The second day of running brought him deep into the snowbound clime of northern Uduria. The ground was lost beneath ankle-deep snow, icicles hung from the branches of trees, and he leaped across frozen streams. Ice crystals hung in his hair and on the fringes of his boot-tops. The cold was a constant companion. He felt no pain, only a distant sense of discomfort. What would have frozen a human man to death in hours was harmless as a toothache to the son of Vod and Shaira. He would not let small things like ice and snow keep him from the white fox.
It was no animal, he knew that now. He no longer wanted to skin it. He did not know what he would do with it, but he would capture it. Time later to decide its fate.
The white forest turned to scarlet as the sun sank into the western hills. Once again he saw the pale girl, closer this time. She squatted on a low crag of icy granite, her blonde tresses mingling with the icicles along its summit. Again he stopped, a steaming icon among the wintery landscape. Her feet were bare upon the ice, and her black eyes met his own. Her lips were soft pink, the color of the fox’s tongue. She watched him watching her, and she smiled. He walked closer, snow crackling beneath his boots. She raised a lithe, colorless arm and pointed southward, the way he had come.
Her eyes said, Go back.
Vireon shook his head, shedding bits of frost from his hair. His heavy breaths filled the space between them like a warm mist.
Without warning he bounded toward the crag, but she was gone. He climbed its face and saw the white fox leaping through the snow.
North… always north. Who is she?
He looked southward for an instant. Hunger gnawed inside his belly. The cold wrapped his skin like a rough fabric. She was the most stunning girl he had ever seen. If he turned back now, as she seemed to want him to, he may never see her again.
He scanned the white hills ahead; they stretched like a pallid blanket across the northern world. Who knew what lay among that white waste? What secrets did the frozen north keep to itself?
He had seen one of them.
Jumping from the crag into a snowdrift, he ran toward the fox-woman’s delicious scent. Now that snow and ice muted the forest, her fragrance was easier to follow than ever. He sped through the winterland like a wild buck fleeing invisible predators. But he was the predator. He would catch this gorgeous treasure and hold her in his arms and… at least he would know her name. He would caress her marble flesh, swim the intimate depth of her eyes… taste those ripe lips.
All that day and into a frozen night he ran. Snow fell again, and he ignored it. He delved deep into the winterlands, far from any recognizable landmarks save the frosted Uyga trees, which grew sporadically from Kdic dethe snowy ground. A range of white-capped mountains stood on the horizon, rising over walls of eternal fog. He had no name for those peaks, nor had any Uduru every spoken of them. The snow was knee-deep here, and far deeper in places. Several times he fell into fissures and had to claw his way out with knife and bare fingers. When he emerged from these white caverns the fox stood nearby as if waiting… but it fled again at first sight of him.
On the third day a pack of wolves ran beside him, snarling with hunger. He ran faster, hoping to outdistance them, but they matched his speed. The reek of their carnivore breath and matted pelts obscured the fox’s scent, and this irritated him. He turned on the pack’s frothing leader, grabbing it around the neck. Locked together they rolled down a frozen slope, the other wolves loping behind, eager for a kill.
Vireon’s knife slit the big wolf’s throat as they tumbled, and at the bottom of the slope he left it bleeding into the whiteness. The wolves had their feast. The sound of their gnashing and chewing receded as he raced northward. The scent of the fox-woman was faint, but he caught it on the frigid wind and ran faster, the knife clutched in his fist and smoking with wolf’s blood. It finally went cold and red crystals froze along the blade.
On the fourth day the icy mountains loomed closer, and Vireon’s weariness caught up with him. He stopped in a deep ravine, standing up to his waist in snow, and sniffed the air for the fox-woman’s scent. She was near, but he could not pinpoint her direction anymore. His vision blurred. He was tired, at last, after days of running. His limbs ached with cold, or fatigue, he could not tell. He was beginning to know his limits, something entirely new to him. But still he would not give up.
The world turned to shades of gray about him as he followed his nose and trudged up the ravine. On either side the walls rose thousands of feet, and Uyga trees topped them like snow-crowned sentinels. He stared up at the trees, seeing for a moment the image of his Uduru cousins garbed in white, looking down as if to cheer him on. Or warning him to go back. Go. Return to the land of sun and warmth, they whispered.
No, he breathed. His face had begun to sprout a shallow beard, frosted to the color of snow.
Then he smelled the sour stench of unwashed Uduru, and thought somehow his cousins had actually followed him. The walls of the ravine shook about him, shards of ice and shale sliding into the gorge. Six great figures rose before him, blue-skinned giants draped in reeking pelts of bear and mountain tiger. He stopped, blinking exhausted eyes. His cousins could not be here… This was a trick of the mind. Was the fox-woman a sorceress, and this some final trick to elude pursuit?
Vireon squinted, looking up into the face of the nearest blue-skin. A necklace of bones, fangs, and claws hung about the great neck. The face above it was heavy-browed, flat-nosed, with a jutting chin and a beard entirely frozen into jagged icicles. The wild mane of hair was snow-pale. The eyes, however, were crimson. Pupils as red as fresh-flowing blood, a marked contrast to the indigo skin. A ring of bronze hung from the broad nostrils, two more from the big flat earlobes. Vireon’s head spun.
Are they ghosts? he wondered. Spirits of frozen Uduru who wandered too far north in some ancient age?
They barked at him, a few guttural syllables in tones of primordial contempt.
Surrounded by the stink of their moldy furs and sweat-caked bodies, he had lost the scent of the fox-woman entirely. He moaned.
The blue-skin before him raised a tree above its shaggy head. Not a tree, a mace of black iron. He realized this too late as the blue-skin brought the weapon crashing against his bare skull.
Thunder and sparks.
The snow rose up to greet him like a feather bed, and at last Vireon slept.
A ribbon of crimson flowed from his scalp, melting a tiny rivulet into the snow.
6
The Royal Gardens of Uurz encircled the soaring walls of the palace proper like a swathe of preserved wilderness. In the works of sages and poets they stood alongside such wonders as the Forest of Jewels in Mumbaza, the Great Earth Wall that divided the continent into Low and High Realms, and the Giant-City of New Udurum. Every known species of plant, tree, and fruit grew in Emperor Dairon’s circular courtyard, a treasury of botanical imports from across the world. Rare birds from Khyrei, Yaskatha and the Southern Isles filled the green canopies with melodious warbling; blue-furred monkeys built tiny huts in the tops of the trees; feline predators, great cats in shades of gold, alabaster, and amber, walked between the walls of sunken enclosures. A popular saying held that there were more blossoms in the Emperor’s Garden than living souls in the six kingdoms.
To walk the winding ways of the Royal Gardens was to visit aspects of every forest and glade, every lush jungle and valley, inhaling the redolence of the entire world’s foliage with every breath. The intoxicating air made women swoon and filled men’s heads with fancies, dreams, and holy visions. Yet to Prince D’zan, sitting by himself on a stone bench beneath a Yaskathan fig tree, the garden’s delights were only shadows… dim, powerless shades existing at the edge of his dulled senses.
He did not touch the plate of fruit and cheese brought by servants for his morning meal, or the cup of spiced wine from his homeland. He stared into the green depths of the garden but saw none of its gaudy birds, hanging vines, or blooming colors. The birdsong and the distant songs of minstrels were sluggish winds in his ears. He wrapped himself in his own arms. In the humid heat of this man-made paradise he sat shivering and chewing on his
