The Time Weaver

It wasn't precisely unadorned. But it was simple. Large, square, and echoing, it held a canopy bed, a mahogany secretaire , a Renaissance table of mother-of-pearl inlay and padded chairs. The fireplace had been rimmed in precious stones, and there were Turkish rugs strewn about for warmth. As Alpha, he'd made only a single major, modern improvement to the tower. He'd added a water closet, and liked it so much he'd commissioned ten more for the rest of the castle.

But the very best part of his private chamber was the view.

Eight glazed windows had been set in the walls, each one reaching nearly from floor to ceiling. Their beveled lozenge panes flared with sunlit prisms or the milky moon. From this lone, high tower, he could gaze in almost every direction, see nearly every corner of his realm. By day the rugged crests of the mountains greeted him, snow-kissed, clouds sweeping down their flanks to caress the green valleys and walled villages below.

By night he slept amid the stars, suspended in their brilliance; it was almost as perfect as flight through the purple-velvet heavens.

So, he'd been asleep. He thought he'd been asleep, because he was burrowed beneath his covers, and the fire in his hearth had dwindled to occasional sparks and embers. He frowned at them from his pillow, wondering what it was about them tonight that seemed different. The fire was lit every evening, even in the summer months. Zaharen Yce, the Tears of Ice, was a castle actually composed of quartzite and music and very chilled air, and no change of seasons would alter that.

But the embers seemed different. After a while—he wasn't certain how long—a new spark flowered and broke apart, and that's when Alexandru realized that their difference was not in color, or heat, or even their small lazy rustlings.

Their difference was that there was a naked woman standing to the right of the hearth. Beyond the post of his canopy, he could just see the outline of her leg, her calf and thigh and the curve of her hip. The bare russet glow of her skin.

He sat up. He stared at her from the soft trap of his bed.

Surely it wasn't the same maiden as two weeks ago. She didn't look quite the same. She was older, for one thing. Her hair was longer. She stood taller. Yet she might have been that child's sister: same coppery mane, even more glimmering by the light of the dying embers. Same long-lashed blue eyes glancing back at him.

And she was drakon , and she was nude. Just like that girl had been.

'I know this place,' she said slowly. She spoke in English, solemn words, trailing a hand along the rubies and emeralds and topazes embedded in the mortar around the marble mantelpiece. Her face turned back to the embers; her profile was orange and dark. 'I know these gems. I know their music. I've heard all this before.'

Sandu made certain not to move; he only cleared his throat. 'Have you?' 'And I know you.' She shot him a look. 'Don't I?' 'No,' he said.

'But ...' Her brows drew together; he saw then that he'd been fooled, just like the first time—she wasn't much older, probably barely as old as he. She crossed her arms to her chest and took a step forward, and the window behind framed her in stars. 'Your face. I know your face.'

'Did you Turn to get in here?'

She shook her head. 'No.'

'Not even to smoke?'

'No .'

'Then if this isn't a dream,' he said carefully, 'I'd appreciate an explanation.'

'As would I.'

She didn't smell like a dream. She didn't smell —but she was scented, very close to how that little girl had been. Yet it was warmer, more feminine now. More like flowers and honey than simple sugar. And strength. Still that.

Perhaps she sensed the change in him, his sudden unexpected arousal, because she eased back into the shadows. One finger tapped a topaz at the corner of the mantel, sending it into arias.

'How do you sleep with all this noise?'

'It's not noise.' He inhaled through his teeth, slowly pushing back the covers. 'It's beautiful.' 'They're loud.' 'They are soothing.'

She seemed about to add something else, then lifted a shoulder in a shrug. 'As you like. You do seem to sleep very soundly.'

He could Turn to smoke. He could be before her in an instant, in less than a heartbeat. He could touch her and verify that she was real—

'You know, I'm not .' The woman dropped her hand, gave a small, embarrassed laugh.

'Not what?' One foot free. The other. He slipped from the bed.

'Not certain why I'm here. Or how.'

'Let us talk then, English. Let us unravel it together.'

'No, I'm not—' She started again, earnest, but vanished midsentence, a blur of tarnished light and dark that melted into empty night.

And she'd been telling the truth. No smoke.

This time he had no proof. This time he realized it might well have been a dream. A strange dream, of a strange female, and he should stop drinking spiced wine before bed, because clearly it was having a deleterious effect on his slumber. The first thing he did the next morning was ask to be served sherry instead.

But in his heart, Alexandru knew she'd been no illusion. The copper-haired girl was either a spirit set to haunt him, or else real.

Either way, it seemed like ill news.

He kept her to himself. It would not do to instill unnecessary fears into his people; his hold over them required their absolute confidence, and life here was difficult enough. The sharp-edged mountains, the stark terrain. The long, brutal winters that shriveled crops and souls until spring cracked open all but the meanest of the thick turquoise ice. It was a land saturated in legends and violet shadows, where a wolf howling from the woods became a man-eater, a baby-stealer, and the sweet dew found on edelweiss was said to be fairy's broth, poison to all pure hearts.

Where the dragons that lanced across the moon at night were either protective demons or avenging angels, depending on who was asked.

There were humans who hunted them, and a distant clan of kin who craved to conquer them. Surely those were problems enough.

He would not deliberately add to the shadows by speaking of this girl. He would not endanger his reign.

Yet three times more, he'd glimpsed her. They did not speak again; there was no opportunity. In each instance she was there mere minutes or seconds, still unclothed, still pale, appearing somehow each time a little older or a little younger ... perhaps that was nothing more than a trick of the light.

He began to wonder, rather seriously, if he were losing his mind.

He found himself searching around corners, examining empty spaces. Scrutinizing even the smallest flickers of movement around him, ready to pounce.

And this is what Sandu saw:

She was a nymph in a field of August grasses, ducking behind a pine just as he was Turning to dragon for flight.

She was sudden color against the drab inner wall of the granary, wheat chaff whirling in a tempest between them, because he and the servants were hauling out bags of rotting grains from a leak in the roof they'd just discovered that must have been there at least a year.

She was a ghost in a ballroom, standing poised and naked for a brief, amazing fifteen seconds against the mural of gods decorating the eastern wall.

It was the harvest ball, a festival of darkness and jewels, tables laid out with all the fruits of their hard year's work: apples and pears and gaudy-striped gourds; braided breads and mulled wines; enormous haunches of seared meat; poached fish from the lakes; soured cream and cheese from the cattle. Sugared almonds, crepes, chocolate. Iced cakes trembling with glasshouse flowers, dusted with flakes of silver and gold.

Champagne. French. Because Sandu insisted upon that.

It was a chance to give his people a taste of true wealth and they reveled in it, nobles and peasants alike. Thin- or thick-blooded, they were drakon, and this was their night. And if, as the hours