“Well, actually, I’m here to rescue Aruendiel,” Nora said, a defiant note in her voice. “Or whatever I can do. He’s a prisoner at Maarikok. Dorneng and Ilissa somehow captured him. I don’t know if you know that she escaped and—”
“I know about the Faitoren rebellion,” he interrupted. “That’s why I’m here. But, wait, you say Dorneng
“Yes, Dorneng was working with Ilissa.” The young man whistled under his breath as she went on: “And before the ice demon made a meal of Dorneng, Dorneng told me that they had captured Aruendiel and were keeping him at Maarikok. So I’m going there.”
“Wait, tell me all that slowly,” he said.
Nora went through the story again, starting with how Hirizjahkinis and Dorneng had come to Aruendiel’s castle to give the alarm. After she had finished, the young man was silent for a minute.
“Lord Aruendiel a prisoner, imagine that,” he said finally. “And how do you plan to free him, once you get to Maarikok?”
Nora hesitated. “I’ll have to figure that out. And you? You’re here because of the Faitoren rebellion?” An unpleasant thought struck her. “Which side—”
“I’m here to fight against the Faitoren, not with them,” he said. “I rode north with my cousin Ourvelren, but we were separated in a skirmish with the Faitoren, and my horse was killed. Now I am trying to rejoin the king’s forces. So we are on the same side, you and I—and perhaps we should introduce ourselves properly. I am Perin Pirekenies. I am ashamed that I don’t remember your name, Lady—”
“Nora.”
“Lady Nora, good,” he said, with brisk approbation—for what, Nora was not quite sure, but there was something so reassuring in his manner that she felt her spirits rise. “When I set out,” Perin continued, “I did not envision myself rescuing Lord Aruendiel—but he is too valuable an ally to leave in the enemy’s hands, so I offer you my services.” She felt him studying her again. “You must be fond of him to travel to his aid in deep winter in the company of an ice demon.”
“Yes, well, Aruendiel is my teacher, and he has been very good to me,” Nora said. She thought of saying that he was her friend as well as her teacher, but—remembering her last conversation with Perin—was afraid of being misinterpreted. “He has treated me with nothing but respect,” she added meaningfully.
“I am glad of it,” Perin said.
Nora had to promise the ice demon double rations before it would agree not to eat Perin in the night. She was running rapidly through her stock of poems, not to mention Dorneng’s small supply of food. It was fortunate that they were so close to Maarikok.
Perin, though, was not so sanguine about their route. The next morning, as they ate a rough gruel made from melted snow and dried-out bread, he suggested that they circle north to avoid Faitoren patrols. He sketched a rough map in the snow.
“So we’re not far from Faitoren territory, then,” Nora said, studying it.
“Frankly, I think you are lucky not to have met them already.” The new route, he said, would add perhaps another day to their journey.
“All right.” She sighed. “But I warn you, Dorneng doesn’t travel very fast. It will be more like two days.”
Perin frowned and glanced over at the former magician. Dorneng’s mouth hung open, a trickle of gruel staining his unshaven chin. He had barely eaten this morning. With each passing day he seemed more shrunken, less responsive.
Perin was no doubt ready to suggest that they leave Dorneng behind. Nora steeled herself to resist, while wondering if she was being incredibly stupid to give a damn about Dorneng’s welfare. Instead, Perin said, rising: “We can make better time than you think. There’s an ice-bull skeleton nearby—I almost broke my ankle tripping over it last night.”
“A what?” Nora asked, but he had already disappeared into the reeds.
He reappeared dragging two enormous curved things that Nora at first took for staves of weather-bleached wood. Then she saw that they were bones—the ribs of a very large animal. After another trip, he brought back two more. “The skull must be frozen under this ice,” he said. “The tusks would be worth a pretty penny in Semr— if you want to come back after the spring thaw.” He grinned at her.
“This is an ice bull?” A dinosaur seemed more likely, from the size of the bones.
“Why do you think they call it the Ivory Marshes?” Perin said.
With leather ties from his pack, he made a crude sled from the bones. They set Dorneng on it and let the ice demon—still sulky, still muttering about how delicious Perin would taste—ride in his lap. Perin pulled the sled while Nora contributed a mild levitation spell to keep the runners from sticking. They could travel twice as fast as she and Dorneng alone, she found.
At last, she thought, something is going right.
In daylight it was easy enough to recognize Perin as the young man she had met in Semr, even though that encounter felt as though it had happened years ago. Now she remembered not just the red hair, but the ease and openness of his manner. He bore himself as though he were inclined to be pleased with whatever or whomever he encountered. And yet there was nothing naive about him: His shrewd brown eyes, already edged by a few wrinkles, seemed to miss very little. The overall effect, Nora found, was to make you feel determined to live up to the warm opinion that he had already formed of you.
She learned he was a captain in the King’s Guard. He was twenty-seven years old, the oldest of nine children. His father had an estate in eastern Muergen, wherever that was. He was unmarried, although his parents had started telling him it was high time to secure a suitable bride. His father also wanted him to obtain a position at court, but Perin was still weighing the idea.
“The king has plenty of flatterers already,” he said. “Not that I am so opposed to flattery, but I’ve had relatively little practice in it, and the competition in Semr is terrible.”
There were no awkward pauses in conversation with Perin, Nora found. After a little while, it was as though she had known him a long time, and in a way she had—he reminded her of certain young men she’d known in her own world, cheerful, responsible sorts launching themselves in medicine or law or business with energy and optimism. She often found them attractive—they had frank and fearless smiles and well-tended, athletic bodies—but regrettably they were always engaged to longtime girlfriends they’d met in college. She almost forgot her fears for Aruendiel as they went along, it was so refreshing to talk to someone of her own age who talked un-self-consciously about himself but who was even more interested in finding out about Nora. He seemed surprised to learn that some of the rumors he had heard about her in Semr were true.
“You are really from another world?” Nora assured him that she was. But he was not entirely convinced. “You are not very different from someone born here. You speak the same language—you have the right number of eyes, ears, limbs—”
Nora laughed. “Thank you! Although in fact we speak a different language in my world—you heard me recite those poems. I’ve been told that I speak Ors rather poorly.”
“With a strange accent, but no stranger than other accents I have heard.” Perin smiled and shook his head. “Well, which world do you prefer?”
No one had asked her that before. “Oh, I miss my own world a lot,” she started. “My family, my friends.” He wanted to hear more about them, so she talked about her parents and her sisters until she began to be afraid that she was boring him. “On the other hand,” she said, seeking to change the subject, “there’s no magic in my world.” People always seemed to be startled by that notion. Perin was, too, but not quite in the way she had anticipated.
“By the day-blade, you’re lucky! This world would be a better place without magic, to my mind. Sorcerers have too much power, nothing happens in this kingdom without their say-so—and yet so much of their magic is useless.”
“I wouldn’t say that.”
“Look at why we’re here. Wizards at war with other wizards, but in the end it will be decided by swords and men. That’s always the way, in all the battles I’ve ever been in, no matter which wizard we had on our side.”
