[Paul/Kallin/Linnell]
It is the cold, and the grey, that holds him, enveloping his limbs, if he has any limbs here, shackling themselves to his bones, claiming him. The cold and grey of <between> --
No color, no warmth, no light, ready to fold and fold again, and spin into nothing, trying to unmake the patterns that marked his heart and his breath --
Long ago, though, Paul Rustin had learned not to fear it, had learned how to force the threads to move between <here> and <there>, move <through> the cold, and carry him where he wishes to go. If any Politi mage can map the landscape of <between>, he can, can write it in loops and swirls and find that point where
-- Fire meets the darkness that flows from the shadowlands, and beats it back, or is swallowed --
where
-- a dark cell, and chains, and the whip flaying open the skin on
a mage's back --
-- two children lost in the snow on a mountainside, the girl lying on her back, contemplating the sky with unblinking blue eyes, the boy silent but his colors echoing with the ripple of screams --
-- dungeons, where one known and well-loved sinks into the grey, and by his side a handless young woman raves --
If they see him, those lost and wandering, they give no notice, though at times that boy in the snow will turn and stare as if sensing a shadow passing before him. But Paul always spins himself onward, holding tight to the ribbon that leads
<out>
For Kallin, this passage <through>, this cast of lines outward, is an unraveling, the heat round his heart and burning through his skin recoiling from the cold, the hum rising to an insistent rhythm seeking release. And the grey draws it, tries to pull it outward and consume it, to undo the patterns and set them loose
Fire across his back and ribs --
-- here where Wyndham falls --
a writhing agony that tears the breath from him
--here where the grey opens up and consumes Wyland --
Only Paul's sure grasp keeps him from dissolving, and casts him
<out>
For Linnell, the cold without meets the cold within --
<no passage out>
The secret she has just learned.
[Morrighu/Geiren]
Morrighu at first found <between> familiar - cold, vast, and eternal. But strangely she found it tugging at her - trying to pull at her essence. Pulling the life from her. Though she had no voice she began to think of a song of binding - keeping her shape, her babe, and Geiren in life.
She found Geiren's strength supporting her's.
Geiren remembered. Remembered each trip between life and death; between spirit and flesh. Each time the link to his mutilated flesh had been severed, and each time he had been reborn.
[Kit]
Kit was caught in mid-howl. <Between> registered on her animal instincts - eliciting her deepest terror.
[Veril/Emerson/Lanaera]
A sudden drop in the temperature of the room was all the warning they were given. Later, Veril would cross to the tall windows and trace the edge of her fingernail through the frost that formed on the panes. Later, but not now, for the slice of grey that had gaped above the marblefloor of the ballroom was not the even line that would spin and open up,but a ragged point that tore open the air between the four mages, pushing aside the net they had cast to find its own anchor.
And started to spread.
As the first of the group stepped out from the surface of grey, Veril stumbled, and rewove, to cast the threads around the borders of the circle and bind it, struggling to keep the grey from opening further to swallow the entire floor and those who stood upon it.
[Fredia]
Fredia caught some of the threads that Veril and Emerson cast out. She began to weave in her own bindings against the encroaching grey - filling the threads with heat.
[Politi]
Where the threads hummed, whispered, even sang, the grey carried nothing but silence, and cold, sending a skim of ice across the marble floor. Veril danced back in surprise at the touch of frost beneath her bare feet, and grapped for the threads again. What lacked pattern they must contain, however it would twist and turn its maw. The uneven circle bulged outward in the center, tasting the air in the room, twitching at the touch of heat, hungry. And only the weavings of the c'hanati pushed it back, wrapped it and kept it from growing.
When the thick cord finally pushed itself through the roiling surface, Lanaera was ready, hooked it and drew it in. At the center, they emerged, one by one, even Kit, scrambling from <between>, her russet fur sparkling with a thin film of ice, until only the Politi remained within. Then Paul, carrying a blanket-shrouded form that could only be Linnell; he placed her gently in one corner, still wrapped against any touch of sunlight, before returning to the floor.
