The Winter King (22 page)

Poppy registered this, and mentally added
the Svalbard seed vault as must-visit on her bucket list. “That’s
incredible,” she said, meaning it. “But… why would you have dragons
guarding it?”

“
Because,” he said, and his
expression grew serious. “The vault also holds the seed of
Yggdrasil.”

Chapter Thirty-Two

In a good portion of the northern hemisphere
right now, it was winter. Snow fell in some locations, and in
others, it was sleet or slurry or freezing rain, whichever you
chose to call it. There were pockets of heat here and there, but
for the most part, people donned their long pants, weather proof
boots, and jackets. The sky had taken on that low-lying quality
that made people think of fire places and sofa throws and hot tea
or coffee.

But where Lalura currently sat and waited
for her first attacker, it was simply dark and quiet. The middle of
the desert tended to be like that at night. All around her, the air
was still, the sand was motionless in its dunes, and only the moon
and stars above shed light on the land below. She rocked back and
forth, creaking quietly in the rocking chair she’d chosen to wait
in. That it was capable of rocking in the sand could only be
chalked up to magic, of course.

Out here, in a place where peace had become
sacred long ago, the only living being for miles was Lalura
Chantelle. Out here, no one else could get hurt.

She’d brought a book to read while she
waited. It was a good one too. The author had just that sort of
story teller quality that pulled you out of the world around you
and into another one. Kept you reading. Even while the minutes
ticked away on the clock and impending doom drew nearer. Most
individuals would have gone slightly mad waiting for their attacker
second after second and hour after hour as she was doing. Time
would have gotten to them, made them twitch and fidget. They would
have given up or done something rash.

But Lalura didn’t mind waiting. Time and the
way it moved was something she’d grown quite accustomed to.

Time was a fickle, haughty
and punishing entity. Humans thought it to be a constant in the
universe. Even as they came to realization after realization that
space was not the constant they thought it to be – even as they
discovered and un-discovered black holes and dark matter and
anti-matter, they continued to believe that
time
was as they’d always thought it
was. But nothing could be farther from the truth.

Mortals didn’t realize that when time
“seemed to slow down” in the most boring or miserable moments, it
was because time had done exactly that. They didn’t know that when
it appeared to “fly when you’re having fun,” it was because time
had sped up for exactly that reason. Petty and cruel as the day was
long. That was time.

But she’d come to an agreement with time
long ago. And now it couldn’t touch her. Not in the way that
mattered.

So she sat silently and rocked quietly and
read the words that transported her to another dimension until her
enemy decided to make his appearance at last. The only thing that
surprised Lalura Chantelle this time around was that when her
attacker did appear, it was not a he – but a she.

“
I hadn’t expected
you
to be the one do
this, my dear,” her greeting softly rasped. She spoke without
looking up. She was at a good part in the book.

Several feet away, a pair of purple velvet
combat boots stood firmly planted in a fighter’s stance and a set
of long, pale but shapely legs supported a woman with fair skin, a
smattering of freckles, and waist-length hair the color of
lilac-dusted snow. That hair moved in an unseen and unfelt breeze
as the rest of the desert lay still and calm.

Light purple eyes gazed at the old woman in
the rocking chair. They were an inhuman and impossible color,
mesmerizing and unsettling. This was why they were normally
disguised by magic, as was the color of her hair. But right now,
they were as they’d been born – and they narrowed in anger.

“
Stand up and face me, you
wrinkled sack of ill-used magic.”

The voice was pure and beautiful. At the
sound of it, one would know immediately that it was capable of the
purest pitch, and lullabies that would send giants to long, deep
slumbers in their massive beds.

Lalura Chantelle laughed. She couldn’t help
it. It was a little annoying, because in such a quiet calm, her
grating chuckle was louder than ever. But laughter was good
nonetheless, was it not? The best medicine, they often said.

Unhurriedly, she summoned a bookmark from
thin air and placed it between the pages of the book she’d been
reading. Then she closed the novel with a sigh and looked up. “Your
manners have improved, I see.”

Those lavender hued eyes narrowed even
further, and a perfect set of bright white teeth gritted in
mounting fury. “No thanks to you.”

Lalura laughed again. “Oh,
of that I have no doubt, little one. I’m afraid I’ve never been a
fantastic influence on you. I suppose I just don’t have the
necessary instincts.” She took hold of the armrests of her rickety
old rocking chair and slowly got to her feet. She may have had an
agreement of sorts with time, but no one could escape
all
of its ravishments.
Her knees, hips and back at once felt the weight of her upon them,
and pain took hold of her form as it had increasingly done over the
last forty decades.

As usual, she pushed past it and focused on
the figure before her. “What is it exactly the Entity has sent you
to do to me, little one?”

Now it was her attacker’s turn to laugh. The
sound was beautiful as ever. It always had been, but the girl had
matured into a woman since the last time Lalura had beheld her; her
voice had matured as well. “You really are something else,” the
woman said through her laughter, and shook her head. “Are you
stalling for a reason hag, or are you just that unimpressed with me
as usual?”

“
Oh, I’ve never been
unimpressed with you, my dear.” She took a deep breath and sighed
heavily, preparing to use some of the magic she’d had summoned and
at the ready for ages. “Quite the opposite.”

The woman watched her in silence for a
moment. Then, just like that, she attacked.

Lalura fell back into the
dimensional pocket of safety she’d had prepared and shook her
head.
I suppose this puts and end to the
catch-up
. She drew her hands together,
closed her eyes, and let her magic flow. It shot through the
dimensional hole just as her opponent’s magic slammed into the
dimensional pocket so hard, it rocked violently around her. Magic
strong enough to move a dimension…. But, of course. She should have
expected no less.

