful paths of silver stone, and someone kept them clear. There were hundreds of bushes, all brittle with death, the stalks spearing out of their cold graves like blackened bones.

Benches, these, too, cleared of snow and ice, stood in graceful curves of deep jewel colors. Ruby, sapphire, emerald, they gleamed in the midst of the stark and merciless white. There was a small pond in the shape of an open rose, and its flower held a rippled sheet of ice. Dead branches with vicious thorns strangled iron arbors. More spindly corpses climbed up the silver stone of the walls as if they'd sought to escape before winter murdered them.

In the center, where all paths led, was a towering column of ice. Under the gla.s.sy sheen, he could see the arch of blackened branches studded with thorns, and hundreds of withered flowers trapped forever in their moment of death.

The rosebush, he thought, where the flowers of lies had been plucked.

No, he corrected as he moved toward it. More a tree, for it was taller than he was and spread wider than the span of both his arms. He ran his fingertips over the ice, found it smooth. Experimentally, he took the dagger from his belt, dragged its tip over the ice. It left no mark.

”It cannot be reached with force.”

Kylar turned and saw Orna standing in the archway. ”What of the rest?

Why haven't the dead branches been cleared and used for fire?” he asked her.

”To do so would be to give up hope.” She had hope still, and more when she looked into Kylar's eyes.

She saw what she needed there. Truth, strength, and courage.

”She walks here.”

”Why would she punish herself in such a way?” he demanded.

”It reminds her, I think, of what was. And what is.” But not, Orna feared, of what might be. ”Once, when my lady was but eight, and the last of the dogs died, breaking her heart, she took her grandfather's sword. In her grief and temper, she tried to hack through that ice into the bush. For nearly an hour she stabbed and sliced and beat at it, and could not so much as scratch the surface. In the end, she went to her knees there where you stand now and wept as if she'd die from it. Something in her did die that day, along with the last of the dogs. I have not heard her weep since. I wish she would.”

”Why do you wish for your lady's tears?”

”For then she would know her heart is not dead but, like the rose, only waiting.”

He sheathed his dagger. ”If force can't reach it, what can?”

She smiled, for she knew he spoke of the heart as much as the rose.

”You will make a good king in your time, Kylar of Mrydon, for you listen to what isn't said. What can't be vanquished with sword or might can be won with truth, with love, with selflessness. She is in the stables, what is left of them. She wouldn't ask for your company, but would enjoy it.”

The stables lined three sides of another courtyard, but this one was crisscrossed with crooked paths dug through or trampled into the snow.

Kylar saw the reason for it in the small troop of children waging a lively snow battle at the far end. Even in such a world, he thought, children found a way to be children.

As he drew closer to the stables, he heard the low cackle of hens. There were men on the roof, working on a chimney. They tipped their caps to him as he pa.s.sed under the eaves and into the stables.

It was warmer, thanks to carefully banked fires, and clean as a parlor.

The queen, he thought, tended her goats and chickens well. Iron kettles heated over the fires. Water for the stock, he concluded, made from melted snow. He noted barrows of manure. For use in her garden, he decided. A wise and practical woman, Queen Deirdre.

Then he saw the wise and practical woman, with her red hood tossed back, her gold hair raining down as she cooed up at his warhorse.

When the horse shook its great head and blew, she laughed. The rich female sound warmed his blood more thoroughly than the fires.

”His name is Cathmor.”

Startled, embarra.s.sed, Deirdre dropped the hands she'd lifted to stroke the horse's muzzle. She knew she shouldn't have lingered, that he would come check on his horse as it had been reported he did twice daily. But she'd so wanted to see the creature herself.

”You have a light step.” ”You were distracted.” He walked up beside her, and to her surprise and delight, the horse b.u.mped his shoulder in greeting.

”Does that mean he's glad to see you?”

”It means he's hoping I have an apple.”

Deirdre fingered the small carrot from her garden she'd tucked in her pocket. ”Perhaps this will do.” She pulled it out, started to offer it to Kylar.

”He would enjoy being fed by a lady. No, not like that.” He took her hand and, opening it, laid the carrot on her palm. ”Have you never fed a horse?”