She gathered her cloak and mittens and changed her shoes for heavier boots. As he promised, the sky arced a clear, deep blue overhead. Louvaen squinted against the sun’s glare after so many weeks spent either outdoors with gray-washed skies or indoors under candlelight. The snow had cleared, but the air burned like cold fire in her nostrils and lungs. The stable’s warmth practically lulled her into a torpor after the bracing temperatures outside. Magnus nickered and blew at her skirts as she waited for Ballard to saddle him.
“He doesn’t mind a second person?” She and Cinnia often rode Plowfoot together, but their mild-mannered draught horse was nothing like this sleek, battle-ready courser.
Ballard adjusted the cinch strap and blanket beneath the saddle. “No. You may not recall, but he carried us both back to the castle after you fell in the pond.” He focused on her next, pulling her hood forward to shelter her face and tightening the laces at her throat. Unlike her, he was impervious to the chill and wore only a quilted surcoat over a heavy wool shirt and leather breeches. “Are you ready?” She nodded, and he sprang nimbly into the saddle without using the stirrup. She took his offered arm and swung behind him, landing neatly on Magnus’s rump amidst a flurry of skirts.
“I told you I didn’t need a stool.” She proceeded to squirm until she adjusted her dress to her satisfaction and Magnus snorted his disapproval.
Ballard looked over his shoulder. “No, but a pair of breeches instead of your dress might have worked better.”
Louvaen slid her arms around his narrow waist and nestled against his back for warmth. “Stop complaining. This ride was your idea.” She very much liked the way the low laugh vibrating along his spine made her cheek tingle.
They rode through the bailey, skirting the serpentine roses. The blooms swiveled on their stems as Magnus trotted past, the crimson petals opening and closing. They hissed their disapproval as the horse rode by, untroubled by their presence. Louvaen pressed closer to Ballard and hissed back.
They crossed the smaller bridge notched into the back of the castle. It stretched across the chasm at the narrowest point, putting them on the track leading to the pond. Louvaen shuddered at the memory of falling into that black, frozen water.
Ballard must have felt her shivers. “Too cold?” he said over his shoulder.
“Not yet.” She was grateful when he led Magnus off the path and down another that twisted and turned through a maze of trees before descending into a shallow gulley and up again to a narrow ridge that hugged the forest edge. They rode without speaking, serenaded by the creak of Ballard’s saddle and the muffled rhythm of the horse’s gait as he trod on a carpet of dead leaves layered with snow. Louvaen settled in to enjoy the ride. Her legs and back prickled from the cold, but the front of her torso stayed warm as she held Ballard close and gazed upon the bare forest locked in winter.
She straightened abruptly when a flash of blue danced in the corner of her eye and disappeared. The flash appeared again, rippling within the shadows cast by a thick stand of birches. Three more times it teased her, flitting in and out of her vision quick as a firefly in summer. She tapped Ballard’s arm. “Are we near a strong pool of magic? There’s blue light darting through the trees.”
His reply surprised her. “You can’t deny your mother’s heritage, mistress. Those of us without the gift of magery don’t see what you do. We’re following the line of Ambrose’s ward. I’m told the boundary sometimes shimmers blue.”
Louvaen peered more closely into the trees and this time noted the odd rippling effect—like a wall of clear water—passing through the undergrowth. The tingles dancing upon her skin were more than just the cold. Magic streamed off the barrier in cerulean runnels, leaving glowing tracers over tree limbs and along the snow-spackled ground. She leaned around Ballard to track the barrier’s path. It edged the ridge, continuing past her line of sight. “How far does the ward go?”
“A league in all directions.”
She gasped. Ballard had mentioned Ambrose possessed an impressive talent for sorcery. Only now did she understand the scope of his power. Erecting and maintaining a barrier so large required a conjurer of both formidable strength and decades of experienced spell-casting. Louvaen groaned into Ballard’s back. “Dear gods, Ambrose could have turned me into a toad or a slug with the snap of his fingers.”
“I believe he’s done so in the past to a few unfortunates foolish enough to cross him.”
He swept his arm across the panoramic view. “My lands once covered ten times the distance they do now, and Ketach Tor nearly burst at the seams with people. I spent my days administering court, settling disputes, reading estate reports, gathering rents and hunting. Sometimes I went to war.”
He recited his past duties as she would a list of those things she needed for market, but Louvaen caught the wistfulness in his flat description. She tightened her arms around his middle. “The flux changed everything.”
“Aye. We’re cut off from the world with only Gavin to tell us of news when he returns from his journeys.”
The manifestations caused by the flux confused her. She was no magic user, even if she could see magic at work, but fluxes were nothing more than swells of power, sometimes channeled by sorcerers for good or evil, but neutral on their own. “I don’t understand. Wild magic isn’t malicious or vengeful; just unpredictable. Why has this pool changed you so much and imprisoned you here?”
He stiffened against her. “You’ll have to talk to Ambrose about such things. He’s the wizard, not I.” His voice had sharpened, whetted on a biting sarcasm that took her aback and signaled an end to any more conversation on the topic.
Louvaen heeded the warning and went quiet. She’d never been one to tiptoe around people, preferring a straightforward approach that was sometimes heavy-handed. It had made her more enemies than friends, but no one was ever unsure where they stood with her. She didn’t believe her question insulted Ballard, but something she said had split the scab on an old wound that still smarted, and he’d snarled in response. One part of her understood this and respected his boundary; the other part bristled, stung by his suddenly hostile manner. She swallowed a biting retort and strangled the temptation to box his ears.
A gravid silence swelled between them. Several times during her stay at Ketach Tor she’d kept wordless company with Ballard, an easy quiet with only the rhythmic tap of her foot on the spinning wheel’s treadle to mar it. This was different.
Louvaen sat up straight and pulled her hands from where they rested against Ballard’s sides. He captured one hand, pressing it hard to his ribs. “Don’t,” he said. “Don’t draw away from me.” He tugged her hand upward and bent to kiss her gloved fingertips. His tone remained somber but no longer carried the earlier hostility. “There are regrets hard to ponder, even harder to speak of. I can’t answer your question, Louvaen; I won’t. I value your regard too much to lose it.”
Louvaen tilted her head, puzzled by the ominous statement, and shivered within her cloak as a chill that had nothing to do with the weather drizzled down her back. “I can be a fishwife of the worst sort, my lord, but I’m a lot more forgiving than most people think. I would hope to comfort instead of judge.”
He tugged on her hand a second time, forcing her to lean into his back once more as he wrapped her arm snugly around his middle. Her other arm soon joined, and she embraced him fully. “Your companionship is my greatest comfort, mistress.”
“I’ll remind you of that the next time I dive naked into that ice pit you call a bed.”
He rewarded her jesting with a soft chuckle, and relaxed in the saddle. “You accuse me unjustly now, Louvaen. The bed’s been warm these past nights.”
She couldn’t argue that one. He’d wielded the warming pan as enthusiastically as he did a sword, telling her several times that his reward for the effort far outweighed the humbleness of the task. Louvaen made sure she rewarded him as often as possible for the kindness.
They continued their journey along the boundaries of his diminished demesne, riding beside fenced pasture land that held the flock of wooly sheep Ambrose both guarded and despised and passing fields sleeping fallow for winter. Ballard pointed to the ones closest to where they rode.