"Away," Paul ordered curtly, ignoring Lanaera's glare as he took the cord from her and waved the others to the far edges. Only when they had moved did he reach
<in>
and spin Kallin loose, to stumble through in a flood of colors and with a rising storm of humming. With a twist of one hand, Paul forced the portal shut.
Kallin, sprawled on the floor, did not even attempt to rise, but merely pressed his palms downward, and released the mosaic into the channels etched into the stone, filling the pale marble with shimmering fire.
[Geiren/Morrighu]
Geiren held Morrighu in the protective
circle of his arms, as if trying to guard both her, and the small bit of
warmth that grew within her womb. And for the first time in many centuries
Morrighu shivered from the frigid temperatures of the Void. Both husband
and wife stood facing the mosiac, watching Kallin. The Bean Nighe's
eyes were filled with concern. As were
Geiren's, though an anger stirred in his
eyes. But not at Kallin.
[Kit]
Kit scurried to huddle near the blanket-wrapped form of Linnell, and there the were-fox crouched. Shivering.
[Fredia]
Once Paul had slammed the portal shut, and Kallin had filled the etchings on the floor with the fire of the mosiac, Fredia started to move forward to help the Dominti. The heat of the mosiac against her chilled foot startled her. And stopped her - as she remembered Kallin's pride. He would not take her help.
[Kallin/et al.]
The channels filled, in a rush of light, and then that moment of waiting until the patterns settled, and then shifted. Paul lowered the mosaic into something just sort of its resting state, before moving to where Kallin had just begun to lift himself. One hand, when he sat back on his knees, left a smear of blood on the marble, bright red against the warm stone. The mage's face was pale, but his eyes were clear, and he permitted only one steading hand under his elbow as he rose to his feet to cross the floor.
"Thank you, c'hanata," he said simply to Fredia. A mere glance to Lanaera, and those who knew him well recognized his dismissal as a sign of rage rather than condescension.
[Fredia]
Fredia tilted her head in recognition at Kallin's comment, but she didn't dare move. The tension in the room was obvious.
[Geiren/Morrighu]
As Geiren walked with Morrighu over to where the Politi were he struggled with his anger. And when they came abreast of Lanaera taut words slipped from him with a tightly-controlled fury, and he hissed, "You risked not only your own people - but an innocent. Our babe." His dark brown eyes glittered.
Morrighu tightened her hand on his arm. She knew that Lanaera had suffered as much as any of them, and she feared that the Dominta's choices indicated how badly she was coping with that pain. "We made it," she simply said. She hoped that later she could talk with Lanaera and see how the woman truly fared.
[Yon]
Yon blinked.
In all the chaos he had simply avoided trouble as much as possible - there was no honour in madness, nor mobs - but had managed nonetheless to find four missing children and two missing animals and return them to their respective owners. Given the general mayhem, his appearance had caused little remark, and even that had been typically silenced by the return of the children in question. Returning to the others just in time to be transported away had been more luck than anything else. Though to Yon, luck was something only the insane and the dishonoured had use for.
And now the madness was over, though not finished for such rarely was, and Geiren seemed less than willing to let it go. Yon didn't understand the words, and even the expressions were less than comprehensible. But even he understood the tone. Time spent among these barbarians had taught him that much. Most of all, the way Geiren had held Morrighu had carried more easily than all the rest combined.
"Is done," he said and stepped forward. What _might_ have happened was irrelevant. He had considered Geiren's re-training to have been complete some time ago, but that had been shown as an incorrect conclusion. Something else Yon needed to rectify to regain his own honour.
He joined both hands briefly at the wrists, palms outwards and upwards.
"Is done, yes."
[Geiren/Morrighu]
The sound of Yon's voice brought Geiren up short, and for a second he seemed trapped in suspended animation. For all of those long seconds he looked at his friend's upraised palms - then the tension drained from his body, and his underlying fatigue lay revealed. Geiren nodded towards Yon and said, "Yes - it is done."
Relief shown in Morrihgu's icy eyes - she could feel the fine edge of battle madness lessening in her husband. She looked at Yon and said, "Thank you, my friend." Her smile was gentle.
Then she looked at Lanaera and before moving off to join Geiren she touched the Dominta's arm.
