A reply came back to Semwe with unusual swiftness, as if it had been penned and sent immediately with the postboy.
Semwe found that this letter took away very little of his bafflement and concern, but he was at least reassured by their promise to look after Paama. It was the comment about his prospective son-in-law that made him uneasy. What he would do to avoid another son-in-law like Ansige!
14
a lesson in the appropriate use of power
Paama stumbled forward and was instantly aware of icy cold hammering up through the soles of her thin slippers like bolts of frozen iron. She was standing on snow. She breathed in, and it felt like a thousand tiny spikes of ice in her nose, throat, and lungs. A cloud blew out of her nostrils as she exhaled. Her eyes prickled and watered in the cold, dry breeze. Everywhere was white.
The indigo lord studied her, his eyes bleakly distant. He walked a few paces away and sat on a snow- covered boulder, apparently immune to the cold, and continued to watch her.
'Put the Stick down by my feet,’ he commanded her.
Her half-frozen fingers were clenched tightly around the Stick, but Paama managed to ease her grip, step forward, and stiffly put the Stick down in the thin carpet of snow. He looked at her suspiciously as she edged away and then bent and picked it up.
Nothing happened.
He glared at it and then glared at her. ‘You are still holding it.'
'Well, I don't know how I could be, when I'm standing over here!’ she snapped at him, frustration overcoming fear. ‘And barely standing, at that, as my feet have gone numb. If you are going to kill me, do it now before the cold does it for you!'
He ignored her and turned the inert Stick over in his hands. Without warning, he raised it in both hands and brought it down hard over his leg. It did not break, though it seemed he could not feel pain. The bafflement and annoyance in his expression increased.
Paama began to shiver violently. ‘P-please,’ she begged, ‘let us get off this mountain—'
'We are not on a mountain,’ he corrected absently, still frowning at the Stick. ‘We have merely gone south ... very far south.'
'You are killing me,’ she whispered.
His answer was to throw the Stick back to her. She caught it clumsily with hands that felt like dead weights on the end of amputated stumps.
'Give it to me again,’ he ordered.
Almost vibrating with cold, she obeyed. This time, as he closed his hand over the Stick just above her gripping hand, a sudden squall of sleet drove between them and whipped up the scant covering of snow. The sun, which had been disappearing at intervals behind fast-scudding clouds, blazed out with a brightness magnified several times over by the reflecting snow, and the air sparkled with tiny rainbows.
Paama screamed, and he flung her away from him. As she fell into the wet snow, still holding the Stick, the sleet and wind vanished, the unnatural brightness of the sun diminished, and the rainbows and sparkles disappeared.
'What is that?’ he said very seriously, reaching out to touch the Stick again.
Immediately the squall returned in full force and the sun beat fiercely through the swirling whiteness. Paama cowered on the ground, overwhelmed, and waited to die. Then something unexpected and immensely comforting happened.
'Paama!'
It was Sister Deian's voice. Somehow, even at this distance, even after all the drama of recent events, the Sisters were still watching and aware. There was still hope that she could be found. The thought made her raise her head and boldly face her enemy.
'Stop! We cannot hold it together! You will kill us both!’ she screamed at him.
He pulled his hand away, bringing the weird weather to an abrupt end, and stared at her. From the look on his face, Paama guessed that he had never been at a loss before.
'I don't want to kill you. I simply want my power back. My power, my own, that which I was made to wield.'
'Then prove it to me,’ she panted. ‘Let us leave this terrible place before I freeze to death.'
He glanced down at her feet in their thin slippers, now soaked-through with melted snow, and finally understood. With that gesture that was now becoming familiar, he cast out his bubble of time and folded it in until they were somewhere else.
It was like being thrown into an oven. Paama crouched in agony, clasping her hands and pressing her feet as the blood returned painfully to her extremities. Squinting up into the brightness of a noonday sun, she saw the branches of a date palm and felt grass beneath her. Sand dunes curved artistically along the eastern horizon with the austere beauty of deadliness, and the bones of some ruined town stood brokenly on the western horizon.
'Wait here,’ the lord said abruptly.
'No!’ she shouted. ‘Don't leave me here!'
He said impatiently, ‘I have told you I am not going to kill you. I am going to get shoes and clothes for you, that is all.'
'Then let me come, too,’ she insisted, panicked at the thought of being abandoned.
He shrugged in annoyance and turned away. She got up slowly, teetering on swollen feet, and stumbled after him over the hot, hard-packed sand and gravel.
'Where is this place?’ she asked, not expecting to be answered.
'A desert east of the country you know,’ he replied vaguely. ‘There is treasure?’ he paused and thumped a foot down on the hard sand ‘...?own here.'
He reached out and took her hand without warning, and they fell through the solid ground as if they had suddenly become ghosts. Paama tried to scream but found herself unable to breathe until, with a slight splash, they landed in darkness, ankle deep in gently running water. It was mildly cold and soothing to her burned feet, and the air was moist and cool on her sun-scorched face, but she could not see. He dropped her hand, and she snatched desperately at the air to find where he was standing.
'I cannot see!’ she wailed.
'Stop it,’ he said, sounding more tired than annoyed.
