The cottage itself was nondescript, a simple structure of logs caulked with clay, roofed with slate. It might have been there forever, but Lord Falk knew it had been built new, magically, literally overnight just eighteen years before: knew, because he had had it built, when Mother Northwind had entered his service (if that was quite the right phrase for it) and set him on the path that would shortly lead to the destruction of the Barrier…
… if the attempt to assassinate Prince Karl did not upset everything.
Well. That was why he was here. He strode forward, boots crunching through the crusted snow.
As he came nearer to the cottage, he heard singing. The tune was a well-worn old folk tune, but the words described the improbable adventures of one Axnay the Well-Hung. She’s home, then, Falk thought wryly, as he stepped up onto the low porch and knocked three times.
The tune cut off in mid-verse, “leaving poor Axnay embarrassingly unsatisfied. “Enter, then,” said a woman’s voice, and Lord Falk pulled the door open and stepped into the warm yellow glow of the cabin’s interior.
Mother Northwind sat in a rocking chair by the cheerily crackling fire, a sky-blue shawl drawn around her shoulders and a bright red scarf covering most of her gray curls. She looked pretty much exactly how someone raised on children’s stories and the skits of traveling players would expect someone named Mother Northwind to look. Lord Falk, however, knew that her image as a harmless old hedge-mage living in a storybook cottage in the wood was very carefully crafted. It endeared her to the Commoners of his demesne, who saw her as “their” Healer far more than they did Eddigar (especially the women), while keeping her accessible to Falk when he had need of her more… exotic services.
Mother Northwind was, in fact, the most powerful practitioner of soft magic in the Kingdom, a Healer without equal. But that was not why Falk valued her. For Healing, he had Eddigar. Much of Healing was actually a form of hard magic, anyway: the knitting of a broken bone was no different in principle from the welding together of rock to make a wall. What set Healers apart was the ability to soothe troubled minds, relieve pain, erase nightmares. The other difference between the two branches of magic was that while hard magic required an outside source of energy (heat from the air, from the Palace’s MageFurnace, from the Magefire in the manor’s basement), the energy for soft magic came from the body of the mage him- or herself. Falk recalled how exhausted Eddigar had been after dealing with a series of serious injuries following the collapse of a granary under construction in Overbridge. Only one man had died, thanks to the Healer, but Falk had feared Eddigar would be the second.
But Eddigar was to Mother Northwind in his abilities as a Mageborn child who had just learned to illuminate a magelight was to Lord Falk. And it was from Mother Northwind that Falk had learned the other way in which a powerful soft mage could obtain the energy for her work-not from herself, but from the person she touched.
Mother Northwind could heal with a touch, and so she did. But Mother Northwind could also kill with a touch, willing a man’s heart to stop. She could alleviate pain, but she could also, without leaving a visible mark, cause pain so great that a man’s throat might be ripped to bloody shreds by his screaming.
More, Mother Northwind could get inside a man’s mind without his knowing she had violated it, and recover nuggets of information he would much rather have kept hidden: nuggets suitable for blackmail, nuggets providing evidence of treason or graft, nuggets that might betray his dearest friends to their blackest enemies.
Supposedly such magic required touch, and for that reason Falk never allowed Mother Northwind close enough to touch him. Of course, “supposedly” was not the same as assuredly. But Mother Northwind also knew that if Falk ever suspected she had been inside his mind, he would blow her into shreds of bloody meat with a flick of his hand.
In such mutual fear and respect, they had become something almost like friends.
Well, perhaps not friends, Falk amended. Coconspirators.
Twenty-five years ago, shortly after he had become Minister of Public Safety, and he and Tagaza had begun to despair of arranging the complex circumstances for bringing down the Barriers, Mother Northwind had come to him one night at the manor, presenting herself as a Commoner from Overbridge with a grievance. He had had her ushered in, and in the privacy of his office, she had revealed that she knew exactly what he wanted to do (though she had never explained how she knew), and just how impossible it seemed. And then she had offered a solution. “The King,” she said, “needs an Heir. The necessary act has appeared to be beyond his capabilities, but I have it on good authority… a Healer within the Palace… that that is about to change.
“There will be an Heir, Lord Falk. Nine months from, oh, this time next week. And he-or she-can be yours.”
“Why?” he had asked her. “Why would you help me in this?”
“Why do you care?” she had said. “Suffice it to say I want the Barrier down as much as you do. And you cannot accomplish that task without my help.”
Falk had not pressed more deeply; he dared not, with the solution to his problem delivered so neatly to his doorstep.
Nine months later, as Mother Northwind had promised, King Kravon’s wife had given birth. The baby had lived; she had died. The Royal Midwife, apparently distraught at having failed her Queen, committed suicide that same night. And a week after that, while the Mageborn were still both mourning the death of the Queen and celebrating the birth of Prince Karl, Heir Apparent to the throne of Evrenfels, Mother Northwind had brought to Falk, waiting in his manor, a squalling female bundle which he had given over into the care of a woman from the village. “Call the child Brenna,” Mother Northwind had told him. “And now let us discuss the cottage you are going to build for me.. .”
Now Falk stood inside the door of that same cottage, looking at Mother Northwind in her chair by the fire. The flames struck sharp red sparks from her eyes, bright and hard as a crow’s. “Lord Falk,” she said. “So nice to see you again. Did you have a pleasant trip from the Palace last night?”
“There’s nothing pleasant about spending most of twenty-four hours in a magecarriage,” Falk said. “But all that matters is that I am here
… although I trust I am not the first visitor from the Palace you have had today.”
Mother Northwind laughed, a hearty, fruity laugh, not at all like the thin cackle she normally affected, which better suited her carefully crafted appearance. “Indeed you are not,” she said. “Your men dropped off my other… guest… a couple of hours ago. She wasn’t nearly as lively as you, though. Dead on her feet, you might say. Charry, but not cheery.”
Lord Falk sighed. Mother Northwind had an… iconoclastic… sense of humor. “But did she have anything to say?”
Mother Northwind’s smile widened. “She did, indeed! You did well to get her into stasis so quickly. I was able to retrieve more than I expected when you first sent word.”
Falk leaned forward. “And?”
Mother Northwind tsked. “So eager,” she said. “Rushing to fulfillment is no way to please a woman.”
“ And? ” Falk repeated, putting an edge into his voice.
Mother Northwind spread her hands. “And,” she said, “she went to her death firmly convinced that she was carrying out the wishes of.. . the Master of the Unbound.
“ I am the Master of the Unbound!” Falk snarled.
Mother Northwind’s eyes widened. “Really? And you are the Minister of Public Safety. It’s a scandal!”
“ I did not give an order to attempt to assassinate the Prince. What purpose would it serve? Especially now?”
Mother Northwind shrugged. “You hardly have to convince me. But I haven’t finished telling you what I learned.”
“Go on.”
“She believed she was carrying out the wishes of the Master of the Unbound… in alliance with the Common Cause.”
That was so unexpected Falk was struck speechless for a moment. “The Unbound in alliance with Commoner rabble-rousers?” he said at last. “Who could believe that?”
“Our would-be assassin, apparently. A Commoner herself, and a-call her a foot soldier-of the Common Cause, she was acting on orders from the Cause… but had been told that the magic that made her attack possible had come from the Unbound. What she thought of that, I cannot tell. There are limits to what may be retrieved from the dead.” She smiled sweetly. “But perhaps, Lord Falk, you are not as fully in control of the Unbound as you think.”
Falk’s eyes narrowed. “You have personally vetted every member of the Unbound, have you not?”