[Veril/etc.]
Veril and Emerson glanced at each other without speaking, but neither had missed the way Lanaera's face had blanched at Geiren's words, or the way she had looked downwards at Morrighu's touch. And both knew that the woman's pride would be injured even more if anyone present took note of her reaction. So rather than giving Kallin the opportunity, Emerson moved quickly to Linnell's side, and stooped down to gather her up. "This way, Dominti," he said carefully, to draw the other mage away before he could pick up where Geiren had left off.
Kallin's mouth twisted, letting the c'hanati know that he recognized the ploy for what it was. But he did not linger to resume the argument with Lanaera, simply waved Kit ahead of him and then followed both her and Emerson from the ballroom.
"We have a suite prepared for you," Veril finally spoke when Lanaera did not. She turned towards the door, then paused when out of ear-shot of the still brooding Dominta. "Congratulations," she said softly to Morrighu and her husband, with just the slightest smile.
[Morrighu/Geiren]
At Veril's words Morrighu looked confused and she looked over at the journeywoman. "Congratulations?" she asked. It was evident by her tone that she had had other concerns on her mind.
Geiren walked beside the two women. He suspected that the "congratulations" came from Lanaera's realization of what had been truly at risk. But he said nothing - just waited to see if his theory was confirmed.
[Fredia]
The journeywoman suddenly found herself alone with Lanaera, who she knew to be in turmoil. A fact that she also knew the Dominta would not like to have witnesses to. Particularly by a c'hanata who had defended Kallin So.
Fredia simply said, "I better see that some food is ready." And with these words she too made her escape.
[Lanaera]
In the darkened ballroom, Lanaera stood on the marble floor, staring sightlessly at the shades moving slowly across its warm surface. When a flicker of blue passed over it, she knelt to press one palm against the stone. But she did not weep.
Kallin slept, more deeply than he had for a long time, unmoving in the bed that Fredia had steered him to, in the bedchamber of a large suite at a second-floor corner of the house. On his stomach, one arm folded under his head, the other flung across the mattress as if reaching for something. No lamp lit the room, though a low fire burned in the fireplace. And a gloss of light inched across the polished floor and over the glass in the windows. On his back, bared by the sheets which had slid to his waist, a fine web of scars could be seen.
The room lay wrapped in silence and bound in wardings, and even the threads moving around the mage spun themselves slowly, with only the most muted of whispers.
Paul pulled the door shut behind him, having cracked it open ever so slightly to look in. Down the hall, Linnell had taken refuge in a small windowless room, one without light, whose doro the threads avoided as they scurried before Paul's feet, humming to themselves in satisfaction that he and Kallin had returned to the household, with only a faint note of unease as they passed Linnell's door.
Here Emerson and Lisabeth had taken rooms, a strand of the threads <shifted> and spun itself under the door to curl around within. And here, Veril and Willem, with Karolyn (and an already-worn stuffed poodle from the circus); another ribbon of colors <shifted> and wiggled through the key-hole. Here, Fredia had taken a residence, and a thin sheet of fire rippled and slid away to touch the room.
In a far hall, Lanaera, and around the corner the suite that had been given to Geiren and Morrighu, and Gwion. Further down the others, Nalin and the other non-mages. The children. Demetrius and Drywen, the a'dalin of the household. So many. And at each turn of the hall, at each door, Paul paused to loop out a weaving, wardings upon those already woven by Veril and Fredia and Emerson, until the entire building echoed softly with the whispers --
<something>
the threads breathed, and Paul responded with only the quietest acknowledgment. The patterns still were working, the knots had not yet untangled themselves. The Politi had spun themselves free of Montfort, but the patterns still spun and <shifted>, and Paul almost could feel the casting <out> that would come. Though who it would wrap it, and where it would throw them, he could not see, not even in the landscape of <between>.
Only Linnell, wrapt in shadows. And Kallin, bound to her in blood.
Well-rested himself, with several hours to go before Veril and Fredia would
bring a stranger to the mosaic, and to the Politi, Paul paced throughout
the house. Behind him, ribbons of fire streamed across the walls.