The old witch managed to keep her balance,
allowing a bit of her power to stabilize her inside the pocket,
lifting her away from its boundaries so that no part of it touched
her body any longer. Then she opened her eyes and watched beyond
the pocket’s clear window as the magic she had sent out encountered
a shield of sparkling violet hue and runic symbols.

Mmm
, she thought.
She’s learned to
shield. Good girl
.

But there was so much more to learn. There
always would be. In fact, Lalura knew well that most of life was
about learning lessons. Some people only learned them the hard
way.

Lalura would know.

The wind that blew through her opponent’s
thick, shimmering hair picked up in speed, lifting the topmost
layer of sand from the desert’s floor to send it flying. The
woman’s purple eyes began to shed light, flickering as if purple
flames had been lit behind them. It was stunningly beautiful.
Everything about her was.

Lalura touched her hand to her heart and
resolved to do what she had to do. She’d known the attack would
come eventually, but she hadn’t wanted to truly harm her enemy
unless it was absolutely necessary. Most people were salvageable.
Even at her age, she still firmly believed that.

The woman outside attacked again, this time
piercing through the dimensional pocket with spears of hardened
air. They had bits of sand in them that interrupted the air’s
iridescence. It looked almost like ice. Lalura used her agreement
with time and slowed down a bit to take a single step back, saving
herself from the razor-sharp point of one of these spears by a few
millimeters.

She looked down and watched the long,
pointed cone of hardened air slowly turn in place.

“
Very well,” she said
softly.

The old woman drew her hands together one
final time, called for the magic she had hoped not to use, and sent
it hurling through the window at her attacker. She both saw and
felt her magic beat up against a shield, this one stronger than
before. But her power pushed stubbornly past it just enough to
touch the woman behind it.

A brush of darkness, and the spell was
done.

Quiet once more claimed the
desert. Lalura dissolved the dimensional pocket and stepped out.
Even now, the remnants of the stranger’s magic were so strong, a
breeze continued to whisper around the tall, pale woman’s fallen
form. It picked up strands of her violet-white hair and brushed
them gently across her beautiful face. Lalura approached the body
and said softly,
“Scribo Vale.”

A scroll tied with a violet ribbon appeared
before the woman’s body.

Then Lalura closed her blue eyes and
transported away.

Chapter Thirty-Three

“
But I thought Yggdrasil’s
seeds were snowflakes?”

“
The Great Tree’s
fruit
is snowflakes. It
has but one seed. It was all Yggdrasil could create. The Tree gave
it to Winter long ago for safe keeping. Just in case.”

They caught up with William as the trail
began to cut through a forest. It wasn’t as gradual a transition as
it would have been on Earth. In Dvalin, there were plush grass and
wild flowers one step, and in the next, the grass was split by the
trunks of trees so tall, they reminded Poppy of the redwoods back
home. The branches reached far overhead, shunning the sunlight and
providing a shaded, eerie feel to the forest’s depths. Poppy tried
to see completely through the forest in order to determine about
when they would be popping out the other side of the woods, but
somewhere in the crowd of trees, all light was lost and the trail
pretty much disappeared.

“
These are the kinds of
woods people write fairy tales about,” she said softly as they
moved deeper into the thick. Their boots made that wonderful
leather-on-stone sound Poppy had always adored, and suddenly she
realized something. She was at that very moment living every dream
she’d ever had. But for a bit of private and thrilling tenderness
between her legs, nothing hurt her right now. She felt tall and
beautiful and powerful. She was wearing her favorite outfit – her
best jeans, her most flattering white top, and her colorful scarf –
and favorite pair of boots. And she was walking on a cobbled-stone
path through unbelievably beautiful, dark and spooky woods,
escorted by two drop-dead gorgeous men, one of which she’d actually
slept with.

She glanced up at that particular gorgeous
man and a shiver went through her at the study of his outline. She
imagined him on his throne, calmly formidable. She imagined him in
that final battle, wielding that sword of ice as if it were an
extension of him. And she pictured him on that motorcycle she’d
first seen him leaning against – the one she’d obliterated.

She found herself grinning
ear to ear.
It doesn’t get better than
this
.

He suddenly came to a stop, and his arm
snaked down, his hand spanning her abdomen to bring her to a halt.
“Wait.”

Beside him, William stopped as well, and his
head cocked as if he were listening. Poppy really wanted to ask,
“What is it?” but that would probably utterly defeat the purpose of
standing very still and listening. It was obvious they didn’t know
what it was. They were trying to figure it out.

Poppy listened as well. She strained as she
very slowly looked through the forest around her. Once, years ago,
she’d been given a 1,000 piece puzzle as a gift for Christmas. It
was one of those puzzles that had four different ways in which you
could hang it, meaning there were four different bottoms, depending
on which image you wanted as your “main” image. Her favorite of the
four had been a forest with a path through it. The forest had been
so flawless, with straight, tall trees growing up from a smooth
grassy forest floor devoid of underbrush or sticker bushes or
anything else that could mar its perfection. The path had been
white stone and clean, free of trash or weeds. It had been the
ultimate fantasy setting, which was the only reason she actually
went through all the trouble of putting the damn thing
together.

That scene was almost exactly what she
looked into now as she peered hard into its far shadows and
attempted to make out what could have brought Kristopher to a
stand-still. After what must have been several full minutes, she
finally looked back up at him and was about to ask him what was
going on.

And then he spun, and she was shoved behind
him and into William’s arms as Kristopher moved so fast, he
literally blurred. His figure flashed, shifting from black leather
jacket-wearing hottie to Thor-like god, replete with a massive
sword of ice in his right hand. Crackling ice spread like wildfire
from the path and across the grass with terrifying speed. Within
milliseconds, it had climbed up the trunks of the nearest
trees.