For most of three days Falk’s magecarriage rolled northward, and Brenna sat in silence within it. Her guard was obviously under orders not to talk to her, and when they stopped along the way for meals, at first at towns, then, as they rolled into the northern forest, at the Royal way stations built at regular intervals, Falk did not speak to her, either. The driver, Robinton, would give her a “Good morning, miss,” and even a “Good night,” but that was the most conversation she had over the course of the journey.
The first night they spent in an inn in Berriton, the largest town in the Kingdom outside New Cabora, where the Colleges of Mages and Healers seemed to frown at each other on opposite banks of the North Evrenfels River. In the morning they were joined in the inn common room by a thin, sallow-faced mage, who climbed into the cabin of the magecarriage with her and the guard. He gave Brenna an appraising look, as though she were an unusual species of beetle, then pulled the hood of his coat around his head and promptly fell asleep.
Left with nothing else to do, Brenna stared out the window.
She had never realized, before flying across much of it west to east and now riding through it from north to south, how truly huge the Kingdom of Evrenfels was.
Huge-and underpopulated. The towns, except for New Cabora and Berriton, were very small. Each would announce its presence by the sudden appearance of cultivated fields instead of virgin prairie, and the occasional farmhouse, which ran from the snug to the ramshackle to, rather frequently, nothing more than rude sod huts. Brenna tried to imagine living for a winter in a house made of nothing but dirt, and shuddered. Those would be Commoners, of course, and they were typically only tenants of a Mageborn landlord, whose much bigger house of stone or wood would soon enough roll by. South of Berriton they had passed through Lord Athol’s land, and Brenna, spotting his manor in the distance, had seen that it rivaled Falk’s in size. I wonder if he’s got a singing fountain, too, she thought bitterly, as, with the multiple chimneys of the manor visible in the distance, they passed a sod hut where an old woman struggled through the snow carrying a load of firewood on her back.
On the second day, well north of Berriton, they left all signs of humanity behind except for the road and the Royal shelters. Flat, tall-grass prairie gave way to rolling hills covered with naked aspen, poplar, and birch; gradually, dark spruce became more abundant; and finally there was only black evergreen forest all around, stretching to the horizon, punctuated by the white sheets of frozen lakes that were visible whenever they topped a rise high enough to give a view over the treetops. Then they would plunge back into the forest again, and into cold, gray gloom.
On the second night, as Brenna climbed wearily down from the carriage, glad to stretch her legs, she noticed something. About noon the cold blue skies had given way to gray cloud; and now, as she gazed around her, she saw that the shelter they were to spend the night in, a large cabin made of unpeeled logs, stood on a bit of a hill; and that to the north, the cloud cover glowed a fitful red, waxing and waning in a slow, erratic cycle.
Brenna didn’t have to ask what it was. There could be only one thing this far north that could give the clouds that bloody tint: the Cauldron. If not for the cloud, she would surely be able to see the Barrier Range, and despite everything, she felt a pang of sorrow that it was hidden. She had always wanted to see mountains.
Brenna spent a restless night, that red glow finding its way into her dreams even through the sealed shutters. In the morning they were on their way again before any light crept through the lowering clouds, which now hung so close overhead that the glow of the Cauldron could no longer be seen. Robinton gave those clouds a worried look, and made certain that the coal furnace on the back of the carriage, which both heated the interior and provided energy for the spell that drove the carriage, was fully stoked-and the big coal bin below it packed to the brim-from the Royal shelter’s stores.
The terrain changed again, from flat forest to rocky hills and sudden cliffs, and even more lakes. The road wound and dipped and rose again, rounding vast sheets of ice, running alongside rivers, climbing hills, plunging into dark valleys. About noon it began to snow, at first lightly, but more and more heavily as they drove.
Brenna began to see bright flashes of blue light reflected off the snow outside. “Lightning?” she said out loud.
The cadaverous mage they had collected in Berriton, whose name she had gathered was Anniska, grunted. “Lord Falk clearing the way,” he said.
Brenna glanced over her shoulder at the wall, covered in plush red velvet, from which the carriage’s welcome warmth radiated. “Will the coal last?”
Anniska laughed. “I doubt he’s drawn on it at all. I know you can’t feel it, but we can.” He inclined his head at the guard, who nodded back.
“Feel what?” Brenna was just glad to finally have someone who would talk to her.
“The Cauldron,” Anniska said. “We’re close enough to draw on it directly. We can save our coal for the return trip.”
“Oh.” Brenna felt a chill that the warm wall behind her could do nothing to lift, and hoped she would be making that trip with them.
The snow slowed their travel, so that it had grown dark again by the time they reached the last shelter; dark, but not as dark as it would have been anywhere else, because now even the snow could not hide the glow of the Cauldron. When Brenna got out, the whole sky was red, a sullen, sulky red that flickered and flowed disturbingly.
She looked north. The road climbed, zigzagging, up a steep ridge. At its crest, the spruce trees were black cutouts against the bloody glow.
Inside the shelter, the driver and guard busied themselves with making food. Falk and Anniska sat talking together in low voices in one corner of the high-ceilinged main room, in chairs made of branches lashed together, upholstered in deerskin. Brenna sat in another near the huge fireplace, staring at the flames. No one made any move to prepare sleeping quarters. Instead, they waited.
Brenna could only pick at the plate of venison, potatoes, and carrots put in front of her. She managed to eat a little bread and drink a little water, but that was all her stomach would allow. The two mages seemed no more interested in eating than she did, and even their conversation died away as the evening dragged toward midnight.
But finally Falk said, “It’s time,” and got to his feet. Anniska followed him to the door and joined him in pulling on coats and boots once more. The guard materialized behind Brenna’s chair. “Miss,” he rumbled.
Brenna wished she hadn’t eaten even the little she had. Her insides felt like water and her knees like green twigs, but she managed to stand and pull on her own coat, hat, gloves, and boots.
Mother Northwind, she prayed, I hope to the SkyMage you were telling me the truth.
If the witch hadn’t told her what Falk intended for her, how would she be feeling now, she wondered? Just as terrified by the strange silence that gripped everyone as they once more climbed into the magecarriage?
No, she thought. Worried, puzzled, but without this gut-wrenching terror, because she would never have thought that Falk meant to kill her.
And suddenly over top of the fear came a surge of anger at the witch, always manipulating, telling her what she had told her just so she wouldn’t tell Falk that Mother Northwind was not the ally-or tool-he seemed to think her.
If I live through the next hour, she vowed to herself, I will tell Falk what I know, and to the Cauldron with the consequences!
Then she winced at that common but, given the circumstances, unfortunate oath. It might not be consequences that were consigned to the Cauldron this night.
The magecarriage surged forward, up the hill, toward the lowering red clouds. Brenna gripped the hanging strap dangling by her head so tightly her knuckles popped, and held on.
They climbed, switching back and forth, up the steep slope. The clouds drew closer and closer until Brenna was convinced they would plunge into them before they finally crested the ridge, but suddenly they were over the top and switchbacking down the other side… and as the path of the magecarriage turned her window toward the north, she caught her first glimpse of the Cauldron, and thought her heart would burst through her chest as it began to race in terror.
A vast lake of molten rock stretched into the snowveiled distance, its crust of black shot through with lightninglike red cracks and, in places, wide, slow-moving rivers of bright yellow. The stench of sulfur rose from it, and already she could feel its heat, the temperature inside the carriage rapidly approaching that of a steam bath. She took off her hat, then her gloves, stuffing them into one of her coat pockets, then had to open her coat. Across
